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+Project Gutenberg’s Jacqueline, Complete, by Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
+
+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: Jacqueline, Complete
+
+Author: (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
+
+Release Date: October 5, 2006 [EBook #3971]
+Last Updated: August 23, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JACQUELINE, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+JACQUELINE
+
+By (Mme. Blanc) Therese Bentzon
+
+
+With a Preface by M. THUREAU-DANGIN, of the French Academy
+
+
+
+
+TH. BENTZON
+
+It is natural that the attention and affection of Americans should
+be attracted to a woman who has devoted herself assiduously to
+understanding and to making known the aspirations of our country,
+especially in introducing the labors and achievements of our women to
+their sisters in France, of whom we also have much to learn; for simple,
+homely virtues and the charm of womanliness may still be studied with
+advantage on the cherished soil of France.
+
+Marie-Therese Blanc, nee Solms--for this is the name of the author
+who writes under the nom de plume of Madame Bentzon--is considered
+the greatest of living French female novelists. She was born in an old
+French chateau at Seine-Porte (Seine et Oise), September 21, 1840.
+This chateau was owned by Madame Bentzon’s grandmother, the Marquise
+de Vitry, who was a woman of great force and energy of character, “a
+ministering angel” to her country neighborhood. Her grandmother’s first
+marriage was to a Dane, Major-General Adrien-Benjamin de Bentzon,
+a Governor of the Danish Antilles. By this marriage there was one
+daughter, the mother of Therese, who in turn married the Comte de Solms.
+“This mixture of races,” Madame Blanc once wrote, “surely explains a
+kind of moral and intellectual cosmopolitanism which is found in my
+nature. My father of German descent, my mother of Danish--my nom de
+plume (which was her maiden-name) is Danish--with Protestant ancestors
+on her side, though she and I were Catholics--my grandmother a sound and
+witty Parisian, gay, brilliant, lively, with superb physical health
+and the consequent good spirits--surely these materials could not have
+produced other than a cosmopolitan being.”
+
+Somehow or other, the family became impoverished. Therese de Solms took
+to writing stories. After many refusals, her debut took place in the
+‘Revue des Deux Mondes’, and her perseverance was largely due to the
+encouragement she received from George Sand, although that great woman
+saw everything through the magnifying glass of her genius. But the
+person to whom Therese Bentzon was most indebted in the matter of
+literary advice--she says herself--was the late M. Caro, the famous
+Sorbonne professor of philosophy, himself an admirable writer, “who put
+me through a course of literature, acting as my guide through a vast
+amount of solid reading, and criticizing my work with kindly severity.”
+ Success was slow. Strange as it may seem, there is a prejudice against
+female writers in France, a country that has produced so many admirable
+women-authors. However, the time was to come when M. Becloz found one
+of her stories in the ‘Journal des Debats’. It was the one entitled ‘Un
+Divorce’, and he lost no time in engaging the young writer to become one
+of his staff. From that day to this she has found the pages of the Revue
+always open to her.
+
+Madame Bentzon is a novelist, translator, and writer of literary essays.
+The list of her works runs as follows: ‘Le Roman d’un Muet (1868); Un
+Divorce (1872); La Grande Sauliere (1877); Un remords (1878); Yette and
+Georgette (1880); Le Retour (1882); Tete folle (1883); Tony, (1884);
+Emancipee (1887); Constance (1891); Jacqueline (1893). We need not enter
+into the merits of style and composition if we mention that ‘Un
+remords, Tony, and Constance’ were crowned by the French Academy, and
+‘Jacqueline’ in 1893. Madame Bentzon is likewise the translator of
+Aldrich, Bret Harte, Dickens, and Ouida. Some of her critical works
+are ‘Litterature et Moeurs etrangeres’, 1882, and ‘Nouveaux romanciers
+americains’, 1885.
+
+                  M. THUREAU-DANGIN
+               de l’Academie Francaise.
+
+
+
+
+JACQUELINE
+
+
+
+
+BOOK 1.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. A PARISIENNE’S “AT HOME”
+
+Despite a short frock, checked stockings, wide turned-over collar, and
+a loose sash around the waist of her blouse in other words, despite the
+childish fashion of a dress which seemed to denote that she was not
+more than thirteen or fourteen years of age, she seemed much older. An
+observer would have put her down as the oldest of the young girls who on
+Tuesdays, at Madame de Nailles’s afternoons, filled what was called “the
+young girls’ corner” with whispered merriment and low laughter, while,
+under pretence of drinking tea, the noise went on which is always
+audible when there is anything to eat.
+
+No doubt the amber tint of this young girl’s complexion, the raven
+blackness of her hair, her marked yet delicate features, and the general
+impression produced by her dark coloring, were reasons why she seemed
+older than the rest. It was Jacqueline’s privilege to exhibit that style
+of beauty which comes earliest to perfection, and retains it longest;
+and, what was an equal privilege, she resembled no one.
+
+The deep bow-window--her favorite spot--which enabled her to have a
+reception-day in connection with that of her mamma, seemed like a great
+basket of roses when all her friends assembled there, seated on
+low chairs in unstudied attitudes: the white rose of the group was
+Mademoiselle d’Etaples, a specimen of pale and pensive beauty, frail
+almost to transparency; the Rose of Bengal was the charming Colette
+Odinska, a girl of Polish race, but born in Paris; the dark-red rose
+was Isabelle Ray-Belle she was called triumphantly--whose dimpled cheeks
+flushed scarlet for almost any cause, some said for very coquetry. Then
+there were three little girls called Wermant, daughters of an agent de
+change--a spray of May roses, exactly alike in features, manners, and
+dress, sprightly and charming as little girls could be. A little
+pompon rose was tiny Dorothee d’Avrigny, to whom the pet name Dolly was
+appropriate, for never had any doll’s waxen face been more lovely than
+her little round one, with its mouth shaped like a little heart--a mouth
+smaller than her eyes, and these were round eyes, too, but so bright,
+and blue, and soft, that it was easy to overlook their too frequently
+startled expression.
+
+Jacqueline had nothing in common with a rose of any kind, but she was
+not the less charming to look at. Such was the unspoken reflection of a
+man who was well able to be a judge in such matters. His name was Hubert
+Marien. He was a great painter, and was now watching the clear-cut,
+somewhat Arab--like profile of this girl--a profile brought out
+distinctly against the dark-red silk background of a screen, much as
+we see a cameo stand out in sharp relief from the glittering stone from
+which the artist has fashioned it. Marien looked at her from a distance,
+leaning against the fireplace of the farther salon, whence he could see
+plainly the corner shaded by green foliage plants where Jacqueline had
+made her niche, as she called it. The two rooms formed practically but
+one, being separated only by a large recess without folding-doors, or
+‘portires’. Hubert Marien, from his place behind Madame de Nailles’s
+chair, had often before watched Jacqueline as he was watching her at
+this moment. She had grown up, as it were, under his own eye. He had
+seen her playing with her dolls, absorbed in her story-books, and
+crunching sugar-plums, he had paid her visits--for how many years? He
+did not care to count them.
+
+And little girls bloom fast! How old they make us feel! Who would have
+supposed the most unpromising of little buds would have transformed
+itself so soon into what he gazed upon? Marien, as an artist, had
+great pleasure in studying the delicate outline of that graceful head
+surmounted by thick tresses, with rebellious ringlets rippling over the
+brow before they were gathered into the thick braid that hung behind;
+and Jacqueline, although she appeared to be wholly occupied with her
+guests, felt the gaze that was fixed upon her, and was conscious of its
+magnetic influence, from which nothing would have induced her to escape
+even had she been able. All the young girls were listening attentively
+(despite their more serious occupation of consuming dainties) to
+what was going on in the next room among the grown-up people, whose
+conversation reached them only in detached fragments.
+
+So long as the subject talked about was the last reception at the French
+Academy, these young girls (comrades in the class-room and at the weekly
+catechising) had been satisfied to discuss together their own little
+affairs, but after Colonel de Valdonjon began to talk complete silence
+reigned among them. One might have heard the buzzing of a fly. Their
+attention, however, was of little use. Exclamations of oh! and ah! and
+protests more or less sincere drowned even the loud and somewhat hoarse
+voice of the Colonel. The girls heard it only through a sort of general
+murmur, out of which a burst of astonishment or of dissent would
+occasionally break forth. These outbreaks were all the curious group
+could hear distinctly. They sniffed, as it were, at the forbidden fruit,
+but they longed to inhale the full perfume of the scandal that they felt
+was in the air. That stout officer of cuirassiers, of whom some people
+spoke as “The Chatterbox,” took advantage of his profession to tell many
+an unsavory story which he had picked up or invented at his club. He
+had come to Madame de Nailles’s reception with a brand-new concoction of
+falsehood and truth, a story likely to be hawked round Paris with great
+success for several weeks to come, though ladies on first hearing it
+would think proper to cry out that they would not even listen to it, and
+would pretend to look round them for their fans to hide their confusion.
+
+The principal object of interest in this scandalous gossip was a
+valuable diamond bracelet, one of those priceless bits of jewelry seldom
+seen except in show-windows on the Rue de la Paix, intended to be bought
+only for presentation to princesses--of some sort or kind. Well, by
+an extraordinary, chance the Marquise de Versannes--aye, the lovely
+Georgine de Versannes herself--had picked up this bracelet in the
+street--by chance, as it were.
+
+“It so happened,” said the Colonel, “that I was at her mother-in-law’s,
+where she was going to dine. She came in looking as innocent as you
+please, with her hand in her pocket. ‘Oh, see what I have found!’ she
+cried. ‘I stepped upon it almost at your door.’ And the bracelet was
+placed under a lamp, where the diamonds shot out sparkles fit to blind
+the old Marquise, and make that old fool of a Versannes see a thousand
+lights. He has long known better than to take all his wife says for
+gospel--but he tries hard to pretend that he believes her. ‘My dear,’
+he said, ‘you must take that to the police.’--‘I’ll send it to-morrow
+morning,’ says the charming Georgine, ‘but I wished to show you my good
+luck.’ Of course nobody came forward to claim the bracelet, and a
+month later Madame de Versannes appeared at the Cranfords’ ball with a
+brilliant diamond bracelet, worn like the Queen of Sheba’s, high up on
+her arm, near the shoulder, to hide the lack of sleeve. This piece of
+finery, which drew everybody’s attention to the wearer, was the famous
+bracelet picked up in the street. Clever of her!--wasn’t it, now?”
+
+“Horrid! Unlikely! Impossible.... What do you mean us to understand
+about it, Colonel? Could she have...?”
+
+Then the Colonel went on to demonstrate, with many coarse insinuations,
+that that good Georgine, as he familiarly called her, had done many more
+things than people gave her credit for. And he went on to add: “Surely,
+you must have heard of the row about her between Givrac and the
+Homme-Volant at the Cirque?”
+
+“What, the man that wears stockinet all covered with gold scales? Do
+tell us, Colonel!”
+
+But here Madame de Nailles gave a dry little cough which was meant to
+impose silence on the subject. She was not a prude, but she disapproved
+of anything that was bad form at her receptions. The Colonel’s
+revelations had to be made in a lower tone, while his hostess endeavored
+to bring back the conversation to the charming reply made by M. Renan to
+the somewhat insipid address of a member of the Academie.
+
+“We sha’n’t hear anything more now,” said Colette, with a sigh. “Did you
+understand it, Jacqueline?”
+
+“Understand--what?”
+
+“Why, that story about the bracelet?”
+
+“No--not all. The Colonel seemed to imply that she had not picked it up,
+and indeed I don’t see how any one could have dropped in the street, in
+broad daylight, a bracelet meant only to be worn at night--a bracelet
+worn near the shoulder.”
+
+“But if she did not pick it up--she must have stolen it.”
+
+“Stolen it?” cried Belle. “Stolen it! What! The Marquise de Versannes?
+Why, she inherited the finest diamonds in Paris!”
+
+“How do you know?”
+
+“Because mamma sometimes takes me to the Opera, and her subscription day
+is the same as that of the Marquise. People say a good deal of harm of
+her--in whispers. They say she is barely received now in society, that
+people turn their backs on her, and so forth, and so on. However, that
+did not hinder her from being superb the other evening at ‘Polyeucte’.”
+
+“So you only go to see ‘Polyeucte’?” said Jacqueline, making a little
+face as if she despised that opera.
+
+“Yes, I have seen it twice. Mamma lets me go to ‘Polyeucte’ and
+‘Guillaume Tell’, and to the ‘Prophete’, but she won’t take me to see
+‘Faust’--and it is just ‘Faust’ that I want to see. Isn’t it provoking
+that one can’t see everything, hear everything, understand everything?
+You see, we could not half understand that story which seemed to
+amuse the people so much in the other room. Why did they send back the
+bracelet from the Prefecture to Madame de Versannes if it was not hers?”
+
+“Yes--why?” said all the little girls, much puzzled.
+
+Meantime, as the hour for closing the exhibition at the neighboring
+hippodrome had arrived, visitors came pouring into Madame de Nailles’s
+reception--tall, graceful women, dressed with taste and elegance, as
+befitted ladies who were interested in horsemanship. The tone of the
+conversation changed. Nothing was talked about but superb horses, leaps
+over ribbons and other obstacles. The young girls interested themselves
+in the spring toilettes, which they either praised or criticised as they
+passed before their eyes.
+
+“Oh! there is Madame Villegry,” cried Jacqueline; “how handsome she is!
+I should like one of these days to be that kind of beauty, so tall and
+slender. Her waist measure is only twenty-one and two thirds inches. The
+woman who makes her corsets and my mamma’s told us so. She brought us
+one of her corsets to look at, a love of a corset, in brocatelle, all
+over many-colored flowers. That material is much more ‘distingue’ than
+the old satin--”
+
+“But what a queer idea it is to waste all that upon a thing that nobody
+will ever look at,” said Dolly, her round eyes opening wider than
+before.
+
+“Oh! it is just to please herself, I suppose. I understand that!
+Besides, nothing is too good for such a figure. But what I admire most
+is her extraordinary hair.”
+
+“Which changes its color now and then,” observed the sharpest of the
+three Wermant sisters. “Extraordinary is just the word for it.
+At present it is dark red. Henna did that, I suppose. Raoul--our
+brother--when he was in Africa saw Arab women who used henna. They tied
+their heads up in a sort of poultice made of little leaves, something
+like tea-leaves. In twenty-four hours the hair will be dyed red, and
+will stay red for a year or more. You can try it if you like. I think it
+is disgusting.”
+
+“Oh! look, there is Madame de Sternay. I recognized her by her perfume
+before I had even seen her. What delightful things good perfumes are!”
+
+“What is it? Is it heliotrope or jessamine?” asked Yvonne d’Etaples,
+sniffing in the air.
+
+“No--it is only orris-root--nothing but orris-root; but she puts it
+everywhere about her--in the hem of her petticoat, in the lining of her
+dress. She lives, one might say, in the middle of a sachet. The thing
+that will please me most when I am married will be to have no limit
+to my perfumes. Till then I have to satisfy myself with very little,”
+ sighed Jacqueline, drawing a little bunch of violets from the loose
+folds of her blouse, and inhaling their fragrance with delight.
+
+“‘Tiens’! here comes somebody who has to be contented with much less,”
+ said Yvonne, as a young girl joined their circle. She was small,
+awkward, timid, and badly dressed. On seeing her Colette whispered “Oh!
+that tiresome Giselle. We sha’n’t be able to talk another word.”
+
+Jacqueline kissed Giselle de Monredon. They were distant cousins, though
+they saw each other very seldom. Giselle was an orphan, having lost
+both her father and her mother, and was being educated in a convent
+from which she was allowed to come out only on great occasions. Her
+grandmother, whose ideas were those of the old school, had placed her
+there. The Easter holidays accounted for Giselle’s unexpected arrival.
+Wrapped in a large cloak which covered up her convent uniform, she
+looked, as compared with the gay girls around her, like a poor sombre
+night-moth, dazzled by the light, in company with other glittering
+creatures of the insect race, fluttering with graceful movements,
+transparent wings and shining corselets.
+
+“Come and have some sandwiches,” said Jacqueline, and she drew Giselle
+to the tea-table, with the kind intention apparently of making her feel
+more at her ease. But she had another motive. She saw some one who was
+very interesting to her coming at that moment toward the table. That
+some one was a man about forty, whose pointed black beard was becoming
+slightly gray--a man whom some people thought ugly, chiefly because
+they had never seen his somewhat irregular features illumined by a smile
+which, spreading from his lips to his eyes, lighted up his face and
+transformed it. The smile of Hubert Marien was rare, however. He
+was exclusive in his friendships, often silent, always somewhat
+unapproachable. He seldom troubled himself to please any one he did
+not care for. In society he was not seen to advantage, because he
+was extremely bored, for which reason he was seldom to be seen at
+the Tuesday receptions of Madame de Nailles; while, on other days, he
+frequented the house as an intimate friend of the family. Jacqueline had
+known him all her life, and for her he had always his beautiful smile.
+He had petted her when she was little, and had been much amused by the
+sort of adoration she had no hesitation in showing that she felt for
+him. He used to call her Mademoiselle ma femme, and M. de Nailles would
+speak of him as “my daughter’s future husband.” This joke had been kept
+up till the little lady had reached her ninth year, when it ceased,
+probably by order of Madame de Nailles, who in matters of propriety was
+very punctilious. Jacqueline, too, became less familiar than she had
+been with the man she called “my great painter.” Indeed, in her heart of
+hearts, she cherished a grudge against him. She thought he presumed on
+the right he had assumed of teasing her. The older she grew the more he
+treated her as if she were a baby, and, in the little passages of
+arms that continually took place between them, Jacqueline was bitterly
+conscious that she no longer had the best of it as formerly. She was no
+longer as droll and lively as she had been. She was easily disconcerted,
+and took everything ‘au serieux’, and her wits became paralyzed by an
+embarrassment that was new to her. And, pained by the sort of sarcasm
+which Marien kept up in all their intercourse, she was often ready to
+burst into tears after talking to him. Yet she was never quite satisfied
+unless he was present. She counted the days from one Wednesday to
+another, for on Wednesdays he always dined with them, and she greeted
+any opportunity of seeing him on other days as a great pleasure. This
+week, for example, would be marked with a white stone. She would have
+seen him twice. For half an hour Marien had been enduring the bore of
+the reception, standing silent and self-absorbed in the midst of the gay
+talk, which did not interest him. He wished to escape, but was always
+kept from doing so by some word or sign from Madame de Nailles.
+Jacqueline had been thinking: “Oh! if he would only come and talk to
+us!” He was now drawing near them, and an instinct made her wish to rush
+up to him and tell him--what should she tell him? She did not know. A
+few moments before so many things to tell him had been passing through
+her brain.
+
+What she said was: “Monsieur Marien, I recommend to you these little
+spiced cakes.” And, with some awkwardness, because her hand was
+trembling, she held out the plate to him.
+
+“No, thank you, Mademoiselle,” he said, affecting a tone of great
+ceremony, “I prefer to take this glass of punch, if you will permit me.”
+
+“The punch is cold, I fear; suppose we were to put a little tea in it.
+Stay--let me help you.”
+
+“A thousand thanks; but I like to attend to such little cookeries
+myself. By the way, it seems to me that Mademoiselle Giselle, in her
+character of an angel who disapproves of the good things of this life,
+has not left us much to eat at your table.”
+
+“Who--I?” cried the poor schoolgirl, in a tone of injured innocence and
+astonishment.
+
+“Don’t pay any attention to him,” said Jacqueline, as if taking her
+under her protection. “He is nothing but a tease; what he says is only
+chaff. But I might as well talk Greek to her,” she added, shrugging her
+shoulders. “In the convent they don’t know what to make of a joke. Only
+spare her at least, if you please, Monsieur Marien.”
+
+“I know by report that Mademoiselle Giselle is worthy of the most
+profound respect,” continued the pitiless painter. “I lay myself at her
+feet--and at yours. Now I am going to slip away in the English fashion.
+Good-evening.”
+
+“Why do you go so soon? You can’t do any more work today.”
+
+“No, it has been a day lost--that is true.”
+
+“That’s polite! By the way”--here Jacqueline became very red and she
+spoke rapidly--“what made you just now stare at me so persistently?”
+
+“I? Impossible that I could have permitted myself to stare at you,
+Mademoiselle.”
+
+“That is just what you did, though. I thought you had found something to
+find fault with. What could it be? I fancied there was something wrong
+with my hair, something absurd that you were laughing at. You always do
+laugh, you know.”
+
+“Wrong with your hair? It is always wrong. But that is not your fault.
+You are not responsible for its looking like a hedgehog’s.”
+
+“Hedgehogs haven’t any hair,” said Jacqueline, much hurt by the
+observation.
+
+“True, they have only prickles, which remind me of the susceptibility
+of your temper. I beg your pardon I was looking at you critically. Being
+myself indulgent and kindhearted, I was only looking at you from
+an artist’s point of view--as is always allowable in my profession.
+Remember, I see you very rarely by daylight. I am obliged to work as
+long as the light allows me. Well, in the light of this April sunshine
+I was saying to myself--excuse my boldness!--that you had reached the
+right age for a picture.”
+
+“For a picture? Were you thinking of painting me?” cried Jacqueline,
+radiant with pleasure.
+
+“Hold a moment, please. Between a dream and its execution lies a great
+space. I was only imagining a picture of you.”
+
+“But my portrait would be frightful.”
+
+“Possibly. But that would depend on the skill of the painter.”
+
+“And yet a model should be--I am so thin,” said Jacqueline, with
+confusion and discouragement.
+
+“True; your limbs are like a grasshopper’s.”
+
+“Oh! you mean my legs--but my arms....”
+
+“Your arms must be like your legs. But, sitting as you were just now, I
+could see only your head, which is better. So! one has to be accountable
+for looking at you? Mademoiselle feels herself affronted if any one
+stares at her! I will remember this in future. There, now! suppose,
+instead of quarrelling with me, you were to go and cast yourself into
+the arms of your cousin Fred.”
+
+“Fred! Fred d’Argy! Fred is at Brest.”
+
+“Where are your eyes, my dear child? He has just come in with his
+mother.”
+
+And at that moment Madame de Nailles, with her pure, clear voice--a
+voice frequently compared to that of Mademoiselle Reichemberg, called:
+
+“Jacqueline!”
+
+Jacqueline never crossed the imaginary line which divided the two salons
+unless she was called upon to do so. She was still summoned like a child
+to speak to certain persons who took an especial interest in her, and
+who were kind enough to wish to see her--Madame d’Argy, for example,
+who had been the dearest friend of her dead mother. The death of that
+mother, who had been long replaced by a stepmother, could hardly be
+said to be deeply regretted by Jacqueline. She remembered her very
+indistinctly. The stories of her she had heard from Modeste, her old
+nurse, probably served her instead of any actual memory. She knew her
+only as a woman pale and in ill health, always lying on a sofa. The
+little black frock that had been made for her had been hardly worn
+out when a new mamma, as gay and fresh as the other had been sick and
+suffering, had come into the household like a ray of sunshine.
+
+After that time Madame d’Argy and Modeste were the only people who
+spoke to her of the mother who was gone. Madame d’Argy, indeed, came on
+certain days to take her to visit the tomb, on which the child read, as
+she prayed for the departed:
+
+         MARIE JACQUELINE ADELAIDE DE VALTIER
+
+              BARONNE DE NAILLES
+
+            DIED AGED TWENTY-SIX YEARS
+
+And such filial sentiment as she still retained, concerning the unknown
+being who had been her mother, was tinged by her association with this
+melancholy pilgrimage which she was expected to perform at certain
+intervals. Without exactly knowing the reason why, Jacqueline was
+conscious of a certain hostility that existed between Madame d’Argy and
+her stepmother.
+
+The intimate friend of the first Madame de Nailles was a woman with
+neither elegance nor beauty. She never had left off her widow’s weeds,
+which she had worn since she had lost her husband in early youth. In the
+eyes of Jacqueline her sombre figure personified austere, exacting Duty,
+a kind of duty not attractive to her. That very day it seemed as if duty
+inconveniently stepped in to break up a conversation that was deeply
+interesting to her. The impatient gesture that she made when her mother
+called her might have been interpreted into: Bother Madame d’Argy!
+
+“Jacqueline!” called again the silvery voice that had first summoned
+her; and a moment after the young girl found herself in the centre of
+a circle of grown people, saying good-morning, making curtseys, and
+kissing the withered hand of old Madame de Monredon, as she had been
+taught to do from infancy. Madame de Monredon was Giselle’s grandmother.
+Jacqueline had been instructed to call her “aunt;” but in her heart she
+called her ‘La Fee Gyognon’, while Madame d’Argy, pointing to her son,
+said: “What do you think, darling, of such a surprise? He is home on
+leave. We came here the first place-naturally.”
+
+“It was very nice of you. How do you do, Fred?” said Jacqueline, holding
+out her hand to a very young man, in a jacket ornamented with gold lace,
+who stood twisting his cap in his hand with some embarrassment “It is a
+long time since we have seen each other. But it does not seem to me that
+you have grown a great deal.”
+
+Fred blushed up to the roots of his hair.
+
+“No one can say that of you, Jacqueline,” observed Madame d’Argy.
+
+“No--what a may-pole!--isn’t she?” said the Baronne, carelessly.
+
+“If she realizes it,” whispered Madame de Monredon, who was sitting
+beside Madame d’Argy on a ‘causeuse’ shaped like an S, “why does she
+persist in dressing her like a child six years old? It is absurd!”
+
+“Still, she can have no reason for keeping her thus in order to make
+herself seem young. She is only a stepmother.”
+
+“Of course. But people might make comparisons. Beauty in the bud
+sometimes blooms out unexpectedly when it is not welcome.”
+
+“Yes--she is fading fast. Small women ought not to grow stout.”
+
+“Anyhow, I have no patience with her for keeping a girl of fifteen in
+short skirts.”
+
+“You are making her out older than she is.”
+
+“How is that?--how is that? She is two years younger than Giselle, who
+has just entered her eighteenth year.”
+
+While the two ladies were exchanging these little remarks, the Baronne
+de Nailles was saying to the young naval cadet:
+
+“Monsieur Fred, we should be charmed to keep you with us, but possibly
+you might like to see some of your old friends. Jacqueline can take you
+to them. They will be glad to see you.”
+
+“Tiens!--that’s true,” said Jacqueline. “Dolly and Belle are yonder. You
+remember Isabelle Ray, who used to take dancing lessons with us.”
+
+“Of course I do,” said Fred, following his cousin with a feeling of
+regret that his sword was not knocking against his legs, increasing his
+importance in the eyes of all the ladies who were present. He was not,
+however; sorry to leave their imposing circle. Above all, he was glad
+to escape from the clear-sighted, critical eyes of Madame de Nailles.
+On the other hand, to be sent off to the girls’ corner, after
+being insulted by being told he had not grown, hurt his sense of
+self-importance.
+
+Meantime Jacqueline was taking him back to her own corner, where he was
+greeted by two or three little exclamations of surprise, shaking hands,
+however, as his former playmates drew their skirts around them, trying
+to make room for him to sit down.
+
+“Young ladies,” said Jacqueline, “I present to you a ‘bordachien’--a
+little middy from the practice-ship the Borda.”
+
+They burst out laughing: “A bordachien! A middy from the practice-ship!”
+ they cried.
+
+“I shall not be much longer on the practice-ship,” said the young man,
+with a gesture which seemed as if his hand were feeling for the hilt of
+his sword, which was not there, “for I am going very soon on my first
+voyage as an ensign.”
+
+“Yes,” explained Jacqueline, “he is going to be transferred from
+the ‘Borda’ to the ‘Jean-Bart’--which, by the way, is no longer the
+‘Jean-Bart’, only people call her so because they are used to it.
+Meantime you see before you “C,” the great “C,” the famous “C,” that is,
+he is the pupil who stands highest on the roll of the naval school at
+this moment.”
+
+There was a vague murmur of applause. Poor Fred was indeed in need of
+some appreciation on the score of merit, for he was not much to look
+upon, being at that trying age when a young fellow’s moustache is only
+a light down, an age at which youths always look their worst, and are
+awkward and unsociable because they are timid.
+
+“Then you are no longer an idle fellow,” said Dolly, rather teasingly.
+“People used to say that you went into the navy to get rid of your
+lessons. That I can quite understand.”
+
+“Oh, he has passed many difficult exams,” cried Giselle, coming to the
+rescue.
+
+“I thought I had had enough of school,” said Fred, without making any
+defense, “and besides I had other reasons for going into the navy.”
+
+His “other reasons” had been a wish to emancipate himself from
+the excessive solicitude of his mother, who kept him tied to her
+apron-strings like a little girl. He was impatient to do something for
+himself, to become a man as soon as possible. But he said nothing of
+all this, and to escape further questions devoured three or four little
+cakes that were offered him. Before taking them he removed his gloves
+and displayed a pair of chapped and horny hands.
+
+“Why--poor Fred!” cried Jacqueline, who remarked them in a moment, “what
+kind of almond paste do you use?”
+
+Much annoyed, he replied, curtly: “We all have to row, we have also
+to attend to the machinery. But that is only while we are cadets. Of
+course, such apprenticeship is very hard. After that we shall get our
+stripes and be ordered on foreign service, and expect promotion.”
+
+“And glory,” said Giselle, who found courage to speak.
+
+Fred thanked her with a look of gratitude. She, at least, understood his
+profession. She entered into his feelings far better than Jacqueline,
+who had been his first confidante--Jacqueline, to whom he had confided
+his purposes, his ambition, and his day-dreams. He thought Jacqueline
+was selfish. She seemed to care only for herself. And yet, selfish or
+not selfish, she pleased him better than all the other girls he knew--a
+thousand times more than gentle, sweet Giselle.
+
+“Ah, glory, of course!” repeated Jacqueline. “I understand how much that
+counts, but there is glory of various kinds, and I know the kind that I
+prefer,” she added in a tone which seemed to imply that it was not that
+of arms, or of perilous navigation. “We all know,” she went on, “that
+not every man can have genius, but any sailor who has good luck can get
+to be an admiral.”
+
+“Let us hope you will be one soon, Monsieur Fred,” said Dolly. “You
+will have well deserved it, according to the way you have distinguished
+yourself on board the ‘Borda.’”
+
+This induced Fred to let them understand something of life on board the
+practice-ship; he told how the masters who resided on shore ascended by
+a ladder to the gun-deck, which had been turned into a schoolroom; how
+six cadets occupied the space intended for each gun-carriage, where
+hammocks hung from hooks served them instead of beds; how the chapel was
+in a closet opened only on Sundays. He described the gymnastic feats in
+the rigging, the practice in gunnery, and many other things which, had
+they been well described, would have been interesting; but Fred was
+only a poor narrator. The conclusion the young ladies seemed to reach
+unanimously after hearing his descriptions, was discouraging. They cried
+almost with one voice--
+
+“Think of any woman being willing to marry a sailor.”
+
+“Why not?” asked Giselle, very promptly.
+
+“Because, what’s the use of a husband who is always out of your reach,
+as it were, between water and sky? One would better be a widow. Widows,
+at any rate, can marry again. But you, Giselle, don’t understand these
+things. You are going to be a nun.”
+
+“Had I been in your place, Fred,” said Isabelle Ray, “I should rather
+have gone into the cavalry school at Saint Cyr. I should have wanted to
+be a good huntsman, had I been a man, and they say naval officers are
+never good horsemen.”
+
+Poor Fred! He was not making much progress among the young girls. Almost
+everything people talked about outside his cadet life was unknown to
+him; what he could talk about seemed to have no interest for any one,
+unless indeed it might interest Giselle, who was an adept in the art of
+sympathetic listening, never having herself anything to say.
+
+Besides this, Fred was by no means at his ease in talking to Jacqueline.
+They had been told not to ‘tutoyer’ each other, because they were
+getting too old for such familiarity, and it was he, and not she, who
+remembered this prohibition. Jacqueline perceived this after a while,
+and burst out laughing:
+
+“Tiens! You call me ‘you,”’ she cried, “and I ought not to say
+‘thou’ but ‘you.’ I forgot. It seems so odd, when we have always been
+accustomed to ‘tutoyer’ each other.”
+
+“One ought to give it up after one’s first communion,” said the eldest
+Mademoiselle Wermant, sententiously. “We ceased to ‘tutoyer’ our boy
+cousins after that. I am told nothing annoys a husband so much as to
+see these little familiarities between his wife and her cousins or her
+playmates.”
+
+Giselle looked very much astonished at this speech, and her air of
+disapproval amused Belle and Yvonne exceedingly. They began presently to
+talk of the classes in which they were considered brilliant pupils,
+and of their success in compositions. They said that sometimes very
+difficult subjects were given out. A week or two before, each had had
+to compose a letter purporting to be from Dante in exile to a friend in
+Florence, describing Paris as it was in his time, especially the manners
+and customs of its universities, ending by some allusion to the state of
+matters between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.
+
+“Good heavens! And could you do it?” said Giselle, whose knowledge of
+history was limited to what may be found in school abridgments.
+
+It was therefore a great satisfaction to her when Fred declared that he
+never should have known how to set about it.
+
+“Oh! papa helped me a little,” said Isabelle, whose father wrote
+articles much appreciated by the public in the ‘Revue des Deux
+Mondes.’ “But he said at the same time that it was horrid to give such
+crack-brained stuff to us poor girls. Happily, our subject this week is
+much nicer. We have to make comparisons between La Tristesse d’Olympio,
+Souvenir, and Le Lac’. That will be something interesting.”
+
+“The Tristesse d’Olympio?” repeated Giselle, in a tone of interrogation.
+
+“You know, of course, that it is Victor Hugo’s,” said Mademoiselle de
+Wermant, with a touch of pity.
+
+Giselle answered with sincerity and humility, “I only knew that Le Lac
+was by Lamartine.”
+
+“Well!--she knows that much,” whispered Belle to Yvonne--“just that
+much, anyhow.”
+
+While they were whispering and laughing, Jacqueline recited, in a soft
+voice, and with feeling that did credit to her instructor in elocution,
+Mademoiselle X----, of the Theatre Francais:
+
+     May the moan of the wind, the green rushes’ soft sighing,
+     The fragrance that floats in the air you have moved,
+     May all heard, may all breathed, may all seen, seem but trying
+     To say: They have loved.
+
+Then she added, after a pause: “Isn’t that beautiful?”
+
+“How dares she say such words?” thought Giselle, whose sense of
+propriety was outraged by this allusion to love. Fred, too, looked
+askance and was not comfortable, for he thought that Jacqueline had too
+much assurance for her age, but that, after all, she was becoming more
+and more charming.
+
+At that moment Belle and Yvonne were summoned, and they departed, full
+of an intention to spread everywhere the news that Giselle, the little
+goose, had actually known that Le Lac had been written by Lamartine. The
+Benedictine Sisters positively had acquired that much knowledge.
+
+These girls were not the only persons that day at the reception who
+indulged in a little ill-natured talk after going away. Mesdames d’Argy
+and de Monredon, on their way to the Faubourg St. Germain, criticised
+Madame de Nailles pretty freely. As they crossed the Parc Monceau
+to reach their carriage, which was waiting for them on the Boulevard
+Malesherbes, they made the young people, Giselle and Fred, walk ahead,
+that they might have an opportunity of expressing themselves freely, the
+old dowager especially, whose toothless mouth never lost an opportunity
+of smirching the character and the reputation of her neighbors.
+
+“When I think of the pains my poor cousin de Nailles took to impress
+upon us all that he was making what is called a ‘mariage raisonnable’!
+Well, if a man wants a wife who is going to set up her own notions, her
+own customs, he had better marry a poor girl without fortune! This one
+will simply ruin him. My dear, I am continually amazed at the way people
+are living whose incomes I know to the last sou. What an example for
+Jacqueline! Extravagance, fast living, elegant self-indulgence.... Did
+you observe the Baronne’s gown?--of rough woolen stuff. She told some
+one it was the last creation of Doucet, and you know what that implies!
+His serge costs more than one of our velvet gowns.... And then her
+artistic tastes, her bric-a brac! Her salon looks like a museum or a
+bazaar. I grant you it makes a very pretty setting for her and all
+her coquetries. But in my time respectable women were contented with
+furniture covered with red or yellow silk damask furnished by their
+upholsterers. They didn’t go about trying to hunt up the impossible. ‘On
+ne cherche pas midi a quatorze heures’. You hold, as I do, to the
+old fashions, though you are not nearly so old, my dear Elise, and
+Jacqueline’s mother thought as we think. She would say that her daughter
+is being very badly brought up. To be sure, all young creatures nowadays
+are the same. Parents, on a plea of tenderness, keep them at home, where
+they get spoiled among grown people, when they had much better have the
+same kind of education that has succeeded so well with Giselle; bolts on
+the garden-gates, wholesome seclusion, the company of girls of their own
+age, a great regularity of life, nothing which stimulates either
+vanity or imagination. That is the proper way to bring up girls without
+notions, girls who will let themselves be married without opposition,
+and are satisfied with the state of life to which Providence may be
+pleased to call them. For my part, I am enchanted with the ladies in the
+Rue de Monsieur, and, what is more, Giselle is very happy among them; to
+hear her talk you would suppose she was quite ready to take the veil. Of
+course, that is a mere passing fancy. But fancies of that sort are
+never dangerous, they have nothing in common with those that are passing
+nowadays through most girls’ brains. Having ‘a day!’--what a foolish
+notion: And then to let little girls take part in it, even in a corner
+of the room. I’ll wager that, though her skirts are half way up her
+legs, and her hair is dressed like a baby’s, that that little de Nailles
+is less of a child than my granddaughter, who has been brought up by
+the Benedictines. You say that she probably does not understand all
+that goes on around her. Perhaps not, but she breathes it in. It’s
+poison-that’s what it is!”
+
+There was a good deal of truth in this harsh picture, although it
+contained considerable exaggeration.
+
+At this moment, when Madame de Monredon was sitting in judgment on the
+education given to the little girls brought up in the world, and on the
+ruinous extravagance of their young stepmothers, Madame de Nailles
+and Jacqueline--their last visitors having departed--were resting
+themselves, leaning tenderly against each other, on a sofa. Jacqueline’s
+head lay on her mother’s lap. Her mother, without speaking, was stroking
+the girl’s dark hair. Jacqueline, too, was silent, but from time to time
+she kissed the slender fingers sparkling with rings, as they came within
+reach of her lips.
+
+When M. de Nailles, about dinner-time, surprised them thus, he said,
+with satisfaction, as he had often said before, that it would be hard to
+find a home scene more charming, as they sat under the light of a lamp
+with a pink shade.
+
+That the stepmother and stepdaughter adored each other was beyond a
+doubt. And yet, had any one been able to look into their hearts at that
+moment, he would have discovered with surprise that each was thinking of
+something that she could not confide to the other.
+
+Both were thinking of the same person. Madame de Nailles was occupied
+with recollections, Jacqueline with hope. She was absorbed in
+Machiavellian strategy, how to realize a hope that had been formed that
+very afternoon.
+
+“What are you both thinking of, sitting there so quietly?” said the
+Baron, stooping over them and kissing first his wife and then his child.
+
+“About nothing,” said the wife, with the most innocent of smiles.
+
+“Oh! I am thinking,” said Jacqueline, “of many things. I have a secret,
+papa, that I want to tell you when we are quite alone. Don’t be jealous,
+dear mamma. It is something about a surprise--Oh, a lovely surprise for
+you.”
+
+“Saint Clotilde’s day-my fete-day is still far off,” said Madame de
+Nailles, refastening, mother-like, the ribbon that was intended to keep
+in order the rough ripples of Jacqueline’s unruly hair, “and usually
+your whisperings begin as the day approaches my fete.”
+
+“Oh, dear!--you will go and guess it!” cried Jacqueline in alarm. “Oh!
+don’t guess it, please.”
+
+“Well! I will do my best not to guess, then,” said the good-natured
+Clotilde, with a laugh.
+
+“And I assure you, for my part, that I am discretion itself,” said M. de
+Nailles.
+
+So saying, he drew his wife’s arm within his own, and the three passed
+gayly together into the dining-room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. A CLEVER STEPMOTHER
+
+No man took more pleasure than M. de Nailles in finding himself in his
+own home--partly, perhaps, because circumstances compelled him to
+be very little there. The post of deputy in the French Chamber is
+no sinecure. He was not often an orator from the tribune, but he was
+absorbed by work in the committees--“Harnessed to a lot of bothering
+reports,” as Jacqueline used to say to him. He had barely any time to
+give to those important duties of his position, by which, as is well
+known, members of the Corps Legislatif are shamelessly harassed by
+constituents, who, on pretence that they have helped to place the
+interests of their district in your hands, feel authorized to worry you
+with personal matters, such as the choice of agricultural machines, or a
+place to be found for a wet-nurse.
+
+Besides his public duties, M. de Nailles was occupied by financial
+speculations--operations that were no doubt made necessary by the style
+of living commented on by his cousin, Madame de Monredon, who was as
+stingy as she was bitter of tongue. The elegance that she found fault
+with was, however, very far from being great when compared with the
+luxury of the present day. Of course, the Baronne had to have her
+horses, her opera-box, her fashionable frocks. To supply these very
+moderate needs, which, however, she never insisted upon, being, so far
+as words went, most simple in her tastes, M. de Nailles, who had not the
+temperament which makes men find pleasure in hard work, became more
+and more fatigued. His days were passed in the Chamber, but he never
+neglected his interest on the Bourse; in the evening he accompanied his
+young wife into society, which, she always declared, she did not care
+for, but which had claims upon her nevertheless. It was therefore not
+surprising that M. de Nailles’s face showed traces of the habitual
+fatigue that was fast aging him; his tall, thin form had acquired a
+slight stoop; though only fifty he was evidently in his declining years.
+He had once been a man of pleasure, it was said, before he entered
+politics. He had married his first wife late in life. She was a prudent
+woman who feared to expose him to temptation, and had kept him as far as
+possible away from Paris.
+
+In the country, having nothing to do, he became interested in
+agriculture, and in looking after his estate at Grandchaux. He had been
+made a member of the Conseil General, when unfortunately death too
+early deprived him of the wise and gentle counsellor for whom he
+felt, possibly not a very lively love, but certainly a high esteem and
+affection. After he be came a widower he met in the Pyrenees, where, as
+he was whiling away the time of seclusion proper after his loss, a young
+lady who appeared to him exactly the person he needed to bring up his
+little daughter--because she was extremely attractive to himself. Of
+course M. de Nailles found plenty of other reasons for his choice, which
+he gave to the world and to himself to justify his second marriage--but
+this was the true reason and the only one. His friends, however, all
+of whom had urged on him the desirability of taking another wife, in
+consideration of the age of Jacqueline, raised many objections as soon
+as he announced his intention of espousing Mademoiselle Clotilde Hecker,
+eldest daughter of a man who had been, at one time, a prefect under
+the Empire, but who had been turned out of office by the Republican
+Government. He had a large family and many debts; but M. de Nailles had
+some answer always ready for the objections of his family and friends.
+He was convinced that Mademoiselle Hecker, having no fortune, would be
+less exacting than other women and more disposed to lead a quiet life.
+
+She had been almost a mother to her own young brothers and sisters,
+which was a pledge for motherliness toward Jacqueline, etc., etc.
+Nevertheless, had she not had eyes as blue as those of the beauties
+painted by Greuze, plenty of audacious wit, and a delicate complexion,
+due to her Alsatian origin--had she not possessed a slender waist and
+a lovely figure, he might have asked himself why a young lady who, in
+winter, studied painting with the commendable intention of making her
+own living by art, passed the summers at all the watering-places of
+France and those of neighboring countries, without any perceptible
+motive.
+
+But, thanks to the bandage love ties over the eyes of men, he saw only
+what Mademoiselle Clotilde was willing that he should see. In the first
+place he saw the great desirability of a talent for painting which,
+unlike music--so often dangerous to married happiness--gives women who
+cultivate it sedentary interests. And then he was attracted by the model
+daughter’s filial piety as he beheld her taking care of her mother, who
+was the victim of an incurable disorder, which required her by turns to
+reside at Cauterets, or sometimes at Ems, sometimes at Aix in Savoy,
+and sometimes even at Trouville. The poor girl had assured him that
+she asked no happier lot than to live eight months of the year in the
+country, where she would devote herself to teaching Jacqueline, for whom
+at first sight she had taken a violent fancy (the attraction indeed was
+mutual). She assured him she would teach her all she knew herself, and
+her diplomas proved how well educated she had been.
+
+Indeed, it seemed as if only prejudice could find any objection to so
+prudent and reasonable a marriage, a marriage contracted principally for
+the good of Jacqueline.
+
+It came to pass, however, that the air of Grandchaux, which is situated
+in the most unhealthful part of Limouzin, proved particularly hurtful to
+the new Madame de Nailles. She could not live a month on her husband’s
+property without falling into a state of health which she attributed to
+malaria. M. de Nailles was at first much concerned about the condition
+of things which seemed likely to upset all his plans for retirement in
+the country, but, his wife having persuaded him that his position in
+the Conseil General was only a stepping-stone to a seat in the Corps
+Legislatif, where his place ought to be, he presented himself to the
+electors as a candidate, and was almost unanimously elected deputy, the
+conservative vote being still all powerful in that part of the country.
+
+His wife, it was said, had shown rare zeal and activity at the time of
+the election, employing in her husband’s service all those little arts
+which enable her sex to succeed in politics, as well as in everything
+else they set their minds to. No lady ever more completely turned the
+heads of country electors. It was really Madame de Nailles who took her
+seat in the Left Centre of the Chamber, in the person of her husband.
+
+After that she returned to Limouzin only long enough to keep up her
+popularity, though, with touching resignation, she frequently offered to
+spend the summer at Grandchaux, even if the consequences should be
+her death, like that of Pia in the Maremma. Her husband, of course,
+peremptorily set his face against such self-sacrifice.
+
+The facilities for Jacqueline’s education were increased by their
+settling down as residents of Paris. Madame de Nailles superintended
+the instruction of her stepdaughter with motherly solicitude, seconded,
+however, by a ‘promeneuse’, or walking-governess, which left her free to
+fulfil her own engagements in the afternoons. The walking-governess is
+a singular modern institution, intended to supply the place of the
+too often inconvenient daily governess of former times. The necessary
+qualifications of such a person are that she should have sturdy legs,
+and such knowledge of some foreign language as will enable her during
+their walks to converse in it with her pupil. Fraulein Schult, who
+came from one of the German cantons of Switzerland, was an ideal
+‘promeneuse’. She never was tired and she was well-informed. The number
+of things that could be learned from her during a walk was absolutely
+incredible.
+
+Madame de Nailles, therefore, after a time, gave up to her, not without
+apparent regret, the duty of accompanying Jacqueline, while she herself
+fulfilled those duties to society which the most devoted of mothers can
+not wholly avoid; but the stepmother and stepdaughter were always to be
+seen together at mass at one o’clock; together they attended the Cours
+(that system of classes now so much in vogue) and also the weekly
+instruction given in the catechism; and if Madame de Nailles, when, at
+night, she told her husband all she had been doing for Jacqueline during
+the day (she never made any merit of her zeal for the child’s welfare),
+added: “I left Jacqueline in this place or in that, where Mademoiselle
+Schult was to call for her,” M. de Nailles showed no disposition to ask
+questions, for he well understood that his wife felt a certain delicacy
+in telling him that she had been to pay a brief visit to her own
+relatives, who, she knew, were distasteful to him. He had, indeed, very
+soon discerned in them a love of intrigue, a desire to get the most they
+could out of him, and a disagreeable propensity to parasitism. With the
+consummate tact she showed in everything she did, Madame de Nailles kept
+her own family in the background, though she never neglected them. She
+was always doing them little services, but she knew well that there
+were certain things about them that could not but be disagreeable to
+her husband. M. de Nailles knew all this, too, and respected his wife’s
+affection for her family. He seldom asked her where she had been during
+the day. If he had she would have answered, with a sigh: “I went to see
+my mother while Jacqueline was taking her dancing-lesson, and before she
+went to her singing-master.”
+
+That she was passionately attached to Jacqueline was proved by the
+affection the little girl conceived for her. “We two are friends,” both
+mother and daughter often said of each other. Even Modeste, old Modeste,
+who had been at first indignant at seeing a stranger take the place of
+her dead mistress, could not but acknowledge that the usurper was no
+ordinary step mother. It might have been truly said that Madame de
+Nailles had never scolded Jacqueline, and that Jacqueline had never done
+anything contrary to the wishes of Madame de Nailles. When anything went
+wrong it was Fraulein Schult who was reproached first; if there was
+any difficulty in the management of Jacqueline, she alone received
+complaints. In the eyes of the “two friends,” Fraulein Schult was
+somehow to be blamed for everything that went wrong in the family,
+but between themselves an observer might have watched in vain for the
+smallest cloud. Madame de Nailles, when she was first married, could
+not make enough of the very ugly yet attractive little girl, whose tight
+black curls and gypsy face made an admirable contrast to her own more
+delicate style of beauty, which was that of a blonde. She caressed
+Jacqueline, she dressed her up, she took her about with her like a
+little dog, and overwhelmed her with demonstrations of affection,
+which served not only to show off her own graceful attitudes, but gave
+spectators a high opinion of her kindness of heart.
+
+When from time to time some one, envious of her happiness, pitied her
+for being childless, Madame de Nailles would say: “What do you mean? I
+have one daughter; she is enough for me.”
+
+It is a pity children grow so fast, and that little girls who were once
+ugly sometimes develop into beautiful young women. The time came when
+the model stepmother began to wish that Jacqueline would only develop
+morally, intellectually, and not physically. But she showed nothing of
+this in her behavior, and replied to any compliments addressed to her
+concerning Jacqueline with as much maternal modesty as if the dawning
+loveliness of her stepdaughter had been due to herself.
+
+“Her nose is rather too long-don’t you think so? And she will always be
+too dark, I fear.” But she used always to add, “She is good enough and
+pretty enough to pass muster with any critic--poor little pussy-cat!”
+ She became desirous to discover some tendency to ill-health in the plant
+that was too ready to bloom into beauty and perfection. She would have
+liked to be able to assert that Jacqueline’s health would not permit her
+to sit up late at night, that fashionable hours would be injurious to
+her, that it would be undesirable to let her go into society as long as
+she could be kept from doing so. But Jacqueline persisted in never being
+ill, and was calculating with impatience how many years it would be
+before she could go to her first ball--three or four possibly. Was
+Madame de Nailles in three or four years to be reduced to the position
+of a chaperon? The young stepmother thought of such a possibility with
+horror. Her anxiety on this subject, however, as well as several
+other anxieties, was so well concealed that even her husband suspected
+nothing.
+
+The complete sympathy which existed between the two beings he most loved
+made M. de Nailles very happy. He had but one thing to complain of in
+his wife, and that thing was very small. Since she had married she had
+completely given up her painting. He had no knowledge of art himself,
+and had therefore given her credit for great artistic capacity. The fact
+was that in her days of poverty she had never been artist enough to make
+a living, and now that she was rich she felt inclined to laugh at her
+own limited ability. Her practice of art, she said, had only served to
+give her a knowledge of outline and of color; a knowledge she utilized
+in her dress and in the smallest details of house decoration and
+furniture. Everything she wore, everything that surrounded her, was
+arranged to perfection. She had a genius for decoration, for furniture,
+for trifles, and brought her artistic knowledge to bear even on the
+tying of a ribbon, or the arrangement of a nosegay.
+
+“This is all I retain of your lessons,” she said sometimes to Hubert
+Marien, when recalling to his memory the days in which she sought his
+advice as to how to prepare herself for the “struggle for life.”
+
+This phrase was amusing when it proceeded from her lips.
+What!--“struggle for life” with those little delicate, soft, childlike
+hands? How absurd! She laughed at the idea now, and all those who heard
+her laughed with her; Marien laughed more than any one. He, who had
+befriended her in her days of adversity, seemed to retain for the
+Baroness in her prosperity the same respectful and discreet devotion he
+had shown her as Mademoiselle Hecker. He had sent a wonderful portrait
+of her, as the wife of M. de Nailles, to the Salon--a portrait that the
+richer electors of Grandchaux, who had voted for her husband and who
+could afford to travel, gazed at with satisfaction, congratulating
+themselves that they had a deputy who had married so pretty a woman. It
+even seemed as if the beauty of Madame de Nailles belonged in some sort
+to the arrondissement, so proud were those who lived there of having
+their share in her charms.
+
+Another portrait--that of M. de Nailles himself--was sent down to
+Limouzin from Paris, and all the peasants in the country round were
+invited to come and look at it. That also produced a very favorable
+impression on the rustic public, and added to the popularity of their
+deputy. Never had the proprietor of Grandchaux looked so grave, so
+dignified, so majestic, so absorbed in deep reflection, as he looked
+standing beside a table covered with papers--papers, no doubt, all
+having relation to local interests, important to the public and to
+individuals. It was the very figure of a statesman destined to high
+dignities. No one who gazed on such a deputy could doubt that one day he
+would be in the ministry.
+
+It was by such real services that Marien endeavored to repay the
+friendship and the kindness always awaiting him in the small house in
+the Parc Monceau, where we have just seen Jacqueline eagerly offering
+him some spiced cakes. To complete what seemed due to the household
+there only remained to paint the curiously expressive features of the
+girl at whom he had been looking that very day with more than ordinary
+attention. Once already, when Jacqueline was hardly out of baby-clothes,
+the great painter had made an admirable sketch of her tousled head,
+a sketch in which she looked like a little imp of darkness, and this
+sketch Madame de Nailles took pains should always be seen, but it bore
+no resemblance to the slender young girl who was on the eve of becoming,
+whatever might be done to arrest her development, a beautiful young
+woman. Jacqueline disliked to look at that picture. It seemed to do her
+an injury by associating her with her nursery. Probably that was
+the reason why she had been so pleased to hear Hubert Marien say
+unexpectedly that she was now ready for the portrait which had been
+often joked about, every one putting it off to the period, always
+remote, when “the may-pole” should have developed a pretty face and
+figure.
+
+And now she was disquieted lest the idea of taking her picture, which
+she felt was very flattering, should remain inoperative in the
+painter’s brain. She wanted it carried out at once, as soon as possible.
+Jacqueline detested waiting, and for some reason, which she never talked
+about, the years that seemed so short and swift to her stepmother seemed
+to her to be terribly long. Marien himself had said: “There is a great
+interval between a dream and its execution.” These words had thrown cold
+water on her sudden joy. She wanted to force him to keep his promise--to
+paint her portrait immediately. How to do this was the problem her
+little head, reclining on Madame de Nailles’s lap after the departure of
+their visitors, had been endeavoring to solve.
+
+Should she communicate her wish to her indulgent stepmother, who for
+the most part willed whatever she wished her to do? A vague instinct--an
+instinct of some mysterious danger--warned her that in this case her
+father would be her better confidant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE FRIEND OF THE FAY
+
+A week later M. de Nailles said to Hubert Marien, as they were smoking
+together in the conservatory, after the usual little family dinner on
+Wednesday was over:
+
+“Well!--when would you like Jacqueline to come to sit for her picture?”
+
+“What! are you thinking about that?” cried the painter, letting his
+cigar fall in his astonishment.
+
+“She told me that you had proposed to make her portrait.”
+
+“The sly little minx!” thought Marien. “I only spoke of painting it some
+day,” he said, with embarrassment.
+
+“Well! she would like that ‘some day’ to be now, and she has a reason
+for wanting it at once, which, I hope, will decide you to gratify her.
+The third of June is Sainte-Clotilde’s day, and she has taken it into
+her head that she would like to give her mamma a magnificent present--a
+present that, of course, we shall unite to give her. For some time past
+I have been thinking of asking you to paint a portrait of my daughter,”
+ continued M. de Nailles, who had in fact had no more wish for the
+portrait than he had had to be a deputy, until it had been put into his
+head. But the women of his household, little or big, could persuade him
+into anything.
+
+“I really don’t think I have the time now,” said Marien.
+
+“Bah!--you have whole two months before you. What can absorb you so
+entirely? I know you have your pictures ready for the Salon.”
+
+“Yes--of course--of course--but are you sure that Madame de Nailles
+would approve of it?”
+
+“She will approve whatever I sanction,” said M. de Nailles, with as much
+assurance as if he had been master in his domestic circle; “besides, we
+don’t intend to ask her. It is to be a surprise. Jacqueline is looking
+forward to the pleasure it will give her. There is something very
+touching to me in the affection of that little thing for--for her
+mother.” M. de Nailles usually hesitated a moment before saying that
+word, as if he were afraid of transferring something still belonging to
+his dead wife to another--that dead wife he so seldom remembered in any
+other way. He added, “She is so eager to give her pleasure.”
+
+Marien shook his head with an air of uncertainty.
+
+“Are you sure that such a portrait would be really acceptable to Madame
+de Nailles?”
+
+“How can you doubt it?” said the Baron, with much astonishment. “A
+portrait of her daughter!--done by a great master? However, of course,
+if we are putting you to any inconvenience--if you would rather not
+undertake it, you had better say so.”
+
+“No--of course I will do it, if you wish it,” said Marien, quickly, who,
+although he was anxious to do nothing to displease Madame de Nailles,
+was equally desirous to stand well with her husband. “Yet I own that
+all the mystery that must attend on what you propose may put me to some
+embarrassment. How do you expect Jacqueline will be able to conceal--”
+
+“Oh! easily enough. She walks out every day with Mademoiselle Schult.
+Well, Mademoiselle Schult will bring her to your studio instead of
+taking her to the Champs Elysees--or to walk elsewhere.”
+
+“But every day there will be concealments, falsehoods, deceptions. I
+think Madame de Nailles might prefer to be asked for her permission.”
+
+“Ask for her permission when I have given mine? Ah, fa! my dear Marien,
+am I, or am I not, the father, of Jacqueline? I take upon myself the
+whole responsibility.”
+
+“Then there is nothing more to be said. But do you think that Jacqueline
+will keep the secret till the picture is done?”
+
+“You don’t know little girls; they are all too glad to have something of
+which they can make a mystery.”
+
+“When would you like us to begin?”
+
+Marien had by this time said to himself that for him to hold out longer
+might seem strange to M. de Nailles. Besides, the matter, though in some
+respects it gave him cause for anxiety, really excited an interest in
+him. For some time past, though he had long known women and knew very
+little of mere girls, he had had his suspicions that a drama was being
+enacted in Jacqueline’s heart, a drama of which he himself was the hero.
+He amused himself by watching it, though he did nothing to promote
+it. He was an artist and a keen and penetrating observer; he employed
+psychology in the service of his art, and probably to that might have
+been attributed the individual character of his portraits--a quality to
+be found in an equal degree only in those of Ricard.
+
+What particularly interested him at this moment was the assumed
+indifference of Jacqueline while her father was conducting the
+negotiation which was of her suggestion. When they returned to the salon
+after smoking she pretended not to be the least anxious to know the
+result of their conversation. She sat sewing near the lamp, giving all
+her attention to the piece of lace on which she was working. Her father
+made her a sign which meant “He consents,” and then Marien saw that the
+needle in her fingers trembled, and a slight color rose in her face--but
+that was all. She did not say a word. He could not know that for a week
+past she had gone to church every time she took a walk, and had offered
+a prayer and a candle that her wish might be granted. How very anxious
+and excited she had been all that week! The famous composition of which
+she had spoken to Giselle, the subject of which had so astonished the
+young girl brought up by the Benedictine nuns, felt the inspiration of
+her emotion and excitement. Jacqueline was in a frame of mind which made
+reading those three masterpieces by three great poets, and pondering
+the meaning of their words, very dangerous. The poems did not affect her
+with the melancholy they inspire in those who have “lived and loved,”
+ but she was attracted by their tenderness and their passion. Certain
+lines she applied to herself--certain others to another person. The very
+word love so often repeated in the verses sent a thrill through all her
+frame. She aspired to taste those “intoxicating moments,” those “swift
+delights,” those “sublime ecstasies,” those “divine transports”--all the
+beautiful things, in short, of which the poems spoke, and which were
+as yet unknown to her. How could she know them? How could she, after an
+experience of sorrow, which seemed to her to be itself enviable, retain
+such sweet remembrances as the poets described?
+
+“Let us love--love each other! Let us hasten to enjoy the passing hour!”
+ so sang the poet of Le Lac. That passing hour of bliss she thought she
+had already enjoyed. She was sure that for a long time past she had
+loved. When had that love begun? She hardly knew. But it would last as
+long as she might live. One loves but once.
+
+These personal emotions, mingling with the literary enchantments of the
+poets, caused Jacqueline’s pen to fly over her paper without effort, and
+she produced a composition so far superior to anything she usually wrote
+that it left the lucubrations of her companions far behind. M. Regis,
+the professor, said so to the class. He was enthusiastic about it, and
+greatly surprised. Belle, who had been always first in this kind of
+composition, was far behind Jacqueline, and was so greatly annoyed at
+her defeat that she would not speak to her for a week. On the other
+hand Colette and Dolly, who never had aspired to literary triumphs, were
+moved to tears when the “Study on the comparative merits of Three
+Poems, ‘Le Lac,’ ‘Souvenir,’ and ‘La Tristesse d’Olympio,’” signed
+“Mademoiselle de Nailles,” received the honor of being read aloud. This
+reading was followed by a murmur of applause, mingled with some hisses
+which may have proceeded from the viper of jealousy. But the paper
+made a sensation like that of some new scandal. Mothers and governesses
+whispered together. Many thought that that little de Nailles had
+expressed sentiments not proper at her age. Some came to the conclusion
+that M. Regis chose subjects for composition not suited to young girls.
+A committee waited on the unlucky professor to beg him to be more
+prudent for the future. He even lost, in consequence of Jacqueline’s
+success, one of his pupils (the most stupid one, be it said, in the
+class), whose mother took her away, saying, with indignation, “One might
+as well risk the things they are teaching at the Sorbonne!”
+
+This literary incident greatly alarmed Madame de Nailles! Of all things
+she dreaded that her daughter should early become dreamy and romantic.
+But on this point Jacqueline’s behavior was calculated to reassure her.
+She laughed about her composition, she frolicked like a six-year-old
+child; without any apparent cause, she grew gayer and gayer as the time
+approached for the execution of her plot.
+
+The evening before the day fixed on for the first sitting, Modeste, the
+elderly maid of the first Madame de Nailles, who loved her daughter,
+whom she had known from the moment of her birth, as if she had been her
+own foster-child, arrived at the studio of Hubert Marien in the Rue de
+Prony, bearing a box which she said contained all that would be wanted
+by Mademoiselle. Marien had the curiosity to look into it. It contained
+a robe of oriental muslin, light as air, diaphanous--and so dazzlingly
+white that he remarked:
+
+“She will look like a fly in milk in that thing.”
+
+“Oh!” replied Modeste, with a laugh of satisfaction, “it is very
+becoming to her. I altered it to fit her, for it is one of Madame’s
+dresses. Mademoiselle has nothing but short skirts, and she wanted to be
+painted as a young lady.”
+
+“With the approval of her papa?”
+
+“Yes, of course, Monsieur, Monsieur le Baron gave his consent. But for
+that I certainly should not have minded what the child said to me.”
+
+“Then,” replied Marien, “I can say nothing,” and he made ready for his
+sitter the next day, by turning two or three studies of the nude, which
+might have shocked her, with their faces to the wall.
+
+A foreign language can not be properly acquired unless the learner has
+great opportunities for conversation. It therefore became a fixed habit
+with Fraulein Schult and Jacqueline to keep up a lively stream of talk
+during their walks, and their discourse was not always about the rain,
+the fine weather, the things displayed in the shop-windows, nor the
+historical monuments of Paris, which they visited conscientiously.
+
+What is near the heart is sure to come eventually to the surface
+in continual tete-a-tete intercourse. Fraulein Schult, who was of
+a sentimental temperament, in spite of her outward resemblance to a
+grenadier, was very willing to allow her companion to draw from her
+confessions relating to an intended husband, who was awaiting her at
+Berne, and whose letters, both in prose and verse, were her comfort in
+her exile. This future husband was an apothecary, and the idea that he
+pounded out verses as he pounded his drugs in a mortar, and rolled out
+rhymes with his pills, sometimes inclined Jacqueline to laugh, but she
+listened patiently to the plaintive outpourings of her ‘promeneuse’,
+because she wished to acquire a right to reciprocate by a few
+half-confidences of her own. In her turn, therefore, she confided to
+Fraulein Schult--moved much as Midas had been, when for his own relief
+he whispered to the reeds--that if she were sometimes idle, inattentive,
+“away off in the moon,” as her instructors told her by way of reproach,
+it was caused by one ever-present idea, which, ever since she had been
+able to think or feel, had taken possession of her inmost being--the
+idea of being loved some day by somebody as she herself loved.
+
+“Was that somebody a boy of her own age?”
+
+Oh, fie!--mere boys--still schoolboys--could only be looked upon as
+playfellows or comrades. Of course she considered Fred--Fred, for
+example!--Frederic d’Argy--as a brother, but how different he was from
+her ideal. Even young men of fashion--she had seen some of them on
+Tuesdays--Raoul Wermant, the one who so distinguished himself as a
+leader in the ‘german’, or Yvonne’s brother, the officer of chasseurs,
+who had gained the prize for horsemanship, and others besides
+these--seemed to her very commonplace by comparison. No!--he whom she
+loved was a man in the prime of life, well known to fame. She didn’t
+care if he had a few white hairs.
+
+“Is he a person of rank?” asked Fraulein Schult, much puzzled.
+
+“Oh! if you mean of noble birth, no, not at all. But fame is so superior
+to birth! There are more ways than one of acquiring an illustrious name,
+and the name that a man makes for himself is the noblest of all!”
+
+Then Jacqueline begged Fraulein Schult to imagine something like the
+passion of Bettina for Goethe--Fraulein Schult having told her that
+story simply with a view of interesting her in German conversation only
+the great man whose name she would not tell was not nearly so old as
+Goethe, and she herself was much less childish than Bettina. But, above
+all, it was his genius that attracted her--though his face, too, was
+very pleasing. And she went on to describe his appearance--till
+suddenly she stopped, burning with indignation; for she perceived that,
+notwithstanding the minuteness of her description, what she said was
+conveying an idea of ugliness and not one of the manly beauty she
+intended to portray.
+
+“He is not like that at all,” she cried. “He has such a beautiful
+smile-a smile like no other I ever saw. And his talk is so
+amusing--and--” here Jacqueline lowered her voice as if afraid to be
+overheard, “and I do think--I think, after all, he does love me--just a
+little.”
+
+On what could she have founded such a notion? Good heaven!--it was on
+something that had at first deeply grieved her, a sudden coldness and
+reserve that had come over his manner to her. Not long before she had
+read an English novel (no others were allowed to come into her hands).
+It was rather a stupid book, with many tedious passages, but in it she
+was told how the high-minded hero, not being able, for grave reasons, to
+aspire to the hand of the heroine, had taken refuge in an icy coldness,
+much as it cost him, and as soon as possible had gone away. English
+novels are nothing if not moral.
+
+This story, not otherwise interesting, threw a gleam of light on what,
+up to that time, had been inexplicable to Jacqueline. He was above all
+things a man of honor. He must have perceived that his presence troubled
+her. He had possibly seen her when she stole a half-burned cigarette
+which he had left upon the table, a prize she had laid up with other
+relics--an old glove that he had lost, a bunch of violets he had
+gathered for her in the country. Yes! When she came to think of it,
+she felt certain he must have seen her furtively lay her hand upon that
+cigarette; that cigarette had compromised her. Then it was he must have
+said to himself that it was due to her parents, who had always shown him
+kindness, to surmount an attachment that could come to nothing--nothing
+at present. But when she should be old enough for him to ask her hand,
+would he dare? Might he not rashly think himself too old? She must seek
+out some way to give him encouragement, to give him to understand that
+she was not, after all, so far--so very far from being a young lady--old
+enough to be married. How difficult it all was! All the more difficult
+because she was exceedingly afraid of him.
+
+It is not surprising that Fraulein Schult, after listening day after
+day to such recitals, with all the alternations of hope and of
+discouragement which succeeded one another in the mind of her precocious
+pupil, guessed, the moment that Jacqueline came to her, in a transport
+of joy, to ask her to go with her to the Rue de Prony, that the hero of
+the mysterious love-story was no other than Hubert Marien.
+
+As soon as she understood this, she perceived that she should be placed
+in a very false position. But she thought to herself there was no
+possible way of getting out of it, without giving a great deal too much
+importance to a very innocent piece of childish folly; she therefore
+determined to say nothing about it, but to keep a strict watch in the
+mean time. After all, M. de Nailles himself had given her her orders.
+She was to accompany Jacqueline, and do her crochet-work in one corner
+of the studio as long as the sitting lasted.
+
+All she could do was to obey.
+
+“And above all not a word to mamma, whatever she may ask you,” said
+Jacqueline.
+
+And her father added, with a laugh, “Not a word.” Fraulein Schult felt
+that she knew what was expected of her. She was naturally compliant, and
+above all things she was anxious to get paid for as many hours of her
+time as possible--much like the driver of a fiacre, because the more
+money she could make the sooner she would be in a position to espouse
+her apothecary.
+
+When Jacqueline, escorted by her Swiss duenna, penetrated almost
+furtively into Marien’s studio, her heart beat as if she had a
+consciousness of doing something very wrong. In truth, she had pictured
+to herself so many impossible scenes beforehand, had rehearsed the
+probable questions and answers in so many strange dialogues, had soothed
+her fancy with so many extravagant ideas, that she had at last created,
+bit by bit, a situation very different from the reality, and then threw
+herself into it, body and soul.
+
+The look of the atelier--the first she had ever been in in her
+life--disappointed her. She had expected to behold a gorgeous collection
+of bric-a-brac, according to accounts she had heard of the studios of
+several celebrated masters. That of Marien was remarkable only for its
+vast dimensions and its abundance of light. Studies and sketches hung on
+the walls, were piled one over another in corners, were scattered
+about everywhere, attesting the incessant industry of the artist, whose
+devotion to his calling was so great that his own work never satisfied
+him.
+
+Only some interesting casts from antique bronzes, brought out into
+strong relief by a background of tapestry, adorned this lofty hall,
+which had none of that confusion of decorative objects, in the midst of
+which some modern artists seem to pose themselves rather than to labor.
+
+A fresh canvas stood upon an easel, all ready for the sitter.
+
+“If you please, we will lose no time,” said Marien, rather roughly,
+seeing that Jacqueline was about to explore all the corners of his
+apartment, and that at that moment, with the tips of her fingers, she
+was drawing aside the covering he had cast over his Death of Savonarola,
+the picture he was then at work upon. It was not the least of his
+grudges against Jacqueline for insisting on having her portrait painted
+that it obliged him to lay aside this really great work, that he might
+paint a likeness.
+
+“In ten minutes I shall be ready,” said Jacqueline, obediently taking
+off her hat.
+
+“Why can’t you stay as you are? That jacket suits you. Let us begin
+immediately.”
+
+“No, indeed! What a horrid suggestion!” she cried, running up to the box
+which was half open. “You’ll see how much better I can look in a moment
+or two.”
+
+“I put no faith in your fancies about your toilette. I certainly don’t
+promise to accept them.”
+
+Nevertheless, he left her alone with her Bernese governess, saying:
+“Call me when you are ready, I shall be in the next room.”
+
+A quarter of an hour, and more, passed, and no signal had been given.
+Marien, getting out of patience, knocked on the door.
+
+“Have you nearly done beautifying yourself?” he asked, in a tone of
+irony.
+
+“Just done,” replied a low voice, which trembled.
+
+He went in, and to the great amusement of Fraulein Schult, who was not
+too preoccupied to notice everything, he stood confounded--petrified,
+as a man might be by some work of magic. What had become of Jacqueline?
+What had she in common with that dazzling vision? Had she been touched
+by some fairy’s wand? Or, to accomplish such a transformation, had
+nothing been needed but the substitution of a woman’s dress, fitted
+to her person, for the short skirts and loose waists cut in a boyish
+fashion, which had made the little girl seem hardly to belong to any
+sex, an indefinite being, condemned, as it were, to childishness? How
+tall, and slender, and graceful she looked in that long gown, the folds
+of which fell from her waist in flowing lines, a waist as round and
+flexible as the branch of a willow; what elegance there was in her
+modest corsage, which displayed for the first time her lovely arms and
+neck, half afraid of their own exposure. She still was not robust,
+but the leanness that she herself had owned to was not brought into
+prominence by any bone or angle, her dark skin was soft and polished,
+the color of ancient statues which have been slightly tinted yellow by
+exposure to the sun. This girl, a Parisienne, seemed formed on the model
+of a figurine of Tanagra. Greek, too, was her small head, crowned only
+by her usual braid of hair, which she had simply gathered up so as to
+show the nape of her neck, which was perhaps the most beautiful thing in
+all her beautiful person.
+
+“Well!--what do you think of me?” she said to Marien, with a searching
+glance to see how she impressed him--a glance strangely like that of a
+grown woman.
+
+“Well!--I can’t get over it!--Why have you bedizened yourself in that
+fashion?” he asked, with an affectation of ‘brusquerie’, as he tried to
+recover his power of speech.
+
+“Then you don’t like me?” she murmured, in a low voice. Tears came into
+her eyes; her lips trembled.
+
+“I don’t see Jacqueline.”
+
+“No--I should hope not--but I am better than Jacqueline, am I not?”
+
+“I am accustomed to Jacqueline. This new acquaintance disconcerts
+me. Give me time to get used to her. But once again let me ask, what
+possessed you to disguise yourself?”
+
+“I am not disguised. I am disguised when I am forced to wear those
+things, which do not suit me,” said Jacqueline, pointing to her gray
+jacket and plaid skirt which were hung up on a hat-rack. “Oh, I know why
+mamma keeps me like that--she is afraid I should get too fond of dress
+before I have finished my education, and that my mind may be diverted
+from serious subjects. It is no doubt all intended for my good, but I
+should not lose much time if I turned up my hair like this, and what
+harm could there be in lengthening my skirts an inch or two? My picture
+will show her that I am improved by such little changes, and perhaps it
+will induce hor to let me go to the Bal Blanc that Madame d’Etaples is
+going to give on Yvonne’s birthday. Mamma declined for me, saying I was
+not fit to wear a low-necked corsage, but you see she was mistaken.”
+
+“Rather,” said Marien, smiling in spite of himself.
+
+“Yes--wasn’t she?” she went on, delighted at his look. “Of course,
+I have bones, but they don’t show like the great hollows under the
+collar-bones that Dolly shows, for instance--but Dolly looks stouter
+than I because her face is so round. Well! Dolly is going to Madame
+d’Etaples’s ball.”
+
+“I grant,” said Marien, devoting all his attention to the preparation
+of his palette, that she might not see him laugh, “I grant that you have
+bones--yes, many bones--but they are not much seen because they are too
+well placed to be obtrusive.”
+
+“I am glad of that,” said Jacqueline, delighted.
+
+“But let me ask you one question. Where did you pick up that queer gown?
+It seems to me that I have seen it somewhere.”
+
+“No doubt you have,” replied Jacqueline, who had quite recovered from
+her first shock, and was now ready to talk; “it is the dress mamma had
+made some time ago when she acted in a comedy.”
+
+“So I thought,” growled Marien, biting his lips.
+
+The dress recalled to his mind many personal recollections, and for one
+instant he paused. Madame de Nailles, among other talents, possessed
+that of amateur acting. On one occasion, several years before, she had
+asked his advice concerning what dress she should wear in a little play
+of Scribe’s, which was to be given at the house of Madame d’Avrigny--the
+house in all Paris most addicted to private theatricals. This
+reproduction of a forgotten play, with its characters attired in the
+costume of the period in which the play was placed, had had great
+success, a success due largely to the excellence of the costumes. In the
+comic parts the dressing had been purposely exaggerated, but Madame de
+Nailles, who played the part of a great coquette, would not have been
+dressed in character had she not tried to make herself as bewitching as
+possible.
+
+Marien had shown her pictures of the beauties of 1840, painted by
+Dubufe, and she had decided on a white gauze embroidered with gold, in
+which, on that memorable evening, she had captured more than one heart,
+and which had had its influence on the life and destiny of Marien. This
+might have been seen in the vague glance of indignation with which he
+now regarded it.
+
+“Never,” he thought, “was it half so pretty when worn by Madame de
+Nailles as by her stepdaughter.”
+
+Jacqueline meantime went on talking.
+
+“You must know--I was rather perplexed what to do--almost all mamma’s
+gowns made me look horribly too old. Modeste tried them on me one after
+another. We burst out laughing, they seemed so absurd. And then we were
+afraid mamma might chance to want the one I took. This old thing it was
+not likely she would ask for. She had worn it only once, and then put
+it away. The gauze is a little yellow from lying by, don’t you think so?
+But we asked my father, who said it was all right, that I should look
+less dark in it, and that the dress was of no particular date, which was
+always an advantage. These Grecian dresses are always in the fashion.
+Ah! four years ago mamma was much more slender than she is now. But we
+have taken it in--oh! we took it in a great deal under the arms, but we
+had to let it down. Would you believe it?--I am taller than mamma--but
+you can hardly see the seam, it is concealed by the gold embroidery.”
+
+“No matter for that. We shall only take a three-quarters’ length,” said
+Marien.
+
+“Oh, what a pity! No one will see I have a long skirt on. But I shall
+be ‘decolletee’, at any rate. I shall wear a comb. No one would know the
+picture for me--nobody!--You yourself hardly knew me--did you?”
+
+“Not at first sight. You are much altered.”
+
+“Mamma will be amazed,” said Jacqueline, clasping her hands. “It was a
+good idea!”
+
+“Amazed, I do not doubt,” said Marien, somewhat anxiously. “But suppose
+we take our pose--Stay!--keep just as you are. Your hands before you,
+hanging down--so. Your fingers loosely clasped--that’s it. Turn your
+head a little. What a lovely neck!--how well her head is set upon it!”
+ he cried, involuntarily.
+
+Jacqueline glanced at Fraulein Schult, who was at the farther end of the
+studio, busy with her crochet. “You see,” said the look, “that he has
+found out I am pretty--that I am worth something--all the rest will soon
+happen.”
+
+And, while Marien was sketching in the graceful figure that posed before
+him, Jacqueline’s imagination was investing it with the white robe of a
+bride. She had a vision of the painter growing more and more resolved
+to ask her hand in marriage as the portrait grew beneath his brush; of
+course, her father would say at first: “You are mad--you must wait.
+I shall not let Jacqueline marry till she is seventeen.” But long
+engagements, she had heard, had great delights, though in France they
+are not the fashion. At last, after being long entreated, she was sure
+that M. and Madame de Nailles would end by giving their consent--they
+were so fond of Marien. Standing there, dreaming this dream, which gave
+her face an expression of extreme happiness, Jacqueline made a most
+admirable model. She had not felt in the least fatigued when Marien at
+last said to her, apologetically: “You must be ready to drop--I forgot
+you were not made of wood; we will go on to-morrow.”
+
+Jacqueline, having put on her gray jacket with as much contempt for
+it as Cinderella may have felt for her rags after her successes at the
+ball, departed with the delightful sensation of having made a bold first
+step, and being eager to make another.
+
+Thus it was with all her sittings, though some left her anxious and
+unhappy, as for instance when Marien, absorbed in his work, had not
+paused, except to say, “Turn your head a little--you are losing the
+pose.” Or else, “Now you may rest for today.”
+
+On such occasions she would watch him anxiously as he painted swiftly,
+his brush making great splashes on the canvas, his dark features wearing
+a scowl, his chin on his breast, a deep frown upon his forehead, on
+which the hair grew low. It was evident that at such times he had no
+thought of pleasing her. Little did she suspect that he was saying to
+himself: “Fool that I am!--A man of my age to take pleasure in seeing
+that little head filled with follies and fancies of which I am the
+object. But can one--let one be ever so old--always act--or think
+reasonably? You are mad, Marien! A child of fourteen! Bah!--they make
+her out to be fourteen--but she is fifteen--and was not that the age of
+Juliet? But, you old graybeard, you are not Romeo!--‘Ma foi’! I am in a
+pretty scrape. It ought to teach me not to play with fire at my age.”
+
+Those words “at my age” were the refrain to all the reflections of
+Hubert Marien. He had seen enough in his relations with women to have
+no doubt about Jacqueline’s feelings, of which indeed he had watched
+the rise and progress from the time she had first begun to conceive
+a passion for him, with a mixture of amusement and conceit. The most
+cautious of men are not insensible to flattery, whatever form it may
+take. To be fallen in love with by a child was no doubt absurd--a thing
+to be laughed at--but Jacqueline seemed no longer a child, since for him
+she had uncovered her young shoulders and arranged her dark hair on
+her head with the effect of a queenly diadem. Not only had her dawning
+loveliness been revealed to him alone, but to him it seemed that he had
+helped to make her lovely. The innocent tenderness she felt for him had
+accomplished this miracle. Why should he refuse to inhale an incense
+so pure, so genuine? How could he help being sensible to its fragrance?
+Would it not be in his power to put an end to the whole affair whenever
+he pleased? But till then might he not bask in it, as one does in a warm
+ray of spring sunshine? He put aside, therefore, all scruples. And when
+he did this Jacqueline with rapture saw the painter’s face, no longer
+with its scowl, but softened by some secret influence, the lines
+smoothed from his brow, while the beautiful smile which had fascinated
+so many women passed like a ray of light over his expressive mobile
+features; then she would once more fancy that he was making love to her,
+and indeed he said many things, which, without rousing in himself any
+scruples of conscience, or alarming the propriety of Fraulein Schult,
+were well calculated to delude a girl who had had no experience, and who
+was charmed by the illusions of a love-affair, as she might have been by
+a fairy-story.
+
+It is true that sometimes, when he fancied he might have gone too far,
+Marien would grow sarcastic, or stay silent for a time. But this
+change of behavior produced on Jacqueline only the same effect that
+the caprices of a coquette produce upon a very young admirer. She grew
+anxious, she wanted to find out the reason, and finally found some
+explanation or excuse for him that coincided with her fancies.
+
+The thing that reassured her in such cases was her picture. If she could
+seem to him as beautiful as he had made her look on canvas she was sure
+that he must love her.
+
+“Is this really I? Are you sure?” she said to Marien with a laugh of
+delight. “It seems to me that you have made me too handsome.”
+
+“I have hardly done you justice,” he replied. “It is not my fault if
+you are more beautiful than seems natural, like the beauties in the
+keepsakes. By the way, I hold those English things in horror. What do
+you say of them?”
+
+Then Jacqueline undertook to defend the keepsake beauties with
+animation, declaring that no one but a hopelessly realistic painter
+would refuse to do justice to those charming monstrosities.
+
+“Good heavens!” thought Marien, “if she is adding a quick wit to her
+other charms--that will put the finishing stroke to me.”
+
+When the portrait was sufficiently advanced, M. de Nailles came to the
+studio to judge of the likeness. He was delighted: “Only, my friend, I
+think,” he cried to Marien, endeavoring to soften his one objection
+to the picture, “that you have given her a look--how can I put it?--an
+expression very charming no doubt, but which is not that of
+a child of her age. You know what I mean. It is something
+tender--intense--profound, too feminine. It may come to her some day,
+perhaps--but hitherto Jacqueline’s expression has been generally that of
+a merry, mischievous child.”
+
+“Oh, papa!” cried the young girl, stung by the insult.
+
+“You may possibly be right,” Marien hastened to reply, “it was probably
+the fatigue of posing that gave her that expression.”
+
+“Oh!” repeated Jacqueline, more shocked than ever.
+
+“I can alter it,” said the painter, much amused by her extreme despair.
+But Marien thought that Jacqueline had not in the least that precocious
+air which her father attributed to her, when standing before him she
+gave herself up to thoughts the current of which he followed easily,
+watching on her candid face its changes of expression. How could he
+have painted her other than she appeared to him? Was what he saw an
+apparition--or was it a work of magic?
+
+Several times during the sittings M. de Nailles made his appearance
+in the studio, and after greatly praising the work, persisted in his
+objection that it made Jacqueline too old. But since the painter saw
+her thus they must accept his judgment. It was no doubt an effect of the
+grown-up costume that she had had a fancy to put on.
+
+“After all,” he said to Jacqueline, “it is of not much consequence; you
+will grow up to it some of these days. And I pay you my compliments in
+advance on your appearance in the future.”
+
+She felt like choking with rage. “Oh! is it right,” she thought, “for
+parents to persist in keeping a young girl forever in her cradle, so to
+speak?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. A DANGEROUS MODEL
+
+Time passed too quickly to please Jacqueline. Her portrait was finished
+at last, notwithstanding the willingness Marien had shown--or so it
+seemed to her--to retouch it unnecessarily that she might again and
+again come back to his atelier. But it was done at last. She glided into
+that dear atelier for the last time, her heart big with regret, with
+no hope that she would ever again put on the fairy robe which had, she
+thought, transfigured her till she was no longer little Jacqueline.
+
+“I want you only for one moment, and I need only your face,” said
+Marien. “I want to change--a line--I hardly know what to call it, at
+the corner of your mouth. Your father is right; your mouth is too grave.
+Think of something amusing--of the Bal Blanc at Madame d’Etaples, or
+merely, if you like, of the satisfaction it will give you to be done
+with these everlasting sittings--to be no longer obliged to bear the
+burden of a secret, in short to get rid of your portrait-painter.”
+
+She made him no answer, not daring to trust her voice.
+
+“Come! now, on the contrary you are tightening your lips,” said Marien,
+continuing to play with her as a cat plays with a mouse--provided there
+ever was a cat who, while playing with its mouse, had no intention
+of crunching it. “You are not merry, you are sad. That is not at all
+becoming to you.”
+
+“Why do you attribute to me your own thoughts? It is you who will be
+glad to get rid of all this trouble.”
+
+Fraulein Schult, who, while patiently adding stitch after stitch to the
+long strip of her crochet-work, was often much amused by the dialogues
+between sitter and painter, pricked up her ears to hear what a Frenchman
+would say to what was evidently intended to provoke a compliment.
+
+“On the contrary, I shall miss you very much,” said Marien, quite
+simply; “I have grown accustomed to see you here. You have become one of
+the familiar objects of my studio. Your absence will create a void.”
+
+“About as much as if this or that were gone,” said Jacqueline, in a hurt
+tone, pointing first to a Japanese bronze and then to an Etruscan vase;
+“with only this difference, that you care least for the living object.”
+
+“You are bitter, Mademoiselle.”
+
+“Because you make me such provoking answers, Monsieur. My feeling
+is different,” she went on impetuously, “I could pass my whole life
+watching you paint.”
+
+“You would get tired of it probably in the long run.”
+
+“Never!” she cried, blushing a deep red.
+
+“And you would have to put up with my pipe--that big pipe yonder--a
+horror.”
+
+“I should like it,” she cried, with conviction.
+
+“But you would not like my bad temper. If you knew how ill I can
+behave sometimes! I can scold, I can become unbearable, when this, for
+example,” here he pointed with his mahlstick to the Savonarola, “does
+not please me.”
+
+“But it is beautiful--so beautiful!”
+
+“It is detestable. I shall have to go back some day and renew my
+impressions of Florence--see once more the Piazze of the Signora and
+San Marco--and then I shall begin my picture all over again. Let us go
+together--will you?”
+
+“Oh!” she cried, fervently, “think of seeing Italy!--and with you!”
+
+“It might not be so great a pleasure as you think. Nothing is such a
+bore as to travel with people who are pervaded by one idea, and my
+‘idee fixe’ is my picture--my great Dominican. He has taken complete
+possession of me--he overshadows me. I can think of nothing but him.”
+
+“Oh! but you think of me sometimes, I suppose,” said Jacqueline, softly,
+“for I share your time with him.”
+
+“I think of you to blame you for taking me away from the fifteenth
+century,” replied Hubert Marien, half seriously. “Ouf!--There! it is
+done at last. That dimple I never could manage I have got in for better
+or for worse. Now you may fly off. I set you at liberty--you poor little
+thing!”
+
+She seemed in no hurry to profit by his permission. She stood perfectly
+still in the middle of the studio.
+
+“Do you think I have posed well, faithfully, and with docility all these
+weeks?” she asked at last.
+
+“I will give you a certificate to that effect, if you like. No one could
+have done better.”
+
+“And if the certificate is not all I want, will you give me some other
+present?”
+
+“A beautiful portrait--what can you want more?”
+
+“The picture is for mamma. I ask a favor on my own account.”
+
+“I refuse it beforehand. But you can tell me what it is, all the same.”
+
+“Well, then--the only part of your house that I have ever been in is
+this atelier. You can imagine I have a curiosity to see the rest.”
+
+“I see! you threaten me with a domiciliary visit without warning. Well!
+certainly, if that would give you any amusement. But my house contains
+nothing wonderful. I tell you that beforehand.”
+
+“One likes to know how one’s friends look at home--in their own setting,
+and I have only seen you here at work in your atelier.”
+
+“The best point of view, believe me. But I am ready to do your bidding.
+Do you wish to see where I eat my dinner?” asked Marien, as he took her
+down the staircase leading to his dining-room.
+
+Fraulein Schult would have liked to go with them--it was, besides, her
+duty. But she had not been asked to fulfil it. She hesitated a moment,
+and in that moment Jacqueline had disappeared. After consideration, the
+‘promeneuse’ went on with her crochet, with a shrug of her shoulders
+which meant: “She can’t come to much harm.”
+
+Seated in the studio, she heard the sound of their voices on the floor
+below. Jacqueline was lingering in the fencing-room where Marien was in
+the habit of counteracting by athletic exercises the effects of a too
+sedentary life. She was amusing herself by fingering the dumb-bells and
+the foils; she lingered long before some precious suits of armor. Then
+she was taken up into a small room, communicating with the atelier,
+where there was a fine collection of drawings by the old masters. “My
+only luxury,” said Marien.
+
+Mademoiselle Schult, getting impatient, began to roll up yards and
+yards of crochet, and coughed, by way of a signal, but remembering
+how disagreeable it would have been to herself to be interrupted in
+a tete-a-tete with her apothecary, she thought it not worth while to
+disturb them in these last moments. M. de Nailles’s orders had been that
+she was to sit in the atelier. So she continued to sit there, doing what
+she had been told to do without any qualms of conscience.
+
+When Marien had shown Jacqueline all his drawings he asked her: “Are you
+satisfied?”
+
+But Jacqueline’s hand was already on the portiere which separated the
+little room from Marien’s bedchamber.
+
+“Oh! I beg pardon,” she exclaimed, pausing on the threshold.
+
+“One would think you would like to see me asleep,” said Marien with some
+little embarrassment.
+
+“I never should have thought your bedroom would have been so pretty.
+Why, it is as elegant as a lady’s chamber,” said Jacqueline, slipping
+into it as she spoke, with an exciting consciousness of doing something
+she ought not to do.
+
+“What an insult, when I thought all my tastes were simple and severe,”
+ he replied; but he had not followed her into the chamber, withheld by
+an impulse of modesty men sometimes feel, when innocence is led into
+audacity through ignorance.
+
+“What lovely flowers you have!” said Jacqueline, from within. “Don’t
+they make your head ache?”
+
+“I take them out at night.”
+
+“I did not know that men liked, as we do, to be surrounded by flowers.
+Won’t you give me one?”
+
+“All, if you like.”
+
+“Oh! one pink will be enough for me.”
+
+“Then take it,” said Marien; her curiosity alarmed him, and he was
+anxious to get her away.
+
+“Would it not be nicer if you gave it me yourself?” she replied, with
+reproach in her tones.
+
+“Here is one, Mademoiselle. And now I must tell you that I want to
+dress. I have to go out immediately.”
+
+She pinned the pink into her bodice so high that she could inhale its
+perfume.
+
+“I beg your pardon. Thank you, and good-by,” she said, extending her
+hand to him with a sigh.
+
+“Au revoir.”
+
+“Yes--‘au revoir’ at home--but that will not be like here.”
+
+As she stood there before him there came into her eyes a strange
+expression, to which, without exactly knowing why, he replied by
+pressing his lips fervently on the little hand he was still holding in
+his own.
+
+Very often since her infancy he had kissed her before witnesses, but
+this time she gave a little cry, and turned as white as the flower whose
+petals were touching her cheek.
+
+Marien started back alarmed.
+
+“Good-by,” he said in a tone that he endeavored to make careless--but in
+vain.
+
+Though she was much agitated herself she failed not to remark his
+emotion, and on the threshold of the atelier, she blew a kiss back to
+him from the tips of her gloved fingers, without speaking or smiling.
+Then she went back to Fraulein Schult, who was still sitting in the
+place where she had left her, and said: “Let us go.”
+
+The next time Madame de Nailles saw her stepdaughter she was dazzled by
+a radiant look in her young face.
+
+“What has happened to you?” she asked, “you look triumphant.”
+
+“Yes--I have good reason to triumph,” said Jacqueline. “I think that I
+have won a victory.”
+
+“How so? Over yourself?”
+
+“No, indeed--victories over one’s self give us the comfort of a good
+conscience, but they do not make us gay--as I am.”
+
+“Then tell me--”
+
+“No-no! I can not tell you yet. I must be silent two days more,” said
+Jacqueline, throwing herself into her mother’s arms.
+
+Madame de Nailles asked no more questions, but she looked at her
+stepdaughter with an air of great surprise. For some weeks past she had
+had no pleasure in looking at Jacqueline. She began to be aware that
+near her, at her side, an exquisite butterfly was about for the first
+time to spread its wings--wings of a radiant loveliness, which,
+when they fluttered in the air, would turn all eyes away from other
+butterflies, which had lost some of their freshness during the summer.
+
+A difficult task was before her. How could she keep this too precocious
+insect in its chrysalis state? How could she shut it up in its dark
+cocoon and retard its transformation?
+
+“Jacqueline,” she said, and the tones of her voice were less soft than
+those in which she usually addressed her, “it seems to me that you
+are wasting your time a great deal. You hardly practise at all; you do
+almost nothing at the ‘cours’. I don’t know what can be distracting your
+attention from your lessons, but I have received complaints which should
+make a great girl like you ashamed of herself. Do you know what I am
+beginning to think?--That Madame de Monredon’s system of education has
+done better than mine.”
+
+“Oh! mamma, you can’t be thinking of sending me to a convent!” cried
+Jacqueline, in tones of comic despair.
+
+“I did not say that--but I really think it might be good for you to make
+a retreat where your cousin Giselle is, instead of plunging into follies
+which interrupt your progress.”
+
+“Do you call Madame d’Etaples’s ‘bal blanc’ a folly?”
+
+“You certainly will not go to it--that is settled,” said the young
+stepmother, dryly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. SURPRISES
+
+In all other ways Madame de Nailles did her best to assist in
+the success of the surprise. On the second of June, the eve of
+Ste.-Clotilde’s day, she went out, leaving every opportunity for the
+grand plot to mature. Had she not absented herself in like manner the
+year before at the same date--thus enabling an upholsterer to drape
+artistically her little salon with beautiful thick silk tapestries which
+had just been imported from the East? Her idea was that this year she
+might find a certain lacquered screen which she coveted. The Baroness
+belonged to her period; she liked Japanese things. But, alas! the
+charming object that awaited her, with a curtain hung over it to prolong
+the suspense, had nothing Japanese about it whatever. Madame de Nailles
+received the good wishes of her family, responded to them with all
+proper cordiality, and then was dragged up joyously to a picture hanging
+on the wall of her room, but still concealed under the cloth that
+covered it.
+
+“How good of you!” she said, with all confidence to her husband.
+
+“It is a picture by Marien!--A portrait by Marien! A likeness of
+Jacqueline!”
+
+And he uncovered the masterpiece of the great artist, expecting to be
+joyous in the joy with which she would receive it. But something strange
+occurred. Madame de Nailles sprang back a step or two, stretching out
+her arms as if repelling an apparition, her face was distorted, her head
+was turned away; then she dropped into the nearest seat and burst into
+tears.
+
+“Mamma!--dear little mamma!--what is it?” cried Jacqueline, springing
+forward to kiss her.
+
+Madame de Nailles disengaged herself angrily from her embrace.
+
+“Let me alone!” she cried, “let me alone!--How dared you?”
+
+And impetuously, hardly restraining a gesture of horror and hate, she
+rushed into her own chamber. Thither her husband followed her, anxious
+and bewildered, and there he witnessed a nervous attack which ended in a
+torrent of reproaches:
+
+Was it possible that he had, not seen the impropriety of those sittings
+to Marien? Oh, yes! No doubt he was an old friend of the family, but
+that did not prevent all these deceptions, all these disguises, and
+all the other follies which he had sanctioned--he--Jacqueline’s
+father!--from being very improper. Did he wish to take from her all
+authority over his child?--a girl who was already too much disposed to
+emancipate herself. Her own efforts had all been directed to curb this
+alarming propensity--yes, alarming--alarming for the future. And all in
+vain! There was no use in saying more. ‘Mon Dieu’! had he no trust in
+her devotion to his child, in her prudence and her foresight, that he
+must thwart her thus? And she had always imagined that for ten years she
+had faithfully fulfilled a mother’s duties! What ingratitude from every
+one! Mademoiselle Schult should be sent away at once. Jacqueline should
+go to a convent. They would break off all intercourse with Marien. They
+had conspired against her--every one.
+
+And then she wept more bitterly than ever--tears of rage, salt tears
+which rubbed the powder off her cheeks and disfigured the face that had
+remained beautiful by her power of will and self-control. But now the
+disorder of her nerves got the better of precautions. The blonde
+angel, whose beauty was on the wane, was transformed into a fury.
+Her six-and-thirty years were fully apparent, her complexion appeared
+slightly blotched, all her defects were obtrusive in contrast with the
+precocious development of beauty in Jacqueline. She was firmly resolved
+that her stepdaughter’s obtrusive womanhood should remain in obscurity a
+very much longer time, under pretence that Jacqueline was still a child.
+She was a child, at any rate! The portrait was a lie! an imposture! an
+affront! an outrage!
+
+Meantime M. de Nailles, almost beside himself, fancied at first that
+his wife was going mad, but in the midst of her sobs and reproaches he
+managed to discover that he had somehow done her wrong, and when, with
+a broken voice, she cried, “You no longer love me!” he did not know
+what to do to prove how bitterly he repented having grieved her. He
+stammered, he made excuses, he owned that he had been to blame, that he
+had been very stupid, and he begged her pardon. As to the portrait,
+it should be taken from the salon, where, if seen, it might become a
+pretext for foolish compliments to Jacqueline. Why not send it at once
+to Grandchaux? In short, he would do anything she wished, provided she
+would leave off crying.
+
+But Madame de Nailles continued to weep. Her husband was forced at last
+to leave her and to return to Jacqueline, who stood petrified in the
+salon.
+
+“Yes,” he said, “your mamma is right. We have made a deplorable mistake
+in what we have done. Besides, you must know that this unlucky picture
+is not in the least like you. Marien has made some use of your features
+to paint a fancy portrait--so we will let nobody see it. They might
+laugh at you.”
+
+In this way he hoped to repair the evil he had done in flattering his
+daughter’s vanity, and promoting that dangerous spirit of independence,
+denounced to him a few minutes before, but of which, up to that time, he
+had never heard.
+
+Jacqueline, in her turn, began to sob.
+
+Mademoiselle Schult had cause, too, to wipe her eyes, pretending a more
+or less sincere repentance for her share in the deception. Vigorously
+cross-questioned by Madame de Nailles, who called upon her to tell all
+she knew, under pain of being dismissed immediately, she saw but one way
+of retaining her situation, which was to deliver up Jacqueline, bound
+hand and foot, to the anger of her stepmother, by telling all she knew
+of the childish romance of which she had been the confidante. As a
+reward she was permitted (as she had foreseen) to retain her place in
+the character of a spy.
+
+It was a sad Ste.-Clotilde’s day that year. Marien, who came in the
+evening, heard with surprise that the Baroness was indisposed and could
+see no one. For twelve days after this he continued in disgrace, being
+refused admittance when he called. Those twelve days were days of
+anguish for Jacqueline. To see Marien no longer, to be treated with
+coldness by her father, to see in the blue eyes of her stepmother--eyes
+so soft and tender when they looked upon her hitherto--only a harsh,
+mistrustful glare, almost a look of hatred, was a punishment greater
+than she could bear. What had she done to deserve punishment? Of what
+was she accused? She spoke of her wretchedness to Fraulein Schult, who,
+perfidiously, day after day, drew from her something to report to Madame
+de Nailles. That lady was somewhat consoled, while suffering tortures
+of jealousy, to know that the girl to whom these sufferings were due was
+paying dearly for her fault and was very unhappy.
+
+On the twelfth day something occurred which, though it made no noise in
+the household, had very serious consequences. The effect it produced
+on Jacqueline was decisive and deplorable. The poor child, after
+going through all the states of mind endured by those who suffer
+under unmerited disgrace--revolt, indignation, sulkiness, silent
+obstinacy--felt unable to bear it longer. She resolved to humble
+herself, hoping that by so doing the wall of ice that had arisen between
+her stepmother and herself might be cast down. By this time she cared
+less to know of what fault she was supposed to be guilty than to be
+taken back into favor as before. What must she do to obtain forgiveness?
+Explanations are usually worthless; besides, none might be granted
+her. She remembered that when she was a small child she had obtained
+immediate oblivion of any fault by throwing herself impulsively into the
+arms of her little mamma, and asking her to forget whatever she had done
+to displease her, for she had not done it on purpose. She would do the
+same thing now. Putting aside all pride and obstinacy, she would go
+to this mamma, who, for some days, had seemed so different. She would
+smother her in kisses. She might possibly be repelled at first. She
+would not mind it. She was sure that in the end she would be forgiven.
+
+No sooner was this resolution formed than she hastened to put it into
+execution. It was the time of day when Madame de Nailles was usually
+alone. Jacqueline went to her bedchamber, but she was not there, and a
+moment after she stood on the threshold of the little salon. There she
+stopped short, not quite certain how she should proceed, asking herself
+what would be her reception.
+
+“How shall I do it?” she thought. “How had I better do it?”
+
+“Bah!” she answered these doubts. “It will be very easy. I will go in on
+tiptoe, so that she can’t hear me. I will slip behind her chair, and
+I will hug her suddenly, so tight, so tenderly, and kiss her till she
+tells me that all has been forgiven.”
+
+As she thought thus Jacqueline noiselessly opened the door of the salon,
+over which, on the inner side, hung a thick plush ‘portiere’. But as
+she was about to lift it, the sound of a voice within made her stand
+motionless. She recognized the tones of Marien. He was pleading,
+imploring, interrupted now and then by the sharp and still angry voice
+of her mamma. They were not speaking above their breath, but if she
+listened she could hear them, and, without any scruples of conscience,
+she did listen intently, anxious to see her way through the dark fog in
+which, for twelve days, she had wandered.
+
+“I do not go quite so far as that,” said Madame de Nailles, dryly. “It
+is enough for me that she produced an illusion of such beauty upon you.
+Now I know what to expect--”
+
+“That is nonsense,” replied Marien--“mere foolishness. You jealous!
+jealous of a baby whom I knew when she wore white pinafores, who has
+grown up under my very eyes? But, so far as I am concerned, she exists
+no longer. She is not, she never will be in my eyes, a woman. I shall
+think of her as playing with her doll, eating sugar-plums, and so on.”
+
+Jacqueline grew faint. She shivered and leaned against the door-post.
+
+“One would not suppose so, to judge by the picture with which she has
+inspired you. You may say what you like, but I know that in all this
+there was a set purpose to insult me.”
+
+“Clotilde!”
+
+“In the first place, on no pretext ought you to have been induced to
+paint her portrait.”
+
+“Do you think so? Consider, had I refused, the danger of awakening
+suspicion? I accepted the commission most unwillingly, much put out
+by it, as you may suppose. But you are making too much of an imaginary
+fault. Consign the wretched picture to the barn, if you like. We will
+never say another word about so foolish a matter. You promise me to
+forget it, won’t you?... Dear! you will promise me?” he added, after a
+pause.
+
+Madame de Nailles sighed and replied: “If not she it will be some one
+else. I am very unhappy.... I am weak and contemptible....”
+
+“Clotilde!” replied Marien, in an accent that went to Jacqueline’s heart
+like a knife.
+
+She fancied that after this she heard the sound of a kiss, and, with
+her cheeks aflame and her head burning, she rushed away. She understood
+little of what she had overheard. She only realized that he had
+given her up, that he had turned her into ridicule, that he had said
+“Clotilde!” to her mother, that he had called her dear--she!--the woman
+she had so adored, so venerated, her best friend, her father’s wife,
+her mother by adoption! Everything in this world seemed to be giving
+way under her feet. The world was full of falsehood and of treason, and
+life, so bad, so cruel, was no longer what she had supposed it to be. It
+had broken its promise to herself, it had made her bad--bad forever. She
+loved no one, she believed in no one. She wished she were dead.
+
+How she reached her own room in this state Jacqueline never knew. She
+was aware at last of being on her knees beside her bed, with her face
+hidden in the bed-clothes. She was biting them to stifle her desire to
+scream. Her hands were clenched convulsively.
+
+“Mamma!” she cried, “mamma!”
+
+Was this a reproach addressed to her she had so long called by that
+name? Or was it an appeal, vibrating with remorse, to her real mother,
+so long forgotten in favor of this false idol, her rival, her enemy?
+
+Undoubtedly, Jacqueline was too innocent, too ignorant to guess the real
+truth from what she had overheard. But she had learned enough to be no
+longer the pure-minded young girl of a few hours before. It seemed to
+her as if a fetid swamp now lay before her, barring her entrance into
+life. Vague as her perceptions were, this swamp before her seemed more
+deep, more dark, more dreadful from uncertainty, and Jacqueline felt
+that thenceforward she could make no step in life without risk
+of falling into it. To whom now could she open her heart in
+confidence--that heart bleeding and bruised as if it had been trampled
+one as if some one had crushed it? The thing that she now knew was
+not like her own little personal secrets, such as she had imprudently
+confided to Fraulein Schult. The words that she had overheard she could
+repeat to no one. She must carry them in her heart, like the barb of an
+arrow in a secret wound, where they would fester and grow more painful
+day by day.
+
+“But, above all,” she said at length, rising from her knees, “let me
+show proper pride.”
+
+She bathed her fevered face in cold water, then she walked up to her
+mirror. As she gazed at herself with a strange interest, trying to see
+whether the entire change so suddenly accomplished in herself had left
+its visible traces on her features, she seemed to see something in her
+eyes that spoke of the clairvoyance of despair. She smiled at herself,
+to see whether the new Jacqueline could play the part, which--whether
+she would or not--was now assigned to her. What a sad smile it was!
+
+“I have lost everything,” she said, “I have lost everything!” And she
+remembered, as one remembers something in the far-off long ago, how that
+very morning, when she awoke, her first thought had been “Shall I see
+him to-day?” Each day she passed without seeing him had seemed to her a
+lost day, and she had accustomed herself to go to sleep thinking of him,
+remembering all he had said to her, and how he had looked at her. Of
+course, sometimes she had been unhappy, but what a difference it seemed
+between such vague unhappiness and what she now experienced? And then,
+when she was sad, she could always find a refuge in that dear mamma--in
+that Clotilde whom she vowed she would never kiss again, except with
+such kisses as might be necessary to avoid suspicion. Kisses of that
+kind were worth nothing. Quite the contrary! Could she kiss her father
+now without a pang? Her father! He had gone wholly over to the side of
+that other in this affair. She had seen him in one moment turn against
+herself. No!--no one was left her!... If she could only lay her head in
+Modeste’s lap and be soothed while she crooned her old songs as in the
+nursery! But, whatever Marien or any one else might choose to say, she
+was no longer a baby. The bitter sense of her isolation arose in her.
+She could hardly breathe. Suddenly she pressed her lips upon the glass
+which reflected her own image, so sad, so pale, so desolate. She put the
+pity for herself into a long, long, fervent kiss, which seemed to say:
+“Yes, I am all alone--alone forever.” Then, in a spirit of revenge, she
+opened what seemed a safety-valve, preventing her from giving way to any
+other emotion.
+
+She rushed for a little box which she had converted into a sort of
+reliquary. She took out of it the half-burned cigarette, the old glove,
+the withered violets, and a visiting-card with his name, on which three
+unimportant lines had been written. She insulted these keepsakes, she
+tore them with her nails, she trampled them underfoot, she reduced
+them to fragments; she left nothing whatever of them, except a pile of
+shreds, which at last she set fire to. She had a feeling as if she were
+employed in executing two great culprits, who deserved cruel tortures
+at her hands; and, with them, she slew now and forever the foolish fancy
+she had called her love. By a strange association of ideas, the famous
+composition, so praised by M. Regis, came back to her memory, and she
+cried:
+
+     “Je ne veux me souvenir.... me souvenir de rien!”
+
+“If I remember, I shall be more unhappy. All has been a dream. His
+look was a dream, his pressure of my hand, his kiss on the last day,
+all--all--were dreams. He was making a fool of me when he gave me that
+pink which is now in this pile of ashes. He was laughing when he told me
+I was more beautiful than was natural. Never have I been--never shall I
+be in his eyes--more than the baby he remembers playing with her doll.”
+
+And unconsciously, as Jacqueline said these words, she imitated the
+careless accent with which she had heard them fall from the lips of the
+artist. And she would have again to meet him! If she had had thunder and
+lightning at her command, as she had had the match with which she had
+set fire to the memorials of her juvenile folly, Marien would have been
+annihilated on the spot. She was at that moment a murderess at heart.
+But the dinner-bell rang. The young fury gave a last glance at the
+adornments of her pretty bedchamber, so elegant, so original--all blue
+and pink, with a couch covered with silk embroidered with flowers. She
+seemed to say to them all: “Keep my secret. It is a sad one. Be careful:
+keep it safely.” The cupids on the clock, the little book-rest on a
+velvet stand, the picture of the Virgin that hung over her bed,
+with rosaries and palms entwined about it, the photographs of her
+girl-friends standing on her writing table in pretty frames of
+old-fashioned silk-all seemed to see her depart with a look of sympathy.
+
+She went down to the dining-room, resolved to prove that she would not
+submit to punishment. The best way to brave Madame de Nailles was, she
+thought, to affect great calmness and indifference, aye, even, if she
+could, some gayety. But the task before her was more difficult than she
+had expected. Apparently, as a proof of reconciliation, Marien had been
+kept to dinner. To see him so soon again after his words of outrage was
+more than she could bear. For one moment the earth seemed to sink under
+her feet; she roused her pride by an heroic effort, and that sustained
+her. She exchanged with the artist, as she always did, a friendly
+“Good-evening!” and ate her dinner, though it nearly choked her.
+
+Madame de Nailles had red eyes; and Jacqueline made the reflection that
+women who are thirty-five should never weep. She knew that her face
+had not been made ugly by her tears, and this gave her a perverse
+satisfaction in the midst of her misery. Of Marien she thought: “He
+sits there as if he had been put ‘en penitence’.” No doubt he could not
+endure scenes, and the one he had just passed through must have given
+him the downcast look which Jacqueline noticed with contempt.
+
+What she did not know was that his depression had more than one cause.
+He felt--and felt with shame and with discouragement--that the fetters
+of a connection which had long since ceased to charm had been fastened
+on his wrists tighter than ever; and he thought: “I shall lose all my
+energy, I shall lose even my talent! While I wear these chains I shall
+see ever before me--ah! tortures of Tantalus!--the vision of a new love,
+fresh as the dawn which beckons to me as it passes before my sight,
+which lays on me the light touch of a caress, while I am forced to see
+it glide away, to let it vanish, disappear forever! And alas! that is
+not all. If I have deceived an inexperienced heart by words spoken or
+deeds done in a moment of weakness or temptation, can I flatter myself
+that I have acted like an honest man?”
+
+This is what Marien was really thinking, while Jacqueline looked at
+him with an expression she strove to make indifferent, but which he
+interpreted, though she knew it not: “You have done me all the harm you
+can.”
+
+M. de Nailles meantime went on talking, with little response from his
+wife or his guest, about some vehement discussion of a new law going
+on just then in the Chamber, and he became so interested in his own
+discourse that he did not remark the constraint of the others.
+
+Marien at last, tired of responding in monosyllables to his remarks,
+said abruptly, a short time before dessert was placed upon the table,
+something about the probability of his soon going to Italy.
+
+“A pilgrimage of art to Florence!” cried the Baron, turning at once from
+politics. “That’s good. But wait a little--let it be after the rising
+of the Chamber. We will follow your steps. It has been the desire of my
+wife’s life--a little jaunt to Italy. Has it not, Clotilde? So we will
+all go in September or October. What say you?”
+
+“In September or October, whichever suits you,” said Marien, with
+despair.
+
+Not one month of liberty! Why couldn’t they leave him to his Savanarola!
+Must he drag about a ball and chain like a galley-slave?
+
+Clotilde rewarded M. de Nailles with a smile--the first smile she had
+given him since their quarrel about Jacqueline.
+
+“My wife has got over her displeasure,” he said to himself, delightedly.
+
+Jacqueline, on her part, well remembered the day when Hubert had spoken
+to her for the first time of his intended journey, and how he had added,
+in a tone which she now knew to be badinage, but which then, alas! she
+had believed serious: “Suppose we go together!”
+
+And her impulse to shed tears became so great, that when they left the
+dinner-table she escaped to her own room, under pretence of a headache.
+
+“Yes--you are looking wretchedly,” said her stepmother. And, turning to
+M. de Nailles, she added: “Don’t you think, ‘mon ami’, she is as yellow
+as a quince!” Marien dared not press the hand which she, who had been
+his little friend for years, offered him as usual, but this time with
+repugnance.
+
+“You are suffering, my poor Jacqueline!” he ventured to say.
+
+“Oh! not much,” she answered, with a glance at once haughty and defiant,
+“to-morrow I shall be quite well again.”
+
+And, saying this, she had the courage to laugh.
+
+But she was not quite well the next day; and for many days after she was
+forced to stay in bed. The doctor who came to see her talked about “low
+fever,” attributed it to too rapid growth, and prescribed sea-bathing
+for her that summer. The fever, which was not very severe, was of great
+service to Jacqueline. It enabled her to recover in quiet from the
+effects of a bitter deception.
+
+Madame de Nailles was not sufficiently uneasy about her to be always
+at her bedside. Usually the sick girl stayed alone, with her
+window-curtains closed, lying there in the soft half-light that was
+soothing to her nerves. The silence was broken at intervals by the voice
+of Modeste, who would come and offer her her medicine. When Jacqueline
+had taken it, she would shut her eyes, and resume, half asleep, her sad
+reflections. These were always the same. What could be the tie between
+her stepmother and Marien?
+
+She tried to recall all the proofs of friendship she had seen pass
+between them, but all had taken place openly. Nothing that she could
+remember seemed suspicious. So she thought at first, but as she thought
+more, lying, feverish, upon her bed, several things, little noticed at
+the time, were recalled to her remembrance. They might mean nothing,
+or they might mean much. In the latter case, Jacqueline could not
+understand them very well. But she knew he had called her “Clotilde,”
+ that he had even dared to say “thou” to her in private--these were
+things she knew of her own knowledge. Her pulse beat quicker as she
+thought of them; her head burned. In that studio, where she had passed
+so many happy hours, had Marien and her stepmother ever met as lovers?
+
+Her stepmother and Marien! She could not understand what it meant. Must
+she apply to them a dreadful word that she had picked up in the history
+books, where it had been associated with such women as Margaret of
+Burgundy, Isabeau of Bavaria, Anne Boleyn, and other princesses of very
+evil reputation? She had looked it out in the dictionary, where the
+meaning given was: “To be unfaithful to conjugal vows.” Even then she
+could not understand precisely the meaning of adultery, and she
+set herself to solve it during the long lonely days when she was
+convalescent. When she was able to walk from one room to another, she
+wandered in a loose dressing-gown, whose long, lank folds showed that
+she had grown taller and thinner during her illness, into the room that
+held the books, and went boldly up to the bookcase, the key of which
+had been left in the lock, for everybody had entire confidence in
+Jacqueline’s scrupulous honesty. Never before had she broken a promise;
+she knew that a well-brought-up young girl ought to read only such
+books as were put into her hands. The idea of taking a volume from those
+shelves had no more occurred to her than the idea of taking money out of
+somebody’s purse; that is, up to this moment it had not occurred to her
+to do so; but now that she had lost all respect for those in authority
+over her, Jacqueline considered herself released from any obligation
+to obey them. She therefore made use of the first opportunity that
+presented itself to take down a novel of George Sand, which she had
+heard spoken of as a very dangerous book, not doubting it would throw
+some light on the subject that absorbed her. But she shut up the volume
+in a rage when she found that it had nothing but excuses to offer for
+the fall of a married woman. After that, and guided only by chance, she
+read a number of other novels, most of which were of antediluvian date,
+thus accounting, she supposed, for their sentiments, which she found old
+fashioned. We should be wrong, however, if we supposed that Jacqueline’s
+crude judgment of these books had nothing in common with true criticism.
+Her only object, however, in reading all this sentimental prose was to
+discover, as formerly she had found in poetry, something that applied to
+her own case; but she soon discovered that all the sentimental heroines
+in the so-called bad books were persons who had had bad husbands;
+besides, they were either widows or old women--at least thirty years
+old! It was astounding! There was nothing--absolutely nothing--about
+young girls, except instances in which they renounced their hopes of
+happiness. What an injustice! Among these victims the two that most
+attracted her sympathy were Madame de Camors and Renee Mauperin. But
+what horrors surrounded them! What a varied assortment of deceptions,
+treacheries, and mysteries, lay hidden under the outward decency and
+respectability of what men called “the world!” Her young head became a
+stage on which strange plays were acted. What one reads is good or bad
+for us, according to the frame of mind in which we read it--according
+as we discover in a volume healing for the sickness of our souls--or the
+contrary. In view of the circumstances in which she found herself, what
+Jacqueline absorbed from these books was poison.
+
+When, after the physical and moral crisis through which she had passed,
+Jacqueline resumed the life of every day, she had in her sad eyes,
+around which for some time past had been dark circles, an expression of
+anxiety such as the first contact with a knowledge of evil might have
+put into Eve’s eyes after she had plucked the apple. Her investigations
+had very imperfectly enlightened her. She was as much perplexed as ever,
+with some false ideas besides. When she was well again, however, she
+continued weak and languid; she felt somehow as if, she had come back to
+her old surroundings from some place far away. Everything about her now
+seemed sad and unfamiliar, though outwardly nothing was altered. Her
+parents had apparently forgotten the unhappy episode of the picture.
+It had been sent away to Grandchaux, which was tantamount to its being
+buried. Hubert Marien had resumed his habits of intimacy in the family.
+From that time forth he took less and less notice of Jacqueline--whether
+it were that he owed her a grudge for all the annoyance she had been the
+means of bringing upon him, or whether he feared to burn himself in the
+flame which had once scorched him more than he admitted to himself, who
+can say? Perhaps he was only acting in obedience to orders.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. A CONVENT FLOWER
+
+One of Jacqueline’s first walks, after she had recovered, was to see her
+cousin Giselle at her convent. She did not seek this friend’s society
+when she was happy and in a humor for amusement, for she thought her a
+little straightlaced, or, as she said, too like a nun; but nobody could
+condole or sympathize with a friend in trouble like Giselle. It seemed
+as if nature herself had intended her for a Sister of Charity--a Gray
+Sister, as Jacqueline would sometimes call her, making fun of
+her somewhat dull intellect, which had been benumbed, rather than
+stimulated, by the education she had received.
+
+The Benedictine Convent is situated in a dull street on the left bank
+of the Seine, all gardens and hotels--that is, detached houses.
+Grass sprouted here and there among the cobblestones. There were no
+street-lamps and no policemen. Profound silence reigned there. The
+petals of an acacia, which peeped timidly over its high wall, dropped,
+like flakes of snow, on the few pedestrians who passed by it in the
+springtime.
+
+The enormous porte-cochere gave entrance into a square courtyard, on one
+side of which was the chapel, on the other, the door that led into
+the convent. Here Jacqueline presented herself, accompanied by her old
+nurse, Modeste. She had not yet resumed her German lessons, and was
+striving to put off as long as possible any intercourse with Fraulein
+Schult, who had known of her foolish fancy, and who might perhaps renew
+the odious subject. Walking with Modeste, on the contrary, seemed
+like going back to the days of her childhood, the remembrance of which
+soothed her like a recollection of happiness and peace, now very far
+away; it was a reminiscence of the far-off limbo in which her young
+soul, pure and white, had floated, without rapture, but without any
+great grief or pain.
+
+The porteress showed them into the parlor. There they found several
+pupils who were talking to members of their families, from whom they
+were separated by a grille, whose black bars gave to those within
+the appearance of captives, and made rather a barrier to eager
+demonstrations of affection, though they did not hinder the reception of
+good things to eat.
+
+“Tiens! I have brought you some chocolate,” said Jacqueline to Giselle,
+as soon as her cousin appeared, looking far prettier in her black cloth
+frock than when she wore an ordinary walking-costume. Her fair hair was
+drawn back ‘a la Chinoise’ from a white forehead resembling that of a
+German Madonna; it was one of those foreheads, slightly and delicately
+curved, which phrenologists tell us indicate reflection and enthusiasm.
+
+But Giselle, without thanking Jacqueline for the chocolate, exclaimed at
+once: “Mon Dieu! What has been the matter with you?”
+
+She spoke rather louder than usual, it being understood that
+conversations were to be carried on in a low tone, so as not to
+interfere with those of other persons. She added: “I find you so
+altered.”
+
+“Yes--I have been ill,” said Jacqueline, carelessly, “sorrow has made me
+ill,” she added, in a whisper, looking to see whether the nun, who was
+discreetly keeping watch, walking to and fro behind the grille, might
+chance to be listening. “Oh, ask me no questions! I must never tell
+you--but for me, you must know--the happiness of my life is at an
+end--is at an end--”
+
+She felt herself to be very interesting while she was speaking thus; her
+sorrows were somewhat assuaged. There was undoubtedly a certain pleasure
+in letting some one look down into the unfathomable, mysterious depths
+of a suffering soul.
+
+She had expected much curiosity on the part of Giselle, and had resolved
+beforehand to give her no answers; but Giselle only sighed, and said,
+softly:
+
+“Ah--my poor darling! I, too, am very unhappy. If you only knew--”
+
+“How? Good heavens! what can have happened to you here?”
+
+“Here? oh! nothing, of course; but this year I am to leave the
+convent--and I think I can guess what will then be before me.”
+
+Here, seeing that the nun who was keeping guard was listening, Giselle,
+with great presence of mind, spoke louder on indifferent subjects till
+she had passed out of earshot, then she rapidly poured her secret into
+Jacqueline’s ear.
+
+From a few words that had passed between her grandmother and Madame
+d’Argy, she had found out that Madame de Monredon intended to marry her.
+
+“But that need not make you unhappy,” said Jacqueline, “unless he is
+really distasteful to you.”
+
+“That is what I am not sure about--perhaps he is not the one I think.
+But I hardly know why--I have a dread, a great dread, that it is one of
+our neighbors in the country. Grandmamma has several times spoken in my
+presence of the advantage of uniting our two estates--they touch each
+other--oh! I know her ideas! she wants a man well-born, one who has a
+position in the world--some one, as she says, who knows something of
+life--that is, I suppose, some one no longer young, and who has not much
+hair on his head--like Monsieur de Talbrun.”
+
+“Is he very ugly--this Monsieur de Talbrun?”
+
+“He’s not ugly--and not handsome. But, just think! he is thirty-four!”
+
+Jacqueline blushed, seeing in this speech a reflection on her own taste
+in such matters.
+
+“That’s twice my age,” sighed Giselle.
+
+“Of course that would be dreadful if he were to stay always twice your
+age--for instance, if you were now thirty-five, he would be seventy, and
+a hundred and twenty when you reached your sixtieth year--but really
+to be twice your age now will only make him seventeen years older than
+yourself.”
+
+In the midst of this chatter, which was beginning to attract the notice
+of the nun, they broke off with a laugh, but it was only one of those
+laughs ‘au bout des levres’, uttered by persons who have made up their
+minds to be unhappy. Then Giselle went on:
+
+“I know nothing about him, you understand--but he frightens me. I
+tremble to think of taking his arm, of talking to him, of being his
+wife. Just think even of saying thou to him!”
+
+“But married people don’t say thou to each other nowadays,” said
+Jacqueline, “it is considered vulgar.”
+
+“But I shall have to call him by his Christian name!”
+
+“What is Monsieur de Talbrun’s Christian name?”
+
+“Oscar.”
+
+“Humph! That is not a very pretty name, but you could get over the
+difficulty--you could say ‘mon ami’. After all, your sorrows are less
+than mine.”
+
+“Poor Jacqueline!” said Giselle, her soft hazel eyes moist with
+sympathy.
+
+“I have lost at one blow all my illusions, and I have made a
+horrible discovery, that it would be wicked to tell to any one--you
+understand--not even to my confessor.”
+
+“Heavens! but you could tell your mother!”
+
+“You forget, I have no mother,” replied Jacqueline in a tone which
+frightened her friend: “I had a dear mamma once, but she would enter
+less than any one into my sorrows; and as to my father--it would make
+things worse to speak to him,” she added, clasping her hands. “Have you
+ever read any novels, Giselle?”
+
+“Hem!” said the discreet voice of the nun, by way of warning.
+
+“Two or three by Walter Scott.”
+
+“Oh! then you can imagine nothing like what I could tell you. How horrid
+that nun is, she stops always as she comes near us! Why can’t she do as
+Modeste does, and leave us to talk by ourselves?”
+
+It seemed indeed as if the Argus in a black veil had overheard part of
+this conversation, not perhaps the griefs of Jacqueline, which were not
+very intelligible, but some of the words spoken by Giselle, for, drawing
+near her, she said, gently: “We, too, shall all grieve to lose you, my
+dearest child; but remember one can serve God anywhere, and save one’s
+soul--in the world as well as in a convent.” And she passed on, giving
+a kind smile to Jacqueline, whom she knew, having seen her several times
+in the convent parlor, and whom she thought a nice girl, notwithstanding
+what she called her “fly-away airs”--“the airs they acquire from modern
+education,” she said to herself, with a sigh.
+
+“Those poor ladies would have us think of nothing but a future life,”
+ said Jacqueline, shrugging her shoulders.
+
+“We ought to think of it first of all,” said Giselle, who had become
+serious. “Sometimes I think my place should have been among these ladies
+who have brought me up. They are so good, and they seem to be so happy.
+Besides, do you know, I stand less in awe of them than I do of my
+grandmother. When grandmamma orders me I never shall dare to object,
+even if--But you must think me very selfish, my poor Jacqueline! I am
+talking only of myself. Do you know what you ought to do as you go away?
+You should go into the chapel, and pray with all your heart for me, that
+I may be brought in safety through my troubles about which I have told
+you, and I will do the same for yours, about which you have not told
+me. An exchange of prayers is the best foundation for a friendship,” she
+added; for Giselle had many little convent maxims at her fingers’ ends,
+to which, when she uttered them, her sincerity of look and tone gave a
+personal meaning.
+
+“You are right,” said Jacqueline, much moved. “It has done me good to
+see you. Take this chocolate.”
+
+“And you must take this,” said Giselle, giving her a little illuminated
+card, with sacred words and symbols.
+
+“Adieu, dearest-say, have you ever detested any one?”
+
+“Never!” cried Giselle, with horror.
+
+“Well! I do detest--detest--You are right, I will go into the chapel. I
+need some exorcism.”
+
+And laughing at her use of this last word--the same little mirthless
+laugh that she had uttered before--Jacqueline went away, followed by the
+admiring glances of the other girls, who from behind the bars of their
+cage noted the brilliant plumage of this bird who was at liberty. She
+crossed the courtyard, and, followed by Modeste, entered the chapel,
+where she sank upon her knees. The mystic half-light of the place,
+tinged purple by its passage through the stained windows, seemed to
+enlarge the little chancel, parted in two by a double grille, behind
+which the nuns could hear the service without being seen.
+
+The silence was so deep that the low murmur of a prayer could now and
+then be heard. The worshipers might have fancied themselves a hundred
+leagues from all the noises of the world, which seemed to die out when
+they reached the convent walls.
+
+Jacqueline read, and re-read mechanically, the words printed in letters
+of gold on the little card Giselle had given her. It was a symbolical
+picture, and very ugly; but the words were: “Oh! that I had wings like a
+dove, for then would I flee away and be at rest.”
+
+“Wings!” she repeated, with vague aspiration. The aspiration seemed to
+disengage her from herself, and from this earth, which had nothing more
+to offer her. Ah! how far away was now the time when she had entered
+churches, full of happiness and hope, to offer a candle that her prayer
+might be granted, which she felt sure it would be! All was vanity! As
+she gazed at the grille, behind which so many women, whose worldly lives
+had been cut short, now lived, safe from the sorrows and temptations
+of this world, Jacqueline seemed for the first time to understand why
+Giselle regretted that she might not share forever the blessed peace
+enjoyed in the convent. A torpor stole over her, caused by the dimness,
+the faint odor of the incense, and the solemn silence. She imagined
+herself in the act of giving up the world. She saw herself in a veil,
+with her eyes raised to Heaven, very pale, standing behind the grille.
+She would have to cut off her hair.
+
+That seemed hard, but she would make the sacrifice. She would accept
+anything, provided the ungrateful pair, whom she would not name, could
+feel sorrow for her loss--maybe even remorse. Full of these ideas, which
+certainly had little in common with the feelings of those who seek to
+forgive those who trespass against them, Jacqueline continued to imagine
+herself a Benedictine sister, under the soothing influence of her
+surroundings, just as she had mistaken the effects of physical weakness
+when she was ill for a desire to die. Such feelings were the result of a
+void which the whole universe, as she thought, never could fill, but it
+was really a temporary vacuum, like that caused by the loss of a first
+tooth. These teeth come out with the first jar, and nature intends them
+to be speedily replaced by others, much more permanent; but children cry
+when they are pulled out, and fancy they are in very tight. Perhaps they
+suffer, after all, nearly as much as they think they do.
+
+“Mademoiselle!” said Modeste, touching her on the shoulder.
+
+“I was content to be here,” answered Jacqueline, with a sigh. “Do you
+know, Modeste,” she went on, when they got out of doors, “that I have
+almost made up my mind to be a nun. What do you say to that?”
+
+“Heaven forbid!” cried the old nurse, much startled.
+
+“Life is so hard,” replied her young mistress.
+
+“Not for you, anyhow. It would be a sin to say so.”
+
+“Ah! Modeste, we so little know the real truth of things--we can see
+only appearances. Don’t you think that a linen band over my forehead
+would be very becoming to me? I should look like Saint Theresa.”
+
+“And what would be the good of your looking like Saint Theresa, when
+there would be nobody to tell you so?” said Modeste, with the practical
+good-sense that never forsook her. “You would be beautiful for yourself
+alone. You would not even be allowed a looking-glass just talk about
+that fancy to Monsieur--we should soon see what he would say to such a
+notion.”
+
+M. de Nailles, having just left the Chamber, was crossing the Pont de la
+Concorde on foot at this moment. His daughter ran up to him, and caught
+him by the arm. They walked homeward talking of very different things
+from bolts and bars. The Baron, who was a weak man, thought in his heart
+that he had been too severe with his daughter for some time past. As
+he recalled what had taken place, the anger of Madame de Nailles in
+the matter of the picture seemed to him to have been extreme and
+unnecessary. Jacqueline was just at an age when young girls are apt to
+be nervous and impressionable; they had been wrong to be rough with
+one who was so sensitive. His wife was quite of his opinion, she
+acknowledged (not wishing him to think too much on the subject) that she
+had been too quick-tempered.
+
+“Yes,” she had said, frankly, “I am jealous; I want things to myself. I
+own I was angry when I thought that Jacqueline was about to throw off
+my authority, and hurt when I found she was capable of keeping up a
+concealment--when I believed she was so open always with me. My behavior
+was foolish, I acknowledge. But what can we do? Neither of us can go and
+ask her pardon?”
+
+“Of course not,” said the father, “all we can do is to treat her with a
+little more consideration for the future; and, with your permission, I
+shall use her illness as an excuse for spoiling her a little.”
+
+“You have carte blanche, my dear, I agree to everything.” So M. de
+Nailles, with his daughter’s arm in his, began to spoil her, as he had
+intended.
+
+“You are still rather pale,” he said, “but sea-bathing will change all
+that. Would you like to go to the seaside next month?”
+
+Jacqueline answered with a little incredulous smile:
+
+“Oh, certainly, papa.”
+
+“You don’t seem very sure about it. In the first place, where shall we
+go? Your mamma seems to fancy Houlgate?”
+
+“Of course we must do what she wishes,” replied Jacqueline, rather
+bitterly.
+
+“But, little daughter, what would you like? What do you say to Treport?”
+
+“I should like Treport very much, because there we should be near Madame
+d’Argy.”
+
+Jacqueline had felt much drawn to Madame d’Argy since her troubles, for
+she had been the nearest friend of her own mother--her own dead mother,
+too long forgotten. The chateau of Madame d’Argy, called Lizerolles, was
+only two miles from Treport, in a charming situation on the road to St.
+Valery.
+
+“That’s the very thing, then!” said M. de Nailles.
+
+“Fred is going to spend a month at Lizerolles with his mother. You might
+ride on horseback with him. He is going to enjoy a holiday, poor fellow!
+before he has to be sent off on long and distant voyages.”
+
+“I don’t know how to ride,” said Jacqueline, still in the tone of a
+victim.
+
+“The doctor thinks riding would be good for you, and you have time
+enough yet to take some lessons. Mademoiselle Schult could take you
+nine or ten times to the riding-school. And I will go with you the first
+time,” added M. de Nailles, in despair at not having been able to
+please her. “To-day we will go to Blackfern’s and order a habit--a
+riding-habit! Can I do more?”
+
+At this, as if by magic, whether she would or not, the lines of sadness
+and sullenness disappeared from Jacqueline’s face; her eyes sparkled.
+She gave one more proof, that to every Parisienne worthy of the name,
+the two pleasures in riding are, first to have a perfectly fitting
+habit, secondly, to have the opportunity of showing how pretty she can
+be after a new fashion.
+
+“Shall we go to Blackfern’s now?”
+
+“This very moment, if you wish it.”
+
+“You really mean Blackfern? Yvonne’s habit came from Blackfern’s!”
+ Yvonne d’Etaples was the incarnation of chic--of fashionable
+elegance--in Jacqueline’s eyes. Her heart beat with pleasure when she
+thought how Belle and Dolly would envy her when she told them: “I have
+a myrtle-green riding-habit, just like Yvonne’s.” She danced rather than
+walked as they went together to Blackfern’s. A habit was much nicer than
+a long gown.
+
+A quarter of an hour later they were in the waiting-room, where the last
+creations of the great ladies’ tailor, were displayed upon lay figures,
+among saleswomen and ‘essayeuses’, the very prettiest that could be
+found in England or the Batignolles, chosen because they showed off to
+perfection anything that could be put upon their shoulders, from the
+ugliest to the most extravagant. Deceived by the unusual elegance of
+these beautiful figures, ladies who are neither young nor well-shaped
+allow themselves to be beguiled and cajoled into buying things not
+suited to them. Very seldom does a hunchbacked dowager hesitate to put
+upon her shoulders the garment that draped so charmingly those of the
+living statue hired to parade before her. Jacqueline could not help
+laughing as she watched this way of hunting larks; and thought the
+mirror might have warned them, like a scarecrow, rather than have
+tempted them into the snare.
+
+The head tailor of the establishment made them wait long enough to
+allow the pretty showgirls to accomplish their work of temptation. They
+fascinated Jacqueline’s father by their graces and their glances, while
+at the same time they warbled into his daughter’s ear, with a slightly
+foreign’ accent: “That would be so becoming to Mademoiselle.”
+
+For ladies going to the seaside there were things of the most exquisite
+simplicity: this white fur, trimmed with white velvet, for instance;
+that jacket like the uniform of a naval officer with a cap to
+match--“All to please Fred,” said Jacqueline, laughing. M. de Nailles,
+while they waited for the tailor, chose two costumes quite as original
+as those of Mademoiselle d’Etaples, which delighted Jacqueline all
+the more, because she thought it probable they would displease her
+stepmother. At last the magnificent personage, his face adorned with
+luxuriant whiskers, appeared with the bow of a great artist or a
+diplomatist; took Jacqueline’s measure as if he were fulfilling some
+important function, said a few brief words to his secretary, and
+then disappeared; the group of English beauties saying in chorus that
+Mademoiselle might come back that day week and try it on.
+
+Accordingly, a week later Jacqueline, seated on the wooden-horse used
+for this purpose, had the satisfaction of assuring herself that her
+habit, fitting marvelously to her bust, showed not a wrinkle, any more
+than a ‘gant de Suede’ shows on the hand; it was closely fitted to
+a figure not yet fully developed, but which the creator of the
+chef-d’oeuvre deigned to declare was faultless. Usually, he said, he
+recommended his customers to wear a certain corset of a special cut,
+with elastic material over the hips covered by satin that matched the
+riding-habit, but at Mademoiselle’s age, and so supple as she was,
+the corset was not necessary. In short, the habit was fashioned to
+perfection, and fitted like her skin to her little flexible figure.
+In her close-fitting petticoat, her riding-trousers and nothing else,
+Jacqueline felt herself half naked, though she was buttoned up to her
+throat. She had taken an attitude on her wooden horse such as might have
+been envied by an accomplished equestrienne, her elbows held well back,
+her shoulders down, her chest expanded, her right leg over the pommel,
+her left foot in the stirrup, and never after did any real gallop give
+her the same delight as this imaginary ride on an imaginary horse, she
+looking at herself with entire satisfaction all the time in an enormous
+cheval-glass.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK 2.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. THE BLUE BAND
+
+Love, like any other human malady, should be treated according to the
+age and temperament of the sufferer. Madame de Nailles, who was a very
+keen observer, especially where her own interests were concerned, lent
+herself with the best possible grace to everything that might amuse and
+distract Jacqueline, of whom she had by this time grown afraid. Not that
+she now dreaded her as a rival. The attitude of coldness and reserve
+that the young girl had adopted in her intercourse with Marien, her
+stepmother could see, was no evidence of coquetry. She showed, in her
+behavior to the friend of the family, a freedom from embarrassment
+which was new to her, and a frigidity which could not possibly have
+been assumed so persistently. No! what struck Madame de Nailles was the
+suddenness of this transformation. Jacqueline evidently took no further
+interest in Marien; she had apparently no longer any affection for
+herself--she, who had been once her dear little mamma, whom she
+had loved so tenderly, now felt herself to be considered only as a
+stepmother. Fraulein Schult, too, received no more confidences. What did
+it all mean?
+
+Had Jacqueline, through any means, discovered a secret, which, in her
+hands, might be turned into a most dangerous weapon? She had a way of
+saying before the guilty pair: “Poor papa!” with an air of pity, as she
+kissed him, which made Madame de Nailles’s flesh creep, and sometimes
+she would amuse herself by making ambiguous remarks which shot arrows
+of suspicion into a heart already afraid. “I feel sure,” thought
+the Baroness, “that she has found out everything. But, no! it seems
+impossible. How can I discover what she knows?”
+
+Jacqueline’s revenge consisted in leaving her stepmother in doubt. She
+more than suspected, not without cause, that Fraulein Schult was false
+to her, and had the wit to baffle all the clever questions of her
+‘promeneuse’.
+
+“My worship of a man of genius--a great artist? Oh! that has all come
+to an end since I have found out that his devotion belongs to an elderly
+lady with a fair complexion and light hair. I am only sorry for him.”
+
+Jacqueline had great hopes that these cruel words would be reported--as
+they were--to her stepmother, and, of course, they did not mitigate
+the Baroness’s uneasiness. Madame de Nailles revenged herself for this
+insult by dismissing the innocent echo of the impertinence--of course,
+under some plausible pretext. She felt it necessary also to be very
+cautious how she treated the enemy whom she was forced to shelter
+under her own roof. Her policy--a policy imposed on her by force of
+circumstances--was one of great indulgence and consideration, so that
+Jacqueline, soon feeling that she was for the present under no control,
+took the bit between her teeth. No other impression can adequately
+convey an idea of the sort of fury with which she plunged into
+pleasure and excitement, a state of mind which apparently, without any
+transition, succeeded her late melancholy. She had done with sentiment,
+she thought, forever. She meant to be practical and positive, a little
+Parisienne, and “in the swim.” There were plenty of examples among those
+she knew that she could follow. Berthe, Helene, and Claire Wermant were
+excellent leaders in that sort of thing. Those three daughters of
+the ‘agent de change’ were at this time at Treport, in charge of a
+governess, who let them do whatever they pleased, subject only to be
+scolded by their father, who came down every Saturday to Treport, on
+that train that was called the ‘train des maris’. They had made friends
+with two or three American girls, who were called “fast,” and Jacqueline
+was soon enrolled in the ranks of that gay company.
+
+The cure that was begun on the wooden horse at Blackfern’s was completed
+on the sea-shore.
+
+The girls with whom she now associated were nine or ten little imps of
+Satan, who, with their hair flying in the wind and their caps over one
+ear, made the quiet beach ring with their boy-like gayety. They were
+called “the Blue Band,” because of a sort of uniform that they adopted.
+We speak of them intentionally as masculine, and not feminine, because
+what is masculine best suited their appearance and behavior, for, though
+all could flirt like coquettes of experience, they were more like boys
+than girls, if judged by their age and their costume.
+
+These Blues lived close to one another on that avenue that is edged
+with chalets, cottages, and villas, whose lower floors are abundantly
+provided with great glass windows, which seem to let the ocean into
+their very rooms, as well as to lay bare everything that passes in them
+to the public eye, as frankly as if their inmates bivouacked in the open
+street. Nothing was private; neither the meals, nor the coming and going
+of visitors. It must be said, however, that the inhabitants of these
+glass houses were very seldom at home. Bathing, and croquet, or tennis,
+at low water, on the sands, searching for shells, fishing with nets,
+dances at the Casino, little family dances alternating with concerts, to
+which even children went till nine o’clock, would seem enough to fill
+up the days of these young people, but they had also to make boating
+excursions to Cayeux, Crotoy, and Hourdel, besides riding parties in the
+beautiful country that surrounded the Chateau of Lizerolles, where they
+usually dismounted on their return.
+
+At Lizerolles they were received by Madame d’Argy, who was delighted
+that they provided safe amusement for her son, who appeared in the midst
+of this group of half-grown girls like a young cock among the hens of
+his harem. Frederic d’Argy, the young naval officer, who was enjoying
+his holiday, as M. de Nailles had said, was enjoying it exceedingly.
+How often, long after, on board the ship Floye, as he paced the silent
+quarter-deck, far from any opportunity of flirting, did he recall
+the forms and faces of these young girls, some dark, some fair, some
+rosy-half-women and half-children, who made much of him, and scolded
+him, and teased him, and contended for his attentions, while no better
+could be had, on purpose to tease one another. Oh! what a delightful
+time he had had! They did not leave him to himself one moment. He had to
+lift them into their saddles, to assist them as they clambered over the
+rocks, to superintend their attempts at swimming, to dance with them all
+by turns, and to look after them in the difficult character of Mentor,
+for he was older than they, and were they not entrusted to his care?
+What a serious responsibility! Had not Mentor even found himself too
+often timid and excited when one little firm foot was placed in his
+hand, when his arm was round one little waist, when he could render her
+as a cavalier a thousand little services, or accept with gladness the
+role of her consoler. He did everything he could think of to please
+them, finding all of them charming, though Jacqueline never ceased to be
+the one he preferred, a preference which she might easily have inferred
+from the poor lad’s unusual timidity and awkwardness when he was brought
+into contact with her. But she paid no attention to his devotion,
+accepting himself and all he did for her as, in some sort, her personal
+property.
+
+He was of no consequence, he did not count; what was he but her comrade
+and former playfellow?
+
+Happily for Fred, he took pleasure in the familiarity with which she
+treated him--a familiarity which, had he known it, was not flattering.
+He was in the seventh heaven for a whole fortnight, during which he was
+the recipient of more dried flowers and bows of ribbon than he ever got
+in all the rest of his life--the American girls were very fond of giving
+keepsakes--but then his star waned. He was no longer the only one. The
+grown-up brother of the Wermants came to Treport--Raoul, with his air
+of a young man about town--a boulevardier, with his jacket cut in the
+latest fashion, with his cockle-shell of a boat, which he managed as
+well on salt water as on fresh, sculling with his arms bare, a cigarette
+in his mouth, a monocle in his eye, and a pith-helmet, such as is worn
+in India. The young ladies used to gather on the sands to watch him as
+he struck the water with the broad blade of his scull, near enough for
+them to see and to admire his nautical ability. They thought all his
+jokes amusing, and they delighted in his way of seizing his partner for
+a waltz and bearing her off as if she were a prize, hardly allowing her
+to touch the floor.
+
+Fred thought him, with his stock of old jokes, very ill-mannered. He
+laughed at his sculling, and had a great mind to strike him after he
+saw him waltzing with Jacqueline. But he had to acknowledge the general
+appreciation felt for the fellow whom he called vulgar.
+
+Raoul Wermant did not stay long at Treport. He had only come to see his
+sisters on his way to Dieppe, where he expected to meet a certain Leah
+Skip, an actress from the ‘Nouveautes’. If he kept her waiting, however,
+for some days, it was because he was loath to leave the handsome
+Madame de Villegry, who was living near her friend Madame de Nailles,
+recruiting herself after the fatigues of the winter season. Such being
+the situation, the young girls of the Blue Band might have tried in vain
+to make any impression upon him. But the hatred with which he inspired
+Fred found some relief in the composition of fragments of melancholy
+verse, which the young midshipman hid under his mattresses. It is not an
+uncommon thing for naval men to combine a love of the sea with a love
+of poetry. Fred’s verses were not good, but they were full of dejection.
+The poor fellow compared Raoul Wermant to Faust, and himself to Siebel.
+He spoke of
+
+        The youth whose eyes were brimming with salt tears,
+        Whose heart was troubled by a thousand fears,
+        Poor slighted lover!-since in his heavy heart
+        All his illusions perish and depart.
+
+Again, he wrote of Siebel:
+
+        O Siebel!--thine is but the common fate!
+        They told thee Fortune upon youth would wait;
+        ‘Tis false when love’s in question-and you may--
+
+Here he enumerated all the proofs of tenderness possible for a woman to
+give her lover, and then he added:
+
+        You may know all, poor Siebel!--all, some day,
+        When weary of this life and all its dreams,
+        You learn to know it is not what it seems;
+        When there is nothing that can cheer you more,
+        All that remains is fondly to adore!
+
+And after trying in vain to find a rhyme for lover, he cried:
+
+        Oh! tell me--if one grief exceeds another
+        Is not this worst, to feel mere friendship moves
+        To cruel kindness the dear girl he loves?
+
+Fred’s mother surprised him one night while he was watering with his
+tears the ink he was putting to so sorry a use. She had been aware
+that he sat up late at night--his sleeplessness was not the insomnia of
+genius--for she had seen the glare of light from his little lamp burning
+later than the usual bedtime of the chateau, in one of the turret
+chambers at Lizerolles.
+
+In vain Fred denied that he was doing anything, in vain he tried to put
+his papers out of sight; his mother was so persuasive that at last he
+owned everything to her, and in addition to the comfort he derived from
+his confession, he gained a certain satisfaction to his ‘amour-propre’,
+for Madame d’Argy thought the verses beautiful. A mother’s geese are
+always swans. But it was only when she said, “I don’t see why you should
+not marry your Jacqueline--such a thing is not by any means impossible,”
+ and promised to do all in her power to insure his happiness, that Fred
+felt how dearly he loved his mother. Oh, a thousand times more than he
+had ever supposed he loved her! However, he had not yet done with the
+agonies that lie in wait for lovers.
+
+Madame de Monredon arrived one day at the Hotel de la Plage, accompanied
+by her granddaughter, whom she had taken away from the convent before
+the beginning of the holidays. Since she had fully arranged the marriage
+with M. de Talbrun, it seemed important that Giselle should acquire
+some liveliness, and recruit her health, before the fatal wedding-day
+arrived. M. de Talbrun liked ladies to be always well and always lively,
+and it was her duty to see that Giselle accommodated herself to his
+taste; sea-bathing, life in the open air, and merry companions, were the
+things she needed to make her a little less thin, to give her tone, and
+to take some of her convent stiffness out of her. Besides, she could
+have free intercourse with her intended husband, thanks to the greater
+freedom of manners permitted at the sea-side. Such were the ideas of
+Madame de Monredon.
+
+Poor Giselle! In vain they dressed her in fine clothes, in vain they
+talked to her and scolded her from morning till night, she continued to
+be the little convent-bred schoolgirl she had always been; with downcast
+eyes, pale as a flower that has known no sunlight, and timid to a point
+of suffering. M. de Talbrun frightened her as much as ever, and she had
+looked forward to the comfort of weeping in the arms of Jacqueline, who,
+the last time she had seen her, had been herself so unhappy. But what
+was her astonishment to find the young girl, who, a few weeks before,
+had made her such tragic confidences through the grille in the convent
+parlor, transformed into a creature bent on excitement and amusement.
+When she attempted to allude to the subject on which Jacqueline had
+spoken to her at the convent, and to ask her what it was that had then
+made her so unhappy, Jacqueline cried: “Oh! my dear, I have forgotten
+all about it!” But there was exaggeration in this profession of
+forgetfulness, and she hurriedly drew Giselle back to the game of
+croquet, where they were joined by M. de Talbrun.
+
+The future husband of Giselle was a stout young fellow, short and
+thick-set, with broad shoulders, a large flat face, and strong jaws,
+ornamented with an enormous pair of whiskers, which partly compensated
+him for a loss of hair. He had never done anything but shoot and hunt
+over his property nine months in the year, and spend the other three
+months in Paris, where the jockey Club and ballet-dancers sufficed for
+his amusement. He did not pretend to be a man whose bachelor life had
+been altogether blameless, but he considered himself to be a “correct”
+ man, according to what he understood by that expression, which implied
+neither talents, virtues, nor good manners; nevertheless, all the Blue
+Band agreed that he was a finished type of gentleman-hood. Even Raoul’s
+sisters had to confess, with a certain disgust, that, whatever people
+may say, in our own day the aristocracy of wealth has to lower its flag
+before the authentic quarterings of the old noblesse. They secretly
+envied Giselle because she was going to be a grande dame, while all the
+while they asserted that old-fashioned distinctions had no longer any
+meaning. Nevertheless, they looked forward to the day when they, too,
+might take their places in the Faubourg St. Germain. One may purchase
+that luxury with a fortune of eight hundred thousand francs.
+
+The croquet-ground, which was underwater at high tide, was a long
+stretch of sand that fringed the shingle. Two parties were formed, in
+which care was taken to make both sides as nearly equal as possible,
+after which the game began, with screams, with laughter, a little
+cheating and some disputes, as is the usual custom. All this appeared
+to amuse Oscar de Talbrun--exceedingly. For the first time during his
+wooing he was not bored. The Misses Sparks--Kate and Nora--by their
+“high spirits” agreeably reminded him of one or two excursions he had
+made in past days into Bohemian society.
+
+He formed the highest opinion of Jacqueline when he saw how her
+still short skirts showed pretty striped silk stockings, and how
+her well-shaped foot was planted firmly on a blue ball, when she was
+preparing to roquer the red one. The way in which he fixed his eyes upon
+her gave great offense to Fred, and did it not alarm and shock Giselle?
+No! Giselle looked on calmly at the fun and talk around her, as unmoved
+as the stump of a tree, spoiling the game sometimes by her ignorance
+or her awkwardness, well satisfied that M. de Talbrun should leave her
+alone. Talking with him was very distasteful to her.
+
+“You have been more stupid than usual,” had been what her grandmother
+had never failed to say to her in Paris after one of his visits, which
+he alternated with bouquets. But at Treport no one seemed to mind her
+being stupid, and indeed M. de Talbrun hardly thought of her existence,
+up to the moment when they were all nearly caught by the first wave that
+came rolling in over the croquet-ground, when all the girls took flight,
+flushed, animated, and with lively gesticulation, while the gentlemen
+followed with the box into which had been hastily flung hoops, balls,
+and mallets.
+
+On their way Count Oscar condescendingly explained to Fred, as to a
+novice, that the only good thing about croquet was that it brought men
+and girls together. He was himself very good at games, he said, having
+remarkably firm muscles and exceptionally sharp sight; but he went on to
+add that he had not been able to show what he could do that day. The wet
+sand did not make so good a croquet-ground as the one he had had made in
+his park! It is a good thing to know one’s ground in all circumstances,
+but especially in playing croquet. Then, dexterously passing from the
+game to the players, he went on to say, under cover of giving Fred a
+warning, that a man need not fear going too far with those girls from
+America--they had known how to flirt from the time they were born. They
+could look out for themselves, they had talons and beaks; but up to a
+certain point they were very easy to get on with. Those other players
+were queer little things; the three sisters Wermant were not wanting in
+chic, but, hang it!--the sweetest flower of them all, to his mind, was
+the tall one, the dark one--unripe fruit in perfection! “And a year
+or two hence,” added M. de Talbrun, with all the self-confidence of an
+expert, “every one will be talking about her in the world of society.”
+
+Poor Fred kept silent, trying to curb his wrath. But the blood mounted
+to his temples as he listened to these remarks, poured into his ear by a
+man of thirty-five, between puffs of his cigar, because there was
+nobody else to whom he could make them. But they seemed to Fred very
+ill-mannered and ill-timed. If he had not dreaded making himself absurd,
+he would gladly have stood forth as the champion of the Sparks, the
+Wermants, and all the other members of the Blue Band, so that he might
+give vent to the anger raging in his heart on hearing that odious
+compliment to Jacqueline. Why was he not old enough to marry her? What
+right had that detestable Talbrun to take notice of any girl but his
+fiancee? If he himself could marry now, his choice would soon be made!
+No doubt, later--as his mother had said to him. But would Jacqueline
+wait? Everybody was beginning to admire her. Somebody would carry her
+off--somebody would cut him out while he was away at sea. Oh, horrible
+thought for a young lover!
+
+That night, at the Casino, while dancing a quadrille with Giselle, he
+could not refrain from saying to her, “Don’t you object to Monsieur de
+Talbrun’s dancing so much with Jacqueline?”
+
+“Who?--I?” she cried, astonished, “I don’t see why he should not.”
+ And then, with a faint laugh, she added: “Oh, if she would only take
+him--and keep him!”
+
+But Madame de Monredon kept a sharp eye upon M. de Talbrun. “It seems
+to me,” she said, looking fixedly into the face of her future
+grandson-in-law, “that you really take pleasure in making children skip
+about with you.”
+
+“So I do,” he replied, frankly and good-humoredly. “It makes me feel
+young again.”
+
+And Madame de Monredon was satisfied. She was ready to admit that most
+men marry women who have not particularly enchanted them, and she had
+brought up Giselle with all those passive qualities, which, together
+with a large fortune, usually suit best with a ‘mariage de convenance’.
+
+Meantime Jacqueline piqued herself upon her worldly wisdom, which she
+looked upon as equal to Madame de Monredon’s, since the terrible event
+which had filled her mind with doubts. She thought M. de Talbrun would
+do well enough for a husband, and she took care to say so to Giselle.
+
+“It is a fact,” she told her, with all the self-confidence of large
+experience, “that men who are very fascinating always remain bachelors.
+That is probably why Monsieur de Cymier, Madame de Villegry’s handsome
+cousin, does not think of marrying.”
+
+She was mistaken. The Comte de Cymier, a satellite who revolved around
+that star of beauty, Madame de Villegry, had been by degrees brought
+round by that lady herself to thoughts of matrimony.
+
+Madame de Villegry, notwithstanding her profuse use of henna and many
+cosmetics, which was always the first thing to strike those who saw her,
+prided herself on being uncompromised as to her moral character. There
+are some women who, because they stop short of actual vice, consider
+themselves irreproachable. They are willing, so to speak, to hang out
+the bush, but keep no tavern. In former times an appearance of evil was
+avoided in order to cover evil deeds, but at present there are those
+who, under the cover of being only “fast,” risk the appearance of evil.
+
+Madame de Villegry was what is sometimes called a “professional beauty.”
+ She devoted many hours daily to her toilette, she liked to have a crowd
+of admirers around her. But when one of them became too troublesome, she
+got rid of him by persuading him to marry. She had before this proposed
+several young girls to Gerard de Cymier, each one plainer and more
+insignificant than the others. It was to tell his dear friend that the
+one she had last suggested was positively too ugly for him, that the
+young attache to an embassy had come down to the sea-side to visit her.
+
+The day after his arrival he was sitting on the shingle at Madame de
+Villegry’s feet, both much amused by the grotesque spectacle presented
+by the bathers, who exhibited themselves in all degrees of ugliness and
+deformity. Of course Madame de Villegry did not bathe, being, as she
+said, too nervous. She was sitting under a large parasol and enjoying
+her own superiority over those wretched, amphibious creatures who
+waddled on the sands before her, comparing Madame X to a seal and
+Mademoiselle Z to the skeleton of a cuttle-fish.
+
+“Well! it was that kind of thing you wished me to marry,” said M. de
+Cymier, in a tone of resentment.
+
+“But, my poor friend, what would you have? All young girls are like
+that. They improve when they are married.”
+
+“If one could only be sure.”
+
+“One is never sure of anything, especially anything relating to young
+girls. One can not say that they do more than exist till they are
+married. A husband has to make whatever he chooses out of them. You are
+quite capable of making what you choose of your wife. Take the risk,
+then.”
+
+“I could educate her as to morals--though, I must say, I am not much
+used to that kind of instruction; but you will permit me to think that,
+as to person, I should at least wish to see a rough sketch of what I may
+expect in my wife before my marriage.”
+
+At that moment, a girl who had been bathing came out of the water a few
+yards from them; the elegant outline of her slender figure, clad in a
+bathing-suit of white flannel, which clung to her closely, was thrown
+into strong relief by the clear blue background of a summer sky.
+
+“Tiens!--but she is pretty!” cried Gerard, breaking off what he was
+saying: “And she is the first pretty one I have seen!”
+
+Madame de Villegry took up her tortoiseshell opera-glasses, which were
+fastened to her waist, but already the young girl, over whose shoulders
+an attentive servant had flung a wrapper--a ‘peignoir-eponge’--had run
+along the boardwalk and stopped before her, with a gay “Good-morning!”
+
+“Jacqueline!” said Madame de Villegry. “Well, my dear child, did you
+find the water pleasant?”
+
+“Delightful!” said the young girl, giving a rapid glance at M. de
+Cymier, who had risen.
+
+He was looking at her with evident admiration, an admiration at which
+she felt much flattered. She was closely wrapped in her soft, snow-white
+peignoir, bordered with red, above which rose her lovely neck and head.
+She was trying to catch, on the point of one little foot, one of her
+bathing shoes, which had slipped from her. The foot which, when well
+shod, M. de Talbrun, through his eyeglass, had so much admired, was
+still prettier without shoe or stocking. It was so perfectly formed, so
+white, with a little pink tinge here and there, and it was set upon so
+delicate an ankle! M. de Cymier looked first at the foot, and then his
+glance passed upward over all the rest of the young figure, which could
+be seen clearly under the clinging folds of the wet drapery. Her form
+could be discerned from head to foot, though nothing was uncovered but
+the pretty little arm which held together with a careless grace the
+folds of her raiment. The eye of the experienced observer ran rapidly
+over the outline of her figure, till it reached the dark head and
+the brown hair, which rippled in little curls over her forehead. Her
+complexion, slightly golden, was not protected by one of those absurd
+hats which many bathers place on top of oiled silk caps which fit them
+closely. Neither was the precaution of oiled silk wanted to protect the
+thick and curling hair, now sprinkled with great drops that shone like
+pearls and diamonds. The water, instead of plastering her hair upon her
+temples, had made it more curly and more fleecy, as it hung over her
+dark eyebrows, which, very near together at the nose, gave to her eyes a
+peculiar, slightly oblique expression. Her teeth were dazzling, and
+were displayed by the smile which parted her lips--lips which were, if
+anything, too red for her pale complexion. She closed her eyelids now
+and then to shade her eyes from the too blinding sunlight. Those eyes
+were not black, but that hazel which has golden streaks. Though only
+half open, they had quickly taken in the fact that the young man sitting
+beside Madame de Villegry was very handsome.
+
+As she went on with a swift step to her bathing-house, she drew out two
+long pins from her back hair, shaking it and letting it fall down
+her back with a slightly impatient and imperious gesture; she wished,
+probably, that it might dry more quickly.
+
+“The devil!” said M. de Cymier, watching her till she disappeared into
+the bathing-house. “I never should have thought that it was all her own!
+There is nothing wanting in her. That is a young creature it is pleasant
+to see.”
+
+“Yes,” said Madame de Villegry, quietly, “she will be very good-looking
+when she is eighteen.”
+
+“Is she nearly eighteen?”
+
+“She is and she is not, for time passes so quickly. A girl goes to sleep
+a child, and wakes up old enough to be married. Would you like to be
+informed, without loss of time, as to her fortune?”
+
+“Oh! I should not care much about her dot. I look out first for other
+things.”
+
+“I know, of course; but Jacqueline de Nailles comes of a very good
+family.”
+
+“Is she the daughter of the deputy?”
+
+“Yes, his only daughter. He has a pretty house in the Parc Monceau and a
+chateau of some importance in the Haute-Vienne.”
