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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1950 ***
+
+
+
+
+A WOMAN OF THIRTY
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+
+Translated by Ellen Marriage
+
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+                    To Louis Boulanger, Painter.
+
+
+
+
+
+A WOMAN OF THIRTY
+
+
+
+
+I. EARLY MISTAKES
+
+It was a Sunday morning in the beginning of April 1813, a morning which
+gave promise of one of those bright days when Parisians, for the first
+time in the year, behold dry pavements underfoot and a cloudless sky
+overhead. It was not yet noon when a luxurious cabriolet, drawn by two
+spirited horses, turned out of the Rue de Castiglione into the Rue de
+Rivoli, and drew up behind a row of carriages standing before the newly
+opened barrier half-way down the Terrasse de Feuillants. The owner of
+the carriage looked anxious and out of health; the thin hair on his
+sallow temples, turning gray already, gave a look of premature age to
+his face. He flung the reins to a servant who followed on horseback,
+and alighted to take in his arms a young girl whose dainty beauty had
+already attracted the eyes of loungers on the Terrasse. The little lady,
+standing upon the carriage step, graciously submitted to be taken by the
+waist, putting an arm round the neck of her guide, who set her down upon
+the pavement without so much as ruffling the trimming of her green rep
+dress. No lover would have been so careful. The stranger could only be
+the father of the young girl, who took his arm familiarly without a word
+of thanks, and hurried him into the Garden of the Tuileries.
+
+The old father noted the wondering stare which some of the young men
+gave the couple, and the sad expression left his face for a moment.
+Although he had long since reached the time of life when a man is fain
+to be content with such illusory delights as vanity bestows, he began to
+smile.
+
+“They think you are my wife,” he said in the young lady’s ear, and he
+held himself erect and walked with slow steps, which filled his daughter
+with despair.
+
+He seemed to take up the coquette’s part for her; perhaps of the two, he
+was the more gratified by the curious glances directed at those little
+feet, shod with plum-colored prunella; at the dainty figure outlined by
+a low-cut bodice, filled in with an embroidered chemisette, which only
+partially concealed the girlish throat. Her dress was lifted by her
+movements as she walked, giving glimpses higher than the shoes of
+delicately moulded outlines beneath open-work silk stockings. More than
+one of the idlers turned and passed the pair again, to admire or to
+catch a second glimpse of the young face, about which the brown tresses
+played; there was a glow in its white and red, partly reflected from the
+rose-colored satin lining of her fashionable bonnet, partly due to the
+eagerness and impatience which sparkled in every feature. A mischievous
+sweetness lighted up the beautiful, almond-shaped dark eyes, bathed
+in liquid brightness, shaded by the long lashes and curving arch of
+eyebrow. Life and youth displayed their treasures in the petulant face
+and in the gracious outlines of the bust unspoiled even by the fashion
+of the day, which brought the girdle under the breast.
+
+The young lady herself appeared to be insensible to admiration. Her
+eyes were fixed in a sort of anxiety on the Palace of the Tuileries,
+the goal, doubtless, of her petulant promenade. It wanted but fifteen
+minutes of noon, yet even at that early hour several women in gala dress
+were coming away from the Tuileries, not without backward glances at the
+gates and pouting looks of discontent, as if they regretted the lateness
+of the arrival which had cheated them of a longed-for spectacle. Chance
+carried a few words let fall by one of these disappointed fair ones to
+the ears of the charming stranger, and put her in a more than common
+uneasiness. The elderly man watched the signs of impatience and
+apprehension which flitted across his companion’s pretty face with
+interest, rather than amusement, in his eyes, observing her with a close
+and careful attention, which perhaps could only be prompted by some
+after-thought in the depths of a father’s mind.
+
+
+
+It was the thirteenth Sunday of the year 1813. In two days’ time
+Napoleon was to set out upon the disastrous campaign in which he was
+to lose first Bessières, and then Duroc; he was to win the memorable
+battles of Lutzen and Bautzen, to see himself treacherously deserted by
+Austria, Saxony, Bavaria, and Bernadotte, and to dispute the dreadful
+field of Leipsic. The magnificent review commanded for that day by the
+Emperor was to be the last of so many which had long drawn forth the
+admiration of Paris and of foreign visitors. For the last time the Old
+Guard would execute their scientific military manoeuvres with the pomp
+and precision which sometimes amazed the Giant himself. Napoleon was
+nearly ready for his duel with Europe. It was a sad sentiment which
+brought a brilliant and curious throng to the Tuileries. Each mind
+seemed to foresee the future, perhaps too in every mind another thought
+was dimly present, how that in the future, when the heroic age of France
+should have taken the half-fabulous color with which it is tinged for
+us to-day, men’s imaginations would more than once seek to retrace the
+picture of the pageant which they were assembled to behold.
+
+“Do let us go more quickly, father; I can hear the drums,” the young
+girl said, and in a half-teasing, half-coaxing manner she urged her
+companion forward.
+
+“The troops are marching into the Tuileries,” said he.
+
+“Or marching out of it--everybody is coming away,” she answered in
+childish vexation, which drew a smile from her father.
+
+“The review only begins at half-past twelve,” he said; he had fallen
+half behind his impetuous daughter.
+
+It might have been supposed that she meant to hasten their progress by
+a movement of her right arm, for it swung like an oar blade through the
+water. In her impatience she had crushed her handkerchief into a ball in
+her tiny, well-gloved fingers. Now and then the old man smiled, but the
+smiles were succeeded by an anxious look which crossed his withered face
+and saddened it. In his love for the fair young girl by his side, he
+was as fain to exalt the present moment as to dread the future. “She is
+happy to-day; will her happiness last?” he seemed to ask himself, for
+the old are somewhat prone to foresee their own sorrows in the future of
+the young.
+
+Father and daughter reached the peristyle under the tower where the
+tricolor flag was still waving; but as they passed under the arch by
+which people came and went between the Gardens of the Tuileries and the
+Place du Carrousel, the sentries on guard called out sternly:
+
+“No admittance this way.”
+
+By standing on tiptoe the young girl contrived to catch a glimpse of
+a crowd of well-dressed women, thronging either side of the old marble
+arcade along which the Emperor was to pass.
+
+“We were too late in starting, father; you can see that quite well.” A
+little piteous pout revealed the immense importance which she attached
+to the sight of this particular review.
+
+“Very well, Julie--let us go away. You dislike a crush.”
+
+“Do let us stay, father. Even here I may catch a glimpse of the Emperor;
+he might die during this campaign, and then I should never have seen
+him.”
+
+Her father shuddered at the selfish speech. There were tears in the
+girl’s voice; he looked at her, and thought that he saw tears beneath
+her lowered eyelids; tears caused not so much by the disappointment as
+by one of the troubles of early youth, a secret easily guessed by an old
+father. Suddenly Julie’s face flushed, and she uttered an exclamation.
+Neither her father nor the sentinels understood the meaning of the cry;
+but an officer within the barrier, who sprang across the court towards
+the staircase, heard it, and turned abruptly at the sound. He went to
+the arcade by the Gardens of the Tuileries, and recognized the young
+lady who had been hidden for a moment by the tall bearskin caps of the
+grenadiers. He set aside in favor of the pair the order which he himself
+had given. Then, taking no heed of the murmurings of the fashionable
+crowd seated under the arcade, he gently drew the enraptured child
+towards him.
+
+“I am no longer surprised at her vexation and enthusiasm, if _you_ are
+in waiting,” the old man said with a half-mocking, half-serious glance
+at the officer.
+
+“If you want a good position, M. le Duc,” the young man answered, “we
+must not spend any time in talking. The Emperor does not like to be kept
+waiting, and the Grand Marshal has sent me to announce our readiness.”
+
+As he spoke, he had taken Julie’s arm with a certain air of old
+acquaintance, and drew her rapidly in the direction of the Place du
+Carrousel. Julie was astonished at the sight. An immense crowd was
+penned up in a narrow space, shut in between the gray walls of the
+palace and the limits marked out by chains round the great sanded
+squares in the midst of the courtyard of the Tuileries. The cordon of
+sentries posted to keep a clear passage for the Emperor and his staff
+had great difficulty in keeping back the eager humming swarm of human
+beings.
+
+“Is it going to be a very fine sight?” Julie asked (she was radiant
+now).
+
+“Pray take care!” cried her guide, and seizing Julie by the waist, he
+lifted her up with as much vigor as rapidity and set her down beside a
+pillar.
+
+But for his prompt action, his gazing kinswoman would have come into
+collision with the hindquarters of a white horse which Napoleon’s
+Mameluke held by the bridle; the animal in its trappings of green velvet
+and gold stood almost under the arcade, some ten paces behind the rest
+of the horses in readiness for the Emperor’s staff.
+
+The young officer placed the father and daughter in front of the crowd
+in the first space to the right, and recommended them by a sign to the
+two veteran grenadiers on either side. Then he went on his way into
+the palace; a look of great joy and happiness had succeeded to his
+horror-struck expression when the horse backed. Julie had given his hand
+a mysterious pressure; had she meant to thank him for the little service
+he had done her, or did she tell him, “After all, I shall really see
+you?” She bent her head quite graciously in response to the respectful
+bow by which the officer took leave of them before he vanished.
+
+The old man stood a little behind his daughter. He looked grave. He
+seemed to have left the two young people together for some purpose of
+his own, and now he furtively watched the girl, trying to lull her
+into false security by appearing to give his whole attention to the
+magnificent sight in the Place du Carrousel. When Julie’s eyes turned
+to her father with the expression of a schoolboy before his master, he
+answered her glance by a gay, kindly smile, but his own keen eyes had
+followed the officer under the arcade, and nothing of all that passed
+was lost upon him.
+
+“What a grand sight!” said Julie in a low voice, as she pressed her
+father’s hand; and indeed the pomp and picturesquesness of the spectacle
+in the Place du Carrousel drew the same exclamation from thousands
+upon thousands of spectators, all agape with wonder. Another array of
+sightseers, as tightly packed as the ranks behind the old noble and
+his daughter, filled the narrow strip of pavement by the railings which
+crossed the Place du Carrousel from side to side in a line parallel with
+the Palace of the Tuileries. The dense living mass, variegated by the
+colors of the women’s dresses, traced out a bold line across the
+centre of the Place du Carrousel, filling in the fourth side of a vast
+parallelogram, surrounded on three sides by the Palace of the Tuileries
+itself. Within the precincts thus railed off stood the regiments of the
+Old Guard about to be passed in review, drawn up opposite the Palace
+in imposing blue columns, ten ranks in depth. Without and beyond in the
+Place du Carrousel stood several regiments likewise drawn up in parallel
+lines, ready to march in through the arch in the centre; the Triumphal
+Arch, where the bronze horses of St. Mark from Venice used to stand in
+those days. At either end, by the Galeries du Louvre, the regimental
+bands were stationed, masked by the Polish Lancers then on duty.
+
+The greater part of the vast graveled space was empty as an arena, ready
+for the evolutions of those silent masses disposed with the symmetry
+of military art. The sunlight blazed back from ten thousand bayonets in
+thin points of flame; the breeze ruffled the men’s helmet plumes till
+they swayed like the crests of forest-trees before a gale. The mute
+glittering ranks of veterans were full of bright contrasting colors,
+thanks to their different uniforms, weapons, accoutrements, and
+aiguillettes; and the whole great picture, that miniature battlefield
+before the combat, was framed by the majestic towering walls of the
+Tuileries, which officers and men seemed to rival in their immobility.
+Involuntarily the spectator made the comparison between the walls of
+men and the walls of stone. The spring sunlight, flooding white masonry
+reared but yesterday and buildings centuries old, shone full likewise
+upon thousands of bronzed faces, each one with its own tale of perils
+passed, each one gravely expectant of perils to come.
+
+The colonels of the regiments came and went alone before the ranks of
+heroes; and behind the masses of troops, checkered with blue and silver
+and gold and purple, the curious could discern the tricolor pennons on
+the lances of some half-a-dozen indefatigable Polish cavalry, rushing
+about like shepherds’ dogs in charge of a flock, caracoling up and down
+between the troops and the crowd, to keep the gazers within their proper
+bounds. But for this slight flutter of movement, the whole scene might
+have been taking place in the courtyard of the palace of the Sleeping
+Beauty. The very spring breeze, ruffling up the long fur on the
+grenadiers’ bearskins, bore witness to the men’s immobility, as the
+smothered murmur of the crowd emphasized their silence. Now and again
+the jingling of Chinese bells, or a chance blow to a big drum, woke
+the reverberating echoes of the Imperial Palace with a sound like the
+far-off rumblings of thunder.
+
+An indescribable, unmistakable enthusiasm was manifest in the expectancy
+of the multitude. France was about to take farewell of Napoleon on the
+eve of a campaign of which the meanest citizen foresaw the perils. The
+existence of the French Empire was at stake--to be, or not to be. The
+whole citizen population seemed to be as much inspired with this thought
+as that other armed population standing in serried and silent ranks in
+the enclosed space, with the Eagles and the genius of Napoleon hovering
+above them.
+
+Those very soldiers were the hope of France, her last drop of blood; and
+this accounted for not a little of the anxious interest of the scene.
+Most of the gazers in the crowd had bidden farewell--perhaps farewell
+for ever--to the men who made up the rank and file of the battalions;
+and even those most hostile to the Emperor, in their hearts, put up
+fervent prayers to heaven for the glory of France; and those most weary
+of the struggle with the rest of Europe had left their hatreds behind as
+they passed in under the Triumphal Arch. They too felt that in the hour
+of danger Napoleon meant France herself.
+
+The clock of the Tuileries struck the half-hour. In a moment the hum of
+the crowd ceased. The silence was so deep that you might have heard a
+child speak. The old noble and his daughter, wholly intent, seeming to
+live only by their eyes, caught a distinct sound of spurs and clank of
+swords echoing up under the sonorous peristyle.
+
+And suddenly there appeared a short, somewhat stout figure in a green
+uniform, white trousers, and riding boots; a man wearing on his head a
+cocked hat well-nigh as magically potent as its wearer; the broad red
+ribbon of the Legion of Honor rose and fell on his breast, and a short
+sword hung at his side. At one and the same moment the man was seen by
+all eyes in all parts of the square.
+
+Immediately the drums beat a salute, both bands struck up a martial
+refrain, caught and repeated like a fugue by every instrument from the
+thinnest flutes to the largest drum. The clangor of that call to arms
+thrilled through every soul. The colors dropped, and the men presented
+arms, one unanimous rhythmical movement shaking every bayonet from
+the foremost front near the Palace to the last rank in the Place du
+Carrousel. The words of command sped from line to line like echoes. The
+whole enthusiastic multitude sent up a shout of “Long live the Emperor!”
+
+Everything shook, quivered, and thrilled at last. Napoleon had mounted
+his horse. It was his movement that had put life into those silent
+masses of men; the dumb instruments had found a voice at his coming,
+the Eagles and the colors had obeyed the same impulse which had brought
+emotion into all faces.
+
+The very walls of the high galleries of the old palace seemed to cry
+aloud, “Long live the Emperor!”
+
+There was something preternatural about it--it was magic at work, a
+counterfeit presentment of the power of God; or rather it was a fugitive
+image of a reign itself so fugitive.
+
+And _he_ the centre of such love, such enthusiasm and devotion, and so
+many prayers, he for whom the sun had driven the clouds from the sky,
+was sitting there on his horse, three paces in front of his Golden
+Squadron, with the grand Marshal on his left, and the Marshal-in-waiting
+on his right. Amid all the outburst of enthusiasm at his presence not a
+feature of his face appeared to alter.
+
+“Oh! yes. At Wagram, in the thick of the firing, on the field of
+Borodino, among the dead, always as cool as a cucumber _he_ is!” said
+the grenadier, in answer to the questions with which the young girl
+plied him. For a moment Julie was absorbed in the contemplation of that
+face, so quiet in the security of conscious power. The Emperor noticed
+Mlle. de Chatillonest, and leaned to make some brief remark to Duroc,
+which drew a smile from the Grand Marshal. Then the review began.
+
+If hitherto the young lady’s attention had been divided between
+Napoleon’s impassive face and the blue, red, and green ranks of troops,
+from this time forth she was wholly intent upon a young officer moving
+among the lines as they performed their swift symmetrical evolutions.
+She watched him gallop with tireless activity to and from the group
+where the plainly dressed Napoleon shone conspicuous. The officer rode a
+splendid black horse. His handsome sky-blue uniform marked him out amid
+the variegated multitude as one of the Emperor’s orderly staff-officers.
+His gold lace glittered in the sunshine which lighted up the aigrette on
+his tall, narrow shako, so that the gazer might have compared him to a
+will-o’-the-wisp, or to a visible spirit emanating from the Emperor to
+infuse movement into those battalions whose swaying bayonets flashed
+into flames; for, at a mere glance from his eyes, they broke and
+gathered again, surging to and fro like the waves in a bay, or again
+swept before him like the long ridges of high-crested wave which the
+vexed Ocean directs against the shore.
+
+When the manoeuvres were over the officer galloped back at full speed,
+pulled up his horse, and awaited orders. He was not ten paces from Julie
+as he stood before the Emperor, much as General Rapp stands in Gerard’s
+_Battle of Austerlitz_. The young girl could behold her lover in all his
+soldierly splendor.
+
+Colonel Victor d’Aiglemont, barely thirty years of age, was tall,
+slender, and well made. His well-proportioned figure never showed to
+better advantage than now as he exerted his strength to hold in the
+restive animal, whose back seemed to curve gracefully to the rider’s
+weight. His brown masculine face possessed the indefinable charm of
+perfectly regular features combined with youth. The fiery eyes under the
+broad forehead, shaded by thick eyebrows and long lashes, looked like
+white ovals bordered by an outline of black. His nose had the delicate
+curve of an eagle’s beak; the sinuous lines of the inevitable black
+moustache enhanced the crimson of the lips. The brown and tawny shades
+which overspread the wide high-colored cheeks told a tale of unusual
+vigor, and his whole face bore the impress of dashing courage. He was
+the very model which French artists seek to-day for the typical hero
+of Imperial France. The horse which he rode was covered with sweat, the
+animal’s quivering head denoted the last degree of restiveness; his hind
+hoofs were set down wide apart and exactly in a line, he shook his long
+thick tail to the wind; in his fidelity to his master he seemed to be a
+visible presentment of that master’s devotion to the Emperor.
+
+Julie saw her lover watching intently for the Emperor’s glances, and
+felt a momentary pang of jealousy, for as yet he had not given her a
+look. Suddenly at a word from his sovereign Victor gripped his horse’s
+flanks and set out at a gallop, but the animal took fright at a shadow
+cast by a post, shied, backed, and reared up so suddenly that his rider
+was all but thrown off. Julie cried out, her face grew white, people
+looked at her curiously, but she saw no one, her eyes were fixed upon
+the too mettlesome beast. The officer gave the horse a sharp admonitory
+cut with the whip, and galloped off with Napoleon’s order.
+
+Julie was so absorbed, so dizzy with sights and sounds, that
+unconsciously she clung to her father’s arm so tightly that he could
+read her thoughts by the varying pressure of her fingers. When Victor
+was all but flung out of the saddle, she clutched her father with a
+convulsive grip as if she herself were in danger of falling, and the
+old man looked at his daughter’s tell-tale face with dark and painful
+anxiety. Pity, jealousy, something even of regret stole across every
+drawn and wrinkled line of mouth and brow. When he saw the unwonted
+light in Julie’s eyes, when that cry broke from her, when the convulsive
+grasp of her fingers drew away the veil and put him in possession of
+her secret, then with that revelation of her love there came surely some
+swift revelation of the future. Mournful forebodings could be read in
+his own face.
+
+Julie’s soul seemed at that moment to have passed into the officer’s
+being. A torturing thought more cruel than any previous dread contracted
+the old man’s painworn features, as he saw the glance of understanding
+that passed between the soldier and Julie. The girl’s eyes were wet, her
+cheeks glowed with unwonted color. Her father turned abruptly and led
+her away into the Garden of the Tuileries.
+
+“Why, father,” she cried, “there are still the regiments in the Place du
+Carrousel to be passed in review.”
+
+“No, child, all the troops are marching out.”
+
+“I think you are mistaken, father; M. d’Aiglemont surely told them to
+advance----”
+
+“But I feel ill, my child, and I do not care to stay.”
+
+Julie could readily believe the words when she glanced at his face; he
+looked quite worn out by his fatherly anxieties.
+
+“Are you feeling very ill?” she asked indifferently, her mind was so
+full of other thoughts.
+
+“Every day is a reprieve for me, is it not?” returned her father.
+
+“Now do you mean to make me miserable again by talking about your death?
+I was in such spirits! Do pray get rid of those horrid gloomy ideas of
+yours.”
+
+The father heaved a sigh. “Ah! spoiled child,” he cried, “the best
+hearts are sometimes very cruel. We devote our whole lives to you, you
+are our one thought, we plan for your welfare, sacrifice our tastes to
+your whims, idolize you, give the very blood in our veins for you, and
+all this is nothing, is it? Alas! yes, you take it all as a matter of
+course. If we would always have your smiles and your disdainful love, we
+should need the power of God in heaven. Then comes another, a lover, a
+husband, and steals away your heart.”
+
+Julie looked in amazement at her father; he walked slowly along, and
+there was no light in the eyes which he turned upon her.
+
+“You hide yourself even from us,” he continued, “but, perhaps, also you
+hide yourself from yourself--”
+
+“What do you mean by that, father?”
+
+“I think that you have secrets from me, Julie.--You love,” he went on
+quickly, as he saw the color rise to her face. “Oh! I hoped that you
+would stay with your old father until he died. I hoped to keep you with
+me, still radiant and happy, to admire you as you were but so lately. So
+long as I knew nothing of your future I could believe in a happy lot for
+you; but now I cannot possibly take away with me a hope of happiness for
+your life, for you love the colonel even more than the cousin. I can no
+longer doubt it.”
+
+“And why should I be forbidden to love him?” asked Julie, with lively
+curiosity in her face.
+
+“Ah, my Julie, you would not understand me,” sighed the father.
+
+“Tell me, all the same,” said Julie, with an involuntary petulant
+gesture.
+
+“Very well, child, listen to me. Girls are apt to imagine noble and
+enchanting and totally imaginary figures in their own minds; they have
+fanciful extravagant ideas about men, and sentiment, and life; and then
+they innocently endow somebody or other with all the perfections of
+their day-dreams, and put their trust in him. They fall in love with
+this imaginary creature in the man of their choice; and then, when it
+is too late to escape from their fate, behold their first idol, the
+illusion made fair with their fancies, turns to an odious skeleton.
+Julie, I would rather have you fall in love with an old man than with
+the Colonel. Ah! if you could but see things from the standpoint of ten
+years hence, you would admit that my old experience was right. I know
+what Victor is, that gaiety of his is simply animal spirits--the gaiety
+of the barracks. He has no ability, and he is a spendthrift. He is one
+of those men whom Heaven created to eat and digest four meals a day, to
+sleep, to fall in love with the first woman that comes to hand, and to
+fight. He does not understand life. His kind heart, for he has a kind
+heart, will perhaps lead him to give his purse to a sufferer or to a
+comrade; _but_ he is careless, he has not the delicacy of heart which
+makes us slaves to a woman’s happiness, he is ignorant, he is selfish.
+There are plenty of _buts_--”
+
+“But, father, he must surely be clever, he must have ability, or he
+would not be a colonel--”
+
+“My dear, Victor will be a colonel all his life.--I have seen no one who
+appears to me to be worthy of you,” the old father added, with a kind of
+enthusiasm.
+
+He paused an instant, looked at his daughter, and added, “Why, my poor
+Julie, you are still too young, too fragile, too delicate for the cares
+and rubs of married life. D’Aiglemont’s relations have spoiled him, just
+as your mother and I have spoiled you. What hope is there that you two
+could agree, with two imperious wills diametrically opposed to
+each other? You will be either the tyrant or the victim, and either
+alternative means, for a wife, an equal sum of misfortune. But you are
+modest and sweet-natured, you would yield from the first. In short,” he
+added, in a quivering voice, “there is a grace of feeling in you
+which would never be valued, and then----” he broke off, for the tears
+overcame him.
+
+“Victor will give you pain through all the girlish qualities of your
+young nature,” he went on, after a pause. “I know what soldiers are, my
+Julie; I have been in the army. In a man of that kind, love very seldom
+gets the better of old habits, due partly to the miseries amid which
+soldiers live, partly to the risks they run in a life of adventure.”
+
+“Then you mean to cross my inclinations, do you, father?” asked Julie,
+half in earnest, half in jest. “Am I to marry to please you and not to
+please myself?”
+
+“To please me!” cried her father, with a start of surprise. “To please
+_me_, child? when you will not hear the voice that upbraids you so
+tenderly very much longer! But I have always heard children impute
+personal motives for the sacrifices that their parents make for
+them. Marry Victor, my Julie! Some day you will bitterly deplore his
+ineptitude, his thriftless ways, his selfishness, his lack of delicacy,
+his inability to understand love, and countless troubles arising through
+him. Then, remember, that here under these trees your old father’s
+prophetic voice sounded in your ears in vain.”
+
+He said no more; he had detected a rebellious shake of the head on his
+daughter’s part. Both made several paces towards the carriage which was
+waiting for them at the grating. During that interval of silence, the
+young girl stole a glance at her father’s face, and little by little her
+sullen brow cleared. The intense pain visible on his bowed forehead made
+a lively impression upon her.
+
+“Father,” she began in gentle tremulous tones, “I promise to say no more
+about Victor until you have overcome your prejudices against him.”
+
+The old man looked at her in amazement. Two tears which filled his eyes
+overflowed down his withered cheeks. He could not take Julie in his arms
+in that crowded place; but he pressed her hand tenderly. A few minutes
+later when they had taken their places in the cabriolet, all the anxious
+thought which had gathered about his brow had completely disappeared.
+Julie’s pensive attitude gave him far less concern than the innocent joy
+which had betrayed her secret during the review.
+
+
+
+Nearly a year had passed since the Emperor’s last review. In early March
+1814 a calèche was rolling along the highroad from Amboise to Tours.
+As the carriage came out from beneath the green-roofed aisle of walnut
+trees by the post-house of la Frillière, the horses dashed forward with
+such speed that in a moment they gained the bridge built across the Cise
+at the point of its confluence with the Loire. There, however, they come
+to a sudden stand. One of the traces had given way in consequence of the
+furious pace at which the post-boy, obedient to his orders, had urged on
+four horses, the most vigorous of their breed. Chance, therefore, gave
+the two recently awakened occupants of the carriage an opportunity of
+seeing one of the most lovely landscapes along the enchanting banks of
+the Loire, and that at their full leisure.
+
+At a glance the travelers could see to the right the whole winding
+course of the Cise meandering like a silver snake among the meadows,
+where the grass had taken the deep, bright green of early spring. To the
+left lay the Loire in all its glory. A chill morning breeze, ruffling
+the surface of the stately river, had fretted the broad sheets of water
+far and wide into a network of ripples, which caught the gleams of the
+sun, so that the green islets here and there in its course shone like
+gems set in a gold necklace. On the opposite bank the fair rich meadows
+of Touraine stretched away as far as the eye could see; the low hills
+of the Cher, the only limits to the view, lay on the far horizon, a
+luminous line against the clear blue sky. Tours itself, framed by the
+trees on the islands in a setting of spring leaves, seemed to rise like
+Venice out of the waters, and her old cathedral towers soaring in air
+were blended with the pale fantastic cloud shapes in the sky.
+
+Over the side of the bridge, where the carriage had come to a stand, the
+traveler looks along a line of cliffs stretching as far as Tours.
+Nature in some freakish mood must have raised these barriers of rock,
+undermined incessantly by the rippling Loire at their feet, for a
+perpetual wonder for spectators. The village of Vouvray nestles, as
+it were, among the clefts and crannies of the crags, which begin
+to describe a bend at the junction of the Loire and Cise. A whole
+population of vine-dressers lives, in fact, in appalling insecurity in
+holes in their jagged sides for the whole way between Vouvray and Tours.
+In some places there are three tiers of dwellings hollowed out, one
+above the other, in the rock, each row communicating with the next by
+dizzy staircases cut likewise in the face of the cliff. A little girl
+in a short red petticoat runs out into her garden on the roof of another
+dwelling; you can watch a wreath of hearth-smoke curling up among
+the shoots and trails of the vines. Men are at work in their almost
+perpendicular patches of ground, an old woman sits tranquilly spinning
+under a blossoming almond tree on a crumbling mass of rock, and smiles
+down on the dismay of the travelers far below her feet. The cracks in
+the ground trouble her as little as the precarious state of the old
+wall, a pendant mass of loose stones, only kept in position by the
+crooked stems of its ivy mantle. The sound of coopers’ mallets rings
+through the skyey caves; for here, where Nature stints human industry of
+soil, the soil is everywhere tilled, and everywhere fertile.
+
+No view along the whole course of the Loire can compare with the rich
+landscape of Touraine, here outspread beneath the traveler’s eyes. The
+triple picture, thus barely sketched in outline, is one of those scenes
+which the imagination engraves for ever upon the memory; let a poet
+fall under its charm, and he shall be haunted by visions which shall
+reproduce its romantic loveliness out of the vague substance of dreams.
+
+As the carriage stopped on the bridge over the Cise, white sails came
+out here and there from among the islands in the Loire to add new grace
+to the perfect view. The subtle scent of the willows by the water’s
+edge was mingled with the damp odor of the breeze from the river. The
+monotonous chant of a goat-herd added a plaintive note to the sound
+of birds’ songs in a chorus which never ends; the cries of the boatmen
+brought tidings of distant busy life. Here was Touraine in all its
+glory, and the very height of the splendor of spring. Here was the
+one peaceful district in France in those troublous days; for it was
+so unlikely that a foreign army should trouble its quiet that Touraine
+might be said to defy invasion.
+
+As soon as the calèche stopped, a head covered with a foraging cap was
+put out of the window, and soon afterwards an impatient military man
+flung open the carriage door and sprang down into the road to pick a
+quarrel with the postilion, but the skill with which the Tourangeau was
+repairing the trace restored Colonel d’Aiglemont’s equanimity. He went
+back to the carriage, stretched himself to relieve his benumbed muscles,
+yawned, looked about him, and finally laid a hand on the arm of a young
+woman warmly wrapped up in a furred pelisse.
+
+“Come, Julie,” he said hoarsely, “just wake up and take a look at this
+country. It is magnificent.”
+
+Julie put her head out of the window. She wore a traveling cap of sable
+fur. Nothing could be seen of her but her face, for the whole of her
+person was completely concealed by the folds of her fur pelisse.
+The young girl who tripped to the review at the Tuileries with light
+footsteps and joy and gladness in her heart was scarcely recognizable in
+Julie d’Aiglemont. Her face, delicate as ever, had lost the rose-color
+which once gave it so rich a glow. A few straggling locks of black hair,
+straightened out by the damp night air, enhanced its dead whiteness,
+and all its life and sparkle seemed to be torpid. Yet her eyes glittered
+with preternatural brightness in spite of the violet shadows under the
+lashes upon her wan cheeks.
+
+She looked out with indifferent eyes over the fields towards the
+Cher, at the islands in the river, at the line of the crags of Vouvray
+stretching along the Loire towards Tours; then she sank back as soon as
+possible into her seat in the calèche. She did not care to give a glance
+to the enchanting valley of the Cise.
+
+“Yes, it is wonderful,” she said, and out in the open air her voice
+sounded weak and faint to the last degree. Evidently she had had her way
+with her father, to her misfortune.
+
+“Would you not like to live here, Julie?”
+
+“Yes; here or anywhere,” she answered listlessly.
+
+“Do you feel ill?” asked Colonel d’Aiglemont.
+
+“No, not at all,” she answered with momentary energy; and, smiling at
+her husband, she added, “I should like to go to sleep.”
+
+Suddenly there came a sound of a horse galloping towards them. Victor
+d’Aiglemont dropped his wife’s hand and turned to watch the bend in the
+road. No sooner had he taken his eyes from Julie’s pale face than
+all the assumed gaiety died out of it; it was as if a light had been
+extinguished. She felt no wish to look at the landscape, no curiosity to
+see the horseman who was galloping towards them at such a furious pace,
+and, ensconcing herself in her corner, stared out before her at the
+hindquarters of the post-horses, looking as blank as any Breton peasant
+listening to his _recteur’s_ sermon.
+
+Suddenly a young man riding a valuable horse came out from behind the
+clump of poplars and flowering briar-rose.
+
+“It is an Englishman,” remarked the Colonel.
+
+“Lord bless you, yes, General,” said the post-boy; “he belongs to the
+race of fellows who have a mind to gobble up France, they say.”
+
+The stranger was one of the foreigners traveling in France at the time
+when Napoleon detained all British subjects within the limits of the
+Empire, by way of reprisals for the violation of the Treaty of Amiens,
+an outrage of international law perpetrated by the Court of St. James.
+These prisoners, compelled to submit to the Emperor’s pleasure, were not
+all suffered to remain in the houses where they were arrested, nor yet
+in the places of residence which at first they were permitted to choose.
+Most of the English colony in Touraine had been transplanted thither
+from different places where their presence was supposed to be inimical
+to the interests of the Continental Policy.
+
+The young man, who was taking the tedium of the early morning hours on
+horseback, was one of these victims of bureaucratic tyranny. Two years
+previously, a sudden order from the Foreign Office had dragged him from
+Montpellier, whither he had gone on account of consumptive tendencies.
+He glanced at the Comte d’Aiglemont, saw that he was a military man, and
+deliberately looked away, turning his head somewhat abruptly towards the
+meadows by the Cise.
+
+“The English are all as insolent as if the globe belonged to them,”
+ muttered the Colonel. “Luckily, Soult will give them a thrashing
+directly.”
+
+The prisoner gave a glance to the calèche as he rode by. Brief though
+that glance was, he had yet time to notice the sad expression which lent
+an indefinable charm to the Countess’ pensive face. Many men are deeply
+moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look
+of pain for a sign of constancy or of love. Julie herself was so much
+absorbed in the contemplation of the opposite cushion that she saw
+neither the horse nor the rider. The damaged trace meanwhile had been
+quickly and strongly repaired; the Count stepped into his place again;
+and the post-boy, doing his best to make up for lost time, drove
+the carriage rapidly along the embankment. On they drove under the
+overhanging cliffs, with their picturesque vine-dressers’ huts and
+stores of wine maturing in their dark sides, till in the distance uprose
+the spire of the famous Abbey of Marmoutiers, the retreat of St. Martin.
+
+“What can that diaphanous milord want with us?” exclaimed the Colonel,
+turning to assure himself that the horseman who had followed them from
+the bridge was the young Englishman.
+
+After all, the stranger committed no breach of good manners by riding
+along on the footway, and Colonel d’Aiglemont was fain to lie back in
+his corner after sending a scowl in the Englishman’s direction. But in
+spite of his hostile instincts, he could not help noticing the beauty of
+the animal and the graceful horsemanship of the rider. The young man’s
+face was of that pale, fair-complexioned, insular type, which is almost
+girlish in the softness and delicacy of its color and texture. He was
+tall, thin, and fair-haired, dressed with the extreme and elaborate
+neatness characteristic of a man of fashion in prudish England. Any one
+might have thought that bashfulness rather than pleasure at the sight
+of the Countess had called up that flush into his face. Once only Julie
+raised her eyes and looked at the stranger, and then only because she
+was in a manner compelled to do so, for her husband called upon her to
+admire the action of the thoroughbred. It so happened that their glances
+clashed; and the shy Englishman, instead of riding abreast of the
+carriage, fell behind on this, and followed them at a distance of a few
+paces.
+
+Yet the Countess had scarcely given him a glance; she saw none of the
+various perfections, human and equine, commended to her notice, and
+fell back again in the carriage, with a slight movement of the eyelids
+intended to express her acquiescence in her husband’s views. The Colonel
+fell asleep again, and both husband and wife reached Tours without
+another word. Not one of those enchanting views of everchanging
+landscape through which they sped had drawn so much as a glance from
+Julie’s eyes.
+
+Mme. d’Aiglemont looked now and again at her sleeping husband. While she
+looked, a sudden jolt shook something down upon her knees. It was her
+father’s portrait, a miniature which she wore suspended about her neck
+by a black cord. At the sight of it, the tears, till then kept back,
+overflowed her eyes, but no one, save perhaps the Englishman, saw them
+glitter there for a brief moment before they dried upon her pale cheeks.
+
+Colonel d’Aiglemont was on his way to the South. Marshal Soult was
+repelling an English invasion of Bearn; and d’Aiglemont, the bearer of
+the Emperor’s orders to the Marshal, seized the opportunity of taking
+his wife as far as Tours to leave her with an elderly relative of his
+own, far away from the dangers threatening Paris.
+
+Very shortly the carriage rolled over the paved road of Tours, over the
+bridge, along the Grande-Rue, and stopped at last before the old mansion
+of the _ci-devant_ Marquise de Listomère-Landon.
+
+The Marquise de Listomère-Landon, with her white hair, pale face, and
+shrewd smile, was one of those fine old ladies who still seem to wear
+the paniers of the eighteenth century, and affects caps of an extinct
+mode. They are nearly always caressing in their manners, as if the
+heyday of love still lingered on for these septuagenarian portraits
+of the age of Louis Quinze, with the faint perfume of _poudre a la
+maréchale_ always clinging about them. Bigoted rather than pious, and
+less of bigots than they seem, women who can tell a story well and talk
+still better, their laughter comes more readily for an old memory than
+for a new jest--the present intrudes upon them.
+
+When an old waiting-woman announced to the Marquise de Listomère-Landon
+(to give her the title which she was soon to resume) the arrival of a
+nephew whom she had not seen since the outbreak of the war with Spain,
+the old lady took off her spectacles with alacrity, shut the _Galerie
+de l’ancienne Cour_ (her favorite work), and recovered something like
+youthful activity, hastening out upon the flight of steps to greet the
+young couple there.
+
+Aunt and niece exchanged a rapid glance of survey.
+
+“Good-morning, dear aunt,” cried the Colonel, giving the old lady a
+hasty embrace. “I am bringing a young lady to put under your wing.
+I have come to put my treasure in your keeping. My Julie is neither
+jealous nor a coquette, she is as good as an angel. I hope that she will
+not be spoiled here,” he added, suddenly interrupting himself.
+
+“Scapegrace!” returned the Marquise, with a satirical glance at her
+nephew.
+
+She did not wait for her niece to approach her, but with a certain
+kindly graciousness went forward herself to kiss Julie, who stood there
+thoughtfully, to all appearance more embarrassed than curious concerning
+her new relation.
+
+“So we are to make each other’s acquaintance, are we, my love?” the
+Marquise continued. “Do not be too much alarmed of me. I always try not
+to be an old woman with young people.”
+
+On the way to the drawing-room, the Marquise ordered breakfast for her
+guests in provincial fashion; but the Count checked his aunt’s flow of
+words by saying soberly that he could only remain in the house while the
+horses were changing. On this the three hurried into the drawing-room.
+The Colonel had barely time to tell the story of the political and
+military events which had compelled him to ask his aunt for a shelter
+for his young wife. While he talked on without interruption, the older
+lady looked from her nephew to her niece, and took the sadness in
+Julie’s white face for grief at the enforced separation. “Eh! eh!” her
+looks seemed to say, “these young things are in love with each other.”
+
+The crack of the postilion’s whip sounded outside in the silent old
+grass-grown courtyard. Victor embraced his aunt once more, and rushed
+out.
+
+“Good-bye, dear,” he said, kissing his wife, who had followed him down
+to the carriage.
+
+“Oh! Victor, let me come still further with you,” she pleaded coaxingly.
+“I do not want to leave you----”
+
+“Can you seriously mean it?”
+
+“Very well,” said Julie, “since you wish it.” The carriage disappeared.
+
+“So you are very fond of my poor Victor?” said the Marquise,
+interrogating her niece with one of those sagacious glances which
+dowagers give younger women.
+
+“Alas, madame!” said Julie, “must one not love a man well indeed to
+marry him?”
+
+The words were spoken with an artless accent which revealed either a
+pure heart or inscrutable depths. How could a woman, who had been the
+friend of Duclos and the Marechal de Richelieu, refrain from trying to
+read the riddle of this marriage? Aunt and niece were standing on the
+steps, gazing after the fast vanishing calèche. The look in the young
+Countess’ eyes did not mean love as the Marquise understood it. The good
+lady was a Provencale, and her passions had been lively.
+
+“So you were captivated by my good-for-nothing of a nephew?” she asked.
+
+Involuntarily Julie shuddered, something in the experienced coquette’s
+look and tone seemed to say that Mme. de Listomère-Landon’s knowledge
+of her husband’s character went perhaps deeper than his wife’s. Mme.
+d’Aiglemont, in dismay, took refuge in this transparent dissimulation,
+ready to her hand, the first resource of an artless unhappiness. Mme.
+de Listomère appeared to be satisfied with Julie’s answers; but in her
+secret heart she rejoiced to think that here was a love affair on hand
+to enliven her solitude, for that her niece had some amusing flirtation
+on foot she was fully convinced.
+
+In the great drawing-room, hung with tapestry framed in strips of
+gilding, young Mme. d’Aiglemont sat before a blazing fire, behind a
+Chinese screen placed to shut out the cold draughts from the window,
+and her heavy mood scarcely lightened. Among the old eighteenth-century
+furniture, under the old paneled ceiling, it was not very easy to be
+gay. Yet the young Parisienne took a sort of pleasure in this entrance
+upon a life of complete solitude and in the solemn silence of the old
+provincial house. She exchanged a few words with the aunt, a stranger,
+to whom she had written a bride’s letter on her marriage, and then sat
+as silent as if she had been listening to an opera. Not until two hours
+had been spent in an atmosphere of quiet befitting la Trappe, did she
+suddenly awaken to a sense of uncourteous behavior, and bethink herself
+of the short answers which she had given her aunt. Mme. de Listomère,
+with the gracious tact characteristic of a bygone age, had respected
+her niece’s mood. When Mme. d’Aiglemont became conscious of her
+shortcomings, the dowager sat knitting, though as a matter of fact she
+had several times left the room to superintend preparations in the
+Green Chamber, whither the Countess’ luggage had been transported; now,
+however, she had returned to her great armchair, and stole a glance from
+time to time at this young relative. Julie felt ashamed of giving way
+to irresistible broodings, and tried to earn her pardon by laughing at
+herself.
+
+“My dear child, _we_ know the sorrows of widowhood,” returned her aunt.
+But only the eyes of forty years could have distinguished the irony
+hovering about the old lady’s mouth.
+
+Next morning the Countess improved. She talked. Mme. de Listomère no
+longer despaired of fathoming the new-made wife, whom yesterday she had
+set down as a dull, unsociable creature, and discoursed on the delights
+of the country, of dances, of houses where they could visit. All that
+day the Marquise’s questions were so many snares; it was the old habit
+of the old Court, she could not help setting traps to discover her
+niece’s character. For several days Julie, plied with temptations,
+steadfastly declined to seek amusement abroad; and much as the old
+lady’s pride longed to exhibit her pretty niece, she was fain to
+renounce all hope of taking her into society, for the young Countess was
+still in morning for her father, and found in her loss and her mourning
+dress a pretext for her sadness and desire for seclusion.
+
+By the end of the week the dowager admired Julie’s angelic sweetness
+of disposition, her diffident charm, her indulgent temper, and
+thenceforward began to take a prodigious interest in the mysterious
+sadness gnawing at this young heart. The Countess was one of those women
+who seem born to be loved and to bring happiness with them. Mme. de
+Listomère found her niece’s society grown so sweet and precious, that
+she doted upon Julie, and could no longer think of parting with her.
+A month sufficed to establish an eternal friendship between the two
+ladies. The dowager noticed, not without surprise, the changes that took
+place in Mme. d’Aiglemont; gradually her bright color died away, and
+her face became dead white. Yet, Julie’s spirits rose as the bloom faded
+from her cheeks. Sometimes the dowager’s sallies provoked outbursts of
+merriment or peals of laughter, promptly repressed, however, by some
+clamorous thought.
+
+Mme. de Listomère had guessed by this time that it was neither Victor’s
+absence nor a father’s death which threw a shadow over her niece’s life;
+but her mind was so full of dark suspicions, that she found it difficult
+to lay a finger upon the real cause of the mischief. Possibly truth is
+only discoverable by chance. A day came, however, at length when
+Julie flashed out before her aunt’s astonished eyes into a complete
+forgetfulness of her marriage; she recovered the wild spirits of
+careless girlhood. Mme. de Listomère then and there made up her mind
+to fathom the depths of this soul, for its exceeding simplicity was as
+inscrutable as dissimulation.
+
+Night was falling. The two ladies were sitting by the window which
+looked out upon the street, and Julie was looking thoughtful again, when
+some one went by on horseback.
+
+“There goes one of your victims,” said the Marquise.
+
+Mme. d’Aiglemont looked up; dismay and surprise blended in her face.
+
+“He is a young Englishman, the Honorable Arthur Ormand, Lord Grenville’s
+eldest son. His history is interesting. His physician sent him to
+Montpellier in 1802; it was hoped that in that climate he might recover
+from the lung complaint which was gaining ground. He was detained, like
+all his fellow-countrymen, by Bonaparte when war broke out. That monster
+cannot live without fighting. The young Englishman, by way of amusing
+himself, took to studying his own complaint, which was believed to be
+incurable. By degrees he acquired a liking for anatomy and physic, and
+took quite a craze for that kind of thing, a most extraordinary taste
+in a man of quality, though the Regent certainly amused himself with
+chemistry! In short, Monsieur Arthur made astonishing progress in his
+studies; his health did the same under the faculty of Montpellier; he
+consoled his captivity, and at the same time his cure was thoroughly
+completed. They say that he spent two whole years in a cowshed, living
+on cresses and the milk of a cow brought from Switzerland, breathing as
+seldom as he could, and never speaking a word. Since he come to Tours
+he has lived quite alone; he is as proud as a peacock; but you have
+certainly made a conquest of him, for probably it is not on my account
+that he has ridden under the window twice every day since you have been
+here.--He has certainly fallen in love with you.”
+
+That last phrase roused the Countess like magic. Her involuntary start
+and smile took the Marquise by surprise. So far from showing a sign of
+the instinctive satisfaction felt by the most strait-laced of women when
+she learns that she has destroyed the peace of mind of some male
+victim, there was a hard, haggard expression in Julie’s face--a look of
+repulsion amounting almost to loathing.
+
+A woman who loves will put the whole world under the ban of Love’s
+empire for the sake of the one whom she loves; but such a woman can
+laugh and jest; and Julie at that moment looked as if the memory of some
+recently escaped peril was too sharp and fresh not to bring with it a
+quick sensation of pain. Her aunt, by this time convinced that Julie
+did not love her nephew, was stupefied by the discovery that she loved
+nobody else. She shuddered lest a further discovery should show her
+Julie’s heart disenchanted, lest the experience of a day, or perhaps
+of a night, should have revealed to a young wife the full extent of
+Victor’s emptiness.
+
+“If she has found him out, there is an end of it,” thought the dowager.
+“My nephew will soon be made to feel the inconveniences of wedded life.”
+
+The Marquise now proposed to convert Julie to the monarchical doctrines
+of the times of Louis Quinze; but a few hours later she discovered, or,
+more properly speaking, guessed, the not uncommon state of affairs, and
+the real cause of her niece’s low spirits.
+
+Julie turned thoughtful on a sudden, and went to her room earlier than
+usual. When her maid left her for the night, she still sat by the fire
+in the yellow velvet depths of a great chair, an old-world piece of
+furniture as well suited for sorrow as for happy people. Tears flowed,
+followed by sighs and meditation. After a while she drew a little table
+to her, sought writing materials, and began to write. The hours went by
+swiftly. Julie’s confidences made to the sheet of paper seemed to cost
+her dear; every sentence set her dreaming, and at last she suddenly
+burst into tears. The clocks were striking two. Her head, grown heavy as
+a dying woman’s, was bowed over her breast. When she raised it, her
+aunt appeared before her as suddenly as if she had stepped out of the
+background of tapestry upon the walls.
+
+“What can be the matter with you, child?” asked the Marquise. “Why are
+you sitting up so late? And why, in the first place, are you crying
+alone, at your age?”
+
+Without further ceremony she sat down beside her niece, her eyes the
+while devouring the unfinished letter.
+
+“Were you writing to your husband?”
+
+“Do I know where he is?” returned the Countess.
+
+Her aunt thereupon took up the sheet and proceeded to read it. She had
+brought her spectacles; the deed was premeditated. The innocent writer
+of the letter allowed her to take it without the slightest remark. It
+was neither lack of dignity nor consciousness of secret guilt which left
+her thus without energy. Her aunt had come in upon her at a crisis. She
+was helpless; right or wrong, reticence and confidence, like all things
+else, were matters of indifference. Like some young maid who had heaped
+scorn upon her lover, and feels so lonely and sad when evening comes,
+that she longs for him to come back or for a heart to which she can pour
+out her sorrow, Julie allowed her aunt to violate the seal which honor
+places upon an open letter, and sat musing while the Marquise read on:--
+
+  “MY DEAR LOUISA,--Why do you ask so often for the fulfilment of as
+  rash a promise as two young and inexperienced girls could make?
+  You say that you often ask yourself why I have given no answer to
+  your questions for these six months. If my silence told you
+  nothing, perhaps you will understand the reasons for it to-day, as
+  you read the secrets which I am about to betray. I should have
+  buried them for ever in the depths of my heart if you had not
+  announced your own approaching marriage. You are about to be
+  married, Louisa. The thought makes me shiver. Poor little one!
+  marry, yes, in a few months’ time one of the keenest pangs of
+  regret will be the recollection of a self which used to be, of the
+  two young girls who sat one evening under one of the tallest
+  oak-trees on the hillside at Ecouen, and looked along the fair
+  valley at our feet in the light of the sunset, which caught us in
+  its glow. We sat on a slab of rock in ecstasy, which sobered down
+  into melancholy of the gentlest. You were the first to discover that
+  the far-off sun spoke to us of the future. How inquisitive and how
+  silly we were! Do you remember all the absurd things we said and
+  did? We embraced each other; ‘like lovers,’ said we. We solemnly
+  promised that the first bride should faithfully reveal to the
+  other the mysteries of marriage, the joys which our childish minds
+  imagined to be so delicious. That evening will complete your
+  despair, Louisa. In those days you were young and beautiful and
+  careless, if not radiantly happy; a few days of marriage, and you
+  will be, what I am already--ugly, wretched, and old. Need I tell
+  you how proud I was and how vain and glad to be married to Colonel
+  Victor d’Aiglemont? And besides, how could I tell you now? for I
+  cannot remember that old self. A few moments turned my girlhood to
+  a dream. All through the memorable day which consecrated a chain,
+  the extent of which was hidden from me, my behavior was not free
+  from reproach. Once and again my father tried to repress my
+  spirits; the joy which I showed so plainly was thought unbefitting
+  the occasion, my talk scarcely innocent, simply because I was so
+  innocent. I played endless child’s tricks with my bridal veil, my
+  wreath, my gown. Left alone that night in the room whither I had
+  been conducted in state, I planned a piece of mischief to tease
+  Victor. While I awaited his coming, my heart beat wildly, as it
+  used to do when I was a child stealing into the drawing-room on
+  the last day of the old year to catch a glimpse of the New Year’s
+  gifts piled up there in heaps. When my husband came in and looked
+  for me, my smothered laughter ringing out from beneath the lace in
+  which I had shrouded myself, was the last outburst of the
+  delicious merriment which brightened our games in childhood...”
+
+When the dowager had finished reading the letter, and after such a
+beginning the rest must have been sad indeed, she slowly laid her
+spectacles on the table, put the letter down beside them, and looked
+fixedly at her niece. Age had not dimmed the fire in those green eyes as
+yet.
+
+“My little girl,” she said, “a married woman cannot write such a letter
+as this to a young unmarried woman; it is scarcely proper--”
+
+“So I was thinking,” Julie broke in upon her aunt. “I felt ashamed of
+myself while you were reading it.”
+
+“If a dish at table is not to our taste, there is no occasion to disgust
+others with it, child,” the old lady continued benignly, “especially
+when marriage has seemed to us all, from Eve downwards, so excellent an
+institution... You have no mother?”
+
+The Countess trembled, then she raised her face meekly, and said:
+
+“I have missed my mother many times already during the past year; but I
+have myself to blame, I would not listen to my father. He was opposed to
+my marriage; he disapproved of Victor as a son-in-law.”
+
+She looked at her aunt. The old face was lighted up with a kindly look,
+and a thrill of joy dried Julie’s tears. She held out her young,
+soft hand to the old Marquise, who seemed to ask for it, and the
+understanding between the two women was completed by the close grasp of
+their fingers.
+
+“Poor orphan child!”
+
+The words came like a final flash of enlightenment to Julie. It seemed
+to her that she heard her father’s prophetic voice again.
+
+“Your hands are burning! Are they always like this?” asked the Marquise.
+
+“The fever only left me seven or eight days ago.”
+
+“You had a fever upon you, and said nothing about it to me!”
+
+“I have had it for a year,” said Julie, with a kind of timid anxiety.
+
+“My good little angel, then your married life hitherto has been one long
+time of suffering?”
+
+Julie did not venture to reply, but an affirmative sign revealed the
+whole truth.
+
+“Then you are unhappy?”
+
+“On! no, no, aunt. Victor loves me, he almost idolizes me, and I adore
+him, he is so kind.”
+
+“Yes, you love him; but you avoid him, do you not?”
+
+“Yes... sometimes... He seeks me too often.”
+
+“And often when you are alone you are troubled with the fear that he may
+suddenly break in on your solitude?”
+
+“Alas! yes, aunt. But, indeed, I love him, I do assure you.”
+
+“Do you not, in your own thoughts, blame yourself because you find it
+impossible to share his pleasures? Do you never think at times that
+marriage is a heavier yoke than an illicit passion could be?”
+
+“Oh, that is just it,” she wept. “It is all a riddle to me, and can you
+guess it all? My faculties are benumbed, I have no ideas, I can scarcely
+see at all. I am weighed down by vague dread, which freezes me till
+I cannot feel, and keeps me in continual torpor. I have no voice with
+which to pity myself, no words to express my trouble. I suffer, and I am
+ashamed to suffer when Victor is happy at my cost.”
+
+“Babyish nonsense, and rubbish, all of it!” exclaimed the aunt, and a
+gay smile, an after-glow of the joys of her own youth, suddenly lighted
+up her withered face.
+
+“And do you too laugh!” the younger woman cried despairingly.
+
+“It was just my own case,” the Marquise returned promptly. “And
+now Victor has left you, you have become a girl again, recovering a
+tranquillity without pleasure and without pain, have you not?”
+
+Julie opened wide eyes of bewilderment.
+
+“In fact, my angel, you adore Victor, do you not? But still you would
+rather be a sister to him than a wife, and, in short, your marriage is
+emphatically not a success?”
+
+“Well--no, aunt. But why do you smile?”
+
+“Oh! you are right, poor child! There is nothing very amusing in all
+this. Your future would be big with more than one mishap if I had not
+taken you under my protection, if my old experience of life had not
+guessed the very innocent cause of your troubles. My nephew did
+not deserve his good fortune, the blockhead! In the reign of our
+well-beloved Louis Quinze, a young wife in your position would very
+soon have punished her husband for behaving like a ruffian. The selfish
+creature! The men who serve under this Imperial tyrant are all of them
+ignorant boors. They take brutality for gallantry; they know no more of
+women than they know of love; and imagine that because they go out
+to face death on the morrow, they may dispense to-day with all
+consideration and attentions for us. The time was when a man could love
+and die too at the proper time. My niece, I will form you. I will put an
+end to this unhappy divergence between you, a natural thing enough, but
+it would end in mutual hatred and desire for a divorce, always supposing
+that you did not die on the way to despair.”
+
+Julie’s amazement equaled her surprise as she listened to her aunt. She
+was surprised by her language, dimly divining rather than appreciating
+the wisdom of the words she heard, and very much dismayed to find what
+this relative, out of great experience, passed judgment upon Victor as
+her father had done, though in somewhat milder terms. Perhaps some quick
+prevision of the future crossed her mind; doubtless, at any rate, she
+felt the heavy weight of the burden which must inevitably overwhelm
+her, for she burst into tears, and sprang to the old lady’s arms. “Be my
+mother,” she sobbed.
+
+The aunt shed no tears. The Revolution had left old ladies of the
+Monarchy but few tears to shed. Love, in bygone days, and the Terror at
+a later time, had familiarized them with extremes of joy and anguish in
+such a sort that, amid the perils of life, they preserved their dignity
+and coolness, a capacity for sincere but undemonstrative affection
+which never disturbed their well-bred self-possession, and a dignity of
+demeanor which a younger generation has done very ill to discard.
+
+The dowager took Julie in her arms, and kissed her on the forehead with
+a tenderness and pity more often found in women’s ways and manner than
+in their hearts. Then she coaxed her niece with kind, soothing words,
+assured her of a happy future, lulled her with promises of love, and
+put her to bed as if she had been not a niece, but a daughter, a
+much-beloved daughter whose hopes and cares she had made her own.
+Perhaps the old Marquise had found her own youth and inexperience and
+beauty again in this nephew’s wife. And the Countess fell asleep, happy
+to have found a friend, nay a mother, to whom she could tell everything
+freely.
+
+Next morning, when the two women kissed each other with heartfelt
+kindness, and that look of intelligence which marks a real advance in
+friendship, a closer intimacy between two souls, they heard the sound
+of horsehoofs, and, turning both together, saw the young Englishman ride
+slowly past the window, after his wont. Apparently he had made a certain
+study of the life led by the two lonely women, for he never failed
+to ride by as they sat at breakfast, and again at dinner. His horse
+slackened pace of its own accord, and for the space of time required
+to pass the two windows in the room, its rider turned a melancholy look
+upon the Countess, who seldom deigned to take the slightest notion of
+him. Not so the Marquise. Minds not necessarily little find it difficult
+to resist the little curiosity which fastens upon the most trifling
+event that enlivens provincial life; and the Englishman’s mute way of
+expressing his timid, earnest love tickled Mme. de Listomère. For her
+the periodically recurrent glance became a part of the day’s routine,
+hailed daily with new jests. As the two women sat down to table, both of
+them looked out at the same moment. This time Julie’s eyes met Arthur’s
+with such a precision of sympathy that the color rose to her face. The
+stranger immediately urged his horse into a gallop and went.
+
+“What is to be done, madame?” asked Julie. “People see this Englishman
+go past the house, and they will take it for granted that I--”
+
+“Yes,” interrupted her aunt.
+
+“Well, then, could I not tell him to discontinue his promenades?”
+
+“Would not that be a way of telling him that he was dangerous? You might
+put that notion into his head. And besides, can you prevent a man from
+coming and going as he pleases? Our meals shall be served in another
+room to-morrow; and when this young gentleman sees us no longer, there
+will be an end of making love to you through the window. There, dear
+child, that is how a woman of the world does.”
+
+But the measure of Julie’s misfortune was to be filled up. The two women
+had scarcely risen from table when Victor’s man arrived in hot haste
+from Bourges with a letter for the Countess from her husband. The
+servant had ridden by unfrequented ways.
+
+Victor sent his wife news of the downfall of the Empire and the
+capitulation of Paris. He himself had gone over to the Bourbons, and all
+France was welcoming them back with transports of enthusiasm. He could
+not go so far as Tours, but he begged her to come at once to join him at
+Orleans, where he hoped to be in readiness with passports for her.
+His servant, an old soldier, would be her escort so far as Orleans; he
+(Victor) believed that the road was still open.
+
+“You have not a moment to lose, madame,” said the man. “The Prussians,
+Austrians, and English are about to effect a junction either at Blois or
+at Orleans.”
+
+A few hours later, Julie’s preparations were made, and she started out
+upon her journey in an old traveling carriage lent by her aunt.
+
+“Why should you not come with us to Paris?” she asked, as she put her
+arms about the Marquise. “Now that the Bourbons have come back you would
+be--”
+
+“Even if there had not been this unhoped-for return, I should still have
+gone to Paris, my poor child, for my advice is only too necessary to
+both you and Victor. So I shall make all my preparations for rejoining
+you there.”
+
+Julie set out. She took her maid with her, and the old soldier galloped
+beside the carriage as escort. At nightfall, as they changed horses for
+the last stage before Blois, Julie grew uneasy. All the way from Amboise
+she had heard the sound of wheels behind them, a carriage following hers
+had kept at the same distance. She stood on the step and looked out
+to see who her traveling companions might be, and in the moonlight saw
+Arthur standing three paces away, gazing fixedly at the chaise which
+contained her. Again their eyes met. The Countess hastily flung herself
+back in her seat, but a feeling of dread set her pulses throbbing. It
+seemed to her, as to most innocent and inexperienced young wives, that
+she was herself to blame for this love which she had all unwittingly
+inspired. With this thought came an instinctive terror, perhaps a sense
+of her own helplessness before aggressive audacity. One of a man’s
+strongest weapons is the terrible power of compelling a woman to think
+of him when her naturally lively imagination takes alarm or offence at
+the thought that she is followed.
+
+The Countess bethought herself of her aunt’s advice, and made up her
+mind that she would not stir from her place during the rest of the
+journey; but every time the horses were changed she heard the Englishman
+pacing round the two carriages, and again upon the road heard the
+importunate sound of the wheels of his calèche. Julie soon began to
+think that, when once reunited to her husband, Victor would know how to
+defend her against this singular persecution.
+
+“Yet suppose that in spite of everything, this young man does not love
+me?” This was the thought that came last of all.
+
+No sooner did she reach Orleans than the Prussians stopped the chaise.
+It was wheeled into an inn-yard and put under a guard of soldiers.
+Resistance was out of the question. The foreign soldiers made the three
+travelers understand by signs that they were obeying orders, and that
+no one could be allowed to leave the carriage. For about two hours the
+Countess sat in tears, a prisoner surrounded by the guard, who smoked,
+laughed, and occasionally stared at her with insolent curiosity. At
+last, however, she saw her captors fall away from the carriage with a
+sort of respect, and heard at the same time the sound of horses entering
+the yard. Another moment, and a little group of foreign officers,
+with an Austrian general at their head, gathered about the door of the
+traveling carriage.
+
+“Madame,” said the General, “pray accept our apologies. A mistake has
+been made. You may continue your journey without fear; and here is a
+passport which will spare you all further annoyance of any kind.”
+
+Trembling the Countess took the paper, and faltered out some vague words
+of thanks. She saw Arthur, now wearing an English uniform, standing
+beside the General, and could not doubt that this prompt deliverance
+was due to him. The young Englishman himself looked half glad, half
+melancholy; his face was turned away, and he only dared to steal an
+occasional glance at Julie’s face.
+
+Thanks to the passport, Mme. d’Aiglemont reached Paris without further
+misadventure, and there she found her husband. Victor d’Aiglemont,
+released from his oath of allegiance to the Emperor, had met with a
+most flattering reception from the Comte d’Artois, recently appointed
+Lieutenant-General of the kingdom by his brother Louis XVIII.
+D’Aiglemont received a commission in the Life Guards, equivalent to
+the rank of general. But amid the rejoicings over the return of the
+Bourbons, fate dealt poor Julie a terrible blow. The death of the
+Marquise de Listomère-Landon was an irreparable loss. The old lady died
+of joy and of an accession of gout to the heart when the Duc d’Angoulême
+came back to Tours, and the one living being entitled by her age to
+enlighten Victor, the woman who, by discreet counsels, might have
+brought about perfect unanimity of husband and wife, was dead; and Julie
+felt the full extent of her loss. Henceforward she must stand alone
+between herself and her husband. But she was young and timid; there
+could be no doubt of the result, or that from the first she would
+elect to bear her lot in silence. The very perfection of her character
+forbade her to venture to swerve from her duties, or to attempt to
+inquire into the cause of her sufferings, for to put an end to them
+would have been to venture on delicate ground, and Julie’s girlish
+modesty shrank from the thought.
+
+A word as to M. d’Aiglemont’s destinies under the Restoration.
+
+How many men are there whose utter incapacity is a secret kept from
+most of their acquaintance. For such as these high rank, high office,
+illustrious birth, a certain veneer of politeness, and considerable
+reserve of manner, or the _prestige_ of great fortunes, are but so many
+sentinels to turn back critics who would penetrate to the presence
+of the real man. Such men are like kings, in that their real figure,
+character, and life can never be known nor justly appreciated, because
+they are always seen from too near or too far. Factitious merit has a
+way of asking questions and saying little; and understands the art of
+putting others forward to save the necessity of posing before them;
+then, with a happy knack of its own, it draws and attaches others by
+the thread of the ruling passion of self-interest, keeping men of far
+greater abilities to play like puppets, and despising those whom it has
+brought down to its own level. The petty fixed idea naturally prevails;
+it has the advantage of persistence over the plasticity of great
+thoughts.
+
+The observer who should seek to estimate and appraise the negative
+values of these empty heads needs subtlety rather than superior wit for
+the task; patience is a more necessary part of his judicial outfit
+than great mental grasp, cunning and tact rather than any elevation or
+greatness of ideas. Yet skilfully as such usurpers can cover and
+defend their weak points, it is difficult to delude wife and mother
+and children and the house-friend of the family; fortunately for them,
+however, these persons almost always keep a secret which in a manner
+touches the honor of all, and not unfrequently go so far as to help to
+foist the imposture upon the public. And if, thanks to such domestic
+conspiracy, many a noodle passes current for a man of ability, on the
+other hand many another who has real ability is taken for a noodle to
+redress the balance, and the total average of this kind of false coin in
+circulation in the state is a pretty constant quantity.
+
+Bethink yourself now of the part to be played by a clever woman quick to
+think and feel, mated with a husband of this kind, and can you not see
+a vision of lives full of sorrow and self-sacrifice? Nothing upon
+earth can repay such hearts so full of love and tender tact. Put a
+strong-willed woman in this wretched situation, and she will force a
+way out of it for herself by a crime, like Catherine II., whom men
+nevertheless style “the Great.” But these women are not all seated upon
+thrones, they are for the most part doomed to domestic unhappiness none
+the less terrible because obscure.
+
+Those who seek consolation in this present world for their woes often
+effect nothing but a change of ills if they remain faithful to their
+duties; or they commit a sin if they break the laws for their pleasure.
+All these reflections are applicable to Julie’s domestic life.
+
+Before the fall of Napoleon nobody was jealous of d’Aiglemont. He was
+one colonel among many, an efficient orderly staff-officer, as good a
+man as you could find for a dangerous mission, as unfit as well could
+be for an important command. D’Aiglemont was looked upon as a dashing
+soldier such as the Emperor liked, the kind of man whom his mess usually
+calls “a good fellow.” The Restoration gave him back his title of
+Marquis, and did not find him ungrateful; he followed the Bourbons into
+exile at Ghent, a piece of logical loyalty which falsified the horoscope
+drawn for him by his late father-in-law, who predicted that Victor would
+remain a colonel all his life. After the Hundred Days he received the
+appointment of Lieutenant-General, and for the second time became a
+marquis; but it was M. d’Aiglemont’s ambition to be a peer of France. He
+adopted, therefore, the maxims and the politics of the _Conservateur_,
+cloaked himself in dissimulation which hid nothing (there being nothing
+to hide), cultivated gravity of countenance and the art of asking
+questions and saying little, and was taken for a man of profound wisdom.
+Nothing drew him from his intrenchments behind the forms of politeness;
+he laid in a provision of formulas, and made lavish use of his stock of
+the catch-words coined at need in Paris to give fools the small change
+for the ore of great ideas and events. Among men of the world he was
+reputed a man of taste and discernment; and as a bigoted upholder of
+aristocratic opinions he was held up for a noble character. If by chance
+he slipped now and again into his old light-heartedness or levity,
+others were ready to discover an undercurrent of diplomatic intention
+beneath his inanity and silliness. “Oh! he only says exactly as much as
+he means to say,” thought these excellent people.
+
+So d’Aiglemont’s defects and good qualities stood him alike in good
+stead. He did nothing to forfeit a high military reputation gained by
+his dashing courage, for he had never been a commander-in-chief. Great
+thoughts surely were engraven upon that manly aristocratic countenance,
+which imposed upon every one but his own wife. And when everybody else
+believed in the Marquis d’Aiglemont’s imaginary talents, the Marquis
+persuaded himself before he had done that he was one of the most
+remarkable men at Court, where, thanks to his purely external
+qualifications, he was in favor and taken at his own valuation.
+
+At home, however, M. d’Aiglemont was modest. Instinctively he felt
+that his wife, young though she was, was his superior; and out of this
+involuntary respect there grew an occult power which the Marquise was
+obliged to wield in spite of all her efforts to shake off the burden.
+She became her husband’s adviser, the director of his actions and his
+fortunes. It was an unnatural position; she felt it as something of a
+humiliation, a source of pain to be buried in the depths of her heart.
+From the first her delicately feminine instinct told her that it is a
+far better thing to obey a man of talent than to lead a fool; and that
+a young wife compelled to act and think like a man is neither man nor
+woman, but a being who lays aside all the charms of her womanhood along
+with its misfortunes, yet acquires none of the privileges which our
+laws give to the stronger sex. Beneath the surface her life was a bitter
+mockery. Was she not compelled to protect her protector, to worship a
+hollow idol, a poor creature who flung her the love of a selfish husband
+as the wages of her continual self-sacrifice; who saw nothing in her but
+the woman; and who either did not think it worth while, or (wrong quite
+as deep) did not think at all of troubling himself about her pleasures,
+of inquiring into the cause of her low spirits and dwindling health? And
+the Marquis, like most men who chafe under a wife’s superiority,
+saved his self-love by arguing from Julie’s physical feebleness a
+corresponding lack of mental power, for which he was pleased to pity
+her; and he would cry out upon fate which had given him a sickly girl
+for a wife. The executioner posed, in fact, as the victim.
+
+All the burdens of this dreary lot fell upon the Marquise, who still
+must smile upon her foolish lord, and deck a house of mourning with
+flowers, and make a parade of happiness in a countenance wan with secret
+torture. And with this sense of responsibility for the honor of
+both, with the magnificent immolation of self, the young Marquise
+unconsciously acquired a wifely dignity, a consciousness of virtue which
+became her safeguard amid many dangers.
+
+Perhaps, if her heart were sounded to the very depths, this intimate
+closely hidden wretchedness, following upon her unthinking, girlish
+first love, had roused in her an abhorrence of passion; possibly she had
+no conception of its rapture, nor of the forbidden but frenzied bliss
+for which some women will renounce all the laws of prudence and the
+principles of conduct upon which society is based. She put from her like
+a dream the thought of bliss and tender harmony of love promised by Mme.
+de Listomère-Landon’s mature experience, and waited resignedly for the
+end of her troubles with a hope that she might die young.
+
+Her health had declined daily since her return from Touraine; her
+life seemed to be measured to her in suffering; yet her ill-health was
+graceful, her malady seemed little more than languor, and might well be
+taken by careless eyes for a fine lady’s whim of invalidism.
+
+Her doctors had condemned her to keep to the sofa, and there among
+her flowers lay the Marquise, fading as they faded. She was not strong
+enough to walk, nor to bear the open air, and only went out in a closed
+carriage. Yet with all the marvels of modern luxury and invention about
+her, she looked more like an indolent queen than an invalid. A few of
+her friends, half in love perhaps with her sad plight and her fragile
+look, sure of finding her at home, and speculating no doubt upon her
+future restoration to health, would come to bring her the news of the
+day, and kept her informed of the thousand and one small events which
+fill life in Paris with variety. Her melancholy, deep and real though it
+was, was still the melancholy of a woman rich in many ways. The Marquise
+d’Aiglemont was like a flower, with a dark insect gnawing at its root.
+
+Occasionally she went into society, not to please herself, but in
+obedience to the exigencies of the position which her husband aspired to
+take. In society her beautiful voice and the perfection of her singing
+could always gain the social success so gratifying to a young woman; but
+what was social success to her, who drew nothing from it for her heart
+or her hopes? Her husband did not care for music. And, moreover, she
+seldom felt at her ease in salons, where her beauty attracted homage not
+wholly disinterested. Her position excited a sort of cruel compassion,
+a morbid curiosity. She was suffering from an inflammatory complaint not
+infrequently fatal, for which our nosology as yet has found no name, a
+complaint spoken of among women in confidential whispers. In spite of
+the silence in which her life was spent, the cause of her ill-health
+was no secret. She was still but a girl in spite of her marriage; the
+slightest glance threw her into confusion. In her endeavor not to blush,
+she was always laughing, always apparently in high spirits; she would
+never admit that she was not perfectly well, and anticipated questions
+as to her health by shame-stricken subterfuges.
+
+In 1817, however, an event took place which did much to alleviate
+Julie’s hitherto deplorable existence. A daughter was born to her, and
+she determined to nurse her child herself. For two years motherhood,
+its all-absorbing multiplicity of cares and anxious joys, made life
+less hard for her. She and her husband lived necessarily apart. Her
+physicians predicted improved health, but the Marquise herself put no
+faith in these auguries based on theory. Perhaps, like many a one for
+whom life has lost its sweetness, she looked forward to death as a happy
+termination of the drama.
+
+But with the beginning of the year 1819 life grew harder than ever. Even
+while she congratulated herself upon the negative happiness which she
+had contrived to win, she caught a terrifying glimpse of yawning depths
+below it. She had passed by degrees out of her husband’s life. Her fine
+tact and her prudence told her that misfortune must come, and that not
+singly, of this cooling of an affection already lukewarm and wholly
+selfish. Sure though she was of her ascendency over Victor, and certain
+as she felt of his unalterable esteem, she dreaded the influence of
+unbridled passions upon a head so empty, so full of rash self-conceit.
+
+Julie’s friends often found her absorbed in prolonged musings; the less
+clairvoyant among them would jestingly ask her what she was thinking
+about, as if a young wife would think of nothing but frivolity, as
+if there were not almost always a depth of seriousness in a mother’s
+thoughts. Unhappiness, like great happiness, induces dreaming. Sometimes
+as Julie played with her little Helene, she would gaze darkly at her,
+giving no reply to the childish questions in which a mother delights,
+questioning the present and the future as to the destiny of this little
+one. Then some sudden recollection would bring back the scene of the
+review at the Tuileries and fill her eyes with tears. Her father’s
+prophetic warnings rang in her ears, and conscience reproached her that
+she had not recognized its wisdom. Her troubles had all come of her
+own wayward folly, and often she knew not which among so many were the
+hardest to bear. The sweet treasures of her soul were unheeded, and not
+only so, she could never succeed in making her husband understand
+her, even in the commonest everyday things. Just as the power to love
+developed and grew strong and active, a legitimate channel for
+the affections of her nature was denied her, and wedded love was
+extinguished in grave physical and mental sufferings. Add to this that
+she now felt for her husband that pity closely bordering upon contempt,
+which withers all affection at last. Even if she had not learned from
+conversations with some of her friends, from examples in life, from
+sundry occurrences in the great world, that love can bring ineffable
+bliss, her own wounds would have taught her to divine the pure and deep
+happiness which binds two kindred souls each to each.
+
+In the picture which her memory traced of the past, Arthur’s frank face
+stood out daily nobler and purer; it was but a flash, for upon that
+recollection she dared not dwell. The young Englishman’s shy, silent
+love for her was the one event since her marriage which had left a
+lingering sweetness in her darkened and lonely heart. It may be that all
+the blighted hopes, all the frustrated longings which gradually clouded
+Julie’s mind, gathered, by a not unnatural trick of imagination, about
+this man--whose manners, sentiments, and character seemed to have so
+much in common with her own. This idea still presented itself to her
+mind fitfully and vaguely, like a dream; yet from that dream, which
+always ended in a sigh, Julie awoke to greater wretchedness, to keener
+consciousness of the latent anguish brooding beneath her imaginary
+bliss.
+
+Occasionally her self-pity took wilder and more daring flights. She
+determined to have happiness at any cost; but still more often she lay a
+helpless victim of an indescribable numbing stupor, the words she heard
+had no meaning to her, or the thoughts which arose in her mind were so
+vague and indistinct that she could not find language to express them.
+Balked of the wishes of her heart, realities jarred harshly upon her
+girlish dreams of life, but she was obliged to devour her tears. To
+whom could she make complaint? Of whom be understood? She possessed,
+moreover, that highest degree of woman’s sensitive pride, the exquisite
+delicacy of feeling which silences useless complainings and declines to
+use an advantage to gain a triumph which can only humiliate both victor
+and vanquished.
+
+Julie tried to endow M. d’Aiglemont with her own abilities and virtues,
+flattering herself that thus she might enjoy the happiness lacking in
+her lot. All her woman’s ingenuity and tact was employed in making the
+best of the situation; pure waste of pains unsuspected by him, whom
+she thus strengthened in his despotism. There were moments when misery
+became an intoxication, expelling all ideas, all self-control; but,
+fortunately, sincere piety always brought her back to one supreme hope;
+she found a refuge in the belief in a future life, a wonderful thought
+which enabled her to take up her painful task afresh. No elation of
+victory followed those terrible inward battles and throes of anguish;
+no one knew of those long hours of sadness; her haggard glances met
+no response from human eyes, and during the brief moments snatched by
+chance for weeping, her bitter tears fell unheeded and in solitude.
+
+One evening in January 1820, the Marquise became aware of the full
+gravity of the crisis, gradually brought on by force of circumstances.
+When a husband and wife know each other thoroughly, and their relation
+has long been a matter of use and wont, when the wife has learned to
+interpret every slightest sign, when her quick insight discerns thoughts
+and facts which her husband keeps from her, a chance word, or a remark
+so carelessly let fall in the first instance, seems, upon subsequent
+reflection, like the swift breaking out of light. A wife not seldom
+suddenly awakes upon the brink of a precipice or in the depths of the
+abyss; and thus it was with the Marquise. She was feeling glad to have
+been left to herself for some days, when the real reason of her solitude
+flashed upon her. Her husband, whether fickle and tired of her, or
+generous and full of pity for her, was hers no longer.
+
+In the moment of that discovery she forgot herself, her sacrifices, all
+that she had passed through, she remembered only that she was a mother.
+Looking forward, she thought of her daughter’s fortune, of the future
+welfare of the one creature through whom some gleams of happiness came
+to her, of her Helene, the only possession which bound her to life.
+
+Then Julie wished to live to save her child from a stepmother’s terrible
+thraldom, which might crush her darling’s life. Upon this new vision of
+threatened possibilities followed one of those paroxysms of thought at
+fever-heat which consume whole years of life.
+
+Henceforward husband and wife were doomed to be separated by a whole
+world of thought, and all the weight of that world she must bear alone.
+Hitherto she had felt sure that Victor loved her, in so far as he could
+be said to love; she had been the slave of pleasures which she did
+not share; to-day the satisfaction of knowing that she purchased his
+contentment with her tears was hers no longer. She was alone in the
+world, nothing was left to her now but a choice of evils. In the calm
+stillness of the night her despondency drained her of all her strength.
+She rose from her sofa beside the dying fire, and stood in the lamplight
+gazing, dry-eyed, at her child, when M. d’Aiglemont came in. He was in
+high spirits. Julie called to him to admire Helene as she lay asleep,
+but he met his wife’s enthusiasm with a commonplace:
+
+“All children are nice at that age.”
+
+He closed the curtains about the cot after a careless kiss on the
+child’s forehead. Then he turned his eyes on Julie, took her hand and
+drew her to sit beside him on the sofa, where she had been sitting with
+such dark thoughts surging up in her mind.
+
+“You are looking very handsome to-night, Mme. d’Aiglemont,” he
+exclaimed, with the gaiety intolerable to the Marquise, who knew its
+emptiness so well.
+
+“Where have you spent the evening?” she asked, with a pretence of
+complete indifference.
+
+“At Mme. de Sérizy’s.”
+
+He had taken up a fire-screen, and was looking intently at the gauze. He
+had not noticed the traces of tears on his wife’s face. Julie shuddered.
+Words could not express the overflowing torrent of thoughts which must
+be forced down into inner depths.
+
+“Mme. de Sérizy is giving a concert on Monday, and is dying for you to
+go. You have not been anywhere for some time past, and that is enough
+to set her longing to see you at her house. She is a good-natured
+woman, and very fond of you. I should be glad if you would go; I all but
+promised that you should----”
+
+“I will go.”
+
+There was something so penetrating, so significant in the tones of
+Julie’s voice, in her accent, in the glance that went with the words,
+that Victor, startled out of his indifference, stared at his wife in
+astonishment.
+
+That was all, Julie had guessed that it was Mme. de Sérizy who had
+stolen her husband’s heart from her. Her brooding despair benumbed her.
+She appeared to be deeply interested in the fire. Victor meanwhile still
+played with the fire-screen. He looked bored, like a man who has enjoyed
+himself elsewhere, and brought home the consequent lassitude. He yawned
+once or twice, then he took up a candle in one hand, and with the
+other languidly sought his wife’s neck for the usual embrace; but Julie
+stooped and received the good-night kiss upon her forehead; the formal,
+loveless grimace seemed hateful to her at that moment.
+
+As soon as the door closed upon Victor, his wife sank into a seat. Her
+limbs tottered beneath her, she burst into tears. None but those who
+have endured the torture of some such scene can fully understand the
+anguish that it means, or divine the horror of the long-drawn tragedy
+arising out of it.
+
+Those simple, foolish words, the silence that followed between the
+husband and wife, the Marquis’ gesture and expression, the way in which
+he sat before the fire, his attitude as he made that futile attempt to
+put a kiss on his wife’s throat,--all these things made up a dark hour
+for Julie, and the catastrophe of the drama of her sad and lonely life.
+In her madness she knelt down before the sofa, burying her face in it
+to shut out everything from sight, and prayed to Heaven, putting a new
+significance into the words of the evening prayer, till it became a cry
+from the depths of her own soul, which would have gone to her husband’s
+heart if he had heard it.
+
+The following week she spent in deep thought for her future, utterly
+overwhelmed by this new trouble. She made a study of it, trying to
+discover a way to regain her ascendency over the Marquis, scheming how
+to live long enough to watch over her daughter’s happiness, yet to live
+true to her own heart. Then she made up her mind. She would struggle
+with her rival. She would shine once more in society. She would feign
+the love which she could no longer feel, she would captivate her
+husband’s fancy; and when she had lured him into her power, she
+would coquet with him like a capricious mistress who takes delight in
+tormenting a lover. This hateful strategy was the only possible way out
+of her troubles. In this way she would become mistress of the situation;
+she would prescribe her own sufferings at her good pleasure, and reduce
+them by enslaving her husband, and bringing him under a tyrannous yoke.
+She felt not the slightest remorse for the hard life which he should
+lead. At a bound she reached cold, calculating indifference--for her
+daughter’s sake. She had gained a sudden insight into the treacherous,
+lying arts of degraded women; the wiles of coquetry, the revolting
+cunning which arouses such profound hatred in men at the mere suspicion
+of innate corruption in a woman.
+
+Julie’s feminine vanity, her interests, and a vague desire to inflict
+punishment, all wrought unconsciously with the mother’s love within
+her to force her into a path where new sufferings awaited her. But her
+nature was too noble, her mind too fastidious, and, above all things,
+too open, to be the accomplice of these frauds for very long. Accustomed
+as she was to self-scrutiny, at the first step in vice--for vice it
+was--the cry of conscience must inevitably drown the clamor of the
+passions and of selfishness. Indeed, in a young wife whose heart is
+still pure, whose love has never been mated, the very sentiment of
+motherhood is overpowered by modesty. Modesty; is not all womanhood
+summed up in that? But just now Julie would not see any danger, anything
+wrong, in her life.
+
+She went to Mme. de Sérizy’s concert. Her rival had expected to see a
+pallid, drooping woman. The Marquise wore rouge, and appeared in all the
+splendor of a toilet which enhanced her beauty.
+
+Mme. de Sérizy was one of those women who claim to exercise a sort of
+sway over fashions and society in Paris; she issued her decrees, saw
+them received in her own circle, and it seemed to her that all the world
+obeyed them. She aspired to epigram, she set up for an authority in
+matters of taste. Literature, politics, men and women, all alike were
+submitted to her censorship, and the lady herself appeared to defy the
+censorship of others. Her house was in every respect a model of good
+taste.
+
+Julie triumphed over the Countess in her own salon, filled as it was
+with beautiful women and women of fashion. Julie’s liveliness and
+sparkling wit gathered all the most distinguished men in the rooms about
+her. Her costume was faultless, for the despair of the women, who one
+and all envied her the fashion of her dress, and attributed the moulded
+outline of her bodice to the genius of some unknown dressmaker, for
+women would rather believe in miracles worked by the science of chiffons
+than in the grace and perfection of the form beneath.
+
+When Julie went to the piano to sing Desdemona’s song, the men in the
+rooms flocked about her to hear the celebrated voice so long mute, and
+there was a deep silence. The Marquise saw the heads clustered thickly
+in the doorways, saw all eyes turned upon her, and a sharp thrill of
+excitement quivered through her. She looked for her husband, gave him
+a coquettish side-glance, and it pleased her to see that his vanity was
+gratified to no small degree. In the joy of triumph she sang the first
+part of _Al piu salice_. Her audience was enraptured. Never had Malibran
+nor Pasta sung with expression and intonation so perfect. But at the
+beginning of the second part she glanced over the glistening groups
+and saw--Arthur. He never took his eyes from her face. A quick shudder
+thrilled through her, and her voice faltered. Up hurried Mme. de Sérizy
+from her place.
+
+“What is it, dear? Oh! poor little thing! she is in such weak health; I
+was so afraid when I saw her begin a piece so far beyond her strength.”
+
+The song was interrupted. Julie was vexed. She had not courage to sing
+any longer, and submitted to her rival’s treacherous sympathy. There was
+a whisper among the women. The incident led to discussions; they guessed
+that the struggle had begun between the Marquise and Mme. de Sérizy, and
+their tongues did not spare the latter.
+
+Julie’s strange, perturbing presentiments were suddenly realized.
+Through her preoccupation with Arthur she had loved to imagine that with
+that gentle, refined face he must remain faithful to his first love.
+There were times when she felt proud that this ideal, pure, and
+passionate young love should have been hers; the passion of the young
+lover whose thoughts are all for her to whom he dedicates every moment
+of his life, who blushes as a woman blushes, thinks as a woman might
+think, forgetting ambition, fame, and fortune in devotion to his
+love,--she need never fear a rival. All these things she had fondly and
+idly dreamed of Arthur; now all at once it seemed to her that her dream
+had come true. In the young Englishman’s half-feminine face she read
+the same deep thoughts, the same pensive melancholy, the same passive
+acquiescence in a painful lot, and an endurance like her own. She saw
+herself in him. Trouble and sadness are the most eloquent of love’s
+interpreters, and response is marvelously swift between two suffering
+creatures, for in them the powers of intuition and of assimilation of
+facts and ideas are well-nigh unerring and perfect. So with the violence
+of the shock the Marquise’s eyes were opened to the whole extent of
+the future danger. She was only too glad to find a pretext for her
+nervousness in her chronic ill-health, and willingly submitted to be
+overwhelmed by Mme. de Sérizy’s insidious compassion.
+
+That incident of the song caused talk and discussion which differed with
+the various groups. Some pitied Julie’s fate, and regretted that such a
+remarkable woman was lost to society; others fell to wondering what the
+cause of her ill-health and seclusion could be.
+
+“Well, now, my dear Ronquerolles,” said the Marquis, addressing Mme. de
+Sérizy’s brother, “you used to envy me my good fortune, and you used to
+blame me for my infidelities. Pshaw, you would not find much to envy in
+my lot, if, like me, you had a pretty wife so fragile that for the past
+two years you might not so much as kiss her hand for fear of damaging
+her. Do not you encumber yourself with one of those fragile ornaments,
+only fit to put in a glass case, so brittle and so costly that you are
+always obliged to be careful of them. They tell me that you are afraid
+of snow or wet for that fine horse of yours; how often do you ride him?
+That is just my own case. It is true that my wife gives me no ground for
+jealousy, but my marriage is purely ornamental business; if you think
+that I am a married man, you are grossly mistaken. So there is some
+excuse for my unfaithfulness. I should dearly like to know what you
+gentlemen who laugh at me would do in my place. Not many men would be so
+considerate as I am. I am sure,” (here he lowered his voice) “that Mme.
+d’Aiglemont suspects nothing. And then, of course, I have no right to
+complain at all; I am very well off. Only there is nothing more trying
+for a man who feels things than the sight of suffering in a poor
+creature to whom you are attached----”
+
+“You must have a very sensitive nature, then,” said M. de Ronquerolles,
+“for you are not often at home.”
+
+Laughter followed on the friendly epigram; but Arthur, who made one of
+the group, maintained a frigid imperturbability in his quality of an
+English gentleman who takes gravity for the very basis of his being.
+D’Aiglemont’s eccentric confidence, no doubt, had kindled some kind of
+hope in Arthur, for he stood patiently awaiting an opportunity of a word
+with the Marquis. He had not to wait long.
+
+“My Lord Marquis,” he said, “I am unspeakably pained to see the state of
+Mme. d’Aiglemont’s health. I do not think that you would talk jestingly
+about it if you knew that unless she adopts a certain course of
+treatment she must die miserably. If I use this language to you, it is
+because I am in a manner justified in using it, for I am quite certain
+that I can save Mme. d’Aiglemont’s life and restore her to health
+and happiness. It is odd, no doubt, that a man of my rank should be
+a physician, yet nevertheless chance determined that I should study
+medicine. I find life dull enough here,” he continued, affecting a cold
+selfishness to gain his ends, “it makes no difference to me whether I
+spend my time and travel for the benefit of a suffering fellow-creature,
+or waste it in Paris on some nonsense or other. It is very, very seldom
+that a cure is completed in these complaints, for they require constant
+care, time, and patience, and, above all things, money. Travel is
+needed, and a punctilious following out of prescriptions, by no means
+unpleasant, and varied daily. Two _gentlemen_” (laying a stress on
+the word in its English sense) “can understand each other. I give you
+warning that if you accept my proposal, you shall be a judge of my
+conduct at every moment. I will do nothing without consulting you,
+without your superintendence, and I will answer for the success of my
+method if you will consent to follow it. Yes, unless you wish to be Mme.
+d’Aiglemont’s husband no longer, and that before long,” he added in the
+Marquis’ ear.
+
+The Marquis laughed. “One thing is certain--that only an Englishman
+could make me such an extraordinary proposal,” he said. “Permit me to
+leave it unaccepted and unrejected. I will think it over; and my wife
+must be consulted first in any case.”
+
+Julie had returned to the piano. This time she sang a song from
+_Semiramide, Son regina, son guerriera_, and the whole room applauded, a
+stifled outburst of wellbred acclamation which proved that the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain had been roused to enthusiasm by her singing.
+
+The evening was over. D’Aiglemont brought his wife home, and Julie
+saw with uneasy satisfaction that her first attempt had at once been
+successful. Her husband had been roused out of indifference by the part
+which she had played, and now he meant to honor her with such a passing
+fancy as he might bestow upon some opera nymph. It amused Julie that
+she, a virtuous married woman, should be treated thus. She tried to play
+with her power, but at the outset her kindness broke down once more, and
+she received the most terrible of all the lessons held in store for her
+by fate.
+
+Between two and three o’clock in the morning Julie sat up, sombre and
+moody, beside her sleeping husband, in the room dimly lighted by the
+flickering lamp. Deep silence prevailed. Her agony of remorse had lasted
+near an hour; how bitter her tears had been none perhaps can realize
+save women who have known such an experience as hers. Only such natures
+as Julie’s can feel her loathing for a calculated caress, the horror
+of a loveless kiss, of the heart’s apostasy followed by dolorous
+prostitution. She despised herself; she cursed marriage. She could have
+longed for death; perhaps if it had not been for a cry from her child,
+she would have sprung from the window and dashed herself upon the
+pavement. M. d’Aiglemont slept on peacefully at her side; his wife’s hot
+dropping tears did not waken him.
+
+But next morning Julie could be gay. She made a great effort to look
+happy, to hide, not her melancholy, as heretofore, but an insuperable
+loathing. From that day she no longer regarded herself as a blameless
+wife. Had she not been false to herself? Why should she not play a
+double part in the future, and display astounding depths of cunning in
+deceiving her husband? In her there lay a hitherto undiscovered latent
+depravity, lacking only opportunity, and her marriage was the cause.
+
+Even now she had asked herself why she should struggle with love, when,
+with her heart and her whole nature in revolt, she gave herself to the
+husband whom she loved no longer. Perhaps, who knows? some piece of
+fallacious reasoning, some bit of special pleading, lies at the root of
+all sins, of all crimes. How shall society exist unless every
+individual of which it is composed will make the necessary sacrifices
+of inclination demanded by its laws? If you accept the benefits of
+civilized society, do you not by implication engage to observe the
+conditions, the conditions of its very existence? And yet, starving
+wretches, compelled to respect the laws of property, are not less to be
+pitied than women whose natural instincts and sensitiveness are turned
+to so many avenues of pain.
+
+A few days after that scene of which the secret lay buried in the
+midnight couch, d’Aiglemont introduced Lord Grenville. Julie gave the
+guest a stiffly polite reception, which did credit to her powers of
+dissimulation. Resolutely she silenced her heart, veiled her eyes,
+steadied her voice, and she kept her future in her own hands. Then, when
+by these devices, this innate woman-craft, as it may be called, she
+had discovered the full extent of the love which she inspired, Mme.
+d’Aiglemont welcomed the hope of a speedy cure, and no longer opposed
+her husband, who pressed her to accept the young doctor’s offer. Yet she
+declined to trust herself with Lord Grenville until after some further
+study of his words and manner, she could feel certain that he had
+sufficient generosity to endure his pain in silence. She had absolute
+power over him, and she had begun to abuse that power already. Was she
+not a woman?
+
+Montcontour is an old manor-house build upon the sandy cliffs above the
+Loire, not far from the bridge where Julie’s journey was interrupted in
+1814. It is a picturesque, white chateau, with turrets covered with
+fine stone carving like Mechlin lace; a chateau such as you often see
+in Touraine, spick and span, ivy clad, standing among its groves
+of mulberry trees and vineyards, with its hollow walks, its stone
+balustrades, and cellars mined in the rock escarpments mirrored in the
+Loire. The roofs of Montcontour gleam in the sun; the whole land glows
+in the burning heat. Traces of the romantic charm of Spain and the south
+hover about the enchanting spot. The breeze brings the scent of bell
+flowers and golden broom, the air is soft, all about you lies a sunny
+land, a land which casts its dreamy spell over your soul, a land of
+languor and of soft desire, a fair, sweet-scented country, where pain is
+lulled to sleep and passion wakes. No heart is cold for long beneath its
+clear sky, beside its sparkling waters. One ambition dies after another,
+and you sink into serene content and repose, as the sun sinks at the end
+of the day swathed about with purple and azure.
+
+
+
+One warm August evening in 1821 two people were climbing the paths cut
+in the crags above the chateau, doubtless for the sake of the view from
+the heights above. The two were Julie and Lord Grenville, but this Julie
+seemed to be a new creature. The unmistakable color of health glowed in
+her face. Overflowing vitality had brought a light into her eyes, which
+sparkled through a moist film with that liquid brightness which gives
+such irresistible charm to the eyes of children. She was radiant with
+smiles; she felt the joy of living and all the possibilities of life.
+From the very way in which she lifted her little feet, it was easy to
+see that no suffering trammeled her lightest movements; there was no
+heaviness nor languor in her eyes, her voice, as heretofore. Under the
+white silk sunshade which screened her from the hot sunlight, she looked
+like some young bride beneath her veil, or a maiden waiting to yield to
+the magical enchantments of Love.
+
+Arthur led her with a lover’s care, helping her up the pathway as if she
+had been a child, finding the smoothest ways, avoiding the stones for
+her, bidding her see glimpses of distance, or some flower beside the
+path, always with the unfailing goodness, the same delicate design in
+all that he did; the intuitive sense of this woman’s wellbeing seemed to
+be innate in him, and as much, nay, perhaps more, a part of his being as
+the pulse of his own life.
+
+The patient and her doctor went step for step. There was nothing strange
+for them in a sympathy which seemed to have existed since the day when
+they first walked together. One will swayed them both; they stopped as
+their senses received the same impression; every word and every glance
+told of the same thought in either mind. They had climbed up through the
+vineyards, and now they turned to sit on one of the long white stones,
+quarried out of the caves in the hillside; but Julie stood awhile gazing
+out over the landscape.
+
+“What a beautiful country!” she cried. “Let us put up a tent and live
+here. Victor, Victor, do come up here!”
+
+M. d’Aiglemont answered by a halloo from below. He did not, however,
+hurry himself, merely giving his wife a glance from time to time when
+the windings of the path gave him a glimpse of her. Julie breathed
+the air with delight. She looked up at Arthur, giving him one of those
+subtle glances in which a clever woman can put the whole of her thought.
+
+“Ah, I should like to live here always,” she said. “Would it be possible
+to tire of this beautiful valley?--What is the picturesque river called,
+do you know?”
+
+“That is the Cise.”
+
+“The Cise,” she repeated. “And all this country below, before us?”
+
+“Those are the low hills above the Cher.”
+
+“And away to the right? Ah, that is Tours. Only see how fine the
+cathedral towers look in the distance.”
+
+She was silent, and let fall the hand which she had stretched out
+towards the view upon Arthur’s. Both admired the wide landscape made up
+of so much blended beauty. Neither of them spoke. The murmuring voice of
+the river, the pure air, and the cloudless heaven were all in tune with
+their thronging thoughts and their youth and the love in their hearts.
+
+“Oh! _mon Dieu_, how I love this country!” Julie continued, with growing
+and ingenuous enthusiasm. “You lived here for a long while, did you
+not?” she added after a pause.
+
+A thrill ran through Lord Grenville at her words.
+
+“It was down there,” he said, in a melancholy voice, indicating as he
+spoke a cluster of walnut trees by the roadside, “that I, a prisoner,
+saw you for the first time.”
+
+“Yes, but even at that time I felt very sad. This country looked wild to
+me then, but now----” She broke off, and Lord Grenville did not dare to
+look at her.
+
+“All this pleasure I owe to you,” Julie began at last, after a long
+silence. “Only the living can feel the joy of life, and until now have
+I not been dead to it all? You have given me more than health, you have
+made me feel all its worth--”
+
+Women have an inimitable talent for giving utterance to strong feelings
+in colorless words; a woman’s eloquence lies in tone and gesture, manner
+and glance. Lord Grenville hid his face in his hands, for his tears
+filled his eyes. This was Julie’s first word of thanks since they left
+Paris a year ago.
+
+For a whole year he had watched over the Marquise, putting his whole
+self into the task. D’Aiglemont seconding him, he had taken her first to
+Aix, then to la Rochelle, to be near the sea. From moment to moment he
+had watched the changes worked in Julie’s shattered constitution by
+his wise and simple prescriptions. He had cultivated her health as
+an enthusiastic gardener might cultivate a rare flower. Yet, to all
+appearance, the Marquise had quietly accepted Arthur’s skill and care
+with the egoism of a spoiled Parisienne, or like a courtesan who has
+no idea of the cost of things, nor of the worth of a man, and judges of
+both by their comparative usefulness to her.
+
+The influence of places upon us is a fact worth remarking. If melancholy
+comes over us by the margin of a great water, another indelible law
+of our nature so orders it that the mountains exercise a purifying
+influence upon our feelings, and among the hills passion gains in depth
+by all that it apparently loses in vivacity. Perhaps it was the light of
+the wide country by the Loire, the height of the fair sloping hillside
+on which the lovers sat, that induced the calm bliss of the moment
+when the whole extent of the passion that lies beneath a few
+insignificant-sounding words is divined for the first time with a
+delicious sense of happiness.
+
+Julie had scarcely spoken the words which had moved Lord Grenville so
+deeply, when a caressing breeze ruffled the treetops and filled the air
+with coolness from the river; a few clouds crossed the sky, and the soft
+cloud-shadows brought out all the beauty of the fair land below.
+
+Julie turned away her head, lest Arthur should see the tears which she
+succeeded in repressing; his emotion had spread at once to her. She
+dried her eyes, but she dared not raise them lest he should read the
+excess of joy in a glance. Her woman’s instinct told her that during
+this hour of danger she must hide her love in the depths of her heart.
+Yet silence might prove equally dangerous, and Julie saw that Lord
+Grenville was unable to utter a word. She went on, therefore, in a
+gentle voice:
+
+“You are touched by what I have said. Perhaps such a quick outburst
+of feeling is the way in which a gracious and kind nature like yours
+reverses a mistaken judgment. You must have thought me ungrateful when
+I was cold and reserved, or cynical and hard, all through the journey
+which, fortunately, is very near its end. I should not have been worthy
+of your care if I had been unable to appreciate it. I have forgotten
+nothing. Alas! I shall forget nothing, not the anxious way in which you
+watched over me as a mother watches over her child, nor, and above
+all else, the noble confidence of our life as brother and sister, the
+delicacy of your conduct--winning charms, against which we women are
+defenceless. My lord, it is out of my power to make you a return----”
+
+At these words Julie hastily moved further away, and Lord Grenville made
+no attempt to detain her. She went to a rock not far away, and there
+sat motionless. What either felt remained a secret known to each alone;
+doubtless they wept in silence. The singing of the birds about them,
+so blithe, so overflowing with tenderness at sunset time, could only
+increase the storm of passion which had driven them apart. Nature took
+up their story for them, and found a language for the love of which they
+did not dare to speak.
+
+“And now, my lord,” said Julie, and she came and stood before Arthur
+with a great dignity, which allowed her to take his hand in hers. “I am
+going to ask you to hallow and purify the life which you have given back
+to me. Here, we will part. I know,” she added, as she saw how white his
+face grew, “I know that I am repaying you for your devotion by requiring
+of you a sacrifice even greater than any which you have hitherto
+made for me, sacrifices so great that they should receive some better
+recompense than this.... But it must be... You must not stay in France.
+By laying this command upon you, do I not give you rights which shall be
+held sacred?” she added, holding his hand against her beating heart.
+
+“Yes,” said Arthur, and he rose.
+
+He looked in the direction of d’Aiglemont, who appeared on the opposite
+side of one of the hollow walks with the child in his arms. He had
+scrambled up on the balustrade by the chateau that little Helene might
+jump down.
+
+“Julie, I will not say a word of my love; we understand each other too
+well. Deeply and carefully though I have hidden the pleasures of my
+heart, you have shared them all. I feel it, I know it, I see it. And
+now, at this moment, as I receive this delicious proof of the constant
+sympathy of our hearts, I must go.... Cunning schemes for getting rid of
+him have crossed my mind too often; the temptation might be irresistible
+if I stayed with you.”
+
+“I had the same thought,” she said, a look of pained surprise in her
+troubled face.
+
+Yet in her tone and involuntary shudder there was such virtue, such
+certainty of herself, won in many a hard-fought battle with a love that
+spoke in Julie’s tones and involuntary gestures, that Lord Grenville
+stood thrilled with admiration of her. The mere shadow of a crime had
+been dispelled from that clear conscience. The religious sentiment
+enthroned on the fair forehead could not but drive away the evil
+thoughts that arise unbidden, engendered by our imperfect nature,
+thoughts which make us aware of the grandeur and the perils of human
+destiny.
+
+“And then,” she said, “I should have drawn down your scorn upon me,
+and--I should have been saved,” she added, and her eyes fell. “To be
+lowered in your eyes, what is that but death?”
+
+For a moment the two heroic lovers were silent, choking down their
+sorrow. Good or ill, it seemed that their thoughts were loyally one,
+and the joys in the depths of their heart were no more experiences apart
+than the pain which they strove most anxiously to hide.
+
+“I have no right to complain,” she said after a while, “my misery is of
+my own making,” and she raised her tear-filled eyes to the sky.
+
+“Perhaps you don’t remember it, but that is the place where we met each
+other for the first time,” shouted the General from below, and he waved
+his hand towards the distance. “There, down yonder, near those poplars!”
+
+The Englishman nodded abruptly by way of answer.
+
+“So I was bound to die young and to know no happiness,” Julie continued.
+“Yes, do not think that I live. Sorrow is just as fatal as the dreadful
+disease which you have cured. I do not think that I am to blame. No. My
+love is stronger than I am, and eternal; but all unconsciously it grew
+in me; and I will not be guilty through my love. Nevertheless, though I
+shall be faithful to my conscience as a wife, to my duties as a mother,
+I will be no less faithful to the instincts of my heart. Hear me,” she
+cried in an unsteady voice, “henceforth I belong to _him_ no longer.”
+
+By a gesture, dreadful to see in its undisguised loathing she indicated
+her husband.
+
+“The social code demands that I shall make his existence happy,” she
+continued. “I will obey, I will be his servant, my devotion to him
+shall be boundless; but from to-day I am a widow. I will neither be a
+prostitute in my own eyes nor in those of the world. If I do not belong
+to M. d’Aiglemont, I will never belong to another. You shall have
+nothing, nothing save this which you have wrung from me. This is the
+doom which I have passed upon myself,” she said, looking proudly at him.
+“And now, know this--if you give way to a single criminal thought, M.
+d’Aiglemont’s widow will enter a convent in Spain or Italy. By an evil
+chance we have spoken of our love; perhaps that confession was bound to
+come; but our hearts must never vibrate again like this. To-morrow you
+will receive a letter from England, and we shall part, and never see
+each other again.”
+
+The effort had exhausted all Julie’s strength. She felt her knees
+trembling, and a feeling of deathly cold came over her. Obeying a
+woman’s instinct, she sat down, lest she should sink into Arthur’s arms.
+
+“_Julie!_” cried Lord Grenville.
+
+The sharp cry rang through the air like a crack of thunder. Till then he
+could not speak; now, all the words which the dumb lover could not utter
+gathered themselves in that heartrending appeal.
+
+“Well, what is wrong with her?” asked the General, who had hurried up at
+that cry, and now suddenly confronted the two.
+
+“Nothing serious,” said Julie, with that wonderful self-possession which
+a woman’s quick-wittedness usually brings to her aid when it is most
+called for. “The chill, damp air under the walnut tree made me feel
+quite faint just now, and that must have alarmed this doctor of mine.
+Does he not look on me as a very nearly finished work of art? He
+was startled, I suppose, by the idea of seeing it destroyed.” With
+ostentatious coolness she took Lord Grenville’s arm, smiled at her
+husband, took a last look at the landscape, and went down the pathway,
+drawing her traveling companion with her.
+
+“This certainly is the grandest view that we have seen,” she said; “I
+shall never forget it. Just look, Victor, what distance, what an expanse
+of country, and what variety in it! I have fallen in love with this
+landscape.”
+
+Her laughter was almost hysterical, but to her husband it sounded
+natural. She sprang gaily down into the hollow pathway and vanished.
+
+“What?” she cried, when they had left M. d’Aiglemont far behind.
+“So soon? Is it so soon? Another moment, and we can neither of us be
+ourselves; we shall never be ourselves again, our life is over, in
+short--”
+
+“Let us go slowly,” said Lord Grenville, “the carriages are still some
+way off, and if we may put words into our glances, our hearts may live a
+little longer.”
+
+They went along the footpath by the river in the late evening light,
+almost in silence; such vague words as they uttered, low as the murmur
+of the Loire, stirred their souls to the depths. Just as the sun sank,
+a last red gleam from the sky fell over them; it was like a mournful
+symbol of their ill-starred love.
+
+The General, much put out because the carriage was not at the spot where
+they had left it, followed and outstripped the pair without interrupting
+their converse. Lord Grenville’s high minded and delicate behavior
+throughout the journey had completely dispelled the Marquis’ suspicions.
+For some time past he had left his wife in freedom, reposing confidence
+in the noble amateur’s Punic faith. Arthur and Julie walked on together
+in the close and painful communion of two hearts laid waste.
+
+So short a while ago as they climbed the cliffs at Montcontour, there
+had been a vague hope in either mind, an uneasy joy for which they dared
+not account to themselves; but now as they came along the pathway by the
+river, they pulled down the frail structure of imaginings, the child’s
+cardcastle, on which neither of them had dared to breathe. That hope was
+over.
+
+That very evening Lord Grenville left them. His last look at Julie made
+it miserably plain that since the moment when sympathy revealed the full
+extent of a tyrannous passion, he did well to mistrust himself.
+
+The next morning, M. d’Aiglemont and his wife took their places in the
+carriage without their traveling companion, and were whirled swiftly
+along the road to Blois. The Marquise was constantly put in mind of the
+journey made in 1814, when as yet she know nothing of love, and had
+been almost ready to curse it for its persistency. Countless forgotten
+impressions were revived. The heart has its own memory. A woman who
+cannot recollect the most important great events will recollect through
+a lifetime things which appealed to her feelings; and Julie d’Aiglemont
+found all the most trifling details of that journey laid up in her mind.
+It was pleasant to her to recall its little incidents as they occurred
+to her one by one; there were points in the road when she could even
+remember the thoughts that passed through her mind when she saw them
+first.
+
+Victor had fallen violently in love with his wife since she had
+recovered the freshness of her youth and all her beauty, and now he
+pressed close to her side like a lover. Once he tried to put his arm
+round her, but she gently disengaged herself, finding some excuse or
+other for evading the harmless caress. In a little while she shrank from
+the close contact with Victor, the sensation of warmth communicated by
+their position. She tried to take the unoccupied place opposite, but
+Victor gallantly resigned the back seat to her. For this attention she
+thanked him with a sigh, whereupon he forgot himself, and the Don Juan
+of the garrison construed his wife’s melancholy to his own advantage,
+so that at the end of the day she was compelled to speak with a firmness
+which impressed him.
+
+“You have all but killed me, dear, once already, as you know,” said
+she. “If I were still an inexperienced girl, I might begin to sacrifice
+myself afresh; but I am a mother, I have a daughter to bring up, and I
+owe as much to her as to you. Let us resign ourselves to a misfortune
+which affects us both alike. You are the less to be pitied. Have you
+not, as it is, found consolations which duty and the honor of both,
+and (stronger still) which Nature forbids to me? Stay,” she added, “you
+carelessly left three letters from Mme. de Sérizy in a drawer; here they
+are. My silence about this matter should make it plain to you that in me
+you have a wife who has plenty of indulgence and does not exact from you
+the sacrifices prescribed by the law. But I have thought enough to see
+that the roles of husband and wife are quite different, and that the
+wife alone is predestined to misfortune. My virtue is based upon firmly
+fixed and definite principles. I shall live blamelessly, but let me
+live.”
+
+The Marquis was taken aback by a logic which women grasp with the clear
+insight of love, and overawed by a certain dignity natural to them at
+such crises. Julie’s instinctive repugnance for all that jarred upon her
+love and the instincts of her heart is one of the fairest qualities of
+woman, and springs perhaps from a natural virtue which neither laws nor
+civilization can silence. And who shall dare to blame women? If a woman
+can silence the exclusive sentiment which bids her “forsake all other”
+ for the man whom she loves, what is she but a priest who has lost his
+faith? If a rigid mind here and there condemns Julie for a sort of
+compromise between love and wifely duty, impassioned souls will lay it
+to her charge as a crime. To be thus blamed by both sides shows one of
+two things very clearly--that misery necessarily follows in the train of
+broken laws, or else that there are deplorable flaws in the institutions
+upon which society in Europe is based.
+
+
+
+Two years went by. M. and Mme. d’Aiglemont went their separate ways,
+leading their life in the world, meeting each other more frequently
+abroad than at home, a refinement upon divorce, in which many a marriage
+in the great world is apt to end.
+
+One evening, strange to say, found husband and wife in their own
+drawing-room. Mme. d’Aiglemont had been dining at home with a friend,
+and the General, who almost invariably dined in town, had not gone out
+for once.
+
+“There is a pleasant time in store for you, _Madame la Marquise_,” said
+M. d’Aiglemont, setting his coffee cup down upon the table. He looked
+at the guest, Mme. de Wimphen, and half-pettishly, half-mischievously
+added, “I am starting off for several days’ sport with the Master of
+the Hounds. For a whole week, at any rate, you will be a widow in good
+earnest; just what you wish for, I suppose.--Guillaume,” he said to the
+servant who entered, “tell them to put the horses in.”
+
+Mme. de Wimphen was the friend to whom Julie had begun the letter upon
+her marriage. The glances exchanged by the two women said plainly that
+in her Julie had found an intimate friend, an indulgent and invaluable
+confidante. Mme. de Wimphen’s marriage had been a very happy one.
+Perhaps it was her own happiness which secured her devotion to Julie’s
+unhappy life, for under such circumstances, dissimilarity of destiny is
+nearly always a strong bond of union.
+
+“Is the hunting season not over yet?” asked Julie, with an indifferent
+glance at her husband.
+
+“The Master of the Hounds comes when and where he pleases, madame. We
+are going boar-hunting in the Royal Forest.”
+
+“Take care that no accident happens to you.”
+
+“Accidents are usually unforeseen,” he said, smiling.
+
+“The carriage is ready, my Lord Marquis,” said the servant.
+
+“Madame, if I should fall a victim to the boar--” he continued, with a
+suppliant air.
+
+“What does this mean?” inquired Mme. de Wimphen.
+
+“Come, come,” said Mme. d’Aiglemont, turning to her husband; smiling at
+her friend as if to say, “You will soon see.”
+
+Julie held up her head; but as her husband came close to her, she
+swerved at the last, so that his kiss fell not on her throat, but on the
+broad frill about it.
+
+“You will be my witness before heaven now that I need a firman to obtain
+this little grace of her,” said the Marquis, addressing Mme. de Wimphen.
+“This is how this wife of mine understands love. She has brought me to
+this pass, by what trickery I am at a loss to know.... A pleasant time
+to you!” and he went.
+
+“But your poor husband is really very good-natured,” cried Louisa de
+Wimphen, when the two women were alone together. “He loves you.”
+
+“Oh! not another syllable after that last word. The name I bear makes me
+shudder----”
+
+“Yes, but Victor obeys you implicitly,” said Louisa.
+
+“His obedience is founded in part upon the great esteem which I have
+inspired in him. As far as outward things go, I am a model wife. I make
+his house pleasant to him; I shut my eyes to his intrigues; I touch not
+a penny of his fortune. He is free to squander the interest exactly as
+he pleases; I only stipulate that he shall not touch the principal. At
+this price I have peace. He neither explains nor attempts to explain my
+life. But though my husband is guided by me, that does not say that I
+have nothing to fear from his character. I am a bear leader who daily
+trembles lest the muzzle should give way at last. If Victor once took
+it into his head that I had forfeited my right to his esteem, what would
+happen next I dare not think; for he is violent, full of personal pride,
+and vain above all things. While his wits are not keen enough to enable
+him to behave discreetly at a delicate crisis when his lowest passions
+are involved, his character is weak, and he would very likely kill me
+provisionally even if he died of remorse next day. But there is no fear
+of that fatal good fortune.”
+
+A brief pause followed. Both women were thinking of the real cause of
+this state of affairs. Julie gave Louisa a glance which revealed her
+thoughts.
+
+“I have been cruelly obeyed,” she cried. “Yet I never forbade him to
+write to me. Oh! _he_ has forgotten me, and he is right. If his life had
+been spoiled, it would have been too tragical; one life is enough, is it
+not? Would you believe it, dear; I read English newspapers simply to
+see his name in print. But he has not yet taken his seat in the House of
+Lords.”
+
+“So you know English.”
+
+“Did I not tell you?--Yes, I learned.”
+
+“Poor little one!” cried Louisa, grasping Julie’s hand in hers. “How can
+you still live?”
+
+“That is the secret,” said the Marquise, with an involuntary gesture
+almost childlike in its simplicity. “Listen, I take laudanum. That
+duchess in London suggested the idea; you know the story, Maturin made
+use of it in one of his novels. My drops are very weak, but I sleep; I
+am only awake for seven hours in the day, and those hours I spend with
+my child.”
+
+Louisa gazed into the fire. The full extent of her friend’s misery was
+opening out before her for the first time, and she dared not look into
+her face.
+
+“Keep my secret, Louisa,” said Julie, after a moment’s silence.
+
+Just as she spoke the footman brought in a letter for the Marquise.
+
+“Ah!” she cried, and her face grew white.
+
+“I need not ask from whom it comes,” said Mme. de Wimphen, but the
+Marquise was reading the letter, and heeded nothing else.
+
+Mme. de Wimphen, watching her friend, saw strong feeling wrought to the
+highest pitch, ecstasy of the most dangerous kind painted on Julie’s
+face in swift changing white and red. At length Julie flung the sheet
+into the fire.
+
+“It burns like fire,” she said. “Oh! my heart beats till I cannot
+breathe.”
+
+She rose to her feet and walked up and down. Her eyes were blazing.
+
+“He did not leave Paris!” she cried.
+
+Mme. de Wimphen did not dare to interrupt the words that followed,
+jerked-out sentences, measured by dreadful pauses in between. After
+every break the deep notes of her voice sank lower and lower. There was
+something awful about the last words.
+
+“He has seen me, constantly, and I have not known it.--A look, taken by
+stealth, every day, helps him to live.--Louisa, you do not know!--He
+is dying.--He wants to say good-bye to me. He knows that my husband has
+gone away for several days. He will be here in a moment. Oh! I shall
+die: I am lost.--Listen, Louisa, stay with me!--_I am afraid!_”
+
+“But my husband knows that I have been dining with you; he is sure to
+come for me,” said Mme. de Wimphen.
+
+“Well, then, before you go I will send _him_ away. I will play the
+executioner for us both. Oh me! he will think that I do not love him any
+more--And that letter of his! Dear, I can see those words in letters of
+fire.”
+
+A carriage rolled in under the archway.
+
+“Ah!” cried the Marquise, with something like joy in her voice, “he is
+coming openly. He makes no mystery of it.”
+
+“Lord Grenville,” announced the servant.
+
+The Marquise stood up rigid and motionless; but at the sight of Arthur’s
+white face, so thin and haggard, how was it possible to keep up the
+show of severity? Lord Grenville saw that Julie was not alone, but he
+controlled his fierce annoyance, and looked cool and unperturbed. Yet
+for the two women who knew his secret, his face, his tones, the look
+in his eyes had something of the power attributed to the torpedo. Their
+faculties were benumbed by the sharp shock of contact with his horrible
+pain. The sound of his voice set Julie’s heart beating so cruelly that
+she could not trust herself to speak; she was afraid that he would see
+the full extent of his power over her. Lord Grenville did not dare to
+look at Julie, and Mme. de Wimphen was left to sustain a conversation
+to which no one listened. Julie glanced at her friend with touching
+gratefulness in her eyes to thank her for coming to her aid.
+
+By this time the lovers had quelled emotion into silence, and could
+preserve the limits laid down by duty and convention. But M. de Wimphen
+was announced, and as he came in the two friends exchanged glances. Both
+felt the difficulties of this fresh complication. It was impossible to
+enter into explanations with M. de Wimphen, and Louisa could not think
+of any sufficient pretext for asking to be left.
+
+Julie went to her, ostensibly to wrap her up in her shawl. “I will be
+brave,” she said, in a low voice. “He came here in the face of all the
+world, so what have I to fear? Yet but for you, in that first moment,
+when I saw how changed he looked, I should have fallen at his feet.”
+
+“Well, Arthur, you have broken your promise to me,” she said, in a
+faltering voice, when she returned. Lord Grenville did not venture to
+take the seat upon the sofa by her side.
+
+“I could not resist the pleasure of hearing your voice, of being near
+you. The thought of it came to be a sort of madness, a delirious frenzy.
+I am no longer master of myself. I have taken myself to task; it is
+no use, I am too weak, I ought to die. But to die without seeing you,
+without having heard the rustle of your dress, or felt your tears. What
+a death!”
+
+He moved further away from her; but in his hasty uprising a pistol fell
+out of his pocket. The Marquise looked down blankly at the weapon; all
+passion, all expression had died out of her eyes. Lord Grenville stooped
+for the thing, raging inwardly over an accident which seemed like a
+piece of lovesick strategy.
+
+“_Arthur!_”
+
+“Madame,” he said, looking down, “I came here in utter desperation; I
+meant----” he broke off.
+
+“You meant to die by your own hand here in my house!”
+
+“Not alone!” he said in a low voice.
+
+“Not alone! My husband, perhaps----?”
+
+“No, no,” he cried in a choking voice. “Reassure yourself,” he
+continued, “I have quite given up my deadly purpose. As soon as I came
+in, as soon as I saw you, I felt that I was strong enough to suffer in
+silence, and to die alone.”
+
+Julie sprang up, and flung herself into his arms. Through her sobbing
+he caught a few passionate words, “To know happiness, and then to
+die.--Yes, let it be so.”
+
+All Julie’s story was summed up in that cry from the depths; it was
+the summons of nature and of love at which women without a religion
+surrender. With the fierce energy of unhoped-for joy, Arthur caught her
+up and carried her to the sofa; but in a moment she tore herself from
+her lover’s arms, looked at him with a fixed despairing gaze, took his
+hand, snatched up a candle, and drew him into her room. When they stood
+by the cot where Helene lay sleeping, she put the curtains softly aside,
+shading the candle with her hand, lest the light should dazzle the
+half-closed eyes beneath the transparent lids. Helene lay smiling in her
+sleep, with her arms outstretched on the coverlet. Julie glanced from
+her child to Arthur’s face. That look told him all.
+
+“We may leave a husband, even though he loves us: a man is strong; he
+has consolations.--We may defy the world and its laws. But a motherless
+child!”--all these thoughts, and a thousand others more moving still,
+found language in that glance.
+
+“We can take her with us,” muttered he; “I will love her dearly.”
+
+“Mamma!” cried little Helene, now awake. Julie burst into tears. Lord
+Grenville sat down and folded his arms in gloomy silence.
+
+“Mamma!” At the sweet childish name, so many nobler feelings, so many
+irresistible yearnings awoke, that for a moment love was effaced by the
+all-powerful instinct of motherhood; the mother triumphed over the woman
+in Julie, and Lord Grenville could not hold out, he was defeated by
+Julie’s tears.
+
+Just at that moment a door was flung noisily open. “Madame d’Aiglemont,
+are you hereabouts?” called a voice which rang like a crack of thunder
+through the hearts of the two lovers. The Marquis had come home.
+
+Before Julie could recover her presence of mind, her husband was on the
+way to the door of her room which opened into his. Luckily, at a sign,
+Lord Grenville escaped into the dressing-closet, and she hastily shut
+the door upon him.
+
+“Well, my lady, here am I,” said Victor, “the hunting party did not come
+off. I am just going to bed.”
+
+“Good-night, so am I. So go and leave me to undress.”
+
+“You are very cross to-night, Madame la Marquise.”
+
+The General returned to his room, Julie went with him to the door and
+shut it. Then she sprang to the dressing-close to release Arthur. All
+her presence of mind returned; she bethought herself that it was quite
+natural that her sometime doctor should pay her a visit; she might have
+left him in the drawing-room while she put her little girl to bed. She
+was about to tell him, under her breath, to go back to the drawing-room,
+and had opened the door. Then she shrieked aloud. Lord Grenville’s
+fingers had been caught and crushed in the door.
+
+“Well, what is it?” demanded her husband.
+
+“Oh! nothing, I have just pricked my finger with a pin.”
+
+The General’s door opened at once. Julie imagined that the irruption was
+due to a sudden concern for her, and cursed a solicitude in which love
+had no part. She had barely time to close the dressing-closet, and Lord
+Grenville had not extricated his hand. The General did, in fact, appear,
+but his wife had mistaken his motives; his apprehensions were entirely
+on his own account.
+
+“Can you lend me a bandana handkerchief? The stupid fool Charles leaves
+me without a single one. In the early days you used to bother me with
+looking after me so carefully. Ah, well, the honeymoon did not last very
+long for me, nor yet for my cravats. Nowadays I am given over to the
+secular arm, in the shape of servants who do not care one jack straw for
+what I say.”
+
+“There! There is a bandana for you. Did you go into the drawing-room?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Oh! you might perhaps have been in time to see Lord Grenville.”
+
+“Is he in Paris?”
+
+“It seems so.”
+
+“Oh! I will go at once. The good doctor.”
+
+“But he will have gone by now!” exclaimed Julie.
+
+The Marquis, standing in the middle of the room, was tying the
+handkerchief over his head. He looked complacently at himself in the
+glass.
+
+“What has become of the servants is more than I know,” he remarked. “I
+have rung the bell for Charles, and he has not answered it. And your
+maid is not here either. Ring for her. I should like another blanket on
+my bed to-night.”
+
+“Pauline is out,” the Marquise said drily.
+
+“What, at midnight!” exclaimed the General.
+
+“I gave her leave to go to the Opéra.”
+
+“That is funny!” returned her husband, continuing to undress. “I thought
+I saw her coming upstairs.”
+
+“She has come in then, of course,” said Julie, with assumed impatience,
+and to allay any possible suspicion on her husband’s part she pretended
+to ring the bell.
+
+
+
+The whole history of that night has never been known, but no doubt it
+was as simple and as tragically commonplace as the domestic incidents
+that preceded it.
+
+Next day the Marquise d’Aiglemont took to her bed, nor did she leave it
+for some days.
+
+“What can have happened in your family so extraordinary that every one
+is talking about your wife?” asked M. de Ronquerolles of M. d’Aiglemont
+a short time after that night of catastrophes.
+
+“Take my advice and remain a bachelor,” said d’Aiglemont. “The curtains
+of Helene’s cot caught fire, and gave my wife such a shock that it will
+be a twelvemonth before she gets over it; so the doctor says. You marry
+a pretty wife, and her looks fall off; you marry a girl in blooming
+health, and she turns into an invalid. You think she has a passionate
+temperament, and find her cold, or else under her apparent coldness
+there lurks a nature so passionate that she is the death of you, or
+she dishonors your name. Sometimes the meekest of them will turn out
+crotchety, though the crotchety ones never grow any sweeter. Sometimes
+the mere child, so simple and silly at first, will develop an iron will
+to thwart you and the ingenuity of a fiend. I am tired of marriage.”
+
+“Or of your wife?”
+
+“That would be difficult. By-the-by, do you feel inclined to go to
+Saint-Thomas d’Aquin with me to attend Lord Grenville’s funeral?”
+
+“A singular way of spending time.--Is it really known how he came by his
+death?” added Ronquerolles.
+
+“His man says that he spent a whole night sitting on somebody’s window
+sill to save some woman’s character, and it has been infernally cold
+lately.”
+
+“Such devotion would be highly creditable to one of us old stagers; but
+Lord Grenville was a youngster and--an Englishman. Englishmen never can
+do anything like anybody else.”
+
+“Pooh!” returned d’Aiglemont, “these heroic exploits all depend upon the
+woman in the case, and it certainly was not for one that I know, that
+poor Arthur came by his death.”
+
+
+
+
+II. A HIDDEN GRIEF
+
+Between the Seine and the little river Loing lies a wide flat country,
+skirted on the one side by the Forest of Fontainebleau, and marked out
+as to its southern limits by the towns of Moret, Montereau, and Nemours.
+It is a dreary country; little knolls of hills appear only at rare
+intervals, and a coppice here and there among the fields affords
+for game; and beyond, upon every side, stretches the endless gray or
+yellowish horizon peculiar to Beauce, Sologne, and Berri.
+
+In the very centre of the plain, at equal distances from Moret and
+Montereau, the traveler passes the old chateau of Saint-Lange, standing
+amid surroundings which lack neither dignity nor stateliness. There are
+magnificent avenues of elm-trees, great gardens encircled by the moat,
+and a circumference of walls about a huge manorial pile which represents
+the profits of the _maltôte_, the gains of farmers-general, legalized
+malversation, or the vast fortunes of great houses now brought low
+beneath the hammer of the Civil Code.
+
+Should any artist or dreamer of dreams chance to stray along the roads
+full of deep ruts, or over the heavy land which secures the place
+against intrusion, he will wonder how it happened that this romantic
+old place was set down in a savanna of corn-land, a desert of chalk,
+and sand, and marl, where gaiety dies away, and melancholy is a natural
+product of the soil. The voiceless solitude, the monotonous horizon line
+which weigh upon the spirits are negative beauties, which only suit with
+sorrow that refuses to be comforted.
+
+Hither, at the close of the year 1820, came a woman, still young, well
+known in Paris for her charm, her fair face, and her wit; and to the
+immense astonishment of the little village a mile away, this woman of
+high rank and corresponding fortune took up her abode at Saint-Lange.
+
+From time immemorial, farmers and laborers had seen no gentry at the
+chateau. The estate, considerable though it was, had been left in charge
+of a land-steward and the house to the old servants. Wherefore the
+appearance of the lady of the manor caused a kind of sensation in the
+district.
+
+A group had gathered in the yard of the wretched little wineshop at the
+end of the village (where the road forks to Nemours and Moret) to see
+the carriage pass. It went by slowly, for the Marquise had come
+from Paris with her own horses, and those on the lookout had ample
+opportunity of observing a waiting-maid, who sat with her back to the
+horses holding a little girl, with a somewhat dreamy look, upon her
+knee. The child’s mother lay back in the carriage; she looked like
+a dying woman sent out into the country air by her doctors as a last
+resource. Village politicians were by no means pleased to see the
+young, delicate, downcast face; they had hoped that the new arrival at
+Saint-Lange would bring some life and stir into the neighborhood,
+and clearly any sort of stir or movement must be distasteful to the
+suffering invalid in the traveling carriage.
+
+That evening, when the notables of Saint-Lange were drinking in the
+private room of the wineshop, the longest head among them declared that
+such depression could admit of but one construction--the Marquise
+was ruined. His lordship the Marquis was away in Spain with the Duc
+d’Angoulême (so they said in the papers), and beyond a doubt her
+ladyship had come to Saint-Lange to retrench after a run of ill-luck on
+the Bourse. The Marquis was one of the greatest gamblers on the face of
+the globe. Perhaps the estate would be cut up and sold in little lots.
+There would be some good strokes of business to be made in that case,
+and it behooved everybody to count up his cash, unearth his savings
+and to see how he stood, so as to secure his share of the spoil of
+Saint-Lange.
+
+So fair did this future seem, that the village worthies, dying to know
+whether it was founded on fact, began to think of ways of getting at the
+truth through the servants at the chateau. None of these, however, could
+throw any light on the calamity which had brought their mistress into
+the country at the beginning of winter, and to the old chateau of
+Saint-Lange of all places, when she might have taken her choice of
+cheerful country-houses famous for their beautiful gardens.
+
+His worship the mayor called to pay his respects; but he did not see the
+lady. Then the land-steward tried with no better success.
+
+Madame la Marquise kept her room, only leaving it, while it was set
+in order, for the small adjoining drawing-room, where she dined; if,
+indeed, to sit down to a table, to look with disgust at the dishes, and
+take the precise amount of nourishment required to prevent death from
+sheer starvation, can be called dining. The meal over, she returned
+at once to the old-fashioned low chair, in which she had sat since the
+morning, in the embrasure of the one window that lighted her room.
+
+Her little girl she only saw for a few minutes daily, during the dismal
+dinner, and even for a short time she seemed scarcely able to bear the
+child’s presence. Surely nothing but the most unheard-of anguish could
+have extinguished a mother’s love so early.
+
+None of the servants were suffered to come near, her own woman was
+the one creature whom she liked to have about her; the chateau must be
+perfectly quiet, the child must play at the other end of the house. The
+slightest sound had grown so intolerable, that any human voice, even the
+voice of her own child, jarred upon her.
+
+At first the whole countryside was deeply interested in these
+eccentricities; but time passed on, every possible hypothesis had been
+advanced to account for them and the peasants and dwellers in the little
+country towns thought no more of the invalid lady.
+
+So the Marquise was left to herself. She might live on, perfectly
+silent, amid the silence which she herself had created; there was
+nothing to draw her forth from the tapestried chamber where her
+grandmother died, whither she herself had come that she might die,
+gently, without witnesses, without importunate solicitude, without
+suffering from the insincere demonstrations of egoism masquerading as
+affection, which double the agony of death in great cities.
+
+She was twenty-six years old. At that age, with plenty of romantic
+illusions still left, the mind loves to dwell on the thought of death
+when death seems to come as a friend. But with youth, death is coy,
+coming up close only to go away, showing himself and hiding again, till
+youth has time to fall out of love with him during this dalliance. There
+is that uncertainty too that hangs over death’s to-morrow. Youth plunges
+back into the world of living men, there to find the pain more pitiless
+than death, that does not wait to strike.
+
+This woman who refused to live was to know the bitterness of these
+reprieves in the depths of her loneliness; in moral agony, which death
+would not come to end, she was to serve a terrible apprenticeship to the
+egoism which must take the bloom from her heart and break her in to the
+life of the world.
+
+This harsh and sorry teaching is the usual outcome of our early sorrows.
+For the first, and perhaps for the last time in her life, the Marquise
+d’Aiglemont was in very truth suffering. And, indeed, would it not be an
+error to suppose that the same sentiment can be reproduced in us? Once
+develop the power to feel, is it not always there in the depths of our
+nature? The accidents of life may lull or awaken it, but there it is, of
+necessity modifying the self, its abiding place. Hence, every sensation
+should have its great day once and for all, its first day of storm,
+be it long or short. Hence, likewise, pain, the most abiding of our
+sensations, could be keenly felt only at its first irruption, its
+intensity diminishing with every subsequent paroxysm, either because we
+grow accustomed to these crises, or perhaps because a natural instinct
+of self-preservation asserts itself, and opposes to the destroying force
+of anguish an equal but passive force of inertia.
+
+Yet of all kinds of suffering, to which does the name of anguish belong?
+For the loss of parents, Nature has in a manner prepared us; physical
+suffering, again, is an evil which passes over us and is gone; it lays
+no hold upon the soul; if it persists, it ceases to be an evil, it is
+death. The young mother loses her firstborn, but wedded love ere long
+gives her a successor. This grief, too, is transient. After all, these,
+and many other troubles like unto them, are in some sort wounds and
+bruises; they do not sap the springs of vitality, and only a succession
+of such blows can crush in us the instinct that seeks happiness. Great
+pain, therefore, pain that arises to anguish, should be suffering so
+deadly, that past, present, and future are alike included in its grip,
+and no part of life is left sound and whole. Never afterwards can
+we think the same thoughts as before. Anguish engraves itself in
+ineffaceable characters on mouth and brow; it passes through us,
+destroying or relaxing the springs that vibrate to enjoyment, leaving
+behind in the soul the seeds of a disgust for all things in this world.
+
+Yet, again, to be measureless, to weigh like this upon body and soul,
+the trouble should befall when soul and body have just come to their
+full strength, and smite down a heart that beats high with life. Then it
+is that great scars are made. Terrible is the anguish. None, it may
+be, can issue from this soul-sickness without undergoing some dramatic
+change. Those who survive it, those who remain on earth, return to the
+world to wear an actor’s countenance and to play an actor’s part. They
+know the side-scenes where actors may retire to calculate chances, shed
+their tears, or pass their jests. Life holds no inscrutable dark places
+for those who have passed through this ordeal; their judgments are
+Rhadamanthine.
+
+For young women of the Marquise d’Aiglemont’s age, this first, this most
+poignant pain of all, is always referable to the same cause. A woman,
+especially if she is a young woman, greatly beautiful, and by nature
+great, never fails to stake her whole life as instinct and sentiment and
+society all unite to bid her. Suppose that that life fails her, suppose
+that she still lives on, she cannot but endure the most cruel pangs,
+inasmuch as a first love is the loveliest of all. How comes it that this
+catastrophe has found no painter, no poet? And yet, can it be painted?
+Can it be sung? No; for the anguish arising from it eludes analysis
+and defies the colors of art. And more than this, such pain is never
+confessed. To console the sufferer, you must be able to divine the past
+which she hugs in bitterness to her soul like a remorse; it is like an
+avalanche in a valley; it laid all waste before it found a permanent
+resting-place.
+
+The Marquise was suffering from this anguish, which will for long remain
+unknown, because the whole world condemns it, while sentiment cherishes
+it, and the conscience of a true woman justifies her in it. It is with
+such pain as with children steadily disowned of life, and therefore
+bound more closely to the mother’s heart than other children more
+bounteously endowed. Never, perhaps, was the awful catastrophe in which
+the whole world without dies for us, so deadly, so complete, so cruelly
+aggravated by circumstance as it had been for the Marquise. The man whom
+she had loved was young and generous; in obedience to the laws of the
+world, she had refused herself to his love, and he had died to save a
+woman’s honor, as the world calls it. To whom could she speak of her
+misery? Her tears would be an offence against her husband, the origin
+of the tragedy. By all laws written and unwritten she was bound over to
+silence. A woman would have enjoyed the story; a man would have schemed
+for his own benefit. No; such grief as hers can only weep freely in
+solitude and in loneliness; she must consume her pain or be consumed by
+it; die or kill something within her--her conscience, it may be.
+
+Day after day she sat gazing at the flat horizon. It lay out before her
+like her own life to come. There was nothing to discover, nothing to
+hope. The whole of it could be seen at a glance. It was the visible
+presentment in the outward world of the chill sense of desolation which
+was gnawing restlessly at her heart. The misty mornings, the pale,
+bright sky, the low clouds scudding under the gray dome of heaven,
+fitted with the moods of her soul-sickness. Her heart did not contract,
+was neither more nor less seared, rather it seemed as if her youth, in
+its full blossom, was slowly turned to stone by an anguish intolerable
+because it was barren. She suffered through herself and for herself. How
+could it end save in self-absorption? Ugly torturing thoughts probed
+her conscience. Candid self-examination pronounced that she was double,
+there were two selves within her; a woman who felt and a woman who
+thought; a self that suffered and a self that could fain suffer no
+longer. Her mind traveled back to the joys of childish days; they had
+gone by, and she had never known how happy they were. Scenes crowded up
+in her memory as in a bright mirror glass, to demonstrate the deception
+of a marriage which, all that it should be in the eyes of the world, was
+in reality wretched. What had the delicate pride of young womanhood
+done for her--the bliss foregone, the sacrifices made to the world?
+Everything in her expressed love, awaited love; her movements still were
+full of perfect grace; her smile, her charm, were hers as before; why?
+she asked herself. The sense of her own youth and physical loveliness
+no more affected her than some meaningless reiterated sound. Her very
+beauty had grown intolerable to her as a useless thing. She shrank
+aghast from the thought that through the rest of life she must remain an
+incomplete creature; had not the inner self lost its power of receiving
+impressions with that zest, that exquisite sense of freshness which is
+the spring of so much of life’s gladness? The impressions of the future
+would for the most part be effaced as soon as received, and many of the
+thoughts which once would have moved her now would move her no more.
+
+After the childhood of the creature dawns the childhood of the heart;
+but this second infancy was over, her lover had taken it down with him
+into the grave. The longings of youth remained; she was young yet; but
+the completeness of youth was gone, and with that lost completeness the
+whole value and savor of life had diminished somewhat. Should she not
+always bear within her the seeds of sadness and mistrust, ready to
+grow up and rob emotion of its springtide of fervor? Conscious she must
+always be that nothing could give her now the happiness so longed for,
+that seemed so fair in her dreams. The fire from heaven that sheds
+abroad its light in the heart, in the dawn of love, had been quenched
+in tears, the first real tears which she had shed; henceforth she must
+always suffer, because it was no longer in her power to be what once
+she might have been. This is a belief which turns us in aversion and
+bitterness of spirit from any proffered new delight.
+
+Julie had come to look at life from the point of view of age about to
+die. Young though she felt, the heavy weight of joyless days had fallen
+upon her, and left her broken-spirited and old before her time. With a
+despairing cry, she asked the world what it could give her in exchange
+for the love now lost, by which she had lived. She asked herself whether
+in that vanished love, so chaste and pure, her will had not been more
+criminal than her deeds, and chose to believe herself guilty; partly
+to affront the world, partly for her own consolation, in that she had
+missed the close union of body and soul, which diminishes the pain of
+the one who is left behind by the knowledge that once it has known and
+given joy to the full, and retains within itself the impress of that
+which is no more.
+
+Something of the mortification of the actress cheated of her part
+mingled with the pain which thrilled through every fibre of her heart
+and brain. Her nature had been thwarted, her vanity wounded, her woman’s
+generosity cheated of self-sacrifice. Then, when she had raised all
+these questions, set vibrating all the springs in those different
+phases of being which we distinguish as social, moral, and physical,
+her energies were so far exhausted and relaxed that she was powerless to
+grasp a single thought amid the chase of conflicting ideas.
+
+Sometimes as the mists fell, she would throw her window open, and would
+stay there, motionless, breathing in unheedingly the damp earthly scent
+in the air, her mind to all appearance an unintelligent blank, for the
+ceaseless burden of sorrow humming in her brain left her deaf to earth’s
+harmonies and insensible to the delights of thought.
+
+One day, towards noon, when the sun shone out for a little, her maid
+came in without a summons.
+
+“This is the fourth time that M. le Curé has come to see Mme. la
+Marquise; to-day he is so determined about it, that we did not know what
+to tell him.”
+
+“He has come to ask for some money for the poor, no doubt; take him
+twenty-five louis from me.”
+
+The woman went only to return.
+
+“M. le Cure will not take the money, my lady; he wants to speak to you.”
+
+“Then let him come!” said Mme. d’Aiglemont, with an involuntary shrug
+which augured ill for the priest’s reception. Evidently the lady meant
+to put a stop to persecution by a short and sharp method.
+
+Mme. d’Aiglemont had lost her mother in her early childhood; and as a
+natural consequence in her bringing-up, she had felt the influence of
+the relaxed notions which loosened the hold of religion upon France
+during the Revolution. Piety is a womanly virtue which women alone can
+really instil; and the Marquise, a child of the eighteenth century, had
+adopted her father’s creed of philosophism, and practised no religious
+observances. A priest, to her way of thinking, was a civil servant of
+very doubtful utility. In her present position, the teaching of religion
+could only poison her wounds; she had, moreover, but scanty faith in the
+lights of country cures, and made up her mind to put this one gently but
+firmly in his place, and to rid herself of him, after the manner of the
+rich, by bestowing a benefit.
+
+At first sight of the curé the Marquise felt no inclination to change
+her mind. She saw before her a stout, rotund little man, with a ruddy,
+wrinkled, elderly face, which awkwardly and unsuccessfully tried to
+smile. His bald, quadrant-shaped forehead, furrowed by intersecting
+lines, was too heavy for the rest of his face, which seemed to be
+dwarfed by it. A fringe of scanty white hair encircled the back of his
+head, and almost reached his ears. Yet the priest looked as if by nature
+he had a genial disposition; his thick lips, his slightly curved nose,
+his chin, which vanished in a double fold of wrinkles,--all marked him
+out as a man who took cheerful views of life.
+
+At first the Marquise saw nothing but these salient characteristics,
+but at the first word she was struck by the sweetness of the speaker’s
+voice. Looking at him more closely, she saw that the eyes under the
+grizzled eyebrows had shed tears, and his face, turned in profile, wore
+so sublime an impress of sorrow, that the Marquise recognized the man in
+the curé.
+
+“Madame la Marquise, the rich only come within our province when
+they are in trouble. It is easy to see that the troubles of a young,
+beautiful, and wealthy woman, who has lost neither children nor
+relatives, are caused by wounds whose pangs religion alone can soothe.
+Your soul is in danger, madame. I am not speaking now of the hereafter
+which awaits us. No, I am not in the confessional. But it is my duty,
+is it not, to open your eyes to your future life here on earth? You
+will pardon an old man, will you not, for importunity which has your own
+happiness for its object?”
+
+“There is no more happiness for me, monsieur. I shall soon be, as you
+say, in your province; but it will be for ever.”
+
+“Nay, madame. You will not die of this pain which lies heavy upon you,
+and can be read in your face. If you had been destined to die of it, you
+would not be here at Saint-Lange. A definite regret is not so deadly
+as hope deferred. I have known others pass through more intolerable and
+more awful anguish, and yet they live.”
+
+The Marquise looked incredulous.
+
+“Madame, I know a man whose affliction was so sore that your trouble
+would seem to you to be light compared with his.”
+
+Perhaps the long solitary hours had begun to hang heavily; perhaps in
+the recesses of the Marquise’s mind lay the thought that here was a
+friendly heart to whom she might be able to pour out her troubles.
+However, it was, she gave the cure a questioning glance which could not
+be mistaken.
+
+“Madame,” he continued, “the man of whom I tell you had but three
+children left of a once large family circle. He lost his parents, his
+daughter, and his wife, whom he dearly loved. He was left alone at last
+on the little farm where he had lived so happily for so long. His three
+sons were in the army, and each of the lads had risen in proportion to
+his time of service. During the Hundred Days, the oldest went into
+the Guard with a colonel’s commission; the second was a major in the
+artillery; the youngest a major in a regiment of dragoons. Madame, those
+three boys loved their father as much as he loved them. If you but knew
+how careless young fellows grow of home ties when they are carried
+away by the current of their own lives, you would realize from this one
+little thing how warmly they loved the lonely old father, who only lived
+in and for them--never a week passed without a letter from one of the
+boys. But then he on his side had never been weakly indulgent, to lessen
+their respect for him; nor unjustly severe, to thwart their affection;
+or apt to grudge sacrifices, the thing that estranges children’s hearts.
+He had been more than a father; he had been a brother to them, and their
+friend.
+
+“At last he went to Paris to bid them good-bye before they set out for
+Belgium; he wished to see that they had good horses and all that they
+needed. And so they went, and the father returned to his home again.
+Then the war began. He had letters from Fleurus, and again from Ligny.
+All went well. Then came the battle of Waterloo, and you know the rest.
+France was plunged into mourning; every family waited in intense anxiety
+for news. You may imagine, madame, how the old man waited for tidings,
+in anxiety that knew no peace nor rest. He used to read the gazettes;
+he went to the coach office every day. One evening he was told that the
+colonel’s servant had come. The man was riding his master’s horse--what
+need was there to ask any questions?--the colonel was dead, cut in
+two by a shell. Before the evening was out the youngest son’s servant
+arrived--the youngest had died on the eve of the battle. At midnight
+came a gunner with tidings of the death of the last; upon whom, in those
+few hours, the poor father had centered all his life. Madame, they all
+had fallen.”
+
+After a pause the good man controlled his feelings, and added gently:
+
+“And their father is still living, madame. He realized that if God had
+left him on earth, he was bound to live on and suffer on earth; but he
+took refuge in the sanctuary. What could he be?”
+
+The Marquise looked up and saw the curé’s face, grown sublime in its
+sorrow and resignation, and waited for him to speak. When the words
+came, tears broke from her.
+
+“A priest, madame; consecrated by his own tears previously shed at the
+foot of the altar.”
+
+Silence prevailed for a little. The Marquise and the curé looked out at
+the foggy landscape, as if they could see the figures of those who were
+no more.
+
+“Not a priest in a city, but a simple country curé,” added he.
+
+“At Saint-Lange,” she said, drying her eyes.
+
+“Yes, madame.”
+
+Never had the majesty of grief seemed so great to Julie. The two words
+sank straight into her heart with the weight of infinite sorrow. The
+gentle, sonorous tones troubled her heart. Ah! that full, deep voice,
+charged with plangent vibration, was the voice of one who had suffered
+indeed.
+
+“And if I do not die, monsieur, what will become of me?” The Marquise
+spoke almost reverently.
+
+“Have you not a child, madame?”
+
+“Yes,” she said stiffly.
+
+The curé gave her such a glance as a doctor gives a patient whose life
+is in danger. Then he determined to do all that in him lay to combat the
+evil spirit into whose clutches she had fallen.
+
+“We must live on with our sorrows--you see it yourself, madame, and
+religion alone offers us real consolation. Will you permit me to come
+again?--to speak to you as a man who can sympathize with every trouble,
+a man about whom there is nothing very alarming, I think?”
+
+“Yes, monsieur, come back again. Thank you for your thought of me.”
+
+“Very well, madame; then I shall return very shortly.”
+
+This visit relaxed the tension of soul, as it were; the heavy strain
+of grief and loneliness had been almost too much for the Marquise’s
+strength. The priest’s visit had left a soothing balm in her heart, his
+words thrilled through her with healing influence. She began to feel
+something of a prisoner’s satisfaction, when, after he has had time
+to feel his utter loneliness and the weight of his chains, he hears a
+neighbor knocking on the wall, and welcomes the sound which brings a
+sense of human friendship. Here was an unhoped-for confidant. But
+this feeling did not last for long. Soon she sank back into the old
+bitterness of spirit, saying to herself, as the prisoner might say, that
+a companion in misfortune could neither lighten her own bondage nor her
+future.
+
+In the first visit the curé had feared to alarm the susceptibilities
+of self-absorbed grief, in a second interview he hoped to make some
+progress towards religion. He came back again two days later, and from
+the Marquise’s welcome it was plain that she had looked forward to the
+visit.
+
+“Well, Mme. la Marquise, have you given a little thought to the great
+mass of human suffering? Have you raised your eyes above our earth and
+seen the immensity of the universe?--the worlds beyond worlds which
+crush our vanity into insignificance, and with our vanity reduce our
+sorrows?”
+
+“No, monsieur,” she said; “I cannot rise to such heights, our social
+laws lie too heavily upon me, and rend my heart with a too poignant
+anguish. And laws perhaps are less cruel than the usages of the world.
+Ah! the world!”
+
+“Madame, we must obey both. Law is the doctrine, and custom the practice
+of society.”
+
+“Obey society?” cried the Marquise, with an involuntary shudder. “Eh!
+monsieur, it is the source of all our woes. God laid down no law to
+make us miserable; but mankind, uniting together in social life, have
+perverted God’s work. Civilization deals harder measure to us women than
+nature does. Nature imposes upon us physical suffering which you have
+not alleviated; civilization has developed in us thoughts and feelings
+which you cheat continually. Nature exterminates the weak; you condemn
+them to live, and by so doing, consign them to a life of misery. The
+whole weight of the burden of marriage, an institution on which society
+is based, falls upon us; for the man liberty, duties for the woman. We
+must give up our whole lives to you, you are only bound to give us a
+few moments of yours. A man, in fact, makes a choice, while we blindly
+submit. Oh, monsieur, to you I can speak freely. Marriage, in these
+days, seems to me to be legalized prostitution. This is the cause of my
+wretchedness. But among so many miserable creatures so unhappily yoked,
+I alone am bound to be silent, I alone am to blame for my misery. My
+marriage was my own doing.”
+
+She stopped short, and bitter tears fell in the silence.
+
+“In the depths of my wretchedness, in the midst of this sea of
+distress,” she went on, “I found some sands on which to set foot and
+suffer at leisure. A great tempest swept everything away. And here am I,
+helpless and alone, too weak to cope with storms.”
+
+“We are never weak while God is with us,” said the priest. “And if your
+cravings for affection cannot be satisfied here on earth, have you no
+duties to perform?”
+
+“Duties continually!” she exclaimed, with something of impatience in
+her tone. “But where for me are the sentiments which give us strength
+to perform them? Nothing from nothing, nothing for nothing,--this,
+monsieur, is one of the most inexorable laws of nature, physical or
+spiritual. Would you have these trees break into leaf without the sap
+which swells the buds? It is the same with our human nature; and in me
+the sap is dried up at its source.”
+
+“I am not going to speak to you of religious sentiments of which
+resignation is born,” said the curé, “but of motherhood, madame,
+surely--”
+
+“Stop, monsieur!” said the Marquise, “with you I will be sincere. Alas!
+in future I can be sincere with no one; I am condemned to falsehood.
+The world requires continual grimaces, and we are bidden to obey
+its conventions if we would escape reproach. There are two kinds of
+motherhood, monsieur; once I knew nothing of such distinctions, but I
+know them now. Only half of me has become a mother; it were better for
+me if I had not been a mother at all. Helene is not _his_ child! Oh! do
+not start. At Saint-Lange there are volcanic depths whence come lurid
+gleams of light and earthquake shocks to shake the fragile edifices of
+laws not based on nature. I have borne a child, that is enough, I am a
+mother in the eyes of the law. But you, monsieur, with your delicately
+compassionate soul, can perhaps understand this cry from an unhappy
+woman who has suffered no lying illusions to enter her heart. God will
+judge me, but surely I have only obeyed His laws by giving way to the
+affections which He Himself set in me, and this I have learned from my
+own soul.--What is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the
+fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended? Unless it is owned by
+every fibre of the body, as by every chord of tenderness in the heart;
+unless it recalls the bliss of love, the hours, the places where two
+creatures were happy, their words that overflowed with the music of
+humanity, and their sweet imaginings, that child is an incomplete
+creation. Yes, those two should find the poetic dreams of their intimate
+double life realized in their child as in an exquisite miniature; it
+should be for them a never-failing spring of emotion, implying their
+whole past and their whole future.
+
+“My poor little Helene is her father’s child, the offspring of duty and
+of chance. In me she finds nothing but the affection of instinct, the
+woman’s natural compassion for the child of her womb. Socially speaking,
+I am above reproach. Have I not sacrificed my life and my happiness to
+my child? Her cries go to my heart; if she were to fall into the water,
+I should spring to save her, but she is not in my heart.
+
+“Ah! love set me dreaming of a motherhood far greater and more complete.
+In a vanished dream I held in my arms a child conceived in desire before
+it was begotten, the exquisite flower of life that blossoms in the soul
+before it sees the light of day. I am Helene’s mother only in the sense
+that I brought her forth. When she needs me no longer, there will be an
+end of my motherhood; with the extinction of the cause, the effects will
+cease. If it is a woman’s adorable prerogative that her motherhood
+may last through her child’s life, surely that divine persistence of
+sentiment is due to the far-reaching glory of the conception of the
+soul? Unless a child has lain wrapped about from life’s first beginnings
+by the mother’s soul, the instinct of motherhood dies in her as in the
+animals. This is true; I feel that it is true. As my poor little one
+grows older, my heart closes. My sacrifices have driven us apart. And
+yet I know, monsieur, that to another child my heart would have gone
+out in inexhaustible love; for that other I should not have known what
+sacrifice meant, all had been delight. In this, monsieur, my instincts
+are stronger than reason, stronger than religion or all else in me. Does
+the woman who is neither wife nor mother sin in wishing to die when, for
+her misfortune, she has caught a glimpse of the infinite beauty of love,
+the limitless joy of motherhood? What can become of her? _I_ can tell
+you what she feels. I cannot put that memory from me so resolutely but
+that a hundred times, night and day, visions of a happiness, greater
+it may be than the reality, rise before me, followed by a shudder which
+shakes brain and heart and body. Before these cruel visions, my feelings
+and thoughts grow colorless, and I ask myself, ‘What would my life have
+been _if_----?’”
+
+She hid her face in her hands and burst into tears.
+
+“There you see the depths of my heart!” she continued. “For _his_
+child I could have acquiesced in any lot however dreadful. He who died,
+bearing the burden of the sins of the world will forgive this thought
+of which I am dying; but the world, I know, is merciless. In its ears
+my words are blasphemies; I am outraging all its codes. Oh! that I could
+wage war against this world and break down and refashion its laws
+and traditions! Has it not turned all my thoughts, and feelings, and
+longings, and hopes, and every fibre in me into so many sources of pain?
+Spoiled my future, present, and past? For me the daylight is full of
+gloom, my thoughts pierce me like a sword, my child is and is not.
+
+“Oh, when Helene speaks to me, I wish that her voice were different,
+when she looks into my face I wish that she had other eyes. She
+constantly keeps me in mind of all that should have been and is not. I
+cannot bear to have her near me. I smile at her, I try to make up to
+her for the real affection of which she is defrauded. I am wretched,
+monsieur, too wretched to live. And I am supposed to be a pattern wife.
+And I have committed no sins. And I am respected! I have fought down
+forbidden love which sprang up at unawares within me; but if I have kept
+the letter of the law, have I kept it in my heart? There has never been
+but one here,” she said, laying her right hand on her breast, “one and
+no other; and my child feels it. Certain looks and tones and gestures
+mould a child’s nature, and my poor little one feels no thrill in the
+arm I put about her, no tremor comes into my voice, no softness into my
+eyes when I speak to her or take her up. She looks at me, and I cannot
+endure the reproach in her eyes. There are times when I shudder to think
+that some day she may be my judge and condemn her mother unheard. Heaven
+grant that hate may not grow up between us! Ah! God in heaven,
+rather let the tomb open for me, rather let me end my days here at
+Saint-Lange!--I want to go back to the world where I shall find my other
+soul and become wholly a mother. Ah! forgive me, sir, I am mad. Those
+words were choking me; now they are spoken. Ah! you are weeping too! You
+will not despise me--”
+
+She heard the child come in from a walk. “Helene, my child, come here!”
+ she called. The words sounded like a cry of despair.
+
+The little girl ran in, laughing and calling to her mother to see a
+butterfly which she had caught; but at the sight of that mother’s tears
+she grew quiet of a sudden, and went up close, and received a kiss on
+her forehead.
+
+“She will be very beautiful some day,” said the priest.
+
+“She is her father’s child,” said the Marquise, kissing the little one
+with eager warmth, as if she meant to pay a debt of affection or to
+extinguish some feeling of remorse.
+
+“How hot you are, mamma!”
+
+“There, go away, my angel,” said the Marquise.
+
+The child went. She did not seem at all sorry to go; she did not
+look back; glad perhaps to escape from a sad face, and instinctively
+comprehending already an antagonism of feeling in its expression. A
+mother’s love finds language in smiles, they are a part of the divine
+right of motherhood. The Marquise could not smile. She flushed red as
+she felt the curé’s eyes. She had hoped to act a mother’s part before
+him, but neither she nor her child could deceive him. And, indeed, when
+a woman loves sincerely, in the kiss she gives there is a divine honey;
+it is as if a soul were breathed forth in the caress, a subtle flame
+of fire which brings warmth to the heart; the kiss that lacks this
+delicious unction is meagre and formal. The priest had felt the
+difference. He could fathom the depths that lie between the motherhood
+of the flesh and the motherhood of the heart. He gave the Marquise a
+keen, scrutinizing glance, then he said:
+
+“You are right, madame; it would be better for you if you were dead----”
+
+“Ah!” she cried, “then you know all my misery; I see you do if,
+Christian priest as you are, you can guess my determination to die and
+sanction it. Yes, I meant to die, but I have lacked the courage. The
+spirit was strong, but the flesh was weak, and when my hand did not
+tremble, the spirit within me wavered.
+
+“I do not know the reason of these inner struggles, and alternations. I
+am very pitiably a woman no doubt, weak in my will, strong only to love.
+Oh, I despise myself. At night, when all my household was asleep, I
+would go out bravely as far as the lake; but when I stood on the brink,
+my cowardice shrank from self-destruction. To you I will confess my
+weakness. When I lay in my bed, again, shame would come over me, and
+courage would come back. Once I took a dose of laudanum; I was ill, but
+I did not die. I thought I had emptied the phial, but I had only taken
+half the dose.”
+
+“You are lost, madame,” the curé said gravely, with tears in his voice.
+“You will go back into the world, and you will deceive the world. You
+will seek and find a compensation (as you imagine it to be) for your
+woes; then will come a day of reckoning for your pleasures--”
+
+“Do you think,” she cried, “that _I_ shall bestow the last, the most
+precious treasures of my heart upon the first base impostor who can
+play the comedy of passion? That I would pollute my life for a moment
+of doubtful pleasure? No; the flame which shall consume my soul shall be
+love, and nothing but love. All men, monsieur, have the senses of
+their sex, but not all have the man’s soul which satisfies all the
+requirements of our nature, drawing out the melodious harmony which
+never breaks forth save in response to the pressure of feeling. Such a
+soul is not found twice in our lifetime. The future that lies before
+me is hideous; I know it. A woman is nothing without love; beauty is
+nothing without pleasure. And even if happiness were offered to me a
+second time, would not the world frown upon it? I owe my daughter an
+honored mother. Oh! I am condemned to live in an iron circle, from which
+there is but one shameful way of escape. The round of family duties, a
+thankless and irksome task, is in store for me. I shall curse life; but
+my child shall have at least a fair semblance of a mother. I will give
+her treasures of virtue for the treasures of love of which I defraud
+her.
+
+“I have not even the mother’s desire to live to enjoy her child’s
+happiness. I have no belief in happiness. What will Helene’s fate be?
+My own, beyond doubt. How can a mother ensure that the man to whom she
+gives her daughter will be the husband of her heart? You pour scorn
+on the miserable creatures who sell themselves for a few coins to any
+passer-by, though want and hunger absolve the brief union; while another
+union, horrible for quite other reasons, is tolerated, nay encouraged,
+by society, and a young and innocent girl is married to a man whom she
+has only met occasionally during the previous three months. She is sold
+for her whole lifetime. It is true that the price is high! If you allow
+her no compensation for her sorrows, you might at least respect her; but
+no, the most virtuous of women cannot escape calumny. This is our fate
+in its double aspect. Open prostitution and shame; secret prostitution
+and unhappiness. As for the poor, portionless girls, they may die or go
+mad, without a soul to pity them. Beauty and virtue are not marketable
+in the bazaar where souls and bodies are bought and sold--in the den of
+selfishness which you call society. Why not disinherit daughters? Then,
+at least, you might fulfil one of the laws of nature, and guided by your
+own inclinations, choose your companions.”
+
+“Madame, from your talk it is clear to me that neither the spirit of
+family nor the sense of religion appeals to you. Why should you hesitate
+between the claims of the social selfishness which irritates you, and
+the purely personal selfishness which craves satisfactions--”
+
+“The family, monsieur--does such a thing exist? I decline to recognize
+as a family a knot of individuals bidden by society to divide the
+property after the death of father and mother, and to go their separate
+ways. A family means a temporary association of persons brought together
+by no will of their own, dissolved at once by death. Our laws have
+broken up homes and estates, and the old family tradition handed down
+from generation to generation. I see nothing but wreck and ruin about
+me.”
+
+“Madame, you will only return to God when His hand has been heavy upon
+you, and I pray that you have time enough given to you in which to make
+your peace with Him. Instead of looking to heaven for comfort, you
+are fixing your eyes on earth. Philosophism and personal interest
+have invaded your heart; like the children of the sceptical eighteenth
+century, you are deaf to the voice of religion. The pleasures of this
+life bring nothing but misery. You are about to make an exchange of
+sorrows, that is all.”
+
+She smiled bitterly.
+
+“I will falsify your predictions,” she said. “I shall be faithful to him
+who died for me.”
+
+“Sorrow,” he answered, “is not likely to live long save in souls
+disciplined by religion,” and he lowered his eyes respectfully lest the
+Marquise should read his doubts in them. The energy of her outburst had
+grieved him. He had seen the self that lurked beneath so many forms,
+and despaired of softening a heart which affliction seemed to sear. The
+divine Sower’s seed could not take root in such a soil, and His gentle
+voice was drowned by the clamorous outcry of self-pity. Yet the good man
+returned again and again with an apostle’s earnest persistence, brought
+back by a hope of leading so noble and proud a soul to God; until the
+day when he made the discovery that the Marquise only cared to talk with
+him because it was sweet to speak of him who was no more. He would
+not lower his ministry by condoning her passion, and confined the
+conversation more and more to generalities and commonplaces.
+
+Spring came, and with the spring the Marquise found distraction from her
+deep melancholy. She busied herself for lack of other occupation with
+her estate, making improvements for amusement.
+
+In October she left the old chateau. In the life of leisure at
+Saint-Lange she had recovered from her grief and grown fair and fresh.
+Her grief had been violent at first in its course, as the quoit hurled
+forth with all the player’s strength, and like the quoit after many
+oscillations, each feebler than the last, it had slackened into
+melancholy. Melancholy is made up of a succession of such oscillations,
+the first touching upon despair, the last on the border between pain
+and pleasure; in youth, it is the twilight of dawn; in age, the dusk of
+night.
+
+As the Marquise drove through the village in her traveling carriage, she
+met the curé on his way back from the church. She bowed in response to
+his farewell greeting, but it was with lowered eyes and averted face.
+She did not wish to see him again. The village curé had judged this poor
+Diana of Ephesus only too well.
+
+
+
+
+III. AT THIRTY YEARS
+
+Madame Firmiani was giving a ball. M. Charles de Vandenesse, a young man
+of great promise, the bearer of one of those historic names which, in
+spite of the efforts of legislation, are always associated with the
+glory of France, had received letters of introduction to some of the
+great lady’s friends in Naples, and had come to thank the hostess and to
+take his leave.
+
+Vandenesse had already acquitted himself creditably on several
+diplomatic missions; and now that he had received an appointment as
+attache to a plenipotentiary at the Congress of Laybach, he wished to
+take advantage of the opportunity to make some study of Italy on the
+way. This ball was a sort of farewell to Paris and its amusements and
+its rapid whirl of life, to the great eddying intellectual centre and
+maelstrom of pleasure; and a pleasant thing it is to be borne along
+by the current of this sufficiently slandered great city of Paris. Yet
+Charles de Vandenesse had little to regret, accustomed as he had been
+for the past three years to salute European capitals and turn his back
+upon them at the capricious bidding of a diplomatist’s destiny. Women
+no longer made any impression upon him; perhaps he thought that a real
+passion would play too large a part in a diplomatist’s life; or perhaps
+that the paltry amusements of frivolity were too empty for a man
+of strong character. We all of us have huge claims to strength of
+character. There is no man in France, be he ever so ordinary a member of
+the rank and file of humanity, that will waive pretensions to something
+beyond mere cleverness.
+
+Charles, young though he was--he was scarcely turned thirty--looked at
+life with a philosophic mind, concerning himself with theories and
+means and ends, while other men of his age were thinking of pleasure,
+sentiments, and the like illusions. He forced back into some inner depth
+the generosity and enthusiasms of youth, and by nature he was generous.
+He tried hard to be cool and calculating, to coin the fund of wealth
+which chanced to be in his nature into gracious manners, and courtesy,
+and attractive arts; ‘tis the proper task of an ambitious man, to play a
+sorry part to gain “a good position,” as we call it in modern days.
+
+He had been dancing, and now he gave a farewell glance over the rooms,
+to carry away a distinct impression of the ball, moved, doubtless, to
+some extent by the feeling which prompts a theatre-goer to stay in
+his box to see the final tableau before the curtain falls. But M. de
+Vandenesse had another reason for his survey. He gazed curiously at the
+scene before him, so French in character and in movement, seeking to
+carry away a picture of the light and laughter and the faces at
+this Parisian fete, to compare with the novel faces and picturesque
+surroundings awaiting him at Naples, where he meant to spend a few
+days before presenting himself at his post. He seemed to be drawing the
+comparison now between this France so variable, changing even as you
+study her, with the manners and aspects of that other land known to him
+as yet only by contradictory hearsay tales or books of travel, for the
+most part unsatisfactory. Thoughts of a somewhat poetical cast, albeit
+hackneyed and trite to our modern ideas, crossed his brain, in response
+to some longing of which, perhaps, he himself was hardly conscious, a
+desire in the depths of a heart fastidious rather than jaded, vacant
+rather than seared.
+
+“These are the wealthiest and most fashionable women and the greatest
+ladies in Paris,” he said to himself. “These are the great men of the
+day, great orators and men of letters, great names and titles; artists
+and men in power; and yet in it all it seems to me as if there were
+nothing but petty intrigues and still-born loves, meaningless smiles
+and causeless scorn, eyes lighted by no flame within, brain-power in
+abundance running aimlessly to waste. All those pink-and-white faces are
+here not so much for enjoyment, as to escape from dulness. None of the
+emotion is genuine. If you ask for nothing but court feathers properly
+adjusted, fresh gauzes and pretty toilettes and fragile, fair women, if
+you desire simply to skim the surface of life, here is your world for
+you. Be content with meaningless phrases and fascinating simpers, and do
+not ask for real feeling. For my own part, I abhor the stale intrigues
+which end in sub-prefectures and receiver-generals’ places and
+marriages; or, if love comes into the question, in stealthy compromises,
+so ashamed are we of the mere semblance of passion. Not a single one of
+all these eloquent faces tells you of a soul, a soul wholly absorbed by
+one idea as by remorse. Regrets and misfortune go about shame-facedly
+clad in jests. There is not one woman here whose resistance I should
+care to overcome, not one who could drag you down to the pit. Where will
+you find energy in Paris? A poniard here is a curious toy to hang from a
+gilt nail, in a picturesque sheath to match. The women, the brains, and
+hearts of Paris are all on a par. There is no passion left, because
+we have no individuality. High birth and intellect and fortune are all
+reduced to one level; we all have taken to the uniform black coat by way
+of mourning for a dead France. There is no love between equals. Between
+two lovers there should be differences to efface, wide gulfs to fill.
+The charm of love fled from us in 1789. Our dulness and our humdrum
+lives are the outcome of the political system. Italy at any rate is the
+land of sharp contrasts. Woman there is a malevolent animal, a dangerous
+unreasoning siren, guided only by her tastes and appetites, a creature
+no more to be trusted than a tiger--”
+
+Mme. Firmiani here came up to interrupt this soliloquy made up of vague,
+conflicting, and fragmentary thoughts which cannot be reproduced in
+words. The whole charm of such musing lies in its vagueness--what is it
+but a sort of mental haze?
+
+“I want to introduce you to some one who has the greatest wish to make
+your acquaintance, after all that she has heard of you,” said the lady,
+taking his arm.
+
+She brought him into the next room, and with such a smile and glance
+as a Parisienne alone can give, she indicated a woman sitting by the
+hearth.
+
+“Who is she?” the Comte de Vandenesse asked quickly.
+
+“You have heard her name more than once coupled with praise or blame.
+She is a woman who lives in seclusion--a perfect mystery.”
+
+“Oh! if ever you have been merciful in your life, for pity’s sake tell
+me her name.”
+
+“She is the Marquise d’Aiglemont.”
+
+“I will take lessons from her; she had managed to make a peer of France
+of that eminently ordinary person her husband, and a dullard into a
+power in the land. But, pray tell me this, did Lord Grenville die for
+her sake, do you think, as some women say?”
+
+“Possibly. Since that adventure, real or imaginary, she is very much
+changed, poor thing! She has not gone into society since. Four years of
+constancy--that is something in Paris. If she is here to-night----”
+ Here Mme. Firmiani broke off, adding with a mysterious expression, “I am
+forgetting that I must say nothing. Go and talk with her.”
+
+For a moment Charles stood motionless, leaning lightly against the
+frame of the doorway, wholly absorbed in his scrutiny of a woman who had
+become famous, no one exactly knew how or why. Such curious anomalies
+are frequent enough in the world. Mme. d’Aiglemont’s reputation was
+certainly no more extraordinary than plenty of other great reputations.
+There are men who are always in travail of some great work which never
+sees the light, statisticians held to be profound on the score of
+calculations which they take very good care not to publish, politicians
+who live on a newspaper article, men of letters and artists whose
+performances are never given to the world, men of science, much as
+Sganarelle is a Latinist for those who know no Latin; there are the men
+who are allowed by general consent to possess a peculiar capacity for
+some one thing, be it for the direction of arts, or for the conduct
+of an important mission. The admirable phrase, “A man with a special
+subject,” might have been invented on purpose for these acephalous
+species in the domain of literature and politics.
+
+Charles gazed longer than he intended. He was vexed with himself for
+feeling so strongly interested; it is true, however, that the lady’s
+appearance was a refutation of the young man’s ballroom generalizations.
+
+The Marquise had reached her thirtieth year. She was beautiful in spite
+of her fragile form and extremely delicate look. Her greatest charm lay
+in her still face, revealing unfathomed depths of soul. Some haunting,
+ever-present thought veiled, as it were, the full brilliance of eyes
+which told of a fevered life and boundless resignation. So seldom
+did she raise the eyelids soberly downcast, and so listless were her
+glances, that it almost seemed as if the fire in her eyes were reserved
+for some occult contemplation. Any man of genius and feeling must have
+felt strangely attracted by her gentleness and silence. If the mind
+sought to explain the mysterious problem of a constant inward turning
+from the present to the past, the soul was no less interested in
+initiating itself into the secrets of a heart proud in some sort of
+its anguish. Everything about her, moreover, was in keeping with these
+thoughts which she inspired. Like almost all women who have very long
+hair, she was very pale and perfectly white. The marvelous fineness of
+her skin (that almost unerring sign) indicated a quick sensibility which
+could be seen yet more unmistakably in her features; there was the same
+minute and wonderful delicacy of finish in them that the Chinese artist
+gives to his fantastic figures. Perhaps her neck was rather too long,
+but such necks belong to the most graceful type, and suggest vague
+affinities between a woman’s head and the magnetic curves of the
+serpent. Leave not a single one of the thousand signs and tokens by
+which the most inscrutable character betrays itself to an observer of
+human nature, he has but to watch carefully the little movements of a
+woman’s head, the ever-varying expressive turns and curves of her neck
+and throat, to read her nature.
+
+Mme. d’Aiglemont’s dress harmonized with the haunting thought that
+informed the whole woman. Her hair was gathered up into a tall coronet
+of broad plaits, without ornament of any kind; she seemed to have bidden
+farewell for ever to elaborate toilettes. Nor were any of the small arts
+of coquetry which spoil so many women to be detected in her. Perhaps
+her bodice, modest though it was, did not altogether conceal the dainty
+grace of her figure, perhaps, too, her gown looked rich from the
+extreme distinction of its fashion, and if it is permissible to look for
+expression in the arrangement of stuffs, surely those numerous straight
+folds invested her with a great dignity. There may have been some
+lingering trace of the indelible feminine foible in the minute care
+bestowed upon her hand and foot; yet, if she allowed them to be seen
+with some pleasure, it would have tasked the utmost malice of a rival to
+discover any affectation in her gestures, so natural did they seem, so
+much a part of old childish habit, that her careless grace absolved this
+vestige of vanity.
+
+All these little characteristics, the nameless trifles which combine to
+make up the sum of a woman’s prettiness or ugliness, her charm or lack
+of charm, can only be indicated, when, as with Mme. d’Aiglemont, a
+personality dominates and gives coherence to the details, informing
+them, blending them all in an exquisite whole. Her manner was perfectly
+in accord with her style of beauty and her dress. Only to certain women
+at a certain age is it given to put language into their attitude. Is it
+joy or is it sorrow that teaches a woman of thirty the secret of that
+eloquence of carriage, so that she must always remain an enigma which
+each interprets by the aid of his hopes, desires, or theories?
+
+The way in which the Marquise leaned both elbows on the arm of her
+chair, the toying of her interclasped fingers, the curve of her throat,
+the indolent lines of her languid but lissome body as she lay back in
+graceful exhaustion, as it were; her indolent limbs, her unstudied pose,
+the utter lassitude of her movements,--all suggested that this was a
+woman for whom life had lost its interest, a woman who had known
+the joys of love only in dreams, a woman bowed down by the burden of
+memories of the past, a woman who had long since despaired of the future
+and despaired of herself, an unoccupied woman who took the emptiness of
+her own life for the nothingness of life.
+
+Charles de Vandenesse saw and admired the beautiful picture before
+him, as a kind of artistic success beyond an ordinary woman’s powers of
+attainment. He was acquainted with d’Aiglemont; and now, at the first
+sight of d’Aiglemont’s wife, the young diplomatist saw at a glance a
+disproportionate marriage, an incompatibility (to use the legal jargon)
+so great that it was impossible that the Marquise should love her
+husband. And yet--the Marquise d’Aiglemont’s life was above reproach,
+and for any observer the mystery about her was the more interesting on
+this account. The first impulse of surprise over, Vandenesse cast
+about for the best way of approaching Mme. d’Aiglemont. He would try a
+commonplace piece of diplomacy, he thought; he would disconcert her by a
+piece of clumsiness and see how she would receive it.
+
+“Madame,” he said, seating himself near her, “through a fortunate
+indiscretion I have learned that, for some reason unknown to me, I have
+had the good fortune to attract your notice. I owe you the more thanks
+because I have never been so honored before. At the same time, you are
+responsible for one of my faults, for I mean never to be modest again--”
+
+“You will make a mistake, monsieur,” she laughed; “vanity should be left
+to those who have nothing else to recommend them.”
+
+The conversation thus opened ranged at large, in the usual way, over a
+multitude of topics--art and literature, politics, men and things--till
+insensibly they fell to talking of the eternal theme in France and all
+the world over--love, sentiment, and women.
+
+“We are bond-slaves.”
+
+“You are queens.”
+
+This was the gist and substance of all the more or less ingenious
+discourse between Charles and the Marquise, as of all such
+discourses--past, present, and to come. Allow a certain space of time,
+and the two formulas shall begin to mean “Love me,” and “I will love
+you.”
+
+“Madame,” Charles de Vandenesse exclaimed under his breath, “you have
+made me bitterly regret that I am leaving Paris. In Italy I certainly
+shall not pass hours in intellectual enjoyment such as this has been.”
+
+“Perhaps, monsieur, you will find happiness, and happiness is worth
+more than all the brilliant things, true and false, that are said every
+evening in Paris.”
+
+Before Charles took leave, he asked permission to pay a farewell call
+on the Marquise d’Aiglemont, and very lucky did he feel himself when
+the form of words in which he expressed himself for once was used in all
+sincerity; and that night, and all day long on the morrow, he could not
+put the thought of the Marquise out of his mind.
+
+At times he wondered why she had singled him out, what she had
+meant when she asked him to come to see her, and thought supplied an
+inexhaustible commentary. Again it seemed to him that he had discovered
+the motives of her curiosity, and he grew intoxicated with hope or
+frigidly sober with each new construction put upon that piece of
+commonplace civility. Sometimes it meant everything, sometimes nothing.
+He made up his mind at last that he would not yield to this inclination,
+and--went to call on Mme. d’Aiglemont.
+
+There are thoughts which determine our conduct, while we do not so much
+as suspect their existence. If at first sight this assertion appears to
+be less a truth than a paradox, let any candid inquirer look into his
+own life and he shall find abundant confirmation therein. Charles went
+to Mme. d’Aiglemont, and so obeyed one of these latent, pre-existent
+germs of thought, of which our experience and our intellectual gains and
+achievements are but later and tangible developments.
+
+For a young man a woman of thirty has irresistible attractions. There
+is nothing more natural, nothing better established, no human tie of
+stouter tissue than the heart-deep attachment between such a woman as
+the Marquise d’Aiglemont and such a man as Charles de Vandenesse. You
+can see examples of it every day in the world. A girl, as a matter
+of fact, has too many young illusions, she is too inexperienced, the
+instinct of sex counts for too much in her love for a young man to feel
+flattered by it. A woman of thirty knows all that is involved in
+the self-surrender to be made. Among the impulses of the first, put
+curiosity and other motives than love; the second acts with integrity of
+sentiment. The first yields; the second makes deliberate choice. Is
+not that choice in itself an immense flattery? A woman armed with
+experience, forewarned by knowledge, almost always dearly bought, seems
+to give more than herself; while the inexperienced and credulous girl,
+unable to draw comparisons for lack of knowledge, can appreciate
+nothing at its just worth. She accepts love and ponders it. A woman is a
+counselor and a guide at an age when we love to be guided and obedience
+is delight; while a girl would fain learn all things, meeting us with a
+girl’s _naivete_ instead of a woman’s tenderness. She affords a single
+triumph; with a woman there is resistance upon resistance to overcome;
+she has but joy and tears, a woman has rapture and remorse.
+
+A girl cannot play the part of a mistress unless she is so corrupt
+that we turn from her with loathing; a woman has a thousand ways of
+preserving her power and her dignity; she has risked so much for love,
+that she must bid him pass through his myriad transformations, while her
+too submissive rival gives a sense of too serene security which palls.
+If the one sacrifices her maidenly pride, the other immolates the honor
+of a whole family. A girl’s coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that
+all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman’s coquetry is endless,
+she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of
+man’s vanity, the novice responds but to one.
+
+And there are terrors, fears, and hesitations--trouble and storm in the
+love of a woman of thirty years, never to be found in a young girl’s
+love. At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back the esteem
+she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her thoughts are
+full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids him make it
+glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, or rise in
+pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young girl can
+only make moan. And with all the advantages of her position, the woman
+of thirty can be a girl again, for she can play all parts, assume a
+girl’s bashfulness, and grow the fairer even for a mischance.
+
+Between these two feminine types lies the immeasurable difference which
+separates the foreseen from the unforeseen, strength from weakness. The
+woman of thirty satisfies every requirement; the young girl must satisfy
+none, under penalty of ceasing to be a young girl. Such ideas as these,
+developing in a young man’s mind, help to strengthen the strongest of
+all passions, a passion in which all spontaneous and natural feeling is
+blended with the artificial sentiment created by conventional manners.
+
+The most important and decisive step in a woman’s life is the very
+one that she invariably regards as the most insignificant. After her
+marriage she is no longer her own mistress, she is the queen and
+the bond-slave of the domestic hearth. The sanctity of womanhood is
+incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman
+emancipation means corruption. If you give a stranger the right of entry
+into the sanctuary of home, do you not put yourself at his mercy? How
+then if she herself bids him enter it? Is not this an offence, or, to
+speak more accurately, a first step towards an offence? You must
+either accept this theory with all its consequences, or absolve illicit
+passion. French society hitherto has chosen the third and middle course
+of looking on and laughing when offences come, apparently upon the
+Spartan principle of condoning the theft and punishing clumsiness.
+And this system, it may be, is a very wise one. ‘Tis a most appalling
+punishment to have all your neighbors pointing the finger of scorn
+at you, a punishment that a woman feels in her very heart. Women are
+tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without
+esteem they cannot exist, esteem is the first demand that they make
+of love. The most corrupt among them feels that she must, in the first
+place, pledge the future to buy absolution for the past, and strives
+to make her lover understand that only for irresistible bliss can she
+barter the respect which the world henceforth will refuse to her.
+
+Some such reflections cross the mind of any woman who for the first time
+and alone receives a visit from a young man; and this especially when,
+like Charles de Vandenesse, the visitor is handsome or clever. And
+similarly there are not many young men who would fail to base some
+secret wish on one of the thousand and one ideas which justify the
+instinct that attracts them to a beautiful, witty, and unhappy woman
+like the Marquise d’Aiglemont.
+
+Mme. d’Aiglemont, therefore, felt troubled when M. de Vandenesse was
+announced; and as for him, he was almost confused in spite of the
+assurance which is like a matter of costume for a diplomatist. But not
+for long. The Marquise took refuge at once in the friendliness of manner
+which women use as a defence against the misinterpretations of fatuity,
+a manner which admits of no afterthought, while it paves the way to
+sentiment (to make use of a figure of speech), tempering the transition
+through the ordinary forms of politeness. In this ambiguous position,
+where the four roads leading respectively to Indifference, Respect,
+Wonder, and Passion meet, a woman may stay as long as she pleases, but
+only at thirty years does she understand all the possibilities of the
+situation. Laughter, tenderness, and jest are all permitted to her at
+the crossing of the ways; she has acquired the tact by which she finds
+all the responsive chords in a man’s nature, and skill in judging the
+sounds which she draws forth. Her silence is as dangerous as her speech.
+You will never read her at that age, nor discover if she is frank or
+false, nor how far she is serious in her admissions or merely laughing
+at you. She gives you the right to engage in a game of fence with her,
+and suddenly by a glance, a gesture of proved potency, she closes the
+combat and turns from you with your secret in her keeping, free to offer
+you up in a jest, free to interest herself in you, safe alike in her
+weakness and your strength.
+
+Although the Marquise d’Aiglemont took up her position upon this neutral
+ground during the first interview, she knew how to preserve a high
+womanly dignity. The sorrows of which she never spoke seemed to hang
+over her assumed gaiety like a light cloud obscuring the sun. When
+Vandenesse went out, after a conversation which he had enjoyed more than
+he had thought possible, he carried with him the conviction that this
+was like to be too costly a conquest for his aspirations.
+
+“It would mean sentiment from here to yonder,” he thought, “and
+correspondence enough to wear out a deputy second-clerk on his
+promotion. And yet if I really cared----”
+
+Luckless phrase that has been the ruin of many an infatuated mortal. In
+France the way to love lies through self-love. Charles went back to Mme.
+d’Aiglemont, and imagined that she showed symptoms of pleasure in his
+conversion. And then, instead of giving himself up like a boy to the joy
+of falling in love, he tried to play a double role. He did his best
+to act passion and to keep cool enough to analyze the progress of this
+flirtation, to be lover and diplomatist at once; but youth and hot blood
+and analysis could only end in one way, over head and ears in love; for,
+natural or artificial, the Marquise was more than his match. Each time
+he went out from Mme. d’Aiglemont, he strenuously held himself to his
+distrust, and submitted the progressive situations of his case to a
+rigorous scrutiny fatal to his own emotions.
+
+“To-day she gave me to understand that she has been very unhappy and
+lonely,” said he to himself, after the third visit, “and that but for
+her little girl she would have longed for death. She was perfectly
+resigned. Now as I am neither her brother nor her spiritual director,
+why should she confide her troubles to _me_? She loves me.”
+
+Two days later he came away apostrophizing modern manners.
+
+“Love takes on the hue of every age. In 1822 love is a doctrinaire.
+Instead of proving love by deeds, as in times past, we have taken to
+argument and rhetoric and debate. Women’s tactics are reduced to three
+shifts. In the first place, they declare that we cannot love as they
+love. (Coquetry! the Marquise simply threw it at me, like a challenge,
+this evening!) Next they grow pathetic, to appeal to our natural
+generosity or self-love; for does it not flatter a young man’s vanity to
+console a woman for a great calamity? And lastly, they have a craze for
+virginity. She must have thought that I thought her very innocent. My
+good faith is like to become an excellent speculation.”
+
+But a day came when every suspicious idea was exhausted. He asked
+himself whether the Marquise was not sincere; whether so much suffering
+could be feigned, and why she should act the part of resignation? She
+lived in complete seclusion; she drank in silence of a cup of sorrow
+scarcely to be guessed unless from the accent of some chance exclamation
+in a voice always well under control. From that moment Charles felt a
+keen interest in Mme. d’Aiglemont. And yet, though his visits had come
+to be a recognized thing, and in some sort a necessity to them both,
+and though the hour was kept free by tacit agreement, Vandenesse still
+thought that this woman with whom he was in love was more clever than
+sincere. “Decidedly, she is an uncommonly clever woman,” he used to say
+to himself as he went away.
+
+When he came into the room, there was the Marquise in her favorite
+attitude, melancholy expressed in her whole form. She made no movement
+when he entered, only raised her eyes and looked full at him, but the
+glance that she gave him was like a smile. Mme. d’Aiglemont’s manner
+meant confidence and sincere friendship, but of love there was no trace.
+Charles sat down and found nothing to say. A sensation for which no
+language exists troubled him.
+
+“What is the matter with you?” she asked in a softened voice.
+
+“Nothing.... Yes; I am thinking of something of which, as yet, you have
+not thought at all.”
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“Why--the Congress is over.”
+
+“Well,” she said, “and ought you to have been at the Congress?”
+
+A direct answer would have been the most eloquent and delicate
+declaration of love; but Charles did not make it. Before the candid
+friendship in Mme. d’Aiglemont’s face all the calculations of vanity,
+the hopes of love, and the diplomatist’s doubts died away. She did not
+suspect, or she seemed not to suspect, his love for her; and Charles,
+in utter confusion turning upon himself, was forced to admit that he had
+said and done nothing which could warrant such a belief on her part. For
+M. de Vandenesse that evening, the Marquise was, as she had always been,
+simple and friendly, sincere in her sorrow, glad to have a friend, proud
+to find a nature responsive to her own--nothing more. It had not entered
+her mind that a woman could yield twice; she had known love--love lay
+bleeding still in the depths of her heart, but she did not imagine that
+bliss could bring her its rapture twice, for she believed not merely
+in the intellect, but in the soul; and for her love was no simple
+attraction; it drew her with all noble attractions.
+
+In a moment Charles became a young man again, enthralled by the splendor
+of a nature so lofty. He wished for a fuller initiation into the secret
+history of a life blighted rather by fate than by her own fault. Mme.
+d’Aiglemont heard him ask the cause of the overwhelming sorrow which had
+blended all the harmonies of sadness with her beauty; she gave him one
+glance, but that searching look was like a seal set upon some solemn
+compact.
+
+“Ask no more such questions of me,” she said. “Four years ago, on
+this very day, the man who loved me, for whom I would have given up
+everything, even my own self-respect, died, and died to save my name.
+That love was still young and pure and full of illusions when it came to
+an end. Before I gave way to passion--and never was a woman so urged by
+fate--I had been drawn into the mistake that ruins many a girl’s life,
+a marriage with a man whose agreeable manners concealed his emptiness.
+Marriage plucked my hopes away one by one. And now, to-day, I have
+forfeited happiness through marriage, as well as the happiness styled
+criminal, and I have known no happiness. Nothing is left to me. If I
+could not die, at least I ought to be faithful to my memories.”
+
+No tears came with the words. Her eyes fell, and there was a slight
+twisting of the fingers interclasped, according to her wont. It was
+simply said, but in her voice there was a note of despair, deep as
+her love seemed to have been, which left Charles without a hope. The
+dreadful story of a life told in three sentences, with that twisting of
+the fingers for all comment, the might of anguish in a fragile woman,
+the dark depths masked by a fair face, the tears of four years of
+mourning fascinated Vandenesse; he sat silent and diminished in the
+presence of her woman’s greatness and nobleness, seeing not the physical
+beauty so exquisite, so perfectly complete, but the soul so great in
+its power to feel. He had found, at last, the ideal of his fantastic
+imaginings, the ideal so vigorously invoked by all who look on life as
+the raw material of a passion for which many a one seeks ardently, and
+dies before he has grasped the whole of the dreamed-of treasure.
+
+With those words of hers in his ears, in the presence of her sublime
+beauty, his own thoughts seemed poor and narrow. Powerless as he felt
+himself to find words of his own, simple enough and lofty enough to
+scale the heights of this exaltation, he took refuge in platitudes as to
+the destiny of women.
+
+“Madame, we must either forget our pain, or hollow out a tomb for
+ourselves.”
+
+But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being
+essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the
+other is infinite. To set to work to reason where you are required to
+feel, is the mark of a limited nature. Vandenesse therefore held his
+peace, sat awhile with his eyes fixed upon her, then came away. A prey
+to novel thoughts which exalted woman for him, he was in something the
+same position as a painter who has taken the vulgar studio model for
+a type of womanhood, and suddenly confronts the _Mnemosyne_ of the
+Musee--that noblest and least appreciated of antique statues.
+
+Charles de Vandenesse was deeply in love. He loved Mme. d’Aiglemont with
+the loyalty of youth, with the fervor that communicates such ineffable
+charm to a first passion, with a simplicity of heart of which a man only
+recovers some fragments when he loves again at a later day. Delicious
+first passion of youth, almost always deliciously savored by the woman
+who calls it forth; for at the golden prime of thirty, from the poetic
+summit of a woman’s life, she can look out over the whole course of
+love--backwards into the past, forwards into the future--and, knowing
+all the price to be paid for love, enjoys her bliss with the dread of
+losing it ever present with her. Her soul is still fair with her waning
+youth, and passion daily gathers strength from the dismaying prospect of
+the coming days.
+
+“This is love,” Vandenesse said to himself this time as he left the
+Marquise, “and for my misfortune I love a woman wedded to her memories.
+It is hard work to struggle against a dead rival, never present to
+make blunders and fall out of favor, nothing of him left but his better
+qualities. What is it but a sort of high treason against the Ideal to
+attempt to break the charm of memory, to destroy the hopes that survive
+a lost lover, precisely because he only awakened longings, and all that
+is loveliest and most enchanting in love?”
+
+These sober reflections, due to the discouragement and dread of failure
+with which love begins in earnest, were the last expiring effort of
+diplomatic reasoning. Thenceforward he knew no afterthoughts, he was the
+plaything of his love, and lost himself in the nothings of that strange
+inexplicable happiness which is full fed by a chance word, by silence,
+or a vague hope. He tried to love Platonically, came daily to breathe
+the air that she breathed, became almost a part of her house, and went
+everywhere with her, slave as he was of a tyrannous passion compounded
+of egoism and devotion of the completest. Love has its own instinct,
+finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way
+to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay or turn aside. If
+feeling is sincere, its destiny is not doubtful. Let a woman begin to
+think that her life depends on the sincerity or fervor or earnestness
+which her lover shall put into his longings, and is there not sufficient
+in the thought to put her through all the tortures of dread? It is
+impossible for a woman, be she wife or mother, to be secure from a young
+man’s love. One thing it is within her power to do--to refuse to see him
+as soon as she learns a secret which she never fails to guess. But
+this is too decided a step to take at an age when marriage has become a
+prosaic and tiresome yoke, and conjugal affection is something less than
+tepid (if indeed her husband has not already begun to neglect her). Is a
+woman plain? she is flattered by a love which gives her fairness. Is she
+young and charming? She is only to be won by a fascination as great
+as her own power to charm, that is to say, a fascination well-nigh
+irresistible. Is she virtuous? There is a love sublime in its
+earthliness which leads her to find something like absolution in the
+very greatness of the surrender and glory in a hard struggle. Everything
+is a snare. No lesson, therefore, is too severe where the temptation is
+so strong. The seclusion in which the Greeks and Orientals kept and keep
+their women, an example more and more followed in modern England, is the
+only safeguard of domestic morality; but under this system there is
+an end of all the charm of social intercourse; and society, and good
+breeding, and refinement of manners become impossible. The nations must
+take their choice.
+
+So a few months went by, and Mme. d’Aiglemont discovered that her life
+was closely bound with this young man’s life, without overmuch confusion
+in her surprise, and felt with something almost like pleasure that she
+shared his tastes and his thoughts. Had she adopted Vandenesse’s ideas?
+Or was it Vandenesse who had made her lightest whims his own? She was
+not careful to inquire. She had been swept out already into the current
+of passion, and yet this adorable woman told herself with the confident
+reiteration of misgiving;
+
+“Ah! no. I will be faithful to him who died for me.”
+
+Pascal said that “the doubt of God implies belief in God.” And similarly
+it may be said that a woman only parleys when she has surrendered. A day
+came when the Marquise admitted to herself that she was loved, and
+with that admission came a time of wavering among countless conflicting
+thoughts and feelings. The superstitions of experience spoke their
+language. Should she be happy? Was it possible that she should find
+happiness outside the limits of the laws which society rightly or
+wrongly has set up for humanity to live by? Hitherto her cup of life had
+been full of bitterness. Was there any happy issue possible for the
+ties which united two human beings held apart by social conventions? And
+might not happiness be bought too dear? Still, this so ardently desired
+happiness, for which it is so natural to seek, might perhaps be found
+after all. Curiosity is always retained on the lover’s side in the suit.
+The secret tribunal was still sitting when Vandenesse appeared, and his
+presence put the metaphysical spectre, reason, to flight.
+
+If such are the successive transformations through which a sentiment,
+transient though it be, passes in a young man and a woman of thirty,
+there comes a moment of time when the shades of difference blend into
+each other, when all reasonings end in a single and final reflection
+which is lost and absorbed in the desire which it confirms. Then the
+longer the resistance, the mightier the voice of love. And here endeth
+this lesson, or rather this study made from the _écorché_, to borrow a
+most graphic term from the studio, for in this history it is not so much
+intended to portray love as to lay bare its mechanism and its dangers.
+From this moment every day adds color to these dry bones, clothes them
+again with living flesh and blood and the charm of youth, and puts
+vitality into their movements; till they glow once more with the beauty,
+the persuasive grace of sentiment, the loveliness of life.
+
+
+
+Charles found Mme. d’Aiglemont absorbed in thought, and to his “What is
+it?” spoken in thrilling tones grown persuasive with the heart’s soft
+magic, she was careful not to reply. The delicious question bore witness
+to the perfect unity of their spirits; and the Marquise felt, with a
+woman’s wonderful intuition, that to give any expression to the sorrow
+in her heart would be to make an advance. If, even now, each one
+of those words was fraught with significance for them both, in what
+fathomless depths might she not plunge at the first step? She read
+herself with a clear and lucid glance. She was silent, and Vandenesse
+followed her example.
+
+“I am not feeling well,” she said at last, taking alarm at the pause
+fraught with such great moment for them both, when the language of the
+eyes completely filled the blank left by the helplessness of speech.
+
+“Madame,” said Charles, and his voice was tender but unsteady with
+strong feeling, “soul and body are both dependent on each other. If you
+were happy, you would be young and fresh. Why do you refuse to ask of
+love all that love has taken from you? You think that your life is over
+when it is only just beginning. Trust yourself to a friend’s care. It is
+so sweet to be loved.”
+
+“I am old already,” she said; “there is no reason why I should not
+continue to suffer as in the past. And ‘one must love,’ do you say?
+Well, I must not, and I cannot. Your friendship has put some sweetness
+into my life, but beside you I care for no one, no one could efface my
+memories. A friend I accept; I should fly from a lover. Besides, would
+it be a very generous thing to do, to exchange a withered heart for a
+young heart; to smile upon illusions which now I cannot share, to cause
+happiness in which I should either have no belief, or tremble to lose?
+I should perhaps respond to his devotion with egoism, should weigh and
+deliberate while he felt; my memory would resent the poignancy of his
+happiness. No, if you love once, that love is never replaced, you see.
+Indeed, who would have my heart at this price?”
+
+There was a tinge of heartless coquetry in the words, the last effort of
+discretion.
+
+“If he loses courage, well and good, I shall live alone and faithful.”
+ The thought came from the very depths of the woman, for her it was the
+too slender willow twig caught in vain by a swimmer swept out by the
+current.
+
+Vandenesse’s involuntary shudder at her dictum plead more eloquently for
+him than all his past assiduity. Nothing moves a woman so much as the
+discovery of a gracious delicacy in us, such a refinement of sentiment
+as her own, for a woman the grace and delicacy are sure tokens of truth.
+Charles’ start revealed the sincerity of his love. Mme. d’Aiglemont
+learned the strength of his affection from the intensity of his pain.
+
+“Perhaps you are right,” he said coldly. “New love, new vexation of
+spirit.”
+
+Then he changed the subject, and spoke of indifferent matters; but he
+was visibly moved, and he concentrated his gaze on Mme. d’Aiglemont as
+if he were seeing her for the last time.
+
+“Adieu, madame,” he said, with emotion in his voice.
+
+“_Au revoir_,” said she, with that subtle coquetry, the secret of a very
+few among women.
+
+He made no answer and went.
+
+When Charles was no longer there, when his empty chair spoke for him,
+regrets flocked in upon her, and she found fault with herself. Passion
+makes an immense advance as soon as a woman persuades herself that she
+has failed somewhat in generosity or hurt a noble nature. In love there
+is never any need to be on our guard against the worst in us; that is
+a safeguard; a woman only surrenders at the summons of a virtue. “The
+floor of hell is paved with good intentions,”--it is no preacher’s
+paradox.
+
+Vandenesse stopped away for several days. Every evening at the
+accustomed hour the Marquise sat expectant in remorseful impatience.
+She could not write--that would be a declaration, and, moreover, her
+instinct told her that he would come back. On the sixth day he was
+announced, and never had she heard the name with such delight. Her joy
+frightened her.
+
+“You have punished me well,” she said, addressing him.
+
+Vandenesse gazed at her in astonishment.
+
+“Punished?” he echoed. “And for what?” He understood her quite well,
+but he meant to be avenged for all that he had suffered as soon as she
+suspected it.
+
+“Why have you not come to see me?” she demanded with a smile.
+
+“Then you have seen no visitors?” asked he, parrying the question.
+
+“Yes. M. de Ronquerolles and M. de Marsay and young d’Escrignon came
+and stayed for nearly two hours, the first two yesterday, the last this
+morning. And besides, I have had a call, I believe, from Mme. Firmiani
+and from your sister, Mme. de Listomère.”
+
+Here was a new infliction, torture which none can comprehend unless they
+know love as a fierce and all-invading tyrant whose mildest symptom is
+a monstrous jealousy, a perpetual desire to snatch away the beloved from
+every other influence.
+
+“What!” thought he to himself, “she has seen visitors, she has been
+with happy creatures, and talking to them, while I was unhappy and all
+alone.”
+
+He buried his annoyance forthwith, and consigned love to the depths of
+his heart, like a coffin to the sea. His thoughts were of the kind that
+never find expression in words; they pass through the mind swiftly as
+a deadly acid, that poisons as it evaporates and vanishes. His brow,
+however, was over-clouded; and Mme. d’Aiglemont, guided by her woman’s
+instinct, shared his sadness without understanding it. She had hurt him,
+unwittingly, as Vandenesse knew. He talked over his position with her,
+as if his jealousy were one of those hypothetical cases which lovers
+love to discuss. Then the Marquise understood it all. She was so deeply
+moved, that she could not keep back the tears--and so these lovers
+entered the heaven of love.
+
+Heaven and Hell are two great imaginative conceptions formulating our
+ideas of Joy and Sorrow--those two poles about which human existence
+revolves. Is not heaven a figure of speech covering now and for
+evermore an infinite of human feeling impossible to express save in its
+accidents--since that Joy is one? And what is Hell but the symbol of
+our infinite power to suffer tortures so diverse that of our pain it is
+possible to fashion works of art, for no two human sorrows are alike?
+
+One evening the two lovers sat alone and side by side, silently watching
+one of the fairest transformations of the sky, a cloudless heaven taking
+hues of pale gold and purple from the last rays of the sunset. With the
+slow fading of the daylight, sweet thoughts seem to awaken, and soft
+stirrings of passion, and a mysterious sense of trouble in the midst of
+calm. Nature sets before us vague images of bliss, bidding us enjoy
+the happiness within our reach, or lament it when it has fled. In those
+moments fraught with enchantment, when the tender light in the canopy
+of the sky blends in harmony with the spells working within, it is
+difficult to resist the heart’s desires grown so magically potent. Cares
+are blunted, joy becomes ecstasy; pain, intolerable anguish. The pomp
+of sunset gives the signal for confessions and draws them forth. Silence
+grows more dangerous than speech for it gives to eyes all the power of
+the infinite of the heavens reflected in them. And for speech, the least
+word has irresistible might. Is not the light infused into the voice and
+purple into the glances? Is not heaven within us, or do we feel that we
+are in the heavens?
+
+Vandenesse and Julie--for so she had allowed herself to be called
+for the past few days by him whom she loved to speak of as
+Charles--Vandenesse and Julie were talking together, but they had
+drifted very far from their original subject; and if their spoken words
+had grown meaningless they listened in delight to the unspoken thoughts
+that lurked in the sounds. Her hand lay in his. She had abandoned it to
+him without a thought that she had granted a proof of love.
+
+Together they leaned forward to look out upon a majestic cloud country,
+full of snows and glaciers and fantastic mountain peaks with gray stains
+of shadow on their sides, a picture composed of sharp contrasts between
+fiery red and the shadows of darkness, filling the skies with a fleeting
+vision of glory which cannot be reproduced--magnificent swaddling-bands
+of sunrise, bright shrouds of the dying sun. As they leaned Julie’s hair
+brushed lightly against Vandenesse’s cheek. She felt that light contact,
+and shuddered violently, and he even more, for imperceptibly they both
+had reached one of those inexplicable crises when quiet has wrought
+upon the senses until every faculty of perception is so keen that the
+slightest shock fills the heart lost in melancholy with sadness that
+overflows in tears; or raises joy to ecstasy in a heart that is lost
+in the vertigo of love. Almost involuntarily Julie pressed her lover’s
+hand. That wooing pressure gave courage to his timidity. All the joy of
+the present, all the hopes of the future were blended in the emotion
+of a first caress, the bashful trembling kiss that Mme. d’Aiglemont
+received upon her cheek. The slighter the concession, the more dangerous
+and insinuating it was. For their double misfortune it was only too
+sincere a revelation. Two noble natures had met and blended, drawn
+each to each by every law of natural attraction, held apart by every
+ordinance.
+
+General d’Aiglemont came in at that very moment.
+
+“The Ministry has gone out,” he said. “Your uncle will be in the
+new cabinet. So you stand an uncommonly good chance of an embassy,
+Vandenesse.”
+
+Charles and Julie looked at each other and flushed red. That blush was
+one more tie to unite them; there was one thought and one remorse in
+either mind; between two lovers guilty of a kiss there is a bond quite
+as strong and terrible as the bond between two robbers who have murdered
+a man. Something had to be said by way of reply.
+
+“I do not care to leave Paris now,” Charles said.
+
+“We know why,” said the General, with the knowing air of a man who
+discovers a secret. “You do not like to leave your uncle, because you do
+not wish to lose your chance of succeeding to the title.”
+
+The Marquise took refuge in her room, and in her mind passed a pitiless
+verdict upon her husband.
+
+“His stupidity is really beyond anything!”
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE FINGER OF GOD
+
+Between the Barrière d’Italie and the Barrière de la Santé, along the
+boulevard which leads to the Jardin des Plantes, you have a view of
+Paris fit to send an artist or the tourist, the most _blase_ in matters
+of landscape, into ecstasies. Reach the slightly higher ground where the
+line of boulevard, shaded by tall, thick-spreading trees, curves with
+the grace of some green and silent forest avenue, and you see spread
+out at your feet a deep valley populous with factories looking almost
+countrified among green trees and the brown streams of the Bièvre or the
+Gobelins.
+
+On the opposite slope, beneath some thousands of roofs packed close
+together like heads in a crowd, lurks the squalor of the Faubourg
+Saint-Marceau. The imposing cupola of the Panthéon, and the grim
+melancholy dome of the Val-du-Grace, tower proudly up above a whole
+town in itself, built amphitheatre-wise; every tier being grotesquely
+represented by a crooked line of street, so that the two public
+monuments look like a huge pair of giants dwarfing into insignificance
+the poor little houses and the tallest poplars in the valley. To your
+left behold the observatory, the daylight, pouring athwart its windows
+and galleries, producing such fantastical strange effects that the
+building looks like a black spectral skeleton. Further yet in the
+distance rises the elegant lantern tower of the Invalides, soaring
+up between the bluish pile of the Luxembourg and the gray tours of
+Saint-Sulpice. From this standpoint the lines of the architecture are
+blended with green leaves and gray shadows, and change every moment with
+every aspect of the heavens, every alteration of light or color in the
+sky. Afar, the skyey spaces themselves seem to be full of buildings;
+near, wind the serpentine curves of waving trees and green footpaths.
+
+Away to your right, through a great gap in this singular landscape,
+you see the canal Saint-Martin, a long pale stripe with its edging
+of reddish stone quays and fringes of lime avenue. The long rows of
+buildings beside it, in genuine Roman style, are the public granaries.
+
+Beyond, again, on the very last plane of all, see the smoke-dimmed
+slopes of Belleville covered with houses and windmills, which blend
+their freaks of outline with the chance effects of cloud. And still,
+between that horizon, vague as some childish recollection, and the
+serried range of roofs in the valley, a whole city lies out of sight: a
+huge city, engulfed, as it were, in a vast hollow between the pinnacles
+of the Hôpital de la Pitié and the ridge line of the Cimetiere de l’Est,
+between suffering on the one hand and death on the other; a city sending
+up a smothered roar like Ocean grumbling at the foot of a cliff, as if
+to let you know that “I am here!”
+
+When the sunlight pours like a flood over this strip of Paris, purifying
+and etherealizing the outlines, kindling answering lights here and there
+in the window panes, brightening the red tiles, flaming about the golden
+crosses, whitening walls and transforming the atmosphere into a gauzy
+veil, calling up rich contrasts of light and fantastic shadow; when the
+sky is blue and earth quivers in the heat, and the bells are pealing,
+then you shall see one of the eloquent fairy scenes which stamp
+themselves for ever on the imagination, a scene that shall find as
+fanatical worshipers as the wondrous views of Naples and Byzantium or
+the isles of Florida. Nothing is wanting to complete the harmony, the
+murmur of the world of men and the idyllic quiet of solitude, the voices
+of a million human creatures and the voice of God. There lies a whole
+capital beneath the peaceful cypresses of Pere-Lachaise.
+
+The landscape lay in all its beauty, sparkling in the spring sunlight,
+as I stood looking out over it one morning, my back against a huge
+elm-tree that flung its yellow flowers to the wind. At the sight of the
+rich and glorious view before me, I thought bitterly of the scorn with
+which even in our literature we affect to hold this land of ours, and
+poured maledictions on the pitiable plutocrats who fall out of love with
+fair France, and spend their gold to acquire the right of sneering at
+their own country, by going through Italy at a gallop and inspecting
+that desecrated land through an opera-glass. I cast loving eyes on
+modern Paris. I was beginning to dream dreams, when the sound of a kiss
+disturbed the solitude and put philosophy to flight. Down the sidewalk,
+along the steep bank, above the rippling water, I saw beyond the
+Ponte des Gobelins the figure of a woman, dressed with the daintiest
+simplicity; she was still young, as it seemed to me, and the blithe
+gladness of the landscape was reflected in her sweet face. Her
+companion, a handsome young man, had just set down a little boy. A
+prettier child has never been seen, and to this day I do not know
+whether it was the little one or his mother who received the kiss. In
+their young faces, in their eyes, their smile, their every movement, you
+could read the same deep and tender thought. Their arms were interlaced
+with such glad swiftness; they drew close together with such marvelous
+unanimity of impulse that, conscious of nothing but themselves, they did
+not so much as see me. A second child, however--a little girl, who had
+turned her back upon them in sullen discontent--threw me a glance, and
+the expression in her eyes startled me. She was as pretty and engaging
+as the little brother whom she left to run about by himself, sometimes
+before, sometimes after their mother and her companion; but her charm
+was less childish, and now, as she stood mute and motionless, her
+attitude and demeanor suggested a torpid snake. There was something
+indescribably mechanical in the way in which the pretty woman and her
+companion paced up and down. In absence of mind, probably, they were
+content to walk to and fro between the little bridge and a carriage that
+stood waiting nearby at a corner in the boulevard, turning, stopping
+short now and again, looking into each other’s eyes, or breaking into
+laughter as their casual talk grew lively or languid, grave or gay.
+
+I watched this delicious picture a while from my hiding-place by the
+great elm-tree, and should have turned away no doubt and respected their
+privacy, if it had not been for a chance discovery. In the face of the
+brooding, silent, elder child I saw traces of thought overdeep for her
+age. When her mother and the young man at her side turned and came
+near, her head was frequently lowered; the furtive sidelong glances
+of intelligence that she gave the pair and the child her brother were
+nothing less than extraordinary. Sometimes the pretty woman or her
+friend would stroke the little boy’s fair curls, or lay a caressing
+finger against the baby throat or the white collar as he played at
+keeping step with them; and no words can describe the shrewd subtlety,
+the ingenuous malice, the fierce intensity which lighted up that pallid
+little face with the faint circles already round the eyes. Truly there
+was a man’s power of passion in the strange-looking, delicate little
+girl. Here were traces of suffering or of thought in her; and which
+is the more certain token of death when life is in blossom--physical
+suffering, or the malady of too early thought preying upon a soul as yet
+in bud? Perhaps a mother knows. For my own part, I know of nothing more
+dreadful to see than an old man’s thoughts on a child’s forehead; even
+blasphemy from girlish lips is less monstrous.
+
+The almost stupid stolidity of this child who had begun to think
+already, her rare gestures, everything about her, interested me. I
+scrutinized her curiously. Then the common whim of the observer drew
+me to compare her with her brother, and to note their likeness and
+unlikeness.
+
+Her brown hair and dark eyes and look of precocious power made a rich
+contrast with the little one’s fair curled head and sea-green eyes and
+winning helplessness. She, perhaps, was seven or eight years of age; the
+boy was full four years younger. Both children were dressed alike; but
+here again, looking closely, I noticed a difference. It was very slight,
+a little thing enough; but in the light of after events I saw that it
+meant a whole romance in the past, a whole tragedy to come. The little
+brown-haired maid wore a linen collar with a plain hem, her brother’s
+was edged with dainty embroidery, that was all; but therein lay the
+confession of a heart’s secret, a tacit preference which a child can
+read in the mother’s inmost soul as clearly as if the spirit of God
+revealed it. The fair-haired child, careless and glad, looked almost
+like a girl, his skin was so fair and fresh, his movements so graceful,
+his look so sweet; while his older sister, in spite of her energy, in
+spite of the beauty of her features and her dazzling complexion, looked
+like a sickly little boy. In her bright eyes there was none of the humid
+softness which lends such charm to children’s faces; they seemed, like
+courtiers’ eyes, to be dried by some inner fire; and in her pallor there
+was a certain swarthy olive tint, the sign of vigorous character. Twice
+her little brother came to her, holding out a tiny hunting-horn with a
+touching charm, a winning look, and wistful expression, which would
+have sent Charlet into ecstasies, but she only scowled in answer to his
+“Here, Helene, will you take it?” so persuasively spoken. The little
+girl, so sombre and vehement beneath her apparent indifference,
+shuddered, and even flushed red when her brother came near her; but
+the little one seemed not to notice his sister’s dark mood, and his
+unconsciousness, blended with earnestness, marked a final difference
+in character between the child and the little girl, whose brow was
+overclouded already by the gloom of a man’s knowledge and cares.
+
+“Mamma, Helene will not play,” cried the little one, seizing an
+opportunity to complain while the two stood silent on the Ponte des
+Gobelins.
+
+“Let her alone, Charles; you know very well that she is always cross.”
+
+Tears sprang to Helene’s eyes at the words so thoughtlessly uttered
+by her mother as she turned abruptly to the young man by her side. The
+child devoured the speech in silence, but she gave her brother one of
+those sagacious looks that seemed inexplicable to me, glancing with a
+sinister expression from the bank where he stood to the Bièvre, then at
+the bridge and the view, and then at me.
+
+I was afraid lest my presence should disturb the happy couple; I slipped
+away and took refuge behind a thicket of elder trees, which completely
+screened me from all eyes. Sitting quietly on the summit of the bank, I
+watched the ever-changing landscape and the fierce-looking little girl,
+for with my head almost on a level with the boulevard I could still see
+her through the leaves. Helene seemed uneasy over my disappearance,
+her dark eyes looked for me down the alley and behind the trees with
+indefinable curiosity. What was I to her? Then Charles’ baby laughter
+rang out like a bird’s song in the silence. The tall, young man, with
+the same fair hair, was dancing him in his arms, showering kisses upon
+him, and the meaningless baby words of that “little language” which
+rises to our lips when we play with children. The mother looked on
+smiling, now and then, doubtless, putting in some low word that came
+up from the heart, for her companion would stop short in his full
+happiness, and the blue eyes that turned towards her were full of
+glowing light and love and worship. Their voices, blending with the
+child’s voice, reached me with a vague sense of a caress. The three
+figures, charming in themselves, composed a lovely scene in a glorious
+landscape, filling it with a pervasive unimaginable grace. A delicately
+fair woman, radiant with smiles, a child of love, a young man with the
+irresistible charm of youth, a cloudless sky; nothing was wanting in
+nature to complete a perfect harmony for the delight of the soul. I
+found myself smiling as if their happiness had been my own.
+
+The clocks struck nine. The young man gave a tender embrace to his
+companion, and went towards the tilbury which an old servant drove
+slowly to meet him. The lady had grown grave and almost sad. The child’s
+prattle sounded unchecked through the last farewell kisses. Then the
+tilbury rolled away, and the lady stood motionless, listening to the
+sound of the wheels, watching the little cloud of dust raised by its
+passage along the road. Charles ran down the green pathway back to the
+bridge to join his sister. I heard his silver voice calling to her.
+
+“Why did you not come to say good-bye to my good friend?” cried he.
+
+Helene looked up. Never surely did such hatred gleam from a child’s
+eyes as from hers at that moment when she turned them on the brother who
+stood beside her on the bank side. She gave him an angry push. Charles
+lost his footing on the steep slope, stumbled over the roots of a tree,
+and fell headlong forwards, dashing his forehead on the sharp-edged
+stones of the embankment, and, covered with blood, disappeared over the
+edge into the muddy river. The turbid water closed over a fair, bright
+head with a shower of splashes; one sharp shriek after another rang in
+my ears; then the sounds were stifled by the thick stream, and the poor
+child sank with a dull sound as if a stone had been thrown into the
+water. The accident had happened with more than lightning swiftness. I
+sprang down the footpath, and Helene, stupefied with horror, shrieked
+again and again:
+
+“Mamma! mamma!”
+
+The mother was there at my side. She had flown to the spot like a bird.
+But neither a mother’s eyes nor mine could find the exact place where
+the little one had gone under. There was a wide space of black hurrying
+water, and below in the bed of the Bièvre ten feet of mud. There was
+not the smallest possibility of saving the child. No one was stirring at
+that hour on a Sunday morning, and there are neither barges nor anglers
+on the Bièvre. There was not a creature in sight, not a pole to plumb
+the filthy stream. What need was there for me to explain how the
+ugly-looking accident had happened--accident or misfortune, whichever
+it might be? Had Helene avenged her father? Her jealousy surely was
+the sword of God. And yet when I looked at the mother I shivered. What
+fearful ordeal awaited her when she should return to her husband, the
+judge before whom she must stand all her days? And here with her was an
+inseparable, incorruptible witness. A child’s forehead is transparent,
+a child’s face hides no thoughts, and a lie, like a red flame set within
+glows out red that colors even the eyes. But the unhappy woman had not
+thought as yet of the punishment awaiting her at home; she was staring
+into the Bièvre.
+
+
+
+Such an event must inevitably send ghastly echoes through a woman’s
+life, and here is one of the most terrible of the reverberations that
+troubled Julie’s love from time to time.
+
+Several years had gone by. The Marquis de Vandenesse wore mourning for
+his father, and succeeded to his estates. One evening, therefore, after
+dinner it happened that a notary was present in his house. This was
+no pettifogging lawyer after Sterne’s pattern, but a very solid,
+substantial notary of Paris, one of your estimable men who do a stupid
+thing pompously, set down a foot heavily upon your private corn, and
+then ask what in the world there is to cry out about? If, by accident,
+they come to know the full extent of the enormity, “Upon my word,” cry
+they, “I hadn’t a notion!” This was a well-intentioned ass, in short,
+who could see nothing in life but deeds and documents.
+
+Mme. de Aiglemont had been dining with M. de Vandenesse; her husband
+had excused himself before dinner was over, for he was taking his two
+children to the play. They were to go to some Boulevard theatre or
+other, to the Ambigu-Comique or the Gaieté, sensational melodrama being
+judged harmless here in Paris, and suitable pabulum for childhood,
+because innocence is always triumphant in the fifth act. The boy and
+girl had teased their father to be there before the curtain rose, so he
+had left the table before dessert was served.
+
+But the notary, the imperturbable notary, utterly incapable of asking
+himself why Mme. d’Aiglemont should have allowed her husband and
+children to go without her to the play, sat on as if he were screwed to
+his chair. Dinner was over, dessert had been prolonged by discussion,
+and coffee delayed. All these things consumed time, doubtless precious,
+and drew impatient movements from that charming woman; she looked not
+unlike a thoroughbred pawing the ground before a race; but the man of
+law, to whom horses and women were equally unknown quantities, simply
+thought the Marquise a very lively and sparkling personage. So enchanted
+was he to be in the company of a woman of fashion and a political
+celebrity, that he was exerting himself to shine in conversation,
+and taking the lady’s forced smile for approbation, talked on with
+unflagging spirit, till the Marquise was almost out of patience.
+
+The master of the house, in concert with the lady, had more than once
+maintained an eloquent silence when the lawyer expected a civil reply;
+but these significant pauses were employed by the talkative nuisance in
+looking for anecdotes in the fire. M. de Vandenesse had recourse to
+his watch; the charming Marquise tried the experiment of fastening her
+bonnet strings, and made as if she would go. But she did not go, and the
+notary, blind and deaf, and delighted with himself, was quite convinced
+that his interesting conversational powers were sufficient to keep the
+lady on the spot.
+
+“I shall certainly have that woman for a client,” said he to himself.
+
+Meanwhile the Marquise stood, putting on her gloves, twisting her
+fingers, looking from the equally impatient Marquis de Vandenesse to the
+lawyer, still pounding away. At every pause in the worthy man’s fire of
+witticisms the charming pair heaved a sigh of relief, and their looks
+said plainly, “At last! He is really going!”
+
+Nothing of the kind. It was a nightmare which could only end in
+exasperating the two impassioned creatures, on whom the lawyer had
+something of the fascinating effect of a snake on a pair of birds;
+before long they would be driven to cut him short.
+
+The clever notary was giving them the history of the discreditable ways
+in which one du Tillet (a stockbroker then much in favor) had laid
+the foundations of his fortune; all the ins and outs of the whole
+disgraceful business were accurately put before them; and the narrator
+was in the very middle of his tale when M. de Vandenesse heard the clock
+strike nine. Then it became clear to him that his legal adviser was very
+emphatically an idiot who must be sent forthwith about his business. He
+stopped him resolutely with a gesture.
+
+“The tongs, my lord Marquis?” queried the notary, handing the object in
+question to his client.
+
+“No, monsieur, I am compelled to send you away. Mme. d’Aiglemont wishes
+to join her children, and I shall have the honor of escorting her.”
+
+“Nine o’clock already! Time goes like a shadow in pleasant company,”
+ said the man of law, who had talked on end for the past hour.
+
+He looked for his hat, planted himself before the fire, with a
+suppressed hiccough; and, without heeding the Marquise’s withering
+glances, spoke once more to his impatient client:
+
+“To sum up, my lord Marquis. Business before all things. To-morrow,
+then, we must subpoena your brother; we will proceed to make out the
+inventory, and faith, after that----”
+
+So ill had the lawyer understood his instructions, that his impression
+was the exact opposite to the one intended. It was a delicate matter,
+and Vandenesse, in spite of himself, began to put the thick-headed
+notary right. The discussion which followed took up a certain amount of
+time.
+
+“Listen,” the diplomatist said at last at a sign from the lady, “You are
+puzzling my brains; come back to-morrow, and if the writ is not issued
+by noon to-morrow, the days of grace will expire, and then--”
+
+As he spoke, a carriage entered the courtyard. The poor woman turned
+sharply away at the sound to hide the tears in her eyes. The Marquis
+rang to give the servant orders to say that he was not at home; but
+before the footman could answer the bell, the lady’s husband reappeared.
+He had returned unexpectedly from the Gaieté, and held both children by
+the hand. The little girl’s eyes were red; the boy was fretful and very
+cross.
+
+“What can have happened?” asked the Marquise.
+
+“I will tell you by and by,” said the General, and catching a glimpse
+through an open door of newspapers on the table in the adjoining
+sitting-room, he went off. The Marquise, at the end of her patience,
+flung herself down on the sofa in desperation. The notary, thinking it
+incumbent upon him to be amiable with the children, spoke to the little
+boy in an insinuating tone:
+
+“Well, my little man, and what is there on at the theatre?”
+
+“_The Valley of the Torrent_,” said Gustave sulkily.
+
+“Upon my word and honor,” declared the notary, “authors nowadays are
+half crazy. _The Valley of the Torrent_! Why not the Torrent of the
+Valley? It is conceivable that a valley might be without a torrent in
+it; now if they had said the Torrent of the Valley, that would have
+been something clear, something precise, something definite and
+comprehensible. But never mind that. Now, how is the drama to take place
+in a torrent and in a valley? You will tell me that in these days the
+principal attraction lies in the scenic effect, and the title is a
+capital advertisement.--And did you enjoy it, my little friend?” he
+continued, sitting down before the child.
+
+When the notary pursued his inquiries as to the possibilities of a drama
+in the bed of a torrent, the little girl turned slowly away and began to
+cry. Her mother did not notice this in her intense annoyance.
+
+“Oh! yes, monsieur, I enjoyed it very much,” said the child. “There is a
+dear little boy in the play, and he was all alone in the world, because
+his papa could not have been his real papa. And when he came to the top
+of the bridge over the torrent, a big, naughty man with a beard, dressed
+all in black, came and threw him into the water. And then Helene began
+to sob and cry, and everybody scolded us, and father brought us away
+quick, quick----”
+
+M. de Vandenesse and the Marquise looked on in dull amazement, as if all
+power to think or move had been suddenly paralyzed.
+
+“Do be quiet, Gustave!” cried the General. “I told you that you were not
+to talk about anything that happened at the play, and you have forgotten
+what I said already.”
+
+“Oh, my lord Marquis, your lordship must excuse him,” cried the notary.
+“I ought not to have asked questions, but I had no idea--”
+
+“He ought not to have answered them,” said the General, looking sternly
+at the child.
+
+It seemed that the Marquise and the master of the house both perfectly
+understood why the children had come back so suddenly. Mme. d’Aiglemont
+looked at her daughter, and rose as if to go to her, but a terrible
+convulsion passed over her face, and all that could be read in it was
+relentless severity.
+
+“That will do, Helene,” she said. “Go into the other room, and leave off
+crying.”
+
+“What can she have done, poor child!” asked the notary, thinking to
+appease the mother’s anger and to stop Helene’s tears at one stroke. “So
+pretty as she is, she must be as good as can be; never anything but a
+joy to her mother, I will be bound. Isn’t that so, my little girl?”
+
+Helene cowered, looked at her mother, dried her eyes, struggled for
+composure, and took refuge in the next room.
+
+“And you, madame, are too good a mother not to love all your children
+alike. You are too good a woman, besides, to have any of those
+lamentable preferences which have such fatal effects, as we lawyers have
+only too much reason to know. Society goes through our hands; we see its
+passions in that most revolting form, greed. Here it is the mother of a
+family trying to disinherit her husband’s children to enrich the others
+whom she loves better; or it is the husband who tries to leave all his
+property to the child who has done his best to earn his mother’s hatred.
+And then begin quarrels, and fears, and deeds, and defeasances, and sham
+sales, and trusts, and all the rest of it; a pretty mess, in fact, it
+is pitiable, upon my honor, pitiable! There are fathers that will spend
+their whole lives in cheating their children and robbing their wives.
+Yes, robbing is the only word for it. We were talking of tragedy; oh!
+I can assure you of this that if we were at liberty to tell the real
+reasons of some donations that I know of, our modern dramatists would
+have the material for some sensational _bourgeois_ dramas. How the wife
+manages to get her way, as she invariably does, I cannot think; for in
+spite of appearances, and in spite of their weakness, it is always the
+women who carry the day. Ah! by the way, they don’t take _me_ in. I
+always know the reason at the bottom of those predilections which the
+world politely styles ‘unaccountable.’ But in justice to the husbands, I
+must say that _they_ never discover anything. You will tell me that this
+is a merciful dispens--”
+
+Helene had come back to the drawing-room with her father, and was
+listening attentively. So well did she understand all that was said,
+that she gave her mother a frightened glance, feeling, with a child’s
+quick instinct, that these remarks would aggravate the punishment
+hanging over her. The Marquise turned her white face to Vandenesse; and,
+with terror in her eyes, indicated her husband, who stood with his eyes
+fixed absently on the flower pattern of the carpet. The diplomatist,
+accomplished man of the world though he was, could no longer contain his
+wrath, he gave the man of law a withering glance.
+
+“Step this way, sir,” he said, and he went hurriedly to the door of the
+ante-chamber; the notary left his sentence half finished, and followed,
+quaking, and the husband and wife were left together.
+
+“Now, sir” said the Marquise de Vandenesse--he banged the drawing-room
+door, and spoke with concentrated rage--“ever since dinner you have done
+nothing but make blunders and talk folly. For heaven’s sake, go. You
+will make the most frightful mischief before you have done. If you are
+a clever man in your profession, keep to your profession; and if by any
+chance you should go into society, endeavor to be more circumspect.”
+
+With that he went back to the drawing-room, and did not even wish
+the notary good-evening. For a moment that worthy stood dumfounded,
+bewildered, utterly at a loss. Then, when the buzzing in his ears
+subsided, he thought he heard someone moaning in the next room.
+Footsteps came and went, and bells were violently rung. He was by no
+means anxious to meet the Marquis again, and found the use of his
+legs to make good his escape, only to run against a hurrying crowd of
+servants at the door.
+
+“Just the way of all these grand folk,” said he to himself outside in
+the street as he looked about for a cab. “They lead you on to talk with
+compliments, and you think you are amusing them. Not a bit of it. They
+treat you insolently; put you at a distance; even put you out at the
+door without scruple. After all, I talked very cleverly, I said nothing
+but what was sensible, well turned, and discreet; and, upon my word, he
+advises me to be more circumspect in future. I will take good care
+of that! Eh! the mischief take it! I am a notary and a member of my
+chamber!--Pshaw! it was an ambassador’s fit of temper, nothing is sacred
+for people of that kind. To-morrow he shall explain what he meant by
+saying that I had done nothing but blunder and talk nonsense in his
+house. I will ask him for an explanation--that is, I will ask him
+to explain my mistake. After all is done and said, I am in the wrong
+perhaps---- Upon my word, it is very good of me to cudgel my brains like
+this. What business is it of mine?”
+
+So the notary went home and laid the enigma before his spouse, with a
+complete account of the evening’s events related in sequence.
+
+And she replied, “My dear Crottat, His Excellency was perfectly right
+when he said that you had done nothing but blunder and talk folly.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“My dear, if I told you why, it would not prevent you from doing the
+same thing somewhere else to-morrow. I tell you again--talk of nothing
+but business when you go out; that is my advice to you.”
+
+“If you will not tell me, I shall ask him to-morrow--”
+
+“Why, dear me! the veriest noodle is careful to hide a thing of that
+kind, and do you suppose that an ambassador will tell you about
+it? Really, Crottat, I have never known you so utterly devoid of
+common-sense.”
+
+“Thank you, my dear.”
+
+
+
+
+V. TWO MEETINGS
+
+One of Napoleon’s orderly staff-officers, who shall be known in this
+history only as the General or the Marquis, had come to spend the spring
+at Versailles. He made a large fortune under the Restoration; and as
+his place at Court would not allow him to go very far from Paris, he had
+taken a country house between the church and the barrier of Montreuil,
+on the road that leads to the Avenue de Saint-Cloud.
+
+The house had been built originally as a retreat for the short-lived
+loves of some _grand seigneur_. The grounds were very large; the gardens
+on either side extending from the first houses of Montreuil to the
+thatched cottages near the barrier, so that the owner could enjoy all
+the pleasures of solitude with the city almost at his gates. By an odd
+piece of contradiction, the whole front of the house itself, with the
+principal entrance, gave directly upon the street. Perhaps in time past
+it was a tolerably lonely road, and indeed this theory looks all the
+more probable when one comes to think of it; for not so very far away,
+on this same road, Louis Quinze built a delicious summer villa for Mlle.
+de Romans, and the curious in such things will discover that the
+wayside _casinos_ are adorned in a style that recalls traditions of the
+ingenious taste displayed in debauchery by our ancestors who, with all
+the license paid to their charge, sought to invest it with secrecy and
+mystery.
+
+One winter evening the family were by themselves in the lonely house.
+The servants had received permission to go to Versailles to celebrate
+the wedding of one of their number. It was Christmas time, and the
+holiday makers, presuming upon the double festival, did not scruple to
+outstay their leave of absence; yet, as the General was well known to be
+a man of his word, the culprits felt some twinges of conscience as they
+danced on after the hour of return. The clocks struck eleven, and still
+there was no sign of the servants.
+
+A deep silence prevailed over the country-side, broken only by the sound
+of the northeast wind whistling through the black branches, wailing
+about the house, dying in gusts along the corridors. The hard frost had
+purified the air, and held the earth in its grip; the roads gave back
+every sound with the hard metallic ring which always strikes us with
+a new surprise; the heavy footsteps of some belated reveler, or a cab
+returning to Paris, could be heard for a long distance with unwonted
+distinctness. Out in the courtyard a few dead leaves set a-dancing
+by some eddying gust found a voice for the night which fain had been
+silent. It was, in fact, one of those sharp, frosty evenings that wring
+barren expressions of pity from our selfish ease for wayfarers and
+the poor, and fills us with a luxurious sense of the comfort of the
+fireside.
+
+But the family party in the salon at that hour gave not a thought to
+absent servants nor houseless folk, nor to the gracious charm with which
+a winter evening sparkles. No one played the philosopher out of season.
+Secure in the protection of an old soldier, women and children gave
+themselves up to the joys of home life, so delicious when there is no
+restraint upon feeling; and talk and play and glances are bright with
+frankness and affection.
+
+The General sat, or more properly speaking, lay buried, in the depths
+of a huge, high-back armchair by the hearth. The heaped-up fire burned
+scorching clear with the excessive cold of the night. The good father
+leaned his head slightly to one side against the back of the chair, in
+the indolence of perfect serenity and a glow of happiness. The languid,
+half-sleepy droop of his outstretched arms seemed to complete his
+expression of placid content. He was watching his youngest, a boy of
+five or thereabouts, who, half clad as he was, declined to allow his
+mother to undress him. The little one fled from the night-gown and cap
+with which he was threatened now and again, and stoutly declined to part
+with his embroidered collar, laughing when his mother called to him,
+for he saw that she too was laughing at this declaration of infant
+independence. The next step was to go back to a game of romps with his
+sister. She was as much a child as he, but more mischievous; and she
+was older by two years, and could speak distinctly already, whereas his
+inarticulate words and confused ideas were a puzzle even to his parents.
+Little Moïna’s playfulness, somewhat coquettish already, provoked
+inextinguishable laughter, explosions of merriment which went off like
+fireworks for no apparent cause. As they tumbled about before the
+fire, unconcernedly displaying little plump bodies and delicate white
+contours, as the dark and golden curls mingled in a collision of rosy
+cheeks dimpled with childish glee, a father surely, a mother most
+certainly, must have understood those little souls, and seen the
+character and power of passion already developed for their eyes. As the
+cherubs frolicked about, struggling, rolling, and tumbling without fear
+of hurt on the soft carpet, its flowers looked pale beside the glowing
+white and red of their cheeks and the brilliant color of their shining
+eyes.
+
+On the sofa by the fire, opposite the great armchair, the children’s
+mother sat among a heap of scattered garments, with a little scarlet
+shoe in her hand. She seemed to have given herself up completely to the
+enjoyment of the moment; wavering discipline had relaxed into a
+sweet smile engraved upon her lips. At the age of six-and-thirty, or
+thereabouts, she was a beautiful woman still, by reason of the rare
+perfection of the outlines of her face, and at this moment light and
+warmth and happiness filled it with preternatural brightness.
+
+Again and again her eyes wandered from her children, and their tender
+gaze was turned upon her husband’s grave face; and now and again the
+eyes of husband and wife met with a silent exchange of happiness and
+thoughts from some inner depth.
+
+The General’s face was deeply bronzed, a stray lock of gray hair scored
+shadows on his forehead. The reckless courage of the battlefield could
+be read in the lines carved in his hollow cheeks, and gleams of rugged
+strength in the blue eyes; clearly the bit of red ribbon flaunting at
+his button-hole had been paid for by hardship and toil. An inexpressible
+kindliness and frankness shone out of the strong, resolute face which
+reflected his children’s merriment; the gray-haired captain found it not
+so very hard to become a child again. Is there not always a little love
+of children in the heart of a soldier who has seen enough of the seamy
+side of life to know something of the piteous limitations of strength
+and the privileges of weakness?
+
+At a round table rather further away, in a circle of bright lamplight
+that dimmed the feebler illumination of the wax candles on the
+chimney-piece, sat a boy of thirteen, rapidly turning the pages of a
+thick volume which he was reading, undisturbed by the shouts of the
+children. There was a boy’s curiosity in his face. From his _lycéens_
+uniform he was evidently a schoolboy, and the book he was reading was
+the _Arabian Nights_. Small wonder that he was deeply absorbed. He sat
+perfectly still in a meditative attitude, with his elbow on the table,
+and his hand propping his head--the white fingers contrasting strongly
+with the brown hair into which they were thrust. As he sat, with the
+light turned full upon his face, and the rest of his body in shadow, he
+looked like one of Raphael’s dark portraits of himself--a bent head and
+intent eyes filled with visions of the future.
+
+Between the table and the Marquise a tall, beautiful girl sat at her
+tapestry frame; sometimes she drew back from her work, sometimes she
+bent over it, and her hair, picturesque in its ebony smoothness and
+darkness, caught the light of the lamp. Helene was a picture in herself.
+In her beauty there was a rare distinctive character of power and
+refinement. Though her hair was gathered up and drawn back from her
+face, so as to trace a clearly marked line about her head, so thick and
+abundant was it, so recalcitrant to the comb, that it sprang back in
+curl-tendrils to the nape of her neck. The bountiful line of eyebrows
+was evenly marked out in dark contrasting outline upon her pure
+forehead. On her upper lip, beneath the Grecian nose with its
+sensitively perfect curve of nostril, there lay a faint, swarthy shadow,
+the sign-manual of courage; but the enchanting roundness of contour, the
+frankly innocent expression of her other features, the transparence
+of the delicate carnations, the voluptuous softness of the lips, the
+flawless oval of the outline of the face, and with these, and more than
+all these, the saintlike expression in the girlish eyes, gave to her
+vigorous loveliness the distinctive touch of feminine grace, that
+enchanting modesty which we look for in these angels of peace and love.
+Yet there was no suggestion of fragility about her; and, surely, with
+so grand a woman’s frame, so attractive a face, she must possess a
+corresponding warmth of heart and strength of soul.
+
+She was as silent as her schoolboy brother. Seemingly a prey to the
+fateful maiden meditations which baffle a father’s penetration and even
+a mother’s sagacity, it was impossible to be certain whether it was the
+lamplight that cast those shadows that flitted over her face like thin
+clouds over a bright sky, or whether they were passing shades of secret
+and painful thoughts.
+
+Husband and wife had quite forgotten the two older children at that
+moment, though now and again the General’s questioning glance traveled
+to that second mute picture; a larger growth, a gracious realization,
+as it were, of the hopes embodied in the baby forms rioting in the
+foreground. Their faces made up a kind of living poem, illustrating
+life’s various phases. The luxurious background of the salon, the
+different attitudes, the strong contrasts of coloring in the faces,
+differing with the character of differing ages, the modeling of the
+forms brought into high relief by the light--altogether it was a page of
+human life, richly illuminated beyond the art of painter, sculptor, or
+poet. Silence, solitude, night and winter lent a final touch of majesty
+to complete the simplicity and sublimity of this exquisite effect of
+nature’s contriving. Married life is full of these sacred hours, which
+perhaps owe their indefinable charm to some vague memory of a better
+world. A divine radiance surely shines upon them, the destined
+compensation for some portion of earth’s sorrows, the solace which
+enables man to accept life. We seem to behold a vision of an enchanted
+universe, the great conception of its system widens out before our eyes,
+and social life pleads for its laws by bidding us look to the future.
+
+Yet in spite of the tender glances that Helene gave Abel and Moïna after
+a fresh outburst of merriment; in spite of the look of gladness in
+her transparent face whenever she stole a glance at her father, a deep
+melancholy pervaded her gestures, her attitude, and more than all, her
+eyes veiled by their long lashes. Those white, strong hands, through
+which the light passed, tinting them with a diaphanous, almost fluid
+red--those hands were trembling. Once only did the eyes of the mother
+and daughter clash without shrinking, and the two women read each
+other’s thoughts in a look, cold, wan, and respectful on Helene’s part,
+sombre and threatening on her mother’s. At once Helene’s eyes were
+lowered to her work, she plied her needle swiftly, and it was long
+before she raised her head, bowed as it seemed by a weight of thought
+too heavy to bear. Was the Marquise over harsh with this one of her
+children? Did she think this harshness needful? Was she jealous of
+Helene’s beauty?--She might still hope to rival Helene, but only by the
+magic arts of the toilette. Or again, had her daughter, like many a girl
+who reaches the clairvoyant age, read the secrets which this wife (to
+all appearance so religiously faithful in the fulfilment of her duties)
+believed to be buried in her own heart as deeply as in a grave?
+
+Helene had reached an age when purity of soul inclines to pass
+over-rigid judgments. A certain order of mind is apt to exaggerate
+transgression into crime; imagination reacts upon conscience, and a
+young girl is a hard judge because she magnifies the seriousness of the
+offence. Helene seemed to think herself worthy of no one. Perhaps
+there was a secret in her past life, perhaps something had happened,
+unintelligible to her at the time, but with gradually developing
+significance for a mind grown susceptible to religious influences;
+something which lately seemed to have degraded her, as it were, in her
+own eyes, and according to her own romantic standard. This change in
+her demeanor dated from the day of reading Schiller’s noble tragedy of
+_Wilhelm Tell_ in a new series of translations. Her mother scolded her
+for letting the book fall, and then remarked to herself that the passage
+which had so worked on Helene’s feelings was the scene in which Wilhelm
+Tell, who spilt the blood of a tyrant to save a nation, fraternizes in
+some sort with John the Parricide. Helene had grown humble, dutiful, and
+self-contained; she no longer cared for gaiety. Never had she made so
+much of her father, especially when the Marquise was not by to watch
+her girlish caresses. And yet, if Helene’s affection for her mother had
+cooled at all, the change in her manner was so slight as to be almost
+imperceptible; so slight that the General could not have noticed it,
+jealous though he might be of the harmony of home. No masculine insight
+could have sounded the depths of those two feminine natures; the one
+was young and generous, the other sensitive and proud; the first had
+a wealth of indulgence in her nature, the second was full of craft and
+love. If the Marquise made her daughter’s life a burden to her by
+a woman’s subtle tyranny, it was a tyranny invisible to all but the
+victim; and for the rest, these conjectures only called forth after the
+event must remain conjectures. Until this night no accusing flash of
+light had escaped either of them, but an ominous mystery was too surely
+growing up between them, a mystery known only to themselves and God.
+
+“Come, Abel,” called the Marquise, seizing on her opportunity when the
+children were tired of play and still for a moment. “Come, come, child;
+you must be put to bed--”
+
+And with a glance that must be obeyed, she caught him up and took him on
+her knee.
+
+“What!” exclaimed the General. “Half-past ten o’clock, and not one of
+the servants has come back! The rascals!--Gustave,” he added, turning to
+his son, “I allowed you to read that book only on the condition that you
+should put it away at ten o’clock. You ought to have shut up the book
+at the proper time and gone to bed, as you promised. If you mean to
+make your mark in the world, you must keep your word; let it be a second
+religion to you, and a point of honor. Fox, one of the greatest English
+orators, was remarkable, above all things, for the beauty of his
+character, and the very first of his qualities was the scrupulous
+faithfulness with which he kept his engagements. When he was a child,
+his father (an Englishman of the old school) gave him a pretty strong
+lesson which he never forgot. Like most rich Englishmen, Fox’s father
+had a country house and a considerable park about it. Now, in the park
+there was an old summer-house, and orders had been given that this
+summer-house was to be pulled down and put up somewhere else where there
+was a finer view. Fox was just about your age, and had come home for the
+holidays. Boys are fond of seeing things pulled to pieces, so young
+Fox asked to stay on at home for a few days longer to see the old
+summer-house taken down; but his father said that he must go back to
+school on the proper day, so there was anger between father and son.
+Fox’s mother (like all mammas) took the boy’s part. Then the father
+solemnly promised that the summer-house should stay where it was till
+the next holidays.
+
+“So Fox went back to school; and his father, thinking that lessons would
+soon drive the whole thing out of the boy’s mind, had the summer-house
+pulled down and put up in the new position. But as it happened, the
+persistent youngster thought of nothing but that summer-house; and as
+soon as he came home again, his first care was to go out to look at the
+old building, and he came in to breakfast looking quite doleful, and
+said to his father, ‘You have broken your promise.’ The old English
+gentleman said with confusion full of dignity, ‘That is true, my boy;
+but I will make amends. A man ought to think of keeping his word before
+he thinks of his fortune; for by keeping his word he will gain fortune,
+while all the fortunes in the world will not efface the stain left on
+your conscience by a breach of faith.’ Then he gave orders that the
+summer-house should be put up again in the old place, and when it had
+been rebuilt he had it taken down again for his son to see. Let this be
+a lesson to _you_, Gustave.”
+
+Gustave had been listening with interest, and now he closed the book at
+once. There was a moment’s silence, while the General took possession of
+Moïna, who could scarcely keep her eyes open. The little one’s languid
+head fell back on her father’s breast, and in a moment she was fast
+asleep, wrapped round about in her golden curls.
+
+Just then a sound of hurrying footsteps rang on the pavement out in the
+street, immediately followed by three knocks on the street door, waking
+the echoes of the house. The reverberating blows told, as plainly as
+a cry for help that here was a man flying for his life. The house dog
+barked furiously. A thrill of excitement ran through Helene and Gustave
+and the General and his wife; but neither Abel, with the night-cap
+strings just tied under his chin, nor Moïna awoke.
+
+“The fellow is in a hurry!” exclaimed the General. He put the little
+girl down on the chair, and hastened out of the room, heedless of his
+wife’s entreating cry, “Dear, do not go down--”
+
+He stepped into his own room for a pair of pistols, lighted a dark
+lantern, sprang at lightning speed down the staircase, and in another
+minute reached the house door, his oldest boy fearlessly following.
+
+“Who is there?” demanded he.
+
+“Let me in,” panted a breathless voice.
+
+“Are you a friend?”
+
+“Yes, friend.”
+
+“Are you alone?”
+
+“Yes! But let me in; _they_ are after me!”
+
+The General had scarcely set the door ajar before a man slipped into the
+porch with the uncanny swiftness of a shadow. Before the master of
+the house could prevent him, the intruder had closed the door with a
+well-directed kick, and set his back against it resolutely, as if he
+were determined that it should not be opened again. In a moment the
+General had his lantern and pistol at a level with the stranger’s
+breast, and beheld a man of medium height in a fur-lined pelisse. It
+was an old man’s garment, both too large and too long for its present
+wearer. Chance or caution had slouched the man’s hat over his eyes.
+
+“You can lower your pistol, sir,” said this person. “I do not claim
+to stay in your house against your will; but if I leave it, death is
+waiting for me at the barrier. And what a death! You would be answerable
+to God for it! I ask for your hospitality for two hours. And bear this
+in mind, sir, that, suppliant as I am, I have a right to command with
+the despotism of necessity. I want the Arab’s hospitality. Either I
+and my secret must be inviolable, or open the door and I will go to my
+death. I want secrecy, a safe hiding-place, and water. Oh! water!” he
+cried again, with a rattle in his throat.
+
+“Who are you?” demanded the General, taken aback by the stranger’s
+feverish volubility.
+
+“Ah! who am I? Good, open the door, and I will put a distance between
+us,” retorted the other, and there was a diabolical irony in his tone.
+
+Dexterously as the Marquis passed the light of the lantern over the
+man’s face, he could only see the lower half of it, and that in nowise
+prepossessed him in favor of this singular claimant of hospitality.
+The cheeks were livid and quivering, the features dreadfully contorted.
+Under the shadow of the hat-brim a pair of eyes gleamed out like flames;
+the feeble candle-light looked almost dim in comparison. Some sort of
+answer must be made however.
+
+“Your language, sir, is so extraordinary that in my place you
+yourself--”
+
+“My life is in your hands!” the intruder broke in. The sound of his
+voice was dreadful to hear.
+
+“Two hours?” said the Marquis, wavering.
+
+“Two hours,” echoed the other.
+
+Then quite suddenly, with a desperate gesture, he pushed back his
+hat and left his forehead bare, and, as if he meant to try a final
+expedient, he gave the General a glance that seemed to plunge like
+a vivid flash into his very soul. That electrical discharge of
+intelligence and will was swift as lightning and crushing as a
+thunderbolt; for there are moments when a human being is invested for a
+brief space with inexplicable power.
+
+“Come, whoever you may be, you shall be in safety under my roof,” the
+master of the house said gravely at last, acting, as he imagined, upon
+one of those intuitions which a man cannot always explain to himself.
+
+“God will repay you!” said the stranger, with a deep, involuntary sigh.
+
+“Have you weapons?” asked the General.
+
+For all answer the stranger flung open his fur pelisse, and scarcely
+gave the other time for a glance before he wrapped it about him again.
+To all appearance he was unarmed and in evening dress. Swift as the
+soldier’s scrutiny had been, he saw something, however, which made him
+exclaim:
+
+“Where the devil have you been to get yourself in such a mess in such
+dry weather?”
+
+“More questions!” said the stranger haughtily.
+
+At the words the Marquis caught sight of his son, and his own late
+homily on the strict fulfilment of a given word came up to his mind. In
+lively vexation, he exclaimed, not without a touch of anger:
+
+“What! little rogue, you here when you ought to be in bed?”
+
+“Because I thought I might be of some good in danger,” answered Gustave.
+
+“There, go up to your room,” said his father, mollified by the
+reply.--“And you” (addressing the stranger), “come with me.”
+
+The two men grew as silent as a pair of gamblers who watch each other’s
+play with mutual suspicions. The General himself began to be troubled
+with ugly presentiments. The strange visit weighed upon his mind already
+like a nightmare; but he had passed his word, there was no help for
+it now, and he led the way along the passages and stairways till they
+reached a large room on the second floor immediately above the salon.
+This was an empty room where linen was dried in the winter. It had
+but the one door, and for all decoration boasted one solitary shabby
+looking-glass above the chimney-piece, left by the previous owner, and a
+great pier glass, placed provisionally opposite the fireplace until
+such time as a use should be found for it in the rooms below. The four
+yellowish walls were bare. The floor had never been swept. The huge
+attic was icy-cold, and the furniture consisted of a couple of rickety
+straw-bottomed chairs, or rather frames of chairs. The General set the
+lantern down upon the chimney-piece. Then he spoke:
+
+“It is necessary for your own safety to hide you in this comfortless
+attic. And, as you have my promise to keep your secret, you will permit
+me to lock you in.”
+
+The other bent his head in acquiescence.
+
+“I asked for nothing but a hiding-place, secrecy, and water,” returned
+he.
+
+“I will bring you some directly,” said the Marquis, shutting the door
+cautiously. He groped his way down into the salon for a lamp before
+going to the kitchen to look for a carafe.
+
+“Well, what is it?” the Marquise asked quickly.
+
+“Nothing, dear,” he returned coolly.
+
+“But we listened, and we certainly heard you go upstairs with somebody.”
+
+“Helene,” said the General, and he looked at his daughter, who raised
+her face, “bear in mind that your father’s honor depends upon your
+discretion. You must have heard nothing.”
+
+The girl bent her head in answer. The Marquise was confused and smarting
+inwardly at the way in which her husband had thought fit to silence her.
+
+Meanwhile the General went for the bottle and a tumbler, and returned to
+the room above. His prisoner was leaning against the chimney-piece,
+his head was bare, he had flung down his hat on one of the two chairs.
+Evidently he had not expected to have so bright a light turned upon him,
+and he frowned and looked anxious as he met the General’s keen eyes;
+but his face softened and wore a gracious expression as he thanked
+his protector. When the latter placed the bottle and glass on the
+mantel-shelf, the stranger’s eyes flashed out on him again; and when
+he spoke, it was in musical tones with no sign of the previous guttural
+convulsion, though his voice was still unsteady with repressed emotion.
+
+“I shall seem to you to be a strange being, sir, but you must pardon the
+caprices of necessity. If you propose to remain in the room, I beg that
+you will not look at me while I am drinking.”
+
+Vexed at this continual obedience to a man whom he disliked, the General
+sharply turned his back upon him. The stranger thereupon drew a white
+handkerchief from his pocket and wound it about his right hand. Then
+he seized the carafe and emptied it at a draught. The Marquis, staring
+vacantly into the tall mirror across the room, without a thought of
+breaking his implicit promise, saw the stranger’s figure distinctly
+reflected by the opposite looking-glass, and saw, too, a red stain
+suddenly appear through the folds of the white bandage. The man’s hands
+were steeped in blood.
+
+“Ah! you saw me!” cried the other. He had drunk off the water and
+wrapped himself again in his cloak, and now scrutinized the General
+suspiciously. “It is all over with me! Here they come!”
+
+“I don’t hear anything,” said the Marquis.
+
+“You have not the same interest that I have in listening for sounds in
+the air.”
+
+“You have been fighting a duel, I suppose, to be in such a state?”
+ queried the General, not a little disturbed by the color of those broad,
+dark patches staining his visitor’s cloak.
+
+“Yes, a duel; you have it,” said the other, and a bitter smile flitted
+over his lips.
+
+As he spoke a sound rang along the distant road, a sound of galloping
+horses; but so faint as yet, that it was the merest dawn of a sound. The
+General’s trained ear recognized the advance of a troop of regulars.
+
+“That is the gendarmerie,” said he.
+
+He glanced at his prisoner to reassure him after his own involuntary
+indiscretion, took the lamp, and went down to the salon. He had scarcely
+laid the key of the room above upon the chimney-piece when the hoof
+beats sounded louder and came swiftly nearer and nearer the house. The
+General felt a shiver of excitement, and indeed the horses stopped at
+the house door; a few words were exchanged among the men, and one
+of them dismounted and knocked loudly. There was no help for it; the
+General went to open the door. He could scarcely conceal his inward
+perturbation at the sight of half a dozen gendarmes outside, the metal
+rims of their caps gleaming like silver in the moonlight.
+
+“My lord,” said the corporal, “have you heard a man run past towards the
+barrier within the last few minutes?”
+
+“Towards the barrier? No.”
+
+“Have you opened the door to any one?”
+
+“Now, am I in the habit of answering the door myself--”
+
+“I ask your pardon, General, but just now it seems to me that--”
+
+“Really!” cried the Marquis wrathfully. “Have you a mind to try joking
+with me? What right have you--?”
+
+“None at all, none at all, my lord,” cried the corporal, hastily putting
+in a soft answer. “You will excuse our zeal. We know, of course, that a
+peer of France is not likely to harbor a murderer at this time of night;
+but as we want any information we can get--”
+
+“A murderer!” cried the General. “Who can have been--”
+
+“M. le Baron de Mauny has just been murdered. It was a blow from an axe,
+and we are in hot pursuit of the criminal. We know for certain that he
+is somewhere in this neighborhood, and we shall hunt him down. By your
+leave, General,” and the man swung himself into the saddle as he spoke.
+It was well that he did so, for a corporal of gendarmerie trained to
+alert observation and quick surmise would have had his suspicions at
+once if he had caught sight of the General’s face. Everything that
+passed through the soldier’s mind was faithfully revealed in his frank
+countenance.
+
+“Is it known who the murderer is?” asked he.
+
+“No,” said the other, now in the saddle. “He left the bureau full of
+banknotes and gold untouched.”
+
+“It was revenge, then,” said the Marquis.
+
+“On an old man? pshaw! No, no, the fellow hadn’t time to take it, that
+was all,” and the corporal galloped after his comrades, who were almost
+out of sight by this time.
+
+For a few minutes the General stood, a victim to perplexities which need
+no explanation; but in a moment he heard the servants returning home,
+their voices were raised in some sort of dispute at the cross-roads
+of Montreuil. When they came in, he gave vent to his feelings in an
+explosion of rage, his wrath fell upon them like a thunderbolt, and all
+the echoes of the house trembled at the sound of his voice. In the
+midst of the storm his own man, the boldest and cleverest of the
+party, brought out an excuse; they had been stopped, he said, by the
+gendarmerie at the gate of Montreuil, a murder had been committed, and
+the police were in pursuit. In a moment the General’s anger vanished,
+he said not another word; then, bethinking himself of his own singular
+position, drily ordered them all off to bed at once, and left them
+amazed at his readiness to accept their fellow servant’s lying excuse.
+
+While these incidents took place in the yard, an apparently trifling
+occurrence had changed the relative positions of three characters in
+this story. The Marquis had scarcely left the room before his wife
+looked first towards the key on the mantel-shelf, and then at Helene;
+and, after some wavering, bent towards her daughter and said in a low
+voice, “Helene your father has left the key on the chimney-piece.”
+
+The girl looked up in surprise and glanced timidly at her mother. The
+Marquise’s eyes sparkled with curiosity.
+
+“Well, mamma?” she said, and her voice had a troubled ring.
+
+“I should like to know what is going on upstairs. If there is anybody up
+there, he has not stirred yet. Just go up--”
+
+“_I_?” cried the girl, with something like horror in her tones.
+
+“Are you afraid?”
+
+“No, mamma, but I thought I heard a man’s footsteps.”
+
+“If I could go myself, I should not have asked you to go, Helene,” said
+her mother with cold dignity. “If your father were to come back and did
+not see me, he would go to look for me perhaps, but he would not notice
+your absence.”
+
+“Madame, if you bid me go, I will go,” said Helene, “but I shall lose my
+father’s good opinion--”
+
+“What is this!” cried the Marquise in a sarcastic tone. “But since you
+take a thing that was said in joke in earnest, I now _order_ you to go
+upstairs and see who is in the room above. Here is the key, child. When
+your father told you to say nothing about this thing that happened, he
+did not forbid you to go up to the room. Go at once--and learn that a
+daughter ought never to judge her mother.”
+
+The last words were spoken with all the severity of a justly offended
+mother. The Marquise took the key and handed it to Helene, who rose
+without a word and left the room.
+
+“My mother can always easily obtain her pardon,” thought the girl; “but
+as for me, my father will never think the same of me again. Does she
+mean to rob me of his tenderness? Does she want to turn me out of his
+house?”
+
+These were the thoughts that set her imagination in a sudden ferment, as
+she went down the dark passage to the mysterious door at the end. When
+she stood before it, her mental confusion grew to a fateful pitch.
+Feelings hitherto forced down into inner depths crowded up at the
+summons of these confused thoughts. Perhaps hitherto she had never
+believed that a happy life lay before her, but now, in this awful
+moment, her despair was complete. She shook convulsively as she set the
+key in the lock; so great indeed was her agitation, that she stopped for
+a moment and laid her hand on her heart, as if to still the heavy throbs
+that sounded in her ears. Then she opened the door.
+
+The creaking of the hinges sounded doubtless in vain on the murderer’s
+ears. Acute as were his powers of hearing, he stood as if lost in
+thought, and so motionless that he might have been glued to the wall
+against which he leaned. In the circle of semi-opaque darkness, dimly
+lit by the bull’s-eye lantern, he looked like the shadowy figure of
+some dead knight, standing for ever in his shadowy mortuary niche in
+the gloom of some Gothic chapel. Drops of cold sweat trickled over the
+broad, sallow forehead. An incredible fearlessness looked out from every
+tense feature. His eyes of fire were fixed and tearless; he seemed to
+be watching some struggle in the darkness beyond him. Stormy thoughts
+passed swiftly across a face whose firm decision spoke of a character
+of no common order. His whole person, bearing, and frame bore out the
+impression of a tameless spirit. The man looked power and strength
+personified; he stood facing the darkness as if it were the visible
+image of his own future.
+
+These physical characteristics had made no impression upon the General,
+familiar as he was with the powerful faces of the group of giants
+gathered about Napoleon; speculative curiosity, moreover, as to the
+why and wherefore of the apparition had completely filled his mind; but
+Helene, with feminine sensitiveness to surface impressions, was struck
+by the blended chaos of light and darkness, grandeur and passion,
+suggesting a likeness between this stranger and Lucifer recovering from
+his fall. Suddenly the storm apparent in his face was stilled as if by
+magic; and the indefinable power to sway which the stranger exercised
+upon others, and perhaps unconsciously and as by reflex action upon
+himself, spread its influence about him with the progressive swiftness
+of a flood. A torrent of thought rolled away from his brow as his face
+resumed its ordinary expression. Perhaps it was the strangeness of this
+meeting, or perhaps it was the mystery into which she had penetrated,
+that held the young girl spellbound in the doorway, so that she could
+look at a face pleasant to behold and full of interest. For some moments
+she stood in the magical silence; a trouble had come upon her never
+known before in her young life. Perhaps some exclamation broke from
+Helene, perhaps she moved unconsciously; or it may be that the hunted
+criminal returned of his own accord from the world of ideas to the
+material world, and heard some one breathing in the room; however it
+was, he turned his head towards his host’s daughter, and saw dimly in
+the shadow a noble face and queenly form, which he must have taken for
+an angel’s, so motionless she stood, so vague and like a spirit.
+
+“Monsieur...” a trembling voice cried.
+
+The murderer trembled.
+
+“A woman!” he cried under his breath. “Is it possible? Go,” he cried, “I
+deny that any one has a right to pity, to absolve, or condemn me. I
+must live alone. Go, my child,” he added, with an imperious gesture, “I
+should ill requite the service done me by the master of the house if I
+were to allow a single creature under his roof to breathe the same air
+with me. I must submit to be judged by the laws of the world.”
+
+The last words were uttered in a lower voice. Even as he realized with
+a profound intuition all the manifold misery awakened by that melancholy
+thought, the glance that he gave Helene had something of the power of
+the serpent, stirring a whole dormant world in the mind of the strange
+girl before him. To her that glance was like a light revealing unknown
+lands. She was stricken with strange trouble, helpless, quelled by a
+magnetic power exerted unconsciously. Trembling and ashamed, she went
+out and returned to the salon. She had scarcely entered the room before
+her father came back, so that she had not time to say a word to her
+mother.
+
+The General was wholly absorbed in thought. He folded his arms, and
+paced silently to and fro between the windows which looked out upon the
+street and the second row which gave upon the garden. His wife lay the
+sleeping Abel on her knee, and little Moïna lay in untroubled slumber in
+the low chair, like a bird in its nest. Her older sister stared into the
+fire, a skein of silk in one hand, a needle in the other.
+
+Deep silence prevailed, broken only by lagging footsteps on the stairs,
+as one by one the servants crept away to bed; there was an occasional
+burst of stifled laughter, a last echo of the wedding festivity, or
+doors were opened as they still talked among themselves, then shut. A
+smothered sound came now and again from the bedrooms, a chair fell, the
+old coachman coughed feebly, then all was silent.
+
+In a little while the dark majesty with which sleeping earth is invested
+at midnight brought all things under its sway. No lights shone but the
+light of the stars. The frost gripped the ground. There was not a sound
+of a voice, nor a living creature stirring. The crackling of the fire
+only seemed to make the depth of the silence more fully felt.
+
+The church clock of Montreuil had just struck one, when an almost
+inaudible sound of a light footstep came from the second flight of
+stairs. The Marquis and his daughter, both believing that M. de Mauny’s
+murderer was a prisoner above, thought that one of the maids had come
+down, and no one was at all surprised to hear the door open in the
+ante-chamber. Quite suddenly the murderer appeared in their midst. The
+Marquis himself was sunk in deep musings, the mother and daughter were
+silent, the one from keen curiosity, the other from sheer astonishment,
+so that the visitor was almost half-way across the room when he spoke to
+the General.
+
+“Sir, the two hours are almost over,” he said, in a voice that was
+strangely calm and musical.
+
+“_You here_!” cried the General. “By what means----?” and he gave wife
+and daughter a formidable questioning glance. Helene grew red as fire.
+
+“You!” he went on, in a tone filled with horror. “_You_ among us! A
+murderer covered with blood! You are a blot on this picture! Go, go
+out!” he added in a burst of rage.
+
+At that word “murderer,” the Marquise cried out; as for Helene, it
+seemed to mark an epoch in her life, there was not a trace of surprise
+in her face. She looked as if she had been waiting for this--for him.
+Those so vast thoughts of hers had found a meaning. The punishment
+reserved by Heaven for her sins flamed out before her. In her own eyes
+she was as great a criminal as this murderer; she confronted him with
+her quiet gaze; she was his fellow, his sister. It seemed to her that in
+this accident the command of God had been made manifest. If she had been
+a few years older, reason would have disposed of her remorse, but at
+this moment she was like one distraught.
+
+The stranger stood impassive and self-possessed; a scornful smile
+overspread his features and his thick, red lips.
+
+“You appreciate the magnanimity of my behavior very badly,” he said
+slowly. “I would not touch with my fingers the glass of water you
+brought me to allay my thirst; I did not so much as think of washing my
+blood-stained hands under your roof; I am going away, leaving nothing
+of _my crime_” (here his lips were compressed) “but the memory; I have
+tried to leave no trace of my presence in this house. Indeed, I would
+not even allow your daughter to--”
+
+“_My daughter_!” cried the General, with a horror-stricken glance at
+Helene. “Vile wretch, go, or I will kill you--”
+
+“The two hours are not yet over,” said the other; “if you kill me or
+give me up, you must lower yourself in your own eyes--and in mine.”
+
+At these last words, the General turned to stare at the criminal in dumb
+amazement; but he could not endure the intolerable light in those eyes
+which for the second time disorganized his being. He was afraid of
+showing weakness once more, conscious as he was that his will was weaker
+already.
+
+“An old man! You can never have seen a family,” he said, with a father’s
+glance at his wife and children.
+
+“Yes, an old man,” echoed the stranger, frowning slightly.
+
+“Fly!” cried the General, but he did not dare to look at his guest. “Our
+compact is broken. I shall not kill you. No! I will never be purveyor to
+the scaffold. But go out. You make us shudder.”
+
+“I know that,” said the other patiently. “There is not a spot on French
+soil where I can set foot and be safe; but if man’s justice, like God’s,
+took all into account, if man’s justice deigned to inquire which was the
+monster--the murderer or his victim--then I might hold up my head among
+my fellows. Can you not guess that other crimes preceded that blow from
+an axe? I constituted myself his judge and executioner; I stepped in
+where man’s justice failed. That was my crime. Farewell, sir. Bitter
+though you have made your hospitality, I shall not forget it. I shall
+always bear in my heart a feeling of gratitude towards one man in the
+world, and you are that man.... But I could wish that you had showed
+yourself more generous!”
+
+He turned towards the door, but in the same instant Helene leaned to
+whisper something in her mother’s ear.
+
+“Ah!...”
+
+At the cry that broke from his wife, the General trembled as if he had
+seen Moïna lying dead. There stood Helene, and the murderer had turned
+instinctively, with something like anxiety about these folk in his face.
+
+“What is it, dear?” asked the General.
+
+“Helene wants to go with him.”
+
+The murderer’s face flushed.
+
+“If that is how my mother understands an almost involuntary
+exclamation,” Helene said in a low voice, “I will fulfil her wishes.” She
+glanced about her with something like fierce pride; then the girl’s eyes
+fell, and she stood, admirable in her modesty.
+
+“Helene, did you go up to the room where----?”
+
+“Yes, father.”
+
+“Helene” (and his voice shook with a convulsive tremor), “is this the
+first time that you have seen this man?”
+
+“Yes, father.”
+
+“Then it is not natural that you should intend to--”
+
+“If it is not natural, father, at any rate it is true.”
+
+“Oh! child,” said the Marquise, lowering her voice, but not so much but
+that her husband could hear her, “you are false to all the principles of
+honor, modesty, and right which I have tried to cultivate in your
+heart. If until this fatal hour you life has only been one lie, there is
+nothing to regret in your loss. It can hardly be the moral perfection of
+this stranger that attracts you to him? Can it be the kind of power that
+commits crime? I have too good an opinion of you to suppose that--”
+
+“Oh, suppose everything, madame,” Helene said coldly.
+
+But though her force of character sustained this ordeal, her flashing
+eyes could scarcely hold the tears that filled them. The stranger,
+watching her, guessed the mother’s language from the girl’s tears,
+and turned his eagle glance upon the Marquise. An irresistible power
+constrained her to look at this terrible seducer; but as her eyes met
+his bright, glittering gaze, she felt a shiver run through her frame,
+such a shock as we feel at the sight of a reptile or the contact of a
+Leyden jar.
+
+“Dear!” she cried, turning to her husband, “this is the Fiend himself.
+He can divine everything!”
+
+The General rose to his feet and went to the bell.
+
+“He means ruin for you,” Helene said to the murderer.
+
+The stranger smiled, took one forward stride, grasped the General’s arm,
+and compelled him to endure a steady gaze which benumbed the soldier’s
+brain and left him powerless.
+
+“I will repay you now for your hospitality,” he said, “and then we shall
+be quits. I will spare you the shame by giving myself up. After all,
+what should I do now with my life?”
+
+“You could repent,” answered Helene, and her glance conveyed such hope
+as only glows in a young girl’s eyes.
+
+“_I shall never repent_,” said the murderer in a sonorous voice, as he
+raised his head proudly.
+
+“His hands are stained with blood,” the father said.
+
+“I will wipe it away,” she answered.
+
+“But do you so much as know whether he cares for you?” said her father,
+not daring now to look at the stranger.
+
+The murderer came up a little nearer. Some light within seemed to glow
+through Helene’s beauty, grave and maidenly though it was, coloring and
+bringing into relief, as it were, the least details, the most delicate
+lines in her face. The stranger, with that terrible face still blazing
+in his eyes, gave one tender glance to her enchanting loveliness, then
+he spoke, his tones revealing how deeply he had been moved.
+
+“And if I refuse to allow this sacrifice of yourself, and so discharge
+my debt of two hours of existence to your father; is not this love, love
+for yourself alone?”
+
+“Then do you too reject me?” Helene’s cry rang painfully through the
+hearts of all who heard her. “Farewell, then, to you all; I will die.”
+
+“What does this mean?” asked the father and mother.
+
+Helene gave her mother an eloquent glance and lowered her eyes.
+
+Since the first attempt made by the General and his wife to contest
+by word or action the intruder’s strange presumption to the right of
+staying in their midst, from their first experience of the power of
+those glittering eyes, a mysterious torpor had crept over them, and
+their benumbed faculties struggled in vain with the preternatural
+influence. The air seemed to have suddenly grown so heavy, that they
+could scarcely breathe; yet, while they could not find the reason of
+this feeling of oppression, a voice within told them that this magnetic
+presence was the real cause of their helplessness. In this moral agony,
+it flashed across the General that he must make every effort to overcome
+this influence on his daughter’s reeling brain; he caught her by the
+waist and drew her into the embrasure of a window, as far as possible
+from the murderer.
+
+“Darling,” he murmured, “if some wild love has been suddenly born in
+your heart, I cannot believe that you have not the strength of soul to
+quell the mad impulse; your innocent life, your pure and dutiful soul,
+has given me too many proofs of your character. There must be something
+behind all this. Well, this heart of mine is full of indulgence, you can
+tell everything to me; even if it breaks, dear child, I can be silent
+about my grief, and keep your confession a secret. What is it? Are you
+jealous of our love for your brothers or your little sister? Is it some
+love trouble? Are you unhappy here at home? Tell me about it, tell me
+the reasons that urge you to leave your home, to rob it of its greatest
+charm, to leave your mother and brothers and your little sister?”
+
+“I am in love with no one, father, and jealous of no one, not even of
+your friend the diplomatist, M. de Vandenesse.”
+
+The Marquise turned pale; her daughter saw this, and stopped short.
+
+“Sooner or later I must live under some man’s protection, must I not?”
+
+“That is true.”
+
+“Do we ever know,” she went on, “the human being to whom we link our
+destinies? Now, I believe in this man.”
+
+“Oh, child,” said the General, raising his voice, “you have no idea of
+all the misery that lies in store for you.”
+
+“I am thinking of _his_.”
+
+“What a life!” groaned the father.
+
+“A woman’s life,” the girl murmured.
+
+“You have a great knowledge of life!” exclaimed the Marquise, finding
+speech at last.
+
+“Madame, my answers are shaped by the questions; but if you desire it, I
+will speak more clearly.”
+
+“Speak out, my child... I am a mother.”
+
+Mother and daughter looked each other in the face, and the Marquise said
+no more. At last she said:
+
+“Helene, if you have any reproaches to make, I would rather bear them
+than see you go away with a man from whom the whole world shrinks in
+horror.”
+
+“Then you see yourself, madame, that but for me he would be quite
+alone.”
+
+“That will do, madame,” the General cried; “we have but one daughter
+left to us now,” and he looked at Moïna, who slept on. “As for you,” he
+added, turning to Helene, “I will put you in a convent.”
+
+“So be it, father,” she said, in calm despair, “I shall die there. You
+are answerable to God alone for my life and for _his_ soul.”
+
+A deep sullen silence fell after these words. The on-lookers during
+this strange scene, so utterly at variance with all the sentiments of
+ordinary life, shunned each other’s eyes.
+
+Suddenly the Marquis happened to glance at his pistols. He caught up one
+of them, cocked the weapon, and pointed it at the intruder. At the click
+of firearms the other turned his piercing gaze full upon the General;
+the soldier’s arm slackened indescribably and fell heavily to his side.
+The pistol dropped to the floor.
+
+“Girl, you are free,” said he, exhausted by this ghastly struggle. “Kiss
+your mother, if she will let you kiss her. For my own part, I wish never
+to see nor to hear of you again.”
+
+“Helene,” the mother began, “only think of the wretched life before
+you.”
+
+A sort of rattling sound came from the intruder’s deep chest, all eyes
+were turned to him. Disdain was plainly visible in his face.
+
+The General rose to his feet. “My hospitality has cost me dear,” he
+cried. “Before you came you had taken an old man’s life; now you are
+dealing a deadly blow at a whole family. Whatever happens, there must be
+unhappiness in this house.”
+
+“And if your daughter is happy?” asked the other, gazing steadily at the
+General.
+
+The father made a superhuman effort for self-control. “If she is happy
+with you,” he said, “she is not worth regretting.”
+
+Helene knelt timidly before her father.
+
+“Father, I love and revere you,” she said, “whether you lavish all the
+treasures of your kindness upon me, or make me feel to the full the
+rigor of disgrace.... But I entreat that your last words of farewell
+shall not be words of anger.”
+
+The General could not trust himself to look at her. The stranger came
+nearer; there was something half-diabolical, half-divine in the smile
+that he gave Helene.
+
+“Angel of pity, you that do not shrink in horror from a murderer, come,
+since you persist in your resolution of intrusting your life to me.”
+
+“Inconceivable!” cried her father.
+
+The Marquise then looked strangely at her daughter, opened her arms, and
+Helene fled to her in tears.
+
+“Farewell,” she said, “farewell, mother!” The stranger trembled as
+Helene, undaunted, made sign to him that she was ready. She kissed her
+father’s hand; and, as if performing a duty, gave a hasty kiss to Moïna
+and little Abel, then she vanished with the murderer.
+
+“Which way are they going?” exclaimed the General, listening to the
+footsteps of the two fugitives.--“Madame,” he turned to his wife, “I
+think I must be dreaming; there is some mystery behind all this, I do
+not understand it; you must know what it means.”
+
+The Marquise shivered.
+
+“For some time past your daughter has grown extraordinarily romantic and
+strangely high-flown in her ideas. In spite of the pains I have taken to
+combat these tendencies in her character--”
+
+“This will not do----” began the General, but fancying that he heard
+footsteps in the garden, he broke off to fling open the window.
+
+“Helene!” he shouted.
+
+His voice was lost in the darkness like a vain prophecy. The utterance
+of that name, to which there should never be answer any more, acted
+like a counterspell; it broke the charm and set him free from the evil
+enchantment which lay upon him. It was as if some spirit passed over
+his face. He now saw clearly what had taken place, and cursed his
+incomprehensible weakness. A shiver of heat rushed from his heart to
+his head and feet; he became himself once more, terrible, thirsting for
+revenge. He raised a dreadful cry.
+
+“Help!” he thundered, “help!”
+
+He rushed to the bell-pull, pulled till the bells rang with a strange
+clamor of din, pulled till the cord gave way. The whole house was roused
+with a start. Still shouting, he flung open the windows that looked upon
+the street, called for the police, caught up his pistols, and fired them
+off to hurry the mounted patrols, the newly-aroused servants, and the
+neighbors. The dogs barked at the sound of their master’s voice; the
+horses neighed and stamped in their stalls. The quiet night was suddenly
+filled with hideous uproar. The General on the staircase, in pursuit
+of his daughter, saw the scared faces of the servants flocking from all
+parts of the house.
+
+“My daughter!” he shouted. “Helene has been carried off. Search
+the garden. Keep a lookout on the road! Open the gates for the
+gendarmerie!--Murder! Help!”
+
+With the strength of fury he snapped the chain and let loose the great
+house-dog.
+
+“Helene!” he cried, “Helene!”
+
+The dog sprang out like a lion, barking furiously, and dashed into the
+garden, leaving the General far behind. A troop of horses came along the
+road at a gallop, and he flew to open the gates himself.
+
+“Corporal!” he shouted, “cut off the retreat of M. de Mauny’s murderer.
+They have gone through my garden. Quick! Put a cordon of men to watch
+the ways by the Butte de Picardie.--I will beat up the grounds, parks,
+and houses.--The rest of you keep a lookout along the road,” he ordered
+the servants, “form a chain between the barrier and Versailles. Forward,
+every man of you!”
+
+He caught up the rifle which his man had brought out, and dashed into
+the garden.
+
+“Find them!” he called to the dog.
+
+An ominous baying came in answer from the distance, and he plunged in
+the direction from which the growl seemed to come.
+
+It was seven o’clock in the morning; all the search made by gendarmes,
+servants, and neighbors had been fruitless, and the dog had not come
+back. The General entered the salon, empty now for him though the other
+three children were there; he was worn out with fatigue, and looked old
+already with that night’s work.
+
+“You have been very cold to your daughter,” he said, turning his eyes
+on his wife.--“And now this is all that is left to us of her,” he added,
+indicating the embroidery frame, and the flower just begun. “Only just
+now she was there, and now she is lost... lost!”
+
+Tears followed; he hid his face in his hands, and for a few minutes he
+said no more; he could not bear the sight of the room, which so short
+a time ago had made a setting to a picture of the sweetest family
+happiness. The winter dawn was struggling with the dying lamplight; the
+tapers burned down to their paper-wreaths and flared out; everything was
+all in keeping with the father’s despair.
+
+“This must be destroyed,” he said after a pause, pointing to the
+tambour-frame. “I shall never bear to see anything again that reminds us
+of _her_!”
+
+The terrible Christmas night when the Marquis and his wife lost their
+oldest daughter, powerless to oppose the mysterious influence exercised
+by the man who involuntarily, as it were, stole Helene from them, was
+like a warning sent by Fate. The Marquis was ruined by the failure of
+his stock-broker; he borrowed money on his wife’s property, and lost
+it in the endeavor to retrieve his fortunes. Driven to desperate
+expedients, he left France. Six years went by. His family seldom had
+news of him; but a few days before Spain recognized the independence of
+the American Republics, he wrote that he was coming home.
+
+So, one fine morning, it happened that several French merchants were on
+board a Spanish brig that lay a few leagues out from Bordeaux, impatient
+to reach their native land again, with wealth acquired by long years of
+toil and perilous adventures in Venezuela and Mexico.
+
+One of the passengers, a man who looked aged by trouble rather than
+by years, was leaning against the bulwark netting, apparently quite
+unaffected by the sight to be seen from the upper deck. The bright
+day, the sense that the voyage was safely over, had brought all the
+passengers above to greet their land. The larger number of them insisted
+that they could see, far off in the distance, the houses and lighthouses
+on the coast of Gascony and the Tower of Cardouan, melting into the
+fantastic erections of white cloud along the horizon. But for the silver
+fringe that played about their bows, and the long furrow swiftly effaced
+in their wake, they might have been perfectly still in mid-ocean, so
+calm was the sea. The sky was magically clear, the dark blue of the
+vault above paled by imperceptible gradations, until it blended with
+the bluish water, a gleaming line that sparkled like stars marking the
+dividing line of sea. The sunlight caught myriads of facets over the
+wide surface of the ocean, in such a sort that the vast plains of salt
+water looked perhaps more full of light than the fields of sky.
+
+The brig had set all her canvas. The snowy sails, swelled by the
+strangely soft wind, the labyrinth of cordage, and the yellow flags
+flying at the masthead, all stood out sharp and uncompromisingly clear
+against the vivid background of space, sky, and sea; there was nothing
+to alter the color but the shadow cast by the great cloudlike sails.
+
+A glorious day, a fair wind, and the fatherland in sight, a sea like a
+mill-pond, the melancholy sound of the ripples, a fair, solitary vessel,
+gliding across the surface of the water like a woman stealing out to
+a tryst--it was a picture full of harmony. That mere speck full of
+movement was a starting-point whence the soul of man could descry the
+immutable vast of space. Solitude and bustling life, silence and sound,
+were all brought together in strange abrupt contrast; you could not
+tell where life, or sound, or silence, and nothingness lay, and no human
+voice broke the divine spell.
+
+The Spanish captain, the crew, and the French passengers sat or stood,
+in a mood of devout ecstasy, in which many memories blended. There was
+idleness in the air. The beaming faces told of complete forgetfulness
+of past hardships, the men were rocked on the fair vessel as in a golden
+dream. Yet, from time to time the elderly passenger, leaning over the
+bulwark nettings, looked with something like uneasiness at the horizon.
+Distrust of the ways of Fate could be read in his whole face; he seemed
+to fear that he should not reach the coast of France in time. This
+was the Marquis. Fortune had not been deaf to his despairing cry and
+struggles. After five years of endeavor and painful toil, he was a
+wealthy man once more. In his impatience to reach his home again and to
+bring the good news to his family, he had followed the example set by
+some French merchants in Havana, and embarked with them on a Spanish
+vessel with a cargo for Bordeaux. And now, grown tired of evil
+forebodings, his fancy was tracing out for him the most delicious
+pictures of past happiness. In that far-off brown line of land he seemed
+to see his wife and children. He sat in his place by the fireside; they
+were crowding about him; he felt their caresses. Moïna had grown to be
+a young girl; she was beautiful, and tall, and striking. The fancied
+picture had grown almost real, when the tears filled his eyes, and, to
+hide his emotion, he turned his face towards the sea-line, opposite the
+hazy streak that meant land.
+
+“There she is again.... She is following us!” he said.
+
+“What?” cried the Spanish captain.
+
+“There is a vessel,” muttered the General.
+
+“I saw her yesterday,” answered Captain Gomez. He looked at his
+interlocutor as if to ask what he thought; then he added in the
+General’s ear, “She has been chasing us all along.”
+
+“Then why she has not come up with us, I do not know,” said the General,
+“for she is a faster sailor than your damned _Saint-Ferdinand_.”
+
+“She will have damaged herself, sprung a leak--”
+
+“She is gaining on us!” the General broke in.
+
+“She is a Columbian privateer,” the captain said in his ear, “and we are
+still six leagues from land, and the wind is dropping.”
+
+“She is not _going_ ahead, she is flying, as if she knew that in two
+hours’ time her prey would escape her. What audacity!”
+
+“Audacity!” cried the captain. “Oh! she is not called the _Othello_ for
+nothing. Not so long back she sank a Spanish frigate that carried thirty
+guns! This is the one thing I was afraid of, for I had a notion that she
+was cruising about somewhere off the Antilles.--Aha!” he added after a
+pause, as he watched the sails of his own vessel, “the wind is rising;
+we are making way. Get through we must, for ‘the Parisian’ will show us
+no mercy.”
+
+“She is making way too!” returned the General.
+
+The _Othello_ was scarce three leagues away by this time; and although
+the conversation between the Marquis and Captain Gomez had taken place
+apart, passengers and crew, attracted by the sudden appearance of a
+sail, came to that side of the vessel. With scarcely an exception,
+however, they took the privateer for a merchantman, and watched her
+course with interest, till all at once a sailor shouted with some energy
+of language:
+
+“By Saint-James, it is all up with us! Yonder is the Parisian captain!”
+
+At that terrible name dismay, and a panic impossible to describe, spread
+through the brig. The Spanish captain’s orders put energy into the
+crew for a while; and in his resolute determination to make land at all
+costs, he set all the studding sails, and crowded on every stitch
+of canvas on board. But all this was not the work of a moment; and
+naturally the men did not work together with that wonderful unanimity
+so fascinating to watch on board a man-of-war. The _Othello_ meanwhile,
+thanks to the trimming of her sails, flew over the water like a swallow;
+but she was making, to all appearance, so little headway, that the
+unlucky Frenchmen began to entertain sweet delusive hopes. At last,
+after unheard-of efforts, the _Saint-Ferdinand_ sprang forward, Gomez
+himself directing the shifting of the sheets with voice and gesture,
+when all at once the man at the tiller, steering at random (purposely,
+no doubt), swung the vessel round. The wind striking athwart the beam,
+the sails shivered so unexpectedly that the brig heeled to one side, the
+booms were carried away, and the vessel was completely out of hand.
+The captain’s face grew whiter than his sails with unutterable rage. He
+sprang upon the man at the tiller, drove his dagger at him in such blind
+fury, that he missed him, and hurled the weapon overboard. Gomez took
+the helm himself, and strove to right the gallant vessel. Tears of
+despair rose to his eyes, for it is harder to lose the result of our
+carefully-laid plans through treachery than to face imminent death.
+But the more the captain swore, the less the men worked, and it was
+he himself who fired the alarm-gun, hoping to be heard on shore. The
+privateer, now gaining hopelessly upon them, replied with a cannon-shot,
+which struck the water ten fathoms away from the _Saint-Ferdinand_.
+
+“Thunder of heaven!” cried the General, “that was a close shave! They
+must have guns made on purpose.”
+
+“Oh! when that one yonder speaks, look you, you have to hold your
+tongue,” said a sailor. “The Parisian would not be afraid to meet an
+English man-of-war.”
+
+“It is all over with us,” the captain cried in desperation; he had
+pointed his telescope landwards, and saw not a sign from the shore. “We
+are further from the coast than I thought.”
+
+“Why do you despair?” asked the General. “All your passengers are
+Frenchmen; they have chartered your vessel. The privateer is a Parisian,
+you say? Well and good, run up the white flag, and--”
+
+“And he would run us down,” retorted the captain. “He can be anything he
+likes when he has a mind to seize on a rich booty!”
+
+“Oh! if he is a pirate--”
+
+“Pirate!” said the ferocious looking sailor. “Oh! he always has the law
+on his side, or he knows how to be on the same side as the law.”
+
+“Very well,” said the General, raising his eyes, “let us make up our
+minds to it,” and his remaining fortitude was still sufficient to keep
+back the tears.
+
+The words were hardly out of his mouth before a second cannon-shot,
+better aimed, came crashing through the hull of the _Saint-Ferdinand_.
+
+“Heave to!” cried the captain gloomily.
+
+The sailor who had commended the Parisian’s law-abiding proclivities
+showed himself a clever hand at working a ship after this desperate
+order was given. The crew waited for half an hour in an agony of
+suspense and the deepest dismay. The _Saint-Ferdinand_ had four millions
+of piastres on board, the whole fortunes of the five passengers, and the
+General’s eleven hundred thousand francs. At length the _Othello_ lay
+not ten gunshots away, so that those on the _Saint-Ferdinand_ could look
+into the muzzles of her loaded guns. The vessel seemed to be borne along
+by a breeze sent by the Devil himself, but the eyes of an expert would
+have discovered the secret of her speed at once. You had but to look
+for a moment at the rake of her stern, her long, narrow keel, her tall
+masts, to see the cut of her sails, the wonderful lightness of her
+rigging, and the ease and perfect seamanship with which her crew trimmed
+her sails to the wind. Everything about her gave the impression of the
+security of power in this delicately curved inanimate creature, swift
+and intelligent as a greyhound or some bird of prey. The privateer
+crew stood silent, ready in case of resistance to shatter the wretched
+merchantman, which, luckily for her, remained motionless, like a
+schoolboy caught in flagrant delict by a master.
+
+“We have guns on board!” cried the General, clutching the Spanish
+captain’s hand. But the courage in Gomez’s eyes was the courage of
+despair.
+
+“Have we men?” he said.
+
+The Marquis looked round at the crew of the _Saint-Ferdinand_, and a
+cold chill ran through him. There stood the four merchants, pale and
+quaking for fear, while the crew gathered about some of their own number
+who appeared to be arranging to go over in a body to the enemy. They
+watched the _Othello_ with greed and curiosity in their faces. The
+captain, the Marquis, and the mate exchanged glances; they were the only
+three who had a thought for any but themselves.
+
+“Ah! Captain Gomez, when I left my home and country, my heart was half
+dead with the bitterness of parting, and now must I bid it good-bye once
+more when I am bringing back happiness and ease for my children?”
+
+The General turned his head away towards the sea, with tears of rage in
+his eyes--and saw the steersman swimming out to the privateer.
+
+“This time it will be good-bye for good,” said the captain by way
+of answer, and the dazed look in the Frenchman’s eyes startled the
+Spaniard.
+
+By this time the two vessels were almost alongside, and at the first
+sight of the enemy’s crew the General saw that Gomez’s gloomy prophecy
+was only too true. The three men at each gun might have been bronze
+statues, standing like athletes, with their rugged features, their bare
+sinewy arms, men whom Death himself had scarcely thrown off their feet.
+
+The rest of the crew, well armed, active, light, and vigorous, also
+stood motionless. Toil had hardened, and the sun had deeply tanned,
+those energetic faces; their eyes glittered like sparks of fire with
+infernal glee and clear-sighted courage. Perfect silence on the upper
+deck, now black with men, bore abundant testimony to the rigorous
+discipline and strong will which held these fiends incarnate in check.
+
+The captain of the _Othello_ stood with folded arms at the foot of the
+main mast; he carried no weapons, but an axe lay on the deck beside him.
+His face was hidden by the shadow of a broad felt hat. The men looked
+like dogs crouching before their master. Gunners, soldiers, and ship’s
+crew turned their eyes first on his face, and then on the merchant
+vessel.
+
+The two brigs came up alongside, and the shock of contact roused the
+privateer captain from his musings; he spoke a word in the ear of the
+lieutenant who stood beside him.
+
+“Grappling-irons!” shouted the latter, and the _Othello_ grappled
+the _Saint-Ferdinand_ with miraculous quickness. The captain of the
+privateer gave his orders in a low voice to the lieutenant, who repeated
+them; the men, told off in succession for each duty, went on the upper
+deck of the _Saint-Ferdinand_, like seminarists going to mass. They
+bound crew and passengers hand and foot and seized the booty. In the
+twinkling of an eye, provisions and barrels full of piastres were
+transferred to the _Othello_; the General thought that he must be
+dreaming when he himself, likewise bound, was flung down on a bale of
+goods as if he had been part of the cargo.
+
+A brief conference took place between the captain of the privateer and
+his lieutenant and a sailor, who seemed to be the mate of the
+vessel; then the mate gave a whistle, and the men jumped on board
+the _Saint-Ferdinand_, and completely dismantled her with the nimble
+dexterity of a soldier who strips a dead comrade of a coveted overcoat
+and shoes.
+
+“It is all over with us,” said the Spanish captain coolly. He had eyed
+the three chiefs during their confabulation, and saw that the sailors
+were proceeding to pull his vessel to pieces.
+
+“Why so?” asked the General.
+
+“What would you have them do with us?” returned the Spaniard. “They
+have just come to the conclusion that they will scarcely sell the
+_Saint-Ferdinand_ in any French or Spanish port, so they are going to
+sink her to be rid of her. As for us, do you suppose that they will put
+themselves to the expense of feeding us, when they don’t know what port
+they are to put into?”
+
+The words were scarcely out of the captain’s mouth before a hideous
+outcry went up, followed by a dull splashing sound, as several bodies
+were thrown overboard. He turned, the four merchants were no longer to
+be seen, but eight ferocious-looking gunners were still standing with
+their arms raised above their heads. He shuddered.
+
+“What did I tell you?” the Spanish captain asked coolly.
+
+The Marquis rose to his feet with a spring. The surface of the sea was
+quite smooth again; he could not so much as see the place where his
+unhappy fellow-passengers had disappeared. By this time they were
+sinking down, bound hand and foot, below the waves, if, indeed, the fish
+had not devoured them already.
+
+Only a few paces away, the treacherous steersman and the sailor who had
+boasted of the Parisian’s power were fraternizing with the crew of the
+_Othello_, and pointing out those among their own number, who, in their
+opinion, were worthy to join the crew of the privateer. Then the boys
+tied the rest together by the feet in spite of frightful oaths. It
+was soon over; the eight gunners seized the doomed men and flung them
+overboard without more ado, watching the different ways in which the
+drowning victims met their death, their contortions, their last agony,
+with a sort of malignant curiosity, but with no sign of amusement,
+surprise, or pity. For them it was an ordinary event to which seemingly
+they were quite accustomed. The older men looked instead with grim, set
+smiles at the casks of piastres about the main mast.
+
+The General and Captain Gomez, left seated on a bale of goods, consulted
+each other with well-nigh hopeless looks; they were, in a sense, the
+sole survivors of the _Saint-Ferdinand_, for the seven men pointed out
+by the spies were transformed amid rejoicings into Peruvians.
+
+“What atrocious villains!” the General cried. Loyal and generous
+indignation silenced prudence and pain on his own account.
+
+“They do it because they must,” Gomez answered coolly. “If you came
+across one of those fellows, you would run him through the body, would
+you not?”
+
+The lieutenant now came up to the Spaniard.
+
+“Captain,” said he, “the Parisian has heard of you. He says that you
+are the only man who really knows the passages of the Antilles and the
+Brazilian coast. Will you--”
+
+The captain cut him short with a scornful exclamation.
+
+“I shall die like a sailor,” he said, “and a loyal Spaniard and a
+Christian. Do you hear?”
+
+“Heave him overboard!” shouted the lieutenant, and a couple of gunners
+seized on Gomez.
+
+“You cowards!” roared the General, seizing hold of the men.
+
+“Don’t get too excited, old boy,” said the lieutenant. “If your red
+ribbon has made some impression upon our captain, I myself do not care
+a rap for it.--You and I will have our little bit of talk together
+directly.”
+
+A smothered sound, with no accompanying cry, told the General that the
+gallant captain had died “like a sailor,” as he had said.
+
+“My money or death!” cried the Marquis, in a fit of rage terrible to
+see.
+
+“Ah! now you talk sensibly!” sneered the lieutenant. “That is the way to
+get something out of us----”
+
+Two of the men came up at a sign and hastened to bind the Frenchmen’s
+feet, but with unlooked-for boldness he snatched the lieutenant’s
+cutlass and laid about him like a cavalry officer who knows his
+business.
+
+“Brigands that you are! You shall not chuck one of Napoleon’s troopers
+over a ship’s side like an oyster!”
+
+At the sound of pistol shots fired point blank at the Frenchman,
+“the Parisian” looked round from his occupation of superintending the
+transfer of the rigging from the _Saint-Ferdinand_. He came up behind
+the brave General, seized him, dragged him to the side, and was about
+to fling him over with no more concern than if the man had been a broken
+spar. They were at the very edge when the General looked into the tawny
+eyes of the man who had stolen his daughter. The recognition was mutual.
+
+The captain of the privateer, his arm still upraised, suddenly swung it
+in the contrary direction as if his victim was but a feather weight, and
+set him down at the foot of the main mast. A murmur rose on the upper
+deck, but the captain glanced round, and there was a sudden silence.
+
+“This is Helene’s father,” said the captain in a clear, firm voice. “Woe
+to any one who meddles with him!”
+
+A hurrah of joy went up at the words, a shout rising to the sky like a
+prayer of the church; a cry like the first high notes of the _Te Deum_.
+The lads swung aloft in the rigging, the men below flung up their caps,
+the gunners pounded away on the deck, there was a general thrill of
+excitement, an outburst of oaths, yells, and shrill cries in voluble
+chorus. The men cheered like fanatics, the General’s misgivings
+deepened, and he grew uneasy; it seemed to him that there was some
+horrible mystery in such wild transports.
+
+“My daughter!” he cried, as soon as he could speak. “Where is my
+daughter?”
+
+For all answer, the captain of the privateer gave him a searching
+glance, one of those glances which throw the bravest man into a
+confusion which no theory can explain. The General was mute, not a
+little to the satisfaction of the crew; it pleased them to see their
+leader exercise the strange power which he possessed over all with whom
+he came in contact. Then the captain led the way down a staircase and
+flung open the door of a cabin.
+
+“There she is,” he said, and disappeared, leaving the General in a
+stupor of bewilderment at the scene before his eyes.
+
+Helene cried out at the sight of him, and sprang up from the sofa on
+which she was lying when the door flew open. So changed was she that
+none but a father’s eyes could have recognized her. The sun of the
+tropics had brought warmer tones into the once pale face, and something
+of Oriental charm with that wonderful coloring; there was a certain
+grandeur about her, a majestic firmness, a profound sentiment which
+impresses itself upon the coarsest nature. Her long, thick hair, falling
+in large curls about her queenly throat, gave an added idea of power
+to the proud face. The consciousness of that power shone out from every
+movement, every line of Helene’s form. The rose-tinted nostrils were
+dilated slightly with the joy of triumph; the serene happiness of her
+life had left its plain tokens in the full development of her beauty. A
+certain indefinable virginal grace met in her with the pride of a woman
+who is loved. This was a slave and a queen, a queen who would fain obey
+that she might reign.
+
+Her dress was magnificent and elegant in its richness; India muslin was
+the sole material, but her sofa and cushions were of cashmere. A Persian
+carpet covered the floor in the large cabin, and her four children
+playing at her feet were building castles of gems and pearl necklaces
+and jewels of price. The air was full of the scent of rare flowers in
+Sevres porcelain vases painted by Madame Jacotot; tiny South American
+birds, like living rubies, sapphires, and gold, hovered among the
+Mexican jessamines and camellias. A pianoforte had been fitted into the
+room, and here and there on the paneled walls, covered with red silk,
+hung small pictures by great painters--a _Sunset_ by Hippolyte Schinner
+beside a Terburg, one of Raphael’s Madonnas scarcely yielded in charm to
+a sketch by Gericault, while a Gerard Dow eclipsed the painters of the
+Empire. On a lacquered table stood a golden plate full of delicious
+fruit. Indeed, Helene might have been the sovereign lady of some great
+country, and this cabin of hers a boudoir in which her crowned lover
+had brought together all earth’s treasure to please his consort. The
+children gazed with bright, keen eyes at their grandfather. Accustomed
+as they were to a life of battle, storm, and tumult, they recalled the
+Roman children in David’s _Brutus_, watching the fighting and bloodshed
+with curious interest.
+
+“What! is it possible?” cried Helene, catching her father’s arm as if to
+assure herself that this was no vision.
+
+“Helene!”
+
+“Father!”
+
+They fell into each other’s arms, and the old man’s embrace was not so
+close and warm as Helene’s.
+
+“Were you on board that vessel?”
+
+“Yes,” he answered sadly, and looking at the little ones, who gathered
+about him and gazed with wide open eyes.
+
+“I was about to perish, but--”
+
+“But for my husband,” she broke in. “I see how it was.”
+
+“Ah!” cried the General, “why must I find you again like this, Helene?
+After all the many tears that I have shed, must I still groan for your
+fate?”
+
+“And why?” she asked, smiling. “Why should you be sorry to learn that I
+am the happiest woman under the sun?”
+
+“_Happy_?” he cried with a start of surprise.
+
+“Yes, happy, my kind father,” and she caught his hands in hers and
+covered them with kisses, and pressed them to her throbbing heart. Her
+caresses, and a something in the carriage of her head, were interpreted
+yet more plainly by the joy sparkling in her eyes.
+
+“And how is this?” he asked, wondering at his daughter’s life, forgetful
+now of everything but the bright glowing face before him.
+
+“Listen, father; I have for lover, husband, servant, and master one
+whose soul is as great as the boundless sea, as infinite in his kindness
+as heaven, a god on earth! Never during these seven years has a chance
+look, or word, or gesture jarred in the divine harmony of his talk,
+his love, his caresses. His eyes have never met mine without a gleam of
+happiness in them; there has always been a bright smile on his lips for
+me. On deck, his voice rises above the thunder of storms and the
+tumult of battle; but here below it is soft and melodious as Rossini’s
+music--for he has Rossini’s music sent for me. I have everything that
+woman’s caprice can imagine. My wishes are more than fulfilled. In
+short, I am a queen on the seas; I am obeyed here as perhaps a queen may
+be obeyed.--Ah!” she cried, interrupting herself, “_happy_ did I say?
+Happiness is no word to express such bliss as mine. All the happiness
+that should have fallen to all the women in the world has been my share.
+Knowing one’s own great love and self-devotion, to find in _his_
+heart an infinite love in which a woman’s soul is lost, and lost for
+ever--tell me, is this happiness? I have lived through a thousand lives
+even now. Here, I am alone; here, I command. No other woman has set foot
+on this noble vessel, and Victor is never more than a few paces distant
+from me,--he cannot wander further from me than from stern to prow,” she
+added, with a shade of mischief in her manner. “Seven years! A love
+that outlasts seven years of continual joy, that endures all the tests
+brought by all the moments that make up seven years--is this love? Oh,
+no, no! it is something better than all that I know of life... human
+language fails to express the bliss of heaven.”
+
+A sudden torrent of tears fell from her burning eyes. The four little
+ones raised a piteous cry at this, and flocked like chickens about their
+mother. The oldest boy struck the General with a threatening look.
+
+“Abel, darling,” said Helene, “I am crying for joy.”
+
+Helene took him on her knee, and the child fondled her, putting his arms
+about her queenly neck, as a lion’s whelp might play with the lioness.
+
+“Do you never weary of your life?” asked the General, bewildered by his
+daughter’s enthusiastic language.
+
+“Yes,” she said, “sometimes, when we are on land, yet even then I have
+never parted from my husband.”
+
+“But you need to be fond of music and balls and fetes.”
+
+“His voice is music for me; and for fetes, I devise new toilettes for
+him to see. When he likes my dress, it is as if all the world admired
+me. Simply for that reason I keep the diamonds and jewels, the precious
+things, the flowers and masterpieces of art that he heaps upon me,
+saying, ‘Helene, as you live out of the world, I will have the world
+come to you.’ But for that I would fling them all overboard.”
+
+“But there are others on board, wild, reckless men whose passions--”
+
+“I understand, father,” she said smiling. “Do not fear for me. Never
+was empress encompassed with more observance than I. The men are very
+superstitious; they look upon me as a sort of tutelary genius, the luck
+of the vessel. But _he_ is their god; they worship him. Once, and
+once only, one of the crew showed disrespect, mere words,” she added,
+laughing; “but before Victor knew of it, the others flung the offender
+overboard, although I forgave him. They love me as their good angel; I
+nurse them when they are ill; several times I have been so fortunate as
+to save a life, by constant care such as a woman can give. Poor fellows,
+they are giants, but they are children at the same time.”
+
+“And when there is fighting overhead?”
+
+“I am used to it now; I quaked for fear during the first engagement,
+but never since.--I am used to such peril, and--I am your daughter,” she
+said; “I love it.”
+
+“But how if he should fall?”
+
+“I should die with him.”
+
+“And your children?”
+
+“They are children of the sea and of danger; they share the life of
+their parents. We have but one life, and we do not flinch from it. We
+have but one life, our names are written on the same page of the book of
+Fate, one skiff bears us and our fortunes, and we know it.”
+
+“Do you so love him that he is more to you than all beside?”
+
+“All beside?” echoed she. “Let us leave that mystery alone. Yet stay!
+there is this dear little one--well, this too is _he_,” and straining
+Abel to her in a tight clasp, she set eager kisses on his cheeks and
+hair.
+
+“But I can never forget that he has just drowned nine men!” exclaimed
+the General.
+
+“There was no help for it, doubtless,” she said, “for he is generous and
+humane. He sheds as little blood as may be, and only in the interests of
+the little world which he defends, and the sacred cause for which he is
+fighting. Talk to him about anything that seems to you to be wrong, and
+he will convince you, you will see.”
+
+“There was that crime of his,” muttered the General to himself.
+
+“But how if that crime was a virtue?” she asked, with cold dignity. “How
+if man’s justice had failed to avenge a great wrong?”
+
+“But a private revenge!” exclaimed her father.
+
+“But what is hell,” she cried, “but a revenge through all eternity for
+the wrong done in a little day?”
+
+“Ah! you are lost! He has bewitched and perverted you. You are talking
+wildly.”
+
+“Stay with us one day, father, and if you will but listen to him, and
+see him, you will love him.”
+
+“Helene, France lies only a few leagues away,” he said gravely.
+
+Helene trembled; then she went to the porthole and pointed to the
+savannas of green water spreading far and wide.
+
+“There lies my country,” she said, tapping the carpet with her foot.
+
+“But are you not coming with me to see your mother and your sister and
+brothers?”
+
+“Oh! yes,” she cried, with tears in her voice, “if _he_ is willing, if
+he will come with me.”
+
+“So,” the General said sternly, “you have neither country nor kin now,
+Helene?”
+
+“I am his wife,” she answered proudly, and there was something very
+noble in her tone. “This is the first happiness in seven years that has
+not come to me through him,” she said--then, as she caught her father’s
+hand and kissed it--“and this is the first word of reproach that I have
+heard.”
+
+“And your conscience?”
+
+“My conscience; he is my conscience!” she cried, trembling from head to
+foot. “Here he is! Even in the thick of a fight I can tell his footstep
+among all the others on deck,” she cried.
+
+A sudden crimson flushed her cheeks and glowed in her features, her eyes
+lighted up, her complexion changed to velvet whiteness, there was joy
+and love in every fibre, in the blue veins, in the unconscious trembling
+of her whole frame. That quiver of the sensitive plant softened the
+General.
+
+It was as she had said. The captain came in, sat down in an easy-chair,
+took up his oldest boy, and began to play with him. There was a moment’s
+silence, for the General’s deep musing had grown vague and dreamy, and
+the daintily furnished cabin and the playing children seemed like a nest
+of halcyons, floating on the waves, between sky and sea, safe in the
+protection of this man who steered his way amid the perils of war and
+tempest, as other heads of household guide those in their care among
+the hazards of common life. He gazed admiringly at Helene--a dreamlike
+vision of some sea goddess, gracious in her loveliness, rich in
+happiness; all the treasures about her grown poor in comparison with
+the wealth of her nature, paling before the brightness of her eyes, the
+indefinable romance expressed in her and her surroundings.
+
+The strangeness of the situation took the General by surprise; the ideas
+of ordinary life were thrown into confusion by this lofty passion and
+reasoning. Chill and narrow social conventions faded away before this
+picture. All these things the old soldier felt, and saw no less how
+impossible it was that his daughter should give up so wide a life, a
+life so variously rich, filled to the full with such passionate love.
+And Helene had tasted danger without shrinking; how could she return to
+the pretty stage, the superficial circumscribed life of society?
+
+It was the captain who broke the silence at last.
+
+“Am I in the way?” he asked, looking at his wife.
+
+“No,” said the General, answering for her. “Helene has told me all. I
+see that she is lost to us--”
+
+“No,” the captain put in quickly; “in a few years’ time the statute of
+limitations will allow me to go back to France. When the conscience
+is clear, and a man has broken the law in obedience to----” he stopped
+short, as if scorning to justify himself.
+
+“How can you commit new murders, such as I have seen with my own eyes,
+without remorse?”
+
+“We had no provisions,” the privateer captain retorted calmly.
+
+“But if you had set the men ashore--”
+
+“They would have given the alarm and sent a man-of-war after us, and we
+should never have seen Chili again.”
+
+“Before France would have given warning to the Spanish admiralty--”
+ began the General.
+
+“But France might take it amiss that a man, with a warrant still out
+against him, should seize a brig chartered by Bordeaux merchants. And
+for that matter, have you never fired a shot or so too many in battle?”
+
+The General shrank under the other’s eyes. He said no more, and his
+daughter looked at him half sadly, half triumphant.
+
+“General,” the privateer continued, in a deep voice, “I have made it
+a rule to abstract nothing from booty. But even so, my share will be
+beyond a doubt far larger than your fortune. Permit me to return it to
+you in another form--”
+
+He drew a pile of banknotes from the piano, and without counting the
+packets handed a million of francs to the Marquis.
+
+“You can understand,” he said, “that I cannot spend my time in watching
+vessels pass by to Bordeaux. So unless the dangers of this Bohemian
+life of ours have some attraction for you, unless you care to see South
+America and the nights of the tropics, and a bit of fighting now and
+again for the pleasure of helping to win a triumph for a young nation,
+or for the name of Simon Bolivar, we must part. The long boat manned
+with a trustworthy crew is ready for you. And now let us hope that our
+third meeting will be completely happy.”
+
+“Victor,” said Helene in a dissatisfied tone, “I should like to see a
+little more of my father.”
+
+“Ten minutes more or less may bring up a French frigate. However, so be
+it, we shall have a little fun. The men find things dull.”
+
+“Oh, father, go!” cried Helene, “and take these keepsakes from me to my
+sister and brothers and--mother,” she added. She caught up a handful of
+jewels and precious stones, folded them in an Indian shawl, and timidly
+held it out.
+
+“But what shall I say to them from you?” asked he. Her hesitation on the
+word “mother” seemed to have struck him.
+
+“Oh! can you doubt me? I pray for their happiness every day.”
+
+“Helene,” he began, as he watched her closely, “how if we should not
+meet again? Shall I never know why you left us?”
+
+“That secret is not mine,” she answered gravely. “Even if I had the
+right to tell it, perhaps I should not. For ten years I was more
+miserable than words can say--”
+
+She broke off, and gave her father the presents for her family. The
+General had acquired tolerably easy views as to booty in the course of
+a soldier’s career, so he took Helene’s gifts and comforted himself with
+the reflection that the Parisian captain was sure to wage war against
+the Spaniards as an honorable man, under the influence of Helene’s pure
+and high-minded nature. His passion for courage carried all before it.
+It was ridiculous, he thought, to be squeamish in the matter; so he
+shook hands cordially with his captor, and kissed Helene, his only
+daughter, with a soldier’s expansiveness; letting fall a tear on the
+face with the proud, strong look that once he had loved to see. “The
+Parisian,” deeply moved, brought the children for his blessing. The
+parting was over, the last good-bye was a long farewell look, with
+something of tender regret on either side.
+
+
+
+A strange sight to seaward met the General’s eyes. The _Saint-Ferdinand_
+was blazing like a huge bonfire. The men told off to sink the Spanish
+brig had found a cargo of rum on board; and as the _Othello_ was already
+amply supplied, had lighted a floating bowl of punch on the high seas,
+by way of a joke; a pleasantry pardonable enough in sailors, who hail
+any chance excitement as a relief from the apparent monotony of life
+at sea. As the General went over the side into the long-boat of the
+_Saint-Ferdinand_, manned by six vigorous rowers, he could not help
+looking at the burning vessel, as well as at the daughter who stood by
+her husband’s side on the stern of the _Othello_. He saw Helene’s white
+dress flutter like one more sail in the breeze; he saw the tall, noble
+figure against a background of sea, queenly still even in the presence
+of Ocean; and so many memories crowded up in his mind, that, with a
+soldier’s recklessness of life, he forgot that he was being borne over
+the grave of the brave Gomez.
+
+A vast column of smoke rising spread like a brown cloud, pierced here
+and there by fantastic shafts of sunlight. It was a second sky, a murky
+dome reflecting the glow of the fire as if the under surface had been
+burnished; but above it soared the unchanging blue of the firmament, a
+thousand times fairer for the short-lived contrast. The strange hues
+of the smoke cloud, black and red, tawny and pale by turns, blurred
+and blending into each other, shrouded the burning vessel as it flared,
+crackled and groaned; the hissing tongues of flame licked up the
+rigging, and flashed across the hull, like a rumor of riot flashing
+along the streets of a city. The burning rum sent up blue flitting
+lights. Some sea god might have been stirring the furious liquor as
+a student stirs the joyous flames of punch in an orgy. But in the
+overpowering sunlight, jealous of the insolent blaze, the colors were
+scarcely visible, and the smoke was but a film fluttering like a thin
+scarf in the noonday torrent of light and heat.
+
+The _Othello_ made the most of the little wind she could gain to fly
+on her new course. Swaying first to one side, then to the other, like a
+stag beetle on the wing, the fair vessel beat to windward on her zigzag
+flight to the south. Sometimes she was hidden from sight by the straight
+column of smoke that flung fantastic shadows across the water, then
+gracefully she shot out clear of it, and Helene, catching sight of her
+father, waved her handkerchief for yet one more farewell greeting.
+
+A few more minutes, and the _Saint-Ferdinand_ went down with a bubbling
+turmoil, at once effaced by the ocean. Nothing of all that had been
+was left but a smoke cloud hanging in the breeze. The _Othello_ was far
+away, the long-boat had almost reached land, the cloud came between
+the frail skiff and the brig, and it was through a break in the swaying
+smoke that the General caught the last glimpse of Helene. A prophetic
+vision! Her dress and her white handkerchief stood out against the murky
+background. Then the brig was not even visible between the green water
+and the blue sky, and Helene was nothing but an imperceptible speck, a
+faint graceful line, an angel in heaven, a mental image, a memory.
+
+The Marquis had retrieved his fortunes, when he died, worn out with
+toil. A few months after his death, in 1833, the Marquise was obliged to
+take Moïna to a watering-place in the Pyrenees, for the capricious child
+had a wish to see the beautiful mountain scenery. They left the baths,
+and the following tragical incident occurred on their way home.
+
+“Dear me, mother,” said Moïna, “it was very foolish of us not to stay
+among the mountains a few days longer. It was much nicer there. Did
+you hear that horrid child moaning all night, and that wretched woman,
+gabbling away in patois no doubt, for I could not understand a single
+word she said. What kind of people can they have put in the next room to
+ours? This is one of the horridest nights I have ever spent in my life.”
+
+“I heard nothing,” said the Marquise, “but I will see the landlady,
+darling, and engage the next room, and then we shall have the whole
+suite of rooms to ourselves, and there will be no more noise. How do you
+feel this morning? Are you tired?”
+
+As she spoke, the Marquise rose and went to Moïna’s bedside.
+
+“Let us see,” she said, feeling for the girl’s hand.
+
+“Oh! let me alone, mother,” said Moïna; “your fingers are cold.”
+
+She turned her head round on the pillow as she spoke, pettishly, but
+with such engaging grace, that a mother could scarcely have taken it
+amiss. Just then a wailing cry echoed through the next room, a faint
+prolonged cry, that must surely have gone to the heart of any woman who
+heard it.
+
+“Why, if you heard _that_ all night long, why did you not wake me? We
+should have--”
+
+A deeper moan than any that had gone before it interrupted the Marquise.
+
+“Some one is dying there,” she cried, and hurried out of the room.
+
+“Send Pauline to me!” called Moïna. “I shall get up and dress.”
+
+The Marquise hastened downstairs, and found the landlady in the
+courtyard with a little group about her, apparently much interested in
+something that she was telling them.
+
+“Madame, you have put some one in the next room who seems to be very ill
+indeed--”
+
+“Oh! don’t talk to me about it!” cried the mistress of the house. “I
+have just sent some one for the mayor. Just imagine it; it is a woman,
+a poor unfortunate creature that came here last night on foot. She comes
+from Spain; she has no passport and no money; she was carrying her baby
+on her back, and the child was dying. I could not refuse to take her
+in. I went up to see her this morning myself; for when she turned up
+yesterday, it made me feel dreadfully bad to look at her. Poor soul!
+she and the child were lying in bed, and both of them at death’s door.
+‘Madame,’ says she, pulling a gold ring off her finger, ‘this is all
+that I have left; take it in payment, it will be enough; I shall not
+stay here long. Poor little one! we shall die together soon!’ she said,
+looking at the child. I took her ring, and I asked her who she was, but
+she never would tell me her name.... I have just sent for the doctor and
+M. le Maire.”
+
+“Why, you must do all that can be done for her,” cried the Marquise.
+“Good heavens! perhaps it is not too late! I will pay for everything
+that is necessary----”
+
+“Ah! my lady, she looks to me uncommonly proud, and I don’t know that
+she would allow it.”
+
+“I will go to see her at once.”
+
+The Marquise went up forthwith to the stranger’s room, without thinking
+of the shock that the sight of her widow’s weeds might give to a woman
+who was said to be dying. At the sight of that dying woman the Marquise
+turned pale. In spite of the changes wrought by fearful suffering in
+Helene’s beautiful face, she recognized her eldest daughter.
+
+But Helene, when she saw a woman dressed in black, sat upright in bed
+with a shriek of horror. Then she sank back; she knew her mother.
+
+“My daughter,” said Mme. d’Aiglemont, “what is to be done? Pauline!...
+Moïna!...”
+
+“Nothing now for me,” said Helene faintly. “I had hoped to see my father
+once more, but your mourning--” she broke off, clutched her child to her
+heart as if to give it warmth, and kissed its forehead. Then she turned
+her eyes on her mother, and the Marquise met the old reproach in them,
+tempered with forgiveness, it is true, but still reproach. She saw it,
+and would not see it. She forgot that Helene was the child conceived
+amid tears and despair, the child of duty, the cause of one of the
+greatest sorrows in her life. She stole to her eldest daughter’s side,
+remembering nothing but that Helene was her firstborn, the child who had
+taught her to know the joys of motherhood. The mother’s eyes were full
+of tears. “Helene, my child!...” she cried, with her arms about her
+daughter.
+
+Helene was silent. Her own babe had just drawn its last breath on her
+breast.
+
+Moïna came into the room with Pauline, her maid, and the landlady and
+the doctor. The Marquise was holding her daughter’s ice-cold hand in
+both of hers, and gazing at her in despair; but the widowed woman, who
+had escaped shipwreck with but one of all her fair band of children,
+spoke in a voice that was dreadful to hear. “All this is your work,” she
+said. “If you had but been for me all that--”
+
+“Moïna, go! Go out of the room, all of you!” cried Mme. d’Aiglemont, her
+shrill tones drowning Helene’s voice.--“For pity’s sake,” she continued,
+“let us not begin these miserable quarrels again now----”
+
+“I will be silent,” Helene answered with a preternatural effort. “I am a
+mother; I know that Moïna ought not... Where is my child?”
+
+Moïna came back, impelled by curiosity.
+
+“Sister,” said the spoiled child, “the doctor--”
+
+“It is all of no use,” said Helene. “Oh! why did I not die as a girl of
+sixteen when I meant to take my own life? There is no happiness outside
+the laws. Moïna... you...”
+
+Her head sank till her face lay against the face of the little one; in
+her agony she strained her babe to her breast, and died.
+
+“Your sister, Moïna,” said Mme. d’Aiglemont, bursting into tears when
+she reached her room, “your sister meant no doubt to tell you that a
+girl will never find happiness in a romantic life, in living as nobody
+else does, and, above all things, far away from her mother.”
+
+
+
+
+VI. THE OLD AGE OF A GUILTY MOTHER
+
+It was one of the earliest June days of the year 1844. A lady of fifty
+or thereabouts, for she looked older than her actual age, was pacing up
+and down one of the sunny paths in the garden of a great mansion in
+the Rue Plumet in Paris. It was noon. The lady took two or three turns
+along the gently winding garden walk, careful never to lose sight of a
+certain row of windows, to which she seemed to give her whole attention;
+then she sat down on a bench, a piece of elegant semi-rusticity made of
+branches with the bark left on the wood. From the place where she sat
+she could look through the garden railings along the inner boulevards to
+the wonderful dome of the Invalides rising above the crests of a
+forest of elm-trees, and see the less striking view of her own grounds
+terminating in the gray stone front of one of the finest hotels in the
+Faubourg Saint-Germain.
+
+Silence lay over the neighboring gardens, and the boulevards stretching
+away to the Invalides. Day scarcely begins at noon in that aristocratic
+quarter, and masters and servants are all alike asleep, or just
+awakening, unless some young lady takes it into her head to go for an
+early ride, or a gray-headed diplomatist rises betimes to redraft a
+protocol.
+
+The elderly lady stirring abroad at that hour was the Marquise
+d’Aiglemont, the mother of Mme. de Saint-Héreen, to whom the great house
+belonged. The Marquise had made over the mansion and almost her whole
+fortune to her daughter, reserving only an annuity for herself.
+
+The Comtesse Moïna de Saint-Héreen was Mme. d’Aiglemont’s youngest
+child. The Marquise had made every sacrifice to marry her daughter to
+the eldest son of one of the greatest houses of France; and this was
+only what might have been expected, for the lady had lost her sons,
+first one and then the other. Gustave, Marquis d’Aiglemont, had died of
+the cholera; Abel, the second, had fallen in Algeria. Gustave had left
+a widow and children, but the dowager’s affection for her sons had
+been only moderately warm, and for the next generation it was decidedly
+tepid. She was always civil to her daughter-in-law, but her feeling
+towards the young Marquise was the distinctly conventional affection
+which good taste and good manners require us to feel for our relatives.
+The fortunes of her dead children having been settled, she could devote
+her savings and her own property to her darling Moïna.
+
+Moïna, beautiful and fascinating from childhood, was Mme. d’Aiglemont’s
+favorite; loved beyond all the others with an instinctive or involuntary
+love, a fatal drawing of the heart, which sometimes seems inexplicable,
+sometimes, and to a close observer, only too easy to explain. Her
+darling’s pretty face, the sound of Moïna’s voice, her ways, her manner,
+her looks and gestures, roused all the deepest emotions that can stir
+a mother’s heart with trouble, rapture, or delight. The springs of the
+Marquise’s life, of yesterday, to-morrow, and to-day, lay in that young
+heart. Moïna, with better fortune, had survived four older children.
+As a matter of fact, Mme. d’Aiglemont had lost her eldest daughter, a
+charming girl, in a most unfortunate manner, said gossip, nobody knew
+exactly what became of her; and then she lost a little boy of five by a
+dreadful accident.
+
+The child of her affections had, however, been spared to her, and
+doubtless the Marquise saw the will of Heaven in that fact; for those
+who had died, she kept but very shadowy recollections in some far-off
+corner of her heart; her memories of her dead children were like the
+headstones on a battlefield, you can scarcely see them for the flowers
+that have sprung up about them since. Of course, if the world had
+chosen, it might have said some hard truths about the Marquise, might
+have taken her to task for shallowness and an overweening preference for
+one child at the expense of the rest; but the world of Paris is swept
+along by the full flood of new events, new ideas, and new fashions, and
+it was inevitable the Mme. d’Aiglemont should be in some sort allowed
+to drop out of sight. So nobody thought of blaming her for coldness
+or neglect which concerned no one, whereas her quick, apprehensive
+tenderness for Moïna was found highly interesting by not a few who
+respected it as a sort of superstition. Besides, the Marquise scarcely
+went into society at all; and the few families who knew her thought of
+her as a kindly, gentle, indulgent woman, wholly devoted to her family.
+What but a curiosity, keen indeed, would seek to pry beneath the surface
+with which the world is quite satisfied? And what would we not pardon
+to old people, if only they will efface themselves like shadows, and
+consent to be regarded as memories and nothing more!
+
+Indeed, Mme. d’Aiglemont became a kind of example complacently held up
+by the younger generation to fathers of families, and frequently cited
+to mothers-in-law. She had made over her property to Moïna in her own
+lifetime; the young Countess’ happiness was enough for her, she only
+lived in her daughter. If some cautious old person or morose uncle here
+and there condemned the course with--“Perhaps Mme. d’Aiglemont may be
+sorry some day that she gave up her fortune to her daughter; she may
+be sure of Moïna, but how can she be equally sure of her
+son-in-law?”--these prophets were cried down on all sides, and from all
+sides a chorus of praise went up for Moïna.
+
+“It ought to be said, in justice to Mme. de Saint-Héreen, that her
+mother cannot feel the slightest difference,” remarked a young married
+woman. “Mme. d’Aiglemont is admirably well housed. She has a carriage at
+her disposal, and can go everywhere just as she used to do--”
+
+“Except to the Italiens,” remarked a low voice. (This was an elderly
+parasite, one of those persons who show their independence--as they
+think--by riddling their friends with epigrams.) “Except to the
+Italiens. And if the dowager cares for anything on this earth but her
+daughter--it is music. Such a good performer she was in her time! But
+the Countess’ box is always full of young butterflies, and the Countess’
+mother would be in the way; the young lady is talked about already as a
+great flirt. So the poor mother never goes to the Italiens.”
+
+“Mme. de Saint-Héreen has delightful ‘At Homes’ for her mother,” said a
+rosebud. “All Paris goes to her salon.
+
+“And no one pays any attention to the Marquise,” returned the parasite.
+
+“The fact is that Mme. d’Aiglemont is never alone,” remarked a coxcomb,
+siding with the young women.
+
+“In the morning,” the old observer continued in a discreet voice, “in
+the morning dear Moïna is asleep. At four o’clock dear Moïna drives
+in the Bois. In the evening dear Moïna goes to a ball or to the
+Bouffes.--Still, it is certainly true that Mme. d’Aiglemont has the
+privilege of seeing her dear daughter while she dresses, and again at
+dinner, if dear Moïna happens to dine with her mother. Not a week ago,
+sir,” continued the elderly person, laying his hand on the arm of the
+shy tutor, a new arrival in the house, “not a week ago, I saw the poor
+mother, solitary and sad, by her own fireside.--‘What is the matter?’ I
+asked. The Marquise looked up smiling, but I am quite sure that she had
+been crying.--‘I was thinking that it is a strange thing that I should
+be left alone when I have had five children,’ she said, ‘but that is
+our destiny! And besides, I am happy when I know that Moïna is enjoying
+herself.’--She could say that to me, for I knew her husband when he was
+alive. A poor stick he was, and uncommonly lucky to have such a wife; it
+was certainly owing to her that he was made a peer of France, and had a
+place at Court under Charles X.”
+
+Yet such mistaken ideas get about in social gossip, and such mischief
+is done by it, that the historian of manners is bound to exercise his
+discretion, and weigh the assertions so recklessly made. After all, who
+is to say that either mother or daughter was right or wrong? There is
+but One who can read and judge their hearts! And how often does He wreak
+His vengeance in the family circle, using throughout all time children
+as His instruments against their mothers, and fathers against their
+sons, raising up peoples against kings, and princes against peoples,
+sowing strife and division everywhere? And in the world of ideas, are
+not opinions and feelings expelled by new feelings and opinions, much
+as withered leaves are thrust forth by the young leaf-buds in the
+spring?--all in obedience to the immutable Scheme; all to some end which
+God alone knows. Yet, surely, all things proceed to Him, or rather, to
+Him all things return.
+
+Such thoughts of religion, the natural thoughts of age, floated up
+now and again on the current of Mme. d’Aiglemont’s thoughts; they were
+always dimly present in her mind, but sometimes they shone out clearly,
+sometimes they were carried under, like flowers tossed on the vexed
+surface of a stormy sea.
+
+She sat on a garden-seat, tired with walking, exhausted with much
+thinking--with the long thoughts in which a whole lifetime rises up
+before the mind, and is spread out like a scroll before the eyes of
+those who feel that Death is near.
+
+If a poet had chanced to pass along the boulevard, he would have found
+an interesting picture in the face of this woman, grown old before her
+time. As she sat under the dotted shadow of the acacia, the shadow the
+acacia casts at noon, a thousand thoughts were written for all the world
+to see on her features, pale and cold even in the hot, bright sunlight.
+There was something sadder than the sense of waning life in that
+expressive face, some trouble that went deeper than the weariness of
+experience. It was a face of a type that fixes you in a moment among a
+host of characterless faces that fail to draw a second glance, a face
+to set you thinking. Among a thousand pictures in a gallery, you are
+strongly impressed by the sublime anguish on the face of some Madonna
+of Murillo’s; by some _Beatrice Cenci_ in which Guido’s art portrays the
+most touching innocence against a background of horror and crime; by the
+awe and majesty that should encircle a king, caught once and for ever
+by Velasquez in the sombre face of a Philip II., and so is it with some
+living human faces; they are tyrannous pictures which speak to you,
+submit you to searching scrutiny, and give response to your inmost
+thoughts, nay, there are faces that set forth a whole drama, and Mme.
+d’Aiglemont’s stony face was one of these awful tragedies, one of such
+faces as Dante Alighieri saw by thousands in his vision.
+
+For the little season that a woman’s beauty is in flower it serves her
+admirably well in the dissimulation to which her natural weakness and
+our social laws condemn her. A young face and rich color, and eyes that
+glow with light, a gracious maze of such subtle, manifold lines and
+curves, flawless and perfectly traced, is a screen that hides everything
+that stirs the woman within. A flush tells nothing, it only heightens
+the coloring so brilliant already; all the fires that burn within
+can add little light to the flame of life in eyes which only seem the
+brighter for the flash of a passing pain. Nothing is so discreet as a
+young face, for nothing is less mobile; it has the serenity, the surface
+smoothness, and the freshness of a lake. There is not character in
+women’s faces before the age of thirty. The painter discovers nothing
+there but pink and white, and the smile and expression that repeat the
+same thought in the same way--a thought of youth and love that goes no
+further than youth and love. But the face of an old woman has expressed
+all that lay in her nature; passion has carved lines on her features;
+love and wifehood and motherhood, and extremes of joy and anguish,
+having wrung them, and left their traces in a thousand wrinkles, all
+of which speak a language of their own; then it is that a woman’s face
+becomes sublime in its horror, beautiful in its melancholy, grand in its
+calm. If it is permissible to carry the strange metaphor still further,
+it might be said that in the dried-up lake you can see the traces of
+all the torrents that once poured into it and made it what it is. An old
+face is nothing to the frivolous world; the frivolous world is shocked
+by the sight of the destruction of such comeliness as it can understand;
+a commonplace artist sees nothing there. An old face is the province of
+the poets among poets of those who can recognize that something which
+is called Beauty, apart from all the conventions underlying so many
+superstitions in art and taste.
+
+
+
+Though Mme. d’Aiglemont wore a fashionable bonnet, it was easy to see
+that her once black hair had been bleached by cruel sorrows; yet her
+good taste and the gracious acquired instincts of a woman of fashion
+could be seen in the way she wore it, divided into two _bandeaux_,
+following the outlines of a forehead that still retained some traces of
+former dazzling beauty, worn and lined though it was. The contours
+of her face, the regularity of her features, gave some idea, faint in
+truth, of that beauty of which surely she had once been proud; but those
+traces spoke still more plainly of the anguish which had laid it waste,
+of sharp pain that had withered the temples, and made those hollows in
+her cheeks, and empurpled the eyelids, and robbed them of their lashes,
+and the eyes of their charm. She was in every way so noiseless; she
+moved with a slow, self-contained gravity that showed itself in her
+whole bearing, and struck a certain awe into others. Her diffident
+manner had changed to positive shyness, due apparently to a habit now of
+some years’ growth, of effacing herself in her daughter’s presence. She
+spoke very seldom, and in the low tones used by those who perforce must
+live within themselves a life of reflection and concentration. This
+demeanor led others to regard her with an indefinable feeling which was
+neither awe nor compassion, but a mysterious blending of the many ideas
+awakened in us by compassion and awe. Finally, there was something in
+her wrinkles, in the lines of her face, in the look of pain in those
+wan eyes of hers, that bore eloquent testimony to tears that never had
+fallen, tears that had been absorbed by her heart. Unhappy creatures,
+accustomed to raise their eyes to heaven, in mute appeal against the
+bitterness of their lot, would have seen at once from her eyes that she
+was broken in to the cruel discipline of ceaseless prayer, would have
+discerned the almost imperceptible symptoms of the secret bruises which
+destroy all the flowers of the soul, even the sentiment of motherhood.
+
+Painters have colors for these portraits, but words, and the mental
+images called up by words, fail to reproduce such impressions
+faithfully; there are mysterious signs and tokens in the tones of the
+coloring and in the look of human faces, which the mind only seizes
+through the sense of sight; and the poet is fain to record the tale
+of the events which wrought the havoc to make their terrible ravages
+understood.
+
+The face spoke of cold and steady storm, an inward conflict between a
+mother’s long-suffering and the limitations of our nature, for our human
+affections are bounded by our humanity, and the infinite has no place
+in finite creatures. Sorrow endured in silence had at last produced an
+indefinable morbid something in this woman. Doubtless mental anguish had
+reacted on the physical frame, and some disease, perhaps an aneurism,
+was undermining Julie’s life. Deep-seated grief lies to all appearance
+very quietly in the depths where it is conceived, yet, so still and
+apparently dormant as it is, it ceaselessly corrodes the soul, like the
+terrible acid which eats away crystal.
+
+Two tears made their way down the Marquise’s cheeks; she rose to her
+feet as if some thought more poignant than any that preceded it had cut
+her to the quick. She had doubtless come to a conclusion as to Moïna’s
+future; and now, foreseeing clearly all the troubles in store for her
+child, the sorrows of her own unhappy life had begun to weigh once
+more upon her. The key of her position must be sought in her daughter’s
+situation.
+
+The Comte de Saint-Héreen had been away for nearly six months on a
+political mission. The Countess, whether from sheer giddiness, or in
+obedience to the countless instincts of woman’s coquetry, or to essay
+its power--with all the vanity of a frivolous fine lady, all the
+capricious waywardness of a child--was amusing herself, during her
+husband’s absence, by playing with the passion of a clever but heartless
+man, distracted (so he said) with love, the love that combines readily
+with every petty social ambition of a self-conceited coxcomb. Mme.
+d’Aiglemont, whose long experience had given her a knowledge of life,
+and taught her to judge of men and to dread the world, watched the
+course of this flirtation, and saw that it could only end in one way,
+if her daughter should fall into the hands of an utterly unscrupulous
+intriguer. How could it be other than a terrible thought for her that
+her daughter listened willingly to this _roue_? Her darling stood on the
+brink of a precipice, she felt horribly sure of it, yet dared not hold
+her back. She was afraid of the Countess. She knew too that Moïna would
+not listen to her wise warnings; she knew that she had no influence
+over that nature--iron for her, silken-soft for all others. Her mother’s
+tenderness might have led her to sympathize with the troubles of a
+passion called forth by the nobler qualities of a lover, but this was
+no passion--it was coquetry, and the Marquise despised Alfred de
+Vandenesse, knowing that he had entered upon this flirtation with Moïna
+as if it were a game of chess.
+
+But if Alfred de Vandenesse made her shudder with disgust, she was
+obliged--unhappy mother!--to conceal the strongest reason for her
+loathing in the deepest recesses of her heart. She was on terms of
+intimate friendship with the Marquis de Vandenesse, the young man’s
+father; and this friendship, a respectable one in the eyes of the world,
+excused the son’s constant presence in the house, he professing an old
+attachment, dating from childhood, for Mme. de Saint-Héreen. More than
+this, in vain did Mme. d’Aiglemont nerve herself to come between Moïna
+and Alfred de Vandenesse with a terrible word, knowing beforehand that
+she should not succeed; knowing that the strong reason which ought to
+separate them would carry no weight; that she should humiliate herself
+vainly in her daughter’s eyes. Alfred was too corrupt; Moïna too clever
+to believe the revelation; the young Countess would turn it off and
+treat it as a piece of maternal strategy. Mme. d’Aiglemont had built
+her prison walls with her own hands; she had immured herself only to
+see Moïna’s happiness ruined thence before she died; she was to look on
+helplessly at the ruin of the young life which had been her pride and
+joy and comfort, a life a thousand times dearer to her than her
+own. What words can describe anguish so hideous beyond belief, such
+unfathomed depths of pain?
+
+She waited for Moïna to rise, with the impatience and sickening dread
+of a doomed man, who longs to have done with life, and turns cold at the
+thought of the headsman. She had braced herself for a last effort, but
+perhaps the prospect of the certain failure of the attempt was less
+dreadful to her than the fear of receiving yet again one of those
+thrusts that went to her very heart--before that fear her courage ebbed
+away. Her mother’s love had come to this. To love her child, to be
+afraid of her, to shrink from the thought of the stab, yet to go
+forward. So great is a mother’s affection in a loving nature, that
+before it can fade away into indifference the mother herself must die
+or find support in some great power without her, in religion or another
+love. Since the Marquise rose that morning, her fatal memory had called
+up before her some of those things, so slight to all appearance, that
+make landmarks in a life. Sometimes, indeed, a whole tragedy grows out
+of a single gesture; the tone in which a few words were spoken rends a
+whole life in two; a glance into indifferent eyes is the deathblow of
+the gladdest love; and, unhappily, such gestures and such words were
+only too familiar to Mme. d’Aiglemont--she had met so many glances that
+wound the soul. No, there was nothing in those memories to bid her hope.
+On the contrary, everything went to show that Alfred had destroyed her
+hold on her daughter’s heart, that the thought of her was now associated
+with duty--not with gladness. In ways innumerable, in things that were
+mere trifles in themselves, the Countess’ detestable conduct rose
+up before her mother; and the Marquise, it may be, looked on Moïna’s
+undutifulness as a punishment, and found excuses for her daughter in the
+will of Heaven, that so she still might adore the hand that smote her.
+
+All these things passed through her memory that morning, and each
+recollection wounded her afresh so sorely, that with a very little
+additional pain her brimming cup of bitterness must have overflowed. A
+cold look might kill her.
+
+The little details of domestic life are difficult to paint; but one or
+two perhaps will suffice to give an idea of the rest.
+
+The Marquise d’Aiglemont, for instance, had grown rather deaf, but she
+could never induce Moïna to raise her voice for her. Once, with the
+naivete of suffering, she had begged Moïna to repeat some remark which
+she had failed to catch, and Moïna obeyed, but with so bad a grace, that
+Mme. d’Aiglemont had never permitted herself to make her modest request
+again. Ever since that day when Moïna was talking or retailing a
+piece of news, her mother was careful to come near to listen; but this
+infirmity of deafness appeared to put the Countess out of patience,
+and she would grumble thoughtlessly about it. This instance is one
+from among very many that must have gone to the mother’s heart; and yet
+nearly all of them might have escaped a close observer, they consisted
+in faint shades of manner invisible to any but a woman’s eyes. Take
+another example. Mme. d’Aiglemont happened to say one day that the
+Princesse de Cadignan had called upon her. “Did she come to see _you_!”
+ Moïna exclaimed. That was all, but the Countess’ voice and manner
+expressed surprise and well-bred contempt in semitones. Any heart,
+still young and sensitive, might well have applauded the philanthropy of
+savage tribes who kill off their old people when they grow too feeble
+to cling to a strongly shaken bough. Mme. d’Aiglemont rose smiling, and
+went away to weep alone.
+
+Well-bred people, and women especially, only betray their feelings
+by imperceptible touches; but those who can look back over their own
+experience on such bruises as this mother’s heart received, know also
+how the heart-strings vibrate to these light touches. Overcome by her
+memories, Mme. d’Aiglemont recollected one of those microscopically
+small things, so stinging and so painful was it that never till this
+moment had she felt all the heartless contempt that lurked beneath
+smiles.
+
+At the sound of shutters thrown back at her daughter’s windows, she
+dried her tears, and hastened up the pathway by the railings. As she
+went, it struck her that the gardener had been unusually careful to rake
+the sand along the walk which had been neglected for some little time.
+As she stood under her daughter’s windows, the shutters were hastily
+closed.
+
+“Moïna, is it you?” she asked.
+
+No answer.
+
+The Marquise went on into the house.
+
+“Mme. la Comtesse is in the little drawing-room,” said the maid, when
+the Marquise asked whether Mme. de Saint-Héreen had finished dressing.
+
+Mme. d’Aiglemont hurried to the little drawing-room; her heart was too
+full, her brain too busy to notice matters so slight; but there on the
+sofa sat the Countess in her loose morning-gown, her hair in disorder
+under the cap tossed carelessly on her head, her feet thrust into
+slippers. The key of her bedroom hung at her girdle. Her face, aglow
+with color, bore traces of almost stormy thought.
+
+“What makes people come in!” she cried, crossly. “Oh! it is you,
+mother,” she interrupted herself, with a preoccupied look.
+
+“Yes, child; it is your mother----”
+
+Something in her tone turned those words into an outpouring of the
+heart, the cry of some deep inward feeling, only to be described by the
+word “holy.” So thoroughly in truth had she rehabilitated the sacred
+character of a mother, that her daughter was impressed, and turned
+towards her, with something of awe, uneasiness, and remorse in her
+manner. The room was the furthest of a suite, and safe from indiscreet
+intrusion, for no one could enter it without giving warning of approach
+through the previous apartments. The Marquise closed the door.
+
+“It is my duty, my child, to warn you in one of the most serious crises
+in the lives of us women; you have perhaps reached it unconsciously, and
+I am come to speak to you as a friend rather than as a mother. When you
+married, you acquired freedom of action; you are only accountable to
+your husband now; but I asserted my authority so little (perhaps I was
+wrong), that I think I have a right to expect you to listen to me, for
+once at least, in a critical position when you must need counsel. Bear
+in mind, Moïna that you are married to a man of high ability, a man of
+whom you may well be proud, a man who--”
+
+“I know what you are going to say, mother!” Moïna broke in pettishly. “I
+am to be lectured about Alfred--”
+
+“Moïna,” the Marquise said gravely, as she struggled with her tears,
+“you would not guess at once if you did not feel--”
+
+“What?” asked Moïna, almost haughtily. “Why, really, mother--”
+
+Mme. d’Aiglemont summoned up all her strength. “Moïna,” she said, “you
+must attend carefully to this that I ought to tell you--”
+
+“I am attending,” returned the Countess, folding her arms, and affecting
+insolent submission. “Permit me, mother, to ring for Pauline,” she added
+with incredible self-possession; “I will send her away first.”
+
+She rang the bell.
+
+“My dear child, Pauline cannot possibly hear--”
+
+“Mamma,” interrupted the Countess, with a gravity which must have struck
+her mother as something unusual, “I must--”
+
+She stopped short, for the woman was in the room.
+
+“Pauline, go _yourself_ to Baudran’s, and ask why my hat has not yet
+been sent.”
+
+Then the Countess reseated herself and scrutinized her mother. The
+Marquise, with a swelling heart and dry eyes, in painful agitation,
+which none but a mother can fully understand, began to open Moïna’s eyes
+to the risk that she was running. But either the Countess felt hurt
+and indignant at her mother’s suspicions of a son of the Marquis de
+Vandenesse, or she was seized with a sudden fit of inexplicable levity
+caused by the inexperience of youth. She took advantage of a pause.
+
+“Mamma, I thought you were only jealous of _the father_--” she said,
+with a forced laugh.
+
+Mme. d’Aiglemont shut her eyes and bent her head at the words, with a
+very faint, almost inaudible sigh. She looked up and out into space,
+as if she felt the common overmastering impulse to appeal to God at the
+great crises of our lives; then she looked at her daughter, and her eyes
+were full of awful majesty and the expression of profound sorrow.
+
+“My child,” she said, and her voice was hardly recognizable, “you have
+been less merciful to your mother than he against whom she sinned; less
+merciful than perhaps God Himself will be!”
+
+Mme. d’Aiglemont rose; at the door she turned; but she saw nothing but
+surprise in her daughter’s face. She went out. Scarcely had she reached
+the garden when her strength failed her. There was a violent pain at her
+heart, and she sank down on a bench. As her eyes wandered over the path,
+she saw fresh marks on the path, a man’s footprints were distinctly
+recognizable. It was too late, then, beyond a doubt. Now she began to
+understand the reason for that order given to Pauline, and with these
+torturing thoughts came a revelation more hateful than any that had
+gone before it. She drew her own inferences--the son of the Marquis
+de Vandenesse had destroyed all feeling of respect for her in her
+daughter’s mind. The physical pain grew worse; by degrees she lost
+consciousness, and sat like one asleep upon the garden-seat.
+
+The Countess de Saint-Héreen, left to herself, thought that her mother
+had given her a somewhat shrewd home-thrust, but a kiss and a few
+attentions that evening would make all right again.
+
+A shrill cry came from the garden. She leaned carelessly out, as
+Pauline, not yet departed on her errand, called out for help, holding
+the Marquise in her arms.
+
+“Do not frighten my daughter!” those were the last words the mother
+uttered.
+
+Moïna saw them carry in a pale and lifeless form that struggled for
+breath, and arms moving restlessly as in protest or effort to speak; and
+overcome by the sight, Moïna followed in silence, and helped to undress
+her mother and lay her on her bed. The burden of her fault was greater
+than she could bear. In that supreme hour she learned to know her
+mother--too late, she could make no reparation now. She would have them
+leave her alone with her mother; and when there was no one else in the
+room, when she felt that the hand which had always been so tender for
+her was now grown cold to her touch, she broke out into weeping. Her
+tears aroused the Marquise; she could still look at her darling
+Moïna; and at the sound of sobbing, that seemed as if it must rend the
+delicate, disheveled breast, could smile back at her daughter. That
+smile taught the unnatural child that forgiveness is always to be found
+in the great deep of a mother’s heart.
+
+
+
+Servants on horseback had been dispatched at once for the physician and
+surgeon and for Mme. d’Aiglemont’s grandchildren. Mme. d’Aiglemont the
+younger and her little sons arrived with the medical men, a sufficiently
+impressive, silent, and anxious little group, which the servants of the
+house came to join. The young Marquise, hearing no sound, tapped gently
+at the door. That signal, doubtless, roused Moïna from her grief, for
+she flung open the doors and stood before them. No words could have
+spoken more plainly than that disheveled figure looking out with haggard
+eyes upon the assembled family. Before that living picture of Remorse
+the rest were dumb. It was easy to see that the Marquise’s feet were
+stretched out stark and stiff with the agony of death; and Moïna,
+leaning against the door-frame, looking into their faces, spoke in a
+hollow voice:
+
+“I have lost my mother!”
+
+
+PARIS, 1828-1844.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+     Aiglemont, General, Marquis Victor d’
+       At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+
+     Bonaparte, Napoleon
+       The Vendetta
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       Colonel Chabert
+       Domestic Peace
+       The Seamy Side of History
+
+     Camps, Madame Octave de (nee Cadignan)
+       Madame Firmiani
+       The Government Clerks
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Chatillonest, De
+       Modeste Mignon
+
+     Crottat, Alexandre
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Colonel Chabert
+       A Start in Life
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Desroches (son)
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+       Colonel Chabert
+       A Start in Life
+       The Commission in Lunacy
+       The Government Clerks
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       A Man of Business
+       The Middle Classes
+
+     Duroc, Gerard-Christophe-Michel
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+
+     Ronquerolles, Marquis de
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+       The Peasantry
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Thirteen
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Saint-Héreen, Comtesse Moïna de
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Sérizy, Comtesse de
+       A Start in Life
+       The Thirteen
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+
+     Vandenesse, Marquis Charles de
+       A Start in Life
+       A Daughter of Eve
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1950 ***
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+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html lang="en">
+
+<head>
+  <meta charset="utf-8">
+  <title>A Woman of Thirty | Project Gutenberg</title>
+  <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover">
+    <style>
+
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+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
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+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1950 ***</div>
+    <h1>
+      A WOMAN OF THIRTY
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Honore De Balzac
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br><br>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Translated by Ellen Marriage
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br> <br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <br> <br>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      DEDICATION<br><br> To Louis Boulanger, Painter.<br>
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br> <br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <br> <br>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>A WOMAN OF THIRTY</b> </a>
+    </h3>
+    <table style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          EARLY MISTAKES
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          A HIDDEN GRIEF
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III. &nbsp;&nbsp;</a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          AT THIRTY YEARS
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE FINGER OF GOD
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> V. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          TWO MEETINGS
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VI. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE OLD AGE OF A GUILTY MOTHER
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> ADDENDUM </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br> <br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <br> <br> <a id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      A WOMAN OF THIRTY
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I. EARLY MISTAKES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was a Sunday morning in the beginning of April 1813, a morning which
+      gave promise of one of those bright days when Parisians, for the first
+      time in the year, behold dry pavements underfoot and a cloudless sky
+      overhead. It was not yet noon when a luxurious cabriolet, drawn by two
+      spirited horses, turned out of the Rue de Castiglione into the Rue de
+      Rivoli, and drew up behind a row of carriages standing before the newly
+      opened barrier half-way down the Terrasse de Feuillants. The owner of the
+      carriage looked anxious and out of health; the thin hair on his sallow
+      temples, turning gray already, gave a look of premature age to his face.