+
+“Very good; but, I repeat, I am not mercenary. Of course, if I should
+marry, I should like, for my wife’s sake, to live as well as a married
+man as I have lived as a bachelor.”
+
+“Which means that you would be satisfied with a fortune equal to your
+own. I should have thought you might have asked more. It is true that
+if you have been suddenly thunderstruck that may alter your
+calculations--for it was very sudden, was it not? Venus rising from the
+sea!”
+
+“Please don’t exaggerate! But you are not so cruel, seeing you are
+always urging me to marry, as to wish me to take a wife who looks like a
+fright or a horror.”
+
+“Heaven preserve me from any such wish! I should be very glad if my
+little friend Jacqueline were destined to work your reformation.”
+
+“I defy the most careful parent to find anything against me at this
+moment, unless it be a platonic devotion. The youth of Mademoiselle de
+Nailles is an advantage, for I might indulge myself in that till we were
+married, and then I should settle down and leave Paris, where nothing
+keeps me but--”
+
+“But a foolish fancy,” laughed Madame de Villegry. “However, in return
+for your madrigal, accept the advice of a friend. The Nailles seem to
+me to be prosperous, but everybody in society appears so, and one never
+knows what may happen any day. You would not do amiss if, before you
+go on, you were to talk with Wermant, the ‘agent de change’, who has a
+considerable knowledge of the business affairs of Jacqueline’s father.
+He could tell you about them better than I can.”
+
+“Wermant is at Treport, is he not? I thought I saw him--”
+
+“Yes, he is here till Monday. You have twenty-four hours.”
+
+“Do you really think I am in such a hurry?”
+
+“Will you take a bet that by this time to-morrow you will not know
+exactly the amount of her dot and the extent of her expectations?”
+
+“You would lose. I have something else to think of--now and always.”
+
+“What?” she said, carelessly.
+
+“You have forbidden me ever to mention it.”
+
+Silence ensued. Then Madame de Villegry said, smiling:
+
+“I suppose you would like me to present you this evening to my friends
+the De Nailles?”
+
+And in fact they all met that evening at the Casino, and Jacqueline,
+in a gown of scarlet foulard, which would have been too trying for any
+other girl, seemed to M. de Cymier as pretty as she had been in her
+bathing-costume. Her hair was not dressed high, but it was gathered
+loosely together and confined by a ribbon of the same color as her gown,
+and she wore a little sailor hat besides. In this costume she had been
+called by M. de Talbrun the “Fra Diavolo of the Seas,” and she never
+better supported that part, by liveliness and audacity, than she
+did that evening, when she made a conquest that was envied--wildly
+envied--by the three Demoiselles Wermant and the two Misses Sparks,
+for the handsome Gerard, after his first waltz with Madame de Villegry,
+asked no one to be his partner but Mademoiselle de Nailles.
+
+The girls whom he neglected had not even Fred to fall back upon, for
+Fred, the night before, had received orders to join his ship. He had
+taken leave of Jacqueline with a pang in his heart which he could
+hardly hide, but to which no keen emotion on her part seemed to respond.
+However, at least, he was spared the unhappiness of seeing the star of
+De Cymier rising above the horizon.
+
+“If he could only see me,” thought Jacqueline, waltzing in triumph with
+M. de Cymier. “If he could only see me I should be avenged.”
+
+But he was not Fred. She was not giving him a thought. It was the
+last flash of resentment and hatred that came to her in that moment of
+triumph, adding to it a touch of exquisite enjoyment.
+
+Thus she performed the obsequies of her first love!
+
+Not long after this M. de Nailles said to his wife:
+
+“Do you know, my dear, that our little Jacqueline is very much admired?
+Her success has been extraordinary. It is not likely she will die an old
+maid.”
+
+The Baronne assented rather reluctantly.
+
+“Wermant was speaking to me the other day,” went on M. de Nailles. “It
+seems that that young Count de Cymier, who is always hanging around you,
+by the way, has been making inquiries of him, in a manner that looks
+as if it had some meaning, as to what is our fortune, our position. But
+really, such a match seems too good to be true.”
+
+“Why so?” said the Baronne. “I know more about it than you do, from
+Blanche de Villegry. She gave me to understand that her cousin was much
+struck by Jacqueline at first sight, and ever since she does nothing
+but talk to me of M. de Cymier--of his birth, his fortune, his
+abilities--the charming young fellow seems gifted with everything.
+He could be Secretary of Legation, if he liked to quit Paris: In the
+meantime attache to an Embassy looks very well on a card. Attache to the
+Ministry of the Foreign Affairs does not seem so good. Jacqueline would
+be a countess, possibly an ambassadress. What would you think of that!”
+
+Madame de Nailles, who understood policy much better than her husband,
+had suddenly become a convert to opportunism, and had made a change of
+base. Not being able to devise a plan by which to suppress her young
+rival, she had begun to think that her best way to get rid of her would
+be by promoting her marriage. The little girl was fast developing into a
+woman--a woman who would certainly not consent quietly to be set aside.
+Well, then, it would be best to dispose of her in so natural a way. When
+Jacqueline’s slender and graceful figure and the freshness of her bloom
+were no longer brought into close comparison with her own charms, she
+felt she should appear much younger, and should recover some of
+her prestige; people would be less likely to remark her increasing
+stoutness, or the red spots on her face, increased by the salt air which
+was so favorable to young girls’ complexions. Yes, Jacqueline must be
+married; that was the resolution to which Madame de Nailles had come
+after several nights of sleeplessness. It was her fixed idea, replacing
+in her brain that other fixed idea which, willingly or unwillingly, she
+saw she must give up--the idea of keeping her stepdaughter in the shade.
+
+“Countess! Ambassadress!” repeated M. de Nailles, with rather a
+melancholy smile. “You are going too fast, my dear Clotilde. I don’t
+doubt that Wermant gave the best possible account of our situation; but
+when it comes to saying what I could give her as a dot, I am very much
+afraid. We should have, in that case, to fall back on Fred, for I
+have not told you everything. This morning Madame d’Argy, who has done
+nothing but weep since her boy went away, and who, she says, never will
+get accustomed to the life of misery and anxiety she will lead as a
+sailor’s mother, exclaimed, as she was talking to me: ‘Ah! there is but
+one way of keeping him at Lizerolles, of having him live there as the
+D’Argys have lived before him, quietly, like a good landlord, and
+that would be to give him your daughter; with her he would be entirely
+satisfied.’”
+
+“Ah! so that is the reason why she asked whether Jacqueline might not
+stay with her when we go to Italy! She wishes to court her by proxy. But
+I don’t think she will succeed. Monsieur de Cymier has the best chance.”
+
+“Do you suppose the child suspects--”
+
+“That he admires her? My dear friend, we have to do with a very
+sharp--sighted young person. Nothing escapes the observation of
+Mademoiselle ‘votre fille’.”
+
+And Madame de Nailles, in her turn, smiled somewhat bitterly.
+
+“Well,” said Jacqueline’s father, after a few moments’ reflection, “it
+may be as well that she should weigh for and against a match before
+deciding. She may spend several years that are difficult and dangerous
+trying to find out what she wants and to make up her mind.”
+
+“Several years?”
+
+“Hang it! You would not marry off Jacqueline at once?”
+
+“Bah! many a girl, practically not as old as she, is married at sixteen
+or seventeen.”
+
+“Why! I fancied you thought so differently!”
+
+“Our ways of thinking are sometimes altered by events, especially when
+they are founded upon sincere and disinterested affection.”
+
+“Like that of good parents, such as we are,” added M. de Nailles, ending
+her sentence with an expression of grateful emotion.
+
+For one moment the Baronne paled under this compliment.
+
+“What did you say to Madame d’Argy?” she hastened to ask.
+
+“I said we must give the young fellow’s beard time to grow.”
+
+“Yes, that was right. I prefer Monsieur de Cymier a hundred times over.
+Still, if nothing better offers--a bird in the hand, you know--”
+
+Madame de Nailles finished her sentence by a wave of her fan.
+
+“Oh! our bird in the hand is not to be despised. A very handsome
+estate--”
+
+“Where Jacqueline would be bored to death. I should rather see her
+radiant at some foreign court. Let me manage it. Let me bring her out.
+Give me carte blanche and let me have some society this winter.”
+
+Madame de Nailles, whether she knew it or not--probably she did, for she
+had great skill in reading the thoughts of others--was acting precisely
+in accordance with the wishes or the will of Jacqueline, who, having
+found much enjoyment in the dances at the Casino, had made up her
+mind that she meant to come out into society before any of her young
+companions.
+
+“I shall not have to beg and implore her,” she said to herself,
+anticipating the objections of her stepmother. “I shall only have
+politely to let her suspect that such a thing may have occurred as
+having had a listener at a door. I paid dearly enough for this hold over
+her. I have no scruple in using it.”
+
+Madame de Nailles was not mistaken in her stepdaughter; she was very far
+advanced beyond her age, thanks to the cruel wrong that had been done
+her by the loss of her trust in her elders and her respect for them. Her
+heart had had its past, though she was still hardly more than a child--a
+sad past, though its pain was being rapidly effaced. She now thought
+about it only at intervals. Time and circumstances were operating on her
+as they act upon us generally; only in her case more quickly than usual,
+which produced in her character and feelings phenomena that might have
+seemed curious to an observer. She was something of a woman, something
+of a child, something of a philosopher. At night, when she was dancing
+with Wermant, or Cymier, or even Talbrun, or on horseback, an exercise
+which all the Blues were wild about, she was an audacious flirt, a girl
+up to anything; and in the morning, at low tide, she might be seen, with
+her legs and feet bare, among the children, of whom there were many on
+the sands, digging ditches, making ramparts, constructing towers and
+fortifications in wet sand, herself as much amused as if she had been
+one of the babies themselves. There was screaming and jumping, and
+rushing out of reach of the waves which came up ready to overthrow the
+most complicated labors of the little architects, rough romping of all
+kinds, enough to amaze and disconcert a lover.
+
+But no one could have guessed at the thoughts which, in the midst of all
+this fun and frolic, were passing through the too early ripened mind of
+Jacqueline. She was thinking that many things to which we attach great
+value and importance in this world are as easily swept away as the sand
+barriers raised against the sea by childish hands; that everywhere there
+must be flux and reflux, that the beach the children had so dug up would
+soon become smooth as a mirror, ready for other little ones to dig it
+over again, tempting them to work, and yet discouraging their industry.
+Her heart, she thought, was like the sand, ready for new impressions.
+The elegant form of M. de Cymier slightly overshadowed it, distinct
+among other shadows more confused.
+
+And Jacqueline said to herself with a smile, exactly what her father and
+Madame de Nailles had said to each other:
+
+“Countess!--who knows? Ambassadress! Perhaps--some day--”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. A PUZZLING CORRESPONDENCE
+
+“But I can not see any reason why we should not take Jacqueline with us
+to Italy. She is just of an age to profit by it.”
+
+These words were spoken by M. de Nailles after a long silence at the
+breakfast-table. They startled his hearers like a bomb.
+
+Jacqueline waited to hear what would come next, fixing a keen look upon
+her stepmother. Their eyes met like the flash of two swords.
+
+The eyes of the one said: “Now, let us hear what you will answer!” while
+the other strove to maintain that calmness which comes to some people in
+a moment of danger. The Baroness grew a little pale, and then said, in
+her softest tones:
+
+“You are quite right, ‘mon ami’, but Jacqueline, I think, prefers to
+stay.”
+
+“I decidedly prefer to stay,” said Jacqueline.
+
+Her adversary, much relieved by this response, could not repress a sigh.
+
+“It seems singular,” said M. de Nailles.
+
+“What! that I prefer to pass a month or six weeks with Madame d’Argy?
+Besides, Giselle is going to be married during that time.”
+
+“They might put it off until we come back, I should suppose.”
+
+“Oh! I don’t think they would,” cried the Baroness. “Madame de Monredon
+is so selfish. She was offended to think we should talk of going away
+on the eve of an event she considers so important. Besides, she has so
+little regard for me that I should think her more likely to hasten the
+wedding-day rather than retard it, if it were only for the pleasure of
+giving us a lesson.”
+
+“I am sorry. I should have been glad to be, as she wished, one
+of Giselle’s witnesses, but people don’t take my position into
+consideration. If I do not take advantage of the recess--”
+
+“Besides,” interrupted Jacqueline, carelessly, “your journey must
+coincide with that of Monsieur Marien.”
+
+She had the pleasure of seeing her stepmother again slightly change
+color. Madame de Nailles was pouring out for herself a cup of tea with
+singular care and attention.
+
+“Of course,” said M. de Nailles. His daughter pitied him, and cried,
+with an increasing wish to annoy her stepmother: “Mamma, don’t you
+see that your teapot has no tea in it? Yes,” she went on, “it must be
+delightful to travel in Italy in company with a great artist who would
+explain everything; but then one would be expected to visit all the
+picture-galleries, and I hate pictures, since--”
+
+She paused and again looked meaningly at her stepmother, whose soft blue
+eyes showed anguish of spirit, and seemed to say: “Oh, what a cruel hold
+she has upon me!” Jacqueline continued, carelessly--“Picture-galleries I
+don’t care for--I like nature a hundred times better. Some day I should
+like to take a journey to suit myself, my own journey! Oh, papa, may I?
+A journey on foot with you in the Tyrol?”
+
+Madame de Nailles was no great walker.
+
+“Both of us, just you and I alone, with our alpenstocks in our hands--it
+would be lovely! But Italy and painters--”
+
+Here, with a boyish flourish of her hands, she seemed to send that
+classic land to Jericho!
+
+“Do promise me, papa!”
+
+“Before asking a reward, you must deserve it,” said her father,
+severely, who saw something was wrong.
+
+During her stay at Lizerolles, which her perverseness, her resentment,
+and a repugnance founded on instincts of delicacy, had made her prefer
+to a journey to Italy, Jacqueline, having nothing better to do, took it
+into her head to write to her friend Fred. The young man received three
+letters at three different ports in the Mediterranean and in the West
+Indies, whose names were long associated in his mind with delightful and
+cruel recollections. When the first was handed to him with one from his
+mother, whose letters always awaited him at every stopping-place, the
+blood flew to his face, his heart beat violently, he could have cried
+aloud but for the necessity of self-command in the presence of his
+comrades, who had already remarked in whispers to each other, and with
+envy, on the pink envelope, which exhaled ‘l’odor di femina’. He hid his
+treasure quickly, and carried it to a spot where he could be alone;
+then he kissed the bold, pointed handwriting that he recognized at once,
+though never before had it written his address. He kissed, too, more
+than once, the pink seal with a J on it, whose slender elegance reminded
+him of its owner. Hardly did he dare to break the seal; then forgetting
+altogether, as we might be sure, his mother’s letter, which he knew
+beforehand was full of good advice and expressions of affection, he
+eagerly read this, which he had not expected to receive:
+
+
+               “LIZEROLLES, October, 5, 188-
+
+   “MY DEAR FRED:
+
+   “Your mother thinks you would be pleased to receive a letter from
+   me, and I hope you will be. You need not answer this if you do not
+   care to do so. You will notice, ‘par parenthese’, that I take this
+   opportunity of saying you and not thou to you. It is easier to
+   change the familiar mode of address in writing than in speaking, and
+   when we meet again the habit will have become confirmed. But, as I
+   write, it will require great attention, and I can not promise to
+   keep to it to the end. Half an hour’s chat with an old friend will
+   also help me to pass the time, which I own seems rather long, as it
+   is passed by your sweet, dear mother and myself at Lizerolles. Oh,
+   if you were only here it would be different! In the first place,
+   we should talk less of a certain Fred, which would be one great
+   advantage. You must know that you are the subject of our discourse
+   from morning to night; we talk only of the dangers of the seas, the
+   future prospects of a seaman, and all the rest of it. If the wind
+   is a little higher than usual, your mother begins to cry; she is
+   sure you are battling with a tempest. If any fishing-boat is
+   wrecked, we talk of nothing but shipwrecks; and I am asked to join
+   in another novena, in addition to those with which we must have
+   already wearied Notre Dame de Treport. Every evening we spread out
+   the map: ‘See, Jacqueline, he must be here now--no, he is almost
+   there,’ and lines of red ink are traced from one port to another,
+   and little crosses are made to show the places where we hope you
+   will get your letters--‘Poor boy, poor, dear boy!’ In short,
+   notwithstanding all the affectionate interest I take in you, this is
+   sometimes too much for me. In fact, I think I must be very fond of
+   thee not to have grown positively to hate thee for all this fuss.
+   There! In this last sentence, instead of saying you, I have said
+   thee! That ought to gild the pill for you!
+
+   “We do not go very frequently to visit Treport, except to invoke for
+   you the protection of Heaven, and I like it just as well, for since
+   the last fortnight in September, which was very rainy, the beach is
+   dismal--so different from what it was in the summer. The town looks
+   gloomy under a cloudy sky with its blackened old brick houses! We
+   are better off at Lizerolles, whose autumnal beauties you know so
+   well that I will say nothing about them.--Oh, Fred, how often I
+   regret that I am not a boy! I could take your gun and go shooting
+   in the swamps, where there are clouds of ducks now. I feel sure
+   that if you were in my place, you could kill time without killing
+   game; but I am at the end of my small resources when I have played a
+   little on the piano to amuse your mother and have read her the
+   ‘Gazette de France’. In the evening we read a translation of some
+   English novel. There are neighbors, of course, old fogies who stay
+   all the year round in Picardy--but, tell me, don’t you find them
+   sometimes a little too respectable? My greatest comfort is in your
+   dog, who loves me as much as if I were his master, though I can not
+   take him out shooting. While I write he is lying on the hem of my
+   gown and makes a little noise, as much as to tell me that I recall
+   you to his remembrance. Yet you are not to suppose that I am
+   suffering from ennui, or am ungrateful, nor above all must you
+   imagine that I have ceased to love your excellent mother with all my
+   heart. I love her, on the contrary, more than ever since I passed
+   this winter through a great, great sorrow--a sorrow which is now
+   only a sad remembrance, but which has changed for me the face of
+   everything in this world. Yes, since I have suffered myself, I
+   understand your mother. I admire her, I love her more than ever.
+
+   “How happy you are, my dear Fred, to have such a sweet mother,--
+   a real mother who never thinks about her face, or her figure, or her
+   age, but only of the success of her son; a dear little mother in a
+   plain black gown, and with pretty gray hair, who has the manners and
+   the toilette that just suit her, who somehow always seems to say:
+   ‘I care for nothing but that which affects my son.’ Such mothers are
+   rare, believe me. Those that I know, the mothers of my friends, are
+   for the most part trying to appear as young as their daughters--nay,
+   prettier, and of course more elegant. When they have sons they make
+   them wear jackets a l’anglaise and turn-down collars, up to the age
+   when I wore short skirts. Have you noticed that nowadays in Paris
+   there are only ladies who are young, or who are trying to make
+   themselves appear so? Up to the last moment they powder and paint,
+   and try to make themselves different from what age has made them.
+   If their hair was black it grows blacker--if red, it is more red.
+   But there is no longer any gray hair in Paris--it is out of fashion.
+   That is the reason why I think your mother’s pretty silver curls so
+   lovely and ‘distingues’. I kiss them every night for you, after I
+   have kissed them for myself.
+
+   “Have a good voyage, come back soon, and take care of yourself, dear
+   Fred.”
+
+The young sailor read this letter over and over again. The more he read
+it the more it puzzled him. Most certainly he felt that Jacqueline gave
+him a great proof of confidence when she spoke to him of some mysterious
+unhappiness, an unhappiness of which it was evident her stepmother
+was the cause. He could see that much; but he was infinitely far from
+suspecting the nature of the woes to which she alluded. Poor Jacqueline!
+He pitied her without knowing what for, with a great outburst of
+sympathy, and an honest desire to do anything in the world to make her
+happy. Was it really possible that she could have been enduring any
+grief that summer when she had seemed so madly gay, so ready for a
+little flirtation? Young girls must be very skilful in concealing their
+inmost feelings! When he was unhappy he had it out by himself, he took
+refuge in solitude, he wanted to be done with existence. Everybody knew
+when anything went wrong with him. Why could not Jacqueline have let him
+know more plainly what it was that troubled her, and why could she not
+have shown a little tenderness toward him, instead of assuming, even
+when she said the kindest things to him, her air of mockery? And then,
+though she might pretend not to find Lizerolles stupid, he could see
+that she was bored there. Yet why had she chosen to stay at Lizerolles
+rather than go to Italy?
+
+Alas! how that little pink letter made him reflect and guess, and turn
+things over in his mind, and wish himself at the devil--that little pink
+letter which he carried day and night on his breast and made it crackle
+as it lay there, when he laid his hand on the satin folds so near his
+heart! It had an odor of sweet violets which seemed to him to overpower
+the smell of pitch and of salt water, to fill the air, to perfume
+everything.
+
+“That young fellow has the instincts of a sailor,” said his superior
+officers when they saw him standing in attitudes which they thought
+denoted observation, though with him it was only reverie. He would stand
+with his eyes fixed upon some distant point, whence he fancied he could
+see emerging from the waves a small, brown, shining head, with long hair
+streaming behind, the head of a girl swimming, a girl he knew so well.
+
+“One can see that he takes an interest in nautical phenomena, that he
+is heart and soul in his profession, that he cares for nothing else. Oh,
+he’ll make a sailor! We may be sure of that!”
+
+Fred sent his young friend and cousin, by way of reply, a big packet
+of manuscript, the leaves of which were of all sizes, over which he
+had poured forth torrents of poetry, amorous and descriptive, under the
+title: At Sea.
+
+Never would he have dared to show her this if the ocean had not lain
+between them. He was frightened when his packet had been sent. His only
+comfort was in the thought that he had hypocritically asked Jacqueline
+for her literary opinion of his verses; but she could not fail, he
+thought, to understand.
+
+Long before an answer could have been expected, he got another letter,
+sky-blue this time, much longer than the first, giving him an account of
+Giselle’s wedding.
+
+   “Your mother and I went together to Normandy, where the marriage was
+   to take place after the manner of old times, ‘in the fashion of the
+   Middle Ages,’ as our friends the Wermants said to me, who might
+   perhaps not have laughed at it had they been invited. Madame de
+   Monredon is all for old customs, and she had made it a great point
+   that the wedding should not take place in Paris. Had I been
+   Giselle, I should not have liked it. I know nothing more elegant or
+   more solemn than the entrance of a bridal party into the Madeleine,
+   but we shall have to be content with Saint-Augustin. Still, the
+   toilettes, as they pass up the aisle, even there, are very
+   effective, and the decoration of the tall, high altar is
+   magnificent. Toc! Toc! First come the beadles with their
+   halberds, then the loud notes of the organ, then the wide doors are
+   thrown open, making a noise as they turn on their great hinges,
+   letting the noise of carriages outside be heard in the church; and
+   then comes the bride in a ray of sunshine. I could wish for nothing
+   more. A grand wedding in the country is much more quiet, but it is
+   old-fashioned. In the little village church the guests were very
+   much crowded, and outside there was a great mob of country folk.
+   Carpets had been laid down over the dilapidated pavement, composed
+   principally of tombstones. The rough walls were hung with scarlet.
+   All the clergy of the neighborhood were present. A Monsignor--
+   related to the Talbruns--pronounced the nuptial benediction; his
+   address was a panegyric on the two families. He gave us to
+   understand that if he did not go back quite as far as the Crusades,
+   it was only because time was wanting.
+
+   “Madame de Monredon was all-glorious, of course. She certainly
+   looked like an old vulture, in a pelisse of gray velvet, with a
+   chinchilla boa round her long, bare neck, and her big beak, with
+   marabouts overshadowing it, of the same color. Monsieur de Talbrun
+   --well! Monsieur de Talbrun was very bald, as bald as he could be.
+   To make up for the want of hair on his head, he has plenty of it on
+   his hands. It is horrid, and it makes him look like an animal. You
+   have no idea how queer he looked when he sat down, with his big,
+   pink head just peeping over the back of the crimson velvet chair,
+   which was, however, almost as tall as he is. He is short, you may
+   remember. As to our poor Giselle, the prettiest persons sometimes
+   look badly as brides, and those who are not pretty look ugly. Do
+   you recollect that picture--by Velasquez, is it not? of a fair
+   little Infanta stiffly swathed in cloth of gold, as becomes her
+   dignity, and looking crushed by it? Giselle’s gown was of point
+   d’Alencon, old family lace as yellow as ancient parchment, but of
+   inestimable value. Her long corsage, made in the fashion of Anne of
+   Austria, looked on her like a cuirass, and she dragged after her,
+   somewhat awkwardly, a very long train, which impeded her movement as
+   she walked. A lace veil, as hereditary and time-worn as the gown,
+   but which had been worn by all the Monredons at their weddings, the
+   present dowager’s included, hid the pretty, light hair of our dear
+   little friend, and was supported by a sort of heraldic comb and some
+   orange-flowers; in short, you can not imagine anything more heavy or
+   more ugly. Poor Giselle, loaded down with it, had red eyes, a face
+   of misery, and the air of a martyr. For all this her grandmother
+   scolded her sharply, which of course did not mend matters. ‘Du
+   reste’, she seemed absorbed in prayer or thought during the
+   ceremony, in which I took up the offerings, by the way, with a young
+   lieutenant of dragoons just out of the military school at Saint Cyr:
+   a uniform always looks well on such occasions. Nor was Monsieur de
+   Talbrun one of those lukewarm Christians who hear mass with their
+   arms crossed and their noses in the air. He pulled a jewelled
+   prayerbook out of his pocket, which Giselle had given him. Speaking
+   of presents, those he gave her were superb: pearls as big as
+   hazelnuts, a ruby heart that was a marvel, a diamond crescent that I
+   am afraid she will never wear with such an air as it deserves, and
+   two strings of diamonds ‘en riviere’, which I should suppose she
+   would have reset, for rivieres are no longer in fashion. The stones
+   are enormous.
+
+   “But, poor dear! she could care little for such things. All she
+   wanted was to get back as quickly as she could into her usual
+   clothes. She said to me, again and again: ‘Pray God for me that I
+   may be a good wife. I am so afraid I may not be. To belong to
+   Monsieur de Talbrun in this world, and in the next; to give up
+   everything for him, seems so extraordinary. Indeed, I think I
+   hardly knew what I was promising.’ I felt sorry for her; I kissed
+   her. I was ready to cry myself, and poor Giselle went on: ‘If you
+   knew, dear, how I love you! how I love all my friends! really to
+   love, people must have been brought up together--must have always
+   known each other.’ I don’t think she was right, but everybody has
+   his or her ideas about such things. I tried, by way of consoling
+   her, to draw her attention to the quantities of presents she had
+   received. They were displayed on several tables in the smaller
+   drawing-room, but her grandmother would not let them put the name of
+   the giver upon each, as is the present custom. She said that it
+   humiliated those who had not been able to make gifts as expensive as
+   others. She is right, when one comes to think of it. Nor would she
+   let the trousseau be displayed; she did not think it proper, but I
+   saw enough to know that there were marvels in linen, muslin, silks,
+   and surahs, covered all over with lace. One could see that the
+   great mantua-maker had not consulted the grandmother, who says that
+   women of distinction in her day did not wear paltry trimmings.
+
+   “Dinner was served under a tent for all the village people during
+   the two mortal hours we had to spend over a repast, in which Madame
+   de Monredon’s cook excelled himself. Then came complimentary
+   addresses in the old-fashioned style, composed by the village
+   schoolmaster who, for a wonder, knew what he was about; groups of
+   village children, boys and girls, came bringing their offerings,
+   followed by pet lambs decked with ribbons; it was all in the style
+   of the days of Madame de Genlis. While we danced in the salons
+   there was dancing in the barn, which had been decorated for the
+   occasion. In short; lords and ladies and laborers all seemed to
+   enjoy themselves, or made believe they did. The Parisian gentlemen
+   who danced were not very numerous. There were a few friends of
+   Monsieur de Talbrun’s, however--among them, a Monsieur de Cymier,
+   whom possibly you remember having seen last summer at Treport; he
+   led the cotillon divinely. The bride and bridegroom drove away
+   during the evening, as they do in England, to their own house, which
+   is not far off. Monsieur de Talbrun’s horses--a magnificent pair,
+   harnessed to a new ‘caleche’--carried off Psyche, as an old
+   gentleman in gold spectacles said near me. He was a pretentious old
+   personage, who made a speech at table, very inappropriate and much
+   applauded. Poor Giselle! I have not seen her since, but she has
+   written me one of those little notes which, when she was in the
+   convent, she used to sign Enfant de Marie. It begged me again to
+   pray earnestly for her that she might not fail in the fulfilment of
+   her new duties. It seems hard, does it not? Let us hope that
+   Monsieur de Talbrun, on his part, may not find that his new life
+   rather wearies him! Do you know what should have been Giselle’s
+   fate--since she has a mania about people being thoroughly acquainted
+   before marriage? What would two or three years more or less have
+   mattered? She would have made an admirable wife for a sailor; she
+   would have spent the months of your absence kneeling before the
+   altar; she would have multiplied the lamentations and the
+   tendernesses of your excellent mother. I have been thinking this
+   ever since the wedding-day--a very sad day, after all.
+
+   “But how I have let my pen run on. I shall have to put on two
+   stamps, notwithstanding my thin paper. But then you have plenty of
+   time to read on board-ship, and this account may amuse you. Make
+   haste and thank me for it.
+
+                  “Your old friend,
+
+                       “JACQUELINE.”
+
+Amuse him! How could he be amused by so great an insult? What! thank her
+for giving him over even in thought to Giselle or to anybody? Oh, how
+wicked, how ungrateful, how unworthy!
+
+The six pages of foreign-post paper were crumpled up by his angry
+fingers. Fred tore them with his teeth, and finally made them into a
+ball which he flung into the sea, hating himself for having been so
+foolish as to let himself be caught by the first lines, as a foolish
+fish snaps at the bait, when, apropos to the church in which she would
+like to be married, she had added “But we should have to be content with
+Saint-Augustin.”
+
+Those words had delighted him as if they had really been meant for
+himself and Jacqueline. This promise for the future, that seemed to
+escape involuntarily from her pen, had made him find all the rest of her
+letter piquant and amusing. As he read, his mind had reverted to that
+little phrase which he now found he had interpreted wrongly. What a
+fall! How his hopes now crumbled under his feet! She must have done it
+on purpose--but no, he need not blacken her! She had written without
+thought, without purpose, in high spirits; she wanted to be witty, to be
+droll, to write gossip without any reference to him to whom her letter
+was addressed. That we who some day would make a triumphal entry into
+St. Augustin would be herself and some other man--some man with whom
+her acquaintance had been short, since she did not seem to feel in that
+matter like Giselle. Some one she did not yet know? Was that sure? She
+might know her future husband already, even now she might have made her
+choice--Marcel d’Etaples, perhaps, who looked so well in uniform, or
+that M. de Cymier, who led the cotillon so divinely. Yes! No doubt it
+was he--the last-comer. And once more Fred suffered all the pangs of
+jealousy. It seemed to him that in his loneliness, between sky and sea,
+those pangs were more acute than he had ever known them. His comrades
+teased him about his melancholy looks, and made him the butt of all
+their jokes in the cockpit. He resolved, however, to get over it, and
+at the next port they put into, Jacqueline’s letter was the cause of his
+entering for the first time some discreditable scenes of dissipation.
+
+At Bermuda he received another letter, dated from Paris, where
+Jacqueline had rejoined her parents, who had returned from Italy. She
+sent him a commission. Would he buy her a riding-whip? Bermuda was
+renowned for its horsewhips, and her father had decided that she must go
+regularly to the riding-school. They seemed anxious now to give her, as
+preliminary to her introduction into society, not only such pleasures as
+horseback exercise, but intellectual enjoyment also. She had been taken
+to the Institute to hear M. Legouve, and what was better still, in
+December her stepmother would give a little party every fortnight and
+would let her sit up till eleven o’clock. She was also to be taken to
+make some calls. In short, she felt herself rising in importance, but
+the first thing that had made her feel so was Fred’s choice of her to be
+his literary confidant. She was greatly obliged to him, and did not know
+how she could better prove to him that she was worthy of so great an
+honor than by telling him quite frankly just what she thought of his
+verses. They were very, very pretty. He had talent--great talent. Only,
+as in attending the classes of M. Regis she had acquired some little
+knowledge of the laws of versification, she would like to warn him
+against impairing a thought for the benefit of a rhyme, and she pointed
+out several such places in his compositions, ending thus:
+
+“Bravo! for sunsets, for twilights, for moonshine, for deep silence, for
+starry nights, and silvery seas--in such things you excel; one feels as
+if one were there, and one envies you the fairy scenes of ocean. But, I
+implore you, be not sentimental. That is the feeble part of your poetry,
+to my thinking, and spoils the rest. By the way, I should like to ask
+you whose are those soft eyes, that silky hair, that radiant smile, and
+all that assortment of amber, jet, and coral occurring so often in your
+visions? Is she--or rather, are they--black, yellow, green, or tattooed,
+for, of course, you have met everywhere beauties of all colors? Several
+times when it appeared as if the lady of your dreams were white, I
+fancied you were drawing a portrait of Isabelle Ray. All the girls, your
+old friends, to whom I have shown At Sea, send you their compliments,
+to which I join my own. Each of them will beg you to write her a sonnet;
+but first of all, in virtue of our ancient friendship, I want one
+myself.
+
+                         “JACQUELINE.”
+
+So! she had shown to others what was meant for her alone; what
+profanation! And what was more abominable, she had not recognized that
+he was speaking of herself. Ah! there was nothing to be done now but to
+forget her. Fred tried to do so conscientiously during all his cruise in
+the Atlantic, but the moment he got ashore and had seen Jacqueline, he
+fell again a victim to her charms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. BEAUTY AT THE FAIR
+
+She was more beautiful than ever, and her first exclamation on seeing
+him was intended to be flattering: “Ah! Fred, how much you have
+improved! But what a change! What an extraordinary change! Why, look at
+him! He is still himself, but who would have thought it was Fred!”
+
+He was not disconcerted, for he had acquired aplomb in his journeys
+round the globe, but he gave her a glance of sad reproach, while Madame
+de Nailles said, quietly:
+
+“Yes, really--How are you, Fred? The tan on your face is very
+becoming to you. You have broadened at the shoulders, and are now a
+man--something more than a man, an experienced sailor, almost an old
+seadog.”
+
+And she laughed, but only softly, because a frank laugh would have shown
+little wrinkles under her eyes and above her cheeks, which were getting
+too large.
+
+Her toilette, which was youthful, yet very carefully adapted to her
+person, showed that she was by no means as yet “laid on the shelf,” as
+Raoul Wermant elegantly said of her. She stood up, leaning over a table
+covered with toys, which it was her duty to sell at the highest price
+possible, for the place of a meeting so full of emotions for Fred was a
+charity bazaar.
+
+The moment he arrived in Paris the young officer had been, so to speak,
+seized by the collar. He had found a great glazed card, bidding him
+to attend this fair, in a fashionable quarter, and forthwith he had
+forgotten his resolution of not going near the Nailles for a long time.
+
+“This is not the same thing,” he said to himself. “One must not let
+one’s self be supposed to be stingy.” So with these thoughts he went to
+the bazaar, very glad in his secret heart to have an excuse for breaking
+his resolution.
+
+The fair was for the benefit of sufferers from a fire--somewhere or
+other. In our day multitudes of people fall victims to all kinds of
+dreadful disasters, explosions of boilers, explosions of fire-damp, of
+everything that can explode, for the agents of destruction seem to be in
+a state of unnatural excitement as well as human beings. Never before,
+perhaps, have inanimate things seemed so much in accordance with the
+spirit of the times. Fred found a superb placard, the work of Cheret, a
+pathetic scene in a mine, banners streaming in the air, with the words
+‘Bazar de Charite’ in gold letters on a red ground, and the courtyard of
+the mansion where the fair was held filled with more carriages than one
+sees at a fashionable wedding. In the vestibule many footmen were in
+attendance, the chasseurs of an Austrian ambassador, the great hulking
+fellows of the English embassy, the gray-liveried servants of old
+Rozenkranz, with their powdered heads, the negro man belonging to Madame
+Azucazillo, etc., etc. At each arrival there was a frou-frou of satin
+and lace, and inside the sales room was a hubbub like the noise in an
+aviary. Fred, finding himself at once in the full stream of Parisian
+life, but for the moment not yet part of it, indulged in some of those
+philosophic reflections to which he had been addicted on shipboard.
+
+Each of the tables showed something of the tastes, the character, the
+peculiarities of the lady who had it in charge. Madame Sterny, who had
+the most beautiful hands in the world, had undertaken to sell gloves,
+being sure that the gentlemen would be eager to buy if she would only
+consent to try them on; Madame de Louisgrif, the ‘chanoiness’, whose
+extreme emaciation was not perceived under a sort of ecclesiastical
+cape, had an assortment of embroideries and objects of devotion,
+intended only for ladies--and indeed for only the most serious among
+them; for the table that held umbrellas, parasols and canes suited to
+all ages and both sexes, a good, upright little lady had been chosen.
+Her only thought was how much money she could make by her sales. Madame
+Strahlberg, the oldest of the Odinskas, obviously expected to sell only
+to gentlemen; her table held pyramids of cigars and cigarettes, but
+nothing else was in the corner where she presided, supple and frail,
+not handsome, but far more dangerous than if she had been, with her
+unfathomable way of looking at you with her light eyes set deep under
+her eyebrows, eyes that she kept half closed, but which were yet so
+keen, and the cruel smile that showed her little sharp teeth. Her dress
+was of black grenadine embroidered with silver. She wore half mourning
+as a sort of announcement that she was a widow, in hopes that this
+might put a stop to any wicked gossip which should assert that Count
+Strahlberg was still living, having got a divorce and been very glad
+to get it. Yet people talked about her, but hardly knew what to bring
+against her, because, though anything might be suspected, nothing was
+known. She was received and even sought after in the best society, on
+account of her wonderful talents, which she employed in a manner as
+perverse as everything else about her, but which led some people to call
+her the ‘Judic des salons’. Wanda Strahlberg was now holding between her
+lips, which were artificially red, in contrast to the greenish paleness
+of her face, which caused others to call her a vampire, one of the
+cigarettes she had for sale. With one hand, she was playing, graceful as
+a cat, with her last package of regalias, tied with green ribbon, which,
+when offered to the highest bidder, brought an enormous sum. Her sister
+Colette was selling flowers, like several other young girls, but while
+for the most part these waited on their customers in silence, she was
+full of lively talk, and as unblushing in her eagerness to sell as a
+‘bouquetiere’ by profession. She had grown dangerously pretty. Fred was
+dazzled when she wanted to fasten a rose into his buttonhole, and then,
+as he paid for it, gave him another, saying: “And here is another thrown
+in for old acquaintance’ sake.”
+
+“Charity seems to cover many things,” thought the young man as he
+withdrew from her smiles and her glances, but yet he had seen nothing so
+attractive among the black, yellow, green or tattooed ladies about whom
+Jacqueline had been pleased to tease him.
+
+“Fred!”
+
+It was Jacqueline’s voice that arrested him. It was sharp and almost
+angry. She, too, was selling flowers, while at the same time she was
+helping Madame de Nailles with her toys; but she was selling with that
+decorum and graceful reserve which custom prescribes for young girls.
+“Fred, I do hope you will wear no roses but mine. Those you have are
+frightful. They make you look like a village bridegroom. Take out those
+things; come! Here is a pretty boutonniere, and I will fasten it much
+better in your buttonhole--let me.”
+
+In vain did he try to seem cold to her; his heart thawed in spite of
+himself. She held him so charmingly by the lapel of his coat, touching
+his cheek with the tip end of an aigrette which set so charmingly on the
+top of the most becoming of fur caps which she wore. Her hair was turned
+up now, showing her beautiful neck, and he could see little rebellious
+hairs curling at their own will over her pure, soft skin, while she,
+bending forward, was engaged in his service. He admired, too, her
+slender waist, only recently subjected to the restraint of a corset.
+He forgave her on the spot. At this moment a man with brown hair, tall,
+elegant, and with his moustache turned up at the ends, after the old
+fashion of the Valois, revived recently, came hurriedly up to the table
+of Madame de Nailles. Fred felt that that inimitable moustache reduced
+his not yet abundant beard to nothing.
+
+“Mademoiselle Jacqueline,” said the newcomer, “Madame de Villegry has
+sent me to beg you to help her at the buffet. She can not keep pace with
+her customers, and is asking for volunteers.”
+
+All this was uttered with a familiar assurance which greatly shocked the
+young naval man.
+
+“You permit me, Madame?”
+
+The Baroness bowed with a smile, which said, had he chosen to interpret
+it, “I give you permission to carry her off now--and forever, if you
+wish it.”
+
+At that moment she was placing in the half-unwilling arms of Hubert
+Marien an enormous rubber balloon and a jumping-jack, in return for
+five Louis which he had laid humbly on her table. But Jacqueline had
+not waited for her stepmother’s permission; she let herself be borne
+off radiant on the arm of the important personage who had come for her,
+while Colette, who perhaps had remarked the substitution for her two
+roses, whispered in Fred’s ear, in atone of great significance “Monsieur
+de Cymier.”
+
+The poor fellow started, like a man suddenly awakened from a happy
+dream to face the most unwelcome of realities. Impelled by that natural
+longing, that we all have, to know the worst, he went toward the buffet,
+affecting a calmness which it cost him a great effort to maintain. As
+he went along he mechanically gave money to each of the ladies whom he
+knew, moving off without waiting for their thanks or stopping to choose
+anything from their tables. He seemed to feel the floor rock under his
+feet, as if he had been walking the deck of a vessel. At last he reached
+a recess decorated with palms, where, in a robe worthy of ‘Peau d’Ane’
+in the story, and absolutely a novelty in the world of fashions robe all
+embroidered with gold and rubies, which glittered with every movement
+made by the wearer--Madame de Villegry was pouring out Russian tea
+and Spanish chocolate and Turkish coffee, while all kinds of deceitful
+promises of favor shone in her eyes, which wore a certain tenderness
+expressive of her interest in charity. A party of young nymphs formed
+the court of this fair goddess, doing their best to lend her their aid.
+Jacqueline was one of them, and, at the moment Fred approached, she was
+offering, with the tips of her fingers, a glass of champagne to M.
+de Cymier, who at the same time was eagerly trying to persuade her to
+believe something, about which she was gayly laughing, while she shook
+her head. Poor Fred, that he might hear, and suffer, drank two mouthfuls
+of sherry which he could hardly swallow.
+
+“One who was really charitable would not hesitate,” said M. de Cymier,
+“especially when every separate hair would be paid for if you chose.
+Just one little curl--for the sake of the poor. It is very often done:
+anything is allowable for the sake of the poor.”
+
+“Maybe it is because, as you say, that it is very often done that I
+shall not do it,” said Jacqueline, still laughing. “I have made up my
+mind never to do what others have done before me.”
+
+“Well, we shall see,” said M. de Cymier, pretending to threaten her.
+
+And her young head was thrown back in a burst of inextinguishable
+laughter.
+
+Fred fled, that he might not be tempted to make a disturbance. When he
+found himself again in the street, he asked himself where he should
+go. His anger choked him; he felt he could not keep his resentment to
+himself, and yet, however angry he might be with Jacqueline, he would
+have been unwilling to hear his mother give utterance to the very
+sentiments that he was feeling, or to harsh judgments, of which he
+preferred to keep the monopoly. It came into his mind that he would pay
+a little visit to Giselle, who, of all the people he knew, was the least
+likely to provoke a quarrel. He had heard that Madame de Talbrun did not
+go out, being confined to her sofa by much suffering, which, it might be
+hoped, would soon come to an end; and the certainty that he should find
+her if he called at once decided him. Since he had been in Paris he had
+done nothing but leave cards. This time, however, he was sure that the
+lady upon whom he called would be at home. He was taken at once into the
+young wife’s boudoir, where he found her very feeble, lying back upon
+her cushions, alone, and working at some little bits of baby-clothes. He
+was not slow to perceive that she was very glad to see him. She flushed
+with pleasure as he came into the room, and, dropping her sewing,
+held out to him two little, thin hands, white as wax. “Take that
+footstool--sit down there--what a great, great pleasure it is to see you
+back again!” She was more expansive than she had been formerly; she had
+gained a certain ease which comes from intercourse with the world, but
+how delicate she seemed! Fred for a moment looked at her in silence,
+she seemed so changed as she lay there in a loose robe of pale blue
+cashmere, whose train drawn over her feet made her look tall as it
+stretched to the end of the gilded couch, round which Giselle had
+collected all the little things required by an invalid--bottles, boxes,
+work-bag, dressing-case, and writing materials.
+
+“You see,” she said, with her soft smile, “I have plenty to occupy
+me, and I venture to be proud of my work and to think I am creating
+marvels.”
+
+As she spoke she turned round on her closed hand a cap that seemed
+microscopic to Fred.
+
+“What!” he cried, “do you expect him to be small enough to wear that!”
+
+“Him! you said him; and I am sure you will be right. I know it will be a
+boy,” replied Giselle, eagerly, her fair face brightened by these words.
+“I have some that are still smaller. Look!” and she lifted up a pile of
+things trimmed with ribbons and embroidery. “See; these are the first!
+Ah! I lie here and fancy how he will look when he has them on. He will
+be sweet enough to eat. Only his papa wants us to give him a name that
+I think is too long for him, because it has always been in the
+family--Enguerrand.”
+
+“His name will be longer than himself, I should say, judging by the
+dimensions of this cap,” said Fred, trying to laugh.
+
+“Bah!” replied Giselle, gayly, “but we can get over it by calling him
+Gue-gue or Ra-ra. What do you think? The difficulty is that names of
+that kind are apt to stick to a boy for fifty years, and then they seem
+ridiculous. Now a pretty abbreviation like Fred is another matter. But
+I forget they have brought up my chocolate. Please ring, and let them
+bring you a cup. We will take our luncheon together, as we used to do.”
+
+“Thank you, I have no appetite. I have just come from a certain buffet
+where I lost it all.”
+
+“Oh! I suppose you have been to the Bazaar--the famous Charity Fair! You
+must have made a sensation there on your return, for I am told that the
+gentlemen who are expected to spend the most are likely to send their
+money, and not to show themselves. There are many complaints of it.”
+
+“There were plenty of men round certain persons,” replied Fred, dryly.
+“Madame de Villegry’s table was literally besieged.”
+
+“Really! What, hers! You surprise me! So it was the good things she gave
+you that make you despise my poor chocolate,” said Giselle, rising on
+her elbow, to receive the smoking cup that a servant brought her on a
+little silver salver.
+
+“I didn’t take much at her table,” said Fred, ready to enter on his
+grievances. “If you wish to know the reason why, I was too indignant to
+eat or drink.”
+
+“Indignant?”
+
+“Yes, the word is not at all too strong. When one has passed whole
+months away from what is unwholesome and artificial, such things as
+make up life in Paris, one becomes a little like Alceste, Moliere’s
+misanthrope, when one gets back to them. It is ridiculous at my age, and
+yet if I were to tell you--”
+
+“What?--you puzzle me. What can there be that is unwholesome in selling
+things for the poor?”
+
+“The poor! A pretty pretext! Was it to benefit the poor that that odious
+Countess Strahlberg made all those disreputable grimaces? I have seen
+kermesses got up by actresses, and, upon my word, they were good form in
+comparison.”
+
+“Oh! Countess Strahlberg! People have heard about her doings until they
+are tired of them,” said Giselle, with that air of knowing everything
+assumed by a young wife whose husband has told her all the current
+scandals, as a sort of initiation.
+
+“And her sister seems likely to be as bad as herself before long.”
+
+“Poor Colette! She has been so badly brought up. It is not her fault.”
+
+“But there’s Jacqueline,” cried Fred, in a sudden outburst, and already
+feeling better because he could mention her name.
+
+“Allons, donc! You don’t mean to say anything against Jacqueline?” cried
+Giselle, clasping her hands with an air of astonishment. “What can she
+have done to scandalize you--poor little dear?”
+
+Fred paused for half a minute, then he drew the stool in the form of
+an X, on which he was sitting, a little nearer to Giselle’s sofa, and,
+lowering his voice, told her how Jacqueline had acted under his very
+eyes. As he went on, watching as he spoke the effect his words produced
+upon Giselle, who listened as if slightly amused by his indignation, the
+case seemed not nearly so bad as he had supposed, and a delicious sense
+of relief crept over him when she to whom he told his wrongs after
+hearing him quietly to the end, said, smiling:
+
+“And what then? There is no great harm in all that. Would you have had
+her refuse to go with the gentleman Madame de Villegry had sent to fetch
+her? And why, may I ask, should she not have done her best to help by
+pouring out champagne? An air put on to please is indispensable to a
+woman, if she wishes to sell anything. Good Heavens! I don’t approve any
+more than you do of all these worldly forms of charity, but this kind of
+thing is considered right; it has come into fashion. Jacqueline had the
+permission of her parents, and I really can’t see any good reason why
+you should complain of her. Unless--why not tell me the whole truth,
+Fred? I know it--don’t we always know what concerns the people that we
+care for? And I might possibly some day be of use to you. Say! don’t you
+think you are--a little bit jealous?”
+
+Less encouragement than this would have sufficed to make him open his
+heart to Giselle. He was delighted that some woman was willing he should
+confide in her. And what was more, he was glad to have it proved that
+he had been all wrong. A quarter of an hour later Giselle had comforted
+him, happy herself that it had been in her power to undertake a task of
+consolation, a work in which, with sweet humility, she felt herself at
+ease. On the great stage of life she knew now she should never play any
+important part, any that would bring her greatly into view. But she felt
+that she was made to be a confidant, one of those perfect confidants
+who never attempt to interfere rashly with the course of events, but
+who wait upon the ways of Providence, removing stones, and briers
+and thorns, and making everything turn out for the best in the end.
+Jacqueline, she said, was so young! A little wild, perhaps, but what
+a treasure! She was all heart! She would need a husband worthy of her,
+such a man as Fred. Madame d’Argy, she knew, had already said something
+on the subject to her father. But it would have to be the Baroness that
+Fred must bring over to their views; the Baroness was acquiring more and
+more influence over her husband, who seemed to be growing older every
+day. M. de Nailles had evidently much, very much upon his mind. It was
+said in business circles that he had for some time past been given to
+speculation. Oscar said so. If that were the case, many of Jacqueline’s
+suitors might withdraw. Not all men were so disinterested as Fred.
+
+“Oh! As to her dot--what do I care for her dot?” cried the young man. “I
+have enough for two, if she would only be satisfied to live quietly at
+Lizerolles!”
+
+“Yes,” said the judicious little matron, nodding her head, “but who
+would like to marry a midshipman? Make haste and be a lieutenant, or an
+ensign.”
+
+She smiled at herself for having made the reward depend upon exertion,
+with a sort of maternal instinct. It was the same instinct that would
+lead her in the future to promise Enguerrand a sugar-plum if he said his
+lesson. “Nobody will steal your Jacqueline till you are ready to carry
+her off. Besides, if there were any danger I could give you timely
+warning.”
+
+“Ah! Giselle, if she only had your kind heart--your good sense.”
+
+“Do you think I am better and more reasonable than other people? In
+what way? I have done as so many other girls do; I have married without
+knowing well what I was doing.”
+
+She stopped short, fearing she might have said too much, and indeed Fred
+looked at her anxiously.
+
+“You don’t regret it, do you?”
+
+“You must ask Monsieur de Talbrun if he regrets it,” she said, with a
+laugh. “It must be hard on him to have a sick wife, who knows little of
+what is passing outside of her own chamber, who is living on her reserve
+fund of resources--a very poor little reserve fund it is, too!”
+
+Then, as if she thought that Fred had been with her long enough, she
+said: “I would ask you to stay and see Monsieur de Talbrun, but he won’t
+be in, he dines at his club. He is going to see a new play tonight which
+they say promises to be very good.”
+
+“What! Will he leave you alone all the evening?”
+
+“Oh! I am very glad he should find amusement. Just think how long it is
+that I have been pinned down here! Poor Oscar!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. GISELLE’S CONSOLATION
+
+The arrival of the expected Enguerrand hindered Giselle from pleading
+Fred’s cause as soon as she could have wished. Her life for twenty-four
+hours was in great danger, and when the crisis was past, which M. de
+Talbrun treated very indifferently, as a matter of course, her first cry
+was “My baby!” uttered in a tone of tender eagerness such as had never
+been heard from her lips before.
+
+The nurse brought him. He lay asleep swathed in his swaddling clothes
+like a mummy in its wrappings, a motionless, mysterious being, but he
+seemed to his mother beautiful--more beautiful than anything she had
+seen in those vague visions of happiness she had indulged in at the
+convent, which were never to be realized. She kissed his little purple
+face, his closed eyelids, his puckered mouth, with a sort of respectful
+awe. She was forbidden to fatigue herself. The wet-nurse, who had been
+brought from Picardy, drew near with her peasant cap trimmed with
+long blue streamers; her big, experienced hands took the baby from his
+mother, she turned him over on her lap, she patted him, she laughed at
+him. And the mother-happiness that had lighted up Giselle’s pale face
+died away.
+
+“What right,” she thought, “has that woman to my child?” She envied
+the horrid creature, coarse and stout, with her tanned face, her bovine
+features, her shapeless figure, who seemed as if Nature had predestined
+her to give milk and nothing more. Giselle would so gladly have been in
+her place! Why wouldn’t they permit her to nurse her baby?
+
+M. de Talbrun said in answer to this question:
+
+“It is never done among people in our position. You have no idea, of all
+it would entail on you--what slavery, what fatigue! And most probably
+you would not have had milk enough.”
+
+“Oh! who can tell? I am his mother! And when this woman goes he will
+have to have English nurses, and when he is older he will have to go to
+school. When shall I have him to myself?”
+
+And she began to cry.
+
+“Come, come!” said M. de Talbrun, much astonished, “all this fuss about
+that frightful little monkey!”
+
+Giselle looked at him almost as much astonished as he had been at her.
+Love, with its jealousy, its transports, its anguish, its delights had
+for the first time come to her--the love that she could not feel for her
+husband awoke in her for her son. She was ennobled--she was transfigured
+by a sense of her maternity; it did for her what marriage does for some
+women--it seemed as if a sudden radiance surrounded her.
+
+When she raised her infant in her arms, to show him to those who came
+to see her, she always seemed like a most chaste and touching
+representation of the Virgin Mother. She would say, as she exhibited
+him: “Is he not superb?” Every one said: “Yes, indeed!” out of
+politeness, but, on leaving the mother’s presence, would generally
+remark: “He is Monsieur de Talbrun in baby-clothes: the likeness is
+perfectly horrible!”
+
+The only visitor who made no secret of this impression was Jacqueline,
+who came to see her cousin as soon as she was permitted--that is, as
+soon as her friend was able to sit up and be prettily dressed, as became
+the mother of such a little gentleman as the heir of all the Talbruns.
+When Jacqueline saw the little creature half-smothered in the lace
+that trimmed his pillows, she burst out laughing, though it was in the
+presence of his mother.
+
+“Oh, mon Dieu!” she cried, “how ugly! I never should have supposed we
+could have been as ugly as that! Why, his face is all the colors of the
+rainbow; who would have imagined it? And he crumples up his little face
+like those things in gutta-percha. My poor Giselle, how can you bear to
+show him! I never, never could covet a baby!”
+
+Giselle, in consternation, asked herself whether this strange girl,
+who did not care for children, could be a proper wife for Fred; but her
+habitual indulgence came to her aid, and she thought:
+
+“She is but a child herself, she does not know what she is saying,” and
+profiting by her first tete-a-tete with Jacqueline’s stepmother, she
+spoke as she had promised to Madame de Nailles.
+
+“A matchmaker already!” said the Baroness, with a smile. “And so soon
+after you have found out what it costs to be a mother! How good of you,
+my dear Giselle! So you support Fred as a candidate? But I can’t say I
+think he has much chance; Monsieur de Nailles has his own ideas.”
+
+She spoke as if she really thought that M. de Nailles could have any
+ideas but her own. When the adroit Clotilde was at a loss, she was
+likely to evoke this chimerical notion of her husband’s having an
+opinion of his own.
+
+“Oh! Madame, you can do anything you like with him!”
+
+The clever woman sighed:
+
+“So you fancy that when people have been long married a wife retains
+as much influence over her husband as you have kept over Monsieur de
+Talbrun? You will learn to know better, my dear.”
+
+“But I have no influence,” murmured Giselle, who knew herself to be her
+husband’s slave.
+
+“Oh! I know better. You are making believe!”
+
+“Well, but we were not talking about me, but--”
+
+“Oh! yes. I understood. I will think about it. I will try to bring over
+Monsieur de Nailles.”
+
+She was not at all disposed to drop the meat for the sake of the shadow,
+but she was not sure of M. de Cymier, notwithstanding all that Madame de
+Villegry was at pains to tell her about his serious intentions. On the
+other hand, she would have been far from willing to break with a man so
+brilliant, who made himself so agreeable at her Tuesday receptions.
+
+“Meantime, it would be well if you, dear, were to try to find out what
+Jacqueline thinks. You may not find it very easy.”
+
+“Will you authorize me to tell her how well he loves her? Oh, then, I am
+quite satisfied!” cried Giselle.
+
+But she was under a mistake. Jacqueline, as soon as she began to speak
+to her of Fred’s suit, stopped her:
+
+“Poor fellow! Why can’t he amuse himself for some time longer and let
+me do the same? Men seem to me so strange! Now, Fred is one who, just
+because he is good and serious by nature, fancies that everybody else
+should be the same; he wishes me to be tethered in the flowery meads of
+Lizerolles, and browse where he would place me. Such a life would be an
+end of everything--an end to my life, and I should not like it at all. I
+should prefer to grow old in Paris, or some other capital, if my husband
+happened to be engaged in diplomacy. Even supposing I marry--which I do
+not think an absolute necessity, unless I can not get rid otherwise of
+an inconvenient chaperon--and to do my stepmother justice, she knows
+well enough that I will not submit to too much of her dictation!”
+
+“Jacqueline, they say you see too much of the Odinskas.”
+
+“There! that’s another fault you find in me. I go there because Madame
+Strahlberg is so kind as to give me some singing-lessons. If you only
+knew how much progress I am making, thanks to her. Music is a thousand
+times more interesting, I can tell you, than all that you can do as
+mistress of a household. You don’t think so? Oh! I know Enguerrand’s
+first tooth, his first steps, his first gleams of intelligence, and all
+that. Such things are not in my line, you know. Of course I think your
+boy very funny, very cunning, very--anything you like to fancy him, but
+forgive me if I am glad he does not belong to me. There, don’t you see
+now that marriage is not my vocation, so please give up speaking to me
+about matrimony.”
+
+“As you will,” said Giselle, sadly, “but you will give great pain to a
+good man whose heart is wholly yours.”
+
+“I did not ask for his heart. Such gifts are exasperating. One does not
+know what to do with them. Can’t he--poor Fred--love me as I love him,
+and leave me my liberty?”
+
+“Your liberty!” exclaimed Giselle; “liberty to ruin your life, that’s
+what it will be.”
+
+“Really, one would suppose there was only one kind of existence in your
+eyes--this life of your own, Giselle. To leave one cage to be shut up
+in another--that is the fate of many birds, I know, but there are
+others who like to use their wings to soar into the air. I like that
+expression. Come, little mother, tell me right out, plainly, that your
+lot is the only one in this world that ought to be envied by a woman.”
+
+Giselle answered with a strange smile:
+
+“You seem astonished that I adore my baby; but since he came great
+things seem to have been revealed to me. When I hold him to my breast
+I seem to understand, as I never did before, duty and marriage, family
+ties and sorrows, life itself, in short, its griefs and joys. You can
+not understand that now, but you will some day. You, too, will gaze
+upon the horizon as I do. I am ready to suffer; I am ready for
+self-sacrifice. I know now whither my life leads me. I am led, as it
+were, by this little being, who seemed to me at first only a doll, for
+whom I was embroidering caps and dresses. You ask whether I am satisfied
+with my lot in life. Yes, I am, thanks to this guide, this guardian
+angel, thanks to my precious Enguerrand.”
+
+Jacqueline listened, stupefied, to this unexpected outburst, so unlike
+her cousin’s usual language; but the charm was broken by its ending with
+the tremendously long name of Enguerrand, which always made her laugh,
+it was in such perfect harmony with the feudal pretensions of the
+Monredons and the Talbruns.
+
+“How solemn and eloquent and obscure you are, my dear,” she answered.
+“You speak like a sibyl. But one thing I see, and that is that you are
+not so perfectly happy as you would have us believe, seeing that you
+feel the need of consolations. Then, why do you wish me to follow your
+example?”
+
+“Fred is not Monsieur de Talbrun,” said the young wife, for the moment
+forgetting herself.
+
+“Do you mean to say--”
+
+“I meant nothing, except that if you married Fred you would have had the
+advantage of first knowing him.”
+
+“Ah! that’s your fixed idea. But I am getting to know Monsieur de Cymier
+pretty well.”
+
+“You have betrayed yourself,” cried Giselle, with indignation. “Monsieur
+de Cymier!”
+
+“Monsieur de Cymier is coming to our house on Saturday evening, and
+I must get up a Spanish song that Madame Strahlberg has taught me, to
+charm his ears and those of other people. Oh! I can do it very well.
+Won’t you come and hear me play the castanets, if Monsieur Enguerrand
+can spare you? There is a young Polish pianist who is to play our
+accompaniment. Ah, there is nothing like a Polish pianist to play
+Chopin! He is charming, poor young man! an exile, and in poverty; but he
+is cared for by those ladies, who take him everywhere. That is the sort
+of life I should like--the life of Madame Strahlberg--to be a young
+widow, free to do what I pleased.”
+
+“She may be a widow--but some say she is divorced.”
+
+“Oh! is it you who repeat such naughty scandals, Giselle? Where shall
+charity take refuge in this world if not in your heart? I am going--your
+seriousness may be catching. Kiss me before I go.”
+
+“No,” said Madame de Talbrun, turning her head away.
+
+After this she asked herself whether she ought not to discourage Fred.
+She could not resolve on doing so, yet she could not tell him what was
+false; but by eluding the truth with that ability which kind-hearted
+women can always show when they try to avoid inflicting pain, she
+succeeded in leaving the young man hope enough to stimulate his
+ambition.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. FRED ASKS A QUESTION
+
+Time, whatever may be said of it by the calendars, is not to be measured
+by days, weeks, and months in all cases; expectation, hope, happiness
+and grief have very different ways of counting hours, and we know from
+our own experience that some are as short as a minute, and others as
+long as a century. The love or the suffering of those who can tell just
+how long they have suffered, or just how long they have been in love, is
+only moderate and reasonable.
+
+Madame d’Argy found the two lonely years she passed awaiting the return
+of her son, who was winning his promotion to the rank of ensign, so
+long, that it seemed to her as if they never would come to an end. She
+had given a reluctant consent to his notion of adopting the navy as a
+profession, thinking that perhaps, after all, there might be no harm
+in allowing her dear boy to pass the most dangerous period of his youth
+under strict discipline, but she could not be patient forever! She
+idolized her son too much to be resigned to living without him; she felt
+that he was hers no longer. Either he was at sea or at Toulon, where
+she could very rarely join him, being detained at Lizerolles by the
+necessity of looking after their property. With what eagerness she
+awaited his promotion, which she did not doubt was all the Nailles
+waited for to give their consent to the marriage; of their happy
+half-consent she hastened to remind them in a note which announced the
+new grade to which he had been promoted. Her indignation was great on
+finding that her formal request received no decided answer; but, as her
+first object was Fred’s happiness, she placed the reply she had received
+in its most favorable light when she forwarded it to the person whom
+it most concerned. She did this in all honesty. She was not willing
+to admit that she was being put off with excuses; still less could she
+believe in a refusal.
+
+She accepted the excuse that M. de Nailles gave for returning no decided
+answer, viz.: that “Jacqueline was too young,” though she answered him
+with some vehemence: “Fred was born when I was eighteen.” But she had to
+accept it. Her ensign would have to pass a few more months on the
+coast of Senegal, a few more months which were made shorter by the
+encouragement forwarded to him by his mother, who was careful to
+send him everything she could find out that seemed to be, or that
+she imagined might be, in his favor; she underlined such things and
+commented upon them, so as to make the faintest hypothesis seem a
+certainty. Sometimes she did not even wait for the post. Fred would
+find, on putting in at some post, a cablegram: “Good news,” or “All goes
+well,” and he would be beside himself with joy and excitement until,
+on receiving his poor, dear mother’s next letter, he found out on how
+slight a foundation her assurance had been founded.
+
+Sometimes, she wrote him disagreeable things about Jacqueline, as if she
+would like to disenchant him, and then he said to himself: “By this, I
+am to understand that my affairs are not going on well; I still count
+for little, notwithstanding my promotion.” Ah! if he could only
+have had, so near the beginning of his career, any opportunity of
+distinguishing himself! No brilliant deed would have been too hard for
+him. He would have scaled the very skies. Alas! he had had no chance
+to win distinction, he had only had to follow in the beaten track of
+ordinary duty; he had encountered no glorious perils, though at St.
+Louis he had come very near leaving his bones, but it was only a case of
+typhoid fever. This fever, however, brought about a scene between M. de
+Nailles and his mother.
+
+“When,” she cried, with all the fury of a lioness, “do you expect to
+come to the conclusion that my son is a suitable match for Jacqueline?
+Do you imagine that I shall let him wait till he is a post-captain to
+satisfy the requirements of Mademoiselle your daughter--provided he does
+not die in a hospital? Do you think that I shall be willing to go
+on living--if you can call it living!--all alone and in continual
+apprehension? Why do you let him keep on in uncertainty? You know his
+worth, and you know that with him Jacqueline would be happy. Instead of
+that--instead of saying once for all to this young man, who is more in
+love with her than any other man will ever be: ‘There, take her, I give
+her to you,’ which would be the straightforward, sensible way, you go on
+encouraging the caprices of a child who will end by wasting, in the
+life you are permitting her to lead, all the good qualities she has and
+keeping nothing but the bad ones.”
+
+“Mon Dieu! I can’t see that Jacqueline leads a life like that!” said M.
+de Nailles, who felt that he must say something.
+
+“You don’t see, you don’t see! How can any one see who won’t open his
+eyes? My poor friend, just look for once at what is going on around you,
+under your own roof--”
+
+“Jacqueline is devoted to music,” said her father, good-humoredly.
+Madame d’Argy in her heart thought he was losing his mind.
+
+And in truth he was growing older day by day, becoming more and more
+anxious, more and more absorbed in the great struggle--not for life;
+that might exhaust a man, but at least it was energetic and noble--but
+for superfluous wealth, for vanity, for luxury, which, for his own
+part, he cared nothing for, and which he purchased dearly, spurred on to
+exertion by those near to him, who insisted on extravagances.
+
+“Oh! yes, Jacqueline, I know, is devoted to music,” went on Madame
+d’Argy, with an air of extreme disapproval, “too much so! And when she
+is able to sing like Madame Strahlberg, what good will it do her?
+Even now I see more than one little thing about her that needs to
+be reformed. How can she escape spoiling in that crowd of Slavs and
+Yankees, people of no position probably in their own countries, with
+whom you permit her to associate? People nowadays are so imprudent about
+acquaintances! To be a foreigner is a passport into society. Just think
+what her poor mother would have said to the bad manners she is adopting
+from all parts of the globe? My poor, dear Adelaide! She was a genuine
+Frenchwoman of the old type; there are not many such left now. Ah!”
+ continued Madame d’Argy, without any apparent connection with her
+subject, “Monsieur de Talbrun’s mother, if he had one, would be truly
+happy to see him married to Giselle!”
+
+“But,” faltered M. de Nailles, struck by the truth of some of these
+remarks, “I make no opposition--quite the contrary--I have spoken
+several times about your son, but I was not listened to!”
+
+“What can she say against Fred?”
+
+“Nothing. She is very fond of him, that you know as well as I do.
+But those childish attachments do not necessarily lead to love and
+marriage.”
+
+“Friendship on her side might be enough,” said Madame d’Argy, in the
+tone of a woman who had never known more than that in marriage. “My poor
+Fred has enthusiasm and all that, enough for two. And in time she will
+be madly in love with him--she must! It is impossible it should be
+otherwise.”
+
+“Very good, persuade her yourself if you can; but Jacqueline has a
+pretty strong will of her own.”
+
+Jacqueline’s will was a reality, though the ideas of M. de Nailles may
+have been illusion.
+
+“And my wife, too!” resumed the Baron, after a long sigh. “I don’t
+know how it is, but Jacqueline, as she has grown up, has become like an
+unbroken colt, and those two, who were once all in all to each other,
+are now seldom of one mind. How am I to act when their two wills cross
+mine, as they often do? I have so many things on my mind. There are
+times when--”
+
+“Yes, one can see that. You don’t seem to know where you are. And do
+you think that the disposition she shows to act, as you say, like an
+unbroken colt, is nothing to me? Do you think I am quite satisfied
+with my son’s choice? I could have wished that he had chosen for his
+wife--but what is the use of saying what I wished? The important thing
+is that he should be happy in his own way. Besides, I dare say the young
+thing will calm down of her own accord. Her mother’s daughter must be
+good at heart. All will come right when she is removed from a circle
+which is doing her no good; it is injuring her in people’s opinion
+already, you must know. And how will it be by-and-bye? I hear people
+saying everywhere: ‘How can the Nailles let that young girl associate so
+much with foreigners?’ You say they are old school-fellows, they went to
+the ‘cours’ together. But see if Madame d’Etaples and Madame Ray, under
+the same pretext, let Isabelle and Yvonne associate with the Odinskas!
+As to that foolish woman, Madame d’Avrigny, she goes to their house
+to look up recruits for her operettas, and Madame Strahlberg has one
+advantage over regular artists, there is no call to pay her. That is the
+reason why she invites her. Besides which, she won’t find it so easy to
+marry Dolly.”
+
+“Oh! there are several reasons for that,” said the Baron, who could see
+the mote in his neighbor’s eye, “Mademoiselle d’Avrigny has led a life
+so very worldly ever since she was a child, so madly fast and lively,
+that suitors are afraid of her. Jacqueline, thank heaven, has never yet
+been in what is called the world. She only visits those with whom she is
+on terms of intimacy.”
+
+“An intimacy which includes all Paris,” said Madame d’Argy, raising her
+eyes to heaven. “If she does not go to great balls, it is only because
+her stepmother is bored by them. But with that exception it seems to me
+she is allowed to do anything. I don’t see the difference. But, to be
+sure, if Jacqueline is not for us, you have a right to say that I am
+interfering in what does not concern me.”
+
+“Not at all,” said the unfortunate father, “I feel how much I ought to
+value your advice, and an alliance with your family would please me more
+than anything.”
+
+He said the truth, for he was disturbed by seeing M. de Cymier so slow
+in making his proposals, and he was also aware that young girls in our
+day are less sought for in marriage than they used to be. His friend
+Wermant, rich as he was, had had some trouble in capturing for Berthe a
+fellow of no account in the Faubourg St. Germain, and the prize was not
+much to be envied. He was a young man without brains and without a sou,
+who enjoyed so little consideration among his own people that his wife
+had not been received as she expected, and no one spoke of Madame de
+Belvan without adding: “You know, that little Wermant, daughter of the
+‘agent de change’.”
+
+Of course, Jacqueline had the advantage of good birth over Berthe,
+but how great was her inferiority in point of fortune! M. de Nailles
+sometimes confided these perplexities to his wife, without, however,
+receiving much comfort from her. Nor did the Baroness confess to her
+husband all her own fears. In secret she often asked herself, with the
+keen insight of a woman of the world well trained in artifice and who
+possessed a thorough knowledge of mankind, whether there might not be
+women capable of using a young girl so as to put the world on a
+wrong scent; whether, in other words, Madame de Villegry did not talk
+everywhere about M. de Cymier’s attentions to Mademoiselle de Nailles
+in order to conceal his relations to herself? Madame de Villegry indeed
+cared little about standing well in public opinion, but rather the
+contrary; she would not, however, for the world have been willing,
+by too openly favoring one man among her admirers, to run the risk of
+putting the rest to flight. No doubt M. de Cymier was most assiduous in
+his attendance on the receptions and dances at Madame de Nailles’s, but
+he was there always at the same time as Madame de Villegry herself. They
+would hold whispered conferences in corners, which might possibly have
+been about Jacqueline, but there was no proof that they were so, except
+what Madame de Villegry herself said. “At any rate,” thought Madame de
+Nailles, “if Fred comes forward as a suitor it may stimulate Monsieur de
+Cymier. There are men who put off taking a decisive step till the last
+moment, and are only to be spurred up by competition.”
+
+So every opportunity was given to Fred to talk freely with Jacqueline
+when he returned to Paris. By this time he wore two gold-lace stripes
+upon his sleeve. But Jacqueline avoided any tete-a-tete with him as if
+she understood the danger that awaited her. She gave him no chance of
+speaking alone with her. She was friendly--nay, sometimes affectionate
+when other people were near them, but more commonly she teased him,
+bewildered him, excited him. After an hour or two spent in her society
+he would go home sometimes savage, sometimes desponding, to ponder in
+his own room, and in his own heart, what interpretation he ought to put
+upon the things that she had said to him.
+
+The more he thought, the less he understood. He would not have confided
+in his mother for the world; she might have cast blame on Jacqueline.
+Besides her, he had no one who could receive his confidences, who would
+bear with his perplexities, who could assist in delivering him from
+the network of hopes and fears in which, after every interview with
+Jacqueline, he seemed to himself to become more and more entangled.
+
+At last, however, at one of the soirees given every fortnight by Madame
+de Nailles, he succeeded in gaining her attention.
+
+“Give me this quadrille,” he said to her.
+
+And, as she could not well refuse, he added, as soon as she had taken
+his arm: “We will not dance, and I defy you to escape me.”
+
+“This is treason!” she cried, somewhat angrily. “We are not here to
+talk; I can almost guess beforehand what you have to say, and--”
+
+But he had made her sit down in the recess of that bow-window which
+had been called the young girls’ corner years ago. He stood before her,
+preventing her escape, and half-laughing, though he was deeply moved.
+
+“Since you have guessed what I wanted to say, answer me quickly.”
+
+“Must I? Must I, really? Why didn’t you ask my father to do your
+commission? It is so horribly disagreeable to do these things for one’s
+self.”
+
+“That depends upon what the things may be that have to be said. I should
+think it ought to be very agreeable to pronounce the word on which the
+happiness of a whole life is to depend.”
+
+“Oh! what a grand phrase! As if I could be essential to anybody’s
+happiness? You can’t make me believe that!”
+
+“You are mistaken. You are indispensable to mine.”
+
+“There! my declaration has been made,” thought Fred, much relieved that
+it was over, for he had been afraid to pronounce the decisive words.
+
+“Well, if I thought that were true, I should be very sorry,” said
+Jacqueline, no longer smiling, but looking down fixedly at the pointed
+toe of her little slipper; “because--”
+
+She stopped suddenly. Her face flushed red.
+
+“I don’t know how to explain to you;” she said.
+
+“Explain nothing,” pleaded Fred; “all I ask is Yes, nothing more. There
+is nothing else I care for.”
+
+She raised her head coldly and haughtily, yet her voice trembled as she
+said:
+
+“You will force me to say it? Then, no! No!” she repeated, as if to
+reaffirm her refusal.
+
+Then, alarmed by Fred’s silence, and above all by his looks, he who had
+seemed so gay shortly before and whose face now showed an anguish such
+as she had never yet seen on the face of man, she added:
+
+“Oh, forgive me!--Forgive me,” she repeated in a lower voice, holding
+out her hand. He did not take it.
+
+“You love some one else?” he asked, through his clenched teeth.
+
+She opened her fan and affected to examine attentively the pink
+landscape painted on it to match her dress.
+
+“Why should you think so? I wish to be free.”
+
+“Free? Are you free? Is a woman ever free?”
+
+Jacqueline shook her head, as if expressing vague dissent.
+
+“Free at least to see a little of the world,” she said, “to choose, to
+use my wings, in short--”
+
+And she moved her slender arms with an audacious gesture which had
+nothing in common with the flight of that mystic dove upon which she had
+meditated when holding the card given her by Giselle.
+
+“Free to prefer some other man,” said Fred, who held fast to his idea
+with the tenacity of jealousy.
+
+“Ah! that is different. Supposing there were anyone whom I liked--not
+more, but differently from the way I like you--it is possible. But you
+spoke of loving!”
+
+“Your distinctions are too subtle,” said Fred.
+
+“Because, much as it seems to astonish you, I am quite capable of seeing
+the difference,” said Jacqueline, with the look and the accent of a
+person who has had large experience. “I have loved once--a long time
+ago, a very long time ago, a thousand years and more. Yes, I loved some
+one, as perhaps you love me, and I suffered more than you will ever
+suffer. It is ended; it is over--I think it is over forever.”
+
+“How foolish! At your age!”
+
+“Yes, that kind of love is ended for me. Others may please me, others do
+please me, as you said, but it is not the same thing. Would you like
+to see the man I once loved?” asked Jacqueline, impelled by a juvenile
+desire to exhibit her experience, and also aware instinctively that to
+cast a scrap of past history to the curious sometimes turns off their
+attention on another track. “He is near us now,” she added.
+
+And while Fred’s angry eyes, under his frowning brows, were wandering
+all round the salon, she pointed to Hubert Marien with a movement of her
+fan.
+
+Marien was looking on at the dancing, with his old smile, not so
+brilliant now as it had been. He now only smiled at beauty collectively,
+which was well represented that evening in Madame de Nailles’s salon.
+Young girls ‘en masse’ continued to delight him, but his admiration as
+an artist became less and less personal.
+
+He had grown stout, his hair and beard were getting gray; he was
+interested no longer in Savonarola, having obtained, thanks to his
+picture, the medal of honor, and the Institute some months since had
+opened its doors to him.
+
+“Marien? You are laughing at me!” cried Fred.
+
+“It is simply the truth.”
+
+Some magnetic influence at that moment caused the painter to turn his
+eyes toward the spot where they were talking.
+
+“We were speaking of you,” said Jacqueline.
+
+And her tone was so singular that he dared not ask what they were
+saying. With humility which had in it a certain touch of bitterness he
+said, still smiling:
+
+“You might find something better to do than to talk good or evil of a
+poor fellow who counts now for nothing.”
+
+“Counts for nothing! A fellow to be pitied!” cried Fred, “a man who has
+just been elected to the Institute--you are hard to satisfy!”
+
+Jacqueline sat looking at him like a young sorceress engaged in sticking
+pins into the heart of a waxen figure of her enemy. She never missed an
+opportunity of showing her implacable dislike of him.
+
+She turned to Fred: “What I was telling you,” she said, “I am quite
+willing to repeat in his presence. The thing has lost its importance
+now that he has become more indifferent to me than any other man in the
+world.”
+
+She stopped, hoping that Marien had understood what she was saying
+and that he resented the humiliating avowal from her own lips that her
+childish love was now only a memory.
+
+“If that is the only confession you have to make to me,” said Fred, who
+had almost recovered his composure, “I can put up with my former rival,
+and I pass a sponge over all that has happened in your long past of
+seventeen years and a half, Jacqueline. Tell me only that at present you
+like no one better than me.”
+
+She smiled a half-smile, but he did not see it. She made no answer.
+
+“Is he here, too--like the other!” he asked, sternly.
+
+And she saw his restless eyes turn for an instant to the conservatory,
+where Madame de Villegry, leaning back in her armchair, and Gerard
+de Cymier, on a low seat almost at her feet, were carrying on their
+platonic flirtation.
+
+“Oh! you must not think of quarrelling with him,” cried Jacqueline,
+frightened at the look Fred fastened on De Cymier.
+
+“No, it would be of no use. I shall go out to Tonquin, that’s all.”
+
+“Fred! You are not serious.”
+
+“You will see whether I am not serious. At this very moment I know a man
+who will be glad to exchange with me.”
+
+“What! go and get yourself killed at Tonquin for a foolish little girl
+like me, who is very, very fond of you, but hardly knows her own mind.
+It would be absurd!”
+
+“People are not always killed at Tonquin, but I must have new interests,
+something to divert my mind from--”
+
+“Fred! my dear Fred”--Jacqueline had suddenly become almost tender,
+almost suppliant. “Your mother! Think of your mother! What would she
+say? Oh, my God!”
+
+“My mother must be allowed to think that I love my profession better
+than all else. But, Jacqueline,” continued the poor fellow, clinging in
+despair to the very smallest hope, as a drowning man catches at a straw,
+“if you do not, as you said, know exactly your own mind--if you would
+like to question your own heart--I would wait--”
+
+Jacqueline was biting the end of her fan--a conflict was taking place
+within her breast. But to certain temperaments there is pleasure in
+breaking a chain or in leaping a barrier; she said:
+
+“Fred, I am too much your friend to deceive you.”
+
+At that moment M. de Cymier came toward them with his air of assurance:
+“Mademoiselle, you forget that you promised me this waltz,” he said.
+
+“No, I never forget anything,” she answered, rising.
+
+Fred detained her an instant, saying, in a low voice:
+
+“Forgive me. This moment, Jacqueline, is decisive. I must have an
+answer. I never shall speak to you again of my sorrow. But decide
+now--on the spot. Is all ended between us?”
+
+“Not our old friendship, Fred,” said Jacqueline, tears rising in her
+eyes.
+
+“So be it, then, if you so will it. But our friendship never will show
+itself unless you are in need of friendship, and then only with the
+discretion that your present attitude toward me has imposed.”
+
+“Are you ready, Mademoiselle,” said Gerard, who, to allow them to
+end their conversation, had obligingly turned his attention to some
+madrigals that Colette Odinska was laughing over.
+
+Jacqueline shook her head resolutely, though at that moment her heart
+felt as if it were in a vise, and the moisture in her eyes looked like
+anything but a refusal. Then, without giving herself time for further
+thought, she whirled away into the dance with M. de Cymier. It was over,
+she had flung to the winds her chance for happiness, and wounded a heart
+more cruelly than Hubert Marien had ever wounded hers. The most horrible
+thing in this unending warfare we call love is that we too often repay
+to those who love us the harm that has been done us by those whom we
+have loved. The seeds of mistrust and perversity sown by one man or by
+one woman bear fruit to be gathered by some one else.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. A COMEDY AND A TRAGEDY
+
+The departure of Frederic d’Argy for Tonquin occasioned a break in the
+intercourse between his mother and the family of De Nailles. The wails
+of Hecuba were nothing to the lamentations of poor Madame d’Argy; the
+unreasonableness of her wrath and the exaggeration in her reproaches
+hindered even Jacqueline from feeling all the remorse she might
+otherwise have felt for her share in Fred’s departure. She told her
+father, who the first time in her life addressed her with some severity,
+that she could not be expected to love all the young men who might
+threaten to go to the wars, or to fling themselves from fourth-story
+windows, for her sake.
+
+“It was very indelicate and inconsiderate of Fred to tell any one that
+it was my fault that he was doing anything so foolish,” she said, with
+true feminine deceit, “but he has taken the very worst possible means
+to make me care for him. Everybody has too much to say about this matter
+which concerns only him and me. Even Giselle thought proper to write me
+a sermon!”
+
+And she gave vent to her feelings in an exclamation of three syllables
+that she had learned from the Odinskas, which meant: “I don’t care!” (je
+m’en moque).
+
+But this was not true. She cared very much for Giselle’s good opinion,
+and for Madame d’Argy’s friendship. She suffered much in her secret
+heart at the thought of having given so much pain to Fred. She guessed
+how deep it was by the step to which it had driven him. But there was in
+her secret soul something more than all the rest, it was a puerile, but
+delicious satisfaction in feeling her own importance, in having been
+able to exercise an influence over one heart which might possibly extend
+to that of M. de Cymier. She thought he might be gratified by knowing
+that she had driven a young man to despair, if he guessed for whose sake
+she had been so cruel. He knew it, of course. Madame de Nailles took
+care that he should not be ignorant of it, and the pleasure he took
+in such a proof of his power over a young heart was not unlike that
+pleasure Jacqueline experienced in her coquetry--which crushed her
+better feelings. He felt proud of the sacrifice this beautiful girl had
+made for his sake, though he did not consider himself thereby committed
+to any decision, only he felt more attached to her than ever. Ever since
+the day when Madame de Villegry had first introduced him at the house
+of Madame de Nailles, he had had great pleasure in going there. The
+daughter of the house was more and more to his taste, but his liking for
+her was not such as to carry him beyond prudence. “If I chose,” he would
+say to himself after every time he met her, “if I chose I could own that
+jewel. I have only to stretch out my hand and have it given me.” And
+the next morning, after going to sleep full of that pleasant thought, he
+would awake glad to find that he was still as free as ever, and able
+to carry on a flirtation with a woman of the world, which imposed no
+obligations upon him, and yet at the same time make love to a young girl
+whom he would gladly have married but for certain reports which were
+beginning to circulate among men of business concerning the financial
+position of M. de Nailles.
+
+They said that he was withdrawing money from secure investments to
+repair (or to increase) considerable losses made by speculation, and
+that he operated recklessly on the Bourse. These rumors had already
+withdrawn Marcel d’Etaples from the list of his daughter’s suitors. The
+young fellow was a captain of Hussars, who had no scruple in declaring
+the reason of his giving up his interest in the young lady. Gerard de
+Cymier, more prudent, waited and watched, thinking it would be quite
+time enough to go to the bottom of things when he found himself called
+upon to make a decision, and greatly interested meantime in the daily
+increase of Jacqueline’s beauty. It was evident she cared for him. After
+all, it was doing the little thing no harm to let her live on in the
+intoxication of vanity and hope, and to give her something to dwell upon
+in her innocent dreams. Never did Gerard allow himself to overstep the
+line he had marked out for himself; a glance, a slight pressure of the
+hand, which might have been intentional, or have meant nothing, a few
+ambiguous words in which an active imagination might find something to
+dream about, a certain way of passing his arm round her slight waist
+which would have meant much had it not been done in public to the sound
+of music, were all the proofs the young diplomatist had ever given of
+an attraction that was real so far as consisted with his complete
+selfishness, joined to his professional prudence, and that systematic
+habit of taking up fancies at any time for anything, which prevents each
+fancy as it occurs from ripening into passion.
+
+He alluded indirectly to Fred’s departure in a way that turned it
+into ridicule. While playing a game of ‘boston’ he whispered into
+Jacqueline’s ear something about the old-fashionedness and stupidity of
+Paul and Virginia, and his opinion of “calf-love,” as the English call
+an early attachment, and something about the right of every girl to know
+a suitor long before she consents to marry him. He said he thought
+that the days of courtship must be the most delightful in the life of a
+woman, and that a man who wished to cut them short was a fellow without
+delicacy or discretion!
+
+From this Jacqueline drew the conclusion that he was not willing to
+resemble such a fellow, and was more and more persuaded that there was
+tenderness in the way he pressed her waist, and that his voice had the
+softness of a caress when he spoke to her. He made many inquiries as to
+what she liked and what she wished for in the future, as if his great
+object in all things was to anticipate her wishes. As for his
+intimacy with Madame de Villegry, Jacqueline thought nothing of it,
+notwithstanding her habitual mistrust of those she called old women.
+In the first place, Madame de Villegry was her own mistress, nothing
+hindered them from having been married long ago had they wished it;
+besides, had not Madame de Villegry brought the young man to their house
+and let every one see, even Jacqueline herself, what was her object in
+doing so? In this matter she was their ally, a most zealous and kind
+ally, for she was continually advising her young friend as to what was
+most becoming to her and how she might make herself most attractive to
+men in general, with little covert allusions to the particular tastes of
+Gerard, which she said she knew as well as if he had been her brother.
+
+All this was lightly insinuated, but never insisted upon, with the tact
+which stood Madame de Villegry in stead of talent, and which had enabled
+her to perform some marvellous feats upon the tight-rope without losing
+her balance completely. She, too, made fun of the tragic determination
+of Fred, which all those who composed the society of the De Nailles had
+been made aware of by the indiscreet lamentations of Madame d’Argy.
+
+“Is not Jacqueline fortunate?” cried. Colette Odinska, who, herself
+always on a high horse, looked on love in its tragic aspect, and would
+have liked to resemble Marie Stuart as much as she could, “is she
+not fortunate? She has had a man who has gone abroad to get himself
+killed--and all for her!”
+
+Colette imagined herself under the same circumstances, making the most
+of a slain lover, with a crape veil covering her fair hair, her
+mourning copied from that of her divorced sister, who wore her weeds so
+charmingly, but who was getting rather tired of a single life.
+
+As for Miss Kate Sparks and Miss Nora, they could not understand why
+the breaking of half-a-dozen hearts should not be the prelude to every
+marriage. That, they said with much conviction, was always the case in
+America, and a girl was thought all the more of who had done so.
+
+Jacqueline, however, thought more than was reasonable about the dangers
+that the friend of her childhood was going to encounter through her
+fault. Fred’s departure would have lent him a certain prestige, had
+not a powerful new interest stepped in to divert her thoughts. Madame
+d’Avrigny was getting up her annual private theatricals, and wanted
+Jacqueline to take the principal part in the play, saying that she ought
+to put her lessons in elocution to some use. The piece chosen was to
+illustrate a proverb, and was entirely new. It was as unexceptionable
+as it was amusing; the most severe critic could have found no fault with
+its morality or with its moral, which turned on the eagerness displayed
+by young girls nowadays to obtain diplomas. Scylla and Charybdis was
+its name. Its story was that of a young bride, who, thinking to please
+a husband, a stupid and ignorant man, was trying to obtain in secret a
+high place in the examination at the Sorbonne--‘un brevet superieur’.
+The husband, disquieted by the mystery, is at first suspicious, then
+jealous, and then is overwhelmed with humiliation when he discovers that
+his wife knows more of everything than himself. He ends by imploring her
+to give up her higher education if she wishes to please him. The little
+play had all the modern loveliness and grace which Octave Feuillet alone
+can give, and it contained a lesson from which any one might profit;
+which was by no means always the case with Madame d’Avrigny’s plays,
+which too often were full of risky allusions, of critical situations,
+and the like; likely, in short, to “sail too close to the wind,” as Fred
+had once described them. But Madame d’Avrigny’s prime object was the
+amusement of society, and society finds pleasure in things which,
+if innocence understood them, would put her to the blush. This play,
+however, was an exception. There had been very little to cut out this
+time. Madame de Nailles had been asked to take the mother’s part, but
+she declined, not caring to act such a character in a house where years
+before in all her glory she had made a sensation as a young coquette. So
+Madame d’Avrigny had to take the part herself, not sorry to be able
+to superintend everything on the stage, and to prompt Dolly, if
+necessary--Dolly, who had but four words to say, which she always
+forgot, but who looked lovely in a little cap as a femme de chambre.
+
+People had been surprised that M. de Cymier should have asked for the
+part of the husband, a local magistrate, stiff and self-important, whom
+everybody laughed at. Jacqueline alone knew why he had chosen it: it
+would give him the opportunity of giving her two kisses. Of course
+those kisses were to be reserved for the representation, but whether
+intentionally or otherwise, the young husband ventured upon them at
+every rehearsal, in spite of the general outcry--not, however, very
+much in earnest, for it is well understood that in private theatricals
+certain liberties may be allowed, and M. de Cymier had never been
+remarkable for reserve when he acted at the clubs, where the female
+parts were taken by ladies from the smaller theatres. In this school
+he had acquired some reputation as an amateur actor. “Besides,” as he
+remarked on making his apology, “we shall do it very awkwardly upon the
+stage if we are not allowed to practise it beforehand.” Jacqueline burst
+out laughing, and did not make much show of opposition. To play the part
+of his wife, to hear him say to her, to respond with the affectionate
+and familiar ‘toi’, was so amusing! It was droll to see her cut out her
+husband in chemistry, history, and grammar, and make him confound La
+Fontaine with Corneille. She had such a little air while doing it! And
+at the close, when he said to her: “If I give you a pony to-morrow, and
+a good hearty kiss this very minute, shall you be willing to give up
+getting that degree?” she responded, with such gusto: “Indeed, I shall!”
+ and her manner was so eager, so boyish, so full of fun, that she was
+wildly applauded, while Gerard embraced her as heartily as he liked, to
+make up to himself for her having had, as his wife, the upper hand.
+
+All this kissing threw him rather off his balance, and he might soon
+have sealed his fate, had not a very sad event occurred, which restored
+his self-possession.
+
+The dress rehearsal was to take place one bright spring day at about
+four o’clock in the afternoon. A large number of guests was assembled
+at the house of Madame d’Avrigny. The performance had been much talked
+about beforehand in society. The beauty, the singing, and the histrionic
+powers of the principal actress had been everywhere extolled. Fully
+conscious of what was expected of her, and eager to do herself credit in
+every way, Jacqueline took advantage of Madame Strahlberg’s presence to
+run over a little song, which she was to--sing between the acts and in
+which she could see no meaning whatever. This little song, which, to
+most of the ladies present, seemed simply idiotic, made the men in the
+audience cry “Oh!” as if half-shocked, and then “Encore! Encore!” in a
+sort of frenzy. It was a so-called pastoral effusion, in which Colinette
+rhymed with herbette, and in which the false innocence of the eighteenth
+century was a cloak for much indelicate allusion.
+
+“I never,” said Jacqueline in self-defense, before she began the song,
+“sang anything so stupid. And that is saying much when one thinks of all
+the nonsensical words that people set to music! It’s a marvel how any
+one can like this stuff. Do tell me what there is in it?” she added,
+turning to Gerard, who was charmed by her ignorance.
+
+Standing beside the grand piano, with her arms waving as she sang,
+repeating, by the expression of her eyes, the question she had asked
+and to which she had received no answer, she was singing the verses she
+considered nonsense with as much point as if she had understood them,
+thanks to the hints given her by Madame Strahlberg, who was playing her
+accompaniment, when the entrance of a servant, who pronounced her name
+aloud, made a sudden interruption. “Mademoiselle de Nailles is wanted at
+home at once. Modeste has come for her.”
+
+Madame d’Avrigny went out to say to the old servant: “She can not
+possibly go home with you! It is only half an hour since she came. The
+rehearsal is just beginning.”
+
+But something Modeste said in answer made her give a little cry, full of
+consternation. She came quickly back, and going up to Jacqueline:
+
+“My dear,” she said, “you must go home at once--there is bad news, your
+father is ill.”
+
+“Ill?”
+
+The solemnity of Madame d’Avrigny’s voice, the pity in her expression,
+the affection with which she spoke and above all her total indifference
+to the fate of her rehearsal, frightened Jacqueline. She rushed away,
+not waiting to say good-by, leaving behind her a general murmur of “Poor
+thing!” while Madame d’Avrigny, recovering from her first shock, was
+already beginning to wonder--her instincts as an impresario coming
+once more to the front--whether the leading part might not be taken by
+Isabelle Ray. She would have to send out two hundred cards, at least,
+and put off her play for another fortnight. What a pity! It seemed as if
+misfortunes always happened just so as to interfere with pleasures.
+
+The fiacre which had brought Modeste was at the door. The old nurse
+helped her young lady into it.
+
+“What has happened to papa?” cried Jacqueline, impetuously.
+
+There was something horrible in this sudden transition from gay
+excitement to the sharpest anxiety.
+
+“Nothing--that is to say--he is very sick. Don’t tremble like that,
+my darling-courage!” stammered Modeste, who was frightened by her
+agitation.
+
+“He was taken sick, you say. Where? How happened it?”
+
+“In his study. Pierre had just brought him his letters. We thought we
+heard a noise as if a chair had been thrown down, and a sort of cry. I
+ran in to see. He was lying at full length on the floor.”
+
+“And now? How is he now?”
+
+“We did what we could for him. Madame came back. He is lying on his
+bed.”
+
+Modeste covered her face with her hands.
+
+“You have not told me all. What else?”
+
+“Mon Dieu! you knew your poor father had heart disease. The last time
+the doctor saw him he thought his legs had swelled--”
+
+“Had!” Jacqueline heard only that one word. It meant that the life of
+her father was a thing of the past. Hardly waiting till the fiacre could
+be stopped, she sprang out, rushed into the house, opened the door of
+her father’s chamber, pushing aside a servant who tried to stop her,
+and fell upon her knees beside the bed where lay the body of her father,
+white and rigid.
+
+“Papa! My poor dear--dear papa!”
+
+The hand she pressed to her lips was as cold as ice. She raised her
+frightened eyes to the face over which the great change from life to
+death had passed. “What does it mean?” Jacqueline had never looked on
+death before, but she knew this was not sleep.
+
+“Oh, speak to me, papa! It is I--it is Jacqueline!”
+
+Her stepmother tried to raise her--tried to fold her in her arms.
+
+“Let me alone!” she cried with horror.
+
+It seemed to her as if her father, where he was now, so far from her, so
+far from everything, might have the power to look into human hearts, and
+know the perfidy he had known nothing of when he was living. He might
+see in her own heart, too, her great despair. All else seemed small and
+of no consequence when death was present.
+
+Oh! why had she not been a better daughter, more loving, more devoted?
+why had she ever cared for anything but to make him happy?
+
+She sobbed aloud, while Madame de Nailles, pressing her handkerchief to
+her eyes, stood at the foot of the bed, and the doctor, too, was near,
+whispering to some one whom Jacqueline at first had not perceived--the
+friend of the family, Hubert Marien.
+
+Marien there? Was it not natural that, so intimate as he had always been
+with the dead man, he should have hastened to offer his services to the
+widow?
+
+Jacqueline flung herself upon her father’s corpse, as if to protect it
+from profanation. She had an impulse to bear it away with her to some
+desert spot where she alone could have wept over it.
+
+She lay thus a long time, beside herself with grief.
+
+The flowers which covered the bed and lay scattered on the floor, gave
+a festal appearance to the death-chamber. They had been purchased for
+a fete, but circumstances had changed their destination. That evening
+there was to have been a reception in the house of M. de Nailles, but
+the unexpected guest that comes without an invitation had arrived before
+the music and the dancers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. THE STORM BREAKS
+
+Monsieur de Nailles was dead, struck down suddenly by what is called
+indefinitely heart-failure. The trouble in that organ from which he had
+long suffered had brought on what might have been long foreseen, and
+yet every one seemed, stupefied by the event. It came upon them like a
+thunderbolt. It often happens so when people who are really ill persist
+in doing all that may be done with safety by other persons. They
+persuaded themselves, and those about them are easily persuaded, that
+small remedies will prolong indefinitely a state of things which is
+precarious to the last degree. Friends are ready to believe, when the
+sufferer complains that his work is too hard for him, that he thinks too
+much of his ailments and that he exaggerates trifles to which they
+are well accustomed, but which are best known to him alone. When M. de
+Nailles, several weeks before his death, had asked to be excused and to
+stay at home instead of attending some large gathering, his wife, and
+even Jacqueline, would try to convince him that a little amusement
+would be good for him; they were unwilling to leave him to the repose he
+needed, prescribed for him by the doctors, who had been unanimous that
+he must “put down the brakes,” give less attention to business, avoid
+late hours and over-exertion of all kinds. “And, above all,” said one
+of the lights of science whom he had consulted recently about certain
+feelings of faintness which were a bad symptom, “above all, you must
+keep yourself from mental anxiety.”
+
+How could he, when his fortune, already much impaired, hung on chances
+as uncertain as those in a game of roulette? What nonsense! The failure
+of a great financial company had brought about a crisis on the Bourse.
+The news of the inability of Wermant, the ‘agent de change’, to meet
+his engagements, had completed the downfall of M. de Nailles. Not only
+death, but ruin, had entered that house, where, a few hours before,
+luxury and opulence had seemed to reign.
+
+“We don’t know whether there will be anything left for us to live upon,”
+ cried Madame de Nailles, with anguish, even while her husband’s body
+lay in the chamber of death, and Jacqueline, kneeling beside it, wept,
+unwilling to receive comfort or consolation.
+
+She turned angrily upon her stepmother and cried:
+
+“What matter? I have no father--there is nothing else I care for.”
+
+But from that moment a dreadful thought, a thought she was ashamed of,
+which made her feel a monster of selfishness, rose in her mind, do
+what she would to hinder it. Jacqueline was sensible that she cared
+for something else; great as was her sense of loss, a sort of reckless
+curiosity seemed haunting her, while all the time she felt that her
+great grief ought not to give place to anything besides. “How would
+Gerard de Cymier behave in these circumstances?” She thought about it
+all one dreadful night as she and Modeste, who was telling her beads
+softly, sat in the faint light of the death-chamber. She thought of it
+at dawn, when, after one of those brief sleeps which come to the young
+under all conditions, she resumed with a sigh a sense of surrounding
+realities. Almost in the same instant she thought: “My dear father will
+never wake again,” and “Does he love me?--does he now wish me to be his
+wife?--will he take me away?” The devil, which put this thought into
+her heart, made her eager to know the answer to these questions. He
+suggested how dreadful life with her stepmother would be if no means of
+escape were offered her. He made her foresee that her stepmother would
+marry again--would marry Marien. “But I shall not be there!” she cried,
+“I will not countenance such an infamy!” Oh, how she hoped Gerard de
+Cymier loved her! The hypocritical tears of Madame de Nailles disgusted
+her. She could not bear to have such false grief associated with her
+own.
+
+Men in black, with solemn faces, came and bore away the body, no longer
+like the form of the father she had loved. He had gone from her forever.
+Pompous funeral rites, little in accordance with the crash that soon
+succeeded them, were superintended by Marien, who, in the absence
+of near relatives, took charge of everything. He seemed to be deeply
+affected, and behaved with all possible kindness and consideration to
+Jacqueline, who could not, however, bring herself to thank him, or even
+to look at him. She hated him with an increase of resentment, as if the
+soul of her dead father, who now knew the truth, had passed into her
+own.
+
+Meantime, M. de Cymier took care to inform himself of the state of
+things. It was easy enough to do so. All Paris was talking of the
+shipwreck in which life and fortune had been lost by a man whose
+kindliness as a host at his wife’s parties every one had appreciated.
+That was what came, people said, of striving after big dividends! The
+house was to be sold, with the horses, the pictures, and the furniture.
+What a change for his poor wife and daughter! There were others who
+suffered by the Wermant crash, but those were less interesting than
+the De Nailles. M. de Belvan found himself left by his father-in-law’s
+failure with a wife on his hands who not only had not a sou, but who was
+the daughter of an ‘agent de change’ who had behaved dishonorably.
+
+This was a text for dissertations on the disgrace of marrying for money;
+those who had done the same thing, minus the same consequences, being
+loudest in reprobating alliances of that kind. M. de Cymier listened
+attentively to such talk, looking and saying the right things, and as
+he heard more and more about the deplorable condition of M. de Nailles’s
+affairs, he congratulated himself that a prudent presentiment had kept
+him from asking the hand of Jacqueline. He had had vague doubts as to
+the firm foundation of the opulence which made so charming a frame for
+her young beauty; it seemed to him as if she were now less beautiful
+than he had imagined her; the enchantment she had exercised upon him
+was thrown off by simple considerations of good sense. And yet he gave
+a long sigh of regret when he thought she was unattainable except by
+marriage. He, however, thanked heaven that he had not gone far enough
+to have compromised himself with her. The most his conscience
+could reproach him with was an occasional imprudence in moments of
+forgetfulness; no court of honor could hold him bound to declare himself
+her suitor. The evening that he made up his mind to this he wrote two
+letters, very nearly alike; one was to Madame d’Avrigny, the other to
+Madame de Nailles, announcing that, having received orders to join the
+Embassy to which he was attached at Vienna, he was about to depart at
+once, with great regret that he should not be able to take leave of any
+one. To Madame d’Avrigny he made apologies for having to give up his
+part in her theatricals; he entreated Madame de Nailles to accept both
+for herself and for Mademoiselle Jacqueline his deepest condolences and
+the assurance of his sympathy. The manner in which this was said was all
+it ought to have been, except that it might have been rather more brief.
+M. de Cymier said more than was necessary about his participation in
+their grief, because he was conscious of a total lack of sympathy. He
+begged the ladies would forgive him if, from feelings of delicacy and a
+sense of the respect due to a great sorrow, he did not, before leaving
+Paris, which he was about do to probably for a long time, personally
+present to them ‘ses hommages attristes’. Then followed a few lines in
+which he spoke of the pleasant recollections he should always retain of
+the hospitality he had enjoyed under M. de Nailles’s roof, in a way
+that gave them clearly to understand that he had no expectation of ever
+entering their family on a more intimate footing.
+
+Madame de Nailles received this letter just as she had had a
+conversation with a man of business, who had shown her how complete was
+the ruin for which in a great measure she herself was responsible. She
+had no longer any illusions as to her position. When the estate had been
+settled there would be nothing left but poverty, not only for herself,
+who, having brought her husband no dot, had no right to consider herself
+wronged by the bankruptcy, but for Jacqueline, whose fortune, derived
+from her mother, had suffered under her father’s management (there
+are such men--unfaithful guardians of a child’s property, but yet good
+fathers) in every way in which it was possible to evade the provisions
+of the Code intended to protect the rights of minor children. In the
+little salon so charmingly furnished, where never before had sorrow or
+sadness been discussed, Madame de Nailles poured out her complaints to
+her stepdaughter and insisted upon plans of strict economy, when M. de
+Cymier’s letter was brought in.
+
+“Read!” said the Baroness, handing the strange document to Jacqueline,
+after she had read it through.
+
+Then she leaned back in her chair with a gesture which signified: “This
+is the last straw!” and remained motionless, apparently overwhelmed,
+with her face covered by one hand, but furtively watching the face of
+the girl so cruelly forsaken.
+
+That face told nothing, for pride supplies some sufferers with necessary
+courage. Jacqueline sat for some time with her eyes fixed on the
+decisive adieu which swept away what might have been her secret hope.
+The paper did not tremble in her hand, a half-smile of contempt passed
+over her mouth. The answer to the restless question that had intruded
+itself upon her in the first moments of her grief was now before her.
+Its promptness, its polished brutality, had given her a shock, but not
+the pain she had expected. Perhaps her great grief--the real, the true,
+the grief death brings--recovered its place in her heart, and prevented
+her from feeling keenly any secondary emotion. Perhaps this man, who
+could pay court to her in her days of happiness and disappear when the
+first trouble came, seemed to her not worth caring for.
+
+She silently handed back the letter to her stepmother.
+
+“No more than I expected,” said the Baroness.
+
+“Indeed?” replied Jacqueline with complete indifference. She wished to
+give no opening to any expressions of sympathy on the part of Madame de
+Nailles.
+
+“Poor Madame d’Avrigny,” she added, “has bad luck; all her actors seem
+to be leaving her.”
+
+This speech was the vain bravado of a young soldier going into action.
+The poor child betrayed herself to the experienced woman, trained either
+to detect or to practise artifice, and who found bitter amusement in
+watching the girl’s assumed ‘sang-froid’. But the mask fell off at the
+first touch of genuine sympathy. When Giselle, forgetful of a certain
+coolness between them ever since Fred’s departure, came to clasp her
+in her arms, she showed only her true self, a girl suffering all the
+bitterness of a cruel, humiliating desertion. Long talks ensued between
+the friends, in which Jacqueline poured into Giselle’s ear her sad
+discoveries in the past, her sorrows and anxieties in the present, and
+her vague plans for the future. “I must go away,” she said; “I must
+escape somewhere; I can not go on living with Madame de Nailles--I
+should go mad, I should be tempted every day to upbraid her with her
+conduct.”
+
+Giselle made no attempt to curb an excitement which she knew would
+resist all she could say to calm it. She feigned agreement, hoping
+thereby to increase her future influence, and advised her friend to seek
+in a convent the refuge that she needed. But she must do nothing rashly;
+she should only consider it a temporary retreat whose motive was a wish
+to remain for a while within reach of religious consolation. In that way
+she would give people nothing to talk about, and her step mother could
+not be offended. It was never of any use to get out of a difficulty by
+breaking all the glass windows with a great noise, and good resolutions
+are made firmer by being matured in quietness. Such were the lessons
+Giselle herself had been taught by the Benedictine nuns, who, however
+deficient they might be in the higher education of women, knew at least
+how to bring up young girls with a view to making them good wives.
+Giselle illustrated this day by day in her relations to a husband as
+disagreeable as a husband well could be, a man of small intelligence,
+who was not even faithful to her. But she did not cite herself as an
+example. She never talked about herself, or her own difficulties.
+
+“You are an angel of sense and goodness,” sobbed Jacqueline. “I will do
+whatever you wish me to do.”
+
+“Count upon me--count upon all your friends,” said Madame de Talbrun,
+tenderly.
+
+And then, enumerating the oldest and the truest of these friends, she
+unluckily named Madame d’Argy. Jacqueline drew herself back at once:
+
+“Oh, for pity’s sake!” she cried, “don’t mention them to me!”
+
+Already a comparison between Fred’s faithful affection and Gerard
+de Cymier’s desertion had come into her mind, but she had refused to
+entertain it, declaring resolutely to herself that she never should
+repent her refusal. She was sore, she was angry with all men, she wished
+all were like Cymier or like Marien, that she might hate every one of
+them; she came to the conclusion in her heart of hearts that all of
+them, even the best, if put to the proof, would turn out selfish. She
+liked to think so--to believe in none of them. Thus it happened that an
+unexpected visit from Fred’s mother, among those that she received in
+her first days of orphanhood, was particularly agreeable to her.
+
+Madame d’Argy, on hearing of the death and of the ruin of M. de Nailles,
+was divided by two contradictory feelings. She clearly saw the hand of
+Providence in what had happened: her son was in the squadron on its
+way to attack Formosa; he was in peril from the climate, in peril from
+Chinese bullets, and assuredly those who had brought him into peril
+could not be punished too severely; on the other hand, the last mail
+from Tonquin had brought her one of those great joys which always
+incline us to be merciful. Fred had so greatly distinguished himself
+in a series of fights upon the river Min that he had been offered his
+choice between the Cross of the Legion of Honor or promotion. He told
+his mother now that he had quite recovered from a wound he had received
+which had brought him some glory, but which he assured her had done him
+no bodily harm, and he repeated to her what he would not tell her at
+first, some words of praise from Admiral Courbet of more value in his
+eyes than any reward.
+
+Triumphant herself, and much moved by pity for Jacqueline, Madame d’Argy
+felt as if she must put an end to a rupture which could not be kept up
+when a great sorrow had fallen on her old friends, besides which she
+longed to tell every one, those who had been blind and ungrateful in
+particular, that Fred had proved himself a hero. So Jacqueline and her
+stepmother saw her arrive as if nothing had ever come between them.
+There were kisses and tears, and a torrent of kindly meant questions,
+affectionate explanations, and offers of service. But Fred’s mother
+could not help showing her own pride and happiness to those in sorrow.
+They congratulated her with sadness. Madame d’Argy would have liked
+to think that the value of what she had lost was now made plain to
+Jacqueline. And if it caused her one more pang--what did it matter?
+He and his mother had suffered too. It was the turn of others. God
+was just. Resentment, and kindness, and a strange mixed feeling of
+forgiveness and revenge contended together in the really generous
+heart of Madame d’Argy, but that heart was still sore within her.
+Pity, however, carried the day, and had it not been for the irritating
+coldness of “that little hard-hearted thing,” as she called Jacqueline,
+she would have entirely forgiven her. She never suspected that
+the exaggerated reserve of manner that offended her was owing to
+Jacqueline’s dread (commendable in itself) of appearing to wish in her
+days of misfortune for the return of one she had rejected in the time of
+prosperity.
+
+In spite of the received opinion that society abandons those who are
+overtaken by misfortune, all the friends of the De Nailles flocked
+to offer their condolences to the widow and the orphan with warm
+demonstrations of interest. Curiosity, a liking to witness, or to
+experience, emotion, the pleasure of being able to tell what has been
+seen and heard, to find out new facts and repeat them again to others,
+joined to a sort of vague, commonplace, almost intrusive pity, are
+sentiments, which sometimes in hours of great disaster, produce what
+appears to wear the look of sympathy. A fortnight after M. de Nailles’s
+death, between the acts of Scylla and Charybdis, the principal parts in
+which were taken by young d’Etaples and Isabelle Ray, the company, as
+it ate ices, was glibly discussing the real drama which had produced
+in their own elegant circle much of the effect a blow has upon an
+ant-hill--fear, agitation, and a tumultuous rush to the scene of the
+disaster.
+
+Great indignation was expressed against the man who had risked the
+fortune of his family in speculation. Oh! the thing had been going
+on for a long while. His fortune had been gradually melting away;
+Grandchaux was loaded down with mortgages and would bring almost nothing
+at a forced sale.
+
+Everybody forgot that had M. de Nailles’s speculations been successful
+they would have been called matters of business, conducted with great
+ability on a large scale. When a performer falls from the tightrope,
+who remembers all the times he has not failed? It is simply said that he
+fell from his own carelessness.
+
+“The poor Baroness is touchingly resigned,” said Madame de Villegry,
+with a deep sigh; “and heaven knows how many other cares she has besides
+the loss of money! I don’t mean only the death of her husband--and you
+know how much they were attached to each other--I am speaking of that
+unaccountable resolution of Jacqueline’s.”
+
+Madame d’Avrigny here came forward with her usual equanimity which
+nothing disturbed, unless it were something which interfered with the
+success of her salon.
+
+She was of course very sorry for her friends in trouble, but the
+vicissitudes that had happened to her theatricals she had more at heart.
+
+“After all,” she said, “the first act did not go off badly, did it? The
+musical part made up for the rest. That divine Strahlberg is ready for
+any emergency. How well she sang that air of ‘La Petite Mariee!’ It
+was exquisite, but I regretted Jacqueline. She was so charming in that
+lively little part. What a catastrophe!
+
+“What a terrible catastrophe! Were you speaking of the retreat she
+wishes to make in a convent? Well, I quite understand how she feels
+about it! I should feel the same myself. In the bewilderment of a first
+grief one does not care to see anything of the world. ‘Mon Dieu’! youth
+always has these exaggerated notions. She will come back to us. Poor
+little thing! Of course it was no fault of hers, and I should not think
+of blaming Monsieur de Cymier. The exigencies of his career--but you all
+must own that unexpected things happen so suddenly in this life that it
+is enough to discourage any one who likes to open her house and provide
+amusement for her friends.”
+
+Every one present pitied her for the contretemps over which she had
+triumphed so successfully. Then she resumed, serenely:
+
+“Don’t you think that Isabelle played the part almost as well as
+Jacqueline? Up to the last moment I was afraid that something would
+go wrong. When one gets into a streak of ill-luck--but all went off to
+perfection, thank heaven!”
+
+Meantime Madame Odinska was whispering to one of those who sat near her
+her belief that Jacqueline would never get over her father’s loss. “It
+would not astonish me,” she said, “to hear that the child, who has a
+noble nature, would remain in the convent and take the veil.”
+
+Any kind of heroic deed seemed natural to this foolish enthusiast, who,
+as a matter of fact, in her own life, had never shown any tendency
+to heroic virtues; her mission in life had seemed to be to spoil her
+daughters in every possible way, and to fling away more money than
+belonged to her.
+
+“Really? Was she so very fond of her father!” asked Madame Ray,
+incredulously. “When he was alive, they did not seem to make much of
+him in his own house. Maybe this retreat is a good way of getting over a
+little wound to her ‘amour-propre’.”
+
+“The proper thing, I think,” said Madame d’Etaples, “would be for the
+mother and daughter to keep together, to bear the troubles before them
+hand in hand. Jacqueline does not seem to think much of the last wishes
+of the father she pretends to be so fond of. The Baroness showed me,
+with many tears, a letter he left joined to his will, which was written
+some years ago, and which now, of course, is of no value. He told mother
+and daughter to take care of each other and hoped they would always
+remain friends, loving each other for love of him. Jacqueline’s conduct
+amazes me; it looks like ingratitude.”
+
+“Oh! she is a hard-hearted little thing! I always thought so!” said
+Madame de Villegry, carelessly.
+
+Here the rising of the curtain stopped short these discussions, which
+displayed so much good-nature and perspicacity. But some laid the blame
+on the influence of that little bigot of a Talbrun, who had secretly
+blown up the fire of religious enthusiasm in Jacqueline, when Madame
+d’Avrigny’s energetic “Hush!” put an end to the discussion. It was time
+to come back to more immediate interests, to the play which went on in
+spite of wind and tide.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK 3.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. BITTER DISILLUSION
+
+Some people in this world who turn round and round in a daily circle of
+small things, like squirrels in a cage, have no idea of the pleasure a
+young creature, conscious of courage, has in trying its strength; this
+struggle with fortune loses its charm as it grows longer and longer and
+more and more difficult, but at the beginning it is an almost certain
+remedy for sorrow.
+
+To her resolve to make head against misfortune Jacqueline owed the
+fact that she did not fall into those morbid reveries which might have
+converted her passing fancy for a man who was simply a male flirt into
+the importance of a lost love. Is there any human being conscious of
+energy, and with faith in his or her own powers, who has not wished
+to know something of adversity in order to rise to the occasion and
+confront it? To say nothing of the pleasure there is in eating brown
+bread, when one has been fed only on cake, or of the satisfaction that a
+child feels when, after strict discipline, he is left to do as he likes,
+to say nothing of the pleasure ladies boarding in nunneries are sure to
+feel on reentering the world, at recovering their liberty, Jacqueline by
+nature loved independence, and she was attracted by the novelty of her
+situation as larks are attracted by a mirror. She was curious to know
+what life held for her in reserve, and she was extremely anxious to
+repair the error she had committed in giving way to a feeling of which
+she was now ashamed. What could do this better than hard work? To owe
+everything to herself, to her talents, to her efforts, to her industry,
+such was Jacqueline’s ideal of her future life.
+
+She had, before this, crowned her brilliant reputation in the ‘cours’ of
+M. Regis by passing her preliminary examination at the Sorbonne; she was
+confident of attaining the highest degree--the ‘brevet superieur’, and
+while pursuing her own studies she hoped to give lessons in music and in
+foreign languages, etc. Thus assured of making her own living, she could
+afford to despise the discreditable happiness of Madame de Nailles, who,
+she had no doubt, would shortly become Madame Marien; also the crooked
+ways in which M. de Cymier might pursue his fortune-hunting. She said
+to herself that she should never marry; that she had other objects of
+interest; that marriage was for those who had nothing better before
+them; and the world appeared to her under a new aspect, a sphere
+of useful activity full of possibilities, of infinite variety, and
+abounding in interests. Marriage might be all very well for rich
+girls, who unhappily were objects of value to be bought and sold; her
+semi-poverty gave her the right to break the chains that hampered the
+career of other well-born women--she would make her own way in the world
+like a man.
+
+Thus, at eighteen, youth is ready to set sail in a light skiff on a
+rough sea, having laid in a good store of imagination and of courage, of
+childlike ignorance and self-esteem.
+
+No doubt she would meet with some difficulties; that thought did but
+excite her ardor. No doubt Madame de Nailles would try to keep her
+with her, and Jacqueline had provided herself beforehand with some
+double-edged remarks by way of weapons, which she intended to use
+according to circumstances. But all these preparations for defense or
+attack proved unnecessary. When she told the Baroness of her plans she
+met with no opposition. She had expected that her project of separation
+would highly displease her stepmother; on the contrary, Madame de
+Nailles discussed her projects quietly, affecting to consider them
+merely temporary, but with no indication of dissatisfaction or
+resistance. In truth she was not sorry that Jacqueline, whose
+companionship became more and more embarrassing every day, had cut the
+knot of a difficult position by a piece of wilfulness and perversity
+which seemed to put her in the wrong. The necessity she would have been
+under of crushing such a girl, who was now eighteen, would have been
+distasteful and unprofitable; she was very glad to get rid of her
+stepdaughter, always provided it could be done decently and without
+scandal. Those two, who had once so loved each other and who were now
+sharers in the same sorrows, became enemies--two hostile parties, which
+only skilful strategy could ever again bring together. They tacitly
+agreed to certain conditions: they would save appearances; they would
+remain on outwardly good terms with each other whatever happened,
+and above all they would avoid any explanation. This programme was
+faithfully carried out, thanks to the great tact of Madame de Nailles.
+
+No one could have been more watchful to appear ignorant of everything
+which, if once brought to light, would have led to difficulties;
+for instance, she feigned not to know that her stepdaughter was in
+possession of a secret which, if the world knew, would forever make them
+strangers to each other; nor would she seem aware that Hubert Marien,
+weary to death of the tie that bound him to her, was restrained
+from breaking it only by a scruple of honor. Thanks to this seeming
+ignorance, she parted from Jacqueline without any open breach, as she
+had long hoped to do, and she retained as a friend who supplied her
+wants a man who was only too happy to be allowed at this price to escape
+the act of reparation which Jacqueline, in her simplicity, had dreaded.
+
+All those who, having for years dined and danced under the roof of the
+Nailles, were accounted their friends by society, formed themselves
+into two parties, one of which lauded to the skies the dignity and
+resignation of the Baroness, while the other admired the force of
+character in Jacqueline.
+
+Visitors flocked to the convent which the young girl, by the advice of
+Giselle, had chosen for her retreat because it was situated in a quiet
+quarter. She who looked so beautiful in her crape garments, who showed
+herself so satisfied in her little cell with hardly any furniture, who
+was grateful for the services rendered her by the lay sisters,
+content with having no salon but the convent parlor, who was passing
+examinations to become a teacher, and who seemed to consider it a favor
+to be sometimes allowed to hear the children in the convent school
+say their lessons--was surely like a heroine in a novel. And indeed
+Jacqueline had the agreeable sensation of considering herself one.
+Public admiration was a great help to her, after she had passed through
+that crisis in her grief during which she could feel nothing but the
+horror of knowing she should never see her father again, when she had
+ceased to weep for him incessantly, to pray for him, and to turn, like
+a wounded lioness, on those who blamed his reckless conduct, though she
+herself had been its chief victim.
+
+For three months she hardly left the convent, walking only in the
+grounds and gardens, which were of considerable extent. From time to
+time Giselle came for her and took her to drive in the Bois at that hour
+of the day when few people were there.
+
+Enguerrand, who, thanks to his mother’s care, was beginning to be an
+intelligent and interesting child, though he was still painfully like
+M. de Talbrun, was always with them in the coupe, kindhearted Giselle
+thinking that nothing could be so likely to assuage grief as the prattle
+of a child. She was astonished--she was touched to the heart, by what
+she called naively the conversion of Jacqueline. It was true that the
+young girl had no longer any whims or caprices. All the nuns seemed to
+her amiable, her lodging was all she needed, her food was excellent; her
+lessons gave her amusement. Possibly the excitement of the entire change
+had much to do at first with this philosophy, and in fact at the end of
+six months Jacqueline owned that she was growing tired of dining at the
+table d’hote.
+
+There was a little knot of crooked old ladies who were righteous
+overmuch, and several sour old maids whose only occupation seemed to
+be to make remarks on any person who had anything different in dress,
+manners, or appearance from what they considered the type of the
+becoming. If it is not good that man should live alone, it is equally
+true that women should not live together. Jacqueline found this out as
+soon as her powers of observation came back to her. And about the
+same time she discovered that she was not so free as she had flattered
+herself she should be. The appearance of a lady, fair and with light
+hair, very pretty and about her own age, gave her for the first time an
+inclination to talk at table. She and this young woman met twice a day
+at their meals, in the morning and in the evening; their rooms were
+next each other, and at night Jacqueline could hear her through the thin
+partition giving utterance to sighs, which showed that she was unhappy.
+Several times, too, she came upon her in the garden looking earnestly
+at a place where the wall had been broken, a spot whence it was said a
+Spanish countess had been carried off by a bold adventurer. Jacqueline
+thought there must be something romantic in the history of this
+newcomer, and would have liked exceedingly to know what it might be.
+As a prelude to acquaintance, she offered the young stranger some holy
+water when they met in the chapel, a bow and a smile were interchanged,
+their fingers touched. They seemed almost friends. After this,
+Jacqueline contrived to change her seat at table to one next to this
+unknown person, so prettily dressed, with her hair so nicely arranged,
+and, though her expression was very sad, with a smile so very winning.
+She alone represented the world, the world of Paris, among all those
+ladies, some of whom were looking for places as companions, some having
+come up from the provinces, and some being old ladies who had seen
+better days. Her change of place was observed by the nun who presided
+at the table, and a shade of displeasure passed over her face. It was
+slight, but it portended trouble. And, indeed, when grace had been said,
+Mademoiselle de Nailles was sent for by the Mother Superior, who gave
+her to understand that, being so young, it was especially incumbent
+on her to be circumspect in her choice of associates. Her place
+thenceforward was to be between Madame de X-----, an old, deaf lady, and
+Mademoiselle J-----, a former governess, as cold as ice and exceedingly
+respectable. As to Madame Saville, she had been received in the convent
+for especial reasons, arising out of circumstances which did not make
+her a fit companion for inexperienced girls. The Superior hesitated a
+moment and then said: “Her husband requested us to take charge of her,”
+ in a tone by which Jacqueline quite understood that “take charge” was a
+synonym for “keep a strict watch upon her.” She was spied upon, she was
+persecuted--unjustly, no doubt.
+
+All this increased the interest that Jacqueline already felt in the lady
+with the light hair. But she made a low curtsey to the Mother
+Superior and returned no answer. Her intercourse with her neighbor
+was thenceforward; however, sly and secret, which only made it more
+interesting and exciting. They would exchange a few words when they met
+upon the stairs, in the garden, or in the cloisters, when there was
+no curious eye to spy them out; and the first time Jacqueline went out
+alone Madame Saville was on the watch, and, without speaking, slipped a
+letter into her hand.
+
+This first time Jacqueline went out was an epoch in her life, as small
+events are sometimes in the annals of nations; it was the date of her
+emancipation, it coincided with what she called her choice of a career.
+Thinking herself sure of possessing a talent for teaching, she had
+spoken of it to several friends who had come to see her, and who each
+and all exclaimed that they would like some lessons, a delicate way of
+helping her quite understood by Jacqueline. Pupils like Belle Ray and
+Yvonne d’Etaples, who wanted her to come twice a week to play duets with
+them or to read over new music, were not nearly so interesting as those
+in her little class who had hardly more than learned their scales!
+Besides this, Madame d’Avrigny begged her to come and dine with her,
+when there would be only themselves, on Mondays, and then practise with
+Dolly, who had not another moment in which she could take a lesson. She
+should be sent home scrupulously before ten o’clock, that being the hour
+at the convent when every one must be in. Jacqueline accepted all these
+kindnesses gratefully. By Giselle’s advice she hid her slight figure
+under a loose cloak and put on her head a bonnet fit for a grandmother,
+a closed hat with long strings, which, when she first put it on her
+head, made her burst out laughing. She imagined herself to be going
+forth in disguise. To walk the streets thus masked she thought would be
+amusing, so amusing that the moment she set foot on the street pavement
+she felt that the joy of living was yet strong in her. With a roll of
+music in her hand, she walked on rather hesitatingly, a little afraid,
+like a bird just escaped from the cage where it was born; her heart
+beat, but it was with pleasure; she fancied every one was looking at
+her, and in fact one old gentleman, not deceived by the cloak, did
+follow her till she got into an omnibus for the first time in her
+life--a new experience and a new pleasure. Once seated, and a little out
+of breath, she remembered Madame Saville’s letter, which she had slipped
+into her pocket. It was sealed and had a stamp on it; it was too highly
+scented to be in good taste, and it was addressed to a lieutenant of
+chasseurs with an aristocratic name, in a garrison at Fontainebleau.
+
+Then Jacqueline began vaguely to comprehend that Madame Saville’s
+husband might have had serious reasons for commending his wife to the
+surveillance of the nuns, and that there might have been some excuse for
+their endeavoring to hinder all intimacy between herself and the little
+blonde.
+
+This office of messenger, thrust upon her without asking permission,
+was not agreeable to Jacqueline, and she resolved as she dropped the
+missive, which, even on the outside, looked compromising, into the
+nearest post-box, to be more reserved in future. For which reason she
+responded coldly to a sign Madame Saville made her when, in the evening,
+she returned from giving her lessons.
+
+Those lessons--those excursions which took her abroad in all weathers,
+though with praiseworthy and serious motives, into the fashionable
+parts of Paris, from which she had exiled herself by her own will--were
+greatly enjoyed by Jacqueline. Everything amused her, being seen from a
+point of view in which she had never before contemplated it. She seemed
+to be at a play, all personal interests forgotten for the moment,
+looking at the world of which she was no longer a part with a lively,
+critical curiosity, without regrets but without cynicism. The world did
+not seem to her bad--only man’s higher instincts had little part in it.
+Such, at least, was what she thought, so long as people praised her
+for her courage, so long as the houses in which another Jacqueline
+de Nailles had been once so brilliant, received her with affection as
+before, though she had to leave in an anteroom her modest waterproof
+or wet umbrella. They were even more kind and cordial to her than ever,
+unless an exaggerated cordiality be one form of impertinence. But the
+enthusiasm bestowed on splendid instances of energy in certain circles,
+to which after all such energy is a reproach, is superficial, and
+not being genuine is sure not to last long. Some people said that
+Jacqueline’s staid manners were put on for effect, and that she was only
+attempting to play a difficult part to which she was not suited; others
+blamed her for not being up to concert-pitch in matters of social
+interest. The first time she felt the pang of exclusion was at
+Madame d’Avrigny’s, who was at the same moment overwhelming her with
+expressions of regard. In the first place, she could see that the little
+family dinner to which she had been so kindly invited was attended by so
+many guests that her deep mourning seemed out of place among them. Then
+Madame d’Avrigny would make whispered explanations, which Jacqueline was
+conscious of, and which were very painful to her. Such words as: “Old
+friend of the family;” “Is giving music lessons to my daughter;” fell
+more than once upon her ear, followed by exclamations of “Poor thing!”
+ “So courageous!” “Chivalric sentiments!” Of course, everyone added that
+they excused her toilette. Then when she tried to escape such remarks
+by wearing a new gown, Dolly, who was always a little fool (there is
+no cure for that infirmity) cried out in a tone such as she never would
+have dared to use in the days when Jacqueline was a model of elegance:
+“Oh, how fine you are!” Then again, Madame d’Avrigny, notwithstanding
+the good manners on which she prided herself, could not conceal that the
+obligation of sending home the recluse to the ends of the earth, at a
+certain hour, made trouble with her servants, who were put out of their
+way. Jacqueline seized on this pretext to propose to give up the Monday
+music-lesson, and after some polite hesitation her offer was accepted,
+evidently to Madame d’Avrigny’s relief.
+
+In this case she had the satisfaction of being the one to propose the
+discontinuance of the lessons. At Madame Ray’s she was simply dismissed.
+About the close of winter she was told that as Isabelle was soon to be
+married she would have no time for music till her wedding was over, and
+about the same time the d’Etaples told her much the same thing. This was
+not to be wondered at, for Mademoiselle Ray was engaged to an officer of
+dragoons, the same Marcel d’Etaples who had acted with her in Scylla
+and Charybdis, and Madame Ray, being a watchful mother, was not long in
+perceiving that Marcel came to pay court to Isabelle too frequently at
+the hour for her music-lesson. Madame d’Etaples on her part had made a
+similar discovery, and both judged that the presence of so beautiful
+a girl, in Jacqueline’s position, might not be desirable in these
+interviews between lovers.
+
+When Giselle, as she was about to leave town for the country in July,
+begged Jacqueline, who seemed run down and out of spirits, to come and
+stay with her, the poor child was very glad to accept the invitation.
+Her pupils were leaving her one after another, she could not understand
+why, and she was bored to death in the convent, whose strict rules were
+drawn tighter on her than before, for the nuns had begun to understand
+her better, and to discover the real worldliness of her character. At
+the same time, that retreat within these pious walls no longer seemed
+like paradise to Jacqueline; her transition from the deepest crape to
+the softer tints of half mourning, seemed to make her less of an angel
+in their eyes. They said to each other that Mademoiselle de Nailles was
+fanciful, and fancies are the very last things wanted in a convent,
+for fancies can brave bolts, and make their escape beyond stone walls,
+whatever means may be taken to clip their wings.
+
+“She does not seem like the same person,” cried the good sisters, who
+had been greatly edified at first by her behavior, and who were almost
+ready now to be shocked at her.
+
+The course of things was coming back rapidly into its natural channel;
+in obedience to the law which makes a tree, apparently dead, put forth
+shoots in springtime. And that inevitable re-budding and reblossoming
+was beautiful to see in this young human plant. M. de Talbrun,
+Jacqueline’s host, could not fail to perceive it. At first he had
+been annoyed with Giselle for giving the invitation, having a habit of
+finding fault with everything he had not ordered or suggested, by virtue
+of his marital authority, and also because he hated above all things, as
+he said, to have people in his house who were “wobegones.” But in a week
+he was quite reconciled to the idea of keeping Mademoiselle de Nailles
+all the summer at the Chateau de Fresne. Never had Giselle known him to
+take so much trouble to be amiable, and indeed Jacqueline saw him much
+more to advantage at home than in Paris, where, as she had often said,
+he diffused too strong an odor of the stables. At Fresne, it was more
+easy to forgive him for talking always of his stud and of his kennel,
+and then he was so obliging! Every day he proposed some new jaunt, an
+excursion to see some view, to visit all the ruined chateaux or abbeys
+in the neighborhood. And, with surprising delicacy, M. de Talbrun
+refrained from inviting too many of his country neighbors, who might
+perhaps have scared Jacqueline and arrested her gradual return to
+gayety. They might also have interrupted his tete-a-tete with his wife’s
+guest, for they had many such conversations. Giselle was absorbed in the
+duty of teaching her son his a, b, c. Besides, being very timid, she had
+never ridden on horseback, and, naturally, riding was delightful to
+her cousin. Jacqueline was never tired of it; while she paid as little
+attention to the absurd remarks Oscar made to her between their gallops
+as a girl does at a ball to the idle words of her partner. She supposed
+it was his custom to talk in that manner--a sort of rough gallantry--but
+with the best intentions. Jacqueline was disposed to look upon her life
+at Fresne as a feast after a long famine. Everything was to her taste,
+the whole appearance of this lordly chateau of the time of Louis
+XIII, the splendid trees in the home park, the gardens laid out ‘a la
+Francais’, decorated with art and kept up carefully. Everything,
+indeed, that pertained to that high life which to Giselle had so little
+importance, was to her delightful. Giselle’s taste was so simple that it
+was a constant subject of reproach from her husband. To be sure, it was
+with him a general rule to find fault with her about everything. He did
+not spare her his reproaches on a multitude of subjects; all day long
+he was worrying her about small trifles with which he should have had
+nothing to do. It is a mistake to suppose that a man can not be brutal
+and fussy at the same time. M. de Talbrun was proof to the contrary.
+
+“You are too patient,” said Jacqueline often to Giselle. “You ought to
+answer him back--to defend yourself. I am sure if you did so you would
+have him, by-and-bye, at your beck and call.”
+
+“Perhaps so. I dare say you could have managed better than I do,”
+ replied Giselle, with a sad smile, but without a spark of jealousy. “Oh,
+you are in high favor. He gave up this week the races at Deauville, the
+great race week from which he has never before been absent, since our
+marriage. But you see my ambition has become limited; I am satisfied if
+he lets me alone.” Giselle spoke these words with emphasis, and then she
+added: “and lets me bring up his son my own way. That is all I ask.”
+
+Jacqueline thought in her heart that it was wrong to ask so little,
+that poor Giselle did not know how to make the best of her husband, and,
+curious to find out what line of conduct would serve best to
+subjugate M. de Talbrun, she became herself--that is to say, a born
+coquette--venturing from one thing to another, like a child playing
+fearlessly with a bulldog, who is gentle only with him, or a fly buzzing
+round a spider’s web, while the spider lies quietly within.
+
+She would tease him, contradict him, and make him listen to long pieces
+of scientific music as she played them on the piano, when she knew he
+always said that music to him was nothing but a disagreeable noise; she
+would laugh at his thanks when a final chord, struck with her utmost
+force, roused him from a brief slumber; in short, it amused her to prove
+that this coarse, rough man was to her alone no object of fear. She
+would have done better had she been afraid.
+
+Thus it came to pass that, as they rode together through some of the
+prettiest roads in the most beautiful part of Normandy, M. de Talbrun
+began to talk, with an ever-increasing vivacity, of the days when
+they first met, at Treport, relating a thousand little incidents which
+Jacqueline had forgotten, and from which it was easy to see that he had
+watched her narrowly, though he was on the eve of his own marriage. With
+unnecessary persistence, and stammering as he was apt to do when moved
+by any emotion, he repeated over and over again, that from the first
+moment he had seen her he had been struck by her--devilishly struck by
+her--he had been, indeed! And one day when she answered, in order not to
+appear to attach any importance to this declaration, that she was very
+glad of it, he took an opportunity, as their horses stopped side by side
+before a beautiful sunset, to put his arm suddenly round her waist, and
+give her a kiss, so abrupt, so violent, so outrageous, that she screamed
+aloud. He did not remove his arm from her, his coarse, red face drew
+near her own again with an expression that filled her with horror. She
+struggled to free herself, her horse began to rear, she screamed for
+help with all her might, but nothing answered her save an echo. The
+situation seemed critical for Jacqueline. As to M. de Talbrun, he was
+quite at his ease, as if he were accustomed to make love like a centaur;
+while the girl felt herself in peril of being thrown at any moment, and
+trampled under his horse’s feet. At last she succeeded in striking her
+aggressor a sharp blow across the face with her riding-whip. Blinded for
+a moment, he let her go, and she took advantage of her release to put
+her horse to its full speed. He galloped after her, beside himself with
+wrath and agitation; it was a mad but silent race, until they reached
+the gate of the Chateau de Fresne, which they entered at the same
+moment, their horses covered with foam.
+
+“How foolish!” cried Giselle, coming to meet them. “Just see in what a
+state you have brought home your poor horses.”
+
+Jacqueline, pale and trembling, made no answer. M. de Talbrun, as he
+helped her to dismount, whispered, savagely: “Not a word of this!”
+
+At dinner, his wife remarked that some branch must have struck him on
+the cheek, there was a red mark right across his face like a blow.
+
+“We were riding through the woods,” he answered, shortly.
+
+Then Giselle began to suspect something, and remarked that nobody was
+talking that evening, asking, with a half-smile, whether they had been
+quarrelling.
+
+“We did have a little difference,” Oscar replied, quietly.
+
+“Oh, it did not amount to anything,” he said, lighting his cigar; “let
+us make friends again, won’t you?” he added, holding out his hand to
+Jacqueline. She was obliged to give him the tips of her fingers, as she
+said in her turn, with audacity equal to his own:
+
+“Oh, it was less than nothing. Only, Giselle, I told your husband that I
+had had some bad news, and shall have to go back to Paris, and he tried
+to persuade me not to go.”
+
+“I beg you not to go,” said Oscar, vehemently.
+
+“Bad news?” repeated Giselle, “you did not say a word to me about it!”
+
+“I did not have a chance. My old Modeste is very ill and asks me to come
+to her. I should never forgive myself if I did not go.”
+
+“What, Modeste? So very ill? Is it really so serious? What a pity! But
+you will come back again?”
+
+“If I can. But I must leave Fresne to-morrow morning.”
+
+“Oh, I defy you to leave Fresne!” said M. de Talbrun.
+
+Jacqueline leaned toward him, and said firmly, but in a low voice: “If
+you attempt to hinder me, I swear I will tell everything.”
+
+All that evening she did not leave Giselle’s side for a moment, and at
+night she locked herself into her chamber and barricaded the door, as if
+a mad dog or a murderer were at large in the chateau.
+
+Giselle came into her room at an early hour.
+
+“Is what you said yesterday the truth, Jacqueline? Is Modeste really
+ill? Are you sure you have had no reason to complain of anybody in this
+place?--of any one?”
+
+Then, after a pause, she added:
+
+“Oh, my darling, how hard it is to do good even to those whom we most
+dearly love.”
+
+“I don’t understand you,” said Jacqueline, with an effort. “Everybody
+has been kind to me.”
+
+They kissed each other with effusion, but M. de Talbrun’s leave-taking
+was icy in the extreme. Jacqueline had made a mortal enemy.
+
+The grand outline of the chateau, built of brick and stone with its
+wings flanked by towers, the green turf of the great park in which it
+stood, passed from her sight as she drove away, like some vision in a
+dream.
+
+“I shall never come back--never come back!” thought Jacqueline. She felt
+as if she had been thrust out everywhere. For one moment she thought
+of seeking refuge at Lizerolles, which was not very many miles from
+the railroad station, and when there of telling Madame d’Argy of her
+difficulties, and asking her advice; but false pride kept her from doing
+so--the same false pride which had made her write coldly, in answer
+to the letters full of feeling and sympathy Fred had written to her on
+receiving news of her father’s death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. TREACHEROUS KINDNESS
+
+The experience through which Jacqueline had just passed was not
+calculated to fortify her or to elevate her soul. She felt for the
+first time that her unprotected situation and her poverty exposed her to
+insult, for what other name could she give to the outrageous behavior of
+M. de Talbrun, which had degraded her in her own eyes?
+
+What right had that man to treat her as his plaything? Her pride and
+all her womanly instincts rose up in rebellion. Her nerves had been so
+shaken that she sobbed behind her veil all the way to her destination.
+Paris, when she reached it, offered her almost nothing that could
+comfort or amuse her. That city is always empty and dull in August, more
+so than at any other season. Even the poor occupation of teaching her
+little class of music pupils had been taken away by the holidays. Her
+sole resource was in Modeste’s society. Modeste--who, by the way, had
+never been ill, and who suffered from nothing but old age--was delighted
+to receive her dear young lady in her little room far up under the
+roof, where, though quite infirm, she lived comfortably, on her savings.
+Jacqueline, sitting beside her as she sewed, was soothed by her old
+nursery tales, or by anecdotes of former days. Her own relatives were
+often the old woman’s theme. She knew the history of Jacqueline’s family
+from beginning to end; but, wherever her story began, it invariably
+wound up with:
+
+“If only your poor papa had not made away with all your money!”
+
+And Jacqueline always answered:
+
+“He was quite at liberty to do what he pleased with what belonged to
+him.”
+
+“Belonged to him! Yes, but what belonged to you? And how does it happen
+that your stepmother seems so well off? Why doesn’t some family council
+interfere? My little pet, to think of your having to work for your
+living. It’s enough to kill me!”
+
+“Bah! Modeste, there are worse things than being poor.”
+
+“Maybe so,” answered the old nurse, doubtfully, “but when one has money
+troubles along with the rest, the money troubles make other things
+harder to bear; whereas, if you have money enough you can bear anything,
+and you would have had enough, after all, if you had married Monsieur
+Fred.”
+
+At which point Jacqueline insisted that Modeste should be silent, and
+answered, resolutely: “I mean never to marry at all.”
+
+To this Modeste made answer: “That’s another of your notions. The worst
+husband is always better than none; and I know, for I never married.”
+
+“That’s why you talk such nonsense, my poor dear Modeste! You know
+nothing about it.”
+
+One day, after one of these visits to the only friend, as she believed,
+who remained to her in the world--for her intimacy with Giselle was
+spoiled forever--she saw, as she walked with a heavy heart toward her
+convent in a distant quarter, an open fiacre pull up, in obedience to
+a sudden cry from a passenger who was sitting inside. The person sprang
+out, and rushed toward Jacqueline with loud exclamations of joy.
+
+“Madame Strahlberg!”
+
+“Dear Jacqueline! What a pleasure to meet you!” And, the street being
+nearly empty, Madame Strahlberg heartily embraced her friend.
+
+“I have thought of you so often, darling, for months past--they seem
+like years, like centuries! Where have you been all that long time?”
+
+In point of fact, Jacqueline had no proof that the three Odinska ladies
+had ever remembered her existence, but that might have been partly her
+own fault, or rather the fault of Giselle, who had made her promise to
+have as little as possible to do with such compromising personages.
+She was seized with a kind of remorse when she found such warmth of
+recognition from the amiable Wanda. Had she not shown herself ungrateful
+and cowardly? People about whom the world talks, are they not sometimes
+quite as good as those who have not lost their standing in society, like
+M. de Talbrun? It seemed to her that, go where she would, she ran risks.
+
+The cynicism that is the result of sad experience was beginning to show
+itself in Jacqueline.
+
+“Oh, forgive me!” she said, feeling, contrite.
+
+“Forgive you for what, you beautiful creature?” asked Madame Strahlberg,
+with sincere astonishment.
+
+She had the excellent custom of never observing when people neglected
+her, or at least, of never showing that she did so, partly because her
+life was so full of varied interests that she cared little for such
+trifles, and secondly because, having endured several affronts of that
+nature, she had ceased to be very sensitive.
+
+“I knew, through the d’Avrignys,” she said, “that you were still at the
+convent. You are not going to take the veil there, are you? It would be
+a great pity. No? You wish to lead the life of an intelligent woman who
+is free and independent? That is well; but it was rather an odd idea to
+begin by going into a cloister. Oh!--I see, public opinion?” And Madame
+Strahlberg made a little face, expressive of her contempt for public
+opinion.
+
+“It does not pay to consult other people’s opinions--it is useless,
+believe me. The more we sacrifice to public opinion, the more it asks of
+us. I cut that matter short long ago. But how glad I am to hear that
+you don’t intend to hide that lovely face in a convent. You are looking
+better than ever--a little too pale, still, perhaps--a little too
+interesting. Colette will be so glad to see you, for you must let me
+take you home with me. I shall carry you off, whether you will or not,
+now I have caught you. We will have a little music just among ourselves,
+as we had in the good old times--you know, our dear music; you will feel
+like yourself again. Ah, art--there is nothing to compare with art in
+this world, my darling!”
+
+Jacqueline yielded without hesitation, only too glad of the unhoped-for
+good fortune which relieved her from her ennui and her depression. And
+soon the hired victoria was on its way to that quarter of the city which
+is made up of streets with geographical names, and seems as if it were
+intended to lodge all the nations under heaven. It stopped in the Rue
+de Naples, before a house that was somewhat showy, but which showed from
+its outside, that it was not inhabited by high-bred people. There were
+pink linings to lace curtains at the windows, and quantities of green
+vines drooped from the balconies, as if to attract attention from the
+passers-by. Madame Strahlberg, with her ostentatious and undulating
+walk, which caused men to turn and notice her as she went by, went
+swiftly up the stairs to the second story. She put one finger on the
+electric bell, which caused two or three little dogs inside to begin
+barking, and pushed Jacqueline in before her, crying: “Colette! Mamma!
+See whom I have brought back to you!” Meantime doors were hurriedly
+opened, quick steps resounded in the antechamber, and the newcomer
+found herself received with a torrent of affectionate and delighted
+exclamations, pressed to the ample bosom of Madame Odinska, covered with
+kisses by Colette, and fawned upon by the three toy terriers, the most
+sociable of their kind in all Paris, their mistresses declared.
+
+Jacqueline was passing through one of those moments when one is at the
+mercy of chance, when the heart which has been closed by sorrow suddenly
+revives, expands, and softens under the influence of a ray of sunshine.
+Tears came into her eyes, and she murmured:
+
+“My friends--my kind friends!”
+
+“Yes, your friends, whatever happens, now and always,” said Colette,
+eagerly, though she had probably barely given a thought to Jacqueline
+for eighteen months. Nevertheless, on seeing her, Colette really
+thought she had not for a moment ceased to be fond of her. “How you have
+suffered, you poor pussy! We must set to work and make you feel a little
+gay, at any price. You see, it is our duty. How lucky you came to-day--”
+
+A sign from her sister stopped her.
+
+They carried Jacqueline into a large and handsome salon, full of dust
+and without curtains, with all the furniture covered up as if the
+family were on the eve of going to the country. Madame Strahlberg,
+nevertheless, was not about to leave Paris, her habit being to remain
+there in the summer, sometimes for months, picnicking as it were, in her
+own apartment. What was curious, too, was that the chandelier and all
+the side-lights had fresh wax candles, and seats were arranged as if in
+preparation for a play, while near the grand piano was a sort of stage,
+shut off from the rest of the room by screens.
+
+Colette sat down on one of the front row of chairs and cried: “I am the
+audience--I am all ears.” Her sister hurriedly explained all this to
+Jacqueline, with out waiting to be questioned: “We have been giving some
+little summer entertainments of late, of which you see the remains.” She
+went at once to the piano, and incited Jacqueline to sing by beginning
+one of their favorite duets, and Jacqueline, once more in her native
+element, followed her lead. They went on from one song to another, from
+the light to the severe, from scientific music to mere tunes and airs,
+turning over the old music-books together.
+
+“Yes, you are a little out of practice, but all you have to do is to
+rub off the rust. Your voice is finer than ever--just like velvet.”
+ And Madame Strahlberg pretended that she envied the fine mezzo-soprano,
+speaking disparagingly of her own little thread of a voice, which,
+however, she managed so skilfully. “What a shame to take up your time
+teaching, with such a voice as that!” she cried; “you are out of your
+senses, my dear, you are raving mad. It would be sinful to keep your
+gifts to yourself! I am very sorry to discourage you, but you have none
+of the requisites for a teacher. The stage would be best for you--‘Mon
+Dieu! why not? You will see La Rochette this evening; she is a person
+who would give you good advice. I wish she could hear you!”
+
+“But my dear friend, I can not stay,” murmured Jacqueline, for those
+unexpected words “the stage, why not?” rang in her head, made her heart
+beat fast, and made lights dance before her eyes. “They are expecting me
+to dine at home.”
+
+“At your convent? I beg your pardon, I’ll take care of that. Don’t you
+know me? My claws seldom let go of a prize, especially when that prize
+is worth the keeping. A little telegram has already been sent, with your
+excuses. The telegraph is good for that, if not for anything else: it
+facilitates ‘impromptus’.”
+
+“Long live impromptus,” cried out Colette, “there is nothing like them
+for fun!” And while Jacqueline was trying to get away, not knowing
+exactly what she was saying, but frightened, pleased, and much excited,
+Colette went on: “Oh! I am so glad, so glad you came to-day; now you can
+see the pantomime! I dreamed, wasn’t it odd, only last night, that you
+were acting it with us. How can one help believing in presentiments?
+Mine are always delightful--and yours?”
+
+“The pantomime?” repeated Jacqueline in bewilderment, “but I thought
+your sister told me you were all alone.”
+
+“How could we have anything like company in August?” said Madame
+Strahlberg, interrupting her; “why, it would be impossible, there are
+not four cats in Paris. No, no, we sha’n’t have anybody. A few
+friends possibly may drop in--people passing through Paris--in their
+travelling-dresses. Nothing that need alarm you. The pantomime Colette
+talks about is only a pretext that they may hear Monsieur Szmera.”
+
+And who was M. Szmera?
+
+Jacqueline soon learned that he was a Hungarian, second half-cousin of
+a friend of Kossuth, the most wonderful violinist of the day, who
+had apparently superseded the famous Polish pianist in these ladies’
+interest and esteem. As for the latter, they had almost forgotten his
+name, he had behaved so badly.
+
+“But,” said Jacqueline, anxiously, “you know I am obliged to be home by
+ten o’clock.”
+
+“Ah! that’s like Cinderella,” laughed Wanda. “Will the stroke of the
+clock change all the carriages in Paris into pumpkins? One can get
+‘fiacres’ at any hour.”
+
+“But it is a fixed rule: I must be in,” repeated Jacqueline, growing
+very uneasy.
+
+“Must you really? Madame Saville says it is very easy to manage those
+nuns--”
+
+“What? Do you know Madame Saville, who was boarding at the convent last
+winter?”
+
+“Yes, indeed; she is a countrywoman of ours, a friend, the most charming
+of women. You will see her here this evening. She has gained her divorce
+suit--”
+
+“You are mistaken,” said Colette, “she has lost it. But that makes
+no difference. She has got tired of her husband. Come, say ‘Yes,’
+Jacqueline--a nice, dear ‘Yes’--you will stay, will you not? Oh, you
+darling!”
+
+They dined without much ceremony, on the pretext that the cook had been
+turned off that morning for impertinence, but immediately after dinner
+there was a procession of boys from a restaurant, bringing whipped
+creams, iced drinks, fruits, sweetmeats, and champagne--more than would
+have been wanted at the buffet of a ball. The Prince, they said, had
+sent these things. What Prince?
+
+As Jacqueline was asking this question, a gentleman came in whose age
+it would have been impossible to guess, so disguised was he by his black
+wig, his dyed whiskers, and the soft bloom on his cheeks, all of which
+were entirely out of keeping with those parts of his face that he could
+not change. In one of his eyes was stuck a monocle. He was bedizened
+with several orders, he bowed with military stiffness, and kissed with
+much devotion the ladies’ hands, calling them by titles, whether they
+had them or not. His foreign accent made it as hard to detect his
+nationality as it was to know his age. Two or three other gentlemen, not
+less decorated and not less foreign, afterward came in. Colette named
+them in a whisper to Jacqueline, but their names were too hard for her
+to pronounce, much less to remember. One of them, a man of handsome
+presence, came accompanied by a sort of female ruin, an old lady leaning
+on a cane, whose head, every time she moved, glittered with jewels,
+placed in a very lofty erection of curled hair.
+
+“That gentleman’s mother is awfully ugly,” Jacqueline could not help
+saying.
+
+“His mother? What, the Countess? She is neither his mother nor his wife.
+He is her gentleman-in-waiting-that’s all. Don’t you understand? Well,
+imagine a man who is a sort of ‘gentleman-companion’; he keeps her
+accounts, he escorts her to the theatre, he gives her his arm. It is a
+very satisfactory arrangement.”
+
+“The gentleman receives a salary, in such a case?” inquired Jacqueline,
+much amused.
+
+“Why, what do you find in it so extraordinary?” said Colette. “She
+adores cards, and there he is, always ready to be her partner. Oh, here
+comes dear Madame Saville!”
+
+There were fresh cries of welcome, fresh exchanges of affectionate
+diminutives and kisses, which seemed to make the Prince’s mouth water.
+Jacqueline discovered, to her great surprise, that she, too, was a dear
+friend of Madame Saville’s, who called her her good angel, in reference,
+no doubt, to the letter she had secretly put into the post. At last she
+said, trying to make her escape from the party: “But it must be nine
+o’clock.”
+
+“Oh! but--you must hear Szmera.”
+
+A handsome young fellow, stoutly built, with heavy eyebrows, a hooked
+nose, a quantity of hair growing low upon his forehead, and lips that
+were too red, the perfect type of a Hungarian gypsy, began a piece of
+his own composition, which had all the ardor of a mild ‘galopade’ and
+a Satanic hunt, with intervals of dying sweetness, during which the
+painted skeleton they called the Countess declared that she certainly
+heard a nightingale warbling in the moonlight.
+
+This charming speech was forthwith repeated by her “umbra” in all parts
+of the room, which was now nearly filled with people, a mixed multitude,
+some of whom were frantic about music, others frantic about Wanda
+Strahlberg. There were artists and amateurs present, and even
+respectable women, for Madame d’Avrigny, attracted by the odor of a
+species of Bohemianism, had come to breathe it with delight, under cover
+of a wish to glean ideas for her next winter’s receptions.
+
+Then again there were women who had been dropped out of society, like
+Madame de Versanne, who, with her sunken eyes and faded face, was not
+likely again to pick up in the street a bracelet worth ten thousand
+francs. There was a literary woman who signed herself Fraisiline, and
+wrote papers on fashion--she was so painted and bedizened that some one
+remarked that the principal establishments she praised in print probably
+paid her in their merchandise. There was a dowager whose aristocratic
+name appeared daily on the fourth page of the newspapers, attesting the
+merits of some kind of quack medicine; and a retired opera-singer, who,
+having been called Zenaide Rochet till she grew up in Montmartre, where
+she was born, had had a brilliant career as a star in Italy under the
+name of Zina Rochette. La Rochette’s name, alas! is unknown to the
+present generation.
+
+In all, there were about twenty persons, who made more noise with their
+applause than a hundred ordinary guests, for enthusiasm was exacted by
+Madame Strahlberg. Profiting by the ovation to the Hungarian musician,
+Jacqueline made a movement toward the door, but just as she reached it
+she had the misfortune of falling in with her old acquaintance, Nora
+Sparks, who was at that moment entering with her father. She was forced
+to sit down again and hear all about Kate’s marriage. Kate had gone back
+to New York, her husband being an American, but Nora said she had made
+up her mind not to leave Europe till she had found a satisfactory match.
+
+“You had better make haste about it, if you expect to keep me here,”
+ said Mr. Sparks, with a peculiar expression in his eye. He was eager to
+get home, having important business to attend to in the West.
+
+“Oh, papa, be quiet! I shall find somebody at Bellagio. Why, darling,
+are you still in mourning?”
+
+She had forgotten that Jacqueline had lost her father. Probably she
+would not have thought it necessary to wear black so long for Mr.
+Sparks. Meantime, Madame Strahlberg and her sister had left the room.
+
+“When are they coming back?” said Jacqueline, growing very nervous. “It
+seems to me this clock must be wrong. It says half-past nine. I am sure
+it must be later than that.”
+
+“Half-past nine!--why, it is past eleven,” replied Miss Nora, with a
+giggle. “Do you suppose they pay any attention to clocks in this house?
+Everything here is topsy-turvy.”
+
+“Oh! what shall I do?” sighed poor Jacqueline, on the verge of tears.
+
+“Why, do they keep you such a prisoner as that? Can’t you come in a
+little late--”
+
+“They wouldn’t open the doors--they never open the doors on any pretext
+after ten o’clock,” cried Jacqueline, beside herself.
+
+“Then your nuns must be savages? You should teach them better.”
+
+“Don’t be worried, dear little one, you can sleep on this sofa,” said
+Madame Odinska, kindly.
+
+To whom had she not offered that useful sofa? Wanda and Colette were
+just as ready to propose that others should spend the night with them
+as, on the smallest pretext, to accept the same hospitality from others.
+Wanda, indeed, always slept curled up like a cat on a divan, in a fur
+wrapper, which she put on early in the evening when she wanted to smoke
+cigarettes. She went to sleep at no regular hour. A bear’s skin was
+placed always within her reach, so that if she were cold she could draw
+it over her. Jacqueline, not being accustomed to these Polish fashions,
+did not seem to be much attracted by the offer of the sofa. She blamed
+herself bitterly for her own folly in having got herself into a scrape
+which might lead to serious consequences.
+
+But this was neither time nor place for expressions of anxiety; it would
+be absurd to trouble every one present with her regrets. Besides, the
+harm was done--it was irreparable--and while she was turning over in her
+mind in what manner she could explain to the Mother Superior that
+the mistake about the hour had been no fault of hers--and the Mother
+Superior, alas! would be sure to make inquiries as to the friends whom
+she had visited--the magic violin of M. Szmera played its first notes,
+accompanied by Madame Odinska on the piano, and by a delicious little
+flute. They played an overture, the dreamy sweetness of which extorted
+cries of admiration from all the women.
+
+Suddenly, the screens parted, and upon the little platform that
+represented a stage bounded a sort of anomalous being, supple and
+charming, in the traditional dress of Pierrot, whom the English
+vulgarize and call Harlequin. He had white camellias instead of buttons
+on his loose white jacket, and the bright eyes of Wanda shone out
+from his red-and-white face. He held a mandolin, and imitated the most
+charming of serenades, before a make-believe window, which, being opened
+by a white, round arm, revealed Colette, dressed as Colombine.
+
+The little pantomime piece was called ‘Pierrot in Love’. It consisted
+of a series of dainty coquetries, sudden quarrels, fits of jealousy,
+and tender reconciliations, played by the two sisters. Colette with
+her beauty, Wanda with her talent, her impishness, her graceful and
+voluptuous attitudes, electrified the spectators, especially in a long
+monologue, in which Pierrot contemplated suicide, made more effective by
+the passionate and heart-piercing strains of the Hungarian’s violin, so
+that old Rochette cried out: “What a pity such a wonder should not be
+upon the stage!” La Rochette, now retired into private life, wearing
+an old dress, with her gray hair and her black eyes, like those of a
+watchful crocodile, took the pleasure in the pantomime that all actors
+do to the very last in everything connected with the theatre. She cried
+‘brava’ in tones that might reach Italy; she blew kisses to the actors
+in default of flowers.
+
+Madame d’Avrigny was also transported to the sixth heaven, but
+Jacqueline’s presence somewhat marred her pleasure. When she first
+perceived her she had shown great surprise. “You here, my dear?” she
+cried, “I thought you safe with our own excellent Giselle.”
+
+“Safe, Madame? It seems to me one can be safe anywhere,” Jacqueline
+answered, though she was tempted to say “safe nowhere;” but instead she
+inquired for Dolly.
+
+Dolly’s mother bit her lips and then replied: “You see I have not
+brought her. Oh, yes, this house is very amusing--but rather too much
+so. The play was very pretty, and I am sorry it would not do at my
+house. It is too--too ‘risque’, you know;” and she rehearsed her usual
+speech about the great difficulties encountered by a lady who wished to
+give entertainments and provide amusement for her friends.
+
+Meantime Pierrot, or rather Madame Strahlberg, had leaped over an
+imaginary barrier and came dancing toward the company, shaking her large
+sleeves and settling her little snake-like head in her large quilled
+collar, dragging after her the Hungarian, who seemed not very willing.
+She presented him to Madame d’Avrigny, hoping that so fashionable a
+woman might want him to play at her receptions during the winter, and
+to a journalist who promised to give him a notice in his paper,
+provided--and here he whispered something to Pierrot, who, smiling,
+answered neither yes nor no. The sisters kept on their costumes;
+Colette was enchanting with her bare neck, her long-waisted black velvet
+corsage, her very short skirt, and a sort of three-cornered hat upon
+her head. All the men paid court to her, and she accepted their homage,
+becoming gayer and gayer at every compliment, laughing loudly, possibly
+that her laugh might exhibit her beautiful teeth.
+
+Wanda, as Pierrot, sang, with her hands in her pockets, a Russian
+village song: “Ah! Dounai-li moy Dounai” (“Oh! thou, my Danube”). Then
+she imperiously called Jacqueline to the piano:--“It is your turn now,”
+ she said, “most humble violet.”
+
+Up to that moment, Jacqueline’s deep mourning had kept the gentlemen
+present from addressing her, though she had been much stared at.
+Although she did not wish to sing, for her heart was heavy as she
+thought of the troubles that awaited her the next day at the convent,
+she sang what was asked of her without resistance or pretension. Then,
+for the first time, she experienced the pride of triumph. Szmera, though
+he was furious at not being the sole lion of the evening, complimented
+her, bowing almost to the ground, with one hand on his heart; Madame
+Rochette assured her that she had a fortune in her throat whenever she
+chose to seek it; persons she had never seen and who did not know her
+name, pressed her hands fervently, saying that her singing was adorable.
+All cried “Encore,” “Encore!” and, yielding to the pleasure of applause,
+she thought no more of the flight of time. Dawn was peeping through the
+windows when the party broke up.
+
+“What kind people!” thought the debutante, whom they had encouraged and
+applauded; “some perhaps are a little odd, but how much cordiality
+and warmth there is among them! It is catching. This is the sort of
+atmosphere in which talent should live.”
+
+Being very much fatigued, she fell asleep upon the offered sofa,
+half-pleased, half-frightened, but with two prominent convictions: one,
+that she was beginning to return to life; the other, that she stood on
+the edge of a precipice. In her dreams old Rochette appeared to her, her
+face like that of an affable frog, her dress the dress of Pierrot, and
+she croaked out, in a variety of tones: “The stage! Why not? Applauded
+every night--it would be glorious!” Then she seemed in her dream to be
+falling, falling down from a great height, as one falls from fairyland
+into stern reality. She opened her eyes: it was noon. Madame Odinska was
+waiting for her: she intended herself to take her to the convent, and
+for that purpose had assumed the imposing air of a noble matron.
+
+Alas! it was in vain! Jacqueline, was made to understand that such
+an infraction of the rules could not be overlooked. To pass the night
+without leave out of the convent, and not with her own family, was cause
+for expulsion. Neither the prayers nor the anger of Madame Odinska
+had any power to change the sentence. While the Mother Superior
+calmly pronounced her decree, she was taking the measure of this stout
+foreigner who appeared in behalf of Jacqueline, a woman overdressed, yet
+at the same time shabby, who had a far from well-bred or aristocratic
+air. “Out of consideration for Madame de Talbrun,” she said, “the
+convent consents to keep Mademoiselle de Nailles a few days longer--a
+few weeks perhaps, until she can find some other place to go. That is
+all we can do for her.”
+
+Jacqueline listened to this sentence as she might have watched a game of
+dice when her fate hung on the result, but she showed no emotion. “Now,”
+ she thought, “my fate has been decided; respectable people will have
+nothing more to do with me. I will go with the others, who, perhaps,
+after all are not worse, and who most certainly are more amusing.”
+
+A fortnight after this, Madame de Nailles, having come back to Paris,
+from some watering-place, was telling Marien that Jacqueline had started
+for Bellagio with Mr. and Miss Sparks, the latter having taken a notion
+that she wanted that kind of chaperon who is called a companion in
+England and America.
+
+“But they are of the same age,” said Marien.
+
+“That is just what Miss Sparks wants. She does not wish to be hampered
+by an elderly chaperon, but to be accompanied, as she would have been by
+her sister.”
+
+“Jacqueline will be exposed to see strange things; how could you have
+consented--”
+
+“Consented? As if she cared for my consent! And then she manages to say
+such irritating things as soon as one attempts to blame her or advise
+her. For example, this is one of them: ‘Don’t you suppose,’ she said to
+me, ‘that every one will take the most agreeable chance that offers for
+a visit to Italy?’ What do you think of that allusion? It closed my lips
+absolutely.”
+
+“Perhaps she did not mean what you think she meant.”
+
+“Do you think so? And when I warned her against Madame Strahlberg,
+saying that she might set her a very bad example, she answered: ‘I may
+have had worse.’ I suppose that was not meant for impertinence either!”
+
+“I don’t know,” said Hubert Marien, biting his lips doubtfully, “but--”
+
+He was silent a few moments, his head drooped on his breast, he was in
+some painful reverie.
+
+“Go on. What are you thinking about?” asked Madame de Nailles,
+impatiently.
+
+“I beg your pardon. I was only thinking that a certain responsibility
+might rest on those who have made that young girl what she is.”
+
+“I don’t understand you,” said the stepmother, with an impatient
+gesture. “Who can do anything to counteract a bad disposition? You don’t
+deny that hers is bad? She is a very devil for pride and obstinacy--she
+has no affection--she has proved it. I have no inclination to get myself
+wounded by trying to control her.”
+
+“Then you prefer to let her ruin herself?”
+
+“I should prefer not to give the world a chance to talk, by coming to an
+open rupture with her, which would certainly be the case if I tried to
+contradict her. After all, the Sparks and Madame Odinska are not yet put
+out of the pale of good society, and she knew them long ago. An early
+intimacy may be a good explanation if people blame her for going too
+far--”
+
+“So be it, then; if you are satisfied it is not for me to say anything,”
+ replied Marien, coldly.
+
+“Satisfied? I am not satisfied with anything or anybody,” said Madame de
+Nailles, indignantly. “How could I be satisfied; I never have met with
+anything but ingratitude.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. THE SAILOR’S RETURN
+
+Madame D’Argy did not leave her son in ignorance of all the freaks and
+follies of Jacqueline. He knew every particular of the wrong-doings and
+the imprudences of his early friend, and even the additions made to
+them by calumny, ever since the fit of in dependence which, after her
+father’s death, had led her to throw off all control. She told of her
+sudden departure from Fresne, where she might have found so safe a
+refuge with her friend and cousin. Then had not her own imprudence and
+coquetry led to a rupture with the families of d’Etaples and Ray? She
+told of the scandalous intimacy with Madame Strahlberg; of her expulsion
+from the convent, where they had discovered, even before she left, that
+she had been in the habit of visiting undesirable persons; and finally
+she informed him that Jacqueline had gone to Italy with an old Yankee
+and his daughter--he being a man, it was said, who had laid the
+foundation of his colossal fortune by keeping a bar-room in a mining
+camp in California. This last was no fiction, the cut of Mr. Sparks’s
+beard and his unpolished manners left no doubt on the subject; and she
+wound up by saying that Madame d’Avrigny, whom no one could accuse
+of ill-nature, had been grieved at meeting this unhappy girl in very
+improper company, among which she seemed quite in her element, like a
+fish in water. It was said also that she was thinking of studying for
+the stage with La Rochette--M. de Talbrun had heard it talked about in
+the foyer of the Opera by an old Prince from some foreign country--she
+could not remember his name, but he was praising Madame Strahlberg
+without any reserve as the most delightful of Parisiennes. Thereupon
+Talbrun had naturally forbidden his wife to have anything to do with
+Jacqueline, or even to write to her. Fat Oscar, though he was not all
+that he ought to be himself, had some very strict notions of propriety.
+No one was more particular about family relations, and really in this
+case no one could blame him; but Giselle had been very unhappy, and to
+the very last had tried to stand up for her unhappy friend. Having told
+him all this, she added, she would say no more on the subject.
+
+Giselle was a model woman in everything, in tact, in goodness, in good
+sense, and she was very attentive to the poor old mother of Fred, who
+but for her must have died long ago of loneliness and sorrow. Thereupon
+ensued the poor lady’s usual lamentations over the long, long absence
+of her beloved son; as usual, she told him she did not think she should
+live to see him back again; she gave him a full account of her maladies,
+caused, or at least aggravated, by her mortal, constant, incurable
+sorrow; and she told how Giselle had been nursing her with all the
+patience and devotion of a Sister of Charity. Through all Madame
+d’Argy’s letters at this period the angelic figure of Giselle was
+contrasted with the very different one of that young and incorrigible
+little devil of a Jacqueline.
+
+Fred at first believed his mother’s stories were all exaggeration,
+but the facts were there, corroborated by the continued silence of the
+person concerned. He knew his mother to be too good wilfully to
+blacken the character of one whom for years she had hoped would be her
+daughter-in-law, the only child of her best friend, the early love of
+her son. But by degrees he fancied that the love so long living at the
+bottom of his heart was slowly dying, that it had been extinguished,
+that nothing remained of it but remembrance, such remembrance as we
+retain for dead things, a remembrance without hope, whose weight added
+to the homesickness which with him was increasing every day.
+
+There was no active service to enable him to endure exile. The heroic
+period of the war had passed. Since a treaty of peace had been signed
+with China, the fleet, which had distinguished itself in so many small
+engagements and bombardments, had had nothing to do but to mount guard,
+as it were, along a conquered coast. All round it in the bay, where it
+lay at anchor, rose mountains of strange shapes, which seemed to shut
+it into a kind of prison. This feeling of nothing to be done--of nothing
+likely to be done, worked in Fred’s head like a nightmare. The only
+thing he thought of was how he could escape, when could he once more
+kiss the faded cheeks of his mother, who often, when he slept or lay
+wakeful during the long hours of the siesta, he saw beside him in tears.
+Hers was the only face that he recalled distinctly; to her and to her
+only were devoted his long reveries when on watch; that time when he
+formerly composed his love verses, tender or angry, or full of despair.
+That was all over! A sort of mournful resignation had succeeded his
+bursts of excited feeling, his revolt against his fate.
+
+This was Fred’s state of mind when he received orders to return
+home--orders as unexpected as everything seems to be in the life of a
+naval man. “I am going back to her!” he cried. Her was his mother, her
+was France. All the rest had disappeared as if into a fog. Jacqueline
+was a phantom of the past; so many things had happened since the old
+times when he had loved her. He had crossed the Indian Ocean and the
+China Sea; he had seen long stretches of interminable coast-line; he
+had beheld misery, and glory, and all the painful scenes that wait on
+warfare; he had seen pestilence, and death in every shape, and all this
+had wrought in him a sort of stoicism, the result of long acquaintance
+with solitude and danger. He remembered his old love as a flower he had
+once admired as he passed it, a treacherous flower, with thorns that had
+wounded him. There are flowers that are beneficent, and flowers that are
+poisonous, and the last are sometimes the most beautiful. They should
+not be blamed, he thought; it was their nature to be hurtful; but it was
+well to pass them by and not to gather them.
+
+By the time he had debarked Fred had made up his mind to let his mother
+choose a wife for him, a daughter-in-law suited to herself, who would
+give her the delight of grandchildren, who would bring them up well,
+and who would not weary of Lizerolles. But a week later the idea of this
+kind of marriage had gone out of his head, and this change of feeling
+was partly owing to Giselle. Giselle gave him a smile of welcome that
+went to his heart, for that poor heart, after all, was only waiting for
+a chance again to give itself away. She was with Madame d’Argy, who had
+not been well enough to go to the sea-coast to meet her son, and he
+saw at the same moment the pale and aged face which had visited him at
+Tonquin in his dreams, and a fair face that he had never before thought
+so beautiful, more oval than he remembered it, with blue eyes soft and
+tender, and a mouth with a sweet infantine expression of sincerity and
+goodness. His mother stretched out her trembling arms, gave a great cry,
+and fainted away.
+
+“Don’t be alarmed; it is only joy,” said Giselle, in her soft voice.
+
+And when Madame d’Argy proved her to be right by recovering very
+quickly, overwhelming her son with rapid questions and covering him with
+kisses, Giselle held out her hand to him and said:
+
+“I, too, am very glad you have come home.”
+
+“Oh!” cried the sick woman in her excitement, “you must kiss your old
+playfellow!”
+
+Giselle blushed a little, and Fred, more embarrassed than she, lightly
+touched with his lips her pretty smooth hair which shone upon her head
+like a helmet of gold. Perhaps it was this new style of hairdressing
+which made her seem so much more beautiful than he remembered her, but
+it seemed to him he saw her for the first time; while, with the greatest
+eagerness, notwithstanding Giselle’s attempts to interrupt her, Madame
+d’Argy repeated to her son all she owed to that dear friend “her own
+daughter, the best of daughters, the most patient, the most devoted of
+daughters, could not have done more! Ah! if there only could be found
+another one like her!”
+
+Whereupon the object of all these praises made her escape, disclaiming
+everything.
+
+Why, after this, should she have hesitated to come back to Lizerolles
+every day, as of late had been her custom? Men know so little about
+taking care of sick people. So she came, and was present at all the
+rejoicings and all the talks that followed Fred’s return. She took her
+part in the discussions about Fred’s future. “Help me, my pet,” said
+Madame d’Argy, “help me to find a wife for him: all we ask is that she
+should be like you.”
+
+In answer to which Fred declared, half-laughing and half-seriously, that
+that was his ideal.
+
+She did not believe much of this, but, following her natural instinct,
+she assumed the dangerous task of consolation, until, as Madame d’Argy
+grew better, she discontinued her daily visits, and Fred, in his turn,
+took a habit of going over to Fresne without being invited, and spending
+there a good deal of his time.
+
+“Don’t send me away. You who are always charitable,” he said. “If you
+only knew what a pleasure a Parisian conversation is after coming from
+Tonquin!”
+
+“But I am so little of a Parisienne, or at least what you mean by that
+term, and my conversation is not worth coming for,” objected Giselle.
+
+In her extreme modesty she did not realize how much she had gained in
+intellectual culture. Women left to themselves have time to read, and
+Giselle had done this all the more because she had considered it a duty.
+Must she not know enough to instruct and superintend the education of
+her son? With much strong feeling, yet with much simplicity, she spoke
+to Fred of this great task, which sometimes frightened her; he gave her
+his advice, and both discussed together the things that make up a good
+man. Giselle brought up frequently the subject of heredity: she named
+no one, but Fred could see that she had a secret terror lest Enguerrand,
+who in person was very like his father, might also inherit his
+character. Fears on this subject, however, appeared unfounded. There was
+nothing about the child that was not good; his tastes were those of his
+mother. He was passionately fond of Fred, climbing on his lap as soon as
+the latter arrived and always maintaining that he, too, wanted a pretty
+red ribbon to wear in his buttonhole, a ribbon only to be got by sailing
+far away over the seas, like sailors.
+
+“A sailor! Heaven forbid!” cried Madame de Talbrun.
+
+“Oh! sailors come back again. He has come back. Couldn’t he take me away
+with him soon? I have some stories about cabin-boys who were not much
+older than I.”
+
+“Let us hope that your friend Fred won’t go away,” said Giselle. “But
+why do you wish to be a cabinboy?”
+
+“Because I want to go away with him, if he does not stay here--because I
+like him,” answered Enguerrand in a tone of decision.
+
+Hereupon Giselle kissed her boy with more than usual tenderness. He
+would not take to the hunting-field, she thought, the boulevard, and the
+corps de ballet. She would not lose him. “But, oh, Fred!” she cried, “it
+is not to be wondered at that he is so fond of you! You spoil him!
+You will be a devoted father some day; your vocation is evidently for
+marriage.”
+
+She thought, in thus speaking, that she was saying what Madame d’Argy
+would like her to say.
+
+“In the matter of children, I think your son is enough for me,” he said,
+one day; “and as for marriage, you would not believe how all women--I
+mean all the young girls among whom I should have to make a choice--are
+indifferent to me. My feeling almost amounts to antipathy.”
+
+For the first time she ventured to say: “Do you still care for
+Jacqueline?”
+
+“About as much as she cares for me,” he answered, dryly. “No, I made a
+mistake once, and that has made me cautious for the future.”
+
+Another day he said:
+
+“I know now who was the woman I ought to have loved.”
+
+Giselle did not look up; she was devoting all her attention to
+Enguerrand.
+
+Fred held certain theories which he used to talk about. He believed in
+a high, spiritual, disinterested affection which would raise a man above
+himself, making him more noble, inspiring a disgust for all ignoble
+pleasures. The woman willing to accept such homage might do anything she
+pleased with a heart that would be hers alone. She would be the lady
+who presided over his life, for whose sake all good deeds and generous
+actions would be done, the idol, higher than a wife or any object of
+earthly passion, the White Angel whom poets have sung.
+
+Giselle pretended that she did not understand him, but she was divinely
+happy. This, then, was the reward of her spotless life! She was the
+object of a worship no less tender than respectful. Fred spoke of the
+woman he ought to have loved as if he meant to say, “I love you;” he
+pressed his lips on the auburn curls of little Enguerrand where his
+mother had just kissed him. Day after day he seemed more attracted
+to that salon where, dressed with more care than she had ever dressed
+before, she expected him. Then awoke in her the wish to please, and she
+was beautiful with that beauty which is not the insipid beauty of St.
+Agnes, but that which, superior to all other, is seen when the face
+reflects the soul. All that winter there was a new Giselle--a Giselle
+who passed away again among the shadows, a Giselle of whom everybody
+said, even her husband, “Ma foi! but she is beautiful!” Oscar de
+Talbrun, as he made this remark, never thought of wondering why she was
+more beautiful. He was ready to take offense and was jealous by nature,
+but he was perfectly sure of his wife, as he had often said. As to Fred,
+the idea of being jealous of him would never have entered his mind. Fred
+was a relative and was admitted to all the privileges of a cousin or a
+brother; besides, he was a fellow of no consequence in any way.
+
+While this platonic attachment grew stronger and stronger between Fred
+and Giselle, assisted by the innocent complicity of little Enguerrand,
+Jacqueline was discovering how hard it is for a girl of good birth, if
+she is poor, to carry out her plans of honest independence. Possibly she
+had allowed herself to be too easily misled by the title of “companion,”
+ which, apparently more cordial than that of ‘demoiselle de compagnie’,
+means in reality the same thing--a sort of half-servile position.
+
+Money is a touchstone which influences all social relations, especially
+when on one side there is a somewhat morbid susceptibility, and on the
+other a lack of good breeding and education. The Sparks, father and
+daughter, Americans of the lower class, though willing to spend any
+number of dollars for their own pleasure, expected that every penny
+they disbursed should receive its full equivalent in service; the place
+therefore offered so gracefully and spontaneously to Mademoiselle de
+Nailles was far from being a sinecure. Jacqueline received her salary on
+the same footing as Justine, the Parisian maid, received her wages, for,
+although her position was apparently one of much greater importance and
+consideration than Justine’s, she was really at the beck and call of a
+girl who, while she called her “darling,” gave her orders and paid her
+for her services. Very often Miss Nora asked her to sew, on the plea
+that she was as skilful with her fingers as a fairy, but in reality that
+her employer might feel the superiority of her own position.
+
+Hitherto Miss Nora had been delighted to meet at watering-places a
+friend of whom she could say proudly, “She is a representative of the
+old nobility of France” (which was not true, by the way, for the title
+of Baron borne by M. de Nailles went no farther back than the days of
+Louis XVIII); and she was still more proud to think that she was now
+waited on by this same daughter of a nobleman, when her own father had
+kept a drinking-saloon. She did not acknowledge this feeling to herself,
+and would certainly have maintained that she never had had such an idea,
+but it existed all the same, and she was under its influence, being very
+vain and rather foolish. And, indeed, Jacqueline, would have been very
+willing to plan trimmings and alter finery from morning to night in
+her own chamber in a hotel, exactly as Mademoiselle Justine did, if she
+could by this means have escaped the special duties of her difficult
+position, which duties were to follow Miss Nora everywhere, like her own
+shadow, to be her confidant and to act sometimes as her screen, or even
+as her accomplice, in matters that occasionally involved risks, and were
+never to her liking.
+
+The young American girl had already said to her father, when he asked
+her to give up her search for an entirely satisfactory European suitor,
+which search he feared might drag on forever without any results: “Oh!
+I shall be sure to find him at Bellagio!” And she made up her mind that
+there he was to be sought and found at any price. Hotel life offered her
+opportunities to exercise her instincts for flirtation, for there she
+met many specimens of men she called chic, with a funny little foreign
+accent, which seemed to put new life into the wornout word. Twenty times
+a day she baited her hook, and twenty times a day some fish would
+bite, or at least nibble, according as he was a fortune-hunter or a
+dilettante. Miss Nora, being incapable of knowing the difference, was
+ready to capture good or bad, and went about dragging her slaves at
+her chariot-wheels. Sometimes she took them rowing, with the Stars and
+Stripes floating over her boat, by moonlight; sometimes she drove
+them recklessly in a drag through roads bordered by olive-groves and
+vineyards; all these expeditions being undertaken under-pretence of
+admiring the romantic scenery. Her father was not disposed to interfere
+with what he called “a little harmless dissipation.” He was confident
+his daughter’s “companion” must know what was proper, she being, as he
+said, accustomed to good society. Were not all Italian ladies attended
+by gentlemen? Who could blame a young girl for amusing herself? Meantime
+Mr. Sparks amused himself after his own fashion, which was to sit
+comfortably, with his feet up on the piazza rail of the hotel, imbibing
+strong iced drinks through straws. But in reality Jacqueline had no
+power whatever to preserve propriety, and only compromised herself by
+her associations, though her own conduct was irreproachable. Indeed she
+was considered quite prudish, and the rest of the mad crowd laughed
+at her for having the manners of a governess. In vain she tried to say
+words of warning to Nora; what she said was laughed at or resented in a
+tone that told her that a paid companion had not the right to speak as
+frankly as a friend.
+
+Her business, she was plainly told one day, was to be on the spot in
+case any impertinent suitor should venture too far in a tete-a-tete,
+but short of that she was not to “spoilsport.” “I am not doing anything
+wrong; it is allowable in America,” was Miss Nora’s regular speech on
+such occasions, and Jacqueline could not dispute the double argument.
+Nora’s conduct was not wicked, and in America such things might be
+allowed. Yet Jacqueline tried to demonstrate that a young girl can not
+pass unscathed through certain adventures, even if they are innocent in
+the strict sense of the word; which made Nora cry out that all she said
+was subterfuge and that she had no patience with prejudices.
+
+In vain her young companion pointed out to her charge that other
+Americans at Bellagio seemed far from approving her conduct. American
+ladies of a very different class, who were staying at the hotel, held
+aloof from her, and treated her with marked coldness whenever they met;
+declaring that her manners would be as objectionable in her own country,
+in good society, as they were in Italy.
+
+But Miss Sparks was not to be put down by any argument. “Bah! they are
+stuck-up Bostonians. And do you know, Jacqueline, you are getting very
+tiresome? You were faster yourself than I when we were the Blue Band at
+Treport.”
+
+Nora’s admirers, sometimes encouraged, sometimes snubbed, when treated
+cavalierly by this young lady, would occasionally pay court to the
+‘demoiselle de compagnie’, who indeed was well worth their pains; but,
+to their surprise, the subordinate received their attentions with great
+coldness. Having entered her protest against what was going on, and
+having resisted the contagion of example, it was natural she should
+somewhat exaggerate her prudery, for it is hard to hit just the right
+point in such reaction. The result was, she made herself so disagreeable
+to Miss Sparks that the latter determined on getting rid of her as
+tactfully as possible.
+
+Their parting took place on the day after an excursion to the Villa
+Sommariva, where Miss Sparks and her little court had behaved with their
+usual noise and rudeness. They had gone there ostensibly to see the
+pictures, about which none of them cared anything, for Nora, wherever
+she was, never liked any one to pay attention to anybody or to look at
+anything but her own noisy, all-pervading self.
+
+It so happened that at the most riotous moment of the picnic an old
+gentleman passed near the lively crowd. He was quite inoffensive,
+pleasant-mannered, and walked leaning on his cane, yet, had the statue
+of the Commander in Don Juan suddenly appeared it could not have
+produced such consternation as his presence did on Jacqueline, when,
+after a moment’s hesitation, he bowed to her. She recognized in him a
+friend of Madame d’Argy, M. Martel, whom she had often met at her house
+in Paris and at Lizerolles. When he recognized her, she fancied she had
+seen pass over his face a look of painful surprise. He would surely tell
+how he had met her; what would her old friends think of her? What would
+Fred? For some time past she had thought more than ever before of what
+Fred would think of her. The more she grew disgusted with the men she
+met, the more she appreciated his good qualities, and the more she
+thought of the honest, faithful love he had offered her--love that she
+had so madly thrown away. She never should meet such love again, she
+thought. It was the idea of how Fred would blame her when he heard
+what she pictured to herself the old gentleman would say of her, that
+suddenly decided her to leave Bellagio.
+
+She told Mr. Sparks that evening that she was not strong enough for such
+duties as were required of a companion.
+
+He looked at her with pity and annoyance.
+
+“I should have thought you had more energy. How do you expect to live by
+work if you are not strong enough for pleasure?”
+
+“Pleasure needs strength as well as labor,” she said, smiling; “I would
+rather work in the fields than go on amusing myself as I have been
+doing.”
+
+“My dear, you must not be so difficult to please. When people have to
+earn their bread, it is a bad plan. I am afraid you will find out
+before long that there are harder ways of making a living than lunching,
+dancing, walking, and driving from morning to night in a pretty
+country--”
+
+Here Mr. Sparks began to laugh as he thought of all he had had to do,
+without making objections, in the Far West, in the heroic days of his
+youthful vigor. He was rather fond of recalling how he had carried his
+pick on his shoulder and his knife in his belt, with two Yankee sayings
+in his head, and little besides for baggage: “Muscle and pluck!--Muscle
+and pluck!” and “Go ahead for ever!” That was the sort of thing to be
+done when a man or a woman had not a cent.
+
+And now, what was Jacqueline to do next? She reflected that in a very
+short time she had attempted many things. It seemed to her that all she
+could do now was to follow the advice which, when first given her
+by Madame Strahlberg, had frightened her, though she had found it so
+attractive. She would study with Madame Rochette; she would go to the
+Milan Conservatory, and as soon as she came of age she would go upon the
+stage, under a feigned name, of course, and in a foreign country. She
+would prove to the world, she said to herself, that the career of an
+actress is compatible with self-respect. This resolve that she would
+never be found wanting in self-respect held a prominent place in all her
+plans, as she began to understand better those dangers in life which are
+for the most part unknown to young girls born in her social position.
+Jacqueline’s character, far from being injured by her trials and
+experiences, had gained in strength. She grew firmer as she gained in
+knowledge. Never had she been so worthy of regard and interest as at
+the very time when her friends were saying sadly to themselves, “She is
+going to the bad,” and when, from all appearances, they were right in
+this conclusion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. TWIN DEVILS
+
+Jacqueline came to the conclusion that she had better seriously consult
+Madame Strahlberg. She therefore stopped at Monaco, where this friend,
+whom she intended to honor with the strange office of Mentor, was
+passing the winter in a little villa in the Condamine quarter--a cottage
+surrounded by roses and laurel-bushes, painted in soft colors and
+looking like a plaything.
+
+Madame Strahlberg had already urged Jacqueline to come and make
+acquaintance with her “paradise,” without giving her any hint of the
+delights of that paradise, from which that of gambling was not excluded,
+for Madame Strahlberg was eager for any kind of excitement. Roulette now
+occupied with her a large part of every night--indeed, her nights had
+been rarely given to slumber, for her creed was that morning is the time
+for sleep, for which reason they never took breakfast in the pink villa,
+but tea, cakes, and confectionery were eaten instead at all hours until
+the evening. Thus it happened very often that they had no dinner, and
+guests had to accommodate themselves to the strange ways of the family.
+Jacqueline, however, did not stay long enough to know much of those
+ways.
+
+She arrived, poor thing, with weary wing, like some bird, who, escaping
+from the fowler’s net, where it has left its feathers, flies straight to
+the spot where a sportsman lies ready to shoot it. She was received
+with the same cries of joy, the same kisses, the same demonstrations of
+affection, as those which, the summer before, had welcomed her to the
+Rue de Naples. They told her she could sleep on a sofa, exactly like the
+one on which she had passed that terrible night which had resulted in
+her expulsion from the convent; and it was decided that she must stay
+several days, at least, before she went on to Paris, to begin the
+life of hard study and courageous work which would make of her a great
+singer.
+
+Tired?--No, she was hardly tired at all. The journey over the enchanting
+road of the Corniche had awakened in her a fervor of admiration which
+prevented her from feeling any bodily needs, and now she seemed to have
+reached fairyland, where the verdure of the tropics was like the hanging
+gardens of Babylon, only those had never had a mirror to reflect back
+their ancient, far-famed splendor, like that before her eyes, as she
+looked down upon the Mediterranean, with the sun setting in the west in
+a sky all crimson and gold.
+
+Notwithstanding the disorder of her travelling-dress, Jacqueline allowed
+her friend to take her straight from the railway station to the Terrace
+of Monte Carlo. She fell into ecstasies at sight of the African cacti,
+the century plants, and the fig-trees of Barbary, covering the low
+walls whence they looked down into the water; at the fragrance of the
+evergreens that surrounded the beautiful palace with its balustrades,
+dedicated to all the worst passions of the human race; with the sharp
+rocky outline of Turbia; with an almost invisible speck on the horizon
+which they said was Corsica; with everything, which, whether mirage or
+reality, lifted her out of herself, and plunged her into that state
+of excited happiness and indescribable sense of bodily comfort, which
+exterior impressions so easily produce upon the young.
+
+After exhausting her vocabulary in exclamations and in questions, she
+stood silent, watching the sun as it sank beneath the waters, thinking
+that life is well worth living if it can give us such glorious
+spectacles, notwithstanding all the difficulties that may have to be
+passed through. Several minutes elapsed before she turned her radiant
+face and dazzled eyes toward Wanda, or rather toward the spot where
+Wanda had been standing beside her. “Oh! my dear--how beautiful!” she
+murmured with a long sigh.
+
+The sigh was echoed by a man, who for a few moments had looked at her
+with as much admiration as she had looked at the landscape. He answered
+her by saying, in a low voice, the tones of which made her tremble from
+head to foot:
+
+“Jacqueline!”
+
+“Monsieur de Cymier!”
+
+The words slipped through her lips as they suddenly turned pale. She had
+an instinctive, sudden persuasion that she had been led into a snare. If
+not, why was Madame Strahlberg now absorbed in conversation with three
+other persons at some little distance.
+
+“Forgive me--you did not expect to see me--you seem quite startled,”
+ said the young man, drawing near her. With an effort she commanded
+herself and looked full in his face. Her anger rose. She had seen the
+same look in the ugly, brutal face of Oscar de Talbrun. From the Terrace
+of Monte Carlo her memory flew back to a country road in Normandy,
+and she clenched her hand round an imaginary riding-whip. She needed
+coolness and she needed courage. They came as if by miracle.
+
+“It is certain, Monsieur,” she answered, slowly, “that I did not expect
+to meet you here.”
+
+“Chance has had pity on me,” he replied, bowing low, as she had set him
+the example of ceremony.
+
+But he had no idea of losing time in commonplace remarks--he wished to
+take up their intimacy on the terms it had been formerly, to resume the
+romance he himself had interrupted.
+
+“I knew,” he said in the same low voice, full of persuasion, which gave
+especial meaning to his words, “I knew that, after all, we should meet
+again.”
+
+“I did not expect it,” said Jacqueline, haughtily.
+
+“Because you do not believe in the magnetism of a fixed desire.”
+
+“No, I do not believe any such thing, when, opposed to such a desire,
+there is a strong, firm will,” said Jacqueline, her eyes burning.
+
+“Ah!” he murmured, and he might have been supposed to be really moved,
+so much his look changed, “do not abuse your power over me--do not make
+me wretched; if you could only understand--”
+
+She made a swift movement to rejoin Madame Strahlberg, but that lady was
+already coming toward them with the same careless ease with which she
+had left them together.
+
+“Well! you have each found an old acquaintance,” she said, gayly. “I beg
+your pardon, my loveliest, but I had to speak to some old friends, and
+ask them to join us to-morrow evening. We shall sup at the restaurant
+of the Grand Hotel, after the opera--for, I did not tell you before,
+you will have the good luck to hear Patti. Monsieur de Cymier, we shall
+expect you. Au revoir.”
+
+He had been on the point of asking leave to walk home with them. But
+there was something in Jacqueline’s look, and in her stubborn silence,
+that deterred him. He thought it best to leave a skilful advocate to
+plead his cause before he continued a conversation which had not
+begun satisfactorily. Not that Gerard de Cymier was discouraged by
+the behavior of Jacqueline. He had expected her to be angry at his
+defection, and that she would make him pay for it; but a little skill on
+his part, and a little credulity on hers, backed by the intervention of
+a third party, might set things right.
+
+One moment he lingered to look at her, admiring her as she stood in
+the light of the dying sun, as beautiful in her plain dress and her
+indignant paleness, while she looked far out to sea, that she might
+not be obliged to look at him, as she had been when he had known her in
+prosperity.
+
+At that moment he knew she hated him, but it would be an additional
+delight to overcome that feeling.
+
+The two women, when he left them, continued walking on the terrace side
+by side, without a word. Wanda watched her companion out of the corners
+of her eyes, and hummed an air to herself to break the silence. She saw
+a storm gathering under Jacqueline’s black eyebrows, and knew that sharp
+arrows were likely to shoot forth from those lips which several times
+had opened, though not a word had been uttered, probably through fear of
+saying too little or too much.
+
+At last she made some trifling comment on the view, explaining something
+about pigeon-shooting.
+
+“Wanda,” interrupted Jacqueline, “did you not know what happened once?”
+
+“Happened, how? About what?” asked Madame Strahlberg, with an air of
+innocence.
+
+“I am speaking of the way Monsieur de Cymier treated me.”
+
+“Bah! He was in love with you. Who didn’t know it? Every one could see
+that. It was all the more reason why you should have been glad to meet
+him.”
+
+“He did not act as if he were much in love,” said Jacqueline.
+
+“Because he went away when your family thought he was about to make his
+formal proposal? Not all men are marrying men, my dear, nor have all
+women that vocation. Men fall in love all the same.”
+
+“Do you think, then, that when a man knows he has no intention of
+marrying he should pay court to a young girl? I think I told you at the
+time that he had paid court to me, and that he afterward--how shall I
+say it?--basely deserted me.”
+
+The sharp and thrilling tone in which Jacqueline said this amused Madame
+Strahlberg.
+
+“What big words, my dear! No, I don’t remember that you ever said
+anything of the sort to me before. But you are wrong. As we grow older
+we lay aside harsh judgments and sharp words. They do no good. In your
+place I should be touched by the thought that a man so charming had been
+faithful to me.”
+
+“Faithful!” cried Jacqueline, her dark eyes flashing into the cat-like
+eyes of Madame Strahlberg.
+
+Wanda looked down, and fastened a ribbon at her waist.
+
+“Ever since we have been here,” she said, “he has been talking of you.”
+
+“Really--for how long?”
+
+“Oh, if you must know, for the last two weeks.”
+
+“It is just a fortnight since you wrote and asked me to stay with you,”
+ said Jacqueline, coldly and reproachfully.
+
+“Oh, well--what’s the harm? Suppose I did think your presence would
+increase the attractions of Monaco?”
+
+“Why did you not tell me?”
+
+“Because I never write a word more than is necessary; you know how lazy
+I am. And also because, I may as well confess, it might have scared you
+off, you are so sensitive.”
+
+“Then you meant to take me by surprise?” said Jacqueline, in the same
+tone.
+
+“Oh! my dear, why do you try to quarrel with me?” replied Madame
+Strahlberg, stopping suddenly and looking at her through her eyeglass.
+“We may as well understand what you mean by a free and independent
+life.”
+
+And thereupon ensued an address to which Jacqueline listened, leaning
+one hand on a balustrade of that enchanted garden, while the voice of
+the serpent, as she thought, was ringing in her ears. Her limbs shook
+under her--her brain reeled. All her hopes of success as a singer on the
+stage Madame Strahlberg swept away, as not worth a thought. She told her
+that, in her position, had she meant to be too scrupulous, she should
+have stayed in the convent. Everything to Jacqueline seemed to dance
+before her eyes. The evening closed around them, the light died out, the
+landscape, like her life, had lost its glow. She uttered a brief prayer
+for help, such a prayer as she had prayed in infancy. She whispered
+it in terror, like a cry in extreme danger. She was more frightened
+by Wanda’s wicked words than she had been by M. de Talbrun or by M. de
+Cymier. She ceased to know what she was saying till the last words, “You
+have good sense and you will think about it,” met her ear.
+
+Jacqueline said not a word.
+
+Wanda took her arm. “You may be sure,” she said, “that I am thinking
+only of your good. Come! Would you like to go into the Casino and look
+at the pictures? No, you are tired? You can see them some evening. The
+ballroom holds a thousand persons. Yes, if you prefer, we will go home.
+You can take a nap till dinner-time. We shall dine at eight o’clock.”
+
+Conversation languished till they reached the Villa Rosa.
+Notwithstanding Jacqueline’s efforts to appear natural, her own voice
+rang in her ears in tones quite new to her, a laugh that she uttered
+without any occasion, and which came near resulting in hysterics. Yet
+she had power enough over her nerves to notice the surroundings as she
+entered the house. At the door of the room in which she was to sleep,
+and which was on the first story, Madame Strahlberg kissed her with one
+of those equivocal smiles which so long had imposed on her simplicity.
+
+“Till eight o’clock, then.”
+
+“Till eight o’clock,” repeated Jacqueline, passively.
+
+But when eight o’clock came she sent word that she had a severe
+headache, and would try to sleep it off.
+
+Suppose, she thought, M. de Cymier should have been asked to dinner;
+suppose she should be placed next to him at table? Anything in that
+house seemed possible now.
+
+They brought her a cup of tea. Up to a late hour she heard a confused
+noise of music and laughter. She did not try to sleep. All her faculties
+were on the alert, like those of a prisoner who is thinking of escape.
+She knew what time the night trains left the station, and, abandoning
+her trunk and everything else that she had with her, she furtively--but
+ready, if need were, to fight for her liberty with the strength of
+desperation--slipped down the broad stairs over their thick carpet and
+pushed open a little glass door. Thank heaven! people came in and went
+out of that house as if it had been a mill. No one discovered her
+flight till the next morning, when she was far on her way to Paris in
+an express train. Modeste, quite unprepared for her young mistress’s
+arrival, was amazed to see her drop down upon her, feverish and excited,
+like some poor hunted animal, with strength exhausted. Jacqueline flung
+herself into her nurse’s arms as she used to do when, as a little girl,
+she was in what she fancied some great trouble, and she cried: “Oh,
+take me in--pray take me in! Keep me safe! Hide me!” And then she told
+Modeste everything, speaking rapidly and disconnectedly, thankful to
+have some one to whom she could open her heart. In default of Modeste
+she would have spoken to stone walls.
+
+“And what will you do now, my poor darling?” asked the old nurse, as
+soon as she understood that her young lady had come back to her, “with
+weary foot and broken wing,” from what she had assured her on her
+departure would be a brilliant excursion.
+
+“Oh! I don’t know,” answered Jacqueline, in utter discouragement; “I am
+too worn out to think or to do anything. Let me rest; that is all.”
+
+“Why don’t you go to see your stepmother?”
+
+“My stepmother? Oh, no! She is at the bottom of all that has happened to
+me.”
+
+“Or Madame d’Argy? Or Madame de Talbrun? Madame de Talbrun is the one
+who would give you good advice.”
+
+Jacqueline shook her head with a sad smile.
+
+“Let me stay here. Don’t you remember--years ago--but it seems like
+yesterday--all the rest is like a nightmare--how I used to hide myself
+under your petticoats, and you would say, going on with your knitting:
+‘You see she is not here; I can’t think where she can be.’ Hide me now
+just like that, dear old Modeste. Only hide me.”
+
+And Modeste, full of heartfelt pity, promised to hide her “dear child”
+ from every one, which promise, however, did not prevent her, for she
+was very self-willed, from going, without Jacqueline’s knowledge, to see
+Madame de Talbrun and tell her all that had taken place. She was hurt
+and amazed at her reception by Giselle, and at her saying, without any
+offer of help or words of sympathy, “She has only reaped what she has
+sown.” Giselle would have been more than woman had not Fred, and a
+remembrance of the wrongs that he had suffered through Jacqueline, now
+stood between them. For months he had been the prime object in her life;
+her mission of comforter had brought her the greatest happiness she had
+ever known. She tried to make him turn his attention to some serious
+work in life; she wanted to keep him at home, for his mother’s sake, she
+thought; she fancied she had inspired him with a taste for home life. If
+she had examined herself she might have discovered that the task she had
+undertaken of doing good to this young man was not wholly for his sake
+but partly for her own. She wanted to see him nearly every day and to
+occupy a place in his life ever larger and larger. But for some
+time past the conscientious Giselle had neglected the duty of strict
+self-examination. She was thankful to be happy--and though Fred was a
+man little given to self-flattery in his relations with women, he could
+not but be pleased at the change produced in her by her intercourse with
+him.
+
+But while Fred and Giselle considered themselves as two friends trying
+to console each other, people had begun to talk about them. Even Madame
+d’Argy asked herself whether her son might not have escaped from the
+cruel claws of a young coquette of the new school to fall into a worse
+scrape with a married woman. She imagined what might happen if the
+jealousy of “that wild boar of an Oscar de Talbrun” were aroused; the
+dangers, far more terrible than the perils of the sea, that might
+in such a case await her only son, the child for whose safety her
+mother-love caused her to suffer perpetual torments. “O mothers!
+mothers!” she often said to herself, “how much they are to be pitied.
+And they are very blind. If Fred must get into danger and difficulty for
+any woman, it should not have been for Giselle de Talbrun.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. “AN AFFAIR OF HONOR”
+
+   A meeting took place yesterday at Vesinet between the Vicomte de
+   Cymier, secretary of Embassy at Vienna, and M. Frederic d’Argy,
+   ensign in the navy. The parties fought with swords. The seconds of
+   M. de Cymier were the Prince de Moelk and M. d’Etaples, captain in
+   the--th Hussars; those of M. d’Argy Hubert Marien, the painter.
+   M. d’Argy was wounded in the right arm, and for the present the
+   affair is terminated, but it is said it will be resumed on M.
+   d’Argy’s recovery, although this seems hardly probable, considering
+   the very slight cause of the quarrel--an altercation at the Cercle
+   de la Rue Boissy d’Anglas, which took place over the card-table.
+
+Such was the announcement in a daily paper that met the eyes of
+Jacqueline, as she lay hidden in Modeste’s lodging, like a fawn in its
+covert, her eyes and ears on the alert, watching for the least sign of
+alarm, in fear and trembling. She expected something, she knew not what;
+she felt that her sad adventure at Monaco could not fail to have its
+epilogue; but this was one of which she never had dreamed.
+
+“Modeste, give me my hat! Get me a carriage! Quick! Oh, my God, it is my
+fault!--I have killed him!”
+
+These incoherent cries came from her lips while Modeste, in alarm,
+picked up the newspaper and adjusted her silver spectacles upon her nose
+to read the paragraph. “Monsieur Fred wounded! Holy Virgin! His poor
+mother! That is a new trouble fallen on her, to be sure. But this
+quarrel had nothing to do with you, my pet; you see they say it was
+about cards.”
+
+And folding up the Figaro, while Jacqueline in all haste was wrapping
+her head in a veil, Modeste, with the best intentions, went on to say:
+“Nobody ever dies of a sword-thrust in the arm.”
+
+“But you see it says that they are going to fight all over again--don’t
+you understand? You are so stupid! What could they have had to quarrel
+about but me? O God! Thou art just! This is indeed punishment--too much
+punishment for me!”
+
+So saying, she ran down the many stairs that led up to Modeste’s little
+lodging in the roof, her feet hardly touching them as she ran, while
+Modeste followed her more slowly, crying: “Wait for me! Wait for me,
+Mademoiselle!”
+
+Calling a fiacre, Jacqueline, almost roughly, pushed the old woman into
+it, and gave the coachman the address of Madame d’Argy, having, in her
+excitement, first given him that of their old house in the Parc Monceau,
+so much was she possessed by the idea that this was a repetition of
+that dreadful day, when with Modeste, just as now, she went to meet
+an irreparable loss. She seemed to see before her her dead father--he
+looked like Fred, and now, as before, Marien had his part in the
+tragedy. Could he not have prevented the duel? Could he not have done
+something to prevent Fred from exposing himself? The wound might be no
+worse than it was said to be in the newspaper--but then a second meeting
+was to take place. No!--it should not, she would stop it at any price!
+
+And yet, as the coach drew nearer to the Rue de Varenne, where Madame
+d’Argy had her winter residence, a little calm, a little sense returned
+to Jacqueline. She did not see how she could dare to enter that house,
+where probably they cursed her very name. She would wait in the street
+with the carriage-blinds pulled down, and Modeste should go in and ask
+for information. Five minutes passed--ten minutes passed--they seemed
+ages. How slow Modeste was, slow as a tortoise! How could she leave her
+there when she knew she was so anxious? What could she be doing? All she
+had to do was to ask news of M. Fred in just two words!
+
+At last, Jacqueline could bear suspense no longer. She opened the
+coach-door and jumped out on the pavement. Just at that moment Modeste
+appeared, brandishing the umbrella that she carried instead of a stick,
+in a manner that meant something. It might be bad news, she would know
+in a moment; anything was better than suspense. She sprang forward.
+
+“What did they say, Modeste? Speak!--Why have you been such a time?”
+
+“Because the servants had something else to do than to attend to me. I
+wasn’t the only person there--they were writing in a register. Get back
+into the carriage, Mademoiselle, or somebody will see you--There are
+lots of people there who know you--Monsieur and Madame d’Etaples--”
+
+“What do I care?--The truth! Tell me the truth--”
+
+“But didn’t you understand my signals? He is going on well. It was only
+a scratch--Ah! Madame that’s only my way of talking. He will be laid up
+for a fortnight. The doctor was there--he has some fever, but he is not
+in any danger.”
+
+“Oh! what a blessing! Kiss me, Modeste. We have a fortnight in which we
+may interfere--But how--Oh, how?--Ah! there is Giselle! We will go to
+Giselle at once!”
+
+And the ‘fiacre’ was ordered to go as fast as possible to the Rue
+Barbet-de-Jouy. This time Jacqueline herself spoke to the concierge.
+
+“Madame la Comtesse is out.”
+
+“But she never goes out at this hour. I wish to see her on important
+business. I must see her.”
+
+And Jacqueline passed the concierge, only to encounter another refusal
+from a footman, who insisted that Madame la Comtesse was at home to no
+one.
+
+“But me, she will see me. Go and tell her it is Mademoiselle de
+Nailles.”
+
+Moved by her persistence, the footman went in to inquire, and came back
+immediately with the answer:
+
+“Madame la Comtesse can not see Mademoiselle.”
+
+“Ah!” thought Jacqueline, “she, too, throws me off, and it is natural.
+I have no friends left. No one will tell me anything!--I think it will
+drive me mad?”
+
+She was half-mad already. She stopped at a newsstand and bought all the
+evening journals; then, up in her garret, in her poor little nest under
+the roof-which, as she felt bitterly, was her only refuge, she began to
+look over those printed papers in which she might possibly find out the
+true cause of the duel. Nearly all related the event in almost the exact
+terms used by the Figaro. Ah!--here was a different one! A reporter who
+knew something more added, in Gil Blas: “We have stated the cause of
+the dispute as it has been given to the public, but in affairs of this
+nature more than in any others, it is safe to remember the old proverb:
+‘Look for the woman.’ The woman could doubtless have been found enjoying
+herself on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean, while men were drawing
+swords in her defense.”
+
+Jacqueline went on looking through the newspapers, crumpling up the
+sheets as she laid them down. The last she opened had the reputation
+of being a repository of scandals, never to be depended on, as she well
+knew. Several times it had come to her hand and she had not opened it,
+remembering what her father had always said of its reputation. But where
+would she be more likely to find what she wanted than in the columns
+of a journal whose reporters listened behind doors and peeped through
+keyholes? Under the heading of ‘Les Dessous Parisiens’, she read on the
+first page:
+
+       “Two hens lived in peace; a cock came
+        And strife soon succeeded to joy;
+        E’en as love, they say, kindled the flame
+        That destroyed the proud city of Troy.
+
+   “This quarrel was the outcome of a violent rupture between the two
+   hens in question, ending in the flight of one of them, a young and
+   tender pullet, whose voice we trust soon to hear warbling on the
+   boards at one of our theatres. This was the subject of conversation
+   in a low voice at the Cercle, at the hour when it is customary to
+   tell such little scandals. M. de C-----was enlarging on the
+   somewhat Bohemian character of the establishment of a lovely foreign
+   lady, who possesses the secret of being always surrounded by
+   delightful friends, young ladies who are self-emancipated, quasi-
+   widows who, by divorce suits, have regained their liberty, etc.
+   He was speaking of one of the beauties who are friends of his friend
+   Madame S----, as men speak of women who have proved themselves
+   careless of public opinion; when M. d’A----, in a loud voice,
+   interrupted him; the lie was given in terms that of course led to
+   the hostile meeting of which the press has spoken, attributing it to
+   a dispute about the Queen of Spades, when it really concerned the
+   Queen of Hearts.”
+
+Then she had made no mistake; it had been her flight from Madame
+Strahlberg’s which had led to her being attacked by one man, and
+defended by the other! Jacqueline found it hard to recognize herself in
+this tissue of lies, insinuations, and half-truths. What did the paper
+mean its readers to understand by its account? Was it a jealous rivalry
+between herself and Madame Strahlberg?--Was M. de Cymier meant by the
+cock? And Fred had heard all this--he had drawn his sword to refute
+the calumny. Brave Fred! Alas! he had been prompted only by chivalric
+generosity. Doubtless he, also, looked upon her as an adventuress.
+
+All night poor Jacqueline wept with such distress that she wished that
+she might die. She was dropping off to sleep at last, overpowered by
+fatigue, when a ring at the bell in the early morning roused her. Then
+she heard whispering:
+
+“Do you think she is so unhappy?”
+
+It was the voice of Giselle.
+
+“Come in--come in quickly!” she cried, springing out of bed. Wrapped
+in a dressing-gown, with bare feet, her face pale, her eyelids red, her
+complexion clouded, she rushed to meet her friend, who was almost as
+much disordered as herself. It seemed as if Madame de Talbrun might also
+have passed a night of sleeplessness and tears.
+
+“You have come! Oh! you have come at last!” cried Jacqueline, throwing
+her arms around her, but Giselle repelled her with a gesture so severe
+that the poor child could not but understand its meaning. She murmured,
+pointing to the pile of newspapers: “Is it possible?--Can you have
+believed all those dreadful things?”
+
+“What things? I have read nothing,” said Giselle, harshly. “I only
+know that a man who was neither your husband nor your brother, and who
+consequently was under no obligation to defend you, has been foolish
+enough to be nearly killed for your sake. Is not that a proof of your
+downfall? Don’t you know it?”
+
+“Downfall?” repeated Jacqueline, as if she did not understand her. Then,
+seizing her friend’s hand, she forcibly raised it to her lips: “Ah! what
+can anything matter to me,” she cried, “if only you remain my friend;
+and he has never doubted me!”
+
+“Women like you can always find defenders,” said Giselle, tearing her
+hand from her cousin’s grasp.
+
+Giselle was not herself at that moment. “But, for your own sake, it
+would have been better he should have abstained from such an act of
+Quixotism.”
+
+“Giselle! can it be that you think me guilty?”
+
+“Guilty!” cried Madame de Talbrun, her pale face aflame. “A little more
+and Monsieur de Cymier’s sword-point would have pierced his lungs.”
+
+“Good heavens!” cried Jacqueline, hiding her face in her hands. “But I
+have done nothing to--”
+
+“Nothing except to set two men against each other; to make them suffer,
+or to make fools of them, and to be loved by them all the same.”
+
+“I have not been a coquette,” said Jacqueline, with indignation.
+
+“You must have been, to authorize the boasts of Monsieur de Cymier. He
+had seen Fred so seldom, and Tonquin had so changed him that he spoke in
+his presence--without supposing any one would interfere. I dare not tell
+you what he said--”
+
+“Whatever spite or revenge suggested to him, no doubt,” said Jacqueline.
+
+“Listen, Giselle--Oh, you must listen. I shall not be long.”
+
+She forced her to sit down; she crouched on a foot stool at her feet,
+holding her hands in hers so tightly that Giselle could not draw them
+away, and began her story, with all its details, of what had happened
+to her since she left Fresne. She told of her meeting with Wanda; of the
+fatal evening which had resulted in her expulsion from the convent;
+her disgust at the Sparks family; the snare prepared for her by Madame
+Strahlberg. “And I can not tell you all,” she added, “I can not tell
+you what drove me away from my true friends, and threw me among these
+people--”
+
+Giselle’s sad smile seemed to answer, “No need--I am aware of it--I know
+my husband.” Encouraged by this, Jacqueline went on with her confession,
+hiding nothing that was wrong, showing herself just as she had been, a
+poor, proud child who had set out to battle for herself in a dangerous
+world. At every step she had been more and more conscious of her own
+imprudence, of her own weakness, and of an ever-increasing desire to
+be done with independence; to submit to law, to be subject to any rules
+which would deliver her from the necessity of obeying no will but her
+own.
+
+“Ah!” she cried, “I am so disgusted with independence, with amusement,
+and amusing people! Tell me what to do in future--I am weary of taking
+charge of myself. I said so the other day to the Abbe Bardin. He is the
+only person I have seen since my return. It seems to me I am coming back
+to my old ideas--you remember how I once wished to end my days in the
+cell of a Carmelite? You might love me again then, perhaps, and Fred and
+poor Madame d’Argy, who must feel so bitterly against me since her son
+was wounded, might forgive me. No one feels bitterly against the dead,
+and it is the same as being dead to be a Carmelite nun. You would all
+speak of me sometimes to each other as one who had been very unhappy,
+who had been guilty of great foolishness, but who had repaired her
+faults as best she could.”
+
+Poor Jacqueline! She was no longer a girl of the period; in her grief
+and humiliation she belonged to the past. Old-fashioned forms of
+penitence attracted her.
+
+“And what did the Abbe Bardin tell you?” asked Giselle, with a slight
+movement of her shoulders.
+
+“He only told me that he could not say at present whether that were my
+vocation.”
+
+“Nor can I,” said Giselle.
+
+Jacqueline lifted up her face, wet with tears, which she had been
+leaning on the lap of Giselle.
+
+“I do not see what else I can do, unless you would get me a place as
+governess somewhere at the ends of the earth,” she said. “I could teach
+children their letters. I should not mind doing anything. I never
+should complain. Ah! if you lived all by yourself, Giselle, how I should
+implore you to take me to teach little Enguerrand!”
+
+“I think you might do better than that,” said Giselle, wiping her
+friend’s eyes almost as a mother might have done, “if you would only
+listen to Fred.”
+
+Jacqueline’s cheeks became crimson.
+
+“Don’t mock me--it is cruel--I am too unworthy--it would pain me to
+see him. Shame--regret--you understand! But I can tell you one thing,
+Giselle--only you. You may tell it to him when he is quite old, when he
+has been long married, and when everything concerning me is a thing of
+the past. I never had loved any one with all my heart up to the moment
+when I read in that paper that he had fought for me, that his blood had
+flowed for me, that after all that had passed he still thought me worthy
+of being defended by him.”
+
+Her tears flowed fast, and she added: “I shall be proud of that all the
+rest of my life! If only you, too, would forgive me.”
+
+The heart of Giselle was melted by these words.
+
+“Forgive you, my dear little girl? Ah! you have been better than I. I
+forgot our old friendship for a moment--I was harsh to you; and I have
+so little right to blame you! But come! Providence may have arranged all
+for the best, though one of us may have to suffer. Pray for that some
+one. Good-by--‘au revoir!”
+
+She kissed Jacqueline’s forehead and was gone, before her cousin had
+seized the meaning of her last words. But joy and peace came back to
+Jacqueline. She had recovered her best friend, and had convinced her of
+her innocence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX. GENTLE CONSPIRATORS
+
+Before Giselle went home to her own house she called on the Abbe Bardin,
+whom a rather surly servant was not disposed to disturb, as he was just
+eating his breakfast. The Abbe Bardin was Jacqueline’s confessor, and he
+held the same relation to a number of other young girls who were among
+her particular friends. He was thoroughly acquainted with all that
+concerned their delicate and generally childish little souls. He kept
+them in the right way, had often a share in their marriages, and in
+general kept an eye upon them all their lives. Even when they escaped
+from him, as had happened in the case of Jacqueline, he did not give
+them up. He commended them to God, and looked forward to the time of
+their repentance with the patience of a father. The Abbe Bardin had
+never been willing to exercise any function but that of catechist; he
+had grown old in the humble rank of third assistant in a great parish,
+when, with a little ambition, he might have been its rector. “Suffer
+little children to come unto me,” had been his motto. These words of
+his Divine Master seemed more often than any others on his lips-lips
+so expressive of loving kindness, though sometimes a shrewd smile would
+pass over them and seem to say: “I know, I can divine.” But when this
+smile, the result of long experience, did not light up his features, the
+good Abbe Bardin looked like an elderly child; he was short, his
+walk was a trot, his face was round and ruddy, his eyes, which were
+short-sighted, were large, wide-open, and blue, and his heavy crop of
+white hair, which curled and crinkled above his forehead, made him look
+like a sixty-year-old angel, crowned with a silvery aureole.
+
+Rubbing his hands affably, he came into the little parlor where Madame
+de Talbrun was waiting for him. There was probably no ecclesiastic in
+all Paris who had a salon so full of worked cushions, each of which was
+a keepsake--a souvenir of some first communion. The Abbe did not know
+his visitor, but the name Talbrun seemed to him connected with an
+honorable and well-meaning family. The lady was probably a mother who
+had come to put her child into his hands for religious instruction. He
+received visits from dozens of such mothers, some of whom were a little
+tiresome, from a wish to teach him what he knew better than they, and
+at one time he had set apart Wednesday as his day for receiving such
+visits, that he might not be too greatly disturbed, as seemed likely to
+happen to him that day. Not that he cared very much whether he ate his
+cutlet hot or cold, but his housekeeper cared a great deal. A man may
+be a very experienced director, and yet be subject to direction in other
+ways.
+
+The youth of Giselle took him by surprise.
+
+“Monsieur l’Abbe,” she said, without any preamble, while he begged her
+to sit down, “I have come to speak to you of a person in whom you take
+an interest, Jacqueline de Nailles.”
+
+He passed the back of his hand over his brow and said, with a sigh:
+“Poor little thing!”
+
+“She is even more to be pitied than you think. You have not seen her, I
+believe, since last week.”
+
+“Yes--she came. She has kept up, thank God, some of her religious
+duties.”
+
+“For all that, she has played a leading part in a recent scandal.”
+
+The Abbe sprang up from his chair.
+
+“A duel has taken place because of her, and her name is in all men’s
+mouths--whispered, of course--but the quarrel took place at the Club.
+You know what it is to be talked of at the Club.”
+
+“The poison of asps,” growled the Abbe; “oh! those clubs--think of all
+the evil reports concocted in them, of which women are the victims!”
+
+“In the present case the evil report was pure calumny. It was taken up
+by some one whom you also know--Frederic d’Argy.”
+
+“I have had profound respect these many years for his excellent and
+pious mother.”
+
+“I thought so. In that case, Monsieur l’Abbe, you would not object to
+going to Madame d’Argy’s house and asking how her son is.”
+
+“No, of course not; but--it is my duty to disapprove--”
+
+“You will tell her that when a young man has compromised a young girl by
+defending her reputation in a manner too public, there is but one thing
+he can do afterward-marry her.”
+
+“Wait one moment,” said the Abbe, who was greatly surprised; “it is
+certain that a good marriage would be the best thing for Jacqueline.
+I have been thinking of it. But I do not think I could so suddenly--so
+soon after--”
+
+“Today at four o’clock, Monsieur l’Abbe. Time presses. You can add
+that such a marriage is the only way to stop a second duel, which will
+otherwise take place.”
+
+“Is it possible?”
+
+“And it is also the only way to bring Frederic to decide on sending in
+his resignation. Don’t forget that--it is important.”
+
+“But how do you know--”
+
+The poor Abbe stammered out his words, and counted on his fingers the
+arguments he was desired to make use of.
+
+“And you will solemnly assure them that Jacqueline is innocent.”
+
+“Oh! as to that, there are wolves in sheeps’ clothing, as the Bible
+tells us; but believe me, when such poor young things are in question,
+it is more often the sheep which has put on the appearance of a wolf--to
+seem in the fashion,” added the Abbe, “just to seem in the fashion.
+Fashion will authorize any kind of counterfeiting.”
+
+“Well, you will say all that, will you not, to Madame d’Argy? It will be
+very good of you if you will. She will make no difficulties about money.
+All she wants is a quietly disposed daughter-in-law who will be willing
+to pass nine months of the year at Lizerolles, and Jacqueline is quite
+cured of her Paris fever.”
+
+“A fever too often mortal,” murmured the Abbe; “oh, for the simplicity
+of nature! A priest whose lot is cast in the country is fortunate,
+Madame, but we can not choose our vocation. We may do good anywhere,
+especially in cities. Are you sure, however, that Jacqueline--”
+
+“She loves Monsieur d’Argy.”
+
+“Well, if that is so, we are all right. The great misfortune with many
+of these poor girls is that they have never learned to love anything;
+they know nothing but agitations, excitements, curiosities, and fancies.
+All that sort of thing runs through their heads.”
+
+“You are speaking of a Jacqueline before the duel. I can assure you that
+ever since yesterday, if not before, she has loved Monsieur d’Argy, who
+on his part for a long time--a very long time--has been in love with
+her.”
+
+Giselle spoke eagerly, as if she forced herself to say the words that
+cost her pain. Her cheeks were flushed under her veil. The Abbe, who was
+keen-sighted, observed these signs.
+
+“But,” continued Giselle, “if he is forced to forget her he may try
+to expend elsewhere the affection he feels for her; he may trouble the
+peace of others, while deceiving himself. He might make in the world
+one of those attachments--Do not fail to represent all these dangers to
+Madame d’Argy when you plead the cause of Jacqueline.”
+
+“Humph! You are evidently much attached, Madame, to Mademoiselle de
+Nailles.”
+
+“Very much, indeed,” she answered, bravely, “very much attached to
+her, and still more to him; therefore you understand that this marriage
+must--absolutely must take place.”
+
+She had risen and was folding her cloak round her, looking straight into
+the Abbe’s eyes. Small as she was, their height was almost the same; she
+wanted him to understand thoroughly why this marriage must take place.
+
+He bowed. Up to that time he had not been quite sure that he had not
+to do with one of those wolves dressed in fleece whose appearance is
+as misleading as that of sheep disguised as wolves: now his opinion was
+settled.
+
+“Mon Dieu! Madame,” he said, “your reasons seem to me excellent--a duel
+to be prevented, a son to be kept by the side of his sick mother, two
+young people who love each other to be married, the saving, possibly, of
+two souls--”
+
+“Say three souls, Monsieur l’Abbe!”
+
+He did not ask whose was the third, nor even why she had insisted that
+this delicate commission must be executed that same day. He only bowed
+when she said again: “At four o’clock: Madame d’Argy will be prepared
+to see you. Thank you, Monsieur l’Abbe.” And then, as she descended the
+staircase, he bestowed upon her silently his most earnest benediction,
+before returning to the cold cutlet that was on his breakfast table.
+
+Giselle did not breakfast much better than he. In truth, M. de Talbrun
+being absent, she sat looking at her son, who was eating with a good
+appetite, while she drank only a cup of tea; after which, she dressed
+herself, with more than usual care, hiding by rice-powder the trace of
+recent tears on her complexion, and arranging her fair hair in the way
+that was most becoming to her, under a charming little bonnet covered
+with gold net-work which corresponded with the embroidery on an entirely
+new costume.
+
+When she went into the dining-room Enguerrand, who was there with his
+nurse finishing his dessert, cried out: “Oh! mamma, how pretty you are!”
+ which went to her heart. She kissed him two or three times--one kiss
+after another.
+
+“I try to be pretty for your sake, my darling.”
+
+“Will you take me with you?”
+
+“No, but I will come back for you, and take you out.”
+
+She walked a few steps, and then turned to give him such a kiss as
+astonished him, for he said:
+
+“Is it really going to be long?”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Before you come back? You kiss me as if you were going for a long time,
+far away.”
+
+“I kissed you to give myself courage.”
+
+Enguerrand, who, when he had a hard lesson to learn, always did the same
+thing, appeared to understand her.
+
+“You are going to do some thing you don’t like.”
+
+“Yes, but I have to do it, because you see it is my duty.”
+
+“Do grown people have duties?”
+
+“Even more than children.”
+
+“But it isn’t your duty to write a copy--your writing is so pretty. Oh!
+that’s what I hate most. And you always say it is my duty to write my
+copy. I’ll go and do it while you do your duty. So that will seem as if
+we were both together doing something we don’t like--won’t it, mamma?”
+
+She kissed him again, even more passionately.
+
+“We shall be always together, we two, my love!”
+
+This word love struck the little ear of Enguerrand as having a new
+accent, a new meaning, and, boy-like, he tried to turn this excess of
+tenderness to advantage.
+
+“Since you love me so much, will you take me to see the puppet-show?”
+
+“Anywhere you like--when I come back. Goodby.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX. A CHIVALROUS SOUL
+
+Madame D’Argy sat knitting by the window in Fred’s chamber, with that
+resigned but saddened air that mothers wear when they are occupied in
+repairing the consequences of some rash folly. Fred had seen her in his
+boyhood knitting in the same way with the same, look on her face, when
+he had been thrown from his pony, or had fallen from his velocipede. He
+himself looked ill at ease and worried, as he lay on a sofa with his arm
+in a sling. He was yawning and counting the hours. From time to time his
+mother glanced at him. Her look was curious, and anxious, and loving,
+all at the same time. He pretended to be asleep. He did not like to see
+her watching him. His handsome masculine face, tanned that pale brown
+which tropical climates give to fair complexions, looked odd as it rose
+above a light-blue cape, a very feminine garment which, as it had no
+sleeves, had been tied round his neck to keep him from being cold. He
+felt himself, with some impatience, at the mercy of the most tender,
+but the most sharp-eyed of nurses, a prisoner to her devotion, and made
+conscious of her power every moment. Her attentions worried him; he knew
+that they all meant “It is your own fault, my poor boy, that you are in
+this state, and that your mother is so unhappy.” He felt it. He knew as
+well as if she had spoken that she was asking him to return to reason,
+to marry, without more delay, their little neighbor in Normandy,
+Mademoiselle d’Argeville, a niece of M. Martel, whom he persisted in not
+thinking of as a wife, always calling her a “cider apple,” in allusion
+to her red cheeks.
+
+A servant came in, and said to Madame d’Argy that Madame de Talbrun was
+in the salon.
+
+“I am coming,” she said, rolling up her knitting.
+
+But Fred suddenly woke up:
+
+“Why not ask her to come here?”
+
+“Very good,” said his mother, with hesitation. She was distracted
+between her various anxieties; exasperated against the fatal influence
+of Jacqueline, alarmed by the increasing intimacy with Giselle, desirous
+that all such complications should be put an end to by his marriage,
+but terribly afraid that her “cider apple” would not be sufficient to
+accomplish it.
+
+“Beg Madame de Talbrun to come in here,” she said, repeating the order
+after her son; but she settled herself in her chair with an air more
+patient, more resigned than ever, and her lips were firmly closed.
+
+Giselle entered in her charming new gown, and Fred’s first words, like
+those of Enguerrand, were: “How pretty you are! It is charity,” he
+added, smiling, “to present such a spectacle to the eyes of a sick man;
+it is enough to set him up again.”
+
+“Isn’t it?” said Giselle, kissing Madame d’Argy on the forehead. The
+poor mother had resumed her knitting with a sigh, hardly glancing at the
+pretty walking-costume, nor at the bonnet with its network of gold.
+
+“Isn’t it pretty?” repeated Giselle. “I am delighted with this costume.
+It is made after one of Rejane’s. Oscar fell in love with it at a first
+representation of a vaudeville, and he gave me over into the hands of
+the same dressmaker, who indeed was named in the play. That kind of
+advertising seems very effective.”
+
+She went on chattering thus to put off what she had really come to say.
+Her heart was beating so fast that its throbs could be seen under
+the embroidered front of the bodice which fitted her so smoothly. She
+wondered how Madame d’Argy would receive the suggestion she was about to
+make.
+
+She went on: “I dressed myself in my best to-day because I am so happy.”
+
+Madame d’Argy’s long tortoise-shell knitting-needles stopped.
+
+“I am glad to hear it, my dear,” she said, coldly, “I am glad anybody
+can be happy. There are so many of us who are sad.”
+
+“But why are you pleased?” asked Fred, looking at her, as if by some
+instinct he understood that he had something to do with it.
+
+“Our prodigal has returned,” answered Giselle, with a little air of
+satisfaction, very artificial, however, for she could hardly breathe,
+so great was her fear and her emotion. “My house is in the garb of
+rejoicing.”
+
+“The prodigal? Do you mean your husband?” said Madame d’Argy,
+maliciously.
+
+“Oh! I despair of him,” replied Giselle, lightly. “No, I speak of a
+prodigal who did not go far, and who made haste to repent. I am speaking
+of Jacqueline.”
+
+There was complete silence. The knitting-needles ticked rapidly, a
+slight flush rose on the dark cheeks of Fred.
+
+“All I beg,” said Madame d’Argy, “is that you will not ask me to eat
+the fatted calf in her honor. The comings and going of Mademoiselle de
+Nailles have long ceased to have the slightest interest for me.”
+
+“They have for Fred at any rate; he has just proved it, I should say,”
+ replied Giselle.
+
+By this time the others were as much embarrassed as Giselle. She saw it,
+and went on quickly:
+
+“Their names are together in everybody’s mouth; you can not hinder it.”
+
+“I regret it deeply-and allow me to make one remark: it seems to me
+you show a want of tact such as I should never have imagined in telling
+us--”
+
+Giselle read in Fred’s eyes, which were steadily fixed on her, that he
+was, on that point, of his mother’s opinion. She went on, however, still
+pretending to blunder.
+
+“Forgive me--but I have been so anxious about you ever since I heard
+there was to be a second meeting--”
+
+“A second meeting!” screamed Madame d’Argy, who, as she read no paper
+but the Gazette de France, or occasionally the Debats, knew nothing of
+all the rumors that find their echo in the daily papers.
+
+“Oh, ‘mon Dieu’! I thought you knew--”
+
+“You need not frighten my mother,” said Fred, almost angrily; “Monsieur
+de Cymier has written a letter which puts an end to our quarrel. It is
+the letter of a man of honor apologizing for having spoken lightly,
+for having repeated false rumors without verifying them--in short,
+retracting all that he had said that reflected in any way on
+Mademoiselle de Nailles, and authorizing me, if I think best, to make
+public his retraction. After that we can have nothing more to say to
+each other.”
+
+“He who makes himself the champion to defend a young girl’s character,”
+ said Madame d’Argy, sententiously, “injures her as much as those who
+have spoken evil of her.”
+
+“That is exactly what I think,” said Giselle. “The self-constituted
+champion has given the evil rumor circulation.”
+
+There was again a painful silence. Then the intrepid little woman
+resumed: “This step on the part of Monsieur de Cymier seems to have
+rendered my errand unnecessary. I had thought of a way to end this sad
+affair; a very simple way, much better, most certainly, than men cutting
+their own throats or those of other people. But since peace has been
+made over the ruins of Jacqueline’s reputation, I had better say nothing
+and go away.”
+
+“No--no! Let us hear what you had to propose,” said Fred, getting up
+from his couch so quickly that he jarred his bandaged arm, and uttered a
+cry of pain, which seemed very much like an oath, too.
+
+Giselle was silent. Standing before the hearth, she was warming her
+small feet, watching, as she did so, Madame d’Argy’s profile, which was
+reflected in the mirror. It was severe--impenetrable. It was Fred who
+spoke first.
+
+“In the first place,” he said, hesitating, “are you sure that
+Mademoiselle de Nailles has not just arrived from Monaco?”
+
+“I am certain that for a week she has been living quietly with
+Modeste, and that, though she passed through Monaco, she did not stay
+there--twenty-four hours, finding that the air of that place did not
+agree with her.”
+
+“But what do you say to what Monsieur Martel saw with his own eyes, and
+which is confirmed by public rumor?” cried Madame d’Argy, as if she were
+giving a challenge.
+
+“Monsieur Martel saw Jacqueline in bad company. She was not there of
+her own will. As to public rumor, we may feel sure that to make it as
+flattering to her tomorrow as it is otherwise to-day only a marriage is
+necessary. Yes, a marriage! That is the way I had thought of to settle
+everything and make everybody happy.”
+
+“What man would marry a girl who had compromised herself?” said Madame
+d’Argy, indignantly.
+
+“He who has done his part to compromise her.”
+
+“Then go and propose it to Monsieur de Cymier!”
+
+“No. It is not Monsieur de Cymier whom she loves.”
+
+“Ah!” Madame d’Argy was on her feet at once. “Indeed, Giselle, you are
+losing your senses. If I were not afraid of agitating Fred--”
+
+He was, in truth, greatly agitated. The only hand that he could use was
+pulling and tearing at the little blue cape crossed on his breast, in
+which his mother had wrapped him; and this unsuitable garment formed
+such a queer contrast to the expression of his face that Giselle, in her
+nervous excitement, burst out laughing, an explosion of merriment which
+completed the exasperation of Madame d’Argy.
+
+“Never!” she cried, beside herself. “You hear me--never will I consent,
+whatever happens!”
+
+At that moment the door was partly opened, and a servant announced
+“Monsieur l’Abbe Bardin.”
+
+Madame d’Argy made a gesture which was anything but reverential.
+
+“Well, to be sure--this is the right moment with a vengeance! What does
+he want! Does he wish me to assist in some good work--or to undertake to
+collect money, which I hate.”
+
+“Above all, mother,” cried Fred, “don’t expose me to the fatigue of
+receiving his visit. Go and see him yourself. Giselle will take care of
+your patient while you are gone. Won’t you, Giselle?”
+
+His voice was soft, and very affectionate. He evidently was not angry at
+what she had dared to say, and she acknowledged this to herself with an
+aching heart.
+
+“I don’t exactly trust your kind of care,” said Madame d’Argy, with a
+smile that was not gay, and certainly not amiable.
+
+She went, however, because Fred repeated:
+
+“But go and see the Abbe Bardin.”
+
+Hardly had she left the room when Fred got up from his sofa and
+approached Giselle with passionate eagerness.
+
+“Are you sure I am not dreaming,” said he. “Is it you--really you who
+advise me to marry Jacqueline?”
+
+“Who else should it be?” she answered, very calm to all appearance.
+“Who can know better than I? But first you must oblige me by lying down
+again, or else I will not say one word more. That is right. Now keep
+still. Your mother is furiously displeased with me--I am sorry--but
+she will get over it. I know that in Jacqueline you would have a good
+wife--a wife far better than the Jacqueline you would have married
+formerly. She has paid dearly for her experience of life, and has
+profited by its lessons, so that she is now worthy of you, and sincerely
+repentant for her childish peccadilloes.”
+
+“Giselle,” said Fred, “look me full in the face--yes, look into my eyes
+frankly and hide nothing. Your eyes never told anything but the truth.
+Why do you turn them away? Do you really and truly wish this marriage?”
+
+She looked at him steadily as long as he would, and let him hold her
+hand, which was burning inside her glove, and which with a great effort
+she prevented from trembling. Then her nerves gave way under his long
+and silent gaze, which seemed to question her, and she laughed, a laugh
+that sounded to herself very unnatural.
+
+“My poor, dear friend,” she cried, “how easily you men are duped! You
+are trying to find out, to discover whether, in case you decide upon
+an honest act, a perfectly sensible act, to which you are strongly
+inclined--don’t tell me you are not--whether, in short, you marry
+Jacqueline, I shall be really as glad of it as I pretend. But have you
+not found out what I have aimed at all along? Do you think I did not
+know from the very first what it was that made you seek me?
+
+“I was not the rope, but I had lived near the rose; I reminded you of
+her continually. We two loved her; each of us felt we did. Even when you
+said harm of her, I knew it was merely because you longed to utter her
+name, and repeat to yourself her perfections. I laughed, yes, I laughed
+to myself, and I was careful how I contradicted you. I tried to keep you
+safe for her, to prevent your going elsewhere and forming attachments
+which might have resulted in your forgetting her. I did my best--do me
+justice--I did my best; perhaps sometimes I pushed things a little far
+in her interest, in that of your mother, but in yours more than all; in
+yours, for God knows I am all for you,” said Giselle, with sudden and
+involuntary fervor.
+
+“Yes, I am all yours as a friend, a faithful friend,” she resumed,
+almost frightened by the tones of her own voice; “but as to the
+slightest feeling of love between us, love the most spiritual, the
+most platonic--yes, all men, I fancy, have a little of that kind of
+self-conceit. Dear Fred, don’t imagine it--Enguerrand would never have
+allowed it.”
+
+She was smiling, half laughing, and he looked at her with astonishment,
+asking himself whether he could believe what she was saying, when he
+could recollect what seemed to him so many proofs to the contrary. Yet
+in what she said there was no hesitation, no incoherence, no false note.
+Pride, noble pride, upheld her to the end. The first falsehood of her
+life was a masterpiece.
+
+“Ah, Giselle!” he said at last, not knowing what to think, “I adore you!
+I revere you!”
+
+“Yes,” she replied, with a smile, gracious, yet with a touch of sadness,
+“I know you do. But her you love!”
+
+Might it not have been sweet to her had he answered “No, I loved her
+once, and remembered that old love enough to risk my life for her, but
+in reality I now love only you--all the more at this moment when I see
+you love me more than yourself.” But, instead, he murmured only, like
+a man and a lover: “And Jacqueline--do you think she loves me?” His
+anxiety, a thrill that ran through all his frame, the light in his eyes,
+his sudden pallor, told more than his words.
+
+If Giselle could have doubted his love for Jacqueline before, she would
+have now been convinced of it. The conviction stabbed her to the heart.
+Death is not that last sleep in which all our faculties, weakened
+and exhausted, fail us; it is the blow which annihilates our supreme
+illusion and leaves us disabused in a cold and empty world. People walk,
+talk, and smile after this death--another ghost is added to the drama
+played on the stage of the world; but the real self is dead.
+
+Giselle was too much of a woman, angelic as she was, to have any courage
+left to say: “Yes, I know she loves you.”
+
+She said instead, in a low voice: “That is a question you must ask of
+her.”
+
+Meantime, in the next room they could hear Madame d’Argy vehemently
+repeating: “Never! No, I never will consent! Is it a plot between you?”
+
+They heard also a rumbling monotone preceding each of these vehement
+interruptions. The Abbe Bardin was pointing out to her that, unmarried,
+her son would return to Tonquin, that Lizerolles would be left deserted,
+her house would be desolate without daughter-in-law or grandchildren;
+and, as he drew these pictures, he came back, again and again, to his
+main argument:
+
+“I will answer for their happiness: I will answer for the future.”
+
+His authority as a priest gave weight to this assurance, at least
+Madame d’Argy felt it so. She went on saying never, but less and less
+emphatically, and apparently she ceased to say it at last, for three
+months later the d’Etaples, the Rays, the d’Avrignys and the rest,
+received two wedding announcements in these words:
+
+“Madame d’Argy has the honor to inform you of the marriage of her son,
+M. Frederic d’Argy, Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, to Mademoiselle de
+Nailles.”
+
+The accompanying card ran thus:
+
+     “The Baroness de Nailles has the honor to inform you of the
+     marriage of Mademoiselle Jacqueline de Nailles, her
+     stepdaughter, to M. Frederic d’Argy.”
+
+Congratulations showered down on both mother and stepmother. A
+love-match is nowadays so rare! It turned out that every one had always
+wished all kinds of good fortune to young Madame d’Argy, and every
+one seemed to take a sincere part in the joy that was expressed on the
+occasion, even Dolly, who, it was said, had in secret set her heart
+on Fred for herself; even Nora Sparks, who, not having carried out
+her plans, had gone back to New York, whence she sent a superb wedding
+present. Madame de Nailles apparently experienced at the wedding all the
+emotions of a real mother.
+
+The roses at Lizerolles bloomed that year with unusual beauty, as if
+to welcome the young pair. Modeste sang ‘Nunc Dimittis’. The least
+demonstrative of all those interested in the event was Giselle.
+
+
+     ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:
+
+     A familiarity which, had he known it, was not flattering
+     A mother’s geese are always swans
+     As we grow older we lay aside harsh judgments and sharp words
+     Bathers, who exhibited themselves in all degrees of ugliness
+     Blow which annihilates our supreme illusion
+     Death is not that last sleep
+     Fool (there is no cure for that infirmity)
+     Fred’s verses were not good, but they were full of dejection
+     Great interval between a dream and its execution
+     Hang out the bush, but keep no tavern
+     His sleeplessness was not the insomnia of genius
+     Importance in this world are as easily swept away as the sand
+     Music--so often dangerous to married happiness
+     Natural longing, that we all have, to know the worst
+     Notion of her husband’s having an opinion of his own
+     Old women--at least thirty years old!
+     Pride supplies some sufferers with necessary courage
+     Seemed to enjoy themselves, or made believe they did
+     Seldom troubled himself to please any one he did not care for
+     Small women ought not to grow stout
+     Sympathetic listening, never having herself anything to say
+     The bandage love ties over the eyes of men
+     The worst husband is always better than none
+     This unending warfare we call love
+     Unwilling to leave him to the repose he needed
+     Waste all that upon a thing that nobody will ever look at
+     Women who are thirty-five should never weep
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s Jacqueline, Complete, by Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
+
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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>
+      Jacqueline, by (Mme. Blanc) Therese Bentzon
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd7; 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%; }
+    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; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    pre     { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+Project Gutenberg's Jacqueline, Complete, by Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
+
+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: Jacqueline, Complete
+
+Author: (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
+
+Release Date: October 5, 2006 [EBook #3971]
+Last Updated: August 23, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JACQUELINE, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <h1>
+      JACQUELINE
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By (Mme. Blanc) Therese Bentzon
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      With a Preface by M. THUREAU-DANGIN, of the French Academy
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> TH. BENTZON </a><br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>JACQUELINE</b> </a><br /><br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0003"> <b>BOOK 1.</b> </a> <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. </a>A PARISIENNE&rsquo;S &ldquo;AT HOME&rdquo; <br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. </a>A CLEVER STEPMOTHER <br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. </a>THE FRIEND OF THE FAY <br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. </a>A DANGEROUS MODEL <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. </a>SURPRISES <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. </a>A CONVENT FLOWER <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0010"> <b>BOOK 2.</b> </a> <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. </a>THE BLUE BAND <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. </a>A PUZZLING CORRESPONDENCE <br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. </a>BEAUTY AT THE FAIR <br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. </a>GISELLE&rsquo;S CONSOLATION <br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. </a>FRED ASKS A QUESTION <br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. </a>A COMEDY AND A TRAGEDY <br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII. </a>THE STORM BREAKS <br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> <b>BOOK 3.</b> </a> <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV. </a>BITTER DISILLUSION <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV. </a>TREACHEROUS KINDNESS <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI. </a>THE SAILOR&rsquo;S RETURN <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII. </a>TWIN DEVILS <br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII. &nbsp;&nbsp;</a>"AN AFFAIR OF
+        HONOR&rdquo; <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX. </a>GENTLE
+        CONSPIRATORS <br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX. </a>A
+        CHIVALROUS SOUL <br /><br />
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      TH. BENTZON
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It is natural that the attention and affection of Americans should be
+      attracted to a woman who has devoted herself assiduously to understanding
+      and to making known the aspirations of our country, especially in
+      introducing the labors and achievements of our women to their sisters in
+      France, of whom we also have much to learn; for simple, homely virtues and
+      the charm of womanliness may still be studied with advantage on the
+      cherished soil of France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marie-Therese Blanc, nee Solms&mdash;for this is the name of the author
+      who writes under the nom de plume of Madame Bentzon&mdash;is considered
+      the greatest of living French female novelists. She was born in an old
+      French chateau at Seine-Porte (Seine et Oise), September 21, 1840. This
+      chateau was owned by Madame Bentzon&rsquo;s grandmother, the Marquise de Vitry,
+      who was a woman of great force and energy of character, &ldquo;a ministering
+      angel&rdquo; to her country neighborhood. Her grandmother&rsquo;s first marriage was
+      to a Dane, Major-General Adrien-Benjamin de Bentzon, a Governor of the
+      Danish Antilles. By this marriage there was one daughter, the mother of
+      Therese, who in turn married the Comte de Solms. &ldquo;This mixture of races,&rdquo;
+       Madame Blanc once wrote, &ldquo;surely explains a kind of moral and intellectual
+      cosmopolitanism which is found in my nature. My father of German descent,
+      my mother of Danish&mdash;my nom de plume (which was her maiden-name) is
+      Danish&mdash;with Protestant ancestors on her side, though she and I were
+      Catholics&mdash;my grandmother a sound and witty Parisian, gay, brilliant,
+      lively, with superb physical health and the consequent good spirits&mdash;surely
+      these materials could not have produced other than a cosmopolitan being.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow or other, the family became impoverished. Therese de Solms took to
+      writing stories. After many refusals, her debut took place in the &lsquo;Revue
+      des Deux Mondes&rsquo;, and her perseverance was largely due to the
+      encouragement she received from George Sand, although that great woman saw
+      everything through the magnifying glass of her genius. But the person to
+      whom Therese Bentzon was most indebted in the matter of literary advice&mdash;she
+      says herself&mdash;was the late M. Caro, the famous Sorbonne professor of
+      philosophy, himself an admirable writer, &ldquo;who put me through a course of
+      literature, acting as my guide through a vast amount of solid reading, and
+      criticizing my work with kindly severity.&rdquo; Success was slow. Strange as it
+      may seem, there is a prejudice against female writers in France, a country
+      that has produced so many admirable women-authors. However, the time was
+      to come when M. Becloz found one of her stories in the &lsquo;Journal des
+      Debats&rsquo;. It was the one entitled &lsquo;Un Divorce&rsquo;, and he lost no time in
+      engaging the young writer to become one of his staff. From that day to
+      this she has found the pages of the Revue always open to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Bentzon is a novelist, translator, and writer of literary essays.
+      The list of her works runs as follows: &lsquo;Le Roman d&rsquo;un Muet (1868); Un
+      Divorce (1872); La Grande Sauliere (1877); Un remords (1878); Yette and
+      Georgette (1880); Le Retour (1882); Tete folle (1883); Tony, (1884);
+      Emancipee (1887); Constance (1891); Jacqueline (1893). We need not enter
+      into the merits of style and composition if we mention that &lsquo;Un remords,
+      Tony, and Constance&rsquo; were crowned by the French Academy, and &lsquo;Jacqueline&rsquo; 
+      in 1893. Madame Bentzon is likewise the translator of Aldrich, Bret Harte,
+      Dickens, and Ouida. Some of her critical works are &lsquo;Litterature et Moeurs
+      etrangeres&rsquo;, 1882, and &lsquo;Nouveaux romanciers americains&rsquo;, 1885.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                  M. THUREAU-DANGIN
+               de l&rsquo;Academie Francaise.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      JACQUELINE
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK 1.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. A PARISIENNE&rsquo;S &ldquo;AT HOME&rdquo;
+     </h2>
+    <p>
+      Despite a short frock, checked stockings, wide turned-over collar, and a
+      loose sash around the waist of her blouse in other words, despite the
+      childish fashion of a dress which seemed to denote that she was not more
+      than thirteen or fourteen years of age, she seemed much older. An observer
+      would have put her down as the oldest of the young girls who on Tuesdays,
+      at Madame de Nailles&rsquo;s afternoons, filled what was called &ldquo;the young
+      girls&rsquo; corner&rdquo; with whispered merriment and low laughter, while, under
+      pretence of drinking tea, the noise went on which is always audible when
+      there is anything to eat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No doubt the amber tint of this young girl&rsquo;s complexion, the raven
+      blackness of her hair, her marked yet delicate features, and the general
+      impression produced by her dark coloring, were reasons why she seemed
+      older than the rest. It was Jacqueline&rsquo;s privilege to exhibit that style
+      of beauty which comes earliest to perfection, and retains it longest; and,
+      what was an equal privilege, she resembled no one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The deep bow-window&mdash;her favorite spot&mdash;which enabled her to
+      have a reception-day in connection with that of her mamma, seemed like a
+      great basket of roses when all her friends assembled there, seated on low
+      chairs in unstudied attitudes: the white rose of the group was
+      Mademoiselle d&rsquo;Etaples, a specimen of pale and pensive beauty, frail
+      almost to transparency; the Rose of Bengal was the charming Colette
+      Odinska, a girl of Polish race, but born in Paris; the dark-red rose was
+      Isabelle Ray-Belle she was called triumphantly&mdash;whose dimpled cheeks
+      flushed scarlet for almost any cause, some said for very coquetry. Then
+      there were three little girls called Wermant, daughters of an agent de
+      change&mdash;a spray of May roses, exactly alike in features, manners, and
+      dress, sprightly and charming as little girls could be. A little pompon
+      rose was tiny Dorothee d&rsquo;Avrigny, to whom the pet name Dolly was
+      appropriate, for never had any doll&rsquo;s waxen face been more lovely than her
+      little round one, with its mouth shaped like a little heart&mdash;a mouth
+      smaller than her eyes, and these were round eyes, too, but so bright, and
+      blue, and soft, that it was easy to overlook their too frequently startled
+      expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline had nothing in common with a rose of any kind, but she was not
+      the less charming to look at. Such was the unspoken reflection of a man
+      who was well able to be a judge in such matters. His name was Hubert
+      Marien. He was a great painter, and was now watching the clear-cut,
+      somewhat Arab&mdash;like profile of this girl&mdash;a profile brought out
+      distinctly against the dark-red silk background of a screen, much as we
+      see a cameo stand out in sharp relief from the glittering stone from which
+      the artist has fashioned it. Marien looked at her from a distance, leaning
+      against the fireplace of the farther salon, whence he could see plainly
+      the corner shaded by green foliage plants where Jacqueline had made her
+      niche, as she called it. The two rooms formed practically but one, being
+      separated only by a large recess without folding-doors, or &lsquo;portires&rsquo;.
+      Hubert Marien, from his place behind Madame de Nailles&rsquo;s chair, had often
+      before watched Jacqueline as he was watching her at this moment. She had
+      grown up, as it were, under his own eye. He had seen her playing with her
+      dolls, absorbed in her story-books, and crunching sugar-plums, he had paid
+      her visits&mdash;for how many years? He did not care to count them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And little girls bloom fast! How old they make us feel! Who would have
+      supposed the most unpromising of little buds would have transformed itself
+      so soon into what he gazed upon? Marien, as an artist, had great pleasure
+      in studying the delicate outline of that graceful head surmounted by thick
+      tresses, with rebellious ringlets rippling over the brow before they were
+      gathered into the thick braid that hung behind; and Jacqueline, although
+      she appeared to be wholly occupied with her guests, felt the gaze that was
+      fixed upon her, and was conscious of its magnetic influence, from which
+      nothing would have induced her to escape even had she been able. All the
+      young girls were listening attentively (despite their more serious
+      occupation of consuming dainties) to what was going on in the next room
+      among the grown-up people, whose conversation reached them only in
+      detached fragments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So long as the subject talked about was the last reception at the French
+      Academy, these young girls (comrades in the class-room and at the weekly
+      catechising) had been satisfied to discuss together their own little
+      affairs, but after Colonel de Valdonjon began to talk complete silence
+      reigned among them. One might have heard the buzzing of a fly. Their
+      attention, however, was of little use. Exclamations of oh! and ah! and
+      protests more or less sincere drowned even the loud and somewhat hoarse
+      voice of the Colonel. The girls heard it only through a sort of general
+      murmur, out of which a burst of astonishment or of dissent would
+      occasionally break forth. These outbreaks were all the curious group could
+      hear distinctly. They sniffed, as it were, at the forbidden fruit, but
+      they longed to inhale the full perfume of the scandal that they felt was
+      in the air. That stout officer of cuirassiers, of whom some people spoke
+      as &ldquo;The Chatterbox,&rdquo; took advantage of his profession to tell many an
+      unsavory story which he had picked up or invented at his club. He had come
+      to Madame de Nailles&rsquo;s reception with a brand-new concoction of falsehood
+      and truth, a story likely to be hawked round Paris with great success for
+      several weeks to come, though ladies on first hearing it would think
+      proper to cry out that they would not even listen to it, and would pretend
+      to look round them for their fans to hide their confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The principal object of interest in this scandalous gossip was a valuable
+      diamond bracelet, one of those priceless bits of jewelry seldom seen
+      except in show-windows on the Rue de la Paix, intended to be bought only
+      for presentation to princesses&mdash;of some sort or kind. Well, by an
+      extraordinary, chance the Marquise de Versannes&mdash;aye, the lovely
+      Georgine de Versannes herself&mdash;had picked up this bracelet in the
+      street&mdash;by chance, as it were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It so happened,&rdquo; said the Colonel, &ldquo;that I was at her mother-in-law&rsquo;s,
+      where she was going to dine. She came in looking as innocent as you
+      please, with her hand in her pocket. &lsquo;Oh, see what I have found!&rsquo; she
+      cried. &lsquo;I stepped upon it almost at your door.&rsquo; And the bracelet was
+      placed under a lamp, where the diamonds shot out sparkles fit to blind the
+      old Marquise, and make that old fool of a Versannes see a thousand lights.
+      He has long known better than to take all his wife says for gospel&mdash;but
+      he tries hard to pretend that he believes her. &lsquo;My dear,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;you
+      must take that to the police.&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;I&rsquo;ll send it to-morrow morning,&rsquo; 
+      says the charming Georgine, &lsquo;but I wished to show you my good luck.&rsquo; Of
+      course nobody came forward to claim the bracelet, and a month later Madame
+      de Versannes appeared at the Cranfords&rsquo; ball with a brilliant diamond
+      bracelet, worn like the Queen of Sheba&rsquo;s, high up on her arm, near the
+      shoulder, to hide the lack of sleeve. This piece of finery, which drew
+      everybody&rsquo;s attention to the wearer, was the famous bracelet picked up in
+      the street. Clever of her!&mdash;wasn&rsquo;t it, now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Horrid! Unlikely! Impossible.... What do you mean us to understand about
+      it, Colonel? Could she have...?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Colonel went on to demonstrate, with many coarse insinuations,
+      that that good Georgine, as he familiarly called her, had done many more
+      things than people gave her credit for. And he went on to add: &ldquo;Surely,
+      you must have heard of the row about her between Givrac and the
+      Homme-Volant at the Cirque?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, the man that wears stockinet all covered with gold scales? Do tell
+      us, Colonel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But here Madame de Nailles gave a dry little cough which was meant to
+      impose silence on the subject. She was not a prude, but she disapproved of
+      anything that was bad form at her receptions. The Colonel&rsquo;s revelations
+      had to be made in a lower tone, while his hostess endeavored to bring back
+      the conversation to the charming reply made by M. Renan to the somewhat
+      insipid address of a member of the Academie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t hear anything more now,&rdquo; said Colette, with a sigh. &ldquo;Did you
+      understand it, Jacqueline?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Understand&mdash;what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that story about the bracelet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;not all. The Colonel seemed to imply that she had not picked it
+      up, and indeed I don&rsquo;t see how any one could have dropped in the street,
+      in broad daylight, a bracelet meant only to be worn at night&mdash;a
+      bracelet worn near the shoulder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if she did not pick it up&mdash;she must have stolen it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stolen it?&rdquo; cried Belle. &ldquo;Stolen it! What! The Marquise de Versannes?
+      Why, she inherited the finest diamonds in Paris!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because mamma sometimes takes me to the Opera, and her subscription day
+      is the same as that of the Marquise. People say a good deal of harm of her&mdash;in
+      whispers. They say she is barely received now in society, that people turn
+      their backs on her, and so forth, and so on. However, that did not hinder
+      her from being superb the other evening at &lsquo;Polyeucte&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you only go to see &lsquo;Polyeucte&rsquo;?&rdquo; said Jacqueline, making a little face
+      as if she despised that opera.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I have seen it twice. Mamma lets me go to &lsquo;Polyeucte&rsquo; and &lsquo;Guillaume
+      Tell&rsquo;, and to the &lsquo;Prophete&rsquo;, but she won&rsquo;t take me to see &lsquo;Faust&rsquo;&mdash;and
+      it is just &lsquo;Faust&rsquo; that I want to see. Isn&rsquo;t it provoking that one can&rsquo;t
+      see everything, hear everything, understand everything? You see, we could
+      not half understand that story which seemed to amuse the people so much in
+      the other room. Why did they send back the bracelet from the Prefecture to
+      Madame de Versannes if it was not hers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;why?&rdquo; said all the little girls, much puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, as the hour for closing the exhibition at the neighboring
+      hippodrome had arrived, visitors came pouring into Madame de Nailles&rsquo;s
+      reception&mdash;tall, graceful women, dressed with taste and elegance, as
+      befitted ladies who were interested in horsemanship. The tone of the
+      conversation changed. Nothing was talked about but superb horses, leaps
+      over ribbons and other obstacles. The young girls interested themselves in
+      the spring toilettes, which they either praised or criticised as they
+      passed before their eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! there is Madame Villegry,&rdquo; cried Jacqueline; &ldquo;how handsome she is! I
+      should like one of these days to be that kind of beauty, so tall and
+      slender. Her waist measure is only twenty-one and two thirds inches. The
+      woman who makes her corsets and my mamma&rsquo;s told us so. She brought us one
+      of her corsets to look at, a love of a corset, in brocatelle, all over
+      many-colored flowers. That material is much more &lsquo;distingue&rsquo; than the old
+      satin&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what a queer idea it is to waste all that upon a thing that nobody
+      will ever look at,&rdquo; said Dolly, her round eyes opening wider than before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! it is just to please herself, I suppose. I understand that! Besides,
+      nothing is too good for such a figure. But what I admire most is her
+      extraordinary hair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which changes its color now and then,&rdquo; observed the sharpest of the three
+      Wermant sisters. &ldquo;Extraordinary is just the word for it. At present it is
+      dark red. Henna did that, I suppose. Raoul&mdash;our brother&mdash;when he
+      was in Africa saw Arab women who used henna. They tied their heads up in a
+      sort of poultice made of little leaves, something like tea-leaves. In
+      twenty-four hours the hair will be dyed red, and will stay red for a year
+      or more. You can try it if you like. I think it is disgusting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! look, there is Madame de Sternay. I recognized her by her perfume
+      before I had even seen her. What delightful things good perfumes are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it? Is it heliotrope or jessamine?&rdquo; asked Yvonne d&rsquo;Etaples,
+      sniffing in the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;it is only orris-root&mdash;nothing but orris-root; but she puts
+      it everywhere about her&mdash;in the hem of her petticoat, in the lining
+      of her dress. She lives, one might say, in the middle of a sachet. The
+      thing that will please me most when I am married will be to have no limit
+      to my perfumes. Till then I have to satisfy myself with very little,&rdquo;
+       sighed Jacqueline, drawing a little bunch of violets from the loose folds
+      of her blouse, and inhaling their fragrance with delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Tiens&rsquo;! here comes somebody who has to be contented with much less,&rdquo;
+       said Yvonne, as a young girl joined their circle. She was small, awkward,
+      timid, and badly dressed. On seeing her Colette whispered &ldquo;Oh! that
+      tiresome Giselle. We sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t be able to talk another word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline kissed Giselle de Monredon. They were distant cousins, though
+      they saw each other very seldom. Giselle was an orphan, having lost both
+      her father and her mother, and was being educated in a convent from which
+      she was allowed to come out only on great occasions. Her grandmother,
+      whose ideas were those of the old school, had placed her there. The Easter
+      holidays accounted for Giselle&rsquo;s unexpected arrival. Wrapped in a large
+      cloak which covered up her convent uniform, she looked, as compared with
+      the gay girls around her, like a poor sombre night-moth, dazzled by the
+      light, in company with other glittering creatures of the insect race,
+      fluttering with graceful movements, transparent wings and shining
+      corselets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come and have some sandwiches,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, and she drew Giselle to
+      the tea-table, with the kind intention apparently of making her feel more
+      at her ease. But she had another motive. She saw some one who was very
+      interesting to her coming at that moment toward the table. That some one
+      was a man about forty, whose pointed black beard was becoming slightly
+      gray&mdash;a man whom some people thought ugly, chiefly because they had
+      never seen his somewhat irregular features illumined by a smile which,
+      spreading from his lips to his eyes, lighted up his face and transformed
+      it. The smile of Hubert Marien was rare, however. He was exclusive in his
+      friendships, often silent, always somewhat unapproachable. He seldom
+      troubled himself to please any one he did not care for. In society he was
+      not seen to advantage, because he was extremely bored, for which reason he
+      was seldom to be seen at the Tuesday receptions of Madame de Nailles;
+      while, on other days, he frequented the house as an intimate friend of the
+      family. Jacqueline had known him all her life, and for her he had always
+      his beautiful smile. He had petted her when she was little, and had been
+      much amused by the sort of adoration she had no hesitation in showing that
+      she felt for him. He used to call her Mademoiselle ma femme, and M. de
+      Nailles would speak of him as &ldquo;my daughter&rsquo;s future husband.&rdquo; This joke
+      had been kept up till the little lady had reached her ninth year, when it
+      ceased, probably by order of Madame de Nailles, who in matters of
+      propriety was very punctilious. Jacqueline, too, became less familiar than
+      she had been with the man she called &ldquo;my great painter.&rdquo; Indeed, in her
+      heart of hearts, she cherished a grudge against him. She thought he
+      presumed on the right he had assumed of teasing her. The older she grew
+      the more he treated her as if she were a baby, and, in the little passages
+      of arms that continually took place between them, Jacqueline was bitterly
+      conscious that she no longer had the best of it as formerly. She was no
+      longer as droll and lively as she had been. She was easily disconcerted,
+      and took everything &lsquo;au serieux&rsquo;, and her wits became paralyzed by an
+      embarrassment that was new to her. And, pained by the sort of sarcasm
+      which Marien kept up in all their intercourse, she was often ready to
+      burst into tears after talking to him. Yet she was never quite satisfied
+      unless he was present. She counted the days from one Wednesday to another,
+      for on Wednesdays he always dined with them, and she greeted any
+      opportunity of seeing him on other days as a great pleasure. This week,
+      for example, would be marked with a white stone. She would have seen him
+      twice. For half an hour Marien had been enduring the bore of the
+      reception, standing silent and self-absorbed in the midst of the gay talk,
+      which did not interest him. He wished to escape, but was always kept from
+      doing so by some word or sign from Madame de Nailles. Jacqueline had been
+      thinking: &ldquo;Oh! if he would only come and talk to us!&rdquo; He was now drawing
+      near them, and an instinct made her wish to rush up to him and tell him&mdash;what
+      should she tell him? She did not know. A few moments before so many things
+      to tell him had been passing through her brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What she said was: &ldquo;Monsieur Marien, I recommend to you these little
+      spiced cakes.&rdquo; And, with some awkwardness, because her hand was trembling,
+      she held out the plate to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, thank you, Mademoiselle,&rdquo; he said, affecting a tone of great
+      ceremony, &ldquo;I prefer to take this glass of punch, if you will permit me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The punch is cold, I fear; suppose we were to put a little tea in it.
+      Stay&mdash;let me help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A thousand thanks; but I like to attend to such little cookeries myself.
+      By the way, it seems to me that Mademoiselle Giselle, in her character of
+      an angel who disapproves of the good things of this life, has not left us
+      much to eat at your table.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who&mdash;I?&rdquo; cried the poor schoolgirl, in a tone of injured innocence
+      and astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t pay any attention to him,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, as if taking her under
+      her protection. &ldquo;He is nothing but a tease; what he says is only chaff.
+      But I might as well talk Greek to her,&rdquo; she added, shrugging her
+      shoulders. &ldquo;In the convent they don&rsquo;t know what to make of a joke. Only
+      spare her at least, if you please, Monsieur Marien.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know by report that Mademoiselle Giselle is worthy of the most profound
+      respect,&rdquo; continued the pitiless painter. &ldquo;I lay myself at her feet&mdash;and
+      at yours. Now I am going to slip away in the English fashion.
+      Good-evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you go so soon? You can&rsquo;t do any more work today.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it has been a day lost&mdash;that is true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s polite! By the way&rdquo;&mdash;here Jacqueline became very red and she
+      spoke rapidly&mdash;&ldquo;what made you just now stare at me so persistently?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I? Impossible that I could have permitted myself to stare at you,
+      Mademoiselle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is just what you did, though. I thought you had found something to
+      find fault with. What could it be? I fancied there was something wrong
+      with my hair, something absurd that you were laughing at. You always do
+      laugh, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wrong with your hair? It is always wrong. But that is not your fault. You
+      are not responsible for its looking like a hedgehog&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hedgehogs haven&rsquo;t any hair,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, much hurt by the
+      observation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True, they have only prickles, which remind me of the susceptibility of
+      your temper. I beg your pardon I was looking at you critically. Being
+      myself indulgent and kindhearted, I was only looking at you from an
+      artist&rsquo;s point of view&mdash;as is always allowable in my profession.
+      Remember, I see you very rarely by daylight. I am obliged to work as long
+      as the light allows me. Well, in the light of this April sunshine I was
+      saying to myself&mdash;excuse my boldness!&mdash;that you had reached the
+      right age for a picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For a picture? Were you thinking of painting me?&rdquo; cried Jacqueline,
+      radiant with pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold a moment, please. Between a dream and its execution lies a great
+      space. I was only imagining a picture of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But my portrait would be frightful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Possibly. But that would depend on the skill of the painter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet a model should be&mdash;I am so thin,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, with
+      confusion and discouragement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True; your limbs are like a grasshopper&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! you mean my legs&mdash;but my arms....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your arms must be like your legs. But, sitting as you were just now, I
+      could see only your head, which is better. So! one has to be accountable
+      for looking at you? Mademoiselle feels herself affronted if any one stares
+      at her! I will remember this in future. There, now! suppose, instead of
+      quarrelling with me, you were to go and cast yourself into the arms of
+      your cousin Fred.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fred! Fred d&rsquo;Argy! Fred is at Brest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are your eyes, my dear child? He has just come in with his mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And at that moment Madame de Nailles, with her pure, clear voice&mdash;a
+      voice frequently compared to that of Mademoiselle Reichemberg, called:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jacqueline!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline never crossed the imaginary line which divided the two salons
+      unless she was called upon to do so. She was still summoned like a child
+      to speak to certain persons who took an especial interest in her, and who
+      were kind enough to wish to see her&mdash;Madame d&rsquo;Argy, for example, who
+      had been the dearest friend of her dead mother. The death of that mother,
+      who had been long replaced by a stepmother, could hardly be said to be
+      deeply regretted by Jacqueline. She remembered her very indistinctly. The
+      stories of her she had heard from Modeste, her old nurse, probably served
+      her instead of any actual memory. She knew her only as a woman pale and in
+      ill health, always lying on a sofa. The little black frock that had been
+      made for her had been hardly worn out when a new mamma, as gay and fresh
+      as the other had been sick and suffering, had come into the household like
+      a ray of sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After that time Madame d&rsquo;Argy and Modeste were the only people who spoke
+      to her of the mother who was gone. Madame d&rsquo;Argy, indeed, came on certain
+      days to take her to visit the tomb, on which the child read, as she prayed
+      for the departed:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+         MARIE JACQUELINE ADELAIDE DE VALTIER
+
+              BARONNE DE NAILLES
+
+            DIED AGED TWENTY-SIX YEARS
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And such filial sentiment as she still retained, concerning the unknown
+      being who had been her mother, was tinged by her association with this
+      melancholy pilgrimage which she was expected to perform at certain
+      intervals. Without exactly knowing the reason why, Jacqueline was
+      conscious of a certain hostility that existed between Madame d&rsquo;Argy and
+      her stepmother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The intimate friend of the first Madame de Nailles was a woman with
+      neither elegance nor beauty. She never had left off her widow&rsquo;s weeds,
+      which she had worn since she had lost her husband in early youth. In the
+      eyes of Jacqueline her sombre figure personified austere, exacting Duty, a
+      kind of duty not attractive to her. That very day it seemed as if duty
+      inconveniently stepped in to break up a conversation that was deeply
+      interesting to her. The impatient gesture that she made when her mother
+      called her might have been interpreted into: Bother Madame d&rsquo;Argy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jacqueline!&rdquo; called again the silvery voice that had first summoned her;
+      and a moment after the young girl found herself in the centre of a circle
+      of grown people, saying good-morning, making curtseys, and kissing the
+      withered hand of old Madame de Monredon, as she had been taught to do from
+      infancy. Madame de Monredon was Giselle&rsquo;s grandmother. Jacqueline had been
+      instructed to call her &ldquo;aunt;&rdquo; but in her heart she called her &lsquo;La Fee
+      Gyognon&rsquo;, while Madame d&rsquo;Argy, pointing to her son, said: &ldquo;What do you
+      think, darling, of such a surprise? He is home on leave. We came here the
+      first place-naturally.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was very nice of you. How do you do, Fred?&rdquo; said Jacqueline, holding
+      out her hand to a very young man, in a jacket ornamented with gold lace,
+      who stood twisting his cap in his hand with some embarrassment &ldquo;It is a
+      long time since we have seen each other. But it does not seem to me that
+      you have grown a great deal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred blushed up to the roots of his hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one can say that of you, Jacqueline,&rdquo; observed Madame d&rsquo;Argy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;what a may-pole!&mdash;isn&rsquo;t she?&rdquo; said the Baronne, carelessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she realizes it,&rdquo; whispered Madame de Monredon, who was sitting beside
+      Madame d&rsquo;Argy on a &lsquo;causeuse&rsquo; shaped like an S, &ldquo;why does she persist in
+      dressing her like a child six years old? It is absurd!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still, she can have no reason for keeping her thus in order to make
+      herself seem young. She is only a stepmother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course. But people might make comparisons. Beauty in the bud sometimes
+      blooms out unexpectedly when it is not welcome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;she is fading fast. Small women ought not to grow stout.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anyhow, I have no patience with her for keeping a girl of fifteen in
+      short skirts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are making her out older than she is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is that?&mdash;how is that? She is two years younger than Giselle,
+      who has just entered her eighteenth year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While the two ladies were exchanging these little remarks, the Baronne de
+      Nailles was saying to the young naval cadet:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Fred, we should be charmed to keep you with us, but possibly you
+      might like to see some of your old friends. Jacqueline can take you to
+      them. They will be glad to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tiens!&mdash;that&rsquo;s true,&rdquo; said Jacqueline. &ldquo;Dolly and Belle are yonder.
+      You remember Isabelle Ray, who used to take dancing lessons with us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I do,&rdquo; said Fred, following his cousin with a feeling of regret
+      that his sword was not knocking against his legs, increasing his
+      importance in the eyes of all the ladies who were present. He was not,
+      however; sorry to leave their imposing circle. Above all, he was glad to
+      escape from the clear-sighted, critical eyes of Madame de Nailles. On the
+      other hand, to be sent off to the girls&rsquo; corner, after being insulted by
+      being told he had not grown, hurt his sense of self-importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Jacqueline was taking him back to her own corner, where he was
+      greeted by two or three little exclamations of surprise, shaking hands,
+      however, as his former playmates drew their skirts around them, trying to
+      make room for him to sit down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Young ladies,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, &ldquo;I present to you a &lsquo;bordachien&rsquo;&mdash;a
+      little middy from the practice-ship the Borda.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They burst out laughing: &ldquo;A bordachien! A middy from the practice-ship!&rdquo;
+       they cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not be much longer on the practice-ship,&rdquo; said the young man,
+      with a gesture which seemed as if his hand were feeling for the hilt of
+      his sword, which was not there, &ldquo;for I am going very soon on my first
+      voyage as an ensign.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; explained Jacqueline, &ldquo;he is going to be transferred from the
+      &lsquo;Borda&rsquo; to the &lsquo;Jean-Bart&rsquo;&mdash;which, by the way, is no longer the
+      &lsquo;Jean-Bart&rsquo;, only people call her so because they are used to it. Meantime
+      you see before you &ldquo;C,&rdquo; the great &ldquo;C,&rdquo; the famous &ldquo;C,&rdquo; that is, he is the
+      pupil who stands highest on the roll of the naval school at this moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a vague murmur of applause. Poor Fred was indeed in need of some
+      appreciation on the score of merit, for he was not much to look upon,
+      being at that trying age when a young fellow&rsquo;s moustache is only a light
+      down, an age at which youths always look their worst, and are awkward and
+      unsociable because they are timid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you are no longer an idle fellow,&rdquo; said Dolly, rather teasingly.
+      &ldquo;People used to say that you went into the navy to get rid of your
+      lessons. That I can quite understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he has passed many difficult exams,&rdquo; cried Giselle, coming to the
+      rescue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought I had had enough of school,&rdquo; said Fred, without making any
+      defense, &ldquo;and besides I had other reasons for going into the navy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His &ldquo;other reasons&rdquo; had been a wish to emancipate himself from the
+      excessive solicitude of his mother, who kept him tied to her apron-strings
+      like a little girl. He was impatient to do something for himself, to
+      become a man as soon as possible. But he said nothing of all this, and to
+      escape further questions devoured three or four little cakes that were
+      offered him. Before taking them he removed his gloves and displayed a pair
+      of chapped and horny hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why&mdash;poor Fred!&rdquo; cried Jacqueline, who remarked them in a moment,
+      &ldquo;what kind of almond paste do you use?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Much annoyed, he replied, curtly: &ldquo;We all have to row, we have also to
+      attend to the machinery. But that is only while we are cadets. Of course,
+      such apprenticeship is very hard. After that we shall get our stripes and
+      be ordered on foreign service, and expect promotion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And glory,&rdquo; said Giselle, who found courage to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred thanked her with a look of gratitude. She, at least, understood his
+      profession. She entered into his feelings far better than Jacqueline, who
+      had been his first confidante&mdash;Jacqueline, to whom he had confided
+      his purposes, his ambition, and his day-dreams. He thought Jacqueline was
+      selfish. She seemed to care only for herself. And yet, selfish or not
+      selfish, she pleased him better than all the other girls he knew&mdash;a
+      thousand times more than gentle, sweet Giselle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, glory, of course!&rdquo; repeated Jacqueline. &ldquo;I understand how much that
+      counts, but there is glory of various kinds, and I know the kind that I
+      prefer,&rdquo; she added in a tone which seemed to imply that it was not that of
+      arms, or of perilous navigation. &ldquo;We all know,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;that not
+      every man can have genius, but any sailor who has good luck can get to be
+      an admiral.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us hope you will be one soon, Monsieur Fred,&rdquo; said Dolly. &ldquo;You will
+      have well deserved it, according to the way you have distinguished
+      yourself on board the &lsquo;Borda.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This induced Fred to let them understand something of life on board the
+      practice-ship; he told how the masters who resided on shore ascended by a
+      ladder to the gun-deck, which had been turned into a schoolroom; how six
+      cadets occupied the space intended for each gun-carriage, where hammocks
+      hung from hooks served them instead of beds; how the chapel was in a
+      closet opened only on Sundays. He described the gymnastic feats in the
+      rigging, the practice in gunnery, and many other things which, had they
+      been well described, would have been interesting; but Fred was only a poor
+      narrator. The conclusion the young ladies seemed to reach unanimously
+      after hearing his descriptions, was discouraging. They cried almost with
+      one voice&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think of any woman being willing to marry a sailor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; asked Giselle, very promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because, what&rsquo;s the use of a husband who is always out of your reach, as
+      it were, between water and sky? One would better be a widow. Widows, at
+      any rate, can marry again. But you, Giselle, don&rsquo;t understand these
+      things. You are going to be a nun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had I been in your place, Fred,&rdquo; said Isabelle Ray, &ldquo;I should rather have
+      gone into the cavalry school at Saint Cyr. I should have wanted to be a
+      good huntsman, had I been a man, and they say naval officers are never
+      good horsemen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Fred! He was not making much progress among the young girls. Almost
+      everything people talked about outside his cadet life was unknown to him;
+      what he could talk about seemed to have no interest for any one, unless
+      indeed it might interest Giselle, who was an adept in the art of
+      sympathetic listening, never having herself anything to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides this, Fred was by no means at his ease in talking to Jacqueline.
+      They had been told not to &lsquo;tutoyer&rsquo; each other, because they were getting
+      too old for such familiarity, and it was he, and not she, who remembered
+      this prohibition. Jacqueline perceived this after a while, and burst out
+      laughing:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tiens! You call me &lsquo;you,&rdquo;&rsquo; she cried, &ldquo;and I ought not to say &lsquo;thou&rsquo; but
+      &lsquo;you.&rsquo; I forgot. It seems so odd, when we have always been accustomed to
+      &lsquo;tutoyer&rsquo; each other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One ought to give it up after one&rsquo;s first communion,&rdquo; said the eldest
+      Mademoiselle Wermant, sententiously. &ldquo;We ceased to &lsquo;tutoyer&rsquo; our boy
+      cousins after that. I am told nothing annoys a husband so much as to see
+      these little familiarities between his wife and her cousins or her
+      playmates.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle looked very much astonished at this speech, and her air of
+      disapproval amused Belle and Yvonne exceedingly. They began presently to
+      talk of the classes in which they were considered brilliant pupils, and of
+      their success in compositions. They said that sometimes very difficult
+      subjects were given out. A week or two before, each had had to compose a
+      letter purporting to be from Dante in exile to a friend in Florence,
+      describing Paris as it was in his time, especially the manners and customs
+      of its universities, ending by some allusion to the state of matters
+      between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens! And could you do it?&rdquo; said Giselle, whose knowledge of
+      history was limited to what may be found in school abridgments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was therefore a great satisfaction to her when Fred declared that he
+      never should have known how to set about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! papa helped me a little,&rdquo; said Isabelle, whose father wrote articles
+      much appreciated by the public in the &lsquo;Revue des Deux Mondes.&rsquo; &ldquo;But he
+      said at the same time that it was horrid to give such crack-brained stuff
+      to us poor girls. Happily, our subject this week is much nicer. We have to
+      make comparisons between La Tristesse d&rsquo;Olympio, Souvenir, and Le Lac&rsquo;.
+      That will be something interesting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Tristesse d&rsquo;Olympio?&rdquo; repeated Giselle, in a tone of interrogation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know, of course, that it is Victor Hugo&rsquo;s,&rdquo; said Mademoiselle de
+      Wermant, with a touch of pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle answered with sincerity and humility, &ldquo;I only knew that Le Lac was
+      by Lamartine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well!&mdash;she knows that much,&rdquo; whispered Belle to Yvonne&mdash;&ldquo;just
+      that much, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While they were whispering and laughing, Jacqueline recited, in a soft
+      voice, and with feeling that did credit to her instructor in elocution,
+      Mademoiselle X&mdash;&mdash;, of the Theatre Francais:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     May the moan of the wind, the green rushes&rsquo; soft sighing,
+     The fragrance that floats in the air you have moved,
+     May all heard, may all breathed, may all seen, seem but trying
+     To say: They have loved.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then she added, after a pause: &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t that beautiful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How dares she say such words?&rdquo; thought Giselle, whose sense of propriety
+      was outraged by this allusion to love. Fred, too, looked askance and was
+      not comfortable, for he thought that Jacqueline had too much assurance for
+      her age, but that, after all, she was becoming more and more charming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment Belle and Yvonne were summoned, and they departed, full of
+      an intention to spread everywhere the news that Giselle, the little goose,
+      had actually known that Le Lac had been written by Lamartine. The
+      Benedictine Sisters positively had acquired that much knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These girls were not the only persons that day at the reception who
+      indulged in a little ill-natured talk after going away. Mesdames d&rsquo;Argy
+      and de Monredon, on their way to the Faubourg St. Germain, criticised
+      Madame de Nailles pretty freely. As they crossed the Parc Monceau to reach
+      their carriage, which was waiting for them on the Boulevard Malesherbes,
+      they made the young people, Giselle and Fred, walk ahead, that they might
+      have an opportunity of expressing themselves freely, the old dowager
+      especially, whose toothless mouth never lost an opportunity of smirching
+      the character and the reputation of her neighbors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I think of the pains my poor cousin de Nailles took to impress upon
+      us all that he was making what is called a &lsquo;mariage raisonnable&rsquo;! Well, if
+      a man wants a wife who is going to set up her own notions, her own
+      customs, he had better marry a poor girl without fortune! This one will
+      simply ruin him. My dear, I am continually amazed at the way people are
+      living whose incomes I know to the last sou. What an example for
+      Jacqueline! Extravagance, fast living, elegant self-indulgence.... Did you
+      observe the Baronne&rsquo;s gown?&mdash;of rough woolen stuff. She told some one
+      it was the last creation of Doucet, and you know what that implies! His
+      serge costs more than one of our velvet gowns.... And then her artistic
+      tastes, her bric-a brac! Her salon looks like a museum or a bazaar. I
+      grant you it makes a very pretty setting for her and all her coquetries.
+      But in my time respectable women were contented with furniture covered
+      with red or yellow silk damask furnished by their upholsterers. They
+      didn&rsquo;t go about trying to hunt up the impossible. &lsquo;On ne cherche pas midi
+      a quatorze heures&rsquo;. You hold, as I do, to the old fashions, though you are
+      not nearly so old, my dear Elise, and Jacqueline&rsquo;s mother thought as we
+      think. She would say that her daughter is being very badly brought up. To
+      be sure, all young creatures nowadays are the same. Parents, on a plea of
+      tenderness, keep them at home, where they get spoiled among grown people,
+      when they had much better have the same kind of education that has
+      succeeded so well with Giselle; bolts on the garden-gates, wholesome
+      seclusion, the company of girls of their own age, a great regularity of
+      life, nothing which stimulates either vanity or imagination. That is the
+      proper way to bring up girls without notions, girls who will let
+      themselves be married without opposition, and are satisfied with the state
+      of life to which Providence may be pleased to call them. For my part, I am
+      enchanted with the ladies in the Rue de Monsieur, and, what is more,
+      Giselle is very happy among them; to hear her talk you would suppose she
+      was quite ready to take the veil. Of course, that is a mere passing fancy.
+      But fancies of that sort are never dangerous, they have nothing in common
+      with those that are passing nowadays through most girls&rsquo; brains. Having &lsquo;a
+      day!&rsquo;&mdash;what a foolish notion: And then to let little girls take part
+      in it, even in a corner of the room. I&rsquo;ll wager that, though her skirts
+      are half way up her legs, and her hair is dressed like a baby&rsquo;s, that that
+      little de Nailles is less of a child than my granddaughter, who has been
+      brought up by the Benedictines. You say that she probably does not
+      understand all that goes on around her. Perhaps not, but she breathes it
+      in. It&rsquo;s poison-that&rsquo;s what it is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a good deal of truth in this harsh picture, although it
+      contained considerable exaggeration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment, when Madame de Monredon was sitting in judgment on the
+      education given to the little girls brought up in the world, and on the
+      ruinous extravagance of their young stepmothers, Madame de Nailles and
+      Jacqueline&mdash;their last visitors having departed&mdash;were resting
+      themselves, leaning tenderly against each other, on a sofa. Jacqueline&rsquo;s
+      head lay on her mother&rsquo;s lap. Her mother, without speaking, was stroking
+      the girl&rsquo;s dark hair. Jacqueline, too, was silent, but from time to time
+      she kissed the slender fingers sparkling with rings, as they came within
+      reach of her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When M. de Nailles, about dinner-time, surprised them thus, he said, with
+      satisfaction, as he had often said before, that it would be hard to find a
+      home scene more charming, as they sat under the light of a lamp with a
+      pink shade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That the stepmother and stepdaughter adored each other was beyond a doubt.
+      And yet, had any one been able to look into their hearts at that moment,
+      he would have discovered with surprise that each was thinking of something
+      that she could not confide to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both were thinking of the same person. Madame de Nailles was occupied with
+      recollections, Jacqueline with hope. She was absorbed in Machiavellian
+      strategy, how to realize a hope that had been formed that very afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you both thinking of, sitting there so quietly?&rdquo; said the Baron,
+      stooping over them and kissing first his wife and then his child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About nothing,&rdquo; said the wife, with the most innocent of smiles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I am thinking,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, &ldquo;of many things. I have a secret,
+      papa, that I want to tell you when we are quite alone. Don&rsquo;t be jealous,
+      dear mamma. It is something about a surprise&mdash;Oh, a lovely surprise
+      for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saint Clotilde&rsquo;s day-my fete-day is still far off,&rdquo; said Madame de
+      Nailles, refastening, mother-like, the ribbon that was intended to keep in
+      order the rough ripples of Jacqueline&rsquo;s unruly hair, &ldquo;and usually your
+      whisperings begin as the day approaches my fete.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dear!&mdash;you will go and guess it!&rdquo; cried Jacqueline in alarm.
+      &ldquo;Oh! don&rsquo;t guess it, please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well! I will do my best not to guess, then,&rdquo; said the good-natured
+      Clotilde, with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I assure you, for my part, that I am discretion itself,&rdquo; said M. de
+      Nailles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he drew his wife&rsquo;s arm within his own, and the three passed
+      gayly together into the dining-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. A CLEVER STEPMOTHER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      No man took more pleasure than M. de Nailles in finding himself in his own
+      home&mdash;partly, perhaps, because circumstances compelled him to be very
+      little there. The post of deputy in the French Chamber is no sinecure. He
+      was not often an orator from the tribune, but he was absorbed by work in
+      the committees&mdash;&ldquo;Harnessed to a lot of bothering reports,&rdquo; as
+      Jacqueline used to say to him. He had barely any time to give to those
+      important duties of his position, by which, as is well known, members of
+      the Corps Legislatif are shamelessly harassed by constituents, who, on
+      pretence that they have helped to place the interests of their district in
+      your hands, feel authorized to worry you with personal matters, such as
+      the choice of agricultural machines, or a place to be found for a
+      wet-nurse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides his public duties, M. de Nailles was occupied by financial
+      speculations&mdash;operations that were no doubt made necessary by the
+      style of living commented on by his cousin, Madame de Monredon, who was as
+      stingy as she was bitter of tongue. The elegance that she found fault with
+      was, however, very far from being great when compared with the luxury of
+      the present day. Of course, the Baronne had to have her horses, her
+      opera-box, her fashionable frocks. To supply these very moderate needs,
+      which, however, she never insisted upon, being, so far as words went, most
+      simple in her tastes, M. de Nailles, who had not the temperament which
+      makes men find pleasure in hard work, became more and more fatigued. His
+      days were passed in the Chamber, but he never neglected his interest on
+      the Bourse; in the evening he accompanied his young wife into society,
+      which, she always declared, she did not care for, but which had claims
+      upon her nevertheless. It was therefore not surprising that M. de
+      Nailles&rsquo;s face showed traces of the habitual fatigue that was fast aging
+      him; his tall, thin form had acquired a slight stoop; though only fifty he
+      was evidently in his declining years. He had once been a man of pleasure,
+      it was said, before he entered politics. He had married his first wife
+      late in life. She was a prudent woman who feared to expose him to
+      temptation, and had kept him as far as possible away from Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the country, having nothing to do, he became interested in agriculture,
+      and in looking after his estate at Grandchaux. He had been made a member
+      of the Conseil General, when unfortunately death too early deprived him of
+      the wise and gentle counsellor for whom he felt, possibly not a very
+      lively love, but certainly a high esteem and affection. After he be came a
+      widower he met in the Pyrenees, where, as he was whiling away the time of
+      seclusion proper after his loss, a young lady who appeared to him exactly
+      the person he needed to bring up his little daughter&mdash;because she was
+      extremely attractive to himself. Of course M. de Nailles found plenty of
+      other reasons for his choice, which he gave to the world and to himself to
+      justify his second marriage&mdash;but this was the true reason and the
+      only one. His friends, however, all of whom had urged on him the
+      desirability of taking another wife, in consideration of the age of
+      Jacqueline, raised many objections as soon as he announced his intention
+      of espousing Mademoiselle Clotilde Hecker, eldest daughter of a man who
+      had been, at one time, a prefect under the Empire, but who had been turned
+      out of office by the Republican Government. He had a large family and many
+      debts; but M. de Nailles had some answer always ready for the objections
+      of his family and friends. He was convinced that Mademoiselle Hecker,
+      having no fortune, would be less exacting than other women and more
+      disposed to lead a quiet life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had been almost a mother to her own young brothers and sisters, which
+      was a pledge for motherliness toward Jacqueline, etc., etc. Nevertheless,
+      had she not had eyes as blue as those of the beauties painted by Greuze,
+      plenty of audacious wit, and a delicate complexion, due to her Alsatian
+      origin&mdash;had she not possessed a slender waist and a lovely figure, he
+      might have asked himself why a young lady who, in winter, studied painting
+      with the commendable intention of making her own living by art, passed the
+      summers at all the watering-places of France and those of neighboring
+      countries, without any perceptible motive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, thanks to the bandage love ties over the eyes of men, he saw only
+      what Mademoiselle Clotilde was willing that he should see. In the first
+      place he saw the great desirability of a talent for painting which, unlike
+      music&mdash;so often dangerous to married happiness&mdash;gives women who
+      cultivate it sedentary interests. And then he was attracted by the model
+      daughter&rsquo;s filial piety as he beheld her taking care of her mother, who
+      was the victim of an incurable disorder, which required her by turns to
+      reside at Cauterets, or sometimes at Ems, sometimes at Aix in Savoy, and
+      sometimes even at Trouville. The poor girl had assured him that she asked
+      no happier lot than to live eight months of the year in the country, where
+      she would devote herself to teaching Jacqueline, for whom at first sight
+      she had taken a violent fancy (the attraction indeed was mutual). She
+      assured him she would teach her all she knew herself, and her diplomas
+      proved how well educated she had been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, it seemed as if only prejudice could find any objection to so
+      prudent and reasonable a marriage, a marriage contracted principally for
+      the good of Jacqueline.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It came to pass, however, that the air of Grandchaux, which is situated in
+      the most unhealthful part of Limouzin, proved particularly hurtful to the
+      new Madame de Nailles. She could not live a month on her husband&rsquo;s
+      property without falling into a state of health which she attributed to
+      malaria. M. de Nailles was at first much concerned about the condition of
+      things which seemed likely to upset all his plans for retirement in the
+      country, but, his wife having persuaded him that his position in the
+      Conseil General was only a stepping-stone to a seat in the Corps
+      Legislatif, where his place ought to be, he presented himself to the
+      electors as a candidate, and was almost unanimously elected deputy, the
+      conservative vote being still all powerful in that part of the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His wife, it was said, had shown rare zeal and activity at the time of the
+      election, employing in her husband&rsquo;s service all those little arts which
+      enable her sex to succeed in politics, as well as in everything else they
+      set their minds to. No lady ever more completely turned the heads of
+      country electors. It was really Madame de Nailles who took her seat in the
+      Left Centre of the Chamber, in the person of her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After that she returned to Limouzin only long enough to keep up her
+      popularity, though, with touching resignation, she frequently offered to
+      spend the summer at Grandchaux, even if the consequences should be her
+      death, like that of Pia in the Maremma. Her husband, of course,
+      peremptorily set his face against such self-sacrifice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The facilities for Jacqueline&rsquo;s education were increased by their settling
+      down as residents of Paris. Madame de Nailles superintended the
+      instruction of her stepdaughter with motherly solicitude, seconded,
+      however, by a &lsquo;promeneuse&rsquo;, or walking-governess, which left her free to
+      fulfil her own engagements in the afternoons. The walking-governess is a
+      singular modern institution, intended to supply the place of the too often
+      inconvenient daily governess of former times. The necessary qualifications
+      of such a person are that she should have sturdy legs, and such knowledge
+      of some foreign language as will enable her during their walks to converse
+      in it with her pupil. Fraulein Schult, who came from one of the German
+      cantons of Switzerland, was an ideal &lsquo;promeneuse&rsquo;. She never was tired and
+      she was well-informed. The number of things that could be learned from her
+      during a walk was absolutely incredible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame de Nailles, therefore, after a time, gave up to her, not without
+      apparent regret, the duty of accompanying Jacqueline, while she herself
+      fulfilled those duties to society which the most devoted of mothers can
+      not wholly avoid; but the stepmother and stepdaughter were always to be
+      seen together at mass at one o&rsquo;clock; together they attended the Cours
+      (that system of classes now so much in vogue) and also the weekly
+      instruction given in the catechism; and if Madame de Nailles, when, at
+      night, she told her husband all she had been doing for Jacqueline during
+      the day (she never made any merit of her zeal for the child&rsquo;s welfare),
+      added: &ldquo;I left Jacqueline in this place or in that, where Mademoiselle
+      Schult was to call for her,&rdquo; M. de Nailles showed no disposition to ask
+      questions, for he well understood that his wife felt a certain delicacy in
+      telling him that she had been to pay a brief visit to her own relatives,
+      who, she knew, were distasteful to him. He had, indeed, very soon
+      discerned in them a love of intrigue, a desire to get the most they could
+      out of him, and a disagreeable propensity to parasitism. With the
+      consummate tact she showed in everything she did, Madame de Nailles kept
+      her own family in the background, though she never neglected them. She was
+      always doing them little services, but she knew well that there were
+      certain things about them that could not but be disagreeable to her
+      husband. M. de Nailles knew all this, too, and respected his wife&rsquo;s
+      affection for her family. He seldom asked her where she had been during
+      the day. If he had she would have answered, with a sigh: &ldquo;I went to see my
+      mother while Jacqueline was taking her dancing-lesson, and before she went
+      to her singing-master.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That she was passionately attached to Jacqueline was proved by the
+      affection the little girl conceived for her. &ldquo;We two are friends,&rdquo; both
+      mother and daughter often said of each other. Even Modeste, old Modeste,
+      who had been at first indignant at seeing a stranger take the place of her
+      dead mistress, could not but acknowledge that the usurper was no ordinary
+      step mother. It might have been truly said that Madame de Nailles had
+      never scolded Jacqueline, and that Jacqueline had never done anything
+      contrary to the wishes of Madame de Nailles. When anything went wrong it
+      was Fraulein Schult who was reproached first; if there was any difficulty
+      in the management of Jacqueline, she alone received complaints. In the
+      eyes of the &ldquo;two friends,&rdquo; Fraulein Schult was somehow to be blamed for
+      everything that went wrong in the family, but between themselves an
+      observer might have watched in vain for the smallest cloud. Madame de
+      Nailles, when she was first married, could not make enough of the very
+      ugly yet attractive little girl, whose tight black curls and gypsy face
+      made an admirable contrast to her own more delicate style of beauty, which
+      was that of a blonde. She caressed Jacqueline, she dressed her up, she
+      took her about with her like a little dog, and overwhelmed her with
+      demonstrations of affection, which served not only to show off her own
+      graceful attitudes, but gave spectators a high opinion of her kindness of
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When from time to time some one, envious of her happiness, pitied her for
+      being childless, Madame de Nailles would say: &ldquo;What do you mean? I have
+      one daughter; she is enough for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a pity children grow so fast, and that little girls who were once
+      ugly sometimes develop into beautiful young women. The time came when the
+      model stepmother began to wish that Jacqueline would only develop morally,
+      intellectually, and not physically. But she showed nothing of this in her
+      behavior, and replied to any compliments addressed to her concerning
+      Jacqueline with as much maternal modesty as if the dawning loveliness of
+      her stepdaughter had been due to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her nose is rather too long-don&rsquo;t you think so? And she will always be
+      too dark, I fear.&rdquo; But she used always to add, &ldquo;She is good enough and
+      pretty enough to pass muster with any critic&mdash;poor little pussy-cat!&rdquo;
+       She became desirous to discover some tendency to ill-health in the plant
+      that was too ready to bloom into beauty and perfection. She would have
+      liked to be able to assert that Jacqueline&rsquo;s health would not permit her
+      to sit up late at night, that fashionable hours would be injurious to her,
+      that it would be undesirable to let her go into society as long as she
+      could be kept from doing so. But Jacqueline persisted in never being ill,
+      and was calculating with impatience how many years it would be before she
+      could go to her first ball&mdash;three or four possibly. Was Madame de
+      Nailles in three or four years to be reduced to the position of a
+      chaperon? The young stepmother thought of such a possibility with horror.
+      Her anxiety on this subject, however, as well as several other anxieties,
+      was so well concealed that even her husband suspected nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The complete sympathy which existed between the two beings he most loved
+      made M. de Nailles very happy. He had but one thing to complain of in his
+      wife, and that thing was very small. Since she had married she had
+      completely given up her painting. He had no knowledge of art himself, and
+      had therefore given her credit for great artistic capacity. The fact was
+      that in her days of poverty she had never been artist enough to make a
+      living, and now that she was rich she felt inclined to laugh at her own
+      limited ability. Her practice of art, she said, had only served to give
+      her a knowledge of outline and of color; a knowledge she utilized in her
+      dress and in the smallest details of house decoration and furniture.
+      Everything she wore, everything that surrounded her, was arranged to
+      perfection. She had a genius for decoration, for furniture, for trifles,
+      and brought her artistic knowledge to bear even on the tying of a ribbon,
+      or the arrangement of a nosegay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is all I retain of your lessons,&rdquo; she said sometimes to Hubert
+      Marien, when recalling to his memory the days in which she sought his
+      advice as to how to prepare herself for the &ldquo;struggle for life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This phrase was amusing when it proceeded from her lips. What!&mdash;&ldquo;struggle
+      for life&rdquo; with those little delicate, soft, childlike hands? How absurd!
+      She laughed at the idea now, and all those who heard her laughed with her;
+      Marien laughed more than any one. He, who had befriended her in her days
+      of adversity, seemed to retain for the Baroness in her prosperity the same
+      respectful and discreet devotion he had shown her as Mademoiselle Hecker.
+      He had sent a wonderful portrait of her, as the wife of M. de Nailles, to
+      the Salon&mdash;a portrait that the richer electors of Grandchaux, who had
+      voted for her husband and who could afford to travel, gazed at with
+      satisfaction, congratulating themselves that they had a deputy who had
+      married so pretty a woman. It even seemed as if the beauty of Madame de
+      Nailles belonged in some sort to the arrondissement, so proud were those
+      who lived there of having their share in her charms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another portrait&mdash;that of M. de Nailles himself&mdash;was sent down
+      to Limouzin from Paris, and all the peasants in the country round were
+      invited to come and look at it. That also produced a very favorable
+      impression on the rustic public, and added to the popularity of their
+      deputy. Never had the proprietor of Grandchaux looked so grave, so
+      dignified, so majestic, so absorbed in deep reflection, as he looked
+      standing beside a table covered with papers&mdash;papers, no doubt, all
+      having relation to local interests, important to the public and to
+      individuals. It was the very figure of a statesman destined to high
+      dignities. No one who gazed on such a deputy could doubt that one day he
+      would be in the ministry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was by such real services that Marien endeavored to repay the
+      friendship and the kindness always awaiting him in the small house in the
+      Parc Monceau, where we have just seen Jacqueline eagerly offering him some
+      spiced cakes. To complete what seemed due to the household there only
+      remained to paint the curiously expressive features of the girl at whom he
+      had been looking that very day with more than ordinary attention. Once
+      already, when Jacqueline was hardly out of baby-clothes, the great painter
+      had made an admirable sketch of her tousled head, a sketch in which she
+      looked like a little imp of darkness, and this sketch Madame de Nailles
+      took pains should always be seen, but it bore no resemblance to the
+      slender young girl who was on the eve of becoming, whatever might be done
+      to arrest her development, a beautiful young woman. Jacqueline disliked to
+      look at that picture. It seemed to do her an injury by associating her
+      with her nursery. Probably that was the reason why she had been so pleased
+      to hear Hubert Marien say unexpectedly that she was now ready for the
+      portrait which had been often joked about, every one putting it off to the
+      period, always remote, when &ldquo;the may-pole&rdquo; should have developed a pretty
+      face and figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now she was disquieted lest the idea of taking her picture, which she
+      felt was very flattering, should remain inoperative in the painter&rsquo;s
+      brain. She wanted it carried out at once, as soon as possible. Jacqueline
+      detested waiting, and for some reason, which she never talked about, the
+      years that seemed so short and swift to her stepmother seemed to her to be
+      terribly long. Marien himself had said: &ldquo;There is a great interval between
+      a dream and its execution.&rdquo; These words had thrown cold water on her
+      sudden joy. She wanted to force him to keep his promise&mdash;to paint her
+      portrait immediately. How to do this was the problem her little head,
+      reclining on Madame de Nailles&rsquo;s lap after the departure of their
+      visitors, had been endeavoring to solve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Should she communicate her wish to her indulgent stepmother, who for the
+      most part willed whatever she wished her to do? A vague instinct&mdash;an
+      instinct of some mysterious danger&mdash;warned her that in this case her
+      father would be her better confidant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. THE FRIEND OF THE FAY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      A week later M. de Nailles said to Hubert Marien, as they were smoking
+      together in the conservatory, after the usual little family dinner on
+      Wednesday was over:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well!&mdash;when would you like Jacqueline to come to sit for her
+      picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! are you thinking about that?&rdquo; cried the painter, letting his cigar
+      fall in his astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She told me that you had proposed to make her portrait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sly little minx!&rdquo; thought Marien. &ldquo;I only spoke of painting it some
+      day,&rdquo; he said, with embarrassment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well! she would like that &lsquo;some day&rsquo; to be now, and she has a reason for
+      wanting it at once, which, I hope, will decide you to gratify her. The
+      third of June is Sainte-Clotilde&rsquo;s day, and she has taken it into her head
+      that she would like to give her mamma a magnificent present&mdash;a
+      present that, of course, we shall unite to give her. For some time past I
+      have been thinking of asking you to paint a portrait of my daughter,&rdquo;
+       continued M. de Nailles, who had in fact had no more wish for the portrait
+      than he had had to be a deputy, until it had been put into his head. But
+      the women of his household, little or big, could persuade him into
+      anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really don&rsquo;t think I have the time now,&rdquo; said Marien.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah!&mdash;you have whole two months before you. What can absorb you so
+      entirely? I know you have your pictures ready for the Salon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;of course&mdash;of course&mdash;but are you sure that Madame de
+      Nailles would approve of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will approve whatever I sanction,&rdquo; said M. de Nailles, with as much
+      assurance as if he had been master in his domestic circle; &ldquo;besides, we
+      don&rsquo;t intend to ask her. It is to be a surprise. Jacqueline is looking
+      forward to the pleasure it will give her. There is something very touching
+      to me in the affection of that little thing for&mdash;for her mother.&rdquo; M.
+      de Nailles usually hesitated a moment before saying that word, as if he
+      were afraid of transferring something still belonging to his dead wife to
+      another&mdash;that dead wife he so seldom remembered in any other way. He
+      added, &ldquo;She is so eager to give her pleasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marien shook his head with an air of uncertainty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure that such a portrait would be really acceptable to Madame de
+      Nailles?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can you doubt it?&rdquo; said the Baron, with much astonishment. &ldquo;A
+      portrait of her daughter!&mdash;done by a great master? However, of
+      course, if we are putting you to any inconvenience&mdash;if you would
+      rather not undertake it, you had better say so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;of course I will do it, if you wish it,&rdquo; said Marien, quickly,
+      who, although he was anxious to do nothing to displease Madame de Nailles,
+      was equally desirous to stand well with her husband. &ldquo;Yet I own that all
+      the mystery that must attend on what you propose may put me to some
+      embarrassment. How do you expect Jacqueline will be able to conceal&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! easily enough. She walks out every day with Mademoiselle Schult.
+      Well, Mademoiselle Schult will bring her to your studio instead of taking
+      her to the Champs Elysees&mdash;or to walk elsewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But every day there will be concealments, falsehoods, deceptions. I think
+      Madame de Nailles might prefer to be asked for her permission.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask for her permission when I have given mine? Ah, fa! my dear Marien, am
+      I, or am I not, the father, of Jacqueline? I take upon myself the whole
+      responsibility.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then there is nothing more to be said. But do you think that Jacqueline
+      will keep the secret till the picture is done?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know little girls; they are all too glad to have something of
+      which they can make a mystery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When would you like us to begin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marien had by this time said to himself that for him to hold out longer
+      might seem strange to M. de Nailles. Besides, the matter, though in some
+      respects it gave him cause for anxiety, really excited an interest in him.
+      For some time past, though he had long known women and knew very little of
+      mere girls, he had had his suspicions that a drama was being enacted in
+      Jacqueline&rsquo;s heart, a drama of which he himself was the hero. He amused
+      himself by watching it, though he did nothing to promote it. He was an
+      artist and a keen and penetrating observer; he employed psychology in the
+      service of his art, and probably to that might have been attributed the
+      individual character of his portraits&mdash;a quality to be found in an
+      equal degree only in those of Ricard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What particularly interested him at this moment was the assumed
+      indifference of Jacqueline while her father was conducting the negotiation
+      which was of her suggestion. When they returned to the salon after smoking
+      she pretended not to be the least anxious to know the result of their
+      conversation. She sat sewing near the lamp, giving all her attention to
+      the piece of lace on which she was working. Her father made her a sign
+      which meant &ldquo;He consents,&rdquo; and then Marien saw that the needle in her
+      fingers trembled, and a slight color rose in her face&mdash;but that was
+      all. She did not say a word. He could not know that for a week past she
+      had gone to church every time she took a walk, and had offered a prayer
+      and a candle that her wish might be granted. How very anxious and excited
+      she had been all that week! The famous composition of which she had spoken
+      to Giselle, the subject of which had so astonished the young girl brought
+      up by the Benedictine nuns, felt the inspiration of her emotion and
+      excitement. Jacqueline was in a frame of mind which made reading those
+      three masterpieces by three great poets, and pondering the meaning of
+      their words, very dangerous. The poems did not affect her with the
+      melancholy they inspire in those who have &ldquo;lived and loved,&rdquo; but she was
+      attracted by their tenderness and their passion. Certain lines she applied
+      to herself&mdash;certain others to another person. The very word love so
+      often repeated in the verses sent a thrill through all her frame. She
+      aspired to taste those &ldquo;intoxicating moments,&rdquo; those &ldquo;swift delights,&rdquo;
+       those &ldquo;sublime ecstasies,&rdquo; those &ldquo;divine transports&rdquo;&mdash;all the
+      beautiful things, in short, of which the poems spoke, and which were as
+      yet unknown to her. How could she know them? How could she, after an
+      experience of sorrow, which seemed to her to be itself enviable, retain
+      such sweet remembrances as the poets described?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us love&mdash;love each other! Let us hasten to enjoy the passing
+      hour!&rdquo; so sang the poet of Le Lac. That passing hour of bliss she thought
+      she had already enjoyed. She was sure that for a long time past she had
+      loved. When had that love begun? She hardly knew. But it would last as
+      long as she might live. One loves but once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These personal emotions, mingling with the literary enchantments of the
+      poets, caused Jacqueline&rsquo;s pen to fly over her paper without effort, and
+      she produced a composition so far superior to anything she usually wrote
+      that it left the lucubrations of her companions far behind. M. Regis, the
+      professor, said so to the class. He was enthusiastic about it, and greatly
+      surprised. Belle, who had been always first in this kind of composition,
+      was far behind Jacqueline, and was so greatly annoyed at her defeat that
+      she would not speak to her for a week. On the other hand Colette and
+      Dolly, who never had aspired to literary triumphs, were moved to tears
+      when the &ldquo;Study on the comparative merits of Three Poems, &lsquo;Le Lac,&rsquo; 
+      &lsquo;Souvenir,&rsquo; and &lsquo;La Tristesse d&rsquo;Olympio,&rsquo;&rdquo; signed &ldquo;Mademoiselle de
+      Nailles,&rdquo; received the honor of being read aloud. This reading was
+      followed by a murmur of applause, mingled with some hisses which may have
+      proceeded from the viper of jealousy. But the paper made a sensation like
+      that of some new scandal. Mothers and governesses whispered together. Many
+      thought that that little de Nailles had expressed sentiments not proper at
+      her age. Some came to the conclusion that M. Regis chose subjects for
+      composition not suited to young girls. A committee waited on the unlucky
+      professor to beg him to be more prudent for the future. He even lost, in
+      consequence of Jacqueline&rsquo;s success, one of his pupils (the most stupid
+      one, be it said, in the class), whose mother took her away, saying, with
+      indignation, &ldquo;One might as well risk the things they are teaching at the
+      Sorbonne!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This literary incident greatly alarmed Madame de Nailles! Of all things
+      she dreaded that her daughter should early become dreamy and romantic. But
+      on this point Jacqueline&rsquo;s behavior was calculated to reassure her. She
+      laughed about her composition, she frolicked like a six-year-old child;
+      without any apparent cause, she grew gayer and gayer as the time
+      approached for the execution of her plot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evening before the day fixed on for the first sitting, Modeste, the
+      elderly maid of the first Madame de Nailles, who loved her daughter, whom
+      she had known from the moment of her birth, as if she had been her own
+      foster-child, arrived at the studio of Hubert Marien in the Rue de Prony,
+      bearing a box which she said contained all that would be wanted by
+      Mademoiselle. Marien had the curiosity to look into it. It contained a
+      robe of oriental muslin, light as air, diaphanous&mdash;and so dazzlingly
+      white that he remarked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will look like a fly in milk in that thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; replied Modeste, with a laugh of satisfaction, &ldquo;it is very becoming
+      to her. I altered it to fit her, for it is one of Madame&rsquo;s dresses.
+      Mademoiselle has nothing but short skirts, and she wanted to be painted as
+      a young lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With the approval of her papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, of course, Monsieur, Monsieur le Baron gave his consent. But for
+      that I certainly should not have minded what the child said to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; replied Marien, &ldquo;I can say nothing,&rdquo; and he made ready for his
+      sitter the next day, by turning two or three studies of the nude, which
+      might have shocked her, with their faces to the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A foreign language can not be properly acquired unless the learner has
+      great opportunities for conversation. It therefore became a fixed habit
+      with Fraulein Schult and Jacqueline to keep up a lively stream of talk
+      during their walks, and their discourse was not always about the rain, the
+      fine weather, the things displayed in the shop-windows, nor the historical
+      monuments of Paris, which they visited conscientiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is near the heart is sure to come eventually to the surface in
+      continual tete-a-tete intercourse. Fraulein Schult, who was of a
+      sentimental temperament, in spite of her outward resemblance to a
+      grenadier, was very willing to allow her companion to draw from her
+      confessions relating to an intended husband, who was awaiting her at
+      Berne, and whose letters, both in prose and verse, were her comfort in her
+      exile. This future husband was an apothecary, and the idea that he pounded
+      out verses as he pounded his drugs in a mortar, and rolled out rhymes with
+      his pills, sometimes inclined Jacqueline to laugh, but she listened
+      patiently to the plaintive outpourings of her &lsquo;promeneuse&rsquo;, because she
+      wished to acquire a right to reciprocate by a few half-confidences of her
+      own. In her turn, therefore, she confided to Fraulein Schult&mdash;moved
+      much as Midas had been, when for his own relief he whispered to the reeds&mdash;that
+      if she were sometimes idle, inattentive, &ldquo;away off in the moon,&rdquo; as her
+      instructors told her by way of reproach, it was caused by one ever-present
+      idea, which, ever since she had been able to think or feel, had taken
+      possession of her inmost being&mdash;the idea of being loved some day by
+      somebody as she herself loved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was that somebody a boy of her own age?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, fie!&mdash;mere boys&mdash;still schoolboys&mdash;could only be looked
+      upon as playfellows or comrades. Of course she considered Fred&mdash;Fred,
+      for example!&mdash;Frederic d&rsquo;Argy&mdash;as a brother, but how different
+      he was from her ideal. Even young men of fashion&mdash;she had seen some
+      of them on Tuesdays&mdash;Raoul Wermant, the one who so distinguished
+      himself as a leader in the &lsquo;german&rsquo;, or Yvonne&rsquo;s brother, the officer of
+      chasseurs, who had gained the prize for horsemanship, and others besides
+      these&mdash;seemed to her very commonplace by comparison. No!&mdash;he
+      whom she loved was a man in the prime of life, well known to fame. She
+      didn&rsquo;t care if he had a few white hairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he a person of rank?&rdquo; asked Fraulein Schult, much puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! if you mean of noble birth, no, not at all. But fame is so superior
+      to birth! There are more ways than one of acquiring an illustrious name,
+      and the name that a man makes for himself is the noblest of all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Jacqueline begged Fraulein Schult to imagine something like the
+      passion of Bettina for Goethe&mdash;Fraulein Schult having told her that
+      story simply with a view of interesting her in German conversation only
+      the great man whose name she would not tell was not nearly so old as
+      Goethe, and she herself was much less childish than Bettina. But, above
+      all, it was his genius that attracted her&mdash;though his face, too, was
+      very pleasing. And she went on to describe his appearance&mdash;till
+      suddenly she stopped, burning with indignation; for she perceived that,
+      notwithstanding the minuteness of her description, what she said was
+      conveying an idea of ugliness and not one of the manly beauty she intended
+      to portray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is not like that at all,&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;He has such a beautiful smile-a
+      smile like no other I ever saw. And his talk is so amusing&mdash;and&mdash;&rdquo;
+       here Jacqueline lowered her voice as if afraid to be overheard, &ldquo;and I do
+      think&mdash;I think, after all, he does love me&mdash;just a little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On what could she have founded such a notion? Good heaven!&mdash;it was on
+      something that had at first deeply grieved her, a sudden coldness and
+      reserve that had come over his manner to her. Not long before she had read
+      an English novel (no others were allowed to come into her hands). It was
+      rather a stupid book, with many tedious passages, but in it she was told
+      how the high-minded hero, not being able, for grave reasons, to aspire to
+      the hand of the heroine, had taken refuge in an icy coldness, much as it
+      cost him, and as soon as possible had gone away. English novels are
+      nothing if not moral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This story, not otherwise interesting, threw a gleam of light on what, up
+      to that time, had been inexplicable to Jacqueline. He was above all things
+      a man of honor. He must have perceived that his presence troubled her. He
+      had possibly seen her when she stole a half-burned cigarette which he had
+      left upon the table, a prize she had laid up with other relics&mdash;an
+      old glove that he had lost, a bunch of violets he had gathered for her in
+      the country. Yes! When she came to think of it, she felt certain he must
+      have seen her furtively lay her hand upon that cigarette; that cigarette
+      had compromised her. Then it was he must have said to himself that it was
+      due to her parents, who had always shown him kindness, to surmount an
+      attachment that could come to nothing&mdash;nothing at present. But when
+      she should be old enough for him to ask her hand, would he dare? Might he
+      not rashly think himself too old? She must seek out some way to give him
+      encouragement, to give him to understand that she was not, after all, so
+      far&mdash;so very far from being a young lady&mdash;old enough to be
+      married. How difficult it all was! All the more difficult because she was
+      exceedingly afraid of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not surprising that Fraulein Schult, after listening day after day
+      to such recitals, with all the alternations of hope and of discouragement
+      which succeeded one another in the mind of her precocious pupil, guessed,
+      the moment that Jacqueline came to her, in a transport of joy, to ask her
+      to go with her to the Rue de Prony, that the hero of the mysterious
+      love-story was no other than Hubert Marien.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as she understood this, she perceived that she should be placed in
+      a very false position. But she thought to herself there was no possible
+      way of getting out of it, without giving a great deal too much importance
+      to a very innocent piece of childish folly; she therefore determined to
+      say nothing about it, but to keep a strict watch in the mean time. After
+      all, M. de Nailles himself had given her her orders. She was to accompany
+      Jacqueline, and do her crochet-work in one corner of the studio as long as
+      the sitting lasted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All she could do was to obey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And above all not a word to mamma, whatever she may ask you,&rdquo; said
+      Jacqueline.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And her father added, with a laugh, &ldquo;Not a word.&rdquo; Fraulein Schult felt
+      that she knew what was expected of her. She was naturally compliant, and
+      above all things she was anxious to get paid for as many hours of her time
+      as possible&mdash;much like the driver of a fiacre, because the more money
+      she could make the sooner she would be in a position to espouse her
+      apothecary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Jacqueline, escorted by her Swiss duenna, penetrated almost furtively
+      into Marien&rsquo;s studio, her heart beat as if she had a consciousness of
+      doing something very wrong. In truth, she had pictured to herself so many
+      impossible scenes beforehand, had rehearsed the probable questions and
+      answers in so many strange dialogues, had soothed her fancy with so many
+      extravagant ideas, that she had at last created, bit by bit, a situation
+      very different from the reality, and then threw herself into it, body and
+      soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The look of the atelier&mdash;the first she had ever been in in her life&mdash;disappointed
+      her. She had expected to behold a gorgeous collection of bric-a-brac,
+      according to accounts she had heard of the studios of several celebrated
+      masters. That of Marien was remarkable only for its vast dimensions and
+      its abundance of light. Studies and sketches hung on the walls, were piled
+      one over another in corners, were scattered about everywhere, attesting
+      the incessant industry of the artist, whose devotion to his calling was so
+      great that his own work never satisfied him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only some interesting casts from antique bronzes, brought out into strong
+      relief by a background of tapestry, adorned this lofty hall, which had
+      none of that confusion of decorative objects, in the midst of which some
+      modern artists seem to pose themselves rather than to labor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fresh canvas stood upon an easel, all ready for the sitter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you please, we will lose no time,&rdquo; said Marien, rather roughly, seeing
+      that Jacqueline was about to explore all the corners of his apartment, and
+      that at that moment, with the tips of her fingers, she was drawing aside
+      the covering he had cast over his Death of Savonarola, the picture he was
+      then at work upon. It was not the least of his grudges against Jacqueline
+      for insisting on having her portrait painted that it obliged him to lay
+      aside this really great work, that he might paint a likeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In ten minutes I shall be ready,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, obediently taking off
+      her hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why can&rsquo;t you stay as you are? That jacket suits you. Let us begin
+      immediately.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, indeed! What a horrid suggestion!&rdquo; she cried, running up to the box
+      which was half open. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll see how much better I can look in a moment or
+      two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I put no faith in your fancies about your toilette. I certainly don&rsquo;t
+      promise to accept them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, he left her alone with her Bernese governess, saying: &ldquo;Call
+      me when you are ready, I shall be in the next room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A quarter of an hour, and more, passed, and no signal had been given.
+      Marien, getting out of patience, knocked on the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you nearly done beautifying yourself?&rdquo; he asked, in a tone of irony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just done,&rdquo; replied a low voice, which trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went in, and to the great amusement of Fraulein Schult, who was not too
+      preoccupied to notice everything, he stood confounded&mdash;petrified, as
+      a man might be by some work of magic. What had become of Jacqueline? What
+      had she in common with that dazzling vision? Had she been touched by some
+      fairy&rsquo;s wand? Or, to accomplish such a transformation, had nothing been
+      needed but the substitution of a woman&rsquo;s dress, fitted to her person, for
+      the short skirts and loose waists cut in a boyish fashion, which had made
+      the little girl seem hardly to belong to any sex, an indefinite being,
+      condemned, as it were, to childishness? How tall, and slender, and
+      graceful she looked in that long gown, the folds of which fell from her
+      waist in flowing lines, a waist as round and flexible as the branch of a
+      willow; what elegance there was in her modest corsage, which displayed for
+      the first time her lovely arms and neck, half afraid of their own
+      exposure. She still was not robust, but the leanness that she herself had
+      owned to was not brought into prominence by any bone or angle, her dark
+      skin was soft and polished, the color of ancient statues which have been
+      slightly tinted yellow by exposure to the sun. This girl, a Parisienne,
+      seemed formed on the model of a figurine of Tanagra. Greek, too, was her
+      small head, crowned only by her usual braid of hair, which she had simply
+      gathered up so as to show the nape of her neck, which was perhaps the most
+      beautiful thing in all her beautiful person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well!&mdash;what do you think of me?&rdquo; she said to Marien, with a
+      searching glance to see how she impressed him&mdash;a glance strangely
+      like that of a grown woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well!&mdash;I can&rsquo;t get over it!&mdash;Why have you bedizened yourself in
+      that fashion?&rdquo; he asked, with an affectation of &lsquo;brusquerie&rsquo;, as he tried
+      to recover his power of speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you don&rsquo;t like me?&rdquo; she murmured, in a low voice. Tears came into
+      her eyes; her lips trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see Jacqueline.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;I should hope not&mdash;but I am better than Jacqueline, am I
+      not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am accustomed to Jacqueline. This new acquaintance disconcerts me. Give
+      me time to get used to her. But once again let me ask, what possessed you
+      to disguise yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not disguised. I am disguised when I am forced to wear those things,
+      which do not suit me,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, pointing to her gray jacket and
+      plaid skirt which were hung up on a hat-rack. &ldquo;Oh, I know why mamma keeps
+      me like that&mdash;she is afraid I should get too fond of dress before I
+      have finished my education, and that my mind may be diverted from serious
+      subjects. It is no doubt all intended for my good, but I should not lose
+      much time if I turned up my hair like this, and what harm could there be
+      in lengthening my skirts an inch or two? My picture will show her that I
+      am improved by such little changes, and perhaps it will induce hor to let
+      me go to the Bal Blanc that Madame d&rsquo;Etaples is going to give on Yvonne&rsquo;s
+      birthday. Mamma declined for me, saying I was not fit to wear a low-necked
+      corsage, but you see she was mistaken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rather,&rdquo; said Marien, smiling in spite of himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;wasn&rsquo;t she?&rdquo; she went on, delighted at his look. &ldquo;Of course, I
+      have bones, but they don&rsquo;t show like the great hollows under the
+      collar-bones that Dolly shows, for instance&mdash;but Dolly looks stouter
+      than I because her face is so round. Well! Dolly is going to Madame
+      d&rsquo;Etaples&rsquo;s ball.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I grant,&rdquo; said Marien, devoting all his attention to the preparation of
+      his palette, that she might not see him laugh, &ldquo;I grant that you have
+      bones&mdash;yes, many bones&mdash;but they are not much seen because they
+      are too well placed to be obtrusive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad of that,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, delighted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But let me ask you one question. Where did you pick up that queer gown?