+      He flung the reins to a servant who followed on horseback, and alighted to
+      take in his arms a young girl whose dainty beauty had already attracted
+      the eyes of loungers on the Terrasse. The little lady, standing upon the
+      carriage step, graciously submitted to be taken by the waist, putting an
+      arm round the neck of her guide, who set her down upon the pavement
+      without so much as ruffling the trimming of her green rep dress. No lover
+      would have been so careful. The stranger could only be the father of the
+      young girl, who took his arm familiarly without a word of thanks, and
+      hurried him into the Garden of the Tuileries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old father noted the wondering stare which some of the young men gave
+      the couple, and the sad expression left his face for a moment. Although he
+      had long since reached the time of life when a man is fain to be content
+      with such illusory delights as vanity bestows, he began to smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They think you are my wife,&rdquo; he said in the young lady&rsquo;s ear, and he held
+      himself erect and walked with slow steps, which filled his daughter with
+      despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed to take up the coquette&rsquo;s part for her; perhaps of the two, he
+      was the more gratified by the curious glances directed at those little
+      feet, shod with plum-colored prunella; at the dainty figure outlined by a
+      low-cut bodice, filled in with an embroidered chemisette, which only
+      partially concealed the girlish throat. Her dress was lifted by her
+      movements as she walked, giving glimpses higher than the shoes of
+      delicately moulded outlines beneath open-work silk stockings. More than
+      one of the idlers turned and passed the pair again, to admire or to catch
+      a second glimpse of the young face, about which the brown tresses played;
+      there was a glow in its white and red, partly reflected from the
+      rose-colored satin lining of her fashionable bonnet, partly due to the
+      eagerness and impatience which sparkled in every feature. A mischievous
+      sweetness lighted up the beautiful, almond-shaped dark eyes, bathed in
+      liquid brightness, shaded by the long lashes and curving arch of eyebrow.
+      Life and youth displayed their treasures in the petulant face and in the
+      gracious outlines of the bust unspoiled even by the fashion of the day,
+      which brought the girdle under the breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young lady herself appeared to be insensible to admiration. Her eyes
+      were fixed in a sort of anxiety on the Palace of the Tuileries, the goal,
+      doubtless, of her petulant promenade. It wanted but fifteen minutes of
+      noon, yet even at that early hour several women in gala dress were coming
+      away from the Tuileries, not without backward glances at the gates and
+      pouting looks of discontent, as if they regretted the lateness of the
+      arrival which had cheated them of a longed-for spectacle. Chance carried a
+      few words let fall by one of these disappointed fair ones to the ears of
+      the charming stranger, and put her in a more than common uneasiness. The
+      elderly man watched the signs of impatience and apprehension which flitted
+      across his companion&rsquo;s pretty face with interest, rather than amusement,
+      in his eyes, observing her with a close and careful attention, which
+      perhaps could only be prompted by some after-thought in the depths of a
+      father&rsquo;s mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the thirteenth Sunday of the year 1813. In two days&rsquo; time Napoleon
+      was to set out upon the disastrous campaign in which he was to lose first
+      Bessières, and then Duroc; he was to win the memorable battles of Lutzen
+      and Bautzen, to see himself treacherously deserted by Austria, Saxony,
+      Bavaria, and Bernadotte, and to dispute the dreadful field of Leipsic. The
+      magnificent review commanded for that day by the Emperor was to be the
+      last of so many which had long drawn forth the admiration of Paris and of
+      foreign visitors. For the last time the Old Guard would execute their
+      scientific military manoeuvres with the pomp and precision which sometimes
+      amazed the Giant himself. Napoleon was nearly ready for his duel with
+      Europe. It was a sad sentiment which brought a brilliant and curious
+      throng to the Tuileries. Each mind seemed to foresee the future, perhaps
+      too in every mind another thought was dimly present, how that in the
+      future, when the heroic age of France should have taken the half-fabulous
+      color with which it is tinged for us to-day, men&rsquo;s imaginations would more
+      than once seek to retrace the picture of the pageant which they were
+      assembled to behold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do let us go more quickly, father; I can hear the drums,&rdquo; the young girl
+      said, and in a half-teasing, half-coaxing manner she urged her companion
+      forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The troops are marching into the Tuileries,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or marching out of it&mdash;everybody is coming away,&rdquo; she answered in
+      childish vexation, which drew a smile from her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The review only begins at half-past twelve,&rdquo; he said; he had fallen half
+      behind his impetuous daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It might have been supposed that she meant to hasten their progress by a
+      movement of her right arm, for it swung like an oar blade through the
+      water. In her impatience she had crushed her handkerchief into a ball in
+      her tiny, well-gloved fingers. Now and then the old man smiled, but the
+      smiles were succeeded by an anxious look which crossed his withered face
+      and saddened it. In his love for the fair young girl by his side, he was
+      as fain to exalt the present moment as to dread the future. &ldquo;She is happy
+      to-day; will her happiness last?&rdquo; he seemed to ask himself, for the old
+      are somewhat prone to foresee their own sorrows in the future of the
+      young.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Father and daughter reached the peristyle under the tower where the
+      tricolor flag was still waving; but as they passed under the arch by which
+      people came and went between the Gardens of the Tuileries and the Place du
+      Carrousel, the sentries on guard called out sternly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No admittance this way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By standing on tiptoe the young girl contrived to catch a glimpse of a
+      crowd of well-dressed women, thronging either side of the old marble
+      arcade along which the Emperor was to pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were too late in starting, father; you can see that quite well.&rdquo; A
+      little piteous pout revealed the immense importance which she attached to
+      the sight of this particular review.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, Julie&mdash;let us go away. You dislike a crush.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do let us stay, father. Even here I may catch a glimpse of the Emperor;
+      he might die during this campaign, and then I should never have seen him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father shuddered at the selfish speech. There were tears in the girl&rsquo;s
+      voice; he looked at her, and thought that he saw tears beneath her lowered
+      eyelids; tears caused not so much by the disappointment as by one of the
+      troubles of early youth, a secret easily guessed by an old father.
+      Suddenly Julie&rsquo;s face flushed, and she uttered an exclamation. Neither her
+      father nor the sentinels understood the meaning of the cry; but an officer
+      within the barrier, who sprang across the court towards the staircase,
+      heard it, and turned abruptly at the sound. He went to the arcade by the
+      Gardens of the Tuileries, and recognized the young lady who had been
+      hidden for a moment by the tall bearskin caps of the grenadiers. He set
+      aside in favor of the pair the order which he himself had given. Then,
+      taking no heed of the murmurings of the fashionable crowd seated under the
+      arcade, he gently drew the enraptured child towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am no longer surprised at her vexation and enthusiasm, if <i>you</i>
+      are in waiting,&rdquo; the old man said with a half-mocking, half-serious glance
+      at the officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you want a good position, M. le Duc,&rdquo; the young man answered, &ldquo;we must
+      not spend any time in talking. The Emperor does not like to be kept
+      waiting, and the Grand Marshal has sent me to announce our readiness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, he had taken Julie&rsquo;s arm with a certain air of old
+      acquaintance, and drew her rapidly in the direction of the Place du
+      Carrousel. Julie was astonished at the sight. An immense crowd was penned
+      up in a narrow space, shut in between the gray walls of the palace and the
+      limits marked out by chains round the great sanded squares in the midst of
+      the courtyard of the Tuileries. The cordon of sentries posted to keep a
+      clear passage for the Emperor and his staff had great difficulty in
+      keeping back the eager humming swarm of human beings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it going to be a very fine sight?&rdquo; Julie asked (she was radiant now).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pray take care!&rdquo; cried her guide, and seizing Julie by the waist, he
+      lifted her up with as much vigor as rapidity and set her down beside a
+      pillar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But for his prompt action, his gazing kinswoman would have come into
+      collision with the hindquarters of a white horse which Napoleon&rsquo;s Mameluke
+      held by the bridle; the animal in its trappings of green velvet and gold
+      stood almost under the arcade, some ten paces behind the rest of the
+      horses in readiness for the Emperor&rsquo;s staff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young officer placed the father and daughter in front of the crowd in
+      the first space to the right, and recommended them by a sign to the two
+      veteran grenadiers on either side. Then he went on his way into the
+      palace; a look of great joy and happiness had succeeded to his
+      horror-struck expression when the horse backed. Julie had given his hand a
+      mysterious pressure; had she meant to thank him for the little service he
+      had done her, or did she tell him, &ldquo;After all, I shall really see you?&rdquo;
+       She bent her head quite graciously in response to the respectful bow by
+      which the officer took leave of them before he vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man stood a little behind his daughter. He looked grave. He seemed
+      to have left the two young people together for some purpose of his own,
+      and now he furtively watched the girl, trying to lull her into false
+      security by appearing to give his whole attention to the magnificent sight
+      in the Place du Carrousel. When Julie&rsquo;s eyes turned to her father with the
+      expression of a schoolboy before his master, he answered her glance by a
+      gay, kindly smile, but his own keen eyes had followed the officer under
+      the arcade, and nothing of all that passed was lost upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a grand sight!&rdquo; said Julie in a low voice, as she pressed her
+      father&rsquo;s hand; and indeed the pomp and picturesquesness of the spectacle
+      in the Place du Carrousel drew the same exclamation from thousands upon
+      thousands of spectators, all agape with wonder. Another array of
+      sightseers, as tightly packed as the ranks behind the old noble and his
+      daughter, filled the narrow strip of pavement by the railings which
+      crossed the Place du Carrousel from side to side in a line parallel with
+      the Palace of the Tuileries. The dense living mass, variegated by the
+      colors of the women&rsquo;s dresses, traced out a bold line across the centre of
+      the Place du Carrousel, filling in the fourth side of a vast
+      parallelogram, surrounded on three sides by the Palace of the Tuileries
+      itself. Within the precincts thus railed off stood the regiments of the
+      Old Guard about to be passed in review, drawn up opposite the Palace in
+      imposing blue columns, ten ranks in depth. Without and beyond in the Place
+      du Carrousel stood several regiments likewise drawn up in parallel lines,
+      ready to march in through the arch in the centre; the Triumphal Arch,
+      where the bronze horses of St. Mark from Venice used to stand in those
+      days. At either end, by the Galeries du Louvre, the regimental bands were
+      stationed, masked by the Polish Lancers then on duty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The greater part of the vast graveled space was empty as an arena, ready
+      for the evolutions of those silent masses disposed with the symmetry of
+      military art. The sunlight blazed back from ten thousand bayonets in thin
+      points of flame; the breeze ruffled the men&rsquo;s helmet plumes till they
+      swayed like the crests of forest-trees before a gale. The mute glittering
+      ranks of veterans were full of bright contrasting colors, thanks to their
+      different uniforms, weapons, accoutrements, and aiguillettes; and the
+      whole great picture, that miniature battlefield before the combat, was
+      framed by the majestic towering walls of the Tuileries, which officers and
+      men seemed to rival in their immobility. Involuntarily the spectator made
+      the comparison between the walls of men and the walls of stone. The spring
+      sunlight, flooding white masonry reared but yesterday and buildings
+      centuries old, shone full likewise upon thousands of bronzed faces, each
+      one with its own tale of perils passed, each one gravely expectant of
+      perils to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The colonels of the regiments came and went alone before the ranks of
+      heroes; and behind the masses of troops, checkered with blue and silver
+      and gold and purple, the curious could discern the tricolor pennons on the
+      lances of some half-a-dozen indefatigable Polish cavalry, rushing about
+      like shepherds&rsquo; dogs in charge of a flock, caracoling up and down between
+      the troops and the crowd, to keep the gazers within their proper bounds.
+      But for this slight flutter of movement, the whole scene might have been
+      taking place in the courtyard of the palace of the Sleeping Beauty. The
+      very spring breeze, ruffling up the long fur on the grenadiers&rsquo; bearskins,
+      bore witness to the men&rsquo;s immobility, as the smothered murmur of the crowd
+      emphasized their silence. Now and again the jingling of Chinese bells, or
+      a chance blow to a big drum, woke the reverberating echoes of the Imperial
+      Palace with a sound like the far-off rumblings of thunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An indescribable, unmistakable enthusiasm was manifest in the expectancy
+      of the multitude. France was about to take farewell of Napoleon on the eve
+      of a campaign of which the meanest citizen foresaw the perils. The
+      existence of the French Empire was at stake&mdash;to be, or not to be. The
+      whole citizen population seemed to be as much inspired with this thought
+      as that other armed population standing in serried and silent ranks in the
+      enclosed space, with the Eagles and the genius of Napoleon hovering above
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those very soldiers were the hope of France, her last drop of blood; and
+      this accounted for not a little of the anxious interest of the scene. Most
+      of the gazers in the crowd had bidden farewell&mdash;perhaps farewell for
+      ever&mdash;to the men who made up the rank and file of the battalions; and
+      even those most hostile to the Emperor, in their hearts, put up fervent
+      prayers to heaven for the glory of France; and those most weary of the
+      struggle with the rest of Europe had left their hatreds behind as they
+      passed in under the Triumphal Arch. They too felt that in the hour of
+      danger Napoleon meant France herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clock of the Tuileries struck the half-hour. In a moment the hum of
+      the crowd ceased. The silence was so deep that you might have heard a
+      child speak. The old noble and his daughter, wholly intent, seeming to
+      live only by their eyes, caught a distinct sound of spurs and clank of
+      swords echoing up under the sonorous peristyle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And suddenly there appeared a short, somewhat stout figure in a green
+      uniform, white trousers, and riding boots; a man wearing on his head a
+      cocked hat well-nigh as magically potent as its wearer; the broad red
+      ribbon of the Legion of Honor rose and fell on his breast, and a short
+      sword hung at his side. At one and the same moment the man was seen by all
+      eyes in all parts of the square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately the drums beat a salute, both bands struck up a martial
+      refrain, caught and repeated like a fugue by every instrument from the
+      thinnest flutes to the largest drum. The clangor of that call to arms
+      thrilled through every soul. The colors dropped, and the men presented
+      arms, one unanimous rhythmical movement shaking every bayonet from the
+      foremost front near the Palace to the last rank in the Place du Carrousel.
+      The words of command sped from line to line like echoes. The whole
+      enthusiastic multitude sent up a shout of &ldquo;Long live the Emperor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Everything shook, quivered, and thrilled at last. Napoleon had mounted his
+      horse. It was his movement that had put life into those silent masses of
+      men; the dumb instruments had found a voice at his coming, the Eagles and
+      the colors had obeyed the same impulse which had brought emotion into all
+      faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The very walls of the high galleries of the old palace seemed to cry
+      aloud, &ldquo;Long live the Emperor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something preternatural about it&mdash;it was magic at work, a
+      counterfeit presentment of the power of God; or rather it was a fugitive
+      image of a reign itself so fugitive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And <i>he</i> the centre of such love, such enthusiasm and devotion, and
+      so many prayers, he for whom the sun had driven the clouds from the sky,
+      was sitting there on his horse, three paces in front of his Golden
+      Squadron, with the grand Marshal on his left, and the Marshal-in-waiting
+      on his right. Amid all the outburst of enthusiasm at his presence not a
+      feature of his face appeared to alter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! yes. At Wagram, in the thick of the firing, on the field of Borodino,
+      among the dead, always as cool as a cucumber <i>he</i> is!&rdquo; said the
+      grenadier, in answer to the questions with which the young girl plied him.
+      For a moment Julie was absorbed in the contemplation of that face, so
+      quiet in the security of conscious power. The Emperor noticed Mlle. de
+      Chatillonest, and leaned to make some brief remark to Duroc, which drew a
+      smile from the Grand Marshal. Then the review began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If hitherto the young lady&rsquo;s attention had been divided between Napoleon&rsquo;s
+      impassive face and the blue, red, and green ranks of troops, from this
+      time forth she was wholly intent upon a young officer moving among the
+      lines as they performed their swift symmetrical evolutions. She watched
+      him gallop with tireless activity to and from the group where the plainly
+      dressed Napoleon shone conspicuous. The officer rode a splendid black
+      horse. His handsome sky-blue uniform marked him out amid the variegated
+      multitude as one of the Emperor&rsquo;s orderly staff-officers. His gold lace
+      glittered in the sunshine which lighted up the aigrette on his tall,
+      narrow shako, so that the gazer might have compared him to a
+      will-o&rsquo;-the-wisp, or to a visible spirit emanating from the Emperor to
+      infuse movement into those battalions whose swaying bayonets flashed into
+      flames; for, at a mere glance from his eyes, they broke and gathered
+      again, surging to and fro like the waves in a bay, or again swept before
+      him like the long ridges of high-crested wave which the vexed Ocean
+      directs against the shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the manoeuvres were over the officer galloped back at full speed,
+      pulled up his horse, and awaited orders. He was not ten paces from Julie
+      as he stood before the Emperor, much as General Rapp stands in Gerard&rsquo;s <i>Battle
+      of Austerlitz</i>. The young girl could behold her lover in all his
+      soldierly splendor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Colonel Victor d&rsquo;Aiglemont, barely thirty years of age, was tall, slender,
+      and well made. His well-proportioned figure never showed to better
+      advantage than now as he exerted his strength to hold in the restive
+      animal, whose back seemed to curve gracefully to the rider&rsquo;s weight. His
+      brown masculine face possessed the indefinable charm of perfectly regular
+      features combined with youth. The fiery eyes under the broad forehead,
+      shaded by thick eyebrows and long lashes, looked like white ovals bordered
+      by an outline of black. His nose had the delicate curve of an eagle&rsquo;s
+      beak; the sinuous lines of the inevitable black moustache enhanced the
+      crimson of the lips. The brown and tawny shades which overspread the wide
+      high-colored cheeks told a tale of unusual vigor, and his whole face bore
+      the impress of dashing courage. He was the very model which French artists
+      seek to-day for the typical hero of Imperial France. The horse which he
+      rode was covered with sweat, the animal&rsquo;s quivering head denoted the last
+      degree of restiveness; his hind hoofs were set down wide apart and exactly
+      in a line, he shook his long thick tail to the wind; in his fidelity to
+      his master he seemed to be a visible presentment of that master&rsquo;s devotion
+      to the Emperor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie saw her lover watching intently for the Emperor&rsquo;s glances, and felt
+      a momentary pang of jealousy, for as yet he had not given her a look.
+      Suddenly at a word from his sovereign Victor gripped his horse&rsquo;s flanks
+      and set out at a gallop, but the animal took fright at a shadow cast by a
+      post, shied, backed, and reared up so suddenly that his rider was all but
+      thrown off. Julie cried out, her face grew white, people looked at her
+      curiously, but she saw no one, her eyes were fixed upon the too mettlesome
+      beast. The officer gave the horse a sharp admonitory cut with the whip,
+      and galloped off with Napoleon&rsquo;s order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie was so absorbed, so dizzy with sights and sounds, that unconsciously
+      she clung to her father&rsquo;s arm so tightly that he could read her thoughts
+      by the varying pressure of her fingers. When Victor was all but flung out
+      of the saddle, she clutched her father with a convulsive grip as if she
+      herself were in danger of falling, and the old man looked at his
+      daughter&rsquo;s tell-tale face with dark and painful anxiety. Pity, jealousy,
+      something even of regret stole across every drawn and wrinkled line of
+      mouth and brow. When he saw the unwonted light in Julie&rsquo;s eyes, when that
+      cry broke from her, when the convulsive grasp of her fingers drew away the
+      veil and put him in possession of her secret, then with that revelation of
+      her love there came surely some swift revelation of the future. Mournful
+      forebodings could be read in his own face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie&rsquo;s soul seemed at that moment to have passed into the officer&rsquo;s
+      being. A torturing thought more cruel than any previous dread contracted
+      the old man&rsquo;s painworn features, as he saw the glance of understanding
+      that passed between the soldier and Julie. The girl&rsquo;s eyes were wet, her
+      cheeks glowed with unwonted color. Her father turned abruptly and led her
+      away into the Garden of the Tuileries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, father,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;there are still the regiments in the Place du
+      Carrousel to be passed in review.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, child, all the troops are marching out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you are mistaken, father; M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont surely told them to
+      advance&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I feel ill, my child, and I do not care to stay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie could readily believe the words when she glanced at his face; he
+      looked quite worn out by his fatherly anxieties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you feeling very ill?&rdquo; she asked indifferently, her mind was so full
+      of other thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every day is a reprieve for me, is it not?&rdquo; returned her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now do you mean to make me miserable again by talking about your death? I
+      was in such spirits! Do pray get rid of those horrid gloomy ideas of
+      yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The father heaved a sigh. &ldquo;Ah! spoiled child,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;the best hearts
+      are sometimes very cruel. We devote our whole lives to you, you are our
+      one thought, we plan for your welfare, sacrifice our tastes to your whims,
+      idolize you, give the very blood in our veins for you, and all this is
+      nothing, is it? Alas! yes, you take it all as a matter of course. If we
+      would always have your smiles and your disdainful love, we should need the
+      power of God in heaven. Then comes another, a lover, a husband, and steals
+      away your heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie looked in amazement at her father; he walked slowly along, and there
+      was no light in the eyes which he turned upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hide yourself even from us,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;but, perhaps, also you
+      hide yourself from yourself&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by that, father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think that you have secrets from me, Julie.&mdash;You love,&rdquo; he went on
+      quickly, as he saw the color rise to her face. &ldquo;Oh! I hoped that you would
+      stay with your old father until he died. I hoped to keep you with me,
+      still radiant and happy, to admire you as you were but so lately. So long
+      as I knew nothing of your future I could believe in a happy lot for you;
+      but now I cannot possibly take away with me a hope of happiness for your
+      life, for you love the colonel even more than the cousin. I can no longer
+      doubt it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why should I be forbidden to love him?&rdquo; asked Julie, with lively
+      curiosity in her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my Julie, you would not understand me,&rdquo; sighed the father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me, all the same,&rdquo; said Julie, with an involuntary petulant gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, child, listen to me. Girls are apt to imagine noble and
+      enchanting and totally imaginary figures in their own minds; they have
+      fanciful extravagant ideas about men, and sentiment, and life; and then
+      they innocently endow somebody or other with all the perfections of their
+      day-dreams, and put their trust in him. They fall in love with this
+      imaginary creature in the man of their choice; and then, when it is too
+      late to escape from their fate, behold their first idol, the illusion made
+      fair with their fancies, turns to an odious skeleton. Julie, I would
+      rather have you fall in love with an old man than with the Colonel. Ah! if
+      you could but see things from the standpoint of ten years hence, you would
+      admit that my old experience was right. I know what Victor is, that gaiety
+      of his is simply animal spirits&mdash;the gaiety of the barracks. He has
+      no ability, and he is a spendthrift. He is one of those men whom Heaven
+      created to eat and digest four meals a day, to sleep, to fall in love with
+      the first woman that comes to hand, and to fight. He does not understand
+      life. His kind heart, for he has a kind heart, will perhaps lead him to
+      give his purse to a sufferer or to a comrade; <i>but</i> he is careless,
+      he has not the delicacy of heart which makes us slaves to a woman&rsquo;s
+      happiness, he is ignorant, he is selfish. There are plenty of <i>buts</i>&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, father, he must surely be clever, he must have ability, or he would
+      not be a colonel&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, Victor will be a colonel all his life.&mdash;I have seen no one
+      who appears to me to be worthy of you,&rdquo; the old father added, with a kind
+      of enthusiasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused an instant, looked at his daughter, and added, &ldquo;Why, my poor
+      Julie, you are still too young, too fragile, too delicate for the cares
+      and rubs of married life. D&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s relations have spoiled him, just
+      as your mother and I have spoiled you. What hope is there that you two
+      could agree, with two imperious wills diametrically opposed to each other?
+      You will be either the tyrant or the victim, and either alternative means,
+      for a wife, an equal sum of misfortune. But you are modest and
+      sweet-natured, you would yield from the first. In short,&rdquo; he added, in a
+      quivering voice, &ldquo;there is a grace of feeling in you which would never be
+      valued, and then&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; he broke off, for the tears overcame him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Victor will give you pain through all the girlish qualities of your young
+      nature,&rdquo; he went on, after a pause. &ldquo;I know what soldiers are, my Julie; I
+      have been in the army. In a man of that kind, love very seldom gets the
+      better of old habits, due partly to the miseries amid which soldiers live,
+      partly to the risks they run in a life of adventure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you mean to cross my inclinations, do you, father?&rdquo; asked Julie,
+      half in earnest, half in jest. &ldquo;Am I to marry to please you and not to
+      please myself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To please me!&rdquo; cried her father, with a start of surprise. &ldquo;To please <i>me</i>,
+      child? when you will not hear the voice that upbraids you so tenderly very
+      much longer! But I have always heard children impute personal motives for
+      the sacrifices that their parents make for them. Marry Victor, my Julie!
+      Some day you will bitterly deplore his ineptitude, his thriftless ways,
+      his selfishness, his lack of delicacy, his inability to understand love,
+      and countless troubles arising through him. Then, remember, that here
+      under these trees your old father&rsquo;s prophetic voice sounded in your ears
+      in vain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He said no more; he had detected a rebellious shake of the head on his
+      daughter&rsquo;s part. Both made several paces towards the carriage which was
+      waiting for them at the grating. During that interval of silence, the
+      young girl stole a glance at her father&rsquo;s face, and little by little her
+      sullen brow cleared. The intense pain visible on his bowed forehead made a
+      lively impression upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; she began in gentle tremulous tones, &ldquo;I promise to say no more
+      about Victor until you have overcome your prejudices against him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man looked at her in amazement. Two tears which filled his eyes
+      overflowed down his withered cheeks. He could not take Julie in his arms
+      in that crowded place; but he pressed her hand tenderly. A few minutes
+      later when they had taken their places in the cabriolet, all the anxious
+      thought which had gathered about his brow had completely disappeared.
+      Julie&rsquo;s pensive attitude gave him far less concern than the innocent joy
+      which had betrayed her secret during the review.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nearly a year had passed since the Emperor&rsquo;s last review. In early March
+      1814 a calèche was rolling along the highroad from Amboise to Tours. As
+      the carriage came out from beneath the green-roofed aisle of walnut trees
+      by the post-house of la Frilliere, the horses dashed forward with such
+      speed that in a moment they gained the bridge built across the Cise at the
+      point of its confluence with the Loire. There, however, they come to a
+      sudden stand. One of the traces had given way in consequence of the
+      furious pace at which the post-boy, obedient to his orders, had urged on
+      four horses, the most vigorous of their breed. Chance, therefore, gave the
+      two recently awakened occupants of the carriage an opportunity of seeing
+      one of the most lovely landscapes along the enchanting banks of the Loire,
+      and that at their full leisure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At a glance the travelers could see to the right the whole winding course
+      of the Cise meandering like a silver snake among the meadows, where the
+      grass had taken the deep, bright green of early spring. To the left lay
+      the Loire in all its glory. A chill morning breeze, ruffling the surface
+      of the stately river, had fretted the broad sheets of water far and wide
+      into a network of ripples, which caught the gleams of the sun, so that the
+      green islets here and there in its course shone like gems set in a gold
+      necklace. On the opposite bank the fair rich meadows of Touraine stretched
+      away as far as the eye could see; the low hills of the Cher, the only
+      limits to the view, lay on the far horizon, a luminous line against the
+      clear blue sky. Tours itself, framed by the trees on the islands in a
+      setting of spring leaves, seemed to rise like Venice out of the waters,
+      and her old cathedral towers soaring in air were blended with the pale
+      fantastic cloud shapes in the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Over the side of the bridge, where the carriage had come to a stand, the
+      traveler looks along a line of cliffs stretching as far as Tours. Nature
+      in some freakish mood must have raised these barriers of rock, undermined
+      incessantly by the rippling Loire at their feet, for a perpetual wonder
+      for spectators. The village of Vouvray nestles, as it were, among the
+      clefts and crannies of the crags, which begin to describe a bend at the
+      junction of the Loire and Cise. A whole population of vine-dressers lives,
+      in fact, in appalling insecurity in holes in their jagged sides for the
+      whole way between Vouvray and Tours. In some places there are three tiers
+      of dwellings hollowed out, one above the other, in the rock, each row
+      communicating with the next by dizzy staircases cut likewise in the face
+      of the cliff. A little girl in a short red petticoat runs out into her
+      garden on the roof of another dwelling; you can watch a wreath of
+      hearth-smoke curling up among the shoots and trails of the vines. Men are
+      at work in their almost perpendicular patches of ground, an old woman sits
+      tranquilly spinning under a blossoming almond tree on a crumbling mass of
+      rock, and smiles down on the dismay of the travelers far below her feet.
+      The cracks in the ground trouble her as little as the precarious state of
+      the old wall, a pendant mass of loose stones, only kept in position by the
+      crooked stems of its ivy mantle. The sound of coopers&rsquo; mallets rings
+      through the skyey caves; for here, where Nature stints human industry of
+      soil, the soil is everywhere tilled, and everywhere fertile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No view along the whole course of the Loire can compare with the rich
+      landscape of Touraine, here outspread beneath the traveler&rsquo;s eyes. The
+      triple picture, thus barely sketched in outline, is one of those scenes
+      which the imagination engraves for ever upon the memory; let a poet fall
+      under its charm, and he shall be haunted by visions which shall reproduce
+      its romantic loveliness out of the vague substance of dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the carriage stopped on the bridge over the Cise, white sails came out
+      here and there from among the islands in the Loire to add new grace to the
+      perfect view. The subtle scent of the willows by the water&rsquo;s edge was
+      mingled with the damp odor of the breeze from the river. The monotonous
+      chant of a goat-herd added a plaintive note to the sound of birds&rsquo; songs
+      in a chorus which never ends; the cries of the boatmen brought tidings of
+      distant busy life. Here was Touraine in all its glory, and the very height
+      of the splendor of spring. Here was the one peaceful district in France in
+      those troublous days; for it was so unlikely that a foreign army should
+      trouble its quiet that Touraine might be said to defy invasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the calèche stopped, a head covered with a foraging cap was put
+      out of the window, and soon afterwards an impatient military man flung
+      open the carriage door and sprang down into the road to pick a quarrel
+      with the postilion, but the skill with which the Tourangeau was repairing
+      the trace restored Colonel d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s equanimity. He went back to the
+      carriage, stretched himself to relieve his benumbed muscles, yawned,
+      looked about him, and finally laid a hand on the arm of a young woman
+      warmly wrapped up in a furred pelisse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, Julie,&rdquo; he said hoarsely, &ldquo;just wake up and take a look at this
+      country. It is magnificent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie put her head out of the window. She wore a traveling cap of sable
+      fur. Nothing could be seen of her but her face, for the whole of her
+      person was completely concealed by the folds of her fur pelisse. The young
+      girl who tripped to the review at the Tuileries with light footsteps and
+      joy and gladness in her heart was scarcely recognizable in Julie
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont. Her face, delicate as ever, had lost the rose-color which
+      once gave it so rich a glow. A few straggling locks of black hair,
+      straightened out by the damp night air, enhanced its dead whiteness, and
+      all its life and sparkle seemed to be torpid. Yet her eyes glittered with
+      preternatural brightness in spite of the violet shadows under the lashes
+      upon her wan cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked out with indifferent eyes over the fields towards the Cher, at
+      the islands in the river, at the line of the crags of Vouvray stretching
+      along the Loire towards Tours; then she sank back as soon as possible into
+      her seat in the calèche. She did not care to give a glance to the
+      enchanting valley of the Cise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it is wonderful,&rdquo; she said, and out in the open air her voice
+      sounded weak and faint to the last degree. Evidently she had had her way
+      with her father, to her misfortune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you not like to live here, Julie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; here or anywhere,&rdquo; she answered listlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you feel ill?&rdquo; asked Colonel d&rsquo;Aiglemont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not at all,&rdquo; she answered with momentary energy; and, smiling at her
+      husband, she added, &ldquo;I should like to go to sleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly there came a sound of a horse galloping towards them. Victor
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont dropped his wife&rsquo;s hand and turned to watch the bend in the
+      road. No sooner had he taken his eyes from Julie&rsquo;s pale face than all the
+      assumed gaiety died out of it; it was as if a light had been extinguished.
+      She felt no wish to look at the landscape, no curiosity to see the
+      horseman who was galloping towards them at such a furious pace, and,
+      ensconcing herself in her corner, stared out before her at the
+      hindquarters of the post-horses, looking as blank as any Breton peasant
+      listening to his <i>recteur&rsquo;s</i> sermon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly a young man riding a valuable horse came out from behind the
+      clump of poplars and flowering briar-rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is an Englishman,&rdquo; remarked the Colonel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord bless you, yes, General,&rdquo; said the post-boy; &ldquo;he belongs to the race
+      of fellows who have a mind to gobble up France, they say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger was one of the foreigners traveling in France at the time
+      when Napoleon detained all British subjects within the limits of the
+      Empire, by way of reprisals for the violation of the Treaty of Amiens, an
+      outrage of international law perpetrated by the Court of St. James. These
+      prisoners, compelled to submit to the Emperor&rsquo;s pleasure, were not all
+      suffered to remain in the houses where they were arrested, nor yet in the
+      places of residence which at first they were permitted to choose. Most of
+      the English colony in Touraine had been transplanted thither from
+      different places where their presence was supposed to be inimical to the
+      interests of the Continental Policy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man, who was taking the tedium of the early morning hours on
+      horseback, was one of these victims of bureaucratic tyranny. Two years
+      previously, a sudden order from the Foreign Office had dragged him from
+      Montpellier, whither he had gone on account of consumptive tendencies. He
+      glanced at the Comte d&rsquo;Aiglemont, saw that he was a military man, and
+      deliberately looked away, turning his head somewhat abruptly towards the
+      meadows by the Cise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The English are all as insolent as if the globe belonged to them,&rdquo;
+       muttered the Colonel. &ldquo;Luckily, Soult will give them a thrashing
+      directly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prisoner gave a glance to the calèche as he rode by. Brief though that
+      glance was, he had yet time to notice the sad expression which lent an
+      indefinable charm to the Countess&rsquo; pensive face. Many men are deeply moved
+      by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain
+      for a sign of constancy or of love. Julie herself was so much absorbed in
+      the contemplation of the opposite cushion that she saw neither the horse
+      nor the rider. The damaged trace meanwhile had been quickly and strongly
+      repaired; the Count stepped into his place again; and the post-boy, doing
+      his best to make up for lost time, drove the carriage rapidly along the
+      embankment. On they drove under the overhanging cliffs, with their
+      picturesque vine-dressers&rsquo; huts and stores of wine maturing in their dark
+      sides, till in the distance uprose the spire of the famous Abbey of
+      Marmoutiers, the retreat of St. Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can that diaphanous milord want with us?&rdquo; exclaimed the Colonel,
+      turning to assure himself that the horseman who had followed them from the
+      bridge was the young Englishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all, the stranger committed no breach of good manners by riding
+      along on the footway, and Colonel d&rsquo;Aiglemont was fain to lie back in his
+      corner after sending a scowl in the Englishman&rsquo;s direction. But in spite
+      of his hostile instincts, he could not help noticing the beauty of the
+      animal and the graceful horsemanship of the rider. The young man&rsquo;s face
+      was of that pale, fair-complexioned, insular type, which is almost girlish
+      in the softness and delicacy of its color and texture. He was tall, thin,
+      and fair-haired, dressed with the extreme and elaborate neatness
+      characteristic of a man of fashion in prudish England. Any one might have
+      thought that bashfulness rather than pleasure at the sight of the Countess
+      had called up that flush into his face. Once only Julie raised her eyes
+      and looked at the stranger, and then only because she was in a manner
+      compelled to do so, for her husband called upon her to admire the action
+      of the thoroughbred. It so happened that their glances clashed; and the
+      shy Englishman, instead of riding abreast of the carriage, fell behind on
+      this, and followed them at a distance of a few paces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet the Countess had scarcely given him a glance; she saw none of the
+      various perfections, human and equine, commended to her notice, and fell
+      back again in the carriage, with a slight movement of the eyelids intended
+      to express her acquiescence in her husband&rsquo;s views. The Colonel fell
+      asleep again, and both husband and wife reached Tours without another
+      word. Not one of those enchanting views of everchanging landscape through
+      which they sped had drawn so much as a glance from Julie&rsquo;s eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont looked now and again at her sleeping husband. While she
+      looked, a sudden jolt shook something down upon her knees. It was her
+      father&rsquo;s portrait, a miniature which she wore suspended about her neck by
+      a black cord. At the sight of it, the tears, till then kept back,
+      overflowed her eyes, but no one, save perhaps the Englishman, saw them
+      glitter there for a brief moment before they dried upon her pale cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Colonel d&rsquo;Aiglemont was on his way to the South. Marshal Soult was
+      repelling an English invasion of Bearn; and d&rsquo;Aiglemont, the bearer of the
+      Emperor&rsquo;s orders to the Marshal, seized the opportunity of taking his wife
+      as far as Tours to leave her with an elderly relative of his own, far away
+      from the dangers threatening Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very shortly the carriage rolled over the paved road of Tours, over the
+      bridge, along the Grande-Rue, and stopped at last before the old mansion
+      of the <i>ci-devant</i> Marquise de Listomere-Landon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise de Listomere-Landon, with her white hair, pale face, and
+      shrewd smile, was one of those fine old ladies who still seem to wear the
+      paniers of the eighteenth century, and affects caps of an extinct mode.
+      They are nearly always caressing in their manners, as if the heyday of
+      love still lingered on for these septuagenarian portraits of the age of
+      Louis Quinze, with the faint perfume of <i>poudre a la maréchale</i>
+      always clinging about them. Bigoted rather than pious, and less of bigots
+      than they seem, women who can tell a story well and talk still better,
+      their laughter comes more readily for an old memory than for a new jest&mdash;the
+      present intrudes upon them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When an old waiting-woman announced to the Marquise de Listomere-Landon
+      (to give her the title which she was soon to resume) the arrival of a
+      nephew whom she had not seen since the outbreak of the war with Spain, the
+      old lady took off her spectacles with alacrity, shut the <i>Galerie de
+      l&rsquo;ancienne Cour</i> (her favorite work), and recovered something like
+      youthful activity, hastening out upon the flight of steps to greet the
+      young couple there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt and niece exchanged a rapid glance of survey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-morning, dear aunt,&rdquo; cried the Colonel, giving the old lady a hasty
+      embrace. &ldquo;I am bringing a young lady to put under your wing. I have come
+      to put my treasure in your keeping. My Julie is neither jealous nor a
+      coquette, she is as good as an angel. I hope that she will not be spoiled
+      here,&rdquo; he added, suddenly interrupting himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scapegrace!&rdquo; returned the Marquise, with a satirical glance at her
+      nephew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not wait for her niece to approach her, but with a certain kindly
+      graciousness went forward herself to kiss Julie, who stood there
+      thoughtfully, to all appearance more embarrassed than curious concerning
+      her new relation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So we are to make each other&rsquo;s acquaintance, are we, my love?&rdquo; the
+      Marquise continued. &ldquo;Do not be too much alarmed of me. I always try not to
+      be an old woman with young people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the way to the drawing-room, the Marquise ordered breakfast for her
+      guests in provincial fashion; but the Count checked his aunt&rsquo;s flow of
+      words by saying soberly that he could only remain in the house while the
+      horses were changing. On this the three hurried into the drawing-room. The
+      Colonel had barely time to tell the story of the political and military
+      events which had compelled him to ask his aunt for a shelter for his young
+      wife. While he talked on without interruption, the older lady looked from
+      her nephew to her niece, and took the sadness in Julie&rsquo;s white face for
+      grief at the enforced separation. &ldquo;Eh! eh!&rdquo; her looks seemed to say,
+      &ldquo;these young things are in love with each other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The crack of the postilion&rsquo;s whip sounded outside in the silent old
+      grass-grown courtyard. Victor embraced his aunt once more, and rushed out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, dear,&rdquo; he said, kissing his wife, who had followed him down to
+      the carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Victor, let me come still further with you,&rdquo; she pleaded coaxingly.
+      &ldquo;I do not want to leave you&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you seriously mean it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said Julie, &ldquo;since you wish it.&rdquo; The carriage disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you are very fond of my poor Victor?&rdquo; said the Marquise, interrogating
+      her niece with one of those sagacious glances which dowagers give younger
+      women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas, madame!&rdquo; said Julie, &ldquo;must one not love a man well indeed to marry
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were spoken with an artless accent which revealed either a pure
+      heart or inscrutable depths. How could a woman, who had been the friend of
+      Duclos and the Marechal de Richelieu, refrain from trying to read the
+      riddle of this marriage? Aunt and niece were standing on the steps, gazing
+      after the fast vanishing calèche. The look in the young Countess&rsquo; eyes did
+      not mean love as the Marquise understood it. The good lady was a
+      Provencale, and her passions had been lively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you were captivated by my good-for-nothing of a nephew?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Involuntarily Julie shuddered, something in the experienced coquette&rsquo;s
+      look and tone seemed to say that Mme. de Listomere-Landon&rsquo;s knowledge of
+      her husband&rsquo;s character went perhaps deeper than his wife&rsquo;s. Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont, in dismay, took refuge in this transparent dissimulation,
+      ready to her hand, the first resource of an artless unhappiness. Mme. de
+      Listomere appeared to be satisfied with Julie&rsquo;s answers; but in her secret
+      heart she rejoiced to think that here was a love affair on hand to enliven
+      her solitude, for that her niece had some amusing flirtation on foot she
+      was fully convinced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the great drawing-room, hung with tapestry framed in strips of gilding,
+      young Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont sat before a blazing fire, behind a Chinese screen
+      placed to shut out the cold draughts from the window, and her heavy mood
+      scarcely lightened. Among the old eighteenth-century furniture, under the
+      old paneled ceiling, it was not very easy to be gay. Yet the young
+      Parisienne took a sort of pleasure in this entrance upon a life of
+      complete solitude and in the solemn silence of the old provincial house.
+      She exchanged a few words with the aunt, a stranger, to whom she had
+      written a bride&rsquo;s letter on her marriage, and then sat as silent as if she
+      had been listening to an opera. Not until two hours had been spent in an
+      atmosphere of quiet befitting la Trappe, did she suddenly awaken to a
+      sense of uncourteous behavior, and bethink herself of the short answers
+      which she had given her aunt. Mme. de Listomere, with the gracious tact
+      characteristic of a bygone age, had respected her niece&rsquo;s mood. When Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont became conscious of her shortcomings, the dowager sat
+      knitting, though as a matter of fact she had several times left the room
+      to superintend preparations in the Green Chamber, whither the Countess&rsquo; 
+      luggage had been transported; now, however, she had returned to her great
+      armchair, and stole a glance from time to time at this young relative.
+      Julie felt ashamed of giving way to irresistible broodings, and tried to
+      earn her pardon by laughing at herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear child, <i>we</i> know the sorrows of widowhood,&rdquo; returned her
+      aunt. But only the eyes of forty years could have distinguished the irony
+      hovering about the old lady&rsquo;s mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning the Countess improved. She talked. Mme. de Listomere no
+      longer despaired of fathoming the new-made wife, whom yesterday she had
+      set down as a dull, unsociable creature, and discoursed on the delights of
+      the country, of dances, of houses where they could visit. All that day the
+      Marquise&rsquo;s questions were so many snares; it was the old habit of the old
+      Court, she could not help setting traps to discover her niece&rsquo;s character.
+      For several days Julie, plied with temptations, steadfastly declined to
+      seek amusement abroad; and much as the old lady&rsquo;s pride longed to exhibit
+      her pretty niece, she was fain to renounce all hope of taking her into
+      society, for the young Countess was still in morning for her father, and
+      found in her loss and her mourning dress a pretext for her sadness and
+      desire for seclusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the end of the week the dowager admired Julie&rsquo;s angelic sweetness of
+      disposition, her diffident charm, her indulgent temper, and thenceforward
+      began to take a prodigious interest in the mysterious sadness gnawing at
+      this young heart. The Countess was one of those women who seem born to be
+      loved and to bring happiness with them. Mme. de Listomere found her
+      niece&rsquo;s society grown so sweet and precious, that she doted upon Julie,
+      and could no longer think of parting with her. A month sufficed to
+      establish an eternal friendship between the two ladies. The dowager
+      noticed, not without surprise, the changes that took place in Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont; gradually her bright color died away, and her face became
+      dead white. Yet, Julie&rsquo;s spirits rose as the bloom faded from her cheeks.
+      Sometimes the dowager&rsquo;s sallies provoked outbursts of merriment or peals
+      of laughter, promptly repressed, however, by some clamorous thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. de Listomere had guessed by this time that it was neither Victor&rsquo;s
+      absence nor a father&rsquo;s death which threw a shadow over her niece&rsquo;s life;
+      but her mind was so full of dark suspicions, that she found it difficult
+      to lay a finger upon the real cause of the mischief. Possibly truth is
+      only discoverable by chance. A day came, however, at length when Julie
+      flashed out before her aunt&rsquo;s astonished eyes into a complete
+      forgetfulness of her marriage; she recovered the wild spirits of careless
+      girlhood. Mme. de Listomere then and there made up her mind to fathom the
+      depths of this soul, for its exceeding simplicity was as inscrutable as
+      dissimulation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Night was falling. The two ladies were sitting by the window which looked
+      out upon the street, and Julie was looking thoughtful again, when some one
+      went by on horseback.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There goes one of your victims,&rdquo; said the Marquise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont looked up; dismay and surprise blended in her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is a young Englishman, the Honorable Arthur Ormand, Lord Grenville&rsquo;s
+      eldest son. His history is interesting. His physician sent him to
+      Montpellier in 1802; it was hoped that in that climate he might recover
+      from the lung complaint which was gaining ground. He was detained, like
+      all his fellow-countrymen, by Bonaparte when war broke out. That monster
+      cannot live without fighting. The young Englishman, by way of amusing
+      himself, took to studying his own complaint, which was believed to be
+      incurable. By degrees he acquired a liking for anatomy and physic, and
+      took quite a craze for that kind of thing, a most extraordinary taste in a
+      man of quality, though the Regent certainly amused himself with chemistry!
+      In short, Monsieur Arthur made astonishing progress in his studies; his
+      health did the same under the faculty of Montpellier; he consoled his
+      captivity, and at the same time his cure was thoroughly completed. They
+      say that he spent two whole years in a cowshed, living on cresses and the
+      milk of a cow brought from Switzerland, breathing as seldom as he could,
+      and never speaking a word. Since he come to Tours he has lived quite
+      alone; he is as proud as a peacock; but you have certainly made a conquest
+      of him, for probably it is not on my account that he has ridden under the
+      window twice every day since you have been here.&mdash;He has certainly
+      fallen in love with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That last phrase roused the Countess like magic. Her involuntary start and
+      smile took the Marquise by surprise. So far from showing a sign of the
+      instinctive satisfaction felt by the most strait-laced of women when she
+      learns that she has destroyed the peace of mind of some male victim, there
+      was a hard, haggard expression in Julie&rsquo;s face&mdash;a look of repulsion
+      amounting almost to loathing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A woman who loves will put the whole world under the ban of Love&rsquo;s empire
+      for the sake of the one whom she loves; but such a woman can laugh and
+      jest; and Julie at that moment looked as if the memory of some recently
+      escaped peril was too sharp and fresh not to bring with it a quick
+      sensation of pain. Her aunt, by this time convinced that Julie did not
+      love her nephew, was stupefied by the discovery that she loved nobody
+      else. She shuddered lest a further discovery should show her Julie&rsquo;s heart
+      disenchanted, lest the experience of a day, or perhaps of a night, should
+      have revealed to a young wife the full extent of Victor&rsquo;s emptiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she has found him out, there is an end of it,&rdquo; thought the dowager.
+      &ldquo;My nephew will soon be made to feel the inconveniences of wedded life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise now proposed to convert Julie to the monarchical doctrines of
+      the times of Louis Quinze; but a few hours later she discovered, or, more
+      properly speaking, guessed, the not uncommon state of affairs, and the
+      real cause of her niece&rsquo;s low spirits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie turned thoughtful on a sudden, and went to her room earlier than
+      usual. When her maid left her for the night, she still sat by the fire in
+      the yellow velvet depths of a great chair, an old-world piece of furniture
+      as well suited for sorrow as for happy people. Tears flowed, followed by
+      sighs and meditation. After a while she drew a little table to her, sought
+      writing materials, and began to write. The hours went by swiftly. Julie&rsquo;s
+      confidences made to the sheet of paper seemed to cost her dear; every
+      sentence set her dreaming, and at last she suddenly burst into tears. The
+      clocks were striking two. Her head, grown heavy as a dying woman&rsquo;s, was
+      bowed over her breast. When she raised it, her aunt appeared before her as
+      suddenly as if she had stepped out of the background of tapestry upon the
+      walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can be the matter with you, child?&rdquo; asked the Marquise. &ldquo;Why are you
+      sitting up so late? And why, in the first place, are you crying alone, at
+      your age?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without further ceremony she sat down beside her niece, her eyes the while
+      devouring the unfinished letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you writing to your husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I know where he is?&rdquo; returned the Countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her aunt thereupon took up the sheet and proceeded to read it. She had
+      brought her spectacles; the deed was premeditated. The innocent writer of
+      the letter allowed her to take it without the slightest remark. It was
+      neither lack of dignity nor consciousness of secret guilt which left her
+      thus without energy. Her aunt had come in upon her at a crisis. She was
+      helpless; right or wrong, reticence and confidence, like all things else,
+      were matters of indifference. Like some young maid who had heaped scorn
+      upon her lover, and feels so lonely and sad when evening comes, that she
+      longs for him to come back or for a heart to which she can pour out her
+      sorrow, Julie allowed her aunt to violate the seal which honor places upon
+      an open letter, and sat musing while the Marquise read on:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre>
+  &ldquo;MY DEAR LOUISA,&mdash;Why do you ask so often for the fulfilment of as
+  rash a promise as two young and inexperienced girls could make?
+  You say that you often ask yourself why I have given no answer to
+  your questions for these six months. If my silence told you
+  nothing, perhaps you will understand the reasons for it to-day, as
+  you read the secrets which I am about to betray. I should have
+  buried them for ever in the depths of my heart if you had not
+  announced your own approaching marriage. You are about to be
+  married, Louisa. The thought makes me shiver. Poor little one!
+  marry, yes, in a few months&rsquo; time one of the keenest pangs of
+  regret will be the recollection of a self which used to be, of the
+  two young girls who sat one evening under one of the tallest
+  oak-trees on the hillside at Ecouen, and looked along the fair
+  valley at our feet in the light of the sunset, which caught us in
+  its glow. We sat on a slab of rock in ecstasy, which sobered down
+  into melancholy of the gentlest. You were the first to discover that
+  the far-off sun spoke to us of the future. How inquisitive and how
+  silly we were! Do you remember all the absurd things we said and
+  did? We embraced each other; &lsquo;like lovers,&rsquo; said we. We solemnly
+  promised that the first bride should faithfully reveal to the
+  other the mysteries of marriage, the joys which our childish minds
+  imagined to be so delicious. That evening will complete your
+  despair, Louisa. In those days you were young and beautiful and
+  careless, if not radiantly happy; a few days of marriage, and you
+  will be, what I am already&mdash;ugly, wretched, and old. Need I tell
+  you how proud I was and how vain and glad to be married to Colonel
+  Victor d&rsquo;Aiglemont? And besides, how could I tell you now? for I
+  cannot remember that old self. A few moments turned my girlhood to
+  a dream. All through the memorable day which consecrated a chain,
+  the extent of which was hidden from me, my behavior was not free
+  from reproach. Once and again my father tried to repress my
+  spirits; the joy which I showed so plainly was thought unbefitting
+  the occasion, my talk scarcely innocent, simply because I was so
+  innocent. I played endless child&rsquo;s tricks with my bridal veil, my
+  wreath, my gown. Left alone that night in the room whither I had
+  been conducted in state, I planned a piece of mischief to tease
+  Victor. While I awaited his coming, my heart beat wildly, as it
+  used to do when I was a child stealing into the drawing-room on
+  the last day of the old year to catch a glimpse of the New Year&rsquo;s
+  gifts piled up there in heaps. When my husband came in and looked
+  for me, my smothered laughter ringing out from beneath the lace in
+  which I had shrouded myself, was the last outburst of the
+  delicious merriment which brightened our games in childhood...&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      When the dowager had finished reading the letter, and after such a
+      beginning the rest must have been sad indeed, she slowly laid her
+      spectacles on the table, put the letter down beside them, and looked
+      fixedly at her niece. Age had not dimmed the fire in those green eyes as
+      yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My little girl,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;a married woman cannot write such a letter as
+      this to a young unmarried woman; it is scarcely proper&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I was thinking,&rdquo; Julie broke in upon her aunt. &ldquo;I felt ashamed of
+      myself while you were reading it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If a dish at table is not to our taste, there is no occasion to disgust
+      others with it, child,&rdquo; the old lady continued benignly, &ldquo;especially when
+      marriage has seemed to us all, from Eve downwards, so excellent an
+      institution... You have no mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess trembled, then she raised her face meekly, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have missed my mother many times already during the past year; but I
+      have myself to blame, I would not listen to my father. He was opposed to
+      my marriage; he disapproved of Victor as a son-in-law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at her aunt. The old face was lighted up with a kindly look,
+      and a thrill of joy dried Julie&rsquo;s tears. She held out her young, soft hand
+      to the old Marquise, who seemed to ask for it, and the understanding
+      between the two women was completed by the close grasp of their fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor orphan child!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words came like a final flash of enlightenment to Julie. It seemed to
+      her that she heard her father&rsquo;s prophetic voice again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your hands are burning! Are they always like this?&rdquo; asked the Marquise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The fever only left me seven or eight days ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had a fever upon you, and said nothing about it to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have had it for a year,&rdquo; said Julie, with a kind of timid anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My good little angel, then your married life hitherto has been one long
+      time of suffering?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie did not venture to reply, but an affirmative sign revealed the whole
+      truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you are unhappy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On! no, no, aunt. Victor loves me, he almost idolizes me, and I adore
+      him, he is so kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you love him; but you avoid him, do you not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes... sometimes... He seeks me too often.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And often when you are alone you are troubled with the fear that he may
+      suddenly break in on your solitude?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas! yes, aunt. But, indeed, I love him, I do assure you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you not, in your own thoughts, blame yourself because you find it
+      impossible to share his pleasures? Do you never think at times that
+      marriage is a heavier yoke than an illicit passion could be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that is just it,&rdquo; she wept. &ldquo;It is all a riddle to me, and can you
+      guess it all? My faculties are benumbed, I have no ideas, I can scarcely
+      see at all. I am weighed down by vague dread, which freezes me till I
+      cannot feel, and keeps me in continual torpor. I have no voice with which
+      to pity myself, no words to express my trouble. I suffer, and I am ashamed
+      to suffer when Victor is happy at my cost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Babyish nonsense, and rubbish, all of it!&rdquo; exclaimed the aunt, and a gay
+      smile, an after-glow of the joys of her own youth, suddenly lighted up her
+      withered face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And do you too laugh!&rdquo; the younger woman cried despairingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was just my own case,&rdquo; the Marquise returned promptly. &ldquo;And now Victor
+      has left you, you have become a girl again, recovering a tranquillity
+      without pleasure and without pain, have you not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie opened wide eyes of bewilderment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In fact, my angel, you adore Victor, do you not? But still you would
+      rather be a sister to him than a wife, and, in short, your marriage is
+      emphatically not a success?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;no, aunt. But why do you smile?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! you are right, poor child! There is nothing very amusing in all this.
+      Your future would be big with more than one mishap if I had not taken you
+      under my protection, if my old experience of life had not guessed the very
+      innocent cause of your troubles. My nephew did not deserve his good
+      fortune, the blockhead! In the reign of our well-beloved Louis Quinze, a
+      young wife in your position would very soon have punished her husband for
+      behaving like a ruffian. The selfish creature! The men who serve under
+      this Imperial tyrant are all of them ignorant boors. They take brutality
+      for gallantry; they know no more of women than they know of love; and
+      imagine that because they go out to face death on the morrow, they may
+      dispense to-day with all consideration and attentions for us. The time was
+      when a man could love and die too at the proper time. My niece, I will
+      form you. I will put an end to this unhappy divergence between you, a
+      natural thing enough, but it would end in mutual hatred and desire for a
+      divorce, always supposing that you did not die on the way to despair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie&rsquo;s amazement equaled her surprise as she listened to her aunt. She
+      was surprised by her language, dimly divining rather than appreciating the
+      wisdom of the words she heard, and very much dismayed to find what this
+      relative, out of great experience, passed judgment upon Victor as her
+      father had done, though in somewhat milder terms. Perhaps some quick
+      prevision of the future crossed her mind; doubtless, at any rate, she felt
+      the heavy weight of the burden which must inevitably overwhelm her, for
+      she burst into tears, and sprang to the old lady&rsquo;s arms. &ldquo;Be my mother,&rdquo;
+       she sobbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The aunt shed no tears. The Revolution had left old ladies of the Monarchy
+      but few tears to shed. Love, in bygone days, and the Terror at a later
+      time, had familiarized them with extremes of joy and anguish in such a
+      sort that, amid the perils of life, they preserved their dignity and
+      coolness, a capacity for sincere but undemonstrative affection which never
+      disturbed their well-bred self-possession, and a dignity of demeanor which
+      a younger generation has done very ill to discard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dowager took Julie in her arms, and kissed her on the forehead with a
+      tenderness and pity more often found in women&rsquo;s ways and manner than in
+      their hearts. Then she coaxed her niece with kind, soothing words, assured
+      her of a happy future, lulled her with promises of love, and put her to
+      bed as if she had been not a niece, but a daughter, a much-beloved
+      daughter whose hopes and cares she had made her own. Perhaps the old
+      Marquise had found her own youth and inexperience and beauty again in this
+      nephew&rsquo;s wife. And the Countess fell asleep, happy to have found a friend,
+      nay a mother, to whom she could tell everything freely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning, when the two women kissed each other with heartfelt
+      kindness, and that look of intelligence which marks a real advance in
+      friendship, a closer intimacy between two souls, they heard the sound of
+      horsehoofs, and, turning both together, saw the young Englishman ride
+      slowly past the window, after his wont. Apparently he had made a certain
+      study of the life led by the two lonely women, for he never failed to ride
+      by as they sat at breakfast, and again at dinner. His horse slackened pace
+      of its own accord, and for the space of time required to pass the two
+      windows in the room, its rider turned a melancholy look upon the Countess,
+      who seldom deigned to take the slightest notion of him. Not so the
+      Marquise. Minds not necessarily little find it difficult to resist the
+      little curiosity which fastens upon the most trifling event that enlivens
+      provincial life; and the Englishman&rsquo;s mute way of expressing his timid,
+      earnest love tickled Mme. de Listomere. For her the periodically recurrent
+      glance became a part of the day&rsquo;s routine, hailed daily with new jests. As
+      the two women sat down to table, both of them looked out at the same
+      moment. This time Julie&rsquo;s eyes met Arthur&rsquo;s with such a precision of
+      sympathy that the color rose to her face. The stranger immediately urged
+      his horse into a gallop and went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is to be done, madame?&rdquo; asked Julie. &ldquo;People see this Englishman go
+      past the house, and they will take it for granted that I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; interrupted her aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, could I not tell him to discontinue his promenades?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would not that be a way of telling him that he was dangerous? You might
+      put that notion into his head. And besides, can you prevent a man from
+      coming and going as he pleases? Our meals shall be served in another room
+      to-morrow; and when this young gentleman sees us no longer, there will be
+      an end of making love to you through the window. There, dear child, that
+      is how a woman of the world does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the measure of Julie&rsquo;s misfortune was to be filled up. The two women
+      had scarcely risen from table when Victor&rsquo;s man arrived in hot haste from
+      Bourges with a letter for the Countess from her husband. The servant had
+      ridden by unfrequented ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Victor sent his wife news of the downfall of the Empire and the
+      capitulation of Paris. He himself had gone over to the Bourbons, and all
+      France was welcoming them back with transports of enthusiasm. He could not
+      go so far as Tours, but he begged her to come at once to join him at
+      Orleans, where he hoped to be in readiness with passports for her. His
+      servant, an old soldier, would be her escort so far as Orleans; he
+      (Victor) believed that the road was still open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have not a moment to lose, madame,&rdquo; said the man. &ldquo;The Prussians,
+      Austrians, and English are about to effect a junction either at Blois or
+      at Orleans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A few hours later, Julie&rsquo;s preparations were made, and she started out
+      upon her journey in an old traveling carriage lent by her aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should you not come with us to Paris?&rdquo; she asked, as she put her arms
+      about the Marquise. &ldquo;Now that the Bourbons have come back you would be&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even if there had not been this unhoped-for return, I should still have
+      gone to Paris, my poor child, for my advice is only too necessary to both
+      you and Victor. So I shall make all my preparations for rejoining you
+      there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie set out. She took her maid with her, and the old soldier galloped
+      beside the carriage as escort. At nightfall, as they changed horses for
+      the last stage before Blois, Julie grew uneasy. All the way from Amboise
+      she had heard the sound of wheels behind them, a carriage following hers
+      had kept at the same distance. She stood on the step and looked out to see
+      who her traveling companions might be, and in the moonlight saw Arthur
+      standing three paces away, gazing fixedly at the chaise which contained
+      her. Again their eyes met. The Countess hastily flung herself back in her
+      seat, but a feeling of dread set her pulses throbbing. It seemed to her,
+      as to most innocent and inexperienced young wives, that she was herself to
+      blame for this love which she had all unwittingly inspired. With this
+      thought came an instinctive terror, perhaps a sense of her own
+      helplessness before aggressive audacity. One of a man&rsquo;s strongest weapons
+      is the terrible power of compelling a woman to think of him when her
+      naturally lively imagination takes alarm or offence at the thought that
+      she is followed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess bethought herself of her aunt&rsquo;s advice, and made up her mind
+      that she would not stir from her place during the rest of the journey; but
+      every time the horses were changed she heard the Englishman pacing round
+      the two carriages, and again upon the road heard the importunate sound of
+      the wheels of his calèche. Julie soon began to think that, when once
+      reunited to her husband, Victor would know how to defend her against this
+      singular persecution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet suppose that in spite of everything, this young man does not love
+      me?&rdquo; This was the thought that came last of all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No sooner did she reach Orleans than the Prussians stopped the chaise. It
+      was wheeled into an inn-yard and put under a guard of soldiers. Resistance
+      was out of the question. The foreign soldiers made the three travelers
+      understand by signs that they were obeying orders, and that no one could
+      be allowed to leave the carriage. For about two hours the Countess sat in
+      tears, a prisoner surrounded by the guard, who smoked, laughed, and
+      occasionally stared at her with insolent curiosity. At last, however, she
+      saw her captors fall away from the carriage with a sort of respect, and
+      heard at the same time the sound of horses entering the yard. Another
+      moment, and a little group of foreign officers, with an Austrian general
+      at their head, gathered about the door of the traveling carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; said the General, &ldquo;pray accept our apologies. A mistake has been
+      made. You may continue your journey without fear; and here is a passport
+      which will spare you all further annoyance of any kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Trembling the Countess took the paper, and faltered out some vague words
+      of thanks. She saw Arthur, now wearing an English uniform, standing beside
+      the General, and could not doubt that this prompt deliverance was due to
+      him. The young Englishman himself looked half glad, half melancholy; his
+      face was turned away, and he only dared to steal an occasional glance at
+      Julie&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thanks to the passport, Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont reached Paris without further
+      misadventure, and there she found her husband. Victor d&rsquo;Aiglemont,
+      released from his oath of allegiance to the Emperor, had met with a most
+      flattering reception from the Comte d&rsquo;Artois, recently appointed
+      Lieutenant-General of the kingdom by his brother Louis XVIII. D&rsquo;Aiglemont
+      received a commission in the Life Guards, equivalent to the rank of
+      general. But amid the rejoicings over the return of the Bourbons, fate
+      dealt poor Julie a terrible blow. The death of the Marquise de
+      Listomere-Landon was an irreparable loss. The old lady died of joy and of
+      an accession of gout to the heart when the Duc d&rsquo;Angoulême came back to
+      Tours, and the one living being entitled by her age to enlighten Victor,
+      the woman who, by discreet counsels, might have brought about perfect
+      unanimity of husband and wife, was dead; and Julie felt the full extent of
+      her loss. Henceforward she must stand alone between herself and her
+      husband. But she was young and timid; there could be no doubt of the
+      result, or that from the first she would elect to bear her lot in silence.
+      The very perfection of her character forbade her to venture to swerve
+      from her duties, or to attempt to inquire into the cause of her
+      sufferings, for to put an end to them would have been to venture on
+      delicate ground, and Julie&rsquo;s girlish modesty shrank from the thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A word as to M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s destinies under the Restoration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How many men are there whose utter incapacity is a secret kept from most
+      of their acquaintance. For such as these high rank, high office,
+      illustrious birth, a certain veneer of politeness, and considerable
+      reserve of manner, or the <i>prestige</i> of great fortunes, are but so
+      many sentinels to turn back critics who would penetrate to the presence of
+      the real man. Such men are like kings, in that their real figure,
+      character, and life can never be known nor justly appreciated, because
+      they are always seen from too near or too far. Factitious merit has a way
+      of asking questions and saying little; and understands the art of putting
+      others forward to save the necessity of posing before them; then, with a
+      happy knack of its own, it draws and attaches others by the thread of the
+      ruling passion of self-interest, keeping men of far greater abilities to
+      play like puppets, and despising those whom it has brought down to its own
+      level. The petty fixed idea naturally prevails; it has the advantage of
+      persistence over the plasticity of great thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The observer who should seek to estimate and appraise the negative values
+      of these empty heads needs subtlety rather than superior wit for the task;
+      patience is a more necessary part of his judicial outfit than great mental
+      grasp, cunning and tact rather than any elevation or greatness of ideas.
+      Yet skilfully as such usurpers can cover and defend their weak points, it
+      is difficult to delude wife and mother and children and the house-friend
+      of the family; fortunately for them, however, these persons almost always
+      keep a secret which in a manner touches the honor of all, and not
+      unfrequently go so far as to help to foist the imposture upon the public.
+      And if, thanks to such domestic conspiracy, many a noodle passes current
+      for a man of ability, on the other hand many another who has real ability
+      is taken for a noodle to redress the balance, and the total average of
+      this kind of false coin in circulation in the state is a pretty constant
+      quantity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bethink yourself now of the part to be played by a clever woman quick to
+      think and feel, mated with a husband of this kind, and can you not see a
+      vision of lives full of sorrow and self-sacrifice? Nothing upon earth can
+      repay such hearts so full of love and tender tact. Put a strong-willed
+      woman in this wretched situation, and she will force a way out of it for
+      herself by a crime, like Catherine II., whom men nevertheless style &ldquo;the
+      Great.&rdquo; But these women are not all seated upon thrones, they are for the
+      most part doomed to domestic unhappiness none the less terrible because
+      obscure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those who seek consolation in this present world for their woes often
+      effect nothing but a change of ills if they remain faithful to their
+      duties; or they commit a sin if they break the laws for their pleasure.
+      All these reflections are applicable to Julie&rsquo;s domestic life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the fall of Napoleon nobody was jealous of d&rsquo;Aiglemont. He was one
+      colonel among many, an efficient orderly staff-officer, as good a man as
+      you could find for a dangerous mission, as unfit as well could be for an
+      important command. D&rsquo;Aiglemont was looked upon as a dashing soldier such
+      as the Emperor liked, the kind of man whom his mess usually calls &ldquo;a good
+      fellow.&rdquo; The Restoration gave him back his title of Marquis, and did not
+      find him ungrateful; he followed the Bourbons into exile at Ghent, a piece
+      of logical loyalty which falsified the horoscope drawn for him by his late
+      father-in-law, who predicted that Victor would remain a colonel all his
+      life. After the Hundred Days he received the appointment of
+      Lieutenant-General, and for the second time became a marquis; but it was
+      M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s ambition to be a peer of France. He adopted, therefore,
+      the maxims and the politics of the <i>Conservateur</i>, cloaked himself in
+      dissimulation which hid nothing (there being nothing to hide), cultivated
+      gravity of countenance and the art of asking questions and saying little,
+      and was taken for a man of profound wisdom. Nothing drew him from his
+      intrenchments behind the forms of politeness; he laid in a provision of
+      formulas, and made lavish use of his stock of the catch-words coined at
+      need in Paris to give fools the small change for the ore of great ideas
+      and events. Among men of the world he was reputed a man of taste and
+      discernment; and as a bigoted upholder of aristocratic opinions he was
+      held up for a noble character. If by chance he slipped now and again into
+      his old light-heartedness or levity, others were ready to discover an
+      undercurrent of diplomatic intention beneath his inanity and silliness.
+      &ldquo;Oh! he only says exactly as much as he means to say,&rdquo; thought these
+      excellent people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s defects and good qualities stood him alike in good stead.
+      He did nothing to forfeit a high military reputation gained by his dashing
+      courage, for he had never been a commander-in-chief. Great thoughts surely
+      were engraven upon that manly aristocratic countenance, which imposed upon
+      every one but his own wife. And when everybody else believed in the
+      Marquis d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s imaginary talents, the Marquis persuaded himself
+      before he had done that he was one of the most remarkable men at Court,
+      where, thanks to his purely external qualifications, he was in favor and
+      taken at his own valuation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At home, however, M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont was modest. Instinctively he felt that
+      his wife, young though she was, was his superior; and out of this
+      involuntary respect there grew an occult power which the Marquise was
+      obliged to wield in spite of all her efforts to shake off the burden. She
+      became her husband&rsquo;s adviser, the director of his actions and his
+      fortunes. It was an unnatural position; she felt it as something of a
+      humiliation, a source of pain to be buried in the depths of her heart.
+      From the first her delicately feminine instinct told her that it is a far
+      better thing to obey a man of talent than to lead a fool; and that a young
+      wife compelled to act and think like a man is neither man nor woman, but a
+      being who lays aside all the charms of her womanhood along with its
+      misfortunes, yet acquires none of the privileges which our laws give to
+      the stronger sex. Beneath the surface her life was a bitter mockery. Was
+      she not compelled to protect her protector, to worship a hollow idol, a
+      poor creature who flung her the love of a selfish husband as the wages of
+      her continual self-sacrifice; who saw nothing in her but the woman; and
+      who either did not think it worth while, or (wrong quite as deep) did not
+      think at all of troubling himself about her pleasures, of inquiring into
+      the cause of her low spirits and dwindling health? And the Marquis, like
+      most men who chafe under a wife&rsquo;s superiority, saved his self-love by
+      arguing from Julie&rsquo;s physical feebleness a corresponding lack of mental
+      power, for which he was pleased to pity her; and he would cry out upon
+      fate which had given him a sickly girl for a wife. The executioner posed,
+      in fact, as the victim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the burdens of this dreary lot fell upon the Marquise, who still must
+      smile upon her foolish lord, and deck a house of mourning with flowers,
+      and make a parade of happiness in a countenance wan with secret torture.
+      And with this sense of responsibility for the honor of both, with the
+      magnificent immolation of self, the young Marquise unconsciously acquired
+      a wifely dignity, a consciousness of virtue which became her safeguard
+      amid many dangers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps, if her heart were sounded to the very depths, this intimate
+      closely hidden wretchedness, following upon her unthinking, girlish first
+      love, had roused in her an abhorrence of passion; possibly she had no
+      conception of its rapture, nor of the forbidden but frenzied bliss for
+      which some women will renounce all the laws of prudence and the principles
+      of conduct upon which society is based. She put from her like a dream the
+      thought of bliss and tender harmony of love promised by Mme. de
+      Listomere-Landon&rsquo;s mature experience, and waited resignedly for the end of
+      her troubles with a hope that she might die young.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her health had declined daily since her return from Touraine; her life
+      seemed to be measured to her in suffering; yet her ill-health was
+      graceful, her malady seemed little more than languor, and might well be
+      taken by careless eyes for a fine lady&rsquo;s whim of invalidism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her doctors had condemned her to keep to the sofa, and there among her
+      flowers lay the Marquise, fading as they faded. She was not strong enough
+      to walk, nor to bear the open air, and only went out in a closed carriage.
+      Yet with all the marvels of modern luxury and invention about her, she
+      looked more like an indolent queen than an invalid. A few of her friends,
+      half in love perhaps with her sad plight and her fragile look, sure of
+      finding her at home, and speculating no doubt upon her future restoration
+      to health, would come to bring her the news of the day, and kept her
+      informed of the thousand and one small events which fill life in Paris
+      with variety. Her melancholy, deep and real though it was, was still the
+      melancholy of a woman rich in many ways. The Marquise d&rsquo;Aiglemont was like
+      a flower, with a dark insect gnawing at its root.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Occasionally she went into society, not to please herself, but in
+      obedience to the exigencies of the position which her husband aspired to
+      take. In society her beautiful voice and the perfection of her singing
+      could always gain the social success so gratifying to a young woman; but
+      what was social success to her, who drew nothing from it for her heart or
+      her hopes? Her husband did not care for music. And, moreover, she seldom
+      felt at her ease in salons, where her beauty attracted homage not wholly
+      disinterested. Her position excited a sort of cruel compassion, a morbid
+      curiosity. She was suffering from an inflammatory complaint not
+      infrequently fatal, for which our nosology as yet has found no name, a
+      complaint spoken of among women in confidential whispers. In spite of the
+      silence in which her life was spent, the cause of her ill-health was no
+      secret. She was still but a girl in spite of her marriage; the slightest
+      glance threw her into confusion. In her endeavor not to blush, she was
+      always laughing, always apparently in high spirits; she would never admit
+      that she was not perfectly well, and anticipated questions as to her
+      health by shame-stricken subterfuges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1817, however, an event took place which did much to alleviate Julie&rsquo;s
+      hitherto deplorable existence. A daughter was born to her, and she
+      determined to nurse her child herself. For two years motherhood, its
+      all-absorbing multiplicity of cares and anxious joys, made life less hard
+      for her. She and her husband lived necessarily apart. Her physicians
+      predicted improved health, but the Marquise herself put no faith in these
+      auguries based on theory. Perhaps, like many a one for whom life has lost
+      its sweetness, she looked forward to death as a happy termination of the
+      drama.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But with the beginning of the year 1819 life grew harder than ever. Even
+      while she congratulated herself upon the negative happiness which she had
+      contrived to win, she caught a terrifying glimpse of yawning depths below
+      it. She had passed by degrees out of her husband&rsquo;s life. Her fine tact and
+      her prudence told her that misfortune must come, and that not singly, of
+      this cooling of an affection already lukewarm and wholly selfish. Sure
+      though she was of her ascendency over Victor, and certain as she felt of
+      his unalterable esteem, she dreaded the influence of unbridled passions
+      upon a head so empty, so full of rash self-conceit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie&rsquo;s friends often found her absorbed in prolonged musings; the less
+      clairvoyant among them would jestingly ask her what she was thinking
+      about, as if a young wife would think of nothing but frivolity, as if
+      there were not almost always a depth of seriousness in a mother&rsquo;s
+      thoughts. Unhappiness, like great happiness, induces dreaming. Sometimes
+      as Julie played with her little Hélène, she would gaze darkly at her,
+      giving no reply to the childish questions in which a mother delights,
+      questioning the present and the future as to the destiny of this little
+      one. Then some sudden recollection would bring back the scene of the
+      review at the Tuileries and fill her eyes with tears. Her father&rsquo;s
+      prophetic warnings rang in her ears, and conscience reproached her that
+      she had not recognized its wisdom. Her troubles had all come of her own
+      wayward folly, and often she knew not which among so many were the hardest
+      to bear. The sweet treasures of her soul were unheeded, and not only so,
+      she could never succeed in making her husband understand her, even in the
+      commonest everyday things. Just as the power to love developed and grew
+      strong and active, a legitimate channel for the affections of her nature
+      was denied her, and wedded love was extinguished in grave physical and
+      mental sufferings. Add to this that she now felt for her husband that pity
+      closely bordering upon contempt, which withers all affection at last. Even
+      if she had not learned from conversations with some of her friends, from
+      examples in life, from sundry occurrences in the great world, that love
+      can bring ineffable bliss, her own wounds would have taught her to divine
+      the pure and deep happiness which binds two kindred souls each to each.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the picture which her memory traced of the past, Arthur&rsquo;s frank face
+      stood out daily nobler and purer; it was but a flash, for upon that
+      recollection she dared not dwell. The young Englishman&rsquo;s shy, silent love
+      for her was the one event since her marriage which had left a lingering
+      sweetness in her darkened and lonely heart. It may be that all the
+      blighted hopes, all the frustrated longings which gradually clouded
+      Julie&rsquo;s mind, gathered, by a not unnatural trick of imagination, about
+      this man&mdash;whose manners, sentiments, and character seemed to have so
+      much in common with her own. This idea still presented itself to her mind
+      fitfully and vaguely, like a dream; yet from that dream, which always
+      ended in a sigh, Julie awoke to greater wretchedness, to keener
+      consciousness of the latent anguish brooding beneath her imaginary bliss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Occasionally her self-pity took wilder and more daring flights. She
+      determined to have happiness at any cost; but still more often she lay a
+      helpless victim of an indescribable numbing stupor, the words she heard
+      had no meaning to her, or the thoughts which arose in her mind were so
+      vague and indistinct that she could not find language to express them.
+      Balked of the wishes of her heart, realities jarred harshly upon her
+      girlish dreams of life, but she was obliged to devour her tears. To whom
+      could she make complaint? Of whom be understood? She possessed, moreover,
+      that highest degree of woman&rsquo;s sensitive pride, the exquisite delicacy of
+      feeling which silences useless complainings and declines to use an
+      advantage to gain a triumph which can only humiliate both victor and
+      vanquished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie tried to endow M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont with her own abilities and virtues,
+      flattering herself that thus she might enjoy the happiness lacking in her
+      lot. All her woman&rsquo;s ingenuity and tact was employed in making the best of
+      the situation; pure waste of pains unsuspected by him, whom she thus
+      strengthened in his despotism. There were moments when misery became an
+      intoxication, expelling all ideas, all self-control; but, fortunately,
+      sincere piety always brought her back to one supreme hope; she found a
+      refuge in the belief in a future life, a wonderful thought which enabled
+      her to take up her painful task afresh. No elation of victory followed
+      those terrible inward battles and throes of anguish; no one knew of those
+      long hours of sadness; her haggard glances met no response from human
+      eyes, and during the brief moments snatched by chance for weeping, her
+      bitter tears fell unheeded and in solitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening in January 1820, the Marquise became aware of the full gravity
+      of the crisis, gradually brought on by force of circumstances. When a
+      husband and wife know each other thoroughly, and their relation has long
+      been a matter of use and wont, when the wife has learned to interpret
+      every slightest sign, when her quick insight discerns thoughts and facts
+      which her husband keeps from her, a chance word, or a remark so carelessly
+      let fall in the first instance, seems, upon subsequent reflection, like
+      the swift breaking out of light. A wife not seldom suddenly awakes upon
+      the brink of a precipice or in the depths of the abyss; and thus it was
+      with the Marquise. She was feeling glad to have been left to herself for
+      some days, when the real reason of her solitude flashed upon her. Her
+      husband, whether fickle and tired of her, or generous and full of pity for
+      her, was hers no longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the moment of that discovery she forgot herself, her sacrifices, all
+      that she had passed through, she remembered only that she was a mother.
+      Looking forward, she thought of her daughter&rsquo;s fortune, of the future
+      welfare of the one creature through whom some gleams of happiness came to
+      her, of her Hélène, the only possession which bound her to life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Julie wished to live to save her child from a stepmother&rsquo;s terrible
+      thraldom, which might crush her darling&rsquo;s life. Upon this new vision of
+      threatened possibilities followed one of those paroxysms of thought at
+      fever-heat which consume whole years of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henceforward husband and wife were doomed to be separated by a whole world
+      of thought, and all the weight of that world she must bear alone. Hitherto
+      she had felt sure that Victor loved her, in so far as he could be said to
+      love; she had been the slave of pleasures which she did not share; to-day
+      the satisfaction of knowing that she purchased his contentment with her
+      tears was hers no longer. She was alone in the world, nothing was left to
+      her now but a choice of evils. In the calm stillness of the night her
+      despondency drained her of all her strength. She rose from her sofa beside
+      the dying fire, and stood in the lamplight gazing, dry-eyed, at her child,
+      when M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont came in. He was in high spirits. Julie called to him
+      to admire Hélène as she lay asleep, but he met his wife&rsquo;s enthusiasm with
+      a commonplace:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All children are nice at that age.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He closed the curtains about the cot after a careless kiss on the child&rsquo;s
+      forehead. Then he turned his eyes on Julie, took her hand and drew her to
+      sit beside him on the sofa, where she had been sitting with such dark
+      thoughts surging up in her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are looking very handsome to-night, Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont,&rdquo; he exclaimed,
+      with the gaiety intolerable to the Marquise, who knew its emptiness so
+      well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where have you spent the evening?&rdquo; she asked, with a pretence of complete
+      indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At Mme. de Sérizy&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had taken up a fire-screen, and was looking intently at the gauze. He
+      had not noticed the traces of tears on his wife&rsquo;s face. Julie shuddered.
+      Words could not express the overflowing torrent of thoughts which must be
+      forced down into inner depths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mme. de Sérizy is giving a concert on Monday, and is dying for you to go.
+      You have not been anywhere for some time past, and that is enough to set
+      her longing to see you at her house. She is a good-natured woman, and very
+      fond of you. I should be glad if you would go; I all but promised that you
+      should&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something so penetrating, so significant in the tones of Julie&rsquo;s
+      voice, in her accent, in the glance that went with the words, that Victor,
+      startled out of his indifference, stared at his wife in astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was all, Julie had guessed that it was Mme. de Sérizy who had stolen
+      her husband&rsquo;s heart from her. Her brooding despair benumbed her. She
+      appeared to be deeply interested in the fire. Victor meanwhile still
+      played with the fire-screen. He looked bored, like a man who has enjoyed
+      himself elsewhere, and brought home the consequent lassitude. He yawned
+      once or twice, then he took up a candle in one hand, and with the other
+      languidly sought his wife&rsquo;s neck for the usual embrace; but Julie stooped
+      and received the good-night kiss upon her forehead; the formal, loveless
+      grimace seemed hateful to her at that moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the door closed upon Victor, his wife sank into a seat. Her
+      limbs tottered beneath her, she burst into tears. None but those who have
+      endured the torture of some such scene can fully understand the anguish
+      that it means, or divine the horror of the long-drawn tragedy arising out
+      of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those simple, foolish words, the silence that followed between the husband
+      and wife, the Marquis&rsquo; gesture and expression, the way in which he sat
+      before the fire, his attitude as he made that futile attempt to put a kiss
+      on his wife&rsquo;s throat,&mdash;all these things made up a dark hour for
+      Julie, and the catastrophe of the drama of her sad and lonely life. In her
+      madness she knelt down before the sofa, burying her face in it to shut out
+      everything from sight, and prayed to Heaven, putting a new significance
+      into the words of the evening prayer, till it became a cry from the depths
+      of her own soul, which would have gone to her husband&rsquo;s heart if he had
+      heard it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following week she spent in deep thought for her future, utterly
+      overwhelmed by this new trouble. She made a study of it, trying to
+      discover a way to regain her ascendency over the Marquis, scheming how to
+      live long enough to watch over her daughter&rsquo;s happiness, yet to live true
+      to her own heart. Then she made up her mind. She would struggle with her
+      rival. She would shine once more in society. She would feign the love
+      which she could no longer feel, she would captivate her husband&rsquo;s fancy;
+      and when she had lured him into her power, she would coquet with him like
+      a capricious mistress who takes delight in tormenting a lover. This
+      hateful strategy was the only possible way out of her troubles. In this
+      way she would become mistress of the situation; she would prescribe her
+      own sufferings at her good pleasure, and reduce them by enslaving her
+      husband, and bringing him under a tyrannous yoke. She felt not the
+      slightest remorse for the hard life which he should lead. At a bound she
+      reached cold, calculating indifference&mdash;for her daughter&rsquo;s sake. She
+      had gained a sudden insight into the treacherous, lying arts of degraded
+      women; the wiles of coquetry, the revolting cunning which arouses such
+      profound hatred in men at the mere suspicion of innate corruption in a
+      woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie&rsquo;s feminine vanity, her interests, and a vague desire to inflict
+      punishment, all wrought unconsciously with the mother&rsquo;s love within her to
+      force her into a path where new sufferings awaited her. But her nature was
+      too noble, her mind too fastidious, and, above all things, too open, to be
+      the accomplice of these frauds for very long. Accustomed as she was to
+      self-scrutiny, at the first step in vice&mdash;for vice it was&mdash;the
+      cry of conscience must inevitably drown the clamor of the passions and of
+      selfishness. Indeed, in a young wife whose heart is still pure, whose love
+      has never been mated, the very sentiment of motherhood is overpowered by
+      modesty. Modesty; is not all womanhood summed up in that? But just now
+      Julie would not see any danger, anything wrong, in her life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to Mme. de Sérizy&rsquo;s concert. Her rival had expected to see a
+      pallid, drooping woman. The Marquise wore rouge, and appeared in all the
+      splendor of a toilet which enhanced her beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. de Sérizy was one of those women who claim to exercise a sort of sway
+      over fashions and society in Paris; she issued her decrees, saw them
+      received in her own circle, and it seemed to her that all the world obeyed
+      them. She aspired to epigram, she set up for an authority in matters of
+      taste. Literature, politics, men and women, all alike were submitted to
+      her censorship, and the lady herself appeared to defy the censorship of
+      others. Her house was in every respect a model of good taste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie triumphed over the Countess in her own salon, filled as it was with
+      beautiful women and women of fashion. Julie&rsquo;s liveliness and sparkling wit
+      gathered all the most distinguished men in the rooms about her. Her
+      costume was faultless, for the despair of the women, who one and all
+      envied her the fashion of her dress, and attributed the moulded outline of
+      her bodice to the genius of some unknown dressmaker, for women would
+      rather believe in miracles worked by the science of chiffons than in the
+      grace and perfection of the form beneath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Julie went to the piano to sing Desdemona&rsquo;s song, the men in the
+      rooms flocked about her to hear the celebrated voice so long mute, and
+      there was a deep silence. The Marquise saw the heads clustered thickly in
+      the doorways, saw all eyes turned upon her, and a sharp thrill of
+      excitement quivered through her. She looked for her husband, gave him a
+      coquettish side-glance, and it pleased her to see that his vanity was
+      gratified to no small degree. In the joy of triumph she sang the first
+      part of <i>Al piu salice</i>. Her audience was enraptured. Never had
+      Malibran nor Pasta sung with expression and intonation so perfect. But at
+      the beginning of the second part she glanced over the glistening groups
+      and saw&mdash;Arthur. He never took his eyes from her face. A quick
+      shudder thrilled through her, and her voice faltered. Up hurried Mme. de
+      Sérizy from her place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, dear? Oh! poor little thing! she is in such weak health; I
+      was so afraid when I saw her begin a piece so far beyond her strength.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The song was interrupted. Julie was vexed. She had not courage to sing any
+      longer, and submitted to her rival&rsquo;s treacherous sympathy. There was a
+      whisper among the women. The incident led to discussions; they guessed
+      that the struggle had begun between the Marquise and Mme. de Sérizy, and
+      their tongues did not spare the latter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie&rsquo;s strange, perturbing presentiments were suddenly realized. Through
+      her preoccupation with Arthur she had loved to imagine that with that
+      gentle, refined face he must remain faithful to his first love. There were
+      times when she felt proud that this ideal, pure, and passionate young love
+      should have been hers; the passion of the young lover whose thoughts are
+      all for her to whom he dedicates every moment of his life, who blushes as
+      a woman blushes, thinks as a woman might think, forgetting ambition, fame,
+      and fortune in devotion to his love,&mdash;she need never fear a rival.
+      All these things she had fondly and idly dreamed of Arthur; now all at
+      once it seemed to her that her dream had come true. In the young
+      Englishman&rsquo;s half-feminine face she read the same deep thoughts, the same
+      pensive melancholy, the same passive acquiescence in a painful lot, and an
+      endurance like her own. She saw herself in him. Trouble and sadness are
+      the most eloquent of love&rsquo;s interpreters, and response is marvelously
+      swift between two suffering creatures, for in them the powers of intuition
+      and of assimilation of facts and ideas are well-nigh unerring and perfect.
+      So with the violence of the shock the Marquise&rsquo;s eyes were opened to the
+      whole extent of the future danger. She was only too glad to find a pretext
+      for her nervousness in her chronic ill-health, and willingly submitted to
+      be overwhelmed by Mme. de Sérizy&rsquo;s insidious compassion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That incident of the song caused talk and discussion which differed with
+      the various groups. Some pitied Julie&rsquo;s fate, and regretted that such a
+      remarkable woman was lost to society; others fell to wondering what the
+      cause of her ill-health and seclusion could be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, now, my dear Ronquerolles,&rdquo; said the Marquis, addressing Mme. de
+      Sérizy&rsquo;s brother, &ldquo;you used to envy me my good fortune, and you used to
+      blame me for my infidelities. Pshaw, you would not find much to envy in my
+      lot, if, like me, you had a pretty wife so fragile that for the past two
+      years you might not so much as kiss her hand for fear of damaging her. Do
+      not you encumber yourself with one of those fragile ornaments, only fit to
+      put in a glass case, so brittle and so costly that you are always obliged
+      to be careful of them. They tell me that you are afraid of snow or wet for
+      that fine horse of yours; how often do you ride him? That is just my own
+      case. It is true that my wife gives me no ground for jealousy, but my
+      marriage is purely ornamental business; if you think that I am a married
+      man, you are grossly mistaken. So there is some excuse for my
+      unfaithfulness. I should dearly like to know what you gentlemen who laugh
+      at me would do in my place. Not many men would be so considerate as I am.
+      I am sure,&rdquo; (here he lowered his voice) &ldquo;that Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont suspects
+      nothing. And then, of course, I have no right to complain at all; I am
+      very well off. Only there is nothing more trying for a man who feels
+      things than the sight of suffering in a poor creature to whom you are
+      attached&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must have a very sensitive nature, then,&rdquo; said M. de Ronquerolles,
+      &ldquo;for you are not often at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Laughter followed on the friendly epigram; but Arthur, who made one of the
+      group, maintained a frigid imperturbability in his quality of an English
+      gentleman who takes gravity for the very basis of his being. D&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s
+      eccentric confidence, no doubt, had kindled some kind of hope in Arthur,
+      for he stood patiently awaiting an opportunity of a word with the Marquis.
+      He had not to wait long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My Lord Marquis,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I am unspeakably pained to see the state of
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s health. I do not think that you would talk jestingly
+      about it if you knew that unless she adopts a certain course of treatment
+      she must die miserably. If I use this language to you, it is because I am
+      in a manner justified in using it, for I am quite certain that I can save
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s life and restore her to health and happiness. It is
+      odd, no doubt, that a man of my rank should be a physician, yet
+      nevertheless chance determined that I should study medicine. I find life
+      dull enough here,&rdquo; he continued, affecting a cold selfishness to gain his
+      ends, &ldquo;it makes no difference to me whether I spend my time and travel for
+      the benefit of a suffering fellow-creature, or waste it in Paris on some
+      nonsense or other. It is very, very seldom that a cure is completed in
+      these complaints, for they require constant care, time, and patience, and,
+      above all things, money. Travel is needed, and a punctilious following out
+      of prescriptions, by no means unpleasant, and varied daily. Two <i>gentlemen</i>&rdquo;
+       (laying a stress on the word in its English sense) &ldquo;can understand each
+      other. I give you warning that if you accept my proposal, you shall be a
+      judge of my conduct at every moment. I will do nothing without consulting
+      you, without your superintendence, and I will answer for the success of my
+      method if you will consent to follow it. Yes, unless you wish to be Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s husband no longer, and that before long,&rdquo; he added in the
+      Marquis&rsquo; ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquis laughed. &ldquo;One thing is certain&mdash;that only an Englishman
+      could make me such an extraordinary proposal,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Permit me to
+      leave it unaccepted and unrejected. I will think it over; and my wife must
+      be consulted first in any case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie had returned to the piano. This time she sang a song from <i>Semiramide,
+      Son regina, son guerriera</i>, and the whole room applauded, a stifled
+      outburst of wellbred acclamation which proved that the Faubourg
+      Saint-Germain had been roused to enthusiasm by her singing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evening was over. D&rsquo;Aiglemont brought his wife home, and Julie saw
+      with uneasy satisfaction that her first attempt had at once been
+      successful. Her husband had been roused out of indifference by the part
+      which she had played, and now he meant to honor her with such a passing
+      fancy as he might bestow upon some opera nymph. It amused Julie that she,
+      a virtuous married woman, should be treated thus. She tried to play with
+      her power, but at the outset her kindness broke down once more, and she
+      received the most terrible of all the lessons held in store for her by
+      fate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between two and three o&rsquo;clock in the morning Julie sat up, sombre and
+      moody, beside her sleeping husband, in the room dimly lighted by the
+      flickering lamp. Deep silence prevailed. Her agony of remorse had lasted
+      near an hour; how bitter her tears had been none perhaps can realize save
+      women who have known such an experience as hers. Only such natures as
+      Julie&rsquo;s can feel her loathing for a calculated caress, the horror of a
+      loveless kiss, of the heart&rsquo;s apostasy followed by dolorous prostitution.
+      She despised herself; she cursed marriage. She could have longed for
+      death; perhaps if it had not been for a cry from her child, she would have
+      sprung from the window and dashed herself upon the pavement. M.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont slept on peacefully at her side; his wife&rsquo;s hot dropping tears
+      did not waken him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But next morning Julie could be gay. She made a great effort to look
+      happy, to hide, not her melancholy, as heretofore, but an insuperable
+      loathing. From that day she no longer regarded herself as a blameless
+      wife. Had she not been false to herself? Why should she not play a double
+      part in the future, and display astounding depths of cunning in deceiving
+      her husband? In her there lay a hitherto undiscovered latent depravity,
+      lacking only opportunity, and her marriage was the cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even now she had asked herself why she should struggle with love, when,
+      with her heart and her whole nature in revolt, she gave herself to the
+      husband whom she loved no longer. Perhaps, who knows? some piece of
+      fallacious reasoning, some bit of special pleading, lies at the root of
+      all sins, of all crimes. How shall society exist unless every individual
+      of which it is composed will make the necessary sacrifices of inclination
+      demanded by its laws? If you accept the benefits of civilized society, do
+      you not by implication engage to observe the conditions, the conditions of
+      its very existence? And yet, starving wretches, compelled to respect the
+      laws of property, are not less to be pitied than women whose natural
+      instincts and sensitiveness are turned to so many avenues of pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few days after that scene of which the secret lay buried in the midnight
+      couch, d&rsquo;Aiglemont introduced Lord Grenville. Julie gave the guest a
+      stiffly polite reception, which did credit to her powers of dissimulation.
+      Resolutely she silenced her heart, veiled her eyes, steadied her voice,
+      and she kept her future in her own hands. Then, when by these devices,
+      this innate woman-craft, as it may be called, she had discovered the full
+      extent of the love which she inspired, Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont welcomed the hope
+      of a speedy cure, and no longer opposed her husband, who pressed her to
+      accept the young doctor&rsquo;s offer. Yet she declined to trust herself with
+      Lord Grenville until after some further study of his words and manner, she
+      could feel certain that he had sufficient generosity to endure his pain in
+      silence. She had absolute power over him, and she had begun to abuse that
+      power already. Was she not a woman?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montcontour is an old manor-house build upon the sandy cliffs above the
+      Loire, not far from the bridge where Julie&rsquo;s journey was interrupted in
+      1814. It is a picturesque, white chateau, with turrets covered with fine
+      stone carving like Mechlin lace; a chateau such as you often see in
+      Touraine, spick and span, ivy clad, standing among its groves of mulberry
+      trees and vineyards, with its hollow walks, its stone balustrades, and
+      cellars mined in the rock escarpments mirrored in the Loire. The roofs of
+      Montcontour gleam in the sun; the whole land glows in the burning heat.
+      Traces of the romantic charm of Spain and the south hover about the
+      enchanting spot. The breeze brings the scent of bell flowers and golden
+      broom, the air is soft, all about you lies a sunny land, a land which
+      casts its dreamy spell over your soul, a land of languor and of soft
+      desire, a fair, sweet-scented country, where pain is lulled to sleep and
+      passion wakes. No heart is cold for long beneath its clear sky, beside its
+      sparkling waters. One ambition dies after another, and you sink into
+      serene content and repose, as the sun sinks at the end of the day swathed
+      about with purple and azure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One warm August evening in 1821 two people were climbing the paths cut in
+      the crags above the chateau, doubtless for the sake of the view from the
+      heights above. The two were Julie and Lord Grenville, but this Julie
+      seemed to be a new creature. The unmistakable color of health glowed in
+      her face. Overflowing vitality had brought a light into her eyes, which
+      sparkled through a moist film with that liquid brightness which gives such
+      irresistible charm to the eyes of children. She was radiant with smiles;
+      she felt the joy of living and all the possibilities of life. From the
+      very way in which she lifted her little feet, it was easy to see that no
+      suffering trammeled her lightest movements; there was no heaviness nor
+      languor in her eyes, her voice, as heretofore. Under the white silk
+      sunshade which screened her from the hot sunlight, she looked like some
+      young bride beneath her veil, or a maiden waiting to yield to the magical
+      enchantments of Love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur led her with a lover&rsquo;s care, helping her up the pathway as if she
+      had been a child, finding the smoothest ways, avoiding the stones for her,
+      bidding her see glimpses of distance, or some flower beside the path,
+      always with the unfailing goodness, the same delicate design in all that
+      he did; the intuitive sense of this woman&rsquo;s wellbeing seemed to be innate
+      in him, and as much, nay, perhaps more, a part of his being as the pulse
+      of his own life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The patient and her doctor went step for step. There was nothing strange
+      for them in a sympathy which seemed to have existed since the day when
+      they first walked together. One will swayed them both; they stopped as
+      their senses received the same impression; every word and every glance
+      told of the same thought in either mind. They had climbed up through the
+      vineyards, and now they turned to sit on one of the long white stones,
+      quarried out of the caves in the hillside; but Julie stood awhile gazing
+      out over the landscape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a beautiful country!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Let us put up a tent and live
+      here. Victor, Victor, do come up here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont answered by a halloo from below. He did not, however, hurry
+      himself, merely giving his wife a glance from time to time when the
+      windings of the path gave him a glimpse of her. Julie breathed the air
+      with delight. She looked up at Arthur, giving him one of those subtle
+      glances in which a clever woman can put the whole of her thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I should like to live here always,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Would it be possible
+      to tire of this beautiful valley?&mdash;What is the picturesque river
+      called, do you know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the Cise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Cise,&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;And all this country below, before us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those are the low hills above the Cher.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And away to the right? Ah, that is Tours. Only see how fine the cathedral
+      towers look in the distance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent, and let fall the hand which she had stretched out towards
+      the view upon Arthur&rsquo;s. Both admired the wide landscape made up of so much
+      blended beauty. Neither of them spoke. The murmuring voice of the river,
+      the pure air, and the cloudless heaven were all in tune with their
+      thronging thoughts and their youth and the love in their hearts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! <i>mon Dieu</i>, how I love this country!&rdquo; Julie continued, with
+      growing and ingenuous enthusiasm. &ldquo;You lived here for a long while, did
+      you not?&rdquo; she added after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A thrill ran through Lord Grenville at her words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was down there,&rdquo; he said, in a melancholy voice, indicating as he
+      spoke a cluster of walnut trees by the roadside, &ldquo;that I, a prisoner, saw
+      you for the first time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but even at that time I felt very sad. This country looked wild to
+      me then, but now&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; She broke off, and Lord Grenville did not
+      dare to look at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All this pleasure I owe to you,&rdquo; Julie began at last, after a long
+      silence. &ldquo;Only the living can feel the joy of life, and until now have I
+      not been dead to it all? You have given me more than health, you have made
+      me feel all its worth&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Women have an inimitable talent for giving utterance to strong feelings in
+      colorless words; a woman&rsquo;s eloquence lies in tone and gesture, manner and
+      glance. Lord Grenville hid his face in his hands, for his tears filled his
+      eyes. This was Julie&rsquo;s first word of thanks since they left Paris a year
+      ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a whole year he had watched over the Marquise, putting his whole self
+      into the task. D&rsquo;Aiglemont seconding him, he had taken her first to Aix,
+      then to la Rochelle, to be near the sea. From moment to moment he had
+      watched the changes worked in Julie&rsquo;s shattered constitution by his wise
+      and simple prescriptions. He had cultivated her health as an enthusiastic
+      gardener might cultivate a rare flower. Yet, to all appearance, the
+      Marquise had quietly accepted Arthur&rsquo;s skill and care with the egoism of a
+      spoiled Parisienne, or like a courtesan who has no idea of the cost of
+      things, nor of the worth of a man, and judges of both by their comparative
+      usefulness to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The influence of places upon us is a fact worth remarking. If melancholy
+      comes over us by the margin of a great water, another indelible law of our
+      nature so orders it that the mountains exercise a purifying influence upon
+      our feelings, and among the hills passion gains in depth by all that it
+      apparently loses in vivacity. Perhaps it was the light of the wide country
+      by the Loire, the height of the fair sloping hillside on which the lovers
+      sat, that induced the calm bliss of the moment when the whole extent of
+      the passion that lies beneath a few insignificant-sounding words is
+      divined for the first time with a delicious sense of happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie had scarcely spoken the words which had moved Lord Grenville so
+      deeply, when a caressing breeze ruffled the treetops and filled the air
+      with coolness from the river; a few clouds crossed the sky, and the soft
+      cloud-shadows brought out all the beauty of the fair land below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie turned away her head, lest Arthur should see the tears which she
+      succeeded in repressing; his emotion had spread at once to her. She dried
+      her eyes, but she dared not raise them lest he should read the excess of
+      joy in a glance. Her woman&rsquo;s instinct told her that during this hour of
+      danger she must hide her love in the depths of her heart. Yet silence
+      might prove equally dangerous, and Julie saw that Lord Grenville was
+      unable to utter a word. She went on, therefore, in a gentle voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are touched by what I have said. Perhaps such a quick outburst of
+      feeling is the way in which a gracious and kind nature like yours reverses
+      a mistaken judgment. You must have thought me ungrateful when I was cold
+      and reserved, or cynical and hard, all through the journey which,
+      fortunately, is very near its end. I should not have been worthy of your
+      care if I had been unable to appreciate it. I have forgotten nothing.
+      Alas! I shall forget nothing, not the anxious way in which you watched
+      over me as a mother watches over her child, nor, and above all else, the
+      noble confidence of our life as brother and sister, the delicacy of your
+      conduct&mdash;winning charms, against which we women are defenceless. My
+      lord, it is out of my power to make you a return&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At these words Julie hastily moved further away, and Lord Grenville made
+      no attempt to detain her. She went to a rock not far away, and there sat
+      motionless. What either felt remained a secret known to each alone;
+      doubtless they wept in silence. The singing of the birds about them, so
+      blithe, so overflowing with tenderness at sunset time, could only increase
+      the storm of passion which had driven them apart. Nature took up their
+      story for them, and found a language for the love of which they did not
+      dare to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now, my lord,&rdquo; said Julie, and she came and stood before Arthur with
+      a great dignity, which allowed her to take his hand in hers. &ldquo;I am going
+      to ask you to hallow and purify the life which you have given back to me.
+      Here, we will part. I know,&rdquo; she added, as she saw how white his face
+      grew, &ldquo;I know that I am repaying you for your devotion by requiring of you
+      a sacrifice even greater than any which you have hitherto made for me,
+      sacrifices so great that they should receive some better recompense than
+      this.... But it must be... You must not stay in France. By laying this
+      command upon you, do I not give you rights which shall be held sacred?&rdquo;
+       she added, holding his hand against her beating heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Arthur, and he rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked in the direction of d&rsquo;Aiglemont, who appeared on the opposite
+      side of one of the hollow walks with the child in his arms. He had
+      scrambled up on the balustrade by the chateau that little Hélène might
+      jump down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Julie, I will not say a word of my love; we understand each other too
+      well. Deeply and carefully though I have hidden the pleasures of my heart,
+      you have shared them all. I feel it, I know it, I see it. And now, at this
+      moment, as I receive this delicious proof of the constant sympathy of our
+      hearts, I must go.... Cunning schemes for getting rid of him have crossed
+      my mind too often; the temptation might be irresistible if I stayed with
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had the same thought,&rdquo; she said, a look of pained surprise in her
+      troubled face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet in her tone and involuntary shudder there was such virtue, such
+      certainty of herself, won in many a hard-fought battle with a love that
+      spoke in Julie&rsquo;s tones and involuntary gestures, that Lord Grenville stood
+      thrilled with admiration of her. The mere shadow of a crime had been
+      dispelled from that clear conscience. The religious sentiment enthroned on
+      the fair forehead could not but drive away the evil thoughts that arise
+      unbidden, engendered by our imperfect nature, thoughts which make us aware
+      of the grandeur and the perils of human destiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I should have drawn down your scorn upon me, and&mdash;I
+      should have been saved,&rdquo; she added, and her eyes fell. &ldquo;To be lowered in
+      your eyes, what is that but death?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the two heroic lovers were silent, choking down their sorrow.
+      Good or ill, it seemed that their thoughts were loyally one, and the joys
+      in the depths of their heart were no more experiences apart than the pain
+      which they strove most anxiously to hide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no right to complain,&rdquo; she said after a while, &ldquo;my misery is of my
+      own making,&rdquo; and she raised her tear-filled eyes to the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you don&rsquo;t remember it, but that is the place where we met each
+      other for the first time,&rdquo; shouted the General from below, and he waved
+      his hand towards the distance. &ldquo;There, down yonder, near those poplars!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Englishman nodded abruptly by way of answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I was bound to die young and to know no happiness,&rdquo; Julie continued.
+      &ldquo;Yes, do not think that I live. Sorrow is just as fatal as the dreadful
+      disease which you have cured. I do not think that I am to blame. No. My
+      love is stronger than I am, and eternal; but all unconsciously it grew in
+      me; and I will not be guilty through my love. Nevertheless, though I shall
+      be faithful to my conscience as a wife, to my duties as a mother, I will
+      be no less faithful to the instincts of my heart. Hear me,&rdquo; she cried in
+      an unsteady voice, &ldquo;henceforth I belong to <i>him</i> no longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By a gesture, dreadful to see in its undisguised loathing she indicated
+      her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The social code demands that I shall make his existence happy,&rdquo; she
+      continued. &ldquo;I will obey, I will be his servant, my devotion to him shall
+      be boundless; but from to-day I am a widow. I will neither be a prostitute
+      in my own eyes nor in those of the world. If I do not belong to M.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont, I will never belong to another. You shall have nothing,
+      nothing save this which you have wrung from me. This is the doom which I
+      have passed upon myself,&rdquo; she said, looking proudly at him. &ldquo;And now, know
+      this&mdash;if you give way to a single criminal thought, M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s
+      widow will enter a convent in Spain or Italy. By an evil chance we have
+      spoken of our love; perhaps that confession was bound to come; but our
+      hearts must never vibrate again like this. To-morrow you will receive a
+      letter from England, and we shall part, and never see each other again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The effort had exhausted all Julie&rsquo;s strength. She felt her knees
+      trembling, and a feeling of deathly cold came over her. Obeying a woman&rsquo;s
+      instinct, she sat down, lest she should sink into Arthur&rsquo;s arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Julie!</i>&rdquo; cried Lord Grenville.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sharp cry rang through the air like a crack of thunder. Till then he
+      could not speak; now, all the words which the dumb lover could not utter
+      gathered themselves in that heartrending appeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what is wrong with her?&rdquo; asked the General, who had hurried up at
+      that cry, and now suddenly confronted the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing serious,&rdquo; said Julie, with that wonderful self-possession which a
+      woman&rsquo;s quick-wittedness usually brings to her aid when it is most called
+      for. &ldquo;The chill, damp air under the walnut tree made me feel quite faint
+      just now, and that must have alarmed this doctor of mine. Does he not look
+      on me as a very nearly finished work of art? He was startled, I suppose,
+      by the idea of seeing it destroyed.&rdquo; With ostentatious coolness she took
+      Lord Grenville&rsquo;s arm, smiled at her husband, took a last look at the
+      landscape, and went down the pathway, drawing her traveling companion with
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This certainly is the grandest view that we have seen,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I
+      shall never forget it. Just look, Victor, what distance, what an expanse
+      of country, and what variety in it! I have fallen in love with this
+      landscape.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her laughter was almost hysterical, but to her husband it sounded natural.
+      She sprang gaily down into the hollow pathway and vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; she cried, when they had left M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont far behind. &ldquo;So soon?
+      Is it so soon? Another moment, and we can neither of us be ourselves; we
+      shall never be ourselves again, our life is over, in short&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us go slowly,&rdquo; said Lord Grenville, &ldquo;the carriages are still some way
+      off, and if we may put words into our glances, our hearts may live a
+      little longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They went along the footpath by the river in the late evening light,
+      almost in silence; such vague words as they uttered, low as the murmur of
+      the Loire, stirred their souls to the depths. Just as the sun sank, a last
+      red gleam from the sky fell over them; it was like a mournful symbol of
+      their ill-starred love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General, much put out because the carriage was not at the spot where
+      they had left it, followed and outstripped the pair without interrupting
+      their converse. Lord Grenville&rsquo;s high minded and delicate behavior
+      throughout the journey had completely dispelled the Marquis&rsquo; suspicions.
+      For some time past he had left his wife in freedom, reposing confidence in
+      the noble amateur&rsquo;s Punic faith. Arthur and Julie walked on together in
+      the close and painful communion of two hearts laid waste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So short a while ago as they climbed the cliffs at Montcontour, there had
+      been a vague hope in either mind, an uneasy joy for which they dared not
+      account to themselves; but now as they came along the pathway by the
+      river, they pulled down the frail structure of imaginings, the child&rsquo;s
+      cardcastle, on which neither of them had dared to breathe. That hope was
+      over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That very evening Lord Grenville left them. His last look at Julie made it
+      miserably plain that since the moment when sympathy revealed the full
+      extent of a tyrannous passion, he did well to mistrust himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont and his wife took their places in the
+      carriage without their traveling companion, and were whirled swiftly along
+      the road to Blois. The Marquise was constantly put in mind of the journey
+      made in 1814, when as yet she know nothing of love, and had been almost
+      ready to curse it for its persistency. Countless forgotten impressions
+      were revived. The heart has its own memory. A woman who cannot recollect
+      the most important great events will recollect through a lifetime things
+      which appealed to her feelings; and Julie d&rsquo;Aiglemont found all the most
+      trifling details of that journey laid up in her mind. It was pleasant to
+      her to recall its little incidents as they occurred to her one by one;
+      there were points in the road when she could even remember the thoughts
+      that passed through her mind when she saw them first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Victor had fallen violently in love with his wife since she had recovered
+      the freshness of her youth and all her beauty, and now he pressed close to
+      her side like a lover. Once he tried to put his arm round her, but she
+      gently disengaged herself, finding some excuse or other for evading the
+      harmless caress. In a little while she shrank from the close contact with
+      Victor, the sensation of warmth communicated by their position. She tried
+      to take the unoccupied place opposite, but Victor gallantly resigned the
+      back seat to her. For this attention she thanked him with a sigh,
+      whereupon he forgot himself, and the Don Juan of the garrison construed
+      his wife&rsquo;s melancholy to his own advantage, so that at the end of the day
+      she was compelled to speak with a firmness which impressed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have all but killed me, dear, once already, as you know,&rdquo; said she.
+      &ldquo;If I were still an inexperienced girl, I might begin to sacrifice myself
+      afresh; but I am a mother, I have a daughter to bring up, and I owe as
+      much to her as to you. Let us resign ourselves to a misfortune which
+      affects us both alike. You are the less to be pitied. Have you not, as it
+      is, found consolations which duty and the honor of both, and (stronger
+      still) which Nature forbids to me? Stay,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;you carelessly left
+      three letters from Mme. de Sérizy in a drawer; here they are. My silence
+      about this matter should make it plain to you that in me you have a wife
+      who has plenty of indulgence and does not exact from you the sacrifices
+      prescribed by the law. But I have thought enough to see that the roles of
+      husband and wife are quite different, and that the wife alone is
+      predestined to misfortune. My virtue is based upon firmly fixed and
+      definite principles. I shall live blamelessly, but let me live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquis was taken aback by a logic which women grasp with the clear
+      insight of love, and overawed by a certain dignity natural to them at such
+      crises. Julie&rsquo;s instinctive repugnance for all that jarred upon her love
+      and the instincts of her heart is one of the fairest qualities of woman,
+      and springs perhaps from a natural virtue which neither laws nor
+      civilization can silence. And who shall dare to blame women? If a woman
+      can silence the exclusive sentiment which bids her &ldquo;forsake all other&rdquo; for
+      the man whom she loves, what is she but a priest who has lost his faith?
+      If a rigid mind here and there condemns Julie for a sort of compromise
+      between love and wifely duty, impassioned souls will lay it to her charge
+      as a crime. To be thus blamed by both sides shows one of two things very
+      clearly&mdash;that misery necessarily follows in the train of broken laws,
+      or else that there are deplorable flaws in the institutions upon which
+      society in Europe is based.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two years went by. M. and Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont went their separate ways,
+      leading their life in the world, meeting each other more frequently abroad
+      than at home, a refinement upon divorce, in which many a marriage in the
+      great world is apt to end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, strange to say, found husband and wife in their own
+      drawing-room. Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont had been dining at home with a friend, and
+      the General, who almost invariably dined in town, had not gone out for
+      once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a pleasant time in store for you, <i>Madame la Marquise</i>,&rdquo;
+       said M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont, setting his coffee cup down upon the table. He looked
+      at the guest, Mme. de Wimphen, and half-pettishly, half-mischievously
+      added, &ldquo;I am starting off for several days&rsquo; sport with the Master of the
+      Hounds. For a whole week, at any rate, you will be a widow in good
+      earnest; just what you wish for, I suppose.&mdash;Guillaume,&rdquo; he said to
+      the servant who entered, &ldquo;tell them to put the horses in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. de Wimphen was the friend to whom Julie had begun the letter upon her
+      marriage. The glances exchanged by the two women said plainly that in her
+      Julie had found an intimate friend, an indulgent and invaluable
+      confidante. Mme. de Wimphen&rsquo;s marriage had been a very happy one. Perhaps
+      it was her own happiness which secured her devotion to Julie&rsquo;s unhappy
+      life, for under such circumstances, dissimilarity of destiny is nearly
+      always a strong bond of union.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the hunting season not over yet?&rdquo; asked Julie, with an indifferent
+      glance at her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Master of the Hounds comes when and where he pleases, madame. We are
+      going boar-hunting in the Royal Forest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take care that no accident happens to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Accidents are usually unforeseen,&rdquo; he said, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The carriage is ready, my Lord Marquis,&rdquo; said the servant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, if I should fall a victim to the boar&mdash;&rdquo; he continued, with
+      a suppliant air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does this mean?&rdquo; inquired Mme. de Wimphen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come,&rdquo; said Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont, turning to her husband; smiling at
+      her friend as if to say, &ldquo;You will soon see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie held up her head; but as her husband came close to her, she swerved
+      at the last, so that his kiss fell not on her throat, but on the broad
+      frill about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be my witness before heaven now that I need a firman to obtain
+      this little grace of her,&rdquo; said the Marquis, addressing Mme. de Wimphen.
+      &ldquo;This is how this wife of mine understands love. She has brought me to
+      this pass, by what trickery I am at a loss to know.... A pleasant time to
+      you!&rdquo; and he went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But your poor husband is really very good-natured,&rdquo; cried Louisa de
+      Wimphen, when the two women were alone together. &ldquo;He loves you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! not another syllable after that last word. The name I bear makes me
+      shudder&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but Victor obeys you implicitly,&rdquo; said Louisa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His obedience is founded in part upon the great esteem which I have
+      inspired in him. As far as outward things go, I am a model wife. I make
+      his house pleasant to him; I shut my eyes to his intrigues; I touch not a
+      penny of his fortune. He is free to squander the interest exactly as he
+      pleases; I only stipulate that he shall not touch the principal. At this
+      price I have peace. He neither explains nor attempts to explain my life.
+      But though my husband is guided by me, that does not say that I have
+      nothing to fear from his character. I am a bear leader who daily trembles
+      lest the muzzle should give way at last. If Victor once took it into his
+      head that I had forfeited my right to his esteem, what would happen next I
+      dare not think; for he is violent, full of personal pride, and vain above
+      all things. While his wits are not keen enough to enable him to behave
+      discreetly at a delicate crisis when his lowest passions are involved, his
+      character is weak, and he would very likely kill me provisionally even if
+      he died of remorse next day. But there is no fear of that fatal good
+      fortune.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A brief pause followed. Both women were thinking of the real cause of this
+      state of affairs. Julie gave Louisa a glance which revealed her thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been cruelly obeyed,&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Yet I never forbade him to write
+      to me. Oh! <i>he</i> has forgotten me, and he is right. If his life had
+      been spoiled, it would have been too tragical; one life is enough, is it
+      not? Would you believe it, dear; I read English newspapers simply to see
+      his name in print. But he has not yet taken his seat in the House of
+      Lords.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you know English.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I not tell you?&mdash;Yes, I learned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little one!&rdquo; cried Louisa, grasping Julie&rsquo;s hand in hers. &ldquo;How can
+      you still live?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the secret,&rdquo; said the Marquise, with an involuntary gesture
+      almost childlike in its simplicity. &ldquo;Listen, I take laudanum. That duchess
+      in London suggested the idea; you know the story, Maturin made use of it
+      in one of his novels. My drops are very weak, but I sleep; I am only awake
+      for seven hours in the day, and those hours I spend with my child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Louisa gazed into the fire. The full extent of her friend&rsquo;s misery was
+      opening out before her for the first time, and she dared not look into her
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep my secret, Louisa,&rdquo; said Julie, after a moment&rsquo;s silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as she spoke the footman brought in a letter for the Marquise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she cried, and her face grew white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I need not ask from whom it comes,&rdquo; said Mme. de Wimphen, but the
+      Marquise was reading the letter, and heeded nothing else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. de Wimphen, watching her friend, saw strong feeling wrought to the
+      highest pitch, ecstasy of the most dangerous kind painted on Julie&rsquo;s face
+      in swift changing white and red. At length Julie flung the sheet into the
+      fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It burns like fire,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Oh! my heart beats till I cannot
+      breathe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose to her feet and walked up and down. Her eyes were blazing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did not leave Paris!&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. de Wimphen did not dare to interrupt the words that followed,
+      jerked-out sentences, measured by dreadful pauses in between. After every
+      break the deep notes of her voice sank lower and lower. There was
+      something awful about the last words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has seen me, constantly, and I have not known it.&mdash;A look, taken
+      by stealth, every day, helps him to live.&mdash;Louisa, you do not know!&mdash;He
+      is dying.&mdash;He wants to say good-bye to me. He knows that my husband
+      has gone away for several days. He will be here in a moment. Oh! I shall
+      die: I am lost.&mdash;Listen, Louisa, stay with me!&mdash;<i>I am afraid!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But my husband knows that I have been dining with you; he is sure to come
+      for me,&rdquo; said Mme. de Wimphen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, before you go I will send <i>him</i> away. I will play the
+      executioner for us both. Oh me! he will think that I do not love him any
+      more&mdash;And that letter of his! Dear, I can see those words in letters
+      of fire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A carriage rolled in under the archway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; cried the Marquise, with something like joy in her voice, &ldquo;he is
+      coming openly. He makes no mystery of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord Grenville,&rdquo; announced the servant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise stood up rigid and motionless; but at the sight of Arthur&rsquo;s
+      white face, so thin and haggard, how was it possible to keep up the show
+      of severity? Lord Grenville saw that Julie was not alone, but he
+      controlled his fierce annoyance, and looked cool and unperturbed. Yet for
+      the two women who knew his secret, his face, his tones, the look in his
+      eyes had something of the power attributed to the torpedo. Their faculties
+      were benumbed by the sharp shock of contact with his horrible pain. The
+      sound of his voice set Julie&rsquo;s heart beating so cruelly that she could not
+      trust herself to speak; she was afraid that he would see the full extent
+      of his power over her. Lord Grenville did not dare to look at Julie, and
+      Mme. de Wimphen was left to sustain a conversation to which no one
+      listened. Julie glanced at her friend with touching gratefulness in her
+      eyes to thank her for coming to her aid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the lovers had quelled emotion into silence, and could
+      preserve the limits laid down by duty and convention. But M. de Wimphen
+      was announced, and as he came in the two friends exchanged glances. Both
+      felt the difficulties of this fresh complication. It was impossible to
+      enter into explanations with M. de Wimphen, and Louisa could not think of
+      any sufficient pretext for asking to be left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie went to her, ostensibly to wrap her up in her shawl. &ldquo;I will be
+      brave,&rdquo; she said, in a low voice. &ldquo;He came here in the face of all the
+      world, so what have I to fear? Yet but for you, in that first moment, when
+      I saw how changed he looked, I should have fallen at his feet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Arthur, you have broken your promise to me,&rdquo; she said, in a
+      faltering voice, when she returned. Lord Grenville did not venture to take
+      the seat upon the sofa by her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could not resist the pleasure of hearing your voice, of being near you.
+      The thought of it came to be a sort of madness, a delirious frenzy. I am
+      no longer master of myself. I have taken myself to task; it is no use, I
+      am too weak, I ought to die. But to die without seeing you, without having
+      heard the rustle of your dress, or felt your tears. What a death!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He moved further away from her; but in his hasty uprising a pistol fell
+      out of his pocket. The Marquise looked down blankly at the weapon; all
+      passion, all expression had died out of her eyes. Lord Grenville stooped
+      for the thing, raging inwardly over an accident which seemed like a piece
+      of lovesick strategy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Arthur!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; he said, looking down, &ldquo;I came here in utter desperation; I
+      meant&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; he broke off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You meant to die by your own hand here in my house!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not alone!&rdquo; he said in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not alone! My husband, perhaps&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; he cried in a choking voice. &ldquo;Reassure yourself,&rdquo; he continued,
+      &ldquo;I have quite given up my deadly purpose. As soon as I came in, as soon as
+      I saw you, I felt that I was strong enough to suffer in silence, and to
+      die alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie sprang up, and flung herself into his arms. Through her sobbing he
+      caught a few passionate words, &ldquo;To know happiness, and then to die.&mdash;Yes,
+      let it be so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All Julie&rsquo;s story was summed up in that cry from the depths; it was the
+      summons of nature and of love at which women without a religion surrender.
+      With the fierce energy of unhoped-for joy, Arthur caught her up and
+      carried her to the sofa; but in a moment she tore herself from her lover&rsquo;s
+      arms, looked at him with a fixed despairing gaze, took his hand, snatched
+      up a candle, and drew him into her room. When they stood by the cot where
+      Hélène lay sleeping, she put the curtains softly aside, shading the candle
+      with her hand, lest the light should dazzle the half-closed eyes beneath
+      the transparent lids. Hélène lay smiling in her sleep, with her arms
+      outstretched on the coverlet. Julie glanced from her child to Arthur&rsquo;s
+      face. That look told him all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We may leave a husband, even though he loves us: a man is strong; he has
+      consolations.&mdash;We may defy the world and its laws. But a motherless
+      child!&rdquo;&mdash;all these thoughts, and a thousand others more moving still,
+      found language in that glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can take her with us,&rdquo; muttered he; &ldquo;I will love her dearly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma!&rdquo; cried little Hélène, now awake. Julie burst into tears. Lord
+      Grenville sat down and folded his arms in gloomy silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma!&rdquo; At the sweet childish name, so many nobler feelings, so many
+      irresistible yearnings awoke, that for a moment love was effaced by the
+      all-powerful instinct of motherhood; the mother triumphed over the woman
+      in Julie, and Lord Grenville could not hold out, he was defeated by
+      Julie&rsquo;s tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just at that moment a door was flung noisily open. &ldquo;Madame d&rsquo;Aiglemont,
+      are you hereabouts?&rdquo; called a voice which rang like a crack of thunder
+      through the hearts of the two lovers. The Marquis had come home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Julie could recover her presence of mind, her husband was on the
+      way to the door of her room which opened into his. Luckily, at a sign,
+      Lord Grenville escaped into the dressing-closet, and she hastily shut the
+      door upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my lady, here am I,&rdquo; said Victor, &ldquo;the hunting party did not come
+      off. I am just going to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night, so am I. So go and leave me to undress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very cross to-night, Madame la Marquise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General returned to his room, Julie went with him to the door and shut
+      it. Then she sprang to the dressing-close to release Arthur. All her
+      presence of mind returned; she bethought herself that it was quite natural
+      that her sometime doctor should pay her a visit; she might have left him
+      in the drawing-room while she put her little girl to bed. She was about to
+      tell him, under her breath, to go back to the drawing-room, and had opened
+      the door. Then she shrieked aloud. Lord Grenville&rsquo;s fingers had been
+      caught and crushed in the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what is it?&rdquo; demanded her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! nothing, I have just pricked my finger with a pin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General&rsquo;s door opened at once. Julie imagined that the irruption was
+      due to a sudden concern for her, and cursed a solicitude in which love had
+      no part. She had barely time to close the dressing-closet, and Lord
+      Grenville had not extricated his hand. The General did, in fact, appear,
+      but his wife had mistaken his motives; his apprehensions were entirely on
+      his own account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you lend me a bandana handkerchief? The stupid fool Charles leaves me
+      without a single one. In the early days you used to bother me with looking
+      after me so carefully. Ah, well, the honeymoon did not last very long for
+      me, nor yet for my cravats. Nowadays I am given over to the secular arm,
+      in the shape of servants who do not care one jack straw for what I say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There! There is a bandana for you. Did you go into the drawing-room?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! you might perhaps have been in time to see Lord Grenville.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he in Paris?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I will go at once. The good doctor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he will have gone by now!&rdquo; exclaimed Julie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquis, standing in the middle of the room, was tying the
+      handkerchief over his head. He looked complacently at himself in the
+      glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has become of the servants is more than I know,&rdquo; he remarked. &ldquo;I
+      have rung the bell for Charles, and he has not answered it. And your maid
+      is not here either. Ring for her. I should like another blanket on my bed
+      to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pauline is out,&rdquo; the Marquise said drily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, at midnight!&rdquo; exclaimed the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I gave her leave to go to the Opéra.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is funny!&rdquo; returned her husband, continuing to undress. &ldquo;I thought I
+      saw her coming upstairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has come in then, of course,&rdquo; said Julie, with assumed impatience,
+      and to allay any possible suspicion on her husband&rsquo;s part she pretended to
+      ring the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole history of that night has never been known, but no doubt it was
+      as simple and as tragically commonplace as the domestic incidents that
+      preceded it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day the Marquise d&rsquo;Aiglemont took to her bed, nor did she leave it
+      for some days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can have happened in your family so extraordinary that every one is
+      talking about your wife?&rdquo; asked M. de Ronquerolles of M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont a
+      short time after that night of catastrophes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take my advice and remain a bachelor,&rdquo; said d&rsquo;Aiglemont. &ldquo;The curtains of
+      Hélène&rsquo;s cot caught fire, and gave my wife such a shock that it will be a
+      twelvemonth before she gets over it; so the doctor says. You marry a
+      pretty wife, and her looks fall off; you marry a girl in blooming health,
+      and she turns into an invalid. You think she has a passionate temperament,
+      and find her cold, or else under her apparent coldness there lurks a
+      nature so passionate that she is the death of you, or she dishonors your
+      name. Sometimes the meekest of them will turn out crotchety, though the
+      crotchety ones never grow any sweeter. Sometimes the mere child, so simple
+      and silly at first, will develop an iron will to thwart you and the
+      ingenuity of a fiend. I am tired of marriage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or of your wife?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would be difficult. By-the-by, do you feel inclined to go to
+      Saint-Thomas d&rsquo;Aquin with me to attend Lord Grenville&rsquo;s funeral?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A singular way of spending time.&mdash;Is it really known how he came by
+      his death?&rdquo; added Ronquerolles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His man says that he spent a whole night sitting on somebody&rsquo;s window
+      sill to save some woman&rsquo;s character, and it has been infernally cold
+      lately.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such devotion would be highly creditable to one of us old stagers; but
+      Lord Grenville was a youngster and&mdash;an Englishman. Englishmen never
+      can do anything like anybody else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pooh!&rdquo; returned d&rsquo;Aiglemont, &ldquo;these heroic exploits all depend upon the
+      woman in the case, and it certainly was not for one that I know, that poor
+      Arthur came by his death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II. A HIDDEN GRIEF
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Between the Seine and the little river Loing lies a wide flat country,
+      skirted on the one side by the Forest of Fontainebleau, and marked out as
+      to its southern limits by the towns of Moret, Montereau, and Nemours. It
+      is a dreary country; little knolls of hills appear only at rare intervals,
+      and a coppice here and there among the fields affords for game; and
+      beyond, upon every side, stretches the endless gray or yellowish horizon
+      peculiar to Beauce, Sologne, and Berri.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the very centre of the plain, at equal distances from Moret and
+      Montereau, the traveler passes the old chateau of Saint-Lange, standing
+      amid surroundings which lack neither dignity nor stateliness. There are
+      magnificent avenues of elm-trees, great gardens encircled by the moat, and
+      a circumference of walls about a huge manorial pile which represents the
+      profits of the <i>maltôte</i>, the gains of farmers-general, legalized
+      malversation, or the vast fortunes of great houses now brought low beneath
+      the hammer of the Civil Code.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Should any artist or dreamer of dreams chance to stray along the roads
+      full of deep ruts, or over the heavy land which secures the place against
+      intrusion, he will wonder how it happened that this romantic old place was
+      set down in a savanna of corn-land, a desert of chalk, and sand, and marl,
+      where gaiety dies away, and melancholy is a natural product of the soil.
+      The voiceless solitude, the monotonous horizon line which weigh upon the
+      spirits are negative beauties, which only suit with sorrow that refuses to
+      be comforted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hither, at the close of the year 1820, came a woman, still young, well
+      known in Paris for her charm, her fair face, and her wit; and to the
+      immense astonishment of the little village a mile away, this woman of high
+      rank and corresponding fortune took up her abode at Saint-Lange.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From time immemorial, farmers and laborers had seen no gentry at the
+      chateau. The estate, considerable though it was, had been left in charge
+      of a land-steward and the house to the old servants. Wherefore the
+      appearance of the lady of the manor caused a kind of sensation in the
+      district.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A group had gathered in the yard of the wretched little wineshop at the
+      end of the village (where the road forks to Nemours and Moret) to see the
+      carriage pass. It went by slowly, for the Marquise had come from Paris
+      with her own horses, and those on the lookout had ample opportunity of
+      observing a waiting-maid, who sat with her back to the horses holding a
+      little girl, with a somewhat dreamy look, upon her knee. The child&rsquo;s
+      mother lay back in the carriage; she looked like a dying woman sent out
+      into the country air by her doctors as a last resource. Village
+      politicians were by no means pleased to see the young, delicate, downcast
+      face; they had hoped that the new arrival at Saint-Lange would bring some
+      life and stir into the neighborhood, and clearly any sort of stir or
+      movement must be distasteful to the suffering invalid in the traveling
+      carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That evening, when the notables of Saint-Lange were drinking in the
+      private room of the wineshop, the longest head among them declared that
+      such depression could admit of but one construction&mdash;the Marquise was
+      ruined. His lordship the Marquis was away in Spain with the Duc
+      d&rsquo;Angoulême (so they said in the papers), and beyond a doubt her ladyship
+      had come to Saint-Lange to retrench after a run of ill-luck on the Bourse.
+      The Marquis was one of the greatest gamblers on the face of the globe.
+      Perhaps the estate would be cut up and sold in little lots. There would be
+      some good strokes of business to be made in that case, and it behooved
+      everybody to count up his cash, unearth his savings and to see how he
+      stood, so as to secure his share of the spoil of Saint-Lange.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So fair did this future seem, that the village worthies, dying to know
+      whether it was founded on fact, began to think of ways of getting at the
+      truth through the servants at the chateau. None of these, however, could
+      throw any light on the calamity which had brought their mistress into the
+      country at the beginning of winter, and to the old chateau of Saint-Lange
+      of all places, when she might have taken her choice of cheerful
+      country-houses famous for their beautiful gardens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His worship the mayor called to pay his respects; but he did not see the
+      lady. Then the land-steward tried with no better success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame la Marquise kept her room, only leaving it, while it was set in
+      order, for the small adjoining drawing-room, where she dined; if, indeed,
+      to sit down to a table, to look with disgust at the dishes, and take the
+      precise amount of nourishment required to prevent death from sheer
+      starvation, can be called dining. The meal over, she returned at once to
+      the old-fashioned low chair, in which she had sat since the morning, in
+      the embrasure of the one window that lighted her room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her little girl she only saw for a few minutes daily, during the dismal
+      dinner, and even for a short time she seemed scarcely able to bear the
+      child&rsquo;s presence. Surely nothing but the most unheard-of anguish could
+      have extinguished a mother&rsquo;s love so early.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      None of the servants were suffered to come near, her own woman was the one
+      creature whom she liked to have about her; the chateau must be perfectly
+      quiet, the child must play at the other end of the house. The slightest
+      sound had grown so intolerable, that any human voice, even the voice of
+      her own child, jarred upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first the whole countryside was deeply interested in these
+      eccentricities; but time passed on, every possible hypothesis had been
+      advanced to account for them and the peasants and dwellers in the little
+      country towns thought no more of the invalid lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the Marquise was left to herself. She might live on, perfectly silent,
+      amid the silence which she herself had created; there was nothing to draw
+      her forth from the tapestried chamber where her grandmother died, whither
+      she herself had come that she might die, gently, without witnesses,
+      without importunate solicitude, without suffering from the insincere
+      demonstrations of egoism masquerading as affection, which double the agony
+      of death in great cities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was twenty-six years old. At that age, with plenty of romantic
+      illusions still left, the mind loves to dwell on the thought of death when
+      death seems to come as a friend. But with youth, death is coy, coming up
+      close only to go away, showing himself and hiding again, till youth has
+      time to fall out of love with him during this dalliance. There is that
+      uncertainty too that hangs over death&rsquo;s to-morrow. Youth plunges back into
+      the world of living men, there to find the pain more pitiless than death,
+      that does not wait to strike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This woman who refused to live was to know the bitterness of these
+      reprieves in the depths of her loneliness; in moral agony, which death
+      would not come to end, she was to serve a terrible apprenticeship to the
+      egoism which must take the bloom from her heart and break her in to the
+      life of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This harsh and sorry teaching is the usual outcome of our early sorrows.
+      For the first, and perhaps for the last time in her life, the Marquise
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont was in very truth suffering. And, indeed, would it not be an
+      error to suppose that the same sentiment can be reproduced in us? Once
+      develop the power to feel, is it not always there in the depths of our
+      nature? The accidents of life may lull or awaken it, but there it is, of
+      necessity modifying the self, its abiding place. Hence, every sensation
+      should have its great day once and for all, its first day of storm, be it
+      long or short. Hence, likewise, pain, the most abiding of our sensations,
+      could be keenly felt only at its first irruption, its intensity
+      diminishing with every subsequent paroxysm, either because we grow
+      accustomed to these crises, or perhaps because a natural instinct of
+      self-preservation asserts itself, and opposes to the destroying force of
+      anguish an equal but passive force of inertia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet of all kinds of suffering, to which does the name of anguish belong?
+      For the loss of parents, Nature has in a manner prepared us; physical
+      suffering, again, is an evil which passes over us and is gone; it lays no
+      hold upon the soul; if it persists, it ceases to be an evil, it is death.
+      The young mother loses her firstborn, but wedded love ere long gives her a
+      successor. This grief, too, is transient. After all, these, and many other
+      troubles like unto them, are in some sort wounds and bruises; they do not
+      sap the springs of vitality, and only a succession of such blows can crush
+      in us the instinct that seeks happiness. Great pain, therefore, pain that
+      arises to anguish, should be suffering so deadly, that past, present, and
+      future are alike included in its grip, and no part of life is left sound
+      and whole. Never afterwards can we think the same thoughts as before.
+      Anguish engraves itself in ineffaceable characters on mouth and brow; it
+      passes through us, destroying or relaxing the springs that vibrate to
+      enjoyment, leaving behind in the soul the seeds of a disgust for all
+      things in this world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, again, to be measureless, to weigh like this upon body and soul, the
+      trouble should befall when soul and body have just come to their full
+      strength, and smite down a heart that beats high with life. Then it is
+      that great scars are made. Terrible is the anguish. None, it may be, can
+      issue from this soul-sickness without undergoing some dramatic change.
+      Those who survive it, those who remain on earth, return to the world to
+      wear an actor&rsquo;s countenance and to play an actor&rsquo;s part. They know the
+      side-scenes where actors may retire to calculate chances, shed their
+      tears, or pass their jests. Life holds no inscrutable dark places for
+      those who have passed through this ordeal; their judgments are
+      Rhadamanthine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For young women of the Marquise d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s age, this first, this most
+      poignant pain of all, is always referable to the same cause. A woman,
+      especially if she is a young woman, greatly beautiful, and by nature
+      great, never fails to stake her whole life as instinct and sentiment and
+      society all unite to bid her. Suppose that that life fails her, suppose
+      that she still lives on, she cannot but endure the most cruel pangs,
+      inasmuch as a first love is the loveliest of all. How comes it that this
+      catastrophe has found no painter, no poet? And yet, can it be painted? Can
+      it be sung? No; for the anguish arising from it eludes analysis and defies
+      the colors of art. And more than this, such pain is never confessed. To
+      console the sufferer, you must be able to divine the past which she hugs
+      in bitterness to her soul like a remorse; it is like an avalanche in a
+      valley; it laid all waste before it found a permanent resting-place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise was suffering from this anguish, which will for long remain
+      unknown, because the whole world condemns it, while sentiment cherishes
+      it, and the conscience of a true woman justifies her in it. It is with
+      such pain as with children steadily disowned of life, and therefore bound
+      more closely to the mother&rsquo;s heart than other children more bounteously
+      endowed. Never, perhaps, was the awful catastrophe in which the whole
+      world without dies for us, so deadly, so complete, so cruelly aggravated
+      by circumstance as it had been for the Marquise. The man whom she had
+      loved was young and generous; in obedience to the laws of the world, she
+      had refused herself to his love, and he had died to save a woman&rsquo;s honor,
+      as the world calls it. To whom could she speak of her misery? Her tears
+      would be an offence against her husband, the origin of the tragedy. By all
+      laws written and unwritten she was bound over to silence. A woman would
+      have enjoyed the story; a man would have schemed for his own benefit. No;
+      such grief as hers can only weep freely in solitude and in loneliness; she
+      must consume her pain or be consumed by it; die or kill something within
+      her&mdash;her conscience, it may be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Day after day she sat gazing at the flat horizon. It lay out before her
+      like her own life to come. There was nothing to discover, nothing to hope.
+      The whole of it could be seen at a glance. It was the visible presentment
+      in the outward world of the chill sense of desolation which was gnawing
+      restlessly at her heart. The misty mornings, the pale, bright sky, the low
+      clouds scudding under the gray dome of heaven, fitted with the moods of
+      her soul-sickness. Her heart did not contract, was neither more nor less
+      seared, rather it seemed as if her youth, in its full blossom, was slowly
+      turned to stone by an anguish intolerable because it was barren. She
+      suffered through herself and for herself. How could it end save in
+      self-absorption? Ugly torturing thoughts probed her conscience. Candid
+      self-examination pronounced that she was double, there were two selves
+      within her; a woman who felt and a woman who thought; a self that suffered
+      and a self that could fain suffer no longer. Her mind traveled back to the
+      joys of childish days; they had gone by, and she had never known how happy
+      they were. Scenes crowded up in her memory as in a bright mirror glass, to
+      demonstrate the deception of a marriage which, all that it should be in
+      the eyes of the world, was in reality wretched. What had the delicate
+      pride of young womanhood done for her&mdash;the bliss foregone, the
+      sacrifices made to the world? Everything in her expressed love, awaited
+      love; her movements still were full of perfect grace; her smile, her
+      charm, were hers as before; why? she asked herself. The sense of her own
+      youth and physical loveliness no more affected her than some meaningless
+      reiterated sound. Her very beauty had grown intolerable to her as a
+      useless thing. She shrank aghast from the thought that through the rest of
+      life she must remain an incomplete creature; had not the inner self lost
+      its power of receiving impressions with that zest, that exquisite sense of
+      freshness which is the spring of so much of life&rsquo;s gladness? The
+      impressions of the future would for the most part be effaced as soon as
+      received, and many of the thoughts which once would have moved her now
+      would move her no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the childhood of the creature dawns the childhood of the heart; but
+      this second infancy was over, her lover had taken it down with him into
+      the grave. The longings of youth remained; she was young yet; but the
+      completeness of youth was gone, and with that lost completeness the whole
+      value and savor of life had diminished somewhat. Should she not always
+      bear within her the seeds of sadness and mistrust, ready to grow up and
+      rob emotion of its springtide of fervor? Conscious she must always be that
+      nothing could give her now the happiness so longed for, that seemed so
+      fair in her dreams. The fire from heaven that sheds abroad its light in
+      the heart, in the dawn of love, had been quenched in tears, the first real
+      tears which she had shed; henceforth she must always suffer, because it
+      was no longer in her power to be what once she might have been. This is a
+      belief which turns us in aversion and bitterness of spirit from any
+      proffered new delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie had come to look at life from the point of view of age about to die.
+      Young though she felt, the heavy weight of joyless days had fallen upon
+      her, and left her broken-spirited and old before her time. With a
+      despairing cry, she asked the world what it could give her in exchange for
+      the love now lost, by which she had lived. She asked herself whether in
+      that vanished love, so chaste and pure, her will had not been more
+      criminal than her deeds, and chose to believe herself guilty; partly to
+      affront the world, partly for her own consolation, in that she had missed
+      the close union of body and soul, which diminishes the pain of the one who
+      is left behind by the knowledge that once it has known and given joy to
+      the full, and retains within itself the impress of that which is no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something of the mortification of the actress cheated of her part mingled
+      with the pain which thrilled through every fibre of her heart and brain.
+      Her nature had been thwarted, her vanity wounded, her woman&rsquo;s generosity
+      cheated of self-sacrifice. Then, when she had raised all these questions,
+      set vibrating all the springs in those different phases of being which we
+      distinguish as social, moral, and physical, her energies were so far
+      exhausted and relaxed that she was powerless to grasp a single thought
+      amid the chase of conflicting ideas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes as the mists fell, she would throw her window open, and would
+      stay there, motionless, breathing in unheedingly the damp earthly scent in
+      the air, her mind to all appearance an unintelligent blank, for the
+      ceaseless burden of sorrow humming in her brain left her deaf to earth&rsquo;s
+      harmonies and insensible to the delights of thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, towards noon, when the sun shone out for a little, her maid came
+      in without a summons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the fourth time that M. le Curé has come to see Mme. la Marquise;
+      to-day he is so determined about it, that we did not know what to tell
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has come to ask for some money for the poor, no doubt; take him
+      twenty-five louis from me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman went only to return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M. le Cure will not take the money, my lady; he wants to speak to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then let him come!&rdquo; said Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont, with an involuntary shrug
+      which augured ill for the priest&rsquo;s reception. Evidently the lady meant to
+      put a stop to persecution by a short and sharp method.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont had lost her mother in her early childhood; and as a
+      natural consequence in her bringing-up, she had felt the influence of the
+      relaxed notions which loosened the hold of religion upon France during the
+      Revolution. Piety is a womanly virtue which women alone can really instil;
+      and the Marquise, a child of the eighteenth century, had adopted her
+      father&rsquo;s creed of philosophism, and practised no religious observances. A
+      priest, to her way of thinking, was a civil servant of very doubtful
+      utility. In her present position, the teaching of religion could only
+      poison her wounds; she had, moreover, but scanty faith in the lights of
+      country cures, and made up her mind to put this one gently but firmly in
+      his place, and to rid herself of him, after the manner of the rich, by
+      bestowing a benefit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first sight of the curé the Marquise felt no inclination to change her
+      mind. She saw before her a stout, rotund little man, with a ruddy,
+      wrinkled, elderly face, which awkwardly and unsuccessfully tried to smile.
+      His bald, quadrant-shaped forehead, furrowed by intersecting lines, was
+      too heavy for the rest of his face, which seemed to be dwarfed by it. A
+      fringe of scanty white hair encircled the back of his head, and almost
+      reached his ears. Yet the priest looked as if by nature he had a genial
+      disposition; his thick lips, his slightly curved nose, his chin, which
+      vanished in a double fold of wrinkles,&mdash;all marked him out as a man
+      who took cheerful views of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first the Marquise saw nothing but these salient characteristics, but
+      at the first word she was struck by the sweetness of the speaker&rsquo;s voice.
+      Looking at him more closely, she saw that the eyes under the grizzled
+      eyebrows had shed tears, and his face, turned in profile, wore so sublime
+      an impress of sorrow, that the Marquise recognized the man in the curé.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame la Marquise, the rich only come within our province when they are
+      in trouble. It is easy to see that the troubles of a young, beautiful, and
+      wealthy woman, who has lost neither children nor relatives, are caused by
+      wounds whose pangs religion alone can soothe. Your soul is in danger,
+      madame. I am not speaking now of the hereafter which awaits us. No, I am
+      not in the confessional. But it is my duty, is it not, to open your eyes
+      to your future life here on earth? You will pardon an old man, will you
+      not, for importunity which has your own happiness for its object?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no more happiness for me, monsieur. I shall soon be, as you say,
+      in your province; but it will be for ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, madame. You will not die of this pain which lies heavy upon you, and
+      can be read in your face. If you had been destined to die of it, you would
+      not be here at Saint-Lange. A definite regret is not so deadly as hope
+      deferred. I have known others pass through more intolerable and more awful
+      anguish, and yet they live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise looked incredulous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, I know a man whose affliction was so sore that your trouble would
+      seem to you to be light compared with his.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps the long solitary hours had begun to hang heavily; perhaps in the
+      recesses of the Marquise&rsquo;s mind lay the thought that here was a friendly
+      heart to whom she might be able to pour out her troubles. However, it was,
+      she gave the cure a questioning glance which could not be mistaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;the man of whom I tell you had but three children
+      left of a once large family circle. He lost his parents, his daughter, and
+      his wife, whom he dearly loved. He was left alone at last on the little
+      farm where he had lived so happily for so long. His three sons were in the
+      army, and each of the lads had risen in proportion to his time of service.
+      During the Hundred Days, the oldest went into the Guard with a colonel&rsquo;s
+      commission; the second was a major in the artillery; the youngest a major
+      in a regiment of dragoons. Madame, those three boys loved their father as
+      much as he loved them. If you but knew how careless young fellows grow of
+      home ties when they are carried away by the current of their own lives,
+      you would realize from this one little thing how warmly they loved the
+      lonely old father, who only lived in and for them&mdash;never a week
+      passed without a letter from one of the boys. But then he on his side had
+      never been weakly indulgent, to lessen their respect for him; nor unjustly
+      severe, to thwart their affection; or apt to grudge sacrifices, the thing
+      that estranges children&rsquo;s hearts. He had been more than a father; he had
+      been a brother to them, and their friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At last he went to Paris to bid them good-bye before they set out for
+      Belgium; he wished to see that they had good horses and all that they
+      needed. And so they went, and the father returned to his home again. Then
+      the war began. He had letters from Fleurus, and again from Ligny. All went
+      well. Then came the battle of Waterloo, and you know the rest. France was
+      plunged into mourning; every family waited in intense anxiety for news.
+      You may imagine, madame, how the old man waited for tidings, in anxiety
+      that knew no peace nor rest. He used to read the gazettes; he went to the
+      coach office every day. One evening he was told that the colonel&rsquo;s servant
+      had come. The man was riding his master&rsquo;s horse&mdash;what need was there
+      to ask any questions?&mdash;the colonel was dead, cut in two by a shell.
+      Before the evening was out the youngest son&rsquo;s servant arrived&mdash;the
+      youngest had died on the eve of the battle. At midnight came a gunner with
+      tidings of the death of the last; upon whom, in those few hours, the poor
+      father had centered all his life. Madame, they all had fallen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a pause the good man controlled his feelings, and added gently:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And their father is still living, madame. He realized that if God had
+      left him on earth, he was bound to live on and suffer on earth; but he
+      took refuge in the sanctuary. What could he be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise looked up and saw the curé&rsquo;s face, grown sublime in its
+      sorrow and resignation, and waited for him to speak. When the words came,
+      tears broke from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A priest, madame; consecrated by his own tears previously shed at the
+      foot of the altar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Silence prevailed for a little. The Marquise and the curé looked out at
+      the foggy landscape, as if they could see the figures of those who were no
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a priest in a city, but a simple country curé,&rdquo; added he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At Saint-Lange,&rdquo; she said, drying her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, madame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Never had the majesty of grief seemed so great to Julie. The two words
+      sank straight into her heart with the weight of infinite sorrow. The
+      gentle, sonorous tones troubled her heart. Ah! that full, deep voice,
+      charged with plangent vibration, was the voice of one who had suffered
+      indeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if I do not die, monsieur, what will become of me?&rdquo; The Marquise
+      spoke almost reverently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you not a child, madame?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said stiffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The curé gave her such a glance as a doctor gives a patient whose life is
+      in danger. Then he determined to do all that in him lay to combat the evil
+      spirit into whose clutches she had fallen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must live on with our sorrows&mdash;you see it yourself, madame, and
+      religion alone offers us real consolation. Will you permit me to come
+      again?&mdash;to speak to you as a man who can sympathize with every
+      trouble, a man about whom there is nothing very alarming, I think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, monsieur, come back again. Thank you for your thought of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, madame; then I shall return very shortly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This visit relaxed the tension of soul, as it were; the heavy strain of
+      grief and loneliness had been almost too much for the Marquise&rsquo;s strength.
+      The priest&rsquo;s visit had left a soothing balm in her heart, his words
+      thrilled through her with healing influence. She began to feel something
+      of a prisoner&rsquo;s satisfaction, when, after he has had time to feel his
+      utter loneliness and the weight of his chains, he hears a neighbor
+      knocking on the wall, and welcomes the sound which brings a sense of human
+      friendship. Here was an unhoped-for confidant. But this feeling did not
+      last for long. Soon she sank back into the old bitterness of spirit,
+      saying to herself, as the prisoner might say, that a companion in
+      misfortune could neither lighten her own bondage nor her future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the first visit the curé had feared to alarm the susceptibilities of
+      self-absorbed grief, in a second interview he hoped to make some progress
+      towards religion. He came back again two days later, and from the
+      Marquise&rsquo;s welcome it was plain that she had looked forward to the visit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Mme. la Marquise, have you given a little thought to the great mass
+      of human suffering? Have you raised your eyes above our earth and seen the
+      immensity of the universe?&mdash;the worlds beyond worlds which crush our
+      vanity into insignificance, and with our vanity reduce our sorrows?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, monsieur,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I cannot rise to such heights, our social laws
+      lie too heavily upon me, and rend my heart with a too poignant anguish.
+      And laws perhaps are less cruel than the usages of the world. Ah! the
+      world!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, we must obey both. Law is the doctrine, and custom the practice
+      of society.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Obey society?&rdquo; cried the Marquise, with an involuntary shudder. &ldquo;Eh!
+      monsieur, it is the source of all our woes. God laid down no law to make
+      us miserable; but mankind, uniting together in social life, have perverted
+      God&rsquo;s work. Civilization deals harder measure to us women than nature
+      does. Nature imposes upon us physical suffering which you have not
+      alleviated; civilization has developed in us thoughts and feelings which
+      you cheat continually. Nature exterminates the weak; you condemn them to
+      live, and by so doing, consign them to a life of misery. The whole weight
+      of the burden of marriage, an institution on which society is based, falls
+      upon us; for the man liberty, duties for the woman. We must give up our
+      whole lives to you, you are only bound to give us a few moments of yours.
+      A man, in fact, makes a choice, while we blindly submit. Oh, monsieur, to
+      you I can speak freely. Marriage, in these days, seems to me to be
+      legalized prostitution. This is the cause of my wretchedness. But among so
+      many miserable creatures so unhappily yoked, I alone am bound to be
+      silent, I alone am to blame for my misery. My marriage was my own doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped short, and bitter tears fell in the silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the depths of my wretchedness, in the midst of this sea of distress,&rdquo;
+       she went on, &ldquo;I found some sands on which to set foot and suffer at
+      leisure. A great tempest swept everything away. And here am I, helpless
+      and alone, too weak to cope with storms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are never weak while God is with us,&rdquo; said the priest. &ldquo;And if your
+      cravings for affection cannot be satisfied here on earth, have you no
+      duties to perform?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Duties continually!&rdquo; she exclaimed, with something of impatience in her
+      tone. &ldquo;But where for me are the sentiments which give us strength to
+      perform them? Nothing from nothing, nothing for nothing,&mdash;this,
+      monsieur, is one of the most inexorable laws of nature, physical or
+      spiritual. Would you have these trees break into leaf without the sap
+      which swells the buds? It is the same with our human nature; and in me the
+      sap is dried up at its source.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not going to speak to you of religious sentiments of which
+      resignation is born,&rdquo; said the curé, &ldquo;but of motherhood, madame, surely&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop, monsieur!&rdquo; said the Marquise, &ldquo;with you I will be sincere. Alas! in
+      future I can be sincere with no one; I am condemned to falsehood. The
+      world requires continual grimaces, and we are bidden to obey its
+      conventions if we would escape reproach. There are two kinds of
+      motherhood, monsieur; once I knew nothing of such distinctions, but I know
+      them now. Only half of me has become a mother; it were better for me if I
+      had not been a mother at all. Hélène is not <i>his</i> child! Oh! do not
+      start. At Saint-Lange there are volcanic depths whence come lurid gleams
+      of light and earthquake shocks to shake the fragile edifices of laws not
+      based on nature. I have borne a child, that is enough, I am a mother in
+      the eyes of the law. But you, monsieur, with your delicately compassionate
+      soul, can perhaps understand this cry from an unhappy woman who has
+      suffered no lying illusions to enter her heart. God will judge me, but
+      surely I have only obeyed His laws by giving way to the affections which
+      He Himself set in me, and this I have learned from my own soul.&mdash;What
+      is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the fruit of two
+      sentiments spontaneously blended? Unless it is owned by every fibre of the
+      body, as by every chord of tenderness in the heart; unless it recalls the
+      bliss of love, the hours, the places where two creatures were happy, their
+      words that overflowed with the music of humanity, and their sweet
+      imaginings, that child is an incomplete creation. Yes, those two should
+      find the poetic dreams of their intimate double life realized in their
+      child as in an exquisite miniature; it should be for them a never-failing
+      spring of emotion, implying their whole past and their whole future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor little Hélène is her father&rsquo;s child, the offspring of duty and of
+      chance. In me she finds nothing but the affection of instinct, the woman&rsquo;s
+      natural compassion for the child of her womb. Socially speaking, I am
+      above reproach. Have I not sacrificed my life and my happiness to my
+      child? Her cries go to my heart; if she were to fall into the water, I
+      should spring to save her, but she is not in my heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! love set me dreaming of a motherhood far greater and more complete.
+      In a vanished dream I held in my arms a child conceived in desire before
+      it was begotten, the exquisite flower of life that blossoms in the soul
+      before it sees the light of day. I am Hélène&rsquo;s mother only in the sense
+      that I brought her forth. When she needs me no longer, there will be an
+      end of my motherhood; with the extinction of the cause, the effects will
+      cease. If it is a woman&rsquo;s adorable prerogative that her motherhood may
+      last through her child&rsquo;s life, surely that divine persistence of sentiment
+      is due to the far-reaching glory of the conception of the soul? Unless a
+      child has lain wrapped about from life&rsquo;s first beginnings by the mother&rsquo;s
+      soul, the instinct of motherhood dies in her as in the animals. This is
+      true; I feel that it is true. As my poor little one grows older, my heart
+      closes. My sacrifices have driven us apart. And yet I know, monsieur, that
+      to another child my heart would have gone out in inexhaustible love; for
+      that other I should not have known what sacrifice meant, all had been
+      delight. In this, monsieur, my instincts are stronger than reason,
+      stronger than religion or all else in me. Does the woman who is neither
+      wife nor mother sin in wishing to die when, for her misfortune, she has
+      caught a glimpse of the infinite beauty of love, the limitless joy of
+      motherhood? What can become of her? <i>I</i> can tell you what she feels.
+      I cannot put that memory from me so resolutely but that a hundred times,
+      night and day, visions of a happiness, greater it may be than the reality,
+      rise before me, followed by a shudder which shakes brain and heart and
+      body. Before these cruel visions, my feelings and thoughts grow colorless,
+      and I ask myself, &lsquo;What would my life have been <i>if</i>&mdash;&mdash;?&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hid her face in her hands and burst into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you see the depths of my heart!&rdquo; she continued. &ldquo;For <i>his</i>
+      child I could have acquiesced in any lot however dreadful. He who died,
+      bearing the burden of the sins of the world will forgive this thought of
+      which I am dying; but the world, I know, is merciless. In its ears my
+      words are blasphemies; I am outraging all its codes. Oh! that I could wage
+      war against this world and break down and refashion its laws and
+      traditions! Has it not turned all my thoughts, and feelings, and longings,
+      and hopes, and every fibre in me into so many sources of pain? Spoiled my
+      future, present, and past? For me the daylight is full of gloom, my
+      thoughts pierce me like a sword, my child is and is not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, when Hélène speaks to me, I wish that her voice were different, when
+      she looks into my face I wish that she had other eyes. She constantly
+      keeps me in mind of all that should have been and is not. I cannot bear to
+      have her near me. I smile at her, I try to make up to her for the real
+      affection of which she is defrauded. I am wretched, monsieur, too wretched
+      to live. And I am supposed to be a pattern wife. And I have committed no
+      sins. And I am respected! I have fought down forbidden love which sprang
+      up at unawares within me; but if I have kept the letter of the law, have I
+      kept it in my heart? There has never been but one here,&rdquo; she said, laying
+      her right hand on her breast, &ldquo;one and no other; and my child feels it.
+      Certain looks and tones and gestures mould a child&rsquo;s nature, and my poor
+      little one feels no thrill in the arm I put about her, no tremor comes
+      into my voice, no softness into my eyes when I speak to her or take her
+      up. She looks at me, and I cannot endure the reproach in her eyes. There
+      are times when I shudder to think that some day she may be my judge and
+      condemn her mother unheard. Heaven grant that hate may not grow up between
+      us! Ah! God in heaven, rather let the tomb open for me, rather let me end
+      my days here at Saint-Lange!&mdash;I want to go back to the world where I
+      shall find my other soul and become wholly a mother. Ah! forgive me, sir,
+      I am mad. Those words were choking me; now they are spoken. Ah! you are
+      weeping too! You will not despise me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She heard the child come in from a walk. &ldquo;Hélène, my child, come here!&rdquo;
+       she called. The words sounded like a cry of despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little girl ran in, laughing and calling to her mother to see a
+      butterfly which she had caught; but at the sight of that mother&rsquo;s tears
+      she grew quiet of a sudden, and went up close, and received a kiss on her
+      forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will be very beautiful some day,&rdquo; said the priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is her father&rsquo;s child,&rdquo; said the Marquise, kissing the little one
+      with eager warmth, as if she meant to pay a debt of affection or to
+      extinguish some feeling of remorse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How hot you are, mamma!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, go away, my angel,&rdquo; said the Marquise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child went. She did not seem at all sorry to go; she did not look
+      back; glad perhaps to escape from a sad face, and instinctively
+      comprehending already an antagonism of feeling in its expression. A
+      mother&rsquo;s love finds language in smiles, they are a part of the divine
+      right of motherhood. The Marquise could not smile. She flushed red as she
+      felt the curé&rsquo;s eyes. She had hoped to act a mother&rsquo;s part before him, but
+      neither she nor her child could deceive him. And, indeed, when a woman
+      loves sincerely, in the kiss she gives there is a divine honey; it is as
+      if a soul were breathed forth in the caress, a subtle flame of fire which
+      brings warmth to the heart; the kiss that lacks this delicious unction is
+      meagre and formal. The priest had felt the difference. He could fathom the
+      depths that lie between the motherhood of the flesh and the motherhood of
+      the heart. He gave the Marquise a keen, scrutinizing glance, then he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right, madame; it would be better for you if you were dead&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;then you know all my misery; I see you do if, Christian
+      priest as you are, you can guess my determination to die and sanction it.
+      Yes, I meant to die, but I have lacked the courage. The spirit was strong,
+      but the flesh was weak, and when my hand did not tremble, the spirit
+      within me wavered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know the reason of these inner struggles, and alternations. I am
+      very pitiably a woman no doubt, weak in my will, strong only to love. Oh,
+      I despise myself. At night, when all my household was asleep, I would go
+      out bravely as far as the lake; but when I stood on the brink, my
+      cowardice shrank from self-destruction. To you I will confess my weakness.
+      When I lay in my bed, again, shame would come over me, and courage would
+      come back. Once I took a dose of laudanum; I was ill, but I did not die. I
+      thought I had emptied the phial, but I had only taken half the dose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are lost, madame,&rdquo; the curé said gravely, with tears in his voice.
+      &ldquo;You will go back into the world, and you will deceive the world. You will
+      seek and find a compensation (as you imagine it to be) for your woes; then
+      will come a day of reckoning for your pleasures&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;that <i>I</i> shall bestow the last, the most
+      precious treasures of my heart upon the first base impostor who can play
+      the comedy of passion? That I would pollute my life for a moment of
+      doubtful pleasure? No; the flame which shall consume my soul shall be
+      love, and nothing but love. All men, monsieur, have the senses of their
+      sex, but not all have the man&rsquo;s soul which satisfies all the requirements
+      of our nature, drawing out the melodious harmony which never breaks forth
+      save in response to the pressure of feeling. Such a soul is not found
+      twice in our lifetime. The future that lies before me is hideous; I know
+      it. A woman is nothing without love; beauty is nothing without pleasure.
+      And even if happiness were offered to me a second time, would not the
+      world frown upon it? I owe my daughter an honored mother. Oh! I am
+      condemned to live in an iron circle, from which there is but one shameful
+      way of escape. The round of family duties, a thankless and irksome task,
+      is in store for me. I shall curse life; but my child shall have at least a
+      fair semblance of a mother. I will give her treasures of virtue for the
+      treasures of love of which I defraud her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not even the mother&rsquo;s desire to live to enjoy her child&rsquo;s
+      happiness. I have no belief in happiness. What will Hélène&rsquo;s fate be? My
+      own, beyond doubt. How can a mother ensure that the man to whom she gives
+      her daughter will be the husband of her heart? You pour scorn on the
+      miserable creatures who sell themselves for a few coins to any passer-by,
+      though want and hunger absolve the brief union; while another union,
+      horrible for quite other reasons, is tolerated, nay encouraged, by
+      society, and a young and innocent girl is married to a man whom she has
+      only met occasionally during the previous three months. She is sold for
+      her whole lifetime. It is true that the price is high! If you allow her no
+      compensation for her sorrows, you might at least respect her; but no, the
+      most virtuous of women cannot escape calumny. This is our fate in its
+      double aspect. Open prostitution and shame; secret prostitution and
+      unhappiness. As for the poor, portionless girls, they may die or go mad,
+      without a soul to pity them. Beauty and virtue are not marketable in the
+      bazaar where souls and bodies are bought and sold&mdash;in the den of
+      selfishness which you call society. Why not disinherit daughters? Then, at
+      least, you might fulfil one of the laws of nature, and guided by your own
+      inclinations, choose your companions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, from your talk it is clear to me that neither the spirit of
+      family nor the sense of religion appeals to you. Why should you hesitate
+      between the claims of the social selfishness which irritates you, and the
+      purely personal selfishness which craves satisfactions&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The family, monsieur&mdash;does such a thing exist? I decline to
+      recognize as a family a knot of individuals bidden by society to divide
+      the property after the death of father and mother, and to go their
+      separate ways. A family means a temporary association of persons brought
+      together by no will of their own, dissolved at once by death. Our laws
+      have broken up homes and estates, and the old family tradition handed down
+      from generation to generation. I see nothing but wreck and ruin about me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, you will only return to God when His hand has been heavy upon
+      you, and I pray that you have time enough given to you in which to make
+      your peace with Him. Instead of looking to heaven for comfort, you are
+      fixing your eyes on earth. Philosophism and personal interest have invaded
+      your heart; like the children of the sceptical eighteenth century, you are
+      deaf to the voice of religion. The pleasures of this life bring nothing
+      but misery. You are about to make an exchange of sorrows, that is all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will falsify your predictions,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I shall be faithful to him
+      who died for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorrow,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;is not likely to live long save in souls
+      disciplined by religion,&rdquo; and he lowered his eyes respectfully lest the
+      Marquise should read his doubts in them. The energy of her outburst had
+      grieved him. He had seen the self that lurked beneath so many forms, and
+      despaired of softening a heart which affliction seemed to sear. The divine
+      Sower&rsquo;s seed could not take root in such a soil, and His gentle voice was
+      drowned by the clamorous outcry of self-pity. Yet the good man returned
+      again and again with an apostle&rsquo;s earnest persistence, brought back by a
+      hope of leading so noble and proud a soul to God; until the day when he
+      made the discovery that the Marquise only cared to talk with him because
+      it was sweet to speak of him who was no more. He would not lower his
+      ministry by condoning her passion, and confined the conversation more and
+      more to generalities and commonplaces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spring came, and with the spring the Marquise found distraction from her
+      deep melancholy. She busied herself for lack of other occupation with her
+      estate, making improvements for amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In October she left the old chateau. In the life of leisure at Saint-Lange
+      she had recovered from her grief and grown fair and fresh. Her grief had
+      been violent at first in its course, as the quoit hurled forth with all
+      the player&rsquo;s strength, and like the quoit after many oscillations, each
+      feebler than the last, it had slackened into melancholy. Melancholy is
+      made up of a succession of such oscillations, the first touching upon
+      despair, the last on the border between pain and pleasure; in youth, it is
+      the twilight of dawn; in age, the dusk of night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the Marquise drove through the village in her traveling carriage, she
+      met the curé on his way back from the church. She bowed in response to his
+      farewell greeting, but it was with lowered eyes and averted face. She did
+      not wish to see him again. The village curé had judged this poor Diana of
+      Ephesus only too well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III. AT THIRTY YEARS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Madame Firmiani was giving a ball. M. Charles de Vandenesse, a young man
+      of great promise, the bearer of one of those historic names which, in
+      spite of the efforts of legislation, are always associated with the glory
+      of France, had received letters of introduction to some of the great
+      lady&rsquo;s friends in Naples, and had come to thank the hostess and to take
+      his leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vandenesse had already acquitted himself creditably on several diplomatic
+      missions; and now that he had received an appointment as attache to a
+      plenipotentiary at the Congress of Laybach, he wished to take advantage of
+      the opportunity to make some study of Italy on the way. This ball was a
+      sort of farewell to Paris and its amusements and its rapid whirl of life,
+      to the great eddying intellectual centre and maelstrom of pleasure; and a
+      pleasant thing it is to be borne along by the current of this sufficiently
+      slandered great city of Paris. Yet Charles de Vandenesse had little to
+      regret, accustomed as he had been for the past three years to salute
+      European capitals and turn his back upon them at the capricious bidding of
+      a diplomatist&rsquo;s destiny. Women no longer made any impression upon him;
+      perhaps he thought that a real passion would play too large a part in a
+      diplomatist&rsquo;s life; or perhaps that the paltry amusements of frivolity
+      were too empty for a man of strong character. We all of us have huge
+      claims to strength of character. There is no man in France, be he ever so
+      ordinary a member of the rank and file of humanity, that will waive
+      pretensions to something beyond mere cleverness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles, young though he was&mdash;he was scarcely turned thirty&mdash;looked
+      at life with a philosophic mind, concerning himself with theories and
+      means and ends, while other men of his age were thinking of pleasure,
+      sentiments, and the like illusions. He forced back into some inner depth
+      the generosity and enthusiasms of youth, and by nature he was generous. He
+      tried hard to be cool and calculating, to coin the fund of wealth which
+      chanced to be in his nature into gracious manners, and courtesy, and
+      attractive arts; &lsquo;tis the proper task of an ambitious man, to play a sorry
+      part to gain &ldquo;a good position,&rdquo; as we call it in modern days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been dancing, and now he gave a farewell glance over the rooms, to
+      carry away a distinct impression of the ball, moved, doubtless, to some
+      extent by the feeling which prompts a theatre-goer to stay in his box to
+      see the final tableau before the curtain falls. But M. de Vandenesse had
+      another reason for his survey. He gazed curiously at the scene before him,
+      so French in character and in movement, seeking to carry away a picture of
+      the light and laughter and the faces at this Parisian fete, to compare
+      with the novel faces and picturesque surroundings awaiting him at Naples,
+      where he meant to spend a few days before presenting himself at his post.
+      He seemed to be drawing the comparison now between this France so
+      variable, changing even as you study her, with the manners and aspects of
+      that other land known to him as yet only by contradictory hearsay tales or
+      books of travel, for the most part unsatisfactory. Thoughts of a somewhat
+      poetical cast, albeit hackneyed and trite to our modern ideas, crossed his
+      brain, in response to some longing of which, perhaps, he himself was
+      hardly conscious, a desire in the depths of a heart fastidious rather than
+      jaded, vacant rather than seared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These are the wealthiest and most fashionable women and the greatest
+      ladies in Paris,&rdquo; he said to himself. &ldquo;These are the great men of the day,
+      great orators and men of letters, great names and titles; artists and men
+      in power; and yet in it all it seems to me as if there were nothing but
+      petty intrigues and still-born loves, meaningless smiles and causeless
+      scorn, eyes lighted by no flame within, brain-power in abundance running
+      aimlessly to waste. All those pink-and-white faces are here not so much
+      for enjoyment, as to escape from dulness. None of the emotion is genuine.
+      If you ask for nothing but court feathers properly adjusted, fresh gauzes
+      and pretty toilettes and fragile, fair women, if you desire simply to skim
+      the surface of life, here is your world for you. Be content with
+      meaningless phrases and fascinating simpers, and do not ask for real
+      feeling. For my own part, I abhor the stale intrigues which end in
+      sub-prefectures and receiver-generals&rsquo; places and marriages; or, if love
+      comes into the question, in stealthy compromises, so ashamed are we of the
+      mere semblance of passion. Not a single one of all these eloquent faces
+      tells you of a soul, a soul wholly absorbed by one idea as by remorse.
+      Regrets and misfortune go about shame-facedly clad in jests. There is not
+      one woman here whose resistance I should care to overcome, not one who
+      could drag you down to the pit. Where will you find energy in Paris? A
+      poniard here is a curious toy to hang from a gilt nail, in a picturesque
+      sheath to match. The women, the brains, and hearts of Paris are all on a
+      par. There is no passion left, because we have no individuality. High
+      birth and intellect and fortune are all reduced to one level; we all have
+      taken to the uniform black coat by way of mourning for a dead France.
+      There is no love between equals. Between two lovers there should be
+      differences to efface, wide gulfs to fill. The charm of love fled from us
+      in 1789. Our dulness and our humdrum lives are the outcome of the
+      political system. Italy at any rate is the land of sharp contrasts. Woman
+      there is a malevolent animal, a dangerous unreasoning siren, guided only
+      by her tastes and appetites, a creature no more to be trusted than a tiger&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. Firmiani here came up to interrupt this soliloquy made up of vague,
+      conflicting, and fragmentary thoughts which cannot be reproduced in words.
+      The whole charm of such musing lies in its vagueness&mdash;what is it but
+      a sort of mental haze?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to introduce you to some one who has the greatest wish to make
+      your acquaintance, after all that she has heard of you,&rdquo; said the lady,
+      taking his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She brought him into the next room, and with such a smile and glance as a
+      Parisienne alone can give, she indicated a woman sitting by the hearth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is she?&rdquo; the Comte de Vandenesse asked quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have heard her name more than once coupled with praise or blame. She
+      is a woman who lives in seclusion&mdash;a perfect mystery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! if ever you have been merciful in your life, for pity&rsquo;s sake tell me
+      her name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is the Marquise d&rsquo;Aiglemont.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will take lessons from her; she had managed to make a peer of France of
+      that eminently ordinary person her husband, and a dullard into a power in
+      the land. But, pray tell me this, did Lord Grenville die for her sake, do
+      you think, as some women say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Possibly. Since that adventure, real or imaginary, she is very much
+      changed, poor thing! She has not gone into society since. Four years of
+      constancy&mdash;that is something in Paris. If she is here to-night&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+       Here Mme. Firmiani broke off, adding with a mysterious expression, &ldquo;I am
+      forgetting that I must say nothing. Go and talk with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Charles stood motionless, leaning lightly against the frame
+      of the doorway, wholly absorbed in his scrutiny of a woman who had become
+      famous, no one exactly knew how or why. Such curious anomalies are
+      frequent enough in the world. Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s reputation was certainly
+      no more extraordinary than plenty of other great reputations. There are
+      men who are always in travail of some great work which never sees the
+      light, statisticians held to be profound on the score of calculations
+      which they take very good care not to publish, politicians who live on a
+      newspaper article, men of letters and artists whose performances are never
+      given to the world, men of science, much as Sganarelle is a Latinist for
+      those who know no Latin; there are the men who are allowed by general
+      consent to possess a peculiar capacity for some one thing, be it for the
+      direction of arts, or for the conduct of an important mission. The
+      admirable phrase, &ldquo;A man with a special subject,&rdquo; might have been invented
+      on purpose for these acephalous species in the domain of literature and
+      politics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles gazed longer than he intended. He was vexed with himself for
+      feeling so strongly interested; it is true, however, that the lady&rsquo;s
+      appearance was a refutation of the young man&rsquo;s ballroom generalizations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise had reached her thirtieth year. She was beautiful in spite of
+      her fragile form and extremely delicate look. Her greatest charm lay in
+      her still face, revealing unfathomed depths of soul. Some haunting,
+      ever-present thought veiled, as it were, the full brilliance of eyes which
+      told of a fevered life and boundless resignation. So seldom did she raise
+      the eyelids soberly downcast, and so listless were her glances, that it
+      almost seemed as if the fire in her eyes were reserved for some occult
+      contemplation. Any man of genius and feeling must have felt strangely
+      attracted by her gentleness and silence. If the mind sought to explain the
+      mysterious problem of a constant inward turning from the present to the
+      past, the soul was no less interested in initiating itself into the
+      secrets of a heart proud in some sort of its anguish. Everything about
+      her, moreover, was in keeping with these thoughts which she inspired. Like
+      almost all women who have very long hair, she was very pale and perfectly
+      white. The marvelous fineness of her skin (that almost unerring sign)
+      indicated a quick sensibility which could be seen yet more unmistakably in
+      her features; there was the same minute and wonderful delicacy of finish
+      in them that the Chinese artist gives to his fantastic figures. Perhaps
+      her neck was rather too long, but such necks belong to the most graceful
+      type, and suggest vague affinities between a woman&rsquo;s head and the magnetic
+      curves of the serpent. Leave not a single one of the thousand signs and
+      tokens by which the most inscrutable character betrays itself to an
+      observer of human nature, he has but to watch carefully the little
+      movements of a woman&rsquo;s head, the ever-varying expressive turns and curves
+      of her neck and throat, to read her nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s dress harmonized with the haunting thought that
+      informed the whole woman. Her hair was gathered up into a tall coronet of
+      broad plaits, without ornament of any kind; she seemed to have bidden
+      farewell for ever to elaborate toilettes. Nor were any of the small arts
+      of coquetry which spoil so many women to be detected in her. Perhaps her
+      bodice, modest though it was, did not altogether conceal the dainty grace
+      of her figure, perhaps, too, her gown looked rich from the extreme
+      distinction of its fashion, and if it is permissible to look for
+      expression in the arrangement of stuffs, surely those numerous straight
+      folds invested her with a great dignity. There may have been some
+      lingering trace of the indelible feminine foible in the minute care
+      bestowed upon her hand and foot; yet, if she allowed them to be seen with
+      some pleasure, it would have tasked the utmost malice of a rival to
+      discover any affectation in her gestures, so natural did they seem, so
+      much a part of old childish habit, that her careless grace absolved this
+      vestige of vanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these little characteristics, the nameless trifles which combine to
+      make up the sum of a woman&rsquo;s prettiness or ugliness, her charm or lack of
+      charm, can only be indicated, when, as with Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont, a
+      personality dominates and gives coherence to the details, informing them,
+      blending them all in an exquisite whole. Her manner was perfectly in
+      accord with her style of beauty and her dress. Only to certain women at a
+      certain age is it given to put language into their attitude. Is it joy or
+      is it sorrow that teaches a woman of thirty the secret of that eloquence
+      of carriage, so that she must always remain an enigma which each
+      interprets by the aid of his hopes, desires, or theories?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The way in which the Marquise leaned both elbows on the arm of her chair,
+      the toying of her interclasped fingers, the curve of her throat, the
+      indolent lines of her languid but lissome body as she lay back in graceful
+      exhaustion, as it were; her indolent limbs, her unstudied pose, the utter
+      lassitude of her movements,&mdash;all suggested that this was a woman for
+      whom life had lost its interest, a woman who had known the joys of love
+      only in dreams, a woman bowed down by the burden of memories of the past,
+      a woman who had long since despaired of the future and despaired of
+      herself, an unoccupied woman who took the emptiness of her own life for
+      the nothingness of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles de Vandenesse saw and admired the beautiful picture before him, as
+      a kind of artistic success beyond an ordinary woman&rsquo;s powers of
+      attainment. He was acquainted with d&rsquo;Aiglemont; and now, at the first
+      sight of d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s wife, the young diplomatist saw at a glance a
+      disproportionate marriage, an incompatibility (to use the legal jargon) so
+      great that it was impossible that the Marquise should love her husband.
+      And yet&mdash;the Marquise d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s life was above reproach, and for
+      any observer the mystery about her was the more interesting on this
+      account. The first impulse of surprise over, Vandenesse cast about for the
+      best way of approaching Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont. He would try a commonplace piece
+      of diplomacy, he thought; he would disconcert her by a piece of clumsiness
+      and see how she would receive it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; he said, seating himself near her, &ldquo;through a fortunate
+      indiscretion I have learned that, for some reason unknown to me, I have
+      had the good fortune to attract your notice. I owe you the more thanks
+      because I have never been so honored before. At the same time, you are
+      responsible for one of my faults, for I mean never to be modest again&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will make a mistake, monsieur,&rdquo; she laughed; &ldquo;vanity should be left
+      to those who have nothing else to recommend them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The conversation thus opened ranged at large, in the usual way, over a
+      multitude of topics&mdash;art and literature, politics, men and things&mdash;till
+      insensibly they fell to talking of the eternal theme in France and all the
+      world over&mdash;love, sentiment, and women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are bond-slaves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are queens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the gist and substance of all the more or less ingenious
+      discourse between Charles and the Marquise, as of all such discourses&mdash;past,
+      present, and to come. Allow a certain space of time, and the two formulas
+      shall begin to mean &ldquo;Love me,&rdquo; and &ldquo;I will love you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; Charles de Vandenesse exclaimed under his breath, &ldquo;you have made
+      me bitterly regret that I am leaving Paris. In Italy I certainly shall not
+      pass hours in intellectual enjoyment such as this has been.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps, monsieur, you will find happiness, and happiness is worth more
+      than all the brilliant things, true and false, that are said every evening
+      in Paris.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Charles took leave, he asked permission to pay a farewell call on
+      the Marquise d&rsquo;Aiglemont, and very lucky did he feel himself when the form
+      of words in which he expressed himself for once was used in all sincerity;
+      and that night, and all day long on the morrow, he could not put the
+      thought of the Marquise out of his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At times he wondered why she had singled him out, what she had meant when
+      she asked him to come to see her, and thought supplied an inexhaustible
+      commentary. Again it seemed to him that he had discovered the motives of
+      her curiosity, and he grew intoxicated with hope or frigidly sober with
+      each new construction put upon that piece of commonplace civility.
+      Sometimes it meant everything, sometimes nothing. He made up his mind at
+      last that he would not yield to this inclination, and&mdash;went to call
+      on Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are thoughts which determine our conduct, while we do not so much as
+      suspect their existence. If at first sight this assertion appears to be
+      less a truth than a paradox, let any candid inquirer look into his own
+      life and he shall find abundant confirmation therein. Charles went to Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont, and so obeyed one of these latent, pre-existent germs of
+      thought, of which our experience and our intellectual gains and
+      achievements are but later and tangible developments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a young man a woman of thirty has irresistible attractions. There is
+      nothing more natural, nothing better established, no human tie of stouter
+      tissue than the heart-deep attachment between such a woman as the Marquise
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont and such a man as Charles de Vandenesse. You can see examples
+      of it every day in the world. A girl, as a matter of fact, has too many
+      young illusions, she is too inexperienced, the instinct of sex counts for
+      too much in her love for a young man to feel flattered by it. A woman of
+      thirty knows all that is involved in the self-surrender to be made. Among
+      the impulses of the first, put curiosity and other motives than love; the
+      second acts with integrity of sentiment. The first yields; the second
+      makes deliberate choice. Is not that choice in itself an immense flattery?
+      A woman armed with experience, forewarned by knowledge, almost always
+      dearly bought, seems to give more than herself; while the inexperienced
+      and credulous girl, unable to draw comparisons for lack of knowledge, can
+      appreciate nothing at its just worth. She accepts love and ponders it. A
+      woman is a counselor and a guide at an age when we love to be guided and
+      obedience is delight; while a girl would fain learn all things, meeting us
+      with a girl&rsquo;s <i>naivete</i> instead of a woman&rsquo;s tenderness. She affords
+      a single triumph; with a woman there is resistance upon resistance to
+      overcome; she has but joy and tears, a woman has rapture and remorse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A girl cannot play the part of a mistress unless she is so corrupt that we
+      turn from her with loathing; a woman has a thousand ways of preserving her
+      power and her dignity; she has risked so much for love, that she must bid
+      him pass through his myriad transformations, while her too submissive
+      rival gives a sense of too serene security which palls. If the one
+      sacrifices her maidenly pride, the other immolates the honor of a whole
+      family. A girl&rsquo;s coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said
+      when the veil is laid aside; a woman&rsquo;s coquetry is endless, she shrouds
+      herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of man&rsquo;s vanity,
+      the novice responds but to one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there are terrors, fears, and hesitations&mdash;trouble and storm in
+      the love of a woman of thirty years, never to be found in a young girl&rsquo;s
+      love. At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back the esteem
+      she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her thoughts are
+      full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids him make it
+      glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, or rise in
+      pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young girl can only
+      make moan. And with all the advantages of her position, the woman of
+      thirty can be a girl again, for she can play all parts, assume a girl&rsquo;s
+      bashfulness, and grow the fairer even for a mischance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between these two feminine types lies the immeasurable difference which
+      separates the foreseen from the unforeseen, strength from weakness. The
+      woman of thirty satisfies every requirement; the young girl must satisfy
+      none, under penalty of ceasing to be a young girl. Such ideas as these,
+      developing in a young man&rsquo;s mind, help to strengthen the strongest of all
+      passions, a passion in which all spontaneous and natural feeling is
+      blended with the artificial sentiment created by conventional manners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The most important and decisive step in a woman&rsquo;s life is the very one
+      that she invariably regards as the most insignificant. After her marriage
+      she is no longer her own mistress, she is the queen and the bond-slave of
+      the domestic hearth. The sanctity of womanhood is incompatible with social
+      liberty and social claims; and for a woman emancipation means corruption.
+      If you give a stranger the right of entry into the sanctuary of home, do
+      you not put yourself at his mercy? How then if she herself bids him enter
+      it? Is not this an offence, or, to speak more accurately, a first step
+      towards an offence? You must either accept this theory with all its
+      consequences, or absolve illicit passion. French society hitherto has
+      chosen the third and middle course of looking on and laughing when
+      offences come, apparently upon the Spartan principle of condoning the
+      theft and punishing clumsiness. And this system, it may be, is a very wise
+      one. &lsquo;Tis a most appalling punishment to have all your neighbors pointing
+      the finger of scorn at you, a punishment that a woman feels in her very
+      heart. Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of
+      respect; without esteem they cannot exist, esteem is the first demand that
+      they make of love. The most corrupt among them feels that she must, in the
+      first place, pledge the future to buy absolution for the past, and strives
+      to make her lover understand that only for irresistible bliss can she
+      barter the respect which the world henceforth will refuse to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some such reflections cross the mind of any woman who for the first time
+      and alone receives a visit from a young man; and this especially when,
+      like Charles de Vandenesse, the visitor is handsome or clever. And
+      similarly there are not many young men who would fail to base some secret
+      wish on one of the thousand and one ideas which justify the instinct that
+      attracts them to a beautiful, witty, and unhappy woman like the Marquise
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont, therefore, felt troubled when M. de Vandenesse was
+      announced; and as for him, he was almost confused in spite of the
+      assurance which is like a matter of costume for a diplomatist. But not for
+      long. The Marquise took refuge at once in the friendliness of manner which
+      women use as a defence against the misinterpretations of fatuity, a manner
+      which admits of no afterthought, while it paves the way to sentiment (to
+      make use of a figure of speech), tempering the transition through the
+      ordinary forms of politeness. In this ambiguous position, where the four
+      roads leading respectively to Indifference, Respect, Wonder, and Passion
+      meet, a woman may stay as long as she pleases, but only at thirty years
+      does she understand all the possibilities of the situation. Laughter,
+      tenderness, and jest are all permitted to her at the crossing of the ways;
+      she has acquired the tact by which she finds all the responsive chords in
+      a man&rsquo;s nature, and skill in judging the sounds which she draws forth. Her
+      silence is as dangerous as her speech. You will never read her at that
+      age, nor discover if she is frank or false, nor how far she is serious in
+      her admissions or merely laughing at you. She gives you the right to
+      engage in a game of fence with her, and suddenly by a glance, a gesture of
+      proved potency, she closes the combat and turns from you with your secret
+      in her keeping, free to offer you up in a jest, free to interest herself
+      in you, safe alike in her weakness and your strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although the Marquise d&rsquo;Aiglemont took up her position upon this neutral
+      ground during the first interview, she knew how to preserve a high womanly
+      dignity. The sorrows of which she never spoke seemed to hang over her
+      assumed gaiety like a light cloud obscuring the sun. When Vandenesse went
+      out, after a conversation which he had enjoyed more than he had thought
+      possible, he carried with him the conviction that this was like to be too
+      costly a conquest for his aspirations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would mean sentiment from here to yonder,&rdquo; he thought, &ldquo;and
+      correspondence enough to wear out a deputy second-clerk on his promotion.
+      And yet if I really cared&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Luckless phrase that has been the ruin of many an infatuated mortal. In
+      France the way to love lies through self-love. Charles went back to Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont, and imagined that she showed symptoms of pleasure in his
+      conversion. And then, instead of giving himself up like a boy to the joy
+      of falling in love, he tried to play a double role. He did his best to act
+      passion and to keep cool enough to analyze the progress of this
+      flirtation, to be lover and diplomatist at once; but youth and hot blood
+      and analysis could only end in one way, over head and ears in love; for,
+      natural or artificial, the Marquise was more than his match. Each time he
+      went out from Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont, he strenuously held himself to his
+      distrust, and submitted the progressive situations of his case to a
+      rigorous scrutiny fatal to his own emotions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-day she gave me to understand that she has been very unhappy and
+      lonely,&rdquo; said he to himself, after the third visit, &ldquo;and that but for her
+      little girl she would have longed for death. She was perfectly resigned.
+      Now as I am neither her brother nor her spiritual director, why should she
+      confide her troubles to <i>me</i>? She loves me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later he came away apostrophizing modern manners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Love takes on the hue of every age. In 1822 love is a doctrinaire.
+      Instead of proving love by deeds, as in times past, we have taken to
+      argument and rhetoric and debate. Women&rsquo;s tactics are reduced to three
+      shifts. In the first place, they declare that we cannot love as they love.
+      (Coquetry! the Marquise simply threw it at me, like a challenge, this
+      evening!) Next they grow pathetic, to appeal to our natural generosity or
+      self-love; for does it not flatter a young man&rsquo;s vanity to console a woman
+      for a great calamity? And lastly, they have a craze for virginity. She
+      must have thought that I thought her very innocent. My good faith is like
+      to become an excellent speculation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But a day came when every suspicious idea was exhausted. He asked himself
+      whether the Marquise was not sincere; whether so much suffering could be
+      feigned, and why she should act the part of resignation? She lived in
+      complete seclusion; she drank in silence of a cup of sorrow scarcely to be
+      guessed unless from the accent of some chance exclamation in a voice
+      always well under control. From that moment Charles felt a keen interest
+      in Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont. And yet, though his visits had come to be a
+      recognized thing, and in some sort a necessity to them both, and though
+      the hour was kept free by tacit agreement, Vandenesse still thought that
+      this woman with whom he was in love was more clever than sincere.
+      &ldquo;Decidedly, she is an uncommonly clever woman,&rdquo; he used to say to himself
+      as he went away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he came into the room, there was the Marquise in her favorite
+      attitude, melancholy expressed in her whole form. She made no movement
+      when he entered, only raised her eyes and looked full at him, but the
+      glance that she gave him was like a smile. Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s manner meant
+      confidence and sincere friendship, but of love there was no trace. Charles
+      sat down and found nothing to say. A sensation for which no language
+      exists troubled him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter with you?&rdquo; she asked in a softened voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing.... Yes; I am thinking of something of which, as yet, you have
+      not thought at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;the Congress is over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and ought you to have been at the Congress?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A direct answer would have been the most eloquent and delicate declaration
+      of love; but Charles did not make it. Before the candid friendship in Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s face all the calculations of vanity, the hopes of love, and
+      the diplomatist&rsquo;s doubts died away. She did not suspect, or she seemed not
+      to suspect, his love for her; and Charles, in utter confusion turning upon
+      himself, was forced to admit that he had said and done nothing which could
+      warrant such a belief on her part. For M. de Vandenesse that evening, the
+      Marquise was, as she had always been, simple and friendly, sincere in her
+      sorrow, glad to have a friend, proud to find a nature responsive to her
+      own&mdash;nothing more. It had not entered her mind that a woman could
+      yield twice; she had known love&mdash;love lay bleeding still in the
+      depths of her heart, but she did not imagine that bliss could bring her
+      its rapture twice, for she believed not merely in the intellect, but in
+      the soul; and for her love was no simple attraction; it drew her with all
+      noble attractions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment Charles became a young man again, enthralled by the splendor
+      of a nature so lofty. He wished for a fuller initiation into the secret
+      history of a life blighted rather by fate than by her own fault. Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont heard him ask the cause of the overwhelming sorrow which had
+      blended all the harmonies of sadness with her beauty; she gave him one
+      glance, but that searching look was like a seal set upon some solemn
+      compact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask no more such questions of me,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Four years ago, on this
+      very day, the man who loved me, for whom I would have given up everything,
+      even my own self-respect, died, and died to save my name. That love was
+      still young and pure and full of illusions when it came to an end. Before
+      I gave way to passion&mdash;and never was a woman so urged by fate&mdash;I
+      had been drawn into the mistake that ruins many a girl&rsquo;s life, a marriage
+      with a man whose agreeable manners concealed his emptiness. Marriage
+      plucked my hopes away one by one. And now, to-day, I have forfeited
+      happiness through marriage, as well as the happiness styled criminal, and
+      I have known no happiness. Nothing is left to me. If I could not die, at
+      least I ought to be faithful to my memories.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No tears came with the words. Her eyes fell, and there was a slight
+      twisting of the fingers interclasped, according to her wont. It was simply
+      said, but in her voice there was a note of despair, deep as her love
+      seemed to have been, which left Charles without a hope. The dreadful story
+      of a life told in three sentences, with that twisting of the fingers for
+      all comment, the might of anguish in a fragile woman, the dark depths
+      masked by a fair face, the tears of four years of mourning fascinated
+      Vandenesse; he sat silent and diminished in the presence of her woman&rsquo;s
+      greatness and nobleness, seeing not the physical beauty so exquisite, so
+      perfectly complete, but the soul so great in its power to feel. He had
+      found, at last, the ideal of his fantastic imaginings, the ideal so
+      vigorously invoked by all who look on life as the raw material of a
+      passion for which many a one seeks ardently, and dies before he has
+      grasped the whole of the dreamed-of treasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With those words of hers in his ears, in the presence of her sublime
+      beauty, his own thoughts seemed poor and narrow. Powerless as he felt
+      himself to find words of his own, simple enough and lofty enough to scale
+      the heights of this exaltation, he took refuge in platitudes as to the
+      destiny of women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, we must either forget our pain, or hollow out a tomb for
+      ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being
+      essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other
+      is infinite. To set to work to reason where you are required to feel, is
+      the mark of a limited nature. Vandenesse therefore held his peace, sat
+      awhile with his eyes fixed upon her, then came away. A prey to novel
+      thoughts which exalted woman for him, he was in something the same
+      position as a painter who has taken the vulgar studio model for a type of
+      womanhood, and suddenly confronts the <i>Mnemosyne</i> of the Musée&mdash;that
+      noblest and least appreciated of antique statues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles de Vandenesse was deeply in love. He loved Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont with
+      the loyalty of youth, with the fervor that communicates such ineffable
+      charm to a first passion, with a simplicity of heart of which a man only
+      recovers some fragments when he loves again at a later day. Delicious
+      first passion of youth, almost always deliciously savored by the woman who
+      calls it forth; for at the golden prime of thirty, from the poetic summit
+      of a woman&rsquo;s life, she can look out over the whole course of love&mdash;backwards
+      into the past, forwards into the future&mdash;and, knowing all the price
+      to be paid for love, enjoys her bliss with the dread of losing it ever
+      present with her. Her soul is still fair with her waning youth, and
+      passion daily gathers strength from the dismaying prospect of the coming
+      days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is love,&rdquo; Vandenesse said to himself this time as he left the
+      Marquise, &ldquo;and for my misfortune I love a woman wedded to her memories. It
+      is hard work to struggle against a dead rival, never present to make
+      blunders and fall out of favor, nothing of him left but his better
+      qualities. What is it but a sort of high treason against the Ideal to
+      attempt to break the charm of memory, to destroy the hopes that survive a
+      lost lover, precisely because he only awakened longings, and all that is
+      loveliest and most enchanting in love?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These sober reflections, due to the discouragement and dread of failure
+      with which love begins in earnest, were the last expiring effort of
+      diplomatic reasoning. Thenceforward he knew no afterthoughts, he was the
+      plaything of his love, and lost himself in the nothings of that strange
+      inexplicable happiness which is full fed by a chance word, by silence, or
+      a vague hope. He tried to love Platonically, came daily to breathe the air
+      that she breathed, became almost a part of her house, and went everywhere
+      with her, slave as he was of a tyrannous passion compounded of egoism and
+      devotion of the completest. Love has its own instinct, finding the way to
+      the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will
+      which nothing can dismay or turn aside. If feeling is sincere, its destiny
+      is not doubtful. Let a woman begin to think that her life depends on the
+      sincerity or fervor or earnestness which her lover shall put into his
+      longings, and is there not sufficient in the thought to put her through
+      all the tortures of dread? It is impossible for a woman, be she wife or
+      mother, to be secure from a young man&rsquo;s love. One thing it is within her
+      power to do&mdash;to refuse to see him as soon as she learns a secret
+      which she never fails to guess. But this is too decided a step to take at
+      an age when marriage has become a prosaic and tiresome yoke, and conjugal
+      affection is something less than tepid (if indeed her husband has not
+      already begun to neglect her). Is a woman plain? she is flattered by a
+      love which gives her fairness. Is she young and charming? She is only to
+      be won by a fascination as great as her own power to charm, that is to
+      say, a fascination well-nigh irresistible. Is she virtuous? There is a
+      love sublime in its earthliness which leads her to find something like
+      absolution in the very greatness of the surrender and glory in a hard
+      struggle. Everything is a snare. No lesson, therefore, is too severe where
+      the temptation is so strong. The seclusion in which the Greeks and
+      Orientals kept and keep their women, an example more and more followed in
+      modern England, is the only safeguard of domestic morality; but under this
+      system there is an end of all the charm of social intercourse; and
+      society, and good breeding, and refinement of manners become impossible.
+      The nations must take their choice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So a few months went by, and Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont discovered that her life was
+      closely bound with this young man&rsquo;s life, without overmuch confusion in
+      her surprise, and felt with something almost like pleasure that she shared
+      his tastes and his thoughts. Had she adopted Vandenesse&rsquo;s ideas? Or was it
+      Vandenesse who had made her lightest whims his own? She was not careful to
+      inquire. She had been swept out already into the current of passion, and
+      yet this adorable woman told herself with the confident reiteration of
+      misgiving;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! no. I will be faithful to him who died for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pascal said that &ldquo;the doubt of God implies belief in God.&rdquo; And similarly
+      it may be said that a woman only parleys when she has surrendered. A day
+      came when the Marquise admitted to herself that she was loved, and with
+      that admission came a time of wavering among countless conflicting
+      thoughts and feelings. The superstitions of experience spoke their
+      language. Should she be happy? Was it possible that she should find
+      happiness outside the limits of the laws which society rightly or wrongly
+      has set up for humanity to live by? Hitherto her cup of life had been full
+      of bitterness. Was there any happy issue possible for the ties which
+      united two human beings held apart by social conventions? And might not
+      happiness be bought too dear? Still, this so ardently desired happiness,
+      for which it is so natural to seek, might perhaps be found after all.
+      Curiosity is always retained on the lover&rsquo;s side in the suit. The secret
+      tribunal was still sitting when Vandenesse appeared, and his presence put
+      the metaphysical spectre, reason, to flight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If such are the successive transformations through which a sentiment,
+      transient though it be, passes in a young man and a woman of thirty, there
+      comes a moment of time when the shades of difference blend into each
+      other, when all reasonings end in a single and final reflection which is
+      lost and absorbed in the desire which it confirms. Then the longer the
+      resistance, the mightier the voice of love. And here endeth this lesson,
+      or rather this study made from the <i>écorché</i>, to borrow a most
+      graphic term from the studio, for in this history it is not so much
+      intended to portray love as to lay bare its mechanism and its dangers.
+      From this moment every day adds color to these dry bones, clothes them
+      again with living flesh and blood and the charm of youth, and puts
+      vitality into their movements; till they glow once more with the beauty,
+      the persuasive grace of sentiment, the loveliness of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles found Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont absorbed in thought, and to his &ldquo;What is
+      it?&rdquo; spoken in thrilling tones grown persuasive with the heart&rsquo;s soft
+      magic, she was careful not to reply. The delicious question bore witness
+      to the perfect unity of their spirits; and the Marquise felt, with a
+      woman&rsquo;s wonderful intuition, that to give any expression to the sorrow in
+      her heart would be to make an advance. If, even now, each one of those
+      words was fraught with significance for them both, in what fathomless
+      depths might she not plunge at the first step? She read herself with a
+      clear and lucid glance. She was silent, and Vandenesse followed her
+      example.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not feeling well,&rdquo; she said at last, taking alarm at the pause
+      fraught with such great moment for them both, when the language of the
+      eyes completely filled the blank left by the helplessness of speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; said Charles, and his voice was tender but unsteady with strong
+      feeling, &ldquo;soul and body are both dependent on each other. If you were
+      happy, you would be young and fresh. Why do you refuse to ask of love all
+      that love has taken from you? You think that your life is over when it is
+      only just beginning. Trust yourself to a friend&rsquo;s care. It is so sweet to
+      be loved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am old already,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;there is no reason why I should not
+      continue to suffer as in the past. And &lsquo;one must love,&rsquo; do you say? Well,
+      I must not, and I cannot. Your friendship has put some sweetness into my
+      life, but beside you I care for no one, no one could efface my memories. A
+      friend I accept; I should fly from a lover. Besides, would it be a very
+      generous thing to do, to exchange a withered heart for a young heart; to
+      smile upon illusions which now I cannot share, to cause happiness in which
+      I should either have no belief, or tremble to lose? I should perhaps
+      respond to his devotion with egoism, should weigh and deliberate while he
+      felt; my memory would resent the poignancy of his happiness. No, if you
+      love once, that love is never replaced, you see. Indeed, who would have my
+      heart at this price?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a tinge of heartless coquetry in the words, the last effort of
+      discretion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he loses courage, well and good, I shall live alone and faithful.&rdquo; The
+      thought came from the very depths of the woman, for her it was the too
+      slender willow twig caught in vain by a swimmer swept out by the current.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vandenesse&rsquo;s involuntary shudder at her dictum plead more eloquently for
+      him than all his past assiduity. Nothing moves a woman so much as the
+      discovery of a gracious delicacy in us, such a refinement of sentiment as
+      her own, for a woman the grace and delicacy are sure tokens of truth.
+      Charles&rsquo; start revealed the sincerity of his love. Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont
+      learned the strength of his affection from the intensity of his pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you are right,&rdquo; he said coldly. &ldquo;New love, new vexation of
+      spirit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he changed the subject, and spoke of indifferent matters; but he was
+      visibly moved, and he concentrated his gaze on Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont as if he
+      were seeing her for the last time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adieu, madame,&rdquo; he said, with emotion in his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Au revoir</i>,&rdquo; said she, with that subtle coquetry, the secret of a
+      very few among women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made no answer and went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Charles was no longer there, when his empty chair spoke for him,
+      regrets flocked in upon her, and she found fault with herself. Passion
+      makes an immense advance as soon as a woman persuades herself that she has
+      failed somewhat in generosity or hurt a noble nature. In love there is
+      never any need to be on our guard against the worst in us; that is a
+      safeguard; a woman only surrenders at the summons of a virtue. &ldquo;The floor
+      of hell is paved with good intentions,&rdquo;&mdash;it is no preacher&rsquo;s paradox.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vandenesse stopped away for several days. Every evening at the accustomed
+      hour the Marquise sat expectant in remorseful impatience. She could not
+      write&mdash;that would be a declaration, and, moreover, her instinct told
+      her that he would come back. On the sixth day he was announced, and never
+      had she heard the name with such delight. Her joy frightened her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have punished me well,&rdquo; she said, addressing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vandenesse gazed at her in astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Punished?&rdquo; he echoed. &ldquo;And for what?&rdquo; He understood her quite well, but
+      he meant to be avenged for all that he had suffered as soon as she
+      suspected it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why have you not come to see me?&rdquo; she demanded with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you have seen no visitors?&rdquo; asked he, parrying the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. M. de Ronquerolles and M. de Marsay and young d&rsquo;Escrignon came and
+      stayed for nearly two hours, the first two yesterday, the last this
+      morning. And besides, I have had a call, I believe, from Mme. Firmiani and
+      from your sister, Mme. de Listomere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was a new infliction, torture which none can comprehend unless they
+      know love as a fierce and all-invading tyrant whose mildest symptom is a
+      monstrous jealousy, a perpetual desire to snatch away the beloved from
+      every other influence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; thought he to himself, &ldquo;she has seen visitors, she has been with
+      happy creatures, and talking to them, while I was unhappy and all alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He buried his annoyance forthwith, and consigned love to the depths of his
+      heart, like a coffin to the sea. His thoughts were of the kind that never
+      find expression in words; they pass through the mind swiftly as a deadly
+      acid, that poisons as it evaporates and vanishes. His brow, however, was
+      over-clouded; and Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont, guided by her woman&rsquo;s instinct, shared
+      his sadness without understanding it. She had hurt him, unwittingly, as
+      Vandenesse knew. He talked over his position with her, as if his jealousy
+      were one of those hypothetical cases which lovers love to discuss. Then
+      the Marquise understood it all. She was so deeply moved, that she could
+      not keep back the tears&mdash;and so these lovers entered the heaven of
+      love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Heaven and Hell are two great imaginative conceptions formulating our
+      ideas of Joy and Sorrow&mdash;those two poles about which human existence
+      revolves. Is not heaven a figure of speech covering now and for evermore
+      an infinite of human feeling impossible to express save in its accidents&mdash;since
+      that Joy is one? And what is Hell but the symbol of our infinite power to
+      suffer tortures so diverse that of our pain it is possible to fashion
+      works of art, for no two human sorrows are alike?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening the two lovers sat alone and side by side, silently watching
+      one of the fairest transformations of the sky, a cloudless heaven taking
+      hues of pale gold and purple from the last rays of the sunset. With the
+      slow fading of the daylight, sweet thoughts seem to awaken, and soft
+      stirrings of passion, and a mysterious sense of trouble in the midst of
+      calm. Nature sets before us vague images of bliss, bidding us enjoy the
+      happiness within our reach, or lament it when it has fled. In those
+      moments fraught with enchantment, when the tender light in the canopy of
+      the sky blends in harmony with the spells working within, it is difficult
+      to resist the heart&rsquo;s desires grown so magically potent. Cares are
+      blunted, joy becomes ecstasy; pain, intolerable anguish. The pomp of
+      sunset gives the signal for confessions and draws them forth. Silence
+      grows more dangerous than speech for it gives to eyes all the power of the
+      infinite of the heavens reflected in them. And for speech, the least word
+      has irresistible might. Is not the light infused into the voice and purple
+      into the glances? Is not heaven within us, or do we feel that we are in
+      the heavens?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vandenesse and Julie&mdash;for so she had allowed herself to be called for
+      the past few days by him whom she loved to speak of as Charles&mdash;Vandenesse
+      and Julie were talking together, but they had drifted very far from their
+      original subject; and if their spoken words had grown meaningless they
+      listened in delight to the unspoken thoughts that lurked in the sounds.
+      Her hand lay in his. She had abandoned it to him without a thought that
+      she had granted a proof of love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Together they leaned forward to look out upon a majestic cloud country,
+      full of snows and glaciers and fantastic mountain peaks with gray stains
+      of shadow on their sides, a picture composed of sharp contrasts between
+      fiery red and the shadows of darkness, filling the skies with a fleeting
+      vision of glory which cannot be reproduced&mdash;magnificent
+      swaddling-bands of sunrise, bright shrouds of the dying sun. As they
+      leaned Julie&rsquo;s hair brushed lightly against Vandenesse&rsquo;s cheek. She felt
+      that light contact, and shuddered violently, and he even more, for
+      imperceptibly they both had reached one of those inexplicable crises when
+      quiet has wrought upon the senses until every faculty of perception is so
+      keen that the slightest shock fills the heart lost in melancholy with
+      sadness that overflows in tears; or raises joy to ecstasy in a heart that
+      is lost in the vertigo of love. Almost involuntarily Julie pressed her
+      lover&rsquo;s hand. That wooing pressure gave courage to his timidity. All the
+      joy of the present, all the hopes of the future were blended in the
+      emotion of a first caress, the bashful trembling kiss that Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont received upon her cheek. The slighter the concession, the more
+      dangerous and insinuating it was. For their double misfortune it was only
+      too sincere a revelation. Two noble natures had met and blended, drawn
+      each to each by every law of natural attraction, held apart by every
+      ordinance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      General d&rsquo;Aiglemont came in at that very moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Ministry has gone out,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Your uncle will be in the new
+      cabinet. So you stand an uncommonly good chance of an embassy,
+      Vandenesse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles and Julie looked at each other and flushed red. That blush was one
+      more tie to unite them; there was one thought and one remorse in either
+      mind; between two lovers guilty of a kiss there is a bond quite as strong
+      and terrible as the bond between two robbers who have murdered a man.
+      Something had to be said by way of reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not care to leave Paris now,&rdquo; Charles said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We know why,&rdquo; said the General, with the knowing air of a man who
+      discovers a secret. &ldquo;You do not like to leave your uncle, because you do
+      not wish to lose your chance of succeeding to the title.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise took refuge in her room, and in her mind passed a pitiless
+      verdict upon her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His stupidity is really beyond anything!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV. THE FINGER OF GOD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Between the Barrière d&rsquo;Italie and the Barrière de la Santé, along the
+      boulevard which leads to the Jardin des Plantes, you have a view of Paris
+      fit to send an artist or the tourist, the most <i>blase</i> in matters of
+      landscape, into ecstasies. Reach the slightly higher ground where the line
+      of boulevard, shaded by tall, thick-spreading trees, curves with the grace
+      of some green and silent forest avenue, and you see spread out at your
+      feet a deep valley populous with factories looking almost countrified
+      among green trees and the brown streams of the Bièvre or the Gobelins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the opposite slope, beneath some thousands of roofs packed close
+      together like heads in a crowd, lurks the squalor of the Faubourg
+      Saint-Marceau. The imposing cupola of the Panthéon, and the grim
+      melancholy dome of the Val-du-Grace, tower proudly up above a whole town
+      in itself, built amphitheatre-wise; every tier being grotesquely
+      represented by a crooked line of street, so that the two public monuments
+      look like a huge pair of giants dwarfing into insignificance the poor
+      little houses and the tallest poplars in the valley. To your left behold
+      the observatory, the daylight, pouring athwart its windows and galleries,
+      producing such fantastical strange effects that the building looks like a
+      black spectral skeleton. Further yet in the distance rises the elegant
+      lantern tower of the Invalides, soaring up between the bluish pile of the
+      Luxembourg and the gray tours of Saint-Sulpice. From this standpoint the
+      lines of the architecture are blended with green leaves and gray shadows,
+      and change every moment with every aspect of the heavens, every alteration
+      of light or color in the sky. Afar, the skyey spaces themselves seem to be
+      full of buildings; near, wind the serpentine curves of waving trees and
+      green footpaths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Away to your right, through a great gap in this singular landscape, you
+      see the canal Saint-Martin, a long pale stripe with its edging of reddish
+      stone quays and fringes of lime avenue. The long rows of buildings beside
+      it, in genuine Roman style, are the public granaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beyond, again, on the very last plane of all, see the smoke-dimmed slopes
+      of Belleville covered with houses and windmills, which blend their freaks
+      of outline with the chance effects of cloud. And still, between that
+      horizon, vague as some childish recollection, and the serried range of
+      roofs in the valley, a whole city lies out of sight: a huge city,
+      engulfed, as it were, in a vast hollow between the pinnacles of the
+      Hôpital de la Pitié and the ridge line of the Cimetiere de l&rsquo;Est, between
+      suffering on the one hand and death on the other; a city sending up a
+      smothered roar like Ocean grumbling at the foot of a cliff, as if to let
+      you know that &ldquo;I am here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the sunlight pours like a flood over this strip of Paris, purifying
+      and etherealizing the outlines, kindling answering lights here and there
+      in the window panes, brightening the red tiles, flaming about the golden
+      crosses, whitening walls and transforming the atmosphere into a gauzy
+      veil, calling up rich contrasts of light and fantastic shadow; when the
+      sky is blue and earth quivers in the heat, and the bells are pealing, then
+      you shall see one of the eloquent fairy scenes which stamp themselves for
+      ever on the imagination, a scene that shall find as fanatical worshipers
+      as the wondrous views of Naples and Byzantium or the isles of Florida.
+      Nothing is wanting to complete the harmony, the murmur of the world of men
+      and the idyllic quiet of solitude, the voices of a million human creatures
+      and the voice of God. There lies a whole capital beneath the peaceful
+      cypresses of Pere-Lachaise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The landscape lay in all its beauty, sparkling in the spring sunlight, as
+      I stood looking out over it one morning, my back against a huge elm-tree
+      that flung its yellow flowers to the wind. At the sight of the rich and
+      glorious view before me, I thought bitterly of the scorn with which even
+      in our literature we affect to hold this land of ours, and poured
+      maledictions on the pitiable plutocrats who fall out of love with fair
+      France, and spend their gold to acquire the right of sneering at their own
+      country, by going through Italy at a gallop and inspecting that desecrated
+      land through an opera-glass. I cast loving eyes on modern Paris. I was
+      beginning to dream dreams, when the sound of a kiss disturbed the solitude
+      and put philosophy to flight. Down the sidewalk, along the steep bank,
+      above the rippling water, I saw beyond the Ponte des Gobelins the figure
+      of a woman, dressed with the daintiest simplicity; she was still young, as
+      it seemed to me, and the blithe gladness of the landscape was reflected in
+      her sweet face. Her companion, a handsome young man, had just set down a
+      little boy. A prettier child has never been seen, and to this day I do not
+      know whether it was the little one or his mother who received the kiss. In
+      their young faces, in their eyes, their smile, their every movement, you
+      could read the same deep and tender thought. Their arms were interlaced
+      with such glad swiftness; they drew close together with such marvelous
+      unanimity of impulse that, conscious of nothing but themselves, they did
+      not so much as see me. A second child, however&mdash;a little girl, who
+      had turned her back upon them in sullen discontent&mdash;threw me a
+      glance, and the expression in her eyes startled me. She was as pretty and
+      engaging as the little brother whom she left to run about by himself,
+      sometimes before, sometimes after their mother and her companion; but her
+      charm was less childish, and now, as she stood mute and motionless, her
+      attitude and demeanor suggested a torpid snake. There was something
+      indescribably mechanical in the way in which the pretty woman and her
+      companion paced up and down. In absence of mind, probably, they were
+      content to walk to and fro between the little bridge and a carriage that
+      stood waiting nearby at a corner in the boulevard, turning, stopping short
+      now and again, looking into each other&rsquo;s eyes, or breaking into laughter
+      as their casual talk grew lively or languid, grave or gay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I watched this delicious picture a while from my hiding-place by the great
+      elm-tree, and should have turned away no doubt and respected their
+      privacy, if it had not been for a chance discovery. In the face of the
+      brooding, silent, elder child I saw traces of thought overdeep for her
+      age. When her mother and the young man at her side turned and came near,
+      her head was frequently lowered; the furtive sidelong glances of
+      intelligence that she gave the pair and the child her brother were nothing
+      less than extraordinary. Sometimes the pretty woman or her friend would
+      stroke the little boy&rsquo;s fair curls, or lay a caressing finger against the
+      baby throat or the white collar as he played at keeping step with them;
+      and no words can describe the shrewd subtlety, the ingenuous malice, the
+      fierce intensity which lighted up that pallid little face with the faint
+      circles already round the eyes. Truly there was a man&rsquo;s power of passion
+      in the strange-looking, delicate little girl. Here were traces of
+      suffering or of thought in her; and which is the more certain token of
+      death when life is in blossom&mdash;physical suffering, or the malady of
+      too early thought preying upon a soul as yet in bud? Perhaps a mother
+      knows. For my own part, I know of nothing more dreadful to see than an old
+      man&rsquo;s thoughts on a child&rsquo;s forehead; even blasphemy from girlish lips is
+      less monstrous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The almost stupid stolidity of this child who had begun to think already,
+      her rare gestures, everything about her, interested me. I scrutinized her
+      curiously. Then the common whim of the observer drew me to compare her
+      with her brother, and to note their likeness and unlikeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her brown hair and dark eyes and look of precocious power made a rich
+      contrast with the little one&rsquo;s fair curled head and sea-green eyes and
+      winning helplessness. She, perhaps, was seven or eight years of age; the
+      boy was full four years younger. Both children were dressed alike; but
+      here again, looking closely, I noticed a difference. It was very slight, a
+      little thing enough; but in the light of after events I saw that it meant
+      a whole romance in the past, a whole tragedy to come. The little
+      brown-haired maid wore a linen collar with a plain hem, her brother&rsquo;s was
+      edged with dainty embroidery, that was all; but therein lay the confession
+      of a heart&rsquo;s secret, a tacit preference which a child can read in the
+      mother&rsquo;s inmost soul as clearly as if the spirit of God revealed it. The
+      fair-haired child, careless and glad, looked almost like a girl, his skin
+      was so fair and fresh, his movements so graceful, his look so sweet; while
+      his older sister, in spite of her energy, in spite of the beauty of her
+      features and her dazzling complexion, looked like a sickly little boy. In
+      her bright eyes there was none of the humid softness which lends such
+      charm to children&rsquo;s faces; they seemed, like courtiers&rsquo; eyes, to be dried
+      by some inner fire; and in her pallor there was a certain swarthy olive
+      tint, the sign of vigorous character. Twice her little brother came to
+      her, holding out a tiny hunting-horn with a touching charm, a winning
+      look, and wistful expression, which would have sent Charlet into
+      ecstasies, but she only scowled in answer to his &ldquo;Here, Hélène, will you
+      take it?&rdquo; so persuasively spoken. The little girl, so sombre and vehement
+      beneath her apparent indifference, shuddered, and even flushed red when
+      her brother came near her; but the little one seemed not to notice his
+      sister&rsquo;s dark mood, and his unconsciousness, blended with earnestness,
+      marked a final difference in character between the child and the little
+      girl, whose brow was overclouded already by the gloom of a man&rsquo;s knowledge
+      and cares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma, Hélène will not play,&rdquo; cried the little one, seizing an
+      opportunity to complain while the two stood silent on the Ponte des
+      Gobelins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let her alone, Charles; you know very well that she is always cross.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tears sprang to Hélène&rsquo;s eyes at the words so thoughtlessly uttered by her
+      mother as she turned abruptly to the young man by her side. The child
+      devoured the speech in silence, but she gave her brother one of those
+      sagacious looks that seemed inexplicable to me, glancing with a sinister
+      expression from the bank where he stood to the Bièvre, then at the bridge
+      and the view, and then at me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was afraid lest my presence should disturb the happy couple; I slipped
+      away and took refuge behind a thicket of elder trees, which completely
+      screened me from all eyes. Sitting quietly on the summit of the bank, I
+      watched the ever-changing landscape and the fierce-looking little girl,
+      for with my head almost on a level with the boulevard I could still see
+      her through the leaves. Hélène seemed uneasy over my disappearance, her
+      dark eyes looked for me down the alley and behind the trees with
+      indefinable curiosity. What was I to her? Then Charles&rsquo; baby laughter rang
+      out like a bird&rsquo;s song in the silence. The tall, young man, with the same
+      fair hair, was dancing him in his arms, showering kisses upon him, and the
+      meaningless baby words of that &ldquo;little language&rdquo; which rises to our lips
+      when we play with children. The mother looked on smiling, now and then,
+      doubtless, putting in some low word that came up from the heart, for her
+      companion would stop short in his full happiness, and the blue eyes that
+      turned towards her were full of glowing light and love and worship. Their
+      voices, blending with the child&rsquo;s voice, reached me with a vague sense of
+      a caress. The three figures, charming in themselves, composed a lovely
+      scene in a glorious landscape, filling it with a pervasive unimaginable
+      grace. A delicately fair woman, radiant with smiles, a child of love, a
+      young man with the irresistible charm of youth, a cloudless sky; nothing
+      was wanting in nature to complete a perfect harmony for the delight of the
+      soul. I found myself smiling as if their happiness had been my own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clocks struck nine. The young man gave a tender embrace to his
+      companion, and went towards the tilbury which an old servant drove slowly
+      to meet him. The lady had grown grave and almost sad. The child&rsquo;s prattle
+      sounded unchecked through the last farewell kisses. Then the tilbury
+      rolled away, and the lady stood motionless, listening to the sound of the
+      wheels, watching the little cloud of dust raised by its passage along the
+      road. Charles ran down the green pathway back to the bridge to join his
+      sister. I heard his silver voice calling to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did you not come to say good-bye to my good friend?&rdquo; cried he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hélène looked up. Never surely did such hatred gleam from a child&rsquo;s eyes
+      as from hers at that moment when she turned them on the brother who stood
+      beside her on the bank side. She gave him an angry push. Charles lost his
+      footing on the steep slope, stumbled over the roots of a tree, and fell
+      headlong forwards, dashing his forehead on the sharp-edged stones of the
+      embankment, and, covered with blood, disappeared over the edge into the
+      muddy river. The turbid water closed over a fair, bright head with a
+      shower of splashes; one sharp shriek after another rang in my ears; then
+      the sounds were stifled by the thick stream, and the poor child sank with
+      a dull sound as if a stone had been thrown into the water. The accident
+      had happened with more than lightning swiftness. I sprang down the
+      footpath, and Hélène, stupefied with horror, shrieked again and again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma! mamma!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother was there at my side. She had flown to the spot like a bird.
+      But neither a mother&rsquo;s eyes nor mine could find the exact place where the
+      little one had gone under. There was a wide space of black hurrying water,
+      and below in the bed of the Bièvre ten feet of mud. There was not the
+      smallest possibility of saving the child. No one was stirring at that hour
+      on a Sunday morning, and there are neither barges nor anglers on the
+      Bièvre. There was not a creature in sight, not a pole to plumb the filthy
+      stream. What need was there for me to explain how the ugly-looking
+      accident had happened&mdash;accident or misfortune, whichever it might be?
+      Had Hélène avenged her father? Her jealousy surely was the sword of God.
+      And yet when I looked at the mother I shivered. What fearful ordeal
+      awaited her when she should return to her husband, the judge before whom
+      she must stand all her days? And here with her was an inseparable,
+      incorruptible witness. A child&rsquo;s forehead is transparent, a child&rsquo;s face
+      hides no thoughts, and a lie, like a red flame set within glows out red
+      that colors even the eyes. But the unhappy woman had not thought as yet of
+      the punishment awaiting her at home; she was staring into the Bièvre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such an event must inevitably send ghastly echoes through a woman&rsquo;s life,
+      and here is one of the most terrible of the reverberations that troubled
+      Julie&rsquo;s love from time to time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several years had gone by. The Marquis de Vandenesse wore mourning for his
+      father, and succeeded to his estates. One evening, therefore, after dinner
+      it happened that a notary was present in his house. This was no
+      pettifogging lawyer after Sterne&rsquo;s pattern, but a very solid, substantial
+      notary of Paris, one of your estimable men who do a stupid thing
+      pompously, set down a foot heavily upon your private corn, and then ask
+      what in the world there is to cry out about? If, by accident, they come to
+      know the full extent of the enormity, &ldquo;Upon my word,&rdquo; cry they, &ldquo;I hadn&rsquo;t
+      a notion!&rdquo; This was a well-intentioned ass, in short, who could see
+      nothing in life but deeds and documents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. de Aiglemont had been dining with M. de Vandenesse; her husband had
+      excused himself before dinner was over, for he was taking his two children
+      to the play. They were to go to some Boulevard theatre or other, to the
+      Ambigu-Comique or the Gaieté, sensational melodrama being judged harmless
+      here in Paris, and suitable pabulum for childhood, because innocence is
+      always triumphant in the fifth act. The boy and girl had teased their
+      father to be there before the curtain rose, so he had left the table
+      before dessert was served.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the notary, the imperturbable notary, utterly incapable of asking
+      himself why Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont should have allowed her husband and children
+      to go without her to the play, sat on as if he were screwed to his chair.
+      Dinner was over, dessert had been prolonged by discussion, and coffee
+      delayed. All these things consumed time, doubtless precious, and drew
+      impatient movements from that charming woman; she looked not unlike a
+      thoroughbred pawing the ground before a race; but the man of law, to whom
+      horses and women were equally unknown quantities, simply thought the
+      Marquise a very lively and sparkling personage. So enchanted was he to be
+      in the company of a woman of fashion and a political celebrity, that he
+      was exerting himself to shine in conversation, and taking the lady&rsquo;s
+      forced smile for approbation, talked on with unflagging spirit, till the
+      Marquise was almost out of patience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The master of the house, in concert with the lady, had more than once
+      maintained an eloquent silence when the lawyer expected a civil reply; but
+      these significant pauses were employed by the talkative nuisance in
+      looking for anecdotes in the fire. M. de Vandenesse had recourse to his
+      watch; the charming Marquise tried the experiment of fastening her bonnet
+      strings, and made as if she would go. But she did not go, and the notary,
+      blind and deaf, and delighted with himself, was quite convinced that his
+      interesting conversational powers were sufficient to keep the lady on the
+      spot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall certainly have that woman for a client,&rdquo; said he to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the Marquise stood, putting on her gloves, twisting her fingers,
+      looking from the equally impatient Marquis de Vandenesse to the lawyer,
+      still pounding away. At every pause in the worthy man&rsquo;s fire of witticisms
+      the charming pair heaved a sigh of relief, and their looks said plainly,
+      &ldquo;At last! He is really going!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing of the kind. It was a nightmare which could only end in
+      exasperating the two impassioned creatures, on whom the lawyer had
+      something of the fascinating effect of a snake on a pair of birds; before
+      long they would be driven to cut him short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clever notary was giving them the history of the discreditable ways in
+      which one du Tillet (a stockbroker then much in favor) had laid the
+      foundations of his fortune; all the ins and outs of the whole disgraceful
+      business were accurately put before them; and the narrator was in the very
+      middle of his tale when M. de Vandenesse heard the clock strike nine. Then
+      it became clear to him that his legal adviser was very emphatically an
+      idiot who must be sent forthwith about his business. He stopped him
+      resolutely with a gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The tongs, my lord Marquis?&rdquo; queried the notary, handing the object in
+      question to his client.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, monsieur, I am compelled to send you away. Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont wishes to
+      join her children, and I shall have the honor of escorting her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nine o&rsquo;clock already! Time goes like a shadow in pleasant company,&rdquo; said
+      the man of law, who had talked on end for the past hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked for his hat, planted himself before the fire, with a suppressed
+      hiccough; and, without heeding the Marquise&rsquo;s withering glances, spoke
+      once more to his impatient client:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To sum up, my lord Marquis. Business before all things. To-morrow, then,
+      we must subpoena your brother; we will proceed to make out the inventory,
+      and faith, after that&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So ill had the lawyer understood his instructions, that his impression was
+      the exact opposite to the one intended. It was a delicate matter, and
+      Vandenesse, in spite of himself, began to put the thick-headed notary
+      right. The discussion which followed took up a certain amount of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; the diplomatist said at last at a sign from the lady, &ldquo;You are
+      puzzling my brains; come back to-morrow, and if the writ is not issued by
+      noon to-morrow, the days of grace will expire, and then&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, a carriage entered the courtyard. The poor woman turned
+      sharply away at the sound to hide the tears in her eyes. The Marquis rang
+      to give the servant orders to say that he was not at home; but before the
+      footman could answer the bell, the lady&rsquo;s husband reappeared. He had
+      returned unexpectedly from the Gaieté, and held both children by the hand.
+      The little girl&rsquo;s eyes were red; the boy was fretful and very cross.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can have happened?&rdquo; asked the Marquise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell you by and by,&rdquo; said the General, and catching a glimpse
+      through an open door of newspapers on the table in the adjoining
+      sitting-room, he went off. The Marquise, at the end of her patience, flung
+      herself down on the sofa in desperation. The notary, thinking it incumbent
+      upon him to be amiable with the children, spoke to the little boy in an
+      insinuating tone:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my little man, and what is there on at the theatre?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>The Valley of the Torrent</i>,&rdquo; said Gustave sulkily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon my word and honor,&rdquo; declared the notary, &ldquo;authors nowadays are half
+      crazy. <i>The Valley of the Torrent</i>! Why not the Torrent of the
+      Valley? It is conceivable that a valley might be without a torrent in it;
+      now if they had said the Torrent of the Valley, that would have been
+      something clear, something precise, something definite and comprehensible.
+      But never mind that. Now, how is the drama to take place in a torrent and
+      in a valley? You will tell me that in these days the principal attraction
+      lies in the scenic effect, and the title is a capital advertisement.&mdash;And
+      did you enjoy it, my little friend?&rdquo; he continued, sitting down before the
+      child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the notary pursued his inquiries as to the possibilities of a drama
+      in the bed of a torrent, the little girl turned slowly away and began to
+      cry. Her mother did not notice this in her intense annoyance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! yes, monsieur, I enjoyed it very much,&rdquo; said the child. &ldquo;There is a
+      dear little boy in the play, and he was all alone in the world, because
+      his papa could not have been his real papa. And when he came to the top of
+      the bridge over the torrent, a big, naughty man with a beard, dressed all
+      in black, came and threw him into the water. And then Hélène began to sob
+      and cry, and everybody scolded us, and father brought us away quick, quick&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      M. de Vandenesse and the Marquise looked on in dull amazement, as if all
+      power to think or move had been suddenly paralyzed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do be quiet, Gustave!&rdquo; cried the General. &ldquo;I told you that you were not
+      to talk about anything that happened at the play, and you have forgotten
+      what I said already.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my lord Marquis, your lordship must excuse him,&rdquo; cried the notary. &ldquo;I
+      ought not to have asked questions, but I had no idea&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He ought not to have answered them,&rdquo; said the General, looking sternly at
+      the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed that the Marquise and the master of the house both perfectly
+      understood why the children had come back so suddenly. Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont
+      looked at her daughter, and rose as if to go to her, but a terrible
+      convulsion passed over her face, and all that could be read in it was
+      relentless severity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will do, Hélène,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Go into the other room, and leave off
+      crying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can she have done, poor child!&rdquo; asked the notary, thinking to
+      appease the mother&rsquo;s anger and to stop Hélène&rsquo;s tears at one stroke. &ldquo;So
+      pretty as she is, she must be as good as can be; never anything but a joy
+      to her mother, I will be bound. Isn&rsquo;t that so, my little girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hélène cowered, looked at her mother, dried her eyes, struggled for
+      composure, and took refuge in the next room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you, madame, are too good a mother not to love all your children
+      alike. You are too good a woman, besides, to have any of those lamentable
+      preferences which have such fatal effects, as we lawyers have only too
+      much reason to know. Society goes through our hands; we see its passions
+      in that most revolting form, greed. Here it is the mother of a family
+      trying to disinherit her husband&rsquo;s children to enrich the others whom she
+      loves better; or it is the husband who tries to leave all his property to
+      the child who has done his best to earn his mother&rsquo;s hatred. And then
+      begin quarrels, and fears, and deeds, and defeasances, and sham sales, and
+      trusts, and all the rest of it; a pretty mess, in fact, it is pitiable,
+      upon my honor, pitiable! There are fathers that will spend their whole
+      lives in cheating their children and robbing their wives. Yes, robbing is
+      the only word for it. We were talking of tragedy; oh! I can assure you of
+      this that if we were at liberty to tell the real reasons of some donations
+      that I know of, our modern dramatists would have the material for some
+      sensational <i>bourgeois</i> dramas. How the wife manages to get her way,
+      as she invariably does, I cannot think; for in spite of appearances, and
+      in spite of their weakness, it is always the women who carry the day. Ah!
+      by the way, they don&rsquo;t take <i>me</i> in. I always know the reason at the
+      bottom of those predilections which the world politely styles
+      &lsquo;unaccountable.&rsquo; But in justice to the husbands, I must say that <i>they</i>
+      never discover anything. You will tell me that this is a merciful dispens&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hélène had come back to the drawing-room with her father, and was
+      listening attentively. So well did she understand all that was said, that
+      she gave her mother a frightened glance, feeling, with a child&rsquo;s quick
+      instinct, that these remarks would aggravate the punishment hanging over
+      her. The Marquise turned her white face to Vandenesse; and, with terror in
+      her eyes, indicated her husband, who stood with his eyes fixed absently on
+      the flower pattern of the carpet. The diplomatist, accomplished man of the
+      world though he was, could no longer contain his wrath, he gave the man of
+      law a withering glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Step this way, sir,&rdquo; he said, and he went hurriedly to the door of the
+      ante-chamber; the notary left his sentence half finished, and followed,
+      quaking, and the husband and wife were left together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, sir&rdquo; said the Marquise de Vandenesse&mdash;he banged the
+      drawing-room door, and spoke with concentrated rage&mdash;&ldquo;ever since
+      dinner you have done nothing but make blunders and talk folly. For
+      heaven&rsquo;s sake, go. You will make the most frightful mischief before you
+      have done. If you are a clever man in your profession, keep to your
+      profession; and if by any chance you should go into society, endeavor to
+      be more circumspect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that he went back to the drawing-room, and did not even wish the
+      notary good-evening. For a moment that worthy stood dumfounded,
+      bewildered, utterly at a loss. Then, when the buzzing in his ears
+      subsided, he thought he heard someone moaning in the next room. Footsteps
+      came and went, and bells were violently rung. He was by no means anxious
+      to meet the Marquis again, and found the use of his legs to make good his
+      escape, only to run against a hurrying crowd of servants at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the way of all these grand folk,&rdquo; said he to himself outside in the
+      street as he looked about for a cab. &ldquo;They lead you on to talk with
+      compliments, and you think you are amusing them. Not a bit of it. They
+      treat you insolently; put you at a distance; even put you out at the door
+      without scruple. After all, I talked very cleverly, I said nothing but
+      what was sensible, well turned, and discreet; and, upon my word, he
+      advises me to be more circumspect in future. I will take good care of
+      that! Eh! the mischief take it! I am a notary and a member of my chamber!&mdash;Pshaw!
+      it was an ambassador&rsquo;s fit of temper, nothing is sacred for people of that
+      kind. To-morrow he shall explain what he meant by saying that I had done
+      nothing but blunder and talk nonsense in his house. I will ask him for an
+      explanation&mdash;that is, I will ask him to explain my mistake. After all
+      is done and said, I am in the wrong perhaps&mdash;&mdash; Upon my word, it
+      is very good of me to cudgel my brains like this. What business is it of
+      mine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So the notary went home and laid the enigma before his spouse, with a
+      complete account of the evening&rsquo;s events related in sequence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she replied, &ldquo;My dear Crottat, His Excellency was perfectly right when
+      he said that you had done nothing but blunder and talk folly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, if I told you why, it would not prevent you from doing the same
+      thing somewhere else to-morrow. I tell you again&mdash;talk of nothing but
+      business when you go out; that is my advice to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you will not tell me, I shall ask him to-morrow&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, dear me! the veriest noodle is careful to hide a thing of that kind,
+      and do you suppose that an ambassador will tell you about it? Really,
+      Crottat, I have never known you so utterly devoid of common-sense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V. TWO MEETINGS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One of Napoleon&rsquo;s orderly staff-officers, who shall be known in this
+      history only as the General or the Marquis, had come to spend the spring
+      at Versailles. He made a large fortune under the Restoration; and as his
+      place at Court would not allow him to go very far from Paris, he had taken
+      a country house between the church and the barrier of Montreuil, on the
+      road that leads to the Avenue de Saint-Cloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house had been built originally as a retreat for the short-lived loves
+      of some <i>grand seigneur</i>. The grounds were very large; the gardens on
+      either side extending from the first houses of Montreuil to the thatched
+      cottages near the barrier, so that the owner could enjoy all the pleasures
+      of solitude with the city almost at his gates. By an odd piece of
+      contradiction, the whole front of the house itself, with the principal
+      entrance, gave directly upon the street. Perhaps in time past it was a
+      tolerably lonely road, and indeed this theory looks all the more probable
+      when one comes to think of it; for not so very far away, on this same
+      road, Louis Quinze built a delicious summer villa for Mlle. de Romans, and
+      the curious in such things will discover that the wayside <i>casinos</i>
+      are adorned in a style that recalls traditions of the ingenious taste
+      displayed in debauchery by our ancestors who, with all the license paid to
+      their charge, sought to invest it with secrecy and mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One winter evening the family were by themselves in the lonely house. The
+      servants had received permission to go to Versailles to celebrate the
+      wedding of one of their number. It was Christmas time, and the holiday
+      makers, presuming upon the double festival, did not scruple to outstay
+      their leave of absence; yet, as the General was well known to be a man of
+      his word, the culprits felt some twinges of conscience as they danced on
+      after the hour of return. The clocks struck eleven, and still there was no
+      sign of the servants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A deep silence prevailed over the country-side, broken only by the sound
+      of the northeast wind whistling through the black branches, wailing about
+      the house, dying in gusts along the corridors. The hard frost had purified
+      the air, and held the earth in its grip; the roads gave back every sound
+      with the hard metallic ring which always strikes us with a new surprise;
+      the heavy footsteps of some belated reveler, or a cab returning to Paris,
+      could be heard for a long distance with unwonted distinctness. Out in the
+      courtyard a few dead leaves set a-dancing by some eddying gust found a
+      voice for the night which fain had been silent. It was, in fact, one of
+      those sharp, frosty evenings that wring barren expressions of pity from
+      our selfish ease for wayfarers and the poor, and fills us with a luxurious
+      sense of the comfort of the fireside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the family party in the salon at that hour gave not a thought to
+      absent servants nor houseless folk, nor to the gracious charm with which a
+      winter evening sparkles. No one played the philosopher out of season.
+      Secure in the protection of an old soldier, women and children gave
+      themselves up to the joys of home life, so delicious when there is no
+      restraint upon feeling; and talk and play and glances are bright with
+      frankness and affection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General sat, or more properly speaking, lay buried, in the depths of a
+      huge, high-back armchair by the hearth. The heaped-up fire burned
+      scorching clear with the excessive cold of the night. The good father
+      leaned his head slightly to one side against the back of the chair, in the
+      indolence of perfect serenity and a glow of happiness. The languid,
+      half-sleepy droop of his outstretched arms seemed to complete his
+      expression of placid content. He was watching his youngest, a boy of five
+      or thereabouts, who, half clad as he was, declined to allow his mother to
+      undress him. The little one fled from the night-gown and cap with which he
+      was threatened now and again, and stoutly declined to part with his
+      embroidered collar, laughing when his mother called to him, for he saw
+      that she too was laughing at this declaration of infant independence. The
+      next step was to go back to a game of romps with his sister. She was as
+      much a child as he, but more mischievous; and she was older by two years,
+      and could speak distinctly already, whereas his inarticulate words and
+      confused ideas were a puzzle even to his parents. Little Moïna&rsquo;s
+      playfulness, somewhat coquettish already, provoked inextinguishable
+      laughter, explosions of merriment which went off like fireworks for no
+      apparent cause. As they tumbled about before the fire, unconcernedly
+      displaying little plump bodies and delicate white contours, as the dark
+      and golden curls mingled in a collision of rosy cheeks dimpled with
+      childish glee, a father surely, a mother most certainly, must have
+      understood those little souls, and seen the character and power of passion
+      already developed for their eyes. As the cherubs frolicked about,
+      struggling, rolling, and tumbling without fear of hurt on the soft carpet,
+      its flowers looked pale beside the glowing white and red of their cheeks
+      and the brilliant color of their shining eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the sofa by the fire, opposite the great armchair, the children&rsquo;s
+      mother sat among a heap of scattered garments, with a little scarlet shoe
+      in her hand. She seemed to have given herself up completely to the
+      enjoyment of the moment; wavering discipline had relaxed into a sweet
+      smile engraved upon her lips. At the age of six-and-thirty, or
+      thereabouts, she was a beautiful woman still, by reason of the rare
+      perfection of the outlines of her face, and at this moment light and
+      warmth and happiness filled it with preternatural brightness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again and again her eyes wandered from her children, and their tender gaze
+      was turned upon her husband&rsquo;s grave face; and now and again the eyes of
+      husband and wife met with a silent exchange of happiness and thoughts from
+      some inner depth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General&rsquo;s face was deeply bronzed, a stray lock of gray hair scored
+      shadows on his forehead. The reckless courage of the battlefield could be
+      read in the lines carved in his hollow cheeks, and gleams of rugged
+      strength in the blue eyes; clearly the bit of red ribbon flaunting at his
+      button-hole had been paid for by hardship and toil. An inexpressible
+      kindliness and frankness shone out of the strong, resolute face which
+      reflected his children&rsquo;s merriment; the gray-haired captain found it not
+      so very hard to become a child again. Is there not always a little love of
+      children in the heart of a soldier who has seen enough of the seamy side
+      of life to know something of the piteous limitations of strength and the
+      privileges of weakness?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At a round table rather further away, in a circle of bright lamplight that
+      dimmed the feebler illumination of the wax candles on the chimney-piece,
+      sat a boy of thirteen, rapidly turning the pages of a thick volume which
+      he was reading, undisturbed by the shouts of the children. There was a
+      boy&rsquo;s curiosity in his face. From his <i>lycéens</i> uniform he was
+      evidently a schoolboy, and the book he was reading was the <i>Arabian
+      Nights</i>. Small wonder that he was deeply absorbed. He sat perfectly
+      still in a meditative attitude, with his elbow on the table, and his hand
+      propping his head&mdash;the white fingers contrasting strongly with the
+      brown hair into which they were thrust. As he sat, with the light turned
+      full upon his face, and the rest of his body in shadow, he looked like one
+      of Raphael&rsquo;s dark portraits of himself&mdash;a bent head and intent eyes
+      filled with visions of the future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between the table and the Marquise a tall, beautiful girl sat at her
+      tapestry frame; sometimes she drew back from her work, sometimes she bent
+      over it, and her hair, picturesque in its ebony smoothness and darkness,
+      caught the light of the lamp. Hélène was a picture in herself. In her
+      beauty there was a rare distinctive character of power and refinement.
+      Though her hair was gathered up and drawn back from her face, so as to
+      trace a clearly marked line about her head, so thick and abundant was it,
+      so recalcitrant to the comb, that it sprang back in curl-tendrils to the
+      nape of her neck. The bountiful line of eyebrows was evenly marked out in
+      dark contrasting outline upon her pure forehead. On her upper lip, beneath
+      the Grecian nose with its sensitively perfect curve of nostril, there lay
+      a faint, swarthy shadow, the sign-manual of courage; but the enchanting
+      roundness of contour, the frankly innocent expression of her other
+      features, the transparence of the delicate carnations, the voluptuous
+      softness of the lips, the flawless oval of the outline of the face, and
+      with these, and more than all these, the saintlike expression in the
+      girlish eyes, gave to her vigorous loveliness the distinctive touch of
+      feminine grace, that enchanting modesty which we look for in these angels
+      of peace and love. Yet there was no suggestion of fragility about her;
+      and, surely, with so grand a woman&rsquo;s frame, so attractive a face, she must
+      possess a corresponding warmth of heart and strength of soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was as silent as her schoolboy brother. Seemingly a prey to the
+      fateful maiden meditations which baffle a father&rsquo;s penetration and even a
+      mother&rsquo;s sagacity, it was impossible to be certain whether it was the
+      lamplight that cast those shadows that flitted over her face like thin
+      clouds over a bright sky, or whether they were passing shades of secret
+      and painful thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Husband and wife had quite forgotten the two older children at that
+      moment, though now and again the General&rsquo;s questioning glance traveled to
+      that second mute picture; a larger growth, a gracious realization, as it
+      were, of the hopes embodied in the baby forms rioting in the foreground.
+      Their faces made up a kind of living poem, illustrating life&rsquo;s various
+      phases. The luxurious background of the salon, the different attitudes,
+      the strong contrasts of coloring in the faces, differing with the
+      character of differing ages, the modeling of the forms brought into high
+      relief by the light&mdash;altogether it was a page of human life, richly
+      illuminated beyond the art of painter, sculptor, or poet. Silence,
+      solitude, night and winter lent a final touch of majesty to complete the
+      simplicity and sublimity of this exquisite effect of nature&rsquo;s contriving.
+      Married life is full of these sacred hours, which perhaps owe their
+      indefinable charm to some vague memory of a better world. A divine
+      radiance surely shines upon them, the destined compensation for some
+      portion of earth&rsquo;s sorrows, the solace which enables man to accept life.
+      We seem to behold a vision of an enchanted universe, the great conception
+      of its system widens out before our eyes, and social life pleads for its
+      laws by bidding us look to the future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet in spite of the tender glances that Hélène gave Abel and Moïna after a
+      fresh outburst of merriment; in spite of the look of gladness in her
+      transparent face whenever she stole a glance at her father, a deep
+      melancholy pervaded her gestures, her attitude, and more than all, her
+      eyes veiled by their long lashes. Those white, strong hands, through which
+      the light passed, tinting them with a diaphanous, almost fluid red&mdash;those
+      hands were trembling. Once only did the eyes of the mother and daughter
+      clash without shrinking, and the two women read each other&rsquo;s thoughts in a
+      look, cold, wan, and respectful on Hélène&rsquo;s part, sombre and threatening
+      on her mother&rsquo;s. At once Hélène&rsquo;s eyes were lowered to her work, she plied
+      her needle swiftly, and it was long before she raised her head, bowed as
+      it seemed by a weight of thought too heavy to bear. Was the Marquise over
+      harsh with this one of her children? Did she think this harshness needful?
+      Was she jealous of Hélène&rsquo;s beauty?&mdash;She might still hope to rival
+      Hélène, but only by the magic arts of the toilette. Or again, had her
+      daughter, like many a girl who reaches the clairvoyant age, read the
+      secrets which this wife (to all appearance so religiously faithful in the
+      fulfilment of her duties) believed to be buried in her own heart as deeply
+      as in a grave?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hélène had reached an age when purity of soul inclines to pass over-rigid
+      judgments. A certain order of mind is apt to exaggerate transgression into
+      crime; imagination reacts upon conscience, and a young girl is a hard
+      judge because she magnifies the seriousness of the offence. Hélène seemed
+      to think herself worthy of no one. Perhaps there was a secret in her past
+      life, perhaps something had happened, unintelligible to her at the time,
+      but with gradually developing significance for a mind grown susceptible to
+      religious influences; something which lately seemed to have degraded her,
+      as it were, in her own eyes, and according to her own romantic standard.
+      This change in her demeanor dated from the day of reading Schiller&rsquo;s noble
+      tragedy of <i>Wilhelm Tell</i> in a new series of translations. Her mother
+      scolded her for letting the book fall, and then remarked to herself that
+      the passage which had so worked on Hélène&rsquo;s feelings was the scene in
+      which Wilhelm Tell, who spilt the blood of a tyrant to save a nation,
+      fraternizes in some sort with John the Parricide. Hélène had grown humble,
+      dutiful, and self-contained; she no longer cared for gaiety. Never had she
+      made so much of her father, especially when the Marquise was not by to
+      watch her girlish caresses. And yet, if Hélène&rsquo;s affection for her mother
+      had cooled at all, the change in her manner was so slight as to be almost
+      imperceptible; so slight that the General could not have noticed it,
+      jealous though he might be of the harmony of home. No masculine insight
+      could have sounded the depths of those two feminine natures; the one was
+      young and generous, the other sensitive and proud; the first had a wealth
+      of indulgence in her nature, the second was full of craft and love. If the
+      Marquise made her daughter&rsquo;s life a burden to her by a woman&rsquo;s subtle
+      tyranny, it was a tyranny invisible to all but the victim; and for the
+      rest, these conjectures only called forth after the event must remain
+      conjectures. Until this night no accusing flash of light had escaped
+      either of them, but an ominous mystery was too surely growing up between
+      them, a mystery known only to themselves and God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, Abel,&rdquo; called the Marquise, seizing on her opportunity when the
+      children were tired of play and still for a moment. &ldquo;Come, come, child;
+      you must be put to bed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with a glance that must be obeyed, she caught him up and took him on
+      her knee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; exclaimed the General. &ldquo;Half-past ten o&rsquo;clock, and not one of the
+      servants has come back! The rascals!&mdash;Gustave,&rdquo; he added, turning to
+      his son, &ldquo;I allowed you to read that book only on the condition that you
+      should put it away at ten o&rsquo;clock. You ought to have shut up the book at
+      the proper time and gone to bed, as you promised. If you mean to make your
+      mark in the world, you must keep your word; let it be a second religion to
+      you, and a point of honor. Fox, one of the greatest English orators, was
+      remarkable, above all things, for the beauty of his character, and the
+      very first of his qualities was the scrupulous faithfulness with which he
+      kept his engagements. When he was a child, his father (an Englishman of
+      the old school) gave him a pretty strong lesson which he never forgot.
+      Like most rich Englishmen, Fox&rsquo;s father had a country house and a
+      considerable park about it. Now, in the park there was an old
+      summer-house, and orders had been given that this summer-house was to be
+      pulled down and put up somewhere else where there was a finer view. Fox
+      was just about your age, and had come home for the holidays. Boys are fond
+      of seeing things pulled to pieces, so young Fox asked to stay on at home
+      for a few days longer to see the old summer-house taken down; but his
+      father said that he must go back to school on the proper day, so there was
+      anger between father and son. Fox&rsquo;s mother (like all mammas) took the
+      boy&rsquo;s part. Then the father solemnly promised that the summer-house should
+      stay where it was till the next holidays.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So Fox went back to school; and his father, thinking that lessons would
+      soon drive the whole thing out of the boy&rsquo;s mind, had the summer-house
+      pulled down and put up in the new position. But as it happened, the
+      persistent youngster thought of nothing but that summer-house; and as soon
+      as he came home again, his first care was to go out to look at the old
+      building, and he came in to breakfast looking quite doleful, and said to
+      his father, &lsquo;You have broken your promise.&rsquo; The old English gentleman said
+      with confusion full of dignity, &lsquo;That is true, my boy; but I will make
+      amends. A man ought to think of keeping his word before he thinks of his
+      fortune; for by keeping his word he will gain fortune, while all the
+      fortunes in the world will not efface the stain left on your conscience by
+      a breach of faith.&rsquo; Then he gave orders that the summer-house should be
+      put up again in the old place, and when it had been rebuilt he had it
+      taken down again for his son to see. Let this be a lesson to <i>you</i>,
+      Gustave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gustave had been listening with interest, and now he closed the book at
+      once. There was a moment&rsquo;s silence, while the General took possession of
+      Moïna, who could scarcely keep her eyes open. The little one&rsquo;s languid
+      head fell back on her father&rsquo;s breast, and in a moment she was fast
+      asleep, wrapped round about in her golden curls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then a sound of hurrying footsteps rang on the pavement out in the
+      street, immediately followed by three knocks on the street door, waking
+      the echoes of the house. The reverberating blows told, as plainly as a cry
+      for help that here was a man flying for his life. The house dog barked
+      furiously. A thrill of excitement ran through Hélène and Gustave and the
+      General and his wife; but neither Abel, with the night-cap strings just
+      tied under his chin, nor Moïna awoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The fellow is in a hurry!&rdquo; exclaimed the General. He put the little girl
+      down on the chair, and hastened out of the room, heedless of his wife&rsquo;s
+      entreating cry, &ldquo;Dear, do not go down&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stepped into his own room for a pair of pistols, lighted a dark
+      lantern, sprang at lightning speed down the staircase, and in another
+      minute reached the house door, his oldest boy fearlessly following.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is there?&rdquo; demanded he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me in,&rdquo; panted a breathless voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you a friend?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes! But let me in; <i>they</i> are after me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General had scarcely set the door ajar before a man slipped into the
+      porch with the uncanny swiftness of a shadow. Before the master of the
+      house could prevent him, the intruder had closed the door with a
+      well-directed kick, and set his back against it resolutely, as if he were
+      determined that it should not be opened again. In a moment the General had
+      his lantern and pistol at a level with the stranger&rsquo;s breast, and beheld a
+      man of medium height in a fur-lined pelisse. It was an old man&rsquo;s garment,
+      both too large and too long for its present wearer. Chance or caution had
+      slouched the man&rsquo;s hat over his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can lower your pistol, sir,&rdquo; said this person. &ldquo;I do not claim to
+      stay in your house against your will; but if I leave it, death is waiting
+      for me at the barrier. And what a death! You would be answerable to God
+      for it! I ask for your hospitality for two hours. And bear this in mind,
+      sir, that, suppliant as I am, I have a right to command with the despotism
+      of necessity. I want the Arab&rsquo;s hospitality. Either I and my secret must
+      be inviolable, or open the door and I will go to my death. I want secrecy,
+      a safe hiding-place, and water. Oh! water!&rdquo; he cried again, with a rattle
+      in his throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; demanded the General, taken aback by the stranger&rsquo;s
+      feverish volubility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! who am I? Good, open the door, and I will put a distance between us,&rdquo;
+       retorted the other, and there was a diabolical irony in his tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dexterously as the Marquis passed the light of the lantern over the man&rsquo;s
+      face, he could only see the lower half of it, and that in nowise
+      prepossessed him in favor of this singular claimant of hospitality. The
+      cheeks were livid and quivering, the features dreadfully contorted. Under
+      the shadow of the hat-brim a pair of eyes gleamed out like flames; the
+      feeble candle-light looked almost dim in comparison. Some sort of answer
+      must be made however.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your language, sir, is so extraordinary that in my place you yourself&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My life is in your hands!&rdquo; the intruder broke in. The sound of his voice
+      was dreadful to hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two hours?&rdquo; said the Marquis, wavering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two hours,&rdquo; echoed the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then quite suddenly, with a desperate gesture, he pushed back his hat and
+      left his forehead bare, and, as if he meant to try a final expedient, he
+      gave the General a glance that seemed to plunge like a vivid flash into
+      his very soul. That electrical discharge of intelligence and will was
+      swift as lightning and crushing as a thunderbolt; for there are moments
+      when a human being is invested for a brief space with inexplicable power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, whoever you may be, you shall be in safety under my roof,&rdquo; the
+      master of the house said gravely at last, acting, as he imagined, upon one
+      of those intuitions which a man cannot always explain to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God will repay you!&rdquo; said the stranger, with a deep, involuntary sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you weapons?&rdquo; asked the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For all answer the stranger flung open his fur pelisse, and scarcely gave
+      the other time for a glance before he wrapped it about him again. To all
+      appearance he was unarmed and in evening dress. Swift as the soldier&rsquo;s
+      scrutiny had been, he saw something, however, which made him exclaim:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where the devil have you been to get yourself in such a mess in such dry
+      weather?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More questions!&rdquo; said the stranger haughtily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the words the Marquis caught sight of his son, and his own late homily
+      on the strict fulfilment of a given word came up to his mind. In lively
+      vexation, he exclaimed, not without a touch of anger:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! little rogue, you here when you ought to be in bed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I thought I might be of some good in danger,&rdquo; answered Gustave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, go up to your room,&rdquo; said his father, mollified by the reply.&mdash;&ldquo;And
+      you&rdquo; (addressing the stranger), &ldquo;come with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men grew as silent as a pair of gamblers who watch each other&rsquo;s
+      play with mutual suspicions. The General himself began to be troubled with
+      ugly presentiments. The strange visit weighed upon his mind already like a
+      nightmare; but he had passed his word, there was no help for it now, and
+      he led the way along the passages and stairways till they reached a large
+      room on the second floor immediately above the salon. This was an empty
+      room where linen was dried in the winter. It had but the one door, and for
+      all decoration boasted one solitary shabby looking-glass above the
+      chimney-piece, left by the previous owner, and a great pier glass, placed
+      provisionally opposite the fireplace until such time as a use should be
+      found for it in the rooms below. The four yellowish walls were bare. The
+      floor had never been swept. The huge attic was icy-cold, and the furniture
+      consisted of a couple of rickety straw-bottomed chairs, or rather frames
+      of chairs. The General set the lantern down upon the chimney-piece. Then
+      he spoke:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is necessary for your own safety to hide you in this comfortless
+      attic. And, as you have my promise to keep your secret, you will permit me
+      to lock you in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other bent his head in acquiescence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I asked for nothing but a hiding-place, secrecy, and water,&rdquo; returned he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will bring you some directly,&rdquo; said the Marquis, shutting the door
+      cautiously. He groped his way down into the salon for a lamp before going
+      to the kitchen to look for a carafe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what is it?&rdquo; the Marquise asked quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, dear,&rdquo; he returned coolly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we listened, and we certainly heard you go upstairs with somebody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hélène,&rdquo; said the General, and he looked at his daughter, who raised her
+      face, &ldquo;bear in mind that your father&rsquo;s honor depends upon your discretion.
+      You must have heard nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl bent her head in answer. The Marquise was confused and smarting
+      inwardly at the way in which her husband had thought fit to silence her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the General went for the bottle and a tumbler, and returned to
+      the room above. His prisoner was leaning against the chimney-piece, his
+      head was bare, he had flung down his hat on one of the two chairs.
+      Evidently he had not expected to have so bright a light turned upon him,
+      and he frowned and looked anxious as he met the General&rsquo;s keen eyes; but
+      his face softened and wore a gracious expression as he thanked his
+      protector. When the latter placed the bottle and glass on the
+      mantel-shelf, the stranger&rsquo;s eyes flashed out on him again; and when he
+      spoke, it was in musical tones with no sign of the previous guttural
+      convulsion, though his voice was still unsteady with repressed emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall seem to you to be a strange being, sir, but you must pardon the
+      caprices of necessity. If you propose to remain in the room, I beg that
+      you will not look at me while I am drinking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Vexed at this continual obedience to a man whom he disliked, the General
+      sharply turned his back upon him. The stranger thereupon drew a white
+      handkerchief from his pocket and wound it about his right hand. Then he
+      seized the carafe and emptied it at a draught. The Marquis, staring
+      vacantly into the tall mirror across the room, without a thought of
+      breaking his implicit promise, saw the stranger&rsquo;s figure distinctly
+      reflected by the opposite looking-glass, and saw, too, a red stain
+      suddenly appear through the folds of the white bandage. The man&rsquo;s hands
+      were steeped in blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! you saw me!&rdquo; cried the other. He had drunk off the water and wrapped
+      himself again in his cloak, and now scrutinized the General suspiciously.
+      &ldquo;It is all over with me! Here they come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t hear anything,&rdquo; said the Marquis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have not the same interest that I have in listening for sounds in the
+      air.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have been fighting a duel, I suppose, to be in such a state?&rdquo; queried
+      the General, not a little disturbed by the color of those broad, dark
+      patches staining his visitor&rsquo;s cloak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, a duel; you have it,&rdquo; said the other, and a bitter smile flitted
+      over his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke a sound rang along the distant road, a sound of galloping
+      horses; but so faint as yet, that it was the merest dawn of a sound. The
+      General&rsquo;s trained ear recognized the advance of a troop of regulars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the gendarmerie,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced at his prisoner to reassure him after his own involuntary
+      indiscretion, took the lamp, and went down to the salon. He had scarcely
+      laid the key of the room above upon the chimney-piece when the hoof beats
+      sounded louder and came swiftly nearer and nearer the house. The General
+      felt a shiver of excitement, and indeed the horses stopped at the house
+      door; a few words were exchanged among the men, and one of them dismounted
+      and knocked loudly. There was no help for it; the General went to open the
+      door. He could scarcely conceal his inward perturbation at the sight of
+      half a dozen gendarmes outside, the metal rims of their caps gleaming like
+      silver in the moonlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My lord,&rdquo; said the corporal, &ldquo;have you heard a man run past towards the
+      barrier within the last few minutes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Towards the barrier? No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you opened the door to any one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, am I in the habit of answering the door myself&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ask your pardon, General, but just now it seems to me that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really!&rdquo; cried the Marquis wrathfully. &ldquo;Have you a mind to try joking
+      with me? What right have you&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None at all, none at all, my lord,&rdquo; cried the corporal, hastily putting
+      in a soft answer. &ldquo;You will excuse our zeal. We know, of course, that a
+      peer of France is not likely to harbor a murderer at this time of night;
+      but as we want any information we can get&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A murderer!&rdquo; cried the General. &ldquo;Who can have been&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M. le Baron de Mauny has just been murdered. It was a blow from an axe,
+      and we are in hot pursuit of the criminal. We know for certain that he is
+      somewhere in this neighborhood, and we shall hunt him down. By your leave,
+      General,&rdquo; and the man swung himself into the saddle as he spoke. It was
+      well that he did so, for a corporal of gendarmerie trained to alert
+      observation and quick surmise would have had his suspicions at once if he
+      had caught sight of the General&rsquo;s face. Everything that passed through the
+      soldier&rsquo;s mind was faithfully revealed in his frank countenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it known who the murderer is?&rdquo; asked he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the other, now in the saddle. &ldquo;He left the bureau full of
+      banknotes and gold untouched.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was revenge, then,&rdquo; said the Marquis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On an old man? pshaw! No, no, the fellow hadn&rsquo;t time to take it, that was
+      all,&rdquo; and the corporal galloped after his comrades, who were almost out of
+      sight by this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a few minutes the General stood, a victim to perplexities which need
+      no explanation; but in a moment he heard the servants returning home,
+      their voices were raised in some sort of dispute at the cross-roads of
+      Montreuil. When they came in, he gave vent to his feelings in an explosion
+      of rage, his wrath fell upon them like a thunderbolt, and all the echoes
+      of the house trembled at the sound of his voice. In the midst of the storm
+      his own man, the boldest and cleverest of the party, brought out an
+      excuse; they had been stopped, he said, by the gendarmerie at the gate of
+      Montreuil, a murder had been committed, and the police were in pursuit. In
+      a moment the General&rsquo;s anger vanished, he said not another word; then,
+      bethinking himself of his own singular position, drily ordered them all
+      off to bed at once, and left them amazed at his readiness to accept their
+      fellow servant&rsquo;s lying excuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While these incidents took place in the yard, an apparently trifling
+      occurrence had changed the relative positions of three characters in this
+      story. The Marquis had scarcely left the room before his wife looked first
+      towards the key on the mantel-shelf, and then at Hélène; and, after some
+      wavering, bent towards her daughter and said in a low voice, &ldquo;Hélène your
+      father has left the key on the chimney-piece.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl looked up in surprise and glanced timidly at her mother. The
+      Marquise&rsquo;s eyes sparkled with curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, mamma?&rdquo; she said, and her voice had a troubled ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to know what is going on upstairs. If there is anybody up
+      there, he has not stirred yet. Just go up&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I</i>?&rdquo; cried the girl, with something like horror in her tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you afraid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, mamma, but I thought I heard a man&rsquo;s footsteps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could go myself, I should not have asked you to go, Hélène,&rdquo; said
+      her mother with cold dignity. &ldquo;If your father were to come back and did
+      not see me, he would go to look for me perhaps, but he would not notice
+      your absence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, if you bid me go, I will go,&rdquo; said Hélène, &ldquo;but I shall lose my
+      father&rsquo;s good opinion&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is this!&rdquo; cried the Marquise in a sarcastic tone. &ldquo;But since you
+      take a thing that was said in joke in earnest, I now <i>order</i> you to
+      go upstairs and see who is in the room above. Here is the key, child. When
+      your father told you to say nothing about this thing that happened, he did
+      not forbid you to go up to the room. Go at once&mdash;and learn that a
+      daughter ought never to judge her mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The last words were spoken with all the severity of a justly offended
+      mother. The Marquise took the key and handed it to Hélène, who rose
+      without a word and left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mother can always easily obtain her pardon,&rdquo; thought the girl; &ldquo;but as
+      for me, my father will never think the same of me again. Does she mean to
+      rob me of his tenderness? Does she want to turn me out of his house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These were the thoughts that set her imagination in a sudden ferment, as
+      she went down the dark passage to the mysterious door at the end. When she
+      stood before it, her mental confusion grew to a fateful pitch. Feelings
+      hitherto forced down into inner depths crowded up at the summons of these
+      confused thoughts. Perhaps hitherto she had never believed that a happy
+      life lay before her, but now, in this awful moment, her despair was
+      complete. She shook convulsively as she set the key in the lock; so great
+      indeed was her agitation, that she stopped for a moment and laid her hand
+      on her heart, as if to still the heavy throbs that sounded in her ears.
+      Then she opened the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The creaking of the hinges sounded doubtless in vain on the murderer&rsquo;s
+      ears. Acute as were his powers of hearing, he stood as if lost in thought,
+      and so motionless that he might have been glued to the wall against which
+      he leaned. In the circle of semi-opaque darkness, dimly lit by the
+      bull&rsquo;s-eye lantern, he looked like the shadowy figure of some dead knight,
+      standing for ever in his shadowy mortuary niche in the gloom of some
+      Gothic chapel. Drops of cold sweat trickled over the broad, sallow
+      forehead. An incredible fearlessness looked out from every tense feature.
+      His eyes of fire were fixed and tearless; he seemed to be watching some
+      struggle in the darkness beyond him. Stormy thoughts passed swiftly across
+      a face whose firm decision spoke of a character of no common order. His
+      whole person, bearing, and frame bore out the impression of a tameless
+      spirit. The man looked power and strength personified; he stood facing the
+      darkness as if it were the visible image of his own future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These physical characteristics had made no impression upon the General,
+      familiar as he was with the powerful faces of the group of giants gathered
+      about Napoleon; speculative curiosity, moreover, as to the why and
+      wherefore of the apparition had completely filled his mind; but Hélène,
+      with feminine sensitiveness to surface impressions, was struck by the
+      blended chaos of light and darkness, grandeur and passion, suggesting a
+      likeness between this stranger and Lucifer recovering from his fall.
+      Suddenly the storm apparent in his face was stilled as if by magic; and
+      the indefinable power to sway which the stranger exercised upon others,
+      and perhaps unconsciously and as by reflex action upon himself, spread its
+      influence about him with the progressive swiftness of a flood. A torrent
+      of thought rolled away from his brow as his face resumed its ordinary
+      expression. Perhaps it was the strangeness of this meeting, or perhaps it
+      was the mystery into which she had penetrated, that held the young girl
+      spellbound in the doorway, so that she could look at a face pleasant to
+      behold and full of interest. For some moments she stood in the magical
+      silence; a trouble had come upon her never known before in her young life.
+      Perhaps some exclamation broke from Hélène, perhaps she moved
+      unconsciously; or it may be that the hunted criminal returned of his own
+      accord from the world of ideas to the material world, and heard some one
+      breathing in the room; however it was, he turned his head towards his
+      host&rsquo;s daughter, and saw dimly in the shadow a noble face and queenly
+      form, which he must have taken for an angel&rsquo;s, so motionless she stood, so
+      vague and like a spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur...&rdquo; a trembling voice cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The murderer trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman!&rdquo; he cried under his breath. &ldquo;Is it possible? Go,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;I
+      deny that any one has a right to pity, to absolve, or condemn me. I must
+      live alone. Go, my child,&rdquo; he added, with an imperious gesture, &ldquo;I should
+      ill requite the service done me by the master of the house if I were to
+      allow a single creature under his roof to breathe the same air with me. I
+      must submit to be judged by the laws of the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The last words were uttered in a lower voice. Even as he realized with a
+      profound intuition all the manifold misery awakened by that melancholy
+      thought, the glance that he gave Hélène had something of the power of the
+      serpent, stirring a whole dormant world in the mind of the strange girl
+      before him. To her that glance was like a light revealing unknown lands.
+      She was stricken with strange trouble, helpless, quelled by a magnetic
+      power exerted unconsciously. Trembling and ashamed, she went out and
+      returned to the salon. She had scarcely entered the room before her father
+      came back, so that she had not time to say a word to her mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General was wholly absorbed in thought. He folded his arms, and paced
+      silently to and fro between the windows which looked out upon the street
+      and the second row which gave upon the garden. His wife lay the sleeping
+      Abel on her knee, and little Moïna lay in untroubled slumber in the low
+      chair, like a bird in its nest. Her older sister stared into the fire, a
+      skein of silk in one hand, a needle in the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deep silence prevailed, broken only by lagging footsteps on the stairs, as
+      one by one the servants crept away to bed; there was an occasional burst
+      of stifled laughter, a last echo of the wedding festivity, or doors were
+      opened as they still talked among themselves, then shut. A smothered sound
+      came now and again from the bedrooms, a chair fell, the old coachman
+      coughed feebly, then all was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a little while the dark majesty with which sleeping earth is invested
+      at midnight brought all things under its sway. No lights shone but the
+      light of the stars. The frost gripped the ground. There was not a sound of
+      a voice, nor a living creature stirring. The crackling of the fire only
+      seemed to make the depth of the silence more fully felt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The church clock of Montreuil had just struck one, when an almost
+      inaudible sound of a light footstep came from the second flight of stairs.
+      The Marquis and his daughter, both believing that M. de Mauny&rsquo;s murderer
+      was a prisoner above, thought that one of the maids had come down, and no
+      one was at all surprised to hear the door open in the ante-chamber. Quite
+      suddenly the murderer appeared in their midst. The Marquis himself was
+      sunk in deep musings, the mother and daughter were silent, the one from
+      keen curiosity, the other from sheer astonishment, so that the visitor was
+      almost half-way across the room when he spoke to the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir, the two hours are almost over,&rdquo; he said, in a voice that was
+      strangely calm and musical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>You here</i>!&rdquo; cried the General. &ldquo;By what means&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo; and
+      he gave wife and daughter a formidable questioning glance. Hélène grew red
+      as fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; he went on, in a tone filled with horror. &ldquo;<i>You</i> among us! A
+      murderer covered with blood! You are a blot on this picture! Go, go out!&rdquo;
+       he added in a burst of rage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that word &ldquo;murderer,&rdquo; the Marquise cried out; as for Hélène, it seemed
+      to mark an epoch in her life, there was not a trace of surprise in her
+      face. She looked as if she had been waiting for this&mdash;for him. Those
+      so vast thoughts of hers had found a meaning. The punishment reserved by
+      Heaven for her sins flamed out before her. In her own eyes she was as
+      great a criminal as this murderer; she confronted him with her quiet gaze;
+      she was his fellow, his sister. It seemed to her that in this accident the
+      command of God had been made manifest. If she had been a few years older,
+      reason would have disposed of her remorse, but at this moment she was like
+      one distraught.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger stood impassive and self-possessed; a scornful smile
+      overspread his features and his thick, red lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You appreciate the magnanimity of my behavior very badly,&rdquo; he said
+      slowly. &ldquo;I would not touch with my fingers the glass of water you brought
+      me to allay my thirst; I did not so much as think of washing my
+      blood-stained hands under your roof; I am going away, leaving nothing of
+      <i>my crime</i>&rdquo; (here his lips were compressed) &ldquo;but the memory; I have
+      tried to leave no trace of my presence in this house. Indeed, I would not
+      even allow your daughter to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>My daughter</i>!&rdquo; cried the General, with a horror-stricken glance at
+      Hélène. &ldquo;Vile wretch, go, or I will kill you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The two hours are not yet over,&rdquo; said the other; &ldquo;if you kill me or give
+      me up, you must lower yourself in your own eyes&mdash;and in mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At these last words, the General turned to stare at the criminal in dumb
+      amazement; but he could not endure the intolerable light in those eyes
+      which for the second time disorganized his being. He was afraid of showing
+      weakness once more, conscious as he was that his will was weaker already.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An old man! You can never have seen a family,&rdquo; he said, with a father&rsquo;s
+      glance at his wife and children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, an old man,&rdquo; echoed the stranger, frowning slightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fly!&rdquo; cried the General, but he did not dare to look at his guest. &ldquo;Our
+      compact is broken. I shall not kill you. No! I will never be purveyor to
+      the scaffold. But go out. You make us shudder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that,&rdquo; said the other patiently. &ldquo;There is not a spot on French
+      soil where I can set foot and be safe; but if man&rsquo;s justice, like God&rsquo;s,
+      took all into account, if man&rsquo;s justice deigned to inquire which was the
+      monster&mdash;the murderer or his victim&mdash;then I might hold up my
+      head among my fellows. Can you not guess that other crimes preceded that
+      blow from an axe? I constituted myself his judge and executioner; I
+      stepped in where man&rsquo;s justice failed. That was my crime. Farewell, sir.
+      Bitter though you have made your hospitality, I shall not forget it. I
+      shall always bear in my heart a feeling of gratitude towards one man in
+      the world, and you are that man.... But I could wish that you had showed
+      yourself more generous!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned towards the door, but in the same instant Hélène leaned to
+      whisper something in her mother&rsquo;s ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the cry that broke from his wife, the General trembled as if he had
+      seen Moïna lying dead. There stood Hélène, and the murderer had turned
+      instinctively, with something like anxiety about these folk in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, dear?&rdquo; asked the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hélène wants to go with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The murderer&rsquo;s face flushed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If that is how my mother understands an almost involuntary exclamation,&rdquo;
+       Hélène said in a low voice, &ldquo;I will fulfil her wishes.&rdquo; She glanced about
+      her with something like fierce pride; then the girl&rsquo;s eyes fell, and she
+      stood, admirable in her modesty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hélène, did you go up to the room where&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hélène&rdquo; (and his voice shook with a convulsive tremor), &ldquo;is this the
+      first time that you have seen this man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it is not natural that you should intend to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it is not natural, father, at any rate it is true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! child,&rdquo; said the Marquise, lowering her voice, but not so much but
+      that her husband could hear her, &ldquo;you are false to all the principles of
+      honor, modesty, and right which I have tried to cultivate in your heart.
+      If until this fatal hour you life has only been one lie, there is nothing
+      to regret in your loss. It can hardly be the moral perfection of this
+      stranger that attracts you to him? Can it be the kind of power that
+      commits crime? I have too good an opinion of you to suppose that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, suppose everything, madame,&rdquo; Hélène said coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though her force of character sustained this ordeal, her flashing eyes
+      could scarcely hold the tears that filled them. The stranger, watching
+      her, guessed the mother&rsquo;s language from the girl&rsquo;s tears, and turned his
+      eagle glance upon the Marquise. An irresistible power constrained her to
+      look at this terrible seducer; but as her eyes met his bright, glittering
+      gaze, she felt a shiver run through her frame, such a shock as we feel at
+      the sight of a reptile or the contact of a Leyden jar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear!&rdquo; she cried, turning to her husband, &ldquo;this is the Fiend himself. He
+      can divine everything!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General rose to his feet and went to the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He means ruin for you,&rdquo; Hélène said to the murderer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger smiled, took one forward stride, grasped the General&rsquo;s arm,
+      and compelled him to endure a steady gaze which benumbed the soldier&rsquo;s
+      brain and left him powerless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will repay you now for your hospitality,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and then we shall
+      be quits. I will spare you the shame by giving myself up. After all, what
+      should I do now with my life?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You could repent,&rdquo; answered Hélène, and her glance conveyed such hope as
+      only glows in a young girl&rsquo;s eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I shall never repent</i>,&rdquo; said the murderer in a sonorous voice, as
+      he raised his head proudly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His hands are stained with blood,&rdquo; the father said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will wipe it away,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But do you so much as know whether he cares for you?&rdquo; said her father,
+      not daring now to look at the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The murderer came up a little nearer. Some light within seemed to glow
+      through Hélène&rsquo;s beauty, grave and maidenly though it was, coloring and
+      bringing into relief, as it were, the least details, the most delicate
+      lines in her face. The stranger, with that terrible face still blazing in
+      his eyes, gave one tender glance to her enchanting loveliness, then he
+      spoke, his tones revealing how deeply he had been moved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if I refuse to allow this sacrifice of yourself, and so discharge my
+      debt of two hours of existence to your father; is not this love, love for
+      yourself alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then do you too reject me?&rdquo; Hélène&rsquo;s cry rang painfully through the
+      hearts of all who heard her. &ldquo;Farewell, then, to you all; I will die.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does this mean?&rdquo; asked the father and mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hélène gave her mother an eloquent glance and lowered her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since the first attempt made by the General and his wife to contest by
+      word or action the intruder&rsquo;s strange presumption to the right of staying
+      in their midst, from their first experience of the power of those
+      glittering eyes, a mysterious torpor had crept over them, and their
+      benumbed faculties struggled in vain with the preternatural influence. The
+      air seemed to have suddenly grown so heavy, that they could scarcely
+      breathe; yet, while they could not find the reason of this feeling of
+      oppression, a voice within told them that this magnetic presence was the
+      real cause of their helplessness. In this moral agony, it flashed across
+      the General that he must make every effort to overcome this influence on
+      his daughter&rsquo;s reeling brain; he caught her by the waist and drew her into
+      the embrasure of a window, as far as possible from the murderer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Darling,&rdquo; he murmured, &ldquo;if some wild love has been suddenly born in your
+      heart, I cannot believe that you have not the strength of soul to quell
+      the mad impulse; your innocent life, your pure and dutiful soul, has given
+      me too many proofs of your character. There must be something behind all
+      this. Well, this heart of mine is full of indulgence, you can tell
+      everything to me; even if it breaks, dear child, I can be silent about my
+      grief, and keep your confession a secret. What is it? Are you jealous of
+      our love for your brothers or your little sister? Is it some love trouble?
+      Are you unhappy here at home? Tell me about it, tell me the reasons that
+      urge you to leave your home, to rob it of its greatest charm, to leave
+      your mother and brothers and your little sister?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am in love with no one, father, and jealous of no one, not even of your
+      friend the diplomatist, M. de Vandenesse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise turned pale; her daughter saw this, and stopped short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sooner or later I must live under some man&rsquo;s protection, must I not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do we ever know,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;the human being to whom we link our
+      destinies? Now, I believe in this man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, child,&rdquo; said the General, raising his voice, &ldquo;you have no idea of all
+      the misery that lies in store for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am thinking of <i>his</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a life!&rdquo; groaned the father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman&rsquo;s life,&rdquo; the girl murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have a great knowledge of life!&rdquo; exclaimed the Marquise, finding
+      speech at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, my answers are shaped by the questions; but if you desire it, I
+      will speak more clearly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak out, my child... I am a mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mother and daughter looked each other in the face, and the Marquise said
+      no more. At last she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hélène, if you have any reproaches to make, I would rather bear them than
+      see you go away with a man from whom the whole world shrinks in horror.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you see yourself, madame, that but for me he would be quite alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will do, madame,&rdquo; the General cried; &ldquo;we have but one daughter left
+      to us now,&rdquo; and he looked at Moïna, who slept on. &ldquo;As for you,&rdquo; he added,
+      turning to Hélène, &ldquo;I will put you in a convent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So be it, father,&rdquo; she said, in calm despair, &ldquo;I shall die there. You are
+      answerable to God alone for my life and for <i>his</i> soul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A deep sullen silence fell after these words. The on-lookers during this
+      strange scene, so utterly at variance with all the sentiments of ordinary
+      life, shunned each other&rsquo;s eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the Marquis happened to glance at his pistols. He caught up one
+      of them, cocked the weapon, and pointed it at the intruder. At the click
+      of firearms the other turned his piercing gaze full upon the General; the
+      soldier&rsquo;s arm slackened indescribably and fell heavily to his side. The
+      pistol dropped to the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Girl, you are free,&rdquo; said he, exhausted by this ghastly struggle. &ldquo;Kiss
+      your mother, if she will let you kiss her. For my own part, I wish never
+      to see nor to hear of you again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hélène,&rdquo; the mother began, &ldquo;only think of the wretched life before you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sort of rattling sound came from the intruder&rsquo;s deep chest, all eyes
+      were turned to him. Disdain was plainly visible in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General rose to his feet. &ldquo;My hospitality has cost me dear,&rdquo; he cried.
+      &ldquo;Before you came you had taken an old man&rsquo;s life; now you are dealing a
+      deadly blow at a whole family. Whatever happens, there must be unhappiness
+      in this house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if your daughter is happy?&rdquo; asked the other, gazing steadily at the
+      General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The father made a superhuman effort for self-control. &ldquo;If she is happy
+      with you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;she is not worth regretting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hélène knelt timidly before her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father, I love and revere you,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;whether you lavish all the
+      treasures of your kindness upon me, or make me feel to the full the rigor
+      of disgrace.... But I entreat that your last words of farewell shall not
+      be words of anger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General could not trust himself to look at her. The stranger came
+      nearer; there was something half-diabolical, half-divine in the smile that
+      he gave Hélène.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Angel of pity, you that do not shrink in horror from a murderer, come,
+      since you persist in your resolution of intrusting your life to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Inconceivable!&rdquo; cried her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise then looked strangely at her daughter, opened her arms, and
+      Hélène fled to her in tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farewell,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;farewell, mother!&rdquo; The stranger trembled as Hélène,
+      undaunted, made sign to him that she was ready. She kissed her father&rsquo;s
+      hand; and, as if performing a duty, gave a hasty kiss to Moïna and little
+      Abel, then she vanished with the murderer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which way are they going?&rdquo; exclaimed the General, listening to the
+      footsteps of the two fugitives.&mdash;&ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; he turned to his wife, &ldquo;I
+      think I must be dreaming; there is some mystery behind all this, I do not
+      understand it; you must know what it means.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise shivered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For some time past your daughter has grown extraordinarily romantic and
+      strangely high-flown in her ideas. In spite of the pains I have taken to
+      combat these tendencies in her character&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This will not do&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; began the General, but fancying that he
+      heard footsteps in the garden, he broke off to fling open the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hélène!&rdquo; he shouted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice was lost in the darkness like a vain prophecy. The utterance of
+      that name, to which there should never be answer any more, acted like a
+      counterspell; it broke the charm and set him free from the evil
+      enchantment which lay upon him. It was as if some spirit passed over his
+      face. He now saw clearly what had taken place, and cursed his
+      incomprehensible weakness. A shiver of heat rushed from his heart to his
+      head and feet; he became himself once more, terrible, thirsting for
+      revenge. He raised a dreadful cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help!&rdquo; he thundered, &ldquo;help!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rushed to the bell-pull, pulled till the bells rang with a strange
+      clamor of din, pulled till the cord gave way. The whole house was roused
+      with a start. Still shouting, he flung open the windows that looked upon
+      the street, called for the police, caught up his pistols, and fired them
+      off to hurry the mounted patrols, the newly-aroused servants, and the
+      neighbors. The dogs barked at the sound of their master&rsquo;s voice; the
+      horses neighed and stamped in their stalls. The quiet night was suddenly
+      filled with hideous uproar. The General on the staircase, in pursuit of
+      his daughter, saw the scared faces of the servants flocking from all parts
+      of the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My daughter!&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;Hélène has been carried off. Search the
+      garden. Keep a lookout on the road! Open the gates for the gendarmerie!&mdash;Murder!
+      Help!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With the strength of fury he snapped the chain and let loose the great
+      house-dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hélène!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;Hélène!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dog sprang out like a lion, barking furiously, and dashed into the
+      garden, leaving the General far behind. A troop of horses came along the
+      road at a gallop, and he flew to open the gates himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Corporal!&rdquo; he shouted, &ldquo;cut off the retreat of M. de Mauny&rsquo;s murderer.
+      They have gone through my garden. Quick! Put a cordon of men to watch the
+      ways by the Butte de Picardie.&mdash;I will beat up the grounds, parks,
+      and houses.&mdash;The rest of you keep a lookout along the road,&rdquo; he
+      ordered the servants, &ldquo;form a chain between the barrier and Versailles.
+      Forward, every man of you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He caught up the rifle which his man had brought out, and dashed into the
+      garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Find them!&rdquo; he called to the dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An ominous baying came in answer from the distance, and he plunged in the
+      direction from which the growl seemed to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was seven o&rsquo;clock in the morning; all the search made by gendarmes,
+      servants, and neighbors had been fruitless, and the dog had not come back.
+      The General entered the salon, empty now for him though the other three
+      children were there; he was worn out with fatigue, and looked old already
+      with that night&rsquo;s work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have been very cold to your daughter,&rdquo; he said, turning his eyes on
+      his wife.&mdash;&ldquo;And now this is all that is left to us of her,&rdquo; he added,
+      indicating the embroidery frame, and the flower just begun. &ldquo;Only just now
+      she was there, and now she is lost... lost!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tears followed; he hid his face in his hands, and for a few minutes he
+      said no more; he could not bear the sight of the room, which so short a
+      time ago had made a setting to a picture of the sweetest family happiness.
+      The winter dawn was struggling with the dying lamplight; the tapers burned
+      down to their paper-wreaths and flared out; everything was all in keeping
+      with the father&rsquo;s despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This must be destroyed,&rdquo; he said after a pause, pointing to the
+      tambour-frame. &ldquo;I shall never bear to see anything again that reminds us
+      of <i>her</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The terrible Christmas night when the Marquis and his wife lost their
+      oldest daughter, powerless to oppose the mysterious influence exercised by
+      the man who involuntarily, as it were, stole Hélène from them, was like a
+      warning sent by Fate. The Marquis was ruined by the failure of his
+      stock-broker; he borrowed money on his wife&rsquo;s property, and lost it in the
+      endeavor to retrieve his fortunes. Driven to desperate expedients, he left
+      France. Six years went by. His family seldom had news of him; but a few
+      days before Spain recognized the independence of the American Republics,
+      he wrote that he was coming home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, one fine morning, it happened that several French merchants were on
+      board a Spanish brig that lay a few leagues out from Bordeaux, impatient
+      to reach their native land again, with wealth acquired by long years of
+      toil and perilous adventures in Venezuela and Mexico.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the passengers, a man who looked aged by trouble rather than by
+      years, was leaning against the bulwark netting, apparently quite
+      unaffected by the sight to be seen from the upper deck. The bright day,
+      the sense that the voyage was safely over, had brought all the passengers
+      above to greet their land. The larger number of them insisted that they
+      could see, far off in the distance, the houses and lighthouses on the
+      coast of Gascony and the Tower of Cardouan, melting into the fantastic
+      erections of white cloud along the horizon. But for the silver fringe that
+      played about their bows, and the long furrow swiftly effaced in their
+      wake, they might have been perfectly still in mid-ocean, so calm was the
+      sea. The sky was magically clear, the dark blue of the vault above paled
+      by imperceptible gradations, until it blended with the bluish water, a
+      gleaming line that sparkled like stars marking the dividing line of sea.
+      The sunlight caught myriads of facets over the wide surface of the ocean,
+      in such a sort that the vast plains of salt water looked perhaps more full
+      of light than the fields of sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The brig had set all her canvas. The snowy sails, swelled by the strangely
+      soft wind, the labyrinth of cordage, and the yellow flags flying at the
+      masthead, all stood out sharp and uncompromisingly clear against the vivid
+      background of space, sky, and sea; there was nothing to alter the color
+      but the shadow cast by the great cloudlike sails.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A glorious day, a fair wind, and the fatherland in sight, a sea like a
+      mill-pond, the melancholy sound of the ripples, a fair, solitary vessel,
+      gliding across the surface of the water like a woman stealing out to a
+      tryst&mdash;it was a picture full of harmony. That mere speck full of
+      movement was a starting-point whence the soul of man could descry the
+      immutable vast of space. Solitude and bustling life, silence and sound,
+      were all brought together in strange abrupt contrast; you could not tell
+      where life, or sound, or silence, and nothingness lay, and no human voice
+      broke the divine spell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Spanish captain, the crew, and the French passengers sat or stood, in
+      a mood of devout ecstasy, in which many memories blended. There was
+      idleness in the air. The beaming faces told of complete forgetfulness of
+      past hardships, the men were rocked on the fair vessel as in a golden
+      dream. Yet, from time to time the elderly passenger, leaning over the
+      bulwark nettings, looked with something like uneasiness at the horizon.
+      Distrust of the ways of Fate could be read in his whole face; he seemed to
+      fear that he should not reach the coast of France in time. This was the
+      Marquis. Fortune had not been deaf to his despairing cry and struggles.
+      After five years of endeavor and painful toil, he was a wealthy man once
+      more. In his impatience to reach his home again and to bring the good news
+      to his family, he had followed the example set by some French merchants in
+      Havana, and embarked with them on a Spanish vessel with a cargo for
+      Bordeaux. And now, grown tired of evil forebodings, his fancy was tracing
+      out for him the most delicious pictures of past happiness. In that far-off
+      brown line of land he seemed to see his wife and children. He sat in his
+      place by the fireside; they were crowding about him; he felt their
+      caresses. Moïna had grown to be a young girl; she was beautiful, and tall,
+      and striking. The fancied picture had grown almost real, when the tears
+      filled his eyes, and, to hide his emotion, he turned his face towards the
+      sea-line, opposite the hazy streak that meant land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There she is again.... She is following us!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; cried the Spanish captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a vessel,&rdquo; muttered the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw her yesterday,&rdquo; answered Captain Gomez. He looked at his
+      interlocutor as if to ask what he thought; then he added in the General&rsquo;s
+      ear, &ldquo;She has been chasing us all along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why she has not come up with us, I do not know,&rdquo; said the General,
+      &ldquo;for she is a faster sailor than your damned <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will have damaged herself, sprung a leak&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is gaining on us!&rdquo; the General broke in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is a Columbian privateer,&rdquo; the captain said in his ear, &ldquo;and we are
+      still six leagues from land, and the wind is dropping.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is not <i>going</i> ahead, she is flying, as if she knew that in two
+      hours&rsquo; time her prey would escape her. What audacity!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Audacity!&rdquo; cried the captain. &ldquo;Oh! she is not called the <i>Othello</i>
+      for nothing. Not so long back she sank a Spanish frigate that carried
+      thirty guns! This is the one thing I was afraid of, for I had a notion
+      that she was cruising about somewhere off the Antilles.&mdash;Aha!&rdquo; he
+      added after a pause, as he watched the sails of his own vessel, &ldquo;the wind
+      is rising; we are making way. Get through we must, for &lsquo;the Parisian&rsquo; will
+      show us no mercy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is making way too!&rdquo; returned the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>Othello</i> was scarce three leagues away by this time; and
+      although the conversation between the Marquis and Captain Gomez had taken
+      place apart, passengers and crew, attracted by the sudden appearance of a
+      sail, came to that side of the vessel. With scarcely an exception,
+      however, they took the privateer for a merchantman, and watched her course
+      with interest, till all at once a sailor shouted with some energy of
+      language:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Saint-James, it is all up with us! Yonder is the Parisian captain!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that terrible name dismay, and a panic impossible to describe, spread
+      through the brig. The Spanish captain&rsquo;s orders put energy into the crew
+      for a while; and in his resolute determination to make land at all costs,
+      he set all the studding sails, and crowded on every stitch of canvas on
+      board. But all this was not the work of a moment; and naturally the men
+      did not work together with that wonderful unanimity so fascinating to
+      watch on board a man-of-war. The <i>Othello</i> meanwhile, thanks to the
+      trimming of her sails, flew over the water like a swallow; but she was
+      making, to all appearance, so little headway, that the unlucky Frenchmen
+      began to entertain sweet delusive hopes. At last, after unheard-of
+      efforts, the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i> sprang forward, Gomez himself
+      directing the shifting of the sheets with voice and gesture, when all at
+      once the man at the tiller, steering at random (purposely, no doubt),
+      swung the vessel round. The wind striking athwart the beam, the sails
+      shivered so unexpectedly that the brig heeled to one side, the booms were
+      carried away, and the vessel was completely out of hand. The captain&rsquo;s
+      face grew whiter than his sails with unutterable rage. He sprang upon the
+      man at the tiller, drove his dagger at him in such blind fury, that he
+      missed him, and hurled the weapon overboard. Gomez took the helm himself,
+      and strove to right the gallant vessel. Tears of despair rose to his eyes,
+      for it is harder to lose the result of our carefully-laid plans through
+      treachery than to face imminent death. But the more the captain swore, the
+      less the men worked, and it was he himself who fired the alarm-gun, hoping
+      to be heard on shore. The privateer, now gaining hopelessly upon them,
+      replied with a cannon-shot, which struck the water ten fathoms away from
+      the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thunder of heaven!&rdquo; cried the General, &ldquo;that was a close shave! They must
+      have guns made on purpose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! when that one yonder speaks, look you, you have to hold your tongue,&rdquo;
+       said a sailor. &ldquo;The Parisian would not be afraid to meet an English
+      man-of-war.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all over with us,&rdquo; the captain cried in desperation; he had pointed
+      his telescope landwards, and saw not a sign from the shore. &ldquo;We are
+      further from the coast than I thought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you despair?&rdquo; asked the General. &ldquo;All your passengers are
+      Frenchmen; they have chartered your vessel. The privateer is a Parisian,
+      you say? Well and good, run up the white flag, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he would run us down,&rdquo; retorted the captain. &ldquo;He can be anything he
+      likes when he has a mind to seize on a rich booty!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! if he is a pirate&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pirate!&rdquo; said the ferocious looking sailor. &ldquo;Oh! he always has the law on
+      his side, or he knows how to be on the same side as the law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said the General, raising his eyes, &ldquo;let us make up our minds
+      to it,&rdquo; and his remaining fortitude was still sufficient to keep back the
+      tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were hardly out of his mouth before a second cannon-shot, better
+      aimed, came crashing through the hull of the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heave to!&rdquo; cried the captain gloomily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sailor who had commended the Parisian&rsquo;s law-abiding proclivities
+      showed himself a clever hand at working a ship after this desperate order
+      was given. The crew waited for half an hour in an agony of suspense and
+      the deepest dismay. The <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i> had four millions of
+      piastres on board, the whole fortunes of the five passengers, and the
+      General&rsquo;s eleven hundred thousand francs. At length the <i>Othello</i> lay
+      not ten gunshots away, so that those on the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i> could
+      look into the muzzles of her loaded guns. The vessel seemed to be borne
+      along by a breeze sent by the Devil himself, but the eyes of an expert
+      would have discovered the secret of her speed at once. You had but to look
+      for a moment at the rake of her stern, her long, narrow keel, her tall
+      masts, to see the cut of her sails, the wonderful lightness of her
+      rigging, and the ease and perfect seamanship with which her crew trimmed
+      her sails to the wind. Everything about her gave the impression of the
+      security of power in this delicately curved inanimate creature, swift and
+      intelligent as a greyhound or some bird of prey. The privateer crew stood
+      silent, ready in case of resistance to shatter the wretched merchantman,
+      which, luckily for her, remained motionless, like a schoolboy caught in
+      flagrant delict by a master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have guns on board!&rdquo; cried the General, clutching the Spanish
+      captain&rsquo;s hand. But the courage in Gomez&rsquo;s eyes was the courage of
+      despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have we men?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquis looked round at the crew of the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>, and a
+      cold chill ran through him. There stood the four merchants, pale and
+      quaking for fear, while the crew gathered about some of their own number
+      who appeared to be arranging to go over in a body to the enemy. They
+      watched the <i>Othello</i> with greed and curiosity in their faces. The
+      captain, the Marquis, and the mate exchanged glances; they were the only
+      three who had a thought for any but themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Captain Gomez, when I left my home and country, my heart was half
+      dead with the bitterness of parting, and now must I bid it good-bye once
+      more when I am bringing back happiness and ease for my children?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General turned his head away towards the sea, with tears of rage in
+      his eyes&mdash;and saw the steersman swimming out to the privateer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This time it will be good-bye for good,&rdquo; said the captain by way of
+      answer, and the dazed look in the Frenchman&rsquo;s eyes startled the Spaniard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the two vessels were almost alongside, and at the first sight
+      of the enemy&rsquo;s crew the General saw that Gomez&rsquo;s gloomy prophecy was only
+      too true. The three men at each gun might have been bronze statues,
+      standing like athletes, with their rugged features, their bare sinewy
+      arms, men whom Death himself had scarcely thrown off their feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest of the crew, well armed, active, light, and vigorous, also stood
+      motionless. Toil had hardened, and the sun had deeply tanned, those
+      energetic faces; their eyes glittered like sparks of fire with infernal
+      glee and clear-sighted courage. Perfect silence on the upper deck, now
+      black with men, bore abundant testimony to the rigorous discipline and
+      strong will which held these fiends incarnate in check.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain of the <i>Othello</i> stood with folded arms at the foot of
+      the main mast; he carried no weapons, but an axe lay on the deck beside
+      him. His face was hidden by the shadow of a broad felt hat. The men looked
+      like dogs crouching before their master. Gunners, soldiers, and ship&rsquo;s
+      crew turned their eyes first on his face, and then on the merchant vessel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two brigs came up alongside, and the shock of contact roused the
+      privateer captain from his musings; he spoke a word in the ear of the
+      lieutenant who stood beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Grappling-irons!&rdquo; shouted the latter, and the <i>Othello</i> grappled the
+      <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i> with miraculous quickness. The captain of the
+      privateer gave his orders in a low voice to the lieutenant, who repeated
+      them; the men, told off in succession for each duty, went on the upper
+      deck of the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>, like seminarists going to mass. They
+      bound crew and passengers hand and foot and seized the booty. In the
+      twinkling of an eye, provisions and barrels full of piastres were
+      transferred to the <i>Othello</i>; the General thought that he must be
+      dreaming when he himself, likewise bound, was flung down on a bale of
+      goods as if he had been part of the cargo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A brief conference took place between the captain of the privateer and his
+      lieutenant and a sailor, who seemed to be the mate of the vessel; then the
+      mate gave a whistle, and the men jumped on board the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>,
+      and completely dismantled her with the nimble dexterity of a soldier who
+      strips a dead comrade of a coveted overcoat and shoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all over with us,&rdquo; said the Spanish captain coolly. He had eyed the
+      three chiefs during their confabulation, and saw that the sailors were
+      proceeding to pull his vessel to pieces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why so?&rdquo; asked the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would you have them do with us?&rdquo; returned the Spaniard. &ldquo;They have
+      just come to the conclusion that they will scarcely sell the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>
+      in any French or Spanish port, so they are going to sink her to be rid of
+      her. As for us, do you suppose that they will put themselves to the
+      expense of feeding us, when they don&rsquo;t know what port they are to put
+      into?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were scarcely out of the captain&rsquo;s mouth before a hideous outcry
+      went up, followed by a dull splashing sound, as several bodies were thrown
+      overboard. He turned, the four merchants were no longer to be seen, but
+      eight ferocious-looking gunners were still standing with their arms raised
+      above their heads. He shuddered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did I tell you?&rdquo; the Spanish captain asked coolly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquis rose to his feet with a spring. The surface of the sea was
+      quite smooth again; he could not so much as see the place where his
+      unhappy fellow-passengers had disappeared. By this time they were sinking
+      down, bound hand and foot, below the waves, if, indeed, the fish had not
+      devoured them already.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only a few paces away, the treacherous steersman and the sailor who had
+      boasted of the Parisian&rsquo;s power were fraternizing with the crew of the <i>Othello</i>,
+      and pointing out those among their own number, who, in their opinion, were
+      worthy to join the crew of the privateer. Then the boys tied the rest
+      together by the feet in spite of frightful oaths. It was soon over; the
+      eight gunners seized the doomed men and flung them overboard without more
+      ado, watching the different ways in which the drowning victims met their
+      death, their contortions, their last agony, with a sort of malignant
+      curiosity, but with no sign of amusement, surprise, or pity. For them it
+      was an ordinary event to which seemingly they were quite accustomed. The
+      older men looked instead with grim, set smiles at the casks of piastres
+      about the main mast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General and Captain Gomez, left seated on a bale of goods, consulted
+      each other with well-nigh hopeless looks; they were, in a sense, the sole
+      survivors of the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>, for the seven men pointed out by
+      the spies were transformed amid rejoicings into Peruvians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What atrocious villains!&rdquo; the General cried. Loyal and generous
+      indignation silenced prudence and pain on his own account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They do it because they must,&rdquo; Gomez answered coolly. &ldquo;If you came across
+      one of those fellows, you would run him through the body, would you not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lieutenant now came up to the Spaniard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Captain,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;the Parisian has heard of you. He says that you are
+      the only man who really knows the passages of the Antilles and the
+      Brazilian coast. Will you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain cut him short with a scornful exclamation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall die like a sailor,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and a loyal Spaniard and a
+      Christian. Do you hear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heave him overboard!&rdquo; shouted the lieutenant, and a couple of gunners
+      seized on Gomez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cowards!&rdquo; roared the General, seizing hold of the men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t get too excited, old boy,&rdquo; said the lieutenant. &ldquo;If your red ribbon
+      has made some impression upon our captain, I myself do not care a rap for
+      it.&mdash;You and I will have our little bit of talk together directly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A smothered sound, with no accompanying cry, told the General that the
+      gallant captain had died &ldquo;like a sailor,&rdquo; as he had said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My money or death!&rdquo; cried the Marquis, in a fit of rage terrible to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! now you talk sensibly!&rdquo; sneered the lieutenant. &ldquo;That is the way to
+      get something out of us&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two of the men came up at a sign and hastened to bind the Frenchmen&rsquo;s
+      feet, but with unlooked-for boldness he snatched the lieutenant&rsquo;s cutlass
+      and laid about him like a cavalry officer who knows his business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brigands that you are! You shall not chuck one of Napoleon&rsquo;s troopers
+      over a ship&rsquo;s side like an oyster!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of pistol shots fired point blank at the Frenchman, &ldquo;the
+      Parisian&rdquo; looked round from his occupation of superintending the transfer
+      of the rigging from the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>. He came up behind the
+      brave General, seized him, dragged him to the side, and was about to fling
+      him over with no more concern than if the man had been a broken spar. They
+      were at the very edge when the General looked into the tawny eyes of the
+      man who had stolen his daughter. The recognition was mutual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain of the privateer, his arm still upraised, suddenly swung it in
+      the contrary direction as if his victim was but a feather weight, and set
+      him down at the foot of the main mast. A murmur rose on the upper deck,
+      but the captain glanced round, and there was a sudden silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is Hélène&rsquo;s father,&rdquo; said the captain in a clear, firm voice. &ldquo;Woe
+      to any one who meddles with him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A hurrah of joy went up at the words, a shout rising to the sky like a
+      prayer of the church; a cry like the first high notes of the <i>Te Deum</i>.
+      The lads swung aloft in the rigging, the men below flung up their caps,
+      the gunners pounded away on the deck, there was a general thrill of
+      excitement, an outburst of oaths, yells, and shrill cries in voluble
+      chorus. The men cheered like fanatics, the General&rsquo;s misgivings deepened,
+      and he grew uneasy; it seemed to him that there was some horrible mystery
+      in such wild transports.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My daughter!&rdquo; he cried, as soon as he could speak. &ldquo;Where is my
+      daughter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For all answer, the captain of the privateer gave him a searching glance,
+      one of those glances which throw the bravest man into a confusion which no
+      theory can explain. The General was mute, not a little to the satisfaction
+      of the crew; it pleased them to see their leader exercise the strange
+      power which he possessed over all with whom he came in contact. Then the
+      captain led the way down a staircase and flung open the door of a cabin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There she is,&rdquo; he said, and disappeared, leaving the General in a stupor
+      of bewilderment at the scene before his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hélène cried out at the sight of him, and sprang up from the sofa on which
+      she was lying when the door flew open. So changed was she that none but a
+      father&rsquo;s eyes could have recognized her. The sun of the tropics had
+      brought warmer tones into the once pale face, and something of Oriental
+      charm with that wonderful coloring; there was a certain grandeur about
+      her, a majestic firmness, a profound sentiment which impresses itself upon
+      the coarsest nature. Her long, thick hair, falling in large curls about
+      her queenly throat, gave an added idea of power to the proud face. The
+      consciousness of that power shone out from every movement, every line of
+      Hélène&rsquo;s form. The rose-tinted nostrils were dilated slightly with the joy
+      of triumph; the serene happiness of her life had left its plain tokens in
+      the full development of her beauty. A certain indefinable virginal grace
+      met in her with the pride of a woman who is loved. This was a slave and a
+      queen, a queen who would fain obey that she might reign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her dress was magnificent and elegant in its richness; India muslin was
+      the sole material, but her sofa and cushions were of cashmere. A Persian
+      carpet covered the floor in the large cabin, and her four children playing
+      at her feet were building castles of gems and pearl necklaces and jewels
+      of price. The air was full of the scent of rare flowers in Sevres
+      porcelain vases painted by Madame Jacotot; tiny South American birds, like
+      living rubies, sapphires, and gold, hovered among the Mexican jessamines
+      and camellias. A pianoforte had been fitted into the room, and here and
+      there on the paneled walls, covered with red silk, hung small pictures by
+      great painters&mdash;a <i>Sunset</i> by Hippolyte Schinner beside a
+      Terburg, one of Raphael&rsquo;s Madonnas scarcely yielded in charm to a sketch
+      by Gericault, while a Gerard Dow eclipsed the painters of the Empire. On a
+      lacquered table stood a golden plate full of delicious fruit. Indeed,
+      Hélène might have been the sovereign lady of some great country, and this
+      cabin of hers a boudoir in which her crowned lover had brought together
+      all earth&rsquo;s treasure to please his consort. The children gazed with
+      bright, keen eyes at their grandfather. Accustomed as they were to a life
+      of battle, storm, and tumult, they recalled the Roman children in David&rsquo;s
+      <i>Brutus</i>, watching the fighting and bloodshed with curious interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! is it possible?&rdquo; cried Hélène, catching her father&rsquo;s arm as if to
+      assure herself that this was no vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hélène!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They fell into each other&rsquo;s arms, and the old man&rsquo;s embrace was not so
+      close and warm as Hélène&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you on board that vessel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he answered sadly, and looking at the little ones, who gathered
+      about him and gazed with wide open eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was about to perish, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But for my husband,&rdquo; she broke in. &ldquo;I see how it was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; cried the General, &ldquo;why must I find you again like this, Hélène?
+      After all the many tears that I have shed, must I still groan for your
+      fate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why?&rdquo; she asked, smiling. &ldquo;Why should you be sorry to learn that I am
+      the happiest woman under the sun?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Happy</i>?&rdquo; he cried with a start of surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, happy, my kind father,&rdquo; and she caught his hands in hers and covered
+      them with kisses, and pressed them to her throbbing heart. Her caresses,
+      and a something in the carriage of her head, were interpreted yet more
+      plainly by the joy sparkling in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how is this?&rdquo; he asked, wondering at his daughter&rsquo;s life, forgetful
+      now of everything but the bright glowing face before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen, father; I have for lover, husband, servant, and master one whose
+      soul is as great as the boundless sea, as infinite in his kindness as
+      heaven, a god on earth! Never during these seven years has a chance look,
+      or word, or gesture jarred in the divine harmony of his talk, his love,
+      his caresses. His eyes have never met mine without a gleam of happiness in
+      them; there has always been a bright smile on his lips for me. On deck,
+      his voice rises above the thunder of storms and the tumult of battle; but
+      here below it is soft and melodious as Rossini&rsquo;s music&mdash;for he has
+      Rossini&rsquo;s music sent for me. I have everything that woman&rsquo;s caprice can
+      imagine. My wishes are more than fulfilled. In short, I am a queen on the
+      seas; I am obeyed here as perhaps a queen may be obeyed.&mdash;Ah!&rdquo; she
+      cried, interrupting herself, &ldquo;<i>happy</i> did I say? Happiness is no word
+      to express such bliss as mine. All the happiness that should have fallen
+      to all the women in the world has been my share. Knowing one&rsquo;s own great
+      love and self-devotion, to find in <i>his</i> heart an infinite love in
+      which a woman&rsquo;s soul is lost, and lost for ever&mdash;tell me, is this
+      happiness? I have lived through a thousand lives even now. Here, I am
+      alone; here, I command. No other woman has set foot on this noble vessel,
+      and Victor is never more than a few paces distant from me,&mdash;he cannot
+      wander further from me than from stern to prow,&rdquo; she added, with a shade
+      of mischief in her manner. &ldquo;Seven years! A love that outlasts seven years
+      of continual joy, that endures all the tests brought by all the moments
+      that make up seven years&mdash;is this love? Oh, no, no! it is something
+      better than all that I know of life... human language fails to express the
+      bliss of heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sudden torrent of tears fell from her burning eyes. The four little ones
+      raised a piteous cry at this, and flocked like chickens about their
+      mother. The oldest boy struck the General with a threatening look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Abel, darling,&rdquo; said Hélène, &ldquo;I am crying for joy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hélène took him on her knee, and the child fondled her, putting his arms
+      about her queenly neck, as a lion&rsquo;s whelp might play with the lioness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you never weary of your life?&rdquo; asked the General, bewildered by his
+      daughter&rsquo;s enthusiastic language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;sometimes, when we are on land, yet even then I have
+      never parted from my husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you need to be fond of music and balls and fetes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His voice is music for me; and for fetes, I devise new toilettes for him
+      to see. When he likes my dress, it is as if all the world admired me.
+      Simply for that reason I keep the diamonds and jewels, the precious
+      things, the flowers and masterpieces of art that he heaps upon me, saying,
+      &lsquo;Hélène, as you live out of the world, I will have the world come to you.&rsquo; 
+      But for that I would fling them all overboard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there are others on board, wild, reckless men whose passions&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand, father,&rdquo; she said smiling. &ldquo;Do not fear for me. Never was
+      empress encompassed with more observance than I. The men are very
+      superstitious; they look upon me as a sort of tutelary genius, the luck of
+      the vessel. But <i>he</i> is their god; they worship him. Once, and once
+      only, one of the crew showed disrespect, mere words,&rdquo; she added, laughing;
+      &ldquo;but before Victor knew of it, the others flung the offender overboard,
+      although I forgave him. They love me as their good angel; I nurse them
+      when they are ill; several times I have been so fortunate as to save a
+      life, by constant care such as a woman can give. Poor fellows, they are
+      giants, but they are children at the same time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when there is fighting overhead?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am used to it now; I quaked for fear during the first engagement, but
+      never since.&mdash;I am used to such peril, and&mdash;I am your daughter,&rdquo;
+       she said; &ldquo;I love it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how if he should fall?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should die with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your children?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are children of the sea and of danger; they share the life of their
+      parents. We have but one life, and we do not flinch from it. We have but
+      one life, our names are written on the same page of the book of Fate, one
+      skiff bears us and our fortunes, and we know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you so love him that he is more to you than all beside?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All beside?&rdquo; echoed she. &ldquo;Let us leave that mystery alone. Yet stay!
+      there is this dear little one&mdash;well, this too is <i>he</i>,&rdquo; and
+      straining Abel to her in a tight clasp, she set eager kisses on his cheeks
+      and hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I can never forget that he has just drowned nine men!&rdquo; exclaimed the
+      General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was no help for it, doubtless,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;for he is generous and
+      humane. He sheds as little blood as may be, and only in the interests of
+      the little world which he defends, and the sacred cause for which he is
+      fighting. Talk to him about anything that seems to you to be wrong, and he
+      will convince you, you will see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was that crime of his,&rdquo; muttered the General to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how if that crime was a virtue?&rdquo; she asked, with cold dignity. &ldquo;How
+      if man&rsquo;s justice had failed to avenge a great wrong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But a private revenge!&rdquo; exclaimed her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what is hell,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;but a revenge through all eternity for the
+      wrong done in a little day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! you are lost! He has bewitched and perverted you. You are talking
+      wildly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay with us one day, father, and if you will but listen to him, and see
+      him, you will love him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hélène, France lies only a few leagues away,&rdquo; he said gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hélène trembled; then she went to the porthole and pointed to the savannas
+      of green water spreading far and wide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There lies my country,&rdquo; she said, tapping the carpet with her foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But are you not coming with me to see your mother and your sister and
+      brothers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! yes,&rdquo; she cried, with tears in her voice, &ldquo;if <i>he</i> is willing,
+      if he will come with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So,&rdquo; the General said sternly, &ldquo;you have neither country nor kin now,
+      Hélène?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am his wife,&rdquo; she answered proudly, and there was something very noble
+      in her tone. &ldquo;This is the first happiness in seven years that has not come
+      to me through him,&rdquo; she said&mdash;then, as she caught her father&rsquo;s hand
+      and kissed it&mdash;&ldquo;and this is the first word of reproach that I have
+      heard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your conscience?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My conscience; he is my conscience!&rdquo; she cried, trembling from head to
+      foot. &ldquo;Here he is! Even in the thick of a fight I can tell his footstep
+      among all the others on deck,&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sudden crimson flushed her cheeks and glowed in her features, her eyes
+      lighted up, her complexion changed to velvet whiteness, there was joy and
+      love in every fibre, in the blue veins, in the unconscious trembling of
+      her whole frame. That quiver of the sensitive plant softened the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was as she had said. The captain came in, sat down in an easy-chair,
+      took up his oldest boy, and began to play with him. There was a moment&rsquo;s
+      silence, for the General&rsquo;s deep musing had grown vague and dreamy, and the
+      daintily furnished cabin and the playing children seemed like a nest of
+      halcyons, floating on the waves, between sky and sea, safe in the
+      protection of this man who steered his way amid the perils of war and
+      tempest, as other heads of household guide those in their care among the
+      hazards of common life. He gazed admiringly at Hélène&mdash;a dreamlike
+      vision of some sea goddess, gracious in her loveliness, rich in happiness;
+      all the treasures about her grown poor in comparison with the wealth of
+      her nature, paling before the brightness of her eyes, the indefinable
+      romance expressed in her and her surroundings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The strangeness of the situation took the General by surprise; the ideas
+      of ordinary life were thrown into confusion by this lofty passion and
+      reasoning. Chill and narrow social conventions faded away before this
+      picture. All these things the old soldier felt, and saw no less how
+      impossible it was that his daughter should give up so wide a life, a life
+      so variously rich, filled to the full with such passionate love. And
+      Hélène had tasted danger without shrinking; how could she return to the
+      pretty stage, the superficial circumscribed life of society?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the captain who broke the silence at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I in the way?&rdquo; he asked, looking at his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the General, answering for her. &ldquo;Hélène has told me all. I see
+      that she is lost to us&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; the captain put in quickly; &ldquo;in a few years&rsquo; time the statute of
+      limitations will allow me to go back to France. When the conscience is
+      clear, and a man has broken the law in obedience to&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; he
+      stopped short, as if scorning to justify himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can you commit new murders, such as I have seen with my own eyes,
+      without remorse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We had no provisions,&rdquo; the privateer captain retorted calmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if you had set the men ashore&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They would have given the alarm and sent a man-of-war after us, and we
+      should never have seen Chili again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before France would have given warning to the Spanish admiralty&mdash;&rdquo;
+       began the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But France might take it amiss that a man, with a warrant still out
+      against him, should seize a brig chartered by Bordeaux merchants. And for
+      that matter, have you never fired a shot or so too many in battle?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General shrank under the other&rsquo;s eyes. He said no more, and his
+      daughter looked at him half sadly, half triumphant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;General,&rdquo; the privateer continued, in a deep voice, &ldquo;I have made it a
+      rule to abstract nothing from booty. But even so, my share will be beyond
+      a doubt far larger than your fortune. Permit me to return it to you in
+      another form&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew a pile of banknotes from the piano, and without counting the
+      packets handed a million of francs to the Marquis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can understand,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that I cannot spend my time in watching
+      vessels pass by to Bordeaux. So unless the dangers of this Bohemian life
+      of ours have some attraction for you, unless you care to see South America
+      and the nights of the tropics, and a bit of fighting now and again for the
+      pleasure of helping to win a triumph for a young nation, or for the name
+      of Simon Bolivar, we must part. The long boat manned with a trustworthy
+      crew is ready for you. And now let us hope that our third meeting will be
+      completely happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Victor,&rdquo; said Hélène in a dissatisfied tone, &ldquo;I should like to see a
+      little more of my father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ten minutes more or less may bring up a French frigate. However, so be
+      it, we shall have a little fun. The men find things dull.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, father, go!&rdquo; cried Hélène, &ldquo;and take these keepsakes from me to my
+      sister and brothers and&mdash;mother,&rdquo; she added. She caught up a handful
+      of jewels and precious stones, folded them in an Indian shawl, and timidly
+      held it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what shall I say to them from you?&rdquo; asked he. Her hesitation on the
+      word &ldquo;mother&rdquo; seemed to have struck him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! can you doubt me? I pray for their happiness every day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hélène,&rdquo; he began, as he watched her closely, &ldquo;how if we should not meet
+      again? Shall I never know why you left us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That secret is not mine,&rdquo; she answered gravely. &ldquo;Even if I had the right
+      to tell it, perhaps I should not. For ten years I was more miserable than
+      words can say&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She broke off, and gave her father the presents for her family. The
+      General had acquired tolerably easy views as to booty in the course of a
+      soldier&rsquo;s career, so he took Hélène&rsquo;s gifts and comforted himself with the
+      reflection that the Parisian captain was sure to wage war against the
+      Spaniards as an honorable man, under the influence of Hélène&rsquo;s pure and
+      high-minded nature. His passion for courage carried all before it. It was
+      ridiculous, he thought, to be squeamish in the matter; so he shook hands
+      cordially with his captor, and kissed Hélène, his only daughter, with a
+      soldier&rsquo;s expansiveness; letting fall a tear on the face with the proud,
+      strong look that once he had loved to see. &ldquo;The Parisian,&rdquo; deeply moved,
+      brought the children for his blessing. The parting was over, the last
+      good-bye was a long farewell look, with something of tender regret on
+      either side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A strange sight to seaward met the General&rsquo;s eyes. The <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>
+      was blazing like a huge bonfire. The men told off to sink the Spanish brig
+      had found a cargo of rum on board; and as the <i>Othello</i> was already
+      amply supplied, had lighted a floating bowl of punch on the high seas, by
+      way of a joke; a pleasantry pardonable enough in sailors, who hail any
+      chance excitement as a relief from the apparent monotony of life at sea.
+      As the General went over the side into the long-boat of the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>,
+      manned by six vigorous rowers, he could not help looking at the burning
+      vessel, as well as at the daughter who stood by her husband&rsquo;s side on the
+      stern of the <i>Othello</i>. He saw Hélène&rsquo;s white dress flutter like one
+      more sail in the breeze; he saw the tall, noble figure against a
+      background of sea, queenly still even in the presence of Ocean; and so
+      many memories crowded up in his mind, that, with a soldier&rsquo;s recklessness
+      of life, he forgot that he was being borne over the grave of the brave
+      Gomez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A vast column of smoke rising spread like a brown cloud, pierced here and
+      there by fantastic shafts of sunlight. It was a second sky, a murky dome
+      reflecting the glow of the fire as if the under surface had been
+      burnished; but above it soared the unchanging blue of the firmament, a
+      thousand times fairer for the short-lived contrast. The strange hues of
+      the smoke cloud, black and red, tawny and pale by turns, blurred and
+      blending into each other, shrouded the burning vessel as it flared,
+      crackled and groaned; the hissing tongues of flame licked up the rigging,
+      and flashed across the hull, like a rumor of riot flashing along the
+      streets of a city. The burning rum sent up blue flitting lights. Some sea
+      god might have been stirring the furious liquor as a student stirs the
+      joyous flames of punch in an orgy. But in the overpowering sunlight,
+      jealous of the insolent blaze, the colors were scarcely visible, and the
+      smoke was but a film fluttering like a thin scarf in the noonday torrent
+      of light and heat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>Othello</i> made the most of the little wind she could gain to fly
+      on her new course. Swaying first to one side, then to the other, like a
+      stag beetle on the wing, the fair vessel beat to windward on her zigzag
+      flight to the south. Sometimes she was hidden from sight by the straight
+      column of smoke that flung fantastic shadows across the water, then
+      gracefully she shot out clear of it, and Hélène, catching sight of her
+      father, waved her handkerchief for yet one more farewell greeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few more minutes, and the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i> went down with a
+      bubbling turmoil, at once effaced by the ocean. Nothing of all that had
+      been was left but a smoke cloud hanging in the breeze. The <i>Othello</i>
+      was far away, the long-boat had almost reached land, the cloud came
+      between the frail skiff and the brig, and it was through a break in the
+      swaying smoke that the General caught the last glimpse of Hélène. A
+      prophetic vision! Her dress and her white handkerchief stood out against
+      the murky background. Then the brig was not even visible between the green
+      water and the blue sky, and Hélène was nothing but an imperceptible speck,
+      a faint graceful line, an angel in heaven, a mental image, a memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquis had retrieved his fortunes, when he died, worn out with toil.
+      A few months after his death, in 1833, the Marquise was obliged to take
+      Moïna to a watering-place in the Pyrenees, for the capricious child had a
+      wish to see the beautiful mountain scenery. They left the baths, and the
+      following tragical incident occurred on their way home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me, mother,&rdquo; said Moïna, &ldquo;it was very foolish of us not to stay
+      among the mountains a few days longer. It was much nicer there. Did you
+      hear that horrid child moaning all night, and that wretched woman,
+      gabbling away in patois no doubt, for I could not understand a single word
+      she said. What kind of people can they have put in the next room to ours?
+      This is one of the horridest nights I have ever spent in my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard nothing,&rdquo; said the Marquise, &ldquo;but I will see the landlady,
+      darling, and engage the next room, and then we shall have the whole suite
+      of rooms to ourselves, and there will be no more noise. How do you feel
+      this morning? Are you tired?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she spoke, the Marquise rose and went to Moïna&rsquo;s bedside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us see,&rdquo; she said, feeling for the girl&rsquo;s hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! let me alone, mother,&rdquo; said Moïna; &ldquo;your fingers are cold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned her head round on the pillow as she spoke, pettishly, but with
+      such engaging grace, that a mother could scarcely have taken it amiss.
+      Just then a wailing cry echoed through the next room, a faint prolonged
+      cry, that must surely have gone to the heart of any woman who heard it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, if you heard <i>that</i> all night long, why did you not wake me? We
+      should have&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A deeper moan than any that had gone before it interrupted the Marquise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some one is dying there,&rdquo; she cried, and hurried out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Send Pauline to me!&rdquo; called Moïna. &ldquo;I shall get up and dress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise hastened downstairs, and found the landlady in the courtyard
+      with a little group about her, apparently much interested in something
+      that she was telling them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, you have put some one in the next room who seems to be very ill
+      indeed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! don&rsquo;t talk to me about it!&rdquo; cried the mistress of the house. &ldquo;I have
+      just sent some one for the mayor. Just imagine it; it is a woman, a poor
+      unfortunate creature that came here last night on foot. She comes from
+      Spain; she has no passport and no money; she was carrying her baby on her
+      back, and the child was dying. I could not refuse to take her in. I went
+      up to see her this morning myself; for when she turned up yesterday, it
+      made me feel dreadfully bad to look at her. Poor soul! she and the child
+      were lying in bed, and both of them at death&rsquo;s door. &lsquo;Madame,&rsquo; says she,
+      pulling a gold ring off her finger, &lsquo;this is all that I have left; take it
+      in payment, it will be enough; I shall not stay here long. Poor little
+      one! we shall die together soon!&rsquo; she said, looking at the child. I took
+      her ring, and I asked her who she was, but she never would tell me her
+      name.... I have just sent for the doctor and M. le Maire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you must do all that can be done for her,&rdquo; cried the Marquise. &ldquo;Good
+      heavens! perhaps it is not too late! I will pay for everything that is
+      necessary&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! my lady, she looks to me uncommonly proud, and I don&rsquo;t know that she
+      would allow it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go to see her at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise went up forthwith to the stranger&rsquo;s room, without thinking of
+      the shock that the sight of her widow&rsquo;s weeds might give to a woman who
+      was said to be dying. At the sight of that dying woman the Marquise turned
+      pale. In spite of the changes wrought by fearful suffering in Hélène&rsquo;s
+      beautiful face, she recognized her eldest daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Hélène, when she saw a woman dressed in black, sat upright in bed with
+      a shriek of horror. Then she sank back; she knew her mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My daughter,&rdquo; said Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont, &ldquo;what is to be done? Pauline!...
+      Moïna!...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing now for me,&rdquo; said Hélène faintly. &ldquo;I had hoped to see my father
+      once more, but your mourning&mdash;&rdquo; she broke off, clutched her child to
+      her heart as if to give it warmth, and kissed its forehead. Then she
+      turned her eyes on her mother, and the Marquise met the old reproach in
+      them, tempered with forgiveness, it is true, but still reproach. She saw
+      it, and would not see it. She forgot that Hélène was the child conceived
+      amid tears and despair, the child of duty, the cause of one of the
+      greatest sorrows in her life. She stole to her eldest daughter&rsquo;s side,
+      remembering nothing but that Hélène was her firstborn, the child who had
+      taught her to know the joys of motherhood. The mother&rsquo;s eyes were full of
+      tears. &ldquo;Hélène, my child!...&rdquo; she cried, with her arms about her daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hélène was silent. Her own babe had just drawn its last breath on her
+      breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moïna came into the room with Pauline, her maid, and the landlady and the
+      doctor. The Marquise was holding her daughter&rsquo;s ice-cold hand in both of
+      hers, and gazing at her in despair; but the widowed woman, who had escaped
+      shipwreck with but one of all her fair band of children, spoke in a voice
+      that was dreadful to hear. &ldquo;All this is your work,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;If you had
+      but been for me all that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moïna, go! Go out of the room, all of you!&rdquo; cried Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont, her
+      shrill tones drowning Hélène&rsquo;s voice.&mdash;&ldquo;For pity&rsquo;s sake,&rdquo; she
+      continued, &ldquo;let us not begin these miserable quarrels again now&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will be silent,&rdquo; Hélène answered with a preternatural effort. &ldquo;I am a
+      mother; I know that Moïna ought not... Where is my child?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Moïna came back, impelled by curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sister,&rdquo; said the spoiled child, &ldquo;the doctor&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all of no use,&rdquo; said Hélène. &ldquo;Oh! why did I not die as a girl of
+      sixteen when I meant to take my own life? There is no happiness outside
+      the laws. Moïna... you...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her head sank till her face lay against the face of the little one; in her
+      agony she strained her babe to her breast, and died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your sister, Moïna,&rdquo; said Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont, bursting into tears when she
+      reached her room, &ldquo;your sister meant no doubt to tell you that a girl will
+      never find happiness in a romantic life, in living as nobody else does,
+      and, above all things, far away from her mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br><br><br><br>
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI. THE OLD AGE OF A GUILTY MOTHER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was one of the earliest June days of the year 1844. A lady of fifty or
+      thereabouts, for she looked older than her actual age, was pacing up and
+      down one of the sunny paths in the garden of a great mansion in the Rue
+      Plumet in Paris. It was noon. The lady took two or three turns along the
+      gently winding garden walk, careful never to lose sight of a certain row
+      of windows, to which she seemed to give her whole attention; then she sat
+      down on a bench, a piece of elegant semi-rusticity made of branches with
+      the bark left on the wood. From the place where she sat she could look
+      through the garden railings along the inner boulevards to the wonderful
+      dome of the Invalides rising above the crests of a forest of elm-trees,
+      and see the less striking view of her own grounds terminating in the gray
+      stone front of one of the finest hotels in the Faubourg Saint-Germain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Silence lay over the neighboring gardens, and the boulevards stretching
+      away to the Invalides. Day scarcely begins at noon in that aristocratic
+      quarter, and masters and servants are all alike asleep, or just awakening,
+      unless some young lady takes it into her head to go for an early ride, or
+      a gray-headed diplomatist rises betimes to redraft a protocol.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The elderly lady stirring abroad at that hour was the Marquise
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont, the mother of Mme. de Saint-Héreen, to whom the great house
+      belonged. The Marquise had made over the mansion and almost her whole
+      fortune to her daughter, reserving only an annuity for herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Comtesse Moïna de Saint-Héreen was Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s youngest child.
+      The Marquise had made every sacrifice to marry her daughter to the eldest
+      son of one of the greatest houses of France; and this was only what might
+      have been expected, for the lady had lost her sons, first one and then the
+      other. Gustave, Marquis d&rsquo;Aiglemont, had died of the cholera; Abel, the
+      second, had fallen in Algeria. Gustave had left a widow and children, but
+      the dowager&rsquo;s affection for her sons had been only moderately warm, and
+      for the next generation it was decidedly tepid. She was always civil to
+      her daughter-in-law, but her feeling towards the young Marquise was the
+      distinctly conventional affection which good taste and good manners
+      require us to feel for our relatives. The fortunes of her dead children
+      having been settled, she could devote her savings and her own property to
+      her darling Moïna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moïna, beautiful and fascinating from childhood, was Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s
+      favorite; loved beyond all the others with an instinctive or involuntary
+      love, a fatal drawing of the heart, which sometimes seems inexplicable,
+      sometimes, and to a close observer, only too easy to explain. Her
+      darling&rsquo;s pretty face, the sound of Moïna&rsquo;s voice, her ways, her manner,
+      her looks and gestures, roused all the deepest emotions that can stir a
+      mother&rsquo;s heart with trouble, rapture, or delight. The springs of the
+      Marquise&rsquo;s life, of yesterday, to-morrow, and to-day, lay in that young
+      heart. Moïna, with better fortune, had survived four older children. As a
+      matter of fact, Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont had lost her eldest daughter, a charming
+      girl, in a most unfortunate manner, said gossip, nobody knew exactly what
+      became of her; and then she lost a little boy of five by a dreadful
+      accident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child of her affections had, however, been spared to her, and
+      doubtless the Marquise saw the will of Heaven in that fact; for those who
+      had died, she kept but very shadowy recollections in some far-off corner
+      of her heart; her memories of her dead children were like the headstones
+      on a battlefield, you can scarcely see them for the flowers that have
+      sprung up about them since. Of course, if the world had chosen, it might
+      have said some hard truths about the Marquise, might have taken her to
+      task for shallowness and an overweening preference for one child at the
+      expense of the rest; but the world of Paris is swept along by the full
+      flood of new events, new ideas, and new fashions, and it was inevitable
+      the Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont should be in some sort allowed to drop out of sight.
+      So nobody thought of blaming her for coldness or neglect which concerned
+      no one, whereas her quick, apprehensive tenderness for Moïna was found
+      highly interesting by not a few who respected it as a sort of
+      superstition. Besides, the Marquise scarcely went into society at all; and
+      the few families who knew her thought of her as a kindly, gentle,
+      indulgent woman, wholly devoted to her family. What but a curiosity, keen
+      indeed, would seek to pry beneath the surface with which the world is
+      quite satisfied? And what would we not pardon to old people, if only they
+      will efface themselves like shadows, and consent to be regarded as
+      memories and nothing more!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont became a kind of example complacently held up by
+      the younger generation to fathers of families, and frequently cited to
+      mothers-in-law. She had made over her property to Moïna in her own
+      lifetime; the young Countess&rsquo; happiness was enough for her, she only lived
+      in her daughter. If some cautious old person or morose uncle here and
+      there condemned the course with&mdash;&ldquo;Perhaps Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont may be
+      sorry some day that she gave up her fortune to her daughter; she may be
+      sure of Moïna, but how can she be equally sure of her son-in-law?&rdquo;&mdash;these
+      prophets were cried down on all sides, and from all sides a chorus of
+      praise went up for Moïna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It ought to be said, in justice to Mme. de Saint-Héreen, that her mother
+      cannot feel the slightest difference,&rdquo; remarked a young married woman.
+      &ldquo;Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont is admirably well housed. She has a carriage at her
+      disposal, and can go everywhere just as she used to do&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Except to the Italiens,&rdquo; remarked a low voice. (This was an elderly
+      parasite, one of those persons who show their independence&mdash;as they
+      think&mdash;by riddling their friends with epigrams.) &ldquo;Except to the
+      Italiens. And if the dowager cares for anything on this earth but her
+      daughter&mdash;it is music. Such a good performer she was in her time! But
+      the Countess&rsquo; box is always full of young butterflies, and the Countess&rsquo; 
+      mother would be in the way; the young lady is talked about already as a
+      great flirt. So the poor mother never goes to the Italiens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mme. de Saint-Héreen has delightful &lsquo;At Homes&rsquo; for her mother,&rdquo; said a
+      rosebud. &ldquo;All Paris goes to her salon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And no one pays any attention to the Marquise,&rdquo; returned the parasite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The fact is that Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont is never alone,&rdquo; remarked a coxcomb,
+      siding with the young women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the morning,&rdquo; the old observer continued in a discreet voice, &ldquo;in the
+      morning dear Moïna is asleep. At four o&rsquo;clock dear Moïna drives in the
+      Bois. In the evening dear Moïna goes to a ball or to the Bouffes.&mdash;Still,
+      it is certainly true that Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont has the privilege of seeing her
+      dear daughter while she dresses, and again at dinner, if dear Moïna
+      happens to dine with her mother. Not a week ago, sir,&rdquo; continued the
+      elderly person, laying his hand on the arm of the shy tutor, a new arrival
+      in the house, &ldquo;not a week ago, I saw the poor mother, solitary and sad, by
+      her own fireside.&mdash;&lsquo;What is the matter?&rsquo; I asked. The Marquise looked
+      up smiling, but I am quite sure that she had been crying.&mdash;&lsquo;I was
+      thinking that it is a strange thing that I should be left alone when I
+      have had five children,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;but that is our destiny! And besides,
+      I am happy when I know that Moïna is enjoying herself.&rsquo;&mdash;She could
+      say that to me, for I knew her husband when he was alive. A poor stick he
+      was, and uncommonly lucky to have such a wife; it was certainly owing to
+      her that he was made a peer of France, and had a place at Court under
+      Charles X.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet such mistaken ideas get about in social gossip, and such mischief is
+      done by it, that the historian of manners is bound to exercise his
+      discretion, and weigh the assertions so recklessly made. After all, who is
+      to say that either mother or daughter was right or wrong? There is but One
+      who can read and judge their hearts! And how often does He wreak His
+      vengeance in the family circle, using throughout all time children as His
+      instruments against their mothers, and fathers against their sons, raising
+      up peoples against kings, and princes against peoples, sowing strife and
+      division everywhere? And in the world of ideas, are not opinions and
+      feelings expelled by new feelings and opinions, much as withered leaves
+      are thrust forth by the young leaf-buds in the spring?&mdash;all in
+      obedience to the immutable Scheme; all to some end which God alone knows.
+      Yet, surely, all things proceed to Him, or rather, to Him all things
+      return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such thoughts of religion, the natural thoughts of age, floated up now and
+      again on the current of Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s thoughts; they were always
+      dimly present in her mind, but sometimes they shone out clearly, sometimes
+      they were carried under, like flowers tossed on the vexed surface of a
+      stormy sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat on a garden-seat, tired with walking, exhausted with much thinking&mdash;with
+      the long thoughts in which a whole lifetime rises up before the mind, and
+      is spread out like a scroll before the eyes of those who feel that Death
+      is near.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If a poet had chanced to pass along the boulevard, he would have found an
+      interesting picture in the face of this woman, grown old before her time.
+      As she sat under the dotted shadow of the acacia, the shadow the acacia
+      casts at noon, a thousand thoughts were written for all the world to see
+      on her features, pale and cold even in the hot, bright sunlight. There was
+      something sadder than the sense of waning life in that expressive face,
+      some trouble that went deeper than the weariness of experience. It was a
+      face of a type that fixes you in a moment among a host of characterless
+      faces that fail to draw a second glance, a face to set you thinking. Among
+      a thousand pictures in a gallery, you are strongly impressed by the
+      sublime anguish on the face of some Madonna of Murillo&rsquo;s; by some <i>Beatrice
+      Cenci</i> in which Guido&rsquo;s art portrays the most touching innocence
+      against a background of horror and crime; by the awe and majesty that
+      should encircle a king, caught once and for ever by Velasquez in the
+      sombre face of a Philip II., and so is it with some living human faces;
+      they are tyrannous pictures which speak to you, submit you to searching
+      scrutiny, and give response to your inmost thoughts, nay, there are faces
+      that set forth a whole drama, and Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s stony face was one of
+      these awful tragedies, one of such faces as Dante Alighieri saw by
+      thousands in his vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the little season that a woman&rsquo;s beauty is in flower it serves her
+      admirably well in the dissimulation to which her natural weakness and our
+      social laws condemn her. A young face and rich color, and eyes that glow
+      with light, a gracious maze of such subtle, manifold lines and curves,
+      flawless and perfectly traced, is a screen that hides everything that
+      stirs the woman within. A flush tells nothing, it only heightens the
+      coloring so brilliant already; all the fires that burn within can add
+      little light to the flame of life in eyes which only seem the brighter for
+      the flash of a passing pain. Nothing is so discreet as a young face, for
+      nothing is less mobile; it has the serenity, the surface smoothness, and
+      the freshness of a lake. There is not character in women&rsquo;s faces before
+      the age of thirty. The painter discovers nothing there but pink and white,
+      and the smile and expression that repeat the same thought in the same way&mdash;a
+      thought of youth and love that goes no further than youth and love. But
+      the face of an old woman has expressed all that lay in her nature; passion
+      has carved lines on her features; love and wifehood and motherhood, and
+      extremes of joy and anguish, having wrung them, and left their traces in a
+      thousand wrinkles, all of which speak a language of their own; then it is
+      that a woman&rsquo;s face becomes sublime in its horror, beautiful in its
+      melancholy, grand in its calm. If it is permissible to carry the strange
+      metaphor still further, it might be said that in the dried-up lake you can
+      see the traces of all the torrents that once poured into it and made it
+      what it is. An old face is nothing to the frivolous world; the frivolous
+      world is shocked by the sight of the destruction of such comeliness as it
+      can understand; a commonplace artist sees nothing there. An old face is
+      the province of the poets among poets of those who can recognize that
+      something which is called Beauty, apart from all the conventions
+      underlying so many superstitions in art and taste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont wore a fashionable bonnet, it was easy to see that
+      her once black hair had been bleached by cruel sorrows; yet her good taste
+      and the gracious acquired instincts of a woman of fashion could be seen in
+      the way she wore it, divided into two <i>bandeaux</i>, following the
+      outlines of a forehead that still retained some traces of former dazzling
+      beauty, worn and lined though it was. The contours of her face, the
+      regularity of her features, gave some idea, faint in truth, of that beauty
+      of which surely she had once been proud; but those traces spoke still more
+      plainly of the anguish which had laid it waste, of sharp pain that had
+      withered the temples, and made those hollows in her cheeks, and empurpled
+      the eyelids, and robbed them of their lashes, and the eyes of their charm.
+      She was in every way so noiseless; she moved with a slow, self-contained
+      gravity that showed itself in her whole bearing, and struck a certain awe
+      into others. Her diffident manner had changed to positive shyness, due
+      apparently to a habit now of some years&rsquo; growth, of effacing herself in
+      her daughter&rsquo;s presence. She spoke very seldom, and in the low tones used
+      by those who perforce must live within themselves a life of reflection and
+      concentration. This demeanor led others to regard her with an indefinable
+      feeling which was neither awe nor compassion, but a mysterious blending of
+      the many ideas awakened in us by compassion and awe. Finally, there was
+      something in her wrinkles, in the lines of her face, in the look of pain
+      in those wan eyes of hers, that bore eloquent testimony to tears that
+      never had fallen, tears that had been absorbed by her heart. Unhappy
+      creatures, accustomed to raise their eyes to heaven, in mute appeal
+      against the bitterness of their lot, would have seen at once from her eyes
+      that she was broken in to the cruel discipline of ceaseless prayer, would
+      have discerned the almost imperceptible symptoms of the secret bruises
+      which destroy all the flowers of the soul, even the sentiment of
+      motherhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Painters have colors for these portraits, but words, and the mental images
+      called up by words, fail to reproduce such impressions faithfully; there
+      are mysterious signs and tokens in the tones of the coloring and in the
+      look of human faces, which the mind only seizes through the sense of
+      sight; and the poet is fain to record the tale of the events which wrought
+      the havoc to make their terrible ravages understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The face spoke of cold and steady storm, an inward conflict between a
+      mother&rsquo;s long-suffering and the limitations of our nature, for our human
+      affections are bounded by our humanity, and the infinite has no place in
+      finite creatures. Sorrow endured in silence had at last produced an
+      indefinable morbid something in this woman. Doubtless mental anguish had
+      reacted on the physical frame, and some disease, perhaps an aneurism, was
+      undermining Julie&rsquo;s life. Deep-seated grief lies to all appearance very
+      quietly in the depths where it is conceived, yet, so still and apparently
+      dormant as it is, it ceaselessly corrodes the soul, like the terrible acid
+      which eats away crystal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two tears made their way down the Marquise&rsquo;s cheeks; she rose to her feet
+      as if some thought more poignant than any that preceded it had cut her to
+      the quick. She had doubtless come to a conclusion as to Moïna&rsquo;s future;
+      and now, foreseeing clearly all the troubles in store for her child, the
+      sorrows of her own unhappy life had begun to weigh once more upon her. The
+      key of her position must be sought in her daughter&rsquo;s situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Comte de Saint-Héreen had been away for nearly six months on a
+      political mission. The Countess, whether from sheer giddiness, or in
+      obedience to the countless instincts of woman&rsquo;s coquetry, or to essay its
+      power&mdash;with all the vanity of a frivolous fine lady, all the
+      capricious waywardness of a child&mdash;was amusing herself, during her
+      husband&rsquo;s absence, by playing with the passion of a clever but heartless
+      man, distracted (so he said) with love, the love that combines readily
+      with every petty social ambition of a self-conceited coxcomb. Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont, whose long experience had given her a knowledge of life, and
+      taught her to judge of men and to dread the world, watched the course of
+      this flirtation, and saw that it could only end in one way, if her
+      daughter should fall into the hands of an utterly unscrupulous intriguer.
+      How could it be other than a terrible thought for her that her daughter
+      listened willingly to this <i>roue</i>? Her darling stood on the brink of
+      a precipice, she felt horribly sure of it, yet dared not hold her back.
+      She was afraid of the Countess. She knew too that Moïna would not listen
+      to her wise warnings; she knew that she had no influence over that nature&mdash;iron
+      for her, silken-soft for all others. Her mother&rsquo;s tenderness might have
+      led her to sympathize with the troubles of a passion called forth by the
+      nobler qualities of a lover, but this was no passion&mdash;it was
+      coquetry, and the Marquise despised Alfred de Vandenesse, knowing that he
+      had entered upon this flirtation with Moïna as if it were a game of chess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if Alfred de Vandenesse made her shudder with disgust, she was obliged&mdash;unhappy
+      mother!&mdash;to conceal the strongest reason for her loathing in the
+      deepest recesses of her heart. She was on terms of intimate friendship
+      with the Marquis de Vandenesse, the young man&rsquo;s father; and this
+      friendship, a respectable one in the eyes of the world, excused the son&rsquo;s
+      constant presence in the house, he professing an old attachment, dating
+      from childhood, for Mme. de Saint-Héreen. More than this, in vain did Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont nerve herself to come between Moïna and Alfred de Vandenesse
+      with a terrible word, knowing beforehand that she should not succeed;
+      knowing that the strong reason which ought to separate them would carry no
+      weight; that she should humiliate herself vainly in her daughter&rsquo;s eyes.
+      Alfred was too corrupt; Moïna too clever to believe the revelation; the
+      young Countess would turn it off and treat it as a piece of maternal
+      strategy. Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont had built her prison walls with her own hands;
+      she had immured herself only to see Moïna&rsquo;s happiness ruined thence before
+      she died; she was to look on helplessly at the ruin of the young life
+      which had been her pride and joy and comfort, a life a thousand times
+      dearer to her than her own. What words can describe anguish so hideous
+      beyond belief, such unfathomed depths of pain?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited for Moïna to rise, with the impatience and sickening dread of a
+      doomed man, who longs to have done with life, and turns cold at the
+      thought of the headsman. She had braced herself for a last effort, but
+      perhaps the prospect of the certain failure of the attempt was less
+      dreadful to her than the fear of receiving yet again one of those thrusts
+      that went to her very heart&mdash;before that fear her courage ebbed away.
+      Her mother&rsquo;s love had come to this. To love her child, to be afraid of
+      her, to shrink from the thought of the stab, yet to go forward. So great
+      is a mother&rsquo;s affection in a loving nature, that before it can fade away
+      into indifference the mother herself must die or find support in some
+      great power without her, in religion or another love. Since the Marquise
+      rose that morning, her fatal memory had called up before her some of those
+      things, so slight to all appearance, that make landmarks in a life.
+      Sometimes, indeed, a whole tragedy grows out of a single gesture; the tone
+      in which a few words were spoken rends a whole life in two; a glance into
+      indifferent eyes is the deathblow of the gladdest love; and, unhappily,
+      such gestures and such words were only too familiar to Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&mdash;she
+      had met so many glances that wound the soul. No, there was nothing in
+      those memories to bid her hope. On the contrary, everything went to show
+      that Alfred had destroyed her hold on her daughter&rsquo;s heart, that the
+      thought of her was now associated with duty&mdash;not with gladness. In
+      ways innumerable, in things that were mere trifles in themselves, the
+      Countess&rsquo; detestable conduct rose up before her mother; and the Marquise,
+      it may be, looked on Moïna&rsquo;s undutifulness as a punishment, and found
+      excuses for her daughter in the will of Heaven, that so she still might
+      adore the hand that smote her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these things passed through her memory that morning, and each
+      recollection wounded her afresh so sorely, that with a very little
+      additional pain her brimming cup of bitterness must have overflowed. A
+      cold look might kill her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little details of domestic life are difficult to paint; but one or two
+      perhaps will suffice to give an idea of the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise d&rsquo;Aiglemont, for instance, had grown rather deaf, but she
+      could never induce Moïna to raise her voice for her. Once, with the
+      naivete of suffering, she had begged Moïna to repeat some remark which she
+      had failed to catch, and Moïna obeyed, but with so bad a grace, that Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont had never permitted herself to make her modest request again.
+      Ever since that day when Moïna was talking or retailing a piece of news,
+      her mother was careful to come near to listen; but this infirmity of
+      deafness appeared to put the Countess out of patience, and she would
+      grumble thoughtlessly about it. This instance is one from among very many
+      that must have gone to the mother&rsquo;s heart; and yet nearly all of them
+      might have escaped a close observer, they consisted in faint shades of
+      manner invisible to any but a woman&rsquo;s eyes. Take another example. Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont happened to say one day that the Princesse de Cadignan had
+      called upon her. &ldquo;Did she come to see <i>you</i>!&rdquo; Moïna exclaimed. That
+      was all, but the Countess&rsquo; voice and manner expressed surprise and
+      well-bred contempt in semitones. Any heart, still young and sensitive,
+      might well have applauded the philanthropy of savage tribes who kill off
+      their old people when they grow too feeble to cling to a strongly shaken
+      bough. Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont rose smiling, and went away to weep alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well-bred people, and women especially, only betray their feelings by
+      imperceptible touches; but those who can look back over their own
+      experience on such bruises as this mother&rsquo;s heart received, know also how
+      the heart-strings vibrate to these light touches. Overcome by her
+      memories, Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont recollected one of those microscopically small
+      things, so stinging and so painful was it that never till this moment had
+      she felt all the heartless contempt that lurked beneath smiles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of shutters thrown back at her daughter&rsquo;s windows, she dried
+      her tears, and hastened up the pathway by the railings. As she went, it
+      struck her that the gardener had been unusually careful to rake the sand
+      along the walk which had been neglected for some little time. As she stood
+      under her daughter&rsquo;s windows, the shutters were hastily closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moïna, is it you?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise went on into the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mme. la Comtesse is in the little drawing-room,&rdquo; said the maid, when the
+      Marquise asked whether Mme. de Saint-Héreen had finished dressing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont hurried to the little drawing-room; her heart was too
+      full, her brain too busy to notice matters so slight; but there on the
+      sofa sat the Countess in her loose morning-gown, her hair in disorder
+      under the cap tossed carelessly on her head, her feet thrust into slippers.