+      It seems to me that I have seen it somewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No doubt you have,&rdquo; replied Jacqueline, who had quite recovered from her
+      first shock, and was now ready to talk; &ldquo;it is the dress mamma had made
+      some time ago when she acted in a comedy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I thought,&rdquo; growled Marien, biting his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dress recalled to his mind many personal recollections, and for one
+      instant he paused. Madame de Nailles, among other talents, possessed that
+      of amateur acting. On one occasion, several years before, she had asked
+      his advice concerning what dress she should wear in a little play of
+      Scribe&rsquo;s, which was to be given at the house of Madame d&rsquo;Avrigny&mdash;the
+      house in all Paris most addicted to private theatricals. This reproduction
+      of a forgotten play, with its characters attired in the costume of the
+      period in which the play was placed, had had great success, a success due
+      largely to the excellence of the costumes. In the comic parts the dressing
+      had been purposely exaggerated, but Madame de Nailles, who played the part
+      of a great coquette, would not have been dressed in character had she not
+      tried to make herself as bewitching as possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marien had shown her pictures of the beauties of 1840, painted by Dubufe,
+      and she had decided on a white gauze embroidered with gold, in which, on
+      that memorable evening, she had captured more than one heart, and which
+      had had its influence on the life and destiny of Marien. This might have
+      been seen in the vague glance of indignation with which he now regarded
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never,&rdquo; he thought, &ldquo;was it half so pretty when worn by Madame de Nailles
+      as by her stepdaughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline meantime went on talking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must know&mdash;I was rather perplexed what to do&mdash;almost all
+      mamma&rsquo;s gowns made me look horribly too old. Modeste tried them on me one
+      after another. We burst out laughing, they seemed so absurd. And then we
+      were afraid mamma might chance to want the one I took. This old thing it
+      was not likely she would ask for. She had worn it only once, and then put
+      it away. The gauze is a little yellow from lying by, don&rsquo;t you think so?
+      But we asked my father, who said it was all right, that I should look less
+      dark in it, and that the dress was of no particular date, which was always
+      an advantage. These Grecian dresses are always in the fashion. Ah! four
+      years ago mamma was much more slender than she is now. But we have taken
+      it in&mdash;oh! we took it in a great deal under the arms, but we had to
+      let it down. Would you believe it?&mdash;I am taller than mamma&mdash;but
+      you can hardly see the seam, it is concealed by the gold embroidery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No matter for that. We shall only take a three-quarters&rsquo; length,&rdquo; said
+      Marien.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what a pity! No one will see I have a long skirt on. But I shall be
+      &lsquo;decolletee&rsquo;, at any rate. I shall wear a comb. No one would know the
+      picture for me&mdash;nobody!&mdash;You yourself hardly knew me&mdash;did
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at first sight. You are much altered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma will be amazed,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, clasping her hands. &ldquo;It was a
+      good idea!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Amazed, I do not doubt,&rdquo; said Marien, somewhat anxiously. &ldquo;But suppose we
+      take our pose&mdash;Stay!&mdash;keep just as you are. Your hands before
+      you, hanging down&mdash;so. Your fingers loosely clasped&mdash;that&rsquo;s it.
+      Turn your head a little. What a lovely neck!&mdash;how well her head is
+      set upon it!&rdquo; he cried, involuntarily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline glanced at Fraulein Schult, who was at the farther end of the
+      studio, busy with her crochet. &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; said the look, &ldquo;that he has
+      found out I am pretty&mdash;that I am worth something&mdash;all the rest
+      will soon happen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, while Marien was sketching in the graceful figure that posed before
+      him, Jacqueline&rsquo;s imagination was investing it with the white robe of a
+      bride. She had a vision of the painter growing more and more resolved to
+      ask her hand in marriage as the portrait grew beneath his brush; of
+      course, her father would say at first: &ldquo;You are mad&mdash;you must wait. I
+      shall not let Jacqueline marry till she is seventeen.&rdquo; But long
+      engagements, she had heard, had great delights, though in France they are
+      not the fashion. At last, after being long entreated, she was sure that M.
+      and Madame de Nailles would end by giving their consent&mdash;they were so
+      fond of Marien. Standing there, dreaming this dream, which gave her face
+      an expression of extreme happiness, Jacqueline made a most admirable
+      model. She had not felt in the least fatigued when Marien at last said to
+      her, apologetically: &ldquo;You must be ready to drop&mdash;I forgot you were
+      not made of wood; we will go on to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline, having put on her gray jacket with as much contempt for it as
+      Cinderella may have felt for her rags after her successes at the ball,
+      departed with the delightful sensation of having made a bold first step,
+      and being eager to make another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus it was with all her sittings, though some left her anxious and
+      unhappy, as for instance when Marien, absorbed in his work, had not
+      paused, except to say, &ldquo;Turn your head a little&mdash;you are losing the
+      pose.&rdquo; Or else, &ldquo;Now you may rest for today.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On such occasions she would watch him anxiously as he painted swiftly, his
+      brush making great splashes on the canvas, his dark features wearing a
+      scowl, his chin on his breast, a deep frown upon his forehead, on which
+      the hair grew low. It was evident that at such times he had no thought of
+      pleasing her. Little did she suspect that he was saying to himself: &ldquo;Fool
+      that I am!&mdash;A man of my age to take pleasure in seeing that little
+      head filled with follies and fancies of which I am the object. But can one&mdash;let
+      one be ever so old&mdash;always act&mdash;or think reasonably? You are
+      mad, Marien! A child of fourteen! Bah!&mdash;they make her out to be
+      fourteen&mdash;but she is fifteen&mdash;and was not that the age of
+      Juliet? But, you old graybeard, you are not Romeo!&mdash;&lsquo;Ma foi&rsquo;! I am in
+      a pretty scrape. It ought to teach me not to play with fire at my age.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Those words &ldquo;at my age&rdquo; were the refrain to all the reflections of Hubert
+      Marien. He had seen enough in his relations with women to have no doubt
+      about Jacqueline&rsquo;s feelings, of which indeed he had watched the rise and
+      progress from the time she had first begun to conceive a passion for him,
+      with a mixture of amusement and conceit. The most cautious of men are not
+      insensible to flattery, whatever form it may take. To be fallen in love
+      with by a child was no doubt absurd&mdash;a thing to be laughed at&mdash;but
+      Jacqueline seemed no longer a child, since for him she had uncovered her
+      young shoulders and arranged her dark hair on her head with the effect of
+      a queenly diadem. Not only had her dawning loveliness been revealed to him
+      alone, but to him it seemed that he had helped to make her lovely. The
+      innocent tenderness she felt for him had accomplished this miracle. Why
+      should he refuse to inhale an incense so pure, so genuine? How could he
+      help being sensible to its fragrance? Would it not be in his power to put
+      an end to the whole affair whenever he pleased? But till then might he not
+      bask in it, as one does in a warm ray of spring sunshine? He put aside,
+      therefore, all scruples. And when he did this Jacqueline with rapture saw
+      the painter&rsquo;s face, no longer with its scowl, but softened by some secret
+      influence, the lines smoothed from his brow, while the beautiful smile
+      which had fascinated so many women passed like a ray of light over his
+      expressive mobile features; then she would once more fancy that he was
+      making love to her, and indeed he said many things, which, without rousing
+      in himself any scruples of conscience, or alarming the propriety of
+      Fraulein Schult, were well calculated to delude a girl who had had no
+      experience, and who was charmed by the illusions of a love-affair, as she
+      might have been by a fairy-story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is true that sometimes, when he fancied he might have gone too far,
+      Marien would grow sarcastic, or stay silent for a time. But this change of
+      behavior produced on Jacqueline only the same effect that the caprices of
+      a coquette produce upon a very young admirer. She grew anxious, she wanted
+      to find out the reason, and finally found some explanation or excuse for
+      him that coincided with her fancies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thing that reassured her in such cases was her picture. If she could
+      seem to him as beautiful as he had made her look on canvas she was sure
+      that he must love her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this really I? Are you sure?&rdquo; she said to Marien with a laugh of
+      delight. &ldquo;It seems to me that you have made me too handsome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have hardly done you justice,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;It is not my fault if you
+      are more beautiful than seems natural, like the beauties in the keepsakes.
+      By the way, I hold those English things in horror. What do you say of
+      them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Jacqueline undertook to defend the keepsake beauties with animation,
+      declaring that no one but a hopelessly realistic painter would refuse to
+      do justice to those charming monstrosities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens!&rdquo; thought Marien, &ldquo;if she is adding a quick wit to her other
+      charms&mdash;that will put the finishing stroke to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the portrait was sufficiently advanced, M. de Nailles came to the
+      studio to judge of the likeness. He was delighted: &ldquo;Only, my friend, I
+      think,&rdquo; he cried to Marien, endeavoring to soften his one objection to the
+      picture, &ldquo;that you have given her a look&mdash;how can I put it?&mdash;an
+      expression very charming no doubt, but which is not that of a child of her
+      age. You know what I mean. It is something tender&mdash;intense&mdash;profound,
+      too feminine. It may come to her some day, perhaps&mdash;but hitherto
+      Jacqueline&rsquo;s expression has been generally that of a merry, mischievous
+      child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, papa!&rdquo; cried the young girl, stung by the insult.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may possibly be right,&rdquo; Marien hastened to reply, &ldquo;it was probably
+      the fatigue of posing that gave her that expression.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; repeated Jacqueline, more shocked than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can alter it,&rdquo; said the painter, much amused by her extreme despair.
+      But Marien thought that Jacqueline had not in the least that precocious
+      air which her father attributed to her, when standing before him she gave
+      herself up to thoughts the current of which he followed easily, watching
+      on her candid face its changes of expression. How could he have painted
+      her other than she appeared to him? Was what he saw an apparition&mdash;or
+      was it a work of magic?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several times during the sittings M. de Nailles made his appearance in the
+      studio, and after greatly praising the work, persisted in his objection
+      that it made Jacqueline too old. But since the painter saw her thus they
+      must accept his judgment. It was no doubt an effect of the grown-up
+      costume that she had had a fancy to put on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all,&rdquo; he said to Jacqueline, &ldquo;it is of not much consequence; you
+      will grow up to it some of these days. And I pay you my compliments in
+      advance on your appearance in the future.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt like choking with rage. &ldquo;Oh! is it right,&rdquo; she thought, &ldquo;for
+      parents to persist in keeping a young girl forever in her cradle, so to
+      speak?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. A DANGEROUS MODEL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Time passed too quickly to please Jacqueline. Her portrait was finished at
+      last, notwithstanding the willingness Marien had shown&mdash;or so it
+      seemed to her&mdash;to retouch it unnecessarily that she might again and
+      again come back to his atelier. But it was done at last. She glided into
+      that dear atelier for the last time, her heart big with regret, with no
+      hope that she would ever again put on the fairy robe which had, she
+      thought, transfigured her till she was no longer little Jacqueline.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you only for one moment, and I need only your face,&rdquo; said Marien.
+      &ldquo;I want to change&mdash;a line&mdash;I hardly know what to call it, at the
+      corner of your mouth. Your father is right; your mouth is too grave. Think
+      of something amusing&mdash;of the Bal Blanc at Madame d&rsquo;Etaples, or
+      merely, if you like, of the satisfaction it will give you to be done with
+      these everlasting sittings&mdash;to be no longer obliged to bear the
+      burden of a secret, in short to get rid of your portrait-painter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made him no answer, not daring to trust her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come! now, on the contrary you are tightening your lips,&rdquo; said Marien,
+      continuing to play with her as a cat plays with a mouse&mdash;provided
+      there ever was a cat who, while playing with its mouse, had no intention
+      of crunching it. &ldquo;You are not merry, you are sad. That is not at all
+      becoming to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you attribute to me your own thoughts? It is you who will be glad
+      to get rid of all this trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fraulein Schult, who, while patiently adding stitch after stitch to the
+      long strip of her crochet-work, was often much amused by the dialogues
+      between sitter and painter, pricked up her ears to hear what a Frenchman
+      would say to what was evidently intended to provoke a compliment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, I shall miss you very much,&rdquo; said Marien, quite simply;
+      &ldquo;I have grown accustomed to see you here. You have become one of the
+      familiar objects of my studio. Your absence will create a void.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About as much as if this or that were gone,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, in a hurt
+      tone, pointing first to a Japanese bronze and then to an Etruscan vase;
+      &ldquo;with only this difference, that you care least for the living object.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are bitter, Mademoiselle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you make me such provoking answers, Monsieur. My feeling is
+      different,&rdquo; she went on impetuously, &ldquo;I could pass my whole life watching
+      you paint.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would get tired of it probably in the long run.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never!&rdquo; she cried, blushing a deep red.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you would have to put up with my pipe&mdash;that big pipe yonder&mdash;a
+      horror.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like it,&rdquo; she cried, with conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you would not like my bad temper. If you knew how ill I can behave
+      sometimes! I can scold, I can become unbearable, when this, for example,&rdquo;
+       here he pointed with his mahlstick to the Savonarola, &ldquo;does not please
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is beautiful&mdash;so beautiful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is detestable. I shall have to go back some day and renew my
+      impressions of Florence&mdash;see once more the Piazze of the Signora and
+      San Marco&mdash;and then I shall begin my picture all over again. Let us
+      go together&mdash;will you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she cried, fervently, &ldquo;think of seeing Italy!&mdash;and with you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It might not be so great a pleasure as you think. Nothing is such a bore
+      as to travel with people who are pervaded by one idea, and my &lsquo;idee fixe&rsquo; 
+      is my picture&mdash;my great Dominican. He has taken complete possession
+      of me&mdash;he overshadows me. I can think of nothing but him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! but you think of me sometimes, I suppose,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, softly,
+      &ldquo;for I share your time with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think of you to blame you for taking me away from the fifteenth
+      century,&rdquo; replied Hubert Marien, half seriously. &ldquo;Ouf!&mdash;There! it is
+      done at last. That dimple I never could manage I have got in for better or
+      for worse. Now you may fly off. I set you at liberty&mdash;you poor little
+      thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She seemed in no hurry to profit by his permission. She stood perfectly
+      still in the middle of the studio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think I have posed well, faithfully, and with docility all these
+      weeks?&rdquo; she asked at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will give you a certificate to that effect, if you like. No one could
+      have done better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if the certificate is not all I want, will you give me some other
+      present?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A beautiful portrait&mdash;what can you want more?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The picture is for mamma. I ask a favor on my own account.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I refuse it beforehand. But you can tell me what it is, all the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then&mdash;the only part of your house that I have ever been in is
+      this atelier. You can imagine I have a curiosity to see the rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see! you threaten me with a domiciliary visit without warning. Well!
+      certainly, if that would give you any amusement. But my house contains
+      nothing wonderful. I tell you that beforehand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One likes to know how one&rsquo;s friends look at home&mdash;in their own
+      setting, and I have only seen you here at work in your atelier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The best point of view, believe me. But I am ready to do your bidding. Do
+      you wish to see where I eat my dinner?&rdquo; asked Marien, as he took her down
+      the staircase leading to his dining-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fraulein Schult would have liked to go with them&mdash;it was, besides,
+      her duty. But she had not been asked to fulfil it. She hesitated a moment,
+      and in that moment Jacqueline had disappeared. After consideration, the
+      &lsquo;promeneuse&rsquo; went on with her crochet, with a shrug of her shoulders which
+      meant: &ldquo;She can&rsquo;t come to much harm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seated in the studio, she heard the sound of their voices on the floor
+      below. Jacqueline was lingering in the fencing-room where Marien was in
+      the habit of counteracting by athletic exercises the effects of a too
+      sedentary life. She was amusing herself by fingering the dumb-bells and
+      the foils; she lingered long before some precious suits of armor. Then she
+      was taken up into a small room, communicating with the atelier, where
+      there was a fine collection of drawings by the old masters. &ldquo;My only
+      luxury,&rdquo; said Marien.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle Schult, getting impatient, began to roll up yards and yards
+      of crochet, and coughed, by way of a signal, but remembering how
+      disagreeable it would have been to herself to be interrupted in a
+      tete-a-tete with her apothecary, she thought it not worth while to disturb
+      them in these last moments. M. de Nailles&rsquo;s orders had been that she was
+      to sit in the atelier. So she continued to sit there, doing what she had
+      been told to do without any qualms of conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Marien had shown Jacqueline all his drawings he asked her: &ldquo;Are you
+      satisfied?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Jacqueline&rsquo;s hand was already on the portiere which separated the
+      little room from Marien&rsquo;s bedchamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I beg pardon,&rdquo; she exclaimed, pausing on the threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One would think you would like to see me asleep,&rdquo; said Marien with some
+      little embarrassment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never should have thought your bedroom would have been so pretty. Why,
+      it is as elegant as a lady&rsquo;s chamber,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, slipping into it
+      as she spoke, with an exciting consciousness of doing something she ought
+      not to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What an insult, when I thought all my tastes were simple and severe,&rdquo; he
+      replied; but he had not followed her into the chamber, withheld by an
+      impulse of modesty men sometimes feel, when innocence is led into audacity
+      through ignorance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What lovely flowers you have!&rdquo; said Jacqueline, from within. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t they
+      make your head ache?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I take them out at night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not know that men liked, as we do, to be surrounded by flowers.
+      Won&rsquo;t you give me one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All, if you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! one pink will be enough for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then take it,&rdquo; said Marien; her curiosity alarmed him, and he was anxious
+      to get her away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would it not be nicer if you gave it me yourself?&rdquo; she replied, with
+      reproach in her tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is one, Mademoiselle. And now I must tell you that I want to dress.
+      I have to go out immediately.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pinned the pink into her bodice so high that she could inhale its
+      perfume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon. Thank you, and good-by,&rdquo; she said, extending her hand
+      to him with a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Au revoir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;&lsquo;au revoir&rsquo; at home&mdash;but that will not be like here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she stood there before him there came into her eyes a strange
+      expression, to which, without exactly knowing why, he replied by pressing
+      his lips fervently on the little hand he was still holding in his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very often since her infancy he had kissed her before witnesses, but this
+      time she gave a little cry, and turned as white as the flower whose petals
+      were touching her cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marien started back alarmed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-by,&rdquo; he said in a tone that he endeavored to make careless&mdash;but
+      in vain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though she was much agitated herself she failed not to remark his emotion,
+      and on the threshold of the atelier, she blew a kiss back to him from the
+      tips of her gloved fingers, without speaking or smiling. Then she went
+      back to Fraulein Schult, who was still sitting in the place where she had
+      left her, and said: &ldquo;Let us go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The next time Madame de Nailles saw her stepdaughter she was dazzled by a
+      radiant look in her young face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has happened to you?&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;you look triumphant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I have good reason to triumph,&rdquo; said Jacqueline. &ldquo;I think that
+      I have won a victory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How so? Over yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, indeed&mdash;victories over one&rsquo;s self give us the comfort of a good
+      conscience, but they do not make us gay&mdash;as I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then tell me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No-no! I can not tell you yet. I must be silent two days more,&rdquo; said
+      Jacqueline, throwing herself into her mother&rsquo;s arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame de Nailles asked no more questions, but she looked at her
+      stepdaughter with an air of great surprise. For some weeks past she had
+      had no pleasure in looking at Jacqueline. She began to be aware that near
+      her, at her side, an exquisite butterfly was about for the first time to
+      spread its wings&mdash;wings of a radiant loveliness, which, when they
+      fluttered in the air, would turn all eyes away from other butterflies,
+      which had lost some of their freshness during the summer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A difficult task was before her. How could she keep this too precocious
+      insect in its chrysalis state? How could she shut it up in its dark cocoon
+      and retard its transformation?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jacqueline,&rdquo; she said, and the tones of her voice were less soft than
+      those in which she usually addressed her, &ldquo;it seems to me that you are
+      wasting your time a great deal. You hardly practise at all; you do almost
+      nothing at the &lsquo;cours&rsquo;. I don&rsquo;t know what can be distracting your
+      attention from your lessons, but I have received complaints which should
+      make a great girl like you ashamed of herself. Do you know what I am
+      beginning to think?&mdash;That Madame de Monredon&rsquo;s system of education
+      has done better than mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! mamma, you can&rsquo;t be thinking of sending me to a convent!&rdquo; cried
+      Jacqueline, in tones of comic despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not say that&mdash;but I really think it might be good for you to
+      make a retreat where your cousin Giselle is, instead of plunging into
+      follies which interrupt your progress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you call Madame d&rsquo;Etaples&rsquo;s &lsquo;bal blanc&rsquo; a folly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You certainly will not go to it&mdash;that is settled,&rdquo; said the young
+      stepmother, dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. SURPRISES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In all other ways Madame de Nailles did her best to assist in the success
+      of the surprise. On the second of June, the eve of Ste.-Clotilde&rsquo;s day,
+      she went out, leaving every opportunity for the grand plot to mature. Had
+      she not absented herself in like manner the year before at the same date&mdash;thus
+      enabling an upholsterer to drape artistically her little salon with
+      beautiful thick silk tapestries which had just been imported from the
+      East? Her idea was that this year she might find a certain lacquered
+      screen which she coveted. The Baroness belonged to her period; she liked
+      Japanese things. But, alas! the charming object that awaited her, with a
+      curtain hung over it to prolong the suspense, had nothing Japanese about
+      it whatever. Madame de Nailles received the good wishes of her family,
+      responded to them with all proper cordiality, and then was dragged up
+      joyously to a picture hanging on the wall of her room, but still concealed
+      under the cloth that covered it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How good of you!&rdquo; she said, with all confidence to her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a picture by Marien!&mdash;A portrait by Marien! A likeness of
+      Jacqueline!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he uncovered the masterpiece of the great artist, expecting to be
+      joyous in the joy with which she would receive it. But something strange
+      occurred. Madame de Nailles sprang back a step or two, stretching out her
+      arms as if repelling an apparition, her face was distorted, her head was
+      turned away; then she dropped into the nearest seat and burst into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma!&mdash;dear little mamma!&mdash;what is it?&rdquo; cried Jacqueline,
+      springing forward to kiss her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame de Nailles disengaged herself angrily from her embrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me alone!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;let me alone!&mdash;How dared you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And impetuously, hardly restraining a gesture of horror and hate, she
+      rushed into her own chamber. Thither her husband followed her, anxious and
+      bewildered, and there he witnessed a nervous attack which ended in a
+      torrent of reproaches:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was it possible that he had, not seen the impropriety of those sittings to
+      Marien? Oh, yes! No doubt he was an old friend of the family, but that did
+      not prevent all these deceptions, all these disguises, and all the other
+      follies which he had sanctioned&mdash;he&mdash;Jacqueline&rsquo;s father!&mdash;from
+      being very improper. Did he wish to take from her all authority over his
+      child?&mdash;a girl who was already too much disposed to emancipate
+      herself. Her own efforts had all been directed to curb this alarming
+      propensity&mdash;yes, alarming&mdash;alarming for the future. And all in
+      vain! There was no use in saying more. &lsquo;Mon Dieu&rsquo;! had he no trust in her
+      devotion to his child, in her prudence and her foresight, that he must
+      thwart her thus? And she had always imagined that for ten years she had
+      faithfully fulfilled a mother&rsquo;s duties! What ingratitude from every one!
+      Mademoiselle Schult should be sent away at once. Jacqueline should go to a
+      convent. They would break off all intercourse with Marien. They had
+      conspired against her&mdash;every one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then she wept more bitterly than ever&mdash;tears of rage, salt tears
+      which rubbed the powder off her cheeks and disfigured the face that had
+      remained beautiful by her power of will and self-control. But now the
+      disorder of her nerves got the better of precautions. The blonde angel,
+      whose beauty was on the wane, was transformed into a fury. Her
+      six-and-thirty years were fully apparent, her complexion appeared slightly
+      blotched, all her defects were obtrusive in contrast with the precocious
+      development of beauty in Jacqueline. She was firmly resolved that her
+      stepdaughter&rsquo;s obtrusive womanhood should remain in obscurity a very much
+      longer time, under pretence that Jacqueline was still a child. She was a
+      child, at any rate! The portrait was a lie! an imposture! an affront! an
+      outrage!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime M. de Nailles, almost beside himself, fancied at first that his
+      wife was going mad, but in the midst of her sobs and reproaches he managed
+      to discover that he had somehow done her wrong, and when, with a broken
+      voice, she cried, &ldquo;You no longer love me!&rdquo; he did not know what to do to
+      prove how bitterly he repented having grieved her. He stammered, he made
+      excuses, he owned that he had been to blame, that he had been very stupid,
+      and he begged her pardon. As to the portrait, it should be taken from the
+      salon, where, if seen, it might become a pretext for foolish compliments
+      to Jacqueline. Why not send it at once to Grandchaux? In short, he would
+      do anything she wished, provided she would leave off crying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Madame de Nailles continued to weep. Her husband was forced at last to
+      leave her and to return to Jacqueline, who stood petrified in the salon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;your mamma is right. We have made a deplorable mistake in
+      what we have done. Besides, you must know that this unlucky picture is not
+      in the least like you. Marien has made some use of your features to paint
+      a fancy portrait&mdash;so we will let nobody see it. They might laugh at
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In this way he hoped to repair the evil he had done in flattering his
+      daughter&rsquo;s vanity, and promoting that dangerous spirit of independence,
+      denounced to him a few minutes before, but of which, up to that time, he
+      had never heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline, in her turn, began to sob.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle Schult had cause, too, to wipe her eyes, pretending a more or
+      less sincere repentance for her share in the deception. Vigorously
+      cross-questioned by Madame de Nailles, who called upon her to tell all she
+      knew, under pain of being dismissed immediately, she saw but one way of
+      retaining her situation, which was to deliver up Jacqueline, bound hand
+      and foot, to the anger of her stepmother, by telling all she knew of the
+      childish romance of which she had been the confidante. As a reward she was
+      permitted (as she had foreseen) to retain her place in the character of a
+      spy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a sad Ste.-Clotilde&rsquo;s day that year. Marien, who came in the
+      evening, heard with surprise that the Baroness was indisposed and could
+      see no one. For twelve days after this he continued in disgrace, being
+      refused admittance when he called. Those twelve days were days of anguish
+      for Jacqueline. To see Marien no longer, to be treated with coldness by
+      her father, to see in the blue eyes of her stepmother&mdash;eyes so soft
+      and tender when they looked upon her hitherto&mdash;only a harsh,
+      mistrustful glare, almost a look of hatred, was a punishment greater than
+      she could bear. What had she done to deserve punishment? Of what was she
+      accused? She spoke of her wretchedness to Fraulein Schult, who,
+      perfidiously, day after day, drew from her something to report to Madame
+      de Nailles. That lady was somewhat consoled, while suffering tortures of
+      jealousy, to know that the girl to whom these sufferings were due was
+      paying dearly for her fault and was very unhappy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the twelfth day something occurred which, though it made no noise in
+      the household, had very serious consequences. The effect it produced on
+      Jacqueline was decisive and deplorable. The poor child, after going
+      through all the states of mind endured by those who suffer under unmerited
+      disgrace&mdash;revolt, indignation, sulkiness, silent obstinacy&mdash;felt
+      unable to bear it longer. She resolved to humble herself, hoping that by
+      so doing the wall of ice that had arisen between her stepmother and
+      herself might be cast down. By this time she cared less to know of what
+      fault she was supposed to be guilty than to be taken back into favor as
+      before. What must she do to obtain forgiveness? Explanations are usually
+      worthless; besides, none might be granted her. She remembered that when
+      she was a small child she had obtained immediate oblivion of any fault by
+      throwing herself impulsively into the arms of her little mamma, and asking
+      her to forget whatever she had done to displease her, for she had not done
+      it on purpose. She would do the same thing now. Putting aside all pride
+      and obstinacy, she would go to this mamma, who, for some days, had seemed
+      so different. She would smother her in kisses. She might possibly be
+      repelled at first. She would not mind it. She was sure that in the end she
+      would be forgiven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No sooner was this resolution formed than she hastened to put it into
+      execution. It was the time of day when Madame de Nailles was usually
+      alone. Jacqueline went to her bedchamber, but she was not there, and a
+      moment after she stood on the threshold of the little salon. There she
+      stopped short, not quite certain how she should proceed, asking herself
+      what would be her reception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How shall I do it?&rdquo; she thought. &ldquo;How had I better do it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah!&rdquo; she answered these doubts. &ldquo;It will be very easy. I will go in on
+      tiptoe, so that she can&rsquo;t hear me. I will slip behind her chair, and I
+      will hug her suddenly, so tight, so tenderly, and kiss her till she tells
+      me that all has been forgiven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she thought thus Jacqueline noiselessly opened the door of the salon,
+      over which, on the inner side, hung a thick plush &lsquo;portiere&rsquo;. But as she
+      was about to lift it, the sound of a voice within made her stand
+      motionless. She recognized the tones of Marien. He was pleading,
+      imploring, interrupted now and then by the sharp and still angry voice of
+      her mamma. They were not speaking above their breath, but if she listened
+      she could hear them, and, without any scruples of conscience, she did
+      listen intently, anxious to see her way through the dark fog in which, for
+      twelve days, she had wandered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not go quite so far as that,&rdquo; said Madame de Nailles, dryly. &ldquo;It is
+      enough for me that she produced an illusion of such beauty upon you. Now I
+      know what to expect&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is nonsense,&rdquo; replied Marien&mdash;&ldquo;mere foolishness. You jealous!
+      jealous of a baby whom I knew when she wore white pinafores, who has grown
+      up under my very eyes? But, so far as I am concerned, she exists no
+      longer. She is not, she never will be in my eyes, a woman. I shall think
+      of her as playing with her doll, eating sugar-plums, and so on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline grew faint. She shivered and leaned against the door-post.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One would not suppose so, to judge by the picture with which she has
+      inspired you. You may say what you like, but I know that in all this there
+      was a set purpose to insult me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clotilde!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the first place, on no pretext ought you to have been induced to paint
+      her portrait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think so? Consider, had I refused, the danger of awakening
+      suspicion? I accepted the commission most unwillingly, much put out by it,
+      as you may suppose. But you are making too much of an imaginary fault.
+      Consign the wretched picture to the barn, if you like. We will never say
+      another word about so foolish a matter. You promise me to forget it, won&rsquo;t
+      you?... Dear! you will promise me?&rdquo; he added, after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame de Nailles sighed and replied: &ldquo;If not she it will be some one
+      else. I am very unhappy.... I am weak and contemptible....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clotilde!&rdquo; replied Marien, in an accent that went to Jacqueline&rsquo;s heart
+      like a knife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She fancied that after this she heard the sound of a kiss, and, with her
+      cheeks aflame and her head burning, she rushed away. She understood little
+      of what she had overheard. She only realized that he had given her up,
+      that he had turned her into ridicule, that he had said &ldquo;Clotilde!&rdquo; to her
+      mother, that he had called her dear&mdash;she!&mdash;the woman she had so
+      adored, so venerated, her best friend, her father&rsquo;s wife, her mother by
+      adoption! Everything in this world seemed to be giving way under her feet.
+      The world was full of falsehood and of treason, and life, so bad, so
+      cruel, was no longer what she had supposed it to be. It had broken its
+      promise to herself, it had made her bad&mdash;bad forever. She loved no
+      one, she believed in no one. She wished she were dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How she reached her own room in this state Jacqueline never knew. She was
+      aware at last of being on her knees beside her bed, with her face hidden
+      in the bed-clothes. She was biting them to stifle her desire to scream.
+      Her hands were clenched convulsively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;mamma!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Was this a reproach addressed to her she had so long called by that name?
+      Or was it an appeal, vibrating with remorse, to her real mother, so long
+      forgotten in favor of this false idol, her rival, her enemy?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Undoubtedly, Jacqueline was too innocent, too ignorant to guess the real
+      truth from what she had overheard. But she had learned enough to be no
+      longer the pure-minded young girl of a few hours before. It seemed to her
+      as if a fetid swamp now lay before her, barring her entrance into life.
+      Vague as her perceptions were, this swamp before her seemed more deep,
+      more dark, more dreadful from uncertainty, and Jacqueline felt that
+      thenceforward she could make no step in life without risk of falling into
+      it. To whom now could she open her heart in confidence&mdash;that heart
+      bleeding and bruised as if it had been trampled one as if some one had
+      crushed it? The thing that she now knew was not like her own little
+      personal secrets, such as she had imprudently confided to Fraulein Schult.
+      The words that she had overheard she could repeat to no one. She must
+      carry them in her heart, like the barb of an arrow in a secret wound,
+      where they would fester and grow more painful day by day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, above all,&rdquo; she said at length, rising from her knees, &ldquo;let me show
+      proper pride.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She bathed her fevered face in cold water, then she walked up to her
+      mirror. As she gazed at herself with a strange interest, trying to see
+      whether the entire change so suddenly accomplished in herself had left its
+      visible traces on her features, she seemed to see something in her eyes
+      that spoke of the clairvoyance of despair. She smiled at herself, to see
+      whether the new Jacqueline could play the part, which&mdash;whether she
+      would or not&mdash;was now assigned to her. What a sad smile it was!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have lost everything,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I have lost everything!&rdquo; And she
+      remembered, as one remembers something in the far-off long ago, how that
+      very morning, when she awoke, her first thought had been &ldquo;Shall I see him
+      to-day?&rdquo; Each day she passed without seeing him had seemed to her a lost
+      day, and she had accustomed herself to go to sleep thinking of him,
+      remembering all he had said to her, and how he had looked at her. Of
+      course, sometimes she had been unhappy, but what a difference it seemed
+      between such vague unhappiness and what she now experienced? And then,
+      when she was sad, she could always find a refuge in that dear mamma&mdash;in
+      that Clotilde whom she vowed she would never kiss again, except with such
+      kisses as might be necessary to avoid suspicion. Kisses of that kind were
+      worth nothing. Quite the contrary! Could she kiss her father now without a
+      pang? Her father! He had gone wholly over to the side of that other in
+      this affair. She had seen him in one moment turn against herself. No!&mdash;no
+      one was left her!... If she could only lay her head in Modeste&rsquo;s lap and
+      be soothed while she crooned her old songs as in the nursery! But,
+      whatever Marien or any one else might choose to say, she was no longer a
+      baby. The bitter sense of her isolation arose in her. She could hardly
+      breathe. Suddenly she pressed her lips upon the glass which reflected her
+      own image, so sad, so pale, so desolate. She put the pity for herself into
+      a long, long, fervent kiss, which seemed to say: &ldquo;Yes, I am all alone&mdash;alone
+      forever.&rdquo; Then, in a spirit of revenge, she opened what seemed a
+      safety-valve, preventing her from giving way to any other emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She rushed for a little box which she had converted into a sort of
+      reliquary. She took out of it the half-burned cigarette, the old glove,
+      the withered violets, and a visiting-card with his name, on which three
+      unimportant lines had been written. She insulted these keepsakes, she tore
+      them with her nails, she trampled them underfoot, she reduced them to
+      fragments; she left nothing whatever of them, except a pile of shreds,
+      which at last she set fire to. She had a feeling as if she were employed
+      in executing two great culprits, who deserved cruel tortures at her hands;
+      and, with them, she slew now and forever the foolish fancy she had called
+      her love. By a strange association of ideas, the famous composition, so
+      praised by M. Regis, came back to her memory, and she cried:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Je ne veux me souvenir.... me souvenir de rien!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I remember, I shall be more unhappy. All has been a dream. His look
+      was a dream, his pressure of my hand, his kiss on the last day, all&mdash;all&mdash;were
+      dreams. He was making a fool of me when he gave me that pink which is now
+      in this pile of ashes. He was laughing when he told me I was more
+      beautiful than was natural. Never have I been&mdash;never shall I be in
+      his eyes&mdash;more than the baby he remembers playing with her doll.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And unconsciously, as Jacqueline said these words, she imitated the
+      careless accent with which she had heard them fall from the lips of the
+      artist. And she would have again to meet him! If she had had thunder and
+      lightning at her command, as she had had the match with which she had set
+      fire to the memorials of her juvenile folly, Marien would have been
+      annihilated on the spot. She was at that moment a murderess at heart. But
+      the dinner-bell rang. The young fury gave a last glance at the adornments
+      of her pretty bedchamber, so elegant, so original&mdash;all blue and pink,
+      with a couch covered with silk embroidered with flowers. She seemed to say
+      to them all: &ldquo;Keep my secret. It is a sad one. Be careful: keep it
+      safely.&rdquo; The cupids on the clock, the little book-rest on a velvet stand,
+      the picture of the Virgin that hung over her bed, with rosaries and palms
+      entwined about it, the photographs of her girl-friends standing on her
+      writing table in pretty frames of old-fashioned silk-all seemed to see her
+      depart with a look of sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went down to the dining-room, resolved to prove that she would not
+      submit to punishment. The best way to brave Madame de Nailles was, she
+      thought, to affect great calmness and indifference, aye, even, if she
+      could, some gayety. But the task before her was more difficult than she
+      had expected. Apparently, as a proof of reconciliation, Marien had been
+      kept to dinner. To see him so soon again after his words of outrage was
+      more than she could bear. For one moment the earth seemed to sink under
+      her feet; she roused her pride by an heroic effort, and that sustained
+      her. She exchanged with the artist, as she always did, a friendly
+      &ldquo;Good-evening!&rdquo; and ate her dinner, though it nearly choked her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame de Nailles had red eyes; and Jacqueline made the reflection that
+      women who are thirty-five should never weep. She knew that her face had
+      not been made ugly by her tears, and this gave her a perverse satisfaction
+      in the midst of her misery. Of Marien she thought: &ldquo;He sits there as if he
+      had been put &lsquo;en penitence&rsquo;.&rdquo; No doubt he could not endure scenes, and the
+      one he had just passed through must have given him the downcast look which
+      Jacqueline noticed with contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What she did not know was that his depression had more than one cause. He
+      felt&mdash;and felt with shame and with discouragement&mdash;that the
+      fetters of a connection which had long since ceased to charm had been
+      fastened on his wrists tighter than ever; and he thought: &ldquo;I shall lose
+      all my energy, I shall lose even my talent! While I wear these chains I
+      shall see ever before me&mdash;ah! tortures of Tantalus!&mdash;the vision
+      of a new love, fresh as the dawn which beckons to me as it passes before
+      my sight, which lays on me the light touch of a caress, while I am forced
+      to see it glide away, to let it vanish, disappear forever! And alas! that
+      is not all. If I have deceived an inexperienced heart by words spoken or
+      deeds done in a moment of weakness or temptation, can I flatter myself
+      that I have acted like an honest man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This is what Marien was really thinking, while Jacqueline looked at him
+      with an expression she strove to make indifferent, but which he
+      interpreted, though she knew it not: &ldquo;You have done me all the harm you
+      can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      M. de Nailles meantime went on talking, with little response from his wife
+      or his guest, about some vehement discussion of a new law going on just
+      then in the Chamber, and he became so interested in his own discourse that
+      he did not remark the constraint of the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marien at last, tired of responding in monosyllables to his remarks, said
+      abruptly, a short time before dessert was placed upon the table, something
+      about the probability of his soon going to Italy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A pilgrimage of art to Florence!&rdquo; cried the Baron, turning at once from
+      politics. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s good. But wait a little&mdash;let it be after the rising
+      of the Chamber. We will follow your steps. It has been the desire of my
+      wife&rsquo;s life&mdash;a little jaunt to Italy. Has it not, Clotilde? So we
+      will all go in September or October. What say you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In September or October, whichever suits you,&rdquo; said Marien, with despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not one month of liberty! Why couldn&rsquo;t they leave him to his Savanarola!
+      Must he drag about a ball and chain like a galley-slave?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clotilde rewarded M. de Nailles with a smile&mdash;the first smile she had
+      given him since their quarrel about Jacqueline.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My wife has got over her displeasure,&rdquo; he said to himself, delightedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline, on her part, well remembered the day when Hubert had spoken to
+      her for the first time of his intended journey, and how he had added, in a
+      tone which she now knew to be badinage, but which then, alas! she had
+      believed serious: &ldquo;Suppose we go together!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And her impulse to shed tears became so great, that when they left the
+      dinner-table she escaped to her own room, under pretence of a headache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;you are looking wretchedly,&rdquo; said her stepmother. And, turning
+      to M. de Nailles, she added: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think, &lsquo;mon ami&rsquo;, she is as yellow
+      as a quince!&rdquo; Marien dared not press the hand which she, who had been his
+      little friend for years, offered him as usual, but this time with
+      repugnance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are suffering, my poor Jacqueline!&rdquo; he ventured to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! not much,&rdquo; she answered, with a glance at once haughty and defiant,
+      &ldquo;to-morrow I shall be quite well again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, saying this, she had the courage to laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she was not quite well the next day; and for many days after she was
+      forced to stay in bed. The doctor who came to see her talked about &ldquo;low
+      fever,&rdquo; attributed it to too rapid growth, and prescribed sea-bathing for
+      her that summer. The fever, which was not very severe, was of great
+      service to Jacqueline. It enabled her to recover in quiet from the effects
+      of a bitter deception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame de Nailles was not sufficiently uneasy about her to be always at
+      her bedside. Usually the sick girl stayed alone, with her window-curtains
+      closed, lying there in the soft half-light that was soothing to her
+      nerves. The silence was broken at intervals by the voice of Modeste, who
+      would come and offer her her medicine. When Jacqueline had taken it, she
+      would shut her eyes, and resume, half asleep, her sad reflections. These
+      were always the same. What could be the tie between her stepmother and
+      Marien?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tried to recall all the proofs of friendship she had seen pass between
+      them, but all had taken place openly. Nothing that she could remember
+      seemed suspicious. So she thought at first, but as she thought more,
+      lying, feverish, upon her bed, several things, little noticed at the time,
+      were recalled to her remembrance. They might mean nothing, or they might
+      mean much. In the latter case, Jacqueline could not understand them very
+      well. But she knew he had called her &ldquo;Clotilde,&rdquo; that he had even dared to
+      say &ldquo;thou&rdquo; to her in private&mdash;these were things she knew of her own
+      knowledge. Her pulse beat quicker as she thought of them; her head burned.
+      In that studio, where she had passed so many happy hours, had Marien and
+      her stepmother ever met as lovers?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her stepmother and Marien! She could not understand what it meant. Must
+      she apply to them a dreadful word that she had picked up in the history
+      books, where it had been associated with such women as Margaret of
+      Burgundy, Isabeau of Bavaria, Anne Boleyn, and other princesses of very
+      evil reputation? She had looked it out in the dictionary, where the
+      meaning given was: &ldquo;To be unfaithful to conjugal vows.&rdquo; Even then she
+      could not understand precisely the meaning of adultery, and she set
+      herself to solve it during the long lonely days when she was convalescent.
+      When she was able to walk from one room to another, she wandered in a
+      loose dressing-gown, whose long, lank folds showed that she had grown
+      taller and thinner during her illness, into the room that held the books,
+      and went boldly up to the bookcase, the key of which had been left in the
+      lock, for everybody had entire confidence in Jacqueline&rsquo;s scrupulous
+      honesty. Never before had she broken a promise; she knew that a
+      well-brought-up young girl ought to read only such books as were put into
+      her hands. The idea of taking a volume from those shelves had no more
+      occurred to her than the idea of taking money out of somebody&rsquo;s purse;
+      that is, up to this moment it had not occurred to her to do so; but now
+      that she had lost all respect for those in authority over her, Jacqueline
+      considered herself released from any obligation to obey them. She
+      therefore made use of the first opportunity that presented itself to take
+      down a novel of George Sand, which she had heard spoken of as a very
+      dangerous book, not doubting it would throw some light on the subject that
+      absorbed her. But she shut up the volume in a rage when she found that it
+      had nothing but excuses to offer for the fall of a married woman. After
+      that, and guided only by chance, she read a number of other novels, most
+      of which were of antediluvian date, thus accounting, she supposed, for
+      their sentiments, which she found old fashioned. We should be wrong,
+      however, if we supposed that Jacqueline&rsquo;s crude judgment of these books
+      had nothing in common with true criticism. Her only object, however, in
+      reading all this sentimental prose was to discover, as formerly she had
+      found in poetry, something that applied to her own case; but she soon
+      discovered that all the sentimental heroines in the so-called bad books
+      were persons who had had bad husbands; besides, they were either widows or
+      old women&mdash;at least thirty years old! It was astounding! There was
+      nothing&mdash;absolutely nothing&mdash;about young girls, except instances
+      in which they renounced their hopes of happiness. What an injustice! Among
+      these victims the two that most attracted her sympathy were Madame de
+      Camors and Renee Mauperin. But what horrors surrounded them! What a varied
+      assortment of deceptions, treacheries, and mysteries, lay hidden under the
+      outward decency and respectability of what men called &ldquo;the world!&rdquo; Her
+      young head became a stage on which strange plays were acted. What one
+      reads is good or bad for us, according to the frame of mind in which we
+      read it&mdash;according as we discover in a volume healing for the
+      sickness of our souls&mdash;or the contrary. In view of the circumstances
+      in which she found herself, what Jacqueline absorbed from these books was
+      poison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, after the physical and moral crisis through which she had passed,
+      Jacqueline resumed the life of every day, she had in her sad eyes, around
+      which for some time past had been dark circles, an expression of anxiety
+      such as the first contact with a knowledge of evil might have put into
+      Eve&rsquo;s eyes after she had plucked the apple. Her investigations had very
+      imperfectly enlightened her. She was as much perplexed as ever, with some
+      false ideas besides. When she was well again, however, she continued weak
+      and languid; she felt somehow as if, she had come back to her old
+      surroundings from some place far away. Everything about her now seemed sad
+      and unfamiliar, though outwardly nothing was altered. Her parents had
+      apparently forgotten the unhappy episode of the picture. It had been sent
+      away to Grandchaux, which was tantamount to its being buried. Hubert
+      Marien had resumed his habits of intimacy in the family. From that time
+      forth he took less and less notice of Jacqueline&mdash;whether it were
+      that he owed her a grudge for all the annoyance she had been the means of
+      bringing upon him, or whether he feared to burn himself in the flame which
+      had once scorched him more than he admitted to himself, who can say?
+      Perhaps he was only acting in obedience to orders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. A CONVENT FLOWER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One of Jacqueline&rsquo;s first walks, after she had recovered, was to see her
+      cousin Giselle at her convent. She did not seek this friend&rsquo;s society when
+      she was happy and in a humor for amusement, for she thought her a little
+      straightlaced, or, as she said, too like a nun; but nobody could condole
+      or sympathize with a friend in trouble like Giselle. It seemed as if
+      nature herself had intended her for a Sister of Charity&mdash;a Gray
+      Sister, as Jacqueline would sometimes call her, making fun of her somewhat
+      dull intellect, which had been benumbed, rather than stimulated, by the
+      education she had received.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Benedictine Convent is situated in a dull street on the left bank of
+      the Seine, all gardens and hotels&mdash;that is, detached houses. Grass
+      sprouted here and there among the cobblestones. There were no street-lamps
+      and no policemen. Profound silence reigned there. The petals of an acacia,
+      which peeped timidly over its high wall, dropped, like flakes of snow, on
+      the few pedestrians who passed by it in the springtime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The enormous porte-cochere gave entrance into a square courtyard, on one
+      side of which was the chapel, on the other, the door that led into the
+      convent. Here Jacqueline presented herself, accompanied by her old nurse,
+      Modeste. She had not yet resumed her German lessons, and was striving to
+      put off as long as possible any intercourse with Fraulein Schult, who had
+      known of her foolish fancy, and who might perhaps renew the odious
+      subject. Walking with Modeste, on the contrary, seemed like going back to
+      the days of her childhood, the remembrance of which soothed her like a
+      recollection of happiness and peace, now very far away; it was a
+      reminiscence of the far-off limbo in which her young soul, pure and white,
+      had floated, without rapture, but without any great grief or pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The porteress showed them into the parlor. There they found several pupils
+      who were talking to members of their families, from whom they were
+      separated by a grille, whose black bars gave to those within the
+      appearance of captives, and made rather a barrier to eager demonstrations
+      of affection, though they did not hinder the reception of good things to
+      eat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tiens! I have brought you some chocolate,&rdquo; said Jacqueline to Giselle, as
+      soon as her cousin appeared, looking far prettier in her black cloth frock
+      than when she wore an ordinary walking-costume. Her fair hair was drawn
+      back &lsquo;a la Chinoise&rsquo; from a white forehead resembling that of a German
+      Madonna; it was one of those foreheads, slightly and delicately curved,
+      which phrenologists tell us indicate reflection and enthusiasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Giselle, without thanking Jacqueline for the chocolate, exclaimed at
+      once: &ldquo;Mon Dieu! What has been the matter with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke rather louder than usual, it being understood that conversations
+      were to be carried on in a low tone, so as not to interfere with those of
+      other persons. She added: &ldquo;I find you so altered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I have been ill,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, carelessly, &ldquo;sorrow has made
+      me ill,&rdquo; she added, in a whisper, looking to see whether the nun, who was
+      discreetly keeping watch, walking to and fro behind the grille, might
+      chance to be listening. &ldquo;Oh, ask me no questions! I must never tell you&mdash;but
+      for me, you must know&mdash;the happiness of my life is at an end&mdash;is
+      at an end&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt herself to be very interesting while she was speaking thus; her
+      sorrows were somewhat assuaged. There was undoubtedly a certain pleasure
+      in letting some one look down into the unfathomable, mysterious depths of
+      a suffering soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had expected much curiosity on the part of Giselle, and had resolved
+      beforehand to give her no answers; but Giselle only sighed, and said,
+      softly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah&mdash;my poor darling! I, too, am very unhappy. If you only knew&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How? Good heavens! what can have happened to you here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here? oh! nothing, of course; but this year I am to leave the convent&mdash;and
+      I think I can guess what will then be before me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, seeing that the nun who was keeping guard was listening, Giselle,
+      with great presence of mind, spoke louder on indifferent subjects till she
+      had passed out of earshot, then she rapidly poured her secret into
+      Jacqueline&rsquo;s ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From a few words that had passed between her grandmother and Madame
+      d&rsquo;Argy, she had found out that Madame de Monredon intended to marry her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that need not make you unhappy,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, &ldquo;unless he is
+      really distasteful to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what I am not sure about&mdash;perhaps he is not the one I think.
+      But I hardly know why&mdash;I have a dread, a great dread, that it is one
+      of our neighbors in the country. Grandmamma has several times spoken in my
+      presence of the advantage of uniting our two estates&mdash;they touch each
+      other&mdash;oh! I know her ideas! she wants a man well-born, one who has a
+      position in the world&mdash;some one, as she says, who knows something of
+      life&mdash;that is, I suppose, some one no longer young, and who has not
+      much hair on his head&mdash;like Monsieur de Talbrun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he very ugly&mdash;this Monsieur de Talbrun?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not ugly&mdash;and not handsome. But, just think! he is
+      thirty-four!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline blushed, seeing in this speech a reflection on her own taste in
+      such matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s twice my age,&rdquo; sighed Giselle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course that would be dreadful if he were to stay always twice your age&mdash;for
+      instance, if you were now thirty-five, he would be seventy, and a hundred
+      and twenty when you reached your sixtieth year&mdash;but really to be
+      twice your age now will only make him seventeen years older than
+      yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of this chatter, which was beginning to attract the notice of
+      the nun, they broke off with a laugh, but it was only one of those laughs
+      &lsquo;au bout des levres&rsquo;, uttered by persons who have made up their minds to
+      be unhappy. Then Giselle went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know nothing about him, you understand&mdash;but he frightens me. I
+      tremble to think of taking his arm, of talking to him, of being his wife.
+      Just think even of saying thou to him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But married people don&rsquo;t say thou to each other nowadays,&rdquo; said
+      Jacqueline, &ldquo;it is considered vulgar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I shall have to call him by his Christian name!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is Monsieur de Talbrun&rsquo;s Christian name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oscar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Humph! That is not a very pretty name, but you could get over the
+      difficulty&mdash;you could say &lsquo;mon ami&rsquo;. After all, your sorrows are less
+      than mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Jacqueline!&rdquo; said Giselle, her soft hazel eyes moist with sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have lost at one blow all my illusions, and I have made a horrible
+      discovery, that it would be wicked to tell to any one&mdash;you understand&mdash;not
+      even to my confessor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heavens! but you could tell your mother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You forget, I have no mother,&rdquo; replied Jacqueline in a tone which
+      frightened her friend: &ldquo;I had a dear mamma once, but she would enter less
+      than any one into my sorrows; and as to my father&mdash;it would make
+      things worse to speak to him,&rdquo; she added, clasping her hands. &ldquo;Have you
+      ever read any novels, Giselle?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hem!&rdquo; said the discreet voice of the nun, by way of warning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two or three by Walter Scott.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! then you can imagine nothing like what I could tell you. How horrid
+      that nun is, she stops always as she comes near us! Why can&rsquo;t she do as
+      Modeste does, and leave us to talk by ourselves?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed indeed as if the Argus in a black veil had overheard part of
+      this conversation, not perhaps the griefs of Jacqueline, which were not
+      very intelligible, but some of the words spoken by Giselle, for, drawing
+      near her, she said, gently: &ldquo;We, too, shall all grieve to lose you, my
+      dearest child; but remember one can serve God anywhere, and save one&rsquo;s
+      soul&mdash;in the world as well as in a convent.&rdquo; And she passed on,
+      giving a kind smile to Jacqueline, whom she knew, having seen her several
+      times in the convent parlor, and whom she thought a nice girl,
+      notwithstanding what she called her &ldquo;fly-away airs&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;the airs they
+      acquire from modern education,&rdquo; she said to herself, with a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those poor ladies would have us think of nothing but a future life,&rdquo; said
+      Jacqueline, shrugging her shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We ought to think of it first of all,&rdquo; said Giselle, who had become
+      serious. &ldquo;Sometimes I think my place should have been among these ladies
+      who have brought me up. They are so good, and they seem to be so happy.
+      Besides, do you know, I stand less in awe of them than I do of my
+      grandmother. When grandmamma orders me I never shall dare to object, even
+      if&mdash;But you must think me very selfish, my poor Jacqueline! I am
+      talking only of myself. Do you know what you ought to do as you go away?
+      You should go into the chapel, and pray with all your heart for me, that I
+      may be brought in safety through my troubles about which I have told you,
+      and I will do the same for yours, about which you have not told me. An
+      exchange of prayers is the best foundation for a friendship,&rdquo; she added;
+      for Giselle had many little convent maxims at her fingers&rsquo; ends, to which,
+      when she uttered them, her sincerity of look and tone gave a personal
+      meaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, much moved. &ldquo;It has done me good to see
+      you. Take this chocolate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you must take this,&rdquo; said Giselle, giving her a little illuminated
+      card, with sacred words and symbols.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adieu, dearest-say, have you ever detested any one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never!&rdquo; cried Giselle, with horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well! I do detest&mdash;detest&mdash;You are right, I will go into the
+      chapel. I need some exorcism.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And laughing at her use of this last word&mdash;the same little mirthless
+      laugh that she had uttered before&mdash;Jacqueline went away, followed by
+      the admiring glances of the other girls, who from behind the bars of their
+      cage noted the brilliant plumage of this bird who was at liberty. She
+      crossed the courtyard, and, followed by Modeste, entered the chapel, where
+      she sank upon her knees. The mystic half-light of the place, tinged purple
+      by its passage through the stained windows, seemed to enlarge the little
+      chancel, parted in two by a double grille, behind which the nuns could
+      hear the service without being seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The silence was so deep that the low murmur of a prayer could now and then
+      be heard. The worshipers might have fancied themselves a hundred leagues
+      from all the noises of the world, which seemed to die out when they
+      reached the convent walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline read, and re-read mechanically, the words printed in letters of
+      gold on the little card Giselle had given her. It was a symbolical
+      picture, and very ugly; but the words were: &ldquo;Oh! that I had wings like a
+      dove, for then would I flee away and be at rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wings!&rdquo; she repeated, with vague aspiration. The aspiration seemed to
+      disengage her from herself, and from this earth, which had nothing more to
+      offer her. Ah! how far away was now the time when she had entered
+      churches, full of happiness and hope, to offer a candle that her prayer
+      might be granted, which she felt sure it would be! All was vanity! As she
+      gazed at the grille, behind which so many women, whose worldly lives had
+      been cut short, now lived, safe from the sorrows and temptations of this
+      world, Jacqueline seemed for the first time to understand why Giselle
+      regretted that she might not share forever the blessed peace enjoyed in
+      the convent. A torpor stole over her, caused by the dimness, the faint
+      odor of the incense, and the solemn silence. She imagined herself in the
+      act of giving up the world. She saw herself in a veil, with her eyes
+      raised to Heaven, very pale, standing behind the grille. She would have to
+      cut off her hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That seemed hard, but she would make the sacrifice. She would accept
+      anything, provided the ungrateful pair, whom she would not name, could
+      feel sorrow for her loss&mdash;maybe even remorse. Full of these ideas,
+      which certainly had little in common with the feelings of those who seek
+      to forgive those who trespass against them, Jacqueline continued to
+      imagine herself a Benedictine sister, under the soothing influence of her
+      surroundings, just as she had mistaken the effects of physical weakness
+      when she was ill for a desire to die. Such feelings were the result of a
+      void which the whole universe, as she thought, never could fill, but it
+      was really a temporary vacuum, like that caused by the loss of a first
+      tooth. These teeth come out with the first jar, and nature intends them to
+      be speedily replaced by others, much more permanent; but children cry when
+      they are pulled out, and fancy they are in very tight. Perhaps they
+      suffer, after all, nearly as much as they think they do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle!&rdquo; said Modeste, touching her on the shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was content to be here,&rdquo; answered Jacqueline, with a sigh. &ldquo;Do you
+      know, Modeste,&rdquo; she went on, when they got out of doors, &ldquo;that I have
+      almost made up my mind to be a nun. What do you say to that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heaven forbid!&rdquo; cried the old nurse, much startled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Life is so hard,&rdquo; replied her young mistress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for you, anyhow. It would be a sin to say so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Modeste, we so little know the real truth of things&mdash;we can see
+      only appearances. Don&rsquo;t you think that a linen band over my forehead would
+      be very becoming to me? I should look like Saint Theresa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what would be the good of your looking like Saint Theresa, when there
+      would be nobody to tell you so?&rdquo; said Modeste, with the practical
+      good-sense that never forsook her. &ldquo;You would be beautiful for yourself
+      alone. You would not even be allowed a looking-glass just talk about that
+      fancy to Monsieur&mdash;we should soon see what he would say to such a
+      notion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      M. de Nailles, having just left the Chamber, was crossing the Pont de la
+      Concorde on foot at this moment. His daughter ran up to him, and caught
+      him by the arm. They walked homeward talking of very different things from
+      bolts and bars. The Baron, who was a weak man, thought in his heart that
+      he had been too severe with his daughter for some time past. As he
+      recalled what had taken place, the anger of Madame de Nailles in the
+      matter of the picture seemed to him to have been extreme and unnecessary.
+      Jacqueline was just at an age when young girls are apt to be nervous and
+      impressionable; they had been wrong to be rough with one who was so
+      sensitive. His wife was quite of his opinion, she acknowledged (not
+      wishing him to think too much on the subject) that she had been too
+      quick-tempered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she had said, frankly, &ldquo;I am jealous; I want things to myself. I
+      own I was angry when I thought that Jacqueline was about to throw off my
+      authority, and hurt when I found she was capable of keeping up a
+      concealment&mdash;when I believed she was so open always with me. My
+      behavior was foolish, I acknowledge. But what can we do? Neither of us can
+      go and ask her pardon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not,&rdquo; said the father, &ldquo;all we can do is to treat her with a
+      little more consideration for the future; and, with your permission, I
+      shall use her illness as an excuse for spoiling her a little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have carte blanche, my dear, I agree to everything.&rdquo; So M. de
+      Nailles, with his daughter&rsquo;s arm in his, began to spoil her, as he had
+      intended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are still rather pale,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but sea-bathing will change all
+      that. Would you like to go to the seaside next month?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline answered with a little incredulous smile:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, certainly, papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t seem very sure about it. In the first place, where shall we go?
+      Your mamma seems to fancy Houlgate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course we must do what she wishes,&rdquo; replied Jacqueline, rather
+      bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, little daughter, what would you like? What do you say to Treport?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like Treport very much, because there we should be near Madame
+      d&rsquo;Argy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline had felt much drawn to Madame d&rsquo;Argy since her troubles, for
+      she had been the nearest friend of her own mother&mdash;her own dead
+      mother, too long forgotten. The chateau of Madame d&rsquo;Argy, called
+      Lizerolles, was only two miles from Treport, in a charming situation on
+      the road to St. Valery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the very thing, then!&rdquo; said M. de Nailles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fred is going to spend a month at Lizerolles with his mother. You might
+      ride on horseback with him. He is going to enjoy a holiday, poor fellow!
+      before he has to be sent off on long and distant voyages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how to ride,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, still in the tone of a
+      victim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The doctor thinks riding would be good for you, and you have time enough
+      yet to take some lessons. Mademoiselle Schult could take you nine or ten
+      times to the riding-school. And I will go with you the first time,&rdquo; added
+      M. de Nailles, in despair at not having been able to please her. &ldquo;To-day
+      we will go to Blackfern&rsquo;s and order a habit&mdash;a riding-habit! Can I do
+      more?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this, as if by magic, whether she would or not, the lines of sadness
+      and sullenness disappeared from Jacqueline&rsquo;s face; her eyes sparkled. She
+      gave one more proof, that to every Parisienne worthy of the name, the two
+      pleasures in riding are, first to have a perfectly fitting habit,
+      secondly, to have the opportunity of showing how pretty she can be after a
+      new fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall we go to Blackfern&rsquo;s now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This very moment, if you wish it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You really mean Blackfern? Yvonne&rsquo;s habit came from Blackfern&rsquo;s!&rdquo; Yvonne
+      d&rsquo;Etaples was the incarnation of chic&mdash;of fashionable elegance&mdash;in
+      Jacqueline&rsquo;s eyes. Her heart beat with pleasure when she thought how Belle
+      and Dolly would envy her when she told them: &ldquo;I have a myrtle-green
+      riding-habit, just like Yvonne&rsquo;s.&rdquo; She danced rather than walked as they
+      went together to Blackfern&rsquo;s. A habit was much nicer than a long gown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A quarter of an hour later they were in the waiting-room, where the last
+      creations of the great ladies&rsquo; tailor, were displayed upon lay figures,
+      among saleswomen and &lsquo;essayeuses&rsquo;, the very prettiest that could be found
+      in England or the Batignolles, chosen because they showed off to
+      perfection anything that could be put upon their shoulders, from the
+      ugliest to the most extravagant. Deceived by the unusual elegance of these
+      beautiful figures, ladies who are neither young nor well-shaped allow
+      themselves to be beguiled and cajoled into buying things not suited to
+      them. Very seldom does a hunchbacked dowager hesitate to put upon her
+      shoulders the garment that draped so charmingly those of the living statue
+      hired to parade before her. Jacqueline could not help laughing as she
+      watched this way of hunting larks; and thought the mirror might have
+      warned them, like a scarecrow, rather than have tempted them into the
+      snare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The head tailor of the establishment made them wait long enough to allow
+      the pretty showgirls to accomplish their work of temptation. They
+      fascinated Jacqueline&rsquo;s father by their graces and their glances, while at
+      the same time they warbled into his daughter&rsquo;s ear, with a slightly
+      foreign&rsquo; accent: &ldquo;That would be so becoming to Mademoiselle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For ladies going to the seaside there were things of the most exquisite
+      simplicity: this white fur, trimmed with white velvet, for instance; that
+      jacket like the uniform of a naval officer with a cap to match&mdash;&ldquo;All
+      to please Fred,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, laughing. M. de Nailles, while they
+      waited for the tailor, chose two costumes quite as original as those of
+      Mademoiselle d&rsquo;Etaples, which delighted Jacqueline all the more, because
+      she thought it probable they would displease her stepmother. At last the
+      magnificent personage, his face adorned with luxuriant whiskers, appeared
+      with the bow of a great artist or a diplomatist; took Jacqueline&rsquo;s measure
+      as if he were fulfilling some important function, said a few brief words
+      to his secretary, and then disappeared; the group of English beauties
+      saying in chorus that Mademoiselle might come back that day week and try
+      it on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Accordingly, a week later Jacqueline, seated on the wooden-horse used for
+      this purpose, had the satisfaction of assuring herself that her habit,
+      fitting marvelously to her bust, showed not a wrinkle, any more than a
+      &lsquo;gant de Suede&rsquo; shows on the hand; it was closely fitted to a figure not
+      yet fully developed, but which the creator of the chef-d&rsquo;oeuvre deigned to
+      declare was faultless. Usually, he said, he recommended his customers to
+      wear a certain corset of a special cut, with elastic material over the
+      hips covered by satin that matched the riding-habit, but at Mademoiselle&rsquo;s
+      age, and so supple as she was, the corset was not necessary. In short, the
+      habit was fashioned to perfection, and fitted like her skin to her little
+      flexible figure. In her close-fitting petticoat, her riding-trousers and
+      nothing else, Jacqueline felt herself half naked, though she was buttoned
+      up to her throat. She had taken an attitude on her wooden horse such as
+      might have been envied by an accomplished equestrienne, her elbows held
+      well back, her shoulders down, her chest expanded, her right leg over the
+      pommel, her left foot in the stirrup, and never after did any real gallop
+      give her the same delight as this imaginary ride on an imaginary horse,
+      she looking at herself with entire satisfaction all the time in an
+      enormous cheval-glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK 2.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. THE BLUE BAND
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Love, like any other human malady, should be treated according to the age
+      and temperament of the sufferer. Madame de Nailles, who was a very keen
+      observer, especially where her own interests were concerned, lent herself
+      with the best possible grace to everything that might amuse and distract
+      Jacqueline, of whom she had by this time grown afraid. Not that she now
+      dreaded her as a rival. The attitude of coldness and reserve that the
+      young girl had adopted in her intercourse with Marien, her stepmother
+      could see, was no evidence of coquetry. She showed, in her behavior to the
+      friend of the family, a freedom from embarrassment which was new to her,
+      and a frigidity which could not possibly have been assumed so
+      persistently. No! what struck Madame de Nailles was the suddenness of this
+      transformation. Jacqueline evidently took no further interest in Marien;
+      she had apparently no longer any affection for herself&mdash;she, who had
+      been once her dear little mamma, whom she had loved so tenderly, now felt
+      herself to be considered only as a stepmother. Fraulein Schult, too,
+      received no more confidences. What did it all mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had Jacqueline, through any means, discovered a secret, which, in her
+      hands, might be turned into a most dangerous weapon? She had a way of
+      saying before the guilty pair: &ldquo;Poor papa!&rdquo; with an air of pity, as she
+      kissed him, which made Madame de Nailles&rsquo;s flesh creep, and sometimes she
+      would amuse herself by making ambiguous remarks which shot arrows of
+      suspicion into a heart already afraid. &ldquo;I feel sure,&rdquo; thought the
+      Baroness, &ldquo;that she has found out everything. But, no! it seems
+      impossible. How can I discover what she knows?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline&rsquo;s revenge consisted in leaving her stepmother in doubt. She
+      more than suspected, not without cause, that Fraulein Schult was false to
+      her, and had the wit to baffle all the clever questions of her
+      &lsquo;promeneuse&rsquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My worship of a man of genius&mdash;a great artist? Oh! that has all come
+      to an end since I have found out that his devotion belongs to an elderly
+      lady with a fair complexion and light hair. I am only sorry for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline had great hopes that these cruel words would be reported&mdash;as
+      they were&mdash;to her stepmother, and, of course, they did not mitigate
+      the Baroness&rsquo;s uneasiness. Madame de Nailles revenged herself for this
+      insult by dismissing the innocent echo of the impertinence&mdash;of
+      course, under some plausible pretext. She felt it necessary also to be
+      very cautious how she treated the enemy whom she was forced to shelter
+      under her own roof. Her policy&mdash;a policy imposed on her by force of
+      circumstances&mdash;was one of great indulgence and consideration, so that
+      Jacqueline, soon feeling that she was for the present under no control,
+      took the bit between her teeth. No other impression can adequately convey
+      an idea of the sort of fury with which she plunged into pleasure and
+      excitement, a state of mind which apparently, without any transition,
+      succeeded her late melancholy. She had done with sentiment, she thought,
+      forever. She meant to be practical and positive, a little Parisienne, and
+      &ldquo;in the swim.&rdquo; There were plenty of examples among those she knew that she
+      could follow. Berthe, Helene, and Claire Wermant were excellent leaders in
+      that sort of thing. Those three daughters of the &lsquo;agent de change&rsquo; were at
+      this time at Treport, in charge of a governess, who let them do whatever
+      they pleased, subject only to be scolded by their father, who came down
+      every Saturday to Treport, on that train that was called the &lsquo;train des
+      maris&rsquo;. They had made friends with two or three American girls, who were
+      called &ldquo;fast,&rdquo; and Jacqueline was soon enrolled in the ranks of that gay
+      company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cure that was begun on the wooden horse at Blackfern&rsquo;s was completed
+      on the sea-shore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girls with whom she now associated were nine or ten little imps of
+      Satan, who, with their hair flying in the wind and their caps over one
+      ear, made the quiet beach ring with their boy-like gayety. They were
+      called &ldquo;the Blue Band,&rdquo; because of a sort of uniform that they adopted. We
+      speak of them intentionally as masculine, and not feminine, because what
+      is masculine best suited their appearance and behavior, for, though all
+      could flirt like coquettes of experience, they were more like boys than
+      girls, if judged by their age and their costume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These Blues lived close to one another on that avenue that is edged with
+      chalets, cottages, and villas, whose lower floors are abundantly provided
+      with great glass windows, which seem to let the ocean into their very
+      rooms, as well as to lay bare everything that passes in them to the public
+      eye, as frankly as if their inmates bivouacked in the open street. Nothing
+      was private; neither the meals, nor the coming and going of visitors. It
+      must be said, however, that the inhabitants of these glass houses were
+      very seldom at home. Bathing, and croquet, or tennis, at low water, on the
+      sands, searching for shells, fishing with nets, dances at the Casino,
+      little family dances alternating with concerts, to which even children
+      went till nine o&rsquo;clock, would seem enough to fill up the days of these
+      young people, but they had also to make boating excursions to Cayeux,
+      Crotoy, and Hourdel, besides riding parties in the beautiful country that
+      surrounded the Chateau of Lizerolles, where they usually dismounted on
+      their return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Lizerolles they were received by Madame d&rsquo;Argy, who was delighted that
+      they provided safe amusement for her son, who appeared in the midst of
+      this group of half-grown girls like a young cock among the hens of his
+      harem. Frederic d&rsquo;Argy, the young naval officer, who was enjoying his
+      holiday, as M. de Nailles had said, was enjoying it exceedingly. How
+      often, long after, on board the ship Floye, as he paced the silent
+      quarter-deck, far from any opportunity of flirting, did he recall the
+      forms and faces of these young girls, some dark, some fair, some
+      rosy-half-women and half-children, who made much of him, and scolded him,
+      and teased him, and contended for his attentions, while no better could be
+      had, on purpose to tease one another. Oh! what a delightful time he had
+      had! They did not leave him to himself one moment. He had to lift them
+      into their saddles, to assist them as they clambered over the rocks, to
+      superintend their attempts at swimming, to dance with them all by turns,
+      and to look after them in the difficult character of Mentor, for he was
+      older than they, and were they not entrusted to his care? What a serious
+      responsibility! Had not Mentor even found himself too often timid and
+      excited when one little firm foot was placed in his hand, when his arm was
+      round one little waist, when he could render her as a cavalier a thousand
+      little services, or accept with gladness the role of her consoler. He did
+      everything he could think of to please them, finding all of them charming,
+      though Jacqueline never ceased to be the one he preferred, a preference
+      which she might easily have inferred from the poor lad&rsquo;s unusual timidity
+      and awkwardness when he was brought into contact with her. But she paid no
+      attention to his devotion, accepting himself and all he did for her as, in
+      some sort, her personal property.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was of no consequence, he did not count; what was he but her comrade
+      and former playfellow?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Happily for Fred, he took pleasure in the familiarity with which she
+      treated him&mdash;a familiarity which, had he known it, was not
+      flattering. He was in the seventh heaven for a whole fortnight, during
+      which he was the recipient of more dried flowers and bows of ribbon than
+      he ever got in all the rest of his life&mdash;the American girls were very
+      fond of giving keepsakes&mdash;but then his star waned. He was no longer
+      the only one. The grown-up brother of the Wermants came to Treport&mdash;Raoul,
+      with his air of a young man about town&mdash;a boulevardier, with his
+      jacket cut in the latest fashion, with his cockle-shell of a boat, which
+      he managed as well on salt water as on fresh, sculling with his arms bare,
+      a cigarette in his mouth, a monocle in his eye, and a pith-helmet, such as
+      is worn in India. The young ladies used to gather on the sands to watch
+      him as he struck the water with the broad blade of his scull, near enough
+      for them to see and to admire his nautical ability. They thought all his
+      jokes amusing, and they delighted in his way of seizing his partner for a
+      waltz and bearing her off as if she were a prize, hardly allowing her to
+      touch the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred thought him, with his stock of old jokes, very ill-mannered. He
+      laughed at his sculling, and had a great mind to strike him after he saw
+      him waltzing with Jacqueline. But he had to acknowledge the general
+      appreciation felt for the fellow whom he called vulgar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Raoul Wermant did not stay long at Treport. He had only come to see his
+      sisters on his way to Dieppe, where he expected to meet a certain Leah
+      Skip, an actress from the &lsquo;Nouveautes&rsquo;. If he kept her waiting, however,
+      for some days, it was because he was loath to leave the handsome Madame de
+      Villegry, who was living near her friend Madame de Nailles, recruiting
+      herself after the fatigues of the winter season. Such being the situation,
+      the young girls of the Blue Band might have tried in vain to make any
+      impression upon him. But the hatred with which he inspired Fred found some
+      relief in the composition of fragments of melancholy verse, which the
+      young midshipman hid under his mattresses. It is not an uncommon thing for
+      naval men to combine a love of the sea with a love of poetry. Fred&rsquo;s
+      verses were not good, but they were full of dejection. The poor fellow
+      compared Raoul Wermant to Faust, and himself to Siebel. He spoke of
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        The youth whose eyes were brimming with salt tears,
+        Whose heart was troubled by a thousand fears,
+        Poor slighted lover!-since in his heavy heart
+        All his illusions perish and depart.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Again, he wrote of Siebel:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        O Siebel!&mdash;thine is but the common fate!
+        They told thee Fortune upon youth would wait;
+        &lsquo;Tis false when love&rsquo;s in question-and you may&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Here he enumerated all the proofs of tenderness possible for a woman to
+      give her lover, and then he added:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        You may know all, poor Siebel!&mdash;all, some day,
+        When weary of this life and all its dreams,
+        You learn to know it is not what it seems;
+        When there is nothing that can cheer you more,
+        All that remains is fondly to adore!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And after trying in vain to find a rhyme for lover, he cried:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        Oh! tell me&mdash;if one grief exceeds another
+        Is not this worst, to feel mere friendship moves
+        To cruel kindness the dear girl he loves?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Fred&rsquo;s mother surprised him one night while he was watering with his tears
+      the ink he was putting to so sorry a use. She had been aware that he sat
+      up late at night&mdash;his sleeplessness was not the insomnia of genius&mdash;for
+      she had seen the glare of light from his little lamp burning later than
+      the usual bedtime of the chateau, in one of the turret chambers at
+      Lizerolles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In vain Fred denied that he was doing anything, in vain he tried to put
+      his papers out of sight; his mother was so persuasive that at last he
+      owned everything to her, and in addition to the comfort he derived from
+      his confession, he gained a certain satisfaction to his &lsquo;amour-propre&rsquo;,
+      for Madame d&rsquo;Argy thought the verses beautiful. A mother&rsquo;s geese are
+      always swans. But it was only when she said, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why you should
+      not marry your Jacqueline&mdash;such a thing is not by any means
+      impossible,&rdquo; and promised to do all in her power to insure his happiness,
+      that Fred felt how dearly he loved his mother. Oh, a thousand times more
+      than he had ever supposed he loved her! However, he had not yet done with
+      the agonies that lie in wait for lovers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame de Monredon arrived one day at the Hotel de la Plage, accompanied
+      by her granddaughter, whom she had taken away from the convent before the
+      beginning of the holidays. Since she had fully arranged the marriage with
+      M. de Talbrun, it seemed important that Giselle should acquire some
+      liveliness, and recruit her health, before the fatal wedding-day arrived.
+      M. de Talbrun liked ladies to be always well and always lively, and it was
+      her duty to see that Giselle accommodated herself to his taste;
+      sea-bathing, life in the open air, and merry companions, were the things
+      she needed to make her a little less thin, to give her tone, and to take
+      some of her convent stiffness out of her. Besides, she could have free
+      intercourse with her intended husband, thanks to the greater freedom of
+      manners permitted at the sea-side. Such were the ideas of Madame de
+      Monredon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Giselle! In vain they dressed her in fine clothes, in vain they
+      talked to her and scolded her from morning till night, she continued to be
+      the little convent-bred schoolgirl she had always been; with downcast
+      eyes, pale as a flower that has known no sunlight, and timid to a point of
+      suffering. M. de Talbrun frightened her as much as ever, and she had
+      looked forward to the comfort of weeping in the arms of Jacqueline, who,
+      the last time she had seen her, had been herself so unhappy. But what was
+      her astonishment to find the young girl, who, a few weeks before, had made
+      her such tragic confidences through the grille in the convent parlor,
+      transformed into a creature bent on excitement and amusement. When she
+      attempted to allude to the subject on which Jacqueline had spoken to her
+      at the convent, and to ask her what it was that had then made her so
+      unhappy, Jacqueline cried: &ldquo;Oh! my dear, I have forgotten all about it!&rdquo;
+       But there was exaggeration in this profession of forgetfulness, and she
+      hurriedly drew Giselle back to the game of croquet, where they were joined
+      by M. de Talbrun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The future husband of Giselle was a stout young fellow, short and
+      thick-set, with broad shoulders, a large flat face, and strong jaws,
+      ornamented with an enormous pair of whiskers, which partly compensated him
+      for a loss of hair. He had never done anything but shoot and hunt over his
+      property nine months in the year, and spend the other three months in
+      Paris, where the jockey Club and ballet-dancers sufficed for his
+      amusement. He did not pretend to be a man whose bachelor life had been
+      altogether blameless, but he considered himself to be a &ldquo;correct&rdquo; man,
+      according to what he understood by that expression, which implied neither
+      talents, virtues, nor good manners; nevertheless, all the Blue Band agreed
+      that he was a finished type of gentleman-hood. Even Raoul&rsquo;s sisters had to
+      confess, with a certain disgust, that, whatever people may say, in our own
+      day the aristocracy of wealth has to lower its flag before the authentic
+      quarterings of the old noblesse. They secretly envied Giselle because she
+      was going to be a grande dame, while all the while they asserted that
+      old-fashioned distinctions had no longer any meaning. Nevertheless, they
+      looked forward to the day when they, too, might take their places in the
+      Faubourg St. Germain. One may purchase that luxury with a fortune of eight
+      hundred thousand francs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The croquet-ground, which was underwater at high tide, was a long stretch
+      of sand that fringed the shingle. Two parties were formed, in which care
+      was taken to make both sides as nearly equal as possible, after which the
+      game began, with screams, with laughter, a little cheating and some
+      disputes, as is the usual custom. All this appeared to amuse Oscar de
+      Talbrun&mdash;exceedingly. For the first time during his wooing he was not
+      bored. The Misses Sparks&mdash;Kate and Nora&mdash;by their &ldquo;high spirits&rdquo;
+       agreeably reminded him of one or two excursions he had made in past days
+      into Bohemian society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He formed the highest opinion of Jacqueline when he saw how her still
+      short skirts showed pretty striped silk stockings, and how her well-shaped
+      foot was planted firmly on a blue ball, when she was preparing to roquer
+      the red one. The way in which he fixed his eyes upon her gave great
+      offense to Fred, and did it not alarm and shock Giselle? No! Giselle
+      looked on calmly at the fun and talk around her, as unmoved as the stump
+      of a tree, spoiling the game sometimes by her ignorance or her
+      awkwardness, well satisfied that M. de Talbrun should leave her alone.
+      Talking with him was very distasteful to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have been more stupid than usual,&rdquo; had been what her grandmother had
+      never failed to say to her in Paris after one of his visits, which he
+      alternated with bouquets. But at Treport no one seemed to mind her being
+      stupid, and indeed M. de Talbrun hardly thought of her existence, up to
+      the moment when they were all nearly caught by the first wave that came
+      rolling in over the croquet-ground, when all the girls took flight,
+      flushed, animated, and with lively gesticulation, while the gentlemen
+      followed with the box into which had been hastily flung hoops, balls, and
+      mallets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On their way Count Oscar condescendingly explained to Fred, as to a
+      novice, that the only good thing about croquet was that it brought men and
+      girls together. He was himself very good at games, he said, having
+      remarkably firm muscles and exceptionally sharp sight; but he went on to
+      add that he had not been able to show what he could do that day. The wet
+      sand did not make so good a croquet-ground as the one he had had made in
+      his park! It is a good thing to know one&rsquo;s ground in all circumstances,
+      but especially in playing croquet. Then, dexterously passing from the game
+      to the players, he went on to say, under cover of giving Fred a warning,
+      that a man need not fear going too far with those girls from America&mdash;they
+      had known how to flirt from the time they were born. They could look out
+      for themselves, they had talons and beaks; but up to a certain point they
+      were very easy to get on with. Those other players were queer little
+      things; the three sisters Wermant were not wanting in chic, but, hang it!&mdash;the
+      sweetest flower of them all, to his mind, was the tall one, the dark one&mdash;unripe
+      fruit in perfection! &ldquo;And a year or two hence,&rdquo; added M. de Talbrun, with
+      all the self-confidence of an expert, &ldquo;every one will be talking about her
+      in the world of society.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Fred kept silent, trying to curb his wrath. But the blood mounted to
+      his temples as he listened to these remarks, poured into his ear by a man
+      of thirty-five, between puffs of his cigar, because there was nobody else
+      to whom he could make them. But they seemed to Fred very ill-mannered and
+      ill-timed. If he had not dreaded making himself absurd, he would gladly
+      have stood forth as the champion of the Sparks, the Wermants, and all the
+      other members of the Blue Band, so that he might give vent to the anger
+      raging in his heart on hearing that odious compliment to Jacqueline. Why
+      was he not old enough to marry her? What right had that detestable Talbrun
+      to take notice of any girl but his fiancee? If he himself could marry now,
+      his choice would soon be made! No doubt, later&mdash;as his mother had
+      said to him. But would Jacqueline wait? Everybody was beginning to admire
+      her. Somebody would carry her off&mdash;somebody would cut him out while
+      he was away at sea. Oh, horrible thought for a young lover!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night, at the Casino, while dancing a quadrille with Giselle, he
+      could not refrain from saying to her, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you object to Monsieur de
+      Talbrun&rsquo;s dancing so much with Jacqueline?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&mdash;I?&rdquo; she cried, astonished, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why he should not.&rdquo;
+       And then, with a faint laugh, she added: &ldquo;Oh, if she would only take him&mdash;and
+      keep him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Madame de Monredon kept a sharp eye upon M. de Talbrun. &ldquo;It seems to
+      me,&rdquo; she said, looking fixedly into the face of her future
+      grandson-in-law, &ldquo;that you really take pleasure in making children skip
+      about with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I do,&rdquo; he replied, frankly and good-humoredly. &ldquo;It makes me feel young
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Madame de Monredon was satisfied. She was ready to admit that most men
+      marry women who have not particularly enchanted them, and she had brought
+      up Giselle with all those passive qualities, which, together with a large
+      fortune, usually suit best with a &lsquo;mariage de convenance&rsquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Jacqueline piqued herself upon her worldly wisdom, which she
+      looked upon as equal to Madame de Monredon&rsquo;s, since the terrible event
+      which had filled her mind with doubts. She thought M. de Talbrun would do
+      well enough for a husband, and she took care to say so to Giselle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a fact,&rdquo; she told her, with all the self-confidence of large
+      experience, &ldquo;that men who are very fascinating always remain bachelors.
+      That is probably why Monsieur de Cymier, Madame de Villegry&rsquo;s handsome
+      cousin, does not think of marrying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was mistaken. The Comte de Cymier, a satellite who revolved around
+      that star of beauty, Madame de Villegry, had been by degrees brought round
+      by that lady herself to thoughts of matrimony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame de Villegry, notwithstanding her profuse use of henna and many
+      cosmetics, which was always the first thing to strike those who saw her,
+      prided herself on being uncompromised as to her moral character. There are
+      some women who, because they stop short of actual vice, consider
+      themselves irreproachable. They are willing, so to speak, to hang out the
+      bush, but keep no tavern. In former times an appearance of evil was
+      avoided in order to cover evil deeds, but at present there are those who,
+      under the cover of being only &ldquo;fast,&rdquo; risk the appearance of evil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame de Villegry was what is sometimes called a &ldquo;professional beauty.&rdquo;
+       She devoted many hours daily to her toilette, she liked to have a crowd of
+      admirers around her. But when one of them became too troublesome, she got
+      rid of him by persuading him to marry. She had before this proposed
+      several young girls to Gerard de Cymier, each one plainer and more
+      insignificant than the others. It was to tell his dear friend that the one
+      she had last suggested was positively too ugly for him, that the young
+      attache to an embassy had come down to the sea-side to visit her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day after his arrival he was sitting on the shingle at Madame de
+      Villegry&rsquo;s feet, both much amused by the grotesque spectacle presented by
+      the bathers, who exhibited themselves in all degrees of ugliness and
+      deformity. Of course Madame de Villegry did not bathe, being, as she said,
+      too nervous. She was sitting under a large parasol and enjoying her own
+      superiority over those wretched, amphibious creatures who waddled on the
+      sands before her, comparing Madame X to a seal and Mademoiselle Z to the
+      skeleton of a cuttle-fish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well! it was that kind of thing you wished me to marry,&rdquo; said M. de
+      Cymier, in a tone of resentment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my poor friend, what would you have? All young girls are like that.
+      They improve when they are married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If one could only be sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One is never sure of anything, especially anything relating to young
+      girls. One can not say that they do more than exist till they are married.
+      A husband has to make whatever he chooses out of them. You are quite
+      capable of making what you choose of your wife. Take the risk, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could educate her as to morals&mdash;though, I must say, I am not much
+      used to that kind of instruction; but you will permit me to think that, as
+      to person, I should at least wish to see a rough sketch of what I may
+      expect in my wife before my marriage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment, a girl who had been bathing came out of the water a few
+      yards from them; the elegant outline of her slender figure, clad in a
+      bathing-suit of white flannel, which clung to her closely, was thrown into
+      strong relief by the clear blue background of a summer sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tiens!&mdash;but she is pretty!&rdquo; cried Gerard, breaking off what he was
+      saying: &ldquo;And she is the first pretty one I have seen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame de Villegry took up her tortoiseshell opera-glasses, which were
+      fastened to her waist, but already the young girl, over whose shoulders an
+      attentive servant had flung a wrapper&mdash;a &lsquo;peignoir-eponge&rsquo;&mdash;had
+      run along the boardwalk and stopped before her, with a gay &ldquo;Good-morning!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jacqueline!&rdquo; said Madame de Villegry. &ldquo;Well, my dear child, did you find
+      the water pleasant?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Delightful!&rdquo; said the young girl, giving a rapid glance at M. de Cymier,
+      who had risen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was looking at her with evident admiration, an admiration at which she
+      felt much flattered. She was closely wrapped in her soft, snow-white
+      peignoir, bordered with red, above which rose her lovely neck and head.
+      She was trying to catch, on the point of one little foot, one of her
+      bathing shoes, which had slipped from her. The foot which, when well shod,
+      M. de Talbrun, through his eyeglass, had so much admired, was still
+      prettier without shoe or stocking. It was so perfectly formed, so white,
+      with a little pink tinge here and there, and it was set upon so delicate
+      an ankle! M. de Cymier looked first at the foot, and then his glance
+      passed upward over all the rest of the young figure, which could be seen
+      clearly under the clinging folds of the wet drapery. Her form could be
+      discerned from head to foot, though nothing was uncovered but the pretty
+      little arm which held together with a careless grace the folds of her
+      raiment. The eye of the experienced observer ran rapidly over the outline
+      of her figure, till it reached the dark head and the brown hair, which
+      rippled in little curls over her forehead. Her complexion, slightly
+      golden, was not protected by one of those absurd hats which many bathers
+      place on top of oiled silk caps which fit them closely. Neither was the
+      precaution of oiled silk wanted to protect the thick and curling hair, now
+      sprinkled with great drops that shone like pearls and diamonds. The water,
+      instead of plastering her hair upon her temples, had made it more curly
+      and more fleecy, as it hung over her dark eyebrows, which, very near
+      together at the nose, gave to her eyes a peculiar, slightly oblique
+      expression. Her teeth were dazzling, and were displayed by the smile which
+      parted her lips&mdash;lips which were, if anything, too red for her pale
+      complexion. She closed her eyelids now and then to shade her eyes from the
+      too blinding sunlight. Those eyes were not black, but that hazel which has
+      golden streaks. Though only half open, they had quickly taken in the fact
+      that the young man sitting beside Madame de Villegry was very handsome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she went on with a swift step to her bathing-house, she drew out two
+      long pins from her back hair, shaking it and letting it fall down her back
+      with a slightly impatient and imperious gesture; she wished, probably,
+      that it might dry more quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The devil!&rdquo; said M. de Cymier, watching her till she disappeared into the
+      bathing-house. &ldquo;I never should have thought that it was all her own! There
+      is nothing wanting in her. That is a young creature it is pleasant to
+      see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Madame de Villegry, quietly, &ldquo;she will be very good-looking
+      when she is eighteen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she nearly eighteen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is and she is not, for time passes so quickly. A girl goes to sleep a
+      child, and wakes up old enough to be married. Would you like to be
+      informed, without loss of time, as to her fortune?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I should not care much about her dot. I look out first for other
+      things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, of course; but Jacqueline de Nailles comes of a very good
+      family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she the daughter of the deputy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, his only daughter. He has a pretty house in the Parc Monceau and a
+      chateau of some importance in the Haute-Vienne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good; but, I repeat, I am not mercenary. Of course, if I should
+      marry, I should like, for my wife&rsquo;s sake, to live as well as a married man
+      as I have lived as a bachelor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which means that you would be satisfied with a fortune equal to your own.
+      I should have thought you might have asked more. It is true that if you
+      have been suddenly thunderstruck that may alter your calculations&mdash;for
+      it was very sudden, was it not? Venus rising from the sea!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please don&rsquo;t exaggerate! But you are not so cruel, seeing you are always
+      urging me to marry, as to wish me to take a wife who looks like a fright
+      or a horror.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heaven preserve me from any such wish! I should be very glad if my little
+      friend Jacqueline were destined to work your reformation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I defy the most careful parent to find anything against me at this
+      moment, unless it be a platonic devotion. The youth of Mademoiselle de
+      Nailles is an advantage, for I might indulge myself in that till we were
+      married, and then I should settle down and leave Paris, where nothing
+      keeps me but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But a foolish fancy,&rdquo; laughed Madame de Villegry. &ldquo;However, in return for
+      your madrigal, accept the advice of a friend. The Nailles seem to me to be
+      prosperous, but everybody in society appears so, and one never knows what
+      may happen any day. You would not do amiss if, before you go on, you were
+      to talk with Wermant, the &lsquo;agent de change&rsquo;, who has a considerable
+      knowledge of the business affairs of Jacqueline&rsquo;s father. He could tell
+      you about them better than I can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wermant is at Treport, is he not? I thought I saw him&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he is here till Monday. You have twenty-four hours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you really think I am in such a hurry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you take a bet that by this time to-morrow you will not know exactly
+      the amount of her dot and the extent of her expectations?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would lose. I have something else to think of&mdash;now and always.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; she said, carelessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have forbidden me ever to mention it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Silence ensued. Then Madame de Villegry said, smiling:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you would like me to present you this evening to my friends the
+      De Nailles?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And in fact they all met that evening at the Casino, and Jacqueline, in a
+      gown of scarlet foulard, which would have been too trying for any other
+      girl, seemed to M. de Cymier as pretty as she had been in her
+      bathing-costume. Her hair was not dressed high, but it was gathered
+      loosely together and confined by a ribbon of the same color as her gown,
+      and she wore a little sailor hat besides. In this costume she had been
+      called by M. de Talbrun the &ldquo;Fra Diavolo of the Seas,&rdquo; and she never
+      better supported that part, by liveliness and audacity, than she did that
+      evening, when she made a conquest that was envied&mdash;wildly envied&mdash;by
+      the three Demoiselles Wermant and the two Misses Sparks, for the handsome
+      Gerard, after his first waltz with Madame de Villegry, asked no one to be
+      his partner but Mademoiselle de Nailles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girls whom he neglected had not even Fred to fall back upon, for Fred,
+      the night before, had received orders to join his ship. He had taken leave
+      of Jacqueline with a pang in his heart which he could hardly hide, but to
+      which no keen emotion on her part seemed to respond. However, at least, he
+      was spared the unhappiness of seeing the star of De Cymier rising above
+      the horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he could only see me,&rdquo; thought Jacqueline, waltzing in triumph with M.
+      de Cymier. &ldquo;If he could only see me I should be avenged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was not Fred. She was not giving him a thought. It was the last
+      flash of resentment and hatred that came to her in that moment of triumph,
+      adding to it a touch of exquisite enjoyment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus she performed the obsequies of her first love!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not long after this M. de Nailles said to his wife:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know, my dear, that our little Jacqueline is very much admired?
+      Her success has been extraordinary. It is not likely she will die an old
+      maid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Baronne assented rather reluctantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wermant was speaking to me the other day,&rdquo; went on M. de Nailles. &ldquo;It
+      seems that that young Count de Cymier, who is always hanging around you,
+      by the way, has been making inquiries of him, in a manner that looks as if
+      it had some meaning, as to what is our fortune, our position. But really,
+      such a match seems too good to be true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why so?&rdquo; said the Baronne. &ldquo;I know more about it than you do, from
+      Blanche de Villegry. She gave me to understand that her cousin was much
+      struck by Jacqueline at first sight, and ever since she does nothing but
+      talk to me of M. de Cymier&mdash;of his birth, his fortune, his abilities&mdash;the
+      charming young fellow seems gifted with everything. He could be Secretary
+      of Legation, if he liked to quit Paris: In the meantime attache to an
+      Embassy looks very well on a card. Attache to the Ministry of the Foreign
+      Affairs does not seem so good. Jacqueline would be a countess, possibly an
+      ambassadress. What would you think of that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame de Nailles, who understood policy much better than her husband, had
+      suddenly become a convert to opportunism, and had made a change of base.
+      Not being able to devise a plan by which to suppress her young rival, she
+      had begun to think that her best way to get rid of her would be by
+      promoting her marriage. The little girl was fast developing into a woman&mdash;a
+      woman who would certainly not consent quietly to be set aside. Well, then,
+      it would be best to dispose of her in so natural a way. When Jacqueline&rsquo;s
+      slender and graceful figure and the freshness of her bloom were no longer
+      brought into close comparison with her own charms, she felt she should
+      appear much younger, and should recover some of her prestige; people would
+      be less likely to remark her increasing stoutness, or the red spots on her
+      face, increased by the salt air which was so favorable to young girls&rsquo; 
+      complexions. Yes, Jacqueline must be married; that was the resolution to
+      which Madame de Nailles had come after several nights of sleeplessness. It
+      was her fixed idea, replacing in her brain that other fixed idea which,
+      willingly or unwillingly, she saw she must give up&mdash;the idea of
+      keeping her stepdaughter in the shade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Countess! Ambassadress!&rdquo; repeated M. de Nailles, with rather a melancholy
+      smile. &ldquo;You are going too fast, my dear Clotilde. I don&rsquo;t doubt that
+      Wermant gave the best possible account of our situation; but when it comes
+      to saying what I could give her as a dot, I am very much afraid. We should
+      have, in that case, to fall back on Fred, for I have not told you
+      everything. This morning Madame d&rsquo;Argy, who has done nothing but weep
+      since her boy went away, and who, she says, never will get accustomed to
+      the life of misery and anxiety she will lead as a sailor&rsquo;s mother,
+      exclaimed, as she was talking to me: &lsquo;Ah! there is but one way of keeping
+      him at Lizerolles, of having him live there as the D&rsquo;Argys have lived
+      before him, quietly, like a good landlord, and that would be to give him
+      your daughter; with her he would be entirely satisfied.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! so that is the reason why she asked whether Jacqueline might not stay
+      with her when we go to Italy! She wishes to court her by proxy. But I
+      don&rsquo;t think she will succeed. Monsieur de Cymier has the best chance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you suppose the child suspects&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That he admires her? My dear friend, we have to do with a very sharp&mdash;sighted
+      young person. Nothing escapes the observation of Mademoiselle &lsquo;votre
+      fille&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Madame de Nailles, in her turn, smiled somewhat bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Jacqueline&rsquo;s father, after a few moments&rsquo; reflection, &ldquo;it may
+      be as well that she should weigh for and against a match before deciding.
+      She may spend several years that are difficult and dangerous trying to
+      find out what she wants and to make up her mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Several years?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hang it! You would not marry off Jacqueline at once?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah! many a girl, practically not as old as she, is married at sixteen or
+      seventeen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why! I fancied you thought so differently!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our ways of thinking are sometimes altered by events, especially when
+      they are founded upon sincere and disinterested affection.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like that of good parents, such as we are,&rdquo; added M. de Nailles, ending
+      her sentence with an expression of grateful emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For one moment the Baronne paled under this compliment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you say to Madame d&rsquo;Argy?&rdquo; she hastened to ask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said we must give the young fellow&rsquo;s beard time to grow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that was right. I prefer Monsieur de Cymier a hundred times over.
+      Still, if nothing better offers&mdash;a bird in the hand, you know&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame de Nailles finished her sentence by a wave of her fan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! our bird in the hand is not to be despised. A very handsome estate&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where Jacqueline would be bored to death. I should rather see her radiant
+      at some foreign court. Let me manage it. Let me bring her out. Give me
+      carte blanche and let me have some society this winter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame de Nailles, whether she knew it or not&mdash;probably she did, for
+      she had great skill in reading the thoughts of others&mdash;was acting
+      precisely in accordance with the wishes or the will of Jacqueline, who,
+      having found much enjoyment in the dances at the Casino, had made up her
+      mind that she meant to come out into society before any of her young
+      companions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not have to beg and implore her,&rdquo; she said to herself,
+      anticipating the objections of her stepmother. &ldquo;I shall only have politely
+      to let her suspect that such a thing may have occurred as having had a
+      listener at a door. I paid dearly enough for this hold over her. I have no
+      scruple in using it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame de Nailles was not mistaken in her stepdaughter; she was very far
+      advanced beyond her age, thanks to the cruel wrong that had been done her
+      by the loss of her trust in her elders and her respect for them. Her heart
+      had had its past, though she was still hardly more than a child&mdash;a
+      sad past, though its pain was being rapidly effaced. She now thought about
+      it only at intervals. Time and circumstances were operating on her as they
+      act upon us generally; only in her case more quickly than usual, which
+      produced in her character and feelings phenomena that might have seemed
+      curious to an observer. She was something of a woman, something of a
+      child, something of a philosopher. At night, when she was dancing with
+      Wermant, or Cymier, or even Talbrun, or on horseback, an exercise which
+      all the Blues were wild about, she was an audacious flirt, a girl up to
+      anything; and in the morning, at low tide, she might be seen, with her
+      legs and feet bare, among the children, of whom there were many on the
+      sands, digging ditches, making ramparts, constructing towers and
+      fortifications in wet sand, herself as much amused as if she had been one
+      of the babies themselves. There was screaming and jumping, and rushing out
+      of reach of the waves which came up ready to overthrow the most
+      complicated labors of the little architects, rough romping of all kinds,
+      enough to amaze and disconcert a lover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But no one could have guessed at the thoughts which, in the midst of all
+      this fun and frolic, were passing through the too early ripened mind of
+      Jacqueline. She was thinking that many things to which we attach great
+      value and importance in this world are as easily swept away as the sand
+      barriers raised against the sea by childish hands; that everywhere there
+      must be flux and reflux, that the beach the children had so dug up would
+      soon become smooth as a mirror, ready for other little ones to dig it over
+      again, tempting them to work, and yet discouraging their industry. Her
+      heart, she thought, was like the sand, ready for new impressions. The
+      elegant form of M. de Cymier slightly overshadowed it, distinct among
+      other shadows more confused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Jacqueline said to herself with a smile, exactly what her father and
+      Madame de Nailles had said to each other:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Countess!&mdash;who knows? Ambassadress! Perhaps&mdash;some day&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. A PUZZLING CORRESPONDENCE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I can not see any reason why we should not take Jacqueline with us to
+      Italy. She is just of an age to profit by it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These words were spoken by M. de Nailles after a long silence at the
+      breakfast-table. They startled his hearers like a bomb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline waited to hear what would come next, fixing a keen look upon
+      her stepmother. Their eyes met like the flash of two swords.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The eyes of the one said: &ldquo;Now, let us hear what you will answer!&rdquo; while
+      the other strove to maintain that calmness which comes to some people in a
+      moment of danger. The Baroness grew a little pale, and then said, in her
+      softest tones:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are quite right, &lsquo;mon ami&rsquo;, but Jacqueline, I think, prefers to
+      stay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I decidedly prefer to stay,&rdquo; said Jacqueline.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her adversary, much relieved by this response, could not repress a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems singular,&rdquo; said M. de Nailles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! that I prefer to pass a month or six weeks with Madame d&rsquo;Argy?
+      Besides, Giselle is going to be married during that time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They might put it off until we come back, I should suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I don&rsquo;t think they would,&rdquo; cried the Baroness. &ldquo;Madame de Monredon is
+      so selfish. She was offended to think we should talk of going away on the
+      eve of an event she considers so important. Besides, she has so little
+      regard for me that I should think her more likely to hasten the
+      wedding-day rather than retard it, if it were only for the pleasure of
+      giving us a lesson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry. I should have been glad to be, as she wished, one of
+      Giselle&rsquo;s witnesses, but people don&rsquo;t take my position into consideration.
+      If I do not take advantage of the recess&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; interrupted Jacqueline, carelessly, &ldquo;your journey must coincide
+      with that of Monsieur Marien.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had the pleasure of seeing her stepmother again slightly change color.
+      Madame de Nailles was pouring out for herself a cup of tea with singular
+      care and attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said M. de Nailles. His daughter pitied him, and cried, with
+      an increasing wish to annoy her stepmother: &ldquo;Mamma, don&rsquo;t you see that
+      your teapot has no tea in it? Yes,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;it must be delightful to
+      travel in Italy in company with a great artist who would explain
+      everything; but then one would be expected to visit all the
+      picture-galleries, and I hate pictures, since&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused and again looked meaningly at her stepmother, whose soft blue
+      eyes showed anguish of spirit, and seemed to say: &ldquo;Oh, what a cruel hold
+      she has upon me!&rdquo; Jacqueline continued, carelessly&mdash;&ldquo;Picture-galleries
+      I don&rsquo;t care for&mdash;I like nature a hundred times better. Some day I
+      should like to take a journey to suit myself, my own journey! Oh, papa,
+      may I? A journey on foot with you in the Tyrol?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame de Nailles was no great walker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Both of us, just you and I alone, with our alpenstocks in our hands&mdash;it
+      would be lovely! But Italy and painters&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, with a boyish flourish of her hands, she seemed to send that classic
+      land to Jericho!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do promise me, papa!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before asking a reward, you must deserve it,&rdquo; said her father, severely,
+      who saw something was wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During her stay at Lizerolles, which her perverseness, her resentment, and
+      a repugnance founded on instincts of delicacy, had made her prefer to a
+      journey to Italy, Jacqueline, having nothing better to do, took it into
+      her head to write to her friend Fred. The young man received three letters
+      at three different ports in the Mediterranean and in the West Indies,
+      whose names were long associated in his mind with delightful and cruel
+      recollections. When the first was handed to him with one from his mother,
+      whose letters always awaited him at every stopping-place, the blood flew
+      to his face, his heart beat violently, he could have cried aloud but for
+      the necessity of self-command in the presence of his comrades, who had
+      already remarked in whispers to each other, and with envy, on the pink
+      envelope, which exhaled &lsquo;l&rsquo;odor di femina&rsquo;. He hid his treasure quickly,
+      and carried it to a spot where he could be alone; then he kissed the bold,
+      pointed handwriting that he recognized at once, though never before had it
+      written his address. He kissed, too, more than once, the pink seal with a
+      J on it, whose slender elegance reminded him of its owner. Hardly did he
+      dare to break the seal; then forgetting altogether, as we might be sure,
+      his mother&rsquo;s letter, which he knew beforehand was full of good advice and
+      expressions of affection, he eagerly read this, which he had not expected
+      to receive:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+               &ldquo;LIZEROLLES, October, 5, 188-
+
+   &ldquo;MY DEAR FRED:
+
+   &ldquo;Your mother thinks you would be pleased to receive a letter from
+   me, and I hope you will be. You need not answer this if you do not
+   care to do so. You will notice, &lsquo;par parenthese&rsquo;, that I take this
+   opportunity of saying you and not thou to you. It is easier to
+   change the familiar mode of address in writing than in speaking, and
+   when we meet again the habit will have become confirmed. But, as I
+   write, it will require great attention, and I can not promise to
+   keep to it to the end. Half an hour&rsquo;s chat with an old friend will
+   also help me to pass the time, which I own seems rather long, as it
+   is passed by your sweet, dear mother and myself at Lizerolles. Oh,
+   if you were only here it would be different! In the first place,
+   we should talk less of a certain Fred, which would be one great
+   advantage. You must know that you are the subject of our discourse
+   from morning to night; we talk only of the dangers of the seas, the
+   future prospects of a seaman, and all the rest of it. If the wind
+   is a little higher than usual, your mother begins to cry; she is
+   sure you are battling with a tempest. If any fishing-boat is
+   wrecked, we talk of nothing but shipwrecks; and I am asked to join
+   in another novena, in addition to those with which we must have
+   already wearied Notre Dame de Treport. Every evening we spread out
+   the map: &lsquo;See, Jacqueline, he must be here now&mdash;no, he is almost
+   there,&rsquo; and lines of red ink are traced from one port to another,
+   and little crosses are made to show the places where we hope you
+   will get your letters&mdash;&lsquo;Poor boy, poor, dear boy!&rsquo; In short,
+   notwithstanding all the affectionate interest I take in you, this is
+   sometimes too much for me. In fact, I think I must be very fond of
+   thee not to have grown positively to hate thee for all this fuss.
+   There! In this last sentence, instead of saying you, I have said
+   thee! That ought to gild the pill for you!
+
+   &ldquo;We do not go very frequently to visit Treport, except to invoke for
+   you the protection of Heaven, and I like it just as well, for since
+   the last fortnight in September, which was very rainy, the beach is
+   dismal&mdash;so different from what it was in the summer. The town looks
+   gloomy under a cloudy sky with its blackened old brick houses! We
+   are better off at Lizerolles, whose autumnal beauties you know so
+   well that I will say nothing about them.&mdash;Oh, Fred, how often I
+   regret that I am not a boy! I could take your gun and go shooting
+   in the swamps, where there are clouds of ducks now. I feel sure
+   that if you were in my place, you could kill time without killing
+   game; but I am at the end of my small resources when I have played a
+   little on the piano to amuse your mother and have read her the
+   &lsquo;Gazette de France&rsquo;. In the evening we read a translation of some
+   English novel. There are neighbors, of course, old fogies who stay
+   all the year round in Picardy&mdash;but, tell me, don&rsquo;t you find them
+   sometimes a little too respectable? My greatest comfort is in your
+   dog, who loves me as much as if I were his master, though I can not
+   take him out shooting. While I write he is lying on the hem of my
+   gown and makes a little noise, as much as to tell me that I recall
+   you to his remembrance. Yet you are not to suppose that I am
+   suffering from ennui, or am ungrateful, nor above all must you
+   imagine that I have ceased to love your excellent mother with all my
+   heart. I love her, on the contrary, more than ever since I passed
+   this winter through a great, great sorrow&mdash;a sorrow which is now
+   only a sad remembrance, but which has changed for me the face of
+   everything in this world. Yes, since I have suffered myself, I
+   understand your mother. I admire her, I love her more than ever.
+
+   &ldquo;How happy you are, my dear Fred, to have such a sweet mother,&mdash;
+   a real mother who never thinks about her face, or her figure, or her
+   age, but only of the success of her son; a dear little mother in a
+   plain black gown, and with pretty gray hair, who has the manners and
+   the toilette that just suit her, who somehow always seems to say:
+   &lsquo;I care for nothing but that which affects my son.&rsquo; Such mothers are
+   rare, believe me. Those that I know, the mothers of my friends, are
+   for the most part trying to appear as young as their daughters&mdash;nay,
+   prettier, and of course more elegant. When they have sons they make
+   them wear jackets a l&rsquo;anglaise and turn-down collars, up to the age
+   when I wore short skirts. Have you noticed that nowadays in Paris
+   there are only ladies who are young, or who are trying to make
+   themselves appear so? Up to the last moment they powder and paint,
+   and try to make themselves different from what age has made them.
+   If their hair was black it grows blacker&mdash;if red, it is more red.
+   But there is no longer any gray hair in Paris&mdash;it is out of fashion.
+   That is the reason why I think your mother&rsquo;s pretty silver curls so
+   lovely and &lsquo;distingues&rsquo;. I kiss them every night for you, after I
+   have kissed them for myself.
+
+   &ldquo;Have a good voyage, come back soon, and take care of yourself, dear
+   Fred.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The young sailor read this letter over and over again. The more he read it
+      the more it puzzled him. Most certainly he felt that Jacqueline gave him a
+      great proof of confidence when she spoke to him of some mysterious
+      unhappiness, an unhappiness of which it was evident her stepmother was the
+      cause. He could see that much; but he was infinitely far from suspecting
+      the nature of the woes to which she alluded. Poor Jacqueline! He pitied
+      her without knowing what for, with a great outburst of sympathy, and an
+      honest desire to do anything in the world to make her happy. Was it really
+      possible that she could have been enduring any grief that summer when she
+      had seemed so madly gay, so ready for a little flirtation? Young girls
+      must be very skilful in concealing their inmost feelings! When he was
+      unhappy he had it out by himself, he took refuge in solitude, he wanted to
+      be done with existence. Everybody knew when anything went wrong with him.
+      Why could not Jacqueline have let him know more plainly what it was that
+      troubled her, and why could she not have shown a little tenderness toward
+      him, instead of assuming, even when she said the kindest things to him,
+      her air of mockery? And then, though she might pretend not to find
+      Lizerolles stupid, he could see that she was bored there. Yet why had she
+      chosen to stay at Lizerolles rather than go to Italy?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alas! how that little pink letter made him reflect and guess, and turn
+      things over in his mind, and wish himself at the devil&mdash;that little
+      pink letter which he carried day and night on his breast and made it
+      crackle as it lay there, when he laid his hand on the satin folds so near
+      his heart! It had an odor of sweet violets which seemed to him to
+      overpower the smell of pitch and of salt water, to fill the air, to
+      perfume everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That young fellow has the instincts of a sailor,&rdquo; said his superior
+      officers when they saw him standing in attitudes which they thought
+      denoted observation, though with him it was only reverie. He would stand
+      with his eyes fixed upon some distant point, whence he fancied he could
+      see emerging from the waves a small, brown, shining head, with long hair
+      streaming behind, the head of a girl swimming, a girl he knew so well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One can see that he takes an interest in nautical phenomena, that he is
+      heart and soul in his profession, that he cares for nothing else. Oh,
+      he&rsquo;ll make a sailor! We may be sure of that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred sent his young friend and cousin, by way of reply, a big packet of
+      manuscript, the leaves of which were of all sizes, over which he had
+      poured forth torrents of poetry, amorous and descriptive, under the title:
+      At Sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never would he have dared to show her this if the ocean had not lain
+      between them. He was frightened when his packet had been sent. His only
+      comfort was in the thought that he had hypocritically asked Jacqueline for
+      her literary opinion of his verses; but she could not fail, he thought, to
+      understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Long before an answer could have been expected, he got another letter,
+      sky-blue this time, much longer than the first, giving him an account of
+      Giselle&rsquo;s wedding.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;Your mother and I went together to Normandy, where the marriage was
+   to take place after the manner of old times, &lsquo;in the fashion of the
+   Middle Ages,&rsquo; as our friends the Wermants said to me, who might
+   perhaps not have laughed at it had they been invited. Madame de
+   Monredon is all for old customs, and she had made it a great point
+   that the wedding should not take place in Paris. Had I been
+   Giselle, I should not have liked it. I know nothing more elegant or
+   more solemn than the entrance of a bridal party into the Madeleine,
+   but we shall have to be content with Saint-Augustin. Still, the
+   toilettes, as they pass up the aisle, even there, are very
+   effective, and the decoration of the tall, high altar is
+   magnificent. Toc! Toc! First come the beadles with their
+   halberds, then the loud notes of the organ, then the wide doors are
+   thrown open, making a noise as they turn on their great hinges,
+   letting the noise of carriages outside be heard in the church; and
+   then comes the bride in a ray of sunshine. I could wish for nothing
+   more. A grand wedding in the country is much more quiet, but it is
+   old-fashioned. In the little village church the guests were very
+   much crowded, and outside there was a great mob of country folk.
+   Carpets had been laid down over the dilapidated pavement, composed
+   principally of tombstones. The rough walls were hung with scarlet.
+   All the clergy of the neighborhood were present. A Monsignor&mdash;
+   related to the Talbruns&mdash;pronounced the nuptial benediction; his
+   address was a panegyric on the two families. He gave us to
+   understand that if he did not go back quite as far as the Crusades,
+   it was only because time was wanting.
+
+   &ldquo;Madame de Monredon was all-glorious, of course. She certainly
+   looked like an old vulture, in a pelisse of gray velvet, with a
+   chinchilla boa round her long, bare neck, and her big beak, with
+   marabouts overshadowing it, of the same color. Monsieur de Talbrun
+   &mdash;well! Monsieur de Talbrun was very bald, as bald as he could be.
+   To make up for the want of hair on his head, he has plenty of it on
+   his hands. It is horrid, and it makes him look like an animal. You
+   have no idea how queer he looked when he sat down, with his big,
+   pink head just peeping over the back of the crimson velvet chair,
+   which was, however, almost as tall as he is. He is short, you may
+   remember. As to our poor Giselle, the prettiest persons sometimes
+   look badly as brides, and those who are not pretty look ugly. Do
+   you recollect that picture&mdash;by Velasquez, is it not? of a fair
+   little Infanta stiffly swathed in cloth of gold, as becomes her
+   dignity, and looking crushed by it? Giselle&rsquo;s gown was of point
+   d&rsquo;Alencon, old family lace as yellow as ancient parchment, but of
+   inestimable value. Her long corsage, made in the fashion of Anne of
+   Austria, looked on her like a cuirass, and she dragged after her,
+   somewhat awkwardly, a very long train, which impeded her movement as
+   she walked. A lace veil, as hereditary and time-worn as the gown,
+   but which had been worn by all the Monredons at their weddings, the
+   present dowager&rsquo;s included, hid the pretty, light hair of our dear
+   little friend, and was supported by a sort of heraldic comb and some
+   orange-flowers; in short, you can not imagine anything more heavy or
+   more ugly. Poor Giselle, loaded down with it, had red eyes, a face
+   of misery, and the air of a martyr. For all this her grandmother
+   scolded her sharply, which of course did not mend matters. &lsquo;Du
+   reste&rsquo;, she seemed absorbed in prayer or thought during the
+   ceremony, in which I took up the offerings, by the way, with a young
+   lieutenant of dragoons just out of the military school at Saint Cyr:
+   a uniform always looks well on such occasions. Nor was Monsieur de
+   Talbrun one of those lukewarm Christians who hear mass with their
+   arms crossed and their noses in the air. He pulled a jewelled
+   prayerbook out of his pocket, which Giselle had given him. Speaking
+   of presents, those he gave her were superb: pearls as big as
+   hazelnuts, a ruby heart that was a marvel, a diamond crescent that I
+   am afraid she will never wear with such an air as it deserves, and
+   two strings of diamonds &lsquo;en riviere&rsquo;, which I should suppose she
+   would have reset, for rivieres are no longer in fashion. The stones
+   are enormous.
+
+   &ldquo;But, poor dear! she could care little for such things. All she
+   wanted was to get back as quickly as she could into her usual
+   clothes. She said to me, again and again: &lsquo;Pray God for me that I
+   may be a good wife. I am so afraid I may not be. To belong to
+   Monsieur de Talbrun in this world, and in the next; to give up
+   everything for him, seems so extraordinary. Indeed, I think I
+   hardly knew what I was promising.&rsquo; I felt sorry for her; I kissed
+   her. I was ready to cry myself, and poor Giselle went on: &lsquo;If you
+   knew, dear, how I love you! how I love all my friends! really to
+   love, people must have been brought up together&mdash;must have always
+   known each other.&rsquo; I don&rsquo;t think she was right, but everybody has
+   his or her ideas about such things. I tried, by way of consoling
+   her, to draw her attention to the quantities of presents she had
+   received. They were displayed on several tables in the smaller
+   drawing-room, but her grandmother would not let them put the name of
+   the giver upon each, as is the present custom. She said that it
+   humiliated those who had not been able to make gifts as expensive as
+   others. She is right, when one comes to think of it. Nor would she
+   let the trousseau be displayed; she did not think it proper, but I
+   saw enough to know that there were marvels in linen, muslin, silks,
+   and surahs, covered all over with lace. One could see that the
+   great mantua-maker had not consulted the grandmother, who says that
+   women of distinction in her day did not wear paltry trimmings.
+
+   &ldquo;Dinner was served under a tent for all the village people during
+   the two mortal hours we had to spend over a repast, in which Madame
+   de Monredon&rsquo;s cook excelled himself. Then came complimentary
+   addresses in the old-fashioned style, composed by the village
+   schoolmaster who, for a wonder, knew what he was about; groups of
+   village children, boys and girls, came bringing their offerings,
+   followed by pet lambs decked with ribbons; it was all in the style
+   of the days of Madame de Genlis. While we danced in the salons
+   there was dancing in the barn, which had been decorated for the
+   occasion. In short; lords and ladies and laborers all seemed to
+   enjoy themselves, or made believe they did. The Parisian gentlemen
+   who danced were not very numerous. There were a few friends of
+   Monsieur de Talbrun&rsquo;s, however&mdash;among them, a Monsieur de Cymier,
+   whom possibly you remember having seen last summer at Treport; he
+   led the cotillon divinely. The bride and bridegroom drove away
+   during the evening, as they do in England, to their own house, which
+   is not far off. Monsieur de Talbrun&rsquo;s horses&mdash;a magnificent pair,
+   harnessed to a new &lsquo;caleche&rsquo;&mdash;carried off Psyche, as an old
+   gentleman in gold spectacles said near me. He was a pretentious old
+   personage, who made a speech at table, very inappropriate and much
+   applauded. Poor Giselle! I have not seen her since, but she has
+   written me one of those little notes which, when she was in the
+   convent, she used to sign Enfant de Marie. It begged me again to
+   pray earnestly for her that she might not fail in the fulfilment of
+   her new duties. It seems hard, does it not? Let us hope that
+   Monsieur de Talbrun, on his part, may not find that his new life
+   rather wearies him! Do you know what should have been Giselle&rsquo;s
+   fate&mdash;since she has a mania about people being thoroughly acquainted
+   before marriage? What would two or three years more or less have
+   mattered? She would have made an admirable wife for a sailor; she
+   would have spent the months of your absence kneeling before the
+   altar; she would have multiplied the lamentations and the
+   tendernesses of your excellent mother. I have been thinking this
+   ever since the wedding-day&mdash;a very sad day, after all.
+
+   &ldquo;But how I have let my pen run on. I shall have to put on two
+   stamps, notwithstanding my thin paper. But then you have plenty of
+   time to read on board-ship, and this account may amuse you. Make
+   haste and thank me for it.
+
+                  &ldquo;Your old friend,
+
+                       &ldquo;JACQUELINE.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Amuse him! How could he be amused by so great an insult? What! thank her
+      for giving him over even in thought to Giselle or to anybody? Oh, how
+      wicked, how ungrateful, how unworthy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The six pages of foreign-post paper were crumpled up by his angry fingers.
+      Fred tore them with his teeth, and finally made them into a ball which he
+      flung into the sea, hating himself for having been so foolish as to let
+      himself be caught by the first lines, as a foolish fish snaps at the bait,
+      when, apropos to the church in which she would like to be married, she had
+      added &ldquo;But we should have to be content with Saint-Augustin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Those words had delighted him as if they had really been meant for himself
+      and Jacqueline. This promise for the future, that seemed to escape
+      involuntarily from her pen, had made him find all the rest of her letter
+      piquant and amusing. As he read, his mind had reverted to that little
+      phrase which he now found he had interpreted wrongly. What a fall! How his
+      hopes now crumbled under his feet! She must have done it on purpose&mdash;but
+      no, he need not blacken her! She had written without thought, without
+      purpose, in high spirits; she wanted to be witty, to be droll, to write
+      gossip without any reference to him to whom her letter was addressed. That
+      we who some day would make a triumphal entry into St. Augustin would be
+      herself and some other man&mdash;some man with whom her acquaintance had
+      been short, since she did not seem to feel in that matter like Giselle.
+      Some one she did not yet know? Was that sure? She might know her future
+      husband already, even now she might have made her choice&mdash;Marcel
+      d&rsquo;Etaples, perhaps, who looked so well in uniform, or that M. de Cymier,
+      who led the cotillon so divinely. Yes! No doubt it was he&mdash;the
+      last-comer. And once more Fred suffered all the pangs of jealousy. It
+      seemed to him that in his loneliness, between sky and sea, those pangs
+      were more acute than he had ever known them. His comrades teased him about
+      his melancholy looks, and made him the butt of all their jokes in the
+      cockpit. He resolved, however, to get over it, and at the next port they
+      put into, Jacqueline&rsquo;s letter was the cause of his entering for the first
+      time some discreditable scenes of dissipation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Bermuda he received another letter, dated from Paris, where Jacqueline
+      had rejoined her parents, who had returned from Italy. She sent him a
+      commission. Would he buy her a riding-whip? Bermuda was renowned for its
+      horsewhips, and her father had decided that she must go regularly to the
+      riding-school. They seemed anxious now to give her, as preliminary to her
+      introduction into society, not only such pleasures as horseback exercise,
+      but intellectual enjoyment also. She had been taken to the Institute to
+      hear M. Legouve, and what was better still, in December her stepmother
+      would give a little party every fortnight and would let her sit up till
+      eleven o&rsquo;clock. She was also to be taken to make some calls. In short, she
+      felt herself rising in importance, but the first thing that had made her
+      feel so was Fred&rsquo;s choice of her to be his literary confidant. She was
+      greatly obliged to him, and did not know how she could better prove to him
+      that she was worthy of so great an honor than by telling him quite frankly
+      just what she thought of his verses. They were very, very pretty. He had
+      talent&mdash;great talent. Only, as in attending the classes of M. Regis
+      she had acquired some little knowledge of the laws of versification, she
+      would like to warn him against impairing a thought for the benefit of a
+      rhyme, and she pointed out several such places in his compositions, ending
+      thus:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bravo! for sunsets, for twilights, for moonshine, for deep silence, for
+      starry nights, and silvery seas&mdash;in such things you excel; one feels
+      as if one were there, and one envies you the fairy scenes of ocean. But, I
+      implore you, be not sentimental. That is the feeble part of your poetry,
+      to my thinking, and spoils the rest. By the way, I should like to ask you
+      whose are those soft eyes, that silky hair, that radiant smile, and all
+      that assortment of amber, jet, and coral occurring so often in your
+      visions? Is she&mdash;or rather, are they&mdash;black, yellow, green, or
+      tattooed, for, of course, you have met everywhere beauties of all colors?
+      Several times when it appeared as if the lady of your dreams were white, I
+      fancied you were drawing a portrait of Isabelle Ray. All the girls, your
+      old friends, to whom I have shown At Sea, send you their compliments, to
+      which I join my own. Each of them will beg you to write her a sonnet; but
+      first of all, in virtue of our ancient friendship, I want one myself.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                         &ldquo;JACQUELINE.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      So! she had shown to others what was meant for her alone; what
+      profanation! And what was more abominable, she had not recognized that he
+      was speaking of herself. Ah! there was nothing to be done now but to
+      forget her. Fred tried to do so conscientiously during all his cruise in
+      the Atlantic, but the moment he got ashore and had seen Jacqueline, he
+      fell again a victim to her charms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. BEAUTY AT THE FAIR
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      She was more beautiful than ever, and her first exclamation on seeing him
+      was intended to be flattering: &ldquo;Ah! Fred, how much you have improved! But
+      what a change! What an extraordinary change! Why, look at him! He is still
+      himself, but who would have thought it was Fred!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not disconcerted, for he had acquired aplomb in his journeys round
+      the globe, but he gave her a glance of sad reproach, while Madame de
+      Nailles said, quietly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, really&mdash;How are you, Fred? The tan on your face is very
+      becoming to you. You have broadened at the shoulders, and are now a man&mdash;something
+      more than a man, an experienced sailor, almost an old seadog.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she laughed, but only softly, because a frank laugh would have shown
+      little wrinkles under her eyes and above her cheeks, which were getting
+      too large.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her toilette, which was youthful, yet very carefully adapted to her
+      person, showed that she was by no means as yet &ldquo;laid on the shelf,&rdquo; as
+      Raoul Wermant elegantly said of her. She stood up, leaning over a table
+      covered with toys, which it was her duty to sell at the highest price
+      possible, for the place of a meeting so full of emotions for Fred was a
+      charity bazaar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment he arrived in Paris the young officer had been, so to speak,
+      seized by the collar. He had found a great glazed card, bidding him to
+      attend this fair, in a fashionable quarter, and forthwith he had forgotten
+      his resolution of not going near the Nailles for a long time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is not the same thing,&rdquo; he said to himself. &ldquo;One must not let one&rsquo;s
+      self be supposed to be stingy.&rdquo; So with these thoughts he went to the
+      bazaar, very glad in his secret heart to have an excuse for breaking his
+      resolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fair was for the benefit of sufferers from a fire&mdash;somewhere or
+      other. In our day multitudes of people fall victims to all kinds of
+      dreadful disasters, explosions of boilers, explosions of fire-damp, of
+      everything that can explode, for the agents of destruction seem to be in a
+      state of unnatural excitement as well as human beings. Never before,
+      perhaps, have inanimate things seemed so much in accordance with the
+      spirit of the times. Fred found a superb placard, the work of Cheret, a
+      pathetic scene in a mine, banners streaming in the air, with the words
+      &lsquo;Bazar de Charite&rsquo; in gold letters on a red ground, and the courtyard of
+      the mansion where the fair was held filled with more carriages than one
+      sees at a fashionable wedding. In the vestibule many footmen were in
+      attendance, the chasseurs of an Austrian ambassador, the great hulking
+      fellows of the English embassy, the gray-liveried servants of old
+      Rozenkranz, with their powdered heads, the negro man belonging to Madame
+      Azucazillo, etc., etc. At each arrival there was a frou-frou of satin and
+      lace, and inside the sales room was a hubbub like the noise in an aviary.
+      Fred, finding himself at once in the full stream of Parisian life, but for
+      the moment not yet part of it, indulged in some of those philosophic
+      reflections to which he had been addicted on shipboard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Each of the tables showed something of the tastes, the character, the
+      peculiarities of the lady who had it in charge. Madame Sterny, who had the
+      most beautiful hands in the world, had undertaken to sell gloves, being
+      sure that the gentlemen would be eager to buy if she would only consent to
+      try them on; Madame de Louisgrif, the &lsquo;chanoiness&rsquo;, whose extreme
+      emaciation was not perceived under a sort of ecclesiastical cape, had an
+      assortment of embroideries and objects of devotion, intended only for
+      ladies&mdash;and indeed for only the most serious among them; for the
+      table that held umbrellas, parasols and canes suited to all ages and both
+      sexes, a good, upright little lady had been chosen. Her only thought was
+      how much money she could make by her sales. Madame Strahlberg, the oldest
+      of the Odinskas, obviously expected to sell only to gentlemen; her table
+      held pyramids of cigars and cigarettes, but nothing else was in the corner
+      where she presided, supple and frail, not handsome, but far more dangerous
+      than if she had been, with her unfathomable way of looking at you with her
+      light eyes set deep under her eyebrows, eyes that she kept half closed,
+      but which were yet so keen, and the cruel smile that showed her little
+      sharp teeth. Her dress was of black grenadine embroidered with silver. She
+      wore half mourning as a sort of announcement that she was a widow, in
+      hopes that this might put a stop to any wicked gossip which should assert
+      that Count Strahlberg was still living, having got a divorce and been very
+      glad to get it. Yet people talked about her, but hardly knew what to bring
+      against her, because, though anything might be suspected, nothing was
+      known. She was received and even sought after in the best society, on
+      account of her wonderful talents, which she employed in a manner as
+      perverse as everything else about her, but which led some people to call
+      her the &lsquo;Judic des salons&rsquo;. Wanda Strahlberg was now holding between her
+      lips, which were artificially red, in contrast to the greenish paleness of
+      her face, which caused others to call her a vampire, one of the cigarettes
+      she had for sale. With one hand, she was playing, graceful as a cat, with
+      her last package of regalias, tied with green ribbon, which, when offered
+      to the highest bidder, brought an enormous sum. Her sister Colette was
+      selling flowers, like several other young girls, but while for the most
+      part these waited on their customers in silence, she was full of lively
+      talk, and as unblushing in her eagerness to sell as a &lsquo;bouquetiere&rsquo; by
+      profession. She had grown dangerously pretty. Fred was dazzled when she
+      wanted to fasten a rose into his buttonhole, and then, as he paid for it,
+      gave him another, saying: &ldquo;And here is another thrown in for old
+      acquaintance&rsquo; sake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Charity seems to cover many things,&rdquo; thought the young man as he withdrew
+      from her smiles and her glances, but yet he had seen nothing so attractive
+      among the black, yellow, green or tattooed ladies about whom Jacqueline
+      had been pleased to tease him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fred!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Jacqueline&rsquo;s voice that arrested him. It was sharp and almost
+      angry. She, too, was selling flowers, while at the same time she was
+      helping Madame de Nailles with her toys; but she was selling with that
+      decorum and graceful reserve which custom prescribes for young girls.
+      &ldquo;Fred, I do hope you will wear no roses but mine. Those you have are
+      frightful. They make you look like a village bridegroom. Take out those
+      things; come! Here is a pretty boutonniere, and I will fasten it much
+      better in your buttonhole&mdash;let me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In vain did he try to seem cold to her; his heart thawed in spite of
+      himself. She held him so charmingly by the lapel of his coat, touching his
+      cheek with the tip end of an aigrette which set so charmingly on the top
+      of the most becoming of fur caps which she wore. Her hair was turned up
+      now, showing her beautiful neck, and he could see little rebellious hairs
+      curling at their own will over her pure, soft skin, while she, bending
+      forward, was engaged in his service. He admired, too, her slender waist,
+      only recently subjected to the restraint of a corset. He forgave her on
+      the spot. At this moment a man with brown hair, tall, elegant, and with
+      his moustache turned up at the ends, after the old fashion of the Valois,
+      revived recently, came hurriedly up to the table of Madame de Nailles.
+      Fred felt that that inimitable moustache reduced his not yet abundant
+      beard to nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle Jacqueline,&rdquo; said the newcomer, &ldquo;Madame de Villegry has sent
+      me to beg you to help her at the buffet. She can not keep pace with her
+      customers, and is asking for volunteers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All this was uttered with a familiar assurance which greatly shocked the
+      young naval man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You permit me, Madame?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Baroness bowed with a smile, which said, had he chosen to interpret
+      it, &ldquo;I give you permission to carry her off now&mdash;and forever, if you
+      wish it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment she was placing in the half-unwilling arms of Hubert Marien
+      an enormous rubber balloon and a jumping-jack, in return for five Louis
+      which he had laid humbly on her table. But Jacqueline had not waited for
+      her stepmother&rsquo;s permission; she let herself be borne off radiant on the
+      arm of the important personage who had come for her, while Colette, who
+      perhaps had remarked the substitution for her two roses, whispered in
+      Fred&rsquo;s ear, in atone of great significance &ldquo;Monsieur de Cymier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor fellow started, like a man suddenly awakened from a happy dream
+      to face the most unwelcome of realities. Impelled by that natural longing,
+      that we all have, to know the worst, he went toward the buffet, affecting
+      a calmness which it cost him a great effort to maintain. As he went along
+      he mechanically gave money to each of the ladies whom he knew, moving off
+      without waiting for their thanks or stopping to choose anything from their
+      tables. He seemed to feel the floor rock under his feet, as if he had been
+      walking the deck of a vessel. At last he reached a recess decorated with
+      palms, where, in a robe worthy of &lsquo;Peau d&rsquo;Ane&rsquo; in the story, and
+      absolutely a novelty in the world of fashions robe all embroidered with
+      gold and rubies, which glittered with every movement made by the wearer&mdash;Madame
+      de Villegry was pouring out Russian tea and Spanish chocolate and Turkish
+      coffee, while all kinds of deceitful promises of favor shone in her eyes,
+      which wore a certain tenderness expressive of her interest in charity. A
+      party of young nymphs formed the court of this fair goddess, doing their
+      best to lend her their aid. Jacqueline was one of them, and, at the moment
+      Fred approached, she was offering, with the tips of her fingers, a glass
+      of champagne to M. de Cymier, who at the same time was eagerly trying to
+      persuade her to believe something, about which she was gayly laughing,
+      while she shook her head. Poor Fred, that he might hear, and suffer, drank
+      two mouthfuls of sherry which he could hardly swallow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One who was really charitable would not hesitate,&rdquo; said M. de Cymier,
+      &ldquo;especially when every separate hair would be paid for if you chose. Just
+      one little curl&mdash;for the sake of the poor. It is very often done:
+      anything is allowable for the sake of the poor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe it is because, as you say, that it is very often done that I shall
+      not do it,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, still laughing. &ldquo;I have made up my mind never
+      to do what others have done before me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we shall see,&rdquo; said M. de Cymier, pretending to threaten her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And her young head was thrown back in a burst of inextinguishable
+      laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred fled, that he might not be tempted to make a disturbance. When he
+      found himself again in the street, he asked himself where he should go.
+      His anger choked him; he felt he could not keep his resentment to himself,
+      and yet, however angry he might be with Jacqueline, he would have been
+      unwilling to hear his mother give utterance to the very sentiments that he
+      was feeling, or to harsh judgments, of which he preferred to keep the
+      monopoly. It came into his mind that he would pay a little visit to
+      Giselle, who, of all the people he knew, was the least likely to provoke a
+      quarrel. He had heard that Madame de Talbrun did not go out, being
+      confined to her sofa by much suffering, which, it might be hoped, would
+      soon come to an end; and the certainty that he should find her if he
+      called at once decided him. Since he had been in Paris he had done nothing
+      but leave cards. This time, however, he was sure that the lady upon whom
+      he called would be at home. He was taken at once into the young wife&rsquo;s
+      boudoir, where he found her very feeble, lying back upon her cushions,
+      alone, and working at some little bits of baby-clothes. He was not slow to
+      perceive that she was very glad to see him. She flushed with pleasure as
+      he came into the room, and, dropping her sewing, held out to him two
+      little, thin hands, white as wax. &ldquo;Take that footstool&mdash;sit down
+      there&mdash;what a great, great pleasure it is to see you back again!&rdquo; She
+      was more expansive than she had been formerly; she had gained a certain
+      ease which comes from intercourse with the world, but how delicate she
+      seemed! Fred for a moment looked at her in silence, she seemed so changed
+      as she lay there in a loose robe of pale blue cashmere, whose train drawn
+      over her feet made her look tall as it stretched to the end of the gilded
+      couch, round which Giselle had collected all the little things required by
+      an invalid&mdash;bottles, boxes, work-bag, dressing-case, and writing
+      materials.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; she said, with her soft smile, &ldquo;I have plenty to occupy me, and
+      I venture to be proud of my work and to think I am creating marvels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she spoke she turned round on her closed hand a cap that seemed
+      microscopic to Fred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;do you expect him to be small enough to wear that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Him! you said him; and I am sure you will be right. I know it will be a
+      boy,&rdquo; replied Giselle, eagerly, her fair face brightened by these words.
+      &ldquo;I have some that are still smaller. Look!&rdquo; and she lifted up a pile of
+      things trimmed with ribbons and embroidery. &ldquo;See; these are the first! Ah!
+      I lie here and fancy how he will look when he has them on. He will be
+      sweet enough to eat. Only his papa wants us to give him a name that I
+      think is too long for him, because it has always been in the family&mdash;Enguerrand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His name will be longer than himself, I should say, judging by the
+      dimensions of this cap,&rdquo; said Fred, trying to laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah!&rdquo; replied Giselle, gayly, &ldquo;but we can get over it by calling him
+      Gue-gue or Ra-ra. What do you think? The difficulty is that names of that
+      kind are apt to stick to a boy for fifty years, and then they seem
+      ridiculous. Now a pretty abbreviation like Fred is another matter. But I
+      forget they have brought up my chocolate. Please ring, and let them bring
+      you a cup. We will take our luncheon together, as we used to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, I have no appetite. I have just come from a certain buffet
+      where I lost it all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I suppose you have been to the Bazaar&mdash;the famous Charity Fair!
+      You must have made a sensation there on your return, for I am told that
+      the gentlemen who are expected to spend the most are likely to send their
+      money, and not to show themselves. There are many complaints of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There were plenty of men round certain persons,&rdquo; replied Fred, dryly.
+      &ldquo;Madame de Villegry&rsquo;s table was literally besieged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really! What, hers! You surprise me! So it was the good things she gave
+      you that make you despise my poor chocolate,&rdquo; said Giselle, rising on her
+      elbow, to receive the smoking cup that a servant brought her on a little
+      silver salver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t take much at her table,&rdquo; said Fred, ready to enter on his
+      grievances. &ldquo;If you wish to know the reason why, I was too indignant to
+      eat or drink.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indignant?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the word is not at all too strong. When one has passed whole months
+      away from what is unwholesome and artificial, such things as make up life
+      in Paris, one becomes a little like Alceste, Moliere&rsquo;s misanthrope, when
+      one gets back to them. It is ridiculous at my age, and yet if I were to
+      tell you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&mdash;you puzzle me. What can there be that is unwholesome in
+      selling things for the poor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poor! A pretty pretext! Was it to benefit the poor that that odious
+      Countess Strahlberg made all those disreputable grimaces? I have seen
+      kermesses got up by actresses, and, upon my word, they were good form in
+      comparison.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Countess Strahlberg! People have heard about her doings until they
+      are tired of them,&rdquo; said Giselle, with that air of knowing everything
+      assumed by a young wife whose husband has told her all the current
+      scandals, as a sort of initiation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And her sister seems likely to be as bad as herself before long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Colette! She has been so badly brought up. It is not her fault.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there&rsquo;s Jacqueline,&rdquo; cried Fred, in a sudden outburst, and already
+      feeling better because he could mention her name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allons, donc! You don&rsquo;t mean to say anything against Jacqueline?&rdquo; cried
+      Giselle, clasping her hands with an air of astonishment. &ldquo;What can she
+      have done to scandalize you&mdash;poor little dear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred paused for half a minute, then he drew the stool in the form of an X,
+      on which he was sitting, a little nearer to Giselle&rsquo;s sofa, and, lowering
+      his voice, told her how Jacqueline had acted under his very eyes. As he
+      went on, watching as he spoke the effect his words produced upon Giselle,
+      who listened as if slightly amused by his indignation, the case seemed not
+      nearly so bad as he had supposed, and a delicious sense of relief crept
+      over him when she to whom he told his wrongs after hearing him quietly to
+      the end, said, smiling:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what then? There is no great harm in all that. Would you have had her
+      refuse to go with the gentleman Madame de Villegry had sent to fetch her?
+      And why, may I ask, should she not have done her best to help by pouring
+      out champagne? An air put on to please is indispensable to a woman, if she
+      wishes to sell anything. Good Heavens! I don&rsquo;t approve any more than you
+      do of all these worldly forms of charity, but this kind of thing is
+      considered right; it has come into fashion. Jacqueline had the permission
+      of her parents, and I really can&rsquo;t see any good reason why you should
+      complain of her. Unless&mdash;why not tell me the whole truth, Fred? I
+      know it&mdash;don&rsquo;t we always know what concerns the people that we care
+      for? And I might possibly some day be of use to you. Say! don&rsquo;t you think
+      you are&mdash;a little bit jealous?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Less encouragement than this would have sufficed to make him open his
+      heart to Giselle. He was delighted that some woman was willing he should
+      confide in her. And what was more, he was glad to have it proved that he
+      had been all wrong. A quarter of an hour later Giselle had comforted him,
+      happy herself that it had been in her power to undertake a task of
+      consolation, a work in which, with sweet humility, she felt herself at
+      ease. On the great stage of life she knew now she should never play any
+      important part, any that would bring her greatly into view. But she felt
+      that she was made to be a confidant, one of those perfect confidants who
+      never attempt to interfere rashly with the course of events, but who wait
+      upon the ways of Providence, removing stones, and briers and thorns, and
+      making everything turn out for the best in the end. Jacqueline, she said,
+      was so young! A little wild, perhaps, but what a treasure! She was all
+      heart! She would need a husband worthy of her, such a man as Fred. Madame
+      d&rsquo;Argy, she knew, had already said something on the subject to her father.
+      But it would have to be the Baroness that Fred must bring over to their
+      views; the Baroness was acquiring more and more influence over her
+      husband, who seemed to be growing older every day. M. de Nailles had
+      evidently much, very much upon his mind. It was said in business circles
+      that he had for some time past been given to speculation. Oscar said so.
+      If that were the case, many of Jacqueline&rsquo;s suitors might withdraw. Not
+      all men were so disinterested as Fred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! As to her dot&mdash;what do I care for her dot?&rdquo; cried the young man.
+      &ldquo;I have enough for two, if she would only be satisfied to live quietly at
+      Lizerolles!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the judicious little matron, nodding her head, &ldquo;but who would
+      like to marry a midshipman? Make haste and be a lieutenant, or an ensign.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled at herself for having made the reward depend upon exertion,
+      with a sort of maternal instinct. It was the same instinct that would lead
+      her in the future to promise Enguerrand a sugar-plum if he said his
+      lesson. &ldquo;Nobody will steal your Jacqueline till you are ready to carry her
+      off. Besides, if there were any danger I could give you timely warning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Giselle, if she only had your kind heart&mdash;your good sense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think I am better and more reasonable than other people? In what
+      way? I have done as so many other girls do; I have married without knowing
+      well what I was doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped short, fearing she might have said too much, and indeed Fred
+      looked at her anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t regret it, do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must ask Monsieur de Talbrun if he regrets it,&rdquo; she said, with a
+      laugh. &ldquo;It must be hard on him to have a sick wife, who knows little of
+      what is passing outside of her own chamber, who is living on her reserve
+      fund of resources&mdash;a very poor little reserve fund it is, too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as if she thought that Fred had been with her long enough, she said:
+      &ldquo;I would ask you to stay and see Monsieur de Talbrun, but he won&rsquo;t be in,
+      he dines at his club. He is going to see a new play tonight which they say
+      promises to be very good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! Will he leave you alone all the evening?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I am very glad he should find amusement. Just think how long it is
+      that I have been pinned down here! Poor Oscar!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. GISELLE&rsquo;S CONSOLATION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The arrival of the expected Enguerrand hindered Giselle from pleading
+      Fred&rsquo;s cause as soon as she could have wished. Her life for twenty-four
+      hours was in great danger, and when the crisis was past, which M. de
+      Talbrun treated very indifferently, as a matter of course, her first cry
+      was &ldquo;My baby!&rdquo; uttered in a tone of tender eagerness such as had never
+      been heard from her lips before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The nurse brought him. He lay asleep swathed in his swaddling clothes like
+      a mummy in its wrappings, a motionless, mysterious being, but he seemed to
+      his mother beautiful&mdash;more beautiful than anything she had seen in
+      those vague visions of happiness she had indulged in at the convent, which
+      were never to be realized. She kissed his little purple face, his closed
+      eyelids, his puckered mouth, with a sort of respectful awe. She was
+      forbidden to fatigue herself. The wet-nurse, who had been brought from
+      Picardy, drew near with her peasant cap trimmed with long blue streamers;
+      her big, experienced hands took the baby from his mother, she turned him
+      over on her lap, she patted him, she laughed at him. And the
+      mother-happiness that had lighted up Giselle&rsquo;s pale face died away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What right,&rdquo; she thought, &ldquo;has that woman to my child?&rdquo; She envied the
+      horrid creature, coarse and stout, with her tanned face, her bovine
+      features, her shapeless figure, who seemed as if Nature had predestined
+      her to give milk and nothing more. Giselle would so gladly have been in
+      her place! Why wouldn&rsquo;t they permit her to nurse her baby?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. de Talbrun said in answer to this question:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is never done among people in our position. You have no idea, of all
+      it would entail on you&mdash;what slavery, what fatigue! And most probably
+      you would not have had milk enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! who can tell? I am his mother! And when this woman goes he will have
+      to have English nurses, and when he is older he will have to go to school.
+      When shall I have him to myself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she began to cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come!&rdquo; said M. de Talbrun, much astonished, &ldquo;all this fuss about
+      that frightful little monkey!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle looked at him almost as much astonished as he had been at her.
+      Love, with its jealousy, its transports, its anguish, its delights had for
+      the first time come to her&mdash;the love that she could not feel for her
+      husband awoke in her for her son. She was ennobled&mdash;she was
+      transfigured by a sense of her maternity; it did for her what marriage
+      does for some women&mdash;it seemed as if a sudden radiance surrounded
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she raised her infant in her arms, to show him to those who came to
+      see her, she always seemed like a most chaste and touching representation
+      of the Virgin Mother. She would say, as she exhibited him: &ldquo;Is he not
+      superb?&rdquo; Every one said: &ldquo;Yes, indeed!&rdquo; out of politeness, but, on leaving
+      the mother&rsquo;s presence, would generally remark: &ldquo;He is Monsieur de Talbrun
+      in baby-clothes: the likeness is perfectly horrible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The only visitor who made no secret of this impression was Jacqueline, who
+      came to see her cousin as soon as she was permitted&mdash;that is, as soon
+      as her friend was able to sit up and be prettily dressed, as became the
+      mother of such a little gentleman as the heir of all the Talbruns. When
+      Jacqueline saw the little creature half-smothered in the lace that trimmed
+      his pillows, she burst out laughing, though it was in the presence of his
+      mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, mon Dieu!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;how ugly! I never should have supposed we
+      could have been as ugly as that! Why, his face is all the colors of the
+      rainbow; who would have imagined it? And he crumples up his little face
+      like those things in gutta-percha. My poor Giselle, how can you bear to
+      show him! I never, never could covet a baby!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle, in consternation, asked herself whether this strange girl, who
+      did not care for children, could be a proper wife for Fred; but her
+      habitual indulgence came to her aid, and she thought:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is but a child herself, she does not know what she is saying,&rdquo; and
+      profiting by her first tete-a-tete with Jacqueline&rsquo;s stepmother, she spoke
+      as she had promised to Madame de Nailles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A matchmaker already!&rdquo; said the Baroness, with a smile. &ldquo;And so soon
+      after you have found out what it costs to be a mother! How good of you, my
+      dear Giselle! So you support Fred as a candidate? But I can&rsquo;t say I think
+      he has much chance; Monsieur de Nailles has his own ideas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke as if she really thought that M. de Nailles could have any ideas
+      but her own. When the adroit Clotilde was at a loss, she was likely to
+      evoke this chimerical notion of her husband&rsquo;s having an opinion of his
+      own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Madame, you can do anything you like with him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The clever woman sighed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you fancy that when people have been long married a wife retains as
+      much influence over her husband as you have kept over Monsieur de Talbrun?
+      You will learn to know better, my dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I have no influence,&rdquo; murmured Giselle, who knew herself to be her
+      husband&rsquo;s slave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I know better. You are making believe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, but we were not talking about me, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! yes. I understood. I will think about it. I will try to bring over
+      Monsieur de Nailles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was not at all disposed to drop the meat for the sake of the shadow,
+      but she was not sure of M. de Cymier, notwithstanding all that Madame de
+      Villegry was at pains to tell her about his serious intentions. On the
+      other hand, she would have been far from willing to break with a man so
+      brilliant, who made himself so agreeable at her Tuesday receptions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Meantime, it would be well if you, dear, were to try to find out what
+      Jacqueline thinks. You may not find it very easy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you authorize me to tell her how well he loves her? Oh, then, I am
+      quite satisfied!&rdquo; cried Giselle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she was under a mistake. Jacqueline, as soon as she began to speak to
+      her of Fred&rsquo;s suit, stopped her:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor fellow! Why can&rsquo;t he amuse himself for some time longer and let me
+      do the same? Men seem to me so strange! Now, Fred is one who, just because
+      he is good and serious by nature, fancies that everybody else should be
+      the same; he wishes me to be tethered in the flowery meads of Lizerolles,
+      and browse where he would place me. Such a life would be an end of
+      everything&mdash;an end to my life, and I should not like it at all. I
+      should prefer to grow old in Paris, or some other capital, if my husband
+      happened to be engaged in diplomacy. Even supposing I marry&mdash;which I
+      do not think an absolute necessity, unless I can not get rid otherwise of
+      an inconvenient chaperon&mdash;and to do my stepmother justice, she knows
+      well enough that I will not submit to too much of her dictation!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jacqueline, they say you see too much of the Odinskas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There! that&rsquo;s another fault you find in me. I go there because Madame
+      Strahlberg is so kind as to give me some singing-lessons. If you only knew
+      how much progress I am making, thanks to her. Music is a thousand times
+      more interesting, I can tell you, than all that you can do as mistress of
+      a household. You don&rsquo;t think so? Oh! I know Enguerrand&rsquo;s first tooth, his
+      first steps, his first gleams of intelligence, and all that. Such things
+      are not in my line, you know. Of course I think your boy very funny, very
+      cunning, very&mdash;anything you like to fancy him, but forgive me if I am
+      glad he does not belong to me. There, don&rsquo;t you see now that marriage is
+      not my vocation, so please give up speaking to me about matrimony.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you will,&rdquo; said Giselle, sadly, &ldquo;but you will give great pain to a
+      good man whose heart is wholly yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not ask for his heart. Such gifts are exasperating. One does not
+      know what to do with them. Can&rsquo;t he&mdash;poor Fred&mdash;love me as I
+      love him, and leave me my liberty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your liberty!&rdquo; exclaimed Giselle; &ldquo;liberty to ruin your life, that&rsquo;s what
+      it will be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really, one would suppose there was only one kind of existence in your
+      eyes&mdash;this life of your own, Giselle. To leave one cage to be shut up
+      in another&mdash;that is the fate of many birds, I know, but there are
+      others who like to use their wings to soar into the air. I like that
+      expression. Come, little mother, tell me right out, plainly, that your lot
+      is the only one in this world that ought to be envied by a woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle answered with a strange smile:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seem astonished that I adore my baby; but since he came great things
+      seem to have been revealed to me. When I hold him to my breast I seem to
+      understand, as I never did before, duty and marriage, family ties and
+      sorrows, life itself, in short, its griefs and joys. You can not
+      understand that now, but you will some day. You, too, will gaze upon the
+      horizon as I do. I am ready to suffer; I am ready for self-sacrifice. I
+      know now whither my life leads me. I am led, as it were, by this little
+      being, who seemed to me at first only a doll, for whom I was embroidering
+      caps and dresses. You ask whether I am satisfied with my lot in life. Yes,
+      I am, thanks to this guide, this guardian angel, thanks to my precious
+      Enguerrand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline listened, stupefied, to this unexpected outburst, so unlike her
+      cousin&rsquo;s usual language; but the charm was broken by its ending with the
+      tremendously long name of Enguerrand, which always made her laugh, it was
+      in such perfect harmony with the feudal pretensions of the Monredons and
+      the Talbruns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How solemn and eloquent and obscure you are, my dear,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;You
+      speak like a sibyl. But one thing I see, and that is that you are not so
+      perfectly happy as you would have us believe, seeing that you feel the
+      need of consolations. Then, why do you wish me to follow your example?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fred is not Monsieur de Talbrun,&rdquo; said the young wife, for the moment
+      forgetting herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to say&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I meant nothing, except that if you married Fred you would have had the
+      advantage of first knowing him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! that&rsquo;s your fixed idea. But I am getting to know Monsieur de Cymier
+      pretty well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have betrayed yourself,&rdquo; cried Giselle, with indignation. &ldquo;Monsieur
+      de Cymier!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur de Cymier is coming to our house on Saturday evening, and I must
+      get up a Spanish song that Madame Strahlberg has taught me, to charm his
+      ears and those of other people. Oh! I can do it very well. Won&rsquo;t you come
+      and hear me play the castanets, if Monsieur Enguerrand can spare you?
+      There is a young Polish pianist who is to play our accompaniment. Ah,
+      there is nothing like a Polish pianist to play Chopin! He is charming,
+      poor young man! an exile, and in poverty; but he is cared for by those
+      ladies, who take him everywhere. That is the sort of life I should like&mdash;the
+      life of Madame Strahlberg&mdash;to be a young widow, free to do what I
+      pleased.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She may be a widow&mdash;but some say she is divorced.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! is it you who repeat such naughty scandals, Giselle? Where shall
+      charity take refuge in this world if not in your heart? I am going&mdash;your
+      seriousness may be catching. Kiss me before I go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Madame de Talbrun, turning her head away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After this she asked herself whether she ought not to discourage Fred. She
+      could not resolve on doing so, yet she could not tell him what was false;
+      but by eluding the truth with that ability which kind-hearted women can
+      always show when they try to avoid inflicting pain, she succeeded in
+      leaving the young man hope enough to stimulate his ambition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. FRED ASKS A QUESTION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Time, whatever may be said of it by the calendars, is not to be measured
+      by days, weeks, and months in all cases; expectation, hope, happiness and
+      grief have very different ways of counting hours, and we know from our own
+      experience that some are as short as a minute, and others as long as a
+      century. The love or the suffering of those who can tell just how long
+      they have suffered, or just how long they have been in love, is only
+      moderate and reasonable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame d&rsquo;Argy found the two lonely years she passed awaiting the return of
+      her son, who was winning his promotion to the rank of ensign, so long,
+      that it seemed to her as if they never would come to an end. She had given
+      a reluctant consent to his notion of adopting the navy as a profession,
+      thinking that perhaps, after all, there might be no harm in allowing her
+      dear boy to pass the most dangerous period of his youth under strict
+      discipline, but she could not be patient forever! She idolized her son too
+      much to be resigned to living without him; she felt that he was hers no
+      longer. Either he was at sea or at Toulon, where she could very rarely
+      join him, being detained at Lizerolles by the necessity of looking after
+      their property. With what eagerness she awaited his promotion, which she
+      did not doubt was all the Nailles waited for to give their consent to the
+      marriage; of their happy half-consent she hastened to remind them in a
+      note which announced the new grade to which he had been promoted. Her
+      indignation was great on finding that her formal request received no
+      decided answer; but, as her first object was Fred&rsquo;s happiness, she placed
+      the reply she had received in its most favorable light when she forwarded
+      it to the person whom it most concerned. She did this in all honesty. She
+      was not willing to admit that she was being put off with excuses; still
+      less could she believe in a refusal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She accepted the excuse that M. de Nailles gave for returning no decided
+      answer, viz.: that &ldquo;Jacqueline was too young,&rdquo; though she answered him
+      with some vehemence: &ldquo;Fred was born when I was eighteen.&rdquo; But she had to
+      accept it. Her ensign would have to pass a few more months on the coast of
+      Senegal, a few more months which were made shorter by the encouragement
+      forwarded to him by his mother, who was careful to send him everything she
+      could find out that seemed to be, or that she imagined might be, in his
+      favor; she underlined such things and commented upon them, so as to make
+      the faintest hypothesis seem a certainty. Sometimes she did not even wait
+      for the post. Fred would find, on putting in at some post, a cablegram:
+      &ldquo;Good news,&rdquo; or &ldquo;All goes well,&rdquo; and he would be beside himself with joy
+      and excitement until, on receiving his poor, dear mother&rsquo;s next letter, he
+      found out on how slight a foundation her assurance had been founded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes, she wrote him disagreeable things about Jacqueline, as if she
+      would like to disenchant him, and then he said to himself: &ldquo;By this, I am
+      to understand that my affairs are not going on well; I still count for
+      little, notwithstanding my promotion.&rdquo; Ah! if he could only have had, so
+      near the beginning of his career, any opportunity of distinguishing
+      himself! No brilliant deed would have been too hard for him. He would have
+      scaled the very skies. Alas! he had had no chance to win distinction, he
+      had only had to follow in the beaten track of ordinary duty; he had
+      encountered no glorious perils, though at St. Louis he had come very near
+      leaving his bones, but it was only a case of typhoid fever. This fever,
+      however, brought about a scene between M. de Nailles and his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When,&rdquo; she cried, with all the fury of a lioness, &ldquo;do you expect to come
+      to the conclusion that my son is a suitable match for Jacqueline? Do you
+      imagine that I shall let him wait till he is a post-captain to satisfy the
+      requirements of Mademoiselle your daughter&mdash;provided he does not die
+      in a hospital? Do you think that I shall be willing to go on living&mdash;if
+      you can call it living!&mdash;all alone and in continual apprehension? Why
+      do you let him keep on in uncertainty? You know his worth, and you know
+      that with him Jacqueline would be happy. Instead of that&mdash;instead of
+      saying once for all to this young man, who is more in love with her than
+      any other man will ever be: &lsquo;There, take her, I give her to you,&rsquo; which
+      would be the straightforward, sensible way, you go on encouraging the
+      caprices of a child who will end by wasting, in the life you are
+      permitting her to lead, all the good qualities she has and keeping nothing
+      but the bad ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mon Dieu! I can&rsquo;t see that Jacqueline leads a life like that!&rdquo; said M. de
+      Nailles, who felt that he must say something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t see, you don&rsquo;t see! How can any one see who won&rsquo;t open his
+      eyes? My poor friend, just look for once at what is going on around you,
+      under your own roof&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jacqueline is devoted to music,&rdquo; said her father, good-humoredly. Madame
+      d&rsquo;Argy in her heart thought he was losing his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in truth he was growing older day by day, becoming more and more
+      anxious, more and more absorbed in the great struggle&mdash;not for life;
+      that might exhaust a man, but at least it was energetic and noble&mdash;but
+      for superfluous wealth, for vanity, for luxury, which, for his own part,
+      he cared nothing for, and which he purchased dearly, spurred on to
+      exertion by those near to him, who insisted on extravagances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! yes, Jacqueline, I know, is devoted to music,&rdquo; went on Madame d&rsquo;Argy,
+      with an air of extreme disapproval, &ldquo;too much so! And when she is able to
+      sing like Madame Strahlberg, what good will it do her? Even now I see more
+      than one little thing about her that needs to be reformed. How can she
+      escape spoiling in that crowd of Slavs and Yankees, people of no position
+      probably in their own countries, with whom you permit her to associate?
+      People nowadays are so imprudent about acquaintances! To be a foreigner is
+      a passport into society. Just think what her poor mother would have said
+      to the bad manners she is adopting from all parts of the globe? My poor,
+      dear Adelaide! She was a genuine Frenchwoman of the old type; there are
+      not many such left now. Ah!&rdquo; continued Madame d&rsquo;Argy, without any apparent
+      connection with her subject, &ldquo;Monsieur de Talbrun&rsquo;s mother, if he had one,
+      would be truly happy to see him married to Giselle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; faltered M. de Nailles, struck by the truth of some of these
+      remarks, &ldquo;I make no opposition&mdash;quite the contrary&mdash;I have
+      spoken several times about your son, but I was not listened to!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can she say against Fred?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing. She is very fond of him, that you know as well as I do. But
+      those childish attachments do not necessarily lead to love and marriage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Friendship on her side might be enough,&rdquo; said Madame d&rsquo;Argy, in the tone
+      of a woman who had never known more than that in marriage. &ldquo;My poor Fred
+      has enthusiasm and all that, enough for two. And in time she will be madly
+      in love with him&mdash;she must! It is impossible it should be otherwise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good, persuade her yourself if you can; but Jacqueline has a pretty
+      strong will of her own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline&rsquo;s will was a reality, though the ideas of M. de Nailles may
+      have been illusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And my wife, too!&rdquo; resumed the Baron, after a long sigh. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know
+      how it is, but Jacqueline, as she has grown up, has become like an
+      unbroken colt, and those two, who were once all in all to each other, are
+      now seldom of one mind. How am I to act when their two wills cross mine,
+      as they often do? I have so many things on my mind. There are times when&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, one can see that. You don&rsquo;t seem to know where you are. And do you
+      think that the disposition she shows to act, as you say, like an unbroken
+      colt, is nothing to me? Do you think I am quite satisfied with my son&rsquo;s
+      choice? I could have wished that he had chosen for his wife&mdash;but what
+      is the use of saying what I wished? The important thing is that he should
+      be happy in his own way. Besides, I dare say the young thing will calm
+      down of her own accord. Her mother&rsquo;s daughter must be good at heart. All
+      will come right when she is removed from a circle which is doing her no
+      good; it is injuring her in people&rsquo;s opinion already, you must know. And
+      how will it be by-and-bye? I hear people saying everywhere: &lsquo;How can the
+      Nailles let that young girl associate so much with foreigners?&rsquo; You say
+      they are old school-fellows, they went to the &lsquo;cours&rsquo; together. But see if
+      Madame d&rsquo;Etaples and Madame Ray, under the same pretext, let Isabelle and
+      Yvonne associate with the Odinskas! As to that foolish woman, Madame
+      d&rsquo;Avrigny, she goes to their house to look up recruits for her operettas,
+      and Madame Strahlberg has one advantage over regular artists, there is no
+      call to pay her. That is the reason why she invites her. Besides which,
+      she won&rsquo;t find it so easy to marry Dolly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! there are several reasons for that,&rdquo; said the Baron, who could see
+      the mote in his neighbor&rsquo;s eye, &ldquo;Mademoiselle d&rsquo;Avrigny has led a life so
+      very worldly ever since she was a child, so madly fast and lively, that
+      suitors are afraid of her. Jacqueline, thank heaven, has never yet been in
+      what is called the world. She only visits those with whom she is on terms
+      of intimacy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An intimacy which includes all Paris,&rdquo; said Madame d&rsquo;Argy, raising her
+      eyes to heaven. &ldquo;If she does not go to great balls, it is only because her
+      stepmother is bored by them. But with that exception it seems to me she is
+      allowed to do anything. I don&rsquo;t see the difference. But, to be sure, if
+      Jacqueline is not for us, you have a right to say that I am interfering in
+      what does not concern me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; said the unfortunate father, &ldquo;I feel how much I ought to
+      value your advice, and an alliance with your family would please me more
+      than anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He said the truth, for he was disturbed by seeing M. de Cymier so slow in
+      making his proposals, and he was also aware that young girls in our day
+      are less sought for in marriage than they used to be. His friend Wermant,
+      rich as he was, had had some trouble in capturing for Berthe a fellow of
+      no account in the Faubourg St. Germain, and the prize was not much to be
+      envied. He was a young man without brains and without a sou, who enjoyed
+      so little consideration among his own people that his wife had not been
+      received as she expected, and no one spoke of Madame de Belvan without
+      adding: &ldquo;You know, that little Wermant, daughter of the &lsquo;agent de
+      change&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course, Jacqueline had the advantage of good birth over Berthe, but how
+      great was her inferiority in point of fortune! M. de Nailles sometimes
+      confided these perplexities to his wife, without, however, receiving much
+      comfort from her. Nor did the Baroness confess to her husband all her own
+      fears. In secret she often asked herself, with the keen insight of a woman
+      of the world well trained in artifice and who possessed a thorough
+      knowledge of mankind, whether there might not be women capable of using a
+      young girl so as to put the world on a wrong scent; whether, in other
+      words, Madame de Villegry did not talk everywhere about M. de Cymier&rsquo;s
+      attentions to Mademoiselle de Nailles in order to conceal his relations to
+      herself? Madame de Villegry indeed cared little about standing well in
+      public opinion, but rather the contrary; she would not, however, for the
+      world have been willing, by too openly favoring one man among her
+      admirers, to run the risk of putting the rest to flight. No doubt M. de
+      Cymier was most assiduous in his attendance on the receptions and dances
+      at Madame de Nailles&rsquo;s, but he was there always at the same time as Madame
+      de Villegry herself. They would hold whispered conferences in corners,
+      which might possibly have been about Jacqueline, but there was no proof
+      that they were so, except what Madame de Villegry herself said. &ldquo;At any
+      rate,&rdquo; thought Madame de Nailles, &ldquo;if Fred comes forward as a suitor it
+      may stimulate Monsieur de Cymier. There are men who put off taking a
+      decisive step till the last moment, and are only to be spurred up by
+      competition.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So every opportunity was given to Fred to talk freely with Jacqueline when
+      he returned to Paris. By this time he wore two gold-lace stripes upon his
+      sleeve. But Jacqueline avoided any tete-a-tete with him as if she
+      understood the danger that awaited her. She gave him no chance of speaking
+      alone with her. She was friendly&mdash;nay, sometimes affectionate when
+      other people were near them, but more commonly she teased him, bewildered
+      him, excited him. After an hour or two spent in her society he would go
+      home sometimes savage, sometimes desponding, to ponder in his own room,
+      and in his own heart, what interpretation he ought to put upon the things
+      that she had said to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The more he thought, the less he understood. He would not have confided in
+      his mother for the world; she might have cast blame on Jacqueline. Besides
+      her, he had no one who could receive his confidences, who would bear with
+      his perplexities, who could assist in delivering him from the network of
+      hopes and fears in which, after every interview with Jacqueline, he seemed
+      to himself to become more and more entangled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, however, at one of the soirees given every fortnight by Madame de
+      Nailles, he succeeded in gaining her attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me this quadrille,&rdquo; he said to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, as she could not well refuse, he added, as soon as she had taken his
+      arm: &ldquo;We will not dance, and I defy you to escape me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is treason!&rdquo; she cried, somewhat angrily. &ldquo;We are not here to talk;
+      I can almost guess beforehand what you have to say, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he had made her sit down in the recess of that bow-window which had
+      been called the young girls&rsquo; corner years ago. He stood before her,
+      preventing her escape, and half-laughing, though he was deeply moved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since you have guessed what I wanted to say, answer me quickly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Must I? Must I, really? Why didn&rsquo;t you ask my father to do your
+      commission? It is so horribly disagreeable to do these things for one&rsquo;s
+      self.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That depends upon what the things may be that have to be said. I should
+      think it ought to be very agreeable to pronounce the word on which the
+      happiness of a whole life is to depend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! what a grand phrase! As if I could be essential to anybody&rsquo;s
+      happiness? You can&rsquo;t make me believe that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are mistaken. You are indispensable to mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There! my declaration has been made,&rdquo; thought Fred, much relieved that it
+      was over, for he had been afraid to pronounce the decisive words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if I thought that were true, I should be very sorry,&rdquo; said
+      Jacqueline, no longer smiling, but looking down fixedly at the pointed toe
+      of her little slipper; &ldquo;because&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped suddenly. Her face flushed red.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how to explain to you;&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Explain nothing,&rdquo; pleaded Fred; &ldquo;all I ask is Yes, nothing more. There is
+      nothing else I care for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her head coldly and haughtily, yet her voice trembled as she
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will force me to say it? Then, no! No!&rdquo; she repeated, as if to
+      reaffirm her refusal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, alarmed by Fred&rsquo;s silence, and above all by his looks, he who had
+      seemed so gay shortly before and whose face now showed an anguish such as
+      she had never yet seen on the face of man, she added:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, forgive me!&mdash;Forgive me,&rdquo; she repeated in a lower voice, holding
+      out her hand. He did not take it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You love some one else?&rdquo; he asked, through his clenched teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She opened her fan and affected to examine attentively the pink landscape
+      painted on it to match her dress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should you think so? I wish to be free.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Free? Are you free? Is a woman ever free?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline shook her head, as if expressing vague dissent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Free at least to see a little of the world,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;to choose, to use
+      my wings, in short&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she moved her slender arms with an audacious gesture which had nothing
+      in common with the flight of that mystic dove upon which she had meditated
+      when holding the card given her by Giselle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Free to prefer some other man,&rdquo; said Fred, who held fast to his idea with
+      the tenacity of jealousy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! that is different. Supposing there were anyone whom I liked&mdash;not
+      more, but differently from the way I like you&mdash;it is possible. But
+      you spoke of loving!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your distinctions are too subtle,&rdquo; said Fred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because, much as it seems to astonish you, I am quite capable of seeing
+      the difference,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, with the look and the accent of a person
+      who has had large experience. &ldquo;I have loved once&mdash;a long time ago, a
+      very long time ago, a thousand years and more. Yes, I loved some one, as
+      perhaps you love me, and I suffered more than you will ever suffer. It is
+      ended; it is over&mdash;I think it is over forever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How foolish! At your age!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that kind of love is ended for me. Others may please me, others do
+      please me, as you said, but it is not the same thing. Would you like to
+      see the man I once loved?&rdquo; asked Jacqueline, impelled by a juvenile desire
+      to exhibit her experience, and also aware instinctively that to cast a
+      scrap of past history to the curious sometimes turns off their attention
+      on another track. &ldquo;He is near us now,&rdquo; she added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And while Fred&rsquo;s angry eyes, under his frowning brows, were wandering all
+      round the salon, she pointed to Hubert Marien with a movement of her fan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marien was looking on at the dancing, with his old smile, not so brilliant
+      now as it had been. He now only smiled at beauty collectively, which was
+      well represented that evening in Madame de Nailles&rsquo;s salon. Young girls
+      &lsquo;en masse&rsquo; continued to delight him, but his admiration as an artist
+      became less and less personal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had grown stout, his hair and beard were getting gray; he was
+      interested no longer in Savonarola, having obtained, thanks to his
+      picture, the medal of honor, and the Institute some months since had
+      opened its doors to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marien? You are laughing at me!&rdquo; cried Fred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is simply the truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Some magnetic influence at that moment caused the painter to turn his eyes
+      toward the spot where they were talking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were speaking of you,&rdquo; said Jacqueline.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And her tone was so singular that he dared not ask what they were saying.
+      With humility which had in it a certain touch of bitterness he said, still
+      smiling:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might find something better to do than to talk good or evil of a poor
+      fellow who counts now for nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Counts for nothing! A fellow to be pitied!&rdquo; cried Fred, &ldquo;a man who has
+      just been elected to the Institute&mdash;you are hard to satisfy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline sat looking at him like a young sorceress engaged in sticking
+      pins into the heart of a waxen figure of her enemy. She never missed an
+      opportunity of showing her implacable dislike of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned to Fred: &ldquo;What I was telling you,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I am quite
+      willing to repeat in his presence. The thing has lost its importance now
+      that he has become more indifferent to me than any other man in the
+      world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped, hoping that Marien had understood what she was saying and
+      that he resented the humiliating avowal from her own lips that her
+      childish love was now only a memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If that is the only confession you have to make to me,&rdquo; said Fred, who
+      had almost recovered his composure, &ldquo;I can put up with my former rival,
+      and I pass a sponge over all that has happened in your long past of
+      seventeen years and a half, Jacqueline. Tell me only that at present you
+      like no one better than me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled a half-smile, but he did not see it. She made no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he here, too&mdash;like the other!&rdquo; he asked, sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she saw his restless eyes turn for an instant to the conservatory,
+      where Madame de Villegry, leaning back in her armchair, and Gerard de
+      Cymier, on a low seat almost at her feet, were carrying on their platonic
+      flirtation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! you must not think of quarrelling with him,&rdquo; cried Jacqueline,
+      frightened at the look Fred fastened on De Cymier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it would be of no use. I shall go out to Tonquin, that&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fred! You are not serious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will see whether I am not serious. At this very moment I know a man
+      who will be glad to exchange with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! go and get yourself killed at Tonquin for a foolish little girl
+      like me, who is very, very fond of you, but hardly knows her own mind. It
+      would be absurd!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People are not always killed at Tonquin, but I must have new interests,
+      something to divert my mind from&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fred! my dear Fred&rdquo;&mdash;Jacqueline had suddenly become almost tender,
+      almost suppliant. &ldquo;Your mother! Think of your mother! What would she say?
+      Oh, my God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mother must be allowed to think that I love my profession better than
+      all else. But, Jacqueline,&rdquo; continued the poor fellow, clinging in despair
+      to the very smallest hope, as a drowning man catches at a straw, &ldquo;if you
+      do not, as you said, know exactly your own mind&mdash;if you would like to
+      question your own heart&mdash;I would wait&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline was biting the end of her fan&mdash;a conflict was taking place
+      within her breast. But to certain temperaments there is pleasure in
+      breaking a chain or in leaping a barrier; she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fred, I am too much your friend to deceive you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment M. de Cymier came toward them with his air of assurance:
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle, you forget that you promised me this waltz,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I never forget anything,&rdquo; she answered, rising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred detained her an instant, saying, in a low voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive me. This moment, Jacqueline, is decisive. I must have an answer.
+      I never shall speak to you again of my sorrow. But decide now&mdash;on the
+      spot. Is all ended between us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not our old friendship, Fred,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, tears rising in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So be it, then, if you so will it. But our friendship never will show
+      itself unless you are in need of friendship, and then only with the
+      discretion that your present attitude toward me has imposed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you ready, Mademoiselle,&rdquo; said Gerard, who, to allow them to end
+      their conversation, had obligingly turned his attention to some madrigals
+      that Colette Odinska was laughing over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline shook her head resolutely, though at that moment her heart felt
+      as if it were in a vise, and the moisture in her eyes looked like anything
+      but a refusal. Then, without giving herself time for further thought, she
+      whirled away into the dance with M. de Cymier. It was over, she had flung
+      to the winds her chance for happiness, and wounded a heart more cruelly
+      than Hubert Marien had ever wounded hers. The most horrible thing in this
+      unending warfare we call love is that we too often repay to those who love
+      us the harm that has been done us by those whom we have loved. The seeds
+      of mistrust and perversity sown by one man or by one woman bear fruit to
+      be gathered by some one else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. A COMEDY AND A TRAGEDY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The departure of Frederic d&rsquo;Argy for Tonquin occasioned a break in the
+      intercourse between his mother and the family of De Nailles. The wails of
+      Hecuba were nothing to the lamentations of poor Madame d&rsquo;Argy; the
+      unreasonableness of her wrath and the exaggeration in her reproaches
+      hindered even Jacqueline from feeling all the remorse she might otherwise
+      have felt for her share in Fred&rsquo;s departure. She told her father, who the
+      first time in her life addressed her with some severity, that she could
+      not be expected to love all the young men who might threaten to go to the
+      wars, or to fling themselves from fourth-story windows, for her sake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was very indelicate and inconsiderate of Fred to tell any one that it
+      was my fault that he was doing anything so foolish,&rdquo; she said, with true
+      feminine deceit, &ldquo;but he has taken the very worst possible means to make
+      me care for him. Everybody has too much to say about this matter which
+      concerns only him and me. Even Giselle thought proper to write me a
+      sermon!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And she gave vent to her feelings in an exclamation of three syllables
+      that she had learned from the Odinskas, which meant: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care!&rdquo; (je
+      m&rsquo;en moque).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this was not true. She cared very much for Giselle&rsquo;s good opinion, and
+      for Madame d&rsquo;Argy&rsquo;s friendship. She suffered much in her secret heart at
+      the thought of having given so much pain to Fred. She guessed how deep it
+      was by the step to which it had driven him. But there was in her secret
+      soul something more than all the rest, it was a puerile, but delicious
+      satisfaction in feeling her own importance, in having been able to
+      exercise an influence over one heart which might possibly extend to that
+      of M. de Cymier. She thought he might be gratified by knowing that she had
+      driven a young man to despair, if he guessed for whose sake she had been
+      so cruel. He knew it, of course. Madame de Nailles took care that he
+      should not be ignorant of it, and the pleasure he took in such a proof of
+      his power over a young heart was not unlike that pleasure Jacqueline
+      experienced in her coquetry&mdash;which crushed her better feelings. He
+      felt proud of the sacrifice this beautiful girl had made for his sake,
+      though he did not consider himself thereby committed to any decision, only
+      he felt more attached to her than ever. Ever since the day when Madame de
+      Villegry had first introduced him at the house of Madame de Nailles, he
+      had had great pleasure in going there. The daughter of the house was more
+      and more to his taste, but his liking for her was not such as to carry him
+      beyond prudence. &ldquo;If I chose,&rdquo; he would say to himself after every time he
+      met her, &ldquo;if I chose I could own that jewel. I have only to stretch out my
+      hand and have it given me.&rdquo; And the next morning, after going to sleep
+      full of that pleasant thought, he would awake glad to find that he was
+      still as free as ever, and able to carry on a flirtation with a woman of
+      the world, which imposed no obligations upon him, and yet at the same time
+      make love to a young girl whom he would gladly have married but for
+      certain reports which were beginning to circulate among men of business
+      concerning the financial position of M. de Nailles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They said that he was withdrawing money from secure investments to repair
+      (or to increase) considerable losses made by speculation, and that he
+      operated recklessly on the Bourse. These rumors had already withdrawn
+      Marcel d&rsquo;Etaples from the list of his daughter&rsquo;s suitors. The young fellow
+      was a captain of Hussars, who had no scruple in declaring the reason of
+      his giving up his interest in the young lady. Gerard de Cymier, more
+      prudent, waited and watched, thinking it would be quite time enough to go
+      to the bottom of things when he found himself called upon to make a
+      decision, and greatly interested meantime in the daily increase of
+      Jacqueline&rsquo;s beauty. It was evident she cared for him. After all, it was
+      doing the little thing no harm to let her live on in the intoxication of
+      vanity and hope, and to give her something to dwell upon in her innocent
+      dreams. Never did Gerard allow himself to overstep the line he had marked
+      out for himself; a glance, a slight pressure of the hand, which might have
+      been intentional, or have meant nothing, a few ambiguous words in which an
+      active imagination might find something to dream about, a certain way of
+      passing his arm round her slight waist which would have meant much had it
+      not been done in public to the sound of music, were all the proofs the
+      young diplomatist had ever given of an attraction that was real so far as
+      consisted with his complete selfishness, joined to his professional
+      prudence, and that systematic habit of taking up fancies at any time for
+      anything, which prevents each fancy as it occurs from ripening into
+      passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He alluded indirectly to Fred&rsquo;s departure in a way that turned it into
+      ridicule. While playing a game of &lsquo;boston&rsquo; he whispered into Jacqueline&rsquo;s
+      ear something about the old-fashionedness and stupidity of Paul and
+      Virginia, and his opinion of &ldquo;calf-love,&rdquo; as the English call an early
+      attachment, and something about the right of every girl to know a suitor
+      long before she consents to marry him. He said he thought that the days of
+      courtship must be the most delightful in the life of a woman, and that a
+      man who wished to cut them short was a fellow without delicacy or
+      discretion!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From this Jacqueline drew the conclusion that he was not willing to
+      resemble such a fellow, and was more and more persuaded that there was
+      tenderness in the way he pressed her waist, and that his voice had the
+      softness of a caress when he spoke to her. He made many inquiries as to
+      what she liked and what she wished for in the future, as if his great
+      object in all things was to anticipate her wishes. As for his intimacy
+      with Madame de Villegry, Jacqueline thought nothing of it, notwithstanding
+      her habitual mistrust of those she called old women. In the first place,
+      Madame de Villegry was her own mistress, nothing hindered them from having
+      been married long ago had they wished it; besides, had not Madame de
+      Villegry brought the young man to their house and let every one see, even
+      Jacqueline herself, what was her object in doing so? In this matter she
+      was their ally, a most zealous and kind ally, for she was continually
+      advising her young friend as to what was most becoming to her and how she
+      might make herself most attractive to men in general, with little covert
+      allusions to the particular tastes of Gerard, which she said she knew as
+      well as if he had been her brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this was lightly insinuated, but never insisted upon, with the tact
+      which stood Madame de Villegry in stead of talent, and which had enabled
+      her to perform some marvellous feats upon the tight-rope without losing
+      her balance completely. She, too, made fun of the tragic determination of
+      Fred, which all those who composed the society of the De Nailles had been
+      made aware of by the indiscreet lamentations of Madame d&rsquo;Argy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is not Jacqueline fortunate?&rdquo; cried. Colette Odinska, who, herself always
+      on a high horse, looked on love in its tragic aspect, and would have liked
+      to resemble Marie Stuart as much as she could, &ldquo;is she not fortunate? She
+      has had a man who has gone abroad to get himself killed&mdash;and all for
+      her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Colette imagined herself under the same circumstances, making the most of
+      a slain lover, with a crape veil covering her fair hair, her mourning
+      copied from that of her divorced sister, who wore her weeds so charmingly,
+      but who was getting rather tired of a single life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Miss Kate Sparks and Miss Nora, they could not understand why the
+      breaking of half-a-dozen hearts should not be the prelude to every
+      marriage. That, they said with much conviction, was always the case in
+      America, and a girl was thought all the more of who had done so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline, however, thought more than was reasonable about the dangers
+      that the friend of her childhood was going to encounter through her fault.
+      Fred&rsquo;s departure would have lent him a certain prestige, had not a
+      powerful new interest stepped in to divert her thoughts. Madame d&rsquo;Avrigny
+      was getting up her annual private theatricals, and wanted Jacqueline to
+      take the principal part in the play, saying that she ought to put her
+      lessons in elocution to some use. The piece chosen was to illustrate a
+      proverb, and was entirely new. It was as unexceptionable as it was
+      amusing; the most severe critic could have found no fault with its
+      morality or with its moral, which turned on the eagerness displayed by
+      young girls nowadays to obtain diplomas. Scylla and Charybdis was its
+      name. Its story was that of a young bride, who, thinking to please a
+      husband, a stupid and ignorant man, was trying to obtain in secret a high
+      place in the examination at the Sorbonne&mdash;&lsquo;un brevet superieur&rsquo;. The
+      husband, disquieted by the mystery, is at first suspicious, then jealous,
+      and then is overwhelmed with humiliation when he discovers that his wife
+      knows more of everything than himself. He ends by imploring her to give up
+      her higher education if she wishes to please him. The little play had all
+      the modern loveliness and grace which Octave Feuillet alone can give, and
+      it contained a lesson from which any one might profit; which was by no
+      means always the case with Madame d&rsquo;Avrigny&rsquo;s plays, which too often were
+      full of risky allusions, of critical situations, and the like; likely, in
+      short, to &ldquo;sail too close to the wind,&rdquo; as Fred had once described them.
+      But Madame d&rsquo;Avrigny&rsquo;s prime object was the amusement of society, and
+      society finds pleasure in things which, if innocence understood them,
+      would put her to the blush. This play, however, was an exception. There
+      had been very little to cut out this time. Madame de Nailles had been
+      asked to take the mother&rsquo;s part, but she declined, not caring to act such
+      a character in a house where years before in all her glory she had made a
+      sensation as a young coquette. So Madame d&rsquo;Avrigny had to take the part
+      herself, not sorry to be able to superintend everything on the stage, and
+      to prompt Dolly, if necessary&mdash;Dolly, who had but four words to say,
+      which she always forgot, but who looked lovely in a little cap as a femme
+      de chambre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      People had been surprised that M. de Cymier should have asked for the part
+      of the husband, a local magistrate, stiff and self-important, whom
+      everybody laughed at. Jacqueline alone knew why he had chosen it: it would
+      give him the opportunity of giving her two kisses. Of course those kisses
+      were to be reserved for the representation, but whether intentionally or
+      otherwise, the young husband ventured upon them at every rehearsal, in
+      spite of the general outcry&mdash;not, however, very much in earnest, for
+      it is well understood that in private theatricals certain liberties may be
+      allowed, and M. de Cymier had never been remarkable for reserve when he
+      acted at the clubs, where the female parts were taken by ladies from the
+      smaller theatres. In this school he had acquired some reputation as an
+      amateur actor. &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; as he remarked on making his apology, &ldquo;we shall
+      do it very awkwardly upon the stage if we are not allowed to practise it
+      beforehand.&rdquo; Jacqueline burst out laughing, and did not make much show of
+      opposition. To play the part of his wife, to hear him say to her, to
+      respond with the affectionate and familiar &lsquo;toi&rsquo;, was so amusing! It was
+      droll to see her cut out her husband in chemistry, history, and grammar,
+      and make him confound La Fontaine with Corneille. She had such a little
+      air while doing it! And at the close, when he said to her: &ldquo;If I give you
+      a pony to-morrow, and a good hearty kiss this very minute, shall you be
+      willing to give up getting that degree?&rdquo; she responded, with such gusto:
+      &ldquo;Indeed, I shall!&rdquo; and her manner was so eager, so boyish, so full of fun,
+      that she was wildly applauded, while Gerard embraced her as heartily as he
+      liked, to make up to himself for her having had, as his wife, the upper
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this kissing threw him rather off his balance, and he might soon have
+      sealed his fate, had not a very sad event occurred, which restored his
+      self-possession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dress rehearsal was to take place one bright spring day at about four
+      o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon. A large number of guests was assembled at the
+      house of Madame d&rsquo;Avrigny. The performance had been much talked about
+      beforehand in society. The beauty, the singing, and the histrionic powers
+      of the principal actress had been everywhere extolled. Fully conscious of
+      what was expected of her, and eager to do herself credit in every way,
+      Jacqueline took advantage of Madame Strahlberg&rsquo;s presence to run over a
+      little song, which she was to&mdash;sing between the acts and in which she
+      could see no meaning whatever. This little song, which, to most of the
+      ladies present, seemed simply idiotic, made the men in the audience cry
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; as if half-shocked, and then &ldquo;Encore! Encore!&rdquo; in a sort of frenzy.
+      It was a so-called pastoral effusion, in which Colinette rhymed with
+      herbette, and in which the false innocence of the eighteenth century was a
+      cloak for much indelicate allusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never,&rdquo; said Jacqueline in self-defense, before she began the song,
+      &ldquo;sang anything so stupid. And that is saying much when one thinks of all
+      the nonsensical words that people set to music! It&rsquo;s a marvel how any one
+      can like this stuff. Do tell me what there is in it?&rdquo; she added, turning
+      to Gerard, who was charmed by her ignorance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Standing beside the grand piano, with her arms waving as she sang,
+      repeating, by the expression of her eyes, the question she had asked and
+      to which she had received no answer, she was singing the verses she
+      considered nonsense with as much point as if she had understood them,
+      thanks to the hints given her by Madame Strahlberg, who was playing her
+      accompaniment, when the entrance of a servant, who pronounced her name
+      aloud, made a sudden interruption. &ldquo;Mademoiselle de Nailles is wanted at
+      home at once. Modeste has come for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame d&rsquo;Avrigny went out to say to the old servant: &ldquo;She can not possibly
+      go home with you! It is only half an hour since she came. The rehearsal is
+      just beginning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But something Modeste said in answer made her give a little cry, full of
+      consternation. She came quickly back, and going up to Jacqueline:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you must go home at once&mdash;there is bad news,
+      your father is ill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The solemnity of Madame d&rsquo;Avrigny&rsquo;s voice, the pity in her expression, the
+      affection with which she spoke and above all her total indifference to the
+      fate of her rehearsal, frightened Jacqueline. She rushed away, not waiting
+      to say good-by, leaving behind her a general murmur of &ldquo;Poor thing!&rdquo; while
+      Madame d&rsquo;Avrigny, recovering from her first shock, was already beginning
+      to wonder&mdash;her instincts as an impresario coming once more to the
+      front&mdash;whether the leading part might not be taken by Isabelle Ray.
+      She would have to send out two hundred cards, at least, and put off her
+      play for another fortnight. What a pity! It seemed as if misfortunes
+      always happened just so as to interfere with pleasures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fiacre which had brought Modeste was at the door. The old nurse helped
+      her young lady into it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has happened to papa?&rdquo; cried Jacqueline, impetuously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something horrible in this sudden transition from gay excitement
+      to the sharpest anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing&mdash;that is to say&mdash;he is very sick. Don&rsquo;t tremble like
+      that, my darling-courage!&rdquo; stammered Modeste, who was frightened by her
+      agitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was taken sick, you say. Where? How happened it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In his study. Pierre had just brought him his letters. We thought we
+      heard a noise as if a chair had been thrown down, and a sort of cry. I ran
+      in to see. He was lying at full length on the floor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now? How is he now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We did what we could for him. Madame came back. He is lying on his bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Modeste covered her face with her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have not told me all. What else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mon Dieu! you knew your poor father had heart disease. The last time the
+      doctor saw him he thought his legs had swelled&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had!&rdquo; Jacqueline heard only that one word. It meant that the life of her
+      father was a thing of the past. Hardly waiting till the fiacre could be
+      stopped, she sprang out, rushed into the house, opened the door of her
+      father&rsquo;s chamber, pushing aside a servant who tried to stop her, and fell
+      upon her knees beside the bed where lay the body of her father, white and
+      rigid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa! My poor dear&mdash;dear papa!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The hand she pressed to her lips was as cold as ice. She raised her
+      frightened eyes to the face over which the great change from life to death
+      had passed. &ldquo;What does it mean?&rdquo; Jacqueline had never looked on death
+      before, but she knew this was not sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, speak to me, papa! It is I&mdash;it is Jacqueline!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her stepmother tried to raise her&mdash;tried to fold her in her arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me alone!&rdquo; she cried with horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to her as if her father, where he was now, so far from her, so
+      far from everything, might have the power to look into human hearts, and
+      know the perfidy he had known nothing of when he was living. He might see
+      in her own heart, too, her great despair. All else seemed small and of no
+      consequence when death was present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh! why had she not been a better daughter, more loving, more devoted? why
+      had she ever cared for anything but to make him happy?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sobbed aloud, while Madame de Nailles, pressing her handkerchief to
+      her eyes, stood at the foot of the bed, and the doctor, too, was near,
+      whispering to some one whom Jacqueline at first had not perceived&mdash;the
+      friend of the family, Hubert Marien.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marien there? Was it not natural that, so intimate as he had always been
+      with the dead man, he should have hastened to offer his services to the
+      widow?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline flung herself upon her father&rsquo;s corpse, as if to protect it
+      from profanation. She had an impulse to bear it away with her to some
+      desert spot where she alone could have wept over it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lay thus a long time, beside herself with grief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flowers which covered the bed and lay scattered on the floor, gave a
+      festal appearance to the death-chamber. They had been purchased for a
+      fete, but circumstances had changed their destination. That evening there
+      was to have been a reception in the house of M. de Nailles, but the
+      unexpected guest that comes without an invitation had arrived before the
+      music and the dancers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. THE STORM BREAKS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Monsieur de Nailles was dead, struck down suddenly by what is called
+      indefinitely heart-failure. The trouble in that organ from which he had
+      long suffered had brought on what might have been long foreseen, and yet
+      every one seemed, stupefied by the event. It came upon them like a
+      thunderbolt. It often happens so when people who are really ill persist in
+      doing all that may be done with safety by other persons. They persuaded
+      themselves, and those about them are easily persuaded, that small remedies
+      will prolong indefinitely a state of things which is precarious to the
+      last degree. Friends are ready to believe, when the sufferer complains
+      that his work is too hard for him, that he thinks too much of his ailments
+      and that he exaggerates trifles to which they are well accustomed, but
+      which are best known to him alone. When M. de Nailles, several weeks
+      before his death, had asked to be excused and to stay at home instead of
+      attending some large gathering, his wife, and even Jacqueline, would try
+      to convince him that a little amusement would be good for him; they were
+      unwilling to leave him to the repose he needed, prescribed for him by the
+      doctors, who had been unanimous that he must &ldquo;put down the brakes,&rdquo; give
+      less attention to business, avoid late hours and over-exertion of all
+      kinds. &ldquo;And, above all,&rdquo; said one of the lights of science whom he had
+      consulted recently about certain feelings of faintness which were a bad
+      symptom, &ldquo;above all, you must keep yourself from mental anxiety.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      How could he, when his fortune, already much impaired, hung on chances as
+      uncertain as those in a game of roulette? What nonsense! The failure of a
+      great financial company had brought about a crisis on the Bourse. The news
+      of the inability of Wermant, the &lsquo;agent de change&rsquo;, to meet his
+      engagements, had completed the downfall of M. de Nailles. Not only death,
+      but ruin, had entered that house, where, a few hours before, luxury and
+      opulence had seemed to reign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t know whether there will be anything left for us to live upon,&rdquo;
+       cried Madame de Nailles, with anguish, even while her husband&rsquo;s body lay
+      in the chamber of death, and Jacqueline, kneeling beside it, wept,
+      unwilling to receive comfort or consolation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned angrily upon her stepmother and cried:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What matter? I have no father&mdash;there is nothing else I care for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But from that moment a dreadful thought, a thought she was ashamed of,
+      which made her feel a monster of selfishness, rose in her mind, do what
+      she would to hinder it. Jacqueline was sensible that she cared for
+      something else; great as was her sense of loss, a sort of reckless
+      curiosity seemed haunting her, while all the time she felt that her great
+      grief ought not to give place to anything besides. &ldquo;How would Gerard de
+      Cymier behave in these circumstances?&rdquo; She thought about it all one
+      dreadful night as she and Modeste, who was telling her beads softly, sat
+      in the faint light of the death-chamber. She thought of it at dawn, when,
+      after one of those brief sleeps which come to the young under all
+      conditions, she resumed with a sigh a sense of surrounding realities.
+      Almost in the same instant she thought: &ldquo;My dear father will never wake
+      again,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Does he love me?&mdash;does he now wish me to be his wife?&mdash;will
+      he take me away?&rdquo; The devil, which put this thought into her heart, made
+      her eager to know the answer to these questions. He suggested how dreadful
+      life with her stepmother would be if no means of escape were offered her.
+      He made her foresee that her stepmother would marry again&mdash;would
+      marry Marien. &ldquo;But I shall not be there!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;I will not
+      countenance such an infamy!&rdquo; Oh, how she hoped Gerard de Cymier loved her!
+      The hypocritical tears of Madame de Nailles disgusted her. She could not
+      bear to have such false grief associated with her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Men in black, with solemn faces, came and bore away the body, no longer
+      like the form of the father she had loved. He had gone from her forever.
+      Pompous funeral rites, little in accordance with the crash that soon
+      succeeded them, were superintended by Marien, who, in the absence of near
+      relatives, took charge of everything. He seemed to be deeply affected, and
+      behaved with all possible kindness and consideration to Jacqueline, who
+      could not, however, bring herself to thank him, or even to look at him.
+      She hated him with an increase of resentment, as if the soul of her dead
+      father, who now knew the truth, had passed into her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, M. de Cymier took care to inform himself of the state of things.
+      It was easy enough to do so. All Paris was talking of the shipwreck in
+      which life and fortune had been lost by a man whose kindliness as a host
+      at his wife&rsquo;s parties every one had appreciated. That was what came,
+      people said, of striving after big dividends! The house was to be sold,
+      with the horses, the pictures, and the furniture. What a change for his
+      poor wife and daughter! There were others who suffered by the Wermant
+      crash, but those were less interesting than the De Nailles. M. de Belvan
+      found himself left by his father-in-law&rsquo;s failure with a wife on his hands
+      who not only had not a sou, but who was the daughter of an &lsquo;agent de
+      change&rsquo; who had behaved dishonorably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a text for dissertations on the disgrace of marrying for money;
+      those who had done the same thing, minus the same consequences, being
+      loudest in reprobating alliances of that kind. M. de Cymier listened
+      attentively to such talk, looking and saying the right things, and as he
+      heard more and more about the deplorable condition of M. de Nailles&rsquo;s
+      affairs, he congratulated himself that a prudent presentiment had kept him
+      from asking the hand of Jacqueline. He had had vague doubts as to the firm
+      foundation of the opulence which made so charming a frame for her young
+      beauty; it seemed to him as if she were now less beautiful than he had
+      imagined her; the enchantment she had exercised upon him was thrown off by
+      simple considerations of good sense. And yet he gave a long sigh of regret
+      when he thought she was unattainable except by marriage. He, however,
+      thanked heaven that he had not gone far enough to have compromised himself
+      with her. The most his conscience could reproach him with was an
+      occasional imprudence in moments of forgetfulness; no court of honor could
+      hold him bound to declare himself her suitor. The evening that he made up
+      his mind to this he wrote two letters, very nearly alike; one was to
+      Madame d&rsquo;Avrigny, the other to Madame de Nailles, announcing that, having
+      received orders to join the Embassy to which he was attached at Vienna, he
+      was about to depart at once, with great regret that he should not be able
+      to take leave of any one. To Madame d&rsquo;Avrigny he made apologies for having
+      to give up his part in her theatricals; he entreated Madame de Nailles to
+      accept both for herself and for Mademoiselle Jacqueline his deepest
+      condolences and the assurance of his sympathy. The manner in which this
+      was said was all it ought to have been, except that it might have been
+      rather more brief. M. de Cymier said more than was necessary about his
+      participation in their grief, because he was conscious of a total lack of
+      sympathy. He begged the ladies would forgive him if, from feelings of
+      delicacy and a sense of the respect due to a great sorrow, he did not,
+      before leaving Paris, which he was about do to probably for a long time,
+      personally present to them &lsquo;ses hommages attristes&rsquo;. Then followed a few
+      lines in which he spoke of the pleasant recollections he should always
+      retain of the hospitality he had enjoyed under M. de Nailles&rsquo;s roof, in a
+      way that gave them clearly to understand that he had no expectation of
+      ever entering their family on a more intimate footing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame de Nailles received this letter just as she had had a conversation
+      with a man of business, who had shown her how complete was the ruin for
+      which in a great measure she herself was responsible. She had no longer
+      any illusions as to her position. When the estate had been settled there
+      would be nothing left but poverty, not only for herself, who, having
+      brought her husband no dot, had no right to consider herself wronged by
+      the bankruptcy, but for Jacqueline, whose fortune, derived from her
+      mother, had suffered under her father&rsquo;s management (there are such men&mdash;unfaithful
+      guardians of a child&rsquo;s property, but yet good fathers) in every way in
+      which it was possible to evade the provisions of the Code intended to
+      protect the rights of minor children. In the little salon so charmingly
+      furnished, where never before had sorrow or sadness been discussed, Madame
+      de Nailles poured out her complaints to her stepdaughter and insisted upon
+      plans of strict economy, when M. de Cymier&rsquo;s letter was brought in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Read!&rdquo; said the Baroness, handing the strange document to Jacqueline,
+      after she had read it through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she leaned back in her chair with a gesture which signified: &ldquo;This is
+      the last straw!&rdquo; and remained motionless, apparently overwhelmed, with her
+      face covered by one hand, but furtively watching the face of the girl so
+      cruelly forsaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That face told nothing, for pride supplies some sufferers with necessary
+      courage. Jacqueline sat for some time with her eyes fixed on the decisive
+      adieu which swept away what might have been her secret hope. The paper did
+      not tremble in her hand, a half-smile of contempt passed over her mouth.
+      The answer to the restless question that had intruded itself upon her in
+      the first moments of her grief was now before her. Its promptness, its
+      polished brutality, had given her a shock, but not the pain she had
+      expected. Perhaps her great grief&mdash;the real, the true, the grief
+      death brings&mdash;recovered its place in her heart, and prevented her
+      from feeling keenly any secondary emotion. Perhaps this man, who could pay
+      court to her in her days of happiness and disappear when the first trouble
+      came, seemed to her not worth caring for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She silently handed back the letter to her stepmother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more than I expected,&rdquo; said the Baroness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed?&rdquo; replied Jacqueline with complete indifference. She wished to
+      give no opening to any expressions of sympathy on the part of Madame de
+      Nailles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Madame d&rsquo;Avrigny,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;has bad luck; all her actors seem to
+      be leaving her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This speech was the vain bravado of a young soldier going into action. The
+      poor child betrayed herself to the experienced woman, trained either to
+      detect or to practise artifice, and who found bitter amusement in watching
+      the girl&rsquo;s assumed &lsquo;sang-froid&rsquo;. But the mask fell off at the first touch
+      of genuine sympathy. When Giselle, forgetful of a certain coolness between
+      them ever since Fred&rsquo;s departure, came to clasp her in her arms, she
+      showed only her true self, a girl suffering all the bitterness of a cruel,
+      humiliating desertion. Long talks ensued between the friends, in which
+      Jacqueline poured into Giselle&rsquo;s ear her sad discoveries in the past, her
+      sorrows and anxieties in the present, and her vague plans for the future.
+      &ldquo;I must go away,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I must escape somewhere; I can not go on
+      living with Madame de Nailles&mdash;I should go mad, I should be tempted
+      every day to upbraid her with her conduct.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle made no attempt to curb an excitement which she knew would resist
+      all she could say to calm it. She feigned agreement, hoping thereby to
+      increase her future influence, and advised her friend to seek in a convent
+      the refuge that she needed. But she must do nothing rashly; she should
+      only consider it a temporary retreat whose motive was a wish to remain for
+      a while within reach of religious consolation. In that way she would give
+      people nothing to talk about, and her step mother could not be offended.
+      It was never of any use to get out of a difficulty by breaking all the
+      glass windows with a great noise, and good resolutions are made firmer by
+      being matured in quietness. Such were the lessons Giselle herself had been
+      taught by the Benedictine nuns, who, however deficient they might be in
+      the higher education of women, knew at least how to bring up young girls
+      with a view to making them good wives. Giselle illustrated this day by day
+      in her relations to a husband as disagreeable as a husband well could be,
+      a man of small intelligence, who was not even faithful to her. But she did
+      not cite herself as an example. She never talked about herself, or her own
+      difficulties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are an angel of sense and goodness,&rdquo; sobbed Jacqueline. &ldquo;I will do
+      whatever you wish me to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Count upon me&mdash;count upon all your friends,&rdquo; said Madame de Talbrun,
+      tenderly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, enumerating the oldest and the truest of these friends, she
+      unluckily named Madame d&rsquo;Argy. Jacqueline drew herself back at once:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, for pity&rsquo;s sake!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t mention them to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Already a comparison between Fred&rsquo;s faithful affection and Gerard de
+      Cymier&rsquo;s desertion had come into her mind, but she had refused to
+      entertain it, declaring resolutely to herself that she never should repent
+      her refusal. She was sore, she was angry with all men, she wished all were
+      like Cymier or like Marien, that she might hate every one of them; she
+      came to the conclusion in her heart of hearts that all of them, even the
+      best, if put to the proof, would turn out selfish. She liked to think so&mdash;to
+      believe in none of them. Thus it happened that an unexpected visit from
+      Fred&rsquo;s mother, among those that she received in her first days of
+      orphanhood, was particularly agreeable to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame d&rsquo;Argy, on hearing of the death and of the ruin of M. de Nailles,
+      was divided by two contradictory feelings. She clearly saw the hand of
+      Providence in what had happened: her son was in the squadron on its way to
+      attack Formosa; he was in peril from the climate, in peril from Chinese
+      bullets, and assuredly those who had brought him into peril could not be
+      punished too severely; on the other hand, the last mail from Tonquin had
+      brought her one of those great joys which always incline us to be
+      merciful. Fred had so greatly distinguished himself in a series of fights
+      upon the river Min that he had been offered his choice between the Cross
+      of the Legion of Honor or promotion. He told his mother now that he had
+      quite recovered from a wound he had received which had brought him some
+      glory, but which he assured her had done him no bodily harm, and he
+      repeated to her what he would not tell her at first, some words of praise
+      from Admiral Courbet of more value in his eyes than any reward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Triumphant herself, and much moved by pity for Jacqueline, Madame d&rsquo;Argy
+      felt as if she must put an end to a rupture which could not be kept up
+      when a great sorrow had fallen on her old friends, besides which she
+      longed to tell every one, those who had been blind and ungrateful in
+      particular, that Fred had proved himself a hero. So Jacqueline and her
+      stepmother saw her arrive as if nothing had ever come between them. There
+      were kisses and tears, and a torrent of kindly meant questions,
+      affectionate explanations, and offers of service. But Fred&rsquo;s mother could
+      not help showing her own pride and happiness to those in sorrow. They
+      congratulated her with sadness. Madame d&rsquo;Argy would have liked to think
+      that the value of what she had lost was now made plain to Jacqueline. And
+      if it caused her one more pang&mdash;what did it matter? He and his mother
+      had suffered too. It was the turn of others. God was just. Resentment, and
+      kindness, and a strange mixed feeling of forgiveness and revenge contended
+      together in the really generous heart of Madame d&rsquo;Argy, but that heart was
+      still sore within her. Pity, however, carried the day, and had it not been
+      for the irritating coldness of &ldquo;that little hard-hearted thing,&rdquo; as she
+      called Jacqueline, she would have entirely forgiven her. She never
+      suspected that the exaggerated reserve of manner that offended her was
+      owing to Jacqueline&rsquo;s dread (commendable in itself) of appearing to wish
+      in her days of misfortune for the return of one she had rejected in the
+      time of prosperity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of the received opinion that society abandons those who are
+      overtaken by misfortune, all the friends of the De Nailles flocked to
+      offer their condolences to the widow and the orphan with warm
+      demonstrations of interest. Curiosity, a liking to witness, or to
+      experience, emotion, the pleasure of being able to tell what has been seen
+      and heard, to find out new facts and repeat them again to others, joined
+      to a sort of vague, commonplace, almost intrusive pity, are sentiments,
+      which sometimes in hours of great disaster, produce what appears to wear
+      the look of sympathy. A fortnight after M. de Nailles&rsquo;s death, between the
+      acts of Scylla and Charybdis, the principal parts in which were taken by
+      young d&rsquo;Etaples and Isabelle Ray, the company, as it ate ices, was glibly
+      discussing the real drama which had produced in their own elegant circle
+      much of the effect a blow has upon an ant-hill&mdash;fear, agitation, and
+      a tumultuous rush to the scene of the disaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Great indignation was expressed against the man who had risked the fortune
+      of his family in speculation. Oh! the thing had been going on for a long
+      while. His fortune had been gradually melting away; Grandchaux was loaded
+      down with mortgages and would bring almost nothing at a forced sale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everybody forgot that had M. de Nailles&rsquo;s speculations been successful
+      they would have been called matters of business, conducted with great
+      ability on a large scale. When a performer falls from the tightrope, who
+      remembers all the times he has not failed? It is simply said that he fell
+      from his own carelessness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poor Baroness is touchingly resigned,&rdquo; said Madame de Villegry, with
+      a deep sigh; &ldquo;and heaven knows how many other cares she has besides the
+      loss of money! I don&rsquo;t mean only the death of her husband&mdash;and you
+      know how much they were attached to each other&mdash;I am speaking of that
+      unaccountable resolution of Jacqueline&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame d&rsquo;Avrigny here came forward with her usual equanimity which nothing
+      disturbed, unless it were something which interfered with the success of
+      her salon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was of course very sorry for her friends in trouble, but the
+      vicissitudes that had happened to her theatricals she had more at heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;the first act did not go off badly, did it? The
+      musical part made up for the rest. That divine Strahlberg is ready for any
+      emergency. How well she sang that air of &lsquo;La Petite Mariee!&rsquo; It was
+      exquisite, but I regretted Jacqueline. She was so charming in that lively
+      little part. What a catastrophe!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a terrible catastrophe! Were you speaking of the retreat she wishes
+      to make in a convent? Well, I quite understand how she feels about it! I
+      should feel the same myself. In the bewilderment of a first grief one does
+      not care to see anything of the world. &lsquo;Mon Dieu&rsquo;! youth always has these
+      exaggerated notions. She will come back to us. Poor little thing! Of
+      course it was no fault of hers, and I should not think of blaming Monsieur
+      de Cymier. The exigencies of his career&mdash;but you all must own that
+      unexpected things happen so suddenly in this life that it is enough to
+      discourage any one who likes to open her house and provide amusement for
+      her friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Every one present pitied her for the contretemps over which she had
+      triumphed so successfully. Then she resumed, serenely:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think that Isabelle played the part almost as well as
+      Jacqueline? Up to the last moment I was afraid that something would go
+      wrong. When one gets into a streak of ill-luck&mdash;but all went off to
+      perfection, thank heaven!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Madame Odinska was whispering to one of those who sat near her
+      her belief that Jacqueline would never get over her father&rsquo;s loss. &ldquo;It
+      would not astonish me,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;to hear that the child, who has a noble
+      nature, would remain in the convent and take the veil.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Any kind of heroic deed seemed natural to this foolish enthusiast, who, as
+      a matter of fact, in her own life, had never shown any tendency to heroic
+      virtues; her mission in life had seemed to be to spoil her daughters in
+      every possible way, and to fling away more money than belonged to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really? Was she so very fond of her father!&rdquo; asked Madame Ray,
+      incredulously. &ldquo;When he was alive, they did not seem to make much of him
+      in his own house. Maybe this retreat is a good way of getting over a
+      little wound to her &lsquo;amour-propre&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The proper thing, I think,&rdquo; said Madame d&rsquo;Etaples, &ldquo;would be for the
+      mother and daughter to keep together, to bear the troubles before them
+      hand in hand. Jacqueline does not seem to think much of the last wishes of
+      the father she pretends to be so fond of. The Baroness showed me, with
+      many tears, a letter he left joined to his will, which was written some
+      years ago, and which now, of course, is of no value. He told mother and
+      daughter to take care of each other and hoped they would always remain
+      friends, loving each other for love of him. Jacqueline&rsquo;s conduct amazes
+      me; it looks like ingratitude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! she is a hard-hearted little thing! I always thought so!&rdquo; said Madame
+      de Villegry, carelessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the rising of the curtain stopped short these discussions, which
+      displayed so much good-nature and perspicacity. But some laid the blame on
+      the influence of that little bigot of a Talbrun, who had secretly blown up
+      the fire of religious enthusiasm in Jacqueline, when Madame d&rsquo;Avrigny&rsquo;s
+      energetic &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; put an end to the discussion. It was time to come back
+      to more immediate interests, to the play which went on in spite of wind
+      and tide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK 3.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV. BITTER DISILLUSION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Some people in this world who turn round and round in a daily circle of
+      small things, like squirrels in a cage, have no idea of the pleasure a
+      young creature, conscious of courage, has in trying its strength; this
+      struggle with fortune loses its charm as it grows longer and longer and
+      more and more difficult, but at the beginning it is an almost certain
+      remedy for sorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To her resolve to make head against misfortune Jacqueline owed the fact
+      that she did not fall into those morbid reveries which might have
+      converted her passing fancy for a man who was simply a male flirt into the
+      importance of a lost love. Is there any human being conscious of energy,
+      and with faith in his or her own powers, who has not wished to know
+      something of adversity in order to rise to the occasion and confront it?
+      To say nothing of the pleasure there is in eating brown bread, when one
+      has been fed only on cake, or of the satisfaction that a child feels when,
+      after strict discipline, he is left to do as he likes, to say nothing of
+      the pleasure ladies boarding in nunneries are sure to feel on reentering
+      the world, at recovering their liberty, Jacqueline by nature loved
+      independence, and she was attracted by the novelty of her situation as
+      larks are attracted by a mirror. She was curious to know what life held
+      for her in reserve, and she was extremely anxious to repair the error she
+      had committed in giving way to a feeling of which she was now ashamed.
+      What could do this better than hard work? To owe everything to herself, to
+      her talents, to her efforts, to her industry, such was Jacqueline&rsquo;s ideal
+      of her future life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had, before this, crowned her brilliant reputation in the &lsquo;cours&rsquo; of
+      M. Regis by passing her preliminary examination at the Sorbonne; she was
+      confident of attaining the highest degree&mdash;the &lsquo;brevet superieur&rsquo;,
+      and while pursuing her own studies she hoped to give lessons in music and
+      in foreign languages, etc. Thus assured of making her own living, she
+      could afford to despise the discreditable happiness of Madame de Nailles,
+      who, she had no doubt, would shortly become Madame Marien; also the
+      crooked ways in which M. de Cymier might pursue his fortune-hunting. She
+      said to herself that she should never marry; that she had other objects of
+      interest; that marriage was for those who had nothing better before them;
+      and the world appeared to her under a new aspect, a sphere of useful
+      activity full of possibilities, of infinite variety, and abounding in
+      interests. Marriage might be all very well for rich girls, who unhappily
+      were objects of value to be bought and sold; her semi-poverty gave her the
+      right to break the chains that hampered the career of other well-born
+      women&mdash;she would make her own way in the world like a man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, at eighteen, youth is ready to set sail in a light skiff on a rough
+      sea, having laid in a good store of imagination and of courage, of
+      childlike ignorance and self-esteem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No doubt she would meet with some difficulties; that thought did but
+      excite her ardor. No doubt Madame de Nailles would try to keep her with
+      her, and Jacqueline had provided herself beforehand with some double-edged
+      remarks by way of weapons, which she intended to use according to
+      circumstances. But all these preparations for defense or attack proved
+      unnecessary. When she told the Baroness of her plans she met with no
+      opposition. She had expected that her project of separation would highly
+      displease her stepmother; on the contrary, Madame de Nailles discussed her
+      projects quietly, affecting to consider them merely temporary, but with no
+      indication of dissatisfaction or resistance. In truth she was not sorry
+      that Jacqueline, whose companionship became more and more embarrassing
+      every day, had cut the knot of a difficult position by a piece of
+      wilfulness and perversity which seemed to put her in the wrong. The
+      necessity she would have been under of crushing such a girl, who was now
+      eighteen, would have been distasteful and unprofitable; she was very glad
+      to get rid of her stepdaughter, always provided it could be done decently
+      and without scandal. Those two, who had once so loved each other and who
+      were now sharers in the same sorrows, became enemies&mdash;two hostile
+      parties, which only skilful strategy could ever again bring together. They
+      tacitly agreed to certain conditions: they would save appearances; they
+      would remain on outwardly good terms with each other whatever happened,
+      and above all they would avoid any explanation. This programme was
+      faithfully carried out, thanks to the great tact of Madame de Nailles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one could have been more watchful to appear ignorant of everything
+      which, if once brought to light, would have led to difficulties; for
+      instance, she feigned not to know that her stepdaughter was in possession
+      of a secret which, if the world knew, would forever make them strangers to
+      each other; nor would she seem aware that Hubert Marien, weary to death of
+      the tie that bound him to her, was restrained from breaking it only by a
+      scruple of honor. Thanks to this seeming ignorance, she parted from
+      Jacqueline without any open breach, as she had long hoped to do, and she
+      retained as a friend who supplied her wants a man who was only too happy
+      to be allowed at this price to escape the act of reparation which
+      Jacqueline, in her simplicity, had dreaded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All those who, having for years dined and danced under the roof of the
+      Nailles, were accounted their friends by society, formed themselves into
+      two parties, one of which lauded to the skies the dignity and resignation
+      of the Baroness, while the other admired the force of character in
+      Jacqueline.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Visitors flocked to the convent which the young girl, by the advice of
+      Giselle, had chosen for her retreat because it was situated in a quiet
+      quarter. She who looked so beautiful in her crape garments, who showed
+      herself so satisfied in her little cell with hardly any furniture, who was
+      grateful for the services rendered her by the lay sisters, content with
+      having no salon but the convent parlor, who was passing examinations to
+      become a teacher, and who seemed to consider it a favor to be sometimes
+      allowed to hear the children in the convent school say their lessons&mdash;was
+      surely like a heroine in a novel. And indeed Jacqueline had the agreeable
+      sensation of considering herself one. Public admiration was a great help
+      to her, after she had passed through that crisis in her grief during which
+      she could feel nothing but the horror of knowing she should never see her
+      father again, when she had ceased to weep for him incessantly, to pray for
+      him, and to turn, like a wounded lioness, on those who blamed his reckless
+      conduct, though she herself had been its chief victim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For three months she hardly left the convent, walking only in the grounds
+      and gardens, which were of considerable extent. From time to time Giselle
+      came for her and took her to drive in the Bois at that hour of the day
+      when few people were there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Enguerrand, who, thanks to his mother&rsquo;s care, was beginning to be an
+      intelligent and interesting child, though he was still painfully like M.
+      de Talbrun, was always with them in the coupe, kindhearted Giselle
+      thinking that nothing could be so likely to assuage grief as the prattle
+      of a child. She was astonished&mdash;she was touched to the heart, by what
+      she called naively the conversion of Jacqueline. It was true that the
+      young girl had no longer any whims or caprices. All the nuns seemed to her
+      amiable, her lodging was all she needed, her food was excellent; her
+      lessons gave her amusement. Possibly the excitement of the entire change
+      had much to do at first with this philosophy, and in fact at the end of
+      six months Jacqueline owned that she was growing tired of dining at the
+      table d&rsquo;hote.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little knot of crooked old ladies who were righteous overmuch,
+      and several sour old maids whose only occupation seemed to be to make
+      remarks on any person who had anything different in dress, manners, or
+      appearance from what they considered the type of the becoming. If it is
+      not good that man should live alone, it is equally true that women should
+      not live together. Jacqueline found this out as soon as her powers of
+      observation came back to her. And about the same time she discovered that
+      she was not so free as she had flattered herself she should be. The
+      appearance of a lady, fair and with light hair, very pretty and about her
+      own age, gave her for the first time an inclination to talk at table. She
+      and this young woman met twice a day at their meals, in the morning and in
+      the evening; their rooms were next each other, and at night Jacqueline
+      could hear her through the thin partition giving utterance to sighs, which
+      showed that she was unhappy. Several times, too, she came upon her in the
+      garden looking earnestly at a place where the wall had been broken, a spot
+      whence it was said a Spanish countess had been carried off by a bold
+      adventurer. Jacqueline thought there must be something romantic in the
+      history of this newcomer, and would have liked exceedingly to know what it
+      might be. As a prelude to acquaintance, she offered the young stranger
+      some holy water when they met in the chapel, a bow and a smile were
+      interchanged, their fingers touched. They seemed almost friends. After
+      this, Jacqueline contrived to change her seat at table to one next to this
+      unknown person, so prettily dressed, with her hair so nicely arranged,
+      and, though her expression was very sad, with a smile so very winning. She
+      alone represented the world, the world of Paris, among all those ladies,
+      some of whom were looking for places as companions, some having come up
+      from the provinces, and some being old ladies who had seen better days.
+      Her change of place was observed by the nun who presided at the table, and
+      a shade of displeasure passed over her face. It was slight, but it
+      portended trouble. And, indeed, when grace had been said, Mademoiselle de
+      Nailles was sent for by the Mother Superior, who gave her to understand
+      that, being so young, it was especially incumbent on her to be circumspect
+      in her choice of associates. Her place thenceforward was to be between
+      Madame de X&mdash;&mdash;-, an old, deaf lady, and Mademoiselle J&mdash;&mdash;-,
+      a former governess, as cold as ice and exceedingly respectable. As to
+      Madame Saville, she had been received in the convent for especial reasons,
+      arising out of circumstances which did not make her a fit companion for
+      inexperienced girls. The Superior hesitated a moment and then said: &ldquo;Her
+      husband requested us to take charge of her,&rdquo; in a tone by which Jacqueline
+      quite understood that &ldquo;take charge&rdquo; was a synonym for &ldquo;keep a strict watch
+      upon her.&rdquo; She was spied upon, she was persecuted&mdash;unjustly, no
+      doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this increased the interest that Jacqueline already felt in the lady
+      with the light hair. But she made a low curtsey to the Mother Superior and
+      returned no answer. Her intercourse with her neighbor was thenceforward;
+      however, sly and secret, which only made it more interesting and exciting.
+      They would exchange a few words when they met upon the stairs, in the
+      garden, or in the cloisters, when there was no curious eye to spy them
+      out; and the first time Jacqueline went out alone Madame Saville was on
+      the watch, and, without speaking, slipped a letter into her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This first time Jacqueline went out was an epoch in her life, as small
+      events are sometimes in the annals of nations; it was the date of her
+      emancipation, it coincided with what she called her choice of a career.
+      Thinking herself sure of possessing a talent for teaching, she had spoken
+      of it to several friends who had come to see her, and who each and all
+      exclaimed that they would like some lessons, a delicate way of helping her
+      quite understood by Jacqueline. Pupils like Belle Ray and Yvonne
+      d&rsquo;Etaples, who wanted her to come twice a week to play duets with them or
+      to read over new music, were not nearly so interesting as those in her
+      little class who had hardly more than learned their scales! Besides this,
+      Madame d&rsquo;Avrigny begged her to come and dine with her, when there would be
+      only themselves, on Mondays, and then practise with Dolly, who had not
+      another moment in which she could take a lesson. She should be sent home
+      scrupulously before ten o&rsquo;clock, that being the hour at the convent when
+      every one must be in. Jacqueline accepted all these kindnesses gratefully.
+      By Giselle&rsquo;s advice she hid her slight figure under a loose cloak and put
+      on her head a bonnet fit for a grandmother, a closed hat with long
+      strings, which, when she first put it on her head, made her burst out
+      laughing. She imagined herself to be going forth in disguise. To walk the
+      streets thus masked she thought would be amusing, so amusing that the
+      moment she set foot on the street pavement she felt that the joy of living
+      was yet strong in her. With a roll of music in her hand, she walked on
+      rather hesitatingly, a little afraid, like a bird just escaped from the
+      cage where it was born; her heart beat, but it was with pleasure; she
+      fancied every one was looking at her, and in fact one old gentleman, not
+      deceived by the cloak, did follow her till she got into an omnibus for the
+      first time in her life&mdash;a new experience and a new pleasure. Once
+      seated, and a little out of breath, she remembered Madame Saville&rsquo;s
+      letter, which she had slipped into her pocket. It was sealed and had a
+      stamp on it; it was too highly scented to be in good taste, and it was
+      addressed to a lieutenant of chasseurs with an aristocratic name, in a
+      garrison at Fontainebleau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Jacqueline began vaguely to comprehend that Madame Saville&rsquo;s husband
+      might have had serious reasons for commending his wife to the surveillance
+      of the nuns, and that there might have been some excuse for their
+      endeavoring to hinder all intimacy between herself and the little blonde.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This office of messenger, thrust upon her without asking permission, was
+      not agreeable to Jacqueline, and she resolved as she dropped the missive,
+      which, even on the outside, looked compromising, into the nearest
+      post-box, to be more reserved in future. For which reason she responded
+      coldly to a sign Madame Saville made her when, in the evening, she
+      returned from giving her lessons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those lessons&mdash;those excursions which took her abroad in all
+      weathers, though with praiseworthy and serious motives, into the
+      fashionable parts of Paris, from which she had exiled herself by her own
+      will&mdash;were greatly enjoyed by Jacqueline. Everything amused her,
+      being seen from a point of view in which she had never before contemplated
+      it. She seemed to be at a play, all personal interests forgotten for the
+      moment, looking at the world of which she was no longer a part with a
+      lively, critical curiosity, without regrets but without cynicism. The
+      world did not seem to her bad&mdash;only man&rsquo;s higher instincts had little
+      part in it. Such, at least, was what she thought, so long as people
+      praised her for her courage, so long as the houses in which another
+      Jacqueline de Nailles had been once so brilliant, received her with
+      affection as before, though she had to leave in an anteroom her modest
+      waterproof or wet umbrella. They were even more kind and cordial to her
+      than ever, unless an exaggerated cordiality be one form of impertinence.
+      But the enthusiasm bestowed on splendid instances of energy in certain
+      circles, to which after all such energy is a reproach, is superficial, and
+      not being genuine is sure not to last long. Some people said that
+      Jacqueline&rsquo;s staid manners were put on for effect, and that she was only
+      attempting to play a difficult part to which she was not suited; others
+      blamed her for not being up to concert-pitch in matters of social
+      interest. The first time she felt the pang of exclusion was at Madame
+      d&rsquo;Avrigny&rsquo;s, who was at the same moment overwhelming her with expressions
+      of regard. In the first place, she could see that the little family dinner
+      to which she had been so kindly invited was attended by so many guests
+      that her deep mourning seemed out of place among them. Then Madame
+      d&rsquo;Avrigny would make whispered explanations, which Jacqueline was
+      conscious of, and which were very painful to her. Such words as: &ldquo;Old
+      friend of the family;&rdquo; &ldquo;Is giving music lessons to my daughter;&rdquo; fell more
+      than once upon her ear, followed by exclamations of &ldquo;Poor thing!&rdquo; &ldquo;So
+      courageous!&rdquo; &ldquo;Chivalric sentiments!&rdquo; Of course, everyone added that they
+      excused her toilette. Then when she tried to escape such remarks by
+      wearing a new gown, Dolly, who was always a little fool (there is no cure
+      for that infirmity) cried out in a tone such as she never would have dared
+      to use in the days when Jacqueline was a model of elegance: &ldquo;Oh, how fine
+      you are!&rdquo; Then again, Madame d&rsquo;Avrigny, notwithstanding the good manners
+      on which she prided herself, could not conceal that the obligation of
+      sending home the recluse to the ends of the earth, at a certain hour, made
+      trouble with her servants, who were put out of their way. Jacqueline
+      seized on this pretext to propose to give up the Monday music-lesson, and
+      after some polite hesitation her offer was accepted, evidently to Madame
+      d&rsquo;Avrigny&rsquo;s relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this case she had the satisfaction of being the one to propose the
+      discontinuance of the lessons. At Madame Ray&rsquo;s she was simply dismissed.
+      About the close of winter she was told that as Isabelle was soon to be
+      married she would have no time for music till her wedding was over, and
+      about the same time the d&rsquo;Etaples told her much the same thing. This was
+      not to be wondered at, for Mademoiselle Ray was engaged to an officer of
+      dragoons, the same Marcel d&rsquo;Etaples who had acted with her in Scylla and
+      Charybdis, and Madame Ray, being a watchful mother, was not long in
+      perceiving that Marcel came to pay court to Isabelle too frequently at the
+      hour for her music-lesson. Madame d&rsquo;Etaples on her part had made a similar
+      discovery, and both judged that the presence of so beautiful a girl, in
+      Jacqueline&rsquo;s position, might not be desirable in these interviews between
+      lovers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Giselle, as she was about to leave town for the country in July,
+      begged Jacqueline, who seemed run down and out of spirits, to come and
+      stay with her, the poor child was very glad to accept the invitation. Her
+      pupils were leaving her one after another, she could not understand why,
+      and she was bored to death in the convent, whose strict rules were drawn
+      tighter on her than before, for the nuns had begun to understand her
+      better, and to discover the real worldliness of her character. At the same
+      time, that retreat within these pious walls no longer seemed like paradise
+      to Jacqueline; her transition from the deepest crape to the softer tints
+      of half mourning, seemed to make her less of an angel in their eyes. They
+      said to each other that Mademoiselle de Nailles was fanciful, and fancies
+      are the very last things wanted in a convent, for fancies can brave bolts,
+      and make their escape beyond stone walls, whatever means may be taken to
+      clip their wings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She does not seem like the same person,&rdquo; cried the good sisters, who had
+      been greatly edified at first by her behavior, and who were almost ready
+      now to be shocked at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The course of things was coming back rapidly into its natural channel; in
+      obedience to the law which makes a tree, apparently dead, put forth shoots
+      in springtime. And that inevitable re-budding and reblossoming was
+      beautiful to see in this young human plant. M. de Talbrun, Jacqueline&rsquo;s
+      host, could not fail to perceive it. At first he had been annoyed with
+      Giselle for giving the invitation, having a habit of finding fault with
+      everything he had not ordered or suggested, by virtue of his marital
+      authority, and also because he hated above all things, as he said, to have
+      people in his house who were &ldquo;wobegones.&rdquo; But in a week he was quite
+      reconciled to the idea of keeping Mademoiselle de Nailles all the summer
+      at the Chateau de Fresne. Never had Giselle known him to take so much
+      trouble to be amiable, and indeed Jacqueline saw him much more to
+      advantage at home than in Paris, where, as she had often said, he diffused
+      too strong an odor of the stables. At Fresne, it was more easy to forgive
+      him for talking always of his stud and of his kennel, and then he was so
+      obliging! Every day he proposed some new jaunt, an excursion to see some
+      view, to visit all the ruined chateaux or abbeys in the neighborhood. And,
+      with surprising delicacy, M. de Talbrun refrained from inviting too many
+      of his country neighbors, who might perhaps have scared Jacqueline and
+      arrested her gradual return to gayety. They might also have interrupted
+      his tete-a-tete with his wife&rsquo;s guest, for they had many such
+      conversations. Giselle was absorbed in the duty of teaching her son his a,
+      b, c. Besides, being very timid, she had never ridden on horseback, and,
+      naturally, riding was delightful to her cousin. Jacqueline was never tired
+      of it; while she paid as little attention to the absurd remarks Oscar made
+      to her between their gallops as a girl does at a ball to the idle words of
+      her partner. She supposed it was his custom to talk in that manner&mdash;a
+      sort of rough gallantry&mdash;but with the best intentions. Jacqueline was
+      disposed to look upon her life at Fresne as a feast after a long famine.
+      Everything was to her taste, the whole appearance of this lordly chateau
+      of the time of Louis XIII, the splendid trees in the home park, the
+      gardens laid out &lsquo;a la Francais&rsquo;, decorated with art and kept up
+      carefully. Everything, indeed, that pertained to that high life which to
+      Giselle had so little importance, was to her delightful. Giselle&rsquo;s taste
+      was so simple that it was a constant subject of reproach from her husband.
+      To be sure, it was with him a general rule to find fault with her about
+      everything. He did not spare her his reproaches on a multitude of
+      subjects; all day long he was worrying her about small trifles with which
+      he should have had nothing to do. It is a mistake to suppose that a man
+      can not be brutal and fussy at the same time. M. de Talbrun was proof to
+      the contrary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are too patient,&rdquo; said Jacqueline often to Giselle. &ldquo;You ought to
+      answer him back&mdash;to defend yourself. I am sure if you did so you
+      would have him, by-and-bye, at your beck and call.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps so. I dare say you could have managed better than I do,&rdquo; replied
+      Giselle, with a sad smile, but without a spark of jealousy. &ldquo;Oh, you are
+      in high favor. He gave up this week the races at Deauville, the great race
+      week from which he has never before been absent, since our marriage. But
+      you see my ambition has become limited; I am satisfied if he lets me
+      alone.&rdquo; Giselle spoke these words with emphasis, and then she added: &ldquo;and
+      lets me bring up his son my own way. That is all I ask.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline thought in her heart that it was wrong to ask so little, that
+      poor Giselle did not know how to make the best of her husband, and,
+      curious to find out what line of conduct would serve best to subjugate M.
+      de Talbrun, she became herself&mdash;that is to say, a born coquette&mdash;venturing
+      from one thing to another, like a child playing fearlessly with a bulldog,
+      who is gentle only with him, or a fly buzzing round a spider&rsquo;s web, while
+      the spider lies quietly within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She would tease him, contradict him, and make him listen to long pieces of
+      scientific music as she played them on the piano, when she knew he always
+      said that music to him was nothing but a disagreeable noise; she would
+      laugh at his thanks when a final chord, struck with her utmost force,
+      roused him from a brief slumber; in short, it amused her to prove that
+      this coarse, rough man was to her alone no object of fear. She would have
+      done better had she been afraid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus it came to pass that, as they rode together through some of the
+      prettiest roads in the most beautiful part of Normandy, M. de Talbrun
+      began to talk, with an ever-increasing vivacity, of the days when they
+      first met, at Treport, relating a thousand little incidents which
+      Jacqueline had forgotten, and from which it was easy to see that he had
+      watched her narrowly, though he was on the eve of his own marriage. With
+      unnecessary persistence, and stammering as he was apt to do when moved by
+      any emotion, he repeated over and over again, that from the first moment
+      he had seen her he had been struck by her&mdash;devilishly struck by her&mdash;he
+      had been, indeed! And one day when she answered, in order not to appear to
+      attach any importance to this declaration, that she was very glad of it,
+      he took an opportunity, as their horses stopped side by side before a
+      beautiful sunset, to put his arm suddenly round her waist, and give her a
+      kiss, so abrupt, so violent, so outrageous, that she screamed aloud. He
+      did not remove his arm from her, his coarse, red face drew near her own
+      again with an expression that filled her with horror. She struggled to
+      free herself, her horse began to rear, she screamed for help with all her
+      might, but nothing answered her save an echo. The situation seemed
+      critical for Jacqueline. As to M. de Talbrun, he was quite at his ease, as
+      if he were accustomed to make love like a centaur; while the girl felt
+      herself in peril of being thrown at any moment, and trampled under his
+      horse&rsquo;s feet. At last she succeeded in striking her aggressor a sharp blow
+      across the face with her riding-whip. Blinded for a moment, he let her go,
+      and she took advantage of her release to put her horse to its full speed.
+      He galloped after her, beside himself with wrath and agitation; it was a
+      mad but silent race, until they reached the gate of the Chateau de Fresne,
+      which they entered at the same moment, their horses covered with foam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How foolish!&rdquo; cried Giselle, coming to meet them. &ldquo;Just see in what a
+      state you have brought home your poor horses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline, pale and trembling, made no answer. M. de Talbrun, as he
+      helped her to dismount, whispered, savagely: &ldquo;Not a word of this!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At dinner, his wife remarked that some branch must have struck him on the
+      cheek, there was a red mark right across his face like a blow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were riding through the woods,&rdquo; he answered, shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Giselle began to suspect something, and remarked that nobody was
+      talking that evening, asking, with a half-smile, whether they had been
+      quarrelling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We did have a little difference,&rdquo; Oscar replied, quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it did not amount to anything,&rdquo; he said, lighting his cigar; &ldquo;let us
+      make friends again, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; he added, holding out his hand to
+      Jacqueline. She was obliged to give him the tips of her fingers, as she
+      said in her turn, with audacity equal to his own:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it was less than nothing. Only, Giselle, I told your husband that I
+      had had some bad news, and shall have to go back to Paris, and he tried to
+      persuade me not to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg you not to go,&rdquo; said Oscar, vehemently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bad news?&rdquo; repeated Giselle, &ldquo;you did not say a word to me about it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not have a chance. My old Modeste is very ill and asks me to come
+      to her. I should never forgive myself if I did not go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, Modeste? So very ill? Is it really so serious? What a pity! But you
+      will come back again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I can. But I must leave Fresne to-morrow morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I defy you to leave Fresne!&rdquo; said M. de Talbrun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline leaned toward him, and said firmly, but in a low voice: &ldquo;If you
+      attempt to hinder me, I swear I will tell everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All that evening she did not leave Giselle&rsquo;s side for a moment, and at
+      night she locked herself into her chamber and barricaded the door, as if a
+      mad dog or a murderer were at large in the chateau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle came into her room at an early hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is what you said yesterday the truth, Jacqueline? Is Modeste really ill?
+      Are you sure you have had no reason to complain of anybody in this place?&mdash;of
+      any one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, after a pause, she added:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my darling, how hard it is to do good even to those whom we most
+      dearly love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand you,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, with an effort. &ldquo;Everybody has
+      been kind to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They kissed each other with effusion, but M. de Talbrun&rsquo;s leave-taking was
+      icy in the extreme. Jacqueline had made a mortal enemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The grand outline of the chateau, built of brick and stone with its wings
+      flanked by towers, the green turf of the great park in which it stood,
+      passed from her sight as she drove away, like some vision in a dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall never come back&mdash;never come back!&rdquo; thought Jacqueline. She
+      felt as if she had been thrust out everywhere. For one moment she thought
+      of seeking refuge at Lizerolles, which was not very many miles from the
+      railroad station, and when there of telling Madame d&rsquo;Argy of her
+      difficulties, and asking her advice; but false pride kept her from doing
+      so&mdash;the same false pride which had made her write coldly, in answer
+      to the letters full of feeling and sympathy Fred had written to her on
+      receiving news of her father&rsquo;s death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV. TREACHEROUS KINDNESS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The experience through which Jacqueline had just passed was not calculated
+      to fortify her or to elevate her soul. She felt for the first time that
+      her unprotected situation and her poverty exposed her to insult, for what
+      other name could she give to the outrageous behavior of M. de Talbrun,
+      which had degraded her in her own eyes?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What right had that man to treat her as his plaything? Her pride and all
+      her womanly instincts rose up in rebellion. Her nerves had been so shaken
+      that she sobbed behind her veil all the way to her destination. Paris,
+      when she reached it, offered her almost nothing that could comfort or
+      amuse her. That city is always empty and dull in August, more so than at
+      any other season. Even the poor occupation of teaching her little class of
+      music pupils had been taken away by the holidays. Her sole resource was in
+      Modeste&rsquo;s society. Modeste&mdash;who, by the way, had never been ill, and
+      who suffered from nothing but old age&mdash;was delighted to receive her
+      dear young lady in her little room far up under the roof, where, though
+      quite infirm, she lived comfortably, on her savings. Jacqueline, sitting
+      beside her as she sewed, was soothed by her old nursery tales, or by
+      anecdotes of former days. Her own relatives were often the old woman&rsquo;s
+      theme. She knew the history of Jacqueline&rsquo;s family from beginning to end;
+      but, wherever her story began, it invariably wound up with:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If only your poor papa had not made away with all your money!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Jacqueline always answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was quite at liberty to do what he pleased with what belonged to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Belonged to him! Yes, but what belonged to you? And how does it happen
+      that your stepmother seems so well off? Why doesn&rsquo;t some family council
+      interfere? My little pet, to think of your having to work for your living.
+      It&rsquo;s enough to kill me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah! Modeste, there are worse things than being poor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe so,&rdquo; answered the old nurse, doubtfully, &ldquo;but when one has money
+      troubles along with the rest, the money troubles make other things harder
+      to bear; whereas, if you have money enough you can bear anything, and you
+      would have had enough, after all, if you had married Monsieur Fred.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At which point Jacqueline insisted that Modeste should be silent, and
+      answered, resolutely: &ldquo;I mean never to marry at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To this Modeste made answer: &ldquo;That&rsquo;s another of your notions. The worst
+      husband is always better than none; and I know, for I never married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why you talk such nonsense, my poor dear Modeste! You know nothing
+      about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, after one of these visits to the only friend, as she believed,
+      who remained to her in the world&mdash;for her intimacy with Giselle was
+      spoiled forever&mdash;she saw, as she walked with a heavy heart toward her
+      convent in a distant quarter, an open fiacre pull up, in obedience to a
+      sudden cry from a passenger who was sitting inside. The person sprang out,
+      and rushed toward Jacqueline with loud exclamations of joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame Strahlberg!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Jacqueline! What a pleasure to meet you!&rdquo; And, the street being
+      nearly empty, Madame Strahlberg heartily embraced her friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have thought of you so often, darling, for months past&mdash;they seem
+      like years, like centuries! Where have you been all that long time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In point of fact, Jacqueline had no proof that the three Odinska ladies
+      had ever remembered her existence, but that might have been partly her own
+      fault, or rather the fault of Giselle, who had made her promise to have as
+      little as possible to do with such compromising personages. She was seized
+      with a kind of remorse when she found such warmth of recognition from the
+      amiable Wanda. Had she not shown herself ungrateful and cowardly? People
+      about whom the world talks, are they not sometimes quite as good as those
+      who have not lost their standing in society, like M. de Talbrun? It seemed
+      to her that, go where she would, she ran risks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cynicism that is the result of sad experience was beginning to show
+      itself in Jacqueline.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, forgive me!&rdquo; she said, feeling, contrite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive you for what, you beautiful creature?&rdquo; asked Madame Strahlberg,
+      with sincere astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had the excellent custom of never observing when people neglected her,
+      or at least, of never showing that she did so, partly because her life was
+      so full of varied interests that she cared little for such trifles, and
+      secondly because, having endured several affronts of that nature, she had
+      ceased to be very sensitive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew, through the d&rsquo;Avrignys,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that you were still at the
+      convent. You are not going to take the veil there, are you? It would be a
+      great pity. No? You wish to lead the life of an intelligent woman who is
+      free and independent? That is well; but it was rather an odd idea to begin
+      by going into a cloister. Oh!&mdash;I see, public opinion?&rdquo; And Madame
+      Strahlberg made a little face, expressive of her contempt for public
+      opinion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does not pay to consult other people&rsquo;s opinions&mdash;it is useless,
+      believe me. The more we sacrifice to public opinion, the more it asks of
+      us. I cut that matter short long ago. But how glad I am to hear that you
+      don&rsquo;t intend to hide that lovely face in a convent. You are looking better
+      than ever&mdash;a little too pale, still, perhaps&mdash;a little too
+      interesting. Colette will be so glad to see you, for you must let me take
+      you home with me. I shall carry you off, whether you will or not, now I
+      have caught you. We will have a little music just among ourselves, as we
+      had in the good old times&mdash;you know, our dear music; you will feel
+      like yourself again. Ah, art&mdash;there is nothing to compare with art in
+      this world, my darling!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline yielded without hesitation, only too glad of the unhoped-for
+      good fortune which relieved her from her ennui and her depression. And
+      soon the hired victoria was on its way to that quarter of the city which
+      is made up of streets with geographical names, and seems as if it were
+      intended to lodge all the nations under heaven. It stopped in the Rue de
+      Naples, before a house that was somewhat showy, but which showed from its
+      outside, that it was not inhabited by high-bred people. There were pink
+      linings to lace curtains at the windows, and quantities of green vines
+      drooped from the balconies, as if to attract attention from the
+      passers-by. Madame Strahlberg, with her ostentatious and undulating walk,
+      which caused men to turn and notice her as she went by, went swiftly up
+      the stairs to the second story. She put one finger on the electric bell,
+      which caused two or three little dogs inside to begin barking, and pushed
+      Jacqueline in before her, crying: &ldquo;Colette! Mamma! See whom I have brought
+      back to you!&rdquo; Meantime doors were hurriedly opened, quick steps resounded
+      in the antechamber, and the newcomer found herself received with a torrent
+      of affectionate and delighted exclamations, pressed to the ample bosom of
+      Madame Odinska, covered with kisses by Colette, and fawned upon by the
+      three toy terriers, the most sociable of their kind in all Paris, their
+      mistresses declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline was passing through one of those moments when one is at the
+      mercy of chance, when the heart which has been closed by sorrow suddenly
+      revives, expands, and softens under the influence of a ray of sunshine.
+      Tears came into her eyes, and she murmured:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My friends&mdash;my kind friends!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, your friends, whatever happens, now and always,&rdquo; said Colette,
+      eagerly, though she had probably barely given a thought to Jacqueline for
+      eighteen months. Nevertheless, on seeing her, Colette really thought she
+      had not for a moment ceased to be fond of her. &ldquo;How you have suffered, you
+      poor pussy! We must set to work and make you feel a little gay, at any
+      price. You see, it is our duty. How lucky you came to-day&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sign from her sister stopped her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They carried Jacqueline into a large and handsome salon, full of dust and
+      without curtains, with all the furniture covered up as if the family were
+      on the eve of going to the country. Madame Strahlberg, nevertheless, was
+      not about to leave Paris, her habit being to remain there in the summer,
+      sometimes for months, picnicking as it were, in her own apartment. What
+      was curious, too, was that the chandelier and all the side-lights had
+      fresh wax candles, and seats were arranged as if in preparation for a
+      play, while near the grand piano was a sort of stage, shut off from the
+      rest of the room by screens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Colette sat down on one of the front row of chairs and cried: &ldquo;I am the
+      audience&mdash;I am all ears.&rdquo; Her sister hurriedly explained all this to
+      Jacqueline, with out waiting to be questioned: &ldquo;We have been giving some
+      little summer entertainments of late, of which you see the remains.&rdquo; She
+      went at once to the piano, and incited Jacqueline to sing by beginning one
+      of their favorite duets, and Jacqueline, once more in her native element,
+      followed her lead. They went on from one song to another, from the light
+      to the severe, from scientific music to mere tunes and airs, turning over
+      the old music-books together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you are a little out of practice, but all you have to do is to rub
+      off the rust. Your voice is finer than ever&mdash;just like velvet.&rdquo; And
+      Madame Strahlberg pretended that she envied the fine mezzo-soprano,
+      speaking disparagingly of her own little thread of a voice, which,
+      however, she managed so skilfully. &ldquo;What a shame to take up your time
+      teaching, with such a voice as that!&rdquo; she cried; &ldquo;you are out of your
+      senses, my dear, you are raving mad. It would be sinful to keep your gifts
+      to yourself! I am very sorry to discourage you, but you have none of the
+      requisites for a teacher. The stage would be best for you&mdash;&lsquo;Mon Dieu!
+      why not? You will see La Rochette this evening; she is a person who would
+      give you good advice. I wish she could hear you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But my dear friend, I can not stay,&rdquo; murmured Jacqueline, for those
+      unexpected words &ldquo;the stage, why not?&rdquo; rang in her head, made her heart
+      beat fast, and made lights dance before her eyes. &ldquo;They are expecting me
+      to dine at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At your convent? I beg your pardon, I&rsquo;ll take care of that. Don&rsquo;t you
+      know me? My claws seldom let go of a prize, especially when that prize is
+      worth the keeping. A little telegram has already been sent, with your
+      excuses. The telegraph is good for that, if not for anything else: it
+      facilitates &lsquo;impromptus&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Long live impromptus,&rdquo; cried out Colette, &ldquo;there is nothing like them for
+      fun!&rdquo; And while Jacqueline was trying to get away, not knowing exactly
+      what she was saying, but frightened, pleased, and much excited, Colette
+      went on: &ldquo;Oh! I am so glad, so glad you came to-day; now you can see the
+      pantomime! I dreamed, wasn&rsquo;t it odd, only last night, that you were acting
+      it with us. How can one help believing in presentiments? Mine are always
+      delightful&mdash;and yours?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The pantomime?&rdquo; repeated Jacqueline in bewilderment, &ldquo;but I thought your
+      sister told me you were all alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How could we have anything like company in August?&rdquo; said Madame
+      Strahlberg, interrupting her; &ldquo;why, it would be impossible, there are not
+      four cats in Paris. No, no, we sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t have anybody. A few friends
+      possibly may drop in&mdash;people passing through Paris&mdash;in their
+      travelling-dresses. Nothing that need alarm you. The pantomime Colette
+      talks about is only a pretext that they may hear Monsieur Szmera.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And who was M. Szmera?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline soon learned that he was a Hungarian, second half-cousin of a
+      friend of Kossuth, the most wonderful violinist of the day, who had
+      apparently superseded the famous Polish pianist in these ladies&rsquo; interest
+      and esteem. As for the latter, they had almost forgotten his name, he had
+      behaved so badly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, anxiously, &ldquo;you know I am obliged to be home by
+      ten o&rsquo;clock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! that&rsquo;s like Cinderella,&rdquo; laughed Wanda. &ldquo;Will the stroke of the clock
+      change all the carriages in Paris into pumpkins? One can get &lsquo;fiacres&rsquo; at
+      any hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is a fixed rule: I must be in,&rdquo; repeated Jacqueline, growing very
+      uneasy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Must you really? Madame Saville says it is very easy to manage those nuns&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What? Do you know Madame Saville, who was boarding at the convent last
+      winter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, indeed; she is a countrywoman of ours, a friend, the most charming
+      of women. You will see her here this evening. She has gained her divorce
+      suit&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are mistaken,&rdquo; said Colette, &ldquo;she has lost it. But that makes no
+      difference. She has got tired of her husband. Come, say &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; Jacqueline&mdash;a
+      nice, dear &lsquo;Yes&rsquo;&mdash;you will stay, will you not? Oh, you darling!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They dined without much ceremony, on the pretext that the cook had been
+      turned off that morning for impertinence, but immediately after dinner
+      there was a procession of boys from a restaurant, bringing whipped creams,
+      iced drinks, fruits, sweetmeats, and champagne&mdash;more than would have
+      been wanted at the buffet of a ball. The Prince, they said, had sent these
+      things. What Prince?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Jacqueline was asking this question, a gentleman came in whose age it
+      would have been impossible to guess, so disguised was he by his black wig,
+      his dyed whiskers, and the soft bloom on his cheeks, all of which were
+      entirely out of keeping with those parts of his face that he could not
+      change. In one of his eyes was stuck a monocle. He was bedizened with
+      several orders, he bowed with military stiffness, and kissed with much
+      devotion the ladies&rsquo; hands, calling them by titles, whether they had them
+      or not. His foreign accent made it as hard to detect his nationality as it
+      was to know his age. Two or three other gentlemen, not less decorated and
+      not less foreign, afterward came in. Colette named them in a whisper to
+      Jacqueline, but their names were too hard for her to pronounce, much less
+      to remember. One of them, a man of handsome presence, came accompanied by
+      a sort of female ruin, an old lady leaning on a cane, whose head, every
+      time she moved, glittered with jewels, placed in a very lofty erection of
+      curled hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That gentleman&rsquo;s mother is awfully ugly,&rdquo; Jacqueline could not help
+      saying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His mother? What, the Countess? She is neither his mother nor his wife.
+      He is her gentleman-in-waiting-that&rsquo;s all. Don&rsquo;t you understand? Well,
+      imagine a man who is a sort of &lsquo;gentleman-companion&rsquo;; he keeps her
+      accounts, he escorts her to the theatre, he gives her his arm. It is a
+      very satisfactory arrangement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The gentleman receives a salary, in such a case?&rdquo; inquired Jacqueline,
+      much amused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what do you find in it so extraordinary?&rdquo; said Colette. &ldquo;She adores
+      cards, and there he is, always ready to be her partner. Oh, here comes
+      dear Madame Saville!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There were fresh cries of welcome, fresh exchanges of affectionate
+      diminutives and kisses, which seemed to make the Prince&rsquo;s mouth water.
+      Jacqueline discovered, to her great surprise, that she, too, was a dear
+      friend of Madame Saville&rsquo;s, who called her her good angel, in reference,
+      no doubt, to the letter she had secretly put into the post. At last she
+      said, trying to make her escape from the party: &ldquo;But it must be nine
+      o&rsquo;clock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! but&mdash;you must hear Szmera.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A handsome young fellow, stoutly built, with heavy eyebrows, a hooked
+      nose, a quantity of hair growing low upon his forehead, and lips that were
+      too red, the perfect type of a Hungarian gypsy, began a piece of his own
+      composition, which had all the ardor of a mild &lsquo;galopade&rsquo; and a Satanic
+      hunt, with intervals of dying sweetness, during which the painted skeleton
+      they called the Countess declared that she certainly heard a nightingale
+      warbling in the moonlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This charming speech was forthwith repeated by her &ldquo;umbra&rdquo; in all parts of
+      the room, which was now nearly filled with people, a mixed multitude, some
+      of whom were frantic about music, others frantic about Wanda Strahlberg.
+      There were artists and amateurs present, and even respectable women, for
+      Madame d&rsquo;Avrigny, attracted by the odor of a species of Bohemianism, had
+      come to breathe it with delight, under cover of a wish to glean ideas for
+      her next winter&rsquo;s receptions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then again there were women who had been dropped out of society, like
+      Madame de Versanne, who, with her sunken eyes and faded face, was not
+      likely again to pick up in the street a bracelet worth ten thousand
+      francs. There was a literary woman who signed herself Fraisiline, and
+      wrote papers on fashion&mdash;she was so painted and bedizened that some
+      one remarked that the principal establishments she praised in print
+      probably paid her in their merchandise. There was a dowager whose
+      aristocratic name appeared daily on the fourth page of the newspapers,
+      attesting the merits of some kind of quack medicine; and a retired
+      opera-singer, who, having been called Zenaide Rochet till she grew up in
+      Montmartre, where she was born, had had a brilliant career as a star in
+      Italy under the name of Zina Rochette. La Rochette&rsquo;s name, alas! is
+      unknown to the present generation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In all, there were about twenty persons, who made more noise with their
+      applause than a hundred ordinary guests, for enthusiasm was exacted by
+      Madame Strahlberg. Profiting by the ovation to the Hungarian musician,
+      Jacqueline made a movement toward the door, but just as she reached it she
+      had the misfortune of falling in with her old acquaintance, Nora Sparks,
+      who was at that moment entering with her father. She was forced to sit
+      down again and hear all about Kate&rsquo;s marriage. Kate had gone back to New
+      York, her husband being an American, but Nora said she had made up her
+      mind not to leave Europe till she had found a satisfactory match.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better make haste about it, if you expect to keep me here,&rdquo; said
+      Mr. Sparks, with a peculiar expression in his eye. He was eager to get
+      home, having important business to attend to in the West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, papa, be quiet! I shall find somebody at Bellagio. Why, darling, are
+      you still in mourning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had forgotten that Jacqueline had lost her father. Probably she would
+      not have thought it necessary to wear black so long for Mr. Sparks.
+      Meantime, Madame Strahlberg and her sister had left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When are they coming back?&rdquo; said Jacqueline, growing very nervous. &ldquo;It
+      seems to me this clock must be wrong. It says half-past nine. I am sure it
+      must be later than that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Half-past nine!&mdash;why, it is past eleven,&rdquo; replied Miss Nora, with a
+      giggle. &ldquo;Do you suppose they pay any attention to clocks in this house?
+      Everything here is topsy-turvy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! what shall I do?&rdquo; sighed poor Jacqueline, on the verge of tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, do they keep you such a prisoner as that? Can&rsquo;t you come in a little
+      late&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They wouldn&rsquo;t open the doors&mdash;they never open the doors on any
+      pretext after ten o&rsquo;clock,&rdquo; cried Jacqueline, beside herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then your nuns must be savages? You should teach them better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be worried, dear little one, you can sleep on this sofa,&rdquo; said
+      Madame Odinska, kindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To whom had she not offered that useful sofa? Wanda and Colette were just
+      as ready to propose that others should spend the night with them as, on
+      the smallest pretext, to accept the same hospitality from others. Wanda,
+      indeed, always slept curled up like a cat on a divan, in a fur wrapper,
+      which she put on early in the evening when she wanted to smoke cigarettes.
+      She went to sleep at no regular hour. A bear&rsquo;s skin was placed always
+      within her reach, so that if she were cold she could draw it over her.
+      Jacqueline, not being accustomed to these Polish fashions, did not seem to
+      be much attracted by the offer of the sofa. She blamed herself bitterly
+      for her own folly in having got herself into a scrape which might lead to
+      serious consequences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this was neither time nor place for expressions of anxiety; it would
+      be absurd to trouble every one present with her regrets. Besides, the harm
+      was done&mdash;it was irreparable&mdash;and while she was turning over in
+      her mind in what manner she could explain to the Mother Superior that the
+      mistake about the hour had been no fault of hers&mdash;and the Mother
+      Superior, alas! would be sure to make inquiries as to the friends whom she
+      had visited&mdash;the magic violin of M. Szmera played its first notes,
+      accompanied by Madame Odinska on the piano, and by a delicious little
+      flute. They played an overture, the dreamy sweetness of which extorted
+      cries of admiration from all the women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly, the screens parted, and upon the little platform that
+      represented a stage bounded a sort of anomalous being, supple and
+      charming, in the traditional dress of Pierrot, whom the English vulgarize
+      and call Harlequin. He had white camellias instead of buttons on his loose
+      white jacket, and the bright eyes of Wanda shone out from his
+      red-and-white face. He held a mandolin, and imitated the most charming of
+      serenades, before a make-believe window, which, being opened by a white,
+      round arm, revealed Colette, dressed as Colombine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little pantomime piece was called &lsquo;Pierrot in Love&rsquo;. It consisted of a
+      series of dainty coquetries, sudden quarrels, fits of jealousy, and tender
+      reconciliations, played by the two sisters. Colette with her beauty, Wanda
+      with her talent, her impishness, her graceful and voluptuous attitudes,
+      electrified the spectators, especially in a long monologue, in which
+      Pierrot contemplated suicide, made more effective by the passionate and
+      heart-piercing strains of the Hungarian&rsquo;s violin, so that old Rochette
+      cried out: &ldquo;What a pity such a wonder should not be upon the stage!&rdquo; La
+      Rochette, now retired into private life, wearing an old dress, with her
+      gray hair and her black eyes, like those of a watchful crocodile, took the
+      pleasure in the pantomime that all actors do to the very last in
+      everything connected with the theatre. She cried &lsquo;brava&rsquo; in tones that
+      might reach Italy; she blew kisses to the actors in default of flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame d&rsquo;Avrigny was also transported to the sixth heaven, but
+      Jacqueline&rsquo;s presence somewhat marred her pleasure. When she first
+      perceived her she had shown great surprise. &ldquo;You here, my dear?&rdquo; she
+      cried, &ldquo;I thought you safe with our own excellent Giselle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Safe, Madame? It seems to me one can be safe anywhere,&rdquo; Jacqueline
+      answered, though she was tempted to say &ldquo;safe nowhere;&rdquo; but instead she
+      inquired for Dolly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dolly&rsquo;s mother bit her lips and then replied: &ldquo;You see I have not brought
+      her. Oh, yes, this house is very amusing&mdash;but rather too much so. The
+      play was very pretty, and I am sorry it would not do at my house. It is
+      too&mdash;too &lsquo;risque&rsquo;, you know;&rdquo; and she rehearsed her usual speech
+      about the great difficulties encountered by a lady who wished to give
+      entertainments and provide amusement for her friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Pierrot, or rather Madame Strahlberg, had leaped over an
+      imaginary barrier and came dancing toward the company, shaking her large
+      sleeves and settling her little snake-like head in her large quilled
+      collar, dragging after her the Hungarian, who seemed not very willing. She
+      presented him to Madame d&rsquo;Avrigny, hoping that so fashionable a woman
+      might want him to play at her receptions during the winter, and to a
+      journalist who promised to give him a notice in his paper, provided&mdash;and
+      here he whispered something to Pierrot, who, smiling, answered neither yes
+      nor no. The sisters kept on their costumes; Colette was enchanting with
+      her bare neck, her long-waisted black velvet corsage, her very short
+      skirt, and a sort of three-cornered hat upon her head. All the men paid
+      court to her, and she accepted their homage, becoming gayer and gayer at
+      every compliment, laughing loudly, possibly that her laugh might exhibit
+      her beautiful teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda, as Pierrot, sang, with her hands in her pockets, a Russian village
+      song: &ldquo;Ah! Dounai-li moy Dounai&rdquo; (&ldquo;Oh! thou, my Danube&rdquo;). Then she
+      imperiously called Jacqueline to the piano:&mdash;&ldquo;It is your turn now,&rdquo;
+       she said, &ldquo;most humble violet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Up to that moment, Jacqueline&rsquo;s deep mourning had kept the gentlemen
+      present from addressing her, though she had been much stared at. Although
+      she did not wish to sing, for her heart was heavy as she thought of the
+      troubles that awaited her the next day at the convent, she sang what was
+      asked of her without resistance or pretension. Then, for the first time,
+      she experienced the pride of triumph. Szmera, though he was furious at not
+      being the sole lion of the evening, complimented her, bowing almost to the
+      ground, with one hand on his heart; Madame Rochette assured her that she
+      had a fortune in her throat whenever she chose to seek it; persons she had
+      never seen and who did not know her name, pressed her hands fervently,
+      saying that her singing was adorable. All cried &ldquo;Encore,&rdquo; &ldquo;Encore!&rdquo; and,
+      yielding to the pleasure of applause, she thought no more of the flight of
+      time. Dawn was peeping through the windows when the party broke up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What kind people!&rdquo; thought the debutante, whom they had encouraged and
+      applauded; &ldquo;some perhaps are a little odd, but how much cordiality and
+      warmth there is among them! It is catching. This is the sort of atmosphere
+      in which talent should live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Being very much fatigued, she fell asleep upon the offered sofa,
+      half-pleased, half-frightened, but with two prominent convictions: one,
+      that she was beginning to return to life; the other, that she stood on the
+      edge of a precipice. In her dreams old Rochette appeared to her, her face
+      like that of an affable frog, her dress the dress of Pierrot, and she
+      croaked out, in a variety of tones: &ldquo;The stage! Why not? Applauded every
+      night&mdash;it would be glorious!&rdquo; Then she seemed in her dream to be
+      falling, falling down from a great height, as one falls from fairyland
+      into stern reality. She opened her eyes: it was noon. Madame Odinska was
+      waiting for her: she intended herself to take her to the convent, and for
+      that purpose had assumed the imposing air of a noble matron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alas! it was in vain! Jacqueline, was made to understand that such an
+      infraction of the rules could not be overlooked. To pass the night without
+      leave out of the convent, and not with her own family, was cause for
+      expulsion. Neither the prayers nor the anger of Madame Odinska had any
+      power to change the sentence. While the Mother Superior calmly pronounced
+      her decree, she was taking the measure of this stout foreigner who
+      appeared in behalf of Jacqueline, a woman overdressed, yet at the same
+      time shabby, who had a far from well-bred or aristocratic air. &ldquo;Out of
+      consideration for Madame de Talbrun,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;the convent consents to
+      keep Mademoiselle de Nailles a few days longer&mdash;a few weeks perhaps,
+      until she can find some other place to go. That is all we can do for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline listened to this sentence as she might have watched a game of
+      dice when her fate hung on the result, but she showed no emotion. &ldquo;Now,&rdquo;
+       she thought, &ldquo;my fate has been decided; respectable people will have
+      nothing more to do with me. I will go with the others, who, perhaps, after
+      all are not worse, and who most certainly are more amusing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A fortnight after this, Madame de Nailles, having come back to Paris, from
+      some watering-place, was telling Marien that Jacqueline had started for
+      Bellagio with Mr. and Miss Sparks, the latter having taken a notion that
+      she wanted that kind of chaperon who is called a companion in England and
+      America.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they are of the same age,&rdquo; said Marien.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is just what Miss Sparks wants. She does not wish to be hampered by
+      an elderly chaperon, but to be accompanied, as she would have been by her
+      sister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jacqueline will be exposed to see strange things; how could you have
+      consented&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Consented? As if she cared for my consent! And then she manages to say
+      such irritating things as soon as one attempts to blame her or advise her.
+      For example, this is one of them: &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t you suppose,&rsquo; she said to me,
+      &lsquo;that every one will take the most agreeable chance that offers for a
+      visit to Italy?&rsquo; What do you think of that allusion? It closed my lips
+      absolutely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps she did not mean what you think she meant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think so? And when I warned her against Madame Strahlberg, saying
+      that she might set her a very bad example, she answered: &lsquo;I may have had
+      worse.&rsquo; I suppose that was not meant for impertinence either!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; said Hubert Marien, biting his lips doubtfully, &ldquo;but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent a few moments, his head drooped on his breast, he was in
+      some painful reverie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on. What are you thinking about?&rdquo; asked Madame de Nailles,
+      impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon. I was only thinking that a certain responsibility
+      might rest on those who have made that young girl what she is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand you,&rdquo; said the stepmother, with an impatient gesture.
+      &ldquo;Who can do anything to counteract a bad disposition? You don&rsquo;t deny that
+      hers is bad? She is a very devil for pride and obstinacy&mdash;she has no
+      affection&mdash;she has proved it. I have no inclination to get myself
+      wounded by trying to control her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you prefer to let her ruin herself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should prefer not to give the world a chance to talk, by coming to an
+      open rupture with her, which would certainly be the case if I tried to
+      contradict her. After all, the Sparks and Madame Odinska are not yet put
+      out of the pale of good society, and she knew them long ago. An early
+      intimacy may be a good explanation if people blame her for going too far&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So be it, then; if you are satisfied it is not for me to say anything,&rdquo;
+       replied Marien, coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Satisfied? I am not satisfied with anything or anybody,&rdquo; said Madame de
+      Nailles, indignantly. &ldquo;How could I be satisfied; I never have met with
+      anything but ingratitude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI. THE SAILOR&rsquo;S RETURN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Madame D&rsquo;Argy did not leave her son in ignorance of all the freaks and
+      follies of Jacqueline. He knew every particular of the wrong-doings and
+      the imprudences of his early friend, and even the additions made to them
+      by calumny, ever since the fit of in dependence which, after her father&rsquo;s
+      death, had led her to throw off all control. She told of her sudden
+      departure from Fresne, where she might have found so safe a refuge with
+      her friend and cousin. Then had not her own imprudence and coquetry led to
+      a rupture with the families of d&rsquo;Etaples and Ray? She told of the
+      scandalous intimacy with Madame Strahlberg; of her expulsion from the
+      convent, where they had discovered, even before she left, that she had
+      been in the habit of visiting undesirable persons; and finally she
+      informed him that Jacqueline had gone to Italy with an old Yankee and his
+      daughter&mdash;he being a man, it was said, who had laid the foundation of
+      his colossal fortune by keeping a bar-room in a mining camp in California.
+      This last was no fiction, the cut of Mr. Sparks&rsquo;s beard and his unpolished
+      manners left no doubt on the subject; and she wound up by saying that
+      Madame d&rsquo;Avrigny, whom no one could accuse of ill-nature, had been grieved
+      at meeting this unhappy girl in very improper company, among which she
+      seemed quite in her element, like a fish in water. It was said also that
+      she was thinking of studying for the stage with La Rochette&mdash;M. de
+      Talbrun had heard it talked about in the foyer of the Opera by an old
+      Prince from some foreign country&mdash;she could not remember his name,
+      but he was praising Madame Strahlberg without any reserve as the most
+      delightful of Parisiennes. Thereupon Talbrun had naturally forbidden his
+      wife to have anything to do with Jacqueline, or even to write to her. Fat
+      Oscar, though he was not all that he ought to be himself, had some very
+      strict notions of propriety. No one was more particular about family
+      relations, and really in this case no one could blame him; but Giselle had
+      been very unhappy, and to the very last had tried to stand up for her
+      unhappy friend. Having told him all this, she added, she would say no more
+      on the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle was a model woman in everything, in tact, in goodness, in good
+      sense, and she was very attentive to the poor old mother of Fred, who but
+      for her must have died long ago of loneliness and sorrow. Thereupon ensued
+      the poor lady&rsquo;s usual lamentations over the long, long absence of her
+      beloved son; as usual, she told him she did not think she should live to
+      see him back again; she gave him a full account of her maladies, caused,
+      or at least aggravated, by her mortal, constant, incurable sorrow; and she
+      told how Giselle had been nursing her with all the patience and devotion
+      of a Sister of Charity. Through all Madame d&rsquo;Argy&rsquo;s letters at this period
+      the angelic figure of Giselle was contrasted with the very different one
+      of that young and incorrigible little devil of a Jacqueline.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred at first believed his mother&rsquo;s stories were all exaggeration, but the
+      facts were there, corroborated by the continued silence of the person
+      concerned. He knew his mother to be too good wilfully to blacken the
+      character of one whom for years she had hoped would be her
+      daughter-in-law, the only child of her best friend, the early love of her
+      son. But by degrees he fancied that the love so long living at the bottom
+      of his heart was slowly dying, that it had been extinguished, that nothing
+      remained of it but remembrance, such remembrance as we retain for dead
+      things, a remembrance without hope, whose weight added to the homesickness
+      which with him was increasing every day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no active service to enable him to endure exile. The heroic
+      period of the war had passed. Since a treaty of peace had been signed with
+      China, the fleet, which had distinguished itself in so many small
+      engagements and bombardments, had had nothing to do but to mount guard, as
+      it were, along a conquered coast. All round it in the bay, where it lay at
+      anchor, rose mountains of strange shapes, which seemed to shut it into a
+      kind of prison. This feeling of nothing to be done&mdash;of nothing likely
+      to be done, worked in Fred&rsquo;s head like a nightmare. The only thing he
+      thought of was how he could escape, when could he once more kiss the faded
+      cheeks of his mother, who often, when he slept or lay wakeful during the
+      long hours of the siesta, he saw beside him in tears. Hers was the only
+      face that he recalled distinctly; to her and to her only were devoted his
+      long reveries when on watch; that time when he formerly composed his love
+      verses, tender or angry, or full of despair. That was all over! A sort of
+      mournful resignation had succeeded his bursts of excited feeling, his
+      revolt against his fate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was Fred&rsquo;s state of mind when he received orders to return home&mdash;orders
+      as unexpected as everything seems to be in the life of a naval man. &ldquo;I am
+      going back to her!&rdquo; he cried. Her was his mother, her was France. All the
+      rest had disappeared as if into a fog. Jacqueline was a phantom of the
+      past; so many things had happened since the old times when he had loved
+      her. He had crossed the Indian Ocean and the China Sea; he had seen long
+      stretches of interminable coast-line; he had beheld misery, and glory, and
+      all the painful scenes that wait on warfare; he had seen pestilence, and
+      death in every shape, and all this had wrought in him a sort of stoicism,
+      the result of long acquaintance with solitude and danger. He remembered
+      his old love as a flower he had once admired as he passed it, a
+      treacherous flower, with thorns that had wounded him. There are flowers
+      that are beneficent, and flowers that are poisonous, and the last are
+      sometimes the most beautiful. They should not be blamed, he thought; it
+      was their nature to be hurtful; but it was well to pass them by and not to
+      gather them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time he had debarked Fred had made up his mind to let his mother
+      choose a wife for him, a daughter-in-law suited to herself, who would give
+      her the delight of grandchildren, who would bring them up well, and who
+      would not weary of Lizerolles. But a week later the idea of this kind of
+      marriage had gone out of his head, and this change of feeling was partly
+      owing to Giselle. Giselle gave him a smile of welcome that went to his
+      heart, for that poor heart, after all, was only waiting for a chance again
+      to give itself away. She was with Madame d&rsquo;Argy, who had not been well
+      enough to go to the sea-coast to meet her son, and he saw at the same
+      moment the pale and aged face which had visited him at Tonquin in his
+      dreams, and a fair face that he had never before thought so beautiful,
+      more oval than he remembered it, with blue eyes soft and tender, and a
+      mouth with a sweet infantine expression of sincerity and goodness. His
+      mother stretched out her trembling arms, gave a great cry, and fainted
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be alarmed; it is only joy,&rdquo; said Giselle, in her soft voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when Madame d&rsquo;Argy proved her to be right by recovering very quickly,
+      overwhelming her son with rapid questions and covering him with kisses,
+      Giselle held out her hand to him and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I, too, am very glad you have come home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; cried the sick woman in her excitement, &ldquo;you must kiss your old
+      playfellow!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle blushed a little, and Fred, more embarrassed than she, lightly
+      touched with his lips her pretty smooth hair which shone upon her head
+      like a helmet of gold. Perhaps it was this new style of hairdressing which
+      made her seem so much more beautiful than he remembered her, but it seemed
+      to him he saw her for the first time; while, with the greatest eagerness,
+      notwithstanding Giselle&rsquo;s attempts to interrupt her, Madame d&rsquo;Argy
+      repeated to her son all she owed to that dear friend &ldquo;her own daughter,
+      the best of daughters, the most patient, the most devoted of daughters,
+      could not have done more! Ah! if there only could be found another one
+      like her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whereupon the object of all these praises made her escape, disclaiming
+      everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why, after this, should she have hesitated to come back to Lizerolles
+      every day, as of late had been her custom? Men know so little about taking
+      care of sick people. So she came, and was present at all the rejoicings
+      and all the talks that followed Fred&rsquo;s return. She took her part in the
+      discussions about Fred&rsquo;s future. &ldquo;Help me, my pet,&rdquo; said Madame d&rsquo;Argy,
+      &ldquo;help me to find a wife for him: all we ask is that she should be like
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In answer to which Fred declared, half-laughing and half-seriously, that
+      that was his ideal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not believe much of this, but, following her natural instinct, she
+      assumed the dangerous task of consolation, until, as Madame d&rsquo;Argy grew
+      better, she discontinued her daily visits, and Fred, in his turn, took a
+      habit of going over to Fresne without being invited, and spending there a
+      good deal of his time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t send me away. You who are always charitable,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you only
+      knew what a pleasure a Parisian conversation is after coming from
+      Tonquin!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I am so little of a Parisienne, or at least what you mean by that
+      term, and my conversation is not worth coming for,&rdquo; objected Giselle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In her extreme modesty she did not realize how much she had gained in
+      intellectual culture. Women left to themselves have time to read, and
+      Giselle had done this all the more because she had considered it a duty.
+      Must she not know enough to instruct and superintend the education of her
+      son? With much strong feeling, yet with much simplicity, she spoke to Fred
+      of this great task, which sometimes frightened her; he gave her his
+      advice, and both discussed together the things that make up a good man.
+      Giselle brought up frequently the subject of heredity: she named no one,
+      but Fred could see that she had a secret terror lest Enguerrand, who in
+      person was very like his father, might also inherit his character. Fears
+      on this subject, however, appeared unfounded. There was nothing about the
+      child that was not good; his tastes were those of his mother. He was
+      passionately fond of Fred, climbing on his lap as soon as the latter
+      arrived and always maintaining that he, too, wanted a pretty red ribbon to
+      wear in his buttonhole, a ribbon only to be got by sailing far away over
+      the seas, like sailors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A sailor! Heaven forbid!&rdquo; cried Madame de Talbrun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! sailors come back again. He has come back. Couldn&rsquo;t he take me away
+      with him soon? I have some stories about cabin-boys who were not much
+      older than I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us hope that your friend Fred won&rsquo;t go away,&rdquo; said Giselle. &ldquo;But why
+      do you wish to be a cabinboy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I want to go away with him, if he does not stay here&mdash;because
+      I like him,&rdquo; answered Enguerrand in a tone of decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hereupon Giselle kissed her boy with more than usual tenderness. He would
+      not take to the hunting-field, she thought, the boulevard, and the corps
+      de ballet. She would not lose him. &ldquo;But, oh, Fred!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;it is not
+      to be wondered at that he is so fond of you! You spoil him! You will be a
+      devoted father some day; your vocation is evidently for marriage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She thought, in thus speaking, that she was saying what Madame d&rsquo;Argy
+      would like her to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the matter of children, I think your son is enough for me,&rdquo; he said,
+      one day; &ldquo;and as for marriage, you would not believe how all women&mdash;I
+      mean all the young girls among whom I should have to make a choice&mdash;are
+      indifferent to me. My feeling almost amounts to antipathy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first time she ventured to say: &ldquo;Do you still care for
+      Jacqueline?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About as much as she cares for me,&rdquo; he answered, dryly. &ldquo;No, I made a
+      mistake once, and that has made me cautious for the future.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another day he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know now who was the woman I ought to have loved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle did not look up; she was devoting all her attention to Enguerrand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fred held certain theories which he used to talk about. He believed in a
+      high, spiritual, disinterested affection which would raise a man above
+      himself, making him more noble, inspiring a disgust for all ignoble
+      pleasures. The woman willing to accept such homage might do anything she
+      pleased with a heart that would be hers alone. She would be the lady who
+      presided over his life, for whose sake all good deeds and generous actions
+      would be done, the idol, higher than a wife or any object of earthly
+      passion, the White Angel whom poets have sung.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle pretended that she did not understand him, but she was divinely
+      happy. This, then, was the reward of her spotless life! She was the object
+      of a worship no less tender than respectful. Fred spoke of the woman he
+      ought to have loved as if he meant to say, &ldquo;I love you;&rdquo; he pressed his
+      lips on the auburn curls of little Enguerrand where his mother had just
+      kissed him. Day after day he seemed more attracted to that salon where,
+      dressed with more care than she had ever dressed before, she expected him.
+      Then awoke in her the wish to please, and she was beautiful with that
+      beauty which is not the insipid beauty of St. Agnes, but that which,
+      superior to all other, is seen when the face reflects the soul. All that
+      winter there was a new Giselle&mdash;a Giselle who passed away again among
+      the shadows, a Giselle of whom everybody said, even her husband, &ldquo;Ma foi!
+      but she is beautiful!&rdquo; Oscar de Talbrun, as he made this remark, never
+      thought of wondering why she was more beautiful. He was ready to take
+      offense and was jealous by nature, but he was perfectly sure of his wife,
+      as he had often said. As to Fred, the idea of being jealous of him would
+      never have entered his mind. Fred was a relative and was admitted to all
+      the privileges of a cousin or a brother; besides, he was a fellow of no
+      consequence in any way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While this platonic attachment grew stronger and stronger between Fred and
+      Giselle, assisted by the innocent complicity of little Enguerrand,
+      Jacqueline was discovering how hard it is for a girl of good birth, if she
+      is poor, to carry out her plans of honest independence. Possibly she had
+      allowed herself to be too easily misled by the title of &ldquo;companion,&rdquo;
+       which, apparently more cordial than that of &lsquo;demoiselle de compagnie&rsquo;,
+      means in reality the same thing&mdash;a sort of half-servile position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Money is a touchstone which influences all social relations, especially
+      when on one side there is a somewhat morbid susceptibility, and on the
+      other a lack of good breeding and education. The Sparks, father and
+      daughter, Americans of the lower class, though willing to spend any number
+      of dollars for their own pleasure, expected that every penny they
+      disbursed should receive its full equivalent in service; the place
+      therefore offered so gracefully and spontaneously to Mademoiselle de
+      Nailles was far from being a sinecure. Jacqueline received her salary on
+      the same footing as Justine, the Parisian maid, received her wages, for,
+      although her position was apparently one of much greater importance and
+      consideration than Justine&rsquo;s, she was really at the beck and call of a
+      girl who, while she called her &ldquo;darling,&rdquo; gave her orders and paid her for
+      her services. Very often Miss Nora asked her to sew, on the plea that she
+      was as skilful with her fingers as a fairy, but in reality that her
+      employer might feel the superiority of her own position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hitherto Miss Nora had been delighted to meet at watering-places a friend
+      of whom she could say proudly, &ldquo;She is a representative of the old
+      nobility of France&rdquo; (which was not true, by the way, for the title of
+      Baron borne by M. de Nailles went no farther back than the days of Louis
+      XVIII); and she was still more proud to think that she was now waited on
+      by this same daughter of a nobleman, when her own father had kept a
+      drinking-saloon. She did not acknowledge this feeling to herself, and
+      would certainly have maintained that she never had had such an idea, but
+      it existed all the same, and she was under its influence, being very vain
+      and rather foolish. And, indeed, Jacqueline, would have been very willing
+      to plan trimmings and alter finery from morning to night in her own
+      chamber in a hotel, exactly as Mademoiselle Justine did, if she could by
+      this means have escaped the special duties of her difficult position,
+      which duties were to follow Miss Nora everywhere, like her own shadow, to
+      be her confidant and to act sometimes as her screen, or even as her
+      accomplice, in matters that occasionally involved risks, and were never to
+      her liking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young American girl had already said to her father, when he asked her
+      to give up her search for an entirely satisfactory European suitor, which
+      search he feared might drag on forever without any results: &ldquo;Oh! I shall
+      be sure to find him at Bellagio!&rdquo; And she made up her mind that there he
+      was to be sought and found at any price. Hotel life offered her
+      opportunities to exercise her instincts for flirtation, for there she met
+      many specimens of men she called chic, with a funny little foreign accent,
+      which seemed to put new life into the wornout word. Twenty times a day she
+      baited her hook, and twenty times a day some fish would bite, or at least
+      nibble, according as he was a fortune-hunter or a dilettante. Miss Nora,
+      being incapable of knowing the difference, was ready to capture good or
+      bad, and went about dragging her slaves at her chariot-wheels. Sometimes
+      she took them rowing, with the Stars and Stripes floating over her boat,
+      by moonlight; sometimes she drove them recklessly in a drag through roads
+      bordered by olive-groves and vineyards; all these expeditions being
+      undertaken under-pretence of admiring the romantic scenery. Her father was
+      not disposed to interfere with what he called &ldquo;a little harmless
+      dissipation.&rdquo; He was confident his daughter&rsquo;s &ldquo;companion&rdquo; must know what
+      was proper, she being, as he said, accustomed to good society. Were not
+      all Italian ladies attended by gentlemen? Who could blame a young girl for
+      amusing herself? Meantime Mr. Sparks amused himself after his own fashion,
+      which was to sit comfortably, with his feet up on the piazza rail of the
+      hotel, imbibing strong iced drinks through straws. But in reality
+      Jacqueline had no power whatever to preserve propriety, and only
+      compromised herself by her associations, though her own conduct was
+      irreproachable. Indeed she was considered quite prudish, and the rest of
+      the mad crowd laughed at her for having the manners of a governess. In
+      vain she tried to say words of warning to Nora; what she said was laughed
+      at or resented in a tone that told her that a paid companion had not the
+      right to speak as frankly as a friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her business, she was plainly told one day, was to be on the spot in case
+      any impertinent suitor should venture too far in a tete-a-tete, but short
+      of that she was not to &ldquo;spoilsport.&rdquo; &ldquo;I am not doing anything wrong; it is
+      allowable in America,&rdquo; was Miss Nora&rsquo;s regular speech on such occasions,
+      and Jacqueline could not dispute the double argument. Nora&rsquo;s conduct was
+      not wicked, and in America such things might be allowed. Yet Jacqueline
+      tried to demonstrate that a young girl can not pass unscathed through
+      certain adventures, even if they are innocent in the strict sense of the
+      word; which made Nora cry out that all she said was subterfuge and that
+      she had no patience with prejudices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In vain her young companion pointed out to her charge that other Americans
+      at Bellagio seemed far from approving her conduct. American ladies of a
+      very different class, who were staying at the hotel, held aloof from her,
+      and treated her with marked coldness whenever they met; declaring that her
+      manners would be as objectionable in her own country, in good society, as
+      they were in Italy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Miss Sparks was not to be put down by any argument. &ldquo;Bah! they are
+      stuck-up Bostonians. And do you know, Jacqueline, you are getting very
+      tiresome? You were faster yourself than I when we were the Blue Band at
+      Treport.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nora&rsquo;s admirers, sometimes encouraged, sometimes snubbed, when treated
+      cavalierly by this young lady, would occasionally pay court to the
+      &lsquo;demoiselle de compagnie&rsquo;, who indeed was well worth their pains; but, to
+      their surprise, the subordinate received their attentions with great
+      coldness. Having entered her protest against what was going on, and having
+      resisted the contagion of example, it was natural she should somewhat
+      exaggerate her prudery, for it is hard to hit just the right point in such
+      reaction. The result was, she made herself so disagreeable to Miss Sparks
+      that the latter determined on getting rid of her as tactfully as possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their parting took place on the day after an excursion to the Villa
+      Sommariva, where Miss Sparks and her little court had behaved with their
+      usual noise and rudeness. They had gone there ostensibly to see the
+      pictures, about which none of them cared anything, for Nora, wherever she
+      was, never liked any one to pay attention to anybody or to look at
+      anything but her own noisy, all-pervading self.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It so happened that at the most riotous moment of the picnic an old
+      gentleman passed near the lively crowd. He was quite inoffensive,
+      pleasant-mannered, and walked leaning on his cane, yet, had the statue of
+      the Commander in Don Juan suddenly appeared it could not have produced
+      such consternation as his presence did on Jacqueline, when, after a
+      moment&rsquo;s hesitation, he bowed to her. She recognized in him a friend of
+      Madame d&rsquo;Argy, M. Martel, whom she had often met at her house in Paris and
+      at Lizerolles. When he recognized her, she fancied she had seen pass over
+      his face a look of painful surprise. He would surely tell how he had met
+      her; what would her old friends think of her? What would Fred? For some
+      time past she had thought more than ever before of what Fred would think
+      of her. The more she grew disgusted with the men she met, the more she
+      appreciated his good qualities, and the more she thought of the honest,
+      faithful love he had offered her&mdash;love that she had so madly thrown
+      away. She never should meet such love again, she thought. It was the idea
+      of how Fred would blame her when he heard what she pictured to herself the
+      old gentleman would say of her, that suddenly decided her to leave
+      Bellagio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She told Mr. Sparks that evening that she was not strong enough for such
+      duties as were required of a companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her with pity and annoyance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have thought you had more energy. How do you expect to live by
+      work if you are not strong enough for pleasure?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pleasure needs strength as well as labor,&rdquo; she said, smiling; &ldquo;I would
+      rather work in the fields than go on amusing myself as I have been doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, you must not be so difficult to please. When people have to earn
+      their bread, it is a bad plan. I am afraid you will find out before long
+      that there are harder ways of making a living than lunching, dancing,
+      walking, and driving from morning to night in a pretty country&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Mr. Sparks began to laugh as he thought of all he had had to do,
+      without making objections, in the Far West, in the heroic days of his
+      youthful vigor. He was rather fond of recalling how he had carried his
+      pick on his shoulder and his knife in his belt, with two Yankee sayings in
+      his head, and little besides for baggage: &ldquo;Muscle and pluck!&mdash;Muscle
+      and pluck!&rdquo; and &ldquo;Go ahead for ever!&rdquo; That was the sort of thing to be done
+      when a man or a woman had not a cent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, what was Jacqueline to do next? She reflected that in a very
+      short time she had attempted many things. It seemed to her that all she
+      could do now was to follow the advice which, when first given her by
+      Madame Strahlberg, had frightened her, though she had found it so
+      attractive. She would study with Madame Rochette; she would go to the
+      Milan Conservatory, and as soon as she came of age she would go upon the
+      stage, under a feigned name, of course, and in a foreign country. She
+      would prove to the world, she said to herself, that the career of an
+      actress is compatible with self-respect. This resolve that she would never
+      be found wanting in self-respect held a prominent place in all her plans,
+      as she began to understand better those dangers in life which are for the
+      most part unknown to young girls born in her social position. Jacqueline&rsquo;s
+      character, far from being injured by her trials and experiences, had
+      gained in strength. She grew firmer as she gained in knowledge. Never had
+      she been so worthy of regard and interest as at the very time when her
+      friends were saying sadly to themselves, &ldquo;She is going to the bad,&rdquo; and
+      when, from all appearances, they were right in this conclusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII. TWIN DEVILS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline came to the conclusion that she had better seriously consult
+      Madame Strahlberg. She therefore stopped at Monaco, where this friend,
+      whom she intended to honor with the strange office of Mentor, was passing
+      the winter in a little villa in the Condamine quarter&mdash;a cottage
+      surrounded by roses and laurel-bushes, painted in soft colors and looking
+      like a plaything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Strahlberg had already urged Jacqueline to come and make
+      acquaintance with her &ldquo;paradise,&rdquo; without giving her any hint of the
+      delights of that paradise, from which that of gambling was not excluded,
+      for Madame Strahlberg was eager for any kind of excitement. Roulette now
+      occupied with her a large part of every night&mdash;indeed, her nights had
+      been rarely given to slumber, for her creed was that morning is the time
+      for sleep, for which reason they never took breakfast in the pink villa,
+      but tea, cakes, and confectionery were eaten instead at all hours until
+      the evening. Thus it happened very often that they had no dinner, and
+      guests had to accommodate themselves to the strange ways of the family.
+      Jacqueline, however, did not stay long enough to know much of those ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She arrived, poor thing, with weary wing, like some bird, who, escaping
+      from the fowler&rsquo;s net, where it has left its feathers, flies straight to
+      the spot where a sportsman lies ready to shoot it. She was received with
+      the same cries of joy, the same kisses, the same demonstrations of
+      affection, as those which, the summer before, had welcomed her to the Rue
+      de Naples. They told her she could sleep on a sofa, exactly like the one
+      on which she had passed that terrible night which had resulted in her
+      expulsion from the convent; and it was decided that she must stay several
+      days, at least, before she went on to Paris, to begin the life of hard
+      study and courageous work which would make of her a great singer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tired?&mdash;No, she was hardly tired at all. The journey over the
+      enchanting road of the Corniche had awakened in her a fervor of admiration
+      which prevented her from feeling any bodily needs, and now she seemed to
+      have reached fairyland, where the verdure of the tropics was like the
+      hanging gardens of Babylon, only those had never had a mirror to reflect
+      back their ancient, far-famed splendor, like that before her eyes, as she
+      looked down upon the Mediterranean, with the sun setting in the west in a
+      sky all crimson and gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Notwithstanding the disorder of her travelling-dress, Jacqueline allowed
+      her friend to take her straight from the railway station to the Terrace of
+      Monte Carlo. She fell into ecstasies at sight of the African cacti, the
+      century plants, and the fig-trees of Barbary, covering the low walls
+      whence they looked down into the water; at the fragrance of the evergreens
+      that surrounded the beautiful palace with its balustrades, dedicated to
+      all the worst passions of the human race; with the sharp rocky outline of
+      Turbia; with an almost invisible speck on the horizon which they said was
+      Corsica; with everything, which, whether mirage or reality, lifted her out
+      of herself, and plunged her into that state of excited happiness and
+      indescribable sense of bodily comfort, which exterior impressions so
+      easily produce upon the young.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After exhausting her vocabulary in exclamations and in questions, she
+      stood silent, watching the sun as it sank beneath the waters, thinking
+      that life is well worth living if it can give us such glorious spectacles,
+      notwithstanding all the difficulties that may have to be passed through.
+      Several minutes elapsed before she turned her radiant face and dazzled
+      eyes toward Wanda, or rather toward the spot where Wanda had been standing
+      beside her. &ldquo;Oh! my dear&mdash;how beautiful!&rdquo; she murmured with a long
+      sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sigh was echoed by a man, who for a few moments had looked at her with
+      as much admiration as she had looked at the landscape. He answered her by
+      saying, in a low voice, the tones of which made her tremble from head to
+      foot:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jacqueline!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur de Cymier!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words slipped through her lips as they suddenly turned pale. She had
+      an instinctive, sudden persuasion that she had been led into a snare. If
+      not, why was Madame Strahlberg now absorbed in conversation with three
+      other persons at some little distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive me&mdash;you did not expect to see me&mdash;you seem quite
+      startled,&rdquo; said the young man, drawing near her. With an effort she
+      commanded herself and looked full in his face. Her anger rose. She had
+      seen the same look in the ugly, brutal face of Oscar de Talbrun. From the
+      Terrace of Monte Carlo her memory flew back to a country road in Normandy,
+      and she clenched her hand round an imaginary riding-whip. She needed
+      coolness and she needed courage. They came as if by miracle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is certain, Monsieur,&rdquo; she answered, slowly, &ldquo;that I did not expect to
+      meet you here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Chance has had pity on me,&rdquo; he replied, bowing low, as she had set him
+      the example of ceremony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he had no idea of losing time in commonplace remarks&mdash;he wished
+      to take up their intimacy on the terms it had been formerly, to resume the
+      romance he himself had interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew,&rdquo; he said in the same low voice, full of persuasion, which gave
+      especial meaning to his words, &ldquo;I knew that, after all, we should meet
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not expect it,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, haughtily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you do not believe in the magnetism of a fixed desire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I do not believe any such thing, when, opposed to such a desire,
+      there is a strong, firm will,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, her eyes burning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he murmured, and he might have been supposed to be really moved, so
+      much his look changed, &ldquo;do not abuse your power over me&mdash;do not make
+      me wretched; if you could only understand&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made a swift movement to rejoin Madame Strahlberg, but that lady was
+      already coming toward them with the same careless ease with which she had
+      left them together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well! you have each found an old acquaintance,&rdquo; she said, gayly. &ldquo;I beg
+      your pardon, my loveliest, but I had to speak to some old friends, and ask
+      them to join us to-morrow evening. We shall sup at the restaurant of the
+      Grand Hotel, after the opera&mdash;for, I did not tell you before, you
+      will have the good luck to hear Patti. Monsieur de Cymier, we shall expect
+      you. Au revoir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been on the point of asking leave to walk home with them. But there
+      was something in Jacqueline&rsquo;s look, and in her stubborn silence, that
+      deterred him. He thought it best to leave a skilful advocate to plead his
+      cause before he continued a conversation which had not begun
+      satisfactorily. Not that Gerard de Cymier was discouraged by the behavior
+      of Jacqueline. He had expected her to be angry at his defection, and that
+      she would make him pay for it; but a little skill on his part, and a
+      little credulity on hers, backed by the intervention of a third party,
+      might set things right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One moment he lingered to look at her, admiring her as she stood in the
+      light of the dying sun, as beautiful in her plain dress and her indignant
+      paleness, while she looked far out to sea, that she might not be obliged
+      to look at him, as she had been when he had known her in prosperity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment he knew she hated him, but it would be an additional
+      delight to overcome that feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two women, when he left them, continued walking on the terrace side by
+      side, without a word. Wanda watched her companion out of the corners of
+      her eyes, and hummed an air to herself to break the silence. She saw a
+      storm gathering under Jacqueline&rsquo;s black eyebrows, and knew that sharp
+      arrows were likely to shoot forth from those lips which several times had
+      opened, though not a word had been uttered, probably through fear of
+      saying too little or too much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last she made some trifling comment on the view, explaining something
+      about pigeon-shooting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wanda,&rdquo; interrupted Jacqueline, &ldquo;did you not know what happened once?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Happened, how? About what?&rdquo; asked Madame Strahlberg, with an air of
+      innocence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am speaking of the way Monsieur de Cymier treated me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah! He was in love with you. Who didn&rsquo;t know it? Every one could see
+      that. It was all the more reason why you should have been glad to meet
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did not act as if he were much in love,&rdquo; said Jacqueline.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because he went away when your family thought he was about to make his
+      formal proposal? Not all men are marrying men, my dear, nor have all women
+      that vocation. Men fall in love all the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think, then, that when a man knows he has no intention of marrying
+      he should pay court to a young girl? I think I told you at the time that
+      he had paid court to me, and that he afterward&mdash;how shall I say it?&mdash;basely
+      deserted me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sharp and thrilling tone in which Jacqueline said this amused Madame
+      Strahlberg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What big words, my dear! No, I don&rsquo;t remember that you ever said anything
+      of the sort to me before. But you are wrong. As we grow older we lay aside
+      harsh judgments and sharp words. They do no good. In your place I should
+      be touched by the thought that a man so charming had been faithful to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Faithful!&rdquo; cried Jacqueline, her dark eyes flashing into the cat-like
+      eyes of Madame Strahlberg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda looked down, and fastened a ribbon at her waist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ever since we have been here,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;he has been talking of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really&mdash;for how long?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if you must know, for the last two weeks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is just a fortnight since you wrote and asked me to stay with you,&rdquo;
+       said Jacqueline, coldly and reproachfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well&mdash;what&rsquo;s the harm? Suppose I did think your presence would
+      increase the attractions of Monaco?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did you not tell me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I never write a word more than is necessary; you know how lazy I
+      am. And also because, I may as well confess, it might have scared you off,
+      you are so sensitive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you meant to take me by surprise?&rdquo; said Jacqueline, in the same
+      tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! my dear, why do you try to quarrel with me?&rdquo; replied Madame
+      Strahlberg, stopping suddenly and looking at her through her eyeglass. &ldquo;We
+      may as well understand what you mean by a free and independent life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And thereupon ensued an address to which Jacqueline listened, leaning one
+      hand on a balustrade of that enchanted garden, while the voice of the
+      serpent, as she thought, was ringing in her ears. Her limbs shook under
+      her&mdash;her brain reeled. All her hopes of success as a singer on the
+      stage Madame Strahlberg swept away, as not worth a thought. She told her
+      that, in her position, had she meant to be too scrupulous, she should have
+      stayed in the convent. Everything to Jacqueline seemed to dance before her
+      eyes. The evening closed around them, the light died out, the landscape,
+      like her life, had lost its glow. She uttered a brief prayer for help,
+      such a prayer as she had prayed in infancy. She whispered it in terror,
+      like a cry in extreme danger. She was more frightened by Wanda&rsquo;s wicked
+      words than she had been by M. de Talbrun or by M. de Cymier. She ceased to
+      know what she was saying till the last words, &ldquo;You have good sense and you
+      will think about it,&rdquo; met her ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline said not a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wanda took her arm. &ldquo;You may be sure,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that I am thinking only
+      of your good. Come! Would you like to go into the Casino and look at the
+      pictures? No, you are tired? You can see them some evening. The ballroom
+      holds a thousand persons. Yes, if you prefer, we will go home. You can
+      take a nap till dinner-time. We shall dine at eight o&rsquo;clock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Conversation languished till they reached the Villa Rosa. Notwithstanding
+      Jacqueline&rsquo;s efforts to appear natural, her own voice rang in her ears in
+      tones quite new to her, a laugh that she uttered without any occasion, and
+      which came near resulting in hysterics. Yet she had power enough over her
+      nerves to notice the surroundings as she entered the house. At the door of
+      the room in which she was to sleep, and which was on the first story,
+      Madame Strahlberg kissed her with one of those equivocal smiles which so
+      long had imposed on her simplicity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Till eight o&rsquo;clock, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Till eight o&rsquo;clock,&rdquo; repeated Jacqueline, passively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when eight o&rsquo;clock came she sent word that she had a severe headache,
+      and would try to sleep it off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suppose, she thought, M. de Cymier should have been asked to dinner;
+      suppose she should be placed next to him at table? Anything in that house
+      seemed possible now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They brought her a cup of tea. Up to a late hour she heard a confused
+      noise of music and laughter. She did not try to sleep. All her faculties
+      were on the alert, like those of a prisoner who is thinking of escape. She
+      knew what time the night trains left the station, and, abandoning her
+      trunk and everything else that she had with her, she furtively&mdash;but
+      ready, if need were, to fight for her liberty with the strength of
+      desperation&mdash;slipped down the broad stairs over their thick carpet
+      and pushed open a little glass door. Thank heaven! people came in and went
+      out of that house as if it had been a mill. No one discovered her flight
+      till the next morning, when she was far on her way to Paris in an express
+      train. Modeste, quite unprepared for her young mistress&rsquo;s arrival, was
+      amazed to see her drop down upon her, feverish and excited, like some poor
+      hunted animal, with strength exhausted. Jacqueline flung herself into her
+      nurse&rsquo;s arms as she used to do when, as a little girl, she was in what she
+      fancied some great trouble, and she cried: &ldquo;Oh, take me in&mdash;pray take
+      me in! Keep me safe! Hide me!&rdquo; And then she told Modeste everything,
+      speaking rapidly and disconnectedly, thankful to have some one to whom she
+      could open her heart. In default of Modeste she would have spoken to stone
+      walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what will you do now, my poor darling?&rdquo; asked the old nurse, as soon
+      as she understood that her young lady had come back to her, &ldquo;with weary
+      foot and broken wing,&rdquo; from what she had assured her on her departure
+      would be a brilliant excursion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; answered Jacqueline, in utter discouragement; &ldquo;I am
+      too worn out to think or to do anything. Let me rest; that is all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you go to see your stepmother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My stepmother? Oh, no! She is at the bottom of all that has happened to
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or Madame d&rsquo;Argy? Or Madame de Talbrun? Madame de Talbrun is the one who
+      would give you good advice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline shook her head with a sad smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me stay here. Don&rsquo;t you remember&mdash;years ago&mdash;but it seems
+      like yesterday&mdash;all the rest is like a nightmare&mdash;how I used to
+      hide myself under your petticoats, and you would say, going on with your
+      knitting: &lsquo;You see she is not here; I can&rsquo;t think where she can be.&rsquo; Hide
+      me now just like that, dear old Modeste. Only hide me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Modeste, full of heartfelt pity, promised to hide her &ldquo;dear child&rdquo;
+       from every one, which promise, however, did not prevent her, for she was
+      very self-willed, from going, without Jacqueline&rsquo;s knowledge, to see
+      Madame de Talbrun and tell her all that had taken place. She was hurt and
+      amazed at her reception by Giselle, and at her saying, without any offer
+      of help or words of sympathy, &ldquo;She has only reaped what she has sown.&rdquo;
+       Giselle would have been more than woman had not Fred, and a remembrance of
+      the wrongs that he had suffered through Jacqueline, now stood between
+      them. For months he had been the prime object in her life; her mission of
+      comforter had brought her the greatest happiness she had ever known. She
+      tried to make him turn his attention to some serious work in life; she
+      wanted to keep him at home, for his mother&rsquo;s sake, she thought; she
+      fancied she had inspired him with a taste for home life. If she had
+      examined herself she might have discovered that the task she had
+      undertaken of doing good to this young man was not wholly for his sake but
+      partly for her own. She wanted to see him nearly every day and to occupy a
+      place in his life ever larger and larger. But for some time past the
+      conscientious Giselle had neglected the duty of strict self-examination.
+      She was thankful to be happy&mdash;and though Fred was a man little given
+      to self-flattery in his relations with women, he could not but be pleased
+      at the change produced in her by her intercourse with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But while Fred and Giselle considered themselves as two friends trying to
+      console each other, people had begun to talk about them. Even Madame
+      d&rsquo;Argy asked herself whether her son might not have escaped from the cruel
+      claws of a young coquette of the new school to fall into a worse scrape
+      with a married woman. She imagined what might happen if the jealousy of
+      &ldquo;that wild boar of an Oscar de Talbrun&rdquo; were aroused; the dangers, far
+      more terrible than the perils of the sea, that might in such a case await
+      her only son, the child for whose safety her mother-love caused her to
+      suffer perpetual torments. &ldquo;O mothers! mothers!&rdquo; she often said to
+      herself, &ldquo;how much they are to be pitied. And they are very blind. If Fred
+      must get into danger and difficulty for any woman, it should not have been
+      for Giselle de Talbrun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII. &ldquo;AN AFFAIR OF HONOR&rdquo;
+     </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   A meeting took place yesterday at Vesinet between the Vicomte de
+   Cymier, secretary of Embassy at Vienna, and M. Frederic d&rsquo;Argy,
+   ensign in the navy. The parties fought with swords. The seconds of
+   M. de Cymier were the Prince de Moelk and M. d&rsquo;Etaples, captain in
+   the&mdash;th Hussars; those of M. d&rsquo;Argy Hubert Marien, the painter.
+   M. d&rsquo;Argy was wounded in the right arm, and for the present the
+   affair is terminated, but it is said it will be resumed on M.
+   d&rsquo;Argy&rsquo;s recovery, although this seems hardly probable, considering
+   the very slight cause of the quarrel&mdash;an altercation at the Cercle
+   de la Rue Boissy d&rsquo;Anglas, which took place over the card-table.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Such was the announcement in a daily paper that met the eyes of
+      Jacqueline, as she lay hidden in Modeste&rsquo;s lodging, like a fawn in its
+      covert, her eyes and ears on the alert, watching for the least sign of
+      alarm, in fear and trembling. She expected something, she knew not what;
+      she felt that her sad adventure at Monaco could not fail to have its
+      epilogue; but this was one of which she never had dreamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Modeste, give me my hat! Get me a carriage! Quick! Oh, my God, it is my
+      fault!&mdash;I have killed him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These incoherent cries came from her lips while Modeste, in alarm, picked
+      up the newspaper and adjusted her silver spectacles upon her nose to read
+      the paragraph. &ldquo;Monsieur Fred wounded! Holy Virgin! His poor mother! That
+      is a new trouble fallen on her, to be sure. But this quarrel had nothing
+      to do with you, my pet; you see they say it was about cards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And folding up the Figaro, while Jacqueline in all haste was wrapping her
+      head in a veil, Modeste, with the best intentions, went on to say: &ldquo;Nobody
+      ever dies of a sword-thrust in the arm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you see it says that they are going to fight all over again&mdash;don&rsquo;t
+      you understand? You are so stupid! What could they have had to quarrel
+      about but me? O God! Thou art just! This is indeed punishment&mdash;too
+      much punishment for me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, she ran down the many stairs that led up to Modeste&rsquo;s little
+      lodging in the roof, her feet hardly touching them as she ran, while
+      Modeste followed her more slowly, crying: &ldquo;Wait for me! Wait for me,
+      Mademoiselle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Calling a fiacre, Jacqueline, almost roughly, pushed the old woman into
+      it, and gave the coachman the address of Madame d&rsquo;Argy, having, in her
+      excitement, first given him that of their old house in the Parc Monceau,
+      so much was she possessed by the idea that this was a repetition of that
+      dreadful day, when with Modeste, just as now, she went to meet an
+      irreparable loss. She seemed to see before her her dead father&mdash;he
+      looked like Fred, and now, as before, Marien had his part in the tragedy.
+      Could he not have prevented the duel? Could he not have done something to
+      prevent Fred from exposing himself? The wound might be no worse than it
+      was said to be in the newspaper&mdash;but then a second meeting was to
+      take place. No!&mdash;it should not, she would stop it at any price!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet, as the coach drew nearer to the Rue de Varenne, where Madame
+      d&rsquo;Argy had her winter residence, a little calm, a little sense returned to
+      Jacqueline. She did not see how she could dare to enter that house, where
+      probably they cursed her very name. She would wait in the street with the
+      carriage-blinds pulled down, and Modeste should go in and ask for
+      information. Five minutes passed&mdash;ten minutes passed&mdash;they
+      seemed ages. How slow Modeste was, slow as a tortoise! How could she leave
+      her there when she knew she was so anxious? What could she be doing? All
+      she had to do was to ask news of M. Fred in just two words!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, Jacqueline could bear suspense no longer. She opened the
+      coach-door and jumped out on the pavement. Just at that moment Modeste
+      appeared, brandishing the umbrella that she carried instead of a stick, in
+      a manner that meant something. It might be bad news, she would know in a
+      moment; anything was better than suspense. She sprang forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did they say, Modeste? Speak!&mdash;Why have you been such a time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because the servants had something else to do than to attend to me. I
+      wasn&rsquo;t the only person there&mdash;they were writing in a register. Get
+      back into the carriage, Mademoiselle, or somebody will see you&mdash;There
+      are lots of people there who know you&mdash;Monsieur and Madame d&rsquo;Etaples&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do I care?&mdash;The truth! Tell me the truth&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But didn&rsquo;t you understand my signals? He is going on well. It was only a
+      scratch&mdash;Ah! Madame that&rsquo;s only my way of talking. He will be laid up
+      for a fortnight. The doctor was there&mdash;he has some fever, but he is
+      not in any danger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! what a blessing! Kiss me, Modeste. We have a fortnight in which we
+      may interfere&mdash;But how&mdash;Oh, how?&mdash;Ah! there is Giselle! We
+      will go to Giselle at once!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the &lsquo;fiacre&rsquo; was ordered to go as fast as possible to the Rue
+      Barbet-de-Jouy. This time Jacqueline herself spoke to the concierge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame la Comtesse is out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she never goes out at this hour. I wish to see her on important
+      business. I must see her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Jacqueline passed the concierge, only to encounter another refusal
+      from a footman, who insisted that Madame la Comtesse was at home to no
+      one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But me, she will see me. Go and tell her it is Mademoiselle de Nailles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Moved by her persistence, the footman went in to inquire, and came back
+      immediately with the answer:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame la Comtesse can not see Mademoiselle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; thought Jacqueline, &ldquo;she, too, throws me off, and it is natural. I
+      have no friends left. No one will tell me anything!&mdash;I think it will
+      drive me mad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was half-mad already. She stopped at a newsstand and bought all the
+      evening journals; then, up in her garret, in her poor little nest under
+      the roof-which, as she felt bitterly, was her only refuge, she began to
+      look over those printed papers in which she might possibly find out the
+      true cause of the duel. Nearly all related the event in almost the exact
+      terms used by the Figaro. Ah!&mdash;here was a different one! A reporter
+      who knew something more added, in Gil Blas: &ldquo;We have stated the cause of
+      the dispute as it has been given to the public, but in affairs of this
+      nature more than in any others, it is safe to remember the old proverb:
+      &lsquo;Look for the woman.&rsquo; The woman could doubtless have been found enjoying
+      herself on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean, while men were drawing
+      swords in her defense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline went on looking through the newspapers, crumpling up the sheets
+      as she laid them down. The last she opened had the reputation of being a
+      repository of scandals, never to be depended on, as she well knew. Several
+      times it had come to her hand and she had not opened it, remembering what
+      her father had always said of its reputation. But where would she be more
+      likely to find what she wanted than in the columns of a journal whose
+      reporters listened behind doors and peeped through keyholes? Under the
+      heading of &lsquo;Les Dessous Parisiens&rsquo;, she read on the first page:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+       &ldquo;Two hens lived in peace; a cock came
+        And strife soon succeeded to joy;
+        E&rsquo;en as love, they say, kindled the flame
+        That destroyed the proud city of Troy.
+
+   &ldquo;This quarrel was the outcome of a violent rupture between the two
+   hens in question, ending in the flight of one of them, a young and
+   tender pullet, whose voice we trust soon to hear warbling on the
+   boards at one of our theatres. This was the subject of conversation
+   in a low voice at the Cercle, at the hour when it is customary to
+   tell such little scandals. M. de C&mdash;&mdash;-was enlarging on the
+   somewhat Bohemian character of the establishment of a lovely foreign
+   lady, who possesses the secret of being always surrounded by
+   delightful friends, young ladies who are self-emancipated, quasi-
+   widows who, by divorce suits, have regained their liberty, etc.
+   He was speaking of one of the beauties who are friends of his friend
+   Madame S&mdash;&mdash;, as men speak of women who have proved themselves
+   careless of public opinion; when M. d&rsquo;A&mdash;&mdash;, in a loud voice,
+   interrupted him; the lie was given in terms that of course led to
+   the hostile meeting of which the press has spoken, attributing it to
+   a dispute about the Queen of Spades, when it really concerned the
+   Queen of Hearts.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Then she had made no mistake; it had been her flight from Madame
+      Strahlberg&rsquo;s which had led to her being attacked by one man, and defended
+      by the other! Jacqueline found it hard to recognize herself in this tissue
+      of lies, insinuations, and half-truths. What did the paper mean its
+      readers to understand by its account? Was it a jealous rivalry between
+      herself and Madame Strahlberg?&mdash;Was M. de Cymier meant by the cock?
+      And Fred had heard all this&mdash;he had drawn his sword to refute the
+      calumny. Brave Fred! Alas! he had been prompted only by chivalric
+      generosity. Doubtless he, also, looked upon her as an adventuress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All night poor Jacqueline wept with such distress that she wished that she
+      might die. She was dropping off to sleep at last, overpowered by fatigue,
+      when a ring at the bell in the early morning roused her. Then she heard
+      whispering:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think she is so unhappy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the voice of Giselle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in&mdash;come in quickly!&rdquo; she cried, springing out of bed. Wrapped
+      in a dressing-gown, with bare feet, her face pale, her eyelids red, her
+      complexion clouded, she rushed to meet her friend, who was almost as much
+      disordered as herself. It seemed as if Madame de Talbrun might also have
+      passed a night of sleeplessness and tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have come! Oh! you have come at last!&rdquo; cried Jacqueline, throwing her
+      arms around her, but Giselle repelled her with a gesture so severe that
+      the poor child could not but understand its meaning. She murmured,
+      pointing to the pile of newspapers: &ldquo;Is it possible?&mdash;Can you have
+      believed all those dreadful things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What things? I have read nothing,&rdquo; said Giselle, harshly. &ldquo;I only know
+      that a man who was neither your husband nor your brother, and who
+      consequently was under no obligation to defend you, has been foolish
+      enough to be nearly killed for your sake. Is not that a proof of your
+      downfall? Don&rsquo;t you know it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Downfall?&rdquo; repeated Jacqueline, as if she did not understand her. Then,
+      seizing her friend&rsquo;s hand, she forcibly raised it to her lips: &ldquo;Ah! what
+      can anything matter to me,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;if only you remain my friend; and
+      he has never doubted me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Women like you can always find defenders,&rdquo; said Giselle, tearing her hand
+      from her cousin&rsquo;s grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle was not herself at that moment. &ldquo;But, for your own sake, it would
+      have been better he should have abstained from such an act of Quixotism.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Giselle! can it be that you think me guilty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guilty!&rdquo; cried Madame de Talbrun, her pale face aflame. &ldquo;A little more
+      and Monsieur de Cymier&rsquo;s sword-point would have pierced his lungs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens!&rdquo; cried Jacqueline, hiding her face in her hands. &ldquo;But I
+      have done nothing to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing except to set two men against each other; to make them suffer, or
+      to make fools of them, and to be loved by them all the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not been a coquette,&rdquo; said Jacqueline, with indignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must have been, to authorize the boasts of Monsieur de Cymier. He had
+      seen Fred so seldom, and Tonquin had so changed him that he spoke in his
+      presence&mdash;without supposing any one would interfere. I dare not tell
+      you what he said&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whatever spite or revenge suggested to him, no doubt,&rdquo; said Jacqueline.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen, Giselle&mdash;Oh, you must listen. I shall not be long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She forced her to sit down; she crouched on a foot stool at her feet,
+      holding her hands in hers so tightly that Giselle could not draw them
+      away, and began her story, with all its details, of what had happened to
+      her since she left Fresne. She told of her meeting with Wanda; of the
+      fatal evening which had resulted in her expulsion from the convent; her
+      disgust at the Sparks family; the snare prepared for her by Madame
+      Strahlberg. &ldquo;And I can not tell you all,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;I can not tell you
+      what drove me away from my true friends, and threw me among these people&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle&rsquo;s sad smile seemed to answer, &ldquo;No need&mdash;I am aware of it&mdash;I
+      know my husband.&rdquo; Encouraged by this, Jacqueline went on with her
+      confession, hiding nothing that was wrong, showing herself just as she had
+      been, a poor, proud child who had set out to battle for herself in a
+      dangerous world. At every step she had been more and more conscious of her
+      own imprudence, of her own weakness, and of an ever-increasing desire to
+      be done with independence; to submit to law, to be subject to any rules
+      which would deliver her from the necessity of obeying no will but her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;I am so disgusted with independence, with amusement, and
+      amusing people! Tell me what to do in future&mdash;I am weary of taking
+      charge of myself. I said so the other day to the Abbe Bardin. He is the
+      only person I have seen since my return. It seems to me I am coming back
+      to my old ideas&mdash;you remember how I once wished to end my days in the
+      cell of a Carmelite? You might love me again then, perhaps, and Fred and
+      poor Madame d&rsquo;Argy, who must feel so bitterly against me since her son was
+      wounded, might forgive me. No one feels bitterly against the dead, and it
+      is the same as being dead to be a Carmelite nun. You would all speak of me
+      sometimes to each other as one who had been very unhappy, who had been
+      guilty of great foolishness, but who had repaired her faults as best she
+      could.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Jacqueline! She was no longer a girl of the period; in her grief and
+      humiliation she belonged to the past. Old-fashioned forms of penitence
+      attracted her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what did the Abbe Bardin tell you?&rdquo; asked Giselle, with a slight
+      movement of her shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He only told me that he could not say at present whether that were my
+      vocation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor can I,&rdquo; said Giselle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline lifted up her face, wet with tears, which she had been leaning
+      on the lap of Giselle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not see what else I can do, unless you would get me a place as
+      governess somewhere at the ends of the earth,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I could teach
+      children their letters. I should not mind doing anything. I never should
+      complain. Ah! if you lived all by yourself, Giselle, how I should implore
+      you to take me to teach little Enguerrand!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you might do better than that,&rdquo; said Giselle, wiping her friend&rsquo;s
+      eyes almost as a mother might have done, &ldquo;if you would only listen to
+      Fred.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jacqueline&rsquo;s cheeks became crimson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t mock me&mdash;it is cruel&mdash;I am too unworthy&mdash;it would
+      pain me to see him. Shame&mdash;regret&mdash;you understand! But I can
+      tell you one thing, Giselle&mdash;only you. You may tell it to him when he
+      is quite old, when he has been long married, and when everything
+      concerning me is a thing of the past. I never had loved any one with all
+      my heart up to the moment when I read in that paper that he had fought for
+      me, that his blood had flowed for me, that after all that had passed he
+      still thought me worthy of being defended by him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her tears flowed fast, and she added: &ldquo;I shall be proud of that all the
+      rest of my life! If only you, too, would forgive me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The heart of Giselle was melted by these words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive you, my dear little girl? Ah! you have been better than I. I
+      forgot our old friendship for a moment&mdash;I was harsh to you; and I
+      have so little right to blame you! But come! Providence may have arranged
+      all for the best, though one of us may have to suffer. Pray for that some
+      one. Good-by&mdash;&lsquo;au revoir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She kissed Jacqueline&rsquo;s forehead and was gone, before her cousin had
+      seized the meaning of her last words. But joy and peace came back to
+      Jacqueline. She had recovered her best friend, and had convinced her of
+      her innocence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX. GENTLE CONSPIRATORS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Before Giselle went home to her own house she called on the Abbe Bardin,
+      whom a rather surly servant was not disposed to disturb, as he was just
+      eating his breakfast. The Abbe Bardin was Jacqueline&rsquo;s confessor, and he
+      held the same relation to a number of other young girls who were among her
+      particular friends. He was thoroughly acquainted with all that concerned
+      their delicate and generally childish little souls. He kept them in the
+      right way, had often a share in their marriages, and in general kept an
+      eye upon them all their lives. Even when they escaped from him, as had
+      happened in the case of Jacqueline, he did not give them up. He commended
+      them to God, and looked forward to the time of their repentance with the
+      patience of a father. The Abbe Bardin had never been willing to exercise
+      any function but that of catechist; he had grown old in the humble rank of
+      third assistant in a great parish, when, with a little ambition, he might
+      have been its rector. &ldquo;Suffer little children to come unto me,&rdquo; had been
+      his motto. These words of his Divine Master seemed more often than any
+      others on his lips-lips so expressive of loving kindness, though sometimes
+      a shrewd smile would pass over them and seem to say: &ldquo;I know, I can
+      divine.&rdquo; But when this smile, the result of long experience, did not light
+      up his features, the good Abbe Bardin looked like an elderly child; he was
+      short, his walk was a trot, his face was round and ruddy, his eyes, which
+      were short-sighted, were large, wide-open, and blue, and his heavy crop of
+      white hair, which curled and crinkled above his forehead, made him look
+      like a sixty-year-old angel, crowned with a silvery aureole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rubbing his hands affably, he came into the little parlor where Madame de
+      Talbrun was waiting for him. There was probably no ecclesiastic in all
+      Paris who had a salon so full of worked cushions, each of which was a
+      keepsake&mdash;a souvenir of some first communion. The Abbe did not know
+      his visitor, but the name Talbrun seemed to him connected with an
+      honorable and well-meaning family. The lady was probably a mother who had
+      come to put her child into his hands for religious instruction. He
+      received visits from dozens of such mothers, some of whom were a little
+      tiresome, from a wish to teach him what he knew better than they, and at
+      one time he had set apart Wednesday as his day for receiving such visits,
+      that he might not be too greatly disturbed, as seemed likely to happen to
+      him that day. Not that he cared very much whether he ate his cutlet hot or
+      cold, but his housekeeper cared a great deal. A man may be a very
+      experienced director, and yet be subject to direction in other ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The youth of Giselle took him by surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur l&rsquo;Abbe,&rdquo; she said, without any preamble, while he begged her to
+      sit down, &ldquo;I have come to speak to you of a person in whom you take an
+      interest, Jacqueline de Nailles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed the back of his hand over his brow and said, with a sigh: &ldquo;Poor
+      little thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is even more to be pitied than you think. You have not seen her, I
+      believe, since last week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;she came. She has kept up, thank God, some of her religious
+      duties.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For all that, she has played a leading part in a recent scandal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Abbe sprang up from his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A duel has taken place because of her, and her name is in all men&rsquo;s
+      mouths&mdash;whispered, of course&mdash;but the quarrel took place at the
+      Club. You know what it is to be talked of at the Club.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poison of asps,&rdquo; growled the Abbe; &ldquo;oh! those clubs&mdash;think of
+      all the evil reports concocted in them, of which women are the victims!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the present case the evil report was pure calumny. It was taken up by
+      some one whom you also know&mdash;Frederic d&rsquo;Argy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have had profound respect these many years for his excellent and pious
+      mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought so. In that case, Monsieur l&rsquo;Abbe, you would not object to
+      going to Madame d&rsquo;Argy&rsquo;s house and asking how her son is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, of course not; but&mdash;it is my duty to disapprove&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will tell her that when a young man has compromised a young girl by
+      defending her reputation in a manner too public, there is but one thing he
+      can do afterward-marry her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait one moment,&rdquo; said the Abbe, who was greatly surprised; &ldquo;it is
+      certain that a good marriage would be the best thing for Jacqueline. I
+      have been thinking of it. But I do not think I could so suddenly&mdash;so
+      soon after&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Today at four o&rsquo;clock, Monsieur l&rsquo;Abbe. Time presses. You can add that
+      such a marriage is the only way to stop a second duel, which will
+      otherwise take place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it possible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it is also the only way to bring Frederic to decide on sending in his
+      resignation. Don&rsquo;t forget that&mdash;it is important.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how do you know&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor Abbe stammered out his words, and counted on his fingers the
+      arguments he was desired to make use of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you will solemnly assure them that Jacqueline is innocent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! as to that, there are wolves in sheeps&rsquo; clothing, as the Bible tells
+      us; but believe me, when such poor young things are in question, it is
+      more often the sheep which has put on the appearance of a wolf&mdash;to
+      seem in the fashion,&rdquo; added the Abbe, &ldquo;just to seem in the fashion.
+      Fashion will authorize any kind of counterfeiting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you will say all that, will you not, to Madame d&rsquo;Argy? It will be
+      very good of you if you will. She will make no difficulties about money.