+      The key of her bedroom hung at her girdle. Her face, aglow with color,
+      bore traces of almost stormy thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What makes people come in!&rdquo; she cried, crossly. &ldquo;Oh! it is you, mother,&rdquo;
+       she interrupted herself, with a preoccupied look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, child; it is your mother&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Something in her tone turned those words into an outpouring of the heart,
+      the cry of some deep inward feeling, only to be described by the word
+      &ldquo;holy.&rdquo; So thoroughly in truth had she rehabilitated the sacred character
+      of a mother, that her daughter was impressed, and turned towards her, with
+      something of awe, uneasiness, and remorse in her manner. The room was the
+      furthest of a suite, and safe from indiscreet intrusion, for no one could
+      enter it without giving warning of approach through the previous
+      apartments. The Marquise closed the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is my duty, my child, to warn you in one of the most serious crises in
+      the lives of us women; you have perhaps reached it unconsciously, and I am
+      come to speak to you as a friend rather than as a mother. When you
+      married, you acquired freedom of action; you are only accountable to your
+      husband now; but I asserted my authority so little (perhaps I was wrong),
+      that I think I have a right to expect you to listen to me, for once at
+      least, in a critical position when you must need counsel. Bear in mind,
+      Moïna that you are married to a man of high ability, a man of whom you may
+      well be proud, a man who&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you are going to say, mother!&rdquo; Moïna broke in pettishly. &ldquo;I
+      am to be lectured about Alfred&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moïna,&rdquo; the Marquise said gravely, as she struggled with her tears, &ldquo;you
+      would not guess at once if you did not feel&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; asked Moïna, almost haughtily. &ldquo;Why, really, mother&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont summoned up all her strength. &ldquo;Moïna,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you
+      must attend carefully to this that I ought to tell you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am attending,&rdquo; returned the Countess, folding her arms, and affecting
+      insolent submission. &ldquo;Permit me, mother, to ring for Pauline,&rdquo; she added
+      with incredible self-possession; &ldquo;I will send her away first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She rang the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear child, Pauline cannot possibly hear&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma,&rdquo; interrupted the Countess, with a gravity which must have struck
+      her mother as something unusual, &ldquo;I must&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped short, for the woman was in the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pauline, go <i>yourself</i> to Baudran&rsquo;s, and ask why my hat has not yet
+      been sent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Countess reseated herself and scrutinized her mother. The
+      Marquise, with a swelling heart and dry eyes, in painful agitation, which
+      none but a mother can fully understand, began to open Moïna&rsquo;s eyes to the
+      risk that she was running. But either the Countess felt hurt and indignant
+      at her mother&rsquo;s suspicions of a son of the Marquis de Vandenesse, or she
+      was seized with a sudden fit of inexplicable levity caused by the
+      inexperience of youth. She took advantage of a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma, I thought you were only jealous of <i>the father</i>&mdash;&rdquo; she
+      said, with a forced laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont shut her eyes and bent her head at the words, with a very
+      faint, almost inaudible sigh. She looked up and out into space, as if she
+      felt the common overmastering impulse to appeal to God at the great crises
+      of our lives; then she looked at her daughter, and her eyes were full of
+      awful majesty and the expression of profound sorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My child,&rdquo; she said, and her voice was hardly recognizable, &ldquo;you have
+      been less merciful to your mother than he against whom she sinned; less
+      merciful than perhaps God Himself will be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont rose; at the door she turned; but she saw nothing but
+      surprise in her daughter&rsquo;s face. She went out. Scarcely had she reached
+      the garden when her strength failed her. There was a violent pain at her
+      heart, and she sank down on a bench. As her eyes wandered over the path,
+      she saw fresh marks on the path, a man&rsquo;s footprints were distinctly
+      recognizable. It was too late, then, beyond a doubt. Now she began to
+      understand the reason for that order given to Pauline, and with these
+      torturing thoughts came a revelation more hateful than any that had gone
+      before it. She drew her own inferences&mdash;the son of the Marquis de
+      Vandenesse had destroyed all feeling of respect for her in her daughter&rsquo;s
+      mind. The physical pain grew worse; by degrees she lost consciousness, and
+      sat like one asleep upon the garden-seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess de Saint-Héreen, left to herself, thought that her mother had
+      given her a somewhat shrewd home-thrust, but a kiss and a few attentions
+      that evening would make all right again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A shrill cry came from the garden. She leaned carelessly out, as Pauline,
+      not yet departed on her errand, called out for help, holding the Marquise
+      in her arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not frighten my daughter!&rdquo; those were the last words the mother
+      uttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moïna saw them carry in a pale and lifeless form that struggled for
+      breath, and arms moving restlessly as in protest or effort to speak; and
+      overcome by the sight, Moïna followed in silence, and helped to undress
+      her mother and lay her on her bed. The burden of her fault was greater
+      than she could bear. In that supreme hour she learned to know her mother&mdash;too
+      late, she could make no reparation now. She would have them leave her
+      alone with her mother; and when there was no one else in the room, when
+      she felt that the hand which had always been so tender for her was now
+      grown cold to her touch, she broke out into weeping. Her tears aroused the
+      Marquise; she could still look at her darling Moïna; and at the sound of
+      sobbing, that seemed as if it must rend the delicate, disheveled breast,
+      could smile back at her daughter. That smile taught the unnatural child
+      that forgiveness is always to be found in the great deep of a mother&rsquo;s
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Servants on horseback had been dispatched at once for the physician and
+      surgeon and for Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s grandchildren. Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont the
+      younger and her little sons arrived with the medical men, a sufficiently
+      impressive, silent, and anxious little group, which the servants of the
+      house came to join. The young Marquise, hearing no sound, tapped gently at
+      the door. That signal, doubtless, roused Moïna from her grief, for she
+      flung open the doors and stood before them. No words could have spoken
+      more plainly than that disheveled figure looking out with haggard eyes
+      upon the assembled family. Before that living picture of Remorse the rest
+      were dumb. It was easy to see that the Marquise&rsquo;s feet were stretched out
+      stark and stiff with the agony of death; and Moïna, leaning against the
+      door-frame, looking into their faces, spoke in a hollow voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have lost my mother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      PARIS, 1828-1844.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br> <br>
+    </p>
+    <hr>
+    <p>
+      <br> <br> <a id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      ADDENDUM
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+    </h3>
+<pre>
+     Aiglemont, General, Marquis Victor d&rsquo; 
+       At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+
+     Bonaparte, Napoleon
+       The Vendetta
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       Colonel Chabert
+       Domestic Peace
+       The Seamy Side of History
+
+     Camps, Madame Octave de (nee Cadignan)
+       Madame Firmiani
+       The Government Clerks
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Chatillonest, De
+       Modeste Mignon
+
+     Crottat, Alexandre
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Colonel Chabert
+       A Start in Life
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Desroches (son)
+       A Bachelor&rsquo;s Establishment
+       Colonel Chabert
+       A Start in Life
+       The Commission in Lunacy
+       The Government Clerks
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Scenes from a Courtesan&rsquo;s Life
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       A Man of Business
+       The Middle Classes
+
+     Duroc, Gerard-Christophe-Michel
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+
+     Ronquerolles, Marquis de
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+       The Peasantry
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Thirteen
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Saint-Héreen, Comtesse Moïna de
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Sérizy, Comtesse de
+       A Start in Life
+       The Thirteen
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       Scenes from a Courtesan&rsquo;s Life
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+
+     Vandenesse, Marquis Charles de
+       A Start in Life
+       A Daughter of Eve
+</pre>
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1950 ***</div>
+  </body>
+</html>
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Woman of Thirty, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Woman of Thirty
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Ellen Marriage
+
+Release Date: November, 1999  [Etext #1950]
+Posting Date: March 6, 2010
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WOMAN OF THIRTY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+A WOMAN OF THIRTY
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+
+Translated by Ellen Marriage
+
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+                    To Louis Boulanger, Painter.
+
+
+
+
+
+A WOMAN OF THIRTY
+
+
+
+
+I. EARLY MISTAKES
+
+It was a Sunday morning in the beginning of April 1813, a morning which
+gave promise of one of those bright days when Parisians, for the first
+time in the year, behold dry pavements underfoot and a cloudless sky
+overhead. It was not yet noon when a luxurious cabriolet, drawn by two
+spirited horses, turned out of the Rue de Castiglione into the Rue de
+Rivoli, and drew up behind a row of carriages standing before the newly
+opened barrier half-way down the Terrasse de Feuillants. The owner of
+the carriage looked anxious and out of health; the thin hair on his
+sallow temples, turning gray already, gave a look of premature age to
+his face. He flung the reins to a servant who followed on horseback,
+and alighted to take in his arms a young girl whose dainty beauty had
+already attracted the eyes of loungers on the Terrasse. The little lady,
+standing upon the carriage step, graciously submitted to be taken by the
+waist, putting an arm round the neck of her guide, who set her down upon
+the pavement without so much as ruffling the trimming of her green rep
+dress. No lover would have been so careful. The stranger could only be
+the father of the young girl, who took his arm familiarly without a word
+of thanks, and hurried him into the Garden of the Tuileries.
+
+The old father noted the wondering stare which some of the young men
+gave the couple, and the sad expression left his face for a moment.
+Although he had long since reached the time of life when a man is fain
+to be content with such illusory delights as vanity bestows, he began to
+smile.
+
+"They think you are my wife," he said in the young lady's ear, and he
+held himself erect and walked with slow steps, which filled his daughter
+with despair.
+
+He seemed to take up the coquette's part for her; perhaps of the two, he
+was the more gratified by the curious glances directed at those little
+feet, shod with plum-colored prunella; at the dainty figure outlined by
+a low-cut bodice, filled in with an embroidered chemisette, which only
+partially concealed the girlish throat. Her dress was lifted by her
+movements as she walked, giving glimpses higher than the shoes of
+delicately moulded outlines beneath open-work silk stockings. More than
+one of the idlers turned and passed the pair again, to admire or to
+catch a second glimpse of the young face, about which the brown tresses
+played; there was a glow in its white and red, partly reflected from the
+rose-colored satin lining of her fashionable bonnet, partly due to the
+eagerness and impatience which sparkled in every feature. A mischievous
+sweetness lighted up the beautiful, almond-shaped dark eyes, bathed
+in liquid brightness, shaded by the long lashes and curving arch of
+eyebrow. Life and youth displayed their treasures in the petulant face
+and in the gracious outlines of the bust unspoiled even by the fashion
+of the day, which brought the girdle under the breast.
+
+The young lady herself appeared to be insensible to admiration. Her
+eyes were fixed in a sort of anxiety on the Palace of the Tuileries,
+the goal, doubtless, of her petulant promenade. It wanted but fifteen
+minutes of noon, yet even at that early hour several women in gala dress
+were coming away from the Tuileries, not without backward glances at the
+gates and pouting looks of discontent, as if they regretted the lateness
+of the arrival which had cheated them of a longed-for spectacle. Chance
+carried a few words let fall by one of these disappointed fair ones to
+the ears of the charming stranger, and put her in a more than common
+uneasiness. The elderly man watched the signs of impatience and
+apprehension which flitted across his companion's pretty face with
+interest, rather than amusement, in his eyes, observing her with a close
+and careful attention, which perhaps could only be prompted by some
+after-thought in the depths of a father's mind.
+
+
+
+It was the thirteenth Sunday of the year 1813. In two days' time
+Napoleon was to set out upon the disastrous campaign in which he was
+to lose first Bessieres, and then Duroc; he was to win the memorable
+battles of Lutzen and Bautzen, to see himself treacherously deserted by
+Austria, Saxony, Bavaria, and Bernadotte, and to dispute the dreadful
+field of Leipsic. The magnificent review commanded for that day by the
+Emperor was to be the last of so many which had long drawn forth the
+admiration of Paris and of foreign visitors. For the last time the Old
+Guard would execute their scientific military manoeuvres with the pomp
+and precision which sometimes amazed the Giant himself. Napoleon was
+nearly ready for his duel with Europe. It was a sad sentiment which
+brought a brilliant and curious throng to the Tuileries. Each mind
+seemed to foresee the future, perhaps too in every mind another thought
+was dimly present, how that in the future, when the heroic age of France
+should have taken the half-fabulous color with which it is tinged for
+us to-day, men's imaginations would more than once seek to retrace the
+picture of the pageant which they were assembled to behold.
+
+"Do let us go more quickly, father; I can hear the drums," the young
+girl said, and in a half-teasing, half-coaxing manner she urged her
+companion forward.
+
+"The troops are marching into the Tuileries," said he.
+
+"Or marching out of it--everybody is coming away," she answered in
+childish vexation, which drew a smile from her father.
+
+"The review only begins at half-past twelve," he said; he had fallen
+half behind his impetuous daughter.
+
+It might have been supposed that she meant to hasten their progress by
+a movement of her right arm, for it swung like an oar blade through the
+water. In her impatience she had crushed her handkerchief into a ball in
+her tiny, well-gloved fingers. Now and then the old man smiled, but the
+smiles were succeeded by an anxious look which crossed his withered face
+and saddened it. In his love for the fair young girl by his side, he
+was as fain to exalt the present moment as to dread the future. "She is
+happy to-day; will her happiness last?" he seemed to ask himself, for
+the old are somewhat prone to foresee their own sorrows in the future of
+the young.
+
+Father and daughter reached the peristyle under the tower where the
+tricolor flag was still waving; but as they passed under the arch by
+which people came and went between the Gardens of the Tuileries and the
+Place du Carrousel, the sentries on guard called out sternly:
+
+"No admittance this way."
+
+By standing on tiptoe the young girl contrived to catch a glimpse of
+a crowd of well-dressed women, thronging either side of the old marble
+arcade along which the Emperor was to pass.
+
+"We were too late in starting, father; you can see that quite well." A
+little piteous pout revealed the immense importance which she attached
+to the sight of this particular review.
+
+"Very well, Julie--let us go away. You dislike a crush."
+
+"Do let us stay, father. Even here I may catch a glimpse of the Emperor;
+he might die during this campaign, and then I should never have seen
+him."
+
+Her father shuddered at the selfish speech. There were tears in the
+girl's voice; he looked at her, and thought that he saw tears beneath
+her lowered eyelids; tears caused not so much by the disappointment as
+by one of the troubles of early youth, a secret easily guessed by an old
+father. Suddenly Julie's face flushed, and she uttered an exclamation.
+Neither her father nor the sentinels understood the meaning of the cry;
+but an officer within the barrier, who sprang across the court towards
+the staircase, heard it, and turned abruptly at the sound. He went to
+the arcade by the Gardens of the Tuileries, and recognized the young
+lady who had been hidden for a moment by the tall bearskin caps of the
+grenadiers. He set aside in favor of the pair the order which he himself
+had given. Then, taking no heed of the murmurings of the fashionable
+crowd seated under the arcade, he gently drew the enraptured child
+towards him.
+
+"I am no longer surprised at her vexation and enthusiasm, if _you_ are
+in waiting," the old man said with a half-mocking, half-serious glance
+at the officer.
+
+"If you want a good position, M. le Duc," the young man answered, "we
+must not spend any time in talking. The Emperor does not like to be kept
+waiting, and the Grand Marshal has sent me to announce our readiness."
+
+As he spoke, he had taken Julie's arm with a certain air of old
+acquaintance, and drew her rapidly in the direction of the Place du
+Carrousel. Julie was astonished at the sight. An immense crowd was
+penned up in a narrow space, shut in between the gray walls of the
+palace and the limits marked out by chains round the great sanded
+squares in the midst of the courtyard of the Tuileries. The cordon of
+sentries posted to keep a clear passage for the Emperor and his staff
+had great difficulty in keeping back the eager humming swarm of human
+beings.
+
+"Is it going to be a very fine sight?" Julie asked (she was radiant
+now).
+
+"Pray take care!" cried her guide, and seizing Julie by the waist, he
+lifted her up with as much vigor as rapidity and set her down beside a
+pillar.
+
+But for his prompt action, his gazing kinswoman would have come into
+collision with the hindquarters of a white horse which Napoleon's
+Mameluke held by the bridle; the animal in its trappings of green velvet
+and gold stood almost under the arcade, some ten paces behind the rest
+of the horses in readiness for the Emperor's staff.
+
+The young officer placed the father and daughter in front of the crowd
+in the first space to the right, and recommended them by a sign to the
+two veteran grenadiers on either side. Then he went on his way into
+the palace; a look of great joy and happiness had succeeded to his
+horror-struck expression when the horse backed. Julie had given his hand
+a mysterious pressure; had she meant to thank him for the little service
+he had done her, or did she tell him, "After all, I shall really see
+you?" She bent her head quite graciously in response to the respectful
+bow by which the officer took leave of them before he vanished.
+
+The old man stood a little behind his daughter. He looked grave. He
+seemed to have left the two young people together for some purpose of
+his own, and now he furtively watched the girl, trying to lull her
+into false security by appearing to give his whole attention to the
+magnificent sight in the Place du Carrousel. When Julie's eyes turned
+to her father with the expression of a schoolboy before his master, he
+answered her glance by a gay, kindly smile, but his own keen eyes had
+followed the officer under the arcade, and nothing of all that passed
+was lost upon him.
+
+"What a grand sight!" said Julie in a low voice, as she pressed her
+father's hand; and indeed the pomp and picturesquesness of the spectacle
+in the Place du Carrousel drew the same exclamation from thousands
+upon thousands of spectators, all agape with wonder. Another array of
+sightseers, as tightly packed as the ranks behind the old noble and
+his daughter, filled the narrow strip of pavement by the railings which
+crossed the Place du Carrousel from side to side in a line parallel with
+the Palace of the Tuileries. The dense living mass, variegated by the
+colors of the women's dresses, traced out a bold line across the
+centre of the Place du Carrousel, filling in the fourth side of a vast
+parallelogram, surrounded on three sides by the Palace of the Tuileries
+itself. Within the precincts thus railed off stood the regiments of the
+Old Guard about to be passed in review, drawn up opposite the Palace
+in imposing blue columns, ten ranks in depth. Without and beyond in the
+Place du Carrousel stood several regiments likewise drawn up in parallel
+lines, ready to march in through the arch in the centre; the Triumphal
+Arch, where the bronze horses of St. Mark from Venice used to stand in
+those days. At either end, by the Galeries du Louvre, the regimental
+bands were stationed, masked by the Polish Lancers then on duty.
+
+The greater part of the vast graveled space was empty as an arena, ready
+for the evolutions of those silent masses disposed with the symmetry
+of military art. The sunlight blazed back from ten thousand bayonets in
+thin points of flame; the breeze ruffled the men's helmet plumes till
+they swayed like the crests of forest-trees before a gale. The mute
+glittering ranks of veterans were full of bright contrasting colors,
+thanks to their different uniforms, weapons, accoutrements, and
+aiguillettes; and the whole great picture, that miniature battlefield
+before the combat, was framed by the majestic towering walls of the
+Tuileries, which officers and men seemed to rival in their immobility.
+Involuntarily the spectator made the comparison between the walls of
+men and the walls of stone. The spring sunlight, flooding white masonry
+reared but yesterday and buildings centuries old, shone full likewise
+upon thousands of bronzed faces, each one with its own tale of perils
+passed, each one gravely expectant of perils to come.
+
+The colonels of the regiments came and went alone before the ranks of
+heroes; and behind the masses of troops, checkered with blue and silver
+and gold and purple, the curious could discern the tricolor pennons on
+the lances of some half-a-dozen indefatigable Polish cavalry, rushing
+about like shepherds' dogs in charge of a flock, caracoling up and down
+between the troops and the crowd, to keep the gazers within their proper
+bounds. But for this slight flutter of movement, the whole scene might
+have been taking place in the courtyard of the palace of the Sleeping
+Beauty. The very spring breeze, ruffling up the long fur on the
+grenadiers' bearskins, bore witness to the men's immobility, as the
+smothered murmur of the crowd emphasized their silence. Now and again
+the jingling of Chinese bells, or a chance blow to a big drum, woke
+the reverberating echoes of the Imperial Palace with a sound like the
+far-off rumblings of thunder.
+
+An indescribable, unmistakable enthusiasm was manifest in the expectancy
+of the multitude. France was about to take farewell of Napoleon on the
+eve of a campaign of which the meanest citizen foresaw the perils. The
+existence of the French Empire was at stake--to be, or not to be. The
+whole citizen population seemed to be as much inspired with this thought
+as that other armed population standing in serried and silent ranks in
+the enclosed space, with the Eagles and the genius of Napoleon hovering
+above them.
+
+Those very soldiers were the hope of France, her last drop of blood; and
+this accounted for not a little of the anxious interest of the scene.
+Most of the gazers in the crowd had bidden farewell--perhaps farewell
+for ever--to the men who made up the rank and file of the battalions;
+and even those most hostile to the Emperor, in their hearts, put up
+fervent prayers to heaven for the glory of France; and those most weary
+of the struggle with the rest of Europe had left their hatreds behind as
+they passed in under the Triumphal Arch. They too felt that in the hour
+of danger Napoleon meant France herself.
+
+The clock of the Tuileries struck the half-hour. In a moment the hum of
+the crowd ceased. The silence was so deep that you might have heard a
+child speak. The old noble and his daughter, wholly intent, seeming to
+live only by their eyes, caught a distinct sound of spurs and clank of
+swords echoing up under the sonorous peristyle.
+
+And suddenly there appeared a short, somewhat stout figure in a green
+uniform, white trousers, and riding boots; a man wearing on his head a
+cocked hat well-nigh as magically potent as its wearer; the broad red
+ribbon of the Legion of Honor rose and fell on his breast, and a short
+sword hung at his side. At one and the same moment the man was seen by
+all eyes in all parts of the square.
+
+Immediately the drums beat a salute, both bands struck up a martial
+refrain, caught and repeated like a fugue by every instrument from the
+thinnest flutes to the largest drum. The clangor of that call to arms
+thrilled through every soul. The colors dropped, and the men presented
+arms, one unanimous rhythmical movement shaking every bayonet from
+the foremost front near the Palace to the last rank in the Place du
+Carrousel. The words of command sped from line to line like echoes. The
+whole enthusiastic multitude sent up a shout of "Long live the Emperor!"
+
+Everything shook, quivered, and thrilled at last. Napoleon had mounted
+his horse. It was his movement that had put life into those silent
+masses of men; the dumb instruments had found a voice at his coming,
+the Eagles and the colors had obeyed the same impulse which had brought
+emotion into all faces.
+
+The very walls of the high galleries of the old palace seemed to cry
+aloud, "Long live the Emperor!"
+
+There was something preternatural about it--it was magic at work, a
+counterfeit presentment of the power of God; or rather it was a fugitive
+image of a reign itself so fugitive.
+
+And _he_ the centre of such love, such enthusiasm and devotion, and so
+many prayers, he for whom the sun had driven the clouds from the sky,
+was sitting there on his horse, three paces in front of his Golden
+Squadron, with the grand Marshal on his left, and the Marshal-in-waiting
+on his right. Amid all the outburst of enthusiasm at his presence not a
+feature of his face appeared to alter.
+
+"Oh! yes. At Wagram, in the thick of the firing, on the field of
+Borodino, among the dead, always as cool as a cucumber _he_ is!" said
+the grenadier, in answer to the questions with which the young girl
+plied him. For a moment Julie was absorbed in the contemplation of that
+face, so quiet in the security of conscious power. The Emperor noticed
+Mlle. de Chatillonest, and leaned to make some brief remark to Duroc,
+which drew a smile from the Grand Marshal. Then the review began.
+
+If hitherto the young lady's attention had been divided between
+Napoleon's impassive face and the blue, red, and green ranks of troops,
+from this time forth she was wholly intent upon a young officer moving
+among the lines as they performed their swift symmetrical evolutions.
+She watched him gallop with tireless activity to and from the group
+where the plainly dressed Napoleon shone conspicuous. The officer rode a
+splendid black horse. His handsome sky-blue uniform marked him out amid
+the variegated multitude as one of the Emperor's orderly staff-officers.
+His gold lace glittered in the sunshine which lighted up the aigrette on
+his tall, narrow shako, so that the gazer might have compared him to a
+will-o'-the-wisp, or to a visible spirit emanating from the Emperor to
+infuse movement into those battalions whose swaying bayonets flashed
+into flames; for, at a mere glance from his eyes, they broke and
+gathered again, surging to and fro like the waves in a bay, or again
+swept before him like the long ridges of high-crested wave which the
+vexed Ocean directs against the shore.
+
+When the manoeuvres were over the officer galloped back at full speed,
+pulled up his horse, and awaited orders. He was not ten paces from Julie
+as he stood before the Emperor, much as General Rapp stands in Gerard's
+_Battle of Austerlitz_. The young girl could behold her lover in all his
+soldierly splendor.
+
+Colonel Victor d'Aiglemont, barely thirty years of age, was tall,
+slender, and well made. His well-proportioned figure never showed to
+better advantage than now as he exerted his strength to hold in the
+restive animal, whose back seemed to curve gracefully to the rider's
+weight. His brown masculine face possessed the indefinable charm of
+perfectly regular features combined with youth. The fiery eyes under the
+broad forehead, shaded by thick eyebrows and long lashes, looked like
+white ovals bordered by an outline of black. His nose had the delicate
+curve of an eagle's beak; the sinuous lines of the inevitable black
+moustache enhanced the crimson of the lips. The brown and tawny shades
+which overspread the wide high-colored cheeks told a tale of unusual
+vigor, and his whole face bore the impress of dashing courage. He was
+the very model which French artists seek to-day for the typical hero
+of Imperial France. The horse which he rode was covered with sweat, the
+animal's quivering head denoted the last degree of restiveness; his hind
+hoofs were set down wide apart and exactly in a line, he shook his long
+thick tail to the wind; in his fidelity to his master he seemed to be a
+visible presentment of that master's devotion to the Emperor.
+
+Julie saw her lover watching intently for the Emperor's glances, and
+felt a momentary pang of jealousy, for as yet he had not given her a
+look. Suddenly at a word from his sovereign Victor gripped his horse's
+flanks and set out at a gallop, but the animal took fright at a shadow
+cast by a post, shied, backed, and reared up so suddenly that his rider
+was all but thrown off. Julie cried out, her face grew white, people
+looked at her curiously, but she saw no one, her eyes were fixed upon
+the too mettlesome beast. The officer gave the horse a sharp admonitory
+cut with the whip, and galloped off with Napoleon's order.
+
+Julie was so absorbed, so dizzy with sights and sounds, that
+unconsciously she clung to her father's arm so tightly that he could
+read her thoughts by the varying pressure of her fingers. When Victor
+was all but flung out of the saddle, she clutched her father with a
+convulsive grip as if she herself were in danger of falling, and the
+old man looked at his daughter's tell-tale face with dark and painful
+anxiety. Pity, jealousy, something even of regret stole across every
+drawn and wrinkled line of mouth and brow. When he saw the unwonted
+light in Julie's eyes, when that cry broke from her, when the convulsive
+grasp of her fingers drew away the veil and put him in possession of
+her secret, then with that revelation of her love there came surely some
+swift revelation of the future. Mournful forebodings could be read in
+his own face.
+
+Julie's soul seemed at that moment to have passed into the officer's
+being. A torturing thought more cruel than any previous dread contracted
+the old man's painworn features, as he saw the glance of understanding
+that passed between the soldier and Julie. The girl's eyes were wet, her
+cheeks glowed with unwonted color. Her father turned abruptly and led
+her away into the Garden of the Tuileries.
+
+"Why, father," she cried, "there are still the regiments in the Place du
+Carrousel to be passed in review."
+
+"No, child, all the troops are marching out."
+
+"I think you are mistaken, father; M. d'Aiglemont surely told them to
+advance----"
+
+"But I feel ill, my child, and I do not care to stay."
+
+Julie could readily believe the words when she glanced at his face; he
+looked quite worn out by his fatherly anxieties.
+
+"Are you feeling very ill?" she asked indifferently, her mind was so
+full of other thoughts.
+
+"Every day is a reprieve for me, is it not?" returned her father.
+
+"Now do you mean to make me miserable again by talking about your death?
+I was in such spirits! Do pray get rid of those horrid gloomy ideas of
+yours."
+
+The father heaved a sigh. "Ah! spoiled child," he cried, "the best
+hearts are sometimes very cruel. We devote our whole lives to you, you
+are our one thought, we plan for your welfare, sacrifice our tastes to
+your whims, idolize you, give the very blood in our veins for you, and
+all this is nothing, is it? Alas! yes, you take it all as a matter of
+course. If we would always have your smiles and your disdainful love, we
+should need the power of God in heaven. Then comes another, a lover, a
+husband, and steals away your heart."
+
+Julie looked in amazement at her father; he walked slowly along, and
+there was no light in the eyes which he turned upon her.
+
+"You hide yourself even from us," he continued, "but, perhaps, also you
+hide yourself from yourself--"
+
+"What do you mean by that, father?"
+
+"I think that you have secrets from me, Julie.--You love," he went on
+quickly, as he saw the color rise to her face. "Oh! I hoped that you
+would stay with your old father until he died. I hoped to keep you with
+me, still radiant and happy, to admire you as you were but so lately. So
+long as I knew nothing of your future I could believe in a happy lot for
+you; but now I cannot possibly take away with me a hope of happiness for
+your life, for you love the colonel even more than the cousin. I can no
+longer doubt it."
+
+"And why should I be forbidden to love him?" asked Julie, with lively
+curiosity in her face.
+
+"Ah, my Julie, you would not understand me," sighed the father.
+
+"Tell me, all the same," said Julie, with an involuntary petulant
+gesture.
+
+"Very well, child, listen to me. Girls are apt to imagine noble and
+enchanting and totally imaginary figures in their own minds; they have
+fanciful extravagant ideas about men, and sentiment, and life; and then
+they innocently endow somebody or other with all the perfections of
+their day-dreams, and put their trust in him. They fall in love with
+this imaginary creature in the man of their choice; and then, when it
+is too late to escape from their fate, behold their first idol, the
+illusion made fair with their fancies, turns to an odious skeleton.
+Julie, I would rather have you fall in love with an old man than with
+the Colonel. Ah! if you could but see things from the standpoint of ten
+years hence, you would admit that my old experience was right. I know
+what Victor is, that gaiety of his is simply animal spirits--the gaiety
+of the barracks. He has no ability, and he is a spendthrift. He is one
+of those men whom Heaven created to eat and digest four meals a day, to
+sleep, to fall in love with the first woman that comes to hand, and to
+fight. He does not understand life. His kind heart, for he has a kind
+heart, will perhaps lead him to give his purse to a sufferer or to a
+comrade; _but_ he is careless, he has not the delicacy of heart which
+makes us slaves to a woman's happiness, he is ignorant, he is selfish.
+There are plenty of _buts_--"
+
+"But, father, he must surely be clever, he must have ability, or he
+would not be a colonel--"
+
+"My dear, Victor will be a colonel all his life.--I have seen no one who
+appears to me to be worthy of you," the old father added, with a kind of
+enthusiasm.
+
+He paused an instant, looked at his daughter, and added, "Why, my poor
+Julie, you are still too young, too fragile, too delicate for the cares
+and rubs of married life. D'Aiglemont's relations have spoiled him, just
+as your mother and I have spoiled you. What hope is there that you two
+could agree, with two imperious wills diametrically opposed to
+each other? You will be either the tyrant or the victim, and either
+alternative means, for a wife, an equal sum of misfortune. But you are
+modest and sweet-natured, you would yield from the first. In short," he
+added, in a quivering voice, "there is a grace of feeling in you
+which would never be valued, and then----" he broke off, for the tears
+overcame him.
+
+"Victor will give you pain through all the girlish qualities of your
+young nature," he went on, after a pause. "I know what soldiers are, my
+Julie; I have been in the army. In a man of that kind, love very seldom
+gets the better of old habits, due partly to the miseries amid which
+soldiers live, partly to the risks they run in a life of adventure."
+
+"Then you mean to cross my inclinations, do you, father?" asked Julie,
+half in earnest, half in jest. "Am I to marry to please you and not to
+please myself?"
+
+"To please me!" cried her father, with a start of surprise. "To please
+_me_, child? when you will not hear the voice that upbraids you so
+tenderly very much longer! But I have always heard children impute
+personal motives for the sacrifices that their parents make for
+them. Marry Victor, my Julie! Some day you will bitterly deplore his
+ineptitude, his thriftless ways, his selfishness, his lack of delicacy,
+his inability to understand love, and countless troubles arising through
+him. Then, remember, that here under these trees your old father's
+prophetic voice sounded in your ears in vain."
+
+He said no more; he had detected a rebellious shake of the head on his
+daughter's part. Both made several paces towards the carriage which was
+waiting for them at the grating. During that interval of silence, the
+young girl stole a glance at her father's face, and little by little her
+sullen brow cleared. The intense pain visible on his bowed forehead made
+a lively impression upon her.
+
+"Father," she began in gentle tremulous tones, "I promise to say no more
+about Victor until you have overcome your prejudices against him."
+
+The old man looked at her in amazement. Two tears which filled his eyes
+overflowed down his withered cheeks. He could not take Julie in his arms
+in that crowded place; but he pressed her hand tenderly. A few minutes
+later when they had taken their places in the cabriolet, all the anxious
+thought which had gathered about his brow had completely disappeared.
+Julie's pensive attitude gave him far less concern than the innocent joy
+which had betrayed her secret during the review.
+
+
+
+Nearly a year had passed since the Emperor's last review. In early March
+1814 a caleche was rolling along the highroad from Amboise to Tours.
+As the carriage came out from beneath the green-roofed aisle of walnut
+trees by the post-house of la Frilliere, the horses dashed forward with
+such speed that in a moment they gained the bridge built across the Cise
+at the point of its confluence with the Loire. There, however, they come
+to a sudden stand. One of the traces had given way in consequence of the
+furious pace at which the post-boy, obedient to his orders, had urged on
+four horses, the most vigorous of their breed. Chance, therefore, gave
+the two recently awakened occupants of the carriage an opportunity of
+seeing one of the most lovely landscapes along the enchanting banks of
+the Loire, and that at their full leisure.
+
+At a glance the travelers could see to the right the whole winding
+course of the Cise meandering like a silver snake among the meadows,
+where the grass had taken the deep, bright green of early spring. To the
+left lay the Loire in all its glory. A chill morning breeze, ruffling
+the surface of the stately river, had fretted the broad sheets of water
+far and wide into a network of ripples, which caught the gleams of the
+sun, so that the green islets here and there in its course shone like
+gems set in a gold necklace. On the opposite bank the fair rich meadows
+of Touraine stretched away as far as the eye could see; the low hills
+of the Cher, the only limits to the view, lay on the far horizon, a
+luminous line against the clear blue sky. Tours itself, framed by the
+trees on the islands in a setting of spring leaves, seemed to rise like
+Venice out of the waters, and her old cathedral towers soaring in air
+were blended with the pale fantastic cloud shapes in the sky.
+
+Over the side of the bridge, where the carriage had come to a stand, the
+traveler looks along a line of cliffs stretching as far as Tours.
+Nature in some freakish mood must have raised these barriers of rock,
+undermined incessantly by the rippling Loire at their feet, for a
+perpetual wonder for spectators. The village of Vouvray nestles, as
+it were, among the clefts and crannies of the crags, which begin
+to describe a bend at the junction of the Loire and Cise. A whole
+population of vine-dressers lives, in fact, in appalling insecurity in
+holes in their jagged sides for the whole way between Vouvray and Tours.
+In some places there are three tiers of dwellings hollowed out, one
+above the other, in the rock, each row communicating with the next by
+dizzy staircases cut likewise in the face of the cliff. A little girl
+in a short red petticoat runs out into her garden on the roof of another
+dwelling; you can watch a wreath of hearth-smoke curling up among
+the shoots and trails of the vines. Men are at work in their almost
+perpendicular patches of ground, an old woman sits tranquilly spinning
+under a blossoming almond tree on a crumbling mass of rock, and smiles
+down on the dismay of the travelers far below her feet. The cracks in
+the ground trouble her as little as the precarious state of the old
+wall, a pendant mass of loose stones, only kept in position by the
+crooked stems of its ivy mantle. The sound of coopers' mallets rings
+through the skyey caves; for here, where Nature stints human industry of
+soil, the soil is everywhere tilled, and everywhere fertile.
+
+No view along the whole course of the Loire can compare with the rich
+landscape of Touraine, here outspread beneath the traveler's eyes. The
+triple picture, thus barely sketched in outline, is one of those scenes
+which the imagination engraves for ever upon the memory; let a poet
+fall under its charm, and he shall be haunted by visions which shall
+reproduce its romantic loveliness out of the vague substance of dreams.
+
+As the carriage stopped on the bridge over the Cise, white sails came
+out here and there from among the islands in the Loire to add new grace
+to the perfect view. The subtle scent of the willows by the water's
+edge was mingled with the damp odor of the breeze from the river. The
+monotonous chant of a goat-herd added a plaintive note to the sound
+of birds' songs in a chorus which never ends; the cries of the boatmen
+brought tidings of distant busy life. Here was Touraine in all its
+glory, and the very height of the splendor of spring. Here was the
+one peaceful district in France in those troublous days; for it was
+so unlikely that a foreign army should trouble its quiet that Touraine
+might be said to defy invasion.
+
+As soon as the caleche stopped, a head covered with a foraging cap was
+put out of the window, and soon afterwards an impatient military man
+flung open the carriage door and sprang down into the road to pick a
+quarrel with the postilion, but the skill with which the Tourangeau was
+repairing the trace restored Colonel d'Aiglemont's equanimity. He went
+back to the carriage, stretched himself to relieve his benumbed muscles,
+yawned, looked about him, and finally laid a hand on the arm of a young
+woman warmly wrapped up in a furred pelisse.
+
+"Come, Julie," he said hoarsely, "just wake up and take a look at this
+country. It is magnificent."
+
+Julie put her head out of the window. She wore a traveling cap of sable
+fur. Nothing could be seen of her but her face, for the whole of her
+person was completely concealed by the folds of her fur pelisse.
+The young girl who tripped to the review at the Tuileries with light
+footsteps and joy and gladness in her heart was scarcely recognizable in
+Julie d'Aiglemont. Her face, delicate as ever, had lost the rose-color
+which once gave it so rich a glow. A few straggling locks of black hair,
+straightened out by the damp night air, enhanced its dead whiteness,
+and all its life and sparkle seemed to be torpid. Yet her eyes glittered
+with preternatural brightness in spite of the violet shadows under the
+lashes upon her wan cheeks.
+
+She looked out with indifferent eyes over the fields towards the
+Cher, at the islands in the river, at the line of the crags of Vouvray
+stretching along the Loire towards Tours; then she sank back as soon as
+possible into her seat in the caleche. She did not care to give a glance
+to the enchanting valley of the Cise.
+
+"Yes, it is wonderful," she said, and out in the open air her voice
+sounded weak and faint to the last degree. Evidently she had had her way
+with her father, to her misfortune.
+
+"Would you not like to live here, Julie?"
+
+"Yes; here or anywhere," she answered listlessly.
+
+"Do you feel ill?" asked Colonel d'Aiglemont.
+
+"No, not at all," she answered with momentary energy; and, smiling at
+her husband, she added, "I should like to go to sleep."
+
+Suddenly there came a sound of a horse galloping towards them. Victor
+d'Aiglemont dropped his wife's hand and turned to watch the bend in the
+road. No sooner had he taken his eyes from Julie's pale face than
+all the assumed gaiety died out of it; it was as if a light had been
+extinguished. She felt no wish to look at the landscape, no curiosity to
+see the horseman who was galloping towards them at such a furious pace,
+and, ensconcing herself in her corner, stared out before her at the
+hindquarters of the post-horses, looking as blank as any Breton peasant
+listening to his _recteur's_ sermon.
+
+Suddenly a young man riding a valuable horse came out from behind the
+clump of poplars and flowering briar-rose.
+
+"It is an Englishman," remarked the Colonel.
+
+"Lord bless you, yes, General," said the post-boy; "he belongs to the
+race of fellows who have a mind to gobble up France, they say."
+
+The stranger was one of the foreigners traveling in France at the time
+when Napoleon detained all British subjects within the limits of the
+Empire, by way of reprisals for the violation of the Treaty of Amiens,
+an outrage of international law perpetrated by the Court of St. James.
+These prisoners, compelled to submit to the Emperor's pleasure, were not
+all suffered to remain in the houses where they were arrested, nor yet
+in the places of residence which at first they were permitted to choose.
+Most of the English colony in Touraine had been transplanted thither
+from different places where their presence was supposed to be inimical
+to the interests of the Continental Policy.
+
+The young man, who was taking the tedium of the early morning hours on
+horseback, was one of these victims of bureaucratic tyranny. Two years
+previously, a sudden order from the Foreign Office had dragged him from
+Montpellier, whither he had gone on account of consumptive tendencies.
+He glanced at the Comte d'Aiglemont, saw that he was a military man, and
+deliberately looked away, turning his head somewhat abruptly towards the
+meadows by the Cise.
+
+"The English are all as insolent as if the globe belonged to them,"
+muttered the Colonel. "Luckily, Soult will give them a thrashing
+directly."
+
+The prisoner gave a glance to the caleche as he rode by. Brief though
+that glance was, he had yet time to notice the sad expression which lent
+an indefinable charm to the Countess' pensive face. Many men are deeply
+moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look
+of pain for a sign of constancy or of love. Julie herself was so much
+absorbed in the contemplation of the opposite cushion that she saw
+neither the horse nor the rider. The damaged trace meanwhile had been
+quickly and strongly repaired; the Count stepped into his place again;
+and the post-boy, doing his best to make up for lost time, drove
+the carriage rapidly along the embankment. On they drove under the
+overhanging cliffs, with their picturesque vine-dressers' huts and
+stores of wine maturing in their dark sides, till in the distance uprose
+the spire of the famous Abbey of Marmoutiers, the retreat of St. Martin.
+
+"What can that diaphanous milord want with us?" exclaimed the Colonel,
+turning to assure himself that the horseman who had followed them from
+the bridge was the young Englishman.
+
+After all, the stranger committed no breach of good manners by riding
+along on the footway, and Colonel d'Aiglemont was fain to lie back in
+his corner after sending a scowl in the Englishman's direction. But in
+spite of his hostile instincts, he could not help noticing the beauty of
+the animal and the graceful horsemanship of the rider. The young man's
+face was of that pale, fair-complexioned, insular type, which is almost
+girlish in the softness and delicacy of its color and texture. He was
+tall, thin, and fair-haired, dressed with the extreme and elaborate
+neatness characteristic of a man of fashion in prudish England. Any one
+might have thought that bashfulness rather than pleasure at the sight
+of the Countess had called up that flush into his face. Once only Julie
+raised her eyes and looked at the stranger, and then only because she
+was in a manner compelled to do so, for her husband called upon her to
+admire the action of the thoroughbred. It so happened that their glances
+clashed; and the shy Englishman, instead of riding abreast of the
+carriage, fell behind on this, and followed them at a distance of a few
+paces.
+
+Yet the Countess had scarcely given him a glance; she saw none of the
+various perfections, human and equine, commended to her notice, and
+fell back again in the carriage, with a slight movement of the eyelids
+intended to express her acquiescence in her husband's views. The Colonel
+fell asleep again, and both husband and wife reached Tours without
+another word. Not one of those enchanting views of everchanging
+landscape through which they sped had drawn so much as a glance from
+Julie's eyes.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont looked now and again at her sleeping husband. While she
+looked, a sudden jolt shook something down upon her knees. It was her
+father's portrait, a miniature which she wore suspended about her neck
+by a black cord. At the sight of it, the tears, till then kept back,
+overflowed her eyes, but no one, save perhaps the Englishman, saw them
+glitter there for a brief moment before they dried upon her pale cheeks.
+
+Colonel d'Aiglemont was on his way to the South. Marshal Soult was
+repelling an English invasion of Bearn; and d'Aiglemont, the bearer of
+the Emperor's orders to the Marshal, seized the opportunity of taking
+his wife as far as Tours to leave her with an elderly relative of his
+own, far away from the dangers threatening Paris.
+
+Very shortly the carriage rolled over the paved road of Tours, over the
+bridge, along the Grande-Rue, and stopped at last before the old mansion
+of the _ci-devant_ Marquise de Listomere-Landon.
+
+The Marquise de Listomere-Landon, with her white hair, pale face, and
+shrewd smile, was one of those fine old ladies who still seem to wear
+the paniers of the eighteenth century, and affects caps of an extinct
+mode. They are nearly always caressing in their manners, as if the
+heyday of love still lingered on for these septuagenarian portraits
+of the age of Louis Quinze, with the faint perfume of _poudre a la
+marechale_ always clinging about them. Bigoted rather than pious, and
+less of bigots than they seem, women who can tell a story well and talk
+still better, their laughter comes more readily for an old memory than
+for a new jest--the present intrudes upon them.
+
+When an old waiting-woman announced to the Marquise de Listomere-Landon
+(to give her the title which she was soon to resume) the arrival of a
+nephew whom she had not seen since the outbreak of the war with Spain,
+the old lady took off her spectacles with alacrity, shut the _Galerie
+de l'ancienne Cour_ (her favorite work), and recovered something like
+youthful activity, hastening out upon the flight of steps to greet the
+young couple there.
+
+Aunt and niece exchanged a rapid glance of survey.
+
+"Good-morning, dear aunt," cried the Colonel, giving the old lady a
+hasty embrace. "I am bringing a young lady to put under your wing.
+I have come to put my treasure in your keeping. My Julie is neither
+jealous nor a coquette, she is as good as an angel. I hope that she will
+not be spoiled here," he added, suddenly interrupting himself.
+
+"Scapegrace!" returned the Marquise, with a satirical glance at her
+nephew.
+
+She did not wait for her niece to approach her, but with a certain
+kindly graciousness went forward herself to kiss Julie, who stood there
+thoughtfully, to all appearance more embarrassed than curious concerning
+her new relation.
+
+"So we are to make each other's acquaintance, are we, my love?" the
+Marquise continued. "Do not be too much alarmed of me. I always try not
+to be an old woman with young people."
+
+On the way to the drawing-room, the Marquise ordered breakfast for her
+guests in provincial fashion; but the Count checked his aunt's flow of
+words by saying soberly that he could only remain in the house while the
+horses were changing. On this the three hurried into the drawing-room.
+The Colonel had barely time to tell the story of the political and
+military events which had compelled him to ask his aunt for a shelter
+for his young wife. While he talked on without interruption, the older
+lady looked from her nephew to her niece, and took the sadness in
+Julie's white face for grief at the enforced separation. "Eh! eh!" her
+looks seemed to say, "these young things are in love with each other."
+
+The crack of the postilion's whip sounded outside in the silent old
+grass-grown courtyard. Victor embraced his aunt once more, and rushed
+out.
+
+"Good-bye, dear," he said, kissing his wife, who had followed him down
+to the carriage.
+
+"Oh! Victor, let me come still further with you," she pleaded coaxingly.
+"I do not want to leave you----"
+
+"Can you seriously mean it?"
+
+"Very well," said Julie, "since you wish it." The carriage disappeared.
+
+"So you are very fond of my poor Victor?" said the Marquise,
+interrogating her niece with one of those sagacious glances which
+dowagers give younger women.
+
+"Alas, madame!" said Julie, "must one not love a man well indeed to
+marry him?"
+
+The words were spoken with an artless accent which revealed either a
+pure heart or inscrutable depths. How could a woman, who had been the
+friend of Duclos and the Marechal de Richelieu, refrain from trying to
+read the riddle of this marriage? Aunt and niece were standing on the
+steps, gazing after the fast vanishing caleche. The look in the young
+Countess' eyes did not mean love as the Marquise understood it. The good
+lady was a Provencale, and her passions had been lively.
+
+"So you were captivated by my good-for-nothing of a nephew?" she asked.
+
+Involuntarily Julie shuddered, something in the experienced coquette's
+look and tone seemed to say that Mme. de Listomere-Landon's knowledge
+of her husband's character went perhaps deeper than his wife's. Mme.
+d'Aiglemont, in dismay, took refuge in this transparent dissimulation,
+ready to her hand, the first resource of an artless unhappiness. Mme.
+de Listomere appeared to be satisfied with Julie's answers; but in her
+secret heart she rejoiced to think that here was a love affair on hand
+to enliven her solitude, for that her niece had some amusing flirtation
+on foot she was fully convinced.
+
+In the great drawing-room, hung with tapestry framed in strips of
+gilding, young Mme. d'Aiglemont sat before a blazing fire, behind a
+Chinese screen placed to shut out the cold draughts from the window,
+and her heavy mood scarcely lightened. Among the old eighteenth-century
+furniture, under the old paneled ceiling, it was not very easy to be
+gay. Yet the young Parisienne took a sort of pleasure in this entrance
+upon a life of complete solitude and in the solemn silence of the old
+provincial house. She exchanged a few words with the aunt, a stranger,
+to whom she had written a bride's letter on her marriage, and then sat
+as silent as if she had been listening to an opera. Not until two hours
+had been spent in an atmosphere of quiet befitting la Trappe, did she
+suddenly awaken to a sense of uncourteous behavior, and bethink herself
+of the short answers which she had given her aunt. Mme. de Listomere,
+with the gracious tact characteristic of a bygone age, had respected
+her niece's mood. When Mme. d'Aiglemont became conscious of her
+shortcomings, the dowager sat knitting, though as a matter of fact she
+had several times left the room to superintend preparations in the
+Green Chamber, whither the Countess' luggage had been transported; now,
+however, she had returned to her great armchair, and stole a glance from
+time to time at this young relative. Julie felt ashamed of giving way
+to irresistible broodings, and tried to earn her pardon by laughing at
+herself.
+
+"My dear child, _we_ know the sorrows of widowhood," returned her aunt.
+But only the eyes of forty years could have distinguished the irony
+hovering about the old lady's mouth.
+
+Next morning the Countess improved. She talked. Mme. de Listomere no
+longer despaired of fathoming the new-made wife, whom yesterday she had
+set down as a dull, unsociable creature, and discoursed on the delights
+of the country, of dances, of houses where they could visit. All that
+day the Marquise's questions were so many snares; it was the old habit
+of the old Court, she could not help setting traps to discover her
+niece's character. For several days Julie, plied with temptations,
+steadfastly declined to seek amusement abroad; and much as the old
+lady's pride longed to exhibit her pretty niece, she was fain to
+renounce all hope of taking her into society, for the young Countess was
+still in morning for her father, and found in her loss and her mourning
+dress a pretext for her sadness and desire for seclusion.
+
+By the end of the week the dowager admired Julie's angelic sweetness
+of disposition, her diffident charm, her indulgent temper, and
+thenceforward began to take a prodigious interest in the mysterious
+sadness gnawing at this young heart. The Countess was one of those women
+who seem born to be loved and to bring happiness with them. Mme. de
+Listomere found her niece's society grown so sweet and precious, that
+she doted upon Julie, and could no longer think of parting with her.
+A month sufficed to establish an eternal friendship between the two
+ladies. The dowager noticed, not without surprise, the changes that took
+place in Mme. d'Aiglemont; gradually her bright color died away, and
+her face became dead white. Yet, Julie's spirits rose as the bloom faded
+from her cheeks. Sometimes the dowager's sallies provoked outbursts of
+merriment or peals of laughter, promptly repressed, however, by some
+clamorous thought.
+
+Mme. de Listomere had guessed by this time that it was neither Victor's
+absence nor a father's death which threw a shadow over her niece's life;
+but her mind was so full of dark suspicions, that she found it difficult
+to lay a finger upon the real cause of the mischief. Possibly truth is
+only discoverable by chance. A day came, however, at length when
+Julie flashed out before her aunt's astonished eyes into a complete
+forgetfulness of her marriage; she recovered the wild spirits of
+careless girlhood. Mme. de Listomere then and there made up her mind
+to fathom the depths of this soul, for its exceeding simplicity was as
+inscrutable as dissimulation.
+
+Night was falling. The two ladies were sitting by the window which
+looked out upon the street, and Julie was looking thoughtful again, when
+some one went by on horseback.
+
+"There goes one of your victims," said the Marquise.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont looked up; dismay and surprise blended in her face.
+
+"He is a young Englishman, the Honorable Arthur Ormand, Lord Grenville's
+eldest son. His history is interesting. His physician sent him to
+Montpellier in 1802; it was hoped that in that climate he might recover
+from the lung complaint which was gaining ground. He was detained, like
+all his fellow-countrymen, by Bonaparte when war broke out. That monster
+cannot live without fighting. The young Englishman, by way of amusing
+himself, took to studying his own complaint, which was believed to be
+incurable. By degrees he acquired a liking for anatomy and physic, and
+took quite a craze for that kind of thing, a most extraordinary taste
+in a man of quality, though the Regent certainly amused himself with
+chemistry! In short, Monsieur Arthur made astonishing progress in his
+studies; his health did the same under the faculty of Montpellier; he
+consoled his captivity, and at the same time his cure was thoroughly
+completed. They say that he spent two whole years in a cowshed, living
+on cresses and the milk of a cow brought from Switzerland, breathing as
+seldom as he could, and never speaking a word. Since he come to Tours
+he has lived quite alone; he is as proud as a peacock; but you have
+certainly made a conquest of him, for probably it is not on my account
+that he has ridden under the window twice every day since you have been
+here.--He has certainly fallen in love with you."
+
+That last phrase roused the Countess like magic. Her involuntary start
+and smile took the Marquise by surprise. So far from showing a sign of
+the instinctive satisfaction felt by the most strait-laced of women when
+she learns that she has destroyed the peace of mind of some male
+victim, there was a hard, haggard expression in Julie's face--a look of
+repulsion amounting almost to loathing.
+
+A woman who loves will put the whole world under the ban of Love's
+empire for the sake of the one whom she loves; but such a woman can
+laugh and jest; and Julie at that moment looked as if the memory of some
+recently escaped peril was too sharp and fresh not to bring with it a
+quick sensation of pain. Her aunt, by this time convinced that Julie
+did not love her nephew, was stupefied by the discovery that she loved
+nobody else. She shuddered lest a further discovery should show her
+Julie's heart disenchanted, lest the experience of a day, or perhaps
+of a night, should have revealed to a young wife the full extent of
+Victor's emptiness.
+
+"If she has found him out, there is an end of it," thought the dowager.
+"My nephew will soon be made to feel the inconveniences of wedded life."
+
+The Marquise now proposed to convert Julie to the monarchical doctrines
+of the times of Louis Quinze; but a few hours later she discovered, or,
+more properly speaking, guessed, the not uncommon state of affairs, and
+the real cause of her niece's low spirits.
+
+Julie turned thoughtful on a sudden, and went to her room earlier than
+usual. When her maid left her for the night, she still sat by the fire
+in the yellow velvet depths of a great chair, an old-world piece of
+furniture as well suited for sorrow as for happy people. Tears flowed,
+followed by sighs and meditation. After a while she drew a little table
+to her, sought writing materials, and began to write. The hours went by
+swiftly. Julie's confidences made to the sheet of paper seemed to cost
+her dear; every sentence set her dreaming, and at last she suddenly
+burst into tears. The clocks were striking two. Her head, grown heavy as
+a dying woman's, was bowed over her breast. When she raised it, her
+aunt appeared before her as suddenly as if she had stepped out of the
+background of tapestry upon the walls.
+
+"What can be the matter with you, child?" asked the Marquise. "Why are
+you sitting up so late? And why, in the first place, are you crying
+alone, at your age?"
+
+Without further ceremony she sat down beside her niece, her eyes the
+while devouring the unfinished letter.
+
+"Were you writing to your husband?"
+
+"Do I know where he is?" returned the Countess.
+
+Her aunt thereupon took up the sheet and proceeded to read it. She had
+brought her spectacles; the deed was premeditated. The innocent writer
+of the letter allowed her to take it without the slightest remark. It
+was neither lack of dignity nor consciousness of secret guilt which left
+her thus without energy. Her aunt had come in upon her at a crisis. She
+was helpless; right or wrong, reticence and confidence, like all things
+else, were matters of indifference. Like some young maid who had heaped
+scorn upon her lover, and feels so lonely and sad when evening comes,
+that she longs for him to come back or for a heart to which she can pour
+out her sorrow, Julie allowed her aunt to violate the seal which honor
+places upon an open letter, and sat musing while the Marquise read on:--
+
+  "MY DEAR LOUISA,--Why do you ask so often for the fulfilment of as
+  rash a promise as two young and inexperienced girls could make?
+  You say that you often ask yourself why I have given no answer to
+  your questions for these six months. If my silence told you
+  nothing, perhaps you will understand the reasons for it to-day, as
+  you read the secrets which I am about to betray. I should have
+  buried them for ever in the depths of my heart if you had not
+  announced your own approaching marriage. You are about to be
+  married, Louisa. The thought makes me shiver. Poor little one!
+  marry, yes, in a few months' time one of the keenest pangs of
+  regret will be the recollection of a self which used to be, of the
+  two young girls who sat one evening under one of the tallest
+  oak-trees on the hillside at Ecouen, and looked along the fair
+  valley at our feet in the light of the sunset, which caught us in
+  its glow. We sat on a slab of rock in ecstasy, which sobered down
+  into melancholy of the gentlest. You were the first to discover that
+  the far-off sun spoke to us of the future. How inquisitive and how
+  silly we were! Do you remember all the absurd things we said and
+  did? We embraced each other; 'like lovers,' said we. We solemnly
+  promised that the first bride should faithfully reveal to the
+  other the mysteries of marriage, the joys which our childish minds
+  imagined to be so delicious. That evening will complete your
+  despair, Louisa. In those days you were young and beautiful and
+  careless, if not radiantly happy; a few days of marriage, and you
+  will be, what I am already--ugly, wretched, and old. Need I tell
+  you how proud I was and how vain and glad to be married to Colonel
+  Victor d'Aiglemont? And besides, how could I tell you now? for I
+  cannot remember that old self. A few moments turned my girlhood to
+  a dream. All through the memorable day which consecrated a chain,
+  the extent of which was hidden from me, my behavior was not free
+  from reproach. Once and again my father tried to repress my
+  spirits; the joy which I showed so plainly was thought unbefitting
+  the occasion, my talk scarcely innocent, simply because I was so
+  innocent. I played endless child's tricks with my bridal veil, my
+  wreath, my gown. Left alone that night in the room whither I had
+  been conducted in state, I planned a piece of mischief to tease
+  Victor. While I awaited his coming, my heart beat wildly, as it
+  used to do when I was a child stealing into the drawing-room on
+  the last day of the old year to catch a glimpse of the New Year's
+  gifts piled up there in heaps. When my husband came in and looked
+  for me, my smothered laughter ringing out from beneath the lace in
+  which I had shrouded myself, was the last outburst of the
+  delicious merriment which brightened our games in childhood..."
+
+When the dowager had finished reading the letter, and after such a
+beginning the rest must have been sad indeed, she slowly laid her
+spectacles on the table, put the letter down beside them, and looked
+fixedly at her niece. Age had not dimmed the fire in those green eyes as
+yet.
+
+"My little girl," she said, "a married woman cannot write such a letter
+as this to a young unmarried woman; it is scarcely proper--"
+
+"So I was thinking," Julie broke in upon her aunt. "I felt ashamed of
+myself while you were reading it."
+
+"If a dish at table is not to our taste, there is no occasion to disgust
+others with it, child," the old lady continued benignly, "especially
+when marriage has seemed to us all, from Eve downwards, so excellent an
+institution... You have no mother?"
+
+The Countess trembled, then she raised her face meekly, and said:
+
+"I have missed my mother many times already during the past year; but I
+have myself to blame, I would not listen to my father. He was opposed to
+my marriage; he disapproved of Victor as a son-in-law."
+
+She looked at her aunt. The old face was lighted up with a kindly look,
+and a thrill of joy dried Julie's tears. She held out her young,
+soft hand to the old Marquise, who seemed to ask for it, and the
+understanding between the two women was completed by the close grasp of
+their fingers.
+
+"Poor orphan child!"
+
+The words came like a final flash of enlightenment to Julie. It seemed
+to her that she heard her father's prophetic voice again.
+
+"Your hands are burning! Are they always like this?" asked the Marquise.
+
+"The fever only left me seven or eight days ago."
+
+"You had a fever upon you, and said nothing about it to me!"
+
+"I have had it for a year," said Julie, with a kind of timid anxiety.
+
+"My good little angel, then your married life hitherto has been one long
+time of suffering?"
+
+Julie did not venture to reply, but an affirmative sign revealed the
+whole truth.
+
+"Then you are unhappy?"
+
+"On! no, no, aunt. Victor loves me, he almost idolizes me, and I adore
+him, he is so kind."
+
+"Yes, you love him; but you avoid him, do you not?"
+
+"Yes... sometimes... He seeks me too often."
+
+"And often when you are alone you are troubled with the fear that he may
+suddenly break in on your solitude?"
+
+"Alas! yes, aunt. But, indeed, I love him, I do assure you."
+
+"Do you not, in your own thoughts, blame yourself because you find it
+impossible to share his pleasures? Do you never think at times that
+marriage is a heavier yoke than an illicit passion could be?"
+
+"Oh, that is just it," she wept. "It is all a riddle to me, and can you
+guess it all? My faculties are benumbed, I have no ideas, I can scarcely
+see at all. I am weighed down by vague dread, which freezes me till
+I cannot feel, and keeps me in continual torpor. I have no voice with
+which to pity myself, no words to express my trouble. I suffer, and I am
+ashamed to suffer when Victor is happy at my cost."
+
+"Babyish nonsense, and rubbish, all of it!" exclaimed the aunt, and a
+gay smile, an after-glow of the joys of her own youth, suddenly lighted
+up her withered face.
+
+"And do you too laugh!" the younger woman cried despairingly.
+
+"It was just my own case," the Marquise returned promptly. "And
+now Victor has left you, you have become a girl again, recovering a
+tranquillity without pleasure and without pain, have you not?"
+
+Julie opened wide eyes of bewilderment.
+
+"In fact, my angel, you adore Victor, do you not? But still you would
+rather be a sister to him than a wife, and, in short, your marriage is
+emphatically not a success?"
+
+"Well--no, aunt. But why do you smile?"
+
+"Oh! you are right, poor child! There is nothing very amusing in all
+this. Your future would be big with more than one mishap if I had not
+taken you under my protection, if my old experience of life had not
+guessed the very innocent cause of your troubles. My nephew did
+not deserve his good fortune, the blockhead! In the reign of our
+well-beloved Louis Quinze, a young wife in your position would very
+soon have punished her husband for behaving like a ruffian. The selfish
+creature! The men who serve under this Imperial tyrant are all of them
+ignorant boors. They take brutality for gallantry; they know no more of
+women than they know of love; and imagine that because they go out
+to face death on the morrow, they may dispense to-day with all
+consideration and attentions for us. The time was when a man could love
+and die too at the proper time. My niece, I will form you. I will put an
+end to this unhappy divergence between you, a natural thing enough, but
+it would end in mutual hatred and desire for a divorce, always supposing
+that you did not die on the way to despair."
+
+Julie's amazement equaled her surprise as she listened to her aunt. She
+was surprised by her language, dimly divining rather than appreciating
+the wisdom of the words she heard, and very much dismayed to find what
+this relative, out of great experience, passed judgment upon Victor as
+her father had done, though in somewhat milder terms. Perhaps some quick
+prevision of the future crossed her mind; doubtless, at any rate, she
+felt the heavy weight of the burden which must inevitably overwhelm
+her, for she burst into tears, and sprang to the old lady's arms. "Be my
+mother," she sobbed.
+
+The aunt shed no tears. The Revolution had left old ladies of the
+Monarchy but few tears to shed. Love, in bygone days, and the Terror at
+a later time, had familiarized them with extremes of joy and anguish in
+such a sort that, amid the perils of life, they preserved their dignity
+and coolness, a capacity for sincere but undemonstrative affection
+which never disturbed their well-bred self-possession, and a dignity of
+demeanor which a younger generation has done very ill to discard.
+
+The dowager took Julie in her arms, and kissed her on the forehead with
+a tenderness and pity more often found in women's ways and manner than
+in their hearts. Then she coaxed her niece with kind, soothing words,
+assured her of a happy future, lulled her with promises of love, and
+put her to bed as if she had been not a niece, but a daughter, a
+much-beloved daughter whose hopes and cares she had made her own.
+Perhaps the old Marquise had found her own youth and inexperience and
+beauty again in this nephew's wife. And the Countess fell asleep, happy
+to have found a friend, nay a mother, to whom she could tell everything
+freely.
+
+Next morning, when the two women kissed each other with heartfelt
+kindness, and that look of intelligence which marks a real advance in
+friendship, a closer intimacy between two souls, they heard the sound
+of horsehoofs, and, turning both together, saw the young Englishman ride
+slowly past the window, after his wont. Apparently he had made a certain
+study of the life led by the two lonely women, for he never failed
+to ride by as they sat at breakfast, and again at dinner. His horse
+slackened pace of its own accord, and for the space of time required
+to pass the two windows in the room, its rider turned a melancholy look
+upon the Countess, who seldom deigned to take the slightest notion of
+him. Not so the Marquise. Minds not necessarily little find it difficult
+to resist the little curiosity which fastens upon the most trifling
+event that enlivens provincial life; and the Englishman's mute way of
+expressing his timid, earnest love tickled Mme. de Listomere. For her
+the periodically recurrent glance became a part of the day's routine,
+hailed daily with new jests. As the two women sat down to table, both of
+them looked out at the same moment. This time Julie's eyes met Arthur's
+with such a precision of sympathy that the color rose to her face. The
+stranger immediately urged his horse into a gallop and went.
+
+"What is to be done, madame?" asked Julie. "People see this Englishman
+go past the house, and they will take it for granted that I--"
+
+"Yes," interrupted her aunt.
+
+"Well, then, could I not tell him to discontinue his promenades?"
+
+"Would not that be a way of telling him that he was dangerous? You might
+put that notion into his head. And besides, can you prevent a man from
+coming and going as he pleases? Our meals shall be served in another
+room to-morrow; and when this young gentleman sees us no longer, there
+will be an end of making love to you through the window. There, dear
+child, that is how a woman of the world does."
+
+But the measure of Julie's misfortune was to be filled up. The two women
+had scarcely risen from table when Victor's man arrived in hot haste
+from Bourges with a letter for the Countess from her husband. The
+servant had ridden by unfrequented ways.
+
+Victor sent his wife news of the downfall of the Empire and the
+capitulation of Paris. He himself had gone over to the Bourbons, and all
+France was welcoming them back with transports of enthusiasm. He could
+not go so far as Tours, but he begged her to come at once to join him at
+Orleans, where he hoped to be in readiness with passports for her.
+His servant, an old soldier, would be her escort so far as Orleans; he
+(Victor) believed that the road was still open.
+
+"You have not a moment to lose, madame," said the man. "The Prussians,
+Austrians, and English are about to effect a junction either at Blois or
+at Orleans."
+
+A few hours later, Julie's preparations were made, and she started out
+upon her journey in an old traveling carriage lent by her aunt.
+
+"Why should you not come with us to Paris?" she asked, as she put her
+arms about the Marquise. "Now that the Bourbons have come back you would
+be--"
+
+"Even if there had not been this unhoped-for return, I should still have
+gone to Paris, my poor child, for my advice is only too necessary to
+both you and Victor. So I shall make all my preparations for rejoining
+you there."
+
+Julie set out. She took her maid with her, and the old soldier galloped
+beside the carriage as escort. At nightfall, as they changed horses for
+the last stage before Blois, Julie grew uneasy. All the way from Amboise
+she had heard the sound of wheels behind them, a carriage following hers
+had kept at the same distance. She stood on the step and looked out
+to see who her traveling companions might be, and in the moonlight saw
+Arthur standing three paces away, gazing fixedly at the chaise which
+contained her. Again their eyes met. The Countess hastily flung herself
+back in her seat, but a feeling of dread set her pulses throbbing. It
+seemed to her, as to most innocent and inexperienced young wives, that
+she was herself to blame for this love which she had all unwittingly
+inspired. With this thought came an instinctive terror, perhaps a sense
+of her own helplessness before aggressive audacity. One of a man's
+strongest weapons is the terrible power of compelling a woman to think
+of him when her naturally lively imagination takes alarm or offence at
+the thought that she is followed.
+
+The Countess bethought herself of her aunt's advice, and made up her
+mind that she would not stir from her place during the rest of the
+journey; but every time the horses were changed she heard the Englishman
+pacing round the two carriages, and again upon the road heard the
+importunate sound of the wheels of his caleche. Julie soon began to
+think that, when once reunited to her husband, Victor would know how to
+defend her against this singular persecution.
+
+"Yet suppose that in spite of everything, this young man does not love
+me?" This was the thought that came last of all.
+
+No sooner did she reach Orleans than the Prussians stopped the chaise.
+It was wheeled into an inn-yard and put under a guard of soldiers.
+Resistance was out of the question. The foreign soldiers made the three
+travelers understand by signs that they were obeying orders, and that
+no one could be allowed to leave the carriage. For about two hours the
+Countess sat in tears, a prisoner surrounded by the guard, who smoked,
+laughed, and occasionally stared at her with insolent curiosity. At
+last, however, she saw her captors fall away from the carriage with a
+sort of respect, and heard at the same time the sound of horses entering
+the yard. Another moment, and a little group of foreign officers,
+with an Austrian general at their head, gathered about the door of the
+traveling carriage.
+
+"Madame," said the General, "pray accept our apologies. A mistake has
+been made. You may continue your journey without fear; and here is a
+passport which will spare you all further annoyance of any kind."
+
+Trembling the Countess took the paper, and faltered out some vague words
+of thanks. She saw Arthur, now wearing an English uniform, standing
+beside the General, and could not doubt that this prompt deliverance
+was due to him. The young Englishman himself looked half glad, half
+melancholy; his face was turned away, and he only dared to steal an
+occasional glance at Julie's face.
+
+Thanks to the passport, Mme. d'Aiglemont reached Paris without further
+misadventure, and there she found her husband. Victor d'Aiglemont,
+released from his oath of allegiance to the Emperor, had met with a
+most flattering reception from the Comte d'Artois, recently appointed
+Lieutenant-General of the kingdom by his brother Louis XVIII.
+D'Aiglemont received a commission in the Life Guards, equivalent to
+the rank of general. But amid the rejoicings over the return of the
+Bourbons, fate dealt poor Julie a terrible blow. The death of the
+Marquise de Listomere-Landon was an irreparable loss. The old lady died
+of joy and of an accession of gout to the heart when the Duc d'Angouleme
+came back to Tours, and the one living being entitled by her age to
+enlighten Victor, the woman who, by discreet counsels, might have
+brought about perfect unanimity of husband and wife, was dead; and Julie
+felt the full extent of her loss. Henceforward she must stand alone
+between herself and her husband. But she was young and timid; there
+could be no doubt of the result, or that from the first she would
+elect to bear her lot in silence. The very perfections of her character
+forbade her to venture to swerve from her duties, or to attempt to
+inquire into the cause of her sufferings, for to put an end to them
+would have been to venture on delicate ground, and Julie's girlish
+modesty shrank from the thought.
+
+A word as to M. d'Aiglemont's destinies under the Restoration.
+
+How many men are there whose utter incapacity is a secret kept from
+most of their acquaintance. For such as these high rank, high office,
+illustrious birth, a certain veneer of politeness, and considerable
+reserve of manner, or the _prestige_ of great fortunes, are but so many
+sentinels to turn back critics who would penetrate to the presence
+of the real man. Such men are like kings, in that their real figure,
+character, and life can never be known nor justly appreciated, because
+they are always seen from too near or too far. Factitious merit has a
+way of asking questions and saying little; and understands the art of
+putting others forward to save the necessity of posing before them;
+then, with a happy knack of its own, it draws and attaches others by
+the thread of the ruling passion of self-interest, keeping men of far
+greater abilities to play like puppets, and despising those whom it has
+brought down to its own level. The petty fixed idea naturally prevails;
+it has the advantage of persistence over the plasticity of great
+thoughts.
+
+The observer who should seek to estimate and appraise the negative
+values of these empty heads needs subtlety rather than superior wit for
+the task; patience is a more necessary part of his judicial outfit
+than great mental grasp, cunning and tact rather than any elevation or
+greatness of ideas. Yet skilfully as such usurpers can cover and
+defend their weak points, it is difficult to delude wife and mother
+and children and the house-friend of the family; fortunately for them,
+however, these persons almost always keep a secret which in a manner
+touches the honor of all, and not unfrequently go so far as to help to
+foist the imposture upon the public. And if, thanks to such domestic
+conspiracy, many a noodle passes current for a man of ability, on the
+other hand many another who has real ability is taken for a noodle to
+redress the balance, and the total average of this kind of false coin in
+circulation in the state is a pretty constant quantity.
+
+Bethink yourself now of the part to be played by a clever woman quick to
+think and feel, mated with a husband of this kind, and can you not see
+a vision of lives full of sorrow and self-sacrifice? Nothing upon
+earth can repay such hearts so full of love and tender tact. Put a
+strong-willed woman in this wretched situation, and she will force a
+way out of it for herself by a crime, like Catherine II., whom men
+nevertheless style "the Great." But these women are not all seated upon
+thrones, they are for the most part doomed to domestic unhappiness none
+the less terrible because obscure.
+
+Those who seek consolation in this present world for their woes often
+effect nothing but a change of ills if they remain faithful to their
+duties; or they commit a sin if they break the laws for their pleasure.
+All these reflections are applicable to Julie's domestic life.
+
+Before the fall of Napoleon nobody was jealous of d'Aiglemont. He was
+one colonel among many, an efficient orderly staff-officer, as good a
+man as you could find for a dangerous mission, as unfit as well could
+be for an important command. D'Aiglemont was looked upon as a dashing
+soldier such as the Emperor liked, the kind of man whom his mess usually
+calls "a good fellow." The Restoration gave him back his title of
+Marquis, and did not find him ungrateful; he followed the Bourbons into
+exile at Ghent, a piece of logical loyalty which falsified the horoscope
+drawn for him by his late father-in-law, who predicted that Victor would
+remain a colonel all his life. After the Hundred Days he received the
+appointment of Lieutenant-General, and for the second time became a
+marquis; but it was M. d'Aiglemont's ambition to be a peer of France. He
+adopted, therefore, the maxims and the politics of the _Conservateur_,
+cloaked himself in dissimulation which hid nothing (there being nothing
+to hide), cultivated gravity of countenance and the art of asking
+questions and saying little, and was taken for a man of profound wisdom.
+Nothing drew him from his intrenchments behind the forms of politeness;
+he laid in a provision of formulas, and made lavish use of his stock of
+the catch-words coined at need in Paris to give fools the small change
+for the ore of great ideas and events. Among men of the world he was
+reputed a man of taste and discernment; and as a bigoted upholder of
+aristocratic opinions he was held up for a noble character. If by chance
+he slipped now and again into his old light-heartedness or levity,
+others were ready to discover an undercurrent of diplomatic intention
+beneath his inanity and silliness. "Oh! he only says exactly as much as
+he means to say," thought these excellent people.
+
+So d'Aiglemont's defects and good qualities stood him alike in good
+stead. He did nothing to forfeit a high military reputation gained by
+his dashing courage, for he had never been a commander-in-chief. Great
+thoughts surely were engraven upon that manly aristocratic countenance,
+which imposed upon every one but his own wife. And when everybody else
+believed in the Marquis d'Aiglemont's imaginary talents, the Marquis
+persuaded himself before he had done that he was one of the most
+remarkable men at Court, where, thanks to his purely external
+qualifications, he was in favor and taken at his own valuation.
+
+At home, however, M. d'Aiglemont was modest. Instinctively he felt
+that his wife, young though she was, was his superior; and out of this
+involuntary respect there grew an occult power which the Marquise was
+obliged to wield in spite of all her efforts to shake off the burden.
+She became her husband's adviser, the director of his actions and his
+fortunes. It was an unnatural position; she felt it as something of a
+humiliation, a source of pain to be buried in the depths of her heart.
+From the first her delicately feminine instinct told her that it is a
+far better thing to obey a man of talent than to lead a fool; and that
+a young wife compelled to act and think like a man is neither man nor
+woman, but a being who lays aside all the charms of her womanhood along
+with its misfortunes, yet acquires none of the privileges which our
+laws give to the stronger sex. Beneath the surface her life was a bitter
+mockery. Was she not compelled to protect her protector, to worship a
+hollow idol, a poor creature who flung her the love of a selfish husband
+as the wages of her continual self-sacrifice; who saw nothing in her but
+the woman; and who either did not think it worth while, or (wrong quite
+as deep) did not think at all of troubling himself about her pleasures,
+of inquiring into the cause of her low spirits and dwindling health? And
+the Marquis, like most men who chafe under a wife's superiority,
+saved his self-love by arguing from Julie's physical feebleness a
+corresponding lack of mental power, for which he was pleased to pity
+her; and he would cry out upon fate which had given him a sickly girl
+for a wife. The executioner posed, in fact, as the victim.
+
+All the burdens of this dreary lot fell upon the Marquise, who still
+must smile upon her foolish lord, and deck a house of mourning with
+flowers, and make a parade of happiness in a countenance wan with secret
+torture. And with this sense of responsibility for the honor of
+both, with the magnificent immolation of self, the young Marquise
+unconsciously acquired a wifely dignity, a consciousness of virtue which
+became her safeguard amid many dangers.
+
+Perhaps, if her heart were sounded to the very depths, this intimate
+closely hidden wretchedness, following upon her unthinking, girlish
+first love, had roused in her an abhorrence of passion; possibly she had
+no conception of its rapture, nor of the forbidden but frenzied bliss
+for which some women will renounce all the laws of prudence and the
+principles of conduct upon which society is based. She put from her like
+a dream the thought of bliss and tender harmony of love promised by Mme.
+de Listomere-Landon's mature experience, and waited resignedly for the
+end of her troubles with a hope that she might die young.
+
+Her health had declined daily since her return from Touraine; her
+life seemed to be measured to her in suffering; yet her ill-health was
+graceful, her malady seemed little more than languor, and might well be
+taken by careless eyes for a fine lady's whim of invalidism.
+
+Her doctors had condemned her to keep to the sofa, and there among
+her flowers lay the Marquise, fading as they faded. She was not strong
+enough to walk, nor to bear the open air, and only went out in a closed
+carriage. Yet with all the marvels of modern luxury and invention about
+her, she looked more like an indolent queen than an invalid. A few of
+her friends, half in love perhaps with her sad plight and her fragile
+look, sure of finding her at home, and speculating no doubt upon her
+future restoration to health, would come to bring her the news of the
+day, and kept her informed of the thousand and one small events which
+fill life in Paris with variety. Her melancholy, deep and real though it
+was was still the melancholy of a woman rich in many ways. The Marquise
+d'Aiglemont was like a flower, with a dark insect gnawing at its root.
+
+Occasionally she went into society, not to please herself, but in
+obedience to the exigencies of the position which her husband aspired to
+take. In society her beautiful voice and the perfection of her singing
+could always gain the social success so gratifying to a young woman; but
+what was social success to her, who drew nothing from it for her heart
+or her hopes? Her husband did not care for music. And, moreover, she
+seldom felt at her ease in salons, where her beauty attracted homage not
+wholly disinterested. Her position excited a sort of cruel compassion,
+a morbid curiosity. She was suffering from an inflammatory complaint not
+infrequently fatal, for which our nosology as yet has found no name, a
+complaint spoken of among women in confidential whispers. In spite of
+the silence in which her life was spent, the cause of her ill-health
+was no secret. She was still but a girl in spite of her marriage; the
+slightest glance threw her into confusion. In her endeavor not to blush,
+she was always laughing, always apparently in high spirits; she would
+never admit that she was not perfectly well, and anticipated questions
+as to her health by shame-stricken subterfuges.
+
+In 1817, however, an event took place which did much to alleviate
+Julie's hitherto deplorable existence. A daughter was born to her, and
+she determined to nurse her child herself. For two years motherhood,
+its all-absorbing multiplicity of cares and anxious joys, made life
+less hard for her. She and her husband lived necessarily apart. Her
+physicians predicted improved health, but the Marquise herself put no
+faith in these auguries based on theory. Perhaps, like many a one for
+whom life has lost its sweetness, she looked forward to death as a happy
+termination of the drama.
+
+But with the beginning of the year 1819 life grew harder than ever. Even
+while she congratulated herself upon the negative happiness which she
+had contrived to win, she caught a terrifying glimpse of yawning depths
+below it. She had passed by degrees out of her husband's life. Her fine
+tact and her prudence told her that misfortune must come, and that not
+singly, of this cooling of an affection already lukewarm and wholly
+selfish. Sure though she was of her ascendency over Victor, and certain
+as she felt of his unalterable esteem, she dreaded the influence of
+unbridled passions upon a head so empty, so full of rash self-conceit.
+
+Julie's friends often found her absorbed in prolonged musings; the less
+clairvoyant among them would jestingly ask her what she was thinking
+about, as if a young wife would think of nothing but frivolity, as
+if there were not almost always a depth of seriousness in a mother's
+thoughts. Unhappiness, like great happiness, induces dreaming. Sometimes
+as Julie played with her little Helene, she would gaze darkly at her,
+giving no reply to the childish questions in which a mother delights,
+questioning the present and the future as to the destiny of this little
+one. Then some sudden recollection would bring back the scene of the
+review at the Tuileries and fill her eyes with tears. Her father's
+prophetic warnings rang in her ears, and conscience reproached her that
+she had not recognized its wisdom. Her troubles had all come of her
+own wayward folly, and often she knew not which among so many were the
+hardest to bear. The sweet treasures of her soul were unheeded, and not
+only so, she could never succeed in making her husband understand
+her, even in the commonest everyday things. Just as the power to love
+developed and grew strong and active, a legitimate channel for
+the affections of her nature was denied her, and wedded love was
+extinguished in grave physical and mental sufferings. Add to this that
+she now felt for her husband that pity closely bordering upon contempt,
+which withers all affection at last. Even if she had not learned from
+conversations with some of her friends, from examples in life, from
+sundry occurrences in the great world, that love can bring ineffable
+bliss, her own wounds would have taught her to divine the pure and deep
+happiness which binds two kindred souls each to each.
+
+In the picture which her memory traced of the past, Arthur's frank face
+stood out daily nobler and purer; it was but a flash, for upon that
+recollection she dared not dwell. The young Englishman's shy, silent
+love for her was the one event since her marriage which had left a
+lingering sweetness in her darkened and lonely heart. It may be that all
+the blighted hopes, all the frustrated longings which gradually clouded
+Julie's mind, gathered, by a not unnatural trick of imagination, about
+this man--whose manners, sentiments, and character seemed to have so
+much in common with her own. This idea still presented itself to her
+mind fitfully and vaguely, like a dream; yet from that dream, which
+always ended in a sigh, Julie awoke to greater wretchedness, to keener
+consciousness of the latent anguish brooding beneath her imaginary
+bliss.
+
+Occasionally her self-pity took wilder and more daring flights. She
+determined to have happiness at any cost; but still more often she lay a
+helpless victim of an indescribable numbing stupor, the words she heard
+had no meaning to her, or the thoughts which arose in her mind were so
+vague and indistinct that she could not find language to express them.
+Balked of the wishes of her heart, realities jarred harshly upon her
+girlish dreams of life, but she was obliged to devour her tears. To
+whom could she make complaint? Of whom be understood? She possessed,
+moreover, that highest degree of woman's sensitive pride, the exquisite
+delicacy of feeling which silences useless complainings and declines to
+use an advantage to gain a triumph which can only humiliate both victor
+and vanquished.
+
+Julie tried to endow M. d'Aiglemont with her own abilities and virtues,
+flattering herself that thus she might enjoy the happiness lacking in
+her lot. All her woman's ingenuity and tact was employed in making the
+best of the situation; pure waste of pains unsuspected by him, whom
+she thus strengthened in his despotism. There were moments when misery
+became an intoxication, expelling all ideas, all self-control; but,
+fortunately, sincere piety always brought her back to one supreme hope;
+she found a refuge in the belief in a future life, a wonderful thought
+which enabled her to take up her painful task afresh. No elation of
+victory followed those terrible inward battles and throes of anguish;
+no one knew of those long hours of sadness; her haggard glances met
+no response from human eyes, and during the brief moments snatched by
+chance for weeping, her bitter tears fell unheeded and in solitude.
+
+One evening in January 1820, the Marquise became aware of the full
+gravity of the crisis, gradually brought on by force of circumstances.
+When a husband and wife know each other thoroughly, and their relation
+has long been a matter of use and wont, when the wife has learned to
+interpret every slightest sign, when her quick insight discerns thoughts
+and facts which her husband keeps from her, a chance word, or a remark
+so carelessly let fall in the first instance, seems, upon subsequent
+reflection, like the swift breaking out of light. A wife not seldom
+suddenly awakes upon the brink of a precipice or in the depths of the
+abyss; and thus it was with the Marquise. She was feeling glad to have
+been left to herself for some days, when the real reason of her solitude
+flashed upon her. Her husband, whether fickle and tired of her, or
+generous and full of pity for her, was hers no longer.
+
+In the moment of that discovery she forgot herself, her sacrifices, all
+that she had passed through, she remembered only that she was a mother.
+Looking forward, she thought of her daughter's fortune, of the future
+welfare of the one creature through whom some gleams of happiness came
+to her, of her Helene, the only possession which bound her to life.
+
+Then Julie wished to live to save her child from a stepmother's terrible
+thraldom, which might crush her darling's life. Upon this new vision of
+threatened possibilities followed one of those paroxysms of thought at
+fever-heat which consume whole years of life.
+
+Henceforward husband and wife were doomed to be separated by a whole
+world of thought, and all the weight of that world she must bear alone.
+Hitherto she had felt sure that Victor loved her, in so far as he could
+be said to love; she had been the slave of pleasures which she did
+not share; to-day the satisfaction of knowing that she purchased his
+contentment with her tears was hers no longer. She was alone in the
+world, nothing was left to her now but a choice of evils. In the calm
+stillness of the night her despondency drained her of all her strength.
+She rose from her sofa beside the dying fire, and stood in the lamplight
+gazing, dry-eyed, at her child, when M. d'Aiglemont came in. He was in
+high spirits. Julie called to him to admire Helene as she lay asleep,
+but he met his wife's enthusiasm with a commonplace:
+
+"All children are nice at that age."
+
+He closed the curtains about the cot after a careless kiss on the
+child's forehead. Then he turned his eyes on Julie, took her hand and
+drew her to sit beside him on the sofa, where she had been sitting with
+such dark thoughts surging up in her mind.
+
+"You are looking very handsome to-night, Mme. d'Aiglemont," he
+exclaimed, with the gaiety intolerable to the Marquise, who knew its
+emptiness so well.
+
+"Where have you spent the evening?" she asked, with a pretence of
+complete indifference.
+
+"At Mme. de Serizy's."
+
+He had taken up a fire-screen, and was looking intently at the gauze. He
+had not noticed the traces of tears on his wife's face. Julie shuddered.
+Words could not express the overflowing torrent of thoughts which must
+be forced down into inner depths.
+
+"Mme. de Serizy is giving a concert on Monday, and is dying for you to
+go. You have not been anywhere for some time past, and that is enough
+to set her longing to see you at her house. She is a good-natured
+woman, and very fond of you. I should be glad if you would go; I all but
+promised that you should----"
+
+"I will go."
+
+There was something so penetrating, so significant in the tones of
+Julie's voice, in her accent, in the glance that went with the words,
+that Victor, startled out of his indifference, stared at his wife in
+astonishment.
+
+That was all, Julie had guessed that it was Mme. de Serizy who had
+stolen her husband's heart from her. Her brooding despair benumbed her.
+She appeared to be deeply interested in the fire. Victor meanwhile still
+played with the fire-screen. He looked bored, like a man who has enjoyed
+himself elsewhere, and brought home the consequent lassitude. He yawned
+once or twice, then he took up a candle in one hand, and with the
+other languidly sought his wife's neck for the usual embrace; but Julie
+stooped and received the good-night kiss upon her forehead; the formal,
+loveless grimace seemed hateful to her at that moment.
+
+As soon as the door closed upon Victor, his wife sank into a seat. Her
+limbs tottered beneath her, she burst into tears. None but those who
+have endured the torture of some such scene can fully understand the
+anguish that it means, or divine the horror of the long-drawn tragedy
+arising out of it.
+
+Those simple, foolish words, the silence that followed between the
+husband and wife, the Marquis' gesture and expression, the way in which
+he sat before the fire, his attitude as he made that futile attempt to
+put a kiss on his wife's throat,--all these things made up a dark hour
+for Julie, and the catastrophe of the drama of her sad and lonely life.
+In her madness she knelt down before the sofa, burying her face in it
+to shut out everything from sight, and prayed to Heaven, putting a new
+significance into the words of the evening prayer, till it became a cry
+from the depths of her own soul, which would have gone to her husband's
+heart if he had heard it.
+
+The following week she spent in deep thought for her future, utterly
+overwhelmed by this new trouble. She made a study of it, trying to
+discover a way to regain her ascendency over the Marquis, scheming how
+to live long enough to watch over her daughter's happiness, yet to live
+true to her own heart. Then she made up her mind. She would struggle
+with her rival. She would shine once more in society. She would feign
+the love which she could no longer feel, she would captivate her
+husband's fancy; and when she had lured him into her power, she
+would coquet with him like a capricious mistress who takes delight in
+tormenting a lover. This hateful strategy was the only possible way out
+of her troubles. In this way she would become mistress of the situation;
+she would prescribe her own sufferings at her good pleasure, and reduce
+them by enslaving her husband, and bringing him under a tyrannous yoke.
+She felt not the slightest remorse for the hard life which he should
+lead. At a bound she reached cold, calculating indifference--for her
+daughter's sake. She had gained a sudden insight into the treacherous,
+lying arts of degraded women; the wiles of coquetry, the revolting
+cunning which arouses such profound hatred in men at the mere suspicion
+of innate corruption in a woman.
+
+Julie's feminine vanity, her interests, and a vague desire to inflict
+punishment, all wrought unconsciously with the mother's love within
+her to force her into a path where new sufferings awaited her. But her
+nature was too noble, her mind too fastidious, and, above all things,
+too open, to be the accomplice of these frauds for very long. Accustomed
+as she was to self-scrutiny, at the first step in vice--for vice it
+was--the cry of conscience must inevitably drown the clamor of the
+passions and of selfishness. Indeed, in a young wife whose heart is
+still pure, whose love has never been mated, the very sentiment of
+motherhood is overpowered by modesty. Modesty; is not all womanhood
+summed up in that? But just now Julie would not see any danger, anything
+wrong, in her life.
+
+She went to Mme. de Serizy's concert. Her rival had expected to see a
+pallid, drooping woman. The Marquise wore rouge, and appeared in all the
+splendor of a toilet which enhanced her beauty.
+
+Mme. de Serizy was one of those women who claim to exercise a sort of
+sway over fashions and society in Paris; she issued her decrees, saw
+them received in her own circle, and it seemed to her that all the world
+obeyed them. She aspired to epigram, she set up for an authority in
+matters of taste. Literature, politics, men and women, all alike were
+submitted to her censorship, and the lady herself appeared to defy the
+censorship of others. Her house was in every respect a model of good
+taste.
+
+Julie triumphed over the Countess in her own salon, filled as it was
+with beautiful women and women of fashion. Julie's liveliness and
+sparkling wit gathered all the most distinguished men in the rooms about
+her. Her costume was faultless, for the despair of the women, who one
+and all envied her the fashion of her dress, and attributed the moulded
+outline of her bodice to the genius of some unknown dressmaker, for
+women would rather believe in miracles worked by the science of chiffons
+than in the grace and perfection of the form beneath.
+
+When Julie went to the piano to sing Desdemona's song, the men in the
+rooms flocked about her to hear the celebrated voice so long mute, and
+there was a deep silence. The Marquise saw the heads clustered thickly
+in the doorways, saw all eyes turned upon her, and a sharp thrill of
+excitement quivered through her. She looked for her husband, gave him
+a coquettish side-glance, and it pleased her to see that his vanity was
+gratified to no small degree. In the joy of triumph she sang the first
+part of _Al piu salice_. Her audience was enraptured. Never had Malibran
+nor Pasta sung with expression and intonation so perfect. But at the
+beginning of the second part she glanced over the glistening groups
+and saw--Arthur. He never took his eyes from her face. A quick shudder
+thrilled through her, and her voice faltered. Up hurried Mme. de Serizy
+from her place.
+
+"What is it, dear? Oh! poor little thing! she is in such weak health; I
+was so afraid when I saw her begin a piece so far beyond her strength."
+
+The song was interrupted. Julie was vexed. She had not courage to sing
+any longer, and submitted to her rival's treacherous sympathy. There was
+a whisper among the women. The incident led to discussions; they guessed
+that the struggle had begun between the Marquise and Mme. de Serizy, and
+their tongues did not spare the latter.
+
+Julie's strange, perturbing presentiments were suddenly realized.
+Through her preoccupation with Arthur she had loved to imagine that with
+that gentle, refined face he must remain faithful to his first love.
+There were times when she felt proud that this ideal, pure, and
+passionate young love should have been hers; the passion of the young
+lover whose thoughts are all for her to whom he dedicates every moment
+of his life, who blushes as a woman blushes, thinks as a woman might
+think, forgetting ambition, fame, and fortune in devotion to his
+love,--she need never fear a rival. All these things she had fondly and
+idly dreamed of Arthur; now all at once it seemed to her that her dream
+had come true. In the young Englishman's half-feminine face she read
+the same deep thoughts, the same pensive melancholy, the same passive
+acquiescence in a painful lot, and an endurance like her own. She saw
+herself in him. Trouble and sadness are the most eloquent of love's
+interpreters, and response is marvelously swift between two suffering
+creatures, for in them the powers of intuition and of assimilation of
+facts and ideas are well-nigh unerring and perfect. So with the violence
+of the shock the Marquise's eyes were opened to the whole extent of
+the future danger. She was only too glad to find a pretext for her
+nervousness in her chronic ill-health, and willingly submitted to be
+overwhelmed by Mme. de Serizy's insidious compassion.
+
+That incident of the song caused talk and discussion which differed with
+the various groups. Some pitied Julie's fate, and regretted that such a
+remarkable woman was lost to society; others fell to wondering what the
+cause of her ill-health and seclusion could be.
+
+"Well, now, my dear Ronquerolles," said the Marquis, addressing Mme. de
+Serizy's brother, "you used to envy me my good fortune, and you used to
+blame me for my infidelities. Pshaw, you would not find much to envy in
+my lot, if, like me, you had a pretty wife so fragile that for the past
+two years you might not so much as kiss her hand for fear of damaging
+her. Do not you encumber yourself with one of those fragile ornaments,
+only fit to put in a glass case, so brittle and so costly that you are
+always obliged to be careful of them. They tell me that you are afraid
+of snow or wet for that fine horse of yours; how often do you ride him?
+That is just my own case. It is true that my wife gives me no ground for
+jealousy, but my marriage is purely ornamental business; if you think
+that I am a married man, you are grossly mistaken. So there is some
+excuse for my unfaithfulness. I should dearly like to know what you
+gentlemen who laugh at me would do in my place. Not many men would be so
+considerate as I am. I am sure," (here he lowered his voice) "that Mme.
+d'Aiglemont suspects nothing. And then, of course, I have no right to
+complain at all; I am very well off. Only there is nothing more trying
+for a man who feels things than the sight of suffering in a poor
+creature to whom you are attached----"
+
+"You must have a very sensitive nature, then," said M. de Ronquerolles,
+"for you are not often at home."
+
+Laughter followed on the friendly epigram; but Arthur, who made one of
+the group, maintained a frigid imperturbability in his quality of an
+English gentleman who takes gravity for the very basis of his being.
+D'Aiglemont's eccentric confidence, no doubt, had kindled some kind of
+hope in Arthur, for he stood patiently awaiting an opportunity of a word
+with the Marquis. He had not to wait long.
+
+"My Lord Marquis," he said, "I am unspeakably pained to see the state of
+Mme. d'Aiglemont's health. I do not think that you would talk jestingly
+about it if you knew that unless she adopts a certain course of
+treatment she must die miserably. If I use this language to you, it is
+because I am in a manner justified in using it, for I am quite certain
+that I can save Mme. d'Aiglemont's life and restore her to health
+and happiness. It is odd, no doubt, that a man of my rank should be
+a physician, yet nevertheless chance determined that I should study
+medicine. I find life dull enough here," he continued, affecting a cold
+selfishness to gain his ends, "it makes no difference to me whether I
+spend my time and travel for the benefit of a suffering fellow-creature,
+or waste it in Paris on some nonsense or other. It is very, very seldom
+that a cure is completed in these complaints, for they require constant
+care, time, and patience, and, above all things, money. Travel is
+needed, and a punctilious following out of prescriptions, by no means
+unpleasant, and varied daily. Two _gentlemen_" (laying a stress on
+the word in its English sense) "can understand each other. I give you
+warning that if you accept my proposal, you shall be a judge of my
+conduct at every moment. I will do nothing without consulting you,
+without your superintendence, and I will answer for the success of my
+method if you will consent to follow it. Yes, unless you wish to be Mme.
+d'Aiglemont's husband no longer, and that before long," he added in the
+Marquis' ear.
+
+The Marquis laughed. "One thing is certain--that only an Englishman
+could make me such an extraordinary proposal," he said. "Permit me to
+leave it unaccepted and unrejected. I will think it over; and my wife
+must be consulted first in any case."
+
+Julie had returned to the piano. This time she sang a song from
+_Semiramide, Son regina, son guerriera_, and the whole room applauded, a
+stifled outburst of wellbred acclamation which proved that the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain had been roused to enthusiasm by her singing.
+
+The evening was over. D'Aiglemont brought his wife home, and Julie
+saw with uneasy satisfaction that her first attempt had at once been
+successful. Her husband had been roused out of indifference by the part
+which she had played, and now he meant to honor her with such a passing
+fancy as he might bestow upon some opera nymph. It amused Julie that
+she, a virtuous married woman, should be treated thus. She tried to play
+with her power, but at the outset her kindness broke down once more, and
+she received the most terrible of all the lessons held in store for her
+by fate.
+
+Between two and three o'clock in the morning Julie sat up, sombre and
+moody, beside her sleeping husband, in the room dimly lighted by the
+flickering lamp. Deep silence prevailed. Her agony of remorse had lasted
+near an hour; how bitter her tears had been none perhaps can realize
+save women who have known such an experience as hers. Only such natures
+as Julie's can feel her loathing for a calculated caress, the horror
+of a loveless kiss, of the heart's apostasy followed by dolorous
+prostitution. She despised herself; she cursed marriage. She could have
+longed for death; perhaps if it had not been for a cry from her child,
+she would have sprung from the window and dashed herself upon the
+pavement. M. d'Aiglemont slept on peacefully at her side; his wife's hot
+dropping tears did not waken him.
+
+But next morning Julie could be gay. She made a great effort to look
+happy, to hide, not her melancholy, as heretofore, but an insuperable
+loathing. From that day she no longer regarded herself as a blameless
+wife. Had she not been false to herself? Why should she not play a
+double part in the future, and display astounding depths of cunning in
+deceiving her husband? In her there lay a hitherto undiscovered latent
+depravity, lacking only opportunity, and her marriage was the cause.
+
+Even now she had asked herself why she should struggle with love, when,
+with her heart and her whole nature in revolt, she gave herself to the
+husband whom she loved no longer. Perhaps, who knows? some piece of
+fallacious reasoning, some bit of special pleading, lies at the root of
+all sins, of all crimes. How shall society exist unless every
+individual of which it is composed will make the necessary sacrifices
+of inclination demanded by its laws? If you accept the benefits of
+civilized society, do you not by implication engage to observe the
+conditions, the conditions of its very existence? And yet, starving
+wretches, compelled to respect the laws of property, are not less to be
+pitied than women whose natural instincts and sensitiveness are turned
+to so many avenues of pain.
+
+A few days after that scene of which the secret lay buried in the
+midnight couch, d'Aiglemont introduced Lord Grenville. Julie gave the
+guest a stiffly polite reception, which did credit to her powers of
+dissimulation. Resolutely she silenced her heart, veiled her eyes,
+steadied her voice, and she kept her future in her own hands. Then, when
+by these devices, this innate woman-craft, as it may be called, she
+had discovered the full extent of the love which she inspired, Mme.
+d'Aiglemont welcomed the hope of a speedy cure, and no longer opposed
+her husband, who pressed her to accept the young doctor's offer. Yet she
+declined to trust herself with Lord Grenville until after some further
+study of his words and manner, she could feel certain that he had
+sufficient generosity to endure his pain in silence. She had absolute
+power over him, and she had begun to abuse that power already. Was she
+not a woman?
+
+Montcontour is an old manor-house build upon the sandy cliffs above the
+Loire, not far from the bridge where Julie's journey was interrupted in
+1814. It is a picturesque, white chateau, with turrets covered with
+fine stone carving like Mechlin lace; a chateau such as you often see
+in Touraine, spick and span, ivy clad, standing among its groves
+of mulberry trees and vineyards, with its hollow walks, its stone
+balustrades, and cellars mined in the rock escarpments mirrored in the
+Loire. The roofs of Montcontour gleam in the sun; the whole land glows
+in the burning heat. Traces of the romantic charm of Spain and the south
+hover about the enchanting spot. The breeze brings the scent of bell
+flowers and golden broom, the air is soft, all about you lies a sunny
+land, a land which casts its dreamy spell over your soul, a land of
+languor and of soft desire, a fair, sweet-scented country, where pain is
+lulled to sleep and passion wakes. No heart is cold for long beneath its
+clear sky, beside its sparkling waters. One ambition dies after another,
+and you sink into serene content and repose, as the sun sinks at the end
+of the day swathed about with purple and azure.
+
+
+
+One warm August evening in 1821 two people were climbing the paths cut
+in the crags above the chateau, doubtless for the sake of the view from
+the heights above. The two were Julie and Lord Grenville, but this Julie
+seemed to be a new creature. The unmistakable color of health glowed in
+her face. Overflowing vitality had brought a light into her eyes, which
+sparkled through a moist film with that liquid brightness which gives
+such irresistible charm to the eyes of children. She was radiant with
+smiles; she felt the joy of living and all the possibilities of life.
+From the very way in which she lifted her little feet, it was easy to
+see that no suffering trammeled her lightest movements; there was no
+heaviness nor languor in her eyes, her voice, as heretofore. Under the
+white silk sunshade which screened her from the hot sunlight, she looked
+like some young bride beneath her veil, or a maiden waiting to yield to
+the magical enchantments of Love.
+
+Arthur led her with a lover's care, helping her up the pathway as if she
+had been a child, finding the smoothest ways, avoiding the stones for
+her, bidding her see glimpses of distance, or some flower beside the
+path, always with the unfailing goodness, the same delicate design in
+all that he did; the intuitive sense of this woman's wellbeing seemed to
+be innate in him, and as much, nay, perhaps more, a part of his being as
+the pulse of his own life.
+
+The patient and her doctor went step for step. There was nothing strange
+for them in a sympathy which seemed to have existed since the day when
+they first walked together. One will swayed them both; they stopped as
+their senses received the same impression; every word and every glance
+told of the same thought in either mind. They had climbed up through the
+vineyards, and now they turned to sit on one of the long white stones,
+quarried out of the caves in the hillside; but Julie stood awhile gazing
+out over the landscape.
+
+"What a beautiful country!" she cried. "Let us put up a tent and live
+here. Victor, Victor, do come up here!"
+
+M. d'Aiglemont answered by a halloo from below. He did not, however,
+hurry himself, merely giving his wife a glance from time to time when
+the windings of the path gave him a glimpse of her. Julie breathed
+the air with delight. She looked up at Arthur, giving him one of those
+subtle glances in which a clever woman can put the whole of her thought.
+
+"Ah, I should like to live here always," she said. "Would it be possible
+to tire of this beautiful valley?--What is the picturesque river called,
+do you know?"
+
+"That is the Cise."
+
+"The Cise," she repeated. "And all this country below, before us?"
+
+"Those are the low hills above the Cher."
+
+"And away to the right? Ah, that is Tours. Only see how fine the
+cathedral towers look in the distance."
+
+She was silent, and let fall the hand which she had stretched out
+towards the view upon Arthur's. Both admired the wide landscape made up
+of so much blended beauty. Neither of them spoke. The murmuring voice of
+the river, the pure air, and the cloudless heaven were all in tune with
+their thronging thoughts and their youth and the love in their hearts.
+
+"Oh! _mon Dieu_, how I love this country!" Julie continued, with growing
+and ingenuous enthusiasm. "You lived here for a long while, did you
+not?" she added after a pause.
+
+A thrill ran through Lord Grenville at her words.
+
+"It was down there," he said, in a melancholy voice, indicating as he
+spoke a cluster of walnut trees by the roadside, "that I, a prisoner,
+saw you for the first time."
+
+"Yes, but even at that time I felt very sad. This country looked wild to
+me then, but now----" She broke off, and Lord Grenville did not dare to
+look at her.
+
+"All this pleasure I owe to you," Julie began at last, after a long
+silence. "Only the living can feel the joy of life, and until now have
+I not been dead to it all? You have given me more than health, you have
+made me feel all its worth--"
+
+Women have an inimitable talent for giving utterance to strong feelings
+in colorless words; a woman's eloquence lies in tone and gesture, manner
+and glance. Lord Grenville hid his face in his hands, for his tears
+filled his eyes. This was Julie's first word of thanks since they left
+Paris a year ago.
+
+For a whole year he had watched over the Marquise, putting his whole
+self into the task. D'Aiglemont seconding him, he had taken her first to
+Aix, then to la Rochelle, to be near the sea. From moment to moment he
+had watched the changes worked in Julie's shattered constitution by
+his wise and simple prescriptions. He had cultivated her health as
+an enthusiastic gardener might cultivate a rare flower. Yet, to all
+appearance, the Marquise had quietly accepted Arthur's skill and care
+with the egoism of a spoiled Parisienne, or like a courtesan who has
+no idea of the cost of things, nor of the worth of a man, and judges of
+both by their comparative usefulness to her.
+
+The influence of places upon us is a fact worth remarking. If melancholy
+comes over us by the margin of a great water, another indelible law
+of our nature so orders it that the mountains exercise a purifying
+influence upon our feelings, and among the hills passion gains in depth
+by all that it apparently loses in vivacity. Perhaps it was the light of
+the wide country by the Loire, the height of the fair sloping hillside
+on which the lovers sat, that induced the calm bliss of the moment
+when the whole extent of the passion that lies beneath a few
+insignificant-sounding words is divined for the first time with a
+delicious sense of happiness.
+
+Julie had scarcely spoken the words which had moved Lord Grenville so
+deeply, when a caressing breeze ruffled the treetops and filled the air
+with coolness from the river; a few clouds crossed the sky, and the soft
+cloud-shadows brought out all the beauty of the fair land below.
+
+Julie turned away her head, lest Arthur should see the tears which she
+succeeded in repressing; his emotion had spread at once to her. She
+dried her eyes, but she dared not raise them lest he should read the
+excess of joy in a glance. Her woman's instinct told her that during
+this hour of danger she must hide her love in the depths of her heart.
+Yet silence might prove equally dangerous, and Julie saw that Lord
+Grenville was unable to utter a word. She went on, therefore, in a
+gentle voice:
+
+"You are touched by what I have said. Perhaps such a quick outburst
+of feeling is the way in which a gracious and kind nature like yours
+reverses a mistaken judgment. You must have thought me ungrateful when
+I was cold and reserved, or cynical and hard, all through the journey
+which, fortunately, is very near its end. I should not have been worthy
+of your care if I had been unable to appreciate it. I have forgotten
+nothing. Alas! I shall forget nothing, not the anxious way in which you
+watched over me as a mother watches over her child, nor, and above
+all else, the noble confidence of our life as brother and sister, the
+delicacy of your conduct--winning charms, against which we women are
+defenceless. My lord, it is out of my power to make you a return----"
+
+At these words Julie hastily moved further away, and Lord Grenville made
+no attempt to detain her. She went to a rock not far away, and there
+sat motionless. What either felt remained a secret known to each alone;
+doubtless they wept in silence. The singing of the birds about them,
+so blithe, so overflowing with tenderness at sunset time, could only
+increase the storm of passion which had driven them apart. Nature took
+up their story for them, and found a language for the love of which they
+did not dare to speak.
+
+"And now, my lord," said Julie, and she came and stood before Arthur
+with a great dignity, which allowed her to take his hand in hers. "I am
+going to ask you to hallow and purify the life which you have given back
+to me. Here, we will part. I know," she added, as she saw how white his
+face grew, "I know that I am repaying you for your devotion by requiring
+of you a sacrifice even greater than any which you have hitherto
+made for me, sacrifices so great that they should receive some better
+recompense than this.... But it must be... You must not stay in France.
+By laying this command upon you, do I not give you rights which shall be
+held sacred?" she added, holding his hand against her beating heart.
+
+"Yes," said Arthur, and he rose.
+
+He looked in the direction of d'Aiglemont, who appeared on the opposite
+side of one of the hollow walks with the child in his arms. He had
+scrambled up on the balustrade by the chateau that little Helene might
+jump down.
+
+"Julie, I will not say a word of my love; we understand each other too
+well. Deeply and carefully though I have hidden the pleasures of my
+heart, you have shared them all, I feel it, I know it, I see it. And
+now, at this moment, as I receive this delicious proof of the constant
+sympathy of our hearts, I must go.... Cunning schemes for getting rid of
+him have crossed my mind too often; the temptation might be irresistible
+if I stayed with you."
+
+"I had the same thought," she said, a look of pained surprise in her
+troubled face.
+
+Yet in her tone and involuntary shudder there was such virtue, such
+certainty of herself, won in many a hard-fought battle with a love that
+spoke in Julie's tones and involuntary gestures, that Lord Grenville
+stood thrilled with admiration of her. The mere shadow of a crime had
+been dispelled from that clear conscience. The religious sentiment
+enthroned on the fair forehead could not but drive away the evil
+thoughts that arise unbidden, engendered by our imperfect nature,
+thoughts which make us aware of the grandeur and the perils of human
+destiny.
+
+"And then," she said, "I should have drawn down your scorn upon me,
+and--I should have been saved," she added, and her eyes fell. "To be
+lowered in your eyes, what is that but death?"
+
+For a moment the two heroic lovers were silent, choking down their
+sorrow. Good or ill, it seemed that their thoughts were loyally one,
+and the joys in the depths of their heart were no more experiences apart
+than the pain which they strove most anxiously to hide.
+
+"I have no right to complain," she said after a while, "my misery is of
+my own making," and she raised her tear-filled eyes to the sky.
+
+"Perhaps you don't remember it, but that is the place where we met each
+other for the first time," shouted the General from below, and he waved
+his hand towards the distance. "There, down yonder, near those poplars!"
+
+The Englishman nodded abruptly by way of answer.
+
+"So I was bound to die young and to know no happiness," Julie continued.
+"Yes, do not think that I live. Sorrow is just as fatal as the dreadful
+disease which you have cured. I do not think that I am to blame. No. My
+love is stronger than I am, and eternal; but all unconsciously it grew
+in me; and I will not be guilty through my love. Nevertheless, though I
+shall be faithful to my conscience as a wife, to my duties as a mother,
+I will be no less faithful to the instincts of my heart. Hear me," she
+cried in an unsteady voice, "henceforth I belong to _him_ no longer."
+
+By a gesture, dreadful to see in its undisguised loathing she indicated
+her husband.
+
+"The social code demands that I shall make his existence happy," she
+continued. "I will obey, I will be his servant, my devotion to him
+shall be boundless; but from to-day I am a widow. I will neither be a
+prostitute in my own eyes nor in those of the world. If I do not belong
+to M. d'Aiglemont, I will never belong to another. You shall have
+nothing, nothing save this which you have wrung from me. This is the
+doom which I have passed upon myself," she said, looking proudly at him.
+"And now, know this--if you give way to a single criminal thought, M.
+d'Aiglemont's widow will enter a convent in Spain or Italy. By an evil
+chance we have spoken of our love; perhaps that confession was bound to
+come; but our hearts must never vibrate again like this. To-morrow you
+will receive a letter from England, and we shall part, and never see
+each other again."
+
+The effort had exhausted all Julie's strength. She felt her knees
+trembling, and a feeling of deathly cold came over her. Obeying a
+woman's instinct, she sat down, lest she should sink into Arthur's arms.
+
+"_Julie!_" cried Lord Grenville.
+
+The sharp cry rang through the air like a crack of thunder. Till then he
+could not speak; now, all the words which the dumb lover could not utter
+gathered themselves in that heartrending appeal.
+
+"Well, what is wrong with her?" asked the General, who had hurried up at
+that cry, and now suddenly confronted the two.
+
+"Nothing serious," said Julie, with that wonderful self-possession which
+a woman's quick-wittedness usually brings to her aid when it is most
+called for. "The chill, damp air under the walnut tree made me feel
+quite faint just now, and that must have alarmed this doctor of mine.
+Does he not look on me as a very nearly finished work of art? He
+was startled, I suppose, by the idea of seeing it destroyed." With
+ostentatious coolness she took Lord Grenville's arm, smiled at her
+husband, took a last look at the landscape, and went down the pathway,
+drawing her traveling companion with her.
+
+"This certainly is the grandest view that we have seen," she said; "I
+shall never forget it. Just look, Victor, what distance, what an expanse
+of country, and what variety in it! I have fallen in love with this
+landscape."
+
+Her laughter was almost hysterical, but to her husband it sounded
+natural. She sprang gaily down into the hollow pathway and vanished.
+
+"What?" she cried, when they had left M. d'Aiglemont far behind.
+"So soon? Is it so soon? Another moment, and we can neither of us be
+ourselves; we shall never be ourselves again, our life is over, in
+short--"
+
+"Let us go slowly," said Lord Grenville, "the carriages are still some
+way off, and if we may put words into our glances, our hearts may live a
+little longer."
+
+They went along the footpath by the river in the late evening light,
+almost in silence; such vague words as they uttered, low as the murmur
+of the Loire, stirred their souls to the depths. Just as the sun sank,
+a last red gleam from the sky fell over them; it was like a mournful
+symbol of their ill-starred love.
+
+The General, much put out because the carriage was not at the spot where
+they had left it, followed and outstripped the pair without interrupting
+their converse. Lord Grenville's high minded and delicate behavior
+throughout the journey had completely dispelled the Marquis' suspicions.
+For some time past he had left his wife in freedom, reposing confidence
+in the noble amateur's Punic faith. Arthur and Julie walked on together
+in the close and painful communion of two hearts laid waste.
+
+So short a while ago as they climbed the cliffs at Montcontour, there
+had been a vague hope in either mind, an uneasy joy for which they dared
+not account to themselves; but now as they came along the pathway by the
+river, they pulled down the frail structure of imaginings, the child's
+cardcastle, on which neither of them had dared to breathe. That hope was
+over.
+
+That very evening Lord Grenville left them. His last look at Julie made
+it miserably plain that since the moment when sympathy revealed the full
+extent of a tyrannous passion, he did well to mistrust himself.
+
+The next morning, M. d'Aiglemont and his wife took their places in the
+carriage without their traveling companion, and were whirled swiftly
+along the road to Blois. The Marquise was constantly put in mind of the
+journey made in 1814, when as yet she know nothing of love, and had
+been almost ready to curse it for its persistency. Countless forgotten
+impressions were revived. The heart has its own memory. A woman who
+cannot recollect the most important great events will recollect through
+a lifetime things which appealed to her feelings; and Julie d'Aiglemont
+found all the most trifling details of that journey laid up in her mind.
+It was pleasant to her to recall its little incidents as they occurred
+to her one by one; there were points in the road when she could even
+remember the thoughts that passed through her mind when she saw them
+first.
+
+Victor had fallen violently in love with his wife since she had
+recovered the freshness of her youth and all her beauty, and now he
+pressed close to her side like a lover. Once he tried to put his arm
+round her, but she gently disengaged herself, finding some excuse or
+other for evading the harmless caress. In a little while she shrank from
+the close contact with Victor, the sensation of warmth communicated by
+their position. She tried to take the unoccupied place opposite, but
+Victor gallantly resigned the back seat to her. For this attention she
+thanked him with a sigh, whereupon he forgot himself, and the Don Juan
+of the garrison construed his wife's melancholy to his own advantage,
+so that at the end of the day she was compelled to speak with a firmness
+which impressed him.
+
+"You have all but killed me, dear, once already, as you know," said
+she. "If I were still an inexperienced girl, I might begin to sacrifice
+myself afresh; but I am a mother, I have a daughter to bring up, and I
+owe as much to her as to you. Let us resign ourselves to a misfortune
+which affects us both alike. You are the less to be pitied. Have you
+not, as it is, found consolations which duty and the honor of both,
+and (stronger still) which Nature forbids to me? Stay," she added, "you
+carelessly left three letters from Mme. de Serizy in a drawer; here they
+are. My silence about this matter should make it plain to you that in me
+you have a wife who has plenty of indulgence and does not exact from you
+the sacrifices prescribed by the law. But I have thought enough to see
+that the roles of husband and wife are quite different, and that the
+wife alone is predestined to misfortune. My virtue is based upon firmly
+fixed and definite principles. I shall live blamelessly, but let me
+live."
+
+The Marquis was taken aback by a logic which women grasp with the clear
+insight of love, and overawed by a certain dignity natural to them at
+such crises. Julie's instinctive repugnance for all that jarred upon her
+love and the instincts of her heart is one of the fairest qualities of
+woman, and springs perhaps from a natural virtue which neither laws nor
+civilization can silence. And who shall dare to blame women? If a woman
+can silence the exclusive sentiment which bids her "forsake all other"
+for the man whom she loves, what is she but a priest who has lost his
+faith? If a rigid mind here and there condemns Julie for a sort of
+compromise between love and wifely duty, impassioned souls will lay it
+to her charge as a crime. To be thus blamed by both sides shows one of
+two things very clearly--that misery necessarily follows in the train of
+broken laws, or else that there are deplorable flaws in the institutions
+upon which society in Europe is based.
+
+
+
+Two years went by. M. and Mme. d'Aiglemont went their separate ways,
+leading their life in the world, meeting each other more frequently
+abroad than at home, a refinement upon divorce, in which many a marriage
+in the great world is apt to end.
+
+One evening, strange to say, found husband and wife in their own
+drawing-room. Mme. d'Aiglemont had been dining at home with a friend,
+and the General, who almost invariably dined in town, had not gone out
+for once.
+
+"There is a pleasant time in store for you, _Madame la Marquise_," said
+M. d'Aiglemont, setting his coffee cup down upon the table. He looked
+at the guest, Mme. de Wimphen, and half-pettishly, half-mischievously
+added, "I am starting off for several days' sport with the Master of
+the Hounds. For a whole week, at any rate, you will be a widow in good
+earnest; just what you wish for, I suppose.--Guillaume," he said to the
+servant who entered, "tell them to put the horses in."
+
+Mme. de Wimphen was the friend to whom Julie had begun the letter upon
+her marriage. The glances exchanged by the two women said plainly that
+in her Julie had found an intimate friend, an indulgent and invaluable
+confidante. Mme. de Wimphen's marriage had been a very happy one.
+Perhaps it was her own happiness which secured her devotion to Julie's
+unhappy life, for under such circumstances, dissimilarity of destiny is
+nearly always a strong bond of union.
+
+"Is the hunting season not over yet?" asked Julie, with an indifferent
+glance at her husband.
+
+"The Master of the Hounds comes when and where he pleases, madame. We
+are going boar-hunting in the Royal Forest."
+
+"Take care that no accident happens to you."
+
+"Accidents are usually unforeseen," he said, smiling.
+
+"The carriage is ready, my Lord Marquis," said the servant.
+
+"Madame, if I should fall a victim to the boar--" he continued, with a
+suppliant air.
+
+"What does this mean?" inquired Mme. de Wimphen.
+
+"Come, come," said Mme. d'Aiglemont, turning to her husband; smiling at
+her friend as if to say, "You will soon see."
+
+Julie held up her head; but as her husband came close to her, she
+swerved at the last, so that his kiss fell not on her throat, but on the
+broad frill about it.
+
+"You will be my witness before heaven now that I need a firman to obtain
+this little grace of her," said the Marquis, addressing Mme. de Wimphen.
+"This is how this wife of mine understands love. She has brought me to
+this pass, by what trickery I am at a loss to know.... A pleasant time
+to you!" and he went.
+
+"But your poor husband is really very good-natured," cried Louisa de
+Wimphen, when the two women were alone together. "He loves you."
+
+"Oh! not another syllable after that last word. The name I bear makes me
+shudder----"
+
+"Yes, but Victor obeys you implicitly," said Louisa.
+
+"His obedience is founded in part upon the great esteem which I have
+inspired in him. As far as outward things go, I am a model wife. I make
+his house pleasant to him; I shut my eyes to his intrigues; I touch not
+a penny of his fortune. He is free to squander the interest exactly as
+he pleases; I only stipulate that he shall not touch the principal. At
+this price I have peace. He neither explains nor attempts to explain my
+life. But though my husband is guided by me, that does not say that I
+have nothing to fear from his character. I am a bear leader who daily
+trembles lest the muzzle should give way at last. If Victor once took
+it into his head that I had forfeited my right to his esteem, what would
+happen next I dare not think; for he is violent, full of personal pride,
+and vain above all things. While his wits are not keen enough to enable
+him to behave discreetly at a delicate crisis when his lowest passions
+are involved, his character is weak, and he would very likely kill me
+provisionally even if he died of remorse next day. But there is no fear
+of that fatal good fortune."
+
+A brief pause followed. Both women were thinking of the real cause of
+this state of affairs. Julie gave Louisa a glance which revealed her
+thoughts.
+
+"I have been cruelly obeyed," she cried. "Yet I never forbade him to
+write to me. Oh! _he_ has forgotten me, and he is right. If his life had
+been spoiled, it would have been too tragical; one life is enough, is it
+not? Would you believe it, dear; I read English newspapers simply to
+see his name in print. But he has not yet taken his seat in the House of
+Lords."
+
+"So you know English."
+
+"Did I not tell you?--Yes, I learned."
+
+"Poor little one!" cried Louisa, grasping Julie's hand in hers. "How can
+you still live?"
+
+"That is the secret," said the Marquise, with an involuntary gesture
+almost childlike in its simplicity. "Listen, I take laudanum. That
+duchess in London suggested the idea; you know the story, Maturin made
+use of it in one of his novels. My drops are very weak, but I sleep; I
+am only awake for seven hours in the day, and those hours I spend with
+my child."
+
+Louisa gazed into the fire. The full extent of her friend's misery was
+opening out before her for the first time, and she dared not look into
+her face.
+
+"Keep my secret, Louisa," said Julie, after a moment's silence.
+
+Just as she spoke the footman brought in a letter for the Marquise.
+
+"Ah!" she cried, and her face grew white.
+
+"I need not ask from whom it comes," said Mme. de Wimphen, but the
+Marquise was reading the letter, and heeded nothing else.
+
+Mme. de Wimphen, watching her friend, saw strong feeling wrought to the
+highest pitch, ecstasy of the most dangerous kind painted on Julie's
+face in swift changing white and red. At length Julie flung the sheet
+into the fire.
+
+"It burns like fire," she said. "Oh! my heart beats till I cannot
+breathe."
+
+She rose to her feet and walked up and down. Her eyes were blazing.
+
+"He did not leave Paris!" she cried.
+
+Mme. de Wimphen did not dare to interrupt the words that followed,
+jerked-out sentences, measured by dreadful pauses in between. After
+every break the deep notes of her voice sank lower and lower. There was
+something awful about the last words.
+
+"He has seen me, constantly, and I have not known it.--A look, taken by
+stealth, every day, helps him to live.--Louisa, you do not know!--He
+is dying.--He wants to say good-bye to me. He knows that my husband has
+gone away for several days. He will be here in a moment. Oh! I shall
+die: I am lost.--Listen, Louisa, stay with me!--_I am afraid!_"
+
+"But my husband knows that I have been dining with you; he is sure to
+come for me," said Mme. de Wimphen.
+
+"Well, then, before you go I will send _him_ away. I will play the
+executioner for us both. Oh me! he will think that I do not love him any
+more--And that letter of his! Dear, I can see those words in letters of
+fire."
+
+A carriage rolled in under the archway.
+
+"Ah!" cried the Marquise, with something like joy in her voice, "he is
+coming openly. He makes no mystery of it."
+
+"Lord Grenville," announced the servant.
+
+The Marquise stood up rigid and motionless; but at the sight of Arthur's
+white face, so thin and haggard, how was it possible to keep up the
+show of severity? Lord Grenville saw that Julie was not alone, but he
+controlled his fierce annoyance, and looked cool and unperturbed. Yet
+for the two women who knew his secret, his face, his tones, the look
+in his eyes had something of the power attributed to the torpedo. Their
+faculties were benumbed by the sharp shock of contact with his horrible
+pain. The sound of his voice set Julie's heart beating so cruelly that
+she could not trust herself to speak; she was afraid that he would see
+the full extent of his power over her. Lord Grenville did not dare to
+look at Julie, and Mme. de Wimphen was left to sustain a conversation
+to which no one listened. Julie glanced at her friend with touching
+gratefulness in her eyes to thank her for coming to her aid.
+
+By this time the lovers had quelled emotion into silence, and could
+preserve the limits laid down by duty and convention. But M. de Wimphen
+was announced, and as he came in the two friends exchanged glances. Both
+felt the difficulties of this fresh complication. It was impossible to
+enter into explanations with M. de Wimphen, and Louisa could not think
+of any sufficient pretext for asking to be left.
+
+Julie went to her, ostensibly to wrap her up in her shawl. "I will be
+brave," she said, in a low voice. "He came here in the face of all the
+world, so what have I to fear? Yet but for you, in that first moment,
+when I saw how changed he looked, I should have fallen at his feet."
+
+"Well, Arthur, you have broken your promise to me," she said, in a
+faltering voice, when she returned. Lord Grenville did not venture to
+take the seat upon the sofa by her side.
+
+"I could not resist the pleasure of hearing your voice, of being near
+you. The thought of it came to be a sort of madness, a delirious frenzy.
+I am no longer master of myself. I have taken myself to task; it is
+no use, I am too weak, I ought to die. But to die without seeing you,
+without having heard the rustle of your dress, or felt your tears. What
+a death!"
+
+He moved further away from her; but in his hasty uprising a pistol fell
+out of his pocket. The Marquise looked down blankly at the weapon; all
+passion, all expression had died out of her eyes. Lord Grenville stooped
+for the thing, raging inwardly over an accident which seemed like a
+piece of lovesick strategy.
+
+"_Arthur!_"
+
+"Madame," he said, looking down, "I came here in utter desperation; I
+meant----" he broke off.
+
+"You meant to die by your own hand here in my house!"
+
+"Not alone!" he said in a low voice.
+
+"Not alone! My husband, perhaps----?"
+
+"No, no," he cried in a choking voice. "Reassure yourself," he
+continued, "I have quite given up my deadly purpose. As soon as I came
+in, as soon as I saw you, I felt that I was strong enough to suffer in
+silence, and to die alone."
+
+Julie sprang up, and flung herself into his arms. Through her sobbing
+he caught a few passionate words, "To know happiness, and then to
+die.--Yes, let it be so."
+
+All Julie's story was summed up in that cry from the depths; it was
+the summons of nature and of love at which women without a religion
+surrender. With the fierce energy of unhoped-for joy, Arthur caught her
+up and carried her to the sofa; but in a moment she tore herself from
+her lover's arms, looked at him with a fixed despairing gaze, took his
+hand, snatched up a candle, and drew him into her room. When they stood
+by the cot where Helene lay sleeping, she put the curtains softly aside,
+shading the candle with her hand, lest the light should dazzle the
+half-closed eyes beneath the transparent lids. Helene lay smiling in her
+sleep, with her arms outstretched on the coverlet. Julie glanced from
+her child to Arthur's face. That look told him all.
+
+"We may leave a husband, even though he loves us: a man is strong; he
+has consolations.--We may defy the world and its laws. But a motherless
+child!"--all these thoughts, and a thousand others more moving still,
+found language in that glance.
+
+"We can take her with us," muttered he; "I will love her dearly."
+
+"Mamma!" cried little Helene, now awake. Julie burst into tears. Lord
+Grenville sat down and folded his arms in gloomy silence.
+
+"Mamma!" At the sweet childish name, so many nobler feelings, so many
+irresistible yearnings awoke, that for a moment love was effaced by the
+all-powerful instinct of motherhood; the mother triumphed over the woman
+in Julie, and Lord Grenville could not hold out, he was defeated by
+Julie's tears.
+
+Just at that moment a door was flung noisily open. "Madame d'Aiglemont,
+are you hereabouts?" called a voice which rang like a crack of thunder
+through the hearts of the two lovers. The Marquis had come home.
+
+Before Julie could recover her presence of mind, her husband was on the
+way to the door of her room which opened into his. Luckily, at a sign,
+Lord Grenville escaped into the dressing-closet, and she hastily shut
+the door upon him.
+
+"Well, my lady, here am I," said Victor, "the hunting party did not come
+off. I am just going to bed."
+
+"Good-night, so am I. So go and leave me to undress."
+
+"You are very cross to-night, Madame la Marquise."
+
+The General returned to his room, Julie went with him to the door and
+shut it. Then she sprang to the dressing-close to release Arthur. All
+her presence of mind returned; she bethought herself that it was quite
+natural that her sometime doctor should pay her a visit; she might have
+left him in the drawing-room while she put her little girl to bed. She
+was about to tell him, under her breath, to go back to the drawing-room,
+and had opened the door. Then she shrieked aloud. Lord Grenville's
+fingers had been caught and crushed in the door.
+
+"Well, what is it?" demanded her husband.
+
+"Oh! nothing, I have just pricked my finger with a pin."
+
+The General's door opened at once. Julie imagined that the irruption was
+due to a sudden concern for her, and cursed a solicitude in which love
+had no part. She had barely time to close the dressing-closet, and Lord
+Grenville had not extricated his hand. The General did, in fact, appear,
+but his wife had mistaken his motives; his apprehensions were entirely
+on his own account.
+
+"Can you lend me a bandana handkerchief? The stupid fool Charles leaves
+me without a single one. In the early days you used to bother me with
+looking after me so carefully. Ah, well, the honeymoon did not last very
+long for me, nor yet for my cravats. Nowadays I am given over to the
+secular arm, in the shape of servants who do not care one jack straw for
+what I say."
+
+"There! There is a bandana for you. Did you go into the drawing-room?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh! you might perhaps have been in time to see Lord Grenville."
+
+"Is he in Paris?"
+
+"It seems so."
+
+"Oh! I will go at once. The good doctor."
+
+"But he will have gone by now!" exclaimed Julie.
+
+The Marquis, standing in the middle of the room, was tying the
+handkerchief over his head. He looked complacently at himself in the
+glass.
+
+"What has become of the servants is more than I know," he remarked. "I
+have rung the bell for Charles, and he has not answered it. And your
+maid is not here either. Ring for her. I should like another blanket on
+my bed to-night."
+
+"Pauline is out," the Marquise said drily.
+
+"What, at midnight!" exclaimed the General.
+
+"I gave her leave to go to the Opera."
+
+"That is funny!" returned her husband, continuing to undress. "I thought
+I saw her coming upstairs."
+
+"She has come in then, of course," said Julie, with assumed impatience,
+and to allay any possible suspicion on her husband's part she pretended
+to ring the bell.
+
+
+
+The whole history of that night has never been known, but no doubt it
+was as simple and as tragically commonplace as the domestic incidents
+that preceded it.
+
+Next day the Marquise d'Aiglemont took to her bed, nor did she leave it
+for some days.
+
+"What can have happened in your family so extraordinary that every one
+is talking about your wife?" asked M. de Ronquerolles of M. d'Aiglemont
+a short time after that night of catastrophes.
+
+"Take my advice and remain a bachelor," said d'Aiglemont. "The curtains
+of Helene's cot caught fire, and gave my wife such a shock that it will
+be a twelvemonth before she gets over it; so the doctor says. You marry
+a pretty wife, and her looks fall off; you marry a girl in blooming
+health, and she turns into an invalid. You think she has a passionate
+temperament, and find her cold, or else under her apparent coldness
+there lurks a nature so passionate that she is the death of you, or
+she dishonors your name. Sometimes the meekest of them will turn out
+crotchety, though the crotchety ones never grow any sweeter. Sometimes
+the mere child, so simple and silly at first, will develop an iron will
+to thwart you and the ingenuity of a fiend. I am tired of marriage."
+
+"Or of your wife?"
+
+"That would be difficult. By-the-by, do you feel inclined to go to
+Saint-Thomas d'Aquin with me to attend Lord Grenville's funeral?"
+
+"A singular way of spending time.--Is it really known how he came by his
+death?" added Ronquerolles.
+
+"His man says that he spent a whole night sitting on somebody's window
+sill to save some woman's character, and it has been infernally cold
+lately."
+
+"Such devotion would be highly creditable to one of us old stagers; but
+Lord Grenville was a youngster and--an Englishman. Englishmen never can
+do anything like anybody else."
+
+"Pooh!" returned d'Aiglemont, "these heroic exploits all depend upon the
+woman in the case, and it certainly was not for one that I know, that
+poor Arthur came by his death."
+
+
+
+
+II. A HIDDEN GRIEF
+
+Between the Seine and the little river Loing lies a wide flat country,
+skirted on the one side by the Forest of Fontainebleau, and marked out
+as to its southern limits by the towns of Moret, Montereau, and Nemours.
+It is a dreary country; little knolls of hills appear only at rare
+intervals, and a coppice here and there among the fields affords
+for game; and beyond, upon every side, stretches the endless gray or
+yellowish horizon peculiar to Beauce, Sologne, and Berri.
+
+In the very centre of the plain, at equal distances from Moret and
+Montereau, the traveler passes the old chateau of Saint-Lange, standing
+amid surroundings which lack neither dignity nor stateliness. There are
+magnificent avenues of elm-trees, great gardens encircled by the moat,
+and a circumference of walls about a huge manorial pile which represents
+the profits of the _maltote_, the gains of farmers-general, legalized
+malversation, or the vast fortunes of great houses now brought low
+beneath the hammer of the Civil Code.
+
+Should any artist or dreamer of dreams chance to stray along the roads
+full of deep ruts, or over the heavy land which secures the place
+against intrusion, he will wonder how it happened that this romantic
+old place was set down in a savanna of corn-land, a desert of chalk,
+and sand, and marl, where gaiety dies away, and melancholy is a natural
+product of the soil. The voiceless solitude, the monotonous horizon line
+which weigh upon the spirits are negative beauties, which only suit with
+sorrow that refuses to be comforted.
+
+Hither, at the close of the year 1820, came a woman, still young, well
+known in Paris for her charm, her fair face, and her wit; and to the
+immense astonishment of the little village a mile away, this woman of
+high rank and corresponding fortune took up her abode at Saint-Lange.
+
+From time immemorial, farmers and laborers had seen no gentry at the
+chateau. The estate, considerable though it was, had been left in charge
+of a land-steward and the house to the old servants. Wherefore the
+appearance of the lady of the manor caused a kind of sensation in the
+district.
+
+A group had gathered in the yard of the wretched little wineshop at the
+end of the village (where the road forks to Nemours and Moret) to see
+the carriage pass. It went by slowly, for the Marquise had come
+from Paris with her own horses, and those on the lookout had ample
+opportunity of observing a waiting-maid, who sat with her back to the
+horses holding a little girl, with a somewhat dreamy look, upon her
+knee. The child's mother lay back in the carriage; she looked like
+a dying woman sent out into the country air by her doctors as a last
+resource. Village politicians were by no means pleased to see the
+young, delicate, downcast face; they had hoped that the new arrival at
+Saint-Lange would bring some life and stir into the neighborhood,
+and clearly any sort of stir or movement must be distasteful to the
+suffering invalid in the traveling carriage.
+
+That evening, when the notables of Saint-Lange were drinking in the
+private room of the wineshop, the longest head among them declared that
+such depression could admit of but one construction--the Marquise
+was ruined. His lordship the Marquis was away in Spain with the Duc
+d'Angouleme (so they said in the papers), and beyond a doubt her
+ladyship had come to Saint-Lange to retrench after a run of ill-luck on
+the Bourse. The Marquis was one of the greatest gamblers on the face of
+the globe. Perhaps the estate would be cut up and sold in little lots.
+There would be some good strokes of business to be made in that case,
+and it behooved everybody to count up his cash, unearth his savings
+and to see how he stood, so as to secure his share of the spoil of
+Saint-Lange.
+
+So fair did this future seem, that the village worthies, dying to know
+whether it was founded on fact, began to think of ways of getting at the
+truth through the servants at the chateau. None of these, however, could
+throw any light on the calamity which had brought their mistress into
+the country at the beginning of winter, and to the old chateau of
+Saint-Lange of all places, when she might have taken her choice of
+cheerful country-houses famous for their beautiful gardens.
+
+His worship the mayor called to pay his respects; but he did not see the
+lady. Then the land-steward tried with no better success.
+
+Madame la Marquise kept her room, only leaving it, while it was set
+in order, for the small adjoining drawing-room, where she dined; if,
+indeed, to sit down to a table, to look with disgust at the dishes, and
+take the precise amount of nourishment required to prevent death from
+sheer starvation, can be called dining. The meal over, she returned
+at once to the old-fashioned low chair, in which she had sat since the
+morning, in the embrasure of the one window that lighted her room.
+
+Her little girl she only saw for a few minutes daily, during the dismal
+dinner, and even for a short time she seemed scarcely able to bear the
+child's presence. Surely nothing but the most unheard-of anguish could
+have extinguished a mother's love so early.
+
+None of the servants were suffered to come near, her own woman was
+the one creature whom she liked to have about her; the chateau must be
+perfectly quiet, the child must play at the other end of the house. The
+slightest sound had grown so intolerable, that any human voice, even the
+voice of her own child, jarred upon her.
+
+At first the whole countryside was deeply interested in these
+eccentricities; but time passed on, every possible hypothesis had been
+advanced to account for them and the peasants and dwellers in the little
+country towns thought no more of the invalid lady.
+
+So the Marquise was left to herself. She might live on, perfectly
+silent, amid the silence which she herself had created; there was
+nothing to draw her forth from the tapestried chamber where her
+grandmother died, whither she herself had come that she might die,
+gently, without witnesses, without importunate solicitude, without
+suffering from the insincere demonstrations of egoism masquerading as
+affection, which double the agony of death in great cities.
+
+She was twenty-six years old. At that age, with plenty of romantic
+illusions still left, the mind loves to dwell on the thought of death
+when death seems to come as a friend. But with youth, death is coy,
+coming up close only to go away, showing himself and hiding again, till
+youth has time to fall out of love with him during this dalliance. There
+is that uncertainty too that hangs over death's to-morrow. Youth plunges
+back into the world of living men, there to find the pain more pitiless
+than death, that does not wait to strike.
+
+This woman who refused to live was to know the bitterness of these
+reprieves in the depths of her loneliness; in moral agony, which death
+would not come to end, she was to serve a terrible apprenticeship to the
+egoism which must take the bloom from her heart and break her in to the
+life of the world.
+
+This harsh and sorry teaching is the usual outcome of our early sorrows.
+For the first, and perhaps for the last time in her life, the Marquise
+d'Aiglemont was in very truth suffering. And, indeed, would it not be an
+error to suppose that the same sentiment can be reproduced in us? Once
+develop the power to feel, is it not always there in the depths of our
+nature? The accidents of life may lull or awaken it, but there it is, of
+necessity modifying the self, its abiding place. Hence, every sensation
+should have its great day once and for all, its first day of storm,
+be it long or short. Hence, likewise, pain, the most abiding of our
+sensations, could be keenly felt only at its first irruption, its
+intensity diminishing with every subsequent paroxysm, either because we
+grow accustomed to these crises, or perhaps because a natural instinct
+of self-preservation asserts itself, and opposes to the destroying force
+of anguish an equal but passive force of inertia.
+
+Yet of all kinds of suffering, to which does the name of anguish belong?
+For the loss of parents, Nature has in a manner prepared us; physical
+suffering, again, is an evil which passes over us and is gone; it lays
+no hold upon the soul; if it persists, it ceases to be an evil, it is
+death. The young mother loses her firstborn, but wedded love ere long
+gives her a successor. This grief, too, is transient. After all, these,
+and many other troubles like unto them, are in some sort wounds and
+bruises; they do not sap the springs of vitality, and only a succession
+of such blows can crush in us the instinct that seeks happiness. Great
+pain, therefore, pain that arises to anguish, should be suffering so
+deadly, that past, present, and future are alike included in its grip,
+and no part of life is left sound and whole. Never afterwards can
+we think the same thoughts as before. Anguish engraves itself in
+ineffaceable characters on mouth and brow; it passes through us,
+destroying or relaxing the springs that vibrate to enjoyment, leaving
+behind in the soul the seeds of a disgust for all things in this world.
+
+Yet, again, to be measureless, to weigh like this upon body and soul,
+the trouble should befall when soul and body have just come to their
+full strength, and smite down a heart that beats high with life. Then it
+is that great scars are made. Terrible is the anguish. None, it may
+be, can issue from this soul-sickness without undergoing some dramatic
+change. Those who survive it, those who remain on earth, return to the
+world to wear an actor's countenance and to play an actor's part. They
+know the side-scenes where actors may retire to calculate chances, shed
+their tears, or pass their jests. Life holds no inscrutable dark places
+for those who have passed through this ordeal; their judgments are
+Rhadamanthine.
+
+For young women of the Marquise d'Aiglemont's age, this first, this most
+poignant pain of all, is always referable to the same cause. A woman,
+especially if she is a young woman, greatly beautiful, and by nature
+great, never fails to stake her whole life as instinct and sentiment and
+society all unite to bid her. Suppose that that life fails her, suppose
+that she still lives on, she cannot but endure the most cruel pangs,
+inasmuch as a first love is the loveliest of all. How comes it that this
+catastrophe has found no painter, no poet? And yet, can it be painted?
+Can it be sung? No; for the anguish arising from it eludes analysis
+and defies the colors of art. And more than this, such pain is never
+confessed. To console the sufferer, you must be able to divine the past
+which she hugs in bitterness to her soul like a remorse; it is like an
+avalanche in a valley; it laid all waste before it found a permanent
+resting-place.
+
+The Marquise was suffering from this anguish, which will for long remain
+unknown, because the whole world condemns it, while sentiment cherishes
+it, and the conscience of a true woman justifies her in it. It is with
+such pain as with children steadily disowned of life, and therefore
+bound more closely to the mother's heart than other children more
+bounteously endowed. Never, perhaps, was the awful catastrophe in which
+the whole world without dies for us, so deadly, so complete, so cruelly
+aggravated by circumstance as it had been for the Marquise. The man whom
+she had loved was young and generous; in obedience to the laws of the
+world, she had refused herself to his love, and he had died to save a
+woman's honor, as the world calls it. To whom could she speak of her
+misery? Her tears would be an offence against her husband, the origin
+of the tragedy. By all laws written and unwritten she was bound over to
+silence. A woman would have enjoyed the story; a man would have schemed
+for his own benefit. No; such grief as hers can only weep freely in
+solitude and in loneliness; she must consume her pain or be consumed by
+it; die or kill something within her--her conscience, it may be.
+
+Day after day she sat gazing at the flat horizon. It lay out before her
+like her own life to come. There was nothing to discover, nothing to
+hope. The whole of it could be seen at a glance. It was the visible
+presentment in the outward world of the chill sense of desolation which
+was gnawing restlessly at her heart. The misty mornings, the pale,
+bright sky, the low clouds scudding under the gray dome of heaven,
+fitted with the moods of her soul-sickness. Her heart did not contract,
+was neither more nor less seared, rather it seemed as if her youth, in
+its full blossom, was slowly turned to stone by an anguish intolerable
+because it was barren. She suffered through herself and for herself. How
+could it end save in self-absorption? Ugly torturing thoughts probed
+her conscience. Candid self-examination pronounced that she was double,
+there were two selves within her; a woman who felt and a woman who
+thought; a self that suffered and a self that could fain suffer no
+longer. Her mind traveled back to the joys of childish days; they had
+gone by, and she had never known how happy they were. Scenes crowded up
+in her memory as in a bright mirror glass, to demonstrate the deception
+of a marriage which, all that it should be in the eyes of the world, was
+in reality wretched. What had the delicate pride of young womanhood
+done for her--the bliss foregone, the sacrifices made to the world?
+Everything in her expressed love, awaited love; her movements still were
+full of perfect grace; her smile, her charm, were hers as before; why?
+she asked herself. The sense of her own youth and physical loveliness
+no more affected her than some meaningless reiterated sound. Her very
+beauty had grown intolerable to her as a useless thing. She shrank
+aghast from the thought that through the rest of life she must remain an
+incomplete creature; had not the inner self lost its power of receiving
+impressions with that zest, that exquisite sense of freshness which is
+the spring of so much of life's gladness? The impressions of the future
+would for the most part be effaced as soon as received, and many of the
+thoughts which once would have moved her now would move her no more.
+
+After the childhood of the creature dawns the childhood of the heart;
+but this second infancy was over, her lover had taken it down with him
+into the grave. The longings of youth remained; she was young yet; but
+the completeness of youth was gone, and with that lost completeness the
+whole value and savor of life had diminished somewhat. Should she not
+always bear within her the seeds of sadness and mistrust, ready to
+grow up and rob emotion of its springtide of fervor? Conscious she must
+always be that nothing could give her now the happiness so longed for,
+that seemed so fair in her dreams. The fire from heaven that sheds
+abroad its light in the heart, in the dawn of love, had been quenched
+in tears, the first real tears which she had shed; henceforth she must
+always suffer, because it was no longer in her power to be what once
+she might have been. This is a belief which turns us in aversion and
+bitterness of spirit from any proffered new delight.
+
+Julie had come to look at life from the point of view of age about to
+die. Young though she felt, the heavy weight of joyless days had fallen
+upon her, and left her broken-spirited and old before her time. With a
+despairing cry, she asked the world what it could give her in exchange
+for the love now lost, by which she had lived. She asked herself whether
+in that vanished love, so chaste and pure, her will had not been more
+criminal than her deeds, and chose to believe herself guilty; partly
+to affront the world, partly for her own consolation, in that she had
+missed the close union of body and soul, which diminishes the pain of
+the one who is left behind by the knowledge that once it has known and
+given joy to the full, and retains within itself the impress of that
+which is no more.
+
+Something of the mortification of the actress cheated of her part
+mingled with the pain which thrilled through every fibre of her heart
+and brain. Her nature had been thwarted, her vanity wounded, her woman's
+generosity cheated of self-sacrifice. Then, when she had raised all
+these questions, set vibrating all the springs in those different
+phases of being which we distinguish as social, moral, and physical,
+her energies were so far exhausted and relaxed that she was powerless to
+grasp a single thought amid the chase of conflicting ideas.
+
+Sometimes as the mists fell, she would throw her window open, and would
+stay there, motionless, breathing in unheedingly the damp earthly scent
+in the air, her mind to all appearance an unintelligent blank, for the
+ceaseless burden of sorrow humming in her brain left her deaf to earth's
+harmonies and insensible to the delights of thought.
+
+One day, towards noon, when the sun shone out for a little, her maid
+came in without a summons.
+
+"This is the fourth time that M. le Cure has come to see Mme. la
+Marquise; to-day he is so determined about it, that we did not know what
+to tell him."
+
+"He has come to ask for some money for the poor, no doubt; take him
+twenty-five louis from me."
+
+The woman went only to return.
+
+"M. le Cure will not take the money, my lady; he wants to speak to you."
+
+"Then let him come!" said Mme. d'Aiglemont, with an involuntary shrug
+which augured ill for the priest's reception. Evidently the lady meant
+to put a stop to persecution by a short and sharp method.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont had lost her mother in her early childhood; and as a
+natural consequence in her bringing-up, she had felt the influence of
+the relaxed notions which loosened the hold of religion upon France
+during the Revolution. Piety is a womanly virtue which women alone can
+really instil; and the Marquise, a child of the eighteenth century, had
+adopted her father's creed of philosophism, and practised no religious
+observances. A priest, to her way of thinking, was a civil servant of
+very doubtful utility. In her present position, the teaching of religion
+could only poison her wounds; she had, moreover, but scanty faith in the
+lights of country cures, and made up her mind to put this one gently but
+firmly in his place, and to rid herself of him, after the manner of the
+rich, by bestowing a benefit.
+
+At first sight of the cure the Marquise felt no inclination to change
+her mind. She saw before her a stout, rotund little man, with a ruddy,
+wrinkled, elderly face, which awkwardly and unsuccessfully tried to
+smile. His bald, quadrant-shaped forehead, furrowed by intersecting
+lines, was too heavy for the rest of his face, which seemed to be
+dwarfed by it. A fringe of scanty white hair encircled the back of his
+head, and almost reached his ears. Yet the priest looked as if by nature
+he had a genial disposition; his thick lips, his slightly curved nose,
+his chin, which vanished in a double fold of wrinkles,--all marked him
+out as a man who took cheerful views of life.
+
+At first the Marquise saw nothing but these salient characteristics,
+but at the first word she was struck by the sweetness of the speaker's
+voice. Looking at him more closely, she saw that the eyes under the
+grizzled eyebrows had shed tears, and his face, turned in profile, wore
+so sublime an impress of sorrow, that the Marquise recognized the man in
+the cure.
+
+"Madame la Marquise, the rich only come within our province when
+they are in trouble. It is easy to see that the troubles of a young,
+beautiful, and wealthy woman, who has lost neither children nor
+relatives, are caused by wounds whose pangs religion alone can soothe.
+Your soul is in danger, madame. I am not speaking now of the hereafter
+which awaits us. No, I am not in the confessional. But it is my duty,
+is it not, to open your eyes to your future life here on earth? You
+will pardon an old man, will you not, for importunity which has your own
+happiness for its object?"
+
+"There is no more happiness for me, monsieur. I shall soon be, as you
+say, in your province; but it will be for ever."
+
+"Nay, madame. You will not die of this pain which lies heavy upon you,
+and can be read in your face. If you had been destined to die of it, you
+would not be here at Saint-Lange. A definite regret is not so deadly
+as hope deferred. I have known others pass through more intolerable and
+more awful anguish, and yet they live."
+
+The Marquise looked incredulous.
+
+"Madame, I know a man whose affliction was so sore that your trouble
+would seem to you to be light compared with his."
+
+Perhaps the long solitary hours had begun to hang heavily; perhaps in
+the recesses of the Marquise's mind lay the thought that here was a
+friendly heart to whom she might be able to pour out her troubles.
+However, it was, she gave the cure a questioning glance which could not
+be mistaken.
+
+"Madame," he continued, "the man of whom I tell you had but three
+children left of a once large family circle. He lost his parents, his
+daughter, and his wife, whom he dearly loved. He was left alone at last
+on the little farm where he had lived so happily for so long. His three
+sons were in the army, and each of the lads had risen in proportion to
+his time of service. During the Hundred Days, the oldest went into
+the Guard with a colonel's commission; the second was a major in the
+artillery; the youngest a major in a regiment of dragoons. Madame, those
+three boys loved their father as much as he loved them. If you but knew
+how careless young fellows grow of home ties when they are carried
+away by the current of their own lives, you would realize from this one
+little thing how warmly they loved the lonely old father, who only lived
+in and for them--never a week passed without a letter from one of the
+boys. But then he on his side had never been weakly indulgent, to lessen
+their respect for him; nor unjustly severe, to thwart their affection;
+or apt to grudge sacrifices, the thing that estranges children's hearts.
+He had been more than a father; he had been a brother to them, and their
+friend.
+
+"At last he went to Paris to bid them good-bye before they set out for
+Belgium; he wished to see that they had good horses and all that they
+needed. And so they went, and the father returned to his home again.
+Then the war began. He had letters from Fleurus, and again from Ligny.
+All went well. Then came the battle of Waterloo, and you know the rest.
+France was plunged into mourning; every family waited in intense anxiety
+for news. You may imagine, madame, how the old man waited for tidings,
+in anxiety that knew no peace nor rest. He used to read the gazettes;
+he went to the coach office every day. One evening he was told that the
+colonel's servant had come. The man was riding his master's horse--what
+need was there to ask any questions?--the colonel was dead, cut in
+two by a shell. Before the evening was out the youngest son's servant
+arrived--the youngest had died on the eve of the battle. At midnight
+came a gunner with tidings of the death of the last; upon whom, in those
+few hours, the poor father had centered all his life. Madame, they all
+had fallen."
+
+After a pause the good man controlled his feelings, and added gently:
+
+"And their father is still living, madame. He realized that if God had
+left him on earth, he was bound to live on and suffer on earth; but he
+took refuge in the sanctuary. What could he be?"
+
+The Marquise looked up and saw the cure's face, grown sublime in its
+sorrow and resignation, and waited for him to speak. When the words
+came, tears broke from her.
+
+"A priest, madame; consecrated by his own tears previously shed at the
+foot of the altar."
+
+Silence prevailed for a little. The Marquise and the cure looked out at
+the foggy landscape, as if they could see the figures of those who were
+no more.
+
+"Not a priest in a city, but a simple country cure," added he.
+
+"At Saint-Lange," she said, drying her eyes.
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+Never had the majesty of grief seemed so great to Julie. The two words
+sank straight into her heart with the weight of infinite sorrow. The
+gentle, sonorous tones troubled her heart. Ah! that full, deep voice,
+charged with plangent vibration, was the voice of one who had suffered
+indeed.
+
+"And if I do not die, monsieur, what will become of me?" The Marquise
+spoke almost reverently.
+
+"Have you not a child, madame?"
+
+"Yes," she said stiffly.
+
+The cure gave her such a glance as a doctor gives a patient whose life
+is in danger. Then he determined to do all that in him lay to combat the
+evil spirit into whose clutches she had fallen.
+
+"We must live on with our sorrows--you see it yourself, madame, and
+religion alone offers us real consolation. Will you permit me to come
+again?--to speak to you as a man who can sympathize with every trouble,
+a man about whom there is nothing very alarming, I think?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur, come back again. Thank you for your thought of me."
+
+"Very well, madame; then I shall return very shortly."
+
+This visit relaxed the tension of soul, as it were; the heavy strain
+of grief and loneliness had been almost too much for the Marquise's
+strength. The priest's visit had left a soothing balm in her heart, his
+words thrilled through her with healing influence. She began to feel
+something of a prisoner's satisfaction, when, after he has had time
+to feel his utter loneliness and the weight of his chains, he hears a
+neighbor knocking on the wall, and welcomes the sound which brings a
+sense of human friendship. Here was an unhoped-for confidant. But
+this feeling did not last for long. Soon she sank back into the old
+bitterness of spirit, saying to herself, as the prisoner might say, that
+a companion in misfortune could neither lighten her own bondage nor her
+future.
+
+In the first visit the cure had feared to alarm the susceptibilities
+of self-absorbed grief, in a second interview he hoped to make some
+progress towards religion. He came back again two days later, and from
+the Marquise's welcome it was plain that she had looked forward to the
+visit.
+
+"Well, Mme. la Marquise, have you given a little thought to the great
+mass of human suffering? Have you raised your eyes above our earth and
+seen the immensity of the universe?--the worlds beyond worlds which
+crush our vanity into insignificance, and with our vanity reduce our
+sorrows?"
+
+"No, monsieur," she said; "I cannot rise to such heights, our social
+laws lie too heavily upon me, and rend my heart with a too poignant
+anguish. And laws perhaps are less cruel than the usages of the world.
+Ah! the world!"
+
+"Madame, we must obey both. Law is the doctrine, and custom the practice
+of society."
+
+"Obey society?" cried the Marquise, with an involuntary shudder. "Eh!
+monsieur, it is the source of all our woes. God laid down no law to
+make us miserable; but mankind, uniting together in social life, have
+perverted God's work. Civilization deals harder measure to us women than
+nature does. Nature imposes upon us physical suffering which you have
+not alleviated; civilization has developed in us thoughts and feelings
+which you cheat continually. Nature exterminates the weak; you condemn
+them to live, and by so doing, consign them to a life of misery. The
+whole weight of the burden of marriage, an institution on which society
+is based, falls upon us; for the man liberty, duties for the woman. We
+must give up our whole lives to you, you are only bound to give us a
+few moments of yours. A man, in fact, makes a choice, while we blindly
+submit. Oh, monsieur, to you I can speak freely. Marriage, in these
+days, seems to me to be legalized prostitution. This is the cause of my
+wretchedness. But among so many miserable creatures so unhappily yoked,
+I alone am bound to be silent, I alone am to blame for my misery. My
+marriage was my own doing."
+
+She stopped short, and bitter tears fell in the silence.
+
+"In the depths of my wretchedness, in the midst of this sea of
+distress," she went on, "I found some sands on which to set foot and
+suffer at leisure. A great tempest swept everything away. And here am I,
+helpless and alone, too weak to cope with storms."
+
+"We are never weak while God is with us," said the priest. "And if your
+cravings for affection cannot be satisfied here on earth, have you no
+duties to perform?"
+
+"Duties continually!" she exclaimed, with something of impatience in
+her tone. "But where for me are the sentiments which give us strength
+to perform them? Nothing from nothing, nothing for nothing,--this,
+monsieur, is one of the most inexorable laws of nature, physical or
+spiritual. Would you have these trees break into leaf without the sap
+which swells the buds? It is the same with our human nature; and in me
+the sap is dried up at its source."
+
+"I am not going to speak to you of religious sentiments of which
+resignation is born," said the cure, "but of motherhood, madame,
+surely--"
+
+"Stop, monsieur!" said the Marquise, "with you I will be sincere. Alas!
+in future I can be sincere with no one; I am condemned to falsehood.
+The world requires continual grimaces, and we are bidden to obey
+its conventions if we would escape reproach. There are two kinds of
+motherhood, monsieur; once I knew nothing of such distinctions, but I
+know them now. Only half of me has become a mother; it were better for
+me if I had not been a mother at all. Helene is not _his_ child! Oh! do
+not start. At Saint-Lange there are volcanic depths whence come lurid
+gleams of light and earthquake shocks to shake the fragile edifices of
+laws not based on nature. I have borne a child, that is enough, I am a
+mother in the eyes of the law. But you, monsieur, with your delicately
+compassionate soul, can perhaps understand this cry from an unhappy
+woman who has suffered no lying illusions to enter her heart. God will
+judge me, but surely I have only obeyed His laws by giving way to the
+affections which He Himself set in me, and this I have learned from my
+own soul.--What is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the
+fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended? Unless it is owned by
+every fibre of the body, as by every chord of tenderness in the heart;
+unless it recalls the bliss of love, the hours, the places where two
+creatures were happy, their words that overflowed with the music of
+humanity, and their sweet imaginings, that child is an incomplete
+creation. Yes, those two should find the poetic dreams of their intimate
+double life realized in their child as in an exquisite miniature; it
+should be for them a never-failing spring of emotion, implying their
+whole past and their whole future.
+
+"My poor little Helene is her father's child, the offspring of duty and
+of chance. In me she finds nothing but the affection of instinct, the
+woman's natural compassion for the child of her womb. Socially speaking,
+I am above reproach. Have I not sacrificed my life and my happiness to
+my child? Her cries go to my heart; if she were to fall into the water,
+I should spring to save her, but she is not in my heart.
+
+"Ah! love set me dreaming of a motherhood far greater and more complete.
+In a vanished dream I held in my arms a child conceived in desire before
+it was begotten, the exquisite flower of life that blossoms in the soul
+before it sees the light of day. I am Helene's mother only in the sense
+that I brought her forth. When she needs me no longer, there will be an
+end of my motherhood; with the extinction of the cause, the effects will
+cease. If it is a woman's adorable prerogative that her motherhood
+may last through her child's life, surely that divine persistence of
+sentiment is due to the far-reaching glory of the conception of the
+soul? Unless a child has lain wrapped about from life's first beginnings
+by the mother's soul, the instinct of motherhood dies in her as in the
+animals. This is true; I feel that it is true. As my poor little one
+grows older, my heart closes. My sacrifices have driven us apart. And
+yet I know, monsieur, that to another child my heart would have gone
+out in inexhaustible love; for that other I should not have known what
+sacrifice meant, all had been delight. In this, monsieur, my instincts
+are stronger than reason, stronger than religion or all else in me. Does
+the woman who is neither wife nor mother sin in wishing to die when, for
+her misfortune, she has caught a glimpse of the infinite beauty of love,
+the limitless joy of motherhood? What can become of her? _I_ can tell
+you what she feels. I cannot put that memory from me so resolutely but
+that a hundred times, night and day, visions of a happiness, greater
+it may be than the reality, rise before me, followed by a shudder which
+shakes brain and heart and body. Before these cruel visions, my feelings
+and thoughts grow colorless, and I ask myself, 'What would my life have
+been _if_----?'"
+
+She hid her face in her hands and burst into tears.
+
+"There you see the depths of my heart!" she continued. "For _his_
+child I could have acquiesced in any lot however dreadful. He who died,
+bearing the burden of the sins of the world will forgive this thought
+of which I am dying; but the world, I know, is merciless. In its ears
+my words are blasphemies; I am outraging all its codes. Oh! that I could
+wage war against this world and break down and refashion its laws
+and traditions! Has it not turned all my thoughts, and feelings, and
+longings, and hopes, and every fibre in me into so many sources of pain?
+Spoiled my future, present, and past? For me the daylight is full of
+gloom, my thoughts pierce me like a sword, my child is and is not.
+
+"Oh, when Helene speaks to me, I wish that her voice were different,
+when she looks into my face I wish that she had other eyes. She
+constantly keeps me in mind of all that should have been and is not. I
+cannot bear to have her near me. I smile at her, I try to make up to
+her for the real affection of which she is defrauded. I am wretched,
+monsieur, too wretched to live. And I am supposed to be a pattern wife.
+And I have committed no sins. And I am respected! I have fought down
+forbidden love which sprang up at unawares within me; but if I have kept
+the letter of the law, have I kept it in my heart? There has never been
+but one here," she said, laying her right hand on her breast, "one and
+no other; and my child feels it. Certain looks and tones and gestures
+mould a child's nature, and my poor little one feels no thrill in the
+arm I put about her, no tremor comes into my voice, no softness into my
+eyes when I speak to her or take her up. She looks at me, and I cannot
+endure the reproach in her eyes. There are times when I shudder to think
+that some day she may be my judge and condemn her mother unheard. Heaven
+grant that hate may not grow up between us! Ah! God in heaven,
+rather let the tomb open for me, rather let me end my days here at
+Saint-Lange!--I want to go back to the world where I shall find my other
+soul and become wholly a mother. Ah! forgive me, sir, I am mad. Those
+words were choking me; now they are spoken. Ah! you are weeping too! You
+will not despise me--"
+
+She heard the child come in from a walk. "Helene, my child, come here!"
+she called. The words sounded like a cry of despair.
+
+The little girl ran in, laughing and calling to her mother to see a
+butterfly which she had caught; but at the sight of that mother's tears
+she grew quiet of a sudden, and went up close, and received a kiss on
+her forehead.
+
+"She will be very beautiful some day," said the priest.
+
+"She is her father's child," said the Marquise, kissing the little one
+with eager warmth, as if she meant to pay a debt of affection or to
+extinguish some feeling of remorse.
+
+"How hot you are, mamma!"
+
+"There, go away, my angel," said the Marquise.
+
+The child went. She did not seem at all sorry to go; she did not
+look back; glad perhaps to escape from a sad face, and instinctively
+comprehending already an antagonism of feeling in its expression. A
+mother's love finds language in smiles, they are a part of the divine
+right of motherhood. The Marquise could not smile. She flushed red as
+she felt the cure's eyes. She had hoped to act a mother's part before
+him, but neither she nor her child could deceive him. And, indeed, when
+a woman loves sincerely, in the kiss she gives there is a divine honey;
+it is as if a soul were breathed forth in the caress, a subtle flame
+of fire which brings warmth to the heart; the kiss that lacks this
+delicious unction is meagre and formal. The priest had felt the
+difference. He could fathom the depths that lie between the motherhood
+of the flesh and the motherhood of the heart. He gave the Marquise a
+keen, scrutinizing glance, then he said:
+
+"You are right, madame; it would be better for you if you were dead----"
+
+"Ah!" she cried, "then you know all my misery; I see you do if,
+Christian priest as you are, you can guess my determination to die and
+sanction it. Yes, I meant to die, but I have lacked the courage. The
+spirit was strong, but the flesh was weak, and when my hand did not
+tremble, the spirit within me wavered.
+
+"I do not know the reason of these inner struggles, and alternations. I
+am very pitiably a woman no doubt, weak in my will, strong only to love.
+Oh, I despise myself. At night, when all my household was asleep, I
+would go out bravely as far as the lake; but when I stood on the brink,
+my cowardice shrank from self-destruction. To you I will confess my
+weakness. When I lay in my bed, again, shame would come over me, and
+courage would come back. Once I took a dose of laudanum; I was ill, but
+I did not die. I thought I had emptied the phial, but I had only taken
+half the dose."
+
+"You are lost, madame," the cure said gravely, with tears in his voice.
+"You will go back into the world, and you will deceive the world. You
+will seek and find a compensation (as you imagine it to be) for your
+woes; then will come a day of reckoning for your pleasures--"
+
+"Do you think," she cried, "that _I_ shall bestow the last, the most
+precious treasures of my heart upon the first base impostor who can
+play the comedy of passion? That I would pollute my life for a moment
+of doubtful pleasure? No; the flame which shall consume my soul shall be
+love, and nothing but love. All men, monsieur, have the senses of
+their sex, but not all have the man's soul which satisfies all the
+requirements of our nature, drawing out the melodious harmony which
+never breaks forth save in response to the pressure of feeling. Such a
+soul is not found twice in our lifetime. The future that lies before
+me is hideous; I know it. A woman is nothing without love; beauty is
+nothing without pleasure. And even if happiness were offered to me a
+second time, would not the world frown upon it? I owe my daughter an
+honored mother. Oh! I am condemned to live in an iron circle, from which
+there is but one shameful way of escape. The round of family duties, a
+thankless and irksome task, is in store for me. I shall curse life; but
+my child shall have at least a fair semblance of a mother. I will give
+her treasures of virtue for the treasures of love of which I defraud
+her.
+
+"I have not even the mother's desire to live to enjoy her child's
+happiness. I have no belief in happiness. What will Helene's fate be?
+My own, beyond doubt. How can a mother ensure that the man to whom she
+gives her daughter will be the husband of her heart? You pour scorn
+on the miserable creatures who sell themselves for a few coins to any
+passer-by, though want and hunger absolve the brief union; while another
+union, horrible for quite other reasons, is tolerated, nay encouraged,
+by society, and a young and innocent girl is married to a man whom she
+has only met occasionally during the previous three months. She is sold
+for her whole lifetime. It is true that the price is high! If you allow
+her no compensation for her sorrows, you might at least respect her; but
+no, the most virtuous of women cannot escape calumny. This is our fate
+in its double aspect. Open prostitution and shame; secret prostitution
+and unhappiness. As for the poor, portionless girls, they may die or go
+mad, without a soul to pity them. Beauty and virtue are not marketable
+in the bazaar where souls and bodies are bought and sold--in the den of
+selfishness which you call society. Why not disinherit daughters? Then,
+at least, you might fulfil one of the laws of nature, and guided by your
+own inclinations, choose your companions."
+
+"Madame, from your talk it is clear to me that neither the spirit of
+family nor the sense of religion appeals to you. Why should you hesitate
+between the claims of the social selfishness which irritates you, and
+the purely personal selfishness which craves satisfactions--"
+
+"The family, monsieur--does such a thing exist? I decline to recognize
+as a family a knot of individuals bidden by society to divide the
+property after the death of father and mother, and to go their separate
+ways. A family means a temporary association of persons brought together
+by no will of their own, dissolved at once by death. Our laws have
+broken up homes and estates, and the old family tradition handed down
+from generation to generation. I see nothing but wreck and ruin about
+me."
+
+"Madame, you will only return to God when His hand has been heavy upon
+you, and I pray that you have time enough given to you in which to make
+your peace with Him. Instead of looking to heaven for comfort, you
+are fixing your eyes on earth. Philosophism and personal interest
+have invaded your heart; like the children of the sceptical eighteenth
+century, you are deaf to the voice of religion. The pleasures of this
+life bring nothing but misery. You are about to make an exchange of
+sorrows, that is all."
+
+She smiled bitterly.
+
+"I will falsify your predictions," she said. "I shall be faithful to him
+who died for me."
+
+"Sorrow," he answered, "is not likely to live long save in souls
+disciplined by religion," and he lowered his eyes respectfully lest the
+Marquise should read his doubts in them. The energy of her outburst had
+grieved him. He had seen the self that lurked beneath so many forms,
+and despaired of softening a heart which affliction seemed to sear. The
+divine Sower's seed could not take root in such a soil, and His gentle
+voice was drowned by the clamorous outcry of self-pity. Yet the good man
+returned again and again with an apostle's earnest persistence, brought
+back by a hope of leading so noble and proud a soul to God; until the
+day when he made the discovery that the Marquise only cared to talk with
+him because it was sweet to speak of him who was no more. He would
+not lower his ministry by condoning her passion, and confined the
+conversation more and more to generalities and commonplaces.
+
+Spring came, and with the spring the Marquise found distraction from her
+deep melancholy. She busied herself for lack of other occupation with
+her estate, making improvements for amusement.
+
+In October she left the old chateau. In the life of leisure at
+Saint-Lange she had recovered from her grief and grown fair and fresh.
+Her grief had been violent at first in its course, as the quoit hurled
+forth with all the player's strength, and like the quoit after many
+oscillations, each feebler than the last, it had slackened into
+melancholy. Melancholy is made up of a succession of such oscillations,
+the first touching upon despair, the last on the border between pain
+and pleasure; in youth, it is the twilight of dawn; in age, the dusk of
+night.
+
+As the Marquise drove through the village in her traveling carriage, she
+met the cure on his way back from the church. She bowed in response to
+his farewell greeting, but it was with lowered eyes and averted face.
+She did not wish to see him again. The village cure had judged this poor
+Diana of Ephesus only too well.
+
+
+
+
+III. AT THIRTY YEARS
+
+Madame Firmiani was giving a ball. M. Charles de Vandenesse, a young man
+of great promise, the bearer of one of those historic names which, in
+spite of the efforts of legislation, are always associated with the
+glory of France, had received letters of introduction to some of the
+great lady's friends in Naples, and had come to thank the hostess and to
+take his leave.
+
+Vandenesse had already acquitted himself creditably on several
+diplomatic missions; and now that he had received an appointment as
+attache to a plenipotentiary at the Congress of Laybach, he wished to
+take advantage of the opportunity to make some study of Italy on the
+way. This ball was a sort of farewell to Paris and its amusements and
+its rapid whirl of life, to the great eddying intellectual centre and
+maelstrom of pleasure; and a pleasant thing it is to be borne along
+by the current of this sufficiently slandered great city of Paris. Yet
+Charles de Vandenesse had little to regret, accustomed as he had been
+for the past three years to salute European capitals and turn his back
+upon them at the capricious bidding of a diplomatist's destiny. Women
+no longer made any impression upon him; perhaps he thought that a real
+passion would play too large a part in a diplomatist's life; or perhaps
+that the paltry amusements of frivolity were too empty for a man
+of strong character. We all of us have huge claims to strength of
+character. There is no man in France, be he ever so ordinary a member of
+the rank and file of humanity, that will waive pretensions to something
+beyond mere cleverness.
+
+Charles, young though he was--he was scarcely turned thirty--looked at
+life with a philosophic mind, concerning himself with theories and
+means and ends, while other men of his age were thinking of pleasure,
+sentiments, and the like illusions. He forced back into some inner depth
+the generosity and enthusiasms of youth, and by nature he was generous.
+He tried hard to be cool and calculating, to coin the fund of wealth
+which chanced to be in his nature into gracious manners, and courtesy,
+and attractive arts; 'tis the proper task of an ambitious man, to play a
+sorry part to gain "a good position," as we call it in modern days.
+
+He had been dancing, and now he gave a farewell glance over the rooms,
+to carry away a distinct impression of the ball, moved, doubtless, to
+some extent by the feeling which prompts a theatre-goer to stay in
+his box to see the final tableau before the curtain falls. But M. de
+Vandenesse had another reason for his survey. He gazed curiously at the
+scene before him, so French in character and in movement, seeking to
+carry away a picture of the light and laughter and the faces at
+this Parisian fete, to compare with the novel faces and picturesque
+surroundings awaiting him at Naples, where he meant to spend a few
+days before presenting himself at his post. He seemed to be drawing the
+comparison now between this France so variable, changing even as you
+study her, with the manners and aspects of that other land known to him
+as yet only by contradictory hearsay tales or books of travel, for the
+most part unsatisfactory. Thoughts of a somewhat poetical cast, albeit
+hackneyed and trite to our modern ideas, crossed his brain, in response
+to some longing of which, perhaps, he himself was hardly conscious, a
+desire in the depths of a heart fastidious rather than jaded, vacant
+rather than seared.
+
+"These are the wealthiest and most fashionable women and the greatest
+ladies in Paris," he said to himself. "These are the great men of the
+day, great orators and men of letters, great names and titles; artists
+and men in power; and yet in it all it seems to me as if there were
+nothing but petty intrigues and still-born loves, meaningless smiles
+and causeless scorn, eyes lighted by no flame within, brain-power in
+abundance running aimlessly to waste. All those pink-and-white faces are
+here not so much for enjoyment, as to escape from dulness. None of the
+emotion is genuine. If you ask for nothing but court feathers properly
+adjusted, fresh gauzes and pretty toilettes and fragile, fair women, if
+you desire simply to skim the surface of life, here is your world for
+you. Be content with meaningless phrases and fascinating simpers, and do
+not ask for real feeling. For my own part, I abhor the stale intrigues
+which end in sub-prefectures and receiver-generals' places and
+marriages; or, if love comes into the question, in stealthy compromises,
+so ashamed are we of the mere semblance of passion. Not a single one of
+all these eloquent faces tells you of a soul, a soul wholly absorbed by
+one idea as by remorse. Regrets and misfortune go about shame-facedly
+clad in jests. There is not one woman here whose resistance I should
+care to overcome, not one who could drag you down to the pit. Where will
+you find energy in Paris? A poniard here is a curious toy to hang from a
+gilt nail, in a picturesque sheath to match. The women, the brains, and
+hearts of Paris are all on a par. There is no passion left, because
+we have no individuality. High birth and intellect and fortune are all
+reduced to one level; we all have taken to the uniform black coat by way
+of mourning for a dead France. There is no love between equals. Between
+two lovers there should be differences to efface, wide gulfs to fill.
+The charm of love fled from us in 1789. Our dulness and our humdrum
+lives are the outcome of the political system. Italy at any rate is the
+land of sharp contrasts. Woman there is a malevolent animal, a dangerous
+unreasoning siren, guided only by her tastes and appetites, a creature
+no more to be trusted than a tiger--"
+
+Mme. Firmiani here came up to interrupt this soliloquy made up of vague,
+conflicting, and fragmentary thoughts which cannot be reproduced in
+words. The whole charm of such musing lies in its vagueness--what is it
+but a sort of mental haze?
+
+"I want to introduce you to some one who has the greatest wish to make
+your acquaintance, after all that she has heard of you," said the lady,
+taking his arm.
+
+She brought him into the next room, and with such a smile and glance
+as a Parisienne alone can give, she indicated a woman sitting by the
+hearth.
+
+"Who is she?" the Comte de Vandenesse asked quickly.
+
+"You have heard her name more than once coupled with praise or blame.
+She is a woman who lives in seclusion--a perfect mystery."
+
+"Oh! if ever you have been merciful in your life, for pity's sake tell
+me her name."
+
+"She is the Marquise d'Aiglemont."
+
+"I will take lessons from her; she had managed to make a peer of France
+of that eminently ordinary person her husband, and a dullard into a
+power in the land. But, pray tell me this, did Lord Grenville die for
+her sake, do you think, as some women say?"
+
+"Possibly. Since that adventure, real or imaginary, she is very much
+changed, poor thing! She has not gone into society since. Four years of
+constancy--that is something in Paris. If she is here to-night----"
+Here Mme. Firmiani broke off, adding with a mysterious expression, "I am
+forgetting that I must say nothing. Go and talk with her."
+
+For a moment Charles stood motionless, leaning lightly against the
+frame of the doorway, wholly absorbed in his scrutiny of a woman who had
+become famous, no one exactly knew how or why. Such curious anomalies
+are frequent enough in the world. Mme. d'Aiglemont's reputation was
+certainly no more extraordinary than plenty of other great reputations.
+There are men who are always in travail of some great work which never
+sees the light, statisticians held to be profound on the score of
+calculations which they take very good care not to publish, politicians
+who live on a newspaper article, men of letters and artists whose
+performances are never given to the world, men of science, much as
+Sganarelle is a Latinist for those who know no Latin; there are the men
+who are allowed by general consent to possess a peculiar capacity for
+some one thing, be it for the direction of arts, or for the conduct
+of an important mission. The admirable phrase, "A man with a special
+subject," might have been invented on purpose for these acephalous
+species in the domain of literature and politics.
+
+Charles gazed longer than he intended. He was vexed with himself for
+feeling so strongly interested; it is true, however, that the lady's
+appearance was a refutation of the young man's ballroom generalizations.
+
+The Marquise had reached her thirtieth year. She was beautiful in spite
+of her fragile form and extremely delicate look. Her greatest charm lay
+in her still face, revealing unfathomed depths of soul. Some haunting,
+ever-present thought veiled, as it were, the full brilliance of eyes
+which told of a fevered life and boundless resignation. So seldom
+did she raise the eyelids soberly downcast, and so listless were her
+glances, that it almost seemed as if the fire in her eyes were reserved
+for some occult contemplation. Any man of genius and feeling must have
+felt strangely attracted by her gentleness and silence. If the mind
+sought to explain the mysterious problem of a constant inward turning
+from the present to the past, the soul was no less interested in
+initiating itself into the secrets of a heart proud in some sort of
+its anguish. Everything about her, moreover, was in keeping with these
+thoughts which she inspired. Like almost all women who have very long
+hair, she was very pale and perfectly white. The marvelous fineness of
+her skin (that almost unerring sign) indicated a quick sensibility which
+could be seen yet more unmistakably in her features; there was the same
+minute and wonderful delicacy of finish in them that the Chinese artist
+gives to his fantastic figures. Perhaps her neck was rather too long,
+but such necks belong to the most graceful type, and suggest vague
+affinities between a woman's head and the magnetic curves of the
+serpent. Leave not a single one of the thousand signs and tokens by
+which the most inscrutable character betrays itself to an observer of
+human nature, he has but to watch carefully the little movements of a
+woman's head, the ever-varying expressive turns and curves of her neck
+and throat, to read her nature.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont's dress harmonized with the haunting thought that
+informed the whole woman. Her hair was gathered up into a tall coronet
+of broad plaits, without ornament of any kind; she seemed to have bidden
+farewell for ever to elaborate toilettes. Nor were any of the small arts
+of coquetry which spoil so many women to be detected in her. Perhaps
+her bodice, modest though it was, did not altogether conceal the dainty
+grace of her figure, perhaps, too, her gown looked rich from the
+extreme distinction of its fashion, and if it is permissible to look for
+expression in the arrangement of stuffs, surely those numerous straight
+folds invested her with a great dignity. There may have been some
+lingering trace of the indelible feminine foible in the minute care
+bestowed upon her hand and foot; yet, if she allowed them to be seen
+with some pleasure, it would have tasked the utmost malice of a rival to
+discover any affectation in her gestures, so natural did they seem, so
+much a part of old childish habit, that her careless grace absolved this
+vestige of vanity.
+
+All these little characteristics, the nameless trifles which combine to
+make up the sum of a woman's prettiness or ugliness, her charm or lack
+of charm, can only be indicated, when, as with Mme. d'Aiglemont, a
+personality dominates and gives coherence to the details, informing
+them, blending them all in an exquisite whole. Her manner was perfectly
+in accord with her style of beauty and her dress. Only to certain women
+at a certain age is it given to put language into their attitude. Is it
+joy or is it sorrow that teaches a woman of thirty the secret of that
+eloquence of carriage, so that she must always remain an enigma which
+each interprets by the aid of his hopes, desires, or theories?
+
+The way in which the Marquise leaned both elbows on the arm of her
+chair, the toying of her interclasped fingers, the curve of her throat,
+the indolent lines of her languid but lissome body as she lay back in
+graceful exhaustion, as it were; her indolent limbs, her unstudied pose,
+the utter lassitude of her movements,--all suggested that this was a
+woman for whom life had lost its interest, a woman who had known
+the joys of love only in dreams, a woman bowed down by the burden of
+memories of the past, a woman who had long since despaired of the future
+and despaired of herself, an unoccupied woman who took the emptiness of
+her own life for the nothingness of life.
+
+Charles de Vandenesse saw and admired the beautiful picture before
+him, as a kind of artistic success beyond an ordinary woman's powers of
+attainment. He was acquainted with d'Aiglemont; and now, at the first
+sight of d'Aiglemont's wife, the young diplomatist saw at a glance a
+disproportionate marriage, an incompatibility (to use the legal jargon)
+so great that it was impossible that the Marquise should love her
+husband. And yet--the Marquise d'Aiglemont's life was above reproach,
+and for any observer the mystery about her was the more interesting on
+this account. The first impulse of surprise over, Vandenesse cast
+about for the best way of approaching Mme. d'Aiglemont. He would try a
+commonplace piece of diplomacy, he thought; he would disconcert her by a
+piece of clumsiness and see how she would receive it.
+
+"Madame," he said, seating himself near her, "through a fortunate
+indiscretion I have learned that, for some reason unknown to me, I have
+had the good fortune to attract your notice. I owe you the more thanks
+because I have never been so honored before. At the same time, you are
+responsible for one of my faults, for I mean never to be modest again--"
+
+"You will make a mistake, monsieur," she laughed; "vanity should be left
+to those who have nothing else to recommend them."
+
+The conversation thus opened ranged at large, in the usual way, over a
+multitude of topics--art and literature, politics, men and things--till
+insensibly they fell to talking of the eternal theme in France and all
+the world over--love, sentiment, and women.
+
+"We are bond-slaves."
+
+"You are queens."
+
+This was the gist and substance of all the more or less ingenious
+discourse between Charles and the Marquise, as of all such
+discourses--past, present, and to come. Allow a certain space of time,
+and the two formulas shall begin to mean "Love me," and "I will love
+you."
+
+"Madame," Charles de Vandenesse exclaimed under his breath, "you have
+made me bitterly regret that I am leaving Paris. In Italy I certainly
+shall not pass hours in intellectual enjoyment such as this has been."
+
+"Perhaps, monsieur, you will find happiness, and happiness is worth
+more than all the brilliant things, true and false, that are said every
+evening in Paris."
+
+Before Charles took leave, he asked permission to pay a farewell call
+on the Marquise d'Aiglemont, and very lucky did he feel himself when
+the form of words in which he expressed himself for once was used in all
+sincerity; and that night, and all day long on the morrow, he could not
+put the thought of the Marquise out of his mind.
+
+At times he wondered why she had singled him out, what she had
+meant when she asked him to come to see her, and thought supplied an
+inexhaustible commentary. Again it seemed to him that he had discovered
+the motives of her curiosity, and he grew intoxicated with hope or
+frigidly sober with each new construction put upon that piece of
+commonplace civility. Sometimes it meant everything, sometimes nothing.
+He made up his mind at last that he would not yield to this inclination,
+and--went to call on Mme. d'Aiglemont.
+
+There are thoughts which determine our conduct, while we do not so much
+as suspect their existence. If at first sight this assertion appears to
+be less a truth than a paradox, let any candid inquirer look into his
+own life and he shall find abundant confirmation therein. Charles went
+to Mme. d'Aiglemont, and so obeyed one of these latent, pre-existent
+germs of thought, of which our experience and our intellectual gains and
+achievements are but later and tangible developments.
+
+For a young man a woman of thirty has irresistible attractions. There
+is nothing more natural, nothing better established, no human tie of
+stouter tissue than the heart-deep attachment between such a woman as
+the Marquise d'Aiglemont and such a man as Charles de Vandenesse. You
+can see examples of it every day in the world. A girl, as a matter
+of fact, has too many young illusions, she is too inexperienced, the
+instinct of sex counts for too much in her love for a young man to feel
+flattered by it. A woman of thirty knows all that is involved in
+the self-surrender to be made. Among the impulses of the first, put
+curiosity and other motives than love; the second acts with integrity of
+sentiment. The first yields; the second makes deliberate choice. Is
+not that choice in itself an immense flattery? A woman armed with
+experience, forewarned by knowledge, almost always dearly bought, seems
+to give more than herself; while the inexperienced and credulous girl,
+unable to draw comparisons for lack of knowledge, can appreciate
+nothing at its just worth. She accepts love and ponders it. A woman is a
+counselor and a guide at an age when we love to be guided and obedience
+is delight; while a girl would fain learn all things, meeting us with a
+girl's _naivete_ instead of a woman's tenderness. She affords a single
+triumph; with a woman there is resistance upon resistance to overcome;
+she has but joy and tears, a woman has rapture and remorse.
+
+A girl cannot play the part of a mistress unless she is so corrupt
+that we turn from her with loathing; a woman has a thousand ways of
+preserving her power and her dignity; she has risked so much for love,
+that she must bid him pass through his myriad transformations, while her
+too submissive rival gives a sense of too serene security which palls.
+If the one sacrifices her maidenly pride, the other immolates the honor
+of a whole family. A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that
+all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry is endless,
+she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of
+man's vanity, the novice responds but to one.
+
+And there are terrors, fears, and hesitations--trouble and storm in the
+love of a woman of thirty years, never to be found in a young girl's
+love. At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back the esteem
+she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her thoughts are
+full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids him make it
+glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, or rise in
+pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young girl can
+only make moan. And with all the advantages of her position, the woman
+of thirty can be a girl again, for she can play all parts, assume a
+girl's bashfulness, and grow the fairer even for a mischance.
+
+Between these two feminine types lies the immeasurable difference which
+separates the foreseen from the unforeseen, strength from weakness. The
+woman of thirty satisfies every requirement; the young girl must satisfy
+none, under penalty of ceasing to be a young girl. Such ideas as these,
+developing in a young man's mind, help to strengthen the strongest of
+all passions, a passion in which all spontaneous and natural feeling is
+blended with the artificial sentiment created by conventional manners.
+
+The most important and decisive step in a woman's life is the very
+one that she invariably regards as the most insignificant. After her
+marriage she is no longer her own mistress, she is the queen and
+the bond-slave of the domestic hearth. The sanctity of womanhood is
+incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman
+emancipation means corruption. If you give a stranger the right of entry
+into the sanctuary of home, do you not put yourself at his mercy? How
+then if she herself bids him enter it? Is not this an offence, or, to
+speak more accurately, a first step towards an offence? You must
+either accept this theory with all its consequences, or absolve illicit
+passion. French society hitherto has chosen the third and middle course
+of looking on and laughing when offences come, apparently upon the
+Spartan principle of condoning the theft and punishing clumsiness.
+And this system, it may be, is a very wise one. 'Tis a most appalling
+punishment to have all your neighbors pointing the finger of scorn
+at you, a punishment that a woman feels in her very heart. Women are
+tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without
+esteem they cannot exist, esteem is the first demand that they make
+of love. The most corrupt among them feels that she must, in the first
+place, pledge the future to buy absolution for the past, and strives
+to make her lover understand that only for irresistible bliss can she
+barter the respect which the world henceforth will refuse to her.
+
+Some such reflections cross the mind of any woman who for the first time
+and alone receives a visit from a young man; and this especially when,
+like Charles de Vandenesse, the visitor is handsome or clever. And
+similarly there are not many young men who would fail to base some
+secret wish on one of the thousand and one ideas which justify the
+instinct that attracts them to a beautiful, witty, and unhappy woman
+like the Marquise d'Aiglemont.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont, therefore, felt troubled when M. de Vandenesse was
+announced; and as for him, he was almost confused in spite of the
+assurance which is like a matter of costume for a diplomatist. But not
+for long. The Marquise took refuge at once in the friendliness of manner
+which women use as a defence against the misinterpretations of fatuity,
+a manner which admits of no afterthought, while it paves the way to
+sentiment (to make use of a figure of speech), tempering the transition
+through the ordinary forms of politeness. In this ambiguous position,
+where the four roads leading respectively to Indifference, Respect,
+Wonder, and Passion meet, a woman may stay as long as she pleases, but
+only at thirty years does she understand all the possibilities of the
+situation. Laughter, tenderness, and jest are all permitted to her at
+the crossing of the ways; she has acquired the tact by which she finds
+all the responsive chords in a man's nature, and skill in judging the
+sounds which she draws forth. Her silence is as dangerous as her speech.
+You will never read her at that age, nor discover if she is frank or
+false, nor how far she is serious in her admissions or merely laughing
+at you. She gives you the right to engage in a game of fence with her,
+and suddenly by a glance, a gesture of proved potency, she closes the
+combat and turns from you with your secret in her keeping, free to offer
+you up in a jest, free to interest herself in you, safe alike in her
+weakness and your strength.
+
+Although the Marquise d'Aiglemont took up her position upon this neutral
+ground during the first interview, she knew how to preserve a high
+womanly dignity. The sorrows of which she never spoke seemed to hang
+over her assumed gaiety like a light cloud obscuring the sun. When
+Vandenesse went out, after a conversation which he had enjoyed more than
+he had thought possible, he carried with him the conviction that this
+was like to be too costly a conquest for his aspirations.
+
+"It would mean sentiment from here to yonder," he thought, "and
+correspondence enough to wear out a deputy second-clerk on his
+promotion. And yet if I really cared----"
+
+Luckless phrase that has been the ruin of many an infatuated mortal. In
+France the way to love lies through self-love. Charles went back to Mme.
+d'Aiglemont, and imagined that she showed symptoms of pleasure in his
+conversion. And then, instead of giving himself up like a boy to the joy
+of falling in love, he tried to play a double role. He did his best
+to act passion and to keep cool enough to analyze the progress of this
+flirtation, to be lover and diplomatist at once; but youth and hot blood
+and analysis could only end in one way, over head and ears in love; for,
+natural or artificial, the Marquise was more than his match. Each time
+he went out from Mme. d'Aiglemont, he strenuously held himself to his
+distrust, and submitted the progressive situations of his case to a
+rigorous scrutiny fatal to his own emotions.
+
+"To-day she gave me to understand that she has been very unhappy and
+lonely," said he to himself, after the third visit, "and that but for
+her little girl she would have longed for death. She was perfectly
+resigned. Now as I am neither her brother nor her spiritual director,
+why should she confide her troubles to _me_? She loves me."
+
+Two days later he came away apostrophizing modern manners.
+
+"Love takes on the hue of every age. In 1822 love is a doctrinaire.
+Instead of proving love by deeds, as in times past, we have taken to
+argument and rhetoric and debate. Women's tactics are reduced to three
+shifts. In the first place, they declare that we cannot love as they
+love. (Coquetry! the Marquise simply threw it at me, like a challenge,
+this evening!) Next they grow pathetic, to appeal to our natural
+generosity or self-love; for does it not flatter a young man's vanity to
+console a woman for a great calamity? And lastly, they have a craze for
+virginity. She must have thought that I thought her very innocent. My
+good faith is like to become an excellent speculation."
+
+But a day came when every suspicious idea was exhausted. He asked
+himself whether the Marquise was not sincere; whether so much suffering
+could be feigned, and why she should act the part of resignation? She
+lived in complete seclusion; she drank in silence of a cup of sorrow
+scarcely to be guessed unless from the accent of some chance exclamation
+in a voice always well under control. From that moment Charles felt a
+keen interest in Mme. d'Aiglemont. And yet, though his visits had come
+to be a recognized thing, and in some sort a necessity to them both,
+and though the hour was kept free by tacit agreement, Vandenesse still
+thought that this woman with whom he was in love was more clever than
+sincere. "Decidedly, she is an uncommonly clever woman," he used to say
+to himself as he went away.
+
+When he came into the room, there was the Marquise in her favorite
+attitude, melancholy expressed in her whole form. She made no movement
+when he entered, only raised her eyes and looked full at him, but the
+glance that she gave him was like a smile. Mme. d'Aiglemont's manner
+meant confidence and sincere friendship, but of love there was no trace.
+Charles sat down and found nothing to say. A sensation for which no
+language exists troubled him.
+
+"What is the matter with you?" she asked in a softened voice.
+
+"Nothing.... Yes; I am thinking of something of which, as yet, you have
+not thought at all."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Why--the Congress is over."
+
+"Well," she said, "and ought you to have been at the Congress?"
+
+A direct answer would have been the most eloquent and delicate
+declaration of love; but Charles did not make it. Before the candid
+friendship in Mme. d'Aiglemont's face all the calculations of vanity,
+the hopes of love, and the diplomatist's doubts died away. She did not
+suspect, or she seemed not to suspect, his love for her; and Charles,
+in utter confusion turning upon himself, was forced to admit that he had
+said and done nothing which could warrant such a belief on her part. For
+M. de Vandenesse that evening, the Marquise was, as she had always been,
+simple and friendly, sincere in her sorrow, glad to have a friend, proud
+to find a nature responsive to her own--nothing more. It had not entered
+her mind that a woman could yield twice; she had known love--love lay
+bleeding still in the depths of her heart, but she did not imagine that
+bliss could bring her its rapture twice, for she believed not merely
+in the intellect, but in the soul; and for her love was no simple
+attraction; it drew her with all noble attractions.
+
+In a moment Charles became a young man again, enthralled by the splendor
+of a nature so lofty. He wished for a fuller initiation into the secret
+history of a life blighted rather by fate than by her own fault. Mme.
+d'Aiglemont heard him ask the cause of the overwhelming sorrow which had
+blended all the harmonies of sadness with her beauty; she gave him one
+glance, but that searching look was like a seal set upon some solemn
+compact.
+
+"Ask no more such questions of me," she said. "Four years ago, on
+this very day, the man who loved me, for whom I would have given up
+everything, even my own self-respect, died, and died to save my name.
+That love was still young and pure and full of illusions when it came to
+an end. Before I gave way to passion--and never was a woman so urged by
+fate--I had been drawn into the mistake that ruins many a girl's life,
+a marriage with a man whose agreeable manners concealed his emptiness.
+Marriage plucked my hopes away one by one. And now, to-day, I have
+forfeited happiness through marriage, as well as the happiness styled
+criminal, and I have known no happiness. Nothing is left to me. If I
+could not die, at least I ought to be faithful to my memories."
+
+No tears came with the words. Her eyes fell, and there was a slight
+twisting of the fingers interclasped, according to her wont. It was
+simply said, but in her voice there was a note of despair, deep as
+her love seemed to have been, which left Charles without a hope. The
+dreadful story of a life told in three sentences, with that twisting of
+the fingers for all comment, the might of anguish in a fragile woman,
+the dark depths masked by a fair face, the tears of four years of
+mourning fascinated Vandenesse; he sat silent and diminished in the
+presence of her woman's greatness and nobleness, seeing not the physical
+beauty so exquisite, so perfectly complete, but the soul so great in
+its power to feel. He had found, at last, the ideal of his fantastic
+imaginings, the ideal so vigorously invoked by all who look on life as
+the raw material of a passion for which many a one seeks ardently, and
+dies before he has grasped the whole of the dreamed-of treasure.
+
+With those words of hers in his ears, in the presence of her sublime
+beauty, his own thoughts seemed poor and narrow. Powerless as he felt
+himself to find words of his own, simple enough and lofty enough to
+scale the heights of this exaltation, he took refuge in platitudes as to
+the destiny of women.
+
+"Madame, we must either forget our pain, or hollow out a tomb for
+ourselves."
+
+But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being
+essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the
+other is infinite. To set to work to reason where you are required to
+feel, is the mark of a limited nature. Vandenesse therefore held his
+peace, sat awhile with his eyes fixed upon her, then came away. A prey
+to novel thoughts which exalted woman for him, he was in something the
+same position as a painter who has taken the vulgar studio model for
+a type of womanhood, and suddenly confronts the _Mnemosyne_ of the
+Musee--that noblest and least appreciated of antique statues.
+
+Charles de Vandenesse was deeply in love. He loved Mme. d'Aiglemont with
+the loyalty of youth, with the fervor that communicates such ineffable
+charm to a first passion, with a simplicity of heart of which a man only
+recovers some fragments when he loves again at a later day. Delicious
+first passion of youth, almost always deliciously savored by the woman
+who calls it forth; for at the golden prime of thirty, from the poetic
+summit of a woman's life, she can look out over the whole course of
+love--backwards into the past, forwards into the future--and, knowing
+all the price to be paid for love, enjoys her bliss with the dread of
+losing it ever present with her. Her soul is still fair with her waning
+youth, and passion daily gathers strength from the dismaying prospect of
+the coming days.
+
+"This is love," Vandenesse said to himself this time as he left the
+Marquise, "and for my misfortune I love a woman wedded to her memories.
+It is hard work to struggle against a dead rival, never present to
+make blunders and fall out of favor, nothing of him left but his better
+qualities. What is it but a sort of high treason against the Ideal to
+attempt to break the charm of memory, to destroy the hopes that survive
+a lost lover, precisely because he only awakened longings, and all that
+is loveliest and most enchanting in love?"
+
+These sober reflections, due to the discouragement and dread of failure
+with which love begins in earnest, were the last expiring effort of
+diplomatic reasoning. Thenceforward he knew no afterthoughts, he was the
+plaything of his love, and lost himself in the nothings of that strange
+inexplicable happiness which is full fed by a chance word, by silence,
+or a vague hope. He tried to love Platonically, came daily to breathe
+the air that she breathed, became almost a part of her house, and went
+everywhere with her, slave as he was of a tyrannous passion compounded
+of egoism and devotion of the completest. Love has its own instinct,
+finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way
+to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay or turn aside. If
+feeling is sincere, its destiny is not doubtful. Let a woman begin to
+think that her life depends on the sincerity or fervor or earnestness
+which her lover shall put into his longings, and is there not sufficient
+in the thought to put her through all the tortures of dread? It is
+impossible for a woman, be she wife or mother, to be secure from a young
+man's love. One thing it is within her power to do--to refuse to see him
+as soon as she learns a secret which she never fails to guess. But
+this is too decided a step to take at an age when marriage has become a
+prosaic and tiresome yoke, and conjugal affection is something less than
+tepid (if indeed her husband has not already begun to neglect her). Is a
+woman plain? she is flattered by a love which gives her fairness. Is she
+young and charming? She is only to be won by a fascination as great
+as her own power to charm, that is to say, a fascination well-nigh
+irresistible. Is she virtuous? There is a love sublime in its
+earthliness which leads her to find something like absolution in the
+very greatness of the surrender and glory in a hard struggle. Everything
+is a snare. No lesson, therefore, is too severe where the temptation is
+so strong. The seclusion in which the Greeks and Orientals kept and keep
+their women, an example more and more followed in modern England, is the
+only safeguard of domestic morality; but under this system there is
+an end of all the charm of social intercourse; and society, and good
+breeding, and refinement of manners become impossible. The nations must
+take their choice.
+
+So a few months went by, and Mme. d'Aiglemont discovered that her life
+was closely bound with this young man's life, without overmuch confusion
+in her surprise, and felt with something almost like pleasure that she
+shared his tastes and his thoughts. Had she adopted Vandenesse's ideas?
+Or was it Vandenesse who had made her lightest whims his own? She was
+not careful to inquire. She had been swept out already into the current
+of passion, and yet this adorable woman told herself with the confident
+reiteration of misgiving;
+
+"Ah! no. I will be faithful to him who died for me."
+
+Pascal said that "the doubt of God implies belief in God." And similarly
+it may be said that a woman only parleys when she has surrendered. A day
+came when the Marquise admitted to herself that she was loved, and
+with that admission came a time of wavering among countless conflicting
+thoughts and feelings. The superstitions of experience spoke their
+language. Should she be happy? Was it possible that she should find
+happiness outside the limits of the laws which society rightly or
+wrongly has set up for humanity to live by? Hitherto her cup of life had
+been full of bitterness. Was there any happy issue possible for the
+ties which united two human beings held apart by social conventions? And
+might not happiness be bought too dear? Still, this so ardently desired
+happiness, for which it is so natural to seek, might perhaps be found
+after all. Curiosity is always retained on the lover's side in the suit.
+The secret tribunal was still sitting when Vandenesse appeared, and his
+presence put the metaphysical spectre, reason, to flight.
+
+If such are the successive transformations through which a sentiment,
+transient though it be, passes in a young man and a woman of thirty,
+there comes a moment of time when the shades of difference blend into
+each other, when all reasonings end in a single and final reflection
+which is lost and absorbed in the desire which it confirms. Then the
+longer the resistance, the mightier the voice of love. And here endeth
+this lesson, or rather this study made from the _ecorche_, to borrow a
+most graphic term from the studio, for in this history it is not so much
+intended to portray love as to lay bare its mechanism and its dangers.
+From this moment every day adds color to these dry bones, clothes them
+again with living flesh and blood and the charm of youth, and puts
+vitality into their movements; till they glow once more with the beauty,
+the persuasive grace of sentiment, the loveliness of life.
+
+
+
+Charles found Mme. d'Aiglemont absorbed in thought, and to his "What is
+it?" spoken in thrilling tones grown persuasive with the heart's soft
+magic, she was careful not to reply. The delicious question bore witness
+to the perfect unity of their spirits; and the Marquise felt, with a
+woman's wonderful intuition, that to give any expression to the sorrow
+in her heart would be to make an advance. If, even now, each one
+of those words was fraught with significance for them both, in what
+fathomless depths might she not plunge at the first step? She read
+herself with a clear and lucid glance. She was silent, and Vandenesse
+followed her example.
+
+"I am not feeling well," she said at last, taking alarm at the pause
+fraught with such great moment for them both, when the language of the
+eyes completely filled the blank left by the helplessness of speech.
+
+"Madame," said Charles, and his voice was tender but unsteady with
+strong feeling, "soul and body are both dependent on each other. If you
+were happy, you would be young and fresh. Why do you refuse to ask of
+love all that love has taken from you? You think that your life is over
+when it is only just beginning. Trust yourself to a friend's care. It is
+so sweet to be loved."
+
+"I am old already," she said; "there is no reason why I should not
+continue to suffer as in the past. And 'one must love,' do you say?
+Well, I must not, and I cannot. Your friendship has put some sweetness
+into my life, but beside you I care for no one, no one could efface my
+memories. A friend I accept; I should fly from a lover. Besides, would
+it be a very generous thing to do, to exchange a withered heart for a
+young heart; to smile upon illusions which now I cannot share, to cause
+happiness in which I should either have no belief, or tremble to lose?
+I should perhaps respond to his devotion with egoism, should weigh and
+deliberate while he felt; my memory would resent the poignancy of his
+happiness. No, if you love once, that love is never replaced, you see.
+Indeed, who would have my heart at this price?"
+
+There was a tinge of heartless coquetry in the words, the last effort of
+discretion.
+
+"If he loses courage, well and good, I shall live alone and faithful."
+The thought came from the very depths of the woman, for her it was the
+too slender willow twig caught in vain by a swimmer swept out by the
+current.
+
+Vandenesse's involuntary shudder at her dictum plead more eloquently for
+him than all his past assiduity. Nothing moves a woman so much as the
+discovery of a gracious delicacy in us, such a refinement of sentiment
+as her own, for a woman the grace and delicacy are sure tokens of truth.
+Charles' start revealed the sincerity of his love. Mme. d'Aiglemont
+learned the strength of his affection from the intensity of his pain.
+
+"Perhaps you are right," he said coldly. "New love, new vexation of
+spirit."
+
+Then he changed the subject, and spoke of indifferent matters; but he
+was visibly moved, and he concentrated his gaze on Mme. d'Aiglemont as
+if he were seeing her for the last time.
+
+"Adieu, madame," he said, with emotion in his voice.
+
+"_Au revoir_," said she, with that subtle coquetry, the secret of a very
+few among women.
+
+He made no answer and went.
+
+When Charles was no longer there, when his empty chair spoke for him,
+regrets flocked in upon her, and she found fault with herself. Passion
+makes an immense advance as soon as a woman persuades herself that she
+has failed somewhat in generosity or hurt a noble nature. In love there
+is never any need to be on our guard against the worst in us; that is
+a safeguard; a woman only surrenders at the summons of a virtue. "The
+floor of hell is paved with good intentions,"--it is no preacher's
+paradox.
+
+Vandenesse stopped away for several days. Every evening at the
+accustomed hour the Marquise sat expectant in remorseful impatience.
+She could not write--that would be a declaration, and, moreover, her
+instinct told her that he would come back. On the sixth day he was
+announced, and never had she heard the name with such delight. Her joy
+frightened her.
+
+"You have punished me well," she said, addressing him.
+
+Vandenesse gazed at her in astonishment.
+
+"Punished?" he echoed. "And for what?" He understood her quite well,
+but he meant to be avenged for all that he had suffered as soon as she
+suspected it.
+
+"Why have you not come to see me?" she demanded with a smile.
+
+"Then you have seen no visitors?" asked he, parrying the question.
+
+"Yes. M. de Ronquerolles and M. de Marsay and young d'Escrignon came
+and stayed for nearly two hours, the first two yesterday, the last this
+morning. And besides, I have had a call, I believe, from Mme. Firmiani
+and from your sister, Mme. de Listomere."
+
+Here was a new infliction, torture which none can comprehend unless they
+know love as a fierce and all-invading tyrant whose mildest symptom is
+a monstrous jealousy, a perpetual desire to snatch away the beloved from
+every other influence.
+
+"What!" thought he to himself, "she has seen visitors, she has been
+with happy creatures, and talking to them, while I was unhappy and all
+alone."
+
+He buried his annoyance forthwith, and consigned love to the depths of
+his heart, like a coffin to the sea. His thoughts were of the kind that
+never find expression in words; they pass through the mind swiftly as
+a deadly acid, that poisons as it evaporates and vanishes. His brow,
+however, was over-clouded; and Mme. d'Aiglemont, guided by her woman's
+instinct, shared his sadness without understanding it. She had hurt him,
+unwittingly, as Vandenesse knew. He talked over his position with her,
+as if his jealousy were one of those hypothetical cases which lovers
+love to discuss. Then the Marquise understood it all. She was so deeply
+moved, that she could not keep back the tears--and so these lovers
+entered the heaven of love.
+
+Heaven and Hell are two great imaginative conceptions formulating our
+ideas of Joy and Sorrow--those two poles about which human existence
+revolves. Is not heaven a figure of speech covering now and for
+evermore an infinite of human feeling impossible to express save in its
+accidents--since that Joy is one? And what is Hell but the symbol of
+our infinite power to suffer tortures so diverse that of our pain it is
+possible to fashion works of art, for no two human sorrows are alike?
+
+One evening the two lovers sat alone and side by side, silently watching
+one of the fairest transformations of the sky, a cloudless heaven taking
+hues of pale gold and purple from the last rays of the sunset. With the
+slow fading of the daylight, sweet thoughts seem to awaken, and soft
+stirrings of passion, and a mysterious sense of trouble in the midst of
+calm. Nature sets before us vague images of bliss, bidding us enjoy
+the happiness within our reach, or lament it when it has fled. In those
+moments fraught with enchantment, when the tender light in the canopy
+of the sky blends in harmony with the spells working within, it is
+difficult to resist the heart's desires grown so magically potent. Cares
+are blunted, joy becomes ecstasy; pain, intolerable anguish. The pomp
+of sunset gives the signal for confessions and draws them forth. Silence
+grows more dangerous than speech for it gives to eyes all the power of
+the infinite of the heavens reflected in them. And for speech, the least
+word has irresistible might. Is not the light infused into the voice and
+purple into the glances? Is not heaven within us, or do we feel that we
+are in the heavens?
+
+Vandenesse and Julie--for so she had allowed herself to be called
+for the past few days by him whom she loved to speak of as
+Charles--Vandenesse and Julie were talking together, but they had
+drifted very far from their original subject; and if their spoken words
+had grown meaningless they listened in delight to the unspoken thoughts
+that lurked in the sounds. Her hand lay in his. She had abandoned it to
+him without a thought that she had granted a proof of love.
+
+Together they leaned forward to look out upon a majestic cloud country,
+full of snows and glaciers and fantastic mountain peaks with gray stains
+of shadow on their sides, a picture composed of sharp contrasts between
+fiery red and the shadows of darkness, filling the skies with a fleeting
+vision of glory which cannot be reproduced--magnificent swaddling-bands
+of sunrise, bright shrouds of the dying sun. As they leaned Julie's hair
+brushed lightly against Vandenesse's cheek. She felt that light contact,
+and shuddered violently, and he even more, for imperceptibly they both
+had reached one of those inexplicable crises when quiet has wrought
+upon the senses until every faculty of perception is so keen that the
+slightest shock fills the heart lost in melancholy with sadness that
+overflows in tears; or raises joy to ecstasy in a heart that is lost
+in the vertigo of love. Almost involuntarily Julie pressed her lover's
+hand. That wooing pressure gave courage to his timidity. All the joy of
+the present, all the hopes of the future were blended in the emotion
+of a first caress, the bashful trembling kiss that Mme. d'Aiglemont
+received upon her cheek. The slighter the concession, the more dangerous
+and insinuating it was. For their double misfortune it was only too
+sincere a revelation. Two noble natures had met and blended, drawn
+each to each by every law of natural attraction, held apart by every
+ordinance.
+
+General d'Aiglemont came in at that very moment.
+
+"The Ministry has gone out," he said. "Your uncle will be in the
+new cabinet. So you stand an uncommonly good chance of an embassy,
+Vandenesse."
+
+Charles and Julie looked at each other and flushed red. That blush was
+one more tie to unite them; there was one thought and one remorse in
+either mind; between two lovers guilty of a kiss there is a bond quite
+as strong and terrible as the bond between two robbers who have murdered
+a man. Something had to be said by way of reply.
+
+"I do not care to leave Paris now," Charles said.
+
+"We know why," said the General, with the knowing air of a man who
+discovers a secret. "You do not like to leave your uncle, because you do
+not wish to lose your chance of succeeding to the title."
+
+The Marquise took refuge in her room, and in her mind passed a pitiless
+verdict upon her husband.
+
+"His stupidity is really beyond anything!"
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE FINGER OF GOD
+
+Between the Barriere d'Italie and the Barriere de la Sante, along the
+boulevard which leads to the Jardin des Plantes, you have a view of
+Paris fit to send an artist or the tourist, the most _blase_ in matters
+of landscape, into ecstasies. Reach the slightly higher ground where the
+line of boulevard, shaded by tall, thick-spreading trees, curves with
+the grace of some green and silent forest avenue, and you see spread
+out at your feet a deep valley populous with factories looking almost
+countrified among green trees and the brown streams of the Bievre or the
+Gobelins.
+
+On the opposite slope, beneath some thousands of roofs packed close
+together like heads in a crowd, lurks the squalor of the Faubourg
+Saint-Marceau. The imposing cupola of the Pantheon, and the grim
+melancholy dome of the Val-du-Grace, tower proudly up above a whole
+town in itself, built amphitheatre-wise; every tier being grotesquely
+represented by a crooked line of street, so that the two public
+monuments look like a huge pair of giants dwarfing into insignificance
+the poor little houses and the tallest poplars in the valley. To your
+left behold the observatory, the daylight, pouring athwart its windows
+and galleries, producing such fantastical strange effects that the
+building looks like a black spectral skeleton. Further yet in the
+distance rises the elegant lantern tower of the Invalides, soaring
+up between the bluish pile of the Luxembourg and the gray tours of
+Saint-Sulpice. From this standpoint the lines of the architecture are
+blended with green leaves and gray shadows, and change every moment with
+every aspect of the heavens, every alteration of light or color in the
+sky. Afar, the skyey spaces themselves seem to be full of buildings;
+near, wind the serpentine curves of waving trees and green footpaths.
+
+Away to your right, through a great gap in this singular landscape,
+you see the canal Saint-Martin, a long pale stripe with its edging
+of reddish stone quays and fringes of lime avenue. The long rows of
+buildings beside it, in genuine Roman style, are the public granaries.
+
+Beyond, again, on the very last plane of all, see the smoke-dimmed
+slopes of Belleville covered with houses and windmills, which blend
+their freaks of outline with the chance effects of cloud. And still,
+between that horizon, vague as some childish recollection, and the
+serried range of roofs in the valley, a whole city lies out of sight: a
+huge city, engulfed, as it were, in a vast hollow between the pinnacles
+of the Hopital de la Pitie and the ridge line of the Cimetiere de l'Est,
+between suffering on the one hand and death on the other; a city sending
+up a smothered roar like Ocean grumbling at the foot of a cliff, as if
+to let you know that "I am here!"
+
+When the sunlight pours like a flood over this strip of Paris, purifying
+and etherealizing the outlines, kindling answering lights here and there
+in the window panes, brightening the red tiles, flaming about the golden
+crosses, whitening walls and transforming the atmosphere into a gauzy
+veil, calling up rich contrasts of light and fantastic shadow; when the
+sky is blue and earth quivers in the heat, and the bells are pealing,
+then you shall see one of the eloquent fairy scenes which stamp
+themselves for ever on the imagination, a scene that shall find as
+fanatical worshipers as the wondrous views of Naples and Byzantium or
+the isles of Florida. Nothing is wanting to complete the harmony, the
+murmur of the world of men and the idyllic quiet of solitude, the voices
+of a million human creatures and the voice of God. There lies a whole
+capital beneath the peaceful cypresses of Pere-Lachaise.
+
+The landscape lay in all its beauty, sparkling in the spring sunlight,
+as I stood looking out over it one morning, my back against a huge
+elm-tree that flung its yellow flowers to the wind. At the sight of the
+rich and glorious view before me, I thought bitterly of the scorn with
+which even in our literature we affect to hold this land of ours, and
+poured maledictions on the pitiable plutocrats who fall out of love with
+fair France, and spend their gold to acquire the right of sneering at
+their own country, by going through Italy at a gallop and inspecting
+that desecrated land through an opera-glass. I cast loving eyes on
+modern Paris. I was beginning to dream dreams, when the sound of a kiss
+disturbed the solitude and put philosophy to flight. Down the sidewalk,
+along the steep bank, above the rippling water, I saw beyond the
+Ponte des Gobelins the figure of a woman, dressed with the daintiest
+simplicity; she was still young, as it seemed to me, and the blithe
+gladness of the landscape was reflected in her sweet face. Her
+companion, a handsome young man, had just set down a little boy. A
+prettier child has never been seen, and to this day I do not know
+whether it was the little one or his mother who received the kiss. In
+their young faces, in their eyes, their smile, their every movement, you
+could read the same deep and tender thought. Their arms were interlaced
+with such glad swiftness; they drew close together with such marvelous
+unanimity of impulse that, conscious of nothing but themselves, they did
+not so much as see me. A second child, however--a little girl, who had
+turned her back upon them in sullen discontent--threw me a glance, and
+the expression in her eyes startled me. She was as pretty and engaging
+as the little brother whom she left to run about by himself, sometimes
+before, sometimes after their mother and her companion; but her charm
+was less childish, and now, as she stood mute and motionless, her
+attitude and demeanor suggested a torpid snake. There was something
+indescribably mechanical in the way in which the pretty woman and her
+companion paced up and down. In absence of mind, probably, they were
+content to walk to and fro between the little bridge and a carriage that
+stood waiting nearby at a corner in the boulevard, turning, stopping
+short now and again, looking into each other's eyes, or breaking into
+laughter as their casual talk grew lively or languid, grave or gay.
+
+I watched this delicious picture a while from my hiding-place by the
+great elm-tree, and should have turned away no doubt and respected their
+privacy, if it had not been for a chance discovery. In the face of the
+brooding, silent, elder child I saw traces of thought overdeep for her
+age. When her mother and the young man at her side turned and came
+near, her head was frequently lowered; the furtive sidelong glances
+of intelligence that she gave the pair and the child her brother were
+nothing less than extraordinary. Sometimes the pretty woman or her
+friend would stroke the little boy's fair curls, or lay a caressing
+finger against the baby throat or the white collar as he played at
+keeping step with them; and no words can describe the shrewd subtlety,
+the ingenuous malice, the fierce intensity which lighted up that pallid
+little face with the faint circles already round the eyes. Truly there
+was a man's power of passion in the strange-looking, delicate little
+girl. Here were traces of suffering or of thought in her; and which
+is the more certain token of death when life is in blossom--physical
+suffering, or the malady of too early thought preying upon a soul as yet
+in bud? Perhaps a mother knows. For my own part, I know of nothing more
+dreadful to see than an old man's thoughts on a child's forehead; even
+blasphemy from girlish lips is less monstrous.
+
+The almost stupid stolidity of this child who had begun to think
+already, her rare gestures, everything about her, interested me. I
+scrutinized her curiously. Then the common whim of the observer drew
+me to compare her with her brother, and to note their likeness and
+unlikeness.
+
+Her brown hair and dark eyes and look of precocious power made a rich
+contrast with the little one's fair curled head and sea-green eyes and
+winning helplessness. She, perhaps, was seven or eight years of age; the
+boy was full four years younger. Both children were dressed alike; but
+here again, looking closely, I noticed a difference. It was very slight,
+a little thing enough; but in the light of after events I saw that it
+meant a whole romance in the past, a whole tragedy to come. The little
+brown-haired maid wore a linen collar with a plain hem, her brother's
+was edged with dainty embroidery, that was all; but therein lay the
+confession of a heart's secret, a tacit preference which a child can
+read in the mother's inmost soul as clearly as if the spirit of God
+revealed it. The fair-haired child, careless and glad, looked almost
+like a girl, his skin was so fair and fresh, his movements so graceful,
+his look so sweet; while his older sister, in spite of her energy, in
+spite of the beauty of her features and her dazzling complexion, looked
+like a sickly little boy. In her bright eyes there was none of the humid
+softness which lends such charm to children's faces; they seemed, like
+courtiers' eyes, to be dried by some inner fire; and in her pallor there
+was a certain swarthy olive tint, the sign of vigorous character. Twice
+her little brother came to her, holding out a tiny hunting-horn with a
+touching charm, a winning look, and wistful expression, which would
+have sent Charlet into ecstasies, but she only scowled in answer to his
+"Here, Helene, will you take it?" so persuasively spoken. The little
+girl, so sombre and vehement beneath her apparent indifference,
+shuddered, and even flushed red when her brother came near her; but
+the little one seemed not to notice his sister's dark mood, and his
+unconsciousness, blended with earnestness, marked a final difference
+in character between the child and the little girl, whose brow was
+overclouded already by the gloom of a man's knowledge and cares.
+
+"Mamma, Helene will not play," cried the little one, seizing an
+opportunity to complain while the two stood silent on the Ponte des
+Gobelins.
+
+"Let her alone, Charles; you know very well that she is always cross."
+
+Tears sprang to Helene's eyes at the words so thoughtlessly uttered
+by her mother as she turned abruptly to the young man by her side. The
+child devoured the speech in silence, but she gave her brother one of
+those sagacious looks that seemed inexplicable to me, glancing with a
+sinister expression from the bank where he stood to the Bievre, then at
+the bridge and the view, and then at me.
+
+I was afraid lest my presence should disturb the happy couple; I slipped
+away and took refuge behind a thicket of elder trees, which completely
+screened me from all eyes. Sitting quietly on the summit of the bank, I
+watched the ever-changing landscape and the fierce-looking little girl,
+for with my head almost on a level with the boulevard I could still see
+her through the leaves. Helene seemed uneasy over my disappearance,
+her dark eyes looked for me down the alley and behind the trees with
+indefinable curiosity. What was I to her? Then Charles' baby laughter
+rang out like a bird's song in the silence. The tall, young man, with
+the same fair hair, was dancing him in his arms, showering kisses upon
+him, and the meaningless baby words of that "little language" which
+rises to our lips when we play with children. The mother looked on
+smiling, now and then, doubtless, putting in some low word that came
+up from the heart, for her companion would stop short in his full
+happiness, and the blue eyes that turned towards her were full of
+glowing light and love and worship. Their voices, blending with the
+child's voice, reached me with a vague sense of a caress. The three
+figures, charming in themselves, composed a lovely scene in a glorious
+landscape, filling it with a pervasive unimaginable grace. A delicately
+fair woman, radiant with smiles, a child of love, a young man with the
+irresistible charm of youth, a cloudless sky; nothing was wanting in
+nature to complete a perfect harmony for the delight of the soul. I
+found myself smiling as if their happiness had been my own.
+
+The clocks struck nine. The young man gave a tender embrace to his
+companion, and went towards the tilbury which an old servant drove
+slowly to meet him. The lady had grown grave and almost sad. The child's
+prattle sounded unchecked through the last farewell kisses. Then the
+tilbury rolled away, and the lady stood motionless, listening to the
+sound of the wheels, watching the little cloud of dust raised by its
+passage along the road. Charles ran down the green pathway back to the
+bridge to join his sister. I heard his silver voice calling to her.
+
+"Why did you not come to say good-bye to my good friend?" cried he.
+
+Helene looked up. Never surely did such hatred gleam from a child's
+eyes as from hers at that moment when she turned them on the brother who
+stood beside her on the bank side. She gave him an angry push. Charles
+lost his footing on the steep slope, stumbled over the roots of a tree,
+and fell headlong forwards, dashing his forehead on the sharp-edged
+stones of the embankment, and, covered with blood, disappeared over the
+edge into the muddy river. The turbid water closed over a fair, bright
+head with a shower of splashes; one sharp shriek after another rang in
+my ears; then the sounds were stifled by the thick stream, and the poor
+child sank with a dull sound as if a stone had been thrown into the
+water. The accident had happened with more than lightning swiftness. I
+sprang down the footpath, and Helene, stupefied with horror, shrieked
+again and again:
+
+"Mamma! mamma!"
+
+The mother was there at my side. She had flown to the spot like a bird.
+But neither a mother's eyes nor mine could find the exact place where
+the little one had gone under. There was a wide space of black hurrying
+water, and below in the bed of the Bievre ten feet of mud. There was
+not the smallest possibility of saving the child. No one was stirring at
+that hour on a Sunday morning, and there are neither barges nor anglers
+on the Bievre. There was not a creature in sight, not a pole to plumb
+the filthy stream. What need was there for me to explain how the
+ugly-looking accident had happened--accident or misfortune, whichever
+it might be? Had Helene avenged her father? Her jealousy surely was
+the sword of God. And yet when I looked at the mother I shivered. What
+fearful ordeal awaited her when she should return to her husband, the
+judge before whom she must stand all her days? And here with her was an
+inseparable, incorruptible witness. A child's forehead is transparent,
+a child's face hides no thoughts, and a lie, like a red flame set within
+glows out red that colors even the eyes. But the unhappy woman had not
+thought as yet of the punishment awaiting her at home; she was staring
+into the Bievre.
+
+
+
+Such an event must inevitably send ghastly echoes through a woman's
+life, and here is one of the most terrible of the reverberations that
+troubled Julie's love from time to time.
+
+Several years had gone by. The Marquis de Vandenesse wore mourning for
+his father, and succeeded to his estates. One evening, therefore, after
+dinner it happened that a notary was present in his house. This was
+no pettifogging lawyer after Sterne's pattern, but a very solid,
+substantial notary of Paris, one of your estimable men who do a stupid
+thing pompously, set down a foot heavily upon your private corn, and
+then ask what in the world there is to cry out about? If, by accident,
+they come to know the full extent of the enormity, "Upon my word," cry
+they, "I hadn't a notion!" This was a well-intentioned ass, in short,
+who could see nothing in life but deeds and documents.
+
+Mme. de Aiglemont had been dining with M. de Vandenesse; her husband
+had excused himself before dinner was over, for he was taking his two
+children to the play. They were to go to some Boulevard theatre or
+other, to the Ambigu-Comique or the Gaiete, sensational melodrama being
+judged harmless here in Paris, and suitable pabulum for childhood,
+because innocence is always triumphant in the fifth act. The boy and
+girl had teased their father to be there before the curtain rose, so he
+had left the table before dessert was served.
+
+But the notary, the imperturbable notary, utterly incapable of asking
+himself why Mme. d'Aiglemont should have allowed her husband and
+children to go without her to the play, sat on as if he were screwed to
+his chair. Dinner was over, dessert had been prolonged by discussion,
+and coffee delayed. All these things consumed time, doubtless precious,
+and drew impatient movements from that charming woman; she looked not
+unlike a thoroughbred pawing the ground before a race; but the man of
+law, to whom horses and women were equally unknown quantities, simply
+thought the Marquise a very lively and sparkling personage. So enchanted
+was he to be in the company of a woman of fashion and a political
+celebrity, that he was exerting himself to shine in conversation,
+and taking the lady's forced smile for approbation, talked on with
+unflagging spirit, till the Marquise was almost out of patience.
+
+The master of the house, in concert with the lady, had more than once
+maintained an eloquent silence when the lawyer expected a civil reply;
+but these significant pauses were employed by the talkative nuisance in
+looking for anecdotes in the fire. M. de Vandenesse had recourse to
+his watch; the charming Marquise tried the experiment of fastening her
+bonnet strings, and made as if she would go. But she did not go, and the
+notary, blind and deaf, and delighted with himself, was quite convinced
+that his interesting conversational powers were sufficient to keep the
+lady on the spot.
+
+"I shall certainly have that woman for a client," said he to himself.
+
+Meanwhile the Marquise stood, putting on her gloves, twisting her
+fingers, looking from the equally impatient Marquis de Vandenesse to the
+lawyer, still pounding away. At every pause in the worthy man's fire of
+witticisms the charming pair heaved a sigh of relief, and their looks
+said plainly, "At last! He is really going!"
+
+Nothing of the kind. It was a nightmare which could only end in
+exasperating the two impassioned creatures, on whom the lawyer had
+something of the fascinating effect of a snake on a pair of birds;
+before long they would be driven to cut him short.
+
+The clever notary was giving them the history of the discreditable ways
+in which one du Tillet (a stockbroker then much in favor) had laid
+the foundations of his fortune; all the ins and outs of the whole
+disgraceful business were accurately put before them; and the narrator
+was in the very middle of his tale when M. de Vandenesse heard the clock
+strike nine. Then it became clear to him that his legal adviser was very
+emphatically an idiot who must be sent forthwith about his business. He
+stopped him resolutely with a gesture.
+
+"The tongs, my lord Marquis?" queried the notary, handing the object in
+question to his client.
+
+"No, monsieur, I am compelled to send you away. Mme. d'Aiglemont wishes
+to join her children, and I shall have the honor of escorting her."
+
+"Nine o'clock already! Time goes like a shadow in pleasant company,"
+said the man of law, who had talked on end for the past hour.
+
+He looked for his hat, planted himself before the fire, with a
+suppressed hiccough; and, without heeding the Marquise's withering
+glances, spoke once more to his impatient client:
+
+"To sum up, my lord Marquis. Business before all things. To-morrow,
+then, we must subpoena your brother; we will proceed to make out the
+inventory, and faith, after that----"
+
+So ill had the lawyer understood his instructions, that his impression
+was the exact opposite to the one intended. It was a delicate matter,
+and Vandenesse, in spite of himself, began to put the thick-headed
+notary right. The discussion which followed took up a certain amount of
+time.
+
+"Listen," the diplomatist said at last at a sign from the lady, "You are
+puzzling my brains; come back to-morrow, and if the writ is not issued
+by noon to-morrow, the days of grace will expire, and then--"
+
+As he spoke, a carriage entered the courtyard. The poor woman turned
+sharply away at the sound to hide the tears in her eyes. The Marquis
+rang to give the servant orders to say that he was not at home; but
+before the footman could answer the bell, the lady's husband reappeared.
+He had returned unexpectedly from the Gaiete, and held both children by
+the hand. The little girl's eyes were red; the boy was fretful and very
+cross.
+
+"What can have happened?" asked the Marquise.
+
+"I will tell you by and by," said the General, and catching a glimpse
+through an open door of newspapers on the table in the adjoining
+sitting-room, he went off. The Marquise, at the end of her patience,
+flung herself down on the sofa in desperation. The notary, thinking it
+incumbent upon him to be amiable with the children, spoke to the little
+boy in an insinuating tone:
+
+"Well, my little man, and what is there on at the theatre?"
+
+"_The Valley of the Torrent_," said Gustave sulkily.
+
+"Upon my word and honor," declared the notary, "authors nowadays are
+half crazy. _The Valley of the Torrent_! Why not the Torrent of the
+Valley? It is conceivable that a valley might be without a torrent in
+it; now if they had said the Torrent of the Valley, that would have
+been something clear, something precise, something definite and
+comprehensible. But never mind that. Now, how is the drama to take place
+in a torrent and in a valley? You will tell me that in these days the
+principal attraction lies in the scenic effect, and the title is a
+capital advertisement.--And did you enjoy it, my little friend?" he
+continued, sitting down before the child.
+
+When the notary pursued his inquiries as to the possibilities of a drama
+in the bed of a torrent, the little girl turned slowly away and began to
+cry. Her mother did not notice this in her intense annoyance.
+
+"Oh! yes, monsieur, I enjoyed it very much," said the child. "There is a
+dear little boy in the play, and he was all alone in the world, because
+his papa could not have been his real papa. And when he came to the top
+of the bridge over the torrent, a big, naughty man with a beard, dressed
+all in black, came and threw him into the water. And then Helene began
+to sob and cry, and everybody scolded us, and father brought us away
+quick, quick----"
+
+M. de Vandenesse and the Marquise looked on in dull amazement, as if all
+power to think or move had been suddenly paralyzed.
+
+"Do be quiet, Gustave!" cried the General. "I told you that you were not
+to talk about anything that happened at the play, and you have forgotten
+what I said already."
+
+"Oh, my lord Marquis, your lordship must excuse him," cried the notary.
+"I ought not to have asked questions, but I had no idea--"
+
+"He ought not to have answered them," said the General, looking sternly
+at the child.
+
+It seemed that the Marquise and the master of the house both perfectly
+understood why the children had come back so suddenly. Mme. d'Aiglemont
+looked at her daughter, and rose as if to go to her, but a terrible
+convulsion passed over her face, and all that could be read in it was
+relentless severity.
+
+"That will do, Helene," she said. "Go into the other room, and leave off
+crying."
+
+"What can she have done, poor child!" asked the notary, thinking to
+appease the mother's anger and to stop Helene's tears at one stroke. "So
+pretty as she is, she must be as good as can be; never anything but a
+joy to her mother, I will be bound. Isn't that so, my little girl?"
+
+Helene cowered, looked at her mother, dried her eyes, struggled for
+composure, and took refuge in the next room.
+
+"And you, madame, are too good a mother not to love all your children
+alike. You are too good a woman, besides, to have any of those
+lamentable preferences which have such fatal effects, as we lawyers have
+only too much reason to know. Society goes through our hands; we see its
+passions in that most revolting form, greed. Here it is the mother of a
+family trying to disinherit her husband's children to enrich the others
+whom she loves better; or it is the husband who tries to leave all his
+property to the child who has done his best to earn his mother's hatred.
+And then begin quarrels, and fears, and deeds, and defeasances, and sham
+sales, and trusts, and all the rest of it; a pretty mess, in fact, it
+is pitiable, upon my honor, pitiable! There are fathers that will spend
+their whole lives in cheating their children and robbing their wives.
+Yes, robbing is the only word for it. We were talking of tragedy; oh!
+I can assure you of this that if we were at liberty to tell the real
+reasons of some donations that I know of, our modern dramatists would
+have the material for some sensational _bourgeois_ dramas. How the wife
+manages to get her way, as she invariably does, I cannot think; for in
+spite of appearances, and in spite of their weakness, it is always the
+women who carry the day. Ah! by the way, they don't take _me_ in. I
+always know the reason at the bottom of those predilections which the
+world politely styles 'unaccountable.' But in justice to the husbands, I
+must say that _they_ never discover anything. You will tell me that this
+is a merciful dispens--"
+
+Helene had come back to the drawing-room with her father, and was
+listening attentively. So well did she understand all that was said,
+that she gave her mother a frightened glance, feeling, with a child's
+quick instinct, that these remarks would aggravate the punishment
+hanging over her. The Marquise turned her white face to Vandenesse; and,
+with terror in her eyes, indicated her husband, who stood with his eyes
+fixed absently on the flower pattern of the carpet. The diplomatist,
+accomplished man of the world though he was, could no longer contain his
+wrath, he gave the man of law a withering glance.
+
+"Step this way, sir," he said, and he went hurriedly to the door of the
+ante-chamber; the notary left his sentence half finished, and followed,
+quaking, and the husband and wife were left together.
+
+"Now, sir" said the Marquise de Vandenesse--he banged the drawing-room
+door, and spoke with concentrated rage--"ever since dinner you have done
+nothing but make blunders and talk folly. For heaven's sake, go. You
+will make the most frightful mischief before you have done. If you are
+a clever man in your profession, keep to your profession; and if by any
+chance you should go into society, endeavor to be more circumspect."
+
+With that he went back to the drawing-room, and did not even wish
+the notary good-evening. For a moment that worthy stood dumfounded,
+bewildered, utterly at a loss. Then, when the buzzing in his ears
+subsided, he thought he heard someone moaning in the next room.
+Footsteps came and went, and bells were violently rung. He was by no
+means anxious to meet the Marquis again, and found the use of his
+legs to make good his escape, only to run against a hurrying crowd of
+servants at the door.
+
+"Just the way of all these grand folk," said he to himself outside in
+the street as he looked about for a cab. "They lead you on to talk with
+compliments, and you think you are amusing them. Not a bit of it. They
+treat you insolently; put you at a distance; even put you out at the
+door without scruple. After all, I talked very cleverly, I said nothing
+but what was sensible, well turned, and discreet; and, upon my word, he
+advises me to be more circumspect in future. I will take good care
+of that! Eh! the mischief take it! I am a notary and a member of my
+chamber!--Pshaw! it was an ambassador's fit of temper, nothing is sacred
+for people of that kind. To-morrow he shall explain what he meant by
+saying that I had done nothing but blunder and talk nonsense in his
+house. I will ask him for an explanation--that is, I will ask him
+to explain my mistake. After all is done and said, I am in the wrong
+perhaps---- Upon my word, it is very good of me to cudgel my brains like
+this. What business is it of mine?"
+
+So the notary went home and laid the enigma before his spouse, with a
+complete account of the evening's events related in sequence.
+
+And she replied, "My dear Crottat, His Excellency was perfectly right
+when he said that you had done nothing but blunder and talk folly."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"My dear, if I told you why, it would not prevent you from doing the
+same thing somewhere else to-morrow. I tell you again--talk of nothing
+but business when you go out; that is my advice to you."
+
+"If you will not tell me, I shall ask him to-morrow--"
+
+"Why, dear me! the veriest noodle is careful to hide a thing of that
+kind, and do you suppose that an ambassador will tell you about
+it? Really, Crottat, I have never known you so utterly devoid of
+common-sense."
+
+"Thank you, my dear."
+
+
+
+
+V. TWO MEETINGS
+
+One of Napoleon's orderly staff-officers, who shall be known in this
+history only as the General or the Marquis, had come to spend the spring
+at Versailles. He made a large fortune under the Restoration; and as
+his place at Court would not allow him to go very far from Paris, he had
+taken a country house between the church and the barrier of Montreuil,
+on the road that leads to the Avenue de Saint-Cloud.
+
+The house had been built originally as a retreat for the short-lived
+loves of some _grand seigneur_. The grounds were very large; the gardens
+on either side extending from the first houses of Montreuil to the
+thatched cottages near the barrier, so that the owner could enjoy all
+the pleasures of solitude with the city almost at his gates. By an odd
+piece of contradiction, the whole front of the house itself, with the
+principal entrance, gave directly upon the street. Perhaps in time past
+it was a tolerably lonely road, and indeed this theory looks all the
+more probable when one comes to think of it; for not so very far away,
+on this same road, Louis Quinze built a delicious summer villa for Mlle.
+de Romans, and the curious in such things will discover that the
+wayside _casinos_ are adorned in a style that recalls traditions of the
+ingenious taste displayed in debauchery by our ancestors who, with all
+the license paid to their charge, sought to invest it with secrecy and
+mystery.
+
+One winter evening the family were by themselves in the lonely house.
+The servants had received permission to go to Versailles to celebrate
+the wedding of one of their number. It was Christmas time, and the
+holiday makers, presuming upon the double festival, did not scruple to
+outstay their leave of absence; yet, as the General was well known to be
+a man of his word, the culprits felt some twinges of conscience as they
+danced on after the hour of return. The clocks struck eleven, and still
+there was no sign of the servants.
+
+A deep silence prevailed over the country-side, broken only by the sound
+of the northeast wind whistling through the black branches, wailing
+about the house, dying in gusts along the corridors. The hard frost had
+purified the air, and held the earth in its grip; the roads gave back
+every sound with the hard metallic ring which always strikes us with
+a new surprise; the heavy footsteps of some belated reveler, or a cab
+returning to Paris, could be heard for a long distance with unwonted
+distinctness. Out in the courtyard a few dead leaves set a-dancing
+by some eddying gust found a voice for the night which fain had been
+silent. It was, in fact, one of those sharp, frosty evenings that wring
+barren expressions of pity from our selfish ease for wayfarers and
+the poor, and fills us with a luxurious sense of the comfort of the
+fireside.
+
+But the family party in the salon at that hour gave not a thought to
+absent servants nor houseless folk, nor to the gracious charm with which
+a winter evening sparkles. No one played the philosopher out of season.
+Secure in the protection of an old soldier, women and children gave
+themselves up to the joys of home life, so delicious when there is no
+restraint upon feeling; and talk and play and glances are bright with
+frankness and affection.
+
+The General sat, or more properly speaking, lay buried, in the depths
+of a huge, high-back armchair by the hearth. The heaped-up fire burned
+scorching clear with the excessive cold of the night. The good father
+leaned his head slightly to one side against the back of the chair, in
+the indolence of perfect serenity and a glow of happiness. The languid,
+half-sleepy droop of his outstretched arms seemed to complete his
+expression of placid content. He was watching his youngest, a boy of
+five or thereabouts, who, half clad as he was, declined to allow his
+mother to undress him. The little one fled from the night-gown and cap
+with which he was threatened now and again, and stoutly declined to part
+with his embroidered collar, laughing when his mother called to him,
+for he saw that she too was laughing at this declaration of infant
+independence. The next step was to go back to a game of romps with his
+sister. She was as much a child as he, but more mischievous; and she
+was older by two years, and could speak distinctly already, whereas his
+inarticulate words and confused ideas were a puzzle even to his parents.
+Little Moina's playfulness, somewhat coquettish already, provoked
+inextinguishable laughter, explosions of merriment which went off like
+fireworks for no apparent cause. As they tumbled about before the
+fire, unconcernedly displaying little plump bodies and delicate white
+contours, as the dark and golden curls mingled in a collision of rosy
+cheeks dimpled with childish glee, a father surely, a mother most
+certainly, must have understood those little souls, and seen the
+character and power of passion already developed for their eyes. As the
+cherubs frolicked about, struggling, rolling, and tumbling without fear
+of hurt on the soft carpet, its flowers looked pale beside the glowing
+white and red of their cheeks and the brilliant color of their shining
+eyes.
+
+On the sofa by the fire, opposite the great armchair, the children's
+mother sat among a heap of scattered garments, with a little scarlet
+shoe in her hand. She seemed to have given herself up completely to the
+enjoyment of the moment; wavering discipline had relaxed into a
+sweet smile engraved upon her lips. At the age of six-and-thirty, or
+thereabouts, she was a beautiful woman still, by reason of the rare
+perfection of the outlines of her face, and at this moment light and
+warmth and happiness filled it with preternatural brightness.
+
+Again and again her eyes wandered from her children, and their tender
+gaze was turned upon her husband's grave face; and now and again the
+eyes of husband and wife met with a silent exchange of happiness and
+thoughts from some inner depth.
+
+The General's face was deeply bronzed, a stray lock of gray hair scored
+shadows on his forehead. The reckless courage of the battlefield could
+be read in the lines carved in his hollow cheeks, and gleams of rugged
+strength in the blue eyes; clearly the bit of red ribbon flaunting at
+his button-hole had been paid for by hardship and toil. An inexpressible
+kindliness and frankness shone out of the strong, resolute face which
+reflected his children's merriment; the gray-haired captain found it not
+so very hard to become a child again. Is there not always a little love
+of children in the heart of a soldier who has seen enough of the seamy
+side of life to know something of the piteous limitations of strength
+and the privileges of weakness?
+
+At a round table rather further away, in a circle of bright lamplight
+that dimmed the feebler illumination of the wax candles on the
+chimney-piece, sat a boy of thirteen, rapidly turning the pages of a
+thick volume which he was reading, undisturbed by the shouts of the
+children. There was a boy's curiosity in his face. From his _lyceens_
+uniform he was evidently a schoolboy, and the book he was reading was
+the _Arabian Nights_. Small wonder that he was deeply absorbed. He sat
+perfectly still in a meditative attitude, with his elbow on the table,
+and his hand propping his head--the white fingers contrasting strongly
+with the brown hair into which they were thrust. As he sat, with the
+light turned full upon his face, and the rest of his body in shadow, he
+looked like one of Raphael's dark portraits of himself--a bent head and
+intent eyes filled with visions of the future.
+
+Between the table and the Marquise a tall, beautiful girl sat at her
+tapestry frame; sometimes she drew back from her work, sometimes she
+bent over it, and her hair, picturesque in its ebony smoothness and
+darkness, caught the light of the lamp. Helene was a picture in herself.
+In her beauty there was a rare distinctive character of power and
+refinement. Though her hair was gathered up and drawn back from her
+face, so as to trace a clearly marked line about her head, so thick and
+abundant was it, so recalcitrant to the comb, that it sprang back in
+curl-tendrils to the nape of her neck. The bountiful line of eyebrows
+was evenly marked out in dark contrasting outline upon her pure
+forehead. On her upper lip, beneath the Grecian nose with its
+sensitively perfect curve of nostril, there lay a faint, swarthy shadow,
+the sign-manual of courage; but the enchanting roundness of contour, the
+frankly innocent expression of her other features, the transparence
+of the delicate carnations, the voluptuous softness of the lips, the
+flawless oval of the outline of the face, and with these, and more than
+all these, the saintlike expression in the girlish eyes, gave to her
+vigorous loveliness the distinctive touch of feminine grace, that
+enchanting modesty which we look for in these angels of peace and love.
+Yet there was no suggestion of fragility about her; and, surely, with
+so grand a woman's frame, so attractive a face, she must possess a
+corresponding warmth of heart and strength of soul.
+
+She was as silent as her schoolboy brother. Seemingly a prey to the
+fateful maiden meditations which baffle a father's penetration and even
+a mother's sagacity, it was impossible to be certain whether it was the
+lamplight that cast those shadows that flitted over her face like thin
+clouds over a bright sky, or whether they were passing shades of secret
+and painful thoughts.
+
+Husband and wife had quite forgotten the two older children at that
+moment, though now and again the General's questioning glance traveled
+to that second mute picture; a larger growth, a gracious realization,
+as it were, of the hopes embodied in the baby forms rioting in the
+foreground. Their faces made up a kind of living poem, illustrating
+life's various phases. The luxurious background of the salon, the
+different attitudes, the strong contrasts of coloring in the faces,
+differing with the character of differing ages, the modeling of the
+forms brought into high relief by the light--altogether it was a page of
+human life, richly illuminated beyond the art of painter, sculptor, or
+poet. Silence, solitude, night and winter lent a final touch of majesty
+to complete the simplicity and sublimity of this exquisite effect of
+nature's contriving. Married life is full of these sacred hours, which
+perhaps owe their indefinable charm to some vague memory of a better
+world. A divine radiance surely shines upon them, the destined
+compensation for some portion of earth's sorrows, the solace which
+enables man to accept life. We seem to behold a vision of an enchanted
+universe, the great conception of its system widens out before our eyes,
+and social life pleads for its laws by bidding us look to the future.
+
+Yet in spite of the tender glances that Helene gave Abel and Moina after
+a fresh outburst of merriment; in spite of the look of gladness in
+her transparent face whenever she stole a glance at her father, a deep
+melancholy pervaded her gestures, her attitude, and more than all, her
+eyes veiled by their long lashes. Those white, strong hands, through
+which the light passed, tinting them with a diaphanous, almost fluid
+red--those hands were trembling. Once only did the eyes of the mother
+and daughter clash without shrinking, and the two women read each
+other's thoughts in a look, cold, wan, and respectful on Helene's part,
+sombre and threatening on her mother's. At once Helene's eyes were
+lowered to her work, she plied her needle swiftly, and it was long
+before she raised her head, bowed as it seemed by a weight of thought
+too heavy to bear. Was the Marquise over harsh with this one of her
+children? Did she think this harshness needful? Was she jealous of
+Helene's beauty?--She might still hope to rival Helene, but only by the
+magic arts of the toilette. Or again, had her daughter, like many a girl
+who reaches the clairvoyant age, read the secrets which this wife (to
+all appearance so religiously faithful in the fulfilment of her duties)
+believed to be buried in her own heart as deeply as in a grave?
+
+Helene had reached an age when purity of soul inclines to pass
+over-rigid judgments. A certain order of mind is apt to exaggerate
+transgression into crime; imagination reacts upon conscience, and a
+young girl is a hard judge because she magnifies the seriousness of the
+offence. Helene seemed to think herself worthy of no one. Perhaps
+there was a secret in her past life, perhaps something had happened,
+unintelligible to her at the time, but with gradually developing
+significance for a mind grown susceptible to religious influences;
+something which lately seemed to have degraded her, as it were, in her
+own eyes, and according to her own romantic standard. This change in
+her demeanor dated from the day of reading Schiller's noble tragedy of
+_Wilhelm Tell_ in a new series of translations. Her mother scolded her
+for letting the book fall, and then remarked to herself that the passage
+which had so worked on Helene's feelings was the scene in which Wilhelm
+Tell, who spilt the blood of a tyrant to save a nation, fraternizes in
+some sort with John the Parricide. Helene had grown humble, dutiful, and
+self-contained; she no longer cared for gaiety. Never had she made so
+much of her father, especially when the Marquise was not by to watch
+her girlish caresses. And yet, if Helene's affection for her mother had
+cooled at all, the change in her manner was so slight as to be almost
+imperceptible; so slight that the General could not have noticed it,
+jealous though he might be of the harmony of home. No masculine insight
+could have sounded the depths of those two feminine natures; the one
+was young and generous, the other sensitive and proud; the first had
+a wealth of indulgence in her nature, the second was full of craft and
+love. If the Marquise made her daughter's life a burden to her by
+a woman's subtle tyranny, it was a tyranny invisible to all but the
+victim; and for the rest, these conjectures only called forth after the
+event must remain conjectures. Until this night no accusing flash of
+light had escaped either of them, but an ominous mystery was too surely
+growing up between them, a mystery known only to themselves and God.
+
+"Come, Abel," called the Marquise, seizing on her opportunity when the
+children were tired of play and still for a moment. "Come, come, child;
+you must be put to bed--"
+
+And with a glance that must be obeyed, she caught him up and took him on
+her knee.
+
+"What!" exclaimed the General. "Half-past ten o'clock, and not one of
+the servants has come back! The rascals!--Gustave," he added, turning to
+his son, "I allowed you to read that book only on the condition that you
+should put it away at ten o'clock. You ought to have shut up the book
+at the proper time and gone to bed, as you promised. If you mean to
+make your mark in the world, you must keep your word; let it be a second
+religion to you, and a point of honor. Fox, one of the greatest English
+orators, was remarkable, above all things, for the beauty of his
+character, and the very first of his qualities was the scrupulous
+faithfulness with which he kept his engagements. When he was a child,
+his father (an Englishman of the old school) gave him a pretty strong
+lesson which he never forgot. Like most rich Englishmen, Fox's father
+had a country house and a considerable park about it. Now, in the park
+there was an old summer-house, and orders had been given that this
+summer-house was to be pulled down and put up somewhere else where there
+was a finer view. Fox was just about your age, and had come home for the
+holidays. Boys are fond of seeing things pulled to pieces, so young
+Fox asked to stay on at home for a few days longer to see the old
+summer-house taken down; but his father said that he must go back to
+school on the proper day, so there was anger between father and son.
+Fox's mother (like all mammas) took the boy's part. Then the father
+solemnly promised that the summer-house should stay where it was till
+the next holidays.
+
+"So Fox went back to school; and his father, thinking that lessons would
+soon drive the whole thing out of the boy's mind, had the summer-house
+pulled down and put up in the new position. But as it happened, the
+persistent youngster thought of nothing but that summer-house; and as
+soon as he came home again, his first care was to go out to look at the
+old building, and he came in to breakfast looking quite doleful, and
+said to his father, 'You have broken your promise.' The old English
+gentleman said with confusion full of dignity, 'That is true, my boy;
+but I will make amends. A man ought to think of keeping his word before
+he thinks of his fortune; for by keeping his word he will gain fortune,
+while all the fortunes in the world will not efface the stain left on
+your conscience by a breach of faith.' Then he gave orders that the
+summer-house should be put up again in the old place, and when it had
+been rebuilt he had it taken down again for his son to see. Let this be
+a lesson to _you_, Gustave."
+
+Gustave had been listening with interest, and now he closed the book at
+once. There was a moment's silence, while the General took possession of
+Moina, who could scarcely keep her eyes open. The little one's languid
+head fell back on her father's breast, and in a moment she was fast
+asleep, wrapped round about in her golden curls.
+
+Just then a sound of hurrying footsteps rang on the pavement out in the
+street, immediately followed by three knocks on the street door, waking
+the echoes of the house. The reverberating blows told, as plainly as
+a cry for help that here was a man flying for his life. The house dog
+barked furiously. A thrill of excitement ran through Helene and Gustave
+and the General and his wife; but neither Abel, with the night-cap
+strings just tied under his chin, nor Moina awoke.
+
+"The fellow is in a hurry!" exclaimed the General. He put the little
+girl down on the chair, and hastened out of the room, heedless of his
+wife's entreating cry, "Dear, do not go down--"
+
+He stepped into his own room for a pair of pistols, lighted a dark
+lantern, sprang at lightning speed down the staircase, and in another
+minute reached the house door, his oldest boy fearlessly following.
+
+"Who is there?" demanded he.
+
+"Let me in," panted a breathless voice.
+
+"Are you a friend?"
+
+"Yes, friend."
+
+"Are you alone?"
+
+"Yes! But let me in; _they_ are after me!"
+
+The General had scarcely set the door ajar before a man slipped into the
+porch with the uncanny swiftness of a shadow. Before the master of
+the house could prevent him, the intruder had closed the door with a
+well-directed kick, and set his back against it resolutely, as if he
+were determined that it should not be opened again. In a moment the
+General had his lantern and pistol at a level with the stranger's
+breast, and beheld a man of medium height in a fur-lined pelisse. It
+was an old man's garment, both too large and too long for its present
+wearer. Chance or caution had slouched the man's hat over his eyes.
+
+"You can lower your pistol, sir," said this person. "I do not claim
+to stay in your house against your will; but if I leave it, death is
+waiting for me at the barrier. And what a death! You would be answerable
+to God for it! I ask for your hospitality for two hours. And bear this
+in mind, sir, that, suppliant as I am, I have a right to command with
+the despotism of necessity. I want the Arab's hospitality. Either I
+and my secret must be inviolable, or open the door and I will go to my
+death. I want secrecy, a safe hiding-place, and water. Oh! water!" he
+cried again, with a rattle in his throat.
+
+"Who are you?" demanded the General, taken aback by the stranger's
+feverish volubility.
+
+"Ah! who am I? Good, open the door, and I will put a distance between
+us," retorted the other, and there was a diabolical irony in his tone.
+
+Dexterously as the Marquis passed the light of the lantern over the
+man's face, he could only see the lower half of it, and that in nowise
+prepossessed him in favor of this singular claimant of hospitality.
+The cheeks were livid and quivering, the features dreadfully contorted.
+Under the shadow of the hat-brim a pair of eyes gleamed out like flames;
+the feeble candle-light looked almost dim in comparison. Some sort of
+answer must be made however.
+
+"Your language, sir, is so extraordinary that in my place you
+yourself--"
+
+"My life is in your hands!" the intruder broke in. The sound of his
+voice was dreadful to hear.
+
+"Two hours?" said the Marquis, wavering.
+
+"Two hours," echoed the other.
+
+Then quite suddenly, with a desperate gesture, he pushed back his
+hat and left his forehead bare, and, as if he meant to try a final
+expedient, he gave the General a glance that seemed to plunge like
+a vivid flash into his very soul. That electrical discharge of
+intelligence and will was swift as lightning and crushing as a
+thunderbolt; for there are moments when a human being is invested for a
+brief space with inexplicable power.
+
+"Come, whoever you may be, you shall be in safety under my roof," the
+master of the house said gravely at last, acting, as he imagined, upon
+one of those intuitions which a man cannot always explain to himself.
+
+"God will repay you!" said the stranger, with a deep, involuntary sigh.
+
+"Have you weapons?" asked the General.
+
+For all answer the stranger flung open his fur pelisse, and scarcely
+gave the other time for a glance before he wrapped it about him again.
+To all appearance he was unarmed and in evening dress. Swift as the
+soldier's scrutiny had been, he saw something, however, which made him
+exclaim:
+
+"Where the devil have you been to get yourself in such a mess in such
+dry weather?"
+
+"More questions!" said the stranger haughtily.
+
+At the words the Marquis caught sight of his son, and his own late
+homily on the strict fulfilment of a given word came up to his mind. In
+lively vexation, he exclaimed, not without a touch of anger:
+
+"What! little rogue, you here when you ought to be in bed?"
+
+"Because I thought I might be of some good in danger," answered Gustave.
+
+"There, go up to your room," said his father, mollified by the
+reply.--"And you" (addressing the stranger), "come with me."
+
+The two men grew as silent as a pair of gamblers who watch each other's
+play with mutual suspicions. The General himself began to be troubled
+with ugly presentiments. The strange visit weighed upon his mind already
+like a nightmare; but he had passed his word, there was no help for
+it now, and he led the way along the passages and stairways till they
+reached a large room on the second floor immediately above the salon.
+This was an empty room where linen was dried in the winter. It had
+but the one door, and for all decoration boasted one solitary shabby
+looking-glass above the chimney-piece, left by the previous owner, and a
+great pier glass, placed provisionally opposite the fireplace until
+such time as a use should be found for it in the rooms below. The four
+yellowish walls were bare. The floor had never been swept. The huge
+attic was icy-cold, and the furniture consisted of a couple of rickety
+straw-bottomed chairs, or rather frames of chairs. The General set the
+lantern down upon the chimney-piece. Then he spoke:
+
+"It is necessary for your own safety to hide you in this comfortless
+attic. And, as you have my promise to keep your secret, you will permit
+me to lock you in."
+
+The other bent his head in acquiescence.
+
+"I asked for nothing but a hiding-place, secrecy, and water," returned
+he.
+
+"I will bring you some directly," said the Marquis, shutting the door
+cautiously. He groped his way down into the salon for a lamp before
+going to the kitchen to look for a carafe.
+
+"Well, what is it?" the Marquise asked quickly.
+
+"Nothing, dear," he returned coolly.
+
+"But we listened, and we certainly heard you go upstairs with somebody."
+
+"Helene," said the General, and he looked at his daughter, who raised
+her face, "bear in mind that your father's honor depends upon your
+discretion. You must have heard nothing."
+
+The girl bent her head in answer. The Marquise was confused and smarting
+inwardly at the way in which her husband had thought fit to silence her.
+
+Meanwhile the General went for the bottle and a tumbler, and returned to
+the room above. His prisoner was leaning against the chimney-piece,
+his head was bare, he had flung down his hat on one of the two chairs.
+Evidently he had not expected to have so bright a light turned upon him,
+and he frowned and looked anxious as he met the General's keen eyes;
+but his face softened and wore a gracious expression as he thanked
+his protector. When the latter placed the bottle and glass on the
+mantel-shelf, the stranger's eyes flashed out on him again; and when
+he spoke, it was in musical tones with no sign of the previous guttural
+convulsion, though his voice was still unsteady with repressed emotion.
+
+"I shall seem to you to be a strange being, sir, but you must pardon the
+caprices of necessity. If you propose to remain in the room, I beg that
+you will not look at me while I am drinking."
+
+Vexed at this continual obedience to a man whom he disliked, the General
+sharply turned his back upon him. The stranger thereupon drew a white
+handkerchief from his pocket and wound it about his right hand. Then
+he seized the carafe and emptied it at a draught. The Marquis, staring
+vacantly into the tall mirror across the room, without a thought of
+breaking his implicit promise, saw the stranger's figure distinctly
+reflected by the opposite looking-glass, and saw, too, a red stain
+suddenly appear through the folds of the white bandage. The man's hands
+were steeped in blood.
+
+"Ah! you saw me!" cried the other. He had drunk off the water and
+wrapped himself again in his cloak, and now scrutinized the General
+suspiciously. "It is all over with me! Here they come!"
+
+"I don't hear anything," said the Marquis.
+
+"You have not the same interest that I have in listening for sounds in
+the air."
+
+"You have been fighting a duel, I suppose, to be in such a state?"
+queried the General, not a little disturbed by the color of those broad,
+dark patches staining his visitor's cloak.
+
+"Yes, a duel; you have it," said the other, and a bitter smile flitted
+over his lips.
+
+As he spoke a sound rang along the distant road, a sound of galloping
+horses; but so faint as yet, that it was the merest dawn of a sound. The
+General's trained ear recognized the advance of a troop of regulars.
+
+"That is the gendarmerie," said he.
+
+He glanced at his prisoner to reassure him after his own involuntary
+indiscretion, took the lamp, and went down to the salon. He had scarcely
+laid the key of the room above upon the chimney-piece when the hoof
+beats sounded louder and came swiftly nearer and nearer the house. The
+General felt a shiver of excitement, and indeed the horses stopped at
+the house door; a few words were exchanged among the men, and one
+of them dismounted and knocked loudly. There was no help for it; the
+General went to open the door. He could scarcely conceal his inward
+perturbation at the sight of half a dozen gendarmes outside, the metal
+rims of their caps gleaming like silver in the moonlight.
+
+"My lord," said the corporal, "have you heard a man run past towards the
+barrier within the last few minutes?"
+
+"Towards the barrier? No."
+
+"Have you opened the door to any one?"
+
+"Now, am I in the habit of answering the door myself--"
+
+"I ask your pardon, General, but just now it seems to me that--"
+
+"Really!" cried the Marquis wrathfully. "Have you a mind to try joking
+with me? What right have you--?"
+
+"None at all, none at all, my lord," cried the corporal, hastily putting
+in a soft answer. "You will excuse our zeal. We know, of course, that a
+peer of France is not likely to harbor a murderer at this time of night;
+but as we want any information we can get--"
+
+"A murderer!" cried the General. "Who can have been--"
+
+"M. le Baron de Mauny has just been murdered. It was a blow from an axe,
+and we are in hot pursuit of the criminal. We know for certain that he
+is somewhere in this neighborhood, and we shall hunt him down. By your
+leave, General," and the man swung himself into the saddle as he spoke.
+It was well that he did so, for a corporal of gendarmerie trained to
+alert observation and quick surmise would have had his suspicions at
+once if he had caught sight of the General's face. Everything that
+passed through the soldier's mind was faithfully revealed in his frank
+countenance.
+
+"Is it known who the murderer is?" asked he.
+
+"No," said the other, now in the saddle. "He left the bureau full of
+banknotes and gold untouched."
+
+"It was revenge, then," said the Marquis.
+
+"On an old man? pshaw! No, no, the fellow hadn't time to take it, that
+was all," and the corporal galloped after his comrades, who were almost
+out of sight by this time.
+
+For a few minutes the General stood, a victim to perplexities which need
+no explanation; but in a moment he heard the servants returning home,
+their voices were raised in some sort of dispute at the cross-roads
+of Montreuil. When they came in, he gave vent to his feelings in an
+explosion of rage, his wrath fell upon them like a thunderbolt, and all
+the echoes of the house trembled at the sound of his voice. In the
+midst of the storm his own man, the boldest and cleverest of the
+party, brought out an excuse; they had been stopped, he said, by the
+gendarmerie at the gate of Montreuil, a murder had been committed, and
+the police were in pursuit. In a moment the General's anger vanished,
+he said not another word; then, bethinking himself of his own singular
+position, drily ordered them all off to bed at once, and left them
+amazed at his readiness to accept their fellow servant's lying excuse.
+
+While these incidents took place in the yard, an apparently trifling
+occurrence had changed the relative positions of three characters in
+this story. The Marquis had scarcely left the room before his wife
+looked first towards the key on the mantel-shelf, and then at Helene;
+and, after some wavering, bent towards her daughter and said in a low
+voice, "Helene your father has left the key on the chimney-piece."
+
+The girl looked up in surprise and glanced timidly at her mother. The
+Marquise's eyes sparkled with curiosity.
+
+"Well, mamma?" she said, and her voice had a troubled ring.
+
+"I should like to know what is going on upstairs. If there is anybody up
+there, he has not stirred yet. Just go up--"
+
+"_I_?" cried the girl, with something like horror in her tones.
+
+"Are you afraid?"
+
+"No, mamma, but I thought I heard a man's footsteps."
+
+"If I could go myself, I should not have asked you to go, Helene," said
+her mother with cold dignity. "If your father were to come back and did
+not see me, he would go to look for me perhaps, but he would not notice
+your absence."
+
+"Madame, if you bid me go, I will go," said Helene, "but I shall lose my
+father's good opinion--"
+
+"What is this!" cried the Marquise in a sarcastic tone. "But since you
+take a thing that was said in joke in earnest, I now _order_ you to go
+upstairs and see who is in the room above. Here is the key, child. When
+your father told you to say nothing about this thing that happened, he
+did not forbid you to go up to the room. Go at once--and learn that a
+daughter ought never to judge her mother."
+
+The last words were spoken with all the severity of a justly offended
+mother. The Marquise took the key and handed it to Helene, who rose
+without a word and left the room.
+
+"My mother can always easily obtain her pardon," thought the girl; "but
+as for me, my father will never think the same of me again. Does she
+mean to rob me of his tenderness? Does she want to turn me out of his
+house?"
+
+These were the thoughts that set her imagination in a sudden ferment, as
+she went down the dark passage to the mysterious door at the end. When
+she stood before it, her mental confusion grew to a fateful pitch.
+Feelings hitherto forced down into inner depths crowded up at the
+summons of these confused thoughts. Perhaps hitherto she had never
+believed that a happy life lay before her, but now, in this awful
+moment, her despair was complete. She shook convulsively as she set the
+key in the lock; so great indeed was her agitation, that she stopped for
+a moment and laid her hand on her heart, as if to still the heavy throbs
+that sounded in her ears. Then she opened the door.
+
+The creaking of the hinges sounded doubtless in vain on the murderer's
+ears. Acute as were his powers of hearing, he stood as if lost in
+thought, and so motionless that he might have been glued to the wall
+against which he leaned. In the circle of semi-opaque darkness, dimly
+lit by the bull's-eye lantern, he looked like the shadowy figure of
+some dead knight, standing for ever in his shadowy mortuary niche in
+the gloom of some Gothic chapel. Drops of cold sweat trickled over the
+broad, sallow forehead. An incredible fearlessness looked out from every
+tense feature. His eyes of fire were fixed and tearless; he seemed to
+be watching some struggle in the darkness beyond him. Stormy thoughts
+passed swiftly across a face whose firm decision spoke of a character
+of no common order. His whole person, bearing, and frame bore out the
+impression of a tameless spirit. The man looked power and strength
+personified; he stood facing the darkness as if it were the visible
+image of his own future.
+
+These physical characteristics had made no impression upon the General,
+familiar as he was with the powerful faces of the group of giants
+gathered about Napoleon; speculative curiosity, moreover, as to the
+why and wherefore of the apparition had completely filled his mind; but
+Helene, with feminine sensitiveness to surface impressions, was struck
+by the blended chaos of light and darkness, grandeur and passion,
+suggesting a likeness between this stranger and Lucifer recovering from
+his fall. Suddenly the storm apparent in his face was stilled as if by
+magic; and the indefinable power to sway which the stranger exercised
+upon others, and perhaps unconsciously and as by reflex action upon
+himself, spread its influence about him with the progressive swiftness
+of a flood. A torrent of thought rolled away from his brow as his face
+resumed its ordinary expression. Perhaps it was the strangeness of this
+meeting, or perhaps it was the mystery into which she had penetrated,
+that held the young girl spellbound in the doorway, so that she could
+look at a face pleasant to behold and full of interest. For some moments
+she stood in the magical silence; a trouble had come upon her never
+known before in her young life. Perhaps some exclamation broke from
+Helene, perhaps she moved unconsciously; or it may be that the hunted
+criminal returned of his own accord from the world of ideas to the
+material world, and heard some one breathing in the room; however it
+was, he turned his head towards his host's daughter, and saw dimly in
+the shadow a noble face and queenly form, which he must have taken for
+an angel's, so motionless she stood, so vague and like a spirit.
+
+"Monsieur..." a trembling voice cried.
+
+The murderer trembled.
+
+"A woman!" he cried under his breath. "Is it possible? Go," he cried, "I
+deny that any one has a right to pity, to absolve, or condemn me. I
+must live alone. Go, my child," he added, with an imperious gesture, "I
+should ill requite the service done me by the master of the house if I
+were to allow a single creature under his roof to breathe the same air
+with me. I must submit to be judged by the laws of the world."
+
+The last words were uttered in a lower voice. Even as he realized with
+a profound intuition all the manifold misery awakened by that melancholy
+thought, the glance that he gave Helene had something of the power of
+the serpent, stirring a whole dormant world in the mind of the strange
+girl before him. To her that glance was like a light revealing unknown
+lands. She was stricken with strange trouble, helpless, quelled by a
+magnetic power exerted unconsciously. Trembling and ashamed, she went
+out and returned to the salon. She had scarcely entered the room before
+her father came back, so that she had not time to say a word to her
+mother.
+
+The General was wholly absorbed in thought. He folded his arms, and
+paced silently to and fro between the windows which looked out upon the
+street and the second row which gave upon the garden. His wife lay the
+sleeping Abel on her knee, and little Moina lay in untroubled slumber in
+the low chair, like a bird in its nest. Her older sister stared into the
+fire, a skein of silk in one hand, a needle in the other.
+
+Deep silence prevailed, broken only by lagging footsteps on the stairs,
+as one by one the servants crept away to bed; there was an occasional
+burst of stifled laughter, a last echo of the wedding festivity, or
+doors were opened as they still talked among themselves, then shut. A
+smothered sound came now and again from the bedrooms, a chair fell, the
+old coachman coughed feebly, then all was silent.
+
+In a little while the dark majesty with which sleeping earth is invested
+at midnight brought all things under its sway. No lights shone but the
+light of the stars. The frost gripped the ground. There was not a sound
+of a voice, nor a living creature stirring. The crackling of the fire
+only seemed to make the depth of the silence more fully felt.
+
+The church clock of Montreuil had just struck one, when an almost
+inaudible sound of a light footstep came from the second flight of
+stairs. The Marquis and his daughter, both believing that M. de Mauny's
+murderer was a prisoner above, thought that one of the maids had come
+down, and no one was at all surprised to hear the door open in the
+ante-chamber. Quite suddenly the murderer appeared in their midst. The
+Marquis himself was sunk in deep musings, the mother and daughter were
+silent, the one from keen curiosity, the other from sheer astonishment,
+so that the visitor was almost half-way across the room when he spoke to
+the General.
+
+"Sir, the two hours are almost over," he said, in a voice that was
+strangely calm and musical.
+
+"_You here_!" cried the General. "By what means----?" and he gave wife
+and daughter a formidable questioning glance. Helene grew red as fire.
+
+"You!" he went on, in a tone filled with horror. "_You_ among us! A
+murderer covered with blood! You are a blot on this picture! Go, go
+out!" he added in a burst of rage.
+
+At that word "murderer," the Marquise cried out; as for Helene, it
+seemed to mark an epoch in her life, there was not a trace of surprise
+in her face. She looked as if she had been waiting for this--for him.
+Those so vast thoughts of hers had found a meaning. The punishment
+reserved by Heaven for her sins flamed out before her. In her own eyes
+she was as great a criminal as this murderer; she confronted him with
+her quiet gaze; she was his fellow, his sister. It seemed to her that in
+this accident the command of God had been made manifest. If she had been
+a few years older, reason would have disposed of her remorse, but at
+this moment she was like one distraught.
+
+The stranger stood impassive and self-possessed; a scornful smile
+overspread his features and his thick, red lips.
+
+"You appreciate the magnanimity of my behavior very badly," he said
+slowly. "I would not touch with my fingers the glass of water you
+brought me to allay my thirst; I did not so much as think of washing my
+blood-stained hands under your roof; I am going away, leaving nothing
+of _my crime_" (here his lips were compressed) "but the memory; I have
+tried to leave no trace of my presence in this house. Indeed, I would
+not even allow your daughter to--"
+
+"_My daughter_!" cried the General, with a horror-stricken glance at
+Helene. "Vile wretch, go, or I will kill you--"
+
+"The two hours are not yet over," said the other; "if you kill me or
+give me up, you must lower yourself in your own eyes--and in mine."
+
+At these last words, the General turned to stare at the criminal in dumb
+amazement; but he could not endure the intolerable light in those eyes
+which for the second time disorganized his being. He was afraid of
+showing weakness once more, conscious as he was that his will was weaker
+already.
+
+"An old man! You can never have seen a family," he said, with a father's
+glance at his wife and children.
+
+"Yes, an old man," echoed the stranger, frowning slightly.
+
+"Fly!" cried the General, but he did not dare to look at his guest. "Our
+compact is broken. I shall not kill you. No! I will never be purveyor to
+the scaffold. But go out. You make us shudder."
+
+"I know that," said the other patiently. "There is not a spot on French
+soil where I can set foot and be safe; but if man's justice, like God's,
+took all into account, if man's justice deigned to inquire which was the
+monster--the murderer or his victim--then I might hold up my head among
+my fellows. Can you not guess that other crimes preceded that blow from
+an axe? I constituted myself his judge and executioner; I stepped in
+where man's justice failed. That was my crime. Farewell, sir. Bitter
+though you have made your hospitality, I shall not forget it. I shall
+always bear in my heart a feeling of gratitude towards one man in the
+world, and you are that man.... But I could wish that you had showed
+yourself more generous!"
+
+He turned towards the door, but in the same instant Helene leaned to
+whisper something in her mother's ear.
+
+"Ah!..."
+
+At the cry that broke from his wife, the General trembled as if he had
+seen Moina lying dead. There stood Helene and the murderer had turned
+instinctively, with something like anxiety about these folk in his face.
+
+"What is it, dear?" asked the General.
+
+"Helene wants to go with him."
+
+The murderer's face flushed.
+
+"If that is how my mother understands an almost involuntary
+exclamation," Helene said in a low voice, "I will fulfil her wishes. She
+glanced about her with something like fierce pride; then the girl's eyes
+fell, and she stood, admirable in her modesty.
+
+"Helene, did you go up to the room where----?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"Helene" (and his voice shook with a convulsive tremor), "is this the
+first time that you have seen this man?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"Then it is not natural that you should intend to--"
+
+"If it is not natural, father, at any rate it is true."
+
+"Oh! child," said the Marquise, lowering her voice, but not so much but
+that her husband could hear her, "you are false to all the principles of
+honor, modesty, and right which I have tried to cultivate in your
+heart. If until this fatal hour you life has only been one lie, there is
+nothing to regret in your loss. It can hardly be the moral perfection of
+this stranger that attracts you to him? Can it be the kind of power that
+commits crime? I have too good an opinion of you to suppose that--"
+
+"Oh, suppose everything, madame," Helene said coldly.
+
+But though her force of character sustained this ordeal, her flashing
+eyes could scarcely hold the tears that filled them. The stranger,
+watching her, guessed the mother's language from the girl's tears,
+and turned his eagle glance upon the Marquise. An irresistible power
+constrained her to look at this terrible seducer; but as her eyes met
+his bright, glittering gaze, she felt a shiver run through her frame,
+such a shock as we feel at the sight of a reptile or the contact of a
+Leyden jar.
+
+"Dear!" she cried, turning to her husband, "this is the Fiend himself.
+He can divine everything!"
+
+The General rose to his feet and went to the bell.
+
+"He means ruin for you," Helene said to the murderer.
+
+The stranger smiled, took one forward stride, grasped the General's arm,
+and compelled him to endure a steady gaze which benumbed the soldier's
+brain and left him powerless.
+
+"I will repay you now for your hospitality," he said, "and then we shall
+be quits. I will spare you the shame by giving myself up. After all,
+what should I do now with my life?"
+
+"You could repent," answered Helene, and her glance conveyed such hope
+as only glows in a young girl's eyes.
+
+"_I shall never repent_," said the murderer in a sonorous voice, as he
+raised his head proudly.
+
+"His hands are stained with blood," the father said.
+
+"I will wipe it away," she answered.
+
+"But do you so much as know whether he cares for you?" said her father,
+not daring now to look at the stranger.
+
+The murderer came up a little nearer. Some light within seemed to glow
+through Helene's beauty, grave and maidenly though it was, coloring and
+bringing into relief, as it were, the least details, the most delicate
+lines in her face. The stranger, with that terrible face still blazing
+in his eyes, gave one tender glance to her enchanting loveliness, then
+he spoke, his tones revealing how deeply he had been moved.
+
+"And if I refuse to allow this sacrifice of yourself, and so discharge
+my debt of two hours of existence to your father; is not this love, love
+for yourself alone?"
+
+"Then do you too reject me?" Helene's cry rang painfully through the
+hearts of all who heard her. "Farewell, then, to you all; I will die."
+
+"What does this mean?" asked the father and mother.
+
+Helene gave her mother an eloquent glance and lowered her eyes.
+
+Since the first attempt made by the General and his wife to contest
+by word or action the intruder's strange presumption to the right of
+staying in their midst, from their first experience of the power of
+those glittering eyes, a mysterious torpor had crept over them, and
+their benumbed faculties struggled in vain with the preternatural
+influence. The air seemed to have suddenly grown so heavy, that they
+could scarcely breathe; yet, while they could not find the reason of
+this feeling of oppression, a voice within told them that this magnetic
+presence was the real cause of their helplessness. In this moral agony,
+it flashed across the General that he must make every effort to overcome
+this influence on his daughter's reeling brain; he caught her by the
+waist and drew her into the embrasure of a window, as far as possible
+from the murderer.
+
+"Darling," he murmured, "if some wild love has been suddenly born in
+your heart, I cannot believe that you have not the strength of soul to
+quell the mad impulse; your innocent life, your pure and dutiful soul,
+has given me too many proofs of your character. There must be something
+behind all this. Well, this heart of mine is full of indulgence, you can
+tell everything to me; even if it breaks, dear child, I can be silent
+about my grief, and keep your confession a secret. What is it? Are you
+jealous of our love for your brothers or your little sister? Is it some
+love trouble? Are you unhappy here at home? Tell me about it, tell me
+the reasons that urge you to leave your home, to rob it of its greatest
+charm, to leave your mother and brothers and your little sister?"
+
+"I am in love with no one, father, and jealous of no one, not even of
+your friend the diplomatist, M. de Vandenesse."
+
+The Marquise turned pale; her daughter saw this, and stopped short.
+
+"Sooner or later I must live under some man's protection, must I not?"
+
+"That is true."
+
+"Do we ever know," she went on, "the human being to whom we link our
+destinies? Now, I believe in this man."
+
+"Oh, child," said the General, raising his voice, "you have no idea of
+all the misery that lies in store for you."
+
+"I am thinking of _his_."
+
+"What a life!" groaned the father.
+
+"A woman's life," the girl murmured.
+
+"You have a great knowledge of life!" exclaimed the Marquise, finding
+speech at last.
+
+"Madame, my answers are shaped by the questions; but if you desire it, I
+will speak more clearly."
+
+"Speak out, my child... I am a mother."
+
+Mother and daughter looked each other in the face, and the Marquise said
+no more. At last she said:
+
+"Helene, if you have any reproaches to make, I would rather bear them
+than see you go away with a man from whom the whole world shrinks in
+horror."
+
+"Then you see yourself, madame, that but for me he would be quite
+alone."
+
+"That will do, madame," the General cried; "we have but one daughter
+left to us now," and he looked at Moina, who slept on. "As for you," he
+added, turning to Helene, "I will put you in a convent."
+
+"So be it, father," she said, in calm despair, "I shall die there. You
+are answerable to God alone for my life and for _his_ soul."
+
+A deep sullen silence fell after these words. The on-lookers during
+this strange scene, so utterly at variance with all the sentiments of
+ordinary life, shunned each other's eyes.
+
+Suddenly the Marquis happened to glance at his pistols. He caught up one
+of them, cocked the weapon, and pointed it at the intruder. At the click
+of firearms the other turned his piercing gaze full upon the General;
+the soldier's arm slackened indescribably and fell heavily to his side.
+The pistol dropped to the floor.
+
+"Girl, you are free," said he, exhausted by this ghastly struggle. "Kiss
+your mother, if she will let you kiss her. For my own part, I wish never
+to see nor to hear of you again."
+
+"Helene," the mother began, "only think of the wretched life before
+you."
+
+A sort of rattling sound came from the intruder's deep chest, all eyes
+were turned to him. Disdain was plainly visible in his face.
+
+The General rose to his feet. "My hospitality has cost me dear," he
+cried. "Before you came you had taken an old man's life; now your are
+dealing a deadly blow at a whole family. Whatever happens, there must be
+unhappiness in this house."
+
+"And if your daughter is happy?" asked the other, gazing steadily at the
+General.
+
+The father made a superhuman effort for self-control. "If she is happy
+with you," he said, "she is not worth regretting."
+
+Helene knelt timidly before her father.
+
+"Father, I love and revere you," she said, "whether you lavish all the
+treasures of your kindness upon me, or make me feel to the full the
+rigor of disgrace.... But I entreat that your last words of farewell
+shall not be words of anger."
+
+The General could not trust himself to look at her. The stranger came
+nearer; there was something half-diabolical, half-divine in the smile
+that he gave Helene.
+
+"Angel of pity, you that do not shrink in horror from a murderer, come,
+since you persist in your resolution of intrusting your life to me."
+
+"Inconceivable!" cried her father.
+
+The Marquise then looked strangely at her daughter, opened her arms, and
+Helene fled to her in tears.
+
+"Farewell," she said, "farewell, mother!" The stranger trembled as
+Helene, undaunted, made sign to him that she was ready. She kissed her
+father's hand; and, as if performing a duty, gave a hasty kiss to Moina
+and little Abel, then she vanished with the murderer.
+
+"Which way are they going?" exclaimed the General, listening to the
+footsteps of the two fugitives.--"Madame," he turned to his wife, "I
+think I must be dreaming; there is some mystery behind all this, I do
+not understand it; you must know what it means."
+
+The Marquise shivered.
+
+"For some time past your daughter has grown extraordinarily romantic and
+strangely high-flown in her ideas. In spite of the pains I have taken to
+combat these tendencies in her character--"
+
+"This will not do----" began the General, but fancying that he heard
+footsteps in the garden, he broke off to fling open the window.
+
+"Helene!" he shouted.
+
+His voice was lost in the darkness like a vain prophecy. The utterance
+of that name, to which there should never be answer any more, acted
+like a counterspell; it broke the charm and set him free from the evil
+enchantment which lay upon him. It was as if some spirit passed over
+his face. He now saw clearly what had taken place, and cursed his
+incomprehensible weakness. A shiver of heat rushed from his heart to
+his head and feet; he became himself once more, terrible, thirsting for
+revenge. He raised a dreadful cry.
+
+"Help!" he thundered, "help!"
+
+He rushed to the bell-pull, pulled till the bells rang with a strange
+clamor of din, pulled till the cord gave way. The whole house was roused
+with a start. Still shouting, he flung open the windows that looked upon
+the street, called for the police, caught up his pistols, and fired them
+off to hurry the mounted patrols, the newly-aroused servants, and the
+neighbors. The dogs barked at the sound of their master's voice; the
+horses neighed and stamped in their stalls. The quiet night was suddenly
+filled with hideous uproar. The General on the staircase, in pursuit
+of his daughter, saw the scared faces of the servants flocking from all
+parts of the house.
+
+"My daughter!" he shouted. "Helene has been carried off. Search
+the garden. Keep a lookout on the road! Open the gates for the
+gendarmerie!--Murder! Help!"
+
+With the strength of fury he snapped the chain and let loose the great
+house-dog.
+
+"Helene!" he cried, "Helene!"
+
+The dog sprang out like a lion, barking furiously, and dashed into the
+garden, leaving the General far behind. A troop of horses came along the
+road at a gallop, and he flew to open the gates himself.
+
+"Corporal!" he shouted, "cut off the retreat of M. de Mauny's murderer.
+They have gone through my garden. Quick! Put a cordon of men to watch
+the ways by the Butte de Picardie.--I will beat up the grounds, parks,
+and houses.--The rest of you keep a lookout along the road," he ordered
+the servants, "form a chain between the barrier and Versailles. Forward,
+every man of you!"
+
+He caught up the rifle which his man had brought out, and dashed into
+the garden.
+
+"Find them!" he called to the dog.
+
+An ominous baying came in answer from the distance, and he plunged in
+the direction from which the growl seemed to come.
+
+It was seven o'clock in the morning; all the search made by gendarmes,
+servants, and neighbors had been fruitless, and the dog had not come
+back. The General entered the salon, empty now for him though the other
+three children were there; he was worn out with fatigue, and looked old
+already with that night's work.
+
+"You have been very cold to your daughter," he said, turning his eyes
+on his wife.--"And now this is all that is left to us of her," he added,
+indicating the embroidery frame, and the flower just begun. "Only just
+now she was there, and now she is lost... lost!"
+
+Tears followed; he hid his face in his hands, and for a few minutes he
+said no more; he could not bear the sight of the room, which so short
+a time ago had made a setting to a picture of the sweetest family
+happiness. The winter dawn was struggling with the dying lamplight; the
+tapers burned down to their paper-wreaths and flared out; everything was
+all in keeping with the father's despair.
+
+"This must be destroyed," he said after a pause, pointing to the
+tambour-frame. "I shall never bear to see anything again that reminds us
+of _her_!"
+
+The terrible Christmas night when the Marquis and his wife lost their
+oldest daughter, powerless to oppose the mysterious influence exercised
+by the man who involuntarily, as it were, stole Helene from them, was
+like a warning sent by Fate. The Marquis was ruined by the failure of
+his stock-broker; he borrowed money on his wife's property, and lost
+it in the endeavor to retrieve his fortunes. Driven to desperate
+expedients, he left France. Six years went by. His family seldom had
+news of him; but a few days before Spain recognized the independence of
+the American Republics, he wrote that he was coming home.
+
+So, one fine morning, it happened that several French merchants were on
+board a Spanish brig that lay a few leagues out from Bordeaux, impatient
+to reach their native land again, with wealth acquired by long years of
+toil and perilous adventures in Venezuela and Mexico.
+
+One of the passengers, a man who looked aged by trouble rather than
+by years, was leaning against the bulwark netting, apparently quite
+unaffected by the sight to be seen from the upper deck. The bright
+day, the sense that the voyage was safely over, had brought all the
+passengers above to greet their land. The larger number of them insisted
+that they could see, far off in the distance, the houses and lighthouses
+on the coast of Gascony and the Tower of Cardouan, melting into the
+fantastic erections of white cloud along the horizon. But for the silver
+fringe that played about their bows, and the long furrow swiftly effaced
+in their wake, they might have been perfectly still in mid-ocean, so
+calm was the sea. The sky was magically clear, the dark blue of the
+vault above paled by imperceptible gradations, until it blended with
+the bluish water, a gleaming line that sparkled like stars marking the
+dividing line of sea. The sunlight caught myriads of facets over the
+wide surface of the ocean, in such a sort that the vast plains of salt
+water looked perhaps more full of light than the fields of sky.
+
+The brig had set all her canvas. The snowy sails, swelled by the
+strangely soft wind, the labyrinth of cordage, and the yellow flags
+flying at the masthead, all stood out sharp and uncompromisingly clear
+against the vivid background of space, sky, and sea; there was nothing
+to alter the color but the shadow cast by the great cloudlike sails.
+
+A glorious day, a fair wind, and the fatherland in sight, a sea like a
+mill-pond, the melancholy sound of the ripples, a fair, solitary vessel,
+gliding across the surface of the water like a woman stealing out to
+a tryst--it was a picture full of harmony. That mere speck full of
+movement was a starting-point whence the soul of man could descry the
+immutable vast of space. Solitude and bustling life, silence and sound,
+were all brought together in strange abrupt contrast; you could not
+tell where life, or sound, or silence, and nothingness lay, and no human
+voice broke the divine spell.
+
+The Spanish captain, the crew, and the French passengers sat or stood,
+in a mood of devout ecstasy, in which many memories blended. There was
+idleness in the air. The beaming faces told of complete forgetfulness
+of past hardships, the men were rocked on the fair vessel as in a golden
+dream. Yet, from time to time the elderly passenger, leaning over the
+bulwark nettings, looked with something like uneasiness at the horizon.
+Distrust of the ways of Fate could be read in his whole face; he seemed
+to fear that he should not reach the coast of France in time. This
+was the Marquis. Fortune had not been deaf to his despairing cry and
+struggles. After five years of endeavor and painful toil, he was a
+wealthy man once more. In his impatience to reach his home again and to
+bring the good news to his family, he had followed the example set by
+some French merchants in Havana, and embarked with them on a Spanish
+vessel with a cargo for Bordeaux. And now, grown tired of evil
+forebodings, his fancy was tracing out for him the most delicious
+pictures of past happiness. In that far-off brown line of land he seemed
+to see his wife and children. He sat in his place by the fireside; they
+were crowding about him; he felt their caresses. Moina had grown to be
+a young girl; she was beautiful, and tall, and striking. The fancied
+picture had grown almost real, when the tears filled his eyes, and, to
+hide his emotion, he turned his face towards the sea-line, opposite the
+hazy streak that meant land.
+
+"There she is again.... She is following us!" he said.
+
+"What?" cried the Spanish captain.
+
+"There is a vessel," muttered the General.
+
+"I saw her yesterday," answered Captain Gomez. He looked at his
+interlocutor as if to ask what he thought; then he added in the
+General's ear, "She has been chasing us all along."
+
+"Then why she has not come up with us, I do not know," said the General,
+"for she is a faster sailor than your damned _Saint-Ferdinand_."
+
+"She will have damaged herself, sprung a leak--"
+
+"She is gaining on us!" the General broke in.
+
+"She is a Columbian privateer," the captain said in his ear, "and we are
+still six leagues from land, and the wind is dropping."
+
+"She is not _going_ ahead, she is flying, as if she knew that in two
+hours' time her prey would escape her. What audacity!"
+
+"Audacity!" cried the captain. "Oh! she is not called the _Othello_ for
+nothing. Not so long back she sank a Spanish frigate that carried thirty
+guns! This is the one thing I was afraid of, for I had a notion that she
+was cruising about somewhere off the Antilles.--Aha!" he added after a
+pause, as he watched the sails of his own vessel, "the wind is rising;
+we are making way. Get through we must, for 'the Parisian' will show us
+no mercy."
+
+"She is making way too!" returned the General.
+
+The _Othello_ was scarce three leagues away by this time; and although
+the conversation between the Marquis and Captain Gomez had taken place
+apart, passengers and crew, attracted by the sudden appearance of a
+sail, came to that side of the vessel. With scarcely an exception,
+however, they took the privateer for a merchantman, and watched her
+course with interest, till all at once a sailor shouted with some energy
+of language:
+
+"By Saint-James, it is all up with us! Yonder is the Parisian captain!"
+
+At that terrible name dismay, and a panic impossible to describe, spread
+through the brig. The Spanish captain's orders put energy into the
+crew for a while; and in his resolute determination to make land at all
+costs, he set all the studding sails, and crowded on every stitch
+of canvas on board. But all this was not the work of a moment; and
+naturally the men did not work together with that wonderful unanimity
+so fascinating to watch on board a man-of-war. The _Othello_ meanwhile,
+thanks to the trimming of her sails, flew over the water like a swallow;
+but she was making, to all appearance, so little headway, that the
+unlucky Frenchmen began to entertain sweet delusive hopes. At last,
+after unheard-of efforts, the _Saint-Ferdinand_ sprang forward, Gomez
+himself directing the shifting of the sheets with voice and gesture,
+when all at once the man at the tiller, steering at random (purposely,
+no doubt), swung the vessel round. The wind striking athwart the beam,
+the sails shivered so unexpectedly that the brig heeled to one side, the
+booms were carried away, and the vessel was completely out of hand.
+The captain's face grew whiter than his sails with unutterable rage. He
+sprang upon the man at the tiller, drove his dagger at him in such blind
+fury, that he missed him, and hurled the weapon overboard. Gomez took
+the helm himself, and strove to right the gallant vessel. Tears of
+despair rose to his eyes, for it is harder to lose the result of our
+carefully-laid plans through treachery than to face imminent death.
+But the more the captain swore, the less the men worked, and it was
+he himself who fired the alarm-gun, hoping to be heard on shore. The
+privateer, now gaining hopelessly upon them, replied with a cannon-shot,
+which struck the water ten fathoms away from the _Saint-Ferdinand_.
+
+"Thunder of heaven!" cried the General, "that was a close shave! They
+must have guns made on purpose."
+
+"Oh! when that one yonder speaks, look you, you have to hold your
+tongue," said a sailor. "The Parisian would not be afraid to meet an
+English man-of-war."
+
+"It is all over with us," the captain cried in desperation; he had
+pointed his telescope landwards, and saw not a sign from the shore. "We
+are further from the coast than I thought."
+
+"Why do you despair?" asked the General. "All your passengers are
+Frenchmen; they have chartered your vessel. The privateer is a Parisian,
+you say? Well and good, run up the white flag, and--"
+
+"And he would run us down," retorted the captain. "He can be anything he
+likes when he has a mind to seize on a rich booty!"
+
+"Oh! if he is a pirate--"
+
+"Pirate!" said the ferocious looking sailor. "Oh! he always has the law
+on his side, or he knows how to be on the same side as the law."
+
+"Very well," said the General, raising his eyes, "let us make up our
+minds to it," and his remaining fortitude was still sufficient to keep
+back the tears.
+
+The words were hardly out of his mouth before a second cannon-shot,
+better aimed, came crashing through the hull of the _Saint-Ferdinand_.
+
+"Heave to!" cried the captain gloomily.
+
+The sailor who had commended the Parisian's law-abiding proclivities
+showed himself a clever hand at working a ship after this desperate
+order was given. The crew waited for half an hour in an agony of
+suspense and the deepest dismay. The _Saint-Ferdinand_ had four millions
+of piastres on board, the whole fortunes of the five passengers, and the
+General's eleven hundred thousand francs. At length the _Othello_ lay
+not ten gunshots away, so that those on the _Saint-Ferdinand_ could look
+into the muzzles of her loaded guns. The vessel seemed to be borne along
+by a breeze sent by the Devil himself, but the eyes of an expert would
+have discovered the secret of her speed at once. You had but to look
+for a moment at the rake of her stern, her long, narrow keel, her tall
+masts, to see the cut of her sails, the wonderful lightness of her
+rigging, and the ease and perfect seamanship with which her crew trimmed
+her sails to the wind. Everything about her gave the impression of the
+security of power in this delicately curved inanimate creature, swift
+and intelligent as a greyhound or some bird of prey. The privateer
+crew stood silent, ready in case of resistance to shatter the wretched
+merchantman, which, luckily for her, remained motionless, like a
+schoolboy caught in flagrant delict by a master.
+
+"We have guns on board!" cried the General, clutching the Spanish
+captain's hand. But the courage in Gomez's eyes was the courage of
+despair.
+
+"Have we men?" he said.
+
+The Marquis looked round at the crew of the _Saint-Ferdinand_, and a
+cold chill ran through him. There stood the four merchants, pale and
+quaking for fear, while the crew gathered about some of their own number
+who appeared to be arranging to go over in a body to the enemy. They
+watched the _Othello_ with greed and curiosity in their faces. The
+captain, the Marquis, and the mate exchanged glances; they were the only
+three who had a thought for any but themselves.
+
+"Ah! Captain Gomez, when I left my home and country, my heart was half
+dead with the bitterness of parting, and now must I bid it good-bye once
+more when I am bringing back happiness and ease for my children?"
+
+The General turned his head away towards the sea, with tears of rage in
+his eyes--and saw the steersman swimming out to the privateer.
+
+"This time it will be good-bye for good," said the captain by way
+of answer, and the dazed look in the Frenchman's eyes startled the
+Spaniard.
+
+By this time the two vessels were almost alongside, and at the first
+sight of the enemy's crew the General saw that Gomez's gloomy prophecy
+was only too true. The three men at each gun might have been bronze
+statues, standing like athletes, with their rugged features, their bare
+sinewy arms, men whom Death himself had scarcely thrown off their feet.
+
+The rest of the crew, well armed, active, light, and vigorous, also
+stood motionless. Toil had hardened, and the sun had deeply tanned,
+those energetic faces; their eyes glittered like sparks of fire with
+infernal glee and clear-sighted courage. Perfect silence on the upper
+deck, now black with men, bore abundant testimony to the rigorous
+discipline and strong will which held these fiends incarnate in check.
+
+The captain of the _Othello_ stood with folded arms at the foot of the
+main mast; he carried no weapons, but an axe lay on the deck beside him.
+His face was hidden by the shadow of a broad felt hat. The men looked
+like dogs crouching before their master. Gunners, soldiers, and ship's
+crew turned their eyes first on his face, and then on the merchant
+vessel.
+
+The two brigs came up alongside, and the shock of contact roused the
+privateer captain from his musings; he spoke a word in the ear of the
+lieutenant who stood beside him.
+
+"Grappling-irons!" shouted the latter, and the _Othello_ grappled
+the _Saint-Ferdinand_ with miraculous quickness. The captain of the
+privateer gave his orders in a low voice to the lieutenant, who repeated
+them; the men, told off in succession for each duty, went on the upper
+deck of the _Saint-Ferdinand_, like seminarists going to mass. They
+bound crew and passengers hand and foot and seized the booty. In the
+twinkling of an eye, provisions and barrels full of piastres were
+transferred to the _Othello_; the General thought that he must be
+dreaming when he himself, likewise bound, was flung down on a bale of
+goods as if he had been part of the cargo.
+
+A brief conference took place between the captain of the privateer and
+his lieutenant and a sailor, who seemed to be the mate of the
+vessel; then the mate gave a whistle, and the men jumped on board
+the _Saint-Ferdinand_, and completely dismantled her with the nimble
+dexterity of a soldier who strips a dead comrade of a coveted overcoat
+and shoes.
+
+"It is all over with us," said the Spanish captain coolly. He had eyed
+the three chiefs during their confabulation, and saw that the sailors
+were proceeding to pull his vessel to pieces.
+
+"Why so?" asked the General.
+
+"What would you have them do with us?" returned the Spaniard. "They
+have just come to the conclusion that they will scarcely sell the
+_Saint-Ferdinand_ in any French or Spanish port, so they are going to
+sink her to be rid of her. As for us, do you suppose that they will put
+themselves to the expense of feeding us, when they don't know what port
+they are to put into?"
+
+The words were scarcely out of the captain's mouth before a hideous
+outcry went up, followed by a dull splashing sound, as several bodies
+were thrown overboard. He turned, the four merchants were no longer to
+be seen, but eight ferocious-looking gunners were still standing with
+their arms raised above their heads. He shuddered.
+
+"What did I tell you?" the Spanish captain asked coolly.
+
+The Marquis rose to his feet with a spring. The surface of the sea was
+quite smooth again; he could not so much as see the place where his
+unhappy fellow-passengers had disappeared. By this time they were
+sinking down, bound hand and foot, below the waves, if, indeed, the fish
+had not devoured them already.
+
+Only a few paces away, the treacherous steersman and the sailor who had
+boasted of the Parisian's power were fraternizing with the crew of the
+_Othello_, and pointing out those among their own number, who, in their
+opinion, were worthy to join the crew of the privateer. Then the boys
+tied the rest together by the feet in spite of frightful oaths. It
+was soon over; the eight gunners seized the doomed men and flung them
+overboard without more ado, watching the different ways in which the
+drowning victims met their death, their contortions, their last agony,
+with a sort of malignant curiosity, but with no sign of amusement,
+surprise, or pity. For them it was an ordinary event to which seemingly
+they were quite accustomed. The older men looked instead with grim, set
+smiles at the casks of piastres about the main mast.
+
+The General and Captain Gomez, left seated on a bale of goods, consulted
+each other with well-nigh hopeless looks; they were, in a sense, the
+sole survivors of the _Saint-Ferdinand_, for the seven men pointed out
+by the spies were transformed amid rejoicings into Peruvians.
+
+"What atrocious villains!" the General cried. Loyal and generous
+indignation silenced prudence and pain on his own account.
+
+"They do it because they must," Gomez answered coolly. "If you came
+across one of those fellows, you would run him through the body, would
+you not?"
+
+The lieutenant now came up to the Spaniard.
+
+"Captain," said he, "the Parisian has heard of you. He says that you
+are the only man who really knows the passages of the Antilles and the
+Brazilian coast. Will you--"
+
+The captain cut him short with a scornful exclamation.
+
+"I shall die like a sailor," he said, "and a loyal Spaniard and a
+Christian. Do you hear?"
+
+"Heave him overboard!" shouted the lieutenant, and a couple of gunners
+seized on Gomez.
+
+"You cowards!" roared the General, seizing hold of the men.
+
+"Don't get too excited, old boy," said the lieutenant. "If your red
+ribbon has made some impression upon our captain, I myself do not care
+a rap for it.--You and I will have our little bit of talk together
+directly."
+
+A smothered sound, with no accompanying cry, told the General that the
+gallant captain had died "like a sailor," as he had said.
+
+"My money or death!" cried the Marquis, in a fit of rage terrible to
+see.
+
+"Ah! now you talk sensibly!" sneered the lieutenant. "That is the way to
+get something out of us----"
+
+Two of the men came up at a sign and hastened to bind the Frenchmen's
+feet, but with unlooked-for boldness he snatched the lieutenant's
+cutlass and laid about him like a cavalry officer who knows his
+business.
+
+"Brigands that you are! You shall not chuck one of Napoleon's troopers
+over a ship's side like an oyster!"
+
+At the sound of pistol shots fired point blank at the Frenchman,
+"the Parisian" looked round from his occupation of superintending the
+transfer of the rigging from the _Saint-Ferdinand_. He came up behind
+the brave General, seized him, dragged him to the side, and was about
+to fling him over with no more concern than if the man had been a broken
+spar. They were at the very edge when the General looked into the tawny
+eyes of the man who had stolen his daughter. The recognition was mutual.
+
+The captain of the privateer, his arm still upraised, suddenly swung it
+in the contrary direction as if his victim was but a feather weight, and
+set him down at the foot of the main mast. A murmur rose on the upper
+deck, but the captain glanced round, and there was a sudden silence.
+
+"This is Helene's father," said the captain in a clear, firm voice. "Woe
+to any one who meddles with him!"
+
+A hurrah of joy went up at the words, a shout rising to the sky like a
+prayer of the church; a cry like the first high notes of the _Te Deum_.
+The lads swung aloft in the rigging, the men below flung up their caps,
+the gunners pounded away on the deck, there was a general thrill of
+excitement, an outburst of oaths, yells, and shrill cries in voluble
+chorus. The men cheered like fanatics, the General's misgivings
+deepened, and he grew uneasy; it seemed to him that there was some
+horrible mystery in such wild transports.
+
+"My daughter!" he cried, as soon as he could speak. "Where is my
+daughter?"
+
+For all answer, the captain of the privateer gave him a searching
+glance, one of those glances which throw the bravest man into a
+confusion which no theory can explain. The General was mute, not a
+little to the satisfaction of the crew; it pleased them to see their
+leader exercise the strange power which he possessed over all with whom
+he came in contact. Then the captain led the way down a staircase and
+flung open the door of a cabin.
+
+"There she is," he said, and disappeared, leaving the General in a
+stupor of bewilderment at the scene before his eyes.
+
+Helene cried out at the sight of him, and sprang up from the sofa on
+which she was lying when the door flew open. So changed was she that
+none but a father's eyes could have recognized her. The sun of the
+tropics had brought warmer tones into the once pale face, and something
+of Oriental charm with that wonderful coloring; there was a certain
+grandeur about her, a majestic firmness, a profound sentiment which
+impresses itself upon the coarsest nature. Her long, thick hair, falling
+in large curls about her queenly throat, gave an added idea of power
+to the proud face. The consciousness of that power shone out from every
+movement, every line of Helene's form. The rose-tinted nostrils were
+dilated slightly with the joy of triumph; the serene happiness of her
+life had left its plain tokens in the full development of her beauty. A
+certain indefinable virginal grace met in her with the pride of a woman
+who is loved. This was a slave and a queen, a queen who would fain obey
+that she might reign.
+
+Her dress was magnificent and elegant in its richness; India muslin was
+the sole material, but her sofa and cushions were of cashmere. A Persian
+carpet covered the floor in the large cabin, and her four children
+playing at her feet were building castles of gems and pearl necklaces
+and jewels of price. The air was full of the scent of rare flowers in
+Sevres porcelain vases painted by Madame Jacotot; tiny South American
+birds, like living rubies, sapphires, and gold, hovered among the
+Mexican jessamines and camellias. A pianoforte had been fitted into the
+room, and here and there on the paneled walls, covered with red silk,
+hung small pictures by great painters--a _Sunset_ by Hippolyte Schinner
+beside a Terburg, one of Raphael's Madonnas scarcely yielded in charm to
+a sketch by Gericault, while a Gerard Dow eclipsed the painters of the
+Empire. On a lacquered table stood a golden plate full of delicious
+fruit. Indeed, Helene might have been the sovereign lady of some great
+country, and this cabin of hers a boudoir in which her crowned lover
+had brought together all earth's treasure to please his consort. The
+children gazed with bright, keen eyes at their grandfather. Accustomed
+as they were to a life of battle, storm, and tumult, they recalled the
+Roman children in David's _Brutus_, watching the fighting and bloodshed
+with curious interest.
+
+"What! is it possible?" cried Helene, catching her father's arm as if to
+assure herself that this was no vision.
+
+"Helene!"
+
+"Father!"
+
+They fell into each other's arms, and the old man's embrace was not so
+close and warm as Helene's.
+
+"Were you on board that vessel?"
+
+"Yes," he answered sadly, and looking at the little ones, who gathered
+about him and gazed with wide open eyes.
+
+"I was about to perish, but--"
+
+"But for my husband," she broke in. "I see how it was."
+
+"Ah!" cried the General, "why must I find you again like this, Helene?
+After all the many tears that I have shed, must I still groan for your
+fate?"
+
+"And why?" she asked, smiling. "Why should you be sorry to learn that I
+am the happiest woman under the sun?"
+
+"_Happy_?" he cried with a start of surprise.
+
+"Yes, happy, my kind father," and she caught his hands in hers and
+covered them with kisses, and pressed them to her throbbing heart. Her
+caresses, and a something in the carriage of her head, were interpreted
+yet more plainly by the joy sparkling in her eyes.
+
+"And how is this?" he asked, wondering at his daughter's life, forgetful
+now of everything but the bright glowing face before him.
+
+"Listen, father; I have for lover, husband, servant, and master one
+whose soul is as great as the boundless sea, as infinite in his kindness
+as heaven, a god on earth! Never during these seven years has a chance
+look, or word, or gesture jarred in the divine harmony of his talk,
+his love, his caresses. His eyes have never met mine without a gleam of
+happiness in them; there has always been a bright smile on his lips for
+me. On deck, his voice rises above the thunder of storms and the
+tumult of battle; but here below it is soft and melodious as Rossini's
+music--for he has Rossini's music sent for me. I have everything that
+woman's caprice can imagine. My wishes are more than fulfilled. In
+short, I am a queen on the seas; I am obeyed here as perhaps a queen may
+be obeyed.--Ah!" she cried, interrupting herself, "_happy_ did I say?
+Happiness is no word to express such bliss as mine. All the happiness
+that should have fallen to all the women in the world has been my share.
+Knowing one's own great love and self-devotion, to find in _his_
+heart an infinite love in which a woman's soul is lost, and lost for
+ever--tell me, is this happiness? I have lived through a thousand lives
+even now. Here, I am alone; here, I command. No other woman has set foot
+on this noble vessel, and Victor is never more than a few paces distant
+from me,--he cannot wander further from me than from stern to prow," she
+added, with a shade of mischief in her manner. "Seven years! A love
+that outlasts seven years of continual joy, that endures all the tests
+brought by all the moments that make up seven years--is this love? Oh,
+no, no! it is something better than all that I know of life... human
+language fails to express the bliss of heaven."
+
+A sudden torrent of tears fell from her burning eyes. The four little
+ones raised a piteous cry at this, and flocked like chickens about their
+mother. The oldest boy struck the General with a threatening look.
+
+"Abel, darling," said Helene, "I am crying for joy."
+
+Helene took him on her knee, and the child fondled her, putting his arms
+about her queenly neck, as a lion's whelp might play with the lioness.
+
+"Do you never weary of your life?" asked the General, bewildered by his
+daughter's enthusiastic language.
+
+"Yes," she said, "sometimes, when we are on land, yet even then I have
+never parted from my husband."
+
+"But you need to be fond of music and balls and fetes."
+
+"His voice is music for me; and for fetes, I devise new toilettes for
+him to see. When he likes my dress, it is as if all the world admired
+me. Simply for that reason I keep the diamonds and jewels, the precious
+things, the flowers and masterpieces of art that he heaps upon me,
+saying, 'Helene, as you live out of the world, I will have the world
+come to you.' But for that I would fling them all overboard."
+
+"But there are others on board, wild, reckless men whose passions--"
+
+"I understand, father," she said smiling. "Do not fear for me. Never
+was empress encompassed with more observance than I. The men are very
+superstitious; they look upon me as a sort of tutelary genius, the luck
+of the vessel. But _he_ is their god; they worship him. Once, and
+once only, one of the crew showed disrespect, mere words," she added,
+laughing; "but before Victor knew of it, the others flung the offender
+overboard, although I forgave him. They love me as their good angel; I
+nurse them when they are ill; several times I have been so fortunate as
+to save a life, by constant care such as a woman can give. Poor fellows,
+they are giants, but they are children at the same time."
+
+"And when there is fighting overhead?"
+
+"I am used to it now; I quaked for fear during the first engagement,
+but never since.--I am used to such peril, and--I am your daughter," she
+said; "I love it."
+
+"But how if he should fall?"
+
+"I should die with him."
+
+"And your children?"
+
+"They are children of the sea and of danger; they share the life of
+their parents. We have but one life, and we do not flinch from it. We
+have but one life, our names are written on the same page of the book of
+Fate, one skiff bears us and our fortunes, and we know it."
+
+"Do you so love him that he is more to you than all beside?"
+
+"All beside?" echoed she. "Let us leave that mystery alone. Yet stay!
+there is this dear little one--well, this too is _he_," and straining
+Abel to her in a tight clasp, she set eager kisses on his cheeks and
+hair.
+
+"But I can never forget that he has just drowned nine men!" exclaimed
+the General.
+
+"There was no help for it, doubtless," she said, "for he is generous and
+humane. He sheds as little blood as may be, and only in the interests of
+the little world which he defends, and the sacred cause for which he is
+fighting. Talk to him about anything that seems to you to be wrong, and
+he will convince you, you will see."
+
+"There was that crime of his," muttered the General to himself.
+
+"But how if that crime was a virtue?" she asked, with cold dignity. "How
+if man's justice had failed to avenge a great wrong?"
+
+"But a private revenge!" exclaimed her father.
+
+"But what is hell," she cried, "but a revenge through all eternity for
+the wrong done in a little day?"
+
+"Ah! you are lost! He has bewitched and perverted you. You are talking
+wildly."
+
+"Stay with us one day, father, and if you will but listen to him, and
+see him, you will love him."
+
+"Helene, France lies only a few leagues away," he said gravely.
+
+Helene trembled; then she went to the porthole and pointed to the
+savannas of green water spreading far and wide.
+
+"There lies my country," she said, tapping the carpet with her foot.
+
+"But are you not coming with me to see your mother and your sister and
+brothers?"
+
+"Oh! yes," she cried, with tears in her voice, "if _he_ is willing, if
+he will come with me."
+
+"So," the General said sternly, "you have neither country nor kin now,
+Helene?"
+
+"I am his wife," she answered proudly, and there was something very
+noble in her tone. "This is the first happiness in seven years that has
+not come to me through him," she said--then, as she caught her father's
+hand and kissed it--"and this is the first word of reproach that I have
+heard."
+
+"And your conscience?"
+
+"My conscience; he is my conscience!" she cried, trembling from head to
+foot. "Here he is! Even in the thick of a fight I can tell his footstep
+among all the others on deck," she cried.
+
+A sudden crimson flushed her cheeks and glowed in her features, her eyes
+lighted up, her complexion changed to velvet whiteness, there was joy
+and love in every fibre, in the blue veins, in the unconscious trembling
+of her whole frame. That quiver of the sensitive plant softened the
+General.
+
+It was as she had said. The captain came in, sat down in an easy-chair,
+took up his oldest boy, and began to play with him. There was a moment's
+silence, for the General's deep musing had grown vague and dreamy, and
+the daintily furnished cabin and the playing children seemed like a nest
+of halcyons, floating on the waves, between sky and sea, safe in the
+protection of this man who steered his way amid the perils of war and
+tempest, as other heads of household guide those in their care among
+the hazards of common life. He gazed admiringly at Helene--a dreamlike
+vision of some sea goddess, gracious in her loveliness, rich in
+happiness; all the treasures about her grown poor in comparison with
+the wealth of her nature, paling before the brightness of her eyes, the
+indefinable romance expressed in her and her surroundings.
+
+The strangeness of the situation took the General by surprise; the ideas
+of ordinary life were thrown into confusion by this lofty passion and
+reasoning. Chill and narrow social conventions faded away before this
+picture. All these things the old soldier felt, and saw no less how
+impossible it was that his daughter should give up so wide a life, a
+life so variously rich, filled to the full with such passionate love.
+And Helene had tasted danger without shrinking; how could she return to
+the pretty stage, the superficial circumscribed life of society?
+
+It was the captain who broke the silence at last.
+
+"Am I in the way?" he asked, looking at his wife.
+
+"No," said the General, answering for her. "Helene has told me all. I
+see that she is lost to us--"
+
+"No," the captain put in quickly; "in a few years' time the statute of
+limitations will allow me to go back to France. When the conscience
+is clear, and a man has broken the law in obedience to----" he stopped
+short, as if scorning to justify himself.
+
+"How can you commit new murders, such as I have seen with my own eyes,
+without remorse?"
+
+"We had no provisions," the privateer captain retorted calmly.
+
+"But if you had set the men ashore--"
+
+"They would have given the alarm and sent a man-of-war after us, and we
+should never have seen Chili again."
+
+"Before France would have given warning to the Spanish admiralty--"
+began the General.
+
+"But France might take it amiss that a man, with a warrant still out
+against him, should seize a brig chartered by Bordeaux merchants. And
+for that matter, have you never fired a shot or so too many in battle?"
+
+The General shrank under the other's eyes. He said no more, and his
+daughter looked at him half sadly, half triumphant.
+
+"General," the privateer continued, in a deep voice, "I have made it
+a rule to abstract nothing from booty. But even so, my share will be
+beyond a doubt far larger than your fortune. Permit me to return it to
+you in another form--"
+
+He drew a pile of banknotes from the piano, and without counting the
+packets handed a million of francs to the Marquis.
+
+"You can understand," he said, "that I cannot spend my time in watching
+vessels pass by to Bordeaux. So unless the dangers of this Bohemian
+life of ours have some attraction for you, unless you care to see South
+America and the nights of the tropics, and a bit of fighting now and
+again for the pleasure of helping to win a triumph for a young nation,
+or for the name of Simon Bolivar, we must part. The long boat manned
+with a trustworthy crew is ready for you. And now let us hope that our
+third meeting will be completely happy."
+
+"Victor," said Helene in a dissatisfied tone, "I should like to see a
+little more of my father."
+
+"Ten minutes more or less may bring up a French frigate. However, so be
+it, we shall have a little fun. The men find things dull."
+
+"Oh, father, go!" cried Helene, "and take these keepsakes from me to my
+sister and brothers and--mother," she added. She caught up a handful of
+jewels and precious stones, folded them in an Indian shawl, and timidly
+held it out.
+
+"But what shall I say to them from you?" asked he. Her hesitation on the
+word "mother" seemed to have struck him.
+
+"Oh! can you doubt me? I pray for their happiness every day."
+
+"Helene," he began, as he watched her closely, "how if we should not
+meet again? Shall I never know why you left us?"
+
+"That secret is not mine," she answered gravely. "Even if I had the
+right to tell it, perhaps I should not. For ten years I was more
+miserable than words can say--"
+
+She broke off, and gave her father the presents for her family. The
+General had acquired tolerably easy views as to booty in the course of
+a soldier's career, so he took Helene's gifts and comforted himself with
+the reflection that the Parisian captain was sure to wage war against
+the Spaniards as an honorable man, under the influence of Helene's pure
+and high-minded nature. His passion for courage carried all before it.
+It was ridiculous, he thought, to be squeamish in the matter; so he
+shook hands cordially with his captor, and kissed Helene, his only
+daughter, with a soldier's expansiveness; letting fall a tear on the
+face with the proud, strong look that once he had loved to see. "The
+Parisian," deeply moved, brought the children for his blessing. The
+parting was over, the last good-bye was a long farewell look, with
+something of tender regret on either side.
+
+
+
+A strange sight to seaward met the General's eyes. The _Saint-Ferdinand_
+was blazing like a huge bonfire. The men told off to sink the Spanish
+brig had found a cargo of rum on board; and as the _Othello_ was already
+amply supplied, had lighted a floating bowl of punch on the high seas,
+by way of a joke; a pleasantry pardonable enough in sailors, who hail
+any chance excitement as a relief from the apparent monotony of life
+at sea. As the General went over the side into the long-boat of the
+_Saint-Ferdinand_, manned by six vigorous rowers, he could not help
+looking at the burning vessel, as well as at the daughter who stood by
+her husband's side on the stern of the _Othello_. He saw Helene's white
+dress flutter like one more sail in the breeze; he saw the tall, noble
+figure against a background of sea, queenly still even in the presence
+of Ocean; and so many memories crowded up in his mind, that, with a
+soldier's recklessness of life, he forgot that he was being borne over
+the grave of the brave Gomez.
+
+A vast column of smoke rising spread like a brown cloud, pierced here
+and there by fantastic shafts of sunlight. It was a second sky, a murky
+dome reflecting the glow of the fire as if the under surface had been
+burnished; but above it soared the unchanging blue of the firmament, a
+thousand times fairer for the short-lived contrast. The strange hues
+of the smoke cloud, black and red, tawny and pale by turns, blurred
+and blending into each other, shrouded the burning vessel as it flared,
+crackled and groaned; the hissing tongues of flame licked up the
+rigging, and flashed across the hull, like a rumor of riot flashing
+along the streets of a city. The burning rum sent up blue flitting
+lights. Some sea god might have been stirring the furious liquor as
+a student stirs the joyous flames of punch in an orgy. But in the
+overpowering sunlight, jealous of the insolent blaze, the colors were
+scarcely visible, and the smoke was but a film fluttering like a thin
+scarf in the noonday torrent of light and heat.
+
+The _Othello_ made the most of the little wind she could gain to fly
+on her new course. Swaying first to one side, then to the other, like a
+stag beetle on the wing, the fair vessel beat to windward on her zigzag
+flight to the south. Sometimes she was hidden from sight by the straight
+column of smoke that flung fantastic shadows across the water, then
+gracefully she shot out clear of it, and Helene, catching sight of her
+father, waved her handkerchief for yet one more farewell greeting.
+
+A few more minutes, and the _Saint-Ferdinand_ went down with a bubbling
+turmoil, at once effaced by the ocean. Nothing of all that had been
+was left but a smoke cloud hanging in the breeze. The _Othello_ was far
+away, the long-boat had almost reached land, the cloud came between
+the frail skiff and the brig, and it was through a break in the swaying
+smoke that the General caught the last glimpse of Helene. A prophetic
+vision! Her dress and her white handkerchief stood out against the murky
+background. Then the brig was not even visible between the green water
+and the blue sky, and Helene was nothing but an imperceptible speck, a
+faint graceful line, an angel in heaven, a mental image, a memory.
+
+The Marquis had retrieved his fortunes, when he died, worn out with
+toil. A few months after his death, in 1833, the Marquise was obliged to
+take Moina to a watering-place in the Pyrenees, for the capricious child
+had a wish to see the beautiful mountain scenery. They left the baths,
+and the following tragical incident occurred on their way home.
+
+"Dear me, mother," said Moina, "it was very foolish of us not to stay
+among the mountains a few days longer. It was much nicer there. Did
+you hear that horrid child moaning all night, and that wretched woman,
+gabbling away in patois no doubt, for I could not understand a single
+word she said. What kind of people can they have put in the next room to
+ours? This is one of the horridest nights I have ever spent in my life."
+
+"I heard nothing," said the Marquise, "but I will see the landlady,
+darling, and engage the next room, and then we shall have the whole
+suite of rooms to ourselves, and there will be no more noise. How do you
+feel this morning? Are you tired?"
+
+As she spoke, the Marquise rose and went to Moina's bedside.
+
+"Let us see," she said, feeling for the girl's hand.
+
+"Oh! let me alone, mother," said Moina; "your fingers are cold."
+
+She turned her head round on the pillow as she spoke, pettishly, but
+with such engaging grace, that a mother could scarcely have taken it
+amiss. Just then a wailing cry echoed through the next room, a faint
+prolonged cry, that must surely have gone to the heart of any woman who
+heard it.
+
+"Why, if you heard _that_ all night long, why did you not wake me? We
+should have--"
+
+A deeper moan than any that had gone before it interrupted the Marquise.
+
+"Some one is dying there," she cried, and hurried out of the room.
+
+"Send Pauline to me!" called Moina. "I shall get up and dress."
+
+The Marquise hastened downstairs, and found the landlady in the
+courtyard with a little group about her, apparently much interested in
+something that she was telling them.
+
+"Madame, you have put some one in the next room who seems to be very ill
+indeed--"
+
+"Oh! don't talk to me about it!" cried the mistress of the house. "I
+have just sent some one for the mayor. Just imagine it; it is a woman,
+a poor unfortunate creature that came here last night on foot. She comes
+from Spain; she has no passport and no money; she was carrying her baby
+on her back, and the child was dying. I could not refuse to take her
+in. I went up to see her this morning myself; for when she turned up
+yesterday, it made me feel dreadfully bad to look at her. Poor soul!
+she and the child were lying in bed, and both of them at death's door.
+'Madame,' says she, pulling a gold ring off her finger, 'this is all
+that I have left; take it in payment, it will be enough; I shall not
+stay here long. Poor little one! we shall die together soon!' she said,
+looking at the child. I took her ring, and I asked her who she was, but
+she never would tell me her name.... I have just sent for the doctor and
+M. le Maire."
+
+"Why, you must do all that can be done for her," cried the Marquise.
+"Good heavens! perhaps it is not too late! I will pay for everything
+that is necessary----"
+
+"Ah! my lady, she looks to me uncommonly proud, and I don't know that
+she would allow it."
+
+"I will go to see her at once."
+
+The Marquise went up forthwith to the stranger's room, without thinking
+of the shock that the sight of her widow's weeds might give to a woman
+who was said to be dying. At the sight of that dying woman the Marquise
+turned pale. In spite of the changes wrought by fearful suffering in
+Helene's beautiful face, she recognized her eldest daughter.
+
+But Helene, when she saw a woman dressed in black, sat upright in bed
+with a shriek of horror. Then she sank back; she knew her mother.
+
+"My daughter," said Mme. d'Aiglemont, "what is to be done? Pauline!...
+Moina!..."
+
+"Nothing now for me," said Helene faintly. "I had hoped to see my father
+once more, but your mourning--" she broke off, clutched her child to her
+heart as if to give it warmth, and kissed its forehead. Then she turned
+her eyes on her mother, and the Marquise met the old reproach in them,
+tempered with forgiveness, it is true, but still reproach. She saw it,
+and would not see it. She forgot that Helene was the child conceived
+amid tears and despair, the child of duty, the cause of one of the
+greatest sorrows in her life. She stole to her eldest daughter's side,
+remembering nothing but that Helene was her firstborn, the child who had
+taught her to know the joys of motherhood. The mother's eyes were full
+of tears. "Helene, my child!..." she cried, with her arms about her
+daughter.
+
+Helene was silent. Her own babe had just drawn its last breath on her
+breast.
+
+Moina came into the room with Pauline, her maid, and the landlady and
+the doctor. The Marquise was holding her daughter's ice-cold hand in
+both of hers, and gazing at her in despair; but the widowed woman, who
+had escaped shipwreck with but one of all her fair band of children,
+spoke in a voice that was dreadful to hear. "All this is your work," she
+said. "If you had but been for me all that--"
+
+"Moina, go! Go out of the room, all of you!" cried Mme. d'Aiglemont, her
+shrill tones drowning Helene's voice.--"For pity's sake," she continued,
+"let us not begin these miserable quarrels again now----"
+
+"I will be silent," Helene answered with a preternatural effort. "I am a
+mother; I know that Moina ought not... Where is my child?"
+
+Moina came back, impelled by curiosity.
+
+"Sister," said the spoiled child, "the doctor--"
+
+"It is all of no use," said Helene. "Oh! why did I not die as a girl of
+sixteen when I meant to take my own life? There is no happiness outside
+the laws. Moina... you..."
+
+Her head sank till her face lay against the face of the little one; in
+her agony she strained her babe to her breast, and died.
+
+"Your sister, Moina," said Mme. d'Aiglemont, bursting into tears when
+she reached her room, "your sister meant no doubt to tell you that a
+girl will never find happiness in a romantic life, in living as nobody
+else does, and, above all things, far away from her mother."
+
+
+
+
+VI. THE OLD AGE OF A GUILTY MOTHER
+
+It was one of the earliest June days of the year 1844. A lady of fifty
+or thereabouts, for she looked older than her actual age, was pacing up
+and down one of the sunny paths in the garden of a great mansion in
+the Rue Plument in Paris. It was noon. The lady took two or three turns
+along the gently winding garden walk, careful never to lose sight of a
+certain row of windows, to which she seemed to give her whole attention;
+then she sat down on a bench, a piece of elegant semi-rusticity made of
+branches with the bark left on the wood. From the place where she sat
+she could look through the garden railings along the inner boulevards to
+the wonderful dome of the Invalides rising above the crests of a
+forest of elm-trees, and see the less striking view of her own grounds
+terminating in the gray stone front of one of the finest hotels in the
+Faubourg Saint-Germain.
+
+Silence lay over the neighboring gardens, and the boulevards stretching
+away to the Invalides. Day scarcely begins at noon in that aristocratic
+quarter, and masters and servants are all alike asleep, or just
+awakening, unless some young lady takes it into her head to go for an
+early ride, or a gray-headed diplomatist rises betimes to redraft a
+protocol.
+
+The elderly lady stirring abroad at that hour was the Marquise
+d'Aiglemont, the mother of Mme. de Saint-Hereen, to whom the great house
+belonged. The Marquise had made over the mansion and almost her whole
+fortune to her daughter, reserving only an annuity for herself.
+
+The Comtesse Moina de Saint-Hereen was Mme. d'Aiglemont's youngest
+child. The Marquise had made every sacrifice to marry her daughter to
+the eldest son of one of the greatest houses of France; and this was
+only what might have been expected, for the lady had lost her sons,
+first one and then the other. Gustave, Marquis d'Aiglemont, had died of
+the cholera; Abel, the second, had fallen in Algeria. Gustave had left
+a widow and children, but the dowager's affection for her sons had
+been only moderately warm, and for the next generation it was decidedly
+tepid. She was always civil to her daughter-in-law, but her feeling
+towards the young Marquise was the distinctly conventional affection
+which good taste and good manners require us to feel for our relatives.
+The fortunes of her dead children having been settled, she could devote
+her savings and her own property to her darling Moina.
+
+Moina, beautiful and fascinating from childhood, was Mme. d'Aiglemont's
+favorite; loved beyond all the others with an instinctive or involuntary
+love, a fatal drawing of the heart, which sometimes seems inexplicable,
+sometimes, and to a close observer, only too easy to explain. Her
+darling's pretty face, the sound of Moina's voice, her ways, her manner,
+her looks and gestures, roused all the deepest emotions that can stir
+a mother's heart with trouble, rapture, or delight. The springs of the
+Marquise's life, of yesterday, to-morrow, and to-day, lay in that young
+heart. Moina, with better fortune, had survived four older children.
+As a matter of fact, Mme. d'Aiglemont had lost her eldest daughter, a
+charming girl, in a most unfortunate manner, said gossip, nobody knew
+exactly what became of her; and then she lost a little boy of five by a
+dreadful accident.
+
+The child of her affections had, however, been spared to her, and
+doubtless the Marquise saw the will of Heaven in that fact; for those
+who had died, she kept but very shadowy recollections in some far-off
+corner of her heart; her memories of her dead children were like the
+headstones on a battlefield, you can scarcely see them for the flowers
+that have sprung up about them since. Of course, if the world had
+chosen, it might have said some hard truths about the Marquise, might
+have taken her to task for shallowness and an overweening preference for
+one child at the expense of the rest; but the world of Paris is swept
+along by the full flood of new events, new ideas, and new fashions, and
+it was inevitable the Mme. d'Aiglemont should be in some sort allowed
+to drop out of sight. So nobody thought of blaming her for coldness
+or neglect which concerned no one, whereas her quick, apprehensive
+tenderness for Moina was found highly interesting by not a few who
+respected it as a sort of superstition. Besides, the Marquise scarcely
+went into society at all; and the few families who knew her thought of
+her as a kindly, gentle, indulgent woman, wholly devoted to her family.
+What but a curiosity, keen indeed, would seek to pry beneath the surface
+with which the world is quite satisfied? And what would we not pardon
+to old people, if only they will efface themselves like shadows, and
+consent to be regarded as memories and nothing more!
+
+Indeed, Mme. d'Aiglemont became a kind of example complacently held up
+by the younger generation to fathers of families, and frequently cited
+to mothers-in-law. She had made over her property to Moina in her own
+lifetime; the young Countess' happiness was enough for her, she only
+lived in her daughter. If some cautious old person or morose uncle here
+and there condemned the course with--"Perhaps Mme. d'Aiglemont may be
+sorry some day that she gave up her fortune to her daughter; she may
+be sure of Moina, but how can she be equally sure of her
+son-in-law?"--these prophets were cried down on all sides, and from all
+sides a chorus of praise went up for Moina.
+
+"It ought to be said, in justice to Mme. de Saint-Hereen, that her
+mother cannot feel the slightest difference," remarked a young married
+woman. "Mme. d'Aiglemont is admirably well housed. She has a carriage at
+her disposal, and can go everywhere just as she used to do--"
+
+"Except to the Italiens," remarked a low voice. (This was an elderly
+parasite, one of those persons who show their independence--as they
+think--by riddling their friends with epigrams.) "Except to the
+Italiens. And if the dowager cares for anything on this earth but her
+daughter--it is music. Such a good performer she was in her time! But
+the Countess' box is always full of young butterflies, and the Countess'
+mother would be in the way; the young lady is talked about already as a
+great flirt. So the poor mother never goes to the Italiens."
+
+"Mme. de Saint-Hereen has delightful 'At Homes' for her mother," said a
+rosebud. "All Paris goes to her salon.
+
+"And no one pays any attention to the Marquise," returned the parasite.
+
+"The fact is that Mme. d'Aiglemont is never alone," remarked a coxcomb,
+siding with the young women.
+
+"In the morning," the old observer continued in a discreet voice, "in
+the morning dear Moina is asleep. At four o'clock dear Moina drives
+in the Bois. In the evening dear Moina goes to a ball or to the
+Bouffes.--Still, it is certainly true that Mme. d'Aiglemont has the
+privilege of seeing her dear daughter while she dresses, and again at
+dinner, if dear Moina happens to dine with her mother. Not a week ago,
+sir," continued the elderly person, laying his hand on the arm of the
+shy tutor, a new arrival in the house, "not a week ago, I saw the poor
+mother, solitary and sad, by her own fireside.--'What is the matter?' I
+asked. The Marquise looked up smiling, but I am quite sure that she had
+been crying.--'I was thinking that it is a strange thing that I should
+be left alone when I have had five children,' she said, 'but that is
+our destiny! And besides, I am happy when I know that Moina is enjoying
+herself.'--She could say that to me, for I knew her husband when he was
+alive. A poor stick he was, and uncommonly lucky to have such a wife; it
+was certainly owing to her that he was made a peer of France, and had a
+place at Court under Charles X."
+
+Yet such mistaken ideas get about in social gossip, and such mischief
+is done by it, that the historian of manners is bound to exercise his
+discretion, and weigh the assertions so recklessly made. After all, who
+is to say that either mother or daughter was right or wrong? There is
+but One who can read and judge their hearts! And how often does He wreak
+His vengeance in the family circle, using throughout all time children
+as His instruments against their mothers, and fathers against their
+sons, raising up peoples against kings, and princes against peoples,
+sowing strife and division everywhere? And in the world of ideas, are
+not opinions and feelings expelled by new feelings and opinions, much
+as withered leaves are thrust forth by the young leaf-buds in the
+spring?--all in obedience to the immutable Scheme; all to some end which
+God alone knows. Yet, surely, all things proceed to Him, or rather, to
+Him all things return.
+
+Such thoughts of religion, the natural thoughts of age, floated up
+now and again on the current of Mme. d'Aiglemont's thoughts; they were
+always dimly present in her mind, but sometimes they shone out clearly,
+sometimes they were carried under, like flowers tossed on the vexed
+surface of a stormy sea.
+
+She sat on a garden-seat, tired with walking, exhausted with much
+thinking--with the long thoughts in which a whole lifetime rises up
+before the mind, and is spread out like a scroll before the eyes of
+those who feel that Death is near.
+
+If a poet had chanced to pass along the boulevard, he would have found
+an interesting picture in the face of this woman, grown old before her
+time. As she sat under the dotted shadow of the acacia, the shadow the
+acacia casts at noon, a thousand thoughts were written for all the world
+to see on her features, pale and cold even in the hot, bright sunlight.
+There was something sadder than the sense of waning life in that
+expressive face, some trouble that went deeper than the weariness of
+experience. It was a face of a type that fixes you in a moment among a
+host of characterless faces that fail to draw a second glance, a face
+to set you thinking. Among a thousand pictures in a gallery, you are
+strongly impressed by the sublime anguish on the face of some Madonna
+of Murillo's; by some _Beatrice Cenci_ in which Guido's art portrays the
+most touching innocence against a background of horror and crime; by the
+awe and majesty that should encircle a king, caught once and for ever
+by Velasquez in the sombre face of a Philip II., and so is it with some
+living human faces; they are tyrannous pictures which speak to you,
+submit you to searching scrutiny, and give response to your inmost
+thoughts, nay, there are faces that set forth a whole drama, and Mme.
+d'Aiglemont's stony face was one of these awful tragedies, one of such
+faces as Dante Alighieri saw by thousands in his vision.
+
+For the little season that a woman's beauty is in flower it serves her
+admirably well in the dissimulation to which her natural weakness and
+our social laws condemn her. A young face and rich color, and eyes that
+glow with light, a gracious maze of such subtle, manifold lines and
+curves, flawless and perfectly traced, is a screen that hides everything
+that stirs the woman within. A flush tells nothing, it only heightens
+the coloring so brilliant already; all the fires that burn within
+can add little light to the flame of life in eyes which only seem the
+brighter for the flash of a passing pain. Nothing is so discreet as a
+young face, for nothing is less mobile; it has the serenity, the surface
+smoothness, and the freshness of a lake. There is not character in
+women's faces before the age of thirty. The painter discovers nothing
+there but pink and white, and the smile and expression that repeat the
+same thought in the same way--a thought of youth and love that goes no
+further than youth and love. But the face of an old woman has expressed
+all that lay in her nature; passion has carved lines on her features;
+love and wifehood and motherhood, and extremes of joy and anguish,
+having wrung them, and left their traces in a thousand wrinkles, all
+of which speak a language of their own; then it is that a woman's face
+becomes sublime in its horror, beautiful in its melancholy, grand in its
+calm. If it is permissible to carry the strange metaphor still further,
+it might be said that in the dried-up lake you can see the traces of
+all the torrents that once poured into it and made it what it is. An old
+face is nothing to the frivolous world; the frivolous world is shocked
+by the sight of the destruction of such comeliness as it can understand;
+a commonplace artist sees nothing there. An old face is the province of
+the poets among poets of those who can recognize that something which
+is called Beauty, apart from all the conventions underlying so many
+superstitions in art and taste.
+
+
+
+Though Mme. d'Aiglemont wore a fashionable bonnet, it was easy to see
+that her once black hair had been bleached by cruel sorrows; yet her
+good taste and the gracious acquired instincts of a woman of fashion
+could be seen in the way she wore it, divided into two _bandeaux_,
+following the outlines of a forehead that still retained some traces of
+former dazzling beauty, worn and lined though it was. The contours
+of her face, the regularity of her features, gave some idea, faint in
+truth, of that beauty of which surely she had once been proud; but those
+traces spoke still more plainly of the anguish which had laid it waste,
+of sharp pain that had withered the temples, and made those hollows in
+her cheeks, and empurpled the eyelids, and robbed them of their lashes,
+and the eyes of their charm. She was in every way so noiseless; she
+moved with a slow, self-contained gravity that showed itself in her
+whole bearing, and struck a certain awe into others. Her diffident
+manner had changed to positive shyness, due apparently to a habit now of
+some years' growth, of effacing herself in her daughter's presence. She
+spoke very seldom, and in the low tones used by those who perforce must
+live within themselves a life of reflection and concentration. This
+demeanor led others to regard her with an indefinable feeling which was
+neither awe nor compassion, but a mysterious blending of the many ideas
+awakened in us by compassion and awe. Finally, there was something in
+her wrinkles, in the lines of her face, in the look of pain in those
+wan eyes of hers, that bore eloquent testimony to tears that never had
+fallen, tears that had been absorbed by her heart. Unhappy creatures,
+accustomed to raise their eyes to heaven, in mute appeal against the
+bitterness of their lot, would have seen at once from her eyes that she
+was broken in to the cruel discipline of ceaseless prayer, would have
+discerned the almost imperceptible symptoms of the secret bruises which
+destroy all the flowers of the soul, even the sentiment of motherhood.
+
+Painters have colors for these portraits, but words, and the mental
+images called up by words, fail to reproduce such impressions
+faithfully; there are mysterious signs and tokens in the tones of the
+coloring and in the look of human faces, which the mind only seizes
+through the sense of sight; and the poet is fain to record the tale
+of the events which wrought the havoc to make their terrible ravages
+understood.
+
+The face spoke of cold and steady storm, an inward conflict between a
+mother's long-suffering and the limitations of our nature, for our human
+affections are bounded by our humanity, and the infinite has no place
+in finite creatures. Sorrow endured in silence had at last produced an
+indefinable morbid something in this woman. Doubtless mental anguish had
+reacted on the physical frame, and some disease, perhaps an aneurism,
+was undermining Julie's life. Deep-seated grief lies to all appearance
+very quietly in the depths where it is conceived, yet, so still and
+apparently dormant as it is, it ceaselessly corrodes the soul, like the
+terrible acid which eats away crystal.
+
+Two tears made their way down the Marquise's cheeks; she rose to her
+feet as if some thought more poignant than any that preceded it had cut
+her to the quick. She had doubtless come to a conclusion as to Moina's
+future; and now, foreseeing clearly all the troubles in store for her
+child, the sorrows of her own unhappy life had begun to weigh once
+more upon her. The key of her position must be sought in her daughter's
+situation.
+
+The Comte de Saint-Hereen had been away for nearly six months on a
+political mission. The Countess, whether from sheer giddiness, or in
+obedience to the countless instincts of woman's coquetry, or to essay
+its power--with all the vanity of a frivolous fine lady, all the
+capricious waywardness of a child--was amusing herself, during her
+husband's absence, by playing with the passion of a clever but heartless
+man, distracted (so he said) with love, the love that combines readily
+with every petty social ambition of a self-conceited coxcomb. Mme.
+d'Aiglemont, whose long experience had given her a knowledge of life,
+and taught her to judge of men and to dread the world, watched the
+course of this flirtation, and saw that it could only end in one way,
+if her daughter should fall into the hands of an utterly unscrupulous
+intriguer. How could it be other than a terrible thought for her that
+her daughter listened willingly to this _roue_? Her darling stood on the
+brink of a precipice, she felt horribly sure of it, yet dared not hold
+her back. She was afraid of the Countess. She knew too that Moina would
+not listen to her wise warnings; she knew that she had no influence
+over that nature--iron for her, silken-soft for all others. Her mother's
+tenderness might have led her to sympathize with the troubles of a
+passion called forth by the nobler qualities of a lover, but this was
+no passion--it was coquetry, and the Marquise despised Alfred de
+Vandenesse, knowing that he had entered upon this flirtation with Moina
+as if it were a game of chess.
+
+But if Alfred de Vandenesse made her shudder with disgust, she was
+obliged--unhappy mother!--to conceal the strongest reason for her
+loathing in the deepest recesses of her heart. She was on terms of
+intimate friendship with the Marquis de Vandenesse, the young man's
+father; and this friendship, a respectable one in the eyes of the world,
+excused the son's constant presence in the house, he professing an old
+attachment, dating from childhood, for Mme. de Saint-Hereen. More than
+this, in vain did Mme. d'Aiglemont nerve herself to come between Moina
+and Alfred de Vandenesse with a terrible word, knowing beforehand that
+she should not succeed; knowing that the strong reason which ought to
+separate them would carry no weight; that she should humiliate herself
+vainly in her daughter's eyes. Alfred was too corrupt; Moina too clever
+to believe the revelation; the young Countess would turn it off and
+treat it as a piece of maternal strategy. Mme. d'Aiglemont had built
+her prison walls with her own hands; she had immured herself only to
+see Moina's happiness ruined thence before she died; she was to look on
+helplessly at the ruin of the young life which had been her pride and
+joy and comfort, a life a thousand times dearer to her than her
+own. What words can describe anguish so hideous beyond belief, such
+unfathomed depths of pain?
+
+She waited for Moina to rise, with the impatience and sickening dread
+of a doomed man, who longs to have done with life, and turns cold at the
+thought of the headsman. She had braced herself for a last effort, but
+perhaps the prospect of the certain failure of the attempt was less
+dreadful to her than the fear of receiving yet again one of those
+thrusts that went to her very heart--before that fear her courage ebbed
+away. Her mother's love had come to this. To love her child, to be
+afraid of her, to shrink from the thought of the stab, yet to go
+forward. So great is a mother's affection in a loving nature, that
+before it can fade away into indifference the mother herself must die
+or find support in some great power without her, in religion or another
+love. Since the Marquise rose that morning, her fatal memory had called
+up before her some of those things, so slight to all appearance, that
+make landmarks in a life. Sometimes, indeed, a whole tragedy grows out
+of a single gesture; the tone in which a few words were spoken rends a
+whole life in two; a glance into indifferent eyes is the deathblow of
+the gladdest love; and, unhappily, such gestures and such words were
+only too familiar to Mme. d'Aiglemont--she had met so many glances that
+wound the soul. No, there was nothing in those memories to bid her hope.
+On the contrary, everything went to show that Alfred had destroyed her
+hold on her daughter's heart, that the thought of her was now associated
+with duty--not with gladness. In ways innumerable, in things that were
+mere trifles in themselves, the Countess' detestable conduct rose
+up before her mother; and the Marquise, it may be, looked on Moina's
+undutifulness as a punishment, and found excuses for her daughter in the
+will of Heaven, that so she still might adore the hand that smote her.
+
+All these things passed through her memory that morning, and each
+recollection wounded her afresh so sorely, that with a very little
+additional pain her brimming cup of bitterness must have overflowed. A
+cold look might kill her.
+
+The little details of domestic life are difficult to paint; but one or
+two perhaps will suffice to give an idea of the rest.
+
+The Marquise d'Aiglemont, for instance, had grown rather deaf, but she
+could never induce Moina to raise her voice for her. Once, with the
+naivete of suffering, she had begged Moina to repeat some remark which
+she had failed to catch, and Moina obeyed, but with so bad a grace, the
+Mme. d'Aiglemont had never permitted herself to make her modest request
+again. Ever since that day when Moina was talking or retailing a
+piece of news, her mother was careful to come near to listen; but this
+infirmity of deafness appeared to put the Countess out of patience,
+and she would grumble thoughtlessly about it. This instance is one
+from among very many that must have gone to the mother's heart; and yet
+nearly all of them might have escaped a close observer, they consisted
+in faint shades of manner invisible to any but a woman's eyes. Take
+another example. Mme. d'Aiglemont happened to say one day that the
+Princesse de Cadignan had called upon her. "Did she come to see _you_!"
+Moina exclaimed. That was all, but the Countess' voice and manner
+expressed surprise and well-bred contempt in semitones. Any heart,
+still young and sensitive, might well have applauded the philanthropy of
+savage tribes who kill off their old people when they grow too feeble
+to cling to a strongly shaken bough. Mme. d'Aiglemont rose smiling, and
+went away to weep alone.
+
+Well-bred people, and women especially, only betray their feelings
+by imperceptible touches; but those who can look back over their own
+experience on such bruises as this mother's heart received, know also
+how the heart-strings vibrate to these light touches. Overcome by her
+memories, Mme. d'Aiglemont recollected one of those microscopically
+small things, so stinging and so painful was it that never till this
+moment had she felt all the heartless contempt that lurked beneath
+smiles.
+
+At the sound of shutters thrown back at her daughter's windows, she
+dried her tears, and hastened up the pathway by the railings. As she
+went, it struck her that the gardener had been unusually careful to rake
+the sand along the walk which had been neglected for some little time.
+As she stood under her daughter's windows, the shutters were hastily
+closed.
+
+"Moina, is it you?" she asked.
+
+No answer.
+
+The Marquise went on into the house.
+
+"Mme. la Comtesse is in the little drawing-room," said the maid, when
+the Marquise asked whether Mme. de Saint-Hereen had finished dressing.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont hurried to the little drawing-room; her heart was too
+full, her brain too busy to notice matters so slight; but there on the
+sofa sat the Countess in her loose morning-gown, her hair in disorder
+under the cap tossed carelessly on he head, her feet thrust into
+slippers. The key of her bedroom hung at her girdle. Her face, aglow
+with color, bore traces of almost stormy thought.
+
+"What makes people come in!" she cried, crossly. "Oh! it is you,
+mother," she interrupted herself, with a preoccupied look.
+
+"Yes, child; it is your mother----"
+
+Something in her tone turned those words into an outpouring of the
+heart, the cry of some deep inward feeling, only to be described by the
+word "holy." So thoroughly in truth had she rehabilitated the sacred
+character of a mother, that her daughter was impressed, and turned
+towards her, with something of awe, uneasiness, and remorse in her
+manner. The room was the furthest of a suite, and safe from indiscreet
+intrusion, for no one could enter it without giving warning of approach
+through the previous apartments. The Marquise closed the door.
+
+"It is my duty, my child, to warn you in one of the most serious crises
+in the lives of us women; you have perhaps reached it unconsciously, and
+I am come to speak to you as a friend rather than as a mother. When you
+married, you acquired freedom of action; you are only accountable to
+your husband now; but I asserted my authority so little (perhaps I was
+wrong), that I think I have a right to expect you to listen to me, for
+once at least, in a critical position when you must need counsel. Bear
+in mind, Moina that you are married to a man of high ability, a man of
+whom you may well be proud, a man who--"
+
+"I know what you are going to say, mother!" Moina broke in pettishly. "I
+am to be lectured about Alfred--"
+
+"Moina," the Marquise said gravely, as she struggled with her tears,
+"you would not guess at once if you did not feel--"
+
+"What?" asked Moina, almost haughtily. "Why, really, mother--"
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont summoned up all her strength. "Moina," she said, "you
+must attend carefully to this that I ought to tell you--"
+
+"I am attending," returned the Countess, folding her arms, and affecting
+insolent submission. "Permit me, mother, to ring for Pauline," she added
+with incredible self-possession; "I will send her away first."
+
+She rang the bell.
+
+"My dear child, Pauline cannot possibly hear--"
+
+"Mamma," interrupted the Countess, with a gravity which must have struck
+her mother as something unusual, "I must--"
+
+She stopped short, for the woman was in the room.
+
+"Pauline, go _yourself_ to Baudran's, and ask why my hat has not yet
+been sent."
+
+Then the Countess reseated herself and scrutinized her mother. The
+Marquise, with a swelling heart and dry eyes, in painful agitation,
+which none but a mother can fully understand, began to open Moina's eyes
+to the risk that she was running. But either the Countess felt hurt
+and indignant at her mother's suspicions of a son of the Marquis de
+Vandenesse, or she was seized with a sudden fit of inexplicable levity
+caused by the inexperience of youth. She took advantage of a pause.
+
+"Mamma, I thought you were only jealous of _the father_--" she said,
+with a forced laugh.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont shut her eyes and bent her head at the words, with a
+very faint, almost inaudible sigh. She looked up and out into space,
+as if she felt the common overmastering impulse to appeal to God at the
+great crises of our lives; then she looked at her daughter, and her eyes
+were full of awful majesty and the expression of profound sorrow.
+
+"My child," she said, and her voice was hardly recognizable, "you have
+been less merciful to your mother than he against whom she sinned; less
+merciful than perhaps God Himself will be!"
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont rose; at the door she turned; but she saw nothing but
+surprise in her daughter's face. She went out. Scarcely had she reached
+the garden when her strength failed her. There was a violent pain at her
+heart, and she sank down on a bench. As her eyes wandered over the path,
+she saw fresh marks on the path, a man's footprints were distinctly
+recognizable. It was too late, then, beyond a doubt. Now she began to
+understand the reason for that order given to Pauline, and with these
+torturing thoughts came a revelation more hateful than any that had
+gone before it. She drew her own inferences--the son of the Marquis
+de Vandenesse had destroyed all feeling of respect for her in her
+daughter's mind. The physical pain grew worse; by degrees she lost
+consciousness, and sat like one asleep upon the garden-seat.
+
+The Countess de Saint-Hereen, left to herself, thought that her mother
+had given her a somewhat shrewd home-thrust, but a kiss and a few
+attentions that evening would make all right again.
+
+A shrill cry came from the garden. She leaned carelessly out, as
+Pauline, not yet departed on her errand, called out for help, holding
+the Marquise in her arms.
+
+"Do not frighten my daughter!" those were the last words the mother
+uttered.
+
+Moina saw them carry in a pale and lifeless form that struggled for
+breath, and arms moving restlessly as in protest or effort to speak; and
+overcome by the sight, Moina followed in silence, and helped to undress
+her mother and lay her on her bed. The burden of her fault was greater
+than she could bear. In that supreme hour she learned to know her
+mother--too late, she could make no reparation now. She would have them
+leave her alone with her mother; and when there was no one else in the
+room, when she felt that the hand which had always been so tender for
+her was now grown cold to her touch, she broke out into weeping. Her
+tears aroused the Marquise; she could still look at her darling
+Moina; and at the sound of sobbing, that seemed as if it must rend the
+delicate, disheveled breast, could smile back at her daughter. That
+smile taught the unnatural child that forgiveness is always to be found
+in the great deep of a mother's heart.
+
+
+
+Servants on horseback had been dispatched at once for the physician and
+surgeon and for Mme. d'Aiglemont's grandchildren. Mme. d'Aiglemont the
+younger and her little sons arrived with the medical men, a sufficiently
+impressive, silent, and anxious little group, which the servants of the
+house came to join. The young Marquise, hearing no sound, tapped gently
+at the door. That signal, doubtless, roused Moina from her grief, for
+she flung open the doors and stood before them. No words could have
+spoken more plainly than that disheveled figure looking out with haggard
+eyes upon the assembled family. Before that living picture of Remorse
+the rest were dumb. It was easy to see that the Marquise's feet were
+stretched out stark and stiff with the agony of death; and Moina,
+leaning against the door-frame, looking into their faces, spoke in a
+hollow voice:
+
+"I have lost my mother!"
+
+
+PARIS, 1828-1844.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+     Aiglemont, General, Marquis Victor d'
+       At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+
+     Bonaparte, Napoleon
+       The Vendetta
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       Colonel Chabert
+       Domestic Peace
+       The Seamy Side of History
+
+     Camps, Madame Octave de (nee Cadignan)
+       Madame Firmiani
+       The Government Clerks
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Chatillonest, De
+       Modeste Mignon
+
+     Crottat, Alexandre
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Colonel Chabert
+       A Start in Life
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Desroches (son)
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       Colonel Chabert
+       A Start in Life
+       The Commission in Lunacy
+       The Government Clerks
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       A Man of Business
+       The Middle Classes
+
+     Duroc, Gerard-Christophe-Michel
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+
+     Ronquerolles, Marquis de
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+       The Peasantry
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Thirteen
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Saint-Hereen, Comtesse Moina de
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Serizy, Comtesse de
+       A Start in Life
+       The Thirteen
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+
+     Vandenesse, Marquis Charles de
+       A Start in Life
+       A Daughter of Eve
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Woman of Thirty, by Honore de Balzac
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #1950 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1950)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Woman of Thirty, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: A Woman of Thirty
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Ellen Marriage
+
+Release Date: November 16, 2005 [EBook #1950]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WOMAN OF THIRTY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers
+
+
+
+
+
+                         A WOMAN OF THIRTY
+
+                                 BY
+
+                          HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+
+                           Translated by
+                           Ellen Marriage
+
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+                    To Louis Boulanger, Painter.
+
+
+
+
+                         A WOMAN OF THIRTY
+
+
+
+                                 I.
+
+                           EARLY MISTAKES
+
+It was a Sunday morning in the beginning of April 1813, a morning
+which gave promise of one of those bright days when Parisians, for the
+first time in the year, behold dry pavements underfoot and a cloudless
+sky overhead. It was not yet noon when a luxurious cabriolet, drawn by
+two spirited horses, turned out of the Rue de Castiglione into the Rue
+de Rivoli, and drew up behind a row of carriages standing before the
+newly opened barrier half-way down the Terrasse de Feuillants. The
+owner of the carriage looked anxious and out of health; the thin hair
+on his sallow temples, turning gray already, gave a look of premature
+age to his face. He flung the reins to a servant who followed on
+horseback, and alighted to take in his arms a young girl whose dainty
+beauty had already attracted the eyes of loungers on the Terrasse. The
+little lady, standing upon the carriage step, graciously submitted to
+be taken by the waist, putting an arm round the neck of her guide, who
+set her down upon the pavement without so much as ruffling the
+trimming of her green rep dress. No lover would have been so careful.
+The stranger could only be the father of the young girl, who took his
+arm familiarly without a word of thanks, and hurried him into the
+Garden of the Tuileries.
+
+The old father noted the wondering stare which some of the young men
+gave the couple, and the sad expression left his face for a moment.
+Although he had long since reached the time of life when a man is fain
+to be content with such illusory delights as vanity bestows, he began
+to smile.
+
+"They think you are my wife," he said in the young lady's ear, and he
+held himself erect and walked with slow steps, which filled his
+daughter with despair.
+
+He seemed to take up the coquette's part for her; perhaps of the two,
+he was the more gratified by the curious glances directed at those
+little feet, shod with plum-colored prunella; at the dainty figure
+outlined by a low-cut bodice, filled in with an embroidered
+chemisette, which only partially concealed the girlish throat. Her
+dress was lifted by her movements as she walked, giving glimpses
+higher than the shoes of delicately moulded outlines beneath open-work
+silk stockings. More than one of the idlers turned and passed the pair
+again, to admire or to catch a second glimpse of the young face, about
+which the brown tresses played; there was a glow in its white and red,
+partly reflected from the rose-colored satin lining of her fashionable
+bonnet, partly due to the eagerness and impatience which sparkled in
+every feature. A mischievous sweetness lighted up the beautiful,
+almond-shaped dark eyes, bathed in liquid brightness, shaded by the
+long lashes and curving arch of eyebrow. Life and youth displayed
+their treasures in the petulant face and in the gracious outlines of
+the bust unspoiled even by the fashion of the day, which brought the
+girdle under the breast.
+
+The young lady herself appeared to be insensible to admiration. Her
+eyes were fixed in a sort of anxiety on the Palace of the Tuileries,
+the goal, doubtless, of her petulant promenade. It wanted but fifteen
+minutes of noon, yet even at that early hour several women in gala
+dress were coming away from the Tuileries, not without backward
+glances at the gates and pouting looks of discontent, as if they
+regretted the lateness of the arrival which had cheated them of a
+longed-for spectacle. Chance carried a few words let fall by one of
+these disappointed fair ones to the ears of the charming stranger, and
+put her in a more than common uneasiness. The elderly man watched the
+signs of impatience and apprehension which flitted across his
+companion's pretty face with interest, rather than amusement, in his
+eyes, observing her with a close and careful attention, which perhaps
+could only be prompted by some after-thought in the depths of a
+father's mind.
+
+
+
+It was the thirteenth Sunday of the year 1813. In two days' time
+Napoleon was to set out upon the disastrous campaign in which he was
+to lose first Bessieres, and then Duroc; he was to win the memorable
+battles of Lutzen and Bautzen, to see himself treacherously deserted
+by Austria, Saxony, Bavaria, and Bernadotte, and to dispute the
+dreadful field of Leipsic. The magnificent review commanded for that
+day by the Emperor was to be the last of so many which had long drawn
+forth the admiration of Paris and of foreign visitors. For the last
+time the Old Guard would execute their scientific military manoeuvres
+with the pomp and precision which sometimes amazed the Giant himself.
+Napoleon was nearly ready for his duel with Europe. It was a sad
+sentiment which brought a brilliant and curious throng to the
+Tuileries. Each mind seemed to foresee the future, perhaps too in
+every mind another thought was dimly present, how that in the future,
+when the heroic age of France should have taken the half-fabulous
+color with which it is tinged for us to-day, men's imaginations would
+more than once seek to retrace the picture of the pageant which they
+were assembled to behold.
+
+"Do let us go more quickly, father; I can hear the drums," the young
+girl said, and in a half-teasing, half-coaxing manner she urged her
+companion forward.
+
+"The troops are marching into the Tuileries," said he.
+
+"Or marching out of it--everybody is coming away," she answered in
+childish vexation, which drew a smile from her father.
+
+"The review only begins at half-past twelve," he said; he had fallen
+half behind his impetuous daughter.
+
+It might have been supposed that she meant to hasten their progress by
+a movement of her right arm, for it swung like an oar blade through
+the water. In her impatience she had crushed her handkerchief into a
+ball in her tiny, well-gloved fingers. Now and then the old man
+smiled, but the smiles were succeeded by an anxious look which crossed
+his withered face and saddened it. In his love for the fair young girl
+by his side, he was as fain to exalt the present moment as to dread
+the future. "She is happy to-day; will her happiness last?" he seemed
+to ask himself, for the old are somewhat prone to foresee their own
+sorrows in the future of the young.
+
+Father and daughter reached the peristyle under the tower where the
+tricolor flag was still waving; but as they passed under the arch by
+which people came and went between the Gardens of the Tuileries and
+the Place du Carrousel, the sentries on guard called out sternly:
+
+"No admittance this way."
+
+By standing on tiptoe the young girl contrived to catch a glimpse of a
+crowd of well-dressed women, thronging either side of the old marble
+arcade along which the Emperor was to pass.
+
+"We were too late in starting, father; you can see that quite well." A
+little piteous pout revealed the immense importance which she attached
+to the sight of this particular review.
+
+"Very well, Julie--let us go away. You dislike a crush."
+
+"Do let us stay, father. Even here I may catch a glimpse of the
+Emperor; he might die during this campaign, and then I should never
+have seen him."
+
+Her father shuddered at the selfish speech. There were tears in the
+girl's voice; he looked at her, and thought that he saw tears beneath
+her lowered eyelids; tears caused not so much by the disappointment as
+by one of the troubles of early youth, a secret easily guessed by an
+old father. Suddenly Julie's face flushed, and she uttered an
+exclamation. Neither her father nor the sentinels understood the
+meaning of the cry; but an officer within the barrier, who sprang
+across the court towards the staircase, heard it, and turned abruptly
+at the sound. He went to the arcade by the Gardens of the Tuileries,
+and recognized the young lady who had been hidden for a moment by the
+tall bearskin caps of the grenadiers. He set aside in favor of the
+pair the order which he himself had given. Then, taking no heed of the
+murmurings of the fashionable crowd seated under the arcade, he gently
+drew the enraptured child towards him.
+
+"I am no longer surprised at her vexation and enthusiasm, if _you_ are
+in waiting," the old man said with a half-mocking, half-serious glance
+at the officer.
+
+"If you want a good position, M. le Duc," the young man answered, "we
+must not spend any time in talking. The Emperor does not like to be
+kept waiting, and the Grand Marshal has sent me to announce our
+readiness."
+
+As he spoke, he had taken Julie's arm with a certain air of old
+acquaintance, and drew her rapidly in the direction of the Place du
+Carrousel. Julie was astonished at the sight. An immense crowd was
+penned up in a narrow space, shut in between the gray walls of the
+palace and the limits marked out by chains round the great sanded
+squares in the midst of the courtyard of the Tuileries. The cordon of
+sentries posted to keep a clear passage for the Emperor and his staff
+had great difficulty in keeping back the eager humming swarm of human
+beings.
+
+"Is it going to be a very fine sight?" Julie asked (she was radiant
+now).
+
+"Pray take care!" cried her guide, and seizing Julie by the waist, he
+lifted her up with as much vigor as rapidity and set her down beside a
+pillar.
+
+But for his prompt action, his gazing kinswoman would have come into
+collision with the hindquarters of a white horse which Napoleon's
+Mameluke held by the bridle; the animal in its trappings of green
+velvet and gold stood almost under the arcade, some ten paces behind
+the rest of the horses in readiness for the Emperor's staff.
+
+The young officer placed the father and daughter in front of the crowd
+in the first space to the right, and recommended them by a sign to the
+two veteran grenadiers on either side. Then he went on his way into
+the palace; a look of great joy and happiness had succeeded to his
+horror-struck expression when the horse backed. Julie had given his
+hand a mysterious pressure; had she meant to thank him for the little
+service he had done her, or did she tell him, "After all, I shall
+really see you?" She bent her head quite graciously in response to the
+respectful bow by which the officer took leave of them before he
+vanished.
+
+The old man stood a little behind his daughter. He looked grave. He
+seemed to have left the two young people together for some purpose of
+his own, and now he furtively watched the girl, trying to lull her
+into false security by appearing to give his whole attention to the
+magnificent sight in the Place du Carrousel. When Julie's eyes turned
+to her father with the expression of a schoolboy before his master, he
+answered her glance by a gay, kindly smile, but his own keen eyes had
+followed the officer under the arcade, and nothing of all that passed
+was lost upon him.
+
+"What a grand sight!" said Julie in a low voice, as she pressed her
+father's hand; and indeed the pomp and picturesquesness of the
+spectacle in the Place du Carrousel drew the same exclamation from
+thousands upon thousands of spectators, all agape with wonder. Another
+array of sightseers, as tightly packed as the ranks behind the old
+noble and his daughter, filled the narrow strip of pavement by the
+railings which crossed the Place du Carrousel from side to side in a
+line parallel with the Palace of the Tuileries. The dense living mass,
+variegated by the colors of the women's dresses, traced out a bold
+line across the centre of the Place du Carrousel, filling in the
+fourth side of a vast parallelogram, surrounded on three sides by the
+Palace of the Tuileries itself. Within the precincts thus railed off
+stood the regiments of the Old Guard about to be passed in review,
+drawn up opposite the Palace in imposing blue columns, ten ranks in
+depth. Without and beyond in the Place du Carrousel stood several
+regiments likewise drawn up in parallel lines, ready to march in
+through the arch in the centre; the Triumphal Arch, where the bronze
+horses of St. Mark from Venice used to stand in those days. At either
+end, by the Galeries du Louvre, the regimental bands were stationed,
+masked by the Polish Lancers then on duty.
+
+The greater part of the vast graveled space was empty as an arena,
+ready for the evolutions of those silent masses disposed with the
+symmetry of military art. The sunlight blazed back from ten thousand
+bayonets in thin points of flame; the breeze ruffled the men's helmet
+plumes till they swayed like the crests of forest-trees before a gale.
+The mute glittering ranks of veterans were full of bright contrasting
+colors, thanks to their different uniforms, weapons, accoutrements,
+and aiguillettes; and the whole great picture, that miniature
+battlefield before the combat, was framed by the majestic towering
+walls of the Tuileries, which officers and men seemed to rival in
+their immobility. Involuntarily the spectator made the comparison
+between the walls of men and the walls of stone. The spring sunlight,
+flooding white masonry reared but yesterday and buildings centuries
+old, shone full likewise upon thousands of bronzed faces, each one
+with its own tale of perils passed, each one gravely expectant of
+perils to come.
+
+The colonels of the regiments came and went alone before the ranks of
+heroes; and behind the masses of troops, checkered with blue and
+silver and gold and purple, the curious could discern the tricolor
+pennons on the lances of some half-a-dozen indefatigable Polish
+cavalry, rushing about like shepherds' dogs in charge of a flock,
+caracoling up and down between the troops and the crowd, to keep the
+gazers within their proper bounds. But for this slight flutter of
+movement, the whole scene might have been taking place in the
+courtyard of the palace of the Sleeping Beauty. The very spring
+breeze, ruffling up the long fur on the grenadiers' bearskins, bore
+witness to the men's immobility, as the smothered murmur of the crowd
+emphasized their silence. Now and again the jingling of Chinese bells,
+or a chance blow to a big drum, woke the reverberating echoes of the
+Imperial Palace with a sound like the far-off rumblings of thunder.
+
+An indescribable, unmistakable enthusiasm was manifest in the
+expectancy of the multitude. France was about to take farewell of
+Napoleon on the eve of a campaign of which the meanest citizen foresaw
+the perils. The existence of the French Empire was at stake--to be, or
+not to be. The whole citizen population seemed to be as much inspired
+with this thought as that other armed population standing in serried
+and silent ranks in the enclosed space, with the Eagles and the genius
+of Napoleon hovering above them.
+
+Those very soldiers were the hope of France, her last drop of blood;
+and this accounted for not a little of the anxious interest of the
+scene. Most of the gazers in the crowd had bidden farewell--perhaps
+farewell for ever--to the men who made up the rank and file of the
+battalions; and even those most hostile to the Emperor, in their
+hearts, put up fervent prayers to heaven for the glory of France; and
+those most weary of the struggle with the rest of Europe had left
+their hatreds behind as they passed in under the Triumphal Arch. They
+too felt that in the hour of danger Napoleon meant France herself.
+
+The clock of the Tuileries struck the half-hour. In a moment the hum
+of the crowd ceased. The silence was so deep that you might have heard
+a child speak. The old noble and his daughter, wholly intent, seeming
+to live only by their eyes, caught a distinct sound of spurs and clank
+of swords echoing up under the sonorous peristyle.
+
+And suddenly there appeared a short, somewhat stout figure in a green
+uniform, white trousers, and riding boots; a man wearing on his head a
+cocked hat well-nigh as magically potent as its wearer; the broad red
+ribbon of the Legion of Honor rose and fell on his breast, and a short
+sword hung at his side. At one and the same moment the man was seen by
+all eyes in all parts of the square.
+
+Immediately the drums beat a salute, both bands struck up a martial
+refrain, caught and repeated like a fugue by every instrument from the
+thinnest flutes to the largest drum. The clangor of that call to arms
+thrilled through every soul. The colors dropped, and the men presented
+arms, one unanimous rhythmical movement shaking every bayonet from the
+foremost front near the Palace to the last rank in the Place du
+Carrousel. The words of command sped from line to line like echoes.
+The whole enthusiastic multitude sent up a shout of "Long live the
+Emperor!"
+
+Everything shook, quivered, and thrilled at last. Napoleon had mounted
+his horse. It was his movement that had put life into those silent
+masses of men; the dumb instruments had found a voice at his coming,
+the Eagles and the colors had obeyed the same impulse which had
+brought emotion into all faces.
+
+The very walls of the high galleries of the old palace seemed to cry
+aloud, "Long live the Emperor!"
+
+There was something preternatural about it--it was magic at work, a
+counterfeit presentment of the power of God; or rather it was a
+fugitive image of a reign itself so fugitive.
+
+And _he_ the centre of such love, such enthusiasm and devotion, and so
+many prayers, he for whom the sun had driven the clouds from the sky,
+was sitting there on his horse, three paces in front of his Golden
+Squadron, with the grand Marshal on his left, and the Marshal-in-waiting
+on his right. Amid all the outburst of enthusiasm at his presence not a
+feature of his face appeared to alter.
+
+"Oh! yes. At Wagram, in the thick of the firing, on the field of
+Borodino, among the dead, always as cool as a cucumber _he_ is!" said
+the grenadier, in answer to the questions with which the young girl
+plied him. For a moment Julie was absorbed in the contemplation of
+that face, so quiet in the security of conscious power. The Emperor
+noticed Mlle. de Chatillonest, and leaned to make some brief remark to
+Duroc, which drew a smile from the Grand Marshal. Then the review
+began.
+
+If hitherto the young lady's attention had been divided between
+Napoleon's impassive face and the blue, red, and green ranks of
+troops, from this time forth she was wholly intent upon a young
+officer moving among the lines as they performed their swift
+symmetrical evolutions. She watched him gallop with tireless activity
+to and from the group where the plainly dressed Napoleon shone
+conspicuous. The officer rode a splendid black horse. His handsome
+sky-blue uniform marked him out amid the variegated multitude as one
+of the Emperor's orderly staff-officers. His gold lace glittered in
+the sunshine which lighted up the aigrette on his tall, narrow shako,
+so that the gazer might have compared him to a will-o'-the-wisp, or to
+a visible spirit emanating from the Emperor to infuse movement into
+those battalions whose swaying bayonets flashed into flames; for, at a
+mere glance from his eyes, they broke and gathered again, surging to
+and fro like the waves in a bay, or again swept before him like the
+long ridges of high-crested wave which the vexed Ocean directs against
+the shore.
+
+When the manoeuvres were over the officer galloped back at full speed,
+pulled up his horse, and awaited orders. He was not ten paces from
+Julie as he stood before the Emperor, much as General Rapp stands in
+Gerard's _Battle of Austerlitz_. The young girl could behold her lover
+in all his soldierly splendor.
+
+Colonel Victor d'Aiglemont, barely thirty years of age, was tall,
+slender, and well made. His well-proportioned figure never showed to
+better advantage than now as he exerted his strength to hold in the
+restive animal, whose back seemed to curve gracefully to the rider's
+weight. His brown masculine face possessed the indefinable charm of
+perfectly regular features combined with youth. The fiery eyes under
+the broad forehead, shaded by thick eyebrows and long lashes, looked
+like white ovals bordered by an outline of black. His nose had the
+delicate curve of an eagle's beak; the sinuous lines of the inevitable
+black moustache enhanced the crimson of the lips. The brown and tawny
+shades which overspread the wide high-colored cheeks told a tale of
+unusual vigor, and his whole face bore the impress of dashing courage.
+He was the very model which French artists seek to-day for the typical
+hero of Imperial France. The horse which he rode was covered with
+sweat, the animal's quivering head denoted the last degree of
+restiveness; his hind hoofs were set down wide apart and exactly in a
+line, he shook his long thick tail to the wind; in his fidelity to his
+master he seemed to be a visible presentment of that master's devotion
+to the Emperor.
+
+Julie saw her lover watching intently for the Emperor's glances, and
+felt a momentary pang of jealousy, for as yet he had not given her a
+look. Suddenly at a word from his sovereign Victor gripped his horse's
+flanks and set out at a gallop, but the animal took fright at a shadow
+cast by a post, shied, backed, and reared up so suddenly that his
+rider was all but thrown off. Julie cried out, her face grew white,
+people looked at her curiously, but she saw no one, her eyes were
+fixed upon the too mettlesome beast. The officer gave the horse a
+sharp admonitory cut with the whip, and galloped off with Napoleon's
+order.
+
+Julie was so absorbed, so dizzy with sights and sounds, that
+unconsciously she clung to her father's arm so tightly that he could
+read her thoughts by the varying pressure of her fingers. When Victor
+was all but flung out of the saddle, she clutched her father with a
+convulsive grip as if she herself were in danger of falling, and the
+old man looked at his daughter's tell-tale face with dark and painful
+anxiety. Pity, jealousy, something even of regret stole across every
+drawn and wrinkled line of mouth and brow. When he saw the unwonted
+light in Julie's eyes, when that cry broke from her, when the
+convulsive grasp of her fingers drew away the veil and put him in
+possession of her secret, then with that revelation of her love there
+came surely some swift revelation of the future. Mournful forebodings
+could be read in his own face.
+
+Julie's soul seemed at that moment to have passed into the officer's
+being. A torturing thought more cruel than any previous dread
+contracted the old man's painworn features, as he saw the glance of
+understanding that passed between the soldier and Julie. The girl's
+eyes were wet, her cheeks glowed with unwonted color. Her father
+turned abruptly and led her away into the Garden of the Tuileries.
+
+"Why, father," she cried, "there are still the regiments in the Place
+du Carrousel to be passed in review."
+
+"No, child, all the troops are marching out."
+
+"I think you are mistaken, father; M. d'Aiglemont surely told them to
+advance----"
+
+"But I feel ill, my child, and I do not care to stay."
+
+Julie could readily believe the words when she glanced at his face; he
+looked quite worn out by his fatherly anxieties.
+
+"Are you feeling very ill?" she asked indifferently, her mind was so
+full of other thoughts.
+
+"Every day is a reprieve for me, is it not?" returned her father.
+
+"Now do you mean to make me miserable again by talking about your
+death? I was in such spirits! Do pray get rid of those horrid gloomy
+ideas of yours."
+
+The father heaved a sigh. "Ah! spoiled child," he cried, "the best
+hearts are sometimes very cruel. We devote our whole lives to you, you
+are our one thought, we plan for your welfare, sacrifice our tastes to
+your whims, idolize you, give the very blood in our veins for you, and
+all this is nothing, is it? Alas! yes, you take it all as a matter of
+course. If we would always have your smiles and your disdainful love,
+we should need the power of God in heaven. Then comes another, a
+lover, a husband, and steals away your heart."
+
+Julie looked in amazement at her father; he walked slowly along, and
+there was no light in the eyes which he turned upon her.
+
+"You hide yourself even from us," he continued, "but, perhaps, also
+you hide yourself from yourself--"
+
+"What do you mean by that, father?"
+
+"I think that you have secrets from me, Julie.--You love," he went on
+quickly, as he saw the color rise to her face. "Oh! I hoped that you
+would stay with your old father until he died. I hoped to keep you
+with me, still radiant and happy, to admire you as you were but so
+lately. So long as I knew nothing of your future I could believe in a
+happy lot for you; but now I cannot possibly take away with me a hope
+of happiness for your life, for you love the colonel even more than
+the cousin. I can no longer doubt it."
+
+"And why should I be forbidden to love him?" asked Julie, with lively
+curiosity in her face.
+
+"Ah, my Julie, you would not understand me," sighed the father.
+
+"Tell me, all the same," said Julie, with an involuntary petulant
+gesture.
+
+"Very well, child, listen to me. Girls are apt to imagine noble and
+enchanting and totally imaginary figures in their own minds; they have
+fanciful extravagant ideas about men, and sentiment, and life; and
+then they innocently endow somebody or other with all the perfections
+of their day-dreams, and put their trust in him. They fall in love
+with this imaginary creature in the man of their choice; and then,
+when it is too late to escape from their fate, behold their first
+idol, the illusion made fair with their fancies, turns to an odious
+skeleton. Julie, I would rather have you fall in love with an old man
+than with the Colonel. Ah! if you could but see things from the
+standpoint of ten years hence, you would admit that my old experience
+was right. I know what Victor is, that gaiety of his is simply animal
+spirits--the gaiety of the barracks. He has no ability, and he is a
+spendthrift. He is one of those men whom Heaven created to eat and
+digest four meals a day, to sleep, to fall in love with the first
+woman that comes to hand, and to fight. He does not understand life.
+His kind heart, for he has a kind heart, will perhaps lead him to give
+his purse to a sufferer or to a comrade; _but_ he is careless, he has
+not the delicacy of heart which makes us slaves to a woman's
+happiness, he is ignorant, he is selfish. There are plenty of
+_buts_--"
+
+"But, father, he must surely be clever, he must have ability, or he
+would not be a colonel--"
+
+"My dear, Victor will be a colonel all his life.--I have seen no one
+who appears to me to be worthy of you," the old father added, with a
+kind of enthusiasm.
+
+He paused an instant, looked at his daughter, and added, "Why, my poor
+Julie, you are still too young, too fragile, too delicate for the
+cares and rubs of married life. D'Aiglemont's relations have spoiled
+him, just as your mother and I have spoiled you. What hope is there
+that you two could agree, with two imperious wills diametrically
+opposed to each other? You will be either the tyrant or the victim,
+and either alternative means, for a wife, an equal sum of misfortune.
+But you are modest and sweet-natured, you would yield from the first.
+In short," he added, in a quivering voice, "there is a grace of
+feeling in you which would never be valued, and then----" he broke
+off, for the tears overcame him.
+
+"Victor will give you pain through all the girlish qualities of your
+young nature," he went on, after a pause. "I know what soldiers are,
+my Julie; I have been in the army. In a man of that kind, love very
+seldom gets the better of old habits, due partly to the miseries amid
+which soldiers live, partly to the risks they run in a life of
+adventure."
+
+"Then you mean to cross my inclinations, do you, father?" asked Julie,
+half in earnest, half in jest. "Am I to marry to please you and not to
+please myself?"
+
+"To please me!" cried her father, with a start of surprise. "To please
+_me_, child? when you will not hear the voice that upbraids you so
+tenderly very much longer! But I have always heard children impute
+personal motives for the sacrifices that their parents make for them.
+Marry Victor, my Julie! Some day you will bitterly deplore his
+ineptitude, his thriftless ways, his selfishness, his lack of
+delicacy, his inability to understand love, and countless troubles
+arising through him. Then, remember, that here under these trees your
+old father's prophetic voice sounded in your ears in vain."
+
+He said no more; he had detected a rebellious shake of the head on his
+daughter's part. Both made several paces towards the carriage which
+was waiting for them at the grating. During that interval of silence,
+the young girl stole a glance at her father's face, and little by
+little her sullen brow cleared. The intense pain visible on his bowed
+forehead made a lively impression upon her.
+
+"Father," she began in gentle tremulous tones, "I promise to say no
+more about Victor until you have overcome your prejudices against
+him."
+
+The old man looked at her in amazement. Two tears which filled his
+eyes overflowed down his withered cheeks. He could not take Julie in
+his arms in that crowded place; but he pressed her hand tenderly. A
+few minutes later when they had taken their places in the cabriolet,
+all the anxious thought which had gathered about his brow had
+completely disappeared. Julie's pensive attitude gave him far less
+concern than the innocent joy which had betrayed her secret during the
+review.
+
+
+
+Nearly a year had passed since the Emperor's last review. In early
+March 1814 a caleche was rolling along the highroad from Amboise to
+Tours. As the carriage came out from beneath the green-roofed aisle of
+walnut trees by the post-house of la Frilliere, the horses dashed
+forward with such speed that in a moment they gained the bridge built
+across the Cise at the point of its confluence with the Loire. There,
+however, they come to a sudden stand. One of the traces had given way
+in consequence of the furious pace at which the post-boy, obedient to
+his orders, had urged on four horses, the most vigorous of their
+breed. Chance, therefore, gave the two recently awakened occupants of
+the carriage an opportunity of seeing one of the most lovely
+landscapes along the enchanting banks of the Loire, and that at their
+full leisure.
+
+At a glance the travelers could see to the right the whole winding
+course of the Cise meandering like a silver snake among the meadows,
+where the grass had taken the deep, bright green of early spring. To
+the left lay the Loire in all its glory. A chill morning breeze,
+ruffling the surface of the stately river, had fretted the broad
+sheets of water far and wide into a network of ripples, which caught
+the gleams of the sun, so that the green islets here and there in its
+course shone like gems set in a gold necklace. On the opposite bank
+the fair rich meadows of Touraine stretched away as far as the eye
+could see; the low hills of the Cher, the only limits to the view, lay
+on the far horizon, a luminous line against the clear blue sky. Tours
+itself, framed by the trees on the islands in a setting of spring
+leaves, seemed to rise like Venice out of the waters, and her old
+cathedral towers soaring in air were blended with the pale fantastic
+cloud shapes in the sky.
+
+Over the side of the bridge, where the carriage had come to a stand,
+the traveler looks along a line of cliffs stretching as far as Tours.
+Nature in some freakish mood must have raised these barriers of rock,
+undermined incessantly by the rippling Loire at their feet, for a
+perpetual wonder for spectators. The village of Vouvray nestles, as it
+were, among the clefts and crannies of the crags, which begin to
+describe a bend at the junction of the Loire and Cise. A whole
+population of vine-dressers lives, in fact, in appalling insecurity in
+holes in their jagged sides for the whole way between Vouvray and
+Tours. In some places there are three tiers of dwellings hollowed out,
+one above the other, in the rock, each row communicating with the next
+by dizzy staircases cut likewise in the face of the cliff. A little
+girl in a short red petticoat runs out into her garden on the roof of
+another dwelling; you can watch a wreath of hearth-smoke curling up
+among the shoots and trails of the vines. Men are at work in their
+almost perpendicular patches of ground, an old woman sits tranquilly
+spinning under a blossoming almond tree on a crumbling mass of rock,
+and smiles down on the dismay of the travelers far below her feet. The
+cracks in the ground trouble her as little as the precarious state of
+the old wall, a pendant mass of loose stones, only kept in position by
+the crooked stems of its ivy mantle. The sound of coopers' mallets
+rings through the skyey caves; for here, where Nature stints human
+industry of soil, the soil is everywhere tilled, and everywhere
+fertile.
+
+No view along the whole course of the Loire can compare with the rich
+landscape of Touraine, here outspread beneath the traveler's eyes. The
+triple picture, thus barely sketched in outline, is one of those
+scenes which the imagination engraves for ever upon the memory; let a
+poet fall under its charm, and he shall be haunted by visions which
+shall reproduce its romantic loveliness out of the vague substance of
+dreams.
+
+As the carriage stopped on the bridge over the Cise, white sails came
+out here and there from among the islands in the Loire to add new
+grace to the perfect view. The subtle scent of the willows by the
+water's edge was mingled with the damp odor of the breeze from the
+river. The monotonous chant of a goat-herd added a plaintive note to
+the sound of birds' songs in a chorus which never ends; the cries of
+the boatmen brought tidings of distant busy life. Here was Touraine in
+all its glory, and the very height of the splendor of spring. Here was
+the one peaceful district in France in those troublous days; for it
+was so unlikely that a foreign army should trouble its quiet that
+Touraine might be said to defy invasion.
+
+As soon as the caleche stopped, a head covered with a foraging cap was
+put out of the window, and soon afterwards an impatient military man
+flung open the carriage door and sprang down into the road to pick a
+quarrel with the postilion, but the skill with which the Tourangeau
+was repairing the trace restored Colonel d'Aiglemont's equanimity. He
+went back to the carriage, stretched himself to relieve his benumbed
+muscles, yawned, looked about him, and finally laid a hand on the arm
+of a young woman warmly wrapped up in a furred pelisse.
+
+"Come, Julie," he said hoarsely, "just wake up and take a look at this
+country. It is magnificent."
+
+Julie put her head out of the window. She wore a traveling cap of
+sable fur. Nothing could be seen of her but her face, for the whole of
+her person was completely concealed by the folds of her fur pelisse.
+The young girl who tripped to the review at the Tuileries with light
+footsteps and joy and gladness in her heart was scarcely recognizable
+in Julie d'Aiglemont. Her face, delicate as ever, had lost the
+rose-color which once gave it so rich a glow. A few straggling locks of
+black hair, straightened out by the damp night air, enhanced its dead
+whiteness, and all its life and sparkle seemed to be torpid. Yet her
+eyes glittered with preternatural brightness in spite of the violet
+shadows under the lashes upon her wan cheeks.
+
+She looked out with indifferent eyes over the fields towards the Cher,
+at the islands in the river, at the line of the crags of Vouvray
+stretching along the Loire towards Tours; then she sank back as soon
+as possible into her seat in the caleche. She did not care to give a
+glance to the enchanting valley of the Cise.
+
+"Yes, it is wonderful," she said, and out in the open air her voice
+sounded weak and faint to the last degree. Evidently she had had her
+way with her father, to her misfortune.
+
+"Would you not like to live here, Julie?"
+
+"Yes; here or anywhere," she answered listlessly.
+
+"Do you feel ill?" asked Colonel d'Aiglemont.
+
+"No, not at all," she answered with momentary energy; and, smiling at
+her husband, she added, "I should like to go to sleep."
+
+Suddenly there came a sound of a horse galloping towards them. Victor
+d'Aiglemont dropped his wife's hand and turned to watch the bend in
+the road. No sooner had he taken his eyes from Julie's pale face than
+all the assumed gaiety died out of it; it was as if a light had been
+extinguished. She felt no wish to look at the landscape, no curiosity
+to see the horseman who was galloping towards them at such a furious
+pace, and, ensconcing herself in her corner, stared out before her at
+the hindquarters of the post-horses, looking as blank as any Breton
+peasant listening to his _recteur's_ sermon.
+
+Suddenly a young man riding a valuable horse came out from behind the
+clump of poplars and flowering briar-rose.
+
+"It is an Englishman," remarked the Colonel.
+
+"Lord bless you, yes, General," said the post-boy; "he belongs to the
+race of fellows who have a mind to gobble up France, they say."
+
+The stranger was one of the foreigners traveling in France at the time
+when Napoleon detained all British subjects within the limits of the
+Empire, by way of reprisals for the violation of the Treaty of Amiens,
+an outrage of international law perpetrated by the Court of St. James.
+These prisoners, compelled to submit to the Emperor's pleasure, were
+not all suffered to remain in the houses where they were arrested, nor
+yet in the places of residence which at first they were permitted to
+choose. Most of the English colony in Touraine had been transplanted
+thither from different places where their presence was supposed to be
+inimical to the interests of the Continental Policy.
+
+The young man, who was taking the tedium of the early morning hours on
+horseback, was one of these victims of bureaucratic tyranny. Two years
+previously, a sudden order from the Foreign Office had dragged him
+from Montpellier, whither he had gone on account of consumptive
+tendencies. He glanced at the Comte d'Aiglemont, saw that he was a
+military man, and deliberately looked away, turning his head somewhat
+abruptly towards the meadows by the Cise.
+
+"The English are all as insolent as if the globe belonged to them,"
+muttered the Colonel. "Luckily, Soult will give them a thrashing
+directly."
+
+The prisoner gave a glance to the caleche as he rode by. Brief though
+that glance was, he had yet time to notice the sad expression which
+lent an indefinable charm to the Countess' pensive face. Many men are
+deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take
+the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love. Julie herself was
+so much absorbed in the contemplation of the opposite cushion that she
+saw neither the horse nor the rider. The damaged trace meanwhile had
+been quickly and strongly repaired; the Count stepped into his place
+again; and the post-boy, doing his best to make up for lost time,
+drove the carriage rapidly along the embankment. On they drove under
+the overhanging cliffs, with their picturesque vine-dressers' huts and
+stores of wine maturing in their dark sides, till in the distance
+uprose the spire of the famous Abbey of Marmoutiers, the retreat of
+St. Martin.
+
+"What can that diaphanous milord want with us?" exclaimed the Colonel,
+turning to assure himself that the horseman who had followed them from
+the bridge was the young Englishman.
+
+After all, the stranger committed no breach of good manners by riding
+along on the footway, and Colonel d'Aiglemont was fain to lie back in
+his corner after sending a scowl in the Englishman's direction. But in
+spite of his hostile instincts, he could not help noticing the beauty
+of the animal and the graceful horsemanship of the rider. The young
+man's face was of that pale, fair-complexioned, insular type, which is
+almost girlish in the softness and delicacy of its color and texture.
+He was tall, thin, and fair-haired, dressed with the extreme and
+elaborate neatness characteristic of a man of fashion in prudish
+England. Any one might have thought that bashfulness rather than
+pleasure at the sight of the Countess had called up that flush into
+his face. Once only Julie raised her eyes and looked at the stranger,
+and then only because she was in a manner compelled to do so, for her
+husband called upon her to admire the action of the thoroughbred. It
+so happened that their glances clashed; and the shy Englishman,
+instead of riding abreast of the carriage, fell behind on this, and
+followed them at a distance of a few paces.
+
+Yet the Countess had scarcely given him a glance; she saw none of the
+various perfections, human and equine, commended to her notice, and
+fell back again in the carriage, with a slight movement of the eyelids
+intended to express her acquiescence in her husband's views. The
+Colonel fell asleep again, and both husband and wife reached Tours
+without another word. Not one of those enchanting views of
+everchanging landscape through which they sped had drawn so much as a
+glance from Julie's eyes.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont looked now and again at her sleeping husband. While
+she looked, a sudden jolt shook something down upon her knees. It was
+her father's portrait, a miniature which she wore suspended about her
+neck by a black cord. At the sight of it, the tears, till then kept
+back, overflowed her eyes, but no one, save perhaps the Englishman,
+saw them glitter there for a brief moment before they dried upon her
+pale cheeks.
+
+Colonel d'Aiglemont was on his way to the South. Marshal Soult was
+repelling an English invasion of Bearn; and d'Aiglemont, the bearer of
+the Emperor's orders to the Marshal, seized the opportunity of taking
+his wife as far as Tours to leave her with an elderly relative of his
+own, far away from the dangers threatening Paris.
+
+Very shortly the carriage rolled over the paved road of Tours, over
+the bridge, along the Grande-Rue, and stopped at last before the old
+mansion of the _ci-devant_ Marquise de Listomere-Landon.
+
+The Marquise de Listomere-Landon, with her white hair, pale face, and
+shrewd smile, was one of those fine old ladies who still seem to wear
+the paniers of the eighteenth century, and affects caps of an extinct
+mode. They are nearly always caressing in their manners, as if the
+heyday of love still lingered on for these septuagenarian portraits of
+the age of Louis Quinze, with the faint perfume of _poudre a la
+marechale_ always clinging about them. Bigoted rather than pious, and
+less of bigots than they seem, women who can tell a story well and
+talk still better, their laughter comes more readily for an old memory
+than for a new jest--the present intrudes upon them.
+
+When an old waiting-woman announced to the Marquise de Listomere-Landon
+(to give her the title which she was soon to resume) the arrival of a
+nephew whom she had not seen since the outbreak of the war with Spain,
+the old lady took off her spectacles with alacrity, shut the _Galerie
+de l'ancienne Cour_ (her favorite work), and recovered something like
+youthful activity, hastening out upon the flight of steps to greet the
+young couple there.
+
+Aunt and niece exchanged a rapid glance of survey.
+
+"Good-morning, dear aunt," cried the Colonel, giving the old lady a
+hasty embrace. "I am bringing a young lady to put under your wing. I
+have come to put my treasure in your keeping. My Julie is neither
+jealous nor a coquette, she is as good as an angel. I hope that she
+will not be spoiled here," he added, suddenly interrupting himself.
+
+"Scapegrace!" returned the Marquise, with a satirical glance at her
+nephew.
+
+She did not wait for her niece to approach her, but with a certain
+kindly graciousness went forward herself to kiss Julie, who stood
+there thoughtfully, to all appearance more embarrassed than curious
+concerning her new relation.
+
+"So we are to make each other's acquaintance, are we, my love?" the
+Marquise continued. "Do not be too much alarmed of me. I always try
+not to be an old woman with young people."
+
+On the way to the drawing-room, the Marquise ordered breakfast for her
+guests in provincial fashion; but the Count checked his aunt's flow of
+words by saying soberly that he could only remain in the house while
+the horses were changing. On this the three hurried into the
+drawing-room. The Colonel had barely time to tell the story of the
+political and military events which had compelled him to ask his aunt
+for a shelter for his young wife. While he talked on without
+interruption, the older lady looked from her nephew to her niece, and
+took the sadness in Julie's white face for grief at the enforced
+separation. "Eh! eh!" her looks seemed to say, "these young things are
+in love with each other."
+
+The crack of the postilion's whip sounded outside in the silent old
+grass-grown courtyard. Victor embraced his aunt once more, and rushed
+out.
+
+"Good-bye, dear," he said, kissing his wife, who had followed him down
+to the carriage.
+
+"Oh! Victor, let me come still further with you," she pleaded
+coaxingly. "I do not want to leave you----"
+
+"Can you seriously mean it?"
+
+"Very well," said Julie, "since you wish it." The carriage
+disappeared.
+
+"So you are very fond of my poor Victor?" said the Marquise,
+interrogating her niece with one of those sagacious glances which
+dowagers give younger women.
+
+"Alas, madame!" said Julie, "must one not love a man well indeed to
+marry him?"
+
+The words were spoken with an artless accent which revealed either a
+pure heart or inscrutable depths. How could a woman, who had been the
+friend of Duclos and the Marechal de Richelieu, refrain from trying to
+read the riddle of this marriage? Aunt and niece were standing on the
+steps, gazing after the fast vanishing caleche. The look in the young
+Countess' eyes did not mean love as the Marquise understood it. The
+good lady was a Provencale, and her passions had been lively.
+
+"So you were captivated by my good-for-nothing of a nephew?" she
+asked.
+
+Involuntarily Julie shuddered, something in the experienced coquette's
+look and tone seemed to say that Mme. de Listomere-Landon's knowledge
+of her husband's character went perhaps deeper than his wife's. Mme.
+d'Aiglemont, in dismay, took refuge in this transparent dissimulation,
+ready to her hand, the first resource of an artless unhappiness. Mme.
+de Listomere appeared to be satisfied with Julie's answers; but in her
+secret heart she rejoiced to think that here was a love affair on hand
+to enliven her solitude, for that her niece had some amusing
+flirtation on foot she was fully convinced.
+
+In the great drawing-room, hung with tapestry framed in strips of
+gilding, young Mme. d'Aiglemont sat before a blazing fire, behind a
+Chinese screen placed to shut out the cold draughts from the window,
+and her heavy mood scarcely lightened. Among the old eighteenth-century
+furniture, under the old paneled ceiling, it was not very easy to be
+gay. Yet the young Parisienne took a sort of pleasure in this entrance
+upon a life of complete solitude and in the solemn silence of the old
+provincial house. She exchanged a few words with the aunt, a stranger,
+to whom she had written a bride's letter on her marriage, and then sat
+as silent as if she had been listening to an opera. Not until two
+hours had been spent in an atmosphere of quiet befitting la Trappe,
+did she suddenly awaken to a sense of uncourteous behavior, and
+bethink herself of the short answers which she had given her aunt.
+Mme. de Listomere, with the gracious tact characteristic of a bygone
+age, had respected her niece's mood. When Mme. d'Aiglemont became
+conscious of her shortcomings, the dowager sat knitting, though as a
+matter of fact she had several times left the room to superintend
+preparations in the Green Chamber, whither the Countess' luggage had
+been transported; now, however, she had returned to her great
+armchair, and stole a glance from time to time at this young relative.
+Julie felt ashamed of giving way to irresistible broodings, and tried
+to earn her pardon by laughing at herself.
+
+"My dear child, _we_ know the sorrows of widowhood," returned her
+aunt. But only the eyes of forty years could have distinguished the
+irony hovering about the old lady's mouth.
+
+Next morning the Countess improved. She talked. Mme. de Listomere no
+longer despaired of fathoming the new-made wife, whom yesterday she
+had set down as a dull, unsociable creature, and discoursed on the
+delights of the country, of dances, of houses where they could visit.
+All that day the Marquise's questions were so many snares; it was the
+old habit of the old Court, she could not help setting traps to
+discover her niece's character. For several days Julie, plied with
+temptations, steadfastly declined to seek amusement abroad; and much
+as the old lady's pride longed to exhibit her pretty niece, she was
+fain to renounce all hope of taking her into society, for the young
+Countess was still in morning for her father, and found in her loss
+and her mourning dress a pretext for her sadness and desire for
+seclusion.
+
+By the end of the week the dowager admired Julie's angelic sweetness
+of disposition, her diffident charm, her indulgent temper, and
+thenceforward began to take a prodigious interest in the mysterious
+sadness gnawing at this young heart. The Countess was one of those
+women who seem born to be loved and to bring happiness with them. Mme.
+de Listomere found her niece's society grown so sweet and precious,
+that she doted upon Julie, and could no longer think of parting with
+her. A month sufficed to establish an eternal friendship between the
+two ladies. The dowager noticed, not without surprise, the changes
+that took place in Mme. d'Aiglemont; gradually her bright color died
+away, and her face became dead white. Yet, Julie's spirits rose as the
+bloom faded from her cheeks. Sometimes the dowager's sallies provoked
+outbursts of merriment or peals of laughter, promptly repressed,
+however, by some clamorous thought.
+
+Mme. de Listomere had guessed by this time that it was neither
+Victor's absence nor a father's death which threw a shadow over her
+niece's life; but her mind was so full of dark suspicions, that she
+found it difficult to lay a finger upon the real cause of the
+mischief. Possibly truth is only discoverable by chance. A day came,
+however, at length when Julie flashed out before her aunt's astonished
+eyes into a complete forgetfulness of her marriage; she recovered the
+wild spirits of careless girlhood. Mme. de Listomere then and there
+made up her mind to fathom the depths of this soul, for its exceeding
+simplicity was as inscrutable as dissimulation.
+
+Night was falling. The two ladies were sitting by the window which
+looked out upon the street, and Julie was looking thoughtful again,
+when some one went by on horseback.
+
+"There goes one of your victims," said the Marquise.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont looked up; dismay and surprise blended in her face.
+
+"He is a young Englishman, the Honorable Arthur Ormand, Lord
+Grenville's eldest son. His history is interesting. His physician sent
+him to Montpellier in 1802; it was hoped that in that climate he might
+recover from the lung complaint which was gaining ground. He was
+detained, like all his fellow-countrymen, by Bonaparte when war broke
+out. That monster cannot live without fighting. The young Englishman,
+by way of amusing himself, took to studying his own complaint, which
+was believed to be incurable. By degrees he acquired a liking for
+anatomy and physic, and took quite a craze for that kind of thing, a
+most extraordinary taste in a man of quality, though the Regent
+certainly amused himself with chemistry! In short, Monsieur Arthur
+made astonishing progress in his studies; his health did the same
+under the faculty of Montpellier; he consoled his captivity, and at
+the same time his cure was thoroughly completed. They say that he
+spent two whole years in a cowshed, living on cresses and the milk of
+a cow brought from Switzerland, breathing as seldom as he could, and
+never speaking a word. Since he come to Tours he has lived quite
+alone; he is as proud as a peacock; but you have certainly made a
+conquest of him, for probably it is not on my account that he has
+ridden under the window twice every day since you have been here.--He
+has certainly fallen in love with you."
+
+That last phrase roused the Countess like magic. Her involuntary start
+and smile took the Marquise by surprise. So far from showing a sign of
+the instinctive satisfaction felt by the most strait-laced of women
+when she learns that she has destroyed the peace of mind of some male
+victim, there was a hard, haggard expression in Julie's face--a look
+of repulsion amounting almost to loathing.
+
+A woman who loves will put the whole world under the ban of Love's
+empire for the sake of the one whom she loves; but such a woman can
+laugh and jest; and Julie at that moment looked as if the memory of
+some recently escaped peril was too sharp and fresh not to bring with
+it a quick sensation of pain. Her aunt, by this time convinced that
+Julie did not love her nephew, was stupefied by the discovery that she
+loved nobody else. She shuddered lest a further discovery should show
+her Julie's heart disenchanted, lest the experience of a day, or
+perhaps of a night, should have revealed to a young wife the full
+extent of Victor's emptiness.
+
+"If she has found him out, there is an end of it," thought the
+dowager. "My nephew will soon be made to feel the inconveniences of
+wedded life."
+
+The Marquise now proposed to convert Julie to the monarchical
+doctrines of the times of Louis Quinze; but a few hours later she
+discovered, or, more properly speaking, guessed, the not uncommon
+state of affairs, and the real cause of her niece's low spirits.
+
+Julie turned thoughtful on a sudden, and went to her room earlier than
+usual. When her maid left her for the night, she still sat by the fire
+in the yellow velvet depths of a great chair, an old-world piece of
+furniture as well suited for sorrow as for happy people. Tears flowed,
+followed by sighs and meditation. After a while she drew a little
+table to her, sought writing materials, and began to write. The hours
+went by swiftly. Julie's confidences made to the sheet of paper seemed
+to cost her dear; every sentence set her dreaming, and at last she
+suddenly burst into tears. The clocks were striking two. Her head,
+grown heavy as a dying woman's, was bowed over her breast. When she
+raised it, her aunt appeared before her as suddenly as if she had
+stepped out of the background of tapestry upon the walls.
+
+"What can be the matter with you, child?" asked the Marquise. "Why are
+you sitting up so late? And why, in the first place, are you crying
+alone, at your age?"
+
+Without further ceremony she sat down beside her niece, her eyes the
+while devouring the unfinished letter.
+
+"Were you writing to your husband?"
+
+"Do I know where he is?" returned the Countess.
+
+Her aunt thereupon took up the sheet and proceeded to read it. She had
+brought her spectacles; the deed was premeditated. The innocent writer
+of the letter allowed her to take it without the slightest remark. It
+was neither lack of dignity nor consciousness of secret guilt which
+left her thus without energy. Her aunt had come in upon her at a
+crisis. She was helpless; right or wrong, reticence and confidence,
+like all things else, were matters of indifference. Like some young
+maid who had heaped scorn upon her lover, and feels so lonely and sad
+when evening comes, that she longs for him to come back or for a heart
+to which she can pour out her sorrow, Julie allowed her aunt to
+violate the seal which honor places upon an open letter, and sat
+musing while the Marquise read on:--
+
+  "MY DEAR LOUISA,--Why do you ask so often for the fulfilment of as
+  rash a promise as two young and inexperienced girls could make?
+  You say that you often ask yourself why I have given no answer to
+  your questions for these six months. If my silence told you
+  nothing, perhaps you will understand the reasons for it to-day, as
+  you read the secrets which I am about to betray. I should have
+  buried them for ever in the depths of my heart if you had not
+  announced your own approaching marriage. You are about to be
+  married, Louisa. The thought makes me shiver. Poor little one!
+  marry, yes, in a few months' time one of the keenest pangs of
+  regret will be the recollection of a self which used to be, of the
+  two young girls who sat one evening under one of the tallest
+  oak-trees on the hillside at Ecouen, and looked along the fair
+  valley at our feet in the light of the sunset, which caught us in
+  its glow. We sat on a slab of rock in ecstasy, which sobered down
+  into melancholy of the gentlest. You were the first to discover that
+  the far-off sun spoke to us of the future. How inquisitive and how
+  silly we were! Do you remember all the absurd things we said and
+  did? We embraced each other; 'like lovers,' said we. We solemnly
+  promised that the first bride should faithfully reveal to the
+  other the mysteries of marriage, the joys which our childish minds
+  imagined to be so delicious. That evening will complete your
+  despair, Louisa. In those days you were young and beautiful and
+  careless, if not radiantly happy; a few days of marriage, and you
+  will be, what I am already--ugly, wretched, and old. Need I tell
+  you how proud I was and how vain and glad to be married to Colonel
+  Victor d'Aiglemont? And besides, how could I tell you now? for I
+  cannot remember that old self. A few moments turned my girlhood to
+  a dream. All through the memorable day which consecrated a chain,
+  the extent of which was hidden from me, my behavior was not free
+  from reproach. Once and again my father tried to repress my
+  spirits; the joy which I showed so plainly was thought unbefitting
+  the occasion, my talk scarcely innocent, simply because I was so
+  innocent. I played endless child's tricks with my bridal veil, my
+  wreath, my gown. Left alone that night in the room whither I had
+  been conducted in state, I planned a piece of mischief to tease
+  Victor. While I awaited his coming, my heart beat wildly, as it
+  used to do when I was a child stealing into the drawing-room on
+  the last day of the old year to catch a glimpse of the New Year's
+  gifts piled up there in heaps. When my husband came in and looked
+  for me, my smothered laughter ringing out from beneath the lace in
+  which I had shrouded myself, was the last outburst of the
+  delicious merriment which brightened our games in childhood . . ."
+
+When the dowager had finished reading the letter, and after such a
+beginning the rest must have been sad indeed, she slowly laid her
+spectacles on the table, put the letter down beside them, and looked
+fixedly at her niece. Age had not dimmed the fire in those green eyes
+as yet.
+
+"My little girl," she said, "a married woman cannot write such a
+letter as this to a young unmarried woman; it is scarcely proper--"
+
+"So I was thinking," Julie broke in upon her aunt. "I felt ashamed of
+myself while you were reading it."
+
+"If a dish at table is not to our taste, there is no occasion to
+disgust others with it, child," the old lady continued benignly,
+"especially when marriage has seemed to us all, from Eve downwards, so
+excellent an institution. . . You have no mother?"
+
+The Countess trembled, then she raised her face meekly, and said:
+
+"I have missed my mother many times already during the past year; but
+I have myself to blame, I would not listen to my father. He was
+opposed to my marriage; he disapproved of Victor as a son-in-law."
+
+She looked at her aunt. The old face was lighted up with a kindly
+look, and a thrill of joy dried Julie's tears. She held out her young,
+soft hand to the old Marquise, who seemed to ask for it, and the
+understanding between the two women was completed by the close grasp
+of their fingers.
+
+"Poor orphan child!"
+
+The words came like a final flash of enlightenment to Julie. It seemed
+to her that she heard her father's prophetic voice again.
+
+"Your hands are burning! Are they always like this?" asked the
+Marquise.
+
+"The fever only left me seven or eight days ago."
+
+"You had a fever upon you, and said nothing about it to me!"
+
+"I have had it for a year," said Julie, with a kind of timid anxiety.
+
+"My good little angel, then your married life hitherto has been one
+long time of suffering?"
+
+Julie did not venture to reply, but an affirmative sign revealed the
+whole truth.
+
+"Then you are unhappy?"
+
+"On! no, no, aunt. Victor loves me, he almost idolizes me, and I adore
+him, he is so kind."
+
+"Yes, you love him; but you avoid him, do you not?"
+
+"Yes . . . sometimes . . . He seeks me too often."
+
+"And often when you are alone you are troubled with the fear that he
+may suddenly break in on your solitude?"
+
+"Alas! yes, aunt. But, indeed, I love him, I do assure you."
+
+"Do you not, in your own thoughts, blame yourself because you find it
+impossible to share his pleasures? Do you never think at times that
+marriage is a heavier yoke than an illicit passion could be?"
+
+"Oh, that is just it," she wept. "It is all a riddle to me, and can
+you guess it all? My faculties are benumbed, I have no ideas, I can
+scarcely see at all. I am weighed down by vague dread, which freezes
+me till I cannot feel, and keeps me in continual torpor. I have no
+voice with which to pity myself, no words to express my trouble. I
+suffer, and I am ashamed to suffer when Victor is happy at my cost."
+
+"Babyish nonsense, and rubbish, all of it!" exclaimed the aunt, and a
+gay smile, an after-glow of the joys of her own youth, suddenly
+lighted up her withered face.
+
+"And do you too laugh!" the younger woman cried despairingly.
+
+"It was just my own case," the Marquise returned promptly. "And now
+Victor has left you, you have become a girl again, recovering a
+tranquillity without pleasure and without pain, have you not?"
+
+Julie opened wide eyes of bewilderment.
+
+"In fact, my angel, you adore Victor, do you not? But still you would
+rather be a sister to him than a wife, and, in short, your marriage is
+emphatically not a success?"
+
+"Well--no, aunt. But why do you smile?"
+
+"Oh! you are right, poor child! There is nothing very amusing in all
+this. Your future would be big with more than one mishap if I had not
+taken you under my protection, if my old experience of life had not
+guessed the very innocent cause of your troubles. My nephew did not
+deserve his good fortune, the blockhead! In the reign of our
+well-beloved Louis Quinze, a young wife in your position would very
+soon have punished her husband for behaving like a ruffian. The selfish
+creature! The men who serve under this Imperial tyrant are all of them
+ignorant boors. They take brutality for gallantry; they know no more
+of women than they know of love; and imagine that because they go out
+to face death on the morrow, they may dispense to-day with all
+consideration and attentions for us. The time was when a man could
+love and die too at the proper time. My niece, I will form you. I will
+put an end to this unhappy divergence between you, a natural thing
+enough, but it would end in mutual hatred and desire for a divorce,
+always supposing that you did not die on the way to despair."
+
+Julie's amazement equaled her surprise as she listened to her aunt.
+She was surprised by her language, dimly divining rather than
+appreciating the wisdom of the words she heard, and very much dismayed
+to find what this relative, out of great experience, passed judgment
+upon Victor as her father had done, though in somewhat milder terms.
+Perhaps some quick prevision of the future crossed her mind;
+doubtless, at any rate, she felt the heavy weight of the burden which
+must inevitably overwhelm her, for she burst into tears, and sprang to
+the old lady's arms. "Be my mother," she sobbed.
+
+The aunt shed no tears. The Revolution had left old ladies of the
+Monarchy but few tears to shed. Love, in bygone days, and the Terror
+at a later time, had familiarized them with extremes of joy and
+anguish in such a sort that, amid the perils of life, they preserved
+their dignity and coolness, a capacity for sincere but undemonstrative
+affection which never disturbed their well-bred self-possession, and a
+dignity of demeanor which a younger generation has done very ill to
+discard.
+
+The dowager took Julie in her arms, and kissed her on the forehead
+with a tenderness and pity more often found in women's ways and manner
+than in their hearts. Then she coaxed her niece with kind, soothing
+words, assured her of a happy future, lulled her with promises of
+love, and put her to bed as if she had been not a niece, but a
+daughter, a much-beloved daughter whose hopes and cares she had made
+her own. Perhaps the old Marquise had found her own youth and
+inexperience and beauty again in this nephew's wife. And the Countess
+fell asleep, happy to have found a friend, nay a mother, to whom she
+could tell everything freely.
+
+Next morning, when the two women kissed each other with heartfelt
+kindness, and that look of intelligence which marks a real advance in
+friendship, a closer intimacy between two souls, they heard the sound
+of horsehoofs, and, turning both together, saw the young Englishman
+ride slowly past the window, after his wont. Apparently he had made a
+certain study of the life led by the two lonely women, for he never
+failed to ride by as they sat at breakfast, and again at dinner. His
+horse slackened pace of its own accord, and for the space of time
+required to pass the two windows in the room, its rider turned a
+melancholy look upon the Countess, who seldom deigned to take the
+slightest notion of him. Not so the Marquise. Minds not necessarily
+little find it difficult to resist the little curiosity which fastens
+upon the most trifling event that enlivens provincial life; and the
+Englishman's mute way of expressing his timid, earnest love tickled
+Mme. de Listomere. For her the periodically recurrent glance became a
+part of the day's routine, hailed daily with new jests. As the two
+women sat down to table, both of them looked out at the same moment.
+This time Julie's eyes met Arthur's with such a precision of sympathy
+that the color rose to her face. The stranger immediately urged his
+horse into a gallop and went.
+
+"What is to be done, madame?" asked Julie. "People see this Englishman
+go past the house, and they will take it for granted that I--"
+
+"Yes," interrupted her aunt.
+
+"Well, then, could I not tell him to discontinue his promenades?"
+
+"Would not that be a way of telling him that he was dangerous? You
+might put that notion into his head. And besides, can you prevent a
+man from coming and going as he pleases? Our meals shall be served in
+another room to-morrow; and when this young gentleman sees us no
+longer, there will be an end of making love to you through the window.
+There, dear child, that is how a woman of the world does."
+
+But the measure of Julie's misfortune was to be filled up. The two
+women had scarcely risen from table when Victor's man arrived in hot
+haste from Bourges with a letter for the Countess from her husband.
+The servant had ridden by unfrequented ways.
+
+Victor sent his wife news of the downfall of the Empire and the
+capitulation of Paris. He himself had gone over to the Bourbons, and
+all France was welcoming them back with transports of enthusiasm. He
+could not go so far as Tours, but he begged her to come at once to
+join him at Orleans, where he hoped to be in readiness with passports
+for her. His servant, an old soldier, would be her escort so far as
+Orleans; he (Victor) believed that the road was still open.
+
+"You have not a moment to lose, madame," said the man. "The Prussians,
+Austrians, and English are about to effect a junction either at Blois
+or at Orleans."
+
+A few hours later, Julie's preparations were made, and she started out
+upon her journey in an old traveling carriage lent by her aunt.
+
+"Why should you not come with us to Paris?" she asked, as she put her
+arms about the Marquise. "Now that the Bourbons have come back you
+would be--"
+
+"Even if there had not been this unhoped-for return, I should still
+have gone to Paris, my poor child, for my advice is only too necessary
+to both you and Victor. So I shall make all my preparations for
+rejoining you there."
+
+Julie set out. She took her maid with her, and the old soldier
+galloped beside the carriage as escort. At nightfall, as they changed
+horses for the last stage before Blois, Julie grew uneasy. All the way
+from Amboise she had heard the sound of wheels behind them, a carriage
+following hers had kept at the same distance. She stood on the step
+and looked out to see who her traveling companions might be, and in
+the moonlight saw Arthur standing three paces away, gazing fixedly at
+the chaise which contained her. Again their eyes met. The Countess
+hastily flung herself back in her seat, but a feeling of dread set her
+pulses throbbing. It seemed to her, as to most innocent and
+inexperienced young wives, that she was herself to blame for this love
+which she had all unwittingly inspired. With this thought came an
+instinctive terror, perhaps a sense of her own helplessness before
+aggressive audacity. One of a man's strongest weapons is the terrible
+power of compelling a woman to think of him when her naturally lively
+imagination takes alarm or offence at the thought that she is
+followed.
+
+The Countess bethought herself of her aunt's advice, and made up her
+mind that she would not stir from her place during the rest of the
+journey; but every time the horses were changed she heard the
+Englishman pacing round the two carriages, and again upon the road
+heard the importunate sound of the wheels of his caleche. Julie soon
+began to think that, when once reunited to her husband, Victor would
+know how to defend her against this singular persecution.
+
+"Yet suppose that in spite of everything, this young man does not love
+me?" This was the thought that came last of all.
+
+No sooner did she reach Orleans than the Prussians stopped the chaise.
+It was wheeled into an inn-yard and put under a guard of soldiers.
+Resistance was out of the question. The foreign soldiers made the
+three travelers understand by signs that they were obeying orders, and
+that no one could be allowed to leave the carriage. For about two
+hours the Countess sat in tears, a prisoner surrounded by the guard,
+who smoked, laughed, and occasionally stared at her with insolent
+curiosity. At last, however, she saw her captors fall away from the
+carriage with a sort of respect, and heard at the same time the sound
+of horses entering the yard. Another moment, and a little group of
+foreign officers, with an Austrian general at their head, gathered
+about the door of the traveling carriage.
+
+"Madame," said the General, "pray accept our apologies. A mistake has
+been made. You may continue your journey without fear; and here is a
+passport which will spare you all further annoyance of any kind."
+
+Trembling the Countess took the paper, and faltered out some vague
+words of thanks. She saw Arthur, now wearing an English uniform,
+standing beside the General, and could not doubt that this prompt
+deliverance was due to him. The young Englishman himself looked half
+glad, half melancholy; his face was turned away, and he only dared to
+steal an occasional glance at Julie's face.
+
+Thanks to the passport, Mme. d'Aiglemont reached Paris without further
+misadventure, and there she found her husband. Victor d'Aiglemont,
+released from his oath of allegiance to the Emperor, had met with a
+most flattering reception from the Comte d'Artois, recently appointed
+Lieutenant-General of the kingdom by his brother Louis XVIII.
+D'Aiglemont received a commission in the Life Guards, equivalent to
+the rank of general. But amid the rejoicings over the return of the
+Bourbons, fate dealt poor Julie a terrible blow. The death of the
+Marquise de Listomere-Landon was an irreparable loss. The old lady
+died of joy and of an accession of gout to the heart when the Duc
+d'Angouleme came back to Tours, and the one living being entitled by
+her age to enlighten Victor, the woman who, by discreet counsels,
+might have brought about perfect unanimity of husband and wife, was
+dead; and Julie felt the full extent of her loss. Henceforward she
+must stand alone between herself and her husband. But she was young
+and timid; there could be no doubt of the result, or that from the
+first she would elect to bear her lot in silence. The very perfections
+of her character forbade her to venture to swerve from her duties, or
+to attempt to inquire into the cause of her sufferings, for to put an
+end to them would have been to venture on delicate ground, and Julie's
+girlish modesty shrank from the thought.
+
+A word as to M. d'Aiglemont's destinies under the Restoration.
+
+How many men are there whose utter incapacity is a secret kept from
+most of their acquaintance. For such as these high rank, high office,
+illustrious birth, a certain veneer of politeness, and considerable
+reserve of manner, or the _prestige_ of great fortunes, are but so
+many sentinels to turn back critics who would penetrate to the
+presence of the real man. Such men are like kings, in that their real
+figure, character, and life can never be known nor justly appreciated,
+because they are always seen from too near or too far. Factitious
+merit has a way of asking questions and saying little; and understands
+the art of putting others forward to save the necessity of posing
+before them; then, with a happy knack of its own, it draws and
+attaches others by the thread of the ruling passion of self-interest,
+keeping men of far greater abilities to play like puppets, and
+despising those whom it has brought down to its own level. The petty
+fixed idea naturally prevails; it has the advantage of persistence
+over the plasticity of great thoughts.
+
+The observer who should seek to estimate and appraise the negative
+values of these empty heads needs subtlety rather than superior wit
+for the task; patience is a more necessary part of his judicial outfit
+than great mental grasp, cunning and tact rather than any elevation or
+greatness of ideas. Yet skilfully as such usurpers can cover and
+defend their weak points, it is difficult to delude wife and mother
+and children and the house-friend of the family; fortunately for them,
+however, these persons almost always keep a secret which in a manner
+touches the honor of all, and not unfrequently go so far as to help to
+foist the imposture upon the public. And if, thanks to such domestic
+conspiracy, many a noodle passes current for a man of ability, on the
+other hand many another who has real ability is taken for a noodle to
+redress the balance, and the total average of this kind of false coin
+in circulation in the state is a pretty constant quantity.
+
+Bethink yourself now of the part to be played by a clever woman quick
+to think and feel, mated with a husband of this kind, and can you not
+see a vision of lives full of sorrow and self-sacrifice? Nothing upon
+earth can repay such hearts so full of love and tender tact. Put a
+strong-willed woman in this wretched situation, and she will force a
+way out of it for herself by a crime, like Catherine II., whom men
+nevertheless style "the Great." But these women are not all seated
+upon thrones, they are for the most part doomed to domestic
+unhappiness none the less terrible because obscure.
+
+Those who seek consolation in this present world for their woes often
+effect nothing but a change of ills if they remain faithful to their
+duties; or they commit a sin if they break the laws for their
+pleasure. All these reflections are applicable to Julie's domestic
+life.
+
+Before the fall of Napoleon nobody was jealous of d'Aiglemont. He was
+one colonel among many, an efficient orderly staff-officer, as good a
+man as you could find for a dangerous mission, as unfit as well could
+be for an important command. D'Aiglemont was looked upon as a dashing
+soldier such as the Emperor liked, the kind of man whom his mess
+usually calls "a good fellow." The Restoration gave him back his title
+of Marquis, and did not find him ungrateful; he followed the Bourbons
+into exile at Ghent, a piece of logical loyalty which falsified the
+horoscope drawn for him by his late father-in-law, who predicted that
+Victor would remain a colonel all his life. After the Hundred Days he
+received the appointment of Lieutenant-General, and for the second
+time became a marquis; but it was M. d'Aiglemont's ambition to be a
+peer of France. He adopted, therefore, the maxims and the politics of
+the _Conservateur_, cloaked himself in dissimulation which hid nothing
+(there being nothing to hide), cultivated gravity of countenance and
+the art of asking questions and saying little, and was taken for a man
+of profound wisdom. Nothing drew him from his intrenchments behind the
+forms of politeness; he laid in a provision of formulas, and made
+lavish use of his stock of the catch-words coined at need in Paris to
+give fools the small change for the ore of great ideas and events.
+Among men of the world he was reputed a man of taste and discernment;
+and as a bigoted upholder of aristocratic opinions he was held up for
+a noble character. If by chance he slipped now and again into his old
+light-heartedness or levity, others were ready to discover an
+undercurrent of diplomatic intention beneath his inanity and
+silliness. "Oh! he only says exactly as much as he means to say,"
+thought these excellent people.
+
+So d'Aiglemont's defects and good qualities stood him alike in good
+stead. He did nothing to forfeit a high military reputation gained by
+his dashing courage, for he had never been a commander-in-chief. Great
+thoughts surely were engraven upon that manly aristocratic
+countenance, which imposed upon every one but his own wife. And when
+everybody else believed in the Marquis d'Aiglemont's imaginary
+talents, the Marquis persuaded himself before he had done that he was
+one of the most remarkable men at Court, where, thanks to his purely
+external qualifications, he was in favor and taken at his own
+valuation.
+
+At home, however, M. d'Aiglemont was modest. Instinctively he felt
+that his wife, young though she was, was his superior; and out of this
+involuntary respect there grew an occult power which the Marquise was
+obliged to wield in spite of all her efforts to shake off the burden.
+She became her husband's adviser, the director of his actions and his
+fortunes. It was an unnatural position; she felt it as something of a
+humiliation, a source of pain to be buried in the depths of her heart.
+From the first her delicately feminine instinct told her that it is a
+far better thing to obey a man of talent than to lead a fool; and that
+a young wife compelled to act and think like a man is neither man nor
+woman, but a being who lays aside all the charms of her womanhood
+along with its misfortunes, yet acquires none of the privileges which
+our laws give to the stronger sex. Beneath the surface her life was a
+bitter mockery. Was she not compelled to protect her protector, to
+worship a hollow idol, a poor creature who flung her the love of a
+selfish husband as the wages of her continual self-sacrifice; who saw
+nothing in her but the woman; and who either did not think it worth
+while, or (wrong quite as deep) did not think at all of troubling
+himself about her pleasures, of inquiring into the cause of her low
+spirits and dwindling health? And the Marquis, like most men who chafe
+under a wife's superiority, saved his self-love by arguing from
+Julie's physical feebleness a corresponding lack of mental power, for
+which he was pleased to pity her; and he would cry out upon fate which
+had given him a sickly girl for a wife. The executioner posed, in
+fact, as the victim.
+
+All the burdens of this dreary lot fell upon the Marquise, who still
+must smile upon her foolish lord, and deck a house of mourning with
+flowers, and make a parade of happiness in a countenance wan with
+secret torture. And with this sense of responsibility for the honor of
+both, with the magnificent immolation of self, the young Marquise
+unconsciously acquired a wifely dignity, a consciousness of virtue
+which became her safeguard amid many dangers.
+
+Perhaps, if her heart were sounded to the very depths, this intimate
+closely hidden wretchedness, following upon her unthinking, girlish
+first love, had roused in her an abhorrence of passion; possibly she
+had no conception of its rapture, nor of the forbidden but frenzied
+bliss for which some women will renounce all the laws of prudence and
+the principles of conduct upon which society is based. She put from
+her like a dream the thought of bliss and tender harmony of love
+promised by Mme. de Listomere-Landon's mature experience, and waited
+resignedly for the end of her troubles with a hope that she might die
+young.
+
+Her health had declined daily since her return from Touraine; her life
+seemed to be measured to her in suffering; yet her ill-health was
+graceful, her malady seemed little more than languor, and might well
+be taken by careless eyes for a fine lady's whim of invalidism.
+
+Her doctors had condemned her to keep to the sofa, and there among her
+flowers lay the Marquise, fading as they faded. She was not strong
+enough to walk, nor to bear the open air, and only went out in a
+closed carriage. Yet with all the marvels of modern luxury and
+invention about her, she looked more like an indolent queen than an
+invalid. A few of her friends, half in love perhaps with her sad
+plight and her fragile look, sure of finding her at home, and
+speculating no doubt upon her future restoration to health, would come
+to bring her the news of the day, and kept her informed of the
+thousand and one small events which fill life in Paris with variety.
+Her melancholy, deep and real though it was was still the melancholy
+of a woman rich in many ways. The Marquise d'Aiglemont was like a
+flower, with a dark insect gnawing at its root.
+
+Occasionally she went into society, not to please herself, but in
+obedience to the exigencies of the position which her husband aspired
+to take. In society her beautiful voice and the perfection of her
+singing could always gain the social success so gratifying to a young
+woman; but what was social success to her, who drew nothing from it
+for her heart or her hopes? Her husband did not care for music. And,
+moreover, she seldom felt at her ease in salons, where her beauty
+attracted homage not wholly disinterested. Her position excited a sort
+of cruel compassion, a morbid curiosity. She was suffering from an
+inflammatory complaint not infrequently fatal, for which our nosology
+as yet has found no name, a complaint spoken of among women in
+confidential whispers. In spite of the silence in which her life was
+spent, the cause of her ill-health was no secret. She was still but a
+girl in spite of her marriage; the slightest glance threw her into
+confusion. In her endeavor not to blush, she was always laughing,
+always apparently in high spirits; she would never admit that she was
+not perfectly well, and anticipated questions as to her health by
+shame-stricken subterfuges.
+
+In 1817, however, an event took place which did much to alleviate
+Julie's hitherto deplorable existence. A daughter was born to her, and
+she determined to nurse her child herself. For two years motherhood,
+its all-absorbing multiplicity of cares and anxious joys, made life
+less hard for her. She and her husband lived necessarily apart. Her
+physicians predicted improved health, but the Marquise herself put no
+faith in these auguries based on theory. Perhaps, like many a one for
+whom life has lost its sweetness, she looked forward to death as a
+happy termination of the drama.
+
+But with the beginning of the year 1819 life grew harder than ever.
+Even while she congratulated herself upon the negative happiness which
+she had contrived to win, she caught a terrifying glimpse of yawning
+depths below it. She had passed by degrees out of her husband's life.
+Her fine tact and her prudence told her that misfortune must come, and
+that not singly, of this cooling of an affection already lukewarm and
+wholly selfish. Sure though she was of her ascendency over Victor, and
+certain as she felt of his unalterable esteem, she dreaded the
+influence of unbridled passions upon a head so empty, so full of rash
+self-conceit.
+
+Julie's friends often found her absorbed in prolonged musings; the
+less clairvoyant among them would jestingly ask her what she was
+thinking about, as if a young wife would think of nothing but
+frivolity, as if there were not almost always a depth of seriousness
+in a mother's thoughts. Unhappiness, like great happiness, induces
+dreaming. Sometimes as Julie played with her little Helene, she would
+gaze darkly at her, giving no reply to the childish questions in which
+a mother delights, questioning the present and the future as to the
+destiny of this little one. Then some sudden recollection would bring
+back the scene of the review at the Tuileries and fill her eyes with
+tears. Her father's prophetic warnings rang in her ears, and
+conscience reproached her that she had not recognized its wisdom. Her
+troubles had all come of her own wayward folly, and often she knew not
+which among so many were the hardest to bear. The sweet treasures of
+her soul were unheeded, and not only so, she could never succeed in
+making her husband understand her, even in the commonest everyday
+things. Just as the power to love developed and grew strong and
+active, a legitimate channel for the affections of her nature was
+denied her, and wedded love was extinguished in grave physical and
+mental sufferings. Add to this that she now felt for her husband that
+pity closely bordering upon contempt, which withers all affection at
+last. Even if she had not learned from conversations with some of her
+friends, from examples in life, from sundry occurrences in the great
+world, that love can bring ineffable bliss, her own wounds would have
+taught her to divine the pure and deep happiness which binds two
+kindred souls each to each.
+
+In the picture which her memory traced of the past, Arthur's frank
+face stood out daily nobler and purer; it was but a flash, for upon
+that recollection she dared not dwell. The young Englishman's shy,
+silent love for her was the one event since her marriage which had
+left a lingering sweetness in her darkened and lonely heart. It may be
+that all the blighted hopes, all the frustrated longings which
+gradually clouded Julie's mind, gathered, by a not unnatural trick of
+imagination, about this man--whose manners, sentiments, and character
+seemed to have so much in common with her own. This idea still
+presented itself to her mind fitfully and vaguely, like a dream; yet
+from that dream, which always ended in a sigh, Julie awoke to greater
+wretchedness, to keener consciousness of the latent anguish brooding
+beneath her imaginary bliss.
+
+Occasionally her self-pity took wilder and more daring flights. She
+determined to have happiness at any cost; but still more often she lay
+a helpless victim of an indescribable numbing stupor, the words she
+heard had no meaning to her, or the thoughts which arose in her mind
+were so vague and indistinct that she could not find language to
+express them. Balked of the wishes of her heart, realities jarred
+harshly upon her girlish dreams of life, but she was obliged to devour
+her tears. To whom could she make complaint? Of whom be understood?
+She possessed, moreover, that highest degree of woman's sensitive
+pride, the exquisite delicacy of feeling which silences useless
+complainings and declines to use an advantage to gain a triumph which
+can only humiliate both victor and vanquished.
+
+Julie tried to endow M. d'Aiglemont with her own abilities and
+virtues, flattering herself that thus she might enjoy the happiness
+lacking in her lot. All her woman's ingenuity and tack was employed in
+making the best of the situation; pure waste of pains unsuspected by
+him, whom she thus strengthened in his despotism. There were moments
+when misery became an intoxication, expelling all ideas, all
+self-control; but, fortunately, sincere piety always brought her back
+to one supreme hope; she found a refuge in the belief in a future
+life, a wonderful thought which enabled her to take up her painful task
+afresh. No elation of victory followed those terrible inward battles
+and throes of anguish; no one knew of those long hours of sadness; her
+haggard glances met no response from human eyes, and during the brief
+moments snatched by chance for weeping, her bitter tears fell unheeded
+and in solitude.
+
+One evening in January 1820, the Marquise became aware of the full
+gravity of the crisis, gradually brought on by force of circumstances.
+When a husband and wife know each other thoroughly, and their relation
+has long been a matter of use and wont, when the wife has learned to
+interpret every slightest sign, when her quick insight discerns
+thoughts and facts which her husband keeps from her, a chance word, or
+a remark so carelessly let fall in the first instance, seems, upon
+subsequent reflection, like the swift breaking out of light. A wife
+not seldom suddenly awakes upon the brink of a precipice or in the
+depths of the abyss; and thus it was with the Marquise. She was
+feeling glad to have been left to herself for some days, when the real
+reason of her solitude flashed upon her. Her husband, whether fickle
+and tired of her, or generous and full of pity for her, was hers no
+longer.
+
+In the moment of that discovery she forgot herself, her sacrifices,
+all that she had passed through, she remembered only that she was a
+mother. Looking forward, she thought of her daughter's fortune, of the
+future welfare of the one creature through whom some gleams of
+happiness came to her, of her Helene, the only possession which bound
+her to life.
+
+Then Julie wished to live to save her child from a stepmother's
+terrible thraldom, which might crush her darling's life. Upon this new
+vision of threatened possibilities followed one of those paroxysms of
+thought at fever-heat which consume whole years of life.
+
+Henceforward husband and wife were doomed to be separated by a whole
+world of thought, and all the weight of that world she must bear
+alone. Hitherto she had felt sure that Victor loved her, in so far as
+he could be said to love; she had been the slave of pleasures which
+she did not share; to-day the satisfaction of knowing that she
+purchased his contentment with her tears was hers no longer. She was
+alone in the world, nothing was left to her now but a choice of evils.
+In the calm stillness of the night her despondency drained her of all
+her strength. She rose from her sofa beside the dying fire, and stood
+in the lamplight gazing, dry-eyed, at her child, when M. d'Aiglemont
+came in. He was in high spirits. Julie called to him to admire Helene
+as she lay asleep, but he met his wife's enthusiasm with a
+commonplace:
+
+"All children are nice at that age."
+
+He closed the curtains about the cot after a careless kiss on the
+child's forehead. Then he turned his eyes on Julie, took her hand and
+drew her to sit beside him on the sofa, where she had been sitting
+with such dark thoughts surging up in her mind.
+
+"You are looking very handsome to-night, Mme. d'Aiglemont," he
+exclaimed, with the gaiety intolerable to the Marquise, who knew its
+emptiness so well.
+
+"Where have you spent the evening?" she asked, with a pretence of
+complete indifference.
+
+"At Mme. de Serizy's."
+
+He had taken up a fire-screen, and was looking intently at the gauze.
+He had not noticed the traces of tears on his wife's face. Julie
+shuddered. Words could not express the overflowing torrent of thoughts
+which must be forced down into inner depths.
+
+"Mme. de Serizy is giving a concert on Monday, and is dying for you to
+go. You have not been anywhere for some time past, and that is enough
+to set her longing to see you at her house. She is a good-natured
+woman, and very fond of you. I should be glad if you would go; I all
+but promised that you should----"
+
+"I will go."
+
+There was something so penetrating, so significant in the tones of
+Julie's voice, in her accent, in the glance that went with the words,
+that Victor, startled out of his indifference, stared at his wife in
+astonishment.
+
+That was all, Julie had guessed that it was Mme. de Serizy who had
+stolen her husband's heart from her. Her brooding despair benumbed
+her. She appeared to be deeply interested in the fire. Victor
+meanwhile still played with the fire-screen. He looked bored, like a
+man who has enjoyed himself elsewhere, and brought home the consequent
+lassitude. He yawned once or twice, then he took up a candle in one
+hand, and with the other languidly sought his wife's neck for the
+usual embrace; but Julie stooped and received the good-night kiss upon
+her forehead; the formal, loveless grimace seemed hateful to her at
+that moment.
+
+As soon as the door closed upon Victor, his wife sank into a seat. Her
+limbs tottered beneath her, she burst into tears. None but those who
+have endured the torture of some such scene can fully understand the
+anguish that it means, or divine the horror of the long-drawn tragedy
+arising out of it.
+
+Those simple, foolish words, the silence that followed between the
+husband and wife, the Marquis' gesture and expression, the way in
+which he sat before the fire, his attitude as he made that futile
+attempt to put a kiss on his wife's throat,--all these things made up
+a dark hour for Julie, and the catastrophe of the drama of her sad and
+lonely life. In her madness she knelt down before the sofa, burying
+her face in it to shut out everything from sight, and prayed to
+Heaven, putting a new significance into the words of the evening
+prayer, till it became a cry from the depths of her own soul, which
+would have gone to her husband's heart if he had heard it.
+
+The following week she spent in deep thought for her future, utterly
+overwhelmed by this new trouble. She made a study of it, trying to
+discover a way to regain her ascendency over the Marquis, scheming how
+to live long enough to watch over her daughter's happiness, yet to
+live true to her own heart. Then she made up her mind. She would
+struggle with her rival. She would shine once more in society. She
+would feign the love which she could no longer feel, she would
+captivate her husband's fancy; and when she had lured him into her
+power, she would coquet with him like a capricious mistress who takes
+delight in tormenting a lover. This hateful strategy was the only
+possible way out of her troubles. In this way she would become
+mistress of the situation; she would prescribe her own sufferings at
+her good pleasure, and reduce them by enslaving her husband, and
+bringing him under a tyrannous yoke. She felt not the slightest
+remorse for the hard life which he should lead. At a bound she reached
+cold, calculating indifference--for her daughter's sake. She had
+gained a sudden insight into the treacherous, lying arts of degraded
+women; the wiles of coquetry, the revolting cunning which arouses such
+profound hatred in men at the mere suspicion of innate corruption in a
+woman.
+
+Julie's feminine vanity, her interests, and a vague desire to inflict
+punishment, all wrought unconsciously with the mother's love within
+her to force her into a path where new sufferings awaited her. But her
+nature was too noble, her mind too fastidious, and, above all things,
+too open, to be the accomplice of these frauds for very long.
+Accustomed as she was to self-scrutiny, at the first step in vice--for
+vice it was--the cry of conscience must inevitably drown the clamor of
+the passions and of selfishness. Indeed, in a young wife whose heart
+is still pure, whose love has never been mated, the very sentiment of
+motherhood is overpowered by modesty. Modesty; is not all womanhood
+summed up in that? But just now Julie would not see any danger,
+anything wrong, in her life.
+
+She went to Mme. de Serizy's concert. Her rival had expected to see a
+pallid, drooping woman. The Marquise wore rouge, and appeared in all
+the splendor of a toilet which enhanced her beauty.
+
+Mme. de Serizy was one of those women who claim to exercise a sort of
+sway over fashions and society in Paris; she issued her decrees, saw
+them received in her own circle, and it seemed to her that all the
+world obeyed them. She aspired to epigram, she set up for an authority
+in matters of taste. Literature, politics, men and women, all alike
+were submitted to her censorship, and the lady herself appeared to
+defy the censorship of others. Her house was in every respect a model
+of good taste.
+
+Julie triumphed over the Countess in her own salon, filled as it was
+with beautiful women and women of fashion. Julie's liveliness and
+sparkling wit gathered all the most distinguished men in the rooms
+about her. Her costume was faultless, for the despair of the women,
+who one and all envied her the fashion of her dress, and attributed
+the moulded outline of her bodice to the genius of some unknown
+dressmaker, for women would rather believe in miracles worked by the
+science of chiffons than in the grace and perfection of the form
+beneath.
+
+When Julie went to the piano to sing Desdemona's song, the men in the
+rooms flocked about her to hear the celebrated voice so long mute, and
+there was a deep silence. The Marquise saw the heads clustered thickly
+in the doorways, saw all eyes turned upon her, and a sharp thrill of
+excitement quivered through her. She looked for her husband, gave him
+a coquettish side-glance, and it pleased her to see that his vanity
+was gratified to no small degree. In the joy of triumph she sang the
+first part of _Al piu salice_. Her audience was enraptured. Never had
+Malibran nor Pasta sung with expression and intonation so perfect. But
+at the beginning of the second part she glanced over the glistening
+groups and saw--Arthur. He never took his eyes from her face. A quick
+shudder thrilled through her, and her voice faltered. Up hurried Mme.
+de Serizy from her place.
+
+"What is it, dear? Oh! poor little thing! she is in such weak health;
+I was so afraid when I saw her begin a piece so far beyond her
+strength."
+
+The song was interrupted. Julie was vexed. She had not courage to sing
+any longer, and submitted to her rival's treacherous sympathy. There
+was a whisper among the women. The incident led to discussions; they
+guessed that the struggle had begun between the Marquise and Mme. de
+Serizy, and their tongues did not spare the latter.
+
+Julie's strange, perturbing presentiments were suddenly realized.
+Through her preoccupation with Arthur she had loved to imagine that
+with that gentle, refined face he must remain faithful to his first
+love. There were times when she felt proud that this ideal, pure, and
+passionate young love should have been hers; the passion of the young
+lover whose thoughts are all for her to whom he dedicates every moment
+of his life, who blushes as a woman blushes, thinks as a woman might
+think, forgetting ambition, fame, and fortune in devotion to his love,
+--she need never fear a rival. All these things she had fondly and
+idly dreamed of Arthur; now all at once it seemed to her that her
+dream had come true. In the young Englishman's half-feminine face she
+read the same deep thoughts, the same pensive melancholy, the same
+passive acquiescence in a painful lot, and an endurance like her own.
+She saw herself in him. Trouble and sadness are the most eloquent of
+love's interpreters, and response is marvelously swift between two
+suffering creatures, for in them the powers of intuition and of
+assimilation of facts and ideas are well-nigh unerring and perfect. So
+with the violence of the shock the Marquise's eyes were opened to the
+whole extent of the future danger. She was only too glad to find a
+pretext for her nervousness in her chronic ill-health, and willingly
+submitted to be overwhelmed by Mme. de Serizy's insidious compassion.
+
+That incident of the song caused talk and discussion which differed
+with the various groups. Some pitied Julie's fate, and regretted that
+such a remarkable woman was lost to society; others fell to wondering
+what the cause of her ill-health and seclusion could be.
+
+"Well, now, my dear Ronquerolles," said the Marquis, addressing Mme.
+de Serizy's brother, "you used to envy me my good fortune, and you
+used to blame me for my infidelities. Pshaw, you would not find much
+to envy in my lot, if, like me, you had a pretty wife so fragile that
+for the past two years you might not so much as kiss her hand for fear
+of damaging her. Do not you encumber yourself with one of those
+fragile ornaments, only fit to put in a glass case, so brittle and so
+costly that you are always obliged to be careful of them. They tell me
+that you are afraid of snow or wet for that fine horse of yours; how
+often do you ride him? That is just my own case. It is true that my
+wife gives me no ground for jealousy, but my marriage is purely
+ornamental business; if you think that I am a married man, you are
+grossly mistaken. So there is some excuse for my unfaithfulness. I
+should dearly like to know what you gentlemen who laugh at me would do
+in my place. Not many men would be so considerate as I am. I am sure,"
+(here he lowered his voice) "that Mme. d'Aiglemont suspects nothing.
+And then, of course, I have no right to complain at all; I am very
+well off. Only there is nothing more trying for a man who feels things
+than the sight of suffering in a poor creature to whom you are
+attached----"
+
+"You must have a very sensitive nature, then," said M. de
+Ronquerolles, "for you are not often at home."
+
+Laughter followed on the friendly epigram; but Arthur, who made one of
+the group, maintained a frigid imperturbability in his quality of an
+English gentleman who takes gravity for the very basis of his being.
+D'Aiglemont's eccentric confidence, no doubt, had kindled some kind of
+hope in Arthur, for he stood patiently awaiting an opportunity of a
+word with the Marquis. He had not to wait long.
+
+"My Lord Marquis," he said, "I am unspeakably pained to see the state
+of Mme. d'Aiglemont's health. I do not think that you would talk
+jestingly about it if you knew that unless she adopts a certain course
+of treatment she must die miserably. If I use this language to you, it
+is because I am in a manner justified in using it, for I am quite
+certain that I can save Mme. d'Aiglemont's life and restore her to
+health and happiness. It is odd, no doubt, that a man of my rank
+should be a physician, yet nevertheless chance determined that I
+should study medicine. I find life dull enough here," he continued,
+affecting a cold selfishness to gain his ends, "it makes no difference
+to me whether I spend my time and travel for the benefit of a
+suffering fellow-creature, or waste it in Paris on some nonsense or
+other. It is very, very seldom that a cure is completed in these
+complaints, for they require constant care, time, and patience, and,
+above all things, money. Travel is needed, and a punctilious following
+out of prescriptions, by no means unpleasant, and varied daily. Two
+_gentlemen_" (laying a stress on the word in its English sense) "can
+understand each other. I give you warning that if you accept my
+proposal, you shall be a judge of my conduct at every moment. I will
+do nothing without consulting you, without your superintendence, and I
+will answer for the success of my method if you will consent to follow
+it. Yes, unless you wish to be Mme. d'Aiglemont's husband no longer,
+and that before long," he added in the Marquis' ear.
+
+The Marquis laughed. "One thing is certain--that only an Englishman
+could make me such an extraordinary proposal," he said. "Permit me to
+leave it unaccepted and unrejected. I will think it over; and my wife
+must be consulted first in any case."
+
+Julie had returned to the piano. This time she sang a song from
+_Semiramide, Son regina, son guerriera_, and the whole room applauded,
+a stifled outburst of wellbred acclamation which proved that the
+Faubourg Saint-Germain had been roused to enthusiasm by her singing.
+
+The evening was over. D'Aiglemont brought his wife home, and Julie saw
+with uneasy satisfaction that her first attempt had at once been
+successful. Her husband had been roused out of indifference by the
+part which she had played, and now he meant to honor her with such a
+passing fancy as he might bestow upon some opera nymph. It amused
+Julie that she, a virtuous married woman, should be treated thus. She
+tried to play with her power, but at the outset her kindness broke
+down once more, and she received the most terrible of all the lessons
+held in store for her by fate.
+
+Between two and three o'clock in the morning Julie sat up, sombre and
+moody, beside her sleeping husband, in the room dimly lighted by the
+flickering lamp. Deep silence prevailed. Her agony of remorse had
+lasted near an hour; how bitter her tears had been none perhaps can
+realize save women who have known such an experience as hers. Only
+such natures as Julie's can feel her loathing for a calculated caress,
+the horror of a loveless kiss, of the heart's apostasy followed by
+dolorous prostitution. She despised herself; she cursed marriage. She
+could have longed for death; perhaps if it had not been for a cry from
+her child, she would have sprung from the window and dashed herself
+upon the pavement. M. d'Aiglemont slept on peacefully at her side; his
+wife's hot dropping tears did not waken him.
+
+But next morning Julie could be gay. She made a great effort to look
+happy, to hide, not her melancholy, as heretofore, but an insuperable
+loathing. From that day she no longer regarded herself as a blameless
+wife. Had she not been false to herself? Why should she not play a
+double part in the future, and display astounding depths of cunning in
+deceiving her husband? In her there lay a hitherto undiscovered latent
+depravity, lacking only opportunity, and her marriage was the cause.
+
+Even now she had asked herself why she should struggle with love,
+when, with her heart and her whole nature in revolt, she gave herself
+to the husband whom she loved no longer. Perhaps, who knows? some
+piece of fallacious reasoning, some bit of special pleading, lies at
+the root of all sins, of all crimes. How shall society exist unless
+every individual of which it is composed will make the necessary
+sacrifices of inclination demanded by its laws? If you accept the
+benefits of civilized society, do you not by implication engage to
+observe the conditions, the conditions of its very existence? And yet,
+starving wretches, compelled to respect the laws of property, are not
+less to be pitied than women whose natural instincts and sensitiveness
+are turned to so many avenues of pain.
+
+A few days after that scene of which the secret lay buried in the
+midnight couch, d'Aiglemont introduced Lord Grenville. Julie gave the
+guest a stiffly polite reception, which did credit to her powers of
+dissimulation. Resolutely she silenced her heart, veiled her eyes,
+steadied her voice, and she kept her future in her own hands. Then,
+when by these devices, this innate woman-craft, as it may be called,
+she had discovered the full extent of the love which she inspired,
+Mme. d'Aiglemont welcomed the hope of a speedy cure, and no longer
+opposed her husband, who pressed her to accept the young doctor's
+offer. Yet she declined to trust herself with Lord Grenville until
+after some further study of his words and manner, she could feel
+certain that he had sufficient generosity to endure his pain in
+silence. She had absolute power over him, and she had begun to abuse
+that power already. Was she not a woman?
+
+Montcontour is an old manor-house build upon the sandy cliffs above
+the Loire, not far from the bridge where Julie's journey was
+interrupted in 1814. It is a picturesque, white chateau, with turrets
+covered with fine stone carving like Mechlin lace; a chateau such as
+you often see in Touraine, spick and span, ivy clad, standing among
+its groves of mulberry trees and vineyards, with its hollow walks, its
+stone balustrades, and cellars mined in the rock escarpments mirrored
+in the Loire. The roofs of Montcontour gleam in the sun; the whole
+land glows in the burning heat. Traces of the romantic charm of Spain
+and the south hover about the enchanting spot. The breeze brings the
+scent of bell flowers and golden broom, the air is soft, all about you
+lies a sunny land, a land which casts its dreamy spell over your soul,
+a land of languor and of soft desire, a fair, sweet-scented country,
+where pain is lulled to sleep and passion wakes. No heart is cold for
+long beneath its clear sky, beside its sparkling waters. One ambition
+dies after another, and you sink into serene content and repose, as
+the sun sinks at the end of the day swathed about with purple and
+azure.
+
+
+
+One warm August evening in 1821 two people were climbing the paths cut
+in the crags above the chateau, doubtless for the sake of the view
+from the heights above. The two were Julie and Lord Grenville, but
+this Julie seemed to be a new creature. The unmistakable color of
+health glowed in her face. Overflowing vitality had brought a light
+into her eyes, which sparkled through a moist film with that liquid
+brightness which gives such irresistible charm to the eyes of
+children. She was radiant with smiles; she felt the joy of living and
+all the possibilities of life. From the very way in which she lifted
+her little feet, it was easy to see that no suffering trammeled her
+lightest movements; there was no heaviness nor languor in her eyes,
+her voice, as heretofore. Under the white silk sunshade which screened
+her from the hot sunlight, she looked like some young bride beneath
+her veil, or a maiden waiting to yield to the magical enchantments of
+Love.
+
+Arthur led her with a lover's care, helping her up the pathway as if
+she had been a child, finding the smoothest ways, avoiding the stones
+for her, bidding her see glimpses of distance, or some flower beside
+the path, always with the unfailing goodness, the same delicate design
+in all that he did; the intuitive sense of this woman's wellbeing
+seemed to be innate in him, and as much, nay, perhaps more, a part of
+his being as the pulse of his own life.
+
+The patient and her doctor went step for step. There was nothing
+strange for them in a sympathy which seemed to have existed since the
+day when they first walked together. One will swayed them both; they
+stopped as their senses received the same impression; every word and
+every glance told of the same thought in either mind. They had climbed
+up through the vineyards, and now they turned to sit on one of the
+long white stones, quarried out of the caves in the hillside; but
+Julie stood awhile gazing out over the landscape.
+
+"What a beautiful country!" she cried. "Let us put up a tent and live
+here. Victor, Victor, do come up here!"
+
+M. d'Aiglemont answered by a halloo from below. He did not, however,
+hurry himself, merely giving his wife a glance from time to time when
+the windings of the path gave him a glimpse of her. Julie breathed the
+air with delight. She looked up at Arthur, giving him one of those
+subtle glances in which a clever woman can put the whole of her
+thought.
+
+"Ah, I should like to live here always," she said. "Would it be
+possible to tire of this beautiful valley?--What is the picturesque
+river called, do you know?"
+
+"That is the Cise."
+
+"The Cise," she repeated. "And all this country below, before us?"
+
+"Those are the low hills above the Cher."
+
+"And away to the right? Ah, that is Tours. Only see how fine the
+cathedral towers look in the distance."
+
+She was silent, and let fall the hand which she had stretched out
+towards the view upon Arthur's. Both admired the wide landscape made
+up of so much blended beauty. Neither of them spoke. The murmuring
+voice of the river, the pure air, and the cloudless heaven were all in
+tune with their thronging thoughts and their youth and the love in
+their hearts.
+
+"Oh! _mon Dieu_, how I love this country!" Julie continued, with
+growing and ingenuous enthusiasm. "You lived here for a long while,
+did you not?" she added after a pause.
+
+A thrill ran through Lord Grenville at her words.
+
+"It was down there," he said, in a melancholy voice, indicating as he
+spoke a cluster of walnut trees by the roadside, "that I, a prisoner,
+saw you for the first time."
+
+"Yes, but even at that time I felt very sad. This country looked wild
+to me then, but now----" She broke off, and Lord Grenville did not
+dare to look at her.
+
+"All this pleasure I owe to you," Julie began at last, after a long
+silence. "Only the living can feel the joy of life, and until now have
+I not been dead to it all? You have given me more than health, you
+have made me feel all its worth--"
+
+Women have an inimitable talent for giving utterance to strong
+feelings in colorless words; a woman's eloquence lies in tone and
+gesture, manner and glance. Lord Grenville hid his face in his hands,
+for his tears filled his eyes. This was Julie's first word of thanks
+since they left Paris a year ago.
+
+For a whole year he had watched over the Marquise, putting his whole
+self into the task. D'Aiglemont seconding him, he had taken her first
+to Aix, then to la Rochelle, to be near the sea. From moment to moment
+he had watched the changes worked in Julie's shattered constitution by
+his wise and simple prescriptions. He had cultivated her health as an
+enthusiastic gardener might cultivate a rare flower. Yet, to all
+appearance, the Marquise had quietly accepted Arthur's skill and care
+with the egoism of a spoiled Parisienne, or like a courtesan who has
+no idea of the cost of things, nor of the worth of a man, and judges
+of both by their comparative usefulness to her.
+
+The influence of places upon us is a fact worth remarking. If
+melancholy comes over us by the margin of a great water, another
+indelible law of our nature so orders it that the mountains exercise a
+purifying influence upon our feelings, and among the hills passion
+gains in depth by all that it apparently loses in vivacity. Perhaps it
+was the light of the wide country by the Loire, the height of the fair
+sloping hillside on which the lovers sat, that induced the calm bliss
+of the moment when the whole extent of the passion that lies beneath a
+few insignificant-sounding words is divined for the first time with a
+delicious sense of happiness.
+
+Julie had scarcely spoken the words which had moved Lord Grenville so
+deeply, when a caressing breeze ruffled the treetops and filled the
+air with coolness from the river; a few clouds crossed the sky, and
+the soft cloud-shadows brought out all the beauty of the fair land
+below.
+
+Julie turned away her head, lest Arthur should see the tears which she
+succeeded in repressing; his emotion had spread at once to her. She
+dried her eyes, but she dared not raise them lest he should read the
+excess of joy in a glance. Her woman's instinct told her that during
+this hour of danger she must hide her love in the depths of her heart.
+Yet silence might prove equally dangerous, and Julie saw that Lord
+Grenville was unable to utter a word. She went on, therefore, in a
+gentle voice:
+
+"You are touched by what I have said. Perhaps such a quick outburst of
+feeling is the way in which a gracious and kind nature like yours
+reverses a mistaken judgment. You must have thought me ungrateful when
+I was cold and reserved, or cynical and hard, all through the journey
+which, fortunately, is very near its end. I should not have been
+worthy of your care if I had been unable to appreciate it. I have
+forgotten nothing. Alas! I shall forget nothing, not the anxious way
+in which you watched over me as a mother watches over her child, nor,
+and above all else, the noble confidence of our life as brother and
+sister, the delicacy of your conduct--winning charms, against which we
+women are defenceless. My lord, it is out of my power to make you a
+return----"
+
+At these words Julie hastily moved further away, and Lord Grenville
+made no attempt to detain her. She went to a rock not far away, and
+there sat motionless. What either felt remained a secret known to each
+alone; doubtless they wept in silence. The singing of the birds about
+them, so blithe, so overflowing with tenderness at sunset time, could
+only increase the storm of passion which had driven them apart. Nature
+took up their story for them, and found a language for the love of
+which they did not dare to speak.
+
+"And now, my lord," said Julie, and she came and stood before Arthur
+with a great dignity, which allowed her to take his hand in hers. "I
+am going to ask you to hallow and purify the life which you have given
+back to me. Here, we will part. I know," she added, as she saw how
+white his face grew, "I know that I am repaying you for your devotion
+by requiring of you a sacrifice even greater than any which you have
+hitherto made for me, sacrifices so great that they should receive
+some better recompense than this. . . . But it must be. . . You must
+not stay in France. By laying this command upon you, do I not give you
+rights which shall be held sacred?" she added, holding his hand
+against her beating heart.
+
+"Yes," said Arthur, and he rose.
+
+He looked in the direction of d'Aiglemont, who appeared on the
+opposite side of one of the hollow walks with the child in his arms.
+He had scrambled up on the balustrade by the chateau that little
+Helene might jump down.
+
+"Julie, I will not say a word of my love; we understand each other too
+well. Deeply and carefully though I have hidden the pleasures of my
+heart, you have shared them all, I feel it, I know it, I see it. And
+now, at this moment, as I receive this delicious proof of the constant
+sympathy of our hearts, I must go. . . . Cunning schemes for getting
+rid of him have crossed my mind too often; the temptation might be
+irresistible if I stayed with you."
+
+"I had the same thought," she said, a look of pained surprise in her
+troubled face.
+
+Yet in her tone and involuntary shudder there was such virtue, such
+certainty of herself, won in many a hard-fought battle with a love
+that spoke in Julie's tones and involuntary gestures, that Lord
+Grenville stood thrilled with admiration of her. The mere shadow of a
+crime had been dispelled from that clear conscience. The religious
+sentiment enthroned on the fair forehead could not but drive away the
+evil thoughts that arise unbidden, engendered by our imperfect nature,
+thoughts which make us aware of the grandeur and the perils of human
+destiny.
+
+"And then," she said, "I should have drawn down your scorn upon me,
+and--I should have been saved," she added, and her eyes fell. "To be
+lowered in your eyes, what is that but death?"
+
+For a moment the two heroic lovers were silent, choking down their
+sorrow. Good or ill, it seemed that their thoughts were loyally one,
+and the joys in the depths of their heart were no more experiences
+apart than the pain which they strove most anxiously to hide.
+
+"I have no right to complain," she said after a while, "my misery is
+of my own making," and she raised her tear-filled eyes to the sky.
+
+"Perhaps you don't remember it, but that is the place where we met
+each other for the first time," shouted the General from below, and he
+waved his hand towards the distance. "There, down yonder, near those
+poplars!"
+
+The Englishman nodded abruptly by way of answer.
+
+"So I was bound to die young and to know no happiness," Julie
+continued. "Yes, do not think that I live. Sorrow is just as fatal as
+the dreadful disease which you have cured. I do not think that I am to
+blame. No. My love is stronger than I am, and eternal; but all
+unconsciously it grew in me; and I will not be guilty through my love.
+Nevertheless, though I shall be faithful to my conscience as a wife,
+to my duties as a mother, I will be no less faithful to the instincts
+of my heart. Hear me," she cried in an unsteady voice, "henceforth I
+belong to _him_ no longer."
+
+By a gesture, dreadful to see in its undisguised loathing she
+indicated her husband.
+
+"The social code demands that I shall make his existence happy," she
+continued. "I will obey, I will be his servant, my devotion to him
+shall be boundless; but from to-day I am a widow. I will neither be a
+prostitute in my own eyes nor in those of the world. If I do not
+belong to M. d'Aiglemont, I will never belong to another. You shall
+have nothing, nothing save this which you have wrung from me. This is
+the doom which I have passed upon myself," she said, looking proudly
+at him. "And now, know this--if you give way to a single criminal
+thought, M. d'Aiglemont's widow will enter a convent in Spain or
+Italy. By an evil chance we have spoken of our love; perhaps that
+confession was bound to come; but our hearts must never vibrate again
+like this. To-morrow you will receive a letter from England, and we
+shall part, and never see each other again."
+
+The effort had exhausted all Julie's strength. She felt her knees
+trembling, and a feeling of deathly cold came over her. Obeying a
+woman's instinct, she sat down, lest she should sink into Arthur's
+arms.
+
+"_Julie!_" cried Lord Grenville.
+
+The sharp cry rang through the air like a crack of thunder. Till then
+he could not speak; now, all the words which the dumb lover could not
+utter gathered themselves in that heartrending appeal.
+
+"Well, what is wrong with her?" asked the General, who had hurried up
+at that cry, and now suddenly confronted the two.
+
+"Nothing serious," said Julie, with that wonderful self-possession
+which a woman's quick-wittedness usually brings to her aid when it is
+most called for. "The chill, damp air under the walnut tree made me
+feel quite faint just now, and that must have alarmed this doctor of
+mine. Does he not look on me as a very nearly finished work of art? He
+was startled, I suppose, by the idea of seeing it destroyed." With
+ostentatious coolness she took Lord Grenville's arm, smiled at her
+husband, took a last look at the landscape, and went down the pathway,
+drawing her traveling companion with her.
+
+"This certainly is the grandest view that we have seen," she said; "I
+shall never forget it. Just look, Victor, what distance, what an
+expanse of country, and what variety in it! I have fallen in love with
+this landscape."
+
+Her laughter was almost hysterical, but to her husband it sounded
+natural. She sprang gaily down into the hollow pathway and vanished.
+
+"What?" she cried, when they had left M. d'Aiglemont far behind. "So
+soon? Is it so soon? Another moment, and we can neither of us be
+ourselves; we shall never be ourselves again, our life is over, in
+short--"
+
+"Let us go slowly," said Lord Grenville, "the carriages are still some
+way off, and if we may put words into our glances, our hearts may live
+a little longer."
+
+They went along the footpath by the river in the late evening light,
+almost in silence; such vague words as they uttered, low as the murmur
+of the Loire, stirred their souls to the depths. Just as the sun sank,
+a last red gleam from the sky fell over them; it was like a mournful
+symbol of their ill-starred love.
+
+The General, much put out because the carriage was not at the spot
+where they had left it, followed and outstripped the pair without
+interrupting their converse. Lord Grenville's high minded and delicate
+behavior throughout the journey had completely dispelled the Marquis'
+suspicions. For some time past he had left his wife in freedom,
+reposing confidence in the noble amateur's Punic faith. Arthur and
+Julie walked on together in the close and painful communion of two
+hearts laid waste.
+
+So short a while ago as they climbed the cliffs at Montcontour, there
+had been a vague hope in either mind, an uneasy joy for which they
+dared not account to themselves; but now as they came along the
+pathway by the river, they pulled down the frail structure of
+imaginings, the child's cardcastle, on which neither of them had dared
+to breathe. That hope was over.
+
+That very evening Lord Grenville left them. His last look at Julie
+made it miserably plain that since the moment when sympathy revealed
+the full extent of a tyrannous passion, he did well to mistrust
+himself.
+
+The next morning, M. d'Aiglemont and his wife took their places in the
+carriage without their traveling companion, and were whirled swiftly
+along the road to Blois. The Marquise was constantly put in mind of
+the journey made in 1814, when as yet she know nothing of love, and
+had been almost ready to curse it for its persistency. Countless
+forgotten impressions were revived. The heart has its own memory. A
+woman who cannot recollect the most important great events will
+recollect through a lifetime things which appealed to her feelings;
+and Julie d'Aiglemont found all the most trifling details of that
+journey laid up in her mind. It was pleasant to her to recall its
+little incidents as they occurred to her one by one; there were points
+in the road when she could even remember the thoughts that passed
+through her mind when she saw them first.
+
+Victor had fallen violently in love with his wife since she had
+recovered the freshness of her youth and all her beauty, and now he
+pressed close to her side like a lover. Once he tried to put his arm
+round her, but she gently disengaged herself, finding some excuse or
+other for evading the harmless caress. In a little while she shrank
+from the close contact with Victor, the sensation of warmth
+communicated by their position. She tried to take the unoccupied place
+opposite, but Victor gallantly resigned the back seat to her. For this
+attention she thanked him with a sigh, whereupon he forgot himself,
+and the Don Juan of the garrison construed his wife's melancholy to
+his own advantage, so that at the end of the day she was compelled to
+speak with a firmness which impressed him.
+
+"You have all but killed me, dear, once already, as you know," said
+she. "If I were still an inexperienced girl, I might begin to
+sacrifice myself afresh; but I am a mother, I have a daughter to bring
+up, and I owe as much to her as to you. Let us resign ourselves to a
+misfortune which affects us both alike. You are the less to be pitied.
+Have you not, as it is, found consolations which duty and the honor of
+both, and (stronger still) which Nature forbids to me? Stay," she
+added, "you carelessly left three letters from Mme. de Serizy in a
+drawer; here they are. My silence about this matter should make it
+plain to you that in me you have a wife who has plenty of indulgence
+and does not exact from you the sacrifices prescribed by the law. But
+I have thought enough to see that the roles of husband and wife are
+quite different, and that the wife alone is predestined to misfortune.
+My virtue is based upon firmly fixed and definite principles. I shall
+live blamelessly, but let me live."
+
+The Marquis was taken aback by a logic which women grasp with the
+clear insight of love, and overawed by a certain dignity natural to
+them at such crises. Julie's instinctive repugnance for all that
+jarred upon her love and the instincts of her heart is one of the
+fairest qualities of woman, and springs perhaps from a natural virtue
+which neither laws nor civilization can silence. And who shall dare to
+blame women? If a woman can silence the exclusive sentiment which bids
+her "forsake all other" for the man whom she loves, what is she but a
+priest who has lost his faith? If a rigid mind here and there condemns
+Julie for a sort of compromise between love and wifely duty,
+impassioned souls will lay it to her charge as a crime. To be thus
+blamed by both sides shows one of two things very clearly--that misery
+necessarily follows in the train of broken laws, or else that there
+are deplorable flaws in the institutions upon which society in Europe
+is based.
+
+
+
+Two years went by. M. and Mme. d'Aiglemont went their separate ways,
+leading their life in the world, meeting each other more frequently
+abroad than at home, a refinement upon divorce, in which many a
+marriage in the great world is apt to end.
+
+One evening, strange to say, found husband and wife in their own
+drawing-room. Mme. d'Aiglemont had been dining at home with a friend,
+and the General, who almost invariably dined in town, had not gone out
+for once.
+
+"There is a pleasant time in store for you, _Madame la Marquise_,"
+said M. d'Aiglemont, setting his coffee cup down upon the table. He
+looked at the guest, Mme. de Wimphen, and half-pettishly, half-
+mischievously added, "I am starting off for several days' sport with
+the Master of the Hounds. For a whole week, at any rate, you will be a
+widow in good earnest; just what you wish for, I suppose.--Guillaume,"
+he said to the servant who entered, "tell them to put the horses in."
+
+Mme. de Wimphen was the friend to whom Julie had begun the letter upon
+her marriage. The glances exchanged by the two women said plainly that
+in her Julie had found an intimate friend, an indulgent and invaluable
+confidante. Mme. de Wimphen's marriage had been a very happy one.
+Perhaps it was her own happiness which secured her devotion to Julie's
+unhappy life, for under such circumstances, dissimilarity of destiny
+is nearly always a strong bond of union.
+
+"Is the hunting season not over yet?" asked Julie, with an indifferent
+glance at her husband.
+
+"The Master of the Hounds comes when and where he pleases, madame. We
+are going boar-hunting in the Royal Forest."
+
+"Take care that no accident happens to you."
+
+"Accidents are usually unforeseen," he said, smiling.
+
+"The carriage is ready, my Lord Marquis," said the servant.
+
+"Madame, if I should fall a victim to the boar--" he continued, with a
+suppliant air.
+
+"What does this mean?" inquired Mme. de Wimphen.
+
+"Come, come," said Mme. d'Aiglemont, turning to her husband; smiling
+at her friend as if to say, "You will soon see."
+
+Julie held up her head; but as her husband came close to her, she
+swerved at the last, so that his kiss fell not on her throat, but on
+the broad frill about it.
+
+"You will be my witness before heaven now that I need a firman to
+obtain this little grace of her," said the Marquis, addressing Mme. de
+Wimphen. "This is how this wife of mine understands love. She has
+brought me to this pass, by what trickery I am at a loss to
+know. . . . A pleasant time to you!" and he went.
+
+"But your poor husband is really very good-natured," cried Louisa de
+Wimphen, when the two women were alone together. "He loves you."
+
+"Oh! not another syllable after that last word. The name I bear makes
+me shudder----"
+
+"Yes, but Victor obeys you implicitly," said Louisa.
+
+"His obedience is founded in part upon the great esteem which I have
+inspired in him. As far as outward things go, I am a model wife. I
+make his house pleasant to him; I shut my eyes to his intrigues; I
+touch not a penny of his fortune. He is free to squander the interest
+exactly as he pleases; I only stipulate that he shall not touch the
+principal. At this price I have peace. He neither explains nor
+attempts to explain my life. But though my husband is guided by me,
+that does not say that I have nothing to fear from his character. I am
+a bear leader who daily trembles lest the muzzle should give way at
+last. If Victor once took it into his head that I had forfeited my
+right to his esteem, what would happen next I dare not think; for he
+is violent, full of personal pride, and vain above all things. While
+his wits are not keen enough to enable him to behave discreetly at a
+delicate crisis when his lowest passions are involved, his character
+is weak, and he would very likely kill me provisionally even if he
+died of remorse next day. But there is no fear of that fatal good
+fortune."
+
+A brief pause followed. Both women were thinking of the real cause of
+this state of affairs. Julie gave Louisa a glance which revealed her
+thoughts.
+
+"I have been cruelly obeyed," she cried. "Yet I never forbade him to
+write to me. Oh! _he_ has forgotten me, and he is right. If his life
+had been spoiled, it would have been too tragical; one life is enough,
+is it not? Would you believe it, dear; I read English newspapers
+simply to see his name in print. But he has not yet taken his seat in
+the House of Lords."
+
+"So you know English."
+
+"Did I not tell you?--Yes, I learned."
+
+"Poor little one!" cried Louisa, grasping Julie's hand in hers. "How
+can you still live?"
+
+"That is the secret," said the Marquise, with an involuntary gesture
+almost childlike in its simplicity. "Listen, I take laudanum. That
+duchess in London suggested the idea; you know the story, Maturin made
+use of it in one of his novels. My drops are very weak, but I sleep; I
+am only awake for seven hours in the day, and those house I spend with
+my child."
+
+Louisa gazed into the fire. The full extent of her friend's misery was
+opening out before her for the first time, and she dared not look into
+her face.
+
+"Keep my secret, Louisa," said Julie, after a moment's silence.
+
+Just as she spoke the footman brought in a letter for the Marquise.
+
+"Ah!" she cried, and her face grew white.
+
+"I need not ask from whom it comes," said Mme. de Wimphen, but the
+Marquise was reading the letter, and heeded nothing else.
+
+Mme. de Wimphen, watching her friend, saw strong feeling wrought to
+the highest pitch, ecstasy of the most dangerous kind painted on
+Julie's face in swift changing white and red. At length Julie flung
+the sheet into the fire.
+
+"It burns like fire," she said. "Oh! my heart beats till I cannot
+breathe."
+
+She rose to her feet and walked up and down. Her eyes were blazing.
+
+"He did not leave Paris!" she cried.
+
+Mme. de Wimphen did not dare to interrupt the words that followed,
+jerked-out sentences, measured by dreadful pauses in between. After
+every break the deep notes of her voice sank lower and lower. There
+was something awful about the last words.
+
+"He has seen me, constantly, and I have not known it.--A look, taken
+by stealth, every day, helps him to live.--Louisa, you do not know!
+--He is dying.--He wants to say good-bye to me. He knows that my
+husband has gone away for several days. He will be here in a moment.
+Oh! I shall die: I am lost.--Listen, Louisa, stay with me!--_I am
+afraid!_"
+
+"But my husband knows that I have been dining with you; he is sure to
+come for me," said Mme. de Wimphen.
+
+"Well, then, before you go I will send _him_ away. I will play the
+executioner for us both. Oh me! he will think that I do not love him
+any more--And that letter of his! Dear, I can see those words in
+letters of fire."
+
+A carriage rolled in under the archway.
+
+"Ah!" cried the Marquise, with something like joy in her voice, "he is
+coming openly. He makes no mystery of it."
+
+"Lord Grenville," announced the servant.
+
+The Marquise stood up rigid and motionless; but at the sight of
+Arthur's white face, so thin and haggard, how was it possible to keep
+up the show of severity? Lord Grenville saw that Julie was not alone,
+but he controlled his fierce annoyance, and looked cool and
+unperturbed. Yet for the two women who knew his secret, his face, his
+tones, the look in his eyes had something of the power attributed to
+the torpedo. Their faculties were benumbed by the sharp shock of
+contact with his horrible pain. The sound of his voice set Julie's
+heart beating so cruelly that she could not trust herself to speak;
+she was afraid that he would see the full extent of his power over
+her. Lord Grenville did not dare to look at Julie, and Mme. de Wimphen
+was left to sustain a conversation to which no one listened. Julie
+glanced at her friend with touching gratefulness in her eyes to thank
+her for coming to her aid.
+
+By this time the lovers had quelled emotion into silence, and could
+preserve the limits laid down by duty and convention. But M. de
+Wimphen was announced, and as he came in the two friends exchanged
+glances. Both felt the difficulties of this fresh complication. It was
+impossible to enter into explanations with M. de Wimphen, and Louisa
+could not think of any sufficient pretext for asking to be left.
+
+Julie went to her, ostensibly to wrap her up in her shawl. "I will be
+brave," she said, in a low voice. "He came here in the face of all the
+world, so what have I to fear? Yet but for you, in that first moment,
+when I saw how changed he looked, I should have fallen at his feet."
+
+"Well, Arthur, you have broken your promise to me," she said, in a
+faltering voice, when she returned. Lord Grenville did not venture to
+take the seat upon the sofa by her side.
+
+"I could not resist the pleasure of hearing your voice, of being near
+you. The thought of it came to be a sort of madness, a delirious
+frenzy. I am no longer master of myself. I have taken myself to task;
+it is no use, I am too weak, I ought to die. But to die without seeing
+you, without having heard the rustle of your dress, or felt your
+tears. What a death!"
+
+He moved further away from her; but in his hasty uprising a pistol
+fell out of his pocket. The Marquise looked down blankly at the
+weapon; all passion, all expression had died out of her eyes. Lord
+Grenville stooped for the thing, raging inwardly over an accident
+which seemed like a piece of lovesick strategy.
+
+"_Arthur!_"
+
+"Madame," he said, looking down, "I came here in utter desperation; I
+meant----" he broke off.
+
+"You meant to die by your own hand here in my house!"
+
+"Not alone!" he said in a low voice.
+
+"Not alone! My husband, perhaps----?"
+
+"No, no," he cried in a choking voice. "Reassure yourself," he
+continued, "I have quite given up my deadly purpose. As soon as I came
+in, as soon as I saw you, I felt that I was strong enough to suffer in
+silence, and to die alone."
+
+Julie sprang up, and flung herself into his arms. Through her sobbing
+he caught a few passionate words, "To know happiness, and then to die.
+--Yes, let it be so."
+
+All Julie's story was summed up in that cry from the depths; it was
+the summons of nature and of love at which women without a religion
+surrender. With the fierce energy of unhoped-for joy, Arthur caught
+her up and carried her to the sofa; but in a moment she tore herself
+from her lover's arms, looked at him with a fixed despairing gaze,
+took his hand, snatched up a candle, and drew him into her room. When
+they stood by the cot where Helene lay sleeping, she put the curtains
+softly aside, shading the candle with her hand, lest the light should
+dazzle the half-closed eyes beneath the transparent lids. Helene lay
+smiling in her sleep, with her arms outstretched on the coverlet.
+Julie glanced from her child to Arthur's face. That look told him all.
+
+"We may leave a husband, even though he loves us: a man is strong; he
+has consolations.--We may defy the world and its laws. But a
+motherless child!"--all these thoughts, and a thousand others more
+moving still, found language in that glance.
+
+"We can take her with us," muttered he; "I will love her dearly."
+
+"Mamma!" cried little Helene, now awake. Julie burst into tears. Lord
+Grenville sat down and folded his arms in gloomy silence.
+
+"Mamma!" At the sweet childish name, so many nobler feelings, so many
+irresistible yearnings awoke, that for a moment love was effaced by
+the all-powerful instinct of motherhood; the mother triumphed over the
+woman in Julie, and Lord Grenville could not hold out, he was defeated
+by Julie's tears.
+
+Just at that moment a door was flung noisily open. "Madame
+d'Aiglemont, are you hereabouts?" called a voice which rang like a
+crack of thunder through the hearts of the two lovers. The Marquis had
+come home.
+
+Before Julie could recover her presence of mind, her husband was on
+the way to the door of her room which opened into his. Luckily, at a
+sign, Lord Grenville escaped into the dressing-closet, and she hastily
+shut the door upon him.
+
+"Well, my lady, here am I," said Victor, "the hunting party did not
+come off. I am just going to bed."
+
+"Good-night, so am I. So go and leave me to undress."
+
+"You are very cross to-night, Madame la Marquise."
+
+The General returned to his room, Julie went with him to the door and
+shut it. Then she sprang to the dressing-close to release Arthur. All
+her presence of mind returned; she bethought herself that it was quite
+natural that her sometime doctor should pay her a visit; she might
+have left him in the drawing-room while she put her little girl to
+bed. She was about to tell him, under her breath, to go back to the
+drawing-room, and had opened the door. Then she shrieked aloud. Lord
+Grenville's fingers had been caught and crushed in the door.
+
+"Well, what is it?" demanded her husband.
+
+"Oh! nothing, I have just pricked my finger with a pin."
+
+The General's door opened at once. Julie imagined that the irruption
+was due to a sudden concern for her, and cursed a solicitude in which
+love had no part. She had barely time to close the dressing-closet,
+and Lord Grenville had not extricated his hand. The General did, in
+fact, appear, but his wife had mistaken his motives; his apprehensions
+were entirely on his own account.
+
+"Can you lend me a bandana handkerchief? The stupid fool Charles
+leaves me without a single one. In the early days you used to bother
+me with looking after me so carefully. Ah, well, the honeymoon did not
+last very long for me, nor yet for my cravats. Nowadays I am given
+over to the secular arm, in the shape of servants who do not care one
+jack straw for what I say."
+
+"There! There is a bandana for you. Did you go into the drawing-room?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh! you might perhaps have been in time to see Lord Grenville."
+
+"Is he in Paris?"
+
+"It seems so."
+
+"Oh! I will go at once. The good doctor."
+
+"But he will have gone by now!" exclaimed Julie.
+
+The Marquis, standing in the middle of the room, was tying the
+handkerchief over his head. He looked complacently at himself in the
+glass.
+
+"What has become of the servants is more than I know," he remarked. "I
+have rung the bell for Charles, and he has not answered it. And your
+maid is not here either. Ring for her. I should like another blanket
+on my bed to-night."
+
+"Pauline is out," the Marquise said drily.
+
+"What, at midnight!" exclaimed the General.
+
+"I gave her leave to go to the Opera."
+
+"That is funny!" returned her husband, continuing to undress. "I
+thought I saw her coming upstairs."
+
+"She has come in then, of course," said Julie, with assumed
+impatience, and to allay any possible suspicion on her husband's part
+she pretended to ring the bell.
+
+
+
+The whole history of that night has never been known, but no doubt it
+was as simple and as tragically commonplace as the domestic incidents
+that preceded it.
+
+Next day the Marquise d'Aiglemont took to her bed, nor did she leave
+it for some days.
+
+"What can have happened in your family so extraordinary that every one
+is talking about your wife?" asked M. de Ronquerolles of M.
+d'Aiglemont a short time after that night of catastrophes.
+
+"Take my advice and remain a bachelor," said d'Aiglemont. "The
+curtains of Helene's cot caught fire, and gave my wife such a shock
+that it will be a twelvemonth before she gets over it; so the doctor
+says. You marry a pretty wife, and her looks fall off; you marry a
+girl in blooming health, and she turns into an invalid. You think she
+has a passionate temperament, and find her cold, or else under her
+apparent coldness there lurks a nature so passionate that she is the
+death of you, or she dishonors your name. Sometimes the meekest of
+them will turn out crotchety, though the crotchety ones never grow any
+sweeter. Sometimes the mere child, so simple and silly at first, will
+develop an iron will to thwart you and the ingenuity of a fiend. I am
+tired of marriage."
+
+"Or of your wife?"
+
+"That would be difficult. By-the-by, do you feel inclined to go to
+Saint-Thomas d'Aquin with me to attend Lord Grenville's funeral?"
+
+"A singular way of spending time.--Is it really known how he came by
+his death?" added Ronquerolles.
+
+"His man says that he spent a whole night sitting on somebody's window
+sill to save some woman's character, and it has been infernally cold
+lately."
+
+"Such devotion would be highly creditable to one of us old stagers;
+but Lord Grenville was a youngster and--an Englishman. Englishmen
+never can do anything like anybody else."
+
+"Pooh!" returned d'Aiglemont, "these heroic exploits all depend upon
+the woman in the case, and it certainly was not for one that I know,
+that poor Arthur came by his death."
+
+
+
+                                II.
+
+                           A HIDDEN GRIEF
+
+Between the Seine and the little river Loing lies a wide flat country,
+skirted on the one side by the Forest of Fontainebleau, and marked out
+as to its southern limits by the towns of Moret, Montereau, and
+Nemours. It is a dreary country; little knolls of hills appear only at
+rare intervals, and a coppice here and there among the fields affords
+for game; and beyond, upon every side, stretches the endless gray or
+yellowish horizon peculiar to Beauce, Sologne, and Berri.
+
+In the very centre of the plain, at equal distances from Moret and
+Montereau, the traveler passes the old chateau of Saint-Lange,
+standing amid surroundings which lack neither dignity nor stateliness.
+There are magnificent avenues of elm-trees, great gardens encircled by
+the moat, and a circumference of walls about a huge manorial pile
+which represents the profits of the _maltote_, the gains of
+farmers-general, legalized malversation, or the vast fortunes of great
+houses now brought low beneath the hammer of the Civil Code.
+
+Should any artist or dreamer of dreams chance to stray along the roads
+full of deep ruts, or over the heavy land which secures the place
+against intrusion, he will wonder how it happened that this romantic
+old place was set down in a savanna of corn-land, a desert of chalk,
+and sand, and marl, where gaiety dies away, and melancholy is a
+natural product of the soil. The voiceless solitude, the monotonous
+horizon line which weigh upon the spirits are negative beauties, which
+only suit with sorrow that refuses to be comforted.
+
+Hither, at the close of the year 1820, came a woman, still young, well
+known in Paris for her charm, her fair face, and her wit; and to the
+immense astonishment of the little village a mile away, this woman of
+high rank and corresponding fortune took up her abode at Saint-Lange.
+
+From time immemorial, farmers and laborers had seen no gentry at the
+chateau. The estate, considerable though it was, had been left in
+charge of a land-steward and the house to the old servants. Wherefore
+the appearance of the lady of the manor caused a kind of sensation in
+the district.
+
+A group had gathered in the yard of the wretched little wineshop at
+the end of the village (where the road forks to Nemours and Moret) to
+see the carriage pass. It went by slowly, for the Marquise had come
+from Paris with her own horses, and those on the lookout had ample
+opportunity of observing a waiting-maid, who sat with her back to the
+horses holding a little girl, with a somewhat dreamy look, upon her
+knee. The child's mother lay back in the carriage; she looked like a
+dying woman sent out into the country air by her doctors as a last
+resource. Village politicians were by no means pleased to see the
+young, delicate, downcast face; they had hoped that the new arrival at
+Saint-Lange would bring some life and stir into the neighborhood, and
+clearly any sort of stir or movement must be distasteful to the
+suffering invalid in the traveling carriage.
+
+That evening, when the notables of Saint-Lange were drinking in the
+private room of the wineshop, the longest head among them declared
+that such depression could admit of but one construction--the Marquise
+was ruined. His lordship the Marquis was away in Spain with the Duc
+d'Angouleme (so they said in the papers), and beyond a doubt her
+ladyship had come to Saint-Lange to retrench after a run of ill-luck
+on the Bourse. The Marquis was one of the greatest gamblers on the
+face of the globe. Perhaps the estate would be cut up and sold in
+little lots. There would be some good strokes of business to be made
+in that case, and it behooved everybody to count up his cash, unearth
+his savings and to see how he stood, so as to secure his share of the
+spoil of Saint-Lange.
+
+So fair did this future seem, that the village worthies, dying to know
+whether it was founded on fact, began to think of ways of getting at
+the truth through the servants at the chateau. None of these, however,
+could throw any light on the calamity which had brought their mistress
+into the country at the beginning of winter, and to the old chateau of
+Saint-Lange of all places, when she might have taken her choice of
+cheerful country-houses famous for their beautiful gardens.
+
+His worship the mayor called to pay his respects; but he did not see
+the lady. Then the land-steward tried with no better success.
+
+Madame la Marquise kept her room, only leaving it, while it was set in
+order, for the small adjoining drawing-room, where she dined; if,
+indeed, to sit down to a table, to look with disgust at the dishes,
+and take the precise amount of nourishment required to prevent death
+from sheer starvation, can be called dining. The meal over, she
+returned at once to the old-fashioned low chair, in which she had sat
+since the morning, in the embrasure of the one window that lighted her
+room.
+
+Her little girl she only saw for a few minutes daily, during the
+dismal dinner, and even for a short time she seemed scarcely able to
+bear the child's presence. Surely nothing but the most unheard-of
+anguish could have extinguished a mother's love so early.
+
+None of the servants were suffered to come near, her own woman was the
+one creature whom she liked to have about her; the chateau must be
+perfectly quiet, the child must play at the other end of the house.
+The slightest sound had grown so intolerable, that any human voice,
+even the voice of her own child, jarred upon her.
+
+At first the whole countryside was deeply interested in these
+eccentricities; but time passed on, every possible hypothesis had been
+advanced to account for them and the peasants and dwellers in the
+little country towns thought no more of the invalid lady.
+
+So the Marquise was left to herself. She might live on, perfectly
+silent, amid the silence which she herself had created; there was
+nothing to draw her forth from the tapestried chamber where her
+grandmother died, whither she herself had come that she might die,
+gently, without witnesses, without importunate solicitude, without
+suffering from the insincere demonstrations of egoism masquerading as
+affection, which double the agony of death in great cities.
+
+She was twenty-six years old. At that age, with plenty of romantic
+illusions still left, the mind loves to dwell on the thought of death
+when death seems to come as a friend. But with youth, death is coy,
+coming up close only to go away, showing himself and hiding again,
+till youth has time to fall out of love with him during this
+dalliance. There is that uncertainty too that hangs over death's
+to-morrow. Youth plunges back into the world of living men, there to
+find the pain more pitiless than death, that does not wait to strike.
+
+This woman who refused to live was to know the bitterness of these
+reprieves in the depths of her loneliness; in moral agony, which death
+would not come to end, she was to serve a terrible apprenticeship to
+the egoism which must take the bloom from her heart and break her in
+to the life of the world.
+
+This harsh and sorry teaching is the usual outcome of our early
+sorrows. For the first, and perhaps for the last time in her life, the
+Marquise d'Aiglemont was in very truth suffering. And, indeed, would
+it not be an error to suppose that the same sentiment can be
+reproduced in us? Once develop the power to feel, is it not always
+there in the depths of our nature? The accidents of life may lull or
+awaken it, but there it is, of necessity modifying the self, its
+abiding place. Hence, every sensation should have its great day once
+and for all, its first day of storm, be it long or short. Hence,
+likewise, pain, the most abiding of our sensations, could be keenly
+felt only at its first irruption, its intensity diminishing with every
+subsequent paroxysm, either because we grow accustomed to these
+crises, or perhaps because a natural instinct of self-preservation
+asserts itself, and opposes to the destroying force of anguish an
+equal but passive force of inertia.
+
+Yet of all kinds of suffering, to which does the name of anguish
+belong? For the loss of parents, Nature has in a manner prepared us;
+physical suffering, again, is an evil which passes over us and is
+gone; it lays no hold upon the soul; if it persists, it ceases to be
+an evil, it is death. The young mother loses her firstborn, but wedded
+love ere long gives her a successor. This grief, too, is transient.
+After all, these, and many other troubles like unto them, are in some
+sort wounds and bruises; they do not sap the springs of vitality, and
+only a succession of such blows can crush in us the instinct that
+seeks happiness. Great pain, therefore, pain that arises to anguish,
+should be suffering so deadly, that past, present, and future are
+alike included in its grip, and no part of life is left sound and
+whole. Never afterwards can we think the same thoughts as before.
+Anguish engraves itself in ineffaceable characters on mouth and brow;
+it passes through us, destroying or relaxing the springs that vibrate
+to enjoyment, leaving behind in the soul the seeds of a disgust for
+all things in this world.
+
+Yet, again, to be measureless, to weigh like this upon body and soul,
+the trouble should befall when soul and body have just come to their
+full strength, and smite down a heart that beats high with life. Then
+it is that great scars are made. Terrible is the anguish. None, it may
+be, can issue from this soul-sickness without undergoing some dramatic
+change. Those who survive it, those who remain on earth, return to the
+world to wear an actor's countenance and to play an actor's part. They
+know the side-scenes where actors may retire to calculate chances,
+shed their tears, or pass their jests. Life holds no inscrutable dark
+places for those who have passed through this ordeal; their judgments
+are Rhadamanthine.
+
+For young women of the Marquise d'Aiglemont's age, this first, this
+most poignant pain of all, is always referable to the same cause. A
+woman, especially if she is a young woman, greatly beautiful, and by
+nature great, never fails to stake her whole life as instinct and
+sentiment and society all unite to bid her. Suppose that that life
+fails her, suppose that she still lives on, she cannot but endure the
+most cruel pangs, inasmuch as a first love is the loveliest of all.
+How comes it that this catastrophe has found no painter, no poet? And
+yet, can it be painted? Can it be sung? No; for the anguish arising
+from it eludes analysis and defies the colors of art. And more than
+this, such pain is never confessed. To console the sufferer, you must
+be able to divine the past which she hugs in bitterness to her soul
+like a remorse; it is like an avalanche in a valley; it laid all waste
+before it found a permanent resting-place.
+
+The Marquise was suffering from this anguish, which will for long
+remain unknown, because the whole world condemns it, while sentiment
+cherishes it, and the conscience of a true woman justifies her in it.
+It is with such pain as with children steadily disowned of life, and
+therefore bound more closely to the mother's heart than other children
+more bounteously endowed. Never, perhaps, was the awful catastrophe in
+which the whole world without dies for us, so deadly, so complete, so
+cruelly aggravated by circumstance as it had been for the Marquise.
+The man whom she had loved was young and generous; in obedience to the
+laws of the world, she had refused herself to his love, and he had
+died to save a woman's honor, as the world calls it. To whom could she
+speak of her misery? Her tears would be an offence against her
+husband, the origin of the tragedy. By all laws written and unwritten
+she was bound over to silence. A woman would have enjoyed the story; a
+man would have schemed for his own benefit. No; such grief as hers can
+only weep freely in solitude and in loneliness; she must consume her
+pain or be consumed by it; die or kill something within her--her
+conscience, it may be.
+
+Day after day she sat gazing at the flat horizon. It lay out before
+her like her own life to come. There was nothing to discover, nothing
+to hope. The whole of it could be seen at a glance. It was the visible
+presentment in the outward world of the chill sense of desolation
+which was gnawing restlessly at her heart. The misty mornings, the
+pale, bright sky, the low clouds scudding under the gray dome of
+heaven, fitted with the moods of her soul-sickness. Her heart did not
+contract, was neither more nor less seared, rather it seemed as if her
+youth, in its full blossom, was slowly turned to stone by an anguish
+intolerable because it was barren. She suffered through herself and
+for herself. How could it end save in self-absorption? Ugly torturing
+thoughts probed her conscience. Candid self-examination pronounced
+that she was double, there were two selves within her; a woman who
+felt and a woman who thought; a self that suffered and a self that
+could fain suffer no longer. Her mind traveled back to the joys of
+childish days; they had gone by, and she had never known how happy
+they were. Scenes crowded up in her memory as in a bright mirror
+glass, to demonstrate the deception of a marriage which, all that it
+should be in the eyes of the world, was in reality wretched. What had
+the delicate pride of young womanhood done for her--the bliss
+foregone, the sacrifices made to the world? Everything in her
+expressed love, awaited love; her movements still were full of perfect
+grace; her smile, her charm, were hers as before; why? she asked
+herself. The sense of her own youth and physical loveliness no more
+affected her than some meaningless reiterated sound. Her very beauty
+had grown intolerable to her as a useless thing. She shrank aghast
+from the thought that through the rest of life she must remain an
+incomplete creature; had not the inner self lost its power of
+receiving impressions with that zest, that exquisite sense of
+freshness which is the spring of so much of life's gladness? The
+impressions of the future would for the most part be effaced as soon
+as received, and many of the thoughts which once would have moved her
+now would move her no more.
+
+After the childhood of the creature dawns the childhood of the heart;
+but this second infancy was over, her lover had taken it down with him
+into the grave. The longings of youth remained; she was young yet; but
+the completeness of youth was gone, and with that lost completeness
+the whole value and savor of life had diminished somewhat. Should she
+not always bear within her the seeds of sadness and mistrust, ready to
+grow up and rob emotion of its springtide of fervor? Conscious she
+must always be that nothing could give her now the happiness so longed
+for, that seemed so fair in her dreams. The fire from heaven that
+sheds abroad its light in the heart, in the dawn of love, had been
+quenched in tears, the first real tears which she had shed; henceforth
+she must always suffer, because it was no longer in her power to be
+what once she might have been. This is a belief which turns us in
+aversion and bitterness of spirit from any proffered new delight.
+
+Julie had come to look at life from the point of view of age about to
+die. Young though she felt, the heavy weight of joyless days had
+fallen upon her, and left her broken-spirited and old before her time.
+With a despairing cry, she asked the world what it could give her in
+exchange for the love now lost, by which she had lived. She asked
+herself whether in that vanished love, so chaste and pure, her will
+had not been more criminal than her deeds, and chose to believe
+herself guilty; partly to affront the world, partly for her own
+consolation, in that she had missed the close union of body and soul,
+which diminishes the pain of the one who is left behind by the
+knowledge that once it has known and given joy to the full, and
+retains within itself the impress of that which is no more.
+
+Something of the mortification of the actress cheated of her part
+mingled with the pain which thrilled through every fibre of her heart
+and brain. Her nature had been thwarted, her vanity wounded, her
+woman's generosity cheated of self-sacrifice. Then, when she had
+raised all these questions, set vibrating all the springs in those
+different phases of being which we distinguish as social, moral, and
+physical, her energies were so far exhausted and relaxed that she was
+powerless to grasp a single thought amid the chase of conflicting
+ideas.
+
+Sometimes as the mists fell, she would throw her window open, and
+would stay there, motionless, breathing in unheedingly the damp
+earthly scent in the air, her mind to all appearance an unintelligent
+blank, for the ceaseless burden of sorrow humming in her brain left
+her deaf to earth's harmonies and insensible to the delights of
+thought.
+
+One day, towards noon, when the sun shone out for a little, her maid
+came in without a summons.
+
+"This is the fourth time that M. le Cure has come to see Mme. la
+Marquise; to-day he is so determined about it, that we did not know
+what to tell him."
+
+"He has come to ask for some money for the poor, no doubt; take him
+twenty-five louis from me."
+
+The woman went only to return.
+
+"M. le Cure will not take the money, my lady; he wants to speak to
+you."
+
+"Then let him come!" said Mme. d'Aiglemont, with an involuntary shrug
+which augured ill for the priest's reception. Evidently the lady meant
+to put a stop to persecution by a short and sharp method.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont had lost her mother in her early childhood; and as a
+natural consequence in her bringing-up, she had felt the influence of
+the relaxed notions which loosened the hold of religion upon France
+during the Revolution. Piety is a womanly virtue which women alone can
+really instil; and the Marquise, a child of the eighteenth century,
+had adopted her father's creed of philosophism, and practised no
+religious observances. A priest, to her way of thinking, was a civil
+servant of very doubtful utility. In her present position, the
+teaching of religion could only poison her wounds; she had, moreover,
+but scanty faith in the lights of country cures, and made up her mind
+to put this one gently but firmly in his place, and to rid herself of
+him, after the manner of the rich, by bestowing a benefit.
+
+At first sight of the cure the Marquise felt no inclination to change
+her mind. She saw before her a stout, rotund little man, with a ruddy,
+wrinkled, elderly face, which awkwardly and unsuccessfully tried to
+smile. His bald, quadrant-shaped forehead, furrowed by intersecting
+lines, was too heavy for the rest of his face, which seemed to be
+dwarfed by it. A fringe of scanty white hair encircled the back of his
+head, and almost reached his ears. Yet the priest looked as if by
+nature he had a genial disposition; his thick lips, his slightly
+curved nose, his chin, which vanished in a double fold of wrinkles,
+--all marked him out as a man who took cheerful views of life.
+
+At first the Marquise saw nothing but these salient characteristics,
+but at the first word she was struck by the sweetness of the speaker's
+voice. Looking at him more closely, she saw that the eyes under the
+grizzled eyebrows had shed tears, and his face, turned in profile,
+wore so sublime an impress of sorrow, that the Marquise recognized the
+man in the cure.
+
+"Madame la Marquise, the rich only come within our province when they
+are in trouble. It is easy to see that the troubles of a young,
+beautiful, and wealthy woman, who has lost neither children nor
+relatives, are caused by wounds whose pangs religion alone can soothe.
+Your soul is in danger, madame. I am not speaking now of the hereafter
+which awaits us. No, I am not in the confessional. But it is my duty,
+is it not, to open your eyes to your future life here on earth? You
+will pardon an old man, will you not, for importunity which has your
+own happiness for its object?"
+
+"There is no more happiness for me, monsieur. I shall soon be, as you
+say, in your province; but it will be for ever."
+
+"Nay, madame. You will not die of this pain which lies heavy upon you,
+and can be read in your face. If you had been destined to die of it,
+you would not be here at Saint-Lange. A definite regret is not so
+deadly as hope deferred. I have known others pass through more
+intolerable and more awful anguish, and yet they live."
+
+The Marquise looked incredulous.
+
+"Madame, I know a man whose affliction was so sore that your trouble
+would seem to you to be light compared with his."
+
+Perhaps the long solitary hours had begun to hang heavily; perhaps in
+the recesses of the Marquise's mind lay the thought that here was a
+friendly heart to whom she might be able to pour out her troubles.
+However, it was, she gave the cure a questioning glance which could
+not be mistaken.
+
+"Madame," he continued, "the man of whom I tell you had but three
+children left of a once large family circle. He lost his parents, his
+daughter, and his wife, whom he dearly loved. He was left alone at
+last on the little farm where he had lived so happily for so long. His
+three sons were in the army, and each of the lads had risen in
+proportion to his time of service. During the Hundred Days, the oldest
+went into the Guard with a colonel's commission; the second was a
+major in the artillery; the youngest a major in a regiment of
+dragoons. Madame, those three boys loved their father as much as he
+loved them. If you but knew how careless young fellows grow of home
+ties when they are carried away by the current of their own lives, you
+would realize from this one little thing how warmly they loved the
+lonely old father, who only lived in and for them--never a week passed
+without a letter from one of the boys. But then he on his side had
+never been weakly indulgent, to lessen their respect for him; nor
+unjustly severe, to thwart their affection; or apt to grudge
+sacrifices, the thing that estranges children's hearts. He had been
+more than a father; he had been a brother to them, and their friend.
+
+"At last he went to Paris to bid them good-bye before they set out for
+Belgium; he wished to see that they had good horses and all that they
+needed. And so they went, and the father returned to his home again.
+Then the war began. He had letters from Fleurus, and again from Ligny.
+All went well. Then came the battle of Waterloo, and you know the
+rest. France was plunged into mourning; every family waited in intense
+anxiety for news. You may imagine, madame, how the old man waited for
+tidings, in anxiety that knew no peace nor rest. He used to read the
+gazettes; he went to the coach office every day. One evening he was
+told that the colonel's servant had come. The man was riding his
+master's horse--what need was there to ask any questions?--the colonel
+was dead, cut in two by a shell. Before the evening was out the
+youngest son's servant arrived--the youngest had died on the eve of
+the battle. At midnight came a gunner with tidings of the death of the
+last; upon whom, in those few hours, the poor father had centered all
+his life. Madame, they all had fallen."
+
+After a pause the good man controlled his feelings, and added gently:
+
+"And their father is still living, madame. He realized that if God had
+left him on earth, he was bound to live on and suffer on earth; but he
+took refuge in the sanctuary. What could he be?"
+
+The Marquise looked up and saw the cure's face, grown sublime in its
+sorrow and resignation, and waited for him to speak. When the words
+came, tears broke from her.
+
+"A priest, madame; consecrated by his own tears previously shed at the
+foot of the altar."
+
+Silence prevailed for a little. The Marquise and the cure looked out
+at the foggy landscape, as if they could see the figures of those who
+were no more.
+
+"Not a priest in a city, but a simple country cure," added he.
+
+"At Saint-Lange," she said, drying her eyes.
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+Never had the majesty of grief seemed so great to Julie. The two words
+sank straight into her heart with the weight of infinite sorrow. The
+gentle, sonorous tones troubled her heart. Ah! that full, deep voice,
+charged with plangent vibration, was the voice of one who had suffered
+indeed.
+
+"And if I do not die, monsieur, what will become of me?" The Marquise
+spoke almost reverently.
+
+"Have you not a child, madame?"
+
+"Yes," she said stiffly.
+
+The cure gave her such a glance as a doctor gives a patient whose life
+is in danger. Then he determined to do all that in him lay to combat
+the evil spirit into whose clutches she had fallen.
+
+"We must live on with our sorrows--you see it yourself, madame, and
+religion alone offers us real consolation. Will you permit me to come
+again?--to speak to you as a man who can sympathize with every
+trouble, a man about whom there is nothing very alarming, I think?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur, come back again. Thank you for your thought of me."
+
+"Very well, madame; then I shall return very shortly."
+
+This visit relaxed the tension of soul, as it were; the heavy strain
+of grief and loneliness had been almost too much for the Marquise's
+strength. The priest's visit had left a soothing balm in her heart,
+his words thrilled through her with healing influence. She began to
+feel something of a prisoner's satisfaction, when, after he has had
+time to feel his utter loneliness and the weight of his chains, he
+hears a neighbor knocking on the wall, and welcomes the sound which
+brings a sense of human friendship. Here was an unhoped-for confidant.
+But this feeling did not last for long. Soon she sank back into the
+old bitterness of spirit, saying to herself, as the prisoner might
+say, that a companion in misfortune could neither lighten her own
+bondage nor her future.
+
+In the first visit the cure had feared to alarm the susceptibilities
+of self-absorbed grief, in a second interview he hoped to make some
+progress towards religion. He came back again two days later, and from
+the Marquise's welcome it was plain that she had looked forward to the
+visit.
+
+"Well, Mme. la Marquise, have you given a little thought to the great
+mass of human suffering? Have you raised your eyes above our earth and
+seen the immensity of the universe?--the worlds beyond worlds which
+crush our vanity into insignificance, and with our vanity reduce our
+sorrows?"
+
+"No, monsieur," she said; "I cannot rise to such heights, our social
+laws lie too heavily upon me, and rend my heart with a too poignant
+anguish. And laws perhaps are less cruel than the usages of the world.
+Ah! the world!"
+
+"Madame, we must obey both. Law is the doctrine, and custom the
+practice of society."
+
+"Obey society?" cried the Marquise, with an involuntary shudder. "Eh!
+monsieur, it is the source of all our woes. God laid down no law to
+make us miserable; but mankind, uniting together in social life, have
+perverted God's work. Civilization deals harder measure to us women
+than nature does. Nature imposes upon us physical suffering which you
+have not alleviated; civilization has developed in us thoughts and
+feelings which you cheat continually. Nature exterminates the weak;
+you condemn them to live, and by so doing, consign them to a life of
+misery. The whole weight of the burden of marriage, an institution on
+which society is based, falls upon us; for the man liberty, duties for
+the woman. We must give up our whole lives to you, you are only bound
+to give us a few moments of yours. A man, in fact, makes a choice,
+while we blindly submit. Oh, monsieur, to you I can speak freely.
+Marriage, in these days, seems to me to be legalized prostitution.
+This is the cause of my wretchedness. But among so many miserable
+creatures so unhappily yoked, I alone am bound to be silent, I alone
+am to blame for my misery. My marriage was my own doing."
+
+She stopped short, and bitter tears fell in the silence.
+
+"In the depths of my wretchedness, in the midst of this sea of
+distress," she went on, "I found some sands on which to set foot and
+suffer at leisure. A great tempest swept everything away. And here am
+I, helpless and alone, too weak to cope with storms."
+
+"We are never weak while God is with us," said the priest. "And if
+your cravings for affection cannot be satisfied here on earth, have
+you no duties to perform?"
+
+"Duties continually!" she exclaimed, with something of impatience in
+her tone. "But where for me are the sentiments which give us strength
+to perform them? Nothing from nothing, nothing for nothing,--this,
+monsieur, is one of the most inexorable laws of nature, physical or
+spiritual. Would you have these trees break into leaf without the sap
+which swells the buds? It is the same with our human nature; and in me
+the sap is dried up at its source."
+
+"I am not going to speak to you of religious sentiments of which
+resignation is born," said the cure, "but of motherhood, madame,
+surely--"
+
+"Stop, monsieur!" said the Marquise, "with you I will be sincere.
+Alas! in future I can be sincere with no one; I am condemned to
+falsehood. The world requires continual grimaces, and we are bidden to
+obey its conventions if we would escape reproach. There are two kinds
+of motherhood, monsieur; once I knew nothing of such distinctions, but
+I know them now. Only half of me has become a mother; it were better
+for me if I had not been a mother at all. Helene is not _his_ child!
+Oh! do not start. At Saint-Lange there are volcanic depths whence come
+lurid gleams of light and earthquake shocks to shake the fragile
+edifices of laws not based on nature. I have borne a child, that is
+enough, I am a mother in the eyes of the law. But you, monsieur, with
+your delicately compassionate soul, can perhaps understand this cry
+from an unhappy woman who has suffered no lying illusions to enter her
+heart. God will judge me, but surely I have only obeyed His laws by
+giving way to the affections which He Himself set in me, and this I
+have learned from my own soul.--What is a child, monsieur, but the
+image of two beings, the fruit of two sentiments spontaneously
+blended? Unless it is owned by every fibre of the body, as by every
+chord of tenderness in the heart; unless it recalls the bliss of love,
+the hours, the places where two creatures were happy, their words that
+overflowed with the music of humanity, and their sweet imaginings,
+that child is an incomplete creation. Yes, those two should find the
+poetic dreams of their intimate double life realized in their child as
+in an exquisite miniature; it should be for them a never-failing
+spring of emotion, implying their whole past and their whole future.
+
+"My poor little Helene is her father's child, the offspring of duty
+and of chance. In me she finds nothing but the affection of instinct,
+the woman's natural compassion for the child of her womb. Socially
+speaking, I am above reproach. Have I not sacrificed my life and my
+happiness to my child? Her cries go to my heart; if she were to fall
+into the water, I should spring to save her, but she is not in my
+heart.
+
+"Ah! love set me dreaming of a motherhood far greater and more
+complete. In a vanished dream I held in my arms a child conceived in
+desire before it was begotten, the exquisite flower of life that
+blossoms in the soul before it sees the light of day. I am Helene's
+mother only in the sense that I brought her forth. When she needs me
+no longer, there will be an end of my motherhood; with the extinction
+of the cause, the effects will cease. If it is a woman's adorable
+prerogative that her motherhood may last through her child's life,
+surely that divine persistence of sentiment is due to the far-reaching
+glory of the conception of the soul? Unless a child has lain wrapped
+about from life's first beginnings by the mother's soul, the instinct
+of motherhood dies in her as in the animals. This is true; I feel that
+it is true. As my poor little one grows older, my heart closes. My
+sacrifices have driven us apart. And yet I know, monsieur, that to
+another child my heart would have gone out in inexhaustible love; for
+that other I should not have known what sacrifice meant, all had been
+delight. In this, monsieur, my instincts are stronger than reason,
+stronger than religion or all else in me. Does the woman who is
+neither wife nor mother sin in wishing to die when, for her
+misfortune, she has caught a glimpse of the infinite beauty of love,
+the limitless joy of motherhood? What can become of her? _I_ can tell
+you what she feels. I cannot put that memory from me so resolutely but
+that a hundred times, night and day, visions of a happiness, greater
+it may be than the reality, rise before me, followed by a shudder
+which shakes brain and heart and body. Before these cruel visions, my
+feelings and thoughts grow colorless, and I ask myself, 'What would my
+life have been _if_----?'"
+
+She hid her face in her hands and burst into tears.
+
+"There you see the depths of my heart!" she continued. "For _his_
+child I could have acquiesced in any lot however dreadful. He who
+died, bearing the burden of the sins of the world will forgive this
+thought of which I am dying; but the world, I know, is merciless. In
+its ears my words are blasphemies; I am outraging all its codes. Oh!
+that I could wage war against this world and break down and refashion
+its laws and traditions! Has it not turned all my thoughts, and
+feelings, and longings, and hopes, and every fibre in me into so many
+sources of pain? Spoiled my future, present, and past? For me the
+daylight is full of gloom, my thoughts pierce me like a sword, my
+child is and is not.
+
+"Oh, when Helene speaks to me, I wish that her voice were different,
+when she looks into my face I wish that she had other eyes. She
+constantly keeps me in mind of all that should have been and is not. I
+cannot bear to have her near me. I smile at her, I try to make up to
+her for the real affection of which she is defrauded. I am wretched,
+monsieur, too wretched to live. And I am supposed to be a pattern
+wife. And I have committed no sins. And I am respected! I have fought
+down forbidden love which sprang up at unawares within me; but if I
+have kept the letter of the law, have I kept it in my heart? There has
+never been but one here," she said, laying her right hand on her
+breast, "one and no other; and my child feels it. Certain looks and
+tones and gestures mould a child's nature, and my poor little one
+feels no thrill in the arm I put about her, no tremor comes into my
+voice, no softness into my eyes when I speak to her or take her up.
+She looks at me, and I cannot endure the reproach in her eyes. There
+are times when I shudder to think that some day she may be my judge
+and condemn her mother unheard. Heaven grant that hate may not grow up
+between us! Ah! God in heaven, rather let the tomb open for me, rather
+let me end my days here at Saint-Lange!--I want to go back to the
+world where I shall find my other soul and become wholly a mother. Ah!
+forgive me, sir, I am mad. Those words were choking me; now they are
+spoken. Ah! you are weeping too! You will not despise me--"
+
+She heard the child come in from a walk. "Helene, my child, come
+here!" she called. The words sounded like a cry of despair.
+
+The little girl ran in, laughing and calling to her mother to see a
+butterfly which she had caught; but at the sight of that mother's
+tears she grew quiet of a sudden, and went up close, and received a
+kiss on her forehead.
+
+"She will be very beautiful some day," said the priest.
+
+"She is her father's child," said the Marquise, kissing the little one
+with eager warmth, as if she meant to pay a debt of affection or to
+extinguish some feeling of remorse.
+
+"How hot you are, mamma!"
+
+"There, go away, my angel," said the Marquise.
+
+The child went. She did not seem at all sorry to go; she did not look
+back; glad perhaps to escape from a sad face, and instinctively
+comprehending already an antagonism of feeling in its expression. A
+mother's love finds language in smiles, they are a part of the divine
+right of motherhood. The Marquise could not smile. She flushed red as
+she felt the cure's eyes. She had hoped to act a mother's part before
+him, but neither she nor her child could deceive him. And, indeed,
+when a woman loves sincerely, in the kiss she gives there is a divine
+honey; it is as if a soul were breathed forth in the caress, a subtle
+flame of fire which brings warmth to the heart; the kiss that lacks
+this delicious unction is meagre and formal. The priest had felt the
+difference. He could fathom the depths that lie between the motherhood
+of the flesh and the motherhood of the heart. He gave the Marquise a
+keen, scrutinizing glance, then he said:
+
+"You are right, madame; it would be better for you if you were
+dead----"
+
+"Ah!" she cried, "then you know all my misery; I see you do if,
+Christian priest as you are, you can guess my determination to die and
+sanction it. Yes, I meant to die, but I have lacked the courage. The
+spirit was strong, but the flesh was weak, and when my hand did not
+tremble, the spirit within me wavered.
+
+"I do not know the reason of these inner struggles, and alternations.
+I am very pitiably a woman no doubt, weak in my will, strong only to
+love. Oh, I despise myself. At night, when all my household was
+asleep, I would go out bravely as far as the lake; but when I stood on
+the brink, my cowardice shrank from self-destruction. To you I will
+confess my weakness. When I lay in my bed, again, shame would come
+over me, and courage would come back. Once I took a dose of laudanum;
+I was ill, but I did not die. I thought I had emptied the phial, but I
+had only taken half the dose."
+
+"You are lost, madame," the cure said gravely, with tears in his
+voice. "You will go back into the world, and you will deceive the
+world. You will seek and find a compensation (as you imagine it to be)
+for your woes; then will come a day of reckoning for your pleasures--"
+
+"Do you think," she cried, "that _I_ shall bestow the last, the most
+precious treasures of my heart upon the first base impostor who can
+play the comedy of passion? That I would pollute my life for a moment
+of doubtful pleasure? No; the flame which shall consume my soul shall
+be love, and nothing but love. All men, monsieur, have the senses of
+their sex, but not all have the man's soul which satisfies all the
+requirements of our nature, drawing out the melodious harmony which
+never breaks forth save in response to the pressure of feeling. Such a
+soul is not found twice in our lifetime. The future that lies before
+me is hideous; I know it. A woman is nothing without love; beauty is
+nothing without pleasure. And even if happiness were offered to me a
+second time, would not the world frown upon it? I owe my daughter an
+honored mother. Oh! I am condemned to live in an iron circle, from
+which there is but one shameful way of escape. The round of family
+duties, a thankless and irksome task, is in store for me. I shall
+curse life; but my child shall have at least a fair semblance of a
+mother. I will give her treasures of virtue for the treasures of love
+of which I defraud her.
+
+"I have not even the mother's desire to live to enjoy her child's
+happiness. I have no belief in happiness. What will Helene's fate be?
+My own, beyond doubt. How can a mother ensure that the man to whom she
+gives her daughter will be the husband of her heart? You pour scorn on
+the miserable creatures who sell themselves for a few coins to any
+passer-by, though want and hunger absolve the brief union; while
+another union, horrible for quite other reasons, is tolerated, nay
+encouraged, by society, and a young and innocent girl is married to a
+man whom she has only met occasionally during the previous three
+months. She is sold for her whole lifetime. It is true that the price
+is high! If you allow her no compensation for her sorrows, you might
+at least respect her; but no, the most virtuous of women cannot escape
+calumny. This is our fate in its double aspect. Open prostitution and
+shame; secret prostitution and unhappiness. As for the poor,
+portionless girls, they may die or go mad, without a soul to pity
+them. Beauty and virtue are not marketable in the bazaar where souls
+and bodies are bought and sold--in the den of selfishness which you
+call society. Why not disinherit daughters? Then, at least, you might
+fulfil one of the laws of nature, and guided by your own inclinations,
+choose your companions."
+
+"Madame, from your talk it is clear to me that neither the spirit of
+family nor the sense of religion appeals to you. Why should you
+hesitate between the claims of the social selfishness which irritates
+you, and the purely personal selfishness which craves satisfactions--"
+
+"The family, monsieur--does such a thing exist? I decline to recognize
+as a family a knot of individuals bidden by society to divide the
+property after the death of father and mother, and to go their
+separate ways. A family means a temporary association of persons
+brought together by no will of their own, dissolved at once by death.
+Our laws have broken up homes and estates, and the old family
+tradition handed down from generation to generation. I see nothing but
+wreck and ruin about me."
+
+"Madame, you will only return to God when His hand has been heavy upon
+you, and I pray that you have time enough given to you in which to
+make your peace with Him. Instead of looking to heaven for comfort,
+you are fixing your eyes on earth. Philosophism and personal interest
+have invaded your heart; like the children of the sceptical eighteenth
+century, you are deaf to the voice of religion. The pleasures of this
+life bring nothing but misery. You are about to make an exchange of
+sorrows, that is all."
+
+She smiled bitterly.
+
+"I will falsify your predictions," she said. "I shall be faithful to
+him who died for me."
+
+"Sorrow," he answered, "is not likely to live long save in souls
+disciplined by religion," and he lowered his eyes respectfully lest
+the Marquise should read his doubts in them. The energy of her
+outburst had grieved him. He had seen the self that lurked beneath so
+many forms, and despaired of softening a heart which affliction seemed
+to sear. The divine Sower's seed could not take root in such a soil,
+and His gentle voice was drowned by the clamorous outcry of self-pity.
+Yet the good man returned again and again with an apostle's earnest
+persistence, brought back by a hope of leading so noble and proud a
+soul to God; until the day when he made the discovery that the
+Marquise only cared to talk with him because it was sweet to speak of
+him who was no more. He would not lower his ministry by condoning her
+passion, and confined the conversation more and more to generalities
+and commonplaces.
+
+Spring came, and with the spring the Marquise found distraction from
+her deep melancholy. She busied herself for lack of other occupation
+with her estate, making improvements for amusement.
+
+In October she left the old chateau. In the life of leisure at
+Saint-Lange she had recovered from her grief and grown fair and fresh.
+Her grief had been violent at first in its course, as the quoit hurled
+forth with all the player's strength, and like the quoit after many
+oscillations, each feebler than the last, it had slackened into
+melancholy. Melancholy is made up of a succession of such
+oscillations, the first touching upon despair, the last on the border
+between pain and pleasure; in youth, it is the twilight of dawn; in
+age, the dusk of night.
+
+As the Marquise drove through the village in her traveling carriage,
+she met the cure on his way back from the church. She bowed in
+response to his farewell greeting, but it was with lowered eyes and
+averted face. She did not wish to see him again. The village cure had
+judged this poor Diana of Ephesus only too well.
+
+
+
+                                III.
+
+                          AT THIRTY YEARS
+
+Madame Firmiani was giving a ball. M. Charles de Vandenesse, a young
+man of great promise, the bearer of one of those historic names which,
+in spite of the efforts of legislation, are always associated with the
+glory of France, had received letters of introduction to some of the
+great lady's friends in Naples, and had come to thank the hostess and
+to take his leave.
+
+Vandenesse had already acquitted himself creditably on several
+diplomatic missions; and now that he had received an appointment as
+attache to a plenipotentiary at the Congress of Laybach, he wished to
+take advantage of the opportunity to make some study of Italy on the
+way. This ball was a sort of farewell to Paris and its amusements and
+its rapid whirl of life, to the great eddying intellectual centre and
+maelstrom of pleasure; and a pleasant thing it is to be borne along by
+the current of this sufficiently slandered great city of Paris. Yet
+Charles de Vandenesse had little to regret, accustomed as he had been
+for the past three years to salute European capitals and turn his back
+upon them at the capricious bidding of a diplomatist's destiny. Women
+no longer made any impression upon him; perhaps he thought that a real
+passion would play too large a part in a diplomatist's life; or
+perhaps that the paltry amusements of frivolity were too empty for a
+man of strong character. We all of us have huge claims to strength of
+character. There is no man in France, be he ever so ordinary a member
+of the rank and file of humanity, that will waive pretensions to
+something beyond mere cleverness.
+
+Charles, young though he was--he was scarcely turned thirty--looked at
+life with a philosophic mind, concerning himself with theories and
+means and ends, while other men of his age were thinking of pleasure,
+sentiments, and the like illusions. He forced back into some inner
+depth the generosity and enthusiasms of youth, and by nature he was
+generous. He tried hard to be cool and calculating, to coin the fund
+of wealth which chanced to be in his nature into gracious manners, and
+courtesy, and attractive arts; 'tis the proper task of an ambitious
+man, to play a sorry part to gain "a good position," as we call it in
+modern days.
+
+He had been dancing, and now he gave a farewell glance over the rooms,
+to carry away a distinct impression of the ball, moved, doubtless, to
+some extent by the feeling which prompts a theatre-goer to stay in his
+box to see the final tableau before the curtain falls. But M. de
+Vandenesse had another reason for his survey. He gazed curiously at
+the scene before him, so French in character and in movement, seeking
+to carry away a picture of the light and laughter and the faces at
+this Parisian fete, to compare with the novel faces and picturesque
+surroundings awaiting him at Naples, where he meant to spend a few
+days before presenting himself at his post. He seemed to be drawing
+the comparison now between this France so variable, changing even as
+you study her, with the manners and aspects of that other land known
+to him as yet only by contradictory hearsay tales or books of travel,
+for the most part unsatisfactory. Thoughts of a somewhat poetical
+cast, albeit hackneyed and trite to our modern ideas, crossed his
+brain, in response to some longing of which, perhaps, he himself was
+hardly conscious, a desire in the depths of a heart fastidious rather
+than jaded, vacant rather than seared.
+
+"These are the wealthiest and most fashionable women and the greatest
+ladies in Paris," he said to himself. "These are the great men of the
+day, great orators and men of letters, great names and titles; artists
+and men in power; and yet in it all it seems to me as if there were
+nothing but petty intrigues and still-born loves, meaningless smiles
+and causeless scorn, eyes lighted by no flame within, brain-power in
+abundance running aimlessly to waste. All those pink-and-white faces
+are here not so much for enjoyment, as to escape from dulness. None of
+the emotion is genuine. If you ask for nothing but court feathers
+properly adjusted, fresh gauzes and pretty toilettes and fragile, fair
+women, if you desire simply to skim the surface of life, here is your
+world for you. Be content with meaningless phrases and fascinating
+simpers, and do not ask for real feeling. For my own part, I abhor the
+stale intrigues which end in sub-prefectures and receiver-generals'
+places and marriages; or, if love comes into the question, in stealthy
+compromises, so ashamed are we of the mere semblance of passion. Not a
+single one of all these eloquent faces tells you of a soul, a soul
+wholly absorbed by one idea as by remorse. Regrets and misfortune go
+about shame-facedly clad in jests. There is not one woman here whose
+resistance I should care to overcome, not one who could drag you down
+to the pit. Where will you find energy in Paris? A poniard here is a
+curious toy to hang from a gilt nail, in a picturesque sheath to
+match. The women, the brains, and hearts of Paris are all on a par.
+There is no passion left, because we have no individuality. High birth
+and intellect and fortune are all reduced to one level; we all have
+taken to the uniform black coat by way of mourning for a dead France.
+There is no love between equals. Between two lovers there should be
+differences to efface, wide gulfs to fill. The charm of love fled from
+us in 1789. Our dulness and our humdrum lives are the outcome of the
+political system. Italy at any rate is the land of sharp contrasts.
+Woman there is a malevolent animal, a dangerous unreasoning siren,
+guided only by her tastes and appetites, a creature no more to be
+trusted than a tiger--"
+
+Mme. Firmiani here came up to interrupt this soliloquy made up of
+vague, conflicting, and fragmentary thoughts which cannot be
+reproduced in words. The whole charm of such musing lies in its
+vagueness--what is it but a sort of mental haze?
+
+"I want to introduce you to some one who has the greatest wish to make
+your acquaintance, after all that she has heard of you," said the
+lady, taking his arm.
+
+She brought him into the next room, and with such a smile and glance
+as a Parisienne alone can give, she indicated a woman sitting by the
+hearth.
+
+"Who is she?" the Comte de Vandenesse asked quickly.
+
+"You have heard her name more than once coupled with praise or blame.
+She is a woman who lives in seclusion--a perfect mystery."
+
+"Oh! if ever you have been merciful in your life, for pity's sake tell
+me her name."
+
+"She is the Marquise d'Aiglemont."
+
+"I will take lessons from her; she had managed to make a peer of
+France of that eminently ordinary person her husband, and a dullard
+into a power in the land. But, pray tell me this, did Lord Grenville
+die for her sake, do you think, as some women say?"
+
+"Possibly. Since that adventure, real or imaginary, she is very much
+changed, poor thing! She has not gone into society since. Four years
+of constancy--that is something in Paris. If she is here to-night----"
+Here Mme. Firmiani broke off, adding with a mysterious expression, "I
+am forgetting that I must say nothing. Go and talk with her."
+
+For a moment Charles stood motionless, leaning lightly against the
+frame of the doorway, wholly absorbed in his scrutiny of a woman who
+had become famous, no one exactly knew how or why. Such curious
+anomalies are frequent enough in the world. Mme. d'Aiglemont's
+reputation was certainly no more extraordinary than plenty of other
+great reputations. There are men who are always in travail of some
+great work which never sees the light, statisticians held to be
+profound on the score of calculations which they take very good care
+not to publish, politicians who live on a newspaper article, men of
+letters and artists whose performances are never given to the world,
+men of science, much as Sganarelle is a Latinist for those who know no
+Latin; there are the men who are allowed by general consent to possess
+a peculiar capacity for some one thing, be it for the direction of
+arts, or for the conduct of an important mission. The admirable
+phrase, "A man with a special subject," might have been invented on
+purpose for these acephalous species in the domain of literature and
+politics.
+
+Charles gazed longer than he intended. He was vexed with himself for
+feeling so strongly interested; it is true, however, that the lady's
+appearance was a refutation of the young man's ballroom
+generalizations.
+
+The Marquise had reached her thirtieth year. She was beautiful in
+spite of her fragile form and extremely delicate look. Her greatest
+charm lay in her still face, revealing unfathomed depths of soul. Some
+haunting, ever-present thought veiled, as it were, the full brilliance
+of eyes which told of a fevered life and boundless resignation. So
+seldom did she raise the eyelids soberly downcast, and so listless
+were her glances, that it almost seemed as if the fire in her eyes
+were reserved for some occult contemplation. Any man of genius and
+feeling must have felt strangely attracted by her gentleness and
+silence. If the mind sought to explain the mysterious problem of a
+constant inward turning from the present to the past, the soul was no
+less interested in initiating itself into the secrets of a heart proud
+in some sort of its anguish. Everything about her, moreover, was in
+keeping with these thoughts which she inspired. Like almost all women
+who have very long hair, she was very pale and perfectly white. The
+marvelous fineness of her skin (that almost unerring sign) indicated a
+quick sensibility which could be seen yet more unmistakably in her
+features; there was the same minute and wonderful delicacy of finish
+in them that the Chinese artist gives to his fantastic figures.
+Perhaps her neck was rather too long, but such necks belong to the
+most graceful type, and suggest vague affinities between a woman's
+head and the magnetic curves of the serpent. Leave not a single one of
+the thousand signs and tokens by which the most inscrutable character
+betrays itself to an observer of human nature, he has but to watch
+carefully the little movements of a woman's head, the ever-varying
+expressive turns and curves of her neck and throat, to read her
+nature.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont's dress harmonized with the haunting thought that
+informed the whole woman. Her hair was gathered up into a tall coronet
+of broad plaits, without ornament of any kind; she seemed to have
+bidden farewell for ever to elaborate toilettes. Nor were any of the
+small arts of coquetry which spoil so many women to be detected in
+her. Perhaps her bodice, modest though it was, did not altogether
+conceal the dainty grace of her figure, perhaps, too, her gown looked
+rich from the extreme distinction of its fashion, and if it is
+permissible to look for expression in the arrangement of stuffs,
+surely those numerous straight folds invested her with a great
+dignity. There may have been some lingering trace of the indelible
+feminine foible in the minute care bestowed upon her hand and foot;
+yet, if she allowed them to be seen with some pleasure, it would have
+tasked the utmost malice of a rival to discover any affectation in her
+gestures, so natural did they seem, so much a part of old childish
+habit, that her careless grace absolved this vestige of vanity.
+
+All these little characteristics, the nameless trifles which combine
+to make up the sum of a woman's prettiness or ugliness, her charm or
+lack of charm, can only be indicated, when, as with Mme. d'Aiglemont,
+a personality dominates and gives coherence to the details, informing
+them, blending them all in an exquisite whole. Her manner was
+perfectly in accord with her style of beauty and her dress. Only to
+certain women at a certain age is it given to put language into their
+attitude. Is it joy or is it sorrow that teaches a woman of thirty the
+secret of that eloquence of carriage, so that she must always remain
+an enigma which each interprets by the aid of his hopes, desires, or
+theories?
+
+The way in which the Marquise leaned both elbows on the arm of her
+chair, the toying of her interclasped fingers, the curve of her
+throat, the indolent lines of her languid but lissome body as she lay
+back in graceful exhaustion, as it were; her indolent limbs, her
+unstudied pose, the utter lassitude of her movements,--all suggested
+that this was a woman for whom life had lost its interest, a woman who
+had known the joys of love only in dreams, a woman bowed down by the
+burden of memories of the past, a woman who had long since despaired
+of the future and despaired of herself, an unoccupied woman who took
+the emptiness of her own life for the nothingness of life.
+
+Charles de Vandenesse saw and admired the beautiful picture before
+him, as a kind of artistic success beyond an ordinary woman's powers
+of attainment. He was acquainted with d'Aiglemont; and now, at the
+first sight of d'Aiglemont's wife, the young diplomatist saw at a
+glance a disproportionate marriage, an incompatibility (to use the
+legal jargon) so great that it was impossible that the Marquise should
+love her husband. And yet--the Marquise d'Aiglemont's life was above
+reproach, and for any observer the mystery about her was the more
+interesting on this account. The first impulse of surprise over,
+Vandenesse cast about for the best way of approaching Mme.
+d'Aiglemont. He would try a commonplace piece of diplomacy, he
+thought; he would disconcert her by a piece of clumsiness and see how
+she would receive it.
+
+"Madame," he said, seating himself near her, "through a fortunate
+indiscretion I have learned that, for some reason unknown to me, I
+have had the good fortune to attract your notice. I owe you the more
+thanks because I have never been so honored before. At the same time,
+you are responsible for one of my faults, for I mean never to be
+modest again--"
+
+"You will make a mistake, monsieur," she laughed; "vanity should be
+left to those who have nothing else to recommend them."
+
+The conversation thus opened ranged at large, in the usual way, over a
+multitude of topics--art and literature, politics, men and things
+--till insensibly they fell to talking of the eternal theme in France
+and all the world over--love, sentiment, and women.
+
+"We are bond-slaves."
+
+"You are queens."
+
+This was the gist and substance of all the more or less ingenious
+discourse between Charles and the Marquise, as of all such discourses
+--past, present, and to come. Allow a certain space of time, and the
+two formulas shall begin to mean "Love me," and "I will love you."
+
+"Madame," Charles de Vandenesse exclaimed under his breath, "you have
+made me bitterly regret that I am leaving Paris. In Italy I certainly
+shall not pass hours in intellectual enjoyment such as this has been."
+
+"Perhaps, monsieur, you will find happiness, and happiness is worth
+more than all the brilliant things, true and false, that are said
+every evening in Paris."
+
+Before Charles took leave, he asked permission to pay a farewell call
+on the Marquise d'Aiglemont, and very lucky did he feel himself when
+the form of words in which he expressed himself for once was used in
+all sincerity; and that night, and all day long on the morrow, he
+could not put the thought of the Marquise out of his mind.
+
+At times he wondered why she had singled him out, what she had meant
+when she asked him to come to see her, and thought supplied an
+inexhaustible commentary. Again it seemed to him that he had
+discovered the motives of her curiosity, and he grew intoxicated with
+hope or frigidly sober with each new construction put upon that piece
+of commonplace civility. Sometimes it meant everything, sometimes
+nothing. He made up his mind at last that he would not yield to this
+inclination, and--went to call on Mme. d'Aiglemont.
+
+There are thoughts which determine our conduct, while we do not so
+much as suspect their existence. If at first sight this assertion
+appears to be less a truth than a paradox, let any candid inquirer
+look into his own life and he shall find abundant confirmation
+therein. Charles went to Mme. d'Aiglemont, and so obeyed one of these
+latent, pre-existent germs of thought, of which our experience and our
+intellectual gains and achievements are but later and tangible
+developments.
+
+For a young man a woman of thirty has irresistible attractions. There
+is nothing more natural, nothing better established, no human tie of
+stouter tissue than the heart-deep attachment between such a woman as
+the Marquise d'Aiglemont and such a man as Charles de Vandenesse. You
+can see examples of it every day in the world. A girl, as a matter of
+fact, has too many young illusions, she is too inexperienced, the
+instinct of sex counts for too much in her love for a young man to
+feel flattered by it. A woman of thirty knows all that is involved in
+the self-surrender to be made. Among the impulses of the first, put
+curiosity and other motives than love; the second acts with integrity
+of sentiment. The first yields; the second makes deliberate choice. Is
+not that choice in itself an immense flattery? A woman armed with
+experience, forewarned by knowledge, almost always dearly bought,
+seems to give more than herself; while the inexperienced and credulous
+girl, unable to draw comparisons for lack of knowledge, can appreciate
+nothing at its just worth. She accepts love and ponders it. A woman is
+a counselor and a guide at an age when we love to be guided and
+obedience is delight; while a girl would fain learn all things,
+meeting us with a girl's _naivete_ instead of a woman's tenderness.
+She affords a single triumph; with a woman there is resistance upon
+resistance to overcome; she has but joy and tears, a woman has rapture
+and remorse.
+
+A girl cannot play the part of a mistress unless she is so corrupt
+that we turn from her with loathing; a woman has a thousand ways of
+preserving her power and her dignity; she has risked so much for love,
+that she must bid him pass through his myriad transformations, while
+her too submissive rival gives a sense of too serene security which
+palls. If the one sacrifices her maidenly pride, the other immolates
+the honor of a whole family. A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she
+thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's
+coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she
+satisfies every demand of man's vanity, the novice responds but to
+one.
+
+And there are terrors, fears, and hesitations--trouble and storm in
+the love of a woman of thirty years, never to be found in a young
+girl's love. At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back
+the esteem she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her
+thoughts are full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids
+him make it glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself,
+or rise in pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young
+girl can only make moan. And with all the advantages of her position,
+the woman of thirty can be a girl again, for she can play all parts,
+assume a girl's bashfulness, and grow the fairer even for a mischance.
+
+Between these two feminine types lies the immeasurable difference
+which separates the foreseen from the unforeseen, strength from
+weakness. The woman of thirty satisfies every requirement; the young
+girl must satisfy none, under penalty of ceasing to be a young girl.
+Such ideas as these, developing in a young man's mind, help to
+strengthen the strongest of all passions, a passion in which all
+spontaneous and natural feeling is blended with the artificial
+sentiment created by conventional manners.
+
+The most important and decisive step in a woman's life is the very one
+that she invariably regards as the most insignificant. After her
+marriage she is no longer her own mistress, she is the queen and the
+bond-slave of the domestic hearth. The sanctity of womanhood is
+incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman
+emancipation means corruption. If you give a stranger the right of
+entry into the sanctuary of home, do you not put yourself at his
+mercy? How then if she herself bids him enter it? Is not this an
+offence, or, to speak more accurately, a first step towards an
+offence? You must either accept this theory with all its consequences,
+or absolve illicit passion. French society hitherto has chosen the
+third and middle course of looking on and laughing when offences come,
+apparently upon the Spartan principle of condoning the theft and
+punishing clumsiness. And this system, it may be, is a very wise one.
+'Tis a most appalling punishment to have all your neighbors pointing
+the finger of scorn at you, a punishment that a woman feels in her
+very heart. Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious
+of respect; without esteem they cannot exist, esteem is the first
+demand that they make of love. The most corrupt among them feels that
+she must, in the first place, pledge the future to buy absolution for
+the past, and strives to make her lover understand that only for
+irresistible bliss can she barter the respect which the world
+henceforth will refuse to her.
+
+Some such reflections cross the mind of any woman who for the first
+time and alone receives a visit from a young man; and this especially
+when, like Charles de Vandenesse, the visitor is handsome or clever.
+And similarly there are not many young men who would fail to base some
+secret wish on one of the thousand and one ideas which justify the
+instinct that attracts them to a beautiful, witty, and unhappy woman
+like the Marquise d'Aiglemont.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont, therefore, felt troubled when M. de Vandenesse was
+announced; and as for him, he was almost confused in spite of the
+assurance which is like a matter of costume for a diplomatist. But not
+for long. The Marquise took refuge at once in the friendliness of
+manner which women use as a defence against the misinterpretations of
+fatuity, a manner which admits of no afterthought, while it paves the
+way to sentiment (to make use of a figure of speech), tempering the
+transition through the ordinary forms of politeness. In this ambiguous
+position, where the four roads leading respectively to Indifference,
+Respect, Wonder, and Passion meet, a woman may stay as long as she
+pleases, but only at thirty years does she understand all the
+possibilities of the situation. Laughter, tenderness, and jest are all
+permitted to her at the crossing of the ways; she has acquired the
+tact by which she finds all the responsive chords in a man's nature,
+and skill in judging the sounds which she draws forth. Her silence is
+as dangerous as her speech. You will never read her at that age, nor
+discover if she is frank or false, nor how far she is serious in her
+admissions or merely laughing at you. She gives you the right to
+engage in a game of fence with her, and suddenly by a glance, a
+gesture of proved potency, she closes the combat and turns from you
+with your secret in her keeping, free to offer you up in a jest, free
+to interest herself in you, safe alike in her weakness and your
+strength.
+
+Although the Marquise d'Aiglemont took up her position upon this
+neutral ground during the first interview, she knew how to preserve a
+high womanly dignity. The sorrows of which she never spoke seemed to
+hang over her assumed gaiety like a light cloud obscuring the sun.
+When Vandenesse went out, after a conversation which he had enjoyed
+more than he had thought possible, he carried with him the conviction
+that this was like to be too costly a conquest for his aspirations.
+
+"It would mean sentiment from here to yonder," he thought, "and
+correspondence enough to wear out a deputy second-clerk on his
+promotion. And yet if I really cared----"
+
+Luckless phrase that has been the ruin of many an infatuated mortal.
+In France the way to love lies through self-love. Charles went back to
+Mme. d'Aiglemont, and imagined that she showed symptoms of pleasure in
+his conversion. And then, instead of giving himself up like a boy to
+the joy of falling in love, he tried to play a double role. He did his
+best to act passion and to keep cool enough to analyze the progress of
+this flirtation, to be lover and diplomatist at once; but youth and
+hot blood and analysis could only end in one way, over head and ears
+in love; for, natural or artificial, the Marquise was more than his
+match. Each time he went out from Mme. d'Aiglemont, he strenuously
+held himself to his distrust, and submitted the progressive situations
+of his case to a rigorous scrutiny fatal to his own emotions.
+
+"To-day she gave me to understand that she has been very unhappy and
+lonely," said he to himself, after the third visit, "and that but for
+her little girl she would have longed for death. She was perfectly
+resigned. Now as I am neither her brother nor her spiritual director,
+why should she confide her troubles to _me_? She loves me."
+
+Two days later he came away apostrophizing modern manners.
+
+"Love takes on the hue of every age. In 1822 love is a doctrinaire.
+Instead of proving love by deeds, as in times past, we have taken to
+argument and rhetoric and debate. Women's tactics are reduced to three
+shifts. In the first place, they declare that we cannot love as they
+love. (Coquetry! the Marquise simply threw it at me, like a challenge,
+this evening!) Next they grow pathetic, to appeal to our natural
+generosity or self-love; for does it not flatter a young man's vanity
+to console a woman for a great calamity? And lastly, they have a craze
+for virginity. She must have thought that I thought her very innocent.
+My good faith is like to become an excellent speculation."
+
+But a day came when every suspicious idea was exhausted. He asked
+himself whether the Marquise was not sincere; whether so much
+suffering could be feigned, and why she should act the part of
+resignation? She lived in complete seclusion; she drank in silence of
+a cup of sorrow scarcely to be guessed unless from the accent of some
+chance exclamation in a voice always well under control. From that
+moment Charles felt a keen interest in Mme. d'Aiglemont. And yet,
+though his visits had come to be a recognized thing, and in some sort
+a necessity to them both, and though the hour was kept free by tacit
+agreement, Vandenesse still thought that this woman with whom he was
+in love was more clever than sincere. "Decidedly, she is an uncommonly
+clever woman," he used to say to himself as he went away.
+
+When he came into the room, there was the Marquise in her favorite
+attitude, melancholy expressed in her whole form. She made no movement
+when he entered, only raised her eyes and looked full at him, but the
+glance that she gave him was like a smile. Mme. d'Aiglemont's manner
+meant confidence and sincere friendship, but of love there was no
+trace. Charles sat down and found nothing to say. A sensation for
+which no language exists troubled him.
+
+"What is the matter with you?" she asked in a softened voice.
+
+"Nothing. . . . Yes; I am thinking of something of which, as yet, you
+have not thought at all."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Why--the Congress is over."
+
+"Well," she said, "and ought you to have been at the Congress?"
+
+A direct answer would have been the most eloquent and delicate
+declaration of love; but Charles did not make it. Before the candid
+friendship in Mme. d'Aiglemont's face all the calculations of vanity,
+the hopes of love, and the diplomatist's doubts died away. She did not
+suspect, or she seemed not to suspect, his love for her; and Charles,
+in utter confusion turning upon himself, was forced to admit that he
+had said and done nothing which could warrant such a belief on her
+part. For M. de Vandenesse that evening, the Marquise was, as she had
+always been, simple and friendly, sincere in her sorrow, glad to have
+a friend, proud to find a nature responsive to her own--nothing more.
+It had not entered her mind that a woman could yield twice; she had
+known love--love lay bleeding still in the depths of her heart, but
+she did not imagine that bliss could bring her its rapture twice, for
+she believed not merely in the intellect, but in the soul; and for her
+love was no simple attraction; it drew her with all noble attractions.
+
+In a moment Charles became a young man again, enthralled by the
+splendor of a nature so lofty. He wished for a fuller initiation into
+the secret history of a life blighted rather by fate than by her own
+fault. Mme. d'Aiglemont heard him ask the cause of the overwhelming
+sorrow which had blended all the harmonies of sadness with her beauty;
+she gave him one glance, but that searching look was like a seal set
+upon some solemn compact.
+
+"Ask no more such questions of me," she said. "Four years ago, on this
+very day, the man who loved me, for whom I would have given up
+everything, even my own self-respect, died, and died to save my name.
+That love was still young and pure and full of illusions when it came
+to an end. Before I gave way to passion--and never was a woman so
+urged by fate--I had been drawn into the mistake that ruins many a
+girl's life, a marriage with a man whose agreeable manners concealed
+his emptiness. Marriage plucked my hopes away one by one. And now,
+to-day, I have forfeited happiness through marriage, as well as the
+happiness styled criminal, and I have known no happiness. Nothing is
+left to me. If I could not die, at least I ought to be faithful to my
+memories."
+
+No tears came with the words. Her eyes fell, and there was a slight
+twisting of the fingers interclasped, according to her wont. It was
+simply said, but in her voice there was a note of despair, deep as her
+love seemed to have been, which left Charles without a hope. The
+dreadful story of a life told in three sentences, with that twisting
+of the fingers for all comment, the might of anguish in a fragile
+woman, the dark depths masked by a fair face, the tears of four years
+of mourning fascinated Vandenesse; he sat silent and diminished in the
+presence of her woman's greatness and nobleness, seeing not the
+physical beauty so exquisite, so perfectly complete, but the soul so
+great in its power to feel. He had found, at last, the ideal of his
+fantastic imaginings, the ideal so vigorously invoked by all who look
+on life as the raw material of a passion for which many a one seeks
+ardently, and dies before he has grasped the whole of the dreamed-of
+treasure.
+
+With those words of hers in his ears, in the presence of her sublime
+beauty, his own thoughts seemed poor and narrow. Powerless as he felt
+himself to find words of his own, simple enough and lofty enough to
+scale the heights of this exaltation, he took refuge in platitudes as
+to the destiny of women.
+
+"Madame, we must either forget our pain, or hollow out a tomb for
+ourselves."
+
+But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being
+essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the
+other is infinite. To set to work to reason where you are required to
+feel, is the mark of a limited nature. Vandenesse therefore held his
+peace, sat awhile with his eyes fixed upon her, then came away. A prey
+to novel thoughts which exalted woman for him, he was in something the
+same position as a painter who has taken the vulgar studio model for a
+type of womanhood, and suddenly confronts the _Mnemosyne_ of the Musee
+--that noblest and least appreciated of antique statues.
+
+Charles de Vandenesse was deeply in love. He loved Mme. d'Aiglemont
+with the loyalty of youth, with the fervor that communicates such
+ineffable charm to a first passion, with a simplicity of heart of
+which a man only recovers some fragments when he loves again at a
+later day. Delicious first passion of youth, almost always deliciously
+savored by the woman who calls it forth; for at the golden prime of
+thirty, from the poetic summit of a woman's life, she can look out
+over the whole course of love--backwards into the past, forwards into
+the future--and, knowing all the price to be paid for love, enjoys her
+bliss with the dread of losing it ever present with her. Her soul is
+still fair with her waning youth, and passion daily gathers strength
+from the dismaying prospect of the coming days.
+
+"This is love," Vandenesse said to himself this time as he left the
+Marquise, "and for my misfortune I love a woman wedded to her
+memories. It is hard work to struggle against a dead rival, never
+present to make blunders and fall out of favor, nothing of him left
+but his better qualities. What is it but a sort of high treason
+against the Ideal to attempt to break the charm of memory, to destroy
+the hopes that survive a lost lover, precisely because he only
+awakened longings, and all that is loveliest and most enchanting in
+love?"
+
+These sober reflections, due to the discouragement and dread of
+failure with which love begins in earnest, were the last expiring
+effort of diplomatic reasoning. Thenceforward he knew no
+afterthoughts, he was the plaything of his love, and lost himself in
+the nothings of that strange inexplicable happiness which is full fed
+by a chance word, by silence, or a vague hope. He tried to love
+Platonically, came daily to breathe the air that she breathed, became
+almost a part of her house, and went everywhere with her, slave as he
+was of a tyrannous passion compounded of egoism and devotion of the
+completest. Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart,
+as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which
+nothing can dismay or turn aside. If feeling is sincere, its destiny
+is not doubtful. Let a woman begin to think that her life depends on
+the sincerity or fervor or earnestness which her lover shall put into
+his longings, and is there not sufficient in the thought to put her
+through all the tortures of dread? It is impossible for a woman, be
+she wife or mother, to be secure from a young man's love. One thing it
+is within her power to do--to refuse to see him as soon as she learns
+a secret which she never fails to guess. But this is too decided a
+step to take at an age when marriage has become a prosaic and tiresome
+yoke, and conjugal affection is something less than tepid (if indeed
+her husband has not already begun to neglect her). Is a woman plain?
+she is flattered by a love which gives her fairness. Is she young and
+charming? She is only to be won by a fascination as great as her own
+power to charm, that is to say, a fascination well-nigh irresistible.
+Is she virtuous? There is a love sublime in its earthliness which
+leads her to find something like absolution in the very greatness of
+the surrender and glory in a hard struggle. Everything is a snare. No
+lesson, therefore, is too severe where the temptation is so strong.
+The seclusion in which the Greeks and Orientals kept and keep their
+women, an example more and more followed in modern England, is the
+only safeguard of domestic morality; but under this system there is an
+end of all the charm of social intercourse; and society, and good
+breeding, and refinement of manners become impossible. The nations
+must take their choice.
+
+So a few months went by, and Mme. d'Aiglemont discovered that her life
+was closely bound with this young man's life, without overmuch
+confusion in her surprise, and felt with something almost like
+pleasure that she shared his tastes and his thoughts. Had she adopted
+Vandenesse's ideas? Or was it Vandenesse who had made her lightest
+whims his own? She was not careful to inquire. She had been swept out
+already into the current of passion, and yet this adorable woman told
+herself with the confident reiteration of misgiving;
+
+"Ah! no. I will be faithful to him who died for me."
+
+Pascal said that "the doubt of God implies belief in God." And
+similarly it may be said that a woman only parleys when she has
+surrendered. A day came when the Marquise admitted to herself that she
+was loved, and with that admission came a time of wavering among
+countless conflicting thoughts and feelings. The superstitions of
+experience spoke their language. Should she be happy? Was it possible
+that she should find happiness outside the limits of the laws which
+society rightly or wrongly has set up for humanity to live by?
+Hitherto her cup of life had been full of bitterness. Was there any
+happy issue possible for the ties which united two human beings held
+apart by social conventions? And might not happiness be bought too
+dear? Still, this so ardently desired happiness, for which it is so
+natural to seek, might perhaps be found after all. Curiosity is always
+retained on the lover's side in the suit. The secret tribunal was
+still sitting when Vandenesse appeared, and his presence put the
+metaphysical spectre, reason, to flight.
+
+If such are the successive transformations through which a sentiment,
+transient though it be, passes in a young man and a woman of thirty,
+there comes a moment of time when the shades of difference blend into
+each other, when all reasonings end in a single and final reflection
+which is lost and absorbed in the desire which it confirms. Then the
+longer the resistance, the mightier the voice of love. And here endeth
+this lesson, or rather this study made from the _ecorche_, to borrow a
+most graphic term from the studio, for in this history it is not so
+much intended to portray love as to lay bare its mechanism and its
+dangers. From this moment every day adds color to these dry bones,
+clothes them again with living flesh and blood and the charm of youth,
+and puts vitality into their movements; till they glow once more with
+the beauty, the persuasive grace of sentiment, the loveliness of life.
+
+
+
+Charles found Mme. d'Aiglemont absorbed in thought, and to his "What
+is it?" spoken in thrilling tones grown persuasive with the heart's
+soft magic, she was careful not to reply. The delicious question bore
+witness to the perfect unity of their spirits; and the Marquise felt,
+with a woman's wonderful intuition, that to give any expression to the
+sorrow in her heart would be to make an advance. If, even now, each
+one of those words was fraught with significance for them both, in
+what fathomless depths might she not plunge at the first step? She
+read herself with a clear and lucid glance. She was silent, and
+Vandenesse followed her example.
+
+"I am not feeling well," she said at last, taking alarm at the pause
+fraught with such great moment for them both, when the language of the
+eyes completely filled the blank left by the helplessness of speech.
+
+"Madame," said Charles, and his voice was tender but unsteady with
+strong feeling, "soul and body are both dependent on each other. If
+you were happy, you would be young and fresh. Why do you refuse to ask
+of love all that love has taken from you? You think that your life is
+over when it is only just beginning. Trust yourself to a friend's
+care. It is so sweet to be loved."
+
+"I am old already," she said; "there is no reason why I should not
+continue to suffer as in the past. And 'one must love,' do you say?
+Well, I must not, and I cannot. Your friendship has put some sweetness
+into my life, but beside you I care for no one, no one could efface my
+memories. A friend I accept; I should fly from a lover. Besides, would
+it be a very generous thing to do, to exchange a withered heart for a
+young heart; to smile upon illusions which now I cannot share, to
+cause happiness in which I should either have no belief, or tremble to
+lose? I should perhaps respond to his devotion with egoism, should
+weigh and deliberate while he felt; my memory would resent the
+poignancy of his happiness. No, if you love once, that love is never
+replaced, you see. Indeed, who would have my heart at this price?"
+
+There was a tinge of heartless coquetry in the words, the last effort
+of discretion.
+
+"If he loses courage, well and good, I shall live alone and faithful."
+The thought came from the very depths of the woman, for her it was the
+too slender willow twig caught in vain by a swimmer swept out by the
+current.
+
+Vandenesse's involuntary shudder at her dictum plead more eloquently
+for him than all his past assiduity. Nothing moves a woman so much as
+the discovery of a gracious delicacy in us, such a refinement of
+sentiment as her own, for a woman the grace and delicacy are sure
+tokens of truth. Charles' start revealed the sincerity of his love.
+Mme. d'Aiglemont learned the strength of his affection from the
+intensity of his pain.
+
+"Perhaps you are right," he said coldly. "New love, new vexation of
+spirit."
+
+Then he changed the subject, and spoke of indifferent matters; but he
+was visibly moved, and he concentrated his gaze on Mme. d'Aiglemont as
+if he were seeing her for the last time.
+
+"Adieu, madame," he said, with emotion in his voice.
+
+"_Au revoir_," said she, with that subtle coquetry, the secret of a
+very few among women.
+
+He made no answer and went.
+
+When Charles was no longer there, when his empty chair spoke for him,
+regrets flocked in upon her, and she found fault with herself. Passion
+makes an immense advance as soon as a woman persuades herself that she
+has failed somewhat in generosity or hurt a noble nature. In love
+there is never any need to be on our guard against the worst in us;
+that is a safeguard; a woman only surrenders at the summons of a
+virtue. "The floor of hell is paved with good intentions,"--it is no
+preacher's paradox.
+
+Vandenesse stopped away for several days. Every evening at the
+accustomed hour the Marquise sat expectant in remorseful impatience.
+She could not write--that would be a declaration, and, moreover, her
+instinct told her that he would come back. On the sixth day he was
+announced, and never had she heard the name with such delight. Her joy
+frightened her.
+
+"You have punished me well," she said, addressing him.
+
+Vandenesse gazed at her in astonishment.
+
+"Punished?" he echoed. "And for what?" He understood her quite well,
+but he meant to be avenged for all that he had suffered as soon as she
+suspected it.
+
+"Why have you not come to see me?" she demanded with a smile.
+
+"Then you have seen no visitors?" asked he, parrying the question.
+
+"Yes. M. de Ronquerolles and M. de Marsay and young d'Escrignon came
+and stayed for nearly two hours, the first two yesterday, the last
+this morning. And besides, I have had a call, I believe, from Mme.
+Firmiani and from your sister, Mme. de Listomere."
+
+Here was a new infliction, torture which none can comprehend unless
+they know love as a fierce and all-invading tyrant whose mildest
+symptom is a monstrous jealousy, a perpetual desire to snatch away the
+beloved from every other influence.
+
+"What!" thought he to himself, "she has seen visitors, she has been
+with happy creatures, and talking to them, while I was unhappy and all
+alone."
+
+He buried his annoyance forthwith, and consigned love to the depths of
+his heart, like a coffin to the sea. His thoughts were of the kind
+that never find expression in words; they pass through the mind
+swiftly as a deadly acid, that poisons as it evaporates and vanishes.
+His brow, however, was over-clouded; and Mme. d'Aiglemont, guided by
+her woman's instinct, shared his sadness without understanding it. She
+had hurt him, unwittingly, as Vandenesse knew. He talked over his
+position with her, as if his jealousy were one of those hypothetical
+cases which lovers love to discuss. Then the Marquise understood it
+all. She was so deeply moved, that she could not keep back the tears
+--and so these lovers entered the heaven of love.
+
+Heaven and Hell are two great imaginative conceptions formulating our
+ideas of Joy and Sorrow--those two poles about which human existence
+revolves. Is not heaven a figure of speech covering now and for
+evermore an infinite of human feeling impossible to express save in
+its accidents--since that Joy is one? And what is Hell but the symbol
+of our infinite power to suffer tortures so diverse that of our pain
+it is possible to fashion works of art, for no two human sorrows are
+alike?
+
+One evening the two lovers sat alone and side by side, silently
+watching one of the fairest transformations of the sky, a cloudless
+heaven taking hues of pale gold and purple from the last rays of the
+sunset. With the slow fading of the daylight, sweet thoughts seem to
+awaken, and soft stirrings of passion, and a mysterious sense of
+trouble in the midst of calm. Nature sets before us vague images of
+bliss, bidding us enjoy the happiness within our reach, or lament it
+when it has fled. In those moments fraught with enchantment, when the
+tender light in the canopy of the sky blends in harmony with the
+spells working within, it is difficult to resist the heart's desires
+grown so magically potent. Cares are blunted, joy becomes ecstasy;
+pain, intolerable anguish. The pomp of sunset gives the signal for
+confessions and draws them forth. Silence grows more dangerous than
+speech for it gives to eyes all the power of the infinite of the
+heavens reflected in them. And for speech, the least word has
+irresistible might. Is not the light infused into the voice and purple
+into the glances? Is not heaven within us, or do we feel that we are
+in the heavens?
+
+Vandenesse and Julie--for so she had allowed herself to be called for
+the past few days by him whom she loved to speak of as Charles
+--Vandenesse and Julie were talking together, but they had drifted very
+far from their original subject; and if their spoken words had grown
+meaningless they listened in delight to the unspoken thoughts that
+lurked in the sounds. Her hand lay in his. She had abandoned it to him
+without a thought that she had granted a proof of love.
+
+Together they leaned forward to look out upon a majestic cloud
+country, full of snows and glaciers and fantastic mountain peaks with
+gray stains of shadow on their sides, a picture composed of sharp
+contrasts between fiery red and the shadows of darkness, filling the
+skies with a fleeting vision of glory which cannot be reproduced
+--magnificent swaddling-bands of sunrise, bright shrouds of the dying
+sun. As they leaned Julie's hair brushed lightly against Vandenesse's
+cheek. She felt that light contact, and shuddered violently, and he
+even more, for imperceptibly they both had reached one of those
+inexplicable crises when quiet has wrought upon the senses until every
+faculty of perception is so keen that the slightest shock fills the
+heart lost in melancholy with sadness that overflows in tears; or
+raises joy to ecstasy in a heart that is lost in the vertigo of love.
+Almost involuntarily Julie pressed her lover's hand. That wooing
+pressure gave courage to his timidity. All the joy of the present, all
+the hopes of the future were blended in the emotion of a first caress,
+the bashful trembling kiss that Mme. d'Aiglemont received upon her
+cheek. The slighter the concession, the more dangerous and insinuating
+it was. For their double misfortune it was only too sincere a
+revelation. Two noble natures had met and blended, drawn each to each
+by every law of natural attraction, held apart by every ordinance.
+
+General d'Aiglemont came in at that very moment.
+
+"The Ministry has gone out," he said. "Your uncle will be in the new
+cabinet. So you stand an uncommonly good chance of an embassy,
+Vandenesse."
+
+Charles and Julie looked at each other and flushed red. That blush was
+one more tie to unite them; there was one thought and one remorse in
+either mind; between two lovers guilty of a kiss there is a bond quite
+as strong and terrible as the bond between two robbers who have
+murdered a man. Something had to be said by way of reply.
+
+"I do not care to leave Paris now," Charles said.
+
+"We know why," said the General, with the knowing air of a man who
+discovers a secret. "You do not like to leave your uncle, because you
+do not wish to lose your chance of succeeding to the title."
+
+The Marquise took refuge in her room, and in her mind passed a
+pitiless verdict upon her husband.
+
+"His stupidity is really beyond anything!"
+
+
+
+                                IV.
+
+                         THE FINGER OF GOD
+
+Between the Barriere d'Italie and the Barriere de la Sante, along the
+boulevard which leads to the Jardin des Plantes, you have a view of
+Paris fit to send an artist or the tourist, the most _blase_ in
+matters of landscape, into ecstasies. Reach the slightly higher ground
+where the line of boulevard, shaded by tall, thick-spreading trees,
+curves with the grace of some green and silent forest avenue, and you
+see spread out at your feet a deep valley populous with factories
+looking almost countrified among green trees and the brown streams of
+the Bievre or the Gobelins.
+
+On the opposite slope, beneath some thousands of roofs packed close
+together like heads in a crowd, lurks the squalor of the Faubourg
+Saint-Marceau. The imposing cupola of the Pantheon, and the grim
+melancholy dome of the Val-du-Grace, tower proudly up above a whole
+town in itself, built amphitheatre-wise; every tier being grotesquely
+represented by a crooked line of street, so that the two public
+monuments look like a huge pair of giants dwarfing into insignificance
+the poor little houses and the tallest poplars in the valley. To your
+left behold the observatory, the daylight, pouring athwart its windows
+and galleries, producing such fantastical strange effects that the
+building looks like a black spectral skeleton. Further yet in the
+distance rises the elegant lantern tower of the Invalides, soaring up
+between the bluish pile of the Luxembourg and the gray tours of
+Saint-Sulpice. From this standpoint the lines of the architecture are
+blended with green leaves and gray shadows, and change every moment
+with every aspect of the heavens, every alteration of light or color
+in the sky. Afar, the skyey spaces themselves seem to be full of
+buildings; near, wind the serpentine curves of waving trees and green
+footpaths.
+
+Away to your right, through a great gap in this singular landscape,
+you see the canal Saint-Martin, a long pale stripe with its edging of
+reddish stone quays and fringes of lime avenue. The long rows of
+buildings beside it, in genuine Roman style, are the public granaries.
+
+Beyond, again, on the very last plane of all, see the smoke-dimmed
+slopes of Belleville covered with houses and windmills, which blend
+their freaks of outline with the chance effects of cloud. And still,
+between that horizon, vague as some childish recollection, and the
+serried range of roofs in the valley, a whole city lies out of sight:
+a huge city, engulfed, as it were, in a vast hollow between the
+pinnacles of the Hopital de la Pitie and the ridge line of the
+Cimetiere de l'Est, between suffering on the one hand and death on the
+other; a city sending up a smothered roar like Ocean grumbling at the
+foot of a cliff, as if to let you know that "I am here!"
+
+When the sunlight pours like a flood over this strip of Paris,
+purifying and etherealizing the outlines, kindling answering lights
+here and there in the window panes, brightening the red tiles, flaming
+about the golden crosses, whitening walls and transforming the
+atmosphere into a gauzy veil, calling up rich contrasts of light and
+fantastic shadow; when the sky is blue and earth quivers in the heat,
+and the bells are pealing, then you shall see one of the eloquent
+fairy scenes which stamp themselves for ever on the imagination, a
+scene that shall find as fanatical worshipers as the wondrous views of
+Naples and Byzantium or the isles of Florida. Nothing is wanting to
+complete the harmony, the murmur of the world of men and the idyllic
+quiet of solitude, the voices of a million human creatures and the
+voice of God. There lies a whole capital beneath the peaceful
+cypresses of Pere-Lachaise.
+
+The landscape lay in all its beauty, sparkling in the spring sunlight,
+as I stood looking out over it one morning, my back against a huge
+elm-tree that flung its yellow flowers to the wind. At the sight of
+the rich and glorious view before me, I thought bitterly of the scorn
+with which even in our literature we affect to hold this land of ours,
+and poured maledictions on the pitiable plutocrats who fall out of
+love with fair France, and spend their gold to acquire the right of
+sneering at their own country, by going through Italy at a gallop and
+inspecting that desecrated land through an opera-glass. I cast loving
+eyes on modern Paris. I was beginning to dream dreams, when the sound
+of a kiss disturbed the solitude and put philosophy to flight. Down
+the sidewalk, along the steep bank, above the rippling water, I saw
+beyond the Ponte des Gobelins the figure of a woman, dressed with the
+daintiest simplicity; she was still young, as it seemed to me, and the
+blithe gladness of the landscape was reflected in her sweet face. Her
+companion, a handsome young man, had just set down a little boy. A
+prettier child has never been seen, and to this day I do not know
+whether it was the little one or his mother who received the kiss. In
+their young faces, in their eyes, their smile, their every movement,
+you could read the same deep and tender thought. Their arms were
+interlaced with such glad swiftness; they drew close together with
+such marvelous unanimity of impulse that, conscious of nothing but
+themselves, they did not so much as see me. A second child, however--a
+little girl, who had turned her back upon them in sullen discontent
+--threw me a glance, and the expression in her eyes startled me. She
+was as pretty and engaging as the little brother whom she left to run
+about by himself, sometimes before, sometimes after their mother and
+her companion; but her charm was less childish, and now, as she stood
+mute and motionless, her attitude and demeanor suggested a torpid
+snake. There was something indescribably mechanical in the way in
+which the pretty woman and her companion paced up and down. In absence
+of mind, probably, they were content to walk to and fro between the
+little bridge and a carriage that stood waiting nearby at a corner in
+the boulevard, turning, stopping short now and again, looking into
+each other's eyes, or breaking into laughter as their casual talk grew
+lively or languid, grave or gay.
+
+I watched this delicious picture a while from my hiding-place by the
+great elm-tree, and should have turned away no doubt and respected
+their privacy, if it had not been for a chance discovery. In the face
+of the brooding, silent, elder child I saw traces of thought overdeep
+for her age. When her mother and the young man at her side turned and
+came near, her head was frequently lowered; the furtive sidelong
+glances of intelligence that she gave the pair and the child her
+brother were nothing less than extraordinary. Sometimes the pretty
+woman or her friend would stroke the little boy's fair curls, or lay a
+caressing finger against the baby throat or the white collar as he
+played at keeping step with them; and no words can describe the shrewd
+subtlety, the ingenuous malice, the fierce intensity which lighted up
+that pallid little face with the faint circles already round the eyes.
+Truly there was a man's power of passion in the strange-looking,
+delicate little girl. Here were traces of suffering or of thought in
+her; and which is the more certain token of death when life is in
+blossom--physical suffering, or the malady of too early thought
+preying upon a soul as yet in bud? Perhaps a mother knows. For my own
+part, I know of nothing more dreadful to see than an old man's
+thoughts on a child's forehead; even blasphemy from girlish lips is
+less monstrous.
+
+The almost stupid stolidity of this child who had begun to think
+already, her rare gestures, everything about her, interested me. I
+scrutinized her curiously. Then the common whim of the observer drew
+me to compare her with her brother, and to note their likeness and
+unlikeness.
+
+Her brown hair and dark eyes and look of precocious power made a rich
+contrast with the little one's fair curled head and sea-green eyes and
+winning helplessness. She, perhaps, was seven or eight years of age;
+the boy was full four years younger. Both children were dressed alike;
+but here again, looking closely, I noticed a difference. It was very
+slight, a little thing enough; but in the light of after events I saw
+that it meant a whole romance in the past, a whole tragedy to come.
+The little brown-haired maid wore a linen collar with a plain hem, her
+brother's was edged with dainty embroidery, that was all; but therein
+lay the confession of a heart's secret, a tacit preference which a
+child can read in the mother's inmost soul as clearly as if the spirit
+of God revealed it. The fair-haired child, careless and glad, looked
+almost like a girl, his skin was so fair and fresh, his movements so
+graceful, his look so sweet; while his older sister, in spite of her
+energy, in spite of the beauty of her features and her dazzling
+complexion, looked like a sickly little boy. In her bright eyes there
+was none of the humid softness which lends such charm to children's
+faces; they seemed, like courtiers' eyes, to be dried by some inner
+fire; and in her pallor there was a certain swarthy olive tint, the
+sign of vigorous character. Twice her little brother came to her,
+holding out a tiny hunting-horn with a touching charm, a winning look,
+and wistful expression, which would have sent Charlet into ecstasies,
+but she only scowled in answer to his "Here, Helene, will you take
+it?" so persuasively spoken. The little girl, so sombre and vehement
+beneath her apparent indifference, shuddered, and even flushed red
+when her brother came near her; but the little one seemed not to
+notice his sister's dark mood, and his unconsciousness, blended with
+earnestness, marked a final difference in character between the child
+and the little girl, whose brow was overclouded already by the gloom
+of a man's knowledge and cares.
+
+"Mamma, Helene will not play," cried the little one, seizing an
+opportunity to complain while the two stood silent on the Ponte des
+Gobelins.
+
+"Let her alone, Charles; you know very well that she is always cross."
+
+Tears sprang to Helene's eyes at the words so thoughtlessly uttered by
+her mother as she turned abruptly to the young man by her side. The
+child devoured the speech in silence, but she gave her brother one of
+those sagacious looks that seemed inexplicable to me, glancing with a
+sinister expression from the bank where he stood to the Bievre, then
+at the bridge and the view, and then at me.
+
+I as afraid lest my presence should disturb the happy couple; I
+slipped away and took refuge behind a thicket of elder trees, which
+completely screened me from all eyes. Sitting quietly on the summit of
+the bank, I watched the ever-changing landscape and the fierce-looking
+little girl, for with my head almost on a level with the boulevard I
+could still see her through the leaves. Helene seemed uneasy over my
+disappearance, her dark eyes looked for me down the alley and behind
+the trees with indefinable curiosity. What was I to her? Then Charles'
+baby laughter rang out like a bird's song in the silence. The tall,
+young man, with the same fair hair, was dancing him in his arms,
+showering kisses upon him, and the meaningless baby words of that
+"little language" which rises to our lips when we play with children.
+The mother looked on smiling, now and then, doubtless, putting in some
+low word that came up from the heart, for her companion would stop
+short in his full happiness, and the blue eyes that turned towards her
+were full of glowing light and love and worship. Their voices,
+blending with the child's voice, reached me with a vague sense of a
+caress. The three figures, charming in themselves, composed a lovely
+scene in a glorious landscape, filling it with a pervasive
+unimaginable grace. A delicately fair woman, radiant with smiles, a
+child of love, a young man with the irresistible charm of youth, a
+cloudless sky; nothing was wanting in nature to complete a perfect
+harmony for the delight of the soul. I found myself smiling as if
+their happiness had been my own.
+
+The clocks struck nine. The young man gave a tender embrace to his
+companion, and went towards the tilbury which an old servant drove
+slowly to meet him. The lady had grown grave and almost sad. The
+child's prattle sounded unchecked through the last farewell kisses.
+Then the tilbury rolled away, and the lady stood motionless, listening
+to the sound of the wheels, watching the little cloud of dust raised
+by its passage along the road. Charles ran down the green pathway back
+to the bridge to join his sister. I heard his silver voice calling to
+her.
+
+"Why did you not come to say good-bye to my good friend?" cried he.
+
+Helene looked up. Never surely did such hatred gleam from a child's
+eyes as from hers at that moment when she turned them on the brother
+who stood beside her on the bank side. She gave him an angry push.
+Charles lost his footing on the steep slope, stumbled over the roots
+of a tree, and fell headlong forwards, dashing his forehead on the
+sharp-edged stones of the embankment, and, covered with blood,
+disappeared over the edge into the muddy river. The turbid water
+closed over a fair, bright head with a shower of splashes; one sharp
+shriek after another rang in my ears; then the sounds were stifled by
+the thick stream, and the poor child sank with a dull sound as if a
+stone had been thrown into the water. The accident had happened with
+more than lightning swiftness. I sprang down the footpath, and Helene,
+stupefied with horror, shrieked again and again:
+
+"Mamma! mamma!"
+
+The mother was there at my side. She had flown to the spot like a
+bird. But neither a mother's eyes nor mine could find the exact place
+where the little one had gone under. There was a wide space of black
+hurrying water, and below in the bed of the Bievre ten feet of mud.
+There was not the smallest possibility of saving the child. No one was
+stirring at that hour on a Sunday morning, and there are neither
+barges nor anglers on the Bievre. There was not a creature in sight,
+not a pole to plumb the filthy stream. What need was there for me to
+explain how the ugly-looking accident had happened--accident or
+misfortune, whichever it might be? Had Helene avenged her father? Her
+jealousy surely was the sword of God. And yet when I looked at the
+mother I shivered. What fearful ordeal awaited her when she should
+return to her husband, the judge before whom she must stand all her
+days? And here with her was an inseparable, incorruptible witness. A
+child's forehead is transparent, a child's face hides no thoughts, and
+a lie, like a red flame set within glows out red that colors even the
+eyes. But the unhappy woman had not thought as yet of the punishment
+awaiting her at home; she was staring into the Bievre.
+
+
+
+Such an event must inevitably send ghastly echoes through a woman's
+life, and here is one of the most terrible of the reverberations that
+troubled Julie's love from time to time.
+
+Several years had gone by. The Marquis de Vandenesse wore mourning for
+his father, and succeeded to his estates. One evening, therefore,
+after dinner it happened that a notary was present in his house. This
+was no pettifogging lawyer after Sterne's pattern, but a very solid,
+substantial notary of Paris, one of your estimable men who do a stupid
+thing pompously, set down a foot heavily upon your private corn, and
+then ask what in the world there is to cry out about? If, by accident,
+they come to know the full extent of the enormity, "Upon my word," cry
+they, "I hadn't a notion!" This was a well-intentioned ass, in short,
+who could see nothing in life but deeds and documents.
+
+Mme. de Aiglemont had been dining with M. de Vandenesse; her husband
+had excused himself before dinner was over, for he was taking his two
+children to the play. They were to go to some Boulevard theatre or
+other, to the Ambigu-Comique or the Gaiete, sensational melodrama
+being judged harmless here in Paris, and suitable pabulum for
+childhood, because innocence is always triumphant in the fifth act.
+The boy and girl had teased their father to be there before the
+curtain rose, so he had left the table before dessert was served.
+
+But the notary, the imperturbable notary, utterly incapable of asking
+himself why Mme. d'Aiglemont should have allowed her husband and
+children to go without her to the play, sat on as if he were screwed
+to his chair. Dinner was over, dessert had been prolonged by
+discussion, and coffee delayed. All these things consumed time,
+doubtless precious, and drew impatient movements from that charming
+woman; she looked not unlike a thoroughbred pawing the ground before a
+race; but the man of law, to whom horses and women were equally
+unknown quantities, simply thought the Marquise a very lively and
+sparkling personage. So enchanted was he to be in the company of a
+woman of fashion and a political celebrity, that he was exerting
+himself to shine in conversation, and taking the lady's forced smile
+for approbation, talked on with unflagging spirit, till the Marquise
+was almost out of patience.
+
+The master of the house, in concert with the lady, had more than once
+maintained an eloquent silence when the lawyer expected a civil reply;
+but these significant pauses were employed by the talkative nuisance
+in looking for anecdotes in the fire. M. de Vandenesse had recourse to
+his watch; the charming Marquise tried the experiment of fastening her
+bonnet strings, and made as if she would go. But she did not go, and
+the notary, blind and deaf, and delighted with himself, was quite
+convinced that his interesting conversational powers were sufficient
+to keep the lady on the spot.
+
+"I shall certainly have that woman for a client," said he to himself.
+
+Meanwhile the Marquise stood, putting on her gloves, twisting her
+fingers, looking from the equally impatient Marquis de Vandenesse to
+the lawyer, still pounding away. At every pause in the worthy man's
+fire of witticisms the charming pair heaved a sigh of relief, and
+their looks said plainly, "At last! He is really going!"
+
+Nothing of the kind. It was a nightmare which could only end in
+exasperating the two impassioned creatures, on whom the lawyer had
+something of the fascinating effect of a snake on a pair of birds;
+before long they would be driven to cut him short.
+
+The clever notary was giving them the history of the discreditable
+ways in which one du Tillet (a stockbroker then much in favor) had
+laid the foundations of his fortune; all the ins and outs of the whole
+disgraceful business were accurately put before them; and the narrator
+was in the very middle of his tale when M. de Vandenesse heard the
+clock strike nine. Then it became clear to him that his legal adviser
+was very emphatically an idiot who must be sent forthwith about his
+business. He stopped him resolutely with a gesture.
+
+"The tongs, my lord Marquis?" queried the notary, handing the object
+in question to his client.
+
+"No, monsieur, I am compelled to send you away. Mme. d'Aiglemont
+wishes to join her children, and I shall have the honor of escorting
+her."
+
+"Nine o'clock already! Time goes like a shadow in pleasant company,"
+said the man of law, who had talked on end for the past hour.
+
+He looked for his hat, planted himself before the fire, with a
+suppressed hiccough; and, without heeding the Marquise's withering
+glances, spoke once more to his impatient client:
+
+"To sum up, my lord Marquis. Business before all things. To-morrow,
+then, we must subpoena your brother; we will proceed to make out the
+inventory, and faith, after that----"
+
+So ill had the lawyer understood his instructions, that his impression
+was the exact opposite to the one intended. It was a delicate matter,
+and Vandenesse, in spite of himself, began to put the thick-headed
+notary right. The discussion which followed took up a certain amount
+of time.
+
+"Listen," the diplomatist said at last at a sign from the lady, "You
+are puzzling my brains; come back to-morrow, and if the writ is not
+issued by noon to-morrow, the days of grace will expire, and then--"
+
+As he spoke, a carriage entered the courtyard. The poor woman turned
+sharply away at the sound to hide the tears in her eyes. The Marquis
+rang to give the servant orders to say that he was not at home; but
+before the footman could answer the bell, the lady's husband
+reappeared. He had returned unexpectedly from the Gaiete, and held
+both children by the hand. The little girl's eyes were red; the boy
+was fretful and very cross.
+
+"What can have happened?" asked the Marquise.
+
+"I will tell you by and by," said the General, and catching a glimpse
+through an open door of newspapers on the table in the adjoining
+sitting-room, he went off. The Marquise, at the end of her patience,
+flung herself down on the sofa in desperation. The notary, thinking it
+incumbent upon him to be amiable with the children, spoke to the
+little boy in an insinuating tone:
+
+"Well, my little man, and what is there on at the theatre?"
+
+"_The Valley of the Torrent_," said Gustave sulkily.
+
+"Upon my word and honor," declared the notary, "authors nowadays are
+half crazy. _The Valley of the Torrent_! Why not the Torrent of the
+Valley? It is conceivable that a valley might be without a torrent in
+it; now if they had said the Torrent of the Valley, that would have
+been something clear, something precise, something definite and
+comprehensible. But never mind that. Now, how is the drama to take
+place in a torrent and in a valley? You will tell me that in these
+days the principal attraction lies in the scenic effect, and the title
+is a capital advertisement.--And did you enjoy it, my little friend?"
+he continued, sitting down before the child.
+
+When the notary pursued his inquiries as to the possibilities of a
+drama in the bed of a torrent, the little girl turned slowly away and
+began to cry. Her mother did not notice this in her intense annoyance.
+
+"Oh! yes, monsieur, I enjoyed it very much," said the child. "There is
+a dear little boy in the play, and he was all alone in the world,
+because his papa could not have been his real papa. And when he came
+to the top of the bridge over the torrent, a big, naughty man with a
+beard, dressed all in black, came and threw him into the water. And
+then Helene began to sob and cry, and everybody scolded us, and father
+brought us away quick, quick----"
+
+M. de Vandenesse and the Marquise looked on in dull amazement, as if
+all power to think or move had been suddenly paralyzed.
+
+"Do be quiet, Gustave!" cried the General. "I told you that you were
+not to talk about anything that happened at the play, and you have
+forgotten what I said already."
+
+"Oh, my lord Marquis, your lordship must excuse him," cried the
+notary. "I ought not to have asked questions, but I had no idea--"
+
+"He ought not to have answered them," said the General, looking
+sternly at the child.
+
+It seemed that the Marquise and the master of the house both perfectly
+understood why the children had come back so suddenly. Mme.
+d'Aiglemont looked at her daughter, and rose as if to go to her, but a
+terrible convulsion passed over her face, and all that could be read
+in it was relentless severity.
+
+"That will do, Helene," she said. "Go into the other room, and leave
+off crying."
+
+"What can she have done, poor child!" asked the notary, thinking to
+appease the mother's anger and to stop Helene's tears at one stroke.
+"So pretty as she his, she must be as good as can be; never anything
+but a joy to her mother, I will be bound. Isn't that so, my little
+girl?"
+
+Helene cowered, looked at her mother, dried her eyes, struggled for
+composure, and took refuge in the next room.
+
+"And you, madame, are too good a mother not to love all your children
+alike. You are too good a woman, besides, to have any of those
+lamentable preferences which have such fatal effects, as we lawyers
+have only too much reason to know. Society goes through our hands; we
+see its passions in that most revolting form, greed. Here it is the
+mother of a family trying to disinherit her husband's children to
+enrich the others whom she loves better; or it is the husband who
+tries to leave all his property to the child who has done his best to
+earn his mother's hatred. And then begin quarrels, and fears, and
+deeds, and defeasances, and sham sales, and trusts, and all the rest
+of it; a pretty mess, in fact, it is pitiable, upon my honor,
+pitiable! There are fathers that will spend their whole lives in
+cheating their children and robbing their wives. Yes, robbing is the
+only word for it. We were talking of tragedy; oh! I can assure you of
+this that if we were at liberty to tell the real reasons of some
+donations that I know of, our modern dramatists would have the
+material for some sensational _bourgeois_ dramas. How the wife manages
+to get her way, as she invariably does, I cannot think; for in spite
+of appearances, and in spite of their weakness, it is always the women
+who carry the day. Ah! by the way, they don't take _me_ in. I always
+know the reason at the bottom of those predilections which the world
+politely styles 'unaccountable.' But in justice to the husbands, I
+must say that _they_ never discover anything. You will tell me that
+this is a merciful dispens--"
+
+Helene had come back to the drawing-room with her father, and was
+listening attentively. So well did she understand all that was said,
+that she gave her mother a frightened glance, feeling, with a child's
+quick instinct, that these remarks would aggravate the punishment
+hanging over her. The Marquise turned her white face to Vandenesse;
+and, with terror in her eyes, indicated her husband, who stood with
+his eyes fixed absently on the flower pattern of the carpet. The
+diplomatist, accomplished man of the world though he was, could no
+longer contain his wrath, he gave the man of law a withering glance.
+
+"Step this way, sir," he said, and he went hurriedly to the door of
+the ante-chamber; the notary left his sentence half finished, and
+followed, quaking, and the husband and wife were left together.
+
+"Now, sir" said the Marquise de Vandenesse--he banged the drawing-room
+door, and spoke with concentrated rage--"ever since dinner you have
+done nothing but make blunders and talk folly. For heaven's sake, go.
+You will make the most frightful mischief before you have done. If you
+are a clever man in your profession, keep to your profession; and if
+by any chance you should go into society, endeavor to be more
+circumspect."
+
+With that he went back to the drawing-room, and did not even wish the
+notary good-evening. For a moment that worthy stood dumfounded,
+bewildered, utterly at a loss. Then, when the buzzing in his ears
+subsided, he thought he heard someone moaning in the next room.
+Footsteps came and went, and bells were violently rung. He was by no
+means anxious to meet the Marquis again, and found the use of his legs
+to make good his escape, only to run against a hurrying crowd of
+servants at the door.
+
+"Just the way of all these grand folk," said he to himself outside in
+the street as he looked about for a cab. "They lead you on to talk
+with compliments, and you think you are amusing them. Not a bit of it.
+They treat you insolently; put you at a distance; even put you out at
+the door without scruple. After all, I talked very cleverly, I said
+nothing but what was sensible, well turned, and discreet; and, upon my
+word, he advises me to be more circumspect in future. I will take good
+care of that! Eh! the mischief take it! I am a notary and a member of
+my chamber!--Pshaw! it was an ambassador's fit of temper, nothing is
+sacred for people of that kind. To-morrow he shall explain what he
+meant by saying that I had done nothing but blunder and talk nonsense
+in his house. I will ask him for an explanation--that is, I will ask
+him to explain my mistake. After all is done and said, I am in the
+wrong perhaps---- Upon my word, it is very good of me to cudgel my
+brains like this. What business is it of mine?"
+
+So the notary went home and laid the enigma before his spouse, with a
+complete account of the evening's events related in sequence.
+
+And she replied, "My dear Crottat, His Excellency was perfectly right
+when he said that you had done nothing but blunder and talk folly."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"My dear, if I told you why, it would not prevent you from doing the
+same thing somewhere else to-morrow. I tell you again--talk of nothing
+but business when you go out; that is my advice to you."
+
+"If you will not tell me, I shall ask him to-morrow--"
+
+"Why, dear me! the veriest noodle is careful to hide a thing of that
+kind, and do you suppose that an ambassador will tell you about it?
+Really, Crottat, I have never known you so utterly devoid of
+common-sense."
+
+"Thank you, my dear."
+
+
+
+                                 V.
+
+                            TWO MEETINGS
+
+One of Napoleon's orderly staff-officers, who shall be known in this
+history only as the General or the Marquis, had come to spend the
+spring at Versailles. He made a large fortune under the Restoration;
+and as his place at Court would not allow him to go very far from
+Paris, he had taken a country house between the church and the barrier
+of Montreuil, on the road that leads to the Avenue de Saint-Cloud.
+
+The house had been built originally as a retreat for the short-lived
+loves of some _grand seigneur_. The grounds were very large; the
+gardens on either side extending from the first houses of Montreuil to
+the thatched cottages near the barrier, so that the owner could enjoy
+all the pleasures of solitude with the city almost at his gates. By an
+odd piece of contradiction, the whole front of the house itself, with
+the principal entrance, gave directly upon the street. Perhaps in time
+past it was a tolerably lonely road, and indeed this theory looks all
+the more probable when one comes to think of it; for not so very far
+away, on this same road, Louis Quinze built a delicious summer villa
+for Mlle. de Romans, and the curious in such things will discover that
+the wayside _casinos_ are adorned in a style that recalls traditions
+of the ingenious taste displayed in debauchery by our ancestors who,
+with all the license paid to their charge, sought to invest it with
+secrecy and mystery.
+
+One winter evening the family were by themselves in the lonely house.
+The servants had received permission to go to Versailles to celebrate
+the wedding of one of their number. It was Christmas time, and the
+holiday makers, presuming upon the double festival, did not scruple to
+outstay their leave of absence; yet, as the General was well known to
+be a man of his word, the culprits felt some twinges of conscience as
+they danced on after the hour of return. The clocks struck eleven, and
+still there was no sign of the servants.
+
+A deep silence prevailed over the country-side, broken only by the
+sound of the northeast wind whistling through the black branches,
+wailing about the house, dying in gusts along the corridors. The hard
+frost had purified the air, and held the earth in its grip; the roads
+gave back every sound with the hard metallic ring which always strikes
+us with a new surprise; the heavy footsteps of some belated reveler,
+or a cab returning to Paris, could be heard for a long distance with
+unwonted distinctness. Out in the courtyard a few dead leaves set
+a-dancing by some eddying gust found a voice for the night which fain
+had been silent. It was, in fact, one of those sharp, frosty evenings
+that wring barren expressions of pity from our selfish ease for
+wayfarers and the poor, and fills us with a luxurious sense of the
+comfort of the fireside.
+
+But the family party in the salon at that hour gave not a thought to
+absent servants nor houseless folk, nor to the gracious charm with
+which a winter evening sparkles. No one played the philosopher out of
+season. Secure in the protection of an old soldier, women and children
+gave themselves up to the joys of home life, so delicious when there
+is no restraint upon feeling; and talk and play and glances are bright
+with frankness and affection.
+
+The General sat, or more properly speaking, lay buried, in the depths
+of a huge, high-back armchair by the hearth. The heaped-up fire burned
+scorching clear with the excessive cold of the night. The good father
+leaned his head slightly to one side against the back of the chair, in
+the indolence of perfect serenity and a glow of happiness. The
+languid, half-sleepy droop of his outstretched arms seemed to complete
+his expression of placid content. He was watching his youngest, a boy
+of five or thereabouts, who, half clad as he was, declined to allow
+his mother to undress him. The little one fled from the night-gown and
+cap with which he was threatened now and again, and stoutly declined
+to part with his embroidered collar, laughing when his mother called
+to him, for he saw that she too was laughing at this declaration of
+infant independence. The next step was to go back to a game of romps
+with his sister. She was as much a child as he, but more mischievous;
+and she was older by two years, and could speak distinctly already,
+whereas his inarticulate words and confused ideas were a puzzle even
+to his parents. Little Moina's playfulness, somewhat coquettish
+already, provoked inextinguishable laughter, explosions of merriment
+which went off like fireworks for no apparent cause. As they tumbled
+about before the fire, unconcernedly displaying little plump bodies
+and delicate white contours, as the dark and golden curls mingled in a
+collision of rosy cheeks dimpled with childish glee, a father surely,
+a mother most certainly, must have understood those little souls, and
+seen the character and power of passion already developed for their
+eyes. As the cherubs frolicked about, struggling, rolling, and
+tumbling without fear of hurt on the soft carpet, its flowers looked
+pale beside the glowing white and red of their cheeks and the
+brilliant color of their shining eyes.
+
+On the sofa by the fire, opposite the great armchair, the children's
+mother sat among a heap of scattered garments, with a little scarlet
+shoe in her hand. She seemed to have given herself up completely to
+the enjoyment of the moment; wavering discipline had relaxed into a
+sweet smile engraved upon her lips. At the age of six-and-thirty, or
+thereabouts, she was a beautiful woman still, by reason of the rare
+perfection of the outlines of her face, and at this moment light and
+warmth and happiness filled it with preternatural brightness.
+
+Again and again her eyes wandered from her children, and their tender
+gaze was turned upon her husband's grave face; and now and again the
+eyes of husband and wife met with a silent exchange of happiness and
+thoughts from some inner depth.
+
+The General's face was deeply bronzed, a stray lock of gray hair
+scored shadows on his forehead. The reckless courage of the
+battlefield could be read in the lines carved in his hollow cheeks,
+and gleams of rugged strength in the blue eyes; clearly the bit of red
+ribbon flaunting at his button-hole had been paid for by hardship and
+toil. An inexpressible kindliness and frankness shone out of the
+strong, resolute face which reflected his children's merriment; the
+gray-haired captain found it not so very hard to become a child again.
+Is there not always a little love of children in the heart of a
+soldier who has seen enough of the seamy side of life to know
+something of the piteous limitations of strength and the privileges of
+weakness?
+
+At a round table rather further away, in a circle of bright lamplight
+that dimmed the feebler illumination of the wax candles on the
+chimney-piece, sat a boy of thirteen, rapidly turning the pages of a
+thick volume which he was reading, undisturbed by the shouts of the
+children. There was a boy's curiosity in his face. From his _lyceens_
+uniform he was evidently a schoolboy, and the book he was reading was
+the _Arabian Nights_. Small wonder that he was deeply absorbed. He sat
+perfectly still in a meditative attitude, with his elbow on the table,
+and his hand propping his head--the white fingers contrasting strongly
+with the brown hair into which they were thrust. As he sat, with the
+light turned full upon his face, and the rest of his body in shadow,
+he looked like one of Raphael's dark portraits of himself--a bent head
+and intent eyes filled with visions of the future.
+
+Between the table and the Marquise a tall, beautiful girl sat at her
+tapestry frame; sometimes she drew back from her work, sometimes she
+bent over it, and her hair, picturesque in its ebony smoothness and
+darkness, caught the light of the lamp. Helene was a picture in
+herself. In her beauty there was a rare distinctive character of power
+and refinement. Though her hair was gathered up and drawn back from
+her face, so as to trace a clearly marked line about her head, so
+thick and abundant was it, so recalcitrant to the comb, that it sprang
+back in curl-tendrils to the nape of her neck. The bountiful line of
+eyebrows was evenly marked out in dark contrasting outline upon her
+pure forehead. On her upper lip, beneath the Grecian nose with its
+sensitively perfect curve of nostril, there lay a faint, swarthy
+shadow, the sign-manual of courage; but the enchanting roundness of
+contour, the frankly innocent expression of her other features, the
+transparence of the delicate carnations, the voluptuous softness of
+the lips, the flawless oval of the outline of the face, and with
+these, and more than all these, the saintlike expression in the
+girlish eyes, gave to her vigorous loveliness the distinctive touch of
+feminine grace, that enchanting modesty which we look for in these
+angels of peace and love. Yet there was no suggestion of fragility
+about her; and, surely, with so grand a woman's frame, so attractive a
+face, she must possess a corresponding warmth of heart and strength of
+soul.
+
+She was as silent as her schoolboy brother. Seemingly a prey to the
+fateful maiden meditations which baffle a father's penetration and
+even a mother's sagacity, it was impossible to be certain whether it
+was the lamplight that cast those shadows that flitted over her face
+like thin clouds over a bright sky, or whether they were passing
+shades of secret and painful thoughts.
+
+Husband and wife had quite forgotten the two older children at that
+moment, though now and again the General's questioning glance traveled
+to that second mute picture; a larger growth, a gracious realization,
+as it were, of the hopes embodied in the baby forms rioting in the
+foreground. Their faces made up a kind of living poem, illustrating
+life's various phases. The luxurious background of the salon, the
+different attitudes, the strong contrasts of coloring in the faces,
+differing with the character of differing ages, the modeling of the
+forms brought into high relief by the light--altogether it was a page
+of human life, richly illuminated beyond the art of painter, sculptor,
+or poet. Silence, solitude, night and winter lent a final touch of
+majesty to complete the simplicity and sublimity of this exquisite
+effect of nature's contriving. Married life is full of these sacred
+hours, which perhaps owe their indefinable charm to some vague memory
+of a better world. A divine radiance surely shines upon them, the
+destined compensation for some portion of earth's sorrows, the solace
+which enables man to accept life. We seem to behold a vision of an
+enchanted universe, the great conception of its system widens out
+before our eyes, and social life pleads for its laws by bidding us
+look to the future.
+
+Yet in spite of the tender glances that Helene gave Abel and Moina
+after a fresh outburst of merriment; in spite of the look of gladness
+in her transparent face whenever she stole a glance at her father, a
+deep melancholy pervaded her gestures, her attitude, and more than
+all, her eyes veiled by their long lashes. Those white, strong hands,
+through which the light passed, tinting them with a diaphanous, almost
+fluid red--those hands were trembling. Once only did the eyes of the
+mother and daughter clash without shrinking, and the two women read
+each other's thoughts in a look, cold, wan, and respectful on Helene's
+part, sombre and threatening on her mother's. At once Helene's eyes
+were lowered to her work, she plied her needle swiftly, and it was
+long before she raised her head, bowed as it seemed by a weight of
+thought too heavy to bear. Was the Marquise over harsh with this one
+of her children? Did she think this harshness needful? Was she jealous
+of Helene's beauty?--She might still hope to rival Helene, but only by
+the magic arts of the toilette. Or again, had her daughter, like many
+a girl who reaches the clairvoyant age, read the secrets which this
+wife (to all appearance so religiously faithful in the fulfilment of
+her duties) believed to be buried in her own heart as deeply as in a
+grave?
+
+Helene had reached an age when purity of soul inclines to pass
+over-rigid judgments. A certain order of mind is apt to exaggerate
+transgression into crime; imagination reacts upon conscience, and a
+young girl is a hard judge because she magnifies the seriousness of
+the offence. Helene seemed to think herself worthy of no one. Perhaps
+there was a secret in her past life, perhaps something had happened,
+unintelligible to her at the time, but with gradually developing
+significance for a mind grown susceptible to religious influences;
+something which lately seemed to have degraded her, as it were, in her
+own eyes, and according to her own romantic standard. This change in
+her demeanor dated from the day of reading Schiller's noble tragedy of
+_Wilhelm Tell_ in a new series of translations. Her mother scolded her
+for letting the book fall, and then remarked to herself that the
+passage which had so worked on Helene's feelings was the scene in
+which Wilhelm Tell, who spilt the blood of a tyrant to save a nation,
+fraternizes in some sort with John the Parricide. Helene had grown
+humble, dutiful, and self-contained; she no longer cared for gaiety.
+Never had she made so much of her father, especially when the Marquise
+was not by to watch her girlish caresses. And yet, if Helene's
+affection for her mother had cooled at all, the change in her manner
+was so slight as to be almost imperceptible; so slight that the
+General could not have noticed it, jealous though he might be of the
+harmony of home. No masculine insight could have sounded the depths of
+those two feminine natures; the one was young and generous, the other
+sensitive and proud; the first had a wealth of indulgence in her
+nature, the second was full of craft and love. If the Marquise made
+her daughter's life a burden to her by a woman's subtle tyranny, it
+was a tyranny invisible to all but the victim; and for the rest, these
+conjectures only called forth after the event must remain conjectures.
+Until this night no accusing flash of light had escaped either of
+them, but an ominous mystery was too surely growing up between them, a
+mystery known only to themselves and God.
+
+"Come, Abel," called the Marquise, seizing on her opportunity when the
+children were tired of play and still for a moment. "Come, come,
+child; you must be put to bed--"
+
+And with a glance that must be obeyed, she caught him up and took him
+on her knee.
+
+"What!" exclaimed the General. "Half-past ten o'clock, and not one of
+the servants has come back! The rascals!--Gustave," he added, turning
+to his son, "I allowed you to read that book only on the condition
+that you should put it away at ten o'clock. You ought to have shut up
+the book at the proper time and gone to bed, as you promised. If you
+mean to make your mark in the world, you must keep your word; let it
+be a second religion to you, and a point of honor. Fox, one of the
+greatest English orators, was remarkable, above all things, for the
+beauty of his character, and the very first of his qualities was the
+scrupulous faithfulness with which he kept his engagements. When he
+was a child, his father (an Englishman of the old school) gave him a
+pretty strong lesson which he never forgot. Like most rich Englishmen,
+Fox's father had a country house and a considerable park about it.
+Now, in the park there was an old summer-house, and orders had been
+given that this summer-house was to be pulled down and put up
+somewhere else where there was a finer view. Fox was just about your
+age, and had come home for the holidays. Boys are fond of seeing
+things pulled to pieces, so young Fox asked to stay on at home for a
+few days longer to see the old summer-house taken down; but his father
+said that he must go back to school on the proper day, so there was
+anger between father and son. Fox's mother (like all mammas) took the
+boy's part. Then the father solemnly promised that the summer-house
+should stay where it was till the next holidays.
+
+"So Fox went back to school; and his father, thinking that lessons
+would soon drive the whole thing out of the boy's mind, had the
+summer-house pulled down and put up in the new position. But as it
+happened, the persistent youngster thought of nothing but that
+summer-house; and as soon as he came home again, his first care was to
+go out to look at the old building, and he came in to breakfast looking
+quite doleful, and said to his father, 'You have broken your promise.'
+The old English gentleman said with confusion full of dignity, 'That is
+true, my boy; but I will make amends. A man ought to think of keeping
+his word before he thinks of his fortune; for by keeping his word he
+will gain fortune, while all the fortunes in the world will not efface
+the stain left on your conscience by a breach of faith.' Then he gave
+orders that the summer-house should be put up again in the old place,
+and when it had been rebuilt he had it taken down again for his son to
+see. Let this be a lesson to _you_, Gustave."
+
+Gustave had been listening with interest, and now he closed the book
+at once. There was a moment's silence, while the General took
+possession of Moina, who could scarcely keep her eyes open. The little
+one's languid head fell back on her father's breast, and in a moment
+she was fast asleep, wrapped round about in her golden curls.
+
+Just then a sound of hurrying footsteps rang on the pavement out in
+the street, immediately followed by three knocks on the street door,
+waking the echoes of the house. The reverberating blows told, as
+plainly as a cry for help that here was a man flying for his life. The
+house dog barked furiously. A thrill of excitement ran through Helene
+and Gustave and the General and his wife; but neither Abel, with the
+night-cap strings just tied under his chin, nor Moina awoke.
+
+"The fellow is in a hurry!" exclaimed the General. He put the little
+girl down on the chair, and hastened out of the room, heedless of his
+wife's entreating cry, "Dear, do not go down--"
+
+He stepped into his own room for a pair of pistols, lighted a dark
+lantern, sprang at lightning speed down the staircase, and in another
+minute reached the house door, his oldest boy fearlessly following.
+
+"Who is there?" demanded he.
+
+"Let me in," panted a breathless voice.
+
+"Are you a friend?"
+
+"Yes, friend,"
+
+"Are you alone?"
+
+"Yes! But let me in; _they_ are after me!"
+
+The General had scarcely set the door ajar before a man slipped into
+the porch with the uncanny swiftness of a shadow. Before the master of
+the house could prevent him, the intruder had closed the door with a
+well-directed kick, and set his back against it resolutely, as if he
+were determined that it should not be opened again. In a moment the
+General had his lantern and pistol at a level with the stranger's
+breast, and beheld a man of medium height in a fur-lined pelisse. It
+was an old man's garment, both too large and too long for its present
+wearer. Chance or caution had slouched the man's hat over his eyes.
+
+"You can lower your pistol, sir," said this person. "I do not claim to
+stay in your house against your will; but if I leave it, death is
+waiting for me at the barrier. And what a death! You would be
+answerable to God for it! I ask for your hospitality for two hours.
+And bear this in mind, sir, that, suppliant as I am, I have a right to
+command with the despotism of necessity. I want the Arab's
+hospitality. Either I and my secret must be inviolable, or open the
+door and I will go to my death. I want secrecy, a safe hiding-place,
+and water. Oh! water!" he cried again, with a rattle in his throat.
+
+"Who are you?" demanded the General, taken aback by the stranger's
+feverish volubility.
+
+"Ah! who am I? Good, open the door, and I will put a distance between
+us," retorted the other, and there was a diabolical irony in his tone.
+
+Dexterously as the Marquis passed the light of the lantern over the
+man's face, he could only see the lower half of it, and that in nowise
+prepossessed him in favor of this singular claimant of hospitality.
+The cheeks were livid and quivering, the features dreadfully
+contorted. Under the shadow of the hat-brim a pair of eyes gleamed out
+like flames; the feeble candle-light looked almost dim in comparison.
+Some sort of answer must be made however.
+
+"Your language, sir, is so extraordinary that in my place you
+yourself--"
+
+"My life is in your hands!" the intruder broke in. The sound of his
+voice was dreadful to hear.
+
+"Two hours?" said the Marquis, wavering.
+
+"Two hours," echoed the other.
+
+Then quite suddenly, with a desperate gesture, he pushed back his hat
+and left his forehead bare, and, as if he meant to try a final
+expedient, he gave the General a glance that seemed to plunge like a
+vivid flash into his very soul. That electrical discharge of
+intelligence and will was swift as lightning and crushing as a
+thunderbolt; for there are moments when a human being is invested for
+a brief space with inexplicable power.
+
+"Come, whoever you may be, you shall be in safety under my roof," the
+master of the house said gravely at last, acting, as he imagined, upon
+one of those intuitions which a man cannot always explain to himself.
+
+"God will repay you!" said the stranger, with a deep, involuntary
+sigh.
+
+"Have you weapons?" asked the General.
+
+For all answer the stranger flung open his fur pelisse, and scarcely
+gave the other time for a glance before he wrapped it about him again.
+To all appearance he was unarmed and in evening dress. Swift as the
+soldier's scrutiny had been, he saw something, however, which made him
+exclaim:
+
+"Where the devil have you been to get yourself in such a mess in such
+dry weather?"
+
+"More questions!" said the stranger haughtily.
+
+At the words the Marquis caught sight of his son, and his own late
+homily on the strict fulfilment of a given word came up to his mind.
+In lively vexation, he exclaimed, not without a touch of anger:
+
+"What! little rogue, you here when you ought to be in bed?"
+
+"Because I thought I might be of some good in danger," answered
+Gustave.
+
+"There, go up to your room," said his father, mollified by the reply.
+--"And you" (addressing the stranger), "come with me."
+
+The two men grew as silent as a pair of gamblers who watch each
+other's play with mutual suspicions. The General himself began to be
+troubled with ugly presentiments. The strange visit weighed upon his
+mind already like a nightmare; but he had passed his word, there was
+no help for it now, and he led the way along the passages and
+stairways till they reached a large room on the second floor
+immediately above the salon. This was an empty room where linen was
+dried in the winter. It had but the one door, and for all decoration
+boasted one solitary shabby looking-glass above the chimney-piece,
+left by the previous owner, and a great pier glass, placed
+provisionally opposite the fireplace until such time as a use should
+be found for it in the rooms below. The four yellowish walls were
+bare. The floor had never been swept. The huge attic was icy-cold, and
+the furniture consisted of a couple of rickety straw-bottomed chairs,
+or rather frames of chairs. The General set the lantern down upon the
+chimney-piece. Then he spoke:
+
+"It is necessary for your own safety to hide you in this comfortless
+attic. And, as you have my promise to keep your secret, you will
+permit me to lock you in."
+
+The other bent his head in acquiescence.
+
+"I asked for nothing but a hiding-place, secrecy, and water," returned
+he.
+
+"I will bring you some directly," said the Marquis, shutting the door
+cautiously. He groped his way down into the salon for a lamp before
+going to the kitchen to look for a carafe.
+
+"Well, what is it?" the Marquise asked quickly.
+
+"Nothing, dear," he returned coolly.
+
+"But we listened, and we certainly heard you go upstairs with
+somebody."
+
+"Helene," said the General, and he looked at his daughter, who raised
+her face, "bear in mind that your father's honor depends upon your
+discretion. You must have heard nothing."
+
+The girl bent her head in answer. The Marquise was confused and
+smarting inwardly at the way in which her husband had thought fit to
+silence her.
+
+Meanwhile the General went for the bottle and a tumbler, and returned
+to the room above. His prisoner was leaning against the chimney-piece,
+his head was bare, he had flung down his hat on one of the two chairs.
+Evidently he had not expected to have so bright a light turned upon
+him, and he frowned and looked anxious as he met the General's keen
+eyes; but his face softened and wore a gracious expression as he
+thanked his protector. When the latter placed the bottle and glass on
+the mantel-shelf, the stranger's eyes flashed out on him again; and
+when he spoke, it was in musical tones with no sign of the previous
+guttural convulsion, though his voice was still unsteady with
+repressed emotion.
+
+"I shall seem to you to be a strange being, sir, but you must pardon
+the caprices of necessity. If you propose to remain in the room, I beg
+that you will not look at me while I am drinking."
+
+Vexed at this continual obedience to a man whom he disliked, the
+General sharply turned his back upon him. The stranger thereupon drew
+a white handkerchief from his pocket and wound it about his right
+hand. Then he seized the carafe and emptied it at a draught. The
+Marquis, staring vacantly into the tall mirror across the room,
+without a thought of breaking his implicit promise, saw the stranger's
+figure distinctly reflected by the opposite looking-glass, and saw,
+too, a red stain suddenly appear through the folds of the white
+bandage. The man's hands were steeped in blood.
+
+"Ah! you saw me!" cried the other. He had drunk off the water and
+wrapped himself again in his cloak, and now scrutinized the General
+suspiciously. "It is all over with me! Here they come!"
+
+"I don't hear anything," said the Marquis.
+
+"You have not the same interest that I have in listening for sounds in
+the air."
+
+"You have been fighting a duel, I suppose, to be in such a state?"
+queried the General, not a little disturbed by the color of those
+broad, dark patches staining his visitor's cloak.
+
+"Yes, a duel; you have it," said the other, and a bitter smile flitted
+over his lips.
+
+As he spoke a sound rang along the distant road, a sound of galloping
+horses; but so faint as yet, that it was the merest dawn of a sound.
+The General's trained ear recognized the advance of a troop of
+regulars.
+
+"That is the gendarmerie," said he.
+
+He glanced at his prisoner to reassure him after his own involuntary
+indiscretion, took the lamp, and went down to the salon. He had
+scarcely laid the key of the room above upon the chimney-piece when
+the hoof beats sounded louder and came swiftly nearer and nearer the
+house. The General felt a shiver of excitement, and indeed the horses
+stopped at the house door; a few words were exchanged among the men,
+and one of them dismounted and knocked loudly. There was no help for
+it; the General went to open the door. He could scarcely conceal his
+inward perturbation at the sight of half a dozen gendarmes outside,
+the metal rims of their caps gleaming like silver in the moonlight.
+
+"My lord," said the corporal, "have you heard a man run past towards
+the barrier within the last few minutes?"
+
+"Towards the barrier? No."
+
+"Have you opened the door to any one?"
+
+"Now, am I in the habit of answering the door myself--"
+
+"I ask your pardon, General, but just now it seems to me that--"
+
+"Really!" cried the Marquis wrathfully. "Have you a mind to try joking
+with me? What right have you--?"
+
+"None at all, none at all, my lord," cried the corporal, hastily
+putting in a soft answer. "You will excuse our zeal. We know, of
+course, that a peer of France is not likely to harbor a murderer at
+this time of night; but as we want any information we can get--"
+
+"A murderer!" cried the General. "Who can have been--"
+
+"M. le Baron de Mauny has just been murdered. It was a blow from an
+axe, and we are in hot pursuit of the criminal. We know for certain
+that he is somewhere in this neighborhood, and we shall hunt him down.
+By your leave, General," and the man swung himself into the saddle as
+he spoke. It was well that he did so, for a corporal of gendarmerie
+trained to alert observation and quick surmise would have had his
+suspicions at once if he had caught sight of the General's face.
+Everything that passed through the soldier's mind was faithfully
+revealed in his frank countenance.
+
+"Is it known who the murderer is?" asked he.
+
+"No," said the other, now in the saddle. "He left the bureau full of
+banknotes and gold untouched."
+
+"It was revenge, then," said the Marquis.
+
+"On an old man? pshaw! No, no, the fellow hadn't time to take it, that
+was all," and the corporal galloped after his comrades, who were
+almost out of sight by this time.
+
+For a few minutes the General stood, a victim to perplexities which
+need no explanation; but in a moment he heard the servants returning
+home, their voices were raised in some sort of dispute at the
+cross-roads of Montreuil. When they came in, he gave vent to his
+feelings in an explosion of rage, his wrath fell upon them like a
+thunderbolt, and all the echoes of the house trembled at the sound
+of his voice. In the midst of the storm his own man, the boldest and
+cleverest of the party, brought out an excuse; they had been stopped,
+he said, by the gendarmerie at the gate of Montreuil, a murder had
+been committed, and the police were in pursuit. In a moment the
+General's anger vanished, he said not another word; then, bethinking
+himself of his own singular position, drily ordered them all off to
+bed at once, and left them amazed at his readiness to accept their
+fellow servant's lying excuse.
+
+While these incidents took place in the yard, an apparently trifling
+occurrence had changed the relative positions of three characters in
+this story. The Marquis had scarcely left the room before his wife
+looked first towards the key on the mantel-shelf, and then at Helene;
+and, after some wavering, bent towards her daughter and said in a low
+voice, "Helene your father has left the key on the chimney-piece."
+
+The girl looked up in surprise and glanced timidly at her mother. The
+Marquise's eyes sparkled with curiosity.
+
+"Well, mamma?" she said, and her voice had a troubled ring.
+
+"I should like to know what is going on upstairs. If there is anybody
+up there, he has not stirred yet. Just go up--"
+
+"_I_?" cried the girl, with something like horror in her tones.
+
+"Are you afraid?"
+
+"No, mamma, but I thought I heard a man's footsteps."
+
+"If I could go myself, I should not have asked you to go, Helene,"
+said her mother with cold dignity. "If your father were to come back
+and did not see me, he would go to look for me perhaps, but he would
+not notice your absence."
+
+"Madame, if you bid me go, I will go," said Helene, "but I shall lose
+my father's good opinion--"
+
+"What is this!" cried the Marquise in a sarcastic tone. "But since you
+take a thing that was said in joke in earnest, I now _order_ you to go
+upstairs and see who is in the room above. Here is the key, child.
+When your father told you to say nothing about this thing that
+happened, he did not forbid you to go up to the room. Go at once--and
+learn that a daughter ought never to judge her mother."
+
+The last words were spoken with all the severity of a justly offended
+mother. The Marquise took the key and handed it to Helene, who rose
+without a word and left the room.
+
+"My mother can always easily obtain her pardon," thought the girl;
+"but as for me, my father will never think the same of me again. Does
+she mean to rob me of his tenderness? Does she want to turn me out of
+his house?"
+
+These were the thoughts that set her imagination in a sudden ferment,
+as she went down the dark passage to the mysterious door at the end.
+When she stood before it, her mental confusion grew to a fateful
+pitch. Feelings hitherto forced down into inner depths crowded up at
+the summons of these confused thoughts. Perhaps hitherto she had never
+believed that a happy life lay before her, but now, in this awful
+moment, her despair was complete. She shook convulsively as she set
+the key in the lock; so great indeed was her agitation, that she
+stopped for a moment and laid her hand on her heart, as if to still
+the heavy throbs that sounded in her ears. Then she opened the door.
+
+The creaking of the hinges sounded doubtless in vain on the murderer's
+ears. Acute as were his powers of hearing, he stood as if lost in
+thought, and so motionless that he might have been glued to the wall
+against which he leaned. In the circle of semi-opaque darkness, dimly
+lit by the bull's-eye lantern, he looked like the shadowy figure of
+some dead knight, standing for ever in his shadowy mortuary niche in
+the gloom of some Gothic chapel. Drops of cold sweat trickled over the
+broad, sallow forehead. An incredible fearlessness looked out from
+every tense feature. His eyes of fire were fixed and tearless; he
+seemed to be watching some struggle in the darkness beyond him. Stormy
+thoughts passed swiftly across a face whose firm decision spoke of a
+character of no common order. His whole person, bearing, and frame
+bore out the impression of a tameless spirit. The man looked power and
+strength personified; he stood facing the darkness as if it were the
+visible image of his own future.
+
+These physical characteristics had made no impression upon the
+General, familiar as he was with the powerful faces of the group of
+giants gathered about Napoleon; speculative curiosity, moreover, as to
+the why and wherefore of the apparition had completely filled his
+mind; but Helene, with feminine sensitiveness to surface impressions,
+was struck by the blended chaos of light and darkness, grandeur and
+passion, suggesting a likeness between this stranger and Lucifer
+recovering from his fall. Suddenly the storm apparent in his face was
+stilled as if by magic; and the indefinable power to sway which the
+stranger exercised upon others, and perhaps unconsciously and as by
+reflex action upon himself, spread its influence about him with the
+progressive swiftness of a flood. A torrent of thought rolled away
+from his brow as his face resumed its ordinary expression. Perhaps it
+was the strangeness of this meeting, or perhaps it was the mystery
+into which she had penetrated, that held the young girl spellbound in
+the doorway, so that she could look at a face pleasant to behold and
+full of interest. For some moments she stood in the magical silence; a
+trouble had come upon her never known before in her young life.
+Perhaps some exclamation broke from Helene, perhaps she moved
+unconsciously; or it may be that the hunted criminal returned of his
+own accord from the world of ideas to the material world, and heard
+some one breathing in the room; however it was, he turned his head
+towards his host's daughter, and saw dimly in the shadow a noble face
+and queenly form, which he must have taken for an angel's, so
+motionless she stood, so vague and like a spirit.
+
+"Monsieur . . ." a trembling voice cried.
+
+The murderer trembled.
+
+"A woman!" he cried under his breath. "Is it possible? Go," he cried,
+"I deny that any one has a right to pity, to absolve, or condemn me. I
+must live alone. Go, my child," he added, with an imperious gesture,
+"I should ill requite the service done me by the master of the house
+if I were to allow a single creature under his roof to breathe the
+same air with me. I must submit to be judged by the laws of the
+world."
+
+The last words were uttered in a lower voice. Even as he realized with
+a profound intuition all the manifold misery awakened by that
+melancholy thought, the glance that he gave Helene had something of
+the power of the serpent, stirring a whole dormant world in the mind
+of the strange girl before him. To her that glance was like a light
+revealing unknown lands. She was stricken with strange trouble,
+helpless, quelled by a magnetic power exerted unconsciously. Trembling
+and ashamed, she went out and returned to the salon. She had scarcely
+entered the room before her father came back, so that she had not time
+to say a word to her mother.
+
+The General was wholly absorbed in thought. He folded his arms, and
+paced silently to and fro between the windows which looked out upon
+the street and the second row which gave upon the garden. His wife lay
+the sleeping Abel on her knee, and little Moina lay in untroubled
+slumber in the low chair, like a bird in its nest. Her older sister
+stared into the fire, a skein of silk in one hand, a needle in the
+other.
+
+Deep silence prevailed, broken only by lagging footsteps on the
+stairs, as one by one the servants crept away to bed; there was an
+occasional burst of stifled laughter, a last echo of the wedding
+festivity, or doors were opened as they still talked among themselves,
+then shut. A smothered sound came now and again from the bedrooms, a
+chair fell, the old coachman coughed feebly, then all was silent.
+
+In a little while the dark majesty with which sleeping earth is
+invested at midnight brought all things under its sway. No lights
+shone but the light of the stars. The frost gripped the ground. There
+was not a sound of a voice, nor a living creature stirring. The
+crackling of the fire only seemed to make the depth of the silence
+more fully felt.
+
+The church clock of Montreuil had just struck one, when an almost
+inaudible sound of a light footstep came from the second flight of
+stairs. The Marquis and his daughter, both believing that M. de
+Mauny's murderer was a prisoner above, thought that one of the maids
+had come down, and no one was at all surprised to hear the door open
+in the ante-chamber. Quite suddenly the murderer appeared in their
+midst. The Marquis himself was sunk in deep musings, the mother and
+daughter were silent, the one from keen curiosity, the other from
+sheer astonishment, so that the visitor was almost half-way across the
+room when he spoke to the General.
+
+"Sir, the two hours are almost over," he said, in a voice that was
+strangely calm and musical.
+
+"_You here_!" cried the General. "By what means----?" and he gave wife
+and daughter a formidable questioning glance. Helene grew red as fire.
+
+"You!" he went on, in a tone filled with horror. "_You_ among us! A
+murderer covered with blood! You are a blot on this picture! Go, go
+out!" he added in a burst of rage.
+
+At that word "murderer," the Marquise cried out; as for Helene, it
+seemed to mark an epoch in her life, there was not a trace of surprise
+in her face. She looked as if she had been waiting for this--for him.
+Those so vast thoughts of hers had found a meaning. The punishment
+reserved by Heaven for her sins flamed out before her. In her own eyes
+she was as great a criminal as this murderer; she confronted him with
+her quiet gaze; she was his fellow, his sister. It seemed to her that
+in this accident the command of God had been made manifest. If she had
+been a few years older, reason would have disposed of her remorse, but
+at this moment she was like one distraught.
+
+The stranger stood impassive and self-possessed; a scornful smile
+overspread his features and his thick, red lips.
+
+"You appreciate the magnanimity of my behavior very badly," he said
+slowly. "I would not touch with my fingers the glass of water you
+brought me to allay my thirst; I did not so much as think of washing
+my blood-stained hands under your roof; I am going away, leaving
+nothing of _my crime_" (here his lips were compressed) "but the
+memory; I have tried to leave no trace of my presence in this house.
+Indeed, I would not even allow your daughter to--"
+
+"_My daughter_!" cried the General, with a horror-stricken glance at
+Helene. "Vile wretch, go, or I will kill you--"
+
+"The two hours are not yet over," said the other; "if you kill me or
+give me up, you must lower yourself in your own eyes--and in mine."
+
+At these last words, the General turned to stare at the criminal in
+dumb amazement; but he could not endure the intolerable light in those
+eyes which for the second time disorganized his being. He was afraid
+of showing weakness once more, conscious as he was that his will was
+weaker already.
+
+"An old man! You can never have seen a family," he said, with a
+father's glance at his wife and children.
+
+"Yes, an old man," echoed the stranger, frowning slightly.
+
+"Fly!" cried the General, but he did not dare to look at his guest.
+"Our compact is broken. I shall not kill you. No! I will never be
+purveyor to the scaffold. But go out. You make us shudder."
+
+"I know that," said the other patiently. "There is not a spot on
+French soil where I can set foot and be safe; but if man's justice,
+like God's, took all into account, if man's justice deigned to inquire
+which was the monster--the murderer or his victim--then I might hold
+up my head among my fellows. Can you not guess that other crimes
+preceded that blow from an axe? I constituted myself his judge and
+executioner; I stepped in where man's justice failed. That was my
+crime. Farewell, sir. Bitter though you have made your hospitality, I
+shall not forget it. I shall always bear in my heart a feeling of
+gratitude towards one man in the world, and you are that man. . . .
+But I could wish that you had showed yourself more generous!"
+
+He turned towards the door, but in the same instant Helene leaned to
+whisper something in her mother's ear.
+
+"Ah! . . ."
+
+At the cry that broke from his wife, the General trembled as if he had
+seen Moina lying dead. There stood Helene and the murderer had turned
+instinctively, with something like anxiety about these folk in his
+face.
+
+"What is it, dear?" asked the General.
+
+"Helene wants to go with him."
+
+The murderer's face flushed.
+
+"If that is how my mother understands an almost involuntary
+exclamation," Helene said in a low voice, "I will fulfil her wishes.
+She glanced about her with something like fierce pride; then the
+girl's eyes fell, and she stood, admirable in her modesty.
+
+"Helene, did you go up to the room where----?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"Helene" (and his voice shook with a convulsive tremor), "is this the
+first time that you have seen this man?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"Then it is not natural that you should intend to--"
+
+"If it is not natural, father, at any rate it is true."
+
+"Oh! child," said the Marquise, lowering her voice, but not so much
+but that her husband could hear her, "you are false to all the
+principles of honor, modesty, and right which I have tried to
+cultivate in your heart. If until this fatal hour you life has only
+been one lie, there is nothing to regret in your loss. It can hardly
+be the moral perfection of this stranger that attracts you to him? Can
+it be the kind of power that commits crime? I have too good an opinion
+of you to suppose that--"
+
+"Oh, suppose everything, madame," Helene said coldly.
+
+But though her force of character sustained this ordeal, her flashing
+eyes could scarcely hold the tears that filled them. The stranger,
+watching her, guessed the mother's language from the girl's tears, and
+turned his eagle glance upon the Marquise. An irresistible power
+constrained her to look at this terrible seducer; but as her eyes met
+his bright, glittering gaze, she felt a shiver run through her frame,
+such a shock as we feel at the sight of a reptile or the contact of a
+Leyden jar.
+
+"Dear!" she cried, turning to her husband, "this is the Fiend himself.
+He can divine everything!"
+
+The General rose to his feet and went to the bell.
+
+"He means ruin for you," Helene said to the murderer.
+
+The stranger smiled, took one forward stride, grasped the General's
+arm, and compelled him to endure a steady gaze which benumbed the
+soldier's brain and left him powerless.
+
+"I will repay you now for your hospitality," he said, "and then we
+shall be quits. I will spare you the shame by giving myself up. After
+all, what should I do now with my life?"
+
+"You could repent," answered Helene, and her glance conveyed such hope
+as only glows in a young girl's eyes.
+
+"_I shall never repent_," said the murderer in a sonorous voice, as he
+raised his head proudly.
+
+"His hands are stained with blood," the father said.
+
+"I will wipe it away," she answered.
+
+"But do you so much as know whether he cares for you?" said her
+father, not daring now to look at the stranger.
+
+The murderer came up a little nearer. Some light within seemed to glow
+through Helene's beauty, grave and maidenly though it was, coloring
+and bringing into relief, as it were, the least details, the most
+delicate lines in her face. The stranger, with that terrible face
+still blazing in his eyes, gave one tender glance to her enchanting
+loveliness, then he spoke, his tones revealing how deeply he had been
+moved.
+
+"And if I refuse to allow this sacrifice of yourself, and so discharge
+my debt of two hours of existence to your father; is not this love,
+love for yourself alone?"
+
+"Then do you too reject me?" Helene's cry rang painfully through the
+hearts of all who heard her. "Farewell, then, to you all; I will die."
+
+"What does this mean?" asked the father and mother.
+
+Helene gave her mother an eloquent glance and lowered her eyes.
+
+Since the first attempt made by the General and his wife to contest by
+word or action the intruder's strange presumption to the right of
+staying in their midst, from their first experience of the power of
+those glittering eyes, a mysterious torpor had crept over them, and
+their benumbed faculties struggled in vain with the preternatural
+influence. The air seemed to have suddenly grown so heavy, that they
+could scarcely breathe; yet, while they could not find the reason of
+this feeling of oppression, a voice within told them that this
+magnetic presence was the real cause of their helplessness. In this
+moral agony, it flashed across the General that he must make every
+effort to overcome this influence on his daughter's reeling brain; he
+caught her by the waist and drew her into the embrasure of a window,
+as far as possible from the murderer.
+
+"Darling," he murmured, "if some wild love has been suddenly born in
+your heart, I cannot believe that you have not the strength of soul to
+quell the mad impulse; your innocent life, your pure and dutiful soul,
+has given me too many proofs of your character. There must be
+something behind all this. Well, this heart of mine is full of
+indulgence, you can tell everything to me; even if it breaks, dear
+child, I can be silent about my grief, and keep your confession a
+secret. What is it? Are you jealous of our love for your brothers or
+your little sister? Is it some love trouble? Are you unhappy here at
+home? Tell me about it, tell me the reasons that urge you to leave
+your home, to rob it of its greatest charm, to leave your mother and
+brothers and your little sister?"
+
+"I am in love with no one, father, and jealous of no one, not even of
+your friend the diplomatist, M. de Vandenesse."
+
+The Marquise turned pale; her daughter saw this, and stopped short.
+
+"Sooner or later I must live under some man's protection, must I not?"
+
+"That is true."
+
+"Do we ever know," she went on, "the human being to whom we link our
+destinies? Now, I believe in this man."
+
+"Oh, child," said the General, raising his voice, "you have no idea of
+all the misery that lies in store for you."
+
+"I am thinking of _his_."
+
+"What a life!" groaned the father.
+
+"A woman's life," the girl murmured.
+
+"You have a great knowledge of life!" exclaimed the Marquise, finding
+speech at last.
+
+"Madame, my answers are shaped by the questions; but if you desire it,
+I will speak more clearly."
+
+"Speak out, my child . . . I am a mother."
+
+Mother and daughter looked each other in the face, and the Marquise
+said no more. At last she said:
+
+"Helene, if you have any reproaches to make, I would rather bear them
+than see you go away with a man from whom the whole world shrinks in
+horror."
+
+"Then you see yourself, madame, that but for me he would be quite
+alone."
+
+"That will do, madame," the General cried; "we have but one daughter
+left to us now," and he looked at Moina, who slept on. "As for you,"
+he added, turning to Helene, "I will put you in a convent."
+
+"So be it, father," she said, in calm despair, "I shall die there. You
+are answerable to God alone for my life and for _his_ soul."
+
+A deep sullen silence fell after these words. The on-lookers during
+this strange scene, so utterly at variance with all the sentiments of
+ordinary life, shunned each other's eyes.
+
+Suddenly the Marquis happened to glance at his pistols. He caught up
+one of them, cocked the weapon, and pointed it at the intruder. At the
+click of firearms the other turned his piercing gaze full upon the
+General; the soldier's arm slackened indescribably and fell heavily to
+his side. The pistol dropped to the floor.
+
+"Girl, you are free," said he, exhausted by this ghastly struggle.
+"Kiss your mother, if she will let you kiss her. For my own part, I
+wish never to see nor to hear of you again."
+
+"Helene," the mother began, "only think of the wretched life before
+you."
+
+A sort of rattling sound came from the intruder's deep chest, all eyes
+were turned to him. Disdain was plainly visible in his face.
+
+The General rose to his feet. "My hospitality has cost me dear," he
+cried. "Before you came you had taken an old man's life; now your are
+dealing a deadly blow at a whole family. Whatever happens, there must
+be unhappiness in this house."
+
+"And if your daughter is happy?" asked the other, gazing steadily at
+the General.
+
+The father made a superhuman effort for self-control. "If she is happy
+with you," he said, "she is not worth regretting."
+
+Helene knelt timidly before her father.
+
+"Father, I love and revere you," she said, "whether you lavish all the
+treasures of your kindness upon me, or make me feel to the full the
+rigor of disgrace. . . . But I entreat that your last words of
+farewell shall not be words of anger."
+
+The General could not trust himself to look at her. The stranger came
+nearer; there was something half-diabolical, half-divine in the smile
+that he gave Helene.
+
+"Angel of pity, you that do not shrink in horror from a murderer,
+come, since you persist in your resolution of intrusting your life to
+me."
+
+"Inconceivable!" cried her father.
+
+The Marquise then looked strangely at her daughter, opened her arms,
+and Helene fled to her in tears.
+
+"Farewell," she said, "farewell, mother!" The stranger trembled as
+Helene, undaunted, made sign to him that she was ready. She kissed her
+father's hand; and, as if performing a duty, gave a hasty kiss to
+Moina and little Abel, then she vanished with the murderer.
+
+"Which way are they going?" exclaimed the General, listening to the
+footsteps of the two fugitives.--"Madame," he turned to his wife, "I
+think I must be dreaming; there is some mystery behind all this, I do
+not understand it; you must know what it means."
+
+The Marquise shivered.
+
+"For some time past your daughter has grown extraordinarily romantic
+and strangely high-flown in her ideas. In spite of the pains I have
+taken to combat these tendencies in her character--"
+
+"This will not do----" began the General, but fancying that he heard
+footsteps in the garden, he broke off to fling open the window.
+
+"Helene!" he shouted.
+
+His voice was lost in the darkness like a vain prophecy. The utterance
+of that name, to which there should never be answer any more, acted
+like a counterspell; it broke the charm and set him free from the evil
+enchantment which lay upon him. It was as if some spirit passed over
+his face. He now saw clearly what had taken place, and cursed his
+incomprehensible weakness. A shiver of heat rushed from his heart to
+his head and feet; he became himself once more, terrible, thirsting
+for revenge. He raised a dreadful cry.
+
+"Help!" he thundered, "help!"
+
+He rushed to the bell-pull, pulled till the bells rang with a strange
+clamor of din, pulled till the cord gave way. The whole house was
+roused with a start. Still shouting, he flung open the windows that
+looked upon the street, called for the police, caught up his pistols,
+and fired them off to hurry the mounted patrols, the newly-aroused
+servants, and the neighbors. The dogs barked at the sound of their
+master's voice; the horses neighed and stamped in their stalls. The
+quiet night was suddenly filled with hideous uproar. The General on
+the staircase, in pursuit of his daughter, saw the scared faces of the
+servants flocking from all parts of the house.
+
+"My daughter!" he shouted. "Helene has been carried off. Search the
+garden. Keep a lookout on the road! Open the gates for the
+gendarmerie!--Murder! Help!"
+
+With the strength of fury he snapped the chain and let loose the great
+house-dog.
+
+"Helene!" he cried, "Helene!"
+
+The dog sprang out like a lion, barking furiously, and dashed into the
+garden, leaving the General far behind. A troop of horses came along
+the road at a gallop, and he flew to open the gates himself.
+
+"Corporal!" he shouted, "cut off the retreat of M. de Mauny's
+murderer. They have gone through my garden. Quick! Put a cordon of men
+to watch the ways by the Butte de Picardie.--I will beat up the
+grounds, parks, and houses.--The rest of you keep a lookout along the
+road," he ordered the servants, "form a chain between the barrier and
+Versailles. Forward, every man of you!"
+
+He caught up the rifle which his man had brought out, and dashed into
+the garden.
+
+"Find them!" he called to the dog.
+
+An ominous baying came in answer from the distance, and he plunged in
+the direction from which the growl seemed to come.
+
+It was seven o'clock in the morning; all the search made by gendarmes,
+servants, and neighbors had been fruitless, and the dog had not come
+back. The General entered the salon, empty now for him though the
+other three children were there; he was worn out with fatigue, and
+looked old already with that night's work.
+
+"You have been very cold to your daughter," he said, turning his eyes
+on his wife.--"And now this is all that is left to us of her," he
+added, indicating the embroidery frame, and the flower just begun.
+"Only just now she was there, and now she is lost . . . lost!"
+
+Tears followed; he hid his face in his hands, and for a few minutes he
+said no more; he could not bear the sight of the room, which so short
+a time ago had made a setting to a picture of the sweetest family
+happiness. The winter dawn was struggling with the dying lamplight;
+the tapers burned down to their paper-wreaths and flared out;
+everything was all in keeping with the father's despair.
+
+"This must be destroyed," he said after a pause, pointing to the
+tambour-frame. "I shall never bear to see anything again that reminds
+us of _her_!"
+
+The terrible Christmas night when the Marquis and his wife lost their
+oldest daughter, powerless to oppose the mysterious influence
+exercised by the man who involuntarily, as it were, stole Helene from
+them, was like a warning sent by Fate. The Marquis was ruined by the
+failure of his stock-broker; he borrowed money on his wife's property,
+and lost it in the endeavor to retrieve his fortunes. Driven to
+desperate expedients, he left France. Six years went by. His family
+seldom had news of him; but a few days before Spain recognized the
+independence of the American Republics, he wrote that he was coming
+home.
+
+So, one fine morning, it happened that several French merchants were
+on board a Spanish brig that lay a few leagues out from Bordeaux,
+impatient to reach their native land again, with wealth acquired by
+long years of toil and perilous adventures in Venezuela and Mexico.
+
+One of the passengers, a man who looked aged by trouble rather than by
+years, was leaning against the bulwark netting, apparently quite
+unaffected by the sight to be seen from the upper deck. The bright
+day, the sense that the voyage was safely over, had brought all the
+passengers above to greet their land. The larger number of them
+insisted that they could see, far off in the distance, the houses and
+lighthouses on the coast of Gascony and the Tower of Cardouan, melting
+into the fantastic erections of white cloud along the horizon. But for
+the silver fringe that played about their bows, and the long furrow
+swiftly effaced in their wake, they might have been perfectly still in
+mid-ocean, so calm was the sea. The sky was magically clear, the dark
+blue of the vault above paled by imperceptible gradations, until it
+blended with the bluish water, a gleaming line that sparkled like
+stars marking the dividing line of sea. The sunlight caught myriads of
+facets over the wide surface of the ocean, in such a sort that the
+vast plains of salt water looked perhaps more full of light than the
+fields of sky.
+
+The brig had set all her canvas. The snowy sails, swelled by the
+strangely soft wind, the labyrinth of cordage, and the yellow flags
+flying at the masthead, all stood out sharp and uncompromisingly clear
+against the vivid background of space, sky, and sea; there was nothing
+to alter the color but the shadow cast by the great cloudlike sails.
+
+A glorious day, a fair wind, and the fatherland in sight, a sea like a
+mill-pond, the melancholy sound of the ripples, a fair, solitary
+vessel, gliding across the surface of the water like a woman stealing
+out to a tryst--it was a picture full of harmony. That mere speck full
+of movement was a starting-point whence the soul of man could descry
+the immutable vast of space. Solitude and bustling life, silence and
+sound, were all brought together in strange abrupt contrast; you could
+not tell where life, or sound, or silence, and nothingness lay, and no
+human voice broke the divine spell.
+
+The Spanish captain, the crew, and the French passengers sat or stood,
+in a mood of devout ecstasy, in which many memories blended. There was
+idleness in the air. The beaming faces told of complete forgetfulness
+of past hardships, the men were rocked on the fair vessel as in a
+golden dream. Yet, from time to time the elderly passenger, leaning
+over the bulwark nettings, looked with something like uneasiness at
+the horizon. Distrust of the ways of Fate could be read in his whole
+face; he seemed to fear that he should not reach the coast of France
+in time. This was the Marquis. Fortune had not been deaf to his
+despairing cry and struggles. After five years of endeavor and painful
+toil, he was a wealthy man once more. In his impatience to reach his
+home again and to bring the good news to his family, he had followed
+the example set by some French merchants in Havana, and embarked with
+them on a Spanish vessel with a cargo for Bordeaux. And now, grown
+tired of evil forebodings, his fancy was tracing out for him the most
+delicious pictures of past happiness. In that far-off brown line of
+land he seemed to see his wife and children. He sat in his place by
+the fireside; they were crowding about him; he felt their caresses.
+Moina had grown to be a young girl; she was beautiful, and tall, and
+striking. The fancied picture had grown almost real, when the tears
+filled his eyes, and, to hide his emotion, he turned his face towards
+the sea-line, opposite the hazy streak that meant land.
+
+"There she is again. . . . She is following us!" he said.
+
+"What?" cried the Spanish captain.
+
+"There is a vessel," muttered the General.
+
+"I saw her yesterday," answered Captain Gomez. He looked at his
+interlocutor as if to ask what he thought; then he added in the
+General's ear, "She has been chasing us all along."
+
+"Then why she has not come up with us, I do not know," said the
+General, "for she is a faster sailor than your damned
+_Saint-Ferdinand_."
+
+"She will have damaged herself, sprung a leak--"
+
+"She is gaining on us!" the General broke in.
+
+"She is a Columbian privateer," the captain said in his ear, "and we
+are still six leagues from land, and the wind is dropping."
+
+"She is not _going_ ahead, she is flying, as if she knew that in two
+hours' time her prey would escape her. What audacity!"
+
+"Audacity!" cried the captain. "Oh! she is not called the _Othello_
+for nothing. Not so long back she sank a Spanish frigate that carried
+thirty guns! This is the one thing I was afraid of, for I had a notion
+that she was cruising about somewhere off the Antilles.--Aha!" he
+added after a pause, as he watched the sails of his own vessel, "the
+wind is rising; we are making way. Get through we must, for 'the
+Parisian' will show us no mercy."
+
+"She is making way too!" returned the General.
+
+The _Othello_ was scarce three leagues away by this time; and although
+the conversation between the Marquis and Captain Gomez had taken place
+apart, passengers and crew, attracted by the sudden appearance of a
+sail, came to that side of the vessel. With scarcely an exception,
+however, they took the privateer for a merchantman, and watched her
+course with interest, till all at once a sailor shouted with some
+energy of language:
+
+"By Saint-James, it is all up with us! Yonder is the Parisian
+captain!"
+
+At that terrible name dismay, and a panic impossible to describe,
+spread through the brig. The Spanish captain's orders put energy into
+the crew for a while; and in his resolute determination to make land
+at all costs, he set all the studding sails, and crowded on every
+stitch of canvas on board. But all this was not the work of a moment;
+and naturally the men did not work together with that wonderful
+unanimity so fascinating to watch on board a man-of-war. The _Othello_
+meanwhile, thanks to the trimming of her sails, flew over the water
+like a swallow; but she was making, to all appearance, so little
+headway, that the unlucky Frenchmen began to entertain sweet delusive
+hopes. At last, after unheard-of efforts, the _Saint-Ferdinand_ sprang
+forward, Gomez himself directing the shifting of the sheets with voice
+and gesture, when all at once the man at the tiller, steering at
+random (purposely, no doubt), swung the vessel round. The wind
+striking athwart the beam, the sails shivered so unexpectedly that the
+brig heeled to one side, the booms were carried away, and the vessel
+was completely out of hand. The captain's face grew whiter than his
+sails with unutterable rage. He sprang upon the man at the tiller,
+drove his dagger at him in such blind fury, that he missed him, and
+hurled the weapon overboard. Gomez took the helm himself, and strove
+to right the gallant vessel. Tears of despair rose to his eyes, for it
+is harder to lose the result of our carefully-laid plans through
+treachery than to face imminent death. But the more the captain swore,
+the less the men worked, and it was he himself who fired the alarm-gun,
+hoping to be heard on shore. The privateer, now gaining hopelessly
+upon them, replied with a cannon-shot, which struck the water ten
+fathoms away from the _Saint-Ferdinand_.
+
+"Thunder of heaven!" cried the General, "that was a close shave! They
+must have guns made on purpose."
+
+"Oh! when that one yonder speaks, look you, you have to hold your
+tongue," said a sailor. "The Parisian would not be afraid to meet an
+English man-of-war."
+
+"It is all over with us," the captain cried in desperation; he had
+pointed his telescope landwards, and saw not a sign from the shore.
+"We are further from the coast than I thought."
+
+"Why do you despair?" asked the General. "All your passengers are
+Frenchmen; they have chartered your vessel. The privateer is a
+Parisian, you say? Well and good, run up the white flag, and--"
+
+"And he would run us down," retorted the captain. "He can be anything
+he likes when he has a mind to seize on a rich booty!"
+
+"Oh! if he is a pirate--"
+
+"Pirate!" said the ferocious looking sailor. "Oh! he always has the
+law on his side, or he knows how to be on the same side as the law."
+
+"Very well," said the General, raising his eyes, "let us make up our
+minds to it," and his remaining fortitude was still sufficient to keep
+back the tears.
+
+The words were hardly out of his mouth before a second cannon-shot,
+better aimed, came crashing through the hull of the _Saint-Ferdinand_.
+
+"Heave to!" cried the captain gloomily.
+
+The sailor who had commended the Parisian's law-abiding proclivities
+showed himself a clever hand at working a ship after this desperate
+order was given. The crew waited for half an hour in an agony of
+suspense and the deepest dismay. The _Saint-Ferdinand_ had four
+millions of piastres on board, the whole fortunes of the five
+passengers, and the General's eleven hundred thousand francs. At
+length the _Othello_ lay not ten gunshots away, so that those on the
+_Saint-Ferdinand_ could look into the muzzles of her loaded guns. The
+vessel seemed to be borne along by a breeze sent by the Devil himself,
+but the eyes of an expert would have discovered the secret of her
+speed at once. You had but to look for a moment at the rake of her
+stern, her long, narrow keel, her tall masts, to see the cut of her
+sails, the wonderful lightness of her rigging, and the ease and
+perfect seamanship with which her crew trimmed her sails to the wind.
+Everything about her gave the impression of the security of power in
+this delicately curved inanimate creature, swift and intelligent as a
+greyhound or some bird of prey. The privateer crew stood silent, ready
+in case of resistance to shatter the wretched merchantman, which,
+luckily for her, remained motionless, like a schoolboy caught in
+flagrant delict by a master.
+
+"We have guns on board!" cried the General, clutching the Spanish
+captain's hand. But the courage in Gomez's eyes was the courage of
+despair.
+
+"Have we men?" he said.
+
+The Marquis looked round at the crew of the _Saint-Ferdinand_, and a
+cold chill ran through him. There stood the four merchants, pale and
+quaking for fear, while the crew gathered about some of their own
+number who appeared to be arranging to go over in a body to the enemy.
+They watched the _Othello_ with greed and curiosity in their faces.
+The captain, the Marquis, and the mate exchanged glances; they were
+the only three who had a thought for any but themselves.
+
+"Ah! Captain Gomez, when I left my home and country, my heart was half
+dead with the bitterness of parting, and now must I bid it good-bye
+once more when I am bringing back happiness and ease for my children?"
+
+The General turned his head away towards the sea, with tears of rage
+in his eyes--and saw the steersman swimming out to the privateer.
+
+"This time it will be good-bye for good," said the captain by way of
+answer, and the dazed look in the Frenchman's eyes startled the
+Spaniard.
+
+By this time the two vessels were almost alongside, and at the first
+sight of the enemy's crew the General saw that Gomez's gloomy prophecy
+was only too true. The three men at each gun might have been bronze
+statues, standing like athletes, with their rugged features, their
+bare sinewy arms, men whom Death himself had scarcely thrown off their
+feet.
+
+The rest of the crew, well armed, active, light, and vigorous, also
+stood motionless. Toil had hardened, and the sun had deeply tanned,
+those energetic faces; their eyes glittered like sparks of fire with
+infernal glee and clear-sighted courage. Perfect silence on the upper
+deck, now black with men, bore abundant testimony to the rigorous
+discipline and strong will which held these fiends incarnate in check.
+
+The captain of the _Othello_ stood with folded arms at the foot of the
+main mast; he carried no weapons, but an axe lay on the deck beside
+him. His face was hidden by the shadow of a broad felt hat. The men
+looked like dogs crouching before their master. Gunners, soldiers, and
+ship's crew turned their eyes first on his face, and then on the
+merchant vessel.
+
+The two brigs came up alongside, and the shock of contact roused the
+privateer captain from his musings; he spoke a word in the ear of the
+lieutenant who stood beside him.
+
+"Grappling-irons!" shouted the latter, and the _Othello_ grappled the
+_Saint-Ferdinand_ with miraculous quickness. The captain of the
+privateer gave his orders in a low voice to the lieutenant, who
+repeated them; the men, told off in succession for each duty, went on
+the upper deck of the _Saint-Ferdinand_, like seminarists going to
+mass. They bound crew and passengers hand and foot and seized the
+booty. In the twinkling of an eye, provisions and barrels full of
+piastres were transferred to the _Othello_; the General thought that
+he must be dreaming when he himself, likewise bound, was flung down on
+a bale of goods as if he had been part of the cargo.
+
+A brief conference took place between the captain of the privateer and
+his lieutenant and a sailor, who seemed to be the mate of the vessel;
+then the mate gave a whistle, and the men jumped on board the
+_Saint-Ferdinand_, and completely dismantled her with the nimble
+dexterity of a soldier who strips a dead comrade of a coveted overcoat
+and shoes.
+
+"It is all over with us," said the Spanish captain coolly. He had eyed
+the three chiefs during their confabulation, and saw that the sailors
+were proceeding to pull his vessel to pieces.
+
+"Why so?" asked the General.
+
+"What would you have them do with us?" returned the Spaniard. "They
+have just come to the conclusion that they will scarcely sell the
+_Saint-Ferdinand_ in any French or Spanish port, so they are going to
+sink her to be rid of her. As for us, do you suppose that they will
+put themselves to the expense of feeding us, when they don't know what
+port they are to put into?"
+
+The words were scarcely out of the captain's mouth before a hideous
+outcry went up, followed by a dull splashing sound, as several bodies
+were thrown overboard. He turned, the four merchants were no longer to
+be seen, but eight ferocious-looking gunners were still standing with
+their arms raised above their heads. He shuddered.
+
+"What did I tell you?" the Spanish captain asked coolly.
+
+The Marquis rose to his feet with a spring. The surface of the sea was
+quite smooth again; he could not so much as see the place where his
+unhappy fellow-passengers had disappeared. By this time they were
+sinking down, bound hand and foot, below the waves, if, indeed, the
+fish had not devoured them already.
+
+Only a few paces away, the treacherous steersman and the sailor who
+had boasted of the Parisian's power were fraternizing with the crew of
+the _Othello_, and pointing out those among their own number, who, in
+their opinion, were worthy to join the crew of the privateer. Then the
+boys tied the rest together by the feet in spite of frightful oaths.
+It was soon over; the eight gunners seized the doomed men and flung
+them overboard without more ado, watching the different ways in which
+the drowning victims met their death, their contortions, their last
+agony, with a sort of malignant curiosity, but with no sign of
+amusement, surprise, or pity. For them it was an ordinary event to
+which seemingly they were quite accustomed. The older men looked
+instead with grim, set smiles at the casks of piastres about the main
+mast.
+
+The General and Captain Gomez, left seated on a bale of goods,
+consulted each other with well-nigh hopeless looks; they were, in a
+sense, the sole survivors of the _Saint-Ferdinand_, for the seven men
+pointed out by the spies were transformed amid rejoicings into
+Peruvians.
+
+"What atrocious villains!" the General cried. Loyal and generous
+indignation silenced prudence and pain on his own account.
+
+"They do it because they must," Gomez answered coolly. "If you came
+across one of those fellows, you would run him through the body, would
+you not?"
+
+The lieutenant now came up to the Spaniard.
+
+"Captain," said he, "the Parisian has heard of you. He says that you
+are the only man who really knows the passages of the Antilles and the
+Brazilian coast. Will you--"
+
+The captain cut him short with a scornful exclamation.
+
+"I shall die like a sailor," he said, "and a loyal Spaniard and a
+Christian. Do you hear?"
+
+"Heave him overboard!" shouted the lieutenant, and a couple of gunners
+seized on Gomez.
+
+"You cowards!" roared the General, seizing hold of the men.
+
+"Don't get too excited, old boy," said the lieutenant. "If your red
+ribbon has made some impression upon our captain, I myself do not care
+a rap for it.--You and I will have our little bit of talk together
+directly."
+
+A smothered sound, with no accompanying cry, told the General that the
+gallant captain had died "like a sailor," as he had said.
+
+"My money or death!" cried the Marquis, in a fit of rage terrible to
+see.
+
+"Ah! now you talk sensibly!" sneered the lieutenant. "That is the way
+to get something out of us----"
+
+Two of the men came up at a sign and hastened to bind the Frenchmen's
+feet, but with unlooked-for boldness he snatched the lieutenant's
+cutlass and laid about him like a cavalry officer who knows his
+business.
+
+"Brigands that you are! You shall not chuck one of Napoleon's troopers
+over a ship's side like an oyster!"
+
+At the sound of pistol shots fired point blank at the Frenchman, "the
+Parisian" looked round from his occupation of superintending the
+transfer of the rigging from the _Saint-Ferdinand_. He came up behind
+the brave General, seized him, dragged him to the side, and was about
+to fling him over with no more concern than if the man had been a
+broken spar. They were at the very edge when the General looked into
+the tawny eyes of the man who had stolen his daughter. The recognition
+was mutual.
+
+The captain of the privateer, his arm still upraised, suddenly swung
+it in the contrary direction as if his victim was but a feather
+weight, and set him down at the foot of the main mast. A murmur rose
+on the upper deck, but the captain glanced round, and there was a
+sudden silence.
+
+"This is Helene's father," said the captain in a clear, firm voice.
+"Woe to any one who meddles with him!"
+
+A hurrah of joy went up at the words, a shout rising to the sky like a
+prayer of the church; a cry like the first high notes of the _Te
+Deum_. The lads swung aloft in the rigging, the men below flung up
+their caps, the gunners pounded away on the deck, there was a general
+thrill of excitement, an outburst of oaths, yells, and shrill cries in
+voluble chorus. The men cheered like fanatics, the General's
+misgivings deepened, and he grew uneasy; it seemed to him that there
+was some horrible mystery in such wild transports.
+
+"My daughter!" he cried, as soon as he could speak. "Where is my
+daughter?"
+
+For all answer, the captain of the privateer gave him a searching
+glance, one of those glances which throw the bravest man into a
+confusion which no theory can explain. The General was mute, not a
+little to the satisfaction of the crew; it pleased them to see their
+leader exercise the strange power which he possessed over all with
+whom he came in contact. Then the captain led the way down a staircase
+and flung open the door of a cabin.
+
+"There she is," he said, and disappeared, leaving the General in a
+stupor of bewilderment at the scene before his eyes.
+
+Helene cried out at the sight of him, and sprang up from the sofa on
+which she was lying when the door flew open. So changed was she that
+none but a father's eyes could have recognized her. The sun of the
+tropics had brought warmer tones into the once pale face, and
+something of Oriental charm with that wonderful coloring; there was a
+certain grandeur about her, a majestic firmness, a profound sentiment
+which impresses itself upon the coarsest nature. Her long, thick hair,
+falling in large curls about her queenly throat, gave an added idea of
+power to the proud face. The consciousness of that power shone out
+from every movement, every line of Helene's form. The rose-tinted
+nostrils were dilated slightly with the joy of triumph; the serene
+happiness of her life had left its plain tokens in the full
+development of her beauty. A certain indefinable virginal grace met in
+her with the pride of a woman who is loved. This was a slave and a
+queen, a queen who would fain obey that she might reign.
+
+Her dress was magnificent and elegant in its richness; India muslin
+was the sole material, but her sofa and cushions were of cashmere. A
+Persian carpet covered the floor in the large cabin, and her four
+children playing at her feet were building castles of gems and pearl
+necklaces and jewels of price. The air was full of the scent of rare
+flowers in Sevres porcelain vases painted by Madame Jacotot; tiny
+South American birds, like living rubies, sapphires, and gold, hovered
+among the Mexican jessamines and camellias. A pianoforte had been
+fitted into the room, and here and there on the paneled walls, covered
+with red silk, hung small pictures by great painters--a _Sunset_ by
+Hippolyte Schinner beside a Terburg, one of Raphael's Madonnas
+scarcely yielded in charm to a sketch by Gericault, while a Gerard Dow
+eclipsed the painters of the Empire. On a lacquered table stood a
+golden plate full of delicious fruit. Indeed, Helene might have been
+the sovereign lady of some great country, and this cabin of hers a
+boudoir in which her crowned lover had brought together all earth's
+treasure to please his consort. The children gazed with bright, keen
+eyes at their grandfather. Accustomed as they were to a life of
+battle, storm, and tumult, they recalled the Roman children in David's
+_Brutus_, watching the fighting and bloodshed with curious interest.
+
+"What! is it possible?" cried Helene, catching her father's arm as if
+to assure herself that this was no vision.
+
+"Helene!"
+
+"Father!"
+
+They fell into each other's arms, and the old man's embrace was not so
+close and warm as Helene's.
+
+"Were you on board that vessel?"
+
+"Yes," he answered sadly, and looking at the little ones, who gathered
+about him and gazed with wide open eyes.
+
+"I was about to perish, but--"
+
+"But for my husband," she broke in. "I see how it was."
+
+"Ah!" cried the General, "why must I find you again like this, Helene?
+After all the many tears that I have shed, must I still groan for your
+fate?"
+
+"And why?" she asked, smiling. "Why should you be sorry to learn that
+I am the happiest woman under the sun?"
+
+"_Happy_?" he cried with a start of surprise.
+
+"Yes, happy, my kind father," and she caught his hands in hers and
+covered them with kisses, and pressed them to her throbbing heart. Her
+caresses, and a something in the carriage of her head, were
+interpreted yet more plainly by the joy sparkling in her eyes.
+
+"And how is this?" he asked, wondering at his daughter's life,
+forgetful now of everything but the bright glowing face before him.
+
+"Listen, father; I have for lover, husband, servant, and master one
+whose soul is as great as the boundless sea, as infinite in his
+kindness as heaven, a god on earth! Never during these seven years has
+a chance look, or word, or gesture jarred in the divine harmony of his
+talk, his love, his caresses. His eyes have never met mine without a
+gleam of happiness in them; there has always been a bright smile on
+his lips for me. On deck, his voice rises above the thunder of storms
+and the tumult of battle; but here below it is soft and melodious as
+Rossini's music--for he has Rossini's music sent for me. I have
+everything that woman's caprice can imagine. My wishes are more than
+fulfilled. In short, I am a queen on the seas; I am obeyed here as
+perhaps a queen may be obeyed.--Ah!" she cried, interrupting herself,
+"_happy_ did I say? Happiness is no word to express such bliss as
+mine. All the happiness that should have fallen to all the women in
+the world has been my share. Knowing one's own great love and
+self-devotion, to find in _his_ heart an infinite love in which a
+woman's soul is lost, and lost for ever--tell me, is this happiness?
+I have lived through a thousand lives even now. Here, I am alone;
+here, I command. No other woman has set foot on this noble vessel,
+and Victor is never more than a few paces distant from me,--he cannot
+wander further from me than from stern to prow," she added, with a
+shade of mischief in her manner. "Seven years! A love that outlasts
+seven years of continual joy, that endures all the tests brought by
+all the moments that make up seven years--is this love? Oh, no, no!
+it is something better than all that I know of life . . . human
+language fails to express the bliss of heaven."
+
+A sudden torrent of tears fell from her burning eyes. The four little
+ones raised a piteous cry at this, and flocked like chickens about
+their mother. The oldest boy struck the General with a threatening
+look.
+
+"Abel, darling," said Helene, "I am crying for joy."
+
+Helene took him on her knee, and the child fondled her, putting his
+arms about her queenly neck, as a lion's whelp might play with the
+lioness.
+
+"Do you never weary of your life?" asked the General, bewildered by
+his daughter's enthusiastic language.
+
+"Yes," she said, "sometimes, when we are on land, yet even then I have
+never parted from my husband."
+
+"But you need to be fond of music and balls and fetes."
+
+"His voice is music for me; and for fetes, I devise new toilettes for
+him to see. When he likes my dress, it is as if all the world admired
+me. Simply for that reason I keep the diamonds and jewels, the
+precious things, the flowers and masterpieces of art that he heaps
+upon me, saying, 'Helene, as you live out of the world, I will have
+the world come to you.' But for that I would fling them all
+overboard."
+
+"But there are others on board, wild, reckless men whose passions--"
+
+"I understand, father," she said smiling. "Do not fear for me. Never
+was empress encompassed with more observance than I. The men are very
+superstitious; they look upon me as a sort of tutelary genius, the
+luck of the vessel. But _he_ is their god; they worship him. Once, and
+once only, one of the crew showed disrespect, mere words," she added,
+laughing; "but before Victor knew of it, the others flung the offender
+overboard, although I forgave him. They love me as their good angel; I
+nurse them when they are ill; several times I have been so fortunate
+as to save a life, by constant care such as a woman can give. Poor
+fellows, they are giants, but they are children at the same time."
+
+"And when there is fighting overhead?"
+
+"I am used to it now; I quaked for fear during the first engagement,
+but never since.--I am used to such peril, and--I am your daughter,"
+she said; "I love it."
+
+"But how if he should fall?"
+
+"I should die with him."
+
+"And your children?"
+
+"They are children of the sea and of danger; they share the life of
+their parents. We have but one life, and we do not flinch from it. We
+have but one life, our names are written on the same page of the book
+of Fate, one skiff bears us and our fortunes, and we know it."
+
+"Do you so love him that he is more to you than all beside?"
+
+"All beside?" echoed she. "Let us leave that mystery alone. Yet stay!
+there is this dear little one--well, this too is _he_," and straining
+Abel to her in a tight clasp, she set eager kisses on his cheeks and
+hair.
+
+"But I can never forget that he has just drowned nine men!" exclaimed
+the General.
+
+"There was no help for it, doubtless," she said, "for he is generous
+and humane. He sheds as little blood as may be, and only in the
+interests of the little world which he defends, and the sacred cause
+for which he is fighting. Talk to him about anything that seems to you
+to be wrong, and he will convince you, you will see."
+
+"There was that crime of his," muttered the General to himself.
+
+"But how if that crime was a virtue?" she asked, with cold dignity.
+"How if man's justice had failed to avenge a great wrong?"
+
+"But a private revenge!" exclaimed her father.
+
+"But what is hell," she cried, "but a revenge through all eternity for
+the wrong done in a little day?"
+
+"Ah! you are lost! He has bewitched and perverted you. You are talking
+wildly."
+
+"Stay with us one day, father, and if you will but listen to him, and
+see him, you will love him."
+
+"Helene, France lies only a few leagues away," he said gravely.
+
+Helene trembled; then she went to the porthole and pointed to the
+savannas of green water spreading far and wide.
+
+"There lies my country," she said, tapping the carpet with her foot.
+
+"But are you not coming with me to see your mother and your sister and
+brothers?"
+
+"Oh! yes," she cried, with tears in her voice, "if _he_ is willing, if
+he will come with me."
+
+"So," the General said sternly, "you have neither country nor kin now,
+Helene?"
+
+"I am his wife," she answered proudly, and there was something very
+noble in her tone. "This is the first happiness in seven years that
+has not come to me through him," she said--then, as she caught her
+father's hand and kissed it--"and this is the first word of reproach
+that I have heard."
+
+"And your conscience?"
+
+"My conscience; he is my conscience!" she cried, trembling from head
+to foot. "Here he is! Even in the thick of a fight I can tell his
+footstep among all the others on deck," she cried.
+
+A sudden crimson flushed her cheeks and glowed in her features, her
+eyes lighted up, her complexion changed to velvet whiteness, there was
+joy and love in every fibre, in the blue veins, in the unconscious
+trembling of her whole frame. That quiver of the sensitive plant
+softened the General.
+
+It was as she had said. The captain came in, sat down in an easy-chair,
+took up his oldest boy, and began to play with him. There was a
+moment's silence, for the General's deep musing had grown vague and
+dreamy, and the daintily furnished cabin and the playing children
+seemed like a nest of halcyons, floating on the waves, between sky and
+sea, safe in the protection of this man who steered his way amid the
+perils of war and tempest, as other heads of household guide those in
+their care among the hazards of common life. He gazed admiringly at
+Helene--a dreamlike vision of some sea goddess, gracious in her
+loveliness, rich in happiness; all the treasures about her grown poor
+in comparison with the wealth of her nature, paling before the
+brightness of her eyes, the indefinable romance expressed in her and
+her surroundings.
+
+The strangeness of the situation took the General by surprise; the
+ideas of ordinary life were thrown into confusion by this lofty
+passion and reasoning. Chill and narrow social conventions faded away
+before this picture. All these things the old soldier felt, and saw no
+less how impossible it was that his daughter should give up so wide a
+life, a life so variously rich, filled to the full with such
+passionate love. And Helene had tasted danger without shrinking; how
+could she return to the pretty stage, the superficial circumscribed
+life of society?
+
+It was the captain who broke the silence at last.
+
+"Am I in the way?" he asked, looking at his wife.
+
+"No," said the General, answering for her. "Helene has told me all. I
+see that she is lost to us--"
+
+"No," the captain put in quickly; "in a few years' time the statute of
+limitations will allow me to go back to France. When the conscience is
+clear, and a man has broken the law in obedience to----" he stopped
+short, as if scorning to justify himself.
+
+"How can you commit new murders, such as I have seen with my own eyes,
+without remorse?"
+
+"We had no provisions," the privateer captain retorted calmly.
+
+"But if you had set the men ashore--"
+
+"They would have given the alarm and sent a man-of-war after us, and
+we should never have seen Chili again."
+
+"Before France would have given warning to the Spanish admiralty--"
+began the General.
+
+"But France might take it amiss that a man, with a warrant still out
+against him, should seize a brig chartered by Bordeaux merchants. And
+for that matter, have you never fired a shot or so too many in
+battle?"
+
+The General shrank under the other's eyes. He said no more, and his
+daughter looked at him half sadly, half triumphant.
+
+"General," the privateer continued, in a deep voice, "I have made it a
+rule to abstract nothing from booty. But even so, my share will be
+beyond a doubt far larger than your fortune. Permit me to return it to
+you in another form--"
+
+He drew a pile of banknotes from the piano, and without counting the
+packets handed a million of francs to the Marquis.
+
+"You can understand," he said, "that I cannot spend my time in
+watching vessels pass by to Bordeaux. So unless the dangers of this
+Bohemian life of ours have some attraction for you, unless you care to
+see South America and the nights of the tropics, and a bit of fighting
+now and again for the pleasure of helping to win a triumph for a young
+nation, or for the name of Simon Bolivar, we must part. The long boat
+manned with a trustworthy crew is ready for you. And now let us hope
+that our third meeting will be completely happy."
+
+"Victor," said Helene in a dissatisfied tone, "I should like to see a
+little more of my father."
+
+"Ten minutes more or less may bring up a French frigate. However, so
+be it, we shall have a little fun. The men find things dull."
+
+"Oh, father, go!" cried Helene, "and take these keepsakes from me to
+my sister and brothers and--mother," she added. She caught up a
+handful of jewels and precious stones, folded them in an Indian shawl,
+and timidly held it out.
+
+"But what shall I say to them from you?" asked he. Her hesitation on
+the word "mother" seemed to have struck him.
+
+"Oh! can you doubt me? I pray for their happiness every day."
+
+"Helene," he began, as he watched her closely, "how if we should not
+meet again? Shall I never know why you left us?"
+
+"That secret is not mine," she answered gravely. "Even if I had the
+right to tell it, perhaps I should not. For ten years I was more
+miserable than words can say--"
+
+She broke off, and gave her father the presents for her family. The
+General had acquired tolerably easy views as to booty in the course of
+a soldier's career, so he took Helene's gifts and comforted himself
+with the reflection that the Parisian captain was sure to wage war
+against the Spaniards as an honorable man, under the influence of
+Helene's pure and high-minded nature. His passion for courage carried
+all before it. It was ridiculous, he thought, to be squeamish in the
+matter; so he shook hands cordially with his captor, and kissed
+Helene, his only daughter, with a soldier's expansiveness; letting
+fall a tear on the face with the proud, strong look that once he had
+loved to see. "The Parisian," deeply moved, brought the children for
+his blessing. The parting was over, the last good-bye was a long
+farewell look, with something of tender regret on either side.
+
+
+
+A strange sight to seaward met the General's eyes. The
+_Saint-Ferdinand_ was blazing like a huge bonfire. The men told off
+to sink the Spanish brig had found a cargo of rum on board; and as
+the _Othello_ was already amply supplied, had lighted a floating bowl
+of punch on the high seas, by way of a joke; a pleasantry pardonable
+enough in sailors, who hail any chance excitement as a relief from the
+apparent monotony of life at sea. As the General went over the side
+into the long-boat of the _Saint-Ferdinand_, manned by six vigorous
+rowers, he could not help looking at the burning vessel, as well as at
+the daughter who stood by her husband's side on the stern of the
+_Othello_. He saw Helene's white dress flutter like one more sail in
+the breeze; he saw the tall, noble figure against a background of sea,
+queenly still even in the presence of Ocean; and so many memories
+crowded up in his mind, that, with a soldier's recklessness of life,
+he forgot that he was being borne over the grave of the brave Gomez.
+
+A vast column of smoke rising spread like a brown cloud, pierced here
+and there by fantastic shafts of sunlight. It was a second sky, a
+murky dome reflecting the glow of the fire as if the under surface had
+been burnished; but above it soared the unchanging blue of the
+firmament, a thousand times fairer for the short-lived contrast. The
+strange hues of the smoke cloud, black and red, tawny and pale by
+turns, blurred and blending into each other, shrouded the burning
+vessel as it flared, crackled and groaned; the hissing tongues of
+flame licked up the rigging, and flashed across the hull, like a rumor
+of riot flashing along the streets of a city. The burning rum sent up
+blue flitting lights. Some sea god might have been stirring the
+furious liquor as a student stirs the joyous flames of punch in an
+orgy. But in the overpowering sunlight, jealous of the insolent blaze,
+the colors were scarcely visible, and the smoke was but a film
+fluttering like a thin scarf in the noonday torrent of light and heat.
+
+The _Othello_ made the most of the little wind she could gain to fly
+on her new course. Swaying first to one side, then to the other, like
+a stag beetle on the wing, the fair vessel beat to windward on her
+zigzag flight to the south. Sometimes she was hidden from sight by the
+straight column of smoke that flung fantastic shadows across the
+water, then gracefully she shot out clear of it, and Helene, catching
+sight of her father, waved her handkerchief for yet one more farewell
+greeting.
+
+A few more minutes, and the _Saint-Ferdinand_ went down with a
+bubbling turmoil, at once effaced by the ocean. Nothing of all that
+had been was left but a smoke cloud hanging in the breeze. The
+_Othello_ was far away, the long-boat had almost reached land, the
+cloud came between the frail skiff and the brig, and it was through a
+break in the swaying smoke that the General caught the last glimpse of
+Helene. A prophetic vision! Her dress and her white handkerchief stood
+out against the murky background. Then the brig was not even visible
+between the green water and the blue sky, and Helene was nothing but
+an imperceptible speck, a faint graceful line, an angel in heaven, a
+mental image, a memory.
+
+The Marquis had retrieved his fortunes, when he died, worn out with
+toil. A few months after his death, in 1833, the Marquise was obliged
+to take Moina to a watering-place in the Pyrenees, for the capricious
+child had a wish to see the beautiful mountain scenery. They left the
+baths, and the following tragical incident occurred on their way home.
+
+"Dear me, mother," said Moina, "it was very foolish of us not to stay
+among the mountains a few days longer. It was much nicer there. Did
+you hear that horrid child moaning all night, and that wretched woman,
+gabbling away in patois no doubt, for I could not understand a single
+word she said. What kind of people can they have put in the next room
+to ours? This is one of the horridest nights I have ever spent in my
+life."
+
+"I heard nothing," said the Marquise, "but I will see the landlady,
+darling, and engage the next room, and then we shall have the whole
+suite of rooms to ourselves, and there will be no more noise. How do
+you feel this morning? Are you tired?"
+
+As she spoke, the Marquise rose and went to Moina's bedside.
+
+"Let us see," she said, feeling for the girl's hand.
+
+"Oh! let me alone, mother," said Moina; "your fingers are cold."
+
+She turned her head round on the pillow as she spoke, pettishly, but
+with such engaging grace, that a mother could scarcely have taken it
+amiss. Just then a wailing cry echoed through the next room, a faint
+prolonged cry, that must surely have gone to the heart of any woman
+who heard it.
+
+"Why, if you heard _that_ all night long, why did you not wake me? We
+should have--"
+
+A deeper moan than any that had gone before it interrupted the
+Marquise.
+
+"Some one is dying there," she cried, and hurried out of the room.
+
+"Send Pauline to me!" called Moina. "I shall get up and dress."
+
+The Marquise hastened downstairs, and found the landlady in the
+courtyard with a little group about her, apparently much interested in
+something that she was telling them.
+
+"Madame, you have put some one in the next room who seems to be very
+ill indeed--"
+
+"Oh! don't talk to me about it!" cried the mistress of the house. "I
+have just sent some one for the mayor. Just imagine it; it is a woman,
+a poor unfortunate creature that came here last night on foot. She
+comes from Spain; she has no passport and no money; she was carrying
+her baby on her back, and the child was dying. I could not refuse to
+take her in. I went up to see her this morning myself; for when she
+turned up yesterday, it made me feel dreadfully bad to look at her.
+Poor soul! she and the child were lying in bed, and both of them at
+death's door. 'Madame,' says she, pulling a gold ring off her finger,
+'this is all that I have left; take it in payment, it will be enough;
+I shall not stay here long. Poor little one! we shall die together
+soon!' she said, looking at the child. I took her ring, and I asked
+her who she was, but she never would tell me her name. . . . I have
+just sent for the doctor and M. le Maire."
+
+"Why, you must do all that can be done for her," cried the Marquise.
+"Good heavens! perhaps it is not too late! I will pay for everything
+that is necessary----"
+
+"Ah! my lady, she looks to me uncommonly proud, and I don't know that
+she would allow it."
+
+"I will go to see her at once."
+
+The Marquise went up forthwith to the stranger's room, without
+thinking of the shock that the sight of her widow's weeds might give
+to a woman who was said to be dying. At the sight of that dying woman
+the Marquise turned pale. In spite of the changes wrought by fearful
+suffering in Helene's beautiful face, she recognized her eldest
+daughter.
+
+But Helene, when she saw a woman dressed in black, sat upright in bed
+with a shriek of horror. Then she sank back; she knew her mother.
+
+"My daughter," said Mme. d'Aiglemont, "what is to be done?
+Pauline! . . . Moina! . . ."
+
+"Nothing now for me," said Helene faintly. "I had hoped to see my
+father once more, but your mourning--" she broke off, clutched her
+child to her heart as if to give it warmth, and kissed its forehead.
+Then she turned her eyes on her mother, and the Marquise met the old
+reproach in them, tempered with forgiveness, it is true, but still
+reproach. She saw it, and would not see it. She forgot that Helene was
+the child conceived amid tears and despair, the child of duty, the
+cause of one of the greatest sorrows in her life. She stole to her
+eldest daughter's side, remembering nothing but that Helene was her
+firstborn, the child who had taught her to know the joys of
+motherhood. The mother's eyes were full of tears. "Helene, my
+child! . . ." she cried, with her arms about her daughter.
+
+Helene was silent. Her own babe had just drawn its last breath on her
+breast.
+
+Moina came into the room with Pauline, her maid, and the landlady and
+the doctor. The Marquise was holding her daughter's ice-cold hand in
+both of hers, and gazing at her in despair; but the widowed woman, who
+had escaped shipwreck with but one of all her fair band of children,
+spoke in a voice that was dreadful to hear. "All this is your work,"
+she said. "If you had but been for me all that--"
+
+"Moina, go! Go out of the room, all of you!" cried Mme. d'Aiglemont,
+her shrill tones drowning Helene's voice.--"For pity's sake," she
+continued, "let us not begin these miserable quarrels again now----"
+
+"I will be silent," Helene answered with a preternatural effort. "I am
+a mother; I know that Moina ought not . . . Where is my child?"
+
+Moina came back, impelled by curiosity.
+
+"Sister," said the spoiled child, "the doctor--"
+
+"It is all of no use," said Helene. "Oh! why did I not die as a girl
+of sixteen when I meant to take my own life? There is no happiness
+outside the laws. Moina . . . you . . ."
+
+Her head sank till her face lay against the face of the little one; in
+her agony she strained her babe to her breast, and died.
+
+"Your sister, Moina," said Mme. d'Aiglemont, bursting into tears when
+she reached her room, "your sister meant no doubt to tell you that a
+girl will never find happiness in a romantic life, in living as nobody
+else does, and, above all things, far away from her mother."
+
+
+
+                                VI.
+
+                   THE OLD AGE OF A GUILTY MOTHER
+
+It was one of the earliest June days of the year 1844. A lady of fifty
+or thereabouts, for she looked older than her actual age, was pacing
+up and down one of the sunny paths in the garden of a great mansion in
+the Rue Plument in Paris. It was noon. The lady took two or three
+turns along the gently winding garden walk, careful never to lose
+sight of a certain row of windows, to which she seemed to give her
+whole attention; then she sat down on a bench, a piece of elegant
+semi-rusticity made of branches with the bark left on the wood. From
+the place where she sat she could look through the garden railings
+along the inner boulevards to the wonderful dome of the Invalides
+rising above the crests of a forest of elm-trees, and see the less
+striking view of her own grounds terminating in the gray stone front
+of one of the finest hotels in the Faubourg Saint-Germain.
+
+Silence lay over the neighboring gardens, and the boulevards
+stretching away to the Invalides. Day scarcely begins at noon in that
+aristocratic quarter, and masters and servants are all alike asleep,
+or just awakening, unless some young lady takes it into her head to go
+for an early ride, or a gray-headed diplomatist rises betimes to
+redraft a protocol.
+
+The elderly lady stirring abroad at that hour was the Marquise
+d'Aiglemont, the mother of Mme. de Saint-Hereen, to whom the great
+house belonged. The Marquise had made over the mansion and almost her
+whole fortune to her daughter, reserving only an annuity for herself.
+
+The Comtesse Moina de Saint-Hereen was Mme. d'Aiglemont's youngest
+child. The Marquise had made every sacrifice to marry her daughter to
+the eldest son of one of the greatest houses of France; and this was
+only what might have been expected, for the lady had lost her sons,
+first one and then the other. Gustave, Marquis d'Aiglemont, had died
+of the cholera; Abel, the second, had fallen in Algeria. Gustave had
+left a widow and children, but the dowager's affection for her sons
+had been only moderately warm, and for the next generation it was
+decidedly tepid. She was always civil to her daughter-in-law, but her
+feeling towards the young Marquise was the distinctly conventional
+affection which good taste and good manners require us to feel for our
+relatives. The fortunes of her dead children having been settled, she
+could devote her savings and her own property to her darling Moina.
+
+Moina, beautiful and fascinating from childhood, was Mme.
+d'Aiglemont's favorite; loved beyond all the others with an
+instinctive or involuntary love, a fatal drawing of the heart, which
+sometimes seems inexplicable, sometimes, and to a close observer, only
+too easy to explain. Her darling's pretty face, the sound of Moina's
+voice, her ways, her manner, her looks and gestures, roused all the
+deepest emotions that can stir a mother's heart with trouble, rapture,
+or delight. The springs of the Marquise's life, of yesterday,
+to-morrow, and to-day, lay in that young heart. Moina, with better
+fortune, had survived four older children. As a matter of fact, Mme.
+d'Aiglemont had lost her eldest daughter, a charming girl, in a most
+unfortunate manner, said gossip, nobody knew exactly what became of
+her; and then she lost a little boy of five by a dreadful accident.
+
+The child of her affections had, however, been spared to her, and
+doubtless the Marquise saw the will of Heaven in that fact; for those
+who had died, she kept but very shadowy recollections in some far-off
+corner of her heart; her memories of her dead children were like the
+headstones on a battlefield, you can scarcely see them for the flowers
+that have sprung up about them since. Of course, if the world had
+chosen, it might have said some hard truths about the Marquise, might
+have taken her to task for shallowness and an overweening preference
+for one child at the expense of the rest; but the world of Paris is
+swept along by the full flood of new events, new ideas, and new
+fashions, and it was inevitable the Mme. d'Aiglemont should be in some
+sort allowed to drop out of sight. So nobody thought of blaming her
+for coldness or neglect which concerned no one, whereas her quick,
+apprehensive tenderness for Moina was found highly interesting by not
+a few who respected it as a sort of superstition. Besides, the
+Marquise scarcely went into society at all; and the few families who
+knew her thought of her as a kindly, gentle, indulgent woman, wholly
+devoted to her family. What but a curiosity, keen indeed, would seek
+to pry beneath the surface with which the world is quite satisfied?
+And what would we not pardon to old people, if only they will efface
+themselves like shadows, and consent to be regarded as memories and
+nothing more!
+
+Indeed, Mme. d'Aiglemont became a kind of example complacently held up
+by the younger generation to fathers of families, and frequently cited
+to mothers-in-law. She had made over her property to Moina in her own
+lifetime; the young Countess' happiness was enough for her, she only
+lived in her daughter. If some cautious old person or morose uncle
+here and there condemned the course with--"Perhaps Mme. d'Aiglemont
+may be sorry some day that she gave up her fortune to her daughter;
+she may be sure of Moina, but how can she be equally sure of her
+son-in-law?"--these prophets were cried down on all sides, and from
+all sides a chorus of praise went up for Moina.
+
+"It ought to be said, in justice to Mme. de Saint-Hereen, that her
+mother cannot feel the slightest difference," remarked a young married
+woman. "Mme. d'Aiglemont is admirably well housed. She has a carriage
+at her disposal, and can go everywhere just as she used to do--"
+
+"Except to the Italiens," remarked a low voice. (This was an elderly
+parasite, one of those persons who show their independence--as they
+think--by riddling their friends with epigrams.) "Except to the
+Italiens. And if the dowager cares for anything on this earth but her
+daughter--it is music. Such a good performer she was in her time! But
+the Countess' box is always full of young butterflies, and the
+Countess' mother would be in the way; the young lady is talked about
+already as a great flirt. So the poor mother never goes to the
+Italiens."
+
+"Mme. de Saint-Hereen has delightful 'At Homes' for her mother," said
+a rosebud. "All Paris goes to her salon.
+
+"And no one pays any attention to the Marquise," returned the
+parasite.
+
+"The fact is that Mme. d'Aiglemont is never alone," remarked a
+coxcomb, siding with the young women.
+
+"In the morning," the old observer continued in a discreet voice, "in
+the morning dear Moina is asleep. At four o'clock dear Moina drives in
+the Bois. In the evening dear Moina goes to a ball or to the Bouffes.
+--Still, it is certainly true that Mme. d'Aiglemont has the privilege
+of seeing her dear daughter while she dresses, and again at dinner, if
+dear Moina happens to dine with her mother. Not a week ago, sir,"
+continued the elderly person, laying his hand on the arm of the shy
+tutor, a new arrival in the house, "not a week ago, I saw the poor
+mother, solitary and sad, by her own fireside.--'What is the matter?'
+I asked. The Marquise looked up smiling, but I am quite sure that she
+had been crying.--'I was thinking that it is a strange thing that I
+should be left alone when I have had five children,' she said, 'but
+that is our destiny! And besides, I am happy when I know that Moina is
+enjoying herself.'--She could say that to me, for I knew her husband
+when he was alive. A poor stick he was, and uncommonly lucky to have
+such a wife; it was certainly owing to her that he was made a peer of
+France, and had a place at Court under Charles X."
+
+Yet such mistaken ideas get about in social gossip, and such mischief
+is done by it, that the historian of manners is bound to exercise his
+discretion, and weigh the assertions so recklessly made. After all,
+who is to say that either mother or daughter was right or wrong? There
+is but One who can read and judge their hearts! And how often does He
+wreak His vengeance in the family circle, using throughout all time
+children as His instruments against their mothers, and fathers against
+their sons, raising up peoples against kings, and princes against
+peoples, sowing strife and division everywhere? And in the world of
+ideas, are not opinions and feelings expelled by new feelings and
+opinions, much as withered leaves are thrust forth by the young
+leaf-buds in the spring?--all in obedience to the immutable Scheme; all
+to some end which God alone knows. Yet, surely, all things proceed to
+Him, or rather, to Him all things return.
+
+Such thoughts of religion, the natural thoughts of age, floated up now
+and again on the current of Mme. d'Aiglemont's thoughts; they were
+always dimly present in her mind, but sometimes they shone out
+clearly, sometimes they were carried under, like flowers tossed on the
+vexed surface of a stormy sea.
+
+She sat on a garden-seat, tired with walking, exhausted with much
+thinking--with the long thoughts in which a whole lifetime rises up
+before the mind, and is spread out like a scroll before the eyes of
+those who feel that Death is near.
+
+If a poet had chanced to pass along the boulevard, he would have found
+an interesting picture in the face of this woman, grown old before her
+time. As she sat under the dotted shadow of the acacia, the shadow the
+acacia casts at noon, a thousand thoughts were written for all the
+world to see on her features, pale and cold even in the hot, bright
+sunlight. There was something sadder than the sense of waning life in
+that expressive face, some trouble that went deeper than the weariness
+of experience. It was a face of a type that fixes you in a moment
+among a host of characterless faces that fail to draw a second glance,
+a face to set you thinking. Among a thousand pictures in a gallery,
+you are strongly impressed by the sublime anguish on the face of some
+Madonna of Murillo's; by some _Beatrice Cenci_ in which Guido's art
+portrays the most touching innocence against a background of horror
+and crime; by the awe and majesty that should encircle a king, caught
+once and for ever by Velasquez in the sombre face of a Philip II., and
+so is it with some living human faces; they are tyrannous pictures
+which speak to you, submit you to searching scrutiny, and give
+response to your inmost thoughts, nay, there are faces that set forth
+a whole drama, and Mme. d'Aiglemont's stony face was one of these
+awful tragedies, one of such faces as Dante Alighieri saw by thousands
+in his vision.
+
+For the little season that a woman's beauty is in flower it serves her
+admirably well in the dissimulation to which her natural weakness and
+our social laws condemn her. A young face and rich color, and eyes
+that glow with light, a gracious maze of such subtle, manifold lines
+and curves, flawless and perfectly traced, is a screen that hides
+everything that stirs the woman within. A flush tells nothing, it only
+heightens the coloring so brilliant already; all the fires that burn
+within can add little light to the flame of life in eyes which only
+seem the brighter for the flash of a passing pain. Nothing is so
+discreet as a young face, for nothing is less mobile; it has the
+serenity, the surface smoothness, and the freshness of a lake. There
+is not character in women's faces before the age of thirty. The
+painter discovers nothing there but pink and white, and the smile and
+expression that repeat the same thought in the same way--a thought of
+youth and love that goes no further than youth and love. But the face
+of an old woman has expressed all that lay in her nature; passion has
+carved lines on her features; love and wifehood and motherhood, and
+extremes of joy and anguish, having wrung them, and left their traces
+in a thousand wrinkles, all of which speak a language of their own;
+then it is that a woman's face becomes sublime in its horror,
+beautiful in its melancholy, grand in its calm. If it is permissible
+to carry the strange metaphor still further, it might be said that in
+the dried-up lake you can see the traces of all the torrents that once
+poured into it and made it what it is. An old face is nothing to the
+frivolous world; the frivolous world is shocked by the sight of the
+destruction of such comeliness as it can understand; a commonplace
+artist sees nothing there. An old face is the province of the poets
+among poets of those who can recognize that something which is called
+Beauty, apart from all the conventions underlying so many
+superstitions in art and taste.
+
+
+
+Though Mme. d'Aiglemont wore a fashionable bonnet, it was easy to see
+that her once black hair had been bleached by cruel sorrows; yet her
+good taste and the gracious acquired instincts of a woman of fashion
+could be seen in the way she wore it, divided into two _bandeaux_,
+following the outlines of a forehead that still retained some traces
+of former dazzling beauty, worn and lined though it was. The contours
+of her face, the regularity of her features, gave some idea, faint in
+truth, of that beauty of which surely she had once been proud; but
+those traces spoke still more plainly of the anguish which had laid it
+waste, of sharp pain that had withered the temples, and made those
+hollows in her cheeks, and empurpled the eyelids, and robbed them of
+their lashes, and the eyes of their charm. She was in every way so
+noiseless; she moved with a slow, self-contained gravity that showed
+itself in her whole bearing, and struck a certain awe into others. Her
+diffident manner had changed to positive shyness, due apparently to a
+habit now of some years' growth, of effacing herself in her daughter's
+presence. She spoke very seldom, and in the low tones used by those
+who perforce must live within themselves a life of reflection and
+concentration. This demeanor led others to regard her with an
+indefinable feeling which was neither awe nor compassion, but a
+mysterious blending of the many ideas awakened in us by compassion and
+awe. Finally, there was something in her wrinkles, in the lines of her
+face, in the look of pain in those wan eyes of hers, that bore
+eloquent testimony to tears that never had fallen, tears that had been
+absorbed by her heart. Unhappy creatures, accustomed to raise their
+eyes to heaven, in mute appeal against the bitterness of their lot,
+would have seen at once from her eyes that she was broken in to the
+cruel discipline of ceaseless prayer, would have discerned the almost
+imperceptible symptoms of the secret bruises which destroy all the
+flowers of the soul, even the sentiment of motherhood.
+
+Painters have colors for these portraits, but words, and the mental
+images called up by words, fail to reproduce such impressions
+faithfully; there are mysterious signs and tokens in the tones of the
+coloring and in the look of human faces, which the mind only seizes
+through the sense of sight; and the poet is fain to record the tale of
+the events which wrought the havoc to make their terrible ravages
+understood.
+
+The face spoke of cold and steady storm, an inward conflict between a
+mother's long-suffering and the limitations of our nature, for our
+human affections are bounded by our humanity, and the infinite has no
+place in finite creatures. Sorrow endured in silence had at last
+produced an indefinable morbid something in this woman. Doubtless
+mental anguish had reacted on the physical frame, and some disease,
+perhaps an aneurism, was undermining Julie's life. Deep-seated grief
+lies to all appearance very quietly in the depths where it is
+conceived, yet, so still and apparently dormant as it is, it
+ceaselessly corrodes the soul, like the terrible acid which eats away
+crystal.
+
+Two tears made their way down the Marquise's cheeks; she rose to her
+feet as if some thought more poignant than any that preceded it had
+cut her to the quick. She had doubtless come to a conclusion as to
+Moina's future; and now, foreseeing clearly all the troubles in store
+for her child, the sorrows of her own unhappy life had begun to weigh
+once more upon her. The key of her position must be sought in her
+daughter's situation.
+
+The Comte de Saint-Hereen had been away for nearly six months on a
+political mission. The Countess, whether from sheer giddiness, or in
+obedience to the countless instincts of woman's coquetry, or to essay
+its power--with all the vanity of a frivolous fine lady, all the
+capricious waywardness of a child--was amusing herself, during her
+husband's absence, by playing with the passion of a clever but
+heartless man, distracted (so he said) with love, the love that
+combines readily with every petty social ambition of a self-conceited
+coxcomb. Mme. d'Aiglemont, whose long experience had given her a
+knowledge of life, and taught her to judge of men and to dread the
+world, watched the course of this flirtation, and saw that it could
+only end in one way, if her daughter should fall into the hands of an
+utterly unscrupulous intriguer. How could it be other than a terrible
+thought for her that her daughter listened willingly to this _roue_?
+Her darling stood on the brink of a precipice, she felt horribly sure
+of it, yet dared not hold her back. She was afraid of the Countess.
+She knew too that Moina would not listen to her wise warnings; she
+knew that she had no influence over that nature--iron for her,
+silken-soft for all others. Her mother's tenderness might have led her
+to sympathize with the troubles of a passion called forth by the nobler
+qualities of a lover, but this was no passion--it was coquetry, and
+the Marquise despised Alfred de Vandenesse, knowing that he had
+entered upon this flirtation with Moina as if it were a game of chess.
+
+But if Alfred de Vandenesse made her shudder with disgust, she was
+obliged--unhappy mother!--to conceal the strongest reason for her
+loathing in the deepest recesses of her heart. She was on terms of
+intimate friendship with the Marquis de Vandenesse, the young man's
+father; and this friendship, a respectable one in the eyes of the
+world, excused the son's constant presence in the house, he professing
+an old attachment, dating from childhood, for Mme. de Saint-Hereen.
+More than this, in vain did Mme. d'Aiglemont nerve herself to come
+between Moina and Alfred de Vandenesse with a terrible word, knowing
+beforehand that she should not succeed; knowing that the strong reason
+which ought to separate them would carry no weight; that she should
+humiliate herself vainly in her daughter's eyes. Alfred was too
+corrupt; Moina too clever to believe the revelation; the young
+Countess would turn it off and treat it as a piece of maternal
+strategy. Mme. d'Aiglemont had built her prison walls with her own
+hands; she had immured herself only to see Moina's happiness ruined
+thence before she died; she was to look on helplessly at the ruin of
+the young life which had been her pride and joy and comfort, a life a
+thousand times dearer to her than her own. What words can describe
+anguish so hideous beyond belief, such unfathomed depths of pain?
+
+She waited for Moina to rise, with the impatience and sickening dread
+of a doomed man, who longs to have done with life, and turns cold at
+the thought of the headsman. She had braced herself for a last effort,
+but perhaps the prospect of the certain failure of the attempt was
+less dreadful to her than the fear of receiving yet again one of those
+thrusts that went to her very heart--before that fear her courage
+ebbed away. Her mother's love had come to this. To love her child, to
+be afraid of her, to shrink from the thought of the stab, yet to go
+forward. So great is a mother's affection in a loving nature, that
+before it can fade away into indifference the mother herself must die
+or find support in some great power without her, in religion or
+another love. Since the Marquise rose that morning, her fatal memory
+had called up before her some of those things, so slight to all
+appearance, that make landmarks in a life. Sometimes, indeed, a whole
+tragedy grows out of a single gesture; the tone in which a few words
+were spoken rends a whole life in two; a glance into indifferent eyes
+is the deathblow of the gladdest love; and, unhappily, such gestures
+and such words were only too familiar to Mme. d'Aiglemont--she had met
+so many glances that wound the soul. No, there was nothing in those
+memories to bid her hope. On the contrary, everything went to show
+that Alfred had destroyed her hold on her daughter's heart, that the
+thought of her was now associated with duty--not with gladness. In
+ways innumerable, in things that were mere trifles in themselves, the
+Countess' detestable conduct rose up before her mother; and the
+Marquise, it may be, looked on Moina's undutifulness as a punishment,
+and found excuses for her daughter in the will of Heaven, that so she
+still might adore the hand that smote her.
+
+All these things passed through her memory that morning, and each
+recollection wounded her afresh so sorely, that with a very little
+additional pain her brimming cup of bitterness must have overflowed. A
+cold look might kill her.
+
+The little details of domestic life are difficult to paint; but one or
+two perhaps will suffice to give an idea of the rest.
+
+The Marquise d'Aiglemont, for instance, had grown rather deaf, but she
+could never induce Moina to raise her voice for her. Once, with the
+naivete of suffering, she had begged Moina to repeat some remark which
+she had failed to catch, and Moina obeyed, but with so bad a grace,
+the Mme. d'Aiglemont had never permitted herself to make her modest
+request again. Ever since that day when Moina was talking or retailing
+a piece of news, her mother was careful to come near to listen; but
+this infirmity of deafness appeared to put the Countess out of
+patience, and she would grumble thoughtlessly about it. This instance
+is one from among very many that must have gone to the mother's heart;
+and yet nearly all of them might have escaped a close observer, they
+consisted in faint shades of manner invisible to any but a woman's
+eyes. Take another example. Mme. d'Aiglemont happened to say one day
+that the Princesse de Cadignan had called upon her. "Did she come to
+see _you_!" Moina exclaimed. That was all, but the Countess' voice and
+manner expressed surprise and well-bred contempt in semitones. Any
+heart, still young and sensitive, might well have applauded the
+philanthropy of savage tribes who kill off their old people when they
+grow too feeble to cling to a strongly shaken bough. Mme. d'Aiglemont
+rose smiling, and went away to weep alone.
+
+Well-bred people, and women especially, only betray their feelings by
+imperceptible touches; but those who can look back over their own
+experience on such bruises as this mother's heart received, know also
+how the heart-strings vibrate to these light touches. Overcome by her
+memories, Mme. d'Aiglemont recollected one of those microscopically
+small things, so stinging and so painful was it that never till this
+moment had she felt all the heartless contempt that lurked beneath
+smiles.
+
+At the sound of shutters thrown back at her daughter's windows, she
+dried her tears, and hastened up the pathway by the railings. As she
+went, it struck her that the gardener had been unusually careful to
+rake the sand along the walk which had been neglected for some little
+time. As she stood under her daughter's windows, the shutters were
+hastily closed.
+
+"Moina, is it you?" she asked.
+
+No answer.
+
+The Marquise went on into the house.
+
+"Mme. la Comtesse is in the little drawing-room," said the maid, when
+the Marquise asked whether Mme. de Saint-Hereen had finished dressing.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont hurried to the little drawing-room; her heart was too
+full, her brain too busy to notice matters so slight; but there on the
+sofa sat the Countess in her loose morning-gown, her hair in disorder
+under the cap tossed carelessly on he head, her feet thrust into
+slippers. The key of her bedroom hung at her girdle. Her face, aglow
+with color, bore traces of almost stormy thought.
+
+"What makes people come in!" she cried, crossly. "Oh! it is you,
+mother," she interrupted herself, with a preoccupied look.
+
+"Yes, child; it is your mother----"
+
+Something in her tone turned those words into an outpouring of the
+heart, the cry of some deep inward feeling, only to be described by
+the word "holy." So thoroughly in truth had she rehabilitated the
+sacred character of a mother, that her daughter was impressed, and
+turned towards her, with something of awe, uneasiness, and remorse in
+her manner. The room was the furthest of a suite, and safe from
+indiscreet intrusion, for no one could enter it without giving warning
+of approach through the previous apartments. The Marquise closed the
+door.
+
+"It is my duty, my child, to warn you in one of the most serious
+crises in the lives of us women; you have perhaps reached it
+unconsciously, and I am come to speak to you as a friend rather than
+as a mother. When you married, you acquired freedom of action; you are
+only accountable to your husband now; but I asserted my authority so
+little (perhaps I was wrong), that I think I have a right to expect
+you to listen to me, for once at least, in a critical position when
+you must need counsel. Bear in mind, Moina that you are married to a
+man of high ability, a man of whom you may well be proud, a man who--"
+
+"I know what you are going to say, mother!" Moina broke in pettishly.
+"I am to be lectured about Alfred--"
+
+"Moina," the Marquise said gravely, as she struggled with her tears,
+"you would not guess at once if you did not feel--"
+
+"What?" asked Moina, almost haughtily. "Why, really, mother--"
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont summoned up all her strength. "Moina," she said, "you
+must attend carefully to this that I ought to tell you--"
+
+"I am attending," returned the Countess, folding her arms, and
+affecting insolent submission. "Permit me, mother, to ring for
+Pauline," she added with incredible self-possession; "I will send her
+away first."
+
+She rang the bell.
+
+"My dear child, Pauline cannot possibly hear--"
+
+"Mamma," interrupted the Countess, with a gravity which must have
+struck her mother as something unusual, "I must--"
+
+She stopped short, for the woman was in the room.
+
+"Pauline, go _yourself_ to Baudran's, and ask why my hat has not yet
+been sent."
+
+Then the Countess reseated herself and scrutinized her mother. The
+Marquise, with a swelling heart and dry eyes, in painful agitation,
+which none but a mother can fully understand, began to open Moina's
+eyes to the risk that she was running. But either the Countess felt
+hurt and indignant at her mother's suspicions of a son of the Marquis
+de Vandenesse, or she was seized with a sudden fit of inexplicable
+levity caused by the inexperience of youth. She took advantage of a
+pause.
+
+"Mamma, I thought you were only jealous of _the father_--" she said,
+with a forced laugh.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont shut her eyes and bent her head at the words, with a
+very faint, almost inaudible sigh. She looked up and out into space,
+as if she felt the common overmastering impulse to appeal to God at
+the great crises of our lives; then she looked at her daughter, and
+her eyes were full of awful majesty and the expression of profound
+sorrow.
+
+"My child," she said, and her voice was hardly recognizable, "you have
+been less merciful to your mother than he against whom she sinned;
+less merciful than perhaps God Himself will be!"
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont rose; at the door she turned; but she saw nothing but
+surprise in her daughter's face. She went out. Scarcely had she
+reached the garden when her strength failed her. There was a violent
+pain at her heart, and she sank down on a bench. As her eyes wandered
+over the path, she saw fresh marks on the path, a man's footprints
+were distinctly recognizable. It was too late, then, beyond a doubt.
+Now she began to understand the reason for that order given to
+Pauline, and with these torturing thoughts came a revelation more
+hateful than any that had gone before it. She drew her own
+inferences--the son of the Marquis de Vandenesse had destroyed all
+feeling of respect for her in her daughter's mind. The physical pain
+grew worse; by degrees she lost consciousness, and sat like one asleep
+upon the garden-seat.
+
+The Countess de Saint-Hereen, left to herself, thought that her mother
+had given her a somewhat shrewd home-thrust, but a kiss and a few
+attentions that evening would make all right again.
+
+A shrill cry came from the garden. She leaned carelessly out, as
+Pauline, not yet departed on her errand, called out for help, holding
+the Marquise in her arms.
+
+"Do not frighten my daughter!" those were the last words the mother
+uttered.
+
+Moina saw them carry in a pale and lifeless form that struggled for
+breath, and arms moving restlessly as in protest or effort to speak;
+and overcome by the sight, Moina followed in silence, and helped to
+undress her mother and lay her on her bed. The burden of her fault was
+greater than she could bear. In that supreme hour she learned to know
+her mother--too late, she could make no reparation now. She would have
+them leave her alone with her mother; and when there was no one else
+in the room, when she felt that the hand which had always been so
+tender for her was now grown cold to her touch, she broke out into
+weeping. Her tears aroused the Marquise; she could still look at her
+darling Moina; and at the sound of sobbing, that seemed as if it must
+rend the delicate, disheveled breast, could smile back at her
+daughter. That smile taught the unnatural child that forgiveness is
+always to be found in the great deep of a mother's heart.
+
+
+
+Servants on horseback had been dispatched at once for the physician
+and surgeon and for Mme. d'Aiglemont's grandchildren. Mme. d'Aiglemont
+the younger and her little sons arrived with the medical men, a
+sufficiently impressive, silent, and anxious little group, which the
+servants of the house came to join. The young Marquise, hearing no
+sound, tapped gently at the door. That signal, doubtless, roused Moina
+from her grief, for she flung open the doors and stood before them. No
+words could have spoken more plainly than that disheveled figure
+looking out with haggard eyes upon the assembled family. Before that
+living picture of Remorse the rest were dumb. It was easy to see that
+the Marquise's feet were stretched out stark and stiff with the agony
+of death; and Moina, leaning against the door-frame, looking into
+their faces, spoke in a hollow voice:
+
+"I have lost my mother!"
+
+
+
+PARIS, 1828-1844.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Aiglemont, General, Marquis Victor d'
+  At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+
+Bonaparte, Napoleon
+  The Vendetta
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  Colonel Chabert
+  Domestic Peace
+  The Seamy Side of History
+
+Camps, Madame Octave de (nee Cadignan)
+  Madame Firmiani
+  The Government Clerks
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Chatillonest, De
+  Modeste Mignon
+
+Crottat, Alexandre
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  Colonel Chabert
+  A Start in Life
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Desroches (son)
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Colonel Chabert
+  A Start in Life
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+  The Government Clerks
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  A Man of Business
+  The Middle Classes
+
+Duroc, Gerard-Christophe-Michel
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+
+Ronquerolles, Marquis de
+  The Imaginary Mistress
+  The Peasantry
+  Ursule Mirouet
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Thirteen
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Saint-Hereen, Comtesse Moina de
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Serizy, Comtesse de
+  A Start in Life
+  The Thirteen
+  Ursule Mirouet
+  Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Imaginary Mistress
+
+Vandenesse, Marquis Charles de
+  A Start in Life
+  A Daughter of Eve
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Woman of Thirty, by Honore de Balzac
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WOMAN OF THIRTY ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Woman of Thirty, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Woman of Thirty
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Ellen Marriage
+
+Release Date: November, 1999  [Etext #1950]
+Posting Date: March 6, 2010
+Last Updated: November 23, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WOMAN OF THIRTY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+A WOMAN OF THIRTY
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+
+Translated by Ellen Marriage
+
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+                    To Louis Boulanger, Painter.