+      All she wants is a quietly disposed daughter-in-law who will be willing to
+      pass nine months of the year at Lizerolles, and Jacqueline is quite cured
+      of her Paris fever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A fever too often mortal,&rdquo; murmured the Abbe; &ldquo;oh, for the simplicity of
+      nature! A priest whose lot is cast in the country is fortunate, Madame,
+      but we can not choose our vocation. We may do good anywhere, especially in
+      cities. Are you sure, however, that Jacqueline&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She loves Monsieur d&rsquo;Argy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if that is so, we are all right. The great misfortune with many of
+      these poor girls is that they have never learned to love anything; they
+      know nothing but agitations, excitements, curiosities, and fancies. All
+      that sort of thing runs through their heads.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are speaking of a Jacqueline before the duel. I can assure you that
+      ever since yesterday, if not before, she has loved Monsieur d&rsquo;Argy, who on
+      his part for a long time&mdash;a very long time&mdash;has been in love
+      with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle spoke eagerly, as if she forced herself to say the words that cost
+      her pain. Her cheeks were flushed under her veil. The Abbe, who was
+      keen-sighted, observed these signs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; continued Giselle, &ldquo;if he is forced to forget her he may try to
+      expend elsewhere the affection he feels for her; he may trouble the peace
+      of others, while deceiving himself. He might make in the world one of
+      those attachments&mdash;Do not fail to represent all these dangers to
+      Madame d&rsquo;Argy when you plead the cause of Jacqueline.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Humph! You are evidently much attached, Madame, to Mademoiselle de
+      Nailles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very much, indeed,&rdquo; she answered, bravely, &ldquo;very much attached to her,
+      and still more to him; therefore you understand that this marriage must&mdash;absolutely
+      must take place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had risen and was folding her cloak round her, looking straight into
+      the Abbe&rsquo;s eyes. Small as she was, their height was almost the same; she
+      wanted him to understand thoroughly why this marriage must take place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He bowed. Up to that time he had not been quite sure that he had not to do
+      with one of those wolves dressed in fleece whose appearance is as
+      misleading as that of sheep disguised as wolves: now his opinion was
+      settled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mon Dieu! Madame,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;your reasons seem to me excellent&mdash;a
+      duel to be prevented, a son to be kept by the side of his sick mother, two
+      young people who love each other to be married, the saving, possibly, of
+      two souls&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say three souls, Monsieur l&rsquo;Abbe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not ask whose was the third, nor even why she had insisted that
+      this delicate commission must be executed that same day. He only bowed
+      when she said again: &ldquo;At four o&rsquo;clock: Madame d&rsquo;Argy will be prepared to
+      see you. Thank you, Monsieur l&rsquo;Abbe.&rdquo; And then, as she descended the
+      staircase, he bestowed upon her silently his most earnest benediction,
+      before returning to the cold cutlet that was on his breakfast table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle did not breakfast much better than he. In truth, M. de Talbrun
+      being absent, she sat looking at her son, who was eating with a good
+      appetite, while she drank only a cup of tea; after which, she dressed
+      herself, with more than usual care, hiding by rice-powder the trace of
+      recent tears on her complexion, and arranging her fair hair in the way
+      that was most becoming to her, under a charming little bonnet covered with
+      gold net-work which corresponded with the embroidery on an entirely new
+      costume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she went into the dining-room Enguerrand, who was there with his
+      nurse finishing his dessert, cried out: &ldquo;Oh! mamma, how pretty you are!&rdquo;
+       which went to her heart. She kissed him two or three times&mdash;one kiss
+      after another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I try to be pretty for your sake, my darling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you take me with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but I will come back for you, and take you out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She walked a few steps, and then turned to give him such a kiss as
+      astonished him, for he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it really going to be long?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before you come back? You kiss me as if you were going for a long time,
+      far away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I kissed you to give myself courage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Enguerrand, who, when he had a hard lesson to learn, always did the same
+      thing, appeared to understand her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are going to do some thing you don&rsquo;t like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but I have to do it, because you see it is my duty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do grown people have duties?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even more than children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it isn&rsquo;t your duty to write a copy&mdash;your writing is so pretty.
+      Oh! that&rsquo;s what I hate most. And you always say it is my duty to write my
+      copy. I&rsquo;ll go and do it while you do your duty. So that will seem as if we
+      were both together doing something we don&rsquo;t like&mdash;won&rsquo;t it, mamma?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She kissed him again, even more passionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall be always together, we two, my love!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This word love struck the little ear of Enguerrand as having a new accent,
+      a new meaning, and, boy-like, he tried to turn this excess of tenderness
+      to advantage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since you love me so much, will you take me to see the puppet-show?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anywhere you like&mdash;when I come back. Goodby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX. A CHIVALROUS SOUL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Madame D&rsquo;Argy sat knitting by the window in Fred&rsquo;s chamber, with that
+      resigned but saddened air that mothers wear when they are occupied in
+      repairing the consequences of some rash folly. Fred had seen her in his
+      boyhood knitting in the same way with the same, look on her face, when he
+      had been thrown from his pony, or had fallen from his velocipede. He
+      himself looked ill at ease and worried, as he lay on a sofa with his arm
+      in a sling. He was yawning and counting the hours. From time to time his
+      mother glanced at him. Her look was curious, and anxious, and loving, all
+      at the same time. He pretended to be asleep. He did not like to see her
+      watching him. His handsome masculine face, tanned that pale brown which
+      tropical climates give to fair complexions, looked odd as it rose above a
+      light-blue cape, a very feminine garment which, as it had no sleeves, had
+      been tied round his neck to keep him from being cold. He felt himself,
+      with some impatience, at the mercy of the most tender, but the most
+      sharp-eyed of nurses, a prisoner to her devotion, and made conscious of
+      her power every moment. Her attentions worried him; he knew that they all
+      meant &ldquo;It is your own fault, my poor boy, that you are in this state, and
+      that your mother is so unhappy.&rdquo; He felt it. He knew as well as if she had
+      spoken that she was asking him to return to reason, to marry, without more
+      delay, their little neighbor in Normandy, Mademoiselle d&rsquo;Argeville, a
+      niece of M. Martel, whom he persisted in not thinking of as a wife, always
+      calling her a &ldquo;cider apple,&rdquo; in allusion to her red cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A servant came in, and said to Madame d&rsquo;Argy that Madame de Talbrun was in
+      the salon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am coming,&rdquo; she said, rolling up her knitting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fred suddenly woke up:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not ask her to come here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; said his mother, with hesitation. She was distracted between
+      her various anxieties; exasperated against the fatal influence of
+      Jacqueline, alarmed by the increasing intimacy with Giselle, desirous that
+      all such complications should be put an end to by his marriage, but
+      terribly afraid that her &ldquo;cider apple&rdquo; would not be sufficient to
+      accomplish it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beg Madame de Talbrun to come in here,&rdquo; she said, repeating the order
+      after her son; but she settled herself in her chair with an air more
+      patient, more resigned than ever, and her lips were firmly closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle entered in her charming new gown, and Fred&rsquo;s first words, like
+      those of Enguerrand, were: &ldquo;How pretty you are! It is charity,&rdquo; he added,
+      smiling, &ldquo;to present such a spectacle to the eyes of a sick man; it is
+      enough to set him up again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; said Giselle, kissing Madame d&rsquo;Argy on the forehead. The poor
+      mother had resumed her knitting with a sigh, hardly glancing at the pretty
+      walking-costume, nor at the bonnet with its network of gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it pretty?&rdquo; repeated Giselle. &ldquo;I am delighted with this costume. It
+      is made after one of Rejane&rsquo;s. Oscar fell in love with it at a first
+      representation of a vaudeville, and he gave me over into the hands of the
+      same dressmaker, who indeed was named in the play. That kind of
+      advertising seems very effective.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went on chattering thus to put off what she had really come to say.
+      Her heart was beating so fast that its throbs could be seen under the
+      embroidered front of the bodice which fitted her so smoothly. She wondered
+      how Madame d&rsquo;Argy would receive the suggestion she was about to make.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went on: &ldquo;I dressed myself in my best to-day because I am so happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame d&rsquo;Argy&rsquo;s long tortoise-shell knitting-needles stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad to hear it, my dear,&rdquo; she said, coldly, &ldquo;I am glad anybody can
+      be happy. There are so many of us who are sad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why are you pleased?&rdquo; asked Fred, looking at her, as if by some
+      instinct he understood that he had something to do with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our prodigal has returned,&rdquo; answered Giselle, with a little air of
+      satisfaction, very artificial, however, for she could hardly breathe, so
+      great was her fear and her emotion. &ldquo;My house is in the garb of
+      rejoicing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The prodigal? Do you mean your husband?&rdquo; said Madame d&rsquo;Argy, maliciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I despair of him,&rdquo; replied Giselle, lightly. &ldquo;No, I speak of a
+      prodigal who did not go far, and who made haste to repent. I am speaking
+      of Jacqueline.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was complete silence. The knitting-needles ticked rapidly, a slight
+      flush rose on the dark cheeks of Fred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All I beg,&rdquo; said Madame d&rsquo;Argy, &ldquo;is that you will not ask me to eat the
+      fatted calf in her honor. The comings and going of Mademoiselle de Nailles
+      have long ceased to have the slightest interest for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have for Fred at any rate; he has just proved it, I should say,&rdquo;
+       replied Giselle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the others were as much embarrassed as Giselle. She saw it,
+      and went on quickly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Their names are together in everybody&rsquo;s mouth; you can not hinder it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I regret it deeply-and allow me to make one remark: it seems to me you
+      show a want of tact such as I should never have imagined in telling us&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle read in Fred&rsquo;s eyes, which were steadily fixed on her, that he
+      was, on that point, of his mother&rsquo;s opinion. She went on, however, still
+      pretending to blunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive me&mdash;but I have been so anxious about you ever since I heard
+      there was to be a second meeting&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A second meeting!&rdquo; screamed Madame d&rsquo;Argy, who, as she read no paper but
+      the Gazette de France, or occasionally the Debats, knew nothing of all the
+      rumors that find their echo in the daily papers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, &lsquo;mon Dieu&rsquo;! I thought you knew&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You need not frighten my mother,&rdquo; said Fred, almost angrily; &ldquo;Monsieur de
+      Cymier has written a letter which puts an end to our quarrel. It is the
+      letter of a man of honor apologizing for having spoken lightly, for having
+      repeated false rumors without verifying them&mdash;in short, retracting
+      all that he had said that reflected in any way on Mademoiselle de Nailles,
+      and authorizing me, if I think best, to make public his retraction. After
+      that we can have nothing more to say to each other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He who makes himself the champion to defend a young girl&rsquo;s character,&rdquo;
+       said Madame d&rsquo;Argy, sententiously, &ldquo;injures her as much as those who have
+      spoken evil of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is exactly what I think,&rdquo; said Giselle. &ldquo;The self-constituted
+      champion has given the evil rumor circulation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was again a painful silence. Then the intrepid little woman resumed:
+      &ldquo;This step on the part of Monsieur de Cymier seems to have rendered my
+      errand unnecessary. I had thought of a way to end this sad affair; a very
+      simple way, much better, most certainly, than men cutting their own
+      throats or those of other people. But since peace has been made over the
+      ruins of Jacqueline&rsquo;s reputation, I had better say nothing and go away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;no! Let us hear what you had to propose,&rdquo; said Fred, getting up
+      from his couch so quickly that he jarred his bandaged arm, and uttered a
+      cry of pain, which seemed very much like an oath, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle was silent. Standing before the hearth, she was warming her small
+      feet, watching, as she did so, Madame d&rsquo;Argy&rsquo;s profile, which was
+      reflected in the mirror. It was severe&mdash;impenetrable. It was Fred who
+      spoke first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the first place,&rdquo; he said, hesitating, &ldquo;are you sure that Mademoiselle
+      de Nailles has not just arrived from Monaco?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am certain that for a week she has been living quietly with Modeste,
+      and that, though she passed through Monaco, she did not stay there&mdash;twenty-four
+      hours, finding that the air of that place did not agree with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what do you say to what Monsieur Martel saw with his own eyes, and
+      which is confirmed by public rumor?&rdquo; cried Madame d&rsquo;Argy, as if she were
+      giving a challenge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Martel saw Jacqueline in bad company. She was not there of her
+      own will. As to public rumor, we may feel sure that to make it as
+      flattering to her tomorrow as it is otherwise to-day only a marriage is
+      necessary. Yes, a marriage! That is the way I had thought of to settle
+      everything and make everybody happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What man would marry a girl who had compromised herself?&rdquo; said Madame
+      d&rsquo;Argy, indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He who has done his part to compromise her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then go and propose it to Monsieur de Cymier!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. It is not Monsieur de Cymier whom she loves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; Madame d&rsquo;Argy was on her feet at once. &ldquo;Indeed, Giselle, you are
+      losing your senses. If I were not afraid of agitating Fred&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was, in truth, greatly agitated. The only hand that he could use was
+      pulling and tearing at the little blue cape crossed on his breast, in
+      which his mother had wrapped him; and this unsuitable garment formed such
+      a queer contrast to the expression of his face that Giselle, in her
+      nervous excitement, burst out laughing, an explosion of merriment which
+      completed the exasperation of Madame d&rsquo;Argy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never!&rdquo; she cried, beside herself. &ldquo;You hear me&mdash;never will I
+      consent, whatever happens!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment the door was partly opened, and a servant announced
+      &ldquo;Monsieur l&rsquo;Abbe Bardin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame d&rsquo;Argy made a gesture which was anything but reverential.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, to be sure&mdash;this is the right moment with a vengeance! What
+      does he want! Does he wish me to assist in some good work&mdash;or to
+      undertake to collect money, which I hate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Above all, mother,&rdquo; cried Fred, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t expose me to the fatigue of
+      receiving his visit. Go and see him yourself. Giselle will take care of
+      your patient while you are gone. Won&rsquo;t you, Giselle?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice was soft, and very affectionate. He evidently was not angry at
+      what she had dared to say, and she acknowledged this to herself with an
+      aching heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t exactly trust your kind of care,&rdquo; said Madame d&rsquo;Argy, with a
+      smile that was not gay, and certainly not amiable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went, however, because Fred repeated:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But go and see the Abbe Bardin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hardly had she left the room when Fred got up from his sofa and approached
+      Giselle with passionate eagerness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure I am not dreaming,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Is it you&mdash;really you who
+      advise me to marry Jacqueline?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who else should it be?&rdquo; she answered, very calm to all appearance. &ldquo;Who
+      can know better than I? But first you must oblige me by lying down again,
+      or else I will not say one word more. That is right. Now keep still. Your
+      mother is furiously displeased with me&mdash;I am sorry&mdash;but she will
+      get over it. I know that in Jacqueline you would have a good wife&mdash;a
+      wife far better than the Jacqueline you would have married formerly. She
+      has paid dearly for her experience of life, and has profited by its
+      lessons, so that she is now worthy of you, and sincerely repentant for her
+      childish peccadilloes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Giselle,&rdquo; said Fred, &ldquo;look me full in the face&mdash;yes, look into my
+      eyes frankly and hide nothing. Your eyes never told anything but the
+      truth. Why do you turn them away? Do you really and truly wish this
+      marriage?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him steadily as long as he would, and let him hold her hand,
+      which was burning inside her glove, and which with a great effort she
+      prevented from trembling. Then her nerves gave way under his long and
+      silent gaze, which seemed to question her, and she laughed, a laugh that
+      sounded to herself very unnatural.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor, dear friend,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;how easily you men are duped! You are
+      trying to find out, to discover whether, in case you decide upon an honest
+      act, a perfectly sensible act, to which you are strongly inclined&mdash;don&rsquo;t
+      tell me you are not&mdash;whether, in short, you marry Jacqueline, I shall
+      be really as glad of it as I pretend. But have you not found out what I
+      have aimed at all along? Do you think I did not know from the very first
+      what it was that made you seek me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was not the rope, but I had lived near the rose; I reminded you of her
+      continually. We two loved her; each of us felt we did. Even when you said
+      harm of her, I knew it was merely because you longed to utter her name,
+      and repeat to yourself her perfections. I laughed, yes, I laughed to
+      myself, and I was careful how I contradicted you. I tried to keep you safe
+      for her, to prevent your going elsewhere and forming attachments which
+      might have resulted in your forgetting her. I did my best&mdash;do me
+      justice&mdash;I did my best; perhaps sometimes I pushed things a little
+      far in her interest, in that of your mother, but in yours more than all;
+      in yours, for God knows I am all for you,&rdquo; said Giselle, with sudden and
+      involuntary fervor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am all yours as a friend, a faithful friend,&rdquo; she resumed, almost
+      frightened by the tones of her own voice; &ldquo;but as to the slightest feeling
+      of love between us, love the most spiritual, the most platonic&mdash;yes,
+      all men, I fancy, have a little of that kind of self-conceit. Dear Fred,
+      don&rsquo;t imagine it&mdash;Enguerrand would never have allowed it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was smiling, half laughing, and he looked at her with astonishment,
+      asking himself whether he could believe what she was saying, when he could
+      recollect what seemed to him so many proofs to the contrary. Yet in what
+      she said there was no hesitation, no incoherence, no false note. Pride,
+      noble pride, upheld her to the end. The first falsehood of her life was a
+      masterpiece.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Giselle!&rdquo; he said at last, not knowing what to think, &ldquo;I adore you! I
+      revere you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she replied, with a smile, gracious, yet with a touch of sadness,
+      &ldquo;I know you do. But her you love!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Might it not have been sweet to her had he answered &ldquo;No, I loved her once,
+      and remembered that old love enough to risk my life for her, but in
+      reality I now love only you&mdash;all the more at this moment when I see
+      you love me more than yourself.&rdquo; But, instead, he murmured only, like a
+      man and a lover: &ldquo;And Jacqueline&mdash;do you think she loves me?&rdquo; His
+      anxiety, a thrill that ran through all his frame, the light in his eyes,
+      his sudden pallor, told more than his words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Giselle could have doubted his love for Jacqueline before, she would
+      have now been convinced of it. The conviction stabbed her to the heart.
+      Death is not that last sleep in which all our faculties, weakened and
+      exhausted, fail us; it is the blow which annihilates our supreme illusion
+      and leaves us disabused in a cold and empty world. People walk, talk, and
+      smile after this death&mdash;another ghost is added to the drama played on
+      the stage of the world; but the real self is dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Giselle was too much of a woman, angelic as she was, to have any courage
+      left to say: &ldquo;Yes, I know she loves you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She said instead, in a low voice: &ldquo;That is a question you must ask of
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, in the next room they could hear Madame d&rsquo;Argy vehemently
+      repeating: &ldquo;Never! No, I never will consent! Is it a plot between you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They heard also a rumbling monotone preceding each of these vehement
+      interruptions. The Abbe Bardin was pointing out to her that, unmarried,
+      her son would return to Tonquin, that Lizerolles would be left deserted,
+      her house would be desolate without daughter-in-law or grandchildren; and,
+      as he drew these pictures, he came back, again and again, to his main
+      argument:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will answer for their happiness: I will answer for the future.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His authority as a priest gave weight to this assurance, at least Madame
+      d&rsquo;Argy felt it so. She went on saying never, but less and less
+      emphatically, and apparently she ceased to say it at last, for three
+      months later the d&rsquo;Etaples, the Rays, the d&rsquo;Avrignys and the rest,
+      received two wedding announcements in these words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame d&rsquo;Argy has the honor to inform you of the marriage of her son, M.
+      Frederic d&rsquo;Argy, Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, to Mademoiselle de
+      Nailles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The accompanying card ran thus:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;The Baroness de Nailles has the honor to inform you of the
+     marriage of Mademoiselle Jacqueline de Nailles, her
+     stepdaughter, to M. Frederic d&rsquo;Argy.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Congratulations showered down on both mother and stepmother. A love-match
+      is nowadays so rare! It turned out that every one had always wished all
+      kinds of good fortune to young Madame d&rsquo;Argy, and every one seemed to take
+      a sincere part in the joy that was expressed on the occasion, even Dolly,
+      who, it was said, had in secret set her heart on Fred for herself; even
+      Nora Sparks, who, not having carried out her plans, had gone back to New
+      York, whence she sent a superb wedding present. Madame de Nailles
+      apparently experienced at the wedding all the emotions of a real mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The roses at Lizerolles bloomed that year with unusual beauty, as if to
+      welcome the young pair. Modeste sang &lsquo;Nunc Dimittis&rsquo;. The least
+      demonstrative of all those interested in the event was Giselle.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     ETEXT EDITOR&rsquo;S BOOKMARKS:
+
+     A familiarity which, had he known it, was not flattering
+     A mother&rsquo;s geese are always swans
+     As we grow older we lay aside harsh judgments and sharp words
+     Bathers, who exhibited themselves in all degrees of ugliness
+     Blow which annihilates our supreme illusion
+     Death is not that last sleep
+     Fool (there is no cure for that infirmity)
+     Fred&rsquo;s verses were not good, but they were full of dejection
+     Great interval between a dream and its execution
+     Hang out the bush, but keep no tavern
+     His sleeplessness was not the insomnia of genius
+     Importance in this world are as easily swept away as the sand
+     Music&mdash;so often dangerous to married happiness
+     Natural longing, that we all have, to know the worst
+     Notion of her husband&rsquo;s having an opinion of his own
+     Old women&mdash;at least thirty years old!
+     Pride supplies some sufferers with necessary courage
+     Seemed to enjoy themselves, or made believe they did
+     Seldom troubled himself to please any one he did not care for
+     Small women ought not to grow stout
+     Sympathetic listening, never having herself anything to say
+     The bandage love ties over the eyes of men
+     The worst husband is always better than none
+     This unending warfare we call love
+     Unwilling to leave him to the repose he needed
+     Waste all that upon a thing that nobody will ever look at
+     Women who are thirty-five should never weep
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg&rsquo;s Jacqueline, Complete, by Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
+
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+</pre>
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+Project Gutenberg's Jacqueline, Complete, by Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
+
+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: Jacqueline, Complete
+
+Author: (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon 
+
+Last Updated: March 3, 2009
+Release Date: October 5, 2006 [EBook #3971]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JACQUELINE, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+JACQUELINE
+
+By (Mme. Blanc) Therese Bentzon
+
+
+With a Preface by M. THUREAU-DANGIN, of the French Academy
+
+
+
+
+TH. BENTZON
+
+It is natural that the attention and affection of Americans should
+be attracted to a woman who has devoted herself assiduously to
+understanding and to making known the aspirations of our country,
+especially in introducing the labors and achievements of our women to
+their sisters in France, of whom we also have much to learn; for simple,
+homely virtues and the charm of womanliness may still be studied with
+advantage on the cherished soil of France.
+
+Marie-Therese Blanc, nee Solms--for this is the name of the author
+who writes under the nom de plume of Madame Bentzon--is considered
+the greatest of living French female novelists. She was born in an old
+French chateau at Seine-Porte (Seine et Oise), September 21, 1840.
+This chateau was owned by Madame Bentzon's grandmother, the Marquise
+de Vitry, who was a woman of great force and energy of character, "a
+ministering angel" to her country neighborhood. Her grandmother's first
+marriage was to a Dane, Major-General Adrien-Benjamin de Bentzon,
+a Governor of the Danish Antilles. By this marriage there was one
+daughter, the mother of Therese, who in turn married the Comte de Solms.
+"This mixture of races," Madame Blanc once wrote, "surely explains a
+kind of moral and intellectual cosmopolitanism which is found in my
+nature. My father of German descent, my mother of Danish--my nom de
+plume (which was her maiden-name) is Danish--with Protestant ancestors
+on her side, though she and I were Catholics--my grandmother a sound and
+witty Parisian, gay, brilliant, lively, with superb physical health
+and the consequent good spirits--surely these materials could not have
+produced other than a cosmopolitan being."
+
+Somehow or other, the family became impoverished. Therese de Solms took
+to writing stories. After many refusals, her debut took place in the
+'Revue des Deux Mondes', and her perseverance was largely due to the
+encouragement she received from George Sand, although that great woman
+saw everything through the magnifying glass of her genius. But the
+person to whom Therese Bentzon was most indebted in the matter of
+literary advice--she says herself--was the late M. Caro, the famous
+Sorbonne professor of philosophy, himself an admirable writer, "who put
+me through a course of literature, acting as my guide through a vast
+amount of solid reading, and criticizing my work with kindly severity."
+Success was slow. Strange as it may seem, there is a prejudice against
+female writers in France, a country that has produced so many admirable
+women-authors. However, the time was to come when M. Becloz found one
+of her stories in the 'Journal des Debats'. It was the one entitled 'Un
+Divorce', and he lost no time in engaging the young writer to become one
+of his staff. From that day to this she has found the pages of the Revue
+always open to her.
+
+Madame Bentzon is a novelist, translator, and writer of literary essays.
+The list of her works runs as follows: 'Le Roman d'un Muet (1868); Un
+Divorce (1872); La Grande Sauliere (1877); Un remords (1878); Yette and
+Georgette (1880); Le Retour (1882); Tete folle (1883); Tony, (1884);
+Emancipee (1887); Constance (1891); Jacqueline (1893). We need not enter
+into the merits of style and composition if we mention that 'Un
+remords, Tony, and Constance' were crowned by the French Academy, and
+'Jacqueline' in 1893. Madame Bentzon is likewise the translator of
+Aldrich, Bret Harte, Dickens, and Ouida. Some of her critical works
+are 'Litterature et Moeurs etrangeres', 1882, and 'Nouveaux romanciers
+americains', 1885.
+
+                  M. THUREAU-DANGIN
+               de l'Academie Francaise.
+
+
+
+
+JACQUELINE
+
+
+
+
+BOOK 1.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. A PARISIENNE'S "AT HOME"
+
+Despite a short frock, checked stockings, wide turned-over collar, and
+a loose sash around the waist of her blouse in other words, despite the
+childish fashion of a dress which seemed to denote that she was not
+more than thirteen or fourteen years of age, she seemed much older. An
+observer would have put her down as the oldest of the young girls who on
+Tuesdays, at Madame de Nailles's afternoons, filled what was called "the
+young girls' corner" with whispered merriment and low laughter, while,
+under pretence of drinking tea, the noise went on which is always
+audible when there is anything to eat.
+
+No doubt the amber tint of this young girl's complexion, the raven
+blackness of her hair, her marked yet delicate features, and the general
+impression produced by her dark coloring, were reasons why she seemed
+older than the rest. It was Jacqueline's privilege to exhibit that style
+of beauty which comes earliest to perfection, and retains it longest;
+and, what was an equal privilege, she resembled no one.
+
+The deep bow-window--her favorite spot--which enabled her to have a
+reception-day in connection with that of her mamma, seemed like a great
+basket of roses when all her friends assembled there, seated on
+low chairs in unstudied attitudes: the white rose of the group was
+Mademoiselle d'Etaples, a specimen of pale and pensive beauty, frail
+almost to transparency; the Rose of Bengal was the charming Colette
+Odinska, a girl of Polish race, but born in Paris; the dark-red rose
+was Isabelle Ray-Belle she was called triumphantly--whose dimpled cheeks
+flushed scarlet for almost any cause, some said for very coquetry. Then
+there were three little girls called Wermant, daughters of an agent de
+change--a spray of May roses, exactly alike in features, manners, and
+dress, sprightly and charming as little girls could be. A little
+pompon rose was tiny Dorothee d'Avrigny, to whom the pet name Dolly was
+appropriate, for never had any doll's waxen face been more lovely than
+her little round one, with its mouth shaped like a little heart--a mouth
+smaller than her eyes, and these were round eyes, too, but so bright,
+and blue, and soft, that it was easy to overlook their too frequently
+startled expression.
+
+Jacqueline had nothing in common with a rose of any kind, but she was
+not the less charming to look at. Such was the unspoken reflection of a
+man who was well able to be a judge in such matters. His name was Hubert
+Marien. He was a great painter, and was now watching the clear-cut,
+somewhat Arab--like profile of this girl--a profile brought out
+distinctly against the dark-red silk background of a screen, much as
+we see a cameo stand out in sharp relief from the glittering stone from
+which the artist has fashioned it. Marien looked at her from a distance,
+leaning against the fireplace of the farther salon, whence he could see
+plainly the corner shaded by green foliage plants where Jacqueline had
+made her niche, as she called it. The two rooms formed practically but
+one, being separated only by a large recess without folding-doors, or
+'portires'. Hubert Marien, from his place behind Madame de Nailles's
+chair, had often before watched Jacqueline as he was watching her at
+this moment. She had grown up, as it were, under his own eye. He had
+seen her playing with her dolls, absorbed in her story-books, and
+crunching sugar-plums, he had paid her visits--for how many years? He
+did not care to count them.
+
+And little girls bloom fast! How old they make us feel! Who would have
+supposed the most unpromising of little buds would have transformed
+itself so soon into what he gazed upon? Marien, as an artist, had
+great pleasure in studying the delicate outline of that graceful head
+surmounted by thick tresses, with rebellious ringlets rippling over the
+brow before they were gathered into the thick braid that hung behind;
+and Jacqueline, although she appeared to be wholly occupied with her
+guests, felt the gaze that was fixed upon her, and was conscious of its
+magnetic influence, from which nothing would have induced her to escape
+even had she been able. All the young girls were listening attentively
+(despite their more serious occupation of consuming dainties) to
+what was going on in the next room among the grown-up people, whose
+conversation reached them only in detached fragments.
+
+So long as the subject talked about was the last reception at the French
+Academy, these young girls (comrades in the class-room and at the weekly
+catechising) had been satisfied to discuss together their own little
+affairs, but after Colonel de Valdonjon began to talk complete silence
+reigned among them. One might have heard the buzzing of a fly. Their
+attention, however, was of little use. Exclamations of oh! and ah! and
+protests more or less sincere drowned even the loud and somewhat hoarse
+voice of the Colonel. The girls heard it only through a sort of general
+murmur, out of which a burst of astonishment or of dissent would
+occasionally break forth. These outbreaks were all the curious group
+could hear distinctly. They sniffed, as it were, at the forbidden fruit,
+but they longed to inhale the full perfume of the scandal that they felt
+was in the air. That stout officer of cuirassiers, of whom some people
+spoke as "The Chatterbox," took advantage of his profession to tell many
+an unsavory story which he had picked up or invented at his club. He
+had come to Madame de Nailles's reception with a brand-new concoction of
+falsehood and truth, a story likely to be hawked round Paris with great
+success for several weeks to come, though ladies on first hearing it
+would think proper to cry out that they would not even listen to it, and
+would pretend to look round them for their fans to hide their confusion.
+
+The principal object of interest in this scandalous gossip was a
+valuable diamond bracelet, one of those priceless bits of jewelry seldom
+seen except in show-windows on the Rue de la Paix, intended to be bought
+only for presentation to princesses--of some sort or kind. Well, by
+an extraordinary, chance the Marquise de Versannes--aye, the lovely
+Georgine de Versannes herself--had picked up this bracelet in the
+street--by chance, as it were.
+
+"It so happened," said the Colonel, "that I was at her mother-in-law's,
+where she was going to dine. She came in looking as innocent as you
+please, with her hand in her pocket. 'Oh, see what I have found!' she
+cried. 'I stepped upon it almost at your door.' And the bracelet was
+placed under a lamp, where the diamonds shot out sparkles fit to blind
+the old Marquise, and make that old fool of a Versannes see a thousand
+lights. He has long known better than to take all his wife says for
+gospel--but he tries hard to pretend that he believes her. 'My dear,'
+he said, 'you must take that to the police.'--'I'll send it to-morrow
+morning,' says the charming Georgine, 'but I wished to show you my good
+luck.' Of course nobody came forward to claim the bracelet, and a
+month later Madame de Versannes appeared at the Cranfords' ball with a
+brilliant diamond bracelet, worn like the Queen of Sheba's, high up on
+her arm, near the shoulder, to hide the lack of sleeve. This piece of
+finery, which drew everybody's attention to the wearer, was the famous
+bracelet picked up in the street. Clever of her!--wasn't it, now?"
+
+"Horrid! Unlikely! Impossible.... What do you mean us to understand
+about it, Colonel? Could she have...?"
+
+Then the Colonel went on to demonstrate, with many coarse insinuations,
+that that good Georgine, as he familiarly called her, had done many more
+things than people gave her credit for. And he went on to add: "Surely,
+you must have heard of the row about her between Givrac and the
+Homme-Volant at the Cirque?"
+
+"What, the man that wears stockinet all covered with gold scales? Do
+tell us, Colonel!"
+
+But here Madame de Nailles gave a dry little cough which was meant to
+impose silence on the subject. She was not a prude, but she disapproved
+of anything that was bad form at her receptions. The Colonel's
+revelations had to be made in a lower tone, while his hostess endeavored
+to bring back the conversation to the charming reply made by M. Renan to
+the somewhat insipid address of a member of the Academie.
+
+"We sha'n't hear anything more now," said Colette, with a sigh. "Did you
+understand it, Jacqueline?"
+
+"Understand--what?"
+
+"Why, that story about the bracelet?"
+
+"No--not all. The Colonel seemed to imply that she had not picked it up,
+and indeed I don't see how any one could have dropped in the street, in
+broad daylight, a bracelet meant only to be worn at night--a bracelet
+worn near the shoulder."
+
+"But if she did not pick it up--she must have stolen it."
+
+"Stolen it?" cried Belle. "Stolen it! What! The Marquise de Versannes?
+Why, she inherited the finest diamonds in Paris!"
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Because mamma sometimes takes me to the Opera, and her subscription day
+is the same as that of the Marquise. People say a good deal of harm of
+her--in whispers. They say she is barely received now in society, that
+people turn their backs on her, and so forth, and so on. However, that
+did not hinder her from being superb the other evening at 'Polyeucte'."
+
+"So you only go to see 'Polyeucte'?" said Jacqueline, making a little
+face as if she despised that opera.
+
+"Yes, I have seen it twice. Mamma lets me go to 'Polyeucte' and
+'Guillaume Tell', and to the 'Prophete', but she won't take me to see
+'Faust'--and it is just 'Faust' that I want to see. Isn't it provoking
+that one can't see everything, hear everything, understand everything?
+You see, we could not half understand that story which seemed to
+amuse the people so much in the other room. Why did they send back the
+bracelet from the Prefecture to Madame de Versannes if it was not hers?"
+
+"Yes--why?" said all the little girls, much puzzled.
+
+Meantime, as the hour for closing the exhibition at the neighboring
+hippodrome had arrived, visitors came pouring into Madame de Nailles's
+reception--tall, graceful women, dressed with taste and elegance, as
+befitted ladies who were interested in horsemanship. The tone of the
+conversation changed. Nothing was talked about but superb horses, leaps
+over ribbons and other obstacles. The young girls interested themselves
+in the spring toilettes, which they either praised or criticised as they
+passed before their eyes.
+
+"Oh! there is Madame Villegry," cried Jacqueline; "how handsome she is!
+I should like one of these days to be that kind of beauty, so tall and
+slender. Her waist measure is only twenty-one and two thirds inches. The
+woman who makes her corsets and my mamma's told us so. She brought us
+one of her corsets to look at, a love of a corset, in brocatelle, all
+over many-colored flowers. That material is much more 'distingue' than
+the old satin--"
+
+"But what a queer idea it is to waste all that upon a thing that nobody
+will ever look at," said Dolly, her round eyes opening wider than
+before.
+
+"Oh! it is just to please herself, I suppose. I understand that!
+Besides, nothing is too good for such a figure. But what I admire most
+is her extraordinary hair."
+
+"Which changes its color now and then," observed the sharpest of the
+three Wermant sisters. "Extraordinary is just the word for it.
+At present it is dark red. Henna did that, I suppose. Raoul--our
+brother--when he was in Africa saw Arab women who used henna. They tied
+their heads up in a sort of poultice made of little leaves, something
+like tea-leaves. In twenty-four hours the hair will be dyed red, and
+will stay red for a year or more. You can try it if you like. I think it
+is disgusting."
+
+"Oh! look, there is Madame de Sternay. I recognized her by her perfume
+before I had even seen her. What delightful things good perfumes are!"
+
+"What is it? Is it heliotrope or jessamine?" asked Yvonne d'Etaples,
+sniffing in the air.
+
+"No--it is only orris-root--nothing but orris-root; but she puts it
+everywhere about her--in the hem of her petticoat, in the lining of her
+dress. She lives, one might say, in the middle of a sachet. The thing
+that will please me most when I am married will be to have no limit
+to my perfumes. Till then I have to satisfy myself with very little,"
+sighed Jacqueline, drawing a little bunch of violets from the loose
+folds of her blouse, and inhaling their fragrance with delight.
+
+"'Tiens'! here comes somebody who has to be contented with much less,"
+said Yvonne, as a young girl joined their circle. She was small,
+awkward, timid, and badly dressed. On seeing her Colette whispered "Oh!
+that tiresome Giselle. We sha'n't be able to talk another word."
+
+Jacqueline kissed Giselle de Monredon. They were distant cousins, though
+they saw each other very seldom. Giselle was an orphan, having lost
+both her father and her mother, and was being educated in a convent
+from which she was allowed to come out only on great occasions. Her
+grandmother, whose ideas were those of the old school, had placed her
+there. The Easter holidays accounted for Giselle's unexpected arrival.
+Wrapped in a large cloak which covered up her convent uniform, she
+looked, as compared with the gay girls around her, like a poor sombre
+night-moth, dazzled by the light, in company with other glittering
+creatures of the insect race, fluttering with graceful movements,
+transparent wings and shining corselets.
+
+"Come and have some sandwiches," said Jacqueline, and she drew Giselle
+to the tea-table, with the kind intention apparently of making her feel
+more at her ease. But she had another motive. She saw some one who was
+very interesting to her coming at that moment toward the table. That
+some one was a man about forty, whose pointed black beard was becoming
+slightly gray--a man whom some people thought ugly, chiefly because
+they had never seen his somewhat irregular features illumined by a smile
+which, spreading from his lips to his eyes, lighted up his face and
+transformed it. The smile of Hubert Marien was rare, however. He
+was exclusive in his friendships, often silent, always somewhat
+unapproachable. He seldom troubled himself to please any one he did
+not care for. In society he was not seen to advantage, because he
+was extremely bored, for which reason he was seldom to be seen at
+the Tuesday receptions of Madame de Nailles; while, on other days, he
+frequented the house as an intimate friend of the family. Jacqueline had
+known him all her life, and for her he had always his beautiful smile.
+He had petted her when she was little, and had been much amused by the
+sort of adoration she had no hesitation in showing that she felt for
+him. He used to call her Mademoiselle ma femme, and M. de Nailles would
+speak of him as "my daughter's future husband." This joke had been kept
+up till the little lady had reached her ninth year, when it ceased,
+probably by order of Madame de Nailles, who in matters of propriety was
+very punctilious. Jacqueline, too, became less familiar than she had
+been with the man she called "my great painter." Indeed, in her heart of
+hearts, she cherished a grudge against him. She thought he presumed on
+the right he had assumed of teasing her. The older she grew the more he
+treated her as if she were a baby, and, in the little passages of
+arms that continually took place between them, Jacqueline was bitterly
+conscious that she no longer had the best of it as formerly. She was no
+longer as droll and lively as she had been. She was easily disconcerted,
+and took everything 'au serieux', and her wits became paralyzed by an
+embarrassment that was new to her. And, pained by the sort of sarcasm
+which Marien kept up in all their intercourse, she was often ready to
+burst into tears after talking to him. Yet she was never quite satisfied
+unless he was present. She counted the days from one Wednesday to
+another, for on Wednesdays he always dined with them, and she greeted
+any opportunity of seeing him on other days as a great pleasure. This
+week, for example, would be marked with a white stone. She would have
+seen him twice. For half an hour Marien had been enduring the bore of
+the reception, standing silent and self-absorbed in the midst of the gay
+talk, which did not interest him. He wished to escape, but was always
+kept from doing so by some word or sign from Madame de Nailles.
+Jacqueline had been thinking: "Oh! if he would only come and talk to
+us!" He was now drawing near them, and an instinct made her wish to rush
+up to him and tell him--what should she tell him? She did not know. A
+few moments before so many things to tell him had been passing through
+her brain.
+
+What she said was: "Monsieur Marien, I recommend to you these little
+spiced cakes." And, with some awkwardness, because her hand was
+trembling, she held out the plate to him.
+
+"No, thank you, Mademoiselle," he said, affecting a tone of great
+ceremony, "I prefer to take this glass of punch, if you will permit me."
+
+"The punch is cold, I fear; suppose we were to put a little tea in it.
+Stay--let me help you."
+
+"A thousand thanks; but I like to attend to such little cookeries
+myself. By the way, it seems to me that Mademoiselle Giselle, in her
+character of an angel who disapproves of the good things of this life,
+has not left us much to eat at your table."
+
+"Who--I?" cried the poor schoolgirl, in a tone of injured innocence and
+astonishment.
+
+"Don't pay any attention to him," said Jacqueline, as if taking her
+under her protection. "He is nothing but a tease; what he says is only
+chaff. But I might as well talk Greek to her," she added, shrugging her
+shoulders. "In the convent they don't know what to make of a joke. Only
+spare her at least, if you please, Monsieur Marien."
+
+"I know by report that Mademoiselle Giselle is worthy of the most
+profound respect," continued the pitiless painter. "I lay myself at her
+feet--and at yours. Now I am going to slip away in the English fashion.
+Good-evening."
+
+"Why do you go so soon? You can't do any more work today."
+
+"No, it has been a day lost--that is true."
+
+"That's polite! By the way"--here Jacqueline became very red and she
+spoke rapidly--"what made you just now stare at me so persistently?"
+
+"I? Impossible that I could have permitted myself to stare at you,
+Mademoiselle."
+
+"That is just what you did, though. I thought you had found something to
+find fault with. What could it be? I fancied there was something wrong
+with my hair, something absurd that you were laughing at. You always do
+laugh, you know."
+
+"Wrong with your hair? It is always wrong. But that is not your fault.
+You are not responsible for its looking like a hedgehog's."
+
+"Hedgehogs haven't any hair," said Jacqueline, much hurt by the
+observation.
+
+"True, they have only prickles, which remind me of the susceptibility
+of your temper. I beg your pardon I was looking at you critically. Being
+myself indulgent and kindhearted, I was only looking at you from
+an artist's point of view--as is always allowable in my profession.
+Remember, I see you very rarely by daylight. I am obliged to work as
+long as the light allows me. Well, in the light of this April sunshine
+I was saying to myself--excuse my boldness!--that you had reached the
+right age for a picture."
+
+"For a picture? Were you thinking of painting me?" cried Jacqueline,
+radiant with pleasure.
+
+"Hold a moment, please. Between a dream and its execution lies a great
+space. I was only imagining a picture of you."
+
+"But my portrait would be frightful."
+
+"Possibly. But that would depend on the skill of the painter."
+
+"And yet a model should be--I am so thin," said Jacqueline, with
+confusion and discouragement.
+
+"True; your limbs are like a grasshopper's."
+
+"Oh! you mean my legs--but my arms...."
+
+"Your arms must be like your legs. But, sitting as you were just now, I
+could see only your head, which is better. So! one has to be accountable
+for looking at you? Mademoiselle feels herself affronted if any one
+stares at her! I will remember this in future. There, now! suppose,
+instead of quarrelling with me, you were to go and cast yourself into
+the arms of your cousin Fred."
+
+"Fred! Fred d'Argy! Fred is at Brest."
+
+"Where are your eyes, my dear child? He has just come in with his
+mother."
+
+And at that moment Madame de Nailles, with her pure, clear voice--a
+voice frequently compared to that of Mademoiselle Reichemberg, called:
+
+"Jacqueline!"
+
+Jacqueline never crossed the imaginary line which divided the two salons
+unless she was called upon to do so. She was still summoned like a child
+to speak to certain persons who took an especial interest in her, and
+who were kind enough to wish to see her--Madame d'Argy, for example,
+who had been the dearest friend of her dead mother. The death of that
+mother, who had been long replaced by a stepmother, could hardly be
+said to be deeply regretted by Jacqueline. She remembered her very
+indistinctly. The stories of her she had heard from Modeste, her old
+nurse, probably served her instead of any actual memory. She knew her
+only as a woman pale and in ill health, always lying on a sofa. The
+little black frock that had been made for her had been hardly worn
+out when a new mamma, as gay and fresh as the other had been sick and
+suffering, had come into the household like a ray of sunshine.
+
+After that time Madame d'Argy and Modeste were the only people who
+spoke to her of the mother who was gone. Madame d'Argy, indeed, came on
+certain days to take her to visit the tomb, on which the child read, as
+she prayed for the departed:
+
+         MARIE JACQUELINE ADELAIDE DE VALTIER
+
+              BARONNE DE NAILLES
+
+            DIED AGED TWENTY-SIX YEARS
+
+And such filial sentiment as she still retained, concerning the unknown
+being who had been her mother, was tinged by her association with this
+melancholy pilgrimage which she was expected to perform at certain
+intervals. Without exactly knowing the reason why, Jacqueline was
+conscious of a certain hostility that existed between Madame d'Argy and
+her stepmother.
+
+The intimate friend of the first Madame de Nailles was a woman with
+neither elegance nor beauty. She never had left off her widow's weeds,
+which she had worn since she had lost her husband in early youth. In the
+eyes of Jacqueline her sombre figure personified austere, exacting Duty,
+a kind of duty not attractive to her. That very day it seemed as if duty
+inconveniently stepped in to break up a conversation that was deeply
+interesting to her. The impatient gesture that she made when her mother
+called her might have been interpreted into: Bother Madame d'Argy!
+
+"Jacqueline!" called again the silvery voice that had first summoned
+her; and a moment after the young girl found herself in the centre of
+a circle of grown people, saying good-morning, making curtseys, and
+kissing the withered hand of old Madame de Monredon, as she had been
+taught to do from infancy. Madame de Monredon was Giselle's grandmother.
+Jacqueline had been instructed to call her "aunt;" but in her heart she
+called her 'La Fee Gyognon', while Madame d'Argy, pointing to her son,
+said: "What do you think, darling, of such a surprise? He is home on
+leave. We came here the first place-naturally."
+
+"It was very nice of you. How do you do, Fred?" said Jacqueline, holding
+out her hand to a very young man, in a jacket ornamented with gold lace,
+who stood twisting his cap in his hand with some embarrassment "It is a
+long time since we have seen each other. But it does not seem to me that
+you have grown a great deal."
+
+Fred blushed up to the roots of his hair.
+
+"No one can say that of you, Jacqueline," observed Madame d'Argy.
+
+"No--what a may-pole!--isn't she?" said the Baronne, carelessly.
+
+"If she realizes it," whispered Madame de Monredon, who was sitting
+beside Madame d'Argy on a 'causeuse' shaped like an S, "why does she
+persist in dressing her like a child six years old? It is absurd!"
+
+"Still, she can have no reason for keeping her thus in order to make
+herself seem young. She is only a stepmother."
+
+"Of course. But people might make comparisons. Beauty in the bud
+sometimes blooms out unexpectedly when it is not welcome."
+
+"Yes--she is fading fast. Small women ought not to grow stout."
+
+"Anyhow, I have no patience with her for keeping a girl of fifteen in
+short skirts."
+
+"You are making her out older than she is."
+
+"How is that?--how is that? She is two years younger than Giselle, who
+has just entered her eighteenth year."
+
+While the two ladies were exchanging these little remarks, the Baronne
+de Nailles was saying to the young naval cadet:
+
+"Monsieur Fred, we should be charmed to keep you with us, but possibly
+you might like to see some of your old friends. Jacqueline can take you
+to them. They will be glad to see you."
+
+"Tiens!--that's true," said Jacqueline. "Dolly and Belle are yonder. You
+remember Isabelle Ray, who used to take dancing lessons with us."
+
+"Of course I do," said Fred, following his cousin with a feeling of
+regret that his sword was not knocking against his legs, increasing his
+importance in the eyes of all the ladies who were present. He was not,
+however; sorry to leave their imposing circle. Above all, he was glad
+to escape from the clear-sighted, critical eyes of Madame de Nailles.
+On the other hand, to be sent off to the girls' corner, after
+being insulted by being told he had not grown, hurt his sense of
+self-importance.
+
+Meantime Jacqueline was taking him back to her own corner, where he was
+greeted by two or three little exclamations of surprise, shaking hands,
+however, as his former playmates drew their skirts around them, trying
+to make room for him to sit down.
+
+"Young ladies," said Jacqueline, "I present to you a 'bordachien'--a
+little middy from the practice-ship the Borda."
+
+They burst out laughing: "A bordachien! A middy from the practice-ship!"
+they cried.
+
+"I shall not be much longer on the practice-ship," said the young man,
+with a gesture which seemed as if his hand were feeling for the hilt of
+his sword, which was not there, "for I am going very soon on my first
+voyage as an ensign."
+
+"Yes," explained Jacqueline, "he is going to be transferred from
+the 'Borda' to the 'Jean-Bart'--which, by the way, is no longer the
+'Jean-Bart', only people call her so because they are used to it.
+Meantime you see before you "C," the great "C," the famous "C," that is,
+he is the pupil who stands highest on the roll of the naval school at
+this moment."
+
+There was a vague murmur of applause. Poor Fred was indeed in need of
+some appreciation on the score of merit, for he was not much to look
+upon, being at that trying age when a young fellow's moustache is only
+a light down, an age at which youths always look their worst, and are
+awkward and unsociable because they are timid.
+
+"Then you are no longer an idle fellow," said Dolly, rather teasingly.
+"People used to say that you went into the navy to get rid of your
+lessons. That I can quite understand."
+
+"Oh, he has passed many difficult exams," cried Giselle, coming to the
+rescue.
+
+"I thought I had had enough of school," said Fred, without making any
+defense, "and besides I had other reasons for going into the navy."
+
+His "other reasons" had been a wish to emancipate himself from
+the excessive solicitude of his mother, who kept him tied to her
+apron-strings like a little girl. He was impatient to do something for
+himself, to become a man as soon as possible. But he said nothing of
+all this, and to escape further questions devoured three or four little
+cakes that were offered him. Before taking them he removed his gloves
+and displayed a pair of chapped and horny hands.
+
+"Why--poor Fred!" cried Jacqueline, who remarked them in a moment, "what
+kind of almond paste do you use?"
+
+Much annoyed, he replied, curtly: "We all have to row, we have also
+to attend to the machinery. But that is only while we are cadets. Of
+course, such apprenticeship is very hard. After that we shall get our
+stripes and be ordered on foreign service, and expect promotion."
+
+"And glory," said Giselle, who found courage to speak.
+
+Fred thanked her with a look of gratitude. She, at least, understood his
+profession. She entered into his feelings far better than Jacqueline,
+who had been his first confidante--Jacqueline, to whom he had confided
+his purposes, his ambition, and his day-dreams. He thought Jacqueline
+was selfish. She seemed to care only for herself. And yet, selfish or
+not selfish, she pleased him better than all the other girls he knew--a
+thousand times more than gentle, sweet Giselle.
+
+"Ah, glory, of course!" repeated Jacqueline. "I understand how much that
+counts, but there is glory of various kinds, and I know the kind that I
+prefer," she added in a tone which seemed to imply that it was not that
+of arms, or of perilous navigation. "We all know," she went on, "that
+not every man can have genius, but any sailor who has good luck can get
+to be an admiral."
+
+"Let us hope you will be one soon, Monsieur Fred," said Dolly. "You
+will have well deserved it, according to the way you have distinguished
+yourself on board the 'Borda.'"
+
+This induced Fred to let them understand something of life on board the
+practice-ship; he told how the masters who resided on shore ascended by
+a ladder to the gun-deck, which had been turned into a schoolroom; how
+six cadets occupied the space intended for each gun-carriage, where
+hammocks hung from hooks served them instead of beds; how the chapel was
+in a closet opened only on Sundays. He described the gymnastic feats in
+the rigging, the practice in gunnery, and many other things which, had
+they been well described, would have been interesting; but Fred was
+only a poor narrator. The conclusion the young ladies seemed to reach
+unanimously after hearing his descriptions, was discouraging. They cried
+almost with one voice--
+
+"Think of any woman being willing to marry a sailor."
+
+"Why not?" asked Giselle, very promptly.
+
+"Because, what's the use of a husband who is always out of your reach,
+as it were, between water and sky? One would better be a widow. Widows,
+at any rate, can marry again. But you, Giselle, don't understand these
+things. You are going to be a nun."
+
+"Had I been in your place, Fred," said Isabelle Ray, "I should rather
+have gone into the cavalry school at Saint Cyr. I should have wanted to
+be a good huntsman, had I been a man, and they say naval officers are
+never good horsemen."
+
+Poor Fred! He was not making much progress among the young girls. Almost
+everything people talked about outside his cadet life was unknown to
+him; what he could talk about seemed to have no interest for any one,
+unless indeed it might interest Giselle, who was an adept in the art of
+sympathetic listening, never having herself anything to say.
+
+Besides this, Fred was by no means at his ease in talking to Jacqueline.
+They had been told not to 'tutoyer' each other, because they were
+getting too old for such familiarity, and it was he, and not she, who
+remembered this prohibition. Jacqueline perceived this after a while,
+and burst out laughing:
+
+"Tiens! You call me 'you,"' she cried, "and I ought not to say
+'thou' but 'you.' I forgot. It seems so odd, when we have always been
+accustomed to 'tutoyer' each other."
+
+"One ought to give it up after one's first communion," said the eldest
+Mademoiselle Wermant, sententiously. "We ceased to 'tutoyer' our boy
+cousins after that. I am told nothing annoys a husband so much as to
+see these little familiarities between his wife and her cousins or her
+playmates."
+
+Giselle looked very much astonished at this speech, and her air of
+disapproval amused Belle and Yvonne exceedingly. They began presently to
+talk of the classes in which they were considered brilliant pupils,
+and of their success in compositions. They said that sometimes very
+difficult subjects were given out. A week or two before, each had had
+to compose a letter purporting to be from Dante in exile to a friend in
+Florence, describing Paris as it was in his time, especially the manners
+and customs of its universities, ending by some allusion to the state of
+matters between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.
+
+"Good heavens! And could you do it?" said Giselle, whose knowledge of
+history was limited to what may be found in school abridgments.
+
+It was therefore a great satisfaction to her when Fred declared that he
+never should have known how to set about it.
+
+"Oh! papa helped me a little," said Isabelle, whose father wrote
+articles much appreciated by the public in the 'Revue des Deux
+Mondes.' "But he said at the same time that it was horrid to give such
+crack-brained stuff to us poor girls. Happily, our subject this week is
+much nicer. We have to make comparisons between La Tristesse d'Olympio,
+Souvenir, and Le Lac'. That will be something interesting."
+
+"The Tristesse d'Olympio?" repeated Giselle, in a tone of interrogation.
+
+"You know, of course, that it is Victor Hugo's," said Mademoiselle de
+Wermant, with a touch of pity.
+
+Giselle answered with sincerity and humility, "I only knew that Le Lac
+was by Lamartine."
+
+"Well!--she knows that much," whispered Belle to Yvonne--"just that
+much, anyhow."
+
+While they were whispering and laughing, Jacqueline recited, in a soft
+voice, and with feeling that did credit to her instructor in elocution,
+Mademoiselle X----, of the Theatre Francais:
+
+     May the moan of the wind, the green rushes' soft sighing,
+     The fragrance that floats in the air you have moved,
+     May all heard, may all breathed, may all seen, seem but trying
+     To say: They have loved.
+
+Then she added, after a pause: "Isn't that beautiful?"
+
+"How dares she say such words?" thought Giselle, whose sense of
+propriety was outraged by this allusion to love. Fred, too, looked
+askance and was not comfortable, for he thought that Jacqueline had too
+much assurance for her age, but that, after all, she was becoming more
+and more charming.
+
+At that moment Belle and Yvonne were summoned, and they departed, full
+of an intention to spread everywhere the news that Giselle, the little
+goose, had actually known that Le Lac had been written by Lamartine. The
+Benedictine Sisters positively had acquired that much knowledge.
+
+These girls were not the only persons that day at the reception who
+indulged in a little ill-natured talk after going away. Mesdames d'Argy
+and de Monredon, on their way to the Faubourg St. Germain, criticised
+Madame de Nailles pretty freely. As they crossed the Parc Monceau
+to reach their carriage, which was waiting for them on the Boulevard
+Malesherbes, they made the young people, Giselle and Fred, walk ahead,
+that they might have an opportunity of expressing themselves freely, the
+old dowager especially, whose toothless mouth never lost an opportunity
+of smirching the character and the reputation of her neighbors.
+
+"When I think of the pains my poor cousin de Nailles took to impress
+upon us all that he was making what is called a 'mariage raisonnable'!
+Well, if a man wants a wife who is going to set up her own notions, her
+own customs, he had better marry a poor girl without fortune! This one
+will simply ruin him. My dear, I am continually amazed at the way people
+are living whose incomes I know to the last sou. What an example for
+Jacqueline! Extravagance, fast living, elegant self-indulgence.... Did
+you observe the Baronne's gown?--of rough woolen stuff. She told some
+one it was the last creation of Doucet, and you know what that implies!
+His serge costs more than one of our velvet gowns.... And then her
+artistic tastes, her bric-a brac! Her salon looks like a museum or a
+bazaar. I grant you it makes a very pretty setting for her and all
+her coquetries. But in my time respectable women were contented with
+furniture covered with red or yellow silk damask furnished by their
+upholsterers. They didn't go about trying to hunt up the impossible. 'On
+ne cherche pas midi a quatorze heures'. You hold, as I do, to the
+old fashions, though you are not nearly so old, my dear Elise, and
+Jacqueline's mother thought as we think. She would say that her daughter
+is being very badly brought up. To be sure, all young creatures nowadays
+are the same. Parents, on a plea of tenderness, keep them at home, where
+they get spoiled among grown people, when they had much better have the
+same kind of education that has succeeded so well with Giselle; bolts on
+the garden-gates, wholesome seclusion, the company of girls of their own
+age, a great regularity of life, nothing which stimulates either
+vanity or imagination. That is the proper way to bring up girls without
+notions, girls who will let themselves be married without opposition,
+and are satisfied with the state of life to which Providence may be
+pleased to call them. For my part, I am enchanted with the ladies in the
+Rue de Monsieur, and, what is more, Giselle is very happy among them; to
+hear her talk you would suppose she was quite ready to take the veil. Of
+course, that is a mere passing fancy. But fancies of that sort are
+never dangerous, they have nothing in common with those that are passing
+nowadays through most girls' brains. Having 'a day!'--what a foolish
+notion: And then to let little girls take part in it, even in a corner
+of the room. I'll wager that, though her skirts are half way up her
+legs, and her hair is dressed like a baby's, that that little de Nailles
+is less of a child than my granddaughter, who has been brought up by
+the Benedictines. You say that she probably does not understand all
+that goes on around her. Perhaps not, but she breathes it in. It's
+poison-that's what it is!"
+
+There was a good deal of truth in this harsh picture, although it
+contained considerable exaggeration.
+
+At this moment, when Madame de Monredon was sitting in judgment on the
+education given to the little girls brought up in the world, and on the
+ruinous extravagance of their young stepmothers, Madame de Nailles
+and Jacqueline--their last visitors having departed--were resting
+themselves, leaning tenderly against each other, on a sofa. Jacqueline's
+head lay on her mother's lap. Her mother, without speaking, was stroking
+the girl's dark hair. Jacqueline, too, was silent, but from time to time
+she kissed the slender fingers sparkling with rings, as they came within
+reach of her lips.
+
+When M. de Nailles, about dinner-time, surprised them thus, he said,
+with satisfaction, as he had often said before, that it would be hard to
+find a home scene more charming, as they sat under the light of a lamp
+with a pink shade.
+
+That the stepmother and stepdaughter adored each other was beyond a
+doubt. And yet, had any one been able to look into their hearts at that
+moment, he would have discovered with surprise that each was thinking of
+something that she could not confide to the other.
+
+Both were thinking of the same person. Madame de Nailles was occupied
+with recollections, Jacqueline with hope. She was absorbed in
+Machiavellian strategy, how to realize a hope that had been formed that
+very afternoon.
+
+"What are you both thinking of, sitting there so quietly?" said the
+Baron, stooping over them and kissing first his wife and then his child.
+
+"About nothing," said the wife, with the most innocent of smiles.
+
+"Oh! I am thinking," said Jacqueline, "of many things. I have a secret,
+papa, that I want to tell you when we are quite alone. Don't be jealous,
+dear mamma. It is something about a surprise--Oh, a lovely surprise for
+you."
+
+"Saint Clotilde's day-my fete-day is still far off," said Madame de
+Nailles, refastening, mother-like, the ribbon that was intended to keep
+in order the rough ripples of Jacqueline's unruly hair, "and usually
+your whisperings begin as the day approaches my fete."
+
+"Oh, dear!--you will go and guess it!" cried Jacqueline in alarm. "Oh!
+don't guess it, please."
+
+"Well! I will do my best not to guess, then," said the good-natured
+Clotilde, with a laugh.
+
+"And I assure you, for my part, that I am discretion itself," said M. de
+Nailles.
+
+So saying, he drew his wife's arm within his own, and the three passed
+gayly together into the dining-room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. A CLEVER STEPMOTHER
+
+No man took more pleasure than M. de Nailles in finding himself in his
+own home--partly, perhaps, because circumstances compelled him to
+be very little there. The post of deputy in the French Chamber is
+no sinecure. He was not often an orator from the tribune, but he was
+absorbed by work in the committees--"Harnessed to a lot of bothering
+reports," as Jacqueline used to say to him. He had barely any time to
+give to those important duties of his position, by which, as is well
+known, members of the Corps Legislatif are shamelessly harassed by
+constituents, who, on pretence that they have helped to place the
+interests of their district in your hands, feel authorized to worry you
+with personal matters, such as the choice of agricultural machines, or a
+place to be found for a wet-nurse.
+
+Besides his public duties, M. de Nailles was occupied by financial
+speculations--operations that were no doubt made necessary by the style
+of living commented on by his cousin, Madame de Monredon, who was as
+stingy as she was bitter of tongue. The elegance that she found fault
+with was, however, very far from being great when compared with the
+luxury of the present day. Of course, the Baronne had to have her
+horses, her opera-box, her fashionable frocks. To supply these very
+moderate needs, which, however, she never insisted upon, being, so far
+as words went, most simple in her tastes, M. de Nailles, who had not the
+temperament which makes men find pleasure in hard work, became more
+and more fatigued. His days were passed in the Chamber, but he never
+neglected his interest on the Bourse; in the evening he accompanied his
+young wife into society, which, she always declared, she did not care
+for, but which had claims upon her nevertheless. It was therefore not
+surprising that M. de Nailles's face showed traces of the habitual
+fatigue that was fast aging him; his tall, thin form had acquired a
+slight stoop; though only fifty he was evidently in his declining years.
+He had once been a man of pleasure, it was said, before he entered
+politics. He had married his first wife late in life. She was a prudent
+woman who feared to expose him to temptation, and had kept him as far as
+possible away from Paris.
+
+In the country, having nothing to do, he became interested in
+agriculture, and in looking after his estate at Grandchaux. He had been
+made a member of the Conseil General, when unfortunately death too
+early deprived him of the wise and gentle counsellor for whom he
+felt, possibly not a very lively love, but certainly a high esteem and
+affection. After he be came a widower he met in the Pyrenees, where, as
+he was whiling away the time of seclusion proper after his loss, a young
+lady who appeared to him exactly the person he needed to bring up his
+little daughter--because she was extremely attractive to himself. Of
+course M. de Nailles found plenty of other reasons for his choice, which
+he gave to the world and to himself to justify his second marriage--but
+this was the true reason and the only one. His friends, however, all
+of whom had urged on him the desirability of taking another wife, in
+consideration of the age of Jacqueline, raised many objections as soon
+as he announced his intention of espousing Mademoiselle Clotilde Hecker,
+eldest daughter of a man who had been, at one time, a prefect under
+the Empire, but who had been turned out of office by the Republican
+Government. He had a large family and many debts; but M. de Nailles had
+some answer always ready for the objections of his family and friends.
+He was convinced that Mademoiselle Hecker, having no fortune, would be
+less exacting than other women and more disposed to lead a quiet life.
+
+She had been almost a mother to her own young brothers and sisters,
+which was a pledge for motherliness toward Jacqueline, etc., etc.
+Nevertheless, had she not had eyes as blue as those of the beauties
+painted by Greuze, plenty of audacious wit, and a delicate complexion,
+due to her Alsatian origin--had she not possessed a slender waist and
+a lovely figure, he might have asked himself why a young lady who, in
+winter, studied painting with the commendable intention of making her
+own living by art, passed the summers at all the watering-places of
+France and those of neighboring countries, without any perceptible
+motive.
+
+But, thanks to the bandage love ties over the eyes of men, he saw only
+what Mademoiselle Clotilde was willing that he should see. In the first
+place he saw the great desirability of a talent for painting which,
+unlike music--so often dangerous to married happiness--gives women who
+cultivate it sedentary interests. And then he was attracted by the model
+daughter's filial piety as he beheld her taking care of her mother, who
+was the victim of an incurable disorder, which required her by turns to
+reside at Cauterets, or sometimes at Ems, sometimes at Aix in Savoy,
+and sometimes even at Trouville. The poor girl had assured him that
+she asked no happier lot than to live eight months of the year in the
+country, where she would devote herself to teaching Jacqueline, for whom
+at first sight she had taken a violent fancy (the attraction indeed was
+mutual). She assured him she would teach her all she knew herself, and
+her diplomas proved how well educated she had been.
+
+Indeed, it seemed as if only prejudice could find any objection to so
+prudent and reasonable a marriage, a marriage contracted principally for
+the good of Jacqueline.
+
+It came to pass, however, that the air of Grandchaux, which is situated
+in the most unhealthful part of Limouzin, proved particularly hurtful to
+the new Madame de Nailles. She could not live a month on her husband's
+property without falling into a state of health which she attributed to
+malaria. M. de Nailles was at first much concerned about the condition
+of things which seemed likely to upset all his plans for retirement in
+the country, but, his wife having persuaded him that his position in
+the Conseil General was only a stepping-stone to a seat in the Corps
+Legislatif, where his place ought to be, he presented himself to the
+electors as a candidate, and was almost unanimously elected deputy, the
+conservative vote being still all powerful in that part of the country.
+
+His wife, it was said, had shown rare zeal and activity at the time of
+the election, employing in her husband's service all those little arts
+which enable her sex to succeed in politics, as well as in everything
+else they set their minds to. No lady ever more completely turned the
+heads of country electors. It was really Madame de Nailles who took her
+seat in the Left Centre of the Chamber, in the person of her husband.
+
+After that she returned to Limouzin only long enough to keep up her
+popularity, though, with touching resignation, she frequently offered to
+spend the summer at Grandchaux, even if the consequences should be
+her death, like that of Pia in the Maremma. Her husband, of course,
+peremptorily set his face against such self-sacrifice.
+
+The facilities for Jacqueline's education were increased by their
+settling down as residents of Paris. Madame de Nailles superintended
+the instruction of her stepdaughter with motherly solicitude, seconded,
+however, by a 'promeneuse', or walking-governess, which left her free to
+fulfil her own engagements in the afternoons. The walking-governess is
+a singular modern institution, intended to supply the place of the
+too often inconvenient daily governess of former times. The necessary
+qualifications of such a person are that she should have sturdy legs,
+and such knowledge of some foreign language as will enable her during
+their walks to converse in it with her pupil. Fraulein Schult, who
+came from one of the German cantons of Switzerland, was an ideal
+'promeneuse'. She never was tired and she was well-informed. The number
+of things that could be learned from her during a walk was absolutely
+incredible.
+
+Madame de Nailles, therefore, after a time, gave up to her, not without
+apparent regret, the duty of accompanying Jacqueline, while she herself
+fulfilled those duties to society which the most devoted of mothers can
+not wholly avoid; but the stepmother and stepdaughter were always to be
+seen together at mass at one o'clock; together they attended the Cours
+(that system of classes now so much in vogue) and also the weekly
+instruction given in the catechism; and if Madame de Nailles, when, at
+night, she told her husband all she had been doing for Jacqueline during
+the day (she never made any merit of her zeal for the child's welfare),
+added: "I left Jacqueline in this place or in that, where Mademoiselle
+Schult was to call for her," M. de Nailles showed no disposition to ask
+questions, for he well understood that his wife felt a certain delicacy
+in telling him that she had been to pay a brief visit to her own
+relatives, who, she knew, were distasteful to him. He had, indeed, very
+soon discerned in them a love of intrigue, a desire to get the most they
+could out of him, and a disagreeable propensity to parasitism. With the
+consummate tact she showed in everything she did, Madame de Nailles kept
+her own family in the background, though she never neglected them. She
+was always doing them little services, but she knew well that there
+were certain things about them that could not but be disagreeable to
+her husband. M. de Nailles knew all this, too, and respected his wife's
+affection for her family. He seldom asked her where she had been during
+the day. If he had she would have answered, with a sigh: "I went to see
+my mother while Jacqueline was taking her dancing-lesson, and before she
+went to her singing-master."
+
+That she was passionately attached to Jacqueline was proved by the
+affection the little girl conceived for her. "We two are friends," both
+mother and daughter often said of each other. Even Modeste, old Modeste,
+who had been at first indignant at seeing a stranger take the place of
+her dead mistress, could not but acknowledge that the usurper was no
+ordinary step mother. It might have been truly said that Madame de
+Nailles had never scolded Jacqueline, and that Jacqueline had never done
+anything contrary to the wishes of Madame de Nailles. When anything went
+wrong it was Fraulein Schult who was reproached first; if there was
+any difficulty in the management of Jacqueline, she alone received
+complaints. In the eyes of the "two friends," Fraulein Schult was
+somehow to be blamed for everything that went wrong in the family,
+but between themselves an observer might have watched in vain for the
+smallest cloud. Madame de Nailles, when she was first married, could
+not make enough of the very ugly yet attractive little girl, whose tight
+black curls and gypsy face made an admirable contrast to her own more
+delicate style of beauty, which was that of a blonde. She caressed
+Jacqueline, she dressed her up, she took her about with her like a
+little dog, and overwhelmed her with demonstrations of affection,
+which served not only to show off her own graceful attitudes, but gave
+spectators a high opinion of her kindness of heart.
+
+When from time to time some one, envious of her happiness, pitied her
+for being childless, Madame de Nailles would say: "What do you mean? I
+have one daughter; she is enough for me."
+
+It is a pity children grow so fast, and that little girls who were once
+ugly sometimes develop into beautiful young women. The time came when
+the model stepmother began to wish that Jacqueline would only develop
+morally, intellectually, and not physically. But she showed nothing of
+this in her behavior, and replied to any compliments addressed to her
+concerning Jacqueline with as much maternal modesty as if the dawning
+loveliness of her stepdaughter had been due to herself.
+
+"Her nose is rather too long-don't you think so? And she will always be
+too dark, I fear." But she used always to add, "She is good enough and
+pretty enough to pass muster with any critic--poor little pussy-cat!"
+She became desirous to discover some tendency to ill-health in the plant
+that was too ready to bloom into beauty and perfection. She would have
+liked to be able to assert that Jacqueline's health would not permit her
+to sit up late at night, that fashionable hours would be injurious to
+her, that it would be undesirable to let her go into society as long as
+she could be kept from doing so. But Jacqueline persisted in never being
+ill, and was calculating with impatience how many years it would be
+before she could go to her first ball--three or four possibly. Was
+Madame de Nailles in three or four years to be reduced to the position
+of a chaperon? The young stepmother thought of such a possibility with
+horror. Her anxiety on this subject, however, as well as several
+other anxieties, was so well concealed that even her husband suspected
+nothing.
+
+The complete sympathy which existed between the two beings he most loved
+made M. de Nailles very happy. He had but one thing to complain of in
+his wife, and that thing was very small. Since she had married she had
+completely given up her painting. He had no knowledge of art himself,
+and had therefore given her credit for great artistic capacity. The fact
+was that in her days of poverty she had never been artist enough to make
+a living, and now that she was rich she felt inclined to laugh at her
+own limited ability. Her practice of art, she said, had only served to
+give her a knowledge of outline and of color; a knowledge she utilized
+in her dress and in the smallest details of house decoration and
+furniture. Everything she wore, everything that surrounded her, was
+arranged to perfection. She had a genius for decoration, for furniture,
+for trifles, and brought her artistic knowledge to bear even on the
+tying of a ribbon, or the arrangement of a nosegay.
+
+"This is all I retain of your lessons," she said sometimes to Hubert
+Marien, when recalling to his memory the days in which she sought his
+advice as to how to prepare herself for the "struggle for life."
+
+This phrase was amusing when it proceeded from her lips.
+What!--"struggle for life" with those little delicate, soft, childlike
+hands? How absurd! She laughed at the idea now, and all those who heard
+her laughed with her; Marien laughed more than any one. He, who had
+befriended her in her days of adversity, seemed to retain for the
+Baroness in her prosperity the same respectful and discreet devotion he
+had shown her as Mademoiselle Hecker. He had sent a wonderful portrait
+of her, as the wife of M. de Nailles, to the Salon--a portrait that the
+richer electors of Grandchaux, who had voted for her husband and who
+could afford to travel, gazed at with satisfaction, congratulating
+themselves that they had a deputy who had married so pretty a woman. It
+even seemed as if the beauty of Madame de Nailles belonged in some sort
+to the arrondissement, so proud were those who lived there of having
+their share in her charms.
+
+Another portrait--that of M. de Nailles himself--was sent down to
+Limouzin from Paris, and all the peasants in the country round were
+invited to come and look at it. That also produced a very favorable
+impression on the rustic public, and added to the popularity of their
+deputy. Never had the proprietor of Grandchaux looked so grave, so
+dignified, so majestic, so absorbed in deep reflection, as he looked
+standing beside a table covered with papers--papers, no doubt, all
+having relation to local interests, important to the public and to
+individuals. It was the very figure of a statesman destined to high
+dignities. No one who gazed on such a deputy could doubt that one day he
+would be in the ministry.
+
+It was by such real services that Marien endeavored to repay the
+friendship and the kindness always awaiting him in the small house in
+the Parc Monceau, where we have just seen Jacqueline eagerly offering
+him some spiced cakes. To complete what seemed due to the household
+there only remained to paint the curiously expressive features of the
+girl at whom he had been looking that very day with more than ordinary
+attention. Once already, when Jacqueline was hardly out of baby-clothes,
+the great painter had made an admirable sketch of her tousled head,
+a sketch in which she looked like a little imp of darkness, and this
+sketch Madame de Nailles took pains should always be seen, but it bore
+no resemblance to the slender young girl who was on the eve of becoming,
+whatever might be done to arrest her development, a beautiful young
+woman. Jacqueline disliked to look at that picture. It seemed to do her
+an injury by associating her with her nursery. Probably that was
+the reason why she had been so pleased to hear Hubert Marien say
+unexpectedly that she was now ready for the portrait which had been
+often joked about, every one putting it off to the period, always
+remote, when "the may-pole" should have developed a pretty face and
+figure.
+
+And now she was disquieted lest the idea of taking her picture, which
+she felt was very flattering, should remain inoperative in the
+painter's brain. She wanted it carried out at once, as soon as possible.
+Jacqueline detested waiting, and for some reason, which she never talked
+about, the years that seemed so short and swift to her stepmother seemed
+to her to be terribly long. Marien himself had said: "There is a great
+interval between a dream and its execution." These words had thrown cold
+water on her sudden joy. She wanted to force him to keep his promise--to
+paint her portrait immediately. How to do this was the problem her
+little head, reclining on Madame de Nailles's lap after the departure of
+their visitors, had been endeavoring to solve.
+
+Should she communicate her wish to her indulgent stepmother, who for
+the most part willed whatever she wished her to do? A vague instinct--an
+instinct of some mysterious danger--warned her that in this case her
+father would be her better confidant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE FRIEND OF THE FAY
+
+A week later M. de Nailles said to Hubert Marien, as they were smoking
+together in the conservatory, after the usual little family dinner on
+Wednesday was over:
+
+"Well!--when would you like Jacqueline to come to sit for her picture?"
+
+"What! are you thinking about that?" cried the painter, letting his
+cigar fall in his astonishment.
+
+"She told me that you had proposed to make her portrait."
+
+"The sly little minx!" thought Marien. "I only spoke of painting it some
+day," he said, with embarrassment.
+
+"Well! she would like that 'some day' to be now, and she has a reason
+for wanting it at once, which, I hope, will decide you to gratify her.
+The third of June is Sainte-Clotilde's day, and she has taken it into
+her head that she would like to give her mamma a magnificent present--a
+present that, of course, we shall unite to give her. For some time past
+I have been thinking of asking you to paint a portrait of my daughter,"
+continued M. de Nailles, who had in fact had no more wish for the
+portrait than he had had to be a deputy, until it had been put into his
+head. But the women of his household, little or big, could persuade him
+into anything.
+
+"I really don't think I have the time now," said Marien.
+
+"Bah!--you have whole two months before you. What can absorb you so
+entirely? I know you have your pictures ready for the Salon."
+
+"Yes--of course--of course--but are you sure that Madame de Nailles
+would approve of it?"
+
+"She will approve whatever I sanction," said M. de Nailles, with as much
+assurance as if he had been master in his domestic circle; "besides, we
+don't intend to ask her. It is to be a surprise. Jacqueline is looking
+forward to the pleasure it will give her. There is something very
+touching to me in the affection of that little thing for--for her
+mother." M. de Nailles usually hesitated a moment before saying that
+word, as if he were afraid of transferring something still belonging to
+his dead wife to another--that dead wife he so seldom remembered in any
+other way. He added, "She is so eager to give her pleasure."
+
+Marien shook his head with an air of uncertainty.
+
+"Are you sure that such a portrait would be really acceptable to Madame
+de Nailles?"
+
+"How can you doubt it?" said the Baron, with much astonishment. "A
+portrait of her daughter!--done by a great master? However, of course,
+if we are putting you to any inconvenience--if you would rather not
+undertake it, you had better say so."
+
+"No--of course I will do it, if you wish it," said Marien, quickly, who,
+although he was anxious to do nothing to displease Madame de Nailles,
+was equally desirous to stand well with her husband. "Yet I own that
+all the mystery that must attend on what you propose may put me to some
+embarrassment. How do you expect Jacqueline will be able to conceal--"
+
+"Oh! easily enough. She walks out every day with Mademoiselle Schult.
+Well, Mademoiselle Schult will bring her to your studio instead of
+taking her to the Champs Elysees--or to walk elsewhere."
+
+"But every day there will be concealments, falsehoods, deceptions. I
+think Madame de Nailles might prefer to be asked for her permission."
+
+"Ask for her permission when I have given mine? Ah, fa! my dear Marien,
+am I, or am I not, the father, of Jacqueline? I take upon myself the
+whole responsibility."
+
+"Then there is nothing more to be said. But do you think that Jacqueline
+will keep the secret till the picture is done?"
+
+"You don't know little girls; they are all too glad to have something of
+which they can make a mystery."
+
+"When would you like us to begin?"
+
+Marien had by this time said to himself that for him to hold out longer
+might seem strange to M. de Nailles. Besides, the matter, though in some
+respects it gave him cause for anxiety, really excited an interest in
+him. For some time past, though he had long known women and knew very
+little of mere girls, he had had his suspicions that a drama was being
+enacted in Jacqueline's heart, a drama of which he himself was the hero.
+He amused himself by watching it, though he did nothing to promote
+it. He was an artist and a keen and penetrating observer; he employed
+psychology in the service of his art, and probably to that might have
+been attributed the individual character of his portraits--a quality to
+be found in an equal degree only in those of Ricard.
+
+What particularly interested him at this moment was the assumed
+indifference of Jacqueline while her father was conducting the
+negotiation which was of her suggestion. When they returned to the salon
+after smoking she pretended not to be the least anxious to know the
+result of their conversation. She sat sewing near the lamp, giving all
+her attention to the piece of lace on which she was working. Her father
+made her a sign which meant "He consents," and then Marien saw that the
+needle in her fingers trembled, and a slight color rose in her face--but
+that was all. She did not say a word. He could not know that for a week
+past she had gone to church every time she took a walk, and had offered
+a prayer and a candle that her wish might be granted. How very anxious
+and excited she had been all that week! The famous composition of which
+she had spoken to Giselle, the subject of which had so astonished the
+young girl brought up by the Benedictine nuns, felt the inspiration of
+her emotion and excitement. Jacqueline was in a frame of mind which made
+reading those three masterpieces by three great poets, and pondering
+the meaning of their words, very dangerous. The poems did not affect her
+with the melancholy they inspire in those who have "lived and loved,"
+but she was attracted by their tenderness and their passion. Certain
+lines she applied to herself--certain others to another person. The very
+word love so often repeated in the verses sent a thrill through all her
+frame. She aspired to taste those "intoxicating moments," those "swift
+delights," those "sublime ecstasies," those "divine transports"--all the
+beautiful things, in short, of which the poems spoke, and which were
+as yet unknown to her. How could she know them? How could she, after an
+experience of sorrow, which seemed to her to be itself enviable, retain
+such sweet remembrances as the poets described?
+
+"Let us love--love each other! Let us hasten to enjoy the passing hour!"
+so sang the poet of Le Lac. That passing hour of bliss she thought she
+had already enjoyed. She was sure that for a long time past she had
+loved. When had that love begun? She hardly knew. But it would last as
+long as she might live. One loves but once.
+
+These personal emotions, mingling with the literary enchantments of the
+poets, caused Jacqueline's pen to fly over her paper without effort, and
+she produced a composition so far superior to anything she usually wrote
+that it left the lucubrations of her companions far behind. M. Regis,
+the professor, said so to the class. He was enthusiastic about it, and
+greatly surprised. Belle, who had been always first in this kind of
+composition, was far behind Jacqueline, and was so greatly annoyed at
+her defeat that she would not speak to her for a week. On the other
+hand Colette and Dolly, who never had aspired to literary triumphs, were
+moved to tears when the "Study on the comparative merits of Three
+Poems, 'Le Lac,' 'Souvenir,' and 'La Tristesse d'Olympio,'" signed
+"Mademoiselle de Nailles," received the honor of being read aloud. This
+reading was followed by a murmur of applause, mingled with some hisses
+which may have proceeded from the viper of jealousy. But the paper
+made a sensation like that of some new scandal. Mothers and governesses
+whispered together. Many thought that that little de Nailles had
+expressed sentiments not proper at her age. Some came to the conclusion
+that M. Regis chose subjects for composition not suited to young girls.
+A committee waited on the unlucky professor to beg him to be more
+prudent for the future. He even lost, in consequence of Jacqueline's
+success, one of his pupils (the most stupid one, be it said, in the
+class), whose mother took her away, saying, with indignation, "One might
+as well risk the things they are teaching at the Sorbonne!"
+
+This literary incident greatly alarmed Madame de Nailles! Of all things
+she dreaded that her daughter should early become dreamy and romantic.
+But on this point Jacqueline's behavior was calculated to reassure her.
+She laughed about her composition, she frolicked like a six-year-old
+child; without any apparent cause, she grew gayer and gayer as the time
+approached for the execution of her plot.
+
+The evening before the day fixed on for the first sitting, Modeste, the
+elderly maid of the first Madame de Nailles, who loved her daughter,
+whom she had known from the moment of her birth, as if she had been her
+own foster-child, arrived at the studio of Hubert Marien in the Rue de
+Prony, bearing a box which she said contained all that would be wanted
+by Mademoiselle. Marien had the curiosity to look into it. It contained
+a robe of oriental muslin, light as air, diaphanous--and so dazzlingly
+white that he remarked:
+
+"She will look like a fly in milk in that thing."
+
+"Oh!" replied Modeste, with a laugh of satisfaction, "it is very
+becoming to her. I altered it to fit her, for it is one of Madame's
+dresses. Mademoiselle has nothing but short skirts, and she wanted to be
+painted as a young lady."
+
+"With the approval of her papa?"
+
+"Yes, of course, Monsieur, Monsieur le Baron gave his consent. But for
+that I certainly should not have minded what the child said to me."
+
+"Then," replied Marien, "I can say nothing," and he made ready for his
+sitter the next day, by turning two or three studies of the nude, which
+might have shocked her, with their faces to the wall.
+
+A foreign language can not be properly acquired unless the learner has
+great opportunities for conversation. It therefore became a fixed habit
+with Fraulein Schult and Jacqueline to keep up a lively stream of talk
+during their walks, and their discourse was not always about the rain,
+the fine weather, the things displayed in the shop-windows, nor the
+historical monuments of Paris, which they visited conscientiously.
+
+What is near the heart is sure to come eventually to the surface
+in continual tete-a-tete intercourse. Fraulein Schult, who was of
+a sentimental temperament, in spite of her outward resemblance to a
+grenadier, was very willing to allow her companion to draw from her
+confessions relating to an intended husband, who was awaiting her at
+Berne, and whose letters, both in prose and verse, were her comfort in
+her exile. This future husband was an apothecary, and the idea that he
+pounded out verses as he pounded his drugs in a mortar, and rolled out
+rhymes with his pills, sometimes inclined Jacqueline to laugh, but she
+listened patiently to the plaintive outpourings of her 'promeneuse',
+because she wished to acquire a right to reciprocate by a few
+half-confidences of her own. In her turn, therefore, she confided to
+Fraulein Schult--moved much as Midas had been, when for his own relief
+he whispered to the reeds--that if she were sometimes idle, inattentive,
+"away off in the moon," as her instructors told her by way of reproach,
+it was caused by one ever-present idea, which, ever since she had been
+able to think or feel, had taken possession of her inmost being--the
+idea of being loved some day by somebody as she herself loved.
+
+"Was that somebody a boy of her own age?"
+
+Oh, fie!--mere boys--still schoolboys--could only be looked upon as
+playfellows or comrades. Of course she considered Fred--Fred, for
+example!--Frederic d'Argy--as a brother, but how different he was from
+her ideal. Even young men of fashion--she had seen some of them on
+Tuesdays--Raoul Wermant, the one who so distinguished himself as a
+leader in the 'german', or Yvonne's brother, the officer of chasseurs,
+who had gained the prize for horsemanship, and others besides
+these--seemed to her very commonplace by comparison. No!--he whom she
+loved was a man in the prime of life, well known to fame. She didn't
+care if he had a few white hairs.
+
+"Is he a person of rank?" asked Fraulein Schult, much puzzled.
+
+"Oh! if you mean of noble birth, no, not at all. But fame is so superior
+to birth! There are more ways than one of acquiring an illustrious name,
+and the name that a man makes for himself is the noblest of all!"
+
+Then Jacqueline begged Fraulein Schult to imagine something like the
+passion of Bettina for Goethe--Fraulein Schult having told her that
+story simply with a view of interesting her in German conversation only
+the great man whose name she would not tell was not nearly so old as
+Goethe, and she herself was much less childish than Bettina. But, above
+all, it was his genius that attracted her--though his face, too, was
+very pleasing. And she went on to describe his appearance--till
+suddenly she stopped, burning with indignation; for she perceived that,
+notwithstanding the minuteness of her description, what she said was
+conveying an idea of ugliness and not one of the manly beauty she
+intended to portray.
+
+"He is not like that at all," she cried. "He has such a beautiful
+smile-a smile like no other I ever saw. And his talk is so
+amusing--and--" here Jacqueline lowered her voice as if afraid to be
+overheard, "and I do think--I think, after all, he does love me--just a
+little."
+
+On what could she have founded such a notion? Good heaven!--it was on
+something that had at first deeply grieved her, a sudden coldness and
+reserve that had come over his manner to her. Not long before she had
+read an English novel (no others were allowed to come into her hands).
+It was rather a stupid book, with many tedious passages, but in it she
+was told how the high-minded hero, not being able, for grave reasons, to
+aspire to the hand of the heroine, had taken refuge in an icy coldness,
+much as it cost him, and as soon as possible had gone away. English
+novels are nothing if not moral.
+
+This story, not otherwise interesting, threw a gleam of light on what,
+up to that time, had been inexplicable to Jacqueline. He was above all
+things a man of honor. He must have perceived that his presence troubled
+her. He had possibly seen her when she stole a half-burned cigarette
+which he had left upon the table, a prize she had laid up with other
+relics--an old glove that he had lost, a bunch of violets he had
+gathered for her in the country. Yes! When she came to think of it,
+she felt certain he must have seen her furtively lay her hand upon that
+cigarette; that cigarette had compromised her. Then it was he must have
+said to himself that it was due to her parents, who had always shown him
+kindness, to surmount an attachment that could come to nothing--nothing
+at present. But when she should be old enough for him to ask her hand,
+would he dare? Might he not rashly think himself too old? She must seek
+out some way to give him encouragement, to give him to understand that
+she was not, after all, so far--so very far from being a young lady--old
+enough to be married. How difficult it all was! All the more difficult
+because she was exceedingly afraid of him.
+
+It is not surprising that Fraulein Schult, after listening day after
+day to such recitals, with all the alternations of hope and of
+discouragement which succeeded one another in the mind of her precocious
+pupil, guessed, the moment that Jacqueline came to her, in a transport
+of joy, to ask her to go with her to the Rue de Prony, that the hero of
+the mysterious love-story was no other than Hubert Marien.
+
+As soon as she understood this, she perceived that she should be placed
+in a very false position. But she thought to herself there was no
+possible way of getting out of it, without giving a great deal too much
+importance to a very innocent piece of childish folly; she therefore
+determined to say nothing about it, but to keep a strict watch in the
+mean time. After all, M. de Nailles himself had given her her orders.
+She was to accompany Jacqueline, and do her crochet-work in one corner
+of the studio as long as the sitting lasted.
+
+All she could do was to obey.
+
+"And above all not a word to mamma, whatever she may ask you," said
+Jacqueline.
+
+And her father added, with a laugh, "Not a word." Fraulein Schult felt
+that she knew what was expected of her. She was naturally compliant, and
+above all things she was anxious to get paid for as many hours of her
+time as possible--much like the driver of a fiacre, because the more
+money she could make the sooner she would be in a position to espouse
+her apothecary.
+
+When Jacqueline, escorted by her Swiss duenna, penetrated almost
+furtively into Marien's studio, her heart beat as if she had a
+consciousness of doing something very wrong. In truth, she had pictured
+to herself so many impossible scenes beforehand, had rehearsed the
+probable questions and answers in so many strange dialogues, had soothed
+her fancy with so many extravagant ideas, that she had at last created,
+bit by bit, a situation very different from the reality, and then threw
+herself into it, body and soul.
+
+The look of the atelier--the first she had ever been in in her
+life--disappointed her. She had expected to behold a gorgeous collection
+of bric-a-brac, according to accounts she had heard of the studios of
+several celebrated masters. That of Marien was remarkable only for its
+vast dimensions and its abundance of light. Studies and sketches hung on
+the walls, were piled one over another in corners, were scattered
+about everywhere, attesting the incessant industry of the artist, whose
+devotion to his calling was so great that his own work never satisfied
+him.
+
+Only some interesting casts from antique bronzes, brought out into
+strong relief by a background of tapestry, adorned this lofty hall,
+which had none of that confusion of decorative objects, in the midst of
+which some modern artists seem to pose themselves rather than to labor.
+
+A fresh canvas stood upon an easel, all ready for the sitter.
+
+"If you please, we will lose no time," said Marien, rather roughly,
+seeing that Jacqueline was about to explore all the corners of his
+apartment, and that at that moment, with the tips of her fingers, she
+was drawing aside the covering he had cast over his Death of Savonarola,
+the picture he was then at work upon. It was not the least of his
+grudges against Jacqueline for insisting on having her portrait painted
+that it obliged him to lay aside this really great work, that he might
+paint a likeness.
+
+"In ten minutes I shall be ready," said Jacqueline, obediently taking
+off her hat.
+
+"Why can't you stay as you are? That jacket suits you. Let us begin
+immediately."
+
+"No, indeed! What a horrid suggestion!" she cried, running up to the box
+which was half open. "You'll see how much better I can look in a moment
+or two."
+
+"I put no faith in your fancies about your toilette. I certainly don't
+promise to accept them."
+
+Nevertheless, he left her alone with her Bernese governess, saying:
+"Call me when you are ready, I shall be in the next room."
+
+A quarter of an hour, and more, passed, and no signal had been given.
+Marien, getting out of patience, knocked on the door.
+
+"Have you nearly done beautifying yourself?" he asked, in a tone of
+irony.
+
+"Just done," replied a low voice, which trembled.
+
+He went in, and to the great amusement of Fraulein Schult, who was not
+too preoccupied to notice everything, he stood confounded--petrified,
+as a man might be by some work of magic. What had become of Jacqueline?
+What had she in common with that dazzling vision? Had she been touched
+by some fairy's wand? Or, to accomplish such a transformation, had
+nothing been needed but the substitution of a woman's dress, fitted
+to her person, for the short skirts and loose waists cut in a boyish
+fashion, which had made the little girl seem hardly to belong to any
+sex, an indefinite being, condemned, as it were, to childishness? How
+tall, and slender, and graceful she looked in that long gown, the folds
+of which fell from her waist in flowing lines, a waist as round and
+flexible as the branch of a willow; what elegance there was in her
+modest corsage, which displayed for the first time her lovely arms and
+neck, half afraid of their own exposure. She still was not robust,
+but the leanness that she herself had owned to was not brought into
+prominence by any bone or angle, her dark skin was soft and polished,
+the color of ancient statues which have been slightly tinted yellow by
+exposure to the sun. This girl, a Parisienne, seemed formed on the model
+of a figurine of Tanagra. Greek, too, was her small head, crowned only
+by her usual braid of hair, which she had simply gathered up so as to
+show the nape of her neck, which was perhaps the most beautiful thing in
+all her beautiful person.
+
+"Well!--what do you think of me?" she said to Marien, with a searching
+glance to see how she impressed him--a glance strangely like that of a
+grown woman.
+
+"Well!--I can't get over it!--Why have you bedizened yourself in that
+fashion?" he asked, with an affectation of 'brusquerie', as he tried to
+recover his power of speech.
+
+"Then you don't like me?" she murmured, in a low voice. Tears came into
+her eyes; her lips trembled.
+
+"I don't see Jacqueline."
+
+"No--I should hope not--but I am better than Jacqueline, am I not?"
+
+"I am accustomed to Jacqueline. This new acquaintance disconcerts
+me. Give me time to get used to her. But once again let me ask, what
+possessed you to disguise yourself?"
+
+"I am not disguised. I am disguised when I am forced to wear those
+things, which do not suit me," said Jacqueline, pointing to her gray
+jacket and plaid skirt which were hung up on a hat-rack. "Oh, I know why
+mamma keeps me like that--she is afraid I should get too fond of dress
+before I have finished my education, and that my mind may be diverted
+from serious subjects. It is no doubt all intended for my good, but I
+should not lose much time if I turned up my hair like this, and what
+harm could there be in lengthening my skirts an inch or two? My picture
+will show her that I am improved by such little changes, and perhaps it
+will induce hor to let me go to the Bal Blanc that Madame d'Etaples is
+going to give on Yvonne's birthday. Mamma declined for me, saying I was
+not fit to wear a low-necked corsage, but you see she was mistaken."
+
+"Rather," said Marien, smiling in spite of himself.
+
+"Yes--wasn't she?" she went on, delighted at his look. "Of course,
+I have bones, but they don't show like the great hollows under the
+collar-bones that Dolly shows, for instance--but Dolly looks stouter
+than I because her face is so round. Well! Dolly is going to Madame
+d'Etaples's ball."
+
+"I grant," said Marien, devoting all his attention to the preparation
+of his palette, that she might not see him laugh, "I grant that you have
+bones--yes, many bones--but they are not much seen because they are too
+well placed to be obtrusive."
+
+"I am glad of that," said Jacqueline, delighted.
+
+"But let me ask you one question. Where did you pick up that queer gown?
+It seems to me that I have seen it somewhere."
+
+"No doubt you have," replied Jacqueline, who had quite recovered from
+her first shock, and was now ready to talk; "it is the dress mamma had
+made some time ago when she acted in a comedy."
+
+"So I thought," growled Marien, biting his lips.
+
+The dress recalled to his mind many personal recollections, and for one
+instant he paused. Madame de Nailles, among other talents, possessed
+that of amateur acting. On one occasion, several years before, she had
+asked his advice concerning what dress she should wear in a little play
+of Scribe's, which was to be given at the house of Madame d'Avrigny--the
+house in all Paris most addicted to private theatricals. This
+reproduction of a forgotten play, with its characters attired in the
+costume of the period in which the play was placed, had had great
+success, a success due largely to the excellence of the costumes. In the
+comic parts the dressing had been purposely exaggerated, but Madame de
+Nailles, who played the part of a great coquette, would not have been
+dressed in character had she not tried to make herself as bewitching as
+possible.
+
+Marien had shown her pictures of the beauties of 1840, painted by
+Dubufe, and she had decided on a white gauze embroidered with gold, in
+which, on that memorable evening, she had captured more than one heart,
+and which had had its influence on the life and destiny of Marien. This
+might have been seen in the vague glance of indignation with which he
+now regarded it.
+
+"Never," he thought, "was it half so pretty when worn by Madame de
+Nailles as by her stepdaughter."
+
+Jacqueline meantime went on talking.
+
+"You must know--I was rather perplexed what to do--almost all mamma's
+gowns made me look horribly too old. Modeste tried them on me one after
+another. We burst out laughing, they seemed so absurd. And then we were
+afraid mamma might chance to want the one I took. This old thing it was
+not likely she would ask for. She had worn it only once, and then put
+it away. The gauze is a little yellow from lying by, don't you think so?
+But we asked my father, who said it was all right, that I should look
+less dark in it, and that the dress was of no particular date, which was
+always an advantage. These Grecian dresses are always in the fashion.
+Ah! four years ago mamma was much more slender than she is now. But we
+have taken it in--oh! we took it in a great deal under the arms, but we
+had to let it down. Would you believe it?--I am taller than mamma--but
+you can hardly see the seam, it is concealed by the gold embroidery."
+
+"No matter for that. We shall only take a three-quarters' length," said
+Marien.
+
+"Oh, what a pity! No one will see I have a long skirt on. But I shall
+be 'decolletee', at any rate. I shall wear a comb. No one would know the
+picture for me--nobody!--You yourself hardly knew me--did you?"
+
+"Not at first sight. You are much altered."
+
+"Mamma will be amazed," said Jacqueline, clasping her hands. "It was a
+good idea!"
+
+"Amazed, I do not doubt," said Marien, somewhat anxiously. "But suppose
+we take our pose--Stay!--keep just as you are. Your hands before you,
+hanging down--so. Your fingers loosely clasped--that's it. Turn your
+head a little. What a lovely neck!--how well her head is set upon it!"
+he cried, involuntarily.
+
+Jacqueline glanced at Fraulein Schult, who was at the farther end of the
+studio, busy with her crochet. "You see," said the look, "that he has
+found out I am pretty--that I am worth something--all the rest will soon
+happen."
+
+And, while Marien was sketching in the graceful figure that posed before
+him, Jacqueline's imagination was investing it with the white robe of a
+bride. She had a vision of the painter growing more and more resolved
+to ask her hand in marriage as the portrait grew beneath his brush; of
+course, her father would say at first: "You are mad--you must wait.
+I shall not let Jacqueline marry till she is seventeen." But long
+engagements, she had heard, had great delights, though in France they
+are not the fashion. At last, after being long entreated, she was sure
+that M. and Madame de Nailles would end by giving their consent--they
+were so fond of Marien. Standing there, dreaming this dream, which gave
+her face an expression of extreme happiness, Jacqueline made a most
+admirable model. She had not felt in the least fatigued when Marien at
+last said to her, apologetically: "You must be ready to drop--I forgot
+you were not made of wood; we will go on to-morrow."
+
+Jacqueline, having put on her gray jacket with as much contempt for
+it as Cinderella may have felt for her rags after her successes at the
+ball, departed with the delightful sensation of having made a bold first
+step, and being eager to make another.
+
+Thus it was with all her sittings, though some left her anxious and
+unhappy, as for instance when Marien, absorbed in his work, had not
+paused, except to say, "Turn your head a little--you are losing the
+pose." Or else, "Now you may rest for today."
+
+On such occasions she would watch him anxiously as he painted swiftly,
+his brush making great splashes on the canvas, his dark features wearing
+a scowl, his chin on his breast, a deep frown upon his forehead, on
+which the hair grew low. It was evident that at such times he had no
+thought of pleasing her. Little did she suspect that he was saying to
+himself: "Fool that I am!--A man of my age to take pleasure in seeing
+that little head filled with follies and fancies of which I am the
+object. But can one--let one be ever so old--always act--or think
+reasonably? You are mad, Marien! A child of fourteen! Bah!--they make
+her out to be fourteen--but she is fifteen--and was not that the age of
+Juliet? But, you old graybeard, you are not Romeo!--'Ma foi'! I am in a
+pretty scrape. It ought to teach me not to play with fire at my age."
+
+Those words "at my age" were the refrain to all the reflections of
+Hubert Marien. He had seen enough in his relations with women to have
+no doubt about Jacqueline's feelings, of which indeed he had watched
+the rise and progress from the time she had first begun to conceive
+a passion for him, with a mixture of amusement and conceit. The most
+cautious of men are not insensible to flattery, whatever form it may
+take. To be fallen in love with by a child was no doubt absurd--a thing
+to be laughed at--but Jacqueline seemed no longer a child, since for him
+she had uncovered her young shoulders and arranged her dark hair on
+her head with the effect of a queenly diadem. Not only had her dawning
+loveliness been revealed to him alone, but to him it seemed that he had
+helped to make her lovely. The innocent tenderness she felt for him had
+accomplished this miracle. Why should he refuse to inhale an incense
+so pure, so genuine? How could he help being sensible to its fragrance?
+Would it not be in his power to put an end to the whole affair whenever
+he pleased? But till then might he not bask in it, as one does in a warm
+ray of spring sunshine? He put aside, therefore, all scruples. And when
+he did this Jacqueline with rapture saw the painter's face, no longer
+with its scowl, but softened by some secret influence, the lines
+smoothed from his brow, while the beautiful smile which had fascinated
+so many women passed like a ray of light over his expressive mobile
+features; then she would once more fancy that he was making love to her,
+and indeed he said many things, which, without rousing in himself any
+scruples of conscience, or alarming the propriety of Fraulein Schult,
+were well calculated to delude a girl who had had no experience, and who
+was charmed by the illusions of a love-affair, as she might have been by
+a fairy-story.
+
+It is true that sometimes, when he fancied he might have gone too far,
+Marien would grow sarcastic, or stay silent for a time. But this
+change of behavior produced on Jacqueline only the same effect that
+the caprices of a coquette produce upon a very young admirer. She grew
+anxious, she wanted to find out the reason, and finally found some
+explanation or excuse for him that coincided with her fancies.
+
+The thing that reassured her in such cases was her picture. If she could
+seem to him as beautiful as he had made her look on canvas she was sure
+that he must love her.
+
+"Is this really I? Are you sure?" she said to Marien with a laugh of
+delight. "It seems to me that you have made me too handsome."
+
+"I have hardly done you justice," he replied. "It is not my fault if
+you are more beautiful than seems natural, like the beauties in the
+keepsakes. By the way, I hold those English things in horror. What do
+you say of them?"
+
+Then Jacqueline undertook to defend the keepsake beauties with
+animation, declaring that no one but a hopelessly realistic painter
+would refuse to do justice to those charming monstrosities.
+
+"Good heavens!" thought Marien, "if she is adding a quick wit to her
+other charms--that will put the finishing stroke to me."
+
+When the portrait was sufficiently advanced, M. de Nailles came to the
+studio to judge of the likeness. He was delighted: "Only, my friend, I
+think," he cried to Marien, endeavoring to soften his one objection
+to the picture, "that you have given her a look--how can I put it?--an
+expression very charming no doubt, but which is not that of
+a child of her age. You know what I mean. It is something
+tender--intense--profound, too feminine. It may come to her some day,
+perhaps--but hitherto Jacqueline's expression has been generally that of
+a merry, mischievous child."
+
+"Oh, papa!" cried the young girl, stung by the insult.
+
+"You may possibly be right," Marien hastened to reply, "it was probably
+the fatigue of posing that gave her that expression."
+
+"Oh!" repeated Jacqueline, more shocked than ever.
+
+"I can alter it," said the painter, much amused by her extreme despair.
+But Marien thought that Jacqueline had not in the least that precocious
+air which her father attributed to her, when standing before him she
+gave herself up to thoughts the current of which he followed easily,
+watching on her candid face its changes of expression. How could he
+have painted her other than she appeared to him? Was what he saw an
+apparition--or was it a work of magic?
+
+Several times during the sittings M. de Nailles made his appearance
+in the studio, and after greatly praising the work, persisted in his
+objection that it made Jacqueline too old. But since the painter saw
+her thus they must accept his judgment. It was no doubt an effect of the
+grown-up costume that she had had a fancy to put on.
+
+"After all," he said to Jacqueline, "it is of not much consequence; you
+will grow up to it some of these days. And I pay you my compliments in
+advance on your appearance in the future."
+
+She felt like choking with rage. "Oh! is it right," she thought, "for
+parents to persist in keeping a young girl forever in her cradle, so to
+speak?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. A DANGEROUS MODEL
+
+Time passed too quickly to please Jacqueline. Her portrait was finished
+at last, notwithstanding the willingness Marien had shown--or so it
+seemed to her--to retouch it unnecessarily that she might again and
+again come back to his atelier. But it was done at last. She glided into
+that dear atelier for the last time, her heart big with regret, with
+no hope that she would ever again put on the fairy robe which had, she
+thought, transfigured her till she was no longer little Jacqueline.
+
+"I want you only for one moment, and I need only your face," said
+Marien. "I want to change--a line--I hardly know what to call it, at
+the corner of your mouth. Your father is right; your mouth is too grave.
+Think of something amusing--of the Bal Blanc at Madame d'Etaples, or
+merely, if you like, of the satisfaction it will give you to be done
+with these everlasting sittings--to be no longer obliged to bear the
+burden of a secret, in short to get rid of your portrait-painter."
+
+She made him no answer, not daring to trust her voice.
+
+"Come! now, on the contrary you are tightening your lips," said Marien,
+continuing to play with her as a cat plays with a mouse--provided there
+ever was a cat who, while playing with its mouse, had no intention
+of crunching it. "You are not merry, you are sad. That is not at all
+becoming to you."
+
+"Why do you attribute to me your own thoughts? It is you who will be
+glad to get rid of all this trouble."
+
+Fraulein Schult, who, while patiently adding stitch after stitch to the
+long strip of her crochet-work, was often much amused by the dialogues
+between sitter and painter, pricked up her ears to hear what a Frenchman
+would say to what was evidently intended to provoke a compliment.
+
+"On the contrary, I shall miss you very much," said Marien, quite
+simply; "I have grown accustomed to see you here. You have become one of
+the familiar objects of my studio. Your absence will create a void."
+
+"About as much as if this or that were gone," said Jacqueline, in a hurt
+tone, pointing first to a Japanese bronze and then to an Etruscan vase;
+"with only this difference, that you care least for the living object."
+
+"You are bitter, Mademoiselle."
+
+"Because you make me such provoking answers, Monsieur. My feeling
+is different," she went on impetuously, "I could pass my whole life
+watching you paint."
+
+"You would get tired of it probably in the long run."
+
+"Never!" she cried, blushing a deep red.
+
+"And you would have to put up with my pipe--that big pipe yonder--a
+horror."
+
+"I should like it," she cried, with conviction.
+
+"But you would not like my bad temper. If you knew how ill I can
+behave sometimes! I can scold, I can become unbearable, when this, for
+example," here he pointed with his mahlstick to the Savonarola, "does
+not please me."
+
+"But it is beautiful--so beautiful!"
+
+"It is detestable. I shall have to go back some day and renew my
+impressions of Florence--see once more the Piazze of the Signora and
+San Marco--and then I shall begin my picture all over again. Let us go
+together--will you?"
+
+"Oh!" she cried, fervently, "think of seeing Italy!--and with you!"
+
+"It might not be so great a pleasure as you think. Nothing is such a
+bore as to travel with people who are pervaded by one idea, and my
+'idee fixe' is my picture--my great Dominican. He has taken complete
+possession of me--he overshadows me. I can think of nothing but him."
+
+"Oh! but you think of me sometimes, I suppose," said Jacqueline, softly,
+"for I share your time with him."
+
+"I think of you to blame you for taking me away from the fifteenth
+century," replied Hubert Marien, half seriously. "Ouf!--There! it is
+done at last. That dimple I never could manage I have got in for better
+or for worse. Now you may fly off. I set you at liberty--you poor little
+thing!"
+
+She seemed in no hurry to profit by his permission. She stood perfectly
+still in the middle of the studio.
+
+"Do you think I have posed well, faithfully, and with docility all these
+weeks?" she asked at last.
+
+"I will give you a certificate to that effect, if you like. No one could
+have done better."
+
+"And if the certificate is not all I want, will you give me some other
+present?"
+
+"A beautiful portrait--what can you want more?"
+
+"The picture is for mamma. I ask a favor on my own account."
+
+"I refuse it beforehand. But you can tell me what it is, all the same."
+
+"Well, then--the only part of your house that I have ever been in is
+this atelier. You can imagine I have a curiosity to see the rest."
+
+"I see! you threaten me with a domiciliary visit without warning. Well!
+certainly, if that would give you any amusement. But my house contains
+nothing wonderful. I tell you that beforehand."
+
+"One likes to know how one's friends look at home--in their own setting,
+and I have only seen you here at work in your atelier."
+
+"The best point of view, believe me. But I am ready to do your bidding.
+Do you wish to see where I eat my dinner?" asked Marien, as he took her
+down the staircase leading to his dining-room.
+
+Fraulein Schult would have liked to go with them--it was, besides, her
+duty. But she had not been asked to fulfil it. She hesitated a moment,
+and in that moment Jacqueline had disappeared. After consideration, the
+'promeneuse' went on with her crochet, with a shrug of her shoulders
+which meant: "She can't come to much harm."
+
+Seated in the studio, she heard the sound of their voices on the floor
+below. Jacqueline was lingering in the fencing-room where Marien was in
+the habit of counteracting by athletic exercises the effects of a too
+sedentary life. She was amusing herself by fingering the dumb-bells and
+the foils; she lingered long before some precious suits of armor. Then
+she was taken up into a small room, communicating with the atelier,
+where there was a fine collection of drawings by the old masters. "My
+only luxury," said Marien.
+
+Mademoiselle Schult, getting impatient, began to roll up yards and
+yards of crochet, and coughed, by way of a signal, but remembering
+how disagreeable it would have been to herself to be interrupted in
+a tete-a-tete with her apothecary, she thought it not worth while to
+disturb them in these last moments. M. de Nailles's orders had been that
+she was to sit in the atelier. So she continued to sit there, doing what
+she had been told to do without any qualms of conscience.
+
+When Marien had shown Jacqueline all his drawings he asked her: "Are you
+satisfied?"
+
+But Jacqueline's hand was already on the portiere which separated the
+little room from Marien's bedchamber.
+
+"Oh! I beg pardon," she exclaimed, pausing on the threshold.
+
+"One would think you would like to see me asleep," said Marien with some
+little embarrassment.
+
+"I never should have thought your bedroom would have been so pretty.
+Why, it is as elegant as a lady's chamber," said Jacqueline, slipping
+into it as she spoke, with an exciting consciousness of doing something
+she ought not to do.
+
+"What an insult, when I thought all my tastes were simple and severe,"
+he replied; but he had not followed her into the chamber, withheld by
+an impulse of modesty men sometimes feel, when innocence is led into
+audacity through ignorance.
+
+"What lovely flowers you have!" said Jacqueline, from within. "Don't
+they make your head ache?"
+
+"I take them out at night."
+
+"I did not know that men liked, as we do, to be surrounded by flowers.
+Won't you give me one?"
+
+"All, if you like."
+
+"Oh! one pink will be enough for me."
+
+"Then take it," said Marien; her curiosity alarmed him, and he was
+anxious to get her away.
+
+"Would it not be nicer if you gave it me yourself?" she replied, with
+reproach in her tones.
+
+"Here is one, Mademoiselle. And now I must tell you that I want to
+dress. I have to go out immediately."
+
+She pinned the pink into her bodice so high that she could inhale its
+perfume.
+
+"I beg your pardon. Thank you, and good-by," she said, extending her
+hand to him with a sigh.
+
+"Au revoir."
+
+"Yes--'au revoir' at home--but that will not be like here."
+
+As she stood there before him there came into her eyes a strange
+expression, to which, without exactly knowing why, he replied by
+pressing his lips fervently on the little hand he was still holding in
+his own.
+
+Very often since her infancy he had kissed her before witnesses, but
+this time she gave a little cry, and turned as white as the flower whose
+petals were touching her cheek.
+
+Marien started back alarmed.
+
+"Good-by," he said in a tone that he endeavored to make careless--but in
+vain.
+
+Though she was much agitated herself she failed not to remark his
+emotion, and on the threshold of the atelier, she blew a kiss back to
+him from the tips of her gloved fingers, without speaking or smiling.
+Then she went back to Fraulein Schult, who was still sitting in the
+place where she had left her, and said: "Let us go."
+
+The next time Madame de Nailles saw her stepdaughter she was dazzled by
+a radiant look in her young face.
+
+"What has happened to you?" she asked, "you look triumphant."
+
+"Yes--I have good reason to triumph," said Jacqueline. "I think that I
+have won a victory."
+
+"How so? Over yourself?"
+
+"No, indeed--victories over one's self give us the comfort of a good
+conscience, but they do not make us gay--as I am."
+
+"Then tell me--"
+
+"No-no! I can not tell you yet. I must be silent two days more," said
+Jacqueline, throwing herself into her mother's arms.
+
+Madame de Nailles asked no more questions, but she looked at her
+stepdaughter with an air of great surprise. For some weeks past she had
+had no pleasure in looking at Jacqueline. She began to be aware that
+near her, at her side, an exquisite butterfly was about for the first
+time to spread its wings--wings of a radiant loveliness, which,
+when they fluttered in the air, would turn all eyes away from other
+butterflies, which had lost some of their freshness during the summer.
+
+A difficult task was before her. How could she keep this too precocious
+insect in its chrysalis state? How could she shut it up in its dark
+cocoon and retard its transformation?
+
+"Jacqueline," she said, and the tones of her voice were less soft than
+those in which she usually addressed her, "it seems to me that you
+are wasting your time a great deal. You hardly practise at all; you do
+almost nothing at the 'cours'. I don't know what can be distracting your
+attention from your lessons, but I have received complaints which should
+make a great girl like you ashamed of herself. Do you know what I am
+beginning to think?--That Madame de Monredon's system of education has
+done better than mine."
+
+"Oh! mamma, you can't be thinking of sending me to a convent!" cried
+Jacqueline, in tones of comic despair.
+
+"I did not say that--but I really think it might be good for you to make
+a retreat where your cousin Giselle is, instead of plunging into follies
+which interrupt your progress."
+
+"Do you call Madame d'Etaples's 'bal blanc' a folly?"
+
+"You certainly will not go to it--that is settled," said the young
+stepmother, dryly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. SURPRISES
+
+In all other ways Madame de Nailles did her best to assist in
+the success of the surprise. On the second of June, the eve of
+Ste.-Clotilde's day, she went out, leaving every opportunity for the
+grand plot to mature. Had she not absented herself in like manner the
+year before at the same date--thus enabling an upholsterer to drape
+artistically her little salon with beautiful thick silk tapestries which
+had just been imported from the East? Her idea was that this year she
+might find a certain lacquered screen which she coveted. The Baroness
+belonged to her period; she liked Japanese things. But, alas! the
+charming object that awaited her, with a curtain hung over it to prolong
+the suspense, had nothing Japanese about it whatever. Madame de Nailles
+received the good wishes of her family, responded to them with all
+proper cordiality, and then was dragged up joyously to a picture hanging
+on the wall of her room, but still concealed under the cloth that
+covered it.
+
+"How good of you!" she said, with all confidence to her husband.
+
+"It is a picture by Marien!--A portrait by Marien! A likeness of
+Jacqueline!"
+
+And he uncovered the masterpiece of the great artist, expecting to be
+joyous in the joy with which she would receive it. But something strange
+occurred. Madame de Nailles sprang back a step or two, stretching out
+her arms as if repelling an apparition, her face was distorted, her head
+was turned away; then she dropped into the nearest seat and burst into
+tears.
+
+"Mamma!--dear little mamma!--what is it?" cried Jacqueline, springing
+forward to kiss her.
+
+Madame de Nailles disengaged herself angrily from her embrace.
+
+"Let me alone!" she cried, "let me alone!--How dared you?"
+
+And impetuously, hardly restraining a gesture of horror and hate, she
+rushed into her own chamber. Thither her husband followed her, anxious
+and bewildered, and there he witnessed a nervous attack which ended in a
+torrent of reproaches:
+
+Was it possible that he had, not seen the impropriety of those sittings
+to Marien? Oh, yes! No doubt he was an old friend of the family, but
+that did not prevent all these deceptions, all these disguises, and
+all the other follies which he had sanctioned--he--Jacqueline's
+father!--from being very improper. Did he wish to take from her all
+authority over his child?--a girl who was already too much disposed to
+emancipate herself. Her own efforts had all been directed to curb this
+alarming propensity--yes, alarming--alarming for the future. And all in
+vain! There was no use in saying more. 'Mon Dieu'! had he no trust in
+her devotion to his child, in her prudence and her foresight, that he
+must thwart her thus? And she had always imagined that for ten years she
+had faithfully fulfilled a mother's duties! What ingratitude from every
+one! Mademoiselle Schult should be sent away at once. Jacqueline should
+go to a convent. They would break off all intercourse with Marien. They
+had conspired against her--every one.
+
+And then she wept more bitterly than ever--tears of rage, salt tears
+which rubbed the powder off her cheeks and disfigured the face that had
+remained beautiful by her power of will and self-control. But now the
+disorder of her nerves got the better of precautions. The blonde
+angel, whose beauty was on the wane, was transformed into a fury.
+Her six-and-thirty years were fully apparent, her complexion appeared
+slightly blotched, all her defects were obtrusive in contrast with the
+precocious development of beauty in Jacqueline. She was firmly resolved
+that her stepdaughter's obtrusive womanhood should remain in obscurity a
+very much longer time, under pretence that Jacqueline was still a child.
+She was a child, at any rate! The portrait was a lie! an imposture! an
+affront! an outrage!
+
+Meantime M. de Nailles, almost beside himself, fancied at first that
+his wife was going mad, but in the midst of her sobs and reproaches he
+managed to discover that he had somehow done her wrong, and when, with
+a broken voice, she cried, "You no longer love me!" he did not know
+what to do to prove how bitterly he repented having grieved her. He
+stammered, he made excuses, he owned that he had been to blame, that he
+had been very stupid, and he begged her pardon. As to the portrait,
+it should be taken from the salon, where, if seen, it might become a
+pretext for foolish compliments to Jacqueline. Why not send it at once
+to Grandchaux? In short, he would do anything she wished, provided she
+would leave off crying.
+
+But Madame de Nailles continued to weep. Her husband was forced at last
+to leave her and to return to Jacqueline, who stood petrified in the
+salon.
+
+"Yes," he said, "your mamma is right. We have made a deplorable mistake
+in what we have done. Besides, you must know that this unlucky picture
+is not in the least like you. Marien has made some use of your features
+to paint a fancy portrait--so we will let nobody see it. They might
+laugh at you."
+
+In this way he hoped to repair the evil he had done in flattering his
+daughter's vanity, and promoting that dangerous spirit of independence,
+denounced to him a few minutes before, but of which, up to that time, he
+had never heard.
+
+Jacqueline, in her turn, began to sob.
+
+Mademoiselle Schult had cause, too, to wipe her eyes, pretending a more
+or less sincere repentance for her share in the deception. Vigorously
+cross-questioned by Madame de Nailles, who called upon her to tell all
+she knew, under pain of being dismissed immediately, she saw but one way
+of retaining her situation, which was to deliver up Jacqueline, bound
+hand and foot, to the anger of her stepmother, by telling all she knew
+of the childish romance of which she had been the confidante. As a
+reward she was permitted (as she had foreseen) to retain her place in
+the character of a spy.
+
+It was a sad Ste.-Clotilde's day that year. Marien, who came in the
+evening, heard with surprise that the Baroness was indisposed and could
+see no one. For twelve days after this he continued in disgrace, being
+refused admittance when he called. Those twelve days were days of
+anguish for Jacqueline. To see Marien no longer, to be treated with
+coldness by her father, to see in the blue eyes of her stepmother--eyes
+so soft and tender when they looked upon her hitherto--only a harsh,
+mistrustful glare, almost a look of hatred, was a punishment greater
+than she could bear. What had she done to deserve punishment? Of what
+was she accused? She spoke of her wretchedness to Fraulein Schult, who,
+perfidiously, day after day, drew from her something to report to Madame
+de Nailles. That lady was somewhat consoled, while suffering tortures
+of jealousy, to know that the girl to whom these sufferings were due was
+paying dearly for her fault and was very unhappy.
+
+On the twelfth day something occurred which, though it made no noise in
+the household, had very serious consequences. The effect it produced
+on Jacqueline was decisive and deplorable. The poor child, after
+going through all the states of mind endured by those who suffer
+under unmerited disgrace--revolt, indignation, sulkiness, silent
+obstinacy--felt unable to bear it longer. She resolved to humble
+herself, hoping that by so doing the wall of ice that had arisen between
+her stepmother and herself might be cast down. By this time she cared
+less to know of what fault she was supposed to be guilty than to be
+taken back into favor as before. What must she do to obtain forgiveness?
+Explanations are usually worthless; besides, none might be granted
+her. She remembered that when she was a small child she had obtained
+immediate oblivion of any fault by throwing herself impulsively into the
+arms of her little mamma, and asking her to forget whatever she had done
+to displease her, for she had not done it on purpose. She would do the
+same thing now. Putting aside all pride and obstinacy, she would go
+to this mamma, who, for some days, had seemed so different. She would
+smother her in kisses. She might possibly be repelled at first. She
+would not mind it. She was sure that in the end she would be forgiven.
+
+No sooner was this resolution formed than she hastened to put it into
+execution. It was the time of day when Madame de Nailles was usually
+alone. Jacqueline went to her bedchamber, but she was not there, and a
+moment after she stood on the threshold of the little salon. There she
+stopped short, not quite certain how she should proceed, asking herself
+what would be her reception.
+
+"How shall I do it?" she thought. "How had I better do it?"
+
+"Bah!" she answered these doubts. "It will be very easy. I will go in on
+tiptoe, so that she can't hear me. I will slip behind her chair, and
+I will hug her suddenly, so tight, so tenderly, and kiss her till she
+tells me that all has been forgiven."
+
+As she thought thus Jacqueline noiselessly opened the door of the salon,
+over which, on the inner side, hung a thick plush 'portiere'. But as
+she was about to lift it, the sound of a voice within made her stand
+motionless. She recognized the tones of Marien. He was pleading,
+imploring, interrupted now and then by the sharp and still angry voice
+of her mamma. They were not speaking above their breath, but if she
+listened she could hear them, and, without any scruples of conscience,
+she did listen intently, anxious to see her way through the dark fog in
+which, for twelve days, she had wandered.
+
+"I do not go quite so far as that," said Madame de Nailles, dryly. "It
+is enough for me that she produced an illusion of such beauty upon you.
+Now I know what to expect--"
+
+"That is nonsense," replied Marien--"mere foolishness. You jealous!
+jealous of a baby whom I knew when she wore white pinafores, who has
+grown up under my very eyes? But, so far as I am concerned, she exists
+no longer. She is not, she never will be in my eyes, a woman. I shall
+think of her as playing with her doll, eating sugar-plums, and so on."
+
+Jacqueline grew faint. She shivered and leaned against the door-post.
+
+"One would not suppose so, to judge by the picture with which she has
+inspired you. You may say what you like, but I know that in all this
+there was a set purpose to insult me."
+
+"Clotilde!"
+
+"In the first place, on no pretext ought you to have been induced to
+paint her portrait."
+
+"Do you think so? Consider, had I refused, the danger of awakening
+suspicion? I accepted the commission most unwillingly, much put out
+by it, as you may suppose. But you are making too much of an imaginary
+fault. Consign the wretched picture to the barn, if you like. We will
+never say another word about so foolish a matter. You promise me to
+forget it, won't you?... Dear! you will promise me?" he added, after a
+pause.
+
+Madame de Nailles sighed and replied: "If not she it will be some one
+else. I am very unhappy.... I am weak and contemptible...."
+
+"Clotilde!" replied Marien, in an accent that went to Jacqueline's heart
+like a knife.
+
+She fancied that after this she heard the sound of a kiss, and, with
+her cheeks aflame and her head burning, she rushed away. She understood
+little of what she had overheard. She only realized that he had
+given her up, that he had turned her into ridicule, that he had said
+"Clotilde!" to her mother, that he had called her dear--she!--the woman
+she had so adored, so venerated, her best friend, her father's wife,
+her mother by adoption! Everything in this world seemed to be giving
+way under her feet. The world was full of falsehood and of treason, and
+life, so bad, so cruel, was no longer what she had supposed it to be. It
+had broken its promise to herself, it had made her bad--bad forever. She
+loved no one, she believed in no one. She wished she were dead.
+
+How she reached her own room in this state Jacqueline never knew. She
+was aware at last of being on her knees beside her bed, with her face
+hidden in the bed-clothes. She was biting them to stifle her desire to
+scream. Her hands were clenched convulsively.
+
+"Mamma!" she cried, "mamma!"
+
+Was this a reproach addressed to her she had so long called by that
+name? Or was it an appeal, vibrating with remorse, to her real mother,
+so long forgotten in favor of this false idol, her rival, her enemy?
+
+Undoubtedly, Jacqueline was too innocent, too ignorant to guess the real
+truth from what she had overheard. But she had learned enough to be no
+longer the pure-minded young girl of a few hours before. It seemed to
+her as if a fetid swamp now lay before her, barring her entrance into
+life. Vague as her perceptions were, this swamp before her seemed more
+deep, more dark, more dreadful from uncertainty, and Jacqueline felt
+that thenceforward she could make no step in life without risk
+of falling into it. To whom now could she open her heart in
+confidence--that heart bleeding and bruised as if it had been trampled
+one as if some one had crushed it? The thing that she now knew was
+not like her own little personal secrets, such as she had imprudently
+confided to Fraulein Schult. The words that she had overheard she could
+repeat to no one. She must carry them in her heart, like the barb of an
+arrow in a secret wound, where they would fester and grow more painful
+day by day.
+
+"But, above all," she said at length, rising from her knees, "let me
+show proper pride."
+
+She bathed her fevered face in cold water, then she walked up to her
+mirror. As she gazed at herself with a strange interest, trying to see
+whether the entire change so suddenly accomplished in herself had left
+its visible traces on her features, she seemed to see something in her
+eyes that spoke of the clairvoyance of despair. She smiled at herself,
+to see whether the new Jacqueline could play the part, which--whether
+she would or not--was now assigned to her. What a sad smile it was!
+
+"I have lost everything," she said, "I have lost everything!" And she
+remembered, as one remembers something in the far-off long ago, how that
+very morning, when she awoke, her first thought had been "Shall I see
+him to-day?" Each day she passed without seeing him had seemed to her a
+lost day, and she had accustomed herself to go to sleep thinking of him,
+remembering all he had said to her, and how he had looked at her. Of
+course, sometimes she had been unhappy, but what a difference it seemed
+between such vague unhappiness and what she now experienced? And then,
+when she was sad, she could always find a refuge in that dear mamma--in
+that Clotilde whom she vowed she would never kiss again, except with
+such kisses as might be necessary to avoid suspicion. Kisses of that
+kind were worth nothing. Quite the contrary! Could she kiss her father
+now without a pang? Her father! He had gone wholly over to the side of
+that other in this affair. She had seen him in one moment turn against
+herself. No!--no one was left her!... If she could only lay her head in
+Modeste's lap and be soothed while she crooned her old songs as in the
+nursery! But, whatever Marien or any one else might choose to say, she
+was no longer a baby. The bitter sense of her isolation arose in her.
+She could hardly breathe. Suddenly she pressed her lips upon the glass
+which reflected her own image, so sad, so pale, so desolate. She put the
+pity for herself into a long, long, fervent kiss, which seemed to say:
+"Yes, I am all alone--alone forever." Then, in a spirit of revenge, she
+opened what seemed a safety-valve, preventing her from giving way to any
+other emotion.
+
+She rushed for a little box which she had converted into a sort of
+reliquary. She took out of it the half-burned cigarette, the old glove,
+the withered violets, and a visiting-card with his name, on which three
+unimportant lines had been written. She insulted these keepsakes, she
+tore them with her nails, she trampled them underfoot, she reduced
+them to fragments; she left nothing whatever of them, except a pile of
+shreds, which at last she set fire to. She had a feeling as if she were
+employed in executing two great culprits, who deserved cruel tortures
+at her hands; and, with them, she slew now and forever the foolish fancy
+she had called her love. By a strange association of ideas, the famous
+composition, so praised by M. Regis, came back to her memory, and she
+cried:
+
+     "Je ne veux me souvenir.... me souvenir de rien!"
+
+"If I remember, I shall be more unhappy. All has been a dream. His
+look was a dream, his pressure of my hand, his kiss on the last day,
+all--all--were dreams. He was making a fool of me when he gave me that
+pink which is now in this pile of ashes. He was laughing when he told me
+I was more beautiful than was natural. Never have I been--never shall I
+be in his eyes--more than the baby he remembers playing with her doll."
+
+And unconsciously, as Jacqueline said these words, she imitated the
+careless accent with which she had heard them fall from the lips of the
+artist. And she would have again to meet him! If she had had thunder and
+lightning at her command, as she had had the match with which she had
+set fire to the memorials of her juvenile folly, Marien would have been
+annihilated on the spot. She was at that moment a murderess at heart.
+But the dinner-bell rang. The young fury gave a last glance at the
+adornments of her pretty bedchamber, so elegant, so original--all blue
+and pink, with a couch covered with silk embroidered with flowers. She
+seemed to say to them all: "Keep my secret. It is a sad one. Be careful:
+keep it safely." The cupids on the clock, the little book-rest on a
+velvet stand, the picture of the Virgin that hung over her bed,
+with rosaries and palms entwined about it, the photographs of her
+girl-friends standing on her writing table in pretty frames of
+old-fashioned silk-all seemed to see her depart with a look of sympathy.
+
+She went down to the dining-room, resolved to prove that she would not
+submit to punishment. The best way to brave Madame de Nailles was, she
+thought, to affect great calmness and indifference, aye, even, if she
+could, some gayety. But the task before her was more difficult than she
+had expected. Apparently, as a proof of reconciliation, Marien had been
+kept to dinner. To see him so soon again after his words of outrage was
+more than she could bear. For one moment the earth seemed to sink under
+her feet; she roused her pride by an heroic effort, and that sustained
+her. She exchanged with the artist, as she always did, a friendly
+"Good-evening!" and ate her dinner, though it nearly choked her.
+
+Madame de Nailles had red eyes; and Jacqueline made the reflection that
+women who are thirty-five should never weep. She knew that her face
+had not been made ugly by her tears, and this gave her a perverse
+satisfaction in the midst of her misery. Of Marien she thought: "He
+sits there as if he had been put 'en penitence'." No doubt he could not
+endure scenes, and the one he had just passed through must have given
+him the downcast look which Jacqueline noticed with contempt.
+
+What she did not know was that his depression had more than one cause.
+He felt--and felt with shame and with discouragement--that the fetters
+of a connection which had long since ceased to charm had been fastened
+on his wrists tighter than ever; and he thought: "I shall lose all my
+energy, I shall lose even my talent! While I wear these chains I shall
+see ever before me--ah! tortures of Tantalus!--the vision of a new love,
+fresh as the dawn which beckons to me as it passes before my sight,
+which lays on me the light touch of a caress, while I am forced to see
+it glide away, to let it vanish, disappear forever! And alas! that is
+not all. If I have deceived an inexperienced heart by words spoken or
+deeds done in a moment of weakness or temptation, can I flatter myself
+that I have acted like an honest man?"
+
+This is what Marien was really thinking, while Jacqueline looked at
+him with an expression she strove to make indifferent, but which he
+interpreted, though she knew it not: "You have done me all the harm you
+can."
+
+M. de Nailles meantime went on talking, with little response from his
+wife or his guest, about some vehement discussion of a new law going
+on just then in the Chamber, and he became so interested in his own
+discourse that he did not remark the constraint of the others.
+
+Marien at last, tired of responding in monosyllables to his remarks,
+said abruptly, a short time before dessert was placed upon the table,
+something about the probability of his soon going to Italy.
+
+"A pilgrimage of art to Florence!" cried the Baron, turning at once from
+politics. "That's good. But wait a little--let it be after the rising
+of the Chamber. We will follow your steps. It has been the desire of my
+wife's life--a little jaunt to Italy. Has it not, Clotilde? So we will
+all go in September or October. What say you?"
+
+"In September or October, whichever suits you," said Marien, with
+despair.
+
+Not one month of liberty! Why couldn't they leave him to his Savanarola!
+Must he drag about a ball and chain like a galley-slave?
+
+Clotilde rewarded M. de Nailles with a smile--the first smile she had
+given him since their quarrel about Jacqueline.
+
+"My wife has got over her displeasure," he said to himself, delightedly.
+
+Jacqueline, on her part, well remembered the day when Hubert had spoken
+to her for the first time of his intended journey, and how he had added,
+in a tone which she now knew to be badinage, but which then, alas! she
+had believed serious: "Suppose we go together!"
+
+And her impulse to shed tears became so great, that when they left the
+dinner-table she escaped to her own room, under pretence of a headache.
+
+"Yes--you are looking wretchedly," said her stepmother. And, turning to
+M. de Nailles, she added: "Don't you think, 'mon ami', she is as yellow
+as a quince!" Marien dared not press the hand which she, who had been
+his little friend for years, offered him as usual, but this time with
+repugnance.
+
+"You are suffering, my poor Jacqueline!" he ventured to say.
+
+"Oh! not much," she answered, with a glance at once haughty and defiant,
+"to-morrow I shall be quite well again."
+
+And, saying this, she had the courage to laugh.
+
+But she was not quite well the next day; and for many days after she was
+forced to stay in bed. The doctor who came to see her talked about "low
+fever," attributed it to too rapid growth, and prescribed sea-bathing
+for her that summer. The fever, which was not very severe, was of great
+service to Jacqueline. It enabled her to recover in quiet from the
+effects of a bitter deception.
+
+Madame de Nailles was not sufficiently uneasy about her to be always
+at her bedside. Usually the sick girl stayed alone, with her
+window-curtains closed, lying there in the soft half-light that was
+soothing to her nerves. The silence was broken at intervals by the voice
+of Modeste, who would come and offer her her medicine. When Jacqueline
+had taken it, she would shut her eyes, and resume, half asleep, her sad
+reflections. These were always the same. What could be the tie between
+her stepmother and Marien?
+
+She tried to recall all the proofs of friendship she had seen pass
+between them, but all had taken place openly. Nothing that she could
+remember seemed suspicious. So she thought at first, but as she thought
+more, lying, feverish, upon her bed, several things, little noticed at
+the time, were recalled to her remembrance. They might mean nothing,
+or they might mean much. In the latter case, Jacqueline could not
+understand them very well. But she knew he had called her "Clotilde,"
+that he had even dared to say "thou" to her in private--these were
+things she knew of her own knowledge. Her pulse beat quicker as she
+thought of them; her head burned. In that studio, where she had passed
+so many happy hours, had Marien and her stepmother ever met as lovers?
+
+Her stepmother and Marien! She could not understand what it meant. Must
+she apply to them a dreadful word that she had picked up in the history
+books, where it had been associated with such women as Margaret of
+Burgundy, Isabeau of Bavaria, Anne Boleyn, and other princesses of very
+evil reputation? She had looked it out in the dictionary, where the
+meaning given was: "To be unfaithful to conjugal vows." Even then she
+could not understand precisely the meaning of adultery, and she
+set herself to solve it during the long lonely days when she was
+convalescent. When she was able to walk from one room to another, she
+wandered in a loose dressing-gown, whose long, lank folds showed that
+she had grown taller and thinner during her illness, into the room that
+held the books, and went boldly up to the bookcase, the key of which
+had been left in the lock, for everybody had entire confidence in
+Jacqueline's scrupulous honesty. Never before had she broken a promise;
+she knew that a well-brought-up young girl ought to read only such
+books as were put into her hands. The idea of taking a volume from those
+shelves had no more occurred to her than the idea of taking money out of
+somebody's purse; that is, up to this moment it had not occurred to her
+to do so; but now that she had lost all respect for those in authority
+over her, Jacqueline considered herself released from any obligation
+to obey them. She therefore made use of the first opportunity that
+presented itself to take down a novel of George Sand, which she had
+heard spoken of as a very dangerous book, not doubting it would throw
+some light on the subject that absorbed her. But she shut up the volume
+in a rage when she found that it had nothing but excuses to offer for
+the fall of a married woman. After that, and guided only by chance, she
+read a number of other novels, most of which were of antediluvian date,
+thus accounting, she supposed, for their sentiments, which she found old
+fashioned. We should be wrong, however, if we supposed that Jacqueline's
+crude judgment of these books had nothing in common with true criticism.
+Her only object, however, in reading all this sentimental prose was to
+discover, as formerly she had found in poetry, something that applied to
+her own case; but she soon discovered that all the sentimental heroines
+in the so-called bad books were persons who had had bad husbands;
+besides, they were either widows or old women--at least thirty years
+old! It was astounding! There was nothing--absolutely nothing--about
+young girls, except instances in which they renounced their hopes of
+happiness. What an injustice! Among these victims the two that most
+attracted her sympathy were Madame de Camors and Renee Mauperin. But
+what horrors surrounded them! What a varied assortment of deceptions,
+treacheries, and mysteries, lay hidden under the outward decency and
+respectability of what men called "the world!" Her young head became a
+stage on which strange plays were acted. What one reads is good or bad
+for us, according to the frame of mind in which we read it--according
+as we discover in a volume healing for the sickness of our souls--or the
+contrary. In view of the circumstances in which she found herself, what
+Jacqueline absorbed from these books was poison.
+
+When, after the physical and moral crisis through which she had passed,
+Jacqueline resumed the life of every day, she had in her sad eyes,
+around which for some time past had been dark circles, an expression of
+anxiety such as the first contact with a knowledge of evil might have
+put into Eve's eyes after she had plucked the apple. Her investigations
+had very imperfectly enlightened her. She was as much perplexed as ever,
+with some false ideas besides. When she was well again, however, she
+continued weak and languid; she felt somehow as if, she had come back to
+her old surroundings from some place far away. Everything about her now
+seemed sad and unfamiliar, though outwardly nothing was altered. Her
+parents had apparently forgotten the unhappy episode of the picture.
+It had been sent away to Grandchaux, which was tantamount to its being
+buried. Hubert Marien had resumed his habits of intimacy in the family.
+From that time forth he took less and less notice of Jacqueline--whether
+it were that he owed her a grudge for all the annoyance she had been the
+means of bringing upon him, or whether he feared to burn himself in the
+flame which had once scorched him more than he admitted to himself, who
+can say? Perhaps he was only acting in obedience to orders.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. A CONVENT FLOWER
+
+One of Jacqueline's first walks, after she had recovered, was to see her
+cousin Giselle at her convent. She did not seek this friend's society
+when she was happy and in a humor for amusement, for she thought her a
+little straightlaced, or, as she said, too like a nun; but nobody could
+condole or sympathize with a friend in trouble like Giselle. It seemed
+as if nature herself had intended her for a Sister of Charity--a Gray
+Sister, as Jacqueline would sometimes call her, making fun of
+her somewhat dull intellect, which had been benumbed, rather than
+stimulated, by the education she had received.
+
+The Benedictine Convent is situated in a dull street on the left bank
+of the Seine, all gardens and hotels--that is, detached houses.
+Grass sprouted here and there among the cobblestones. There were no
+street-lamps and no policemen. Profound silence reigned there. The
+petals of an acacia, which peeped timidly over its high wall, dropped,
+like flakes of snow, on the few pedestrians who passed by it in the
+springtime.
+
+The enormous porte-cochere gave entrance into a square courtyard, on one
+side of which was the chapel, on the other, the door that led into
+the convent. Here Jacqueline presented herself, accompanied by her old
+nurse, Modeste. She had not yet resumed her German lessons, and was
+striving to put off as long as possible any intercourse with Fraulein
+Schult, who had known of her foolish fancy, and who might perhaps renew
+the odious subject. Walking with Modeste, on the contrary, seemed
+like going back to the days of her childhood, the remembrance of which
+soothed her like a recollection of happiness and peace, now very far
+away; it was a reminiscence of the far-off limbo in which her young
+soul, pure and white, had floated, without rapture, but without any
+great grief or pain.
+
+The porteress showed them into the parlor. There they found several
+pupils who were talking to members of their families, from whom they
+were separated by a grille, whose black bars gave to those within
+the appearance of captives, and made rather a barrier to eager
+demonstrations of affection, though they did not hinder the reception of
+good things to eat.
+
+"Tiens! I have brought you some chocolate," said Jacqueline to Giselle,
+as soon as her cousin appeared, looking far prettier in her black cloth
+frock than when she wore an ordinary walking-costume. Her fair hair was
+drawn back 'a la Chinoise' from a white forehead resembling that of a
+German Madonna; it was one of those foreheads, slightly and delicately
+curved, which phrenologists tell us indicate reflection and enthusiasm.
+
+But Giselle, without thanking Jacqueline for the chocolate, exclaimed at
+once: "Mon Dieu! What has been the matter with you?"
+
+She spoke rather louder than usual, it being understood that
+conversations were to be carried on in a low tone, so as not to
+interfere with those of other persons. She added: "I find you so
+altered."
+
+"Yes--I have been ill," said Jacqueline, carelessly, "sorrow has made me
+ill," she added, in a whisper, looking to see whether the nun, who was
+discreetly keeping watch, walking to and fro behind the grille, might
+chance to be listening. "Oh, ask me no questions! I must never tell
+you--but for me, you must know--the happiness of my life is at an
+end--is at an end--"
+
+She felt herself to be very interesting while she was speaking thus; her
+sorrows were somewhat assuaged. There was undoubtedly a certain pleasure
+in letting some one look down into the unfathomable, mysterious depths
+of a suffering soul.
+
+She had expected much curiosity on the part of Giselle, and had resolved
+beforehand to give her no answers; but Giselle only sighed, and said,
+softly:
+
+"Ah--my poor darling! I, too, am very unhappy. If you only knew--"
+
+"How? Good heavens! what can have happened to you here?"
+
+"Here? oh! nothing, of course; but this year I am to leave the
+convent--and I think I can guess what will then be before me."
+
+Here, seeing that the nun who was keeping guard was listening, Giselle,
+with great presence of mind, spoke louder on indifferent subjects till
+she had passed out of earshot, then she rapidly poured her secret into
+Jacqueline's ear.
+
+From a few words that had passed between her grandmother and Madame
+d'Argy, she had found out that Madame de Monredon intended to marry her.
+
+"But that need not make you unhappy," said Jacqueline, "unless he is
+really distasteful to you."
+
+"That is what I am not sure about--perhaps he is not the one I think.
+But I hardly know why--I have a dread, a great dread, that it is one of
+our neighbors in the country. Grandmamma has several times spoken in my
+presence of the advantage of uniting our two estates--they touch each
+other--oh! I know her ideas! she wants a man well-born, one who has a
+position in the world--some one, as she says, who knows something of
+life--that is, I suppose, some one no longer young, and who has not much
+hair on his head--like Monsieur de Talbrun."
+
+"Is he very ugly--this Monsieur de Talbrun?"
+
+"He's not ugly--and not handsome. But, just think! he is thirty-four!"
+
+Jacqueline blushed, seeing in this speech a reflection on her own taste
+in such matters.
+
+"That's twice my age," sighed Giselle.
+
+"Of course that would be dreadful if he were to stay always twice your
+age--for instance, if you were now thirty-five, he would be seventy, and
+a hundred and twenty when you reached your sixtieth year--but really
+to be twice your age now will only make him seventeen years older than
+yourself."
+
+In the midst of this chatter, which was beginning to attract the notice
+of the nun, they broke off with a laugh, but it was only one of those
+laughs 'au bout des levres', uttered by persons who have made up their
+minds to be unhappy. Then Giselle went on:
+
+"I know nothing about him, you understand--but he frightens me. I
+tremble to think of taking his arm, of talking to him, of being his
+wife. Just think even of saying thou to him!"
+
+"But married people don't say thou to each other nowadays," said
+Jacqueline, "it is considered vulgar."
+
+"But I shall have to call him by his Christian name!"
+
+"What is Monsieur de Talbrun's Christian name?"
+
+"Oscar."
+
+"Humph! That is not a very pretty name, but you could get over the
+difficulty--you could say 'mon ami'. After all, your sorrows are less
+than mine."
+
+"Poor Jacqueline!" said Giselle, her soft hazel eyes moist with
+sympathy.
+
+"I have lost at one blow all my illusions, and I have made a
+horrible discovery, that it would be wicked to tell to any one--you
+understand--not even to my confessor."
+
+"Heavens! but you could tell your mother!"
+
+"You forget, I have no mother," replied Jacqueline in a tone which
+frightened her friend: "I had a dear mamma once, but she would enter
+less than any one into my sorrows; and as to my father--it would make
+things worse to speak to him," she added, clasping her hands. "Have you
+ever read any novels, Giselle?"
+
+"Hem!" said the discreet voice of the nun, by way of warning.
+
+"Two or three by Walter Scott."
+
+"Oh! then you can imagine nothing like what I could tell you. How horrid
+that nun is, she stops always as she comes near us! Why can't she do as
+Modeste does, and leave us to talk by ourselves?"
+
+It seemed indeed as if the Argus in a black veil had overheard part of
+this conversation, not perhaps the griefs of Jacqueline, which were not
+very intelligible, but some of the words spoken by Giselle, for, drawing
+near her, she said, gently: "We, too, shall all grieve to lose you, my
+dearest child; but remember one can serve God anywhere, and save one's
+soul--in the world as well as in a convent." And she passed on, giving
+a kind smile to Jacqueline, whom she knew, having seen her several times
+in the convent parlor, and whom she thought a nice girl, notwithstanding
+what she called her "fly-away airs"--"the airs they acquire from modern
+education," she said to herself, with a sigh.
+
+"Those poor ladies would have us think of nothing but a future life,"
+said Jacqueline, shrugging her shoulders.
+
+"We ought to think of it first of all," said Giselle, who had become
+serious. "Sometimes I think my place should have been among these ladies
+who have brought me up. They are so good, and they seem to be so happy.
+Besides, do you know, I stand less in awe of them than I do of my
+grandmother. When grandmamma orders me I never shall dare to object,
+even if--But you must think me very selfish, my poor Jacqueline! I am
+talking only of myself. Do you know what you ought to do as you go away?
+You should go into the chapel, and pray with all your heart for me, that
+I may be brought in safety through my troubles about which I have told
+you, and I will do the same for yours, about which you have not told
+me. An exchange of prayers is the best foundation for a friendship," she
+added; for Giselle had many little convent maxims at her fingers' ends,
+to which, when she uttered them, her sincerity of look and tone gave a
+personal meaning.
+
+"You are right," said Jacqueline, much moved. "It has done me good to
+see you. Take this chocolate."
+
+"And you must take this," said Giselle, giving her a little illuminated
+card, with sacred words and symbols.
+
+"Adieu, dearest-say, have you ever detested any one?"
+
+"Never!" cried Giselle, with horror.
+
+"Well! I do detest--detest--You are right, I will go into the chapel. I
+need some exorcism."
+
+And laughing at her use of this last word--the same little mirthless
+laugh that she had uttered before--Jacqueline went away, followed by the
+admiring glances of the other girls, who from behind the bars of their
+cage noted the brilliant plumage of this bird who was at liberty. She
+crossed the courtyard, and, followed by Modeste, entered the chapel,
+where she sank upon her knees. The mystic half-light of the place,
+tinged purple by its passage through the stained windows, seemed to
+enlarge the little chancel, parted in two by a double grille, behind
+which the nuns could hear the service without being seen.
+
+The silence was so deep that the low murmur of a prayer could now and
+then be heard. The worshipers might have fancied themselves a hundred
+leagues from all the noises of the world, which seemed to die out when
+they reached the convent walls.
+
+Jacqueline read, and re-read mechanically, the words printed in letters
+of gold on the little card Giselle had given her. It was a symbolical
+picture, and very ugly; but the words were: "Oh! that I had wings like a
+dove, for then would I flee away and be at rest."
+
+"Wings!" she repeated, with vague aspiration. The aspiration seemed to
+disengage her from herself, and from this earth, which had nothing more
+to offer her. Ah! how far away was now the time when she had entered
+churches, full of happiness and hope, to offer a candle that her prayer
+might be granted, which she felt sure it would be! All was vanity! As
+she gazed at the grille, behind which so many women, whose worldly lives
+had been cut short, now lived, safe from the sorrows and temptations
+of this world, Jacqueline seemed for the first time to understand why
+Giselle regretted that she might not share forever the blessed peace
+enjoyed in the convent. A torpor stole over her, caused by the dimness,
+the faint odor of the incense, and the solemn silence. She imagined
+herself in the act of giving up the world. She saw herself in a veil,
+with her eyes raised to Heaven, very pale, standing behind the grille.
+She would have to cut off her hair.
+
+That seemed hard, but she would make the sacrifice. She would accept
+anything, provided the ungrateful pair, whom she would not name, could
+feel sorrow for her loss--maybe even remorse. Full of these ideas, which
+certainly had little in common with the feelings of those who seek to
+forgive those who trespass against them, Jacqueline continued to imagine
+herself a Benedictine sister, under the soothing influence of her
+surroundings, just as she had mistaken the effects of physical weakness
+when she was ill for a desire to die. Such feelings were the result of a
+void which the whole universe, as she thought, never could fill, but it
+was really a temporary vacuum, like that caused by the loss of a first
+tooth. These teeth come out with the first jar, and nature intends them
+to be speedily replaced by others, much more permanent; but children cry
+when they are pulled out, and fancy they are in very tight. Perhaps they
+suffer, after all, nearly as much as they think they do.
+
+"Mademoiselle!" said Modeste, touching her on the shoulder.
+
+"I was content to be here," answered Jacqueline, with a sigh. "Do you
+know, Modeste," she went on, when they got out of doors, "that I have
+almost made up my mind to be a nun. What do you say to that?"
+
+"Heaven forbid!" cried the old nurse, much startled.
+
+"Life is so hard," replied her young mistress.
+
+"Not for you, anyhow. It would be a sin to say so."
+
+"Ah! Modeste, we so little know the real truth of things--we can see
+only appearances. Don't you think that a linen band over my forehead
+would be very becoming to me? I should look like Saint Theresa."
+
+"And what would be the good of your looking like Saint Theresa, when
+there would be nobody to tell you so?" said Modeste, with the practical
+good-sense that never forsook her. "You would be beautiful for yourself
+alone. You would not even be allowed a looking-glass just talk about
+that fancy to Monsieur--we should soon see what he would say to such a
+notion."
+
+M. de Nailles, having just left the Chamber, was crossing the Pont de la
+Concorde on foot at this moment. His daughter ran up to him, and caught
+him by the arm. They walked homeward talking of very different things
+from bolts and bars. The Baron, who was a weak man, thought in his heart
+that he had been too severe with his daughter for some time past. As
+he recalled what had taken place, the anger of Madame de Nailles in
+the matter of the picture seemed to him to have been extreme and
+unnecessary. Jacqueline was just at an age when young girls are apt to
+be nervous and impressionable; they had been wrong to be rough with
+one who was so sensitive. His wife was quite of his opinion, she
+acknowledged (not wishing him to think too much on the subject) that she
+had been too quick-tempered.
+
+"Yes," she had said, frankly, "I am jealous; I want things to myself. I
+own I was angry when I thought that Jacqueline was about to throw off
+my authority, and hurt when I found she was capable of keeping up a
+concealment--when I believed she was so open always with me. My behavior
+was foolish, I acknowledge. But what can we do? Neither of us can go and
+ask her pardon?"
+
+"Of course not," said the father, "all we can do is to treat her with a
+little more consideration for the future; and, with your permission, I
+shall use her illness as an excuse for spoiling her a little."
+
+"You have carte blanche, my dear, I agree to everything." So M. de
+Nailles, with his daughter's arm in his, began to spoil her, as he had
+intended.
+
+"You are still rather pale," he said, "but sea-bathing will change all
+that. Would you like to go to the seaside next month?"
+
+Jacqueline answered with a little incredulous smile:
+
+"Oh, certainly, papa."
+
+"You don't seem very sure about it. In the first place, where shall we
+go? Your mamma seems to fancy Houlgate?"
+
+"Of course we must do what she wishes," replied Jacqueline, rather
+bitterly.
+
+"But, little daughter, what would you like? What do you say to Treport?"
+
+"I should like Treport very much, because there we should be near Madame
+d'Argy."
+
+Jacqueline had felt much drawn to Madame d'Argy since her troubles, for
+she had been the nearest friend of her own mother--her own dead mother,
+too long forgotten. The chateau of Madame d'Argy, called Lizerolles, was
+only two miles from Treport, in a charming situation on the road to St.
+Valery.
+
+"That's the very thing, then!" said M. de Nailles.
+
+"Fred is going to spend a month at Lizerolles with his mother. You might
+ride on horseback with him. He is going to enjoy a holiday, poor fellow!
+before he has to be sent off on long and distant voyages."
+
+"I don't know how to ride," said Jacqueline, still in the tone of a
+victim.
+
+"The doctor thinks riding would be good for you, and you have time
+enough yet to take some lessons. Mademoiselle Schult could take you
+nine or ten times to the riding-school. And I will go with you the first
+time," added M. de Nailles, in despair at not having been able to
+please her. "To-day we will go to Blackfern's and order a habit--a
+riding-habit! Can I do more?"
+
+At this, as if by magic, whether she would or not, the lines of sadness
+and sullenness disappeared from Jacqueline's face; her eyes sparkled.
+She gave one more proof, that to every Parisienne worthy of the name,
+the two pleasures in riding are, first to have a perfectly fitting
+habit, secondly, to have the opportunity of showing how pretty she can
+be after a new fashion.
+
+"Shall we go to Blackfern's now?"
+
+"This very moment, if you wish it."
+
+"You really mean Blackfern? Yvonne's habit came from Blackfern's!"
+Yvonne d'Etaples was the incarnation of chic--of fashionable
+elegance--in Jacqueline's eyes. Her heart beat with pleasure when she
+thought how Belle and Dolly would envy her when she told them: "I have
+a myrtle-green riding-habit, just like Yvonne's." She danced rather than
+walked as they went together to Blackfern's. A habit was much nicer than
+a long gown.
+
+A quarter of an hour later they were in the waiting-room, where the last
+creations of the great ladies' tailor, were displayed upon lay figures,
+among saleswomen and 'essayeuses', the very prettiest that could be
+found in England or the Batignolles, chosen because they showed off to
+perfection anything that could be put upon their shoulders, from the
+ugliest to the most extravagant. Deceived by the unusual elegance of
+these beautiful figures, ladies who are neither young nor well-shaped
+allow themselves to be beguiled and cajoled into buying things not
+suited to them. Very seldom does a hunchbacked dowager hesitate to put
+upon her shoulders the garment that draped so charmingly those of the
+living statue hired to parade before her. Jacqueline could not help
+laughing as she watched this way of hunting larks; and thought the
+mirror might have warned them, like a scarecrow, rather than have
+tempted them into the snare.
+
+The head tailor of the establishment made them wait long enough to
+allow the pretty showgirls to accomplish their work of temptation. They
+fascinated Jacqueline's father by their graces and their glances, while
+at the same time they warbled into his daughter's ear, with a slightly
+foreign' accent: "That would be so becoming to Mademoiselle."
+
+For ladies going to the seaside there were things of the most exquisite
+simplicity: this white fur, trimmed with white velvet, for instance;
+that jacket like the uniform of a naval officer with a cap to
+match--"All to please Fred," said Jacqueline, laughing. M. de Nailles,
+while they waited for the tailor, chose two costumes quite as original
+as those of Mademoiselle d'Etaples, which delighted Jacqueline all
+the more, because she thought it probable they would displease her
+stepmother. At last the magnificent personage, his face adorned with
+luxuriant whiskers, appeared with the bow of a great artist or a
+diplomatist; took Jacqueline's measure as if he were fulfilling some
+important function, said a few brief words to his secretary, and
+then disappeared; the group of English beauties saying in chorus that
+Mademoiselle might come back that day week and try it on.
+
+Accordingly, a week later Jacqueline, seated on the wooden-horse used
+for this purpose, had the satisfaction of assuring herself that her
+habit, fitting marvelously to her bust, showed not a wrinkle, any more
+than a 'gant de Suede' shows on the hand; it was closely fitted to
+a figure not yet fully developed, but which the creator of the
+chef-d'oeuvre deigned to declare was faultless. Usually, he said, he
+recommended his customers to wear a certain corset of a special cut,
+with elastic material over the hips covered by satin that matched the
+riding-habit, but at Mademoiselle's age, and so supple as she was,
+the corset was not necessary. In short, the habit was fashioned to
+perfection, and fitted like her skin to her little flexible figure.
+In her close-fitting petticoat, her riding-trousers and nothing else,
+Jacqueline felt herself half naked, though she was buttoned up to her
+throat. She had taken an attitude on her wooden horse such as might have
+been envied by an accomplished equestrienne, her elbows held well back,
+her shoulders down, her chest expanded, her right leg over the pommel,
+her left foot in the stirrup, and never after did any real gallop give
+her the same delight as this imaginary ride on an imaginary horse, she
+looking at herself with entire satisfaction all the time in an enormous
+cheval-glass.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK 2.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. THE BLUE BAND
+
+Love, like any other human malady, should be treated according to the
+age and temperament of the sufferer. Madame de Nailles, who was a very
+keen observer, especially where her own interests were concerned, lent
+herself with the best possible grace to everything that might amuse and
+distract Jacqueline, of whom she had by this time grown afraid. Not that
+she now dreaded her as a rival. The attitude of coldness and reserve
+that the young girl had adopted in her intercourse with Marien, her
+stepmother could see, was no evidence of coquetry. She showed, in her
+behavior to the friend of the family, a freedom from embarrassment
+which was new to her, and a frigidity which could not possibly have
+been assumed so persistently. No! what struck Madame de Nailles was the
+suddenness of this transformation. Jacqueline evidently took no further
+interest in Marien; she had apparently no longer any affection for
+herself--she, who had been once her dear little mamma, whom she
+had loved so tenderly, now felt herself to be considered only as a
+stepmother. Fraulein Schult, too, received no more confidences. What did
+it all mean?
+
+Had Jacqueline, through any means, discovered a secret, which, in her
+hands, might be turned into a most dangerous weapon? She had a way of
+saying before the guilty pair: "Poor papa!" with an air of pity, as she
+kissed him, which made Madame de Nailles's flesh creep, and sometimes
+she would amuse herself by making ambiguous remarks which shot arrows
+of suspicion into a heart already afraid. "I feel sure," thought
+the Baroness, "that she has found out everything. But, no! it seems
+impossible. How can I discover what she knows?"
+
+Jacqueline's revenge consisted in leaving her stepmother in doubt. She
+more than suspected, not without cause, that Fraulein Schult was false
+to her, and had the wit to baffle all the clever questions of her
+'promeneuse'.
+
+"My worship of a man of genius--a great artist? Oh! that has all come
+to an end since I have found out that his devotion belongs to an elderly
+lady with a fair complexion and light hair. I am only sorry for him."
+
+Jacqueline had great hopes that these cruel words would be reported--as
+they were--to her stepmother, and, of course, they did not mitigate
+the Baroness's uneasiness. Madame de Nailles revenged herself for this
+insult by dismissing the innocent echo of the impertinence--of course,
+under some plausible pretext. She felt it necessary also to be very
+cautious how she treated the enemy whom she was forced to shelter
+under her own roof. Her policy--a policy imposed on her by force of
+circumstances--was one of great indulgence and consideration, so that
+Jacqueline, soon feeling that she was for the present under no control,
+took the bit between her teeth. No other impression can adequately
+convey an idea of the sort of fury with which she plunged into
+pleasure and excitement, a state of mind which apparently, without any
+transition, succeeded her late melancholy. She had done with sentiment,
+she thought, forever. She meant to be practical and positive, a little
+Parisienne, and "in the swim." There were plenty of examples among those
+she knew that she could follow. Berthe, Helene, and Claire Wermant were
+excellent leaders in that sort of thing. Those three daughters of
+the 'agent de change' were at this time at Treport, in charge of a
+governess, who let them do whatever they pleased, subject only to be
+scolded by their father, who came down every Saturday to Treport, on
+that train that was called the 'train des maris'. They had made friends
+with two or three American girls, who were called "fast," and Jacqueline
+was soon enrolled in the ranks of that gay company.
+
+The cure that was begun on the wooden horse at Blackfern's was completed
+on the sea-shore.
+
+The girls with whom she now associated were nine or ten little imps of
+Satan, who, with their hair flying in the wind and their caps over one
+ear, made the quiet beach ring with their boy-like gayety. They were
+called "the Blue Band," because of a sort of uniform that they adopted.
+We speak of them intentionally as masculine, and not feminine, because
+what is masculine best suited their appearance and behavior, for, though
+all could flirt like coquettes of experience, they were more like boys
+than girls, if judged by their age and their costume.