+
+
+
+
+
+A WOMAN OF THIRTY
+
+
+
+
+I. EARLY MISTAKES
+
+It was a Sunday morning in the beginning of April 1813, a morning which
+gave promise of one of those bright days when Parisians, for the first
+time in the year, behold dry pavements underfoot and a cloudless sky
+overhead. It was not yet noon when a luxurious cabriolet, drawn by two
+spirited horses, turned out of the Rue de Castiglione into the Rue de
+Rivoli, and drew up behind a row of carriages standing before the newly
+opened barrier half-way down the Terrasse de Feuillants. The owner of
+the carriage looked anxious and out of health; the thin hair on his
+sallow temples, turning gray already, gave a look of premature age to
+his face. He flung the reins to a servant who followed on horseback,
+and alighted to take in his arms a young girl whose dainty beauty had
+already attracted the eyes of loungers on the Terrasse. The little lady,
+standing upon the carriage step, graciously submitted to be taken by the
+waist, putting an arm round the neck of her guide, who set her down upon
+the pavement without so much as ruffling the trimming of her green rep
+dress. No lover would have been so careful. The stranger could only be
+the father of the young girl, who took his arm familiarly without a word
+of thanks, and hurried him into the Garden of the Tuileries.
+
+The old father noted the wondering stare which some of the young men
+gave the couple, and the sad expression left his face for a moment.
+Although he had long since reached the time of life when a man is fain
+to be content with such illusory delights as vanity bestows, he began to
+smile.
+
+“They think you are my wife,” he said in the young lady’s ear, and he
+held himself erect and walked with slow steps, which filled his daughter
+with despair.
+
+He seemed to take up the coquette’s part for her; perhaps of the two, he
+was the more gratified by the curious glances directed at those little
+feet, shod with plum-colored prunella; at the dainty figure outlined by
+a low-cut bodice, filled in with an embroidered chemisette, which only
+partially concealed the girlish throat. Her dress was lifted by her
+movements as she walked, giving glimpses higher than the shoes of
+delicately moulded outlines beneath open-work silk stockings. More than
+one of the idlers turned and passed the pair again, to admire or to
+catch a second glimpse of the young face, about which the brown tresses
+played; there was a glow in its white and red, partly reflected from the
+rose-colored satin lining of her fashionable bonnet, partly due to the
+eagerness and impatience which sparkled in every feature. A mischievous
+sweetness lighted up the beautiful, almond-shaped dark eyes, bathed
+in liquid brightness, shaded by the long lashes and curving arch of
+eyebrow. Life and youth displayed their treasures in the petulant face
+and in the gracious outlines of the bust unspoiled even by the fashion
+of the day, which brought the girdle under the breast.
+
+The young lady herself appeared to be insensible to admiration. Her
+eyes were fixed in a sort of anxiety on the Palace of the Tuileries,
+the goal, doubtless, of her petulant promenade. It wanted but fifteen
+minutes of noon, yet even at that early hour several women in gala dress
+were coming away from the Tuileries, not without backward glances at the
+gates and pouting looks of discontent, as if they regretted the lateness
+of the arrival which had cheated them of a longed-for spectacle. Chance
+carried a few words let fall by one of these disappointed fair ones to
+the ears of the charming stranger, and put her in a more than common
+uneasiness. The elderly man watched the signs of impatience and
+apprehension which flitted across his companion’s pretty face with
+interest, rather than amusement, in his eyes, observing her with a close
+and careful attention, which perhaps could only be prompted by some
+after-thought in the depths of a father’s mind.
+
+
+
+It was the thirteenth Sunday of the year 1813. In two days’ time
+Napoleon was to set out upon the disastrous campaign in which he was
+to lose first Bessieres, and then Duroc; he was to win the memorable
+battles of Lutzen and Bautzen, to see himself treacherously deserted by
+Austria, Saxony, Bavaria, and Bernadotte, and to dispute the dreadful
+field of Leipsic. The magnificent review commanded for that day by the
+Emperor was to be the last of so many which had long drawn forth the
+admiration of Paris and of foreign visitors. For the last time the Old
+Guard would execute their scientific military manoeuvres with the pomp
+and precision which sometimes amazed the Giant himself. Napoleon was
+nearly ready for his duel with Europe. It was a sad sentiment which
+brought a brilliant and curious throng to the Tuileries. Each mind
+seemed to foresee the future, perhaps too in every mind another thought
+was dimly present, how that in the future, when the heroic age of France
+should have taken the half-fabulous color with which it is tinged for
+us to-day, men’s imaginations would more than once seek to retrace the
+picture of the pageant which they were assembled to behold.
+
+“Do let us go more quickly, father; I can hear the drums,” the young
+girl said, and in a half-teasing, half-coaxing manner she urged her
+companion forward.
+
+“The troops are marching into the Tuileries,” said he.
+
+“Or marching out of it--everybody is coming away,” she answered in
+childish vexation, which drew a smile from her father.
+
+“The review only begins at half-past twelve,” he said; he had fallen
+half behind his impetuous daughter.
+
+It might have been supposed that she meant to hasten their progress by
+a movement of her right arm, for it swung like an oar blade through the
+water. In her impatience she had crushed her handkerchief into a ball in
+her tiny, well-gloved fingers. Now and then the old man smiled, but the
+smiles were succeeded by an anxious look which crossed his withered face
+and saddened it. In his love for the fair young girl by his side, he
+was as fain to exalt the present moment as to dread the future. “She is
+happy to-day; will her happiness last?” he seemed to ask himself, for
+the old are somewhat prone to foresee their own sorrows in the future of
+the young.
+
+Father and daughter reached the peristyle under the tower where the
+tricolor flag was still waving; but as they passed under the arch by
+which people came and went between the Gardens of the Tuileries and the
+Place du Carrousel, the sentries on guard called out sternly:
+
+“No admittance this way.”
+
+By standing on tiptoe the young girl contrived to catch a glimpse of
+a crowd of well-dressed women, thronging either side of the old marble
+arcade along which the Emperor was to pass.
+
+“We were too late in starting, father; you can see that quite well.” A
+little piteous pout revealed the immense importance which she attached
+to the sight of this particular review.
+
+“Very well, Julie--let us go away. You dislike a crush.”
+
+“Do let us stay, father. Even here I may catch a glimpse of the Emperor;
+he might die during this campaign, and then I should never have seen
+him.”
+
+Her father shuddered at the selfish speech. There were tears in the
+girl’s voice; he looked at her, and thought that he saw tears beneath
+her lowered eyelids; tears caused not so much by the disappointment as
+by one of the troubles of early youth, a secret easily guessed by an old
+father. Suddenly Julie’s face flushed, and she uttered an exclamation.
+Neither her father nor the sentinels understood the meaning of the cry;
+but an officer within the barrier, who sprang across the court towards
+the staircase, heard it, and turned abruptly at the sound. He went to
+the arcade by the Gardens of the Tuileries, and recognized the young
+lady who had been hidden for a moment by the tall bearskin caps of the
+grenadiers. He set aside in favor of the pair the order which he himself
+had given. Then, taking no heed of the murmurings of the fashionable
+crowd seated under the arcade, he gently drew the enraptured child
+towards him.
+
+“I am no longer surprised at her vexation and enthusiasm, if _you_ are
+in waiting,” the old man said with a half-mocking, half-serious glance
+at the officer.
+
+“If you want a good position, M. le Duc,” the young man answered, “we
+must not spend any time in talking. The Emperor does not like to be kept
+waiting, and the Grand Marshal has sent me to announce our readiness.”
+
+As he spoke, he had taken Julie’s arm with a certain air of old
+acquaintance, and drew her rapidly in the direction of the Place du
+Carrousel. Julie was astonished at the sight. An immense crowd was
+penned up in a narrow space, shut in between the gray walls of the
+palace and the limits marked out by chains round the great sanded
+squares in the midst of the courtyard of the Tuileries. The cordon of
+sentries posted to keep a clear passage for the Emperor and his staff
+had great difficulty in keeping back the eager humming swarm of human
+beings.
+
+“Is it going to be a very fine sight?” Julie asked (she was radiant
+now).
+
+“Pray take care!” cried her guide, and seizing Julie by the waist, he
+lifted her up with as much vigor as rapidity and set her down beside a
+pillar.
+
+But for his prompt action, his gazing kinswoman would have come into
+collision with the hindquarters of a white horse which Napoleon’s
+Mameluke held by the bridle; the animal in its trappings of green velvet
+and gold stood almost under the arcade, some ten paces behind the rest
+of the horses in readiness for the Emperor’s staff.
+
+The young officer placed the father and daughter in front of the crowd
+in the first space to the right, and recommended them by a sign to the
+two veteran grenadiers on either side. Then he went on his way into
+the palace; a look of great joy and happiness had succeeded to his
+horror-struck expression when the horse backed. Julie had given his hand
+a mysterious pressure; had she meant to thank him for the little service
+he had done her, or did she tell him, “After all, I shall really see
+you?” She bent her head quite graciously in response to the respectful
+bow by which the officer took leave of them before he vanished.
+
+The old man stood a little behind his daughter. He looked grave. He
+seemed to have left the two young people together for some purpose of
+his own, and now he furtively watched the girl, trying to lull her
+into false security by appearing to give his whole attention to the
+magnificent sight in the Place du Carrousel. When Julie’s eyes turned
+to her father with the expression of a schoolboy before his master, he
+answered her glance by a gay, kindly smile, but his own keen eyes had
+followed the officer under the arcade, and nothing of all that passed
+was lost upon him.
+
+“What a grand sight!” said Julie in a low voice, as she pressed her
+father’s hand; and indeed the pomp and picturesquesness of the spectacle
+in the Place du Carrousel drew the same exclamation from thousands
+upon thousands of spectators, all agape with wonder. Another array of
+sightseers, as tightly packed as the ranks behind the old noble and
+his daughter, filled the narrow strip of pavement by the railings which
+crossed the Place du Carrousel from side to side in a line parallel with
+the Palace of the Tuileries. The dense living mass, variegated by the
+colors of the women’s dresses, traced out a bold line across the
+centre of the Place du Carrousel, filling in the fourth side of a vast
+parallelogram, surrounded on three sides by the Palace of the Tuileries
+itself. Within the precincts thus railed off stood the regiments of the
+Old Guard about to be passed in review, drawn up opposite the Palace
+in imposing blue columns, ten ranks in depth. Without and beyond in the
+Place du Carrousel stood several regiments likewise drawn up in parallel
+lines, ready to march in through the arch in the centre; the Triumphal
+Arch, where the bronze horses of St. Mark from Venice used to stand in
+those days. At either end, by the Galeries du Louvre, the regimental
+bands were stationed, masked by the Polish Lancers then on duty.
+
+The greater part of the vast graveled space was empty as an arena, ready
+for the evolutions of those silent masses disposed with the symmetry
+of military art. The sunlight blazed back from ten thousand bayonets in
+thin points of flame; the breeze ruffled the men’s helmet plumes till
+they swayed like the crests of forest-trees before a gale. The mute
+glittering ranks of veterans were full of bright contrasting colors,
+thanks to their different uniforms, weapons, accoutrements, and
+aiguillettes; and the whole great picture, that miniature battlefield
+before the combat, was framed by the majestic towering walls of the
+Tuileries, which officers and men seemed to rival in their immobility.
+Involuntarily the spectator made the comparison between the walls of
+men and the walls of stone. The spring sunlight, flooding white masonry
+reared but yesterday and buildings centuries old, shone full likewise
+upon thousands of bronzed faces, each one with its own tale of perils
+passed, each one gravely expectant of perils to come.
+
+The colonels of the regiments came and went alone before the ranks of
+heroes; and behind the masses of troops, checkered with blue and silver
+and gold and purple, the curious could discern the tricolor pennons on
+the lances of some half-a-dozen indefatigable Polish cavalry, rushing
+about like shepherds’ dogs in charge of a flock, caracoling up and down
+between the troops and the crowd, to keep the gazers within their proper
+bounds. But for this slight flutter of movement, the whole scene might
+have been taking place in the courtyard of the palace of the Sleeping
+Beauty. The very spring breeze, ruffling up the long fur on the
+grenadiers’ bearskins, bore witness to the men’s immobility, as the
+smothered murmur of the crowd emphasized their silence. Now and again
+the jingling of Chinese bells, or a chance blow to a big drum, woke
+the reverberating echoes of the Imperial Palace with a sound like the
+far-off rumblings of thunder.
+
+An indescribable, unmistakable enthusiasm was manifest in the expectancy
+of the multitude. France was about to take farewell of Napoleon on the
+eve of a campaign of which the meanest citizen foresaw the perils. The
+existence of the French Empire was at stake--to be, or not to be. The
+whole citizen population seemed to be as much inspired with this thought
+as that other armed population standing in serried and silent ranks in
+the enclosed space, with the Eagles and the genius of Napoleon hovering
+above them.
+
+Those very soldiers were the hope of France, her last drop of blood; and
+this accounted for not a little of the anxious interest of the scene.
+Most of the gazers in the crowd had bidden farewell--perhaps farewell
+for ever--to the men who made up the rank and file of the battalions;
+and even those most hostile to the Emperor, in their hearts, put up
+fervent prayers to heaven for the glory of France; and those most weary
+of the struggle with the rest of Europe had left their hatreds behind as
+they passed in under the Triumphal Arch. They too felt that in the hour
+of danger Napoleon meant France herself.
+
+The clock of the Tuileries struck the half-hour. In a moment the hum of
+the crowd ceased. The silence was so deep that you might have heard a
+child speak. The old noble and his daughter, wholly intent, seeming to
+live only by their eyes, caught a distinct sound of spurs and clank of
+swords echoing up under the sonorous peristyle.
+
+And suddenly there appeared a short, somewhat stout figure in a green
+uniform, white trousers, and riding boots; a man wearing on his head a
+cocked hat well-nigh as magically potent as its wearer; the broad red
+ribbon of the Legion of Honor rose and fell on his breast, and a short
+sword hung at his side. At one and the same moment the man was seen by
+all eyes in all parts of the square.
+
+Immediately the drums beat a salute, both bands struck up a martial
+refrain, caught and repeated like a fugue by every instrument from the
+thinnest flutes to the largest drum. The clangor of that call to arms
+thrilled through every soul. The colors dropped, and the men presented
+arms, one unanimous rhythmical movement shaking every bayonet from
+the foremost front near the Palace to the last rank in the Place du
+Carrousel. The words of command sped from line to line like echoes. The
+whole enthusiastic multitude sent up a shout of “Long live the Emperor!”
+
+Everything shook, quivered, and thrilled at last. Napoleon had mounted
+his horse. It was his movement that had put life into those silent
+masses of men; the dumb instruments had found a voice at his coming,
+the Eagles and the colors had obeyed the same impulse which had brought
+emotion into all faces.
+
+The very walls of the high galleries of the old palace seemed to cry
+aloud, “Long live the Emperor!”
+
+There was something preternatural about it--it was magic at work, a
+counterfeit presentment of the power of God; or rather it was a fugitive
+image of a reign itself so fugitive.
+
+And _he_ the centre of such love, such enthusiasm and devotion, and so
+many prayers, he for whom the sun had driven the clouds from the sky,
+was sitting there on his horse, three paces in front of his Golden
+Squadron, with the grand Marshal on his left, and the Marshal-in-waiting
+on his right. Amid all the outburst of enthusiasm at his presence not a
+feature of his face appeared to alter.
+
+“Oh! yes. At Wagram, in the thick of the firing, on the field of
+Borodino, among the dead, always as cool as a cucumber _he_ is!” said
+the grenadier, in answer to the questions with which the young girl
+plied him. For a moment Julie was absorbed in the contemplation of that
+face, so quiet in the security of conscious power. The Emperor noticed
+Mlle. de Chatillonest, and leaned to make some brief remark to Duroc,
+which drew a smile from the Grand Marshal. Then the review began.
+
+If hitherto the young lady’s attention had been divided between
+Napoleon’s impassive face and the blue, red, and green ranks of troops,
+from this time forth she was wholly intent upon a young officer moving
+among the lines as they performed their swift symmetrical evolutions.
+She watched him gallop with tireless activity to and from the group
+where the plainly dressed Napoleon shone conspicuous. The officer rode a
+splendid black horse. His handsome sky-blue uniform marked him out amid
+the variegated multitude as one of the Emperor’s orderly staff-officers.
+His gold lace glittered in the sunshine which lighted up the aigrette on
+his tall, narrow shako, so that the gazer might have compared him to a
+will-o’-the-wisp, or to a visible spirit emanating from the Emperor to
+infuse movement into those battalions whose swaying bayonets flashed
+into flames; for, at a mere glance from his eyes, they broke and
+gathered again, surging to and fro like the waves in a bay, or again
+swept before him like the long ridges of high-crested wave which the
+vexed Ocean directs against the shore.
+
+When the manoeuvres were over the officer galloped back at full speed,
+pulled up his horse, and awaited orders. He was not ten paces from Julie
+as he stood before the Emperor, much as General Rapp stands in Gerard’s
+_Battle of Austerlitz_. The young girl could behold her lover in all his
+soldierly splendor.
+
+Colonel Victor d’Aiglemont, barely thirty years of age, was tall,
+slender, and well made. His well-proportioned figure never showed to
+better advantage than now as he exerted his strength to hold in the
+restive animal, whose back seemed to curve gracefully to the rider’s
+weight. His brown masculine face possessed the indefinable charm of
+perfectly regular features combined with youth. The fiery eyes under the
+broad forehead, shaded by thick eyebrows and long lashes, looked like
+white ovals bordered by an outline of black. His nose had the delicate
+curve of an eagle’s beak; the sinuous lines of the inevitable black
+moustache enhanced the crimson of the lips. The brown and tawny shades
+which overspread the wide high-colored cheeks told a tale of unusual
+vigor, and his whole face bore the impress of dashing courage. He was
+the very model which French artists seek to-day for the typical hero
+of Imperial France. The horse which he rode was covered with sweat, the
+animal’s quivering head denoted the last degree of restiveness; his hind
+hoofs were set down wide apart and exactly in a line, he shook his long
+thick tail to the wind; in his fidelity to his master he seemed to be a
+visible presentment of that master’s devotion to the Emperor.
+
+Julie saw her lover watching intently for the Emperor’s glances, and
+felt a momentary pang of jealousy, for as yet he had not given her a
+look. Suddenly at a word from his sovereign Victor gripped his horse’s
+flanks and set out at a gallop, but the animal took fright at a shadow
+cast by a post, shied, backed, and reared up so suddenly that his rider
+was all but thrown off. Julie cried out, her face grew white, people
+looked at her curiously, but she saw no one, her eyes were fixed upon
+the too mettlesome beast. The officer gave the horse a sharp admonitory
+cut with the whip, and galloped off with Napoleon’s order.
+
+Julie was so absorbed, so dizzy with sights and sounds, that
+unconsciously she clung to her father’s arm so tightly that he could
+read her thoughts by the varying pressure of her fingers. When Victor
+was all but flung out of the saddle, she clutched her father with a
+convulsive grip as if she herself were in danger of falling, and the
+old man looked at his daughter’s tell-tale face with dark and painful
+anxiety. Pity, jealousy, something even of regret stole across every
+drawn and wrinkled line of mouth and brow. When he saw the unwonted
+light in Julie’s eyes, when that cry broke from her, when the convulsive
+grasp of her fingers drew away the veil and put him in possession of
+her secret, then with that revelation of her love there came surely some
+swift revelation of the future. Mournful forebodings could be read in
+his own face.
+
+Julie’s soul seemed at that moment to have passed into the officer’s
+being. A torturing thought more cruel than any previous dread contracted
+the old man’s painworn features, as he saw the glance of understanding
+that passed between the soldier and Julie. The girl’s eyes were wet, her
+cheeks glowed with unwonted color. Her father turned abruptly and led
+her away into the Garden of the Tuileries.
+
+“Why, father,” she cried, “there are still the regiments in the Place du
+Carrousel to be passed in review.”
+
+“No, child, all the troops are marching out.”
+
+“I think you are mistaken, father; M. d’Aiglemont surely told them to
+advance----”
+
+“But I feel ill, my child, and I do not care to stay.”
+
+Julie could readily believe the words when she glanced at his face; he
+looked quite worn out by his fatherly anxieties.
+
+“Are you feeling very ill?” she asked indifferently, her mind was so
+full of other thoughts.
+
+“Every day is a reprieve for me, is it not?” returned her father.
+
+“Now do you mean to make me miserable again by talking about your death?
+I was in such spirits! Do pray get rid of those horrid gloomy ideas of
+yours.”
+
+The father heaved a sigh. “Ah! spoiled child,” he cried, “the best
+hearts are sometimes very cruel. We devote our whole lives to you, you
+are our one thought, we plan for your welfare, sacrifice our tastes to
+your whims, idolize you, give the very blood in our veins for you, and
+all this is nothing, is it? Alas! yes, you take it all as a matter of
+course. If we would always have your smiles and your disdainful love, we
+should need the power of God in heaven. Then comes another, a lover, a
+husband, and steals away your heart.”
+
+Julie looked in amazement at her father; he walked slowly along, and
+there was no light in the eyes which he turned upon her.
+
+“You hide yourself even from us,” he continued, “but, perhaps, also you
+hide yourself from yourself--”
+
+“What do you mean by that, father?”
+
+“I think that you have secrets from me, Julie.--You love,” he went on
+quickly, as he saw the color rise to her face. “Oh! I hoped that you
+would stay with your old father until he died. I hoped to keep you with
+me, still radiant and happy, to admire you as you were but so lately. So
+long as I knew nothing of your future I could believe in a happy lot for
+you; but now I cannot possibly take away with me a hope of happiness for
+your life, for you love the colonel even more than the cousin. I can no
+longer doubt it.”
+
+“And why should I be forbidden to love him?” asked Julie, with lively
+curiosity in her face.
+
+“Ah, my Julie, you would not understand me,” sighed the father.
+
+“Tell me, all the same,” said Julie, with an involuntary petulant
+gesture.
+
+“Very well, child, listen to me. Girls are apt to imagine noble and
+enchanting and totally imaginary figures in their own minds; they have
+fanciful extravagant ideas about men, and sentiment, and life; and then
+they innocently endow somebody or other with all the perfections of
+their day-dreams, and put their trust in him. They fall in love with
+this imaginary creature in the man of their choice; and then, when it
+is too late to escape from their fate, behold their first idol, the
+illusion made fair with their fancies, turns to an odious skeleton.
+Julie, I would rather have you fall in love with an old man than with
+the Colonel. Ah! if you could but see things from the standpoint of ten
+years hence, you would admit that my old experience was right. I know
+what Victor is, that gaiety of his is simply animal spirits--the gaiety
+of the barracks. He has no ability, and he is a spendthrift. He is one
+of those men whom Heaven created to eat and digest four meals a day, to
+sleep, to fall in love with the first woman that comes to hand, and to
+fight. He does not understand life. His kind heart, for he has a kind
+heart, will perhaps lead him to give his purse to a sufferer or to a
+comrade; _but_ he is careless, he has not the delicacy of heart which
+makes us slaves to a woman’s happiness, he is ignorant, he is selfish.
+There are plenty of _buts_--”
+
+“But, father, he must surely be clever, he must have ability, or he
+would not be a colonel--”
+
+“My dear, Victor will be a colonel all his life.--I have seen no one who
+appears to me to be worthy of you,” the old father added, with a kind of
+enthusiasm.
+
+He paused an instant, looked at his daughter, and added, “Why, my poor
+Julie, you are still too young, too fragile, too delicate for the cares
+and rubs of married life. D’Aiglemont’s relations have spoiled him, just
+as your mother and I have spoiled you. What hope is there that you two
+could agree, with two imperious wills diametrically opposed to
+each other? You will be either the tyrant or the victim, and either
+alternative means, for a wife, an equal sum of misfortune. But you are
+modest and sweet-natured, you would yield from the first. In short,” he
+added, in a quivering voice, “there is a grace of feeling in you
+which would never be valued, and then----” he broke off, for the tears
+overcame him.
+
+“Victor will give you pain through all the girlish qualities of your
+young nature,” he went on, after a pause. “I know what soldiers are, my
+Julie; I have been in the army. In a man of that kind, love very seldom
+gets the better of old habits, due partly to the miseries amid which
+soldiers live, partly to the risks they run in a life of adventure.”
+
+“Then you mean to cross my inclinations, do you, father?” asked Julie,
+half in earnest, half in jest. “Am I to marry to please you and not to
+please myself?”
+
+“To please me!” cried her father, with a start of surprise. “To please
+_me_, child? when you will not hear the voice that upbraids you so
+tenderly very much longer! But I have always heard children impute
+personal motives for the sacrifices that their parents make for
+them. Marry Victor, my Julie! Some day you will bitterly deplore his
+ineptitude, his thriftless ways, his selfishness, his lack of delicacy,
+his inability to understand love, and countless troubles arising through
+him. Then, remember, that here under these trees your old father’s
+prophetic voice sounded in your ears in vain.”
+
+He said no more; he had detected a rebellious shake of the head on his
+daughter’s part. Both made several paces towards the carriage which was
+waiting for them at the grating. During that interval of silence, the
+young girl stole a glance at her father’s face, and little by little her
+sullen brow cleared. The intense pain visible on his bowed forehead made
+a lively impression upon her.
+
+“Father,” she began in gentle tremulous tones, “I promise to say no more
+about Victor until you have overcome your prejudices against him.”
+
+The old man looked at her in amazement. Two tears which filled his eyes
+overflowed down his withered cheeks. He could not take Julie in his arms
+in that crowded place; but he pressed her hand tenderly. A few minutes
+later when they had taken their places in the cabriolet, all the anxious
+thought which had gathered about his brow had completely disappeared.
+Julie’s pensive attitude gave him far less concern than the innocent joy
+which had betrayed her secret during the review.
+
+
+
+Nearly a year had passed since the Emperor’s last review. In early March
+1814 a caleche was rolling along the highroad from Amboise to Tours.
+As the carriage came out from beneath the green-roofed aisle of walnut
+trees by the post-house of la Frilliere, the horses dashed forward with
+such speed that in a moment they gained the bridge built across the Cise
+at the point of its confluence with the Loire. There, however, they come
+to a sudden stand. One of the traces had given way in consequence of the
+furious pace at which the post-boy, obedient to his orders, had urged on
+four horses, the most vigorous of their breed. Chance, therefore, gave
+the two recently awakened occupants of the carriage an opportunity of
+seeing one of the most lovely landscapes along the enchanting banks of
+the Loire, and that at their full leisure.
+
+At a glance the travelers could see to the right the whole winding
+course of the Cise meandering like a silver snake among the meadows,
+where the grass had taken the deep, bright green of early spring. To the
+left lay the Loire in all its glory. A chill morning breeze, ruffling
+the surface of the stately river, had fretted the broad sheets of water
+far and wide into a network of ripples, which caught the gleams of the
+sun, so that the green islets here and there in its course shone like
+gems set in a gold necklace. On the opposite bank the fair rich meadows
+of Touraine stretched away as far as the eye could see; the low hills
+of the Cher, the only limits to the view, lay on the far horizon, a
+luminous line against the clear blue sky. Tours itself, framed by the
+trees on the islands in a setting of spring leaves, seemed to rise like
+Venice out of the waters, and her old cathedral towers soaring in air
+were blended with the pale fantastic cloud shapes in the sky.
+
+Over the side of the bridge, where the carriage had come to a stand, the
+traveler looks along a line of cliffs stretching as far as Tours.
+Nature in some freakish mood must have raised these barriers of rock,
+undermined incessantly by the rippling Loire at their feet, for a
+perpetual wonder for spectators. The village of Vouvray nestles, as
+it were, among the clefts and crannies of the crags, which begin
+to describe a bend at the junction of the Loire and Cise. A whole
+population of vine-dressers lives, in fact, in appalling insecurity in
+holes in their jagged sides for the whole way between Vouvray and Tours.
+In some places there are three tiers of dwellings hollowed out, one
+above the other, in the rock, each row communicating with the next by
+dizzy staircases cut likewise in the face of the cliff. A little girl
+in a short red petticoat runs out into her garden on the roof of another
+dwelling; you can watch a wreath of hearth-smoke curling up among
+the shoots and trails of the vines. Men are at work in their almost
+perpendicular patches of ground, an old woman sits tranquilly spinning
+under a blossoming almond tree on a crumbling mass of rock, and smiles
+down on the dismay of the travelers far below her feet. The cracks in
+the ground trouble her as little as the precarious state of the old
+wall, a pendant mass of loose stones, only kept in position by the
+crooked stems of its ivy mantle. The sound of coopers’ mallets rings
+through the skyey caves; for here, where Nature stints human industry of
+soil, the soil is everywhere tilled, and everywhere fertile.
+
+No view along the whole course of the Loire can compare with the rich
+landscape of Touraine, here outspread beneath the traveler’s eyes. The
+triple picture, thus barely sketched in outline, is one of those scenes
+which the imagination engraves for ever upon the memory; let a poet
+fall under its charm, and he shall be haunted by visions which shall
+reproduce its romantic loveliness out of the vague substance of dreams.
+
+As the carriage stopped on the bridge over the Cise, white sails came
+out here and there from among the islands in the Loire to add new grace
+to the perfect view. The subtle scent of the willows by the water’s
+edge was mingled with the damp odor of the breeze from the river. The
+monotonous chant of a goat-herd added a plaintive note to the sound
+of birds’ songs in a chorus which never ends; the cries of the boatmen
+brought tidings of distant busy life. Here was Touraine in all its
+glory, and the very height of the splendor of spring. Here was the
+one peaceful district in France in those troublous days; for it was
+so unlikely that a foreign army should trouble its quiet that Touraine
+might be said to defy invasion.
+
+As soon as the caleche stopped, a head covered with a foraging cap was
+put out of the window, and soon afterwards an impatient military man
+flung open the carriage door and sprang down into the road to pick a
+quarrel with the postilion, but the skill with which the Tourangeau was
+repairing the trace restored Colonel d’Aiglemont’s equanimity. He went
+back to the carriage, stretched himself to relieve his benumbed muscles,
+yawned, looked about him, and finally laid a hand on the arm of a young
+woman warmly wrapped up in a furred pelisse.
+
+“Come, Julie,” he said hoarsely, “just wake up and take a look at this
+country. It is magnificent.”
+
+Julie put her head out of the window. She wore a traveling cap of sable
+fur. Nothing could be seen of her but her face, for the whole of her
+person was completely concealed by the folds of her fur pelisse.
+The young girl who tripped to the review at the Tuileries with light
+footsteps and joy and gladness in her heart was scarcely recognizable in
+Julie d’Aiglemont. Her face, delicate as ever, had lost the rose-color
+which once gave it so rich a glow. A few straggling locks of black hair,
+straightened out by the damp night air, enhanced its dead whiteness,
+and all its life and sparkle seemed to be torpid. Yet her eyes glittered
+with preternatural brightness in spite of the violet shadows under the
+lashes upon her wan cheeks.
+
+She looked out with indifferent eyes over the fields towards the
+Cher, at the islands in the river, at the line of the crags of Vouvray
+stretching along the Loire towards Tours; then she sank back as soon as
+possible into her seat in the caleche. She did not care to give a glance
+to the enchanting valley of the Cise.
+
+“Yes, it is wonderful,” she said, and out in the open air her voice
+sounded weak and faint to the last degree. Evidently she had had her way
+with her father, to her misfortune.
+
+“Would you not like to live here, Julie?”
+
+“Yes; here or anywhere,” she answered listlessly.
+
+“Do you feel ill?” asked Colonel d’Aiglemont.
+
+“No, not at all,” she answered with momentary energy; and, smiling at
+her husband, she added, “I should like to go to sleep.”
+
+Suddenly there came a sound of a horse galloping towards them. Victor
+d’Aiglemont dropped his wife’s hand and turned to watch the bend in the
+road. No sooner had he taken his eyes from Julie’s pale face than
+all the assumed gaiety died out of it; it was as if a light had been
+extinguished. She felt no wish to look at the landscape, no curiosity to
+see the horseman who was galloping towards them at such a furious pace,
+and, ensconcing herself in her corner, stared out before her at the
+hindquarters of the post-horses, looking as blank as any Breton peasant
+listening to his _recteur’s_ sermon.
+
+Suddenly a young man riding a valuable horse came out from behind the
+clump of poplars and flowering briar-rose.
+
+“It is an Englishman,” remarked the Colonel.
+
+“Lord bless you, yes, General,” said the post-boy; “he belongs to the
+race of fellows who have a mind to gobble up France, they say.”
+
+The stranger was one of the foreigners traveling in France at the time
+when Napoleon detained all British subjects within the limits of the
+Empire, by way of reprisals for the violation of the Treaty of Amiens,
+an outrage of international law perpetrated by the Court of St. James.
+These prisoners, compelled to submit to the Emperor’s pleasure, were not
+all suffered to remain in the houses where they were arrested, nor yet
+in the places of residence which at first they were permitted to choose.
+Most of the English colony in Touraine had been transplanted thither
+from different places where their presence was supposed to be inimical
+to the interests of the Continental Policy.
+
+The young man, who was taking the tedium of the early morning hours on
+horseback, was one of these victims of bureaucratic tyranny. Two years
+previously, a sudden order from the Foreign Office had dragged him from
+Montpellier, whither he had gone on account of consumptive tendencies.
+He glanced at the Comte d’Aiglemont, saw that he was a military man, and
+deliberately looked away, turning his head somewhat abruptly towards the
+meadows by the Cise.
+
+“The English are all as insolent as if the globe belonged to them,”
+ muttered the Colonel. “Luckily, Soult will give them a thrashing
+directly.”
+
+The prisoner gave a glance to the caleche as he rode by. Brief though
+that glance was, he had yet time to notice the sad expression which lent
+an indefinable charm to the Countess’ pensive face. Many men are deeply
+moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look
+of pain for a sign of constancy or of love. Julie herself was so much
+absorbed in the contemplation of the opposite cushion that she saw
+neither the horse nor the rider. The damaged trace meanwhile had been
+quickly and strongly repaired; the Count stepped into his place again;
+and the post-boy, doing his best to make up for lost time, drove
+the carriage rapidly along the embankment. On they drove under the
+overhanging cliffs, with their picturesque vine-dressers’ huts and
+stores of wine maturing in their dark sides, till in the distance uprose
+the spire of the famous Abbey of Marmoutiers, the retreat of St. Martin.
+
+“What can that diaphanous milord want with us?” exclaimed the Colonel,
+turning to assure himself that the horseman who had followed them from
+the bridge was the young Englishman.
+
+After all, the stranger committed no breach of good manners by riding
+along on the footway, and Colonel d’Aiglemont was fain to lie back in
+his corner after sending a scowl in the Englishman’s direction. But in
+spite of his hostile instincts, he could not help noticing the beauty of
+the animal and the graceful horsemanship of the rider. The young man’s
+face was of that pale, fair-complexioned, insular type, which is almost
+girlish in the softness and delicacy of its color and texture. He was
+tall, thin, and fair-haired, dressed with the extreme and elaborate
+neatness characteristic of a man of fashion in prudish England. Any one
+might have thought that bashfulness rather than pleasure at the sight
+of the Countess had called up that flush into his face. Once only Julie
+raised her eyes and looked at the stranger, and then only because she
+was in a manner compelled to do so, for her husband called upon her to
+admire the action of the thoroughbred. It so happened that their glances
+clashed; and the shy Englishman, instead of riding abreast of the
+carriage, fell behind on this, and followed them at a distance of a few
+paces.
+
+Yet the Countess had scarcely given him a glance; she saw none of the
+various perfections, human and equine, commended to her notice, and
+fell back again in the carriage, with a slight movement of the eyelids
+intended to express her acquiescence in her husband’s views. The Colonel
+fell asleep again, and both husband and wife reached Tours without
+another word. Not one of those enchanting views of everchanging
+landscape through which they sped had drawn so much as a glance from
+Julie’s eyes.
+
+Mme. d’Aiglemont looked now and again at her sleeping husband. While she
+looked, a sudden jolt shook something down upon her knees. It was her
+father’s portrait, a miniature which she wore suspended about her neck
+by a black cord. At the sight of it, the tears, till then kept back,
+overflowed her eyes, but no one, save perhaps the Englishman, saw them
+glitter there for a brief moment before they dried upon her pale cheeks.
+
+Colonel d’Aiglemont was on his way to the South. Marshal Soult was
+repelling an English invasion of Bearn; and d’Aiglemont, the bearer of
+the Emperor’s orders to the Marshal, seized the opportunity of taking
+his wife as far as Tours to leave her with an elderly relative of his
+own, far away from the dangers threatening Paris.
+
+Very shortly the carriage rolled over the paved road of Tours, over the
+bridge, along the Grande-Rue, and stopped at last before the old mansion
+of the _ci-devant_ Marquise de Listomere-Landon.
+
+The Marquise de Listomere-Landon, with her white hair, pale face, and
+shrewd smile, was one of those fine old ladies who still seem to wear
+the paniers of the eighteenth century, and affects caps of an extinct
+mode. They are nearly always caressing in their manners, as if the
+heyday of love still lingered on for these septuagenarian portraits
+of the age of Louis Quinze, with the faint perfume of _poudre a la
+marechale_ always clinging about them. Bigoted rather than pious, and
+less of bigots than they seem, women who can tell a story well and talk
+still better, their laughter comes more readily for an old memory than
+for a new jest--the present intrudes upon them.
+
+When an old waiting-woman announced to the Marquise de Listomere-Landon
+(to give her the title which she was soon to resume) the arrival of a
+nephew whom she had not seen since the outbreak of the war with Spain,
+the old lady took off her spectacles with alacrity, shut the _Galerie
+de l’ancienne Cour_ (her favorite work), and recovered something like
+youthful activity, hastening out upon the flight of steps to greet the
+young couple there.
+
+Aunt and niece exchanged a rapid glance of survey.
+
+“Good-morning, dear aunt,” cried the Colonel, giving the old lady a
+hasty embrace. “I am bringing a young lady to put under your wing.
+I have come to put my treasure in your keeping. My Julie is neither
+jealous nor a coquette, she is as good as an angel. I hope that she will
+not be spoiled here,” he added, suddenly interrupting himself.
+
+“Scapegrace!” returned the Marquise, with a satirical glance at her
+nephew.
+
+She did not wait for her niece to approach her, but with a certain
+kindly graciousness went forward herself to kiss Julie, who stood there
+thoughtfully, to all appearance more embarrassed than curious concerning
+her new relation.
+
+“So we are to make each other’s acquaintance, are we, my love?” the
+Marquise continued. “Do not be too much alarmed of me. I always try not
+to be an old woman with young people.”
+
+On the way to the drawing-room, the Marquise ordered breakfast for her
+guests in provincial fashion; but the Count checked his aunt’s flow of
+words by saying soberly that he could only remain in the house while the
+horses were changing. On this the three hurried into the drawing-room.
+The Colonel had barely time to tell the story of the political and
+military events which had compelled him to ask his aunt for a shelter
+for his young wife. While he talked on without interruption, the older
+lady looked from her nephew to her niece, and took the sadness in
+Julie’s white face for grief at the enforced separation. “Eh! eh!” her
+looks seemed to say, “these young things are in love with each other.”
+
+The crack of the postilion’s whip sounded outside in the silent old
+grass-grown courtyard. Victor embraced his aunt once more, and rushed
+out.
+
+“Good-bye, dear,” he said, kissing his wife, who had followed him down
+to the carriage.
+
+“Oh! Victor, let me come still further with you,” she pleaded coaxingly.
+“I do not want to leave you----”
+
+“Can you seriously mean it?”
+
+“Very well,” said Julie, “since you wish it.” The carriage disappeared.
+
+“So you are very fond of my poor Victor?” said the Marquise,
+interrogating her niece with one of those sagacious glances which
+dowagers give younger women.
+
+“Alas, madame!” said Julie, “must one not love a man well indeed to
+marry him?”
+
+The words were spoken with an artless accent which revealed either a
+pure heart or inscrutable depths. How could a woman, who had been the
+friend of Duclos and the Marechal de Richelieu, refrain from trying to
+read the riddle of this marriage? Aunt and niece were standing on the
+steps, gazing after the fast vanishing caleche. The look in the young
+Countess’ eyes did not mean love as the Marquise understood it. The good
+lady was a Provencale, and her passions had been lively.
+
+“So you were captivated by my good-for-nothing of a nephew?” she asked.
+
+Involuntarily Julie shuddered, something in the experienced coquette’s
+look and tone seemed to say that Mme. de Listomere-Landon’s knowledge
+of her husband’s character went perhaps deeper than his wife’s. Mme.
+d’Aiglemont, in dismay, took refuge in this transparent dissimulation,
+ready to her hand, the first resource of an artless unhappiness. Mme.
+de Listomere appeared to be satisfied with Julie’s answers; but in her
+secret heart she rejoiced to think that here was a love affair on hand
+to enliven her solitude, for that her niece had some amusing flirtation
+on foot she was fully convinced.
+
+In the great drawing-room, hung with tapestry framed in strips of
+gilding, young Mme. d’Aiglemont sat before a blazing fire, behind a
+Chinese screen placed to shut out the cold draughts from the window,
+and her heavy mood scarcely lightened. Among the old eighteenth-century
+furniture, under the old paneled ceiling, it was not very easy to be
+gay. Yet the young Parisienne took a sort of pleasure in this entrance
+upon a life of complete solitude and in the solemn silence of the old
+provincial house. She exchanged a few words with the aunt, a stranger,
+to whom she had written a bride’s letter on her marriage, and then sat
+as silent as if she had been listening to an opera. Not until two hours
+had been spent in an atmosphere of quiet befitting la Trappe, did she
+suddenly awaken to a sense of uncourteous behavior, and bethink herself
+of the short answers which she had given her aunt. Mme. de Listomere,
+with the gracious tact characteristic of a bygone age, had respected
+her niece’s mood. When Mme. d’Aiglemont became conscious of her
+shortcomings, the dowager sat knitting, though as a matter of fact she
+had several times left the room to superintend preparations in the
+Green Chamber, whither the Countess’ luggage had been transported; now,
+however, she had returned to her great armchair, and stole a glance from
+time to time at this young relative. Julie felt ashamed of giving way
+to irresistible broodings, and tried to earn her pardon by laughing at
+herself.
+
+“My dear child, _we_ know the sorrows of widowhood,” returned her aunt.
+But only the eyes of forty years could have distinguished the irony
+hovering about the old lady’s mouth.
+
+Next morning the Countess improved. She talked. Mme. de Listomere no
+longer despaired of fathoming the new-made wife, whom yesterday she had
+set down as a dull, unsociable creature, and discoursed on the delights
+of the country, of dances, of houses where they could visit. All that
+day the Marquise’s questions were so many snares; it was the old habit
+of the old Court, she could not help setting traps to discover her
+niece’s character. For several days Julie, plied with temptations,
+steadfastly declined to seek amusement abroad; and much as the old
+lady’s pride longed to exhibit her pretty niece, she was fain to
+renounce all hope of taking her into society, for the young Countess was
+still in morning for her father, and found in her loss and her mourning
+dress a pretext for her sadness and desire for seclusion.
+
+By the end of the week the dowager admired Julie’s angelic sweetness
+of disposition, her diffident charm, her indulgent temper, and
+thenceforward began to take a prodigious interest in the mysterious
+sadness gnawing at this young heart. The Countess was one of those women
+who seem born to be loved and to bring happiness with them. Mme. de
+Listomere found her niece’s society grown so sweet and precious, that
+she doted upon Julie, and could no longer think of parting with her.
+A month sufficed to establish an eternal friendship between the two
+ladies. The dowager noticed, not without surprise, the changes that took
+place in Mme. d’Aiglemont; gradually her bright color died away, and
+her face became dead white. Yet, Julie’s spirits rose as the bloom faded
+from her cheeks. Sometimes the dowager’s sallies provoked outbursts of
+merriment or peals of laughter, promptly repressed, however, by some
+clamorous thought.
+
+Mme. de Listomere had guessed by this time that it was neither Victor’s
+absence nor a father’s death which threw a shadow over her niece’s life;
+but her mind was so full of dark suspicions, that she found it difficult
+to lay a finger upon the real cause of the mischief. Possibly truth is
+only discoverable by chance. A day came, however, at length when
+Julie flashed out before her aunt’s astonished eyes into a complete
+forgetfulness of her marriage; she recovered the wild spirits of
+careless girlhood. Mme. de Listomere then and there made up her mind
+to fathom the depths of this soul, for its exceeding simplicity was as
+inscrutable as dissimulation.
+
+Night was falling. The two ladies were sitting by the window which
+looked out upon the street, and Julie was looking thoughtful again, when
+some one went by on horseback.
+
+“There goes one of your victims,” said the Marquise.
+
+Mme. d’Aiglemont looked up; dismay and surprise blended in her face.
+
+“He is a young Englishman, the Honorable Arthur Ormand, Lord Grenville’s
+eldest son. His history is interesting. His physician sent him to
+Montpellier in 1802; it was hoped that in that climate he might recover
+from the lung complaint which was gaining ground. He was detained, like
+all his fellow-countrymen, by Bonaparte when war broke out. That monster
+cannot live without fighting. The young Englishman, by way of amusing
+himself, took to studying his own complaint, which was believed to be
+incurable. By degrees he acquired a liking for anatomy and physic, and
+took quite a craze for that kind of thing, a most extraordinary taste
+in a man of quality, though the Regent certainly amused himself with
+chemistry! In short, Monsieur Arthur made astonishing progress in his
+studies; his health did the same under the faculty of Montpellier; he
+consoled his captivity, and at the same time his cure was thoroughly
+completed. They say that he spent two whole years in a cowshed, living
+on cresses and the milk of a cow brought from Switzerland, breathing as
+seldom as he could, and never speaking a word. Since he come to Tours
+he has lived quite alone; he is as proud as a peacock; but you have
+certainly made a conquest of him, for probably it is not on my account
+that he has ridden under the window twice every day since you have been
+here.--He has certainly fallen in love with you.”
+
+That last phrase roused the Countess like magic. Her involuntary start
+and smile took the Marquise by surprise. So far from showing a sign of
+the instinctive satisfaction felt by the most strait-laced of women when
+she learns that she has destroyed the peace of mind of some male
+victim, there was a hard, haggard expression in Julie’s face--a look of
+repulsion amounting almost to loathing.
+
+A woman who loves will put the whole world under the ban of Love’s
+empire for the sake of the one whom she loves; but such a woman can
+laugh and jest; and Julie at that moment looked as if the memory of some
+recently escaped peril was too sharp and fresh not to bring with it a
+quick sensation of pain. Her aunt, by this time convinced that Julie
+did not love her nephew, was stupefied by the discovery that she loved
+nobody else. She shuddered lest a further discovery should show her
+Julie’s heart disenchanted, lest the experience of a day, or perhaps
+of a night, should have revealed to a young wife the full extent of
+Victor’s emptiness.
+
+“If she has found him out, there is an end of it,” thought the dowager.
+“My nephew will soon be made to feel the inconveniences of wedded life.”
+
+The Marquise now proposed to convert Julie to the monarchical doctrines
+of the times of Louis Quinze; but a few hours later she discovered, or,
+more properly speaking, guessed, the not uncommon state of affairs, and
+the real cause of her niece’s low spirits.
+
+Julie turned thoughtful on a sudden, and went to her room earlier than
+usual. When her maid left her for the night, she still sat by the fire
+in the yellow velvet depths of a great chair, an old-world piece of
+furniture as well suited for sorrow as for happy people. Tears flowed,
+followed by sighs and meditation. After a while she drew a little table
+to her, sought writing materials, and began to write. The hours went by
+swiftly. Julie’s confidences made to the sheet of paper seemed to cost
+her dear; every sentence set her dreaming, and at last she suddenly
+burst into tears. The clocks were striking two. Her head, grown heavy as
+a dying woman’s, was bowed over her breast. When she raised it, her
+aunt appeared before her as suddenly as if she had stepped out of the
+background of tapestry upon the walls.
+
+“What can be the matter with you, child?” asked the Marquise. “Why are
+you sitting up so late? And why, in the first place, are you crying
+alone, at your age?”
+
+Without further ceremony she sat down beside her niece, her eyes the
+while devouring the unfinished letter.
+
+“Were you writing to your husband?”
+
+“Do I know where he is?” returned the Countess.
+
+Her aunt thereupon took up the sheet and proceeded to read it. She had
+brought her spectacles; the deed was premeditated. The innocent writer
+of the letter allowed her to take it without the slightest remark. It
+was neither lack of dignity nor consciousness of secret guilt which left
+her thus without energy. Her aunt had come in upon her at a crisis. She
+was helpless; right or wrong, reticence and confidence, like all things
+else, were matters of indifference. Like some young maid who had heaped
+scorn upon her lover, and feels so lonely and sad when evening comes,
+that she longs for him to come back or for a heart to which she can pour
+out her sorrow, Julie allowed her aunt to violate the seal which honor
+places upon an open letter, and sat musing while the Marquise read on:--
+
+  “MY DEAR LOUISA,--Why do you ask so often for the fulfilment of as
+  rash a promise as two young and inexperienced girls could make?
+  You say that you often ask yourself why I have given no answer to
+  your questions for these six months. If my silence told you
+  nothing, perhaps you will understand the reasons for it to-day, as
+  you read the secrets which I am about to betray. I should have
+  buried them for ever in the depths of my heart if you had not
+  announced your own approaching marriage. You are about to be
+  married, Louisa. The thought makes me shiver. Poor little one!
+  marry, yes, in a few months’ time one of the keenest pangs of
+  regret will be the recollection of a self which used to be, of the
+  two young girls who sat one evening under one of the tallest
+  oak-trees on the hillside at Ecouen, and looked along the fair
+  valley at our feet in the light of the sunset, which caught us in
+  its glow. We sat on a slab of rock in ecstasy, which sobered down
+  into melancholy of the gentlest. You were the first to discover that
+  the far-off sun spoke to us of the future. How inquisitive and how
+  silly we were! Do you remember all the absurd things we said and
+  did? We embraced each other; ‘like lovers,’ said we. We solemnly
+  promised that the first bride should faithfully reveal to the
+  other the mysteries of marriage, the joys which our childish minds
+  imagined to be so delicious. That evening will complete your
+  despair, Louisa. In those days you were young and beautiful and
+  careless, if not radiantly happy; a few days of marriage, and you
+  will be, what I am already--ugly, wretched, and old. Need I tell
+  you how proud I was and how vain and glad to be married to Colonel
+  Victor d’Aiglemont? And besides, how could I tell you now? for I
+  cannot remember that old self. A few moments turned my girlhood to
+  a dream. All through the memorable day which consecrated a chain,
+  the extent of which was hidden from me, my behavior was not free
+  from reproach. Once and again my father tried to repress my
+  spirits; the joy which I showed so plainly was thought unbefitting
+  the occasion, my talk scarcely innocent, simply because I was so
+  innocent. I played endless child’s tricks with my bridal veil, my
+  wreath, my gown. Left alone that night in the room whither I had
+  been conducted in state, I planned a piece of mischief to tease
+  Victor. While I awaited his coming, my heart beat wildly, as it
+  used to do when I was a child stealing into the drawing-room on
+  the last day of the old year to catch a glimpse of the New Year’s
+  gifts piled up there in heaps. When my husband came in and looked
+  for me, my smothered laughter ringing out from beneath the lace in
+  which I had shrouded myself, was the last outburst of the
+  delicious merriment which brightened our games in childhood...”
+
+When the dowager had finished reading the letter, and after such a
+beginning the rest must have been sad indeed, she slowly laid her
+spectacles on the table, put the letter down beside them, and looked
+fixedly at her niece. Age had not dimmed the fire in those green eyes as
+yet.
+
+“My little girl,” she said, “a married woman cannot write such a letter
+as this to a young unmarried woman; it is scarcely proper--”
+
+“So I was thinking,” Julie broke in upon her aunt. “I felt ashamed of
+myself while you were reading it.”
+
+“If a dish at table is not to our taste, there is no occasion to disgust
+others with it, child,” the old lady continued benignly, “especially
+when marriage has seemed to us all, from Eve downwards, so excellent an
+institution... You have no mother?”
+
+The Countess trembled, then she raised her face meekly, and said:
+
+“I have missed my mother many times already during the past year; but I
+have myself to blame, I would not listen to my father. He was opposed to
+my marriage; he disapproved of Victor as a son-in-law.”
+
+She looked at her aunt. The old face was lighted up with a kindly look,
+and a thrill of joy dried Julie’s tears. She held out her young,
+soft hand to the old Marquise, who seemed to ask for it, and the
+understanding between the two women was completed by the close grasp of
+their fingers.
+
+“Poor orphan child!”
+
+The words came like a final flash of enlightenment to Julie. It seemed
+to her that she heard her father’s prophetic voice again.
+
+“Your hands are burning! Are they always like this?” asked the Marquise.
+
+“The fever only left me seven or eight days ago.”
+
+“You had a fever upon you, and said nothing about it to me!”
+
+“I have had it for a year,” said Julie, with a kind of timid anxiety.
+
+“My good little angel, then your married life hitherto has been one long
+time of suffering?”
+
+Julie did not venture to reply, but an affirmative sign revealed the
+whole truth.
+
+“Then you are unhappy?”
+
+“On! no, no, aunt. Victor loves me, he almost idolizes me, and I adore
+him, he is so kind.”
+
+“Yes, you love him; but you avoid him, do you not?”
+
+“Yes... sometimes... He seeks me too often.”
+
+“And often when you are alone you are troubled with the fear that he may
+suddenly break in on your solitude?”
+
+“Alas! yes, aunt. But, indeed, I love him, I do assure you.”
+
+“Do you not, in your own thoughts, blame yourself because you find it
+impossible to share his pleasures? Do you never think at times that
+marriage is a heavier yoke than an illicit passion could be?”
+
+“Oh, that is just it,” she wept. “It is all a riddle to me, and can you
+guess it all? My faculties are benumbed, I have no ideas, I can scarcely
+see at all. I am weighed down by vague dread, which freezes me till
+I cannot feel, and keeps me in continual torpor. I have no voice with
+which to pity myself, no words to express my trouble. I suffer, and I am
+ashamed to suffer when Victor is happy at my cost.”
+
+“Babyish nonsense, and rubbish, all of it!” exclaimed the aunt, and a
+gay smile, an after-glow of the joys of her own youth, suddenly lighted
+up her withered face.
+
+“And do you too laugh!” the younger woman cried despairingly.
+
+“It was just my own case,” the Marquise returned promptly. “And
+now Victor has left you, you have become a girl again, recovering a
+tranquillity without pleasure and without pain, have you not?”
+
+Julie opened wide eyes of bewilderment.
+
+“In fact, my angel, you adore Victor, do you not? But still you would
+rather be a sister to him than a wife, and, in short, your marriage is
+emphatically not a success?”
+
+“Well--no, aunt. But why do you smile?”
+
+“Oh! you are right, poor child! There is nothing very amusing in all
+this. Your future would be big with more than one mishap if I had not
+taken you under my protection, if my old experience of life had not
+guessed the very innocent cause of your troubles. My nephew did
+not deserve his good fortune, the blockhead! In the reign of our
+well-beloved Louis Quinze, a young wife in your position would very
+soon have punished her husband for behaving like a ruffian. The selfish
+creature! The men who serve under this Imperial tyrant are all of them
+ignorant boors. They take brutality for gallantry; they know no more of
+women than they know of love; and imagine that because they go out
+to face death on the morrow, they may dispense to-day with all
+consideration and attentions for us. The time was when a man could love
+and die too at the proper time. My niece, I will form you. I will put an
+end to this unhappy divergence between you, a natural thing enough, but
+it would end in mutual hatred and desire for a divorce, always supposing
+that you did not die on the way to despair.”
+
+Julie’s amazement equaled her surprise as she listened to her aunt. She
+was surprised by her language, dimly divining rather than appreciating
+the wisdom of the words she heard, and very much dismayed to find what
+this relative, out of great experience, passed judgment upon Victor as
+her father had done, though in somewhat milder terms. Perhaps some quick
+prevision of the future crossed her mind; doubtless, at any rate, she
+felt the heavy weight of the burden which must inevitably overwhelm
+her, for she burst into tears, and sprang to the old lady’s arms. “Be my
+mother,” she sobbed.
+
+The aunt shed no tears. The Revolution had left old ladies of the
+Monarchy but few tears to shed. Love, in bygone days, and the Terror at
+a later time, had familiarized them with extremes of joy and anguish in
+such a sort that, amid the perils of life, they preserved their dignity
+and coolness, a capacity for sincere but undemonstrative affection
+which never disturbed their well-bred self-possession, and a dignity of
+demeanor which a younger generation has done very ill to discard.
+
+The dowager took Julie in her arms, and kissed her on the forehead with
+a tenderness and pity more often found in women’s ways and manner than
+in their hearts. Then she coaxed her niece with kind, soothing words,
+assured her of a happy future, lulled her with promises of love, and
+put her to bed as if she had been not a niece, but a daughter, a
+much-beloved daughter whose hopes and cares she had made her own.
+Perhaps the old Marquise had found her own youth and inexperience and
+beauty again in this nephew’s wife. And the Countess fell asleep, happy
+to have found a friend, nay a mother, to whom she could tell everything
+freely.
+
+Next morning, when the two women kissed each other with heartfelt
+kindness, and that look of intelligence which marks a real advance in
+friendship, a closer intimacy between two souls, they heard the sound
+of horsehoofs, and, turning both together, saw the young Englishman ride
+slowly past the window, after his wont. Apparently he had made a certain
+study of the life led by the two lonely women, for he never failed
+to ride by as they sat at breakfast, and again at dinner. His horse
+slackened pace of its own accord, and for the space of time required
+to pass the two windows in the room, its rider turned a melancholy look
+upon the Countess, who seldom deigned to take the slightest notion of
+him. Not so the Marquise. Minds not necessarily little find it difficult
+to resist the little curiosity which fastens upon the most trifling
+event that enlivens provincial life; and the Englishman’s mute way of
+expressing his timid, earnest love tickled Mme. de Listomere. For her
+the periodically recurrent glance became a part of the day’s routine,
+hailed daily with new jests. As the two women sat down to table, both of
+them looked out at the same moment. This time Julie’s eyes met Arthur’s
+with such a precision of sympathy that the color rose to her face. The
+stranger immediately urged his horse into a gallop and went.
+
+“What is to be done, madame?” asked Julie. “People see this Englishman
+go past the house, and they will take it for granted that I--”
+
+“Yes,” interrupted her aunt.
+
+“Well, then, could I not tell him to discontinue his promenades?”
+
+“Would not that be a way of telling him that he was dangerous? You might
+put that notion into his head. And besides, can you prevent a man from
+coming and going as he pleases? Our meals shall be served in another
+room to-morrow; and when this young gentleman sees us no longer, there
+will be an end of making love to you through the window. There, dear
+child, that is how a woman of the world does.”
+
+But the measure of Julie’s misfortune was to be filled up. The two women
+had scarcely risen from table when Victor’s man arrived in hot haste
+from Bourges with a letter for the Countess from her husband. The
+servant had ridden by unfrequented ways.
+
+Victor sent his wife news of the downfall of the Empire and the
+capitulation of Paris. He himself had gone over to the Bourbons, and all
+France was welcoming them back with transports of enthusiasm. He could
+not go so far as Tours, but he begged her to come at once to join him at
+Orleans, where he hoped to be in readiness with passports for her.
+His servant, an old soldier, would be her escort so far as Orleans; he
+(Victor) believed that the road was still open.
+
+“You have not a moment to lose, madame,” said the man. “The Prussians,
+Austrians, and English are about to effect a junction either at Blois or
+at Orleans.”
+
+A few hours later, Julie’s preparations were made, and she started out
+upon her journey in an old traveling carriage lent by her aunt.
+
+“Why should you not come with us to Paris?” she asked, as she put her
+arms about the Marquise. “Now that the Bourbons have come back you would
+be--”
+
+“Even if there had not been this unhoped-for return, I should still have
+gone to Paris, my poor child, for my advice is only too necessary to
+both you and Victor. So I shall make all my preparations for rejoining
+you there.”
+
+Julie set out. She took her maid with her, and the old soldier galloped
+beside the carriage as escort. At nightfall, as they changed horses for
+the last stage before Blois, Julie grew uneasy. All the way from Amboise
+she had heard the sound of wheels behind them, a carriage following hers
+had kept at the same distance. She stood on the step and looked out
+to see who her traveling companions might be, and in the moonlight saw
+Arthur standing three paces away, gazing fixedly at the chaise which
+contained her. Again their eyes met. The Countess hastily flung herself
+back in her seat, but a feeling of dread set her pulses throbbing. It
+seemed to her, as to most innocent and inexperienced young wives, that
+she was herself to blame for this love which she had all unwittingly
+inspired. With this thought came an instinctive terror, perhaps a sense
+of her own helplessness before aggressive audacity. One of a man’s
+strongest weapons is the terrible power of compelling a woman to think
+of him when her naturally lively imagination takes alarm or offence at
+the thought that she is followed.
+
+The Countess bethought herself of her aunt’s advice, and made up her
+mind that she would not stir from her place during the rest of the
+journey; but every time the horses were changed she heard the Englishman
+pacing round the two carriages, and again upon the road heard the
+importunate sound of the wheels of his caleche. Julie soon began to
+think that, when once reunited to her husband, Victor would know how to
+defend her against this singular persecution.
+
+“Yet suppose that in spite of everything, this young man does not love
+me?” This was the thought that came last of all.
+
+No sooner did she reach Orleans than the Prussians stopped the chaise.
+It was wheeled into an inn-yard and put under a guard of soldiers.
+Resistance was out of the question. The foreign soldiers made the three
+travelers understand by signs that they were obeying orders, and that
+no one could be allowed to leave the carriage. For about two hours the
+Countess sat in tears, a prisoner surrounded by the guard, who smoked,
+laughed, and occasionally stared at her with insolent curiosity. At
+last, however, she saw her captors fall away from the carriage with a
+sort of respect, and heard at the same time the sound of horses entering
+the yard. Another moment, and a little group of foreign officers,
+with an Austrian general at their head, gathered about the door of the
+traveling carriage.
+
+“Madame,” said the General, “pray accept our apologies. A mistake has
+been made. You may continue your journey without fear; and here is a
+passport which will spare you all further annoyance of any kind.”
+
+Trembling the Countess took the paper, and faltered out some vague words
+of thanks. She saw Arthur, now wearing an English uniform, standing
+beside the General, and could not doubt that this prompt deliverance
+was due to him. The young Englishman himself looked half glad, half
+melancholy; his face was turned away, and he only dared to steal an
+occasional glance at Julie’s face.
+
+Thanks to the passport, Mme. d’Aiglemont reached Paris without further
+misadventure, and there she found her husband. Victor d’Aiglemont,
+released from his oath of allegiance to the Emperor, had met with a
+most flattering reception from the Comte d’Artois, recently appointed
+Lieutenant-General of the kingdom by his brother Louis XVIII.
+D’Aiglemont received a commission in the Life Guards, equivalent to
+the rank of general. But amid the rejoicings over the return of the
+Bourbons, fate dealt poor Julie a terrible blow. The death of the
+Marquise de Listomere-Landon was an irreparable loss. The old lady died
+of joy and of an accession of gout to the heart when the Duc d’Angouleme
+came back to Tours, and the one living being entitled by her age to
+enlighten Victor, the woman who, by discreet counsels, might have
+brought about perfect unanimity of husband and wife, was dead; and Julie
+felt the full extent of her loss. Henceforward she must stand alone
+between herself and her husband. But she was young and timid; there
+could be no doubt of the result, or that from the first she would
+elect to bear her lot in silence. The very perfections of her character
+forbade her to venture to swerve from her duties, or to attempt to
+inquire into the cause of her sufferings, for to put an end to them
+would have been to venture on delicate ground, and Julie’s girlish
+modesty shrank from the thought.
+
+A word as to M. d’Aiglemont’s destinies under the Restoration.
+
+How many men are there whose utter incapacity is a secret kept from
+most of their acquaintance. For such as these high rank, high office,
+illustrious birth, a certain veneer of politeness, and considerable
+reserve of manner, or the _prestige_ of great fortunes, are but so many
+sentinels to turn back critics who would penetrate to the presence
+of the real man. Such men are like kings, in that their real figure,
+character, and life can never be known nor justly appreciated, because
+they are always seen from too near or too far. Factitious merit has a
+way of asking questions and saying little; and understands the art of
+putting others forward to save the necessity of posing before them;
+then, with a happy knack of its own, it draws and attaches others by
+the thread of the ruling passion of self-interest, keeping men of far
+greater abilities to play like puppets, and despising those whom it has
+brought down to its own level. The petty fixed idea naturally prevails;
+it has the advantage of persistence over the plasticity of great
+thoughts.
+
+The observer who should seek to estimate and appraise the negative
+values of these empty heads needs subtlety rather than superior wit for
+the task; patience is a more necessary part of his judicial outfit
+than great mental grasp, cunning and tact rather than any elevation or
+greatness of ideas. Yet skilfully as such usurpers can cover and
+defend their weak points, it is difficult to delude wife and mother
+and children and the house-friend of the family; fortunately for them,
+however, these persons almost always keep a secret which in a manner
+touches the honor of all, and not unfrequently go so far as to help to
+foist the imposture upon the public. And if, thanks to such domestic
+conspiracy, many a noodle passes current for a man of ability, on the
+other hand many another who has real ability is taken for a noodle to
+redress the balance, and the total average of this kind of false coin in
+circulation in the state is a pretty constant quantity.
+
+Bethink yourself now of the part to be played by a clever woman quick to
+think and feel, mated with a husband of this kind, and can you not see
+a vision of lives full of sorrow and self-sacrifice? Nothing upon
+earth can repay such hearts so full of love and tender tact. Put a
+strong-willed woman in this wretched situation, and she will force a
+way out of it for herself by a crime, like Catherine II., whom men
+nevertheless style “the Great.” But these women are not all seated upon
+thrones, they are for the most part doomed to domestic unhappiness none
+the less terrible because obscure.
+
+Those who seek consolation in this present world for their woes often
+effect nothing but a change of ills if they remain faithful to their
+duties; or they commit a sin if they break the laws for their pleasure.
+All these reflections are applicable to Julie’s domestic life.
+
+Before the fall of Napoleon nobody was jealous of d’Aiglemont. He was
+one colonel among many, an efficient orderly staff-officer, as good a
+man as you could find for a dangerous mission, as unfit as well could
+be for an important command. D’Aiglemont was looked upon as a dashing
+soldier such as the Emperor liked, the kind of man whom his mess usually
+calls “a good fellow.” The Restoration gave him back his title of
+Marquis, and did not find him ungrateful; he followed the Bourbons into
+exile at Ghent, a piece of logical loyalty which falsified the horoscope
+drawn for him by his late father-in-law, who predicted that Victor would
+remain a colonel all his life. After the Hundred Days he received the
+appointment of Lieutenant-General, and for the second time became a
+marquis; but it was M. d’Aiglemont’s ambition to be a peer of France. He
+adopted, therefore, the maxims and the politics of the _Conservateur_,
+cloaked himself in dissimulation which hid nothing (there being nothing
+to hide), cultivated gravity of countenance and the art of asking
+questions and saying little, and was taken for a man of profound wisdom.
+Nothing drew him from his intrenchments behind the forms of politeness;
+he laid in a provision of formulas, and made lavish use of his stock of
+the catch-words coined at need in Paris to give fools the small change
+for the ore of great ideas and events. Among men of the world he was
+reputed a man of taste and discernment; and as a bigoted upholder of
+aristocratic opinions he was held up for a noble character. If by chance
+he slipped now and again into his old light-heartedness or levity,
+others were ready to discover an undercurrent of diplomatic intention
+beneath his inanity and silliness. “Oh! he only says exactly as much as
+he means to say,” thought these excellent people.
+
+So d’Aiglemont’s defects and good qualities stood him alike in good
+stead. He did nothing to forfeit a high military reputation gained by
+his dashing courage, for he had never been a commander-in-chief. Great
+thoughts surely were engraven upon that manly aristocratic countenance,
+which imposed upon every one but his own wife. And when everybody else
+believed in the Marquis d’Aiglemont’s imaginary talents, the Marquis
+persuaded himself before he had done that he was one of the most
+remarkable men at Court, where, thanks to his purely external
+qualifications, he was in favor and taken at his own valuation.
+
+At home, however, M. d’Aiglemont was modest. Instinctively he felt
+that his wife, young though she was, was his superior; and out of this
+involuntary respect there grew an occult power which the Marquise was
+obliged to wield in spite of all her efforts to shake off the burden.
+She became her husband’s adviser, the director of his actions and his
+fortunes. It was an unnatural position; she felt it as something of a
+humiliation, a source of pain to be buried in the depths of her heart.
+From the first her delicately feminine instinct told her that it is a
+far better thing to obey a man of talent than to lead a fool; and that
+a young wife compelled to act and think like a man is neither man nor
+woman, but a being who lays aside all the charms of her womanhood along
+with its misfortunes, yet acquires none of the privileges which our
+laws give to the stronger sex. Beneath the surface her life was a bitter
+mockery. Was she not compelled to protect her protector, to worship a
+hollow idol, a poor creature who flung her the love of a selfish husband
+as the wages of her continual self-sacrifice; who saw nothing in her but
+the woman; and who either did not think it worth while, or (wrong quite
+as deep) did not think at all of troubling himself about her pleasures,
+of inquiring into the cause of her low spirits and dwindling health? And
+the Marquis, like most men who chafe under a wife’s superiority,
+saved his self-love by arguing from Julie’s physical feebleness a
+corresponding lack of mental power, for which he was pleased to pity
+her; and he would cry out upon fate which had given him a sickly girl
+for a wife. The executioner posed, in fact, as the victim.
+
+All the burdens of this dreary lot fell upon the Marquise, who still
+must smile upon her foolish lord, and deck a house of mourning with
+flowers, and make a parade of happiness in a countenance wan with secret
+torture. And with this sense of responsibility for the honor of
+both, with the magnificent immolation of self, the young Marquise
+unconsciously acquired a wifely dignity, a consciousness of virtue which
+became her safeguard amid many dangers.
+
+Perhaps, if her heart were sounded to the very depths, this intimate
+closely hidden wretchedness, following upon her unthinking, girlish
+first love, had roused in her an abhorrence of passion; possibly she had
+no conception of its rapture, nor of the forbidden but frenzied bliss
+for which some women will renounce all the laws of prudence and the
+principles of conduct upon which society is based. She put from her like
+a dream the thought of bliss and tender harmony of love promised by Mme.
+de Listomere-Landon’s mature experience, and waited resignedly for the
+end of her troubles with a hope that she might die young.
+
+Her health had declined daily since her return from Touraine; her
+life seemed to be measured to her in suffering; yet her ill-health was
+graceful, her malady seemed little more than languor, and might well be
+taken by careless eyes for a fine lady’s whim of invalidism.
+
+Her doctors had condemned her to keep to the sofa, and there among
+her flowers lay the Marquise, fading as they faded. She was not strong
+enough to walk, nor to bear the open air, and only went out in a closed
+carriage. Yet with all the marvels of modern luxury and invention about
+her, she looked more like an indolent queen than an invalid. A few of
+her friends, half in love perhaps with her sad plight and her fragile
+look, sure of finding her at home, and speculating no doubt upon her
+future restoration to health, would come to bring her the news of the
+day, and kept her informed of the thousand and one small events which
+fill life in Paris with variety. Her melancholy, deep and real though it
+was was still the melancholy of a woman rich in many ways. The Marquise
+d’Aiglemont was like a flower, with a dark insect gnawing at its root.
+
+Occasionally she went into society, not to please herself, but in
+obedience to the exigencies of the position which her husband aspired to
+take. In society her beautiful voice and the perfection of her singing
+could always gain the social success so gratifying to a young woman; but
+what was social success to her, who drew nothing from it for her heart
+or her hopes? Her husband did not care for music. And, moreover, she
+seldom felt at her ease in salons, where her beauty attracted homage not
+wholly disinterested. Her position excited a sort of cruel compassion,
+a morbid curiosity. She was suffering from an inflammatory complaint not
+infrequently fatal, for which our nosology as yet has found no name, a
+complaint spoken of among women in confidential whispers. In spite of
+the silence in which her life was spent, the cause of her ill-health
+was no secret. She was still but a girl in spite of her marriage; the
+slightest glance threw her into confusion. In her endeavor not to blush,
+she was always laughing, always apparently in high spirits; she would
+never admit that she was not perfectly well, and anticipated questions
+as to her health by shame-stricken subterfuges.
+
+In 1817, however, an event took place which did much to alleviate
+Julie’s hitherto deplorable existence. A daughter was born to her, and
+she determined to nurse her child herself. For two years motherhood,
+its all-absorbing multiplicity of cares and anxious joys, made life
+less hard for her. She and her husband lived necessarily apart. Her
+physicians predicted improved health, but the Marquise herself put no
+faith in these auguries based on theory. Perhaps, like many a one for
+whom life has lost its sweetness, she looked forward to death as a happy
+termination of the drama.
+
+But with the beginning of the year 1819 life grew harder than ever. Even
+while she congratulated herself upon the negative happiness which she
+had contrived to win, she caught a terrifying glimpse of yawning depths
+below it. She had passed by degrees out of her husband’s life. Her fine
+tact and her prudence told her that misfortune must come, and that not
+singly, of this cooling of an affection already lukewarm and wholly
+selfish. Sure though she was of her ascendency over Victor, and certain
+as she felt of his unalterable esteem, she dreaded the influence of
+unbridled passions upon a head so empty, so full of rash self-conceit.
+
+Julie’s friends often found her absorbed in prolonged musings; the less
+clairvoyant among them would jestingly ask her what she was thinking
+about, as if a young wife would think of nothing but frivolity, as
+if there were not almost always a depth of seriousness in a mother’s
+thoughts. Unhappiness, like great happiness, induces dreaming. Sometimes
+as Julie played with her little Helene, she would gaze darkly at her,
+giving no reply to the childish questions in which a mother delights,
+questioning the present and the future as to the destiny of this little
+one. Then some sudden recollection would bring back the scene of the
+review at the Tuileries and fill her eyes with tears. Her father’s
+prophetic warnings rang in her ears, and conscience reproached her that
+she had not recognized its wisdom. Her troubles had all come of her
+own wayward folly, and often she knew not which among so many were the
+hardest to bear. The sweet treasures of her soul were unheeded, and not
+only so, she could never succeed in making her husband understand
+her, even in the commonest everyday things. Just as the power to love
+developed and grew strong and active, a legitimate channel for
+the affections of her nature was denied her, and wedded love was
+extinguished in grave physical and mental sufferings. Add to this that
+she now felt for her husband that pity closely bordering upon contempt,
+which withers all affection at last. Even if she had not learned from
+conversations with some of her friends, from examples in life, from
+sundry occurrences in the great world, that love can bring ineffable
+bliss, her own wounds would have taught her to divine the pure and deep
+happiness which binds two kindred souls each to each.
+
+In the picture which her memory traced of the past, Arthur’s frank face
+stood out daily nobler and purer; it was but a flash, for upon that
+recollection she dared not dwell. The young Englishman’s shy, silent
+love for her was the one event since her marriage which had left a
+lingering sweetness in her darkened and lonely heart. It may be that all
+the blighted hopes, all the frustrated longings which gradually clouded
+Julie’s mind, gathered, by a not unnatural trick of imagination, about
+this man--whose manners, sentiments, and character seemed to have so
+much in common with her own. This idea still presented itself to her
+mind fitfully and vaguely, like a dream; yet from that dream, which
+always ended in a sigh, Julie awoke to greater wretchedness, to keener
+consciousness of the latent anguish brooding beneath her imaginary
+bliss.
+
+Occasionally her self-pity took wilder and more daring flights. She
+determined to have happiness at any cost; but still more often she lay a
+helpless victim of an indescribable numbing stupor, the words she heard
+had no meaning to her, or the thoughts which arose in her mind were so
+vague and indistinct that she could not find language to express them.
+Balked of the wishes of her heart, realities jarred harshly upon her
+girlish dreams of life, but she was obliged to devour her tears. To
+whom could she make complaint? Of whom be understood? She possessed,
+moreover, that highest degree of woman’s sensitive pride, the exquisite
+delicacy of feeling which silences useless complainings and declines to
+use an advantage to gain a triumph which can only humiliate both victor
+and vanquished.
+
+Julie tried to endow M. d’Aiglemont with her own abilities and virtues,
+flattering herself that thus she might enjoy the happiness lacking in
+her lot. All her woman’s ingenuity and tact was employed in making the
+best of the situation; pure waste of pains unsuspected by him, whom
+she thus strengthened in his despotism. There were moments when misery
+became an intoxication, expelling all ideas, all self-control; but,
+fortunately, sincere piety always brought her back to one supreme hope;
+she found a refuge in the belief in a future life, a wonderful thought
+which enabled her to take up her painful task afresh. No elation of
+victory followed those terrible inward battles and throes of anguish;
+no one knew of those long hours of sadness; her haggard glances met
+no response from human eyes, and during the brief moments snatched by
+chance for weeping, her bitter tears fell unheeded and in solitude.
+
+One evening in January 1820, the Marquise became aware of the full
+gravity of the crisis, gradually brought on by force of circumstances.
+When a husband and wife know each other thoroughly, and their relation
+has long been a matter of use and wont, when the wife has learned to
+interpret every slightest sign, when her quick insight discerns thoughts
+and facts which her husband keeps from her, a chance word, or a remark
+so carelessly let fall in the first instance, seems, upon subsequent
+reflection, like the swift breaking out of light. A wife not seldom
+suddenly awakes upon the brink of a precipice or in the depths of the
+abyss; and thus it was with the Marquise. She was feeling glad to have
+been left to herself for some days, when the real reason of her solitude
+flashed upon her. Her husband, whether fickle and tired of her, or
+generous and full of pity for her, was hers no longer.
+
+In the moment of that discovery she forgot herself, her sacrifices, all
+that she had passed through, she remembered only that she was a mother.
+Looking forward, she thought of her daughter’s fortune, of the future
+welfare of the one creature through whom some gleams of happiness came
+to her, of her Helene, the only possession which bound her to life.
+
+Then Julie wished to live to save her child from a stepmother’s terrible
+thraldom, which might crush her darling’s life. Upon this new vision of
+threatened possibilities followed one of those paroxysms of thought at
+fever-heat which consume whole years of life.
+
+Henceforward husband and wife were doomed to be separated by a whole
+world of thought, and all the weight of that world she must bear alone.
+Hitherto she had felt sure that Victor loved her, in so far as he could
+be said to love; she had been the slave of pleasures which she did
+not share; to-day the satisfaction of knowing that she purchased his
+contentment with her tears was hers no longer. She was alone in the
+world, nothing was left to her now but a choice of evils. In the calm
+stillness of the night her despondency drained her of all her strength.
+She rose from her sofa beside the dying fire, and stood in the lamplight
+gazing, dry-eyed, at her child, when M. d’Aiglemont came in. He was in
+high spirits. Julie called to him to admire Helene as she lay asleep,
+but he met his wife’s enthusiasm with a commonplace:
+
+“All children are nice at that age.”
+
+He closed the curtains about the cot after a careless kiss on the
+child’s forehead. Then he turned his eyes on Julie, took her hand and
+drew her to sit beside him on the sofa, where she had been sitting with
+such dark thoughts surging up in her mind.
+
+“You are looking very handsome to-night, Mme. d’Aiglemont,” he
+exclaimed, with the gaiety intolerable to the Marquise, who knew its
+emptiness so well.
+
+“Where have you spent the evening?” she asked, with a pretence of
+complete indifference.
+
+“At Mme. de Serizy’s.”
+
+He had taken up a fire-screen, and was looking intently at the gauze. He
+had not noticed the traces of tears on his wife’s face. Julie shuddered.
+Words could not express the overflowing torrent of thoughts which must
+be forced down into inner depths.
+
+“Mme. de Serizy is giving a concert on Monday, and is dying for you to
+go. You have not been anywhere for some time past, and that is enough
+to set her longing to see you at her house. She is a good-natured
+woman, and very fond of you. I should be glad if you would go; I all but
+promised that you should----”
+
+“I will go.”
+
+There was something so penetrating, so significant in the tones of
+Julie’s voice, in her accent, in the glance that went with the words,
+that Victor, startled out of his indifference, stared at his wife in
+astonishment.
+
+That was all, Julie had guessed that it was Mme. de Serizy who had
+stolen her husband’s heart from her. Her brooding despair benumbed her.
+She appeared to be deeply interested in the fire. Victor meanwhile still
+played with the fire-screen. He looked bored, like a man who has enjoyed
+himself elsewhere, and brought home the consequent lassitude. He yawned
+once or twice, then he took up a candle in one hand, and with the
+other languidly sought his wife’s neck for the usual embrace; but Julie
+stooped and received the good-night kiss upon her forehead; the formal,
+loveless grimace seemed hateful to her at that moment.
+
+As soon as the door closed upon Victor, his wife sank into a seat. Her
+limbs tottered beneath her, she burst into tears. None but those who
+have endured the torture of some such scene can fully understand the
+anguish that it means, or divine the horror of the long-drawn tragedy
+arising out of it.
+
+Those simple, foolish words, the silence that followed between the
+husband and wife, the Marquis’ gesture and expression, the way in which
+he sat before the fire, his attitude as he made that futile attempt to
+put a kiss on his wife’s throat,--all these things made up a dark hour
+for Julie, and the catastrophe of the drama of her sad and lonely life.
+In her madness she knelt down before the sofa, burying her face in it
+to shut out everything from sight, and prayed to Heaven, putting a new
+significance into the words of the evening prayer, till it became a cry
+from the depths of her own soul, which would have gone to her husband’s
+heart if he had heard it.
+
+The following week she spent in deep thought for her future, utterly
+overwhelmed by this new trouble. She made a study of it, trying to
+discover a way to regain her ascendency over the Marquis, scheming how
+to live long enough to watch over her daughter’s happiness, yet to live
+true to her own heart. Then she made up her mind. She would struggle
+with her rival. She would shine once more in society. She would feign
+the love which she could no longer feel, she would captivate her
+husband’s fancy; and when she had lured him into her power, she
+would coquet with him like a capricious mistress who takes delight in
+tormenting a lover. This hateful strategy was the only possible way out
+of her troubles. In this way she would become mistress of the situation;
+she would prescribe her own sufferings at her good pleasure, and reduce
+them by enslaving her husband, and bringing him under a tyrannous yoke.
+She felt not the slightest remorse for the hard life which he should
+lead. At a bound she reached cold, calculating indifference--for her
+daughter’s sake. She had gained a sudden insight into the treacherous,
+lying arts of degraded women; the wiles of coquetry, the revolting
+cunning which arouses such profound hatred in men at the mere suspicion
+of innate corruption in a woman.
+
+Julie’s feminine vanity, her interests, and a vague desire to inflict
+punishment, all wrought unconsciously with the mother’s love within
+her to force her into a path where new sufferings awaited her. But her
+nature was too noble, her mind too fastidious, and, above all things,
+too open, to be the accomplice of these frauds for very long. Accustomed
+as she was to self-scrutiny, at the first step in vice--for vice it
+was--the cry of conscience must inevitably drown the clamor of the
+passions and of selfishness. Indeed, in a young wife whose heart is
+still pure, whose love has never been mated, the very sentiment of
+motherhood is overpowered by modesty. Modesty; is not all womanhood
+summed up in that? But just now Julie would not see any danger, anything
+wrong, in her life.
+
+She went to Mme. de Serizy’s concert. Her rival had expected to see a
+pallid, drooping woman. The Marquise wore rouge, and appeared in all the
+splendor of a toilet which enhanced her beauty.
+
+Mme. de Serizy was one of those women who claim to exercise a sort of
+sway over fashions and society in Paris; she issued her decrees, saw
+them received in her own circle, and it seemed to her that all the world
+obeyed them. She aspired to epigram, she set up for an authority in
+matters of taste. Literature, politics, men and women, all alike were
+submitted to her censorship, and the lady herself appeared to defy the
+censorship of others. Her house was in every respect a model of good
+taste.
+
+Julie triumphed over the Countess in her own salon, filled as it was
+with beautiful women and women of fashion. Julie’s liveliness and
+sparkling wit gathered all the most distinguished men in the rooms about
+her. Her costume was faultless, for the despair of the women, who one
+and all envied her the fashion of her dress, and attributed the moulded
+outline of her bodice to the genius of some unknown dressmaker, for
+women would rather believe in miracles worked by the science of chiffons
+than in the grace and perfection of the form beneath.
+
+When Julie went to the piano to sing Desdemona’s song, the men in the
+rooms flocked about her to hear the celebrated voice so long mute, and
+there was a deep silence. The Marquise saw the heads clustered thickly
+in the doorways, saw all eyes turned upon her, and a sharp thrill of
+excitement quivered through her. She looked for her husband, gave him
+a coquettish side-glance, and it pleased her to see that his vanity was
+gratified to no small degree. In the joy of triumph she sang the first
+part of _Al piu salice_. Her audience was enraptured. Never had Malibran
+nor Pasta sung with expression and intonation so perfect. But at the
+beginning of the second part she glanced over the glistening groups
+and saw--Arthur. He never took his eyes from her face. A quick shudder
+thrilled through her, and her voice faltered. Up hurried Mme. de Serizy
+from her place.
+
+“What is it, dear? Oh! poor little thing! she is in such weak health; I
+was so afraid when I saw her begin a piece so far beyond her strength.”
+
+The song was interrupted. Julie was vexed. She had not courage to sing
+any longer, and submitted to her rival’s treacherous sympathy. There was
+a whisper among the women. The incident led to discussions; they guessed
+that the struggle had begun between the Marquise and Mme. de Serizy, and
+their tongues did not spare the latter.
+
+Julie’s strange, perturbing presentiments were suddenly realized.
+Through her preoccupation with Arthur she had loved to imagine that with
+that gentle, refined face he must remain faithful to his first love.
+There were times when she felt proud that this ideal, pure, and
+passionate young love should have been hers; the passion of the young
+lover whose thoughts are all for her to whom he dedicates every moment
+of his life, who blushes as a woman blushes, thinks as a woman might
+think, forgetting ambition, fame, and fortune in devotion to his
+love,--she need never fear a rival. All these things she had fondly and
+idly dreamed of Arthur; now all at once it seemed to her that her dream
+had come true. In the young Englishman’s half-feminine face she read
+the same deep thoughts, the same pensive melancholy, the same passive
+acquiescence in a painful lot, and an endurance like her own. She saw
+herself in him. Trouble and sadness are the most eloquent of love’s
+interpreters, and response is marvelously swift between two suffering
+creatures, for in them the powers of intuition and of assimilation of
+facts and ideas are well-nigh unerring and perfect. So with the violence
+of the shock the Marquise’s eyes were opened to the whole extent of
+the future danger. She was only too glad to find a pretext for her
+nervousness in her chronic ill-health, and willingly submitted to be
+overwhelmed by Mme. de Serizy’s insidious compassion.
+
+That incident of the song caused talk and discussion which differed with
+the various groups. Some pitied Julie’s fate, and regretted that such a
+remarkable woman was lost to society; others fell to wondering what the
+cause of her ill-health and seclusion could be.
+
+“Well, now, my dear Ronquerolles,” said the Marquis, addressing Mme. de
+Serizy’s brother, “you used to envy me my good fortune, and you used to
+blame me for my infidelities. Pshaw, you would not find much to envy in
+my lot, if, like me, you had a pretty wife so fragile that for the past
+two years you might not so much as kiss her hand for fear of damaging
+her. Do not you encumber yourself with one of those fragile ornaments,
+only fit to put in a glass case, so brittle and so costly that you are
+always obliged to be careful of them. They tell me that you are afraid
+of snow or wet for that fine horse of yours; how often do you ride him?
+That is just my own case. It is true that my wife gives me no ground for
+jealousy, but my marriage is purely ornamental business; if you think
+that I am a married man, you are grossly mistaken. So there is some
+excuse for my unfaithfulness. I should dearly like to know what you
+gentlemen who laugh at me would do in my place. Not many men would be so
+considerate as I am. I am sure,” (here he lowered his voice) “that Mme.
+d’Aiglemont suspects nothing. And then, of course, I have no right to
+complain at all; I am very well off. Only there is nothing more trying
+for a man who feels things than the sight of suffering in a poor
+creature to whom you are attached----”
+
+“You must have a very sensitive nature, then,” said M. de Ronquerolles,
+“for you are not often at home.”
+
+Laughter followed on the friendly epigram; but Arthur, who made one of
+the group, maintained a frigid imperturbability in his quality of an
+English gentleman who takes gravity for the very basis of his being.
+D’Aiglemont’s eccentric confidence, no doubt, had kindled some kind of
+hope in Arthur, for he stood patiently awaiting an opportunity of a word
+with the Marquis. He had not to wait long.
+
+“My Lord Marquis,” he said, “I am unspeakably pained to see the state of
+Mme. d’Aiglemont’s health. I do not think that you would talk jestingly
+about it if you knew that unless she adopts a certain course of
+treatment she must die miserably. If I use this language to you, it is
+because I am in a manner justified in using it, for I am quite certain
+that I can save Mme. d’Aiglemont’s life and restore her to health
+and happiness. It is odd, no doubt, that a man of my rank should be
+a physician, yet nevertheless chance determined that I should study
+medicine. I find life dull enough here,” he continued, affecting a cold
+selfishness to gain his ends, “it makes no difference to me whether I
+spend my time and travel for the benefit of a suffering fellow-creature,
+or waste it in Paris on some nonsense or other. It is very, very seldom
+that a cure is completed in these complaints, for they require constant
+care, time, and patience, and, above all things, money. Travel is
+needed, and a punctilious following out of prescriptions, by no means
+unpleasant, and varied daily. Two _gentlemen_” (laying a stress on
+the word in its English sense) “can understand each other. I give you
+warning that if you accept my proposal, you shall be a judge of my
+conduct at every moment. I will do nothing without consulting you,
+without your superintendence, and I will answer for the success of my
+method if you will consent to follow it. Yes, unless you wish to be Mme.
+d’Aiglemont’s husband no longer, and that before long,” he added in the
+Marquis’ ear.
+
+The Marquis laughed. “One thing is certain--that only an Englishman
+could make me such an extraordinary proposal,” he said. “Permit me to
+leave it unaccepted and unrejected. I will think it over; and my wife
+must be consulted first in any case.”
+
+Julie had returned to the piano. This time she sang a song from
+_Semiramide, Son regina, son guerriera_, and the whole room applauded, a
+stifled outburst of wellbred acclamation which proved that the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain had been roused to enthusiasm by her singing.
+
+The evening was over. D’Aiglemont brought his wife home, and Julie
+saw with uneasy satisfaction that her first attempt had at once been
+successful. Her husband had been roused out of indifference by the part
+which she had played, and now he meant to honor her with such a passing
+fancy as he might bestow upon some opera nymph. It amused Julie that
+she, a virtuous married woman, should be treated thus. She tried to play
+with her power, but at the outset her kindness broke down once more, and
+she received the most terrible of all the lessons held in store for her
+by fate.
+
+Between two and three o’clock in the morning Julie sat up, sombre and
+moody, beside her sleeping husband, in the room dimly lighted by the
+flickering lamp. Deep silence prevailed. Her agony of remorse had lasted
+near an hour; how bitter her tears had been none perhaps can realize
+save women who have known such an experience as hers. Only such natures
+as Julie’s can feel her loathing for a calculated caress, the horror
+of a loveless kiss, of the heart’s apostasy followed by dolorous
+prostitution. She despised herself; she cursed marriage. She could have
+longed for death; perhaps if it had not been for a cry from her child,
+she would have sprung from the window and dashed herself upon the
+pavement. M. d’Aiglemont slept on peacefully at her side; his wife’s hot
+dropping tears did not waken him.
+
+But next morning Julie could be gay. She made a great effort to look
+happy, to hide, not her melancholy, as heretofore, but an insuperable
+loathing. From that day she no longer regarded herself as a blameless
+wife. Had she not been false to herself? Why should she not play a
+double part in the future, and display astounding depths of cunning in
+deceiving her husband? In her there lay a hitherto undiscovered latent
+depravity, lacking only opportunity, and her marriage was the cause.
+
+Even now she had asked herself why she should struggle with love, when,
+with her heart and her whole nature in revolt, she gave herself to the
+husband whom she loved no longer. Perhaps, who knows? some piece of
+fallacious reasoning, some bit of special pleading, lies at the root of
+all sins, of all crimes. How shall society exist unless every
+individual of which it is composed will make the necessary sacrifices
+of inclination demanded by its laws? If you accept the benefits of
+civilized society, do you not by implication engage to observe the
+conditions, the conditions of its very existence? And yet, starving
+wretches, compelled to respect the laws of property, are not less to be
+pitied than women whose natural instincts and sensitiveness are turned
+to so many avenues of pain.
+
+A few days after that scene of which the secret lay buried in the
+midnight couch, d’Aiglemont introduced Lord Grenville. Julie gave the
+guest a stiffly polite reception, which did credit to her powers of
+dissimulation. Resolutely she silenced her heart, veiled her eyes,
+steadied her voice, and she kept her future in her own hands. Then, when
+by these devices, this innate woman-craft, as it may be called, she
+had discovered the full extent of the love which she inspired, Mme.
+d’Aiglemont welcomed the hope of a speedy cure, and no longer opposed
+her husband, who pressed her to accept the young doctor’s offer. Yet she
+declined to trust herself with Lord Grenville until after some further
+study of his words and manner, she could feel certain that he had
+sufficient generosity to endure his pain in silence. She had absolute
+power over him, and she had begun to abuse that power already. Was she
+not a woman?
+
+Montcontour is an old manor-house build upon the sandy cliffs above the
+Loire, not far from the bridge where Julie’s journey was interrupted in
+1814. It is a picturesque, white chateau, with turrets covered with
+fine stone carving like Mechlin lace; a chateau such as you often see
+in Touraine, spick and span, ivy clad, standing among its groves
+of mulberry trees and vineyards, with its hollow walks, its stone
+balustrades, and cellars mined in the rock escarpments mirrored in the
+Loire. The roofs of Montcontour gleam in the sun; the whole land glows
+in the burning heat. Traces of the romantic charm of Spain and the south
+hover about the enchanting spot. The breeze brings the scent of bell
+flowers and golden broom, the air is soft, all about you lies a sunny
+land, a land which casts its dreamy spell over your soul, a land of
+languor and of soft desire, a fair, sweet-scented country, where pain is
+lulled to sleep and passion wakes. No heart is cold for long beneath its
+clear sky, beside its sparkling waters. One ambition dies after another,
+and you sink into serene content and repose, as the sun sinks at the end
+of the day swathed about with purple and azure.
+
+
+
+One warm August evening in 1821 two people were climbing the paths cut
+in the crags above the chateau, doubtless for the sake of the view from
+the heights above. The two were Julie and Lord Grenville, but this Julie
+seemed to be a new creature. The unmistakable color of health glowed in
+her face. Overflowing vitality had brought a light into her eyes, which
+sparkled through a moist film with that liquid brightness which gives
+such irresistible charm to the eyes of children. She was radiant with
+smiles; she felt the joy of living and all the possibilities of life.
+From the very way in which she lifted her little feet, it was easy to
+see that no suffering trammeled her lightest movements; there was no
+heaviness nor languor in her eyes, her voice, as heretofore. Under the
+white silk sunshade which screened her from the hot sunlight, she looked
+like some young bride beneath her veil, or a maiden waiting to yield to
+the magical enchantments of Love.
+
+Arthur led her with a lover’s care, helping her up the pathway as if she
+had been a child, finding the smoothest ways, avoiding the stones for
+her, bidding her see glimpses of distance, or some flower beside the
+path, always with the unfailing goodness, the same delicate design in
+all that he did; the intuitive sense of this woman’s wellbeing seemed to
+be innate in him, and as much, nay, perhaps more, a part of his being as
+the pulse of his own life.
+
+The patient and her doctor went step for step. There was nothing strange
+for them in a sympathy which seemed to have existed since the day when
+they first walked together. One will swayed them both; they stopped as
+their senses received the same impression; every word and every glance
+told of the same thought in either mind. They had climbed up through the
+vineyards, and now they turned to sit on one of the long white stones,
+quarried out of the caves in the hillside; but Julie stood awhile gazing
+out over the landscape.
+
+“What a beautiful country!” she cried. “Let us put up a tent and live
+here. Victor, Victor, do come up here!”
+
+M. d’Aiglemont answered by a halloo from below. He did not, however,
+hurry himself, merely giving his wife a glance from time to time when
+the windings of the path gave him a glimpse of her. Julie breathed
+the air with delight. She looked up at Arthur, giving him one of those
+subtle glances in which a clever woman can put the whole of her thought.
+
+“Ah, I should like to live here always,” she said. “Would it be possible
+to tire of this beautiful valley?--What is the picturesque river called,
+do you know?”
+
+“That is the Cise.”
+
+“The Cise,” she repeated. “And all this country below, before us?”
+
+“Those are the low hills above the Cher.”
+
+“And away to the right? Ah, that is Tours. Only see how fine the
+cathedral towers look in the distance.”
+
+She was silent, and let fall the hand which she had stretched out
+towards the view upon Arthur’s. Both admired the wide landscape made up
+of so much blended beauty. Neither of them spoke. The murmuring voice of
+the river, the pure air, and the cloudless heaven were all in tune with
+their thronging thoughts and their youth and the love in their hearts.
+
+“Oh! _mon Dieu_, how I love this country!” Julie continued, with growing
+and ingenuous enthusiasm. “You lived here for a long while, did you
+not?” she added after a pause.
+
+A thrill ran through Lord Grenville at her words.
+
+“It was down there,” he said, in a melancholy voice, indicating as he
+spoke a cluster of walnut trees by the roadside, “that I, a prisoner,
+saw you for the first time.”
+
+“Yes, but even at that time I felt very sad. This country looked wild to
+me then, but now----” She broke off, and Lord Grenville did not dare to
+look at her.
+
+“All this pleasure I owe to you,” Julie began at last, after a long
+silence. “Only the living can feel the joy of life, and until now have
+I not been dead to it all? You have given me more than health, you have
+made me feel all its worth--”
+
+Women have an inimitable talent for giving utterance to strong feelings
+in colorless words; a woman’s eloquence lies in tone and gesture, manner
+and glance. Lord Grenville hid his face in his hands, for his tears
+filled his eyes. This was Julie’s first word of thanks since they left
+Paris a year ago.
+
+For a whole year he had watched over the Marquise, putting his whole
+self into the task. D’Aiglemont seconding him, he had taken her first to
+Aix, then to la Rochelle, to be near the sea. From moment to moment he
+had watched the changes worked in Julie’s shattered constitution by
+his wise and simple prescriptions. He had cultivated her health as
+an enthusiastic gardener might cultivate a rare flower. Yet, to all
+appearance, the Marquise had quietly accepted Arthur’s skill and care
+with the egoism of a spoiled Parisienne, or like a courtesan who has
+no idea of the cost of things, nor of the worth of a man, and judges of
+both by their comparative usefulness to her.
+
+The influence of places upon us is a fact worth remarking. If melancholy
+comes over us by the margin of a great water, another indelible law
+of our nature so orders it that the mountains exercise a purifying
+influence upon our feelings, and among the hills passion gains in depth
+by all that it apparently loses in vivacity. Perhaps it was the light of
+the wide country by the Loire, the height of the fair sloping hillside
+on which the lovers sat, that induced the calm bliss of the moment
+when the whole extent of the passion that lies beneath a few
+insignificant-sounding words is divined for the first time with a
+delicious sense of happiness.
+
+Julie had scarcely spoken the words which had moved Lord Grenville so
+deeply, when a caressing breeze ruffled the treetops and filled the air
+with coolness from the river; a few clouds crossed the sky, and the soft
+cloud-shadows brought out all the beauty of the fair land below.
+
+Julie turned away her head, lest Arthur should see the tears which she
+succeeded in repressing; his emotion had spread at once to her. She
+dried her eyes, but she dared not raise them lest he should read the
+excess of joy in a glance. Her woman’s instinct told her that during
+this hour of danger she must hide her love in the depths of her heart.
+Yet silence might prove equally dangerous, and Julie saw that Lord
+Grenville was unable to utter a word. She went on, therefore, in a
+gentle voice:
+
+“You are touched by what I have said. Perhaps such a quick outburst
+of feeling is the way in which a gracious and kind nature like yours
+reverses a mistaken judgment. You must have thought me ungrateful when
+I was cold and reserved, or cynical and hard, all through the journey
+which, fortunately, is very near its end. I should not have been worthy
+of your care if I had been unable to appreciate it. I have forgotten
+nothing. Alas! I shall forget nothing, not the anxious way in which you
+watched over me as a mother watches over her child, nor, and above
+all else, the noble confidence of our life as brother and sister, the
+delicacy of your conduct--winning charms, against which we women are
+defenceless. My lord, it is out of my power to make you a return----”
+
+At these words Julie hastily moved further away, and Lord Grenville made
+no attempt to detain her. She went to a rock not far away, and there
+sat motionless. What either felt remained a secret known to each alone;
+doubtless they wept in silence. The singing of the birds about them,
+so blithe, so overflowing with tenderness at sunset time, could only
+increase the storm of passion which had driven them apart. Nature took
+up their story for them, and found a language for the love of which they
+did not dare to speak.
+
+“And now, my lord,” said Julie, and she came and stood before Arthur
+with a great dignity, which allowed her to take his hand in hers. “I am
+going to ask you to hallow and purify the life which you have given back
+to me. Here, we will part. I know,” she added, as she saw how white his
+face grew, “I know that I am repaying you for your devotion by requiring
+of you a sacrifice even greater than any which you have hitherto
+made for me, sacrifices so great that they should receive some better
+recompense than this.... But it must be... You must not stay in France.
+By laying this command upon you, do I not give you rights which shall be
+held sacred?” she added, holding his hand against her beating heart.
+
+“Yes,” said Arthur, and he rose.
+
+He looked in the direction of d’Aiglemont, who appeared on the opposite
+side of one of the hollow walks with the child in his arms. He had
+scrambled up on the balustrade by the chateau that little Helene might
+jump down.
+
+“Julie, I will not say a word of my love; we understand each other too
+well. Deeply and carefully though I have hidden the pleasures of my
+heart, you have shared them all, I feel it, I know it, I see it. And
+now, at this moment, as I receive this delicious proof of the constant
+sympathy of our hearts, I must go.... Cunning schemes for getting rid of
+him have crossed my mind too often; the temptation might be irresistible
+if I stayed with you.”
+
+“I had the same thought,” she said, a look of pained surprise in her
+troubled face.
+
+Yet in her tone and involuntary shudder there was such virtue, such
+certainty of herself, won in many a hard-fought battle with a love that
+spoke in Julie’s tones and involuntary gestures, that Lord Grenville
+stood thrilled with admiration of her. The mere shadow of a crime had
+been dispelled from that clear conscience. The religious sentiment
+enthroned on the fair forehead could not but drive away the evil
+thoughts that arise unbidden, engendered by our imperfect nature,
+thoughts which make us aware of the grandeur and the perils of human
+destiny.
+
+“And then,” she said, “I should have drawn down your scorn upon me,
+and--I should have been saved,” she added, and her eyes fell. “To be
+lowered in your eyes, what is that but death?”
+
+For a moment the two heroic lovers were silent, choking down their
+sorrow. Good or ill, it seemed that their thoughts were loyally one,
+and the joys in the depths of their heart were no more experiences apart
+than the pain which they strove most anxiously to hide.
+
+“I have no right to complain,” she said after a while, “my misery is of
+my own making,” and she raised her tear-filled eyes to the sky.
+
+“Perhaps you don’t remember it, but that is the place where we met each
+other for the first time,” shouted the General from below, and he waved
+his hand towards the distance. “There, down yonder, near those poplars!”
+
+The Englishman nodded abruptly by way of answer.
+
+“So I was bound to die young and to know no happiness,” Julie continued.
+“Yes, do not think that I live. Sorrow is just as fatal as the dreadful
+disease which you have cured. I do not think that I am to blame. No. My
+love is stronger than I am, and eternal; but all unconsciously it grew
+in me; and I will not be guilty through my love. Nevertheless, though I
+shall be faithful to my conscience as a wife, to my duties as a mother,
+I will be no less faithful to the instincts of my heart. Hear me,” she
+cried in an unsteady voice, “henceforth I belong to _him_ no longer.”
+
+By a gesture, dreadful to see in its undisguised loathing she indicated
+her husband.
+
+“The social code demands that I shall make his existence happy,” she
+continued. “I will obey, I will be his servant, my devotion to him
+shall be boundless; but from to-day I am a widow. I will neither be a
+prostitute in my own eyes nor in those of the world. If I do not belong
+to M. d’Aiglemont, I will never belong to another. You shall have
+nothing, nothing save this which you have wrung from me. This is the
+doom which I have passed upon myself,” she said, looking proudly at him.
+“And now, know this--if you give way to a single criminal thought, M.
+d’Aiglemont’s widow will enter a convent in Spain or Italy. By an evil
+chance we have spoken of our love; perhaps that confession was bound to
+come; but our hearts must never vibrate again like this. To-morrow you
+will receive a letter from England, and we shall part, and never see
+each other again.”
+
+The effort had exhausted all Julie’s strength. She felt her knees
+trembling, and a feeling of deathly cold came over her. Obeying a
+woman’s instinct, she sat down, lest she should sink into Arthur’s arms.
+
+“_Julie!_” cried Lord Grenville.
+
+The sharp cry rang through the air like a crack of thunder. Till then he
+could not speak; now, all the words which the dumb lover could not utter
+gathered themselves in that heartrending appeal.
+
+“Well, what is wrong with her?” asked the General, who had hurried up at
+that cry, and now suddenly confronted the two.
+
+“Nothing serious,” said Julie, with that wonderful self-possession which
+a woman’s quick-wittedness usually brings to her aid when it is most
+called for. “The chill, damp air under the walnut tree made me feel
+quite faint just now, and that must have alarmed this doctor of mine.
+Does he not look on me as a very nearly finished work of art? He
+was startled, I suppose, by the idea of seeing it destroyed.” With
+ostentatious coolness she took Lord Grenville’s arm, smiled at her
+husband, took a last look at the landscape, and went down the pathway,
+drawing her traveling companion with her.
+
+“This certainly is the grandest view that we have seen,” she said; “I
+shall never forget it. Just look, Victor, what distance, what an expanse
+of country, and what variety in it! I have fallen in love with this
+landscape.”
+
+Her laughter was almost hysterical, but to her husband it sounded
+natural. She sprang gaily down into the hollow pathway and vanished.
+
+“What?” she cried, when they had left M. d’Aiglemont far behind.
+“So soon? Is it so soon? Another moment, and we can neither of us be
+ourselves; we shall never be ourselves again, our life is over, in
+short--”
+
+“Let us go slowly,” said Lord Grenville, “the carriages are still some
+way off, and if we may put words into our glances, our hearts may live a
+little longer.”
+
+They went along the footpath by the river in the late evening light,
+almost in silence; such vague words as they uttered, low as the murmur
+of the Loire, stirred their souls to the depths. Just as the sun sank,
+a last red gleam from the sky fell over them; it was like a mournful
+symbol of their ill-starred love.
+
+The General, much put out because the carriage was not at the spot where
+they had left it, followed and outstripped the pair without interrupting
+their converse. Lord Grenville’s high minded and delicate behavior
+throughout the journey had completely dispelled the Marquis’ suspicions.
+For some time past he had left his wife in freedom, reposing confidence
+in the noble amateur’s Punic faith. Arthur and Julie walked on together
+in the close and painful communion of two hearts laid waste.
+
+So short a while ago as they climbed the cliffs at Montcontour, there
+had been a vague hope in either mind, an uneasy joy for which they dared
+not account to themselves; but now as they came along the pathway by the
+river, they pulled down the frail structure of imaginings, the child’s
+cardcastle, on which neither of them had dared to breathe. That hope was
+over.
+
+That very evening Lord Grenville left them. His last look at Julie made
+it miserably plain that since the moment when sympathy revealed the full
+extent of a tyrannous passion, he did well to mistrust himself.
+
+The next morning, M. d’Aiglemont and his wife took their places in the
+carriage without their traveling companion, and were whirled swiftly
+along the road to Blois. The Marquise was constantly put in mind of the
+journey made in 1814, when as yet she know nothing of love, and had
+been almost ready to curse it for its persistency. Countless forgotten
+impressions were revived. The heart has its own memory. A woman who
+cannot recollect the most important great events will recollect through
+a lifetime things which appealed to her feelings; and Julie d’Aiglemont
+found all the most trifling details of that journey laid up in her mind.
+It was pleasant to her to recall its little incidents as they occurred
+to her one by one; there were points in the road when she could even
+remember the thoughts that passed through her mind when she saw them
+first.
+
+Victor had fallen violently in love with his wife since she had
+recovered the freshness of her youth and all her beauty, and now he
+pressed close to her side like a lover. Once he tried to put his arm
+round her, but she gently disengaged herself, finding some excuse or
+other for evading the harmless caress. In a little while she shrank from
+the close contact with Victor, the sensation of warmth communicated by
+their position. She tried to take the unoccupied place opposite, but
+Victor gallantly resigned the back seat to her. For this attention she
+thanked him with a sigh, whereupon he forgot himself, and the Don Juan
+of the garrison construed his wife’s melancholy to his own advantage,
+so that at the end of the day she was compelled to speak with a firmness
+which impressed him.
+
+“You have all but killed me, dear, once already, as you know,” said
+she. “If I were still an inexperienced girl, I might begin to sacrifice
+myself afresh; but I am a mother, I have a daughter to bring up, and I
+owe as much to her as to you. Let us resign ourselves to a misfortune
+which affects us both alike. You are the less to be pitied. Have you
+not, as it is, found consolations which duty and the honor of both,
+and (stronger still) which Nature forbids to me? Stay,” she added, “you
+carelessly left three letters from Mme. de Serizy in a drawer; here they
+are. My silence about this matter should make it plain to you that in me
+you have a wife who has plenty of indulgence and does not exact from you
+the sacrifices prescribed by the law. But I have thought enough to see
+that the roles of husband and wife are quite different, and that the
+wife alone is predestined to misfortune. My virtue is based upon firmly
+fixed and definite principles. I shall live blamelessly, but let me
+live.”
+
+The Marquis was taken aback by a logic which women grasp with the clear
+insight of love, and overawed by a certain dignity natural to them at
+such crises. Julie’s instinctive repugnance for all that jarred upon her
+love and the instincts of her heart is one of the fairest qualities of
+woman, and springs perhaps from a natural virtue which neither laws nor
+civilization can silence. And who shall dare to blame women? If a woman
+can silence the exclusive sentiment which bids her “forsake all other”
+ for the man whom she loves, what is she but a priest who has lost his
+faith? If a rigid mind here and there condemns Julie for a sort of
+compromise between love and wifely duty, impassioned souls will lay it
+to her charge as a crime. To be thus blamed by both sides shows one of
+two things very clearly--that misery necessarily follows in the train of
+broken laws, or else that there are deplorable flaws in the institutions
+upon which society in Europe is based.
+
+
+
+Two years went by. M. and Mme. d’Aiglemont went their separate ways,
+leading their life in the world, meeting each other more frequently
+abroad than at home, a refinement upon divorce, in which many a marriage
+in the great world is apt to end.
+
+One evening, strange to say, found husband and wife in their own
+drawing-room. Mme. d’Aiglemont had been dining at home with a friend,
+and the General, who almost invariably dined in town, had not gone out
+for once.
+
+“There is a pleasant time in store for you, _Madame la Marquise_,” said
+M. d’Aiglemont, setting his coffee cup down upon the table. He looked
+at the guest, Mme. de Wimphen, and half-pettishly, half-mischievously
+added, “I am starting off for several days’ sport with the Master of
+the Hounds. For a whole week, at any rate, you will be a widow in good
+earnest; just what you wish for, I suppose.--Guillaume,” he said to the
+servant who entered, “tell them to put the horses in.”
+
+Mme. de Wimphen was the friend to whom Julie had begun the letter upon
+her marriage. The glances exchanged by the two women said plainly that
+in her Julie had found an intimate friend, an indulgent and invaluable
+confidante. Mme. de Wimphen’s marriage had been a very happy one.
+Perhaps it was her own happiness which secured her devotion to Julie’s
+unhappy life, for under such circumstances, dissimilarity of destiny is
+nearly always a strong bond of union.
+
+“Is the hunting season not over yet?” asked Julie, with an indifferent
+glance at her husband.
+
+“The Master of the Hounds comes when and where he pleases, madame. We
+are going boar-hunting in the Royal Forest.”
+
+“Take care that no accident happens to you.”
+
+“Accidents are usually unforeseen,” he said, smiling.
+
+“The carriage is ready, my Lord Marquis,” said the servant.
+
+“Madame, if I should fall a victim to the boar--” he continued, with a
+suppliant air.
+
+“What does this mean?” inquired Mme. de Wimphen.
+
+“Come, come,” said Mme. d’Aiglemont, turning to her husband; smiling at
+her friend as if to say, “You will soon see.”
+
+Julie held up her head; but as her husband came close to her, she
+swerved at the last, so that his kiss fell not on her throat, but on the
+broad frill about it.
+
+“You will be my witness before heaven now that I need a firman to obtain
+this little grace of her,” said the Marquis, addressing Mme. de Wimphen.
+“This is how this wife of mine understands love. She has brought me to
+this pass, by what trickery I am at a loss to know.... A pleasant time
+to you!” and he went.
+
+“But your poor husband is really very good-natured,” cried Louisa de
+Wimphen, when the two women were alone together. “He loves you.”
+
+“Oh! not another syllable after that last word. The name I bear makes me
+shudder----”
+
+“Yes, but Victor obeys you implicitly,” said Louisa.
+
+“His obedience is founded in part upon the great esteem which I have
+inspired in him. As far as outward things go, I am a model wife. I make
+his house pleasant to him; I shut my eyes to his intrigues; I touch not
+a penny of his fortune. He is free to squander the interest exactly as
+he pleases; I only stipulate that he shall not touch the principal. At
+this price I have peace. He neither explains nor attempts to explain my
+life. But though my husband is guided by me, that does not say that I
+have nothing to fear from his character. I am a bear leader who daily
+trembles lest the muzzle should give way at last. If Victor once took
+it into his head that I had forfeited my right to his esteem, what would
+happen next I dare not think; for he is violent, full of personal pride,
+and vain above all things. While his wits are not keen enough to enable
+him to behave discreetly at a delicate crisis when his lowest passions
+are involved, his character is weak, and he would very likely kill me
+provisionally even if he died of remorse next day. But there is no fear
+of that fatal good fortune.”
+
+A brief pause followed. Both women were thinking of the real cause of
+this state of affairs. Julie gave Louisa a glance which revealed her
+thoughts.
+
+“I have been cruelly obeyed,” she cried. “Yet I never forbade him to
+write to me. Oh! _he_ has forgotten me, and he is right. If his life had
+been spoiled, it would have been too tragical; one life is enough, is it
+not? Would you believe it, dear; I read English newspapers simply to
+see his name in print. But he has not yet taken his seat in the House of
+Lords.”
+
+“So you know English.”
+
+“Did I not tell you?--Yes, I learned.”
+
+“Poor little one!” cried Louisa, grasping Julie’s hand in hers. “How can
+you still live?”
+
+“That is the secret,” said the Marquise, with an involuntary gesture
+almost childlike in its simplicity. “Listen, I take laudanum. That
+duchess in London suggested the idea; you know the story, Maturin made
+use of it in one of his novels. My drops are very weak, but I sleep; I
+am only awake for seven hours in the day, and those hours I spend with
+my child.”
+
+Louisa gazed into the fire. The full extent of her friend’s misery was
+opening out before her for the first time, and she dared not look into
+her face.
+
+“Keep my secret, Louisa,” said Julie, after a moment’s silence.
+
+Just as she spoke the footman brought in a letter for the Marquise.
+
+“Ah!” she cried, and her face grew white.
+
+“I need not ask from whom it comes,” said Mme. de Wimphen, but the
+Marquise was reading the letter, and heeded nothing else.
+
+Mme. de Wimphen, watching her friend, saw strong feeling wrought to the
+highest pitch, ecstasy of the most dangerous kind painted on Julie’s
+face in swift changing white and red. At length Julie flung the sheet
+into the fire.
+
+“It burns like fire,” she said. “Oh! my heart beats till I cannot
+breathe.”
+
+She rose to her feet and walked up and down. Her eyes were blazing.
+
+“He did not leave Paris!” she cried.
+
+Mme. de Wimphen did not dare to interrupt the words that followed,
+jerked-out sentences, measured by dreadful pauses in between. After
+every break the deep notes of her voice sank lower and lower. There was
+something awful about the last words.
+
+“He has seen me, constantly, and I have not known it.--A look, taken by
+stealth, every day, helps him to live.--Louisa, you do not know!--He
+is dying.--He wants to say good-bye to me. He knows that my husband has
+gone away for several days. He will be here in a moment. Oh! I shall
+die: I am lost.--Listen, Louisa, stay with me!--_I am afraid!_”
+
+“But my husband knows that I have been dining with you; he is sure to
+come for me,” said Mme. de Wimphen.
+
+“Well, then, before you go I will send _him_ away. I will play the
+executioner for us both. Oh me! he will think that I do not love him any
+more--And that letter of his! Dear, I can see those words in letters of
+fire.”
+
+A carriage rolled in under the archway.
+
+“Ah!” cried the Marquise, with something like joy in her voice, “he is
+coming openly. He makes no mystery of it.”
+
+“Lord Grenville,” announced the servant.
+
+The Marquise stood up rigid and motionless; but at the sight of Arthur’s
+white face, so thin and haggard, how was it possible to keep up the
+show of severity? Lord Grenville saw that Julie was not alone, but he
+controlled his fierce annoyance, and looked cool and unperturbed. Yet
+for the two women who knew his secret, his face, his tones, the look
+in his eyes had something of the power attributed to the torpedo. Their
+faculties were benumbed by the sharp shock of contact with his horrible
+pain. The sound of his voice set Julie’s heart beating so cruelly that
+she could not trust herself to speak; she was afraid that he would see
+the full extent of his power over her. Lord Grenville did not dare to
+look at Julie, and Mme. de Wimphen was left to sustain a conversation
+to which no one listened. Julie glanced at her friend with touching
+gratefulness in her eyes to thank her for coming to her aid.
+
+By this time the lovers had quelled emotion into silence, and could
+preserve the limits laid down by duty and convention. But M. de Wimphen
+was announced, and as he came in the two friends exchanged glances. Both
+felt the difficulties of this fresh complication. It was impossible to
+enter into explanations with M. de Wimphen, and Louisa could not think
+of any sufficient pretext for asking to be left.
+
+Julie went to her, ostensibly to wrap her up in her shawl. “I will be
+brave,” she said, in a low voice. “He came here in the face of all the
+world, so what have I to fear? Yet but for you, in that first moment,
+when I saw how changed he looked, I should have fallen at his feet.”
+
+“Well, Arthur, you have broken your promise to me,” she said, in a
+faltering voice, when she returned. Lord Grenville did not venture to
+take the seat upon the sofa by her side.
+
+“I could not resist the pleasure of hearing your voice, of being near
+you. The thought of it came to be a sort of madness, a delirious frenzy.
+I am no longer master of myself. I have taken myself to task; it is
+no use, I am too weak, I ought to die. But to die without seeing you,
+without having heard the rustle of your dress, or felt your tears. What
+a death!”
+
+He moved further away from her; but in his hasty uprising a pistol fell
+out of his pocket. The Marquise looked down blankly at the weapon; all
+passion, all expression had died out of her eyes. Lord Grenville stooped
+for the thing, raging inwardly over an accident which seemed like a
+piece of lovesick strategy.
+
+“_Arthur!_”
+
+“Madame,” he said, looking down, “I came here in utter desperation; I
+meant----” he broke off.
+
+“You meant to die by your own hand here in my house!”
+
+“Not alone!” he said in a low voice.
+
+“Not alone! My husband, perhaps----?”
+
+“No, no,” he cried in a choking voice. “Reassure yourself,” he
+continued, “I have quite given up my deadly purpose. As soon as I came
+in, as soon as I saw you, I felt that I was strong enough to suffer in
+silence, and to die alone.”
+
+Julie sprang up, and flung herself into his arms. Through her sobbing
+he caught a few passionate words, “To know happiness, and then to
+die.--Yes, let it be so.”
+
+All Julie’s story was summed up in that cry from the depths; it was
+the summons of nature and of love at which women without a religion
+surrender. With the fierce energy of unhoped-for joy, Arthur caught her
+up and carried her to the sofa; but in a moment she tore herself from
+her lover’s arms, looked at him with a fixed despairing gaze, took his
+hand, snatched up a candle, and drew him into her room. When they stood
+by the cot where Helene lay sleeping, she put the curtains softly aside,
+shading the candle with her hand, lest the light should dazzle the
+half-closed eyes beneath the transparent lids. Helene lay smiling in her
+sleep, with her arms outstretched on the coverlet. Julie glanced from
+her child to Arthur’s face. That look told him all.
+
+“We may leave a husband, even though he loves us: a man is strong; he
+has consolations.--We may defy the world and its laws. But a motherless
+child!”--all these thoughts, and a thousand others more moving still,
+found language in that glance.
+
+“We can take her with us,” muttered he; “I will love her dearly.”
+
+“Mamma!” cried little Helene, now awake. Julie burst into tears. Lord
+Grenville sat down and folded his arms in gloomy silence.
+
+“Mamma!” At the sweet childish name, so many nobler feelings, so many
+irresistible yearnings awoke, that for a moment love was effaced by the
+all-powerful instinct of motherhood; the mother triumphed over the woman
+in Julie, and Lord Grenville could not hold out, he was defeated by
+Julie’s tears.
+
+Just at that moment a door was flung noisily open. “Madame d’Aiglemont,
+are you hereabouts?” called a voice which rang like a crack of thunder
+through the hearts of the two lovers. The Marquis had come home.
+
+Before Julie could recover her presence of mind, her husband was on the
+way to the door of her room which opened into his. Luckily, at a sign,
+Lord Grenville escaped into the dressing-closet, and she hastily shut
+the door upon him.
+
+“Well, my lady, here am I,” said Victor, “the hunting party did not come
+off. I am just going to bed.”
+
+“Good-night, so am I. So go and leave me to undress.”
+
+“You are very cross to-night, Madame la Marquise.”
+
+The General returned to his room, Julie went with him to the door and
+shut it. Then she sprang to the dressing-close to release Arthur. All
+her presence of mind returned; she bethought herself that it was quite
+natural that her sometime doctor should pay her a visit; she might have
+left him in the drawing-room while she put her little girl to bed. She
+was about to tell him, under her breath, to go back to the drawing-room,
+and had opened the door. Then she shrieked aloud. Lord Grenville’s
+fingers had been caught and crushed in the door.
+
+“Well, what is it?” demanded her husband.
+
+“Oh! nothing, I have just pricked my finger with a pin.”
+
+The General’s door opened at once. Julie imagined that the irruption was
+due to a sudden concern for her, and cursed a solicitude in which love
+had no part. She had barely time to close the dressing-closet, and Lord
+Grenville had not extricated his hand. The General did, in fact, appear,
+but his wife had mistaken his motives; his apprehensions were entirely
+on his own account.
+
+“Can you lend me a bandana handkerchief? The stupid fool Charles leaves
+me without a single one. In the early days you used to bother me with
+looking after me so carefully. Ah, well, the honeymoon did not last very
+long for me, nor yet for my cravats. Nowadays I am given over to the
+secular arm, in the shape of servants who do not care one jack straw for
+what I say.”
+
+“There! There is a bandana for you. Did you go into the drawing-room?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Oh! you might perhaps have been in time to see Lord Grenville.”
+
+“Is he in Paris?”
+
+“It seems so.”
+
+“Oh! I will go at once. The good doctor.”
+
+“But he will have gone by now!” exclaimed Julie.
+
+The Marquis, standing in the middle of the room, was tying the
+handkerchief over his head. He looked complacently at himself in the
+glass.
+
+“What has become of the servants is more than I know,” he remarked. “I
+have rung the bell for Charles, and he has not answered it. And your
+maid is not here either. Ring for her. I should like another blanket on
+my bed to-night.”
+
+“Pauline is out,” the Marquise said drily.
+
+“What, at midnight!” exclaimed the General.
+
+“I gave her leave to go to the Opera.”
+
+“That is funny!” returned her husband, continuing to undress. “I thought
+I saw her coming upstairs.”
+
+“She has come in then, of course,” said Julie, with assumed impatience,
+and to allay any possible suspicion on her husband’s part she pretended
+to ring the bell.
+
+
+
+The whole history of that night has never been known, but no doubt it
+was as simple and as tragically commonplace as the domestic incidents
+that preceded it.
+
+Next day the Marquise d’Aiglemont took to her bed, nor did she leave it
+for some days.
+
+“What can have happened in your family so extraordinary that every one
+is talking about your wife?” asked M. de Ronquerolles of M. d’Aiglemont
+a short time after that night of catastrophes.
+
+“Take my advice and remain a bachelor,” said d’Aiglemont. “The curtains
+of Helene’s cot caught fire, and gave my wife such a shock that it will
+be a twelvemonth before she gets over it; so the doctor says. You marry
+a pretty wife, and her looks fall off; you marry a girl in blooming
+health, and she turns into an invalid. You think she has a passionate
+temperament, and find her cold, or else under her apparent coldness
+there lurks a nature so passionate that she is the death of you, or
+she dishonors your name. Sometimes the meekest of them will turn out
+crotchety, though the crotchety ones never grow any sweeter. Sometimes
+the mere child, so simple and silly at first, will develop an iron will
+to thwart you and the ingenuity of a fiend. I am tired of marriage.”
+
+“Or of your wife?”
+
+“That would be difficult. By-the-by, do you feel inclined to go to
+Saint-Thomas d’Aquin with me to attend Lord Grenville’s funeral?”
+
+“A singular way of spending time.--Is it really known how he came by his
+death?” added Ronquerolles.
+
+“His man says that he spent a whole night sitting on somebody’s window
+sill to save some woman’s character, and it has been infernally cold
+lately.”
+
+“Such devotion would be highly creditable to one of us old stagers; but
+Lord Grenville was a youngster and--an Englishman. Englishmen never can
+do anything like anybody else.”
+
+“Pooh!” returned d’Aiglemont, “these heroic exploits all depend upon the
+woman in the case, and it certainly was not for one that I know, that
+poor Arthur came by his death.”
+
+
+
+
+II. A HIDDEN GRIEF
+
+Between the Seine and the little river Loing lies a wide flat country,
+skirted on the one side by the Forest of Fontainebleau, and marked out
+as to its southern limits by the towns of Moret, Montereau, and Nemours.
+It is a dreary country; little knolls of hills appear only at rare
+intervals, and a coppice here and there among the fields affords
+for game; and beyond, upon every side, stretches the endless gray or
+yellowish horizon peculiar to Beauce, Sologne, and Berri.
+
+In the very centre of the plain, at equal distances from Moret and
+Montereau, the traveler passes the old chateau of Saint-Lange, standing
+amid surroundings which lack neither dignity nor stateliness. There are
+magnificent avenues of elm-trees, great gardens encircled by the moat,
+and a circumference of walls about a huge manorial pile which represents
+the profits of the _maltote_, the gains of farmers-general, legalized
+malversation, or the vast fortunes of great houses now brought low
+beneath the hammer of the Civil Code.
+
+Should any artist or dreamer of dreams chance to stray along the roads
+full of deep ruts, or over the heavy land which secures the place
+against intrusion, he will wonder how it happened that this romantic
+old place was set down in a savanna of corn-land, a desert of chalk,
+and sand, and marl, where gaiety dies away, and melancholy is a natural
+product of the soil. The voiceless solitude, the monotonous horizon line
+which weigh upon the spirits are negative beauties, which only suit with
+sorrow that refuses to be comforted.
+
+Hither, at the close of the year 1820, came a woman, still young, well
+known in Paris for her charm, her fair face, and her wit; and to the
+immense astonishment of the little village a mile away, this woman of
+high rank and corresponding fortune took up her abode at Saint-Lange.
+
+From time immemorial, farmers and laborers had seen no gentry at the
+chateau. The estate, considerable though it was, had been left in charge
+of a land-steward and the house to the old servants. Wherefore the
+appearance of the lady of the manor caused a kind of sensation in the
+district.
+
+A group had gathered in the yard of the wretched little wineshop at the
+end of the village (where the road forks to Nemours and Moret) to see
+the carriage pass. It went by slowly, for the Marquise had come
+from Paris with her own horses, and those on the lookout had ample
+opportunity of observing a waiting-maid, who sat with her back to the
+horses holding a little girl, with a somewhat dreamy look, upon her
+knee. The child’s mother lay back in the carriage; she looked like
+a dying woman sent out into the country air by her doctors as a last
+resource. Village politicians were by no means pleased to see the
+young, delicate, downcast face; they had hoped that the new arrival at
+Saint-Lange would bring some life and stir into the neighborhood,
+and clearly any sort of stir or movement must be distasteful to the
+suffering invalid in the traveling carriage.
+
+That evening, when the notables of Saint-Lange were drinking in the
+private room of the wineshop, the longest head among them declared that
+such depression could admit of but one construction--the Marquise
+was ruined. His lordship the Marquis was away in Spain with the Duc
+d’Angouleme (so they said in the papers), and beyond a doubt her
+ladyship had come to Saint-Lange to retrench after a run of ill-luck on
+the Bourse. The Marquis was one of the greatest gamblers on the face of
+the globe. Perhaps the estate would be cut up and sold in little lots.
+There would be some good strokes of business to be made in that case,
+and it behooved everybody to count up his cash, unearth his savings
+and to see how he stood, so as to secure his share of the spoil of
+Saint-Lange.
+
+So fair did this future seem, that the village worthies, dying to know
+whether it was founded on fact, began to think of ways of getting at the
+truth through the servants at the chateau. None of these, however, could
+throw any light on the calamity which had brought their mistress into
+the country at the beginning of winter, and to the old chateau of
+Saint-Lange of all places, when she might have taken her choice of
+cheerful country-houses famous for their beautiful gardens.
+
+His worship the mayor called to pay his respects; but he did not see the
+lady. Then the land-steward tried with no better success.
+
+Madame la Marquise kept her room, only leaving it, while it was set
+in order, for the small adjoining drawing-room, where she dined; if,
+indeed, to sit down to a table, to look with disgust at the dishes, and
+take the precise amount of nourishment required to prevent death from
+sheer starvation, can be called dining. The meal over, she returned
+at once to the old-fashioned low chair, in which she had sat since the
+morning, in the embrasure of the one window that lighted her room.
+
+Her little girl she only saw for a few minutes daily, during the dismal
+dinner, and even for a short time she seemed scarcely able to bear the
+child’s presence. Surely nothing but the most unheard-of anguish could
+have extinguished a mother’s love so early.
+
+None of the servants were suffered to come near, her own woman was
+the one creature whom she liked to have about her; the chateau must be
+perfectly quiet, the child must play at the other end of the house. The
+slightest sound had grown so intolerable, that any human voice, even the
+voice of her own child, jarred upon her.
+
+At first the whole countryside was deeply interested in these
+eccentricities; but time passed on, every possible hypothesis had been
+advanced to account for them and the peasants and dwellers in the little
+country towns thought no more of the invalid lady.
+
+So the Marquise was left to herself. She might live on, perfectly
+silent, amid the silence which she herself had created; there was
+nothing to draw her forth from the tapestried chamber where her
+grandmother died, whither she herself had come that she might die,
+gently, without witnesses, without importunate solicitude, without
+suffering from the insincere demonstrations of egoism masquerading as
+affection, which double the agony of death in great cities.
+
+She was twenty-six years old. At that age, with plenty of romantic
+illusions still left, the mind loves to dwell on the thought of death
+when death seems to come as a friend. But with youth, death is coy,
+coming up close only to go away, showing himself and hiding again, till
+youth has time to fall out of love with him during this dalliance. There
+is that uncertainty too that hangs over death’s to-morrow. Youth plunges
+back into the world of living men, there to find the pain more pitiless
+than death, that does not wait to strike.
+
+This woman who refused to live was to know the bitterness of these
+reprieves in the depths of her loneliness; in moral agony, which death
+would not come to end, she was to serve a terrible apprenticeship to the
+egoism which must take the bloom from her heart and break her in to the
+life of the world.
+
+This harsh and sorry teaching is the usual outcome of our early sorrows.
+For the first, and perhaps for the last time in her life, the Marquise
+d’Aiglemont was in very truth suffering. And, indeed, would it not be an
+error to suppose that the same sentiment can be reproduced in us? Once
+develop the power to feel, is it not always there in the depths of our
+nature? The accidents of life may lull or awaken it, but there it is, of
+necessity modifying the self, its abiding place. Hence, every sensation
+should have its great day once and for all, its first day of storm,
+be it long or short. Hence, likewise, pain, the most abiding of our
+sensations, could be keenly felt only at its first irruption, its
+intensity diminishing with every subsequent paroxysm, either because we
+grow accustomed to these crises, or perhaps because a natural instinct
+of self-preservation asserts itself, and opposes to the destroying force
+of anguish an equal but passive force of inertia.
+
+Yet of all kinds of suffering, to which does the name of anguish belong?
+For the loss of parents, Nature has in a manner prepared us; physical
+suffering, again, is an evil which passes over us and is gone; it lays
+no hold upon the soul; if it persists, it ceases to be an evil, it is
+death. The young mother loses her firstborn, but wedded love ere long
+gives her a successor. This grief, too, is transient. After all, these,
+and many other troubles like unto them, are in some sort wounds and
+bruises; they do not sap the springs of vitality, and only a succession
+of such blows can crush in us the instinct that seeks happiness. Great
+pain, therefore, pain that arises to anguish, should be suffering so
+deadly, that past, present, and future are alike included in its grip,
+and no part of life is left sound and whole. Never afterwards can
+we think the same thoughts as before. Anguish engraves itself in
+ineffaceable characters on mouth and brow; it passes through us,
+destroying or relaxing the springs that vibrate to enjoyment, leaving
+behind in the soul the seeds of a disgust for all things in this world.
+
+Yet, again, to be measureless, to weigh like this upon body and soul,
+the trouble should befall when soul and body have just come to their
+full strength, and smite down a heart that beats high with life. Then it
+is that great scars are made. Terrible is the anguish. None, it may
+be, can issue from this soul-sickness without undergoing some dramatic
+change. Those who survive it, those who remain on earth, return to the
+world to wear an actor’s countenance and to play an actor’s part. They
+know the side-scenes where actors may retire to calculate chances, shed
+their tears, or pass their jests. Life holds no inscrutable dark places
+for those who have passed through this ordeal; their judgments are
+Rhadamanthine.
+
+For young women of the Marquise d’Aiglemont’s age, this first, this most
+poignant pain of all, is always referable to the same cause. A woman,
+especially if she is a young woman, greatly beautiful, and by nature
+great, never fails to stake her whole life as instinct and sentiment and
+society all unite to bid her. Suppose that that life fails her, suppose
+that she still lives on, she cannot but endure the most cruel pangs,
+inasmuch as a first love is the loveliest of all. How comes it that this
+catastrophe has found no painter, no poet? And yet, can it be painted?
+Can it be sung? No; for the anguish arising from it eludes analysis
+and defies the colors of art. And more than this, such pain is never
+confessed. To console the sufferer, you must be able to divine the past
+which she hugs in bitterness to her soul like a remorse; it is like an
+avalanche in a valley; it laid all waste before it found a permanent
+resting-place.
+
+The Marquise was suffering from this anguish, which will for long remain
+unknown, because the whole world condemns it, while sentiment cherishes
+it, and the conscience of a true woman justifies her in it. It is with
+such pain as with children steadily disowned of life, and therefore
+bound more closely to the mother’s heart than other children more
+bounteously endowed. Never, perhaps, was the awful catastrophe in which
+the whole world without dies for us, so deadly, so complete, so cruelly
+aggravated by circumstance as it had been for the Marquise. The man whom
+she had loved was young and generous; in obedience to the laws of the
+world, she had refused herself to his love, and he had died to save a
+woman’s honor, as the world calls it. To whom could she speak of her
+misery? Her tears would be an offence against her husband, the origin
+of the tragedy. By all laws written and unwritten she was bound over to
+silence. A woman would have enjoyed the story; a man would have schemed
+for his own benefit. No; such grief as hers can only weep freely in
+solitude and in loneliness; she must consume her pain or be consumed by
+it; die or kill something within her--her conscience, it may be.
+
+Day after day she sat gazing at the flat horizon. It lay out before her
+like her own life to come. There was nothing to discover, nothing to
+hope. The whole of it could be seen at a glance. It was the visible
+presentment in the outward world of the chill sense of desolation which
+was gnawing restlessly at her heart. The misty mornings, the pale,
+bright sky, the low clouds scudding under the gray dome of heaven,
+fitted with the moods of her soul-sickness. Her heart did not contract,
+was neither more nor less seared, rather it seemed as if her youth, in
+its full blossom, was slowly turned to stone by an anguish intolerable
+because it was barren. She suffered through herself and for herself. How
+could it end save in self-absorption? Ugly torturing thoughts probed
+her conscience. Candid self-examination pronounced that she was double,
+there were two selves within her; a woman who felt and a woman who
+thought; a self that suffered and a self that could fain suffer no
+longer. Her mind traveled back to the joys of childish days; they had
+gone by, and she had never known how happy they were. Scenes crowded up
+in her memory as in a bright mirror glass, to demonstrate the deception
+of a marriage which, all that it should be in the eyes of the world, was
+in reality wretched. What had the delicate pride of young womanhood
+done for her--the bliss foregone, the sacrifices made to the world?
+Everything in her expressed love, awaited love; her movements still were
+full of perfect grace; her smile, her charm, were hers as before; why?
+she asked herself. The sense of her own youth and physical loveliness
+no more affected her than some meaningless reiterated sound. Her very
+beauty had grown intolerable to her as a useless thing. She shrank
+aghast from the thought that through the rest of life she must remain an
+incomplete creature; had not the inner self lost its power of receiving
+impressions with that zest, that exquisite sense of freshness which is
+the spring of so much of life’s gladness? The impressions of the future
+would for the most part be effaced as soon as received, and many of the
+thoughts which once would have moved her now would move her no more.
+
+After the childhood of the creature dawns the childhood of the heart;
+but this second infancy was over, her lover had taken it down with him
+into the grave. The longings of youth remained; she was young yet; but
+the completeness of youth was gone, and with that lost completeness the
+whole value and savor of life had diminished somewhat. Should she not
+always bear within her the seeds of sadness and mistrust, ready to
+grow up and rob emotion of its springtide of fervor? Conscious she must
+always be that nothing could give her now the happiness so longed for,
+that seemed so fair in her dreams. The fire from heaven that sheds
+abroad its light in the heart, in the dawn of love, had been quenched
+in tears, the first real tears which she had shed; henceforth she must
+always suffer, because it was no longer in her power to be what once
+she might have been. This is a belief which turns us in aversion and
+bitterness of spirit from any proffered new delight.
+
+Julie had come to look at life from the point of view of age about to
+die. Young though she felt, the heavy weight of joyless days had fallen
+upon her, and left her broken-spirited and old before her time. With a
+despairing cry, she asked the world what it could give her in exchange
+for the love now lost, by which she had lived. She asked herself whether
+in that vanished love, so chaste and pure, her will had not been more
+criminal than her deeds, and chose to believe herself guilty; partly
+to affront the world, partly for her own consolation, in that she had
+missed the close union of body and soul, which diminishes the pain of
+the one who is left behind by the knowledge that once it has known and
+given joy to the full, and retains within itself the impress of that
+which is no more.
+
+Something of the mortification of the actress cheated of her part
+mingled with the pain which thrilled through every fibre of her heart
+and brain. Her nature had been thwarted, her vanity wounded, her woman’s
+generosity cheated of self-sacrifice. Then, when she had raised all
+these questions, set vibrating all the springs in those different
+phases of being which we distinguish as social, moral, and physical,
+her energies were so far exhausted and relaxed that she was powerless to
+grasp a single thought amid the chase of conflicting ideas.
+
+Sometimes as the mists fell, she would throw her window open, and would
+stay there, motionless, breathing in unheedingly the damp earthly scent
+in the air, her mind to all appearance an unintelligent blank, for the
+ceaseless burden of sorrow humming in her brain left her deaf to earth’s
+harmonies and insensible to the delights of thought.
+
+One day, towards noon, when the sun shone out for a little, her maid
+came in without a summons.
+
+“This is the fourth time that M. le Cure has come to see Mme. la
+Marquise; to-day he is so determined about it, that we did not know what
+to tell him.”
+
+“He has come to ask for some money for the poor, no doubt; take him
+twenty-five louis from me.”
+
+The woman went only to return.
+
+“M. le Cure will not take the money, my lady; he wants to speak to you.”
+
+“Then let him come!” said Mme. d’Aiglemont, with an involuntary shrug
+which augured ill for the priest’s reception. Evidently the lady meant
+to put a stop to persecution by a short and sharp method.
+
+Mme. d’Aiglemont had lost her mother in her early childhood; and as a
+natural consequence in her bringing-up, she had felt the influence of
+the relaxed notions which loosened the hold of religion upon France
+during the Revolution. Piety is a womanly virtue which women alone can
+really instil; and the Marquise, a child of the eighteenth century, had
+adopted her father’s creed of philosophism, and practised no religious
+observances. A priest, to her way of thinking, was a civil servant of
+very doubtful utility. In her present position, the teaching of religion
+could only poison her wounds; she had, moreover, but scanty faith in the
+lights of country cures, and made up her mind to put this one gently but
+firmly in his place, and to rid herself of him, after the manner of the
+rich, by bestowing a benefit.
+
+At first sight of the cure the Marquise felt no inclination to change
+her mind. She saw before her a stout, rotund little man, with a ruddy,
+wrinkled, elderly face, which awkwardly and unsuccessfully tried to
+smile. His bald, quadrant-shaped forehead, furrowed by intersecting
+lines, was too heavy for the rest of his face, which seemed to be
+dwarfed by it. A fringe of scanty white hair encircled the back of his
+head, and almost reached his ears. Yet the priest looked as if by nature
+he had a genial disposition; his thick lips, his slightly curved nose,
+his chin, which vanished in a double fold of wrinkles,--all marked him
+out as a man who took cheerful views of life.
+
+At first the Marquise saw nothing but these salient characteristics,
+but at the first word she was struck by the sweetness of the speaker’s
+voice. Looking at him more closely, she saw that the eyes under the
+grizzled eyebrows had shed tears, and his face, turned in profile, wore
+so sublime an impress of sorrow, that the Marquise recognized the man in
+the cure.
+
+“Madame la Marquise, the rich only come within our province when
+they are in trouble. It is easy to see that the troubles of a young,
+beautiful, and wealthy woman, who has lost neither children nor
+relatives, are caused by wounds whose pangs religion alone can soothe.
+Your soul is in danger, madame. I am not speaking now of the hereafter
+which awaits us. No, I am not in the confessional. But it is my duty,
+is it not, to open your eyes to your future life here on earth? You
+will pardon an old man, will you not, for importunity which has your own
+happiness for its object?”
+
+“There is no more happiness for me, monsieur. I shall soon be, as you
+say, in your province; but it will be for ever.”
+
+“Nay, madame. You will not die of this pain which lies heavy upon you,
+and can be read in your face. If you had been destined to die of it, you
+would not be here at Saint-Lange. A definite regret is not so deadly
+as hope deferred. I have known others pass through more intolerable and
+more awful anguish, and yet they live.”
+
+The Marquise looked incredulous.
+
+“Madame, I know a man whose affliction was so sore that your trouble
+would seem to you to be light compared with his.”
+
+Perhaps the long solitary hours had begun to hang heavily; perhaps in
+the recesses of the Marquise’s mind lay the thought that here was a
+friendly heart to whom she might be able to pour out her troubles.
+However, it was, she gave the cure a questioning glance which could not
+be mistaken.
+
+“Madame,” he continued, “the man of whom I tell you had but three
+children left of a once large family circle. He lost his parents, his
+daughter, and his wife, whom he dearly loved. He was left alone at last
+on the little farm where he had lived so happily for so long. His three
+sons were in the army, and each of the lads had risen in proportion to
+his time of service. During the Hundred Days, the oldest went into
+the Guard with a colonel’s commission; the second was a major in the
+artillery; the youngest a major in a regiment of dragoons. Madame, those
+three boys loved their father as much as he loved them. If you but knew
+how careless young fellows grow of home ties when they are carried
+away by the current of their own lives, you would realize from this one
+little thing how warmly they loved the lonely old father, who only lived
+in and for them--never a week passed without a letter from one of the
+boys. But then he on his side had never been weakly indulgent, to lessen
+their respect for him; nor unjustly severe, to thwart their affection;
+or apt to grudge sacrifices, the thing that estranges children’s hearts.
+He had been more than a father; he had been a brother to them, and their
+friend.
+
+“At last he went to Paris to bid them good-bye before they set out for
+Belgium; he wished to see that they had good horses and all that they
+needed. And so they went, and the father returned to his home again.
+Then the war began. He had letters from Fleurus, and again from Ligny.
+All went well. Then came the battle of Waterloo, and you know the rest.
+France was plunged into mourning; every family waited in intense anxiety
+for news. You may imagine, madame, how the old man waited for tidings,
+in anxiety that knew no peace nor rest. He used to read the gazettes;
+he went to the coach office every day. One evening he was told that the
+colonel’s servant had come. The man was riding his master’s horse--what
+need was there to ask any questions?--the colonel was dead, cut in
+two by a shell. Before the evening was out the youngest son’s servant
+arrived--the youngest had died on the eve of the battle. At midnight
+came a gunner with tidings of the death of the last; upon whom, in those
+few hours, the poor father had centered all his life. Madame, they all
+had fallen.”
+
+After a pause the good man controlled his feelings, and added gently:
+
+“And their father is still living, madame. He realized that if God had
+left him on earth, he was bound to live on and suffer on earth; but he
+took refuge in the sanctuary. What could he be?”
+
+The Marquise looked up and saw the cure’s face, grown sublime in its
+sorrow and resignation, and waited for him to speak. When the words
+came, tears broke from her.
+
+“A priest, madame; consecrated by his own tears previously shed at the
+foot of the altar.”
+
+Silence prevailed for a little. The Marquise and the cure looked out at
+the foggy landscape, as if they could see the figures of those who were
+no more.
+
+“Not a priest in a city, but a simple country cure,” added he.
+
+“At Saint-Lange,” she said, drying her eyes.
+
+“Yes, madame.”
+
+Never had the majesty of grief seemed so great to Julie. The two words
+sank straight into her heart with the weight of infinite sorrow. The
+gentle, sonorous tones troubled her heart. Ah! that full, deep voice,
+charged with plangent vibration, was the voice of one who had suffered
+indeed.
+
+“And if I do not die, monsieur, what will become of me?” The Marquise
+spoke almost reverently.
+
+“Have you not a child, madame?”
+
+“Yes,” she said stiffly.
+
+The cure gave her such a glance as a doctor gives a patient whose life
+is in danger. Then he determined to do all that in him lay to combat the
+evil spirit into whose clutches she had fallen.
+
+“We must live on with our sorrows--you see it yourself, madame, and
+religion alone offers us real consolation. Will you permit me to come
+again?--to speak to you as a man who can sympathize with every trouble,
+a man about whom there is nothing very alarming, I think?”
+
+“Yes, monsieur, come back again. Thank you for your thought of me.”
+
+“Very well, madame; then I shall return very shortly.”
+
+This visit relaxed the tension of soul, as it were; the heavy strain
+of grief and loneliness had been almost too much for the Marquise’s
+strength. The priest’s visit had left a soothing balm in her heart, his
+words thrilled through her with healing influence. She began to feel
+something of a prisoner’s satisfaction, when, after he has had time
+to feel his utter loneliness and the weight of his chains, he hears a
+neighbor knocking on the wall, and welcomes the sound which brings a
+sense of human friendship. Here was an unhoped-for confidant. But
+this feeling did not last for long. Soon she sank back into the old
+bitterness of spirit, saying to herself, as the prisoner might say, that
+a companion in misfortune could neither lighten her own bondage nor her
+future.
+
+In the first visit the cure had feared to alarm the susceptibilities
+of self-absorbed grief, in a second interview he hoped to make some
+progress towards religion. He came back again two days later, and from
+the Marquise’s welcome it was plain that she had looked forward to the
+visit.
+
+“Well, Mme. la Marquise, have you given a little thought to the great
+mass of human suffering? Have you raised your eyes above our earth and
+seen the immensity of the universe?--the worlds beyond worlds which
+crush our vanity into insignificance, and with our vanity reduce our
+sorrows?”
+
+“No, monsieur,” she said; “I cannot rise to such heights, our social
+laws lie too heavily upon me, and rend my heart with a too poignant
+anguish. And laws perhaps are less cruel than the usages of the world.
+Ah! the world!”
+
+“Madame, we must obey both. Law is the doctrine, and custom the practice
+of society.”
+
+“Obey society?” cried the Marquise, with an involuntary shudder. “Eh!
+monsieur, it is the source of all our woes. God laid down no law to
+make us miserable; but mankind, uniting together in social life, have
+perverted God’s work. Civilization deals harder measure to us women than
+nature does. Nature imposes upon us physical suffering which you have
+not alleviated; civilization has developed in us thoughts and feelings
+which you cheat continually. Nature exterminates the weak; you condemn
+them to live, and by so doing, consign them to a life of misery. The
+whole weight of the burden of marriage, an institution on which society
+is based, falls upon us; for the man liberty, duties for the woman. We
+must give up our whole lives to you, you are only bound to give us a
+few moments of yours. A man, in fact, makes a choice, while we blindly
+submit. Oh, monsieur, to you I can speak freely. Marriage, in these
+days, seems to me to be legalized prostitution. This is the cause of my
+wretchedness. But among so many miserable creatures so unhappily yoked,
+I alone am bound to be silent, I alone am to blame for my misery. My
+marriage was my own doing.”
+
+She stopped short, and bitter tears fell in the silence.
+
+“In the depths of my wretchedness, in the midst of this sea of
+distress,” she went on, “I found some sands on which to set foot and
+suffer at leisure. A great tempest swept everything away. And here am I,
+helpless and alone, too weak to cope with storms.”
+
+“We are never weak while God is with us,” said the priest. “And if your
+cravings for affection cannot be satisfied here on earth, have you no
+duties to perform?”
+
+“Duties continually!” she exclaimed, with something of impatience in
+her tone. “But where for me are the sentiments which give us strength
+to perform them? Nothing from nothing, nothing for nothing,--this,
+monsieur, is one of the most inexorable laws of nature, physical or
+spiritual. Would you have these trees break into leaf without the sap
+which swells the buds? It is the same with our human nature; and in me
+the sap is dried up at its source.”
+
+“I am not going to speak to you of religious sentiments of which
+resignation is born,” said the cure, “but of motherhood, madame,
+surely--”
+
+“Stop, monsieur!” said the Marquise, “with you I will be sincere. Alas!
+in future I can be sincere with no one; I am condemned to falsehood.
+The world requires continual grimaces, and we are bidden to obey
+its conventions if we would escape reproach. There are two kinds of
+motherhood, monsieur; once I knew nothing of such distinctions, but I
+know them now. Only half of me has become a mother; it were better for
+me if I had not been a mother at all. Helene is not _his_ child! Oh! do
+not start. At Saint-Lange there are volcanic depths whence come lurid
+gleams of light and earthquake shocks to shake the fragile edifices of
+laws not based on nature. I have borne a child, that is enough, I am a
+mother in the eyes of the law. But you, monsieur, with your delicately
+compassionate soul, can perhaps understand this cry from an unhappy
+woman who has suffered no lying illusions to enter her heart. God will
+judge me, but surely I have only obeyed His laws by giving way to the
+affections which He Himself set in me, and this I have learned from my
+own soul.--What is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the
+fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended? Unless it is owned by
+every fibre of the body, as by every chord of tenderness in the heart;
+unless it recalls the bliss of love, the hours, the places where two
+creatures were happy, their words that overflowed with the music of
+humanity, and their sweet imaginings, that child is an incomplete
+creation. Yes, those two should find the poetic dreams of their intimate
+double life realized in their child as in an exquisite miniature; it
+should be for them a never-failing spring of emotion, implying their
+whole past and their whole future.
+
+“My poor little Helene is her father’s child, the offspring of duty and
+of chance. In me she finds nothing but the affection of instinct, the
+woman’s natural compassion for the child of her womb. Socially speaking,
+I am above reproach. Have I not sacrificed my life and my happiness to
+my child? Her cries go to my heart; if she were to fall into the water,
+I should spring to save her, but she is not in my heart.
+
+“Ah! love set me dreaming of a motherhood far greater and more complete.
+In a vanished dream I held in my arms a child conceived in desire before
+it was begotten, the exquisite flower of life that blossoms in the soul
+before it sees the light of day. I am Helene’s mother only in the sense
+that I brought her forth. When she needs me no longer, there will be an
+end of my motherhood; with the extinction of the cause, the effects will
+cease. If it is a woman’s adorable prerogative that her motherhood
+may last through her child’s life, surely that divine persistence of
+sentiment is due to the far-reaching glory of the conception of the
+soul? Unless a child has lain wrapped about from life’s first beginnings
+by the mother’s soul, the instinct of motherhood dies in her as in the
+animals. This is true; I feel that it is true. As my poor little one
+grows older, my heart closes. My sacrifices have driven us apart. And
+yet I know, monsieur, that to another child my heart would have gone
+out in inexhaustible love; for that other I should not have known what
+sacrifice meant, all had been delight. In this, monsieur, my instincts
+are stronger than reason, stronger than religion or all else in me. Does
+the woman who is neither wife nor mother sin in wishing to die when, for
+her misfortune, she has caught a glimpse of the infinite beauty of love,
+the limitless joy of motherhood? What can become of her? _I_ can tell
+you what she feels. I cannot put that memory from me so resolutely but
+that a hundred times, night and day, visions of a happiness, greater
+it may be than the reality, rise before me, followed by a shudder which
+shakes brain and heart and body. Before these cruel visions, my feelings
+and thoughts grow colorless, and I ask myself, ‘What would my life have
+been _if_----?’”
+
+She hid her face in her hands and burst into tears.
+
+“There you see the depths of my heart!” she continued. “For _his_
+child I could have acquiesced in any lot however dreadful. He who died,
+bearing the burden of the sins of the world will forgive this thought
+of which I am dying; but the world, I know, is merciless. In its ears
+my words are blasphemies; I am outraging all its codes. Oh! that I could
+wage war against this world and break down and refashion its laws
+and traditions! Has it not turned all my thoughts, and feelings, and
+longings, and hopes, and every fibre in me into so many sources of pain?
+Spoiled my future, present, and past? For me the daylight is full of
+gloom, my thoughts pierce me like a sword, my child is and is not.
+
+“Oh, when Helene speaks to me, I wish that her voice were different,
+when she looks into my face I wish that she had other eyes. She
+constantly keeps me in mind of all that should have been and is not. I
+cannot bear to have her near me. I smile at her, I try to make up to
+her for the real affection of which she is defrauded. I am wretched,
+monsieur, too wretched to live. And I am supposed to be a pattern wife.
+And I have committed no sins. And I am respected! I have fought down
+forbidden love which sprang up at unawares within me; but if I have kept
+the letter of the law, have I kept it in my heart? There has never been
+but one here,” she said, laying her right hand on her breast, “one and
+no other; and my child feels it. Certain looks and tones and gestures
+mould a child’s nature, and my poor little one feels no thrill in the
+arm I put about her, no tremor comes into my voice, no softness into my
+eyes when I speak to her or take her up. She looks at me, and I cannot
+endure the reproach in her eyes. There are times when I shudder to think
+that some day she may be my judge and condemn her mother unheard. Heaven
+grant that hate may not grow up between us! Ah! God in heaven,
+rather let the tomb open for me, rather let me end my days here at
+Saint-Lange!--I want to go back to the world where I shall find my other
+soul and become wholly a mother. Ah! forgive me, sir, I am mad. Those
+words were choking me; now they are spoken. Ah! you are weeping too! You
+will not despise me--”
+
+She heard the child come in from a walk. “Helene, my child, come here!”
+ she called. The words sounded like a cry of despair.
+
+The little girl ran in, laughing and calling to her mother to see a
+butterfly which she had caught; but at the sight of that mother’s tears
+she grew quiet of a sudden, and went up close, and received a kiss on
+her forehead.
+
+“She will be very beautiful some day,” said the priest.
+
+“She is her father’s child,” said the Marquise, kissing the little one
+with eager warmth, as if she meant to pay a debt of affection or to
+extinguish some feeling of remorse.
+
+“How hot you are, mamma!”
+
+“There, go away, my angel,” said the Marquise.
+
+The child went. She did not seem at all sorry to go; she did not
+look back; glad perhaps to escape from a sad face, and instinctively
+comprehending already an antagonism of feeling in its expression. A
+mother’s love finds language in smiles, they are a part of the divine
+right of motherhood. The Marquise could not smile. She flushed red as
+she felt the cure’s eyes. She had hoped to act a mother’s part before
+him, but neither she nor her child could deceive him. And, indeed, when
+a woman loves sincerely, in the kiss she gives there is a divine honey;
+it is as if a soul were breathed forth in the caress, a subtle flame
+of fire which brings warmth to the heart; the kiss that lacks this
+delicious unction is meagre and formal. The priest had felt the
+difference. He could fathom the depths that lie between the motherhood
+of the flesh and the motherhood of the heart. He gave the Marquise a
+keen, scrutinizing glance, then he said:
+
+“You are right, madame; it would be better for you if you were dead----”
+
+“Ah!” she cried, “then you know all my misery; I see you do if,
+Christian priest as you are, you can guess my determination to die and
+sanction it. Yes, I meant to die, but I have lacked the courage. The
+spirit was strong, but the flesh was weak, and when my hand did not
+tremble, the spirit within me wavered.
+
+“I do not know the reason of these inner struggles, and alternations. I
+am very pitiably a woman no doubt, weak in my will, strong only to love.
+Oh, I despise myself. At night, when all my household was asleep, I
+would go out bravely as far as the lake; but when I stood on the brink,
+my cowardice shrank from self-destruction. To you I will confess my
+weakness. When I lay in my bed, again, shame would come over me, and
+courage would come back. Once I took a dose of laudanum; I was ill, but
+I did not die. I thought I had emptied the phial, but I had only taken
+half the dose.”
+
+“You are lost, madame,” the cure said gravely, with tears in his voice.
+“You will go back into the world, and you will deceive the world. You
+will seek and find a compensation (as you imagine it to be) for your
+woes; then will come a day of reckoning for your pleasures--”
+
+“Do you think,” she cried, “that _I_ shall bestow the last, the most
+precious treasures of my heart upon the first base impostor who can
+play the comedy of passion? That I would pollute my life for a moment
+of doubtful pleasure? No; the flame which shall consume my soul shall be
+love, and nothing but love. All men, monsieur, have the senses of
+their sex, but not all have the man’s soul which satisfies all the
+requirements of our nature, drawing out the melodious harmony which
+never breaks forth save in response to the pressure of feeling. Such a
+soul is not found twice in our lifetime. The future that lies before
+me is hideous; I know it. A woman is nothing without love; beauty is
+nothing without pleasure. And even if happiness were offered to me a
+second time, would not the world frown upon it? I owe my daughter an
+honored mother. Oh! I am condemned to live in an iron circle, from which
+there is but one shameful way of escape. The round of family duties, a
+thankless and irksome task, is in store for me. I shall curse life; but
+my child shall have at least a fair semblance of a mother. I will give
+her treasures of virtue for the treasures of love of which I defraud
+her.
+
+“I have not even the mother’s desire to live to enjoy her child’s
+happiness. I have no belief in happiness. What will Helene’s fate be?
+My own, beyond doubt. How can a mother ensure that the man to whom she
+gives her daughter will be the husband of her heart? You pour scorn
+on the miserable creatures who sell themselves for a few coins to any
+passer-by, though want and hunger absolve the brief union; while another
+union, horrible for quite other reasons, is tolerated, nay encouraged,
+by society, and a young and innocent girl is married to a man whom she
+has only met occasionally during the previous three months. She is sold
+for her whole lifetime. It is true that the price is high! If you allow
+her no compensation for her sorrows, you might at least respect her; but
+no, the most virtuous of women cannot escape calumny. This is our fate
+in its double aspect. Open prostitution and shame; secret prostitution
+and unhappiness. As for the poor, portionless girls, they may die or go
+mad, without a soul to pity them. Beauty and virtue are not marketable
+in the bazaar where souls and bodies are bought and sold--in the den of
+selfishness which you call society. Why not disinherit daughters? Then,
+at least, you might fulfil one of the laws of nature, and guided by your
+own inclinations, choose your companions.”
+
+“Madame, from your talk it is clear to me that neither the spirit of
+family nor the sense of religion appeals to you. Why should you hesitate
+between the claims of the social selfishness which irritates you, and
+the purely personal selfishness which craves satisfactions--”
+
+“The family, monsieur--does such a thing exist? I decline to recognize
+as a family a knot of individuals bidden by society to divide the
+property after the death of father and mother, and to go their separate
+ways. A family means a temporary association of persons brought together
+by no will of their own, dissolved at once by death. Our laws have
+broken up homes and estates, and the old family tradition handed down
+from generation to generation. I see nothing but wreck and ruin about
+me.”
+
+“Madame, you will only return to God when His hand has been heavy upon
+you, and I pray that you have time enough given to you in which to make
+your peace with Him. Instead of looking to heaven for comfort, you
+are fixing your eyes on earth. Philosophism and personal interest
+have invaded your heart; like the children of the sceptical eighteenth
+century, you are deaf to the voice of religion. The pleasures of this
+life bring nothing but misery. You are about to make an exchange of
+sorrows, that is all.”
+
+She smiled bitterly.
+
+“I will falsify your predictions,” she said. “I shall be faithful to him
+who died for me.”
+
+“Sorrow,” he answered, “is not likely to live long save in souls
+disciplined by religion,” and he lowered his eyes respectfully lest the
+Marquise should read his doubts in them. The energy of her outburst had
+grieved him. He had seen the self that lurked beneath so many forms,
+and despaired of softening a heart which affliction seemed to sear. The
+divine Sower’s seed could not take root in such a soil, and His gentle
+voice was drowned by the clamorous outcry of self-pity. Yet the good man
+returned again and again with an apostle’s earnest persistence, brought
+back by a hope of leading so noble and proud a soul to God; until the
+day when he made the discovery that the Marquise only cared to talk with
+him because it was sweet to speak of him who was no more. He would
+not lower his ministry by condoning her passion, and confined the
+conversation more and more to generalities and commonplaces.
+
+Spring came, and with the spring the Marquise found distraction from her
+deep melancholy. She busied herself for lack of other occupation with
+her estate, making improvements for amusement.
+
+In October she left the old chateau. In the life of leisure at
+Saint-Lange she had recovered from her grief and grown fair and fresh.
+Her grief had been violent at first in its course, as the quoit hurled
+forth with all the player’s strength, and like the quoit after many
+oscillations, each feebler than the last, it had slackened into
+melancholy. Melancholy is made up of a succession of such oscillations,
+the first touching upon despair, the last on the border between pain
+and pleasure; in youth, it is the twilight of dawn; in age, the dusk of
+night.
+
+As the Marquise drove through the village in her traveling carriage, she
+met the cure on his way back from the church. She bowed in response to
+his farewell greeting, but it was with lowered eyes and averted face.
+She did not wish to see him again. The village cure had judged this poor
+Diana of Ephesus only too well.
+
+
+
+
+III. AT THIRTY YEARS
+
+Madame Firmiani was giving a ball. M. Charles de Vandenesse, a young man
+of great promise, the bearer of one of those historic names which, in
+spite of the efforts of legislation, are always associated with the
+glory of France, had received letters of introduction to some of the
+great lady’s friends in Naples, and had come to thank the hostess and to
+take his leave.
+
+Vandenesse had already acquitted himself creditably on several
+diplomatic missions; and now that he had received an appointment as
+attache to a plenipotentiary at the Congress of Laybach, he wished to
+take advantage of the opportunity to make some study of Italy on the
+way. This ball was a sort of farewell to Paris and its amusements and
+its rapid whirl of life, to the great eddying intellectual centre and
+maelstrom of pleasure; and a pleasant thing it is to be borne along
+by the current of this sufficiently slandered great city of Paris. Yet
+Charles de Vandenesse had little to regret, accustomed as he had been
+for the past three years to salute European capitals and turn his back
+upon them at the capricious bidding of a diplomatist’s destiny. Women
+no longer made any impression upon him; perhaps he thought that a real
+passion would play too large a part in a diplomatist’s life; or perhaps
+that the paltry amusements of frivolity were too empty for a man
+of strong character. We all of us have huge claims to strength of
+character. There is no man in France, be he ever so ordinary a member of
+the rank and file of humanity, that will waive pretensions to something
+beyond mere cleverness.
+
+Charles, young though he was--he was scarcely turned thirty--looked at
+life with a philosophic mind, concerning himself with theories and
+means and ends, while other men of his age were thinking of pleasure,
+sentiments, and the like illusions. He forced back into some inner depth
+the generosity and enthusiasms of youth, and by nature he was generous.
+He tried hard to be cool and calculating, to coin the fund of wealth
+which chanced to be in his nature into gracious manners, and courtesy,
+and attractive arts; ‘tis the proper task of an ambitious man, to play a
+sorry part to gain “a good position,” as we call it in modern days.
+
+He had been dancing, and now he gave a farewell glance over the rooms,
+to carry away a distinct impression of the ball, moved, doubtless, to
+some extent by the feeling which prompts a theatre-goer to stay in
+his box to see the final tableau before the curtain falls. But M. de
+Vandenesse had another reason for his survey. He gazed curiously at the
+scene before him, so French in character and in movement, seeking to
+carry away a picture of the light and laughter and the faces at
+this Parisian fete, to compare with the novel faces and picturesque
+surroundings awaiting him at Naples, where he meant to spend a few
+days before presenting himself at his post. He seemed to be drawing the
+comparison now between this France so variable, changing even as you
+study her, with the manners and aspects of that other land known to him
+as yet only by contradictory hearsay tales or books of travel, for the
+most part unsatisfactory. Thoughts of a somewhat poetical cast, albeit
+hackneyed and trite to our modern ideas, crossed his brain, in response
+to some longing of which, perhaps, he himself was hardly conscious, a
+desire in the depths of a heart fastidious rather than jaded, vacant
+rather than seared.
+
+“These are the wealthiest and most fashionable women and the greatest
+ladies in Paris,” he said to himself. “These are the great men of the
+day, great orators and men of letters, great names and titles; artists
+and men in power; and yet in it all it seems to me as if there were
+nothing but petty intrigues and still-born loves, meaningless smiles
+and causeless scorn, eyes lighted by no flame within, brain-power in
+abundance running aimlessly to waste. All those pink-and-white faces are
+here not so much for enjoyment, as to escape from dulness. None of the
+emotion is genuine. If you ask for nothing but court feathers properly
+adjusted, fresh gauzes and pretty toilettes and fragile, fair women, if
+you desire simply to skim the surface of life, here is your world for
+you. Be content with meaningless phrases and fascinating simpers, and do
+not ask for real feeling. For my own part, I abhor the stale intrigues
+which end in sub-prefectures and receiver-generals’ places and
+marriages; or, if love comes into the question, in stealthy compromises,
+so ashamed are we of the mere semblance of passion. Not a single one of
+all these eloquent faces tells you of a soul, a soul wholly absorbed by
+one idea as by remorse. Regrets and misfortune go about shame-facedly
+clad in jests. There is not one woman here whose resistance I should
+care to overcome, not one who could drag you down to the pit. Where will
+you find energy in Paris? A poniard here is a curious toy to hang from a
+gilt nail, in a picturesque sheath to match. The women, the brains, and
+hearts of Paris are all on a par. There is no passion left, because
+we have no individuality. High birth and intellect and fortune are all
+reduced to one level; we all have taken to the uniform black coat by way
+of mourning for a dead France. There is no love between equals. Between
+two lovers there should be differences to efface, wide gulfs to fill.
+The charm of love fled from us in 1789. Our dulness and our humdrum
+lives are the outcome of the political system. Italy at any rate is the
+land of sharp contrasts. Woman there is a malevolent animal, a dangerous
+unreasoning siren, guided only by her tastes and appetites, a creature
+no more to be trusted than a tiger--”
+
+Mme. Firmiani here came up to interrupt this soliloquy made up of vague,
+conflicting, and fragmentary thoughts which cannot be reproduced in
+words. The whole charm of such musing lies in its vagueness--what is it
+but a sort of mental haze?
+
+“I want to introduce you to some one who has the greatest wish to make
+your acquaintance, after all that she has heard of you,” said the lady,
+taking his arm.
+
+She brought him into the next room, and with such a smile and glance
+as a Parisienne alone can give, she indicated a woman sitting by the
+hearth.
+
+“Who is she?” the Comte de Vandenesse asked quickly.
+
+“You have heard her name more than once coupled with praise or blame.
+She is a woman who lives in seclusion--a perfect mystery.”
+
+“Oh! if ever you have been merciful in your life, for pity’s sake tell
+me her name.”
+
+“She is the Marquise d’Aiglemont.”
+
+“I will take lessons from her; she had managed to make a peer of France
+of that eminently ordinary person her husband, and a dullard into a
+power in the land. But, pray tell me this, did Lord Grenville die for
+her sake, do you think, as some women say?”
+
+“Possibly. Since that adventure, real or imaginary, she is very much
+changed, poor thing! She has not gone into society since. Four years of
+constancy--that is something in Paris. If she is here to-night----”
+ Here Mme. Firmiani broke off, adding with a mysterious expression, “I am
+forgetting that I must say nothing. Go and talk with her.”
+
+For a moment Charles stood motionless, leaning lightly against the
+frame of the doorway, wholly absorbed in his scrutiny of a woman who had
+become famous, no one exactly knew how or why. Such curious anomalies
+are frequent enough in the world. Mme. d’Aiglemont’s reputation was
+certainly no more extraordinary than plenty of other great reputations.
+There are men who are always in travail of some great work which never
+sees the light, statisticians held to be profound on the score of
+calculations which they take very good care not to publish, politicians
+who live on a newspaper article, men of letters and artists whose
+performances are never given to the world, men of science, much as
+Sganarelle is a Latinist for those who know no Latin; there are the men
+who are allowed by general consent to possess a peculiar capacity for
+some one thing, be it for the direction of arts, or for the conduct
+of an important mission. The admirable phrase, “A man with a special
+subject,” might have been invented on purpose for these acephalous
+species in the domain of literature and politics.
+
+Charles gazed longer than he intended. He was vexed with himself for
+feeling so strongly interested; it is true, however, that the lady’s
+appearance was a refutation of the young man’s ballroom generalizations.
+
+The Marquise had reached her thirtieth year. She was beautiful in spite
+of her fragile form and extremely delicate look. Her greatest charm lay
+in her still face, revealing unfathomed depths of soul. Some haunting,
+ever-present thought veiled, as it were, the full brilliance of eyes
+which told of a fevered life and boundless resignation. So seldom
+did she raise the eyelids soberly downcast, and so listless were her
+glances, that it almost seemed as if the fire in her eyes were reserved
+for some occult contemplation. Any man of genius and feeling must have
+felt strangely attracted by her gentleness and silence. If the mind
+sought to explain the mysterious problem of a constant inward turning
+from the present to the past, the soul was no less interested in
+initiating itself into the secrets of a heart proud in some sort of
+its anguish. Everything about her, moreover, was in keeping with these
+thoughts which she inspired. Like almost all women who have very long
+hair, she was very pale and perfectly white. The marvelous fineness of
+her skin (that almost unerring sign) indicated a quick sensibility which
+could be seen yet more unmistakably in her features; there was the same
+minute and wonderful delicacy of finish in them that the Chinese artist
+gives to his fantastic figures. Perhaps her neck was rather too long,
+but such necks belong to the most graceful type, and suggest vague
+affinities between a woman’s head and the magnetic curves of the
+serpent. Leave not a single one of the thousand signs and tokens by
+which the most inscrutable character betrays itself to an observer of
+human nature, he has but to watch carefully the little movements of a
+woman’s head, the ever-varying expressive turns and curves of her neck
+and throat, to read her nature.
+
+Mme. d’Aiglemont’s dress harmonized with the haunting thought that
+informed the whole woman. Her hair was gathered up into a tall coronet
+of broad plaits, without ornament of any kind; she seemed to have bidden
+farewell for ever to elaborate toilettes. Nor were any of the small arts
+of coquetry which spoil so many women to be detected in her. Perhaps
+her bodice, modest though it was, did not altogether conceal the dainty
+grace of her figure, perhaps, too, her gown looked rich from the
+extreme distinction of its fashion, and if it is permissible to look for
+expression in the arrangement of stuffs, surely those numerous straight
+folds invested her with a great dignity. There may have been some
+lingering trace of the indelible feminine foible in the minute care
+bestowed upon her hand and foot; yet, if she allowed them to be seen
+with some pleasure, it would have tasked the utmost malice of a rival to
+discover any affectation in her gestures, so natural did they seem, so
+much a part of old childish habit, that her careless grace absolved this
+vestige of vanity.
+
+All these little characteristics, the nameless trifles which combine to
+make up the sum of a woman’s prettiness or ugliness, her charm or lack
+of charm, can only be indicated, when, as with Mme. d’Aiglemont, a
+personality dominates and gives coherence to the details, informing
+them, blending them all in an exquisite whole. Her manner was perfectly
+in accord with her style of beauty and her dress. Only to certain women
+at a certain age is it given to put language into their attitude. Is it
+joy or is it sorrow that teaches a woman of thirty the secret of that
+eloquence of carriage, so that she must always remain an enigma which
+each interprets by the aid of his hopes, desires, or theories?
+
+The way in which the Marquise leaned both elbows on the arm of her
+chair, the toying of her interclasped fingers, the curve of her throat,
+the indolent lines of her languid but lissome body as she lay back in
+graceful exhaustion, as it were; her indolent limbs, her unstudied pose,
+the utter lassitude of her movements,--all suggested that this was a
+woman for whom life had lost its interest, a woman who had known
+the joys of love only in dreams, a woman bowed down by the burden of
+memories of the past, a woman who had long since despaired of the future
+and despaired of herself, an unoccupied woman who took the emptiness of
+her own life for the nothingness of life.
+
+Charles de Vandenesse saw and admired the beautiful picture before
+him, as a kind of artistic success beyond an ordinary woman’s powers of
+attainment. He was acquainted with d’Aiglemont; and now, at the first
+sight of d’Aiglemont’s wife, the young diplomatist saw at a glance a
+disproportionate marriage, an incompatibility (to use the legal jargon)
+so great that it was impossible that the Marquise should love her
+husband. And yet--the Marquise d’Aiglemont’s life was above reproach,
+and for any observer the mystery about her was the more interesting on
+this account. The first impulse of surprise over, Vandenesse cast
+about for the best way of approaching Mme. d’Aiglemont. He would try a
+commonplace piece of diplomacy, he thought; he would disconcert her by a
+piece of clumsiness and see how she would receive it.
+
+“Madame,” he said, seating himself near her, “through a fortunate
+indiscretion I have learned that, for some reason unknown to me, I have
+had the good fortune to attract your notice. I owe you the more thanks
+because I have never been so honored before. At the same time, you are
+responsible for one of my faults, for I mean never to be modest again--”
+
+“You will make a mistake, monsieur,” she laughed; “vanity should be left
+to those who have nothing else to recommend them.”
+
+The conversation thus opened ranged at large, in the usual way, over a
+multitude of topics--art and literature, politics, men and things--till
+insensibly they fell to talking of the eternal theme in France and all
+the world over--love, sentiment, and women.
+
+“We are bond-slaves.”
+
+“You are queens.”
+
+This was the gist and substance of all the more or less ingenious
+discourse between Charles and the Marquise, as of all such
+discourses--past, present, and to come. Allow a certain space of time,
+and the two formulas shall begin to mean “Love me,” and “I will love
+you.”
+
+“Madame,” Charles de Vandenesse exclaimed under his breath, “you have
+made me bitterly regret that I am leaving Paris. In Italy I certainly
+shall not pass hours in intellectual enjoyment such as this has been.”
+
+“Perhaps, monsieur, you will find happiness, and happiness is worth
+more than all the brilliant things, true and false, that are said every
+evening in Paris.”
+
+Before Charles took leave, he asked permission to pay a farewell call
+on the Marquise d’Aiglemont, and very lucky did he feel himself when
+the form of words in which he expressed himself for once was used in all
+sincerity; and that night, and all day long on the morrow, he could not
+put the thought of the Marquise out of his mind.
+
+At times he wondered why she had singled him out, what she had
+meant when she asked him to come to see her, and thought supplied an
+inexhaustible commentary. Again it seemed to him that he had discovered
+the motives of her curiosity, and he grew intoxicated with hope or
+frigidly sober with each new construction put upon that piece of
+commonplace civility. Sometimes it meant everything, sometimes nothing.
+He made up his mind at last that he would not yield to this inclination,
+and--went to call on Mme. d’Aiglemont.
+
+There are thoughts which determine our conduct, while we do not so much
+as suspect their existence. If at first sight this assertion appears to
+be less a truth than a paradox, let any candid inquirer look into his
+own life and he shall find abundant confirmation therein. Charles went
+to Mme. d’Aiglemont, and so obeyed one of these latent, pre-existent
+germs of thought, of which our experience and our intellectual gains and
+achievements are but later and tangible developments.
+
+For a young man a woman of thirty has irresistible attractions. There
+is nothing more natural, nothing better established, no human tie of
+stouter tissue than the heart-deep attachment between such a woman as
+the Marquise d’Aiglemont and such a man as Charles de Vandenesse. You
+can see examples of it every day in the world. A girl, as a matter
+of fact, has too many young illusions, she is too inexperienced, the
+instinct of sex counts for too much in her love for a young man to feel
+flattered by it. A woman of thirty knows all that is involved in
+the self-surrender to be made. Among the impulses of the first, put
+curiosity and other motives than love; the second acts with integrity of
+sentiment. The first yields; the second makes deliberate choice. Is
+not that choice in itself an immense flattery? A woman armed with
+experience, forewarned by knowledge, almost always dearly bought, seems
+to give more than herself; while the inexperienced and credulous girl,
+unable to draw comparisons for lack of knowledge, can appreciate
+nothing at its just worth. She accepts love and ponders it. A woman is a
+counselor and a guide at an age when we love to be guided and obedience
+is delight; while a girl would fain learn all things, meeting us with a
+girl’s _naivete_ instead of a woman’s tenderness. She affords a single
+triumph; with a woman there is resistance upon resistance to overcome;
+she has but joy and tears, a woman has rapture and remorse.
+
+A girl cannot play the part of a mistress unless she is so corrupt
+that we turn from her with loathing; a woman has a thousand ways of
+preserving her power and her dignity; she has risked so much for love,
+that she must bid him pass through his myriad transformations, while her
+too submissive rival gives a sense of too serene security which palls.
+If the one sacrifices her maidenly pride, the other immolates the honor
+of a whole family. A girl’s coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that
+all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman’s coquetry is endless,
+she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of
+man’s vanity, the novice responds but to one.
+
+And there are terrors, fears, and hesitations--trouble and storm in the
+love of a woman of thirty years, never to be found in a young girl’s
+love. At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back the esteem
+she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her thoughts are
+full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids him make it
+glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, or rise in
+pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young girl can
+only make moan. And with all the advantages of her position, the woman
+of thirty can be a girl again, for she can play all parts, assume a
+girl’s bashfulness, and grow the fairer even for a mischance.
+
+Between these two feminine types lies the immeasurable difference which
+separates the foreseen from the unforeseen, strength from weakness. The
+woman of thirty satisfies every requirement; the young girl must satisfy
+none, under penalty of ceasing to be a young girl. Such ideas as these,
+developing in a young man’s mind, help to strengthen the strongest of
+all passions, a passion in which all spontaneous and natural feeling is
+blended with the artificial sentiment created by conventional manners.
+
+The most important and decisive step in a woman’s life is the very
+one that she invariably regards as the most insignificant. After her
+marriage she is no longer her own mistress, she is the queen and
+the bond-slave of the domestic hearth. The sanctity of womanhood is
+incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman
+emancipation means corruption. If you give a stranger the right of entry
+into the sanctuary of home, do you not put yourself at his mercy? How
+then if she herself bids him enter it? Is not this an offence, or, to
+speak more accurately, a first step towards an offence? You must
+either accept this theory with all its consequences, or absolve illicit
+passion. French society hitherto has chosen the third and middle course
+of looking on and laughing when offences come, apparently upon the
+Spartan principle of condoning the theft and punishing clumsiness.
+And this system, it may be, is a very wise one. ‘Tis a most appalling
+punishment to have all your neighbors pointing the finger of scorn
+at you, a punishment that a woman feels in her very heart. Women are
+tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without
+esteem they cannot exist, esteem is the first demand that they make
+of love. The most corrupt among them feels that she must, in the first
+place, pledge the future to buy absolution for the past, and strives
+to make her lover understand that only for irresistible bliss can she
+barter the respect which the world henceforth will refuse to her.
+
+Some such reflections cross the mind of any woman who for the first time
+and alone receives a visit from a young man; and this especially when,
+like Charles de Vandenesse, the visitor is handsome or clever. And
+similarly there are not many young men who would fail to base some
+secret wish on one of the thousand and one ideas which justify the
+instinct that attracts them to a beautiful, witty, and unhappy woman
+like the Marquise d’Aiglemont.
+
+Mme. d’Aiglemont, therefore, felt troubled when M. de Vandenesse was
+announced; and as for him, he was almost confused in spite of the
+assurance which is like a matter of costume for a diplomatist. But not
+for long. The Marquise took refuge at once in the friendliness of manner
+which women use as a defence against the misinterpretations of fatuity,
+a manner which admits of no afterthought, while it paves the way to
+sentiment (to make use of a figure of speech), tempering the transition
+through the ordinary forms of politeness. In this ambiguous position,
+where the four roads leading respectively to Indifference, Respect,
+Wonder, and Passion meet, a woman may stay as long as she pleases, but
+only at thirty years does she understand all the possibilities of the
+situation. Laughter, tenderness, and jest are all permitted to her at
+the crossing of the ways; she has acquired the tact by which she finds
+all the responsive chords in a man’s nature, and skill in judging the
+sounds which she draws forth. Her silence is as dangerous as her speech.
+You will never read her at that age, nor discover if she is frank or
+false, nor how far she is serious in her admissions or merely laughing
+at you. She gives you the right to engage in a game of fence with her,
+and suddenly by a glance, a gesture of proved potency, she closes the
+combat and turns from you with your secret in her keeping, free to offer
+you up in a jest, free to interest herself in you, safe alike in her
+weakness and your strength.
+
+Although the Marquise d’Aiglemont took up her position upon this neutral
+ground during the first interview, she knew how to preserve a high
+womanly dignity. The sorrows of which she never spoke seemed to hang
+over her assumed gaiety like a light cloud obscuring the sun. When
+Vandenesse went out, after a conversation which he had enjoyed more than
+he had thought possible, he carried with him the conviction that this
+was like to be too costly a conquest for his aspirations.
+
+“It would mean sentiment from here to yonder,” he thought, “and
+correspondence enough to wear out a deputy second-clerk on his
+promotion. And yet if I really cared----”
+
+Luckless phrase that has been the ruin of many an infatuated mortal. In
+France the way to love lies through self-love. Charles went back to Mme.
+d’Aiglemont, and imagined that she showed symptoms of pleasure in his
+conversion. And then, instead of giving himself up like a boy to the joy
+of falling in love, he tried to play a double role. He did his best
+to act passion and to keep cool enough to analyze the progress of this
+flirtation, to be lover and diplomatist at once; but youth and hot blood
+and analysis could only end in one way, over head and ears in love; for,
+natural or artificial, the Marquise was more than his match. Each time
+he went out from Mme. d’Aiglemont, he strenuously held himself to his
+distrust, and submitted the progressive situations of his case to a
+rigorous scrutiny fatal to his own emotions.
+
+“To-day she gave me to understand that she has been very unhappy and
+lonely,” said he to himself, after the third visit, “and that but for
+her little girl she would have longed for death. She was perfectly
+resigned. Now as I am neither her brother nor her spiritual director,
+why should she confide her troubles to _me_? She loves me.”
+
+Two days later he came away apostrophizing modern manners.
+
+“Love takes on the hue of every age. In 1822 love is a doctrinaire.
+Instead of proving love by deeds, as in times past, we have taken to
+argument and rhetoric and debate. Women’s tactics are reduced to three
+shifts. In the first place, they declare that we cannot love as they
+love. (Coquetry! the Marquise simply threw it at me, like a challenge,
+this evening!) Next they grow pathetic, to appeal to our natural
+generosity or self-love; for does it not flatter a young man’s vanity to
+console a woman for a great calamity? And lastly, they have a craze for
+virginity. She must have thought that I thought her very innocent. My
+good faith is like to become an excellent speculation.”
+
+But a day came when every suspicious idea was exhausted. He asked
+himself whether the Marquise was not sincere; whether so much suffering
+could be feigned, and why she should act the part of resignation? She
+lived in complete seclusion; she drank in silence of a cup of sorrow
+scarcely to be guessed unless from the accent of some chance exclamation
+in a voice always well under control. From that moment Charles felt a
+keen interest in Mme. d’Aiglemont. And yet, though his visits had come
+to be a recognized thing, and in some sort a necessity to them both,
+and though the hour was kept free by tacit agreement, Vandenesse still
+thought that this woman with whom he was in love was more clever than
+sincere. “Decidedly, she is an uncommonly clever woman,” he used to say
+to himself as he went away.
+
+When he came into the room, there was the Marquise in her favorite
+attitude, melancholy expressed in her whole form. She made no movement
+when he entered, only raised her eyes and looked full at him, but the
+glance that she gave him was like a smile. Mme. d’Aiglemont’s manner
+meant confidence and sincere friendship, but of love there was no trace.
+Charles sat down and found nothing to say. A sensation for which no
+language exists troubled him.
+
+“What is the matter with you?” she asked in a softened voice.
+
+“Nothing.... Yes; I am thinking of something of which, as yet, you have
+not thought at all.”
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“Why--the Congress is over.”
+
+“Well,” she said, “and ought you to have been at the Congress?”
+
+A direct answer would have been the most eloquent and delicate
+declaration of love; but Charles did not make it. Before the candid
+friendship in Mme. d’Aiglemont’s face all the calculations of vanity,
+the hopes of love, and the diplomatist’s doubts died away. She did not
+suspect, or she seemed not to suspect, his love for her; and Charles,
+in utter confusion turning upon himself, was forced to admit that he had
+said and done nothing which could warrant such a belief on her part. For
+M. de Vandenesse that evening, the Marquise was, as she had always been,
+simple and friendly, sincere in her sorrow, glad to have a friend, proud
+to find a nature responsive to her own--nothing more. It had not entered
+her mind that a woman could yield twice; she had known love--love lay
+bleeding still in the depths of her heart, but she did not imagine that
+bliss could bring her its rapture twice, for she believed not merely
+in the intellect, but in the soul; and for her love was no simple
+attraction; it drew her with all noble attractions.
+
+In a moment Charles became a young man again, enthralled by the splendor
+of a nature so lofty. He wished for a fuller initiation into the secret
+history of a life blighted rather by fate than by her own fault. Mme.
+d’Aiglemont heard him ask the cause of the overwhelming sorrow which had
+blended all the harmonies of sadness with her beauty; she gave him one
+glance, but that searching look was like a seal set upon some solemn
+compact.
+
+“Ask no more such questions of me,” she said. “Four years ago, on
+this very day, the man who loved me, for whom I would have given up
+everything, even my own self-respect, died, and died to save my name.
+That love was still young and pure and full of illusions when it came to
+an end. Before I gave way to passion--and never was a woman so urged by
+fate--I had been drawn into the mistake that ruins many a girl’s life,
+a marriage with a man whose agreeable manners concealed his emptiness.
+Marriage plucked my hopes away one by one. And now, to-day, I have
+forfeited happiness through marriage, as well as the happiness styled
+criminal, and I have known no happiness. Nothing is left to me. If I
+could not die, at least I ought to be faithful to my memories.”
+
+No tears came with the words. Her eyes fell, and there was a slight
+twisting of the fingers interclasped, according to her wont. It was
+simply said, but in her voice there was a note of despair, deep as
+her love seemed to have been, which left Charles without a hope. The
+dreadful story of a life told in three sentences, with that twisting of
+the fingers for all comment, the might of anguish in a fragile woman,
+the dark depths masked by a fair face, the tears of four years of
+mourning fascinated Vandenesse; he sat silent and diminished in the
+presence of her woman’s greatness and nobleness, seeing not the physical
+beauty so exquisite, so perfectly complete, but the soul so great in
+its power to feel. He had found, at last, the ideal of his fantastic
+imaginings, the ideal so vigorously invoked by all who look on life as
+the raw material of a passion for which many a one seeks ardently, and
+dies before he has grasped the whole of the dreamed-of treasure.
+
+With those words of hers in his ears, in the presence of her sublime
+beauty, his own thoughts seemed poor and narrow. Powerless as he felt
+himself to find words of his own, simple enough and lofty enough to
+scale the heights of this exaltation, he took refuge in platitudes as to
+the destiny of women.
+
+“Madame, we must either forget our pain, or hollow out a tomb for
+ourselves.”
+
+But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being
+essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the
+other is infinite. To set to work to reason where you are required to
+feel, is the mark of a limited nature. Vandenesse therefore held his
+peace, sat awhile with his eyes fixed upon her, then came away. A prey
+to novel thoughts which exalted woman for him, he was in something the
+same position as a painter who has taken the vulgar studio model for
+a type of womanhood, and suddenly confronts the _Mnemosyne_ of the
+Musee--that noblest and least appreciated of antique statues.
+
+Charles de Vandenesse was deeply in love. He loved Mme. d’Aiglemont with
+the loyalty of youth, with the fervor that communicates such ineffable
+charm to a first passion, with a simplicity of heart of which a man only
+recovers some fragments when he loves again at a later day. Delicious
+first passion of youth, almost always deliciously savored by the woman
+who calls it forth; for at the golden prime of thirty, from the poetic
+summit of a woman’s life, she can look out over the whole course of
+love--backwards into the past, forwards into the future--and, knowing
+all the price to be paid for love, enjoys her bliss with the dread of
+losing it ever present with her. Her soul is still fair with her waning
+youth, and passion daily gathers strength from the dismaying prospect of
+the coming days.
+
+“This is love,” Vandenesse said to himself this time as he left the
+Marquise, “and for my misfortune I love a woman wedded to her memories.
+It is hard work to struggle against a dead rival, never present to
+make blunders and fall out of favor, nothing of him left but his better
+qualities. What is it but a sort of high treason against the Ideal to
+attempt to break the charm of memory, to destroy the hopes that survive
+a lost lover, precisely because he only awakened longings, and all that
+is loveliest and most enchanting in love?”
+
+These sober reflections, due to the discouragement and dread of failure
+with which love begins in earnest, were the last expiring effort of
+diplomatic reasoning. Thenceforward he knew no afterthoughts, he was the
+plaything of his love, and lost himself in the nothings of that strange
+inexplicable happiness which is full fed by a chance word, by silence,
+or a vague hope. He tried to love Platonically, came daily to breathe
+the air that she breathed, became almost a part of her house, and went
+everywhere with her, slave as he was of a tyrannous passion compounded
+of egoism and devotion of the completest. Love has its own instinct,
+finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way
+to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay or turn aside. If
+feeling is sincere, its destiny is not doubtful. Let a woman begin to
+think that her life depends on the sincerity or fervor or earnestness
+which her lover shall put into his longings, and is there not sufficient
+in the thought to put her through all the tortures of dread? It is
+impossible for a woman, be she wife or mother, to be secure from a young
+man’s love. One thing it is within her power to do--to refuse to see him
+as soon as she learns a secret which she never fails to guess. But
+this is too decided a step to take at an age when marriage has become a
+prosaic and tiresome yoke, and conjugal affection is something less than
+tepid (if indeed her husband has not already begun to neglect her). Is a
+woman plain? she is flattered by a love which gives her fairness. Is she
+young and charming? She is only to be won by a fascination as great
+as her own power to charm, that is to say, a fascination well-nigh
+irresistible. Is she virtuous? There is a love sublime in its
+earthliness which leads her to find something like absolution in the
+very greatness of the surrender and glory in a hard struggle. Everything
+is a snare. No lesson, therefore, is too severe where the temptation is
+so strong. The seclusion in which the Greeks and Orientals kept and keep
+their women, an example more and more followed in modern England, is the
+only safeguard of domestic morality; but under this system there is
+an end of all the charm of social intercourse; and society, and good
+breeding, and refinement of manners become impossible. The nations must
+take their choice.
+
+So a few months went by, and Mme. d’Aiglemont discovered that her life
+was closely bound with this young man’s life, without overmuch confusion
+in her surprise, and felt with something almost like pleasure that she
+shared his tastes and his thoughts. Had she adopted Vandenesse’s ideas?
+Or was it Vandenesse who had made her lightest whims his own? She was
+not careful to inquire. She had been swept out already into the current
+of passion, and yet this adorable woman told herself with the confident
+reiteration of misgiving;
+
+“Ah! no. I will be faithful to him who died for me.”
+
+Pascal said that “the doubt of God implies belief in God.” And similarly
+it may be said that a woman only parleys when she has surrendered. A day
+came when the Marquise admitted to herself that she was loved, and
+with that admission came a time of wavering among countless conflicting
+thoughts and feelings. The superstitions of experience spoke their
+language. Should she be happy? Was it possible that she should find
+happiness outside the limits of the laws which society rightly or
+wrongly has set up for humanity to live by? Hitherto her cup of life had
+been full of bitterness. Was there any happy issue possible for the
+ties which united two human beings held apart by social conventions? And
+might not happiness be bought too dear? Still, this so ardently desired
+happiness, for which it is so natural to seek, might perhaps be found
+after all. Curiosity is always retained on the lover’s side in the suit.
+The secret tribunal was still sitting when Vandenesse appeared, and his
+presence put the metaphysical spectre, reason, to flight.
+
+If such are the successive transformations through which a sentiment,
+transient though it be, passes in a young man and a woman of thirty,
+there comes a moment of time when the shades of difference blend into
+each other, when all reasonings end in a single and final reflection
+which is lost and absorbed in the desire which it confirms. Then the
+longer the resistance, the mightier the voice of love. And here endeth
+this lesson, or rather this study made from the _ecorche_, to borrow a
+most graphic term from the studio, for in this history it is not so much
+intended to portray love as to lay bare its mechanism and its dangers.
+From this moment every day adds color to these dry bones, clothes them
+again with living flesh and blood and the charm of youth, and puts
+vitality into their movements; till they glow once more with the beauty,
+the persuasive grace of sentiment, the loveliness of life.
+
+
+
+Charles found Mme. d’Aiglemont absorbed in thought, and to his “What is
+it?” spoken in thrilling tones grown persuasive with the heart’s soft
+magic, she was careful not to reply. The delicious question bore witness
+to the perfect unity of their spirits; and the Marquise felt, with a
+woman’s wonderful intuition, that to give any expression to the sorrow
+in her heart would be to make an advance. If, even now, each one
+of those words was fraught with significance for them both, in what
+fathomless depths might she not plunge at the first step? She read
+herself with a clear and lucid glance. She was silent, and Vandenesse
+followed her example.
+
+“I am not feeling well,” she said at last, taking alarm at the pause
+fraught with such great moment for them both, when the language of the
+eyes completely filled the blank left by the helplessness of speech.
+
+“Madame,” said Charles, and his voice was tender but unsteady with
+strong feeling, “soul and body are both dependent on each other. If you
+were happy, you would be young and fresh. Why do you refuse to ask of
+love all that love has taken from you? You think that your life is over
+when it is only just beginning. Trust yourself to a friend’s care. It is
+so sweet to be loved.”
+
+“I am old already,” she said; “there is no reason why I should not
+continue to suffer as in the past. And ‘one must love,’ do you say?
+Well, I must not, and I cannot. Your friendship has put some sweetness
+into my life, but beside you I care for no one, no one could efface my
+memories. A friend I accept; I should fly from a lover. Besides, would
+it be a very generous thing to do, to exchange a withered heart for a
+young heart; to smile upon illusions which now I cannot share, to cause
+happiness in which I should either have no belief, or tremble to lose?
+I should perhaps respond to his devotion with egoism, should weigh and
+deliberate while he felt; my memory would resent the poignancy of his
+happiness. No, if you love once, that love is never replaced, you see.
+Indeed, who would have my heart at this price?”
+
+There was a tinge of heartless coquetry in the words, the last effort of
+discretion.
+
+“If he loses courage, well and good, I shall live alone and faithful.”
+ The thought came from the very depths of the woman, for her it was the
+too slender willow twig caught in vain by a swimmer swept out by the
+current.
+
+Vandenesse’s involuntary shudder at her dictum plead more eloquently for
+him than all his past assiduity. Nothing moves a woman so much as the
+discovery of a gracious delicacy in us, such a refinement of sentiment
+as her own, for a woman the grace and delicacy are sure tokens of truth.
+Charles’ start revealed the sincerity of his love. Mme. d’Aiglemont
+learned the strength of his affection from the intensity of his pain.
+
+“Perhaps you are right,” he said coldly. “New love, new vexation of
+spirit.”
+
+Then he changed the subject, and spoke of indifferent matters; but he
+was visibly moved, and he concentrated his gaze on Mme. d’Aiglemont as
+if he were seeing her for the last time.
+
+“Adieu, madame,” he said, with emotion in his voice.
+
+“_Au revoir_,” said she, with that subtle coquetry, the secret of a very
+few among women.
+
+He made no answer and went.
+
+When Charles was no longer there, when his empty chair spoke for him,
+regrets flocked in upon her, and she found fault with herself. Passion
+makes an immense advance as soon as a woman persuades herself that she
+has failed somewhat in generosity or hurt a noble nature. In love there
+is never any need to be on our guard against the worst in us; that is
+a safeguard; a woman only surrenders at the summons of a virtue. “The
+floor of hell is paved with good intentions,”--it is no preacher’s
+paradox.
+
+Vandenesse stopped away for several days. Every evening at the
+accustomed hour the Marquise sat expectant in remorseful impatience.
+She could not write--that would be a declaration, and, moreover, her
+instinct told her that he would come back. On the sixth day he was
+announced, and never had she heard the name with such delight. Her joy
+frightened her.
+
+“You have punished me well,” she said, addressing him.
+
+Vandenesse gazed at her in astonishment.
+
+“Punished?” he echoed. “And for what?” He understood her quite well,
+but he meant to be avenged for all that he had suffered as soon as she
+suspected it.
+
+“Why have you not come to see me?” she demanded with a smile.
+
+“Then you have seen no visitors?” asked he, parrying the question.
+
+“Yes. M. de Ronquerolles and M. de Marsay and young d’Escrignon came
+and stayed for nearly two hours, the first two yesterday, the last this
+morning. And besides, I have had a call, I believe, from Mme. Firmiani
+and from your sister, Mme. de Listomere.”
+
+Here was a new infliction, torture which none can comprehend unless they
+know love as a fierce and all-invading tyrant whose mildest symptom is
+a monstrous jealousy, a perpetual desire to snatch away the beloved from
+every other influence.
+
+“What!” thought he to himself, “she has seen visitors, she has been
+with happy creatures, and talking to them, while I was unhappy and all
+alone.”
+
+He buried his annoyance forthwith, and consigned love to the depths of
+his heart, like a coffin to the sea. His thoughts were of the kind that
+never find expression in words; they pass through the mind swiftly as
+a deadly acid, that poisons as it evaporates and vanishes. His brow,
+however, was over-clouded; and Mme. d’Aiglemont, guided by her woman’s
+instinct, shared his sadness without understanding it. She had hurt him,
+unwittingly, as Vandenesse knew. He talked over his position with her,
+as if his jealousy were one of those hypothetical cases which lovers
+love to discuss. Then the Marquise understood it all. She was so deeply
+moved, that she could not keep back the tears--and so these lovers
+entered the heaven of love.
+
+Heaven and Hell are two great imaginative conceptions formulating our
+ideas of Joy and Sorrow--those two poles about which human existence
+revolves. Is not heaven a figure of speech covering now and for
+evermore an infinite of human feeling impossible to express save in its
+accidents--since that Joy is one? And what is Hell but the symbol of
+our infinite power to suffer tortures so diverse that of our pain it is
+possible to fashion works of art, for no two human sorrows are alike?
+
+One evening the two lovers sat alone and side by side, silently watching
+one of the fairest transformations of the sky, a cloudless heaven taking
+hues of pale gold and purple from the last rays of the sunset. With the
+slow fading of the daylight, sweet thoughts seem to awaken, and soft
+stirrings of passion, and a mysterious sense of trouble in the midst of
+calm. Nature sets before us vague images of bliss, bidding us enjoy
+the happiness within our reach, or lament it when it has fled. In those
+moments fraught with enchantment, when the tender light in the canopy
+of the sky blends in harmony with the spells working within, it is
+difficult to resist the heart’s desires grown so magically potent. Cares
+are blunted, joy becomes ecstasy; pain, intolerable anguish. The pomp
+of sunset gives the signal for confessions and draws them forth. Silence
+grows more dangerous than speech for it gives to eyes all the power of
+the infinite of the heavens reflected in them. And for speech, the least
+word has irresistible might. Is not the light infused into the voice and
+purple into the glances? Is not heaven within us, or do we feel that we
+are in the heavens?
+
+Vandenesse and Julie--for so she had allowed herself to be called
+for the past few days by him whom she loved to speak of as
+Charles--Vandenesse and Julie were talking together, but they had
+drifted very far from their original subject; and if their spoken words
+had grown meaningless they listened in delight to the unspoken thoughts
+that lurked in the sounds. Her hand lay in his. She had abandoned it to
+him without a thought that she had granted a proof of love.
+
+Together they leaned forward to look out upon a majestic cloud country,
+full of snows and glaciers and fantastic mountain peaks with gray stains
+of shadow on their sides, a picture composed of sharp contrasts between
+fiery red and the shadows of darkness, filling the skies with a fleeting
+vision of glory which cannot be reproduced--magnificent swaddling-bands
+of sunrise, bright shrouds of the dying sun. As they leaned Julie’s hair
+brushed lightly against Vandenesse’s cheek. She felt that light contact,
+and shuddered violently, and he even more, for imperceptibly they both
+had reached one of those inexplicable crises when quiet has wrought
+upon the senses until every faculty of perception is so keen that the
+slightest shock fills the heart lost in melancholy with sadness that
+overflows in tears; or raises joy to ecstasy in a heart that is lost
+in the vertigo of love. Almost involuntarily Julie pressed her lover’s
+hand. That wooing pressure gave courage to his timidity. All the joy of
+the present, all the hopes of the future were blended in the emotion
+of a first caress, the bashful trembling kiss that Mme. d’Aiglemont
+received upon her cheek. The slighter the concession, the more dangerous
+and insinuating it was. For their double misfortune it was only too
+sincere a revelation. Two noble natures had met and blended, drawn
+each to each by every law of natural attraction, held apart by every
+ordinance.
+
+General d’Aiglemont came in at that very moment.
+
+“The Ministry has gone out,” he said. “Your uncle will be in the
+new cabinet. So you stand an uncommonly good chance of an embassy,
+Vandenesse.”
+
+Charles and Julie looked at each other and flushed red. That blush was
+one more tie to unite them; there was one thought and one remorse in
+either mind; between two lovers guilty of a kiss there is a bond quite
+as strong and terrible as the bond between two robbers who have murdered
+a man. Something had to be said by way of reply.
+
+“I do not care to leave Paris now,” Charles said.
+
+“We know why,” said the General, with the knowing air of a man who
+discovers a secret. “You do not like to leave your uncle, because you do
+not wish to lose your chance of succeeding to the title.”
+
+The Marquise took refuge in her room, and in her mind passed a pitiless
+verdict upon her husband.
+
+“His stupidity is really beyond anything!”
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE FINGER OF GOD
+
+Between the Barriere d’Italie and the Barriere de la Sante, along the
+boulevard which leads to the Jardin des Plantes, you have a view of
+Paris fit to send an artist or the tourist, the most _blase_ in matters
+of landscape, into ecstasies. Reach the slightly higher ground where the
+line of boulevard, shaded by tall, thick-spreading trees, curves with
+the grace of some green and silent forest avenue, and you see spread
+out at your feet a deep valley populous with factories looking almost
+countrified among green trees and the brown streams of the Bievre or the
+Gobelins.
+
+On the opposite slope, beneath some thousands of roofs packed close
+together like heads in a crowd, lurks the squalor of the Faubourg
+Saint-Marceau. The imposing cupola of the Pantheon, and the grim
+melancholy dome of the Val-du-Grace, tower proudly up above a whole
+town in itself, built amphitheatre-wise; every tier being grotesquely
+represented by a crooked line of street, so that the two public
+monuments look like a huge pair of giants dwarfing into insignificance
+the poor little houses and the tallest poplars in the valley. To your
+left behold the observatory, the daylight, pouring athwart its windows
+and galleries, producing such fantastical strange effects that the
+building looks like a black spectral skeleton. Further yet in the
+distance rises the elegant lantern tower of the Invalides, soaring
+up between the bluish pile of the Luxembourg and the gray tours of
+Saint-Sulpice. From this standpoint the lines of the architecture are
+blended with green leaves and gray shadows, and change every moment with
+every aspect of the heavens, every alteration of light or color in the
+sky. Afar, the skyey spaces themselves seem to be full of buildings;
+near, wind the serpentine curves of waving trees and green footpaths.
+
+Away to your right, through a great gap in this singular landscape,
+you see the canal Saint-Martin, a long pale stripe with its edging
+of reddish stone quays and fringes of lime avenue. The long rows of
+buildings beside it, in genuine Roman style, are the public granaries.
+
+Beyond, again, on the very last plane of all, see the smoke-dimmed
+slopes of Belleville covered with houses and windmills, which blend
+their freaks of outline with the chance effects of cloud. And still,
+between that horizon, vague as some childish recollection, and the
+serried range of roofs in the valley, a whole city lies out of sight: a
+huge city, engulfed, as it were, in a vast hollow between the pinnacles
+of the Hopital de la Pitie and the ridge line of the Cimetiere de l’Est,
+between suffering on the one hand and death on the other; a city sending
+up a smothered roar like Ocean grumbling at the foot of a cliff, as if
+to let you know that “I am here!”
+
+When the sunlight pours like a flood over this strip of Paris, purifying
+and etherealizing the outlines, kindling answering lights here and there
+in the window panes, brightening the red tiles, flaming about the golden
+crosses, whitening walls and transforming the atmosphere into a gauzy
+veil, calling up rich contrasts of light and fantastic shadow; when the
+sky is blue and earth quivers in the heat, and the bells are pealing,
+then you shall see one of the eloquent fairy scenes which stamp
+themselves for ever on the imagination, a scene that shall find as
+fanatical worshipers as the wondrous views of Naples and Byzantium or
+the isles of Florida. Nothing is wanting to complete the harmony, the
+murmur of the world of men and the idyllic quiet of solitude, the voices
+of a million human creatures and the voice of God. There lies a whole
+capital beneath the peaceful cypresses of Pere-Lachaise.
+
+The landscape lay in all its beauty, sparkling in the spring sunlight,
+as I stood looking out over it one morning, my back against a huge
+elm-tree that flung its yellow flowers to the wind. At the sight of the
+rich and glorious view before me, I thought bitterly of the scorn with
+which even in our literature we affect to hold this land of ours, and
+poured maledictions on the pitiable plutocrats who fall out of love with
+fair France, and spend their gold to acquire the right of sneering at
+their own country, by going through Italy at a gallop and inspecting
+that desecrated land through an opera-glass. I cast loving eyes on
+modern Paris. I was beginning to dream dreams, when the sound of a kiss
+disturbed the solitude and put philosophy to flight. Down the sidewalk,
+along the steep bank, above the rippling water, I saw beyond the
+Ponte des Gobelins the figure of a woman, dressed with the daintiest
+simplicity; she was still young, as it seemed to me, and the blithe
+gladness of the landscape was reflected in her sweet face. Her
+companion, a handsome young man, had just set down a little boy. A
+prettier child has never been seen, and to this day I do not know
+whether it was the little one or his mother who received the kiss. In
+their young faces, in their eyes, their smile, their every movement, you
+could read the same deep and tender thought. Their arms were interlaced
+with such glad swiftness; they drew close together with such marvelous
+unanimity of impulse that, conscious of nothing but themselves, they did
+not so much as see me. A second child, however--a little girl, who had
+turned her back upon them in sullen discontent--threw me a glance, and
+the expression in her eyes startled me. She was as pretty and engaging
+as the little brother whom she left to run about by himself, sometimes
+before, sometimes after their mother and her companion; but her charm
+was less childish, and now, as she stood mute and motionless, her
+attitude and demeanor suggested a torpid snake. There was something
+indescribably mechanical in the way in which the pretty woman and her
+companion paced up and down. In absence of mind, probably, they were
+content to walk to and fro between the little bridge and a carriage that
+stood waiting nearby at a corner in the boulevard, turning, stopping
+short now and again, looking into each other’s eyes, or breaking into
+laughter as their casual talk grew lively or languid, grave or gay.
+
+I watched this delicious picture a while from my hiding-place by the
+great elm-tree, and should have turned away no doubt and respected their
+privacy, if it had not been for a chance discovery. In the face of the
+brooding, silent, elder child I saw traces of thought overdeep for her
+age. When her mother and the young man at her side turned and came
+near, her head was frequently lowered; the furtive sidelong glances
+of intelligence that she gave the pair and the child her brother were
+nothing less than extraordinary. Sometimes the pretty woman or her
+friend would stroke the little boy’s fair curls, or lay a caressing
+finger against the baby throat or the white collar as he played at
+keeping step with them; and no words can describe the shrewd subtlety,
+the ingenuous malice, the fierce intensity which lighted up that pallid
+little face with the faint circles already round the eyes. Truly there
+was a man’s power of passion in the strange-looking, delicate little
+girl. Here were traces of suffering or of thought in her; and which
+is the more certain token of death when life is in blossom--physical
+suffering, or the malady of too early thought preying upon a soul as yet
+in bud? Perhaps a mother knows. For my own part, I know of nothing more
+dreadful to see than an old man’s thoughts on a child’s forehead; even
+blasphemy from girlish lips is less monstrous.
+
+The almost stupid stolidity of this child who had begun to think
+already, her rare gestures, everything about her, interested me. I
+scrutinized her curiously. Then the common whim of the observer drew
+me to compare her with her brother, and to note their likeness and
+unlikeness.
+
+Her brown hair and dark eyes and look of precocious power made a rich
+contrast with the little one’s fair curled head and sea-green eyes and
+winning helplessness. She, perhaps, was seven or eight years of age; the
+boy was full four years younger. Both children were dressed alike; but
+here again, looking closely, I noticed a difference. It was very slight,
+a little thing enough; but in the light of after events I saw that it
+meant a whole romance in the past, a whole tragedy to come. The little
+brown-haired maid wore a linen collar with a plain hem, her brother’s
+was edged with dainty embroidery, that was all; but therein lay the
+confession of a heart’s secret, a tacit preference which a child can
+read in the mother’s inmost soul as clearly as if the spirit of God
+revealed it. The fair-haired child, careless and glad, looked almost
+like a girl, his skin was so fair and fresh, his movements so graceful,
+his look so sweet; while his older sister, in spite of her energy, in
+spite of the beauty of her features and her dazzling complexion, looked
+like a sickly little boy. In her bright eyes there was none of the humid
+softness which lends such charm to children’s faces; they seemed, like
+courtiers’ eyes, to be dried by some inner fire; and in her pallor there
+was a certain swarthy olive tint, the sign of vigorous character. Twice
+her little brother came to her, holding out a tiny hunting-horn with a
+touching charm, a winning look, and wistful expression, which would
+have sent Charlet into ecstasies, but she only scowled in answer to his
+“Here, Helene, will you take it?” so persuasively spoken. The little
+girl, so sombre and vehement beneath her apparent indifference,
+shuddered, and even flushed red when her brother came near her; but
+the little one seemed not to notice his sister’s dark mood, and his
+unconsciousness, blended with earnestness, marked a final difference
+in character between the child and the little girl, whose brow was
+overclouded already by the gloom of a man’s knowledge and cares.
+
+“Mamma, Helene will not play,” cried the little one, seizing an
+opportunity to complain while the two stood silent on the Ponte des
+Gobelins.
+
+“Let her alone, Charles; you know very well that she is always cross.”
+
+Tears sprang to Helene’s eyes at the words so thoughtlessly uttered
+by her mother as she turned abruptly to the young man by her side. The
+child devoured the speech in silence, but she gave her brother one of
+those sagacious looks that seemed inexplicable to me, glancing with a
+sinister expression from the bank where he stood to the Bievre, then at
+the bridge and the view, and then at me.
+
+I was afraid lest my presence should disturb the happy couple; I slipped
+away and took refuge behind a thicket of elder trees, which completely
+screened me from all eyes. Sitting quietly on the summit of the bank, I
+watched the ever-changing landscape and the fierce-looking little girl,
+for with my head almost on a level with the boulevard I could still see
+her through the leaves. Helene seemed uneasy over my disappearance,
+her dark eyes looked for me down the alley and behind the trees with
+indefinable curiosity. What was I to her? Then Charles’ baby laughter
+rang out like a bird’s song in the silence. The tall, young man, with
+the same fair hair, was dancing him in his arms, showering kisses upon
+him, and the meaningless baby words of that “little language” which
+rises to our lips when we play with children. The mother looked on
+smiling, now and then, doubtless, putting in some low word that came
+up from the heart, for her companion would stop short in his full
+happiness, and the blue eyes that turned towards her were full of
+glowing light and love and worship. Their voices, blending with the
+child’s voice, reached me with a vague sense of a caress. The three
+figures, charming in themselves, composed a lovely scene in a glorious
+landscape, filling it with a pervasive unimaginable grace. A delicately
+fair woman, radiant with smiles, a child of love, a young man with the
+irresistible charm of youth, a cloudless sky; nothing was wanting in
+nature to complete a perfect harmony for the delight of the soul. I
+found myself smiling as if their happiness had been my own.
+
+The clocks struck nine. The young man gave a tender embrace to his
+companion, and went towards the tilbury which an old servant drove
+slowly to meet him. The lady had grown grave and almost sad. The child’s
+prattle sounded unchecked through the last farewell kisses. Then the
+tilbury rolled away, and the lady stood motionless, listening to the
+sound of the wheels, watching the little cloud of dust raised by its
+passage along the road. Charles ran down the green pathway back to the
+bridge to join his sister. I heard his silver voice calling to her.
+
+“Why did you not come to say good-bye to my good friend?” cried he.
+
+Helene looked up. Never surely did such hatred gleam from a child’s
+eyes as from hers at that moment when she turned them on the brother who
+stood beside her on the bank side. She gave him an angry push. Charles
+lost his footing on the steep slope, stumbled over the roots of a tree,
+and fell headlong forwards, dashing his forehead on the sharp-edged
+stones of the embankment, and, covered with blood, disappeared over the
+edge into the muddy river. The turbid water closed over a fair, bright
+head with a shower of splashes; one sharp shriek after another rang in
+my ears; then the sounds were stifled by the thick stream, and the poor
+child sank with a dull sound as if a stone had been thrown into the
+water. The accident had happened with more than lightning swiftness. I
+sprang down the footpath, and Helene, stupefied with horror, shrieked
+again and again:
+
+“Mamma! mamma!”
+
+The mother was there at my side. She had flown to the spot like a bird.
+But neither a mother’s eyes nor mine could find the exact place where
+the little one had gone under. There was a wide space of black hurrying
+water, and below in the bed of the Bievre ten feet of mud. There was
+not the smallest possibility of saving the child. No one was stirring at
+that hour on a Sunday morning, and there are neither barges nor anglers
+on the Bievre. There was not a creature in sight, not a pole to plumb
+the filthy stream. What need was there for me to explain how the
+ugly-looking accident had happened--accident or misfortune, whichever
+it might be? Had Helene avenged her father? Her jealousy surely was
+the sword of God. And yet when I looked at the mother I shivered. What
+fearful ordeal awaited her when she should return to her husband, the
+judge before whom she must stand all her days? And here with her was an
+inseparable, incorruptible witness. A child’s forehead is transparent,
+a child’s face hides no thoughts, and a lie, like a red flame set within
+glows out red that colors even the eyes. But the unhappy woman had not
+thought as yet of the punishment awaiting her at home; she was staring
+into the Bievre.
+
+
+
+Such an event must inevitably send ghastly echoes through a woman’s
+life, and here is one of the most terrible of the reverberations that
+troubled Julie’s love from time to time.
+
+Several years had gone by. The Marquis de Vandenesse wore mourning for
+his father, and succeeded to his estates. One evening, therefore, after
+dinner it happened that a notary was present in his house. This was
+no pettifogging lawyer after Sterne’s pattern, but a very solid,
+substantial notary of Paris, one of your estimable men who do a stupid
+thing pompously, set down a foot heavily upon your private corn, and
+then ask what in the world there is to cry out about? If, by accident,
+they come to know the full extent of the enormity, “Upon my word,” cry
+they, “I hadn’t a notion!” This was a well-intentioned ass, in short,
+who could see nothing in life but deeds and documents.
+
+Mme. de Aiglemont had been dining with M. de Vandenesse; her husband
+had excused himself before dinner was over, for he was taking his two
+children to the play. They were to go to some Boulevard theatre or
+other, to the Ambigu-Comique or the Gaiete, sensational melodrama being
+judged harmless here in Paris, and suitable pabulum for childhood,
+because innocence is always triumphant in the fifth act. The boy and
+girl had teased their father to be there before the curtain rose, so he
+had left the table before dessert was served.
+
+But the notary, the imperturbable notary, utterly incapable of asking
+himself why Mme. d’Aiglemont should have allowed her husband and
+children to go without her to the play, sat on as if he were screwed to
+his chair. Dinner was over, dessert had been prolonged by discussion,
+and coffee delayed. All these things consumed time, doubtless precious,
+and drew impatient movements from that charming woman; she looked not
+unlike a thoroughbred pawing the ground before a race; but the man of
+law, to whom horses and women were equally unknown quantities, simply
+thought the Marquise a very lively and sparkling personage. So enchanted
+was he to be in the company of a woman of fashion and a political
+celebrity, that he was exerting himself to shine in conversation,
+and taking the lady’s forced smile for approbation, talked on with
+unflagging spirit, till the Marquise was almost out of patience.
+
+The master of the house, in concert with the lady, had more than once
+maintained an eloquent silence when the lawyer expected a civil reply;
+but these significant pauses were employed by the talkative nuisance in
+looking for anecdotes in the fire. M. de Vandenesse had recourse to
+his watch; the charming Marquise tried the experiment of fastening her
+bonnet strings, and made as if she would go. But she did not go, and the
+notary, blind and deaf, and delighted with himself, was quite convinced
+that his interesting conversational powers were sufficient to keep the
+lady on the spot.
+
+“I shall certainly have that woman for a client,” said he to himself.
+
+Meanwhile the Marquise stood, putting on her gloves, twisting her
+fingers, looking from the equally impatient Marquis de Vandenesse to the
+lawyer, still pounding away. At every pause in the worthy man’s fire of
+witticisms the charming pair heaved a sigh of relief, and their looks
+said plainly, “At last! He is really going!”
+
+Nothing of the kind. It was a nightmare which could only end in
+exasperating the two impassioned creatures, on whom the lawyer had
+something of the fascinating effect of a snake on a pair of birds;
+before long they would be driven to cut him short.
+
+The clever notary was giving them the history of the discreditable ways
+in which one du Tillet (a stockbroker then much in favor) had laid
+the foundations of his fortune; all the ins and outs of the whole
+disgraceful business were accurately put before them; and the narrator
+was in the very middle of his tale when M. de Vandenesse heard the clock
+strike nine. Then it became clear to him that his legal adviser was very
+emphatically an idiot who must be sent forthwith about his business. He
+stopped him resolutely with a gesture.
+
+“The tongs, my lord Marquis?” queried the notary, handing the object in
+question to his client.
+
+“No, monsieur, I am compelled to send you away. Mme. d’Aiglemont wishes
+to join her children, and I shall have the honor of escorting her.”
+
+“Nine o’clock already! Time goes like a shadow in pleasant company,”
+ said the man of law, who had talked on end for the past hour.
+
+He looked for his hat, planted himself before the fire, with a
+suppressed hiccough; and, without heeding the Marquise’s withering
+glances, spoke once more to his impatient client:
+
+“To sum up, my lord Marquis. Business before all things. To-morrow,
+then, we must subpoena your brother; we will proceed to make out the
+inventory, and faith, after that----”
+
+So ill had the lawyer understood his instructions, that his impression
+was the exact opposite to the one intended. It was a delicate matter,
+and Vandenesse, in spite of himself, began to put the thick-headed
+notary right. The discussion which followed took up a certain amount of
+time.
+
+“Listen,” the diplomatist said at last at a sign from the lady, “You are
+puzzling my brains; come back to-morrow, and if the writ is not issued
+by noon to-morrow, the days of grace will expire, and then--”
+
+As he spoke, a carriage entered the courtyard. The poor woman turned
+sharply away at the sound to hide the tears in her eyes. The Marquis
+rang to give the servant orders to say that he was not at home; but
+before the footman could answer the bell, the lady’s husband reappeared.
+He had returned unexpectedly from the Gaiete, and held both children by
+the hand. The little girl’s eyes were red; the boy was fretful and very
+cross.
+
+“What can have happened?” asked the Marquise.
+
+“I will tell you by and by,” said the General, and catching a glimpse
+through an open door of newspapers on the table in the adjoining
+sitting-room, he went off. The Marquise, at the end of her patience,
+flung herself down on the sofa in desperation. The notary, thinking it
+incumbent upon him to be amiable with the children, spoke to the little
+boy in an insinuating tone:
+
+“Well, my little man, and what is there on at the theatre?”
+
+“_The Valley of the Torrent_,” said Gustave sulkily.
+
+“Upon my word and honor,” declared the notary, “authors nowadays are
+half crazy. _The Valley of the Torrent_! Why not the Torrent of the
+Valley? It is conceivable that a valley might be without a torrent in
+it; now if they had said the Torrent of the Valley, that would have
+been something clear, something precise, something definite and
+comprehensible. But never mind that. Now, how is the drama to take place
+in a torrent and in a valley? You will tell me that in these days the
+principal attraction lies in the scenic effect, and the title is a
+capital advertisement.--And did you enjoy it, my little friend?” he
+continued, sitting down before the child.
+
+When the notary pursued his inquiries as to the possibilities of a drama
+in the bed of a torrent, the little girl turned slowly away and began to
+cry. Her mother did not notice this in her intense annoyance.
+
+“Oh! yes, monsieur, I enjoyed it very much,” said the child. “There is a
+dear little boy in the play, and he was all alone in the world, because
+his papa could not have been his real papa. And when he came to the top
+of the bridge over the torrent, a big, naughty man with a beard, dressed
+all in black, came and threw him into the water. And then Helene began
+to sob and cry, and everybody scolded us, and father brought us away
+quick, quick----”
+
+M. de Vandenesse and the Marquise looked on in dull amazement, as if all
+power to think or move had been suddenly paralyzed.
+
+“Do be quiet, Gustave!” cried the General. “I told you that you were not
+to talk about anything that happened at the play, and you have forgotten
+what I said already.”
+
+“Oh, my lord Marquis, your lordship must excuse him,” cried the notary.
+“I ought not to have asked questions, but I had no idea--”
+
+“He ought not to have answered them,” said the General, looking sternly
+at the child.
+
+It seemed that the Marquise and the master of the house both perfectly
+understood why the children had come back so suddenly. Mme. d’Aiglemont
+looked at her daughter, and rose as if to go to her, but a terrible
+convulsion passed over her face, and all that could be read in it was
+relentless severity.
+
+“That will do, Helene,” she said. “Go into the other room, and leave off
+crying.”
+
+“What can she have done, poor child!” asked the notary, thinking to
+appease the mother’s anger and to stop Helene’s tears at one stroke. “So
+pretty as she is, she must be as good as can be; never anything but a
+joy to her mother, I will be bound. Isn’t that so, my little girl?”
+
+Helene cowered, looked at her mother, dried her eyes, struggled for
+composure, and took refuge in the next room.
+
+“And you, madame, are too good a mother not to love all your children
+alike. You are too good a woman, besides, to have any of those
+lamentable preferences which have such fatal effects, as we lawyers have
+only too much reason to know. Society goes through our hands; we see its
+passions in that most revolting form, greed. Here it is the mother of a
+family trying to disinherit her husband’s children to enrich the others
+whom she loves better; or it is the husband who tries to leave all his
+property to the child who has done his best to earn his mother’s hatred.
+And then begin quarrels, and fears, and deeds, and defeasances, and sham
+sales, and trusts, and all the rest of it; a pretty mess, in fact, it
+is pitiable, upon my honor, pitiable! There are fathers that will spend
+their whole lives in cheating their children and robbing their wives.
+Yes, robbing is the only word for it. We were talking of tragedy; oh!
+I can assure you of this that if we were at liberty to tell the real
+reasons of some donations that I know of, our modern dramatists would
+have the material for some sensational _bourgeois_ dramas. How the wife
+manages to get her way, as she invariably does, I cannot think; for in
+spite of appearances, and in spite of their weakness, it is always the
+women who carry the day. Ah! by the way, they don’t take _me_ in. I
+always know the reason at the bottom of those predilections which the
+world politely styles ‘unaccountable.’ But in justice to the husbands, I
+must say that _they_ never discover anything. You will tell me that this
+is a merciful dispens--”
+
+Helene had come back to the drawing-room with her father, and was
+listening attentively. So well did she understand all that was said,
+that she gave her mother a frightened glance, feeling, with a child’s
+quick instinct, that these remarks would aggravate the punishment
+hanging over her. The Marquise turned her white face to Vandenesse; and,
+with terror in her eyes, indicated her husband, who stood with his eyes
+fixed absently on the flower pattern of the carpet. The diplomatist,
+accomplished man of the world though he was, could no longer contain his
+wrath, he gave the man of law a withering glance.
+
+“Step this way, sir,” he said, and he went hurriedly to the door of the
+ante-chamber; the notary left his sentence half finished, and followed,
+quaking, and the husband and wife were left together.
+
+“Now, sir” said the Marquise de Vandenesse--he banged the drawing-room
+door, and spoke with concentrated rage--“ever since dinner you have done
+nothing but make blunders and talk folly. For heaven’s sake, go. You
+will make the most frightful mischief before you have done. If you are
+a clever man in your profession, keep to your profession; and if by any
+chance you should go into society, endeavor to be more circumspect.”
+
+With that he went back to the drawing-room, and did not even wish
+the notary good-evening. For a moment that worthy stood dumfounded,
+bewildered, utterly at a loss. Then, when the buzzing in his ears
+subsided, he thought he heard someone moaning in the next room.
+Footsteps came and went, and bells were violently rung. He was by no
+means anxious to meet the Marquis again, and found the use of his
+legs to make good his escape, only to run against a hurrying crowd of
+servants at the door.
+
+“Just the way of all these grand folk,” said he to himself outside in
+the street as he looked about for a cab. “They lead you on to talk with
+compliments, and you think you are amusing them. Not a bit of it. They
+treat you insolently; put you at a distance; even put you out at the
+door without scruple. After all, I talked very cleverly, I said nothing
+but what was sensible, well turned, and discreet; and, upon my word, he
+advises me to be more circumspect in future. I will take good care
+of that! Eh! the mischief take it! I am a notary and a member of my
+chamber!--Pshaw! it was an ambassador’s fit of temper, nothing is sacred
+for people of that kind. To-morrow he shall explain what he meant by
+saying that I had done nothing but blunder and talk nonsense in his
+house. I will ask him for an explanation--that is, I will ask him
+to explain my mistake. After all is done and said, I am in the wrong
+perhaps---- Upon my word, it is very good of me to cudgel my brains like
+this. What business is it of mine?”
+
+So the notary went home and laid the enigma before his spouse, with a
+complete account of the evening’s events related in sequence.
+
+And she replied, “My dear Crottat, His Excellency was perfectly right
+when he said that you had done nothing but blunder and talk folly.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“My dear, if I told you why, it would not prevent you from doing the
+same thing somewhere else to-morrow. I tell you again--talk of nothing
+but business when you go out; that is my advice to you.”
+
+“If you will not tell me, I shall ask him to-morrow--”
+
+“Why, dear me! the veriest noodle is careful to hide a thing of that
+kind, and do you suppose that an ambassador will tell you about
+it? Really, Crottat, I have never known you so utterly devoid of
+common-sense.”
+
+“Thank you, my dear.”
+
+
+
+
+V. TWO MEETINGS
+
+One of Napoleon’s orderly staff-officers, who shall be known in this
+history only as the General or the Marquis, had come to spend the spring
+at Versailles. He made a large fortune under the Restoration; and as
+his place at Court would not allow him to go very far from Paris, he had
+taken a country house between the church and the barrier of Montreuil,
+on the road that leads to the Avenue de Saint-Cloud.
+
+The house had been built originally as a retreat for the short-lived
+loves of some _grand seigneur_. The grounds were very large; the gardens
+on either side extending from the first houses of Montreuil to the
+thatched cottages near the barrier, so that the owner could enjoy all
+the pleasures of solitude with the city almost at his gates. By an odd
+piece of contradiction, the whole front of the house itself, with the
+principal entrance, gave directly upon the street. Perhaps in time past
+it was a tolerably lonely road, and indeed this theory looks all the
+more probable when one comes to think of it; for not so very far away,
+on this same road, Louis Quinze built a delicious summer villa for Mlle.
+de Romans, and the curious in such things will discover that the
+wayside _casinos_ are adorned in a style that recalls traditions of the
+ingenious taste displayed in debauchery by our ancestors who, with all
+the license paid to their charge, sought to invest it with secrecy and
+mystery.
+
+One winter evening the family were by themselves in the lonely house.
+The servants had received permission to go to Versailles to celebrate
+the wedding of one of their number. It was Christmas time, and the
+holiday makers, presuming upon the double festival, did not scruple to
+outstay their leave of absence; yet, as the General was well known to be
+a man of his word, the culprits felt some twinges of conscience as they
+danced on after the hour of return. The clocks struck eleven, and still
+there was no sign of the servants.
+
+A deep silence prevailed over the country-side, broken only by the sound
+of the northeast wind whistling through the black branches, wailing
+about the house, dying in gusts along the corridors. The hard frost had
+purified the air, and held the earth in its grip; the roads gave back
+every sound with the hard metallic ring which always strikes us with
+a new surprise; the heavy footsteps of some belated reveler, or a cab
+returning to Paris, could be heard for a long distance with unwonted
+distinctness. Out in the courtyard a few dead leaves set a-dancing
+by some eddying gust found a voice for the night which fain had been
+silent. It was, in fact, one of those sharp, frosty evenings that wring
+barren expressions of pity from our selfish ease for wayfarers and
+the poor, and fills us with a luxurious sense of the comfort of the
+fireside.
+
+But the family party in the salon at that hour gave not a thought to
+absent servants nor houseless folk, nor to the gracious charm with which
+a winter evening sparkles. No one played the philosopher out of season.
+Secure in the protection of an old soldier, women and children gave
+themselves up to the joys of home life, so delicious when there is no
+restraint upon feeling; and talk and play and glances are bright with
+frankness and affection.
+
+The General sat, or more properly speaking, lay buried, in the depths
+of a huge, high-back armchair by the hearth. The heaped-up fire burned
+scorching clear with the excessive cold of the night. The good father
+leaned his head slightly to one side against the back of the chair, in
+the indolence of perfect serenity and a glow of happiness. The languid,
+half-sleepy droop of his outstretched arms seemed to complete his
+expression of placid content. He was watching his youngest, a boy of
+five or thereabouts, who, half clad as he was, declined to allow his
+mother to undress him. The little one fled from the night-gown and cap
+with which he was threatened now and again, and stoutly declined to part
+with his embroidered collar, laughing when his mother called to him,
+for he saw that she too was laughing at this declaration of infant
+independence. The next step was to go back to a game of romps with his
+sister. She was as much a child as he, but more mischievous; and she
+was older by two years, and could speak distinctly already, whereas his
+inarticulate words and confused ideas were a puzzle even to his parents.
+Little Moina’s playfulness, somewhat coquettish already, provoked
+inextinguishable laughter, explosions of merriment which went off like
+fireworks for no apparent cause. As they tumbled about before the
+fire, unconcernedly displaying little plump bodies and delicate white
+contours, as the dark and golden curls mingled in a collision of rosy
+cheeks dimpled with childish glee, a father surely, a mother most
+certainly, must have understood those little souls, and seen the
+character and power of passion already developed for their eyes. As the
+cherubs frolicked about, struggling, rolling, and tumbling without fear
+of hurt on the soft carpet, its flowers looked pale beside the glowing
+white and red of their cheeks and the brilliant color of their shining
+eyes.
+
+On the sofa by the fire, opposite the great armchair, the children’s
+mother sat among a heap of scattered garments, with a little scarlet
+shoe in her hand. She seemed to have given herself up completely to the
+enjoyment of the moment; wavering discipline had relaxed into a
+sweet smile engraved upon her lips. At the age of six-and-thirty, or
+thereabouts, she was a beautiful woman still, by reason of the rare
+perfection of the outlines of her face, and at this moment light and
+warmth and happiness filled it with preternatural brightness.
+
+Again and again her eyes wandered from her children, and their tender
+gaze was turned upon her husband’s grave face; and now and again the
+eyes of husband and wife met with a silent exchange of happiness and
+thoughts from some inner depth.
+
+The General’s face was deeply bronzed, a stray lock of gray hair scored
+shadows on his forehead. The reckless courage of the battlefield could
+be read in the lines carved in his hollow cheeks, and gleams of rugged
+strength in the blue eyes; clearly the bit of red ribbon flaunting at
+his button-hole had been paid for by hardship and toil. An inexpressible
+kindliness and frankness shone out of the strong, resolute face which
+reflected his children’s merriment; the gray-haired captain found it not
+so very hard to become a child again. Is there not always a little love
+of children in the heart of a soldier who has seen enough of the seamy
+side of life to know something of the piteous limitations of strength
+and the privileges of weakness?
+
+At a round table rather further away, in a circle of bright lamplight
+that dimmed the feebler illumination of the wax candles on the
+chimney-piece, sat a boy of thirteen, rapidly turning the pages of a
+thick volume which he was reading, undisturbed by the shouts of the
+children. There was a boy’s curiosity in his face. From his _lyceens_
+uniform he was evidently a schoolboy, and the book he was reading was
+the _Arabian Nights_. Small wonder that he was deeply absorbed. He sat
+perfectly still in a meditative attitude, with his elbow on the table,
+and his hand propping his head--the white fingers contrasting strongly
+with the brown hair into which they were thrust. As he sat, with the
+light turned full upon his face, and the rest of his body in shadow, he
+looked like one of Raphael’s dark portraits of himself--a bent head and
+intent eyes filled with visions of the future.
+
+Between the table and the Marquise a tall, beautiful girl sat at her
+tapestry frame; sometimes she drew back from her work, sometimes she
+bent over it, and her hair, picturesque in its ebony smoothness and
+darkness, caught the light of the lamp. Helene was a picture in herself.
+In her beauty there was a rare distinctive character of power and
+refinement. Though her hair was gathered up and drawn back from her
+face, so as to trace a clearly marked line about her head, so thick and
+abundant was it, so recalcitrant to the comb, that it sprang back in
+curl-tendrils to the nape of her neck. The bountiful line of eyebrows
+was evenly marked out in dark contrasting outline upon her pure
+forehead. On her upper lip, beneath the Grecian nose with its
+sensitively perfect curve of nostril, there lay a faint, swarthy shadow,
+the sign-manual of courage; but the enchanting roundness of contour, the
+frankly innocent expression of her other features, the transparence
+of the delicate carnations, the voluptuous softness of the lips, the
+flawless oval of the outline of the face, and with these, and more than
+all these, the saintlike expression in the girlish eyes, gave to her
+vigorous loveliness the distinctive touch of feminine grace, that
+enchanting modesty which we look for in these angels of peace and love.
+Yet there was no suggestion of fragility about her; and, surely, with
+so grand a woman’s frame, so attractive a face, she must possess a
+corresponding warmth of heart and strength of soul.
+
+She was as silent as her schoolboy brother. Seemingly a prey to the
+fateful maiden meditations which baffle a father’s penetration and even
+a mother’s sagacity, it was impossible to be certain whether it was the
+lamplight that cast those shadows that flitted over her face like thin
+clouds over a bright sky, or whether they were passing shades of secret
+and painful thoughts.
+
+Husband and wife had quite forgotten the two older children at that
+moment, though now and again the General’s questioning glance traveled
+to that second mute picture; a larger growth, a gracious realization,
+as it were, of the hopes embodied in the baby forms rioting in the
+foreground. Their faces made up a kind of living poem, illustrating
+life’s various phases. The luxurious background of the salon, the
+different attitudes, the strong contrasts of coloring in the faces,
+differing with the character of differing ages, the modeling of the
+forms brought into high relief by the light--altogether it was a page of
+human life, richly illuminated beyond the art of painter, sculptor, or
+poet. Silence, solitude, night and winter lent a final touch of majesty
+to complete the simplicity and sublimity of this exquisite effect of
+nature’s contriving. Married life is full of these sacred hours, which
+perhaps owe their indefinable charm to some vague memory of a better
+world. A divine radiance surely shines upon them, the destined
+compensation for some portion of earth’s sorrows, the solace which
+enables man to accept life. We seem to behold a vision of an enchanted
+universe, the great conception of its system widens out before our eyes,
+and social life pleads for its laws by bidding us look to the future.
+
+Yet in spite of the tender glances that Helene gave Abel and Moina after
+a fresh outburst of merriment; in spite of the look of gladness in
+her transparent face whenever she stole a glance at her father, a deep
+melancholy pervaded her gestures, her attitude, and more than all, her
+eyes veiled by their long lashes. Those white, strong hands, through
+which the light passed, tinting them with a diaphanous, almost fluid
+red--those hands were trembling. Once only did the eyes of the mother
+and daughter clash without shrinking, and the two women read each
+other’s thoughts in a look, cold, wan, and respectful on Helene’s part,
+sombre and threatening on her mother’s. At once Helene’s eyes were
+lowered to her work, she plied her needle swiftly, and it was long
+before she raised her head, bowed as it seemed by a weight of thought
+too heavy to bear. Was the Marquise over harsh with this one of her
+children? Did she think this harshness needful? Was she jealous of
+Helene’s beauty?--She might still hope to rival Helene, but only by the
+magic arts of the toilette. Or again, had her daughter, like many a girl
+who reaches the clairvoyant age, read the secrets which this wife (to
+all appearance so religiously faithful in the fulfilment of her duties)
+believed to be buried in her own heart as deeply as in a grave?
+
+Helene had reached an age when purity of soul inclines to pass
+over-rigid judgments. A certain order of mind is apt to exaggerate
+transgression into crime; imagination reacts upon conscience, and a
+young girl is a hard judge because she magnifies the seriousness of the
+offence. Helene seemed to think herself worthy of no one. Perhaps
+there was a secret in her past life, perhaps something had happened,
+unintelligible to her at the time, but with gradually developing
+significance for a mind grown susceptible to religious influences;
+something which lately seemed to have degraded her, as it were, in her
+own eyes, and according to her own romantic standard. This change in
+her demeanor dated from the day of reading Schiller’s noble tragedy of
+_Wilhelm Tell_ in a new series of translations. Her mother scolded her
+for letting the book fall, and then remarked to herself that the passage
+which had so worked on Helene’s feelings was the scene in which Wilhelm
+Tell, who spilt the blood of a tyrant to save a nation, fraternizes in
+some sort with John the Parricide. Helene had grown humble, dutiful, and
+self-contained; she no longer cared for gaiety. Never had she made so
+much of her father, especially when the Marquise was not by to watch
+her girlish caresses. And yet, if Helene’s affection for her mother had
+cooled at all, the change in her manner was so slight as to be almost
+imperceptible; so slight that the General could not have noticed it,
+jealous though he might be of the harmony of home. No masculine insight
+could have sounded the depths of those two feminine natures; the one
+was young and generous, the other sensitive and proud; the first had
+a wealth of indulgence in her nature, the second was full of craft and
+love. If the Marquise made her daughter’s life a burden to her by
+a woman’s subtle tyranny, it was a tyranny invisible to all but the
+victim; and for the rest, these conjectures only called forth after the
+event must remain conjectures. Until this night no accusing flash of
+light had escaped either of them, but an ominous mystery was too surely
+growing up between them, a mystery known only to themselves and God.
+
+“Come, Abel,” called the Marquise, seizing on her opportunity when the
+children were tired of play and still for a moment. “Come, come, child;
+you must be put to bed--”
+
+And with a glance that must be obeyed, she caught him up and took him on
+her knee.
+
+“What!” exclaimed the General. “Half-past ten o’clock, and not one of
+the servants has come back! The rascals!--Gustave,” he added, turning to
+his son, “I allowed you to read that book only on the condition that you
+should put it away at ten o’clock. You ought to have shut up the book
+at the proper time and gone to bed, as you promised. If you mean to
+make your mark in the world, you must keep your word; let it be a second
+religion to you, and a point of honor. Fox, one of the greatest English
+orators, was remarkable, above all things, for the beauty of his
+character, and the very first of his qualities was the scrupulous
+faithfulness with which he kept his engagements. When he was a child,
+his father (an Englishman of the old school) gave him a pretty strong
+lesson which he never forgot. Like most rich Englishmen, Fox’s father
+had a country house and a considerable park about it. Now, in the park
+there was an old summer-house, and orders had been given that this
+summer-house was to be pulled down and put up somewhere else where there
+was a finer view. Fox was just about your age, and had come home for the
+holidays. Boys are fond of seeing things pulled to pieces, so young
+Fox asked to stay on at home for a few days longer to see the old
+summer-house taken down; but his father said that he must go back to
+school on the proper day, so there was anger between father and son.
+Fox’s mother (like all mammas) took the boy’s part. Then the father
+solemnly promised that the summer-house should stay where it was till
+the next holidays.
+
+“So Fox went back to school; and his father, thinking that lessons would
+soon drive the whole thing out of the boy’s mind, had the summer-house
+pulled down and put up in the new position. But as it happened, the
+persistent youngster thought of nothing but that summer-house; and as
+soon as he came home again, his first care was to go out to look at the
+old building, and he came in to breakfast looking quite doleful, and
+said to his father, ‘You have broken your promise.’ The old English
+gentleman said with confusion full of dignity, ‘That is true, my boy;
+but I will make amends. A man ought to think of keeping his word before
+he thinks of his fortune; for by keeping his word he will gain fortune,
+while all the fortunes in the world will not efface the stain left on
+your conscience by a breach of faith.’ Then he gave orders that the
+summer-house should be put up again in the old place, and when it had
+been rebuilt he had it taken down again for his son to see. Let this be
+a lesson to _you_, Gustave.”
+
+Gustave had been listening with interest, and now he closed the book at
+once. There was a moment’s silence, while the General took possession of
+Moina, who could scarcely keep her eyes open. The little one’s languid
+head fell back on her father’s breast, and in a moment she was fast
+asleep, wrapped round about in her golden curls.
+
+Just then a sound of hurrying footsteps rang on the pavement out in the
+street, immediately followed by three knocks on the street door, waking
+the echoes of the house. The reverberating blows told, as plainly as
+a cry for help that here was a man flying for his life. The house dog
+barked furiously. A thrill of excitement ran through Helene and Gustave
+and the General and his wife; but neither Abel, with the night-cap
+strings just tied under his chin, nor Moina awoke.
+
+“The fellow is in a hurry!” exclaimed the General. He put the little
+girl down on the chair, and hastened out of the room, heedless of his
+wife’s entreating cry, “Dear, do not go down--”
+
+He stepped into his own room for a pair of pistols, lighted a dark
+lantern, sprang at lightning speed down the staircase, and in another
+minute reached the house door, his oldest boy fearlessly following.
+
+“Who is there?” demanded he.
+
+“Let me in,” panted a breathless voice.
+
+“Are you a friend?”
+
+“Yes, friend.”
+
+“Are you alone?”
+
+“Yes! But let me in; _they_ are after me!”
+
+The General had scarcely set the door ajar before a man slipped into the
+porch with the uncanny swiftness of a shadow. Before the master of
+the house could prevent him, the intruder had closed the door with a
+well-directed kick, and set his back against it resolutely, as if he
+were determined that it should not be opened again. In a moment the
+General had his lantern and pistol at a level with the stranger’s
+breast, and beheld a man of medium height in a fur-lined pelisse. It
+was an old man’s garment, both too large and too long for its present
+wearer. Chance or caution had slouched the man’s hat over his eyes.
+
+“You can lower your pistol, sir,” said this person. “I do not claim
+to stay in your house against your will; but if I leave it, death is
+waiting for me at the barrier. And what a death! You would be answerable
+to God for it! I ask for your hospitality for two hours. And bear this
+in mind, sir, that, suppliant as I am, I have a right to command with
+the despotism of necessity. I want the Arab’s hospitality. Either I
+and my secret must be inviolable, or open the door and I will go to my
+death. I want secrecy, a safe hiding-place, and water. Oh! water!” he
+cried again, with a rattle in his throat.
+
+“Who are you?” demanded the General, taken aback by the stranger’s
+feverish volubility.
+
+“Ah! who am I? Good, open the door, and I will put a distance between
+us,” retorted the other, and there was a diabolical irony in his tone.
+
+Dexterously as the Marquis passed the light of the lantern over the
+man’s face, he could only see the lower half of it, and that in nowise
+prepossessed him in favor of this singular claimant of hospitality.
+The cheeks were livid and quivering, the features dreadfully contorted.
+Under the shadow of the hat-brim a pair of eyes gleamed out like flames;
+the feeble candle-light looked almost dim in comparison. Some sort of
+answer must be made however.
+
+“Your language, sir, is so extraordinary that in my place you
+yourself--”
+
+“My life is in your hands!” the intruder broke in. The sound of his
+voice was dreadful to hear.
+
+“Two hours?” said the Marquis, wavering.
+
+“Two hours,” echoed the other.
+
+Then quite suddenly, with a desperate gesture, he pushed back his
+hat and left his forehead bare, and, as if he meant to try a final
+expedient, he gave the General a glance that seemed to plunge like
+a vivid flash into his very soul. That electrical discharge of
+intelligence and will was swift as lightning and crushing as a
+thunderbolt; for there are moments when a human being is invested for a
+brief space with inexplicable power.
+
+“Come, whoever you may be, you shall be in safety under my roof,” the
+master of the house said gravely at last, acting, as he imagined, upon
+one of those intuitions which a man cannot always explain to himself.
+
+“God will repay you!” said the stranger, with a deep, involuntary sigh.
+
+“Have you weapons?” asked the General.
+
+For all answer the stranger flung open his fur pelisse, and scarcely
+gave the other time for a glance before he wrapped it about him again.
+To all appearance he was unarmed and in evening dress. Swift as the
+soldier’s scrutiny had been, he saw something, however, which made him
+exclaim:
+
+“Where the devil have you been to get yourself in such a mess in such
+dry weather?”
+
+“More questions!” said the stranger haughtily.
+
+At the words the Marquis caught sight of his son, and his own late
+homily on the strict fulfilment of a given word came up to his mind. In
+lively vexation, he exclaimed, not without a touch of anger:
+
+“What! little rogue, you here when you ought to be in bed?”
+
+“Because I thought I might be of some good in danger,” answered Gustave.
+
+“There, go up to your room,” said his father, mollified by the
+reply.--“And you” (addressing the stranger), “come with me.”
+
+The two men grew as silent as a pair of gamblers who watch each other’s
+play with mutual suspicions. The General himself began to be troubled
+with ugly presentiments. The strange visit weighed upon his mind already
+like a nightmare; but he had passed his word, there was no help for
+it now, and he led the way along the passages and stairways till they
+reached a large room on the second floor immediately above the salon.
+This was an empty room where linen was dried in the winter. It had
+but the one door, and for all decoration boasted one solitary shabby
+looking-glass above the chimney-piece, left by the previous owner, and a
+great pier glass, placed provisionally opposite the fireplace until
+such time as a use should be found for it in the rooms below. The four
+yellowish walls were bare. The floor had never been swept. The huge
+attic was icy-cold, and the furniture consisted of a couple of rickety
+straw-bottomed chairs, or rather frames of chairs. The General set the
+lantern down upon the chimney-piece. Then he spoke:
+
+“It is necessary for your own safety to hide you in this comfortless
+attic. And, as you have my promise to keep your secret, you will permit
+me to lock you in.”
+
+The other bent his head in acquiescence.
+
+“I asked for nothing but a hiding-place, secrecy, and water,” returned
+he.
+
+“I will bring you some directly,” said the Marquis, shutting the door
+cautiously. He groped his way down into the salon for a lamp before
+going to the kitchen to look for a carafe.
+
+“Well, what is it?” the Marquise asked quickly.
+
+“Nothing, dear,” he returned coolly.
+
+“But we listened, and we certainly heard you go upstairs with somebody.”
+
+“Helene,” said the General, and he looked at his daughter, who raised
+her face, “bear in mind that your father’s honor depends upon your
+discretion. You must have heard nothing.”
+
+The girl bent her head in answer. The Marquise was confused and smarting
+inwardly at the way in which her husband had thought fit to silence her.
+
+Meanwhile the General went for the bottle and a tumbler, and returned to
+the room above. His prisoner was leaning against the chimney-piece,
+his head was bare, he had flung down his hat on one of the two chairs.
+Evidently he had not expected to have so bright a light turned upon him,
+and he frowned and looked anxious as he met the General’s keen eyes;
+but his face softened and wore a gracious expression as he thanked
+his protector. When the latter placed the bottle and glass on the
+mantel-shelf, the stranger’s eyes flashed out on him again; and when
+he spoke, it was in musical tones with no sign of the previous guttural
+convulsion, though his voice was still unsteady with repressed emotion.
+
+“I shall seem to you to be a strange being, sir, but you must pardon the
+caprices of necessity. If you propose to remain in the room, I beg that
+you will not look at me while I am drinking.”
+
+Vexed at this continual obedience to a man whom he disliked, the General
+sharply turned his back upon him. The stranger thereupon drew a white
+handkerchief from his pocket and wound it about his right hand. Then
+he seized the carafe and emptied it at a draught. The Marquis, staring
+vacantly into the tall mirror across the room, without a thought of
+breaking his implicit promise, saw the stranger’s figure distinctly
+reflected by the opposite looking-glass, and saw, too, a red stain
+suddenly appear through the folds of the white bandage. The man’s hands
+were steeped in blood.
+
+“Ah! you saw me!” cried the other. He had drunk off the water and
+wrapped himself again in his cloak, and now scrutinized the General
+suspiciously. “It is all over with me! Here they come!”
+
+“I don’t hear anything,” said the Marquis.
+
+“You have not the same interest that I have in listening for sounds in
+the air.”
+
+“You have been fighting a duel, I suppose, to be in such a state?”
+ queried the General, not a little disturbed by the color of those broad,
+dark patches staining his visitor’s cloak.
+
+“Yes, a duel; you have it,” said the other, and a bitter smile flitted
+over his lips.
+
+As he spoke a sound rang along the distant road, a sound of galloping
+horses; but so faint as yet, that it was the merest dawn of a sound. The
+General’s trained ear recognized the advance of a troop of regulars.
+
+“That is the gendarmerie,” said he.
+
+He glanced at his prisoner to reassure him after his own involuntary
+indiscretion, took the lamp, and went down to the salon. He had scarcely
+laid the key of the room above upon the chimney-piece when the hoof
+beats sounded louder and came swiftly nearer and nearer the house. The
+General felt a shiver of excitement, and indeed the horses stopped at
+the house door; a few words were exchanged among the men, and one
+of them dismounted and knocked loudly. There was no help for it; the
+General went to open the door. He could scarcely conceal his inward
+perturbation at the sight of half a dozen gendarmes outside, the metal
+rims of their caps gleaming like silver in the moonlight.
+
+“My lord,” said the corporal, “have you heard a man run past towards the
+barrier within the last few minutes?”
+
+“Towards the barrier? No.”
+
+“Have you opened the door to any one?”
+
+“Now, am I in the habit of answering the door myself--”
+
+“I ask your pardon, General, but just now it seems to me that--”
+
+“Really!” cried the Marquis wrathfully. “Have you a mind to try joking
+with me? What right have you--?”
+
+“None at all, none at all, my lord,” cried the corporal, hastily putting
+in a soft answer. “You will excuse our zeal. We know, of course, that a
+peer of France is not likely to harbor a murderer at this time of night;
+but as we want any information we can get--”
+
+“A murderer!” cried the General. “Who can have been--”
+
+“M. le Baron de Mauny has just been murdered. It was a blow from an axe,
+and we are in hot pursuit of the criminal. We know for certain that he
+is somewhere in this neighborhood, and we shall hunt him down. By your
+leave, General,” and the man swung himself into the saddle as he spoke.
+It was well that he did so, for a corporal of gendarmerie trained to
+alert observation and quick surmise would have had his suspicions at
+once if he had caught sight of the General’s face. Everything that
+passed through the soldier’s mind was faithfully revealed in his frank
+countenance.
+
+“Is it known who the murderer is?” asked he.
+
+“No,” said the other, now in the saddle. “He left the bureau full of
+banknotes and gold untouched.”
+
+“It was revenge, then,” said the Marquis.
+
+“On an old man? pshaw! No, no, the fellow hadn’t time to take it, that
+was all,” and the corporal galloped after his comrades, who were almost
+out of sight by this time.
+
+For a few minutes the General stood, a victim to perplexities which need
+no explanation; but in a moment he heard the servants returning home,
+their voices were raised in some sort of dispute at the cross-roads
+of Montreuil. When they came in, he gave vent to his feelings in an
+explosion of rage, his wrath fell upon them like a thunderbolt, and all
+the echoes of the house trembled at the sound of his voice. In the
+midst of the storm his own man, the boldest and cleverest of the
+party, brought out an excuse; they had been stopped, he said, by the
+gendarmerie at the gate of Montreuil, a murder had been committed, and
+the police were in pursuit. In a moment the General’s anger vanished,
+he said not another word; then, bethinking himself of his own singular
+position, drily ordered them all off to bed at once, and left them
+amazed at his readiness to accept their fellow servant’s lying excuse.
+
+While these incidents took place in the yard, an apparently trifling
+occurrence had changed the relative positions of three characters in
+this story. The Marquis had scarcely left the room before his wife
+looked first towards the key on the mantel-shelf, and then at Helene;
+and, after some wavering, bent towards her daughter and said in a low
+voice, “Helene your father has left the key on the chimney-piece.”
+
+The girl looked up in surprise and glanced timidly at her mother. The
+Marquise’s eyes sparkled with curiosity.
+
+“Well, mamma?” she said, and her voice had a troubled ring.
+
+“I should like to know what is going on upstairs. If there is anybody up
+there, he has not stirred yet. Just go up--”
+
+“_I_?” cried the girl, with something like horror in her tones.
+
+“Are you afraid?”
+
+“No, mamma, but I thought I heard a man’s footsteps.”
+
+“If I could go myself, I should not have asked you to go, Helene,” said
+her mother with cold dignity. “If your father were to come back and did
+not see me, he would go to look for me perhaps, but he would not notice
+your absence.”
+
+“Madame, if you bid me go, I will go,” said Helene, “but I shall lose my
+father’s good opinion--”
+
+“What is this!” cried the Marquise in a sarcastic tone. “But since you
+take a thing that was said in joke in earnest, I now _order_ you to go
+upstairs and see who is in the room above. Here is the key, child. When
+your father told you to say nothing about this thing that happened, he
+did not forbid you to go up to the room. Go at once--and learn that a
+daughter ought never to judge her mother.”
+
+The last words were spoken with all the severity of a justly offended
+mother. The Marquise took the key and handed it to Helene, who rose
+without a word and left the room.
+
+“My mother can always easily obtain her pardon,” thought the girl; “but
+as for me, my father will never think the same of me again. Does she
+mean to rob me of his tenderness? Does she want to turn me out of his
+house?”
+
+These were the thoughts that set her imagination in a sudden ferment, as
+she went down the dark passage to the mysterious door at the end. When
+she stood before it, her mental confusion grew to a fateful pitch.
+Feelings hitherto forced down into inner depths crowded up at the
+summons of these confused thoughts. Perhaps hitherto she had never
+believed that a happy life lay before her, but now, in this awful
+moment, her despair was complete. She shook convulsively as she set the
+key in the lock; so great indeed was her agitation, that she stopped for
+a moment and laid her hand on her heart, as if to still the heavy throbs
+that sounded in her ears. Then she opened the door.
+
+The creaking of the hinges sounded doubtless in vain on the murderer’s
+ears. Acute as were his powers of hearing, he stood as if lost in
+thought, and so motionless that he might have been glued to the wall
+against which he leaned. In the circle of semi-opaque darkness, dimly
+lit by the bull’s-eye lantern, he looked like the shadowy figure of
+some dead knight, standing for ever in his shadowy mortuary niche in
+the gloom of some Gothic chapel. Drops of cold sweat trickled over the
+broad, sallow forehead. An incredible fearlessness looked out from every
+tense feature. His eyes of fire were fixed and tearless; he seemed to
+be watching some struggle in the darkness beyond him. Stormy thoughts
+passed swiftly across a face whose firm decision spoke of a character
+of no common order. His whole person, bearing, and frame bore out the
+impression of a tameless spirit. The man looked power and strength
+personified; he stood facing the darkness as if it were the visible
+image of his own future.
+
+These physical characteristics had made no impression upon the General,
+familiar as he was with the powerful faces of the group of giants
+gathered about Napoleon; speculative curiosity, moreover, as to the
+why and wherefore of the apparition had completely filled his mind; but
+Helene, with feminine sensitiveness to surface impressions, was struck
+by the blended chaos of light and darkness, grandeur and passion,
+suggesting a likeness between this stranger and Lucifer recovering from
+his fall. Suddenly the storm apparent in his face was stilled as if by
+magic; and the indefinable power to sway which the stranger exercised
+upon others, and perhaps unconsciously and as by reflex action upon
+himself, spread its influence about him with the progressive swiftness
+of a flood. A torrent of thought rolled away from his brow as his face
+resumed its ordinary expression. Perhaps it was the strangeness of this
+meeting, or perhaps it was the mystery into which she had penetrated,
+that held the young girl spellbound in the doorway, so that she could
+look at a face pleasant to behold and full of interest. For some moments
+she stood in the magical silence; a trouble had come upon her never
+known before in her young life. Perhaps some exclamation broke from
+Helene, perhaps she moved unconsciously; or it may be that the hunted
+criminal returned of his own accord from the world of ideas to the
+material world, and heard some one breathing in the room; however it
+was, he turned his head towards his host’s daughter, and saw dimly in
+the shadow a noble face and queenly form, which he must have taken for
+an angel’s, so motionless she stood, so vague and like a spirit.
+
+“Monsieur...” a trembling voice cried.
+
+The murderer trembled.
+
+“A woman!” he cried under his breath. “Is it possible? Go,” he cried, “I
+deny that any one has a right to pity, to absolve, or condemn me. I
+must live alone. Go, my child,” he added, with an imperious gesture, “I
+should ill requite the service done me by the master of the house if I
+were to allow a single creature under his roof to breathe the same air
+with me. I must submit to be judged by the laws of the world.”
+
+The last words were uttered in a lower voice. Even as he realized with
+a profound intuition all the manifold misery awakened by that melancholy
+thought, the glance that he gave Helene had something of the power of
+the serpent, stirring a whole dormant world in the mind of the strange
+girl before him. To her that glance was like a light revealing unknown
+lands. She was stricken with strange trouble, helpless, quelled by a
+magnetic power exerted unconsciously. Trembling and ashamed, she went
+out and returned to the salon. She had scarcely entered the room before
+her father came back, so that she had not time to say a word to her
+mother.
+
+The General was wholly absorbed in thought. He folded his arms, and
+paced silently to and fro between the windows which looked out upon the
+street and the second row which gave upon the garden. His wife lay the
+sleeping Abel on her knee, and little Moina lay in untroubled slumber in
+the low chair, like a bird in its nest. Her older sister stared into the
+fire, a skein of silk in one hand, a needle in the other.
+
+Deep silence prevailed, broken only by lagging footsteps on the stairs,
+as one by one the servants crept away to bed; there was an occasional
+burst of stifled laughter, a last echo of the wedding festivity, or
+doors were opened as they still talked among themselves, then shut. A
+smothered sound came now and again from the bedrooms, a chair fell, the
+old coachman coughed feebly, then all was silent.
+
+In a little while the dark majesty with which sleeping earth is invested
+at midnight brought all things under its sway. No lights shone but the
+light of the stars. The frost gripped the ground. There was not a sound
+of a voice, nor a living creature stirring. The crackling of the fire
+only seemed to make the depth of the silence more fully felt.
+
+The church clock of Montreuil had just struck one, when an almost
+inaudible sound of a light footstep came from the second flight of
+stairs. The Marquis and his daughter, both believing that M. de Mauny’s
+murderer was a prisoner above, thought that one of the maids had come
+down, and no one was at all surprised to hear the door open in the
+ante-chamber. Quite suddenly the murderer appeared in their midst. The
+Marquis himself was sunk in deep musings, the mother and daughter were
+silent, the one from keen curiosity, the other from sheer astonishment,
+so that the visitor was almost half-way across the room when he spoke to
+the General.
+
+“Sir, the two hours are almost over,” he said, in a voice that was
+strangely calm and musical.
+
+“_You here_!” cried the General. “By what means----?” and he gave wife
+and daughter a formidable questioning glance. Helene grew red as fire.
+
+“You!” he went on, in a tone filled with horror. “_You_ among us! A
+murderer covered with blood! You are a blot on this picture! Go, go
+out!” he added in a burst of rage.
+
+At that word “murderer,” the Marquise cried out; as for Helene, it
+seemed to mark an epoch in her life, there was not a trace of surprise
+in her face. She looked as if she had been waiting for this--for him.
+Those so vast thoughts of hers had found a meaning. The punishment
+reserved by Heaven for her sins flamed out before her. In her own eyes
+she was as great a criminal as this murderer; she confronted him with
+her quiet gaze; she was his fellow, his sister. It seemed to her that in
+this accident the command of God had been made manifest. If she had been
+a few years older, reason would have disposed of her remorse, but at
+this moment she was like one distraught.
+
+The stranger stood impassive and self-possessed; a scornful smile
+overspread his features and his thick, red lips.
+
+“You appreciate the magnanimity of my behavior very badly,” he said
+slowly. “I would not touch with my fingers the glass of water you
+brought me to allay my thirst; I did not so much as think of washing my
+blood-stained hands under your roof; I am going away, leaving nothing
+of _my crime_” (here his lips were compressed) “but the memory; I have
+tried to leave no trace of my presence in this house. Indeed, I would
+not even allow your daughter to--”
+
+“_My daughter_!” cried the General, with a horror-stricken glance at
+Helene. “Vile wretch, go, or I will kill you--”
+
+“The two hours are not yet over,” said the other; “if you kill me or
+give me up, you must lower yourself in your own eyes--and in mine.”
+
+At these last words, the General turned to stare at the criminal in dumb
+amazement; but he could not endure the intolerable light in those eyes
+which for the second time disorganized his being. He was afraid of
+showing weakness once more, conscious as he was that his will was weaker
+already.
+
+“An old man! You can never have seen a family,” he said, with a father’s
+glance at his wife and children.
+
+“Yes, an old man,” echoed the stranger, frowning slightly.
+
+“Fly!” cried the General, but he did not dare to look at his guest. “Our
+compact is broken. I shall not kill you. No! I will never be purveyor to
+the scaffold. But go out. You make us shudder.”
+
+“I know that,” said the other patiently. “There is not a spot on French
+soil where I can set foot and be safe; but if man’s justice, like God’s,
+took all into account, if man’s justice deigned to inquire which was the
+monster--the murderer or his victim--then I might hold up my head among
+my fellows. Can you not guess that other crimes preceded that blow from
+an axe? I constituted myself his judge and executioner; I stepped in
+where man’s justice failed. That was my crime. Farewell, sir. Bitter
+though you have made your hospitality, I shall not forget it. I shall
+always bear in my heart a feeling of gratitude towards one man in the
+world, and you are that man.... But I could wish that you had showed
+yourself more generous!”
+
+He turned towards the door, but in the same instant Helene leaned to
+whisper something in her mother’s ear.
+
+“Ah!...”
+
+At the cry that broke from his wife, the General trembled as if he had
+seen Moina lying dead. There stood Helene and the murderer had turned
+instinctively, with something like anxiety about these folk in his face.
+
+“What is it, dear?” asked the General.
+
+“Helene wants to go with him.”
+
+The murderer’s face flushed.
+
+“If that is how my mother understands an almost involuntary
+exclamation,” Helene said in a low voice, “I will fulfil her wishes. She
+glanced about her with something like fierce pride; then the girl’s eyes
+fell, and she stood, admirable in her modesty.
+
+“Helene, did you go up to the room where----?”
+
+“Yes, father.”
+
+“Helene” (and his voice shook with a convulsive tremor), “is this the
+first time that you have seen this man?”
+
+“Yes, father.”
+
+“Then it is not natural that you should intend to--”
+
+“If it is not natural, father, at any rate it is true.”
+
+“Oh! child,” said the Marquise, lowering her voice, but not so much but
+that her husband could hear her, “you are false to all the principles of
+honor, modesty, and right which I have tried to cultivate in your
+heart. If until this fatal hour you life has only been one lie, there is
+nothing to regret in your loss. It can hardly be the moral perfection of
+this stranger that attracts you to him? Can it be the kind of power that
+commits crime? I have too good an opinion of you to suppose that--”
+
+“Oh, suppose everything, madame,” Helene said coldly.
+
+But though her force of character sustained this ordeal, her flashing
+eyes could scarcely hold the tears that filled them. The stranger,
+watching her, guessed the mother’s language from the girl’s tears,
+and turned his eagle glance upon the Marquise. An irresistible power
+constrained her to look at this terrible seducer; but as her eyes met
+his bright, glittering gaze, she felt a shiver run through her frame,
+such a shock as we feel at the sight of a reptile or the contact of a
+Leyden jar.
+
+“Dear!” she cried, turning to her husband, “this is the Fiend himself.
+He can divine everything!”
+
+The General rose to his feet and went to the bell.
+
+“He means ruin for you,” Helene said to the murderer.
+
+The stranger smiled, took one forward stride, grasped the General’s arm,
+and compelled him to endure a steady gaze which benumbed the soldier’s
+brain and left him powerless.
+
+“I will repay you now for your hospitality,” he said, “and then we shall
+be quits. I will spare you the shame by giving myself up. After all,
+what should I do now with my life?”
+
+“You could repent,” answered Helene, and her glance conveyed such hope
+as only glows in a young girl’s eyes.
+
+“_I shall never repent_,” said the murderer in a sonorous voice, as he
+raised his head proudly.
+
+“His hands are stained with blood,” the father said.
+
+“I will wipe it away,” she answered.
+
+“But do you so much as know whether he cares for you?” said her father,
+not daring now to look at the stranger.
+
+The murderer came up a little nearer. Some light within seemed to glow
+through Helene’s beauty, grave and maidenly though it was, coloring and
+bringing into relief, as it were, the least details, the most delicate
+lines in her face. The stranger, with that terrible face still blazing
+in his eyes, gave one tender glance to her enchanting loveliness, then
+he spoke, his tones revealing how deeply he had been moved.
+
+“And if I refuse to allow this sacrifice of yourself, and so discharge
+my debt of two hours of existence to your father; is not this love, love
+for yourself alone?”
+
+“Then do you too reject me?” Helene’s cry rang painfully through the
+hearts of all who heard her. “Farewell, then, to you all; I will die.”
+
+“What does this mean?” asked the father and mother.
+
+Helene gave her mother an eloquent glance and lowered her eyes.
+
+Since the first attempt made by the General and his wife to contest
+by word or action the intruder’s strange presumption to the right of
+staying in their midst, from their first experience of the power of
+those glittering eyes, a mysterious torpor had crept over them, and
+their benumbed faculties struggled in vain with the preternatural
+influence. The air seemed to have suddenly grown so heavy, that they
+could scarcely breathe; yet, while they could not find the reason of
+this feeling of oppression, a voice within told them that this magnetic
+presence was the real cause of their helplessness. In this moral agony,
+it flashed across the General that he must make every effort to overcome
+this influence on his daughter’s reeling brain; he caught her by the
+waist and drew her into the embrasure of a window, as far as possible
+from the murderer.
+
+“Darling,” he murmured, “if some wild love has been suddenly born in
+your heart, I cannot believe that you have not the strength of soul to
+quell the mad impulse; your innocent life, your pure and dutiful soul,
+has given me too many proofs of your character. There must be something
+behind all this. Well, this heart of mine is full of indulgence, you can
+tell everything to me; even if it breaks, dear child, I can be silent
+about my grief, and keep your confession a secret. What is it? Are you
+jealous of our love for your brothers or your little sister? Is it some
+love trouble? Are you unhappy here at home? Tell me about it, tell me
+the reasons that urge you to leave your home, to rob it of its greatest
+charm, to leave your mother and brothers and your little sister?”
+
+“I am in love with no one, father, and jealous of no one, not even of
+your friend the diplomatist, M. de Vandenesse.”
+
+The Marquise turned pale; her daughter saw this, and stopped short.
+
+“Sooner or later I must live under some man’s protection, must I not?”
+
+“That is true.”
+
+“Do we ever know,” she went on, “the human being to whom we link our
+destinies? Now, I believe in this man.”
+
+“Oh, child,” said the General, raising his voice, “you have no idea of
+all the misery that lies in store for you.”
+
+“I am thinking of _his_.”
+
+“What a life!” groaned the father.
+
+“A woman’s life,” the girl murmured.
+
+“You have a great knowledge of life!” exclaimed the Marquise, finding
+speech at last.
+
+“Madame, my answers are shaped by the questions; but if you desire it, I
+will speak more clearly.”
+
+“Speak out, my child... I am a mother.”
+
+Mother and daughter looked each other in the face, and the Marquise said
+no more. At last she said:
+
+“Helene, if you have any reproaches to make, I would rather bear them
+than see you go away with a man from whom the whole world shrinks in
+horror.”
+
+“Then you see yourself, madame, that but for me he would be quite
+alone.”
+
+“That will do, madame,” the General cried; “we have but one daughter
+left to us now,” and he looked at Moina, who slept on. “As for you,” he
+added, turning to Helene, “I will put you in a convent.”
+
+“So be it, father,” she said, in calm despair, “I shall die there. You
+are answerable to God alone for my life and for _his_ soul.”
+
+A deep sullen silence fell after these words. The on-lookers during
+this strange scene, so utterly at variance with all the sentiments of
+ordinary life, shunned each other’s eyes.
+
+Suddenly the Marquis happened to glance at his pistols. He caught up one
+of them, cocked the weapon, and pointed it at the intruder. At the click
+of firearms the other turned his piercing gaze full upon the General;
+the soldier’s arm slackened indescribably and fell heavily to his side.
+The pistol dropped to the floor.
+
+“Girl, you are free,” said he, exhausted by this ghastly struggle. “Kiss
+your mother, if she will let you kiss her. For my own part, I wish never
+to see nor to hear of you again.”
+
+“Helene,” the mother began, “only think of the wretched life before
+you.”
+
+A sort of rattling sound came from the intruder’s deep chest, all eyes
+were turned to him. Disdain was plainly visible in his face.
+
+The General rose to his feet. “My hospitality has cost me dear,” he
+cried. “Before you came you had taken an old man’s life; now your are
+dealing a deadly blow at a whole family. Whatever happens, there must be
+unhappiness in this house.”
+
+“And if your daughter is happy?” asked the other, gazing steadily at the
+General.
+
+The father made a superhuman effort for self-control. “If she is happy
+with you,” he said, “she is not worth regretting.”
+
+Helene knelt timidly before her father.
+
+“Father, I love and revere you,” she said, “whether you lavish all the
+treasures of your kindness upon me, or make me feel to the full the
+rigor of disgrace.... But I entreat that your last words of farewell
+shall not be words of anger.”
+
+The General could not trust himself to look at her. The stranger came
+nearer; there was something half-diabolical, half-divine in the smile
+that he gave Helene.
+
+“Angel of pity, you that do not shrink in horror from a murderer, come,
+since you persist in your resolution of intrusting your life to me.”
+
+“Inconceivable!” cried her father.
+
+The Marquise then looked strangely at her daughter, opened her arms, and
+Helene fled to her in tears.
+
+“Farewell,” she said, “farewell, mother!” The stranger trembled as
+Helene, undaunted, made sign to him that she was ready. She kissed her
+father’s hand; and, as if performing a duty, gave a hasty kiss to Moina
+and little Abel, then she vanished with the murderer.
+
+“Which way are they going?” exclaimed the General, listening to the
+footsteps of the two fugitives.--“Madame,” he turned to his wife, “I
+think I must be dreaming; there is some mystery behind all this, I do
+not understand it; you must know what it means.”
+
+The Marquise shivered.
+
+“For some time past your daughter has grown extraordinarily romantic and
+strangely high-flown in her ideas. In spite of the pains I have taken to
+combat these tendencies in her character--”
+
+“This will not do----” began the General, but fancying that he heard
+footsteps in the garden, he broke off to fling open the window.
+
+“Helene!” he shouted.
+
+His voice was lost in the darkness like a vain prophecy. The utterance
+of that name, to which there should never be answer any more, acted
+like a counterspell; it broke the charm and set him free from the evil
+enchantment which lay upon him. It was as if some spirit passed over
+his face. He now saw clearly what had taken place, and cursed his
+incomprehensible weakness. A shiver of heat rushed from his heart to
+his head and feet; he became himself once more, terrible, thirsting for
+revenge. He raised a dreadful cry.
+
+“Help!” he thundered, “help!”
+
+He rushed to the bell-pull, pulled till the bells rang with a strange
+clamor of din, pulled till the cord gave way. The whole house was roused
+with a start. Still shouting, he flung open the windows that looked upon
+the street, called for the police, caught up his pistols, and fired them
+off to hurry the mounted patrols, the newly-aroused servants, and the
+neighbors. The dogs barked at the sound of their master’s voice; the
+horses neighed and stamped in their stalls. The quiet night was suddenly
+filled with hideous uproar. The General on the staircase, in pursuit
+of his daughter, saw the scared faces of the servants flocking from all
+parts of the house.
+
+“My daughter!” he shouted. “Helene has been carried off. Search
+the garden. Keep a lookout on the road! Open the gates for the
+gendarmerie!--Murder! Help!”
+
+With the strength of fury he snapped the chain and let loose the great
+house-dog.
+
+“Helene!” he cried, “Helene!”
+
+The dog sprang out like a lion, barking furiously, and dashed into the
+garden, leaving the General far behind. A troop of horses came along the
+road at a gallop, and he flew to open the gates himself.
+
+“Corporal!” he shouted, “cut off the retreat of M. de Mauny’s murderer.
+They have gone through my garden. Quick! Put a cordon of men to watch
+the ways by the Butte de Picardie.--I will beat up the grounds, parks,
+and houses.--The rest of you keep a lookout along the road,” he ordered
+the servants, “form a chain between the barrier and Versailles. Forward,
+every man of you!”
+
+He caught up the rifle which his man had brought out, and dashed into
+the garden.
+
+“Find them!” he called to the dog.
+
+An ominous baying came in answer from the distance, and he plunged in
+the direction from which the growl seemed to come.
+
+It was seven o’clock in the morning; all the search made by gendarmes,
+servants, and neighbors had been fruitless, and the dog had not come
+back. The General entered the salon, empty now for him though the other
+three children were there; he was worn out with fatigue, and looked old
+already with that night’s work.
+
+“You have been very cold to your daughter,” he said, turning his eyes
+on his wife.--“And now this is all that is left to us of her,” he added,
+indicating the embroidery frame, and the flower just begun. “Only just
+now she was there, and now she is lost... lost!”
+
+Tears followed; he hid his face in his hands, and for a few minutes he
+said no more; he could not bear the sight of the room, which so short
+a time ago had made a setting to a picture of the sweetest family
+happiness. The winter dawn was struggling with the dying lamplight; the
+tapers burned down to their paper-wreaths and flared out; everything was
+all in keeping with the father’s despair.
+
+“This must be destroyed,” he said after a pause, pointing to the
+tambour-frame. “I shall never bear to see anything again that reminds us
+of _her_!”
+
+The terrible Christmas night when the Marquis and his wife lost their
+oldest daughter, powerless to oppose the mysterious influence exercised
+by the man who involuntarily, as it were, stole Helene from them, was
+like a warning sent by Fate. The Marquis was ruined by the failure of
+his stock-broker; he borrowed money on his wife’s property, and lost
+it in the endeavor to retrieve his fortunes. Driven to desperate
+expedients, he left France. Six years went by. His family seldom had
+news of him; but a few days before Spain recognized the independence of
+the American Republics, he wrote that he was coming home.
+
+So, one fine morning, it happened that several French merchants were on
+board a Spanish brig that lay a few leagues out from Bordeaux, impatient
+to reach their native land again, with wealth acquired by long years of
+toil and perilous adventures in Venezuela and Mexico.
+
+One of the passengers, a man who looked aged by trouble rather than
+by years, was leaning against the bulwark netting, apparently quite
+unaffected by the sight to be seen from the upper deck. The bright
+day, the sense that the voyage was safely over, had brought all the
+passengers above to greet their land. The larger number of them insisted
+that they could see, far off in the distance, the houses and lighthouses
+on the coast of Gascony and the Tower of Cardouan, melting into the
+fantastic erections of white cloud along the horizon. But for the silver
+fringe that played about their bows, and the long furrow swiftly effaced
+in their wake, they might have been perfectly still in mid-ocean, so
+calm was the sea. The sky was magically clear, the dark blue of the
+vault above paled by imperceptible gradations, until it blended with
+the bluish water, a gleaming line that sparkled like stars marking the
+dividing line of sea. The sunlight caught myriads of facets over the
+wide surface of the ocean, in such a sort that the vast plains of salt
+water looked perhaps more full of light than the fields of sky.
+
+The brig had set all her canvas. The snowy sails, swelled by the
+strangely soft wind, the labyrinth of cordage, and the yellow flags
+flying at the masthead, all stood out sharp and uncompromisingly clear
+against the vivid background of space, sky, and sea; there was nothing
+to alter the color but the shadow cast by the great cloudlike sails.
+
+A glorious day, a fair wind, and the fatherland in sight, a sea like a
+mill-pond, the melancholy sound of the ripples, a fair, solitary vessel,
+gliding across the surface of the water like a woman stealing out to
+a tryst--it was a picture full of harmony. That mere speck full of
+movement was a starting-point whence the soul of man could descry the
+immutable vast of space. Solitude and bustling life, silence and sound,
+were all brought together in strange abrupt contrast; you could not
+tell where life, or sound, or silence, and nothingness lay, and no human
+voice broke the divine spell.
+
+The Spanish captain, the crew, and the French passengers sat or stood,
+in a mood of devout ecstasy, in which many memories blended. There was
+idleness in the air. The beaming faces told of complete forgetfulness
+of past hardships, the men were rocked on the fair vessel as in a golden
+dream. Yet, from time to time the elderly passenger, leaning over the
+bulwark nettings, looked with something like uneasiness at the horizon.
+Distrust of the ways of Fate could be read in his whole face; he seemed
+to fear that he should not reach the coast of France in time. This
+was the Marquis. Fortune had not been deaf to his despairing cry and
+struggles. After five years of endeavor and painful toil, he was a
+wealthy man once more. In his impatience to reach his home again and to
+bring the good news to his family, he had followed the example set by
+some French merchants in Havana, and embarked with them on a Spanish
+vessel with a cargo for Bordeaux. And now, grown tired of evil
+forebodings, his fancy was tracing out for him the most delicious
+pictures of past happiness. In that far-off brown line of land he seemed
+to see his wife and children. He sat in his place by the fireside; they
+were crowding about him; he felt their caresses. Moina had grown to be
+a young girl; she was beautiful, and tall, and striking. The fancied
+picture had grown almost real, when the tears filled his eyes, and, to
+hide his emotion, he turned his face towards the sea-line, opposite the
+hazy streak that meant land.
+
+“There she is again.... She is following us!” he said.
+
+“What?” cried the Spanish captain.
+
+“There is a vessel,” muttered the General.
+
+“I saw her yesterday,” answered Captain Gomez. He looked at his
+interlocutor as if to ask what he thought; then he added in the
+General’s ear, “She has been chasing us all along.”
+
+“Then why she has not come up with us, I do not know,” said the General,
+“for she is a faster sailor than your damned _Saint-Ferdinand_.”
+
+“She will have damaged herself, sprung a leak--”
+
+“She is gaining on us!” the General broke in.
+
+“She is a Columbian privateer,” the captain said in his ear, “and we are
+still six leagues from land, and the wind is dropping.”
+
+“She is not _going_ ahead, she is flying, as if she knew that in two
+hours’ time her prey would escape her. What audacity!”
+
+“Audacity!” cried the captain. “Oh! she is not called the _Othello_ for
+nothing. Not so long back she sank a Spanish frigate that carried thirty
+guns! This is the one thing I was afraid of, for I had a notion that she
+was cruising about somewhere off the Antilles.--Aha!” he added after a
+pause, as he watched the sails of his own vessel, “the wind is rising;
+we are making way. Get through we must, for ‘the Parisian’ will show us
+no mercy.”
+
+“She is making way too!” returned the General.
+
+The _Othello_ was scarce three leagues away by this time; and although
+the conversation between the Marquis and Captain Gomez had taken place
+apart, passengers and crew, attracted by the sudden appearance of a
+sail, came to that side of the vessel. With scarcely an exception,
+however, they took the privateer for a merchantman, and watched her
+course with interest, till all at once a sailor shouted with some energy
+of language:
+
+“By Saint-James, it is all up with us! Yonder is the Parisian captain!”
+
+At that terrible name dismay, and a panic impossible to describe, spread
+through the brig. The Spanish captain’s orders put energy into the
+crew for a while; and in his resolute determination to make land at all
+costs, he set all the studding sails, and crowded on every stitch
+of canvas on board. But all this was not the work of a moment; and
+naturally the men did not work together with that wonderful unanimity
+so fascinating to watch on board a man-of-war. The _Othello_ meanwhile,
+thanks to the trimming of her sails, flew over the water like a swallow;
+but she was making, to all appearance, so little headway, that the
+unlucky Frenchmen began to entertain sweet delusive hopes. At last,
+after unheard-of efforts, the _Saint-Ferdinand_ sprang forward, Gomez
+himself directing the shifting of the sheets with voice and gesture,
+when all at once the man at the tiller, steering at random (purposely,
+no doubt), swung the vessel round. The wind striking athwart the beam,
+the sails shivered so unexpectedly that the brig heeled to one side, the
+booms were carried away, and the vessel was completely out of hand.
+The captain’s face grew whiter than his sails with unutterable rage. He
+sprang upon the man at the tiller, drove his dagger at him in such blind
+fury, that he missed him, and hurled the weapon overboard. Gomez took
+the helm himself, and strove to right the gallant vessel. Tears of
+despair rose to his eyes, for it is harder to lose the result of our
+carefully-laid plans through treachery than to face imminent death.
+But the more the captain swore, the less the men worked, and it was
+he himself who fired the alarm-gun, hoping to be heard on shore. The
+privateer, now gaining hopelessly upon them, replied with a cannon-shot,
+which struck the water ten fathoms away from the _Saint-Ferdinand_.
+
+“Thunder of heaven!” cried the General, “that was a close shave! They
+must have guns made on purpose.”
+
+“Oh! when that one yonder speaks, look you, you have to hold your
+tongue,” said a sailor. “The Parisian would not be afraid to meet an
+English man-of-war.”
+
+“It is all over with us,” the captain cried in desperation; he had
+pointed his telescope landwards, and saw not a sign from the shore. “We
+are further from the coast than I thought.”
+
+“Why do you despair?” asked the General. “All your passengers are
+Frenchmen; they have chartered your vessel. The privateer is a Parisian,
+you say? Well and good, run up the white flag, and--”
+
+“And he would run us down,” retorted the captain. “He can be anything he
+likes when he has a mind to seize on a rich booty!”
+
+“Oh! if he is a pirate--”
+
+“Pirate!” said the ferocious looking sailor. “Oh! he always has the law
+on his side, or he knows how to be on the same side as the law.”
+
+“Very well,” said the General, raising his eyes, “let us make up our
+minds to it,” and his remaining fortitude was still sufficient to keep
+back the tears.
+
+The words were hardly out of his mouth before a second cannon-shot,
+better aimed, came crashing through the hull of the _Saint-Ferdinand_.
+
+“Heave to!” cried the captain gloomily.
+
+The sailor who had commended the Parisian’s law-abiding proclivities
+showed himself a clever hand at working a ship after this desperate
+order was given. The crew waited for half an hour in an agony of
+suspense and the deepest dismay. The _Saint-Ferdinand_ had four millions
+of piastres on board, the whole fortunes of the five passengers, and the
+General’s eleven hundred thousand francs. At length the _Othello_ lay
+not ten gunshots away, so that those on the _Saint-Ferdinand_ could look
+into the muzzles of her loaded guns. The vessel seemed to be borne along
+by a breeze sent by the Devil himself, but the eyes of an expert would
+have discovered the secret of her speed at once. You had but to look
+for a moment at the rake of her stern, her long, narrow keel, her tall
+masts, to see the cut of her sails, the wonderful lightness of her
+rigging, and the ease and perfect seamanship with which her crew trimmed
+her sails to the wind. Everything about her gave the impression of the
+security of power in this delicately curved inanimate creature, swift
+and intelligent as a greyhound or some bird of prey. The privateer
+crew stood silent, ready in case of resistance to shatter the wretched
+merchantman, which, luckily for her, remained motionless, like a
+schoolboy caught in flagrant delict by a master.
+
+“We have guns on board!” cried the General, clutching the Spanish
+captain’s hand. But the courage in Gomez’s eyes was the courage of
+despair.
+
+“Have we men?” he said.
+
+The Marquis looked round at the crew of the _Saint-Ferdinand_, and a
+cold chill ran through him. There stood the four merchants, pale and
+quaking for fear, while the crew gathered about some of their own number
+who appeared to be arranging to go over in a body to the enemy. They
+watched the _Othello_ with greed and curiosity in their faces. The
+captain, the Marquis, and the mate exchanged glances; they were the only
+three who had a thought for any but themselves.
+
+“Ah! Captain Gomez, when I left my home and country, my heart was half
+dead with the bitterness of parting, and now must I bid it good-bye once
+more when I am bringing back happiness and ease for my children?”
+
+The General turned his head away towards the sea, with tears of rage in
+his eyes--and saw the steersman swimming out to the privateer.
+
+“This time it will be good-bye for good,” said the captain by way
+of answer, and the dazed look in the Frenchman’s eyes startled the
+Spaniard.
+
+By this time the two vessels were almost alongside, and at the first
+sight of the enemy’s crew the General saw that Gomez’s gloomy prophecy
+was only too true. The three men at each gun might have been bronze
+statues, standing like athletes, with their rugged features, their bare
+sinewy arms, men whom Death himself had scarcely thrown off their feet.
+
+The rest of the crew, well armed, active, light, and vigorous, also
+stood motionless. Toil had hardened, and the sun had deeply tanned,
+those energetic faces; their eyes glittered like sparks of fire with
+infernal glee and clear-sighted courage. Perfect silence on the upper
+deck, now black with men, bore abundant testimony to the rigorous
+discipline and strong will which held these fiends incarnate in check.
+
+The captain of the _Othello_ stood with folded arms at the foot of the
+main mast; he carried no weapons, but an axe lay on the deck beside him.
+His face was hidden by the shadow of a broad felt hat. The men looked
+like dogs crouching before their master. Gunners, soldiers, and ship’s
+crew turned their eyes first on his face, and then on the merchant
+vessel.
+
+The two brigs came up alongside, and the shock of contact roused the
+privateer captain from his musings; he spoke a word in the ear of the
+lieutenant who stood beside him.
+
+“Grappling-irons!” shouted the latter, and the _Othello_ grappled
+the _Saint-Ferdinand_ with miraculous quickness. The captain of the
+privateer gave his orders in a low voice to the lieutenant, who repeated
+them; the men, told off in succession for each duty, went on the upper
+deck of the _Saint-Ferdinand_, like seminarists going to mass. They
+bound crew and passengers hand and foot and seized the booty. In the
+twinkling of an eye, provisions and barrels full of piastres were
+transferred to the _Othello_; the General thought that he must be
+dreaming when he himself, likewise bound, was flung down on a bale of
+goods as if he had been part of the cargo.
+
+A brief conference took place between the captain of the privateer and
+his lieutenant and a sailor, who seemed to be the mate of the
+vessel; then the mate gave a whistle, and the men jumped on board
+the _Saint-Ferdinand_, and completely dismantled her with the nimble
+dexterity of a soldier who strips a dead comrade of a coveted overcoat
+and shoes.
+
+“It is all over with us,” said the Spanish captain coolly. He had eyed
+the three chiefs during their confabulation, and saw that the sailors
+were proceeding to pull his vessel to pieces.
+
+“Why so?” asked the General.
+
+“What would you have them do with us?” returned the Spaniard. “They
+have just come to the conclusion that they will scarcely sell the
+_Saint-Ferdinand_ in any French or Spanish port, so they are going to
+sink her to be rid of her. As for us, do you suppose that they will put
+themselves to the expense of feeding us, when they don’t know what port
+they are to put into?”
+
+The words were scarcely out of the captain’s mouth before a hideous
+outcry went up, followed by a dull splashing sound, as several bodies
+were thrown overboard. He turned, the four merchants were no longer to
+be seen, but eight ferocious-looking gunners were still standing with
+their arms raised above their heads. He shuddered.
+
+“What did I tell you?” the Spanish captain asked coolly.
+
+The Marquis rose to his feet with a spring. The surface of the sea was
+quite smooth again; he could not so much as see the place where his
+unhappy fellow-passengers had disappeared. By this time they were
+sinking down, bound hand and foot, below the waves, if, indeed, the fish
+had not devoured them already.
+
+Only a few paces away, the treacherous steersman and the sailor who had
+boasted of the Parisian’s power were fraternizing with the crew of the
+_Othello_, and pointing out those among their own number, who, in their
+opinion, were worthy to join the crew of the privateer. Then the boys
+tied the rest together by the feet in spite of frightful oaths. It
+was soon over; the eight gunners seized the doomed men and flung them
+overboard without more ado, watching the different ways in which the
+drowning victims met their death, their contortions, their last agony,
+with a sort of malignant curiosity, but with no sign of amusement,
+surprise, or pity. For them it was an ordinary event to which seemingly
+they were quite accustomed. The older men looked instead with grim, set
+smiles at the casks of piastres about the main mast.
+
+The General and Captain Gomez, left seated on a bale of goods, consulted
+each other with well-nigh hopeless looks; they were, in a sense, the
+sole survivors of the _Saint-Ferdinand_, for the seven men pointed out
+by the spies were transformed amid rejoicings into Peruvians.
+
+“What atrocious villains!” the General cried. Loyal and generous
+indignation silenced prudence and pain on his own account.
+
+“They do it because they must,” Gomez answered coolly. “If you came
+across one of those fellows, you would run him through the body, would
+you not?”
+
+The lieutenant now came up to the Spaniard.
+
+“Captain,” said he, “the Parisian has heard of you. He says that you
+are the only man who really knows the passages of the Antilles and the
+Brazilian coast. Will you--”
+
+The captain cut him short with a scornful exclamation.
+
+“I shall die like a sailor,” he said, “and a loyal Spaniard and a
+Christian. Do you hear?”
+
+“Heave him overboard!” shouted the lieutenant, and a couple of gunners
+seized on Gomez.
+
+“You cowards!” roared the General, seizing hold of the men.
+
+“Don’t get too excited, old boy,” said the lieutenant. “If your red
+ribbon has made some impression upon our captain, I myself do not care
+a rap for it.--You and I will have our little bit of talk together
+directly.”
+
+A smothered sound, with no accompanying cry, told the General that the
+gallant captain had died “like a sailor,” as he had said.
+
+“My money or death!” cried the Marquis, in a fit of rage terrible to
+see.
+
+“Ah! now you talk sensibly!” sneered the lieutenant. “That is the way to
+get something out of us----”
+
+Two of the men came up at a sign and hastened to bind the Frenchmen’s
+feet, but with unlooked-for boldness he snatched the lieutenant’s
+cutlass and laid about him like a cavalry officer who knows his
+business.
+
+“Brigands that you are! You shall not chuck one of Napoleon’s troopers
+over a ship’s side like an oyster!”
+
+At the sound of pistol shots fired point blank at the Frenchman,
+“the Parisian” looked round from his occupation of superintending the
+transfer of the rigging from the _Saint-Ferdinand_. He came up behind
+the brave General, seized him, dragged him to the side, and was about
+to fling him over with no more concern than if the man had been a broken
+spar. They were at the very edge when the General looked into the tawny
+eyes of the man who had stolen his daughter. The recognition was mutual.
+
+The captain of the privateer, his arm still upraised, suddenly swung it
+in the contrary direction as if his victim was but a feather weight, and
+set him down at the foot of the main mast. A murmur rose on the upper
+deck, but the captain glanced round, and there was a sudden silence.
+
+“This is Helene’s father,” said the captain in a clear, firm voice. “Woe
+to any one who meddles with him!”
+
+A hurrah of joy went up at the words, a shout rising to the sky like a
+prayer of the church; a cry like the first high notes of the _Te Deum_.
+The lads swung aloft in the rigging, the men below flung up their caps,
+the gunners pounded away on the deck, there was a general thrill of
+excitement, an outburst of oaths, yells, and shrill cries in voluble
+chorus. The men cheered like fanatics, the General’s misgivings
+deepened, and he grew uneasy; it seemed to him that there was some
+horrible mystery in such wild transports.
+
+“My daughter!” he cried, as soon as he could speak. “Where is my
+daughter?”
+
+For all answer, the captain of the privateer gave him a searching
+glance, one of those glances which throw the bravest man into a
+confusion which no theory can explain. The General was mute, not a
+little to the satisfaction of the crew; it pleased them to see their
+leader exercise the strange power which he possessed over all with whom
+he came in contact. Then the captain led the way down a staircase and
+flung open the door of a cabin.
+
+“There she is,” he said, and disappeared, leaving the General in a
+stupor of bewilderment at the scene before his eyes.
+
+Helene cried out at the sight of him, and sprang up from the sofa on
+which she was lying when the door flew open. So changed was she that
+none but a father’s eyes could have recognized her. The sun of the
+tropics had brought warmer tones into the once pale face, and something
+of Oriental charm with that wonderful coloring; there was a certain
+grandeur about her, a majestic firmness, a profound sentiment which
+impresses itself upon the coarsest nature. Her long, thick hair, falling
+in large curls about her queenly throat, gave an added idea of power
+to the proud face. The consciousness of that power shone out from every
+movement, every line of Helene’s form. The rose-tinted nostrils were
+dilated slightly with the joy of triumph; the serene happiness of her
+life had left its plain tokens in the full development of her beauty. A
+certain indefinable virginal grace met in her with the pride of a woman
+who is loved. This was a slave and a queen, a queen who would fain obey
+that she might reign.
+
+Her dress was magnificent and elegant in its richness; India muslin was
+the sole material, but her sofa and cushions were of cashmere. A Persian
+carpet covered the floor in the large cabin, and her four children
+playing at her feet were building castles of gems and pearl necklaces
+and jewels of price. The air was full of the scent of rare flowers in
+Sevres porcelain vases painted by Madame Jacotot; tiny South American
+birds, like living rubies, sapphires, and gold, hovered among the
+Mexican jessamines and camellias. A pianoforte had been fitted into the
+room, and here and there on the paneled walls, covered with red silk,
+hung small pictures by great painters--a _Sunset_ by Hippolyte Schinner
+beside a Terburg, one of Raphael’s Madonnas scarcely yielded in charm to
+a sketch by Gericault, while a Gerard Dow eclipsed the painters of the
+Empire. On a lacquered table stood a golden plate full of delicious
+fruit. Indeed, Helene might have been the sovereign lady of some great
+country, and this cabin of hers a boudoir in which her crowned lover
+had brought together all earth’s treasure to please his consort. The
+children gazed with bright, keen eyes at their grandfather. Accustomed
+as they were to a life of battle, storm, and tumult, they recalled the
+Roman children in David’s _Brutus_, watching the fighting and bloodshed
+with curious interest.
+
+“What! is it possible?” cried Helene, catching her father’s arm as if to
+assure herself that this was no vision.
+
+“Helene!”
+
+“Father!”
+
+They fell into each other’s arms, and the old man’s embrace was not so
+close and warm as Helene’s.
+
+“Were you on board that vessel?”
+
+“Yes,” he answered sadly, and looking at the little ones, who gathered
+about him and gazed with wide open eyes.
+
+“I was about to perish, but--”
+
+“But for my husband,” she broke in. “I see how it was.”
+
+“Ah!” cried the General, “why must I find you again like this, Helene?
+After all the many tears that I have shed, must I still groan for your
+fate?”
+
+“And why?” she asked, smiling. “Why should you be sorry to learn that I
+am the happiest woman under the sun?”
+
+“_Happy_?” he cried with a start of surprise.
+
+“Yes, happy, my kind father,” and she caught his hands in hers and
+covered them with kisses, and pressed them to her throbbing heart. Her
+caresses, and a something in the carriage of her head, were interpreted
+yet more plainly by the joy sparkling in her eyes.
+
+“And how is this?” he asked, wondering at his daughter’s life, forgetful
+now of everything but the bright glowing face before him.
+
+“Listen, father; I have for lover, husband, servant, and master one
+whose soul is as great as the boundless sea, as infinite in his kindness
+as heaven, a god on earth! Never during these seven years has a chance
+look, or word, or gesture jarred in the divine harmony of his talk,
+his love, his caresses. His eyes have never met mine without a gleam of
+happiness in them; there has always been a bright smile on his lips for
+me. On deck, his voice rises above the thunder of storms and the
+tumult of battle; but here below it is soft and melodious as Rossini’s
+music--for he has Rossini’s music sent for me. I have everything that
+woman’s caprice can imagine. My wishes are more than fulfilled. In
+short, I am a queen on the seas; I am obeyed here as perhaps a queen may
+be obeyed.--Ah!” she cried, interrupting herself, “_happy_ did I say?
+Happiness is no word to express such bliss as mine. All the happiness
+that should have fallen to all the women in the world has been my share.
+Knowing one’s own great love and self-devotion, to find in _his_
+heart an infinite love in which a woman’s soul is lost, and lost for
+ever--tell me, is this happiness? I have lived through a thousand lives
+even now. Here, I am alone; here, I command. No other woman has set foot
+on this noble vessel, and Victor is never more than a few paces distant
+from me,--he cannot wander further from me than from stern to prow,” she
+added, with a shade of mischief in her manner. “Seven years! A love
+that outlasts seven years of continual joy, that endures all the tests
+brought by all the moments that make up seven years--is this love? Oh,
+no, no! it is something better than all that I know of life... human
+language fails to express the bliss of heaven.”
+
+A sudden torrent of tears fell from her burning eyes. The four little
+ones raised a piteous cry at this, and flocked like chickens about their
+mother. The oldest boy struck the General with a threatening look.
+
+“Abel, darling,” said Helene, “I am crying for joy.”
+
+Helene took him on her knee, and the child fondled her, putting his arms
+about her queenly neck, as a lion’s whelp might play with the lioness.
+
+“Do you never weary of your life?” asked the General, bewildered by his
+daughter’s enthusiastic language.
+
+“Yes,” she said, “sometimes, when we are on land, yet even then I have
+never parted from my husband.”
+
+“But you need to be fond of music and balls and fetes.”
+
+“His voice is music for me; and for fetes, I devise new toilettes for
+him to see. When he likes my dress, it is as if all the world admired
+me. Simply for that reason I keep the diamonds and jewels, the precious
+things, the flowers and masterpieces of art that he heaps upon me,
+saying, ‘Helene, as you live out of the world, I will have the world
+come to you.’ But for that I would fling them all overboard.”
+
+“But there are others on board, wild, reckless men whose passions--”
+
+“I understand, father,” she said smiling. “Do not fear for me. Never
+was empress encompassed with more observance than I. The men are very
+superstitious; they look upon me as a sort of tutelary genius, the luck
+of the vessel. But _he_ is their god; they worship him. Once, and
+once only, one of the crew showed disrespect, mere words,” she added,
+laughing; “but before Victor knew of it, the others flung the offender
+overboard, although I forgave him. They love me as their good angel; I
+nurse them when they are ill; several times I have been so fortunate as
+to save a life, by constant care such as a woman can give. Poor fellows,
+they are giants, but they are children at the same time.”
+
+“And when there is fighting overhead?”
+
+“I am used to it now; I quaked for fear during the first engagement,
+but never since.--I am used to such peril, and--I am your daughter,” she
+said; “I love it.”
+
+“But how if he should fall?”
+
+“I should die with him.”
+
+“And your children?”
+
+“They are children of the sea and of danger; they share the life of
+their parents. We have but one life, and we do not flinch from it. We
+have but one life, our names are written on the same page of the book of
+Fate, one skiff bears us and our fortunes, and we know it.”
+
+“Do you so love him that he is more to you than all beside?”
+
+“All beside?” echoed she. “Let us leave that mystery alone. Yet stay!
+there is this dear little one--well, this too is _he_,” and straining
+Abel to her in a tight clasp, she set eager kisses on his cheeks and
+hair.
+
+“But I can never forget that he has just drowned nine men!” exclaimed
+the General.
+
+“There was no help for it, doubtless,” she said, “for he is generous and
+humane. He sheds as little blood as may be, and only in the interests of
+the little world which he defends, and the sacred cause for which he is
+fighting. Talk to him about anything that seems to you to be wrong, and
+he will convince you, you will see.”
+
+“There was that crime of his,” muttered the General to himself.
+
+“But how if that crime was a virtue?” she asked, with cold dignity. “How
+if man’s justice had failed to avenge a great wrong?”
+
+“But a private revenge!” exclaimed her father.
+
+“But what is hell,” she cried, “but a revenge through all eternity for
+the wrong done in a little day?”
+
+“Ah! you are lost! He has bewitched and perverted you. You are talking
+wildly.”
+
+“Stay with us one day, father, and if you will but listen to him, and
+see him, you will love him.”
+
+“Helene, France lies only a few leagues away,” he said gravely.
+
+Helene trembled; then she went to the porthole and pointed to the
+savannas of green water spreading far and wide.
+
+“There lies my country,” she said, tapping the carpet with her foot.
+
+“But are you not coming with me to see your mother and your sister and
+brothers?”
+
+“Oh! yes,” she cried, with tears in her voice, “if _he_ is willing, if
+he will come with me.”
+
+“So,” the General said sternly, “you have neither country nor kin now,
+Helene?”
+
+“I am his wife,” she answered proudly, and there was something very
+noble in her tone. “This is the first happiness in seven years that has
+not come to me through him,” she said--then, as she caught her father’s
+hand and kissed it--“and this is the first word of reproach that I have
+heard.”
+
+“And your conscience?”
+
+“My conscience; he is my conscience!” she cried, trembling from head to
+foot. “Here he is! Even in the thick of a fight I can tell his footstep
+among all the others on deck,” she cried.
+
+A sudden crimson flushed her cheeks and glowed in her features, her eyes
+lighted up, her complexion changed to velvet whiteness, there was joy
+and love in every fibre, in the blue veins, in the unconscious trembling
+of her whole frame. That quiver of the sensitive plant softened the
+General.
+
+It was as she had said. The captain came in, sat down in an easy-chair,
+took up his oldest boy, and began to play with him. There was a moment’s
+silence, for the General’s deep musing had grown vague and dreamy, and
+the daintily furnished cabin and the playing children seemed like a nest
+of halcyons, floating on the waves, between sky and sea, safe in the
+protection of this man who steered his way amid the perils of war and
+tempest, as other heads of household guide those in their care among
+the hazards of common life. He gazed admiringly at Helene--a dreamlike
+vision of some sea goddess, gracious in her loveliness, rich in
+happiness; all the treasures about her grown poor in comparison with
+the wealth of her nature, paling before the brightness of her eyes, the
+indefinable romance expressed in her and her surroundings.
+
+The strangeness of the situation took the General by surprise; the ideas
+of ordinary life were thrown into confusion by this lofty passion and
+reasoning. Chill and narrow social conventions faded away before this
+picture. All these things the old soldier felt, and saw no less how
+impossible it was that his daughter should give up so wide a life, a
+life so variously rich, filled to the full with such passionate love.
+And Helene had tasted danger without shrinking; how could she return to
+the pretty stage, the superficial circumscribed life of society?
+
+It was the captain who broke the silence at last.
+
+“Am I in the way?” he asked, looking at his wife.
+
+“No,” said the General, answering for her. “Helene has told me all. I
+see that she is lost to us--”
+
+“No,” the captain put in quickly; “in a few years’ time the statute of
+limitations will allow me to go back to France. When the conscience
+is clear, and a man has broken the law in obedience to----” he stopped
+short, as if scorning to justify himself.
+
+“How can you commit new murders, such as I have seen with my own eyes,
+without remorse?”
+
+“We had no provisions,” the privateer captain retorted calmly.
+
+“But if you had set the men ashore--”
+
+“They would have given the alarm and sent a man-of-war after us, and we
+should never have seen Chili again.”
+
+“Before France would have given warning to the Spanish admiralty--”
+ began the General.
+
+“But France might take it amiss that a man, with a warrant still out
+against him, should seize a brig chartered by Bordeaux merchants. And
+for that matter, have you never fired a shot or so too many in battle?”
+
+The General shrank under the other’s eyes. He said no more, and his
+daughter looked at him half sadly, half triumphant.
+
+“General,” the privateer continued, in a deep voice, “I have made it
+a rule to abstract nothing from booty. But even so, my share will be
+beyond a doubt far larger than your fortune. Permit me to return it to
+you in another form--”
+
+He drew a pile of banknotes from the piano, and without counting the
+packets handed a million of francs to the Marquis.
+
+“You can understand,” he said, “that I cannot spend my time in watching
+vessels pass by to Bordeaux. So unless the dangers of this Bohemian
+life of ours have some attraction for you, unless you care to see South
+America and the nights of the tropics, and a bit of fighting now and
+again for the pleasure of helping to win a triumph for a young nation,
+or for the name of Simon Bolivar, we must part. The long boat manned
+with a trustworthy crew is ready for you. And now let us hope that our
+third meeting will be completely happy.”
+
+“Victor,” said Helene in a dissatisfied tone, “I should like to see a
+little more of my father.”
+
+“Ten minutes more or less may bring up a French frigate. However, so be
+it, we shall have a little fun. The men find things dull.”
+
+“Oh, father, go!” cried Helene, “and take these keepsakes from me to my
+sister and brothers and--mother,” she added. She caught up a handful of
+jewels and precious stones, folded them in an Indian shawl, and timidly
+held it out.
+
+“But what shall I say to them from you?” asked he. Her hesitation on the
+word “mother” seemed to have struck him.
+
+“Oh! can you doubt me? I pray for their happiness every day.”
+
+“Helene,” he began, as he watched her closely, “how if we should not
+meet again? Shall I never know why you left us?”
+
+“That secret is not mine,” she answered gravely. “Even if I had the
+right to tell it, perhaps I should not. For ten years I was more
+miserable than words can say--”
+
+She broke off, and gave her father the presents for her family. The
+General had acquired tolerably easy views as to booty in the course of
+a soldier’s career, so he took Helene’s gifts and comforted himself with
+the reflection that the Parisian captain was sure to wage war against
+the Spaniards as an honorable man, under the influence of Helene’s pure
+and high-minded nature. His passion for courage carried all before it.
+It was ridiculous, he thought, to be squeamish in the matter; so he
+shook hands cordially with his captor, and kissed Helene, his only
+daughter, with a soldier’s expansiveness; letting fall a tear on the
+face with the proud, strong look that once he had loved to see. “The
+Parisian,” deeply moved, brought the children for his blessing. The
+parting was over, the last good-bye was a long farewell look, with
+something of tender regret on either side.
+
+
+
+A strange sight to seaward met the General’s eyes. The _Saint-Ferdinand_
+was blazing like a huge bonfire. The men told off to sink the Spanish
+brig had found a cargo of rum on board; and as the _Othello_ was already
+amply supplied, had lighted a floating bowl of punch on the high seas,
+by way of a joke; a pleasantry pardonable enough in sailors, who hail
+any chance excitement as a relief from the apparent monotony of life
+at sea. As the General went over the side into the long-boat of the
+_Saint-Ferdinand_, manned by six vigorous rowers, he could not help
+looking at the burning vessel, as well as at the daughter who stood by
+her husband’s side on the stern of the _Othello_. He saw Helene’s white
+dress flutter like one more sail in the breeze; he saw the tall, noble
+figure against a background of sea, queenly still even in the presence
+of Ocean; and so many memories crowded up in his mind, that, with a
+soldier’s recklessness of life, he forgot that he was being borne over
+the grave of the brave Gomez.
+
+A vast column of smoke rising spread like a brown cloud, pierced here
+and there by fantastic shafts of sunlight. It was a second sky, a murky
+dome reflecting the glow of the fire as if the under surface had been
+burnished; but above it soared the unchanging blue of the firmament, a
+thousand times fairer for the short-lived contrast. The strange hues
+of the smoke cloud, black and red, tawny and pale by turns, blurred
+and blending into each other, shrouded the burning vessel as it flared,
+crackled and groaned; the hissing tongues of flame licked up the
+rigging, and flashed across the hull, like a rumor of riot flashing
+along the streets of a city. The burning rum sent up blue flitting
+lights. Some sea god might have been stirring the furious liquor as
+a student stirs the joyous flames of punch in an orgy. But in the
+overpowering sunlight, jealous of the insolent blaze, the colors were
+scarcely visible, and the smoke was but a film fluttering like a thin
+scarf in the noonday torrent of light and heat.
+
+The _Othello_ made the most of the little wind she could gain to fly
+on her new course. Swaying first to one side, then to the other, like a
+stag beetle on the wing, the fair vessel beat to windward on her zigzag
+flight to the south. Sometimes she was hidden from sight by the straight
+column of smoke that flung fantastic shadows across the water, then
+gracefully she shot out clear of it, and Helene, catching sight of her
+father, waved her handkerchief for yet one more farewell greeting.
+
+A few more minutes, and the _Saint-Ferdinand_ went down with a bubbling
+turmoil, at once effaced by the ocean. Nothing of all that had been
+was left but a smoke cloud hanging in the breeze. The _Othello_ was far
+away, the long-boat had almost reached land, the cloud came between
+the frail skiff and the brig, and it was through a break in the swaying
+smoke that the General caught the last glimpse of Helene. A prophetic
+vision! Her dress and her white handkerchief stood out against the murky
+background. Then the brig was not even visible between the green water
+and the blue sky, and Helene was nothing but an imperceptible speck, a
+faint graceful line, an angel in heaven, a mental image, a memory.
+
+The Marquis had retrieved his fortunes, when he died, worn out with
+toil. A few months after his death, in 1833, the Marquise was obliged to
+take Moina to a watering-place in the Pyrenees, for the capricious child
+had a wish to see the beautiful mountain scenery. They left the baths,
+and the following tragical incident occurred on their way home.
+
+“Dear me, mother,” said Moina, “it was very foolish of us not to stay
+among the mountains a few days longer. It was much nicer there. Did
+you hear that horrid child moaning all night, and that wretched woman,
+gabbling away in patois no doubt, for I could not understand a single
+word she said. What kind of people can they have put in the next room to
+ours? This is one of the horridest nights I have ever spent in my life.”
+
+“I heard nothing,” said the Marquise, “but I will see the landlady,
+darling, and engage the next room, and then we shall have the whole
+suite of rooms to ourselves, and there will be no more noise. How do you
+feel this morning? Are you tired?”
+
+As she spoke, the Marquise rose and went to Moina’s bedside.
+
+“Let us see,” she said, feeling for the girl’s hand.
+
+“Oh! let me alone, mother,” said Moina; “your fingers are cold.”
+
+She turned her head round on the pillow as she spoke, pettishly, but
+with such engaging grace, that a mother could scarcely have taken it
+amiss. Just then a wailing cry echoed through the next room, a faint
+prolonged cry, that must surely have gone to the heart of any woman who
+heard it.
+
+“Why, if you heard _that_ all night long, why did you not wake me? We
+should have--”
+
+A deeper moan than any that had gone before it interrupted the Marquise.
+
+“Some one is dying there,” she cried, and hurried out of the room.
+
+“Send Pauline to me!” called Moina. “I shall get up and dress.”
+
+The Marquise hastened downstairs, and found the landlady in the
+courtyard with a little group about her, apparently much interested in
+something that she was telling them.
+
+“Madame, you have put some one in the next room who seems to be very ill
+indeed--”
+
+“Oh! don’t talk to me about it!” cried the mistress of the house. “I
+have just sent some one for the mayor. Just imagine it; it is a woman,
+a poor unfortunate creature that came here last night on foot. She comes
+from Spain; she has no passport and no money; she was carrying her baby
+on her back, and the child was dying. I could not refuse to take her
+in. I went up to see her this morning myself; for when she turned up
+yesterday, it made me feel dreadfully bad to look at her. Poor soul!
+she and the child were lying in bed, and both of them at death’s door.
+‘Madame,’ says she, pulling a gold ring off her finger, ‘this is all
+that I have left; take it in payment, it will be enough; I shall not
+stay here long. Poor little one! we shall die together soon!’ she said,
+looking at the child. I took her ring, and I asked her who she was, but
+she never would tell me her name.... I have just sent for the doctor and
+M. le Maire.”
+
+“Why, you must do all that can be done for her,” cried the Marquise.
+“Good heavens! perhaps it is not too late! I will pay for everything
+that is necessary----”
+
+“Ah! my lady, she looks to me uncommonly proud, and I don’t know that
+she would allow it.”
+
+“I will go to see her at once.”
+
+The Marquise went up forthwith to the stranger’s room, without thinking
+of the shock that the sight of her widow’s weeds might give to a woman
+who was said to be dying. At the sight of that dying woman the Marquise
+turned pale. In spite of the changes wrought by fearful suffering in
+Helene’s beautiful face, she recognized her eldest daughter.
+
+But Helene, when she saw a woman dressed in black, sat upright in bed
+with a shriek of horror. Then she sank back; she knew her mother.
+
+“My daughter,” said Mme. d’Aiglemont, “what is to be done? Pauline!...
+Moina!...”
+
+“Nothing now for me,” said Helene faintly. “I had hoped to see my father
+once more, but your mourning--” she broke off, clutched her child to her
+heart as if to give it warmth, and kissed its forehead. Then she turned
+her eyes on her mother, and the Marquise met the old reproach in them,
+tempered with forgiveness, it is true, but still reproach. She saw it,
+and would not see it. She forgot that Helene was the child conceived
+amid tears and despair, the child of duty, the cause of one of the
+greatest sorrows in her life. She stole to her eldest daughter’s side,
+remembering nothing but that Helene was her firstborn, the child who had
+taught her to know the joys of motherhood. The mother’s eyes were full
+of tears. “Helene, my child!...” she cried, with her arms about her
+daughter.
+
+Helene was silent. Her own babe had just drawn its last breath on her
+breast.
+
+Moina came into the room with Pauline, her maid, and the landlady and
+the doctor. The Marquise was holding her daughter’s ice-cold hand in
+both of hers, and gazing at her in despair; but the widowed woman, who
+had escaped shipwreck with but one of all her fair band of children,
+spoke in a voice that was dreadful to hear. “All this is your work,” she
+said. “If you had but been for me all that--”
+
+“Moina, go! Go out of the room, all of you!” cried Mme. d’Aiglemont, her
+shrill tones drowning Helene’s voice.--“For pity’s sake,” she continued,
+“let us not begin these miserable quarrels again now----”
+
+“I will be silent,” Helene answered with a preternatural effort. “I am a
+mother; I know that Moina ought not... Where is my child?”
+
+Moina came back, impelled by curiosity.
+
+“Sister,” said the spoiled child, “the doctor--”
+
+“It is all of no use,” said Helene. “Oh! why did I not die as a girl of
+sixteen when I meant to take my own life? There is no happiness outside
+the laws. Moina... you...”
+
+Her head sank till her face lay against the face of the little one; in
+her agony she strained her babe to her breast, and died.
+
+“Your sister, Moina,” said Mme. d’Aiglemont, bursting into tears when
+she reached her room, “your sister meant no doubt to tell you that a
+girl will never find happiness in a romantic life, in living as nobody
+else does, and, above all things, far away from her mother.”
+
+
+
+
+VI. THE OLD AGE OF A GUILTY MOTHER
+
+It was one of the earliest June days of the year 1844. A lady of fifty
+or thereabouts, for she looked older than her actual age, was pacing up
+and down one of the sunny paths in the garden of a great mansion in
+the Rue Plument in Paris. It was noon. The lady took two or three turns
+along the gently winding garden walk, careful never to lose sight of a
+certain row of windows, to which she seemed to give her whole attention;
+then she sat down on a bench, a piece of elegant semi-rusticity made of
+branches with the bark left on the wood. From the place where she sat
+she could look through the garden railings along the inner boulevards to
+the wonderful dome of the Invalides rising above the crests of a
+forest of elm-trees, and see the less striking view of her own grounds
+terminating in the gray stone front of one of the finest hotels in the
+Faubourg Saint-Germain.
+
+Silence lay over the neighboring gardens, and the boulevards stretching
+away to the Invalides. Day scarcely begins at noon in that aristocratic
+quarter, and masters and servants are all alike asleep, or just
+awakening, unless some young lady takes it into her head to go for an
+early ride, or a gray-headed diplomatist rises betimes to redraft a
+protocol.
+
+The elderly lady stirring abroad at that hour was the Marquise
+d’Aiglemont, the mother of Mme. de Saint-Hereen, to whom the great house
+belonged. The Marquise had made over the mansion and almost her whole
+fortune to her daughter, reserving only an annuity for herself.
+
+The Comtesse Moina de Saint-Hereen was Mme. d’Aiglemont’s youngest
+child. The Marquise had made every sacrifice to marry her daughter to
+the eldest son of one of the greatest houses of France; and this was
+only what might have been expected, for the lady had lost her sons,
+first one and then the other. Gustave, Marquis d’Aiglemont, had died of
+the cholera; Abel, the second, had fallen in Algeria. Gustave had left
+a widow and children, but the dowager’s affection for her sons had
+been only moderately warm, and for the next generation it was decidedly
+tepid. She was always civil to her daughter-in-law, but her feeling
+towards the young Marquise was the distinctly conventional affection
+which good taste and good manners require us to feel for our relatives.
+The fortunes of her dead children having been settled, she could devote
+her savings and her own property to her darling Moina.
+
+Moina, beautiful and fascinating from childhood, was Mme. d’Aiglemont’s
+favorite; loved beyond all the others with an instinctive or involuntary
+love, a fatal drawing of the heart, which sometimes seems inexplicable,
+sometimes, and to a close observer, only too easy to explain. Her
+darling’s pretty face, the sound of Moina’s voice, her ways, her manner,
+her looks and gestures, roused all the deepest emotions that can stir
+a mother’s heart with trouble, rapture, or delight. The springs of the
+Marquise’s life, of yesterday, to-morrow, and to-day, lay in that young
+heart. Moina, with better fortune, had survived four older children.
+As a matter of fact, Mme. d’Aiglemont had lost her eldest daughter, a
+charming girl, in a most unfortunate manner, said gossip, nobody knew
+exactly what became of her; and then she lost a little boy of five by a
+dreadful accident.
+
+The child of her affections had, however, been spared to her, and
+doubtless the Marquise saw the will of Heaven in that fact; for those
+who had died, she kept but very shadowy recollections in some far-off
+corner of her heart; her memories of her dead children were like the
+headstones on a battlefield, you can scarcely see them for the flowers
+that have sprung up about them since. Of course, if the world had
+chosen, it might have said some hard truths about the Marquise, might
+have taken her to task for shallowness and an overweening preference for
+one child at the expense of the rest; but the world of Paris is swept
+along by the full flood of new events, new ideas, and new fashions, and
+it was inevitable the Mme. d’Aiglemont should be in some sort allowed
+to drop out of sight. So nobody thought of blaming her for coldness
+or neglect which concerned no one, whereas her quick, apprehensive
+tenderness for Moina was found highly interesting by not a few who
+respected it as a sort of superstition. Besides, the Marquise scarcely
+went into society at all; and the few families who knew her thought of
+her as a kindly, gentle, indulgent woman, wholly devoted to her family.
+What but a curiosity, keen indeed, would seek to pry beneath the surface
+with which the world is quite satisfied? And what would we not pardon
+to old people, if only they will efface themselves like shadows, and
+consent to be regarded as memories and nothing more!
+
+Indeed, Mme. d’Aiglemont became a kind of example complacently held up
+by the younger generation to fathers of families, and frequently cited
+to mothers-in-law. She had made over her property to Moina in her own
+lifetime; the young Countess’ happiness was enough for her, she only
+lived in her daughter. If some cautious old person or morose uncle here
+and there condemned the course with--“Perhaps Mme. d’Aiglemont may be
+sorry some day that she gave up her fortune to her daughter; she may
+be sure of Moina, but how can she be equally sure of her
+son-in-law?”--these prophets were cried down on all sides, and from all
+sides a chorus of praise went up for Moina.
+
+“It ought to be said, in justice to Mme. de Saint-Hereen, that her
+mother cannot feel the slightest difference,” remarked a young married
+woman. “Mme. d’Aiglemont is admirably well housed. She has a carriage at
+her disposal, and can go everywhere just as she used to do--”
+
+“Except to the Italiens,” remarked a low voice. (This was an elderly
+parasite, one of those persons who show their independence--as they
+think--by riddling their friends with epigrams.) “Except to the
+Italiens. And if the dowager cares for anything on this earth but her
+daughter--it is music. Such a good performer she was in her time! But
+the Countess’ box is always full of young butterflies, and the Countess’
+mother would be in the way; the young lady is talked about already as a
+great flirt. So the poor mother never goes to the Italiens.”
+
+“Mme. de Saint-Hereen has delightful ‘At Homes’ for her mother,” said a
+rosebud. “All Paris goes to her salon.
+
+“And no one pays any attention to the Marquise,” returned the parasite.
+
+“The fact is that Mme. d’Aiglemont is never alone,” remarked a coxcomb,
+siding with the young women.
+
+“In the morning,” the old observer continued in a discreet voice, “in
+the morning dear Moina is asleep. At four o’clock dear Moina drives
+in the Bois. In the evening dear Moina goes to a ball or to the
+Bouffes.--Still, it is certainly true that Mme. d’Aiglemont has the
+privilege of seeing her dear daughter while she dresses, and again at
+dinner, if dear Moina happens to dine with her mother. Not a week ago,
+sir,” continued the elderly person, laying his hand on the arm of the
+shy tutor, a new arrival in the house, “not a week ago, I saw the poor
+mother, solitary and sad, by her own fireside.--‘What is the matter?’ I
+asked. The Marquise looked up smiling, but I am quite sure that she had
+been crying.--‘I was thinking that it is a strange thing that I should
+be left alone when I have had five children,’ she said, ‘but that is
+our destiny! And besides, I am happy when I know that Moina is enjoying
+herself.’--She could say that to me, for I knew her husband when he was
+alive. A poor stick he was, and uncommonly lucky to have such a wife; it
+was certainly owing to her that he was made a peer of France, and had a
+place at Court under Charles X.”
+
+Yet such mistaken ideas get about in social gossip, and such mischief
+is done by it, that the historian of manners is bound to exercise his
+discretion, and weigh the assertions so recklessly made. After all, who
+is to say that either mother or daughter was right or wrong? There is
+but One who can read and judge their hearts! And how often does He wreak
+His vengeance in the family circle, using throughout all time children
+as His instruments against their mothers, and fathers against their
+sons, raising up peoples against kings, and princes against peoples,
+sowing strife and division everywhere? And in the world of ideas, are
+not opinions and feelings expelled by new feelings and opinions, much
+as withered leaves are thrust forth by the young leaf-buds in the
+spring?--all in obedience to the immutable Scheme; all to some end which
+God alone knows. Yet, surely, all things proceed to Him, or rather, to
+Him all things return.
+
+Such thoughts of religion, the natural thoughts of age, floated up
+now and again on the current of Mme. d’Aiglemont’s thoughts; they were
+always dimly present in her mind, but sometimes they shone out clearly,
+sometimes they were carried under, like flowers tossed on the vexed
+surface of a stormy sea.
+
+She sat on a garden-seat, tired with walking, exhausted with much
+thinking--with the long thoughts in which a whole lifetime rises up
+before the mind, and is spread out like a scroll before the eyes of
+those who feel that Death is near.
+
+If a poet had chanced to pass along the boulevard, he would have found
+an interesting picture in the face of this woman, grown old before her
+time. As she sat under the dotted shadow of the acacia, the shadow the
+acacia casts at noon, a thousand thoughts were written for all the world
+to see on her features, pale and cold even in the hot, bright sunlight.
+There was something sadder than the sense of waning life in that
+expressive face, some trouble that went deeper than the weariness of
+experience. It was a face of a type that fixes you in a moment among a
+host of characterless faces that fail to draw a second glance, a face
+to set you thinking. Among a thousand pictures in a gallery, you are
+strongly impressed by the sublime anguish on the face of some Madonna
+of Murillo’s; by some _Beatrice Cenci_ in which Guido’s art portrays the
+most touching innocence against a background of horror and crime; by the
+awe and majesty that should encircle a king, caught once and for ever
+by Velasquez in the sombre face of a Philip II., and so is it with some
+living human faces; they are tyrannous pictures which speak to you,
+submit you to searching scrutiny, and give response to your inmost
+thoughts, nay, there are faces that set forth a whole drama, and Mme.
+d’Aiglemont’s stony face was one of these awful tragedies, one of such
+faces as Dante Alighieri saw by thousands in his vision.
+
+For the little season that a woman’s beauty is in flower it serves her
+admirably well in the dissimulation to which her natural weakness and
+our social laws condemn her. A young face and rich color, and eyes that
+glow with light, a gracious maze of such subtle, manifold lines and
+curves, flawless and perfectly traced, is a screen that hides everything
+that stirs the woman within. A flush tells nothing, it only heightens
+the coloring so brilliant already; all the fires that burn within
+can add little light to the flame of life in eyes which only seem the
+brighter for the flash of a passing pain. Nothing is so discreet as a
+young face, for nothing is less mobile; it has the serenity, the surface
+smoothness, and the freshness of a lake. There is not character in
+women’s faces before the age of thirty. The painter discovers nothing
+there but pink and white, and the smile and expression that repeat the
+same thought in the same way--a thought of youth and love that goes no
+further than youth and love. But the face of an old woman has expressed
+all that lay in her nature; passion has carved lines on her features;
+love and wifehood and motherhood, and extremes of joy and anguish,
+having wrung them, and left their traces in a thousand wrinkles, all
+of which speak a language of their own; then it is that a woman’s face
+becomes sublime in its horror, beautiful in its melancholy, grand in its
+calm. If it is permissible to carry the strange metaphor still further,
+it might be said that in the dried-up lake you can see the traces of
+all the torrents that once poured into it and made it what it is. An old
+face is nothing to the frivolous world; the frivolous world is shocked
+by the sight of the destruction of such comeliness as it can understand;
+a commonplace artist sees nothing there. An old face is the province of
+the poets among poets of those who can recognize that something which
+is called Beauty, apart from all the conventions underlying so many
+superstitions in art and taste.
+
+
+
+Though Mme. d’Aiglemont wore a fashionable bonnet, it was easy to see
+that her once black hair had been bleached by cruel sorrows; yet her
+good taste and the gracious acquired instincts of a woman of fashion
+could be seen in the way she wore it, divided into two _bandeaux_,
+following the outlines of a forehead that still retained some traces of
+former dazzling beauty, worn and lined though it was. The contours
+of her face, the regularity of her features, gave some idea, faint in
+truth, of that beauty of which surely she had once been proud; but those
+traces spoke still more plainly of the anguish which had laid it waste,
+of sharp pain that had withered the temples, and made those hollows in
+her cheeks, and empurpled the eyelids, and robbed them of their lashes,
+and the eyes of their charm. She was in every way so noiseless; she
+moved with a slow, self-contained gravity that showed itself in her
+whole bearing, and struck a certain awe into others. Her diffident
+manner had changed to positive shyness, due apparently to a habit now of
+some years’ growth, of effacing herself in her daughter’s presence. She
+spoke very seldom, and in the low tones used by those who perforce must
+live within themselves a life of reflection and concentration. This
+demeanor led others to regard her with an indefinable feeling which was
+neither awe nor compassion, but a mysterious blending of the many ideas
+awakened in us by compassion and awe. Finally, there was something in
+her wrinkles, in the lines of her face, in the look of pain in those
+wan eyes of hers, that bore eloquent testimony to tears that never had
+fallen, tears that had been absorbed by her heart. Unhappy creatures,
+accustomed to raise their eyes to heaven, in mute appeal against the
+bitterness of their lot, would have seen at once from her eyes that she
+was broken in to the cruel discipline of ceaseless prayer, would have
+discerned the almost imperceptible symptoms of the secret bruises which
+destroy all the flowers of the soul, even the sentiment of motherhood.
+
+Painters have colors for these portraits, but words, and the mental
+images called up by words, fail to reproduce such impressions
+faithfully; there are mysterious signs and tokens in the tones of the
+coloring and in the look of human faces, which the mind only seizes
+through the sense of sight; and the poet is fain to record the tale
+of the events which wrought the havoc to make their terrible ravages
+understood.
+
+The face spoke of cold and steady storm, an inward conflict between a
+mother’s long-suffering and the limitations of our nature, for our human
+affections are bounded by our humanity, and the infinite has no place
+in finite creatures. Sorrow endured in silence had at last produced an
+indefinable morbid something in this woman. Doubtless mental anguish had
+reacted on the physical frame, and some disease, perhaps an aneurism,
+was undermining Julie’s life. Deep-seated grief lies to all appearance
+very quietly in the depths where it is conceived, yet, so still and
+apparently dormant as it is, it ceaselessly corrodes the soul, like the
+terrible acid which eats away crystal.
+
+Two tears made their way down the Marquise’s cheeks; she rose to her
+feet as if some thought more poignant than any that preceded it had cut
+her to the quick. She had doubtless come to a conclusion as to Moina’s
+future; and now, foreseeing clearly all the troubles in store for her
+child, the sorrows of her own unhappy life had begun to weigh once
+more upon her. The key of her position must be sought in her daughter’s
+situation.
+
+The Comte de Saint-Hereen had been away for nearly six months on a
+political mission. The Countess, whether from sheer giddiness, or in
+obedience to the countless instincts of woman’s coquetry, or to essay
+its power--with all the vanity of a frivolous fine lady, all the
+capricious waywardness of a child--was amusing herself, during her
+husband’s absence, by playing with the passion of a clever but heartless
+man, distracted (so he said) with love, the love that combines readily
+with every petty social ambition of a self-conceited coxcomb. Mme.
+d’Aiglemont, whose long experience had given her a knowledge of life,
+and taught her to judge of men and to dread the world, watched the
+course of this flirtation, and saw that it could only end in one way,
+if her daughter should fall into the hands of an utterly unscrupulous
+intriguer. How could it be other than a terrible thought for her that
+her daughter listened willingly to this _roue_? Her darling stood on the
+brink of a precipice, she felt horribly sure of it, yet dared not hold
+her back. She was afraid of the Countess. She knew too that Moina would
+not listen to her wise warnings; she knew that she had no influence
+over that nature--iron for her, silken-soft for all others. Her mother’s
+tenderness might have led her to sympathize with the troubles of a
+passion called forth by the nobler qualities of a lover, but this was
+no passion--it was coquetry, and the Marquise despised Alfred de
+Vandenesse, knowing that he had entered upon this flirtation with Moina
+as if it were a game of chess.
+
+But if Alfred de Vandenesse made her shudder with disgust, she was
+obliged--unhappy mother!--to conceal the strongest reason for her
+loathing in the deepest recesses of her heart. She was on terms of
+intimate friendship with the Marquis de Vandenesse, the young man’s
+father; and this friendship, a respectable one in the eyes of the world,
+excused the son’s constant presence in the house, he professing an old
+attachment, dating from childhood, for Mme. de Saint-Hereen. More than
+this, in vain did Mme. d’Aiglemont nerve herself to come between Moina
+and Alfred de Vandenesse with a terrible word, knowing beforehand that
+she should not succeed; knowing that the strong reason which ought to
+separate them would carry no weight; that she should humiliate herself
+vainly in her daughter’s eyes. Alfred was too corrupt; Moina too clever
+to believe the revelation; the young Countess would turn it off and
+treat it as a piece of maternal strategy. Mme. d’Aiglemont had built
+her prison walls with her own hands; she had immured herself only to
+see Moina’s happiness ruined thence before she died; she was to look on
+helplessly at the ruin of the young life which had been her pride and
+joy and comfort, a life a thousand times dearer to her than her
+own. What words can describe anguish so hideous beyond belief, such
+unfathomed depths of pain?
+
+She waited for Moina to rise, with the impatience and sickening dread
+of a doomed man, who longs to have done with life, and turns cold at the
+thought of the headsman. She had braced herself for a last effort, but
+perhaps the prospect of the certain failure of the attempt was less
+dreadful to her than the fear of receiving yet again one of those
+thrusts that went to her very heart--before that fear her courage ebbed
+away. Her mother’s love had come to this. To love her child, to be
+afraid of her, to shrink from the thought of the stab, yet to go
+forward. So great is a mother’s affection in a loving nature, that
+before it can fade away into indifference the mother herself must die
+or find support in some great power without her, in religion or another
+love. Since the Marquise rose that morning, her fatal memory had called
+up before her some of those things, so slight to all appearance, that
+make landmarks in a life. Sometimes, indeed, a whole tragedy grows out
+of a single gesture; the tone in which a few words were spoken rends a
+whole life in two; a glance into indifferent eyes is the deathblow of
+the gladdest love; and, unhappily, such gestures and such words were
+only too familiar to Mme. d’Aiglemont--she had met so many glances that
+wound the soul. No, there was nothing in those memories to bid her hope.
+On the contrary, everything went to show that Alfred had destroyed her
+hold on her daughter’s heart, that the thought of her was now associated
+with duty--not with gladness. In ways innumerable, in things that were
+mere trifles in themselves, the Countess’ detestable conduct rose
+up before her mother; and the Marquise, it may be, looked on Moina’s
+undutifulness as a punishment, and found excuses for her daughter in the
+will of Heaven, that so she still might adore the hand that smote her.
+
+All these things passed through her memory that morning, and each
+recollection wounded her afresh so sorely, that with a very little
+additional pain her brimming cup of bitterness must have overflowed. A
+cold look might kill her.
+
+The little details of domestic life are difficult to paint; but one or
+two perhaps will suffice to give an idea of the rest.
+
+The Marquise d’Aiglemont, for instance, had grown rather deaf, but she
+could never induce Moina to raise her voice for her. Once, with the
+naivete of suffering, she had begged Moina to repeat some remark which
+she had failed to catch, and Moina obeyed, but with so bad a grace, the
+Mme. d’Aiglemont had never permitted herself to make her modest request
+again. Ever since that day when Moina was talking or retailing a
+piece of news, her mother was careful to come near to listen; but this
+infirmity of deafness appeared to put the Countess out of patience,
+and she would grumble thoughtlessly about it. This instance is one
+from among very many that must have gone to the mother’s heart; and yet
+nearly all of them might have escaped a close observer, they consisted
+in faint shades of manner invisible to any but a woman’s eyes. Take
+another example. Mme. d’Aiglemont happened to say one day that the
+Princesse de Cadignan had called upon her. “Did she come to see _you_!”
+ Moina exclaimed. That was all, but the Countess’ voice and manner
+expressed surprise and well-bred contempt in semitones. Any heart,
+still young and sensitive, might well have applauded the philanthropy of
+savage tribes who kill off their old people when they grow too feeble
+to cling to a strongly shaken bough. Mme. d’Aiglemont rose smiling, and
+went away to weep alone.
+
+Well-bred people, and women especially, only betray their feelings
+by imperceptible touches; but those who can look back over their own
+experience on such bruises as this mother’s heart received, know also
+how the heart-strings vibrate to these light touches. Overcome by her
+memories, Mme. d’Aiglemont recollected one of those microscopically
+small things, so stinging and so painful was it that never till this
+moment had she felt all the heartless contempt that lurked beneath
+smiles.
+
+At the sound of shutters thrown back at her daughter’s windows, she
+dried her tears, and hastened up the pathway by the railings. As she
+went, it struck her that the gardener had been unusually careful to rake
+the sand along the walk which had been neglected for some little time.
+As she stood under her daughter’s windows, the shutters were hastily
+closed.
+
+“Moina, is it you?” she asked.
+
+No answer.
+
+The Marquise went on into the house.
+
+“Mme. la Comtesse is in the little drawing-room,” said the maid, when
+the Marquise asked whether Mme. de Saint-Hereen had finished dressing.
+
+Mme. d’Aiglemont hurried to the little drawing-room; her heart was too
+full, her brain too busy to notice matters so slight; but there on the
+sofa sat the Countess in her loose morning-gown, her hair in disorder
+under the cap tossed carelessly on he head, her feet thrust into
+slippers. The key of her bedroom hung at her girdle. Her face, aglow
+with color, bore traces of almost stormy thought.
+
+“What makes people come in!” she cried, crossly. “Oh! it is you,
+mother,” she interrupted herself, with a preoccupied look.
+
+“Yes, child; it is your mother----”
+
+Something in her tone turned those words into an outpouring of the
+heart, the cry of some deep inward feeling, only to be described by the
+word “holy.” So thoroughly in truth had she rehabilitated the sacred
+character of a mother, that her daughter was impressed, and turned
+towards her, with something of awe, uneasiness, and remorse in her
+manner. The room was the furthest of a suite, and safe from indiscreet
+intrusion, for no one could enter it without giving warning of approach
+through the previous apartments. The Marquise closed the door.
+
+“It is my duty, my child, to warn you in one of the most serious crises
+in the lives of us women; you have perhaps reached it unconsciously, and
+I am come to speak to you as a friend rather than as a mother. When you
+married, you acquired freedom of action; you are only accountable to
+your husband now; but I asserted my authority so little (perhaps I was
+wrong), that I think I have a right to expect you to listen to me, for
+once at least, in a critical position when you must need counsel. Bear
+in mind, Moina that you are married to a man of high ability, a man of
+whom you may well be proud, a man who--”
+
+“I know what you are going to say, mother!” Moina broke in pettishly. “I
+am to be lectured about Alfred--”
+
+“Moina,” the Marquise said gravely, as she struggled with her tears,
+“you would not guess at once if you did not feel--”
+
+“What?” asked Moina, almost haughtily. “Why, really, mother--”
+
+Mme. d’Aiglemont summoned up all her strength. “Moina,” she said, “you
+must attend carefully to this that I ought to tell you--”
+
+“I am attending,” returned the Countess, folding her arms, and affecting
+insolent submission. “Permit me, mother, to ring for Pauline,” she added
+with incredible self-possession; “I will send her away first.”
+
+She rang the bell.
+
+“My dear child, Pauline cannot possibly hear--”
+
+“Mamma,” interrupted the Countess, with a gravity which must have struck
+her mother as something unusual, “I must--”
+
+She stopped short, for the woman was in the room.
+
+“Pauline, go _yourself_ to Baudran’s, and ask why my hat has not yet
+been sent.”
+
+Then the Countess reseated herself and scrutinized her mother. The
+Marquise, with a swelling heart and dry eyes, in painful agitation,
+which none but a mother can fully understand, began to open Moina’s eyes
+to the risk that she was running. But either the Countess felt hurt
+and indignant at her mother’s suspicions of a son of the Marquis de
+Vandenesse, or she was seized with a sudden fit of inexplicable levity
+caused by the inexperience of youth. She took advantage of a pause.
+
+“Mamma, I thought you were only jealous of _the father_--” she said,
+with a forced laugh.
+
+Mme. d’Aiglemont shut her eyes and bent her head at the words, with a
+very faint, almost inaudible sigh. She looked up and out into space,
+as if she felt the common overmastering impulse to appeal to God at the
+great crises of our lives; then she looked at her daughter, and her eyes
+were full of awful majesty and the expression of profound sorrow.
+
+“My child,” she said, and her voice was hardly recognizable, “you have
+been less merciful to your mother than he against whom she sinned; less
+merciful than perhaps God Himself will be!”
+
+Mme. d’Aiglemont rose; at the door she turned; but she saw nothing but
+surprise in her daughter’s face. She went out. Scarcely had she reached
+the garden when her strength failed her. There was a violent pain at her
+heart, and she sank down on a bench. As her eyes wandered over the path,
+she saw fresh marks on the path, a man’s footprints were distinctly
+recognizable. It was too late, then, beyond a doubt. Now she began to
+understand the reason for that order given to Pauline, and with these
+torturing thoughts came a revelation more hateful than any that had
+gone before it. She drew her own inferences--the son of the Marquis
+de Vandenesse had destroyed all feeling of respect for her in her
+daughter’s mind. The physical pain grew worse; by degrees she lost
+consciousness, and sat like one asleep upon the garden-seat.
+
+The Countess de Saint-Hereen, left to herself, thought that her mother
+had given her a somewhat shrewd home-thrust, but a kiss and a few
+attentions that evening would make all right again.
+
+A shrill cry came from the garden. She leaned carelessly out, as
+Pauline, not yet departed on her errand, called out for help, holding
+the Marquise in her arms.
+
+“Do not frighten my daughter!” those were the last words the mother
+uttered.
+
+Moina saw them carry in a pale and lifeless form that struggled for
+breath, and arms moving restlessly as in protest or effort to speak; and
+overcome by the sight, Moina followed in silence, and helped to undress
+her mother and lay her on her bed. The burden of her fault was greater
+than she could bear. In that supreme hour she learned to know her
+mother--too late, she could make no reparation now. She would have them
+leave her alone with her mother; and when there was no one else in the
+room, when she felt that the hand which had always been so tender for
+her was now grown cold to her touch, she broke out into weeping. Her
+tears aroused the Marquise; she could still look at her darling
+Moina; and at the sound of sobbing, that seemed as if it must rend the
+delicate, disheveled breast, could smile back at her daughter. That
+smile taught the unnatural child that forgiveness is always to be found
+in the great deep of a mother’s heart.
+
+
+
+Servants on horseback had been dispatched at once for the physician and
+surgeon and for Mme. d’Aiglemont’s grandchildren. Mme. d’Aiglemont the
+younger and her little sons arrived with the medical men, a sufficiently
+impressive, silent, and anxious little group, which the servants of the
+house came to join. The young Marquise, hearing no sound, tapped gently
+at the door. That signal, doubtless, roused Moina from her grief, for
+she flung open the doors and stood before them. No words could have
+spoken more plainly than that disheveled figure looking out with haggard
+eyes upon the assembled family. Before that living picture of Remorse
+the rest were dumb. It was easy to see that the Marquise’s feet were
+stretched out stark and stiff with the agony of death; and Moina,
+leaning against the door-frame, looking into their faces, spoke in a
+hollow voice:
+
+“I have lost my mother!”
+
+
+PARIS, 1828-1844.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+     Aiglemont, General, Marquis Victor d’
+       At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+
+     Bonaparte, Napoleon
+       The Vendetta
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       Colonel Chabert
+       Domestic Peace
+       The Seamy Side of History
+
+     Camps, Madame Octave de (nee Cadignan)
+       Madame Firmiani
+       The Government Clerks
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Chatillonest, De
+       Modeste Mignon
+
+     Crottat, Alexandre
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Colonel Chabert
+       A Start in Life
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Desroches (son)
+       A Bachelor’s Establishment
+       Colonel Chabert
+       A Start in Life
+       The Commission in Lunacy
+       The Government Clerks
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       A Man of Business
+       The Middle Classes
+
+     Duroc, Gerard-Christophe-Michel
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+
+     Ronquerolles, Marquis de
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+       The Peasantry
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Thirteen
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Saint-Hereen, Comtesse Moina de
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Serizy, Comtesse de
+       A Start in Life
+       The Thirteen
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+
+     Vandenesse, Marquis Charles de
+       A Start in Life
+       A Daughter of Eve
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Woman of Thirty, by Honore de Balzac
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WOMAN OF THIRTY ***
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
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+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      A Woman of Thirty, by Honore de Balzac
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
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+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Woman of Thirty, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Woman of Thirty
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Ellen Marriage
+
+Release Date: March 6, 2010 [EBook #1950]
+Last Updated: November 23, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WOMAN OF THIRTY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      A WOMAN OF THIRTY
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Honore De Balzac
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Translated by Ellen Marriage
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      DEDICATION<br /><br /> To Louis Boulanger, Painter.<br />
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>A WOMAN OF THIRTY</b> </a>
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+    </h3>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          EARLY MISTAKES
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          A HIDDEN GRIEF
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III. &nbsp;&nbsp;</a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          AT THIRTY YEARS
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE FINGER OF GOD
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> V. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          TWO MEETINGS
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VI. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE OLD AGE OF A GUILTY MOTHER
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> ADDENDUM </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      A WOMAN OF THIRTY
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I. EARLY MISTAKES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was a Sunday morning in the beginning of April 1813, a morning which
+      gave promise of one of those bright days when Parisians, for the first
+      time in the year, behold dry pavements underfoot and a cloudless sky
+      overhead. It was not yet noon when a luxurious cabriolet, drawn by two
+      spirited horses, turned out of the Rue de Castiglione into the Rue de
+      Rivoli, and drew up behind a row of carriages standing before the newly
+      opened barrier half-way down the Terrasse de Feuillants. The owner of the
+      carriage looked anxious and out of health; the thin hair on his sallow
+      temples, turning gray already, gave a look of premature age to his face.