+
+These Blues lived close to one another on that avenue that is edged
+with chalets, cottages, and villas, whose lower floors are abundantly
+provided with great glass windows, which seem to let the ocean into
+their very rooms, as well as to lay bare everything that passes in them
+to the public eye, as frankly as if their inmates bivouacked in the open
+street. Nothing was private; neither the meals, nor the coming and going
+of visitors. It must be said, however, that the inhabitants of these
+glass houses were very seldom at home. Bathing, and croquet, or tennis,
+at low water, on the sands, searching for shells, fishing with nets,
+dances at the Casino, little family dances alternating with concerts, to
+which even children went till nine o'clock, would seem enough to fill
+up the days of these young people, but they had also to make boating
+excursions to Cayeux, Crotoy, and Hourdel, besides riding parties in the
+beautiful country that surrounded the Chateau of Lizerolles, where they
+usually dismounted on their return.
+
+At Lizerolles they were received by Madame d'Argy, who was delighted
+that they provided safe amusement for her son, who appeared in the midst
+of this group of half-grown girls like a young cock among the hens of
+his harem. Frederic d'Argy, the young naval officer, who was enjoying
+his holiday, as M. de Nailles had said, was enjoying it exceedingly.
+How often, long after, on board the ship Floye, as he paced the silent
+quarter-deck, far from any opportunity of flirting, did he recall
+the forms and faces of these young girls, some dark, some fair, some
+rosy-half-women and half-children, who made much of him, and scolded
+him, and teased him, and contended for his attentions, while no better
+could be had, on purpose to tease one another. Oh! what a delightful
+time he had had! They did not leave him to himself one moment. He had to
+lift them into their saddles, to assist them as they clambered over the
+rocks, to superintend their attempts at swimming, to dance with them all
+by turns, and to look after them in the difficult character of Mentor,
+for he was older than they, and were they not entrusted to his care?
+What a serious responsibility! Had not Mentor even found himself too
+often timid and excited when one little firm foot was placed in his
+hand, when his arm was round one little waist, when he could render her
+as a cavalier a thousand little services, or accept with gladness the
+role of her consoler. He did everything he could think of to please
+them, finding all of them charming, though Jacqueline never ceased to be
+the one he preferred, a preference which she might easily have inferred
+from the poor lad's unusual timidity and awkwardness when he was brought
+into contact with her. But she paid no attention to his devotion,
+accepting himself and all he did for her as, in some sort, her personal
+property.
+
+He was of no consequence, he did not count; what was he but her comrade
+and former playfellow?
+
+Happily for Fred, he took pleasure in the familiarity with which she
+treated him--a familiarity which, had he known it, was not flattering.
+He was in the seventh heaven for a whole fortnight, during which he was
+the recipient of more dried flowers and bows of ribbon than he ever got
+in all the rest of his life--the American girls were very fond of giving
+keepsakes--but then his star waned. He was no longer the only one. The
+grown-up brother of the Wermants came to Treport--Raoul, with his air
+of a young man about town--a boulevardier, with his jacket cut in the
+latest fashion, with his cockle-shell of a boat, which he managed as
+well on salt water as on fresh, sculling with his arms bare, a cigarette
+in his mouth, a monocle in his eye, and a pith-helmet, such as is worn
+in India. The young ladies used to gather on the sands to watch him as
+he struck the water with the broad blade of his scull, near enough for
+them to see and to admire his nautical ability. They thought all his
+jokes amusing, and they delighted in his way of seizing his partner for
+a waltz and bearing her off as if she were a prize, hardly allowing her
+to touch the floor.
+
+Fred thought him, with his stock of old jokes, very ill-mannered. He
+laughed at his sculling, and had a great mind to strike him after he
+saw him waltzing with Jacqueline. But he had to acknowledge the general
+appreciation felt for the fellow whom he called vulgar.
+
+Raoul Wermant did not stay long at Treport. He had only come to see his
+sisters on his way to Dieppe, where he expected to meet a certain Leah
+Skip, an actress from the 'Nouveautes'. If he kept her waiting, however,
+for some days, it was because he was loath to leave the handsome
+Madame de Villegry, who was living near her friend Madame de Nailles,
+recruiting herself after the fatigues of the winter season. Such being
+the situation, the young girls of the Blue Band might have tried in vain
+to make any impression upon him. But the hatred with which he inspired
+Fred found some relief in the composition of fragments of melancholy
+verse, which the young midshipman hid under his mattresses. It is not an
+uncommon thing for naval men to combine a love of the sea with a love
+of poetry. Fred's verses were not good, but they were full of dejection.
+The poor fellow compared Raoul Wermant to Faust, and himself to Siebel.
+He spoke of
+
+        The youth whose eyes were brimming with salt tears,
+        Whose heart was troubled by a thousand fears,
+        Poor slighted lover!-since in his heavy heart
+        All his illusions perish and depart.
+
+Again, he wrote of Siebel:
+
+        O Siebel!--thine is but the common fate!
+        They told thee Fortune upon youth would wait;
+        'Tis false when love's in question-and you may--
+
+Here he enumerated all the proofs of tenderness possible for a woman to
+give her lover, and then he added:
+
+        You may know all, poor Siebel!--all, some day,
+        When weary of this life and all its dreams,
+        You learn to know it is not what it seems;
+        When there is nothing that can cheer you more,
+        All that remains is fondly to adore!
+
+And after trying in vain to find a rhyme for lover, he cried:
+
+        Oh! tell me--if one grief exceeds another
+        Is not this worst, to feel mere friendship moves
+        To cruel kindness the dear girl he loves?
+
+Fred's mother surprised him one night while he was watering with his
+tears the ink he was putting to so sorry a use. She had been aware
+that he sat up late at night--his sleeplessness was not the insomnia of
+genius--for she had seen the glare of light from his little lamp burning
+later than the usual bedtime of the chateau, in one of the turret
+chambers at Lizerolles.
+
+In vain Fred denied that he was doing anything, in vain he tried to put
+his papers out of sight; his mother was so persuasive that at last he
+owned everything to her, and in addition to the comfort he derived from
+his confession, he gained a certain satisfaction to his 'amour-propre',
+for Madame d'Argy thought the verses beautiful. A mother's geese are
+always swans. But it was only when she said, "I don't see why you should
+not marry your Jacqueline--such a thing is not by any means impossible,"
+and promised to do all in her power to insure his happiness, that Fred
+felt how dearly he loved his mother. Oh, a thousand times more than he
+had ever supposed he loved her! However, he had not yet done with the
+agonies that lie in wait for lovers.
+
+Madame de Monredon arrived one day at the Hotel de la Plage, accompanied
+by her granddaughter, whom she had taken away from the convent before
+the beginning of the holidays. Since she had fully arranged the marriage
+with M. de Talbrun, it seemed important that Giselle should acquire
+some liveliness, and recruit her health, before the fatal wedding-day
+arrived. M. de Talbrun liked ladies to be always well and always lively,
+and it was her duty to see that Giselle accommodated herself to his
+taste; sea-bathing, life in the open air, and merry companions, were the
+things she needed to make her a little less thin, to give her tone, and
+to take some of her convent stiffness out of her. Besides, she could
+have free intercourse with her intended husband, thanks to the greater
+freedom of manners permitted at the sea-side. Such were the ideas of
+Madame de Monredon.
+
+Poor Giselle! In vain they dressed her in fine clothes, in vain they
+talked to her and scolded her from morning till night, she continued to
+be the little convent-bred schoolgirl she had always been; with downcast
+eyes, pale as a flower that has known no sunlight, and timid to a point
+of suffering. M. de Talbrun frightened her as much as ever, and she had
+looked forward to the comfort of weeping in the arms of Jacqueline, who,
+the last time she had seen her, had been herself so unhappy. But what
+was her astonishment to find the young girl, who, a few weeks before,
+had made her such tragic confidences through the grille in the convent
+parlor, transformed into a creature bent on excitement and amusement.
+When she attempted to allude to the subject on which Jacqueline had
+spoken to her at the convent, and to ask her what it was that had then
+made her so unhappy, Jacqueline cried: "Oh! my dear, I have forgotten
+all about it!" But there was exaggeration in this profession of
+forgetfulness, and she hurriedly drew Giselle back to the game of
+croquet, where they were joined by M. de Talbrun.
+
+The future husband of Giselle was a stout young fellow, short and
+thick-set, with broad shoulders, a large flat face, and strong jaws,
+ornamented with an enormous pair of whiskers, which partly compensated
+him for a loss of hair. He had never done anything but shoot and hunt
+over his property nine months in the year, and spend the other three
+months in Paris, where the jockey Club and ballet-dancers sufficed for
+his amusement. He did not pretend to be a man whose bachelor life had
+been altogether blameless, but he considered himself to be a "correct"
+man, according to what he understood by that expression, which implied
+neither talents, virtues, nor good manners; nevertheless, all the Blue
+Band agreed that he was a finished type of gentleman-hood. Even Raoul's
+sisters had to confess, with a certain disgust, that, whatever people
+may say, in our own day the aristocracy of wealth has to lower its flag
+before the authentic quarterings of the old noblesse. They secretly
+envied Giselle because she was going to be a grande dame, while all the
+while they asserted that old-fashioned distinctions had no longer any
+meaning. Nevertheless, they looked forward to the day when they, too,
+might take their places in the Faubourg St. Germain. One may purchase
+that luxury with a fortune of eight hundred thousand francs.
+
+The croquet-ground, which was underwater at high tide, was a long
+stretch of sand that fringed the shingle. Two parties were formed, in
+which care was taken to make both sides as nearly equal as possible,
+after which the game began, with screams, with laughter, a little
+cheating and some disputes, as is the usual custom. All this appeared
+to amuse Oscar de Talbrun--exceedingly. For the first time during his
+wooing he was not bored. The Misses Sparks--Kate and Nora--by their
+"high spirits" agreeably reminded him of one or two excursions he had
+made in past days into Bohemian society.
+
+He formed the highest opinion of Jacqueline when he saw how her
+still short skirts showed pretty striped silk stockings, and how
+her well-shaped foot was planted firmly on a blue ball, when she was
+preparing to roquer the red one. The way in which he fixed his eyes upon
+her gave great offense to Fred, and did it not alarm and shock Giselle?
+No! Giselle looked on calmly at the fun and talk around her, as unmoved
+as the stump of a tree, spoiling the game sometimes by her ignorance
+or her awkwardness, well satisfied that M. de Talbrun should leave her
+alone. Talking with him was very distasteful to her.
+
+"You have been more stupid than usual," had been what her grandmother
+had never failed to say to her in Paris after one of his visits, which
+he alternated with bouquets. But at Treport no one seemed to mind her
+being stupid, and indeed M. de Talbrun hardly thought of her existence,
+up to the moment when they were all nearly caught by the first wave that
+came rolling in over the croquet-ground, when all the girls took flight,
+flushed, animated, and with lively gesticulation, while the gentlemen
+followed with the box into which had been hastily flung hoops, balls,
+and mallets.
+
+On their way Count Oscar condescendingly explained to Fred, as to a
+novice, that the only good thing about croquet was that it brought men
+and girls together. He was himself very good at games, he said, having
+remarkably firm muscles and exceptionally sharp sight; but he went on to
+add that he had not been able to show what he could do that day. The wet
+sand did not make so good a croquet-ground as the one he had had made in
+his park! It is a good thing to know one's ground in all circumstances,
+but especially in playing croquet. Then, dexterously passing from the
+game to the players, he went on to say, under cover of giving Fred a
+warning, that a man need not fear going too far with those girls from
+America--they had known how to flirt from the time they were born. They
+could look out for themselves, they had talons and beaks; but up to a
+certain point they were very easy to get on with. Those other players
+were queer little things; the three sisters Wermant were not wanting in
+chic, but, hang it!--the sweetest flower of them all, to his mind, was
+the tall one, the dark one--unripe fruit in perfection! "And a year
+or two hence," added M. de Talbrun, with all the self-confidence of an
+expert, "every one will be talking about her in the world of society."
+
+Poor Fred kept silent, trying to curb his wrath. But the blood mounted
+to his temples as he listened to these remarks, poured into his ear by a
+man of thirty-five, between puffs of his cigar, because there was
+nobody else to whom he could make them. But they seemed to Fred very
+ill-mannered and ill-timed. If he had not dreaded making himself absurd,
+he would gladly have stood forth as the champion of the Sparks, the
+Wermants, and all the other members of the Blue Band, so that he might
+give vent to the anger raging in his heart on hearing that odious
+compliment to Jacqueline. Why was he not old enough to marry her? What
+right had that detestable Talbrun to take notice of any girl but his
+fiancee? If he himself could marry now, his choice would soon be made!
+No doubt, later--as his mother had said to him. But would Jacqueline
+wait? Everybody was beginning to admire her. Somebody would carry her
+off--somebody would cut him out while he was away at sea. Oh, horrible
+thought for a young lover!
+
+That night, at the Casino, while dancing a quadrille with Giselle, he
+could not refrain from saying to her, "Don't you object to Monsieur de
+Talbrun's dancing so much with Jacqueline?"
+
+"Who?--I?" she cried, astonished, "I don't see why he should not."
+And then, with a faint laugh, she added: "Oh, if she would only take
+him--and keep him!"
+
+But Madame de Monredon kept a sharp eye upon M. de Talbrun. "It seems
+to me," she said, looking fixedly into the face of her future
+grandson-in-law, "that you really take pleasure in making children skip
+about with you."
+
+"So I do," he replied, frankly and good-humoredly. "It makes me feel
+young again."
+
+And Madame de Monredon was satisfied. She was ready to admit that most
+men marry women who have not particularly enchanted them, and she had
+brought up Giselle with all those passive qualities, which, together
+with a large fortune, usually suit best with a 'mariage de convenance'.
+
+Meantime Jacqueline piqued herself upon her worldly wisdom, which she
+looked upon as equal to Madame de Monredon's, since the terrible event
+which had filled her mind with doubts. She thought M. de Talbrun would
+do well enough for a husband, and she took care to say so to Giselle.
+
+"It is a fact," she told her, with all the self-confidence of large
+experience, "that men who are very fascinating always remain bachelors.
+That is probably why Monsieur de Cymier, Madame de Villegry's handsome
+cousin, does not think of marrying."
+
+She was mistaken. The Comte de Cymier, a satellite who revolved around
+that star of beauty, Madame de Villegry, had been by degrees brought
+round by that lady herself to thoughts of matrimony.
+
+Madame de Villegry, notwithstanding her profuse use of henna and many
+cosmetics, which was always the first thing to strike those who saw her,
+prided herself on being uncompromised as to her moral character. There
+are some women who, because they stop short of actual vice, consider
+themselves irreproachable. They are willing, so to speak, to hang out
+the bush, but keep no tavern. In former times an appearance of evil was
+avoided in order to cover evil deeds, but at present there are those
+who, under the cover of being only "fast," risk the appearance of evil.
+
+Madame de Villegry was what is sometimes called a "professional beauty."
+She devoted many hours daily to her toilette, she liked to have a crowd
+of admirers around her. But when one of them became too troublesome, she
+got rid of him by persuading him to marry. She had before this proposed
+several young girls to Gerard de Cymier, each one plainer and more
+insignificant than the others. It was to tell his dear friend that the
+one she had last suggested was positively too ugly for him, that the
+young attache to an embassy had come down to the sea-side to visit her.
+
+The day after his arrival he was sitting on the shingle at Madame de
+Villegry's feet, both much amused by the grotesque spectacle presented
+by the bathers, who exhibited themselves in all degrees of ugliness and
+deformity. Of course Madame de Villegry did not bathe, being, as she
+said, too nervous. She was sitting under a large parasol and enjoying
+her own superiority over those wretched, amphibious creatures who
+waddled on the sands before her, comparing Madame X to a seal and
+Mademoiselle Z to the skeleton of a cuttle-fish.
+
+"Well! it was that kind of thing you wished me to marry," said M. de
+Cymier, in a tone of resentment.
+
+"But, my poor friend, what would you have? All young girls are like
+that. They improve when they are married."
+
+"If one could only be sure."
+
+"One is never sure of anything, especially anything relating to young
+girls. One can not say that they do more than exist till they are
+married. A husband has to make whatever he chooses out of them. You are
+quite capable of making what you choose of your wife. Take the risk,
+then."
+
+"I could educate her as to morals--though, I must say, I am not much
+used to that kind of instruction; but you will permit me to think that,
+as to person, I should at least wish to see a rough sketch of what I may
+expect in my wife before my marriage."
+
+At that moment, a girl who had been bathing came out of the water a few
+yards from them; the elegant outline of her slender figure, clad in a
+bathing-suit of white flannel, which clung to her closely, was thrown
+into strong relief by the clear blue background of a summer sky.
+
+"Tiens!--but she is pretty!" cried Gerard, breaking off what he was
+saying: "And she is the first pretty one I have seen!"
+
+Madame de Villegry took up her tortoiseshell opera-glasses, which were
+fastened to her waist, but already the young girl, over whose shoulders
+an attentive servant had flung a wrapper--a 'peignoir-eponge'--had run
+along the boardwalk and stopped before her, with a gay "Good-morning!"
+
+"Jacqueline!" said Madame de Villegry. "Well, my dear child, did you
+find the water pleasant?"
+
+"Delightful!" said the young girl, giving a rapid glance at M. de
+Cymier, who had risen.
+
+He was looking at her with evident admiration, an admiration at which
+she felt much flattered. She was closely wrapped in her soft, snow-white
+peignoir, bordered with red, above which rose her lovely neck and head.
+She was trying to catch, on the point of one little foot, one of her
+bathing shoes, which had slipped from her. The foot which, when well
+shod, M. de Talbrun, through his eyeglass, had so much admired, was
+still prettier without shoe or stocking. It was so perfectly formed, so
+white, with a little pink tinge here and there, and it was set upon so
+delicate an ankle! M. de Cymier looked first at the foot, and then his
+glance passed upward over all the rest of the young figure, which could
+be seen clearly under the clinging folds of the wet drapery. Her form
+could be discerned from head to foot, though nothing was uncovered but
+the pretty little arm which held together with a careless grace the
+folds of her raiment. The eye of the experienced observer ran rapidly
+over the outline of her figure, till it reached the dark head and
+the brown hair, which rippled in little curls over her forehead. Her
+complexion, slightly golden, was not protected by one of those absurd
+hats which many bathers place on top of oiled silk caps which fit them
+closely. Neither was the precaution of oiled silk wanted to protect the
+thick and curling hair, now sprinkled with great drops that shone like
+pearls and diamonds. The water, instead of plastering her hair upon her
+temples, had made it more curly and more fleecy, as it hung over her
+dark eyebrows, which, very near together at the nose, gave to her eyes a
+peculiar, slightly oblique expression. Her teeth were dazzling, and
+were displayed by the smile which parted her lips--lips which were, if
+anything, too red for her pale complexion. She closed her eyelids now
+and then to shade her eyes from the too blinding sunlight. Those eyes
+were not black, but that hazel which has golden streaks. Though only
+half open, they had quickly taken in the fact that the young man sitting
+beside Madame de Villegry was very handsome.
+
+As she went on with a swift step to her bathing-house, she drew out two
+long pins from her back hair, shaking it and letting it fall down
+her back with a slightly impatient and imperious gesture; she wished,
+probably, that it might dry more quickly.
+
+"The devil!" said M. de Cymier, watching her till she disappeared into
+the bathing-house. "I never should have thought that it was all her own!
+There is nothing wanting in her. That is a young creature it is pleasant
+to see."
+
+"Yes," said Madame de Villegry, quietly, "she will be very good-looking
+when she is eighteen."
+
+"Is she nearly eighteen?"
+
+"She is and she is not, for time passes so quickly. A girl goes to sleep
+a child, and wakes up old enough to be married. Would you like to be
+informed, without loss of time, as to her fortune?"
+
+"Oh! I should not care much about her dot. I look out first for other
+things."
+
+"I know, of course; but Jacqueline de Nailles comes of a very good
+family."
+
+"Is she the daughter of the deputy?"
+
+"Yes, his only daughter. He has a pretty house in the Parc Monceau and a
+chateau of some importance in the Haute-Vienne."
+
+"Very good; but, I repeat, I am not mercenary. Of course, if I should
+marry, I should like, for my wife's sake, to live as well as a married
+man as I have lived as a bachelor."
+
+"Which means that you would be satisfied with a fortune equal to your
+own. I should have thought you might have asked more. It is true that
+if you have been suddenly thunderstruck that may alter your
+calculations--for it was very sudden, was it not? Venus rising from the
+sea!"
+
+"Please don't exaggerate! But you are not so cruel, seeing you are
+always urging me to marry, as to wish me to take a wife who looks like a
+fright or a horror."
+
+"Heaven preserve me from any such wish! I should be very glad if my
+little friend Jacqueline were destined to work your reformation."
+
+"I defy the most careful parent to find anything against me at this
+moment, unless it be a platonic devotion. The youth of Mademoiselle de
+Nailles is an advantage, for I might indulge myself in that till we were
+married, and then I should settle down and leave Paris, where nothing
+keeps me but--"
+
+"But a foolish fancy," laughed Madame de Villegry. "However, in return
+for your madrigal, accept the advice of a friend. The Nailles seem to
+me to be prosperous, but everybody in society appears so, and one never
+knows what may happen any day. You would not do amiss if, before you
+go on, you were to talk with Wermant, the 'agent de change', who has a
+considerable knowledge of the business affairs of Jacqueline's father.
+He could tell you about them better than I can."
+
+"Wermant is at Treport, is he not? I thought I saw him--"
+
+"Yes, he is here till Monday. You have twenty-four hours."
+
+"Do you really think I am in such a hurry?"
+
+"Will you take a bet that by this time to-morrow you will not know
+exactly the amount of her dot and the extent of her expectations?"
+
+"You would lose. I have something else to think of--now and always."
+
+"What?" she said, carelessly.
+
+"You have forbidden me ever to mention it."
+
+Silence ensued. Then Madame de Villegry said, smiling:
+
+"I suppose you would like me to present you this evening to my friends
+the De Nailles?"
+
+And in fact they all met that evening at the Casino, and Jacqueline,
+in a gown of scarlet foulard, which would have been too trying for any
+other girl, seemed to M. de Cymier as pretty as she had been in her
+bathing-costume. Her hair was not dressed high, but it was gathered
+loosely together and confined by a ribbon of the same color as her gown,
+and she wore a little sailor hat besides. In this costume she had been
+called by M. de Talbrun the "Fra Diavolo of the Seas," and she never
+better supported that part, by liveliness and audacity, than she
+did that evening, when she made a conquest that was envied--wildly
+envied--by the three Demoiselles Wermant and the two Misses Sparks,
+for the handsome Gerard, after his first waltz with Madame de Villegry,
+asked no one to be his partner but Mademoiselle de Nailles.
+
+The girls whom he neglected had not even Fred to fall back upon, for
+Fred, the night before, had received orders to join his ship. He had
+taken leave of Jacqueline with a pang in his heart which he could
+hardly hide, but to which no keen emotion on her part seemed to respond.
+However, at least, he was spared the unhappiness of seeing the star of
+De Cymier rising above the horizon.
+
+"If he could only see me," thought Jacqueline, waltzing in triumph with
+M. de Cymier. "If he could only see me I should be avenged."
+
+But he was not Fred. She was not giving him a thought. It was the
+last flash of resentment and hatred that came to her in that moment of
+triumph, adding to it a touch of exquisite enjoyment.
+
+Thus she performed the obsequies of her first love!
+
+Not long after this M. de Nailles said to his wife:
+
+"Do you know, my dear, that our little Jacqueline is very much admired?
+Her success has been extraordinary. It is not likely she will die an old
+maid."
+
+The Baronne assented rather reluctantly.
+
+"Wermant was speaking to me the other day," went on M. de Nailles. "It
+seems that that young Count de Cymier, who is always hanging around you,
+by the way, has been making inquiries of him, in a manner that looks
+as if it had some meaning, as to what is our fortune, our position. But
+really, such a match seems too good to be true."
+
+"Why so?" said the Baronne. "I know more about it than you do, from
+Blanche de Villegry. She gave me to understand that her cousin was much
+struck by Jacqueline at first sight, and ever since she does nothing
+but talk to me of M. de Cymier--of his birth, his fortune, his
+abilities--the charming young fellow seems gifted with everything.
+He could be Secretary of Legation, if he liked to quit Paris: In the
+meantime attache to an Embassy looks very well on a card. Attache to the
+Ministry of the Foreign Affairs does not seem so good. Jacqueline would
+be a countess, possibly an ambassadress. What would you think of that!"
+
+Madame de Nailles, who understood policy much better than her husband,
+had suddenly become a convert to opportunism, and had made a change of
+base. Not being able to devise a plan by which to suppress her young
+rival, she had begun to think that her best way to get rid of her would
+be by promoting her marriage. The little girl was fast developing into a
+woman--a woman who would certainly not consent quietly to be set aside.
+Well, then, it would be best to dispose of her in so natural a way. When
+Jacqueline's slender and graceful figure and the freshness of her bloom
+were no longer brought into close comparison with her own charms, she
+felt she should appear much younger, and should recover some of
+her prestige; people would be less likely to remark her increasing
+stoutness, or the red spots on her face, increased by the salt air which
+was so favorable to young girls' complexions. Yes, Jacqueline must be
+married; that was the resolution to which Madame de Nailles had come
+after several nights of sleeplessness. It was her fixed idea, replacing
+in her brain that other fixed idea which, willingly or unwillingly, she
+saw she must give up--the idea of keeping her stepdaughter in the shade.
+
+"Countess! Ambassadress!" repeated M. de Nailles, with rather a
+melancholy smile. "You are going too fast, my dear Clotilde. I don't
+doubt that Wermant gave the best possible account of our situation; but
+when it comes to saying what I could give her as a dot, I am very much
+afraid. We should have, in that case, to fall back on Fred, for I
+have not told you everything. This morning Madame d'Argy, who has done
+nothing but weep since her boy went away, and who, she says, never will
+get accustomed to the life of misery and anxiety she will lead as a
+sailor's mother, exclaimed, as she was talking to me: 'Ah! there is but
+one way of keeping him at Lizerolles, of having him live there as the
+D'Argys have lived before him, quietly, like a good landlord, and
+that would be to give him your daughter; with her he would be entirely
+satisfied.'"
+
+"Ah! so that is the reason why she asked whether Jacqueline might not
+stay with her when we go to Italy! She wishes to court her by proxy. But
+I don't think she will succeed. Monsieur de Cymier has the best chance."
+
+"Do you suppose the child suspects--"
+
+"That he admires her? My dear friend, we have to do with a very
+sharp--sighted young person. Nothing escapes the observation of
+Mademoiselle 'votre fille'."
+
+And Madame de Nailles, in her turn, smiled somewhat bitterly.
+
+"Well," said Jacqueline's father, after a few moments' reflection, "it
+may be as well that she should weigh for and against a match before
+deciding. She may spend several years that are difficult and dangerous
+trying to find out what she wants and to make up her mind."
+
+"Several years?"
+
+"Hang it! You would not marry off Jacqueline at once?"
+
+"Bah! many a girl, practically not as old as she, is married at sixteen
+or seventeen."
+
+"Why! I fancied you thought so differently!"
+
+"Our ways of thinking are sometimes altered by events, especially when
+they are founded upon sincere and disinterested affection."
+
+"Like that of good parents, such as we are," added M. de Nailles, ending
+her sentence with an expression of grateful emotion.
+
+For one moment the Baronne paled under this compliment.
+
+"What did you say to Madame d'Argy?" she hastened to ask.
+
+"I said we must give the young fellow's beard time to grow."
+
+"Yes, that was right. I prefer Monsieur de Cymier a hundred times over.
+Still, if nothing better offers--a bird in the hand, you know--"
+
+Madame de Nailles finished her sentence by a wave of her fan.
+
+"Oh! our bird in the hand is not to be despised. A very handsome
+estate--"
+
+"Where Jacqueline would be bored to death. I should rather see her
+radiant at some foreign court. Let me manage it. Let me bring her out.
+Give me carte blanche and let me have some society this winter."
+
+Madame de Nailles, whether she knew it or not--probably she did, for she
+had great skill in reading the thoughts of others--was acting precisely
+in accordance with the wishes or the will of Jacqueline, who, having
+found much enjoyment in the dances at the Casino, had made up her
+mind that she meant to come out into society before any of her young
+companions.
+
+"I shall not have to beg and implore her," she said to herself,
+anticipating the objections of her stepmother. "I shall only have
+politely to let her suspect that such a thing may have occurred as
+having had a listener at a door. I paid dearly enough for this hold over
+her. I have no scruple in using it."
+
+Madame de Nailles was not mistaken in her stepdaughter; she was very far
+advanced beyond her age, thanks to the cruel wrong that had been done
+her by the loss of her trust in her elders and her respect for them. Her
+heart had had its past, though she was still hardly more than a child--a
+sad past, though its pain was being rapidly effaced. She now thought
+about it only at intervals. Time and circumstances were operating on her
+as they act upon us generally; only in her case more quickly than usual,
+which produced in her character and feelings phenomena that might have
+seemed curious to an observer. She was something of a woman, something
+of a child, something of a philosopher. At night, when she was dancing
+with Wermant, or Cymier, or even Talbrun, or on horseback, an exercise
+which all the Blues were wild about, she was an audacious flirt, a girl
+up to anything; and in the morning, at low tide, she might be seen, with
+her legs and feet bare, among the children, of whom there were many on
+the sands, digging ditches, making ramparts, constructing towers and
+fortifications in wet sand, herself as much amused as if she had been
+one of the babies themselves. There was screaming and jumping, and
+rushing out of reach of the waves which came up ready to overthrow the
+most complicated labors of the little architects, rough romping of all
+kinds, enough to amaze and disconcert a lover.
+
+But no one could have guessed at the thoughts which, in the midst of all
+this fun and frolic, were passing through the too early ripened mind of
+Jacqueline. She was thinking that many things to which we attach great
+value and importance in this world are as easily swept away as the sand
+barriers raised against the sea by childish hands; that everywhere there
+must be flux and reflux, that the beach the children had so dug up would
+soon become smooth as a mirror, ready for other little ones to dig it
+over again, tempting them to work, and yet discouraging their industry.
+Her heart, she thought, was like the sand, ready for new impressions.
+The elegant form of M. de Cymier slightly overshadowed it, distinct
+among other shadows more confused.
+
+And Jacqueline said to herself with a smile, exactly what her father and
+Madame de Nailles had said to each other:
+
+"Countess!--who knows? Ambassadress! Perhaps--some day--"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. A PUZZLING CORRESPONDENCE
+
+"But I can not see any reason why we should not take Jacqueline with us
+to Italy. She is just of an age to profit by it."
+
+These words were spoken by M. de Nailles after a long silence at the
+breakfast-table. They startled his hearers like a bomb.
+
+Jacqueline waited to hear what would come next, fixing a keen look upon
+her stepmother. Their eyes met like the flash of two swords.
+
+The eyes of the one said: "Now, let us hear what you will answer!" while
+the other strove to maintain that calmness which comes to some people in
+a moment of danger. The Baroness grew a little pale, and then said, in
+her softest tones:
+
+"You are quite right, 'mon ami', but Jacqueline, I think, prefers to
+stay."
+
+"I decidedly prefer to stay," said Jacqueline.
+
+Her adversary, much relieved by this response, could not repress a sigh.
+
+"It seems singular," said M. de Nailles.
+
+"What! that I prefer to pass a month or six weeks with Madame d'Argy?
+Besides, Giselle is going to be married during that time."
+
+"They might put it off until we come back, I should suppose."
+
+"Oh! I don't think they would," cried the Baroness. "Madame de Monredon
+is so selfish. She was offended to think we should talk of going away
+on the eve of an event she considers so important. Besides, she has so
+little regard for me that I should think her more likely to hasten the
+wedding-day rather than retard it, if it were only for the pleasure of
+giving us a lesson."
+
+"I am sorry. I should have been glad to be, as she wished, one
+of Giselle's witnesses, but people don't take my position into
+consideration. If I do not take advantage of the recess--"
+
+"Besides," interrupted Jacqueline, carelessly, "your journey must
+coincide with that of Monsieur Marien."
+
+She had the pleasure of seeing her stepmother again slightly change
+color. Madame de Nailles was pouring out for herself a cup of tea with
+singular care and attention.
+
+"Of course," said M. de Nailles. His daughter pitied him, and cried,
+with an increasing wish to annoy her stepmother: "Mamma, don't you
+see that your teapot has no tea in it? Yes," she went on, "it must be
+delightful to travel in Italy in company with a great artist who would
+explain everything; but then one would be expected to visit all the
+picture-galleries, and I hate pictures, since--"
+
+She paused and again looked meaningly at her stepmother, whose soft blue
+eyes showed anguish of spirit, and seemed to say: "Oh, what a cruel hold
+she has upon me!" Jacqueline continued, carelessly--"Picture-galleries I
+don't care for--I like nature a hundred times better. Some day I should
+like to take a journey to suit myself, my own journey! Oh, papa, may I?
+A journey on foot with you in the Tyrol?"
+
+Madame de Nailles was no great walker.
+
+"Both of us, just you and I alone, with our alpenstocks in our hands--it
+would be lovely! But Italy and painters--"
+
+Here, with a boyish flourish of her hands, she seemed to send that
+classic land to Jericho!
+
+"Do promise me, papa!"
+
+"Before asking a reward, you must deserve it," said her father,
+severely, who saw something was wrong.
+
+During her stay at Lizerolles, which her perverseness, her resentment,
+and a repugnance founded on instincts of delicacy, had made her prefer
+to a journey to Italy, Jacqueline, having nothing better to do, took it
+into her head to write to her friend Fred. The young man received three
+letters at three different ports in the Mediterranean and in the West
+Indies, whose names were long associated in his mind with delightful and
+cruel recollections. When the first was handed to him with one from his
+mother, whose letters always awaited him at every stopping-place, the
+blood flew to his face, his heart beat violently, he could have cried
+aloud but for the necessity of self-command in the presence of his
+comrades, who had already remarked in whispers to each other, and with
+envy, on the pink envelope, which exhaled 'l'odor di femina'. He hid his
+treasure quickly, and carried it to a spot where he could be alone;
+then he kissed the bold, pointed handwriting that he recognized at once,
+though never before had it written his address. He kissed, too, more
+than once, the pink seal with a J on it, whose slender elegance reminded
+him of its owner. Hardly did he dare to break the seal; then forgetting
+altogether, as we might be sure, his mother's letter, which he knew
+beforehand was full of good advice and expressions of affection, he
+eagerly read this, which he had not expected to receive:
+
+
+               "LIZEROLLES, October, 5, 188-
+
+   "MY DEAR FRED:
+
+   "Your mother thinks you would be pleased to receive a letter from
+   me, and I hope you will be. You need not answer this if you do not
+   care to do so. You will notice, 'par parenthese', that I take this
+   opportunity of saying you and not thou to you. It is easier to
+   change the familiar mode of address in writing than in speaking, and
+   when we meet again the habit will have become confirmed. But, as I
+   write, it will require great attention, and I can not promise to
+   keep to it to the end. Half an hour's chat with an old friend will
+   also help me to pass the time, which I own seems rather long, as it
+   is passed by your sweet, dear mother and myself at Lizerolles. Oh,
+   if you were only here it would be different! In the first place,
+   we should talk less of a certain Fred, which would be one great
+   advantage. You must know that you are the subject of our discourse
+   from morning to night; we talk only of the dangers of the seas, the
+   future prospects of a seaman, and all the rest of it. If the wind
+   is a little higher than usual, your mother begins to cry; she is
+   sure you are battling with a tempest. If any fishing-boat is
+   wrecked, we talk of nothing but shipwrecks; and I am asked to join
+   in another novena, in addition to those with which we must have
+   already wearied Notre Dame de Treport. Every evening we spread out
+   the map: 'See, Jacqueline, he must be here now--no, he is almost
+   there,' and lines of red ink are traced from one port to another,
+   and little crosses are made to show the places where we hope you
+   will get your letters--'Poor boy, poor, dear boy!' In short,
+   notwithstanding all the affectionate interest I take in you, this is
+   sometimes too much for me. In fact, I think I must be very fond of
+   thee not to have grown positively to hate thee for all this fuss.
+   There! In this last sentence, instead of saying you, I have said
+   thee! That ought to gild the pill for you!
+
+   "We do not go very frequently to visit Treport, except to invoke for
+   you the protection of Heaven, and I like it just as well, for since
+   the last fortnight in September, which was very rainy, the beach is
+   dismal--so different from what it was in the summer. The town looks
+   gloomy under a cloudy sky with its blackened old brick houses! We
+   are better off at Lizerolles, whose autumnal beauties you know so
+   well that I will say nothing about them.--Oh, Fred, how often I
+   regret that I am not a boy! I could take your gun and go shooting
+   in the swamps, where there are clouds of ducks now. I feel sure
+   that if you were in my place, you could kill time without killing
+   game; but I am at the end of my small resources when I have played a
+   little on the piano to amuse your mother and have read her the
+   'Gazette de France'. In the evening we read a translation of some
+   English novel. There are neighbors, of course, old fogies who stay
+   all the year round in Picardy--but, tell me, don't you find them
+   sometimes a little too respectable? My greatest comfort is in your
+   dog, who loves me as much as if I were his master, though I can not
+   take him out shooting. While I write he is lying on the hem of my
+   gown and makes a little noise, as much as to tell me that I recall
+   you to his remembrance. Yet you are not to suppose that I am
+   suffering from ennui, or am ungrateful, nor above all must you
+   imagine that I have ceased to love your excellent mother with all my
+   heart. I love her, on the contrary, more than ever since I passed
+   this winter through a great, great sorrow--a sorrow which is now
+   only a sad remembrance, but which has changed for me the face of
+   everything in this world. Yes, since I have suffered myself, I
+   understand your mother. I admire her, I love her more than ever.
+
+   "How happy you are, my dear Fred, to have such a sweet mother,--
+   a real mother who never thinks about her face, or her figure, or her
+   age, but only of the success of her son; a dear little mother in a
+   plain black gown, and with pretty gray hair, who has the manners and
+   the toilette that just suit her, who somehow always seems to say:
+   'I care for nothing but that which affects my son.' Such mothers are
+   rare, believe me. Those that I know, the mothers of my friends, are
+   for the most part trying to appear as young as their daughters--nay,
+   prettier, and of course more elegant. When they have sons they make
+   them wear jackets a l'anglaise and turn-down collars, up to the age
+   when I wore short skirts. Have you noticed that nowadays in Paris
+   there are only ladies who are young, or who are trying to make
+   themselves appear so? Up to the last moment they powder and paint,
+   and try to make themselves different from what age has made them.
+   If their hair was black it grows blacker--if red, it is more red.
+   But there is no longer any gray hair in Paris--it is out of fashion.
+   That is the reason why I think your mother's pretty silver curls so
+   lovely and 'distingues'. I kiss them every night for you, after I
+   have kissed them for myself.
+
+   "Have a good voyage, come back soon, and take care of yourself, dear
+   Fred."
+
+The young sailor read this letter over and over again. The more he read
+it the more it puzzled him. Most certainly he felt that Jacqueline gave
+him a great proof of confidence when she spoke to him of some mysterious
+unhappiness, an unhappiness of which it was evident her stepmother
+was the cause. He could see that much; but he was infinitely far from
+suspecting the nature of the woes to which she alluded. Poor Jacqueline!
+He pitied her without knowing what for, with a great outburst of
+sympathy, and an honest desire to do anything in the world to make her
+happy. Was it really possible that she could have been enduring any
+grief that summer when she had seemed so madly gay, so ready for a
+little flirtation? Young girls must be very skilful in concealing their
+inmost feelings! When he was unhappy he had it out by himself, he took
+refuge in solitude, he wanted to be done with existence. Everybody knew
+when anything went wrong with him. Why could not Jacqueline have let him
+know more plainly what it was that troubled her, and why could she not
+have shown a little tenderness toward him, instead of assuming, even
+when she said the kindest things to him, her air of mockery? And then,
+though she might pretend not to find Lizerolles stupid, he could see
+that she was bored there. Yet why had she chosen to stay at Lizerolles
+rather than go to Italy?
+
+Alas! how that little pink letter made him reflect and guess, and turn
+things over in his mind, and wish himself at the devil--that little pink
+letter which he carried day and night on his breast and made it crackle
+as it lay there, when he laid his hand on the satin folds so near his
+heart! It had an odor of sweet violets which seemed to him to overpower
+the smell of pitch and of salt water, to fill the air, to perfume
+everything.
+
+"That young fellow has the instincts of a sailor," said his superior
+officers when they saw him standing in attitudes which they thought
+denoted observation, though with him it was only reverie. He would stand
+with his eyes fixed upon some distant point, whence he fancied he could
+see emerging from the waves a small, brown, shining head, with long hair
+streaming behind, the head of a girl swimming, a girl he knew so well.
+
+"One can see that he takes an interest in nautical phenomena, that he
+is heart and soul in his profession, that he cares for nothing else. Oh,
+he'll make a sailor! We may be sure of that!"
+
+Fred sent his young friend and cousin, by way of reply, a big packet
+of manuscript, the leaves of which were of all sizes, over which he
+had poured forth torrents of poetry, amorous and descriptive, under the
+title: At Sea.
+
+Never would he have dared to show her this if the ocean had not lain
+between them. He was frightened when his packet had been sent. His only
+comfort was in the thought that he had hypocritically asked Jacqueline
+for her literary opinion of his verses; but she could not fail, he
+thought, to understand.
+
+Long before an answer could have been expected, he got another letter,
+sky-blue this time, much longer than the first, giving him an account of
+Giselle's wedding.
+
+   "Your mother and I went together to Normandy, where the marriage was
+   to take place after the manner of old times, 'in the fashion of the
+   Middle Ages,' as our friends the Wermants said to me, who might
+   perhaps not have laughed at it had they been invited. Madame de
+   Monredon is all for old customs, and she had made it a great point
+   that the wedding should not take place in Paris. Had I been
+   Giselle, I should not have liked it. I know nothing more elegant or
+   more solemn than the entrance of a bridal party into the Madeleine,
+   but we shall have to be content with Saint-Augustin. Still, the
+   toilettes, as they pass up the aisle, even there, are very
+   effective, and the decoration of the tall, high altar is
+   magnificent. Toc! Toc! First come the beadles with their
+   halberds, then the loud notes of the organ, then the wide doors are
+   thrown open, making a noise as they turn on their great hinges,
+   letting the noise of carriages outside be heard in the church; and
+   then comes the bride in a ray of sunshine. I could wish for nothing
+   more. A grand wedding in the country is much more quiet, but it is
+   old-fashioned. In the little village church the guests were very
+   much crowded, and outside there was a great mob of country folk.
+   Carpets had been laid down over the dilapidated pavement, composed
+   principally of tombstones. The rough walls were hung with scarlet.
+   All the clergy of the neighborhood were present. A Monsignor--
+   related to the Talbruns--pronounced the nuptial benediction; his
+   address was a panegyric on the two families. He gave us to
+   understand that if he did not go back quite as far as the Crusades,
+   it was only because time was wanting.
+
+   "Madame de Monredon was all-glorious, of course. She certainly
+   looked like an old vulture, in a pelisse of gray velvet, with a
+   chinchilla boa round her long, bare neck, and her big beak, with
+   marabouts overshadowing it, of the same color. Monsieur de Talbrun
+   --well! Monsieur de Talbrun was very bald, as bald as he could be.
+   To make up for the want of hair on his head, he has plenty of it on
+   his hands. It is horrid, and it makes him look like an animal. You
+   have no idea how queer he looked when he sat down, with his big,
+   pink head just peeping over the back of the crimson velvet chair,
+   which was, however, almost as tall as he is. He is short, you may
+   remember. As to our poor Giselle, the prettiest persons sometimes
+   look badly as brides, and those who are not pretty look ugly. Do
+   you recollect that picture--by Velasquez, is it not? of a fair
+   little Infanta stiffly swathed in cloth of gold, as becomes her
+   dignity, and looking crushed by it? Giselle's gown was of point
+   d'Alencon, old family lace as yellow as ancient parchment, but of
+   inestimable value. Her long corsage, made in the fashion of Anne of
+   Austria, looked on her like a cuirass, and she dragged after her,
+   somewhat awkwardly, a very long train, which impeded her movement as
+   she walked. A lace veil, as hereditary and time-worn as the gown,
+   but which had been worn by all the Monredons at their weddings, the
+   present dowager's included, hid the pretty, light hair of our dear
+   little friend, and was supported by a sort of heraldic comb and some
+   orange-flowers; in short, you can not imagine anything more heavy or
+   more ugly. Poor Giselle, loaded down with it, had red eyes, a face
+   of misery, and the air of a martyr. For all this her grandmother
+   scolded her sharply, which of course did not mend matters. 'Du
+   reste', she seemed absorbed in prayer or thought during the
+   ceremony, in which I took up the offerings, by the way, with a young
+   lieutenant of dragoons just out of the military school at Saint Cyr:
+   a uniform always looks well on such occasions. Nor was Monsieur de
+   Talbrun one of those lukewarm Christians who hear mass with their
+   arms crossed and their noses in the air. He pulled a jewelled
+   prayerbook out of his pocket, which Giselle had given him. Speaking
+   of presents, those he gave her were superb: pearls as big as
+   hazelnuts, a ruby heart that was a marvel, a diamond crescent that I
+   am afraid she will never wear with such an air as it deserves, and
+   two strings of diamonds 'en riviere', which I should suppose she
+   would have reset, for rivieres are no longer in fashion. The stones
+   are enormous.
+
+   "But, poor dear! she could care little for such things. All she
+   wanted was to get back as quickly as she could into her usual
+   clothes. She said to me, again and again: 'Pray God for me that I
+   may be a good wife. I am so afraid I may not be. To belong to
+   Monsieur de Talbrun in this world, and in the next; to give up
+   everything for him, seems so extraordinary. Indeed, I think I
+   hardly knew what I was promising.' I felt sorry for her; I kissed
+   her. I was ready to cry myself, and poor Giselle went on: 'If you
+   knew, dear, how I love you! how I love all my friends! really to
+   love, people must have been brought up together--must have always
+   known each other.' I don't think she was right, but everybody has
+   his or her ideas about such things. I tried, by way of consoling
+   her, to draw her attention to the quantities of presents she had
+   received. They were displayed on several tables in the smaller
+   drawing-room, but her grandmother would not let them put the name of
+   the giver upon each, as is the present custom. She said that it
+   humiliated those who had not been able to make gifts as expensive as
+   others. She is right, when one comes to think of it. Nor would she
+   let the trousseau be displayed; she did not think it proper, but I
+   saw enough to know that there were marvels in linen, muslin, silks,
+   and surahs, covered all over with lace. One could see that the
+   great mantua-maker had not consulted the grandmother, who says that
+   women of distinction in her day did not wear paltry trimmings.
+
+   "Dinner was served under a tent for all the village people during
+   the two mortal hours we had to spend over a repast, in which Madame
+   de Monredon's cook excelled himself. Then came complimentary
+   addresses in the old-fashioned style, composed by the village
+   schoolmaster who, for a wonder, knew what he was about; groups of
+   village children, boys and girls, came bringing their offerings,
+   followed by pet lambs decked with ribbons; it was all in the style
+   of the days of Madame de Genlis. While we danced in the salons
+   there was dancing in the barn, which had been decorated for the
+   occasion. In short; lords and ladies and laborers all seemed to
+   enjoy themselves, or made believe they did. The Parisian gentlemen
+   who danced were not very numerous. There were a few friends of
+   Monsieur de Talbrun's, however--among them, a Monsieur de Cymier,
+   whom possibly you remember having seen last summer at Treport; he
+   led the cotillon divinely. The bride and bridegroom drove away
+   during the evening, as they do in England, to their own house, which
+   is not far off. Monsieur de Talbrun's horses--a magnificent pair,
+   harnessed to a new 'caleche'--carried off Psyche, as an old
+   gentleman in gold spectacles said near me. He was a pretentious old
+   personage, who made a speech at table, very inappropriate and much
+   applauded. Poor Giselle! I have not seen her since, but she has
+   written me one of those little notes which, when she was in the
+   convent, she used to sign Enfant de Marie. It begged me again to
+   pray earnestly for her that she might not fail in the fulfilment of
+   her new duties. It seems hard, does it not? Let us hope that
+   Monsieur de Talbrun, on his part, may not find that his new life
+   rather wearies him! Do you know what should have been Giselle's
+   fate--since she has a mania about people being thoroughly acquainted
+   before marriage? What would two or three years more or less have
+   mattered? She would have made an admirable wife for a sailor; she
+   would have spent the months of your absence kneeling before the
+   altar; she would have multiplied the lamentations and the
+   tendernesses of your excellent mother. I have been thinking this
+   ever since the wedding-day--a very sad day, after all.
+
+   "But how I have let my pen run on. I shall have to put on two
+   stamps, notwithstanding my thin paper. But then you have plenty of
+   time to read on board-ship, and this account may amuse you. Make
+   haste and thank me for it.
+
+                  "Your old friend,
+
+                       "JACQUELINE."
+
+Amuse him! How could he be amused by so great an insult? What! thank her
+for giving him over even in thought to Giselle or to anybody? Oh, how
+wicked, how ungrateful, how unworthy!
+
+The six pages of foreign-post paper were crumpled up by his angry
+fingers. Fred tore them with his teeth, and finally made them into a
+ball which he flung into the sea, hating himself for having been so
+foolish as to let himself be caught by the first lines, as a foolish
+fish snaps at the bait, when, apropos to the church in which she would
+like to be married, she had added "But we should have to be content with
+Saint-Augustin."
+
+Those words had delighted him as if they had really been meant for
+himself and Jacqueline. This promise for the future, that seemed to
+escape involuntarily from her pen, had made him find all the rest of her
+letter piquant and amusing. As he read, his mind had reverted to that
+little phrase which he now found he had interpreted wrongly. What a
+fall! How his hopes now crumbled under his feet! She must have done it
+on purpose--but no, he need not blacken her! She had written without
+thought, without purpose, in high spirits; she wanted to be witty, to be
+droll, to write gossip without any reference to him to whom her letter
+was addressed. That we who some day would make a triumphal entry into
+St. Augustin would be herself and some other man--some man with whom
+her acquaintance had been short, since she did not seem to feel in that
+matter like Giselle. Some one she did not yet know? Was that sure? She
+might know her future husband already, even now she might have made her
+choice--Marcel d'Etaples, perhaps, who looked so well in uniform, or
+that M. de Cymier, who led the cotillon so divinely. Yes! No doubt it
+was he--the last-comer. And once more Fred suffered all the pangs of
+jealousy. It seemed to him that in his loneliness, between sky and sea,
+those pangs were more acute than he had ever known them. His comrades
+teased him about his melancholy looks, and made him the butt of all
+their jokes in the cockpit. He resolved, however, to get over it, and
+at the next port they put into, Jacqueline's letter was the cause of his
+entering for the first time some discreditable scenes of dissipation.
+
+At Bermuda he received another letter, dated from Paris, where
+Jacqueline had rejoined her parents, who had returned from Italy. She
+sent him a commission. Would he buy her a riding-whip? Bermuda was
+renowned for its horsewhips, and her father had decided that she must go
+regularly to the riding-school. They seemed anxious now to give her, as
+preliminary to her introduction into society, not only such pleasures as
+horseback exercise, but intellectual enjoyment also. She had been taken
+to the Institute to hear M. Legouve, and what was better still, in
+December her stepmother would give a little party every fortnight and
+would let her sit up till eleven o'clock. She was also to be taken to
+make some calls. In short, she felt herself rising in importance, but
+the first thing that had made her feel so was Fred's choice of her to be
+his literary confidant. She was greatly obliged to him, and did not know
+how she could better prove to him that she was worthy of so great an
+honor than by telling him quite frankly just what she thought of his
+verses. They were very, very pretty. He had talent--great talent. Only,
+as in attending the classes of M. Regis she had acquired some little
+knowledge of the laws of versification, she would like to warn him
+against impairing a thought for the benefit of a rhyme, and she pointed
+out several such places in his compositions, ending thus:
+
+"Bravo! for sunsets, for twilights, for moonshine, for deep silence, for
+starry nights, and silvery seas--in such things you excel; one feels as
+if one were there, and one envies you the fairy scenes of ocean. But, I
+implore you, be not sentimental. That is the feeble part of your poetry,
+to my thinking, and spoils the rest. By the way, I should like to ask
+you whose are those soft eyes, that silky hair, that radiant smile, and
+all that assortment of amber, jet, and coral occurring so often in your
+visions? Is she--or rather, are they--black, yellow, green, or tattooed,
+for, of course, you have met everywhere beauties of all colors? Several
+times when it appeared as if the lady of your dreams were white, I
+fancied you were drawing a portrait of Isabelle Ray. All the girls, your
+old friends, to whom I have shown At Sea, send you their compliments,
+to which I join my own. Each of them will beg you to write her a sonnet;
+but first of all, in virtue of our ancient friendship, I want one
+myself.
+
+                         "JACQUELINE."
+
+So! she had shown to others what was meant for her alone; what
+profanation! And what was more abominable, she had not recognized that
+he was speaking of herself. Ah! there was nothing to be done now but to
+forget her. Fred tried to do so conscientiously during all his cruise in
+the Atlantic, but the moment he got ashore and had seen Jacqueline, he
+fell again a victim to her charms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. BEAUTY AT THE FAIR
+
+She was more beautiful than ever, and her first exclamation on seeing
+him was intended to be flattering: "Ah! Fred, how much you have
+improved! But what a change! What an extraordinary change! Why, look at
+him! He is still himself, but who would have thought it was Fred!"
+
+He was not disconcerted, for he had acquired aplomb in his journeys
+round the globe, but he gave her a glance of sad reproach, while Madame
+de Nailles said, quietly:
+
+"Yes, really--How are you, Fred? The tan on your face is very
+becoming to you. You have broadened at the shoulders, and are now a
+man--something more than a man, an experienced sailor, almost an old
+seadog."
+
+And she laughed, but only softly, because a frank laugh would have shown
+little wrinkles under her eyes and above her cheeks, which were getting
+too large.
+
+Her toilette, which was youthful, yet very carefully adapted to her
+person, showed that she was by no means as yet "laid on the shelf," as
+Raoul Wermant elegantly said of her. She stood up, leaning over a table
+covered with toys, which it was her duty to sell at the highest price
+possible, for the place of a meeting so full of emotions for Fred was a
+charity bazaar.
+
+The moment he arrived in Paris the young officer had been, so to speak,
+seized by the collar. He had found a great glazed card, bidding him
+to attend this fair, in a fashionable quarter, and forthwith he had
+forgotten his resolution of not going near the Nailles for a long time.
+
+"This is not the same thing," he said to himself. "One must not let
+one's self be supposed to be stingy." So with these thoughts he went to
+the bazaar, very glad in his secret heart to have an excuse for breaking
+his resolution.
+
+The fair was for the benefit of sufferers from a fire--somewhere or
+other. In our day multitudes of people fall victims to all kinds of
+dreadful disasters, explosions of boilers, explosions of fire-damp, of
+everything that can explode, for the agents of destruction seem to be in
+a state of unnatural excitement as well as human beings. Never before,
+perhaps, have inanimate things seemed so much in accordance with the
+spirit of the times. Fred found a superb placard, the work of Cheret, a
+pathetic scene in a mine, banners streaming in the air, with the words
+'Bazar de Charite' in gold letters on a red ground, and the courtyard of
+the mansion where the fair was held filled with more carriages than one
+sees at a fashionable wedding. In the vestibule many footmen were in
+attendance, the chasseurs of an Austrian ambassador, the great hulking
+fellows of the English embassy, the gray-liveried servants of old
+Rozenkranz, with their powdered heads, the negro man belonging to Madame
+Azucazillo, etc., etc. At each arrival there was a frou-frou of satin
+and lace, and inside the sales room was a hubbub like the noise in an
+aviary. Fred, finding himself at once in the full stream of Parisian
+life, but for the moment not yet part of it, indulged in some of those
+philosophic reflections to which he had been addicted on shipboard.
+
+Each of the tables showed something of the tastes, the character, the
+peculiarities of the lady who had it in charge. Madame Sterny, who had
+the most beautiful hands in the world, had undertaken to sell gloves,
+being sure that the gentlemen would be eager to buy if she would only
+consent to try them on; Madame de Louisgrif, the 'chanoiness', whose
+extreme emaciation was not perceived under a sort of ecclesiastical
+cape, had an assortment of embroideries and objects of devotion,
+intended only for ladies--and indeed for only the most serious among
+them; for the table that held umbrellas, parasols and canes suited to
+all ages and both sexes, a good, upright little lady had been chosen.
+Her only thought was how much money she could make by her sales. Madame
+Strahlberg, the oldest of the Odinskas, obviously expected to sell only
+to gentlemen; her table held pyramids of cigars and cigarettes, but
+nothing else was in the corner where she presided, supple and frail,
+not handsome, but far more dangerous than if she had been, with her
+unfathomable way of looking at you with her light eyes set deep under
+her eyebrows, eyes that she kept half closed, but which were yet so
+keen, and the cruel smile that showed her little sharp teeth. Her dress
+was of black grenadine embroidered with silver. She wore half mourning
+as a sort of announcement that she was a widow, in hopes that this
+might put a stop to any wicked gossip which should assert that Count
+Strahlberg was still living, having got a divorce and been very glad
+to get it. Yet people talked about her, but hardly knew what to bring
+against her, because, though anything might be suspected, nothing was
+known. She was received and even sought after in the best society, on
+account of her wonderful talents, which she employed in a manner as
+perverse as everything else about her, but which led some people to call
+her the 'Judic des salons'. Wanda Strahlberg was now holding between her
+lips, which were artificially red, in contrast to the greenish paleness
+of her face, which caused others to call her a vampire, one of the
+cigarettes she had for sale. With one hand, she was playing, graceful as
+a cat, with her last package of regalias, tied with green ribbon, which,
+when offered to the highest bidder, brought an enormous sum. Her sister
+Colette was selling flowers, like several other young girls, but while
+for the most part these waited on their customers in silence, she was
+full of lively talk, and as unblushing in her eagerness to sell as a
+'bouquetiere' by profession. She had grown dangerously pretty. Fred was
+dazzled when she wanted to fasten a rose into his buttonhole, and then,
+as he paid for it, gave him another, saying: "And here is another thrown
+in for old acquaintance' sake."
+
+"Charity seems to cover many things," thought the young man as he
+withdrew from her smiles and her glances, but yet he had seen nothing so
+attractive among the black, yellow, green or tattooed ladies about whom
+Jacqueline had been pleased to tease him.
+
+"Fred!"
+
+It was Jacqueline's voice that arrested him. It was sharp and almost
+angry. She, too, was selling flowers, while at the same time she was
+helping Madame de Nailles with her toys; but she was selling with that
+decorum and graceful reserve which custom prescribes for young girls.
+"Fred, I do hope you will wear no roses but mine. Those you have are
+frightful. They make you look like a village bridegroom. Take out those
+things; come! Here is a pretty boutonniere, and I will fasten it much
+better in your buttonhole--let me."
+
+In vain did he try to seem cold to her; his heart thawed in spite of
+himself. She held him so charmingly by the lapel of his coat, touching
+his cheek with the tip end of an aigrette which set so charmingly on the
+top of the most becoming of fur caps which she wore. Her hair was turned
+up now, showing her beautiful neck, and he could see little rebellious
+hairs curling at their own will over her pure, soft skin, while she,
+bending forward, was engaged in his service. He admired, too, her
+slender waist, only recently subjected to the restraint of a corset.
+He forgave her on the spot. At this moment a man with brown hair, tall,
+elegant, and with his moustache turned up at the ends, after the old
+fashion of the Valois, revived recently, came hurriedly up to the table
+of Madame de Nailles. Fred felt that that inimitable moustache reduced
+his not yet abundant beard to nothing.
+
+"Mademoiselle Jacqueline," said the newcomer, "Madame de Villegry has
+sent me to beg you to help her at the buffet. She can not keep pace with
+her customers, and is asking for volunteers."
+
+All this was uttered with a familiar assurance which greatly shocked the
+young naval man.
+
+"You permit me, Madame?"
+
+The Baroness bowed with a smile, which said, had he chosen to interpret
+it, "I give you permission to carry her off now--and forever, if you
+wish it."
+
+At that moment she was placing in the half-unwilling arms of Hubert
+Marien an enormous rubber balloon and a jumping-jack, in return for
+five Louis which he had laid humbly on her table. But Jacqueline had
+not waited for her stepmother's permission; she let herself be borne
+off radiant on the arm of the important personage who had come for her,
+while Colette, who perhaps had remarked the substitution for her two
+roses, whispered in Fred's ear, in atone of great significance "Monsieur
+de Cymier."
+
+The poor fellow started, like a man suddenly awakened from a happy
+dream to face the most unwelcome of realities. Impelled by that natural
+longing, that we all have, to know the worst, he went toward the buffet,
+affecting a calmness which it cost him a great effort to maintain. As
+he went along he mechanically gave money to each of the ladies whom he
+knew, moving off without waiting for their thanks or stopping to choose
+anything from their tables. He seemed to feel the floor rock under his
+feet, as if he had been walking the deck of a vessel. At last he reached
+a recess decorated with palms, where, in a robe worthy of 'Peau d'Ane'
+in the story, and absolutely a novelty in the world of fashions robe all
+embroidered with gold and rubies, which glittered with every movement
+made by the wearer--Madame de Villegry was pouring out Russian tea
+and Spanish chocolate and Turkish coffee, while all kinds of deceitful
+promises of favor shone in her eyes, which wore a certain tenderness
+expressive of her interest in charity. A party of young nymphs formed
+the court of this fair goddess, doing their best to lend her their aid.
+Jacqueline was one of them, and, at the moment Fred approached, she was
+offering, with the tips of her fingers, a glass of champagne to M.
+de Cymier, who at the same time was eagerly trying to persuade her to
+believe something, about which she was gayly laughing, while she shook
+her head. Poor Fred, that he might hear, and suffer, drank two mouthfuls
+of sherry which he could hardly swallow.
+
+"One who was really charitable would not hesitate," said M. de Cymier,
+"especially when every separate hair would be paid for if you chose.
+Just one little curl--for the sake of the poor. It is very often done:
+anything is allowable for the sake of the poor."
+
+"Maybe it is because, as you say, that it is very often done that I
+shall not do it," said Jacqueline, still laughing. "I have made up my
+mind never to do what others have done before me."
+
+"Well, we shall see," said M. de Cymier, pretending to threaten her.
+
+And her young head was thrown back in a burst of inextinguishable
+laughter.
+
+Fred fled, that he might not be tempted to make a disturbance. When he
+found himself again in the street, he asked himself where he should
+go. His anger choked him; he felt he could not keep his resentment to
+himself, and yet, however angry he might be with Jacqueline, he would
+have been unwilling to hear his mother give utterance to the very
+sentiments that he was feeling, or to harsh judgments, of which he
+preferred to keep the monopoly. It came into his mind that he would pay
+a little visit to Giselle, who, of all the people he knew, was the least
+likely to provoke a quarrel. He had heard that Madame de Talbrun did not
+go out, being confined to her sofa by much suffering, which, it might be
+hoped, would soon come to an end; and the certainty that he should find
+her if he called at once decided him. Since he had been in Paris he had
+done nothing but leave cards. This time, however, he was sure that the
+lady upon whom he called would be at home. He was taken at once into the
+young wife's boudoir, where he found her very feeble, lying back upon
+her cushions, alone, and working at some little bits of baby-clothes. He
+was not slow to perceive that she was very glad to see him. She flushed
+with pleasure as he came into the room, and, dropping her sewing,
+held out to him two little, thin hands, white as wax. "Take that
+footstool--sit down there--what a great, great pleasure it is to see you
+back again!" She was more expansive than she had been formerly; she had
+gained a certain ease which comes from intercourse with the world, but
+how delicate she seemed! Fred for a moment looked at her in silence,
+she seemed so changed as she lay there in a loose robe of pale blue
+cashmere, whose train drawn over her feet made her look tall as it
+stretched to the end of the gilded couch, round which Giselle had
+collected all the little things required by an invalid--bottles, boxes,
+work-bag, dressing-case, and writing materials.
+
+"You see," she said, with her soft smile, "I have plenty to occupy
+me, and I venture to be proud of my work and to think I am creating
+marvels."
+
+As she spoke she turned round on her closed hand a cap that seemed
+microscopic to Fred.
+
+"What!" he cried, "do you expect him to be small enough to wear that!"
+
+"Him! you said him; and I am sure you will be right. I know it will be a
+boy," replied Giselle, eagerly, her fair face brightened by these words.
+"I have some that are still smaller. Look!" and she lifted up a pile of
+things trimmed with ribbons and embroidery. "See; these are the first!
+Ah! I lie here and fancy how he will look when he has them on. He will
+be sweet enough to eat. Only his papa wants us to give him a name that
+I think is too long for him, because it has always been in the
+family--Enguerrand."
+
+"His name will be longer than himself, I should say, judging by the
+dimensions of this cap," said Fred, trying to laugh.
+
+"Bah!" replied Giselle, gayly, "but we can get over it by calling him
+Gue-gue or Ra-ra. What do you think? The difficulty is that names of
+that kind are apt to stick to a boy for fifty years, and then they seem
+ridiculous. Now a pretty abbreviation like Fred is another matter. But
+I forget they have brought up my chocolate. Please ring, and let them
+bring you a cup. We will take our luncheon together, as we used to do."
+
+"Thank you, I have no appetite. I have just come from a certain buffet
+where I lost it all."
+
+"Oh! I suppose you have been to the Bazaar--the famous Charity Fair! You
+must have made a sensation there on your return, for I am told that the
+gentlemen who are expected to spend the most are likely to send their
+money, and not to show themselves. There are many complaints of it."
+
+"There were plenty of men round certain persons," replied Fred, dryly.
+"Madame de Villegry's table was literally besieged."
+
+"Really! What, hers! You surprise me! So it was the good things she gave
+you that make you despise my poor chocolate," said Giselle, rising on
+her elbow, to receive the smoking cup that a servant brought her on a
+little silver salver.
+
+"I didn't take much at her table," said Fred, ready to enter on his
+grievances. "If you wish to know the reason why, I was too indignant to
+eat or drink."
+
+"Indignant?"
+
+"Yes, the word is not at all too strong. When one has passed whole
+months away from what is unwholesome and artificial, such things as
+make up life in Paris, one becomes a little like Alceste, Moliere's
+misanthrope, when one gets back to them. It is ridiculous at my age, and
+yet if I were to tell you--"
+
+"What?--you puzzle me. What can there be that is unwholesome in selling
+things for the poor?"
+
+"The poor! A pretty pretext! Was it to benefit the poor that that odious
+Countess Strahlberg made all those disreputable grimaces? I have seen
+kermesses got up by actresses, and, upon my word, they were good form in
+comparison."
+
+"Oh! Countess Strahlberg! People have heard about her doings until they
+are tired of them," said Giselle, with that air of knowing everything
+assumed by a young wife whose husband has told her all the current
+scandals, as a sort of initiation.
+
+"And her sister seems likely to be as bad as herself before long."
+
+"Poor Colette! She has been so badly brought up. It is not her fault."
+
+"But there's Jacqueline," cried Fred, in a sudden outburst, and already
+feeling better because he could mention her name.
+
+"Allons, donc! You don't mean to say anything against Jacqueline?" cried
+Giselle, clasping her hands with an air of astonishment. "What can she
+have done to scandalize you--poor little dear?"
+
+Fred paused for half a minute, then he drew the stool in the form of
+an X, on which he was sitting, a little nearer to Giselle's sofa, and,
+lowering his voice, told her how Jacqueline had acted under his very
+eyes. As he went on, watching as he spoke the effect his words produced
+upon Giselle, who listened as if slightly amused by his indignation, the
+case seemed not nearly so bad as he had supposed, and a delicious sense
+of relief crept over him when she to whom he told his wrongs after
+hearing him quietly to the end, said, smiling:
+
+"And what then? There is no great harm in all that. Would you have had
+her refuse to go with the gentleman Madame de Villegry had sent to fetch
+her? And why, may I ask, should she not have done her best to help by
+pouring out champagne? An air put on to please is indispensable to a
+woman, if she wishes to sell anything. Good Heavens! I don't approve any
+more than you do of all these worldly forms of charity, but this kind of
+thing is considered right; it has come into fashion. Jacqueline had the
+permission of her parents, and I really can't see any good reason why
+you should complain of her. Unless--why not tell me the whole truth,
+Fred? I know it--don't we always know what concerns the people that we
+care for? And I might possibly some day be of use to you. Say! don't you
+think you are--a little bit jealous?"
+
+Less encouragement than this would have sufficed to make him open his
+heart to Giselle. He was delighted that some woman was willing he should
+confide in her. And what was more, he was glad to have it proved that
+he had been all wrong. A quarter of an hour later Giselle had comforted
+him, happy herself that it had been in her power to undertake a task of
+consolation, a work in which, with sweet humility, she felt herself at
+ease. On the great stage of life she knew now she should never play any
+important part, any that would bring her greatly into view. But she felt
+that she was made to be a confidant, one of those perfect confidants
+who never attempt to interfere rashly with the course of events, but
+who wait upon the ways of Providence, removing stones, and briers
+and thorns, and making everything turn out for the best in the end.
+Jacqueline, she said, was so young! A little wild, perhaps, but what
+a treasure! She was all heart! She would need a husband worthy of her,
+such a man as Fred. Madame d'Argy, she knew, had already said something
+on the subject to her father. But it would have to be the Baroness that
+Fred must bring over to their views; the Baroness was acquiring more and
+more influence over her husband, who seemed to be growing older every
+day. M. de Nailles had evidently much, very much upon his mind. It was
+said in business circles that he had for some time past been given to
+speculation. Oscar said so. If that were the case, many of Jacqueline's
+suitors might withdraw. Not all men were so disinterested as Fred.
+
+"Oh! As to her dot--what do I care for her dot?" cried the young man. "I
+have enough for two, if she would only be satisfied to live quietly at
+Lizerolles!"
+
+"Yes," said the judicious little matron, nodding her head, "but who
+would like to marry a midshipman? Make haste and be a lieutenant, or an
+ensign."
+
+She smiled at herself for having made the reward depend upon exertion,
+with a sort of maternal instinct. It was the same instinct that would
+lead her in the future to promise Enguerrand a sugar-plum if he said his
+lesson. "Nobody will steal your Jacqueline till you are ready to carry
+her off. Besides, if there were any danger I could give you timely
+warning."
+
+"Ah! Giselle, if she only had your kind heart--your good sense."
+
+"Do you think I am better and more reasonable than other people? In
+what way? I have done as so many other girls do; I have married without
+knowing well what I was doing."
+
+She stopped short, fearing she might have said too much, and indeed Fred
+looked at her anxiously.
+
+"You don't regret it, do you?"
+
+"You must ask Monsieur de Talbrun if he regrets it," she said, with a
+laugh. "It must be hard on him to have a sick wife, who knows little of
+what is passing outside of her own chamber, who is living on her reserve
+fund of resources--a very poor little reserve fund it is, too!"
+
+Then, as if she thought that Fred had been with her long enough, she
+said: "I would ask you to stay and see Monsieur de Talbrun, but he won't
+be in, he dines at his club. He is going to see a new play tonight which
+they say promises to be very good."
+
+"What! Will he leave you alone all the evening?"
+
+"Oh! I am very glad he should find amusement. Just think how long it is
+that I have been pinned down here! Poor Oscar!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. GISELLE'S CONSOLATION
+
+The arrival of the expected Enguerrand hindered Giselle from pleading
+Fred's cause as soon as she could have wished. Her life for twenty-four
+hours was in great danger, and when the crisis was past, which M. de
+Talbrun treated very indifferently, as a matter of course, her first cry
+was "My baby!" uttered in a tone of tender eagerness such as had never
+been heard from her lips before.
+
+The nurse brought him. He lay asleep swathed in his swaddling clothes
+like a mummy in its wrappings, a motionless, mysterious being, but he
+seemed to his mother beautiful--more beautiful than anything she had
+seen in those vague visions of happiness she had indulged in at the
+convent, which were never to be realized. She kissed his little purple
+face, his closed eyelids, his puckered mouth, with a sort of respectful
+awe. She was forbidden to fatigue herself. The wet-nurse, who had been
+brought from Picardy, drew near with her peasant cap trimmed with
+long blue streamers; her big, experienced hands took the baby from his
+mother, she turned him over on her lap, she patted him, she laughed at
+him. And the mother-happiness that had lighted up Giselle's pale face
+died away.
+
+"What right," she thought, "has that woman to my child?" She envied
+the horrid creature, coarse and stout, with her tanned face, her bovine
+features, her shapeless figure, who seemed as if Nature had predestined
+her to give milk and nothing more. Giselle would so gladly have been in
+her place! Why wouldn't they permit her to nurse her baby?
+
+M. de Talbrun said in answer to this question:
+
+"It is never done among people in our position. You have no idea, of all
+it would entail on you--what slavery, what fatigue! And most probably
+you would not have had milk enough."
+
+"Oh! who can tell? I am his mother! And when this woman goes he will
+have to have English nurses, and when he is older he will have to go to
+school. When shall I have him to myself?"
+
+And she began to cry.
+
+"Come, come!" said M. de Talbrun, much astonished, "all this fuss about
+that frightful little monkey!"
+
+Giselle looked at him almost as much astonished as he had been at her.
+Love, with its jealousy, its transports, its anguish, its delights had
+for the first time come to her--the love that she could not feel for her
+husband awoke in her for her son. She was ennobled--she was transfigured
+by a sense of her maternity; it did for her what marriage does for some
+women--it seemed as if a sudden radiance surrounded her.
+
+When she raised her infant in her arms, to show him to those who came
+to see her, she always seemed like a most chaste and touching
+representation of the Virgin Mother. She would say, as she exhibited
+him: "Is he not superb?" Every one said: "Yes, indeed!" out of
+politeness, but, on leaving the mother's presence, would generally
+remark: "He is Monsieur de Talbrun in baby-clothes: the likeness is
+perfectly horrible!"
+
+The only visitor who made no secret of this impression was Jacqueline,
+who came to see her cousin as soon as she was permitted--that is, as
+soon as her friend was able to sit up and be prettily dressed, as became
+the mother of such a little gentleman as the heir of all the Talbruns.
+When Jacqueline saw the little creature half-smothered in the lace
+that trimmed his pillows, she burst out laughing, though it was in the
+presence of his mother.
+
+"Oh, mon Dieu!" she cried, "how ugly! I never should have supposed we
+could have been as ugly as that! Why, his face is all the colors of the
+rainbow; who would have imagined it? And he crumples up his little face
+like those things in gutta-percha. My poor Giselle, how can you bear to
+show him! I never, never could covet a baby!"
+
+Giselle, in consternation, asked herself whether this strange girl,
+who did not care for children, could be a proper wife for Fred; but her
+habitual indulgence came to her aid, and she thought:
+
+"She is but a child herself, she does not know what she is saying," and
+profiting by her first tete-a-tete with Jacqueline's stepmother, she
+spoke as she had promised to Madame de Nailles.
+
+"A matchmaker already!" said the Baroness, with a smile. "And so soon
+after you have found out what it costs to be a mother! How good of you,
+my dear Giselle! So you support Fred as a candidate? But I can't say I
+think he has much chance; Monsieur de Nailles has his own ideas."
+
+She spoke as if she really thought that M. de Nailles could have any
+ideas but her own. When the adroit Clotilde was at a loss, she was
+likely to evoke this chimerical notion of her husband's having an
+opinion of his own.
+
+"Oh! Madame, you can do anything you like with him!"
+
+The clever woman sighed:
+
+"So you fancy that when people have been long married a wife retains
+as much influence over her husband as you have kept over Monsieur de
+Talbrun? You will learn to know better, my dear."
+
+"But I have no influence," murmured Giselle, who knew herself to be her
+husband's slave.
+
+"Oh! I know better. You are making believe!"
+
+"Well, but we were not talking about me, but--"
+
+"Oh! yes. I understood. I will think about it. I will try to bring over
+Monsieur de Nailles."
+
+She was not at all disposed to drop the meat for the sake of the shadow,
+but she was not sure of M. de Cymier, notwithstanding all that Madame de
+Villegry was at pains to tell her about his serious intentions. On the
+other hand, she would have been far from willing to break with a man so
+brilliant, who made himself so agreeable at her Tuesday receptions.
+
+"Meantime, it would be well if you, dear, were to try to find out what
+Jacqueline thinks. You may not find it very easy."
+
+"Will you authorize me to tell her how well he loves her? Oh, then, I am
+quite satisfied!" cried Giselle.
+
+But she was under a mistake. Jacqueline, as soon as she began to speak
+to her of Fred's suit, stopped her:
+
+"Poor fellow! Why can't he amuse himself for some time longer and let
+me do the same? Men seem to me so strange! Now, Fred is one who, just
+because he is good and serious by nature, fancies that everybody else
+should be the same; he wishes me to be tethered in the flowery meads of
+Lizerolles, and browse where he would place me. Such a life would be an
+end of everything--an end to my life, and I should not like it at all. I
+should prefer to grow old in Paris, or some other capital, if my husband
+happened to be engaged in diplomacy. Even supposing I marry--which I do
+not think an absolute necessity, unless I can not get rid otherwise of
+an inconvenient chaperon--and to do my stepmother justice, she knows
+well enough that I will not submit to too much of her dictation!"
+
+"Jacqueline, they say you see too much of the Odinskas."
+
+"There! that's another fault you find in me. I go there because Madame
+Strahlberg is so kind as to give me some singing-lessons. If you only
+knew how much progress I am making, thanks to her. Music is a thousand
+times more interesting, I can tell you, than all that you can do as
+mistress of a household. You don't think so? Oh! I know Enguerrand's
+first tooth, his first steps, his first gleams of intelligence, and all
+that. Such things are not in my line, you know. Of course I think your
+boy very funny, very cunning, very--anything you like to fancy him, but
+forgive me if I am glad he does not belong to me. There, don't you see
+now that marriage is not my vocation, so please give up speaking to me
+about matrimony."
+
+"As you will," said Giselle, sadly, "but you will give great pain to a
+good man whose heart is wholly yours."
+
+"I did not ask for his heart. Such gifts are exasperating. One does not
+know what to do with them. Can't he--poor Fred--love me as I love him,
+and leave me my liberty?"
+
+"Your liberty!" exclaimed Giselle; "liberty to ruin your life, that's
+what it will be."
+
+"Really, one would suppose there was only one kind of existence in your
+eyes--this life of your own, Giselle. To leave one cage to be shut up
+in another--that is the fate of many birds, I know, but there are
+others who like to use their wings to soar into the air. I like that
+expression. Come, little mother, tell me right out, plainly, that your
+lot is the only one in this world that ought to be envied by a woman."
+
+Giselle answered with a strange smile:
+
+"You seem astonished that I adore my baby; but since he came great
+things seem to have been revealed to me. When I hold him to my breast
+I seem to understand, as I never did before, duty and marriage, family
+ties and sorrows, life itself, in short, its griefs and joys. You can
+not understand that now, but you will some day. You, too, will gaze
+upon the horizon as I do. I am ready to suffer; I am ready for
+self-sacrifice. I know now whither my life leads me. I am led, as it
+were, by this little being, who seemed to me at first only a doll, for
+whom I was embroidering caps and dresses. You ask whether I am satisfied
+with my lot in life. Yes, I am, thanks to this guide, this guardian
+angel, thanks to my precious Enguerrand."
+
+Jacqueline listened, stupefied, to this unexpected outburst, so unlike
+her cousin's usual language; but the charm was broken by its ending with
+the tremendously long name of Enguerrand, which always made her laugh,
+it was in such perfect harmony with the feudal pretensions of the
+Monredons and the Talbruns.
+
+"How solemn and eloquent and obscure you are, my dear," she answered.
+"You speak like a sibyl. But one thing I see, and that is that you are
+not so perfectly happy as you would have us believe, seeing that you
+feel the need of consolations. Then, why do you wish me to follow your
+example?"
+
+"Fred is not Monsieur de Talbrun," said the young wife, for the moment
+forgetting herself.
+
+"Do you mean to say--"
+
+"I meant nothing, except that if you married Fred you would have had the
+advantage of first knowing him."
+
+"Ah! that's your fixed idea. But I am getting to know Monsieur de Cymier
+pretty well."
+
+"You have betrayed yourself," cried Giselle, with indignation. "Monsieur
+de Cymier!"
+
+"Monsieur de Cymier is coming to our house on Saturday evening, and
+I must get up a Spanish song that Madame Strahlberg has taught me, to
+charm his ears and those of other people. Oh! I can do it very well.
+Won't you come and hear me play the castanets, if Monsieur Enguerrand
+can spare you? There is a young Polish pianist who is to play our
+accompaniment. Ah, there is nothing like a Polish pianist to play
+Chopin! He is charming, poor young man! an exile, and in poverty; but he
+is cared for by those ladies, who take him everywhere. That is the sort
+of life I should like--the life of Madame Strahlberg--to be a young
+widow, free to do what I pleased."
+
+"She may be a widow--but some say she is divorced."
+
+"Oh! is it you who repeat such naughty scandals, Giselle? Where shall
+charity take refuge in this world if not in your heart? I am going--your
+seriousness may be catching. Kiss me before I go."
+
+"No," said Madame de Talbrun, turning her head away.
+
+After this she asked herself whether she ought not to discourage Fred.
+She could not resolve on doing so, yet she could not tell him what was
+false; but by eluding the truth with that ability which kind-hearted
+women can always show when they try to avoid inflicting pain, she
+succeeded in leaving the young man hope enough to stimulate his
+ambition.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. FRED ASKS A QUESTION
+
+Time, whatever may be said of it by the calendars, is not to be measured
+by days, weeks, and months in all cases; expectation, hope, happiness
+and grief have very different ways of counting hours, and we know from
+our own experience that some are as short as a minute, and others as
+long as a century. The love or the suffering of those who can tell just
+how long they have suffered, or just how long they have been in love, is
+only moderate and reasonable.
+
+Madame d'Argy found the two lonely years she passed awaiting the return
+of her son, who was winning his promotion to the rank of ensign, so
+long, that it seemed to her as if they never would come to an end. She
+had given a reluctant consent to his notion of adopting the navy as a
+profession, thinking that perhaps, after all, there might be no harm
+in allowing her dear boy to pass the most dangerous period of his youth
+under strict discipline, but she could not be patient forever! She
+idolized her son too much to be resigned to living without him; she felt
+that he was hers no longer. Either he was at sea or at Toulon, where
+she could very rarely join him, being detained at Lizerolles by the
+necessity of looking after their property. With what eagerness she
+awaited his promotion, which she did not doubt was all the Nailles
+waited for to give their consent to the marriage; of their happy
+half-consent she hastened to remind them in a note which announced the
+new grade to which he had been promoted. Her indignation was great on
+finding that her formal request received no decided answer; but, as her
+first object was Fred's happiness, she placed the reply she had received
+in its most favorable light when she forwarded it to the person whom
+it most concerned. She did this in all honesty. She was not willing
+to admit that she was being put off with excuses; still less could she
+believe in a refusal.
+
+She accepted the excuse that M. de Nailles gave for returning no decided
+answer, viz.: that "Jacqueline was too young," though she answered him
+with some vehemence: "Fred was born when I was eighteen." But she had to
+accept it. Her ensign would have to pass a few more months on the
+coast of Senegal, a few more months which were made shorter by the
+encouragement forwarded to him by his mother, who was careful to
+send him everything she could find out that seemed to be, or that
+she imagined might be, in his favor; she underlined such things and
+commented upon them, so as to make the faintest hypothesis seem a
+certainty. Sometimes she did not even wait for the post. Fred would
+find, on putting in at some post, a cablegram: "Good news," or "All goes
+well," and he would be beside himself with joy and excitement until,
+on receiving his poor, dear mother's next letter, he found out on how
+slight a foundation her assurance had been founded.
+
+Sometimes, she wrote him disagreeable things about Jacqueline, as if she
+would like to disenchant him, and then he said to himself: "By this, I
+am to understand that my affairs are not going on well; I still count
+for little, notwithstanding my promotion." Ah! if he could only
+have had, so near the beginning of his career, any opportunity of
+distinguishing himself! No brilliant deed would have been too hard for
+him. He would have scaled the very skies. Alas! he had had no chance
+to win distinction, he had only had to follow in the beaten track of
+ordinary duty; he had encountered no glorious perils, though at St.
+Louis he had come very near leaving his bones, but it was only a case of
+typhoid fever. This fever, however, brought about a scene between M. de
+Nailles and his mother.
+
+"When," she cried, with all the fury of a lioness, "do you expect to
+come to the conclusion that my son is a suitable match for Jacqueline?
+Do you imagine that I shall let him wait till he is a post-captain to
+satisfy the requirements of Mademoiselle your daughter--provided he does
+not die in a hospital? Do you think that I shall be willing to go
+on living--if you can call it living!--all alone and in continual
+apprehension? Why do you let him keep on in uncertainty? You know his
+worth, and you know that with him Jacqueline would be happy. Instead of
+that--instead of saying once for all to this young man, who is more in
+love with her than any other man will ever be: 'There, take her, I give
+her to you,' which would be the straightforward, sensible way, you go on
+encouraging the caprices of a child who will end by wasting, in the
+life you are permitting her to lead, all the good qualities she has and
+keeping nothing but the bad ones."
+
+"Mon Dieu! I can't see that Jacqueline leads a life like that!" said M.
+de Nailles, who felt that he must say something.
+
+"You don't see, you don't see! How can any one see who won't open his
+eyes? My poor friend, just look for once at what is going on around you,
+under your own roof--"
+
+"Jacqueline is devoted to music," said her father, good-humoredly.
+Madame d'Argy in her heart thought he was losing his mind.
+
+And in truth he was growing older day by day, becoming more and more
+anxious, more and more absorbed in the great struggle--not for life;
+that might exhaust a man, but at least it was energetic and noble--but
+for superfluous wealth, for vanity, for luxury, which, for his own
+part, he cared nothing for, and which he purchased dearly, spurred on to
+exertion by those near to him, who insisted on extravagances.
+
+"Oh! yes, Jacqueline, I know, is devoted to music," went on Madame
+d'Argy, with an air of extreme disapproval, "too much so! And when she
+is able to sing like Madame Strahlberg, what good will it do her?
+Even now I see more than one little thing about her that needs to
+be reformed. How can she escape spoiling in that crowd of Slavs and
+Yankees, people of no position probably in their own countries, with
+whom you permit her to associate? People nowadays are so imprudent about
+acquaintances! To be a foreigner is a passport into society. Just think
+what her poor mother would have said to the bad manners she is adopting
+from all parts of the globe? My poor, dear Adelaide! She was a genuine
+Frenchwoman of the old type; there are not many such left now. Ah!"
+continued Madame d'Argy, without any apparent connection with her
+subject, "Monsieur de Talbrun's mother, if he had one, would be truly
+happy to see him married to Giselle!"
+
+"But," faltered M. de Nailles, struck by the truth of some of these
+remarks, "I make no opposition--quite the contrary--I have spoken
+several times about your son, but I was not listened to!"
+
+"What can she say against Fred?"
+
+"Nothing. She is very fond of him, that you know as well as I do.
+But those childish attachments do not necessarily lead to love and
+marriage."
+
+"Friendship on her side might be enough," said Madame d'Argy, in the
+tone of a woman who had never known more than that in marriage. "My poor
+Fred has enthusiasm and all that, enough for two. And in time she will
+be madly in love with him--she must! It is impossible it should be
+otherwise."
+
+"Very good, persuade her yourself if you can; but Jacqueline has a
+pretty strong will of her own."
+
+Jacqueline's will was a reality, though the ideas of M. de Nailles may
+have been illusion.
+
+"And my wife, too!" resumed the Baron, after a long sigh. "I don't
+know how it is, but Jacqueline, as she has grown up, has become like an
+unbroken colt, and those two, who were once all in all to each other,
+are now seldom of one mind. How am I to act when their two wills cross
+mine, as they often do? I have so many things on my mind. There are
+times when--"
+
+"Yes, one can see that. You don't seem to know where you are. And do
+you think that the disposition she shows to act, as you say, like an
+unbroken colt, is nothing to me? Do you think I am quite satisfied
+with my son's choice? I could have wished that he had chosen for his
+wife--but what is the use of saying what I wished? The important thing
+is that he should be happy in his own way. Besides, I dare say the young
+thing will calm down of her own accord. Her mother's daughter must be
+good at heart. All will come right when she is removed from a circle
+which is doing her no good; it is injuring her in people's opinion
+already, you must know. And how will it be by-and-bye? I hear people
+saying everywhere: 'How can the Nailles let that young girl associate so
+much with foreigners?' You say they are old school-fellows, they went to
+the 'cours' together. But see if Madame d'Etaples and Madame Ray, under
+the same pretext, let Isabelle and Yvonne associate with the Odinskas!
+As to that foolish woman, Madame d'Avrigny, she goes to their house
+to look up recruits for her operettas, and Madame Strahlberg has one
+advantage over regular artists, there is no call to pay her. That is the
+reason why she invites her. Besides which, she won't find it so easy to
+marry Dolly."
+
+"Oh! there are several reasons for that," said the Baron, who could see
+the mote in his neighbor's eye, "Mademoiselle d'Avrigny has led a life
+so very worldly ever since she was a child, so madly fast and lively,
+that suitors are afraid of her. Jacqueline, thank heaven, has never yet
+been in what is called the world. She only visits those with whom she is
+on terms of intimacy."
+
+"An intimacy which includes all Paris," said Madame d'Argy, raising her
+eyes to heaven. "If she does not go to great balls, it is only because
+her stepmother is bored by them. But with that exception it seems to me
+she is allowed to do anything. I don't see the difference. But, to be
+sure, if Jacqueline is not for us, you have a right to say that I am
+interfering in what does not concern me."
+
+"Not at all," said the unfortunate father, "I feel how much I ought to
+value your advice, and an alliance with your family would please me more
+than anything."
+
+He said the truth, for he was disturbed by seeing M. de Cymier so slow
+in making his proposals, and he was also aware that young girls in our
+day are less sought for in marriage than they used to be. His friend
+Wermant, rich as he was, had had some trouble in capturing for Berthe a
+fellow of no account in the Faubourg St. Germain, and the prize was not
+much to be envied. He was a young man without brains and without a sou,
+who enjoyed so little consideration among his own people that his wife
+had not been received as she expected, and no one spoke of Madame de
+Belvan without adding: "You know, that little Wermant, daughter of the
+'agent de change'."
+
+Of course, Jacqueline had the advantage of good birth over Berthe,
+but how great was her inferiority in point of fortune! M. de Nailles
+sometimes confided these perplexities to his wife, without, however,
+receiving much comfort from her. Nor did the Baroness confess to her
+husband all her own fears. In secret she often asked herself, with the
+keen insight of a woman of the world well trained in artifice and who
+possessed a thorough knowledge of mankind, whether there might not be
+women capable of using a young girl so as to put the world on a
+wrong scent; whether, in other words, Madame de Villegry did not talk
+everywhere about M. de Cymier's attentions to Mademoiselle de Nailles
+in order to conceal his relations to herself? Madame de Villegry indeed
+cared little about standing well in public opinion, but rather the
+contrary; she would not, however, for the world have been willing,
+by too openly favoring one man among her admirers, to run the risk of
+putting the rest to flight. No doubt M. de Cymier was most assiduous in
+his attendance on the receptions and dances at Madame de Nailles's, but
+he was there always at the same time as Madame de Villegry herself. They
+would hold whispered conferences in corners, which might possibly have
+been about Jacqueline, but there was no proof that they were so, except
+what Madame de Villegry herself said. "At any rate," thought Madame de
+Nailles, "if Fred comes forward as a suitor it may stimulate Monsieur de
+Cymier. There are men who put off taking a decisive step till the last
+moment, and are only to be spurred up by competition."
+
+So every opportunity was given to Fred to talk freely with Jacqueline
+when he returned to Paris. By this time he wore two gold-lace stripes
+upon his sleeve. But Jacqueline avoided any tete-a-tete with him as if
+she understood the danger that awaited her. She gave him no chance of
+speaking alone with her. She was friendly--nay, sometimes affectionate
+when other people were near them, but more commonly she teased him,
+bewildered him, excited him. After an hour or two spent in her society
+he would go home sometimes savage, sometimes desponding, to ponder in
+his own room, and in his own heart, what interpretation he ought to put
+upon the things that she had said to him.
+
+The more he thought, the less he understood. He would not have confided
+in his mother for the world; she might have cast blame on Jacqueline.
+Besides her, he had no one who could receive his confidences, who would
+bear with his perplexities, who could assist in delivering him from
+the network of hopes and fears in which, after every interview with
+Jacqueline, he seemed to himself to become more and more entangled.
+
+At last, however, at one of the soirees given every fortnight by Madame
+de Nailles, he succeeded in gaining her attention.
+
+"Give me this quadrille," he said to her.
+
+And, as she could not well refuse, he added, as soon as she had taken
+his arm: "We will not dance, and I defy you to escape me."
+
+"This is treason!" she cried, somewhat angrily. "We are not here to
+talk; I can almost guess beforehand what you have to say, and--"
+
+But he had made her sit down in the recess of that bow-window which
+had been called the young girls' corner years ago. He stood before her,
+preventing her escape, and half-laughing, though he was deeply moved.
+
+"Since you have guessed what I wanted to say, answer me quickly."
+
+"Must I? Must I, really? Why didn't you ask my father to do your
+commission? It is so horribly disagreeable to do these things for one's
+self."
+
+"That depends upon what the things may be that have to be said. I should
+think it ought to be very agreeable to pronounce the word on which the
+happiness of a whole life is to depend."
+
+"Oh! what a grand phrase! As if I could be essential to anybody's
+happiness? You can't make me believe that!"
+
+"You are mistaken. You are indispensable to mine."
+
+"There! my declaration has been made," thought Fred, much relieved that
+it was over, for he had been afraid to pronounce the decisive words.
+
+"Well, if I thought that were true, I should be very sorry," said
+Jacqueline, no longer smiling, but looking down fixedly at the pointed
+toe of her little slipper; "because--"
+
+She stopped suddenly. Her face flushed red.
+
+"I don't know how to explain to you;" she said.
+
+"Explain nothing," pleaded Fred; "all I ask is Yes, nothing more. There
+is nothing else I care for."
+
+She raised her head coldly and haughtily, yet her voice trembled as she
+said:
+
+"You will force me to say it? Then, no! No!" she repeated, as if to
+reaffirm her refusal.
+
+Then, alarmed by Fred's silence, and above all by his looks, he who had
+seemed so gay shortly before and whose face now showed an anguish such
+as she had never yet seen on the face of man, she added:
+
+"Oh, forgive me!--Forgive me," she repeated in a lower voice, holding
+out her hand. He did not take it.
+
+"You love some one else?" he asked, through his clenched teeth.
+
+She opened her fan and affected to examine attentively the pink
+landscape painted on it to match her dress.
+
+"Why should you think so? I wish to be free."
+
+"Free? Are you free? Is a woman ever free?"
+
+Jacqueline shook her head, as if expressing vague dissent.
+
+"Free at least to see a little of the world," she said, "to choose, to
+use my wings, in short--"
+
+And she moved her slender arms with an audacious gesture which had
+nothing in common with the flight of that mystic dove upon which she had
+meditated when holding the card given her by Giselle.
+
+"Free to prefer some other man," said Fred, who held fast to his idea
+with the tenacity of jealousy.
+
+"Ah! that is different. Supposing there were anyone whom I liked--not
+more, but differently from the way I like you--it is possible. But you
+spoke of loving!"
+
+"Your distinctions are too subtle," said Fred.
+
+"Because, much as it seems to astonish you, I am quite capable of seeing
+the difference," said Jacqueline, with the look and the accent of a
+person who has had large experience. "I have loved once--a long time
+ago, a very long time ago, a thousand years and more. Yes, I loved some
+one, as perhaps you love me, and I suffered more than you will ever
+suffer. It is ended; it is over--I think it is over forever."
+
+"How foolish! At your age!"
+
+"Yes, that kind of love is ended for me. Others may please me, others do
+please me, as you said, but it is not the same thing. Would you like
+to see the man I once loved?" asked Jacqueline, impelled by a juvenile
+desire to exhibit her experience, and also aware instinctively that to
+cast a scrap of past history to the curious sometimes turns off their
+attention on another track. "He is near us now," she added.
+
+And while Fred's angry eyes, under his frowning brows, were wandering
+all round the salon, she pointed to Hubert Marien with a movement of her
+fan.
+
+Marien was looking on at the dancing, with his old smile, not so
+brilliant now as it had been. He now only smiled at beauty collectively,
+which was well represented that evening in Madame de Nailles's salon.
+Young girls 'en masse' continued to delight him, but his admiration as
+an artist became less and less personal.
+
+He had grown stout, his hair and beard were getting gray; he was
+interested no longer in Savonarola, having obtained, thanks to his
+picture, the medal of honor, and the Institute some months since had
+opened its doors to him.
+
+"Marien? You are laughing at me!" cried Fred.
+
+"It is simply the truth."
+
+Some magnetic influence at that moment caused the painter to turn his
+eyes toward the spot where they were talking.
+
+"We were speaking of you," said Jacqueline.
+
+And her tone was so singular that he dared not ask what they were
+saying. With humility which had in it a certain touch of bitterness he
+said, still smiling:
+
+"You might find something better to do than to talk good or evil of a
+poor fellow who counts now for nothing."
+
+"Counts for nothing! A fellow to be pitied!" cried Fred, "a man who has
+just been elected to the Institute--you are hard to satisfy!"
+
+Jacqueline sat looking at him like a young sorceress engaged in sticking
+pins into the heart of a waxen figure of her enemy. She never missed an
+opportunity of showing her implacable dislike of him.
+
+She turned to Fred: "What I was telling you," she said, "I am quite
+willing to repeat in his presence. The thing has lost its importance
+now that he has become more indifferent to me than any other man in the
+world."
+
+She stopped, hoping that Marien had understood what she was saying
+and that he resented the humiliating avowal from her own lips that her
+childish love was now only a memory.
+
+"If that is the only confession you have to make to me," said Fred, who
+had almost recovered his composure, "I can put up with my former rival,
+and I pass a sponge over all that has happened in your long past of
+seventeen years and a half, Jacqueline. Tell me only that at present you
+like no one better than me."
+
+She smiled a half-smile, but he did not see it. She made no answer.
+
+"Is he here, too--like the other!" he asked, sternly.
+
+And she saw his restless eyes turn for an instant to the conservatory,
+where Madame de Villegry, leaning back in her armchair, and Gerard
+de Cymier, on a low seat almost at her feet, were carrying on their
+platonic flirtation.
+
+"Oh! you must not think of quarrelling with him," cried Jacqueline,
+frightened at the look Fred fastened on De Cymier.
+
+"No, it would be of no use. I shall go out to Tonquin, that's all."
+
+"Fred! You are not serious."
+
+"You will see whether I am not serious. At this very moment I know a man
+who will be glad to exchange with me."
+
+"What! go and get yourself killed at Tonquin for a foolish little girl
+like me, who is very, very fond of you, but hardly knows her own mind.
+It would be absurd!"
+
+"People are not always killed at Tonquin, but I must have new interests,
+something to divert my mind from--"
+
+"Fred! my dear Fred"--Jacqueline had suddenly become almost tender,
+almost suppliant. "Your mother! Think of your mother! What would she
+say? Oh, my God!"
+
+"My mother must be allowed to think that I love my profession better
+than all else. But, Jacqueline," continued the poor fellow, clinging in
+despair to the very smallest hope, as a drowning man catches at a straw,
+"if you do not, as you said, know exactly your own mind--if you would
+like to question your own heart--I would wait--"
+
+Jacqueline was biting the end of her fan--a conflict was taking place
+within her breast. But to certain temperaments there is pleasure in
+breaking a chain or in leaping a barrier; she said:
+
+"Fred, I am too much your friend to deceive you."
+
+At that moment M. de Cymier came toward them with his air of assurance:
+"Mademoiselle, you forget that you promised me this waltz," he said.
+
+"No, I never forget anything," she answered, rising.
+
+Fred detained her an instant, saying, in a low voice:
+
+"Forgive me. This moment, Jacqueline, is decisive. I must have an
+answer. I never shall speak to you again of my sorrow. But decide
+now--on the spot. Is all ended between us?"
+
+"Not our old friendship, Fred," said Jacqueline, tears rising in her
+eyes.
+
+"So be it, then, if you so will it. But our friendship never will show
+itself unless you are in need of friendship, and then only with the
+discretion that your present attitude toward me has imposed."
+
+"Are you ready, Mademoiselle," said Gerard, who, to allow them to
+end their conversation, had obligingly turned his attention to some
+madrigals that Colette Odinska was laughing over.
+
+Jacqueline shook her head resolutely, though at that moment her heart
+felt as if it were in a vise, and the moisture in her eyes looked like
+anything but a refusal. Then, without giving herself time for further
+thought, she whirled away into the dance with M. de Cymier. It was over,
+she had flung to the winds her chance for happiness, and wounded a heart
+more cruelly than Hubert Marien had ever wounded hers. The most horrible
+thing in this unending warfare we call love is that we too often repay
+to those who love us the harm that has been done us by those whom we
+have loved. The seeds of mistrust and perversity sown by one man or by
+one woman bear fruit to be gathered by some one else.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. A COMEDY AND A TRAGEDY
+
+The departure of Frederic d'Argy for Tonquin occasioned a break in the
+intercourse between his mother and the family of De Nailles. The wails
+of Hecuba were nothing to the lamentations of poor Madame d'Argy; the
+unreasonableness of her wrath and the exaggeration in her reproaches
+hindered even Jacqueline from feeling all the remorse she might
+otherwise have felt for her share in Fred's departure. She told her
+father, who the first time in her life addressed her with some severity,
+that she could not be expected to love all the young men who might
+threaten to go to the wars, or to fling themselves from fourth-story
+windows, for her sake.
+
+"It was very indelicate and inconsiderate of Fred to tell any one that
+it was my fault that he was doing anything so foolish," she said, with
+true feminine deceit, "but he has taken the very worst possible means
+to make me care for him. Everybody has too much to say about this matter
+which concerns only him and me. Even Giselle thought proper to write me
+a sermon!"
+
+And she gave vent to her feelings in an exclamation of three syllables
+that she had learned from the Odinskas, which meant: "I don't care!" (je
+m'en moque).
+
+But this was not true. She cared very much for Giselle's good opinion,
+and for Madame d'Argy's friendship. She suffered much in her secret
+heart at the thought of having given so much pain to Fred. She guessed
+how deep it was by the step to which it had driven him. But there was in
+her secret soul something more than all the rest, it was a puerile, but
+delicious satisfaction in feeling her own importance, in having been
+able to exercise an influence over one heart which might possibly extend
+to that of M. de Cymier. She thought he might be gratified by knowing
+that she had driven a young man to despair, if he guessed for whose sake
+she had been so cruel. He knew it, of course. Madame de Nailles took
+care that he should not be ignorant of it, and the pleasure he took
+in such a proof of his power over a young heart was not unlike that
+pleasure Jacqueline experienced in her coquetry--which crushed her
+better feelings. He felt proud of the sacrifice this beautiful girl had
+made for his sake, though he did not consider himself thereby committed
+to any decision, only he felt more attached to her than ever. Ever since
+the day when Madame de Villegry had first introduced him at the house
+of Madame de Nailles, he had had great pleasure in going there. The
+daughter of the house was more and more to his taste, but his liking for
+her was not such as to carry him beyond prudence. "If I chose," he would
+say to himself after every time he met her, "if I chose I could own that
+jewel. I have only to stretch out my hand and have it given me." And
+the next morning, after going to sleep full of that pleasant thought, he
+would awake glad to find that he was still as free as ever, and able
+to carry on a flirtation with a woman of the world, which imposed no
+obligations upon him, and yet at the same time make love to a young girl
+whom he would gladly have married but for certain reports which were
+beginning to circulate among men of business concerning the financial
+position of M. de Nailles.
+
+They said that he was withdrawing money from secure investments to
+repair (or to increase) considerable losses made by speculation, and
+that he operated recklessly on the Bourse. These rumors had already
+withdrawn Marcel d'Etaples from the list of his daughter's suitors. The
+young fellow was a captain of Hussars, who had no scruple in declaring
+the reason of his giving up his interest in the young lady. Gerard de
+Cymier, more prudent, waited and watched, thinking it would be quite
+time enough to go to the bottom of things when he found himself called
+upon to make a decision, and greatly interested meantime in the daily
+increase of Jacqueline's beauty. It was evident she cared for him. After
+all, it was doing the little thing no harm to let her live on in the
+intoxication of vanity and hope, and to give her something to dwell upon
+in her innocent dreams. Never did Gerard allow himself to overstep the
+line he had marked out for himself; a glance, a slight pressure of the
+hand, which might have been intentional, or have meant nothing, a few
+ambiguous words in which an active imagination might find something to
+dream about, a certain way of passing his arm round her slight waist
+which would have meant much had it not been done in public to the sound
+of music, were all the proofs the young diplomatist had ever given of
+an attraction that was real so far as consisted with his complete
+selfishness, joined to his professional prudence, and that systematic
+habit of taking up fancies at any time for anything, which prevents each
+fancy as it occurs from ripening into passion.
+
+He alluded indirectly to Fred's departure in a way that turned it
+into ridicule. While playing a game of 'boston' he whispered into
+Jacqueline's ear something about the old-fashionedness and stupidity of
+Paul and Virginia, and his opinion of "calf-love," as the English call
+an early attachment, and something about the right of every girl to know
+a suitor long before she consents to marry him. He said he thought
+that the days of courtship must be the most delightful in the life of a
+woman, and that a man who wished to cut them short was a fellow without
+delicacy or discretion!
+
+From this Jacqueline drew the conclusion that he was not willing to
+resemble such a fellow, and was more and more persuaded that there was
+tenderness in the way he pressed her waist, and that his voice had the
+softness of a caress when he spoke to her. He made many inquiries as to
+what she liked and what she wished for in the future, as if his great
+object in all things was to anticipate her wishes. As for his
+intimacy with Madame de Villegry, Jacqueline thought nothing of it,
+notwithstanding her habitual mistrust of those she called old women.
+In the first place, Madame de Villegry was her own mistress, nothing
+hindered them from having been married long ago had they wished it;
+besides, had not Madame de Villegry brought the young man to their house
+and let every one see, even Jacqueline herself, what was her object in
+doing so? In this matter she was their ally, a most zealous and kind
+ally, for she was continually advising her young friend as to what was
+most becoming to her and how she might make herself most attractive to
+men in general, with little covert allusions to the particular tastes of
+Gerard, which she said she knew as well as if he had been her brother.
+
+All this was lightly insinuated, but never insisted upon, with the tact
+which stood Madame de Villegry in stead of talent, and which had enabled
+her to perform some marvellous feats upon the tight-rope without losing
+her balance completely. She, too, made fun of the tragic determination
+of Fred, which all those who composed the society of the De Nailles had
+been made aware of by the indiscreet lamentations of Madame d'Argy.
+
+"Is not Jacqueline fortunate?" cried. Colette Odinska, who, herself
+always on a high horse, looked on love in its tragic aspect, and would
+have liked to resemble Marie Stuart as much as she could, "is she
+not fortunate? She has had a man who has gone abroad to get himself
+killed--and all for her!"
+
+Colette imagined herself under the same circumstances, making the most
+of a slain lover, with a crape veil covering her fair hair, her
+mourning copied from that of her divorced sister, who wore her weeds so
+charmingly, but who was getting rather tired of a single life.
+
+As for Miss Kate Sparks and Miss Nora, they could not understand why
+the breaking of half-a-dozen hearts should not be the prelude to every
+marriage. That, they said with much conviction, was always the case in
+America, and a girl was thought all the more of who had done so.
+
+Jacqueline, however, thought more than was reasonable about the dangers
+that the friend of her childhood was going to encounter through her
+fault. Fred's departure would have lent him a certain prestige, had
+not a powerful new interest stepped in to divert her thoughts. Madame
+d'Avrigny was getting up her annual private theatricals, and wanted
+Jacqueline to take the principal part in the play, saying that she ought
+to put her lessons in elocution to some use. The piece chosen was to
+illustrate a proverb, and was entirely new. It was as unexceptionable
+as it was amusing; the most severe critic could have found no fault with
+its morality or with its moral, which turned on the eagerness displayed
+by young girls nowadays to obtain diplomas. Scylla and Charybdis was
+its name. Its story was that of a young bride, who, thinking to please
+a husband, a stupid and ignorant man, was trying to obtain in secret a
+high place in the examination at the Sorbonne--'un brevet superieur'.
+The husband, disquieted by the mystery, is at first suspicious, then
+jealous, and then is overwhelmed with humiliation when he discovers that
+his wife knows more of everything than himself. He ends by imploring her
+to give up her higher education if she wishes to please him. The little
+play had all the modern loveliness and grace which Octave Feuillet alone
+can give, and it contained a lesson from which any one might profit;
+which was by no means always the case with Madame d'Avrigny's plays,
+which too often were full of risky allusions, of critical situations,
+and the like; likely, in short, to "sail too close to the wind," as Fred
+had once described them. But Madame d'Avrigny's prime object was the
+amusement of society, and society finds pleasure in things which,
+if innocence understood them, would put her to the blush. This play,
+however, was an exception. There had been very little to cut out this
+time. Madame de Nailles had been asked to take the mother's part, but
+she declined, not caring to act such a character in a house where years
+before in all her glory she had made a sensation as a young coquette. So
+Madame d'Avrigny had to take the part herself, not sorry to be able
+to superintend everything on the stage, and to prompt Dolly, if
+necessary--Dolly, who had but four words to say, which she always
+forgot, but who looked lovely in a little cap as a femme de chambre.
+
+People had been surprised that M. de Cymier should have asked for the
+part of the husband, a local magistrate, stiff and self-important, whom
+everybody laughed at. Jacqueline alone knew why he had chosen it: it
+would give him the opportunity of giving her two kisses. Of course
+those kisses were to be reserved for the representation, but whether
+intentionally or otherwise, the young husband ventured upon them at
+every rehearsal, in spite of the general outcry--not, however, very
+much in earnest, for it is well understood that in private theatricals
+certain liberties may be allowed, and M. de Cymier had never been
+remarkable for reserve when he acted at the clubs, where the female
+parts were taken by ladies from the smaller theatres. In this school
+he had acquired some reputation as an amateur actor. "Besides," as he
+remarked on making his apology, "we shall do it very awkwardly upon the
+stage if we are not allowed to practise it beforehand." Jacqueline burst
+out laughing, and did not make much show of opposition. To play the part
+of his wife, to hear him say to her, to respond with the affectionate
+and familiar 'toi', was so amusing! It was droll to see her cut out her
+husband in chemistry, history, and grammar, and make him confound La
+Fontaine with Corneille. She had such a little air while doing it! And
+at the close, when he said to her: "If I give you a pony to-morrow, and
+a good hearty kiss this very minute, shall you be willing to give up
+getting that degree?" she responded, with such gusto: "Indeed, I shall!"
+and her manner was so eager, so boyish, so full of fun, that she was
+wildly applauded, while Gerard embraced her as heartily as he liked, to
+make up to himself for her having had, as his wife, the upper hand.
+
+All this kissing threw him rather off his balance, and he might soon
+have sealed his fate, had not a very sad event occurred, which restored
+his self-possession.
+
+The dress rehearsal was to take place one bright spring day at about
+four o'clock in the afternoon. A large number of guests was assembled
+at the house of Madame d'Avrigny. The performance had been much talked
+about beforehand in society. The beauty, the singing, and the histrionic
+powers of the principal actress had been everywhere extolled. Fully
+conscious of what was expected of her, and eager to do herself credit in
+every way, Jacqueline took advantage of Madame Strahlberg's presence to
+run over a little song, which she was to--sing between the acts and in
+which she could see no meaning whatever. This little song, which, to
+most of the ladies present, seemed simply idiotic, made the men in the
+audience cry "Oh!" as if half-shocked, and then "Encore! Encore!" in a
+sort of frenzy. It was a so-called pastoral effusion, in which Colinette
+rhymed with herbette, and in which the false innocence of the eighteenth
+century was a cloak for much indelicate allusion.
+
+"I never," said Jacqueline in self-defense, before she began the song,
+"sang anything so stupid. And that is saying much when one thinks of all
+the nonsensical words that people set to music! It's a marvel how any
+one can like this stuff. Do tell me what there is in it?" she added,
+turning to Gerard, who was charmed by her ignorance.
+
+Standing beside the grand piano, with her arms waving as she sang,
+repeating, by the expression of her eyes, the question she had asked
+and to which she had received no answer, she was singing the verses she
+considered nonsense with as much point as if she had understood them,
+thanks to the hints given her by Madame Strahlberg, who was playing her
+accompaniment, when the entrance of a servant, who pronounced her name
+aloud, made a sudden interruption. "Mademoiselle de Nailles is wanted at
+home at once. Modeste has come for her."
+
+Madame d'Avrigny went out to say to the old servant: "She can not
+possibly go home with you! It is only half an hour since she came. The
+rehearsal is just beginning."
+
+But something Modeste said in answer made her give a little cry, full of
+consternation. She came quickly back, and going up to Jacqueline:
+
+"My dear," she said, "you must go home at once--there is bad news, your
+father is ill."
+
+"Ill?"
+
+The solemnity of Madame d'Avrigny's voice, the pity in her expression,
+the affection with which she spoke and above all her total indifference
+to the fate of her rehearsal, frightened Jacqueline. She rushed away,
+not waiting to say good-by, leaving behind her a general murmur of "Poor
+thing!" while Madame d'Avrigny, recovering from her first shock, was
+already beginning to wonder--her instincts as an impresario coming
+once more to the front--whether the leading part might not be taken by
+Isabelle Ray. She would have to send out two hundred cards, at least,
+and put off her play for another fortnight. What a pity! It seemed as if
+misfortunes always happened just so as to interfere with pleasures.
+
+The fiacre which had brought Modeste was at the door. The old nurse
+helped her young lady into it.
+
+"What has happened to papa?" cried Jacqueline, impetuously.
+
+There was something horrible in this sudden transition from gay
+excitement to the sharpest anxiety.
+
+"Nothing--that is to say--he is very sick. Don't tremble like that,
+my darling-courage!" stammered Modeste, who was frightened by her
+agitation.
+
+"He was taken sick, you say. Where? How happened it?"
+
+"In his study. Pierre had just brought him his letters. We thought we
+heard a noise as if a chair had been thrown down, and a sort of cry. I
+ran in to see. He was lying at full length on the floor."
+
+"And now? How is he now?"
+
+"We did what we could for him. Madame came back. He is lying on his
+bed."
+
+Modeste covered her face with her hands.
+
+"You have not told me all. What else?"
+
+"Mon Dieu! you knew your poor father had heart disease. The last time
+the doctor saw him he thought his legs had swelled--"
+
+"Had!" Jacqueline heard only that one word. It meant that the life of
+her father was a thing of the past. Hardly waiting till the fiacre could
+be stopped, she sprang out, rushed into the house, opened the door of
+her father's chamber, pushing aside a servant who tried to stop her,
+and fell upon her knees beside the bed where lay the body of her father,
+white and rigid.
+
+"Papa! My poor dear--dear papa!"
+
+The hand she pressed to her lips was as cold as ice. She raised her
+frightened eyes to the face over which the great change from life to
+death had passed. "What does it mean?" Jacqueline had never looked on
+death before, but she knew this was not sleep.
+
+"Oh, speak to me, papa! It is I--it is Jacqueline!"
+
+Her stepmother tried to raise her--tried to fold her in her arms.
+
+"Let me alone!" she cried with horror.
+
+It seemed to her as if her father, where he was now, so far from her, so
+far from everything, might have the power to look into human hearts, and
+know the perfidy he had known nothing of when he was living. He might
+see in her own heart, too, her great despair. All else seemed small and
+of no consequence when death was present.
+
+Oh! why had she not been a better daughter, more loving, more devoted?
+why had she ever cared for anything but to make him happy?
+
+She sobbed aloud, while Madame de Nailles, pressing her handkerchief to
+her eyes, stood at the foot of the bed, and the doctor, too, was near,
+whispering to some one whom Jacqueline at first had not perceived--the
+friend of the family, Hubert Marien.
+
+Marien there? Was it not natural that, so intimate as he had always been
+with the dead man, he should have hastened to offer his services to the
+widow?
+
+Jacqueline flung herself upon her father's corpse, as if to protect it
+from profanation. She had an impulse to bear it away with her to some
+desert spot where she alone could have wept over it.
+
+She lay thus a long time, beside herself with grief.
+
+The flowers which covered the bed and lay scattered on the floor, gave
+a festal appearance to the death-chamber. They had been purchased for
+a fete, but circumstances had changed their destination. That evening
+there was to have been a reception in the house of M. de Nailles, but
+the unexpected guest that comes without an invitation had arrived before
+the music and the dancers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. THE STORM BREAKS
+
+Monsieur de Nailles was dead, struck down suddenly by what is called
+indefinitely heart-failure. The trouble in that organ from which he had
+long suffered had brought on what might have been long foreseen, and
+yet every one seemed, stupefied by the event. It came upon them like a
+thunderbolt. It often happens so when people who are really ill persist
+in doing all that may be done with safety by other persons. They
+persuaded themselves, and those about them are easily persuaded, that
+small remedies will prolong indefinitely a state of things which is
+precarious to the last degree. Friends are ready to believe, when the
+sufferer complains that his work is too hard for him, that he thinks too
+much of his ailments and that he exaggerates trifles to which they
+are well accustomed, but which are best known to him alone. When M. de
+Nailles, several weeks before his death, had asked to be excused and to
+stay at home instead of attending some large gathering, his wife, and
+even Jacqueline, would try to convince him that a little amusement
+would be good for him; they were unwilling to leave him to the repose he
+needed, prescribed for him by the doctors, who had been unanimous that
+he must "put down the brakes," give less attention to business, avoid
+late hours and over-exertion of all kinds. "And, above all," said one
+of the lights of science whom he had consulted recently about certain
+feelings of faintness which were a bad symptom, "above all, you must
+keep yourself from mental anxiety."
+
+How could he, when his fortune, already much impaired, hung on chances
+as uncertain as those in a game of roulette? What nonsense! The failure
+of a great financial company had brought about a crisis on the Bourse.
+The news of the inability of Wermant, the 'agent de change', to meet
+his engagements, had completed the downfall of M. de Nailles. Not only
+death, but ruin, had entered that house, where, a few hours before,
+luxury and opulence had seemed to reign.
+
+"We don't know whether there will be anything left for us to live upon,"
+cried Madame de Nailles, with anguish, even while her husband's body
+lay in the chamber of death, and Jacqueline, kneeling beside it, wept,
+unwilling to receive comfort or consolation.
+
+She turned angrily upon her stepmother and cried:
+
+"What matter? I have no father--there is nothing else I care for."
+
+But from that moment a dreadful thought, a thought she was ashamed of,
+which made her feel a monster of selfishness, rose in her mind, do
+what she would to hinder it. Jacqueline was sensible that she cared
+for something else; great as was her sense of loss, a sort of reckless
+curiosity seemed haunting her, while all the time she felt that her
+great grief ought not to give place to anything besides. "How would
+Gerard de Cymier behave in these circumstances?" She thought about it
+all one dreadful night as she and Modeste, who was telling her beads
+softly, sat in the faint light of the death-chamber. She thought of it
+at dawn, when, after one of those brief sleeps which come to the young
+under all conditions, she resumed with a sigh a sense of surrounding
+realities. Almost in the same instant she thought: "My dear father will
+never wake again," and "Does he love me?--does he now wish me to be his
+wife?--will he take me away?" The devil, which put this thought into
+her heart, made her eager to know the answer to these questions. He
+suggested how dreadful life with her stepmother would be if no means of
+escape were offered her. He made her foresee that her stepmother would
+marry again--would marry Marien. "But I shall not be there!" she cried,
+"I will not countenance such an infamy!" Oh, how she hoped Gerard de
+Cymier loved her! The hypocritical tears of Madame de Nailles disgusted
+her. She could not bear to have such false grief associated with her
+own.
+
+Men in black, with solemn faces, came and bore away the body, no longer
+like the form of the father she had loved. He had gone from her forever.
+Pompous funeral rites, little in accordance with the crash that soon
+succeeded them, were superintended by Marien, who, in the absence
+of near relatives, took charge of everything. He seemed to be deeply
+affected, and behaved with all possible kindness and consideration to
+Jacqueline, who could not, however, bring herself to thank him, or even
+to look at him. She hated him with an increase of resentment, as if the
+soul of her dead father, who now knew the truth, had passed into her
+own.
+
+Meantime, M. de Cymier took care to inform himself of the state of
+things. It was easy enough to do so. All Paris was talking of the
+shipwreck in which life and fortune had been lost by a man whose
+kindliness as a host at his wife's parties every one had appreciated.
+That was what came, people said, of striving after big dividends! The
+house was to be sold, with the horses, the pictures, and the furniture.
+What a change for his poor wife and daughter! There were others who
+suffered by the Wermant crash, but those were less interesting than
+the De Nailles. M. de Belvan found himself left by his father-in-law's
+failure with a wife on his hands who not only had not a sou, but who was
+the daughter of an 'agent de change' who had behaved dishonorably.
+
+This was a text for dissertations on the disgrace of marrying for money;
+those who had done the same thing, minus the same consequences, being
+loudest in reprobating alliances of that kind. M. de Cymier listened
+attentively to such talk, looking and saying the right things, and as
+he heard more and more about the deplorable condition of M. de Nailles's
+affairs, he congratulated himself that a prudent presentiment had kept
+him from asking the hand of Jacqueline. He had had vague doubts as to
+the firm foundation of the opulence which made so charming a frame for
+her young beauty; it seemed to him as if she were now less beautiful
+than he had imagined her; the enchantment she had exercised upon him
+was thrown off by simple considerations of good sense. And yet he gave
+a long sigh of regret when he thought she was unattainable except by
+marriage. He, however, thanked heaven that he had not gone far enough
+to have compromised himself with her. The most his conscience
+could reproach him with was an occasional imprudence in moments of
+forgetfulness; no court of honor could hold him bound to declare himself
+her suitor. The evening that he made up his mind to this he wrote two
+letters, very nearly alike; one was to Madame d'Avrigny, the other to
+Madame de Nailles, announcing that, having received orders to join the
+Embassy to which he was attached at Vienna, he was about to depart at
+once, with great regret that he should not be able to take leave of any
+one. To Madame d'Avrigny he made apologies for having to give up his
+part in her theatricals; he entreated Madame de Nailles to accept both
+for herself and for Mademoiselle Jacqueline his deepest condolences and
+the assurance of his sympathy. The manner in which this was said was all
+it ought to have been, except that it might have been rather more brief.
+M. de Cymier said more than was necessary about his participation in
+their grief, because he was conscious of a total lack of sympathy. He
+begged the ladies would forgive him if, from feelings of delicacy and a
+sense of the respect due to a great sorrow, he did not, before leaving
+Paris, which he was about do to probably for a long time, personally
+present to them 'ses hommages attristes'. Then followed a few lines in
+which he spoke of the pleasant recollections he should always retain of
+the hospitality he had enjoyed under M. de Nailles's roof, in a way
+that gave them clearly to understand that he had no expectation of ever
+entering their family on a more intimate footing.
+
+Madame de Nailles received this letter just as she had had a
+conversation with a man of business, who had shown her how complete was
+the ruin for which in a great measure she herself was responsible. She
+had no longer any illusions as to her position. When the estate had been
+settled there would be nothing left but poverty, not only for herself,
+who, having brought her husband no dot, had no right to consider herself
+wronged by the bankruptcy, but for Jacqueline, whose fortune, derived
+from her mother, had suffered under her father's management (there
+are such men--unfaithful guardians of a child's property, but yet good
+fathers) in every way in which it was possible to evade the provisions
+of the Code intended to protect the rights of minor children. In the
+little salon so charmingly furnished, where never before had sorrow or
+sadness been discussed, Madame de Nailles poured out her complaints to
+her stepdaughter and insisted upon plans of strict economy, when M. de
+Cymier's letter was brought in.
+
+"Read!" said the Baroness, handing the strange document to Jacqueline,
+after she had read it through.
+
+Then she leaned back in her chair with a gesture which signified: "This
+is the last straw!" and remained motionless, apparently overwhelmed,
+with her face covered by one hand, but furtively watching the face of
+the girl so cruelly forsaken.
+
+That face told nothing, for pride supplies some sufferers with necessary
+courage. Jacqueline sat for some time with her eyes fixed on the
+decisive adieu which swept away what might have been her secret hope.
+The paper did not tremble in her hand, a half-smile of contempt passed
+over her mouth. The answer to the restless question that had intruded
+itself upon her in the first moments of her grief was now before her.
+Its promptness, its polished brutality, had given her a shock, but not
+the pain she had expected. Perhaps her great grief--the real, the true,
+the grief death brings--recovered its place in her heart, and prevented
+her from feeling keenly any secondary emotion. Perhaps this man, who
+could pay court to her in her days of happiness and disappear when the
+first trouble came, seemed to her not worth caring for.
+
+She silently handed back the letter to her stepmother.
+
+"No more than I expected," said the Baroness.
+
+"Indeed?" replied Jacqueline with complete indifference. She wished to
+give no opening to any expressions of sympathy on the part of Madame de
+Nailles.
+
+"Poor Madame d'Avrigny," she added, "has bad luck; all her actors seem
+to be leaving her."
+
+This speech was the vain bravado of a young soldier going into action.
+The poor child betrayed herself to the experienced woman, trained either
+to detect or to practise artifice, and who found bitter amusement in
+watching the girl's assumed 'sang-froid'. But the mask fell off at the
+first touch of genuine sympathy. When Giselle, forgetful of a certain
+coolness between them ever since Fred's departure, came to clasp her
+in her arms, she showed only her true self, a girl suffering all the
+bitterness of a cruel, humiliating desertion. Long talks ensued between
+the friends, in which Jacqueline poured into Giselle's ear her sad
+discoveries in the past, her sorrows and anxieties in the present, and
+her vague plans for the future. "I must go away," she said; "I must
+escape somewhere; I can not go on living with Madame de Nailles--I
+should go mad, I should be tempted every day to upbraid her with her
+conduct."
+
+Giselle made no attempt to curb an excitement which she knew would
+resist all she could say to calm it. She feigned agreement, hoping
+thereby to increase her future influence, and advised her friend to seek
+in a convent the refuge that she needed. But she must do nothing rashly;
+she should only consider it a temporary retreat whose motive was a wish
+to remain for a while within reach of religious consolation. In that way
+she would give people nothing to talk about, and her step mother could
+not be offended. It was never of any use to get out of a difficulty by
+breaking all the glass windows with a great noise, and good resolutions
+are made firmer by being matured in quietness. Such were the lessons
+Giselle herself had been taught by the Benedictine nuns, who, however
+deficient they might be in the higher education of women, knew at least
+how to bring up young girls with a view to making them good wives.
+Giselle illustrated this day by day in her relations to a husband as
+disagreeable as a husband well could be, a man of small intelligence,
+who was not even faithful to her. But she did not cite herself as an
+example. She never talked about herself, or her own difficulties.
+
+"You are an angel of sense and goodness," sobbed Jacqueline. "I will do
+whatever you wish me to do."
+
+"Count upon me--count upon all your friends," said Madame de Talbrun,
+tenderly.
+
+And then, enumerating the oldest and the truest of these friends, she
+unluckily named Madame d'Argy. Jacqueline drew herself back at once:
+
+"Oh, for pity's sake!" she cried, "don't mention them to me!"
+
+Already a comparison between Fred's faithful affection and Gerard
+de Cymier's desertion had come into her mind, but she had refused to
+entertain it, declaring resolutely to herself that she never should
+repent her refusal. She was sore, she was angry with all men, she wished
+all were like Cymier or like Marien, that she might hate every one of
+them; she came to the conclusion in her heart of hearts that all of
+them, even the best, if put to the proof, would turn out selfish. She
+liked to think so--to believe in none of them. Thus it happened that an
+unexpected visit from Fred's mother, among those that she received in
+her first days of orphanhood, was particularly agreeable to her.
+
+Madame d'Argy, on hearing of the death and of the ruin of M. de Nailles,
+was divided by two contradictory feelings. She clearly saw the hand of
+Providence in what had happened: her son was in the squadron on its
+way to attack Formosa; he was in peril from the climate, in peril from
+Chinese bullets, and assuredly those who had brought him into peril
+could not be punished too severely; on the other hand, the last mail
+from Tonquin had brought her one of those great joys which always
+incline us to be merciful. Fred had so greatly distinguished himself
+in a series of fights upon the river Min that he had been offered his
+choice between the Cross of the Legion of Honor or promotion. He told
+his mother now that he had quite recovered from a wound he had received
+which had brought him some glory, but which he assured her had done him
+no bodily harm, and he repeated to her what he would not tell her at
+first, some words of praise from Admiral Courbet of more value in his
+eyes than any reward.
+
+Triumphant herself, and much moved by pity for Jacqueline, Madame d'Argy
+felt as if she must put an end to a rupture which could not be kept up
+when a great sorrow had fallen on her old friends, besides which she
+longed to tell every one, those who had been blind and ungrateful in
+particular, that Fred had proved himself a hero. So Jacqueline and her
+stepmother saw her arrive as if nothing had ever come between them.
+There were kisses and tears, and a torrent of kindly meant questions,
+affectionate explanations, and offers of service. But Fred's mother
+could not help showing her own pride and happiness to those in sorrow.
+They congratulated her with sadness. Madame d'Argy would have liked
+to think that the value of what she had lost was now made plain to
+Jacqueline. And if it caused her one more pang--what did it matter?
+He and his mother had suffered too. It was the turn of others. God
+was just. Resentment, and kindness, and a strange mixed feeling of
+forgiveness and revenge contended together in the really generous
+heart of Madame d'Argy, but that heart was still sore within her.
+Pity, however, carried the day, and had it not been for the irritating
+coldness of "that little hard-hearted thing," as she called Jacqueline,
+she would have entirely forgiven her. She never suspected that
+the exaggerated reserve of manner that offended her was owing to
+Jacqueline's dread (commendable in itself) of appearing to wish in her
+days of misfortune for the return of one she had rejected in the time of
+prosperity.
+
+In spite of the received opinion that society abandons those who are
+overtaken by misfortune, all the friends of the De Nailles flocked
+to offer their condolences to the widow and the orphan with warm
+demonstrations of interest. Curiosity, a liking to witness, or to
+experience, emotion, the pleasure of being able to tell what has been
+seen and heard, to find out new facts and repeat them again to others,
+joined to a sort of vague, commonplace, almost intrusive pity, are
+sentiments, which sometimes in hours of great disaster, produce what
+appears to wear the look of sympathy. A fortnight after M. de Nailles's
+death, between the acts of Scylla and Charybdis, the principal parts in
+which were taken by young d'Etaples and Isabelle Ray, the company, as
+it ate ices, was glibly discussing the real drama which had produced
+in their own elegant circle much of the effect a blow has upon an
+ant-hill--fear, agitation, and a tumultuous rush to the scene of the
+disaster.
+
+Great indignation was expressed against the man who had risked the
+fortune of his family in speculation. Oh! the thing had been going
+on for a long while. His fortune had been gradually melting away;
+Grandchaux was loaded down with mortgages and would bring almost nothing
+at a forced sale.
+
+Everybody forgot that had M. de Nailles's speculations been successful
+they would have been called matters of business, conducted with great
+ability on a large scale. When a performer falls from the tightrope,
+who remembers all the times he has not failed? It is simply said that he
+fell from his own carelessness.
+
+"The poor Baroness is touchingly resigned," said Madame de Villegry,
+with a deep sigh; "and heaven knows how many other cares she has besides
+the loss of money! I don't mean only the death of her husband--and you
+know how much they were attached to each other--I am speaking of that
+unaccountable resolution of Jacqueline's."
+
+Madame d'Avrigny here came forward with her usual equanimity which
+nothing disturbed, unless it were something which interfered with the
+success of her salon.
+
+She was of course very sorry for her friends in trouble, but the
+vicissitudes that had happened to her theatricals she had more at heart.
+
+"After all," she said, "the first act did not go off badly, did it? The
+musical part made up for the rest. That divine Strahlberg is ready for
+any emergency. How well she sang that air of 'La Petite Mariee!' It
+was exquisite, but I regretted Jacqueline. She was so charming in that
+lively little part. What a catastrophe!
+
+"What a terrible catastrophe! Were you speaking of the retreat she
+wishes to make in a convent? Well, I quite understand how she feels
+about it! I should feel the same myself. In the bewilderment of a first
+grief one does not care to see anything of the world. 'Mon Dieu'! youth
+always has these exaggerated notions. She will come back to us. Poor
+little thing! Of course it was no fault of hers, and I should not think
+of blaming Monsieur de Cymier. The exigencies of his career--but you all
+must own that unexpected things happen so suddenly in this life that it
+is enough to discourage any one who likes to open her house and provide
+amusement for her friends."
+
+Every one present pitied her for the contretemps over which she had
+triumphed so successfully. Then she resumed, serenely:
+
+"Don't you think that Isabelle played the part almost as well as
+Jacqueline? Up to the last moment I was afraid that something would
+go wrong. When one gets into a streak of ill-luck--but all went off to
+perfection, thank heaven!"
+
+Meantime Madame Odinska was whispering to one of those who sat near her
+her belief that Jacqueline would never get over her father's loss. "It
+would not astonish me," she said, "to hear that the child, who has a
+noble nature, would remain in the convent and take the veil."
+
+Any kind of heroic deed seemed natural to this foolish enthusiast, who,
+as a matter of fact, in her own life, had never shown any tendency
+to heroic virtues; her mission in life had seemed to be to spoil her
+daughters in every possible way, and to fling away more money than
+belonged to her.
+
+"Really? Was she so very fond of her father!" asked Madame Ray,
+incredulously. "When he was alive, they did not seem to make much of
+him in his own house. Maybe this retreat is a good way of getting over a
+little wound to her 'amour-propre'."
+
+"The proper thing, I think," said Madame d'Etaples, "would be for the
+mother and daughter to keep together, to bear the troubles before them
+hand in hand. Jacqueline does not seem to think much of the last wishes
+of the father she pretends to be so fond of. The Baroness showed me,
+with many tears, a letter he left joined to his will, which was written
+some years ago, and which now, of course, is of no value. He told mother
+and daughter to take care of each other and hoped they would always
+remain friends, loving each other for love of him. Jacqueline's conduct
+amazes me; it looks like ingratitude."
+
+"Oh! she is a hard-hearted little thing! I always thought so!" said
+Madame de Villegry, carelessly.
+
+Here the rising of the curtain stopped short these discussions, which
+displayed so much good-nature and perspicacity. But some laid the blame
+on the influence of that little bigot of a Talbrun, who had secretly
+blown up the fire of religious enthusiasm in Jacqueline, when Madame
+d'Avrigny's energetic "Hush!" put an end to the discussion. It was time
+to come back to more immediate interests, to the play which went on in
+spite of wind and tide.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK 3.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. BITTER DISILLUSION
+
+Some people in this world who turn round and round in a daily circle of
+small things, like squirrels in a cage, have no idea of the pleasure a
+young creature, conscious of courage, has in trying its strength; this
+struggle with fortune loses its charm as it grows longer and longer and
+more and more difficult, but at the beginning it is an almost certain
+remedy for sorrow.
+
+To her resolve to make head against misfortune Jacqueline owed the
+fact that she did not fall into those morbid reveries which might have
+converted her passing fancy for a man who was simply a male flirt into
+the importance of a lost love. Is there any human being conscious of
+energy, and with faith in his or her own powers, who has not wished
+to know something of adversity in order to rise to the occasion and
+confront it? To say nothing of the pleasure there is in eating brown
+bread, when one has been fed only on cake, or of the satisfaction that a
+child feels when, after strict discipline, he is left to do as he likes,
+to say nothing of the pleasure ladies boarding in nunneries are sure to
+feel on reentering the world, at recovering their liberty, Jacqueline by
+nature loved independence, and she was attracted by the novelty of her
+situation as larks are attracted by a mirror. She was curious to know
+what life held for her in reserve, and she was extremely anxious to
+repair the error she had committed in giving way to a feeling of which
+she was now ashamed. What could do this better than hard work? To owe
+everything to herself, to her talents, to her efforts, to her industry,
+such was Jacqueline's ideal of her future life.
+
+She had, before this, crowned her brilliant reputation in the 'cours' of
+M. Regis by passing her preliminary examination at the Sorbonne; she was
+confident of attaining the highest degree--the 'brevet superieur', and
+while pursuing her own studies she hoped to give lessons in music and in
+foreign languages, etc. Thus assured of making her own living, she could
+afford to despise the discreditable happiness of Madame de Nailles, who,
+she had no doubt, would shortly become Madame Marien; also the crooked
+ways in which M. de Cymier might pursue his fortune-hunting. She said
+to herself that she should never marry; that she had other objects of
+interest; that marriage was for those who had nothing better before
+them; and the world appeared to her under a new aspect, a sphere
+of useful activity full of possibilities, of infinite variety, and
+abounding in interests. Marriage might be all very well for rich
+girls, who unhappily were objects of value to be bought and sold; her
+semi-poverty gave her the right to break the chains that hampered the
+career of other well-born women--she would make her own way in the world
+like a man.
+
+Thus, at eighteen, youth is ready to set sail in a light skiff on a
+rough sea, having laid in a good store of imagination and of courage, of
+childlike ignorance and self-esteem.
+
+No doubt she would meet with some difficulties; that thought did but
+excite her ardor. No doubt Madame de Nailles would try to keep her
+with her, and Jacqueline had provided herself beforehand with some
+double-edged remarks by way of weapons, which she intended to use
+according to circumstances. But all these preparations for defense or
+attack proved unnecessary. When she told the Baroness of her plans she
+met with no opposition. She had expected that her project of separation
+would highly displease her stepmother; on the contrary, Madame de
+Nailles discussed her projects quietly, affecting to consider them
+merely temporary, but with no indication of dissatisfaction or
+resistance. In truth she was not sorry that Jacqueline, whose
+companionship became more and more embarrassing every day, had cut the
+knot of a difficult position by a piece of wilfulness and perversity
+which seemed to put her in the wrong. The necessity she would have been
+under of crushing such a girl, who was now eighteen, would have been
+distasteful and unprofitable; she was very glad to get rid of her
+stepdaughter, always provided it could be done decently and without
+scandal. Those two, who had once so loved each other and who were now
+sharers in the same sorrows, became enemies--two hostile parties, which
+only skilful strategy could ever again bring together. They tacitly
+agreed to certain conditions: they would save appearances; they would
+remain on outwardly good terms with each other whatever happened,
+and above all they would avoid any explanation. This programme was
+faithfully carried out, thanks to the great tact of Madame de Nailles.
+
+No one could have been more watchful to appear ignorant of everything
+which, if once brought to light, would have led to difficulties;
+for instance, she feigned not to know that her stepdaughter was in
+possession of a secret which, if the world knew, would forever make them
+strangers to each other; nor would she seem aware that Hubert Marien,
+weary to death of the tie that bound him to her, was restrained
+from breaking it only by a scruple of honor. Thanks to this seeming
+ignorance, she parted from Jacqueline without any open breach, as she
+had long hoped to do, and she retained as a friend who supplied her
+wants a man who was only too happy to be allowed at this price to escape
+the act of reparation which Jacqueline, in her simplicity, had dreaded.
+
+All those who, having for years dined and danced under the roof of the
+Nailles, were accounted their friends by society, formed themselves
+into two parties, one of which lauded to the skies the dignity and
+resignation of the Baroness, while the other admired the force of
+character in Jacqueline.
+
+Visitors flocked to the convent which the young girl, by the advice of
+Giselle, had chosen for her retreat because it was situated in a quiet
+quarter. She who looked so beautiful in her crape garments, who showed
+herself so satisfied in her little cell with hardly any furniture, who
+was grateful for the services rendered her by the lay sisters,
+content with having no salon but the convent parlor, who was passing
+examinations to become a teacher, and who seemed to consider it a favor
+to be sometimes allowed to hear the children in the convent school
+say their lessons--was surely like a heroine in a novel. And indeed
+Jacqueline had the agreeable sensation of considering herself one.
+Public admiration was a great help to her, after she had passed through
+that crisis in her grief during which she could feel nothing but the
+horror of knowing she should never see her father again, when she had
+ceased to weep for him incessantly, to pray for him, and to turn, like
+a wounded lioness, on those who blamed his reckless conduct, though she
+herself had been its chief victim.
+
+For three months she hardly left the convent, walking only in the
+grounds and gardens, which were of considerable extent. From time to
+time Giselle came for her and took her to drive in the Bois at that hour
+of the day when few people were there.
+
+Enguerrand, who, thanks to his mother's care, was beginning to be an
+intelligent and interesting child, though he was still painfully like
+M. de Talbrun, was always with them in the coupe, kindhearted Giselle
+thinking that nothing could be so likely to assuage grief as the prattle
+of a child. She was astonished--she was touched to the heart, by what
+she called naively the conversion of Jacqueline. It was true that the
+young girl had no longer any whims or caprices. All the nuns seemed to
+her amiable, her lodging was all she needed, her food was excellent; her
+lessons gave her amusement. Possibly the excitement of the entire change
+had much to do at first with this philosophy, and in fact at the end of
+six months Jacqueline owned that she was growing tired of dining at the
+table d'hote.
+
+There was a little knot of crooked old ladies who were righteous
+overmuch, and several sour old maids whose only occupation seemed to
+be to make remarks on any person who had anything different in dress,
+manners, or appearance from what they considered the type of the
+becoming. If it is not good that man should live alone, it is equally
+true that women should not live together. Jacqueline found this out as
+soon as her powers of observation came back to her. And about the
+same time she discovered that she was not so free as she had flattered
+herself she should be. The appearance of a lady, fair and with light
+hair, very pretty and about her own age, gave her for the first time an
+inclination to talk at table. She and this young woman met twice a day
+at their meals, in the morning and in the evening; their rooms were
+next each other, and at night Jacqueline could hear her through the thin
+partition giving utterance to sighs, which showed that she was unhappy.
+Several times, too, she came upon her in the garden looking earnestly
+at a place where the wall had been broken, a spot whence it was said a
+Spanish countess had been carried off by a bold adventurer. Jacqueline
+thought there must be something romantic in the history of this
+newcomer, and would have liked exceedingly to know what it might be.
+As a prelude to acquaintance, she offered the young stranger some holy
+water when they met in the chapel, a bow and a smile were interchanged,
+their fingers touched. They seemed almost friends. After this,
+Jacqueline contrived to change her seat at table to one next to this
+unknown person, so prettily dressed, with her hair so nicely arranged,
+and, though her expression was very sad, with a smile so very winning.
+She alone represented the world, the world of Paris, among all those
+ladies, some of whom were looking for places as companions, some having
+come up from the provinces, and some being old ladies who had seen
+better days. Her change of place was observed by the nun who presided
+at the table, and a shade of displeasure passed over her face. It was
+slight, but it portended trouble. And, indeed, when grace had been said,
+Mademoiselle de Nailles was sent for by the Mother Superior, who gave
+her to understand that, being so young, it was especially incumbent
+on her to be circumspect in her choice of associates. Her place
+thenceforward was to be between Madame de X-----, an old, deaf lady, and
+Mademoiselle J-----, a former governess, as cold as ice and exceedingly
+respectable. As to Madame Saville, she had been received in the convent
+for especial reasons, arising out of circumstances which did not make
+her a fit companion for inexperienced girls. The Superior hesitated a
+moment and then said: "Her husband requested us to take charge of her,"
+in a tone by which Jacqueline quite understood that "take charge" was a
+synonym for "keep a strict watch upon her." She was spied upon, she was
+persecuted--unjustly, no doubt.
+
+All this increased the interest that Jacqueline already felt in the lady
+with the light hair. But she made a low curtsey to the Mother
+Superior and returned no answer. Her intercourse with her neighbor
+was thenceforward; however, sly and secret, which only made it more
+interesting and exciting. They would exchange a few words when they met
+upon the stairs, in the garden, or in the cloisters, when there was
+no curious eye to spy them out; and the first time Jacqueline went out
+alone Madame Saville was on the watch, and, without speaking, slipped a
+letter into her hand.
+
+This first time Jacqueline went out was an epoch in her life, as small
+events are sometimes in the annals of nations; it was the date of her
+emancipation, it coincided with what she called her choice of a career.
+Thinking herself sure of possessing a talent for teaching, she had
+spoken of it to several friends who had come to see her, and who each
+and all exclaimed that they would like some lessons, a delicate way of
+helping her quite understood by Jacqueline. Pupils like Belle Ray and
+Yvonne d'Etaples, who wanted her to come twice a week to play duets with
+them or to read over new music, were not nearly so interesting as those
+in her little class who had hardly more than learned their scales!
+Besides this, Madame d'Avrigny begged her to come and dine with her,
+when there would be only themselves, on Mondays, and then practise with
+Dolly, who had not another moment in which she could take a lesson. She
+should be sent home scrupulously before ten o'clock, that being the hour
+at the convent when every one must be in. Jacqueline accepted all these
+kindnesses gratefully. By Giselle's advice she hid her slight figure
+under a loose cloak and put on her head a bonnet fit for a grandmother,
+a closed hat with long strings, which, when she first put it on her
+head, made her burst out laughing. She imagined herself to be going
+forth in disguise. To walk the streets thus masked she thought would be
+amusing, so amusing that the moment she set foot on the street pavement
+she felt that the joy of living was yet strong in her. With a roll of
+music in her hand, she walked on rather hesitatingly, a little afraid,
+like a bird just escaped from the cage where it was born; her heart
+beat, but it was with pleasure; she fancied every one was looking at
+her, and in fact one old gentleman, not deceived by the cloak, did
+follow her till she got into an omnibus for the first time in her
+life--a new experience and a new pleasure. Once seated, and a little out
+of breath, she remembered Madame Saville's letter, which she had slipped
+into her pocket. It was sealed and had a stamp on it; it was too highly
+scented to be in good taste, and it was addressed to a lieutenant of
+chasseurs with an aristocratic name, in a garrison at Fontainebleau.
+
+Then Jacqueline began vaguely to comprehend that Madame Saville's
+husband might have had serious reasons for commending his wife to the
+surveillance of the nuns, and that there might have been some excuse for
+their endeavoring to hinder all intimacy between herself and the little
+blonde.
+
+This office of messenger, thrust upon her without asking permission,
+was not agreeable to Jacqueline, and she resolved as she dropped the
+missive, which, even on the outside, looked compromising, into the
+nearest post-box, to be more reserved in future. For which reason she
+responded coldly to a sign Madame Saville made her when, in the evening,
+she returned from giving her lessons.
+
+Those lessons--those excursions which took her abroad in all weathers,
+though with praiseworthy and serious motives, into the fashionable
+parts of Paris, from which she had exiled herself by her own will--were
+greatly enjoyed by Jacqueline. Everything amused her, being seen from a
+point of view in which she had never before contemplated it. She seemed
+to be at a play, all personal interests forgotten for the moment,
+looking at the world of which she was no longer a part with a lively,
+critical curiosity, without regrets but without cynicism. The world did
+not seem to her bad--only man's higher instincts had little part in it.
+Such, at least, was what she thought, so long as people praised her
+for her courage, so long as the houses in which another Jacqueline
+de Nailles had been once so brilliant, received her with affection as
+before, though she had to leave in an anteroom her modest waterproof
+or wet umbrella. They were even more kind and cordial to her than ever,
+unless an exaggerated cordiality be one form of impertinence. But the
+enthusiasm bestowed on splendid instances of energy in certain circles,
+to which after all such energy is a reproach, is superficial, and
+not being genuine is sure not to last long. Some people said that
+Jacqueline's staid manners were put on for effect, and that she was only
+attempting to play a difficult part to which she was not suited; others
+blamed her for not being up to concert-pitch in matters of social
+interest. The first time she felt the pang of exclusion was at
+Madame d'Avrigny's, who was at the same moment overwhelming her with
+expressions of regard. In the first place, she could see that the little
+family dinner to which she had been so kindly invited was attended by so
+many guests that her deep mourning seemed out of place among them. Then
+Madame d'Avrigny would make whispered explanations, which Jacqueline was
+conscious of, and which were very painful to her. Such words as: "Old
+friend of the family;" "Is giving music lessons to my daughter;" fell
+more than once upon her ear, followed by exclamations of "Poor thing!"
+"So courageous!" "Chivalric sentiments!" Of course, everyone added that
+they excused her toilette. Then when she tried to escape such remarks
+by wearing a new gown, Dolly, who was always a little fool (there is
+no cure for that infirmity) cried out in a tone such as she never would
+have dared to use in the days when Jacqueline was a model of elegance:
+"Oh, how fine you are!" Then again, Madame d'Avrigny, notwithstanding
+the good manners on which she prided herself, could not conceal that the
+obligation of sending home the recluse to the ends of the earth, at a
+certain hour, made trouble with her servants, who were put out of their
+way. Jacqueline seized on this pretext to propose to give up the Monday
+music-lesson, and after some polite hesitation her offer was accepted,
+evidently to Madame d'Avrigny's relief.
+
+In this case she had the satisfaction of being the one to propose the
+discontinuance of the lessons. At Madame Ray's she was simply dismissed.
+About the close of winter she was told that as Isabelle was soon to be
+married she would have no time for music till her wedding was over, and
+about the same time the d'Etaples told her much the same thing. This was
+not to be wondered at, for Mademoiselle Ray was engaged to an officer of
+dragoons, the same Marcel d'Etaples who had acted with her in Scylla
+and Charybdis, and Madame Ray, being a watchful mother, was not long in
+perceiving that Marcel came to pay court to Isabelle too frequently at
+the hour for her music-lesson. Madame d'Etaples on her part had made a
+similar discovery, and both judged that the presence of so beautiful
+a girl, in Jacqueline's position, might not be desirable in these
+interviews between lovers.
+
+When Giselle, as she was about to leave town for the country in July,
+begged Jacqueline, who seemed run down and out of spirits, to come and
+stay with her, the poor child was very glad to accept the invitation.
+Her pupils were leaving her one after another, she could not understand
+why, and she was bored to death in the convent, whose strict rules were
+drawn tighter on her than before, for the nuns had begun to understand
+her better, and to discover the real worldliness of her character. At
+the same time, that retreat within these pious walls no longer seemed
+like paradise to Jacqueline; her transition from the deepest crape to
+the softer tints of half mourning, seemed to make her less of an angel
+in their eyes. They said to each other that Mademoiselle de Nailles was
+fanciful, and fancies are the very last things wanted in a convent,
+for fancies can brave bolts, and make their escape beyond stone walls,
+whatever means may be taken to clip their wings.
+
+"She does not seem like the same person," cried the good sisters, who
+had been greatly edified at first by her behavior, and who were almost
+ready now to be shocked at her.
+
+The course of things was coming back rapidly into its natural channel;
+in obedience to the law which makes a tree, apparently dead, put forth
+shoots in springtime. And that inevitable re-budding and reblossoming
+was beautiful to see in this young human plant. M. de Talbrun,
+Jacqueline's host, could not fail to perceive it. At first he had
+been annoyed with Giselle for giving the invitation, having a habit of
+finding fault with everything he had not ordered or suggested, by virtue
+of his marital authority, and also because he hated above all things, as
+he said, to have people in his house who were "wobegones." But in a week
+he was quite reconciled to the idea of keeping Mademoiselle de Nailles
+all the summer at the Chateau de Fresne. Never had Giselle known him to
+take so much trouble to be amiable, and indeed Jacqueline saw him much
+more to advantage at home than in Paris, where, as she had often said,
+he diffused too strong an odor of the stables. At Fresne, it was more
+easy to forgive him for talking always of his stud and of his kennel,
+and then he was so obliging! Every day he proposed some new jaunt, an
+excursion to see some view, to visit all the ruined chateaux or abbeys
+in the neighborhood. And, with surprising delicacy, M. de Talbrun
+refrained from inviting too many of his country neighbors, who might
+perhaps have scared Jacqueline and arrested her gradual return to
+gayety. They might also have interrupted his tete-a-tete with his wife's
+guest, for they had many such conversations. Giselle was absorbed in the
+duty of teaching her son his a, b, c. Besides, being very timid, she had
+never ridden on horseback, and, naturally, riding was delightful to
+her cousin. Jacqueline was never tired of it; while she paid as little
+attention to the absurd remarks Oscar made to her between their gallops
+as a girl does at a ball to the idle words of her partner. She supposed
+it was his custom to talk in that manner--a sort of rough gallantry--but
+with the best intentions. Jacqueline was disposed to look upon her life
+at Fresne as a feast after a long famine. Everything was to her taste,
+the whole appearance of this lordly chateau of the time of Louis
+XIII, the splendid trees in the home park, the gardens laid out 'a la
+Francais', decorated with art and kept up carefully. Everything,
+indeed, that pertained to that high life which to Giselle had so little
+importance, was to her delightful. Giselle's taste was so simple that it
+was a constant subject of reproach from her husband. To be sure, it was
+with him a general rule to find fault with her about everything. He did
+not spare her his reproaches on a multitude of subjects; all day long
+he was worrying her about small trifles with which he should have had
+nothing to do. It is a mistake to suppose that a man can not be brutal
+and fussy at the same time. M. de Talbrun was proof to the contrary.
+
+"You are too patient," said Jacqueline often to Giselle. "You ought to
+answer him back--to defend yourself. I am sure if you did so you would
+have him, by-and-bye, at your beck and call."
+
+"Perhaps so. I dare say you could have managed better than I do,"
+replied Giselle, with a sad smile, but without a spark of jealousy. "Oh,
+you are in high favor. He gave up this week the races at Deauville, the
+great race week from which he has never before been absent, since our
+marriage. But you see my ambition has become limited; I am satisfied if
+he lets me alone." Giselle spoke these words with emphasis, and then she
+added: "and lets me bring up his son my own way. That is all I ask."
+
+Jacqueline thought in her heart that it was wrong to ask so little,
+that poor Giselle did not know how to make the best of her husband, and,
+curious to find out what line of conduct would serve best to
+subjugate M. de Talbrun, she became herself--that is to say, a born
+coquette--venturing from one thing to another, like a child playing
+fearlessly with a bulldog, who is gentle only with him, or a fly buzzing
+round a spider's web, while the spider lies quietly within.
+
+She would tease him, contradict him, and make him listen to long pieces
+of scientific music as she played them on the piano, when she knew he
+always said that music to him was nothing but a disagreeable noise; she
+would laugh at his thanks when a final chord, struck with her utmost
+force, roused him from a brief slumber; in short, it amused her to prove
+that this coarse, rough man was to her alone no object of fear. She
+would have done better had she been afraid.
+
+Thus it came to pass that, as they rode together through some of the
+prettiest roads in the most beautiful part of Normandy, M. de Talbrun
+began to talk, with an ever-increasing vivacity, of the days when
+they first met, at Treport, relating a thousand little incidents which
+Jacqueline had forgotten, and from which it was easy to see that he had
+watched her narrowly, though he was on the eve of his own marriage. With
+unnecessary persistence, and stammering as he was apt to do when moved
+by any emotion, he repeated over and over again, that from the first
+moment he had seen her he had been struck by her--devilishly struck by
+her--he had been, indeed! And one day when she answered, in order not to
+appear to attach any importance to this declaration, that she was very
+glad of it, he took an opportunity, as their horses stopped side by side
+before a beautiful sunset, to put his arm suddenly round her waist, and
+give her a kiss, so abrupt, so violent, so outrageous, that she screamed
+aloud. He did not remove his arm from her, his coarse, red face drew
+near her own again with an expression that filled her with horror. She
+struggled to free herself, her horse began to rear, she screamed for
+help with all her might, but nothing answered her save an echo. The
+situation seemed critical for Jacqueline. As to M. de Talbrun, he was
+quite at his ease, as if he were accustomed to make love like a centaur;
+while the girl felt herself in peril of being thrown at any moment, and
+trampled under his horse's feet. At last she succeeded in striking her
+aggressor a sharp blow across the face with her riding-whip. Blinded for
+a moment, he let her go, and she took advantage of her release to put
+her horse to its full speed. He galloped after her, beside himself with
+wrath and agitation; it was a mad but silent race, until they reached
+the gate of the Chateau de Fresne, which they entered at the same
+moment, their horses covered with foam.
+
+"How foolish!" cried Giselle, coming to meet them. "Just see in what a
+state you have brought home your poor horses."
+
+Jacqueline, pale and trembling, made no answer. M. de Talbrun, as he
+helped her to dismount, whispered, savagely: "Not a word of this!"
+
+At dinner, his wife remarked that some branch must have struck him on
+the cheek, there was a red mark right across his face like a blow.
+
+"We were riding through the woods," he answered, shortly.
+
+Then Giselle began to suspect something, and remarked that nobody was
+talking that evening, asking, with a half-smile, whether they had been
+quarrelling.
+
+"We did have a little difference," Oscar replied, quietly.
+
+"Oh, it did not amount to anything," he said, lighting his cigar; "let
+us make friends again, won't you?" he added, holding out his hand to
+Jacqueline. She was obliged to give him the tips of her fingers, as she
+said in her turn, with audacity equal to his own:
+
+"Oh, it was less than nothing. Only, Giselle, I told your husband that I
+had had some bad news, and shall have to go back to Paris, and he tried
+to persuade me not to go."
+
+"I beg you not to go," said Oscar, vehemently.
+
+"Bad news?" repeated Giselle, "you did not say a word to me about it!"
+
+"I did not have a chance. My old Modeste is very ill and asks me to come
+to her. I should never forgive myself if I did not go."
+
+"What, Modeste? So very ill? Is it really so serious? What a pity! But
+you will come back again?"
+
+"If I can. But I must leave Fresne to-morrow morning."
+
+"Oh, I defy you to leave Fresne!" said M. de Talbrun.
+
+Jacqueline leaned toward him, and said firmly, but in a low voice: "If
+you attempt to hinder me, I swear I will tell everything."
+
+All that evening she did not leave Giselle's side for a moment, and at
+night she locked herself into her chamber and barricaded the door, as if
+a mad dog or a murderer were at large in the chateau.
+
+Giselle came into her room at an early hour.
+
+"Is what you said yesterday the truth, Jacqueline? Is Modeste really
+ill? Are you sure you have had no reason to complain of anybody in this
+place?--of any one?"
+
+Then, after a pause, she added:
+
+"Oh, my darling, how hard it is to do good even to those whom we most
+dearly love."
+
+"I don't understand you," said Jacqueline, with an effort. "Everybody
+has been kind to me."
+
+They kissed each other with effusion, but M. de Talbrun's leave-taking
+was icy in the extreme. Jacqueline had made a mortal enemy.
+
+The grand outline of the chateau, built of brick and stone with its
+wings flanked by towers, the green turf of the great park in which it
+stood, passed from her sight as she drove away, like some vision in a
+dream.
+
+"I shall never come back--never come back!" thought Jacqueline. She felt
+as if she had been thrust out everywhere. For one moment she thought
+of seeking refuge at Lizerolles, which was not very many miles from
+the railroad station, and when there of telling Madame d'Argy of her
+difficulties, and asking her advice; but false pride kept her from doing
+so--the same false pride which had made her write coldly, in answer
+to the letters full of feeling and sympathy Fred had written to her on
+receiving news of her father's death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. TREACHEROUS KINDNESS
+
+The experience through which Jacqueline had just passed was not
+calculated to fortify her or to elevate her soul. She felt for the
+first time that her unprotected situation and her poverty exposed her to
+insult, for what other name could she give to the outrageous behavior of
+M. de Talbrun, which had degraded her in her own eyes?
+
+What right had that man to treat her as his plaything? Her pride and
+all her womanly instincts rose up in rebellion. Her nerves had been so
+shaken that she sobbed behind her veil all the way to her destination.
+Paris, when she reached it, offered her almost nothing that could
+comfort or amuse her. That city is always empty and dull in August, more
+so than at any other season. Even the poor occupation of teaching her
+little class of music pupils had been taken away by the holidays. Her
+sole resource was in Modeste's society. Modeste--who, by the way, had
+never been ill, and who suffered from nothing but old age--was delighted
+to receive her dear young lady in her little room far up under the
+roof, where, though quite infirm, she lived comfortably, on her savings.
+Jacqueline, sitting beside her as she sewed, was soothed by her old
+nursery tales, or by anecdotes of former days. Her own relatives were
+often the old woman's theme. She knew the history of Jacqueline's family
+from beginning to end; but, wherever her story began, it invariably
+wound up with:
+
+"If only your poor papa had not made away with all your money!"
+
+And Jacqueline always answered:
+
+"He was quite at liberty to do what he pleased with what belonged to
+him."
+
+"Belonged to him! Yes, but what belonged to you? And how does it happen
+that your stepmother seems so well off? Why doesn't some family council
+interfere? My little pet, to think of your having to work for your
+living. It's enough to kill me!"
+
+"Bah! Modeste, there are worse things than being poor."
+
+"Maybe so," answered the old nurse, doubtfully, "but when one has money
+troubles along with the rest, the money troubles make other things
+harder to bear; whereas, if you have money enough you can bear anything,
+and you would have had enough, after all, if you had married Monsieur
+Fred."