+      He flung the reins to a servant who followed on horseback, and alighted to
+      take in his arms a young girl whose dainty beauty had already attracted
+      the eyes of loungers on the Terrasse. The little lady, standing upon the
+      carriage step, graciously submitted to be taken by the waist, putting an
+      arm round the neck of her guide, who set her down upon the pavement
+      without so much as ruffling the trimming of her green rep dress. No lover
+      would have been so careful. The stranger could only be the father of the
+      young girl, who took his arm familiarly without a word of thanks, and
+      hurried him into the Garden of the Tuileries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old father noted the wondering stare which some of the young men gave
+      the couple, and the sad expression left his face for a moment. Although he
+      had long since reached the time of life when a man is fain to be content
+      with such illusory delights as vanity bestows, he began to smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They think you are my wife,&rdquo; he said in the young lady&rsquo;s ear, and he held
+      himself erect and walked with slow steps, which filled his daughter with
+      despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed to take up the coquette&rsquo;s part for her; perhaps of the two, he
+      was the more gratified by the curious glances directed at those little
+      feet, shod with plum-colored prunella; at the dainty figure outlined by a
+      low-cut bodice, filled in with an embroidered chemisette, which only
+      partially concealed the girlish throat. Her dress was lifted by her
+      movements as she walked, giving glimpses higher than the shoes of
+      delicately moulded outlines beneath open-work silk stockings. More than
+      one of the idlers turned and passed the pair again, to admire or to catch
+      a second glimpse of the young face, about which the brown tresses played;
+      there was a glow in its white and red, partly reflected from the
+      rose-colored satin lining of her fashionable bonnet, partly due to the
+      eagerness and impatience which sparkled in every feature. A mischievous
+      sweetness lighted up the beautiful, almond-shaped dark eyes, bathed in
+      liquid brightness, shaded by the long lashes and curving arch of eyebrow.
+      Life and youth displayed their treasures in the petulant face and in the
+      gracious outlines of the bust unspoiled even by the fashion of the day,
+      which brought the girdle under the breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young lady herself appeared to be insensible to admiration. Her eyes
+      were fixed in a sort of anxiety on the Palace of the Tuileries, the goal,
+      doubtless, of her petulant promenade. It wanted but fifteen minutes of
+      noon, yet even at that early hour several women in gala dress were coming
+      away from the Tuileries, not without backward glances at the gates and
+      pouting looks of discontent, as if they regretted the lateness of the
+      arrival which had cheated them of a longed-for spectacle. Chance carried a
+      few words let fall by one of these disappointed fair ones to the ears of
+      the charming stranger, and put her in a more than common uneasiness. The
+      elderly man watched the signs of impatience and apprehension which flitted
+      across his companion&rsquo;s pretty face with interest, rather than amusement,
+      in his eyes, observing her with a close and careful attention, which
+      perhaps could only be prompted by some after-thought in the depths of a
+      father&rsquo;s mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the thirteenth Sunday of the year 1813. In two days&rsquo; time Napoleon
+      was to set out upon the disastrous campaign in which he was to lose first
+      Bessieres, and then Duroc; he was to win the memorable battles of Lutzen
+      and Bautzen, to see himself treacherously deserted by Austria, Saxony,
+      Bavaria, and Bernadotte, and to dispute the dreadful field of Leipsic. The
+      magnificent review commanded for that day by the Emperor was to be the
+      last of so many which had long drawn forth the admiration of Paris and of
+      foreign visitors. For the last time the Old Guard would execute their
+      scientific military manoeuvres with the pomp and precision which sometimes
+      amazed the Giant himself. Napoleon was nearly ready for his duel with
+      Europe. It was a sad sentiment which brought a brilliant and curious
+      throng to the Tuileries. Each mind seemed to foresee the future, perhaps
+      too in every mind another thought was dimly present, how that in the
+      future, when the heroic age of France should have taken the half-fabulous
+      color with which it is tinged for us to-day, men&rsquo;s imaginations would more
+      than once seek to retrace the picture of the pageant which they were
+      assembled to behold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do let us go more quickly, father; I can hear the drums,&rdquo; the young girl
+      said, and in a half-teasing, half-coaxing manner she urged her companion
+      forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The troops are marching into the Tuileries,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or marching out of it&mdash;everybody is coming away,&rdquo; she answered in
+      childish vexation, which drew a smile from her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The review only begins at half-past twelve,&rdquo; he said; he had fallen half
+      behind his impetuous daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It might have been supposed that she meant to hasten their progress by a
+      movement of her right arm, for it swung like an oar blade through the
+      water. In her impatience she had crushed her handkerchief into a ball in
+      her tiny, well-gloved fingers. Now and then the old man smiled, but the
+      smiles were succeeded by an anxious look which crossed his withered face
+      and saddened it. In his love for the fair young girl by his side, he was
+      as fain to exalt the present moment as to dread the future. &ldquo;She is happy
+      to-day; will her happiness last?&rdquo; he seemed to ask himself, for the old
+      are somewhat prone to foresee their own sorrows in the future of the
+      young.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Father and daughter reached the peristyle under the tower where the
+      tricolor flag was still waving; but as they passed under the arch by which
+      people came and went between the Gardens of the Tuileries and the Place du
+      Carrousel, the sentries on guard called out sternly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No admittance this way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By standing on tiptoe the young girl contrived to catch a glimpse of a
+      crowd of well-dressed women, thronging either side of the old marble
+      arcade along which the Emperor was to pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were too late in starting, father; you can see that quite well.&rdquo; A
+      little piteous pout revealed the immense importance which she attached to
+      the sight of this particular review.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, Julie&mdash;let us go away. You dislike a crush.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do let us stay, father. Even here I may catch a glimpse of the Emperor;
+      he might die during this campaign, and then I should never have seen him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father shuddered at the selfish speech. There were tears in the girl&rsquo;s
+      voice; he looked at her, and thought that he saw tears beneath her lowered
+      eyelids; tears caused not so much by the disappointment as by one of the
+      troubles of early youth, a secret easily guessed by an old father.
+      Suddenly Julie&rsquo;s face flushed, and she uttered an exclamation. Neither her
+      father nor the sentinels understood the meaning of the cry; but an officer
+      within the barrier, who sprang across the court towards the staircase,
+      heard it, and turned abruptly at the sound. He went to the arcade by the
+      Gardens of the Tuileries, and recognized the young lady who had been
+      hidden for a moment by the tall bearskin caps of the grenadiers. He set
+      aside in favor of the pair the order which he himself had given. Then,
+      taking no heed of the murmurings of the fashionable crowd seated under the
+      arcade, he gently drew the enraptured child towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am no longer surprised at her vexation and enthusiasm, if <i>you</i>
+      are in waiting,&rdquo; the old man said with a half-mocking, half-serious glance
+      at the officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you want a good position, M. le Duc,&rdquo; the young man answered, &ldquo;we must
+      not spend any time in talking. The Emperor does not like to be kept
+      waiting, and the Grand Marshal has sent me to announce our readiness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, he had taken Julie&rsquo;s arm with a certain air of old
+      acquaintance, and drew her rapidly in the direction of the Place du
+      Carrousel. Julie was astonished at the sight. An immense crowd was penned
+      up in a narrow space, shut in between the gray walls of the palace and the
+      limits marked out by chains round the great sanded squares in the midst of
+      the courtyard of the Tuileries. The cordon of sentries posted to keep a
+      clear passage for the Emperor and his staff had great difficulty in
+      keeping back the eager humming swarm of human beings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it going to be a very fine sight?&rdquo; Julie asked (she was radiant now).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pray take care!&rdquo; cried her guide, and seizing Julie by the waist, he
+      lifted her up with as much vigor as rapidity and set her down beside a
+      pillar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But for his prompt action, his gazing kinswoman would have come into
+      collision with the hindquarters of a white horse which Napoleon&rsquo;s Mameluke
+      held by the bridle; the animal in its trappings of green velvet and gold
+      stood almost under the arcade, some ten paces behind the rest of the
+      horses in readiness for the Emperor&rsquo;s staff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young officer placed the father and daughter in front of the crowd in
+      the first space to the right, and recommended them by a sign to the two
+      veteran grenadiers on either side. Then he went on his way into the
+      palace; a look of great joy and happiness had succeeded to his
+      horror-struck expression when the horse backed. Julie had given his hand a
+      mysterious pressure; had she meant to thank him for the little service he
+      had done her, or did she tell him, &ldquo;After all, I shall really see you?&rdquo;
+       She bent her head quite graciously in response to the respectful bow by
+      which the officer took leave of them before he vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man stood a little behind his daughter. He looked grave. He seemed
+      to have left the two young people together for some purpose of his own,
+      and now he furtively watched the girl, trying to lull her into false
+      security by appearing to give his whole attention to the magnificent sight
+      in the Place du Carrousel. When Julie&rsquo;s eyes turned to her father with the
+      expression of a schoolboy before his master, he answered her glance by a
+      gay, kindly smile, but his own keen eyes had followed the officer under
+      the arcade, and nothing of all that passed was lost upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a grand sight!&rdquo; said Julie in a low voice, as she pressed her
+      father&rsquo;s hand; and indeed the pomp and picturesquesness of the spectacle
+      in the Place du Carrousel drew the same exclamation from thousands upon
+      thousands of spectators, all agape with wonder. Another array of
+      sightseers, as tightly packed as the ranks behind the old noble and his
+      daughter, filled the narrow strip of pavement by the railings which
+      crossed the Place du Carrousel from side to side in a line parallel with
+      the Palace of the Tuileries. The dense living mass, variegated by the
+      colors of the women&rsquo;s dresses, traced out a bold line across the centre of
+      the Place du Carrousel, filling in the fourth side of a vast
+      parallelogram, surrounded on three sides by the Palace of the Tuileries
+      itself. Within the precincts thus railed off stood the regiments of the
+      Old Guard about to be passed in review, drawn up opposite the Palace in
+      imposing blue columns, ten ranks in depth. Without and beyond in the Place
+      du Carrousel stood several regiments likewise drawn up in parallel lines,
+      ready to march in through the arch in the centre; the Triumphal Arch,
+      where the bronze horses of St. Mark from Venice used to stand in those
+      days. At either end, by the Galeries du Louvre, the regimental bands were
+      stationed, masked by the Polish Lancers then on duty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The greater part of the vast graveled space was empty as an arena, ready
+      for the evolutions of those silent masses disposed with the symmetry of
+      military art. The sunlight blazed back from ten thousand bayonets in thin
+      points of flame; the breeze ruffled the men&rsquo;s helmet plumes till they
+      swayed like the crests of forest-trees before a gale. The mute glittering
+      ranks of veterans were full of bright contrasting colors, thanks to their
+      different uniforms, weapons, accoutrements, and aiguillettes; and the
+      whole great picture, that miniature battlefield before the combat, was
+      framed by the majestic towering walls of the Tuileries, which officers and
+      men seemed to rival in their immobility. Involuntarily the spectator made
+      the comparison between the walls of men and the walls of stone. The spring
+      sunlight, flooding white masonry reared but yesterday and buildings
+      centuries old, shone full likewise upon thousands of bronzed faces, each
+      one with its own tale of perils passed, each one gravely expectant of
+      perils to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The colonels of the regiments came and went alone before the ranks of
+      heroes; and behind the masses of troops, checkered with blue and silver
+      and gold and purple, the curious could discern the tricolor pennons on the
+      lances of some half-a-dozen indefatigable Polish cavalry, rushing about
+      like shepherds&rsquo; dogs in charge of a flock, caracoling up and down between
+      the troops and the crowd, to keep the gazers within their proper bounds.
+      But for this slight flutter of movement, the whole scene might have been
+      taking place in the courtyard of the palace of the Sleeping Beauty. The
+      very spring breeze, ruffling up the long fur on the grenadiers&rsquo; bearskins,
+      bore witness to the men&rsquo;s immobility, as the smothered murmur of the crowd
+      emphasized their silence. Now and again the jingling of Chinese bells, or
+      a chance blow to a big drum, woke the reverberating echoes of the Imperial
+      Palace with a sound like the far-off rumblings of thunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An indescribable, unmistakable enthusiasm was manifest in the expectancy
+      of the multitude. France was about to take farewell of Napoleon on the eve
+      of a campaign of which the meanest citizen foresaw the perils. The
+      existence of the French Empire was at stake&mdash;to be, or not to be. The
+      whole citizen population seemed to be as much inspired with this thought
+      as that other armed population standing in serried and silent ranks in the
+      enclosed space, with the Eagles and the genius of Napoleon hovering above
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those very soldiers were the hope of France, her last drop of blood; and
+      this accounted for not a little of the anxious interest of the scene. Most
+      of the gazers in the crowd had bidden farewell&mdash;perhaps farewell for
+      ever&mdash;to the men who made up the rank and file of the battalions; and
+      even those most hostile to the Emperor, in their hearts, put up fervent
+      prayers to heaven for the glory of France; and those most weary of the
+      struggle with the rest of Europe had left their hatreds behind as they
+      passed in under the Triumphal Arch. They too felt that in the hour of
+      danger Napoleon meant France herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clock of the Tuileries struck the half-hour. In a moment the hum of
+      the crowd ceased. The silence was so deep that you might have heard a
+      child speak. The old noble and his daughter, wholly intent, seeming to
+      live only by their eyes, caught a distinct sound of spurs and clank of
+      swords echoing up under the sonorous peristyle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And suddenly there appeared a short, somewhat stout figure in a green
+      uniform, white trousers, and riding boots; a man wearing on his head a
+      cocked hat well-nigh as magically potent as its wearer; the broad red
+      ribbon of the Legion of Honor rose and fell on his breast, and a short
+      sword hung at his side. At one and the same moment the man was seen by all
+      eyes in all parts of the square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately the drums beat a salute, both bands struck up a martial
+      refrain, caught and repeated like a fugue by every instrument from the
+      thinnest flutes to the largest drum. The clangor of that call to arms
+      thrilled through every soul. The colors dropped, and the men presented
+      arms, one unanimous rhythmical movement shaking every bayonet from the
+      foremost front near the Palace to the last rank in the Place du Carrousel.
+      The words of command sped from line to line like echoes. The whole
+      enthusiastic multitude sent up a shout of &ldquo;Long live the Emperor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Everything shook, quivered, and thrilled at last. Napoleon had mounted his
+      horse. It was his movement that had put life into those silent masses of
+      men; the dumb instruments had found a voice at his coming, the Eagles and
+      the colors had obeyed the same impulse which had brought emotion into all
+      faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The very walls of the high galleries of the old palace seemed to cry
+      aloud, &ldquo;Long live the Emperor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something preternatural about it&mdash;it was magic at work, a
+      counterfeit presentment of the power of God; or rather it was a fugitive
+      image of a reign itself so fugitive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And <i>he</i> the centre of such love, such enthusiasm and devotion, and
+      so many prayers, he for whom the sun had driven the clouds from the sky,
+      was sitting there on his horse, three paces in front of his Golden
+      Squadron, with the grand Marshal on his left, and the Marshal-in-waiting
+      on his right. Amid all the outburst of enthusiasm at his presence not a
+      feature of his face appeared to alter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! yes. At Wagram, in the thick of the firing, on the field of Borodino,
+      among the dead, always as cool as a cucumber <i>he</i> is!&rdquo; said the
+      grenadier, in answer to the questions with which the young girl plied him.
+      For a moment Julie was absorbed in the contemplation of that face, so
+      quiet in the security of conscious power. The Emperor noticed Mlle. de
+      Chatillonest, and leaned to make some brief remark to Duroc, which drew a
+      smile from the Grand Marshal. Then the review began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If hitherto the young lady&rsquo;s attention had been divided between Napoleon&rsquo;s
+      impassive face and the blue, red, and green ranks of troops, from this
+      time forth she was wholly intent upon a young officer moving among the
+      lines as they performed their swift symmetrical evolutions. She watched
+      him gallop with tireless activity to and from the group where the plainly
+      dressed Napoleon shone conspicuous. The officer rode a splendid black
+      horse. His handsome sky-blue uniform marked him out amid the variegated
+      multitude as one of the Emperor&rsquo;s orderly staff-officers. His gold lace
+      glittered in the sunshine which lighted up the aigrette on his tall,
+      narrow shako, so that the gazer might have compared him to a
+      will-o&rsquo;-the-wisp, or to a visible spirit emanating from the Emperor to
+      infuse movement into those battalions whose swaying bayonets flashed into
+      flames; for, at a mere glance from his eyes, they broke and gathered
+      again, surging to and fro like the waves in a bay, or again swept before
+      him like the long ridges of high-crested wave which the vexed Ocean
+      directs against the shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the manoeuvres were over the officer galloped back at full speed,
+      pulled up his horse, and awaited orders. He was not ten paces from Julie
+      as he stood before the Emperor, much as General Rapp stands in Gerard&rsquo;s <i>Battle
+      of Austerlitz</i>. The young girl could behold her lover in all his
+      soldierly splendor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Colonel Victor d&rsquo;Aiglemont, barely thirty years of age, was tall, slender,
+      and well made. His well-proportioned figure never showed to better
+      advantage than now as he exerted his strength to hold in the restive
+      animal, whose back seemed to curve gracefully to the rider&rsquo;s weight. His
+      brown masculine face possessed the indefinable charm of perfectly regular
+      features combined with youth. The fiery eyes under the broad forehead,
+      shaded by thick eyebrows and long lashes, looked like white ovals bordered
+      by an outline of black. His nose had the delicate curve of an eagle&rsquo;s
+      beak; the sinuous lines of the inevitable black moustache enhanced the
+      crimson of the lips. The brown and tawny shades which overspread the wide
+      high-colored cheeks told a tale of unusual vigor, and his whole face bore
+      the impress of dashing courage. He was the very model which French artists
+      seek to-day for the typical hero of Imperial France. The horse which he
+      rode was covered with sweat, the animal&rsquo;s quivering head denoted the last
+      degree of restiveness; his hind hoofs were set down wide apart and exactly
+      in a line, he shook his long thick tail to the wind; in his fidelity to
+      his master he seemed to be a visible presentment of that master&rsquo;s devotion
+      to the Emperor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie saw her lover watching intently for the Emperor&rsquo;s glances, and felt
+      a momentary pang of jealousy, for as yet he had not given her a look.
+      Suddenly at a word from his sovereign Victor gripped his horse&rsquo;s flanks
+      and set out at a gallop, but the animal took fright at a shadow cast by a
+      post, shied, backed, and reared up so suddenly that his rider was all but
+      thrown off. Julie cried out, her face grew white, people looked at her
+      curiously, but she saw no one, her eyes were fixed upon the too mettlesome
+      beast. The officer gave the horse a sharp admonitory cut with the whip,
+      and galloped off with Napoleon&rsquo;s order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie was so absorbed, so dizzy with sights and sounds, that unconsciously
+      she clung to her father&rsquo;s arm so tightly that he could read her thoughts
+      by the varying pressure of her fingers. When Victor was all but flung out
+      of the saddle, she clutched her father with a convulsive grip as if she
+      herself were in danger of falling, and the old man looked at his
+      daughter&rsquo;s tell-tale face with dark and painful anxiety. Pity, jealousy,
+      something even of regret stole across every drawn and wrinkled line of
+      mouth and brow. When he saw the unwonted light in Julie&rsquo;s eyes, when that
+      cry broke from her, when the convulsive grasp of her fingers drew away the
+      veil and put him in possession of her secret, then with that revelation of
+      her love there came surely some swift revelation of the future. Mournful
+      forebodings could be read in his own face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie&rsquo;s soul seemed at that moment to have passed into the officer&rsquo;s
+      being. A torturing thought more cruel than any previous dread contracted
+      the old man&rsquo;s painworn features, as he saw the glance of understanding
+      that passed between the soldier and Julie. The girl&rsquo;s eyes were wet, her
+      cheeks glowed with unwonted color. Her father turned abruptly and led her
+      away into the Garden of the Tuileries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, father,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;there are still the regiments in the Place du
+      Carrousel to be passed in review.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, child, all the troops are marching out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you are mistaken, father; M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont surely told them to
+      advance&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I feel ill, my child, and I do not care to stay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie could readily believe the words when she glanced at his face; he
+      looked quite worn out by his fatherly anxieties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you feeling very ill?&rdquo; she asked indifferently, her mind was so full
+      of other thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every day is a reprieve for me, is it not?&rdquo; returned her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now do you mean to make me miserable again by talking about your death? I
+      was in such spirits! Do pray get rid of those horrid gloomy ideas of
+      yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The father heaved a sigh. &ldquo;Ah! spoiled child,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;the best hearts
+      are sometimes very cruel. We devote our whole lives to you, you are our
+      one thought, we plan for your welfare, sacrifice our tastes to your whims,
+      idolize you, give the very blood in our veins for you, and all this is
+      nothing, is it? Alas! yes, you take it all as a matter of course. If we
+      would always have your smiles and your disdainful love, we should need the
+      power of God in heaven. Then comes another, a lover, a husband, and steals
+      away your heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie looked in amazement at her father; he walked slowly along, and there
+      was no light in the eyes which he turned upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hide yourself even from us,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;but, perhaps, also you
+      hide yourself from yourself&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by that, father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think that you have secrets from me, Julie.&mdash;You love,&rdquo; he went on
+      quickly, as he saw the color rise to her face. &ldquo;Oh! I hoped that you would
+      stay with your old father until he died. I hoped to keep you with me,
+      still radiant and happy, to admire you as you were but so lately. So long
+      as I knew nothing of your future I could believe in a happy lot for you;
+      but now I cannot possibly take away with me a hope of happiness for your
+      life, for you love the colonel even more than the cousin. I can no longer
+      doubt it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why should I be forbidden to love him?&rdquo; asked Julie, with lively
+      curiosity in her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my Julie, you would not understand me,&rdquo; sighed the father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me, all the same,&rdquo; said Julie, with an involuntary petulant gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, child, listen to me. Girls are apt to imagine noble and
+      enchanting and totally imaginary figures in their own minds; they have
+      fanciful extravagant ideas about men, and sentiment, and life; and then
+      they innocently endow somebody or other with all the perfections of their
+      day-dreams, and put their trust in him. They fall in love with this
+      imaginary creature in the man of their choice; and then, when it is too
+      late to escape from their fate, behold their first idol, the illusion made
+      fair with their fancies, turns to an odious skeleton. Julie, I would
+      rather have you fall in love with an old man than with the Colonel. Ah! if
+      you could but see things from the standpoint of ten years hence, you would
+      admit that my old experience was right. I know what Victor is, that gaiety
+      of his is simply animal spirits&mdash;the gaiety of the barracks. He has
+      no ability, and he is a spendthrift. He is one of those men whom Heaven
+      created to eat and digest four meals a day, to sleep, to fall in love with
+      the first woman that comes to hand, and to fight. He does not understand
+      life. His kind heart, for he has a kind heart, will perhaps lead him to
+      give his purse to a sufferer or to a comrade; <i>but</i> he is careless,
+      he has not the delicacy of heart which makes us slaves to a woman&rsquo;s
+      happiness, he is ignorant, he is selfish. There are plenty of <i>buts</i>&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, father, he must surely be clever, he must have ability, or he would
+      not be a colonel&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, Victor will be a colonel all his life.&mdash;I have seen no one
+      who appears to me to be worthy of you,&rdquo; the old father added, with a kind
+      of enthusiasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused an instant, looked at his daughter, and added, &ldquo;Why, my poor
+      Julie, you are still too young, too fragile, too delicate for the cares
+      and rubs of married life. D&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s relations have spoiled him, just
+      as your mother and I have spoiled you. What hope is there that you two
+      could agree, with two imperious wills diametrically opposed to each other?
+      You will be either the tyrant or the victim, and either alternative means,
+      for a wife, an equal sum of misfortune. But you are modest and
+      sweet-natured, you would yield from the first. In short,&rdquo; he added, in a
+      quivering voice, &ldquo;there is a grace of feeling in you which would never be
+      valued, and then&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; he broke off, for the tears overcame him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Victor will give you pain through all the girlish qualities of your young
+      nature,&rdquo; he went on, after a pause. &ldquo;I know what soldiers are, my Julie; I
+      have been in the army. In a man of that kind, love very seldom gets the
+      better of old habits, due partly to the miseries amid which soldiers live,
+      partly to the risks they run in a life of adventure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you mean to cross my inclinations, do you, father?&rdquo; asked Julie,
+      half in earnest, half in jest. &ldquo;Am I to marry to please you and not to
+      please myself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To please me!&rdquo; cried her father, with a start of surprise. &ldquo;To please <i>me</i>,
+      child? when you will not hear the voice that upbraids you so tenderly very
+      much longer! But I have always heard children impute personal motives for
+      the sacrifices that their parents make for them. Marry Victor, my Julie!
+      Some day you will bitterly deplore his ineptitude, his thriftless ways,
+      his selfishness, his lack of delicacy, his inability to understand love,
+      and countless troubles arising through him. Then, remember, that here
+      under these trees your old father&rsquo;s prophetic voice sounded in your ears
+      in vain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He said no more; he had detected a rebellious shake of the head on his
+      daughter&rsquo;s part. Both made several paces towards the carriage which was
+      waiting for them at the grating. During that interval of silence, the
+      young girl stole a glance at her father&rsquo;s face, and little by little her
+      sullen brow cleared. The intense pain visible on his bowed forehead made a
+      lively impression upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; she began in gentle tremulous tones, &ldquo;I promise to say no more
+      about Victor until you have overcome your prejudices against him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man looked at her in amazement. Two tears which filled his eyes
+      overflowed down his withered cheeks. He could not take Julie in his arms
+      in that crowded place; but he pressed her hand tenderly. A few minutes
+      later when they had taken their places in the cabriolet, all the anxious
+      thought which had gathered about his brow had completely disappeared.
+      Julie&rsquo;s pensive attitude gave him far less concern than the innocent joy
+      which had betrayed her secret during the review.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nearly a year had passed since the Emperor&rsquo;s last review. In early March
+      1814 a caleche was rolling along the highroad from Amboise to Tours. As
+      the carriage came out from beneath the green-roofed aisle of walnut trees
+      by the post-house of la Frilliere, the horses dashed forward with such
+      speed that in a moment they gained the bridge built across the Cise at the
+      point of its confluence with the Loire. There, however, they come to a
+      sudden stand. One of the traces had given way in consequence of the
+      furious pace at which the post-boy, obedient to his orders, had urged on
+      four horses, the most vigorous of their breed. Chance, therefore, gave the
+      two recently awakened occupants of the carriage an opportunity of seeing
+      one of the most lovely landscapes along the enchanting banks of the Loire,
+      and that at their full leisure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At a glance the travelers could see to the right the whole winding course
+      of the Cise meandering like a silver snake among the meadows, where the
+      grass had taken the deep, bright green of early spring. To the left lay
+      the Loire in all its glory. A chill morning breeze, ruffling the surface
+      of the stately river, had fretted the broad sheets of water far and wide
+      into a network of ripples, which caught the gleams of the sun, so that the
+      green islets here and there in its course shone like gems set in a gold
+      necklace. On the opposite bank the fair rich meadows of Touraine stretched
+      away as far as the eye could see; the low hills of the Cher, the only
+      limits to the view, lay on the far horizon, a luminous line against the
+      clear blue sky. Tours itself, framed by the trees on the islands in a
+      setting of spring leaves, seemed to rise like Venice out of the waters,
+      and her old cathedral towers soaring in air were blended with the pale
+      fantastic cloud shapes in the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Over the side of the bridge, where the carriage had come to a stand, the
+      traveler looks along a line of cliffs stretching as far as Tours. Nature
+      in some freakish mood must have raised these barriers of rock, undermined
+      incessantly by the rippling Loire at their feet, for a perpetual wonder
+      for spectators. The village of Vouvray nestles, as it were, among the
+      clefts and crannies of the crags, which begin to describe a bend at the
+      junction of the Loire and Cise. A whole population of vine-dressers lives,
+      in fact, in appalling insecurity in holes in their jagged sides for the
+      whole way between Vouvray and Tours. In some places there are three tiers
+      of dwellings hollowed out, one above the other, in the rock, each row
+      communicating with the next by dizzy staircases cut likewise in the face
+      of the cliff. A little girl in a short red petticoat runs out into her
+      garden on the roof of another dwelling; you can watch a wreath of
+      hearth-smoke curling up among the shoots and trails of the vines. Men are
+      at work in their almost perpendicular patches of ground, an old woman sits
+      tranquilly spinning under a blossoming almond tree on a crumbling mass of
+      rock, and smiles down on the dismay of the travelers far below her feet.
+      The cracks in the ground trouble her as little as the precarious state of
+      the old wall, a pendant mass of loose stones, only kept in position by the
+      crooked stems of its ivy mantle. The sound of coopers&rsquo; mallets rings
+      through the skyey caves; for here, where Nature stints human industry of
+      soil, the soil is everywhere tilled, and everywhere fertile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No view along the whole course of the Loire can compare with the rich
+      landscape of Touraine, here outspread beneath the traveler&rsquo;s eyes. The
+      triple picture, thus barely sketched in outline, is one of those scenes
+      which the imagination engraves for ever upon the memory; let a poet fall
+      under its charm, and he shall be haunted by visions which shall reproduce
+      its romantic loveliness out of the vague substance of dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the carriage stopped on the bridge over the Cise, white sails came out
+      here and there from among the islands in the Loire to add new grace to the
+      perfect view. The subtle scent of the willows by the water&rsquo;s edge was
+      mingled with the damp odor of the breeze from the river. The monotonous
+      chant of a goat-herd added a plaintive note to the sound of birds&rsquo; songs
+      in a chorus which never ends; the cries of the boatmen brought tidings of
+      distant busy life. Here was Touraine in all its glory, and the very height
+      of the splendor of spring. Here was the one peaceful district in France in
+      those troublous days; for it was so unlikely that a foreign army should
+      trouble its quiet that Touraine might be said to defy invasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the caleche stopped, a head covered with a foraging cap was put
+      out of the window, and soon afterwards an impatient military man flung
+      open the carriage door and sprang down into the road to pick a quarrel
+      with the postilion, but the skill with which the Tourangeau was repairing
+      the trace restored Colonel d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s equanimity. He went back to the
+      carriage, stretched himself to relieve his benumbed muscles, yawned,
+      looked about him, and finally laid a hand on the arm of a young woman
+      warmly wrapped up in a furred pelisse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, Julie,&rdquo; he said hoarsely, &ldquo;just wake up and take a look at this
+      country. It is magnificent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie put her head out of the window. She wore a traveling cap of sable
+      fur. Nothing could be seen of her but her face, for the whole of her
+      person was completely concealed by the folds of her fur pelisse. The young
+      girl who tripped to the review at the Tuileries with light footsteps and
+      joy and gladness in her heart was scarcely recognizable in Julie
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont. Her face, delicate as ever, had lost the rose-color which
+      once gave it so rich a glow. A few straggling locks of black hair,
+      straightened out by the damp night air, enhanced its dead whiteness, and
+      all its life and sparkle seemed to be torpid. Yet her eyes glittered with
+      preternatural brightness in spite of the violet shadows under the lashes
+      upon her wan cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked out with indifferent eyes over the fields towards the Cher, at
+      the islands in the river, at the line of the crags of Vouvray stretching
+      along the Loire towards Tours; then she sank back as soon as possible into
+      her seat in the caleche. She did not care to give a glance to the
+      enchanting valley of the Cise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it is wonderful,&rdquo; she said, and out in the open air her voice
+      sounded weak and faint to the last degree. Evidently she had had her way
+      with her father, to her misfortune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you not like to live here, Julie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; here or anywhere,&rdquo; she answered listlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you feel ill?&rdquo; asked Colonel d&rsquo;Aiglemont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not at all,&rdquo; she answered with momentary energy; and, smiling at her
+      husband, she added, &ldquo;I should like to go to sleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly there came a sound of a horse galloping towards them. Victor
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont dropped his wife&rsquo;s hand and turned to watch the bend in the
+      road. No sooner had he taken his eyes from Julie&rsquo;s pale face than all the
+      assumed gaiety died out of it; it was as if a light had been extinguished.
+      She felt no wish to look at the landscape, no curiosity to see the
+      horseman who was galloping towards them at such a furious pace, and,
+      ensconcing herself in her corner, stared out before her at the
+      hindquarters of the post-horses, looking as blank as any Breton peasant
+      listening to his <i>recteur&rsquo;s</i> sermon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly a young man riding a valuable horse came out from behind the
+      clump of poplars and flowering briar-rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is an Englishman,&rdquo; remarked the Colonel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord bless you, yes, General,&rdquo; said the post-boy; &ldquo;he belongs to the race
+      of fellows who have a mind to gobble up France, they say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger was one of the foreigners traveling in France at the time
+      when Napoleon detained all British subjects within the limits of the
+      Empire, by way of reprisals for the violation of the Treaty of Amiens, an
+      outrage of international law perpetrated by the Court of St. James. These
+      prisoners, compelled to submit to the Emperor&rsquo;s pleasure, were not all
+      suffered to remain in the houses where they were arrested, nor yet in the
+      places of residence which at first they were permitted to choose. Most of
+      the English colony in Touraine had been transplanted thither from
+      different places where their presence was supposed to be inimical to the
+      interests of the Continental Policy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man, who was taking the tedium of the early morning hours on
+      horseback, was one of these victims of bureaucratic tyranny. Two years
+      previously, a sudden order from the Foreign Office had dragged him from
+      Montpellier, whither he had gone on account of consumptive tendencies. He
+      glanced at the Comte d&rsquo;Aiglemont, saw that he was a military man, and
+      deliberately looked away, turning his head somewhat abruptly towards the
+      meadows by the Cise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The English are all as insolent as if the globe belonged to them,&rdquo;
+       muttered the Colonel. &ldquo;Luckily, Soult will give them a thrashing
+      directly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prisoner gave a glance to the caleche as he rode by. Brief though that
+      glance was, he had yet time to notice the sad expression which lent an
+      indefinable charm to the Countess&rsquo; pensive face. Many men are deeply moved
+      by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain
+      for a sign of constancy or of love. Julie herself was so much absorbed in
+      the contemplation of the opposite cushion that she saw neither the horse
+      nor the rider. The damaged trace meanwhile had been quickly and strongly
+      repaired; the Count stepped into his place again; and the post-boy, doing
+      his best to make up for lost time, drove the carriage rapidly along the
+      embankment. On they drove under the overhanging cliffs, with their
+      picturesque vine-dressers&rsquo; huts and stores of wine maturing in their dark
+      sides, till in the distance uprose the spire of the famous Abbey of
+      Marmoutiers, the retreat of St. Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can that diaphanous milord want with us?&rdquo; exclaimed the Colonel,
+      turning to assure himself that the horseman who had followed them from the
+      bridge was the young Englishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all, the stranger committed no breach of good manners by riding
+      along on the footway, and Colonel d&rsquo;Aiglemont was fain to lie back in his
+      corner after sending a scowl in the Englishman&rsquo;s direction. But in spite
+      of his hostile instincts, he could not help noticing the beauty of the
+      animal and the graceful horsemanship of the rider. The young man&rsquo;s face
+      was of that pale, fair-complexioned, insular type, which is almost girlish
+      in the softness and delicacy of its color and texture. He was tall, thin,
+      and fair-haired, dressed with the extreme and elaborate neatness
+      characteristic of a man of fashion in prudish England. Any one might have
+      thought that bashfulness rather than pleasure at the sight of the Countess
+      had called up that flush into his face. Once only Julie raised her eyes
+      and looked at the stranger, and then only because she was in a manner
+      compelled to do so, for her husband called upon her to admire the action
+      of the thoroughbred. It so happened that their glances clashed; and the
+      shy Englishman, instead of riding abreast of the carriage, fell behind on
+      this, and followed them at a distance of a few paces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet the Countess had scarcely given him a glance; she saw none of the
+      various perfections, human and equine, commended to her notice, and fell
+      back again in the carriage, with a slight movement of the eyelids intended
+      to express her acquiescence in her husband&rsquo;s views. The Colonel fell
+      asleep again, and both husband and wife reached Tours without another
+      word. Not one of those enchanting views of everchanging landscape through
+      which they sped had drawn so much as a glance from Julie&rsquo;s eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont looked now and again at her sleeping husband. While she
+      looked, a sudden jolt shook something down upon her knees. It was her
+      father&rsquo;s portrait, a miniature which she wore suspended about her neck by
+      a black cord. At the sight of it, the tears, till then kept back,
+      overflowed her eyes, but no one, save perhaps the Englishman, saw them
+      glitter there for a brief moment before they dried upon her pale cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Colonel d&rsquo;Aiglemont was on his way to the South. Marshal Soult was
+      repelling an English invasion of Bearn; and d&rsquo;Aiglemont, the bearer of the
+      Emperor&rsquo;s orders to the Marshal, seized the opportunity of taking his wife
+      as far as Tours to leave her with an elderly relative of his own, far away
+      from the dangers threatening Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very shortly the carriage rolled over the paved road of Tours, over the
+      bridge, along the Grande-Rue, and stopped at last before the old mansion
+      of the <i>ci-devant</i> Marquise de Listomere-Landon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise de Listomere-Landon, with her white hair, pale face, and
+      shrewd smile, was one of those fine old ladies who still seem to wear the
+      paniers of the eighteenth century, and affects caps of an extinct mode.
+      They are nearly always caressing in their manners, as if the heyday of
+      love still lingered on for these septuagenarian portraits of the age of
+      Louis Quinze, with the faint perfume of <i>poudre a la marechale</i>
+      always clinging about them. Bigoted rather than pious, and less of bigots
+      than they seem, women who can tell a story well and talk still better,
+      their laughter comes more readily for an old memory than for a new jest&mdash;the
+      present intrudes upon them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When an old waiting-woman announced to the Marquise de Listomere-Landon
+      (to give her the title which she was soon to resume) the arrival of a
+      nephew whom she had not seen since the outbreak of the war with Spain, the
+      old lady took off her spectacles with alacrity, shut the <i>Galerie de
+      l&rsquo;ancienne Cour</i> (her favorite work), and recovered something like
+      youthful activity, hastening out upon the flight of steps to greet the
+      young couple there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt and niece exchanged a rapid glance of survey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-morning, dear aunt,&rdquo; cried the Colonel, giving the old lady a hasty
+      embrace. &ldquo;I am bringing a young lady to put under your wing. I have come
+      to put my treasure in your keeping. My Julie is neither jealous nor a
+      coquette, she is as good as an angel. I hope that she will not be spoiled
+      here,&rdquo; he added, suddenly interrupting himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scapegrace!&rdquo; returned the Marquise, with a satirical glance at her
+      nephew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not wait for her niece to approach her, but with a certain kindly
+      graciousness went forward herself to kiss Julie, who stood there
+      thoughtfully, to all appearance more embarrassed than curious concerning
+      her new relation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So we are to make each other&rsquo;s acquaintance, are we, my love?&rdquo; the
+      Marquise continued. &ldquo;Do not be too much alarmed of me. I always try not to
+      be an old woman with young people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the way to the drawing-room, the Marquise ordered breakfast for her
+      guests in provincial fashion; but the Count checked his aunt&rsquo;s flow of
+      words by saying soberly that he could only remain in the house while the
+      horses were changing. On this the three hurried into the drawing-room. The
+      Colonel had barely time to tell the story of the political and military
+      events which had compelled him to ask his aunt for a shelter for his young
+      wife. While he talked on without interruption, the older lady looked from
+      her nephew to her niece, and took the sadness in Julie&rsquo;s white face for
+      grief at the enforced separation. &ldquo;Eh! eh!&rdquo; her looks seemed to say,
+      &ldquo;these young things are in love with each other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The crack of the postilion&rsquo;s whip sounded outside in the silent old
+      grass-grown courtyard. Victor embraced his aunt once more, and rushed out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, dear,&rdquo; he said, kissing his wife, who had followed him down to
+      the carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Victor, let me come still further with you,&rdquo; she pleaded coaxingly.
+      &ldquo;I do not want to leave you&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you seriously mean it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said Julie, &ldquo;since you wish it.&rdquo; The carriage disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you are very fond of my poor Victor?&rdquo; said the Marquise, interrogating
+      her niece with one of those sagacious glances which dowagers give younger
+      women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas, madame!&rdquo; said Julie, &ldquo;must one not love a man well indeed to marry
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were spoken with an artless accent which revealed either a pure
+      heart or inscrutable depths. How could a woman, who had been the friend of
+      Duclos and the Marechal de Richelieu, refrain from trying to read the
+      riddle of this marriage? Aunt and niece were standing on the steps, gazing
+      after the fast vanishing caleche. The look in the young Countess&rsquo; eyes did
+      not mean love as the Marquise understood it. The good lady was a
+      Provencale, and her passions had been lively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you were captivated by my good-for-nothing of a nephew?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Involuntarily Julie shuddered, something in the experienced coquette&rsquo;s
+      look and tone seemed to say that Mme. de Listomere-Landon&rsquo;s knowledge of
+      her husband&rsquo;s character went perhaps deeper than his wife&rsquo;s. Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont, in dismay, took refuge in this transparent dissimulation,
+      ready to her hand, the first resource of an artless unhappiness. Mme. de
+      Listomere appeared to be satisfied with Julie&rsquo;s answers; but in her secret
+      heart she rejoiced to think that here was a love affair on hand to enliven
+      her solitude, for that her niece had some amusing flirtation on foot she
+      was fully convinced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the great drawing-room, hung with tapestry framed in strips of gilding,
+      young Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont sat before a blazing fire, behind a Chinese screen
+      placed to shut out the cold draughts from the window, and her heavy mood
+      scarcely lightened. Among the old eighteenth-century furniture, under the
+      old paneled ceiling, it was not very easy to be gay. Yet the young
+      Parisienne took a sort of pleasure in this entrance upon a life of
+      complete solitude and in the solemn silence of the old provincial house.
+      She exchanged a few words with the aunt, a stranger, to whom she had
+      written a bride&rsquo;s letter on her marriage, and then sat as silent as if she
+      had been listening to an opera. Not until two hours had been spent in an
+      atmosphere of quiet befitting la Trappe, did she suddenly awaken to a
+      sense of uncourteous behavior, and bethink herself of the short answers
+      which she had given her aunt. Mme. de Listomere, with the gracious tact
+      characteristic of a bygone age, had respected her niece&rsquo;s mood. When Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont became conscious of her shortcomings, the dowager sat
+      knitting, though as a matter of fact she had several times left the room
+      to superintend preparations in the Green Chamber, whither the Countess&rsquo; 
+      luggage had been transported; now, however, she had returned to her great
+      armchair, and stole a glance from time to time at this young relative.
+      Julie felt ashamed of giving way to irresistible broodings, and tried to
+      earn her pardon by laughing at herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear child, <i>we</i> know the sorrows of widowhood,&rdquo; returned her
+      aunt. But only the eyes of forty years could have distinguished the irony
+      hovering about the old lady&rsquo;s mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning the Countess improved. She talked. Mme. de Listomere no
+      longer despaired of fathoming the new-made wife, whom yesterday she had
+      set down as a dull, unsociable creature, and discoursed on the delights of
+      the country, of dances, of houses where they could visit. All that day the
+      Marquise&rsquo;s questions were so many snares; it was the old habit of the old
+      Court, she could not help setting traps to discover her niece&rsquo;s character.
+      For several days Julie, plied with temptations, steadfastly declined to
+      seek amusement abroad; and much as the old lady&rsquo;s pride longed to exhibit
+      her pretty niece, she was fain to renounce all hope of taking her into
+      society, for the young Countess was still in morning for her father, and
+      found in her loss and her mourning dress a pretext for her sadness and
+      desire for seclusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the end of the week the dowager admired Julie&rsquo;s angelic sweetness of
+      disposition, her diffident charm, her indulgent temper, and thenceforward
+      began to take a prodigious interest in the mysterious sadness gnawing at
+      this young heart. The Countess was one of those women who seem born to be
+      loved and to bring happiness with them. Mme. de Listomere found her
+      niece&rsquo;s society grown so sweet and precious, that she doted upon Julie,
+      and could no longer think of parting with her. A month sufficed to
+      establish an eternal friendship between the two ladies. The dowager
+      noticed, not without surprise, the changes that took place in Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont; gradually her bright color died away, and her face became
+      dead white. Yet, Julie&rsquo;s spirits rose as the bloom faded from her cheeks.
+      Sometimes the dowager&rsquo;s sallies provoked outbursts of merriment or peals
+      of laughter, promptly repressed, however, by some clamorous thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. de Listomere had guessed by this time that it was neither Victor&rsquo;s
+      absence nor a father&rsquo;s death which threw a shadow over her niece&rsquo;s life;
+      but her mind was so full of dark suspicions, that she found it difficult
+      to lay a finger upon the real cause of the mischief. Possibly truth is
+      only discoverable by chance. A day came, however, at length when Julie
+      flashed out before her aunt&rsquo;s astonished eyes into a complete
+      forgetfulness of her marriage; she recovered the wild spirits of careless
+      girlhood. Mme. de Listomere then and there made up her mind to fathom the
+      depths of this soul, for its exceeding simplicity was as inscrutable as
+      dissimulation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Night was falling. The two ladies were sitting by the window which looked
+      out upon the street, and Julie was looking thoughtful again, when some one
+      went by on horseback.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There goes one of your victims,&rdquo; said the Marquise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont looked up; dismay and surprise blended in her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is a young Englishman, the Honorable Arthur Ormand, Lord Grenville&rsquo;s
+      eldest son. His history is interesting. His physician sent him to
+      Montpellier in 1802; it was hoped that in that climate he might recover
+      from the lung complaint which was gaining ground. He was detained, like
+      all his fellow-countrymen, by Bonaparte when war broke out. That monster
+      cannot live without fighting. The young Englishman, by way of amusing
+      himself, took to studying his own complaint, which was believed to be
+      incurable. By degrees he acquired a liking for anatomy and physic, and
+      took quite a craze for that kind of thing, a most extraordinary taste in a
+      man of quality, though the Regent certainly amused himself with chemistry!
+      In short, Monsieur Arthur made astonishing progress in his studies; his
+      health did the same under the faculty of Montpellier; he consoled his
+      captivity, and at the same time his cure was thoroughly completed. They
+      say that he spent two whole years in a cowshed, living on cresses and the
+      milk of a cow brought from Switzerland, breathing as seldom as he could,
+      and never speaking a word. Since he come to Tours he has lived quite
+      alone; he is as proud as a peacock; but you have certainly made a conquest
+      of him, for probably it is not on my account that he has ridden under the
+      window twice every day since you have been here.&mdash;He has certainly
+      fallen in love with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That last phrase roused the Countess like magic. Her involuntary start and
+      smile took the Marquise by surprise. So far from showing a sign of the
+      instinctive satisfaction felt by the most strait-laced of women when she
+      learns that she has destroyed the peace of mind of some male victim, there
+      was a hard, haggard expression in Julie&rsquo;s face&mdash;a look of repulsion
+      amounting almost to loathing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A woman who loves will put the whole world under the ban of Love&rsquo;s empire
+      for the sake of the one whom she loves; but such a woman can laugh and
+      jest; and Julie at that moment looked as if the memory of some recently
+      escaped peril was too sharp and fresh not to bring with it a quick
+      sensation of pain. Her aunt, by this time convinced that Julie did not
+      love her nephew, was stupefied by the discovery that she loved nobody
+      else. She shuddered lest a further discovery should show her Julie&rsquo;s heart
+      disenchanted, lest the experience of a day, or perhaps of a night, should
+      have revealed to a young wife the full extent of Victor&rsquo;s emptiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she has found him out, there is an end of it,&rdquo; thought the dowager.
+      &ldquo;My nephew will soon be made to feel the inconveniences of wedded life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise now proposed to convert Julie to the monarchical doctrines of
+      the times of Louis Quinze; but a few hours later she discovered, or, more
+      properly speaking, guessed, the not uncommon state of affairs, and the
+      real cause of her niece&rsquo;s low spirits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie turned thoughtful on a sudden, and went to her room earlier than
+      usual. When her maid left her for the night, she still sat by the fire in
+      the yellow velvet depths of a great chair, an old-world piece of furniture
+      as well suited for sorrow as for happy people. Tears flowed, followed by
+      sighs and meditation. After a while she drew a little table to her, sought
+      writing materials, and began to write. The hours went by swiftly. Julie&rsquo;s
+      confidences made to the sheet of paper seemed to cost her dear; every
+      sentence set her dreaming, and at last she suddenly burst into tears. The
+      clocks were striking two. Her head, grown heavy as a dying woman&rsquo;s, was
+      bowed over her breast. When she raised it, her aunt appeared before her as
+      suddenly as if she had stepped out of the background of tapestry upon the
+      walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can be the matter with you, child?&rdquo; asked the Marquise. &ldquo;Why are you
+      sitting up so late? And why, in the first place, are you crying alone, at
+      your age?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without further ceremony she sat down beside her niece, her eyes the while
+      devouring the unfinished letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you writing to your husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I know where he is?&rdquo; returned the Countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her aunt thereupon took up the sheet and proceeded to read it. She had
+      brought her spectacles; the deed was premeditated. The innocent writer of
+      the letter allowed her to take it without the slightest remark. It was
+      neither lack of dignity nor consciousness of secret guilt which left her
+      thus without energy. Her aunt had come in upon her at a crisis. She was
+      helpless; right or wrong, reticence and confidence, like all things else,
+      were matters of indifference. Like some young maid who had heaped scorn
+      upon her lover, and feels so lonely and sad when evening comes, that she
+      longs for him to come back or for a heart to which she can pour out her
+      sorrow, Julie allowed her aunt to violate the seal which honor places upon
+      an open letter, and sat musing while the Marquise read on:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;MY DEAR LOUISA,&mdash;Why do you ask so often for the fulfilment of as
+  rash a promise as two young and inexperienced girls could make?
+  You say that you often ask yourself why I have given no answer to
+  your questions for these six months. If my silence told you
+  nothing, perhaps you will understand the reasons for it to-day, as
+  you read the secrets which I am about to betray. I should have
+  buried them for ever in the depths of my heart if you had not
+  announced your own approaching marriage. You are about to be
+  married, Louisa. The thought makes me shiver. Poor little one!
+  marry, yes, in a few months&rsquo; time one of the keenest pangs of
+  regret will be the recollection of a self which used to be, of the
+  two young girls who sat one evening under one of the tallest
+  oak-trees on the hillside at Ecouen, and looked along the fair
+  valley at our feet in the light of the sunset, which caught us in
+  its glow. We sat on a slab of rock in ecstasy, which sobered down
+  into melancholy of the gentlest. You were the first to discover that
+  the far-off sun spoke to us of the future. How inquisitive and how
+  silly we were! Do you remember all the absurd things we said and
+  did? We embraced each other; &lsquo;like lovers,&rsquo; said we. We solemnly
+  promised that the first bride should faithfully reveal to the
+  other the mysteries of marriage, the joys which our childish minds
+  imagined to be so delicious. That evening will complete your
+  despair, Louisa. In those days you were young and beautiful and
+  careless, if not radiantly happy; a few days of marriage, and you
+  will be, what I am already&mdash;ugly, wretched, and old. Need I tell
+  you how proud I was and how vain and glad to be married to Colonel
+  Victor d&rsquo;Aiglemont? And besides, how could I tell you now? for I
+  cannot remember that old self. A few moments turned my girlhood to
+  a dream. All through the memorable day which consecrated a chain,
+  the extent of which was hidden from me, my behavior was not free
+  from reproach. Once and again my father tried to repress my
+  spirits; the joy which I showed so plainly was thought unbefitting
+  the occasion, my talk scarcely innocent, simply because I was so
+  innocent. I played endless child&rsquo;s tricks with my bridal veil, my
+  wreath, my gown. Left alone that night in the room whither I had
+  been conducted in state, I planned a piece of mischief to tease
+  Victor. While I awaited his coming, my heart beat wildly, as it
+  used to do when I was a child stealing into the drawing-room on
+  the last day of the old year to catch a glimpse of the New Year&rsquo;s
+  gifts piled up there in heaps. When my husband came in and looked
+  for me, my smothered laughter ringing out from beneath the lace in
+  which I had shrouded myself, was the last outburst of the
+  delicious merriment which brightened our games in childhood...&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      When the dowager had finished reading the letter, and after such a
+      beginning the rest must have been sad indeed, she slowly laid her
+      spectacles on the table, put the letter down beside them, and looked
+      fixedly at her niece. Age had not dimmed the fire in those green eyes as
+      yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My little girl,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;a married woman cannot write such a letter as
+      this to a young unmarried woman; it is scarcely proper&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I was thinking,&rdquo; Julie broke in upon her aunt. &ldquo;I felt ashamed of
+      myself while you were reading it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If a dish at table is not to our taste, there is no occasion to disgust
+      others with it, child,&rdquo; the old lady continued benignly, &ldquo;especially when
+      marriage has seemed to us all, from Eve downwards, so excellent an
+      institution... You have no mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess trembled, then she raised her face meekly, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have missed my mother many times already during the past year; but I
+      have myself to blame, I would not listen to my father. He was opposed to
+      my marriage; he disapproved of Victor as a son-in-law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at her aunt. The old face was lighted up with a kindly look,
+      and a thrill of joy dried Julie&rsquo;s tears. She held out her young, soft hand
+      to the old Marquise, who seemed to ask for it, and the understanding
+      between the two women was completed by the close grasp of their fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor orphan child!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words came like a final flash of enlightenment to Julie. It seemed to
+      her that she heard her father&rsquo;s prophetic voice again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your hands are burning! Are they always like this?&rdquo; asked the Marquise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The fever only left me seven or eight days ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had a fever upon you, and said nothing about it to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have had it for a year,&rdquo; said Julie, with a kind of timid anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My good little angel, then your married life hitherto has been one long
+      time of suffering?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie did not venture to reply, but an affirmative sign revealed the whole
+      truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you are unhappy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On! no, no, aunt. Victor loves me, he almost idolizes me, and I adore
+      him, he is so kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you love him; but you avoid him, do you not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes... sometimes... He seeks me too often.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And often when you are alone you are troubled with the fear that he may
+      suddenly break in on your solitude?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas! yes, aunt. But, indeed, I love him, I do assure you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you not, in your own thoughts, blame yourself because you find it
+      impossible to share his pleasures? Do you never think at times that
+      marriage is a heavier yoke than an illicit passion could be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that is just it,&rdquo; she wept. &ldquo;It is all a riddle to me, and can you
+      guess it all? My faculties are benumbed, I have no ideas, I can scarcely
+      see at all. I am weighed down by vague dread, which freezes me till I
+      cannot feel, and keeps me in continual torpor. I have no voice with which
+      to pity myself, no words to express my trouble. I suffer, and I am ashamed
+      to suffer when Victor is happy at my cost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Babyish nonsense, and rubbish, all of it!&rdquo; exclaimed the aunt, and a gay
+      smile, an after-glow of the joys of her own youth, suddenly lighted up her
+      withered face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And do you too laugh!&rdquo; the younger woman cried despairingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was just my own case,&rdquo; the Marquise returned promptly. &ldquo;And now Victor
+      has left you, you have become a girl again, recovering a tranquillity
+      without pleasure and without pain, have you not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie opened wide eyes of bewilderment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In fact, my angel, you adore Victor, do you not? But still you would
+      rather be a sister to him than a wife, and, in short, your marriage is
+      emphatically not a success?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;no, aunt. But why do you smile?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! you are right, poor child! There is nothing very amusing in all this.
+      Your future would be big with more than one mishap if I had not taken you
+      under my protection, if my old experience of life had not guessed the very
+      innocent cause of your troubles. My nephew did not deserve his good
+      fortune, the blockhead! In the reign of our well-beloved Louis Quinze, a
+      young wife in your position would very soon have punished her husband for
+      behaving like a ruffian. The selfish creature! The men who serve under
+      this Imperial tyrant are all of them ignorant boors. They take brutality
+      for gallantry; they know no more of women than they know of love; and
+      imagine that because they go out to face death on the morrow, they may
+      dispense to-day with all consideration and attentions for us. The time was
+      when a man could love and die too at the proper time. My niece, I will
+      form you. I will put an end to this unhappy divergence between you, a
+      natural thing enough, but it would end in mutual hatred and desire for a
+      divorce, always supposing that you did not die on the way to despair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie&rsquo;s amazement equaled her surprise as she listened to her aunt. She
+      was surprised by her language, dimly divining rather than appreciating the
+      wisdom of the words she heard, and very much dismayed to find what this
+      relative, out of great experience, passed judgment upon Victor as her
+      father had done, though in somewhat milder terms. Perhaps some quick
+      prevision of the future crossed her mind; doubtless, at any rate, she felt
+      the heavy weight of the burden which must inevitably overwhelm her, for
+      she burst into tears, and sprang to the old lady&rsquo;s arms. &ldquo;Be my mother,&rdquo;
+       she sobbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The aunt shed no tears. The Revolution had left old ladies of the Monarchy
+      but few tears to shed. Love, in bygone days, and the Terror at a later
+      time, had familiarized them with extremes of joy and anguish in such a
+      sort that, amid the perils of life, they preserved their dignity and
+      coolness, a capacity for sincere but undemonstrative affection which never
+      disturbed their well-bred self-possession, and a dignity of demeanor which
+      a younger generation has done very ill to discard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dowager took Julie in her arms, and kissed her on the forehead with a
+      tenderness and pity more often found in women&rsquo;s ways and manner than in
+      their hearts. Then she coaxed her niece with kind, soothing words, assured
+      her of a happy future, lulled her with promises of love, and put her to
+      bed as if she had been not a niece, but a daughter, a much-beloved
+      daughter whose hopes and cares she had made her own. Perhaps the old
+      Marquise had found her own youth and inexperience and beauty again in this
+      nephew&rsquo;s wife. And the Countess fell asleep, happy to have found a friend,
+      nay a mother, to whom she could tell everything freely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning, when the two women kissed each other with heartfelt
+      kindness, and that look of intelligence which marks a real advance in
+      friendship, a closer intimacy between two souls, they heard the sound of
+      horsehoofs, and, turning both together, saw the young Englishman ride
+      slowly past the window, after his wont. Apparently he had made a certain
+      study of the life led by the two lonely women, for he never failed to ride
+      by as they sat at breakfast, and again at dinner. His horse slackened pace
+      of its own accord, and for the space of time required to pass the two
+      windows in the room, its rider turned a melancholy look upon the Countess,
+      who seldom deigned to take the slightest notion of him. Not so the
+      Marquise. Minds not necessarily little find it difficult to resist the
+      little curiosity which fastens upon the most trifling event that enlivens
+      provincial life; and the Englishman&rsquo;s mute way of expressing his timid,
+      earnest love tickled Mme. de Listomere. For her the periodically recurrent
+      glance became a part of the day&rsquo;s routine, hailed daily with new jests. As
+      the two women sat down to table, both of them looked out at the same
+      moment. This time Julie&rsquo;s eyes met Arthur&rsquo;s with such a precision of
+      sympathy that the color rose to her face. The stranger immediately urged
+      his horse into a gallop and went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is to be done, madame?&rdquo; asked Julie. &ldquo;People see this Englishman go
+      past the house, and they will take it for granted that I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; interrupted her aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, could I not tell him to discontinue his promenades?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would not that be a way of telling him that he was dangerous? You might
+      put that notion into his head. And besides, can you prevent a man from
+      coming and going as he pleases? Our meals shall be served in another room
+      to-morrow; and when this young gentleman sees us no longer, there will be
+      an end of making love to you through the window. There, dear child, that
+      is how a woman of the world does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the measure of Julie&rsquo;s misfortune was to be filled up. The two women
+      had scarcely risen from table when Victor&rsquo;s man arrived in hot haste from
+      Bourges with a letter for the Countess from her husband. The servant had
+      ridden by unfrequented ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Victor sent his wife news of the downfall of the Empire and the
+      capitulation of Paris. He himself had gone over to the Bourbons, and all
+      France was welcoming them back with transports of enthusiasm. He could not
+      go so far as Tours, but he begged her to come at once to join him at
+      Orleans, where he hoped to be in readiness with passports for her. His
+      servant, an old soldier, would be her escort so far as Orleans; he
+      (Victor) believed that the road was still open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have not a moment to lose, madame,&rdquo; said the man. &ldquo;The Prussians,
+      Austrians, and English are about to effect a junction either at Blois or
+      at Orleans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A few hours later, Julie&rsquo;s preparations were made, and she started out
+      upon her journey in an old traveling carriage lent by her aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should you not come with us to Paris?&rdquo; she asked, as she put her arms
+      about the Marquise. &ldquo;Now that the Bourbons have come back you would be&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even if there had not been this unhoped-for return, I should still have
+      gone to Paris, my poor child, for my advice is only too necessary to both
+      you and Victor. So I shall make all my preparations for rejoining you
+      there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie set out. She took her maid with her, and the old soldier galloped
+      beside the carriage as escort. At nightfall, as they changed horses for
+      the last stage before Blois, Julie grew uneasy. All the way from Amboise
+      she had heard the sound of wheels behind them, a carriage following hers
+      had kept at the same distance. She stood on the step and looked out to see
+      who her traveling companions might be, and in the moonlight saw Arthur
+      standing three paces away, gazing fixedly at the chaise which contained
+      her. Again their eyes met. The Countess hastily flung herself back in her
+      seat, but a feeling of dread set her pulses throbbing. It seemed to her,
+      as to most innocent and inexperienced young wives, that she was herself to
+      blame for this love which she had all unwittingly inspired. With this
+      thought came an instinctive terror, perhaps a sense of her own
+      helplessness before aggressive audacity. One of a man&rsquo;s strongest weapons
+      is the terrible power of compelling a woman to think of him when her
+      naturally lively imagination takes alarm or offence at the thought that
+      she is followed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess bethought herself of her aunt&rsquo;s advice, and made up her mind
+      that she would not stir from her place during the rest of the journey; but
+      every time the horses were changed she heard the Englishman pacing round
+      the two carriages, and again upon the road heard the importunate sound of
+      the wheels of his caleche. Julie soon began to think that, when once
+      reunited to her husband, Victor would know how to defend her against this
+      singular persecution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet suppose that in spite of everything, this young man does not love
+      me?&rdquo; This was the thought that came last of all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No sooner did she reach Orleans than the Prussians stopped the chaise. It
+      was wheeled into an inn-yard and put under a guard of soldiers. Resistance
+      was out of the question. The foreign soldiers made the three travelers
+      understand by signs that they were obeying orders, and that no one could
+      be allowed to leave the carriage. For about two hours the Countess sat in
+      tears, a prisoner surrounded by the guard, who smoked, laughed, and
+      occasionally stared at her with insolent curiosity. At last, however, she
+      saw her captors fall away from the carriage with a sort of respect, and
+      heard at the same time the sound of horses entering the yard. Another
+      moment, and a little group of foreign officers, with an Austrian general
+      at their head, gathered about the door of the traveling carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; said the General, &ldquo;pray accept our apologies. A mistake has been
+      made. You may continue your journey without fear; and here is a passport
+      which will spare you all further annoyance of any kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Trembling the Countess took the paper, and faltered out some vague words
+      of thanks. She saw Arthur, now wearing an English uniform, standing beside
+      the General, and could not doubt that this prompt deliverance was due to
+      him. The young Englishman himself looked half glad, half melancholy; his
+      face was turned away, and he only dared to steal an occasional glance at
+      Julie&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thanks to the passport, Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont reached Paris without further
+      misadventure, and there she found her husband. Victor d&rsquo;Aiglemont,
+      released from his oath of allegiance to the Emperor, had met with a most
+      flattering reception from the Comte d&rsquo;Artois, recently appointed
+      Lieutenant-General of the kingdom by his brother Louis XVIII. D&rsquo;Aiglemont
+      received a commission in the Life Guards, equivalent to the rank of
+      general. But amid the rejoicings over the return of the Bourbons, fate
+      dealt poor Julie a terrible blow. The death of the Marquise de
+      Listomere-Landon was an irreparable loss. The old lady died of joy and of
+      an accession of gout to the heart when the Duc d&rsquo;Angouleme came back to
+      Tours, and the one living being entitled by her age to enlighten Victor,
+      the woman who, by discreet counsels, might have brought about perfect
+      unanimity of husband and wife, was dead; and Julie felt the full extent of
+      her loss. Henceforward she must stand alone between herself and her
+      husband. But she was young and timid; there could be no doubt of the
+      result, or that from the first she would elect to bear her lot in silence.
+      The very perfections of her character forbade her to venture to swerve
+      from her duties, or to attempt to inquire into the cause of her
+      sufferings, for to put an end to them would have been to venture on
+      delicate ground, and Julie&rsquo;s girlish modesty shrank from the thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A word as to M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s destinies under the Restoration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How many men are there whose utter incapacity is a secret kept from most
+      of their acquaintance. For such as these high rank, high office,
+      illustrious birth, a certain veneer of politeness, and considerable
+      reserve of manner, or the <i>prestige</i> of great fortunes, are but so
+      many sentinels to turn back critics who would penetrate to the presence of
+      the real man. Such men are like kings, in that their real figure,
+      character, and life can never be known nor justly appreciated, because
+      they are always seen from too near or too far. Factitious merit has a way
+      of asking questions and saying little; and understands the art of putting
+      others forward to save the necessity of posing before them; then, with a
+      happy knack of its own, it draws and attaches others by the thread of the
+      ruling passion of self-interest, keeping men of far greater abilities to
+      play like puppets, and despising those whom it has brought down to its own
+      level. The petty fixed idea naturally prevails; it has the advantage of
+      persistence over the plasticity of great thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The observer who should seek to estimate and appraise the negative values
+      of these empty heads needs subtlety rather than superior wit for the task;
+      patience is a more necessary part of his judicial outfit than great mental
+      grasp, cunning and tact rather than any elevation or greatness of ideas.
+      Yet skilfully as such usurpers can cover and defend their weak points, it
+      is difficult to delude wife and mother and children and the house-friend
+      of the family; fortunately for them, however, these persons almost always
+      keep a secret which in a manner touches the honor of all, and not
+      unfrequently go so far as to help to foist the imposture upon the public.
+      And if, thanks to such domestic conspiracy, many a noodle passes current
+      for a man of ability, on the other hand many another who has real ability
+      is taken for a noodle to redress the balance, and the total average of
+      this kind of false coin in circulation in the state is a pretty constant
+      quantity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bethink yourself now of the part to be played by a clever woman quick to
+      think and feel, mated with a husband of this kind, and can you not see a
+      vision of lives full of sorrow and self-sacrifice? Nothing upon earth can
+      repay such hearts so full of love and tender tact. Put a strong-willed
+      woman in this wretched situation, and she will force a way out of it for
+      herself by a crime, like Catherine II., whom men nevertheless style &ldquo;the
+      Great.&rdquo; But these women are not all seated upon thrones, they are for the
+      most part doomed to domestic unhappiness none the less terrible because
+      obscure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those who seek consolation in this present world for their woes often
+      effect nothing but a change of ills if they remain faithful to their
+      duties; or they commit a sin if they break the laws for their pleasure.
+      All these reflections are applicable to Julie&rsquo;s domestic life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the fall of Napoleon nobody was jealous of d&rsquo;Aiglemont. He was one
+      colonel among many, an efficient orderly staff-officer, as good a man as
+      you could find for a dangerous mission, as unfit as well could be for an
+      important command. D&rsquo;Aiglemont was looked upon as a dashing soldier such
+      as the Emperor liked, the kind of man whom his mess usually calls &ldquo;a good
+      fellow.&rdquo; The Restoration gave him back his title of Marquis, and did not
+      find him ungrateful; he followed the Bourbons into exile at Ghent, a piece
+      of logical loyalty which falsified the horoscope drawn for him by his late
+      father-in-law, who predicted that Victor would remain a colonel all his
+      life. After the Hundred Days he received the appointment of
+      Lieutenant-General, and for the second time became a marquis; but it was
+      M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s ambition to be a peer of France. He adopted, therefore,
+      the maxims and the politics of the <i>Conservateur</i>, cloaked himself in
+      dissimulation which hid nothing (there being nothing to hide), cultivated
+      gravity of countenance and the art of asking questions and saying little,
+      and was taken for a man of profound wisdom. Nothing drew him from his
+      intrenchments behind the forms of politeness; he laid in a provision of
+      formulas, and made lavish use of his stock of the catch-words coined at
+      need in Paris to give fools the small change for the ore of great ideas
+      and events. Among men of the world he was reputed a man of taste and
+      discernment; and as a bigoted upholder of aristocratic opinions he was
+      held up for a noble character. If by chance he slipped now and again into
+      his old light-heartedness or levity, others were ready to discover an
+      undercurrent of diplomatic intention beneath his inanity and silliness.
+      &ldquo;Oh! he only says exactly as much as he means to say,&rdquo; thought these
+      excellent people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s defects and good qualities stood him alike in good stead.
+      He did nothing to forfeit a high military reputation gained by his dashing
+      courage, for he had never been a commander-in-chief. Great thoughts surely
+      were engraven upon that manly aristocratic countenance, which imposed upon
+      every one but his own wife. And when everybody else believed in the
+      Marquis d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s imaginary talents, the Marquis persuaded himself
+      before he had done that he was one of the most remarkable men at Court,
+      where, thanks to his purely external qualifications, he was in favor and
+      taken at his own valuation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At home, however, M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont was modest. Instinctively he felt that
+      his wife, young though she was, was his superior; and out of this
+      involuntary respect there grew an occult power which the Marquise was
+      obliged to wield in spite of all her efforts to shake off the burden. She
+      became her husband&rsquo;s adviser, the director of his actions and his
+      fortunes. It was an unnatural position; she felt it as something of a
+      humiliation, a source of pain to be buried in the depths of her heart.
+      From the first her delicately feminine instinct told her that it is a far
+      better thing to obey a man of talent than to lead a fool; and that a young
+      wife compelled to act and think like a man is neither man nor woman, but a
+      being who lays aside all the charms of her womanhood along with its
+      misfortunes, yet acquires none of the privileges which our laws give to
+      the stronger sex. Beneath the surface her life was a bitter mockery. Was
+      she not compelled to protect her protector, to worship a hollow idol, a
+      poor creature who flung her the love of a selfish husband as the wages of
+      her continual self-sacrifice; who saw nothing in her but the woman; and
+      who either did not think it worth while, or (wrong quite as deep) did not
+      think at all of troubling himself about her pleasures, of inquiring into
+      the cause of her low spirits and dwindling health? And the Marquis, like
+      most men who chafe under a wife&rsquo;s superiority, saved his self-love by
+      arguing from Julie&rsquo;s physical feebleness a corresponding lack of mental
+      power, for which he was pleased to pity her; and he would cry out upon
+      fate which had given him a sickly girl for a wife. The executioner posed,
+      in fact, as the victim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the burdens of this dreary lot fell upon the Marquise, who still must
+      smile upon her foolish lord, and deck a house of mourning with flowers,
+      and make a parade of happiness in a countenance wan with secret torture.
+      And with this sense of responsibility for the honor of both, with the
+      magnificent immolation of self, the young Marquise unconsciously acquired
+      a wifely dignity, a consciousness of virtue which became her safeguard
+      amid many dangers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps, if her heart were sounded to the very depths, this intimate
+      closely hidden wretchedness, following upon her unthinking, girlish first
+      love, had roused in her an abhorrence of passion; possibly she had no
+      conception of its rapture, nor of the forbidden but frenzied bliss for
+      which some women will renounce all the laws of prudence and the principles
+      of conduct upon which society is based. She put from her like a dream the
+      thought of bliss and tender harmony of love promised by Mme. de
+      Listomere-Landon&rsquo;s mature experience, and waited resignedly for the end of
+      her troubles with a hope that she might die young.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her health had declined daily since her return from Touraine; her life
+      seemed to be measured to her in suffering; yet her ill-health was
+      graceful, her malady seemed little more than languor, and might well be
+      taken by careless eyes for a fine lady&rsquo;s whim of invalidism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her doctors had condemned her to keep to the sofa, and there among her
+      flowers lay the Marquise, fading as they faded. She was not strong enough
+      to walk, nor to bear the open air, and only went out in a closed carriage.
+      Yet with all the marvels of modern luxury and invention about her, she
+      looked more like an indolent queen than an invalid. A few of her friends,
+      half in love perhaps with her sad plight and her fragile look, sure of
+      finding her at home, and speculating no doubt upon her future restoration
+      to health, would come to bring her the news of the day, and kept her
+      informed of the thousand and one small events which fill life in Paris
+      with variety. Her melancholy, deep and real though it was was still the
+      melancholy of a woman rich in many ways. The Marquise d&rsquo;Aiglemont was like
+      a flower, with a dark insect gnawing at its root.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Occasionally she went into society, not to please herself, but in
+      obedience to the exigencies of the position which her husband aspired to
+      take. In society her beautiful voice and the perfection of her singing
+      could always gain the social success so gratifying to a young woman; but
+      what was social success to her, who drew nothing from it for her heart or
+      her hopes? Her husband did not care for music. And, moreover, she seldom
+      felt at her ease in salons, where her beauty attracted homage not wholly
+      disinterested. Her position excited a sort of cruel compassion, a morbid
+      curiosity. She was suffering from an inflammatory complaint not
+      infrequently fatal, for which our nosology as yet has found no name, a
+      complaint spoken of among women in confidential whispers. In spite of the
+      silence in which her life was spent, the cause of her ill-health was no
+      secret. She was still but a girl in spite of her marriage; the slightest
+      glance threw her into confusion. In her endeavor not to blush, she was
+      always laughing, always apparently in high spirits; she would never admit
+      that she was not perfectly well, and anticipated questions as to her
+      health by shame-stricken subterfuges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1817, however, an event took place which did much to alleviate Julie&rsquo;s
+      hitherto deplorable existence. A daughter was born to her, and she
+      determined to nurse her child herself. For two years motherhood, its
+      all-absorbing multiplicity of cares and anxious joys, made life less hard
+      for her. She and her husband lived necessarily apart. Her physicians
+      predicted improved health, but the Marquise herself put no faith in these
+      auguries based on theory. Perhaps, like many a one for whom life has lost
+      its sweetness, she looked forward to death as a happy termination of the
+      drama.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But with the beginning of the year 1819 life grew harder than ever. Even
+      while she congratulated herself upon the negative happiness which she had
+      contrived to win, she caught a terrifying glimpse of yawning depths below
+      it. She had passed by degrees out of her husband&rsquo;s life. Her fine tact and
+      her prudence told her that misfortune must come, and that not singly, of
+      this cooling of an affection already lukewarm and wholly selfish. Sure
+      though she was of her ascendency over Victor, and certain as she felt of
+      his unalterable esteem, she dreaded the influence of unbridled passions
+      upon a head so empty, so full of rash self-conceit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie&rsquo;s friends often found her absorbed in prolonged musings; the less
+      clairvoyant among them would jestingly ask her what she was thinking
+      about, as if a young wife would think of nothing but frivolity, as if
+      there were not almost always a depth of seriousness in a mother&rsquo;s
+      thoughts. Unhappiness, like great happiness, induces dreaming. Sometimes
+      as Julie played with her little Helene, she would gaze darkly at her,
+      giving no reply to the childish questions in which a mother delights,
+      questioning the present and the future as to the destiny of this little
+      one. Then some sudden recollection would bring back the scene of the
+      review at the Tuileries and fill her eyes with tears. Her father&rsquo;s
+      prophetic warnings rang in her ears, and conscience reproached her that
+      she had not recognized its wisdom. Her troubles had all come of her own
+      wayward folly, and often she knew not which among so many were the hardest
+      to bear. The sweet treasures of her soul were unheeded, and not only so,
+      she could never succeed in making her husband understand her, even in the
+      commonest everyday things. Just as the power to love developed and grew
+      strong and active, a legitimate channel for the affections of her nature
+      was denied her, and wedded love was extinguished in grave physical and
+      mental sufferings. Add to this that she now felt for her husband that pity
+      closely bordering upon contempt, which withers all affection at last. Even
+      if she had not learned from conversations with some of her friends, from
+      examples in life, from sundry occurrences in the great world, that love
+      can bring ineffable bliss, her own wounds would have taught her to divine
+      the pure and deep happiness which binds two kindred souls each to each.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the picture which her memory traced of the past, Arthur&rsquo;s frank face
+      stood out daily nobler and purer; it was but a flash, for upon that
+      recollection she dared not dwell. The young Englishman&rsquo;s shy, silent love
+      for her was the one event since her marriage which had left a lingering
+      sweetness in her darkened and lonely heart. It may be that all the
+      blighted hopes, all the frustrated longings which gradually clouded
+      Julie&rsquo;s mind, gathered, by a not unnatural trick of imagination, about
+      this man&mdash;whose manners, sentiments, and character seemed to have so
+      much in common with her own. This idea still presented itself to her mind
+      fitfully and vaguely, like a dream; yet from that dream, which always
+      ended in a sigh, Julie awoke to greater wretchedness, to keener
+      consciousness of the latent anguish brooding beneath her imaginary bliss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Occasionally her self-pity took wilder and more daring flights. She
+      determined to have happiness at any cost; but still more often she lay a
+      helpless victim of an indescribable numbing stupor, the words she heard
+      had no meaning to her, or the thoughts which arose in her mind were so
+      vague and indistinct that she could not find language to express them.
+      Balked of the wishes of her heart, realities jarred harshly upon her
+      girlish dreams of life, but she was obliged to devour her tears. To whom
+      could she make complaint? Of whom be understood? She possessed, moreover,
+      that highest degree of woman&rsquo;s sensitive pride, the exquisite delicacy of
+      feeling which silences useless complainings and declines to use an
+      advantage to gain a triumph which can only humiliate both victor and
+      vanquished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie tried to endow M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont with her own abilities and virtues,
+      flattering herself that thus she might enjoy the happiness lacking in her
+      lot. All her woman&rsquo;s ingenuity and tact was employed in making the best of
+      the situation; pure waste of pains unsuspected by him, whom she thus
+      strengthened in his despotism. There were moments when misery became an
+      intoxication, expelling all ideas, all self-control; but, fortunately,
+      sincere piety always brought her back to one supreme hope; she found a
+      refuge in the belief in a future life, a wonderful thought which enabled
+      her to take up her painful task afresh. No elation of victory followed
+      those terrible inward battles and throes of anguish; no one knew of those
+      long hours of sadness; her haggard glances met no response from human
+      eyes, and during the brief moments snatched by chance for weeping, her
+      bitter tears fell unheeded and in solitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening in January 1820, the Marquise became aware of the full gravity
+      of the crisis, gradually brought on by force of circumstances. When a
+      husband and wife know each other thoroughly, and their relation has long
+      been a matter of use and wont, when the wife has learned to interpret
+      every slightest sign, when her quick insight discerns thoughts and facts
+      which her husband keeps from her, a chance word, or a remark so carelessly
+      let fall in the first instance, seems, upon subsequent reflection, like
+      the swift breaking out of light. A wife not seldom suddenly awakes upon
+      the brink of a precipice or in the depths of the abyss; and thus it was
+      with the Marquise. She was feeling glad to have been left to herself for
+      some days, when the real reason of her solitude flashed upon her. Her
+      husband, whether fickle and tired of her, or generous and full of pity for
+      her, was hers no longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the moment of that discovery she forgot herself, her sacrifices, all
+      that she had passed through, she remembered only that she was a mother.
+      Looking forward, she thought of her daughter&rsquo;s fortune, of the future
+      welfare of the one creature through whom some gleams of happiness came to
+      her, of her Helene, the only possession which bound her to life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Julie wished to live to save her child from a stepmother&rsquo;s terrible
+      thraldom, which might crush her darling&rsquo;s life. Upon this new vision of
+      threatened possibilities followed one of those paroxysms of thought at
+      fever-heat which consume whole years of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henceforward husband and wife were doomed to be separated by a whole world
+      of thought, and all the weight of that world she must bear alone. Hitherto
+      she had felt sure that Victor loved her, in so far as he could be said to
+      love; she had been the slave of pleasures which she did not share; to-day
+      the satisfaction of knowing that she purchased his contentment with her
+      tears was hers no longer. She was alone in the world, nothing was left to
+      her now but a choice of evils. In the calm stillness of the night her
+      despondency drained her of all her strength. She rose from her sofa beside
+      the dying fire, and stood in the lamplight gazing, dry-eyed, at her child,
+      when M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont came in. He was in high spirits. Julie called to him
+      to admire Helene as she lay asleep, but he met his wife&rsquo;s enthusiasm with
+      a commonplace:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All children are nice at that age.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He closed the curtains about the cot after a careless kiss on the child&rsquo;s
+      forehead. Then he turned his eyes on Julie, took her hand and drew her to
+      sit beside him on the sofa, where she had been sitting with such dark
+      thoughts surging up in her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are looking very handsome to-night, Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont,&rdquo; he exclaimed,
+      with the gaiety intolerable to the Marquise, who knew its emptiness so
+      well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where have you spent the evening?&rdquo; she asked, with a pretence of complete
+      indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At Mme. de Serizy&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had taken up a fire-screen, and was looking intently at the gauze. He
+      had not noticed the traces of tears on his wife&rsquo;s face. Julie shuddered.
+      Words could not express the overflowing torrent of thoughts which must be
+      forced down into inner depths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mme. de Serizy is giving a concert on Monday, and is dying for you to go.
+      You have not been anywhere for some time past, and that is enough to set
+      her longing to see you at her house. She is a good-natured woman, and very
+      fond of you. I should be glad if you would go; I all but promised that you
+      should&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something so penetrating, so significant in the tones of Julie&rsquo;s
+      voice, in her accent, in the glance that went with the words, that Victor,
+      startled out of his indifference, stared at his wife in astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was all, Julie had guessed that it was Mme. de Serizy who had stolen
+      her husband&rsquo;s heart from her. Her brooding despair benumbed her. She
+      appeared to be deeply interested in the fire. Victor meanwhile still
+      played with the fire-screen. He looked bored, like a man who has enjoyed
+      himself elsewhere, and brought home the consequent lassitude. He yawned
+      once or twice, then he took up a candle in one hand, and with the other
+      languidly sought his wife&rsquo;s neck for the usual embrace; but Julie stooped
+      and received the good-night kiss upon her forehead; the formal, loveless
+      grimace seemed hateful to her at that moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the door closed upon Victor, his wife sank into a seat. Her
+      limbs tottered beneath her, she burst into tears. None but those who have
+      endured the torture of some such scene can fully understand the anguish
+      that it means, or divine the horror of the long-drawn tragedy arising out
+      of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those simple, foolish words, the silence that followed between the husband
+      and wife, the Marquis&rsquo; gesture and expression, the way in which he sat
+      before the fire, his attitude as he made that futile attempt to put a kiss
+      on his wife&rsquo;s throat,&mdash;all these things made up a dark hour for
+      Julie, and the catastrophe of the drama of her sad and lonely life. In her
+      madness she knelt down before the sofa, burying her face in it to shut out
+      everything from sight, and prayed to Heaven, putting a new significance
+      into the words of the evening prayer, till it became a cry from the depths
+      of her own soul, which would have gone to her husband&rsquo;s heart if he had
+      heard it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following week she spent in deep thought for her future, utterly
+      overwhelmed by this new trouble. She made a study of it, trying to
+      discover a way to regain her ascendency over the Marquis, scheming how to
+      live long enough to watch over her daughter&rsquo;s happiness, yet to live true
+      to her own heart. Then she made up her mind. She would struggle with her
+      rival. She would shine once more in society. She would feign the love
+      which she could no longer feel, she would captivate her husband&rsquo;s fancy;
+      and when she had lured him into her power, she would coquet with him like
+      a capricious mistress who takes delight in tormenting a lover. This
+      hateful strategy was the only possible way out of her troubles. In this
+      way she would become mistress of the situation; she would prescribe her
+      own sufferings at her good pleasure, and reduce them by enslaving her
+      husband, and bringing him under a tyrannous yoke. She felt not the
+      slightest remorse for the hard life which he should lead. At a bound she
+      reached cold, calculating indifference&mdash;for her daughter&rsquo;s sake. She
+      had gained a sudden insight into the treacherous, lying arts of degraded
+      women; the wiles of coquetry, the revolting cunning which arouses such
+      profound hatred in men at the mere suspicion of innate corruption in a
+      woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie&rsquo;s feminine vanity, her interests, and a vague desire to inflict
+      punishment, all wrought unconsciously with the mother&rsquo;s love within her to
+      force her into a path where new sufferings awaited her. But her nature was
+      too noble, her mind too fastidious, and, above all things, too open, to be
+      the accomplice of these frauds for very long. Accustomed as she was to
+      self-scrutiny, at the first step in vice&mdash;for vice it was&mdash;the
+      cry of conscience must inevitably drown the clamor of the passions and of
+      selfishness. Indeed, in a young wife whose heart is still pure, whose love
+      has never been mated, the very sentiment of motherhood is overpowered by
+      modesty. Modesty; is not all womanhood summed up in that? But just now
+      Julie would not see any danger, anything wrong, in her life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to Mme. de Serizy&rsquo;s concert. Her rival had expected to see a
+      pallid, drooping woman. The Marquise wore rouge, and appeared in all the
+      splendor of a toilet which enhanced her beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. de Serizy was one of those women who claim to exercise a sort of sway
+      over fashions and society in Paris; she issued her decrees, saw them
+      received in her own circle, and it seemed to her that all the world obeyed
+      them. She aspired to epigram, she set up for an authority in matters of
+      taste. Literature, politics, men and women, all alike were submitted to
+      her censorship, and the lady herself appeared to defy the censorship of
+      others. Her house was in every respect a model of good taste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie triumphed over the Countess in her own salon, filled as it was with
+      beautiful women and women of fashion. Julie&rsquo;s liveliness and sparkling wit
+      gathered all the most distinguished men in the rooms about her. Her
+      costume was faultless, for the despair of the women, who one and all
+      envied her the fashion of her dress, and attributed the moulded outline of
+      her bodice to the genius of some unknown dressmaker, for women would
+      rather believe in miracles worked by the science of chiffons than in the
+      grace and perfection of the form beneath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Julie went to the piano to sing Desdemona&rsquo;s song, the men in the
+      rooms flocked about her to hear the celebrated voice so long mute, and
+      there was a deep silence. The Marquise saw the heads clustered thickly in
+      the doorways, saw all eyes turned upon her, and a sharp thrill of
+      excitement quivered through her. She looked for her husband, gave him a
+      coquettish side-glance, and it pleased her to see that his vanity was
+      gratified to no small degree. In the joy of triumph she sang the first
+      part of <i>Al piu salice</i>. Her audience was enraptured. Never had
+      Malibran nor Pasta sung with expression and intonation so perfect. But at
+      the beginning of the second part she glanced over the glistening groups
+      and saw&mdash;Arthur. He never took his eyes from her face. A quick
+      shudder thrilled through her, and her voice faltered. Up hurried Mme. de
+      Serizy from her place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, dear? Oh! poor little thing! she is in such weak health; I
+      was so afraid when I saw her begin a piece so far beyond her strength.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The song was interrupted. Julie was vexed. She had not courage to sing any
+      longer, and submitted to her rival&rsquo;s treacherous sympathy. There was a
+      whisper among the women. The incident led to discussions; they guessed
+      that the struggle had begun between the Marquise and Mme. de Serizy, and
+      their tongues did not spare the latter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie&rsquo;s strange, perturbing presentiments were suddenly realized. Through
+      her preoccupation with Arthur she had loved to imagine that with that
+      gentle, refined face he must remain faithful to his first love. There were
+      times when she felt proud that this ideal, pure, and passionate young love
+      should have been hers; the passion of the young lover whose thoughts are
+      all for her to whom he dedicates every moment of his life, who blushes as
+      a woman blushes, thinks as a woman might think, forgetting ambition, fame,
+      and fortune in devotion to his love,&mdash;she need never fear a rival.
+      All these things she had fondly and idly dreamed of Arthur; now all at
+      once it seemed to her that her dream had come true. In the young
+      Englishman&rsquo;s half-feminine face she read the same deep thoughts, the same
+      pensive melancholy, the same passive acquiescence in a painful lot, and an
+      endurance like her own. She saw herself in him. Trouble and sadness are
+      the most eloquent of love&rsquo;s interpreters, and response is marvelously
+      swift between two suffering creatures, for in them the powers of intuition
+      and of assimilation of facts and ideas are well-nigh unerring and perfect.
+      So with the violence of the shock the Marquise&rsquo;s eyes were opened to the
+      whole extent of the future danger. She was only too glad to find a pretext
+      for her nervousness in her chronic ill-health, and willingly submitted to
+      be overwhelmed by Mme. de Serizy&rsquo;s insidious compassion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That incident of the song caused talk and discussion which differed with
+      the various groups. Some pitied Julie&rsquo;s fate, and regretted that such a
+      remarkable woman was lost to society; others fell to wondering what the
+      cause of her ill-health and seclusion could be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, now, my dear Ronquerolles,&rdquo; said the Marquis, addressing Mme. de
+      Serizy&rsquo;s brother, &ldquo;you used to envy me my good fortune, and you used to
+      blame me for my infidelities. Pshaw, you would not find much to envy in my
+      lot, if, like me, you had a pretty wife so fragile that for the past two
+      years you might not so much as kiss her hand for fear of damaging her. Do
+      not you encumber yourself with one of those fragile ornaments, only fit to
+      put in a glass case, so brittle and so costly that you are always obliged
+      to be careful of them. They tell me that you are afraid of snow or wet for
+      that fine horse of yours; how often do you ride him? That is just my own
+      case. It is true that my wife gives me no ground for jealousy, but my
+      marriage is purely ornamental business; if you think that I am a married
+      man, you are grossly mistaken. So there is some excuse for my
+      unfaithfulness. I should dearly like to know what you gentlemen who laugh
+      at me would do in my place. Not many men would be so considerate as I am.
+      I am sure,&rdquo; (here he lowered his voice) &ldquo;that Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont suspects
+      nothing. And then, of course, I have no right to complain at all; I am
+      very well off. Only there is nothing more trying for a man who feels
+      things than the sight of suffering in a poor creature to whom you are
+      attached&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must have a very sensitive nature, then,&rdquo; said M. de Ronquerolles,
+      &ldquo;for you are not often at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Laughter followed on the friendly epigram; but Arthur, who made one of the
+      group, maintained a frigid imperturbability in his quality of an English
+      gentleman who takes gravity for the very basis of his being. D&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s
+      eccentric confidence, no doubt, had kindled some kind of hope in Arthur,
+      for he stood patiently awaiting an opportunity of a word with the Marquis.
+      He had not to wait long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My Lord Marquis,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I am unspeakably pained to see the state of
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s health. I do not think that you would talk jestingly
+      about it if you knew that unless she adopts a certain course of treatment
+      she must die miserably. If I use this language to you, it is because I am
+      in a manner justified in using it, for I am quite certain that I can save
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s life and restore her to health and happiness. It is
+      odd, no doubt, that a man of my rank should be a physician, yet
+      nevertheless chance determined that I should study medicine. I find life
+      dull enough here,&rdquo; he continued, affecting a cold selfishness to gain his
+      ends, &ldquo;it makes no difference to me whether I spend my time and travel for
+      the benefit of a suffering fellow-creature, or waste it in Paris on some
+      nonsense or other. It is very, very seldom that a cure is completed in
+      these complaints, for they require constant care, time, and patience, and,
+      above all things, money. Travel is needed, and a punctilious following out
+      of prescriptions, by no means unpleasant, and varied daily. Two <i>gentlemen</i>&rdquo;
+       (laying a stress on the word in its English sense) &ldquo;can understand each
+      other. I give you warning that if you accept my proposal, you shall be a
+      judge of my conduct at every moment. I will do nothing without consulting
+      you, without your superintendence, and I will answer for the success of my
+      method if you will consent to follow it. Yes, unless you wish to be Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s husband no longer, and that before long,&rdquo; he added in the
+      Marquis&rsquo; ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquis laughed. &ldquo;One thing is certain&mdash;that only an Englishman
+      could make me such an extraordinary proposal,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Permit me to
+      leave it unaccepted and unrejected. I will think it over; and my wife must
+      be consulted first in any case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie had returned to the piano. This time she sang a song from <i>Semiramide,
+      Son regina, son guerriera</i>, and the whole room applauded, a stifled
+      outburst of wellbred acclamation which proved that the Faubourg
+      Saint-Germain had been roused to enthusiasm by her singing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evening was over. D&rsquo;Aiglemont brought his wife home, and Julie saw
+      with uneasy satisfaction that her first attempt had at once been
+      successful. Her husband had been roused out of indifference by the part
+      which she had played, and now he meant to honor her with such a passing
+      fancy as he might bestow upon some opera nymph. It amused Julie that she,
+      a virtuous married woman, should be treated thus. She tried to play with
+      her power, but at the outset her kindness broke down once more, and she
+      received the most terrible of all the lessons held in store for her by
+      fate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between two and three o&rsquo;clock in the morning Julie sat up, sombre and
+      moody, beside her sleeping husband, in the room dimly lighted by the
+      flickering lamp. Deep silence prevailed. Her agony of remorse had lasted
+      near an hour; how bitter her tears had been none perhaps can realize save
+      women who have known such an experience as hers. Only such natures as
+      Julie&rsquo;s can feel her loathing for a calculated caress, the horror of a
+      loveless kiss, of the heart&rsquo;s apostasy followed by dolorous prostitution.
+      She despised herself; she cursed marriage. She could have longed for
+      death; perhaps if it had not been for a cry from her child, she would have
+      sprung from the window and dashed herself upon the pavement. M.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont slept on peacefully at her side; his wife&rsquo;s hot dropping tears
+      did not waken him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But next morning Julie could be gay. She made a great effort to look
+      happy, to hide, not her melancholy, as heretofore, but an insuperable
+      loathing. From that day she no longer regarded herself as a blameless
+      wife. Had she not been false to herself? Why should she not play a double
+      part in the future, and display astounding depths of cunning in deceiving
+      her husband? In her there lay a hitherto undiscovered latent depravity,
+      lacking only opportunity, and her marriage was the cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even now she had asked herself why she should struggle with love, when,
+      with her heart and her whole nature in revolt, she gave herself to the
+      husband whom she loved no longer. Perhaps, who knows? some piece of
+      fallacious reasoning, some bit of special pleading, lies at the root of
+      all sins, of all crimes. How shall society exist unless every individual
+      of which it is composed will make the necessary sacrifices of inclination
+      demanded by its laws? If you accept the benefits of civilized society, do
+      you not by implication engage to observe the conditions, the conditions of
+      its very existence? And yet, starving wretches, compelled to respect the
+      laws of property, are not less to be pitied than women whose natural
+      instincts and sensitiveness are turned to so many avenues of pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few days after that scene of which the secret lay buried in the midnight
+      couch, d&rsquo;Aiglemont introduced Lord Grenville. Julie gave the guest a
+      stiffly polite reception, which did credit to her powers of dissimulation.
+      Resolutely she silenced her heart, veiled her eyes, steadied her voice,
+      and she kept her future in her own hands. Then, when by these devices,
+      this innate woman-craft, as it may be called, she had discovered the full
+      extent of the love which she inspired, Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont welcomed the hope
+      of a speedy cure, and no longer opposed her husband, who pressed her to
+      accept the young doctor&rsquo;s offer. Yet she declined to trust herself with
+      Lord Grenville until after some further study of his words and manner, she
+      could feel certain that he had sufficient generosity to endure his pain in
+      silence. She had absolute power over him, and she had begun to abuse that
+      power already. Was she not a woman?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montcontour is an old manor-house build upon the sandy cliffs above the
+      Loire, not far from the bridge where Julie&rsquo;s journey was interrupted in
+      1814. It is a picturesque, white chateau, with turrets covered with fine
+      stone carving like Mechlin lace; a chateau such as you often see in
+      Touraine, spick and span, ivy clad, standing among its groves of mulberry
+      trees and vineyards, with its hollow walks, its stone balustrades, and
+      cellars mined in the rock escarpments mirrored in the Loire. The roofs of
+      Montcontour gleam in the sun; the whole land glows in the burning heat.
+      Traces of the romantic charm of Spain and the south hover about the
+      enchanting spot. The breeze brings the scent of bell flowers and golden
+      broom, the air is soft, all about you lies a sunny land, a land which
+      casts its dreamy spell over your soul, a land of languor and of soft
+      desire, a fair, sweet-scented country, where pain is lulled to sleep and
+      passion wakes. No heart is cold for long beneath its clear sky, beside its
+      sparkling waters. One ambition dies after another, and you sink into
+      serene content and repose, as the sun sinks at the end of the day swathed
+      about with purple and azure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One warm August evening in 1821 two people were climbing the paths cut in
+      the crags above the chateau, doubtless for the sake of the view from the
+      heights above. The two were Julie and Lord Grenville, but this Julie
+      seemed to be a new creature. The unmistakable color of health glowed in
+      her face. Overflowing vitality had brought a light into her eyes, which
+      sparkled through a moist film with that liquid brightness which gives such
+      irresistible charm to the eyes of children. She was radiant with smiles;
+      she felt the joy of living and all the possibilities of life. From the
+      very way in which she lifted her little feet, it was easy to see that no
+      suffering trammeled her lightest movements; there was no heaviness nor
+      languor in her eyes, her voice, as heretofore. Under the white silk
+      sunshade which screened her from the hot sunlight, she looked like some
+      young bride beneath her veil, or a maiden waiting to yield to the magical
+      enchantments of Love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arthur led her with a lover&rsquo;s care, helping her up the pathway as if she
+      had been a child, finding the smoothest ways, avoiding the stones for her,
+      bidding her see glimpses of distance, or some flower beside the path,
+      always with the unfailing goodness, the same delicate design in all that
+      he did; the intuitive sense of this woman&rsquo;s wellbeing seemed to be innate
+      in him, and as much, nay, perhaps more, a part of his being as the pulse
+      of his own life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The patient and her doctor went step for step. There was nothing strange
+      for them in a sympathy which seemed to have existed since the day when
+      they first walked together. One will swayed them both; they stopped as
+      their senses received the same impression; every word and every glance
+      told of the same thought in either mind. They had climbed up through the
+      vineyards, and now they turned to sit on one of the long white stones,
+      quarried out of the caves in the hillside; but Julie stood awhile gazing
+      out over the landscape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a beautiful country!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Let us put up a tent and live
+      here. Victor, Victor, do come up here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont answered by a halloo from below. He did not, however, hurry
+      himself, merely giving his wife a glance from time to time when the
+      windings of the path gave him a glimpse of her. Julie breathed the air
+      with delight. She looked up at Arthur, giving him one of those subtle
+      glances in which a clever woman can put the whole of her thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I should like to live here always,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Would it be possible
+      to tire of this beautiful valley?&mdash;What is the picturesque river
+      called, do you know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the Cise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Cise,&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;And all this country below, before us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those are the low hills above the Cher.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And away to the right? Ah, that is Tours. Only see how fine the cathedral
+      towers look in the distance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent, and let fall the hand which she had stretched out towards
+      the view upon Arthur&rsquo;s. Both admired the wide landscape made up of so much
+      blended beauty. Neither of them spoke. The murmuring voice of the river,
+      the pure air, and the cloudless heaven were all in tune with their
+      thronging thoughts and their youth and the love in their hearts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! <i>mon Dieu</i>, how I love this country!&rdquo; Julie continued, with
+      growing and ingenuous enthusiasm. &ldquo;You lived here for a long while, did
+      you not?&rdquo; she added after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A thrill ran through Lord Grenville at her words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was down there,&rdquo; he said, in a melancholy voice, indicating as he
+      spoke a cluster of walnut trees by the roadside, &ldquo;that I, a prisoner, saw
+      you for the first time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but even at that time I felt very sad. This country looked wild to
+      me then, but now&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; She broke off, and Lord Grenville did not
+      dare to look at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All this pleasure I owe to you,&rdquo; Julie began at last, after a long
+      silence. &ldquo;Only the living can feel the joy of life, and until now have I
+      not been dead to it all? You have given me more than health, you have made
+      me feel all its worth&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Women have an inimitable talent for giving utterance to strong feelings in
+      colorless words; a woman&rsquo;s eloquence lies in tone and gesture, manner and
+      glance. Lord Grenville hid his face in his hands, for his tears filled his
+      eyes. This was Julie&rsquo;s first word of thanks since they left Paris a year
+      ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a whole year he had watched over the Marquise, putting his whole self
+      into the task. D&rsquo;Aiglemont seconding him, he had taken her first to Aix,
+      then to la Rochelle, to be near the sea. From moment to moment he had
+      watched the changes worked in Julie&rsquo;s shattered constitution by his wise
+      and simple prescriptions. He had cultivated her health as an enthusiastic
+      gardener might cultivate a rare flower. Yet, to all appearance, the
+      Marquise had quietly accepted Arthur&rsquo;s skill and care with the egoism of a
+      spoiled Parisienne, or like a courtesan who has no idea of the cost of
+      things, nor of the worth of a man, and judges of both by their comparative
+      usefulness to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The influence of places upon us is a fact worth remarking. If melancholy
+      comes over us by the margin of a great water, another indelible law of our
+      nature so orders it that the mountains exercise a purifying influence upon
+      our feelings, and among the hills passion gains in depth by all that it
+      apparently loses in vivacity. Perhaps it was the light of the wide country
+      by the Loire, the height of the fair sloping hillside on which the lovers
+      sat, that induced the calm bliss of the moment when the whole extent of
+      the passion that lies beneath a few insignificant-sounding words is
+      divined for the first time with a delicious sense of happiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie had scarcely spoken the words which had moved Lord Grenville so
+      deeply, when a caressing breeze ruffled the treetops and filled the air
+      with coolness from the river; a few clouds crossed the sky, and the soft
+      cloud-shadows brought out all the beauty of the fair land below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie turned away her head, lest Arthur should see the tears which she
+      succeeded in repressing; his emotion had spread at once to her. She dried
+      her eyes, but she dared not raise them lest he should read the excess of
+      joy in a glance. Her woman&rsquo;s instinct told her that during this hour of
+      danger she must hide her love in the depths of her heart. Yet silence
+      might prove equally dangerous, and Julie saw that Lord Grenville was
+      unable to utter a word. She went on, therefore, in a gentle voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are touched by what I have said. Perhaps such a quick outburst of
+      feeling is the way in which a gracious and kind nature like yours reverses
+      a mistaken judgment. You must have thought me ungrateful when I was cold
+      and reserved, or cynical and hard, all through the journey which,
+      fortunately, is very near its end. I should not have been worthy of your
+      care if I had been unable to appreciate it. I have forgotten nothing.
+      Alas! I shall forget nothing, not the anxious way in which you watched
+      over me as a mother watches over her child, nor, and above all else, the
+      noble confidence of our life as brother and sister, the delicacy of your
+      conduct&mdash;winning charms, against which we women are defenceless. My
+      lord, it is out of my power to make you a return&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At these words Julie hastily moved further away, and Lord Grenville made
+      no attempt to detain her. She went to a rock not far away, and there sat
+      motionless. What either felt remained a secret known to each alone;
+      doubtless they wept in silence. The singing of the birds about them, so
+      blithe, so overflowing with tenderness at sunset time, could only increase
+      the storm of passion which had driven them apart. Nature took up their
+      story for them, and found a language for the love of which they did not
+      dare to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now, my lord,&rdquo; said Julie, and she came and stood before Arthur with
+      a great dignity, which allowed her to take his hand in hers. &ldquo;I am going
+      to ask you to hallow and purify the life which you have given back to me.
+      Here, we will part. I know,&rdquo; she added, as she saw how white his face
+      grew, &ldquo;I know that I am repaying you for your devotion by requiring of you
+      a sacrifice even greater than any which you have hitherto made for me,
+      sacrifices so great that they should receive some better recompense than
+      this.... But it must be... You must not stay in France. By laying this
+      command upon you, do I not give you rights which shall be held sacred?&rdquo;
+       she added, holding his hand against her beating heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Arthur, and he rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked in the direction of d&rsquo;Aiglemont, who appeared on the opposite
+      side of one of the hollow walks with the child in his arms. He had
+      scrambled up on the balustrade by the chateau that little Helene might
+      jump down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Julie, I will not say a word of my love; we understand each other too
+      well. Deeply and carefully though I have hidden the pleasures of my heart,
+      you have shared them all, I feel it, I know it, I see it. And now, at this
+      moment, as I receive this delicious proof of the constant sympathy of our
+      hearts, I must go.... Cunning schemes for getting rid of him have crossed
+      my mind too often; the temptation might be irresistible if I stayed with
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had the same thought,&rdquo; she said, a look of pained surprise in her
+      troubled face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet in her tone and involuntary shudder there was such virtue, such
+      certainty of herself, won in many a hard-fought battle with a love that
+      spoke in Julie&rsquo;s tones and involuntary gestures, that Lord Grenville stood
+      thrilled with admiration of her. The mere shadow of a crime had been
+      dispelled from that clear conscience. The religious sentiment enthroned on
+      the fair forehead could not but drive away the evil thoughts that arise
+      unbidden, engendered by our imperfect nature, thoughts which make us aware
+      of the grandeur and the perils of human destiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I should have drawn down your scorn upon me, and&mdash;I
+      should have been saved,&rdquo; she added, and her eyes fell. &ldquo;To be lowered in
+      your eyes, what is that but death?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the two heroic lovers were silent, choking down their sorrow.
+      Good or ill, it seemed that their thoughts were loyally one, and the joys
+      in the depths of their heart were no more experiences apart than the pain
+      which they strove most anxiously to hide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no right to complain,&rdquo; she said after a while, &ldquo;my misery is of my
+      own making,&rdquo; and she raised her tear-filled eyes to the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you don&rsquo;t remember it, but that is the place where we met each
+      other for the first time,&rdquo; shouted the General from below, and he waved
+      his hand towards the distance. &ldquo;There, down yonder, near those poplars!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Englishman nodded abruptly by way of answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I was bound to die young and to know no happiness,&rdquo; Julie continued.
+      &ldquo;Yes, do not think that I live. Sorrow is just as fatal as the dreadful
+      disease which you have cured. I do not think that I am to blame. No. My
+      love is stronger than I am, and eternal; but all unconsciously it grew in
+      me; and I will not be guilty through my love. Nevertheless, though I shall
+      be faithful to my conscience as a wife, to my duties as a mother, I will
+      be no less faithful to the instincts of my heart. Hear me,&rdquo; she cried in
+      an unsteady voice, &ldquo;henceforth I belong to <i>him</i> no longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By a gesture, dreadful to see in its undisguised loathing she indicated
+      her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The social code demands that I shall make his existence happy,&rdquo; she
+      continued. &ldquo;I will obey, I will be his servant, my devotion to him shall
+      be boundless; but from to-day I am a widow. I will neither be a prostitute
+      in my own eyes nor in those of the world. If I do not belong to M.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont, I will never belong to another. You shall have nothing,
+      nothing save this which you have wrung from me. This is the doom which I
+      have passed upon myself,&rdquo; she said, looking proudly at him. &ldquo;And now, know
+      this&mdash;if you give way to a single criminal thought, M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s
+      widow will enter a convent in Spain or Italy. By an evil chance we have
+      spoken of our love; perhaps that confession was bound to come; but our
+      hearts must never vibrate again like this. To-morrow you will receive a
+      letter from England, and we shall part, and never see each other again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The effort had exhausted all Julie&rsquo;s strength. She felt her knees
+      trembling, and a feeling of deathly cold came over her. Obeying a woman&rsquo;s
+      instinct, she sat down, lest she should sink into Arthur&rsquo;s arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Julie!</i>&rdquo; cried Lord Grenville.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sharp cry rang through the air like a crack of thunder. Till then he
+      could not speak; now, all the words which the dumb lover could not utter
+      gathered themselves in that heartrending appeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what is wrong with her?&rdquo; asked the General, who had hurried up at
+      that cry, and now suddenly confronted the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing serious,&rdquo; said Julie, with that wonderful self-possession which a
+      woman&rsquo;s quick-wittedness usually brings to her aid when it is most called
+      for. &ldquo;The chill, damp air under the walnut tree made me feel quite faint
+      just now, and that must have alarmed this doctor of mine. Does he not look
+      on me as a very nearly finished work of art? He was startled, I suppose,
+      by the idea of seeing it destroyed.&rdquo; With ostentatious coolness she took
+      Lord Grenville&rsquo;s arm, smiled at her husband, took a last look at the
+      landscape, and went down the pathway, drawing her traveling companion with
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This certainly is the grandest view that we have seen,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I
+      shall never forget it. Just look, Victor, what distance, what an expanse
+      of country, and what variety in it! I have fallen in love with this
+      landscape.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her laughter was almost hysterical, but to her husband it sounded natural.
+      She sprang gaily down into the hollow pathway and vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; she cried, when they had left M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont far behind. &ldquo;So soon?
+      Is it so soon? Another moment, and we can neither of us be ourselves; we
+      shall never be ourselves again, our life is over, in short&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us go slowly,&rdquo; said Lord Grenville, &ldquo;the carriages are still some way
+      off, and if we may put words into our glances, our hearts may live a
+      little longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They went along the footpath by the river in the late evening light,
+      almost in silence; such vague words as they uttered, low as the murmur of
+      the Loire, stirred their souls to the depths. Just as the sun sank, a last
+      red gleam from the sky fell over them; it was like a mournful symbol of
+      their ill-starred love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General, much put out because the carriage was not at the spot where
+      they had left it, followed and outstripped the pair without interrupting
+      their converse. Lord Grenville&rsquo;s high minded and delicate behavior
+      throughout the journey had completely dispelled the Marquis&rsquo; suspicions.
+      For some time past he had left his wife in freedom, reposing confidence in
+      the noble amateur&rsquo;s Punic faith. Arthur and Julie walked on together in
+      the close and painful communion of two hearts laid waste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So short a while ago as they climbed the cliffs at Montcontour, there had
+      been a vague hope in either mind, an uneasy joy for which they dared not
+      account to themselves; but now as they came along the pathway by the
+      river, they pulled down the frail structure of imaginings, the child&rsquo;s
+      cardcastle, on which neither of them had dared to breathe. That hope was
+      over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That very evening Lord Grenville left them. His last look at Julie made it
+      miserably plain that since the moment when sympathy revealed the full
+      extent of a tyrannous passion, he did well to mistrust himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont and his wife took their places in the
+      carriage without their traveling companion, and were whirled swiftly along
+      the road to Blois. The Marquise was constantly put in mind of the journey
+      made in 1814, when as yet she know nothing of love, and had been almost
+      ready to curse it for its persistency. Countless forgotten impressions
+      were revived. The heart has its own memory. A woman who cannot recollect
+      the most important great events will recollect through a lifetime things
+      which appealed to her feelings; and Julie d&rsquo;Aiglemont found all the most
+      trifling details of that journey laid up in her mind. It was pleasant to
+      her to recall its little incidents as they occurred to her one by one;
+      there were points in the road when she could even remember the thoughts
+      that passed through her mind when she saw them first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Victor had fallen violently in love with his wife since she had recovered
+      the freshness of her youth and all her beauty, and now he pressed close to
+      her side like a lover. Once he tried to put his arm round her, but she
+      gently disengaged herself, finding some excuse or other for evading the
+      harmless caress. In a little while she shrank from the close contact with
+      Victor, the sensation of warmth communicated by their position. She tried
+      to take the unoccupied place opposite, but Victor gallantly resigned the
+      back seat to her. For this attention she thanked him with a sigh,
+      whereupon he forgot himself, and the Don Juan of the garrison construed
+      his wife&rsquo;s melancholy to his own advantage, so that at the end of the day
+      she was compelled to speak with a firmness which impressed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have all but killed me, dear, once already, as you know,&rdquo; said she.
+      &ldquo;If I were still an inexperienced girl, I might begin to sacrifice myself
+      afresh; but I am a mother, I have a daughter to bring up, and I owe as
+      much to her as to you. Let us resign ourselves to a misfortune which
+      affects us both alike. You are the less to be pitied. Have you not, as it
+      is, found consolations which duty and the honor of both, and (stronger
+      still) which Nature forbids to me? Stay,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;you carelessly left
+      three letters from Mme. de Serizy in a drawer; here they are. My silence
+      about this matter should make it plain to you that in me you have a wife
+      who has plenty of indulgence and does not exact from you the sacrifices
+      prescribed by the law. But I have thought enough to see that the roles of
+      husband and wife are quite different, and that the wife alone is
+      predestined to misfortune. My virtue is based upon firmly fixed and
+      definite principles. I shall live blamelessly, but let me live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquis was taken aback by a logic which women grasp with the clear
+      insight of love, and overawed by a certain dignity natural to them at such
+      crises. Julie&rsquo;s instinctive repugnance for all that jarred upon her love
+      and the instincts of her heart is one of the fairest qualities of woman,
+      and springs perhaps from a natural virtue which neither laws nor
+      civilization can silence. And who shall dare to blame women? If a woman
+      can silence the exclusive sentiment which bids her &ldquo;forsake all other&rdquo; for
+      the man whom she loves, what is she but a priest who has lost his faith?
+      If a rigid mind here and there condemns Julie for a sort of compromise
+      between love and wifely duty, impassioned souls will lay it to her charge
+      as a crime. To be thus blamed by both sides shows one of two things very
+      clearly&mdash;that misery necessarily follows in the train of broken laws,
+      or else that there are deplorable flaws in the institutions upon which
+      society in Europe is based.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two years went by. M. and Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont went their separate ways,
+      leading their life in the world, meeting each other more frequently abroad
+      than at home, a refinement upon divorce, in which many a marriage in the
+      great world is apt to end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, strange to say, found husband and wife in their own
+      drawing-room. Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont had been dining at home with a friend, and
+      the General, who almost invariably dined in town, had not gone out for
+      once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a pleasant time in store for you, <i>Madame la Marquise</i>,&rdquo;
+       said M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont, setting his coffee cup down upon the table. He looked
+      at the guest, Mme. de Wimphen, and half-pettishly, half-mischievously
+      added, &ldquo;I am starting off for several days&rsquo; sport with the Master of the
+      Hounds. For a whole week, at any rate, you will be a widow in good
+      earnest; just what you wish for, I suppose.&mdash;Guillaume,&rdquo; he said to
+      the servant who entered, &ldquo;tell them to put the horses in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. de Wimphen was the friend to whom Julie had begun the letter upon her
+      marriage. The glances exchanged by the two women said plainly that in her
+      Julie had found an intimate friend, an indulgent and invaluable
+      confidante. Mme. de Wimphen&rsquo;s marriage had been a very happy one. Perhaps
+      it was her own happiness which secured her devotion to Julie&rsquo;s unhappy
+      life, for under such circumstances, dissimilarity of destiny is nearly
+      always a strong bond of union.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the hunting season not over yet?&rdquo; asked Julie, with an indifferent
+      glance at her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Master of the Hounds comes when and where he pleases, madame. We are
+      going boar-hunting in the Royal Forest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take care that no accident happens to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Accidents are usually unforeseen,&rdquo; he said, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The carriage is ready, my Lord Marquis,&rdquo; said the servant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, if I should fall a victim to the boar&mdash;&rdquo; he continued, with
+      a suppliant air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does this mean?&rdquo; inquired Mme. de Wimphen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come,&rdquo; said Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont, turning to her husband; smiling at
+      her friend as if to say, &ldquo;You will soon see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie held up her head; but as her husband came close to her, she swerved
+      at the last, so that his kiss fell not on her throat, but on the broad
+      frill about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be my witness before heaven now that I need a firman to obtain
+      this little grace of her,&rdquo; said the Marquis, addressing Mme. de Wimphen.
+      &ldquo;This is how this wife of mine understands love. She has brought me to
+      this pass, by what trickery I am at a loss to know.... A pleasant time to
+      you!&rdquo; and he went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But your poor husband is really very good-natured,&rdquo; cried Louisa de
+      Wimphen, when the two women were alone together. &ldquo;He loves you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! not another syllable after that last word. The name I bear makes me
+      shudder&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but Victor obeys you implicitly,&rdquo; said Louisa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His obedience is founded in part upon the great esteem which I have
+      inspired in him. As far as outward things go, I am a model wife. I make
+      his house pleasant to him; I shut my eyes to his intrigues; I touch not a
+      penny of his fortune. He is free to squander the interest exactly as he
+      pleases; I only stipulate that he shall not touch the principal. At this
+      price I have peace. He neither explains nor attempts to explain my life.
+      But though my husband is guided by me, that does not say that I have
+      nothing to fear from his character. I am a bear leader who daily trembles
+      lest the muzzle should give way at last. If Victor once took it into his
+      head that I had forfeited my right to his esteem, what would happen next I
+      dare not think; for he is violent, full of personal pride, and vain above
+      all things. While his wits are not keen enough to enable him to behave
+      discreetly at a delicate crisis when his lowest passions are involved, his
+      character is weak, and he would very likely kill me provisionally even if
+      he died of remorse next day. But there is no fear of that fatal good
+      fortune.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A brief pause followed. Both women were thinking of the real cause of this
+      state of affairs. Julie gave Louisa a glance which revealed her thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been cruelly obeyed,&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Yet I never forbade him to write
+      to me. Oh! <i>he</i> has forgotten me, and he is right. If his life had
+      been spoiled, it would have been too tragical; one life is enough, is it
+      not? Would you believe it, dear; I read English newspapers simply to see
+      his name in print. But he has not yet taken his seat in the House of
+      Lords.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you know English.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I not tell you?&mdash;Yes, I learned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little one!&rdquo; cried Louisa, grasping Julie&rsquo;s hand in hers. &ldquo;How can
+      you still live?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the secret,&rdquo; said the Marquise, with an involuntary gesture
+      almost childlike in its simplicity. &ldquo;Listen, I take laudanum. That duchess
+      in London suggested the idea; you know the story, Maturin made use of it
+      in one of his novels. My drops are very weak, but I sleep; I am only awake
+      for seven hours in the day, and those hours I spend with my child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Louisa gazed into the fire. The full extent of her friend&rsquo;s misery was
+      opening out before her for the first time, and she dared not look into her
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep my secret, Louisa,&rdquo; said Julie, after a moment&rsquo;s silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as she spoke the footman brought in a letter for the Marquise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she cried, and her face grew white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I need not ask from whom it comes,&rdquo; said Mme. de Wimphen, but the
+      Marquise was reading the letter, and heeded nothing else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. de Wimphen, watching her friend, saw strong feeling wrought to the
+      highest pitch, ecstasy of the most dangerous kind painted on Julie&rsquo;s face
+      in swift changing white and red. At length Julie flung the sheet into the
+      fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It burns like fire,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Oh! my heart beats till I cannot
+      breathe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose to her feet and walked up and down. Her eyes were blazing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did not leave Paris!&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. de Wimphen did not dare to interrupt the words that followed,
+      jerked-out sentences, measured by dreadful pauses in between. After every
+      break the deep notes of her voice sank lower and lower. There was
+      something awful about the last words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has seen me, constantly, and I have not known it.&mdash;A look, taken
+      by stealth, every day, helps him to live.&mdash;Louisa, you do not know!&mdash;He
+      is dying.&mdash;He wants to say good-bye to me. He knows that my husband
+      has gone away for several days. He will be here in a moment. Oh! I shall
+      die: I am lost.&mdash;Listen, Louisa, stay with me!&mdash;<i>I am afraid!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But my husband knows that I have been dining with you; he is sure to come
+      for me,&rdquo; said Mme. de Wimphen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, before you go I will send <i>him</i> away. I will play the
+      executioner for us both. Oh me! he will think that I do not love him any
+      more&mdash;And that letter of his! Dear, I can see those words in letters
+      of fire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A carriage rolled in under the archway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; cried the Marquise, with something like joy in her voice, &ldquo;he is
+      coming openly. He makes no mystery of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord Grenville,&rdquo; announced the servant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise stood up rigid and motionless; but at the sight of Arthur&rsquo;s
+      white face, so thin and haggard, how was it possible to keep up the show
+      of severity? Lord Grenville saw that Julie was not alone, but he
+      controlled his fierce annoyance, and looked cool and unperturbed. Yet for
+      the two women who knew his secret, his face, his tones, the look in his
+      eyes had something of the power attributed to the torpedo. Their faculties
+      were benumbed by the sharp shock of contact with his horrible pain. The
+      sound of his voice set Julie&rsquo;s heart beating so cruelly that she could not
+      trust herself to speak; she was afraid that he would see the full extent
+      of his power over her. Lord Grenville did not dare to look at Julie, and
+      Mme. de Wimphen was left to sustain a conversation to which no one
+      listened. Julie glanced at her friend with touching gratefulness in her
+      eyes to thank her for coming to her aid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the lovers had quelled emotion into silence, and could
+      preserve the limits laid down by duty and convention. But M. de Wimphen
+      was announced, and as he came in the two friends exchanged glances. Both
+      felt the difficulties of this fresh complication. It was impossible to
+      enter into explanations with M. de Wimphen, and Louisa could not think of
+      any sufficient pretext for asking to be left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie went to her, ostensibly to wrap her up in her shawl. &ldquo;I will be
+      brave,&rdquo; she said, in a low voice. &ldquo;He came here in the face of all the
+      world, so what have I to fear? Yet but for you, in that first moment, when
+      I saw how changed he looked, I should have fallen at his feet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Arthur, you have broken your promise to me,&rdquo; she said, in a
+      faltering voice, when she returned. Lord Grenville did not venture to take
+      the seat upon the sofa by her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could not resist the pleasure of hearing your voice, of being near you.
+      The thought of it came to be a sort of madness, a delirious frenzy. I am
+      no longer master of myself. I have taken myself to task; it is no use, I
+      am too weak, I ought to die. But to die without seeing you, without having
+      heard the rustle of your dress, or felt your tears. What a death!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He moved further away from her; but in his hasty uprising a pistol fell
+      out of his pocket. The Marquise looked down blankly at the weapon; all
+      passion, all expression had died out of her eyes. Lord Grenville stooped
+      for the thing, raging inwardly over an accident which seemed like a piece
+      of lovesick strategy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Arthur!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; he said, looking down, &ldquo;I came here in utter desperation; I
+      meant&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; he broke off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You meant to die by your own hand here in my house!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not alone!&rdquo; he said in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not alone! My husband, perhaps&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; he cried in a choking voice. &ldquo;Reassure yourself,&rdquo; he continued,
+      &ldquo;I have quite given up my deadly purpose. As soon as I came in, as soon as
+      I saw you, I felt that I was strong enough to suffer in silence, and to
+      die alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie sprang up, and flung herself into his arms. Through her sobbing he
+      caught a few passionate words, &ldquo;To know happiness, and then to die.&mdash;Yes,
+      let it be so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All Julie&rsquo;s story was summed up in that cry from the depths; it was the
+      summons of nature and of love at which women without a religion surrender.
+      With the fierce energy of unhoped-for joy, Arthur caught her up and
+      carried her to the sofa; but in a moment she tore herself from her lover&rsquo;s
+      arms, looked at him with a fixed despairing gaze, took his hand, snatched
+      up a candle, and drew him into her room. When they stood by the cot where
+      Helene lay sleeping, she put the curtains softly aside, shading the candle
+      with her hand, lest the light should dazzle the half-closed eyes beneath
+      the transparent lids. Helene lay smiling in her sleep, with her arms
+      outstretched on the coverlet. Julie glanced from her child to Arthur&rsquo;s
+      face. That look told him all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We may leave a husband, even though he loves us: a man is strong; he has
+      consolations.&mdash;We may defy the world and its laws. But a motherless
+      child!&rdquo;&mdash;all these thoughts, and a thousand others more moving still,
+      found language in that glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can take her with us,&rdquo; muttered he; &ldquo;I will love her dearly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma!&rdquo; cried little Helene, now awake. Julie burst into tears. Lord
+      Grenville sat down and folded his arms in gloomy silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma!&rdquo; At the sweet childish name, so many nobler feelings, so many
+      irresistible yearnings awoke, that for a moment love was effaced by the
+      all-powerful instinct of motherhood; the mother triumphed over the woman
+      in Julie, and Lord Grenville could not hold out, he was defeated by
+      Julie&rsquo;s tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just at that moment a door was flung noisily open. &ldquo;Madame d&rsquo;Aiglemont,
+      are you hereabouts?&rdquo; called a voice which rang like a crack of thunder
+      through the hearts of the two lovers. The Marquis had come home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Julie could recover her presence of mind, her husband was on the
+      way to the door of her room which opened into his. Luckily, at a sign,
+      Lord Grenville escaped into the dressing-closet, and she hastily shut the
+      door upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my lady, here am I,&rdquo; said Victor, &ldquo;the hunting party did not come
+      off. I am just going to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night, so am I. So go and leave me to undress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very cross to-night, Madame la Marquise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General returned to his room, Julie went with him to the door and shut
+      it. Then she sprang to the dressing-close to release Arthur. All her
+      presence of mind returned; she bethought herself that it was quite natural
+      that her sometime doctor should pay her a visit; she might have left him
+      in the drawing-room while she put her little girl to bed. She was about to
+      tell him, under her breath, to go back to the drawing-room, and had opened
+      the door. Then she shrieked aloud. Lord Grenville&rsquo;s fingers had been
+      caught and crushed in the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what is it?&rdquo; demanded her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! nothing, I have just pricked my finger with a pin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General&rsquo;s door opened at once. Julie imagined that the irruption was
+      due to a sudden concern for her, and cursed a solicitude in which love had
+      no part. She had barely time to close the dressing-closet, and Lord
+      Grenville had not extricated his hand. The General did, in fact, appear,
+      but his wife had mistaken his motives; his apprehensions were entirely on
+      his own account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you lend me a bandana handkerchief? The stupid fool Charles leaves me
+      without a single one. In the early days you used to bother me with looking
+      after me so carefully. Ah, well, the honeymoon did not last very long for
+      me, nor yet for my cravats. Nowadays I am given over to the secular arm,
+      in the shape of servants who do not care one jack straw for what I say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There! There is a bandana for you. Did you go into the drawing-room?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! you might perhaps have been in time to see Lord Grenville.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he in Paris?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I will go at once. The good doctor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he will have gone by now!&rdquo; exclaimed Julie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquis, standing in the middle of the room, was tying the
+      handkerchief over his head. He looked complacently at himself in the
+      glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has become of the servants is more than I know,&rdquo; he remarked. &ldquo;I
+      have rung the bell for Charles, and he has not answered it. And your maid
+      is not here either. Ring for her. I should like another blanket on my bed
+      to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pauline is out,&rdquo; the Marquise said drily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, at midnight!&rdquo; exclaimed the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I gave her leave to go to the Opera.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is funny!&rdquo; returned her husband, continuing to undress. &ldquo;I thought I
+      saw her coming upstairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has come in then, of course,&rdquo; said Julie, with assumed impatience,
+      and to allay any possible suspicion on her husband&rsquo;s part she pretended to
+      ring the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole history of that night has never been known, but no doubt it was
+      as simple and as tragically commonplace as the domestic incidents that
+      preceded it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day the Marquise d&rsquo;Aiglemont took to her bed, nor did she leave it
+      for some days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can have happened in your family so extraordinary that every one is
+      talking about your wife?&rdquo; asked M. de Ronquerolles of M. d&rsquo;Aiglemont a
+      short time after that night of catastrophes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take my advice and remain a bachelor,&rdquo; said d&rsquo;Aiglemont. &ldquo;The curtains of
+      Helene&rsquo;s cot caught fire, and gave my wife such a shock that it will be a
+      twelvemonth before she gets over it; so the doctor says. You marry a
+      pretty wife, and her looks fall off; you marry a girl in blooming health,
+      and she turns into an invalid. You think she has a passionate temperament,
+      and find her cold, or else under her apparent coldness there lurks a
+      nature so passionate that she is the death of you, or she dishonors your
+      name. Sometimes the meekest of them will turn out crotchety, though the
+      crotchety ones never grow any sweeter. Sometimes the mere child, so simple
+      and silly at first, will develop an iron will to thwart you and the
+      ingenuity of a fiend. I am tired of marriage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or of your wife?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would be difficult. By-the-by, do you feel inclined to go to
+      Saint-Thomas d&rsquo;Aquin with me to attend Lord Grenville&rsquo;s funeral?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A singular way of spending time.&mdash;Is it really known how he came by
+      his death?&rdquo; added Ronquerolles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His man says that he spent a whole night sitting on somebody&rsquo;s window
+      sill to save some woman&rsquo;s character, and it has been infernally cold
+      lately.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such devotion would be highly creditable to one of us old stagers; but
+      Lord Grenville was a youngster and&mdash;an Englishman. Englishmen never
+      can do anything like anybody else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pooh!&rdquo; returned d&rsquo;Aiglemont, &ldquo;these heroic exploits all depend upon the
+      woman in the case, and it certainly was not for one that I know, that poor
+      Arthur came by his death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II. A HIDDEN GRIEF
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Between the Seine and the little river Loing lies a wide flat country,
+      skirted on the one side by the Forest of Fontainebleau, and marked out as
+      to its southern limits by the towns of Moret, Montereau, and Nemours. It
+      is a dreary country; little knolls of hills appear only at rare intervals,
+      and a coppice here and there among the fields affords for game; and
+      beyond, upon every side, stretches the endless gray or yellowish horizon
+      peculiar to Beauce, Sologne, and Berri.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the very centre of the plain, at equal distances from Moret and
+      Montereau, the traveler passes the old chateau of Saint-Lange, standing
+      amid surroundings which lack neither dignity nor stateliness. There are
+      magnificent avenues of elm-trees, great gardens encircled by the moat, and
+      a circumference of walls about a huge manorial pile which represents the
+      profits of the <i>maltote</i>, the gains of farmers-general, legalized
+      malversation, or the vast fortunes of great houses now brought low beneath
+      the hammer of the Civil Code.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Should any artist or dreamer of dreams chance to stray along the roads
+      full of deep ruts, or over the heavy land which secures the place against
+      intrusion, he will wonder how it happened that this romantic old place was
+      set down in a savanna of corn-land, a desert of chalk, and sand, and marl,
+      where gaiety dies away, and melancholy is a natural product of the soil.
+      The voiceless solitude, the monotonous horizon line which weigh upon the
+      spirits are negative beauties, which only suit with sorrow that refuses to
+      be comforted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hither, at the close of the year 1820, came a woman, still young, well
+      known in Paris for her charm, her fair face, and her wit; and to the
+      immense astonishment of the little village a mile away, this woman of high
+      rank and corresponding fortune took up her abode at Saint-Lange.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From time immemorial, farmers and laborers had seen no gentry at the
+      chateau. The estate, considerable though it was, had been left in charge
+      of a land-steward and the house to the old servants. Wherefore the
+      appearance of the lady of the manor caused a kind of sensation in the
+      district.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A group had gathered in the yard of the wretched little wineshop at the
+      end of the village (where the road forks to Nemours and Moret) to see the
+      carriage pass. It went by slowly, for the Marquise had come from Paris
+      with her own horses, and those on the lookout had ample opportunity of
+      observing a waiting-maid, who sat with her back to the horses holding a
+      little girl, with a somewhat dreamy look, upon her knee. The child&rsquo;s
+      mother lay back in the carriage; she looked like a dying woman sent out
+      into the country air by her doctors as a last resource. Village
+      politicians were by no means pleased to see the young, delicate, downcast
+      face; they had hoped that the new arrival at Saint-Lange would bring some
+      life and stir into the neighborhood, and clearly any sort of stir or
+      movement must be distasteful to the suffering invalid in the traveling
+      carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That evening, when the notables of Saint-Lange were drinking in the
+      private room of the wineshop, the longest head among them declared that
+      such depression could admit of but one construction&mdash;the Marquise was
+      ruined. His lordship the Marquis was away in Spain with the Duc
+      d&rsquo;Angouleme (so they said in the papers), and beyond a doubt her ladyship
+      had come to Saint-Lange to retrench after a run of ill-luck on the Bourse.
+      The Marquis was one of the greatest gamblers on the face of the globe.
+      Perhaps the estate would be cut up and sold in little lots. There would be
+      some good strokes of business to be made in that case, and it behooved
+      everybody to count up his cash, unearth his savings and to see how he
+      stood, so as to secure his share of the spoil of Saint-Lange.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So fair did this future seem, that the village worthies, dying to know
+      whether it was founded on fact, began to think of ways of getting at the
+      truth through the servants at the chateau. None of these, however, could
+      throw any light on the calamity which had brought their mistress into the
+      country at the beginning of winter, and to the old chateau of Saint-Lange
+      of all places, when she might have taken her choice of cheerful
+      country-houses famous for their beautiful gardens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His worship the mayor called to pay his respects; but he did not see the
+      lady. Then the land-steward tried with no better success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame la Marquise kept her room, only leaving it, while it was set in
+      order, for the small adjoining drawing-room, where she dined; if, indeed,
+      to sit down to a table, to look with disgust at the dishes, and take the
+      precise amount of nourishment required to prevent death from sheer
+      starvation, can be called dining. The meal over, she returned at once to
+      the old-fashioned low chair, in which she had sat since the morning, in
+      the embrasure of the one window that lighted her room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her little girl she only saw for a few minutes daily, during the dismal
+      dinner, and even for a short time she seemed scarcely able to bear the
+      child&rsquo;s presence. Surely nothing but the most unheard-of anguish could
+      have extinguished a mother&rsquo;s love so early.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      None of the servants were suffered to come near, her own woman was the one
+      creature whom she liked to have about her; the chateau must be perfectly
+      quiet, the child must play at the other end of the house. The slightest
+      sound had grown so intolerable, that any human voice, even the voice of
+      her own child, jarred upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first the whole countryside was deeply interested in these
+      eccentricities; but time passed on, every possible hypothesis had been
+      advanced to account for them and the peasants and dwellers in the little
+      country towns thought no more of the invalid lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the Marquise was left to herself. She might live on, perfectly silent,
+      amid the silence which she herself had created; there was nothing to draw
+      her forth from the tapestried chamber where her grandmother died, whither
+      she herself had come that she might die, gently, without witnesses,
+      without importunate solicitude, without suffering from the insincere
+      demonstrations of egoism masquerading as affection, which double the agony
+      of death in great cities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was twenty-six years old. At that age, with plenty of romantic
+      illusions still left, the mind loves to dwell on the thought of death when
+      death seems to come as a friend. But with youth, death is coy, coming up
+      close only to go away, showing himself and hiding again, till youth has
+      time to fall out of love with him during this dalliance. There is that
+      uncertainty too that hangs over death&rsquo;s to-morrow. Youth plunges back into
+      the world of living men, there to find the pain more pitiless than death,
+      that does not wait to strike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This woman who refused to live was to know the bitterness of these
+      reprieves in the depths of her loneliness; in moral agony, which death
+      would not come to end, she was to serve a terrible apprenticeship to the
+      egoism which must take the bloom from her heart and break her in to the
+      life of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This harsh and sorry teaching is the usual outcome of our early sorrows.
+      For the first, and perhaps for the last time in her life, the Marquise
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont was in very truth suffering. And, indeed, would it not be an
+      error to suppose that the same sentiment can be reproduced in us? Once
+      develop the power to feel, is it not always there in the depths of our
+      nature? The accidents of life may lull or awaken it, but there it is, of
+      necessity modifying the self, its abiding place. Hence, every sensation
+      should have its great day once and for all, its first day of storm, be it
+      long or short. Hence, likewise, pain, the most abiding of our sensations,
+      could be keenly felt only at its first irruption, its intensity
+      diminishing with every subsequent paroxysm, either because we grow
+      accustomed to these crises, or perhaps because a natural instinct of
+      self-preservation asserts itself, and opposes to the destroying force of
+      anguish an equal but passive force of inertia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet of all kinds of suffering, to which does the name of anguish belong?
+      For the loss of parents, Nature has in a manner prepared us; physical
+      suffering, again, is an evil which passes over us and is gone; it lays no
+      hold upon the soul; if it persists, it ceases to be an evil, it is death.
+      The young mother loses her firstborn, but wedded love ere long gives her a
+      successor. This grief, too, is transient. After all, these, and many other
+      troubles like unto them, are in some sort wounds and bruises; they do not
+      sap the springs of vitality, and only a succession of such blows can crush
+      in us the instinct that seeks happiness. Great pain, therefore, pain that
+      arises to anguish, should be suffering so deadly, that past, present, and
+      future are alike included in its grip, and no part of life is left sound
+      and whole. Never afterwards can we think the same thoughts as before.
+      Anguish engraves itself in ineffaceable characters on mouth and brow; it
+      passes through us, destroying or relaxing the springs that vibrate to
+      enjoyment, leaving behind in the soul the seeds of a disgust for all
+      things in this world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, again, to be measureless, to weigh like this upon body and soul, the
+      trouble should befall when soul and body have just come to their full
+      strength, and smite down a heart that beats high with life. Then it is
+      that great scars are made. Terrible is the anguish. None, it may be, can
+      issue from this soul-sickness without undergoing some dramatic change.
+      Those who survive it, those who remain on earth, return to the world to
+      wear an actor&rsquo;s countenance and to play an actor&rsquo;s part. They know the
+      side-scenes where actors may retire to calculate chances, shed their
+      tears, or pass their jests. Life holds no inscrutable dark places for
+      those who have passed through this ordeal; their judgments are
+      Rhadamanthine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For young women of the Marquise d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s age, this first, this most
+      poignant pain of all, is always referable to the same cause. A woman,
+      especially if she is a young woman, greatly beautiful, and by nature
+      great, never fails to stake her whole life as instinct and sentiment and
+      society all unite to bid her. Suppose that that life fails her, suppose
+      that she still lives on, she cannot but endure the most cruel pangs,
+      inasmuch as a first love is the loveliest of all. How comes it that this
+      catastrophe has found no painter, no poet? And yet, can it be painted? Can
+      it be sung? No; for the anguish arising from it eludes analysis and defies
+      the colors of art. And more than this, such pain is never confessed. To
+      console the sufferer, you must be able to divine the past which she hugs
+      in bitterness to her soul like a remorse; it is like an avalanche in a
+      valley; it laid all waste before it found a permanent resting-place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise was suffering from this anguish, which will for long remain
+      unknown, because the whole world condemns it, while sentiment cherishes
+      it, and the conscience of a true woman justifies her in it. It is with
+      such pain as with children steadily disowned of life, and therefore bound
+      more closely to the mother&rsquo;s heart than other children more bounteously
+      endowed. Never, perhaps, was the awful catastrophe in which the whole
+      world without dies for us, so deadly, so complete, so cruelly aggravated
+      by circumstance as it had been for the Marquise. The man whom she had
+      loved was young and generous; in obedience to the laws of the world, she
+      had refused herself to his love, and he had died to save a woman&rsquo;s honor,
+      as the world calls it. To whom could she speak of her misery? Her tears
+      would be an offence against her husband, the origin of the tragedy. By all
+      laws written and unwritten she was bound over to silence. A woman would
+      have enjoyed the story; a man would have schemed for his own benefit. No;
+      such grief as hers can only weep freely in solitude and in loneliness; she
+      must consume her pain or be consumed by it; die or kill something within
+      her&mdash;her conscience, it may be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Day after day she sat gazing at the flat horizon. It lay out before her
+      like her own life to come. There was nothing to discover, nothing to hope.
+      The whole of it could be seen at a glance. It was the visible presentment
+      in the outward world of the chill sense of desolation which was gnawing
+      restlessly at her heart. The misty mornings, the pale, bright sky, the low
+      clouds scudding under the gray dome of heaven, fitted with the moods of
+      her soul-sickness. Her heart did not contract, was neither more nor less
+      seared, rather it seemed as if her youth, in its full blossom, was slowly
+      turned to stone by an anguish intolerable because it was barren. She
+      suffered through herself and for herself. How could it end save in
+      self-absorption? Ugly torturing thoughts probed her conscience. Candid
+      self-examination pronounced that she was double, there were two selves
+      within her; a woman who felt and a woman who thought; a self that suffered
+      and a self that could fain suffer no longer. Her mind traveled back to the
+      joys of childish days; they had gone by, and she had never known how happy
+      they were. Scenes crowded up in her memory as in a bright mirror glass, to
+      demonstrate the deception of a marriage which, all that it should be in
+      the eyes of the world, was in reality wretched. What had the delicate
+      pride of young womanhood done for her&mdash;the bliss foregone, the
+      sacrifices made to the world? Everything in her expressed love, awaited
+      love; her movements still were full of perfect grace; her smile, her
+      charm, were hers as before; why? she asked herself. The sense of her own
+      youth and physical loveliness no more affected her than some meaningless
+      reiterated sound. Her very beauty had grown intolerable to her as a
+      useless thing. She shrank aghast from the thought that through the rest of
+      life she must remain an incomplete creature; had not the inner self lost
+      its power of receiving impressions with that zest, that exquisite sense of
+      freshness which is the spring of so much of life&rsquo;s gladness? The
+      impressions of the future would for the most part be effaced as soon as
+      received, and many of the thoughts which once would have moved her now
+      would move her no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the childhood of the creature dawns the childhood of the heart; but
+      this second infancy was over, her lover had taken it down with him into
+      the grave. The longings of youth remained; she was young yet; but the
+      completeness of youth was gone, and with that lost completeness the whole
+      value and savor of life had diminished somewhat. Should she not always
+      bear within her the seeds of sadness and mistrust, ready to grow up and
+      rob emotion of its springtide of fervor? Conscious she must always be that
+      nothing could give her now the happiness so longed for, that seemed so
+      fair in her dreams. The fire from heaven that sheds abroad its light in
+      the heart, in the dawn of love, had been quenched in tears, the first real
+      tears which she had shed; henceforth she must always suffer, because it
+      was no longer in her power to be what once she might have been. This is a
+      belief which turns us in aversion and bitterness of spirit from any
+      proffered new delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie had come to look at life from the point of view of age about to die.
+      Young though she felt, the heavy weight of joyless days had fallen upon
+      her, and left her broken-spirited and old before her time. With a
+      despairing cry, she asked the world what it could give her in exchange for
+      the love now lost, by which she had lived. She asked herself whether in
+      that vanished love, so chaste and pure, her will had not been more
+      criminal than her deeds, and chose to believe herself guilty; partly to
+      affront the world, partly for her own consolation, in that she had missed
+      the close union of body and soul, which diminishes the pain of the one who
+      is left behind by the knowledge that once it has known and given joy to
+      the full, and retains within itself the impress of that which is no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something of the mortification of the actress cheated of her part mingled
+      with the pain which thrilled through every fibre of her heart and brain.
+      Her nature had been thwarted, her vanity wounded, her woman&rsquo;s generosity
+      cheated of self-sacrifice. Then, when she had raised all these questions,
+      set vibrating all the springs in those different phases of being which we
+      distinguish as social, moral, and physical, her energies were so far
+      exhausted and relaxed that she was powerless to grasp a single thought
+      amid the chase of conflicting ideas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes as the mists fell, she would throw her window open, and would
+      stay there, motionless, breathing in unheedingly the damp earthly scent in
+      the air, her mind to all appearance an unintelligent blank, for the
+      ceaseless burden of sorrow humming in her brain left her deaf to earth&rsquo;s
+      harmonies and insensible to the delights of thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, towards noon, when the sun shone out for a little, her maid came
+      in without a summons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the fourth time that M. le Cure has come to see Mme. la Marquise;
+      to-day he is so determined about it, that we did not know what to tell
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has come to ask for some money for the poor, no doubt; take him
+      twenty-five louis from me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman went only to return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M. le Cure will not take the money, my lady; he wants to speak to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then let him come!&rdquo; said Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont, with an involuntary shrug
+      which augured ill for the priest&rsquo;s reception. Evidently the lady meant to
+      put a stop to persecution by a short and sharp method.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont had lost her mother in her early childhood; and as a
+      natural consequence in her bringing-up, she had felt the influence of the
+      relaxed notions which loosened the hold of religion upon France during the
+      Revolution. Piety is a womanly virtue which women alone can really instil;
+      and the Marquise, a child of the eighteenth century, had adopted her
+      father&rsquo;s creed of philosophism, and practised no religious observances. A
+      priest, to her way of thinking, was a civil servant of very doubtful
+      utility. In her present position, the teaching of religion could only
+      poison her wounds; she had, moreover, but scanty faith in the lights of
+      country cures, and made up her mind to put this one gently but firmly in
+      his place, and to rid herself of him, after the manner of the rich, by
+      bestowing a benefit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first sight of the cure the Marquise felt no inclination to change her
+      mind. She saw before her a stout, rotund little man, with a ruddy,
+      wrinkled, elderly face, which awkwardly and unsuccessfully tried to smile.
+      His bald, quadrant-shaped forehead, furrowed by intersecting lines, was
+      too heavy for the rest of his face, which seemed to be dwarfed by it. A
+      fringe of scanty white hair encircled the back of his head, and almost
+      reached his ears. Yet the priest looked as if by nature he had a genial
+      disposition; his thick lips, his slightly curved nose, his chin, which
+      vanished in a double fold of wrinkles,&mdash;all marked him out as a man
+      who took cheerful views of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first the Marquise saw nothing but these salient characteristics, but
+      at the first word she was struck by the sweetness of the speaker&rsquo;s voice.
+      Looking at him more closely, she saw that the eyes under the grizzled
+      eyebrows had shed tears, and his face, turned in profile, wore so sublime
+      an impress of sorrow, that the Marquise recognized the man in the cure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame la Marquise, the rich only come within our province when they are
+      in trouble. It is easy to see that the troubles of a young, beautiful, and
+      wealthy woman, who has lost neither children nor relatives, are caused by
+      wounds whose pangs religion alone can soothe. Your soul is in danger,
+      madame. I am not speaking now of the hereafter which awaits us. No, I am
+      not in the confessional. But it is my duty, is it not, to open your eyes
+      to your future life here on earth? You will pardon an old man, will you
+      not, for importunity which has your own happiness for its object?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no more happiness for me, monsieur. I shall soon be, as you say,
+      in your province; but it will be for ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, madame. You will not die of this pain which lies heavy upon you, and
+      can be read in your face. If you had been destined to die of it, you would
+      not be here at Saint-Lange. A definite regret is not so deadly as hope
+      deferred. I have known others pass through more intolerable and more awful
+      anguish, and yet they live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise looked incredulous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, I know a man whose affliction was so sore that your trouble would
+      seem to you to be light compared with his.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps the long solitary hours had begun to hang heavily; perhaps in the
+      recesses of the Marquise&rsquo;s mind lay the thought that here was a friendly
+      heart to whom she might be able to pour out her troubles. However, it was,
+      she gave the cure a questioning glance which could not be mistaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;the man of whom I tell you had but three children
+      left of a once large family circle. He lost his parents, his daughter, and
+      his wife, whom he dearly loved. He was left alone at last on the little
+      farm where he had lived so happily for so long. His three sons were in the
+      army, and each of the lads had risen in proportion to his time of service.
+      During the Hundred Days, the oldest went into the Guard with a colonel&rsquo;s
+      commission; the second was a major in the artillery; the youngest a major
+      in a regiment of dragoons. Madame, those three boys loved their father as
+      much as he loved them. If you but knew how careless young fellows grow of
+      home ties when they are carried away by the current of their own lives,
+      you would realize from this one little thing how warmly they loved the
+      lonely old father, who only lived in and for them&mdash;never a week
+      passed without a letter from one of the boys. But then he on his side had
+      never been weakly indulgent, to lessen their respect for him; nor unjustly
+      severe, to thwart their affection; or apt to grudge sacrifices, the thing
+      that estranges children&rsquo;s hearts. He had been more than a father; he had
+      been a brother to them, and their friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At last he went to Paris to bid them good-bye before they set out for
+      Belgium; he wished to see that they had good horses and all that they
+      needed. And so they went, and the father returned to his home again. Then
+      the war began. He had letters from Fleurus, and again from Ligny. All went
+      well. Then came the battle of Waterloo, and you know the rest. France was
+      plunged into mourning; every family waited in intense anxiety for news.
+      You may imagine, madame, how the old man waited for tidings, in anxiety
+      that knew no peace nor rest. He used to read the gazettes; he went to the
+      coach office every day. One evening he was told that the colonel&rsquo;s servant
+      had come. The man was riding his master&rsquo;s horse&mdash;what need was there
+      to ask any questions?&mdash;the colonel was dead, cut in two by a shell.
+      Before the evening was out the youngest son&rsquo;s servant arrived&mdash;the
+      youngest had died on the eve of the battle. At midnight came a gunner with
+      tidings of the death of the last; upon whom, in those few hours, the poor
+      father had centered all his life. Madame, they all had fallen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a pause the good man controlled his feelings, and added gently:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And their father is still living, madame. He realized that if God had
+      left him on earth, he was bound to live on and suffer on earth; but he
+      took refuge in the sanctuary. What could he be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise looked up and saw the cure&rsquo;s face, grown sublime in its
+      sorrow and resignation, and waited for him to speak. When the words came,
+      tears broke from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A priest, madame; consecrated by his own tears previously shed at the
+      foot of the altar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Silence prevailed for a little. The Marquise and the cure looked out at
+      the foggy landscape, as if they could see the figures of those who were no
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a priest in a city, but a simple country cure,&rdquo; added he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At Saint-Lange,&rdquo; she said, drying her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, madame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Never had the majesty of grief seemed so great to Julie. The two words
+      sank straight into her heart with the weight of infinite sorrow. The
+      gentle, sonorous tones troubled her heart. Ah! that full, deep voice,
+      charged with plangent vibration, was the voice of one who had suffered
+      indeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if I do not die, monsieur, what will become of me?&rdquo; The Marquise
+      spoke almost reverently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you not a child, madame?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said stiffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cure gave her such a glance as a doctor gives a patient whose life is
+      in danger. Then he determined to do all that in him lay to combat the evil
+      spirit into whose clutches she had fallen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must live on with our sorrows&mdash;you see it yourself, madame, and
+      religion alone offers us real consolation. Will you permit me to come
+      again?&mdash;to speak to you as a man who can sympathize with every
+      trouble, a man about whom there is nothing very alarming, I think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, monsieur, come back again. Thank you for your thought of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, madame; then I shall return very shortly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This visit relaxed the tension of soul, as it were; the heavy strain of
+      grief and loneliness had been almost too much for the Marquise&rsquo;s strength.
+      The priest&rsquo;s visit had left a soothing balm in her heart, his words
+      thrilled through her with healing influence. She began to feel something
+      of a prisoner&rsquo;s satisfaction, when, after he has had time to feel his
+      utter loneliness and the weight of his chains, he hears a neighbor
+      knocking on the wall, and welcomes the sound which brings a sense of human
+      friendship. Here was an unhoped-for confidant. But this feeling did not
+      last for long. Soon she sank back into the old bitterness of spirit,
+      saying to herself, as the prisoner might say, that a companion in
+      misfortune could neither lighten her own bondage nor her future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the first visit the cure had feared to alarm the susceptibilities of
+      self-absorbed grief, in a second interview he hoped to make some progress
+      towards religion. He came back again two days later, and from the
+      Marquise&rsquo;s welcome it was plain that she had looked forward to the visit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Mme. la Marquise, have you given a little thought to the great mass
+      of human suffering? Have you raised your eyes above our earth and seen the
+      immensity of the universe?&mdash;the worlds beyond worlds which crush our
+      vanity into insignificance, and with our vanity reduce our sorrows?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, monsieur,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I cannot rise to such heights, our social laws
+      lie too heavily upon me, and rend my heart with a too poignant anguish.
+      And laws perhaps are less cruel than the usages of the world. Ah! the
+      world!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, we must obey both. Law is the doctrine, and custom the practice
+      of society.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Obey society?&rdquo; cried the Marquise, with an involuntary shudder. &ldquo;Eh!
+      monsieur, it is the source of all our woes. God laid down no law to make
+      us miserable; but mankind, uniting together in social life, have perverted
+      God&rsquo;s work. Civilization deals harder measure to us women than nature
+      does. Nature imposes upon us physical suffering which you have not
+      alleviated; civilization has developed in us thoughts and feelings which
+      you cheat continually. Nature exterminates the weak; you condemn them to
+      live, and by so doing, consign them to a life of misery. The whole weight
+      of the burden of marriage, an institution on which society is based, falls
+      upon us; for the man liberty, duties for the woman. We must give up our
+      whole lives to you, you are only bound to give us a few moments of yours.
+      A man, in fact, makes a choice, while we blindly submit. Oh, monsieur, to
+      you I can speak freely. Marriage, in these days, seems to me to be
+      legalized prostitution. This is the cause of my wretchedness. But among so
+      many miserable creatures so unhappily yoked, I alone am bound to be
+      silent, I alone am to blame for my misery. My marriage was my own doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped short, and bitter tears fell in the silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the depths of my wretchedness, in the midst of this sea of distress,&rdquo;
+       she went on, &ldquo;I found some sands on which to set foot and suffer at
+      leisure. A great tempest swept everything away. And here am I, helpless
+      and alone, too weak to cope with storms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are never weak while God is with us,&rdquo; said the priest. &ldquo;And if your
+      cravings for affection cannot be satisfied here on earth, have you no
+      duties to perform?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Duties continually!&rdquo; she exclaimed, with something of impatience in her
+      tone. &ldquo;But where for me are the sentiments which give us strength to
+      perform them? Nothing from nothing, nothing for nothing,&mdash;this,
+      monsieur, is one of the most inexorable laws of nature, physical or
+      spiritual. Would you have these trees break into leaf without the sap
+      which swells the buds? It is the same with our human nature; and in me the
+      sap is dried up at its source.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not going to speak to you of religious sentiments of which
+      resignation is born,&rdquo; said the cure, &ldquo;but of motherhood, madame, surely&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop, monsieur!&rdquo; said the Marquise, &ldquo;with you I will be sincere. Alas! in
+      future I can be sincere with no one; I am condemned to falsehood. The
+      world requires continual grimaces, and we are bidden to obey its
+      conventions if we would escape reproach. There are two kinds of
+      motherhood, monsieur; once I knew nothing of such distinctions, but I know
+      them now. Only half of me has become a mother; it were better for me if I
+      had not been a mother at all. Helene is not <i>his</i> child! Oh! do not
+      start. At Saint-Lange there are volcanic depths whence come lurid gleams
+      of light and earthquake shocks to shake the fragile edifices of laws not
+      based on nature. I have borne a child, that is enough, I am a mother in
+      the eyes of the law. But you, monsieur, with your delicately compassionate
+      soul, can perhaps understand this cry from an unhappy woman who has
+      suffered no lying illusions to enter her heart. God will judge me, but
+      surely I have only obeyed His laws by giving way to the affections which
+      He Himself set in me, and this I have learned from my own soul.&mdash;What
+      is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the fruit of two
+      sentiments spontaneously blended? Unless it is owned by every fibre of the
+      body, as by every chord of tenderness in the heart; unless it recalls the
+      bliss of love, the hours, the places where two creatures were happy, their
+      words that overflowed with the music of humanity, and their sweet
+      imaginings, that child is an incomplete creation. Yes, those two should
+      find the poetic dreams of their intimate double life realized in their
+      child as in an exquisite miniature; it should be for them a never-failing
+      spring of emotion, implying their whole past and their whole future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor little Helene is her father&rsquo;s child, the offspring of duty and of
+      chance. In me she finds nothing but the affection of instinct, the woman&rsquo;s
+      natural compassion for the child of her womb. Socially speaking, I am
+      above reproach. Have I not sacrificed my life and my happiness to my
+      child? Her cries go to my heart; if she were to fall into the water, I
+      should spring to save her, but she is not in my heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! love set me dreaming of a motherhood far greater and more complete.
+      In a vanished dream I held in my arms a child conceived in desire before
+      it was begotten, the exquisite flower of life that blossoms in the soul
+      before it sees the light of day. I am Helene&rsquo;s mother only in the sense
+      that I brought her forth. When she needs me no longer, there will be an
+      end of my motherhood; with the extinction of the cause, the effects will
+      cease. If it is a woman&rsquo;s adorable prerogative that her motherhood may
+      last through her child&rsquo;s life, surely that divine persistence of sentiment
+      is due to the far-reaching glory of the conception of the soul? Unless a
+      child has lain wrapped about from life&rsquo;s first beginnings by the mother&rsquo;s
+      soul, the instinct of motherhood dies in her as in the animals. This is
+      true; I feel that it is true. As my poor little one grows older, my heart
+      closes. My sacrifices have driven us apart. And yet I know, monsieur, that
+      to another child my heart would have gone out in inexhaustible love; for
+      that other I should not have known what sacrifice meant, all had been
+      delight. In this, monsieur, my instincts are stronger than reason,
+      stronger than religion or all else in me. Does the woman who is neither
+      wife nor mother sin in wishing to die when, for her misfortune, she has
+      caught a glimpse of the infinite beauty of love, the limitless joy of
+      motherhood? What can become of her? <i>I</i> can tell you what she feels.
+      I cannot put that memory from me so resolutely but that a hundred times,
+      night and day, visions of a happiness, greater it may be than the reality,
+      rise before me, followed by a shudder which shakes brain and heart and
+      body. Before these cruel visions, my feelings and thoughts grow colorless,
+      and I ask myself, &lsquo;What would my life have been <i>if</i>&mdash;&mdash;?&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hid her face in her hands and burst into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you see the depths of my heart!&rdquo; she continued. &ldquo;For <i>his</i>
+      child I could have acquiesced in any lot however dreadful. He who died,
+      bearing the burden of the sins of the world will forgive this thought of
+      which I am dying; but the world, I know, is merciless. In its ears my
+      words are blasphemies; I am outraging all its codes. Oh! that I could wage
+      war against this world and break down and refashion its laws and
+      traditions! Has it not turned all my thoughts, and feelings, and longings,
+      and hopes, and every fibre in me into so many sources of pain? Spoiled my
+      future, present, and past? For me the daylight is full of gloom, my
+      thoughts pierce me like a sword, my child is and is not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, when Helene speaks to me, I wish that her voice were different, when
+      she looks into my face I wish that she had other eyes. She constantly
+      keeps me in mind of all that should have been and is not. I cannot bear to
+      have her near me. I smile at her, I try to make up to her for the real
+      affection of which she is defrauded. I am wretched, monsieur, too wretched
+      to live. And I am supposed to be a pattern wife. And I have committed no
+      sins. And I am respected! I have fought down forbidden love which sprang
+      up at unawares within me; but if I have kept the letter of the law, have I
+      kept it in my heart? There has never been but one here,&rdquo; she said, laying
+      her right hand on her breast, &ldquo;one and no other; and my child feels it.
+      Certain looks and tones and gestures mould a child&rsquo;s nature, and my poor
+      little one feels no thrill in the arm I put about her, no tremor comes
+      into my voice, no softness into my eyes when I speak to her or take her
+      up. She looks at me, and I cannot endure the reproach in her eyes. There
+      are times when I shudder to think that some day she may be my judge and
+      condemn her mother unheard. Heaven grant that hate may not grow up between
+      us! Ah! God in heaven, rather let the tomb open for me, rather let me end
+      my days here at Saint-Lange!&mdash;I want to go back to the world where I
+      shall find my other soul and become wholly a mother. Ah! forgive me, sir,
+      I am mad. Those words were choking me; now they are spoken. Ah! you are
+      weeping too! You will not despise me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She heard the child come in from a walk. &ldquo;Helene, my child, come here!&rdquo;
+       she called. The words sounded like a cry of despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little girl ran in, laughing and calling to her mother to see a
+      butterfly which she had caught; but at the sight of that mother&rsquo;s tears
+      she grew quiet of a sudden, and went up close, and received a kiss on her
+      forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will be very beautiful some day,&rdquo; said the priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is her father&rsquo;s child,&rdquo; said the Marquise, kissing the little one
+      with eager warmth, as if she meant to pay a debt of affection or to
+      extinguish some feeling of remorse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How hot you are, mamma!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, go away, my angel,&rdquo; said the Marquise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child went. She did not seem at all sorry to go; she did not look
+      back; glad perhaps to escape from a sad face, and instinctively
+      comprehending already an antagonism of feeling in its expression. A
+      mother&rsquo;s love finds language in smiles, they are a part of the divine
+      right of motherhood. The Marquise could not smile. She flushed red as she
+      felt the cure&rsquo;s eyes. She had hoped to act a mother&rsquo;s part before him, but
+      neither she nor her child could deceive him. And, indeed, when a woman
+      loves sincerely, in the kiss she gives there is a divine honey; it is as
+      if a soul were breathed forth in the caress, a subtle flame of fire which
+      brings warmth to the heart; the kiss that lacks this delicious unction is
+      meagre and formal. The priest had felt the difference. He could fathom the
+      depths that lie between the motherhood of the flesh and the motherhood of
+      the heart. He gave the Marquise a keen, scrutinizing glance, then he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right, madame; it would be better for you if you were dead&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;then you know all my misery; I see you do if, Christian
+      priest as you are, you can guess my determination to die and sanction it.
+      Yes, I meant to die, but I have lacked the courage. The spirit was strong,
+      but the flesh was weak, and when my hand did not tremble, the spirit
+      within me wavered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know the reason of these inner struggles, and alternations. I am
+      very pitiably a woman no doubt, weak in my will, strong only to love. Oh,
+      I despise myself. At night, when all my household was asleep, I would go
+      out bravely as far as the lake; but when I stood on the brink, my
+      cowardice shrank from self-destruction. To you I will confess my weakness.
+      When I lay in my bed, again, shame would come over me, and courage would
+      come back. Once I took a dose of laudanum; I was ill, but I did not die. I
+      thought I had emptied the phial, but I had only taken half the dose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are lost, madame,&rdquo; the cure said gravely, with tears in his voice.
+      &ldquo;You will go back into the world, and you will deceive the world. You will
+      seek and find a compensation (as you imagine it to be) for your woes; then
+      will come a day of reckoning for your pleasures&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;that <i>I</i> shall bestow the last, the most
+      precious treasures of my heart upon the first base impostor who can play
+      the comedy of passion? That I would pollute my life for a moment of
+      doubtful pleasure? No; the flame which shall consume my soul shall be
+      love, and nothing but love. All men, monsieur, have the senses of their
+      sex, but not all have the man&rsquo;s soul which satisfies all the requirements
+      of our nature, drawing out the melodious harmony which never breaks forth
+      save in response to the pressure of feeling. Such a soul is not found
+      twice in our lifetime. The future that lies before me is hideous; I know
+      it. A woman is nothing without love; beauty is nothing without pleasure.
+      And even if happiness were offered to me a second time, would not the
+      world frown upon it? I owe my daughter an honored mother. Oh! I am
+      condemned to live in an iron circle, from which there is but one shameful
+      way of escape. The round of family duties, a thankless and irksome task,
+      is in store for me. I shall curse life; but my child shall have at least a
+      fair semblance of a mother. I will give her treasures of virtue for the
+      treasures of love of which I defraud her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not even the mother&rsquo;s desire to live to enjoy her child&rsquo;s
+      happiness. I have no belief in happiness. What will Helene&rsquo;s fate be? My
+      own, beyond doubt. How can a mother ensure that the man to whom she gives
+      her daughter will be the husband of her heart? You pour scorn on the
+      miserable creatures who sell themselves for a few coins to any passer-by,
+      though want and hunger absolve the brief union; while another union,
+      horrible for quite other reasons, is tolerated, nay encouraged, by
+      society, and a young and innocent girl is married to a man whom she has
+      only met occasionally during the previous three months. She is sold for
+      her whole lifetime. It is true that the price is high! If you allow her no
+      compensation for her sorrows, you might at least respect her; but no, the
+      most virtuous of women cannot escape calumny. This is our fate in its
+      double aspect. Open prostitution and shame; secret prostitution and
+      unhappiness. As for the poor, portionless girls, they may die or go mad,
+      without a soul to pity them. Beauty and virtue are not marketable in the
+      bazaar where souls and bodies are bought and sold&mdash;in the den of
+      selfishness which you call society. Why not disinherit daughters? Then, at
+      least, you might fulfil one of the laws of nature, and guided by your own
+      inclinations, choose your companions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, from your talk it is clear to me that neither the spirit of
+      family nor the sense of religion appeals to you. Why should you hesitate
+      between the claims of the social selfishness which irritates you, and the
+      purely personal selfishness which craves satisfactions&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The family, monsieur&mdash;does such a thing exist? I decline to
+      recognize as a family a knot of individuals bidden by society to divide
+      the property after the death of father and mother, and to go their
+      separate ways. A family means a temporary association of persons brought
+      together by no will of their own, dissolved at once by death. Our laws
+      have broken up homes and estates, and the old family tradition handed down
+      from generation to generation. I see nothing but wreck and ruin about me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, you will only return to God when His hand has been heavy upon
+      you, and I pray that you have time enough given to you in which to make
+      your peace with Him. Instead of looking to heaven for comfort, you are
+      fixing your eyes on earth. Philosophism and personal interest have invaded
+      your heart; like the children of the sceptical eighteenth century, you are
+      deaf to the voice of religion. The pleasures of this life bring nothing
+      but misery. You are about to make an exchange of sorrows, that is all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will falsify your predictions,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I shall be faithful to him
+      who died for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorrow,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;is not likely to live long save in souls
+      disciplined by religion,&rdquo; and he lowered his eyes respectfully lest the
+      Marquise should read his doubts in them. The energy of her outburst had
+      grieved him. He had seen the self that lurked beneath so many forms, and
+      despaired of softening a heart which affliction seemed to sear. The divine
+      Sower&rsquo;s seed could not take root in such a soil, and His gentle voice was
+      drowned by the clamorous outcry of self-pity. Yet the good man returned
+      again and again with an apostle&rsquo;s earnest persistence, brought back by a
+      hope of leading so noble and proud a soul to God; until the day when he
+      made the discovery that the Marquise only cared to talk with him because
+      it was sweet to speak of him who was no more. He would not lower his
+      ministry by condoning her passion, and confined the conversation more and
+      more to generalities and commonplaces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spring came, and with the spring the Marquise found distraction from her
+      deep melancholy. She busied herself for lack of other occupation with her
+      estate, making improvements for amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In October she left the old chateau. In the life of leisure at Saint-Lange
+      she had recovered from her grief and grown fair and fresh. Her grief had
+      been violent at first in its course, as the quoit hurled forth with all
+      the player&rsquo;s strength, and like the quoit after many oscillations, each
+      feebler than the last, it had slackened into melancholy. Melancholy is
+      made up of a succession of such oscillations, the first touching upon
+      despair, the last on the border between pain and pleasure; in youth, it is
+      the twilight of dawn; in age, the dusk of night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the Marquise drove through the village in her traveling carriage, she
+      met the cure on his way back from the church. She bowed in response to his
+      farewell greeting, but it was with lowered eyes and averted face. She did
+      not wish to see him again. The village cure had judged this poor Diana of
+      Ephesus only too well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III. AT THIRTY YEARS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Madame Firmiani was giving a ball. M. Charles de Vandenesse, a young man
+      of great promise, the bearer of one of those historic names which, in
+      spite of the efforts of legislation, are always associated with the glory
+      of France, had received letters of introduction to some of the great
+      lady&rsquo;s friends in Naples, and had come to thank the hostess and to take
+      his leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vandenesse had already acquitted himself creditably on several diplomatic
+      missions; and now that he had received an appointment as attache to a
+      plenipotentiary at the Congress of Laybach, he wished to take advantage of
+      the opportunity to make some study of Italy on the way. This ball was a
+      sort of farewell to Paris and its amusements and its rapid whirl of life,
+      to the great eddying intellectual centre and maelstrom of pleasure; and a
+      pleasant thing it is to be borne along by the current of this sufficiently
+      slandered great city of Paris. Yet Charles de Vandenesse had little to
+      regret, accustomed as he had been for the past three years to salute
+      European capitals and turn his back upon them at the capricious bidding of
+      a diplomatist&rsquo;s destiny. Women no longer made any impression upon him;
+      perhaps he thought that a real passion would play too large a part in a
+      diplomatist&rsquo;s life; or perhaps that the paltry amusements of frivolity
+      were too empty for a man of strong character. We all of us have huge
+      claims to strength of character. There is no man in France, be he ever so
+      ordinary a member of the rank and file of humanity, that will waive
+      pretensions to something beyond mere cleverness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles, young though he was&mdash;he was scarcely turned thirty&mdash;looked
+      at life with a philosophic mind, concerning himself with theories and
+      means and ends, while other men of his age were thinking of pleasure,
+      sentiments, and the like illusions. He forced back into some inner depth
+      the generosity and enthusiasms of youth, and by nature he was generous. He
+      tried hard to be cool and calculating, to coin the fund of wealth which
+      chanced to be in his nature into gracious manners, and courtesy, and
+      attractive arts; &lsquo;tis the proper task of an ambitious man, to play a sorry
+      part to gain &ldquo;a good position,&rdquo; as we call it in modern days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been dancing, and now he gave a farewell glance over the rooms, to
+      carry away a distinct impression of the ball, moved, doubtless, to some
+      extent by the feeling which prompts a theatre-goer to stay in his box to
+      see the final tableau before the curtain falls. But M. de Vandenesse had
+      another reason for his survey. He gazed curiously at the scene before him,
+      so French in character and in movement, seeking to carry away a picture of
+      the light and laughter and the faces at this Parisian fete, to compare
+      with the novel faces and picturesque surroundings awaiting him at Naples,
+      where he meant to spend a few days before presenting himself at his post.
+      He seemed to be drawing the comparison now between this France so
+      variable, changing even as you study her, with the manners and aspects of
+      that other land known to him as yet only by contradictory hearsay tales or
+      books of travel, for the most part unsatisfactory. Thoughts of a somewhat
+      poetical cast, albeit hackneyed and trite to our modern ideas, crossed his
+      brain, in response to some longing of which, perhaps, he himself was
+      hardly conscious, a desire in the depths of a heart fastidious rather than
+      jaded, vacant rather than seared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These are the wealthiest and most fashionable women and the greatest
+      ladies in Paris,&rdquo; he said to himself. &ldquo;These are the great men of the day,
+      great orators and men of letters, great names and titles; artists and men
+      in power; and yet in it all it seems to me as if there were nothing but
+      petty intrigues and still-born loves, meaningless smiles and causeless
+      scorn, eyes lighted by no flame within, brain-power in abundance running
+      aimlessly to waste. All those pink-and-white faces are here not so much
+      for enjoyment, as to escape from dulness. None of the emotion is genuine.
+      If you ask for nothing but court feathers properly adjusted, fresh gauzes
+      and pretty toilettes and fragile, fair women, if you desire simply to skim
+      the surface of life, here is your world for you. Be content with
+      meaningless phrases and fascinating simpers, and do not ask for real
+      feeling. For my own part, I abhor the stale intrigues which end in
+      sub-prefectures and receiver-generals&rsquo; places and marriages; or, if love
+      comes into the question, in stealthy compromises, so ashamed are we of the
+      mere semblance of passion. Not a single one of all these eloquent faces
+      tells you of a soul, a soul wholly absorbed by one idea as by remorse.
+      Regrets and misfortune go about shame-facedly clad in jests. There is not
+      one woman here whose resistance I should care to overcome, not one who
+      could drag you down to the pit. Where will you find energy in Paris? A
+      poniard here is a curious toy to hang from a gilt nail, in a picturesque
+      sheath to match. The women, the brains, and hearts of Paris are all on a
+      par. There is no passion left, because we have no individuality. High
+      birth and intellect and fortune are all reduced to one level; we all have
+      taken to the uniform black coat by way of mourning for a dead France.
+      There is no love between equals. Between two lovers there should be
+      differences to efface, wide gulfs to fill. The charm of love fled from us
+      in 1789. Our dulness and our humdrum lives are the outcome of the
+      political system. Italy at any rate is the land of sharp contrasts. Woman
+      there is a malevolent animal, a dangerous unreasoning siren, guided only
+      by her tastes and appetites, a creature no more to be trusted than a tiger&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. Firmiani here came up to interrupt this soliloquy made up of vague,
+      conflicting, and fragmentary thoughts which cannot be reproduced in words.
+      The whole charm of such musing lies in its vagueness&mdash;what is it but
+      a sort of mental haze?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to introduce you to some one who has the greatest wish to make
+      your acquaintance, after all that she has heard of you,&rdquo; said the lady,
+      taking his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She brought him into the next room, and with such a smile and glance as a
+      Parisienne alone can give, she indicated a woman sitting by the hearth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is she?&rdquo; the Comte de Vandenesse asked quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have heard her name more than once coupled with praise or blame. She
+      is a woman who lives in seclusion&mdash;a perfect mystery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! if ever you have been merciful in your life, for pity&rsquo;s sake tell me
+      her name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is the Marquise d&rsquo;Aiglemont.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will take lessons from her; she had managed to make a peer of France of
+      that eminently ordinary person her husband, and a dullard into a power in
+      the land. But, pray tell me this, did Lord Grenville die for her sake, do
+      you think, as some women say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Possibly. Since that adventure, real or imaginary, she is very much
+      changed, poor thing! She has not gone into society since. Four years of
+      constancy&mdash;that is something in Paris. If she is here to-night&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+       Here Mme. Firmiani broke off, adding with a mysterious expression, &ldquo;I am
+      forgetting that I must say nothing. Go and talk with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Charles stood motionless, leaning lightly against the frame
+      of the doorway, wholly absorbed in his scrutiny of a woman who had become
+      famous, no one exactly knew how or why. Such curious anomalies are
+      frequent enough in the world. Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s reputation was certainly
+      no more extraordinary than plenty of other great reputations. There are
+      men who are always in travail of some great work which never sees the
+      light, statisticians held to be profound on the score of calculations
+      which they take very good care not to publish, politicians who live on a
+      newspaper article, men of letters and artists whose performances are never
+      given to the world, men of science, much as Sganarelle is a Latinist for
+      those who know no Latin; there are the men who are allowed by general
+      consent to possess a peculiar capacity for some one thing, be it for the
+      direction of arts, or for the conduct of an important mission. The
+      admirable phrase, &ldquo;A man with a special subject,&rdquo; might have been invented
+      on purpose for these acephalous species in the domain of literature and
+      politics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles gazed longer than he intended. He was vexed with himself for
+      feeling so strongly interested; it is true, however, that the lady&rsquo;s
+      appearance was a refutation of the young man&rsquo;s ballroom generalizations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise had reached her thirtieth year. She was beautiful in spite of
+      her fragile form and extremely delicate look. Her greatest charm lay in
+      her still face, revealing unfathomed depths of soul. Some haunting,
+      ever-present thought veiled, as it were, the full brilliance of eyes which
+      told of a fevered life and boundless resignation. So seldom did she raise
+      the eyelids soberly downcast, and so listless were her glances, that it
+      almost seemed as if the fire in her eyes were reserved for some occult
+      contemplation. Any man of genius and feeling must have felt strangely
+      attracted by her gentleness and silence. If the mind sought to explain the
+      mysterious problem of a constant inward turning from the present to the
+      past, the soul was no less interested in initiating itself into the
+      secrets of a heart proud in some sort of its anguish. Everything about
+      her, moreover, was in keeping with these thoughts which she inspired. Like
+      almost all women who have very long hair, she was very pale and perfectly
+      white. The marvelous fineness of her skin (that almost unerring sign)
+      indicated a quick sensibility which could be seen yet more unmistakably in
+      her features; there was the same minute and wonderful delicacy of finish
+      in them that the Chinese artist gives to his fantastic figures. Perhaps
+      her neck was rather too long, but such necks belong to the most graceful
+      type, and suggest vague affinities between a woman&rsquo;s head and the magnetic
+      curves of the serpent. Leave not a single one of the thousand signs and
+      tokens by which the most inscrutable character betrays itself to an
+      observer of human nature, he has but to watch carefully the little
+      movements of a woman&rsquo;s head, the ever-varying expressive turns and curves
+      of her neck and throat, to read her nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s dress harmonized with the haunting thought that
+      informed the whole woman. Her hair was gathered up into a tall coronet of
+      broad plaits, without ornament of any kind; she seemed to have bidden
+      farewell for ever to elaborate toilettes. Nor were any of the small arts
+      of coquetry which spoil so many women to be detected in her. Perhaps her
+      bodice, modest though it was, did not altogether conceal the dainty grace
+      of her figure, perhaps, too, her gown looked rich from the extreme
+      distinction of its fashion, and if it is permissible to look for
+      expression in the arrangement of stuffs, surely those numerous straight
+      folds invested her with a great dignity. There may have been some
+      lingering trace of the indelible feminine foible in the minute care
+      bestowed upon her hand and foot; yet, if she allowed them to be seen with
+      some pleasure, it would have tasked the utmost malice of a rival to
+      discover any affectation in her gestures, so natural did they seem, so
+      much a part of old childish habit, that her careless grace absolved this
+      vestige of vanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these little characteristics, the nameless trifles which combine to
+      make up the sum of a woman&rsquo;s prettiness or ugliness, her charm or lack of
+      charm, can only be indicated, when, as with Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont, a
+      personality dominates and gives coherence to the details, informing them,
+      blending them all in an exquisite whole. Her manner was perfectly in
+      accord with her style of beauty and her dress. Only to certain women at a
+      certain age is it given to put language into their attitude. Is it joy or
+      is it sorrow that teaches a woman of thirty the secret of that eloquence
+      of carriage, so that she must always remain an enigma which each
+      interprets by the aid of his hopes, desires, or theories?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The way in which the Marquise leaned both elbows on the arm of her chair,
+      the toying of her interclasped fingers, the curve of her throat, the
+      indolent lines of her languid but lissome body as she lay back in graceful
+      exhaustion, as it were; her indolent limbs, her unstudied pose, the utter
+      lassitude of her movements,&mdash;all suggested that this was a woman for
+      whom life had lost its interest, a woman who had known the joys of love
+      only in dreams, a woman bowed down by the burden of memories of the past,
+      a woman who had long since despaired of the future and despaired of
+      herself, an unoccupied woman who took the emptiness of her own life for
+      the nothingness of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles de Vandenesse saw and admired the beautiful picture before him, as
+      a kind of artistic success beyond an ordinary woman&rsquo;s powers of
+      attainment. He was acquainted with d&rsquo;Aiglemont; and now, at the first
+      sight of d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s wife, the young diplomatist saw at a glance a
+      disproportionate marriage, an incompatibility (to use the legal jargon) so
+      great that it was impossible that the Marquise should love her husband.
+      And yet&mdash;the Marquise d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s life was above reproach, and for
+      any observer the mystery about her was the more interesting on this
+      account. The first impulse of surprise over, Vandenesse cast about for the
+      best way of approaching Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont. He would try a commonplace piece
+      of diplomacy, he thought; he would disconcert her by a piece of clumsiness
+      and see how she would receive it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; he said, seating himself near her, &ldquo;through a fortunate
+      indiscretion I have learned that, for some reason unknown to me, I have
+      had the good fortune to attract your notice. I owe you the more thanks
+      because I have never been so honored before. At the same time, you are
+      responsible for one of my faults, for I mean never to be modest again&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will make a mistake, monsieur,&rdquo; she laughed; &ldquo;vanity should be left
+      to those who have nothing else to recommend them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The conversation thus opened ranged at large, in the usual way, over a
+      multitude of topics&mdash;art and literature, politics, men and things&mdash;till
+      insensibly they fell to talking of the eternal theme in France and all the
+      world over&mdash;love, sentiment, and women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are bond-slaves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are queens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the gist and substance of all the more or less ingenious
+      discourse between Charles and the Marquise, as of all such discourses&mdash;past,
+      present, and to come. Allow a certain space of time, and the two formulas
+      shall begin to mean &ldquo;Love me,&rdquo; and &ldquo;I will love you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; Charles de Vandenesse exclaimed under his breath, &ldquo;you have made
+      me bitterly regret that I am leaving Paris. In Italy I certainly shall not
+      pass hours in intellectual enjoyment such as this has been.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps, monsieur, you will find happiness, and happiness is worth more
+      than all the brilliant things, true and false, that are said every evening
+      in Paris.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Charles took leave, he asked permission to pay a farewell call on
+      the Marquise d&rsquo;Aiglemont, and very lucky did he feel himself when the form
+      of words in which he expressed himself for once was used in all sincerity;
+      and that night, and all day long on the morrow, he could not put the
+      thought of the Marquise out of his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At times he wondered why she had singled him out, what she had meant when
+      she asked him to come to see her, and thought supplied an inexhaustible
+      commentary. Again it seemed to him that he had discovered the motives of
+      her curiosity, and he grew intoxicated with hope or frigidly sober with
+      each new construction put upon that piece of commonplace civility.
+      Sometimes it meant everything, sometimes nothing. He made up his mind at
+      last that he would not yield to this inclination, and&mdash;went to call
+      on Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are thoughts which determine our conduct, while we do not so much as
+      suspect their existence. If at first sight this assertion appears to be
+      less a truth than a paradox, let any candid inquirer look into his own
+      life and he shall find abundant confirmation therein. Charles went to Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont, and so obeyed one of these latent, pre-existent germs of
+      thought, of which our experience and our intellectual gains and
+      achievements are but later and tangible developments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a young man a woman of thirty has irresistible attractions. There is
+      nothing more natural, nothing better established, no human tie of stouter
+      tissue than the heart-deep attachment between such a woman as the Marquise
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont and such a man as Charles de Vandenesse. You can see examples
+      of it every day in the world. A girl, as a matter of fact, has too many
+      young illusions, she is too inexperienced, the instinct of sex counts for
+      too much in her love for a young man to feel flattered by it. A woman of
+      thirty knows all that is involved in the self-surrender to be made. Among
+      the impulses of the first, put curiosity and other motives than love; the
+      second acts with integrity of sentiment. The first yields; the second
+      makes deliberate choice. Is not that choice in itself an immense flattery?
+      A woman armed with experience, forewarned by knowledge, almost always
+      dearly bought, seems to give more than herself; while the inexperienced
+      and credulous girl, unable to draw comparisons for lack of knowledge, can
+      appreciate nothing at its just worth. She accepts love and ponders it. A
+      woman is a counselor and a guide at an age when we love to be guided and
+      obedience is delight; while a girl would fain learn all things, meeting us
+      with a girl&rsquo;s <i>naivete</i> instead of a woman&rsquo;s tenderness. She affords
+      a single triumph; with a woman there is resistance upon resistance to
+      overcome; she has but joy and tears, a woman has rapture and remorse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A girl cannot play the part of a mistress unless she is so corrupt that we
+      turn from her with loathing; a woman has a thousand ways of preserving her
+      power and her dignity; she has risked so much for love, that she must bid
+      him pass through his myriad transformations, while her too submissive
+      rival gives a sense of too serene security which palls. If the one
+      sacrifices her maidenly pride, the other immolates the honor of a whole
+      family. A girl&rsquo;s coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said
+      when the veil is laid aside; a woman&rsquo;s coquetry is endless, she shrouds
+      herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of man&rsquo;s vanity,
+      the novice responds but to one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there are terrors, fears, and hesitations&mdash;trouble and storm in
+      the love of a woman of thirty years, never to be found in a young girl&rsquo;s
+      love. At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back the esteem
+      she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her thoughts are
+      full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids him make it
+      glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, or rise in
+      pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young girl can only
+      make moan. And with all the advantages of her position, the woman of
+      thirty can be a girl again, for she can play all parts, assume a girl&rsquo;s
+      bashfulness, and grow the fairer even for a mischance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between these two feminine types lies the immeasurable difference which
+      separates the foreseen from the unforeseen, strength from weakness. The
+      woman of thirty satisfies every requirement; the young girl must satisfy
+      none, under penalty of ceasing to be a young girl. Such ideas as these,
+      developing in a young man&rsquo;s mind, help to strengthen the strongest of all
+      passions, a passion in which all spontaneous and natural feeling is
+      blended with the artificial sentiment created by conventional manners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The most important and decisive step in a woman&rsquo;s life is the very one
+      that she invariably regards as the most insignificant. After her marriage
+      she is no longer her own mistress, she is the queen and the bond-slave of
+      the domestic hearth. The sanctity of womanhood is incompatible with social
+      liberty and social claims; and for a woman emancipation means corruption.
+      If you give a stranger the right of entry into the sanctuary of home, do
+      you not put yourself at his mercy? How then if she herself bids him enter
+      it? Is not this an offence, or, to speak more accurately, a first step
+      towards an offence? You must either accept this theory with all its
+      consequences, or absolve illicit passion. French society hitherto has
+      chosen the third and middle course of looking on and laughing when
+      offences come, apparently upon the Spartan principle of condoning the
+      theft and punishing clumsiness. And this system, it may be, is a very wise
+      one. &lsquo;Tis a most appalling punishment to have all your neighbors pointing
+      the finger of scorn at you, a punishment that a woman feels in her very
+      heart. Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of
+      respect; without esteem they cannot exist, esteem is the first demand that
+      they make of love. The most corrupt among them feels that she must, in the
+      first place, pledge the future to buy absolution for the past, and strives
+      to make her lover understand that only for irresistible bliss can she
+      barter the respect which the world henceforth will refuse to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some such reflections cross the mind of any woman who for the first time
+      and alone receives a visit from a young man; and this especially when,
+      like Charles de Vandenesse, the visitor is handsome or clever. And
+      similarly there are not many young men who would fail to base some secret
+      wish on one of the thousand and one ideas which justify the instinct that
+      attracts them to a beautiful, witty, and unhappy woman like the Marquise
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont, therefore, felt troubled when M. de Vandenesse was
+      announced; and as for him, he was almost confused in spite of the
+      assurance which is like a matter of costume for a diplomatist. But not for
+      long. The Marquise took refuge at once in the friendliness of manner which
+      women use as a defence against the misinterpretations of fatuity, a manner
+      which admits of no afterthought, while it paves the way to sentiment (to
+      make use of a figure of speech), tempering the transition through the
+      ordinary forms of politeness. In this ambiguous position, where the four
+      roads leading respectively to Indifference, Respect, Wonder, and Passion
+      meet, a woman may stay as long as she pleases, but only at thirty years
+      does she understand all the possibilities of the situation. Laughter,
+      tenderness, and jest are all permitted to her at the crossing of the ways;
+      she has acquired the tact by which she finds all the responsive chords in
+      a man&rsquo;s nature, and skill in judging the sounds which she draws forth. Her
+      silence is as dangerous as her speech. You will never read her at that
+      age, nor discover if she is frank or false, nor how far she is serious in
+      her admissions or merely laughing at you. She gives you the right to
+      engage in a game of fence with her, and suddenly by a glance, a gesture of
+      proved potency, she closes the combat and turns from you with your secret
+      in her keeping, free to offer you up in a jest, free to interest herself
+      in you, safe alike in her weakness and your strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although the Marquise d&rsquo;Aiglemont took up her position upon this neutral
+      ground during the first interview, she knew how to preserve a high womanly
+      dignity. The sorrows of which she never spoke seemed to hang over her
+      assumed gaiety like a light cloud obscuring the sun. When Vandenesse went
+      out, after a conversation which he had enjoyed more than he had thought
+      possible, he carried with him the conviction that this was like to be too
+      costly a conquest for his aspirations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would mean sentiment from here to yonder,&rdquo; he thought, &ldquo;and
+      correspondence enough to wear out a deputy second-clerk on his promotion.
+      And yet if I really cared&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Luckless phrase that has been the ruin of many an infatuated mortal. In
+      France the way to love lies through self-love. Charles went back to Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont, and imagined that she showed symptoms of pleasure in his
+      conversion. And then, instead of giving himself up like a boy to the joy
+      of falling in love, he tried to play a double role. He did his best to act
+      passion and to keep cool enough to analyze the progress of this
+      flirtation, to be lover and diplomatist at once; but youth and hot blood
+      and analysis could only end in one way, over head and ears in love; for,
+      natural or artificial, the Marquise was more than his match. Each time he
+      went out from Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont, he strenuously held himself to his
+      distrust, and submitted the progressive situations of his case to a
+      rigorous scrutiny fatal to his own emotions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-day she gave me to understand that she has been very unhappy and
+      lonely,&rdquo; said he to himself, after the third visit, &ldquo;and that but for her
+      little girl she would have longed for death. She was perfectly resigned.
+      Now as I am neither her brother nor her spiritual director, why should she
+      confide her troubles to <i>me</i>? She loves me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later he came away apostrophizing modern manners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Love takes on the hue of every age. In 1822 love is a doctrinaire.
+      Instead of proving love by deeds, as in times past, we have taken to
+      argument and rhetoric and debate. Women&rsquo;s tactics are reduced to three
+      shifts. In the first place, they declare that we cannot love as they love.
+      (Coquetry! the Marquise simply threw it at me, like a challenge, this
+      evening!) Next they grow pathetic, to appeal to our natural generosity or
+      self-love; for does it not flatter a young man&rsquo;s vanity to console a woman
+      for a great calamity? And lastly, they have a craze for virginity. She
+      must have thought that I thought her very innocent. My good faith is like
+      to become an excellent speculation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But a day came when every suspicious idea was exhausted. He asked himself
+      whether the Marquise was not sincere; whether so much suffering could be
+      feigned, and why she should act the part of resignation? She lived in
+      complete seclusion; she drank in silence of a cup of sorrow scarcely to be
+      guessed unless from the accent of some chance exclamation in a voice
+      always well under control. From that moment Charles felt a keen interest
+      in Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont. And yet, though his visits had come to be a
+      recognized thing, and in some sort a necessity to them both, and though
+      the hour was kept free by tacit agreement, Vandenesse still thought that
+      this woman with whom he was in love was more clever than sincere.
+      &ldquo;Decidedly, she is an uncommonly clever woman,&rdquo; he used to say to himself
+      as he went away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he came into the room, there was the Marquise in her favorite
+      attitude, melancholy expressed in her whole form. She made no movement
+      when he entered, only raised her eyes and looked full at him, but the
+      glance that she gave him was like a smile. Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s manner meant
+      confidence and sincere friendship, but of love there was no trace. Charles
+      sat down and found nothing to say. A sensation for which no language
+      exists troubled him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter with you?&rdquo; she asked in a softened voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing.... Yes; I am thinking of something of which, as yet, you have
+      not thought at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;the Congress is over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and ought you to have been at the Congress?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A direct answer would have been the most eloquent and delicate declaration
+      of love; but Charles did not make it. Before the candid friendship in Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s face all the calculations of vanity, the hopes of love, and
+      the diplomatist&rsquo;s doubts died away. She did not suspect, or she seemed not
+      to suspect, his love for her; and Charles, in utter confusion turning upon
+      himself, was forced to admit that he had said and done nothing which could
+      warrant such a belief on her part. For M. de Vandenesse that evening, the
+      Marquise was, as she had always been, simple and friendly, sincere in her
+      sorrow, glad to have a friend, proud to find a nature responsive to her
+      own&mdash;nothing more. It had not entered her mind that a woman could
+      yield twice; she had known love&mdash;love lay bleeding still in the
+      depths of her heart, but she did not imagine that bliss could bring her
+      its rapture twice, for she believed not merely in the intellect, but in
+      the soul; and for her love was no simple attraction; it drew her with all
+      noble attractions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment Charles became a young man again, enthralled by the splendor
+      of a nature so lofty. He wished for a fuller initiation into the secret
+      history of a life blighted rather by fate than by her own fault. Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont heard him ask the cause of the overwhelming sorrow which had
+      blended all the harmonies of sadness with her beauty; she gave him one
+      glance, but that searching look was like a seal set upon some solemn
+      compact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask no more such questions of me,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Four years ago, on this
+      very day, the man who loved me, for whom I would have given up everything,
+      even my own self-respect, died, and died to save my name. That love was
+      still young and pure and full of illusions when it came to an end. Before
+      I gave way to passion&mdash;and never was a woman so urged by fate&mdash;I
+      had been drawn into the mistake that ruins many a girl&rsquo;s life, a marriage
+      with a man whose agreeable manners concealed his emptiness. Marriage
+      plucked my hopes away one by one. And now, to-day, I have forfeited
+      happiness through marriage, as well as the happiness styled criminal, and
+      I have known no happiness. Nothing is left to me. If I could not die, at
+      least I ought to be faithful to my memories.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No tears came with the words. Her eyes fell, and there was a slight
+      twisting of the fingers interclasped, according to her wont. It was simply
+      said, but in her voice there was a note of despair, deep as her love
+      seemed to have been, which left Charles without a hope. The dreadful story
+      of a life told in three sentences, with that twisting of the fingers for
+      all comment, the might of anguish in a fragile woman, the dark depths
+      masked by a fair face, the tears of four years of mourning fascinated
+      Vandenesse; he sat silent and diminished in the presence of her woman&rsquo;s
+      greatness and nobleness, seeing not the physical beauty so exquisite, so
+      perfectly complete, but the soul so great in its power to feel. He had
+      found, at last, the ideal of his fantastic imaginings, the ideal so
+      vigorously invoked by all who look on life as the raw material of a
+      passion for which many a one seeks ardently, and dies before he has
+      grasped the whole of the dreamed-of treasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With those words of hers in his ears, in the presence of her sublime
+      beauty, his own thoughts seemed poor and narrow. Powerless as he felt
+      himself to find words of his own, simple enough and lofty enough to scale
+      the heights of this exaltation, he took refuge in platitudes as to the
+      destiny of women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, we must either forget our pain, or hollow out a tomb for
+      ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being
+      essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other
+      is infinite. To set to work to reason where you are required to feel, is
+      the mark of a limited nature. Vandenesse therefore held his peace, sat
+      awhile with his eyes fixed upon her, then came away. A prey to novel
+      thoughts which exalted woman for him, he was in something the same
+      position as a painter who has taken the vulgar studio model for a type of
+      womanhood, and suddenly confronts the <i>Mnemosyne</i> of the Musee&mdash;that
+      noblest and least appreciated of antique statues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles de Vandenesse was deeply in love. He loved Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont with
+      the loyalty of youth, with the fervor that communicates such ineffable
+      charm to a first passion, with a simplicity of heart of which a man only
+      recovers some fragments when he loves again at a later day. Delicious
+      first passion of youth, almost always deliciously savored by the woman who
+      calls it forth; for at the golden prime of thirty, from the poetic summit
+      of a woman&rsquo;s life, she can look out over the whole course of love&mdash;backwards
+      into the past, forwards into the future&mdash;and, knowing all the price
+      to be paid for love, enjoys her bliss with the dread of losing it ever
+      present with her. Her soul is still fair with her waning youth, and
+      passion daily gathers strength from the dismaying prospect of the coming
+      days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is love,&rdquo; Vandenesse said to himself this time as he left the
+      Marquise, &ldquo;and for my misfortune I love a woman wedded to her memories. It
+      is hard work to struggle against a dead rival, never present to make
+      blunders and fall out of favor, nothing of him left but his better
+      qualities. What is it but a sort of high treason against the Ideal to
+      attempt to break the charm of memory, to destroy the hopes that survive a
+      lost lover, precisely because he only awakened longings, and all that is
+      loveliest and most enchanting in love?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These sober reflections, due to the discouragement and dread of failure
+      with which love begins in earnest, were the last expiring effort of
+      diplomatic reasoning. Thenceforward he knew no afterthoughts, he was the
+      plaything of his love, and lost himself in the nothings of that strange
+      inexplicable happiness which is full fed by a chance word, by silence, or
+      a vague hope. He tried to love Platonically, came daily to breathe the air
+      that she breathed, became almost a part of her house, and went everywhere
+      with her, slave as he was of a tyrannous passion compounded of egoism and
+      devotion of the completest. Love has its own instinct, finding the way to
+      the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will
+      which nothing can dismay or turn aside. If feeling is sincere, its destiny
+      is not doubtful. Let a woman begin to think that her life depends on the
+      sincerity or fervor or earnestness which her lover shall put into his
+      longings, and is there not sufficient in the thought to put her through
+      all the tortures of dread? It is impossible for a woman, be she wife or
+      mother, to be secure from a young man&rsquo;s love. One thing it is within her
+      power to do&mdash;to refuse to see him as soon as she learns a secret
+      which she never fails to guess. But this is too decided a step to take at
+      an age when marriage has become a prosaic and tiresome yoke, and conjugal
+      affection is something less than tepid (if indeed her husband has not
+      already begun to neglect her). Is a woman plain? she is flattered by a
+      love which gives her fairness. Is she young and charming? She is only to
+      be won by a fascination as great as her own power to charm, that is to
+      say, a fascination well-nigh irresistible. Is she virtuous? There is a
+      love sublime in its earthliness which leads her to find something like
+      absolution in the very greatness of the surrender and glory in a hard
+      struggle. Everything is a snare. No lesson, therefore, is too severe where
+      the temptation is so strong. The seclusion in which the Greeks and
+      Orientals kept and keep their women, an example more and more followed in
+      modern England, is the only safeguard of domestic morality; but under this
+      system there is an end of all the charm of social intercourse; and
+      society, and good breeding, and refinement of manners become impossible.
+      The nations must take their choice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So a few months went by, and Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont discovered that her life was
+      closely bound with this young man&rsquo;s life, without overmuch confusion in
+      her surprise, and felt with something almost like pleasure that she shared
+      his tastes and his thoughts. Had she adopted Vandenesse&rsquo;s ideas? Or was it
+      Vandenesse who had made her lightest whims his own? She was not careful to
+      inquire. She had been swept out already into the current of passion, and
+      yet this adorable woman told herself with the confident reiteration of
+      misgiving;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! no. I will be faithful to him who died for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pascal said that &ldquo;the doubt of God implies belief in God.&rdquo; And similarly
+      it may be said that a woman only parleys when she has surrendered. A day
+      came when the Marquise admitted to herself that she was loved, and with
+      that admission came a time of wavering among countless conflicting
+      thoughts and feelings. The superstitions of experience spoke their
+      language. Should she be happy? Was it possible that she should find
+      happiness outside the limits of the laws which society rightly or wrongly
+      has set up for humanity to live by? Hitherto her cup of life had been full
+      of bitterness. Was there any happy issue possible for the ties which
+      united two human beings held apart by social conventions? And might not
+      happiness be bought too dear? Still, this so ardently desired happiness,
+      for which it is so natural to seek, might perhaps be found after all.
+      Curiosity is always retained on the lover&rsquo;s side in the suit. The secret
+      tribunal was still sitting when Vandenesse appeared, and his presence put
+      the metaphysical spectre, reason, to flight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If such are the successive transformations through which a sentiment,
+      transient though it be, passes in a young man and a woman of thirty, there
+      comes a moment of time when the shades of difference blend into each
+      other, when all reasonings end in a single and final reflection which is
+      lost and absorbed in the desire which it confirms. Then the longer the
+      resistance, the mightier the voice of love. And here endeth this lesson,
+      or rather this study made from the <i>ecorche</i>, to borrow a most
+      graphic term from the studio, for in this history it is not so much
+      intended to portray love as to lay bare its mechanism and its dangers.
+      From this moment every day adds color to these dry bones, clothes them
+      again with living flesh and blood and the charm of youth, and puts
+      vitality into their movements; till they glow once more with the beauty,
+      the persuasive grace of sentiment, the loveliness of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles found Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont absorbed in thought, and to his &ldquo;What is
+      it?&rdquo; spoken in thrilling tones grown persuasive with the heart&rsquo;s soft
+      magic, she was careful not to reply. The delicious question bore witness
+      to the perfect unity of their spirits; and the Marquise felt, with a
+      woman&rsquo;s wonderful intuition, that to give any expression to the sorrow in
+      her heart would be to make an advance. If, even now, each one of those
+      words was fraught with significance for them both, in what fathomless
+      depths might she not plunge at the first step? She read herself with a
+      clear and lucid glance. She was silent, and Vandenesse followed her
+      example.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not feeling well,&rdquo; she said at last, taking alarm at the pause
+      fraught with such great moment for them both, when the language of the
+      eyes completely filled the blank left by the helplessness of speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; said Charles, and his voice was tender but unsteady with strong
+      feeling, &ldquo;soul and body are both dependent on each other. If you were
+      happy, you would be young and fresh. Why do you refuse to ask of love all
+      that love has taken from you? You think that your life is over when it is
+      only just beginning. Trust yourself to a friend&rsquo;s care. It is so sweet to
+      be loved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am old already,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;there is no reason why I should not
+      continue to suffer as in the past. And &lsquo;one must love,&rsquo; do you say? Well,
+      I must not, and I cannot. Your friendship has put some sweetness into my
+      life, but beside you I care for no one, no one could efface my memories. A
+      friend I accept; I should fly from a lover. Besides, would it be a very
+      generous thing to do, to exchange a withered heart for a young heart; to
+      smile upon illusions which now I cannot share, to cause happiness in which
+      I should either have no belief, or tremble to lose? I should perhaps
+      respond to his devotion with egoism, should weigh and deliberate while he
+      felt; my memory would resent the poignancy of his happiness. No, if you
+      love once, that love is never replaced, you see. Indeed, who would have my
+      heart at this price?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a tinge of heartless coquetry in the words, the last effort of
+      discretion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he loses courage, well and good, I shall live alone and faithful.&rdquo; The
+      thought came from the very depths of the woman, for her it was the too
+      slender willow twig caught in vain by a swimmer swept out by the current.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vandenesse&rsquo;s involuntary shudder at her dictum plead more eloquently for
+      him than all his past assiduity. Nothing moves a woman so much as the
+      discovery of a gracious delicacy in us, such a refinement of sentiment as
+      her own, for a woman the grace and delicacy are sure tokens of truth.
+      Charles&rsquo; start revealed the sincerity of his love. Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont
+      learned the strength of his affection from the intensity of his pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you are right,&rdquo; he said coldly. &ldquo;New love, new vexation of
+      spirit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he changed the subject, and spoke of indifferent matters; but he was
+      visibly moved, and he concentrated his gaze on Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont as if he
+      were seeing her for the last time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adieu, madame,&rdquo; he said, with emotion in his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Au revoir</i>,&rdquo; said she, with that subtle coquetry, the secret of a
+      very few among women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made no answer and went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Charles was no longer there, when his empty chair spoke for him,
+      regrets flocked in upon her, and she found fault with herself. Passion
+      makes an immense advance as soon as a woman persuades herself that she has
+      failed somewhat in generosity or hurt a noble nature. In love there is
+      never any need to be on our guard against the worst in us; that is a
+      safeguard; a woman only surrenders at the summons of a virtue. &ldquo;The floor
+      of hell is paved with good intentions,&rdquo;&mdash;it is no preacher&rsquo;s paradox.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vandenesse stopped away for several days. Every evening at the accustomed
+      hour the Marquise sat expectant in remorseful impatience. She could not
+      write&mdash;that would be a declaration, and, moreover, her instinct told
+      her that he would come back. On the sixth day he was announced, and never
+      had she heard the name with such delight. Her joy frightened her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have punished me well,&rdquo; she said, addressing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vandenesse gazed at her in astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Punished?&rdquo; he echoed. &ldquo;And for what?&rdquo; He understood her quite well, but
+      he meant to be avenged for all that he had suffered as soon as she
+      suspected it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why have you not come to see me?&rdquo; she demanded with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you have seen no visitors?&rdquo; asked he, parrying the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. M. de Ronquerolles and M. de Marsay and young d&rsquo;Escrignon came and
+      stayed for nearly two hours, the first two yesterday, the last this
+      morning. And besides, I have had a call, I believe, from Mme. Firmiani and
+      from your sister, Mme. de Listomere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was a new infliction, torture which none can comprehend unless they
+      know love as a fierce and all-invading tyrant whose mildest symptom is a
+      monstrous jealousy, a perpetual desire to snatch away the beloved from
+      every other influence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; thought he to himself, &ldquo;she has seen visitors, she has been with
+      happy creatures, and talking to them, while I was unhappy and all alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He buried his annoyance forthwith, and consigned love to the depths of his
+      heart, like a coffin to the sea. His thoughts were of the kind that never
+      find expression in words; they pass through the mind swiftly as a deadly
+      acid, that poisons as it evaporates and vanishes. His brow, however, was
+      over-clouded; and Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont, guided by her woman&rsquo;s instinct, shared
+      his sadness without understanding it. She had hurt him, unwittingly, as
+      Vandenesse knew. He talked over his position with her, as if his jealousy
+      were one of those hypothetical cases which lovers love to discuss. Then
+      the Marquise understood it all. She was so deeply moved, that she could
+      not keep back the tears&mdash;and so these lovers entered the heaven of
+      love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Heaven and Hell are two great imaginative conceptions formulating our
+      ideas of Joy and Sorrow&mdash;those two poles about which human existence
+      revolves. Is not heaven a figure of speech covering now and for evermore
+      an infinite of human feeling impossible to express save in its accidents&mdash;since
+      that Joy is one? And what is Hell but the symbol of our infinite power to
+      suffer tortures so diverse that of our pain it is possible to fashion
+      works of art, for no two human sorrows are alike?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening the two lovers sat alone and side by side, silently watching
+      one of the fairest transformations of the sky, a cloudless heaven taking
+      hues of pale gold and purple from the last rays of the sunset. With the
+      slow fading of the daylight, sweet thoughts seem to awaken, and soft
+      stirrings of passion, and a mysterious sense of trouble in the midst of
+      calm. Nature sets before us vague images of bliss, bidding us enjoy the
+      happiness within our reach, or lament it when it has fled. In those
+      moments fraught with enchantment, when the tender light in the canopy of
+      the sky blends in harmony with the spells working within, it is difficult
+      to resist the heart&rsquo;s desires grown so magically potent. Cares are
+      blunted, joy becomes ecstasy; pain, intolerable anguish. The pomp of
+      sunset gives the signal for confessions and draws them forth. Silence
+      grows more dangerous than speech for it gives to eyes all the power of the
+      infinite of the heavens reflected in them. And for speech, the least word
+      has irresistible might. Is not the light infused into the voice and purple
+      into the glances? Is not heaven within us, or do we feel that we are in
+      the heavens?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vandenesse and Julie&mdash;for so she had allowed herself to be called for
+      the past few days by him whom she loved to speak of as Charles&mdash;Vandenesse
+      and Julie were talking together, but they had drifted very far from their
+      original subject; and if their spoken words had grown meaningless they
+      listened in delight to the unspoken thoughts that lurked in the sounds.
+      Her hand lay in his. She had abandoned it to him without a thought that
+      she had granted a proof of love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Together they leaned forward to look out upon a majestic cloud country,
+      full of snows and glaciers and fantastic mountain peaks with gray stains
+      of shadow on their sides, a picture composed of sharp contrasts between
+      fiery red and the shadows of darkness, filling the skies with a fleeting
+      vision of glory which cannot be reproduced&mdash;magnificent
+      swaddling-bands of sunrise, bright shrouds of the dying sun. As they
+      leaned Julie&rsquo;s hair brushed lightly against Vandenesse&rsquo;s cheek. She felt
+      that light contact, and shuddered violently, and he even more, for
+      imperceptibly they both had reached one of those inexplicable crises when
+      quiet has wrought upon the senses until every faculty of perception is so
+      keen that the slightest shock fills the heart lost in melancholy with
+      sadness that overflows in tears; or raises joy to ecstasy in a heart that
+      is lost in the vertigo of love. Almost involuntarily Julie pressed her
+      lover&rsquo;s hand. That wooing pressure gave courage to his timidity. All the
+      joy of the present, all the hopes of the future were blended in the
+      emotion of a first caress, the bashful trembling kiss that Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont received upon her cheek. The slighter the concession, the more
+      dangerous and insinuating it was. For their double misfortune it was only
+      too sincere a revelation. Two noble natures had met and blended, drawn
+      each to each by every law of natural attraction, held apart by every
+      ordinance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      General d&rsquo;Aiglemont came in at that very moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Ministry has gone out,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Your uncle will be in the new
+      cabinet. So you stand an uncommonly good chance of an embassy,
+      Vandenesse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles and Julie looked at each other and flushed red. That blush was one
+      more tie to unite them; there was one thought and one remorse in either
+      mind; between two lovers guilty of a kiss there is a bond quite as strong
+      and terrible as the bond between two robbers who have murdered a man.
+      Something had to be said by way of reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not care to leave Paris now,&rdquo; Charles said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We know why,&rdquo; said the General, with the knowing air of a man who
+      discovers a secret. &ldquo;You do not like to leave your uncle, because you do
+      not wish to lose your chance of succeeding to the title.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise took refuge in her room, and in her mind passed a pitiless
+      verdict upon her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His stupidity is really beyond anything!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV. THE FINGER OF GOD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Between the Barriere d&rsquo;Italie and the Barriere de la Sante, along the
+      boulevard which leads to the Jardin des Plantes, you have a view of Paris
+      fit to send an artist or the tourist, the most <i>blase</i> in matters of
+      landscape, into ecstasies. Reach the slightly higher ground where the line
+      of boulevard, shaded by tall, thick-spreading trees, curves with the grace
+      of some green and silent forest avenue, and you see spread out at your
+      feet a deep valley populous with factories looking almost countrified
+      among green trees and the brown streams of the Bievre or the Gobelins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the opposite slope, beneath some thousands of roofs packed close
+      together like heads in a crowd, lurks the squalor of the Faubourg
+      Saint-Marceau. The imposing cupola of the Pantheon, and the grim
+      melancholy dome of the Val-du-Grace, tower proudly up above a whole town
+      in itself, built amphitheatre-wise; every tier being grotesquely
+      represented by a crooked line of street, so that the two public monuments
+      look like a huge pair of giants dwarfing into insignificance the poor
+      little houses and the tallest poplars in the valley. To your left behold
+      the observatory, the daylight, pouring athwart its windows and galleries,
+      producing such fantastical strange effects that the building looks like a
+      black spectral skeleton. Further yet in the distance rises the elegant
+      lantern tower of the Invalides, soaring up between the bluish pile of the
+      Luxembourg and the gray tours of Saint-Sulpice. From this standpoint the
+      lines of the architecture are blended with green leaves and gray shadows,
+      and change every moment with every aspect of the heavens, every alteration
+      of light or color in the sky. Afar, the skyey spaces themselves seem to be
+      full of buildings; near, wind the serpentine curves of waving trees and
+      green footpaths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Away to your right, through a great gap in this singular landscape, you
+      see the canal Saint-Martin, a long pale stripe with its edging of reddish
+      stone quays and fringes of lime avenue. The long rows of buildings beside
+      it, in genuine Roman style, are the public granaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beyond, again, on the very last plane of all, see the smoke-dimmed slopes
+      of Belleville covered with houses and windmills, which blend their freaks
+      of outline with the chance effects of cloud. And still, between that
+      horizon, vague as some childish recollection, and the serried range of
+      roofs in the valley, a whole city lies out of sight: a huge city,
+      engulfed, as it were, in a vast hollow between the pinnacles of the
+      Hopital de la Pitie and the ridge line of the Cimetiere de l&rsquo;Est, between
+      suffering on the one hand and death on the other; a city sending up a
+      smothered roar like Ocean grumbling at the foot of a cliff, as if to let
+      you know that &ldquo;I am here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the sunlight pours like a flood over this strip of Paris, purifying
+      and etherealizing the outlines, kindling answering lights here and there
+      in the window panes, brightening the red tiles, flaming about the golden
+      crosses, whitening walls and transforming the atmosphere into a gauzy
+      veil, calling up rich contrasts of light and fantastic shadow; when the
+      sky is blue and earth quivers in the heat, and the bells are pealing, then
+      you shall see one of the eloquent fairy scenes which stamp themselves for
+      ever on the imagination, a scene that shall find as fanatical worshipers
+      as the wondrous views of Naples and Byzantium or the isles of Florida.
+      Nothing is wanting to complete the harmony, the murmur of the world of men
+      and the idyllic quiet of solitude, the voices of a million human creatures
+      and the voice of God. There lies a whole capital beneath the peaceful
+      cypresses of Pere-Lachaise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The landscape lay in all its beauty, sparkling in the spring sunlight, as
+      I stood looking out over it one morning, my back against a huge elm-tree
+      that flung its yellow flowers to the wind. At the sight of the rich and
+      glorious view before me, I thought bitterly of the scorn with which even
+      in our literature we affect to hold this land of ours, and poured
+      maledictions on the pitiable plutocrats who fall out of love with fair
+      France, and spend their gold to acquire the right of sneering at their own
+      country, by going through Italy at a gallop and inspecting that desecrated
+      land through an opera-glass. I cast loving eyes on modern Paris. I was
+      beginning to dream dreams, when the sound of a kiss disturbed the solitude
+      and put philosophy to flight. Down the sidewalk, along the steep bank,
+      above the rippling water, I saw beyond the Ponte des Gobelins the figure
+      of a woman, dressed with the daintiest simplicity; she was still young, as
+      it seemed to me, and the blithe gladness of the landscape was reflected in
+      her sweet face. Her companion, a handsome young man, had just set down a
+      little boy. A prettier child has never been seen, and to this day I do not
+      know whether it was the little one or his mother who received the kiss. In
+      their young faces, in their eyes, their smile, their every movement, you
+      could read the same deep and tender thought. Their arms were interlaced
+      with such glad swiftness; they drew close together with such marvelous
+      unanimity of impulse that, conscious of nothing but themselves, they did
+      not so much as see me. A second child, however&mdash;a little girl, who
+      had turned her back upon them in sullen discontent&mdash;threw me a
+      glance, and the expression in her eyes startled me. She was as pretty and
+      engaging as the little brother whom she left to run about by himself,
+      sometimes before, sometimes after their mother and her companion; but her
+      charm was less childish, and now, as she stood mute and motionless, her
+      attitude and demeanor suggested a torpid snake. There was something
+      indescribably mechanical in the way in which the pretty woman and her
+      companion paced up and down. In absence of mind, probably, they were
+      content to walk to and fro between the little bridge and a carriage that
+      stood waiting nearby at a corner in the boulevard, turning, stopping short
+      now and again, looking into each other&rsquo;s eyes, or breaking into laughter
+      as their casual talk grew lively or languid, grave or gay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I watched this delicious picture a while from my hiding-place by the great
+      elm-tree, and should have turned away no doubt and respected their
+      privacy, if it had not been for a chance discovery. In the face of the
+      brooding, silent, elder child I saw traces of thought overdeep for her
+      age. When her mother and the young man at her side turned and came near,
+      her head was frequently lowered; the furtive sidelong glances of
+      intelligence that she gave the pair and the child her brother were nothing
+      less than extraordinary. Sometimes the pretty woman or her friend would
+      stroke the little boy&rsquo;s fair curls, or lay a caressing finger against the
+      baby throat or the white collar as he played at keeping step with them;
+      and no words can describe the shrewd subtlety, the ingenuous malice, the
+      fierce intensity which lighted up that pallid little face with the faint
+      circles already round the eyes. Truly there was a man&rsquo;s power of passion
+      in the strange-looking, delicate little girl. Here were traces of
+      suffering or of thought in her; and which is the more certain token of
+      death when life is in blossom&mdash;physical suffering, or the malady of
+      too early thought preying upon a soul as yet in bud? Perhaps a mother
+      knows. For my own part, I know of nothing more dreadful to see than an old
+      man&rsquo;s thoughts on a child&rsquo;s forehead; even blasphemy from girlish lips is
+      less monstrous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The almost stupid stolidity of this child who had begun to think already,
+      her rare gestures, everything about her, interested me. I scrutinized her
+      curiously. Then the common whim of the observer drew me to compare her
+      with her brother, and to note their likeness and unlikeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her brown hair and dark eyes and look of precocious power made a rich
+      contrast with the little one&rsquo;s fair curled head and sea-green eyes and
+      winning helplessness. She, perhaps, was seven or eight years of age; the
+      boy was full four years younger. Both children were dressed alike; but
+      here again, looking closely, I noticed a difference. It was very slight, a
+      little thing enough; but in the light of after events I saw that it meant
+      a whole romance in the past, a whole tragedy to come. The little
+      brown-haired maid wore a linen collar with a plain hem, her brother&rsquo;s was
+      edged with dainty embroidery, that was all; but therein lay the confession
+      of a heart&rsquo;s secret, a tacit preference which a child can read in the
+      mother&rsquo;s inmost soul as clearly as if the spirit of God revealed it. The
+      fair-haired child, careless and glad, looked almost like a girl, his skin
+      was so fair and fresh, his movements so graceful, his look so sweet; while
+      his older sister, in spite of her energy, in spite of the beauty of her
+      features and her dazzling complexion, looked like a sickly little boy. In
+      her bright eyes there was none of the humid softness which lends such
+      charm to children&rsquo;s faces; they seemed, like courtiers&rsquo; eyes, to be dried
+      by some inner fire; and in her pallor there was a certain swarthy olive
+      tint, the sign of vigorous character. Twice her little brother came to
+      her, holding out a tiny hunting-horn with a touching charm, a winning
+      look, and wistful expression, which would have sent Charlet into
+      ecstasies, but she only scowled in answer to his &ldquo;Here, Helene, will you
+      take it?&rdquo; so persuasively spoken. The little girl, so sombre and vehement
+      beneath her apparent indifference, shuddered, and even flushed red when
+      her brother came near her; but the little one seemed not to notice his
+      sister&rsquo;s dark mood, and his unconsciousness, blended with earnestness,
+      marked a final difference in character between the child and the little
+      girl, whose brow was overclouded already by the gloom of a man&rsquo;s knowledge
+      and cares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma, Helene will not play,&rdquo; cried the little one, seizing an
+      opportunity to complain while the two stood silent on the Ponte des
+      Gobelins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let her alone, Charles; you know very well that she is always cross.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tears sprang to Helene&rsquo;s eyes at the words so thoughtlessly uttered by her
+      mother as she turned abruptly to the young man by her side. The child
+      devoured the speech in silence, but she gave her brother one of those
+      sagacious looks that seemed inexplicable to me, glancing with a sinister
+      expression from the bank where he stood to the Bievre, then at the bridge
+      and the view, and then at me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was afraid lest my presence should disturb the happy couple; I slipped
+      away and took refuge behind a thicket of elder trees, which completely
+      screened me from all eyes. Sitting quietly on the summit of the bank, I
+      watched the ever-changing landscape and the fierce-looking little girl,
+      for with my head almost on a level with the boulevard I could still see
+      her through the leaves. Helene seemed uneasy over my disappearance, her
+      dark eyes looked for me down the alley and behind the trees with
+      indefinable curiosity. What was I to her? Then Charles&rsquo; baby laughter rang
+      out like a bird&rsquo;s song in the silence. The tall, young man, with the same
+      fair hair, was dancing him in his arms, showering kisses upon him, and the
+      meaningless baby words of that &ldquo;little language&rdquo; which rises to our lips
+      when we play with children. The mother looked on smiling, now and then,
+      doubtless, putting in some low word that came up from the heart, for her
+      companion would stop short in his full happiness, and the blue eyes that
+      turned towards her were full of glowing light and love and worship. Their
+      voices, blending with the child&rsquo;s voice, reached me with a vague sense of
+      a caress. The three figures, charming in themselves, composed a lovely
+      scene in a glorious landscape, filling it with a pervasive unimaginable
+      grace. A delicately fair woman, radiant with smiles, a child of love, a
+      young man with the irresistible charm of youth, a cloudless sky; nothing
+      was wanting in nature to complete a perfect harmony for the delight of the
+      soul. I found myself smiling as if their happiness had been my own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clocks struck nine. The young man gave a tender embrace to his
+      companion, and went towards the tilbury which an old servant drove slowly
+      to meet him. The lady had grown grave and almost sad. The child&rsquo;s prattle
+      sounded unchecked through the last farewell kisses. Then the tilbury
+      rolled away, and the lady stood motionless, listening to the sound of the
+      wheels, watching the little cloud of dust raised by its passage along the
+      road. Charles ran down the green pathway back to the bridge to join his
+      sister. I heard his silver voice calling to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did you not come to say good-bye to my good friend?&rdquo; cried he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Helene looked up. Never surely did such hatred gleam from a child&rsquo;s eyes
+      as from hers at that moment when she turned them on the brother who stood
+      beside her on the bank side. She gave him an angry push. Charles lost his
+      footing on the steep slope, stumbled over the roots of a tree, and fell
+      headlong forwards, dashing his forehead on the sharp-edged stones of the
+      embankment, and, covered with blood, disappeared over the edge into the
+      muddy river. The turbid water closed over a fair, bright head with a
+      shower of splashes; one sharp shriek after another rang in my ears; then
+      the sounds were stifled by the thick stream, and the poor child sank with
+      a dull sound as if a stone had been thrown into the water. The accident
+      had happened with more than lightning swiftness. I sprang down the
+      footpath, and Helene, stupefied with horror, shrieked again and again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma! mamma!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother was there at my side. She had flown to the spot like a bird.
+      But neither a mother&rsquo;s eyes nor mine could find the exact place where the
+      little one had gone under. There was a wide space of black hurrying water,
+      and below in the bed of the Bievre ten feet of mud. There was not the
+      smallest possibility of saving the child. No one was stirring at that hour
+      on a Sunday morning, and there are neither barges nor anglers on the
+      Bievre. There was not a creature in sight, not a pole to plumb the filthy
+      stream. What need was there for me to explain how the ugly-looking
+      accident had happened&mdash;accident or misfortune, whichever it might be?
+      Had Helene avenged her father? Her jealousy surely was the sword of God.
+      And yet when I looked at the mother I shivered. What fearful ordeal
+      awaited her when she should return to her husband, the judge before whom
+      she must stand all her days? And here with her was an inseparable,
+      incorruptible witness. A child&rsquo;s forehead is transparent, a child&rsquo;s face
+      hides no thoughts, and a lie, like a red flame set within glows out red
+      that colors even the eyes. But the unhappy woman had not thought as yet of
+      the punishment awaiting her at home; she was staring into the Bievre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such an event must inevitably send ghastly echoes through a woman&rsquo;s life,
+      and here is one of the most terrible of the reverberations that troubled
+      Julie&rsquo;s love from time to time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several years had gone by. The Marquis de Vandenesse wore mourning for his
+      father, and succeeded to his estates. One evening, therefore, after dinner
+      it happened that a notary was present in his house. This was no
+      pettifogging lawyer after Sterne&rsquo;s pattern, but a very solid, substantial
+      notary of Paris, one of your estimable men who do a stupid thing
+      pompously, set down a foot heavily upon your private corn, and then ask
+      what in the world there is to cry out about? If, by accident, they come to
+      know the full extent of the enormity, &ldquo;Upon my word,&rdquo; cry they, &ldquo;I hadn&rsquo;t
+      a notion!&rdquo; This was a well-intentioned ass, in short, who could see
+      nothing in life but deeds and documents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. de Aiglemont had been dining with M. de Vandenesse; her husband had
+      excused himself before dinner was over, for he was taking his two children
+      to the play. They were to go to some Boulevard theatre or other, to the
+      Ambigu-Comique or the Gaiete, sensational melodrama being judged harmless
+      here in Paris, and suitable pabulum for childhood, because innocence is
+      always triumphant in the fifth act. The boy and girl had teased their
+      father to be there before the curtain rose, so he had left the table
+      before dessert was served.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the notary, the imperturbable notary, utterly incapable of asking
+      himself why Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont should have allowed her husband and children
+      to go without her to the play, sat on as if he were screwed to his chair.
+      Dinner was over, dessert had been prolonged by discussion, and coffee
+      delayed. All these things consumed time, doubtless precious, and drew
+      impatient movements from that charming woman; she looked not unlike a
+      thoroughbred pawing the ground before a race; but the man of law, to whom
+      horses and women were equally unknown quantities, simply thought the
+      Marquise a very lively and sparkling personage. So enchanted was he to be
+      in the company of a woman of fashion and a political celebrity, that he
+      was exerting himself to shine in conversation, and taking the lady&rsquo;s
+      forced smile for approbation, talked on with unflagging spirit, till the
+      Marquise was almost out of patience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The master of the house, in concert with the lady, had more than once
+      maintained an eloquent silence when the lawyer expected a civil reply; but
+      these significant pauses were employed by the talkative nuisance in
+      looking for anecdotes in the fire. M. de Vandenesse had recourse to his
+      watch; the charming Marquise tried the experiment of fastening her bonnet
+      strings, and made as if she would go. But she did not go, and the notary,
+      blind and deaf, and delighted with himself, was quite convinced that his
+      interesting conversational powers were sufficient to keep the lady on the
+      spot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall certainly have that woman for a client,&rdquo; said he to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the Marquise stood, putting on her gloves, twisting her fingers,
+      looking from the equally impatient Marquis de Vandenesse to the lawyer,
+      still pounding away. At every pause in the worthy man&rsquo;s fire of witticisms
+      the charming pair heaved a sigh of relief, and their looks said plainly,
+      &ldquo;At last! He is really going!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing of the kind. It was a nightmare which could only end in
+      exasperating the two impassioned creatures, on whom the lawyer had
+      something of the fascinating effect of a snake on a pair of birds; before
+      long they would be driven to cut him short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clever notary was giving them the history of the discreditable ways in
+      which one du Tillet (a stockbroker then much in favor) had laid the
+      foundations of his fortune; all the ins and outs of the whole disgraceful
+      business were accurately put before them; and the narrator was in the very
+      middle of his tale when M. de Vandenesse heard the clock strike nine. Then
+      it became clear to him that his legal adviser was very emphatically an
+      idiot who must be sent forthwith about his business. He stopped him
+      resolutely with a gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The tongs, my lord Marquis?&rdquo; queried the notary, handing the object in
+      question to his client.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, monsieur, I am compelled to send you away. Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont wishes to
+      join her children, and I shall have the honor of escorting her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nine o&rsquo;clock already! Time goes like a shadow in pleasant company,&rdquo; said
+      the man of law, who had talked on end for the past hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked for his hat, planted himself before the fire, with a suppressed
+      hiccough; and, without heeding the Marquise&rsquo;s withering glances, spoke
+      once more to his impatient client:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To sum up, my lord Marquis. Business before all things. To-morrow, then,
+      we must subpoena your brother; we will proceed to make out the inventory,
+      and faith, after that&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So ill had the lawyer understood his instructions, that his impression was
+      the exact opposite to the one intended. It was a delicate matter, and
+      Vandenesse, in spite of himself, began to put the thick-headed notary
+      right. The discussion which followed took up a certain amount of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; the diplomatist said at last at a sign from the lady, &ldquo;You are
+      puzzling my brains; come back to-morrow, and if the writ is not issued by
+      noon to-morrow, the days of grace will expire, and then&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke, a carriage entered the courtyard. The poor woman turned
+      sharply away at the sound to hide the tears in her eyes. The Marquis rang
+      to give the servant orders to say that he was not at home; but before the
+      footman could answer the bell, the lady&rsquo;s husband reappeared. He had
+      returned unexpectedly from the Gaiete, and held both children by the hand.
+      The little girl&rsquo;s eyes were red; the boy was fretful and very cross.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can have happened?&rdquo; asked the Marquise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell you by and by,&rdquo; said the General, and catching a glimpse
+      through an open door of newspapers on the table in the adjoining
+      sitting-room, he went off. The Marquise, at the end of her patience, flung
+      herself down on the sofa in desperation. The notary, thinking it incumbent
+      upon him to be amiable with the children, spoke to the little boy in an
+      insinuating tone:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my little man, and what is there on at the theatre?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>The Valley of the Torrent</i>,&rdquo; said Gustave sulkily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon my word and honor,&rdquo; declared the notary, &ldquo;authors nowadays are half
+      crazy. <i>The Valley of the Torrent</i>! Why not the Torrent of the
+      Valley? It is conceivable that a valley might be without a torrent in it;
+      now if they had said the Torrent of the Valley, that would have been
+      something clear, something precise, something definite and comprehensible.
+      But never mind that. Now, how is the drama to take place in a torrent and
+      in a valley? You will tell me that in these days the principal attraction
+      lies in the scenic effect, and the title is a capital advertisement.&mdash;And
+      did you enjoy it, my little friend?&rdquo; he continued, sitting down before the
+      child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the notary pursued his inquiries as to the possibilities of a drama
+      in the bed of a torrent, the little girl turned slowly away and began to
+      cry. Her mother did not notice this in her intense annoyance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! yes, monsieur, I enjoyed it very much,&rdquo; said the child. &ldquo;There is a
+      dear little boy in the play, and he was all alone in the world, because
+      his papa could not have been his real papa. And when he came to the top of
+      the bridge over the torrent, a big, naughty man with a beard, dressed all
+      in black, came and threw him into the water. And then Helene began to sob
+      and cry, and everybody scolded us, and father brought us away quick, quick&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      M. de Vandenesse and the Marquise looked on in dull amazement, as if all
+      power to think or move had been suddenly paralyzed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do be quiet, Gustave!&rdquo; cried the General. &ldquo;I told you that you were not
+      to talk about anything that happened at the play, and you have forgotten
+      what I said already.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my lord Marquis, your lordship must excuse him,&rdquo; cried the notary. &ldquo;I
+      ought not to have asked questions, but I had no idea&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He ought not to have answered them,&rdquo; said the General, looking sternly at
+      the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed that the Marquise and the master of the house both perfectly
+      understood why the children had come back so suddenly. Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont
+      looked at her daughter, and rose as if to go to her, but a terrible
+      convulsion passed over her face, and all that could be read in it was
+      relentless severity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will do, Helene,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Go into the other room, and leave off
+      crying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can she have done, poor child!&rdquo; asked the notary, thinking to
+      appease the mother&rsquo;s anger and to stop Helene&rsquo;s tears at one stroke. &ldquo;So
+      pretty as she is, she must be as good as can be; never anything but a joy
+      to her mother, I will be bound. Isn&rsquo;t that so, my little girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Helene cowered, looked at her mother, dried her eyes, struggled for
+      composure, and took refuge in the next room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you, madame, are too good a mother not to love all your children
+      alike. You are too good a woman, besides, to have any of those lamentable
+      preferences which have such fatal effects, as we lawyers have only too
+      much reason to know. Society goes through our hands; we see its passions
+      in that most revolting form, greed. Here it is the mother of a family
+      trying to disinherit her husband&rsquo;s children to enrich the others whom she
+      loves better; or it is the husband who tries to leave all his property to
+      the child who has done his best to earn his mother&rsquo;s hatred. And then
+      begin quarrels, and fears, and deeds, and defeasances, and sham sales, and
+      trusts, and all the rest of it; a pretty mess, in fact, it is pitiable,
+      upon my honor, pitiable! There are fathers that will spend their whole
+      lives in cheating their children and robbing their wives. Yes, robbing is
+      the only word for it. We were talking of tragedy; oh! I can assure you of
+      this that if we were at liberty to tell the real reasons of some donations
+      that I know of, our modern dramatists would have the material for some
+      sensational <i>bourgeois</i> dramas. How the wife manages to get her way,
+      as she invariably does, I cannot think; for in spite of appearances, and
+      in spite of their weakness, it is always the women who carry the day. Ah!
+      by the way, they don&rsquo;t take <i>me</i> in. I always know the reason at the
+      bottom of those predilections which the world politely styles
+      &lsquo;unaccountable.&rsquo; But in justice to the husbands, I must say that <i>they</i>
+      never discover anything. You will tell me that this is a merciful dispens&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Helene had come back to the drawing-room with her father, and was
+      listening attentively. So well did she understand all that was said, that
+      she gave her mother a frightened glance, feeling, with a child&rsquo;s quick
+      instinct, that these remarks would aggravate the punishment hanging over
+      her. The Marquise turned her white face to Vandenesse; and, with terror in
+      her eyes, indicated her husband, who stood with his eyes fixed absently on
+      the flower pattern of the carpet. The diplomatist, accomplished man of the
+      world though he was, could no longer contain his wrath, he gave the man of
+      law a withering glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Step this way, sir,&rdquo; he said, and he went hurriedly to the door of the
+      ante-chamber; the notary left his sentence half finished, and followed,
+      quaking, and the husband and wife were left together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, sir&rdquo; said the Marquise de Vandenesse&mdash;he banged the
+      drawing-room door, and spoke with concentrated rage&mdash;&ldquo;ever since
+      dinner you have done nothing but make blunders and talk folly. For
+      heaven&rsquo;s sake, go. You will make the most frightful mischief before you
+      have done. If you are a clever man in your profession, keep to your
+      profession; and if by any chance you should go into society, endeavor to
+      be more circumspect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that he went back to the drawing-room, and did not even wish the
+      notary good-evening. For a moment that worthy stood dumfounded,
+      bewildered, utterly at a loss. Then, when the buzzing in his ears
+      subsided, he thought he heard someone moaning in the next room. Footsteps
+      came and went, and bells were violently rung. He was by no means anxious
+      to meet the Marquis again, and found the use of his legs to make good his
+      escape, only to run against a hurrying crowd of servants at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the way of all these grand folk,&rdquo; said he to himself outside in the
+      street as he looked about for a cab. &ldquo;They lead you on to talk with
+      compliments, and you think you are amusing them. Not a bit of it. They
+      treat you insolently; put you at a distance; even put you out at the door
+      without scruple. After all, I talked very cleverly, I said nothing but
+      what was sensible, well turned, and discreet; and, upon my word, he
+      advises me to be more circumspect in future. I will take good care of
+      that! Eh! the mischief take it! I am a notary and a member of my chamber!&mdash;Pshaw!
+      it was an ambassador&rsquo;s fit of temper, nothing is sacred for people of that
+      kind. To-morrow he shall explain what he meant by saying that I had done
+      nothing but blunder and talk nonsense in his house. I will ask him for an
+      explanation&mdash;that is, I will ask him to explain my mistake. After all
+      is done and said, I am in the wrong perhaps&mdash;&mdash; Upon my word, it
+      is very good of me to cudgel my brains like this. What business is it of
+      mine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So the notary went home and laid the enigma before his spouse, with a
+      complete account of the evening&rsquo;s events related in sequence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she replied, &ldquo;My dear Crottat, His Excellency was perfectly right when
+      he said that you had done nothing but blunder and talk folly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, if I told you why, it would not prevent you from doing the same
+      thing somewhere else to-morrow. I tell you again&mdash;talk of nothing but
+      business when you go out; that is my advice to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you will not tell me, I shall ask him to-morrow&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, dear me! the veriest noodle is careful to hide a thing of that kind,
+      and do you suppose that an ambassador will tell you about it? Really,
+      Crottat, I have never known you so utterly devoid of common-sense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V. TWO MEETINGS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One of Napoleon&rsquo;s orderly staff-officers, who shall be known in this
+      history only as the General or the Marquis, had come to spend the spring
+      at Versailles. He made a large fortune under the Restoration; and as his
+      place at Court would not allow him to go very far from Paris, he had taken
+      a country house between the church and the barrier of Montreuil, on the
+      road that leads to the Avenue de Saint-Cloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house had been built originally as a retreat for the short-lived loves
+      of some <i>grand seigneur</i>. The grounds were very large; the gardens on
+      either side extending from the first houses of Montreuil to the thatched
+      cottages near the barrier, so that the owner could enjoy all the pleasures
+      of solitude with the city almost at his gates. By an odd piece of
+      contradiction, the whole front of the house itself, with the principal
+      entrance, gave directly upon the street. Perhaps in time past it was a
+      tolerably lonely road, and indeed this theory looks all the more probable
+      when one comes to think of it; for not so very far away, on this same
+      road, Louis Quinze built a delicious summer villa for Mlle. de Romans, and
+      the curious in such things will discover that the wayside <i>casinos</i>
+      are adorned in a style that recalls traditions of the ingenious taste
+      displayed in debauchery by our ancestors who, with all the license paid to
+      their charge, sought to invest it with secrecy and mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One winter evening the family were by themselves in the lonely house. The
+      servants had received permission to go to Versailles to celebrate the
+      wedding of one of their number. It was Christmas time, and the holiday
+      makers, presuming upon the double festival, did not scruple to outstay
+      their leave of absence; yet, as the General was well known to be a man of
+      his word, the culprits felt some twinges of conscience as they danced on
+      after the hour of return. The clocks struck eleven, and still there was no
+      sign of the servants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A deep silence prevailed over the country-side, broken only by the sound
+      of the northeast wind whistling through the black branches, wailing about
+      the house, dying in gusts along the corridors. The hard frost had purified
+      the air, and held the earth in its grip; the roads gave back every sound
+      with the hard metallic ring which always strikes us with a new surprise;
+      the heavy footsteps of some belated reveler, or a cab returning to Paris,
+      could be heard for a long distance with unwonted distinctness. Out in the
+      courtyard a few dead leaves set a-dancing by some eddying gust found a
+      voice for the night which fain had been silent. It was, in fact, one of
+      those sharp, frosty evenings that wring barren expressions of pity from
+      our selfish ease for wayfarers and the poor, and fills us with a luxurious
+      sense of the comfort of the fireside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the family party in the salon at that hour gave not a thought to
+      absent servants nor houseless folk, nor to the gracious charm with which a
+      winter evening sparkles. No one played the philosopher out of season.
+      Secure in the protection of an old soldier, women and children gave
+      themselves up to the joys of home life, so delicious when there is no
+      restraint upon feeling; and talk and play and glances are bright with
+      frankness and affection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General sat, or more properly speaking, lay buried, in the depths of a
+      huge, high-back armchair by the hearth. The heaped-up fire burned
+      scorching clear with the excessive cold of the night. The good father
+      leaned his head slightly to one side against the back of the chair, in the
+      indolence of perfect serenity and a glow of happiness. The languid,
+      half-sleepy droop of his outstretched arms seemed to complete his
+      expression of placid content. He was watching his youngest, a boy of five
+      or thereabouts, who, half clad as he was, declined to allow his mother to
+      undress him. The little one fled from the night-gown and cap with which he
+      was threatened now and again, and stoutly declined to part with his
+      embroidered collar, laughing when his mother called to him, for he saw
+      that she too was laughing at this declaration of infant independence. The
+      next step was to go back to a game of romps with his sister. She was as
+      much a child as he, but more mischievous; and she was older by two years,
+      and could speak distinctly already, whereas his inarticulate words and
+      confused ideas were a puzzle even to his parents. Little Moina&rsquo;s
+      playfulness, somewhat coquettish already, provoked inextinguishable
+      laughter, explosions of merriment which went off like fireworks for no
+      apparent cause. As they tumbled about before the fire, unconcernedly
+      displaying little plump bodies and delicate white contours, as the dark
+      and golden curls mingled in a collision of rosy cheeks dimpled with
+      childish glee, a father surely, a mother most certainly, must have
+      understood those little souls, and seen the character and power of passion
+      already developed for their eyes. As the cherubs frolicked about,
+      struggling, rolling, and tumbling without fear of hurt on the soft carpet,
+      its flowers looked pale beside the glowing white and red of their cheeks
+      and the brilliant color of their shining eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the sofa by the fire, opposite the great armchair, the children&rsquo;s
+      mother sat among a heap of scattered garments, with a little scarlet shoe
+      in her hand. She seemed to have given herself up completely to the
+      enjoyment of the moment; wavering discipline had relaxed into a sweet
+      smile engraved upon her lips. At the age of six-and-thirty, or
+      thereabouts, she was a beautiful woman still, by reason of the rare
+      perfection of the outlines of her face, and at this moment light and
+      warmth and happiness filled it with preternatural brightness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again and again her eyes wandered from her children, and their tender gaze
+      was turned upon her husband&rsquo;s grave face; and now and again the eyes of
+      husband and wife met with a silent exchange of happiness and thoughts from
+      some inner depth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General&rsquo;s face was deeply bronzed, a stray lock of gray hair scored
+      shadows on his forehead. The reckless courage of the battlefield could be
+      read in the lines carved in his hollow cheeks, and gleams of rugged
+      strength in the blue eyes; clearly the bit of red ribbon flaunting at his
+      button-hole had been paid for by hardship and toil. An inexpressible
+      kindliness and frankness shone out of the strong, resolute face which
+      reflected his children&rsquo;s merriment; the gray-haired captain found it not
+      so very hard to become a child again. Is there not always a little love of
+      children in the heart of a soldier who has seen enough of the seamy side
+      of life to know something of the piteous limitations of strength and the
+      privileges of weakness?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At a round table rather further away, in a circle of bright lamplight that
+      dimmed the feebler illumination of the wax candles on the chimney-piece,
+      sat a boy of thirteen, rapidly turning the pages of a thick volume which
+      he was reading, undisturbed by the shouts of the children. There was a
+      boy&rsquo;s curiosity in his face. From his <i>lyceens</i> uniform he was
+      evidently a schoolboy, and the book he was reading was the <i>Arabian
+      Nights</i>. Small wonder that he was deeply absorbed. He sat perfectly
+      still in a meditative attitude, with his elbow on the table, and his hand
+      propping his head&mdash;the white fingers contrasting strongly with the
+      brown hair into which they were thrust. As he sat, with the light turned
+      full upon his face, and the rest of his body in shadow, he looked like one
+      of Raphael&rsquo;s dark portraits of himself&mdash;a bent head and intent eyes
+      filled with visions of the future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between the table and the Marquise a tall, beautiful girl sat at her
+      tapestry frame; sometimes she drew back from her work, sometimes she bent
+      over it, and her hair, picturesque in its ebony smoothness and darkness,
+      caught the light of the lamp. Helene was a picture in herself. In her
+      beauty there was a rare distinctive character of power and refinement.
+      Though her hair was gathered up and drawn back from her face, so as to
+      trace a clearly marked line about her head, so thick and abundant was it,
+      so recalcitrant to the comb, that it sprang back in curl-tendrils to the
+      nape of her neck. The bountiful line of eyebrows was evenly marked out in
+      dark contrasting outline upon her pure forehead. On her upper lip, beneath
+      the Grecian nose with its sensitively perfect curve of nostril, there lay
+      a faint, swarthy shadow, the sign-manual of courage; but the enchanting
+      roundness of contour, the frankly innocent expression of her other
+      features, the transparence of the delicate carnations, the voluptuous
+      softness of the lips, the flawless oval of the outline of the face, and
+      with these, and more than all these, the saintlike expression in the
+      girlish eyes, gave to her vigorous loveliness the distinctive touch of
+      feminine grace, that enchanting modesty which we look for in these angels
+      of peace and love. Yet there was no suggestion of fragility about her;
+      and, surely, with so grand a woman&rsquo;s frame, so attractive a face, she must
+      possess a corresponding warmth of heart and strength of soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was as silent as her schoolboy brother. Seemingly a prey to the
+      fateful maiden meditations which baffle a father&rsquo;s penetration and even a
+      mother&rsquo;s sagacity, it was impossible to be certain whether it was the
+      lamplight that cast those shadows that flitted over her face like thin
+      clouds over a bright sky, or whether they were passing shades of secret
+      and painful thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Husband and wife had quite forgotten the two older children at that
+      moment, though now and again the General&rsquo;s questioning glance traveled to
+      that second mute picture; a larger growth, a gracious realization, as it
+      were, of the hopes embodied in the baby forms rioting in the foreground.
+      Their faces made up a kind of living poem, illustrating life&rsquo;s various
+      phases. The luxurious background of the salon, the different attitudes,
+      the strong contrasts of coloring in the faces, differing with the
+      character of differing ages, the modeling of the forms brought into high
+      relief by the light&mdash;altogether it was a page of human life, richly
+      illuminated beyond the art of painter, sculptor, or poet. Silence,
+      solitude, night and winter lent a final touch of majesty to complete the
+      simplicity and sublimity of this exquisite effect of nature&rsquo;s contriving.
+      Married life is full of these sacred hours, which perhaps owe their
+      indefinable charm to some vague memory of a better world. A divine
+      radiance surely shines upon them, the destined compensation for some
+      portion of earth&rsquo;s sorrows, the solace which enables man to accept life.
+      We seem to behold a vision of an enchanted universe, the great conception
+      of its system widens out before our eyes, and social life pleads for its
+      laws by bidding us look to the future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet in spite of the tender glances that Helene gave Abel and Moina after a
+      fresh outburst of merriment; in spite of the look of gladness in her
+      transparent face whenever she stole a glance at her father, a deep
+      melancholy pervaded her gestures, her attitude, and more than all, her
+      eyes veiled by their long lashes. Those white, strong hands, through which
+      the light passed, tinting them with a diaphanous, almost fluid red&mdash;those
+      hands were trembling. Once only did the eyes of the mother and daughter
+      clash without shrinking, and the two women read each other&rsquo;s thoughts in a
+      look, cold, wan, and respectful on Helene&rsquo;s part, sombre and threatening
+      on her mother&rsquo;s. At once Helene&rsquo;s eyes were lowered to her work, she plied
+      her needle swiftly, and it was long before she raised her head, bowed as
+      it seemed by a weight of thought too heavy to bear. Was the Marquise over
+      harsh with this one of her children? Did she think this harshness needful?
+      Was she jealous of Helene&rsquo;s beauty?&mdash;She might still hope to rival
+      Helene, but only by the magic arts of the toilette. Or again, had her
+      daughter, like many a girl who reaches the clairvoyant age, read the
+      secrets which this wife (to all appearance so religiously faithful in the
+      fulfilment of her duties) believed to be buried in her own heart as deeply
+      as in a grave?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Helene had reached an age when purity of soul inclines to pass over-rigid
+      judgments. A certain order of mind is apt to exaggerate transgression into
+      crime; imagination reacts upon conscience, and a young girl is a hard
+      judge because she magnifies the seriousness of the offence. Helene seemed
+      to think herself worthy of no one. Perhaps there was a secret in her past
+      life, perhaps something had happened, unintelligible to her at the time,
+      but with gradually developing significance for a mind grown susceptible to
+      religious influences; something which lately seemed to have degraded her,
+      as it were, in her own eyes, and according to her own romantic standard.
+      This change in her demeanor dated from the day of reading Schiller&rsquo;s noble
+      tragedy of <i>Wilhelm Tell</i> in a new series of translations. Her mother
+      scolded her for letting the book fall, and then remarked to herself that
+      the passage which had so worked on Helene&rsquo;s feelings was the scene in
+      which Wilhelm Tell, who spilt the blood of a tyrant to save a nation,
+      fraternizes in some sort with John the Parricide. Helene had grown humble,
+      dutiful, and self-contained; she no longer cared for gaiety. Never had she
+      made so much of her father, especially when the Marquise was not by to
+      watch her girlish caresses. And yet, if Helene&rsquo;s affection for her mother
+      had cooled at all, the change in her manner was so slight as to be almost
+      imperceptible; so slight that the General could not have noticed it,
+      jealous though he might be of the harmony of home. No masculine insight
+      could have sounded the depths of those two feminine natures; the one was
+      young and generous, the other sensitive and proud; the first had a wealth
+      of indulgence in her nature, the second was full of craft and love. If the
+      Marquise made her daughter&rsquo;s life a burden to her by a woman&rsquo;s subtle
+      tyranny, it was a tyranny invisible to all but the victim; and for the
+      rest, these conjectures only called forth after the event must remain
+      conjectures. Until this night no accusing flash of light had escaped
+      either of them, but an ominous mystery was too surely growing up between
+      them, a mystery known only to themselves and God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, Abel,&rdquo; called the Marquise, seizing on her opportunity when the
+      children were tired of play and still for a moment. &ldquo;Come, come, child;
+      you must be put to bed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with a glance that must be obeyed, she caught him up and took him on
+      her knee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; exclaimed the General. &ldquo;Half-past ten o&rsquo;clock, and not one of the
+      servants has come back! The rascals!&mdash;Gustave,&rdquo; he added, turning to
+      his son, &ldquo;I allowed you to read that book only on the condition that you
+      should put it away at ten o&rsquo;clock. You ought to have shut up the book at
+      the proper time and gone to bed, as you promised. If you mean to make your
+      mark in the world, you must keep your word; let it be a second religion to
+      you, and a point of honor. Fox, one of the greatest English orators, was
+      remarkable, above all things, for the beauty of his character, and the
+      very first of his qualities was the scrupulous faithfulness with which he
+      kept his engagements. When he was a child, his father (an Englishman of
+      the old school) gave him a pretty strong lesson which he never forgot.
+      Like most rich Englishmen, Fox&rsquo;s father had a country house and a
+      considerable park about it. Now, in the park there was an old
+      summer-house, and orders had been given that this summer-house was to be
+      pulled down and put up somewhere else where there was a finer view. Fox
+      was just about your age, and had come home for the holidays. Boys are fond
+      of seeing things pulled to pieces, so young Fox asked to stay on at home
+      for a few days longer to see the old summer-house taken down; but his
+      father said that he must go back to school on the proper day, so there was
+      anger between father and son. Fox&rsquo;s mother (like all mammas) took the
+      boy&rsquo;s part. Then the father solemnly promised that the summer-house should
+      stay where it was till the next holidays.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So Fox went back to school; and his father, thinking that lessons would
+      soon drive the whole thing out of the boy&rsquo;s mind, had the summer-house
+      pulled down and put up in the new position. But as it happened, the
+      persistent youngster thought of nothing but that summer-house; and as soon
+      as he came home again, his first care was to go out to look at the old
+      building, and he came in to breakfast looking quite doleful, and said to
+      his father, &lsquo;You have broken your promise.&rsquo; The old English gentleman said
+      with confusion full of dignity, &lsquo;That is true, my boy; but I will make
+      amends. A man ought to think of keeping his word before he thinks of his
+      fortune; for by keeping his word he will gain fortune, while all the
+      fortunes in the world will not efface the stain left on your conscience by
+      a breach of faith.&rsquo; Then he gave orders that the summer-house should be
+      put up again in the old place, and when it had been rebuilt he had it
+      taken down again for his son to see. Let this be a lesson to <i>you</i>,
+      Gustave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gustave had been listening with interest, and now he closed the book at
+      once. There was a moment&rsquo;s silence, while the General took possession of
+      Moina, who could scarcely keep her eyes open. The little one&rsquo;s languid
+      head fell back on her father&rsquo;s breast, and in a moment she was fast
+      asleep, wrapped round about in her golden curls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then a sound of hurrying footsteps rang on the pavement out in the
+      street, immediately followed by three knocks on the street door, waking
+      the echoes of the house. The reverberating blows told, as plainly as a cry
+      for help that here was a man flying for his life. The house dog barked
+      furiously. A thrill of excitement ran through Helene and Gustave and the
+      General and his wife; but neither Abel, with the night-cap strings just
+      tied under his chin, nor Moina awoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The fellow is in a hurry!&rdquo; exclaimed the General. He put the little girl
+      down on the chair, and hastened out of the room, heedless of his wife&rsquo;s
+      entreating cry, &ldquo;Dear, do not go down&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stepped into his own room for a pair of pistols, lighted a dark
+      lantern, sprang at lightning speed down the staircase, and in another
+      minute reached the house door, his oldest boy fearlessly following.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is there?&rdquo; demanded he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me in,&rdquo; panted a breathless voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you a friend?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes! But let me in; <i>they</i> are after me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General had scarcely set the door ajar before a man slipped into the
+      porch with the uncanny swiftness of a shadow. Before the master of the
+      house could prevent him, the intruder had closed the door with a
+      well-directed kick, and set his back against it resolutely, as if he were
+      determined that it should not be opened again. In a moment the General had
+      his lantern and pistol at a level with the stranger&rsquo;s breast, and beheld a
+      man of medium height in a fur-lined pelisse. It was an old man&rsquo;s garment,
+      both too large and too long for its present wearer. Chance or caution had
+      slouched the man&rsquo;s hat over his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can lower your pistol, sir,&rdquo; said this person. &ldquo;I do not claim to
+      stay in your house against your will; but if I leave it, death is waiting
+      for me at the barrier. And what a death! You would be answerable to God
+      for it! I ask for your hospitality for two hours. And bear this in mind,
+      sir, that, suppliant as I am, I have a right to command with the despotism
+      of necessity. I want the Arab&rsquo;s hospitality. Either I and my secret must
+      be inviolable, or open the door and I will go to my death. I want secrecy,
+      a safe hiding-place, and water. Oh! water!&rdquo; he cried again, with a rattle
+      in his throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; demanded the General, taken aback by the stranger&rsquo;s
+      feverish volubility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! who am I? Good, open the door, and I will put a distance between us,&rdquo;
+       retorted the other, and there was a diabolical irony in his tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dexterously as the Marquis passed the light of the lantern over the man&rsquo;s
+      face, he could only see the lower half of it, and that in nowise
+      prepossessed him in favor of this singular claimant of hospitality. The
+      cheeks were livid and quivering, the features dreadfully contorted. Under
+      the shadow of the hat-brim a pair of eyes gleamed out like flames; the
+      feeble candle-light looked almost dim in comparison. Some sort of answer
+      must be made however.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your language, sir, is so extraordinary that in my place you yourself&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My life is in your hands!&rdquo; the intruder broke in. The sound of his voice
+      was dreadful to hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two hours?&rdquo; said the Marquis, wavering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two hours,&rdquo; echoed the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then quite suddenly, with a desperate gesture, he pushed back his hat and
+      left his forehead bare, and, as if he meant to try a final expedient, he
+      gave the General a glance that seemed to plunge like a vivid flash into
+      his very soul. That electrical discharge of intelligence and will was
+      swift as lightning and crushing as a thunderbolt; for there are moments
+      when a human being is invested for a brief space with inexplicable power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, whoever you may be, you shall be in safety under my roof,&rdquo; the
+      master of the house said gravely at last, acting, as he imagined, upon one
+      of those intuitions which a man cannot always explain to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God will repay you!&rdquo; said the stranger, with a deep, involuntary sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you weapons?&rdquo; asked the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For all answer the stranger flung open his fur pelisse, and scarcely gave
+      the other time for a glance before he wrapped it about him again. To all
+      appearance he was unarmed and in evening dress. Swift as the soldier&rsquo;s
+      scrutiny had been, he saw something, however, which made him exclaim:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where the devil have you been to get yourself in such a mess in such dry
+      weather?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More questions!&rdquo; said the stranger haughtily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the words the Marquis caught sight of his son, and his own late homily
+      on the strict fulfilment of a given word came up to his mind. In lively
+      vexation, he exclaimed, not without a touch of anger:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! little rogue, you here when you ought to be in bed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I thought I might be of some good in danger,&rdquo; answered Gustave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, go up to your room,&rdquo; said his father, mollified by the reply.&mdash;&ldquo;And
+      you&rdquo; (addressing the stranger), &ldquo;come with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men grew as silent as a pair of gamblers who watch each other&rsquo;s
+      play with mutual suspicions. The General himself began to be troubled with
+      ugly presentiments. The strange visit weighed upon his mind already like a
+      nightmare; but he had passed his word, there was no help for it now, and
+      he led the way along the passages and stairways till they reached a large
+      room on the second floor immediately above the salon. This was an empty
+      room where linen was dried in the winter. It had but the one door, and for
+      all decoration boasted one solitary shabby looking-glass above the
+      chimney-piece, left by the previous owner, and a great pier glass, placed
+      provisionally opposite the fireplace until such time as a use should be
+      found for it in the rooms below. The four yellowish walls were bare. The
+      floor had never been swept. The huge attic was icy-cold, and the furniture
+      consisted of a couple of rickety straw-bottomed chairs, or rather frames
+      of chairs. The General set the lantern down upon the chimney-piece. Then
+      he spoke:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is necessary for your own safety to hide you in this comfortless
+      attic. And, as you have my promise to keep your secret, you will permit me
+      to lock you in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other bent his head in acquiescence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I asked for nothing but a hiding-place, secrecy, and water,&rdquo; returned he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will bring you some directly,&rdquo; said the Marquis, shutting the door
+      cautiously. He groped his way down into the salon for a lamp before going
+      to the kitchen to look for a carafe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what is it?&rdquo; the Marquise asked quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, dear,&rdquo; he returned coolly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we listened, and we certainly heard you go upstairs with somebody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Helene,&rdquo; said the General, and he looked at his daughter, who raised her
+      face, &ldquo;bear in mind that your father&rsquo;s honor depends upon your discretion.
+      You must have heard nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl bent her head in answer. The Marquise was confused and smarting
+      inwardly at the way in which her husband had thought fit to silence her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the General went for the bottle and a tumbler, and returned to
+      the room above. His prisoner was leaning against the chimney-piece, his
+      head was bare, he had flung down his hat on one of the two chairs.
+      Evidently he had not expected to have so bright a light turned upon him,
+      and he frowned and looked anxious as he met the General&rsquo;s keen eyes; but
+      his face softened and wore a gracious expression as he thanked his
+      protector. When the latter placed the bottle and glass on the
+      mantel-shelf, the stranger&rsquo;s eyes flashed out on him again; and when he
+      spoke, it was in musical tones with no sign of the previous guttural
+      convulsion, though his voice was still unsteady with repressed emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall seem to you to be a strange being, sir, but you must pardon the
+      caprices of necessity. If you propose to remain in the room, I beg that
+      you will not look at me while I am drinking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Vexed at this continual obedience to a man whom he disliked, the General
+      sharply turned his back upon him. The stranger thereupon drew a white
+      handkerchief from his pocket and wound it about his right hand. Then he
+      seized the carafe and emptied it at a draught. The Marquis, staring
+      vacantly into the tall mirror across the room, without a thought of
+      breaking his implicit promise, saw the stranger&rsquo;s figure distinctly
+      reflected by the opposite looking-glass, and saw, too, a red stain
+      suddenly appear through the folds of the white bandage. The man&rsquo;s hands
+      were steeped in blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! you saw me!&rdquo; cried the other. He had drunk off the water and wrapped
+      himself again in his cloak, and now scrutinized the General suspiciously.
+      &ldquo;It is all over with me! Here they come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t hear anything,&rdquo; said the Marquis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have not the same interest that I have in listening for sounds in the
+      air.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have been fighting a duel, I suppose, to be in such a state?&rdquo; queried
+      the General, not a little disturbed by the color of those broad, dark
+      patches staining his visitor&rsquo;s cloak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, a duel; you have it,&rdquo; said the other, and a bitter smile flitted
+      over his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke a sound rang along the distant road, a sound of galloping
+      horses; but so faint as yet, that it was the merest dawn of a sound. The
+      General&rsquo;s trained ear recognized the advance of a troop of regulars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the gendarmerie,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced at his prisoner to reassure him after his own involuntary
+      indiscretion, took the lamp, and went down to the salon. He had scarcely
+      laid the key of the room above upon the chimney-piece when the hoof beats
+      sounded louder and came swiftly nearer and nearer the house. The General
+      felt a shiver of excitement, and indeed the horses stopped at the house
+      door; a few words were exchanged among the men, and one of them dismounted
+      and knocked loudly. There was no help for it; the General went to open the
+      door. He could scarcely conceal his inward perturbation at the sight of
+      half a dozen gendarmes outside, the metal rims of their caps gleaming like
+      silver in the moonlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My lord,&rdquo; said the corporal, &ldquo;have you heard a man run past towards the
+      barrier within the last few minutes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Towards the barrier? No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you opened the door to any one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, am I in the habit of answering the door myself&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ask your pardon, General, but just now it seems to me that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really!&rdquo; cried the Marquis wrathfully. &ldquo;Have you a mind to try joking
+      with me? What right have you&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None at all, none at all, my lord,&rdquo; cried the corporal, hastily putting
+      in a soft answer. &ldquo;You will excuse our zeal. We know, of course, that a
+      peer of France is not likely to harbor a murderer at this time of night;
+      but as we want any information we can get&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A murderer!&rdquo; cried the General. &ldquo;Who can have been&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M. le Baron de Mauny has just been murdered. It was a blow from an axe,
+      and we are in hot pursuit of the criminal. We know for certain that he is
+      somewhere in this neighborhood, and we shall hunt him down. By your leave,
+      General,&rdquo; and the man swung himself into the saddle as he spoke. It was
+      well that he did so, for a corporal of gendarmerie trained to alert
+      observation and quick surmise would have had his suspicions at once if he
+      had caught sight of the General&rsquo;s face. Everything that passed through the
+      soldier&rsquo;s mind was faithfully revealed in his frank countenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it known who the murderer is?&rdquo; asked he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the other, now in the saddle. &ldquo;He left the bureau full of
+      banknotes and gold untouched.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was revenge, then,&rdquo; said the Marquis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On an old man? pshaw! No, no, the fellow hadn&rsquo;t time to take it, that was
+      all,&rdquo; and the corporal galloped after his comrades, who were almost out of
+      sight by this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a few minutes the General stood, a victim to perplexities which need
+      no explanation; but in a moment he heard the servants returning home,
+      their voices were raised in some sort of dispute at the cross-roads of
+      Montreuil. When they came in, he gave vent to his feelings in an explosion
+      of rage, his wrath fell upon them like a thunderbolt, and all the echoes
+      of the house trembled at the sound of his voice. In the midst of the storm
+      his own man, the boldest and cleverest of the party, brought out an
+      excuse; they had been stopped, he said, by the gendarmerie at the gate of
+      Montreuil, a murder had been committed, and the police were in pursuit. In
+      a moment the General&rsquo;s anger vanished, he said not another word; then,
+      bethinking himself of his own singular position, drily ordered them all
+      off to bed at once, and left them amazed at his readiness to accept their
+      fellow servant&rsquo;s lying excuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While these incidents took place in the yard, an apparently trifling
+      occurrence had changed the relative positions of three characters in this
+      story. The Marquis had scarcely left the room before his wife looked first
+      towards the key on the mantel-shelf, and then at Helene; and, after some
+      wavering, bent towards her daughter and said in a low voice, &ldquo;Helene your
+      father has left the key on the chimney-piece.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl looked up in surprise and glanced timidly at her mother. The
+      Marquise&rsquo;s eyes sparkled with curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, mamma?&rdquo; she said, and her voice had a troubled ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to know what is going on upstairs. If there is anybody up
+      there, he has not stirred yet. Just go up&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I</i>?&rdquo; cried the girl, with something like horror in her tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you afraid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, mamma, but I thought I heard a man&rsquo;s footsteps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could go myself, I should not have asked you to go, Helene,&rdquo; said
+      her mother with cold dignity. &ldquo;If your father were to come back and did
+      not see me, he would go to look for me perhaps, but he would not notice
+      your absence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, if you bid me go, I will go,&rdquo; said Helene, &ldquo;but I shall lose my
+      father&rsquo;s good opinion&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is this!&rdquo; cried the Marquise in a sarcastic tone. &ldquo;But since you
+      take a thing that was said in joke in earnest, I now <i>order</i> you to
+      go upstairs and see who is in the room above. Here is the key, child. When
+      your father told you to say nothing about this thing that happened, he did
+      not forbid you to go up to the room. Go at once&mdash;and learn that a
+      daughter ought never to judge her mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The last words were spoken with all the severity of a justly offended
+      mother. The Marquise took the key and handed it to Helene, who rose
+      without a word and left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mother can always easily obtain her pardon,&rdquo; thought the girl; &ldquo;but as
+      for me, my father will never think the same of me again. Does she mean to
+      rob me of his tenderness? Does she want to turn me out of his house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These were the thoughts that set her imagination in a sudden ferment, as
+      she went down the dark passage to the mysterious door at the end. When she
+      stood before it, her mental confusion grew to a fateful pitch. Feelings
+      hitherto forced down into inner depths crowded up at the summons of these
+      confused thoughts. Perhaps hitherto she had never believed that a happy
+      life lay before her, but now, in this awful moment, her despair was
+      complete. She shook convulsively as she set the key in the lock; so great
+      indeed was her agitation, that she stopped for a moment and laid her hand
+      on her heart, as if to still the heavy throbs that sounded in her ears.
+      Then she opened the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The creaking of the hinges sounded doubtless in vain on the murderer&rsquo;s
+      ears. Acute as were his powers of hearing, he stood as if lost in thought,
+      and so motionless that he might have been glued to the wall against which
+      he leaned. In the circle of semi-opaque darkness, dimly lit by the
+      bull&rsquo;s-eye lantern, he looked like the shadowy figure of some dead knight,
+      standing for ever in his shadowy mortuary niche in the gloom of some
+      Gothic chapel. Drops of cold sweat trickled over the broad, sallow
+      forehead. An incredible fearlessness looked out from every tense feature.
+      His eyes of fire were fixed and tearless; he seemed to be watching some
+      struggle in the darkness beyond him. Stormy thoughts passed swiftly across
+      a face whose firm decision spoke of a character of no common order. His
+      whole person, bearing, and frame bore out the impression of a tameless
+      spirit. The man looked power and strength personified; he stood facing the
+      darkness as if it were the visible image of his own future.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These physical characteristics had made no impression upon the General,
+      familiar as he was with the powerful faces of the group of giants gathered
+      about Napoleon; speculative curiosity, moreover, as to the why and
+      wherefore of the apparition had completely filled his mind; but Helene,
+      with feminine sensitiveness to surface impressions, was struck by the
+      blended chaos of light and darkness, grandeur and passion, suggesting a
+      likeness between this stranger and Lucifer recovering from his fall.
+      Suddenly the storm apparent in his face was stilled as if by magic; and
+      the indefinable power to sway which the stranger exercised upon others,
+      and perhaps unconsciously and as by reflex action upon himself, spread its
+      influence about him with the progressive swiftness of a flood. A torrent
+      of thought rolled away from his brow as his face resumed its ordinary
+      expression. Perhaps it was the strangeness of this meeting, or perhaps it
+      was the mystery into which she had penetrated, that held the young girl
+      spellbound in the doorway, so that she could look at a face pleasant to
+      behold and full of interest. For some moments she stood in the magical
+      silence; a trouble had come upon her never known before in her young life.
+      Perhaps some exclamation broke from Helene, perhaps she moved
+      unconsciously; or it may be that the hunted criminal returned of his own
+      accord from the world of ideas to the material world, and heard some one
+      breathing in the room; however it was, he turned his head towards his
+      host&rsquo;s daughter, and saw dimly in the shadow a noble face and queenly
+      form, which he must have taken for an angel&rsquo;s, so motionless she stood, so
+      vague and like a spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur...&rdquo; a trembling voice cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The murderer trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman!&rdquo; he cried under his breath. &ldquo;Is it possible? Go,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;I
+      deny that any one has a right to pity, to absolve, or condemn me. I must
+      live alone. Go, my child,&rdquo; he added, with an imperious gesture, &ldquo;I should
+      ill requite the service done me by the master of the house if I were to
+      allow a single creature under his roof to breathe the same air with me. I
+      must submit to be judged by the laws of the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The last words were uttered in a lower voice. Even as he realized with a
+      profound intuition all the manifold misery awakened by that melancholy
+      thought, the glance that he gave Helene had something of the power of the
+      serpent, stirring a whole dormant world in the mind of the strange girl
+      before him. To her that glance was like a light revealing unknown lands.
+      She was stricken with strange trouble, helpless, quelled by a magnetic
+      power exerted unconsciously. Trembling and ashamed, she went out and
+      returned to the salon. She had scarcely entered the room before her father
+      came back, so that she had not time to say a word to her mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General was wholly absorbed in thought. He folded his arms, and paced
+      silently to and fro between the windows which looked out upon the street
+      and the second row which gave upon the garden. His wife lay the sleeping
+      Abel on her knee, and little Moina lay in untroubled slumber in the low
+      chair, like a bird in its nest. Her older sister stared into the fire, a
+      skein of silk in one hand, a needle in the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deep silence prevailed, broken only by lagging footsteps on the stairs, as
+      one by one the servants crept away to bed; there was an occasional burst
+      of stifled laughter, a last echo of the wedding festivity, or doors were
+      opened as they still talked among themselves, then shut. A smothered sound
+      came now and again from the bedrooms, a chair fell, the old coachman
+      coughed feebly, then all was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a little while the dark majesty with which sleeping earth is invested
+      at midnight brought all things under its sway. No lights shone but the
+      light of the stars. The frost gripped the ground. There was not a sound of
+      a voice, nor a living creature stirring. The crackling of the fire only
+      seemed to make the depth of the silence more fully felt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The church clock of Montreuil had just struck one, when an almost
+      inaudible sound of a light footstep came from the second flight of stairs.
+      The Marquis and his daughter, both believing that M. de Mauny&rsquo;s murderer
+      was a prisoner above, thought that one of the maids had come down, and no
+      one was at all surprised to hear the door open in the ante-chamber. Quite
+      suddenly the murderer appeared in their midst. The Marquis himself was
+      sunk in deep musings, the mother and daughter were silent, the one from
+      keen curiosity, the other from sheer astonishment, so that the visitor was
+      almost half-way across the room when he spoke to the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir, the two hours are almost over,&rdquo; he said, in a voice that was
+      strangely calm and musical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>You here</i>!&rdquo; cried the General. &ldquo;By what means&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo; and
+      he gave wife and daughter a formidable questioning glance. Helene grew red
+      as fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; he went on, in a tone filled with horror. &ldquo;<i>You</i> among us! A
+      murderer covered with blood! You are a blot on this picture! Go, go out!&rdquo;
+       he added in a burst of rage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that word &ldquo;murderer,&rdquo; the Marquise cried out; as for Helene, it seemed
+      to mark an epoch in her life, there was not a trace of surprise in her
+      face. She looked as if she had been waiting for this&mdash;for him. Those
+      so vast thoughts of hers had found a meaning. The punishment reserved by
+      Heaven for her sins flamed out before her. In her own eyes she was as
+      great a criminal as this murderer; she confronted him with her quiet gaze;
+      she was his fellow, his sister. It seemed to her that in this accident the
+      command of God had been made manifest. If she had been a few years older,
+      reason would have disposed of her remorse, but at this moment she was like
+      one distraught.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger stood impassive and self-possessed; a scornful smile
+      overspread his features and his thick, red lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You appreciate the magnanimity of my behavior very badly,&rdquo; he said
+      slowly. &ldquo;I would not touch with my fingers the glass of water you brought
+      me to allay my thirst; I did not so much as think of washing my
+      blood-stained hands under your roof; I am going away, leaving nothing of
+      <i>my crime</i>&rdquo; (here his lips were compressed) &ldquo;but the memory; I have
+      tried to leave no trace of my presence in this house. Indeed, I would not
+      even allow your daughter to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>My daughter</i>!&rdquo; cried the General, with a horror-stricken glance at
+      Helene. &ldquo;Vile wretch, go, or I will kill you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The two hours are not yet over,&rdquo; said the other; &ldquo;if you kill me or give
+      me up, you must lower yourself in your own eyes&mdash;and in mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At these last words, the General turned to stare at the criminal in dumb
+      amazement; but he could not endure the intolerable light in those eyes
+      which for the second time disorganized his being. He was afraid of showing
+      weakness once more, conscious as he was that his will was weaker already.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An old man! You can never have seen a family,&rdquo; he said, with a father&rsquo;s
+      glance at his wife and children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, an old man,&rdquo; echoed the stranger, frowning slightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fly!&rdquo; cried the General, but he did not dare to look at his guest. &ldquo;Our
+      compact is broken. I shall not kill you. No! I will never be purveyor to
+      the scaffold. But go out. You make us shudder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that,&rdquo; said the other patiently. &ldquo;There is not a spot on French
+      soil where I can set foot and be safe; but if man&rsquo;s justice, like God&rsquo;s,
+      took all into account, if man&rsquo;s justice deigned to inquire which was the
+      monster&mdash;the murderer or his victim&mdash;then I might hold up my
+      head among my fellows. Can you not guess that other crimes preceded that
+      blow from an axe? I constituted myself his judge and executioner; I
+      stepped in where man&rsquo;s justice failed. That was my crime. Farewell, sir.
+      Bitter though you have made your hospitality, I shall not forget it. I
+      shall always bear in my heart a feeling of gratitude towards one man in
+      the world, and you are that man.... But I could wish that you had showed
+      yourself more generous!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned towards the door, but in the same instant Helene leaned to
+      whisper something in her mother&rsquo;s ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the cry that broke from his wife, the General trembled as if he had
+      seen Moina lying dead. There stood Helene and the murderer had turned
+      instinctively, with something like anxiety about these folk in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, dear?&rdquo; asked the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Helene wants to go with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The murderer&rsquo;s face flushed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If that is how my mother understands an almost involuntary exclamation,&rdquo;
+       Helene said in a low voice, &ldquo;I will fulfil her wishes. She glanced about
+      her with something like fierce pride; then the girl&rsquo;s eyes fell, and she
+      stood, admirable in her modesty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Helene, did you go up to the room where&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Helene&rdquo; (and his voice shook with a convulsive tremor), &ldquo;is this the
+      first time that you have seen this man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it is not natural that you should intend to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it is not natural, father, at any rate it is true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! child,&rdquo; said the Marquise, lowering her voice, but not so much but
+      that her husband could hear her, &ldquo;you are false to all the principles of
+      honor, modesty, and right which I have tried to cultivate in your heart.
+      If until this fatal hour you life has only been one lie, there is nothing
+      to regret in your loss. It can hardly be the moral perfection of this
+      stranger that attracts you to him? Can it be the kind of power that
+      commits crime? I have too good an opinion of you to suppose that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, suppose everything, madame,&rdquo; Helene said coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though her force of character sustained this ordeal, her flashing eyes
+      could scarcely hold the tears that filled them. The stranger, watching
+      her, guessed the mother&rsquo;s language from the girl&rsquo;s tears, and turned his
+      eagle glance upon the Marquise. An irresistible power constrained her to
+      look at this terrible seducer; but as her eyes met his bright, glittering
+      gaze, she felt a shiver run through her frame, such a shock as we feel at
+      the sight of a reptile or the contact of a Leyden jar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear!&rdquo; she cried, turning to her husband, &ldquo;this is the Fiend himself. He
+      can divine everything!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General rose to his feet and went to the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He means ruin for you,&rdquo; Helene said to the murderer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger smiled, took one forward stride, grasped the General&rsquo;s arm,
+      and compelled him to endure a steady gaze which benumbed the soldier&rsquo;s
+      brain and left him powerless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will repay you now for your hospitality,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and then we shall
+      be quits. I will spare you the shame by giving myself up. After all, what
+      should I do now with my life?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You could repent,&rdquo; answered Helene, and her glance conveyed such hope as
+      only glows in a young girl&rsquo;s eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I shall never repent</i>,&rdquo; said the murderer in a sonorous voice, as
+      he raised his head proudly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His hands are stained with blood,&rdquo; the father said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will wipe it away,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But do you so much as know whether he cares for you?&rdquo; said her father,
+      not daring now to look at the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The murderer came up a little nearer. Some light within seemed to glow
+      through Helene&rsquo;s beauty, grave and maidenly though it was, coloring and
+      bringing into relief, as it were, the least details, the most delicate
+      lines in her face. The stranger, with that terrible face still blazing in
+      his eyes, gave one tender glance to her enchanting loveliness, then he
+      spoke, his tones revealing how deeply he had been moved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if I refuse to allow this sacrifice of yourself, and so discharge my
+      debt of two hours of existence to your father; is not this love, love for
+      yourself alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then do you too reject me?&rdquo; Helene&rsquo;s cry rang painfully through the
+      hearts of all who heard her. &ldquo;Farewell, then, to you all; I will die.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does this mean?&rdquo; asked the father and mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Helene gave her mother an eloquent glance and lowered her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since the first attempt made by the General and his wife to contest by
+      word or action the intruder&rsquo;s strange presumption to the right of staying
+      in their midst, from their first experience of the power of those
+      glittering eyes, a mysterious torpor had crept over them, and their
+      benumbed faculties struggled in vain with the preternatural influence. The
+      air seemed to have suddenly grown so heavy, that they could scarcely
+      breathe; yet, while they could not find the reason of this feeling of
+      oppression, a voice within told them that this magnetic presence was the
+      real cause of their helplessness. In this moral agony, it flashed across
+      the General that he must make every effort to overcome this influence on
+      his daughter&rsquo;s reeling brain; he caught her by the waist and drew her into
+      the embrasure of a window, as far as possible from the murderer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Darling,&rdquo; he murmured, &ldquo;if some wild love has been suddenly born in your
+      heart, I cannot believe that you have not the strength of soul to quell
+      the mad impulse; your innocent life, your pure and dutiful soul, has given
+      me too many proofs of your character. There must be something behind all
+      this. Well, this heart of mine is full of indulgence, you can tell
+      everything to me; even if it breaks, dear child, I can be silent about my
+      grief, and keep your confession a secret. What is it? Are you jealous of
+      our love for your brothers or your little sister? Is it some love trouble?
+      Are you unhappy here at home? Tell me about it, tell me the reasons that
+      urge you to leave your home, to rob it of its greatest charm, to leave
+      your mother and brothers and your little sister?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am in love with no one, father, and jealous of no one, not even of your
+      friend the diplomatist, M. de Vandenesse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise turned pale; her daughter saw this, and stopped short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sooner or later I must live under some man&rsquo;s protection, must I not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do we ever know,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;the human being to whom we link our
+      destinies? Now, I believe in this man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, child,&rdquo; said the General, raising his voice, &ldquo;you have no idea of all
+      the misery that lies in store for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am thinking of <i>his</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a life!&rdquo; groaned the father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman&rsquo;s life,&rdquo; the girl murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have a great knowledge of life!&rdquo; exclaimed the Marquise, finding
+      speech at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, my answers are shaped by the questions; but if you desire it, I
+      will speak more clearly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak out, my child... I am a mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mother and daughter looked each other in the face, and the Marquise said
+      no more. At last she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Helene, if you have any reproaches to make, I would rather bear them than
+      see you go away with a man from whom the whole world shrinks in horror.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you see yourself, madame, that but for me he would be quite alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will do, madame,&rdquo; the General cried; &ldquo;we have but one daughter left
+      to us now,&rdquo; and he looked at Moina, who slept on. &ldquo;As for you,&rdquo; he added,
+      turning to Helene, &ldquo;I will put you in a convent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So be it, father,&rdquo; she said, in calm despair, &ldquo;I shall die there. You are
+      answerable to God alone for my life and for <i>his</i> soul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A deep sullen silence fell after these words. The on-lookers during this
+      strange scene, so utterly at variance with all the sentiments of ordinary
+      life, shunned each other&rsquo;s eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the Marquis happened to glance at his pistols. He caught up one
+      of them, cocked the weapon, and pointed it at the intruder. At the click
+      of firearms the other turned his piercing gaze full upon the General; the
+      soldier&rsquo;s arm slackened indescribably and fell heavily to his side. The
+      pistol dropped to the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Girl, you are free,&rdquo; said he, exhausted by this ghastly struggle. &ldquo;Kiss
+      your mother, if she will let you kiss her. For my own part, I wish never
+      to see nor to hear of you again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Helene,&rdquo; the mother began, &ldquo;only think of the wretched life before you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sort of rattling sound came from the intruder&rsquo;s deep chest, all eyes
+      were turned to him. Disdain was plainly visible in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General rose to his feet. &ldquo;My hospitality has cost me dear,&rdquo; he cried.
+      &ldquo;Before you came you had taken an old man&rsquo;s life; now your are dealing a
+      deadly blow at a whole family. Whatever happens, there must be unhappiness
+      in this house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if your daughter is happy?&rdquo; asked the other, gazing steadily at the
+      General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The father made a superhuman effort for self-control. &ldquo;If she is happy
+      with you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;she is not worth regretting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Helene knelt timidly before her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father, I love and revere you,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;whether you lavish all the
+      treasures of your kindness upon me, or make me feel to the full the rigor
+      of disgrace.... But I entreat that your last words of farewell shall not
+      be words of anger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General could not trust himself to look at her. The stranger came
+      nearer; there was something half-diabolical, half-divine in the smile that
+      he gave Helene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Angel of pity, you that do not shrink in horror from a murderer, come,
+      since you persist in your resolution of intrusting your life to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Inconceivable!&rdquo; cried her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise then looked strangely at her daughter, opened her arms, and
+      Helene fled to her in tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farewell,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;farewell, mother!&rdquo; The stranger trembled as Helene,
+      undaunted, made sign to him that she was ready. She kissed her father&rsquo;s
+      hand; and, as if performing a duty, gave a hasty kiss to Moina and little
+      Abel, then she vanished with the murderer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which way are they going?&rdquo; exclaimed the General, listening to the
+      footsteps of the two fugitives.&mdash;&ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; he turned to his wife, &ldquo;I
+      think I must be dreaming; there is some mystery behind all this, I do not
+      understand it; you must know what it means.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise shivered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For some time past your daughter has grown extraordinarily romantic and
+      strangely high-flown in her ideas. In spite of the pains I have taken to
+      combat these tendencies in her character&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This will not do&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; began the General, but fancying that he
+      heard footsteps in the garden, he broke off to fling open the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Helene!&rdquo; he shouted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice was lost in the darkness like a vain prophecy. The utterance of
+      that name, to which there should never be answer any more, acted like a
+      counterspell; it broke the charm and set him free from the evil
+      enchantment which lay upon him. It was as if some spirit passed over his
+      face. He now saw clearly what had taken place, and cursed his
+      incomprehensible weakness. A shiver of heat rushed from his heart to his
+      head and feet; he became himself once more, terrible, thirsting for
+      revenge. He raised a dreadful cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help!&rdquo; he thundered, &ldquo;help!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rushed to the bell-pull, pulled till the bells rang with a strange
+      clamor of din, pulled till the cord gave way. The whole house was roused
+      with a start. Still shouting, he flung open the windows that looked upon
+      the street, called for the police, caught up his pistols, and fired them
+      off to hurry the mounted patrols, the newly-aroused servants, and the
+      neighbors. The dogs barked at the sound of their master&rsquo;s voice; the
+      horses neighed and stamped in their stalls. The quiet night was suddenly
+      filled with hideous uproar. The General on the staircase, in pursuit of
+      his daughter, saw the scared faces of the servants flocking from all parts
+      of the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My daughter!&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;Helene has been carried off. Search the
+      garden. Keep a lookout on the road! Open the gates for the gendarmerie!&mdash;Murder!
+      Help!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With the strength of fury he snapped the chain and let loose the great
+      house-dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Helene!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;Helene!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dog sprang out like a lion, barking furiously, and dashed into the
+      garden, leaving the General far behind. A troop of horses came along the
+      road at a gallop, and he flew to open the gates himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Corporal!&rdquo; he shouted, &ldquo;cut off the retreat of M. de Mauny&rsquo;s murderer.
+      They have gone through my garden. Quick! Put a cordon of men to watch the
+      ways by the Butte de Picardie.&mdash;I will beat up the grounds, parks,
+      and houses.&mdash;The rest of you keep a lookout along the road,&rdquo; he
+      ordered the servants, &ldquo;form a chain between the barrier and Versailles.
+      Forward, every man of you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He caught up the rifle which his man had brought out, and dashed into the
+      garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Find them!&rdquo; he called to the dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An ominous baying came in answer from the distance, and he plunged in the
+      direction from which the growl seemed to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was seven o&rsquo;clock in the morning; all the search made by gendarmes,
+      servants, and neighbors had been fruitless, and the dog had not come back.
+      The General entered the salon, empty now for him though the other three
+      children were there; he was worn out with fatigue, and looked old already
+      with that night&rsquo;s work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have been very cold to your daughter,&rdquo; he said, turning his eyes on
+      his wife.&mdash;&ldquo;And now this is all that is left to us of her,&rdquo; he added,
+      indicating the embroidery frame, and the flower just begun. &ldquo;Only just now
+      she was there, and now she is lost... lost!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tears followed; he hid his face in his hands, and for a few minutes he
+      said no more; he could not bear the sight of the room, which so short a
+      time ago had made a setting to a picture of the sweetest family happiness.
+      The winter dawn was struggling with the dying lamplight; the tapers burned
+      down to their paper-wreaths and flared out; everything was all in keeping
+      with the father&rsquo;s despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This must be destroyed,&rdquo; he said after a pause, pointing to the
+      tambour-frame. &ldquo;I shall never bear to see anything again that reminds us
+      of <i>her</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The terrible Christmas night when the Marquis and his wife lost their
+      oldest daughter, powerless to oppose the mysterious influence exercised by
+      the man who involuntarily, as it were, stole Helene from them, was like a
+      warning sent by Fate. The Marquis was ruined by the failure of his
+      stock-broker; he borrowed money on his wife&rsquo;s property, and lost it in the
+      endeavor to retrieve his fortunes. Driven to desperate expedients, he left
+      France. Six years went by. His family seldom had news of him; but a few
+      days before Spain recognized the independence of the American Republics,
+      he wrote that he was coming home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, one fine morning, it happened that several French merchants were on
+      board a Spanish brig that lay a few leagues out from Bordeaux, impatient
+      to reach their native land again, with wealth acquired by long years of
+      toil and perilous adventures in Venezuela and Mexico.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the passengers, a man who looked aged by trouble rather than by
+      years, was leaning against the bulwark netting, apparently quite
+      unaffected by the sight to be seen from the upper deck. The bright day,
+      the sense that the voyage was safely over, had brought all the passengers
+      above to greet their land. The larger number of them insisted that they
+      could see, far off in the distance, the houses and lighthouses on the
+      coast of Gascony and the Tower of Cardouan, melting into the fantastic
+      erections of white cloud along the horizon. But for the silver fringe that
+      played about their bows, and the long furrow swiftly effaced in their
+      wake, they might have been perfectly still in mid-ocean, so calm was the
+      sea. The sky was magically clear, the dark blue of the vault above paled
+      by imperceptible gradations, until it blended with the bluish water, a
+      gleaming line that sparkled like stars marking the dividing line of sea.
+      The sunlight caught myriads of facets over the wide surface of the ocean,
+      in such a sort that the vast plains of salt water looked perhaps more full
+      of light than the fields of sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The brig had set all her canvas. The snowy sails, swelled by the strangely
+      soft wind, the labyrinth of cordage, and the yellow flags flying at the
+      masthead, all stood out sharp and uncompromisingly clear against the vivid
+      background of space, sky, and sea; there was nothing to alter the color
+      but the shadow cast by the great cloudlike sails.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A glorious day, a fair wind, and the fatherland in sight, a sea like a
+      mill-pond, the melancholy sound of the ripples, a fair, solitary vessel,
+      gliding across the surface of the water like a woman stealing out to a
+      tryst&mdash;it was a picture full of harmony. That mere speck full of
+      movement was a starting-point whence the soul of man could descry the
+      immutable vast of space. Solitude and bustling life, silence and sound,
+      were all brought together in strange abrupt contrast; you could not tell
+      where life, or sound, or silence, and nothingness lay, and no human voice
+      broke the divine spell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Spanish captain, the crew, and the French passengers sat or stood, in
+      a mood of devout ecstasy, in which many memories blended. There was
+      idleness in the air. The beaming faces told of complete forgetfulness of
+      past hardships, the men were rocked on the fair vessel as in a golden
+      dream. Yet, from time to time the elderly passenger, leaning over the
+      bulwark nettings, looked with something like uneasiness at the horizon.
+      Distrust of the ways of Fate could be read in his whole face; he seemed to
+      fear that he should not reach the coast of France in time. This was the
+      Marquis. Fortune had not been deaf to his despairing cry and struggles.
+      After five years of endeavor and painful toil, he was a wealthy man once
+      more. In his impatience to reach his home again and to bring the good news
+      to his family, he had followed the example set by some French merchants in
+      Havana, and embarked with them on a Spanish vessel with a cargo for
+      Bordeaux. And now, grown tired of evil forebodings, his fancy was tracing
+      out for him the most delicious pictures of past happiness. In that far-off
+      brown line of land he seemed to see his wife and children. He sat in his
+      place by the fireside; they were crowding about him; he felt their
+      caresses. Moina had grown to be a young girl; she was beautiful, and tall,
+      and striking. The fancied picture had grown almost real, when the tears
+      filled his eyes, and, to hide his emotion, he turned his face towards the
+      sea-line, opposite the hazy streak that meant land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There she is again.... She is following us!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; cried the Spanish captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a vessel,&rdquo; muttered the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw her yesterday,&rdquo; answered Captain Gomez. He looked at his
+      interlocutor as if to ask what he thought; then he added in the General&rsquo;s
+      ear, &ldquo;She has been chasing us all along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why she has not come up with us, I do not know,&rdquo; said the General,
+      &ldquo;for she is a faster sailor than your damned <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will have damaged herself, sprung a leak&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is gaining on us!&rdquo; the General broke in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is a Columbian privateer,&rdquo; the captain said in his ear, &ldquo;and we are
+      still six leagues from land, and the wind is dropping.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is not <i>going</i> ahead, she is flying, as if she knew that in two
+      hours&rsquo; time her prey would escape her. What audacity!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Audacity!&rdquo; cried the captain. &ldquo;Oh! she is not called the <i>Othello</i>
+      for nothing. Not so long back she sank a Spanish frigate that carried
+      thirty guns! This is the one thing I was afraid of, for I had a notion
+      that she was cruising about somewhere off the Antilles.&mdash;Aha!&rdquo; he
+      added after a pause, as he watched the sails of his own vessel, &ldquo;the wind
+      is rising; we are making way. Get through we must, for &lsquo;the Parisian&rsquo; will
+      show us no mercy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is making way too!&rdquo; returned the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>Othello</i> was scarce three leagues away by this time; and
+      although the conversation between the Marquis and Captain Gomez had taken
+      place apart, passengers and crew, attracted by the sudden appearance of a
+      sail, came to that side of the vessel. With scarcely an exception,
+      however, they took the privateer for a merchantman, and watched her course
+      with interest, till all at once a sailor shouted with some energy of
+      language:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Saint-James, it is all up with us! Yonder is the Parisian captain!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that terrible name dismay, and a panic impossible to describe, spread
+      through the brig. The Spanish captain&rsquo;s orders put energy into the crew
+      for a while; and in his resolute determination to make land at all costs,
+      he set all the studding sails, and crowded on every stitch of canvas on
+      board. But all this was not the work of a moment; and naturally the men
+      did not work together with that wonderful unanimity so fascinating to
+      watch on board a man-of-war. The <i>Othello</i> meanwhile, thanks to the
+      trimming of her sails, flew over the water like a swallow; but she was
+      making, to all appearance, so little headway, that the unlucky Frenchmen
+      began to entertain sweet delusive hopes. At last, after unheard-of
+      efforts, the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i> sprang forward, Gomez himself
+      directing the shifting of the sheets with voice and gesture, when all at
+      once the man at the tiller, steering at random (purposely, no doubt),
+      swung the vessel round. The wind striking athwart the beam, the sails
+      shivered so unexpectedly that the brig heeled to one side, the booms were
+      carried away, and the vessel was completely out of hand. The captain&rsquo;s
+      face grew whiter than his sails with unutterable rage. He sprang upon the
+      man at the tiller, drove his dagger at him in such blind fury, that he
+      missed him, and hurled the weapon overboard. Gomez took the helm himself,
+      and strove to right the gallant vessel. Tears of despair rose to his eyes,
+      for it is harder to lose the result of our carefully-laid plans through
+      treachery than to face imminent death. But the more the captain swore, the
+      less the men worked, and it was he himself who fired the alarm-gun, hoping
+      to be heard on shore. The privateer, now gaining hopelessly upon them,
+      replied with a cannon-shot, which struck the water ten fathoms away from
+      the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thunder of heaven!&rdquo; cried the General, &ldquo;that was a close shave! They must
+      have guns made on purpose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! when that one yonder speaks, look you, you have to hold your tongue,&rdquo;
+       said a sailor. &ldquo;The Parisian would not be afraid to meet an English
+      man-of-war.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all over with us,&rdquo; the captain cried in desperation; he had pointed
+      his telescope landwards, and saw not a sign from the shore. &ldquo;We are
+      further from the coast than I thought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you despair?&rdquo; asked the General. &ldquo;All your passengers are
+      Frenchmen; they have chartered your vessel. The privateer is a Parisian,
+      you say? Well and good, run up the white flag, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he would run us down,&rdquo; retorted the captain. &ldquo;He can be anything he
+      likes when he has a mind to seize on a rich booty!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! if he is a pirate&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pirate!&rdquo; said the ferocious looking sailor. &ldquo;Oh! he always has the law on
+      his side, or he knows how to be on the same side as the law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said the General, raising his eyes, &ldquo;let us make up our minds
+      to it,&rdquo; and his remaining fortitude was still sufficient to keep back the
+      tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were hardly out of his mouth before a second cannon-shot, better
+      aimed, came crashing through the hull of the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heave to!&rdquo; cried the captain gloomily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sailor who had commended the Parisian&rsquo;s law-abiding proclivities
+      showed himself a clever hand at working a ship after this desperate order
+      was given. The crew waited for half an hour in an agony of suspense and
+      the deepest dismay. The <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i> had four millions of
+      piastres on board, the whole fortunes of the five passengers, and the
+      General&rsquo;s eleven hundred thousand francs. At length the <i>Othello</i> lay
+      not ten gunshots away, so that those on the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i> could
+      look into the muzzles of her loaded guns. The vessel seemed to be borne
+      along by a breeze sent by the Devil himself, but the eyes of an expert
+      would have discovered the secret of her speed at once. You had but to look
+      for a moment at the rake of her stern, her long, narrow keel, her tall
+      masts, to see the cut of her sails, the wonderful lightness of her
+      rigging, and the ease and perfect seamanship with which her crew trimmed
+      her sails to the wind. Everything about her gave the impression of the
+      security of power in this delicately curved inanimate creature, swift and
+      intelligent as a greyhound or some bird of prey. The privateer crew stood
+      silent, ready in case of resistance to shatter the wretched merchantman,
+      which, luckily for her, remained motionless, like a schoolboy caught in
+      flagrant delict by a master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have guns on board!&rdquo; cried the General, clutching the Spanish
+      captain&rsquo;s hand. But the courage in Gomez&rsquo;s eyes was the courage of
+      despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have we men?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquis looked round at the crew of the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>, and a
+      cold chill ran through him. There stood the four merchants, pale and
+      quaking for fear, while the crew gathered about some of their own number
+      who appeared to be arranging to go over in a body to the enemy. They
+      watched the <i>Othello</i> with greed and curiosity in their faces. The
+      captain, the Marquis, and the mate exchanged glances; they were the only
+      three who had a thought for any but themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Captain Gomez, when I left my home and country, my heart was half
+      dead with the bitterness of parting, and now must I bid it good-bye once
+      more when I am bringing back happiness and ease for my children?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General turned his head away towards the sea, with tears of rage in
+      his eyes&mdash;and saw the steersman swimming out to the privateer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This time it will be good-bye for good,&rdquo; said the captain by way of
+      answer, and the dazed look in the Frenchman&rsquo;s eyes startled the Spaniard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the two vessels were almost alongside, and at the first sight
+      of the enemy&rsquo;s crew the General saw that Gomez&rsquo;s gloomy prophecy was only
+      too true. The three men at each gun might have been bronze statues,
+      standing like athletes, with their rugged features, their bare sinewy
+      arms, men whom Death himself had scarcely thrown off their feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest of the crew, well armed, active, light, and vigorous, also stood
+      motionless. Toil had hardened, and the sun had deeply tanned, those
+      energetic faces; their eyes glittered like sparks of fire with infernal
+      glee and clear-sighted courage. Perfect silence on the upper deck, now
+      black with men, bore abundant testimony to the rigorous discipline and
+      strong will which held these fiends incarnate in check.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain of the <i>Othello</i> stood with folded arms at the foot of
+      the main mast; he carried no weapons, but an axe lay on the deck beside
+      him. His face was hidden by the shadow of a broad felt hat. The men looked
+      like dogs crouching before their master. Gunners, soldiers, and ship&rsquo;s
+      crew turned their eyes first on his face, and then on the merchant vessel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two brigs came up alongside, and the shock of contact roused the
+      privateer captain from his musings; he spoke a word in the ear of the
+      lieutenant who stood beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Grappling-irons!&rdquo; shouted the latter, and the <i>Othello</i> grappled the
+      <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i> with miraculous quickness. The captain of the
+      privateer gave his orders in a low voice to the lieutenant, who repeated
+      them; the men, told off in succession for each duty, went on the upper
+      deck of the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>, like seminarists going to mass. They
+      bound crew and passengers hand and foot and seized the booty. In the
+      twinkling of an eye, provisions and barrels full of piastres were
+      transferred to the <i>Othello</i>; the General thought that he must be
+      dreaming when he himself, likewise bound, was flung down on a bale of
+      goods as if he had been part of the cargo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A brief conference took place between the captain of the privateer and his
+      lieutenant and a sailor, who seemed to be the mate of the vessel; then the
+      mate gave a whistle, and the men jumped on board the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>,
+      and completely dismantled her with the nimble dexterity of a soldier who
+      strips a dead comrade of a coveted overcoat and shoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all over with us,&rdquo; said the Spanish captain coolly. He had eyed the
+      three chiefs during their confabulation, and saw that the sailors were
+      proceeding to pull his vessel to pieces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why so?&rdquo; asked the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would you have them do with us?&rdquo; returned the Spaniard. &ldquo;They have
+      just come to the conclusion that they will scarcely sell the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>
+      in any French or Spanish port, so they are going to sink her to be rid of
+      her. As for us, do you suppose that they will put themselves to the
+      expense of feeding us, when they don&rsquo;t know what port they are to put
+      into?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were scarcely out of the captain&rsquo;s mouth before a hideous outcry
+      went up, followed by a dull splashing sound, as several bodies were thrown
+      overboard. He turned, the four merchants were no longer to be seen, but
+      eight ferocious-looking gunners were still standing with their arms raised
+      above their heads. He shuddered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did I tell you?&rdquo; the Spanish captain asked coolly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquis rose to his feet with a spring. The surface of the sea was
+      quite smooth again; he could not so much as see the place where his
+      unhappy fellow-passengers had disappeared. By this time they were sinking
+      down, bound hand and foot, below the waves, if, indeed, the fish had not
+      devoured them already.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only a few paces away, the treacherous steersman and the sailor who had
+      boasted of the Parisian&rsquo;s power were fraternizing with the crew of the <i>Othello</i>,
+      and pointing out those among their own number, who, in their opinion, were
+      worthy to join the crew of the privateer. Then the boys tied the rest
+      together by the feet in spite of frightful oaths. It was soon over; the
+      eight gunners seized the doomed men and flung them overboard without more
+      ado, watching the different ways in which the drowning victims met their
+      death, their contortions, their last agony, with a sort of malignant
+      curiosity, but with no sign of amusement, surprise, or pity. For them it
+      was an ordinary event to which seemingly they were quite accustomed. The
+      older men looked instead with grim, set smiles at the casks of piastres
+      about the main mast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The General and Captain Gomez, left seated on a bale of goods, consulted
+      each other with well-nigh hopeless looks; they were, in a sense, the sole
+      survivors of the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>, for the seven men pointed out by
+      the spies were transformed amid rejoicings into Peruvians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What atrocious villains!&rdquo; the General cried. Loyal and generous
+      indignation silenced prudence and pain on his own account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They do it because they must,&rdquo; Gomez answered coolly. &ldquo;If you came across
+      one of those fellows, you would run him through the body, would you not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lieutenant now came up to the Spaniard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Captain,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;the Parisian has heard of you. He says that you are
+      the only man who really knows the passages of the Antilles and the
+      Brazilian coast. Will you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain cut him short with a scornful exclamation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall die like a sailor,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and a loyal Spaniard and a
+      Christian. Do you hear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heave him overboard!&rdquo; shouted the lieutenant, and a couple of gunners
+      seized on Gomez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cowards!&rdquo; roared the General, seizing hold of the men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t get too excited, old boy,&rdquo; said the lieutenant. &ldquo;If your red ribbon
+      has made some impression upon our captain, I myself do not care a rap for
+      it.&mdash;You and I will have our little bit of talk together directly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A smothered sound, with no accompanying cry, told the General that the
+      gallant captain had died &ldquo;like a sailor,&rdquo; as he had said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My money or death!&rdquo; cried the Marquis, in a fit of rage terrible to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! now you talk sensibly!&rdquo; sneered the lieutenant. &ldquo;That is the way to
+      get something out of us&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two of the men came up at a sign and hastened to bind the Frenchmen&rsquo;s
+      feet, but with unlooked-for boldness he snatched the lieutenant&rsquo;s cutlass
+      and laid about him like a cavalry officer who knows his business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brigands that you are! You shall not chuck one of Napoleon&rsquo;s troopers
+      over a ship&rsquo;s side like an oyster!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of pistol shots fired point blank at the Frenchman, &ldquo;the
+      Parisian&rdquo; looked round from his occupation of superintending the transfer
+      of the rigging from the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>. He came up behind the
+      brave General, seized him, dragged him to the side, and was about to fling
+      him over with no more concern than if the man had been a broken spar. They
+      were at the very edge when the General looked into the tawny eyes of the
+      man who had stolen his daughter. The recognition was mutual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain of the privateer, his arm still upraised, suddenly swung it in
+      the contrary direction as if his victim was but a feather weight, and set
+      him down at the foot of the main mast. A murmur rose on the upper deck,
+      but the captain glanced round, and there was a sudden silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is Helene&rsquo;s father,&rdquo; said the captain in a clear, firm voice. &ldquo;Woe
+      to any one who meddles with him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A hurrah of joy went up at the words, a shout rising to the sky like a
+      prayer of the church; a cry like the first high notes of the <i>Te Deum</i>.
+      The lads swung aloft in the rigging, the men below flung up their caps,
+      the gunners pounded away on the deck, there was a general thrill of
+      excitement, an outburst of oaths, yells, and shrill cries in voluble
+      chorus. The men cheered like fanatics, the General&rsquo;s misgivings deepened,
+      and he grew uneasy; it seemed to him that there was some horrible mystery
+      in such wild transports.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My daughter!&rdquo; he cried, as soon as he could speak. &ldquo;Where is my
+      daughter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For all answer, the captain of the privateer gave him a searching glance,
+      one of those glances which throw the bravest man into a confusion which no
+      theory can explain. The General was mute, not a little to the satisfaction
+      of the crew; it pleased them to see their leader exercise the strange
+      power which he possessed over all with whom he came in contact. Then the
+      captain led the way down a staircase and flung open the door of a cabin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There she is,&rdquo; he said, and disappeared, leaving the General in a stupor
+      of bewilderment at the scene before his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Helene cried out at the sight of him, and sprang up from the sofa on which
+      she was lying when the door flew open. So changed was she that none but a
+      father&rsquo;s eyes could have recognized her. The sun of the tropics had
+      brought warmer tones into the once pale face, and something of Oriental
+      charm with that wonderful coloring; there was a certain grandeur about
+      her, a majestic firmness, a profound sentiment which impresses itself upon
+      the coarsest nature. Her long, thick hair, falling in large curls about
+      her queenly throat, gave an added idea of power to the proud face. The
+      consciousness of that power shone out from every movement, every line of
+      Helene&rsquo;s form. The rose-tinted nostrils were dilated slightly with the joy
+      of triumph; the serene happiness of her life had left its plain tokens in
+      the full development of her beauty. A certain indefinable virginal grace
+      met in her with the pride of a woman who is loved. This was a slave and a
+      queen, a queen who would fain obey that she might reign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her dress was magnificent and elegant in its richness; India muslin was
+      the sole material, but her sofa and cushions were of cashmere. A Persian
+      carpet covered the floor in the large cabin, and her four children playing
+      at her feet were building castles of gems and pearl necklaces and jewels
+      of price. The air was full of the scent of rare flowers in Sevres
+      porcelain vases painted by Madame Jacotot; tiny South American birds, like
+      living rubies, sapphires, and gold, hovered among the Mexican jessamines
+      and camellias. A pianoforte had been fitted into the room, and here and
+      there on the paneled walls, covered with red silk, hung small pictures by
+      great painters&mdash;a <i>Sunset</i> by Hippolyte Schinner beside a
+      Terburg, one of Raphael&rsquo;s Madonnas scarcely yielded in charm to a sketch
+      by Gericault, while a Gerard Dow eclipsed the painters of the Empire. On a
+      lacquered table stood a golden plate full of delicious fruit. Indeed,
+      Helene might have been the sovereign lady of some great country, and this
+      cabin of hers a boudoir in which her crowned lover had brought together
+      all earth&rsquo;s treasure to please his consort. The children gazed with
+      bright, keen eyes at their grandfather. Accustomed as they were to a life
+      of battle, storm, and tumult, they recalled the Roman children in David&rsquo;s
+      <i>Brutus</i>, watching the fighting and bloodshed with curious interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! is it possible?&rdquo; cried Helene, catching her father&rsquo;s arm as if to
+      assure herself that this was no vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Helene!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They fell into each other&rsquo;s arms, and the old man&rsquo;s embrace was not so
+      close and warm as Helene&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were you on board that vessel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he answered sadly, and looking at the little ones, who gathered
+      about him and gazed with wide open eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was about to perish, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But for my husband,&rdquo; she broke in. &ldquo;I see how it was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; cried the General, &ldquo;why must I find you again like this, Helene?
+      After all the many tears that I have shed, must I still groan for your
+      fate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why?&rdquo; she asked, smiling. &ldquo;Why should you be sorry to learn that I am
+      the happiest woman under the sun?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Happy</i>?&rdquo; he cried with a start of surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, happy, my kind father,&rdquo; and she caught his hands in hers and covered
+      them with kisses, and pressed them to her throbbing heart. Her caresses,
+      and a something in the carriage of her head, were interpreted yet more
+      plainly by the joy sparkling in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how is this?&rdquo; he asked, wondering at his daughter&rsquo;s life, forgetful
+      now of everything but the bright glowing face before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen, father; I have for lover, husband, servant, and master one whose
+      soul is as great as the boundless sea, as infinite in his kindness as
+      heaven, a god on earth! Never during these seven years has a chance look,
+      or word, or gesture jarred in the divine harmony of his talk, his love,
+      his caresses. His eyes have never met mine without a gleam of happiness in
+      them; there has always been a bright smile on his lips for me. On deck,
+      his voice rises above the thunder of storms and the tumult of battle; but
+      here below it is soft and melodious as Rossini&rsquo;s music&mdash;for he has
+      Rossini&rsquo;s music sent for me. I have everything that woman&rsquo;s caprice can
+      imagine. My wishes are more than fulfilled. In short, I am a queen on the
+      seas; I am obeyed here as perhaps a queen may be obeyed.&mdash;Ah!&rdquo; she
+      cried, interrupting herself, &ldquo;<i>happy</i> did I say? Happiness is no word
+      to express such bliss as mine. All the happiness that should have fallen
+      to all the women in the world has been my share. Knowing one&rsquo;s own great
+      love and self-devotion, to find in <i>his</i> heart an infinite love in
+      which a woman&rsquo;s soul is lost, and lost for ever&mdash;tell me, is this
+      happiness? I have lived through a thousand lives even now. Here, I am
+      alone; here, I command. No other woman has set foot on this noble vessel,
+      and Victor is never more than a few paces distant from me,&mdash;he cannot
+      wander further from me than from stern to prow,&rdquo; she added, with a shade
+      of mischief in her manner. &ldquo;Seven years! A love that outlasts seven years
+      of continual joy, that endures all the tests brought by all the moments
+      that make up seven years&mdash;is this love? Oh, no, no! it is something
+      better than all that I know of life... human language fails to express the
+      bliss of heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sudden torrent of tears fell from her burning eyes. The four little ones
+      raised a piteous cry at this, and flocked like chickens about their
+      mother. The oldest boy struck the General with a threatening look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Abel, darling,&rdquo; said Helene, &ldquo;I am crying for joy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Helene took him on her knee, and the child fondled her, putting his arms
+      about her queenly neck, as a lion&rsquo;s whelp might play with the lioness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you never weary of your life?&rdquo; asked the General, bewildered by his
+      daughter&rsquo;s enthusiastic language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;sometimes, when we are on land, yet even then I have
+      never parted from my husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you need to be fond of music and balls and fetes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His voice is music for me; and for fetes, I devise new toilettes for him
+      to see. When he likes my dress, it is as if all the world admired me.
+      Simply for that reason I keep the diamonds and jewels, the precious
+      things, the flowers and masterpieces of art that he heaps upon me, saying,
+      &lsquo;Helene, as you live out of the world, I will have the world come to you.&rsquo; 
+      But for that I would fling them all overboard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there are others on board, wild, reckless men whose passions&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand, father,&rdquo; she said smiling. &ldquo;Do not fear for me. Never was
+      empress encompassed with more observance than I. The men are very
+      superstitious; they look upon me as a sort of tutelary genius, the luck of
+      the vessel. But <i>he</i> is their god; they worship him. Once, and once
+      only, one of the crew showed disrespect, mere words,&rdquo; she added, laughing;
+      &ldquo;but before Victor knew of it, the others flung the offender overboard,
+      although I forgave him. They love me as their good angel; I nurse them
+      when they are ill; several times I have been so fortunate as to save a
+      life, by constant care such as a woman can give. Poor fellows, they are
+      giants, but they are children at the same time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when there is fighting overhead?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am used to it now; I quaked for fear during the first engagement, but
+      never since.&mdash;I am used to such peril, and&mdash;I am your daughter,&rdquo;
+       she said; &ldquo;I love it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how if he should fall?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should die with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your children?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are children of the sea and of danger; they share the life of their
+      parents. We have but one life, and we do not flinch from it. We have but
+      one life, our names are written on the same page of the book of Fate, one
+      skiff bears us and our fortunes, and we know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you so love him that he is more to you than all beside?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All beside?&rdquo; echoed she. &ldquo;Let us leave that mystery alone. Yet stay!
+      there is this dear little one&mdash;well, this too is <i>he</i>,&rdquo; and
+      straining Abel to her in a tight clasp, she set eager kisses on his cheeks
+      and hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I can never forget that he has just drowned nine men!&rdquo; exclaimed the
+      General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was no help for it, doubtless,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;for he is generous and
+      humane. He sheds as little blood as may be, and only in the interests of
+      the little world which he defends, and the sacred cause for which he is
+      fighting. Talk to him about anything that seems to you to be wrong, and he
+      will convince you, you will see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was that crime of his,&rdquo; muttered the General to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how if that crime was a virtue?&rdquo; she asked, with cold dignity. &ldquo;How
+      if man&rsquo;s justice had failed to avenge a great wrong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But a private revenge!&rdquo; exclaimed her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what is hell,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;but a revenge through all eternity for the
+      wrong done in a little day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! you are lost! He has bewitched and perverted you. You are talking
+      wildly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay with us one day, father, and if you will but listen to him, and see
+      him, you will love him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Helene, France lies only a few leagues away,&rdquo; he said gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Helene trembled; then she went to the porthole and pointed to the savannas
+      of green water spreading far and wide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There lies my country,&rdquo; she said, tapping the carpet with her foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But are you not coming with me to see your mother and your sister and
+      brothers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! yes,&rdquo; she cried, with tears in her voice, &ldquo;if <i>he</i> is willing,
+      if he will come with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So,&rdquo; the General said sternly, &ldquo;you have neither country nor kin now,
+      Helene?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am his wife,&rdquo; she answered proudly, and there was something very noble
+      in her tone. &ldquo;This is the first happiness in seven years that has not come
+      to me through him,&rdquo; she said&mdash;then, as she caught her father&rsquo;s hand
+      and kissed it&mdash;&ldquo;and this is the first word of reproach that I have
+      heard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your conscience?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My conscience; he is my conscience!&rdquo; she cried, trembling from head to
+      foot. &ldquo;Here he is! Even in the thick of a fight I can tell his footstep
+      among all the others on deck,&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sudden crimson flushed her cheeks and glowed in her features, her eyes
+      lighted up, her complexion changed to velvet whiteness, there was joy and
+      love in every fibre, in the blue veins, in the unconscious trembling of
+      her whole frame. That quiver of the sensitive plant softened the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was as she had said. The captain came in, sat down in an easy-chair,
+      took up his oldest boy, and began to play with him. There was a moment&rsquo;s
+      silence, for the General&rsquo;s deep musing had grown vague and dreamy, and the
+      daintily furnished cabin and the playing children seemed like a nest of
+      halcyons, floating on the waves, between sky and sea, safe in the
+      protection of this man who steered his way amid the perils of war and
+      tempest, as other heads of household guide those in their care among the
+      hazards of common life. He gazed admiringly at Helene&mdash;a dreamlike
+      vision of some sea goddess, gracious in her loveliness, rich in happiness;
+      all the treasures about her grown poor in comparison with the wealth of
+      her nature, paling before the brightness of her eyes, the indefinable
+      romance expressed in her and her surroundings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The strangeness of the situation took the General by surprise; the ideas
+      of ordinary life were thrown into confusion by this lofty passion and
+      reasoning. Chill and narrow social conventions faded away before this
+      picture. All these things the old soldier felt, and saw no less how
+      impossible it was that his daughter should give up so wide a life, a life
+      so variously rich, filled to the full with such passionate love. And
+      Helene had tasted danger without shrinking; how could she return to the
+      pretty stage, the superficial circumscribed life of society?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the captain who broke the silence at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I in the way?&rdquo; he asked, looking at his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the General, answering for her. &ldquo;Helene has told me all. I see
+      that she is lost to us&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; the captain put in quickly; &ldquo;in a few years&rsquo; time the statute of
+      limitations will allow me to go back to France. When the conscience is
+      clear, and a man has broken the law in obedience to&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; he
+      stopped short, as if scorning to justify himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can you commit new murders, such as I have seen with my own eyes,
+      without remorse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We had no provisions,&rdquo; the privateer captain retorted calmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if you had set the men ashore&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They would have given the alarm and sent a man-of-war after us, and we
+      should never have seen Chili again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before France would have given warning to the Spanish admiralty&mdash;&rdquo;
+       began the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But France might take it amiss that a man, with a warrant still out
+      against him, should seize a brig chartered by Bordeaux merchants. And for
+      that matter, have you never fired a shot or so too many in battle?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The General shrank under the other&rsquo;s eyes. He said no more, and his
+      daughter looked at him half sadly, half triumphant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;General,&rdquo; the privateer continued, in a deep voice, &ldquo;I have made it a
+      rule to abstract nothing from booty. But even so, my share will be beyond
+      a doubt far larger than your fortune. Permit me to return it to you in
+      another form&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew a pile of banknotes from the piano, and without counting the
+      packets handed a million of francs to the Marquis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can understand,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that I cannot spend my time in watching
+      vessels pass by to Bordeaux. So unless the dangers of this Bohemian life
+      of ours have some attraction for you, unless you care to see South America
+      and the nights of the tropics, and a bit of fighting now and again for the
+      pleasure of helping to win a triumph for a young nation, or for the name
+      of Simon Bolivar, we must part. The long boat manned with a trustworthy
+      crew is ready for you. And now let us hope that our third meeting will be
+      completely happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Victor,&rdquo; said Helene in a dissatisfied tone, &ldquo;I should like to see a
+      little more of my father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ten minutes more or less may bring up a French frigate. However, so be
+      it, we shall have a little fun. The men find things dull.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, father, go!&rdquo; cried Helene, &ldquo;and take these keepsakes from me to my
+      sister and brothers and&mdash;mother,&rdquo; she added. She caught up a handful
+      of jewels and precious stones, folded them in an Indian shawl, and timidly
+      held it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what shall I say to them from you?&rdquo; asked he. Her hesitation on the
+      word &ldquo;mother&rdquo; seemed to have struck him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! can you doubt me? I pray for their happiness every day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Helene,&rdquo; he began, as he watched her closely, &ldquo;how if we should not meet
+      again? Shall I never know why you left us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That secret is not mine,&rdquo; she answered gravely. &ldquo;Even if I had the right
+      to tell it, perhaps I should not. For ten years I was more miserable than
+      words can say&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She broke off, and gave her father the presents for her family. The
+      General had acquired tolerably easy views as to booty in the course of a
+      soldier&rsquo;s career, so he took Helene&rsquo;s gifts and comforted himself with the
+      reflection that the Parisian captain was sure to wage war against the
+      Spaniards as an honorable man, under the influence of Helene&rsquo;s pure and
+      high-minded nature. His passion for courage carried all before it. It was
+      ridiculous, he thought, to be squeamish in the matter; so he shook hands
+      cordially with his captor, and kissed Helene, his only daughter, with a
+      soldier&rsquo;s expansiveness; letting fall a tear on the face with the proud,
+      strong look that once he had loved to see. &ldquo;The Parisian,&rdquo; deeply moved,
+      brought the children for his blessing. The parting was over, the last
+      good-bye was a long farewell look, with something of tender regret on
+      either side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A strange sight to seaward met the General&rsquo;s eyes. The <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>
+      was blazing like a huge bonfire. The men told off to sink the Spanish brig
+      had found a cargo of rum on board; and as the <i>Othello</i> was already
+      amply supplied, had lighted a floating bowl of punch on the high seas, by
+      way of a joke; a pleasantry pardonable enough in sailors, who hail any
+      chance excitement as a relief from the apparent monotony of life at sea.
+      As the General went over the side into the long-boat of the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i>,
+      manned by six vigorous rowers, he could not help looking at the burning
+      vessel, as well as at the daughter who stood by her husband&rsquo;s side on the
+      stern of the <i>Othello</i>. He saw Helene&rsquo;s white dress flutter like one
+      more sail in the breeze; he saw the tall, noble figure against a
+      background of sea, queenly still even in the presence of Ocean; and so
+      many memories crowded up in his mind, that, with a soldier&rsquo;s recklessness
+      of life, he forgot that he was being borne over the grave of the brave
+      Gomez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A vast column of smoke rising spread like a brown cloud, pierced here and
+      there by fantastic shafts of sunlight. It was a second sky, a murky dome
+      reflecting the glow of the fire as if the under surface had been
+      burnished; but above it soared the unchanging blue of the firmament, a
+      thousand times fairer for the short-lived contrast. The strange hues of
+      the smoke cloud, black and red, tawny and pale by turns, blurred and
+      blending into each other, shrouded the burning vessel as it flared,
+      crackled and groaned; the hissing tongues of flame licked up the rigging,
+      and flashed across the hull, like a rumor of riot flashing along the
+      streets of a city. The burning rum sent up blue flitting lights. Some sea
+      god might have been stirring the furious liquor as a student stirs the
+      joyous flames of punch in an orgy. But in the overpowering sunlight,
+      jealous of the insolent blaze, the colors were scarcely visible, and the
+      smoke was but a film fluttering like a thin scarf in the noonday torrent
+      of light and heat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>Othello</i> made the most of the little wind she could gain to fly
+      on her new course. Swaying first to one side, then to the other, like a
+      stag beetle on the wing, the fair vessel beat to windward on her zigzag
+      flight to the south. Sometimes she was hidden from sight by the straight
+      column of smoke that flung fantastic shadows across the water, then
+      gracefully she shot out clear of it, and Helene, catching sight of her
+      father, waved her handkerchief for yet one more farewell greeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few more minutes, and the <i>Saint-Ferdinand</i> went down with a
+      bubbling turmoil, at once effaced by the ocean. Nothing of all that had
+      been was left but a smoke cloud hanging in the breeze. The <i>Othello</i>
+      was far away, the long-boat had almost reached land, the cloud came
+      between the frail skiff and the brig, and it was through a break in the
+      swaying smoke that the General caught the last glimpse of Helene. A
+      prophetic vision! Her dress and her white handkerchief stood out against
+      the murky background. Then the brig was not even visible between the green
+      water and the blue sky, and Helene was nothing but an imperceptible speck,
+      a faint graceful line, an angel in heaven, a mental image, a memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquis had retrieved his fortunes, when he died, worn out with toil.
+      A few months after his death, in 1833, the Marquise was obliged to take
+      Moina to a watering-place in the Pyrenees, for the capricious child had a
+      wish to see the beautiful mountain scenery. They left the baths, and the
+      following tragical incident occurred on their way home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me, mother,&rdquo; said Moina, &ldquo;it was very foolish of us not to stay
+      among the mountains a few days longer. It was much nicer there. Did you
+      hear that horrid child moaning all night, and that wretched woman,
+      gabbling away in patois no doubt, for I could not understand a single word
+      she said. What kind of people can they have put in the next room to ours?
+      This is one of the horridest nights I have ever spent in my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard nothing,&rdquo; said the Marquise, &ldquo;but I will see the landlady,
+      darling, and engage the next room, and then we shall have the whole suite
+      of rooms to ourselves, and there will be no more noise. How do you feel
+      this morning? Are you tired?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she spoke, the Marquise rose and went to Moina&rsquo;s bedside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us see,&rdquo; she said, feeling for the girl&rsquo;s hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! let me alone, mother,&rdquo; said Moina; &ldquo;your fingers are cold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned her head round on the pillow as she spoke, pettishly, but with
+      such engaging grace, that a mother could scarcely have taken it amiss.
+      Just then a wailing cry echoed through the next room, a faint prolonged
+      cry, that must surely have gone to the heart of any woman who heard it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, if you heard <i>that</i> all night long, why did you not wake me? We
+      should have&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A deeper moan than any that had gone before it interrupted the Marquise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some one is dying there,&rdquo; she cried, and hurried out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Send Pauline to me!&rdquo; called Moina. &ldquo;I shall get up and dress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise hastened downstairs, and found the landlady in the courtyard
+      with a little group about her, apparently much interested in something
+      that she was telling them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, you have put some one in the next room who seems to be very ill
+      indeed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! don&rsquo;t talk to me about it!&rdquo; cried the mistress of the house. &ldquo;I have
+      just sent some one for the mayor. Just imagine it; it is a woman, a poor
+      unfortunate creature that came here last night on foot. She comes from
+      Spain; she has no passport and no money; she was carrying her baby on her
+      back, and the child was dying. I could not refuse to take her in. I went
+      up to see her this morning myself; for when she turned up yesterday, it
+      made me feel dreadfully bad to look at her. Poor soul! she and the child
+      were lying in bed, and both of them at death&rsquo;s door. &lsquo;Madame,&rsquo; says she,
+      pulling a gold ring off her finger, &lsquo;this is all that I have left; take it
+      in payment, it will be enough; I shall not stay here long. Poor little
+      one! we shall die together soon!&rsquo; she said, looking at the child. I took
+      her ring, and I asked her who she was, but she never would tell me her
+      name.... I have just sent for the doctor and M. le Maire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you must do all that can be done for her,&rdquo; cried the Marquise. &ldquo;Good
+      heavens! perhaps it is not too late! I will pay for everything that is
+      necessary&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! my lady, she looks to me uncommonly proud, and I don&rsquo;t know that she
+      would allow it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go to see her at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise went up forthwith to the stranger&rsquo;s room, without thinking of
+      the shock that the sight of her widow&rsquo;s weeds might give to a woman who
+      was said to be dying. At the sight of that dying woman the Marquise turned
+      pale. In spite of the changes wrought by fearful suffering in Helene&rsquo;s
+      beautiful face, she recognized her eldest daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Helene, when she saw a woman dressed in black, sat upright in bed with
+      a shriek of horror. Then she sank back; she knew her mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My daughter,&rdquo; said Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont, &ldquo;what is to be done? Pauline!...
+      Moina!...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing now for me,&rdquo; said Helene faintly. &ldquo;I had hoped to see my father
+      once more, but your mourning&mdash;&rdquo; she broke off, clutched her child to
+      her heart as if to give it warmth, and kissed its forehead. Then she
+      turned her eyes on her mother, and the Marquise met the old reproach in
+      them, tempered with forgiveness, it is true, but still reproach. She saw
+      it, and would not see it. She forgot that Helene was the child conceived
+      amid tears and despair, the child of duty, the cause of one of the
+      greatest sorrows in her life. She stole to her eldest daughter&rsquo;s side,
+      remembering nothing but that Helene was her firstborn, the child who had
+      taught her to know the joys of motherhood. The mother&rsquo;s eyes were full of
+      tears. &ldquo;Helene, my child!...&rdquo; she cried, with her arms about her daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Helene was silent. Her own babe had just drawn its last breath on her
+      breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moina came into the room with Pauline, her maid, and the landlady and the
+      doctor. The Marquise was holding her daughter&rsquo;s ice-cold hand in both of
+      hers, and gazing at her in despair; but the widowed woman, who had escaped
+      shipwreck with but one of all her fair band of children, spoke in a voice
+      that was dreadful to hear. &ldquo;All this is your work,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;If you had
+      but been for me all that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moina, go! Go out of the room, all of you!&rdquo; cried Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont, her
+      shrill tones drowning Helene&rsquo;s voice.&mdash;&ldquo;For pity&rsquo;s sake,&rdquo; she
+      continued, &ldquo;let us not begin these miserable quarrels again now&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will be silent,&rdquo; Helene answered with a preternatural effort. &ldquo;I am a
+      mother; I know that Moina ought not... Where is my child?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Moina came back, impelled by curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sister,&rdquo; said the spoiled child, &ldquo;the doctor&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all of no use,&rdquo; said Helene. &ldquo;Oh! why did I not die as a girl of
+      sixteen when I meant to take my own life? There is no happiness outside
+      the laws. Moina... you...&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her head sank till her face lay against the face of the little one; in her
+      agony she strained her babe to her breast, and died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your sister, Moina,&rdquo; said Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont, bursting into tears when she
+      reached her room, &ldquo;your sister meant no doubt to tell you that a girl will
+      never find happiness in a romantic life, in living as nobody else does,
+      and, above all things, far away from her mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI. THE OLD AGE OF A GUILTY MOTHER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was one of the earliest June days of the year 1844. A lady of fifty or
+      thereabouts, for she looked older than her actual age, was pacing up and
+      down one of the sunny paths in the garden of a great mansion in the Rue
+      Plument in Paris. It was noon. The lady took two or three turns along the
+      gently winding garden walk, careful never to lose sight of a certain row
+      of windows, to which she seemed to give her whole attention; then she sat
+      down on a bench, a piece of elegant semi-rusticity made of branches with
+      the bark left on the wood. From the place where she sat she could look
+      through the garden railings along the inner boulevards to the wonderful
+      dome of the Invalides rising above the crests of a forest of elm-trees,
+      and see the less striking view of her own grounds terminating in the gray
+      stone front of one of the finest hotels in the Faubourg Saint-Germain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Silence lay over the neighboring gardens, and the boulevards stretching
+      away to the Invalides. Day scarcely begins at noon in that aristocratic
+      quarter, and masters and servants are all alike asleep, or just awakening,
+      unless some young lady takes it into her head to go for an early ride, or
+      a gray-headed diplomatist rises betimes to redraft a protocol.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The elderly lady stirring abroad at that hour was the Marquise
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont, the mother of Mme. de Saint-Hereen, to whom the great house
+      belonged. The Marquise had made over the mansion and almost her whole
+      fortune to her daughter, reserving only an annuity for herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Comtesse Moina de Saint-Hereen was Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s youngest child.
+      The Marquise had made every sacrifice to marry her daughter to the eldest
+      son of one of the greatest houses of France; and this was only what might
+      have been expected, for the lady had lost her sons, first one and then the
+      other. Gustave, Marquis d&rsquo;Aiglemont, had died of the cholera; Abel, the
+      second, had fallen in Algeria. Gustave had left a widow and children, but
+      the dowager&rsquo;s affection for her sons had been only moderately warm, and
+      for the next generation it was decidedly tepid. She was always civil to
+      her daughter-in-law, but her feeling towards the young Marquise was the
+      distinctly conventional affection which good taste and good manners
+      require us to feel for our relatives. The fortunes of her dead children
+      having been settled, she could devote her savings and her own property to
+      her darling Moina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moina, beautiful and fascinating from childhood, was Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s
+      favorite; loved beyond all the others with an instinctive or involuntary
+      love, a fatal drawing of the heart, which sometimes seems inexplicable,
+      sometimes, and to a close observer, only too easy to explain. Her
+      darling&rsquo;s pretty face, the sound of Moina&rsquo;s voice, her ways, her manner,
+      her looks and gestures, roused all the deepest emotions that can stir a
+      mother&rsquo;s heart with trouble, rapture, or delight. The springs of the
+      Marquise&rsquo;s life, of yesterday, to-morrow, and to-day, lay in that young
+      heart. Moina, with better fortune, had survived four older children. As a
+      matter of fact, Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont had lost her eldest daughter, a charming
+      girl, in a most unfortunate manner, said gossip, nobody knew exactly what
+      became of her; and then she lost a little boy of five by a dreadful
+      accident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child of her affections had, however, been spared to her, and
+      doubtless the Marquise saw the will of Heaven in that fact; for those who
+      had died, she kept but very shadowy recollections in some far-off corner
+      of her heart; her memories of her dead children were like the headstones
+      on a battlefield, you can scarcely see them for the flowers that have
+      sprung up about them since. Of course, if the world had chosen, it might
+      have said some hard truths about the Marquise, might have taken her to
+      task for shallowness and an overweening preference for one child at the
+      expense of the rest; but the world of Paris is swept along by the full
+      flood of new events, new ideas, and new fashions, and it was inevitable
+      the Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont should be in some sort allowed to drop out of sight.
+      So nobody thought of blaming her for coldness or neglect which concerned
+      no one, whereas her quick, apprehensive tenderness for Moina was found
+      highly interesting by not a few who respected it as a sort of
+      superstition. Besides, the Marquise scarcely went into society at all; and
+      the few families who knew her thought of her as a kindly, gentle,
+      indulgent woman, wholly devoted to her family. What but a curiosity, keen
+      indeed, would seek to pry beneath the surface with which the world is
+      quite satisfied? And what would we not pardon to old people, if only they
+      will efface themselves like shadows, and consent to be regarded as
+      memories and nothing more!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont became a kind of example complacently held up by
+      the younger generation to fathers of families, and frequently cited to
+      mothers-in-law. She had made over her property to Moina in her own
+      lifetime; the young Countess&rsquo; happiness was enough for her, she only lived
+      in her daughter. If some cautious old person or morose uncle here and
+      there condemned the course with&mdash;&ldquo;Perhaps Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont may be
+      sorry some day that she gave up her fortune to her daughter; she may be
+      sure of Moina, but how can she be equally sure of her son-in-law?&rdquo;&mdash;these
+      prophets were cried down on all sides, and from all sides a chorus of
+      praise went up for Moina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It ought to be said, in justice to Mme. de Saint-Hereen, that her mother
+      cannot feel the slightest difference,&rdquo; remarked a young married woman.
+      &ldquo;Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont is admirably well housed. She has a carriage at her
+      disposal, and can go everywhere just as she used to do&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Except to the Italiens,&rdquo; remarked a low voice. (This was an elderly
+      parasite, one of those persons who show their independence&mdash;as they
+      think&mdash;by riddling their friends with epigrams.) &ldquo;Except to the
+      Italiens. And if the dowager cares for anything on this earth but her
+      daughter&mdash;it is music. Such a good performer she was in her time! But
+      the Countess&rsquo; box is always full of young butterflies, and the Countess&rsquo; 
+      mother would be in the way; the young lady is talked about already as a
+      great flirt. So the poor mother never goes to the Italiens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mme. de Saint-Hereen has delightful &lsquo;At Homes&rsquo; for her mother,&rdquo; said a
+      rosebud. &ldquo;All Paris goes to her salon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And no one pays any attention to the Marquise,&rdquo; returned the parasite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The fact is that Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont is never alone,&rdquo; remarked a coxcomb,
+      siding with the young women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the morning,&rdquo; the old observer continued in a discreet voice, &ldquo;in the
+      morning dear Moina is asleep. At four o&rsquo;clock dear Moina drives in the
+      Bois. In the evening dear Moina goes to a ball or to the Bouffes.&mdash;Still,
+      it is certainly true that Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont has the privilege of seeing her
+      dear daughter while she dresses, and again at dinner, if dear Moina
+      happens to dine with her mother. Not a week ago, sir,&rdquo; continued the
+      elderly person, laying his hand on the arm of the shy tutor, a new arrival
+      in the house, &ldquo;not a week ago, I saw the poor mother, solitary and sad, by
+      her own fireside.&mdash;&lsquo;What is the matter?&rsquo; I asked. The Marquise looked
+      up smiling, but I am quite sure that she had been crying.&mdash;&lsquo;I was
+      thinking that it is a strange thing that I should be left alone when I
+      have had five children,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;but that is our destiny! And besides,
+      I am happy when I know that Moina is enjoying herself.&rsquo;&mdash;She could
+      say that to me, for I knew her husband when he was alive. A poor stick he
+      was, and uncommonly lucky to have such a wife; it was certainly owing to
+      her that he was made a peer of France, and had a place at Court under
+      Charles X.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet such mistaken ideas get about in social gossip, and such mischief is
+      done by it, that the historian of manners is bound to exercise his
+      discretion, and weigh the assertions so recklessly made. After all, who is
+      to say that either mother or daughter was right or wrong? There is but One
+      who can read and judge their hearts! And how often does He wreak His
+      vengeance in the family circle, using throughout all time children as His
+      instruments against their mothers, and fathers against their sons, raising
+      up peoples against kings, and princes against peoples, sowing strife and
+      division everywhere? And in the world of ideas, are not opinions and
+      feelings expelled by new feelings and opinions, much as withered leaves
+      are thrust forth by the young leaf-buds in the spring?&mdash;all in
+      obedience to the immutable Scheme; all to some end which God alone knows.
+      Yet, surely, all things proceed to Him, or rather, to Him all things
+      return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such thoughts of religion, the natural thoughts of age, floated up now and
+      again on the current of Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s thoughts; they were always
+      dimly present in her mind, but sometimes they shone out clearly, sometimes
+      they were carried under, like flowers tossed on the vexed surface of a
+      stormy sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat on a garden-seat, tired with walking, exhausted with much thinking&mdash;with
+      the long thoughts in which a whole lifetime rises up before the mind, and
+      is spread out like a scroll before the eyes of those who feel that Death
+      is near.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If a poet had chanced to pass along the boulevard, he would have found an
+      interesting picture in the face of this woman, grown old before her time.
+      As she sat under the dotted shadow of the acacia, the shadow the acacia
+      casts at noon, a thousand thoughts were written for all the world to see
+      on her features, pale and cold even in the hot, bright sunlight. There was
+      something sadder than the sense of waning life in that expressive face,
+      some trouble that went deeper than the weariness of experience. It was a
+      face of a type that fixes you in a moment among a host of characterless
+      faces that fail to draw a second glance, a face to set you thinking. Among
+      a thousand pictures in a gallery, you are strongly impressed by the
+      sublime anguish on the face of some Madonna of Murillo&rsquo;s; by some <i>Beatrice
+      Cenci</i> in which Guido&rsquo;s art portrays the most touching innocence
+      against a background of horror and crime; by the awe and majesty that
+      should encircle a king, caught once and for ever by Velasquez in the
+      sombre face of a Philip II., and so is it with some living human faces;
+      they are tyrannous pictures which speak to you, submit you to searching
+      scrutiny, and give response to your inmost thoughts, nay, there are faces
+      that set forth a whole drama, and Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s stony face was one of
+      these awful tragedies, one of such faces as Dante Alighieri saw by
+      thousands in his vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the little season that a woman&rsquo;s beauty is in flower it serves her
+      admirably well in the dissimulation to which her natural weakness and our
+      social laws condemn her. A young face and rich color, and eyes that glow
+      with light, a gracious maze of such subtle, manifold lines and curves,
+      flawless and perfectly traced, is a screen that hides everything that
+      stirs the woman within. A flush tells nothing, it only heightens the
+      coloring so brilliant already; all the fires that burn within can add
+      little light to the flame of life in eyes which only seem the brighter for
+      the flash of a passing pain. Nothing is so discreet as a young face, for
+      nothing is less mobile; it has the serenity, the surface smoothness, and
+      the freshness of a lake. There is not character in women&rsquo;s faces before
+      the age of thirty. The painter discovers nothing there but pink and white,
+      and the smile and expression that repeat the same thought in the same way&mdash;a
+      thought of youth and love that goes no further than youth and love. But
+      the face of an old woman has expressed all that lay in her nature; passion
+      has carved lines on her features; love and wifehood and motherhood, and
+      extremes of joy and anguish, having wrung them, and left their traces in a
+      thousand wrinkles, all of which speak a language of their own; then it is
+      that a woman&rsquo;s face becomes sublime in its horror, beautiful in its
+      melancholy, grand in its calm. If it is permissible to carry the strange
+      metaphor still further, it might be said that in the dried-up lake you can
+      see the traces of all the torrents that once poured into it and made it
+      what it is. An old face is nothing to the frivolous world; the frivolous
+      world is shocked by the sight of the destruction of such comeliness as it
+      can understand; a commonplace artist sees nothing there. An old face is
+      the province of the poets among poets of those who can recognize that
+      something which is called Beauty, apart from all the conventions
+      underlying so many superstitions in art and taste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont wore a fashionable bonnet, it was easy to see that
+      her once black hair had been bleached by cruel sorrows; yet her good taste
+      and the gracious acquired instincts of a woman of fashion could be seen in
+      the way she wore it, divided into two <i>bandeaux</i>, following the
+      outlines of a forehead that still retained some traces of former dazzling
+      beauty, worn and lined though it was. The contours of her face, the
+      regularity of her features, gave some idea, faint in truth, of that beauty
+      of which surely she had once been proud; but those traces spoke still more
+      plainly of the anguish which had laid it waste, of sharp pain that had
+      withered the temples, and made those hollows in her cheeks, and empurpled
+      the eyelids, and robbed them of their lashes, and the eyes of their charm.
+      She was in every way so noiseless; she moved with a slow, self-contained
+      gravity that showed itself in her whole bearing, and struck a certain awe
+      into others. Her diffident manner had changed to positive shyness, due
+      apparently to a habit now of some years&rsquo; growth, of effacing herself in
+      her daughter&rsquo;s presence. She spoke very seldom, and in the low tones used
+      by those who perforce must live within themselves a life of reflection and
+      concentration. This demeanor led others to regard her with an indefinable
+      feeling which was neither awe nor compassion, but a mysterious blending of
+      the many ideas awakened in us by compassion and awe. Finally, there was
+      something in her wrinkles, in the lines of her face, in the look of pain
+      in those wan eyes of hers, that bore eloquent testimony to tears that
+      never had fallen, tears that had been absorbed by her heart. Unhappy
+      creatures, accustomed to raise their eyes to heaven, in mute appeal
+      against the bitterness of their lot, would have seen at once from her eyes
+      that she was broken in to the cruel discipline of ceaseless prayer, would
+      have discerned the almost imperceptible symptoms of the secret bruises
+      which destroy all the flowers of the soul, even the sentiment of
+      motherhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Painters have colors for these portraits, but words, and the mental images
+      called up by words, fail to reproduce such impressions faithfully; there
+      are mysterious signs and tokens in the tones of the coloring and in the
+      look of human faces, which the mind only seizes through the sense of
+      sight; and the poet is fain to record the tale of the events which wrought
+      the havoc to make their terrible ravages understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The face spoke of cold and steady storm, an inward conflict between a
+      mother&rsquo;s long-suffering and the limitations of our nature, for our human
+      affections are bounded by our humanity, and the infinite has no place in
+      finite creatures. Sorrow endured in silence had at last produced an
+      indefinable morbid something in this woman. Doubtless mental anguish had
+      reacted on the physical frame, and some disease, perhaps an aneurism, was
+      undermining Julie&rsquo;s life. Deep-seated grief lies to all appearance very
+      quietly in the depths where it is conceived, yet, so still and apparently
+      dormant as it is, it ceaselessly corrodes the soul, like the terrible acid
+      which eats away crystal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two tears made their way down the Marquise&rsquo;s cheeks; she rose to her feet
+      as if some thought more poignant than any that preceded it had cut her to
+      the quick. She had doubtless come to a conclusion as to Moina&rsquo;s future;
+      and now, foreseeing clearly all the troubles in store for her child, the
+      sorrows of her own unhappy life had begun to weigh once more upon her. The
+      key of her position must be sought in her daughter&rsquo;s situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Comte de Saint-Hereen had been away for nearly six months on a
+      political mission. The Countess, whether from sheer giddiness, or in
+      obedience to the countless instincts of woman&rsquo;s coquetry, or to essay its
+      power&mdash;with all the vanity of a frivolous fine lady, all the
+      capricious waywardness of a child&mdash;was amusing herself, during her
+      husband&rsquo;s absence, by playing with the passion of a clever but heartless
+      man, distracted (so he said) with love, the love that combines readily
+      with every petty social ambition of a self-conceited coxcomb. Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont, whose long experience had given her a knowledge of life, and
+      taught her to judge of men and to dread the world, watched the course of
+      this flirtation, and saw that it could only end in one way, if her
+      daughter should fall into the hands of an utterly unscrupulous intriguer.
+      How could it be other than a terrible thought for her that her daughter
+      listened willingly to this <i>roue</i>? Her darling stood on the brink of
+      a precipice, she felt horribly sure of it, yet dared not hold her back.
+      She was afraid of the Countess. She knew too that Moina would not listen
+      to her wise warnings; she knew that she had no influence over that nature&mdash;iron
+      for her, silken-soft for all others. Her mother&rsquo;s tenderness might have
+      led her to sympathize with the troubles of a passion called forth by the
+      nobler qualities of a lover, but this was no passion&mdash;it was
+      coquetry, and the Marquise despised Alfred de Vandenesse, knowing that he
+      had entered upon this flirtation with Moina as if it were a game of chess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if Alfred de Vandenesse made her shudder with disgust, she was obliged&mdash;unhappy
+      mother!&mdash;to conceal the strongest reason for her loathing in the
+      deepest recesses of her heart. She was on terms of intimate friendship
+      with the Marquis de Vandenesse, the young man&rsquo;s father; and this
+      friendship, a respectable one in the eyes of the world, excused the son&rsquo;s
+      constant presence in the house, he professing an old attachment, dating
+      from childhood, for Mme. de Saint-Hereen. More than this, in vain did Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont nerve herself to come between Moina and Alfred de Vandenesse
+      with a terrible word, knowing beforehand that she should not succeed;
+      knowing that the strong reason which ought to separate them would carry no
+      weight; that she should humiliate herself vainly in her daughter&rsquo;s eyes.
+      Alfred was too corrupt; Moina too clever to believe the revelation; the
+      young Countess would turn it off and treat it as a piece of maternal
+      strategy. Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont had built her prison walls with her own hands;
+      she had immured herself only to see Moina&rsquo;s happiness ruined thence before
+      she died; she was to look on helplessly at the ruin of the young life
+      which had been her pride and joy and comfort, a life a thousand times
+      dearer to her than her own. What words can describe anguish so hideous
+      beyond belief, such unfathomed depths of pain?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited for Moina to rise, with the impatience and sickening dread of a
+      doomed man, who longs to have done with life, and turns cold at the
+      thought of the headsman. She had braced herself for a last effort, but
+      perhaps the prospect of the certain failure of the attempt was less
+      dreadful to her than the fear of receiving yet again one of those thrusts
+      that went to her very heart&mdash;before that fear her courage ebbed away.
+      Her mother&rsquo;s love had come to this. To love her child, to be afraid of
+      her, to shrink from the thought of the stab, yet to go forward. So great
+      is a mother&rsquo;s affection in a loving nature, that before it can fade away
+      into indifference the mother herself must die or find support in some
+      great power without her, in religion or another love. Since the Marquise
+      rose that morning, her fatal memory had called up before her some of those
+      things, so slight to all appearance, that make landmarks in a life.
+      Sometimes, indeed, a whole tragedy grows out of a single gesture; the tone
+      in which a few words were spoken rends a whole life in two; a glance into
+      indifferent eyes is the deathblow of the gladdest love; and, unhappily,
+      such gestures and such words were only too familiar to Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&mdash;she
+      had met so many glances that wound the soul. No, there was nothing in
+      those memories to bid her hope. On the contrary, everything went to show
+      that Alfred had destroyed her hold on her daughter&rsquo;s heart, that the
+      thought of her was now associated with duty&mdash;not with gladness. In
+      ways innumerable, in things that were mere trifles in themselves, the
+      Countess&rsquo; detestable conduct rose up before her mother; and the Marquise,
+      it may be, looked on Moina&rsquo;s undutifulness as a punishment, and found
+      excuses for her daughter in the will of Heaven, that so she still might
+      adore the hand that smote her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these things passed through her memory that morning, and each
+      recollection wounded her afresh so sorely, that with a very little
+      additional pain her brimming cup of bitterness must have overflowed. A
+      cold look might kill her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little details of domestic life are difficult to paint; but one or two
+      perhaps will suffice to give an idea of the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise d&rsquo;Aiglemont, for instance, had grown rather deaf, but she
+      could never induce Moina to raise her voice for her. Once, with the
+      naivete of suffering, she had begged Moina to repeat some remark which she
+      had failed to catch, and Moina obeyed, but with so bad a grace, the Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont had never permitted herself to make her modest request again.
+      Ever since that day when Moina was talking or retailing a piece of news,
+      her mother was careful to come near to listen; but this infirmity of
+      deafness appeared to put the Countess out of patience, and she would
+      grumble thoughtlessly about it. This instance is one from among very many
+      that must have gone to the mother&rsquo;s heart; and yet nearly all of them
+      might have escaped a close observer, they consisted in faint shades of
+      manner invisible to any but a woman&rsquo;s eyes. Take another example. Mme.
+      d&rsquo;Aiglemont happened to say one day that the Princesse de Cadignan had
+      called upon her. &ldquo;Did she come to see <i>you</i>!&rdquo; Moina exclaimed. That
+      was all, but the Countess&rsquo; voice and manner expressed surprise and
+      well-bred contempt in semitones. Any heart, still young and sensitive,
+      might well have applauded the philanthropy of savage tribes who kill off
+      their old people when they grow too feeble to cling to a strongly shaken
+      bough. Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont rose smiling, and went away to weep alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well-bred people, and women especially, only betray their feelings by
+      imperceptible touches; but those who can look back over their own
+      experience on such bruises as this mother&rsquo;s heart received, know also how
+      the heart-strings vibrate to these light touches. Overcome by her
+      memories, Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont recollected one of those microscopically small
+      things, so stinging and so painful was it that never till this moment had
+      she felt all the heartless contempt that lurked beneath smiles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of shutters thrown back at her daughter&rsquo;s windows, she dried
+      her tears, and hastened up the pathway by the railings. As she went, it
+      struck her that the gardener had been unusually careful to rake the sand
+      along the walk which had been neglected for some little time. As she stood
+      under her daughter&rsquo;s windows, the shutters were hastily closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moina, is it you?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Marquise went on into the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mme. la Comtesse is in the little drawing-room,&rdquo; said the maid, when the
+      Marquise asked whether Mme. de Saint-Hereen had finished dressing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont hurried to the little drawing-room; her heart was too
+      full, her brain too busy to notice matters so slight; but there on the
+      sofa sat the Countess in her loose morning-gown, her hair in disorder
+      under the cap tossed carelessly on he head, her feet thrust into slippers.
+      The key of her bedroom hung at her girdle. Her face, aglow with color,
+      bore traces of almost stormy thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What makes people come in!&rdquo; she cried, crossly. &ldquo;Oh! it is you, mother,&rdquo;
+       she interrupted herself, with a preoccupied look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, child; it is your mother&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Something in her tone turned those words into an outpouring of the heart,
+      the cry of some deep inward feeling, only to be described by the word
+      &ldquo;holy.&rdquo; So thoroughly in truth had she rehabilitated the sacred character
+      of a mother, that her daughter was impressed, and turned towards her, with
+      something of awe, uneasiness, and remorse in her manner. The room was the
+      furthest of a suite, and safe from indiscreet intrusion, for no one could
+      enter it without giving warning of approach through the previous
+      apartments. The Marquise closed the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is my duty, my child, to warn you in one of the most serious crises in
+      the lives of us women; you have perhaps reached it unconsciously, and I am
+      come to speak to you as a friend rather than as a mother. When you
+      married, you acquired freedom of action; you are only accountable to your
+      husband now; but I asserted my authority so little (perhaps I was wrong),
+      that I think I have a right to expect you to listen to me, for once at
+      least, in a critical position when you must need counsel. Bear in mind,
+      Moina that you are married to a man of high ability, a man of whom you may
+      well be proud, a man who&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you are going to say, mother!&rdquo; Moina broke in pettishly. &ldquo;I
+      am to be lectured about Alfred&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moina,&rdquo; the Marquise said gravely, as she struggled with her tears, &ldquo;you
+      would not guess at once if you did not feel&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; asked Moina, almost haughtily. &ldquo;Why, really, mother&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont summoned up all her strength. &ldquo;Moina,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you
+      must attend carefully to this that I ought to tell you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am attending,&rdquo; returned the Countess, folding her arms, and affecting
+      insolent submission. &ldquo;Permit me, mother, to ring for Pauline,&rdquo; she added
+      with incredible self-possession; &ldquo;I will send her away first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She rang the bell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear child, Pauline cannot possibly hear&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma,&rdquo; interrupted the Countess, with a gravity which must have struck
+      her mother as something unusual, &ldquo;I must&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped short, for the woman was in the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pauline, go <i>yourself</i> to Baudran&rsquo;s, and ask why my hat has not yet
+      been sent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Countess reseated herself and scrutinized her mother. The
+      Marquise, with a swelling heart and dry eyes, in painful agitation, which
+      none but a mother can fully understand, began to open Moina&rsquo;s eyes to the
+      risk that she was running. But either the Countess felt hurt and indignant
+      at her mother&rsquo;s suspicions of a son of the Marquis de Vandenesse, or she
+      was seized with a sudden fit of inexplicable levity caused by the
+      inexperience of youth. She took advantage of a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma, I thought you were only jealous of <i>the father</i>&mdash;&rdquo; she
+      said, with a forced laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont shut her eyes and bent her head at the words, with a very
+      faint, almost inaudible sigh. She looked up and out into space, as if she
+      felt the common overmastering impulse to appeal to God at the great crises
+      of our lives; then she looked at her daughter, and her eyes were full of
+      awful majesty and the expression of profound sorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My child,&rdquo; she said, and her voice was hardly recognizable, &ldquo;you have
+      been less merciful to your mother than he against whom she sinned; less
+      merciful than perhaps God Himself will be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont rose; at the door she turned; but she saw nothing but
+      surprise in her daughter&rsquo;s face. She went out. Scarcely had she reached
+      the garden when her strength failed her. There was a violent pain at her
+      heart, and she sank down on a bench. As her eyes wandered over the path,
+      she saw fresh marks on the path, a man&rsquo;s footprints were distinctly
+      recognizable. It was too late, then, beyond a doubt. Now she began to
+      understand the reason for that order given to Pauline, and with these
+      torturing thoughts came a revelation more hateful than any that had gone
+      before it. She drew her own inferences&mdash;the son of the Marquis de
+      Vandenesse had destroyed all feeling of respect for her in her daughter&rsquo;s
+      mind. The physical pain grew worse; by degrees she lost consciousness, and
+      sat like one asleep upon the garden-seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Countess de Saint-Hereen, left to herself, thought that her mother had
+      given her a somewhat shrewd home-thrust, but a kiss and a few attentions
+      that evening would make all right again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A shrill cry came from the garden. She leaned carelessly out, as Pauline,
+      not yet departed on her errand, called out for help, holding the Marquise
+      in her arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not frighten my daughter!&rdquo; those were the last words the mother
+      uttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moina saw them carry in a pale and lifeless form that struggled for
+      breath, and arms moving restlessly as in protest or effort to speak; and
+      overcome by the sight, Moina followed in silence, and helped to undress
+      her mother and lay her on her bed. The burden of her fault was greater
+      than she could bear. In that supreme hour she learned to know her mother&mdash;too
+      late, she could make no reparation now. She would have them leave her
+      alone with her mother; and when there was no one else in the room, when
+      she felt that the hand which had always been so tender for her was now
+      grown cold to her touch, she broke out into weeping. Her tears aroused the
+      Marquise; she could still look at her darling Moina; and at the sound of
+      sobbing, that seemed as if it must rend the delicate, disheveled breast,
+      could smile back at her daughter. That smile taught the unnatural child
+      that forgiveness is always to be found in the great deep of a mother&rsquo;s
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Servants on horseback had been dispatched at once for the physician and
+      surgeon and for Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont&rsquo;s grandchildren. Mme. d&rsquo;Aiglemont the
+      younger and her little sons arrived with the medical men, a sufficiently
+      impressive, silent, and anxious little group, which the servants of the
+      house came to join. The young Marquise, hearing no sound, tapped gently at
+      the door. That signal, doubtless, roused Moina from her grief, for she
+      flung open the doors and stood before them. No words could have spoken
+      more plainly than that disheveled figure looking out with haggard eyes
+      upon the assembled family. Before that living picture of Remorse the rest
+      were dumb. It was easy to see that the Marquise&rsquo;s feet were stretched out
+      stark and stiff with the agony of death; and Moina, leaning against the
+      door-frame, looking into their faces, spoke in a hollow voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have lost my mother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      PARIS, 1828-1844.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      ADDENDUM
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+    </h3>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Aiglemont, General, Marquis Victor d&rsquo; 
+       At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+
+     Bonaparte, Napoleon
+       The Vendetta
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       Colonel Chabert
+       Domestic Peace
+       The Seamy Side of History
+
+     Camps, Madame Octave de (nee Cadignan)
+       Madame Firmiani
+       The Government Clerks
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Chatillonest, De
+       Modeste Mignon
+
+     Crottat, Alexandre
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Colonel Chabert
+       A Start in Life
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Desroches (son)
+       A Bachelor&rsquo;s Establishment
+       Colonel Chabert
+       A Start in Life
+       The Commission in Lunacy
+       The Government Clerks
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Scenes from a Courtesan&rsquo;s Life
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       A Man of Business
+       The Middle Classes
+
+     Duroc, Gerard-Christophe-Michel
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+
+     Ronquerolles, Marquis de
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+       The Peasantry
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Thirteen
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Saint-Hereen, Comtesse Moina de
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Serizy, Comtesse de
+       A Start in Life
+       The Thirteen
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       Scenes from a Courtesan&rsquo;s Life
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+
+     Vandenesse, Marquis Charles de
+       A Start in Life
+       A Daughter of Eve
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Woman of Thirty, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Woman of Thirty
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Ellen Marriage
+
+Release Date: November, 1999  [Etext #1950]
+Posting Date: March 6, 2010
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WOMAN OF THIRTY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+A WOMAN OF THIRTY
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+
+Translated by Ellen Marriage
+
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+                    To Louis Boulanger, Painter.
+
+
+
+
+
+A WOMAN OF THIRTY
+
+
+
+
+I. EARLY MISTAKES
+
+It was a Sunday morning in the beginning of April 1813, a morning which
+gave promise of one of those bright days when Parisians, for the first
+time in the year, behold dry pavements underfoot and a cloudless sky
+overhead. It was not yet noon when a luxurious cabriolet, drawn by two
+spirited horses, turned out of the Rue de Castiglione into the Rue de
+Rivoli, and drew up behind a row of carriages standing before the newly
+opened barrier half-way down the Terrasse de Feuillants. The owner of
+the carriage looked anxious and out of health; the thin hair on his
+sallow temples, turning gray already, gave a look of premature age to
+his face. He flung the reins to a servant who followed on horseback,
+and alighted to take in his arms a young girl whose dainty beauty had
+already attracted the eyes of loungers on the Terrasse. The little lady,
+standing upon the carriage step, graciously submitted to be taken by the
+waist, putting an arm round the neck of her guide, who set her down upon
+the pavement without so much as ruffling the trimming of her green rep
+dress. No lover would have been so careful. The stranger could only be
+the father of the young girl, who took his arm familiarly without a word
+of thanks, and hurried him into the Garden of the Tuileries.
+
+The old father noted the wondering stare which some of the young men
+gave the couple, and the sad expression left his face for a moment.
+Although he had long since reached the time of life when a man is fain
+to be content with such illusory delights as vanity bestows, he began to
+smile.
+
+"They think you are my wife," he said in the young lady's ear, and he
+held himself erect and walked with slow steps, which filled his daughter
+with despair.
+
+He seemed to take up the coquette's part for her; perhaps of the two, he
+was the more gratified by the curious glances directed at those little
+feet, shod with plum-colored prunella; at the dainty figure outlined by
+a low-cut bodice, filled in with an embroidered chemisette, which only
+partially concealed the girlish throat. Her dress was lifted by her
+movements as she walked, giving glimpses higher than the shoes of
+delicately moulded outlines beneath open-work silk stockings. More than
+one of the idlers turned and passed the pair again, to admire or to
+catch a second glimpse of the young face, about which the brown tresses
+played; there was a glow in its white and red, partly reflected from the
+rose-colored satin lining of her fashionable bonnet, partly due to the
+eagerness and impatience which sparkled in every feature. A mischievous
+sweetness lighted up the beautiful, almond-shaped dark eyes, bathed
+in liquid brightness, shaded by the long lashes and curving arch of
+eyebrow. Life and youth displayed their treasures in the petulant face
+and in the gracious outlines of the bust unspoiled even by the fashion
+of the day, which brought the girdle under the breast.
+
+The young lady herself appeared to be insensible to admiration. Her
+eyes were fixed in a sort of anxiety on the Palace of the Tuileries,
+the goal, doubtless, of her petulant promenade. It wanted but fifteen
+minutes of noon, yet even at that early hour several women in gala dress
+were coming away from the Tuileries, not without backward glances at the
+gates and pouting looks of discontent, as if they regretted the lateness
+of the arrival which had cheated them of a longed-for spectacle. Chance
+carried a few words let fall by one of these disappointed fair ones to
+the ears of the charming stranger, and put her in a more than common
+uneasiness. The elderly man watched the signs of impatience and
+apprehension which flitted across his companion's pretty face with
+interest, rather than amusement, in his eyes, observing her with a close
+and careful attention, which perhaps could only be prompted by some
+after-thought in the depths of a father's mind.
+
+
+
+It was the thirteenth Sunday of the year 1813. In two days' time
+Napoleon was to set out upon the disastrous campaign in which he was
+to lose first Bessieres, and then Duroc; he was to win the memorable
+battles of Lutzen and Bautzen, to see himself treacherously deserted by
+Austria, Saxony, Bavaria, and Bernadotte, and to dispute the dreadful
+field of Leipsic. The magnificent review commanded for that day by the
+Emperor was to be the last of so many which had long drawn forth the
+admiration of Paris and of foreign visitors. For the last time the Old
+Guard would execute their scientific military manoeuvres with the pomp
+and precision which sometimes amazed the Giant himself. Napoleon was
+nearly ready for his duel with Europe. It was a sad sentiment which
+brought a brilliant and curious throng to the Tuileries. Each mind
+seemed to foresee the future, perhaps too in every mind another thought
+was dimly present, how that in the future, when the heroic age of France
+should have taken the half-fabulous color with which it is tinged for
+us to-day, men's imaginations would more than once seek to retrace the
+picture of the pageant which they were assembled to behold.
+
+"Do let us go more quickly, father; I can hear the drums," the young
+girl said, and in a half-teasing, half-coaxing manner she urged her
+companion forward.
+
+"The troops are marching into the Tuileries," said he.
+
+"Or marching out of it--everybody is coming away," she answered in
+childish vexation, which drew a smile from her father.
+
+"The review only begins at half-past twelve," he said; he had fallen
+half behind his impetuous daughter.
+
+It might have been supposed that she meant to hasten their progress by
+a movement of her right arm, for it swung like an oar blade through the
+water. In her impatience she had crushed her handkerchief into a ball in
+her tiny, well-gloved fingers. Now and then the old man smiled, but the
+smiles were succeeded by an anxious look which crossed his withered face
+and saddened it. In his love for the fair young girl by his side, he
+was as fain to exalt the present moment as to dread the future. "She is
+happy to-day; will her happiness last?" he seemed to ask himself, for
+the old are somewhat prone to foresee their own sorrows in the future of
+the young.
+
+Father and daughter reached the peristyle under the tower where the
+tricolor flag was still waving; but as they passed under the arch by
+which people came and went between the Gardens of the Tuileries and the
+Place du Carrousel, the sentries on guard called out sternly:
+
+"No admittance this way."
+
+By standing on tiptoe the young girl contrived to catch a glimpse of
+a crowd of well-dressed women, thronging either side of the old marble
+arcade along which the Emperor was to pass.
+
+"We were too late in starting, father; you can see that quite well." A
+little piteous pout revealed the immense importance which she attached
+to the sight of this particular review.
+
+"Very well, Julie--let us go away. You dislike a crush."
+
+"Do let us stay, father. Even here I may catch a glimpse of the Emperor;
+he might die during this campaign, and then I should never have seen
+him."
+
+Her father shuddered at the selfish speech. There were tears in the
+girl's voice; he looked at her, and thought that he saw tears beneath
+her lowered eyelids; tears caused not so much by the disappointment as
+by one of the troubles of early youth, a secret easily guessed by an old
+father. Suddenly Julie's face flushed, and she uttered an exclamation.
+Neither her father nor the sentinels understood the meaning of the cry;
+but an officer within the barrier, who sprang across the court towards
+the staircase, heard it, and turned abruptly at the sound. He went to
+the arcade by the Gardens of the Tuileries, and recognized the young
+lady who had been hidden for a moment by the tall bearskin caps of the
+grenadiers. He set aside in favor of the pair the order which he himself
+had given. Then, taking no heed of the murmurings of the fashionable
+crowd seated under the arcade, he gently drew the enraptured child
+towards him.
+
+"I am no longer surprised at her vexation and enthusiasm, if _you_ are
+in waiting," the old man said with a half-mocking, half-serious glance
+at the officer.
+
+"If you want a good position, M. le Duc," the young man answered, "we
+must not spend any time in talking. The Emperor does not like to be kept
+waiting, and the Grand Marshal has sent me to announce our readiness."
+
+As he spoke, he had taken Julie's arm with a certain air of old
+acquaintance, and drew her rapidly in the direction of the Place du
+Carrousel. Julie was astonished at the sight. An immense crowd was
+penned up in a narrow space, shut in between the gray walls of the
+palace and the limits marked out by chains round the great sanded
+squares in the midst of the courtyard of the Tuileries. The cordon of
+sentries posted to keep a clear passage for the Emperor and his staff
+had great difficulty in keeping back the eager humming swarm of human
+beings.
+
+"Is it going to be a very fine sight?" Julie asked (she was radiant
+now).
+
+"Pray take care!" cried her guide, and seizing Julie by the waist, he
+lifted her up with as much vigor as rapidity and set her down beside a
+pillar.
+
+But for his prompt action, his gazing kinswoman would have come into
+collision with the hindquarters of a white horse which Napoleon's
+Mameluke held by the bridle; the animal in its trappings of green velvet
+and gold stood almost under the arcade, some ten paces behind the rest
+of the horses in readiness for the Emperor's staff.
+
+The young officer placed the father and daughter in front of the crowd
+in the first space to the right, and recommended them by a sign to the
+two veteran grenadiers on either side. Then he went on his way into
+the palace; a look of great joy and happiness had succeeded to his
+horror-struck expression when the horse backed. Julie had given his hand
+a mysterious pressure; had she meant to thank him for the little service
+he had done her, or did she tell him, "After all, I shall really see
+you?" She bent her head quite graciously in response to the respectful
+bow by which the officer took leave of them before he vanished.
+
+The old man stood a little behind his daughter. He looked grave. He
+seemed to have left the two young people together for some purpose of
+his own, and now he furtively watched the girl, trying to lull her
+into false security by appearing to give his whole attention to the
+magnificent sight in the Place du Carrousel. When Julie's eyes turned
+to her father with the expression of a schoolboy before his master, he
+answered her glance by a gay, kindly smile, but his own keen eyes had
+followed the officer under the arcade, and nothing of all that passed
+was lost upon him.
+
+"What a grand sight!" said Julie in a low voice, as she pressed her
+father's hand; and indeed the pomp and picturesquesness of the spectacle
+in the Place du Carrousel drew the same exclamation from thousands
+upon thousands of spectators, all agape with wonder. Another array of
+sightseers, as tightly packed as the ranks behind the old noble and
+his daughter, filled the narrow strip of pavement by the railings which
+crossed the Place du Carrousel from side to side in a line parallel with
+the Palace of the Tuileries. The dense living mass, variegated by the
+colors of the women's dresses, traced out a bold line across the
+centre of the Place du Carrousel, filling in the fourth side of a vast
+parallelogram, surrounded on three sides by the Palace of the Tuileries
+itself. Within the precincts thus railed off stood the regiments of the
+Old Guard about to be passed in review, drawn up opposite the Palace
+in imposing blue columns, ten ranks in depth. Without and beyond in the
+Place du Carrousel stood several regiments likewise drawn up in parallel
+lines, ready to march in through the arch in the centre; the Triumphal
+Arch, where the bronze horses of St. Mark from Venice used to stand in
+those days. At either end, by the Galeries du Louvre, the regimental
+bands were stationed, masked by the Polish Lancers then on duty.
+
+The greater part of the vast graveled space was empty as an arena, ready
+for the evolutions of those silent masses disposed with the symmetry
+of military art. The sunlight blazed back from ten thousand bayonets in
+thin points of flame; the breeze ruffled the men's helmet plumes till
+they swayed like the crests of forest-trees before a gale. The mute
+glittering ranks of veterans were full of bright contrasting colors,
+thanks to their different uniforms, weapons, accoutrements, and
+aiguillettes; and the whole great picture, that miniature battlefield
+before the combat, was framed by the majestic towering walls of the
+Tuileries, which officers and men seemed to rival in their immobility.
+Involuntarily the spectator made the comparison between the walls of
+men and the walls of stone. The spring sunlight, flooding white masonry
+reared but yesterday and buildings centuries old, shone full likewise
+upon thousands of bronzed faces, each one with its own tale of perils
+passed, each one gravely expectant of perils to come.
+
+The colonels of the regiments came and went alone before the ranks of
+heroes; and behind the masses of troops, checkered with blue and silver
+and gold and purple, the curious could discern the tricolor pennons on
+the lances of some half-a-dozen indefatigable Polish cavalry, rushing
+about like shepherds' dogs in charge of a flock, caracoling up and down
+between the troops and the crowd, to keep the gazers within their proper
+bounds. But for this slight flutter of movement, the whole scene might
+have been taking place in the courtyard of the palace of the Sleeping
+Beauty. The very spring breeze, ruffling up the long fur on the
+grenadiers' bearskins, bore witness to the men's immobility, as the
+smothered murmur of the crowd emphasized their silence. Now and again
+the jingling of Chinese bells, or a chance blow to a big drum, woke
+the reverberating echoes of the Imperial Palace with a sound like the
+far-off rumblings of thunder.
+
+An indescribable, unmistakable enthusiasm was manifest in the expectancy
+of the multitude. France was about to take farewell of Napoleon on the
+eve of a campaign of which the meanest citizen foresaw the perils. The
+existence of the French Empire was at stake--to be, or not to be. The
+whole citizen population seemed to be as much inspired with this thought
+as that other armed population standing in serried and silent ranks in
+the enclosed space, with the Eagles and the genius of Napoleon hovering
+above them.
+
+Those very soldiers were the hope of France, her last drop of blood; and
+this accounted for not a little of the anxious interest of the scene.
+Most of the gazers in the crowd had bidden farewell--perhaps farewell
+for ever--to the men who made up the rank and file of the battalions;
+and even those most hostile to the Emperor, in their hearts, put up
+fervent prayers to heaven for the glory of France; and those most weary
+of the struggle with the rest of Europe had left their hatreds behind as
+they passed in under the Triumphal Arch. They too felt that in the hour
+of danger Napoleon meant France herself.
+
+The clock of the Tuileries struck the half-hour. In a moment the hum of
+the crowd ceased. The silence was so deep that you might have heard a
+child speak. The old noble and his daughter, wholly intent, seeming to
+live only by their eyes, caught a distinct sound of spurs and clank of
+swords echoing up under the sonorous peristyle.
+
+And suddenly there appeared a short, somewhat stout figure in a green
+uniform, white trousers, and riding boots; a man wearing on his head a
+cocked hat well-nigh as magically potent as its wearer; the broad red
+ribbon of the Legion of Honor rose and fell on his breast, and a short
+sword hung at his side. At one and the same moment the man was seen by
+all eyes in all parts of the square.
+
+Immediately the drums beat a salute, both bands struck up a martial
+refrain, caught and repeated like a fugue by every instrument from the
+thinnest flutes to the largest drum. The clangor of that call to arms
+thrilled through every soul. The colors dropped, and the men presented
+arms, one unanimous rhythmical movement shaking every bayonet from
+the foremost front near the Palace to the last rank in the Place du
+Carrousel. The words of command sped from line to line like echoes. The
+whole enthusiastic multitude sent up a shout of "Long live the Emperor!"
+
+Everything shook, quivered, and thrilled at last. Napoleon had mounted
+his horse. It was his movement that had put life into those silent
+masses of men; the dumb instruments had found a voice at his coming,
+the Eagles and the colors had obeyed the same impulse which had brought
+emotion into all faces.
+
+The very walls of the high galleries of the old palace seemed to cry
+aloud, "Long live the Emperor!"
+
+There was something preternatural about it--it was magic at work, a
+counterfeit presentment of the power of God; or rather it was a fugitive
+image of a reign itself so fugitive.
+
+And _he_ the centre of such love, such enthusiasm and devotion, and so
+many prayers, he for whom the sun had driven the clouds from the sky,
+was sitting there on his horse, three paces in front of his Golden
+Squadron, with the grand Marshal on his left, and the Marshal-in-waiting
+on his right. Amid all the outburst of enthusiasm at his presence not a
+feature of his face appeared to alter.
+
+"Oh! yes. At Wagram, in the thick of the firing, on the field of
+Borodino, among the dead, always as cool as a cucumber _he_ is!" said
+the grenadier, in answer to the questions with which the young girl
+plied him. For a moment Julie was absorbed in the contemplation of that
+face, so quiet in the security of conscious power. The Emperor noticed
+Mlle. de Chatillonest, and leaned to make some brief remark to Duroc,
+which drew a smile from the Grand Marshal. Then the review began.
+
+If hitherto the young lady's attention had been divided between
+Napoleon's impassive face and the blue, red, and green ranks of troops,
+from this time forth she was wholly intent upon a young officer moving
+among the lines as they performed their swift symmetrical evolutions.
+She watched him gallop with tireless activity to and from the group
+where the plainly dressed Napoleon shone conspicuous. The officer rode a
+splendid black horse. His handsome sky-blue uniform marked him out amid
+the variegated multitude as one of the Emperor's orderly staff-officers.
+His gold lace glittered in the sunshine which lighted up the aigrette on
+his tall, narrow shako, so that the gazer might have compared him to a
+will-o'-the-wisp, or to a visible spirit emanating from the Emperor to
+infuse movement into those battalions whose swaying bayonets flashed
+into flames; for, at a mere glance from his eyes, they broke and
+gathered again, surging to and fro like the waves in a bay, or again
+swept before him like the long ridges of high-crested wave which the
+vexed Ocean directs against the shore.
+
+When the manoeuvres were over the officer galloped back at full speed,
+pulled up his horse, and awaited orders. He was not ten paces from Julie
+as he stood before the Emperor, much as General Rapp stands in Gerard's
+_Battle of Austerlitz_. The young girl could behold her lover in all his
+soldierly splendor.
+
+Colonel Victor d'Aiglemont, barely thirty years of age, was tall,
+slender, and well made. His well-proportioned figure never showed to
+better advantage than now as he exerted his strength to hold in the
+restive animal, whose back seemed to curve gracefully to the rider's
+weight. His brown masculine face possessed the indefinable charm of
+perfectly regular features combined with youth. The fiery eyes under the
+broad forehead, shaded by thick eyebrows and long lashes, looked like
+white ovals bordered by an outline of black. His nose had the delicate
+curve of an eagle's beak; the sinuous lines of the inevitable black
+moustache enhanced the crimson of the lips. The brown and tawny shades
+which overspread the wide high-colored cheeks told a tale of unusual
+vigor, and his whole face bore the impress of dashing courage. He was
+the very model which French artists seek to-day for the typical hero
+of Imperial France. The horse which he rode was covered with sweat, the
+animal's quivering head denoted the last degree of restiveness; his hind
+hoofs were set down wide apart and exactly in a line, he shook his long
+thick tail to the wind; in his fidelity to his master he seemed to be a
+visible presentment of that master's devotion to the Emperor.
+
+Julie saw her lover watching intently for the Emperor's glances, and
+felt a momentary pang of jealousy, for as yet he had not given her a
+look. Suddenly at a word from his sovereign Victor gripped his horse's
+flanks and set out at a gallop, but the animal took fright at a shadow
+cast by a post, shied, backed, and reared up so suddenly that his rider
+was all but thrown off. Julie cried out, her face grew white, people
+looked at her curiously, but she saw no one, her eyes were fixed upon
+the too mettlesome beast. The officer gave the horse a sharp admonitory
+cut with the whip, and galloped off with Napoleon's order.
+
+Julie was so absorbed, so dizzy with sights and sounds, that
+unconsciously she clung to her father's arm so tightly that he could
+read her thoughts by the varying pressure of her fingers. When Victor
+was all but flung out of the saddle, she clutched her father with a
+convulsive grip as if she herself were in danger of falling, and the
+old man looked at his daughter's tell-tale face with dark and painful
+anxiety. Pity, jealousy, something even of regret stole across every
+drawn and wrinkled line of mouth and brow. When he saw the unwonted
+light in Julie's eyes, when that cry broke from her, when the convulsive
+grasp of her fingers drew away the veil and put him in possession of
+her secret, then with that revelation of her love there came surely some
+swift revelation of the future. Mournful forebodings could be read in
+his own face.
+
+Julie's soul seemed at that moment to have passed into the officer's
+being. A torturing thought more cruel than any previous dread contracted
+the old man's painworn features, as he saw the glance of understanding
+that passed between the soldier and Julie. The girl's eyes were wet, her
+cheeks glowed with unwonted color. Her father turned abruptly and led
+her away into the Garden of the Tuileries.
+
+"Why, father," she cried, "there are still the regiments in the Place du
+Carrousel to be passed in review."
+
+"No, child, all the troops are marching out."
+
+"I think you are mistaken, father; M. d'Aiglemont surely told them to
+advance----"
+
+"But I feel ill, my child, and I do not care to stay."
+
+Julie could readily believe the words when she glanced at his face; he
+looked quite worn out by his fatherly anxieties.
+
+"Are you feeling very ill?" she asked indifferently, her mind was so
+full of other thoughts.
+
+"Every day is a reprieve for me, is it not?" returned her father.
+
+"Now do you mean to make me miserable again by talking about your death?
+I was in such spirits! Do pray get rid of those horrid gloomy ideas of
+yours."
+
+The father heaved a sigh. "Ah! spoiled child," he cried, "the best
+hearts are sometimes very cruel. We devote our whole lives to you, you
+are our one thought, we plan for your welfare, sacrifice our tastes to
+your whims, idolize you, give the very blood in our veins for you, and
+all this is nothing, is it? Alas! yes, you take it all as a matter of
+course. If we would always have your smiles and your disdainful love, we
+should need the power of God in heaven. Then comes another, a lover, a
+husband, and steals away your heart."
+
+Julie looked in amazement at her father; he walked slowly along, and
+there was no light in the eyes which he turned upon her.
+
+"You hide yourself even from us," he continued, "but, perhaps, also you
+hide yourself from yourself--"
+
+"What do you mean by that, father?"
+
+"I think that you have secrets from me, Julie.--You love," he went on
+quickly, as he saw the color rise to her face. "Oh! I hoped that you
+would stay with your old father until he died. I hoped to keep you with
+me, still radiant and happy, to admire you as you were but so lately. So
+long as I knew nothing of your future I could believe in a happy lot for
+you; but now I cannot possibly take away with me a hope of happiness for
+your life, for you love the colonel even more than the cousin. I can no
+longer doubt it."
+
+"And why should I be forbidden to love him?" asked Julie, with lively
+curiosity in her face.
+
+"Ah, my Julie, you would not understand me," sighed the father.
+
+"Tell me, all the same," said Julie, with an involuntary petulant
+gesture.
+
+"Very well, child, listen to me. Girls are apt to imagine noble and
+enchanting and totally imaginary figures in their own minds; they have
+fanciful extravagant ideas about men, and sentiment, and life; and then
+they innocently endow somebody or other with all the perfections of
+their day-dreams, and put their trust in him. They fall in love with
+this imaginary creature in the man of their choice; and then, when it
+is too late to escape from their fate, behold their first idol, the
+illusion made fair with their fancies, turns to an odious skeleton.
+Julie, I would rather have you fall in love with an old man than with
+the Colonel. Ah! if you could but see things from the standpoint of ten
+years hence, you would admit that my old experience was right. I know
+what Victor is, that gaiety of his is simply animal spirits--the gaiety
+of the barracks. He has no ability, and he is a spendthrift. He is one
+of those men whom Heaven created to eat and digest four meals a day, to
+sleep, to fall in love with the first woman that comes to hand, and to
+fight. He does not understand life. His kind heart, for he has a kind
+heart, will perhaps lead him to give his purse to a sufferer or to a
+comrade; _but_ he is careless, he has not the delicacy of heart which
+makes us slaves to a woman's happiness, he is ignorant, he is selfish.
+There are plenty of _buts_--"
+
+"But, father, he must surely be clever, he must have ability, or he
+would not be a colonel--"
+
+"My dear, Victor will be a colonel all his life.--I have seen no one who
+appears to me to be worthy of you," the old father added, with a kind of
+enthusiasm.
+
+He paused an instant, looked at his daughter, and added, "Why, my poor
+Julie, you are still too young, too fragile, too delicate for the cares
+and rubs of married life. D'Aiglemont's relations have spoiled him, just
+as your mother and I have spoiled you. What hope is there that you two
+could agree, with two imperious wills diametrically opposed to
+each other? You will be either the tyrant or the victim, and either
+alternative means, for a wife, an equal sum of misfortune. But you are
+modest and sweet-natured, you would yield from the first. In short," he
+added, in a quivering voice, "there is a grace of feeling in you
+which would never be valued, and then----" he broke off, for the tears
+overcame him.
+
+"Victor will give you pain through all the girlish qualities of your
+young nature," he went on, after a pause. "I know what soldiers are, my
+Julie; I have been in the army. In a man of that kind, love very seldom
+gets the better of old habits, due partly to the miseries amid which
+soldiers live, partly to the risks they run in a life of adventure."
+
+"Then you mean to cross my inclinations, do you, father?" asked Julie,
+half in earnest, half in jest. "Am I to marry to please you and not to
+please myself?"
+
+"To please me!" cried her father, with a start of surprise. "To please
+_me_, child? when you will not hear the voice that upbraids you so
+tenderly very much longer! But I have always heard children impute
+personal motives for the sacrifices that their parents make for
+them. Marry Victor, my Julie! Some day you will bitterly deplore his
+ineptitude, his thriftless ways, his selfishness, his lack of delicacy,
+his inability to understand love, and countless troubles arising through
+him. Then, remember, that here under these trees your old father's
+prophetic voice sounded in your ears in vain."
+
+He said no more; he had detected a rebellious shake of the head on his
+daughter's part. Both made several paces towards the carriage which was
+waiting for them at the grating. During that interval of silence, the
+young girl stole a glance at her father's face, and little by little her
+sullen brow cleared. The intense pain visible on his bowed forehead made
+a lively impression upon her.
+
+"Father," she began in gentle tremulous tones, "I promise to say no more
+about Victor until you have overcome your prejudices against him."
+
+The old man looked at her in amazement. Two tears which filled his eyes
+overflowed down his withered cheeks. He could not take Julie in his arms
+in that crowded place; but he pressed her hand tenderly. A few minutes
+later when they had taken their places in the cabriolet, all the anxious
+thought which had gathered about his brow had completely disappeared.
+Julie's pensive attitude gave him far less concern than the innocent joy
+which had betrayed her secret during the review.
+
+
+
+Nearly a year had passed since the Emperor's last review. In early March
+1814 a caleche was rolling along the highroad from Amboise to Tours.
+As the carriage came out from beneath the green-roofed aisle of walnut
+trees by the post-house of la Frilliere, the horses dashed forward with
+such speed that in a moment they gained the bridge built across the Cise
+at the point of its confluence with the Loire. There, however, they come
+to a sudden stand. One of the traces had given way in consequence of the
+furious pace at which the post-boy, obedient to his orders, had urged on
+four horses, the most vigorous of their breed. Chance, therefore, gave
+the two recently awakened occupants of the carriage an opportunity of
+seeing one of the most lovely landscapes along the enchanting banks of
+the Loire, and that at their full leisure.
+
+At a glance the travelers could see to the right the whole winding
+course of the Cise meandering like a silver snake among the meadows,
+where the grass had taken the deep, bright green of early spring. To the
+left lay the Loire in all its glory. A chill morning breeze, ruffling
+the surface of the stately river, had fretted the broad sheets of water
+far and wide into a network of ripples, which caught the gleams of the
+sun, so that the green islets here and there in its course shone like
+gems set in a gold necklace. On the opposite bank the fair rich meadows
+of Touraine stretched away as far as the eye could see; the low hills
+of the Cher, the only limits to the view, lay on the far horizon, a
+luminous line against the clear blue sky. Tours itself, framed by the
+trees on the islands in a setting of spring leaves, seemed to rise like
+Venice out of the waters, and her old cathedral towers soaring in air
+were blended with the pale fantastic cloud shapes in the sky.
+
+Over the side of the bridge, where the carriage had come to a stand, the
+traveler looks along a line of cliffs stretching as far as Tours.
+Nature in some freakish mood must have raised these barriers of rock,
+undermined incessantly by the rippling Loire at their feet, for a
+perpetual wonder for spectators. The village of Vouvray nestles, as
+it were, among the clefts and crannies of the crags, which begin
+to describe a bend at the junction of the Loire and Cise. A whole
+population of vine-dressers lives, in fact, in appalling insecurity in
+holes in their jagged sides for the whole way between Vouvray and Tours.
+In some places there are three tiers of dwellings hollowed out, one
+above the other, in the rock, each row communicating with the next by
+dizzy staircases cut likewise in the face of the cliff. A little girl
+in a short red petticoat runs out into her garden on the roof of another
+dwelling; you can watch a wreath of hearth-smoke curling up among
+the shoots and trails of the vines. Men are at work in their almost
+perpendicular patches of ground, an old woman sits tranquilly spinning
+under a blossoming almond tree on a crumbling mass of rock, and smiles
+down on the dismay of the travelers far below her feet. The cracks in
+the ground trouble her as little as the precarious state of the old
+wall, a pendant mass of loose stones, only kept in position by the
+crooked stems of its ivy mantle. The sound of coopers' mallets rings
+through the skyey caves; for here, where Nature stints human industry of
+soil, the soil is everywhere tilled, and everywhere fertile.
+
+No view along the whole course of the Loire can compare with the rich
+landscape of Touraine, here outspread beneath the traveler's eyes. The
+triple picture, thus barely sketched in outline, is one of those scenes
+which the imagination engraves for ever upon the memory; let a poet
+fall under its charm, and he shall be haunted by visions which shall
+reproduce its romantic loveliness out of the vague substance of dreams.
+
+As the carriage stopped on the bridge over the Cise, white sails came
+out here and there from among the islands in the Loire to add new grace
+to the perfect view. The subtle scent of the willows by the water's
+edge was mingled with the damp odor of the breeze from the river. The
+monotonous chant of a goat-herd added a plaintive note to the sound
+of birds' songs in a chorus which never ends; the cries of the boatmen
+brought tidings of distant busy life. Here was Touraine in all its
+glory, and the very height of the splendor of spring. Here was the
+one peaceful district in France in those troublous days; for it was
+so unlikely that a foreign army should trouble its quiet that Touraine
+might be said to defy invasion.
+
+As soon as the caleche stopped, a head covered with a foraging cap was
+put out of the window, and soon afterwards an impatient military man
+flung open the carriage door and sprang down into the road to pick a
+quarrel with the postilion, but the skill with which the Tourangeau was
+repairing the trace restored Colonel d'Aiglemont's equanimity. He went
+back to the carriage, stretched himself to relieve his benumbed muscles,
+yawned, looked about him, and finally laid a hand on the arm of a young
+woman warmly wrapped up in a furred pelisse.
+
+"Come, Julie," he said hoarsely, "just wake up and take a look at this
+country. It is magnificent."
+
+Julie put her head out of the window. She wore a traveling cap of sable
+fur. Nothing could be seen of her but her face, for the whole of her
+person was completely concealed by the folds of her fur pelisse.
+The young girl who tripped to the review at the Tuileries with light
+footsteps and joy and gladness in her heart was scarcely recognizable in
+Julie d'Aiglemont. Her face, delicate as ever, had lost the rose-color
+which once gave it so rich a glow. A few straggling locks of black hair,
+straightened out by the damp night air, enhanced its dead whiteness,
+and all its life and sparkle seemed to be torpid. Yet her eyes glittered
+with preternatural brightness in spite of the violet shadows under the
+lashes upon her wan cheeks.
+
+She looked out with indifferent eyes over the fields towards the
+Cher, at the islands in the river, at the line of the crags of Vouvray
+stretching along the Loire towards Tours; then she sank back as soon as
+possible into her seat in the caleche. She did not care to give a glance
+to the enchanting valley of the Cise.
+
+"Yes, it is wonderful," she said, and out in the open air her voice
+sounded weak and faint to the last degree. Evidently she had had her way
+with her father, to her misfortune.
+
+"Would you not like to live here, Julie?"
+
+"Yes; here or anywhere," she answered listlessly.
+
+"Do you feel ill?" asked Colonel d'Aiglemont.
+
+"No, not at all," she answered with momentary energy; and, smiling at
+her husband, she added, "I should like to go to sleep."
+
+Suddenly there came a sound of a horse galloping towards them. Victor
+d'Aiglemont dropped his wife's hand and turned to watch the bend in the
+road. No sooner had he taken his eyes from Julie's pale face than
+all the assumed gaiety died out of it; it was as if a light had been
+extinguished. She felt no wish to look at the landscape, no curiosity to
+see the horseman who was galloping towards them at such a furious pace,
+and, ensconcing herself in her corner, stared out before her at the
+hindquarters of the post-horses, looking as blank as any Breton peasant
+listening to his _recteur's_ sermon.
+
+Suddenly a young man riding a valuable horse came out from behind the
+clump of poplars and flowering briar-rose.
+
+"It is an Englishman," remarked the Colonel.
+
+"Lord bless you, yes, General," said the post-boy; "he belongs to the
+race of fellows who have a mind to gobble up France, they say."
+
+The stranger was one of the foreigners traveling in France at the time
+when Napoleon detained all British subjects within the limits of the
+Empire, by way of reprisals for the violation of the Treaty of Amiens,
+an outrage of international law perpetrated by the Court of St. James.
+These prisoners, compelled to submit to the Emperor's pleasure, were not
+all suffered to remain in the houses where they were arrested, nor yet
+in the places of residence which at first they were permitted to choose.
+Most of the English colony in Touraine had been transplanted thither
+from different places where their presence was supposed to be inimical
+to the interests of the Continental Policy.
+
+The young man, who was taking the tedium of the early morning hours on
+horseback, was one of these victims of bureaucratic tyranny. Two years
+previously, a sudden order from the Foreign Office had dragged him from
+Montpellier, whither he had gone on account of consumptive tendencies.
+He glanced at the Comte d'Aiglemont, saw that he was a military man, and
+deliberately looked away, turning his head somewhat abruptly towards the
+meadows by the Cise.
+
+"The English are all as insolent as if the globe belonged to them,"
+muttered the Colonel. "Luckily, Soult will give them a thrashing
+directly."
+
+The prisoner gave a glance to the caleche as he rode by. Brief though
+that glance was, he had yet time to notice the sad expression which lent
+an indefinable charm to the Countess' pensive face. Many men are deeply
+moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look
+of pain for a sign of constancy or of love. Julie herself was so much
+absorbed in the contemplation of the opposite cushion that she saw
+neither the horse nor the rider. The damaged trace meanwhile had been
+quickly and strongly repaired; the Count stepped into his place again;
+and the post-boy, doing his best to make up for lost time, drove
+the carriage rapidly along the embankment. On they drove under the
+overhanging cliffs, with their picturesque vine-dressers' huts and
+stores of wine maturing in their dark sides, till in the distance uprose
+the spire of the famous Abbey of Marmoutiers, the retreat of St. Martin.
+
+"What can that diaphanous milord want with us?" exclaimed the Colonel,
+turning to assure himself that the horseman who had followed them from
+the bridge was the young Englishman.
+
+After all, the stranger committed no breach of good manners by riding
+along on the footway, and Colonel d'Aiglemont was fain to lie back in
+his corner after sending a scowl in the Englishman's direction. But in
+spite of his hostile instincts, he could not help noticing the beauty of
+the animal and the graceful horsemanship of the rider. The young man's
+face was of that pale, fair-complexioned, insular type, which is almost
+girlish in the softness and delicacy of its color and texture. He was
+tall, thin, and fair-haired, dressed with the extreme and elaborate
+neatness characteristic of a man of fashion in prudish England. Any one
+might have thought that bashfulness rather than pleasure at the sight
+of the Countess had called up that flush into his face. Once only Julie
+raised her eyes and looked at the stranger, and then only because she
+was in a manner compelled to do so, for her husband called upon her to
+admire the action of the thoroughbred. It so happened that their glances
+clashed; and the shy Englishman, instead of riding abreast of the
+carriage, fell behind on this, and followed them at a distance of a few
+paces.
+
+Yet the Countess had scarcely given him a glance; she saw none of the
+various perfections, human and equine, commended to her notice, and
+fell back again in the carriage, with a slight movement of the eyelids
+intended to express her acquiescence in her husband's views. The Colonel
+fell asleep again, and both husband and wife reached Tours without
+another word. Not one of those enchanting views of everchanging
+landscape through which they sped had drawn so much as a glance from
+Julie's eyes.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont looked now and again at her sleeping husband. While she
+looked, a sudden jolt shook something down upon her knees. It was her
+father's portrait, a miniature which she wore suspended about her neck
+by a black cord. At the sight of it, the tears, till then kept back,
+overflowed her eyes, but no one, save perhaps the Englishman, saw them
+glitter there for a brief moment before they dried upon her pale cheeks.
+
+Colonel d'Aiglemont was on his way to the South. Marshal Soult was
+repelling an English invasion of Bearn; and d'Aiglemont, the bearer of
+the Emperor's orders to the Marshal, seized the opportunity of taking
+his wife as far as Tours to leave her with an elderly relative of his
+own, far away from the dangers threatening Paris.
+
+Very shortly the carriage rolled over the paved road of Tours, over the
+bridge, along the Grande-Rue, and stopped at last before the old mansion
+of the _ci-devant_ Marquise de Listomere-Landon.
+
+The Marquise de Listomere-Landon, with her white hair, pale face, and
+shrewd smile, was one of those fine old ladies who still seem to wear
+the paniers of the eighteenth century, and affects caps of an extinct
+mode. They are nearly always caressing in their manners, as if the
+heyday of love still lingered on for these septuagenarian portraits
+of the age of Louis Quinze, with the faint perfume of _poudre a la
+marechale_ always clinging about them. Bigoted rather than pious, and
+less of bigots than they seem, women who can tell a story well and talk
+still better, their laughter comes more readily for an old memory than
+for a new jest--the present intrudes upon them.
+
+When an old waiting-woman announced to the Marquise de Listomere-Landon
+(to give her the title which she was soon to resume) the arrival of a
+nephew whom she had not seen since the outbreak of the war with Spain,
+the old lady took off her spectacles with alacrity, shut the _Galerie
+de l'ancienne Cour_ (her favorite work), and recovered something like
+youthful activity, hastening out upon the flight of steps to greet the
+young couple there.
+
+Aunt and niece exchanged a rapid glance of survey.
+
+"Good-morning, dear aunt," cried the Colonel, giving the old lady a
+hasty embrace. "I am bringing a young lady to put under your wing.
+I have come to put my treasure in your keeping. My Julie is neither
+jealous nor a coquette, she is as good as an angel. I hope that she will
+not be spoiled here," he added, suddenly interrupting himself.
+
+"Scapegrace!" returned the Marquise, with a satirical glance at her
+nephew.
+
+She did not wait for her niece to approach her, but with a certain
+kindly graciousness went forward herself to kiss Julie, who stood there
+thoughtfully, to all appearance more embarrassed than curious concerning
+her new relation.
+
+"So we are to make each other's acquaintance, are we, my love?" the
+Marquise continued. "Do not be too much alarmed of me. I always try not
+to be an old woman with young people."
+
+On the way to the drawing-room, the Marquise ordered breakfast for her
+guests in provincial fashion; but the Count checked his aunt's flow of
+words by saying soberly that he could only remain in the house while the
+horses were changing. On this the three hurried into the drawing-room.
+The Colonel had barely time to tell the story of the political and
+military events which had compelled him to ask his aunt for a shelter
+for his young wife. While he talked on without interruption, the older
+lady looked from her nephew to her niece, and took the sadness in
+Julie's white face for grief at the enforced separation. "Eh! eh!" her
+looks seemed to say, "these young things are in love with each other."
+
+The crack of the postilion's whip sounded outside in the silent old
+grass-grown courtyard. Victor embraced his aunt once more, and rushed
+out.
+
+"Good-bye, dear," he said, kissing his wife, who had followed him down
+to the carriage.
+
+"Oh! Victor, let me come still further with you," she pleaded coaxingly.
+"I do not want to leave you----"
+
+"Can you seriously mean it?"
+
+"Very well," said Julie, "since you wish it." The carriage disappeared.
+
+"So you are very fond of my poor Victor?" said the Marquise,
+interrogating her niece with one of those sagacious glances which
+dowagers give younger women.
+
+"Alas, madame!" said Julie, "must one not love a man well indeed to
+marry him?"
+
+The words were spoken with an artless accent which revealed either a
+pure heart or inscrutable depths. How could a woman, who had been the
+friend of Duclos and the Marechal de Richelieu, refrain from trying to
+read the riddle of this marriage? Aunt and niece were standing on the
+steps, gazing after the fast vanishing caleche. The look in the young
+Countess' eyes did not mean love as the Marquise understood it. The good
+lady was a Provencale, and her passions had been lively.
+
+"So you were captivated by my good-for-nothing of a nephew?" she asked.
+
+Involuntarily Julie shuddered, something in the experienced coquette's
+look and tone seemed to say that Mme. de Listomere-Landon's knowledge
+of her husband's character went perhaps deeper than his wife's. Mme.
+d'Aiglemont, in dismay, took refuge in this transparent dissimulation,
+ready to her hand, the first resource of an artless unhappiness. Mme.
+de Listomere appeared to be satisfied with Julie's answers; but in her
+secret heart she rejoiced to think that here was a love affair on hand
+to enliven her solitude, for that her niece had some amusing flirtation
+on foot she was fully convinced.
+
+In the great drawing-room, hung with tapestry framed in strips of
+gilding, young Mme. d'Aiglemont sat before a blazing fire, behind a
+Chinese screen placed to shut out the cold draughts from the window,
+and her heavy mood scarcely lightened. Among the old eighteenth-century
+furniture, under the old paneled ceiling, it was not very easy to be
+gay. Yet the young Parisienne took a sort of pleasure in this entrance
+upon a life of complete solitude and in the solemn silence of the old
+provincial house. She exchanged a few words with the aunt, a stranger,
+to whom she had written a bride's letter on her marriage, and then sat
+as silent as if she had been listening to an opera. Not until two hours
+had been spent in an atmosphere of quiet befitting la Trappe, did she
+suddenly awaken to a sense of uncourteous behavior, and bethink herself
+of the short answers which she had given her aunt. Mme. de Listomere,
+with the gracious tact characteristic of a bygone age, had respected
+her niece's mood. When Mme. d'Aiglemont became conscious of her
+shortcomings, the dowager sat knitting, though as a matter of fact she
+had several times left the room to superintend preparations in the
+Green Chamber, whither the Countess' luggage had been transported; now,
+however, she had returned to her great armchair, and stole a glance from
+time to time at this young relative. Julie felt ashamed of giving way
+to irresistible broodings, and tried to earn her pardon by laughing at
+herself.
+
+"My dear child, _we_ know the sorrows of widowhood," returned her aunt.
+But only the eyes of forty years could have distinguished the irony
+hovering about the old lady's mouth.
+
+Next morning the Countess improved. She talked. Mme. de Listomere no
+longer despaired of fathoming the new-made wife, whom yesterday she had
+set down as a dull, unsociable creature, and discoursed on the delights
+of the country, of dances, of houses where they could visit. All that
+day the Marquise's questions were so many snares; it was the old habit
+of the old Court, she could not help setting traps to discover her
+niece's character. For several days Julie, plied with temptations,
+steadfastly declined to seek amusement abroad; and much as the old
+lady's pride longed to exhibit her pretty niece, she was fain to
+renounce all hope of taking her into society, for the young Countess was
+still in morning for her father, and found in her loss and her mourning
+dress a pretext for her sadness and desire for seclusion.
+
+By the end of the week the dowager admired Julie's angelic sweetness
+of disposition, her diffident charm, her indulgent temper, and
+thenceforward began to take a prodigious interest in the mysterious
+sadness gnawing at this young heart. The Countess was one of those women
+who seem born to be loved and to bring happiness with them. Mme. de
+Listomere found her niece's society grown so sweet and precious, that
+she doted upon Julie, and could no longer think of parting with her.
+A month sufficed to establish an eternal friendship between the two
+ladies. The dowager noticed, not without surprise, the changes that took
+place in Mme. d'Aiglemont; gradually her bright color died away, and
+her face became dead white. Yet, Julie's spirits rose as the bloom faded
+from her cheeks. Sometimes the dowager's sallies provoked outbursts of
+merriment or peals of laughter, promptly repressed, however, by some
+clamorous thought.
+
+Mme. de Listomere had guessed by this time that it was neither Victor's
+absence nor a father's death which threw a shadow over her niece's life;
+but her mind was so full of dark suspicions, that she found it difficult
+to lay a finger upon the real cause of the mischief. Possibly truth is
+only discoverable by chance. A day came, however, at length when
+Julie flashed out before her aunt's astonished eyes into a complete
+forgetfulness of her marriage; she recovered the wild spirits of
+careless girlhood. Mme. de Listomere then and there made up her mind
+to fathom the depths of this soul, for its exceeding simplicity was as
+inscrutable as dissimulation.
+
+Night was falling. The two ladies were sitting by the window which
+looked out upon the street, and Julie was looking thoughtful again, when
+some one went by on horseback.
+
+"There goes one of your victims," said the Marquise.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont looked up; dismay and surprise blended in her face.
+
+"He is a young Englishman, the Honorable Arthur Ormand, Lord Grenville's
+eldest son. His history is interesting. His physician sent him to
+Montpellier in 1802; it was hoped that in that climate he might recover
+from the lung complaint which was gaining ground. He was detained, like
+all his fellow-countrymen, by Bonaparte when war broke out. That monster
+cannot live without fighting. The young Englishman, by way of amusing
+himself, took to studying his own complaint, which was believed to be
+incurable. By degrees he acquired a liking for anatomy and physic, and
+took quite a craze for that kind of thing, a most extraordinary taste
+in a man of quality, though the Regent certainly amused himself with
+chemistry! In short, Monsieur Arthur made astonishing progress in his
+studies; his health did the same under the faculty of Montpellier; he
+consoled his captivity, and at the same time his cure was thoroughly
+completed. They say that he spent two whole years in a cowshed, living
+on cresses and the milk of a cow brought from Switzerland, breathing as
+seldom as he could, and never speaking a word. Since he come to Tours
+he has lived quite alone; he is as proud as a peacock; but you have
+certainly made a conquest of him, for probably it is not on my account
+that he has ridden under the window twice every day since you have been
+here.--He has certainly fallen in love with you."
+
+That last phrase roused the Countess like magic. Her involuntary start
+and smile took the Marquise by surprise. So far from showing a sign of
+the instinctive satisfaction felt by the most strait-laced of women when
+she learns that she has destroyed the peace of mind of some male
+victim, there was a hard, haggard expression in Julie's face--a look of
+repulsion amounting almost to loathing.
+
+A woman who loves will put the whole world under the ban of Love's
+empire for the sake of the one whom she loves; but such a woman can
+laugh and jest; and Julie at that moment looked as if the memory of some
+recently escaped peril was too sharp and fresh not to bring with it a
+quick sensation of pain. Her aunt, by this time convinced that Julie
+did not love her nephew, was stupefied by the discovery that she loved
+nobody else. She shuddered lest a further discovery should show her
+Julie's heart disenchanted, lest the experience of a day, or perhaps
+of a night, should have revealed to a young wife the full extent of
+Victor's emptiness.
+
+"If she has found him out, there is an end of it," thought the dowager.
+"My nephew will soon be made to feel the inconveniences of wedded life."
+
+The Marquise now proposed to convert Julie to the monarchical doctrines
+of the times of Louis Quinze; but a few hours later she discovered, or,
+more properly speaking, guessed, the not uncommon state of affairs, and
+the real cause of her niece's low spirits.
+
+Julie turned thoughtful on a sudden, and went to her room earlier than
+usual. When her maid left her for the night, she still sat by the fire
+in the yellow velvet depths of a great chair, an old-world piece of
+furniture as well suited for sorrow as for happy people. Tears flowed,
+followed by sighs and meditation. After a while she drew a little table
+to her, sought writing materials, and began to write. The hours went by
+swiftly. Julie's confidences made to the sheet of paper seemed to cost
+her dear; every sentence set her dreaming, and at last she suddenly
+burst into tears. The clocks were striking two. Her head, grown heavy as
+a dying woman's, was bowed over her breast. When she raised it, her
+aunt appeared before her as suddenly as if she had stepped out of the
+background of tapestry upon the walls.
+
+"What can be the matter with you, child?" asked the Marquise. "Why are
+you sitting up so late? And why, in the first place, are you crying
+alone, at your age?"
+
+Without further ceremony she sat down beside her niece, her eyes the
+while devouring the unfinished letter.
+
+"Were you writing to your husband?"
+
+"Do I know where he is?" returned the Countess.
+
+Her aunt thereupon took up the sheet and proceeded to read it. She had
+brought her spectacles; the deed was premeditated. The innocent writer
+of the letter allowed her to take it without the slightest remark. It
+was neither lack of dignity nor consciousness of secret guilt which left
+her thus without energy. Her aunt had come in upon her at a crisis. She
+was helpless; right or wrong, reticence and confidence, like all things
+else, were matters of indifference. Like some young maid who had heaped
+scorn upon her lover, and feels so lonely and sad when evening comes,
+that she longs for him to come back or for a heart to which she can pour
+out her sorrow, Julie allowed her aunt to violate the seal which honor
+places upon an open letter, and sat musing while the Marquise read on:--
+
+  "MY DEAR LOUISA,--Why do you ask so often for the fulfilment of as
+  rash a promise as two young and inexperienced girls could make?
+  You say that you often ask yourself why I have given no answer to
+  your questions for these six months. If my silence told you
+  nothing, perhaps you will understand the reasons for it to-day, as
+  you read the secrets which I am about to betray. I should have
+  buried them for ever in the depths of my heart if you had not
+  announced your own approaching marriage. You are about to be
+  married, Louisa. The thought makes me shiver. Poor little one!
+  marry, yes, in a few months' time one of the keenest pangs of
+  regret will be the recollection of a self which used to be, of the
+  two young girls who sat one evening under one of the tallest
+  oak-trees on the hillside at Ecouen, and looked along the fair
+  valley at our feet in the light of the sunset, which caught us in
+  its glow. We sat on a slab of rock in ecstasy, which sobered down
+  into melancholy of the gentlest. You were the first to discover that
+  the far-off sun spoke to us of the future. How inquisitive and how
+  silly we were! Do you remember all the absurd things we said and
+  did? We embraced each other; 'like lovers,' said we. We solemnly
+  promised that the first bride should faithfully reveal to the
+  other the mysteries of marriage, the joys which our childish minds
+  imagined to be so delicious. That evening will complete your
+  despair, Louisa. In those days you were young and beautiful and
+  careless, if not radiantly happy; a few days of marriage, and you
+  will be, what I am already--ugly, wretched, and old. Need I tell
+  you how proud I was and how vain and glad to be married to Colonel
+  Victor d'Aiglemont? And besides, how could I tell you now? for I
+  cannot remember that old self. A few moments turned my girlhood to
+  a dream. All through the memorable day which consecrated a chain,
+  the extent of which was hidden from me, my behavior was not free
+  from reproach. Once and again my father tried to repress my
+  spirits; the joy which I showed so plainly was thought unbefitting
+  the occasion, my talk scarcely innocent, simply because I was so
+  innocent. I played endless child's tricks with my bridal veil, my
+  wreath, my gown. Left alone that night in the room whither I had
+  been conducted in state, I planned a piece of mischief to tease
+  Victor. While I awaited his coming, my heart beat wildly, as it
+  used to do when I was a child stealing into the drawing-room on
+  the last day of the old year to catch a glimpse of the New Year's
+  gifts piled up there in heaps. When my husband came in and looked
+  for me, my smothered laughter ringing out from beneath the lace in
+  which I had shrouded myself, was the last outburst of the
+  delicious merriment which brightened our games in childhood..."
+
+When the dowager had finished reading the letter, and after such a
+beginning the rest must have been sad indeed, she slowly laid her
+spectacles on the table, put the letter down beside them, and looked
+fixedly at her niece. Age had not dimmed the fire in those green eyes as
+yet.
+
+"My little girl," she said, "a married woman cannot write such a letter
+as this to a young unmarried woman; it is scarcely proper--"
+
+"So I was thinking," Julie broke in upon her aunt. "I felt ashamed of
+myself while you were reading it."
+
+"If a dish at table is not to our taste, there is no occasion to disgust
+others with it, child," the old lady continued benignly, "especially
+when marriage has seemed to us all, from Eve downwards, so excellent an
+institution... You have no mother?"
+
+The Countess trembled, then she raised her face meekly, and said:
+
+"I have missed my mother many times already during the past year; but I
+have myself to blame, I would not listen to my father. He was opposed to
+my marriage; he disapproved of Victor as a son-in-law."
+
+She looked at her aunt. The old face was lighted up with a kindly look,
+and a thrill of joy dried Julie's tears. She held out her young,
+soft hand to the old Marquise, who seemed to ask for it, and the
+understanding between the two women was completed by the close grasp of
+their fingers.
+
+"Poor orphan child!"
+
+The words came like a final flash of enlightenment to Julie. It seemed
+to her that she heard her father's prophetic voice again.
+
+"Your hands are burning! Are they always like this?" asked the Marquise.
+
+"The fever only left me seven or eight days ago."
+
+"You had a fever upon you, and said nothing about it to me!"
+
+"I have had it for a year," said Julie, with a kind of timid anxiety.
+
+"My good little angel, then your married life hitherto has been one long
+time of suffering?"
+
+Julie did not venture to reply, but an affirmative sign revealed the
+whole truth.
+
+"Then you are unhappy?"
+
+"On! no, no, aunt. Victor loves me, he almost idolizes me, and I adore
+him, he is so kind."
+
+"Yes, you love him; but you avoid him, do you not?"
+
+"Yes... sometimes... He seeks me too often."
+
+"And often when you are alone you are troubled with the fear that he may
+suddenly break in on your solitude?"
+
+"Alas! yes, aunt. But, indeed, I love him, I do assure you."
+
+"Do you not, in your own thoughts, blame yourself because you find it
+impossible to share his pleasures? Do you never think at times that
+marriage is a heavier yoke than an illicit passion could be?"
+
+"Oh, that is just it," she wept. "It is all a riddle to me, and can you
+guess it all? My faculties are benumbed, I have no ideas, I can scarcely
+see at all. I am weighed down by vague dread, which freezes me till
+I cannot feel, and keeps me in continual torpor. I have no voice with
+which to pity myself, no words to express my trouble. I suffer, and I am
+ashamed to suffer when Victor is happy at my cost."
+
+"Babyish nonsense, and rubbish, all of it!" exclaimed the aunt, and a
+gay smile, an after-glow of the joys of her own youth, suddenly lighted
+up her withered face.
+
+"And do you too laugh!" the younger woman cried despairingly.
+
+"It was just my own case," the Marquise returned promptly. "And
+now Victor has left you, you have become a girl again, recovering a
+tranquillity without pleasure and without pain, have you not?"
+
+Julie opened wide eyes of bewilderment.
+
+"In fact, my angel, you adore Victor, do you not? But still you would
+rather be a sister to him than a wife, and, in short, your marriage is
+emphatically not a success?"
+
+"Well--no, aunt. But why do you smile?"
+
+"Oh! you are right, poor child! There is nothing very amusing in all
+this. Your future would be big with more than one mishap if I had not
+taken you under my protection, if my old experience of life had not
+guessed the very innocent cause of your troubles. My nephew did
+not deserve his good fortune, the blockhead! In the reign of our
+well-beloved Louis Quinze, a young wife in your position would very
+soon have punished her husband for behaving like a ruffian. The selfish
+creature! The men who serve under this Imperial tyrant are all of them
+ignorant boors. They take brutality for gallantry; they know no more of
+women than they know of love; and imagine that because they go out
+to face death on the morrow, they may dispense to-day with all
+consideration and attentions for us. The time was when a man could love
+and die too at the proper time. My niece, I will form you. I will put an
+end to this unhappy divergence between you, a natural thing enough, but
+it would end in mutual hatred and desire for a divorce, always supposing
+that you did not die on the way to despair."
+
+Julie's amazement equaled her surprise as she listened to her aunt. She
+was surprised by her language, dimly divining rather than appreciating
+the wisdom of the words she heard, and very much dismayed to find what
+this relative, out of great experience, passed judgment upon Victor as
+her father had done, though in somewhat milder terms. Perhaps some quick
+prevision of the future crossed her mind; doubtless, at any rate, she
+felt the heavy weight of the burden which must inevitably overwhelm
+her, for she burst into tears, and sprang to the old lady's arms. "Be my
+mother," she sobbed.
+
+The aunt shed no tears. The Revolution had left old ladies of the
+Monarchy but few tears to shed. Love, in bygone days, and the Terror at
+a later time, had familiarized them with extremes of joy and anguish in
+such a sort that, amid the perils of life, they preserved their dignity
+and coolness, a capacity for sincere but undemonstrative affection
+which never disturbed their well-bred self-possession, and a dignity of
+demeanor which a younger generation has done very ill to discard.
+
+The dowager took Julie in her arms, and kissed her on the forehead with
+a tenderness and pity more often found in women's ways and manner than
+in their hearts. Then she coaxed her niece with kind, soothing words,
+assured her of a happy future, lulled her with promises of love, and
+put her to bed as if she had been not a niece, but a daughter, a
+much-beloved daughter whose hopes and cares she had made her own.
+Perhaps the old Marquise had found her own youth and inexperience and
+beauty again in this nephew's wife. And the Countess fell asleep, happy
+to have found a friend, nay a mother, to whom she could tell everything
+freely.
+
+Next morning, when the two women kissed each other with heartfelt
+kindness, and that look of intelligence which marks a real advance in
+friendship, a closer intimacy between two souls, they heard the sound
+of horsehoofs, and, turning both together, saw the young Englishman ride
+slowly past the window, after his wont. Apparently he had made a certain
+study of the life led by the two lonely women, for he never failed
+to ride by as they sat at breakfast, and again at dinner. His horse
+slackened pace of its own accord, and for the space of time required
+to pass the two windows in the room, its rider turned a melancholy look
+upon the Countess, who seldom deigned to take the slightest notion of
+him. Not so the Marquise. Minds not necessarily little find it difficult
+to resist the little curiosity which fastens upon the most trifling
+event that enlivens provincial life; and the Englishman's mute way of
+expressing his timid, earnest love tickled Mme. de Listomere. For her
+the periodically recurrent glance became a part of the day's routine,
+hailed daily with new jests. As the two women sat down to table, both of
+them looked out at the same moment. This time Julie's eyes met Arthur's
+with such a precision of sympathy that the color rose to her face. The
+stranger immediately urged his horse into a gallop and went.
+
+"What is to be done, madame?" asked Julie. "People see this Englishman
+go past the house, and they will take it for granted that I--"
+
+"Yes," interrupted her aunt.
+
+"Well, then, could I not tell him to discontinue his promenades?"
+
+"Would not that be a way of telling him that he was dangerous? You might
+put that notion into his head. And besides, can you prevent a man from
+coming and going as he pleases? Our meals shall be served in another
+room to-morrow; and when this young gentleman sees us no longer, there
+will be an end of making love to you through the window. There, dear
+child, that is how a woman of the world does."
+
+But the measure of Julie's misfortune was to be filled up. The two women
+had scarcely risen from table when Victor's man arrived in hot haste
+from Bourges with a letter for the Countess from her husband. The
+servant had ridden by unfrequented ways.
+
+Victor sent his wife news of the downfall of the Empire and the
+capitulation of Paris. He himself had gone over to the Bourbons, and all
+France was welcoming them back with transports of enthusiasm. He could
+not go so far as Tours, but he begged her to come at once to join him at
+Orleans, where he hoped to be in readiness with passports for her.
+His servant, an old soldier, would be her escort so far as Orleans; he
+(Victor) believed that the road was still open.
+
+"You have not a moment to lose, madame," said the man. "The Prussians,
+Austrians, and English are about to effect a junction either at Blois or
+at Orleans."
+
+A few hours later, Julie's preparations were made, and she started out
+upon her journey in an old traveling carriage lent by her aunt.
+
+"Why should you not come with us to Paris?" she asked, as she put her
+arms about the Marquise. "Now that the Bourbons have come back you would
+be--"
+
+"Even if there had not been this unhoped-for return, I should still have
+gone to Paris, my poor child, for my advice is only too necessary to
+both you and Victor. So I shall make all my preparations for rejoining
+you there."
+
+Julie set out. She took her maid with her, and the old soldier galloped
+beside the carriage as escort. At nightfall, as they changed horses for
+the last stage before Blois, Julie grew uneasy. All the way from Amboise
+she had heard the sound of wheels behind them, a carriage following hers
+had kept at the same distance. She stood on the step and looked out
+to see who her traveling companions might be, and in the moonlight saw
+Arthur standing three paces away, gazing fixedly at the chaise which
+contained her. Again their eyes met. The Countess hastily flung herself
+back in her seat, but a feeling of dread set her pulses throbbing. It
+seemed to her, as to most innocent and inexperienced young wives, that
+she was herself to blame for this love which she had all unwittingly
+inspired. With this thought came an instinctive terror, perhaps a sense
+of her own helplessness before aggressive audacity. One of a man's
+strongest weapons is the terrible power of compelling a woman to think
+of him when her naturally lively imagination takes alarm or offence at
+the thought that she is followed.
+
+The Countess bethought herself of her aunt's advice, and made up her
+mind that she would not stir from her place during the rest of the
+journey; but every time the horses were changed she heard the Englishman
+pacing round the two carriages, and again upon the road heard the
+importunate sound of the wheels of his caleche. Julie soon began to
+think that, when once reunited to her husband, Victor would know how to
+defend her against this singular persecution.
+
+"Yet suppose that in spite of everything, this young man does not love
+me?" This was the thought that came last of all.
+
+No sooner did she reach Orleans than the Prussians stopped the chaise.
+It was wheeled into an inn-yard and put under a guard of soldiers.
+Resistance was out of the question. The foreign soldiers made the three
+travelers understand by signs that they were obeying orders, and that
+no one could be allowed to leave the carriage. For about two hours the
+Countess sat in tears, a prisoner surrounded by the guard, who smoked,
+laughed, and occasionally stared at her with insolent curiosity. At
+last, however, she saw her captors fall away from the carriage with a
+sort of respect, and heard at the same time the sound of horses entering
+the yard. Another moment, and a little group of foreign officers,
+with an Austrian general at their head, gathered about the door of the
+traveling carriage.
+
+"Madame," said the General, "pray accept our apologies. A mistake has
+been made. You may continue your journey without fear; and here is a
+passport which will spare you all further annoyance of any kind."
+
+Trembling the Countess took the paper, and faltered out some vague words
+of thanks. She saw Arthur, now wearing an English uniform, standing
+beside the General, and could not doubt that this prompt deliverance
+was due to him. The young Englishman himself looked half glad, half
+melancholy; his face was turned away, and he only dared to steal an
+occasional glance at Julie's face.
+
+Thanks to the passport, Mme. d'Aiglemont reached Paris without further
+misadventure, and there she found her husband. Victor d'Aiglemont,
+released from his oath of allegiance to the Emperor, had met with a
+most flattering reception from the Comte d'Artois, recently appointed
+Lieutenant-General of the kingdom by his brother Louis XVIII.
+D'Aiglemont received a commission in the Life Guards, equivalent to
+the rank of general. But amid the rejoicings over the return of the
+Bourbons, fate dealt poor Julie a terrible blow. The death of the
+Marquise de Listomere-Landon was an irreparable loss. The old lady died
+of joy and of an accession of gout to the heart when the Duc d'Angouleme
+came back to Tours, and the one living being entitled by her age to
+enlighten Victor, the woman who, by discreet counsels, might have
+brought about perfect unanimity of husband and wife, was dead; and Julie
+felt the full extent of her loss. Henceforward she must stand alone
+between herself and her husband. But she was young and timid; there
+could be no doubt of the result, or that from the first she would
+elect to bear her lot in silence. The very perfections of her character
+forbade her to venture to swerve from her duties, or to attempt to
+inquire into the cause of her sufferings, for to put an end to them
+would have been to venture on delicate ground, and Julie's girlish
+modesty shrank from the thought.
+
+A word as to M. d'Aiglemont's destinies under the Restoration.
+
+How many men are there whose utter incapacity is a secret kept from
+most of their acquaintance. For such as these high rank, high office,
+illustrious birth, a certain veneer of politeness, and considerable
+reserve of manner, or the _prestige_ of great fortunes, are but so many
+sentinels to turn back critics who would penetrate to the presence
+of the real man. Such men are like kings, in that their real figure,
+character, and life can never be known nor justly appreciated, because
+they are always seen from too near or too far. Factitious merit has a
+way of asking questions and saying little; and understands the art of
+putting others forward to save the necessity of posing before them;
+then, with a happy knack of its own, it draws and attaches others by
+the thread of the ruling passion of self-interest, keeping men of far
+greater abilities to play like puppets, and despising those whom it has
+brought down to its own level. The petty fixed idea naturally prevails;
+it has the advantage of persistence over the plasticity of great
+thoughts.
+
+The observer who should seek to estimate and appraise the negative
+values of these empty heads needs subtlety rather than superior wit for
+the task; patience is a more necessary part of his judicial outfit
+than great mental grasp, cunning and tact rather than any elevation or
+greatness of ideas. Yet skilfully as such usurpers can cover and
+defend their weak points, it is difficult to delude wife and mother
+and children and the house-friend of the family; fortunately for them,
+however, these persons almost always keep a secret which in a manner
+touches the honor of all, and not unfrequently go so far as to help to
+foist the imposture upon the public. And if, thanks to such domestic
+conspiracy, many a noodle passes current for a man of ability, on the
+other hand many another who has real ability is taken for a noodle to
+redress the balance, and the total average of this kind of false coin in
+circulation in the state is a pretty constant quantity.
+
+Bethink yourself now of the part to be played by a clever woman quick to
+think and feel, mated with a husband of this kind, and can you not see
+a vision of lives full of sorrow and self-sacrifice? Nothing upon
+earth can repay such hearts so full of love and tender tact. Put a
+strong-willed woman in this wretched situation, and she will force a
+way out of it for herself by a crime, like Catherine II., whom men
+nevertheless style "the Great." But these women are not all seated upon
+thrones, they are for the most part doomed to domestic unhappiness none
+the less terrible because obscure.
+
+Those who seek consolation in this present world for their woes often
+effect nothing but a change of ills if they remain faithful to their
+duties; or they commit a sin if they break the laws for their pleasure.
+All these reflections are applicable to Julie's domestic life.
+
+Before the fall of Napoleon nobody was jealous of d'Aiglemont. He was
+one colonel among many, an efficient orderly staff-officer, as good a
+man as you could find for a dangerous mission, as unfit as well could
+be for an important command. D'Aiglemont was looked upon as a dashing
+soldier such as the Emperor liked, the kind of man whom his mess usually
+calls "a good fellow." The Restoration gave him back his title of
+Marquis, and did not find him ungrateful; he followed the Bourbons into
+exile at Ghent, a piece of logical loyalty which falsified the horoscope
+drawn for him by his late father-in-law, who predicted that Victor would
+remain a colonel all his life. After the Hundred Days he received the
+appointment of Lieutenant-General, and for the second time became a
+marquis; but it was M. d'Aiglemont's ambition to be a peer of France. He
+adopted, therefore, the maxims and the politics of the _Conservateur_,
+cloaked himself in dissimulation which hid nothing (there being nothing
+to hide), cultivated gravity of countenance and the art of asking
+questions and saying little, and was taken for a man of profound wisdom.
+Nothing drew him from his intrenchments behind the forms of politeness;
+he laid in a provision of formulas, and made lavish use of his stock of
+the catch-words coined at need in Paris to give fools the small change
+for the ore of great ideas and events. Among men of the world he was
+reputed a man of taste and discernment; and as a bigoted upholder of
+aristocratic opinions he was held up for a noble character. If by chance
+he slipped now and again into his old light-heartedness or levity,
+others were ready to discover an undercurrent of diplomatic intention
+beneath his inanity and silliness. "Oh! he only says exactly as much as
+he means to say," thought these excellent people.
+
+So d'Aiglemont's defects and good qualities stood him alike in good
+stead. He did nothing to forfeit a high military reputation gained by
+his dashing courage, for he had never been a commander-in-chief. Great
+thoughts surely were engraven upon that manly aristocratic countenance,
+which imposed upon every one but his own wife. And when everybody else
+believed in the Marquis d'Aiglemont's imaginary talents, the Marquis
+persuaded himself before he had done that he was one of the most
+remarkable men at Court, where, thanks to his purely external
+qualifications, he was in favor and taken at his own valuation.
+
+At home, however, M. d'Aiglemont was modest. Instinctively he felt
+that his wife, young though she was, was his superior; and out of this
+involuntary respect there grew an occult power which the Marquise was
+obliged to wield in spite of all her efforts to shake off the burden.
+She became her husband's adviser, the director of his actions and his
+fortunes. It was an unnatural position; she felt it as something of a
+humiliation, a source of pain to be buried in the depths of her heart.
+From the first her delicately feminine instinct told her that it is a
+far better thing to obey a man of talent than to lead a fool; and that
+a young wife compelled to act and think like a man is neither man nor
+woman, but a being who lays aside all the charms of her womanhood along
+with its misfortunes, yet acquires none of the privileges which our
+laws give to the stronger sex. Beneath the surface her life was a bitter
+mockery. Was she not compelled to protect her protector, to worship a
+hollow idol, a poor creature who flung her the love of a selfish husband
+as the wages of her continual self-sacrifice; who saw nothing in her but
+the woman; and who either did not think it worth while, or (wrong quite
+as deep) did not think at all of troubling himself about her pleasures,
+of inquiring into the cause of her low spirits and dwindling health? And
+the Marquis, like most men who chafe under a wife's superiority,
+saved his self-love by arguing from Julie's physical feebleness a
+corresponding lack of mental power, for which he was pleased to pity
+her; and he would cry out upon fate which had given him a sickly girl
+for a wife. The executioner posed, in fact, as the victim.
+
+All the burdens of this dreary lot fell upon the Marquise, who still
+must smile upon her foolish lord, and deck a house of mourning with
+flowers, and make a parade of happiness in a countenance wan with secret
+torture. And with this sense of responsibility for the honor of
+both, with the magnificent immolation of self, the young Marquise
+unconsciously acquired a wifely dignity, a consciousness of virtue which
+became her safeguard amid many dangers.
+
+Perhaps, if her heart were sounded to the very depths, this intimate
+closely hidden wretchedness, following upon her unthinking, girlish
+first love, had roused in her an abhorrence of passion; possibly she had
+no conception of its rapture, nor of the forbidden but frenzied bliss
+for which some women will renounce all the laws of prudence and the
+principles of conduct upon which society is based. She put from her like
+a dream the thought of bliss and tender harmony of love promised by Mme.
+de Listomere-Landon's mature experience, and waited resignedly for the
+end of her troubles with a hope that she might die young.
+
+Her health had declined daily since her return from Touraine; her
+life seemed to be measured to her in suffering; yet her ill-health was
+graceful, her malady seemed little more than languor, and might well be
+taken by careless eyes for a fine lady's whim of invalidism.
+
+Her doctors had condemned her to keep to the sofa, and there among
+her flowers lay the Marquise, fading as they faded. She was not strong
+enough to walk, nor to bear the open air, and only went out in a closed
+carriage. Yet with all the marvels of modern luxury and invention about
+her, she looked more like an indolent queen than an invalid. A few of
+her friends, half in love perhaps with her sad plight and her fragile
+look, sure of finding her at home, and speculating no doubt upon her
+future restoration to health, would come to bring her the news of the
+day, and kept her informed of the thousand and one small events which
+fill life in Paris with variety. Her melancholy, deep and real though it
+was was still the melancholy of a woman rich in many ways. The Marquise
+d'Aiglemont was like a flower, with a dark insect gnawing at its root.
+
+Occasionally she went into society, not to please herself, but in
+obedience to the exigencies of the position which her husband aspired to
+take. In society her beautiful voice and the perfection of her singing
+could always gain the social success so gratifying to a young woman; but
+what was social success to her, who drew nothing from it for her heart
+or her hopes? Her husband did not care for music. And, moreover, she
+seldom felt at her ease in salons, where her beauty attracted homage not
+wholly disinterested. Her position excited a sort of cruel compassion,
+a morbid curiosity. She was suffering from an inflammatory complaint not
+infrequently fatal, for which our nosology as yet has found no name, a
+complaint spoken of among women in confidential whispers. In spite of
+the silence in which her life was spent, the cause of her ill-health
+was no secret. She was still but a girl in spite of her marriage; the
+slightest glance threw her into confusion. In her endeavor not to blush,
+she was always laughing, always apparently in high spirits; she would
+never admit that she was not perfectly well, and anticipated questions
+as to her health by shame-stricken subterfuges.
+
+In 1817, however, an event took place which did much to alleviate
+Julie's hitherto deplorable existence. A daughter was born to her, and
+she determined to nurse her child herself. For two years motherhood,
+its all-absorbing multiplicity of cares and anxious joys, made life
+less hard for her. She and her husband lived necessarily apart. Her
+physicians predicted improved health, but the Marquise herself put no
+faith in these auguries based on theory. Perhaps, like many a one for
+whom life has lost its sweetness, she looked forward to death as a happy
+termination of the drama.
+
+But with the beginning of the year 1819 life grew harder than ever. Even
+while she congratulated herself upon the negative happiness which she
+had contrived to win, she caught a terrifying glimpse of yawning depths
+below it. She had passed by degrees out of her husband's life. Her fine
+tact and her prudence told her that misfortune must come, and that not
+singly, of this cooling of an affection already lukewarm and wholly
+selfish. Sure though she was of her ascendency over Victor, and certain
+as she felt of his unalterable esteem, she dreaded the influence of
+unbridled passions upon a head so empty, so full of rash self-conceit.
+
+Julie's friends often found her absorbed in prolonged musings; the less
+clairvoyant among them would jestingly ask her what she was thinking
+about, as if a young wife would think of nothing but frivolity, as
+if there were not almost always a depth of seriousness in a mother's
+thoughts. Unhappiness, like great happiness, induces dreaming. Sometimes
+as Julie played with her little Helene, she would gaze darkly at her,
+giving no reply to the childish questions in which a mother delights,
+questioning the present and the future as to the destiny of this little
+one. Then some sudden recollection would bring back the scene of the
+review at the Tuileries and fill her eyes with tears. Her father's
+prophetic warnings rang in her ears, and conscience reproached her that
+she had not recognized its wisdom. Her troubles had all come of her
+own wayward folly, and often she knew not which among so many were the
+hardest to bear. The sweet treasures of her soul were unheeded, and not
+only so, she could never succeed in making her husband understand
+her, even in the commonest everyday things. Just as the power to love
+developed and grew strong and active, a legitimate channel for
+the affections of her nature was denied her, and wedded love was
+extinguished in grave physical and mental sufferings. Add to this that
+she now felt for her husband that pity closely bordering upon contempt,
+which withers all affection at last. Even if she had not learned from
+conversations with some of her friends, from examples in life, from
+sundry occurrences in the great world, that love can bring ineffable
+bliss, her own wounds would have taught her to divine the pure and deep
+happiness which binds two kindred souls each to each.
+
+In the picture which her memory traced of the past, Arthur's frank face
+stood out daily nobler and purer; it was but a flash, for upon that
+recollection she dared not dwell. The young Englishman's shy, silent
+love for her was the one event since her marriage which had left a
+lingering sweetness in her darkened and lonely heart. It may be that all
+the blighted hopes, all the frustrated longings which gradually clouded
+Julie's mind, gathered, by a not unnatural trick of imagination, about
+this man--whose manners, sentiments, and character seemed to have so
+much in common with her own. This idea still presented itself to her
+mind fitfully and vaguely, like a dream; yet from that dream, which
+always ended in a sigh, Julie awoke to greater wretchedness, to keener
+consciousness of the latent anguish brooding beneath her imaginary
+bliss.
+
+Occasionally her self-pity took wilder and more daring flights. She
+determined to have happiness at any cost; but still more often she lay a
+helpless victim of an indescribable numbing stupor, the words she heard
+had no meaning to her, or the thoughts which arose in her mind were so
+vague and indistinct that she could not find language to express them.
+Balked of the wishes of her heart, realities jarred harshly upon her
+girlish dreams of life, but she was obliged to devour her tears. To
+whom could she make complaint? Of whom be understood? She possessed,
+moreover, that highest degree of woman's sensitive pride, the exquisite
+delicacy of feeling which silences useless complainings and declines to
+use an advantage to gain a triumph which can only humiliate both victor
+and vanquished.
+
+Julie tried to endow M. d'Aiglemont with her own abilities and virtues,
+flattering herself that thus she might enjoy the happiness lacking in
+her lot. All her woman's ingenuity and tact was employed in making the
+best of the situation; pure waste of pains unsuspected by him, whom
+she thus strengthened in his despotism. There were moments when misery
+became an intoxication, expelling all ideas, all self-control; but,
+fortunately, sincere piety always brought her back to one supreme hope;
+she found a refuge in the belief in a future life, a wonderful thought
+which enabled her to take up her painful task afresh. No elation of
+victory followed those terrible inward battles and throes of anguish;
+no one knew of those long hours of sadness; her haggard glances met
+no response from human eyes, and during the brief moments snatched by
+chance for weeping, her bitter tears fell unheeded and in solitude.
+
+One evening in January 1820, the Marquise became aware of the full
+gravity of the crisis, gradually brought on by force of circumstances.
+When a husband and wife know each other thoroughly, and their relation
+has long been a matter of use and wont, when the wife has learned to
+interpret every slightest sign, when her quick insight discerns thoughts
+and facts which her husband keeps from her, a chance word, or a remark
+so carelessly let fall in the first instance, seems, upon subsequent
+reflection, like the swift breaking out of light. A wife not seldom
+suddenly awakes upon the brink of a precipice or in the depths of the
+abyss; and thus it was with the Marquise. She was feeling glad to have
+been left to herself for some days, when the real reason of her solitude
+flashed upon her. Her husband, whether fickle and tired of her, or
+generous and full of pity for her, was hers no longer.
+
+In the moment of that discovery she forgot herself, her sacrifices, all
+that she had passed through, she remembered only that she was a mother.
+Looking forward, she thought of her daughter's fortune, of the future
+welfare of the one creature through whom some gleams of happiness came
+to her, of her Helene, the only possession which bound her to life.
+
+Then Julie wished to live to save her child from a stepmother's terrible
+thraldom, which might crush her darling's life. Upon this new vision of
+threatened possibilities followed one of those paroxysms of thought at
+fever-heat which consume whole years of life.
+
+Henceforward husband and wife were doomed to be separated by a whole
+world of thought, and all the weight of that world she must bear alone.
+Hitherto she had felt sure that Victor loved her, in so far as he could
+be said to love; she had been the slave of pleasures which she did
+not share; to-day the satisfaction of knowing that she purchased his
+contentment with her tears was hers no longer. She was alone in the
+world, nothing was left to her now but a choice of evils. In the calm
+stillness of the night her despondency drained her of all her strength.
+She rose from her sofa beside the dying fire, and stood in the lamplight
+gazing, dry-eyed, at her child, when M. d'Aiglemont came in. He was in
+high spirits. Julie called to him to admire Helene as she lay asleep,
+but he met his wife's enthusiasm with a commonplace:
+
+"All children are nice at that age."
+
+He closed the curtains about the cot after a careless kiss on the
+child's forehead. Then he turned his eyes on Julie, took her hand and
+drew her to sit beside him on the sofa, where she had been sitting with
+such dark thoughts surging up in her mind.
+
+"You are looking very handsome to-night, Mme. d'Aiglemont," he
+exclaimed, with the gaiety intolerable to the Marquise, who knew its
+emptiness so well.
+
+"Where have you spent the evening?" she asked, with a pretence of
+complete indifference.
+
+"At Mme. de Serizy's."
+
+He had taken up a fire-screen, and was looking intently at the gauze. He
+had not noticed the traces of tears on his wife's face. Julie shuddered.
+Words could not express the overflowing torrent of thoughts which must
+be forced down into inner depths.
+
+"Mme. de Serizy is giving a concert on Monday, and is dying for you to
+go. You have not been anywhere for some time past, and that is enough
+to set her longing to see you at her house. She is a good-natured
+woman, and very fond of you. I should be glad if you would go; I all but
+promised that you should----"
+
+"I will go."
+
+There was something so penetrating, so significant in the tones of
+Julie's voice, in her accent, in the glance that went with the words,
+that Victor, startled out of his indifference, stared at his wife in
+astonishment.
+
+That was all, Julie had guessed that it was Mme. de Serizy who had
+stolen her husband's heart from her. Her brooding despair benumbed her.
+She appeared to be deeply interested in the fire. Victor meanwhile still
+played with the fire-screen. He looked bored, like a man who has enjoyed
+himself elsewhere, and brought home the consequent lassitude. He yawned
+once or twice, then he took up a candle in one hand, and with the
+other languidly sought his wife's neck for the usual embrace; but Julie
+stooped and received the good-night kiss upon her forehead; the formal,
+loveless grimace seemed hateful to her at that moment.
+
+As soon as the door closed upon Victor, his wife sank into a seat. Her
+limbs tottered beneath her, she burst into tears. None but those who
+have endured the torture of some such scene can fully understand the
+anguish that it means, or divine the horror of the long-drawn tragedy
+arising out of it.
+
+Those simple, foolish words, the silence that followed between the
+husband and wife, the Marquis' gesture and expression, the way in which
+he sat before the fire, his attitude as he made that futile attempt to
+put a kiss on his wife's throat,--all these things made up a dark hour
+for Julie, and the catastrophe of the drama of her sad and lonely life.
+In her madness she knelt down before the sofa, burying her face in it
+to shut out everything from sight, and prayed to Heaven, putting a new
+significance into the words of the evening prayer, till it became a cry
+from the depths of her own soul, which would have gone to her husband's
+heart if he had heard it.
+
+The following week she spent in deep thought for her future, utterly
+overwhelmed by this new trouble. She made a study of it, trying to
+discover a way to regain her ascendency over the Marquis, scheming how
+to live long enough to watch over her daughter's happiness, yet to live
+true to her own heart. Then she made up her mind. She would struggle
+with her rival. She would shine once more in society. She would feign
+the love which she could no longer feel, she would captivate her
+husband's fancy; and when she had lured him into her power, she
+would coquet with him like a capricious mistress who takes delight in
+tormenting a lover. This hateful strategy was the only possible way out
+of her troubles. In this way she would become mistress of the situation;
+she would prescribe her own sufferings at her good pleasure, and reduce
+them by enslaving her husband, and bringing him under a tyrannous yoke.
+She felt not the slightest remorse for the hard life which he should
+lead. At a bound she reached cold, calculating indifference--for her
+daughter's sake. She had gained a sudden insight into the treacherous,
+lying arts of degraded women; the wiles of coquetry, the revolting
+cunning which arouses such profound hatred in men at the mere suspicion
+of innate corruption in a woman.
+
+Julie's feminine vanity, her interests, and a vague desire to inflict
+punishment, all wrought unconsciously with the mother's love within
+her to force her into a path where new sufferings awaited her. But her
+nature was too noble, her mind too fastidious, and, above all things,
+too open, to be the accomplice of these frauds for very long. Accustomed
+as she was to self-scrutiny, at the first step in vice--for vice it
+was--the cry of conscience must inevitably drown the clamor of the
+passions and of selfishness. Indeed, in a young wife whose heart is
+still pure, whose love has never been mated, the very sentiment of
+motherhood is overpowered by modesty. Modesty; is not all womanhood
+summed up in that? But just now Julie would not see any danger, anything
+wrong, in her life.
+
+She went to Mme. de Serizy's concert. Her rival had expected to see a
+pallid, drooping woman. The Marquise wore rouge, and appeared in all the
+splendor of a toilet which enhanced her beauty.
+
+Mme. de Serizy was one of those women who claim to exercise a sort of
+sway over fashions and society in Paris; she issued her decrees, saw
+them received in her own circle, and it seemed to her that all the world
+obeyed them. She aspired to epigram, she set up for an authority in
+matters of taste. Literature, politics, men and women, all alike were
+submitted to her censorship, and the lady herself appeared to defy the
+censorship of others. Her house was in every respect a model of good
+taste.
+
+Julie triumphed over the Countess in her own salon, filled as it was
+with beautiful women and women of fashion. Julie's liveliness and
+sparkling wit gathered all the most distinguished men in the rooms about
+her. Her costume was faultless, for the despair of the women, who one
+and all envied her the fashion of her dress, and attributed the moulded
+outline of her bodice to the genius of some unknown dressmaker, for
+women would rather believe in miracles worked by the science of chiffons
+than in the grace and perfection of the form beneath.
+
+When Julie went to the piano to sing Desdemona's song, the men in the
+rooms flocked about her to hear the celebrated voice so long mute, and
+there was a deep silence. The Marquise saw the heads clustered thickly
+in the doorways, saw all eyes turned upon her, and a sharp thrill of
+excitement quivered through her. She looked for her husband, gave him
+a coquettish side-glance, and it pleased her to see that his vanity was
+gratified to no small degree. In the joy of triumph she sang the first
+part of _Al piu salice_. Her audience was enraptured. Never had Malibran
+nor Pasta sung with expression and intonation so perfect. But at the
+beginning of the second part she glanced over the glistening groups
+and saw--Arthur. He never took his eyes from her face. A quick shudder
+thrilled through her, and her voice faltered. Up hurried Mme. de Serizy
+from her place.
+
+"What is it, dear? Oh! poor little thing! she is in such weak health; I
+was so afraid when I saw her begin a piece so far beyond her strength."
+
+The song was interrupted. Julie was vexed. She had not courage to sing
+any longer, and submitted to her rival's treacherous sympathy. There was
+a whisper among the women. The incident led to discussions; they guessed
+that the struggle had begun between the Marquise and Mme. de Serizy, and
+their tongues did not spare the latter.
+
+Julie's strange, perturbing presentiments were suddenly realized.
+Through her preoccupation with Arthur she had loved to imagine that with
+that gentle, refined face he must remain faithful to his first love.
+There were times when she felt proud that this ideal, pure, and
+passionate young love should have been hers; the passion of the young
+lover whose thoughts are all for her to whom he dedicates every moment
+of his life, who blushes as a woman blushes, thinks as a woman might
+think, forgetting ambition, fame, and fortune in devotion to his
+love,--she need never fear a rival. All these things she had fondly and
+idly dreamed of Arthur; now all at once it seemed to her that her dream
+had come true. In the young Englishman's half-feminine face she read
+the same deep thoughts, the same pensive melancholy, the same passive
+acquiescence in a painful lot, and an endurance like her own. She saw
+herself in him. Trouble and sadness are the most eloquent of love's
+interpreters, and response is marvelously swift between two suffering
+creatures, for in them the powers of intuition and of assimilation of
+facts and ideas are well-nigh unerring and perfect. So with the violence
+of the shock the Marquise's eyes were opened to the whole extent of
+the future danger. She was only too glad to find a pretext for her
+nervousness in her chronic ill-health, and willingly submitted to be
+overwhelmed by Mme. de Serizy's insidious compassion.
+
+That incident of the song caused talk and discussion which differed with
+the various groups. Some pitied Julie's fate, and regretted that such a
+remarkable woman was lost to society; others fell to wondering what the
+cause of her ill-health and seclusion could be.
+
+"Well, now, my dear Ronquerolles," said the Marquis, addressing Mme. de
+Serizy's brother, "you used to envy me my good fortune, and you used to
+blame me for my infidelities. Pshaw, you would not find much to envy in
+my lot, if, like me, you had a pretty wife so fragile that for the past
+two years you might not so much as kiss her hand for fear of damaging
+her. Do not you encumber yourself with one of those fragile ornaments,
+only fit to put in a glass case, so brittle and so costly that you are
+always obliged to be careful of them. They tell me that you are afraid
+of snow or wet for that fine horse of yours; how often do you ride him?
+That is just my own case. It is true that my wife gives me no ground for
+jealousy, but my marriage is purely ornamental business; if you think
+that I am a married man, you are grossly mistaken. So there is some
+excuse for my unfaithfulness. I should dearly like to know what you
+gentlemen who laugh at me would do in my place. Not many men would be so
+considerate as I am. I am sure," (here he lowered his voice) "that Mme.
+d'Aiglemont suspects nothing. And then, of course, I have no right to
+complain at all; I am very well off. Only there is nothing more trying
+for a man who feels things than the sight of suffering in a poor
+creature to whom you are attached----"
+
+"You must have a very sensitive nature, then," said M. de Ronquerolles,
+"for you are not often at home."
+
+Laughter followed on the friendly epigram; but Arthur, who made one of
+the group, maintained a frigid imperturbability in his quality of an
+English gentleman who takes gravity for the very basis of his being.
+D'Aiglemont's eccentric confidence, no doubt, had kindled some kind of
+hope in Arthur, for he stood patiently awaiting an opportunity of a word
+with the Marquis. He had not to wait long.
+
+"My Lord Marquis," he said, "I am unspeakably pained to see the state of
+Mme. d'Aiglemont's health. I do not think that you would talk jestingly
+about it if you knew that unless she adopts a certain course of
+treatment she must die miserably. If I use this language to you, it is
+because I am in a manner justified in using it, for I am quite certain
+that I can save Mme. d'Aiglemont's life and restore her to health
+and happiness. It is odd, no doubt, that a man of my rank should be
+a physician, yet nevertheless chance determined that I should study
+medicine. I find life dull enough here," he continued, affecting a cold
+selfishness to gain his ends, "it makes no difference to me whether I
+spend my time and travel for the benefit of a suffering fellow-creature,
+or waste it in Paris on some nonsense or other. It is very, very seldom
+that a cure is completed in these complaints, for they require constant
+care, time, and patience, and, above all things, money. Travel is
+needed, and a punctilious following out of prescriptions, by no means
+unpleasant, and varied daily. Two _gentlemen_" (laying a stress on
+the word in its English sense) "can understand each other. I give you
+warning that if you accept my proposal, you shall be a judge of my
+conduct at every moment. I will do nothing without consulting you,
+without your superintendence, and I will answer for the success of my
+method if you will consent to follow it. Yes, unless you wish to be Mme.
+d'Aiglemont's husband no longer, and that before long," he added in the
+Marquis' ear.
+
+The Marquis laughed. "One thing is certain--that only an Englishman
+could make me such an extraordinary proposal," he said. "Permit me to
+leave it unaccepted and unrejected. I will think it over; and my wife
+must be consulted first in any case."
+
+Julie had returned to the piano. This time she sang a song from
+_Semiramide, Son regina, son guerriera_, and the whole room applauded, a
+stifled outburst of wellbred acclamation which proved that the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain had been roused to enthusiasm by her singing.
+
+The evening was over. D'Aiglemont brought his wife home, and Julie
+saw with uneasy satisfaction that her first attempt had at once been
+successful. Her husband had been roused out of indifference by the part
+which she had played, and now he meant to honor her with such a passing
+fancy as he might bestow upon some opera nymph. It amused Julie that
+she, a virtuous married woman, should be treated thus. She tried to play
+with her power, but at the outset her kindness broke down once more, and
+she received the most terrible of all the lessons held in store for her
+by fate.
+
+Between two and three o'clock in the morning Julie sat up, sombre and
+moody, beside her sleeping husband, in the room dimly lighted by the
+flickering lamp. Deep silence prevailed. Her agony of remorse had lasted
+near an hour; how bitter her tears had been none perhaps can realize
+save women who have known such an experience as hers. Only such natures
+as Julie's can feel her loathing for a calculated caress, the horror
+of a loveless kiss, of the heart's apostasy followed by dolorous
+prostitution. She despised herself; she cursed marriage. She could have
+longed for death; perhaps if it had not been for a cry from her child,
+she would have sprung from the window and dashed herself upon the
+pavement. M. d'Aiglemont slept on peacefully at her side; his wife's hot
+dropping tears did not waken him.
+
+But next morning Julie could be gay. She made a great effort to look
+happy, to hide, not her melancholy, as heretofore, but an insuperable
+loathing. From that day she no longer regarded herself as a blameless
+wife. Had she not been false to herself? Why should she not play a
+double part in the future, and display astounding depths of cunning in
+deceiving her husband? In her there lay a hitherto undiscovered latent
+depravity, lacking only opportunity, and her marriage was the cause.
+
+Even now she had asked herself why she should struggle with love, when,
+with her heart and her whole nature in revolt, she gave herself to the
+husband whom she loved no longer. Perhaps, who knows? some piece of
+fallacious reasoning, some bit of special pleading, lies at the root of
+all sins, of all crimes. How shall society exist unless every
+individual of which it is composed will make the necessary sacrifices
+of inclination demanded by its laws? If you accept the benefits of
+civilized society, do you not by implication engage to observe the
+conditions, the conditions of its very existence? And yet, starving
+wretches, compelled to respect the laws of property, are not less to be
+pitied than women whose natural instincts and sensitiveness are turned
+to so many avenues of pain.
+
+A few days after that scene of which the secret lay buried in the
+midnight couch, d'Aiglemont introduced Lord Grenville. Julie gave the
+guest a stiffly polite reception, which did credit to her powers of
+dissimulation. Resolutely she silenced her heart, veiled her eyes,
+steadied her voice, and she kept her future in her own hands. Then, when
+by these devices, this innate woman-craft, as it may be called, she
+had discovered the full extent of the love which she inspired, Mme.
+d'Aiglemont welcomed the hope of a speedy cure, and no longer opposed
+her husband, who pressed her to accept the young doctor's offer. Yet she
+declined to trust herself with Lord Grenville until after some further
+study of his words and manner, she could feel certain that he had
+sufficient generosity to endure his pain in silence. She had absolute
+power over him, and she had begun to abuse that power already. Was she
+not a woman?
+
+Montcontour is an old manor-house build upon the sandy cliffs above the
+Loire, not far from the bridge where Julie's journey was interrupted in
+1814. It is a picturesque, white chateau, with turrets covered with
+fine stone carving like Mechlin lace; a chateau such as you often see
+in Touraine, spick and span, ivy clad, standing among its groves
+of mulberry trees and vineyards, with its hollow walks, its stone
+balustrades, and cellars mined in the rock escarpments mirrored in the
+Loire. The roofs of Montcontour gleam in the sun; the whole land glows
+in the burning heat. Traces of the romantic charm of Spain and the south
+hover about the enchanting spot. The breeze brings the scent of bell
+flowers and golden broom, the air is soft, all about you lies a sunny
+land, a land which casts its dreamy spell over your soul, a land of
+languor and of soft desire, a fair, sweet-scented country, where pain is
+lulled to sleep and passion wakes. No heart is cold for long beneath its
+clear sky, beside its sparkling waters. One ambition dies after another,
+and you sink into serene content and repose, as the sun sinks at the end
+of the day swathed about with purple and azure.
+
+
+
+One warm August evening in 1821 two people were climbing the paths cut
+in the crags above the chateau, doubtless for the sake of the view from
+the heights above. The two were Julie and Lord Grenville, but this Julie
+seemed to be a new creature. The unmistakable color of health glowed in
+her face. Overflowing vitality had brought a light into her eyes, which
+sparkled through a moist film with that liquid brightness which gives
+such irresistible charm to the eyes of children. She was radiant with
+smiles; she felt the joy of living and all the possibilities of life.
+From the very way in which she lifted her little feet, it was easy to
+see that no suffering trammeled her lightest movements; there was no
+heaviness nor languor in her eyes, her voice, as heretofore. Under the
+white silk sunshade which screened her from the hot sunlight, she looked
+like some young bride beneath her veil, or a maiden waiting to yield to
+the magical enchantments of Love.
+
+Arthur led her with a lover's care, helping her up the pathway as if she
+had been a child, finding the smoothest ways, avoiding the stones for
+her, bidding her see glimpses of distance, or some flower beside the
+path, always with the unfailing goodness, the same delicate design in
+all that he did; the intuitive sense of this woman's wellbeing seemed to
+be innate in him, and as much, nay, perhaps more, a part of his being as
+the pulse of his own life.
+
+The patient and her doctor went step for step. There was nothing strange
+for them in a sympathy which seemed to have existed since the day when
+they first walked together. One will swayed them both; they stopped as
+their senses received the same impression; every word and every glance
+told of the same thought in either mind. They had climbed up through the
+vineyards, and now they turned to sit on one of the long white stones,
+quarried out of the caves in the hillside; but Julie stood awhile gazing
+out over the landscape.
+
+"What a beautiful country!" she cried. "Let us put up a tent and live
+here. Victor, Victor, do come up here!"
+
+M. d'Aiglemont answered by a halloo from below. He did not, however,
+hurry himself, merely giving his wife a glance from time to time when
+the windings of the path gave him a glimpse of her. Julie breathed
+the air with delight. She looked up at Arthur, giving him one of those
+subtle glances in which a clever woman can put the whole of her thought.
+
+"Ah, I should like to live here always," she said. "Would it be possible
+to tire of this beautiful valley?--What is the picturesque river called,
+do you know?"
+
+"That is the Cise."
+
+"The Cise," she repeated. "And all this country below, before us?"
+
+"Those are the low hills above the Cher."
+
+"And away to the right? Ah, that is Tours. Only see how fine the
+cathedral towers look in the distance."
+
+She was silent, and let fall the hand which she had stretched out
+towards the view upon Arthur's. Both admired the wide landscape made up
+of so much blended beauty. Neither of them spoke. The murmuring voice of
+the river, the pure air, and the cloudless heaven were all in tune with
+their thronging thoughts and their youth and the love in their hearts.
+
+"Oh! _mon Dieu_, how I love this country!" Julie continued, with growing
+and ingenuous enthusiasm. "You lived here for a long while, did you
+not?" she added after a pause.
+
+A thrill ran through Lord Grenville at her words.
+
+"It was down there," he said, in a melancholy voice, indicating as he
+spoke a cluster of walnut trees by the roadside, "that I, a prisoner,
+saw you for the first time."
+
+"Yes, but even at that time I felt very sad. This country looked wild to
+me then, but now----" She broke off, and Lord Grenville did not dare to
+look at her.
+
+"All this pleasure I owe to you," Julie began at last, after a long
+silence. "Only the living can feel the joy of life, and until now have
+I not been dead to it all? You have given me more than health, you have
+made me feel all its worth--"
+
+Women have an inimitable talent for giving utterance to strong feelings
+in colorless words; a woman's eloquence lies in tone and gesture, manner
+and glance. Lord Grenville hid his face in his hands, for his tears
+filled his eyes. This was Julie's first word of thanks since they left
+Paris a year ago.
+
+For a whole year he had watched over the Marquise, putting his whole
+self into the task. D'Aiglemont seconding him, he had taken her first to
+Aix, then to la Rochelle, to be near the sea. From moment to moment he
+had watched the changes worked in Julie's shattered constitution by
+his wise and simple prescriptions. He had cultivated her health as
+an enthusiastic gardener might cultivate a rare flower. Yet, to all
+appearance, the Marquise had quietly accepted Arthur's skill and care
+with the egoism of a spoiled Parisienne, or like a courtesan who has
+no idea of the cost of things, nor of the worth of a man, and judges of
+both by their comparative usefulness to her.
+
+The influence of places upon us is a fact worth remarking. If melancholy
+comes over us by the margin of a great water, another indelible law
+of our nature so orders it that the mountains exercise a purifying
+influence upon our feelings, and among the hills passion gains in depth
+by all that it apparently loses in vivacity. Perhaps it was the light of
+the wide country by the Loire, the height of the fair sloping hillside
+on which the lovers sat, that induced the calm bliss of the moment
+when the whole extent of the passion that lies beneath a few
+insignificant-sounding words is divined for the first time with a
+delicious sense of happiness.
+
+Julie had scarcely spoken the words which had moved Lord Grenville so
+deeply, when a caressing breeze ruffled the treetops and filled the air
+with coolness from the river; a few clouds crossed the sky, and the soft
+cloud-shadows brought out all the beauty of the fair land below.
+
+Julie turned away her head, lest Arthur should see the tears which she
+succeeded in repressing; his emotion had spread at once to her. She
+dried her eyes, but she dared not raise them lest he should read the
+excess of joy in a glance. Her woman's instinct told her that during
+this hour of danger she must hide her love in the depths of her heart.
+Yet silence might prove equally dangerous, and Julie saw that Lord
+Grenville was unable to utter a word. She went on, therefore, in a
+gentle voice:
+
+"You are touched by what I have said. Perhaps such a quick outburst
+of feeling is the way in which a gracious and kind nature like yours
+reverses a mistaken judgment. You must have thought me ungrateful when
+I was cold and reserved, or cynical and hard, all through the journey
+which, fortunately, is very near its end. I should not have been worthy
+of your care if I had been unable to appreciate it. I have forgotten
+nothing. Alas! I shall forget nothing, not the anxious way in which you
+watched over me as a mother watches over her child, nor, and above
+all else, the noble confidence of our life as brother and sister, the
+delicacy of your conduct--winning charms, against which we women are
+defenceless. My lord, it is out of my power to make you a return----"
+
+At these words Julie hastily moved further away, and Lord Grenville made
+no attempt to detain her. She went to a rock not far away, and there
+sat motionless. What either felt remained a secret known to each alone;
+doubtless they wept in silence. The singing of the birds about them,
+so blithe, so overflowing with tenderness at sunset time, could only
+increase the storm of passion which had driven them apart. Nature took
+up their story for them, and found a language for the love of which they
+did not dare to speak.
+
+"And now, my lord," said Julie, and she came and stood before Arthur
+with a great dignity, which allowed her to take his hand in hers. "I am
+going to ask you to hallow and purify the life which you have given back
+to me. Here, we will part. I know," she added, as she saw how white his
+face grew, "I know that I am repaying you for your devotion by requiring
+of you a sacrifice even greater than any which you have hitherto
+made for me, sacrifices so great that they should receive some better
+recompense than this.... But it must be... You must not stay in France.
+By laying this command upon you, do I not give you rights which shall be
+held sacred?" she added, holding his hand against her beating heart.
+
+"Yes," said Arthur, and he rose.
+
+He looked in the direction of d'Aiglemont, who appeared on the opposite
+side of one of the hollow walks with the child in his arms. He had
+scrambled up on the balustrade by the chateau that little Helene might
+jump down.
+
+"Julie, I will not say a word of my love; we understand each other too
+well. Deeply and carefully though I have hidden the pleasures of my
+heart, you have shared them all, I feel it, I know it, I see it. And
+now, at this moment, as I receive this delicious proof of the constant
+sympathy of our hearts, I must go.... Cunning schemes for getting rid of
+him have crossed my mind too often; the temptation might be irresistible
+if I stayed with you."
+
+"I had the same thought," she said, a look of pained surprise in her
+troubled face.
+
+Yet in her tone and involuntary shudder there was such virtue, such
+certainty of herself, won in many a hard-fought battle with a love that
+spoke in Julie's tones and involuntary gestures, that Lord Grenville
+stood thrilled with admiration of her. The mere shadow of a crime had
+been dispelled from that clear conscience. The religious sentiment
+enthroned on the fair forehead could not but drive away the evil
+thoughts that arise unbidden, engendered by our imperfect nature,
+thoughts which make us aware of the grandeur and the perils of human
+destiny.
+
+"And then," she said, "I should have drawn down your scorn upon me,
+and--I should have been saved," she added, and her eyes fell. "To be
+lowered in your eyes, what is that but death?"
+
+For a moment the two heroic lovers were silent, choking down their
+sorrow. Good or ill, it seemed that their thoughts were loyally one,
+and the joys in the depths of their heart were no more experiences apart
+than the pain which they strove most anxiously to hide.
+
+"I have no right to complain," she said after a while, "my misery is of
+my own making," and she raised her tear-filled eyes to the sky.
+
+"Perhaps you don't remember it, but that is the place where we met each
+other for the first time," shouted the General from below, and he waved
+his hand towards the distance. "There, down yonder, near those poplars!"
+
+The Englishman nodded abruptly by way of answer.
+
+"So I was bound to die young and to know no happiness," Julie continued.
+"Yes, do not think that I live. Sorrow is just as fatal as the dreadful
+disease which you have cured. I do not think that I am to blame. No. My
+love is stronger than I am, and eternal; but all unconsciously it grew
+in me; and I will not be guilty through my love. Nevertheless, though I
+shall be faithful to my conscience as a wife, to my duties as a mother,
+I will be no less faithful to the instincts of my heart. Hear me," she
+cried in an unsteady voice, "henceforth I belong to _him_ no longer."
+
+By a gesture, dreadful to see in its undisguised loathing she indicated
+her husband.
+
+"The social code demands that I shall make his existence happy," she
+continued. "I will obey, I will be his servant, my devotion to him
+shall be boundless; but from to-day I am a widow. I will neither be a
+prostitute in my own eyes nor in those of the world. If I do not belong
+to M. d'Aiglemont, I will never belong to another. You shall have
+nothing, nothing save this which you have wrung from me. This is the
+doom which I have passed upon myself," she said, looking proudly at him.
+"And now, know this--if you give way to a single criminal thought, M.
+d'Aiglemont's widow will enter a convent in Spain or Italy. By an evil
+chance we have spoken of our love; perhaps that confession was bound to
+come; but our hearts must never vibrate again like this. To-morrow you
+will receive a letter from England, and we shall part, and never see
+each other again."
+
+The effort had exhausted all Julie's strength. She felt her knees
+trembling, and a feeling of deathly cold came over her. Obeying a
+woman's instinct, she sat down, lest she should sink into Arthur's arms.
+
+"_Julie!_" cried Lord Grenville.
+
+The sharp cry rang through the air like a crack of thunder. Till then he
+could not speak; now, all the words which the dumb lover could not utter
+gathered themselves in that heartrending appeal.
+
+"Well, what is wrong with her?" asked the General, who had hurried up at
+that cry, and now suddenly confronted the two.
+
+"Nothing serious," said Julie, with that wonderful self-possession which
+a woman's quick-wittedness usually brings to her aid when it is most
+called for. "The chill, damp air under the walnut tree made me feel
+quite faint just now, and that must have alarmed this doctor of mine.
+Does he not look on me as a very nearly finished work of art? He
+was startled, I suppose, by the idea of seeing it destroyed." With
+ostentatious coolness she took Lord Grenville's arm, smiled at her
+husband, took a last look at the landscape, and went down the pathway,
+drawing her traveling companion with her.
+
+"This certainly is the grandest view that we have seen," she said; "I
+shall never forget it. Just look, Victor, what distance, what an expanse
+of country, and what variety in it! I have fallen in love with this
+landscape."
+
+Her laughter was almost hysterical, but to her husband it sounded
+natural. She sprang gaily down into the hollow pathway and vanished.
+
+"What?" she cried, when they had left M. d'Aiglemont far behind.
+"So soon? Is it so soon? Another moment, and we can neither of us be
+ourselves; we shall never be ourselves again, our life is over, in
+short--"
+
+"Let us go slowly," said Lord Grenville, "the carriages are still some
+way off, and if we may put words into our glances, our hearts may live a
+little longer."
+
+They went along the footpath by the river in the late evening light,
+almost in silence; such vague words as they uttered, low as the murmur
+of the Loire, stirred their souls to the depths. Just as the sun sank,
+a last red gleam from the sky fell over them; it was like a mournful
+symbol of their ill-starred love.
+
+The General, much put out because the carriage was not at the spot where
+they had left it, followed and outstripped the pair without interrupting
+their converse. Lord Grenville's high minded and delicate behavior
+throughout the journey had completely dispelled the Marquis' suspicions.
+For some time past he had left his wife in freedom, reposing confidence
+in the noble amateur's Punic faith. Arthur and Julie walked on together
+in the close and painful communion of two hearts laid waste.
+
+So short a while ago as they climbed the cliffs at Montcontour, there
+had been a vague hope in either mind, an uneasy joy for which they dared
+not account to themselves; but now as they came along the pathway by the
+river, they pulled down the frail structure of imaginings, the child's
+cardcastle, on which neither of them had dared to breathe. That hope was
+over.
+
+That very evening Lord Grenville left them. His last look at Julie made
+it miserably plain that since the moment when sympathy revealed the full
+extent of a tyrannous passion, he did well to mistrust himself.
+
+The next morning, M. d'Aiglemont and his wife took their places in the
+carriage without their traveling companion, and were whirled swiftly
+along the road to Blois. The Marquise was constantly put in mind of the
+journey made in 1814, when as yet she know nothing of love, and had
+been almost ready to curse it for its persistency. Countless forgotten
+impressions were revived. The heart has its own memory. A woman who
+cannot recollect the most important great events will recollect through
+a lifetime things which appealed to her feelings; and Julie d'Aiglemont
+found all the most trifling details of that journey laid up in her mind.
+It was pleasant to her to recall its little incidents as they occurred
+to her one by one; there were points in the road when she could even
+remember the thoughts that passed through her mind when she saw them
+first.
+
+Victor had fallen violently in love with his wife since she had
+recovered the freshness of her youth and all her beauty, and now he
+pressed close to her side like a lover. Once he tried to put his arm
+round her, but she gently disengaged herself, finding some excuse or
+other for evading the harmless caress. In a little while she shrank from
+the close contact with Victor, the sensation of warmth communicated by
+their position. She tried to take the unoccupied place opposite, but
+Victor gallantly resigned the back seat to her. For this attention she
+thanked him with a sigh, whereupon he forgot himself, and the Don Juan
+of the garrison construed his wife's melancholy to his own advantage,
+so that at the end of the day she was compelled to speak with a firmness
+which impressed him.
+
+"You have all but killed me, dear, once already, as you know," said
+she. "If I were still an inexperienced girl, I might begin to sacrifice
+myself afresh; but I am a mother, I have a daughter to bring up, and I
+owe as much to her as to you. Let us resign ourselves to a misfortune
+which affects us both alike. You are the less to be pitied. Have you
+not, as it is, found consolations which duty and the honor of both,
+and (stronger still) which Nature forbids to me? Stay," she added, "you
+carelessly left three letters from Mme. de Serizy in a drawer; here they
+are. My silence about this matter should make it plain to you that in me
+you have a wife who has plenty of indulgence and does not exact from you
+the sacrifices prescribed by the law. But I have thought enough to see
+that the roles of husband and wife are quite different, and that the
+wife alone is predestined to misfortune. My virtue is based upon firmly
+fixed and definite principles. I shall live blamelessly, but let me
+live."
+
+The Marquis was taken aback by a logic which women grasp with the clear
+insight of love, and overawed by a certain dignity natural to them at
+such crises. Julie's instinctive repugnance for all that jarred upon her
+love and the instincts of her heart is one of the fairest qualities of
+woman, and springs perhaps from a natural virtue which neither laws nor
+civilization can silence. And who shall dare to blame women? If a woman
+can silence the exclusive sentiment which bids her "forsake all other"
+for the man whom she loves, what is she but a priest who has lost his
+faith? If a rigid mind here and there condemns Julie for a sort of
+compromise between love and wifely duty, impassioned souls will lay it
+to her charge as a crime. To be thus blamed by both sides shows one of
+two things very clearly--that misery necessarily follows in the train of
+broken laws, or else that there are deplorable flaws in the institutions
+upon which society in Europe is based.
+
+
+
+Two years went by. M. and Mme. d'Aiglemont went their separate ways,
+leading their life in the world, meeting each other more frequently
+abroad than at home, a refinement upon divorce, in which many a marriage
+in the great world is apt to end.
+
+One evening, strange to say, found husband and wife in their own
+drawing-room. Mme. d'Aiglemont had been dining at home with a friend,
+and the General, who almost invariably dined in town, had not gone out
+for once.
+
+"There is a pleasant time in store for you, _Madame la Marquise_," said
+M. d'Aiglemont, setting his coffee cup down upon the table. He looked
+at the guest, Mme. de Wimphen, and half-pettishly, half-mischievously
+added, "I am starting off for several days' sport with the Master of
+the Hounds. For a whole week, at any rate, you will be a widow in good
+earnest; just what you wish for, I suppose.--Guillaume," he said to the
+servant who entered, "tell them to put the horses in."
+
+Mme. de Wimphen was the friend to whom Julie had begun the letter upon
+her marriage. The glances exchanged by the two women said plainly that
+in her Julie had found an intimate friend, an indulgent and invaluable
+confidante. Mme. de Wimphen's marriage had been a very happy one.
+Perhaps it was her own happiness which secured her devotion to Julie's
+unhappy life, for under such circumstances, dissimilarity of destiny is
+nearly always a strong bond of union.
+
+"Is the hunting season not over yet?" asked Julie, with an indifferent
+glance at her husband.
+
+"The Master of the Hounds comes when and where he pleases, madame. We
+are going boar-hunting in the Royal Forest."
+
+"Take care that no accident happens to you."
+
+"Accidents are usually unforeseen," he said, smiling.
+
+"The carriage is ready, my Lord Marquis," said the servant.
+
+"Madame, if I should fall a victim to the boar--" he continued, with a
+suppliant air.
+
+"What does this mean?" inquired Mme. de Wimphen.
+
+"Come, come," said Mme. d'Aiglemont, turning to her husband; smiling at
+her friend as if to say, "You will soon see."
+
+Julie held up her head; but as her husband came close to her, she
+swerved at the last, so that his kiss fell not on her throat, but on the
+broad frill about it.
+
+"You will be my witness before heaven now that I need a firman to obtain
+this little grace of her," said the Marquis, addressing Mme. de Wimphen.
+"This is how this wife of mine understands love. She has brought me to
+this pass, by what trickery I am at a loss to know.... A pleasant time
+to you!" and he went.
+
+"But your poor husband is really very good-natured," cried Louisa de
+Wimphen, when the two women were alone together. "He loves you."
+
+"Oh! not another syllable after that last word. The name I bear makes me
+shudder----"
+
+"Yes, but Victor obeys you implicitly," said Louisa.
+
+"His obedience is founded in part upon the great esteem which I have
+inspired in him. As far as outward things go, I am a model wife. I make
+his house pleasant to him; I shut my eyes to his intrigues; I touch not
+a penny of his fortune. He is free to squander the interest exactly as
+he pleases; I only stipulate that he shall not touch the principal. At
+this price I have peace. He neither explains nor attempts to explain my
+life. But though my husband is guided by me, that does not say that I
+have nothing to fear from his character. I am a bear leader who daily
+trembles lest the muzzle should give way at last. If Victor once took
+it into his head that I had forfeited my right to his esteem, what would
+happen next I dare not think; for he is violent, full of personal pride,
+and vain above all things. While his wits are not keen enough to enable
+him to behave discreetly at a delicate crisis when his lowest passions
+are involved, his character is weak, and he would very likely kill me
+provisionally even if he died of remorse next day. But there is no fear
+of that fatal good fortune."
+
+A brief pause followed. Both women were thinking of the real cause of
+this state of affairs. Julie gave Louisa a glance which revealed her
+thoughts.
+
+"I have been cruelly obeyed," she cried. "Yet I never forbade him to
+write to me. Oh! _he_ has forgotten me, and he is right. If his life had
+been spoiled, it would have been too tragical; one life is enough, is it
+not? Would you believe it, dear; I read English newspapers simply to
+see his name in print. But he has not yet taken his seat in the House of
+Lords."
+
+"So you know English."
+
+"Did I not tell you?--Yes, I learned."
+
+"Poor little one!" cried Louisa, grasping Julie's hand in hers. "How can
+you still live?"
+
+"That is the secret," said the Marquise, with an involuntary gesture
+almost childlike in its simplicity. "Listen, I take laudanum. That
+duchess in London suggested the idea; you know the story, Maturin made
+use of it in one of his novels. My drops are very weak, but I sleep; I
+am only awake for seven hours in the day, and those hours I spend with
+my child."
+
+Louisa gazed into the fire. The full extent of her friend's misery was
+opening out before her for the first time, and she dared not look into
+her face.
+
+"Keep my secret, Louisa," said Julie, after a moment's silence.
+
+Just as she spoke the footman brought in a letter for the Marquise.
+
+"Ah!" she cried, and her face grew white.
+
+"I need not ask from whom it comes," said Mme. de Wimphen, but the
+Marquise was reading the letter, and heeded nothing else.
+
+Mme. de Wimphen, watching her friend, saw strong feeling wrought to the
+highest pitch, ecstasy of the most dangerous kind painted on Julie's
+face in swift changing white and red. At length Julie flung the sheet
+into the fire.
+
+"It burns like fire," she said. "Oh! my heart beats till I cannot
+breathe."
+
+She rose to her feet and walked up and down. Her eyes were blazing.
+
+"He did not leave Paris!" she cried.
+
+Mme. de Wimphen did not dare to interrupt the words that followed,
+jerked-out sentences, measured by dreadful pauses in between. After
+every break the deep notes of her voice sank lower and lower. There was
+something awful about the last words.
+
+"He has seen me, constantly, and I have not known it.--A look, taken by
+stealth, every day, helps him to live.--Louisa, you do not know!--He
+is dying.--He wants to say good-bye to me. He knows that my husband has
+gone away for several days. He will be here in a moment. Oh! I shall
+die: I am lost.--Listen, Louisa, stay with me!--_I am afraid!_"
+
+"But my husband knows that I have been dining with you; he is sure to
+come for me," said Mme. de Wimphen.
+
+"Well, then, before you go I will send _him_ away. I will play the
+executioner for us both. Oh me! he will think that I do not love him any
+more--And that letter of his! Dear, I can see those words in letters of
+fire."
+
+A carriage rolled in under the archway.
+
+"Ah!" cried the Marquise, with something like joy in her voice, "he is
+coming openly. He makes no mystery of it."
+
+"Lord Grenville," announced the servant.
+
+The Marquise stood up rigid and motionless; but at the sight of Arthur's
+white face, so thin and haggard, how was it possible to keep up the
+show of severity? Lord Grenville saw that Julie was not alone, but he
+controlled his fierce annoyance, and looked cool and unperturbed. Yet
+for the two women who knew his secret, his face, his tones, the look
+in his eyes had something of the power attributed to the torpedo. Their
+faculties were benumbed by the sharp shock of contact with his horrible
+pain. The sound of his voice set Julie's heart beating so cruelly that
+she could not trust herself to speak; she was afraid that he would see
+the full extent of his power over her. Lord Grenville did not dare to
+look at Julie, and Mme. de Wimphen was left to sustain a conversation
+to which no one listened. Julie glanced at her friend with touching
+gratefulness in her eyes to thank her for coming to her aid.
+
+By this time the lovers had quelled emotion into silence, and could
+preserve the limits laid down by duty and convention. But M. de Wimphen
+was announced, and as he came in the two friends exchanged glances. Both
+felt the difficulties of this fresh complication. It was impossible to
+enter into explanations with M. de Wimphen, and Louisa could not think
+of any sufficient pretext for asking to be left.
+
+Julie went to her, ostensibly to wrap her up in her shawl. "I will be
+brave," she said, in a low voice. "He came here in the face of all the
+world, so what have I to fear? Yet but for you, in that first moment,
+when I saw how changed he looked, I should have fallen at his feet."
+
+"Well, Arthur, you have broken your promise to me," she said, in a
+faltering voice, when she returned. Lord Grenville did not venture to
+take the seat upon the sofa by her side.
+
+"I could not resist the pleasure of hearing your voice, of being near
+you. The thought of it came to be a sort of madness, a delirious frenzy.
+I am no longer master of myself. I have taken myself to task; it is
+no use, I am too weak, I ought to die. But to die without seeing you,
+without having heard the rustle of your dress, or felt your tears. What
+a death!"
+
+He moved further away from her; but in his hasty uprising a pistol fell
+out of his pocket. The Marquise looked down blankly at the weapon; all
+passion, all expression had died out of her eyes. Lord Grenville stooped
+for the thing, raging inwardly over an accident which seemed like a
+piece of lovesick strategy.
+
+"_Arthur!_"
+
+"Madame," he said, looking down, "I came here in utter desperation; I
+meant----" he broke off.
+
+"You meant to die by your own hand here in my house!"
+
+"Not alone!" he said in a low voice.
+
+"Not alone! My husband, perhaps----?"
+
+"No, no," he cried in a choking voice. "Reassure yourself," he
+continued, "I have quite given up my deadly purpose. As soon as I came
+in, as soon as I saw you, I felt that I was strong enough to suffer in
+silence, and to die alone."
+
+Julie sprang up, and flung herself into his arms. Through her sobbing
+he caught a few passionate words, "To know happiness, and then to
+die.--Yes, let it be so."
+
+All Julie's story was summed up in that cry from the depths; it was
+the summons of nature and of love at which women without a religion
+surrender. With the fierce energy of unhoped-for joy, Arthur caught her
+up and carried her to the sofa; but in a moment she tore herself from
+her lover's arms, looked at him with a fixed despairing gaze, took his
+hand, snatched up a candle, and drew him into her room. When they stood
+by the cot where Helene lay sleeping, she put the curtains softly aside,
+shading the candle with her hand, lest the light should dazzle the
+half-closed eyes beneath the transparent lids. Helene lay smiling in her
+sleep, with her arms outstretched on the coverlet. Julie glanced from
+her child to Arthur's face. That look told him all.
+
+"We may leave a husband, even though he loves us: a man is strong; he
+has consolations.--We may defy the world and its laws. But a motherless
+child!"--all these thoughts, and a thousand others more moving still,
+found language in that glance.
+
+"We can take her with us," muttered he; "I will love her dearly."
+
+"Mamma!" cried little Helene, now awake. Julie burst into tears. Lord
+Grenville sat down and folded his arms in gloomy silence.
+
+"Mamma!" At the sweet childish name, so many nobler feelings, so many
+irresistible yearnings awoke, that for a moment love was effaced by the
+all-powerful instinct of motherhood; the mother triumphed over the woman
+in Julie, and Lord Grenville could not hold out, he was defeated by
+Julie's tears.
+
+Just at that moment a door was flung noisily open. "Madame d'Aiglemont,
+are you hereabouts?" called a voice which rang like a crack of thunder
+through the hearts of the two lovers. The Marquis had come home.
+
+Before Julie could recover her presence of mind, her husband was on the
+way to the door of her room which opened into his. Luckily, at a sign,
+Lord Grenville escaped into the dressing-closet, and she hastily shut
+the door upon him.
+
+"Well, my lady, here am I," said Victor, "the hunting party did not come
+off. I am just going to bed."
+
+"Good-night, so am I. So go and leave me to undress."
+
+"You are very cross to-night, Madame la Marquise."
+
+The General returned to his room, Julie went with him to the door and
+shut it. Then she sprang to the dressing-close to release Arthur. All
+her presence of mind returned; she bethought herself that it was quite
+natural that her sometime doctor should pay her a visit; she might have
+left him in the drawing-room while she put her little girl to bed. She
+was about to tell him, under her breath, to go back to the drawing-room,
+and had opened the door. Then she shrieked aloud. Lord Grenville's
+fingers had been caught and crushed in the door.
+
+"Well, what is it?" demanded her husband.
+
+"Oh! nothing, I have just pricked my finger with a pin."
+
+The General's door opened at once. Julie imagined that the irruption was
+due to a sudden concern for her, and cursed a solicitude in which love
+had no part. She had barely time to close the dressing-closet, and Lord
+Grenville had not extricated his hand. The General did, in fact, appear,
+but his wife had mistaken his motives; his apprehensions were entirely
+on his own account.
+
+"Can you lend me a bandana handkerchief? The stupid fool Charles leaves
+me without a single one. In the early days you used to bother me with
+looking after me so carefully. Ah, well, the honeymoon did not last very
+long for me, nor yet for my cravats. Nowadays I am given over to the
+secular arm, in the shape of servants who do not care one jack straw for
+what I say."
+
+"There! There is a bandana for you. Did you go into the drawing-room?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh! you might perhaps have been in time to see Lord Grenville."
+
+"Is he in Paris?"
+
+"It seems so."
+
+"Oh! I will go at once. The good doctor."
+
+"But he will have gone by now!" exclaimed Julie.
+
+The Marquis, standing in the middle of the room, was tying the
+handkerchief over his head. He looked complacently at himself in the
+glass.
+
+"What has become of the servants is more than I know," he remarked. "I
+have rung the bell for Charles, and he has not answered it. And your
+maid is not here either. Ring for her. I should like another blanket on
+my bed to-night."
+
+"Pauline is out," the Marquise said drily.
+
+"What, at midnight!" exclaimed the General.
+
+"I gave her leave to go to the Opera."
+
+"That is funny!" returned her husband, continuing to undress. "I thought
+I saw her coming upstairs."
+
+"She has come in then, of course," said Julie, with assumed impatience,
+and to allay any possible suspicion on her husband's part she pretended
+to ring the bell.
+
+
+
+The whole history of that night has never been known, but no doubt it
+was as simple and as tragically commonplace as the domestic incidents
+that preceded it.
+
+Next day the Marquise d'Aiglemont took to her bed, nor did she leave it
+for some days.
+
+"What can have happened in your family so extraordinary that every one
+is talking about your wife?" asked M. de Ronquerolles of M. d'Aiglemont
+a short time after that night of catastrophes.
+
+"Take my advice and remain a bachelor," said d'Aiglemont. "The curtains
+of Helene's cot caught fire, and gave my wife such a shock that it will
+be a twelvemonth before she gets over it; so the doctor says. You marry
+a pretty wife, and her looks fall off; you marry a girl in blooming
+health, and she turns into an invalid. You think she has a passionate
+temperament, and find her cold, or else under her apparent coldness
+there lurks a nature so passionate that she is the death of you, or
+she dishonors your name. Sometimes the meekest of them will turn out
+crotchety, though the crotchety ones never grow any sweeter. Sometimes
+the mere child, so simple and silly at first, will develop an iron will
+to thwart you and the ingenuity of a fiend. I am tired of marriage."
+
+"Or of your wife?"
+
+"That would be difficult. By-the-by, do you feel inclined to go to
+Saint-Thomas d'Aquin with me to attend Lord Grenville's funeral?"
+
+"A singular way of spending time.--Is it really known how he came by his
+death?" added Ronquerolles.
+
+"His man says that he spent a whole night sitting on somebody's window
+sill to save some woman's character, and it has been infernally cold
+lately."
+
+"Such devotion would be highly creditable to one of us old stagers; but
+Lord Grenville was a youngster and--an Englishman. Englishmen never can
+do anything like anybody else."
+
+"Pooh!" returned d'Aiglemont, "these heroic exploits all depend upon the
+woman in the case, and it certainly was not for one that I know, that
+poor Arthur came by his death."
+
+
+
+
+II. A HIDDEN GRIEF
+
+Between the Seine and the little river Loing lies a wide flat country,
+skirted on the one side by the Forest of Fontainebleau, and marked out
+as to its southern limits by the towns of Moret, Montereau, and Nemours.
+It is a dreary country; little knolls of hills appear only at rare
+intervals, and a coppice here and there among the fields affords
+for game; and beyond, upon every side, stretches the endless gray or
+yellowish horizon peculiar to Beauce, Sologne, and Berri.
+
+In the very centre of the plain, at equal distances from Moret and
+Montereau, the traveler passes the old chateau of Saint-Lange, standing
+amid surroundings which lack neither dignity nor stateliness. There are
+magnificent avenues of elm-trees, great gardens encircled by the moat,
+and a circumference of walls about a huge manorial pile which represents
+the profits of the _maltote_, the gains of farmers-general, legalized
+malversation, or the vast fortunes of great houses now brought low
+beneath the hammer of the Civil Code.
+
+Should any artist or dreamer of dreams chance to stray along the roads
+full of deep ruts, or over the heavy land which secures the place
+against intrusion, he will wonder how it happened that this romantic
+old place was set down in a savanna of corn-land, a desert of chalk,
+and sand, and marl, where gaiety dies away, and melancholy is a natural
+product of the soil. The voiceless solitude, the monotonous horizon line
+which weigh upon the spirits are negative beauties, which only suit with
+sorrow that refuses to be comforted.
+
+Hither, at the close of the year 1820, came a woman, still young, well
+known in Paris for her charm, her fair face, and her wit; and to the
+immense astonishment of the little village a mile away, this woman of
+high rank and corresponding fortune took up her abode at Saint-Lange.
+
+From time immemorial, farmers and laborers had seen no gentry at the
+chateau. The estate, considerable though it was, had been left in charge
+of a land-steward and the house to the old servants. Wherefore the
+appearance of the lady of the manor caused a kind of sensation in the
+district.
+
+A group had gathered in the yard of the wretched little wineshop at the
+end of the village (where the road forks to Nemours and Moret) to see
+the carriage pass. It went by slowly, for the Marquise had come
+from Paris with her own horses, and those on the lookout had ample
+opportunity of observing a waiting-maid, who sat with her back to the
+horses holding a little girl, with a somewhat dreamy look, upon her
+knee. The child's mother lay back in the carriage; she looked like
+a dying woman sent out into the country air by her doctors as a last
+resource. Village politicians were by no means pleased to see the
+young, delicate, downcast face; they had hoped that the new arrival at
+Saint-Lange would bring some life and stir into the neighborhood,
+and clearly any sort of stir or movement must be distasteful to the
+suffering invalid in the traveling carriage.
+
+That evening, when the notables of Saint-Lange were drinking in the
+private room of the wineshop, the longest head among them declared that
+such depression could admit of but one construction--the Marquise
+was ruined. His lordship the Marquis was away in Spain with the Duc
+d'Angouleme (so they said in the papers), and beyond a doubt her
+ladyship had come to Saint-Lange to retrench after a run of ill-luck on
+the Bourse. The Marquis was one of the greatest gamblers on the face of
+the globe. Perhaps the estate would be cut up and sold in little lots.
+There would be some good strokes of business to be made in that case,
+and it behooved everybody to count up his cash, unearth his savings
+and to see how he stood, so as to secure his share of the spoil of
+Saint-Lange.
+
+So fair did this future seem, that the village worthies, dying to know
+whether it was founded on fact, began to think of ways of getting at the
+truth through the servants at the chateau. None of these, however, could
+throw any light on the calamity which had brought their mistress into
+the country at the beginning of winter, and to the old chateau of
+Saint-Lange of all places, when she might have taken her choice of
+cheerful country-houses famous for their beautiful gardens.
+
+His worship the mayor called to pay his respects; but he did not see the
+lady. Then the land-steward tried with no better success.
+
+Madame la Marquise kept her room, only leaving it, while it was set
+in order, for the small adjoining drawing-room, where she dined; if,
+indeed, to sit down to a table, to look with disgust at the dishes, and
+take the precise amount of nourishment required to prevent death from
+sheer starvation, can be called dining. The meal over, she returned
+at once to the old-fashioned low chair, in which she had sat since the
+morning, in the embrasure of the one window that lighted her room.
+
+Her little girl she only saw for a few minutes daily, during the dismal
+dinner, and even for a short time she seemed scarcely able to bear the
+child's presence. Surely nothing but the most unheard-of anguish could
+have extinguished a mother's love so early.
+
+None of the servants were suffered to come near, her own woman was
+the one creature whom she liked to have about her; the chateau must be
+perfectly quiet, the child must play at the other end of the house. The
+slightest sound had grown so intolerable, that any human voice, even the
+voice of her own child, jarred upon her.
+
+At first the whole countryside was deeply interested in these
+eccentricities; but time passed on, every possible hypothesis had been
+advanced to account for them and the peasants and dwellers in the little
+country towns thought no more of the invalid lady.
+
+So the Marquise was left to herself. She might live on, perfectly
+silent, amid the silence which she herself had created; there was
+nothing to draw her forth from the tapestried chamber where her
+grandmother died, whither she herself had come that she might die,
+gently, without witnesses, without importunate solicitude, without
+suffering from the insincere demonstrations of egoism masquerading as
+affection, which double the agony of death in great cities.
+
+She was twenty-six years old. At that age, with plenty of romantic
+illusions still left, the mind loves to dwell on the thought of death
+when death seems to come as a friend. But with youth, death is coy,
+coming up close only to go away, showing himself and hiding again, till
+youth has time to fall out of love with him during this dalliance. There
+is that uncertainty too that hangs over death's to-morrow. Youth plunges
+back into the world of living men, there to find the pain more pitiless
+than death, that does not wait to strike.
+
+This woman who refused to live was to know the bitterness of these
+reprieves in the depths of her loneliness; in moral agony, which death
+would not come to end, she was to serve a terrible apprenticeship to the
+egoism which must take the bloom from her heart and break her in to the
+life of the world.
+
+This harsh and sorry teaching is the usual outcome of our early sorrows.
+For the first, and perhaps for the last time in her life, the Marquise
+d'Aiglemont was in very truth suffering. And, indeed, would it not be an
+error to suppose that the same sentiment can be reproduced in us? Once
+develop the power to feel, is it not always there in the depths of our
+nature? The accidents of life may lull or awaken it, but there it is, of
+necessity modifying the self, its abiding place. Hence, every sensation
+should have its great day once and for all, its first day of storm,
+be it long or short. Hence, likewise, pain, the most abiding of our
+sensations, could be keenly felt only at its first irruption, its
+intensity diminishing with every subsequent paroxysm, either because we
+grow accustomed to these crises, or perhaps because a natural instinct
+of self-preservation asserts itself, and opposes to the destroying force
+of anguish an equal but passive force of inertia.
+
+Yet of all kinds of suffering, to which does the name of anguish belong?
+For the loss of parents, Nature has in a manner prepared us; physical
+suffering, again, is an evil which passes over us and is gone; it lays
+no hold upon the soul; if it persists, it ceases to be an evil, it is
+death. The young mother loses her firstborn, but wedded love ere long
+gives her a successor. This grief, too, is transient. After all, these,
+and many other troubles like unto them, are in some sort wounds and
+bruises; they do not sap the springs of vitality, and only a succession
+of such blows can crush in us the instinct that seeks happiness. Great
+pain, therefore, pain that arises to anguish, should be suffering so
+deadly, that past, present, and future are alike included in its grip,
+and no part of life is left sound and whole. Never afterwards can
+we think the same thoughts as before. Anguish engraves itself in
+ineffaceable characters on mouth and brow; it passes through us,
+destroying or relaxing the springs that vibrate to enjoyment, leaving
+behind in the soul the seeds of a disgust for all things in this world.
+
+Yet, again, to be measureless, to weigh like this upon body and soul,
+the trouble should befall when soul and body have just come to their
+full strength, and smite down a heart that beats high with life. Then it
+is that great scars are made. Terrible is the anguish. None, it may
+be, can issue from this soul-sickness without undergoing some dramatic
+change. Those who survive it, those who remain on earth, return to the
+world to wear an actor's countenance and to play an actor's part. They
+know the side-scenes where actors may retire to calculate chances, shed
+their tears, or pass their jests. Life holds no inscrutable dark places
+for those who have passed through this ordeal; their judgments are
+Rhadamanthine.
+
+For young women of the Marquise d'Aiglemont's age, this first, this most
+poignant pain of all, is always referable to the same cause. A woman,
+especially if she is a young woman, greatly beautiful, and by nature
+great, never fails to stake her whole life as instinct and sentiment and
+society all unite to bid her. Suppose that that life fails her, suppose
+that she still lives on, she cannot but endure the most cruel pangs,
+inasmuch as a first love is the loveliest of all. How comes it that this
+catastrophe has found no painter, no poet? And yet, can it be painted?
+Can it be sung? No; for the anguish arising from it eludes analysis
+and defies the colors of art. And more than this, such pain is never
+confessed. To console the sufferer, you must be able to divine the past
+which she hugs in bitterness to her soul like a remorse; it is like an
+avalanche in a valley; it laid all waste before it found a permanent
+resting-place.
+
+The Marquise was suffering from this anguish, which will for long remain
+unknown, because the whole world condemns it, while sentiment cherishes
+it, and the conscience of a true woman justifies her in it. It is with
+such pain as with children steadily disowned of life, and therefore
+bound more closely to the mother's heart than other children more
+bounteously endowed. Never, perhaps, was the awful catastrophe in which
+the whole world without dies for us, so deadly, so complete, so cruelly
+aggravated by circumstance as it had been for the Marquise. The man whom
+she had loved was young and generous; in obedience to the laws of the
+world, she had refused herself to his love, and he had died to save a
+woman's honor, as the world calls it. To whom could she speak of her
+misery? Her tears would be an offence against her husband, the origin
+of the tragedy. By all laws written and unwritten she was bound over to
+silence. A woman would have enjoyed the story; a man would have schemed
+for his own benefit. No; such grief as hers can only weep freely in
+solitude and in loneliness; she must consume her pain or be consumed by
+it; die or kill something within her--her conscience, it may be.
+
+Day after day she sat gazing at the flat horizon. It lay out before her
+like her own life to come. There was nothing to discover, nothing to
+hope. The whole of it could be seen at a glance. It was the visible
+presentment in the outward world of the chill sense of desolation which
+was gnawing restlessly at her heart. The misty mornings, the pale,
+bright sky, the low clouds scudding under the gray dome of heaven,
+fitted with the moods of her soul-sickness. Her heart did not contract,
+was neither more nor less seared, rather it seemed as if her youth, in
+its full blossom, was slowly turned to stone by an anguish intolerable
+because it was barren. She suffered through herself and for herself. How
+could it end save in self-absorption? Ugly torturing thoughts probed
+her conscience. Candid self-examination pronounced that she was double,
+there were two selves within her; a woman who felt and a woman who
+thought; a self that suffered and a self that could fain suffer no
+longer. Her mind traveled back to the joys of childish days; they had
+gone by, and she had never known how happy they were. Scenes crowded up
+in her memory as in a bright mirror glass, to demonstrate the deception
+of a marriage which, all that it should be in the eyes of the world, was
+in reality wretched. What had the delicate pride of young womanhood
+done for her--the bliss foregone, the sacrifices made to the world?
+Everything in her expressed love, awaited love; her movements still were
+full of perfect grace; her smile, her charm, were hers as before; why?
+she asked herself. The sense of her own youth and physical loveliness
+no more affected her than some meaningless reiterated sound. Her very
+beauty had grown intolerable to her as a useless thing. She shrank
+aghast from the thought that through the rest of life she must remain an
+incomplete creature; had not the inner self lost its power of receiving
+impressions with that zest, that exquisite sense of freshness which is
+the spring of so much of life's gladness? The impressions of the future
+would for the most part be effaced as soon as received, and many of the
+thoughts which once would have moved her now would move her no more.
+
+After the childhood of the creature dawns the childhood of the heart;
+but this second infancy was over, her lover had taken it down with him
+into the grave. The longings of youth remained; she was young yet; but
+the completeness of youth was gone, and with that lost completeness the
+whole value and savor of life had diminished somewhat. Should she not
+always bear within her the seeds of sadness and mistrust, ready to
+grow up and rob emotion of its springtide of fervor? Conscious she must
+always be that nothing could give her now the happiness so longed for,
+that seemed so fair in her dreams. The fire from heaven that sheds
+abroad its light in the heart, in the dawn of love, had been quenched
+in tears, the first real tears which she had shed; henceforth she must
+always suffer, because it was no longer in her power to be what once
+she might have been. This is a belief which turns us in aversion and
+bitterness of spirit from any proffered new delight.
+
+Julie had come to look at life from the point of view of age about to
+die. Young though she felt, the heavy weight of joyless days had fallen
+upon her, and left her broken-spirited and old before her time. With a
+despairing cry, she asked the world what it could give her in exchange
+for the love now lost, by which she had lived. She asked herself whether
+in that vanished love, so chaste and pure, her will had not been more
+criminal than her deeds, and chose to believe herself guilty; partly
+to affront the world, partly for her own consolation, in that she had
+missed the close union of body and soul, which diminishes the pain of
+the one who is left behind by the knowledge that once it has known and
+given joy to the full, and retains within itself the impress of that
+which is no more.
+
+Something of the mortification of the actress cheated of her part
+mingled with the pain which thrilled through every fibre of her heart
+and brain. Her nature had been thwarted, her vanity wounded, her woman's
+generosity cheated of self-sacrifice. Then, when she had raised all
+these questions, set vibrating all the springs in those different
+phases of being which we distinguish as social, moral, and physical,
+her energies were so far exhausted and relaxed that she was powerless to
+grasp a single thought amid the chase of conflicting ideas.
+
+Sometimes as the mists fell, she would throw her window open, and would
+stay there, motionless, breathing in unheedingly the damp earthly scent
+in the air, her mind to all appearance an unintelligent blank, for the
+ceaseless burden of sorrow humming in her brain left her deaf to earth's
+harmonies and insensible to the delights of thought.
+
+One day, towards noon, when the sun shone out for a little, her maid
+came in without a summons.
+
+"This is the fourth time that M. le Cure has come to see Mme. la
+Marquise; to-day he is so determined about it, that we did not know what
+to tell him."
+
+"He has come to ask for some money for the poor, no doubt; take him
+twenty-five louis from me."
+
+The woman went only to return.
+
+"M. le Cure will not take the money, my lady; he wants to speak to you."
+
+"Then let him come!" said Mme. d'Aiglemont, with an involuntary shrug
+which augured ill for the priest's reception. Evidently the lady meant
+to put a stop to persecution by a short and sharp method.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont had lost her mother in her early childhood; and as a
+natural consequence in her bringing-up, she had felt the influence of
+the relaxed notions which loosened the hold of religion upon France
+during the Revolution. Piety is a womanly virtue which women alone can
+really instil; and the Marquise, a child of the eighteenth century, had
+adopted her father's creed of philosophism, and practised no religious
+observances. A priest, to her way of thinking, was a civil servant of
+very doubtful utility. In her present position, the teaching of religion
+could only poison her wounds; she had, moreover, but scanty faith in the
+lights of country cures, and made up her mind to put this one gently but
+firmly in his place, and to rid herself of him, after the manner of the
+rich, by bestowing a benefit.
+
+At first sight of the cure the Marquise felt no inclination to change
+her mind. She saw before her a stout, rotund little man, with a ruddy,
+wrinkled, elderly face, which awkwardly and unsuccessfully tried to
+smile. His bald, quadrant-shaped forehead, furrowed by intersecting
+lines, was too heavy for the rest of his face, which seemed to be
+dwarfed by it. A fringe of scanty white hair encircled the back of his
+head, and almost reached his ears. Yet the priest looked as if by nature
+he had a genial disposition; his thick lips, his slightly curved nose,
+his chin, which vanished in a double fold of wrinkles,--all marked him
+out as a man who took cheerful views of life.
+
+At first the Marquise saw nothing but these salient characteristics,
+but at the first word she was struck by the sweetness of the speaker's
+voice. Looking at him more closely, she saw that the eyes under the
+grizzled eyebrows had shed tears, and his face, turned in profile, wore
+so sublime an impress of sorrow, that the Marquise recognized the man in
+the cure.
+
+"Madame la Marquise, the rich only come within our province when
+they are in trouble. It is easy to see that the troubles of a young,
+beautiful, and wealthy woman, who has lost neither children nor
+relatives, are caused by wounds whose pangs religion alone can soothe.
+Your soul is in danger, madame. I am not speaking now of the hereafter
+which awaits us. No, I am not in the confessional. But it is my duty,
+is it not, to open your eyes to your future life here on earth? You
+will pardon an old man, will you not, for importunity which has your own
+happiness for its object?"
+
+"There is no more happiness for me, monsieur. I shall soon be, as you
+say, in your province; but it will be for ever."
+
+"Nay, madame. You will not die of this pain which lies heavy upon you,
+and can be read in your face. If you had been destined to die of it, you
+would not be here at Saint-Lange. A definite regret is not so deadly
+as hope deferred. I have known others pass through more intolerable and
+more awful anguish, and yet they live."
+
+The Marquise looked incredulous.
+
+"Madame, I know a man whose affliction was so sore that your trouble
+would seem to you to be light compared with his."
+
+Perhaps the long solitary hours had begun to hang heavily; perhaps in
+the recesses of the Marquise's mind lay the thought that here was a
+friendly heart to whom she might be able to pour out her troubles.
+However, it was, she gave the cure a questioning glance which could not
+be mistaken.
+
+"Madame," he continued, "the man of whom I tell you had but three
+children left of a once large family circle. He lost his parents, his
+daughter, and his wife, whom he dearly loved. He was left alone at last
+on the little farm where he had lived so happily for so long. His three
+sons were in the army, and each of the lads had risen in proportion to
+his time of service. During the Hundred Days, the oldest went into
+the Guard with a colonel's commission; the second was a major in the
+artillery; the youngest a major in a regiment of dragoons. Madame, those
+three boys loved their father as much as he loved them. If you but knew
+how careless young fellows grow of home ties when they are carried
+away by the current of their own lives, you would realize from this one
+little thing how warmly they loved the lonely old father, who only lived
+in and for them--never a week passed without a letter from one of the
+boys. But then he on his side had never been weakly indulgent, to lessen
+their respect for him; nor unjustly severe, to thwart their affection;
+or apt to grudge sacrifices, the thing that estranges children's hearts.
+He had been more than a father; he had been a brother to them, and their
+friend.
+
+"At last he went to Paris to bid them good-bye before they set out for
+Belgium; he wished to see that they had good horses and all that they
+needed. And so they went, and the father returned to his home again.
+Then the war began. He had letters from Fleurus, and again from Ligny.
+All went well. Then came the battle of Waterloo, and you know the rest.
+France was plunged into mourning; every family waited in intense anxiety
+for news. You may imagine, madame, how the old man waited for tidings,
+in anxiety that knew no peace nor rest. He used to read the gazettes;
+he went to the coach office every day. One evening he was told that the
+colonel's servant had come. The man was riding his master's horse--what
+need was there to ask any questions?--the colonel was dead, cut in
+two by a shell. Before the evening was out the youngest son's servant
+arrived--the youngest had died on the eve of the battle. At midnight
+came a gunner with tidings of the death of the last; upon whom, in those
+few hours, the poor father had centered all his life. Madame, they all
+had fallen."
+
+After a pause the good man controlled his feelings, and added gently:
+
+"And their father is still living, madame. He realized that if God had
+left him on earth, he was bound to live on and suffer on earth; but he
+took refuge in the sanctuary. What could he be?"
+
+The Marquise looked up and saw the cure's face, grown sublime in its
+sorrow and resignation, and waited for him to speak. When the words
+came, tears broke from her.
+
+"A priest, madame; consecrated by his own tears previously shed at the
+foot of the altar."
+
+Silence prevailed for a little. The Marquise and the cure looked out at
+the foggy landscape, as if they could see the figures of those who were
+no more.
+
+"Not a priest in a city, but a simple country cure," added he.
+
+"At Saint-Lange," she said, drying her eyes.
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+Never had the majesty of grief seemed so great to Julie. The two words
+sank straight into her heart with the weight of infinite sorrow. The
+gentle, sonorous tones troubled her heart. Ah! that full, deep voice,
+charged with plangent vibration, was the voice of one who had suffered
+indeed.
+
+"And if I do not die, monsieur, what will become of me?" The Marquise
+spoke almost reverently.
+
+"Have you not a child, madame?"
+
+"Yes," she said stiffly.
+
+The cure gave her such a glance as a doctor gives a patient whose life
+is in danger. Then he determined to do all that in him lay to combat the
+evil spirit into whose clutches she had fallen.
+
+"We must live on with our sorrows--you see it yourself, madame, and
+religion alone offers us real consolation. Will you permit me to come
+again?--to speak to you as a man who can sympathize with every trouble,
+a man about whom there is nothing very alarming, I think?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur, come back again. Thank you for your thought of me."
+
+"Very well, madame; then I shall return very shortly."
+
+This visit relaxed the tension of soul, as it were; the heavy strain
+of grief and loneliness had been almost too much for the Marquise's
+strength. The priest's visit had left a soothing balm in her heart, his
+words thrilled through her with healing influence. She began to feel
+something of a prisoner's satisfaction, when, after he has had time
+to feel his utter loneliness and the weight of his chains, he hears a
+neighbor knocking on the wall, and welcomes the sound which brings a
+sense of human friendship. Here was an unhoped-for confidant. But
+this feeling did not last for long. Soon she sank back into the old
+bitterness of spirit, saying to herself, as the prisoner might say, that
+a companion in misfortune could neither lighten her own bondage nor her
+future.
+
+In the first visit the cure had feared to alarm the susceptibilities
+of self-absorbed grief, in a second interview he hoped to make some
+progress towards religion. He came back again two days later, and from
+the Marquise's welcome it was plain that she had looked forward to the
+visit.
+
+"Well, Mme. la Marquise, have you given a little thought to the great
+mass of human suffering? Have you raised your eyes above our earth and
+seen the immensity of the universe?--the worlds beyond worlds which
+crush our vanity into insignificance, and with our vanity reduce our
+sorrows?"
+
+"No, monsieur," she said; "I cannot rise to such heights, our social
+laws lie too heavily upon me, and rend my heart with a too poignant
+anguish. And laws perhaps are less cruel than the usages of the world.
+Ah! the world!"
+
+"Madame, we must obey both. Law is the doctrine, and custom the practice
+of society."
+
+"Obey society?" cried the Marquise, with an involuntary shudder. "Eh!
+monsieur, it is the source of all our woes. God laid down no law to
+make us miserable; but mankind, uniting together in social life, have
+perverted God's work. Civilization deals harder measure to us women than
+nature does. Nature imposes upon us physical suffering which you have
+not alleviated; civilization has developed in us thoughts and feelings
+which you cheat continually. Nature exterminates the weak; you condemn
+them to live, and by so doing, consign them to a life of misery. The
+whole weight of the burden of marriage, an institution on which society
+is based, falls upon us; for the man liberty, duties for the woman. We
+must give up our whole lives to you, you are only bound to give us a
+few moments of yours. A man, in fact, makes a choice, while we blindly
+submit. Oh, monsieur, to you I can speak freely. Marriage, in these
+days, seems to me to be legalized prostitution. This is the cause of my
+wretchedness. But among so many miserable creatures so unhappily yoked,
+I alone am bound to be silent, I alone am to blame for my misery. My
+marriage was my own doing."
+
+She stopped short, and bitter tears fell in the silence.
+
+"In the depths of my wretchedness, in the midst of this sea of
+distress," she went on, "I found some sands on which to set foot and
+suffer at leisure. A great tempest swept everything away. And here am I,
+helpless and alone, too weak to cope with storms."
+
+"We are never weak while God is with us," said the priest. "And if your
+cravings for affection cannot be satisfied here on earth, have you no
+duties to perform?"
+
+"Duties continually!" she exclaimed, with something of impatience in
+her tone. "But where for me are the sentiments which give us strength
+to perform them? Nothing from nothing, nothing for nothing,--this,
+monsieur, is one of the most inexorable laws of nature, physical or
+spiritual. Would you have these trees break into leaf without the sap
+which swells the buds? It is the same with our human nature; and in me
+the sap is dried up at its source."
+
+"I am not going to speak to you of religious sentiments of which
+resignation is born," said the cure, "but of motherhood, madame,
+surely--"
+
+"Stop, monsieur!" said the Marquise, "with you I will be sincere. Alas!
+in future I can be sincere with no one; I am condemned to falsehood.
+The world requires continual grimaces, and we are bidden to obey
+its conventions if we would escape reproach. There are two kinds of
+motherhood, monsieur; once I knew nothing of such distinctions, but I
+know them now. Only half of me has become a mother; it were better for
+me if I had not been a mother at all. Helene is not _his_ child! Oh! do
+not start. At Saint-Lange there are volcanic depths whence come lurid
+gleams of light and earthquake shocks to shake the fragile edifices of
+laws not based on nature. I have borne a child, that is enough, I am a
+mother in the eyes of the law. But you, monsieur, with your delicately
+compassionate soul, can perhaps understand this cry from an unhappy
+woman who has suffered no lying illusions to enter her heart. God will
+judge me, but surely I have only obeyed His laws by giving way to the
+affections which He Himself set in me, and this I have learned from my
+own soul.--What is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the
+fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended? Unless it is owned by
+every fibre of the body, as by every chord of tenderness in the heart;
+unless it recalls the bliss of love, the hours, the places where two
+creatures were happy, their words that overflowed with the music of
+humanity, and their sweet imaginings, that child is an incomplete
+creation. Yes, those two should find the poetic dreams of their intimate
+double life realized in their child as in an exquisite miniature; it
+should be for them a never-failing spring of emotion, implying their
+whole past and their whole future.
+
+"My poor little Helene is her father's child, the offspring of duty and
+of chance. In me she finds nothing but the affection of instinct, the
+woman's natural compassion for the child of her womb. Socially speaking,
+I am above reproach. Have I not sacrificed my life and my happiness to
+my child? Her cries go to my heart; if she were to fall into the water,
+I should spring to save her, but she is not in my heart.
+
+"Ah! love set me dreaming of a motherhood far greater and more complete.
+In a vanished dream I held in my arms a child conceived in desire before
+it was begotten, the exquisite flower of life that blossoms in the soul
+before it sees the light of day. I am Helene's mother only in the sense
+that I brought her forth. When she needs me no longer, there will be an
+end of my motherhood; with the extinction of the cause, the effects will
+cease. If it is a woman's adorable prerogative that her motherhood
+may last through her child's life, surely that divine persistence of
+sentiment is due to the far-reaching glory of the conception of the
+soul? Unless a child has lain wrapped about from life's first beginnings
+by the mother's soul, the instinct of motherhood dies in her as in the
+animals. This is true; I feel that it is true. As my poor little one
+grows older, my heart closes. My sacrifices have driven us apart. And
+yet I know, monsieur, that to another child my heart would have gone
+out in inexhaustible love; for that other I should not have known what
+sacrifice meant, all had been delight. In this, monsieur, my instincts
+are stronger than reason, stronger than religion or all else in me. Does
+the woman who is neither wife nor mother sin in wishing to die when, for
+her misfortune, she has caught a glimpse of the infinite beauty of love,
+the limitless joy of motherhood? What can become of her? _I_ can tell
+you what she feels. I cannot put that memory from me so resolutely but
+that a hundred times, night and day, visions of a happiness, greater
+it may be than the reality, rise before me, followed by a shudder which
+shakes brain and heart and body. Before these cruel visions, my feelings
+and thoughts grow colorless, and I ask myself, 'What would my life have
+been _if_----?'"
+
+She hid her face in her hands and burst into tears.
+
+"There you see the depths of my heart!" she continued. "For _his_
+child I could have acquiesced in any lot however dreadful. He who died,
+bearing the burden of the sins of the world will forgive this thought
+of which I am dying; but the world, I know, is merciless. In its ears
+my words are blasphemies; I am outraging all its codes. Oh! that I could
+wage war against this world and break down and refashion its laws
+and traditions! Has it not turned all my thoughts, and feelings, and
+longings, and hopes, and every fibre in me into so many sources of pain?
+Spoiled my future, present, and past? For me the daylight is full of
+gloom, my thoughts pierce me like a sword, my child is and is not.
+
+"Oh, when Helene speaks to me, I wish that her voice were different,
+when she looks into my face I wish that she had other eyes. She
+constantly keeps me in mind of all that should have been and is not. I
+cannot bear to have her near me. I smile at her, I try to make up to
+her for the real affection of which she is defrauded. I am wretched,
+monsieur, too wretched to live. And I am supposed to be a pattern wife.
+And I have committed no sins. And I am respected! I have fought down
+forbidden love which sprang up at unawares within me; but if I have kept
+the letter of the law, have I kept it in my heart? There has never been
+but one here," she said, laying her right hand on her breast, "one and
+no other; and my child feels it. Certain looks and tones and gestures
+mould a child's nature, and my poor little one feels no thrill in the
+arm I put about her, no tremor comes into my voice, no softness into my
+eyes when I speak to her or take her up. She looks at me, and I cannot
+endure the reproach in her eyes. There are times when I shudder to think
+that some day she may be my judge and condemn her mother unheard. Heaven
+grant that hate may not grow up between us! Ah! God in heaven,
+rather let the tomb open for me, rather let me end my days here at
+Saint-Lange!--I want to go back to the world where I shall find my other
+soul and become wholly a mother. Ah! forgive me, sir, I am mad. Those
+words were choking me; now they are spoken. Ah! you are weeping too! You
+will not despise me--"
+
+She heard the child come in from a walk. "Helene, my child, come here!"
+she called. The words sounded like a cry of despair.
+
+The little girl ran in, laughing and calling to her mother to see a
+butterfly which she had caught; but at the sight of that mother's tears
+she grew quiet of a sudden, and went up close, and received a kiss on
+her forehead.
+
+"She will be very beautiful some day," said the priest.
+
+"She is her father's child," said the Marquise, kissing the little one
+with eager warmth, as if she meant to pay a debt of affection or to
+extinguish some feeling of remorse.
+
+"How hot you are, mamma!"
+
+"There, go away, my angel," said the Marquise.
+
+The child went. She did not seem at all sorry to go; she did not
+look back; glad perhaps to escape from a sad face, and instinctively
+comprehending already an antagonism of feeling in its expression. A
+mother's love finds language in smiles, they are a part of the divine
+right of motherhood. The Marquise could not smile. She flushed red as
+she felt the cure's eyes. She had hoped to act a mother's part before
+him, but neither she nor her child could deceive him. And, indeed, when
+a woman loves sincerely, in the kiss she gives there is a divine honey;
+it is as if a soul were breathed forth in the caress, a subtle flame
+of fire which brings warmth to the heart; the kiss that lacks this
+delicious unction is meagre and formal. The priest had felt the
+difference. He could fathom the depths that lie between the motherhood
+of the flesh and the motherhood of the heart. He gave the Marquise a
+keen, scrutinizing glance, then he said:
+
+"You are right, madame; it would be better for you if you were dead----"
+
+"Ah!" she cried, "then you know all my misery; I see you do if,
+Christian priest as you are, you can guess my determination to die and
+sanction it. Yes, I meant to die, but I have lacked the courage. The
+spirit was strong, but the flesh was weak, and when my hand did not
+tremble, the spirit within me wavered.
+
+"I do not know the reason of these inner struggles, and alternations. I
+am very pitiably a woman no doubt, weak in my will, strong only to love.
+Oh, I despise myself. At night, when all my household was asleep, I
+would go out bravely as far as the lake; but when I stood on the brink,
+my cowardice shrank from self-destruction. To you I will confess my
+weakness. When I lay in my bed, again, shame would come over me, and
+courage would come back. Once I took a dose of laudanum; I was ill, but
+I did not die. I thought I had emptied the phial, but I had only taken
+half the dose."
+
+"You are lost, madame," the cure said gravely, with tears in his voice.
+"You will go back into the world, and you will deceive the world. You
+will seek and find a compensation (as you imagine it to be) for your
+woes; then will come a day of reckoning for your pleasures--"
+
+"Do you think," she cried, "that _I_ shall bestow the last, the most
+precious treasures of my heart upon the first base impostor who can
+play the comedy of passion? That I would pollute my life for a moment
+of doubtful pleasure? No; the flame which shall consume my soul shall be
+love, and nothing but love. All men, monsieur, have the senses of
+their sex, but not all have the man's soul which satisfies all the
+requirements of our nature, drawing out the melodious harmony which
+never breaks forth save in response to the pressure of feeling. Such a
+soul is not found twice in our lifetime. The future that lies before
+me is hideous; I know it. A woman is nothing without love; beauty is
+nothing without pleasure. And even if happiness were offered to me a
+second time, would not the world frown upon it? I owe my daughter an
+honored mother. Oh! I am condemned to live in an iron circle, from which
+there is but one shameful way of escape. The round of family duties, a
+thankless and irksome task, is in store for me. I shall curse life; but
+my child shall have at least a fair semblance of a mother. I will give
+her treasures of virtue for the treasures of love of which I defraud
+her.
+
+"I have not even the mother's desire to live to enjoy her child's
+happiness. I have no belief in happiness. What will Helene's fate be?
+My own, beyond doubt. How can a mother ensure that the man to whom she
+gives her daughter will be the husband of her heart? You pour scorn
+on the miserable creatures who sell themselves for a few coins to any
+passer-by, though want and hunger absolve the brief union; while another
+union, horrible for quite other reasons, is tolerated, nay encouraged,
+by society, and a young and innocent girl is married to a man whom she
+has only met occasionally during the previous three months. She is sold
+for her whole lifetime. It is true that the price is high! If you allow
+her no compensation for her sorrows, you might at least respect her; but
+no, the most virtuous of women cannot escape calumny. This is our fate
+in its double aspect. Open prostitution and shame; secret prostitution
+and unhappiness. As for the poor, portionless girls, they may die or go
+mad, without a soul to pity them. Beauty and virtue are not marketable
+in the bazaar where souls and bodies are bought and sold--in the den of
+selfishness which you call society. Why not disinherit daughters? Then,
+at least, you might fulfil one of the laws of nature, and guided by your
+own inclinations, choose your companions."
+
+"Madame, from your talk it is clear to me that neither the spirit of
+family nor the sense of religion appeals to you. Why should you hesitate
+between the claims of the social selfishness which irritates you, and
+the purely personal selfishness which craves satisfactions--"
+
+"The family, monsieur--does such a thing exist? I decline to recognize
+as a family a knot of individuals bidden by society to divide the
+property after the death of father and mother, and to go their separate
+ways. A family means a temporary association of persons brought together
+by no will of their own, dissolved at once by death. Our laws have
+broken up homes and estates, and the old family tradition handed down
+from generation to generation. I see nothing but wreck and ruin about
+me."
+
+"Madame, you will only return to God when His hand has been heavy upon
+you, and I pray that you have time enough given to you in which to make
+your peace with Him. Instead of looking to heaven for comfort, you
+are fixing your eyes on earth. Philosophism and personal interest
+have invaded your heart; like the children of the sceptical eighteenth
+century, you are deaf to the voice of religion. The pleasures of this
+life bring nothing but misery. You are about to make an exchange of
+sorrows, that is all."
+
+She smiled bitterly.
+
+"I will falsify your predictions," she said. "I shall be faithful to him
+who died for me."
+
+"Sorrow," he answered, "is not likely to live long save in souls
+disciplined by religion," and he lowered his eyes respectfully lest the
+Marquise should read his doubts in them. The energy of her outburst had
+grieved him. He had seen the self that lurked beneath so many forms,
+and despaired of softening a heart which affliction seemed to sear. The
+divine Sower's seed could not take root in such a soil, and His gentle
+voice was drowned by the clamorous outcry of self-pity. Yet the good man
+returned again and again with an apostle's earnest persistence, brought
+back by a hope of leading so noble and proud a soul to God; until the
+day when he made the discovery that the Marquise only cared to talk with
+him because it was sweet to speak of him who was no more. He would
+not lower his ministry by condoning her passion, and confined the
+conversation more and more to generalities and commonplaces.
+
+Spring came, and with the spring the Marquise found distraction from her
+deep melancholy. She busied herself for lack of other occupation with
+her estate, making improvements for amusement.
+
+In October she left the old chateau. In the life of leisure at
+Saint-Lange she had recovered from her grief and grown fair and fresh.
+Her grief had been violent at first in its course, as the quoit hurled
+forth with all the player's strength, and like the quoit after many
+oscillations, each feebler than the last, it had slackened into
+melancholy. Melancholy is made up of a succession of such oscillations,
+the first touching upon despair, the last on the border between pain
+and pleasure; in youth, it is the twilight of dawn; in age, the dusk of
+night.
+
+As the Marquise drove through the village in her traveling carriage, she
+met the cure on his way back from the church. She bowed in response to
+his farewell greeting, but it was with lowered eyes and averted face.
+She did not wish to see him again. The village cure had judged this poor
+Diana of Ephesus only too well.
+
+
+
+
+III. AT THIRTY YEARS
+
+Madame Firmiani was giving a ball. M. Charles de Vandenesse, a young man
+of great promise, the bearer of one of those historic names which, in
+spite of the efforts of legislation, are always associated with the
+glory of France, had received letters of introduction to some of the
+great lady's friends in Naples, and had come to thank the hostess and to
+take his leave.
+
+Vandenesse had already acquitted himself creditably on several
+diplomatic missions; and now that he had received an appointment as
+attache to a plenipotentiary at the Congress of Laybach, he wished to
+take advantage of the opportunity to make some study of Italy on the
+way. This ball was a sort of farewell to Paris and its amusements and
+its rapid whirl of life, to the great eddying intellectual centre and
+maelstrom of pleasure; and a pleasant thing it is to be borne along
+by the current of this sufficiently slandered great city of Paris. Yet
+Charles de Vandenesse had little to regret, accustomed as he had been
+for the past three years to salute European capitals and turn his back
+upon them at the capricious bidding of a diplomatist's destiny. Women
+no longer made any impression upon him; perhaps he thought that a real
+passion would play too large a part in a diplomatist's life; or perhaps
+that the paltry amusements of frivolity were too empty for a man
+of strong character. We all of us have huge claims to strength of
+character. There is no man in France, be he ever so ordinary a member of
+the rank and file of humanity, that will waive pretensions to something
+beyond mere cleverness.
+
+Charles, young though he was--he was scarcely turned thirty--looked at
+life with a philosophic mind, concerning himself with theories and
+means and ends, while other men of his age were thinking of pleasure,
+sentiments, and the like illusions. He forced back into some inner depth
+the generosity and enthusiasms of youth, and by nature he was generous.
+He tried hard to be cool and calculating, to coin the fund of wealth
+which chanced to be in his nature into gracious manners, and courtesy,
+and attractive arts; 'tis the proper task of an ambitious man, to play a
+sorry part to gain "a good position," as we call it in modern days.
+
+He had been dancing, and now he gave a farewell glance over the rooms,
+to carry away a distinct impression of the ball, moved, doubtless, to
+some extent by the feeling which prompts a theatre-goer to stay in
+his box to see the final tableau before the curtain falls. But M. de
+Vandenesse had another reason for his survey. He gazed curiously at the
+scene before him, so French in character and in movement, seeking to
+carry away a picture of the light and laughter and the faces at
+this Parisian fete, to compare with the novel faces and picturesque
+surroundings awaiting him at Naples, where he meant to spend a few
+days before presenting himself at his post. He seemed to be drawing the
+comparison now between this France so variable, changing even as you
+study her, with the manners and aspects of that other land known to him
+as yet only by contradictory hearsay tales or books of travel, for the
+most part unsatisfactory. Thoughts of a somewhat poetical cast, albeit
+hackneyed and trite to our modern ideas, crossed his brain, in response
+to some longing of which, perhaps, he himself was hardly conscious, a
+desire in the depths of a heart fastidious rather than jaded, vacant
+rather than seared.
+
+"These are the wealthiest and most fashionable women and the greatest
+ladies in Paris," he said to himself. "These are the great men of the
+day, great orators and men of letters, great names and titles; artists
+and men in power; and yet in it all it seems to me as if there were
+nothing but petty intrigues and still-born loves, meaningless smiles
+and causeless scorn, eyes lighted by no flame within, brain-power in
+abundance running aimlessly to waste. All those pink-and-white faces are
+here not so much for enjoyment, as to escape from dulness. None of the
+emotion is genuine. If you ask for nothing but court feathers properly
+adjusted, fresh gauzes and pretty toilettes and fragile, fair women, if
+you desire simply to skim the surface of life, here is your world for
+you. Be content with meaningless phrases and fascinating simpers, and do
+not ask for real feeling. For my own part, I abhor the stale intrigues
+which end in sub-prefectures and receiver-generals' places and
+marriages; or, if love comes into the question, in stealthy compromises,
+so ashamed are we of the mere semblance of passion. Not a single one of
+all these eloquent faces tells you of a soul, a soul wholly absorbed by
+one idea as by remorse. Regrets and misfortune go about shame-facedly
+clad in jests. There is not one woman here whose resistance I should
+care to overcome, not one who could drag you down to the pit. Where will
+you find energy in Paris? A poniard here is a curious toy to hang from a
+gilt nail, in a picturesque sheath to match. The women, the brains, and
+hearts of Paris are all on a par. There is no passion left, because
+we have no individuality. High birth and intellect and fortune are all
+reduced to one level; we all have taken to the uniform black coat by way
+of mourning for a dead France. There is no love between equals. Between
+two lovers there should be differences to efface, wide gulfs to fill.
+The charm of love fled from us in 1789. Our dulness and our humdrum
+lives are the outcome of the political system. Italy at any rate is the
+land of sharp contrasts. Woman there is a malevolent animal, a dangerous
+unreasoning siren, guided only by her tastes and appetites, a creature
+no more to be trusted than a tiger--"
+
+Mme. Firmiani here came up to interrupt this soliloquy made up of vague,
+conflicting, and fragmentary thoughts which cannot be reproduced in
+words. The whole charm of such musing lies in its vagueness--what is it
+but a sort of mental haze?
+
+"I want to introduce you to some one who has the greatest wish to make
+your acquaintance, after all that she has heard of you," said the lady,
+taking his arm.
+
+She brought him into the next room, and with such a smile and glance
+as a Parisienne alone can give, she indicated a woman sitting by the
+hearth.
+
+"Who is she?" the Comte de Vandenesse asked quickly.
+
+"You have heard her name more than once coupled with praise or blame.
+She is a woman who lives in seclusion--a perfect mystery."
+
+"Oh! if ever you have been merciful in your life, for pity's sake tell
+me her name."
+
+"She is the Marquise d'Aiglemont."
+
+"I will take lessons from her; she had managed to make a peer of France
+of that eminently ordinary person her husband, and a dullard into a
+power in the land. But, pray tell me this, did Lord Grenville die for
+her sake, do you think, as some women say?"
+
+"Possibly. Since that adventure, real or imaginary, she is very much
+changed, poor thing! She has not gone into society since. Four years of
+constancy--that is something in Paris. If she is here to-night----"
+Here Mme. Firmiani broke off, adding with a mysterious expression, "I am
+forgetting that I must say nothing. Go and talk with her."
+
+For a moment Charles stood motionless, leaning lightly against the
+frame of the doorway, wholly absorbed in his scrutiny of a woman who had
+become famous, no one exactly knew how or why. Such curious anomalies
+are frequent enough in the world. Mme. d'Aiglemont's reputation was
+certainly no more extraordinary than plenty of other great reputations.
+There are men who are always in travail of some great work which never
+sees the light, statisticians held to be profound on the score of
+calculations which they take very good care not to publish, politicians
+who live on a newspaper article, men of letters and artists whose
+performances are never given to the world, men of science, much as
+Sganarelle is a Latinist for those who know no Latin; there are the men
+who are allowed by general consent to possess a peculiar capacity for
+some one thing, be it for the direction of arts, or for the conduct
+of an important mission. The admirable phrase, "A man with a special
+subject," might have been invented on purpose for these acephalous
+species in the domain of literature and politics.
+
+Charles gazed longer than he intended. He was vexed with himself for
+feeling so strongly interested; it is true, however, that the lady's
+appearance was a refutation of the young man's ballroom generalizations.
+
+The Marquise had reached her thirtieth year. She was beautiful in spite
+of her fragile form and extremely delicate look. Her greatest charm lay
+in her still face, revealing unfathomed depths of soul. Some haunting,
+ever-present thought veiled, as it were, the full brilliance of eyes
+which told of a fevered life and boundless resignation. So seldom
+did she raise the eyelids soberly downcast, and so listless were her
+glances, that it almost seemed as if the fire in her eyes were reserved
+for some occult contemplation. Any man of genius and feeling must have
+felt strangely attracted by her gentleness and silence. If the mind
+sought to explain the mysterious problem of a constant inward turning
+from the present to the past, the soul was no less interested in
+initiating itself into the secrets of a heart proud in some sort of
+its anguish. Everything about her, moreover, was in keeping with these
+thoughts which she inspired. Like almost all women who have very long
+hair, she was very pale and perfectly white. The marvelous fineness of
+her skin (that almost unerring sign) indicated a quick sensibility which
+could be seen yet more unmistakably in her features; there was the same
+minute and wonderful delicacy of finish in them that the Chinese artist
+gives to his fantastic figures. Perhaps her neck was rather too long,
+but such necks belong to the most graceful type, and suggest vague
+affinities between a woman's head and the magnetic curves of the
+serpent. Leave not a single one of the thousand signs and tokens by
+which the most inscrutable character betrays itself to an observer of
+human nature, he has but to watch carefully the little movements of a
+woman's head, the ever-varying expressive turns and curves of her neck
+and throat, to read her nature.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont's dress harmonized with the haunting thought that
+informed the whole woman. Her hair was gathered up into a tall coronet
+of broad plaits, without ornament of any kind; she seemed to have bidden
+farewell for ever to elaborate toilettes. Nor were any of the small arts
+of coquetry which spoil so many women to be detected in her. Perhaps
+her bodice, modest though it was, did not altogether conceal the dainty
+grace of her figure, perhaps, too, her gown looked rich from the
+extreme distinction of its fashion, and if it is permissible to look for
+expression in the arrangement of stuffs, surely those numerous straight
+folds invested her with a great dignity. There may have been some
+lingering trace of the indelible feminine foible in the minute care
+bestowed upon her hand and foot; yet, if she allowed them to be seen
+with some pleasure, it would have tasked the utmost malice of a rival to
+discover any affectation in her gestures, so natural did they seem, so
+much a part of old childish habit, that her careless grace absolved this
+vestige of vanity.
+
+All these little characteristics, the nameless trifles which combine to
+make up the sum of a woman's prettiness or ugliness, her charm or lack
+of charm, can only be indicated, when, as with Mme. d'Aiglemont, a
+personality dominates and gives coherence to the details, informing
+them, blending them all in an exquisite whole. Her manner was perfectly
+in accord with her style of beauty and her dress. Only to certain women
+at a certain age is it given to put language into their attitude. Is it
+joy or is it sorrow that teaches a woman of thirty the secret of that
+eloquence of carriage, so that she must always remain an enigma which
+each interprets by the aid of his hopes, desires, or theories?
+
+The way in which the Marquise leaned both elbows on the arm of her
+chair, the toying of her interclasped fingers, the curve of her throat,
+the indolent lines of her languid but lissome body as she lay back in
+graceful exhaustion, as it were; her indolent limbs, her unstudied pose,
+the utter lassitude of her movements,--all suggested that this was a
+woman for whom life had lost its interest, a woman who had known
+the joys of love only in dreams, a woman bowed down by the burden of
+memories of the past, a woman who had long since despaired of the future
+and despaired of herself, an unoccupied woman who took the emptiness of
+her own life for the nothingness of life.
+
+Charles de Vandenesse saw and admired the beautiful picture before
+him, as a kind of artistic success beyond an ordinary woman's powers of
+attainment. He was acquainted with d'Aiglemont; and now, at the first
+sight of d'Aiglemont's wife, the young diplomatist saw at a glance a
+disproportionate marriage, an incompatibility (to use the legal jargon)
+so great that it was impossible that the Marquise should love her
+husband. And yet--the Marquise d'Aiglemont's life was above reproach,
+and for any observer the mystery about her was the more interesting on
+this account. The first impulse of surprise over, Vandenesse cast
+about for the best way of approaching Mme. d'Aiglemont. He would try a
+commonplace piece of diplomacy, he thought; he would disconcert her by a
+piece of clumsiness and see how she would receive it.
+
+"Madame," he said, seating himself near her, "through a fortunate
+indiscretion I have learned that, for some reason unknown to me, I have
+had the good fortune to attract your notice. I owe you the more thanks
+because I have never been so honored before. At the same time, you are
+responsible for one of my faults, for I mean never to be modest again--"
+
+"You will make a mistake, monsieur," she laughed; "vanity should be left
+to those who have nothing else to recommend them."
+
+The conversation thus opened ranged at large, in the usual way, over a
+multitude of topics--art and literature, politics, men and things--till
+insensibly they fell to talking of the eternal theme in France and all
+the world over--love, sentiment, and women.
+
+"We are bond-slaves."
+
+"You are queens."
+
+This was the gist and substance of all the more or less ingenious
+discourse between Charles and the Marquise, as of all such
+discourses--past, present, and to come. Allow a certain space of time,
+and the two formulas shall begin to mean "Love me," and "I will love
+you."
+
+"Madame," Charles de Vandenesse exclaimed under his breath, "you have
+made me bitterly regret that I am leaving Paris. In Italy I certainly
+shall not pass hours in intellectual enjoyment such as this has been."
+
+"Perhaps, monsieur, you will find happiness, and happiness is worth
+more than all the brilliant things, true and false, that are said every
+evening in Paris."
+
+Before Charles took leave, he asked permission to pay a farewell call
+on the Marquise d'Aiglemont, and very lucky did he feel himself when
+the form of words in which he expressed himself for once was used in all
+sincerity; and that night, and all day long on the morrow, he could not
+put the thought of the Marquise out of his mind.
+
+At times he wondered why she had singled him out, what she had
+meant when she asked him to come to see her, and thought supplied an
+inexhaustible commentary. Again it seemed to him that he had discovered
+the motives of her curiosity, and he grew intoxicated with hope or
+frigidly sober with each new construction put upon that piece of
+commonplace civility. Sometimes it meant everything, sometimes nothing.
+He made up his mind at last that he would not yield to this inclination,
+and--went to call on Mme. d'Aiglemont.
+
+There are thoughts which determine our conduct, while we do not so much
+as suspect their existence. If at first sight this assertion appears to
+be less a truth than a paradox, let any candid inquirer look into his
+own life and he shall find abundant confirmation therein. Charles went
+to Mme. d'Aiglemont, and so obeyed one of these latent, pre-existent
+germs of thought, of which our experience and our intellectual gains and
+achievements are but later and tangible developments.
+
+For a young man a woman of thirty has irresistible attractions. There
+is nothing more natural, nothing better established, no human tie of
+stouter tissue than the heart-deep attachment between such a woman as
+the Marquise d'Aiglemont and such a man as Charles de Vandenesse. You
+can see examples of it every day in the world. A girl, as a matter
+of fact, has too many young illusions, she is too inexperienced, the
+instinct of sex counts for too much in her love for a young man to feel
+flattered by it. A woman of thirty knows all that is involved in
+the self-surrender to be made. Among the impulses of the first, put
+curiosity and other motives than love; the second acts with integrity of
+sentiment. The first yields; the second makes deliberate choice. Is
+not that choice in itself an immense flattery? A woman armed with
+experience, forewarned by knowledge, almost always dearly bought, seems
+to give more than herself; while the inexperienced and credulous girl,
+unable to draw comparisons for lack of knowledge, can appreciate
+nothing at its just worth. She accepts love and ponders it. A woman is a
+counselor and a guide at an age when we love to be guided and obedience
+is delight; while a girl would fain learn all things, meeting us with a
+girl's _naivete_ instead of a woman's tenderness. She affords a single
+triumph; with a woman there is resistance upon resistance to overcome;
+she has but joy and tears, a woman has rapture and remorse.
+
+A girl cannot play the part of a mistress unless she is so corrupt
+that we turn from her with loathing; a woman has a thousand ways of
+preserving her power and her dignity; she has risked so much for love,
+that she must bid him pass through his myriad transformations, while her
+too submissive rival gives a sense of too serene security which palls.
+If the one sacrifices her maidenly pride, the other immolates the honor
+of a whole family. A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that
+all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry is endless,
+she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she satisfies every demand of
+man's vanity, the novice responds but to one.
+
+And there are terrors, fears, and hesitations--trouble and storm in the
+love of a woman of thirty years, never to be found in a young girl's
+love. At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back the esteem
+she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her thoughts are
+full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids him make it
+glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, or rise in
+pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young girl can
+only make moan. And with all the advantages of her position, the woman
+of thirty can be a girl again, for she can play all parts, assume a
+girl's bashfulness, and grow the fairer even for a mischance.
+
+Between these two feminine types lies the immeasurable difference which
+separates the foreseen from the unforeseen, strength from weakness. The
+woman of thirty satisfies every requirement; the young girl must satisfy
+none, under penalty of ceasing to be a young girl. Such ideas as these,
+developing in a young man's mind, help to strengthen the strongest of
+all passions, a passion in which all spontaneous and natural feeling is
+blended with the artificial sentiment created by conventional manners.
+
+The most important and decisive step in a woman's life is the very
+one that she invariably regards as the most insignificant. After her
+marriage she is no longer her own mistress, she is the queen and
+the bond-slave of the domestic hearth. The sanctity of womanhood is
+incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman
+emancipation means corruption. If you give a stranger the right of entry
+into the sanctuary of home, do you not put yourself at his mercy? How
+then if she herself bids him enter it? Is not this an offence, or, to
+speak more accurately, a first step towards an offence? You must
+either accept this theory with all its consequences, or absolve illicit
+passion. French society hitherto has chosen the third and middle course
+of looking on and laughing when offences come, apparently upon the
+Spartan principle of condoning the theft and punishing clumsiness.
+And this system, it may be, is a very wise one. 'Tis a most appalling
+punishment to have all your neighbors pointing the finger of scorn
+at you, a punishment that a woman feels in her very heart. Women are
+tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without
+esteem they cannot exist, esteem is the first demand that they make
+of love. The most corrupt among them feels that she must, in the first
+place, pledge the future to buy absolution for the past, and strives
+to make her lover understand that only for irresistible bliss can she
+barter the respect which the world henceforth will refuse to her.
+
+Some such reflections cross the mind of any woman who for the first time
+and alone receives a visit from a young man; and this especially when,
+like Charles de Vandenesse, the visitor is handsome or clever. And
+similarly there are not many young men who would fail to base some
+secret wish on one of the thousand and one ideas which justify the
+instinct that attracts them to a beautiful, witty, and unhappy woman
+like the Marquise d'Aiglemont.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont, therefore, felt troubled when M. de Vandenesse was
+announced; and as for him, he was almost confused in spite of the
+assurance which is like a matter of costume for a diplomatist. But not
+for long. The Marquise took refuge at once in the friendliness of manner
+which women use as a defence against the misinterpretations of fatuity,
+a manner which admits of no afterthought, while it paves the way to
+sentiment (to make use of a figure of speech), tempering the transition
+through the ordinary forms of politeness. In this ambiguous position,
+where the four roads leading respectively to Indifference, Respect,
+Wonder, and Passion meet, a woman may stay as long as she pleases, but
+only at thirty years does she understand all the possibilities of the
+situation. Laughter, tenderness, and jest are all permitted to her at
+the crossing of the ways; she has acquired the tact by which she finds
+all the responsive chords in a man's nature, and skill in judging the
+sounds which she draws forth. Her silence is as dangerous as her speech.
+You will never read her at that age, nor discover if she is frank or
+false, nor how far she is serious in her admissions or merely laughing
+at you. She gives you the right to engage in a game of fence with her,
+and suddenly by a glance, a gesture of proved potency, she closes the
+combat and turns from you with your secret in her keeping, free to offer
+you up in a jest, free to interest herself in you, safe alike in her
+weakness and your strength.
+
+Although the Marquise d'Aiglemont took up her position upon this neutral
+ground during the first interview, she knew how to preserve a high
+womanly dignity. The sorrows of which she never spoke seemed to hang
+over her assumed gaiety like a light cloud obscuring the sun. When
+Vandenesse went out, after a conversation which he had enjoyed more than
+he had thought possible, he carried with him the conviction that this
+was like to be too costly a conquest for his aspirations.
+
+"It would mean sentiment from here to yonder," he thought, "and
+correspondence enough to wear out a deputy second-clerk on his
+promotion. And yet if I really cared----"
+
+Luckless phrase that has been the ruin of many an infatuated mortal. In
+France the way to love lies through self-love. Charles went back to Mme.
+d'Aiglemont, and imagined that she showed symptoms of pleasure in his
+conversion. And then, instead of giving himself up like a boy to the joy
+of falling in love, he tried to play a double role. He did his best
+to act passion and to keep cool enough to analyze the progress of this
+flirtation, to be lover and diplomatist at once; but youth and hot blood
+and analysis could only end in one way, over head and ears in love; for,
+natural or artificial, the Marquise was more than his match. Each time
+he went out from Mme. d'Aiglemont, he strenuously held himself to his
+distrust, and submitted the progressive situations of his case to a
+rigorous scrutiny fatal to his own emotions.
+
+"To-day she gave me to understand that she has been very unhappy and
+lonely," said he to himself, after the third visit, "and that but for
+her little girl she would have longed for death. She was perfectly
+resigned. Now as I am neither her brother nor her spiritual director,
+why should she confide her troubles to _me_? She loves me."
+
+Two days later he came away apostrophizing modern manners.
+
+"Love takes on the hue of every age. In 1822 love is a doctrinaire.
+Instead of proving love by deeds, as in times past, we have taken to
+argument and rhetoric and debate. Women's tactics are reduced to three
+shifts. In the first place, they declare that we cannot love as they
+love. (Coquetry! the Marquise simply threw it at me, like a challenge,
+this evening!) Next they grow pathetic, to appeal to our natural
+generosity or self-love; for does it not flatter a young man's vanity to
+console a woman for a great calamity? And lastly, they have a craze for
+virginity. She must have thought that I thought her very innocent. My
+good faith is like to become an excellent speculation."
+
+But a day came when every suspicious idea was exhausted. He asked
+himself whether the Marquise was not sincere; whether so much suffering
+could be feigned, and why she should act the part of resignation? She
+lived in complete seclusion; she drank in silence of a cup of sorrow
+scarcely to be guessed unless from the accent of some chance exclamation
+in a voice always well under control. From that moment Charles felt a
+keen interest in Mme. d'Aiglemont. And yet, though his visits had come
+to be a recognized thing, and in some sort a necessity to them both,
+and though the hour was kept free by tacit agreement, Vandenesse still
+thought that this woman with whom he was in love was more clever than
+sincere. "Decidedly, she is an uncommonly clever woman," he used to say
+to himself as he went away.
+
+When he came into the room, there was the Marquise in her favorite
+attitude, melancholy expressed in her whole form. She made no movement
+when he entered, only raised her eyes and looked full at him, but the
+glance that she gave him was like a smile. Mme. d'Aiglemont's manner
+meant confidence and sincere friendship, but of love there was no trace.
+Charles sat down and found nothing to say. A sensation for which no
+language exists troubled him.
+
+"What is the matter with you?" she asked in a softened voice.
+
+"Nothing.... Yes; I am thinking of something of which, as yet, you have
+not thought at all."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Why--the Congress is over."
+
+"Well," she said, "and ought you to have been at the Congress?"
+
+A direct answer would have been the most eloquent and delicate
+declaration of love; but Charles did not make it. Before the candid
+friendship in Mme. d'Aiglemont's face all the calculations of vanity,
+the hopes of love, and the diplomatist's doubts died away. She did not
+suspect, or she seemed not to suspect, his love for her; and Charles,
+in utter confusion turning upon himself, was forced to admit that he had
+said and done nothing which could warrant such a belief on her part. For
+M. de Vandenesse that evening, the Marquise was, as she had always been,
+simple and friendly, sincere in her sorrow, glad to have a friend, proud
+to find a nature responsive to her own--nothing more. It had not entered
+her mind that a woman could yield twice; she had known love--love lay
+bleeding still in the depths of her heart, but she did not imagine that
+bliss could bring her its rapture twice, for she believed not merely
+in the intellect, but in the soul; and for her love was no simple
+attraction; it drew her with all noble attractions.
+
+In a moment Charles became a young man again, enthralled by the splendor
+of a nature so lofty. He wished for a fuller initiation into the secret
+history of a life blighted rather by fate than by her own fault. Mme.
+d'Aiglemont heard him ask the cause of the overwhelming sorrow which had
+blended all the harmonies of sadness with her beauty; she gave him one
+glance, but that searching look was like a seal set upon some solemn
+compact.
+
+"Ask no more such questions of me," she said. "Four years ago, on
+this very day, the man who loved me, for whom I would have given up
+everything, even my own self-respect, died, and died to save my name.
+That love was still young and pure and full of illusions when it came to
+an end. Before I gave way to passion--and never was a woman so urged by
+fate--I had been drawn into the mistake that ruins many a girl's life,
+a marriage with a man whose agreeable manners concealed his emptiness.
+Marriage plucked my hopes away one by one. And now, to-day, I have
+forfeited happiness through marriage, as well as the happiness styled
+criminal, and I have known no happiness. Nothing is left to me. If I
+could not die, at least I ought to be faithful to my memories."
+
+No tears came with the words. Her eyes fell, and there was a slight
+twisting of the fingers interclasped, according to her wont. It was
+simply said, but in her voice there was a note of despair, deep as
+her love seemed to have been, which left Charles without a hope. The
+dreadful story of a life told in three sentences, with that twisting of
+the fingers for all comment, the might of anguish in a fragile woman,
+the dark depths masked by a fair face, the tears of four years of
+mourning fascinated Vandenesse; he sat silent and diminished in the
+presence of her woman's greatness and nobleness, seeing not the physical
+beauty so exquisite, so perfectly complete, but the soul so great in
+its power to feel. He had found, at last, the ideal of his fantastic
+imaginings, the ideal so vigorously invoked by all who look on life as
+the raw material of a passion for which many a one seeks ardently, and
+dies before he has grasped the whole of the dreamed-of treasure.
+
+With those words of hers in his ears, in the presence of her sublime
+beauty, his own thoughts seemed poor and narrow. Powerless as he felt
+himself to find words of his own, simple enough and lofty enough to
+scale the heights of this exaltation, he took refuge in platitudes as to
+the destiny of women.
+
+"Madame, we must either forget our pain, or hollow out a tomb for
+ourselves."
+
+But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being
+essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the
+other is infinite. To set to work to reason where you are required to
+feel, is the mark of a limited nature. Vandenesse therefore held his
+peace, sat awhile with his eyes fixed upon her, then came away. A prey
+to novel thoughts which exalted woman for him, he was in something the
+same position as a painter who has taken the vulgar studio model for
+a type of womanhood, and suddenly confronts the _Mnemosyne_ of the
+Musee--that noblest and least appreciated of antique statues.
+
+Charles de Vandenesse was deeply in love. He loved Mme. d'Aiglemont with
+the loyalty of youth, with the fervor that communicates such ineffable
+charm to a first passion, with a simplicity of heart of which a man only
+recovers some fragments when he loves again at a later day. Delicious
+first passion of youth, almost always deliciously savored by the woman
+who calls it forth; for at the golden prime of thirty, from the poetic
+summit of a woman's life, she can look out over the whole course of
+love--backwards into the past, forwards into the future--and, knowing
+all the price to be paid for love, enjoys her bliss with the dread of
+losing it ever present with her. Her soul is still fair with her waning
+youth, and passion daily gathers strength from the dismaying prospect of
+the coming days.
+
+"This is love," Vandenesse said to himself this time as he left the
+Marquise, "and for my misfortune I love a woman wedded to her memories.
+It is hard work to struggle against a dead rival, never present to
+make blunders and fall out of favor, nothing of him left but his better
+qualities. What is it but a sort of high treason against the Ideal to
+attempt to break the charm of memory, to destroy the hopes that survive
+a lost lover, precisely because he only awakened longings, and all that
+is loveliest and most enchanting in love?"
+
+These sober reflections, due to the discouragement and dread of failure
+with which love begins in earnest, were the last expiring effort of
+diplomatic reasoning. Thenceforward he knew no afterthoughts, he was the
+plaything of his love, and lost himself in the nothings of that strange
+inexplicable happiness which is full fed by a chance word, by silence,
+or a vague hope. He tried to love Platonically, came daily to breathe
+the air that she breathed, became almost a part of her house, and went
+everywhere with her, slave as he was of a tyrannous passion compounded
+of egoism and devotion of the completest. Love has its own instinct,
+finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way
+to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay or turn aside. If
+feeling is sincere, its destiny is not doubtful. Let a woman begin to
+think that her life depends on the sincerity or fervor or earnestness
+which her lover shall put into his longings, and is there not sufficient
+in the thought to put her through all the tortures of dread? It is
+impossible for a woman, be she wife or mother, to be secure from a young
+man's love. One thing it is within her power to do--to refuse to see him
+as soon as she learns a secret which she never fails to guess. But
+this is too decided a step to take at an age when marriage has become a
+prosaic and tiresome yoke, and conjugal affection is something less than
+tepid (if indeed her husband has not already begun to neglect her). Is a
+woman plain? she is flattered by a love which gives her fairness. Is she
+young and charming? She is only to be won by a fascination as great
+as her own power to charm, that is to say, a fascination well-nigh
+irresistible. Is she virtuous? There is a love sublime in its
+earthliness which leads her to find something like absolution in the
+very greatness of the surrender and glory in a hard struggle. Everything
+is a snare. No lesson, therefore, is too severe where the temptation is
+so strong. The seclusion in which the Greeks and Orientals kept and keep
+their women, an example more and more followed in modern England, is the
+only safeguard of domestic morality; but under this system there is
+an end of all the charm of social intercourse; and society, and good
+breeding, and refinement of manners become impossible. The nations must
+take their choice.
+
+So a few months went by, and Mme. d'Aiglemont discovered that her life
+was closely bound with this young man's life, without overmuch confusion
+in her surprise, and felt with something almost like pleasure that she
+shared his tastes and his thoughts. Had she adopted Vandenesse's ideas?
+Or was it Vandenesse who had made her lightest whims his own? She was
+not careful to inquire. She had been swept out already into the current
+of passion, and yet this adorable woman told herself with the confident
+reiteration of misgiving;
+
+"Ah! no. I will be faithful to him who died for me."
+
+Pascal said that "the doubt of God implies belief in God." And similarly
+it may be said that a woman only parleys when she has surrendered. A day
+came when the Marquise admitted to herself that she was loved, and
+with that admission came a time of wavering among countless conflicting
+thoughts and feelings. The superstitions of experience spoke their
+language. Should she be happy? Was it possible that she should find
+happiness outside the limits of the laws which society rightly or
+wrongly has set up for humanity to live by? Hitherto her cup of life had
+been full of bitterness. Was there any happy issue possible for the
+ties which united two human beings held apart by social conventions? And
+might not happiness be bought too dear? Still, this so ardently desired
+happiness, for which it is so natural to seek, might perhaps be found
+after all. Curiosity is always retained on the lover's side in the suit.
+The secret tribunal was still sitting when Vandenesse appeared, and his
+presence put the metaphysical spectre, reason, to flight.
+
+If such are the successive transformations through which a sentiment,
+transient though it be, passes in a young man and a woman of thirty,
+there comes a moment of time when the shades of difference blend into
+each other, when all reasonings end in a single and final reflection
+which is lost and absorbed in the desire which it confirms. Then the
+longer the resistance, the mightier the voice of love. And here endeth
+this lesson, or rather this study made from the _ecorche_, to borrow a
+most graphic term from the studio, for in this history it is not so much
+intended to portray love as to lay bare its mechanism and its dangers.
+From this moment every day adds color to these dry bones, clothes them
+again with living flesh and blood and the charm of youth, and puts
+vitality into their movements; till they glow once more with the beauty,
+the persuasive grace of sentiment, the loveliness of life.
+
+
+
+Charles found Mme. d'Aiglemont absorbed in thought, and to his "What is
+it?" spoken in thrilling tones grown persuasive with the heart's soft
+magic, she was careful not to reply. The delicious question bore witness
+to the perfect unity of their spirits; and the Marquise felt, with a
+woman's wonderful intuition, that to give any expression to the sorrow
+in her heart would be to make an advance. If, even now, each one
+of those words was fraught with significance for them both, in what
+fathomless depths might she not plunge at the first step? She read
+herself with a clear and lucid glance. She was silent, and Vandenesse
+followed her example.
+
+"I am not feeling well," she said at last, taking alarm at the pause
+fraught with such great moment for them both, when the language of the
+eyes completely filled the blank left by the helplessness of speech.
+
+"Madame," said Charles, and his voice was tender but unsteady with
+strong feeling, "soul and body are both dependent on each other. If you
+were happy, you would be young and fresh. Why do you refuse to ask of
+love all that love has taken from you? You think that your life is over
+when it is only just beginning. Trust yourself to a friend's care. It is
+so sweet to be loved."
+
+"I am old already," she said; "there is no reason why I should not
+continue to suffer as in the past. And 'one must love,' do you say?
+Well, I must not, and I cannot. Your friendship has put some sweetness
+into my life, but beside you I care for no one, no one could efface my
+memories. A friend I accept; I should fly from a lover. Besides, would
+it be a very generous thing to do, to exchange a withered heart for a
+young heart; to smile upon illusions which now I cannot share, to cause
+happiness in which I should either have no belief, or tremble to lose?
+I should perhaps respond to his devotion with egoism, should weigh and
+deliberate while he felt; my memory would resent the poignancy of his
+happiness. No, if you love once, that love is never replaced, you see.
+Indeed, who would have my heart at this price?"
+
+There was a tinge of heartless coquetry in the words, the last effort of
+discretion.
+
+"If he loses courage, well and good, I shall live alone and faithful."
+The thought came from the very depths of the woman, for her it was the
+too slender willow twig caught in vain by a swimmer swept out by the
+current.
+
+Vandenesse's involuntary shudder at her dictum plead more eloquently for
+him than all his past assiduity. Nothing moves a woman so much as the
+discovery of a gracious delicacy in us, such a refinement of sentiment
+as her own, for a woman the grace and delicacy are sure tokens of truth.
+Charles' start revealed the sincerity of his love. Mme. d'Aiglemont
+learned the strength of his affection from the intensity of his pain.
+
+"Perhaps you are right," he said coldly. "New love, new vexation of
+spirit."
+
+Then he changed the subject, and spoke of indifferent matters; but he
+was visibly moved, and he concentrated his gaze on Mme. d'Aiglemont as
+if he were seeing her for the last time.
+
+"Adieu, madame," he said, with emotion in his voice.
+
+"_Au revoir_," said she, with that subtle coquetry, the secret of a very
+few among women.
+
+He made no answer and went.
+
+When Charles was no longer there, when his empty chair spoke for him,
+regrets flocked in upon her, and she found fault with herself. Passion
+makes an immense advance as soon as a woman persuades herself that she
+has failed somewhat in generosity or hurt a noble nature. In love there
+is never any need to be on our guard against the worst in us; that is
+a safeguard; a woman only surrenders at the summons of a virtue. "The
+floor of hell is paved with good intentions,"--it is no preacher's
+paradox.
+
+Vandenesse stopped away for several days. Every evening at the
+accustomed hour the Marquise sat expectant in remorseful impatience.
+She could not write--that would be a declaration, and, moreover, her
+instinct told her that he would come back. On the sixth day he was
+announced, and never had she heard the name with such delight. Her joy
+frightened her.
+
+"You have punished me well," she said, addressing him.
+
+Vandenesse gazed at her in astonishment.
+
+"Punished?" he echoed. "And for what?" He understood her quite well,
+but he meant to be avenged for all that he had suffered as soon as she
+suspected it.
+
+"Why have you not come to see me?" she demanded with a smile.
+
+"Then you have seen no visitors?" asked he, parrying the question.
+
+"Yes. M. de Ronquerolles and M. de Marsay and young d'Escrignon came
+and stayed for nearly two hours, the first two yesterday, the last this
+morning. And besides, I have had a call, I believe, from Mme. Firmiani
+and from your sister, Mme. de Listomere."
+
+Here was a new infliction, torture which none can comprehend unless they
+know love as a fierce and all-invading tyrant whose mildest symptom is
+a monstrous jealousy, a perpetual desire to snatch away the beloved from
+every other influence.
+
+"What!" thought he to himself, "she has seen visitors, she has been
+with happy creatures, and talking to them, while I was unhappy and all
+alone."
+
+He buried his annoyance forthwith, and consigned love to the depths of
+his heart, like a coffin to the sea. His thoughts were of the kind that
+never find expression in words; they pass through the mind swiftly as
+a deadly acid, that poisons as it evaporates and vanishes. His brow,
+however, was over-clouded; and Mme. d'Aiglemont, guided by her woman's
+instinct, shared his sadness without understanding it. She had hurt him,
+unwittingly, as Vandenesse knew. He talked over his position with her,
+as if his jealousy were one of those hypothetical cases which lovers
+love to discuss. Then the Marquise understood it all. She was so deeply
+moved, that she could not keep back the tears--and so these lovers
+entered the heaven of love.
+
+Heaven and Hell are two great imaginative conceptions formulating our
+ideas of Joy and Sorrow--those two poles about which human existence
+revolves. Is not heaven a figure of speech covering now and for
+evermore an infinite of human feeling impossible to express save in its
+accidents--since that Joy is one? And what is Hell but the symbol of
+our infinite power to suffer tortures so diverse that of our pain it is
+possible to fashion works of art, for no two human sorrows are alike?
+
+One evening the two lovers sat alone and side by side, silently watching
+one of the fairest transformations of the sky, a cloudless heaven taking
+hues of pale gold and purple from the last rays of the sunset. With the
+slow fading of the daylight, sweet thoughts seem to awaken, and soft
+stirrings of passion, and a mysterious sense of trouble in the midst of
+calm. Nature sets before us vague images of bliss, bidding us enjoy
+the happiness within our reach, or lament it when it has fled. In those
+moments fraught with enchantment, when the tender light in the canopy
+of the sky blends in harmony with the spells working within, it is
+difficult to resist the heart's desires grown so magically potent. Cares
+are blunted, joy becomes ecstasy; pain, intolerable anguish. The pomp
+of sunset gives the signal for confessions and draws them forth. Silence
+grows more dangerous than speech for it gives to eyes all the power of
+the infinite of the heavens reflected in them. And for speech, the least
+word has irresistible might. Is not the light infused into the voice and
+purple into the glances? Is not heaven within us, or do we feel that we
+are in the heavens?
+
+Vandenesse and Julie--for so she had allowed herself to be called
+for the past few days by him whom she loved to speak of as
+Charles--Vandenesse and Julie were talking together, but they had
+drifted very far from their original subject; and if their spoken words
+had grown meaningless they listened in delight to the unspoken thoughts
+that lurked in the sounds. Her hand lay in his. She had abandoned it to
+him without a thought that she had granted a proof of love.
+
+Together they leaned forward to look out upon a majestic cloud country,
+full of snows and glaciers and fantastic mountain peaks with gray stains
+of shadow on their sides, a picture composed of sharp contrasts between
+fiery red and the shadows of darkness, filling the skies with a fleeting
+vision of glory which cannot be reproduced--magnificent swaddling-bands
+of sunrise, bright shrouds of the dying sun. As they leaned Julie's hair
+brushed lightly against Vandenesse's cheek. She felt that light contact,
+and shuddered violently, and he even more, for imperceptibly they both
+had reached one of those inexplicable crises when quiet has wrought
+upon the senses until every faculty of perception is so keen that the
+slightest shock fills the heart lost in melancholy with sadness that
+overflows in tears; or raises joy to ecstasy in a heart that is lost
+in the vertigo of love. Almost involuntarily Julie pressed her lover's
+hand. That wooing pressure gave courage to his timidity. All the joy of
+the present, all the hopes of the future were blended in the emotion
+of a first caress, the bashful trembling kiss that Mme. d'Aiglemont
+received upon her cheek. The slighter the concession, the more dangerous
+and insinuating it was. For their double misfortune it was only too
+sincere a revelation. Two noble natures had met and blended, drawn
+each to each by every law of natural attraction, held apart by every
+ordinance.
+
+General d'Aiglemont came in at that very moment.
+
+"The Ministry has gone out," he said. "Your uncle will be in the
+new cabinet. So you stand an uncommonly good chance of an embassy,
+Vandenesse."
+
+Charles and Julie looked at each other and flushed red. That blush was
+one more tie to unite them; there was one thought and one remorse in
+either mind; between two lovers guilty of a kiss there is a bond quite
+as strong and terrible as the bond between two robbers who have murdered
+a man. Something had to be said by way of reply.
+
+"I do not care to leave Paris now," Charles said.
+
+"We know why," said the General, with the knowing air of a man who
+discovers a secret. "You do not like to leave your uncle, because you do
+not wish to lose your chance of succeeding to the title."
+
+The Marquise took refuge in her room, and in her mind passed a pitiless
+verdict upon her husband.
+
+"His stupidity is really beyond anything!"
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE FINGER OF GOD
+
+Between the Barriere d'Italie and the Barriere de la Sante, along the
+boulevard which leads to the Jardin des Plantes, you have a view of
+Paris fit to send an artist or the tourist, the most _blase_ in matters
+of landscape, into ecstasies. Reach the slightly higher ground where the
+line of boulevard, shaded by tall, thick-spreading trees, curves with
+the grace of some green and silent forest avenue, and you see spread
+out at your feet a deep valley populous with factories looking almost
+countrified among green trees and the brown streams of the Bievre or the
+Gobelins.
+
+On the opposite slope, beneath some thousands of roofs packed close
+together like heads in a crowd, lurks the squalor of the Faubourg
+Saint-Marceau. The imposing cupola of the Pantheon, and the grim
+melancholy dome of the Val-du-Grace, tower proudly up above a whole
+town in itself, built amphitheatre-wise; every tier being grotesquely
+represented by a crooked line of street, so that the two public
+monuments look like a huge pair of giants dwarfing into insignificance
+the poor little houses and the tallest poplars in the valley. To your
+left behold the observatory, the daylight, pouring athwart its windows
+and galleries, producing such fantastical strange effects that the
+building looks like a black spectral skeleton. Further yet in the
+distance rises the elegant lantern tower of the Invalides, soaring
+up between the bluish pile of the Luxembourg and the gray tours of
+Saint-Sulpice. From this standpoint the lines of the architecture are
+blended with green leaves and gray shadows, and change every moment with
+every aspect of the heavens, every alteration of light or color in the
+sky. Afar, the skyey spaces themselves seem to be full of buildings;
+near, wind the serpentine curves of waving trees and green footpaths.
+
+Away to your right, through a great gap in this singular landscape,
+you see the canal Saint-Martin, a long pale stripe with its edging
+of reddish stone quays and fringes of lime avenue. The long rows of
+buildings beside it, in genuine Roman style, are the public granaries.
+
+Beyond, again, on the very last plane of all, see the smoke-dimmed
+slopes of Belleville covered with houses and windmills, which blend
+their freaks of outline with the chance effects of cloud. And still,
+between that horizon, vague as some childish recollection, and the
+serried range of roofs in the valley, a whole city lies out of sight: a
+huge city, engulfed, as it were, in a vast hollow between the pinnacles
+of the Hopital de la Pitie and the ridge line of the Cimetiere de l'Est,
+between suffering on the one hand and death on the other; a city sending
+up a smothered roar like Ocean grumbling at the foot of a cliff, as if
+to let you know that "I am here!"
+
+When the sunlight pours like a flood over this strip of Paris, purifying
+and etherealizing the outlines, kindling answering lights here and there
+in the window panes, brightening the red tiles, flaming about the golden
+crosses, whitening walls and transforming the atmosphere into a gauzy
+veil, calling up rich contrasts of light and fantastic shadow; when the
+sky is blue and earth quivers in the heat, and the bells are pealing,
+then you shall see one of the eloquent fairy scenes which stamp
+themselves for ever on the imagination, a scene that shall find as
+fanatical worshipers as the wondrous views of Naples and Byzantium or
+the isles of Florida. Nothing is wanting to complete the harmony, the
+murmur of the world of men and the idyllic quiet of solitude, the voices
+of a million human creatures and the voice of God. There lies a whole
+capital beneath the peaceful cypresses of Pere-Lachaise.
+
+The landscape lay in all its beauty, sparkling in the spring sunlight,
+as I stood looking out over it one morning, my back against a huge
+elm-tree that flung its yellow flowers to the wind. At the sight of the
+rich and glorious view before me, I thought bitterly of the scorn with
+which even in our literature we affect to hold this land of ours, and
+poured maledictions on the pitiable plutocrats who fall out of love with
+fair France, and spend their gold to acquire the right of sneering at
+their own country, by going through Italy at a gallop and inspecting
+that desecrated land through an opera-glass. I cast loving eyes on
+modern Paris. I was beginning to dream dreams, when the sound of a kiss
+disturbed the solitude and put philosophy to flight. Down the sidewalk,
+along the steep bank, above the rippling water, I saw beyond the
+Ponte des Gobelins the figure of a woman, dressed with the daintiest
+simplicity; she was still young, as it seemed to me, and the blithe
+gladness of the landscape was reflected in her sweet face. Her
+companion, a handsome young man, had just set down a little boy. A
+prettier child has never been seen, and to this day I do not know
+whether it was the little one or his mother who received the kiss. In
+their young faces, in their eyes, their smile, their every movement, you
+could read the same deep and tender thought. Their arms were interlaced
+with such glad swiftness; they drew close together with such marvelous
+unanimity of impulse that, conscious of nothing but themselves, they did
+not so much as see me. A second child, however--a little girl, who had
+turned her back upon them in sullen discontent--threw me a glance, and
+the expression in her eyes startled me. She was as pretty and engaging
+as the little brother whom she left to run about by himself, sometimes
+before, sometimes after their mother and her companion; but her charm
+was less childish, and now, as she stood mute and motionless, her
+attitude and demeanor suggested a torpid snake. There was something
+indescribably mechanical in the way in which the pretty woman and her
+companion paced up and down. In absence of mind, probably, they were
+content to walk to and fro between the little bridge and a carriage that
+stood waiting nearby at a corner in the boulevard, turning, stopping
+short now and again, looking into each other's eyes, or breaking into
+laughter as their casual talk grew lively or languid, grave or gay.
+
+I watched this delicious picture a while from my hiding-place by the
+great elm-tree, and should have turned away no doubt and respected their
+privacy, if it had not been for a chance discovery. In the face of the
+brooding, silent, elder child I saw traces of thought overdeep for her
+age. When her mother and the young man at her side turned and came
+near, her head was frequently lowered; the furtive sidelong glances
+of intelligence that she gave the pair and the child her brother were
+nothing less than extraordinary. Sometimes the pretty woman or her
+friend would stroke the little boy's fair curls, or lay a caressing
+finger against the baby throat or the white collar as he played at
+keeping step with them; and no words can describe the shrewd subtlety,
+the ingenuous malice, the fierce intensity which lighted up that pallid
+little face with the faint circles already round the eyes. Truly there
+was a man's power of passion in the strange-looking, delicate little
+girl. Here were traces of suffering or of thought in her; and which
+is the more certain token of death when life is in blossom--physical
+suffering, or the malady of too early thought preying upon a soul as yet
+in bud? Perhaps a mother knows. For my own part, I know of nothing more
+dreadful to see than an old man's thoughts on a child's forehead; even
+blasphemy from girlish lips is less monstrous.
+
+The almost stupid stolidity of this child who had begun to think
+already, her rare gestures, everything about her, interested me. I
+scrutinized her curiously. Then the common whim of the observer drew
+me to compare her with her brother, and to note their likeness and
+unlikeness.
+
+Her brown hair and dark eyes and look of precocious power made a rich
+contrast with the little one's fair curled head and sea-green eyes and
+winning helplessness. She, perhaps, was seven or eight years of age; the
+boy was full four years younger. Both children were dressed alike; but
+here again, looking closely, I noticed a difference. It was very slight,
+a little thing enough; but in the light of after events I saw that it
+meant a whole romance in the past, a whole tragedy to come. The little
+brown-haired maid wore a linen collar with a plain hem, her brother's
+was edged with dainty embroidery, that was all; but therein lay the
+confession of a heart's secret, a tacit preference which a child can
+read in the mother's inmost soul as clearly as if the spirit of God
+revealed it. The fair-haired child, careless and glad, looked almost
+like a girl, his skin was so fair and fresh, his movements so graceful,
+his look so sweet; while his older sister, in spite of her energy, in
+spite of the beauty of her features and her dazzling complexion, looked
+like a sickly little boy. In her bright eyes there was none of the humid
+softness which lends such charm to children's faces; they seemed, like
+courtiers' eyes, to be dried by some inner fire; and in her pallor there
+was a certain swarthy olive tint, the sign of vigorous character. Twice
+her little brother came to her, holding out a tiny hunting-horn with a
+touching charm, a winning look, and wistful expression, which would
+have sent Charlet into ecstasies, but she only scowled in answer to his
+"Here, Helene, will you take it?" so persuasively spoken. The little
+girl, so sombre and vehement beneath her apparent indifference,
+shuddered, and even flushed red when her brother came near her; but
+the little one seemed not to notice his sister's dark mood, and his
+unconsciousness, blended with earnestness, marked a final difference
+in character between the child and the little girl, whose brow was
+overclouded already by the gloom of a man's knowledge and cares.
+
+"Mamma, Helene will not play," cried the little one, seizing an
+opportunity to complain while the two stood silent on the Ponte des
+Gobelins.
+
+"Let her alone, Charles; you know very well that she is always cross."
+
+Tears sprang to Helene's eyes at the words so thoughtlessly uttered
+by her mother as she turned abruptly to the young man by her side. The
+child devoured the speech in silence, but she gave her brother one of
+those sagacious looks that seemed inexplicable to me, glancing with a
+sinister expression from the bank where he stood to the Bievre, then at
+the bridge and the view, and then at me.
+
+I was afraid lest my presence should disturb the happy couple; I slipped
+away and took refuge behind a thicket of elder trees, which completely
+screened me from all eyes. Sitting quietly on the summit of the bank, I
+watched the ever-changing landscape and the fierce-looking little girl,
+for with my head almost on a level with the boulevard I could still see
+her through the leaves. Helene seemed uneasy over my disappearance,
+her dark eyes looked for me down the alley and behind the trees with
+indefinable curiosity. What was I to her? Then Charles' baby laughter
+rang out like a bird's song in the silence. The tall, young man, with
+the same fair hair, was dancing him in his arms, showering kisses upon
+him, and the meaningless baby words of that "little language" which
+rises to our lips when we play with children. The mother looked on
+smiling, now and then, doubtless, putting in some low word that came
+up from the heart, for her companion would stop short in his full
+happiness, and the blue eyes that turned towards her were full of
+glowing light and love and worship. Their voices, blending with the
+child's voice, reached me with a vague sense of a caress. The three
+figures, charming in themselves, composed a lovely scene in a glorious
+landscape, filling it with a pervasive unimaginable grace. A delicately
+fair woman, radiant with smiles, a child of love, a young man with the
+irresistible charm of youth, a cloudless sky; nothing was wanting in
+nature to complete a perfect harmony for the delight of the soul. I
+found myself smiling as if their happiness had been my own.
+
+The clocks struck nine. The young man gave a tender embrace to his
+companion, and went towards the tilbury which an old servant drove
+slowly to meet him. The lady had grown grave and almost sad. The child's
+prattle sounded unchecked through the last farewell kisses. Then the
+tilbury rolled away, and the lady stood motionless, listening to the
+sound of the wheels, watching the little cloud of dust raised by its
+passage along the road. Charles ran down the green pathway back to the
+bridge to join his sister. I heard his silver voice calling to her.
+
+"Why did you not come to say good-bye to my good friend?" cried he.
+
+Helene looked up. Never surely did such hatred gleam from a child's
+eyes as from hers at that moment when she turned them on the brother who
+stood beside her on the bank side. She gave him an angry push. Charles
+lost his footing on the steep slope, stumbled over the roots of a tree,
+and fell headlong forwards, dashing his forehead on the sharp-edged
+stones of the embankment, and, covered with blood, disappeared over the
+edge into the muddy river. The turbid water closed over a fair, bright
+head with a shower of splashes; one sharp shriek after another rang in
+my ears; then the sounds were stifled by the thick stream, and the poor
+child sank with a dull sound as if a stone had been thrown into the
+water. The accident had happened with more than lightning swiftness. I
+sprang down the footpath, and Helene, stupefied with horror, shrieked
+again and again:
+
+"Mamma! mamma!"
+
+The mother was there at my side. She had flown to the spot like a bird.
+But neither a mother's eyes nor mine could find the exact place where
+the little one had gone under. There was a wide space of black hurrying
+water, and below in the bed of the Bievre ten feet of mud. There was
+not the smallest possibility of saving the child. No one was stirring at
+that hour on a Sunday morning, and there are neither barges nor anglers
+on the Bievre. There was not a creature in sight, not a pole to plumb
+the filthy stream. What need was there for me to explain how the
+ugly-looking accident had happened--accident or misfortune, whichever
+it might be? Had Helene avenged her father? Her jealousy surely was
+the sword of God. And yet when I looked at the mother I shivered. What
+fearful ordeal awaited her when she should return to her husband, the
+judge before whom she must stand all her days? And here with her was an
+inseparable, incorruptible witness. A child's forehead is transparent,
+a child's face hides no thoughts, and a lie, like a red flame set within
+glows out red that colors even the eyes. But the unhappy woman had not
+thought as yet of the punishment awaiting her at home; she was staring
+into the Bievre.
+
+
+
+Such an event must inevitably send ghastly echoes through a woman's
+life, and here is one of the most terrible of the reverberations that
+troubled Julie's love from time to time.
+
+Several years had gone by. The Marquis de Vandenesse wore mourning for
+his father, and succeeded to his estates. One evening, therefore, after
+dinner it happened that a notary was present in his house. This was
+no pettifogging lawyer after Sterne's pattern, but a very solid,
+substantial notary of Paris, one of your estimable men who do a stupid
+thing pompously, set down a foot heavily upon your private corn, and
+then ask what in the world there is to cry out about? If, by accident,
+they come to know the full extent of the enormity, "Upon my word," cry
+they, "I hadn't a notion!" This was a well-intentioned ass, in short,
+who could see nothing in life but deeds and documents.
+
+Mme. de Aiglemont had been dining with M. de Vandenesse; her husband
+had excused himself before dinner was over, for he was taking his two
+children to the play. They were to go to some Boulevard theatre or
+other, to the Ambigu-Comique or the Gaiete, sensational melodrama being
+judged harmless here in Paris, and suitable pabulum for childhood,
+because innocence is always triumphant in the fifth act. The boy and
+girl had teased their father to be there before the curtain rose, so he
+had left the table before dessert was served.
+
+But the notary, the imperturbable notary, utterly incapable of asking
+himself why Mme. d'Aiglemont should have allowed her husband and
+children to go without her to the play, sat on as if he were screwed to
+his chair. Dinner was over, dessert had been prolonged by discussion,
+and coffee delayed. All these things consumed time, doubtless precious,
+and drew impatient movements from that charming woman; she looked not
+unlike a thoroughbred pawing the ground before a race; but the man of
+law, to whom horses and women were equally unknown quantities, simply
+thought the Marquise a very lively and sparkling personage. So enchanted
+was he to be in the company of a woman of fashion and a political
+celebrity, that he was exerting himself to shine in conversation,
+and taking the lady's forced smile for approbation, talked on with
+unflagging spirit, till the Marquise was almost out of patience.
+
+The master of the house, in concert with the lady, had more than once
+maintained an eloquent silence when the lawyer expected a civil reply;
+but these significant pauses were employed by the talkative nuisance in
+looking for anecdotes in the fire. M. de Vandenesse had recourse to
+his watch; the charming Marquise tried the experiment of fastening her
+bonnet strings, and made as if she would go. But she did not go, and the
+notary, blind and deaf, and delighted with himself, was quite convinced
+that his interesting conversational powers were sufficient to keep the
+lady on the spot.
+
+"I shall certainly have that woman for a client," said he to himself.
+
+Meanwhile the Marquise stood, putting on her gloves, twisting her
+fingers, looking from the equally impatient Marquis de Vandenesse to the
+lawyer, still pounding away. At every pause in the worthy man's fire of
+witticisms the charming pair heaved a sigh of relief, and their looks
+said plainly, "At last! He is really going!"
+
+Nothing of the kind. It was a nightmare which could only end in
+exasperating the two impassioned creatures, on whom the lawyer had
+something of the fascinating effect of a snake on a pair of birds;
+before long they would be driven to cut him short.
+
+The clever notary was giving them the history of the discreditable ways
+in which one du Tillet (a stockbroker then much in favor) had laid
+the foundations of his fortune; all the ins and outs of the whole
+disgraceful business were accurately put before them; and the narrator
+was in the very middle of his tale when M. de Vandenesse heard the clock
+strike nine. Then it became clear to him that his legal adviser was very
+emphatically an idiot who must be sent forthwith about his business. He
+stopped him resolutely with a gesture.
+
+"The tongs, my lord Marquis?" queried the notary, handing the object in
+question to his client.
+
+"No, monsieur, I am compelled to send you away. Mme. d'Aiglemont wishes
+to join her children, and I shall have the honor of escorting her."
+
+"Nine o'clock already! Time goes like a shadow in pleasant company,"
+said the man of law, who had talked on end for the past hour.
+
+He looked for his hat, planted himself before the fire, with a
+suppressed hiccough; and, without heeding the Marquise's withering
+glances, spoke once more to his impatient client:
+
+"To sum up, my lord Marquis. Business before all things. To-morrow,
+then, we must subpoena your brother; we will proceed to make out the
+inventory, and faith, after that----"
+
+So ill had the lawyer understood his instructions, that his impression
+was the exact opposite to the one intended. It was a delicate matter,
+and Vandenesse, in spite of himself, began to put the thick-headed
+notary right. The discussion which followed took up a certain amount of
+time.
+
+"Listen," the diplomatist said at last at a sign from the lady, "You are
+puzzling my brains; come back to-morrow, and if the writ is not issued
+by noon to-morrow, the days of grace will expire, and then--"
+
+As he spoke, a carriage entered the courtyard. The poor woman turned
+sharply away at the sound to hide the tears in her eyes. The Marquis
+rang to give the servant orders to say that he was not at home; but
+before the footman could answer the bell, the lady's husband reappeared.
+He had returned unexpectedly from the Gaiete, and held both children by
+the hand. The little girl's eyes were red; the boy was fretful and very
+cross.
+
+"What can have happened?" asked the Marquise.
+
+"I will tell you by and by," said the General, and catching a glimpse
+through an open door of newspapers on the table in the adjoining
+sitting-room, he went off. The Marquise, at the end of her patience,
+flung herself down on the sofa in desperation. The notary, thinking it
+incumbent upon him to be amiable with the children, spoke to the little
+boy in an insinuating tone:
+
+"Well, my little man, and what is there on at the theatre?"
+
+"_The Valley of the Torrent_," said Gustave sulkily.
+
+"Upon my word and honor," declared the notary, "authors nowadays are
+half crazy. _The Valley of the Torrent_! Why not the Torrent of the
+Valley? It is conceivable that a valley might be without a torrent in
+it; now if they had said the Torrent of the Valley, that would have
+been something clear, something precise, something definite and
+comprehensible. But never mind that. Now, how is the drama to take place
+in a torrent and in a valley? You will tell me that in these days the
+principal attraction lies in the scenic effect, and the title is a
+capital advertisement.--And did you enjoy it, my little friend?" he
+continued, sitting down before the child.
+
+When the notary pursued his inquiries as to the possibilities of a drama
+in the bed of a torrent, the little girl turned slowly away and began to
+cry. Her mother did not notice this in her intense annoyance.
+
+"Oh! yes, monsieur, I enjoyed it very much," said the child. "There is a
+dear little boy in the play, and he was all alone in the world, because
+his papa could not have been his real papa. And when he came to the top
+of the bridge over the torrent, a big, naughty man with a beard, dressed
+all in black, came and threw him into the water. And then Helene began
+to sob and cry, and everybody scolded us, and father brought us away
+quick, quick----"
+
+M. de Vandenesse and the Marquise looked on in dull amazement, as if all
+power to think or move had been suddenly paralyzed.
+
+"Do be quiet, Gustave!" cried the General. "I told you that you were not
+to talk about anything that happened at the play, and you have forgotten
+what I said already."
+
+"Oh, my lord Marquis, your lordship must excuse him," cried the notary.
+"I ought not to have asked questions, but I had no idea--"
+
+"He ought not to have answered them," said the General, looking sternly
+at the child.
+
+It seemed that the Marquise and the master of the house both perfectly
+understood why the children had come back so suddenly. Mme. d'Aiglemont
+looked at her daughter, and rose as if to go to her, but a terrible
+convulsion passed over her face, and all that could be read in it was
+relentless severity.
+
+"That will do, Helene," she said. "Go into the other room, and leave off
+crying."
+
+"What can she have done, poor child!" asked the notary, thinking to
+appease the mother's anger and to stop Helene's tears at one stroke. "So
+pretty as she is, she must be as good as can be; never anything but a
+joy to her mother, I will be bound. Isn't that so, my little girl?"
+
+Helene cowered, looked at her mother, dried her eyes, struggled for
+composure, and took refuge in the next room.
+
+"And you, madame, are too good a mother not to love all your children
+alike. You are too good a woman, besides, to have any of those
+lamentable preferences which have such fatal effects, as we lawyers have
+only too much reason to know. Society goes through our hands; we see its
+passions in that most revolting form, greed. Here it is the mother of a
+family trying to disinherit her husband's children to enrich the others
+whom she loves better; or it is the husband who tries to leave all his
+property to the child who has done his best to earn his mother's hatred.
+And then begin quarrels, and fears, and deeds, and defeasances, and sham
+sales, and trusts, and all the rest of it; a pretty mess, in fact, it
+is pitiable, upon my honor, pitiable! There are fathers that will spend
+their whole lives in cheating their children and robbing their wives.
+Yes, robbing is the only word for it. We were talking of tragedy; oh!
+I can assure you of this that if we were at liberty to tell the real
+reasons of some donations that I know of, our modern dramatists would
+have the material for some sensational _bourgeois_ dramas. How the wife
+manages to get her way, as she invariably does, I cannot think; for in
+spite of appearances, and in spite of their weakness, it is always the
+women who carry the day. Ah! by the way, they don't take _me_ in. I
+always know the reason at the bottom of those predilections which the
+world politely styles 'unaccountable.' But in justice to the husbands, I
+must say that _they_ never discover anything. You will tell me that this
+is a merciful dispens--"
+
+Helene had come back to the drawing-room with her father, and was
+listening attentively. So well did she understand all that was said,
+that she gave her mother a frightened glance, feeling, with a child's
+quick instinct, that these remarks would aggravate the punishment
+hanging over her. The Marquise turned her white face to Vandenesse; and,
+with terror in her eyes, indicated her husband, who stood with his eyes
+fixed absently on the flower pattern of the carpet. The diplomatist,
+accomplished man of the world though he was, could no longer contain his
+wrath, he gave the man of law a withering glance.
+
+"Step this way, sir," he said, and he went hurriedly to the door of the
+ante-chamber; the notary left his sentence half finished, and followed,
+quaking, and the husband and wife were left together.
+
+"Now, sir" said the Marquise de Vandenesse--he banged the drawing-room
+door, and spoke with concentrated rage--"ever since dinner you have done
+nothing but make blunders and talk folly. For heaven's sake, go. You
+will make the most frightful mischief before you have done. If you are
+a clever man in your profession, keep to your profession; and if by any
+chance you should go into society, endeavor to be more circumspect."
+
+With that he went back to the drawing-room, and did not even wish
+the notary good-evening. For a moment that worthy stood dumfounded,
+bewildered, utterly at a loss. Then, when the buzzing in his ears
+subsided, he thought he heard someone moaning in the next room.
+Footsteps came and went, and bells were violently rung. He was by no
+means anxious to meet the Marquis again, and found the use of his
+legs to make good his escape, only to run against a hurrying crowd of
+servants at the door.
+
+"Just the way of all these grand folk," said he to himself outside in
+the street as he looked about for a cab. "They lead you on to talk with
+compliments, and you think you are amusing them. Not a bit of it. They
+treat you insolently; put you at a distance; even put you out at the
+door without scruple. After all, I talked very cleverly, I said nothing
+but what was sensible, well turned, and discreet; and, upon my word, he
+advises me to be more circumspect in future. I will take good care
+of that! Eh! the mischief take it! I am a notary and a member of my
+chamber!--Pshaw! it was an ambassador's fit of temper, nothing is sacred
+for people of that kind. To-morrow he shall explain what he meant by
+saying that I had done nothing but blunder and talk nonsense in his
+house. I will ask him for an explanation--that is, I will ask him
+to explain my mistake. After all is done and said, I am in the wrong
+perhaps---- Upon my word, it is very good of me to cudgel my brains like
+this. What business is it of mine?"
+
+So the notary went home and laid the enigma before his spouse, with a
+complete account of the evening's events related in sequence.
+
+And she replied, "My dear Crottat, His Excellency was perfectly right
+when he said that you had done nothing but blunder and talk folly."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"My dear, if I told you why, it would not prevent you from doing the
+same thing somewhere else to-morrow. I tell you again--talk of nothing
+but business when you go out; that is my advice to you."
+
+"If you will not tell me, I shall ask him to-morrow--"
+
+"Why, dear me! the veriest noodle is careful to hide a thing of that
+kind, and do you suppose that an ambassador will tell you about
+it? Really, Crottat, I have never known you so utterly devoid of
+common-sense."
+
+"Thank you, my dear."
+
+
+
+
+V. TWO MEETINGS
+
+One of Napoleon's orderly staff-officers, who shall be known in this
+history only as the General or the Marquis, had come to spend the spring
+at Versailles. He made a large fortune under the Restoration; and as
+his place at Court would not allow him to go very far from Paris, he had
+taken a country house between the church and the barrier of Montreuil,
+on the road that leads to the Avenue de Saint-Cloud.
+
+The house had been built originally as a retreat for the short-lived
+loves of some _grand seigneur_. The grounds were very large; the gardens
+on either side extending from the first houses of Montreuil to the
+thatched cottages near the barrier, so that the owner could enjoy all
+the pleasures of solitude with the city almost at his gates. By an odd
+piece of contradiction, the whole front of the house itself, with the
+principal entrance, gave directly upon the street. Perhaps in time past
+it was a tolerably lonely road, and indeed this theory looks all the
+more probable when one comes to think of it; for not so very far away,
+on this same road, Louis Quinze built a delicious summer villa for Mlle.
+de Romans, and the curious in such things will discover that the
+wayside _casinos_ are adorned in a style that recalls traditions of the
+ingenious taste displayed in debauchery by our ancestors who, with all
+the license paid to their charge, sought to invest it with secrecy and
+mystery.
+
+One winter evening the family were by themselves in the lonely house.
+The servants had received permission to go to Versailles to celebrate
+the wedding of one of their number. It was Christmas time, and the
+holiday makers, presuming upon the double festival, did not scruple to
+outstay their leave of absence; yet, as the General was well known to be
+a man of his word, the culprits felt some twinges of conscience as they
+danced on after the hour of return. The clocks struck eleven, and still
+there was no sign of the servants.
+
+A deep silence prevailed over the country-side, broken only by the sound
+of the northeast wind whistling through the black branches, wailing
+about the house, dying in gusts along the corridors. The hard frost had
+purified the air, and held the earth in its grip; the roads gave back
+every sound with the hard metallic ring which always strikes us with
+a new surprise; the heavy footsteps of some belated reveler, or a cab
+returning to Paris, could be heard for a long distance with unwonted
+distinctness. Out in the courtyard a few dead leaves set a-dancing
+by some eddying gust found a voice for the night which fain had been
+silent. It was, in fact, one of those sharp, frosty evenings that wring
+barren expressions of pity from our selfish ease for wayfarers and
+the poor, and fills us with a luxurious sense of the comfort of the
+fireside.
+
+But the family party in the salon at that hour gave not a thought to
+absent servants nor houseless folk, nor to the gracious charm with which
+a winter evening sparkles. No one played the philosopher out of season.
+Secure in the protection of an old soldier, women and children gave
+themselves up to the joys of home life, so delicious when there is no
+restraint upon feeling; and talk and play and glances are bright with
+frankness and affection.
+
+The General sat, or more properly speaking, lay buried, in the depths
+of a huge, high-back armchair by the hearth. The heaped-up fire burned
+scorching clear with the excessive cold of the night. The good father
+leaned his head slightly to one side against the back of the chair, in
+the indolence of perfect serenity and a glow of happiness. The languid,
+half-sleepy droop of his outstretched arms seemed to complete his
+expression of placid content. He was watching his youngest, a boy of
+five or thereabouts, who, half clad as he was, declined to allow his
+mother to undress him. The little one fled from the night-gown and cap
+with which he was threatened now and again, and stoutly declined to part
+with his embroidered collar, laughing when his mother called to him,
+for he saw that she too was laughing at this declaration of infant
+independence. The next step was to go back to a game of romps with his
+sister. She was as much a child as he, but more mischievous; and she
+was older by two years, and could speak distinctly already, whereas his
+inarticulate words and confused ideas were a puzzle even to his parents.
+Little Moina's playfulness, somewhat coquettish already, provoked
+inextinguishable laughter, explosions of merriment which went off like
+fireworks for no apparent cause. As they tumbled about before the
+fire, unconcernedly displaying little plump bodies and delicate white
+contours, as the dark and golden curls mingled in a collision of rosy
+cheeks dimpled with childish glee, a father surely, a mother most
+certainly, must have understood those little souls, and seen the
+character and power of passion already developed for their eyes. As the
+cherubs frolicked about, struggling, rolling, and tumbling without fear
+of hurt on the soft carpet, its flowers looked pale beside the glowing
+white and red of their cheeks and the brilliant color of their shining
+eyes.
+
+On the sofa by the fire, opposite the great armchair, the children's
+mother sat among a heap of scattered garments, with a little scarlet
+shoe in her hand. She seemed to have given herself up completely to the
+enjoyment of the moment; wavering discipline had relaxed into a
+sweet smile engraved upon her lips. At the age of six-and-thirty, or
+thereabouts, she was a beautiful woman still, by reason of the rare
+perfection of the outlines of her face, and at this moment light and
+warmth and happiness filled it with preternatural brightness.
+
+Again and again her eyes wandered from her children, and their tender
+gaze was turned upon her husband's grave face; and now and again the
+eyes of husband and wife met with a silent exchange of happiness and
+thoughts from some inner depth.
+
+The General's face was deeply bronzed, a stray lock of gray hair scored
+shadows on his forehead. The reckless courage of the battlefield could
+be read in the lines carved in his hollow cheeks, and gleams of rugged
+strength in the blue eyes; clearly the bit of red ribbon flaunting at
+his button-hole had been paid for by hardship and toil. An inexpressible
+kindliness and frankness shone out of the strong, resolute face which
+reflected his children's merriment; the gray-haired captain found it not
+so very hard to become a child again. Is there not always a little love
+of children in the heart of a soldier who has seen enough of the seamy
+side of life to know something of the piteous limitations of strength
+and the privileges of weakness?
+
+At a round table rather further away, in a circle of bright lamplight
+that dimmed the feebler illumination of the wax candles on the
+chimney-piece, sat a boy of thirteen, rapidly turning the pages of a
+thick volume which he was reading, undisturbed by the shouts of the
+children. There was a boy's curiosity in his face. From his _lyceens_
+uniform he was evidently a schoolboy, and the book he was reading was
+the _Arabian Nights_. Small wonder that he was deeply absorbed. He sat
+perfectly still in a meditative attitude, with his elbow on the table,
+and his hand propping his head--the white fingers contrasting strongly
+with the brown hair into which they were thrust. As he sat, with the
+light turned full upon his face, and the rest of his body in shadow, he
+looked like one of Raphael's dark portraits of himself--a bent head and
+intent eyes filled with visions of the future.
+
+Between the table and the Marquise a tall, beautiful girl sat at her
+tapestry frame; sometimes she drew back from her work, sometimes she
+bent over it, and her hair, picturesque in its ebony smoothness and
+darkness, caught the light of the lamp. Helene was a picture in herself.
+In her beauty there was a rare distinctive character of power and
+refinement. Though her hair was gathered up and drawn back from her
+face, so as to trace a clearly marked line about her head, so thick and
+abundant was it, so recalcitrant to the comb, that it sprang back in
+curl-tendrils to the nape of her neck. The bountiful line of eyebrows
+was evenly marked out in dark contrasting outline upon her pure
+forehead. On her upper lip, beneath the Grecian nose with its
+sensitively perfect curve of nostril, there lay a faint, swarthy shadow,
+the sign-manual of courage; but the enchanting roundness of contour, the
+frankly innocent expression of her other features, the transparence
+of the delicate carnations, the voluptuous softness of the lips, the
+flawless oval of the outline of the face, and with these, and more than
+all these, the saintlike expression in the girlish eyes, gave to her
+vigorous loveliness the distinctive touch of feminine grace, that
+enchanting modesty which we look for in these angels of peace and love.
+Yet there was no suggestion of fragility about her; and, surely, with
+so grand a woman's frame, so attractive a face, she must possess a
+corresponding warmth of heart and strength of soul.
+
+She was as silent as her schoolboy brother. Seemingly a prey to the
+fateful maiden meditations which baffle a father's penetration and even
+a mother's sagacity, it was impossible to be certain whether it was the
+lamplight that cast those shadows that flitted over her face like thin
+clouds over a bright sky, or whether they were passing shades of secret
+and painful thoughts.
+
+Husband and wife had quite forgotten the two older children at that
+moment, though now and again the General's questioning glance traveled
+to that second mute picture; a larger growth, a gracious realization,
+as it were, of the hopes embodied in the baby forms rioting in the
+foreground. Their faces made up a kind of living poem, illustrating
+life's various phases. The luxurious background of the salon, the
+different attitudes, the strong contrasts of coloring in the faces,
+differing with the character of differing ages, the modeling of the
+forms brought into high relief by the light--altogether it was a page of
+human life, richly illuminated beyond the art of painter, sculptor, or
+poet. Silence, solitude, night and winter lent a final touch of majesty
+to complete the simplicity and sublimity of this exquisite effect of
+nature's contriving. Married life is full of these sacred hours, which
+perhaps owe their indefinable charm to some vague memory of a better
+world. A divine radiance surely shines upon them, the destined
+compensation for some portion of earth's sorrows, the solace which
+enables man to accept life. We seem to behold a vision of an enchanted
+universe, the great conception of its system widens out before our eyes,
+and social life pleads for its laws by bidding us look to the future.
+
+Yet in spite of the tender glances that Helene gave Abel and Moina after
+a fresh outburst of merriment; in spite of the look of gladness in
+her transparent face whenever she stole a glance at her father, a deep
+melancholy pervaded her gestures, her attitude, and more than all, her
+eyes veiled by their long lashes. Those white, strong hands, through
+which the light passed, tinting them with a diaphanous, almost fluid
+red--those hands were trembling. Once only did the eyes of the mother
+and daughter clash without shrinking, and the two women read each
+other's thoughts in a look, cold, wan, and respectful on Helene's part,
+sombre and threatening on her mother's. At once Helene's eyes were
+lowered to her work, she plied her needle swiftly, and it was long
+before she raised her head, bowed as it seemed by a weight of thought
+too heavy to bear. Was the Marquise over harsh with this one of her
+children? Did she think this harshness needful? Was she jealous of
+Helene's beauty?--She might still hope to rival Helene, but only by the
+magic arts of the toilette. Or again, had her daughter, like many a girl
+who reaches the clairvoyant age, read the secrets which this wife (to
+all appearance so religiously faithful in the fulfilment of her duties)
+believed to be buried in her own heart as deeply as in a grave?
+
+Helene had reached an age when purity of soul inclines to pass
+over-rigid judgments. A certain order of mind is apt to exaggerate
+transgression into crime; imagination reacts upon conscience, and a
+young girl is a hard judge because she magnifies the seriousness of the
+offence. Helene seemed to think herself worthy of no one. Perhaps
+there was a secret in her past life, perhaps something had happened,
+unintelligible to her at the time, but with gradually developing
+significance for a mind grown susceptible to religious influences;
+something which lately seemed to have degraded her, as it were, in her
+own eyes, and according to her own romantic standard. This change in
+her demeanor dated from the day of reading Schiller's noble tragedy of
+_Wilhelm Tell_ in a new series of translations. Her mother scolded her
+for letting the book fall, and then remarked to herself that the passage
+which had so worked on Helene's feelings was the scene in which Wilhelm
+Tell, who spilt the blood of a tyrant to save a nation, fraternizes in
+some sort with John the Parricide. Helene had grown humble, dutiful, and
+self-contained; she no longer cared for gaiety. Never had she made so
+much of her father, especially when the Marquise was not by to watch
+her girlish caresses. And yet, if Helene's affection for her mother had
+cooled at all, the change in her manner was so slight as to be almost
+imperceptible; so slight that the General could not have noticed it,
+jealous though he might be of the harmony of home. No masculine insight
+could have sounded the depths of those two feminine natures; the one
+was young and generous, the other sensitive and proud; the first had
+a wealth of indulgence in her nature, the second was full of craft and
+love. If the Marquise made her daughter's life a burden to her by
+a woman's subtle tyranny, it was a tyranny invisible to all but the
+victim; and for the rest, these conjectures only called forth after the
+event must remain conjectures. Until this night no accusing flash of
+light had escaped either of them, but an ominous mystery was too surely
+growing up between them, a mystery known only to themselves and God.
+
+"Come, Abel," called the Marquise, seizing on her opportunity when the
+children were tired of play and still for a moment. "Come, come, child;
+you must be put to bed--"
+
+And with a glance that must be obeyed, she caught him up and took him on
+her knee.
+
+"What!" exclaimed the General. "Half-past ten o'clock, and not one of
+the servants has come back! The rascals!--Gustave," he added, turning to
+his son, "I allowed you to read that book only on the condition that you
+should put it away at ten o'clock. You ought to have shut up the book
+at the proper time and gone to bed, as you promised. If you mean to
+make your mark in the world, you must keep your word; let it be a second
+religion to you, and a point of honor. Fox, one of the greatest English
+orators, was remarkable, above all things, for the beauty of his
+character, and the very first of his qualities was the scrupulous
+faithfulness with which he kept his engagements. When he was a child,
+his father (an Englishman of the old school) gave him a pretty strong
+lesson which he never forgot. Like most rich Englishmen, Fox's father
+had a country house and a considerable park about it. Now, in the park
+there was an old summer-house, and orders had been given that this
+summer-house was to be pulled down and put up somewhere else where there
+was a finer view. Fox was just about your age, and had come home for the
+holidays. Boys are fond of seeing things pulled to pieces, so young
+Fox asked to stay on at home for a few days longer to see the old
+summer-house taken down; but his father said that he must go back to
+school on the proper day, so there was anger between father and son.
+Fox's mother (like all mammas) took the boy's part. Then the father
+solemnly promised that the summer-house should stay where it was till
+the next holidays.
+
+"So Fox went back to school; and his father, thinking that lessons would
+soon drive the whole thing out of the boy's mind, had the summer-house
+pulled down and put up in the new position. But as it happened, the
+persistent youngster thought of nothing but that summer-house; and as
+soon as he came home again, his first care was to go out to look at the
+old building, and he came in to breakfast looking quite doleful, and
+said to his father, 'You have broken your promise.' The old English
+gentleman said with confusion full of dignity, 'That is true, my boy;
+but I will make amends. A man ought to think of keeping his word before
+he thinks of his fortune; for by keeping his word he will gain fortune,
+while all the fortunes in the world will not efface the stain left on
+your conscience by a breach of faith.' Then he gave orders that the
+summer-house should be put up again in the old place, and when it had
+been rebuilt he had it taken down again for his son to see. Let this be
+a lesson to _you_, Gustave."
+
+Gustave had been listening with interest, and now he closed the book at
+once. There was a moment's silence, while the General took possession of
+Moina, who could scarcely keep her eyes open. The little one's languid
+head fell back on her father's breast, and in a moment she was fast
+asleep, wrapped round about in her golden curls.
+
+Just then a sound of hurrying footsteps rang on the pavement out in the
+street, immediately followed by three knocks on the street door, waking
+the echoes of the house. The reverberating blows told, as plainly as
+a cry for help that here was a man flying for his life. The house dog
+barked furiously. A thrill of excitement ran through Helene and Gustave
+and the General and his wife; but neither Abel, with the night-cap
+strings just tied under his chin, nor Moina awoke.
+
+"The fellow is in a hurry!" exclaimed the General. He put the little
+girl down on the chair, and hastened out of the room, heedless of his
+wife's entreating cry, "Dear, do not go down--"
+
+He stepped into his own room for a pair of pistols, lighted a dark
+lantern, sprang at lightning speed down the staircase, and in another
+minute reached the house door, his oldest boy fearlessly following.
+
+"Who is there?" demanded he.
+
+"Let me in," panted a breathless voice.
+
+"Are you a friend?"
+
+"Yes, friend."
+
+"Are you alone?"
+
+"Yes! But let me in; _they_ are after me!"
+
+The General had scarcely set the door ajar before a man slipped into the
+porch with the uncanny swiftness of a shadow. Before the master of
+the house could prevent him, the intruder had closed the door with a
+well-directed kick, and set his back against it resolutely, as if he
+were determined that it should not be opened again. In a moment the
+General had his lantern and pistol at a level with the stranger's
+breast, and beheld a man of medium height in a fur-lined pelisse. It
+was an old man's garment, both too large and too long for its present
+wearer. Chance or caution had slouched the man's hat over his eyes.
+
+"You can lower your pistol, sir," said this person. "I do not claim
+to stay in your house against your will; but if I leave it, death is
+waiting for me at the barrier. And what a death! You would be answerable
+to God for it! I ask for your hospitality for two hours. And bear this
+in mind, sir, that, suppliant as I am, I have a right to command with
+the despotism of necessity. I want the Arab's hospitality. Either I
+and my secret must be inviolable, or open the door and I will go to my
+death. I want secrecy, a safe hiding-place, and water. Oh! water!" he
+cried again, with a rattle in his throat.
+
+"Who are you?" demanded the General, taken aback by the stranger's
+feverish volubility.
+
+"Ah! who am I? Good, open the door, and I will put a distance between
+us," retorted the other, and there was a diabolical irony in his tone.
+
+Dexterously as the Marquis passed the light of the lantern over the
+man's face, he could only see the lower half of it, and that in nowise
+prepossessed him in favor of this singular claimant of hospitality.
+The cheeks were livid and quivering, the features dreadfully contorted.
+Under the shadow of the hat-brim a pair of eyes gleamed out like flames;
+the feeble candle-light looked almost dim in comparison. Some sort of
+answer must be made however.
+
+"Your language, sir, is so extraordinary that in my place you
+yourself--"
+
+"My life is in your hands!" the intruder broke in. The sound of his
+voice was dreadful to hear.
+
+"Two hours?" said the Marquis, wavering.
+
+"Two hours," echoed the other.
+
+Then quite suddenly, with a desperate gesture, he pushed back his
+hat and left his forehead bare, and, as if he meant to try a final
+expedient, he gave the General a glance that seemed to plunge like
+a vivid flash into his very soul. That electrical discharge of
+intelligence and will was swift as lightning and crushing as a
+thunderbolt; for there are moments when a human being is invested for a
+brief space with inexplicable power.
+
+"Come, whoever you may be, you shall be in safety under my roof," the
+master of the house said gravely at last, acting, as he imagined, upon
+one of those intuitions which a man cannot always explain to himself.
+
+"God will repay you!" said the stranger, with a deep, involuntary sigh.
+
+"Have you weapons?" asked the General.
+
+For all answer the stranger flung open his fur pelisse, and scarcely
+gave the other time for a glance before he wrapped it about him again.
+To all appearance he was unarmed and in evening dress. Swift as the
+soldier's scrutiny had been, he saw something, however, which made him
+exclaim:
+
+"Where the devil have you been to get yourself in such a mess in such
+dry weather?"
+
+"More questions!" said the stranger haughtily.
+
+At the words the Marquis caught sight of his son, and his own late
+homily on the strict fulfilment of a given word came up to his mind. In
+lively vexation, he exclaimed, not without a touch of anger:
+
+"What! little rogue, you here when you ought to be in bed?"
+
+"Because I thought I might be of some good in danger," answered Gustave.
+
+"There, go up to your room," said his father, mollified by the
+reply.--"And you" (addressing the stranger), "come with me."
+
+The two men grew as silent as a pair of gamblers who watch each other's
+play with mutual suspicions. The General himself began to be troubled
+with ugly presentiments. The strange visit weighed upon his mind already
+like a nightmare; but he had passed his word, there was no help for
+it now, and he led the way along the passages and stairways till they
+reached a large room on the second floor immediately above the salon.
+This was an empty room where linen was dried in the winter. It had
+but the one door, and for all decoration boasted one solitary shabby
+looking-glass above the chimney-piece, left by the previous owner, and a
+great pier glass, placed provisionally opposite the fireplace until
+such time as a use should be found for it in the rooms below. The four
+yellowish walls were bare. The floor had never been swept. The huge
+attic was icy-cold, and the furniture consisted of a couple of rickety
+straw-bottomed chairs, or rather frames of chairs. The General set the
+lantern down upon the chimney-piece. Then he spoke:
+
+"It is necessary for your own safety to hide you in this comfortless
+attic. And, as you have my promise to keep your secret, you will permit
+me to lock you in."
+
+The other bent his head in acquiescence.
+
+"I asked for nothing but a hiding-place, secrecy, and water," returned
+he.
+
+"I will bring you some directly," said the Marquis, shutting the door
+cautiously. He groped his way down into the salon for a lamp before
+going to the kitchen to look for a carafe.
+
+"Well, what is it?" the Marquise asked quickly.
+
+"Nothing, dear," he returned coolly.
+
+"But we listened, and we certainly heard you go upstairs with somebody."
+
+"Helene," said the General, and he looked at his daughter, who raised
+her face, "bear in mind that your father's honor depends upon your
+discretion. You must have heard nothing."
+
+The girl bent her head in answer. The Marquise was confused and smarting
+inwardly at the way in which her husband had thought fit to silence her.
+
+Meanwhile the General went for the bottle and a tumbler, and returned to
+the room above. His prisoner was leaning against the chimney-piece,
+his head was bare, he had flung down his hat on one of the two chairs.
+Evidently he had not expected to have so bright a light turned upon him,
+and he frowned and looked anxious as he met the General's keen eyes;
+but his face softened and wore a gracious expression as he thanked
+his protector. When the latter placed the bottle and glass on the
+mantel-shelf, the stranger's eyes flashed out on him again; and when
+he spoke, it was in musical tones with no sign of the previous guttural
+convulsion, though his voice was still unsteady with repressed emotion.
+
+"I shall seem to you to be a strange being, sir, but you must pardon the
+caprices of necessity. If you propose to remain in the room, I beg that
+you will not look at me while I am drinking."
+
+Vexed at this continual obedience to a man whom he disliked, the General
+sharply turned his back upon him. The stranger thereupon drew a white
+handkerchief from his pocket and wound it about his right hand. Then
+he seized the carafe and emptied it at a draught. The Marquis, staring
+vacantly into the tall mirror across the room, without a thought of
+breaking his implicit promise, saw the stranger's figure distinctly
+reflected by the opposite looking-glass, and saw, too, a red stain
+suddenly appear through the folds of the white bandage. The man's hands
+were steeped in blood.
+
+"Ah! you saw me!" cried the other. He had drunk off the water and
+wrapped himself again in his cloak, and now scrutinized the General
+suspiciously. "It is all over with me! Here they come!"
+
+"I don't hear anything," said the Marquis.
+
+"You have not the same interest that I have in listening for sounds in
+the air."
+
+"You have been fighting a duel, I suppose, to be in such a state?"
+queried the General, not a little disturbed by the color of those broad,
+dark patches staining his visitor's cloak.
+
+"Yes, a duel; you have it," said the other, and a bitter smile flitted
+over his lips.
+
+As he spoke a sound rang along the distant road, a sound of galloping
+horses; but so faint as yet, that it was the merest dawn of a sound. The
+General's trained ear recognized the advance of a troop of regulars.
+
+"That is the gendarmerie," said he.
+
+He glanced at his prisoner to reassure him after his own involuntary
+indiscretion, took the lamp, and went down to the salon. He had scarcely
+laid the key of the room above upon the chimney-piece when the hoof
+beats sounded louder and came swiftly nearer and nearer the house. The
+General felt a shiver of excitement, and indeed the horses stopped at
+the house door; a few words were exchanged among the men, and one
+of them dismounted and knocked loudly. There was no help for it; the
+General went to open the door. He could scarcely conceal his inward
+perturbation at the sight of half a dozen gendarmes outside, the metal
+rims of their caps gleaming like silver in the moonlight.
+
+"My lord," said the corporal, "have you heard a man run past towards the
+barrier within the last few minutes?"
+
+"Towards the barrier? No."
+
+"Have you opened the door to any one?"
+
+"Now, am I in the habit of answering the door myself--"
+
+"I ask your pardon, General, but just now it seems to me that--"
+
+"Really!" cried the Marquis wrathfully. "Have you a mind to try joking
+with me? What right have you--?"
+
+"None at all, none at all, my lord," cried the corporal, hastily putting
+in a soft answer. "You will excuse our zeal. We know, of course, that a
+peer of France is not likely to harbor a murderer at this time of night;
+but as we want any information we can get--"
+
+"A murderer!" cried the General. "Who can have been--"
+
+"M. le Baron de Mauny has just been murdered. It was a blow from an axe,
+and we are in hot pursuit of the criminal. We know for certain that he
+is somewhere in this neighborhood, and we shall hunt him down. By your
+leave, General," and the man swung himself into the saddle as he spoke.
+It was well that he did so, for a corporal of gendarmerie trained to
+alert observation and quick surmise would have had his suspicions at
+once if he had caught sight of the General's face. Everything that
+passed through the soldier's mind was faithfully revealed in his frank
+countenance.
+
+"Is it known who the murderer is?" asked he.
+
+"No," said the other, now in the saddle. "He left the bureau full of
+banknotes and gold untouched."
+
+"It was revenge, then," said the Marquis.
+
+"On an old man? pshaw! No, no, the fellow hadn't time to take it, that
+was all," and the corporal galloped after his comrades, who were almost
+out of sight by this time.
+
+For a few minutes the General stood, a victim to perplexities which need
+no explanation; but in a moment he heard the servants returning home,
+their voices were raised in some sort of dispute at the cross-roads
+of Montreuil. When they came in, he gave vent to his feelings in an
+explosion of rage, his wrath fell upon them like a thunderbolt, and all
+the echoes of the house trembled at the sound of his voice. In the
+midst of the storm his own man, the boldest and cleverest of the
+party, brought out an excuse; they had been stopped, he said, by the
+gendarmerie at the gate of Montreuil, a murder had been committed, and
+the police were in pursuit. In a moment the General's anger vanished,
+he said not another word; then, bethinking himself of his own singular
+position, drily ordered them all off to bed at once, and left them
+amazed at his readiness to accept their fellow servant's lying excuse.
+
+While these incidents took place in the yard, an apparently trifling
+occurrence had changed the relative positions of three characters in
+this story. The Marquis had scarcely left the room before his wife
+looked first towards the key on the mantel-shelf, and then at Helene;
+and, after some wavering, bent towards her daughter and said in a low
+voice, "Helene your father has left the key on the chimney-piece."
+
+The girl looked up in surprise and glanced timidly at her mother. The
+Marquise's eyes sparkled with curiosity.
+
+"Well, mamma?" she said, and her voice had a troubled ring.
+
+"I should like to know what is going on upstairs. If there is anybody up
+there, he has not stirred yet. Just go up--"
+
+"_I_?" cried the girl, with something like horror in her tones.
+
+"Are you afraid?"
+
+"No, mamma, but I thought I heard a man's footsteps."
+
+"If I could go myself, I should not have asked you to go, Helene," said
+her mother with cold dignity. "If your father were to come back and did
+not see me, he would go to look for me perhaps, but he would not notice
+your absence."
+
+"Madame, if you bid me go, I will go," said Helene, "but I shall lose my
+father's good opinion--"
+
+"What is this!" cried the Marquise in a sarcastic tone. "But since you
+take a thing that was said in joke in earnest, I now _order_ you to go
+upstairs and see who is in the room above. Here is the key, child. When
+your father told you to say nothing about this thing that happened, he
+did not forbid you to go up to the room. Go at once--and learn that a
+daughter ought never to judge her mother."
+
+The last words were spoken with all the severity of a justly offended
+mother. The Marquise took the key and handed it to Helene, who rose
+without a word and left the room.
+
+"My mother can always easily obtain her pardon," thought the girl; "but
+as for me, my father will never think the same of me again. Does she
+mean to rob me of his tenderness? Does she want to turn me out of his
+house?"
+
+These were the thoughts that set her imagination in a sudden ferment, as
+she went down the dark passage to the mysterious door at the end. When
+she stood before it, her mental confusion grew to a fateful pitch.
+Feelings hitherto forced down into inner depths crowded up at the
+summons of these confused thoughts. Perhaps hitherto she had never
+believed that a happy life lay before her, but now, in this awful
+moment, her despair was complete. She shook convulsively as she set the
+key in the lock; so great indeed was her agitation, that she stopped for
+a moment and laid her hand on her heart, as if to still the heavy throbs
+that sounded in her ears. Then she opened the door.
+
+The creaking of the hinges sounded doubtless in vain on the murderer's
+ears. Acute as were his powers of hearing, he stood as if lost in
+thought, and so motionless that he might have been glued to the wall
+against which he leaned. In the circle of semi-opaque darkness, dimly
+lit by the bull's-eye lantern, he looked like the shadowy figure of
+some dead knight, standing for ever in his shadowy mortuary niche in
+the gloom of some Gothic chapel. Drops of cold sweat trickled over the
+broad, sallow forehead. An incredible fearlessness looked out from every
+tense feature. His eyes of fire were fixed and tearless; he seemed to
+be watching some struggle in the darkness beyond him. Stormy thoughts
+passed swiftly across a face whose firm decision spoke of a character
+of no common order. His whole person, bearing, and frame bore out the
+impression of a tameless spirit. The man looked power and strength
+personified; he stood facing the darkness as if it were the visible
+image of his own future.
+
+These physical characteristics had made no impression upon the General,
+familiar as he was with the powerful faces of the group of giants
+gathered about Napoleon; speculative curiosity, moreover, as to the
+why and wherefore of the apparition had completely filled his mind; but
+Helene, with feminine sensitiveness to surface impressions, was struck
+by the blended chaos of light and darkness, grandeur and passion,
+suggesting a likeness between this stranger and Lucifer recovering from
+his fall. Suddenly the storm apparent in his face was stilled as if by
+magic; and the indefinable power to sway which the stranger exercised
+upon others, and perhaps unconsciously and as by reflex action upon
+himself, spread its influence about him with the progressive swiftness
+of a flood. A torrent of thought rolled away from his brow as his face
+resumed its ordinary expression. Perhaps it was the strangeness of this
+meeting, or perhaps it was the mystery into which she had penetrated,
+that held the young girl spellbound in the doorway, so that she could
+look at a face pleasant to behold and full of interest. For some moments
+she stood in the magical silence; a trouble had come upon her never
+known before in her young life. Perhaps some exclamation broke from
+Helene, perhaps she moved unconsciously; or it may be that the hunted
+criminal returned of his own accord from the world of ideas to the
+material world, and heard some one breathing in the room; however it
+was, he turned his head towards his host's daughter, and saw dimly in
+the shadow a noble face and queenly form, which he must have taken for
+an angel's, so motionless she stood, so vague and like a spirit.
+
+"Monsieur..." a trembling voice cried.
+
+The murderer trembled.
+
+"A woman!" he cried under his breath. "Is it possible? Go," he cried, "I
+deny that any one has a right to pity, to absolve, or condemn me. I
+must live alone. Go, my child," he added, with an imperious gesture, "I
+should ill requite the service done me by the master of the house if I
+were to allow a single creature under his roof to breathe the same air
+with me. I must submit to be judged by the laws of the world."
+
+The last words were uttered in a lower voice. Even as he realized with
+a profound intuition all the manifold misery awakened by that melancholy
+thought, the glance that he gave Helene had something of the power of
+the serpent, stirring a whole dormant world in the mind of the strange
+girl before him. To her that glance was like a light revealing unknown
+lands. She was stricken with strange trouble, helpless, quelled by a
+magnetic power exerted unconsciously. Trembling and ashamed, she went
+out and returned to the salon. She had scarcely entered the room before
+her father came back, so that she had not time to say a word to her
+mother.
+
+The General was wholly absorbed in thought. He folded his arms, and
+paced silently to and fro between the windows which looked out upon the
+street and the second row which gave upon the garden. His wife lay the
+sleeping Abel on her knee, and little Moina lay in untroubled slumber in
+the low chair, like a bird in its nest. Her older sister stared into the
+fire, a skein of silk in one hand, a needle in the other.
+
+Deep silence prevailed, broken only by lagging footsteps on the stairs,
+as one by one the servants crept away to bed; there was an occasional
+burst of stifled laughter, a last echo of the wedding festivity, or
+doors were opened as they still talked among themselves, then shut. A
+smothered sound came now and again from the bedrooms, a chair fell, the
+old coachman coughed feebly, then all was silent.
+
+In a little while the dark majesty with which sleeping earth is invested
+at midnight brought all things under its sway. No lights shone but the
+light of the stars. The frost gripped the ground. There was not a sound
+of a voice, nor a living creature stirring. The crackling of the fire
+only seemed to make the depth of the silence more fully felt.
+
+The church clock of Montreuil had just struck one, when an almost
+inaudible sound of a light footstep came from the second flight of
+stairs. The Marquis and his daughter, both believing that M. de Mauny's
+murderer was a prisoner above, thought that one of the maids had come
+down, and no one was at all surprised to hear the door open in the
+ante-chamber. Quite suddenly the murderer appeared in their midst. The
+Marquis himself was sunk in deep musings, the mother and daughter were
+silent, the one from keen curiosity, the other from sheer astonishment,
+so that the visitor was almost half-way across the room when he spoke to
+the General.
+
+"Sir, the two hours are almost over," he said, in a voice that was
+strangely calm and musical.
+
+"_You here_!" cried the General. "By what means----?" and he gave wife
+and daughter a formidable questioning glance. Helene grew red as fire.
+
+"You!" he went on, in a tone filled with horror. "_You_ among us! A
+murderer covered with blood! You are a blot on this picture! Go, go
+out!" he added in a burst of rage.
+
+At that word "murderer," the Marquise cried out; as for Helene, it
+seemed to mark an epoch in her life, there was not a trace of surprise
+in her face. She looked as if she had been waiting for this--for him.
+Those so vast thoughts of hers had found a meaning. The punishment
+reserved by Heaven for her sins flamed out before her. In her own eyes
+she was as great a criminal as this murderer; she confronted him with
+her quiet gaze; she was his fellow, his sister. It seemed to her that in
+this accident the command of God had been made manifest. If she had been
+a few years older, reason would have disposed of her remorse, but at
+this moment she was like one distraught.
+
+The stranger stood impassive and self-possessed; a scornful smile
+overspread his features and his thick, red lips.
+
+"You appreciate the magnanimity of my behavior very badly," he said
+slowly. "I would not touch with my fingers the glass of water you
+brought me to allay my thirst; I did not so much as think of washing my
+blood-stained hands under your roof; I am going away, leaving nothing
+of _my crime_" (here his lips were compressed) "but the memory; I have
+tried to leave no trace of my presence in this house. Indeed, I would
+not even allow your daughter to--"
+
+"_My daughter_!" cried the General, with a horror-stricken glance at
+Helene. "Vile wretch, go, or I will kill you--"
+
+"The two hours are not yet over," said the other; "if you kill me or
+give me up, you must lower yourself in your own eyes--and in mine."
+
+At these last words, the General turned to stare at the criminal in dumb
+amazement; but he could not endure the intolerable light in those eyes
+which for the second time disorganized his being. He was afraid of
+showing weakness once more, conscious as he was that his will was weaker
+already.
+
+"An old man! You can never have seen a family," he said, with a father's
+glance at his wife and children.
+
+"Yes, an old man," echoed the stranger, frowning slightly.
+
+"Fly!" cried the General, but he did not dare to look at his guest. "Our
+compact is broken. I shall not kill you. No! I will never be purveyor to
+the scaffold. But go out. You make us shudder."
+
+"I know that," said the other patiently. "There is not a spot on French
+soil where I can set foot and be safe; but if man's justice, like God's,
+took all into account, if man's justice deigned to inquire which was the
+monster--the murderer or his victim--then I might hold up my head among
+my fellows. Can you not guess that other crimes preceded that blow from
+an axe? I constituted myself his judge and executioner; I stepped in
+where man's justice failed. That was my crime. Farewell, sir. Bitter
+though you have made your hospitality, I shall not forget it. I shall
+always bear in my heart a feeling of gratitude towards one man in the
+world, and you are that man.... But I could wish that you had showed
+yourself more generous!"
+
+He turned towards the door, but in the same instant Helene leaned to
+whisper something in her mother's ear.
+
+"Ah!..."
+
+At the cry that broke from his wife, the General trembled as if he had
+seen Moina lying dead. There stood Helene and the murderer had turned
+instinctively, with something like anxiety about these folk in his face.
+
+"What is it, dear?" asked the General.
+
+"Helene wants to go with him."
+
+The murderer's face flushed.
+
+"If that is how my mother understands an almost involuntary
+exclamation," Helene said in a low voice, "I will fulfil her wishes. She
+glanced about her with something like fierce pride; then the girl's eyes
+fell, and she stood, admirable in her modesty.
+
+"Helene, did you go up to the room where----?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"Helene" (and his voice shook with a convulsive tremor), "is this the
+first time that you have seen this man?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"Then it is not natural that you should intend to--"
+
+"If it is not natural, father, at any rate it is true."
+
+"Oh! child," said the Marquise, lowering her voice, but not so much but
+that her husband could hear her, "you are false to all the principles of
+honor, modesty, and right which I have tried to cultivate in your
+heart. If until this fatal hour you life has only been one lie, there is
+nothing to regret in your loss. It can hardly be the moral perfection of
+this stranger that attracts you to him? Can it be the kind of power that
+commits crime? I have too good an opinion of you to suppose that--"
+
+"Oh, suppose everything, madame," Helene said coldly.
+
+But though her force of character sustained this ordeal, her flashing
+eyes could scarcely hold the tears that filled them. The stranger,
+watching her, guessed the mother's language from the girl's tears,
+and turned his eagle glance upon the Marquise. An irresistible power
+constrained her to look at this terrible seducer; but as her eyes met
+his bright, glittering gaze, she felt a shiver run through her frame,
+such a shock as we feel at the sight of a reptile or the contact of a
+Leyden jar.
+
+"Dear!" she cried, turning to her husband, "this is the Fiend himself.
+He can divine everything!"
+
+The General rose to his feet and went to the bell.
+
+"He means ruin for you," Helene said to the murderer.
+
+The stranger smiled, took one forward stride, grasped the General's arm,
+and compelled him to endure a steady gaze which benumbed the soldier's
+brain and left him powerless.
+
+"I will repay you now for your hospitality," he said, "and then we shall
+be quits. I will spare you the shame by giving myself up. After all,
+what should I do now with my life?"
+
+"You could repent," answered Helene, and her glance conveyed such hope
+as only glows in a young girl's eyes.
+
+"_I shall never repent_," said the murderer in a sonorous voice, as he
+raised his head proudly.
+
+"His hands are stained with blood," the father said.
+
+"I will wipe it away," she answered.
+
+"But do you so much as know whether he cares for you?" said her father,
+not daring now to look at the stranger.
+
+The murderer came up a little nearer. Some light within seemed to glow
+through Helene's beauty, grave and maidenly though it was, coloring and
+bringing into relief, as it were, the least details, the most delicate
+lines in her face. The stranger, with that terrible face still blazing
+in his eyes, gave one tender glance to her enchanting loveliness, then
+he spoke, his tones revealing how deeply he had been moved.
+
+"And if I refuse to allow this sacrifice of yourself, and so discharge
+my debt of two hours of existence to your father; is not this love, love
+for yourself alone?"
+
+"Then do you too reject me?" Helene's cry rang painfully through the
+hearts of all who heard her. "Farewell, then, to you all; I will die."
+
+"What does this mean?" asked the father and mother.
+
+Helene gave her mother an eloquent glance and lowered her eyes.
+
+Since the first attempt made by the General and his wife to contest
+by word or action the intruder's strange presumption to the right of
+staying in their midst, from their first experience of the power of
+those glittering eyes, a mysterious torpor had crept over them, and
+their benumbed faculties struggled in vain with the preternatural
+influence. The air seemed to have suddenly grown so heavy, that they
+could scarcely breathe; yet, while they could not find the reason of
+this feeling of oppression, a voice within told them that this magnetic
+presence was the real cause of their helplessness. In this moral agony,
+it flashed across the General that he must make every effort to overcome
+this influence on his daughter's reeling brain; he caught her by the
+waist and drew her into the embrasure of a window, as far as possible
+from the murderer.
+
+"Darling," he murmured, "if some wild love has been suddenly born in
+your heart, I cannot believe that you have not the strength of soul to
+quell the mad impulse; your innocent life, your pure and dutiful soul,
+has given me too many proofs of your character. There must be something
+behind all this. Well, this heart of mine is full of indulgence, you can
+tell everything to me; even if it breaks, dear child, I can be silent
+about my grief, and keep your confession a secret. What is it? Are you
+jealous of our love for your brothers or your little sister? Is it some
+love trouble? Are you unhappy here at home? Tell me about it, tell me
+the reasons that urge you to leave your home, to rob it of its greatest
+charm, to leave your mother and brothers and your little sister?"
+
+"I am in love with no one, father, and jealous of no one, not even of
+your friend the diplomatist, M. de Vandenesse."
+
+The Marquise turned pale; her daughter saw this, and stopped short.
+
+"Sooner or later I must live under some man's protection, must I not?"
+
+"That is true."
+
+"Do we ever know," she went on, "the human being to whom we link our
+destinies? Now, I believe in this man."
+
+"Oh, child," said the General, raising his voice, "you have no idea of
+all the misery that lies in store for you."
+
+"I am thinking of _his_."
+
+"What a life!" groaned the father.
+
+"A woman's life," the girl murmured.
+
+"You have a great knowledge of life!" exclaimed the Marquise, finding
+speech at last.
+
+"Madame, my answers are shaped by the questions; but if you desire it, I
+will speak more clearly."
+
+"Speak out, my child... I am a mother."
+
+Mother and daughter looked each other in the face, and the Marquise said
+no more. At last she said:
+
+"Helene, if you have any reproaches to make, I would rather bear them
+than see you go away with a man from whom the whole world shrinks in
+horror."
+
+"Then you see yourself, madame, that but for me he would be quite
+alone."
+
+"That will do, madame," the General cried; "we have but one daughter
+left to us now," and he looked at Moina, who slept on. "As for you," he
+added, turning to Helene, "I will put you in a convent."
+
+"So be it, father," she said, in calm despair, "I shall die there. You
+are answerable to God alone for my life and for _his_ soul."
+
+A deep sullen silence fell after these words. The on-lookers during
+this strange scene, so utterly at variance with all the sentiments of
+ordinary life, shunned each other's eyes.
+
+Suddenly the Marquis happened to glance at his pistols. He caught up one
+of them, cocked the weapon, and pointed it at the intruder. At the click
+of firearms the other turned his piercing gaze full upon the General;
+the soldier's arm slackened indescribably and fell heavily to his side.
+The pistol dropped to the floor.
+
+"Girl, you are free," said he, exhausted by this ghastly struggle. "Kiss
+your mother, if she will let you kiss her. For my own part, I wish never
+to see nor to hear of you again."
+
+"Helene," the mother began, "only think of the wretched life before
+you."
+
+A sort of rattling sound came from the intruder's deep chest, all eyes
+were turned to him. Disdain was plainly visible in his face.
+
+The General rose to his feet. "My hospitality has cost me dear," he
+cried. "Before you came you had taken an old man's life; now your are
+dealing a deadly blow at a whole family. Whatever happens, there must be
+unhappiness in this house."
+
+"And if your daughter is happy?" asked the other, gazing steadily at the
+General.
+
+The father made a superhuman effort for self-control. "If she is happy
+with you," he said, "she is not worth regretting."
+
+Helene knelt timidly before her father.
+
+"Father, I love and revere you," she said, "whether you lavish all the
+treasures of your kindness upon me, or make me feel to the full the
+rigor of disgrace.... But I entreat that your last words of farewell
+shall not be words of anger."
+
+The General could not trust himself to look at her. The stranger came
+nearer; there was something half-diabolical, half-divine in the smile
+that he gave Helene.
+
+"Angel of pity, you that do not shrink in horror from a murderer, come,
+since you persist in your resolution of intrusting your life to me."
+
+"Inconceivable!" cried her father.
+
+The Marquise then looked strangely at her daughter, opened her arms, and
+Helene fled to her in tears.
+
+"Farewell," she said, "farewell, mother!" The stranger trembled as
+Helene, undaunted, made sign to him that she was ready. She kissed her
+father's hand; and, as if performing a duty, gave a hasty kiss to Moina
+and little Abel, then she vanished with the murderer.
+
+"Which way are they going?" exclaimed the General, listening to the
+footsteps of the two fugitives.--"Madame," he turned to his wife, "I
+think I must be dreaming; there is some mystery behind all this, I do
+not understand it; you must know what it means."
+
+The Marquise shivered.
+
+"For some time past your daughter has grown extraordinarily romantic and
+strangely high-flown in her ideas. In spite of the pains I have taken to
+combat these tendencies in her character--"
+
+"This will not do----" began the General, but fancying that he heard
+footsteps in the garden, he broke off to fling open the window.
+
+"Helene!" he shouted.
+
+His voice was lost in the darkness like a vain prophecy. The utterance
+of that name, to which there should never be answer any more, acted
+like a counterspell; it broke the charm and set him free from the evil
+enchantment which lay upon him. It was as if some spirit passed over
+his face. He now saw clearly what had taken place, and cursed his
+incomprehensible weakness. A shiver of heat rushed from his heart to
+his head and feet; he became himself once more, terrible, thirsting for
+revenge. He raised a dreadful cry.
+
+"Help!" he thundered, "help!"
+
+He rushed to the bell-pull, pulled till the bells rang with a strange
+clamor of din, pulled till the cord gave way. The whole house was roused
+with a start. Still shouting, he flung open the windows that looked upon
+the street, called for the police, caught up his pistols, and fired them
+off to hurry the mounted patrols, the newly-aroused servants, and the
+neighbors. The dogs barked at the sound of their master's voice; the
+horses neighed and stamped in their stalls. The quiet night was suddenly
+filled with hideous uproar. The General on the staircase, in pursuit
+of his daughter, saw the scared faces of the servants flocking from all
+parts of the house.
+
+"My daughter!" he shouted. "Helene has been carried off. Search
+the garden. Keep a lookout on the road! Open the gates for the
+gendarmerie!--Murder! Help!"
+
+With the strength of fury he snapped the chain and let loose the great
+house-dog.
+
+"Helene!" he cried, "Helene!"
+
+The dog sprang out like a lion, barking furiously, and dashed into the
+garden, leaving the General far behind. A troop of horses came along the
+road at a gallop, and he flew to open the gates himself.
+
+"Corporal!" he shouted, "cut off the retreat of M. de Mauny's murderer.
+They have gone through my garden. Quick! Put a cordon of men to watch
+the ways by the Butte de Picardie.--I will beat up the grounds, parks,
+and houses.--The rest of you keep a lookout along the road," he ordered
+the servants, "form a chain between the barrier and Versailles. Forward,
+every man of you!"
+
+He caught up the rifle which his man had brought out, and dashed into
+the garden.
+
+"Find them!" he called to the dog.
+
+An ominous baying came in answer from the distance, and he plunged in
+the direction from which the growl seemed to come.
+
+It was seven o'clock in the morning; all the search made by gendarmes,
+servants, and neighbors had been fruitless, and the dog had not come
+back. The General entered the salon, empty now for him though the other
+three children were there; he was worn out with fatigue, and looked old
+already with that night's work.
+
+"You have been very cold to your daughter," he said, turning his eyes
+on his wife.--"And now this is all that is left to us of her," he added,
+indicating the embroidery frame, and the flower just begun. "Only just
+now she was there, and now she is lost... lost!"
+
+Tears followed; he hid his face in his hands, and for a few minutes he
+said no more; he could not bear the sight of the room, which so short
+a time ago had made a setting to a picture of the sweetest family
+happiness. The winter dawn was struggling with the dying lamplight; the
+tapers burned down to their paper-wreaths and flared out; everything was
+all in keeping with the father's despair.
+
+"This must be destroyed," he said after a pause, pointing to the
+tambour-frame. "I shall never bear to see anything again that reminds us
+of _her_!"
+
+The terrible Christmas night when the Marquis and his wife lost their
+oldest daughter, powerless to oppose the mysterious influence exercised
+by the man who involuntarily, as it were, stole Helene from them, was
+like a warning sent by Fate. The Marquis was ruined by the failure of
+his stock-broker; he borrowed money on his wife's property, and lost
+it in the endeavor to retrieve his fortunes. Driven to desperate
+expedients, he left France. Six years went by. His family seldom had
+news of him; but a few days before Spain recognized the independence of
+the American Republics, he wrote that he was coming home.
+
+So, one fine morning, it happened that several French merchants were on
+board a Spanish brig that lay a few leagues out from Bordeaux, impatient
+to reach their native land again, with wealth acquired by long years of
+toil and perilous adventures in Venezuela and Mexico.
+
+One of the passengers, a man who looked aged by trouble rather than
+by years, was leaning against the bulwark netting, apparently quite
+unaffected by the sight to be seen from the upper deck. The bright
+day, the sense that the voyage was safely over, had brought all the
+passengers above to greet their land. The larger number of them insisted
+that they could see, far off in the distance, the houses and lighthouses
+on the coast of Gascony and the Tower of Cardouan, melting into the
+fantastic erections of white cloud along the horizon. But for the silver
+fringe that played about their bows, and the long furrow swiftly effaced
+in their wake, they might have been perfectly still in mid-ocean, so
+calm was the sea. The sky was magically clear, the dark blue of the
+vault above paled by imperceptible gradations, until it blended with
+the bluish water, a gleaming line that sparkled like stars marking the
+dividing line of sea. The sunlight caught myriads of facets over the
+wide surface of the ocean, in such a sort that the vast plains of salt
+water looked perhaps more full of light than the fields of sky.
+
+The brig had set all her canvas. The snowy sails, swelled by the
+strangely soft wind, the labyrinth of cordage, and the yellow flags
+flying at the masthead, all stood out sharp and uncompromisingly clear
+against the vivid background of space, sky, and sea; there was nothing
+to alter the color but the shadow cast by the great cloudlike sails.
+
+A glorious day, a fair wind, and the fatherland in sight, a sea like a
+mill-pond, the melancholy sound of the ripples, a fair, solitary vessel,
+gliding across the surface of the water like a woman stealing out to
+a tryst--it was a picture full of harmony. That mere speck full of
+movement was a starting-point whence the soul of man could descry the
+immutable vast of space. Solitude and bustling life, silence and sound,
+were all brought together in strange abrupt contrast; you could not
+tell where life, or sound, or silence, and nothingness lay, and no human
+voice broke the divine spell.
+
+The Spanish captain, the crew, and the French passengers sat or stood,
+in a mood of devout ecstasy, in which many memories blended. There was
+idleness in the air. The beaming faces told of complete forgetfulness
+of past hardships, the men were rocked on the fair vessel as in a golden
+dream. Yet, from time to time the elderly passenger, leaning over the
+bulwark nettings, looked with something like uneasiness at the horizon.
+Distrust of the ways of Fate could be read in his whole face; he seemed
+to fear that he should not reach the coast of France in time. This
+was the Marquis. Fortune had not been deaf to his despairing cry and
+struggles. After five years of endeavor and painful toil, he was a
+wealthy man once more. In his impatience to reach his home again and to
+bring the good news to his family, he had followed the example set by
+some French merchants in Havana, and embarked with them on a Spanish
+vessel with a cargo for Bordeaux. And now, grown tired of evil
+forebodings, his fancy was tracing out for him the most delicious
+pictures of past happiness. In that far-off brown line of land he seemed
+to see his wife and children. He sat in his place by the fireside; they
+were crowding about him; he felt their caresses. Moina had grown to be
+a young girl; she was beautiful, and tall, and striking. The fancied
+picture had grown almost real, when the tears filled his eyes, and, to
+hide his emotion, he turned his face towards the sea-line, opposite the
+hazy streak that meant land.
+
+"There she is again.... She is following us!" he said.
+
+"What?" cried the Spanish captain.
+
+"There is a vessel," muttered the General.
+
+"I saw her yesterday," answered Captain Gomez. He looked at his
+interlocutor as if to ask what he thought; then he added in the
+General's ear, "She has been chasing us all along."
+
+"Then why she has not come up with us, I do not know," said the General,
+"for she is a faster sailor than your damned _Saint-Ferdinand_."
+
+"She will have damaged herself, sprung a leak--"
+
+"She is gaining on us!" the General broke in.
+
+"She is a Columbian privateer," the captain said in his ear, "and we are
+still six leagues from land, and the wind is dropping."
+
+"She is not _going_ ahead, she is flying, as if she knew that in two
+hours' time her prey would escape her. What audacity!"
+
+"Audacity!" cried the captain. "Oh! she is not called the _Othello_ for
+nothing. Not so long back she sank a Spanish frigate that carried thirty
+guns! This is the one thing I was afraid of, for I had a notion that she
+was cruising about somewhere off the Antilles.--Aha!" he added after a
+pause, as he watched the sails of his own vessel, "the wind is rising;
+we are making way. Get through we must, for 'the Parisian' will show us
+no mercy."
+
+"She is making way too!" returned the General.
+
+The _Othello_ was scarce three leagues away by this time; and although
+the conversation between the Marquis and Captain Gomez had taken place
+apart, passengers and crew, attracted by the sudden appearance of a
+sail, came to that side of the vessel. With scarcely an exception,
+however, they took the privateer for a merchantman, and watched her
+course with interest, till all at once a sailor shouted with some energy
+of language:
+
+"By Saint-James, it is all up with us! Yonder is the Parisian captain!"
+
+At that terrible name dismay, and a panic impossible to describe, spread
+through the brig. The Spanish captain's orders put energy into the
+crew for a while; and in his resolute determination to make land at all
+costs, he set all the studding sails, and crowded on every stitch
+of canvas on board. But all this was not the work of a moment; and
+naturally the men did not work together with that wonderful unanimity
+so fascinating to watch on board a man-of-war. The _Othello_ meanwhile,
+thanks to the trimming of her sails, flew over the water like a swallow;
+but she was making, to all appearance, so little headway, that the
+unlucky Frenchmen began to entertain sweet delusive hopes. At last,
+after unheard-of efforts, the _Saint-Ferdinand_ sprang forward, Gomez
+himself directing the shifting of the sheets with voice and gesture,
+when all at once the man at the tiller, steering at random (purposely,
+no doubt), swung the vessel round. The wind striking athwart the beam,
+the sails shivered so unexpectedly that the brig heeled to one side, the
+booms were carried away, and the vessel was completely out of hand.
+The captain's face grew whiter than his sails with unutterable rage. He
+sprang upon the man at the tiller, drove his dagger at him in such blind
+fury, that he missed him, and hurled the weapon overboard. Gomez took
+the helm himself, and strove to right the gallant vessel. Tears of
+despair rose to his eyes, for it is harder to lose the result of our
+carefully-laid plans through treachery than to face imminent death.
+But the more the captain swore, the less the men worked, and it was
+he himself who fired the alarm-gun, hoping to be heard on shore. The
+privateer, now gaining hopelessly upon them, replied with a cannon-shot,
+which struck the water ten fathoms away from the _Saint-Ferdinand_.
+
+"Thunder of heaven!" cried the General, "that was a close shave! They
+must have guns made on purpose."
+
+"Oh! when that one yonder speaks, look you, you have to hold your
+tongue," said a sailor. "The Parisian would not be afraid to meet an
+English man-of-war."
+
+"It is all over with us," the captain cried in desperation; he had
+pointed his telescope landwards, and saw not a sign from the shore. "We
+are further from the coast than I thought."
+
+"Why do you despair?" asked the General. "All your passengers are
+Frenchmen; they have chartered your vessel. The privateer is a Parisian,
+you say? Well and good, run up the white flag, and--"
+
+"And he would run us down," retorted the captain. "He can be anything he
+likes when he has a mind to seize on a rich booty!"
+
+"Oh! if he is a pirate--"
+
+"Pirate!" said the ferocious looking sailor. "Oh! he always has the law
+on his side, or he knows how to be on the same side as the law."
+
+"Very well," said the General, raising his eyes, "let us make up our
+minds to it," and his remaining fortitude was still sufficient to keep
+back the tears.
+
+The words were hardly out of his mouth before a second cannon-shot,
+better aimed, came crashing through the hull of the _Saint-Ferdinand_.
+
+"Heave to!" cried the captain gloomily.
+
+The sailor who had commended the Parisian's law-abiding proclivities
+showed himself a clever hand at working a ship after this desperate
+order was given. The crew waited for half an hour in an agony of
+suspense and the deepest dismay. The _Saint-Ferdinand_ had four millions
+of piastres on board, the whole fortunes of the five passengers, and the
+General's eleven hundred thousand francs. At length the _Othello_ lay
+not ten gunshots away, so that those on the _Saint-Ferdinand_ could look
+into the muzzles of her loaded guns. The vessel seemed to be borne along
+by a breeze sent by the Devil himself, but the eyes of an expert would
+have discovered the secret of her speed at once. You had but to look
+for a moment at the rake of her stern, her long, narrow keel, her tall
+masts, to see the cut of her sails, the wonderful lightness of her
+rigging, and the ease and perfect seamanship with which her crew trimmed
+her sails to the wind. Everything about her gave the impression of the
+security of power in this delicately curved inanimate creature, swift
+and intelligent as a greyhound or some bird of prey. The privateer
+crew stood silent, ready in case of resistance to shatter the wretched
+merchantman, which, luckily for her, remained motionless, like a
+schoolboy caught in flagrant delict by a master.
+
+"We have guns on board!" cried the General, clutching the Spanish
+captain's hand. But the courage in Gomez's eyes was the courage of
+despair.
+
+"Have we men?" he said.
+
+The Marquis looked round at the crew of the _Saint-Ferdinand_, and a
+cold chill ran through him. There stood the four merchants, pale and
+quaking for fear, while the crew gathered about some of their own number
+who appeared to be arranging to go over in a body to the enemy. They
+watched the _Othello_ with greed and curiosity in their faces. The
+captain, the Marquis, and the mate exchanged glances; they were the only
+three who had a thought for any but themselves.
+
+"Ah! Captain Gomez, when I left my home and country, my heart was half
+dead with the bitterness of parting, and now must I bid it good-bye once
+more when I am bringing back happiness and ease for my children?"
+
+The General turned his head away towards the sea, with tears of rage in
+his eyes--and saw the steersman swimming out to the privateer.
+
+"This time it will be good-bye for good," said the captain by way
+of answer, and the dazed look in the Frenchman's eyes startled the
+Spaniard.
+
+By this time the two vessels were almost alongside, and at the first
+sight of the enemy's crew the General saw that Gomez's gloomy prophecy
+was only too true. The three men at each gun might have been bronze
+statues, standing like athletes, with their rugged features, their bare
+sinewy arms, men whom Death himself had scarcely thrown off their feet.
+
+The rest of the crew, well armed, active, light, and vigorous, also
+stood motionless. Toil had hardened, and the sun had deeply tanned,
+those energetic faces; their eyes glittered like sparks of fire with
+infernal glee and clear-sighted courage. Perfect silence on the upper
+deck, now black with men, bore abundant testimony to the rigorous
+discipline and strong will which held these fiends incarnate in check.
+
+The captain of the _Othello_ stood with folded arms at the foot of the
+main mast; he carried no weapons, but an axe lay on the deck beside him.
+His face was hidden by the shadow of a broad felt hat. The men looked
+like dogs crouching before their master. Gunners, soldiers, and ship's
+crew turned their eyes first on his face, and then on the merchant
+vessel.
+
+The two brigs came up alongside, and the shock of contact roused the
+privateer captain from his musings; he spoke a word in the ear of the
+lieutenant who stood beside him.
+
+"Grappling-irons!" shouted the latter, and the _Othello_ grappled
+the _Saint-Ferdinand_ with miraculous quickness. The captain of the
+privateer gave his orders in a low voice to the lieutenant, who repeated
+them; the men, told off in succession for each duty, went on the upper
+deck of the _Saint-Ferdinand_, like seminarists going to mass. They
+bound crew and passengers hand and foot and seized the booty. In the
+twinkling of an eye, provisions and barrels full of piastres were
+transferred to the _Othello_; the General thought that he must be
+dreaming when he himself, likewise bound, was flung down on a bale of
+goods as if he had been part of the cargo.
+
+A brief conference took place between the captain of the privateer and
+his lieutenant and a sailor, who seemed to be the mate of the
+vessel; then the mate gave a whistle, and the men jumped on board
+the _Saint-Ferdinand_, and completely dismantled her with the nimble
+dexterity of a soldier who strips a dead comrade of a coveted overcoat
+and shoes.
+
+"It is all over with us," said the Spanish captain coolly. He had eyed
+the three chiefs during their confabulation, and saw that the sailors
+were proceeding to pull his vessel to pieces.
+
+"Why so?" asked the General.
+
+"What would you have them do with us?" returned the Spaniard. "They
+have just come to the conclusion that they will scarcely sell the
+_Saint-Ferdinand_ in any French or Spanish port, so they are going to
+sink her to be rid of her. As for us, do you suppose that they will put
+themselves to the expense of feeding us, when they don't know what port
+they are to put into?"
+
+The words were scarcely out of the captain's mouth before a hideous
+outcry went up, followed by a dull splashing sound, as several bodies
+were thrown overboard. He turned, the four merchants were no longer to
+be seen, but eight ferocious-looking gunners were still standing with
+their arms raised above their heads. He shuddered.
+
+"What did I tell you?" the Spanish captain asked coolly.
+
+The Marquis rose to his feet with a spring. The surface of the sea was
+quite smooth again; he could not so much as see the place where his
+unhappy fellow-passengers had disappeared. By this time they were
+sinking down, bound hand and foot, below the waves, if, indeed, the fish
+had not devoured them already.
+
+Only a few paces away, the treacherous steersman and the sailor who had
+boasted of the Parisian's power were fraternizing with the crew of the
+_Othello_, and pointing out those among their own number, who, in their
+opinion, were worthy to join the crew of the privateer. Then the boys
+tied the rest together by the feet in spite of frightful oaths. It
+was soon over; the eight gunners seized the doomed men and flung them
+overboard without more ado, watching the different ways in which the
+drowning victims met their death, their contortions, their last agony,
+with a sort of malignant curiosity, but with no sign of amusement,
+surprise, or pity. For them it was an ordinary event to which seemingly
+they were quite accustomed. The older men looked instead with grim, set
+smiles at the casks of piastres about the main mast.
+
+The General and Captain Gomez, left seated on a bale of goods, consulted
+each other with well-nigh hopeless looks; they were, in a sense, the
+sole survivors of the _Saint-Ferdinand_, for the seven men pointed out
+by the spies were transformed amid rejoicings into Peruvians.
+
+"What atrocious villains!" the General cried. Loyal and generous
+indignation silenced prudence and pain on his own account.
+
+"They do it because they must," Gomez answered coolly. "If you came
+across one of those fellows, you would run him through the body, would
+you not?"
+
+The lieutenant now came up to the Spaniard.
+
+"Captain," said he, "the Parisian has heard of you. He says that you
+are the only man who really knows the passages of the Antilles and the
+Brazilian coast. Will you--"
+
+The captain cut him short with a scornful exclamation.
+
+"I shall die like a sailor," he said, "and a loyal Spaniard and a
+Christian. Do you hear?"
+
+"Heave him overboard!" shouted the lieutenant, and a couple of gunners
+seized on Gomez.
+
+"You cowards!" roared the General, seizing hold of the men.
+
+"Don't get too excited, old boy," said the lieutenant. "If your red
+ribbon has made some impression upon our captain, I myself do not care
+a rap for it.--You and I will have our little bit of talk together
+directly."
+
+A smothered sound, with no accompanying cry, told the General that the
+gallant captain had died "like a sailor," as he had said.
+
+"My money or death!" cried the Marquis, in a fit of rage terrible to
+see.
+
+"Ah! now you talk sensibly!" sneered the lieutenant. "That is the way to
+get something out of us----"
+
+Two of the men came up at a sign and hastened to bind the Frenchmen's
+feet, but with unlooked-for boldness he snatched the lieutenant's
+cutlass and laid about him like a cavalry officer who knows his
+business.
+
+"Brigands that you are! You shall not chuck one of Napoleon's troopers
+over a ship's side like an oyster!"
+
+At the sound of pistol shots fired point blank at the Frenchman,
+"the Parisian" looked round from his occupation of superintending the
+transfer of the rigging from the _Saint-Ferdinand_. He came up behind
+the brave General, seized him, dragged him to the side, and was about
+to fling him over with no more concern than if the man had been a broken
+spar. They were at the very edge when the General looked into the tawny
+eyes of the man who had stolen his daughter. The recognition was mutual.
+
+The captain of the privateer, his arm still upraised, suddenly swung it
+in the contrary direction as if his victim was but a feather weight, and
+set him down at the foot of the main mast. A murmur rose on the upper
+deck, but the captain glanced round, and there was a sudden silence.
+
+"This is Helene's father," said the captain in a clear, firm voice. "Woe
+to any one who meddles with him!"
+
+A hurrah of joy went up at the words, a shout rising to the sky like a
+prayer of the church; a cry like the first high notes of the _Te Deum_.
+The lads swung aloft in the rigging, the men below flung up their caps,
+the gunners pounded away on the deck, there was a general thrill of
+excitement, an outburst of oaths, yells, and shrill cries in voluble
+chorus. The men cheered like fanatics, the General's misgivings
+deepened, and he grew uneasy; it seemed to him that there was some
+horrible mystery in such wild transports.
+
+"My daughter!" he cried, as soon as he could speak. "Where is my
+daughter?"
+
+For all answer, the captain of the privateer gave him a searching
+glance, one of those glances which throw the bravest man into a
+confusion which no theory can explain. The General was mute, not a
+little to the satisfaction of the crew; it pleased them to see their
+leader exercise the strange power which he possessed over all with whom
+he came in contact. Then the captain led the way down a staircase and
+flung open the door of a cabin.
+
+"There she is," he said, and disappeared, leaving the General in a
+stupor of bewilderment at the scene before his eyes.
+
+Helene cried out at the sight of him, and sprang up from the sofa on
+which she was lying when the door flew open. So changed was she that
+none but a father's eyes could have recognized her. The sun of the
+tropics had brought warmer tones into the once pale face, and something
+of Oriental charm with that wonderful coloring; there was a certain
+grandeur about her, a majestic firmness, a profound sentiment which
+impresses itself upon the coarsest nature. Her long, thick hair, falling
+in large curls about her queenly throat, gave an added idea of power
+to the proud face. The consciousness of that power shone out from every
+movement, every line of Helene's form. The rose-tinted nostrils were
+dilated slightly with the joy of triumph; the serene happiness of her
+life had left its plain tokens in the full development of her beauty. A
+certain indefinable virginal grace met in her with the pride of a woman
+who is loved. This was a slave and a queen, a queen who would fain obey
+that she might reign.
+
+Her dress was magnificent and elegant in its richness; India muslin was
+the sole material, but her sofa and cushions were of cashmere. A Persian
+carpet covered the floor in the large cabin, and her four children
+playing at her feet were building castles of gems and pearl necklaces
+and jewels of price. The air was full of the scent of rare flowers in
+Sevres porcelain vases painted by Madame Jacotot; tiny South American
+birds, like living rubies, sapphires, and gold, hovered among the
+Mexican jessamines and camellias. A pianoforte had been fitted into the
+room, and here and there on the paneled walls, covered with red silk,
+hung small pictures by great painters--a _Sunset_ by Hippolyte Schinner
+beside a Terburg, one of Raphael's Madonnas scarcely yielded in charm to
+a sketch by Gericault, while a Gerard Dow eclipsed the painters of the
+Empire. On a lacquered table stood a golden plate full of delicious
+fruit. Indeed, Helene might have been the sovereign lady of some great
+country, and this cabin of hers a boudoir in which her crowned lover
+had brought together all earth's treasure to please his consort. The
+children gazed with bright, keen eyes at their grandfather. Accustomed
+as they were to a life of battle, storm, and tumult, they recalled the
+Roman children in David's _Brutus_, watching the fighting and bloodshed
+with curious interest.
+
+"What! is it possible?" cried Helene, catching her father's arm as if to
+assure herself that this was no vision.
+
+"Helene!"
+
+"Father!"
+
+They fell into each other's arms, and the old man's embrace was not so
+close and warm as Helene's.
+
+"Were you on board that vessel?"
+
+"Yes," he answered sadly, and looking at the little ones, who gathered
+about him and gazed with wide open eyes.
+
+"I was about to perish, but--"
+
+"But for my husband," she broke in. "I see how it was."
+
+"Ah!" cried the General, "why must I find you again like this, Helene?
+After all the many tears that I have shed, must I still groan for your
+fate?"
+
+"And why?" she asked, smiling. "Why should you be sorry to learn that I
+am the happiest woman under the sun?"
+
+"_Happy_?" he cried with a start of surprise.
+
+"Yes, happy, my kind father," and she caught his hands in hers and
+covered them with kisses, and pressed them to her throbbing heart. Her
+caresses, and a something in the carriage of her head, were interpreted
+yet more plainly by the joy sparkling in her eyes.
+
+"And how is this?" he asked, wondering at his daughter's life, forgetful
+now of everything but the bright glowing face before him.
+
+"Listen, father; I have for lover, husband, servant, and master one
+whose soul is as great as the boundless sea, as infinite in his kindness
+as heaven, a god on earth! Never during these seven years has a chance
+look, or word, or gesture jarred in the divine harmony of his talk,
+his love, his caresses. His eyes have never met mine without a gleam of
+happiness in them; there has always been a bright smile on his lips for
+me. On deck, his voice rises above the thunder of storms and the
+tumult of battle; but here below it is soft and melodious as Rossini's
+music--for he has Rossini's music sent for me. I have everything that
+woman's caprice can imagine. My wishes are more than fulfilled. In
+short, I am a queen on the seas; I am obeyed here as perhaps a queen may
+be obeyed.--Ah!" she cried, interrupting herself, "_happy_ did I say?
+Happiness is no word to express such bliss as mine. All the happiness
+that should have fallen to all the women in the world has been my share.
+Knowing one's own great love and self-devotion, to find in _his_
+heart an infinite love in which a woman's soul is lost, and lost for
+ever--tell me, is this happiness? I have lived through a thousand lives
+even now. Here, I am alone; here, I command. No other woman has set foot
+on this noble vessel, and Victor is never more than a few paces distant
+from me,--he cannot wander further from me than from stern to prow," she
+added, with a shade of mischief in her manner. "Seven years! A love
+that outlasts seven years of continual joy, that endures all the tests
+brought by all the moments that make up seven years--is this love? Oh,
+no, no! it is something better than all that I know of life... human
+language fails to express the bliss of heaven."
+
+A sudden torrent of tears fell from her burning eyes. The four little
+ones raised a piteous cry at this, and flocked like chickens about their
+mother. The oldest boy struck the General with a threatening look.
+
+"Abel, darling," said Helene, "I am crying for joy."
+
+Helene took him on her knee, and the child fondled her, putting his arms
+about her queenly neck, as a lion's whelp might play with the lioness.
+
+"Do you never weary of your life?" asked the General, bewildered by his
+daughter's enthusiastic language.
+
+"Yes," she said, "sometimes, when we are on land, yet even then I have
+never parted from my husband."
+
+"But you need to be fond of music and balls and fetes."
+
+"His voice is music for me; and for fetes, I devise new toilettes for
+him to see. When he likes my dress, it is as if all the world admired
+me. Simply for that reason I keep the diamonds and jewels, the precious
+things, the flowers and masterpieces of art that he heaps upon me,
+saying, 'Helene, as you live out of the world, I will have the world
+come to you.' But for that I would fling them all overboard."
+
+"But there are others on board, wild, reckless men whose passions--"
+
+"I understand, father," she said smiling. "Do not fear for me. Never
+was empress encompassed with more observance than I. The men are very
+superstitious; they look upon me as a sort of tutelary genius, the luck
+of the vessel. But _he_ is their god; they worship him. Once, and
+once only, one of the crew showed disrespect, mere words," she added,
+laughing; "but before Victor knew of it, the others flung the offender
+overboard, although I forgave him. They love me as their good angel; I
+nurse them when they are ill; several times I have been so fortunate as
+to save a life, by constant care such as a woman can give. Poor fellows,
+they are giants, but they are children at the same time."
+
+"And when there is fighting overhead?"
+
+"I am used to it now; I quaked for fear during the first engagement,
+but never since.--I am used to such peril, and--I am your daughter," she
+said; "I love it."
+
+"But how if he should fall?"
+
+"I should die with him."
+
+"And your children?"
+
+"They are children of the sea and of danger; they share the life of
+their parents. We have but one life, and we do not flinch from it. We
+have but one life, our names are written on the same page of the book of
+Fate, one skiff bears us and our fortunes, and we know it."
+
+"Do you so love him that he is more to you than all beside?"
+
+"All beside?" echoed she. "Let us leave that mystery alone. Yet stay!
+there is this dear little one--well, this too is _he_," and straining
+Abel to her in a tight clasp, she set eager kisses on his cheeks and
+hair.
+
+"But I can never forget that he has just drowned nine men!" exclaimed
+the General.
+
+"There was no help for it, doubtless," she said, "for he is generous and
+humane. He sheds as little blood as may be, and only in the interests of
+the little world which he defends, and the sacred cause for which he is
+fighting. Talk to him about anything that seems to you to be wrong, and
+he will convince you, you will see."
+
+"There was that crime of his," muttered the General to himself.
+
+"But how if that crime was a virtue?" she asked, with cold dignity. "How
+if man's justice had failed to avenge a great wrong?"
+
+"But a private revenge!" exclaimed her father.
+
+"But what is hell," she cried, "but a revenge through all eternity for
+the wrong done in a little day?"
+
+"Ah! you are lost! He has bewitched and perverted you. You are talking
+wildly."
+
+"Stay with us one day, father, and if you will but listen to him, and
+see him, you will love him."
+
+"Helene, France lies only a few leagues away," he said gravely.
+
+Helene trembled; then she went to the porthole and pointed to the
+savannas of green water spreading far and wide.
+
+"There lies my country," she said, tapping the carpet with her foot.
+
+"But are you not coming with me to see your mother and your sister and
+brothers?"
+
+"Oh! yes," she cried, with tears in her voice, "if _he_ is willing, if
+he will come with me."
+
+"So," the General said sternly, "you have neither country nor kin now,
+Helene?"
+
+"I am his wife," she answered proudly, and there was something very
+noble in her tone. "This is the first happiness in seven years that has
+not come to me through him," she said--then, as she caught her father's
+hand and kissed it--"and this is the first word of reproach that I have
+heard."
+
+"And your conscience?"
+
+"My conscience; he is my conscience!" she cried, trembling from head to
+foot. "Here he is! Even in the thick of a fight I can tell his footstep
+among all the others on deck," she cried.
+
+A sudden crimson flushed her cheeks and glowed in her features, her eyes
+lighted up, her complexion changed to velvet whiteness, there was joy
+and love in every fibre, in the blue veins, in the unconscious trembling
+of her whole frame. That quiver of the sensitive plant softened the
+General.
+
+It was as she had said. The captain came in, sat down in an easy-chair,
+took up his oldest boy, and began to play with him. There was a moment's
+silence, for the General's deep musing had grown vague and dreamy, and
+the daintily furnished cabin and the playing children seemed like a nest
+of halcyons, floating on the waves, between sky and sea, safe in the
+protection of this man who steered his way amid the perils of war and
+tempest, as other heads of household guide those in their care among
+the hazards of common life. He gazed admiringly at Helene--a dreamlike
+vision of some sea goddess, gracious in her loveliness, rich in
+happiness; all the treasures about her grown poor in comparison with
+the wealth of her nature, paling before the brightness of her eyes, the
+indefinable romance expressed in her and her surroundings.
+
+The strangeness of the situation took the General by surprise; the ideas
+of ordinary life were thrown into confusion by this lofty passion and
+reasoning. Chill and narrow social conventions faded away before this
+picture. All these things the old soldier felt, and saw no less how
+impossible it was that his daughter should give up so wide a life, a
+life so variously rich, filled to the full with such passionate love.
+And Helene had tasted danger without shrinking; how could she return to
+the pretty stage, the superficial circumscribed life of society?
+
+It was the captain who broke the silence at last.
+
+"Am I in the way?" he asked, looking at his wife.
+
+"No," said the General, answering for her. "Helene has told me all. I
+see that she is lost to us--"
+
+"No," the captain put in quickly; "in a few years' time the statute of
+limitations will allow me to go back to France. When the conscience
+is clear, and a man has broken the law in obedience to----" he stopped
+short, as if scorning to justify himself.
+
+"How can you commit new murders, such as I have seen with my own eyes,
+without remorse?"
+
+"We had no provisions," the privateer captain retorted calmly.
+
+"But if you had set the men ashore--"
+
+"They would have given the alarm and sent a man-of-war after us, and we
+should never have seen Chili again."
+
+"Before France would have given warning to the Spanish admiralty--"
+began the General.
+
+"But France might take it amiss that a man, with a warrant still out
+against him, should seize a brig chartered by Bordeaux merchants. And
+for that matter, have you never fired a shot or so too many in battle?"
+
+The General shrank under the other's eyes. He said no more, and his
+daughter looked at him half sadly, half triumphant.
+
+"General," the privateer continued, in a deep voice, "I have made it
+a rule to abstract nothing from booty. But even so, my share will be
+beyond a doubt far larger than your fortune. Permit me to return it to
+you in another form--"
+
+He drew a pile of banknotes from the piano, and without counting the
+packets handed a million of francs to the Marquis.
+
+"You can understand," he said, "that I cannot spend my time in watching
+vessels pass by to Bordeaux. So unless the dangers of this Bohemian
+life of ours have some attraction for you, unless you care to see South
+America and the nights of the tropics, and a bit of fighting now and
+again for the pleasure of helping to win a triumph for a young nation,
+or for the name of Simon Bolivar, we must part. The long boat manned
+with a trustworthy crew is ready for you. And now let us hope that our
+third meeting will be completely happy."
+
+"Victor," said Helene in a dissatisfied tone, "I should like to see a
+little more of my father."
+
+"Ten minutes more or less may bring up a French frigate. However, so be
+it, we shall have a little fun. The men find things dull."
+
+"Oh, father, go!" cried Helene, "and take these keepsakes from me to my
+sister and brothers and--mother," she added. She caught up a handful of
+jewels and precious stones, folded them in an Indian shawl, and timidly
+held it out.
+
+"But what shall I say to them from you?" asked he. Her hesitation on the
+word "mother" seemed to have struck him.
+
+"Oh! can you doubt me? I pray for their happiness every day."
+
+"Helene," he began, as he watched her closely, "how if we should not
+meet again? Shall I never know why you left us?"
+
+"That secret is not mine," she answered gravely. "Even if I had the
+right to tell it, perhaps I should not. For ten years I was more
+miserable than words can say--"
+
+She broke off, and gave her father the presents for her family. The
+General had acquired tolerably easy views as to booty in the course of
+a soldier's career, so he took Helene's gifts and comforted himself with
+the reflection that the Parisian captain was sure to wage war against
+the Spaniards as an honorable man, under the influence of Helene's pure
+and high-minded nature. His passion for courage carried all before it.
+It was ridiculous, he thought, to be squeamish in the matter; so he
+shook hands cordially with his captor, and kissed Helene, his only
+daughter, with a soldier's expansiveness; letting fall a tear on the
+face with the proud, strong look that once he had loved to see. "The
+Parisian," deeply moved, brought the children for his blessing. The
+parting was over, the last good-bye was a long farewell look, with
+something of tender regret on either side.
+
+
+
+A strange sight to seaward met the General's eyes. The _Saint-Ferdinand_
+was blazing like a huge bonfire. The men told off to sink the Spanish
+brig had found a cargo of rum on board; and as the _Othello_ was already
+amply supplied, had lighted a floating bowl of punch on the high seas,
+by way of a joke; a pleasantry pardonable enough in sailors, who hail
+any chance excitement as a relief from the apparent monotony of life
+at sea. As the General went over the side into the long-boat of the
+_Saint-Ferdinand_, manned by six vigorous rowers, he could not help
+looking at the burning vessel, as well as at the daughter who stood by
+her husband's side on the stern of the _Othello_. He saw Helene's white
+dress flutter like one more sail in the breeze; he saw the tall, noble
+figure against a background of sea, queenly still even in the presence
+of Ocean; and so many memories crowded up in his mind, that, with a
+soldier's recklessness of life, he forgot that he was being borne over
+the grave of the brave Gomez.
+
+A vast column of smoke rising spread like a brown cloud, pierced here
+and there by fantastic shafts of sunlight. It was a second sky, a murky
+dome reflecting the glow of the fire as if the under surface had been
+burnished; but above it soared the unchanging blue of the firmament, a
+thousand times fairer for the short-lived contrast. The strange hues
+of the smoke cloud, black and red, tawny and pale by turns, blurred
+and blending into each other, shrouded the burning vessel as it flared,
+crackled and groaned; the hissing tongues of flame licked up the
+rigging, and flashed across the hull, like a rumor of riot flashing
+along the streets of a city. The burning rum sent up blue flitting
+lights. Some sea god might have been stirring the furious liquor as
+a student stirs the joyous flames of punch in an orgy. But in the
+overpowering sunlight, jealous of the insolent blaze, the colors were
+scarcely visible, and the smoke was but a film fluttering like a thin
+scarf in the noonday torrent of light and heat.
+
+The _Othello_ made the most of the little wind she could gain to fly
+on her new course. Swaying first to one side, then to the other, like a
+stag beetle on the wing, the fair vessel beat to windward on her zigzag
+flight to the south. Sometimes she was hidden from sight by the straight
+column of smoke that flung fantastic shadows across the water, then
+gracefully she shot out clear of it, and Helene, catching sight of her
+father, waved her handkerchief for yet one more farewell greeting.
+
+A few more minutes, and the _Saint-Ferdinand_ went down with a bubbling
+turmoil, at once effaced by the ocean. Nothing of all that had been
+was left but a smoke cloud hanging in the breeze. The _Othello_ was far
+away, the long-boat had almost reached land, the cloud came between
+the frail skiff and the brig, and it was through a break in the swaying
+smoke that the General caught the last glimpse of Helene. A prophetic
+vision! Her dress and her white handkerchief stood out against the murky
+background. Then the brig was not even visible between the green water
+and the blue sky, and Helene was nothing but an imperceptible speck, a
+faint graceful line, an angel in heaven, a mental image, a memory.
+
+The Marquis had retrieved his fortunes, when he died, worn out with
+toil. A few months after his death, in 1833, the Marquise was obliged to
+take Moina to a watering-place in the Pyrenees, for the capricious child
+had a wish to see the beautiful mountain scenery. They left the baths,
+and the following tragical incident occurred on their way home.
+
+"Dear me, mother," said Moina, "it was very foolish of us not to stay
+among the mountains a few days longer. It was much nicer there. Did
+you hear that horrid child moaning all night, and that wretched woman,
+gabbling away in patois no doubt, for I could not understand a single
+word she said. What kind of people can they have put in the next room to
+ours? This is one of the horridest nights I have ever spent in my life."
+
+"I heard nothing," said the Marquise, "but I will see the landlady,
+darling, and engage the next room, and then we shall have the whole
+suite of rooms to ourselves, and there will be no more noise. How do you
+feel this morning? Are you tired?"
+
+As she spoke, the Marquise rose and went to Moina's bedside.
+
+"Let us see," she said, feeling for the girl's hand.
+
+"Oh! let me alone, mother," said Moina; "your fingers are cold."
+
+She turned her head round on the pillow as she spoke, pettishly, but
+with such engaging grace, that a mother could scarcely have taken it
+amiss. Just then a wailing cry echoed through the next room, a faint
+prolonged cry, that must surely have gone to the heart of any woman who
+heard it.
+
+"Why, if you heard _that_ all night long, why did you not wake me? We
+should have--"
+
+A deeper moan than any that had gone before it interrupted the Marquise.
+
+"Some one is dying there," she cried, and hurried out of the room.
+
+"Send Pauline to me!" called Moina. "I shall get up and dress."
+
+The Marquise hastened downstairs, and found the landlady in the
+courtyard with a little group about her, apparently much interested in
+something that she was telling them.
+
+"Madame, you have put some one in the next room who seems to be very ill
+indeed--"
+
+"Oh! don't talk to me about it!" cried the mistress of the house. "I
+have just sent some one for the mayor. Just imagine it; it is a woman,
+a poor unfortunate creature that came here last night on foot. She comes
+from Spain; she has no passport and no money; she was carrying her baby
+on her back, and the child was dying. I could not refuse to take her
+in. I went up to see her this morning myself; for when she turned up
+yesterday, it made me feel dreadfully bad to look at her. Poor soul!
+she and the child were lying in bed, and both of them at death's door.
+'Madame,' says she, pulling a gold ring off her finger, 'this is all
+that I have left; take it in payment, it will be enough; I shall not
+stay here long. Poor little one! we shall die together soon!' she said,
+looking at the child. I took her ring, and I asked her who she was, but
+she never would tell me her name.... I have just sent for the doctor and
+M. le Maire."
+
+"Why, you must do all that can be done for her," cried the Marquise.
+"Good heavens! perhaps it is not too late! I will pay for everything
+that is necessary----"
+
+"Ah! my lady, she looks to me uncommonly proud, and I don't know that
+she would allow it."
+
+"I will go to see her at once."
+
+The Marquise went up forthwith to the stranger's room, without thinking
+of the shock that the sight of her widow's weeds might give to a woman
+who was said to be dying. At the sight of that dying woman the Marquise
+turned pale. In spite of the changes wrought by fearful suffering in
+Helene's beautiful face, she recognized her eldest daughter.
+
+But Helene, when she saw a woman dressed in black, sat upright in bed
+with a shriek of horror. Then she sank back; she knew her mother.
+
+"My daughter," said Mme. d'Aiglemont, "what is to be done? Pauline!...
+Moina!..."
+
+"Nothing now for me," said Helene faintly. "I had hoped to see my father
+once more, but your mourning--" she broke off, clutched her child to her
+heart as if to give it warmth, and kissed its forehead. Then she turned
+her eyes on her mother, and the Marquise met the old reproach in them,
+tempered with forgiveness, it is true, but still reproach. She saw it,
+and would not see it. She forgot that Helene was the child conceived
+amid tears and despair, the child of duty, the cause of one of the
+greatest sorrows in her life. She stole to her eldest daughter's side,
+remembering nothing but that Helene was her firstborn, the child who had
+taught her to know the joys of motherhood. The mother's eyes were full
+of tears. "Helene, my child!..." she cried, with her arms about her
+daughter.
+
+Helene was silent. Her own babe had just drawn its last breath on her
+breast.
+
+Moina came into the room with Pauline, her maid, and the landlady and
+the doctor. The Marquise was holding her daughter's ice-cold hand in
+both of hers, and gazing at her in despair; but the widowed woman, who
+had escaped shipwreck with but one of all her fair band of children,
+spoke in a voice that was dreadful to hear. "All this is your work," she
+said. "If you had but been for me all that--"
+
+"Moina, go! Go out of the room, all of you!" cried Mme. d'Aiglemont, her
+shrill tones drowning Helene's voice.--"For pity's sake," she continued,
+"let us not begin these miserable quarrels again now----"
+
+"I will be silent," Helene answered with a preternatural effort. "I am a
+mother; I know that Moina ought not... Where is my child?"
+
+Moina came back, impelled by curiosity.
+
+"Sister," said the spoiled child, "the doctor--"
+
+"It is all of no use," said Helene. "Oh! why did I not die as a girl of
+sixteen when I meant to take my own life? There is no happiness outside
+the laws. Moina... you..."
+
+Her head sank till her face lay against the face of the little one; in
+her agony she strained her babe to her breast, and died.
+
+"Your sister, Moina," said Mme. d'Aiglemont, bursting into tears when
+she reached her room, "your sister meant no doubt to tell you that a
+girl will never find happiness in a romantic life, in living as nobody
+else does, and, above all things, far away from her mother."
+
+
+
+
+VI. THE OLD AGE OF A GUILTY MOTHER
+
+It was one of the earliest June days of the year 1844. A lady of fifty
+or thereabouts, for she looked older than her actual age, was pacing up
+and down one of the sunny paths in the garden of a great mansion in
+the Rue Plument in Paris. It was noon. The lady took two or three turns
+along the gently winding garden walk, careful never to lose sight of a
+certain row of windows, to which she seemed to give her whole attention;
+then she sat down on a bench, a piece of elegant semi-rusticity made of
+branches with the bark left on the wood. From the place where she sat
+she could look through the garden railings along the inner boulevards to
+the wonderful dome of the Invalides rising above the crests of a
+forest of elm-trees, and see the less striking view of her own grounds
+terminating in the gray stone front of one of the finest hotels in the
+Faubourg Saint-Germain.
+
+Silence lay over the neighboring gardens, and the boulevards stretching
+away to the Invalides. Day scarcely begins at noon in that aristocratic
+quarter, and masters and servants are all alike asleep, or just
+awakening, unless some young lady takes it into her head to go for an
+early ride, or a gray-headed diplomatist rises betimes to redraft a
+protocol.
+
+The elderly lady stirring abroad at that hour was the Marquise
+d'Aiglemont, the mother of Mme. de Saint-Hereen, to whom the great house
+belonged. The Marquise had made over the mansion and almost her whole
+fortune to her daughter, reserving only an annuity for herself.
+
+The Comtesse Moina de Saint-Hereen was Mme. d'Aiglemont's youngest
+child. The Marquise had made every sacrifice to marry her daughter to
+the eldest son of one of the greatest houses of France; and this was
+only what might have been expected, for the lady had lost her sons,
+first one and then the other. Gustave, Marquis d'Aiglemont, had died of
+the cholera; Abel, the second, had fallen in Algeria. Gustave had left
+a widow and children, but the dowager's affection for her sons had
+been only moderately warm, and for the next generation it was decidedly
+tepid. She was always civil to her daughter-in-law, but her feeling
+towards the young Marquise was the distinctly conventional affection
+which good taste and good manners require us to feel for our relatives.
+The fortunes of her dead children having been settled, she could devote
+her savings and her own property to her darling Moina.
+
+Moina, beautiful and fascinating from childhood, was Mme. d'Aiglemont's
+favorite; loved beyond all the others with an instinctive or involuntary
+love, a fatal drawing of the heart, which sometimes seems inexplicable,
+sometimes, and to a close observer, only too easy to explain. Her
+darling's pretty face, the sound of Moina's voice, her ways, her manner,
+her looks and gestures, roused all the deepest emotions that can stir
+a mother's heart with trouble, rapture, or delight. The springs of the
+Marquise's life, of yesterday, to-morrow, and to-day, lay in that young
+heart. Moina, with better fortune, had survived four older children.
+As a matter of fact, Mme. d'Aiglemont had lost her eldest daughter, a
+charming girl, in a most unfortunate manner, said gossip, nobody knew
+exactly what became of her; and then she lost a little boy of five by a
+dreadful accident.
+
+The child of her affections had, however, been spared to her, and
+doubtless the Marquise saw the will of Heaven in that fact; for those
+who had died, she kept but very shadowy recollections in some far-off
+corner of her heart; her memories of her dead children were like the
+headstones on a battlefield, you can scarcely see them for the flowers
+that have sprung up about them since. Of course, if the world had
+chosen, it might have said some hard truths about the Marquise, might
+have taken her to task for shallowness and an overweening preference for
+one child at the expense of the rest; but the world of Paris is swept
+along by the full flood of new events, new ideas, and new fashions, and
+it was inevitable the Mme. d'Aiglemont should be in some sort allowed
+to drop out of sight. So nobody thought of blaming her for coldness
+or neglect which concerned no one, whereas her quick, apprehensive
+tenderness for Moina was found highly interesting by not a few who
+respected it as a sort of superstition. Besides, the Marquise scarcely
+went into society at all; and the few families who knew her thought of
+her as a kindly, gentle, indulgent woman, wholly devoted to her family.
+What but a curiosity, keen indeed, would seek to pry beneath the surface
+with which the world is quite satisfied? And what would we not pardon
+to old people, if only they will efface themselves like shadows, and
+consent to be regarded as memories and nothing more!
+
+Indeed, Mme. d'Aiglemont became a kind of example complacently held up
+by the younger generation to fathers of families, and frequently cited
+to mothers-in-law. She had made over her property to Moina in her own
+lifetime; the young Countess' happiness was enough for her, she only
+lived in her daughter. If some cautious old person or morose uncle here
+and there condemned the course with--"Perhaps Mme. d'Aiglemont may be
+sorry some day that she gave up her fortune to her daughter; she may
+be sure of Moina, but how can she be equally sure of her
+son-in-law?"--these prophets were cried down on all sides, and from all
+sides a chorus of praise went up for Moina.
+
+"It ought to be said, in justice to Mme. de Saint-Hereen, that her
+mother cannot feel the slightest difference," remarked a young married
+woman. "Mme. d'Aiglemont is admirably well housed. She has a carriage at
+her disposal, and can go everywhere just as she used to do--"
+
+"Except to the Italiens," remarked a low voice. (This was an elderly
+parasite, one of those persons who show their independence--as they
+think--by riddling their friends with epigrams.) "Except to the
+Italiens. And if the dowager cares for anything on this earth but her
+daughter--it is music. Such a good performer she was in her time! But
+the Countess' box is always full of young butterflies, and the Countess'
+mother would be in the way; the young lady is talked about already as a
+great flirt. So the poor mother never goes to the Italiens."
+
+"Mme. de Saint-Hereen has delightful 'At Homes' for her mother," said a
+rosebud. "All Paris goes to her salon.
+
+"And no one pays any attention to the Marquise," returned the parasite.
+
+"The fact is that Mme. d'Aiglemont is never alone," remarked a coxcomb,
+siding with the young women.
+
+"In the morning," the old observer continued in a discreet voice, "in
+the morning dear Moina is asleep. At four o'clock dear Moina drives
+in the Bois. In the evening dear Moina goes to a ball or to the
+Bouffes.--Still, it is certainly true that Mme. d'Aiglemont has the
+privilege of seeing her dear daughter while she dresses, and again at
+dinner, if dear Moina happens to dine with her mother. Not a week ago,
+sir," continued the elderly person, laying his hand on the arm of the
+shy tutor, a new arrival in the house, "not a week ago, I saw the poor
+mother, solitary and sad, by her own fireside.--'What is the matter?' I
+asked. The Marquise looked up smiling, but I am quite sure that she had
+been crying.--'I was thinking that it is a strange thing that I should
+be left alone when I have had five children,' she said, 'but that is
+our destiny! And besides, I am happy when I know that Moina is enjoying
+herself.'--She could say that to me, for I knew her husband when he was
+alive. A poor stick he was, and uncommonly lucky to have such a wife; it
+was certainly owing to her that he was made a peer of France, and had a
+place at Court under Charles X."
+
+Yet such mistaken ideas get about in social gossip, and such mischief
+is done by it, that the historian of manners is bound to exercise his
+discretion, and weigh the assertions so recklessly made. After all, who
+is to say that either mother or daughter was right or wrong? There is
+but One who can read and judge their hearts! And how often does He wreak
+His vengeance in the family circle, using throughout all time children
+as His instruments against their mothers, and fathers against their
+sons, raising up peoples against kings, and princes against peoples,
+sowing strife and division everywhere? And in the world of ideas, are
+not opinions and feelings expelled by new feelings and opinions, much
+as withered leaves are thrust forth by the young leaf-buds in the
+spring?--all in obedience to the immutable Scheme; all to some end which
+God alone knows. Yet, surely, all things proceed to Him, or rather, to
+Him all things return.
+
+Such thoughts of religion, the natural thoughts of age, floated up
+now and again on the current of Mme. d'Aiglemont's thoughts; they were
+always dimly present in her mind, but sometimes they shone out clearly,
+sometimes they were carried under, like flowers tossed on the vexed
+surface of a stormy sea.
+
+She sat on a garden-seat, tired with walking, exhausted with much
+thinking--with the long thoughts in which a whole lifetime rises up
+before the mind, and is spread out like a scroll before the eyes of
+those who feel that Death is near.
+
+If a poet had chanced to pass along the boulevard, he would have found
+an interesting picture in the face of this woman, grown old before her
+time. As she sat under the dotted shadow of the acacia, the shadow the
+acacia casts at noon, a thousand thoughts were written for all the world
+to see on her features, pale and cold even in the hot, bright sunlight.
+There was something sadder than the sense of waning life in that
+expressive face, some trouble that went deeper than the weariness of
+experience. It was a face of a type that fixes you in a moment among a
+host of characterless faces that fail to draw a second glance, a face
+to set you thinking. Among a thousand pictures in a gallery, you are
+strongly impressed by the sublime anguish on the face of some Madonna
+of Murillo's; by some _Beatrice Cenci_ in which Guido's art portrays the
+most touching innocence against a background of horror and crime; by the
+awe and majesty that should encircle a king, caught once and for ever
+by Velasquez in the sombre face of a Philip II., and so is it with some
+living human faces; they are tyrannous pictures which speak to you,
+submit you to searching scrutiny, and give response to your inmost
+thoughts, nay, there are faces that set forth a whole drama, and Mme.
+d'Aiglemont's stony face was one of these awful tragedies, one of such
+faces as Dante Alighieri saw by thousands in his vision.
+
+For the little season that a woman's beauty is in flower it serves her
+admirably well in the dissimulation to which her natural weakness and
+our social laws condemn her. A young face and rich color, and eyes that
+glow with light, a gracious maze of such subtle, manifold lines and
+curves, flawless and perfectly traced, is a screen that hides everything
+that stirs the woman within. A flush tells nothing, it only heightens
+the coloring so brilliant already; all the fires that burn within
+can add little light to the flame of life in eyes which only seem the
+brighter for the flash of a passing pain. Nothing is so discreet as a
+young face, for nothing is less mobile; it has the serenity, the surface
+smoothness, and the freshness of a lake. There is not character in
+women's faces before the age of thirty. The painter discovers nothing
+there but pink and white, and the smile and expression that repeat the
+same thought in the same way--a thought of youth and love that goes no
+further than youth and love. But the face of an old woman has expressed
+all that lay in her nature; passion has carved lines on her features;
+love and wifehood and motherhood, and extremes of joy and anguish,
+having wrung them, and left their traces in a thousand wrinkles, all
+of which speak a language of their own; then it is that a woman's face
+becomes sublime in its horror, beautiful in its melancholy, grand in its
+calm. If it is permissible to carry the strange metaphor still further,
+it might be said that in the dried-up lake you can see the traces of
+all the torrents that once poured into it and made it what it is. An old
+face is nothing to the frivolous world; the frivolous world is shocked
+by the sight of the destruction of such comeliness as it can understand;
+a commonplace artist sees nothing there. An old face is the province of
+the poets among poets of those who can recognize that something which
+is called Beauty, apart from all the conventions underlying so many
+superstitions in art and taste.
+
+
+
+Though Mme. d'Aiglemont wore a fashionable bonnet, it was easy to see
+that her once black hair had been bleached by cruel sorrows; yet her
+good taste and the gracious acquired instincts of a woman of fashion
+could be seen in the way she wore it, divided into two _bandeaux_,
+following the outlines of a forehead that still retained some traces of
+former dazzling beauty, worn and lined though it was. The contours
+of her face, the regularity of her features, gave some idea, faint in
+truth, of that beauty of which surely she had once been proud; but those
+traces spoke still more plainly of the anguish which had laid it waste,
+of sharp pain that had withered the temples, and made those hollows in
+her cheeks, and empurpled the eyelids, and robbed them of their lashes,
+and the eyes of their charm. She was in every way so noiseless; she
+moved with a slow, self-contained gravity that showed itself in her
+whole bearing, and struck a certain awe into others. Her diffident
+manner had changed to positive shyness, due apparently to a habit now of
+some years' growth, of effacing herself in her daughter's presence. She
+spoke very seldom, and in the low tones used by those who perforce must
+live within themselves a life of reflection and concentration. This
+demeanor led others to regard her with an indefinable feeling which was
+neither awe nor compassion, but a mysterious blending of the many ideas
+awakened in us by compassion and awe. Finally, there was something in
+her wrinkles, in the lines of her face, in the look of pain in those
+wan eyes of hers, that bore eloquent testimony to tears that never had
+fallen, tears that had been absorbed by her heart. Unhappy creatures,
+accustomed to raise their eyes to heaven, in mute appeal against the
+bitterness of their lot, would have seen at once from her eyes that she
+was broken in to the cruel discipline of ceaseless prayer, would have
+discerned the almost imperceptible symptoms of the secret bruises which
+destroy all the flowers of the soul, even the sentiment of motherhood.
+
+Painters have colors for these portraits, but words, and the mental
+images called up by words, fail to reproduce such impressions
+faithfully; there are mysterious signs and tokens in the tones of the
+coloring and in the look of human faces, which the mind only seizes
+through the sense of sight; and the poet is fain to record the tale
+of the events which wrought the havoc to make their terrible ravages
+understood.
+
+The face spoke of cold and steady storm, an inward conflict between a
+mother's long-suffering and the limitations of our nature, for our human
+affections are bounded by our humanity, and the infinite has no place
+in finite creatures. Sorrow endured in silence had at last produced an
+indefinable morbid something in this woman. Doubtless mental anguish had
+reacted on the physical frame, and some disease, perhaps an aneurism,
+was undermining Julie's life. Deep-seated grief lies to all appearance
+very quietly in the depths where it is conceived, yet, so still and
+apparently dormant as it is, it ceaselessly corrodes the soul, like the
+terrible acid which eats away crystal.
+
+Two tears made their way down the Marquise's cheeks; she rose to her
+feet as if some thought more poignant than any that preceded it had cut
+her to the quick. She had doubtless come to a conclusion as to Moina's
+future; and now, foreseeing clearly all the troubles in store for her
+child, the sorrows of her own unhappy life had begun to weigh once
+more upon her. The key of her position must be sought in her daughter's
+situation.
+
+The Comte de Saint-Hereen had been away for nearly six months on a
+political mission. The Countess, whether from sheer giddiness, or in
+obedience to the countless instincts of woman's coquetry, or to essay
+its power--with all the vanity of a frivolous fine lady, all the
+capricious waywardness of a child--was amusing herself, during her
+husband's absence, by playing with the passion of a clever but heartless
+man, distracted (so he said) with love, the love that combines readily
+with every petty social ambition of a self-conceited coxcomb. Mme.
+d'Aiglemont, whose long experience had given her a knowledge of life,
+and taught her to judge of men and to dread the world, watched the
+course of this flirtation, and saw that it could only end in one way,
+if her daughter should fall into the hands of an utterly unscrupulous
+intriguer. How could it be other than a terrible thought for her that
+her daughter listened willingly to this _roue_? Her darling stood on the
+brink of a precipice, she felt horribly sure of it, yet dared not hold
+her back. She was afraid of the Countess. She knew too that Moina would
+not listen to her wise warnings; she knew that she had no influence
+over that nature--iron for her, silken-soft for all others. Her mother's
+tenderness might have led her to sympathize with the troubles of a
+passion called forth by the nobler qualities of a lover, but this was
+no passion--it was coquetry, and the Marquise despised Alfred de
+Vandenesse, knowing that he had entered upon this flirtation with Moina
+as if it were a game of chess.
+
+But if Alfred de Vandenesse made her shudder with disgust, she was
+obliged--unhappy mother!--to conceal the strongest reason for her
+loathing in the deepest recesses of her heart. She was on terms of
+intimate friendship with the Marquis de Vandenesse, the young man's
+father; and this friendship, a respectable one in the eyes of the world,
+excused the son's constant presence in the house, he professing an old
+attachment, dating from childhood, for Mme. de Saint-Hereen. More than
+this, in vain did Mme. d'Aiglemont nerve herself to come between Moina
+and Alfred de Vandenesse with a terrible word, knowing beforehand that
+she should not succeed; knowing that the strong reason which ought to
+separate them would carry no weight; that she should humiliate herself
+vainly in her daughter's eyes. Alfred was too corrupt; Moina too clever
+to believe the revelation; the young Countess would turn it off and
+treat it as a piece of maternal strategy. Mme. d'Aiglemont had built
+her prison walls with her own hands; she had immured herself only to
+see Moina's happiness ruined thence before she died; she was to look on
+helplessly at the ruin of the young life which had been her pride and
+joy and comfort, a life a thousand times dearer to her than her
+own. What words can describe anguish so hideous beyond belief, such
+unfathomed depths of pain?
+
+She waited for Moina to rise, with the impatience and sickening dread
+of a doomed man, who longs to have done with life, and turns cold at the
+thought of the headsman. She had braced herself for a last effort, but
+perhaps the prospect of the certain failure of the attempt was less
+dreadful to her than the fear of receiving yet again one of those
+thrusts that went to her very heart--before that fear her courage ebbed
+away. Her mother's love had come to this. To love her child, to be
+afraid of her, to shrink from the thought of the stab, yet to go
+forward. So great is a mother's affection in a loving nature, that
+before it can fade away into indifference the mother herself must die
+or find support in some great power without her, in religion or another
+love. Since the Marquise rose that morning, her fatal memory had called
+up before her some of those things, so slight to all appearance, that
+make landmarks in a life. Sometimes, indeed, a whole tragedy grows out
+of a single gesture; the tone in which a few words were spoken rends a
+whole life in two; a glance into indifferent eyes is the deathblow of
+the gladdest love; and, unhappily, such gestures and such words were
+only too familiar to Mme. d'Aiglemont--she had met so many glances that
+wound the soul. No, there was nothing in those memories to bid her hope.
+On the contrary, everything went to show that Alfred had destroyed her
+hold on her daughter's heart, that the thought of her was now associated
+with duty--not with gladness. In ways innumerable, in things that were
+mere trifles in themselves, the Countess' detestable conduct rose
+up before her mother; and the Marquise, it may be, looked on Moina's
+undutifulness as a punishment, and found excuses for her daughter in the
+will of Heaven, that so she still might adore the hand that smote her.
+
+All these things passed through her memory that morning, and each
+recollection wounded her afresh so sorely, that with a very little
+additional pain her brimming cup of bitterness must have overflowed. A
+cold look might kill her.
+
+The little details of domestic life are difficult to paint; but one or
+two perhaps will suffice to give an idea of the rest.
+
+The Marquise d'Aiglemont, for instance, had grown rather deaf, but she
+could never induce Moina to raise her voice for her. Once, with the
+naivete of suffering, she had begged Moina to repeat some remark which
+she had failed to catch, and Moina obeyed, but with so bad a grace, the
+Mme. d'Aiglemont had never permitted herself to make her modest request
+again. Ever since that day when Moina was talking or retailing a
+piece of news, her mother was careful to come near to listen; but this
+infirmity of deafness appeared to put the Countess out of patience,
+and she would grumble thoughtlessly about it. This instance is one
+from among very many that must have gone to the mother's heart; and yet
+nearly all of them might have escaped a close observer, they consisted
+in faint shades of manner invisible to any but a woman's eyes. Take
+another example. Mme. d'Aiglemont happened to say one day that the
+Princesse de Cadignan had called upon her. "Did she come to see _you_!"
+Moina exclaimed. That was all, but the Countess' voice and manner
+expressed surprise and well-bred contempt in semitones. Any heart,
+still young and sensitive, might well have applauded the philanthropy of
+savage tribes who kill off their old people when they grow too feeble
+to cling to a strongly shaken bough. Mme. d'Aiglemont rose smiling, and
+went away to weep alone.
+
+Well-bred people, and women especially, only betray their feelings
+by imperceptible touches; but those who can look back over their own
+experience on such bruises as this mother's heart received, know also
+how the heart-strings vibrate to these light touches. Overcome by her
+memories, Mme. d'Aiglemont recollected one of those microscopically
+small things, so stinging and so painful was it that never till this
+moment had she felt all the heartless contempt that lurked beneath
+smiles.
+
+At the sound of shutters thrown back at her daughter's windows, she
+dried her tears, and hastened up the pathway by the railings. As she
+went, it struck her that the gardener had been unusually careful to rake
+the sand along the walk which had been neglected for some little time.
+As she stood under her daughter's windows, the shutters were hastily
+closed.
+
+"Moina, is it you?" she asked.
+
+No answer.
+
+The Marquise went on into the house.
+
+"Mme. la Comtesse is in the little drawing-room," said the maid, when
+the Marquise asked whether Mme. de Saint-Hereen had finished dressing.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont hurried to the little drawing-room; her heart was too
+full, her brain too busy to notice matters so slight; but there on the
+sofa sat the Countess in her loose morning-gown, her hair in disorder
+under the cap tossed carelessly on he head, her feet thrust into
+slippers. The key of her bedroom hung at her girdle. Her face, aglow
+with color, bore traces of almost stormy thought.
+
+"What makes people come in!" she cried, crossly. "Oh! it is you,
+mother," she interrupted herself, with a preoccupied look.
+
+"Yes, child; it is your mother----"
+
+Something in her tone turned those words into an outpouring of the
+heart, the cry of some deep inward feeling, only to be described by the
+word "holy." So thoroughly in truth had she rehabilitated the sacred
+character of a mother, that her daughter was impressed, and turned
+towards her, with something of awe, uneasiness, and remorse in her
+manner. The room was the furthest of a suite, and safe from indiscreet
+intrusion, for no one could enter it without giving warning of approach
+through the previous apartments. The Marquise closed the door.
+
+"It is my duty, my child, to warn you in one of the most serious crises
+in the lives of us women; you have perhaps reached it unconsciously, and
+I am come to speak to you as a friend rather than as a mother. When you
+married, you acquired freedom of action; you are only accountable to
+your husband now; but I asserted my authority so little (perhaps I was
+wrong), that I think I have a right to expect you to listen to me, for
+once at least, in a critical position when you must need counsel. Bear
+in mind, Moina that you are married to a man of high ability, a man of
+whom you may well be proud, a man who--"
+
+"I know what you are going to say, mother!" Moina broke in pettishly. "I
+am to be lectured about Alfred--"
+
+"Moina," the Marquise said gravely, as she struggled with her tears,
+"you would not guess at once if you did not feel--"
+
+"What?" asked Moina, almost haughtily. "Why, really, mother--"
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont summoned up all her strength. "Moina," she said, "you
+must attend carefully to this that I ought to tell you--"
+
+"I am attending," returned the Countess, folding her arms, and affecting
+insolent submission. "Permit me, mother, to ring for Pauline," she added
+with incredible self-possession; "I will send her away first."
+
+She rang the bell.
+
+"My dear child, Pauline cannot possibly hear--"
+
+"Mamma," interrupted the Countess, with a gravity which must have struck
+her mother as something unusual, "I must--"
+
+She stopped short, for the woman was in the room.
+
+"Pauline, go _yourself_ to Baudran's, and ask why my hat has not yet
+been sent."
+
+Then the Countess reseated herself and scrutinized her mother. The
+Marquise, with a swelling heart and dry eyes, in painful agitation,
+which none but a mother can fully understand, began to open Moina's eyes
+to the risk that she was running. But either the Countess felt hurt
+and indignant at her mother's suspicions of a son of the Marquis de
+Vandenesse, or she was seized with a sudden fit of inexplicable levity
+caused by the inexperience of youth. She took advantage of a pause.
+
+"Mamma, I thought you were only jealous of _the father_--" she said,
+with a forced laugh.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont shut her eyes and bent her head at the words, with a
+very faint, almost inaudible sigh. She looked up and out into space,
+as if she felt the common overmastering impulse to appeal to God at the
+great crises of our lives; then she looked at her daughter, and her eyes
+were full of awful majesty and the expression of profound sorrow.
+
+"My child," she said, and her voice was hardly recognizable, "you have
+been less merciful to your mother than he against whom she sinned; less
+merciful than perhaps God Himself will be!"
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont rose; at the door she turned; but she saw nothing but
+surprise in her daughter's face. She went out. Scarcely had she reached
+the garden when her strength failed her. There was a violent pain at her
+heart, and she sank down on a bench. As her eyes wandered over the path,
+she saw fresh marks on the path, a man's footprints were distinctly
+recognizable. It was too late, then, beyond a doubt. Now she began to
+understand the reason for that order given to Pauline, and with these
+torturing thoughts came a revelation more hateful than any that had
+gone before it. She drew her own inferences--the son of the Marquis
+de Vandenesse had destroyed all feeling of respect for her in her
+daughter's mind. The physical pain grew worse; by degrees she lost
+consciousness, and sat like one asleep upon the garden-seat.
+
+The Countess de Saint-Hereen, left to herself, thought that her mother
+had given her a somewhat shrewd home-thrust, but a kiss and a few
+attentions that evening would make all right again.
+
+A shrill cry came from the garden. She leaned carelessly out, as
+Pauline, not yet departed on her errand, called out for help, holding
+the Marquise in her arms.
+
+"Do not frighten my daughter!" those were the last words the mother
+uttered.
+
+Moina saw them carry in a pale and lifeless form that struggled for
+breath, and arms moving restlessly as in protest or effort to speak; and
+overcome by the sight, Moina followed in silence, and helped to undress
+her mother and lay her on her bed. The burden of her fault was greater
+than she could bear. In that supreme hour she learned to know her
+mother--too late, she could make no reparation now. She would have them
+leave her alone with her mother; and when there was no one else in the
+room, when she felt that the hand which had always been so tender for
+her was now grown cold to her touch, she broke out into weeping. Her
+tears aroused the Marquise; she could still look at her darling
+Moina; and at the sound of sobbing, that seemed as if it must rend the
+delicate, disheveled breast, could smile back at her daughter. That
+smile taught the unnatural child that forgiveness is always to be found
+in the great deep of a mother's heart.
+
+
+
+Servants on horseback had been dispatched at once for the physician and
+surgeon and for Mme. d'Aiglemont's grandchildren. Mme. d'Aiglemont the
+younger and her little sons arrived with the medical men, a sufficiently
+impressive, silent, and anxious little group, which the servants of the
+house came to join. The young Marquise, hearing no sound, tapped gently
+at the door. That signal, doubtless, roused Moina from her grief, for
+she flung open the doors and stood before them. No words could have
+spoken more plainly than that disheveled figure looking out with haggard
+eyes upon the assembled family. Before that living picture of Remorse
+the rest were dumb. It was easy to see that the Marquise's feet were
+stretched out stark and stiff with the agony of death; and Moina,
+leaning against the door-frame, looking into their faces, spoke in a
+hollow voice:
+
+"I have lost my mother!"
+
+
+PARIS, 1828-1844.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+     Aiglemont, General, Marquis Victor d'
+       At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+
+     Bonaparte, Napoleon
+       The Vendetta
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       Colonel Chabert
+       Domestic Peace
+       The Seamy Side of History
+
+     Camps, Madame Octave de (nee Cadignan)
+       Madame Firmiani
+       The Government Clerks
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Chatillonest, De
+       Modeste Mignon
+
+     Crottat, Alexandre
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Colonel Chabert
+       A Start in Life
+       Cousin Pons
+
+     Desroches (son)
+       A Bachelor's Establishment
+       Colonel Chabert
+       A Start in Life
+       The Commission in Lunacy
+       The Government Clerks
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       A Man of Business
+       The Middle Classes
+
+     Duroc, Gerard-Christophe-Michel
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+
+     Ronquerolles, Marquis de
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+       The Peasantry
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Thirteen
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Saint-Hereen, Comtesse Moina de
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Member for Arcis
+
+     Serizy, Comtesse de
+       A Start in Life
+       The Thirteen
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Imaginary Mistress
+
+     Vandenesse, Marquis Charles de
+       A Start in Life
+       A Daughter of Eve
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Woman of Thirty, by Honore de Balzac
+
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diff --git a/old/old-2024-11-27/1950.zip b/old/old-2024-11-27/1950.zip
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diff --git a/old/thrty10.txt b/old/thrty10.txt
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@@ -0,0 +1,7810 @@
+Project Gutenberg's Etext A Woman of Thirty, by Honore de Balzac
+#87 in our series by Honore de Balzac
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+A Woman of Thirty
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+
+
+
+
+
+Etext prepared by Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com
+and John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz
+
+
+
+
+
+A Woman of Thirty
+
+by Honore de Balzac
+
+Translated by Ellen Marriage
+
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+To Louis Boulanger, Painter.
+
+
+
+
+
+A WOMAN OF THIRTY
+
+
+
+I.
+
+EARLY MISTAKES
+
+It was a Sunday morning in the beginning of April 1813, a morning
+which gave promise of one of those bright days when Parisians, for the
+first time in the year, behold dry pavements underfoot and a cloudless
+sky overhead. It was not yet noon when a luxurious cabriolet, drawn by
+two spirited horses, turned out of the Rue de Castiglione into the Rue
+de Rivoli, and drew up behind a row of carriages standing before the
+newly opened barrier half-way down the Terrasse de Feuillants. The
+owner of the carriage looked anxious and out of health; the thin hair
+on his sallow temples, turning gray already, gave a look of premature
+age to his face. He flung the reins to a servant who followed on
+horseback, and alighted to take in his arms a young girl whose dainty
+beauty had already attracted the eyes of loungers on the Terrasse. The
+little lady, standing upon the carriage step, graciously submitted to
+be taken by the waist, putting an arm round the neck of her guide, who
+set her down upon the pavement without so much as ruffling the
+trimming of her green rep dress. No lover would have been so careful.
+The stranger could only be the father of the young girl, who took his
+arm familiarly without a word of thanks, and hurried him into the
+Garden of the Tuileries.
+
+The old father noted the wondering stare which some of the young men
+gave the couple, and the sad expression left his face for a moment.
+Although he had long since reached the time of life when a man is fain
+to be content with such illusory delights as vanity bestows, he began
+to smile.
+
+"They think you are my wife," he said in the young lady's ear, and he
+held himself erect and walked with slow steps, which filled his
+daughter with despair.
+
+He seemed to take up the coquette's part for her; perhaps of the two,
+he was the more gratified by the curious glances directed at those
+little feet, shod with plum-colored prunella; at the dainty figure
+outlined by a low-cut bodice, filled in with an embroidered
+chemisette, which only partially concealed the girlish throat. Her
+dress was lifted by her movements as she walked, giving glimpses
+higher than the shoes of delicately moulded outlines beneath open-work
+silk stockings. More than one of the idlers turned and passed the pair
+again, to admire or to catch a second glimpse of the young face, about
+which the brown tresses played; there was a glow in its white and red,
+partly reflected from the rose-colored satin lining of her fashionable
+bonnet, partly due to the eagerness and impatience which sparkled in
+every feature. A mischievous sweetness lighted up the beautiful,
+almond-shaped dark eyes, bathed in liquid brightness, shaded by the
+long lashes and curving arch of eyebrow. Life and youth displayed
+their treasures in the petulant face and in the gracious outlines of
+the bust unspoiled even by the fashion of the day, which brought the
+girdle under the breast.
+
+The young lady herself appeared to be insensible to admiration. Her
+eyes were fixed in a sort of anxiety on the Palace of the Tuileries,
+the goal, doubtless, of her petulant promenade. It wanted but fifteen
+minutes of noon, yet even at that early hour several women in gala
+dress were coming away from the Tuileries, not without backward
+glances at the gates and pouting looks of discontent, as if they
+regretted the lateness of the arrival which had cheated them of a
+longed-for spectacle. Chance carried a few words let fall by one of
+these disappointed fair ones to the ears of the charming stranger, and
+put her in a more than common uneasiness. The elderly man watched the
+signs of impatience and apprehension which flitted across his
+companion's pretty face with interest, rather than amusement, in his
+eyes, observing her with a close and careful attention, which perhaps
+could only be prompted by some after-thought in the depths of a
+father's mind.
+
+
+
+It was the thirteenth Sunday of the year 1813. In two days' time
+Napoleon was to set out upon the disastrous campaign in which he was
+to lose first Bessieres, and then Duroc; he was to win the memorable
+battles of Lutzen and Bautzen, to see himself treacherously deserted
+by Austria, Saxony, Bavaria, and Bernadotte, and to dispute the
+dreadful field of Leipsic. The magnificent review commanded for that
+day by the Emperor was to be the last of so many which had long drawn
+forth the admiration of Paris and of foreign visitors. For the last
+time the Old Guard would execute their scientific military manoeuvres
+with the pomp and precision which sometimes amazed the Giant himself.
+Napoleon was nearly ready for his duel with Europe. It was a sad
+sentiment which brought a brilliant and curious throng to the
+Tuileries. Each mind seemed to foresee the future, perhaps too in
+every mind another thought was dimly present, how that in the future,
+when the heroic age of France should have taken the half-fabulous
+color with which it is tinged for us to-day, men's imaginations would
+more than once seek to retrace the picture of the pageant which they
+were assembled to behold.
+
+"Do let us go more quickly, father; I can hear the drums," the young
+girl said, and in a half-teasing, half-coaxing manner she urged her
+companion forward.
+
+"The troops are marching into the Tuileries," said he.
+
+"Or marching out of it--everybody is coming away," she answered in
+childish vexation, which drew a smile from her father.
+
+"The review only begins at half-past twelve," he said; he had fallen
+half behind his impetuous daughter.
+
+It might have been supposed that she meant to hasten their progress by
+a movement of her right arm, for it swung like an oar blade through
+the water. In her impatience she had crushed her handkerchief into a
+ball in her tiny, well-gloved fingers. Now and then the old man
+smiled, but the smiles were succeeded by an anxious look which crossed
+his withered face and saddened it. In his love for the fair young girl
+by his side, he was as fain to exalt the present moment as to dread
+the future. "She is happy to-day; will her happiness last?" he seemed
+to ask himself, for the old are somewhat prone to foresee their own
+sorrows in the future of the young.
+
+Father and daughter reached the peristyle under the tower where the
+tricolor flag was still waving; but as they passed under the arch by
+which people came and went between the Gardens of the Tuileries and
+the Place du Carrousel, the sentries on guard called out sternly:
+
+"No admittance this way."
+
+By standing on tiptoe the young girl contrived to catch a glimpse of a
+crowd of well-dressed women, thronging either side of the old marble
+arcade along which the Emperor was to pass.
+
+"We were too late in starting, father; you can see that quite well." A
+little piteous pout revealed the immense importance which she attached
+to the sight of this particular review.
+
+"Very well, Julie--let us go away. You dislike a crush."
+
+"Do let us stay, father. Even here I may catch a glimpse of the
+Emperor; he might die during this campaign, and then I should never
+have seen him."
+
+Her father shuddered at the selfish speech. There were tears in the
+girl's voice; he looked at her, and thought that he saw tears beneath
+her lowered eyelids; tears caused not so much by the disappointment as
+by one of the troubles of early youth, a secret easily guessed by an
+old father. Suddenly Julie's face flushed, and she uttered an
+exclamation. Neither her father nor the sentinels understood the
+meaning of the cry; but an officer within the barrier, who sprang
+across the court towards the staircase, heard it, and turned abruptly
+at the sound. He went to the arcade by the Gardens of the Tuileries,
+and recognized the young lady who had been hidden for a moment by the
+tall bearskin caps of the grenadiers. He set aside in favor of the
+pair the order which he himself had given. Then, taking no heed of the
+murmurings of the fashionable crowd seated under the arcade, he gently
+drew the enraptured child towards him.
+
+"I am no longer surprised at her vexation and enthusiasm, if /you/ are
+in waiting," the old man said with a half-mocking, half-serious glance
+at the officer.
+
+"If you want a good position, M. le Duc," the young man answered, "we
+must not spend any time in talking. The Emperor does not like to be
+kept waiting, and the Grand Marshal has sent me to announce our
+readiness."
+
+As he spoke, he had taken Julie's arm with a certain air of old
+acquaintance, and drew her rapidly in the direction of the Place du
+Carrousel. Julie was astonished at the sight. An immense crowd was
+penned up in a narrow space, shut in between the gray walls of the
+palace and the limits marked out by chains round the great sanded
+squares in the midst of the courtyard of the Tuileries. The cordon of
+sentries posted to keep a clear passage for the Emperor and his staff
+had great difficulty in keeping back the eager humming swarm of human
+beings.
+
+"Is it going to be a very fine sight?" Julie asked (she was radiant
+now).
+
+"Pray take care!" cried her guide, and seizing Julie by the waist, he
+lifted her up with as much vigor as rapidity and set her down beside a
+pillar.
+
+But for his prompt action, his gazing kinswoman would have come into
+collision with the hindquarters of a white horse which Napoleon's
+Mameluke held by the bridle; the animal in its trappings of green
+velvet and gold stood almost under the arcade, some ten paces behind
+the rest of the horses in readiness for the Emperor's staff.
+
+The young officer placed the father and daughter in front of the crowd
+in the first space to the right, and recommended them by a sign to the
+two veteran grenadiers on either side. Then he went on his way into
+the palace; a look of great joy and happiness had succeeded to his
+horror-struck expression when the horse backed. Julie had given his
+hand a mysterious pressure; had she meant to thank him for the little
+service he had done her, or did she tell him, "After all, I shall
+really see you?" She bent her head quite graciously in response to the
+respectful bow by which the officer took leave of them before he
+vanished.
+
+The old man stood a little behind his daughter. He looked grave. He
+seemed to have left the two young people together for some purpose of
+his own, and now he furtively watched the girl, trying to lull her
+into false security by appearing to give his whole attention to the
+magnificent sight in the Place du Carrousel. When Julie's eyes turned
+to her father with the expression of a schoolboy before his master, he
+answered her glance by a gay, kindly smile, but his own keen eyes had
+followed the officer under the arcade, and nothing of all that passed
+was lost upon him.
+
+"What a grand sight!" said Julie in a low voice, as she pressed her
+father's hand; and indeed the pomp and picturesquesness of the
+spectacle in the Place du Carrousel drew the same exclamation from
+thousands upon thousands of spectators, all agape with wonder. Another
+array of sightseers, as tightly packed as the ranks behind the old
+noble and his daughter, filled the narrow strip of pavement by the
+railings which crossed the Place du Carrousel from side to side in a
+line parallel with the Palace of the Tuileries. The dense living mass,
+variegated by the colors of the women's dresses, traced out a bold
+line across the centre of the Place du Carrousel, filling in the
+fourth side of a vast parallelogram, surrounded on three sides by the
+Palace of the Tuileries itself. Within the precincts thus railed off
+stood the regiments of the Old Guard about to be passed in review,
+drawn up opposite the Palace in imposing blue columns, ten ranks in
+depth. Without and beyond in the Place du Carrousel stood several
+regiments likewise drawn up in parallel lines, ready to march in
+through the arch in the centre; the Triumphal Arch, where the bronze
+horses of St. Mark from Venice used to stand in those days. At either
+end, by the Galeries du Louvre, the regimental bands were stationed,
+masked by the Polish Lancers then on duty.
+
+The greater part of the vast graveled space was empty as an arena,
+ready for the evolutions of those silent masses disposed with the
+symmetry of military art. The sunlight blazed back from ten thousand
+bayonets in thin points of flame; the breeze ruffled the men's helmet
+plumes till they swayed like the crests of forest-trees before a gale.
+The mute glittering ranks of veterans were full of bright contrasting
+colors, thanks to their different uniforms, weapons, accoutrements,
+and aiguillettes; and the whole great picture, that miniature
+battlefield before the combat, was framed by the majestic towering
+walls of the Tuileries, which officers and men seemed to rival in
+their immobility. Involuntarily the spectator made the comparison
+between the walls of men and the walls of stone. The spring sunlight,
+flooding white masonry reared but yesterday and buildings centuries
+old, shone full likewise upon thousands of bronzed faces, each one
+with its own tale of perils passed, each one gravely expectant of
+perils to come.
+
+The colonels of the regiments came and went alone before the ranks of
+heroes; and behind the masses of troops, checkered with blue and
+silver and gold and purple, the curious could discern the tricolor
+pennons on the lances of some half-a-dozen indefatigable Polish
+cavalry, rushing about like shepherds' dogs in charge of a flock,
+caracoling up and down between the troops and the crowd, to keep the
+gazers within their proper bounds. But for this slight flutter of
+movement, the whole scene might have been taking place in the
+courtyard of the palace of the Sleeping Beauty. The very spring
+breeze, ruffling up the long fur on the grenadiers' bearskins, bore
+witness to the men's immobility, as the smothered murmur of the crowd
+emphasized their silence. Now and again the jingling of Chinese bells,
+or a chance blow to a big drum, woke the reverberating echoes of the
+Imperial Palace with a sound like the far-off rumblings of thunder.
+
+An indescribable, unmistakable enthusiasm was manifest in the
+expectancy of the multitude. France was about to take farewell of
+Napoleon on the eve of a campaign of which the meanest citizen foresaw
+the perils. The existence of the French Empire was at stake--to be, or
+not to be. The whole citizen population seemed to be as much inspired
+with this thought as that other armed population standing in serried
+and silent ranks in the enclosed space, with the Eagles and the genius
+of Napoleon hovering above them.
+
+Those very soldiers were the hope of France, her last drop of blood;
+and this accounted for not a little of the anxious interest of the
+scene. Most of the gazers in the crowd had bidden farewell--perhaps
+farewell for ever--to the men who made up the rank and file of the
+battalions; and even those most hostile to the Emperor, in their
+hearts, put up fervent prayers to heaven for the glory of France; and
+those most weary of the struggle with the rest of Europe had left
+their hatreds behind as they passed in under the Triumphal Arch. They
+too felt that in the hour of danger Napoleon meant France herself.
+
+The clock of the Tuileries struck the half-hour. In a moment the hum
+of the crowd ceased. The silence was so deep that you might have heard
+a child speak. The old noble and his daughter, wholly intent, seeming
+to live only by their eyes, caught a distinct sound of spurs and clank
+of swords echoing up under the sonorous peristyle.
+
+And suddenly there appeared a short, somewhat stout figure in a green
+uniform, white trousers, and riding boots; a man wearing on his head a
+cocked hat well-nigh as magically potent as its wearer; the broad red
+ribbon of the Legion of Honor rose and fell on his breast, and a short
+sword hung at his side. At one and the same moment the man was seen by
+all eyes in all parts of the square.
+
+Immediately the drums beat a salute, both bands struck up a martial
+refrain, caught and repeated like a fugue by every instrument from the
+thinnest flutes to the largest drum. The clangor of that call to arms
+thrilled through every soul. The colors dropped, and the men presented
+arms, one unanimous rhythmical movement shaking every bayonet from the
+foremost front near the Palace to the last rank in the Place du
+Carrousel. The words of command sped from line to line like echoes.
+The whole enthusiastic multitude sent up a shout of "Long live the
+Emperor!"
+
+Everything shook, quivered, and thrilled at last. Napoleon had mounted
+his horse. It was his movement that had put life into those silent
+masses of men; the dumb instruments had found a voice at his coming,
+the Eagles and the colors had obeyed the same impulse which had
+brought emotion into all faces.
+
+The very walls of the high galleries of the old palace seemed to cry
+aloud, "Long live the Emperor!"
+
+There was something preternatural about it--it was magic at work, a
+counterfeit presentment of the power of God; or rather it was a
+fugitive image of a reign itself so fugitive.
+
+And /he/ the centre of such love, such enthusiasm and devotion, and so
+many prayers, he for whom the sun had driven the clouds from the sky,
+was sitting there on his horse, three paces in front of his Golden
+Squadron, with the grand Marshal on his left, and the Marshal-in-
+waiting on his right. Amid all the outburst of enthusiasm at his
+presence not a feature of his face appeared to alter.
+
+"Oh! yes. At Wagram, in the thick of the firing, on the field of
+Borodino, among the dead, always as cool as a cucumber /he/ is!" said
+the grenadier, in answer to the questions with which the young girl
+plied him. For a moment Julie was absorbed in the contemplation of
+that face, so quiet in the security of conscious power. The Emperor
+noticed Mlle. de Chatillonest, and leaned to make some brief remark to
+Duroc, which drew a smile from the Grand Marshal. Then the review
+began.
+
+If hitherto the young lady's attention had been divided between
+Napoleon's impassive face and the blue, red, and green ranks of
+troops, from this time forth she was wholly intent upon a young
+officer moving among the lines as they performed their swift
+symmetrical evolutions. She watched him gallop with tireless activity
+to and from the group where the plainly dressed Napoleon shone
+conspicuous. The officer rode a splendid black horse. His handsome
+sky-blue uniform marked him out amid the variegated multitude as one
+of the Emperor's orderly staff-officers. His gold lace glittered in
+the sunshine which lighted up the aigrette on his tall, narrow shako,
+so that the gazer might have compared him to a will-o'-the-wisp, or to
+a visible spirit emanating from the Emperor to infuse movement into
+those battalions whose swaying bayonets flashed into flames; for, at a
+mere glance from his eyes, they broke and gathered again, surging to
+and fro like the waves in a bay, or again swept before him like the
+long ridges of high-crested wave which the vexed Ocean directs against
+the shore.
+
+When the manoeuvres were over the officer galloped back at full speed,
+pulled up his horse, and awaited orders. He was not ten paces from
+Julie as he stood before the Emperor, much as General Rapp stands in
+Gerard's /Battle of Austerlitz/. The young girl could behold her lover
+in all his soldierly splendor.
+
+Colonel Victor d'Aiglemont, barely thirty years of age, was tall,
+slender, and well made. His well-proportioned figure never showed to
+better advantage than now as he exerted his strength to hold in the
+restive animal, whose back seemed to curve gracefully to the rider's
+weight. His brown masculine face possessed the indefinable charm of
+perfectly regular features combined with youth. The fiery eyes under
+the broad forehead, shaded by thick eyebrows and long lashes, looked
+like white ovals bordered by an outline of black. His nose had the
+delicate curve of an eagle's beak; the sinuous lines of the inevitable
+black moustache enhanced the crimson of the lips. The brown and tawny
+shades which overspread the wide high-colored cheeks told a tale of
+unusual vigor, and his whole face bore the impress of dashing courage.
+He was the very model which French artists seek to-day for the typical
+hero of Imperial France. The horse which he rode was covered with
+sweat, the animal's quivering head denoted the last degree of
+restiveness; his hind hoofs were set down wide apart and exactly in a
+line, he shook his long thick tail to the wind; in his fidelity to his
+master he seemed to be a visible presentment of that master's devotion
+to the Emperor.
+
+Julie saw her lover watching intently for the Emperor's glances, and
+felt a momentary pang of jealousy, for as yet he had not given her a
+look. Suddenly at a word from his sovereign Victor gripped his horse's
+flanks and set out at a gallop, but the animal took fright at a shadow
+cast by a post, shied, backed, and reared up so suddenly that his
+rider was all but thrown off. Julie cried out, her face grew white,
+people looked at her curiously, but she saw no one, her eyes were
+fixed upon the too mettlesome beast. The officer gave the horse a
+sharp admonitory cut with the whip, and galloped off with Napoleon's
+order.
+
+Julie was so absorbed, so dizzy with sights and sounds, that
+unconsciously she clung to her father's arm so tightly that he could
+read her thoughts by the varying pressure of her fingers. When Victor
+was all but flung out of the saddle, she clutched her father with a
+convulsive grip as if she herself were in danger of falling, and the
+old man looked at his daughter's tell-tale face with dark and painful
+anxiety. Pity, jealousy, something even of regret stole across every
+drawn and wrinkled line of mouth and brow. When he saw the unwonted
+light in Julie's eyes, when that cry broke from her, when the
+convulsive grasp of her fingers drew away the veil and put him in
+possession of her secret, then with that revelation of her love there
+came surely some swift revelation of the future. Mournful forebodings
+could be read in his own face.
+
+Julie's soul seemed at that moment to have passed into the officer's
+being. A torturing thought more cruel than any previous dread
+contracted the old man's painworn features, as he saw the glance of
+understanding that passed between the soldier and Julie. The girl's
+eyes were wet, her cheeks glowed with unwonted color. Her father
+turned abruptly and led her away into the Garden of the Tuileries.
+
+"Why, father," she cried, "there are still the regiments in the Place
+du Carrousel to be passed in review."
+
+"No, child, all the troops are marching out."
+
+"I think you are mistaken, father; M. d'Aiglemont surely told them to
+advance----"
+
+"But I feel ill, my child, and I do not care to stay."
+
+Julie could readily believe the words when she glanced at his face; he
+looked quite worn out by his fatherly anxieties.
+
+"Are you feeling very ill?" she asked indifferently, her mind was so
+full of other thoughts.
+
+"Every day is a reprieve for me, is it not?" returned her father.
+
+"Now do you mean to make me miserable again by talking about your
+death? I was in such spirits! Do pray get rid of those horrid gloomy
+ideas of yours."
+
+The father heaved a sigh. "Ah! spoiled child," he cried, "the best
+hearts are sometimes very cruel. We devote our whole lives to you, you
+are our one thought, we plan for your welfare, sacrifice our tastes to
+your whims, idolize you, give the very blood in our veins for you, and
+all this is nothing, is it? Alas! yes, you take it all as a matter of
+course. If we would always have your smiles and your disdainful love,
+we should need the power of God in heaven. Then comes another, a
+lover, a husband, and steals away your heart."
+
+Julie looked in amazement at her father; he walked slowly along, and
+there was no light in the eyes which he turned upon her.
+
+"You hide yourself even from us," he continued, "but, perhaps, also
+you hide yourself from yourself--"
+
+"What do you mean by that, father?"
+
+"I think that you have secrets from me, Julie.--You love," he went on
+quickly, as he saw the color rise to her face. "Oh! I hoped that you
+would stay with your old father until he died. I hoped to keep you
+with me, still radiant and happy, to admire you as you were but so
+lately. So long as I knew nothing of your future I could believe in a
+happy lot for you; but now I cannot possibly take away with me a hope
+of happiness for your life, for you love the colonel even more than
+the cousin. I can no longer doubt it."
+
+"And why should I be forbidden to love him?" asked Julie, with lively
+curiosity in her face.
+
+"Ah, my Julie, you would not understand me," sighed the father.
+
+"Tell me, all the same," said Julie, with an involuntary petulant
+gesture.
+
+"Very well, child, listen to me. Girls are apt to imagine noble and
+enchanting and totally imaginary figures in their own minds; they have
+fanciful extravagant ideas about men, and sentiment, and life; and
+then they innocently endow somebody or other with all the perfections
+of their day-dreams, and put their trust in him. They fall in love
+with this imaginary creature in the man of their choice; and then,
+when it is too late to escape from their fate, behold their first
+idol, the illusion made fair with their fancies, turns to an odious
+skeleton. Julie, I would rather have you fall in love with an old man
+than with the Colonel. Ah! if you could but see things from the
+standpoint of ten years hence, you would admit that my old experience
+was right. I know what Victor is, that gaiety of his is simply animal
+spirits--the gaiety of the barracks. He has no ability, and he is a
+spendthrift. He is one of those men whom Heaven created to eat and
+digest four meals a day, to sleep, to fall in love with the first
+woman that comes to hand, and to fight. He does not understand life.
+His kind heart, for he has a kind heart, will perhaps lead him to give
+his purse to a sufferer or to a comrade; /but/ he is careless, he has
+not the delicacy of heart which makes us slaves to a woman's
+happiness, he is ignorant, he is selfish. There are plenty of
+/buts/--"
+
+"But, father, he must surely be clever, he must have ability, or he
+would not be a colonel--"
+
+"My dear, Victor will be a colonel all his life.--I have seen no one
+who appears to me to be worthy of you," the old father added, with a
+kind of enthusiasm.
+
+He paused an instant, looked at his daughter, and added, "Why, my poor
+Julie, you are still too young, too fragile, too delicate for the
+cares and rubs of married life. D'Aiglemont's relations have spoiled
+him, just as your mother and I have spoiled you. What hope is there
+that you two could agree, with two imperious wills diametrically
+opposed to each other? You will be either the tyrant or the victim,
+and either alternative means, for a wife, an equal sum of misfortune.
+But you are modest and sweet-natured, you would yield from the first.
+In short," he added, in a quivering voice, "there is a grace of
+feeling in you which would never be valued, and then----" he broke
+off, for the tears overcame him.
+
+"Victor will give you pain through all the girlish qualities of your
+young nature," he went on, after a pause. "I know what soldiers are,
+my Julie; I have been in the army. In a man of that kind, love very
+seldom gets the better of old habits, due partly to the miseries amid
+which soldiers live, partly to the risks they run in a life of
+adventure."
+
+"Then you mean to cross my inclinations, do you, father?" asked Julie,
+half in earnest, half in jest. "Am I to marry to please you and not to
+please myself?"
+
+"To please me!" cried her father, with a start of surprise. "To please
+/me/, child? when you will not hear the voice that upbraids you so
+tenderly very much longer! But I have always heard children impute
+personal motives for the sacrifices that their parents make for them.
+Marry Victor, my Julie! Some day you will bitterly deplore his
+ineptitude, his thriftless ways, his selfishness, his lack of
+delicacy, his inability to understand love, and countless troubles
+arising through him. Then, remember, that here under these trees your
+old father's prophetic voice sounded in your ears in vain."
+
+He said no more; he had detected a rebellious shake of the head on his
+daughter's part. Both made several paces towards the carriage which
+was waiting for them at the grating. During that interval of silence,
+the young girl stole a glance at her father's face, and little by
+little her sullen brow cleared. The intense pain visible on his bowed
+forehead made a lively impression upon her.
+
+"Father," she began in gentle tremulous tones, "I promise to say no
+more about Victor until you have overcome your prejudices against
+him."
+
+The old man looked at her in amazement. Two tears which filled his
+eyes overflowed down his withered cheeks. He could not take Julie in
+his arms in that crowded place; but he pressed her hand tenderly. A
+few minutes later when they had taken their places in the cabriolet,
+all the anxious thought which had gathered about his brow had
+completely disappeared. Julie's pensive attitude gave him far less
+concern than the innocent joy which had betrayed her secret during the
+review.
+
+
+
+Nearly a year had passed since the Emperor's last review. In early
+March 1814 a caleche was rolling along the highroad from Amboise to
+Tours. As the carriage came out from beneath the green-roofed aisle of
+walnut trees by the post-house of la Frilliere, the horses dashed
+forward with such speed that in a moment they gained the bridge built
+across the Cise at the point of its confluence with the Loire. There,
+however, they come to a sudden stand. One of the traces had given way
+in consequence of the furious pace at which the post-boy, obedient to
+his orders, had urged on four horses, the most vigorous of their
+breed. Chance, therefore, gave the two recently awakened occupants of
+the carriage an opportunity of seeing one of the most lovely
+landscapes along the enchanting banks of the Loire, and that at their
+full leisure.
+
+At a glance the travelers could see to the right the whole winding
+course of the Cise meandering like a silver snake among the meadows,
+where the grass had taken the deep, bright green of early spring. To
+the left lay the Loire in all its glory. A chill morning breeze,
+ruffling the surface of the stately river, had fretted the broad
+sheets of water far and wide into a network of ripples, which caught
+the gleams of the sun, so that the green islets here and there in its
+course shone like gems set in a gold necklace. On the opposite bank
+the fair rich meadows of Touraine stretched away as far as the eye
+could see; the low hills of the Cher, the only limits to the view, lay
+on the far horizon, a luminous line against the clear blue sky. Tours
+itself, framed by the trees on the islands in a setting of spring
+leaves, seemed to rise like Venice out of the waters, and her old
+cathedral towers soaring in air were blended with the pale fantastic
+cloud shapes in the sky.
+
+Over the side of the bridge, where the carriage had come to a stand,
+the traveler looks along a line of cliffs stretching as far as Tours.
+Nature in some freakish mood must have raised these barriers of rock,
+undermined incessantly by the rippling Loire at their feet, for a
+perpetual wonder for spectators. The village of Vouvray nestles, as it
+were, among the clefts and crannies of the crags, which begin to
+describe a bend at the junction of the Loire and Cise. A whole
+population of vine-dressers lives, in fact, in appalling insecurity in
+holes in their jagged sides for the whole way between Vouvray and
+Tours. In some places there are three tiers of dwellings hollowed out,
+one above the other, in the rock, each row communicating with the next
+by dizzy staircases cut likewise in the face of the cliff. A little
+girl in a short red petticoat runs out into her garden on the roof of
+another dwelling; you can watch a wreath of hearth-smoke curling up
+among the shoots and trails of the vines. Men are at work in their
+almost perpendicular patches of ground, an old woman sits tranquilly
+spinning under a blossoming almond tree on a crumbling mass of rock,
+and smiles down on the dismay of the travelers far below her feet. The
+cracks in the ground trouble her as little as the precarious state of
+the old wall, a pendant mass of loose stones, only kept in position by
+the crooked stems of its ivy mantle. The sound of coopers' mallets
+rings through the skyey caves; for here, where Nature stints human
+industry of soil, the soil is everywhere tilled, and everywhere
+fertile.
+
+No view along the whole course of the Loire can compare with the rich
+landscape of Touraine, here outspread beneath the traveler's eyes. The
+triple picture, thus barely sketched in outline, is one of those
+scenes which the imagination engraves for ever upon the memory; let a
+poet fall under its charm, and he shall be haunted by visions which
+shall reproduce its romantic loveliness out of the vague substance of
+dreams.
+
+As the carriage stopped on the bridge over the Cise, white sails came
+out here and there from among the islands in the Loire to add new
+grace to the perfect view. The subtle scent of the willows by the
+water's edge was mingled with the damp odor of the breeze from the
+river. The monotonous chant of a goat-herd added a plaintive note to
+the sound of birds' songs in a chorus which never ends; the cries of
+the boatmen brought tidings of distant busy life. Here was Touraine in
+all its glory, and the very height of the splendor of spring. Here was
+the one peaceful district in France in those troublous days; for it
+was so unlikely that a foreign army should trouble its quiet that
+Touraine might be said to defy invasion.
+
+As soon as the caleche stopped, a head covered with a foraging cap was
+put out of the window, and soon afterwards an impatient military man
+flung open the carriage door and sprang down into the road to pick a
+quarrel with the postilion, but the skill with which the Tourangeau
+was repairing the trace restored Colonel d'Aiglemont's equanimity. He
+went back to the carriage, stretched himself to relieve his benumbed
+muscles, yawned, looked about him, and finally laid a hand on the arm
+of a young woman warmly wrapped up in a furred pelisse.
+
+"Come, Julie," he said hoarsely, "just wake up and take a look at this
+country. It is magnificent."
+
+Julie put her head out of the window. She wore a traveling cap of
+sable fur. Nothing could be seen of her but her face, for the whole of
+her person was completely concealed by the folds of her fur pelisse.
+The young girl who tripped to the review at the Tuileries with light
+footsteps and joy and gladness in her heart was scarcely recognizable
+in Julie d'Aiglemont. Her face, delicate as ever, had lost the rose-
+color which once gave it so rich a glow. A few straggling locks of
+black hair, straightened out by the damp night air, enhanced its dead
+whiteness, and all its life and sparkle seemed to be torpid. Yet her
+eyes glittered with preternatural brightness in spite of the violet
+shadows under the lashes upon her wan cheeks.
+
+She looked out with indifferent eyes over the fields towards the Cher,
+at the islands in the river, at the line of the crags of Vouvray
+stretching along the Loire towards Tours; then she sank back as soon
+as possible into her seat in the caleche. She did not care to give a
+glance to the enchanting valley of the Cise.
+
+"Yes, it is wonderful," she said, and out in the open air her voice
+sounded weak and faint to the last degree. Evidently she had had her
+way with her father, to her misfortune.
+
+"Would you not like to live here, Julie?"
+
+"Yes; here or anywhere," she answered listlessly.
+
+"Do you feel ill?" asked Colonel d'Aiglemont.
+
+"No, not at all," she answered with momentary energy; and, smiling at
+her husband, she added, "I should like to go to sleep."
+
+Suddenly there came a sound of a horse galloping towards them. Victor
+d'Aiglemont dropped his wife's hand and turned to watch the bend in
+the road. No sooner had he taken his eyes from Julie's pale face than
+all the assumed gaiety died out of it; it was as if a light had been
+extinguished. She felt no wish to look at the landscape, no curiosity
+to see the horseman who was galloping towards them at such a furious
+pace, and, ensconcing herself in her corner, stared out before her at
+the hindquarters of the post-horses, looking as blank as any Breton
+peasant listening to his /recteur's/ sermon.
+
+Suddenly a young man riding a valuable horse came out from behind the
+clump of poplars and flowering briar-rose.
+
+"It is an Englishman," remarked the Colonel.
+
+"Lord bless you, yes, General," said the post-boy; "he belongs to the
+race of fellows who have a mind to gobble up France, they say."
+
+The stranger was one of the foreigners traveling in France at the time
+when Napoleon detained all British subjects within the limits of the
+Empire, by way of reprisals for the violation of the Treaty of Amiens,
+an outrage of international law perpetrated by the Court of St. James.
+These prisoners, compelled to submit to the Emperor's pleasure, were
+not all suffered to remain in the houses where they were arrested, nor
+yet in the places of residence which at first they were permitted to
+choose. Most of the English colony in Touraine had been transplanted
+thither from different places where their presence was supposed to be
+inimical to the interests of the Continental Policy.
+
+The young man, who was taking the tedium of the early morning hours on
+horseback, was one of these victims of bureaucratic tyranny. Two years
+previously, a sudden order from the Foreign Office had dragged him
+from Montpellier, whither he had gone on account of consumptive
+tendencies. He glanced at the Comte d'Aiglemont, saw that he was a
+military man, and deliberately looked away, turning his head somewhat
+abruptly towards the meadows by the Cise.
+
+"The English are all as insolent as if the globe belonged to them,"
+muttered the Colonel. "Luckily, Soult will give them a thrashing
+directly."
+
+The prisoner gave a glance to the caleche as he rode by. Brief though
+that glance was, he had yet time to notice the sad expression which
+lent an indefinable charm to the Countess' pensive face. Many men are
+deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take
+the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love. Julie herself was
+so much absorbed in the contemplation of the opposite cushion that she
+saw neither the horse nor the rider. The damaged trace meanwhile had
+been quickly and strongly repaired; the Count stepped into his place
+again; and the post-boy, doing his best to make up for lost time,
+drove the carriage rapidly along the embankment. On they drove under
+the overhanging cliffs, with their picturesque vine-dressers' huts and
+stores of wine maturing in their dark sides, till in the distance
+uprose the spire of the famous Abbey of Marmoutiers, the retreat of
+St. Martin.
+
+"What can that diaphanous milord want with us?" exclaimed the Colonel,
+turning to assure himself that the horseman who had followed them from
+the bridge was the young Englishman.
+
+After all, the stranger committed no breach of good manners by riding
+along on the footway, and Colonel d'Aiglemont was fain to lie back in
+his corner after sending a scowl in the Englishman's direction. But in
+spite of his hostile instincts, he could not help noticing the beauty
+of the animal and the graceful horsemanship of the rider. The young
+man's face was of that pale, fair-complexioned, insular type, which is
+almost girlish in the softness and delicacy of its color and texture.
+He was tall, thin, and fair-haired, dressed with the extreme and
+elaborate neatness characteristic of a man of fashion in prudish
+England. Any one might have thought that bashfulness rather than
+pleasure at the sight of the Countess had called up that flush into
+his face. Once only Julie raised her eyes and looked at the stranger,
+and then only because she was in a manner compelled to do so, for her
+husband called upon her to admire the action of the thoroughbred. It
+so happened that their glances clashed; and the shy Englishman,
+instead of riding abreast of the carriage, fell behind on this, and
+followed them at a distance of a few paces.
+
+Yet the Countess had scarcely given him a glance; she saw none of the
+various perfections, human and equine, commended to her notice, and
+fell back again in the carriage, with a slight movement of the eyelids
+intended to express her acquiescence in her husband's views. The
+Colonel fell asleep again, and both husband and wife reached Tours
+without another word. Not one of those enchanting views of
+everchanging landscape through which they sped had drawn so much as a
+glance from Julie's eyes.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont looked now and again at her sleeping husband. While
+she looked, a sudden jolt shook something down upon her knees. It was
+her father's portrait, a miniature which she wore suspended about her
+neck by a black cord. At the sight of it, the tears, till then kept
+back, overflowed her eyes, but no one, save perhaps the Englishman,
+saw them glitter there for a brief moment before they dried upon her
+pale cheeks.
+
+Colonel d'Aiglemont was on his way to the South. Marshal Soult was
+repelling an English invasion of Bearn; and d'Aiglemont, the bearer of
+the Emperor's orders to the Marshal, seized the opportunity of taking
+his wife as far as Tours to leave her with an elderly relative of his
+own, far away from the dangers threatening Paris.
+
+Very shortly the carriage rolled over the paved road of Tours, over
+the bridge, along the Grande-Rue, and stopped at last before the old
+mansion of the /ci-devant/ Marquise de Listomere-Landon.
+
+The Marquise de Listomere-Landon, with her white hair, pale face, and
+shrewd smile, was one of those fine old ladies who still seem to wear
+the paniers of the eighteenth century, and affects caps of an extinct
+mode. They are nearly always caressing in their manners, as if the
+heyday of love still lingered on for these septuagenarian portraits of
+the age of Louis Quinze, with the faint perfume of /poudre a la
+marechale/ always clinging about them. Bigoted rather than pious, and
+less of bigots than they seem, women who can tell a story well and
+talk still better, their laughter comes more readily for an old memory
+than for a new jest--the present intrudes upon them.
+
+When an old waiting-woman announced to the Marquise de Listomere-
+Landon (to give her the title which she was soon to resume) the
+arrival of a nephew whom she had not seen since the outbreak of the
+war with Spain, the old lady took off her spectacles with alacrity,
+shut the /Galerie de l'ancienne Cour/ (her favorite work), and
+recovered something like youthful activity, hastening out upon the
+flight of steps to greet the young couple there.
+
+Aunt and niece exchanged a rapid glance of survey.
+
+"Good-morning, dear aunt," cried the Colonel, giving the old lady a
+hasty embrace. "I am bringing a young lady to put under your wing. I
+have come to put my treasure in your keeping. My Julie is neither
+jealous nor a coquette, she is as good as an angel. I hope that she
+will not be spoiled here," he added, suddenly interrupting himself.
+
+"Scapegrace!" returned the Marquise, with a satirical glance at her
+nephew.
+
+She did not wait for her niece to approach her, but with a certain
+kindly graciousness went forward herself to kiss Julie, who stood
+there thoughtfully, to all appearance more embarrassed than curious
+concerning her new relation.
+
+"So we are to make each other's acquaintance, are we, my love?" the
+Marquise continued. "Do not be too much alarmed of me. I always try
+not to be an old woman with young people."
+
+On the way to the drawing-room, the Marquise ordered breakfast for her
+guests in provincial fashion; but the Count checked his aunt's flow of
+words by saying soberly that he could only remain in the house while
+the horses were changing. On this the three hurried into the drawing-
+room. The Colonel had barely time to tell the story of the political
+and military events which had compelled him to ask his aunt for a
+shelter for his young wife. While he talked on without interruption,
+the older lady looked from her nephew to her niece, and took the
+sadness in Julie's white face for grief at the enforced separation.
+"Eh! eh!" her looks seemed to say, "these young things are in love
+with each other."
+
+The crack of the postilion's whip sounded outside in the silent old
+grass-grown courtyard. Victor embraced his aunt once more, and rushed
+out.
+
+"Good-bye, dear," he said, kissing his wife, who had followed him down
+to the carriage.
+
+"Oh! Victor, let me come still further with you," she pleaded
+coaxingly. "I do not want to leave you----"
+
+"Can you seriously mean it?"
+
+"Very well," said Julie, "since you wish it." The carriage
+disappeared.
+
+"So you are very fond of my poor Victor?" said the Marquise,
+interrogating her niece with one of those sagacious glances which
+dowagers give younger women.
+
+"Alas, madame!" said Julie, "must one not love a man well indeed to
+marry him?"
+
+The words were spoken with an artless accent which revealed either a
+pure heart or inscrutable depths. How could a woman, who had been the
+friend of Duclos and the Marechal de Richelieu, refrain from trying to
+read the riddle of this marriage? Aunt and niece were standing on the
+steps, gazing after the fast vanishing caleche. The look in the young
+Countess' eyes did not mean love as the Marquise understood it. The
+good lady was a Provencale, and her passions had been lively.
+
+"So you were captivated by my good-for-nothing of a nephew?" she
+asked.
+
+Involuntarily Julie shuddered, something in the experienced coquette's
+look and tone seemed to say that Mme. de Listomere-Landon's knowledge
+of her husband's character went perhaps deeper than his wife's. Mme.
+d'Aiglemont, in dismay, took refuge in this transparent dissimulation,
+ready to her hand, the first resource of an artless unhappiness. Mme.
+de Listomere appeared to be satisfied with Julie's answers; but in her
+secret heart she rejoiced to think that here was a love affair on hand
+to enliven her solitude, for that her niece had some amusing
+flirtation on foot she was fully convinced.
+
+In the great drawing-room, hung with tapestry framed in strips of
+gilding, young Mme. d'Aiglemont sat before a blazing fire, behind a
+Chinese screen placed to shut out the cold draughts from the window,
+and her heavy mood scarcely lightened. Among the old eighteenth-
+century furniture, under the old paneled ceiling, it was not very easy
+to be gay. Yet the young Parisienne took a sort of pleasure in this
+entrance upon a life of complete solitude and in the solemn silence of
+the old provincial house. She exchanged a few words with the aunt, a
+stranger, to whom she had written a bride's letter on her marriage,
+and then sat as silent as if she had been listening to an opera. Not
+until two hours had been spent in an atmosphere of quiet befitting la
+Trappe, did she suddenly awaken to a sense of uncourteous behavior,
+and bethink herself of the short answers which she had given her aunt.
+Mme. de Listomere, with the gracious tact characteristic of a bygone
+age, had respected her niece's mood. When Mme. d'Aiglemont became
+conscious of her shortcomings, the dowager sat knitting, though as a
+matter of fact she had several times left the room to superintend
+preparations in the Green Chamber, whither the Countess' luggage had
+been transported; now, however, she had returned to her great
+armchair, and stole a glance from time to time at this young relative.
+Julie felt ashamed of giving way to irresistible broodings, and tried
+to earn her pardon by laughing at herself.
+
+"My dear child, /we/ know the sorrows of widowhood," returned her
+aunt. But only the eyes of forty years could have distinguished the
+irony hovering about the old lady's mouth.
+
+Next morning the Countess improved. She talked. Mme. de Listomere no
+longer despaired of fathoming the new-made wife, whom yesterday she
+had set down as a dull, unsociable creature, and discoursed on the
+delights of the country, of dances, of houses where they could visit.
+All that day the Marquise's questions were so many snares; it was the
+old habit of the old Court, she could not help setting traps to
+discover her niece's character. For several days Julie, plied with
+temptations, steadfastly declined to seek amusement abroad; and much
+as the old lady's pride longed to exhibit her pretty niece, she was
+fain to renounce all hope of taking her into society, for the young
+Countess was still in morning for her father, and found in her loss
+and her mourning dress a pretext for her sadness and desire for
+seclusion.
+
+By the end of the week the dowager admired Julie's angelic sweetness
+of disposition, her diffident charm, her indulgent temper, and
+thenceforward began to take a prodigious interest in the mysterious
+sadness gnawing at this young heart. The Countess was one of those
+women who seem born to be loved and to bring happiness with them. Mme.
+de Listomere found her niece's society grown so sweet and precious,
+that she doted upon Julie, and could no longer think of parting with
+her. A month sufficed to establish an eternal friendship between the
+two ladies. The dowager noticed, not without surprise, the changes
+that took place in Mme. d'Aiglemont; gradually her bright color died
+away, and her face became dead white. Yet, Julie's spirits rose as the
+bloom faded from her cheeks. Sometimes the dowager's sallies provoked
+outbursts of merriment or peals of laughter, promptly repressed,
+however, by some clamorous thought.
+
+Mme. de Listomere had guessed by this time that it was neither
+Victor's absence nor a father's death which threw a shadow over her
+niece's life; but her mind was so full of dark suspicions, that she
+found it difficult to lay a finger upon the real cause of the
+mischief. Possibly truth is only discoverable by chance. A day came,
+however, at length when Julie flashed out before her aunt's astonished
+eyes into a complete forgetfulness of her marriage; she recovered the
+wild spirits of careless girlhood. Mme. de Listomere then and there
+made up her mind to fathom the depths of this soul, for its exceeding
+simplicity was as inscrutable as dissimulation.
+
+Night was falling. The two ladies were sitting by the window which
+looked out upon the street, and Julie was looking thoughtful again,
+when some one went by on horseback.
+
+"There goes one of your victims," said the Marquise.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont looked up; dismay and surprise blended in her face.
+
+"He is a young Englishman, the Honorable Arthur Ormand, Lord
+Grenville's eldest son. His history is interesting. His physician sent
+him to Montpellier in 1802; it was hoped that in that climate he might
+recover from the lung complaint which was gaining ground. He was
+detained, like all his fellow-countrymen, by Bonaparte when war broke
+out. That monster cannot live without fighting. The young Englishman,
+by way of amusing himself, took to studying his own complaint, which
+was believed to be incurable. By degrees he acquired a liking for
+anatomy and physic, and took quite a craze for that kind of thing, a
+most extraordinary taste in a man of quality, though the Regent
+certainly amused himself with chemistry! In short, Monsieur Arthur
+made astonishing progress in his studies; his health did the same
+under the faculty of Montpellier; he consoled his captivity, and at
+the same time his cure was thoroughly completed. They say that he
+spent two whole years in a cowshed, living on cresses and the milk of
+a cow brought from Switzerland, breathing as seldom as he could, and
+never speaking a word. Since he come to Tours he has lived quite
+alone; he is as proud as a peacock; but you have certainly made a
+conquest of him, for probably it is not on my account that he has
+ridden under the window twice every day since you have been here.--He
+has certainly fallen in love with you."
+
+That last phrase roused the Countess like magic. Her involuntary start
+and smile took the Marquise by surprise. So far from showing a sign of
+the instinctive satisfaction felt by the most strait-laced of women
+when she learns that she has destroyed the peace of mind of some male
+victim, there was a hard, haggard expression in Julie's face--a look
+of repulsion amounting almost to loathing.
+
+A woman who loves will put the whole world under the ban of Love's
+empire for the sake of the one whom she loves; but such a woman can
+laugh and jest; and Julie at that moment looked as if the memory of
+some recently escaped peril was too sharp and fresh not to bring with
+it a quick sensation of pain. Her aunt, by this time convinced that
+Julie did not love her nephew, was stupefied by the discovery that she
+loved nobody else. She shuddered lest a further discovery should show
+her Julie's heart disenchanted, lest the experience of a day, or
+perhaps of a night, should have revealed to a young wife the full
+extent of Victor's emptiness.
+
+"If she has found him out, there is an end of it," thought the
+dowager. "My nephew will soon be made to feel the inconveniences of
+wedded life."
+
+The Marquise now proposed to convert Julie to the monarchical
+doctrines of the times of Louis Quinze; but a few hours later she
+discovered, or, more properly speaking, guessed, the not uncommon
+state of affairs, and the real cause of her niece's low spirits.
+
+Julie turned thoughtful on a sudden, and went to her room earlier than
+usual. When her maid left her for the night, she still sat by the fire
+in the yellow velvet depths of a great chair, an old-world piece of
+furniture as well suited for sorrow as for happy people. Tears flowed,
+followed by sighs and meditation. After a while she drew a little
+table to her, sought writing materials, and began to write. The hours
+went by swiftly. Julie's confidences made to the sheet of paper seemed
+to cost her dear; every sentence set her dreaming, and at last she
+suddenly burst into tears. The clocks were striking two. Her head,
+grown heavy as a dying woman's, was bowed over her breast. When she
+raised it, her aunt appeared before her as suddenly as if she had
+stepped out of the background of tapestry upon the walls.
+
+"What can be the matter with you, child?" asked the Marquise. "Why are
+you sitting up so late? And why, in the first place, are you crying
+alone, at your age?"
+
+Without further ceremony she sat down beside her niece, her eyes the
+while devouring the unfinished letter.
+
+"Were you writing to your husband?"
+
+"Do I know where he is?" returned the Countess.
+
+Her aunt thereupon took up the sheet and proceeded to read it. She had
+brought her spectacles; the deed was premeditated. The innocent writer
+of the letter allowed her to take it without the slightest remark. It
+was neither lack of dignity nor consciousness of secret guilt which
+left her thus without energy. Her aunt had come in upon her at a
+crisis. She was helpless; right or wrong, reticence and confidence,
+like all things else, were matters of indifference. Like some young
+maid who had heaped scorn upon her lover, and feels so lonely and sad
+when evening comes, that she longs for him to come back or for a heart
+to which she can pour out her sorrow, Julie allowed her aunt to
+violate the seal which honor places upon an open letter, and sat
+musing while the Marquise read on:--
+
+  "MY DEAR LOUISA,--Why do you ask so often for the fulfilment of as
+  rash a promise as two young and inexperienced girls could make?
+  You say that you often ask yourself why I have given no answer to
+  your questions for these six months. If my silence told you
+  nothing, perhaps you will understand the reasons for it to-day, as
+  you read the secrets which I am about to betray. I should have
+  buried them for ever in the depths of my heart if you had not
+  announced your own approaching marriage. You are about to be
+  married, Louisa. The thought makes me shiver. Poor little one!
+  marry, yes, in a few months' time one of the keenest pangs of
+  regret will be the recollection of a self which used to be, of the
+  two young girls who sat one evening under one of the tallest oak-
+  trees on the hillside at Ecouen, and looked along the fair valley
+  at our feet in the light of the sunset, which caught us in its
+  glow. We sat on a slab of rock in ecstasy, which sobered down into
+  melancholy of the gentlest. You were the first to discover that
+  the far-off sun spoke to us of the future. How inquisitive and how
+  silly we were! Do you remember all the absurd things we said and
+  did? We embraced each other; 'like lovers,' said we. We solemnly
+  promised that the first bride should faithfully reveal to the
+  other the mysteries of marriage, the joys which our childish minds
+  imagined to be so delicious. That evening will complete your
+  despair, Louisa. In those days you were young and beautiful and
+  careless, if not radiantly happy; a few days of marriage, and you
+  will be, what I am already--ugly, wretched, and old. Need I tell
+  you how proud I was and how vain and glad to be married to Colonel
+  Victor d'Aiglemont? And besides, how could I tell you now? for I
+  cannot remember that old self. A few moments turned my girlhood to
+  a dream. All through the memorable day which consecrated a chain,
+  the extent of which was hidden from me, my behavior was not free
+  from reproach. Once and again my father tried to repress my
+  spirits; the joy which I showed so plainly was thought unbefitting
+  the occasion, my talk scarcely innocent, simply because I was so
+  innocent. I played endless child's tricks with my bridal veil, my
+  wreath, my gown. Left alone that night in the room whither I had
+  been conducted in state, I planned a piece of mischief to tease
+  Victor. While I awaited his coming, my heart beat wildly, as it
+  used to do when I was a child stealing into the drawing-room on
+  the last day of the old year to catch a glimpse of the New Year's
+  gifts piled up there in heaps. When my husband came in and looked
+  for me, my smothered laughter ringing out from beneath the lace in
+  which I had shrouded myself, was the last outburst of the
+  delicious merriment which brightened our games in childhood . . ."
+
+When the dowager had finished reading the letter, and after such a
+beginning the rest must have been sad indeed, she slowly laid her
+spectacles on the table, put the letter down beside them, and looked
+fixedly at her niece. Age had not dimmed the fire in those green eyes
+as yet.
+
+"My little girl," she said, "a married woman cannot write such a
+letter as this to a young unmarried woman; it is scarcely proper--"
+
+"So I was thinking," Julie broke in upon her aunt. "I felt ashamed of
+myself while you were reading it."
+
+"If a dish at table is not to our taste, there is no occasion to
+disgust others with it, child," the old lady continued benignly,
+"especially when marriage has seemed to us all, from Eve downwards, so
+excellent an institution. . . You have no mother?"
+
+The Countess trembled, then she raised her face meekly, and said:
+
+"I have missed my mother many times already during the past year; but
+I have myself to blame, I would not listen to my father. He was
+opposed to my marriage; he disapproved of Victor as a son-in-law."
+
+She looked at her aunt. The old face was lighted up with a kindly
+look, and a thrill of joy dried Julie's tears. She held out her young,
+soft hand to the old Marquise, who seemed to ask for it, and the
+understanding between the two women was completed by the close grasp
+of their fingers.
+
+"Poor orphan child!"
+
+The words came like a final flash of enlightenment to Julie. It seemed
+to her that she heard her father's prophetic voice again.
+
+"Your hands are burning! Are they always like this?" asked the
+Marquise.
+
+"The fever only left me seven or eight days ago."
+
+"You had a fever upon you, and said nothing about it to me!"
+
+"I have had it for a year," said Julie, with a kind of timid anxiety.
+
+"My good little angel, then your married life hitherto has been one
+long time of suffering?"
+
+Julie did not venture to reply, but an affirmative sign revealed the
+whole truth.
+
+"Then you are unhappy?"
+
+"On! no, no, aunt. Victor loves me, he almost idolizes me, and I adore
+him, he is so kind."
+
+"Yes, you love him; but you avoid him, do you not?"
+
+"Yes . . . sometimes . . . He seeks me too often."
+
+"And often when you are alone you are troubled with the fear that he
+may suddenly break in on your solitude?"
+
+"Alas! yes, aunt. But, indeed, I love him, I do assure you."
+
+"Do you not, in your own thoughts, blame yourself because you find it
+impossible to share his pleasures? Do you never think at times that
+marriage is a heavier yoke than an illicit passion could be?"
+
+"Oh, that is just it," she wept. "It is all a riddle to me, and can
+you guess it all? My faculties are benumbed, I have no ideas, I can
+scarcely see at all. I am weighed down by vague dread, which freezes
+me till I cannot feel, and keeps me in continual torpor. I have no
+voice with which to pity myself, no words to express my trouble. I
+suffer, and I am ashamed to suffer when Victor is happy at my cost."
+
+"Babyish nonsense, and rubbish, all of it!" exclaimed the aunt, and a
+gay smile, an after-glow of the joys of her own youth, suddenly
+lighted up her withered face.
+
+"And do you too laugh!" the younger woman cried despairingly.
+
+"It was just my own case," the Marquise returned promptly. "And now
+Victor has left you, you have become a girl again, recovering a
+tranquillity without pleasure and without pain, have you not?"
+
+Julie opened wide eyes of bewilderment.
+
+"In fact, my angel, you adore Victor, do you not? But still you would
+rather be a sister to him than a wife, and, in short, your marriage is
+emphatically not a success?"
+
+"Well--no, aunt. But why do you smile?"
+
+"Oh! you are right, poor child! There is nothing very amusing in all
+this. Your future would be big with more than one mishap if I had not
+taken you under my protection, if my old experience of life had not
+guessed the very innocent cause of your troubles. My nephew did not
+deserve his good fortune, the blockhead! In the reign of our well-
+beloved Louis Quinze, a young wife in your position would very soon
+have punished her husband for behaving like a ruffian. The selfish
+creature! The men who serve under this Imperial tyrant are all of them
+ignorant boors. They take brutality for gallantry; they know no more
+of women than they know of love; and imagine that because they go out
+to face death on the morrow, they may dispense to-day with all
+consideration and attentions for us. The time was when a man could
+love and die too at the proper time. My niece, I will form you. I will
+put an end to this unhappy divergence between you, a natural thing
+enough, but it would end in mutual hatred and desire for a divorce,
+always supposing that you did not die on the way to despair."
+
+Julie's amazement equaled her surprise as she listened to her aunt.
+She was surprised by her language, dimly divining rather than
+appreciating the wisdom of the words she heard, and very much dismayed
+to find what this relative, out of great experience, passed judgment
+upon Victor as her father had done, though in somewhat milder terms.
+Perhaps some quick prevision of the future crossed her mind;
+doubtless, at any rate, she felt the heavy weight of the burden which
+must inevitably overwhelm her, for she burst into tears, and sprang to
+the old lady's arms. "Be my mother," she sobbed.
+
+The aunt shed no tears. The Revolution had left old ladies of the
+Monarchy but few tears to shed. Love, in bygone days, and the Terror
+at a later time, had familiarized them with extremes of joy and
+anguish in such a sort that, amid the perils of life, they preserved
+their dignity and coolness, a capacity for sincere but undemonstrative
+affection which never disturbed their well-bred self-possession, and a
+dignity of demeanor which a younger generation has done very ill to
+discard.
+
+The dowager took Julie in her arms, and kissed her on the forehead
+with a tenderness and pity more often found in women's ways and manner
+than in their hearts. Then she coaxed her niece with kind, soothing
+words, assured her of a happy future, lulled her with promises of
+love, and put her to bed as if she had been not a niece, but a
+daughter, a much-beloved daughter whose hopes and cares she had made
+her own. Perhaps the old Marquise had found her own youth and
+inexperience and beauty again in this nephew's wife. And the Countess
+fell asleep, happy to have found a friend, nay a mother, to whom she
+could tell everything freely.
+
+Next morning, when the two women kissed each other with heartfelt
+kindness, and that look of intelligence which marks a real advance in
+friendship, a closer intimacy between two souls, they heard the sound
+of horsehoofs, and, turning both together, saw the young Englishman
+ride slowly past the window, after his wont. Apparently he had made a
+certain study of the life led by the two lonely women, for he never
+failed to ride by as they sat at breakfast, and again at dinner. His
+horse slackened pace of its own accord, and for the space of time
+required to pass the two windows in the room, its rider turned a
+melancholy look upon the Countess, who seldom deigned to take the
+slightest notion of him. Not so the Marquise. Minds not necessarily
+little find it difficult to resist the little curiosity which fastens
+upon the most trifling event that enlivens provincial life; and the
+Englishman's mute way of expressing his timid, earnest love tickled
+Mme. de Listomere. For her the periodically recurrent glance became a
+part of the day's routine, hailed daily with new jests. As the two
+women sat down to table, both of them looked out at the same moment.
+This time Julie's eyes met Arthur's with such a precision of sympathy
+that the color rose to her face. The stranger immediately urged his
+horse into a gallop and went.
+
+"What is to be done, madame?" asked Julie. "People see this Englishman
+go past the house, and they will take it for granted that I--"
+
+"Yes," interrupted her aunt.
+
+"Well, then, could I not tell him to discontinue his promenades?"
+
+"Would not that be a way of telling him that he was dangerous? You
+might put that notion into his head. And besides, can you prevent a
+man from coming and going as he pleases? Our meals shall be served in
+another room to-morrow; and when this young gentleman sees us no
+longer, there will be an end of making love to you through the window.
+There, dear child, that is how a woman of the world does."
+
+But the measure of Julie's misfortune was to be filled up. The two
+women had scarcely risen from table when Victor's man arrived in hot
+haste from Bourges with a letter for the Countess from her husband.
+The servant had ridden by unfrequented ways.
+
+Victor sent his wife news of the downfall of the Empire and the
+capitulation of Paris. He himself had gone over to the Bourbons, and
+all France was welcoming them back with transports of enthusiasm. He
+could not go so far as Tours, but he begged her to come at once to
+join him at Orleans, where he hoped to be in readiness with passports
+for her. His servant, an old soldier, would be her escort so far as
+Orleans; he (Victor) believed that the road was still open.
+
+"You have not a moment to lose, madame," said the man. "The Prussians,
+Austrians, and English are about to effect a junction either at Blois
+or at Orleans."
+
+A few hours later, Julie's preparations were made, and she started out
+upon her journey in an old traveling carriage lent by her aunt.
+
+"Why should you not come with us to Paris?" she asked, as she put her
+arms about the Marquise. "Now that the Bourbons have come back you
+would be--"
+
+"Even if there had not been this unhoped-for return, I should still
+have gone to Paris, my poor child, for my advice is only too necessary
+to both you and Victor. So I shall make all my preparations for
+rejoining you there."
+
+Julie set out. She took her maid with her, and the old soldier
+galloped beside the carriage as escort. At nightfall, as they changed
+horses for the last stage before Blois, Julie grew uneasy. All the way
+from Amboise she had heard the sound of wheels behind them, a carriage
+following hers had kept at the same distance. She stood on the step
+and looked out to see who her traveling companions might be, and in
+the moonlight saw Arthur standing three paces away, gazing fixedly at
+the chaise which contained her. Again their eyes met. The Countess
+hastily flung herself back in her seat, but a feeling of dread set her
+pulses throbbing. It seemed to her, as to most innocent and
+inexperienced young wives, that she was herself to blame for this love
+which she had all unwittingly inspired. With this thought came an
+instinctive terror, perhaps a sense of her own helplessness before
+aggressive audacity. One of a man's strongest weapons is the terrible
+power of compelling a woman to think of him when her naturally lively
+imagination takes alarm or offence at the thought that she is
+followed.
+
+The Countess bethought herself of her aunt's advice, and made up her
+mind that she would not stir from her place during the rest of the
+journey; but every time the horses were changed she heard the
+Englishman pacing round the two carriages, and again upon the road
+heard the importunate sound of the wheels of his caleche. Julie soon
+began to think that, when once reunited to her husband, Victor would
+know how to defend her against this singular persecution.
+
+"Yet suppose that in spite of everything, this young man does not love
+me?" This was the thought that came last of all.
+
+No sooner did she reach Orleans than the Prussians stopped the chaise.
+It was wheeled into an inn-yard and put under a guard of soldiers.
+Resistance was out of the question. The foreign soldiers made the
+three travelers understand by signs that they were obeying orders, and
+that no one could be allowed to leave the carriage. For about two
+hours the Countess sat in tears, a prisoner surrounded by the guard,
+who smoked, laughed, and occasionally stared at her with insolent
+curiosity. At last, however, she saw her captors fall away from the
+carriage with a sort of respect, and heard at the same time the sound
+of horses entering the yard. Another moment, and a little group of
+foreign officers, with an Austrian general at their head, gathered
+about the door of the traveling carriage.
+
+"Madame," said the General, "pray accept our apologies. A mistake has
+been made. You may continue your journey without fear; and here is a
+passport which will spare you all further annoyance of any kind."
+
+Trembling the Countess took the paper, and faltered out some vague
+words of thanks. She saw Arthur, now wearing an English uniform,
+standing beside the General, and could not doubt that this prompt
+deliverance was due to him. The young Englishman himself looked half
+glad, half melancholy; his face was turned away, and he only dared to
+steal an occasional glance at Julie's face.
+
+Thanks to the passport, Mme. d'Aiglemont reached Paris without further
+misadventure, and there she found her husband. Victor d'Aiglemont,
+released from his oath of allegiance to the Emperor, had met with a
+most flattering reception from the Comte d'Artois, recently appointed
+Lieutenant-General of the kingdom by his brother Louis XVIII.
+D'Aiglemont received a commission in the Life Guards, equivalent to
+the rank of general. But amid the rejoicings over the return of the
+Bourbons, fate dealt poor Julie a terrible blow. The death of the
+Marquise de Listomere-Landon was an irreparable loss. The old lady
+died of joy and of an accession of gout to the heart when the Duc
+d'Angouleme came back to Tours, and the one living being entitled by
+her age to enlighten Victor, the woman who, by discreet counsels,
+might have brought about perfect unanimity of husband and wife, was
+dead; and Julie felt the full extent of her loss. Henceforward she
+must stand alone between herself and her husband. But she was young
+and timid; there could be no doubt of the result, or that from the
+first she would elect to bear her lot in silence. The very perfections
+of her character forbade her to venture to swerve from her duties, or
+to attempt to inquire into the cause of her sufferings, for to put an
+end to them would have been to venture on delicate ground, and Julie's
+girlish modesty shrank from the thought.
+
+A word as to M. d'Aiglemont's destinies under the Restoration.
+
+How many men are there whose utter incapacity is a secret kept from
+most of their acquaintance. For such as these high rank, high office,
+illustrious birth, a certain veneer of politeness, and considerable
+reserve of manner, or the /prestige/ of great fortunes, are but so
+many sentinels to turn back critics who would penetrate to the
+presence of the real man. Such men are like kings, in that their real
+figure, character, and life can never be known nor justly appreciated,
+because they are always seen from too near or too far. Factitious
+merit has a way of asking questions and saying little; and understands
+the art of putting others forward to save the necessity of posing
+before them; then, with a happy knack of its own, it draws and
+attaches others by the thread of the ruling passion of self-interest,
+keeping men of far greater abilities to play like puppets, and
+despising those whom it has brought down to its own level. The petty
+fixed idea naturally prevails; it has the advantage of persistence
+over the plasticity of great thoughts.
+
+The observer who should seek to estimate and appraise the negative
+values of these empty heads needs subtlety rather than superior wit
+for the task; patience is a more necessary part of his judicial outfit
+than great mental grasp, cunning and tact rather than any elevation or
+greatness of ideas. Yet skilfully as such usurpers can cover and
+defend their weak points, it is difficult to delude wife and mother
+and children and the house-friend of the family; fortunately for them,
+however, these persons almost always keep a secret which in a manner
+touches the honor of all, and not unfrequently go so far as to help to
+foist the imposture upon the public. And if, thanks to such domestic
+conspiracy, many a noodle passes current for a man of ability, on the
+other hand many another who has real ability is taken for a noodle to
+redress the balance, and the total average of this kind of false coin
+in circulation in the state is a pretty constant quantity.
+
+Bethink yourself now of the part to be played by a clever woman quick
+to think and feel, mated with a husband of this kind, and can you not
+see a vision of lives full of sorrow and self-sacrifice? Nothing upon
+earth can repay such hearts so full of love and tender tact. Put a
+strong-willed woman in this wretched situation, and she will force a
+way out of it for herself by a crime, like Catherine II., whom men
+nevertheless style "the Great." But these women are not all seated
+upon thrones, they are for the most part doomed to domestic
+unhappiness none the less terrible because obscure.
+
+Those who seek consolation in this present world for their woes often
+effect nothing but a change of ills if they remain faithful to their
+duties; or they commit a sin if they break the laws for their
+pleasure. All these reflections are applicable to Julie's domestic
+life.
+
+Before the fall of Napoleon nobody was jealous of d'Aiglemont. He was
+one colonel among many, an efficient orderly staff-officer, as good a
+man as you could find for a dangerous mission, as unfit as well could
+be for an important command. D'Aiglemont was looked upon as a dashing
+soldier such as the Emperor liked, the kind of man whom his mess
+usually calls "a good fellow." The Restoration gave him back his title
+of Marquis, and did not find him ungrateful; he followed the Bourbons
+into exile at Ghent, a piece of logical loyalty which falsified the
+horoscope drawn for him by his late father-in-law, who predicted that
+Victor would remain a colonel all his life. After the Hundred Days he
+received the appointment of Lieutenant-General, and for the second
+time became a marquis; but it was M. d'Aiglemont's ambition to be a
+peer of France. He adopted, therefore, the maxims and the politics of
+the /Conservateur/, cloaked himself in dissimulation which hid nothing
+(there being nothing to hide), cultivated gravity of countenance and
+the art of asking questions and saying little, and was taken for a man
+of profound wisdom. Nothing drew him from his intrenchments behind the
+forms of politeness; he laid in a provision of formulas, and made
+lavish use of his stock of the catch-words coined at need in Paris to
+give fools the small change for the ore of great ideas and events.
+Among men of the world he was reputed a man of taste and discernment;
+and as a bigoted upholder of aristocratic opinions he was held up for
+a noble character. If by chance he slipped now and again into his old
+light-heartedness or levity, others were ready to discover an
+undercurrent of diplomatic intention beneath his inanity and
+silliness. "Oh! he only says exactly as much as he means to say,"
+thought these excellent people.
+
+So d'Aiglemont's defects and good qualities stood him alike in good
+stead. He did nothing to forfeit a high military reputation gained by
+his dashing courage, for he had never been a commander-in-chief. Great
+thoughts surely were engraven upon that manly aristocratic
+countenance, which imposed upon every one but his own wife. And when
+everybody else believed in the Marquis d'Aiglemont's imaginary
+talents, the Marquis persuaded himself before he had done that he was
+one of the most remarkable men at Court, where, thanks to his purely
+external qualifications, he was in favor and taken at his own
+valuation.
+
+At home, however, M. d'Aiglemont was modest. Instinctively he felt
+that his wife, young though she was, was his superior; and out of this
+involuntary respect there grew an occult power which the Marquise was
+obliged to wield in spite of all her efforts to shake off the burden.
+She became her husband's adviser, the director of his actions and his
+fortunes. It was an unnatural position; she felt it as something of a
+humiliation, a source of pain to be buried in the depths of her heart.
+From the first her delicately feminine instinct told her that it is a
+far better thing to obey a man of talent than to lead a fool; and that
+a young wife compelled to act and think like a man is neither man nor
+woman, but a being who lays aside all the charms of her womanhood
+along with its misfortunes, yet acquires none of the privileges which
+our laws give to the stronger sex. Beneath the surface her life was a
+bitter mockery. Was she not compelled to protect her protector, to
+worship a hollow idol, a poor creature who flung her the love of a
+selfish husband as the wages of her continual self-sacrifice; who saw
+nothing in her but the woman; and who either did not think it worth
+while, or (wrong quite as deep) did not think at all of troubling
+himself about her pleasures, of inquiring into the cause of her low
+spirits and dwindling health? And the Marquis, like most men who chafe
+under a wife's superiority, saved his self-love by arguing from
+Julie's physical feebleness a corresponding lack of mental power, for
+which he was pleased to pity her; and he would cry out upon fate which
+had given him a sickly girl for a wife. The executioner posed, in
+fact, as the victim.
+
+All the burdens of this dreary lot fell upon the Marquise, who still
+must smile upon her foolish lord, and deck a house of mourning with
+flowers, and make a parade of happiness in a countenance wan with
+secret torture. And with this sense of responsibility for the honor of
+both, with the magnificent immolation of self, the young Marquise
+unconsciously acquired a wifely dignity, a consciousness of virtue
+which became her safeguard amid many dangers.
+
+Perhaps, if her heart were sounded to the very depths, this intimate
+closely hidden wretchedness, following upon her unthinking, girlish
+first love, had roused in her an abhorrence of passion; possibly she
+had no conception of its rapture, nor of the forbidden but frenzied
+bliss for which some women will renounce all the laws of prudence and
+the principles of conduct upon which society is based. She put from
+her like a dream the thought of bliss and tender harmony of love
+promised by Mme. de Listomere-Landon's mature experience, and waited
+resignedly for the end of her troubles with a hope that she might die
+young.
+
+Her health had declined daily since her return from Touraine; her life
+seemed to be measured to her in suffering; yet her ill-health was
+graceful, her malady seemed little more than languor, and might well
+be taken by careless eyes for a fine lady's whim of invalidism.
+
+Her doctors had condemned her to keep to the sofa, and there among her
+flowers lay the Marquise, fading as they faded. She was not strong
+enough to walk, nor to bear the open air, and only went out in a
+closed carriage. Yet with all the marvels of modern luxury and
+invention about her, she looked more like an indolent queen than an
+invalid. A few of her friends, half in love perhaps with her sad
+plight and her fragile look, sure of finding her at home, and
+speculating no doubt upon her future restoration to health, would come
+to bring her the news of the day, and kept her informed of the
+thousand and one small events which fill life in Paris with variety.
+Her melancholy, deep and real though it was was still the melancholy
+of a woman rich in many ways. The Marquise d'Aiglemont was like a
+flower, with a dark insect gnawing at its root.
+
+Occasionally she went into society, not to please herself, but in
+obedience to the exigencies of the position which her husband aspired
+to take. In society her beautiful voice and the perfection of her
+singing could always gain the social success so gratifying to a young
+woman; but what was social success to her, who drew nothing from it
+for her heart or her hopes? Her husband did not care for music. And,
+moreover, she seldom felt at her ease in salons, where her beauty
+attracted homage not wholly disinterested. Her position excited a sort
+of cruel compassion, a morbid curiosity. She was suffering from an
+inflammatory complaint not infrequently fatal, for which our nosology
+as yet has found no name, a complaint spoken of among women in
+confidential whispers. In spite of the silence in which her life was
+spent, the cause of her ill-health was no secret. She was still but a
+girl in spite of her marriage; the slightest glance threw her into
+confusion. In her endeavor not to blush, she was always laughing,
+always apparently in high spirits; she would never admit that she was
+not perfectly well, and anticipated questions as to her health by
+shame-stricken subterfuges.
+
+In 1817, however, an event took place which did much to alleviate
+Julie's hitherto deplorable existence. A daughter was born to her, and
+she determined to nurse her child herself. For two years motherhood,
+its all-absorbing multiplicity of cares and anxious joys, made life
+less hard for her. She and her husband lived necessarily apart. Her
+physicians predicted improved health, but the Marquise herself put no
+faith in these auguries based on theory. Perhaps, like many a one for
+whom life has lost its sweetness, she looked forward to death as a
+happy termination of the drama.
+
+But with the beginning of the year 1819 life grew harder than ever.
+Even while she congratulated herself upon the negative happiness which
+she had contrived to win, she caught a terrifying glimpse of yawning
+depths below it. She had passed by degrees out of her husband's life.
+Her fine tact and her prudence told her that misfortune must come, and
+that not singly, of this cooling of an affection already lukewarm and
+wholly selfish. Sure though she was of her ascendency over Victor, and
+certain as she felt of his unalterable esteem, she dreaded the
+influence of unbridled passions upon a head so empty, so full of rash
+self-conceit.
+
+Julie's friends often found her absorbed in prolonged musings; the
+less clairvoyant among them would jestingly ask her what she was
+thinking about, as if a young wife would think of nothing but
+frivolity, as if there were not almost always a depth of seriousness
+in a mother's thoughts. Unhappiness, like great happiness, induces
+dreaming. Sometimes as Julie played with her little Helene, she would
+gaze darkly at her, giving no reply to the childish questions in which
+a mother delights, questioning the present and the future as to the
+destiny of this little one. Then some sudden recollection would bring
+back the scene of the review at the Tuileries and fill her eyes with
+tears. Her father's prophetic warnings rang in her ears, and
+conscience reproached her that she had not recognized its wisdom. Her
+troubles had all come of her own wayward folly, and often she knew not
+which among so many were the hardest to bear. The sweet treasures of
+her soul were unheeded, and not only so, she could never succeed in
+making her husband understand her, even in the commonest everyday
+things. Just as the power to love developed and grew strong and
+active, a legitimate channel for the affections of her nature was
+denied her, and wedded love was extinguished in grave physical and
+mental sufferings. Add to this that she now felt for her husband that
+pity closely bordering upon contempt, which withers all affection at
+last. Even if she had not learned from conversations with some of her
+friends, from examples in life, from sundry occurrences in the great
+world, that love can bring ineffable bliss, her own wounds would have
+taught her to divine the pure and deep happiness which binds two
+kindred souls each to each.
+
+In the picture which her memory traced of the past, Arthur's frank
+face stood out daily nobler and purer; it was but a flash, for upon
+that recollection she dared not dwell. The young Englishman's shy,
+silent love for her was the one event since her marriage which had
+left a lingering sweetness in her darkened and lonely heart. It may be
+that all the blighted hopes, all the frustrated longings which
+gradually clouded Julie's mind, gathered, by a not unnatural trick of
+imagination, about this man--whose manners, sentiments, and character
+seemed to have so much in common with her own. This idea still
+presented itself to her mind fitfully and vaguely, like a dream; yet
+from that dream, which always ended in a sigh, Julie awoke to greater
+wretchedness, to keener consciousness of the latent anguish brooding
+beneath her imaginary bliss.
+
+Occasionally her self-pity took wilder and more daring flights. She
+determined to have happiness at any cost; but still more often she lay
+a helpless victim of an indescribable numbing stupor, the words she
+heard had no meaning to her, or the thoughts which arose in her mind
+were so vague and indistinct that she could not find language to
+express them. Balked of the wishes of her heart, realities jarred
+harshly upon her girlish dreams of life, but she was obliged to devour
+her tears. To whom could she make complaint? Of whom be understood?
+She possessed, moreover, that highest degree of woman's sensitive
+pride, the exquisite delicacy of feeling which silences useless
+complainings and declines to use an advantage to gain a triumph which
+can only humiliate both victor and vanquished.
+
+Julie tried to endow M. d'Aiglemont with her own abilities and
+virtues, flattering herself that thus she might enjoy the happiness
+lacking in her lot. All her woman's ingenuity and tack was employed in
+making the best of the situation; pure waste of pains unsuspected by
+him, whom she thus strengthened in his despotism. There were moments
+when misery became an intoxication, expelling all ideas, all self-
+control; but, fortunately, sincere piety always brought her back to
+one supreme hope; she found a refuge in the belief in a future life, a
+wonderful thought which enabled her to take up her painful task
+afresh. No elation of victory followed those terrible inward battles
+and throes of anguish; no one knew of those long hours of sadness; her
+haggard glances met no response from human eyes, and during the brief
+moments snatched by chance for weeping, her bitter tears fell unheeded
+and in solitude.
+
+One evening in January 1820, the Marquise became aware of the full
+gravity of the crisis, gradually brought on by force of circumstances.
+When a husband and wife know each other thoroughly, and their relation
+has long been a matter of use and wont, when the wife has learned to
+interpret every slightest sign, when her quick insight discerns
+thoughts and facts which her husband keeps from her, a chance word, or
+a remark so carelessly let fall in the first instance, seems, upon
+subsequent reflection, like the swift breaking out of light. A wife
+not seldom suddenly awakes upon the brink of a precipice or in the
+depths of the abyss; and thus it was with the Marquise. She was
+feeling glad to have been left to herself for some days, when the real
+reason of her solitude flashed upon her. Her husband, whether fickle
+and tired of her, or generous and full of pity for her, was hers no
+longer.
+
+In the moment of that discovery she forgot herself, her sacrifices,
+all that she had passed through, she remembered only that she was a
+mother. Looking forward, she thought of her daughter's fortune, of the
+future welfare of the one creature through whom some gleams of
+happiness came to her, of her Helene, the only possession which bound
+her to life.
+
+Then Julie wished to live to save her child from a stepmother's
+terrible thraldom, which might crush her darling's life. Upon this new
+vision of threatened possibilities followed one of those paroxysms of
+thought at fever-heat which consume whole years of life.
+
+Henceforward husband and wife were doomed to be separated by a whole
+world of thought, and all the weight of that world she must bear
+alone. Hitherto she had felt sure that Victor loved her, in so far as
+he could be said to love; she had been the slave of pleasures which
+she did not share; to-day the satisfaction of knowing that she
+purchased his contentment with her tears was hers no longer. She was
+alone in the world, nothing was left to her now but a choice of evils.
+In the calm stillness of the night her despondency drained her of all
+her strength. She rose from her sofa beside the dying fire, and stood
+in the lamplight gazing, dry-eyed, at her child, when M. d'Aiglemont
+came in. He was in high spirits. Julie called to him to admire Helene
+as she lay asleep, but he met his wife's enthusiasm with a
+commonplace:
+
+"All children are nice at that age."
+
+He closed the curtains about the cot after a careless kiss on the
+child's forehead. Then he turned his eyes on Julie, took her hand and
+drew her to sit beside him on the sofa, where she had been sitting
+with such dark thoughts surging up in her mind.
+
+"You are looking very handsome to-night, Mme. d'Aiglemont," he
+exclaimed, with the gaiety intolerable to the Marquise, who knew its
+emptiness so well.
+
+"Where have you spent the evening?" she asked, with a pretence of
+complete indifference.
+
+"At Mme. de Serizy's."
+
+He had taken up a fire-screen, and was looking intently at the gauze.
+He had not noticed the traces of tears on his wife's face. Julie
+shuddered. Words could not express the overflowing torrent of thoughts
+which must be forced down into inner depths.
+
+"Mme. de Serizy is giving a concert on Monday, and is dying for you to
+go. You have not been anywhere for some time past, and that is enough
+to set her longing to see you at her house. She is a good-natured
+woman, and very fond of you. I should be glad if you would go; I all
+but promised that you should----"
+
+"I will go."
+
+There was something so penetrating, so significant in the tones of
+Julie's voice, in her accent, in the glance that went with the words,
+that Victor, startled out of his indifference, stared at his wife in
+astonishment.
+
+That was all, Julie had guessed that it was Mme. de Serizy who had
+stolen her husband's heart from her. Her brooding despair benumbed
+her. She appeared to be deeply interested in the fire. Victor
+meanwhile still played with the fire-screen. He looked bored, like a
+man who has enjoyed himself elsewhere, and brought home the consequent
+lassitude. He yawned once or twice, then he took up a candle in one
+hand, and with the other languidly sought his wife's neck for the
+usual embrace; but Julie stooped and received the good-night kiss upon
+her forehead; the formal, loveless grimace seemed hateful to her at
+that moment.
+
+As soon as the door closed upon Victor, his wife sank into a seat. Her
+limbs tottered beneath her, she burst into tears. None but those who
+have endured the torture of some such scene can fully understand the
+anguish that it means, or divine the horror of the long-drawn tragedy
+arising out of it.
+
+Those simple, foolish words, the silence that followed between the
+husband and wife, the Marquis' gesture and expression, the way in
+which he sat before the fire, his attitude as he made that futile
+attempt to put a kiss on his wife's throat,--all these things made up
+a dark hour for Julie, and the catastrophe of the drama of her sad and
+lonely life. In her madness she knelt down before the sofa, burying
+her face in it to shut out everything from sight, and prayed to
+Heaven, putting a new significance into the words of the evening
+prayer, till it became a cry from the depths of her own soul, which
+would have gone to her husband's heart if he had heard it.
+
+The following week she spent in deep thought for her future, utterly
+overwhelmed by this new trouble. She made a study of it, trying to
+discover a way to regain her ascendency over the Marquis, scheming how
+to live long enough to watch over her daughter's happiness, yet to
+live true to her own heart. Then she made up her mind. She would
+struggle with her rival. She would shine once more in society. She
+would feign the love which she could no longer feel, she would
+captivate her husband's fancy; and when she had lured him into her
+power, she would coquet with him like a capricious mistress who takes
+delight in tormenting a lover. This hateful strategy was the only
+possible way out of her troubles. In this way she would become
+mistress of the situation; she would prescribe her own sufferings at
+her good pleasure, and reduce them by enslaving her husband, and
+bringing him under a tyrannous yoke. She felt not the slightest
+remorse for the hard life which he should lead. At a bound she reached
+cold, calculating indifference--for her daughter's sake. She had
+gained a sudden insight into the treacherous, lying arts of degraded
+women; the wiles of coquetry, the revolting cunning which arouses such
+profound hatred in men at the mere suspicion of innate corruption in a
+woman.
+
+Julie's feminine vanity, her interests, and a vague desire to inflict
+punishment, all wrought unconsciously with the mother's love within
+her to force her into a path where new sufferings awaited her. But her
+nature was too noble, her mind too fastidious, and, above all things,
+too open, to be the accomplice of these frauds for very long.
+Accustomed as she was to self-scrutiny, at the first step in vice--for
+vice it was--the cry of conscience must inevitably drown the clamor of
+the passions and of selfishness. Indeed, in a young wife whose heart
+is still pure, whose love has never been mated, the very sentiment of
+motherhood is overpowered by modesty. Modesty; is not all womanhood
+summed up in that? But just now Julie would not see any danger,
+anything wrong, in her life.
+
+She went to Mme. de Serizy's concert. Her rival had expected to see a
+pallid, drooping woman. The Marquise wore rouge, and appeared in all
+the splendor of a toilet which enhanced her beauty.
+
+Mme. de Serizy was one of those women who claim to exercise a sort of
+sway over fashions and society in Paris; she issued her decrees, saw
+them received in her own circle, and it seemed to her that all the
+world obeyed them. She aspired to epigram, she set up for an authority
+in matters of taste. Literature, politics, men and women, all alike
+were submitted to her censorship, and the lady herself appeared to
+defy the censorship of others. Her house was in every respect a model
+of good taste.
+
+Julie triumphed over the Countess in her own salon, filled as it was
+with beautiful women and women of fashion. Julie's liveliness and
+sparkling wit gathered all the most distinguished men in the rooms
+about her. Her costume was faultless, for the despair of the women,
+who one and all envied her the fashion of her dress, and attributed
+the moulded outline of her bodice to the genius of some unknown
+dressmaker, for women would rather believe in miracles worked by the
+science of chiffons than in the grace and perfection of the form
+beneath.
+
+When Julie went to the piano to sing Desdemona's song, the men in the
+rooms flocked about her to hear the celebrated voice so long mute, and
+there was a deep silence. The Marquise saw the heads clustered thickly
+in the doorways, saw all eyes turned upon her, and a sharp thrill of
+excitement quivered through her. She looked for her husband, gave him
+a coquettish side-glance, and it pleased her to see that his vanity
+was gratified to no small degree. In the joy of triumph she sang the
+first part of /Al piu salice/. Her audience was enraptured. Never had
+Malibran nor Pasta sung with expression and intonation so perfect. But
+at the beginning of the second part she glanced over the glistening
+groups and saw--Arthur. He never took his eyes from her face. A quick
+shudder thrilled through her, and her voice faltered. Up hurried Mme.
+de Serizy from her place.
+
+"What is it, dear? Oh! poor little thing! she is in such weak health;
+I was so afraid when I saw her begin a piece so far beyond her
+strength."
+
+The song was interrupted. Julie was vexed. She had not courage to sing
+any longer, and submitted to her rival's treacherous sympathy. There
+was a whisper among the women. The incident led to discussions; they
+guessed that the struggle had begun between the Marquise and Mme. de
+Serizy, and their tongues did not spare the latter.
+
+Julie's strange, perturbing presentiments were suddenly realized.
+Through her preoccupation with Arthur she had loved to imagine that
+with that gentle, refined face he must remain faithful to his first
+love. There were times when she felt proud that this ideal, pure, and
+passionate young love should have been hers; the passion of the young
+lover whose thoughts are all for her to whom he dedicates every moment
+of his life, who blushes as a woman blushes, thinks as a woman might
+think, forgetting ambition, fame, and fortune in devotion to his love,
+--she need never fear a rival. All these things she had fondly and
+idly dreamed of Arthur; now all at once it seemed to her that her
+dream had come true. In the young Englishman's half-feminine face she
+read the same deep thoughts, the same pensive melancholy, the same
+passive acquiescence in a painful lot, and an endurance like her own.
+She saw herself in him. Trouble and sadness are the most eloquent of
+love's interpreters, and response is marvelously swift between two
+suffering creatures, for in them the powers of intuition and of
+assimilation of facts and ideas are well-nigh unerring and perfect. So
+with the violence of the shock the Marquise's eyes were opened to the
+whole extent of the future danger. She was only too glad to find a
+pretext for her nervousness in her chronic ill-health, and willingly
+submitted to be overwhelmed by Mme. de Serizy's insidious compassion.
+
+That incident of the song caused talk and discussion which differed
+with the various groups. Some pitied Julie's fate, and regretted that
+such a remarkable woman was lost to society; others fell to wondering
+what the cause of her ill-health and seclusion could be.
+
+"Well, now, my dear Ronquerolles," said the Marquis, addressing Mme.
+de Serizy's brother, "you used to envy me my good fortune, and you
+used to blame me for my infidelities. Pshaw, you would not find much
+to envy in my lot, if, like me, you had a pretty wife so fragile that
+for the past two years you might not so much as kiss her hand for fear
+of damaging her. Do not you encumber yourself with one of those
+fragile ornaments, only fit to put in a glass case, so brittle and so
+costly that you are always obliged to be careful of them. They tell me
+that you are afraid of snow or wet for that fine horse of yours; how
+often do you ride him? That is just my own case. It is true that my
+wife gives me no ground for jealousy, but my marriage is purely
+ornamental business; if you think that I am a married man, you are
+grossly mistaken. So there is some excuse for my unfaithfulness. I
+should dearly like to know what you gentlemen who laugh at me would do
+in my place. Not many men would be so considerate as I am. I am sure,"
+(here he lowered his voice) "that Mme. d'Aiglemont suspects nothing.
+And then, of course, I have no right to complain at all; I am very
+well off. Only there is nothing more trying for a man who feels things
+than the sight of suffering in a poor creature to whom you are
+attached----"
+
+"You must have a very sensitive nature, then," said M. de
+Ronquerolles, "for you are not often at home."
+
+Laughter followed on the friendly epigram; but Arthur, who made one of
+the group, maintained a frigid imperturbability in his quality of an
+English gentleman who takes gravity for the very basis of his being.
+D'Aiglemont's eccentric confidence, no doubt, had kindled some kind of
+hope in Arthur, for he stood patiently awaiting an opportunity of a
+word with the Marquis. He had not to wait long.
+
+"My Lord Marquis," he said, "I am unspeakably pained to see the state
+of Mme. d'Aiglemont's health. I do not think that you would talk
+jestingly about it if you knew that unless she adopts a certain course
+of treatment she must die miserably. If I use this language to you, it
+is because I am in a manner justified in using it, for I am quite
+certain that I can save Mme. d'Aiglemont's life and restore her to
+health and happiness. It is odd, no doubt, that a man of my rank
+should be a physician, yet nevertheless chance determined that I
+should study medicine. I find life dull enough here," he continued,
+affecting a cold selfishness to gain his ends, "it makes no difference
+to me whether I spend my time and travel for the benefit of a
+suffering fellow-creature, or waste it in Paris on some nonsense or
+other. It is very, very seldom that a cure is completed in these
+complaints, for they require constant care, time, and patience, and,
+above all things, money. Travel is needed, and a punctilious following
+out of prescriptions, by no means unpleasant, and varied daily. Two
+/gentlemen/" (laying a stress on the word in its English sense) "can
+understand each other. I give you warning that if you accept my
+proposal, you shall be a judge of my conduct at every moment. I will
+do nothing without consulting you, without your superintendence, and I
+will answer for the success of my method if you will consent to follow
+it. Yes, unless you wish to be Mme. d'Aiglemont's husband no longer,
+and that before long," he added in the Marquis' ear.
+
+The Marquis laughed. "One thing is certain--that only an Englishman
+could make me such an extraordinary proposal," he said. "Permit me to
+leave it unaccepted and unrejected. I will think it over; and my wife
+must be consulted first in any case."
+
+Julie had returned to the piano. This time she sang a song from
+/Semiramide, Son regina, son guerriera/, and the whole room applauded,
+a stifled outburst of wellbred acclamation which proved that the
+Faubourg Saint-Germain had been roused to enthusiasm by her singing.
+
+The evening was over. D'Aiglemont brought his wife home, and Julie saw
+with uneasy satisfaction that her first attempt had at once been
+successful. Her husband had been roused out of indifference by the
+part which she had played, and now he meant to honor her with such a
+passing fancy as he might bestow upon some opera nymph. It amused
+Julie that she, a virtuous married woman, should be treated thus. She
+tried to play with her power, but at the outset her kindness broke
+down once more, and she received the most terrible of all the lessons
+held in store for her by fate.
+
+Between two and three o'clock in the morning Julie sat up, sombre and
+moody, beside her sleeping husband, in the room dimly lighted by the
+flickering lamp. Deep silence prevailed. Her agony of remorse had
+lasted near an hour; how bitter her tears had been none perhaps can
+realize save women who have known such an experience as hers. Only
+such natures as Julie's can feel her loathing for a calculated caress,
+the horror of a loveless kiss, of the heart's apostasy followed by
+dolorous prostitution. She despised herself; she cursed marriage. She
+could have longed for death; perhaps if it had not been for a cry from
+her child, she would have sprung from the window and dashed herself
+upon the pavement. M. d'Aiglemont slept on peacefully at her side; his
+wife's hot dropping tears did not waken him.
+
+But next morning Julie could be gay. She made a great effort to look
+happy, to hide, not her melancholy, as heretofore, but an insuperable
+loathing. From that day she no longer regarded herself as a blameless
+wife. Had she not been false to herself? Why should she not play a
+double part in the future, and display astounding depths of cunning in
+deceiving her husband? In her there lay a hitherto undiscovered latent
+depravity, lacking only opportunity, and her marriage was the cause.
+
+Even now she had asked herself why she should struggle with love,
+when, with her heart and her whole nature in revolt, she gave herself
+to the husband whom she loved no longer. Perhaps, who knows? some
+piece of fallacious reasoning, some bit of special pleading, lies at
+the root of all sins, of all crimes. How shall society exist unless
+every individual of which it is composed will make the necessary
+sacrifices of inclination demanded by its laws? If you accept the
+benefits of civilized society, do you not by implication engage to
+observe the conditions, the conditions of its very existence? And yet,
+starving wretches, compelled to respect the laws of property, are not
+less to be pitied than women whose natural instincts and sensitiveness
+are turned to so many avenues of pain.
+
+A few days after that scene of which the secret lay buried in the
+midnight couch, d'Aiglemont introduced Lord Grenville. Julie gave the
+guest a stiffly polite reception, which did credit to her powers of
+dissimulation. Resolutely she silenced her heart, veiled her eyes,
+steadied her voice, and she kept her future in her own hands. Then,
+when by these devices, this innate woman-craft, as it may be called,
+she had discovered the full extent of the love which she inspired,
+Mme. d'Aiglemont welcomed the hope of a speedy cure, and no longer
+opposed her husband, who pressed her to accept the young doctor's
+offer. Yet she declined to trust herself with Lord Grenville until
+after some further study of his words and manner, she could feel
+certain that he had sufficient generosity to endure his pain in
+silence. She had absolute power over him, and she had begun to abuse
+that power already. Was she not a woman?
+
+Montcontour is an old manor-house build upon the sandy cliffs above
+the Loire, not far from the bridge where Julie's journey was
+interrupted in 1814. It is a picturesque, white chateau, with turrets
+covered with fine stone carving like Mechlin lace; a chateau such as
+you often see in Touraine, spick and span, ivy clad, standing among
+its groves of mulberry trees and vineyards, with its hollow walks, its
+stone balustrades, and cellars mined in the rock escarpments mirrored
+in the Loire. The roofs of Montcontour gleam in the sun; the whole
+land glows in the burning heat. Traces of the romantic charm of Spain
+and the south hover about the enchanting spot. The breeze brings the
+scent of bell flowers and golden broom, the air is soft, all about you
+lies a sunny land, a land which casts its dreamy spell over your soul,
+a land of languor and of soft desire, a fair, sweet-scented country,
+where pain is lulled to sleep and passion wakes. No heart is cold for
+long beneath its clear sky, beside its sparkling waters. One ambition
+dies after another, and you sink into serene content and repose, as
+the sun sinks at the end of the day swathed about with purple and
+azure.
+
+
+
+One warm August evening in 1821 two people were climbing the paths cut
+in the crags above the chateau, doubtless for the sake of the view
+from the heights above. The two were Julie and Lord Grenville, but
+this Julie seemed to be a new creature. The unmistakable color of
+health glowed in her face. Overflowing vitality had brought a light
+into her eyes, which sparkled through a moist film with that liquid
+brightness which gives such irresistible charm to the eyes of
+children. She was radiant with smiles; she felt the joy of living and
+all the possibilities of life. From the very way in which she lifted
+her little feet, it was easy to see that no suffering trammeled her
+lightest movements; there was no heaviness nor languor in her eyes,
+her voice, as heretofore. Under the white silk sunshade which screened
+her from the hot sunlight, she looked like some young bride beneath
+her veil, or a maiden waiting to yield to the magical enchantments of
+Love.
+
+Arthur led her with a lover's care, helping her up the pathway as if
+she had been a child, finding the smoothest ways, avoiding the stones
+for her, bidding her see glimpses of distance, or some flower beside
+the path, always with the unfailing goodness, the same delicate design
+in all that he did; the intuitive sense of this woman's wellbeing
+seemed to be innate in him, and as much, nay, perhaps more, a part of
+his being as the pulse of his own life.
+
+The patient and her doctor went step for step. There was nothing
+strange for them in a sympathy which seemed to have existed since the
+day when they first walked together. One will swayed them both; they
+stopped as their senses received the same impression; every word and
+every glance told of the same thought in either mind. They had climbed
+up through the vineyards, and now they turned to sit on one of the
+long white stones, quarried out of the caves in the hillside; but
+Julie stood awhile gazing out over the landscape.
+
+"What a beautiful country!" she cried. "Let us put up a tent and live
+here. Victor, Victor, do come up here!"
+
+M. d'Aiglemont answered by a halloo from below. He did not, however,
+hurry himself, merely giving his wife a glance from time to time when
+the windings of the path gave him a glimpse of her. Julie breathed the
+air with delight. She looked up at Arthur, giving him one of those
+subtle glances in which a clever woman can put the whole of her
+thought.
+
+"Ah, I should like to live here always," she said. "Would it be
+possible to tire of this beautiful valley?--What is the picturesque
+river called, do you know?"
+
+"That is the Cise."
+
+"The Cise," she repeated. "And all this country below, before us?"
+
+"Those are the low hills above the Cher."
+
+"And away to the right? Ah, that is Tours. Only see how fine the
+cathedral towers look in the distance."
+
+She was silent, and let fall the hand which she had stretched out
+towards the view upon Arthur's. Both admired the wide landscape made
+up of so much blended beauty. Neither of them spoke. The murmuring
+voice of the river, the pure air, and the cloudless heaven were all in
+tune with their thronging thoughts and their youth and the love in
+their hearts.
+
+"Oh! /mon Dieu/, how I love this country!" Julie continued, with
+growing and ingenuous enthusiasm. "You lived here for a long while,
+did you not?" she added after a pause.
+
+A thrill ran through Lord Grenville at her words.
+
+"It was down there," he said, in a melancholy voice, indicating as he
+spoke a cluster of walnut trees by the roadside, "that I, a prisoner,
+saw you for the first time."
+
+"Yes, but even at that time I felt very sad. This country looked wild
+to me then, but now----" She broke off, and Lord Grenville did not
+dare to look at her.
+
+"All this pleasure I owe to you," Julie began at last, after a long
+silence. "Only the living can feel the joy of life, and until now have
+I not been dead to it all? You have given me more than health, you
+have made me feel all its worth--"
+
+Women have an inimitable talent for giving utterance to strong
+feelings in colorless words; a woman's eloquence lies in tone and
+gesture, manner and glance. Lord Grenville hid his face in his hands,
+for his tears filled his eyes. This was Julie's first word of thanks
+since they left Paris a year ago.
+
+For a whole year he had watched over the Marquise, putting his whole
+self into the task. D'Aiglemont seconding him, he had taken her first
+to Aix, then to la Rochelle, to be near the sea. From moment to moment
+he had watched the changes worked in Julie's shattered constitution by
+his wise and simple prescriptions. He had cultivated her health as an
+enthusiastic gardener might cultivate a rare flower. Yet, to all
+appearance, the Marquise had quietly accepted Arthur's skill and care
+with the egoism of a spoiled Parisienne, or like a courtesan who has
+no idea of the cost of things, nor of the worth of a man, and judges
+of both by their comparative usefulness to her.
+
+The influence of places upon us is a fact worth remarking. If
+melancholy comes over us by the margin of a great water, another
+indelible law of our nature so orders it that the mountains exercise a
+purifying influence upon our feelings, and among the hills passion
+gains in depth by all that it apparently loses in vivacity. Perhaps it
+was the light of the wide country by the Loire, the height of the fair
+sloping hillside on which the lovers sat, that induced the calm bliss
+of the moment when the whole extent of the passion that lies beneath a
+few insignificant-sounding words is divined for the first time with a
+delicious sense of happiness.
+
+Julie had scarcely spoken the words which had moved Lord Grenville so
+deeply, when a caressing breeze ruffled the treetops and filled the
+air with coolness from the river; a few clouds crossed the sky, and
+the soft cloud-shadows brought out all the beauty of the fair land
+below.
+
+Julie turned away her head, lest Arthur should see the tears which she
+succeeded in repressing; his emotion had spread at once to her. She
+dried her eyes, but she dared not raise them lest he should read the
+excess of joy in a glance. Her woman's instinct told her that during
+this hour of danger she must hide her love in the depths of her heart.
+Yet silence might prove equally dangerous, and Julie saw that Lord
+Grenville was unable to utter a word. She went on, therefore, in a
+gentle voice:
+
+"You are touched by what I have said. Perhaps such a quick outburst of
+feeling is the way in which a gracious and kind nature like yours
+reverses a mistaken judgment. You must have thought me ungrateful when
+I was cold and reserved, or cynical and hard, all through the journey
+which, fortunately, is very near its end. I should not have been
+worthy of your care if I had been unable to appreciate it. I have
+forgotten nothing. Alas! I shall forget nothing, not the anxious way
+in which you watched over me as a mother watches over her child, nor,
+and above all else, the noble confidence of our life as brother and
+sister, the delicacy of your conduct--winning charms, against which we
+women are defenceless. My lord, it is out of my power to make you a
+return----"
+
+At these words Julie hastily moved further away, and Lord Grenville
+made no attempt to detain her. She went to a rock not far away, and
+there sat motionless. What either felt remained a secret known to each
+alone; doubtless they wept in silence. The singing of the birds about
+them, so blithe, so overflowing with tenderness at sunset time, could
+only increase the storm of passion which had driven them apart. Nature
+took up their story for them, and found a language for the love of
+which they did not dare to speak.
+
+"And now, my lord," said Julie, and she came and stood before Arthur
+with a great dignity, which allowed her to take his hand in hers. "I
+am going to ask you to hallow and purify the life which you have given
+back to me. Here, we will part. I know," she added, as she saw how
+white his face grew, "I know that I am repaying you for your devotion
+by requiring of you a sacrifice even greater than any which you have
+hitherto made for me, sacrifices so great that they should receive
+some better recompense than this. . . . But it must be. . . You must
+not stay in France. By laying this command upon you, do I not give you
+rights which shall be held sacred?" she added, holding his hand
+against her beating heart.
+
+"Yes," said Arthur, and he rose.
+
+He looked in the direction of d'Aiglemont, who appeared on the
+opposite side of one of the hollow walks with the child in his arms.
+He had scrambled up on the balustrade by the chateau that little
+Helene might jump down.
+
+"Julie, I will not say a word of my love; we understand each other too
+well. Deeply and carefully though I have hidden the pleasures of my
+heart, you have shared them all, I feel it, I know it, I see it. And
+now, at this moment, as I receive this delicious proof of the constant
+sympathy of our hearts, I must go. . . . Cunning schemes for getting
+rid of him have crossed my mind too often; the temptation might be
+irresistible if I stayed with you."
+
+"I had the same thought," she said, a look of pained surprise in her
+troubled face.
+
+Yet in her tone and involuntary shudder there was such virtue, such
+certainty of herself, won in many a hard-fought battle with a love
+that spoke in Julie's tones and involuntary gestures, that Lord
+Grenville stood thrilled with admiration of her. The mere shadow of a
+crime had been dispelled from that clear conscience. The religious
+sentiment enthroned on the fair forehead could not but drive away the
+evil thoughts that arise unbidden, engendered by our imperfect nature,
+thoughts which make us aware of the grandeur and the perils of human
+destiny.
+
+"And then," she said, "I should have drawn down your scorn upon me,
+and--I should have been saved," she added, and her eyes fell. "To be
+lowered in your eyes, what is that but death?"
+
+For a moment the two heroic lovers were silent, choking down their
+sorrow. Good or ill, it seemed that their thoughts were loyally one,
+and the joys in the depths of their heart were no more experiences
+apart than the pain which they strove most anxiously to hide.
+
+"I have no right to complain," she said after a while, "my misery is
+of my own making," and she raised her tear-filled eyes to the sky.
+
+"Perhaps you don't remember it, but that is the place where we met
+each other for the first time," shouted the General from below, and he
+waved his hand towards the distance. "There, down yonder, near those
+poplars!"
+
+The Englishman nodded abruptly by way of answer.
+
+"So I was bound to die young and to know no happiness," Julie
+continued. "Yes, do not think that I live. Sorrow is just as fatal as
+the dreadful disease which you have cured. I do not think that I am to
+blame. No. My love is stronger than I am, and eternal; but all
+unconsciously it grew in me; and I will not be guilty through my love.
+Nevertheless, though I shall be faithful to my conscience as a wife,
+to my duties as a mother, I will be no less faithful to the instincts
+of my heart. Hear me," she cried in an unsteady voice, "henceforth I
+belong to /him/ no longer."
+
+By a gesture, dreadful to see in its undisguised loathing she
+indicated her husband.
+
+"The social code demands that I shall make his existence happy," she
+continued. "I will obey, I will be his servant, my devotion to him
+shall be boundless; but from to-day I am a widow. I will neither be a
+prostitute in my own eyes nor in those of the world. If I do not
+belong to M. d'Aiglemont, I will never belong to another. You shall
+have nothing, nothing save this which you have wrung from me. This is
+the doom which I have passed upon myself," she said, looking proudly
+at him. "And now, know this--if you give way to a single criminal
+thought, M. d'Aiglemont's widow will enter a convent in Spain or
+Italy. By an evil chance we have spoken of our love; perhaps that
+confession was bound to come; but our hearts must never vibrate again
+like this. To-morrow you will receive a letter from England, and we
+shall part, and never see each other again."
+
+The effort had exhausted all Julie's strength. She felt her knees
+trembling, and a feeling of deathly cold came over her. Obeying a
+woman's instinct, she sat down, lest she should sink into Arthur's
+arms.
+
+"/Julie!/" cried Lord Grenville.
+
+The sharp cry rang through the air like a crack of thunder. Till then
+he could not speak; now, all the words which the dumb lover could not
+utter gathered themselves in that heartrending appeal.
+
+"Well, what is wrong with her?" asked the General, who had hurried up
+at that cry, and now suddenly confronted the two.
+
+"Nothing serious," said Julie, with that wonderful self-possession
+which a woman's quick-wittedness usually brings to her aid when it is
+most called for. "The chill, damp air under the walnut tree made me
+feel quite faint just now, and that must have alarmed this doctor of
+mine. Does he not look on me as a very nearly finished work of art? He
+was startled, I suppose, by the idea of seeing it destroyed." With
+ostentatious coolness she took Lord Grenville's arm, smiled at her
+husband, took a last look at the landscape, and went down the pathway,
+drawing her traveling companion with her.
+
+"This certainly is the grandest view that we have seen," she said; "I
+shall never forget it. Just look, Victor, what distance, what an
+expanse of country, and what variety in it! I have fallen in love with
+this landscape."
+
+Her laughter was almost hysterical, but to her husband it sounded
+natural. She sprang gaily down into the hollow pathway and vanished.
+
+"What?" she cried, when they had left M. d'Aiglemont far behind. "So
+soon? Is it so soon? Another moment, and we can neither of us be
+ourselves; we shall never be ourselves again, our life is over, in
+short--"
+
+"Let us go slowly," said Lord Grenville, "the carriages are still some
+way off, and if we may put words into our glances, our hearts may live
+a little longer."
+
+They went along the footpath by the river in the late evening light,
+almost in silence; such vague words as they uttered, low as the murmur
+of the Loire, stirred their souls to the depths. Just as the sun sank,
+a last red gleam from the sky fell over them; it was like a mournful
+symbol of their ill-starred love.
+
+The General, much put out because the carriage was not at the spot
+where they had left it, followed and outstripped the pair without
+interrupting their converse. Lord Grenville's high minded and delicate
+behavior throughout the journey had completely dispelled the Marquis'
+suspicions. For some time past he had left his wife in freedom,
+reposing confidence in the noble amateur's Punic faith. Arthur and
+Julie walked on together in the close and painful communion of two
+hearts laid waste.
+
+So short a while ago as they climbed the cliffs at Montcontour, there
+had been a vague hope in either mind, an uneasy joy for which they
+dared not account to themselves; but now as they came along the
+pathway by the river, they pulled down the frail structure of
+imaginings, the child's cardcastle, on which neither of them had dared
+to breathe. That hope was over.
+
+That very evening Lord Grenville left them. His last look at Julie
+made it miserably plain that since the moment when sympathy revealed
+the full extent of a tyrannous passion, he did well to mistrust
+himself.
+
+The next morning, M. d'Aiglemont and his wife took their places in the
+carriage without their traveling companion, and were whirled swiftly
+along the road to Blois. The Marquise was constantly put in mind of
+the journey made in 1814, when as yet she know nothing of love, and
+had been almost ready to curse it for its persistency. Countless
+forgotten impressions were revived. The heart has its own memory. A
+woman who cannot recollect the most important great events will
+recollect through a lifetime things which appealed to her feelings;
+and Julie d'Aiglemont found all the most trifling details of that
+journey laid up in her mind. It was pleasant to her to recall its
+little incidents as they occurred to her one by one; there were points
+in the road when she could even remember the thoughts that passed
+through her mind when she saw them first.
+
+Victor had fallen violently in love with his wife since she had
+recovered the freshness of her youth and all her beauty, and now he
+pressed close to her side like a lover. Once he tried to put his arm
+round her, but she gently disengaged herself, finding some excuse or
+other for evading the harmless caress. In a little while she shrank
+from the close contact with Victor, the sensation of warmth
+communicated by their position. She tried to take the unoccupied place
+opposite, but Victor gallantly resigned the back seat to her. For this
+attention she thanked him with a sigh, whereupon he forgot himself,
+and the Don Juan of the garrison construed his wife's melancholy to
+his own advantage, so that at the end of the day she was compelled to
+speak with a firmness which impressed him.
+
+"You have all but killed me, dear, once already, as you know," said
+she. "If I were still an inexperienced girl, I might begin to
+sacrifice myself afresh; but I am a mother, I have a daughter to bring
+up, and I owe as much to her as to you. Let us resign ourselves to a
+misfortune which affects us both alike. You are the less to be pitied.
+Have you not, as it is, found consolations which duty and the honor of
+both, and (stronger still) which Nature forbids to me? Stay," she
+added, "you carelessly left three letters from Mme. de Serizy in a
+drawer; here they are. My silence about this matter should make it
+plain to you that in me you have a wife who has plenty of indulgence
+and does not exact from you the sacrifices prescribed by the law. But
+I have thought enough to see that the roles of husband and wife are
+quite different, and that the wife alone is predestined to misfortune.
+My virtue is based upon firmly fixed and definite principles. I shall
+live blamelessly, but let me live."
+
+The Marquis was taken aback by a logic which women grasp with the
+clear insight of love, and overawed by a certain dignity natural to
+them at such crises. Julie's instinctive repugnance for all that
+jarred upon her love and the instincts of her heart is one of the
+fairest qualities of woman, and springs perhaps from a natural virtue
+which neither laws nor civilization can silence. And who shall dare to
+blame women? If a woman can silence the exclusive sentiment which bids
+her "forsake all other" for the man whom she loves, what is she but a
+priest who has lost his faith? If a rigid mind here and there condemns
+Julie for a sort of compromise between love and wifely duty,
+impassioned souls will lay it to her charge as a crime. To be thus
+blamed by both sides shows one of two things very clearly--that misery
+necessarily follows in the train of broken laws, or else that there
+are deplorable flaws in the institutions upon which society in Europe
+is based.
+
+
+
+Two years went by. M. and Mme. d'Aiglemont went their separate ways,
+leading their life in the world, meeting each other more frequently
+abroad than at home, a refinement upon divorce, in which many a
+marriage in the great world is apt to end.
+
+One evening, strange to say, found husband and wife in their own
+drawing-room. Mme. d'Aiglemont had been dining at home with a friend,
+and the General, who almost invariably dined in town, had not gone out
+for once.
+
+"There is a pleasant time in store for you, /Madame la Marquise/,"
+said M. d'Aiglemont, setting his coffee cup down upon the table. He
+looked at the guest, Mme. de Wimphen, and half-pettishly, half-
+mischievously added, "I am starting off for several days' sport with
+the Master of the Hounds. For a whole week, at any rate, you will be a
+widow in good earnest; just what you wish for, I suppose.--Guillaume,"
+he said to the servant who entered, "tell them to put the horses in."
+
+Mme. de Wimphen was the friend to whom Julie had begun the letter upon
+her marriage. The glances exchanged by the two women said plainly that
+in her Julie had found an intimate friend, an indulgent and invaluable
+confidante. Mme. de Wimphen's marriage had been a very happy one.
+Perhaps it was her own happiness which secured her devotion to Julie's
+unhappy life, for under such circumstances, dissimilarity of destiny
+is nearly always a strong bond of union.
+
+"Is the hunting season not over yet?" asked Julie, with an indifferent
+glance at her husband.
+
+"The Master of the Hounds comes when and where he pleases, madame. We
+are going boar-hunting in the Royal Forest."
+
+"Take care that no accident happens to you."
+
+"Accidents are usually unforeseen," he said, smiling.
+
+"The carriage is ready, my Lord Marquis," said the servant.
+
+"Madame, if I should fall a victim to the boar--" he continued, with a
+suppliant air.
+
+"What does this mean?" inquired Mme. de Wimphen.
+
+"Come, come," said Mme. d'Aiglemont, turning to her husband; smiling
+at her friend as if to say, "You will soon see."
+
+Julie held up her head; but as her husband came close to her, she
+swerved at the last, so that his kiss fell not on her throat, but on
+the broad frill about it.
+
+"You will be my witness before heaven now that I need a firman to
+obtain this little grace of her," said the Marquis, addressing Mme. de
+Wimphen. "This is how this wife of mine understands love. She has
+brought me to this pass, by what trickery I am at a loss to
+know. . . . A pleasant time to you!" and he went.
+
+"But your poor husband is really very good-natured," cried Louisa de
+Wimphen, when the two women were alone together. "He loves you."
+
+"Oh! not another syllable after that last word. The name I bear makes
+me shudder----"
+
+"Yes, but Victor obeys you implicitly," said Louisa.
+
+"His obedience is founded in part upon the great esteem which I have
+inspired in him. As far as outward things go, I am a model wife. I
+make his house pleasant to him; I shut my eyes to his intrigues; I
+touch not a penny of his fortune. He is free to squander the interest
+exactly as he pleases; I only stipulate that he shall not touch the
+principal. At this price I have peace. He neither explains nor
+attempts to explain my life. But though my husband is guided by me,
+that does not say that I have nothing to fear from his character. I am
+a bear leader who daily trembles lest the muzzle should give way at
+last. If Victor once took it into his head that I had forfeited my
+right to his esteem, what would happen next I dare not think; for he
+is violent, full of personal pride, and vain above all things. While
+his wits are not keen enough to enable him to behave discreetly at a
+delicate crisis when his lowest passions are involved, his character
+is weak, and he would very likely kill me provisionally even if he
+died of remorse next day. But there is no fear of that fatal good
+fortune."
+
+A brief pause followed. Both women were thinking of the real cause of
+this state of affairs. Julie gave Louisa a glance which revealed her
+thoughts.
+
+"I have been cruelly obeyed," she cried. "Yet I never forbade him to
+write to me. Oh! /he/ has forgotten me, and he is right. If his life
+had been spoiled, it would have been too tragical; one life is enough,
+is it not? Would you believe it, dear; I read English newspapers
+simply to see his name in print. But he has not yet taken his seat in
+the House of Lords."
+
+"So you know English."
+
+"Did I not tell you?--Yes, I learned."
+
+"Poor little one!" cried Louisa, grasping Julie's hand in hers. "How
+can you still live?"
+
+"That is the secret," said the Marquise, with an involuntary gesture
+almost childlike in its simplicity. "Listen, I take laudanum. That
+duchess in London suggested the idea; you know the story, Maturin made
+use of it in one of his novels. My drops are very weak, but I sleep; I
+am only awake for seven hours in the day, and those house I spend with
+my child."
+
+Louisa gazed into the fire. The full extent of her friend's misery was
+opening out before her for the first time, and she dared not look into
+her face.
+
+"Keep my secret, Louisa," said Julie, after a moment's silence.
+
+Just as she spoke the footman brought in a letter for the Marquise.
+
+"Ah!" she cried, and her face grew white.
+
+"I need not ask from whom it comes," said Mme. de Wimphen, but the
+Marquise was reading the letter, and heeded nothing else.
+
+Mme. de Wimphen, watching her friend, saw strong feeling wrought to
+the highest pitch, ecstasy of the most dangerous kind painted on
+Julie's face in swift changing white and red. At length Julie flung
+the sheet into the fire.
+
+"It burns like fire," she said. "Oh! my heart beats till I cannot
+breathe."
+
+She rose to her feet and walked up and down. Her eyes were blazing.
+
+"He did not leave Paris!" she cried.
+
+Mme. de Wimphen did not dare to interrupt the words that followed,
+jerked-out sentences, measured by dreadful pauses in between. After
+every break the deep notes of her voice sank lower and lower. There
+was something awful about the last words.
+
+"He has seen me, constantly, and I have not known it.--A look, taken
+by stealth, every day, helps him to live.--Louisa, you do not know!--
+He is dying.--He wants to say good-bye to me. He knows that my husband
+has gone away for several days. He will be here in a moment. Oh! I
+shall die: I am lost.--Listen, Louisa, stay with me!--/I am afraid!/"
+
+"But my husband knows that I have been dining with you; he is sure to
+come for me," said Mme. de Wimphen.
+
+"Well, then, before you go I will send /him/ away. I will play the
+executioner for us both. Oh me! he will think that I do not love him
+any more--And that letter of his! Dear, I can see those words in
+letters of fire."
+
+A carriage rolled in under the archway.
+
+"Ah!" cried the Marquise, with something like joy in her voice, "he is
+coming openly. He makes no mystery of it."
+
+"Lord Grenville," announced the servant.
+
+The Marquise stood up rigid and motionless; but at the sight of
+Arthur's white face, so thin and haggard, how was it possible to keep
+up the show of severity? Lord Grenville saw that Julie was not alone,
+but he controlled his fierce annoyance, and looked cool and
+unperturbed. Yet for the two women who knew his secret, his face, his
+tones, the look in his eyes had something of the power attributed to
+the torpedo. Their faculties were benumbed by the sharp shock of
+contact with his horrible pain. The sound of his voice set Julie's
+heart beating so cruelly that she could not trust herself to speak;
+she was afraid that he would see the full extent of his power over
+her. Lord Grenville did not dare to look at Julie, and Mme. de Wimphen
+was left to sustain a conversation to which no one listened. Julie
+glanced at her friend with touching gratefulness in her eyes to thank
+her for coming to her aid.
+
+By this time the lovers had quelled emotion into silence, and could
+preserve the limits laid down by duty and convention. But M. de
+Wimphen was announced, and as he came in the two friends exchanged
+glances. Both felt the difficulties of this fresh complication. It was
+impossible to enter into explanations with M. de Wimphen, and Louisa
+could not think of any sufficient pretext for asking to be left.
+
+Julie went to her, ostensibly to wrap her up in her shawl. "I will be
+brave," she said, in a low voice. "He came here in the face of all the
+world, so what have I to fear? Yet but for you, in that first moment,
+when I saw how changed he looked, I should have fallen at his feet."
+
+"Well, Arthur, you have broken your promise to me," she said, in a
+faltering voice, when she returned. Lord Grenville did not venture to
+take the seat upon the sofa by her side.
+
+"I could not resist the pleasure of hearing your voice, of being near
+you. The thought of it came to be a sort of madness, a delirious
+frenzy. I am no longer master of myself. I have taken myself to task;
+it is no use, I am too weak, I ought to die. But to die without seeing
+you, without having heard the rustle of your dress, or felt your
+tears. What a death!"
+
+He moved further away from her; but in his hasty uprising a pistol
+fell out of his pocket. The Marquise looked down blankly at the
+weapon; all passion, all expression had died out of her eyes. Lord
+Grenville stooped for the thing, raging inwardly over an accident
+which seemed like a piece of lovesick strategy.
+
+"/Arthur!/"
+
+"Madame," he said, looking down, "I came here in utter desperation; I
+meant----" he broke off.
+
+"You meant to die by your own hand here in my house!"
+
+"Not alone!" he said in a low voice.
+
+"Not alone! My husband, perhaps----?"
+
+"No, no," he cried in a choking voice. "Reassure yourself," he
+continued, "I have quite given up my deadly purpose. As soon as I came
+in, as soon as I saw you, I felt that I was strong enough to suffer in
+silence, and to die alone."
+
+Julie sprang up, and flung herself into his arms. Through her sobbing
+he caught a few passionate words, "To know happiness, and then to die.
+--Yes, let it be so."
+
+All Julie's story was summed up in that cry from the depths; it was
+the summons of nature and of love at which women without a religion
+surrender. With the fierce energy of unhoped-for joy, Arthur caught
+her up and carried her to the sofa; but in a moment she tore herself
+from her lover's arms, looked at him with a fixed despairing gaze,
+took his hand, snatched up a candle, and drew him into her room. When
+they stood by the cot where Helene lay sleeping, she put the curtains
+softly aside, shading the candle with her hand, lest the light should
+dazzle the half-closed eyes beneath the transparent lids. Helene lay
+smiling in her sleep, with her arms outstretched on the coverlet.
+Julie glanced from her child to Arthur's face. That look told him all.
+
+"We may leave a husband, even though he loves us: a man is strong; he
+has consolations.--We may defy the world and its laws. But a
+motherless child!"--all these thoughts, and a thousand others more
+moving still, found language in that glance.
+
+"We can take her with us," muttered he; "I will love her dearly."
+
+"Mamma!" cried little Helene, now awake. Julie burst into tears. Lord
+Grenville sat down and folded his arms in gloomy silence.
+
+"Mamma!" At the sweet childish name, so many nobler feelings, so many
+irresistible yearnings awoke, that for a moment love was effaced by
+the all-powerful instinct of motherhood; the mother triumphed over the
+woman in Julie, and Lord Grenville could not hold out, he was defeated
+by Julie's tears.
+
+Just at that moment a door was flung noisily open. "Madame
+d'Aiglemont, are you hereabouts?" called a voice which rang like a
+crack of thunder through the hearts of the two lovers. The Marquis had
+come home.
+
+Before Julie could recover her presence of mind, her husband was on
+the way to the door of her room which opened into his. Luckily, at a
+sign, Lord Grenville escaped into the dressing-closet, and she hastily
+shut the door upon him.
+
+"Well, my lady, here am I," said Victor, "the hunting party did not
+come off. I am just going to bed."
+
+"Good-night, so am I. So go and leave me to undress."
+
+"You are very cross to-night, Madame la Marquise."
+
+The General returned to his room, Julie went with him to the door and
+shut it. Then she sprang to the dressing-close to release Arthur. All
+her presence of mind returned; she bethought herself that it was quite
+natural that her sometime doctor should pay her a visit; she might
+have left him in the drawing-room while she put her little girl to
+bed. She was about to tell him, under her breath, to go back to the
+drawing-room, and had opened the door. Then she shrieked aloud. Lord
+Grenville's fingers had been caught and crushed in the door.
+
+"Well, what is it?" demanded her husband.
+
+"Oh! nothing, I have just pricked my finger with a pin."
+
+The General's door opened at once. Julie imagined that the irruption
+was due to a sudden concern for her, and cursed a solicitude in which
+love had no part. She had barely time to close the dressing-closet,
+and Lord Grenville had not extricated his hand. The General did, in
+fact, appear, but his wife had mistaken his motives; his apprehensions
+were entirely on his own account.
+
+"Can you lend me a bandana handkerchief? The stupid fool Charles
+leaves me without a single one. In the early days you used to bother
+me with looking after me so carefully. Ah, well, the honeymoon did not
+last very long for me, nor yet for my cravats. Nowadays I am given
+over to the secular arm, in the shape of servants who do not care one
+jack straw for what I say."
+
+"There! There is a bandana for you. Did you go into the drawing-room?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh! you might perhaps have been in time to see Lord Grenville."
+
+"Is he in Paris?"
+
+"It seems so."
+
+"Oh! I will go at once. The good doctor."
+
+"But he will have gone by now!" exclaimed Julie.
+
+The Marquis, standing in the middle of the room, was tying the
+handkerchief over his head. He looked complacently at himself in the
+glass.
+
+"What has become of the servants is more than I know," he remarked. "I
+have rung the bell for Charles, and he has not answered it. And your
+maid is not here either. Ring for her. I should like another blanket
+on my bed to-night."
+
+"Pauline is out," the Marquise said drily.
+
+"What, at midnight!" exclaimed the General.
+
+"I gave her leave to go to the Opera."
+
+"That is funny!" returned her husband, continuing to undress. "I
+thought I saw her coming upstairs."
+
+"She has come in then, of course," said Julie, with assumed
+impatience, and to allay any possible suspicion on her husband's part
+she pretended to ring the bell.
+
+
+
+The whole history of that night has never been known, but no doubt it
+was as simple and as tragically commonplace as the domestic incidents
+that preceded it.
+
+Next day the Marquise d'Aiglemont took to her bed, nor did she leave
+it for some days.
+
+"What can have happened in your family so extraordinary that every one
+is talking about your wife?" asked M. de Ronquerolles of M.
+d'Aiglemont a short time after that night of catastrophes.
+
+"Take my advice and remain a bachelor," said d'Aiglemont. "The
+curtains of Helene's cot caught fire, and gave my wife such a shock
+that it will be a twelvemonth before she gets over it; so the doctor
+says. You marry a pretty wife, and her looks fall off; you marry a
+girl in blooming health, and she turns into an invalid. You think she
+has a passionate temperament, and find her cold, or else under her
+apparent coldness there lurks a nature so passionate that she is the
+death of you, or she dishonors your name. Sometimes the meekest of
+them will turn out crotchety, though the crotchety ones never grow any
+sweeter. Sometimes the mere child, so simple and silly at first, will
+develop an iron will to thwart you and the ingenuity of a fiend. I am
+tired of marriage."
+
+"Or of your wife?"
+
+"That would be difficult. By-the-by, do you feel inclined to go to
+Saint-Thomas d'Aquin with me to attend Lord Grenville's funeral?"
+
+"A singular way of spending time.--Is it really known how he came by
+his death?" added Ronquerolles.
+
+"His man says that he spent a whole night sitting on somebody's window
+sill to save some woman's character, and it has been infernally cold
+lately."
+
+"Such devotion would be highly creditable to one of us old stagers;
+but Lord Grenville was a youngster and--an Englishman. Englishmen
+never can do anything like anybody else."
+
+"Pooh!" returned d'Aiglemont, "these heroic exploits all depend upon
+the woman in the case, and it certainly was not for one that I know,
+that poor Arthur came by his death."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+A HIDDEN GRIEF
+
+Between the Seine and the little river Loing lies a wide flat country,
+skirted on the one side by the Forest of Fontainebleau, and marked out
+as to its southern limits by the towns of Moret, Montereau, and
+Nemours. It is a dreary country; little knolls of hills appear only at
+rare intervals, and a coppice here and there among the fields affords
+for game; and beyond, upon every side, stretches the endless gray or
+yellowish horizon peculiar to Beauce, Sologne, and Berri.
+
+In the very centre of the plain, at equal distances from Moret and
+Montereau, the traveler passes the old chateau of Saint-Lange,
+standing amid surroundings which lack neither dignity nor stateliness.
+There are magnificent avenues of elm-trees, great gardens encircled by
+the moat, and a circumference of walls about a huge manorial pile
+which represents the profits of the /maltote/, the gains of farmers-
+general, legalized malversation, or the vast fortunes of great houses
+now brought low beneath the hammer of the Civil Code.
+
+Should any artist or dreamer of dreams chance to stray along the roads
+full of deep ruts, or over the heavy land which secures the place
+against intrusion, he will wonder how it happened that this romantic
+old place was set down in a savanna of corn-land, a desert of chalk,
+and sand, and marl, where gaiety dies away, and melancholy is a
+natural product of the soil. The voiceless solitude, the monotonous
+horizon line which weigh upon the spirits are negative beauties, which
+only suit with sorrow that refuses to be comforted.
+
+Hither, at the close of the year 1820, came a woman, still young, well
+known in Paris for her charm, her fair face, and her wit; and to the
+immense astonishment of the little village a mile away, this woman of
+high rank and corresponding fortune took up her abode at Saint-Lange.
+
+From time immemorial, farmers and laborers had seen no gentry at the
+chateau. The estate, considerable though it was, had been left in
+charge of a land-steward and the house to the old servants. Wherefore
+the appearance of the lady of the manor caused a kind of sensation in
+the district.
+
+A group had gathered in the yard of the wretched little wineshop at
+the end of the village (where the road forks to Nemours and Moret) to
+see the carriage pass. It went by slowly, for the Marquise had come
+from Paris with her own horses, and those on the lookout had ample
+opportunity of observing a waiting-maid, who sat with her back to the
+horses holding a little girl, with a somewhat dreamy look, upon her
+knee. The child's mother lay back in the carriage; she looked like a
+dying woman sent out into the country air by her doctors as a last
+resource. Village politicians were by no means pleased to see the
+young, delicate, downcast face; they had hoped that the new arrival at
+Saint-Lange would bring some life and stir into the neighborhood, and
+clearly any sort of stir or movement must be distasteful to the
+suffering invalid in the traveling carriage.
+
+That evening, when the notables of Saint-Lange were drinking in the
+private room of the wineshop, the longest head among them declared
+that such depression could admit of but one construction--the Marquise
+was ruined. His lordship the Marquis was away in Spain with the Duc
+d'Angouleme (so they said in the papers), and beyond a doubt her
+ladyship had come to Saint-Lange to retrench after a run of ill-luck
+on the Bourse. The Marquis was one of the greatest gamblers on the
+face of the globe. Perhaps the estate would be cut up and sold in
+little lots. There would be some good strokes of business to be made
+in that case, and it behooved everybody to count up his cash, unearth
+his savings and to see how he stood, so as to secure his share of the
+spoil of Saint-Lange.
+
+So fair did this future seem, that the village worthies, dying to know
+whether it was founded on fact, began to think of ways of getting at
+the truth through the servants at the chateau. None of these, however,
+could throw any light on the calamity which had brought their mistress
+into the country at the beginning of winter, and to the old chateau of
+Saint-Lange of all places, when she might have taken her choice of
+cheerful country-houses famous for their beautiful gardens.
+
+His worship the mayor called to pay his respects; but he did not see
+the lady. Then the land-steward tried with no better success.
+
+Madame la Marquise kept her room, only leaving it, while it was set in
+order, for the small adjoining drawing-room, where she dined; if,
+indeed, to sit down to a table, to look with disgust at the dishes,
+and take the precise amount of nourishment required to prevent death
+from sheer starvation, can be called dining. The meal over, she
+returned at once to the old-fashioned low chair, in which she had sat
+since the morning, in the embrasure of the one window that lighted her
+room.
+
+Her little girl she only saw for a few minutes daily, during the
+dismal dinner, and even for a short time she seemed scarcely able to
+bear the child's presence. Surely nothing but the most unheard-of
+anguish could have extinguished a mother's love so early.
+
+None of the servants were suffered to come near, her own woman was the
+one creature whom she liked to have about her; the chateau must be
+perfectly quiet, the child must play at the other end of the house.
+The slightest sound had grown so intolerable, that any human voice,
+even the voice of her own child, jarred upon her.
+
+At first the whole countryside was deeply interested in these
+eccentricities; but time passed on, every possible hypothesis had been
+advanced to account for them and the peasants and dwellers in the
+little country towns thought no more of the invalid lady.
+
+So the Marquise was left to herself. She might live on, perfectly
+silent, amid the silence which she herself had created; there was
+nothing to draw her forth from the tapestried chamber where her
+grandmother died, whither she herself had come that she might die,
+gently, without witnesses, without importunate solicitude, without
+suffering from the insincere demonstrations of egoism masquerading as
+affection, which double the agony of death in great cities.
+
+She was twenty-six years old. At that age, with plenty of romantic
+illusions still left, the mind loves to dwell on the thought of death
+when death seems to come as a friend. But with youth, death is coy,
+coming up close only to go away, showing himself and hiding again,
+till youth has time to fall out of love with him during this
+dalliance. There is that uncertainty too that hangs over death's
+to-morrow. Youth plunges back into the world of living men, there to
+find the pain more pitiless than death, that does not wait to strike.
+
+This woman who refused to live was to know the bitterness of these
+reprieves in the depths of her loneliness; in moral agony, which death
+would not come to end, she was to serve a terrible apprenticeship to
+the egoism which must take the bloom from her heart and break her in
+to the life of the world.
+
+This harsh and sorry teaching is the usual outcome of our early
+sorrows. For the first, and perhaps for the last time in her life, the
+Marquise d'Aiglemont was in very truth suffering. And, indeed, would
+it not be an error to suppose that the same sentiment can be
+reproduced in us? Once develop the power to feel, is it not always
+there in the depths of our nature? The accidents of life may lull or
+awaken it, but there it is, of necessity modifying the self, its
+abiding place. Hence, every sensation should have its great day once
+and for all, its first day of storm, be it long or short. Hence,
+likewise, pain, the most abiding of our sensations, could be keenly
+felt only at its first irruption, its intensity diminishing with every
+subsequent paroxysm, either because we grow accustomed to these
+crises, or perhaps because a natural instinct of self-preservation
+asserts itself, and opposes to the destroying force of anguish an
+equal but passive force of inertia.
+
+Yet of all kinds of suffering, to which does the name of anguish
+belong? For the loss of parents, Nature has in a manner prepared us;
+physical suffering, again, is an evil which passes over us and is
+gone; it lays no hold upon the soul; if it persists, it ceases to be
+an evil, it is death. The young mother loses her firstborn, but wedded
+love ere long gives her a successor. This grief, too, is transient.
+After all, these, and many other troubles like unto them, are in some
+sort wounds and bruises; they do not sap the springs of vitality, and
+only a succession of such blows can crush in us the instinct that
+seeks happiness. Great pain, therefore, pain that arises to anguish,
+should be suffering so deadly, that past, present, and future are
+alike included in its grip, and no part of life is left sound and
+whole. Never afterwards can we think the same thoughts as before.
+Anguish engraves itself in ineffaceable characters on mouth and brow;
+it passes through us, destroying or relaxing the springs that vibrate
+to enjoyment, leaving behind in the soul the seeds of a disgust for
+all things in this world.
+
+Yet, again, to be measureless, to weigh like this upon body and soul,
+the trouble should befall when soul and body have just come to their
+full strength, and smite down a heart that beats high with life. Then
+it is that great scars are made. Terrible is the anguish. None, it may
+be, can issue from this soul-sickness without undergoing some dramatic
+change. Those who survive it, those who remain on earth, return to the
+world to wear an actor's countenance and to play an actor's part. They
+know the side-scenes where actors may retire to calculate chances,
+shed their tears, or pass their jests. Life holds no inscrutable dark
+places for those who have passed through this ordeal; their judgments
+are Rhadamanthine.
+
+For young women of the Marquise d'Aiglemont's age, this first, this
+most poignant pain of all, is always referable to the same cause. A
+woman, especially if she is a young woman, greatly beautiful, and by
+nature great, never fails to stake her whole life as instinct and
+sentiment and society all unite to bid her. Suppose that that life
+fails her, suppose that she still lives on, she cannot but endure the
+most cruel pangs, inasmuch as a first love is the loveliest of all.
+How comes it that this catastrophe has found no painter, no poet? And
+yet, can it be painted? Can it be sung? No; for the anguish arising
+from it eludes analysis and defies the colors of art. And more than
+this, such pain is never confessed. To console the sufferer, you must
+be able to divine the past which she hugs in bitterness to her soul
+like a remorse; it is like an avalanche in a valley; it laid all waste
+before it found a permanent resting-place.
+
+The Marquise was suffering from this anguish, which will for long
+remain unknown, because the whole world condemns it, while sentiment
+cherishes it, and the conscience of a true woman justifies her in it.
+It is with such pain as with children steadily disowned of life, and
+therefore bound more closely to the mother's heart than other children
+more bounteously endowed. Never, perhaps, was the awful catastrophe in
+which the whole world without dies for us, so deadly, so complete, so
+cruelly aggravated by circumstance as it had been for the Marquise.
+The man whom she had loved was young and generous; in obedience to the
+laws of the world, she had refused herself to his love, and he had
+died to save a woman's honor, as the world calls it. To whom could she
+speak of her misery? Her tears would be an offence against her
+husband, the origin of the tragedy. By all laws written and unwritten
+she was bound over to silence. A woman would have enjoyed the story; a
+man would have schemed for his own benefit. No; such grief as hers can
+only weep freely in solitude and in loneliness; she must consume her
+pain or be consumed by it; die or kill something within her--her
+conscience, it may be.
+
+Day after day she sat gazing at the flat horizon. It lay out before
+her like her own life to come. There was nothing to discover, nothing
+to hope. The whole of it could be seen at a glance. It was the visible
+presentment in the outward world of the chill sense of desolation
+which was gnawing restlessly at her heart. The misty mornings, the
+pale, bright sky, the low clouds scudding under the gray dome of
+heaven, fitted with the moods of her soul-sickness. Her heart did not
+contract, was neither more nor less seared, rather it seemed as if her
+youth, in its full blossom, was slowly turned to stone by an anguish
+intolerable because it was barren. She suffered through herself and
+for herself. How could it end save in self-absorption? Ugly torturing
+thoughts probed her conscience. Candid self-examination pronounced
+that she was double, there were two selves within her; a woman who
+felt and a woman who thought; a self that suffered and a self that
+could fain suffer no longer. Her mind traveled back to the joys of
+childish days; they had gone by, and she had never known how happy
+they were. Scenes crowded up in her memory as in a bright mirror
+glass, to demonstrate the deception of a marriage which, all that it
+should be in the eyes of the world, was in reality wretched. What had
+the delicate pride of young womanhood done for her--the bliss
+foregone, the sacrifices made to the world? Everything in her
+expressed love, awaited love; her movements still were full of perfect
+grace; her smile, her charm, were hers as before; why? she asked
+herself. The sense of her own youth and physical loveliness no more
+affected her than some meaningless reiterated sound. Her very beauty
+had grown intolerable to her as a useless thing. She shrank aghast
+from the thought that through the rest of life she must remain an
+incomplete creature; had not the inner self lost its power of
+receiving impressions with that zest, that exquisite sense of
+freshness which is the spring of so much of life's gladness? The
+impressions of the future would for the most part be effaced as soon
+as received, and many of the thoughts which once would have moved her
+now would move her no more.
+
+After the childhood of the creature dawns the childhood of the heart;
+but this second infancy was over, her lover had taken it down with him
+into the grave. The longings of youth remained; she was young yet; but
+the completeness of youth was gone, and with that lost completeness
+the whole value and savor of life had diminished somewhat. Should she
+not always bear within her the seeds of sadness and mistrust, ready to
+grow up and rob emotion of its springtide of fervor? Conscious she
+must always be that nothing could give her now the happiness so longed
+for, that seemed so fair in her dreams. The fire from heaven that
+sheds abroad its light in the heart, in the dawn of love, had been
+quenched in tears, the first real tears which she had shed; henceforth
+she must always suffer, because it was no longer in her power to be
+what once she might have been. This is a belief which turns us in
+aversion and bitterness of spirit from any proffered new delight.
+
+Julie had come to look at life from the point of view of age about to
+die. Young though she felt, the heavy weight of joyless days had
+fallen upon her, and left her broken-spirited and old before her time.
+With a despairing cry, she asked the world what it could give her in
+exchange for the love now lost, by which she had lived. She asked
+herself whether in that vanished love, so chaste and pure, her will
+had not been more criminal than her deeds, and chose to believe
+herself guilty; partly to affront the world, partly for her own
+consolation, in that she had missed the close union of body and soul,
+which diminishes the pain of the one who is left behind by the
+knowledge that once it has known and given joy to the full, and
+retains within itself the impress of that which is no more.
+
+Something of the mortification of the actress cheated of her part
+mingled with the pain which thrilled through every fibre of her heart
+and brain. Her nature had been thwarted, her vanity wounded, her
+woman's generosity cheated of self-sacrifice. Then, when she had
+raised all these questions, set vibrating all the springs in those
+different phases of being which we distinguish as social, moral, and
+physical, her energies were so far exhausted and relaxed that she was
+powerless to grasp a single thought amid the chase of conflicting
+ideas.
+
+Sometimes as the mists fell, she would throw her window open, and
+would stay there, motionless, breathing in unheedingly the damp
+earthly scent in the air, her mind to all appearance an unintelligent
+blank, for the ceaseless burden of sorrow humming in her brain left
+her deaf to earth's harmonies and insensible to the delights of
+thought.
+
+One day, towards noon, when the sun shone out for a little, her maid
+came in without a summons.
+
+"This is the fourth time that M. le Cure has come to see Mme. la
+Marquise; to-day he is so determined about it, that we did not know
+what to tell him."
+
+"He has come to ask for some money for the poor, no doubt; take him
+twenty-five louis from me."
+
+The woman went only to return.
+
+"M. le Cure will not take the money, my lady; he wants to speak to
+you."
+
+"Then let him come!" said Mme. d'Aiglemont, with an involuntary shrug
+which augured ill for the priest's reception. Evidently the lady meant
+to put a stop to persecution by a short and sharp method.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont had lost her mother in her early childhood; and as a
+natural consequence in her bringing-up, she had felt the influence of
+the relaxed notions which loosened the hold of religion upon France
+during the Revolution. Piety is a womanly virtue which women alone can
+really instil; and the Marquise, a child of the eighteenth century,
+had adopted her father's creed of philosophism, and practised no
+religious observances. A priest, to her way of thinking, was a civil
+servant of very doubtful utility. In her present position, the
+teaching of religion could only poison her wounds; she had, moreover,
+but scanty faith in the lights of country cures, and made up her mind
+to put this one gently but firmly in his place, and to rid herself of
+him, after the manner of the rich, by bestowing a benefit.
+
+At first sight of the cure the Marquise felt no inclination to change
+her mind. She saw before her a stout, rotund little man, with a ruddy,
+wrinkled, elderly face, which awkwardly and unsuccessfully tried to
+smile. His bald, quadrant-shaped forehead, furrowed by intersecting
+lines, was too heavy for the rest of his face, which seemed to be
+dwarfed by it. A fringe of scanty white hair encircled the back of his
+head, and almost reached his ears. Yet the priest looked as if by
+nature he had a genial disposition; his thick lips, his slightly
+curved nose, his chin, which vanished in a double fold of wrinkles,--
+all marked him out as a man who took cheerful views of life.
+
+At first the Marquise saw nothing but these salient characteristics,
+but at the first word she was struck by the sweetness of the speaker's
+voice. Looking at him more closely, she saw that the eyes under the
+grizzled eyebrows had shed tears, and his face, turned in profile,
+wore so sublime an impress of sorrow, that the Marquise recognized the
+man in the cure.
+
+"Madame la Marquise, the rich only come within our province when they
+are in trouble. It is easy to see that the troubles of a young,
+beautiful, and wealthy woman, who has lost neither children nor
+relatives, are caused by wounds whose pangs religion alone can soothe.
+Your soul is in danger, madame. I am not speaking now of the hereafter
+which awaits us. No, I am not in the confessional. But it is my duty,
+is it not, to open your eyes to your future life here on earth? You
+will pardon an old man, will you not, for importunity which has your
+own happiness for its object?"
+
+"There is no more happiness for me, monsieur. I shall soon be, as you
+say, in your province; but it will be for ever."
+
+"Nay, madame. You will not die of this pain which lies heavy upon you,
+and can be read in your face. If you had been destined to die of it,
+you would not be here at Saint-Lange. A definite regret is not so
+deadly as hope deferred. I have known others pass through more
+intolerable and more awful anguish, and yet they live."
+
+The Marquise looked incredulous.
+
+"Madame, I know a man whose affliction was so sore that your trouble
+would seem to you to be light compared with his."
+
+Perhaps the long solitary hours had begun to hang heavily; perhaps in
+the recesses of the Marquise's mind lay the thought that here was a
+friendly heart to whom she might be able to pour out her troubles.
+However, it was, she gave the cure a questioning glance which could
+not be mistaken.
+
+"Madame," he continued, "the man of whom I tell you had but three
+children left of a once large family circle. He lost his parents, his
+daughter, and his wife, whom he dearly loved. He was left alone at
+last on the little farm where he had lived so happily for so long. His
+three sons were in the army, and each of the lads had risen in
+proportion to his time of service. During the Hundred Days, the oldest
+went into the Guard with a colonel's commission; the second was a
+major in the artillery; the youngest a major in a regiment of
+dragoons. Madame, those three boys loved their father as much as he
+loved them. If you but knew how careless young fellows grow of home
+ties when they are carried away by the current of their own lives, you
+would realize from this one little thing how warmly they loved the
+lonely old father, who only lived in and for them--never a week passed
+without a letter from one of the boys. But then he on his side had
+never been weakly indulgent, to lessen their respect for him; nor
+unjustly severe, to thwart their affection; or apt to grudge
+sacrifices, the thing that estranges children's hearts. He had been
+more than a father; he had been a brother to them, and their friend.
+
+"At last he went to Paris to bid them good-bye before they set out for
+Belgium; he wished to see that they had good horses and all that they
+needed. And so they went, and the father returned to his home again.
+Then the war began. He had letters from Fleurus, and again from Ligny.
+All went well. Then came the battle of Waterloo, and you know the
+rest. France was plunged into mourning; every family waited in intense
+anxiety for news. You may imagine, madame, how the old man waited for
+tidings, in anxiety that knew no peace nor rest. He used to read the
+gazettes; he went to the coach office every day. One evening he was
+told that the colonel's servant had come. The man was riding his
+master's horse--what need was there to ask any questions?--the colonel
+was dead, cut in two by a shell. Before the evening was out the
+youngest son's servant arrived--the youngest had died on the eve of
+the battle. At midnight came a gunner with tidings of the death of the
+last; upon whom, in those few hours, the poor father had centered all
+his life. Madame, they all had fallen."
+
+After a pause the good man controlled his feelings, and added gently:
+
+"And their father is still living, madame. He realized that if God had
+left him on earth, he was bound to live on and suffer on earth; but he
+took refuge in the sanctuary. What could he be?"
+
+The Marquise looked up and saw the cure's face, grown sublime in its
+sorrow and resignation, and waited for him to speak. When the words
+came, tears broke from her.
+
+"A priest, madame; consecrated by his own tears previously shed at the
+foot of the altar."
+
+Silence prevailed for a little. The Marquise and the cure looked out
+at the foggy landscape, as if they could see the figures of those who
+were no more.
+
+"Not a priest in a city, but a simple country cure," added he.
+
+"At Saint-Lange," she said, drying her eyes.
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+Never had the majesty of grief seemed so great to Julie. The two words
+sank straight into her heart with the weight of infinite sorrow. The
+gentle, sonorous tones troubled her heart. Ah! that full, deep voice,
+charged with plangent vibration, was the voice of one who had suffered
+indeed.
+
+"And if I do not die, monsieur, what will become of me?" The Marquise
+spoke almost reverently.
+
+"Have you not a child, madame?"
+
+"Yes," she said stiffly.
+
+The cure gave her such a glance as a doctor gives a patient whose life
+is in danger. Then he determined to do all that in him lay to combat
+the evil spirit into whose clutches she had fallen.
+
+"We must live on with our sorrows--you see it yourself, madame, and
+religion alone offers us real consolation. Will you permit me to come
+again?--to speak to you as a man who can sympathize with every
+trouble, a man about whom there is nothing very alarming, I think?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur, come back again. Thank you for your thought of me."
+
+"Very well, madame; then I shall return very shortly."
+
+This visit relaxed the tension of soul, as it were; the heavy strain
+of grief and loneliness had been almost too much for the Marquise's
+strength. The priest's visit had left a soothing balm in her heart,
+his words thrilled through her with healing influence. She began to
+feel something of a prisoner's satisfaction, when, after he has had
+time to feel his utter loneliness and the weight of his chains, he
+hears a neighbor knocking on the wall, and welcomes the sound which
+brings a sense of human friendship. Here was an unhoped-for confidant.
+But this feeling did not last for long. Soon she sank back into the
+old bitterness of spirit, saying to herself, as the prisoner might
+say, that a companion in misfortune could neither lighten her own
+bondage nor her future.
+
+In the first visit the cure had feared to alarm the susceptibilities
+of self-absorbed grief, in a second interview he hoped to make some
+progress towards religion. He came back again two days later, and from
+the Marquise's welcome it was plain that she had looked forward to the
+visit.
+
+"Well, Mme. la Marquise, have you given a little thought to the great
+mass of human suffering? Have you raised your eyes above our earth and
+seen the immensity of the universe?--the worlds beyond worlds which
+crush our vanity into insignificance, and with our vanity reduce our
+sorrows?"
+
+"No, monsieur," she said; "I cannot rise to such heights, our social
+laws lie too heavily upon me, and rend my heart with a too poignant
+anguish. And laws perhaps are less cruel than the usages of the world.
+Ah! the world!"
+
+"Madame, we must obey both. Law is the doctrine, and custom the
+practice of society."
+
+"Obey society?" cried the Marquise, with an involuntary shudder. "Eh!
+monsieur, it is the source of all our woes. God laid down no law to
+make us miserable; but mankind, uniting together in social life, have
+perverted God's work. Civilization deals harder measure to us women
+than nature does. Nature imposes upon us physical suffering which you
+have not alleviated; civilization has developed in us thoughts and
+feelings which you cheat continually. Nature exterminates the weak;
+you condemn them to live, and by so doing, consign them to a life of
+misery. The whole weight of the burden of marriage, an institution on
+which society is based, falls upon us; for the man liberty, duties for
+the woman. We must give up our whole lives to you, you are only bound
+to give us a few moments of yours. A man, in fact, makes a choice,
+while we blindly submit. Oh, monsieur, to you I can speak freely.
+Marriage, in these days, seems to me to be legalized prostitution.
+This is the cause of my wretchedness. But among so many miserable
+creatures so unhappily yoked, I alone am bound to be silent, I alone
+am to blame for my misery. My marriage was my own doing."
+
+She stopped short, and bitter tears fell in the silence.
+
+"In the depths of my wretchedness, in the midst of this sea of
+distress," she went on, "I found some sands on which to set foot and
+suffer at leisure. A great tempest swept everything away. And here am
+I, helpless and alone, too weak to cope with storms."
+
+"We are never weak while God is with us," said the priest. "And if
+your cravings for affection cannot be satisfied here on earth, have
+you no duties to perform?"
+
+"Duties continually!" she exclaimed, with something of impatience in
+her tone. "But where for me are the sentiments which give us strength
+to perform them? Nothing from nothing, nothing for nothing,--this,
+monsieur, is one of the most inexorable laws of nature, physical or
+spiritual. Would you have these trees break into leaf without the sap
+which swells the buds? It is the same with our human nature; and in me
+the sap is dried up at its source."
+
+"I am not going to speak to you of religious sentiments of which
+resignation is born," said the cure, "but of motherhood, madame,
+surely--"
+
+"Stop, monsieur!" said the Marquise, "with you I will be sincere.
+Alas! in future I can be sincere with no one; I am condemned to
+falsehood. The world requires continual grimaces, and we are bidden to
+obey its conventions if we would escape reproach. There are two kinds
+of motherhood, monsieur; once I knew nothing of such distinctions, but
+I know them now. Only half of me has become a mother; it were better
+for me if I had not been a mother at all. Helene is not /his/ child!
+Oh! do not start. At Saint-Lange there are volcanic depths whence come
+lurid gleams of light and earthquake shocks to shake the fragile
+edifices of laws not based on nature. I have borne a child, that is
+enough, I am a mother in the eyes of the law. But you, monsieur, with
+your delicately compassionate soul, can perhaps understand this cry
+from an unhappy woman who has suffered no lying illusions to enter her
+heart. God will judge me, but surely I have only obeyed His laws by
+giving way to the affections which He Himself set in me, and this I
+have learned from my own soul.--What is a child, monsieur, but the
+image of two beings, the fruit of two sentiments spontaneously
+blended? Unless it is owned by every fibre of the body, as by every
+chord of tenderness in the heart; unless it recalls the bliss of love,
+the hours, the places where two creatures were happy, their words that
+overflowed with the music of humanity, and their sweet imaginings,
+that child is an incomplete creation. Yes, those two should find the
+poetic dreams of their intimate double life realized in their child as
+in an exquisite miniature; it should be for them a never-failing
+spring of emotion, implying their whole past and their whole future.
+
+"My poor little Helene is her father's child, the offspring of duty
+and of chance. In me she finds nothing but the affection of instinct,
+the woman's natural compassion for the child of her womb. Socially
+speaking, I am above reproach. Have I not sacrificed my life and my
+happiness to my child? Her cries go to my heart; if she were to fall
+into the water, I should spring to save her, but she is not in my
+heart.
+
+"Ah! love set me dreaming of a motherhood far greater and more
+complete. In a vanished dream I held in my arms a child conceived in
+desire before it was begotten, the exquisite flower of life that
+blossoms in the soul before it sees the light of day. I am Helene's
+mother only in the sense that I brought her forth. When she needs me
+no longer, there will be an end of my motherhood; with the extinction
+of the cause, the effects will cease. If it is a woman's adorable
+prerogative that her motherhood may last through her child's life,
+surely that divine persistence of sentiment is due to the far-reaching
+glory of the conception of the soul? Unless a child has lain wrapped
+about from life's first beginnings by the mother's soul, the instinct
+of motherhood dies in her as in the animals. This is true; I feel that
+it is true. As my poor little one grows older, my heart closes. My
+sacrifices have driven us apart. And yet I know, monsieur, that to
+another child my heart would have gone out in inexhaustible love; for
+that other I should not have known what sacrifice meant, all had been
+delight. In this, monsieur, my instincts are stronger than reason,
+stronger than religion or all else in me. Does the woman who is
+neither wife nor mother sin in wishing to die when, for her
+misfortune, she has caught a glimpse of the infinite beauty of love,
+the limitless joy of motherhood? What can become of her? /I/ can tell
+you what she feels. I cannot put that memory from me so resolutely but
+that a hundred times, night and day, visions of a happiness, greater
+it may be than the reality, rise before me, followed by a shudder
+which shakes brain and heart and body. Before these cruel visions, my
+feelings and thoughts grow colorless, and I ask myself, 'What would my
+life have been /if/----?' "
+
+She hid her face in her hands and burst into tears.
+
+"There you see the depths of my heart!" she continued. "For /his/
+child I could have acquiesced in any lot however dreadful. He who
+died, bearing the burden of the sins of the world will forgive this
+thought of which I am dying; but the world, I know, is merciless. In
+its ears my words are blasphemies; I am outraging all its codes. Oh!
+that I could wage war against this world and break down and refashion
+its laws and traditions! Has it not turned all my thoughts, and
+feelings, and longings, and hopes, and every fibre in me into so many
+sources of pain? Spoiled my future, present, and past? For me the
+daylight is full of gloom, my thoughts pierce me like a sword, my
+child is and is not.
+
+"Oh, when Helene speaks to me, I wish that her voice were different,
+when she looks into my face I wish that she had other eyes. She
+constantly keeps me in mind of all that should have been and is not. I
+cannot bear to have her near me. I smile at her, I try to make up to
+her for the real affection of which she is defrauded. I am wretched,
+monsieur, too wretched to live. And I am supposed to be a pattern
+wife. And I have committed no sins. And I am respected! I have fought
+down forbidden love which sprang up at unawares within me; but if I
+have kept the letter of the law, have I kept it in my heart? There has
+never been but one here," she said, laying her right hand on her
+breast, "one and no other; and my child feels it. Certain looks and
+tones and gestures mould a child's nature, and my poor little one
+feels no thrill in the arm I put about her, no tremor comes into my
+voice, no softness into my eyes when I speak to her or take her up.
+She looks at me, and I cannot endure the reproach in her eyes. There
+are times when I shudder to think that some day she may be my judge
+and condemn her mother unheard. Heaven grant that hate may not grow up
+between us! Ah! God in heaven, rather let the tomb open for me, rather
+let me end my days here at Saint-Lange!--I want to go back to the
+world where I shall find my other soul and become wholly a mother. Ah!
+forgive me, sir, I am mad. Those words were choking me; now they are
+spoken. Ah! you are weeping too! You will not despise me--"
+
+She heard the child come in from a walk. "Helene, my child, come
+here!" she called. The words sounded like a cry of despair.
+
+The little girl ran in, laughing and calling to her mother to see a
+butterfly which she had caught; but at the sight of that mother's
+tears she grew quiet of a sudden, and went up close, and received a
+kiss on her forehead.
+
+"She will be very beautiful some day," said the priest.
+
+"She is her father's child," said the Marquise, kissing the little one
+with eager warmth, as if she meant to pay a debt of affection or to
+extinguish some feeling of remorse.
+
+"How hot you are, mamma!"
+
+"There, go away, my angel," said the Marquise.
+
+The child went. She did not seem at all sorry to go; she did not look
+back; glad perhaps to escape from a sad face, and instinctively
+comprehending already an antagonism of feeling in its expression. A
+mother's love finds language in smiles, they are a part of the divine
+right of motherhood. The Marquise could not smile. She flushed red as
+she felt the cure's eyes. She had hoped to act a mother's part before
+him, but neither she nor her child could deceive him. And, indeed,
+when a woman loves sincerely, in the kiss she gives there is a divine
+honey; it is as if a soul were breathed forth in the caress, a subtle
+flame of fire which brings warmth to the heart; the kiss that lacks
+this delicious unction is meagre and formal. The priest had felt the
+difference. He could fathom the depths that lie between the motherhood
+of the flesh and the motherhood of the heart. He gave the Marquise a
+keen, scrutinizing glance, then he said:
+
+"You are right, madame; it would be better for you if you were
+dead----"
+
+"Ah!" she cried, "then you know all my misery; I see you do if,
+Christian priest as you are, you can guess my determination to die and
+sanction it. Yes, I meant to die, but I have lacked the courage. The
+spirit was strong, but the flesh was weak, and when my hand did not
+tremble, the spirit within me wavered.
+
+"I do not know the reason of these inner struggles, and alternations.
+I am very pitiably a woman no doubt, weak in my will, strong only to
+love. Oh, I despise myself. At night, when all my household was
+asleep, I would go out bravely as far as the lake; but when I stood on
+the brink, my cowardice shrank from self-destruction. To you I will
+confess my weakness. When I lay in my bed, again, shame would come
+over me, and courage would come back. Once I took a dose of laudanum;
+I was ill, but I did not die. I thought I had emptied the phial, but I
+had only taken half the dose."
+
+"You are lost, madame," the cure said gravely, with tears in his
+voice. "You will go back into the world, and you will deceive the
+world. You will seek and find a compensation (as you imagine it to be)
+for your woes; then will come a day of reckoning for your pleasures--"
+
+"Do you think," she cried, "that /I/ shall bestow the last, the most
+precious treasures of my heart upon the first base impostor who can
+play the comedy of passion? That I would pollute my life for a moment
+of doubtful pleasure? No; the flame which shall consume my soul shall
+be love, and nothing but love. All men, monsieur, have the senses of
+their sex, but not all have the man's soul which satisfies all the
+requirements of our nature, drawing out the melodious harmony which
+never breaks forth save in response to the pressure of feeling. Such a
+soul is not found twice in our lifetime. The future that lies before
+me is hideous; I know it. A woman is nothing without love; beauty is
+nothing without pleasure. And even if happiness were offered to me a
+second time, would not the world frown upon it? I owe my daughter an
+honored mother. Oh! I am condemned to live in an iron circle, from
+which there is but one shameful way of escape. The round of family
+duties, a thankless and irksome task, is in store for me. I shall
+curse life; but my child shall have at least a fair semblance of a
+mother. I will give her treasures of virtue for the treasures of love
+of which I defraud her.
+
+"I have not even the mother's desire to live to enjoy her child's
+happiness. I have no belief in happiness. What will Helene's fate be?
+My own, beyond doubt. How can a mother ensure that the man to whom she
+gives her daughter will be the husband of her heart? You pour scorn on
+the miserable creatures who sell themselves for a few coins to any
+passer-by, though want and hunger absolve the brief union; while
+another union, horrible for quite other reasons, is tolerated, nay
+encouraged, by society, and a young and innocent girl is married to a
+man whom she has only met occasionally during the previous three
+months. She is sold for her whole lifetime. It is true that the price
+is high! If you allow her no compensation for her sorrows, you might
+at least respect her; but no, the most virtuous of women cannot escape
+calumny. This is our fate in its double aspect. Open prostitution and
+shame; secret prostitution and unhappiness. As for the poor,
+portionless girls, they may die or go mad, without a soul to pity
+them. Beauty and virtue are not marketable in the bazaar where souls
+and bodies are bought and sold--in the den of selfishness which you
+call society. Why not disinherit daughters? Then, at least, you might
+fulfil one of the laws of nature, and guided by your own inclinations,
+choose your companions."
+
+"Madame, from your talk it is clear to me that neither the spirit of
+family nor the sense of religion appeals to you. Why should you
+hesitate between the claims of the social selfishness which irritates
+you, and the purely personal selfishness which craves satisfactions--"
+
+"The family, monsieur--does such a thing exist? I decline to recognize
+as a family a knot of individuals bidden by society to divide the
+property after the death of father and mother, and to go their
+separate ways. A family means a temporary association of persons
+brought together by no will of their own, dissolved at once by death.
+Our laws have broken up homes and estates, and the old family
+tradition handed down from generation to generation. I see nothing but
+wreck and ruin about me."
+
+"Madame, you will only return to God when His hand has been heavy upon
+you, and I pray that you have time enough given to you in which to
+make your peace with Him. Instead of looking to heaven for comfort,
+you are fixing your eyes on earth. Philosophism and personal interest
+have invaded your heart; like the children of the sceptical eighteenth
+century, you are deaf to the voice of religion. The pleasures of this
+life bring nothing but misery. You are about to make an exchange of
+sorrows, that is all."
+
+She smiled bitterly.
+
+"I will falsify your predictions," she said. "I shall be faithful to
+him who died for me."
+
+"Sorrow," he answered, "is not likely to live long save in souls
+disciplined by religion," and he lowered his eyes respectfully lest
+the Marquise should read his doubts in them. The energy of her
+outburst had grieved him. He had seen the self that lurked beneath so
+many forms, and despaired of softening a heart which affliction seemed
+to sear. The divine Sower's seed could not take root in such a soil,
+and His gentle voice was drowned by the clamorous outcry of self-pity.
+Yet the good man returned again and again with an apostle's earnest
+persistence, brought back by a hope of leading so noble and proud a
+soul to God; until the day when he made the discovery that the
+Marquise only cared to talk with him because it was sweet to speak of
+him who was no more. He would not lower his ministry by condoning her
+passion, and confined the conversation more and more to generalities
+and commonplaces.
+
+Spring came, and with the spring the Marquise found distraction from
+her deep melancholy. She busied herself for lack of other occupation
+with her estate, making improvements for amusement.
+
+In October she left the old chateau. In the life of leisure at Saint-
+Lange she had recovered from her grief and grown fair and fresh. Her
+grief had been violent at first in its course, as the quoit hurled
+forth with all the player's strength, and like the quoit after many
+oscillations, each feebler than the last, it had slackened into
+melancholy. Melancholy is made up of a succession of such
+oscillations, the first touching upon despair, the last on the border
+between pain and pleasure; in youth, it is the twilight of dawn; in
+age, the dusk of night.
+
+As the Marquise drove through the village in her traveling carriage,
+she met the cure on his way back from the church. She bowed in
+response to his farewell greeting, but it was with lowered eyes and
+averted face. She did not wish to see him again. The village cure had
+judged this poor Diana of Ephesus only too well.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+AT THIRTY YEARS
+
+Madame Firmiani was giving a ball. M. Charles de Vandenesse, a young
+man of great promise, the bearer of one of those historic names which,
+in spite of the efforts of legislation, are always associated with the
+glory of France, had received letters of introduction to some of the
+great lady's friends in Naples, and had come to thank the hostess and
+to take his leave.
+
+Vandenesse had already acquitted himself creditably on several
+diplomatic missions; and now that he had received an appointment as
+attache to a plenipotentiary at the Congress of Laybach, he wished to
+take advantage of the opportunity to make some study of Italy on the
+way. This ball was a sort of farewell to Paris and its amusements and
+its rapid whirl of life, to the great eddying intellectual centre and
+maelstrom of pleasure; and a pleasant thing it is to be borne along by
+the current of this sufficiently slandered great city of Paris. Yet
+Charles de Vandenesse had little to regret, accustomed as he had been
+for the past three years to salute European capitals and turn his back
+upon them at the capricious bidding of a diplomatist's destiny. Women
+no longer made any impression upon him; perhaps he thought that a real
+passion would play too large a part in a diplomatist's life; or
+perhaps that the paltry amusements of frivolity were too empty for a
+man of strong character. We all of us have huge claims to strength of
+character. There is no man in France, be he ever so ordinary a member
+of the rank and file of humanity, that will waive pretensions to
+something beyond mere cleverness.
+
+Charles, young though he was--he was scarcely turned thirty--looked at
+life with a philosophic mind, concerning himself with theories and
+means and ends, while other men of his age were thinking of pleasure,
+sentiments, and the like illusions. He forced back into some inner
+depth the generosity and enthusiasms of youth, and by nature he was
+generous. He tried hard to be cool and calculating, to coin the fund
+of wealth which chanced to be in his nature into gracious manners, and
+courtesy, and attractive arts; 'tis the proper task of an ambitious
+man, to play a sorry part to gain "a good position," as we call it in
+modern days.
+
+He had been dancing, and now he gave a farewell glance over the rooms,
+to carry away a distinct impression of the ball, moved, doubtless, to
+some extent by the feeling which prompts a theatre-goer to stay in his
+box to see the final tableau before the curtain falls. But M. de
+Vandenesse had another reason for his survey. He gazed curiously at
+the scene before him, so French in character and in movement, seeking
+to carry away a picture of the light and laughter and the faces at
+this Parisian fete, to compare with the novel faces and picturesque
+surroundings awaiting him at Naples, where he meant to spend a few
+days before presenting himself at his post. He seemed to be drawing
+the comparison now between this France so variable, changing even as
+you study her, with the manners and aspects of that other land known
+to him as yet only by contradictory hearsay tales or books of travel,
+for the most part unsatisfactory. Thoughts of a somewhat poetical
+cast, albeit hackneyed and trite to our modern ideas, crossed his
+brain, in response to some longing of which, perhaps, he himself was
+hardly conscious, a desire in the depths of a heart fastidious rather
+than jaded, vacant rather than seared.
+
+"These are the wealthiest and most fashionable women and the greatest
+ladies in Paris," he said to himself. "These are the great men of the
+day, great orators and men of letters, great names and titles; artists
+and men in power; and yet in it all it seems to me as if there were
+nothing but petty intrigues and still-born loves, meaningless smiles
+and causeless scorn, eyes lighted by no flame within, brain-power in
+abundance running aimlessly to waste. All those pink-and-white faces
+are here not so much for enjoyment, as to escape from dulness. None of
+the emotion is genuine. If you ask for nothing but court feathers
+properly adjusted, fresh gauzes and pretty toilettes and fragile, fair
+women, if you desire simply to skim the surface of life, here is your
+world for you. Be content with meaningless phrases and fascinating
+simpers, and do not ask for real feeling. For my own part, I abhor the
+stale intrigues which end in sub-prefectures and receiver-generals'
+places and marriages; or, if love comes into the question, in stealthy
+compromises, so ashamed are we of the mere semblance of passion. Not a
+single one of all these eloquent faces tells you of a soul, a soul
+wholly absorbed by one idea as by remorse. Regrets and misfortune go
+about shame-facedly clad in jests. There is not one woman here whose
+resistance I should care to overcome, not one who could drag you down
+to the pit. Where will you find energy in Paris? A poniard here is a
+curious toy to hang from a gilt nail, in a picturesque sheath to
+match. The women, the brains, and hearts of Paris are all on a par.
+There is no passion left, because we have no individuality. High birth
+and intellect and fortune are all reduced to one level; we all have
+taken to the uniform black coat by way of mourning for a dead France.
+There is no love between equals. Between two lovers there should be
+differences to efface, wide gulfs to fill. The charm of love fled from
+us in 1789. Our dulness and our humdrum lives are the outcome of the
+political system. Italy at any rate is the land of sharp contrasts.
+Woman there is a malevolent animal, a dangerous unreasoning siren,
+guided only by her tastes and appetites, a creature no more to be
+trusted than a tiger--"
+
+Mme. Firmiani here came up to interrupt this soliloquy made up of
+vague, conflicting, and fragmentary thoughts which cannot be
+reproduced in words. The whole charm of such musing lies in its
+vagueness--what is it but a sort of mental haze?
+
+"I want to introduce you to some one who has the greatest wish to make
+your acquaintance, after all that she has heard of you," said the
+lady, taking his arm.
+
+She brought him into the next room, and with such a smile and glance
+as a Parisienne alone can give, she indicated a woman sitting by the
+hearth.
+
+"Who is she?" the Comte de Vandenesse asked quickly.
+
+"You have heard her name more than once coupled with praise or blame.
+She is a woman who lives in seclusion--a perfect mystery."
+
+"Oh! if ever you have been merciful in your life, for pity's sake tell
+me her name."
+
+"She is the Marquise d'Aiglemont."
+
+"I will take lessons from her; she had managed to make a peer of
+France of that eminently ordinary person her husband, and a dullard
+into a power in the land. But, pray tell me this, did Lord Grenville
+die for her sake, do you think, as some women say?"
+
+"Possibly. Since that adventure, real or imaginary, she is very much
+changed, poor thing! She has not gone into society since. Four years
+of constancy--that is something in Paris. If she is here to-night----"
+Here Mme. Firmiani broke off, adding with a mysterious expression, "I
+am forgetting that I must say nothing. Go and talk with her."
+
+For a moment Charles stood motionless, leaning lightly against the
+frame of the doorway, wholly absorbed in his scrutiny of a woman who
+had become famous, no one exactly knew how or why. Such curious
+anomalies are frequent enough in the world. Mme. d'Aiglemont's
+reputation was certainly no more extraordinary than plenty of other
+great reputations. There are men who are always in travail of some
+great work which never sees the light, statisticians held to be
+profound on the score of calculations which they take very good care
+not to publish, politicians who live on a newspaper article, men of
+letters and artists whose performances are never given to the world,
+men of science, much as Sganarelle is a Latinist for those who know no
+Latin; there are the men who are allowed by general consent to possess
+a peculiar capacity for some one thing, be it for the direction of
+arts, or for the conduct of an important mission. The admirable
+phrase, "A man with a special subject," might have been invented on
+purpose for these acephalous species in the domain of literature and
+politics.
+
+Charles gazed longer than he intended. He was vexed with himself for
+feeling so strongly interested; it is true, however, that the lady's
+appearance was a refutation of the young man's ballroom
+generalizations.
+
+The Marquise had reached her thirtieth year. She was beautiful in
+spite of her fragile form and extremely delicate look. Her greatest
+charm lay in her still face, revealing unfathomed depths of soul. Some
+haunting, ever-present thought veiled, as it were, the full brilliance
+of eyes which told of a fevered life and boundless resignation. So
+seldom did she raise the eyelids soberly downcast, and so listless
+were her glances, that it almost seemed as if the fire in her eyes
+were reserved for some occult contemplation. Any man of genius and
+feeling must have felt strangely attracted by her gentleness and
+silence. If the mind sought to explain the mysterious problem of a
+constant inward turning from the present to the past, the soul was no
+less interested in initiating itself into the secrets of a heart proud
+in some sort of its anguish. Everything about her, moreover, was in
+keeping with these thoughts which she inspired. Like almost all women
+who have very long hair, she was very pale and perfectly white. The
+marvelous fineness of her skin (that almost unerring sign) indicated a
+quick sensibility which could be seen yet more unmistakably in her
+features; there was the same minute and wonderful delicacy of finish
+in them that the Chinese artist gives to his fantastic figures.
+Perhaps her neck was rather too long, but such necks belong to the
+most graceful type, and suggest vague affinities between a woman's
+head and the magnetic curves of the serpent. Leave not a single one of
+the thousand signs and tokens by which the most inscrutable character
+betrays itself to an observer of human nature, he has but to watch
+carefully the little movements of a woman's head, the ever-varying
+expressive turns and curves of her neck and throat, to read her
+nature.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont's dress harmonized with the haunting thought that
+informed the whole woman. Her hair was gathered up into a tall coronet
+of broad plaits, without ornament of any kind; she seemed to have
+bidden farewell for ever to elaborate toilettes. Nor were any of the
+small arts of coquetry which spoil so many women to be detected in
+her. Perhaps her bodice, modest though it was, did not altogether
+conceal the dainty grace of her figure, perhaps, too, her gown looked
+rich from the extreme distinction of its fashion, and if it is
+permissible to look for expression in the arrangement of stuffs,
+surely those numerous straight folds invested her with a great
+dignity. There may have been some lingering trace of the indelible
+feminine foible in the minute care bestowed upon her hand and foot;
+yet, if she allowed them to be seen with some pleasure, it would have
+tasked the utmost malice of a rival to discover any affectation in her
+gestures, so natural did they seem, so much a part of old childish
+habit, that her careless grace absolved this vestige of vanity.
+
+All these little characteristics, the nameless trifles which combine
+to make up the sum of a woman's prettiness or ugliness, her charm or
+lack of charm, can only be indicated, when, as with Mme. d'Aiglemont,
+a personality dominates and gives coherence to the details, informing
+them, blending them all in an exquisite whole. Her manner was
+perfectly in accord with her style of beauty and her dress. Only to
+certain women at a certain age is it given to put language into their
+attitude. Is it joy or is it sorrow that teaches a woman of thirty the
+secret of that eloquence of carriage, so that she must always remain
+an enigma which each interprets by the aid of his hopes, desires, or
+theories?
+
+The way in which the Marquise leaned both elbows on the arm of her
+chair, the toying of her interclasped fingers, the curve of her
+throat, the indolent lines of her languid but lissome body as she lay
+back in graceful exhaustion, as it were; her indolent limbs, her
+unstudied pose, the utter lassitude of her movements,--all suggested
+that this was a woman for whom life had lost its interest, a woman who
+had known the joys of love only in dreams, a woman bowed down by the
+burden of memories of the past, a woman who had long since despaired
+of the future and despaired of herself, an unoccupied woman who took
+the emptiness of her own life for the nothingness of life.
+
+Charles de Vandenesse saw and admired the beautiful picture before
+him, as a kind of artistic success beyond an ordinary woman's powers
+of attainment. He was acquainted with d'Aiglemont; and now, at the
+first sight of d'Aiglemont's wife, the young diplomatist saw at a
+glance a disproportionate marriage, an incompatibility (to use the
+legal jargon) so great that it was impossible that the Marquise should
+love her husband. And yet--the Marquise d'Aiglemont's life was above
+reproach, and for any observer the mystery about her was the more
+interesting on this account. The first impulse of surprise over,
+Vandenesse cast about for the best way of approaching Mme.
+d'Aiglemont. He would try a commonplace piece of diplomacy, he
+thought; he would disconcert her by a piece of clumsiness and see how
+she would receive it.
+
+"Madame," he said, seating himself near her, "through a fortunate
+indiscretion I have learned that, for some reason unknown to me, I
+have had the good fortune to attract your notice. I owe you the more
+thanks because I have never been so honored before. At the same time,
+you are responsible for one of my faults, for I mean never to be
+modest again--"
+
+"You will make a mistake, monsieur," she laughed; "vanity should be
+left to those who have nothing else to recommend them."
+
+The conversation thus opened ranged at large, in the usual way, over a
+multitude of topics--art and literature, politics, men and things--
+till insensibly they fell to talking of the eternal theme in France
+and all the world over--love, sentiment, and women.
+
+"We are bond-slaves."
+
+"You are queens."
+
+This was the gist and substance of all the more or less ingenious
+discourse between Charles and the Marquise, as of all such discourses
+--past, present, and to come. Allow a certain space of time, and the
+two formulas shall begin to mean "Love me," and "I will love you."
+
+"Madame," Charles de Vandenesse exclaimed under his breath, "you have
+made me bitterly regret that I am leaving Paris. In Italy I certainly
+shall not pass hours in intellectual enjoyment such as this has been."
+
+"Perhaps, monsieur, you will find happiness, and happiness is worth
+more than all the brilliant things, true and false, that are said
+every evening in Paris."
+
+Before Charles took leave, he asked permission to pay a farewell call
+on the Marquise d'Aiglemont, and very lucky did he feel himself when
+the form of words in which he expressed himself for once was used in
+all sincerity; and that night, and all day long on the morrow, he
+could not put the thought of the Marquise out of his mind.
+
+At times he wondered why she had singled him out, what she had meant
+when she asked him to come to see her, and thought supplied an
+inexhaustible commentary. Again it seemed to him that he had
+discovered the motives of her curiosity, and he grew intoxicated with
+hope or frigidly sober with each new construction put upon that piece
+of commonplace civility. Sometimes it meant everything, sometimes
+nothing. He made up his mind at last that he would not yield to this
+inclination, and--went to call on Mme. d'Aiglemont.
+
+There are thoughts which determine our conduct, while we do not so
+much as suspect their existence. If at first sight this assertion
+appears to be less a truth than a paradox, let any candid inquirer
+look into his own life and he shall find abundant confirmation
+therein. Charles went to Mme. d'Aiglemont, and so obeyed one of these
+latent, pre-existent germs of thought, of which our experience and our
+intellectual gains and achievements are but later and tangible
+developments.
+
+For a young man a woman of thirty has irresistible attractions. There
+is nothing more natural, nothing better established, no human tie of
+stouter tissue than the heart-deep attachment between such a woman as
+the Marquise d'Aiglemont and such a man as Charles de Vandenesse. You
+can see examples of it every day in the world. A girl, as a matter of
+fact, has too many young illusions, she is too inexperienced, the
+instinct of sex counts for too much in her love for a young man to
+feel flattered by it. A woman of thirty knows all that is involved in
+the self-surrender to be made. Among the impulses of the first, put
+curiosity and other motives than love; the second acts with integrity
+of sentiment. The first yields; the second makes deliberate choice. Is
+not that choice in itself an immense flattery? A woman armed with
+experience, forewarned by knowledge, almost always dearly bought,
+seems to give more than herself; while the inexperienced and credulous
+girl, unable to draw comparisons for lack of knowledge, can appreciate
+nothing at its just worth. She accepts love and ponders it. A woman is
+a counselor and a guide at an age when we love to be guided and
+obedience is delight; while a girl would fain learn all things,
+meeting us with a girl's /naivete/ instead of a woman's tenderness.
+She affords a single triumph; with a woman there is resistance upon
+resistance to overcome; she has but joy and tears, a woman has rapture
+and remorse.
+
+A girl cannot play the part of a mistress unless she is so corrupt
+that we turn from her with loathing; a woman has a thousand ways of
+preserving her power and her dignity; she has risked so much for love,
+that she must bid him pass through his myriad transformations, while
+her too submissive rival gives a sense of too serene security which
+palls. If the one sacrifices her maidenly pride, the other immolates
+the honor of a whole family. A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she
+thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's
+coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after veil, she
+satisfies every demand of man's vanity, the novice responds but to
+one.
+
+And there are terrors, fears, and hesitations--trouble and storm in
+the love of a woman of thirty years, never to be found in a young
+girl's love. At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back
+the esteem she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her
+thoughts are full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids
+him make it glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself,
+or rise in pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young
+girl can only make moan. And with all the advantages of her position,
+the woman of thirty can be a girl again, for she can play all parts,
+assume a girl's bashfulness, and grow the fairer even for a mischance.
+
+Between these two feminine types lies the immeasurable difference
+which separates the foreseen from the unforeseen, strength from
+weakness. The woman of thirty satisfies every requirement; the young
+girl must satisfy none, under penalty of ceasing to be a young girl.
+Such ideas as these, developing in a young man's mind, help to
+strengthen the strongest of all passions, a passion in which all
+spontaneous and natural feeling is blended with the artificial
+sentiment created by conventional manners.
+
+The most important and decisive step in a woman's life is the very one
+that she invariably regards as the most insignificant. After her
+marriage she is no longer her own mistress, she is the queen and the
+bond-slave of the domestic hearth. The sanctity of womanhood is
+incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman
+emancipation means corruption. If you give a stranger the right of
+entry into the sanctuary of home, do you not put yourself at his
+mercy? How then if she herself bids him enter it? Is not this an
+offence, or, to speak more accurately, a first step towards an
+offence? You must either accept this theory with all its consequences,
+or absolve illicit passion. French society hitherto has chosen the
+third and middle course of looking on and laughing when offences come,
+apparently upon the Spartan principle of condoning the theft and
+punishing clumsiness. And this system, it may be, is a very wise one.
+'Tis a most appalling punishment to have all your neighbors pointing
+the finger of scorn at you, a punishment that a woman feels in her
+very heart. Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious
+of respect; without esteem they cannot exist, esteem is the first
+demand that they make of love. The most corrupt among them feels that
+she must, in the first place, pledge the future to buy absolution for
+the past, and strives to make her lover understand that only for
+irresistible bliss can she barter the respect which the world
+henceforth will refuse to her.
+
+Some such reflections cross the mind of any woman who for the first
+time and alone receives a visit from a young man; and this especially
+when, like Charles de Vandenesse, the visitor is handsome or clever.
+And similarly there are not many young men who would fail to base some
+secret wish on one of the thousand and one ideas which justify the
+instinct that attracts them to a beautiful, witty, and unhappy woman
+like the Marquise d'Aiglemont.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont, therefore, felt troubled when M. de Vandenesse was
+announced; and as for him, he was almost confused in spite of the
+assurance which is like a matter of costume for a diplomatist. But not
+for long. The Marquise took refuge at once in the friendliness of
+manner which women use as a defence against the misinterpretations of
+fatuity, a manner which admits of no afterthought, while it paves the
+way to sentiment (to make use of a figure of speech), tempering the
+transition through the ordinary forms of politeness. In this ambiguous
+position, where the four roads leading respectively to Indifference,
+Respect, Wonder, and Passion meet, a woman may stay as long as she
+pleases, but only at thirty years does she understand all the
+possibilities of the situation. Laughter, tenderness, and jest are all
+permitted to her at the crossing of the ways; she has acquired the
+tact by which she finds all the responsive chords in a man's nature,
+and skill in judging the sounds which she draws forth. Her silence is
+as dangerous as her speech. You will never read her at that age, nor
+discover if she is frank or false, nor how far she is serious in her
+admissions or merely laughing at you. She gives you the right to
+engage in a game of fence with her, and suddenly by a glance, a
+gesture of proved potency, she closes the combat and turns from you
+with your secret in her keeping, free to offer you up in a jest, free
+to interest herself in you, safe alike in her weakness and your
+strength.
+
+Although the Marquise d'Aiglemont took up her position upon this
+neutral ground during the first interview, she knew how to preserve a
+high womanly dignity. The sorrows of which she never spoke seemed to
+hang over her assumed gaiety like a light cloud obscuring the sun.
+When Vandenesse went out, after a conversation which he had enjoyed
+more than he had thought possible, he carried with him the conviction
+that this was like to be too costly a conquest for his aspirations.
+
+"It would mean sentiment from here to yonder," he thought, "and
+correspondence enough to wear out a deputy second-clerk on his
+promotion. And yet if I really cared----"
+
+Luckless phrase that has been the ruin of many an infatuated mortal.
+In France the way to love lies through self-love. Charles went back to
+Mme. d'Aiglemont, and imagined that she showed symptoms of pleasure in
+his conversion. And then, instead of giving himself up like a boy to
+the joy of falling in love, he tried to play a double role. He did his
+best to act passion and to keep cool enough to analyze the progress of
+this flirtation, to be lover and diplomatist at once; but youth and
+hot blood and analysis could only end in one way, over head and ears
+in love; for, natural or artificial, the Marquise was more than his
+match. Each time he went out from Mme. d'Aiglemont, he strenuously
+held himself to his distrust, and submitted the progressive situations
+of his case to a rigorous scrutiny fatal to his own emotions.
+
+"To-day she gave me to understand that she has been very unhappy and
+lonely," said he to himself, after the third visit, "and that but for
+her little girl she would have longed for death. She was perfectly
+resigned. Now as I am neither her brother nor her spiritual director,
+why should she confide her troubles to /me/? She loves me."
+
+Two days later he came away apostrophizing modern manners.
+
+"Love takes on the hue of every age. In 1822 love is a doctrinaire.
+Instead of proving love by deeds, as in times past, we have taken to
+argument and rhetoric and debate. Women's tactics are reduced to three
+shifts. In the first place, they declare that we cannot love as they
+love. (Coquetry! the Marquise simply threw it at me, like a challenge,
+this evening!) Next they grow pathetic, to appeal to our natural
+generosity or self-love; for does it not flatter a young man's vanity
+to console a woman for a great calamity? And lastly, they have a craze
+for virginity. She must have thought that I thought her very innocent.
+My good faith is like to become an excellent speculation."
+
+But a day came when every suspicious idea was exhausted. He asked
+himself whether the Marquise was not sincere; whether so much
+suffering could be feigned, and why she should act the part of
+resignation? She lived in complete seclusion; she drank in silence of
+a cup of sorrow scarcely to be guessed unless from the accent of some
+chance exclamation in a voice always well under control. From that
+moment Charles felt a keen interest in Mme. d'Aiglemont. And yet,
+though his visits had come to be a recognized thing, and in some sort
+a necessity to them both, and though the hour was kept free by tacit
+agreement, Vandenesse still thought that this woman with whom he was
+in love was more clever than sincere. "Decidedly, she is an uncommonly
+clever woman," he used to say to himself as he went away.
+
+When he came into the room, there was the Marquise in her favorite
+attitude, melancholy expressed in her whole form. She made no movement
+when he entered, only raised her eyes and looked full at him, but the
+glance that she gave him was like a smile. Mme. d'Aiglemont's manner
+meant confidence and sincere friendship, but of love there was no
+trace. Charles sat down and found nothing to say. A sensation for
+which no language exists troubled him.
+
+"What is the matter with you?" she asked in a softened voice.
+
+"Nothing. . . . Yes; I am thinking of something of which, as yet, you
+have not thought at all."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Why--the Congress is over."
+
+"Well," she said, "and ought you to have been at the Congress?"
+
+A direct answer would have been the most eloquent and delicate
+declaration of love; but Charles did not make it. Before the candid
+friendship in Mme. d'Aiglemont's face all the calculations of vanity,
+the hopes of love, and the diplomatist's doubts died away. She did not
+suspect, or she seemed not to suspect, his love for her; and Charles,
+in utter confusion turning upon himself, was forced to admit that he
+had said and done nothing which could warrant such a belief on her
+part. For M. de Vandenesse that evening, the Marquise was, as she had
+always been, simple and friendly, sincere in her sorrow, glad to have
+a friend, proud to find a nature responsive to her own--nothing more.
+It had not entered her mind that a woman could yield twice; she had
+known love--love lay bleeding still in the depths of her heart, but
+she did not imagine that bliss could bring her its rapture twice, for
+she believed not merely in the intellect, but in the soul; and for her
+love was no simple attraction; it drew her with all noble attractions.
+
+In a moment Charles became a young man again, enthralled by the
+splendor of a nature so lofty. He wished for a fuller initiation into
+the secret history of a life blighted rather by fate than by her own
+fault. Mme. d'Aiglemont heard him ask the cause of the overwhelming
+sorrow which had blended all the harmonies of sadness with her beauty;
+she gave him one glance, but that searching look was like a seal set
+upon some solemn compact.
+
+"Ask no more such questions of me," she said. "Four years ago, on this
+very day, the man who loved me, for whom I would have given up
+everything, even my own self-respect, died, and died to save my name.
+That love was still young and pure and full of illusions when it came
+to an end. Before I gave way to passion--and never was a woman so
+urged by fate--I had been drawn into the mistake that ruins many a
+girl's life, a marriage with a man whose agreeable manners concealed
+his emptiness. Marriage plucked my hopes away one by one. And now,
+to-day, I have forfeited happiness through marriage, as well as the
+happiness styled criminal, and I have known no happiness. Nothing is
+left to me. If I could not die, at least I ought to be faithful to my
+memories."
+
+No tears came with the words. Her eyes fell, and there was a slight
+twisting of the fingers interclasped, according to her wont. It was
+simply said, but in her voice there was a note of despair, deep as her
+love seemed to have been, which left Charles without a hope. The
+dreadful story of a life told in three sentences, with that twisting
+of the fingers for all comment, the might of anguish in a fragile
+woman, the dark depths masked by a fair face, the tears of four years
+of mourning fascinated Vandenesse; he sat silent and diminished in the
+presence of her woman's greatness and nobleness, seeing not the
+physical beauty so exquisite, so perfectly complete, but the soul so
+great in its power to feel. He had found, at last, the ideal of his
+fantastic imaginings, the ideal so vigorously invoked by all who look
+on life as the raw material of a passion for which many a one seeks
+ardently, and dies before he has grasped the whole of the dreamed-of
+treasure.
+
+With those words of hers in his ears, in the presence of her sublime
+beauty, his own thoughts seemed poor and narrow. Powerless as he felt
+himself to find words of his own, simple enough and lofty enough to
+scale the heights of this exaltation, he took refuge in platitudes as
+to the destiny of women.
+
+"Madame, we must either forget our pain, or hollow out a tomb for
+ourselves."
+
+But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being
+essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the
+other is infinite. To set to work to reason where you are required to
+feel, is the mark of a limited nature. Vandenesse therefore held his
+peace, sat awhile with his eyes fixed upon her, then came away. A prey
+to novel thoughts which exalted woman for him, he was in something the
+same position as a painter who has taken the vulgar studio model for a
+type of womanhood, and suddenly confronts the /Mnemosyne/ of the Musee
+--that noblest and least appreciated of antique statues.
+
+Charles de Vandenesse was deeply in love. He loved Mme. d'Aiglemont
+with the loyalty of youth, with the fervor that communicates such
+ineffable charm to a first passion, with a simplicity of heart of
+which a man only recovers some fragments when he loves again at a
+later day. Delicious first passion of youth, almost always deliciously
+savored by the woman who calls it forth; for at the golden prime of
+thirty, from the poetic summit of a woman's life, she can look out
+over the whole course of love--backwards into the past, forwards into
+the future--and, knowing all the price to be paid for love, enjoys her
+bliss with the dread of losing it ever present with her. Her soul is
+still fair with her waning youth, and passion daily gathers strength
+from the dismaying prospect of the coming days.
+
+"This is love," Vandenesse said to himself this time as he left the
+Marquise, "and for my misfortune I love a woman wedded to her
+memories. It is hard work to struggle against a dead rival, never
+present to make blunders and fall out of favor, nothing of him left
+but his better qualities. What is it but a sort of high treason
+against the Ideal to attempt to break the charm of memory, to destroy
+the hopes that survive a lost lover, precisely because he only
+awakened longings, and all that is loveliest and most enchanting in
+love?"
+
+These sober reflections, due to the discouragement and dread of
+failure with which love begins in earnest, were the last expiring
+effort of diplomatic reasoning. Thenceforward he knew no
+afterthoughts, he was the plaything of his love, and lost himself in
+the nothings of that strange inexplicable happiness which is full fed
+by a chance word, by silence, or a vague hope. He tried to love
+Platonically, came daily to breathe the air that she breathed, became
+almost a part of her house, and went everywhere with her, slave as he
+was of a tyrannous passion compounded of egoism and devotion of the
+completest. Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart,
+as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which
+nothing can dismay or turn aside. If feeling is sincere, its destiny
+is not doubtful. Let a woman begin to think that her life depends on
+the sincerity or fervor or earnestness which her lover shall put into
+his longings, and is there not sufficient in the thought to put her
+through all the tortures of dread? It is impossible for a woman, be
+she wife or mother, to be secure from a young man's love. One thing it
+is within her power to do--to refuse to see him as soon as she learns
+a secret which she never fails to guess. But this is too decided a
+step to take at an age when marriage has become a prosaic and tiresome
+yoke, and conjugal affection is something less than tepid (if indeed
+her husband has not already begun to neglect her). Is a woman plain?
+she is flattered by a love which gives her fairness. Is she young and
+charming? She is only to be won by a fascination as great as her own
+power to charm, that is to say, a fascination well-nigh irresistible.
+Is she virtuous? There is a love sublime in its earthliness which
+leads her to find something like absolution in the very greatness of
+the surrender and glory in a hard struggle. Everything is a snare. No
+lesson, therefore, is too severe where the temptation is so strong.
+The seclusion in which the Greeks and Orientals kept and keep their
+women, an example more and more followed in modern England, is the
+only safeguard of domestic morality; but under this system there is an
+end of all the charm of social intercourse; and society, and good
+breeding, and refinement of manners become impossible. The nations
+must take their choice.
+
+So a few months went by, and Mme. d'Aiglemont discovered that her life
+was closely bound with this young man's life, without overmuch
+confusion in her surprise, and felt with something almost like
+pleasure that she shared his tastes and his thoughts. Had she adopted
+Vandenesse's ideas? Or was it Vandenesse who had made her lightest
+whims his own? She was not careful to inquire. She had been swept out
+already into the current of passion, and yet this adorable woman told
+herself with the confident reiteration of misgiving;
+
+"Ah! no. I will be faithful to him who died for me."
+
+Pascal said that "the doubt of God implies belief in God." And
+similarly it may be said that a woman only parleys when she has
+surrendered. A day came when the Marquise admitted to herself that she
+was loved, and with that admission came a time of wavering among
+countless conflicting thoughts and feelings. The superstitions of
+experience spoke their language. Should she be happy? Was it possible
+that she should find happiness outside the limits of the laws which
+society rightly or wrongly has set up for humanity to live by?
+Hitherto her cup of life had been full of bitterness. Was there any
+happy issue possible for the ties which united two human beings held
+apart by social conventions? And might not happiness be bought too
+dear? Still, this so ardently desired happiness, for which it is so
+natural to seek, might perhaps be found after all. Curiosity is always
+retained on the lover's side in the suit. The secret tribunal was
+still sitting when Vandenesse appeared, and his presence put the
+metaphysical spectre, reason, to flight.
+
+If such are the successive transformations through which a sentiment,
+transient though it be, passes in a young man and a woman of thirty,
+there comes a moment of time when the shades of difference blend into
+each other, when all reasonings end in a single and final reflection
+which is lost and absorbed in the desire which it confirms. Then the
+longer the resistance, the mightier the voice of love. And here endeth
+this lesson, or rather this study made from the /ecorche/, to borrow a
+most graphic term from the studio, for in this history it is not so
+much intended to portray love as to lay bare its mechanism and its
+dangers. From this moment every day adds color to these dry bones,
+clothes them again with living flesh and blood and the charm of youth,
+and puts vitality into their movements; till they glow once more with
+the beauty, the persuasive grace of sentiment, the loveliness of life.
+
+
+
+Charles found Mme. d'Aiglemont absorbed in thought, and to his "What
+is it?" spoken in thrilling tones grown persuasive with the heart's
+soft magic, she was careful not to reply. The delicious question bore
+witness to the perfect unity of their spirits; and the Marquise felt,
+with a woman's wonderful intuition, that to give any expression to the
+sorrow in her heart would be to make an advance. If, even now, each
+one of those words was fraught with significance for them both, in
+what fathomless depths might she not plunge at the first step? She
+read herself with a clear and lucid glance. She was silent, and
+Vandenesse followed her example.
+
+"I am not feeling well," she said at last, taking alarm at the pause
+fraught with such great moment for them both, when the language of the
+eyes completely filled the blank left by the helplessness of speech.
+
+"Madame," said Charles, and his voice was tender but unsteady with
+strong feeling, "soul and body are both dependent on each other. If
+you were happy, you would be young and fresh. Why do you refuse to ask
+of love all that love has taken from you? You think that your life is
+over when it is only just beginning. Trust yourself to a friend's
+care. It is so sweet to be loved."
+
+"I am old already," she said; "there is no reason why I should not
+continue to suffer as in the past. And 'one must love,' do you say?
+Well, I must not, and I cannot. Your friendship has put some sweetness
+into my life, but beside you I care for no one, no one could efface my
+memories. A friend I accept; I should fly from a lover. Besides, would
+it be a very generous thing to do, to exchange a withered heart for a
+young heart; to smile upon illusions which now I cannot share, to
+cause happiness in which I should either have no belief, or tremble to
+lose? I should perhaps respond to his devotion with egoism, should
+weigh and deliberate while he felt; my memory would resent the
+poignancy of his happiness. No, if you love once, that love is never
+replaced, you see. Indeed, who would have my heart at this price?"
+
+There was a tinge of heartless coquetry in the words, the last effort
+of discretion.
+
+"If he loses courage, well and good, I shall live alone and faithful."
+The thought came from the very depths of the woman, for her it was the
+too slender willow twig caught in vain by a swimmer swept out by the
+current.
+
+Vandenesse's involuntary shudder at her dictum plead more eloquently
+for him than all his past assiduity. Nothing moves a woman so much as
+the discovery of a gracious delicacy in us, such a refinement of
+sentiment as her own, for a woman the grace and delicacy are sure
+tokens of truth. Charles' start revealed the sincerity of his love.
+Mme. d'Aiglemont learned the strength of his affection from the
+intensity of his pain.
+
+"Perhaps you are right," he said coldly. "New love, new vexation of
+spirit."
+
+Then he changed the subject, and spoke of indifferent matters; but he
+was visibly moved, and he concentrated his gaze on Mme. d'Aiglemont as
+if he were seeing her for the last time.
+
+"Adieu, madame," he said, with emotion in his voice.
+
+"/Au revoir/," said she, with that subtle coquetry, the secret of a
+very few among women.
+
+He made no answer and went.
+
+When Charles was no longer there, when his empty chair spoke for him,
+regrets flocked in upon her, and she found fault with herself. Passion
+makes an immense advance as soon as a woman persuades herself that she
+has failed somewhat in generosity or hurt a noble nature. In love
+there is never any need to be on our guard against the worst in us;
+that is a safeguard; a woman only surrenders at the summons of a
+virtue. "The floor of hell is paved with good intentions,"--it is no
+preacher's paradox.
+
+Vandenesse stopped away for several days. Every evening at the
+accustomed hour the Marquise sat expectant in remorseful impatience.
+She could not write--that would be a declaration, and, moreover, her
+instinct told her that he would come back. On the sixth day he was
+announced, and never had she heard the name with such delight. Her joy
+frightened her.
+
+"You have punished me well," she said, addressing him.
+
+Vandenesse gazed at her in astonishment.
+
+"Punished?" he echoed. "And for what?" He understood her quite well,
+but he meant to be avenged for all that he had suffered as soon as she
+suspected it.
+
+"Why have you not come to see me?" she demanded with a smile.
+
+"Then you have seen no visitors?" asked he, parrying the question.
+
+"Yes. M. de Ronquerolles and M. de Marsay and young d'Escrignon came
+and stayed for nearly two hours, the first two yesterday, the last
+this morning. And besides, I have had a call, I believe, from Mme.
+Firmiani and from your sister, Mme. de Listomere."
+
+Here was a new infliction, torture which none can comprehend unless
+they know love as a fierce and all-invading tyrant whose mildest
+symptom is a monstrous jealousy, a perpetual desire to snatch away the
+beloved from every other influence.
+
+"What!" thought he to himself, "she has seen visitors, she has been
+with happy creatures, and talking to them, while I was unhappy and all
+alone."
+
+He buried his annoyance forthwith, and consigned love to the depths of
+his heart, like a coffin to the sea. His thoughts were of the kind
+that never find expression in words; they pass through the mind
+swiftly as a deadly acid, that poisons as it evaporates and vanishes.
+His brow, however, was over-clouded; and Mme. d'Aiglemont, guided by
+her woman's instinct, shared his sadness without understanding it. She
+had hurt him, unwittingly, as Vandenesse knew. He talked over his
+position with her, as if his jealousy were one of those hypothetical
+cases which lovers love to discuss. Then the Marquise understood it
+all. She was so deeply moved, that she could not keep back the tears--
+and so these lovers entered the heaven of love.
+
+Heaven and Hell are two great imaginative conceptions formulating our
+ideas of Joy and Sorrow--those two poles about which human existence
+revolves. Is not heaven a figure of speech covering now and for
+evermore an infinite of human feeling impossible to express save in
+its accidents--since that Joy is one? And what is Hell but the symbol
+of our infinite power to suffer tortures so diverse that of our pain
+it is possible to fashion works of art, for no two human sorrows are
+alike?
+
+One evening the two lovers sat alone and side by side, silently
+watching one of the fairest transformations of the sky, a cloudless
+heaven taking hues of pale gold and purple from the last rays of the
+sunset. With the slow fading of the daylight, sweet thoughts seem to
+awaken, and soft stirrings of passion, and a mysterious sense of
+trouble in the midst of calm. Nature sets before us vague images of
+bliss, bidding us enjoy the happiness within our reach, or lament it
+when it has fled. In those moments fraught with enchantment, when the
+tender light in the canopy of the sky blends in harmony with the
+spells working within, it is difficult to resist the heart's desires
+grown so magically potent. Cares are blunted, joy becomes ecstasy;
+pain, intolerable anguish. The pomp of sunset gives the signal for
+confessions and draws them forth. Silence grows more dangerous than
+speech for it gives to eyes all the power of the infinite of the
+heavens reflected in them. And for speech, the least word has
+irresistible might. Is not the light infused into the voice and purple
+into the glances? Is not heaven within us, or do we feel that we are
+in the heavens?
+
+Vandenesse and Julie--for so she had allowed herself to be called for
+the past few days by him whom she loved to speak of as Charles--
+Vandenesse and Julie were talking together, but they had drifted very
+far from their original subject; and if their spoken words had grown
+meaningless they listened in delight to the unspoken thoughts that
+lurked in the sounds. Her hand lay in his. She had abandoned it to him
+without a thought that she had granted a proof of love.
+
+Together they leaned forward to look out upon a majestic cloud
+country, full of snows and glaciers and fantastic mountain peaks with
+gray stains of shadow on their sides, a picture composed of sharp
+contrasts between fiery red and the shadows of darkness, filling the
+skies with a fleeting vision of glory which cannot be reproduced--
+magnificent swaddling-bands of sunrise, bright shrouds of the dying
+sun. As they leaned Julie's hair brushed lightly against Vandenesse's
+cheek. She felt that light contact, and shuddered violently, and he
+even more, for imperceptibly they both had reached one of those
+inexplicable crises when quiet has wrought upon the senses until every
+faculty of perception is so keen that the slightest shock fills the
+heart lost in melancholy with sadness that overflows in tears; or
+raises joy to ecstasy in a heart that is lost in the vertigo of love.
+Almost involuntarily Julie pressed her lover's hand. That wooing
+pressure gave courage to his timidity. All the joy of the present, all
+the hopes of the future were blended in the emotion of a first caress,
+the bashful trembling kiss that Mme. d'Aiglemont received upon her
+cheek. The slighter the concession, the more dangerous and insinuating
+it was. For their double misfortune it was only too sincere a
+revelation. Two noble natures had met and blended, drawn each to each
+by every law of natural attraction, held apart by every ordinance.
+
+General d'Aiglemont came in at that very moment.
+
+"The Ministry has gone out," he said. "Your uncle will be in the new
+cabinet. So you stand an uncommonly good chance of an embassy,
+Vandenesse."
+
+Charles and Julie looked at each other and flushed red. That blush was
+one more tie to unite them; there was one thought and one remorse in
+either mind; between two lovers guilty of a kiss there is a bond quite
+as strong and terrible as the bond between two robbers who have
+murdered a man. Something had to be said by way of reply.
+
+"I do not care to leave Paris now," Charles said.
+
+"We know why," said the General, with the knowing air of a man who
+discovers a secret. "You do not like to leave your uncle, because you
+do not wish to lose your chance of succeeding to the title."
+
+The Marquise took refuge in her room, and in her mind passed a
+pitiless verdict upon her husband.
+
+"His stupidity is really beyond anything!"
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE FINGER OF GOD
+
+Between the Barriere d'Italie and the Barriere de la Sante, along the
+boulevard which leads to the Jardin des Plantes, you have a view of
+Paris fit to send an artist or the tourist, the most /blase/ in
+matters of landscape, into ecstasies. Reach the slightly higher ground
+where the line of boulevard, shaded by tall, thick-spreading trees,
+curves with the grace of some green and silent forest avenue, and you
+see spread out at your feet a deep valley populous with factories
+looking almost countrified among green trees and the brown streams of
+the Bievre or the Gobelins.
+
+On the opposite slope, beneath some thousands of roofs packed close
+together like heads in a crowd, lurks the squalor of the Faubourg
+Saint-Marceau. The imposing cupola of the Pantheon, and the grim
+melancholy dome of the Val-du-Grace, tower proudly up above a whole
+town in itself, built amphitheatre-wise; every tier being grotesquely
+represented by a crooked line of street, so that the two public
+monuments look like a huge pair of giants dwarfing into insignificance
+the poor little houses and the tallest poplars in the valley. To your
+left behold the observatory, the daylight, pouring athwart its windows
+and galleries, producing such fantastical strange effects that the
+building looks like a black spectral skeleton. Further yet in the
+distance rises the elegant lantern tower of the Invalides, soaring up
+between the bluish pile of the Luxembourg and the gray tours of Saint-
+Sulpice. From this standpoint the lines of the architecture are
+blended with green leaves and gray shadows, and change every moment
+with every aspect of the heavens, every alteration of light or color
+in the sky. Afar, the skyey spaces themselves seem to be full of
+buildings; near, wind the serpentine curves of waving trees and green
+footpaths.
+
+Away to your right, through a great gap in this singular landscape,
+you see the canal Saint-Martin, a long pale stripe with its edging of
+reddish stone quays and fringes of lime avenue. The long rows of
+buildings beside it, in genuine Roman style, are the public granaries.
+
+Beyond, again, on the very last plane of all, see the smoke-dimmed
+slopes of Belleville covered with houses and windmills, which blend
+their freaks of outline with the chance effects of cloud. And still,
+between that horizon, vague as some childish recollection, and the
+serried range of roofs in the valley, a whole city lies out of sight:
+a huge city, engulfed, as it were, in a vast hollow between the
+pinnacles of the Hopital de la Pitie and the ridge line of the
+Cimetiere de l'Est, between suffering on the one hand and death on the
+other; a city sending up a smothered roar like Ocean grumbling at the
+foot of a cliff, as if to let you know that "I am here!"
+
+When the sunlight pours like a flood over this strip of Paris,
+purifying and etherealizing the outlines, kindling answering lights
+here and there in the window panes, brightening the red tiles, flaming
+about the golden crosses, whitening walls and transforming the
+atmosphere into a gauzy veil, calling up rich contrasts of light and
+fantastic shadow; when the sky is blue and earth quivers in the heat,
+and the bells are pealing, then you shall see one of the eloquent
+fairy scenes which stamp themselves for ever on the imagination, a
+scene that shall find as fanatical worshipers as the wondrous views of
+Naples and Byzantium or the isles of Florida. Nothing is wanting to
+complete the harmony, the murmur of the world of men and the idyllic
+quiet of solitude, the voices of a million human creatures and the
+voice of God. There lies a whole capital beneath the peaceful
+cypresses of Pere-Lachaise.
+
+The landscape lay in all its beauty, sparkling in the spring sunlight,
+as I stood looking out over it one morning, my back against a huge
+elm-tree that flung its yellow flowers to the wind. At the sight of
+the rich and glorious view before me, I thought bitterly of the scorn
+with which even in our literature we affect to hold this land of ours,
+and poured maledictions on the pitiable plutocrats who fall out of
+love with fair France, and spend their gold to acquire the right of
+sneering at their own country, by going through Italy at a gallop and
+inspecting that desecrated land through an opera-glass. I cast loving
+eyes on modern Paris. I was beginning to dream dreams, when the sound
+of a kiss disturbed the solitude and put philosophy to flight. Down
+the sidewalk, along the steep bank, above the rippling water, I saw
+beyond the Ponte des Gobelins the figure of a woman, dressed with the
+daintiest simplicity; she was still young, as it seemed to me, and the
+blithe gladness of the landscape was reflected in her sweet face. Her
+companion, a handsome young man, had just set down a little boy. A
+prettier child has never been seen, and to this day I do not know
+whether it was the little one or his mother who received the kiss. In
+their young faces, in their eyes, their smile, their every movement,
+you could read the same deep and tender thought. Their arms were
+interlaced with such glad swiftness; they drew close together with
+such marvelous unanimity of impulse that, conscious of nothing but
+themselves, they did not so much as see me. A second child, however--a
+little girl, who had turned her back upon them in sullen discontent--
+threw me a glance, and the expression in her eyes startled me. She was
+as pretty and engaging as the little brother whom she left to run
+about by himself, sometimes before, sometimes after their mother and
+her companion; but her charm was less childish, and now, as she stood
+mute and motionless, her attitude and demeanor suggested a torpid
+snake. There was something indescribably mechanical in the way in
+which the pretty woman and her companion paced up and down. In absence
+of mind, probably, they were content to walk to and fro between the
+little bridge and a carriage that stood waiting nearby at a corner in
+the boulevard, turning, stopping short now and again, looking into
+each other's eyes, or breaking into laughter as their casual talk grew
+lively or languid, grave or gay.
+
+I watched this delicious picture a while from my hiding-place by the
+great elm-tree, and should have turned away no doubt and respected
+their privacy, if it had not been for a chance discovery. In the face
+of the brooding, silent, elder child I saw traces of thought overdeep
+for her age. When her mother and the young man at her side turned and
+came near, her head was frequently lowered; the furtive sidelong
+glances of intelligence that she gave the pair and the child her
+brother were nothing less than extraordinary. Sometimes the pretty
+woman or her friend would stroke the little boy's fair curls, or lay a
+caressing finger against the baby throat or the white collar as he
+played at keeping step with them; and no words can describe the shrewd
+subtlety, the ingenuous malice, the fierce intensity which lighted up
+that pallid little face with the faint circles already round the eyes.
+Truly there was a man's power of passion in the strange-looking,
+delicate little girl. Here were traces of suffering or of thought in
+her; and which is the more certain token of death when life is in
+blossom--physical suffering, or the malady of too early thought
+preying upon a soul as yet in bud? Perhaps a mother knows. For my own
+part, I know of nothing more dreadful to see than an old man's
+thoughts on a child's forehead; even blasphemy from girlish lips is
+less monstrous.
+
+The almost stupid stolidity of this child who had begun to think
+already, her rare gestures, everything about her, interested me. I
+scrutinized her curiously. Then the common whim of the observer drew
+me to compare her with her brother, and to note their likeness and
+unlikeness.
+
+Her brown hair and dark eyes and look of precocious power made a rich
+contrast with the little one's fair curled head and sea-green eyes and
+winning helplessness. She, perhaps, was seven or eight years of age;
+the boy was full four years younger. Both children were dressed alike;
+but here again, looking closely, I noticed a difference. It was very
+slight, a little thing enough; but in the light of after events I saw
+that it meant a whole romance in the past, a whole tragedy to come.
+The little brown-haired maid wore a linen collar with a plain hem, her
+brother's was edged with dainty embroidery, that was all; but therein
+lay the confession of a heart's secret, a tacit preference which a
+child can read in the mother's inmost soul as clearly as if the spirit
+of God revealed it. The fair-haired child, careless and glad, looked
+almost like a girl, his skin was so fair and fresh, his movements so
+graceful, his look so sweet; while his older sister, in spite of her
+energy, in spite of the beauty of her features and her dazzling
+complexion, looked like a sickly little boy. In her bright eyes there
+was none of the humid softness which lends such charm to children's
+faces; they seemed, like courtiers' eyes, to be dried by some inner
+fire; and in her pallor there was a certain swarthy olive tint, the
+sign of vigorous character. Twice her little brother came to her,
+holding out a tiny hunting-horn with a touching charm, a winning look,
+and wistful expression, which would have sent Charlet into ecstasies,
+but she only scowled in answer to his "Here, Helene, will you take
+it?" so persuasively spoken. The little girl, so sombre and vehement
+beneath her apparent indifference, shuddered, and even flushed red
+when her brother came near her; but the little one seemed not to
+notice his sister's dark mood, and his unconsciousness, blended with
+earnestness, marked a final difference in character between the child
+and the little girl, whose brow was overclouded already by the gloom
+of a man's knowledge and cares.
+
+"Mamma, Helene will not play," cried the little one, seizing an
+opportunity to complain while the two stood silent on the Ponte des
+Gobelins.
+
+"Let her alone, Charles; you know very well that she is always cross."
+
+Tears sprang to Helene's eyes at the words so thoughtlessly uttered by
+her mother as she turned abruptly to the young man by her side. The
+child devoured the speech in silence, but she gave her brother one of
+those sagacious looks that seemed inexplicable to me, glancing with a
+sinister expression from the bank where he stood to the Bievre, then
+at the bridge and the view, and then at me.
+
+I as afraid lest my presence should disturb the happy couple; I
+slipped away and took refuge behind a thicket of elder trees, which
+completely screened me from all eyes. Sitting quietly on the summit of
+the bank, I watched the ever-changing landscape and the fierce-looking
+little girl, for with my head almost on a level with the boulevard I
+could still see her through the leaves. Helene seemed uneasy over my
+disappearance, her dark eyes looked for me down the alley and behind
+the trees with indefinable curiosity. What was I to her? Then Charles'
+baby laughter rang out like a bird's song in the silence. The tall,
+young man, with the same fair hair, was dancing him in his arms,
+showering kisses upon him, and the meaningless baby words of that
+"little language" which rises to our lips when we play with children.
+The mother looked on smiling, now and then, doubtless, putting in some
+low word that came up from the heart, for her companion would stop
+short in his full happiness, and the blue eyes that turned towards her
+were full of glowing light and love and worship. Their voices,
+blending with the child's voice, reached me with a vague sense of a
+caress. The three figures, charming in themselves, composed a lovely
+scene in a glorious landscape, filling it with a pervasive
+unimaginable grace. A delicately fair woman, radiant with smiles, a
+child of love, a young man with the irresistible charm of youth, a
+cloudless sky; nothing was wanting in nature to complete a perfect
+harmony for the delight of the soul. I found myself smiling as if
+their happiness had been my own.
+
+The clocks struck nine. The young man gave a tender embrace to his
+companion, and went towards the tilbury which an old servant drove
+slowly to meet him. The lady had grown grave and almost sad. The
+child's prattle sounded unchecked through the last farewell kisses.
+Then the tilbury rolled away, and the lady stood motionless, listening
+to the sound of the wheels, watching the little cloud of dust raised
+by its passage along the road. Charles ran down the green pathway back
+to the bridge to join his sister. I heard his silver voice calling to
+her.
+
+"Why did you not come to say good-bye to my good friend?" cried he.
+
+Helene looked up. Never surely did such hatred gleam from a child's
+eyes as from hers at that moment when she turned them on the brother
+who stood beside her on the bank side. She gave him an angry push.
+Charles lost his footing on the steep slope, stumbled over the roots
+of a tree, and fell headlong forwards, dashing his forehead on the
+sharp-edged stones of the embankment, and, covered with blood,
+disappeared over the edge into the muddy river. The turbid water
+closed over a fair, bright head with a shower of splashes; one sharp
+shriek after another rang in my ears; then the sounds were stifled by
+the thick stream, and the poor child sank with a dull sound as if a
+stone had been thrown into the water. The accident had happened with
+more than lightning swiftness. I sprang down the footpath, and Helene,
+stupefied with horror, shrieked again and again:
+
+"Mamma! mamma!"
+
+The mother was there at my side. She had flown to the spot like a
+bird. But neither a mother's eyes nor mine could find the exact place
+where the little one had gone under. There was a wide space of black
+hurrying water, and below in the bed of the Bievre ten feet of mud.
+There was not the smallest possibility of saving the child. No one was
+stirring at that hour on a Sunday morning, and there are neither
+barges nor anglers on the Bievre. There was not a creature in sight,
+not a pole to plumb the filthy stream. What need was there for me to
+explain how the ugly-looking accident had happened--accident or
+misfortune, whichever it might be? Had Helene avenged her father? Her
+jealousy surely was the sword of God. And yet when I looked at the
+mother I shivered. What fearful ordeal awaited her when she should
+return to her husband, the judge before whom she must stand all her
+days? And here with her was an inseparable, incorruptible witness. A
+child's forehead is transparent, a child's face hides no thoughts, and
+a lie, like a red flame set within glows out red that colors even the
+eyes. But the unhappy woman had not thought as yet of the punishment
+awaiting her at home; she was staring into the Bievre.
+
+
+
+Such an event must inevitably send ghastly echoes through a woman's
+life, and here is one of the most terrible of the reverberations that
+troubled Julie's love from time to time.
+
+Several years had gone by. The Marquis de Vandenesse wore mourning for
+his father, and succeeded to his estates. One evening, therefore,
+after dinner it happened that a notary was present in his house. This
+was no pettifogging lawyer after Sterne's pattern, but a very solid,
+substantial notary of Paris, one of your estimable men who do a stupid
+thing pompously, set down a foot heavily upon your private corn, and
+then ask what in the world there is to cry out about? If, by accident,
+they come to know the full extent of the enormity, "Upon my word," cry
+they, "I hadn't a notion!" This was a well-intentioned ass, in short,
+who could see nothing in life but deeds and documents.
+
+Mme. de Aiglemont had been dining with M. de Vandenesse; her husband
+had excused himself before dinner was over, for he was taking his two
+children to the play. They were to go to some Boulevard theatre or
+other, to the Ambigu-Comique or the Gaiete, sensational melodrama
+being judged harmless here in Paris, and suitable pabulum for
+childhood, because innocence is always triumphant in the fifth act.
+The boy and girl had teased their father to be there before the
+curtain rose, so he had left the table before dessert was served.
+
+But the notary, the imperturbable notary, utterly incapable of asking
+himself why Mme. d'Aiglemont should have allowed her husband and
+children to go without her to the play, sat on as if he were screwed
+to his chair. Dinner was over, dessert had been prolonged by
+discussion, and coffee delayed. All these things consumed time,
+doubtless precious, and drew impatient movements from that charming
+woman; she looked not unlike a thoroughbred pawing the ground before a
+race; but the man of law, to whom horses and women were equally
+unknown quantities, simply thought the Marquise a very lively and
+sparkling personage. So enchanted was he to be in the company of a
+woman of fashion and a political celebrity, that he was exerting
+himself to shine in conversation, and taking the lady's forced smile
+for approbation, talked on with unflagging spirit, till the Marquise
+was almost out of patience.
+
+The master of the house, in concert with the lady, had more than once
+maintained an eloquent silence when the lawyer expected a civil reply;
+but these significant pauses were employed by the talkative nuisance
+in looking for anecdotes in the fire. M. de Vandenesse had recourse to
+his watch; the charming Marquise tried the experiment of fastening her
+bonnet strings, and made as if she would go. But she did not go, and
+the notary, blind and deaf, and delighted with himself, was quite
+convinced that his interesting conversational powers were sufficient
+to keep the lady on the spot.
+
+"I shall certainly have that woman for a client," said he to himself.
+
+Meanwhile the Marquise stood, putting on her gloves, twisting her
+fingers, looking from the equally impatient Marquis de Vandenesse to
+the lawyer, still pounding away. At every pause in the worthy man's
+fire of witticisms the charming pair heaved a sigh of relief, and
+their looks said plainly, "At last! He is really going!"
+
+Nothing of the kind. It was a nightmare which could only end in
+exasperating the two impassioned creatures, on whom the lawyer had
+something of the fascinating effect of a snake on a pair of birds;
+before long they would be driven to cut him short.
+
+The clever notary was giving them the history of the discreditable
+ways in which one du Tillet (a stockbroker then much in favor) had
+laid the foundations of his fortune; all the ins and outs of the whole
+disgraceful business were accurately put before them; and the narrator
+was in the very middle of his tale when M. de Vandenesse heard the
+clock strike nine. Then it became clear to him that his legal adviser
+was very emphatically an idiot who must be sent forthwith about his
+business. He stopped him resolutely with a gesture.
+
+"The tongs, my lord Marquis?" queried the notary, handing the object
+in question to his client.
+
+"No, monsieur, I am compelled to send you away. Mme. d'Aiglemont
+wishes to join her children, and I shall have the honor of escorting
+her."
+
+"Nine o'clock already! Time goes like a shadow in pleasant company,"
+said the man of law, who had talked on end for the past hour.
+
+He looked for his hat, planted himself before the fire, with a
+suppressed hiccough; and, without heeding the Marquise's withering
+glances, spoke once more to his impatient client:
+
+"To sum up, my lord Marquis. Business before all things. To-morrow,
+then, we must subpoena your brother; we will proceed to make out the
+inventory, and faith, after that----"
+
+So ill had the lawyer understood his instructions, that his impression
+was the exact opposite to the one intended. It was a delicate matter,
+and Vandenesse, in spite of himself, began to put the thick-headed
+notary right. The discussion which followed took up a certain amount
+of time.
+
+"Listen," the diplomatist said at last at a sign from the lady, "You
+are puzzling my brains; come back to-morrow, and if the writ is not
+issued by noon to-morrow, the days of grace will expire, and then--"
+
+As he spoke, a carriage entered the courtyard. The poor woman turned
+sharply away at the sound to hide the tears in her eyes. The Marquis
+rang to give the servant orders to say that he was not at home; but
+before the footman could answer the bell, the lady's husband
+reappeared. He had returned unexpectedly from the Gaiete, and held
+both children by the hand. The little girl's eyes were red; the boy
+was fretful and very cross.
+
+"What can have happened?" asked the Marquise.
+
+"I will tell you by and by," said the General, and catching a glimpse
+through an open door of newspapers on the table in the adjoining
+sitting-room, he went off. The Marquise, at the end of her patience,
+flung herself down on the sofa in desperation. The notary, thinking it
+incumbent upon him to be amiable with the children, spoke to the
+little boy in an insinuating tone:
+
+"Well, my little man, and what is there on at the theatre?"
+
+"/The Valley of the Torrent/," said Gustave sulkily.
+
+"Upon my word and honor," declared the notary, "authors nowadays are
+half crazy. /The Valley of the Torrent/! Why not the Torrent of the
+Valley? It is conceivable that a valley might be without a torrent in
+it; now if they had said the Torrent of the Valley, that would have
+been something clear, something precise, something definite and
+comprehensible. But never mind that. Now, how is the drama to take
+place in a torrent and in a valley? You will tell me that in these
+days the principal attraction lies in the scenic effect, and the title
+is a capital advertisement.--And did you enjoy it, my little friend?"
+he continued, sitting down before the child.
+
+When the notary pursued his inquiries as to the possibilities of a
+drama in the bed of a torrent, the little girl turned slowly away and
+began to cry. Her mother did not notice this in her intense annoyance.
+
+"Oh! yes, monsieur, I enjoyed it very much," said the child. "There is
+a dear little boy in the play, and he was all alone in the world,
+because his papa could not have been his real papa. And when he came
+to the top of the bridge over the torrent, a big, naughty man with a
+beard, dressed all in black, came and threw him into the water. And
+then Helene began to sob and cry, and everybody scolded us, and father
+brought us away quick, quick----"
+
+M. de Vandenesse and the Marquise looked on in dull amazement, as if
+all power to think or move had been suddenly paralyzed.
+
+"Do be quiet, Gustave!" cried the General. "I told you that you were
+not to talk about anything that happened at the play, and you have
+forgotten what I said already."
+
+"Oh, my lord Marquis, your lordship must excuse him," cried the
+notary. "I ought not to have asked questions, but I had no idea--"
+
+"He ought not to have answered them," said the General, looking
+sternly at the child.
+
+It seemed that the Marquise and the master of the house both perfectly
+understood why the children had come back so suddenly. Mme.
+d'Aiglemont looked at her daughter, and rose as if to go to her, but a
+terrible convulsion passed over her face, and all that could be read
+in it was relentless severity.
+
+"That will do, Helene," she said. "Go into the other room, and leave
+off crying."
+
+"What can she have done, poor child!" asked the notary, thinking to
+appease the mother's anger and to stop Helene's tears at one stroke.
+"So pretty as she his, she must be as good as can be; never anything
+but a joy to her mother, I will be bound. Isn't that so, my little
+girl?"
+
+Helene cowered, looked at her mother, dried her eyes, struggled for
+composure, and took refuge in the next room.
+
+"And you, madame, are too good a mother not to love all your children
+alike. You are too good a woman, besides, to have any of those
+lamentable preferences which have such fatal effects, as we lawyers
+have only too much reason to know. Society goes through our hands; we
+see its passions in that most revolting form, greed. Here it is the
+mother of a family trying to disinherit her husband's children to
+enrich the others whom she loves better; or it is the husband who
+tries to leave all his property to the child who has done his best to
+earn his mother's hatred. And then begin quarrels, and fears, and
+deeds, and defeasances, and sham sales, and trusts, and all the rest
+of it; a pretty mess, in fact, it is pitiable, upon my honor,
+pitiable! There are fathers that will spend their whole lives in
+cheating their children and robbing their wives. Yes, robbing is the
+only word for it. We were talking of tragedy; oh! I can assure you of
+this that if we were at liberty to tell the real reasons of some
+donations that I know of, our modern dramatists would have the
+material for some sensational /bourgeois/ dramas. How the wife manages
+to get her way, as she invariably does, I cannot think; for in spite
+of appearances, and in spite of their weakness, it is always the women
+who carry the day. Ah! by the way, they don't take /me/ in. I always
+know the reason at the bottom of those predilections which the world
+politely styles 'unaccountable.' But in justice to the husbands, I
+must say that /they/ never discover anything. You will tell me that
+this is a merciful dispens--"
+
+Helene had come back to the drawing-room with her father, and was
+listening attentively. So well did she understand all that was said,
+that she gave her mother a frightened glance, feeling, with a child's
+quick instinct, that these remarks would aggravate the punishment
+hanging over her. The Marquise turned her white face to Vandenesse;
+and, with terror in her eyes, indicated her husband, who stood with
+his eyes fixed absently on the flower pattern of the carpet. The
+diplomatist, accomplished man of the world though he was, could no
+longer contain his wrath, he gave the man of law a withering glance.
+
+"Step this way, sir," he said, and he went hurriedly to the door of
+the ante-chamber; the notary left his sentence half finished, and
+followed, quaking, and the husband and wife were left together.
+
+"Now, sir" said the Marquise de Vandenesse--he banged the drawing-room
+door, and spoke with concentrated rage--"ever since dinner you have
+done nothing but make blunders and talk folly. For heaven's sake, go.
+You will make the most frightful mischief before you have done. If you
+are a clever man in your profession, keep to your profession; and if
+by any chance you should go into society, endeavor to be more
+circumspect."
+
+With that he went back to the drawing-room, and did not even wish the
+notary good-evening. For a moment that worthy stood dumfounded,
+bewildered, utterly at a loss. Then, when the buzzing in his ears
+subsided, he thought he heard someone moaning in the next room.
+Footsteps came and went, and bells were violently rung. He was by no
+means anxious to meet the Marquis again, and found the use of his legs
+to make good his escape, only to run against a hurrying crowd of
+servants at the door.
+
+"Just the way of all these grand folk," said he to himself outside in
+the street as he looked about for a cab. "They lead you on to talk
+with compliments, and you think you are amusing them. Not a bit of it.
+They treat you insolently; put you at a distance; even put you out at
+the door without scruple. After all, I talked very cleverly, I said
+nothing but what was sensible, well turned, and discreet; and, upon my
+word, he advises me to be more circumspect in future. I will take good
+care of that! Eh! the mischief take it! I am a notary and a member of
+my chamber!--Pshaw! it was an ambassador's fit of temper, nothing is
+sacred for people of that kind. To-morrow he shall explain what he
+meant by saying that I had done nothing but blunder and talk nonsense
+in his house. I will ask him for an explanation--that is, I will ask
+him to explain my mistake. After all is done and said, I am in the
+wrong perhaps---- Upon my word, it is very good of me to cudgel my
+brains like this. What business is it of mine?"
+
+So the notary went home and laid the enigma before his spouse, with a
+complete account of the evening's events related in sequence.
+
+And she replied, "My dear Crottat, His Excellency was perfectly right
+when he said that you had done nothing but blunder and talk folly."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"My dear, if I told you why, it would not prevent you from doing the
+same thing somewhere else to-morrow. I tell you again--talk of nothing
+but business when you go out; that is my advice to you."
+
+"If you will not tell me, I shall ask him to-morrow--"
+
+"Why, dear me! the veriest noodle is careful to hide a thing of that
+kind, and do you suppose that an ambassador will tell you about it?
+Really, Crottat, I have never known you so utterly devoid of common-
+sense."
+
+"Thank you, my dear."
+
+
+
+V.
+
+TWO MEETINGS
+
+One of Napoleon's orderly staff-officers, who shall be known in this
+history only as the General or the Marquis, had come to spend the
+spring at Versailles. He made a large fortune under the Restoration;
+and as his place at Court would not allow him to go very far from
+Paris, he had taken a country house between the church and the barrier
+of Montreuil, on the road that leads to the Avenue de Saint-Cloud.
+
+The house had been built originally as a retreat for the short-lived
+loves of some /grand seigneur/. The grounds were very large; the
+gardens on either side extending from the first houses of Montreuil to
+the thatched cottages near the barrier, so that the owner could enjoy
+all the pleasures of solitude with the city almost at his gates. By an
+odd piece of contradiction, the whole front of the house itself, with
+the principal entrance, gave directly upon the street. Perhaps in time
+past it was a tolerably lonely road, and indeed this theory looks all
+the more probable when one comes to think of it; for not so very far
+away, on this same road, Louis Quinze built a delicious summer villa
+for Mlle. de Romans, and the curious in such things will discover that
+the wayside /casinos/ are adorned in a style that recalls traditions
+of the ingenious taste displayed in debauchery by our ancestors who,
+with all the license paid to their charge, sought to invest it with
+secrecy and mystery.
+
+One winter evening the family were by themselves in the lonely house.
+The servants had received permission to go to Versailles to celebrate
+the wedding of one of their number. It was Christmas time, and the
+holiday makers, presuming upon the double festival, did not scruple to
+outstay their leave of absence; yet, as the General was well known to
+be a man of his word, the culprits felt some twinges of conscience as
+they danced on after the hour of return. The clocks struck eleven, and
+still there was no sign of the servants.
+
+A deep silence prevailed over the country-side, broken only by the
+sound of the northeast wind whistling through the black branches,
+wailing about the house, dying in gusts along the corridors. The hard
+frost had purified the air, and held the earth in its grip; the roads
+gave back every sound with the hard metallic ring which always strikes
+us with a new surprise; the heavy footsteps of some belated reveler,
+or a cab returning to Paris, could be heard for a long distance with
+unwonted distinctness. Out in the courtyard a few dead leaves set a-
+dancing by some eddying gust found a voice for the night which fain
+had been silent. It was, in fact, one of those sharp, frosty evenings
+that wring barren expressions of pity from our selfish ease for
+wayfarers and the poor, and fills us with a luxurious sense of the
+comfort of the fireside.
+
+But the family party in the salon at that hour gave not a thought to
+absent servants nor houseless folk, nor to the gracious charm with
+which a winter evening sparkles. No one played the philosopher out of
+season. Secure in the protection of an old soldier, women and children
+gave themselves up to the joys of home life, so delicious when there
+is no restraint upon feeling; and talk and play and glances are bright
+with frankness and affection.
+
+The General sat, or more properly speaking, lay buried, in the depths
+of a huge, high-back armchair by the hearth. The heaped-up fire burned
+scorching clear with the excessive cold of the night. The good father
+leaned his head slightly to one side against the back of the chair, in
+the indolence of perfect serenity and a glow of happiness. The
+languid, half-sleepy droop of his outstretched arms seemed to complete
+his expression of placid content. He was watching his youngest, a boy
+of five or thereabouts, who, half clad as he was, declined to allow
+his mother to undress him. The little one fled from the night-gown and
+cap with which he was threatened now and again, and stoutly declined
+to part with his embroidered collar, laughing when his mother called
+to him, for he saw that she too was laughing at this declaration of
+infant independence. The next step was to go back to a game of romps
+with his sister. She was as much a child as he, but more mischievous;
+and she was older by two years, and could speak distinctly already,
+whereas his inarticulate words and confused ideas were a puzzle even
+to his parents. Little Moina's playfulness, somewhat coquettish
+already, provoked inextinguishable laughter, explosions of merriment
+which went off like fireworks for no apparent cause. As they tumbled
+about before the fire, unconcernedly displaying little plump bodies
+and delicate white contours, as the dark and golden curls mingled in a
+collision of rosy cheeks dimpled with childish glee, a father surely,
+a mother most certainly, must have understood those little souls, and
+seen the character and power of passion already developed for their
+eyes. As the cherubs frolicked about, struggling, rolling, and
+tumbling without fear of hurt on the soft carpet, its flowers looked
+pale beside the glowing white and red of their cheeks and the
+brilliant color of their shining eyes.
+
+On the sofa by the fire, opposite the great armchair, the children's
+mother sat among a heap of scattered garments, with a little scarlet
+shoe in her hand. She seemed to have given herself up completely to
+the enjoyment of the moment; wavering discipline had relaxed into a
+sweet smile engraved upon her lips. At the age of six-and-thirty, or
+thereabouts, she was a beautiful woman still, by reason of the rare
+perfection of the outlines of her face, and at this moment light and
+warmth and happiness filled it with preternatural brightness.
+
+Again and again her eyes wandered from her children, and their tender
+gaze was turned upon her husband's grave face; and now and again the
+eyes of husband and wife met with a silent exchange of happiness and
+thoughts from some inner depth.
+
+The General's face was deeply bronzed, a stray lock of gray hair
+scored shadows on his forehead. The reckless courage of the
+battlefield could be read in the lines carved in his hollow cheeks,
+and gleams of rugged strength in the blue eyes; clearly the bit of red
+ribbon flaunting at his button-hole had been paid for by hardship and
+toil. An inexpressible kindliness and frankness shone out of the
+strong, resolute face which reflected his children's merriment; the
+gray-haired captain found it not so very hard to become a child again.
+Is there not always a little love of children in the heart of a
+soldier who has seen enough of the seamy side of life to know
+something of the piteous limitations of strength and the privileges of
+weakness?
+
+At a round table rather further away, in a circle of bright lamplight
+that dimmed the feebler illumination of the wax candles on the
+chimney-piece, sat a boy of thirteen, rapidly turning the pages of a
+thick volume which he was reading, undisturbed by the shouts of the
+children. There was a boy's curiosity in his face. From his /lyceens/
+uniform he was evidently a schoolboy, and the book he was reading was
+the /Arabian Nights/. Small wonder that he was deeply absorbed. He sat
+perfectly still in a meditative attitude, with his elbow on the table,
+and his hand propping his head--the white fingers contrasting strongly
+with the brown hair into which they were thrust. As he sat, with the
+light turned full upon his face, and the rest of his body in shadow,
+he looked like one of Raphael's dark portraits of himself--a bent head
+and intent eyes filled with visions of the future.
+
+Between the table and the Marquise a tall, beautiful girl sat at her
+tapestry frame; sometimes she drew back from her work, sometimes she
+bent over it, and her hair, picturesque in its ebony smoothness and
+darkness, caught the light of the lamp. Helene was a picture in
+herself. In her beauty there was a rare distinctive character of power
+and refinement. Though her hair was gathered up and drawn back from
+her face, so as to trace a clearly marked line about her head, so
+thick and abundant was it, so recalcitrant to the comb, that it sprang
+back in curl-tendrils to the nape of her neck. The bountiful line of
+eyebrows was evenly marked out in dark contrasting outline upon her
+pure forehead. On her upper lip, beneath the Grecian nose with its
+sensitively perfect curve of nostril, there lay a faint, swarthy
+shadow, the sign-manual of courage; but the enchanting roundness of
+contour, the frankly innocent expression of her other features, the
+transparence of the delicate carnations, the voluptuous softness of
+the lips, the flawless oval of the outline of the face, and with
+these, and more than all these, the saintlike expression in the
+girlish eyes, gave to her vigorous loveliness the distinctive touch of
+feminine grace, that enchanting modesty which we look for in these
+angels of peace and love. Yet there was no suggestion of fragility
+about her; and, surely, with so grand a woman's frame, so attractive a
+face, she must possess a corresponding warmth of heart and strength of
+soul.
+
+She was as silent as her schoolboy brother. Seemingly a prey to the
+fateful maiden meditations which baffle a father's penetration and
+even a mother's sagacity, it was impossible to be certain whether it
+was the lamplight that cast those shadows that flitted over her face
+like thin clouds over a bright sky, or whether they were passing
+shades of secret and painful thoughts.
+
+Husband and wife had quite forgotten the two older children at that
+moment, though now and again the General's questioning glance traveled
+to that second mute picture; a larger growth, a gracious realization,
+as it were, of the hopes embodied in the baby forms rioting in the
+foreground. Their faces made up a kind of living poem, illustrating
+life's various phases. The luxurious background of the salon, the
+different attitudes, the strong contrasts of coloring in the faces,
+differing with the character of differing ages, the modeling of the
+forms brought into high relief by the light--altogether it was a page
+of human life, richly illuminated beyond the art of painter, sculptor,
+or poet. Silence, solitude, night and winter lent a final touch of
+majesty to complete the simplicity and sublimity of this exquisite
+effect of nature's contriving. Married life is full of these sacred
+hours, which perhaps owe their indefinable charm to some vague memory
+of a better world. A divine radiance surely shines upon them, the
+destined compensation for some portion of earth's sorrows, the solace
+which enables man to accept life. We seem to behold a vision of an
+enchanted universe, the great conception of its system widens out
+before our eyes, and social life pleads for its laws by bidding us
+look to the future.
+
+Yet in spite of the tender glances that Helene gave Abel and Moina
+after a fresh outburst of merriment; in spite of the look of gladness
+in her transparent face whenever she stole a glance at her father, a
+deep melancholy pervaded her gestures, her attitude, and more than
+all, her eyes veiled by their long lashes. Those white, strong hands,
+through which the light passed, tinting them with a diaphanous, almost
+fluid red--those hands were trembling. Once only did the eyes of the
+mother and daughter clash without shrinking, and the two women read
+each other's thoughts in a look, cold, wan, and respectful on Helene's
+part, sombre and threatening on her mother's. At once Helene's eyes
+were lowered to her work, she plied her needle swiftly, and it was
+long before she raised her head, bowed as it seemed by a weight of
+thought too heavy to bear. Was the Marquise over harsh with this one
+of her children? Did she think this harshness needful? Was she jealous
+of Helene's beauty?--She might still hope to rival Helene, but only by
+the magic arts of the toilette. Or again, had her daughter, like many
+a girl who reaches the clairvoyant age, read the secrets which this
+wife (to all appearance so religiously faithful in the fulfilment of
+her duties) believed to be buried in her own heart as deeply as in a
+grave?
+
+Helene had reached an age when purity of soul inclines to pass over-
+rigid judgments. A certain order of mind is apt to exaggerate
+transgression into crime; imagination reacts upon conscience, and a
+young girl is a hard judge because she magnifies the seriousness of
+the offence. Helene seemed to think herself worthy of no one. Perhaps
+there was a secret in her past life, perhaps something had happened,
+unintelligible to her at the time, but with gradually developing
+significance for a mind grown susceptible to religious influences;
+something which lately seemed to have degraded her, as it were, in her
+own eyes, and according to her own romantic standard. This change in
+her demeanor dated from the day of reading Schiller's noble tragedy of
+/Wilhelm Tell/ in a new series of translations. Her mother scolded her
+for letting the book fall, and then remarked to herself that the
+passage which had so worked on Helene's feelings was the scene in
+which Wilhelm Tell, who spilt the blood of a tyrant to save a nation,
+fraternizes in some sort with John the Parricide. Helene had grown
+humble, dutiful, and self-contained; she no longer cared for gaiety.
+Never had she made so much of her father, especially when the Marquise
+was not by to watch her girlish caresses. And yet, if Helene's
+affection for her mother had cooled at all, the change in her manner
+was so slight as to be almost imperceptible; so slight that the
+General could not have noticed it, jealous though he might be of the
+harmony of home. No masculine insight could have sounded the depths of
+those two feminine natures; the one was young and generous, the other
+sensitive and proud; the first had a wealth of indulgence in her
+nature, the second was full of craft and love. If the Marquise made
+her daughter's life a burden to her by a woman's subtle tyranny, it
+was a tyranny invisible to all but the victim; and for the rest, these
+conjectures only called forth after the event must remain conjectures.
+Until this night no accusing flash of light had escaped either of
+them, but an ominous mystery was too surely growing up between them, a
+mystery known only to themselves and God.
+
+"Come, Abel," called the Marquise, seizing on her opportunity when the
+children were tired of play and still for a moment. "Come, come,
+child; you must be put to bed--"
+
+And with a glance that must be obeyed, she caught him up and took him
+on her knee.
+
+"What!" exclaimed the General. "Half-past ten o'clock, and not one of
+the servants has come back! The rascals!--Gustave," he added, turning
+to his son, "I allowed you to read that book only on the condition
+that you should put it away at ten o'clock. You ought to have shut up
+the book at the proper time and gone to bed, as you promised. If you
+mean to make your mark in the world, you must keep your word; let it
+be a second religion to you, and a point of honor. Fox, one of the
+greatest English orators, was remarkable, above all things, for the
+beauty of his character, and the very first of his qualities was the
+scrupulous faithfulness with which he kept his engagements. When he
+was a child, his father (an Englishman of the old school) gave him a
+pretty strong lesson which he never forgot. Like most rich Englishmen,
+Fox's father had a country house and a considerable park about it.
+Now, in the park there was an old summer-house, and orders had been
+given that this summer-house was to be pulled down and put up
+somewhere else where there was a finer view. Fox was just about your
+age, and had come home for the holidays. Boys are fond of seeing
+things pulled to pieces, so young Fox asked to stay on at home for a
+few days longer to see the old summer-house taken down; but his father
+said that he must go back to school on the proper day, so there was
+anger between father and son. Fox's mother (like all mammas) took the
+boy's part. Then the father solemnly promised that the summer-house
+should stay where it was till the next holidays.
+
+"So Fox went back to school; and his father, thinking that lessons
+would soon drive the whole thing out of the boy's mind, had the
+summer-house pulled down and put up in the new position. But as it
+happened, the persistent youngster thought of nothing but that summer-
+house; and as soon as he came home again, his first care was to go out
+to look at the old building, and he came in to breakfast looking quite
+doleful, and said to his father, 'You have broken your promise.' The
+old English gentleman said with confusion full of dignity, 'That is
+true, my boy; but I will make amends. A man ought to think of keeping
+his word before he thinks of his fortune; for by keeping his word he
+will gain fortune, while all the fortunes in the world will not efface
+the stain left on your conscience by a breach of faith.' Then he gave
+orders that the summer-house should be put up again in the old place,
+and when it had been rebuilt he had it taken down again for his son to
+see. Let this be a lesson to /you/, Gustave."
+
+Gustave had been listening with interest, and now he closed the book
+at once. There was a moment's silence, while the General took
+possession of Moina, who could scarcely keep her eyes open. The little
+one's languid head fell back on her father's breast, and in a moment
+she was fast asleep, wrapped round about in her golden curls.
+
+Just then a sound of hurrying footsteps rang on the pavement out in
+the street, immediately followed by three knocks on the street door,
+waking the echoes of the house. The reverberating blows told, as
+plainly as a cry for help that here was a man flying for his life. The
+house dog barked furiously. A thrill of excitement ran through Helene
+and Gustave and the General and his wife; but neither Abel, with the
+night-cap strings just tied under his chin, nor Moina awoke.
+
+"The fellow is in a hurry!" exclaimed the General. He put the little
+girl down on the chair, and hastened out of the room, heedless of his
+wife's entreating cry, "Dear, do not go down--"
+
+He stepped into his own room for a pair of pistols, lighted a dark
+lantern, sprang at lightning speed down the staircase, and in another
+minute reached the house door, his oldest boy fearlessly following.
+
+"Who is there?" demanded he.
+
+"Let me in," panted a breathless voice.
+
+"Are you a friend?"
+
+"Yes, friend,"
+
+"Are you alone?"
+
+"Yes! But let me in; /they/ are after me!"
+
+The General had scarcely set the door ajar before a man slipped into
+the porch with the uncanny swiftness of a shadow. Before the master of
+the house could prevent him, the intruder had closed the door with a
+well-directed kick, and set his back against it resolutely, as if he
+were determined that it should not be opened again. In a moment the
+General had his lantern and pistol at a level with the stranger's
+breast, and beheld a man of medium height in a fur-lined pelisse. It
+was an old man's garment, both too large and too long for its present
+wearer. Chance or caution had slouched the man's hat over his eyes.
+
+"You can lower your pistol, sir," said this person. "I do not claim to
+stay in your house against your will; but if I leave it, death is
+waiting for me at the barrier. And what a death! You would be
+answerable to God for it! I ask for your hospitality for two hours.
+And bear this in mind, sir, that, suppliant as I am, I have a right to
+command with the despotism of necessity. I want the Arab's
+hospitality. Either I and my secret must be inviolable, or open the
+door and I will go to my death. I want secrecy, a safe hiding-place,
+and water. Oh! water!" he cried again, with a rattle in his throat.
+
+"Who are you?" demanded the General, taken aback by the stranger's
+feverish volubility.
+
+"Ah! who am I? Good, open the door, and I will put a distance between
+us," retorted the other, and there was a diabolical irony in his tone.
+
+Dexterously as the Marquis passed the light of the lantern over the
+man's face, he could only see the lower half of it, and that in nowise
+prepossessed him in favor of this singular claimant of hospitality.
+The cheeks were livid and quivering, the features dreadfully
+contorted. Under the shadow of the hat-brim a pair of eyes gleamed out
+like flames; the feeble candle-light looked almost dim in comparison.
+Some sort of answer must be made however.
+
+"Your language, sir, is so extraordinary that in my place you
+yourself--"
+
+"My life is in your hands!" the intruder broke in. The sound of his
+voice was dreadful to hear.
+
+"Two hours?" said the Marquis, wavering.
+
+"Two hours," echoed the other.
+
+Then quite suddenly, with a desperate gesture, he pushed back his hat
+and left his forehead bare, and, as if he meant to try a final
+expedient, he gave the General a glance that seemed to plunge like a
+vivid flash into his very soul. That electrical discharge of
+intelligence and will was swift as lightning and crushing as a
+thunderbolt; for there are moments when a human being is invested for
+a brief space with inexplicable power.
+
+"Come, whoever you may be, you shall be in safety under my roof," the
+master of the house said gravely at last, acting, as he imagined, upon
+one of those intuitions which a man cannot always explain to himself.
+
+"God will repay you!" said the stranger, with a deep, involuntary
+sigh.
+
+"Have you weapons?" asked the General.
+
+For all answer the stranger flung open his fur pelisse, and scarcely
+gave the other time for a glance before he wrapped it about him again.
+To all appearance he was unarmed and in evening dress. Swift as the
+soldier's scrutiny had been, he saw something, however, which made him
+exclaim:
+
+"Where the devil have you been to get yourself in such a mess in such
+dry weather?"
+
+"More questions!" said the stranger haughtily.
+
+At the words the Marquis caught sight of his son, and his own late
+homily on the strict fulfilment of a given word came up to his mind.
+In lively vexation, he exclaimed, not without a touch of anger:
+
+"What! little rogue, you here when you ought to be in bed?"
+
+"Because I thought I might be of some good in danger," answered
+Gustave.
+
+"There, go up to your room," said his father, mollified by the reply.
+--"And you" (addressing the stranger), "come with me."
+
+The two men grew as silent as a pair of gamblers who watch each
+other's play with mutual suspicions. The General himself began to be
+troubled with ugly presentiments. The strange visit weighed upon his
+mind already like a nightmare; but he had passed his word, there was
+no help for it now, and he led the way along the passages and
+stairways till they reached a large room on the second floor
+immediately above the salon. This was an empty room where linen was
+dried in the winter. It had but the one door, and for all decoration
+boasted one solitary shabby looking-glass above the chimney-piece,
+left by the previous owner, and a great pier glass, placed
+provisionally opposite the fireplace until such time as a use should
+be found for it in the rooms below. The four yellowish walls were
+bare. The floor had never been swept. The huge attic was icy-cold, and
+the furniture consisted of a couple of rickety straw-bottomed chairs,
+or rather frames of chairs. The General set the lantern down upon the
+chimney-piece. Then he spoke:
+
+"It is necessary for your own safety to hide you in this comfortless
+attic. And, as you have my promise to keep your secret, you will
+permit me to lock you in."
+
+The other bent his head in acquiescence.
+
+"I asked for nothing but a hiding-place, secrecy, and water," returned
+he.
+
+"I will bring you some directly," said the Marquis, shutting the door
+cautiously. He groped his way down into the salon for a lamp before
+going to the kitchen to look for a carafe.
+
+"Well, what is it?" the Marquise asked quickly.
+
+"Nothing, dear," he returned coolly.
+
+"But we listened, and we certainly heard you go upstairs with
+somebody."
+
+"Helene," said the General, and he looked at his daughter, who raised
+her face, "bear in mind that your father's honor depends upon your
+discretion. You must have heard nothing."
+
+The girl bent her head in answer. The Marquise was confused and
+smarting inwardly at the way in which her husband had thought fit to
+silence her.
+
+Meanwhile the General went for the bottle and a tumbler, and returned
+to the room above. His prisoner was leaning against the chimney-piece,
+his head was bare, he had flung down his hat on one of the two chairs.
+Evidently he had not expected to have so bright a light turned upon
+him, and he frowned and looked anxious as he met the General's keen
+eyes; but his face softened and wore a gracious expression as he
+thanked his protector. When the latter placed the bottle and glass on
+the mantel-shelf, the stranger's eyes flashed out on him again; and
+when he spoke, it was in musical tones with no sign of the previous
+guttural convulsion, though his voice was still unsteady with
+repressed emotion.
+
+"I shall seem to you to be a strange being, sir, but you must pardon
+the caprices of necessity. If you propose to remain in the room, I beg
+that you will not look at me while I am drinking."
+
+Vexed at this continual obedience to a man whom he disliked, the
+General sharply turned his back upon him. The stranger thereupon drew
+a white handkerchief from his pocket and wound it about his right
+hand. Then he seized the carafe and emptied it at a draught. The
+Marquis, staring vacantly into the tall mirror across the room,
+without a thought of breaking his implicit promise, saw the stranger's
+figure distinctly reflected by the opposite looking-glass, and saw,
+too, a red stain suddenly appear through the folds of the white
+bandage. The man's hands were steeped in blood.
+
+"Ah! you saw me!" cried the other. He had drunk off the water and
+wrapped himself again in his cloak, and now scrutinized the General
+suspiciously. "It is all over with me! Here they come!"
+
+"I don't hear anything," said the Marquis.
+
+"You have not the same interest that I have in listening for sounds in
+the air."
+
+"You have been fighting a duel, I suppose, to be in such a state?"
+queried the General, not a little disturbed by the color of those
+broad, dark patches staining his visitor's cloak.
+
+"Yes, a duel; you have it," said the other, and a bitter smile flitted
+over his lips.
+
+As he spoke a sound rang along the distant road, a sound of galloping
+horses; but so faint as yet, that it was the merest dawn of a sound.
+The General's trained ear recognized the advance of a troop of
+regulars.
+
+"That is the gendarmerie," said he.
+
+He glanced at his prisoner to reassure him after his own involuntary
+indiscretion, took the lamp, and went down to the salon. He had
+scarcely laid the key of the room above upon the chimney-piece when
+the hoof beats sounded louder and came swiftly nearer and nearer the
+house. The General felt a shiver of excitement, and indeed the horses
+stopped at the house door; a few words were exchanged among the men,
+and one of them dismounted and knocked loudly. There was no help for
+it; the General went to open the door. He could scarcely conceal his
+inward perturbation at the sight of half a dozen gendarmes outside,
+the metal rims of their caps gleaming like silver in the moonlight.
+
+"My lord," said the corporal, "have you heard a man run past towards
+the barrier within the last few minutes?"
+
+"Towards the barrier? No."
+
+"Have you opened the door to any one?"
+
+"Now, am I in the habit of answering the door myself--"
+
+"I ask your pardon, General, but just now it seems to me that--"
+
+"Really!" cried the Marquis wrathfully. "Have you a mind to try joking
+with me? What right have you--?"
+
+"None at all, none at all, my lord," cried the corporal, hastily
+putting in a soft answer. "You will excuse our zeal. We know, of
+course, that a peer of France is not likely to harbor a murderer at
+this time of night; but as we want any information we can get--"
+
+"A murderer!" cried the General. "Who can have been--"
+
+"M. le Baron de Mauny has just been murdered. It was a blow from an
+axe, and we are in hot pursuit of the criminal. We know for certain
+that he is somewhere in this neighborhood, and we shall hunt him down.
+By your leave, General," and the man swung himself into the saddle as
+he spoke. It was well that he did so, for a corporal of gendarmerie
+trained to alert observation and quick surmise would have had his
+suspicions at once if he had caught sight of the General's face.
+Everything that passed through the soldier's mind was faithfully
+revealed in his frank countenance.
+
+"Is it known who the murderer is?" asked he.
+
+"No," said the other, now in the saddle. "He left the bureau full of
+banknotes and gold untouched."
+
+"It was revenge, then," said the Marquis.
+
+"On an old man? pshaw! No, no, the fellow hadn't time to take it, that
+was all," and the corporal galloped after his comrades, who were
+almost out of sight by this time.
+
+For a few minutes the General stood, a victim to perplexities which
+need no explanation; but in a moment he heard the servants returning
+home, their voices were raised in some sort of dispute at the cross-
+roads of Montreuil. When they came in, he gave vent to his feelings in
+an explosion of rage, his wrath fell upon them like a thunderbolt, and
+all the echoes of the house trembled at the sound of his voice. In the
+midst of the storm his own man, the boldest and cleverest of the
+party, brought out an excuse; they had been stopped, he said, by the
+gendarmerie at the gate of Montreuil, a murder had been committed, and
+the police were in pursuit. In a moment the General's anger vanished,
+he said not another word; then, bethinking himself of his own singular
+position, drily ordered them all off to bed at once, and left them
+amazed at his readiness to accept their fellow servant's lying excuse.
+
+While these incidents took place in the yard, an apparently trifling
+occurrence had changed the relative positions of three characters in
+this story. The Marquis had scarcely left the room before his wife
+looked first towards the key on the mantel-shelf, and then at Helene;
+and, after some wavering, bent towards her daughter and said in a low
+voice, "Helene your father has left the key on the chimney-piece."
+
+The girl looked up in surprise and glanced timidly at her mother. The
+Marquise's eyes sparkled with curiosity.
+
+"Well, mamma?" she said, and her voice had a troubled ring.
+
+"I should like to know what is going on upstairs. If there is anybody
+up there, he has not stirred yet. Just go up--"
+
+"/I/?" cried the girl, with something like horror in her tones.
+
+"Are you afraid?"
+
+"No, mamma, but I thought I heard a man's footsteps."
+
+"If I could go myself, I should not have asked you to go, Helene,"
+said her mother with cold dignity. "If your father were to come back
+and did not see me, he would go to look for me perhaps, but he would
+not notice your absence."
+
+"Madame, if you bid me go, I will go," said Helene, "but I shall lose
+my father's good opinion--"
+
+"What is this!" cried the Marquise in a sarcastic tone. "But since you
+take a thing that was said in joke in earnest, I now /order/ you to go
+upstairs and see who is in the room above. Here is the key, child.
+When your father told you to say nothing about this thing that
+happened, he did not forbid you to go up to the room. Go at once--and
+learn that a daughter ought never to judge her mother."
+
+The last words were spoken with all the severity of a justly offended
+mother. The Marquise took the key and handed it to Helene, who rose
+without a word and left the room.
+
+"My mother can always easily obtain her pardon," thought the girl;
+"but as for me, my father will never think the same of me again. Does
+she mean to rob me of his tenderness? Does she want to turn me out of
+his house?"
+
+These were the thoughts that set her imagination in a sudden ferment,
+as she went down the dark passage to the mysterious door at the end.
+When she stood before it, her mental confusion grew to a fateful
+pitch. Feelings hitherto forced down into inner depths crowded up at
+the summons of these confused thoughts. Perhaps hitherto she had never
+believed that a happy life lay before her, but now, in this awful
+moment, her despair was complete. She shook convulsively as she set
+the key in the lock; so great indeed was her agitation, that she
+stopped for a moment and laid her hand on her heart, as if to still
+the heavy throbs that sounded in her ears. Then she opened the door.
+
+The creaking of the hinges sounded doubtless in vain on the murderer's
+ears. Acute as were his powers of hearing, he stood as if lost in
+thought, and so motionless that he might have been glued to the wall
+against which he leaned. In the circle of semi-opaque darkness, dimly
+lit by the bull's-eye lantern, he looked like the shadowy figure of
+some dead knight, standing for ever in his shadowy mortuary niche in
+the gloom of some Gothic chapel. Drops of cold sweat trickled over the
+broad, sallow forehead. An incredible fearlessness looked out from
+every tense feature. His eyes of fire were fixed and tearless; he
+seemed to be watching some struggle in the darkness beyond him. Stormy
+thoughts passed swiftly across a face whose firm decision spoke of a
+character of no common order. His whole person, bearing, and frame
+bore out the impression of a tameless spirit. The man looked power and
+strength personified; he stood facing the darkness as if it were the
+visible image of his own future.
+
+These physical characteristics had made no impression upon the
+General, familiar as he was with the powerful faces of the group of
+giants gathered about Napoleon; speculative curiosity, moreover, as to
+the why and wherefore of the apparition had completely filled his
+mind; but Helene, with feminine sensitiveness to surface impressions,
+was struck by the blended chaos of light and darkness, grandeur and
+passion, suggesting a likeness between this stranger and Lucifer
+recovering from his fall. Suddenly the storm apparent in his face was
+stilled as if by magic; and the indefinable power to sway which the
+stranger exercised upon others, and perhaps unconsciously and as by
+reflex action upon himself, spread its influence about him with the
+progressive swiftness of a flood. A torrent of thought rolled away
+from his brow as his face resumed its ordinary expression. Perhaps it
+was the strangeness of this meeting, or perhaps it was the mystery
+into which she had penetrated, that held the young girl spellbound in
+the doorway, so that she could look at a face pleasant to behold and
+full of interest. For some moments she stood in the magical silence; a
+trouble had come upon her never known before in her young life.
+Perhaps some exclamation broke from Helene, perhaps she moved
+unconsciously; or it may be that the hunted criminal returned of his
+own accord from the world of ideas to the material world, and heard
+some one breathing in the room; however it was, he turned his head
+towards his host's daughter, and saw dimly in the shadow a noble face
+and queenly form, which he must have taken for an angel's, so
+motionless she stood, so vague and like a spirit.
+
+"Monsieur . . ." a trembling voice cried.
+
+The murderer trembled.
+
+"A woman!" he cried under his breath. "Is it possible? Go," he cried,
+"I deny that any one has a right to pity, to absolve, or condemn me. I
+must live alone. Go, my child," he added, with an imperious gesture,
+"I should ill requite the service done me by the master of the house
+if I were to allow a single creature under his roof to breathe the
+same air with me. I must submit to be judged by the laws of the
+world."
+
+The last words were uttered in a lower voice. Even as he realized with
+a profound intuition all the manifold misery awakened by that
+melancholy thought, the glance that he gave Helene had something of
+the power of the serpent, stirring a whole dormant world in the mind
+of the strange girl before him. To her that glance was like a light
+revealing unknown lands. She was stricken with strange trouble,
+helpless, quelled by a magnetic power exerted unconsciously. Trembling
+and ashamed, she went out and returned to the salon. She had scarcely
+entered the room before her father came back, so that she had not time
+to say a word to her mother.
+
+The General was wholly absorbed in thought. He folded his arms, and
+paced silently to and fro between the windows which looked out upon
+the street and the second row which gave upon the garden. His wife lay
+the sleeping Abel on her knee, and little Moina lay in untroubled
+slumber in the low chair, like a bird in its nest. Her older sister
+stared into the fire, a skein of silk in one hand, a needle in the
+other.
+
+Deep silence prevailed, broken only by lagging footsteps on the
+stairs, as one by one the servants crept away to bed; there was an
+occasional burst of stifled laughter, a last echo of the wedding
+festivity, or doors were opened as they still talked among themselves,
+then shut. A smothered sound came now and again from the bedrooms, a
+chair fell, the old coachman coughed feebly, then all was silent.
+
+In a little while the dark majesty with which sleeping earth is
+invested at midnight brought all things under its sway. No lights
+shone but the light of the stars. The frost gripped the ground. There
+was not a sound of a voice, nor a living creature stirring. The
+crackling of the fire only seemed to make the depth of the silence
+more fully felt.
+
+The church clock of Montreuil had just struck one, when an almost
+inaudible sound of a light footstep came from the second flight of
+stairs. The Marquis and his daughter, both believing that M. de
+Mauny's murderer was a prisoner above, thought that one of the maids
+had come down, and no one was at all surprised to hear the door open
+in the ante-chamber. Quite suddenly the murderer appeared in their
+midst. The Marquis himself was sunk in deep musings, the mother and
+daughter were silent, the one from keen curiosity, the other from
+sheer astonishment, so that the visitor was almost half-way across the
+room when he spoke to the General.
+
+"Sir, the two hours are almost over," he said, in a voice that was
+strangely calm and musical.
+
+"/You here/!" cried the General. "By what means----?" and he gave wife
+and daughter a formidable questioning glance. Helene grew red as fire.
+
+"You!" he went on, in a tone filled with horror. "/You/ among us! A
+murderer covered with blood! You are a blot on this picture! Go, go
+out!" he added in a burst of rage.
+
+At that word "murderer," the Marquise cried out; as for Helene, it
+seemed to mark an epoch in her life, there was not a trace of surprise
+in her face. She looked as if she had been waiting for this--for him.
+Those so vast thoughts of hers had found a meaning. The punishment
+reserved by Heaven for her sins flamed out before her. In her own eyes
+she was as great a criminal as this murderer; she confronted him with
+her quiet gaze; she was his fellow, his sister. It seemed to her that
+in this accident the command of God had been made manifest. If she had
+been a few years older, reason would have disposed of her remorse, but
+at this moment she was like one distraught.
+
+The stranger stood impassive and self-possessed; a scornful smile
+overspread his features and his thick, red lips.
+
+"You appreciate the magnanimity of my behavior very badly," he said
+slowly. "I would not touch with my fingers the glass of water you
+brought me to allay my thirst; I did not so much as think of washing
+my blood-stained hands under your roof; I am going away, leaving
+nothing of /my crime/" (here his lips were compressed) "but the
+memory; I have tried to leave no trace of my presence in this house.
+Indeed, I would not even allow your daughter to--"
+
+"/My daughter/!" cried the General, with a horror-stricken glance at
+Helene. "Vile wretch, go, or I will kill you--"
+
+"The two hours are not yet over," said the other; "if you kill me or
+give me up, you must lower yourself in your own eyes--and in mine."
+
+At these last words, the General turned to stare at the criminal in
+dumb amazement; but he could not endure the intolerable light in those
+eyes which for the second time disorganized his being. He was afraid
+of showing weakness once more, conscious as he was that his will was
+weaker already.
+
+"An old man! You can never have seen a family," he said, with a
+father's glance at his wife and children.
+
+"Yes, an old man," echoed the stranger, frowning slightly.
+
+"Fly!" cried the General, but he did not dare to look at his guest.
+"Our compact is broken. I shall not kill you. No! I will never be
+purveyor to the scaffold. But go out. You make us shudder."
+
+"I know that," said the other patiently. "There is not a spot on
+French soil where I can set foot and be safe; but if man's justice,
+like God's, took all into account, if man's justice deigned to inquire
+which was the monster--the murderer or his victim--then I might hold
+up my head among my fellows. Can you not guess that other crimes
+preceded that blow from an axe? I constituted myself his judge and
+executioner; I stepped in where man's justice failed. That was my
+crime. Farewell, sir. Bitter though you have made your hospitality, I
+shall not forget it. I shall always bear in my heart a feeling of
+gratitude towards one man in the world, and you are that man. . . .
+But I could wish that you had showed yourself more generous!"
+
+He turned towards the door, but in the same instant Helene leaned to
+whisper something in her mother's ear.
+
+"Ah! . . ."
+
+At the cry that broke from his wife, the General trembled as if he had
+seen Moina lying dead. There stood Helene and the murderer had turned
+instinctively, with something like anxiety about these folk in his
+face.
+
+"What is it, dear?" asked the General.
+
+"Helene wants to go with him."
+
+The murderer's face flushed.
+
+"If that is how my mother understands an almost involuntary
+exclamation," Helene said in a low voice, "I will fulfil her wishes.
+She glanced about her with something like fierce pride; then the
+girl's eyes fell, and she stood, admirable in her modesty.
+
+"Helene, did you go up to the room where----?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"Helene" (and his voice shook with a convulsive tremor), "is this the
+first time that you have seen this man?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"Then it is not natural that you should intend to--"
+
+"If it is not natural, father, at any rate it is true."
+
+"Oh! child," said the Marquise, lowering her voice, but not so much
+but that her husband could hear her, "you are false to all the
+principles of honor, modesty, and right which I have tried to
+cultivate in your heart. If until this fatal hour you life has only
+been one lie, there is nothing to regret in your loss. It can hardly
+be the moral perfection of this stranger that attracts you to him? Can
+it be the kind of power that commits crime? I have too good an opinion
+of you to suppose that--"
+
+"Oh, suppose everything, madame," Helene said coldly.
+
+But though her force of character sustained this ordeal, her flashing
+eyes could scarcely hold the tears that filled them. The stranger,
+watching her, guessed the mother's language from the girl's tears, and
+turned his eagle glance upon the Marquise. An irresistible power
+constrained her to look at this terrible seducer; but as her eyes met
+his bright, glittering gaze, she felt a shiver run through her frame,
+such a shock as we feel at the sight of a reptile or the contact of a
+Leyden jar.
+
+"Dear!" she cried, turning to her husband, "this is the Fiend himself.
+He can divine everything!"
+
+The General rose to his feet and went to the bell.
+
+"He means ruin for you," Helene said to the murderer.
+
+The stranger smiled, took one forward stride, grasped the General's
+arm, and compelled him to endure a steady gaze which benumbed the
+soldier's brain and left him powerless.
+
+"I will repay you now for your hospitality," he said, "and then we
+shall be quits. I will spare you the shame by giving myself up. After
+all, what should I do now with my life?"
+
+"You could repent," answered Helene, and her glance conveyed such hope
+as only glows in a young girl's eyes.
+
+"/I shall never repent/," said the murderer in a sonorous voice, as he
+raised his head proudly.
+
+"His hands are stained with blood," the father said.
+
+"I will wipe it away," she answered.
+
+"But do you so much as know whether he cares for you?" said her
+father, not daring now to look at the stranger.
+
+The murderer came up a little nearer. Some light within seemed to glow
+through Helene's beauty, grave and maidenly though it was, coloring
+and bringing into relief, as it were, the least details, the most
+delicate lines in her face. The stranger, with that terrible face
+still blazing in his eyes, gave one tender glance to her enchanting
+loveliness, then he spoke, his tones revealing how deeply he had been
+moved.
+
+"And if I refuse to allow this sacrifice of yourself, and so discharge
+my debt of two hours of existence to your father; is not this love,
+love for yourself alone?"
+
+"Then do you too reject me?" Helene's cry rang painfully through the
+hearts of all who heard her. "Farewell, then, to you all; I will die."
+
+"What does this mean?" asked the father and mother.
+
+Helene gave her mother an eloquent glance and lowered her eyes.
+
+Since the first attempt made by the General and his wife to contest by
+word or action the intruder's strange presumption to the right of
+staying in their midst, from their first experience of the power of
+those glittering eyes, a mysterious torpor had crept over them, and
+their benumbed faculties struggled in vain with the preternatural
+influence. The air seemed to have suddenly grown so heavy, that they
+could scarcely breathe; yet, while they could not find the reason of
+this feeling of oppression, a voice within told them that this
+magnetic presence was the real cause of their helplessness. In this
+moral agony, it flashed across the General that he must make every
+effort to overcome this influence on his daughter's reeling brain; he
+caught her by the waist and drew her into the embrasure of a window,
+as far as possible from the murderer.
+
+"Darling," he murmured, "if some wild love has been suddenly born in
+your heart, I cannot believe that you have not the strength of soul to
+quell the mad impulse; your innocent life, your pure and dutiful soul,
+has given me too many proofs of your character. There must be
+something behind all this. Well, this heart of mine is full of
+indulgence, you can tell everything to me; even if it breaks, dear
+child, I can be silent about my grief, and keep your confession a
+secret. What is it? Are you jealous of our love for your brothers or
+your little sister? Is it some love trouble? Are you unhappy here at
+home? Tell me about it, tell me the reasons that urge you to leave
+your home, to rob it of its greatest charm, to leave your mother and
+brothers and your little sister?"
+
+"I am in love with no one, father, and jealous of no one, not even of
+your friend the diplomatist, M. de Vandenesse."
+
+The Marquise turned pale; her daughter saw this, and stopped short.
+
+"Sooner or later I must live under some man's protection, must I not?"
+
+"That is true."
+
+"Do we ever know," she went on, "the human being to whom we link our
+destinies? Now, I believe in this man."
+
+"Oh, child," said the General, raising his voice, "you have no idea of
+all the misery that lies in store for you."
+
+"I am thinking of /his/."
+
+"What a life!" groaned the father.
+
+"A woman's life," the girl murmured.
+
+"You have a great knowledge of life!" exclaimed the Marquise, finding
+speech at last.
+
+"Madame, my answers are shaped by the questions; but if you desire it,
+I will speak more clearly."
+
+"Speak out, my child . . . I am a mother."
+
+Mother and daughter looked each other in the face, and the Marquise
+said no more. At last she said:
+
+"Helene, if you have any reproaches to make, I would rather bear them
+than see you go away with a man from whom the whole world shrinks in
+horror."
+
+"Then you see yourself, madame, that but for me he would be quite
+alone."
+
+"That will do, madame," the General cried; "we have but one daughter
+left to us now," and he looked at Moina, who slept on. "As for you,"
+he added, turning to Helene, "I will put you in a convent."
+
+"So be it, father," she said, in calm despair, "I shall die there. You
+are answerable to God alone for my life and for /his/ soul."
+
+A deep sullen silence fell after these words. The on-lookers during
+this strange scene, so utterly at variance with all the sentiments of
+ordinary life, shunned each other's eyes.
+
+Suddenly the Marquis happened to glance at his pistols. He caught up
+one of them, cocked the weapon, and pointed it at the intruder. At the
+click of firearms the other turned his piercing gaze full upon the
+General; the soldier's arm slackened indescribably and fell heavily to
+his side. The pistol dropped to the floor.
+
+"Girl, you are free," said he, exhausted by this ghastly struggle.
+"Kiss your mother, if she will let you kiss her. For my own part, I
+wish never to see nor to hear of you again."
+
+"Helene," the mother began, "only think of the wretched life before
+you."
+
+A sort of rattling sound came from the intruder's deep chest, all eyes
+were turned to him. Disdain was plainly visible in his face.
+
+The General rose to his feet. "My hospitality has cost me dear," he
+cried. "Before you came you had taken an old man's life; now your are
+dealing a deadly blow at a whole family. Whatever happens, there must
+be unhappiness in this house."
+
+"And if your daughter is happy?" asked the other, gazing steadily at
+the General.
+
+The father made a superhuman effort for self-control. "If she is happy
+with you," he said, "she is not worth regretting."
+
+Helene knelt timidly before her father.
+
+"Father, I love and revere you," she said, "whether you lavish all the
+treasures of your kindness upon me, or make me feel to the full the
+rigor of disgrace. . . . But I entreat that your last words of
+farewell shall not be words of anger."
+
+The General could not trust himself to look at her. The stranger came
+nearer; there was something half-diabolical, half-divine in the smile
+that he gave Helene.
+
+"Angel of pity, you that do not shrink in horror from a murderer,
+come, since you persist in your resolution of intrusting your life to
+me."
+
+"Inconceivable!" cried her father.
+
+The Marquise then looked strangely at her daughter, opened her arms,
+and Helene fled to her in tears.
+
+"Farewell," she said, "farewell, mother!" The stranger trembled as
+Helene, undaunted, made sign to him that she was ready. She kissed her
+father's hand; and, as if performing a duty, gave a hasty kiss to
+Moina and little Abel, then she vanished with the murderer.
+
+"Which way are they going?" exclaimed the General, listening to the
+footsteps of the two fugitives.--"Madame," he turned to his wife, "I
+think I must be dreaming; there is some mystery behind all this, I do
+not understand it; you must know what it means."
+
+The Marquise shivered.
+
+"For some time past your daughter has grown extraordinarily romantic
+and strangely high-flown in her ideas. In spite of the pains I have
+taken to combat these tendencies in her character--"
+
+"This will not do----" began the General, but fancying that he heard
+footsteps in the garden, he broke off to fling open the window.
+
+"Helene!" he shouted.
+
+His voice was lost in the darkness like a vain prophecy. The utterance
+of that name, to which there should never be answer any more, acted
+like a counterspell; it broke the charm and set him free from the evil
+enchantment which lay upon him. It was as if some spirit passed over
+his face. He now saw clearly what had taken place, and cursed his
+incomprehensible weakness. A shiver of heat rushed from his heart to
+his head and feet; he became himself once more, terrible, thirsting
+for revenge. He raised a dreadful cry.
+
+"Help!" he thundered, "help!"
+
+He rushed to the bell-pull, pulled till the bells rang with a strange
+clamor of din, pulled till the cord gave way. The whole house was
+roused with a start. Still shouting, he flung open the windows that
+looked upon the street, called for the police, caught up his pistols,
+and fired them off to hurry the mounted patrols, the newly-aroused
+servants, and the neighbors. The dogs barked at the sound of their
+master's voice; the horses neighed and stamped in their stalls. The
+quiet night was suddenly filled with hideous uproar. The General on
+the staircase, in pursuit of his daughter, saw the scared faces of the
+servants flocking from all parts of the house.
+
+"My daughter!" he shouted. "Helene has been carried off. Search the
+garden. Keep a lookout on the road! Open the gates for the
+gendarmerie!--Murder! Help!"
+
+With the strength of fury he snapped the chain and let loose the great
+house-dog.
+
+"Helene!" he cried, "Helene!"
+
+The dog sprang out like a lion, barking furiously, and dashed into the
+garden, leaving the General far behind. A troop of horses came along
+the road at a gallop, and he flew to open the gates himself.
+
+"Corporal!" he shouted, "cut off the retreat of M. de Mauny's
+murderer. They have gone through my garden. Quick! Put a cordon of men
+to watch the ways by the Butte de Picardie.--I will beat up the
+grounds, parks, and houses.--The rest of you keep a lookout along the
+road," he ordered the servants, "form a chain between the barrier and
+Versailles. Forward, every man of you!"
+
+He caught up the rifle which his man had brought out, and dashed into
+the garden.
+
+"Find them!" he called to the dog.
+
+An ominous baying came in answer from the distance, and he plunged in
+the direction from which the growl seemed to come.
+
+It was seven o'clock in the morning; all the search made by gendarmes,
+servants, and neighbors had been fruitless, and the dog had not come
+back. The General entered the salon, empty now for him though the
+other three children were there; he was worn out with fatigue, and
+looked old already with that night's work.
+
+"You have been very cold to your daughter," he said, turning his eyes
+on his wife.--"And now this is all that is left to us of her," he
+added, indicating the embroidery frame, and the flower just begun.
+"Only just now she was there, and now she is lost . . . lost!"
+
+Tears followed; he hid his face in his hands, and for a few minutes he
+said no more; he could not bear the sight of the room, which so short
+a time ago had made a setting to a picture of the sweetest family
+happiness. The winter dawn was struggling with the dying lamplight;
+the tapers burned down to their paper- wreaths and flared out;
+everything was all in keeping with the father's despair.
+
+"This must be destroyed," he said after a pause, pointing to the
+tambour-frame. "I shall never bear to see anything again that reminds
+us of /her/!"
+
+The terrible Christmas night when the Marquis and his wife lost their
+oldest daughter, powerless to oppose the mysterious influence
+exercised by the man who involuntarily, as it were, stole Helene from
+them, was like a warning sent by Fate. The Marquis was ruined by the
+failure of his stock-broker; he borrowed money on his wife's property,
+and lost it in the endeavor to retrieve his fortunes. Driven to
+desperate expedients, he left France. Six years went by. His family
+seldom had news of him; but a few days before Spain recognized the
+independence of the American Republics, he wrote that he was coming
+home.
+
+So, one fine morning, it happened that several French merchants were
+on board a Spanish brig that lay a few leagues out from Bordeaux,
+impatient to reach their native land again, with wealth acquired by
+long years of toil and perilous adventures in Venezuela and Mexico.
+
+One of the passengers, a man who looked aged by trouble rather than by
+years, was leaning against the bulwark netting, apparently quite
+unaffected by the sight to be seen from the upper deck. The bright
+day, the sense that the voyage was safely over, had brought all the
+passengers above to greet their land. The larger number of them
+insisted that they could see, far off in the distance, the houses and
+lighthouses on the coast of Gascony and the Tower of Cardouan, melting
+into the fantastic erections of white cloud along the horizon. But for
+the silver fringe that played about their bows, and the long furrow
+swiftly effaced in their wake, they might have been perfectly still in
+mid-ocean, so calm was the sea. The sky was magically clear, the dark
+blue of the vault above paled by imperceptible gradations, until it
+blended with the bluish water, a gleaming line that sparkled like
+stars marking the dividing line of sea. The sunlight caught myriads of
+facets over the wide surface of the ocean, in such a sort that the
+vast plains of salt water looked perhaps more full of light than the
+fields of sky.
+
+The brig had set all her canvas. The snowy sails, swelled by the
+strangely soft wind, the labyrinth of cordage, and the yellow flags
+flying at the masthead, all stood out sharp and uncompromisingly clear
+against the vivid background of space, sky, and sea; there was nothing
+to alter the color but the shadow cast by the great cloudlike sails.
+
+A glorious day, a fair wind, and the fatherland in sight, a sea like a
+mill-pond, the melancholy sound of the ripples, a fair, solitary
+vessel, gliding across the surface of the water like a woman stealing
+out to a tryst--it was a picture full of harmony. That mere speck full
+of movement was a starting-point whence the soul of man could descry
+the immutable vast of space. Solitude and bustling life, silence and
+sound, were all brought together in strange abrupt contrast; you could
+not tell where life, or sound, or silence, and nothingness lay, and no
+human voice broke the divine spell.
+
+The Spanish captain, the crew, and the French passengers sat or stood,
+in a mood of devout ecstasy, in which many memories blended. There was
+idleness in the air. The beaming faces told of complete forgetfulness
+of past hardships, the men were rocked on the fair vessel as in a
+golden dream. Yet, from time to time the elderly passenger, leaning
+over the bulwark nettings, looked with something like uneasiness at
+the horizon. Distrust of the ways of Fate could be read in his whole
+face; he seemed to fear that he should not reach the coast of France
+in time. This was the Marquis. Fortune had not been deaf to his
+despairing cry and struggles. After five years of endeavor and painful
+toil, he was a wealthy man once more. In his impatience to reach his
+home again and to bring the good news to his family, he had followed
+the example set by some French merchants in Havana, and embarked with
+them on a Spanish vessel with a cargo for Bordeaux. And now, grown
+tired of evil forebodings, his fancy was tracing out for him the most
+delicious pictures of past happiness. In that far-off brown line of
+land he seemed to see his wife and children. He sat in his place by
+the fireside; they were crowding about him; he felt their caresses.
+Moina had grown to be a young girl; she was beautiful, and tall, and
+striking. The fancied picture had grown almost real, when the tears
+filled his eyes, and, to hide his emotion, he turned his face towards
+the sea-line, opposite the hazy streak that meant land.
+
+"There she is again. . . . She is following us!" he said.
+
+"What?" cried the Spanish captain.
+
+"There is a vessel," muttered the General.
+
+"I saw her yesterday," answered Captain Gomez. He looked at his
+interlocutor as if to ask what he thought; then he added in the
+General's ear, "She has been chasing us all along."
+
+"Then why she has not come up with us, I do not know," said the
+General, "for she is a faster sailor than your damned /Saint-
+Ferdinand/."
+
+"She will have damaged herself, sprung a leak--"
+
+"She is gaining on us!" the General broke in.
+
+"She is a Columbian privateer," the captain said in his ear, "and we
+are still six leagues from land, and the wind is dropping."
+
+"She is not /going/ ahead, she is flying, as if she knew that in two
+hours' time her prey would escape her. What audacity!"
+
+"Audacity!" cried the captain. "Oh! she is not called the /Othello/
+for nothing. Not so long back she sank a Spanish frigate that carried
+thirty guns! This is the one thing I was afraid of, for I had a notion
+that she was cruising about somewhere off the Antilles.--Aha!" he
+added after a pause, as he watched the sails of his own vessel, "the
+wind is rising; we are making way. Get through we must, for 'the
+Parisian' will show us no mercy."
+
+"She is making way too!" returned the General.
+
+The /Othello/ was scarce three leagues away by this time; and although
+the conversation between the Marquis and Captain Gomez had taken place
+apart, passengers and crew, attracted by the sudden appearance of a
+sail, came to that side of the vessel. With scarcely an exception,
+however, they took the privateer for a merchantman, and watched her
+course with interest, till all at once a sailor shouted with some
+energy of language:
+
+"By Saint-James, it is all up with us! Yonder is the Parisian
+captain!"
+
+At that terrible name dismay, and a panic impossible to describe,
+spread through the brig. The Spanish captain's orders put energy into
+the crew for a while; and in his resolute determination to make land
+at all costs, he set all the studding sails, and crowded on every
+stitch of canvas on board. But all this was not the work of a moment;
+and naturally the men did not work together with that wonderful
+unanimity so fascinating to watch on board a man-of-war. The /Othello/
+meanwhile, thanks to the trimming of her sails, flew over the water
+like a swallow; but she was making, to all appearance, so little
+headway, that the unlucky Frenchmen began to entertain sweet delusive
+hopes. At last, after unheard-of efforts, the /Saint-Ferdinand/ sprang
+forward, Gomez himself directing the shifting of the sheets with voice
+and gesture, when all at once the man at the tiller, steering at
+random (purposely, no doubt), swung the vessel round. The wind
+striking athwart the beam, the sails shivered so unexpectedly that the
+brig heeled to one side, the booms were carried away, and the vessel
+was completely out of hand. The captain's face grew whiter than his
+sails with unutterable rage. He sprang upon the man at the tiller,
+drove his dagger at him in such blind fury, that he missed him, and
+hurled the weapon overboard. Gomez took the helm himself, and strove
+to right the gallant vessel. Tears of despair rose to his eyes, for it
+is harder to lose the result of our carefully-laid plans through
+treachery than to face imminent death. But the more the captain swore,
+the less the men worked, and it was he himself who fired the alarm-
+gun, hoping to be heard on shore. The privateer, now gaining
+hopelessly upon them, replied with a cannon-shot, which struck the
+water ten fathoms away from the /Saint-Ferdinand/.
+
+"Thunder of heaven!" cried the General, "that was a close shave! They
+must have guns made on purpose."
+
+"Oh! when that one yonder speaks, look you, you have to hold your
+tongue," said a sailor. "The Parisian would not be afraid to meet an
+English man-of-war."
+
+"It is all over with us," the captain cried in desperation; he had
+pointed his telescope landwards, and saw not a sign from the shore.
+"We are further from the coast than I thought."
+
+"Why do you despair?" asked the General. "All your passengers are
+Frenchmen; they have chartered your vessel. The privateer is a
+Parisian, you say? Well and good, run up the white flag, and--"
+
+"And he would run us down," retorted the captain. "He can be anything
+he likes when he has a mind to seize on a rich booty!"
+
+"Oh! if he is a pirate--"
+
+"Pirate!" said the ferocious looking sailor. "Oh! he always has the
+law on his side, or he knows how to be on the same side as the law."
+
+"Very well," said the General, raising his eyes, "let us make up our
+minds to it," and his remaining fortitude was still sufficient to keep
+back the tears.
+
+The words were hardly out of his mouth before a second cannon-shot,
+better aimed, came crashing through the hull of the /Saint-Ferdinand/.
+
+"Heave to!" cried the captain gloomily.
+
+The sailor who had commended the Parisian's law-abiding proclivities
+showed himself a clever hand at working a ship after this desperate
+order was given. The crew waited for half an hour in an agony of
+suspense and the deepest dismay. The /Saint-Ferdinand/ had four
+millions of piastres on board, the whole fortunes of the five
+passengers, and the General's eleven hundred thousand francs. At
+length the /Othello/ lay not ten gunshots away, so that those on the
+/Saint-Ferdinand/ could look into the muzzles of her loaded guns. The
+vessel seemed to be borne along by a breeze sent by the Devil himself,
+but the eyes of an expert would have discovered the secret of her
+speed at once. You had but to look for a moment at the rake of her
+stern, her long, narrow keel, her tall masts, to see the cut of her
+sails, the wonderful lightness of her rigging, and the ease and
+perfect seamanship with which her crew trimmed her sails to the wind.
+Everything about her gave the impression of the security of power in
+this delicately curved inanimate creature, swift and intelligent as a
+greyhound or some bird of prey. The privateer crew stood silent, ready
+in case of resistance to shatter the wretched merchantman, which,
+luckily for her, remained motionless, like a schoolboy caught in
+flagrant delict by a master.
+
+"We have guns on board!" cried the General, clutching the Spanish
+captain's hand. But the courage in Gomez's eyes was the courage of
+despair.
+
+"Have we men?" he said.
+
+The Marquis looked round at the crew of the /Saint-Ferdinand/, and a
+cold chill ran through him. There stood the four merchants, pale and
+quaking for fear, while the crew gathered about some of their own
+number who appeared to be arranging to go over in a body to the enemy.
+They watched the /Othello/ with greed and curiosity in their faces.
+The captain, the Marquis, and the mate exchanged glances; they were
+the only three who had a thought for any but themselves.
+
+"Ah! Captain Gomez, when I left my home and country, my heart was half
+dead with the bitterness of parting, and now must I bid it good-bye
+once more when I am bringing back happiness and ease for my children?"
+
+The General turned his head away towards the sea, with tears of rage
+in his eyes--and saw the steersman swimming out to the privateer.
+
+"This time it will be good-bye for good," said the captain by way of
+answer, and the dazed look in the Frenchman's eyes startled the
+Spaniard.
+
+By this time the two vessels were almost alongside, and at the first
+sight of the enemy's crew the General saw that Gomez's gloomy prophecy
+was only too true. The three men at each gun might have been bronze
+statues, standing like athletes, with their rugged features, their
+bare sinewy arms, men whom Death himself had scarcely thrown off their
+feet.
+
+The rest of the crew, well armed, active, light, and vigorous, also
+stood motionless. Toil had hardened, and the sun had deeply tanned,
+those energetic faces; their eyes glittered like sparks of fire with
+infernal glee and clear-sighted courage. Perfect silence on the upper
+deck, now black with men, bore abundant testimony to the rigorous
+discipline and strong will which held these fiends incarnate in check.
+
+The captain of the /Othello/ stood with folded arms at the foot of the
+main mast; he carried no weapons, but an axe lay on the deck beside
+him. His face was hidden by the shadow of a broad felt hat. The men
+looked like dogs crouching before their master. Gunners, soldiers, and
+ship's crew turned their eyes first on his face, and then on the
+merchant vessel.
+
+The two brigs came up alongside, and the shock of contact roused the
+privateer captain from his musings; he spoke a word in the ear of the
+lieutenant who stood beside him.
+
+"Grappling-irons!" shouted the latter, and the /Othello/ grappled the
+/Saint-Ferdinand/ with miraculous quickness. The captain of the
+privateer gave his orders in a low voice to the lieutenant, who
+repeated them; the men, told off in succession for each duty, went on
+the upper deck of the /Saint-Ferdinand/, like seminarists going to
+mass. They bound crew and passengers hand and foot and seized the
+booty. In the twinkling of an eye, provisions and barrels full of
+piastres were transferred to the /Othello/; the General thought that
+he must be dreaming when he himself, likewise bound, was flung down on
+a bale of goods as if he had been part of the cargo.
+
+A brief conference took place between the captain of the privateer and
+his lieutenant and a sailor, who seemed to be the mate of the vessel;
+then the mate gave a whistle, and the men jumped on board the /Saint-
+Ferdinand/, and completely dismantled her with the nimble dexterity of
+a soldier who strips a dead comrade of a coveted overcoat and shoes.
+
+"It is all over with us," said the Spanish captain coolly. He had eyed
+the three chiefs during their confabulation, and saw that the sailors
+were proceeding to pull his vessel to pieces.
+
+"Why so?" asked the General.
+
+"What would you have them do with us?" returned the Spaniard. "They
+have just come to the conclusion that they will scarcely sell the
+/Saint-Ferdinand/ in any French or Spanish port, so they are going to
+sink her to be rid of her. As for us, do you suppose that they will
+put themselves to the expense of feeding us, when they don't know what
+port they are to put into?"
+
+The words were scarcely out of the captain's mouth before a hideous
+outcry went up, followed by a dull splashing sound, as several bodies
+were thrown overboard. He turned, the four merchants were no longer to
+be seen, but eight ferocious-looking gunners were still standing with
+their arms raised above their heads. He shuddered.
+
+"What did I tell you?" the Spanish captain asked coolly.
+
+The Marquis rose to his feet with a spring. The surface of the sea was
+quite smooth again; he could not so much as see the place where his
+unhappy fellow-passengers had disappeared. By this time they were
+sinking down, bound hand and foot, below the waves, if, indeed, the
+fish had not devoured them already.
+
+Only a few paces away, the treacherous steersman and the sailor who
+had boasted of the Parisian's power were fraternizing with the crew of
+the /Othello/, and pointing out those among their own number, who, in
+their opinion, were worthy to join the crew of the privateer. Then the
+boys tied the rest together by the feet in spite of frightful oaths.
+It was soon over; the eight gunners seized the doomed men and flung
+them overboard without more ado, watching the different ways in which
+the drowning victims met their death, their contortions, their last
+agony, with a sort of malignant curiosity, but with no sign of
+amusement, surprise, or pity. For them it was an ordinary event to
+which seemingly they were quite accustomed. The older men looked
+instead with grim, set smiles at the casks of piastres about the main
+mast.
+
+The General and Captain Gomez, left seated on a bale of goods,
+consulted each other with well-nigh hopeless looks; they were, in a
+sense, the sole survivors of the /Saint-Ferdinand/, for the seven men
+pointed out by the spies were transformed amid rejoicings into
+Peruvians.
+
+"What atrocious villains!" the General cried. Loyal and generous
+indignation silenced prudence and pain on his own account.
+
+"They do it because they must," Gomez answered coolly. "If you came
+across one of those fellows, you would run him through the body, would
+you not?"
+
+The lieutenant now came up to the Spaniard.
+
+"Captain," said he, "the Parisian has heard of you. He says that you
+are the only man who really knows the passages of the Antilles and the
+Brazilian coast. Will you--"
+
+The captain cut him short with a scornful exclamation.
+
+"I shall die like a sailor," he said, "and a loyal Spaniard and a
+Christian. Do you hear?"
+
+"Heave him overboard!" shouted the lieutenant, and a couple of gunners
+seized on Gomez.
+
+"You cowards!" roared the General, seizing hold of the men.
+
+"Don't get too excited, old boy," said the lieutenant. "If your red
+ribbon has made some impression upon our captain, I myself do not care
+a rap for it.--You and I will have our little bit of talk together
+directly."
+
+A smothered sound, with no accompanying cry, told the General that the
+gallant captain had died "like a sailor," as he had said.
+
+"My money or death!" cried the Marquis, in a fit of rage terrible to
+see.
+
+"Ah! now you talk sensibly!" sneered the lieutenant. "That is the way
+to get something out of us----"
+
+Two of the men came up at a sign and hastened to bind the Frenchmen's
+feet, but with unlooked-for boldness he snatched the lieutenant's
+cutlass and laid about him like a cavalry officer who knows his
+business.
+
+"Brigands that you are! You shall not chuck one of Napoleon's troopers
+over a ship's side like an oyster!"
+
+At the sound of pistol shots fired point blank at the Frenchman, "the
+Parisian" looked round from his occupation of superintending the
+transfer of the rigging from the /Saint-Ferdinand/. He came up behind
+the brave General, seized him, dragged him to the side, and was about
+to fling him over with no more concern than if the man had been a
+broken spar. They were at the very edge when the General looked into
+the tawny eyes of the man who had stolen his daughter. The recognition
+was mutual.
+
+The captain of the privateer, his arm still upraised, suddenly swung
+it in the contrary direction as if his victim was but a feather
+weight, and set him down at the foot of the main mast. A murmur rose
+on the upper deck, but the captain glanced round, and there was a
+sudden silence.
+
+"This is Helene's father," said the captain in a clear, firm voice.
+"Woe to any one who meddles with him!"
+
+A hurrah of joy went up at the words, a shout rising to the sky like a
+prayer of the church; a cry like the first high notes of the /Te
+Deum/. The lads swung aloft in the rigging, the men below flung up
+their caps, the gunners pounded away on the deck, there was a general
+thrill of excitement, an outburst of oaths, yells, and shrill cries in
+voluble chorus. The men cheered like fanatics, the General's
+misgivings deepened, and he grew uneasy; it seemed to him that there
+was some horrible mystery in such wild transports.
+
+"My daughter!" he cried, as soon as he could speak. "Where is my
+daughter?"
+
+For all answer, the captain of the privateer gave him a searching
+glance, one of those glances which throw the bravest man into a
+confusion which no theory can explain. The General was mute, not a
+little to the satisfaction of the crew; it pleased them to see their
+leader exercise the strange power which he possessed over all with
+whom he came in contact. Then the captain led the way down a staircase
+and flung open the door of a cabin.
+
+"There she is," he said, and disappeared, leaving the General in a
+stupor of bewilderment at the scene before his eyes.
+
+Helene cried out at the sight of him, and sprang up from the sofa on
+which she was lying when the door flew open. So changed was she that
+none but a father's eyes could have recognized her. The sun of the
+tropics had brought warmer tones into the once pale face, and
+something of Oriental charm with that wonderful coloring; there was a
+certain grandeur about her, a majestic firmness, a profound sentiment
+which impresses itself upon the coarsest nature. Her long, thick hair,
+falling in large curls about her queenly throat, gave an added idea of
+power to the proud face. The consciousness of that power shone out
+from every movement, every line of Helene's form. The rose-tinted
+nostrils were dilated slightly with the joy of triumph; the serene
+happiness of her life had left its plain tokens in the full
+development of her beauty. A certain indefinable virginal grace met in
+her with the pride of a woman who is loved. This was a slave and a
+queen, a queen who would fain obey that she might reign.
+
+Her dress was magnificent and elegant in its richness; India muslin
+was the sole material, but her sofa and cushions were of cashmere. A
+Persian carpet covered the floor in the large cabin, and her four
+children playing at her feet were building castles of gems and pearl
+necklaces and jewels of price. The air was full of the scent of rare
+flowers in Sevres porcelain vases painted by Madame Jacotot; tiny
+South American birds, like living rubies, sapphires, and gold, hovered
+among the Mexican jessamines and camellias. A pianoforte had been
+fitted into the room, and here and there on the paneled walls, covered
+with red silk, hung small pictures by great painters--a /Sunset/ by
+Hippolyte Schinner beside a Terburg, one of Raphael's Madonnas
+scarcely yielded in charm to a sketch by Gericault, while a Gerard Dow
+eclipsed the painters of the Empire. On a lacquered table stood a
+golden plate full of delicious fruit. Indeed, Helene might have been
+the sovereign lady of some great country, and this cabin of hers a
+boudoir in which her crowned lover had brought together all earth's
+treasure to please his consort. The children gazed with bright, keen
+eyes at their grandfather. Accustomed as they were to a life of
+battle, storm, and tumult, they recalled the Roman children in David's
+/Brutus/, watching the fighting and bloodshed with curious interest.
+
+"What! is it possible?" cried Helene, catching her father's arm as if
+to assure herself that this was no vision.
+
+"Helene!"
+
+"Father!"
+
+They fell into each other's arms, and the old man's embrace was not so
+close and warm as Helene's.
+
+"Were you on board that vessel?"
+
+"Yes," he answered sadly, and looking at the little ones, who gathered
+about him and gazed with wide open eyes.
+
+"I was about to perish, but--"
+
+"But for my husband," she broke in. "I see how it was."
+
+"Ah!" cried the General, "why must I find you again like this, Helene?
+After all the many tears that I have shed, must I still groan for your
+fate?"
+
+"And why?" she asked, smiling. "Why should you be sorry to learn that
+I am the happiest woman under the sun?"
+
+"/Happy/?" he cried with a start of surprise.
+
+"Yes, happy, my kind father," and she caught his hands in hers and
+covered them with kisses, and pressed them to her throbbing heart. Her
+caresses, and a something in the carriage of her head, were
+interpreted yet more plainly by the joy sparkling in her eyes.
+
+"And how is this?" he asked, wondering at his daughter's life,
+forgetful now of everything but the bright glowing face before him.
+
+"Listen, father; I have for lover, husband, servant, and master one
+whose soul is as great as the boundless sea, as infinite in his
+kindness as heaven, a god on earth! Never during these seven years has
+a chance look, or word, or gesture jarred in the divine harmony of his
+talk, his love, his caresses. His eyes have never met mine without a
+gleam of happiness in them; there has always been a bright smile on
+his lips for me. On deck, his voice rises above the thunder of storms
+and the tumult of battle; but here below it is soft and melodious as
+Rossini's music--for he has Rossini's music sent for me. I have
+everything that woman's caprice can imagine. My wishes are more than
+fulfilled. In short, I am a queen on the seas; I am obeyed here as
+perhaps a queen may be obeyed.--Ah!" she cried, interrupting herself,
+"/happy/ did I say? Happiness is no word to express such bliss as
+mine. All the happiness that should have fallen to all the women in
+the world has been my share. Knowing one's own great love and self-
+devotion, to find in /his/ heart an infinite love in which a woman's
+soul is lost, and lost for ever--tell me, is this happiness? I have
+lived through a thousand lives even now. Here, I am alone; here, I
+command. No other woman has set foot on this noble vessel, and Victor
+is never more than a few paces distant from me,--he cannot wander
+further from me than from stern to prow," she added, with a shade of
+mischief in her manner. "Seven years! A love that outlasts seven years
+of continual joy, that endures all the tests brought by all the
+moments that make up seven years--is this love? Oh, no, no! it is
+something better than all that I know of life . . . human language
+fails to express the bliss of heaven."
+
+A sudden torrent of tears fell from her burning eyes. The four little
+ones raised a piteous cry at this, and flocked like chickens about
+their mother. The oldest boy struck the General with a threatening
+look.
+
+"Abel, darling," said Helene, "I am crying for joy."
+
+Helene took him on her knee, and the child fondled her, putting his
+arms about her queenly neck, as a lion's whelp might play with the
+lioness.
+
+"Do you never weary of your life?" asked the General, bewildered by
+his daughter's enthusiastic language.
+
+"Yes," she said, "sometimes, when we are on land, yet even then I have
+never parted from my husband."
+
+"But you need to be fond of music and balls and fetes."
+
+"His voice is music for me; and for fetes, I devise new toilettes for
+him to see. When he likes my dress, it is as if all the world admired
+me. Simply for that reason I keep the diamonds and jewels, the
+precious things, the flowers and masterpieces of art that he heaps
+upon me, saying, 'Helene, as you live out of the world, I will have
+the world come to you.' But for that I would fling them all
+overboard."
+
+"But there are others on board, wild, reckless men whose passions--"
+
+"I understand, father," she said smiling. "Do not fear for me. Never
+was empress encompassed with more observance than I. The men are very
+superstitious; they look upon me as a sort of tutelary genius, the
+luck of the vessel. But /he/ is their god; they worship him. Once, and
+once only, one of the crew showed disrespect, mere words," she added,
+laughing; "but before Victor knew of it, the others flung the offender
+overboard, although I forgave him. They love me as their good angel; I
+nurse them when they are ill; several times I have been so fortunate
+as to save a life, by constant care such as a woman can give. Poor
+fellows, they are giants, but they are children at the same time."
+
+"And when there is fighting overhead?"
+
+"I am used to it now; I quaked for fear during the first engagement,
+but never since.--I am used to such peril, and--I am your daughter,"
+she said; "I love it."
+
+"But how if he should fall?"
+
+"I should die with him."
+
+"And your children?"
+
+"They are children of the sea and of danger; they share the life of
+their parents. We have but one life, and we do not flinch from it. We
+have but one life, our names are written on the same page of the book
+of Fate, one skiff bears us and our fortunes, and we know it."
+
+"Do you so love him that he is more to you than all beside?"
+
+"All beside?" echoed she. "Let us leave that mystery alone. Yet stay!
+there is this dear little one--well, this too is /he/," and straining
+Abel to her in a tight clasp, she set eager kisses on his cheeks and
+hair.
+
+"But I can never forget that he has just drowned nine men!" exclaimed
+the General.
+
+"There was no help for it, doubtless," she said, "for he is generous
+and humane. He sheds as little blood as may be, and only in the
+interests of the little world which he defends, and the sacred cause
+for which he is fighting. Talk to him about anything that seems to you
+to be wrong, and he will convince you, you will see."
+
+"There was that crime of his," muttered the General to himself.
+
+"But how if that crime was a virtue?" she asked, with cold dignity.
+"How if man's justice had failed to avenge a great wrong?"
+
+"But a private revenge!" exclaimed her father.
+
+"But what is hell," she cried, "but a revenge through all eternity for
+the wrong done in a little day?"
+
+"Ah! you are lost! He has bewitched and perverted you. You are talking
+wildly."
+
+"Stay with us one day, father, and if you will but listen to him, and
+see him, you will love him."
+
+"Helene, France lies only a few leagues away," he said gravely.
+
+Helene trembled; then she went to the porthole and pointed to the
+savannas of green water spreading far and wide.
+
+"There lies my country," she said, tapping the carpet with her foot.
+
+"But are you not coming with me to see your mother and your sister and
+brothers?"
+
+"Oh! yes," she cried, with tears in her voice, "if /he/ is willing, if
+he will come with me."
+
+"So," the General said sternly, "you have neither country nor kin now,
+Helene?"
+
+"I am his wife," she answered proudly, and there was something very
+noble in her tone. "This is the first happiness in seven years that
+has not come to me through him," she said--then, as she caught her
+father's hand and kissed it--"and this is the first word of reproach
+that I have heard."
+
+"And your conscience?"
+
+"My conscience; he is my conscience!" she cried, trembling from head
+to foot. "Here he is! Even in the thick of a fight I can tell his
+footstep among all the others on deck," she cried.
+
+A sudden crimson flushed her cheeks and glowed in her features, her
+eyes lighted up, her complexion changed to velvet whiteness, there was
+joy and love in every fibre, in the blue veins, in the unconscious
+trembling of her whole frame. That quiver of the sensitive plant
+softened the General.
+
+It was as she had said. The captain came in, sat down in an easy-
+chair, took up his oldest boy, and began to play with him. There was a
+moment's silence, for the General's deep musing had grown vague and
+dreamy, and the daintily furnished cabin and the playing children
+seemed like a nest of halcyons, floating on the waves, between sky and
+sea, safe in the protection of this man who steered his way amid the
+perils of war and tempest, as other heads of household guide those in
+their care among the hazards of common life. He gazed admiringly at
+Helene--a dreamlike vision of some sea goddess, gracious in her
+loveliness, rich in happiness; all the treasures about her grown poor
+in comparison with the wealth of her nature, paling before the
+brightness of her eyes, the indefinable romance expressed in her and
+her surroundings.
+
+The strangeness of the situation took the General by surprise; the
+ideas of ordinary life were thrown into confusion by this lofty
+passion and reasoning. Chill and narrow social conventions faded away
+before this picture. All these things the old soldier felt, and saw no
+less how impossible it was that his daughter should give up so wide a
+life, a life so variously rich, filled to the full with such
+passionate love. And Helene had tasted danger without shrinking; how
+could she return to the pretty stage, the superficial circumscribed
+life of society?
+
+It was the captain who broke the silence at last.
+
+"Am I in the way?" he asked, looking at his wife.
+
+"No," said the General, answering for her. "Helene has told me all. I
+see that she is lost to us--"
+
+"No," the captain put in quickly; "in a few years' time the statute of
+limitations will allow me to go back to France. When the conscience is
+clear, and a man has broken the law in obedience to----" he stopped
+short, as if scorning to justify himself.
+
+"How can you commit new murders, such as I have seen with my own eyes,
+without remorse?"
+
+"We had no provisions," the privateer captain retorted calmly.
+
+"But if you had set the men ashore--"
+
+"They would have given the alarm and sent a man-of-war after us, and
+we should never have seen Chili again."
+
+"Before France would have given warning to the Spanish admiralty--"
+began the General.
+
+"But France might take it amiss that a man, with a warrant still out
+against him, should seize a brig chartered by Bordeaux merchants. And
+for that matter, have you never fired a shot or so too many in
+battle?"
+
+The General shrank under the other's eyes. He said no more, and his
+daughter looked at him half sadly, half triumphant.
+
+"General," the privateer continued, in a deep voice, "I have made it a
+rule to abstract nothing from booty. But even so, my share will be
+beyond a doubt far larger than your fortune. Permit me to return it to
+you in another form--"
+
+He drew a pile of banknotes from the piano, and without counting the
+packets handed a million of francs to the Marquis.
+
+"You can understand," he said, "that I cannot spend my time in
+watching vessels pass by to Bordeaux. So unless the dangers of this
+Bohemian life of ours have some attraction for you, unless you care to
+see South America and the nights of the tropics, and a bit of fighting
+now and again for the pleasure of helping to win a triumph for a young
+nation, or for the name of Simon Bolivar, we must part. The long boat
+manned with a trustworthy crew is ready for you. And now let us hope
+that our third meeting will be completely happy."
+
+"Victor," said Helene in a dissatisfied tone, "I should like to see a
+little more of my father."
+
+"Ten minutes more or less may bring up a French frigate. However, so
+be it, we shall have a little fun. The men find things dull."
+
+"Oh, father, go!" cried Helene, "and take these keepsakes from me to
+my sister and brothers and--mother," she added. She caught up a
+handful of jewels and precious stones, folded them in an Indian shawl,
+and timidly held it out.
+
+"But what shall I say to them from you?" asked he. Her hesitation on
+the word "mother" seemed to have struck him.
+
+"Oh! can you doubt me? I pray for their happiness every day."
+
+"Helene," he began, as he watched her closely, "how if we should not
+meet again? Shall I never know why you left us?"
+
+"That secret is not mine," she answered gravely. "Even if I had the
+right to tell it, perhaps I should not. For ten years I was more
+miserable than words can say--"
+
+She broke off, and gave her father the presents for her family. The
+General had acquired tolerably easy views as to booty in the course of
+a soldier's career, so he took Helene's gifts and comforted himself
+with the reflection that the Parisian captain was sure to wage war
+against the Spaniards as an honorable man, under the influence of
+Helene's pure and high-minded nature. His passion for courage carried
+all before it. It was ridiculous, he thought, to be squeamish in the
+matter; so he shook hands cordially with his captor, and kissed
+Helene, his only daughter, with a soldier's expansiveness; letting
+fall a tear on the face with the proud, strong look that once he had
+loved to see. "The Parisian," deeply moved, brought the children for
+his blessing. The parting was over, the last good-bye was a long
+farewell look, with something of tender regret on either side.
+
+
+
+A strange sight to seaward met the General's eyes. The /Saint-
+Ferdinand/ was blazing like a huge bonfire. The men told off to sink
+the Spanish brig had found a cargo of rum on board; and as the
+/Othello/ was already amply supplied, had lighted a floating bowl of
+punch on the high seas, by way of a joke; a pleasantry pardonable
+enough in sailors, who hail any chance excitement as a relief from the
+apparent monotony of life at sea. As the General went over the side
+into the long-boat of the /Saint-Ferdinand/, manned by six vigorous
+rowers, he could not help looking at the burning vessel, as well as at
+the daughter who stood by her husband's side on the stern of the
+/Othello/. He saw Helene's white dress flutter like one more sail in
+the breeze; he saw the tall, noble figure against a background of sea,
+queenly still even in the presence of Ocean; and so many memories
+crowded up in his mind, that, with a soldier's recklessness of life,
+he forgot that he was being borne over the grave of the brave Gomez.
+
+A vast column of smoke rising spread like a brown cloud, pierced here
+and there by fantastic shafts of sunlight. It was a second sky, a
+murky dome reflecting the glow of the fire as if the under surface had
+been burnished; but above it soared the unchanging blue of the
+firmament, a thousand times fairer for the short-lived contrast. The
+strange hues of the smoke cloud, black and red, tawny and pale by
+turns, blurred and blending into each other, shrouded the burning
+vessel as it flared, crackled and groaned; the hissing tongues of
+flame licked up the rigging, and flashed across the hull, like a rumor
+of riot flashing along the streets of a city. The burning rum sent up
+blue flitting lights. Some sea god might have been stirring the
+furious liquor as a student stirs the joyous flames of punch in an
+orgy. But in the overpowering sunlight, jealous of the insolent blaze,
+the colors were scarcely visible, and the smoke was but a film
+fluttering like a thin scarf in the noonday torrent of light and heat.
+
+The /Othello/ made the most of the little wind she could gain to fly
+on her new course. Swaying first to one side, then to the other, like
+a stag beetle on the wing, the fair vessel beat to windward on her
+zigzag flight to the south. Sometimes she was hidden from sight by the
+straight column of smoke that flung fantastic shadows across the
+water, then gracefully she shot out clear of it, and Helene, catching
+sight of her father, waved her handkerchief for yet one more farewell
+greeting.
+
+A few more minutes, and the /Saint-Ferdinand/ went down with a
+bubbling turmoil, at once effaced by the ocean. Nothing of all that
+had been was left but a smoke cloud hanging in the breeze. The
+/Othello/ was far away, the long-boat had almost reached land, the
+cloud came between the frail skiff and the brig, and it was through a
+break in the swaying smoke that the General caught the last glimpse of
+Helene. A prophetic vision! Her dress and her white handkerchief stood
+out against the murky background. Then the brig was not even visible
+between the green water and the blue sky, and Helene was nothing but
+an imperceptible speck, a faint graceful line, an angel in heaven, a
+mental image, a memory.
+
+The Marquis had retrieved his fortunes, when he died, worn out with
+toil. A few months after his death, in 1833, the Marquise was obliged
+to take Moina to a watering-place in the Pyrenees, for the capricious
+child had a wish to see the beautiful mountain scenery. They left the
+baths, and the following tragical incident occurred on their way home.
+
+"Dear me, mother," said Moina, "it was very foolish of us not to stay
+among the mountains a few days longer. It was much nicer there. Did
+you hear that horrid child moaning all night, and that wretched woman,
+gabbling away in patois no doubt, for I could not understand a single
+word she said. What kind of people can they have put in the next room
+to ours? This is one of the horridest nights I have ever spent in my
+life."
+
+"I heard nothing," said the Marquise, "but I will see the landlady,
+darling, and engage the next room, and then we shall have the whole
+suite of rooms to ourselves, and there will be no more noise. How do
+you feel this morning? Are you tired?"
+
+As she spoke, the Marquise rose and went to Moina's bedside.
+
+"Let us see," she said, feeling for the girl's hand.
+
+"Oh! let me alone, mother," said Moina; "your fingers are cold."
+
+She turned her head round on the pillow as she spoke, pettishly, but
+with such engaging grace, that a mother could scarcely have taken it
+amiss. Just then a wailing cry echoed through the next room, a faint
+prolonged cry, that must surely have gone to the heart of any woman
+who heard it.
+
+"Why, if you heard /that/ all night long, why did you not wake me? We
+should have--"
+
+A deeper moan than any that had gone before it interrupted the
+Marquise.
+
+"Some one is dying there," she cried, and hurried out of the room.
+
+"Send Pauline to me!" called Moina. "I shall get up and dress."
+
+The Marquise hastened downstairs, and found the landlady in the
+courtyard with a little group about her, apparently much interested in
+something that she was telling them.
+
+"Madame, you have put some one in the next room who seems to be very
+ill indeed--"
+
+"Oh! don't talk to me about it!" cried the mistress of the house. "I
+have just sent some one for the mayor. Just imagine it; it is a woman,
+a poor unfortunate creature that came here last night on foot. She
+comes from Spain; she has no passport and no money; she was carrying
+her baby on her back, and the child was dying. I could not refuse to
+take her in. I went up to see her this morning myself; for when she
+turned up yesterday, it made me feel dreadfully bad to look at her.
+Poor soul! she and the child were lying in bed, and both of them at
+death's door. 'Madame,' says she, pulling a gold ring off her finger,
+'this is all that I have left; take it in payment, it will be enough;
+I shall not stay here long. Poor little one! we shall die together
+soon!' she said, looking at the child. I took her ring, and I asked
+her who she was, but she never would tell me her name. . . . I have
+just sent for the doctor and M. le Maire."
+
+"Why, you must do all that can be done for her," cried the Marquise.
+"Good heavens! perhaps it is not too late! I will pay for everything
+that is necessary----"
+
+"Ah! my lady, she looks to me uncommonly proud, and I don't know that
+she would allow it."
+
+"I will go to see her at once."
+
+The Marquise went up forthwith to the stranger's room, without
+thinking of the shock that the sight of her widow's weeds might give
+to a woman who was said to be dying. At the sight of that dying woman
+the Marquise turned pale. In spite of the changes wrought by fearful
+suffering in Helene's beautiful face, she recognized her eldest
+daughter.
+
+But Helene, when she saw a woman dressed in black, sat upright in bed
+with a shriek of horror. Then she sank back; she knew her mother.
+
+"My daughter," said Mme. d'Aiglemont, "what is to be done? 
+Pauline! . . . Moina! . . ."
+
+"Nothing now for me," said Helene faintly. "I had hoped to see my
+father once more, but your mourning--" she broke off, clutched her
+child to her heart as if to give it warmth, and kissed its forehead.
+Then she turned her eyes on her mother, and the Marquise met the old
+reproach in them, tempered with forgiveness, it is true, but still
+reproach. She saw it, and would not see it. She forgot that Helene was
+the child conceived amid tears and despair, the child of duty, the
+cause of one of the greatest sorrows in her life. She stole to her
+eldest daughter's side, remembering nothing but that Helene was her
+firstborn, the child who had taught her to know the joys of
+motherhood. The mother's eyes were full of tears. "Helene, my
+child! . . ." she cried, with her arms about her daughter.
+
+Helene was silent. Her own babe had just drawn its last breath on her
+breast.
+
+Moina came into the room with Pauline, her maid, and the landlady and
+the doctor. The Marquise was holding her daughter's ice-cold hand in
+both of hers, and gazing at her in despair; but the widowed woman, who
+had escaped shipwreck with but one of all her fair band of children,
+spoke in a voice that was dreadful to hear. "All this is your work,"
+she said. "If you had but been for me all that--"
+
+"Moina, go! Go out of the room, all of you!" cried Mme. d'Aiglemont,
+her shrill tones drowning Helene's voice.--"For pity's sake," she
+continued, "let us not begin these miserable quarrels again now----"
+
+"I will be silent," Helene answered with a preternatural effort. "I am
+a mother; I know that Moina ought not . . . Where is my child?"
+
+Moina came back, impelled by curiosity.
+
+"Sister," said the spoiled child, "the doctor--"
+
+"It is all of no use," said Helene. "Oh! why did I not die as a girl
+of sixteen when I meant to take my own life? There is no happiness
+outside the laws. Moina . . . you . . ."
+
+Her head sank till her face lay against the face of the little one; in
+her agony she strained her babe to her breast, and died.
+
+"Your sister, Moina," said Mme. d'Aiglemont, bursting into tears when
+she reached her room, "your sister meant no doubt to tell you that a
+girl will never find happiness in a romantic life, in living as nobody
+else does, and, above all things, far away from her mother."
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+THE OLD AGE OF A GUILTY MOTHER
+
+It was one of the earliest June days of the year 1844. A lady of fifty
+or thereabouts, for she looked older than her actual age, was pacing
+up and down one of the sunny paths in the garden of a great mansion in
+the Rue Plument in Paris. It was noon. The lady took two or three
+turns along the gently winding garden walk, careful never to lose
+sight of a certain row of windows, to which she seemed to give her
+whole attention; then she sat down on a bench, a piece of elegant
+semi-rusticity made of branches with the bark left on the wood. From
+the place where she sat she could look through the garden railings
+along the inner boulevards to the wonderful dome of the Invalides
+rising above the crests of a forest of elm-trees, and see the less
+striking view of her own grounds terminating in the gray stone front
+of one of the finest hotels in the Faubourg Saint-Germain.
+
+Silence lay over the neighboring gardens, and the boulevards
+stretching away to the Invalides. Day scarcely begins at noon in that
+aristocratic quarter, and masters and servants are all alike asleep,
+or just awakening, unless some young lady takes it into her head to go
+for an early ride, or a gray-headed diplomatist rises betimes to
+redraft a protocol.
+
+The elderly lady stirring abroad at that hour was the Marquise
+d'Aiglemont, the mother of Mme. de Saint-Hereen, to whom the great
+house belonged. The Marquise had made over the mansion and almost her
+whole fortune to her daughter, reserving only an annuity for herself.
+
+The Comtesse Moina de Saint-Hereen was Mme. d'Aiglemont's youngest
+child. The Marquise had made every sacrifice to marry her daughter to
+the eldest son of one of the greatest houses of France; and this was
+only what might have been expected, for the lady had lost her sons,
+first one and then the other. Gustave, Marquis d'Aiglemont, had died
+of the cholera; Abel, the second, had fallen in Algeria. Gustave had
+left a widow and children, but the dowager's affection for her sons
+had been only moderately warm, and for the next generation it was
+decidedly tepid. She was always civil to her daughter-in-law, but her
+feeling towards the young Marquise was the distinctly conventional
+affection which good taste and good manners require us to feel for our
+relatives. The fortunes of her dead children having been settled, she
+could devote her savings and her own property to her darling Moina.
+
+Moina, beautiful and fascinating from childhood, was Mme.
+d'Aiglemont's favorite; loved beyond all the others with an
+instinctive or involuntary love, a fatal drawing of the heart, which
+sometimes seems inexplicable, sometimes, and to a close observer, only
+too easy to explain. Her darling's pretty face, the sound of Moina's
+voice, her ways, her manner, her looks and gestures, roused all the
+deepest emotions that can stir a mother's heart with trouble, rapture,
+or delight. The springs of the Marquise's life, of yesterday,
+to-morrow, and to-day, lay in that young heart. Moina, with better
+fortune, had survived four older children. As a matter of fact, Mme.
+d'Aiglemont had lost her eldest daughter, a charming girl, in a most
+unfortunate manner, said gossip, nobody knew exactly what became of
+her; and then she lost a little boy of five by a dreadful accident.
+
+The child of her affections had, however, been spared to her, and
+doubtless the Marquise saw the will of Heaven in that fact; for those
+who had died, she kept but very shadowy recollections in some far-off
+corner of her heart; her memories of her dead children were like the
+headstones on a battlefield, you can scarcely see them for the flowers
+that have sprung up about them since. Of course, if the world had
+chosen, it might have said some hard truths about the Marquise, might
+have taken her to task for shallowness and an overweening preference
+for one child at the expense of the rest; but the world of Paris is
+swept along by the full flood of new events, new ideas, and new
+fashions, and it was inevitable the Mme. d'Aiglemont should be in some
+sort allowed to drop out of sight. So nobody thought of blaming her
+for coldness or neglect which concerned no one, whereas her quick,
+apprehensive tenderness for Moina was found highly interesting by not
+a few who respected it as a sort of superstition. Besides, the
+Marquise scarcely went into society at all; and the few families who
+knew her thought of her as a kindly, gentle, indulgent woman, wholly
+devoted to her family. What but a curiosity, keen indeed, would seek
+to pry beneath the surface with which the world is quite satisfied?
+And what would we not pardon to old people, if only they will efface
+themselves like shadows, and consent to be regarded as memories and
+nothing more!
+
+Indeed, Mme. d'Aiglemont became a kind of example complacently held up
+by the younger generation to fathers of families, and frequently cited
+to mothers-in-law. She had made over her property to Moina in her own
+lifetime; the young Countess' happiness was enough for her, she only
+lived in her daughter. If some cautious old person or morose uncle
+here and there condemned the course with--"Perhaps Mme. d'Aiglemont
+may be sorry some day that she gave up her fortune to her daughter;
+she may be sure of Moina, but how can she be equally sure of her son-
+in-law?"--these prophets were cried down on all sides, and from all
+sides a chorus of praise went up for Moina.
+
+"It ought to be said, in justice to Mme. de Saint-Hereen, that her
+mother cannot feel the slightest difference," remarked a young married
+woman. "Mme. d'Aiglemont is admirably well housed. She has a carriage
+at her disposal, and can go everywhere just as she used to do--"
+
+"Except to the Italiens," remarked a low voice. (This was an elderly
+parasite, one of those persons who show their independence--as they
+think--by riddling their friends with epigrams.) "Except to the
+Italiens. And if the dowager cares for anything on this earth but her
+daughter--it is music. Such a good performer she was in her time! But
+the Countess' box is always full of young butterflies, and the
+Countess' mother would be in the way; the young lady is talked about
+already as a great flirt. So the poor mother never goes to the
+Italiens."
+
+"Mme. de Saint-Hereen has delightful 'At Homes' for her mother," said
+a rosebud. "All Paris goes to her salon.
+
+"And no one pays any attention to the Marquise," returned the
+parasite.
+
+"The fact is that Mme. d'Aiglemont is never alone," remarked a
+coxcomb, siding with the young women.
+
+"In the morning," the old observer continued in a discreet voice, "in
+the morning dear Moina is asleep. At four o'clock dear Moina drives in
+the Bois. In the evening dear Moina goes to a ball or to the Bouffes.
+--Still, it is certainly true that Mme. d'Aiglemont has the privilege
+of seeing her dear daughter while she dresses, and again at dinner, if
+dear Moina happens to dine with her mother. Not a week ago, sir,"
+continued the elderly person, laying his hand on the arm of the shy
+tutor, a new arrival in the house, "not a week ago, I saw the poor
+mother, solitary and sad, by her own fireside.--'What is the matter?'
+I asked. The Marquise looked up smiling, but I am quite sure that she
+had been crying.--'I was thinking that it is a strange thing that I
+should be left alone when I have had five children,' she said, 'but
+that is our destiny! And besides, I am happy when I know that Moina is
+enjoying herself.'--She could say that to me, for I knew her husband
+when he was alive. A poor stick he was, and uncommonly lucky to have
+such a wife; it was certainly owing to her that he was made a peer of
+France, and had a place at Court under Charles X."
+
+Yet such mistaken ideas get about in social gossip, and such mischief
+is done by it, that the historian of manners is bound to exercise his
+discretion, and weigh the assertions so recklessly made. After all,
+who is to say that either mother or daughter was right or wrong? There
+is but One who can read and judge their hearts! And how often does He
+wreak His vengeance in the family circle, using throughout all time
+children as His instruments against their mothers, and fathers against
+their sons, raising up peoples against kings, and princes against
+peoples, sowing strife and division everywhere? And in the world of
+ideas, are not opinions and feelings expelled by new feelings and
+opinions, much as withered leaves are thrust forth by the young leaf-
+buds in the spring?--all in obedience to the immutable Scheme; all to
+some end which God alone knows. Yet, surely, all things proceed to
+Him, or rather, to Him all things return.
+
+Such thoughts of religion, the natural thoughts of age, floated up now
+and again on the current of Mme. d'Aiglemont's thoughts; they were
+always dimly present in her mind, but sometimes they shone out
+clearly, sometimes they were carried under, like flowers tossed on the
+vexed surface of a stormy sea.
+
+She sat on a garden-seat, tired with walking, exhausted with much
+thinking--with the long thoughts in which a whole lifetime rises up
+before the mind, and is spread out like a scroll before the eyes of
+those who feel that Death is near.
+
+If a poet had chanced to pass along the boulevard, he would have found
+an interesting picture in the face of this woman, grown old before her
+time. As she sat under the dotted shadow of the acacia, the shadow the
+acacia casts at noon, a thousand thoughts were written for all the
+world to see on her features, pale and cold even in the hot, bright
+sunlight. There was something sadder than the sense of waning life in
+that expressive face, some trouble that went deeper than the weariness
+of experience. It was a face of a type that fixes you in a moment
+among a host of characterless faces that fail to draw a second glance,
+a face to set you thinking. Among a thousand pictures in a gallery,
+you are strongly impressed by the sublime anguish on the face of some
+Madonna of Murillo's; by some /Beatrice Cenci/ in which Guido's art
+portrays the most touching innocence against a background of horror
+and crime; by the awe and majesty that should encircle a king, caught
+once and for ever by Velasquez in the sombre face of a Philip II., and
+so is it with some living human faces; they are tyrannous pictures
+which speak to you, submit you to searching scrutiny, and give
+response to your inmost thoughts, nay, there are faces that set forth
+a whole drama, and Mme. d'Aiglemont's stony face was one of these
+awful tragedies, one of such faces as Dante Alighieri saw by thousands
+in his vision.
+
+For the little season that a woman's beauty is in flower it serves her
+admirably well in the dissimulation to which her natural weakness and
+our social laws condemn her. A young face and rich color, and eyes
+that glow with light, a gracious maze of such subtle, manifold lines
+and curves, flawless and perfectly traced, is a screen that hides
+everything that stirs the woman within. A flush tells nothing, it only
+heightens the coloring so brilliant already; all the fires that burn
+within can add little light to the flame of life in eyes which only
+seem the brighter for the flash of a passing pain. Nothing is so
+discreet as a young face, for nothing is less mobile; it has the
+serenity, the surface smoothness, and the freshness of a lake. There
+is not character in women's faces before the age of thirty. The
+painter discovers nothing there but pink and white, and the smile and
+expression that repeat the same thought in the same way--a thought of
+youth and love that goes no further than youth and love. But the face
+of an old woman has expressed all that lay in her nature; passion has
+carved lines on her features; love and wifehood and motherhood, and
+extremes of joy and anguish, having wrung them, and left their traces
+in a thousand wrinkles, all of which speak a language of their own;
+then it is that a woman's face becomes sublime in its horror,
+beautiful in its melancholy, grand in its calm. If it is permissible
+to carry the strange metaphor still further, it might be said that in
+the dried-up lake you can see the traces of all the torrents that once
+poured into it and made it what it is. An old face is nothing to the
+frivolous world; the frivolous world is shocked by the sight of the
+destruction of such comeliness as it can understand; a commonplace
+artist sees nothing there. An old face is the province of the poets
+among poets of those who can recognize that something which is called
+Beauty, apart from all the conventions underlying so many
+superstitions in art and taste.
+
+
+
+Though Mme. d'Aiglemont wore a fashionable bonnet, it was easy to see
+that her once black hair had been bleached by cruel sorrows; yet her
+good taste and the gracious acquired instincts of a woman of fashion
+could be seen in the way she wore it, divided into two /bandeaux/,
+following the outlines of a forehead that still retained some traces
+of former dazzling beauty, worn and lined though it was. The contours
+of her face, the regularity of her features, gave some idea, faint in
+truth, of that beauty of which surely she had once been proud; but
+those traces spoke still more plainly of the anguish which had laid it
+waste, of sharp pain that had withered the temples, and made those
+hollows in her cheeks, and empurpled the eyelids, and robbed them of
+their lashes, and the eyes of their charm. She was in every way so
+noiseless; she moved with a slow, self-contained gravity that showed
+itself in her whole bearing, and struck a certain awe into others. Her
+diffident manner had changed to positive shyness, due apparently to a
+habit now of some years' growth, of effacing herself in her daughter's
+presence. She spoke very seldom, and in the low tones used by those
+who perforce must live within themselves a life of reflection and
+concentration. This demeanor led others to regard her with an
+indefinable feeling which was neither awe nor compassion, but a
+mysterious blending of the many ideas awakened in us by compassion and
+awe. Finally, there was something in her wrinkles, in the lines of her
+face, in the look of pain in those wan eyes of hers, that bore
+eloquent testimony to tears that never had fallen, tears that had been
+absorbed by her heart. Unhappy creatures, accustomed to raise their
+eyes to heaven, in mute appeal against the bitterness of their lot,
+would have seen at once from her eyes that she was broken in to the
+cruel discipline of ceaseless prayer, would have discerned the almost
+imperceptible symptoms of the secret bruises which destroy all the
+flowers of the soul, even the sentiment of motherhood.
+
+Painters have colors for these portraits, but words, and the mental
+images called up by words, fail to reproduce such impressions
+faithfully; there are mysterious signs and tokens in the tones of the
+coloring and in the look of human faces, which the mind only seizes
+through the sense of sight; and the poet is fain to record the tale of
+the events which wrought the havoc to make their terrible ravages
+understood.
+
+The face spoke of cold and steady storm, an inward conflict between a
+mother's long-suffering and the limitations of our nature, for our
+human affections are bounded by our humanity, and the infinite has no
+place in finite creatures. Sorrow endured in silence had at last
+produced an indefinable morbid something in this woman. Doubtless
+mental anguish had reacted on the physical frame, and some disease,
+perhaps an aneurism, was undermining Julie's life. Deep-seated grief
+lies to all appearance very quietly in the depths where it is
+conceived, yet, so still and apparently dormant as it is, it
+ceaselessly corrodes the soul, like the terrible acid which eats away
+crystal.
+
+Two tears made their way down the Marquise's cheeks; she rose to her
+feet as if some thought more poignant than any that preceded it had
+cut her to the quick. She had doubtless come to a conclusion as to
+Moina's future; and now, foreseeing clearly all the troubles in store
+for her child, the sorrows of her own unhappy life had begun to weigh
+once more upon her. The key of her position must be sought in her
+daughter's situation.
+
+The Comte de Saint-Hereen had been away for nearly six months on a
+political mission. The Countess, whether from sheer giddiness, or in
+obedience to the countless instincts of woman's coquetry, or to essay
+its power--with all the vanity of a frivolous fine lady, all the
+capricious waywardness of a child--was amusing herself, during her
+husband's absence, by playing with the passion of a clever but
+heartless man, distracted (so he said) with love, the love that
+combines readily with every petty social ambition of a self-conceited
+coxcomb. Mme. d'Aiglemont, whose long experience had given her a
+knowledge of life, and taught her to judge of men and to dread the
+world, watched the course of this flirtation, and saw that it could
+only end in one way, if her daughter should fall into the hands of an
+utterly unscrupulous intriguer. How could it be other than a terrible
+thought for her that her daughter listened willingly to this /roue/?
+Her darling stood on the brink of a precipice, she felt horribly sure
+of it, yet dared not hold her back. She was afraid of the Countess.
+She knew too that Moina would not listen to her wise warnings; she
+knew that she had no influence over that nature--iron for her, silken-
+soft for all others. Her mother's tenderness might have led her to
+sympathize with the troubles of a passion called forth by the nobler
+qualities of a lover, but this was no passion--it was coquetry, and
+the Marquise despised Alfred de Vandenesse, knowing that he had
+entered upon this flirtation with Moina as if it were a game of chess.
+
+But if Alfred de Vandenesse made her shudder with disgust, she was
+obliged--unhappy mother!--to conceal the strongest reason for her
+loathing in the deepest recesses of her heart. She was on terms of
+intimate friendship with the Marquis de Vandenesse, the young man's
+father; and this friendship, a respectable one in the eyes of the
+world, excused the son's constant presence in the house, he professing
+an old attachment, dating from childhood, for Mme. de Saint-Hereen.
+More than this, in vain did Mme. d'Aiglemont nerve herself to come
+between Moina and Alfred de Vandenesse with a terrible word, knowing
+beforehand that she should not succeed; knowing that the strong reason
+which ought to separate them would carry no weight; that she should
+humiliate herself vainly in her daughter's eyes. Alfred was too
+corrupt; Moina too clever to believe the revelation; the young
+Countess would turn it off and treat it as a piece of maternal
+strategy. Mme. d'Aiglemont had built her prison walls with her own
+hands; she had immured herself only to see Moina's happiness ruined
+thence before she died; she was to look on helplessly at the ruin of
+the young life which had been her pride and joy and comfort, a life a
+thousand times dearer to her than her own. What words can describe
+anguish so hideous beyond belief, such unfathomed depths of pain?
+
+She waited for Moina to rise, with the impatience and sickening dread
+of a doomed man, who longs to have done with life, and turns cold at
+the thought of the headsman. She had braced herself for a last effort,
+but perhaps the prospect of the certain failure of the attempt was
+less dreadful to her than the fear of receiving yet again one of those
+thrusts that went to her very heart--before that fear her courage
+ebbed away. Her mother's love had come to this. To love her child, to
+be afraid of her, to shrink from the thought of the stab, yet to go
+forward. So great is a mother's affection in a loving nature, that
+before it can fade away into indifference the mother herself must die
+or find support in some great power without her, in religion or
+another love. Since the Marquise rose that morning, her fatal memory
+had called up before her some of those things, so slight to all
+appearance, that make landmarks in a life. Sometimes, indeed, a whole
+tragedy grows out of a single gesture; the tone in which a few words
+were spoken rends a whole life in two; a glance into indifferent eyes
+is the deathblow of the gladdest love; and, unhappily, such gestures
+and such words were only too familiar to Mme. d'Aiglemont--she had met
+so many glances that wound the soul. No, there was nothing in those
+memories to bid her hope. On the contrary, everything went to show
+that Alfred had destroyed her hold on her daughter's heart, that the
+thought of her was now associated with duty--not with gladness. In
+ways innumerable, in things that were mere trifles in themselves, the
+Countess' detestable conduct rose up before her mother; and the
+Marquise, it may be, looked on Moina's undutifulness as a punishment,
+and found excuses for her daughter in the will of Heaven, that so she
+still might adore the hand that smote her.
+
+All these things passed through her memory that morning, and each
+recollection wounded her afresh so sorely, that with a very little
+additional pain her brimming cup of bitterness must have overflowed. A
+cold look might kill her.
+
+The little details of domestic life are difficult to paint; but one or
+two perhaps will suffice to give an idea of the rest.
+
+The Marquise d'Aiglemont, for instance, had grown rather deaf, but she
+could never induce Moina to raise her voice for her. Once, with the
+naivete of suffering, she had begged Moina to repeat some remark which
+she had failed to catch, and Moina obeyed, but with so bad a grace,
+the Mme. d'Aiglemont had never permitted herself to make her modest
+request again. Ever since that day when Moina was talking or retailing
+a piece of news, her mother was careful to come near to listen; but
+this infirmity of deafness appeared to put the Countess out of
+patience, and she would grumble thoughtlessly about it. This instance
+is one from among very many that must have gone to the mother's heart;
+and yet nearly all of them might have escaped a close observer, they
+consisted in faint shades of manner invisible to any but a woman's
+eyes. Take another example. Mme. d'Aiglemont happened to say one day
+that the Princesse de Cadignan had called upon her. "Did she come to
+see /you/!" Moina exclaimed. That was all, but the Countess' voice and
+manner expressed surprise and well-bred contempt in semitones. Any
+heart, still young and sensitive, might well have applauded the
+philanthropy of savage tribes who kill off their old people when they
+grow too feeble to cling to a strongly shaken bough. Mme. d'Aiglemont
+rose smiling, and went away to weep alone.
+
+Well-bred people, and women especially, only betray their feelings by
+imperceptible touches; but those who can look back over their own
+experience on such bruises as this mother's heart received, know also
+how the heart-strings vibrate to these light touches. Overcome by her
+memories, Mme. d'Aiglemont recollected one of those microscopically
+small things, so stinging and so painful was it that never till this
+moment had she felt all the heartless contempt that lurked beneath
+smiles.
+
+At the sound of shutters thrown back at her daughter's windows, she
+dried her tears, and hastened up the pathway by the railings. As she
+went, it struck her that the gardener had been unusually careful to
+rake the sand along the walk which had been neglected for some little
+time. As she stood under her daughter's windows, the shutters were
+hastily closed.
+
+"Moina, is it you?" she asked.
+
+No answer.
+
+The Marquise went on into the house.
+
+"Mme. la Comtesse is in the little drawing-room," said the maid, when
+the Marquise asked whether Mme. de Saint-Hereen had finished dressing.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont hurried to the little drawing-room; her heart was too
+full, her brain too busy to notice matters so slight; but there on the
+sofa sat the Countess in her loose morning-gown, her hair in disorder
+under the cap tossed carelessly on he head, her feet thrust into
+slippers. The key of her bedroom hung at her girdle. Her face, aglow
+with color, bore traces of almost stormy thought.
+
+"What makes people come in!" she cried, crossly. "Oh! it is you,
+mother," she interrupted herself, with a preoccupied look.
+
+"Yes, child; it is your mother----"
+
+Something in her tone turned those words into an outpouring of the
+heart, the cry of some deep inward feeling, only to be described by
+the word "holy." So thoroughly in truth had she rehabilitated the
+sacred character of a mother, that her daughter was impressed, and
+turned towards her, with something of awe, uneasiness, and remorse in
+her manner. The room was the furthest of a suite, and safe from
+indiscreet intrusion, for no one could enter it without giving warning
+of approach through the previous apartments. The Marquise closed the
+door.
+
+"It is my duty, my child, to warn you in one of the most serious
+crises in the lives of us women; you have perhaps reached it
+unconsciously, and I am come to speak to you as a friend rather than
+as a mother. When you married, you acquired freedom of action; you are
+only accountable to your husband now; but I asserted my authority so
+little (perhaps I was wrong), that I think I have a right to expect
+you to listen to me, for once at least, in a critical position when
+you must need counsel. Bear in mind, Moina that you are married to a
+man of high ability, a man of whom you may well be proud, a man who--"
+
+"I know what you are going to say, mother!" Moina broke in pettishly.
+"I am to be lectured about Alfred--"
+
+"Moina," the Marquise said gravely, as she struggled with her tears,
+"you would not guess at once if you did not feel--"
+
+"What?" asked Moina, almost haughtily. "Why, really, mother--"
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont summoned up all her strength. "Moina," she said, "you
+must attend carefully to this that I ought to tell you--"
+
+"I am attending," returned the Countess, folding her arms, and
+affecting insolent submission. "Permit me, mother, to ring for
+Pauline," she added with incredible self-possession; "I will send her
+away first."
+
+She rang the bell.
+
+"My dear child, Pauline cannot possibly hear--"
+
+"Mamma," interrupted the Countess, with a gravity which must have
+struck her mother as something unusual, "I must--"
+
+She stopped short, for the woman was in the room.
+
+"Pauline, go /yourself/ to Baudran's, and ask why my hat has not yet
+been sent."
+
+Then the Countess reseated herself and scrutinized her mother. The
+Marquise, with a swelling heart and dry eyes, in painful agitation,
+which none but a mother can fully understand, began to open Moina's
+eyes to the risk that she was running. But either the Countess felt
+hurt and indignant at her mother's suspicions of a son of the Marquis
+de Vandenesse, or she was seized with a sudden fit of inexplicable
+levity caused by the inexperience of youth. She took advantage of a
+pause.
+
+"Mamma, I thought you were only jealous of /the father/--" she said,
+with a forced laugh.
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont shut her eyes and bent her head at the words, with a
+very faint, almost inaudible sigh. She looked up and out into space,
+as if she felt the common overmastering impulse to appeal to God at
+the great crises of our lives; then she looked at her daughter, and
+her eyes were full of awful majesty and the expression of profound
+sorrow.
+
+"My child," she said, and her voice was hardly recognizable, "you have
+been less merciful to your mother than he against whom she sinned;
+less merciful than perhaps God Himself will be!"
+
+Mme. d'Aiglemont rose; at the door she turned; but she saw nothing but
+surprise in her daughter's face. She went out. Scarcely had she
+reached the garden when her strength failed her. There was a violent
+pain at her heart, and she sank down on a bench. As her eyes wandered
+over the path, she saw fresh marks on the path, a man's footprints
+were distinctly recognizable. It was too late, then, beyond a doubt.
+Now she began to understand the reason for that order given to
+Pauline, and with these torturing thoughts came a revelation more
+hateful than any that had gone before it. She drew her own
+inferences--the son of the Marquis de Vandenesse had destroyed all
+feeling of respect for her in her daughter's mind. The physical pain
+grew worse; by degrees she lost consciousness, and sat like one asleep
+upon the garden-seat.
+
+The Countess de Saint-Hereen, left to herself, thought that her mother
+had given her a somewhat shrewd home-thrust, but a kiss and a few
+attentions that evening would make all right again.
+
+A shrill cry came from the garden. She leaned carelessly out, as
+Pauline, not yet departed on her errand, called out for help, holding
+the Marquise in her arms.
+
+"Do not frighten my daughter!" those were the last words the mother
+uttered.
+
+Moina saw them carry in a pale and lifeless form that struggled for
+breath, and arms moving restlessly as in protest or effort to speak;
+and overcome by the sight, Moina followed in silence, and helped to
+undress her mother and lay her on her bed. The burden of her fault was
+greater than she could bear. In that supreme hour she learned to know
+her mother--too late, she could make no reparation now. She would have
+them leave her alone with her mother; and when there was no one else
+in the room, when she felt that the hand which had always been so
+tender for her was now grown cold to her touch, she broke out into
+weeping. Her tears aroused the Marquise; she could still look at her
+darling Moina; and at the sound of sobbing, that seemed as if it must
+rend the delicate, disheveled breast, could smile back at her
+daughter. That smile taught the unnatural child that forgiveness is
+always to be found in the great deep of a mother's heart.
+
+
+
+Servants on horseback had been dispatched at once for the physician
+and surgeon and for Mme. d'Aiglemont's grandchildren. Mme. d'Aiglemont
+the younger and her little sons arrived with the medical men, a
+sufficiently impressive, silent, and anxious little group, which the
+servants of the house came to join. The young Marquise, hearing no
+sound, tapped gently at the door. That signal, doubtless, roused Moina
+from her grief, for she flung open the doors and stood before them. No
+words could have spoken more plainly than that disheveled figure
+looking out with haggard eyes upon the assembled family. Before that
+living picture of Remorse the rest were dumb. It was easy to see that
+the Marquise's feet were stretched out stark and stiff with the agony
+of death; and Moina, leaning against the door-frame, looking into
+their faces, spoke in a hollow voice:
+
+"I have lost my mother!"
+
+
+
+PARIS, 1828-1844.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Aiglemont, General, Marquis Victor d'
+  At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+
+Bonaparte, Napoleon
+  The Vendetta
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  Colonel Chabert
+  Domestic Peace
+  The Seamy Side of History
+
+Camps, Madame Octave de (nee Cadignan)
+  Madame Firmiani
+  The Government Clerks
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Chatillonest, De
+  Modeste Mignon
+
+Crottat, Alexandre
+  Cesar Birotteau
+  Colonel Chabert
+  A Start in Life
+  Cousin Pons
+
+Desroches (son)
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Colonel Chabert
+  A Start in Life
+  The Commission in Lunacy
+  The Government Clerks
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+  The Firm of Nucingen
+  A Man of Business
+  The Middle Classes
+
+Duroc, Gerard-Christophe-Michel
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+
+Ronquerolles, Marquis de
+  The Imaginary Mistress
+  The Peasantry
+  Ursule Mirouet
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Thirteen
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Saint-Hereen, Comtesse Moina de
+  A Daughter of Eve
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Serizy, Comtesse de
+  A Start in Life
+  The Thirteen
+  Ursule Mirouet
+  Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Imaginary Mistress
+
+Vandenesse, Marquis Charles de
+  A Start in Life
+  A Daughter of Eve
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Etext A Woman of Thirty, by Honore de Balzac
+
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