+
+At which point Jacqueline insisted that Modeste should be silent, and
+answered, resolutely: "I mean never to marry at all."
+
+To this Modeste made answer: "That's another of your notions. The worst
+husband is always better than none; and I know, for I never married."
+
+"That's why you talk such nonsense, my poor dear Modeste! You know
+nothing about it."
+
+One day, after one of these visits to the only friend, as she believed,
+who remained to her in the world--for her intimacy with Giselle was
+spoiled forever--she saw, as she walked with a heavy heart toward her
+convent in a distant quarter, an open fiacre pull up, in obedience to
+a sudden cry from a passenger who was sitting inside. The person sprang
+out, and rushed toward Jacqueline with loud exclamations of joy.
+
+"Madame Strahlberg!"
+
+"Dear Jacqueline! What a pleasure to meet you!" And, the street being
+nearly empty, Madame Strahlberg heartily embraced her friend.
+
+"I have thought of you so often, darling, for months past--they seem
+like years, like centuries! Where have you been all that long time?"
+
+In point of fact, Jacqueline had no proof that the three Odinska ladies
+had ever remembered her existence, but that might have been partly her
+own fault, or rather the fault of Giselle, who had made her promise to
+have as little as possible to do with such compromising personages.
+She was seized with a kind of remorse when she found such warmth of
+recognition from the amiable Wanda. Had she not shown herself ungrateful
+and cowardly? People about whom the world talks, are they not sometimes
+quite as good as those who have not lost their standing in society, like
+M. de Talbrun? It seemed to her that, go where she would, she ran risks.
+
+The cynicism that is the result of sad experience was beginning to show
+itself in Jacqueline.
+
+"Oh, forgive me!" she said, feeling, contrite.
+
+"Forgive you for what, you beautiful creature?" asked Madame Strahlberg,
+with sincere astonishment.
+
+She had the excellent custom of never observing when people neglected
+her, or at least, of never showing that she did so, partly because her
+life was so full of varied interests that she cared little for such
+trifles, and secondly because, having endured several affronts of that
+nature, she had ceased to be very sensitive.
+
+"I knew, through the d'Avrignys," she said, "that you were still at the
+convent. You are not going to take the veil there, are you? It would be
+a great pity. No? You wish to lead the life of an intelligent woman who
+is free and independent? That is well; but it was rather an odd idea to
+begin by going into a cloister. Oh!--I see, public opinion?" And Madame
+Strahlberg made a little face, expressive of her contempt for public
+opinion.
+
+"It does not pay to consult other people's opinions--it is useless,
+believe me. The more we sacrifice to public opinion, the more it asks of
+us. I cut that matter short long ago. But how glad I am to hear that
+you don't intend to hide that lovely face in a convent. You are looking
+better than ever--a little too pale, still, perhaps--a little too
+interesting. Colette will be so glad to see you, for you must let me
+take you home with me. I shall carry you off, whether you will or not,
+now I have caught you. We will have a little music just among ourselves,
+as we had in the good old times--you know, our dear music; you will feel
+like yourself again. Ah, art--there is nothing to compare with art in
+this world, my darling!"
+
+Jacqueline yielded without hesitation, only too glad of the unhoped-for
+good fortune which relieved her from her ennui and her depression. And
+soon the hired victoria was on its way to that quarter of the city which
+is made up of streets with geographical names, and seems as if it were
+intended to lodge all the nations under heaven. It stopped in the Rue
+de Naples, before a house that was somewhat showy, but which showed from
+its outside, that it was not inhabited by high-bred people. There were
+pink linings to lace curtains at the windows, and quantities of green
+vines drooped from the balconies, as if to attract attention from the
+passers-by. Madame Strahlberg, with her ostentatious and undulating
+walk, which caused men to turn and notice her as she went by, went
+swiftly up the stairs to the second story. She put one finger on the
+electric bell, which caused two or three little dogs inside to begin
+barking, and pushed Jacqueline in before her, crying: "Colette! Mamma!
+See whom I have brought back to you!" Meantime doors were hurriedly
+opened, quick steps resounded in the antechamber, and the newcomer
+found herself received with a torrent of affectionate and delighted
+exclamations, pressed to the ample bosom of Madame Odinska, covered with
+kisses by Colette, and fawned upon by the three toy terriers, the most
+sociable of their kind in all Paris, their mistresses declared.
+
+Jacqueline was passing through one of those moments when one is at the
+mercy of chance, when the heart which has been closed by sorrow suddenly
+revives, expands, and softens under the influence of a ray of sunshine.
+Tears came into her eyes, and she murmured:
+
+"My friends--my kind friends!"
+
+"Yes, your friends, whatever happens, now and always," said Colette,
+eagerly, though she had probably barely given a thought to Jacqueline
+for eighteen months. Nevertheless, on seeing her, Colette really
+thought she had not for a moment ceased to be fond of her. "How you have
+suffered, you poor pussy! We must set to work and make you feel a little
+gay, at any price. You see, it is our duty. How lucky you came to-day--"
+
+A sign from her sister stopped her.
+
+They carried Jacqueline into a large and handsome salon, full of dust
+and without curtains, with all the furniture covered up as if the
+family were on the eve of going to the country. Madame Strahlberg,
+nevertheless, was not about to leave Paris, her habit being to remain
+there in the summer, sometimes for months, picnicking as it were, in her
+own apartment. What was curious, too, was that the chandelier and all
+the side-lights had fresh wax candles, and seats were arranged as if in
+preparation for a play, while near the grand piano was a sort of stage,
+shut off from the rest of the room by screens.
+
+Colette sat down on one of the front row of chairs and cried: "I am the
+audience--I am all ears." Her sister hurriedly explained all this to
+Jacqueline, with out waiting to be questioned: "We have been giving some
+little summer entertainments of late, of which you see the remains." She
+went at once to the piano, and incited Jacqueline to sing by beginning
+one of their favorite duets, and Jacqueline, once more in her native
+element, followed her lead. They went on from one song to another, from
+the light to the severe, from scientific music to mere tunes and airs,
+turning over the old music-books together.
+
+"Yes, you are a little out of practice, but all you have to do is to
+rub off the rust. Your voice is finer than ever--just like velvet."
+And Madame Strahlberg pretended that she envied the fine mezzo-soprano,
+speaking disparagingly of her own little thread of a voice, which,
+however, she managed so skilfully. "What a shame to take up your time
+teaching, with such a voice as that!" she cried; "you are out of your
+senses, my dear, you are raving mad. It would be sinful to keep your
+gifts to yourself! I am very sorry to discourage you, but you have none
+of the requisites for a teacher. The stage would be best for you--'Mon
+Dieu! why not? You will see La Rochette this evening; she is a person
+who would give you good advice. I wish she could hear you!"
+
+"But my dear friend, I can not stay," murmured Jacqueline, for those
+unexpected words "the stage, why not?" rang in her head, made her heart
+beat fast, and made lights dance before her eyes. "They are expecting me
+to dine at home."
+
+"At your convent? I beg your pardon, I'll take care of that. Don't you
+know me? My claws seldom let go of a prize, especially when that prize
+is worth the keeping. A little telegram has already been sent, with your
+excuses. The telegraph is good for that, if not for anything else: it
+facilitates 'impromptus'."
+
+"Long live impromptus," cried out Colette, "there is nothing like them
+for fun!" And while Jacqueline was trying to get away, not knowing
+exactly what she was saying, but frightened, pleased, and much excited,
+Colette went on: "Oh! I am so glad, so glad you came to-day; now you can
+see the pantomime! I dreamed, wasn't it odd, only last night, that you
+were acting it with us. How can one help believing in presentiments?
+Mine are always delightful--and yours?"
+
+"The pantomime?" repeated Jacqueline in bewilderment, "but I thought
+your sister told me you were all alone."
+
+"How could we have anything like company in August?" said Madame
+Strahlberg, interrupting her; "why, it would be impossible, there are
+not four cats in Paris. No, no, we sha'n't have anybody. A few
+friends possibly may drop in--people passing through Paris--in their
+travelling-dresses. Nothing that need alarm you. The pantomime Colette
+talks about is only a pretext that they may hear Monsieur Szmera."
+
+And who was M. Szmera?
+
+Jacqueline soon learned that he was a Hungarian, second half-cousin of
+a friend of Kossuth, the most wonderful violinist of the day, who
+had apparently superseded the famous Polish pianist in these ladies'
+interest and esteem. As for the latter, they had almost forgotten his
+name, he had behaved so badly.
+
+"But," said Jacqueline, anxiously, "you know I am obliged to be home by
+ten o'clock."
+
+"Ah! that's like Cinderella," laughed Wanda. "Will the stroke of the
+clock change all the carriages in Paris into pumpkins? One can get
+'fiacres' at any hour."
+
+"But it is a fixed rule: I must be in," repeated Jacqueline, growing
+very uneasy.
+
+"Must you really? Madame Saville says it is very easy to manage those
+nuns--"
+
+"What? Do you know Madame Saville, who was boarding at the convent last
+winter?"
+
+"Yes, indeed; she is a countrywoman of ours, a friend, the most charming
+of women. You will see her here this evening. She has gained her divorce
+suit--"
+
+"You are mistaken," said Colette, "she has lost it. But that makes
+no difference. She has got tired of her husband. Come, say 'Yes,'
+Jacqueline--a nice, dear 'Yes'--you will stay, will you not? Oh, you
+darling!"
+
+They dined without much ceremony, on the pretext that the cook had been
+turned off that morning for impertinence, but immediately after dinner
+there was a procession of boys from a restaurant, bringing whipped
+creams, iced drinks, fruits, sweetmeats, and champagne--more than would
+have been wanted at the buffet of a ball. The Prince, they said, had
+sent these things. What Prince?
+
+As Jacqueline was asking this question, a gentleman came in whose age
+it would have been impossible to guess, so disguised was he by his black
+wig, his dyed whiskers, and the soft bloom on his cheeks, all of which
+were entirely out of keeping with those parts of his face that he could
+not change. In one of his eyes was stuck a monocle. He was bedizened
+with several orders, he bowed with military stiffness, and kissed with
+much devotion the ladies' hands, calling them by titles, whether they
+had them or not. His foreign accent made it as hard to detect his
+nationality as it was to know his age. Two or three other gentlemen, not
+less decorated and not less foreign, afterward came in. Colette named
+them in a whisper to Jacqueline, but their names were too hard for her
+to pronounce, much less to remember. One of them, a man of handsome
+presence, came accompanied by a sort of female ruin, an old lady leaning
+on a cane, whose head, every time she moved, glittered with jewels,
+placed in a very lofty erection of curled hair.
+
+"That gentleman's mother is awfully ugly," Jacqueline could not help
+saying.
+
+"His mother? What, the Countess? She is neither his mother nor his wife.
+He is her gentleman-in-waiting-that's all. Don't you understand? Well,
+imagine a man who is a sort of 'gentleman-companion'; he keeps her
+accounts, he escorts her to the theatre, he gives her his arm. It is a
+very satisfactory arrangement."
+
+"The gentleman receives a salary, in such a case?" inquired Jacqueline,
+much amused.
+
+"Why, what do you find in it so extraordinary?" said Colette. "She
+adores cards, and there he is, always ready to be her partner. Oh, here
+comes dear Madame Saville!"
+
+There were fresh cries of welcome, fresh exchanges of affectionate
+diminutives and kisses, which seemed to make the Prince's mouth water.
+Jacqueline discovered, to her great surprise, that she, too, was a dear
+friend of Madame Saville's, who called her her good angel, in reference,
+no doubt, to the letter she had secretly put into the post. At last she
+said, trying to make her escape from the party: "But it must be nine
+o'clock."
+
+"Oh! but--you must hear Szmera."
+
+A handsome young fellow, stoutly built, with heavy eyebrows, a hooked
+nose, a quantity of hair growing low upon his forehead, and lips that
+were too red, the perfect type of a Hungarian gypsy, began a piece of
+his own composition, which had all the ardor of a mild 'galopade' and
+a Satanic hunt, with intervals of dying sweetness, during which the
+painted skeleton they called the Countess declared that she certainly
+heard a nightingale warbling in the moonlight.
+
+This charming speech was forthwith repeated by her "umbra" in all parts
+of the room, which was now nearly filled with people, a mixed multitude,
+some of whom were frantic about music, others frantic about Wanda
+Strahlberg. There were artists and amateurs present, and even
+respectable women, for Madame d'Avrigny, attracted by the odor of a
+species of Bohemianism, had come to breathe it with delight, under cover
+of a wish to glean ideas for her next winter's receptions.
+
+Then again there were women who had been dropped out of society, like
+Madame de Versanne, who, with her sunken eyes and faded face, was not
+likely again to pick up in the street a bracelet worth ten thousand
+francs. There was a literary woman who signed herself Fraisiline, and
+wrote papers on fashion--she was so painted and bedizened that some one
+remarked that the principal establishments she praised in print probably
+paid her in their merchandise. There was a dowager whose aristocratic
+name appeared daily on the fourth page of the newspapers, attesting the
+merits of some kind of quack medicine; and a retired opera-singer, who,
+having been called Zenaide Rochet till she grew up in Montmartre, where
+she was born, had had a brilliant career as a star in Italy under the
+name of Zina Rochette. La Rochette's name, alas! is unknown to the
+present generation.
+
+In all, there were about twenty persons, who made more noise with their
+applause than a hundred ordinary guests, for enthusiasm was exacted by
+Madame Strahlberg. Profiting by the ovation to the Hungarian musician,
+Jacqueline made a movement toward the door, but just as she reached it
+she had the misfortune of falling in with her old acquaintance, Nora
+Sparks, who was at that moment entering with her father. She was forced
+to sit down again and hear all about Kate's marriage. Kate had gone back
+to New York, her husband being an American, but Nora said she had made
+up her mind not to leave Europe till she had found a satisfactory match.
+
+"You had better make haste about it, if you expect to keep me here,"
+said Mr. Sparks, with a peculiar expression in his eye. He was eager to
+get home, having important business to attend to in the West.
+
+"Oh, papa, be quiet! I shall find somebody at Bellagio. Why, darling,
+are you still in mourning?"
+
+She had forgotten that Jacqueline had lost her father. Probably she
+would not have thought it necessary to wear black so long for Mr.
+Sparks. Meantime, Madame Strahlberg and her sister had left the room.
+
+"When are they coming back?" said Jacqueline, growing very nervous. "It
+seems to me this clock must be wrong. It says half-past nine. I am sure
+it must be later than that."
+
+"Half-past nine!--why, it is past eleven," replied Miss Nora, with a
+giggle. "Do you suppose they pay any attention to clocks in this house?
+Everything here is topsy-turvy."
+
+"Oh! what shall I do?" sighed poor Jacqueline, on the verge of tears.
+
+"Why, do they keep you such a prisoner as that? Can't you come in a
+little late--"
+
+"They wouldn't open the doors--they never open the doors on any pretext
+after ten o'clock," cried Jacqueline, beside herself.
+
+"Then your nuns must be savages? You should teach them better."
+
+"Don't be worried, dear little one, you can sleep on this sofa," said
+Madame Odinska, kindly.
+
+To whom had she not offered that useful sofa? Wanda and Colette were
+just as ready to propose that others should spend the night with them
+as, on the smallest pretext, to accept the same hospitality from others.
+Wanda, indeed, always slept curled up like a cat on a divan, in a fur
+wrapper, which she put on early in the evening when she wanted to smoke
+cigarettes. She went to sleep at no regular hour. A bear's skin was
+placed always within her reach, so that if she were cold she could draw
+it over her. Jacqueline, not being accustomed to these Polish fashions,
+did not seem to be much attracted by the offer of the sofa. She blamed
+herself bitterly for her own folly in having got herself into a scrape
+which might lead to serious consequences.
+
+But this was neither time nor place for expressions of anxiety; it would
+be absurd to trouble every one present with her regrets. Besides, the
+harm was done--it was irreparable--and while she was turning over in her
+mind in what manner she could explain to the Mother Superior that
+the mistake about the hour had been no fault of hers--and the Mother
+Superior, alas! would be sure to make inquiries as to the friends whom
+she had visited--the magic violin of M. Szmera played its first notes,
+accompanied by Madame Odinska on the piano, and by a delicious little
+flute. They played an overture, the dreamy sweetness of which extorted
+cries of admiration from all the women.
+
+Suddenly, the screens parted, and upon the little platform that
+represented a stage bounded a sort of anomalous being, supple and
+charming, in the traditional dress of Pierrot, whom the English
+vulgarize and call Harlequin. He had white camellias instead of buttons
+on his loose white jacket, and the bright eyes of Wanda shone out
+from his red-and-white face. He held a mandolin, and imitated the most
+charming of serenades, before a make-believe window, which, being opened
+by a white, round arm, revealed Colette, dressed as Colombine.
+
+The little pantomime piece was called 'Pierrot in Love'. It consisted
+of a series of dainty coquetries, sudden quarrels, fits of jealousy,
+and tender reconciliations, played by the two sisters. Colette with
+her beauty, Wanda with her talent, her impishness, her graceful and
+voluptuous attitudes, electrified the spectators, especially in a long
+monologue, in which Pierrot contemplated suicide, made more effective by
+the passionate and heart-piercing strains of the Hungarian's violin, so
+that old Rochette cried out: "What a pity such a wonder should not be
+upon the stage!" La Rochette, now retired into private life, wearing
+an old dress, with her gray hair and her black eyes, like those of a
+watchful crocodile, took the pleasure in the pantomime that all actors
+do to the very last in everything connected with the theatre. She cried
+'brava' in tones that might reach Italy; she blew kisses to the actors
+in default of flowers.
+
+Madame d'Avrigny was also transported to the sixth heaven, but
+Jacqueline's presence somewhat marred her pleasure. When she first
+perceived her she had shown great surprise. "You here, my dear?" she
+cried, "I thought you safe with our own excellent Giselle."
+
+"Safe, Madame? It seems to me one can be safe anywhere," Jacqueline
+answered, though she was tempted to say "safe nowhere;" but instead she
+inquired for Dolly.
+
+Dolly's mother bit her lips and then replied: "You see I have not
+brought her. Oh, yes, this house is very amusing--but rather too much
+so. The play was very pretty, and I am sorry it would not do at my
+house. It is too--too 'risque', you know;" and she rehearsed her usual
+speech about the great difficulties encountered by a lady who wished to
+give entertainments and provide amusement for her friends.
+
+Meantime Pierrot, or rather Madame Strahlberg, had leaped over an
+imaginary barrier and came dancing toward the company, shaking her large
+sleeves and settling her little snake-like head in her large quilled
+collar, dragging after her the Hungarian, who seemed not very willing.
+She presented him to Madame d'Avrigny, hoping that so fashionable a
+woman might want him to play at her receptions during the winter, and
+to a journalist who promised to give him a notice in his paper,
+provided--and here he whispered something to Pierrot, who, smiling,
+answered neither yes nor no. The sisters kept on their costumes;
+Colette was enchanting with her bare neck, her long-waisted black velvet
+corsage, her very short skirt, and a sort of three-cornered hat upon
+her head. All the men paid court to her, and she accepted their homage,
+becoming gayer and gayer at every compliment, laughing loudly, possibly
+that her laugh might exhibit her beautiful teeth.
+
+Wanda, as Pierrot, sang, with her hands in her pockets, a Russian
+village song: "Ah! Dounai-li moy Dounai" ("Oh! thou, my Danube"). Then
+she imperiously called Jacqueline to the piano:--"It is your turn now,"
+she said, "most humble violet."
+
+Up to that moment, Jacqueline's deep mourning had kept the gentlemen
+present from addressing her, though she had been much stared at.
+Although she did not wish to sing, for her heart was heavy as she
+thought of the troubles that awaited her the next day at the convent,
+she sang what was asked of her without resistance or pretension. Then,
+for the first time, she experienced the pride of triumph. Szmera, though
+he was furious at not being the sole lion of the evening, complimented
+her, bowing almost to the ground, with one hand on his heart; Madame
+Rochette assured her that she had a fortune in her throat whenever she
+chose to seek it; persons she had never seen and who did not know her
+name, pressed her hands fervently, saying that her singing was adorable.
+All cried "Encore," "Encore!" and, yielding to the pleasure of applause,
+she thought no more of the flight of time. Dawn was peeping through the
+windows when the party broke up.
+
+"What kind people!" thought the debutante, whom they had encouraged and
+applauded; "some perhaps are a little odd, but how much cordiality
+and warmth there is among them! It is catching. This is the sort of
+atmosphere in which talent should live."
+
+Being very much fatigued, she fell asleep upon the offered sofa,
+half-pleased, half-frightened, but with two prominent convictions: one,
+that she was beginning to return to life; the other, that she stood on
+the edge of a precipice. In her dreams old Rochette appeared to her, her
+face like that of an affable frog, her dress the dress of Pierrot, and
+she croaked out, in a variety of tones: "The stage! Why not? Applauded
+every night--it would be glorious!" Then she seemed in her dream to be
+falling, falling down from a great height, as one falls from fairyland
+into stern reality. She opened her eyes: it was noon. Madame Odinska was
+waiting for her: she intended herself to take her to the convent, and
+for that purpose had assumed the imposing air of a noble matron.
+
+Alas! it was in vain! Jacqueline, was made to understand that such
+an infraction of the rules could not be overlooked. To pass the night
+without leave out of the convent, and not with her own family, was cause
+for expulsion. Neither the prayers nor the anger of Madame Odinska
+had any power to change the sentence. While the Mother Superior
+calmly pronounced her decree, she was taking the measure of this stout
+foreigner who appeared in behalf of Jacqueline, a woman overdressed, yet
+at the same time shabby, who had a far from well-bred or aristocratic
+air. "Out of consideration for Madame de Talbrun," she said, "the
+convent consents to keep Mademoiselle de Nailles a few days longer--a
+few weeks perhaps, until she can find some other place to go. That is
+all we can do for her."
+
+Jacqueline listened to this sentence as she might have watched a game of
+dice when her fate hung on the result, but she showed no emotion. "Now,"
+she thought, "my fate has been decided; respectable people will have
+nothing more to do with me. I will go with the others, who, perhaps,
+after all are not worse, and who most certainly are more amusing."
+
+A fortnight after this, Madame de Nailles, having come back to Paris,
+from some watering-place, was telling Marien that Jacqueline had started
+for Bellagio with Mr. and Miss Sparks, the latter having taken a notion
+that she wanted that kind of chaperon who is called a companion in
+England and America.
+
+"But they are of the same age," said Marien.
+
+"That is just what Miss Sparks wants. She does not wish to be hampered
+by an elderly chaperon, but to be accompanied, as she would have been by
+her sister."
+
+"Jacqueline will be exposed to see strange things; how could you have
+consented--"
+
+"Consented? As if she cared for my consent! And then she manages to say
+such irritating things as soon as one attempts to blame her or advise
+her. For example, this is one of them: 'Don't you suppose,' she said to
+me, 'that every one will take the most agreeable chance that offers for
+a visit to Italy?' What do you think of that allusion? It closed my lips
+absolutely."
+
+"Perhaps she did not mean what you think she meant."
+
+"Do you think so? And when I warned her against Madame Strahlberg,
+saying that she might set her a very bad example, she answered: 'I may
+have had worse.' I suppose that was not meant for impertinence either!"
+
+"I don't know," said Hubert Marien, biting his lips doubtfully, "but--"
+
+He was silent a few moments, his head drooped on his breast, he was in
+some painful reverie.
+
+"Go on. What are you thinking about?" asked Madame de Nailles,
+impatiently.
+
+"I beg your pardon. I was only thinking that a certain responsibility
+might rest on those who have made that young girl what she is."
+
+"I don't understand you," said the stepmother, with an impatient
+gesture. "Who can do anything to counteract a bad disposition? You don't
+deny that hers is bad? She is a very devil for pride and obstinacy--she
+has no affection--she has proved it. I have no inclination to get myself
+wounded by trying to control her."
+
+"Then you prefer to let her ruin herself?"
+
+"I should prefer not to give the world a chance to talk, by coming to an
+open rupture with her, which would certainly be the case if I tried to
+contradict her. After all, the Sparks and Madame Odinska are not yet put
+out of the pale of good society, and she knew them long ago. An early
+intimacy may be a good explanation if people blame her for going too
+far--"
+
+"So be it, then; if you are satisfied it is not for me to say anything,"
+replied Marien, coldly.
+
+"Satisfied? I am not satisfied with anything or anybody," said Madame de
+Nailles, indignantly. "How could I be satisfied; I never have met with
+anything but ingratitude."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. THE SAILOR'S RETURN
+
+Madame D'Argy did not leave her son in ignorance of all the freaks and
+follies of Jacqueline. He knew every particular of the wrong-doings and
+the imprudences of his early friend, and even the additions made to
+them by calumny, ever since the fit of in dependence which, after her
+father's death, had led her to throw off all control. She told of her
+sudden departure from Fresne, where she might have found so safe a
+refuge with her friend and cousin. Then had not her own imprudence and
+coquetry led to a rupture with the families of d'Etaples and Ray? She
+told of the scandalous intimacy with Madame Strahlberg; of her expulsion
+from the convent, where they had discovered, even before she left, that
+she had been in the habit of visiting undesirable persons; and finally
+she informed him that Jacqueline had gone to Italy with an old Yankee
+and his daughter--he being a man, it was said, who had laid the
+foundation of his colossal fortune by keeping a bar-room in a mining
+camp in California. This last was no fiction, the cut of Mr. Sparks's
+beard and his unpolished manners left no doubt on the subject; and she
+wound up by saying that Madame d'Avrigny, whom no one could accuse
+of ill-nature, had been grieved at meeting this unhappy girl in very
+improper company, among which she seemed quite in her element, like a
+fish in water. It was said also that she was thinking of studying for
+the stage with La Rochette--M. de Talbrun had heard it talked about in
+the foyer of the Opera by an old Prince from some foreign country--she
+could not remember his name, but he was praising Madame Strahlberg
+without any reserve as the most delightful of Parisiennes. Thereupon
+Talbrun had naturally forbidden his wife to have anything to do with
+Jacqueline, or even to write to her. Fat Oscar, though he was not all
+that he ought to be himself, had some very strict notions of propriety.
+No one was more particular about family relations, and really in this
+case no one could blame him; but Giselle had been very unhappy, and to
+the very last had tried to stand up for her unhappy friend. Having told
+him all this, she added, she would say no more on the subject.
+
+Giselle was a model woman in everything, in tact, in goodness, in good
+sense, and she was very attentive to the poor old mother of Fred, who
+but for her must have died long ago of loneliness and sorrow. Thereupon
+ensued the poor lady's usual lamentations over the long, long absence
+of her beloved son; as usual, she told him she did not think she should
+live to see him back again; she gave him a full account of her maladies,
+caused, or at least aggravated, by her mortal, constant, incurable
+sorrow; and she told how Giselle had been nursing her with all the
+patience and devotion of a Sister of Charity. Through all Madame
+d'Argy's letters at this period the angelic figure of Giselle was
+contrasted with the very different one of that young and incorrigible
+little devil of a Jacqueline.
+
+Fred at first believed his mother's stories were all exaggeration,
+but the facts were there, corroborated by the continued silence of the
+person concerned. He knew his mother to be too good wilfully to
+blacken the character of one whom for years she had hoped would be her
+daughter-in-law, the only child of her best friend, the early love of
+her son. But by degrees he fancied that the love so long living at the
+bottom of his heart was slowly dying, that it had been extinguished,
+that nothing remained of it but remembrance, such remembrance as we
+retain for dead things, a remembrance without hope, whose weight added
+to the homesickness which with him was increasing every day.
+
+There was no active service to enable him to endure exile. The heroic
+period of the war had passed. Since a treaty of peace had been signed
+with China, the fleet, which had distinguished itself in so many small
+engagements and bombardments, had had nothing to do but to mount guard,
+as it were, along a conquered coast. All round it in the bay, where it
+lay at anchor, rose mountains of strange shapes, which seemed to shut
+it into a kind of prison. This feeling of nothing to be done--of nothing
+likely to be done, worked in Fred's head like a nightmare. The only
+thing he thought of was how he could escape, when could he once more
+kiss the faded cheeks of his mother, who often, when he slept or lay
+wakeful during the long hours of the siesta, he saw beside him in tears.
+Hers was the only face that he recalled distinctly; to her and to her
+only were devoted his long reveries when on watch; that time when he
+formerly composed his love verses, tender or angry, or full of despair.
+That was all over! A sort of mournful resignation had succeeded his
+bursts of excited feeling, his revolt against his fate.
+
+This was Fred's state of mind when he received orders to return
+home--orders as unexpected as everything seems to be in the life of a
+naval man. "I am going back to her!" he cried. Her was his mother, her
+was France. All the rest had disappeared as if into a fog. Jacqueline
+was a phantom of the past; so many things had happened since the old
+times when he had loved her. He had crossed the Indian Ocean and the
+China Sea; he had seen long stretches of interminable coast-line; he
+had beheld misery, and glory, and all the painful scenes that wait on
+warfare; he had seen pestilence, and death in every shape, and all this
+had wrought in him a sort of stoicism, the result of long acquaintance
+with solitude and danger. He remembered his old love as a flower he had
+once admired as he passed it, a treacherous flower, with thorns that had
+wounded him. There are flowers that are beneficent, and flowers that are
+poisonous, and the last are sometimes the most beautiful. They should
+not be blamed, he thought; it was their nature to be hurtful; but it was
+well to pass them by and not to gather them.
+
+By the time he had debarked Fred had made up his mind to let his mother
+choose a wife for him, a daughter-in-law suited to herself, who would
+give her the delight of grandchildren, who would bring them up well,
+and who would not weary of Lizerolles. But a week later the idea of this
+kind of marriage had gone out of his head, and this change of feeling
+was partly owing to Giselle. Giselle gave him a smile of welcome that
+went to his heart, for that poor heart, after all, was only waiting for
+a chance again to give itself away. She was with Madame d'Argy, who had
+not been well enough to go to the sea-coast to meet her son, and he
+saw at the same moment the pale and aged face which had visited him at
+Tonquin in his dreams, and a fair face that he had never before thought
+so beautiful, more oval than he remembered it, with blue eyes soft and
+tender, and a mouth with a sweet infantine expression of sincerity and
+goodness. His mother stretched out her trembling arms, gave a great cry,
+and fainted away.
+
+"Don't be alarmed; it is only joy," said Giselle, in her soft voice.
+
+And when Madame d'Argy proved her to be right by recovering very
+quickly, overwhelming her son with rapid questions and covering him with
+kisses, Giselle held out her hand to him and said:
+
+"I, too, am very glad you have come home."
+
+"Oh!" cried the sick woman in her excitement, "you must kiss your old
+playfellow!"
+
+Giselle blushed a little, and Fred, more embarrassed than she, lightly
+touched with his lips her pretty smooth hair which shone upon her head
+like a helmet of gold. Perhaps it was this new style of hairdressing
+which made her seem so much more beautiful than he remembered her, but
+it seemed to him he saw her for the first time; while, with the greatest
+eagerness, notwithstanding Giselle's attempts to interrupt her, Madame
+d'Argy repeated to her son all she owed to that dear friend "her own
+daughter, the best of daughters, the most patient, the most devoted of
+daughters, could not have done more! Ah! if there only could be found
+another one like her!"
+
+Whereupon the object of all these praises made her escape, disclaiming
+everything.
+
+Why, after this, should she have hesitated to come back to Lizerolles
+every day, as of late had been her custom? Men know so little about
+taking care of sick people. So she came, and was present at all the
+rejoicings and all the talks that followed Fred's return. She took her
+part in the discussions about Fred's future. "Help me, my pet," said
+Madame d'Argy, "help me to find a wife for him: all we ask is that she
+should be like you."
+
+In answer to which Fred declared, half-laughing and half-seriously, that
+that was his ideal.
+
+She did not believe much of this, but, following her natural instinct,
+she assumed the dangerous task of consolation, until, as Madame d'Argy
+grew better, she discontinued her daily visits, and Fred, in his turn,
+took a habit of going over to Fresne without being invited, and spending
+there a good deal of his time.
+
+"Don't send me away. You who are always charitable," he said. "If you
+only knew what a pleasure a Parisian conversation is after coming from
+Tonquin!"
+
+"But I am so little of a Parisienne, or at least what you mean by that
+term, and my conversation is not worth coming for," objected Giselle.
+
+In her extreme modesty she did not realize how much she had gained in
+intellectual culture. Women left to themselves have time to read, and
+Giselle had done this all the more because she had considered it a duty.
+Must she not know enough to instruct and superintend the education of
+her son? With much strong feeling, yet with much simplicity, she spoke
+to Fred of this great task, which sometimes frightened her; he gave her
+his advice, and both discussed together the things that make up a good
+man. Giselle brought up frequently the subject of heredity: she named
+no one, but Fred could see that she had a secret terror lest Enguerrand,
+who in person was very like his father, might also inherit his
+character. Fears on this subject, however, appeared unfounded. There was
+nothing about the child that was not good; his tastes were those of his
+mother. He was passionately fond of Fred, climbing on his lap as soon as
+the latter arrived and always maintaining that he, too, wanted a pretty
+red ribbon to wear in his buttonhole, a ribbon only to be got by sailing
+far away over the seas, like sailors.
+
+"A sailor! Heaven forbid!" cried Madame de Talbrun.
+
+"Oh! sailors come back again. He has come back. Couldn't he take me away
+with him soon? I have some stories about cabin-boys who were not much
+older than I."
+
+"Let us hope that your friend Fred won't go away," said Giselle. "But
+why do you wish to be a cabinboy?"
+
+"Because I want to go away with him, if he does not stay here--because I
+like him," answered Enguerrand in a tone of decision.
+
+Hereupon Giselle kissed her boy with more than usual tenderness. He
+would not take to the hunting-field, she thought, the boulevard, and the
+corps de ballet. She would not lose him. "But, oh, Fred!" she cried, "it
+is not to be wondered at that he is so fond of you! You spoil him!
+You will be a devoted father some day; your vocation is evidently for
+marriage."
+
+She thought, in thus speaking, that she was saying what Madame d'Argy
+would like her to say.
+
+"In the matter of children, I think your son is enough for me," he said,
+one day; "and as for marriage, you would not believe how all women--I
+mean all the young girls among whom I should have to make a choice--are
+indifferent to me. My feeling almost amounts to antipathy."
+
+For the first time she ventured to say: "Do you still care for
+Jacqueline?"
+
+"About as much as she cares for me," he answered, dryly. "No, I made a
+mistake once, and that has made me cautious for the future."
+
+Another day he said:
+
+"I know now who was the woman I ought to have loved."
+
+Giselle did not look up; she was devoting all her attention to
+Enguerrand.
+
+Fred held certain theories which he used to talk about. He believed in
+a high, spiritual, disinterested affection which would raise a man above
+himself, making him more noble, inspiring a disgust for all ignoble
+pleasures. The woman willing to accept such homage might do anything she
+pleased with a heart that would be hers alone. She would be the lady
+who presided over his life, for whose sake all good deeds and generous
+actions would be done, the idol, higher than a wife or any object of
+earthly passion, the White Angel whom poets have sung.
+
+Giselle pretended that she did not understand him, but she was divinely
+happy. This, then, was the reward of her spotless life! She was the
+object of a worship no less tender than respectful. Fred spoke of the
+woman he ought to have loved as if he meant to say, "I love you;" he
+pressed his lips on the auburn curls of little Enguerrand where his
+mother had just kissed him. Day after day he seemed more attracted
+to that salon where, dressed with more care than she had ever dressed
+before, she expected him. Then awoke in her the wish to please, and she
+was beautiful with that beauty which is not the insipid beauty of St.
+Agnes, but that which, superior to all other, is seen when the face
+reflects the soul. All that winter there was a new Giselle--a Giselle
+who passed away again among the shadows, a Giselle of whom everybody
+said, even her husband, "Ma foi! but she is beautiful!" Oscar de
+Talbrun, as he made this remark, never thought of wondering why she was
+more beautiful. He was ready to take offense and was jealous by nature,
+but he was perfectly sure of his wife, as he had often said. As to Fred,
+the idea of being jealous of him would never have entered his mind. Fred
+was a relative and was admitted to all the privileges of a cousin or a
+brother; besides, he was a fellow of no consequence in any way.
+
+While this platonic attachment grew stronger and stronger between Fred
+and Giselle, assisted by the innocent complicity of little Enguerrand,
+Jacqueline was discovering how hard it is for a girl of good birth, if
+she is poor, to carry out her plans of honest independence. Possibly she
+had allowed herself to be too easily misled by the title of "companion,"
+which, apparently more cordial than that of 'demoiselle de compagnie',
+means in reality the same thing--a sort of half-servile position.
+
+Money is a touchstone which influences all social relations, especially
+when on one side there is a somewhat morbid susceptibility, and on the
+other a lack of good breeding and education. The Sparks, father and
+daughter, Americans of the lower class, though willing to spend any
+number of dollars for their own pleasure, expected that every penny
+they disbursed should receive its full equivalent in service; the place
+therefore offered so gracefully and spontaneously to Mademoiselle de
+Nailles was far from being a sinecure. Jacqueline received her salary on
+the same footing as Justine, the Parisian maid, received her wages, for,
+although her position was apparently one of much greater importance and
+consideration than Justine's, she was really at the beck and call of a
+girl who, while she called her "darling," gave her orders and paid her
+for her services. Very often Miss Nora asked her to sew, on the plea
+that she was as skilful with her fingers as a fairy, but in reality that
+her employer might feel the superiority of her own position.
+
+Hitherto Miss Nora had been delighted to meet at watering-places a
+friend of whom she could say proudly, "She is a representative of the
+old nobility of France" (which was not true, by the way, for the title
+of Baron borne by M. de Nailles went no farther back than the days of
+Louis XVIII); and she was still more proud to think that she was now
+waited on by this same daughter of a nobleman, when her own father had
+kept a drinking-saloon. She did not acknowledge this feeling to herself,
+and would certainly have maintained that she never had had such an idea,
+but it existed all the same, and she was under its influence, being very
+vain and rather foolish. And, indeed, Jacqueline, would have been very
+willing to plan trimmings and alter finery from morning to night in
+her own chamber in a hotel, exactly as Mademoiselle Justine did, if she
+could by this means have escaped the special duties of her difficult
+position, which duties were to follow Miss Nora everywhere, like her own
+shadow, to be her confidant and to act sometimes as her screen, or even
+as her accomplice, in matters that occasionally involved risks, and were
+never to her liking.
+
+The young American girl had already said to her father, when he asked
+her to give up her search for an entirely satisfactory European suitor,
+which search he feared might drag on forever without any results: "Oh!
+I shall be sure to find him at Bellagio!" And she made up her mind that
+there he was to be sought and found at any price. Hotel life offered her
+opportunities to exercise her instincts for flirtation, for there she
+met many specimens of men she called chic, with a funny little foreign
+accent, which seemed to put new life into the wornout word. Twenty times
+a day she baited her hook, and twenty times a day some fish would
+bite, or at least nibble, according as he was a fortune-hunter or a
+dilettante. Miss Nora, being incapable of knowing the difference, was
+ready to capture good or bad, and went about dragging her slaves at
+her chariot-wheels. Sometimes she took them rowing, with the Stars and
+Stripes floating over her boat, by moonlight; sometimes she drove
+them recklessly in a drag through roads bordered by olive-groves and
+vineyards; all these expeditions being undertaken under-pretence of
+admiring the romantic scenery. Her father was not disposed to interfere
+with what he called "a little harmless dissipation." He was confident
+his daughter's "companion" must know what was proper, she being, as he
+said, accustomed to good society. Were not all Italian ladies attended
+by gentlemen? Who could blame a young girl for amusing herself? Meantime
+Mr. Sparks amused himself after his own fashion, which was to sit
+comfortably, with his feet up on the piazza rail of the hotel, imbibing
+strong iced drinks through straws. But in reality Jacqueline had no
+power whatever to preserve propriety, and only compromised herself by
+her associations, though her own conduct was irreproachable. Indeed she
+was considered quite prudish, and the rest of the mad crowd laughed
+at her for having the manners of a governess. In vain she tried to say
+words of warning to Nora; what she said was laughed at or resented in a
+tone that told her that a paid companion had not the right to speak as
+frankly as a friend.
+
+Her business, she was plainly told one day, was to be on the spot in
+case any impertinent suitor should venture too far in a tete-a-tete,
+but short of that she was not to "spoilsport." "I am not doing anything
+wrong; it is allowable in America," was Miss Nora's regular speech on
+such occasions, and Jacqueline could not dispute the double argument.
+Nora's conduct was not wicked, and in America such things might be
+allowed. Yet Jacqueline tried to demonstrate that a young girl can not
+pass unscathed through certain adventures, even if they are innocent in
+the strict sense of the word; which made Nora cry out that all she said
+was subterfuge and that she had no patience with prejudices.
+
+In vain her young companion pointed out to her charge that other
+Americans at Bellagio seemed far from approving her conduct. American
+ladies of a very different class, who were staying at the hotel, held
+aloof from her, and treated her with marked coldness whenever they met;
+declaring that her manners would be as objectionable in her own country,
+in good society, as they were in Italy.
+
+But Miss Sparks was not to be put down by any argument. "Bah! they are
+stuck-up Bostonians. And do you know, Jacqueline, you are getting very
+tiresome? You were faster yourself than I when we were the Blue Band at
+Treport."
+
+Nora's admirers, sometimes encouraged, sometimes snubbed, when treated
+cavalierly by this young lady, would occasionally pay court to the
+'demoiselle de compagnie', who indeed was well worth their pains; but,
+to their surprise, the subordinate received their attentions with great
+coldness. Having entered her protest against what was going on, and
+having resisted the contagion of example, it was natural she should
+somewhat exaggerate her prudery, for it is hard to hit just the right
+point in such reaction. The result was, she made herself so disagreeable
+to Miss Sparks that the latter determined on getting rid of her as
+tactfully as possible.
+
+Their parting took place on the day after an excursion to the Villa
+Sommariva, where Miss Sparks and her little court had behaved with their
+usual noise and rudeness. They had gone there ostensibly to see the
+pictures, about which none of them cared anything, for Nora, wherever
+she was, never liked any one to pay attention to anybody or to look at
+anything but her own noisy, all-pervading self.
+
+It so happened that at the most riotous moment of the picnic an old
+gentleman passed near the lively crowd. He was quite inoffensive,
+pleasant-mannered, and walked leaning on his cane, yet, had the statue
+of the Commander in Don Juan suddenly appeared it could not have
+produced such consternation as his presence did on Jacqueline, when,
+after a moment's hesitation, he bowed to her. She recognized in him a
+friend of Madame d'Argy, M. Martel, whom she had often met at her house
+in Paris and at Lizerolles. When he recognized her, she fancied she had
+seen pass over his face a look of painful surprise. He would surely tell
+how he had met her; what would her old friends think of her? What would
+Fred? For some time past she had thought more than ever before of what
+Fred would think of her. The more she grew disgusted with the men she
+met, the more she appreciated his good qualities, and the more she
+thought of the honest, faithful love he had offered her--love that she
+had so madly thrown away. She never should meet such love again, she
+thought. It was the idea of how Fred would blame her when he heard
+what she pictured to herself the old gentleman would say of her, that
+suddenly decided her to leave Bellagio.
+
+She told Mr. Sparks that evening that she was not strong enough for such
+duties as were required of a companion.
+
+He looked at her with pity and annoyance.
+
+"I should have thought you had more energy. How do you expect to live by
+work if you are not strong enough for pleasure?"
+
+"Pleasure needs strength as well as labor," she said, smiling; "I would
+rather work in the fields than go on amusing myself as I have been
+doing."
+
+"My dear, you must not be so difficult to please. When people have to
+earn their bread, it is a bad plan. I am afraid you will find out
+before long that there are harder ways of making a living than lunching,
+dancing, walking, and driving from morning to night in a pretty
+country--"
+
+Here Mr. Sparks began to laugh as he thought of all he had had to do,
+without making objections, in the Far West, in the heroic days of his
+youthful vigor. He was rather fond of recalling how he had carried his
+pick on his shoulder and his knife in his belt, with two Yankee sayings
+in his head, and little besides for baggage: "Muscle and pluck!--Muscle
+and pluck!" and "Go ahead for ever!" That was the sort of thing to be
+done when a man or a woman had not a cent.
+
+And now, what was Jacqueline to do next? She reflected that in a very
+short time she had attempted many things. It seemed to her that all she
+could do now was to follow the advice which, when first given her
+by Madame Strahlberg, had frightened her, though she had found it so
+attractive. She would study with Madame Rochette; she would go to the
+Milan Conservatory, and as soon as she came of age she would go upon the
+stage, under a feigned name, of course, and in a foreign country. She
+would prove to the world, she said to herself, that the career of an
+actress is compatible with self-respect. This resolve that she would
+never be found wanting in self-respect held a prominent place in all her
+plans, as she began to understand better those dangers in life which are
+for the most part unknown to young girls born in her social position.
+Jacqueline's character, far from being injured by her trials and
+experiences, had gained in strength. She grew firmer as she gained in
+knowledge. Never had she been so worthy of regard and interest as at
+the very time when her friends were saying sadly to themselves, "She is
+going to the bad," and when, from all appearances, they were right in
+this conclusion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. TWIN DEVILS
+
+Jacqueline came to the conclusion that she had better seriously consult
+Madame Strahlberg. She therefore stopped at Monaco, where this friend,
+whom she intended to honor with the strange office of Mentor, was
+passing the winter in a little villa in the Condamine quarter--a cottage
+surrounded by roses and laurel-bushes, painted in soft colors and
+looking like a plaything.
+
+Madame Strahlberg had already urged Jacqueline to come and make
+acquaintance with her "paradise," without giving her any hint of the
+delights of that paradise, from which that of gambling was not excluded,
+for Madame Strahlberg was eager for any kind of excitement. Roulette now
+occupied with her a large part of every night--indeed, her nights had
+been rarely given to slumber, for her creed was that morning is the time
+for sleep, for which reason they never took breakfast in the pink villa,
+but tea, cakes, and confectionery were eaten instead at all hours until
+the evening. Thus it happened very often that they had no dinner, and
+guests had to accommodate themselves to the strange ways of the family.
+Jacqueline, however, did not stay long enough to know much of those
+ways.
+
+She arrived, poor thing, with weary wing, like some bird, who, escaping
+from the fowler's net, where it has left its feathers, flies straight to
+the spot where a sportsman lies ready to shoot it. She was received
+with the same cries of joy, the same kisses, the same demonstrations of
+affection, as those which, the summer before, had welcomed her to the
+Rue de Naples. They told her she could sleep on a sofa, exactly like the
+one on which she had passed that terrible night which had resulted in
+her expulsion from the convent; and it was decided that she must stay
+several days, at least, before she went on to Paris, to begin the
+life of hard study and courageous work which would make of her a great
+singer.
+
+Tired?--No, she was hardly tired at all. The journey over the enchanting
+road of the Corniche had awakened in her a fervor of admiration which
+prevented her from feeling any bodily needs, and now she seemed to have
+reached fairyland, where the verdure of the tropics was like the hanging
+gardens of Babylon, only those had never had a mirror to reflect back
+their ancient, far-famed splendor, like that before her eyes, as she
+looked down upon the Mediterranean, with the sun setting in the west in
+a sky all crimson and gold.
+
+Notwithstanding the disorder of her travelling-dress, Jacqueline allowed
+her friend to take her straight from the railway station to the Terrace
+of Monte Carlo. She fell into ecstasies at sight of the African cacti,
+the century plants, and the fig-trees of Barbary, covering the low
+walls whence they looked down into the water; at the fragrance of the
+evergreens that surrounded the beautiful palace with its balustrades,
+dedicated to all the worst passions of the human race; with the sharp
+rocky outline of Turbia; with an almost invisible speck on the horizon
+which they said was Corsica; with everything, which, whether mirage or
+reality, lifted her out of herself, and plunged her into that state
+of excited happiness and indescribable sense of bodily comfort, which
+exterior impressions so easily produce upon the young.
+
+After exhausting her vocabulary in exclamations and in questions, she
+stood silent, watching the sun as it sank beneath the waters, thinking
+that life is well worth living if it can give us such glorious
+spectacles, notwithstanding all the difficulties that may have to be
+passed through. Several minutes elapsed before she turned her radiant
+face and dazzled eyes toward Wanda, or rather toward the spot where
+Wanda had been standing beside her. "Oh! my dear--how beautiful!" she
+murmured with a long sigh.
+
+The sigh was echoed by a man, who for a few moments had looked at her
+with as much admiration as she had looked at the landscape. He answered
+her by saying, in a low voice, the tones of which made her tremble from
+head to foot:
+
+"Jacqueline!"
+
+"Monsieur de Cymier!"
+
+The words slipped through her lips as they suddenly turned pale. She had
+an instinctive, sudden persuasion that she had been led into a snare. If
+not, why was Madame Strahlberg now absorbed in conversation with three
+other persons at some little distance.
+
+"Forgive me--you did not expect to see me--you seem quite startled,"
+said the young man, drawing near her. With an effort she commanded
+herself and looked full in his face. Her anger rose. She had seen the
+same look in the ugly, brutal face of Oscar de Talbrun. From the Terrace
+of Monte Carlo her memory flew back to a country road in Normandy,
+and she clenched her hand round an imaginary riding-whip. She needed
+coolness and she needed courage. They came as if by miracle.
+
+"It is certain, Monsieur," she answered, slowly, "that I did not expect
+to meet you here."
+
+"Chance has had pity on me," he replied, bowing low, as she had set him
+the example of ceremony.
+
+But he had no idea of losing time in commonplace remarks--he wished to
+take up their intimacy on the terms it had been formerly, to resume the
+romance he himself had interrupted.
+
+"I knew," he said in the same low voice, full of persuasion, which gave
+especial meaning to his words, "I knew that, after all, we should meet
+again."
+
+"I did not expect it," said Jacqueline, haughtily.
+
+"Because you do not believe in the magnetism of a fixed desire."
+
+"No, I do not believe any such thing, when, opposed to such a desire,
+there is a strong, firm will," said Jacqueline, her eyes burning.
+
+"Ah!" he murmured, and he might have been supposed to be really moved,
+so much his look changed, "do not abuse your power over me--do not make
+me wretched; if you could only understand--"
+
+She made a swift movement to rejoin Madame Strahlberg, but that lady was
+already coming toward them with the same careless ease with which she
+had left them together.
+
+"Well! you have each found an old acquaintance," she said, gayly. "I beg
+your pardon, my loveliest, but I had to speak to some old friends, and
+ask them to join us to-morrow evening. We shall sup at the restaurant
+of the Grand Hotel, after the opera--for, I did not tell you before,
+you will have the good luck to hear Patti. Monsieur de Cymier, we shall
+expect you. Au revoir."
+
+He had been on the point of asking leave to walk home with them. But
+there was something in Jacqueline's look, and in her stubborn silence,
+that deterred him. He thought it best to leave a skilful advocate to
+plead his cause before he continued a conversation which had not
+begun satisfactorily. Not that Gerard de Cymier was discouraged by
+the behavior of Jacqueline. He had expected her to be angry at his
+defection, and that she would make him pay for it; but a little skill on
+his part, and a little credulity on hers, backed by the intervention of
+a third party, might set things right.
+
+One moment he lingered to look at her, admiring her as she stood in
+the light of the dying sun, as beautiful in her plain dress and her
+indignant paleness, while she looked far out to sea, that she might
+not be obliged to look at him, as she had been when he had known her in
+prosperity.
+
+At that moment he knew she hated him, but it would be an additional
+delight to overcome that feeling.
+
+The two women, when he left them, continued walking on the terrace side
+by side, without a word. Wanda watched her companion out of the corners
+of her eyes, and hummed an air to herself to break the silence. She saw
+a storm gathering under Jacqueline's black eyebrows, and knew that sharp
+arrows were likely to shoot forth from those lips which several times
+had opened, though not a word had been uttered, probably through fear of
+saying too little or too much.
+
+At last she made some trifling comment on the view, explaining something
+about pigeon-shooting.
+
+"Wanda," interrupted Jacqueline, "did you not know what happened once?"
+
+"Happened, how? About what?" asked Madame Strahlberg, with an air of
+innocence.
+
+"I am speaking of the way Monsieur de Cymier treated me."
+
+"Bah! He was in love with you. Who didn't know it? Every one could see
+that. It was all the more reason why you should have been glad to meet
+him."
+
+"He did not act as if he were much in love," said Jacqueline.
+
+"Because he went away when your family thought he was about to make his
+formal proposal? Not all men are marrying men, my dear, nor have all
+women that vocation. Men fall in love all the same."
+
+"Do you think, then, that when a man knows he has no intention of
+marrying he should pay court to a young girl? I think I told you at the
+time that he had paid court to me, and that he afterward--how shall I
+say it?--basely deserted me."
+
+The sharp and thrilling tone in which Jacqueline said this amused Madame
+Strahlberg.
+
+"What big words, my dear! No, I don't remember that you ever said
+anything of the sort to me before. But you are wrong. As we grow older
+we lay aside harsh judgments and sharp words. They do no good. In your
+place I should be touched by the thought that a man so charming had been
+faithful to me."
+
+"Faithful!" cried Jacqueline, her dark eyes flashing into the cat-like
+eyes of Madame Strahlberg.
+
+Wanda looked down, and fastened a ribbon at her waist.
+
+"Ever since we have been here," she said, "he has been talking of you."
+
+"Really--for how long?"
+
+"Oh, if you must know, for the last two weeks."
+
+"It is just a fortnight since you wrote and asked me to stay with you,"
+said Jacqueline, coldly and reproachfully.
+
+"Oh, well--what's the harm? Suppose I did think your presence would
+increase the attractions of Monaco?"
+
+"Why did you not tell me?"
+
+"Because I never write a word more than is necessary; you know how lazy
+I am. And also because, I may as well confess, it might have scared you
+off, you are so sensitive."
+
+"Then you meant to take me by surprise?" said Jacqueline, in the same
+tone.
+
+"Oh! my dear, why do you try to quarrel with me?" replied Madame
+Strahlberg, stopping suddenly and looking at her through her eyeglass.
+"We may as well understand what you mean by a free and independent
+life."
+
+And thereupon ensued an address to which Jacqueline listened, leaning
+one hand on a balustrade of that enchanted garden, while the voice of
+the serpent, as she thought, was ringing in her ears. Her limbs shook
+under her--her brain reeled. All her hopes of success as a singer on the
+stage Madame Strahlberg swept away, as not worth a thought. She told her
+that, in her position, had she meant to be too scrupulous, she should
+have stayed in the convent. Everything to Jacqueline seemed to dance
+before her eyes. The evening closed around them, the light died out, the
+landscape, like her life, had lost its glow. She uttered a brief prayer
+for help, such a prayer as she had prayed in infancy. She whispered
+it in terror, like a cry in extreme danger. She was more frightened
+by Wanda's wicked words than she had been by M. de Talbrun or by M. de
+Cymier. She ceased to know what she was saying till the last words, "You
+have good sense and you will think about it," met her ear.
+
+Jacqueline said not a word.
+
+Wanda took her arm. "You may be sure," she said, "that I am thinking
+only of your good. Come! Would you like to go into the Casino and look
+at the pictures? No, you are tired? You can see them some evening. The
+ballroom holds a thousand persons. Yes, if you prefer, we will go home.
+You can take a nap till dinner-time. We shall dine at eight o'clock."
+
+Conversation languished till they reached the Villa Rosa.
+Notwithstanding Jacqueline's efforts to appear natural, her own voice
+rang in her ears in tones quite new to her, a laugh that she uttered
+without any occasion, and which came near resulting in hysterics. Yet
+she had power enough over her nerves to notice the surroundings as she
+entered the house. At the door of the room in which she was to sleep,
+and which was on the first story, Madame Strahlberg kissed her with one
+of those equivocal smiles which so long had imposed on her simplicity.
+
+"Till eight o'clock, then."
+
+"Till eight o'clock," repeated Jacqueline, passively.
+
+But when eight o'clock came she sent word that she had a severe
+headache, and would try to sleep it off.
+
+Suppose, she thought, M. de Cymier should have been asked to dinner;
+suppose she should be placed next to him at table? Anything in that
+house seemed possible now.
+
+They brought her a cup of tea. Up to a late hour she heard a confused
+noise of music and laughter. She did not try to sleep. All her faculties
+were on the alert, like those of a prisoner who is thinking of escape.
+She knew what time the night trains left the station, and, abandoning
+her trunk and everything else that she had with her, she furtively--but
+ready, if need were, to fight for her liberty with the strength of
+desperation--slipped down the broad stairs over their thick carpet and
+pushed open a little glass door. Thank heaven! people came in and went
+out of that house as if it had been a mill. No one discovered her
+flight till the next morning, when she was far on her way to Paris in
+an express train. Modeste, quite unprepared for her young mistress's
+arrival, was amazed to see her drop down upon her, feverish and excited,
+like some poor hunted animal, with strength exhausted. Jacqueline flung
+herself into her nurse's arms as she used to do when, as a little girl,
+she was in what she fancied some great trouble, and she cried: "Oh,
+take me in--pray take me in! Keep me safe! Hide me!" And then she told
+Modeste everything, speaking rapidly and disconnectedly, thankful to
+have some one to whom she could open her heart. In default of Modeste
+she would have spoken to stone walls.
+
+"And what will you do now, my poor darling?" asked the old nurse, as
+soon as she understood that her young lady had come back to her, "with
+weary foot and broken wing," from what she had assured her on her
+departure would be a brilliant excursion.
+
+"Oh! I don't know," answered Jacqueline, in utter discouragement; "I am
+too worn out to think or to do anything. Let me rest; that is all."
+
+"Why don't you go to see your stepmother?"
+
+"My stepmother? Oh, no! She is at the bottom of all that has happened to
+me."
+
+"Or Madame d'Argy? Or Madame de Talbrun? Madame de Talbrun is the one
+who would give you good advice."
+
+Jacqueline shook her head with a sad smile.
+
+"Let me stay here. Don't you remember--years ago--but it seems like
+yesterday--all the rest is like a nightmare--how I used to hide myself
+under your petticoats, and you would say, going on with your knitting:
+'You see she is not here; I can't think where she can be.' Hide me now
+just like that, dear old Modeste. Only hide me."
+
+And Modeste, full of heartfelt pity, promised to hide her "dear child"
+from every one, which promise, however, did not prevent her, for she
+was very self-willed, from going, without Jacqueline's knowledge, to see
+Madame de Talbrun and tell her all that had taken place. She was hurt
+and amazed at her reception by Giselle, and at her saying, without any
+offer of help or words of sympathy, "She has only reaped what she has
+sown." Giselle would have been more than woman had not Fred, and a
+remembrance of the wrongs that he had suffered through Jacqueline, now
+stood between them. For months he had been the prime object in her life;
+her mission of comforter had brought her the greatest happiness she had
+ever known. She tried to make him turn his attention to some serious
+work in life; she wanted to keep him at home, for his mother's sake, she
+thought; she fancied she had inspired him with a taste for home life. If
+she had examined herself she might have discovered that the task she had
+undertaken of doing good to this young man was not wholly for his sake
+but partly for her own. She wanted to see him nearly every day and to
+occupy a place in his life ever larger and larger. But for some
+time past the conscientious Giselle had neglected the duty of strict
+self-examination. She was thankful to be happy--and though Fred was a
+man little given to self-flattery in his relations with women, he could
+not but be pleased at the change produced in her by her intercourse with
+him.
+
+But while Fred and Giselle considered themselves as two friends trying
+to console each other, people had begun to talk about them. Even Madame
+d'Argy asked herself whether her son might not have escaped from the
+cruel claws of a young coquette of the new school to fall into a worse
+scrape with a married woman. She imagined what might happen if the
+jealousy of "that wild boar of an Oscar de Talbrun" were aroused; the
+dangers, far more terrible than the perils of the sea, that might
+in such a case await her only son, the child for whose safety her
+mother-love caused her to suffer perpetual torments. "O mothers!
+mothers!" she often said to herself, "how much they are to be pitied.
+And they are very blind. If Fred must get into danger and difficulty for
+any woman, it should not have been for Giselle de Talbrun."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. "AN AFFAIR OF HONOR"
+
+   A meeting took place yesterday at Vesinet between the Vicomte de
+   Cymier, secretary of Embassy at Vienna, and M. Frederic d'Argy,
+   ensign in the navy. The parties fought with swords. The seconds of
+   M. de Cymier were the Prince de Moelk and M. d'Etaples, captain in
+   the--th Hussars; those of M. d'Argy Hubert Marien, the painter.
+   M. d'Argy was wounded in the right arm, and for the present the
+   affair is terminated, but it is said it will be resumed on M.
+   d'Argy's recovery, although this seems hardly probable, considering
+   the very slight cause of the quarrel--an altercation at the Cercle
+   de la Rue Boissy d'Anglas, which took place over the card-table.
+
+Such was the announcement in a daily paper that met the eyes of
+Jacqueline, as she lay hidden in Modeste's lodging, like a fawn in its
+covert, her eyes and ears on the alert, watching for the least sign of
+alarm, in fear and trembling. She expected something, she knew not what;
+she felt that her sad adventure at Monaco could not fail to have its
+epilogue; but this was one of which she never had dreamed.
+
+"Modeste, give me my hat! Get me a carriage! Quick! Oh, my God, it is my
+fault!--I have killed him!"
+
+These incoherent cries came from her lips while Modeste, in alarm,
+picked up the newspaper and adjusted her silver spectacles upon her nose
+to read the paragraph. "Monsieur Fred wounded! Holy Virgin! His poor
+mother! That is a new trouble fallen on her, to be sure. But this
+quarrel had nothing to do with you, my pet; you see they say it was
+about cards."
+
+And folding up the Figaro, while Jacqueline in all haste was wrapping
+her head in a veil, Modeste, with the best intentions, went on to say:
+"Nobody ever dies of a sword-thrust in the arm."
+
+"But you see it says that they are going to fight all over again--don't
+you understand? You are so stupid! What could they have had to quarrel
+about but me? O God! Thou art just! This is indeed punishment--too much
+punishment for me!"
+
+So saying, she ran down the many stairs that led up to Modeste's little
+lodging in the roof, her feet hardly touching them as she ran, while
+Modeste followed her more slowly, crying: "Wait for me! Wait for me,
+Mademoiselle!"
+
+Calling a fiacre, Jacqueline, almost roughly, pushed the old woman into
+it, and gave the coachman the address of Madame d'Argy, having, in her
+excitement, first given him that of their old house in the Parc Monceau,
+so much was she possessed by the idea that this was a repetition of
+that dreadful day, when with Modeste, just as now, she went to meet
+an irreparable loss. She seemed to see before her her dead father--he
+looked like Fred, and now, as before, Marien had his part in the
+tragedy. Could he not have prevented the duel? Could he not have done
+something to prevent Fred from exposing himself? The wound might be no
+worse than it was said to be in the newspaper--but then a second meeting
+was to take place. No!--it should not, she would stop it at any price!
+
+And yet, as the coach drew nearer to the Rue de Varenne, where Madame
+d'Argy had her winter residence, a little calm, a little sense returned
+to Jacqueline. She did not see how she could dare to enter that house,
+where probably they cursed her very name. She would wait in the street
+with the carriage-blinds pulled down, and Modeste should go in and ask
+for information. Five minutes passed--ten minutes passed--they seemed
+ages. How slow Modeste was, slow as a tortoise! How could she leave her
+there when she knew she was so anxious? What could she be doing? All she
+had to do was to ask news of M. Fred in just two words!
+
+At last, Jacqueline could bear suspense no longer. She opened the
+coach-door and jumped out on the pavement. Just at that moment Modeste
+appeared, brandishing the umbrella that she carried instead of a stick,
+in a manner that meant something. It might be bad news, she would know
+in a moment; anything was better than suspense. She sprang forward.
+
+"What did they say, Modeste? Speak!--Why have you been such a time?"
+
+"Because the servants had something else to do than to attend to me. I
+wasn't the only person there--they were writing in a register. Get back
+into the carriage, Mademoiselle, or somebody will see you--There are
+lots of people there who know you--Monsieur and Madame d'Etaples--"
+
+"What do I care?--The truth! Tell me the truth--"
+
+"But didn't you understand my signals? He is going on well. It was only
+a scratch--Ah! Madame that's only my way of talking. He will be laid up
+for a fortnight. The doctor was there--he has some fever, but he is not
+in any danger."
+
+"Oh! what a blessing! Kiss me, Modeste. We have a fortnight in which we
+may interfere--But how--Oh, how?--Ah! there is Giselle! We will go to
+Giselle at once!"
+
+And the 'fiacre' was ordered to go as fast as possible to the Rue
+Barbet-de-Jouy. This time Jacqueline herself spoke to the concierge.
+
+"Madame la Comtesse is out."
+
+"But she never goes out at this hour. I wish to see her on important
+business. I must see her."
+
+And Jacqueline passed the concierge, only to encounter another refusal
+from a footman, who insisted that Madame la Comtesse was at home to no
+one.
+
+"But me, she will see me. Go and tell her it is Mademoiselle de
+Nailles."
+
+Moved by her persistence, the footman went in to inquire, and came back
+immediately with the answer:
+
+"Madame la Comtesse can not see Mademoiselle."
+
+"Ah!" thought Jacqueline, "she, too, throws me off, and it is natural.
+I have no friends left. No one will tell me anything!--I think it will
+drive me mad?"
+
+She was half-mad already. She stopped at a newsstand and bought all the
+evening journals; then, up in her garret, in her poor little nest under
+the roof-which, as she felt bitterly, was her only refuge, she began to
+look over those printed papers in which she might possibly find out the
+true cause of the duel. Nearly all related the event in almost the exact
+terms used by the Figaro. Ah!--here was a different one! A reporter who
+knew something more added, in Gil Blas: "We have stated the cause of
+the dispute as it has been given to the public, but in affairs of this
+nature more than in any others, it is safe to remember the old proverb:
+'Look for the woman.' The woman could doubtless have been found enjoying
+herself on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean, while men were drawing
+swords in her defense."
+
+Jacqueline went on looking through the newspapers, crumpling up the
+sheets as she laid them down. The last she opened had the reputation
+of being a repository of scandals, never to be depended on, as she well
+knew. Several times it had come to her hand and she had not opened it,
+remembering what her father had always said of its reputation. But where
+would she be more likely to find what she wanted than in the columns
+of a journal whose reporters listened behind doors and peeped through
+keyholes? Under the heading of 'Les Dessous Parisiens', she read on the
+first page:
+
+       "Two hens lived in peace; a cock came
+        And strife soon succeeded to joy;
+        E'en as love, they say, kindled the flame
+        That destroyed the proud city of Troy.
+
+   "This quarrel was the outcome of a violent rupture between the two
+   hens in question, ending in the flight of one of them, a young and
+   tender pullet, whose voice we trust soon to hear warbling on the
+   boards at one of our theatres. This was the subject of conversation
+   in a low voice at the Cercle, at the hour when it is customary to
+   tell such little scandals. M. de C-----was enlarging on the
+   somewhat Bohemian character of the establishment of a lovely foreign
+   lady, who possesses the secret of being always surrounded by
+   delightful friends, young ladies who are self-emancipated, quasi-
+   widows who, by divorce suits, have regained their liberty, etc.
+   He was speaking of one of the beauties who are friends of his friend
+   Madame S----, as men speak of women who have proved themselves
+   careless of public opinion; when M. d'A----, in a loud voice,
+   interrupted him; the lie was given in terms that of course led to
+   the hostile meeting of which the press has spoken, attributing it to
+   a dispute about the Queen of Spades, when it really concerned the
+   Queen of Hearts."
+
+Then she had made no mistake; it had been her flight from Madame
+Strahlberg's which had led to her being attacked by one man, and
+defended by the other! Jacqueline found it hard to recognize herself in
+this tissue of lies, insinuations, and half-truths. What did the paper
+mean its readers to understand by its account? Was it a jealous rivalry
+between herself and Madame Strahlberg?--Was M. de Cymier meant by the
+cock? And Fred had heard all this--he had drawn his sword to refute
+the calumny. Brave Fred! Alas! he had been prompted only by chivalric
+generosity. Doubtless he, also, looked upon her as an adventuress.
+
+All night poor Jacqueline wept with such distress that she wished that
+she might die. She was dropping off to sleep at last, overpowered by
+fatigue, when a ring at the bell in the early morning roused her. Then
+she heard whispering:
+
+"Do you think she is so unhappy?"
+
+It was the voice of Giselle.
+
+"Come in--come in quickly!" she cried, springing out of bed. Wrapped
+in a dressing-gown, with bare feet, her face pale, her eyelids red, her
+complexion clouded, she rushed to meet her friend, who was almost as
+much disordered as herself. It seemed as if Madame de Talbrun might also
+have passed a night of sleeplessness and tears.
+
+"You have come! Oh! you have come at last!" cried Jacqueline, throwing
+her arms around her, but Giselle repelled her with a gesture so severe
+that the poor child could not but understand its meaning. She murmured,
+pointing to the pile of newspapers: "Is it possible?--Can you have
+believed all those dreadful things?"
+
+"What things? I have read nothing," said Giselle, harshly. "I only
+know that a man who was neither your husband nor your brother, and who
+consequently was under no obligation to defend you, has been foolish
+enough to be nearly killed for your sake. Is not that a proof of your
+downfall? Don't you know it?"
+
+"Downfall?" repeated Jacqueline, as if she did not understand her. Then,
+seizing her friend's hand, she forcibly raised it to her lips: "Ah! what
+can anything matter to me," she cried, "if only you remain my friend;
+and he has never doubted me!"
+
+"Women like you can always find defenders," said Giselle, tearing her
+hand from her cousin's grasp.
+
+Giselle was not herself at that moment. "But, for your own sake, it
+would have been better he should have abstained from such an act of
+Quixotism."
+
+"Giselle! can it be that you think me guilty?"
+
+"Guilty!" cried Madame de Talbrun, her pale face aflame. "A little more
+and Monsieur de Cymier's sword-point would have pierced his lungs."
+
+"Good heavens!" cried Jacqueline, hiding her face in her hands. "But I
+have done nothing to--"
+
+"Nothing except to set two men against each other; to make them suffer,
+or to make fools of them, and to be loved by them all the same."
+
+"I have not been a coquette," said Jacqueline, with indignation.
+
+"You must have been, to authorize the boasts of Monsieur de Cymier. He
+had seen Fred so seldom, and Tonquin had so changed him that he spoke in
+his presence--without supposing any one would interfere. I dare not tell
+you what he said--"
+
+"Whatever spite or revenge suggested to him, no doubt," said Jacqueline.
+
+"Listen, Giselle--Oh, you must listen. I shall not be long."
+
+She forced her to sit down; she crouched on a foot stool at her feet,
+holding her hands in hers so tightly that Giselle could not draw them
+away, and began her story, with all its details, of what had happened
+to her since she left Fresne. She told of her meeting with Wanda; of the
+fatal evening which had resulted in her expulsion from the convent;
+her disgust at the Sparks family; the snare prepared for her by Madame
+Strahlberg. "And I can not tell you all," she added, "I can not tell
+you what drove me away from my true friends, and threw me among these
+people--"
+
+Giselle's sad smile seemed to answer, "No need--I am aware of it--I know
+my husband." Encouraged by this, Jacqueline went on with her confession,
+hiding nothing that was wrong, showing herself just as she had been, a
+poor, proud child who had set out to battle for herself in a dangerous
+world. At every step she had been more and more conscious of her own
+imprudence, of her own weakness, and of an ever-increasing desire to
+be done with independence; to submit to law, to be subject to any rules
+which would deliver her from the necessity of obeying no will but her
+own.
+
+"Ah!" she cried, "I am so disgusted with independence, with amusement,
+and amusing people! Tell me what to do in future--I am weary of taking
+charge of myself. I said so the other day to the Abbe Bardin. He is the
+only person I have seen since my return. It seems to me I am coming back
+to my old ideas--you remember how I once wished to end my days in the
+cell of a Carmelite? You might love me again then, perhaps, and Fred and
+poor Madame d'Argy, who must feel so bitterly against me since her son
+was wounded, might forgive me. No one feels bitterly against the dead,
+and it is the same as being dead to be a Carmelite nun. You would all
+speak of me sometimes to each other as one who had been very unhappy,
+who had been guilty of great foolishness, but who had repaired her
+faults as best she could."
+
+Poor Jacqueline! She was no longer a girl of the period; in her grief
+and humiliation she belonged to the past. Old-fashioned forms of
+penitence attracted her.
+
+"And what did the Abbe Bardin tell you?" asked Giselle, with a slight
+movement of her shoulders.
+
+"He only told me that he could not say at present whether that were my
+vocation."
+
+"Nor can I," said Giselle.
+
+Jacqueline lifted up her face, wet with tears, which she had been
+leaning on the lap of Giselle.
+
+"I do not see what else I can do, unless you would get me a place as
+governess somewhere at the ends of the earth," she said. "I could teach
+children their letters. I should not mind doing anything. I never
+should complain. Ah! if you lived all by yourself, Giselle, how I should
+implore you to take me to teach little Enguerrand!"
+
+"I think you might do better than that," said Giselle, wiping her
+friend's eyes almost as a mother might have done, "if you would only
+listen to Fred."
+
+Jacqueline's cheeks became crimson.
+
+"Don't mock me--it is cruel--I am too unworthy--it would pain me to
+see him. Shame--regret--you understand! But I can tell you one thing,
+Giselle--only you. You may tell it to him when he is quite old, when he
+has been long married, and when everything concerning me is a thing of
+the past. I never had loved any one with all my heart up to the moment
+when I read in that paper that he had fought for me, that his blood had
+flowed for me, that after all that had passed he still thought me worthy
+of being defended by him."
+
+Her tears flowed fast, and she added: "I shall be proud of that all the
+rest of my life! If only you, too, would forgive me."
+
+The heart of Giselle was melted by these words.
+
+"Forgive you, my dear little girl? Ah! you have been better than I. I
+forgot our old friendship for a moment--I was harsh to you; and I have
+so little right to blame you! But come! Providence may have arranged all
+for the best, though one of us may have to suffer. Pray for that some
+one. Good-by--'au revoir!"
+
+She kissed Jacqueline's forehead and was gone, before her cousin had
+seized the meaning of her last words. But joy and peace came back to
+Jacqueline. She had recovered her best friend, and had convinced her of
+her innocence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX. GENTLE CONSPIRATORS
+
+Before Giselle went home to her own house she called on the Abbe Bardin,
+whom a rather surly servant was not disposed to disturb, as he was just
+eating his breakfast. The Abbe Bardin was Jacqueline's confessor, and he
+held the same relation to a number of other young girls who were among
+her particular friends. He was thoroughly acquainted with all that
+concerned their delicate and generally childish little souls. He kept
+them in the right way, had often a share in their marriages, and in
+general kept an eye upon them all their lives. Even when they escaped
+from him, as had happened in the case of Jacqueline, he did not give
+them up. He commended them to God, and looked forward to the time of
+their repentance with the patience of a father. The Abbe Bardin had
+never been willing to exercise any function but that of catechist; he
+had grown old in the humble rank of third assistant in a great parish,
+when, with a little ambition, he might have been its rector. "Suffer
+little children to come unto me," had been his motto. These words of
+his Divine Master seemed more often than any others on his lips-lips
+so expressive of loving kindness, though sometimes a shrewd smile would
+pass over them and seem to say: "I know, I can divine." But when this
+smile, the result of long experience, did not light up his features, the
+good Abbe Bardin looked like an elderly child; he was short, his
+walk was a trot, his face was round and ruddy, his eyes, which were
+short-sighted, were large, wide-open, and blue, and his heavy crop of
+white hair, which curled and crinkled above his forehead, made him look
+like a sixty-year-old angel, crowned with a silvery aureole.
+
+Rubbing his hands affably, he came into the little parlor where Madame
+de Talbrun was waiting for him. There was probably no ecclesiastic in
+all Paris who had a salon so full of worked cushions, each of which was
+a keepsake--a souvenir of some first communion. The Abbe did not know
+his visitor, but the name Talbrun seemed to him connected with an
+honorable and well-meaning family. The lady was probably a mother who
+had come to put her child into his hands for religious instruction. He
+received visits from dozens of such mothers, some of whom were a little
+tiresome, from a wish to teach him what he knew better than they, and
+at one time he had set apart Wednesday as his day for receiving such
+visits, that he might not be too greatly disturbed, as seemed likely to
+happen to him that day. Not that he cared very much whether he ate his
+cutlet hot or cold, but his housekeeper cared a great deal. A man may
+be a very experienced director, and yet be subject to direction in other
+ways.
+
+The youth of Giselle took him by surprise.
+
+"Monsieur l'Abbe," she said, without any preamble, while he begged her
+to sit down, "I have come to speak to you of a person in whom you take
+an interest, Jacqueline de Nailles."
+
+He passed the back of his hand over his brow and said, with a sigh:
+"Poor little thing!"
+
+"She is even more to be pitied than you think. You have not seen her, I
+believe, since last week."
+
+"Yes--she came. She has kept up, thank God, some of her religious
+duties."
+
+"For all that, she has played a leading part in a recent scandal."
+
+The Abbe sprang up from his chair.
+
+"A duel has taken place because of her, and her name is in all men's
+mouths--whispered, of course--but the quarrel took place at the Club.
+You know what it is to be talked of at the Club."
+
+"The poison of asps," growled the Abbe; "oh! those clubs--think of all
+the evil reports concocted in them, of which women are the victims!"
+
+"In the present case the evil report was pure calumny. It was taken up
+by some one whom you also know--Frederic d'Argy."
+
+"I have had profound respect these many years for his excellent and
+pious mother."
+
+"I thought so. In that case, Monsieur l'Abbe, you would not object to
+going to Madame d'Argy's house and asking how her son is."
+
+"No, of course not; but--it is my duty to disapprove--"
+
+"You will tell her that when a young man has compromised a young girl by
+defending her reputation in a manner too public, there is but one thing
+he can do afterward-marry her."
+
+"Wait one moment," said the Abbe, who was greatly surprised; "it is
+certain that a good marriage would be the best thing for Jacqueline.
+I have been thinking of it. But I do not think I could so suddenly--so
+soon after--"
+
+"Today at four o'clock, Monsieur l'Abbe. Time presses. You can add
+that such a marriage is the only way to stop a second duel, which will
+otherwise take place."
+
+"Is it possible?"
+
+"And it is also the only way to bring Frederic to decide on sending in
+his resignation. Don't forget that--it is important."
+
+"But how do you know--"
+
+The poor Abbe stammered out his words, and counted on his fingers the
+arguments he was desired to make use of.
+
+"And you will solemnly assure them that Jacqueline is innocent."
+
+"Oh! as to that, there are wolves in sheeps' clothing, as the Bible
+tells us; but believe me, when such poor young things are in question,
+it is more often the sheep which has put on the appearance of a wolf--to
+seem in the fashion," added the Abbe, "just to seem in the fashion.
+Fashion will authorize any kind of counterfeiting."
+
+"Well, you will say all that, will you not, to Madame d'Argy? It will be
+very good of you if you will. She will make no difficulties about money.
+All she wants is a quietly disposed daughter-in-law who will be willing
+to pass nine months of the year at Lizerolles, and Jacqueline is quite
+cured of her Paris fever."
+
+"A fever too often mortal," murmured the Abbe; "oh, for the simplicity
+of nature! A priest whose lot is cast in the country is fortunate,
+Madame, but we can not choose our vocation. We may do good anywhere,
+especially in cities. Are you sure, however, that Jacqueline--"
+
+"She loves Monsieur d'Argy."
+
+"Well, if that is so, we are all right. The great misfortune with many
+of these poor girls is that they have never learned to love anything;
+they know nothing but agitations, excitements, curiosities, and fancies.
+All that sort of thing runs through their heads."
+
+"You are speaking of a Jacqueline before the duel. I can assure you that
+ever since yesterday, if not before, she has loved Monsieur d'Argy, who
+on his part for a long time--a very long time--has been in love with
+her."
+
+Giselle spoke eagerly, as if she forced herself to say the words that
+cost her pain. Her cheeks were flushed under her veil. The Abbe, who was
+keen-sighted, observed these signs.
+
+"But," continued Giselle, "if he is forced to forget her he may try
+to expend elsewhere the affection he feels for her; he may trouble the
+peace of others, while deceiving himself. He might make in the world
+one of those attachments--Do not fail to represent all these dangers to
+Madame d'Argy when you plead the cause of Jacqueline."
+
+"Humph! You are evidently much attached, Madame, to Mademoiselle de
+Nailles."
+
+"Very much, indeed," she answered, bravely, "very much attached to
+her, and still more to him; therefore you understand that this marriage
+must--absolutely must take place."
+
+She had risen and was folding her cloak round her, looking straight into
+the Abbe's eyes. Small as she was, their height was almost the same; she
+wanted him to understand thoroughly why this marriage must take place.
+
+He bowed. Up to that time he had not been quite sure that he had not
+to do with one of those wolves dressed in fleece whose appearance is
+as misleading as that of sheep disguised as wolves: now his opinion was
+settled.
+
+"Mon Dieu! Madame," he said, "your reasons seem to me excellent--a duel
+to be prevented, a son to be kept by the side of his sick mother, two
+young people who love each other to be married, the saving, possibly, of
+two souls--"
+
+"Say three souls, Monsieur l'Abbe!"
+
+He did not ask whose was the third, nor even why she had insisted that
+this delicate commission must be executed that same day. He only bowed
+when she said again: "At four o'clock: Madame d'Argy will be prepared
+to see you. Thank you, Monsieur l'Abbe." And then, as she descended the
+staircase, he bestowed upon her silently his most earnest benediction,
+before returning to the cold cutlet that was on his breakfast table.
+
+Giselle did not breakfast much better than he. In truth, M. de Talbrun
+being absent, she sat looking at her son, who was eating with a good
+appetite, while she drank only a cup of tea; after which, she dressed
+herself, with more than usual care, hiding by rice-powder the trace of
+recent tears on her complexion, and arranging her fair hair in the way
+that was most becoming to her, under a charming little bonnet covered
+with gold net-work which corresponded with the embroidery on an entirely
+new costume.
+
+When she went into the dining-room Enguerrand, who was there with his
+nurse finishing his dessert, cried out: "Oh! mamma, how pretty you are!"
+which went to her heart. She kissed him two or three times--one kiss
+after another.
+
+"I try to be pretty for your sake, my darling."
+
+"Will you take me with you?"
+
+"No, but I will come back for you, and take you out."
+
+She walked a few steps, and then turned to give him such a kiss as
+astonished him, for he said:
+
+"Is it really going to be long?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Before you come back? You kiss me as if you were going for a long time,
+far away."
+
+"I kissed you to give myself courage."
+
+Enguerrand, who, when he had a hard lesson to learn, always did the same
+thing, appeared to understand her.
+
+"You are going to do some thing you don't like."
+
+"Yes, but I have to do it, because you see it is my duty."
+
+"Do grown people have duties?"
+
+"Even more than children."
+
+"But it isn't your duty to write a copy--your writing is so pretty. Oh!
+that's what I hate most. And you always say it is my duty to write my
+copy. I'll go and do it while you do your duty. So that will seem as if
+we were both together doing something we don't like--won't it, mamma?"
+
+She kissed him again, even more passionately.
+
+"We shall be always together, we two, my love!"
+
+This word love struck the little ear of Enguerrand as having a new
+accent, a new meaning, and, boy-like, he tried to turn this excess of
+tenderness to advantage.
+
+"Since you love me so much, will you take me to see the puppet-show?"
+
+"Anywhere you like--when I come back. Goodby."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX. A CHIVALROUS SOUL
+
+Madame D'Argy sat knitting by the window in Fred's chamber, with that
+resigned but saddened air that mothers wear when they are occupied in
+repairing the consequences of some rash folly. Fred had seen her in his
+boyhood knitting in the same way with the same, look on her face, when
+he had been thrown from his pony, or had fallen from his velocipede. He
+himself looked ill at ease and worried, as he lay on a sofa with his arm
+in a sling. He was yawning and counting the hours. From time to time his
+mother glanced at him. Her look was curious, and anxious, and loving,
+all at the same time. He pretended to be asleep. He did not like to see
+her watching him. His handsome masculine face, tanned that pale brown
+which tropical climates give to fair complexions, looked odd as it rose
+above a light-blue cape, a very feminine garment which, as it had no
+sleeves, had been tied round his neck to keep him from being cold. He
+felt himself, with some impatience, at the mercy of the most tender,
+but the most sharp-eyed of nurses, a prisoner to her devotion, and made
+conscious of her power every moment. Her attentions worried him; he knew
+that they all meant "It is your own fault, my poor boy, that you are in
+this state, and that your mother is so unhappy." He felt it. He knew as
+well as if she had spoken that she was asking him to return to reason,
+to marry, without more delay, their little neighbor in Normandy,
+Mademoiselle d'Argeville, a niece of M. Martel, whom he persisted in not
+thinking of as a wife, always calling her a "cider apple," in allusion
+to her red cheeks.
+
+A servant came in, and said to Madame d'Argy that Madame de Talbrun was
+in the salon.
+
+"I am coming," she said, rolling up her knitting.
+
+But Fred suddenly woke up:
+
+"Why not ask her to come here?"
+
+"Very good," said his mother, with hesitation. She was distracted
+between her various anxieties; exasperated against the fatal influence
+of Jacqueline, alarmed by the increasing intimacy with Giselle, desirous
+that all such complications should be put an end to by his marriage,
+but terribly afraid that her "cider apple" would not be sufficient to
+accomplish it.
+
+"Beg Madame de Talbrun to come in here," she said, repeating the order
+after her son; but she settled herself in her chair with an air more
+patient, more resigned than ever, and her lips were firmly closed.
+
+Giselle entered in her charming new gown, and Fred's first words, like
+those of Enguerrand, were: "How pretty you are! It is charity," he
+added, smiling, "to present such a spectacle to the eyes of a sick man;
+it is enough to set him up again."
+
+"Isn't it?" said Giselle, kissing Madame d'Argy on the forehead. The
+poor mother had resumed her knitting with a sigh, hardly glancing at the
+pretty walking-costume, nor at the bonnet with its network of gold.
+
+"Isn't it pretty?" repeated Giselle. "I am delighted with this costume.
+It is made after one of Rejane's. Oscar fell in love with it at a first
+representation of a vaudeville, and he gave me over into the hands of
+the same dressmaker, who indeed was named in the play. That kind of
+advertising seems very effective."
+
+She went on chattering thus to put off what she had really come to say.
+Her heart was beating so fast that its throbs could be seen under
+the embroidered front of the bodice which fitted her so smoothly. She
+wondered how Madame d'Argy would receive the suggestion she was about to
+make.
+
+She went on: "I dressed myself in my best to-day because I am so happy."
+
+Madame d'Argy's long tortoise-shell knitting-needles stopped.
+
+"I am glad to hear it, my dear," she said, coldly, "I am glad anybody
+can be happy. There are so many of us who are sad."
+
+"But why are you pleased?" asked Fred, looking at her, as if by some
+instinct he understood that he had something to do with it.
+
+"Our prodigal has returned," answered Giselle, with a little air of
+satisfaction, very artificial, however, for she could hardly breathe,
+so great was her fear and her emotion. "My house is in the garb of
+rejoicing."
+
+"The prodigal? Do you mean your husband?" said Madame d'Argy,
+maliciously.
+
+"Oh! I despair of him," replied Giselle, lightly. "No, I speak of a
+prodigal who did not go far, and who made haste to repent. I am speaking
+of Jacqueline."
+
+There was complete silence. The knitting-needles ticked rapidly, a
+slight flush rose on the dark cheeks of Fred.
+
+"All I beg," said Madame d'Argy, "is that you will not ask me to eat
+the fatted calf in her honor. The comings and going of Mademoiselle de
+Nailles have long ceased to have the slightest interest for me."
+
+"They have for Fred at any rate; he has just proved it, I should say,"
+replied Giselle.
+
+By this time the others were as much embarrassed as Giselle. She saw it,
+and went on quickly:
+
+"Their names are together in everybody's mouth; you can not hinder it."
+
+"I regret it deeply-and allow me to make one remark: it seems to me
+you show a want of tact such as I should never have imagined in telling
+us--"
+
+Giselle read in Fred's eyes, which were steadily fixed on her, that he
+was, on that point, of his mother's opinion. She went on, however, still
+pretending to blunder.
+
+"Forgive me--but I have been so anxious about you ever since I heard
+there was to be a second meeting--"
+
+"A second meeting!" screamed Madame d'Argy, who, as she read no paper
+but the Gazette de France, or occasionally the Debats, knew nothing of
+all the rumors that find their echo in the daily papers.
+
+"Oh, 'mon Dieu'! I thought you knew--"
+
+"You need not frighten my mother," said Fred, almost angrily; "Monsieur
+de Cymier has written a letter which puts an end to our quarrel. It is
+the letter of a man of honor apologizing for having spoken lightly,
+for having repeated false rumors without verifying them--in short,
+retracting all that he had said that reflected in any way on
+Mademoiselle de Nailles, and authorizing me, if I think best, to make
+public his retraction. After that we can have nothing more to say to
+each other."
+
+"He who makes himself the champion to defend a young girl's character,"
+said Madame d'Argy, sententiously, "injures her as much as those who
+have spoken evil of her."
+
+"That is exactly what I think," said Giselle. "The self-constituted
+champion has given the evil rumor circulation."
+
+There was again a painful silence. Then the intrepid little woman
+resumed: "This step on the part of Monsieur de Cymier seems to have
+rendered my errand unnecessary. I had thought of a way to end this sad
+affair; a very simple way, much better, most certainly, than men cutting
+their own throats or those of other people. But since peace has been
+made over the ruins of Jacqueline's reputation, I had better say nothing
+and go away."
+
+"No--no! Let us hear what you had to propose," said Fred, getting up
+from his couch so quickly that he jarred his bandaged arm, and uttered a
+cry of pain, which seemed very much like an oath, too.
+
+Giselle was silent. Standing before the hearth, she was warming her
+small feet, watching, as she did so, Madame d'Argy's profile, which was
+reflected in the mirror. It was severe--impenetrable. It was Fred who
+spoke first.
+
+"In the first place," he said, hesitating, "are you sure that
+Mademoiselle de Nailles has not just arrived from Monaco?"
+
+"I am certain that for a week she has been living quietly with
+Modeste, and that, though she passed through Monaco, she did not stay
+there--twenty-four hours, finding that the air of that place did not
+agree with her."
+
+"But what do you say to what Monsieur Martel saw with his own eyes, and
+which is confirmed by public rumor?" cried Madame d'Argy, as if she were
+giving a challenge.
+
+"Monsieur Martel saw Jacqueline in bad company. She was not there of
+her own will. As to public rumor, we may feel sure that to make it as
+flattering to her tomorrow as it is otherwise to-day only a marriage is
+necessary. Yes, a marriage! That is the way I had thought of to settle
+everything and make everybody happy."
+
+"What man would marry a girl who had compromised herself?" said Madame
+d'Argy, indignantly.
+
+"He who has done his part to compromise her."
+
+"Then go and propose it to Monsieur de Cymier!"
+
+"No. It is not Monsieur de Cymier whom she loves."
+
+"Ah!" Madame d'Argy was on her feet at once. "Indeed, Giselle, you are
+losing your senses. If I were not afraid of agitating Fred--"
+
+He was, in truth, greatly agitated. The only hand that he could use was
+pulling and tearing at the little blue cape crossed on his breast, in
+which his mother had wrapped him; and this unsuitable garment formed
+such a queer contrast to the expression of his face that Giselle, in her
+nervous excitement, burst out laughing, an explosion of merriment which
+completed the exasperation of Madame d'Argy.
+
+"Never!" she cried, beside herself. "You hear me--never will I consent,
+whatever happens!"
+
+At that moment the door was partly opened, and a servant announced
+"Monsieur l'Abbe Bardin."
+
+Madame d'Argy made a gesture which was anything but reverential.
+
+"Well, to be sure--this is the right moment with a vengeance! What does
+he want! Does he wish me to assist in some good work--or to undertake to
+collect money, which I hate."
+
+"Above all, mother," cried Fred, "don't expose me to the fatigue of
+receiving his visit. Go and see him yourself. Giselle will take care of
+your patient while you are gone. Won't you, Giselle?"
+
+His voice was soft, and very affectionate. He evidently was not angry at
+what she had dared to say, and she acknowledged this to herself with an
+aching heart.
+
+"I don't exactly trust your kind of care," said Madame d'Argy, with a
+smile that was not gay, and certainly not amiable.
+
+She went, however, because Fred repeated:
+
+"But go and see the Abbe Bardin."
+
+Hardly had she left the room when Fred got up from his sofa and
+approached Giselle with passionate eagerness.
+
+"Are you sure I am not dreaming," said he. "Is it you--really you who
+advise me to marry Jacqueline?"
+
+"Who else should it be?" she answered, very calm to all appearance.
+"Who can know better than I? But first you must oblige me by lying down
+again, or else I will not say one word more. That is right. Now keep
+still. Your mother is furiously displeased with me--I am sorry--but
+she will get over it. I know that in Jacqueline you would have a good
+wife--a wife far better than the Jacqueline you would have married
+formerly. She has paid dearly for her experience of life, and has
+profited by its lessons, so that she is now worthy of you, and sincerely
+repentant for her childish peccadilloes."
+
+"Giselle," said Fred, "look me full in the face--yes, look into my eyes
+frankly and hide nothing. Your eyes never told anything but the truth.
+Why do you turn them away? Do you really and truly wish this marriage?"
+
+She looked at him steadily as long as he would, and let him hold her
+hand, which was burning inside her glove, and which with a great effort
+she prevented from trembling. Then her nerves gave way under his long
+and silent gaze, which seemed to question her, and she laughed, a laugh
+that sounded to herself very unnatural.
+
+"My poor, dear friend," she cried, "how easily you men are duped! You
+are trying to find out, to discover whether, in case you decide upon
+an honest act, a perfectly sensible act, to which you are strongly
+inclined--don't tell me you are not--whether, in short, you marry
+Jacqueline, I shall be really as glad of it as I pretend. But have you
+not found out what I have aimed at all along? Do you think I did not
+know from the very first what it was that made you seek me?
+
+"I was not the rope, but I had lived near the rose; I reminded you of
+her continually. We two loved her; each of us felt we did. Even when you
+said harm of her, I knew it was merely because you longed to utter her
+name, and repeat to yourself her perfections. I laughed, yes, I laughed
+to myself, and I was careful how I contradicted you. I tried to keep you
+safe for her, to prevent your going elsewhere and forming attachments
+which might have resulted in your forgetting her. I did my best--do me
+justice--I did my best; perhaps sometimes I pushed things a little far
+in her interest, in that of your mother, but in yours more than all; in
+yours, for God knows I am all for you," said Giselle, with sudden and
+involuntary fervor.
+
+"Yes, I am all yours as a friend, a faithful friend," she resumed,
+almost frightened by the tones of her own voice; "but as to the
+slightest feeling of love between us, love the most spiritual, the
+most platonic--yes, all men, I fancy, have a little of that kind of
+self-conceit. Dear Fred, don't imagine it--Enguerrand would never have
+allowed it."
+
+She was smiling, half laughing, and he looked at her with astonishment,
+asking himself whether he could believe what she was saying, when he
+could recollect what seemed to him so many proofs to the contrary. Yet
+in what she said there was no hesitation, no incoherence, no false note.
+Pride, noble pride, upheld her to the end. The first falsehood of her
+life was a masterpiece.
+
+"Ah, Giselle!" he said at last, not knowing what to think, "I adore you!
+I revere you!"
+
+"Yes," she replied, with a smile, gracious, yet with a touch of sadness,
+"I know you do. But her you love!"
+
+Might it not have been sweet to her had he answered "No, I loved her
+once, and remembered that old love enough to risk my life for her, but
+in reality I now love only you--all the more at this moment when I see
+you love me more than yourself." But, instead, he murmured only, like
+a man and a lover: "And Jacqueline--do you think she loves me?" His
+anxiety, a thrill that ran through all his frame, the light in his eyes,
+his sudden pallor, told more than his words.
+
+If Giselle could have doubted his love for Jacqueline before, she would
+have now been convinced of it. The conviction stabbed her to the heart.
+Death is not that last sleep in which all our faculties, weakened
+and exhausted, fail us; it is the blow which annihilates our supreme
+illusion and leaves us disabused in a cold and empty world. People walk,
+talk, and smile after this death--another ghost is added to the drama
+played on the stage of the world; but the real self is dead.
+
+Giselle was too much of a woman, angelic as she was, to have any courage
+left to say: "Yes, I know she loves you."
+
+She said instead, in a low voice: "That is a question you must ask of
+her."
+
+Meantime, in the next room they could hear Madame d'Argy vehemently
+repeating: "Never! No, I never will consent! Is it a plot between you?"
+
+They heard also a rumbling monotone preceding each of these vehement
+interruptions. The Abbe Bardin was pointing out to her that, unmarried,
+her son would return to Tonquin, that Lizerolles would be left deserted,
+her house would be desolate without daughter-in-law or grandchildren;
+and, as he drew these pictures, he came back, again and again, to his
+main argument:
+
+"I will answer for their happiness: I will answer for the future."
+
+His authority as a priest gave weight to this assurance, at least
+Madame d'Argy felt it so. She went on saying never, but less and less
+emphatically, and apparently she ceased to say it at last, for three
+months later the d'Etaples, the Rays, the d'Avrignys and the rest,
+received two wedding announcements in these words:
+
+"Madame d'Argy has the honor to inform you of the marriage of her son,
+M. Frederic d'Argy, Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, to Mademoiselle de
+Nailles."
+
+The accompanying card ran thus:
+
+     "The Baroness de Nailles has the honor to inform you of the
+     marriage of Mademoiselle Jacqueline de Nailles, her
+     stepdaughter, to M. Frederic d'Argy."
+
+Congratulations showered down on both mother and stepmother. A
+love-match is nowadays so rare! It turned out that every one had always
+wished all kinds of good fortune to young Madame d'Argy, and every
+one seemed to take a sincere part in the joy that was expressed on the
+occasion, even Dolly, who, it was said, had in secret set her heart
+on Fred for herself; even Nora Sparks, who, not having carried out
+her plans, had gone back to New York, whence she sent a superb wedding
+present. Madame de Nailles apparently experienced at the wedding all the
+emotions of a real mother.
+
+The roses at Lizerolles bloomed that year with unusual beauty, as if
+to welcome the young pair. Modeste sang 'Nunc Dimittis'. The least
+demonstrative of all those interested in the event was Giselle.
+
+
+     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+     A familiarity which, had he known it, was not flattering
+     A mother's geese are always swans
+     As we grow older we lay aside harsh judgments and sharp words
+     Bathers, who exhibited themselves in all degrees of ugliness
+     Blow which annihilates our supreme illusion
+     Death is not that last sleep
+     Fool (there is no cure for that infirmity)
+     Fred's verses were not good, but they were full of dejection
+     Great interval between a dream and its execution
+     Hang out the bush, but keep no tavern
+     His sleeplessness was not the insomnia of genius
+     Importance in this world are as easily swept away as the sand
+     Music--so often dangerous to married happiness
+     Natural longing, that we all have, to know the worst
+     Notion of her husband's having an opinion of his own
+     Old women--at least thirty years old!
+     Pride supplies some sufferers with necessary courage
+     Seemed to enjoy themselves, or made believe they did
+     Seldom troubled himself to please any one he did not care for
+     Small women ought not to grow stout
+     Sympathetic listening, never having herself anything to say
+     The bandage love ties over the eyes of men
+     The worst husband is always better than none
+     This unending warfare we call love
+     Unwilling to leave him to the repose he needed
+     Waste all that upon a thing that nobody will ever look at
+     Women who are thirty-five should never weep
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Jacqueline, Complete, by Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Jacqueline by Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc), entire
+#58 in our series The French Immortals Crowned by the French Academy
+#4 in our series by Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
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+Title: Jacqueline, entire
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+Author: Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
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+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
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+
+
+
+JACQUELINE
+
+By THERESE BENTZON (MME. BLANC)
+
+
+With a Preface by M. THUREAU-DANGIN, of the French Academy
+
+
+
+
+TH. BENTZON
+
+It is natural that the attention and affection of Americans should be
+attracted to a woman who has devoted herself assiduously to understanding
+and to making known the aspirations of our country, especially in
+introducing the labors and achievements of our women to their sisters in
+France, of whom we also have much to learn; for simple, homely virtues
+and the charm of womanliness may still be studied with advantage on the
+cherished soil of France.
+
+Marie-Therese Blanc, nee Solms--for this is the name of the author who
+writes under the nom de plume of Madame Bentzon--is considered the
+greatest of living French female novelists.  She was born in an old
+French chateau at Seine-Porte (Seine et Oise), September 21, 1840.  This
+chateau was owned by Madame Bentzon's grandmother, the Marquise de Vitry,
+who was a woman of great force and energy of character, "a ministering
+angel" to her country neighborhood.  Her grandmother's first marriage was
+to a Dane, Major-General Adrien-Benjamin de Bentzon, a Governor of the
+Danish Antilles.  By this marriage there was one daughter, the mother of
+Therese, who in turn married the Comte de Solms.  "This mixture of
+races," Madame Blanc once wrote, "surely explains a kind of moral and
+intellectual cosmopolitanism which is found in my nature.  My father of
+German descent, my mother of Danish--my nom de plume (which was her
+maiden-name) is Danish--with Protestant ancestors on her side, though she
+and I were Catholics--my grandmother a sound and witty Parisian, gay,
+brilliant, lively, with superb physical health and the consequent good
+spirits--surely these materials could not have produced other than a
+cosmopolitan being."
+
+Somehow or other, the family became impoverished.  Therese de Solms took
+to writing stories.  After many refusals, her debut took place in the
+'Revue des Deux Mondes', and her perseverance was largely due to the
+encouragement she received from George Sand, although that great woman
+saw everything through the magnifying glass of her genius.  But the
+person to whom Therese Bentzon was most indebted in the matter of
+literary advice--she says herself--was the late M. Caro, the famous
+Sorbonne professor of philosophy, himself an admirable writer, "who put
+me through a course of literature, acting as my guide through a vast
+amount of solid reading, and criticizing my work with kindly severity."
+Success was slow.  Strange as it may seem, there is a prejudice against
+female writers in France, a country that has produced so many admirable
+women-authors.  However, the time was to come when M. Becloz found one of
+her stories in the 'Journal des Debats'.  It was the one entitled 'Un
+Divorce', and he lost no time in engaging the young writer to become one
+of his staff.  From that day to this she has found the pages of the Revue
+always open to her.
+
+Madame Bentzon is a novelist, translator, and writer of literary essays.
+The list of her works runs as follows: 'Le Roman d'un Muet (1868); Un
+Divorce (1872); La Grande Sauliere (1877); Un remords (1878); Yette and
+Georgette (1880); Le Retour (1882); Tete folle (1883); Tony, (1884);
+Emancipee (1887); Constance (1891); Jacqueline (1893).  We need not enter
+into the merits of style and composition if we mention that 'Un remords,
+Tony, and Constance' were crowned by the French Academy, and 'Jacqueline'
+in 1893.  Madame Bentzon is likewise the translator of Aldrich, Bret
+Harte, Dickens, and Ouida.  Some of her critical works are 'Litterature
+et Moeurs etrangeres', 1882, and 'Nouveaux romanciers americains', 1885.
+
+                                   M. THUREAU-DANGIN
+                              de l'Academie Francaise.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK 1.
+
+
+JACQUELINE
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A PARISIENNE'S "AT HOME"
+
+Despite a short frock, checked stockings, wide turned-over collar, and a
+loose sash around the waist of her blouse in other words, despite the
+childish fashion of a dress which seemed to denote that she was not more
+than thirteen or fourteen years of age, she seemed much older.  An
+observer would have put her down as the oldest of the young girls who on
+Tuesdays, at Madame de Nailles's afternoons, filled what was called "the
+young girls' corner" with whispered merriment and low laughter, while,
+under pretence of drinking tea, the noise went on which is always audible
+when there is anything to eat.
+
+No doubt the amber tint of this young girl's complexion, the raven
+blackness of her hair, her marked yet delicate features, and the general
+impression produced by her dark coloring, were reasons why she seemed
+older than the rest.  It was Jacqueline's privilege to exhibit that style
+of beauty which comes earliest to perfection, and retains it longest;
+and, what was an equal privilege, she resembled no one.
+
+The deep bow-window--her favorite spot--which enabled her to have a
+reception-day in connection with that of her mamma, seemed like a great
+basket of roses when all her friends assembled there, seated on low
+chairs in unstudied attitudes: the white rose of the group was
+Mademoiselle d'Etaples, a specimen of pale and pensive beauty, frail
+almost to transparency; the Rose of Bengal was the charming Colette
+Odinska, a girl of Polish race, but born in Paris; the dark-red rose was
+Isabelle Ray-Belle she was called triumphantly--whose dimpled cheeks
+flushed scarlet for almost any cause, some said for very coquetry.  Then
+there were three little girls called Wermant, daughters of an agent de
+change--a spray of May roses, exactly alike in features, manners, and
+dress, sprightly and charming as little girls could be.  A little pompon
+rose was tiny Dorothee d'Avrigny, to whom the pet name Dolly was
+appropriate, for never had any doll's waxen face been more lovely than
+her little round one, with its mouth shaped like a little heart--a mouth
+smaller than her eyes, and these were round eyes, too, but so bright, and
+blue, and soft, that it was easy to overlook their too frequently
+startled expression.
+
+Jacqueline had nothing in common with a rose of any kind, but she was not
+the less charming to look at.  Such was the unspoken reflection of a man
+who was well able to be a judge in such matters.  His name was Hubert
+Marien.  He was a great painter, and was now watching the clear-cut,
+somewhat Arab--like profile of this girl--a profile brought out
+distinctly against the dark-red silk background of a screen, much as we
+see a cameo stand out in sharp relief from the glittering stone from
+which the artist has fashioned it.  Marien looked at her from a distance,
+leaning against the fireplace of the farther salon, whence he could see
+plainly the corner shaded by green foliage plants where Jacqueline had
+made her niche, as she called it.  The two rooms formed practically but
+one, being separated only by a large recess without folding-doors, or
+'portires'.  Hubert Marien, from his place behind Madame de Nailles's
+chair, had often before watched Jacqueline as he was watching her at this
+moment.  She had grown up, as it were, under his own eye.  He had seen
+her playing with her dolls, absorbed in her story-books, and crunching
+sugar-plums, he had paid her visits--for how many years?  He did not care
+to count them.
+
+And little girls bloom fast!  How old they make us feel!  Who would have
+supposed the most unpromising of little buds would have transformed
+itself so soon into what he gazed upon?  Marien, as an artist, had great
+pleasure in studying the delicate outline of that graceful head
+surmounted by thick tresses, with rebellious ringlets rippling over the
+brow before they were gathered into the thick braid that hung behind; and
+Jacqueline, although she appeared to be wholly occupied with her guests,
+felt the gaze that was fixed upon her, and was conscious of its magnetic
+influence, from which nothing would have induced her to escape even had
+she been able.  All the young girls were listening attentively (despite
+their more serious occupation of consuming dainties) to what was going on
+in the next room among the grown-up people, whose conversation reached
+them only in detached fragments.
+
+So long as the subject talked about was the last reception at the French
+Academy, these young girls (comrades in the class-room and at the weekly
+catechising) had been satisfied to discuss together their own little
+affairs, but after Colonel de Valdonjon began to talk complete silence
+reigned among them.  One might have heard the buzzing of a fly.  Their
+attention, however, was of little use.  Exclamations of oh! and ah! and
+protests more or less sincere drowned even the loud and somewhat hoarse
+voice of the Colonel.  The girls heard it only through a sort of general
+murmur, out of which a burst of astonishment or of dissent would
+occasionally break forth.  These outbreaks were all the curious group
+could hear distinctly.  They sniffed, as it were, at the forbidden fruit,
+but they longed to inhale the full perfume of the scandal that they felt
+was in the air.  That stout officer of cuirassiers, of whom some people
+spoke as "The Chatterbox," took advantage of his profession to tell many
+an unsavory story which he had picked up or invented at his club.  He had
+come to Madame de Nailles's reception with a brand-new concoction of
+falsehood and truth, a story likely to be hawked round Paris with great
+success for several weeks to come, though ladies on first hearing it
+would think proper to cry out that they would not even listen to it, and
+would pretend to look round them for their fans to hide their confusion.
+
+The principal object of interest in this scandalous gossip was a valuable
+diamond bracelet, one of those priceless bits of jewelry seldom seen
+except in show-windows on the Rue de la Paix, intended to be bought only
+for presentation to princesses--of some sort or kind.  Well, by an
+extraordinary, chance the Marquise de Versannes--aye, the lovely Georgine
+de Versannes herself--had picked up this bracelet in the street--by
+chance, as it were.
+
+"It so happened," said the Colonel, "that I was at her mother-in-law's,
+where she was going to dine.  She came in looking as innocent as you
+please, with her hand in her pocket.  'Oh, see what I have found!' she
+cried.  'I stepped upon it almost at your door.'  And the bracelet was
+placed under a lamp, where the diamonds shot out sparkles fit to blind
+the old Marquise, and make that old fool of a Versannes see a thousand
+lights.  He has long known better than to take all his wife says for
+gospel--but he tries hard to pretend that he believes her.  'My dear,' he
+said, 'you must take that to the police.'--'I'll send it to-morrow
+morning,' says the charming Georgine, 'but I wished to show you my good
+luck.'  Of course nobody came forward to claim the bracelet, and a month
+later Madame de Versannes appeared at the Cranfords' ball with a
+brilliant diamond bracelet, worn like the Queen of Sheba's, high up on
+her arm, near the shoulder, to hide the lack of sleeve.  This piece of
+finery, which drew everybody's attention to the wearer, was the famous
+bracelet picked up in the street.  Clever of her!--wasn't it, now?"
+
+"Horrid!  Unlikely!  Impossible....  What do you mean us to understand
+about it, Colonel?  Could she have....?"
+
+Then the Colonel went on to demonstrate, with many coarse insinuations,
+that that good Georgine, as he familiarly called her, had done many more
+things than people gave her credit for.  And he went on to add: "Surely,
+you must have heard of the row about her between Givrac and the Homme-
+Volant at the Cirque?"
+
+"What, the man that wears stockinet all covered with gold scales?  Do
+tell us, Colonel!"
+
+But here Madame de Nailles gave a dry little cough which was meant to
+impose silence on the subject.  She was not a prude, but she disapproved
+of anything that was bad form at her receptions.  The Colonel's
+revelations had to be made in a lower tone, while his hostess endeavored
+to bring back the conversation to the charming reply made by M. Renan to
+the somewhat insipid address of a member of the Academie.
+
+"We sha'n't hear anything more now," said Colette, with a sigh.  "Did you
+understand it, Jacqueline?"
+
+"Understand--what?"
+
+"Why, that story about the bracelet?"
+
+"No--not all.  The Colonel seemed to imply that she had not picked it up,
+and indeed I don't see how any one could have dropped in the street, in
+broad daylight, a bracelet meant only to be worn at night--a bracelet
+worn near the shoulder."
+
+"But if she did not pick it up--she must have stolen it."
+
+"Stolen it?"  cried Belle.  "Stolen it!  What!  The Marquise de
+Versannes?  Why, she inherited the finest diamonds in Paris!"
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Because mamma sometimes takes me to the Opera, and her subscription day
+is the same as that of the Marquise.  People say a good deal of harm of
+her--in whispers.  They say she is barely received now in society, that
+people turn their backs on her, and so forth, and so on.  However, that
+did not hinder her from being superb the other evening at 'Polyeucte'."
+
+"So you only go to see 'Polyeucte'?"  said Jacqueline, making a little
+face as if she despised that opera.
+
+"Yes, I have seen it twice.  Mamma lets me go to 'Polyeucte' and
+'Guillaume Tell', and to the 'Prophete', but she won't take me to see
+'Faust'--and it is just 'Faust' that I want to see.  Isn't it provoking
+that one can't see everything, hear everything, understand everything?
+You see, we could not half understand that story which seemed to amuse
+the people so much in the other room.  Why did they send back the
+bracelet from the Prefecture to Madame de Versannes if it was not hers?"
+
+"Yes--why?"  said all the little girls, much puzzled.
+
+Meantime, as the hour for closing the exhibition at the neighboring
+hippodrome had arrived, visitors came pouring into Madame de Nailles's
+reception--tall, graceful women, dressed with taste and elegance, as
+befitted ladies who were interested in horsemanship.  The tone of the
+conversation changed.  Nothing was talked about but superb horses, leaps
+over ribbons and other obstacles.  The young girls interested themselves
+in the spring toilettes, which they either praised or criticised as they
+passed before their eyes.
+
+"Oh!  there is Madame Villegry," cried Jacqueline; "how handsome she is!
+I should like one of these days to be that kind of beauty, so tall and
+slender.  Her waist measure is only twenty-one and two thirds inches.
+The woman who makes her corsets and my mamma's told us so.  She brought
+us one of her corsets to look at, a love of a corset, in brocatelle, all
+over many-colored flowers.  That material is much more 'distingue' than
+the old satin--"
+
+"But what a queer idea it is to waste all that upon a thing that nobody
+will ever look at," said Dolly, her round eyes opening wider than before.
+
+"Oh!  it is just to please herself, I suppose.  I understand that!
+Besides, nothing is too good for such a figure.  But what I admire most
+is her extraordinary hair."
+
+"Which changes its color now and then," observed the sharpest of the
+three Wermant sisters.  "Extraordinary is just the word for it.  At
+present it is dark red.  Henna did that, I suppose.  Raoul--our brother--
+when he was in Africa saw Arab women who used henna.  They tied their
+heads up in a sort of poultice made of little leaves, something like tea-
+leaves.  In twenty-four hours the hair will be dyed red, and will stay
+red for a year or more.  You can try it if you like.  I think it is
+disgusting."
+
+"Oh! look, there is Madame de Sternay.  I recognized her by her perfume
+before I had even seen her.  What delightful things good perfumes are!"
+
+"What is it?  Is it heliotrope or jessamine?"  asked Yvonne d'Etaples,
+sniffing in the air.
+
+"No--it is only orris-root--nothing but orris-root; but she puts it
+everywhere about her--in the hem of her petticoat, in the lining of her
+dress.  She lives, one might say, in the middle of a sachet.  The thing
+that will please me most when I am married will be to have no limit to my
+perfumes.  Till then I have to satisfy myself with very little," sighed
+Jacqueline, drawing a little bunch of violets from the loose folds of her
+blouse, and inhaling their fragrance with delight.
+
+"'Tiens'!  here comes somebody who has to be contented with much less,"
+said Yvonne, as a young girl joined their circle.  She was small,
+awkward, timid, and badly dressed.  On seeing her Colette whispered "Oh!
+that tiresome Giselle.  We sha'n't be able to talk another word."
+
+Jacqueline kissed Giselle de Monredon.  They were distant cousins, though
+they saw each other very seldom.  Giselle was an orphan, having lost both
+her father and her mother, and was being educated in a convent from which
+she was allowed to come out only on great occasions.  Her grandmother,
+whose ideas were those of the old school, had placed her there.  The
+Easter holidays accounted for Giselle's unexpected arrival.  Wrapped in a
+large cloak which covered up her convent uniform, she looked, as compared
+with the gay girls around her, like a poor sombre night-moth, dazzled by
+the light, in company with other glittering creatures of the insect race,
+fluttering with graceful movements, transparent wings and shining
+corselets.
+
+"Come and have some sandwiches," said Jacqueline, and she drew Giselle to
+the tea-table, with the kind intention apparently of making her feel more
+at her ease.  But she had another motive.  She saw some one who was very
+interesting to her coming at that moment toward the table.  That some one
+was a man about forty, whose pointed black beard was becoming slightly
+gray--a man whom some people thought ugly, chiefly because they had never
+seen his somewhat irregular features illumined by a smile which,
+spreading from his lips to his eyes, lighted up his face and transformed
+it.  The smile of Hubert Marien was rare, however.  He was exclusive in
+his friendships, often silent, always somewhat unapproachable.  He seldom
+troubled himself to please any one he did not care for.  In society he
+was not seen to advantage, because he was extremely bored, for which
+reason he was seldom to be seen at the Tuesday receptions of Madame de
+Nailles; while, on other days, he frequented the house as an intimate
+friend of the family.  Jacqueline had known him all her life, and for her
+he had always his beautiful smile.  He had petted her when she was
+little, and had been much amused by the sort of adoration she had no
+hesitation in showing that she felt for him.  He used to call her
+Mademoiselle ma femme, and M. de Nailles would speak of him as "my
+daughter's future husband."  This joke had been kept up till the little
+lady had reached her ninth year, when it ceased, probably by order of
+Madame de Nailles, who in matters of propriety was very punctilious.
+Jacqueline, too, became less familiar than she had been with the man she
+called "my great painter."  Indeed, in her heart of hearts, she cherished
+a grudge against him.  She thought he presumed on the right he had
+assumed of teasing her.  The older she grew the more he treated her as if
+she were a baby, and, in the little passages of arms that continually
+took place between them, Jacqueline was bitterly conscious that she no
+longer had the best of it as formerly.  She was no longer as droll and
+lively as she had been.  She was easily disconcerted, and took everything
+'au serieux', and her wits became paralyzed by an embarrassment that was
+new to her.  And, pained by the sort of sarcasm which Marien kept up in
+all their intercourse, she was often ready to burst into tears after
+talking to him.  Yet she was never quite satisfied unless he was present.
+She counted the days from one Wednesday to another, for on Wednesdays he
+always dined with them, and she greeted any opportunity of seeing him on
+other days as a great pleasure.  This week, for example, would be marked
+with a white stone.  She would have seen him twice.  For half an hour
+Marien had been enduring the bore of the reception, standing silent and
+self-absorbed in the midst of the gay talk, which did not interest him.
+He wished to escape, but was always kept from doing so by some word or
+sign from Madame de Nailles.  Jacqueline had been thinking: "Oh! if he
+would only come and talk to us!"  He was now drawing near them, and an
+instinct made her wish to rush up to him and tell him--what should she
+tell him?  She did not know.  A few moments before so many things to tell
+him had been passing through her brain.
+
+What she said was: "Monsieur Marien, I recommend to you these little
+spiced cakes."  And, with some awkwardness, because her hand was
+trembling, she held out the plate to him.
+
+"No, thank you, Mademoiselle," he said, affecting a tone of great
+ceremony, "I prefer to take this glass of punch, if you will permit me."
+
+"The punch is cold, I fear; suppose we were to put a little tea in it.
+Stay--let me help you."
+
+"A thousand thanks; but I like to attend to such little cookeries myself.
+By the way, it seems to me that Mademoiselle Giselle, in her character of
+an angel who disapproves of the good things of this life, has not left us
+much to eat at your table."
+
+"Who--I?"  cried the poor schoolgirl, in a tone of injured innocence and
+astonishment.
+
+"Don't pay any attention to him," said Jacqueline, as if taking her under
+her protection.  "He is nothing but a tease; what he says is only chaff.
+But I might as well talk Greek to her," she added, shrugging her
+shoulders.  "In the convent they don't know what to make of a joke.  Only
+spare her at least, if you please, Monsieur Marien."
+
+"I know by report that Mademoiselle Giselle is worthy of the most
+profound respect," continued the pitiless painter.  "I lay myself at her
+feet--and at yours.  Now I am going to slip away in the English fashion.
+Good-evening."
+
+"Why do you go so soon?  You can't do any more work today."
+
+"No, it has been a day lost--that is true."
+
+"That's polite!  By the way--" here Jacqueline became very red and she
+spoke rapidly--" what made you just now stare at me so persistently?"
+
+"I?  Impossible that I could have permitted myself to stare at you,
+Mademoiselle."
+
+"That is just what you did, though.  I thought you had found something to
+find fault with.  What could it be?  I fancied there was something wrong
+with my hair, something absurd that you were laughing at.  You always do
+laugh, you know."
+
+"Wrong with your hair?  It is always wrong.  But that is not your fault.
+You are not responsible for its looking like a hedgehog's."
+
+"Hedgehogs haven't any hair," said Jacqueline, much hurt by the
+observation.
+
+"True, they have only prickles, which remind me of the susceptibility of
+your temper.  I beg your pardon I was looking at you critically.  Being
+myself indulgent and kindhearted, I was only looking at you from an
+artist's point of view--as is always allowable in my profession.
+Remember, I see you very rarely by daylight.  I am obliged to work as
+long as the light allows me.  Well, in the light of this April sunshine I
+was saying to myself--excuse my boldness!--that you had reached the right
+age for a picture."
+
+"For a picture?  Were you thinking of painting me?"  cried Jacqueline,
+radiant with pleasure.
+
+"Hold a moment, please.  Between a dream and its execution lies a great
+space.  I was only imagining a picture of you."
+
+"But my portrait would be frightful."
+
+"Possibly.  But that would depend on the skill of the painter."
+
+"And yet a model should be--I am so thin," said Jacqueline, with
+confusion and discouragement.
+
+"True; your limbs are like a grasshopper's."
+
+"Oh!  you mean my legs--but my arms...."
+
+"Your arms must be like your legs.  But, sitting as you were just now,
+I could see only your head, which is better.  So!  one has to be
+accountable for looking at you?  Mademoiselle feels herself affronted if
+any one stares at her!  I will remember this in future.  There, now!
+suppose, instead of quarrelling with me, you were to go and cast yourself
+into the arms of your cousin Fred."
+
+"Fred!  Fred d'Argy!  Fred is at Brest."
+
+"Where are your eyes, my dear child?  He has just come in with his
+mother."
+
+And at that moment Madame de Nailles, with her pure, clear voice--a voice
+frequently compared to that of Mademoiselle Reichemberg, called:
+
+"Jacqueline!"
+
+Jacqueline never crossed the imaginary line which divided the two salons
+unless she was called upon to do so.  She was still summoned like a child
+to speak to certain persons who took an especial interest in her, and who
+were kind enough to wish to see her--Madame d'Argy, for example, who had
+been the dearest friend of her dead mother.  The death of that mother,
+who had been long replaced by a stepmother, could hardly be said to be
+deeply regretted by Jacqueline.  She remembered her very indistinctly.
+The stories of her she had heard from Modeste, her old nurse, probably
+served her instead of any actual memory.  She knew her only as a woman
+pale and in ill health, always lying on a sofa.  The little black frock
+that had been made for her had been hardly worn out when a new mamma, as
+gay and fresh as the other had been sick and suffering, had come into the
+household like a ray of sunshine.
+
+After that time Madame d'Argy and Modeste were the only people who spoke
+to her of the mother who was gone.  Madame d'Argy, indeed, came on
+certain days to take her to visit the tomb, on which the child read, as
+she prayed for the departed:
+
+                  MARIE JACQUELINE ADELAIDE DE VALTIER
+
+                           BARONNE DE NAILLES
+
+                       DIED AGED TWENTY-SIX YEARS
+
+And such filial sentiment as she still retained, concerning the unknown
+being who had been her mother, was tinged by her association with this
+melancholy pilgrimage which she was expected to perform at certain
+intervals.  Without exactly knowing the reason why, Jacqueline was
+conscious of a certain hostility that existed between Madame d'Argy and
+her stepmother.
+
+The intimate friend of the first Madame de Nailles was a woman with
+neither elegance nor beauty.  She never had left off her widow's weeds,
+which she had worn since she had lost her husband in early youth.  In the
+eyes of Jacqueline her sombre figure personified austere, exacting Duty,
+a kind of duty not attractive to her.  That very day it seemed as if duty
+inconveniently stepped in to break up a conversation that was deeply
+interesting to her.  The impatient gesture that she made when her mother
+called her might have been interpreted into: Bother Madame d'Argy!
+
+"Jacqueline!"  called again the silvery voice that had first summoned
+her; and a moment after the young girl found herself in the centre of a
+circle of grown people, saying good-morning, making curtseys, and kissing
+the withered hand of old Madame de Monredon, as she had been taught to do
+from infancy.  Madame de Monredon was Giselle's grandmother.  Jacqueline
+had been instructed to call her "aunt;" but in her heart she called her
+'La Fee Gyognon', while Madame d'Argy, pointing to her son, said: "What
+do you think, darling, of such a surprise?  He is home on leave.  We came
+here the first place-naturally."
+
+"It was very nice of you.  How do you do, Fred?"  said Jacqueline,
+holding out her hand to a very young man, in a jacket ornamented with
+gold lace, who stood twisting his cap in his hand with some embarrassment
+"It is a long time since we have seen each other.  But it does not seem
+to me that you have grown a great deal."
+
+Fred blushed up to the roots of his hair.
+
+"No one can say that of you, Jacqueline," observed Madame d'Argy.
+
+"No--what a may-pole!--isn't she?"  said the Baronne, carelessly.
+
+"If she realizes it," whispered Madame de Monredon, who was sitting
+beside Madame d'Argy on a 'causeuse' shaped like an S, "why does she
+persist in dressing her like a child six years old?  It is absurd!"
+
+"Still, she can have no reason for keeping her thus in order to make
+herself seem young.  She is only a stepmother."
+
+"Of course.  But people might make comparisons.  Beauty in the bud
+sometimes blooms out unexpectedly when it is not welcome."
+
+"Yes--she is fading fast.  Small women ought not to grow stout."
+
+"Anyhow, I have no patience with her for keeping a girl of fifteen in
+short skirts."
+
+"You are making her out older than she is."
+
+"How is that?--how is that?  She is two years younger than Giselle, who
+has just entered her eighteenth year."
+
+While the two ladies were exchanging these little remarks, the Baronne de
+Nailles was saying to the young naval cadet:
+
+"Monsieur Fred, we should be charmed to keep you with us, but possibly
+you might like to see some of your old friends.  Jacqueline can take you
+to them.  They will be glad to see you."
+
+"Tiens!--that's true," said Jacqueline.  "Dolly and Belle are yonder.
+You remember Isabelle Ray, who used to take dancing lessons with us."
+
+"Of course I do," said Fred, following his cousin with a feeling of
+regret that his sword was not knocking against his legs, increasing his
+importance in the eyes of all the ladies who were present.  He was not,
+however; sorry to leave their imposing circle.  Above all, he was glad to
+escape from the clear-sighted, critical eyes of Madame de Nailles.  On
+the other hand, to be sent off to the girls' corner, after being insulted
+by being told he had not grown, hurt his sense of self-importance.
+
+Meantime Jacqueline was taking him back to her own corner, where he was
+greeted by two or three little exclamations of surprise, shaking hands,
+however, as his former playmates drew their skirts around them, trying to
+make room for him to sit down.
+
+"Young ladies," said Jacqueline, "I present to you a 'bordachien'--a
+little middy from the practice-ship the Borda."
+
+They burst out laughing: "A bordachien!  A middy from the practice-ship!"
+they cried.
+
+"I shall not be much longer on the practice-ship," said the young man,
+with a gesture which seemed as if his hand were feeling for the hilt of
+his sword, which was not there, "for I am going very soon on my first
+voyage as an ensign."
+
+"Yes," explained Jacqueline, "he is going to be transferred from the
+'Borda' to the 'Jean-Bart'--which, by the way, is no longer the 'Jean-
+Bart', only people call her so because they are used to it.  Meantime you
+see before you "C," the great "C," the famous "C," that is, he is the
+pupil who stands highest on the roll of the naval school at this moment."
+
+There was a vague murmur of applause.  Poor Fred was indeed in need of
+some appreciation on the score of merit, for he was not much to look
+upon, being at that trying age when a young fellow's moustache is only a
+light down, an age at which youths always look their worst, and are
+awkward and unsociable because they are timid.
+
+"Then you are no longer an idle fellow," said Dolly, rather teasingly.
+"People used to say that you went into the navy to get rid of your
+lessons.  That I can quite understand."
+
+"Oh, he has passed many difficult exams," cried Giselle, coming to the
+rescue.
+
+"I thought I had had enough of school," said Fred, without making any
+defense, "and besides I had other reasons for going into the navy."
+
+His "other reasons" had been a wish to emancipate himself from the
+excessive solicitude of his mother, who kept him tied to her apron-
+strings like a little girl.  He was impatient to do something for
+himself, to become a man as soon as possible.  But he said nothing of all
+this, and to escape further questions devoured three or four little cakes
+that were offered him.  Before taking them he removed his gloves and
+displayed a pair of chapped and horny hands.
+
+"Why--poor Fred!"  cried Jacqueline, who remarked them in a moment, "what
+kind of almond paste do you use?"
+
+Much annoyed, he replied, curtly: "We all have to row, we have also to
+attend to the machinery.  But that is only while we are cadets.  Of
+course, such apprenticeship is very hard.  After that we shall get our
+stripes and be ordered on foreign service, and expect promotion."
+
+"And glory," said Giselle, who found courage to speak.
+
+Fred thanked her with a look of gratitude.  She, at least, understood his
+profession.  She entered into his feelings far better than Jacqueline,
+who had been his first confidante--Jacqueline, to whom he had confided
+his purposes, his ambition, and his day-dreams.  He thought Jacqueline
+was selfish.  She seemed to care only for herself.  And yet, selfish or
+not selfish, she pleased him better than all the other girls he knew--
+a thousand times more than gentle, sweet Giselle.
+
+"Ah, glory, of course!"  repeated Jacqueline.  "I understand how much
+that counts, but there is glory of various kinds, and I know the kind
+that I prefer," she added in a tone which seemed to imply that it was not
+that of arms, or of perilous navigation.  "We all know," she went on,
+"that not every man can have genius, but any sailor who has good luck can
+get to be an admiral."
+
+"Let us hope you will be one soon, Monsieur Fred," said Dolly.  "You will
+have well deserved it, according to the way you have distinguished
+yourself on board the 'Borda.'"
+
+This induced Fred to let them understand something of life on board the
+practice-ship; he told how the masters who resided on shore ascended by a
+ladder to the gun-deck, which had been turned into a schoolroom; how six
+cadets occupied the space intended for each gun-carriage, where hammocks
+hung from hooks served them instead of beds; how the chapel was in a
+closet opened only on Sundays.  He described the gymnastic feats in the
+rigging, the practice in gunnery, and many other things which, had they
+been well described, would have been interesting; but Fred was only a
+poor narrator.  The conclusion the young ladies seemed to reach
+unanimously after hearing his descriptions, was discouraging.
+They cried almost with one voice
+
+"Think of any woman being willing to marry a sailor."
+
+"Why not?"  asked Giselle, very promptly.
+
+"Because, what's the use of a husband who is always out of your reach,
+as it were, between water and sky?  One would better be a widow.  Widows,
+at any rate, can marry again.  But you, Giselle, don't understand these
+things.  You are going to be a nun."
+
+"Had I been in your place, Fred," said Isabelle Ray, "I should rather
+have gone into the cavalry school at Saint Cyr.  I should have wanted to
+be a good huntsman, had I been a man, and they say naval officers are
+never good horsemen."
+
+Poor Fred!  He was not making much progress among the young girls.
+Almost everything people talked about outside his cadet life was unknown
+to him; what he could talk about seemed to have no interest for any one,
+unless indeed it might interest Giselle, who was an adept in the art of
+sympathetic listening, never having herself anything to say.
+
+Besides this, Fred was by no means at his ease in talking to Jacqueline.
+They had been told not to 'tutoyer' each other, because they were getting
+too old for such familiarity, and it was he, and not she, who remembered
+this prohibition.  Jacqueline perceived this after a while, and burst out
+laughing:
+
+"Tiens!  You call me 'you,"' she cried, "and I ought not to say 'thou'
+but 'you.' I forgot.  It seems so odd, when we have always been
+accustomed to 'tutoyer' each other."
+
+"One ought to give it up after one's first communion," said the eldest
+Mademoiselle Wermant, sententiously.  "We ceased to 'tutoyer' our boy
+cousins after that.  I am told nothing annoys a husband so much as to see
+these little familiarities between his wife and her cousins or her
+playmates."
+
+Giselle looked very much astonished at this speech, and her air of
+disapproval amused Belle and Yvonne exceedingly.  They began presently to
+talk of the classes in which they were considered brilliant pupils, and
+of their success in compositions.  They said that sometimes very
+difficult subjects were given out.  A week or two before, each had had to
+compose a letter purporting to be from Dante in exile to a friend in
+Florence, describing Paris as it was in his time, especially the manners
+and customs of its universities, ending by some allusion to the state of
+matters between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.
+
+"Good heavens!  And could you do it?"  said Giselle, whose knowledge of
+history was limited to what may be found in school abridgments.
+
+It was therefore a great satisfaction to her when Fred declared that he
+never should have known how to set about it.
+
+"Oh!  papa helped me a little," said Isabelle, whose father wrote
+articles much appreciated by the public in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes.'
+"But he said at the same time that it was horrid to give such crack-
+brained stuff to us poor girls.  Happily, our subject this week is much
+nicer.  We have to make comparisons between La Tristesse d'Olympio,
+Souvenir, and Le Lac'.  That will be something interesting."
+
+"The Tristesse d'Olympio?"  repeated Giselle, in a tone of interrogation.
+
+"You know, of course, that it is Victor Hugo's," said Mademoiselle de
+Wermant, with a touch of pity.
+
+Giselle answered with sincerity and humility, "I only knew that Le Lac
+was by Lamartine."
+
+"Well!--she knows that much," whispered Belle to Yvonne--" just that
+much, anyhow."
+
+While they were whispering and laughing, Jacqueline recited, in a soft
+voice, and with feeling that did credit to her instructor in elocution,
+Mademoiselle X----, of the Theatre Francais:
+
+          May the moan of the wind, the green rushes' soft sighing,
+          The fragrance that floats in the air you have moved,
+          May all heard, may all breathed, may all seen, seem but trying
+          To say: They have loved.
+
+Then she added, after a pause: "Isn't that beautiful?"
+
+"How dares she say such words?"  thought Giselle, whose sense of
+propriety was outraged by this allusion to love.  Fred, too, looked
+askance and was not comfortable, for he thought that Jacqueline had too
+much assurance for her age, but that, after all, she was becoming more
+and more charming.
+
+At that moment Belle and Yvonne were summoned, and they departed, full
+of an intention to spread everywhere the news that Giselle, the little
+goose, had actually known that Le Lac had been written by Lamartine.
+The Benedictine Sisters positively had acquired that much knowledge.
+
+These girls were not the only persons that day at the reception who
+indulged in a little ill-natured talk after going away.  Mesdames d'Argy
+and de Monredon, on their way to the Faubourg St. Germain, criticised
+Madame de Nailles pretty freely.  As they crossed the Parc Monceau to
+reach their carriage, which was waiting for them on the Boulevard
+Malesherbes, they made the young people, Giselle and Fred, walk ahead,
+that they might have an opportunity of expressing themselves freely, the
+old dowager especially, whose toothless mouth never lost an opportunity
+of smirching the character and the reputation of her neighbors.
+
+"When I think of the pains my poor cousin de Nailles took to impress upon
+us all that he was making what is called a 'mariage raisonnable'!  Well,
+if a man wants a wife who is going to set up her own notions, her own
+customs, he had better marry a poor girl without fortune!  This one will
+simply ruin him.  My dear, I am continually amazed at the way people are
+living whose incomes I know to the last sou.  What an example for
+Jacqueline!  Extravagance, fast living, elegant self-indulgence....
+Did you observe the Baronne's gown?--of rough woolen stuff.  She told
+some one it was the last creation of Doucet, and you know what that
+implies!  His serge costs more than one of our velvet gowns .  .  .  .
+And then her artistic tastes, her bric-a brac!  Her salon looks like a
+museum or a bazaar.  I grant you it makes a very pretty setting for her
+and all her coquetries.  But in my time respectable women were contented
+with furniture covered with red or yellow silk damask furnished by their
+upholsterers.  They didn't go about trying to hunt up the impossible.
+'On ne cherche pas midi a quatorze heures'.  You hold, as I do, to the
+old fashions, though you are not nearly so old, my dear Elise, and
+Jacqueline's mother thought as we think.  She would say that her daughter
+is being very badly brought up.  To be sure, all young creatures nowadays
+are the same.  Parents, on a plea of tenderness, keep them at home, where
+they get spoiled among grown people, when they had much better have the
+same kind of education that has succeeded so well with Giselle; bolts on
+the garden-gates, wholesome seclusion, the company of girls of their own
+age, a great regularity of life, nothing which stimulates either vanity
+or imagination.  That is the proper way to bring up girls without
+notions, girls who will let themselves be married without opposition,
+and are satisfied with the state of life to which Providence may be
+pleased to call them.  For my part, I am enchanted with the ladies in
+the Rue de Monsieur, and, what is more, Giselle is very happy among them;
+to hear her talk you would suppose she was quite ready to take the veil.
+Of course, that is a mere passing fancy.  But fancies of that sort are
+never dangerous, they have nothing in common with those that are passing
+nowadays through most girls' brains.  Having 'a day!'--what a foolish
+notion: And then to let little girls take part in it, even in a corner of
+the room.  I'll wager that, though her skirts are half way up her legs,
+and her hair is dressed like a baby's, that that little de Nailles is
+less of a child than my granddaughter, who has been brought up by the
+Benedictines.  You say that she probably does not understand all that
+goes on around her.  Perhaps not, but she breathes it in.  It's poison-
+that's what it is!"
+
+There was a good deal of truth in this harsh picture, although it
+contained considerable exaggeration.
+
+At this moment, when Madame de Monredon was sitting in judgment on the
+education given to the little girls brought up in the world, and on the
+ruinous extravagance of their young stepmothers, Madame de Nailles and
+Jacqueline--their last visitors having departed--were resting themselves,
+leaning tenderly against each other, on a sofa.  Jacqueline's head lay on
+her mother's lap.  Her mother, without speaking, was stroking the girl's
+dark hair.  Jacqueline, too, was silent, but from time to time she kissed
+the slender fingers sparkling with rings, as they came within reach of
+her lips.
+
+When M. de Nailles, about dinner-time, surprised them thus, he said, with
+satisfaction, as he had often said before, that it would be hard to find
+a home scene more charming, as they sat under the light of a lamp with a
+pink shade.
+
+That the stepmother and stepdaughter adored each other was beyond a
+doubt.  And yet, had any one been able to look into their hearts at that
+moment, he would have discovered with surprise that each was thinking of
+something that she could not confide to the other.
+
+Both were thinking of the same person.  Madame de Nailles was occupied
+with recollections, Jacqueline with hope.  She was absorbed in
+Machiavellian strategy, how to realize a hope that had been formed
+that very afternoon.
+
+"What are you both thinking of, sitting there so quietly?"  said the
+Baron, stooping over them and kissing first his wife and then his child.
+
+"About nothing," said the wife, with the most innocent of smiles.
+
+"Oh! I am thinking," said Jacqueline, "of many things.  I have a secret,
+papa, that I want to tell you when we are quite alone.  Don't be jealous,
+dear mamma.  It is something about a surprise--Oh, a lovely surprise for
+you."
+
+"Saint Clotilde's day-my fete-day is still far off," said Madame de
+Nailles, refastening, mother-like, the ribbon that was intended to keep
+in order the rough ripples of Jacqueline's unruly hair, "and usually your
+whisperings begin as the day approaches my fete."
+
+"Oh, dear!--you will go and guess it!"  cried Jacqueline in alarm.
+"Oh!  don't guess it, please."
+
+"Well!  I will do my best not to guess, then," said the good-natured
+Clotilde, with a laugh.
+
+"And I assure you, for my part, that I am discretion itself," said M. de
+Nailles.
+
+So saying, he drew his wife's arm within his own, and the three passed
+gayly together into the dining-room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A CLEVER STEPMOTHER
+
+No man took more pleasure than M. de Nailles in finding himself in his
+own home--partly, perhaps, because circumstances compelled him to be very
+little there.  The post of deputy in the French Chamber is no sinecure.
+He was not often an orator from the tribune, but he was absorbed by work
+in the committees--"Harnessed to a lot of bothering reports," as
+Jacqueline used to say to him.  He had barely any time to give to those
+important duties of his position, by which, as is well known, members of
+the Corps Legislatif are shamelessly harassed by constituents, who, on
+pretence that they have helped to place the interests of their district
+in your hands, feel authorized to worry you with personal matters, such
+as the choice of agricultural machines, or a place to be found for a wet-
+nurse.
+
+Besides his public duties, M. de Nailles was occupied by financial
+speculations--operations that were no doubt made necessary by the style
+of living commented on by his cousin, Madame de Monredon, who was as
+stingy as she was bitter of tongue.  The elegance that she found fault
+with was, however, very far from being great when compared with the
+luxury of the present day.  Of course, the Baronne had to have her
+horses, her opera-box, her fashionable frocks.  To supply these very
+moderate needs, which, however, she never insisted upon, being, so far
+as words went, most simple in her tastes, M. de Nailles, who had not the
+temperament which makes men find pleasure in hard work, became more and
+more fatigued.  His days were passed in the Chamber, but he never
+neglected his interest on the Bourse; in the evening he accompanied his
+young wife into society, which, she always declared, she did not care
+for, but which had claims upon her nevertheless.  It was therefore not
+surprising that M. de Nailles's face showed traces of the habitual
+fatigue that was fast aging him; his tall, thin form had acquired a
+slight stoop; though only fifty he was evidently in his declining years.
+He had once been a man of pleasure, it was said, before he entered
+politics.  He had married his first wife late in life.  She was a prudent
+woman who feared to expose him to temptation, and had kept him as far as
+possible away from Paris.
+
+In the country, having nothing to do, he became interested in
+agriculture, and in looking after his estate at Grandchaux.  He had been
+made a member of the Conseil General, when unfortunately death too early
+deprived him of the wise and gentle counsellor for whom he felt, possibly
+not a very lively love, but certainly a high esteem and affection.  After
+he be came a widower he met in the Pyrenees, where, as he was whiling
+away the time of seclusion proper after his loss, a young lady who
+appeared to him exactly the person he needed to bring up his little
+daughter--because she was extremely attractive to himself.  Of course
+M. de Nailles found plenty of other reasons for his choice, which he gave
+to the world and to himself to justify his second marriage--but this was
+the true reason and the only one.  His friends, however, all of whom had
+urged on him the desirability of taking another wife, in consideration of
+the age of Jacqueline, raised many objections as soon as he announced his
+intention of espousing Mademoiselle Clotilde Hecker, eldest daughter of a
+man who had been, at one time, a prefect under the Empire, but who had
+been turned out of office by the Republican Government.  He had a large
+family and many debts; but M. de Nailles had some answer always ready for
+the objections of his family and friends.  He was convinced that
+Mademoiselle Hecker, having no fortune, would be less exacting than other
+women and more disposed to lead a quiet life.
+
+She had been almost a mother to her own young brothers and sisters,
+which was a pledge for motherliness toward Jacqueline, etc., etc.
+Nevertheless, had she not had eyes as blue as those of the beauties
+painted by Greuze, plenty of audacious wit, and a delicate complexion,
+due to her Alsatian origin--had she not possessed a slender waist and a
+lovely figure, he might have asked himself why a young lady who,
+in winter, studied painting with the commendable intention of making
+her own living by art, passed the summers at all the watering-places
+of France and those of neighboring countries, without any perceptible
+motive.
+
+But, thanks to the bandage love ties over the eyes of men, he saw only
+what Mademoiselle Clotilde was willing that he should see.  In the first
+place he saw the great desirability of a talent for painting which,
+unlike music--so often dangerous to married happiness--gives women who
+cultivate it sedentary interests.  And then he was attracted by the model
+daughter's filial piety as he beheld her taking care of her mother, who
+was the victim of an incurable disorder, which required her by turns to
+reside at Cauterets, or sometimes at Ems, sometimes at Aix in Savoy, and
+sometimes even at Trouville.  The poor girl had assured him that she
+asked no happier lot than to live eight months of the year in the
+country, where she would devote herself to teaching Jacqueline, for whom
+at first sight she had taken a violent fancy (the attraction indeed was
+mutual).  She assured him she would teach her all she knew herself, and
+her diplomas proved how well educated she had been.
+
+Indeed, it seemed as if only prejudice could find any objection to so
+prudent and reasonable a marriage, a marriage contracted principally for
+the good of Jacqueline.
+
+It came to pass, however, that the air of Grandchaux, which is situated
+in the most unhealthful part of Limouzin, proved particularly hurtful to
+the new Madame de Nailles.  She could not live a month on her husband's
+property without falling into a state of health which she attributed to
+malaria.  M. de Nailles was at first much concerned about the condition
+of things which seemed likely to upset all his plans for retirement in
+the country, but, his wife having persuaded him that his position in the
+Conseil General was only a stepping-stone to a seat in the Corps
+Legislatif, where his place ought to be, he presented himself to the
+electors as a candidate, and was almost unanimously elected deputy, the
+conservative vote being still all powerful in that part of the country.
+
+His wife, it was said, had shown rare zeal and activity at the time of
+the election, employing in her husband's service all those little arts
+which enable her sex to succeed in politics, as well as in everything
+else they set their minds to.  No lady ever more completely turned the
+heads of country electors.  It was really Madame de Nailles who took her
+seat in the Left Centre of the Chamber, in the person of her husband.
+
+After that she returned to Limouzin only long enough to keep up her
+popularity, though, with touching resignation, she frequently offered to
+spend the summer at Grandchaux, even if the consequences should be her
+death, like that of Pia in the Maremma.  Her husband, of course,
+peremptorily set his face against such self-sacrifice.
+
+The facilities for Jacqueline's education were increased by their
+settling down as residents of Paris.  Madame de Nailles superintended the
+instruction of her stepdaughter with motherly solicitude, seconded,
+however, by a 'promeneuse', or walking-governess, which left her free to
+fulfil her own engagements in the afternoons.  The walking-governess is
+a singular modern institution, intended to supply the place of the too
+often inconvenient daily governess of former times.  The necessary
+qualifications of such a person are that she should have sturdy legs,
+and such knowledge of some foreign language as will enable her during
+their walks to converse in it with her pupil.  Fraulein Schult, who came
+from one of the German cantons of Switzerland, was an ideal 'promeneuse'.
+She never was tired and she was well-informed.  The number of things that
+could be learned from her during a walk was absolutely incredible.
+
+Madame de Nailles, therefore, after a time, gave up to her, not without
+apparent regret, the duty of accompanying Jacqueline, while she herself
+fulfilled those duties to society which the most devoted of mothers can
+not wholly avoid; but the stepmother and stepdaughter were always to be
+seen together at mass at one o'clock; together they attended the Cours
+(that system of classes now so much in vogue) and also the weekly
+instruction given in the catechism; and if Madame de Nailles, when, at
+night, she told her husband all she had been doing for Jacqueline during
+the day (she never made any merit of her zeal for the child's welfare),
+added: "I left Jacqueline in this place or in that, where Mademoiselle
+Schult was to call for her," M. de Nailles showed no disposition to ask
+questions, for he well understood that his wife felt a certain delicacy
+in telling him that she had been to pay a brief visit to her own
+relatives, who, she knew, were distasteful to him.  He had, indeed, very
+soon discerned in them a love of intrigue, a desire to get the most they
+could out of him, and a disagreeable propensity to parasitism.  With the
+consummate tact she showed in everything she did, Madame de Nailles kept
+her own family in the background, though she never neglected them.  She
+was always doing them little services, but she knew well that there were
+certain things about them that could not but be disagreeable to her
+husband.  M. de Nailles knew all this, too, and respected his wife's
+affection for her family.  He seldom asked her where she had been during
+the day.  If he had she would have answered, with a sigh: "I went to see
+my mother while Jacqueline was taking her dancing-lesson, and before she
+went to her singing-master."
+
+That she was passionately attached to Jacqueline was proved by the
+affection the little girl conceived for her.  "We two are friends," both
+mother and daughter often said of each other.  Even Modeste, old Modeste,
+who had been at first indignant at seeing a stranger take the place of
+her dead mistress, could not but acknowledge that the usurper was no
+ordinary step mother.  It might have been truly said that Madame de
+Nailles had never scolded Jacqueline, and that Jacqueline had never done
+anything contrary to the wishes of Madame de Nailles.  When anything went
+wrong it was Fraulein Schult who was reproached first; if there was any
+difficulty in the management of Jacqueline, she alone received
+complaints.  In the eyes of the "two friends," Fraulein Schult was
+somehow to be blamed for everything that went wrong in the family,
+but between themselves an observer might have watched in vain for the
+smallest cloud.  Madame de Nailles, when she was first married, could not
+make enough of the very ugly yet attractive little girl, whose tight
+black curls and gypsy face made an admirable contrast to her own more
+delicate style of beauty, which was that of a blonde.  She caressed
+Jacqueline, she dressed her up, she took her about with her like a little
+dog, and overwhelmed her with demonstrations of affection, which served
+not only to show off her own graceful attitudes, but gave spectators a
+high opinion of her kindness of heart.
+
+When from time to time some one, envious of her happiness, pitied her for
+being childless, Madame de Nailles would say: "What do you mean?  I have
+one daughter; she is enough for me."
+
+It is a pity children grow so fast, and that little girls who were once
+ugly sometimes develop into beautiful young women.  The time came when
+the model stepmother began to wish that Jacqueline would only develop
+morally, intellectually, and not physically.  But she showed nothing of
+this in her behavior, and replied to any compliments addressed to her
+concerning Jacqueline with as much maternal modesty as if the dawning
+loveliness of her stepdaughter had been due to herself.
+
+"Her nose is rather too long-don't you think so?  And she will always be
+too dark, I fear."  But she used always to add, "She is good enough and
+pretty enough to pass muster with any critic--poor little pussy-cat!"
+She became desirous to discover some tendency to ill-health in the plant
+that was too ready to bloom into beauty and perfection.  She would have
+liked to be able to assert that Jacqueline's health would not permit her
+to sit up late at night, that fashionable hours would be injurious to
+her, that it would be undesirable to let her go into society as long as
+she could be kept from doing so.  But Jacqueline persisted in never being
+ill, and was calculating with impatience how many years it would be
+before she could go to her first ball--three or four possibly.  Was
+Madame de Nailles in three or four years to be reduced to the position of
+a chaperon?  The young stepmother thought of such a possibility with
+horror.  Her anxiety on this subject, however, as well as several other
+anxieties, was so well concealed that even her husband suspected nothing.
+
+The complete sympathy which existed between the two beings he most loved
+made M. de Nailles very happy.  He had but one thing to complain of in
+his wife, and that thing was very small.  Since she had married she had
+completely given up her painting.  He had no knowledge of art himself,
+and had therefore given her credit for great artistic capacity.  The fact
+was that in her days of poverty she had never been artist enough to make
+a living, and now that she was rich she felt inclined to laugh at her own
+limited ability.  Her practice of art, she said, had only served to give
+her a knowledge of outline and of color; a knowledge she utilized in her
+dress and in the smallest details of house decoration and furniture.
+Everything she wore, everything that surrounded her, was arranged to
+perfection.  She had a genius for decoration, for furniture, for trifles,
+and brought her artistic knowledge to bear even on the tying of a ribbon,
+or the arrangement of a nosegay.
+
+"This is all I retain of your lessons," she said sometimes to Hubert
+Marien, when recalling to his memory the days in which she sought his
+advice as to how to prepare herself for the "struggle for life."
+
+This phrase was amusing when it proceeded from her lips.  What!--
+"struggle for life" with those little delicate, soft, childlike hands?
+How absurd!  She laughed at the idea now, and all those who heard her
+laughed with her; Marien laughed more than any one.  He, who had
+befriended her in her days of adversity, seemed to retain for the
+Baroness in her prosperity the same respectful and discreet devotion he
+had shown her as Mademoiselle Hecker.  He had sent a wonderful portrait
+of her, as the wife of M. de Nailles, to the Salon--a portrait that the
+richer electors of Grandchaux, who had voted for her husband and who
+could afford to travel, gazed at with satisfaction, congratulating
+themselves that they had a deputy who had married so pretty a woman.
+It even seemed as if the beauty of Madame de Nailles belonged in some
+sort to the arrondissement, so proud were those who lived there of having
+their share in her charms.
+
+Another portrait--that of M. de Nailles himself--was sent down to
+Limouzin from Paris, and all the peasants in the country round were
+invited to come and look at it.  That also produced a very favorable
+impression on the rustic public, and added to the popularity of their
+deputy.  Never had the proprietor of Grandchaux looked so grave, so
+dignified, so majestic, so absorbed in deep reflection, as he looked
+standing beside a table covered with papers--papers, no doubt, all having
+relation to local interests, important to the public and to individuals.
+It was the very figure of a statesman destined to high dignities.  No one
+who gazed on such a deputy could doubt that one day he would be in the
+ministry.
+
+It was by such real services that Marien endeavored to repay the
+friendship and the kindness always awaiting him in the small house in the
+Parc Monceau, where we have just seen Jacqueline eagerly offering him
+some spiced cakes.  To complete what seemed due to the household there
+only remained to paint the curiously expressive features of the girl at
+whom he had been looking that very day with more than ordinary attention.
+Once already, when Jacqueline was hardly out of baby-clothes, the great
+painter had made an admirable sketch of her tousled head, a sketch in
+which she looked like a little imp of darkness, and this sketch Madame de
+Nailles took pains should always be seen, but it bore no resemblance to
+the slender young girl who was on the eve of becoming, whatever might be
+done to arrest her development, a beautiful young woman.  Jacqueline
+disliked to look at that picture.  It seemed to do her an injury by
+associating her with her nursery.  Probably that was the reason why she
+had been so pleased to hear Hubert Marien say unexpectedly that she was
+now ready for the portrait which had been often joked about, every one
+putting it off to the period, always remote, when "the may-pole" should
+have developed a pretty face and figure.
+
+And now she was disquieted lest the idea of taking her picture, which she
+felt was very flattering, should remain inoperative in the painter's
+brain.  She wanted it carried out at once, as soon as possible.
+Jacqueline detested waiting, and for some reason, which she never talked
+about, the years that seemed so short and swift to her stepmother seemed
+to her to be terribly long.  Marien himself had said: "There is a great
+interval between a dream and its execution."  These words had thrown cold
+water on her sudden joy.  She wanted to force him to keep his promise--
+to paint her portrait immediately.  How to do this was the problem her
+little head, reclining on Madame de Nailles's lap after the departure of
+their visitors, had been endeavoring to solve.
+
+Should she communicate her wish to her indulgent stepmother, who for the
+most part willed whatever she wished her to do?  A vague instinct--an
+instinct of some mysterious danger--warned her that in this case her
+father would be her better confidant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE FRIEND OF THE FAY
+
+A week later M. de Nailles said to Hubert Marien, as they were smoking
+together in the conservatory, after the usual little family dinner on
+Wednesday was over:
+
+"Well!--when would you like Jacqueline to come to sit for her picture?"
+
+"What! are you thinking about that?"  cried the painter, letting his
+cigar fall in his astonishment.
+
+"She told me that you had proposed to make her portrait."
+
+"The sly little minx!"  thought Marien.  "I only spoke of painting it
+some day," he said, with embarrassment.
+
+"Well!  she would like that 'some day' to be now, and she has a reason
+for wanting it at once, which, I hope, will decide you to gratify her.
+The third of June is Sainte-Clotilde's day, and she has taken it into
+her head that she would like to give her mamma a magnificent present--
+a present that, of course, we shall unite to give her.  For some time
+past I have been thinking of asking you to paint a portrait of my
+daughter," continued M. de Nailles, who had in fact had no more wish for
+the portrait than he had had to be a deputy, until it had been put into
+his head.  But the women of his household, little or big, could persuade
+him into anything.
+
+"I really don't think I have the time now," said Marien.
+
+"Bah!--you have whole two months before you.  What can absorb you so
+entirely?  I know you have your pictures ready for the Salon."
+
+"Yes--of course--of course--but are you sure that Madame de Nailles would
+approve of it?"
+
+"She will approve whatever I sanction," said M. de Nailles, with as much
+assurance as if he had been master in his domestic circle; "besides, we
+don't intend to ask her.  It is to be a surprise.  Jacqueline is looking
+forward to the pleasure it will give her.  There is something very
+touching to me in the affection of that little thing for--for her
+mother."  M. de Nailles usually hesitated a moment before saying that
+word, as if he were afraid of transferring something still belonging to
+his dead wife to another--that dead wife he so seldom remembered in any
+other way.  He added, "She is so eager to give her pleasure."
+
+Marien shook his head with an air of uncertainty.
+
+"Are you sure that such a portrait would be really acceptable to Madame
+de Nailles?"
+
+"How can you doubt it?"  said the Baron, with much astonishment.  "A
+portrait of her daughter!--done by a great master?  However, of course,
+if we are putting you to any inconvenience--if you would rather not
+undertake it, you had better say so."
+
+"No--of course I will do it, if you wish it," said Marien, quickly, who,
+although he was anxious to do nothing to displease Madame de Nailles, was
+equally desirous to stand well with her husband.  "Yet I own that all the
+mystery that must attend on what you propose may put me to some
+embarrassment.  How do you expect Jacqueline will be able to conceal--"
+
+"Oh!  easily enough.  She walks out every day with Mademoiselle Schult.
+Well, Mademoiselle Schult will bring her to your studio instead of taking
+her to the Champs Elysees--or to walk elsewhere."
+
+"But every day there will be concealments, falsehoods, deceptions.
+I think Madame de Nailles might prefer to be asked for her permission."
+
+"Ask for her permission when I have given mine?  Ah, fa!  my dear Marien,
+am I, or am I not, the father, of Jacqueline?  I take upon myself the
+whole responsibility."
+
+"Then there is nothing more to be said.  But do you think that Jacqueline
+will keep the secret till the picture is done?"
+
+"You don't know little girls; they are all too glad to have something of
+which they can make a mystery."
+
+"When would you like us to begin?"
+
+Marien had by this time said to himself that for him to hold out longer
+might seem strange to M. de Nailles.  Besides, the matter, though in some
+respects it gave him cause for anxiety, really excited an interest in
+him.  For some time past, though he had long known women and knew very
+little of mere girls, he had had his suspicions that a drama was being
+enacted in Jacqueline's heart, a drama of which he himself was the hero.
+He amused himself by watching it, though he did nothing to promote it.
+He was an artist and a keen and penetrating observer; he employed
+psychology in the service of his art, and probably to that might have
+been attributed the individual character of his portraits--a quality to
+be found in an equal degree only in those of Ricard.
+
+What particularly interested him at this moment was the assumed
+indifference of Jacqueline while her father was conducting the
+negotiation which was of her suggestion.  When they returned to the salon
+after smoking she pretended not to be the least anxious to know the
+result of their conversation.  She sat sewing near the lamp, giving all
+her attention to the piece of lace on which she was working.  Her father
+made her a sign which meant "He consents," and then Marien saw that the
+needle in her fingers trembled, and a slight color rose in her face--but
+that was all.  She did not say a word.  He could not know that for a week
+past she had gone to church every time she took a walk, and had offered a
+prayer and a candle that her wish might be granted.  How very anxious and
+excited she had been all that week!  The famous composition of which
+she had spoken to Giselle, the subject of which had so astonished the
+young girl brought up by the Benedictine nuns, felt the inspiration of
+her emotion and excitement.  Jacqueline was in a frame of mind which made
+reading those three masterpieces by three great poets, and pondering the
+meaning of their words, very dangerous.  The poems did not affect her
+with the melancholy they inspire in those who have "lived and loved,"
+but she was attracted by their tenderness and their passion.  Certain
+lines she applied to herself--certain others to another person.  The very
+word love so often repeated in the verses sent a thrill through all her
+frame.  She aspired to taste those "intoxicating moments," those "swift
+delights," those "sublime ecstasies," those "divine transports"--all the
+beautiful things, in short, of which the poems spoke, and which were as
+yet unknown to her.  How could she know them?  How could she, after an
+experience of sorrow, which seemed to her to be itself enviable, retain
+such sweet remembrances as the poets described?
+
+"Let us love--love each other!  Let us hasten to enjoy the passing hour!"
+so sang the poet of Le Lac.  That passing hour of bliss she thought she
+had already enjoyed.  She was sure that for a long time past she had
+loved.  When had that love begun?  She hardly knew.  But it would last as
+long as she might live.  One loves but once.
+
+These personal emotions, mingling with the literary enchantments of the
+poets, caused Jacqueline's pen to fly over her paper without effort, and
+she produced a composition so far superior to anything she usually wrote
+that it left the lucubrations of her companions far behind.  M. Regis,
+the professor, said so to the class.  He was enthusiastic about it, and
+greatly surprised.  Belle, who had been always first in this kind of
+composition, was far behind Jacqueline, and was so greatly annoyed at her
+defeat that she would not speak to her for a week.  On the other hand
+Colette and Dolly, who never had aspired to literary triumphs, were moved
+to tears when the "Study on the comparative merits of Three Poems, 'Le
+Lac,' 'Souvenir,' and 'La Tristesse d'Olympio,'" signed "Mademoiselle de
+Nailles," received the honor of being read aloud.  This reading was
+followed by a murmur of applause, mingled with some hisses which may have
+proceeded from the viper of jealousy.  But the paper made a sensation
+like that of some new scandal.  Mothers and governesses whispered
+together.  Many thought that that little de Nailles had expressed
+sentiments not proper at her age.  Some came to the conclusion that
+M. Regis chose subjects for composition not suited to young girls.
+A committee waited on the unlucky professor to beg him to be more prudent
+for the future.  He even lost, in consequence of Jacqueline's success,
+one of his pupils (the most stupid one, be it said, in the class), whose
+mother took her away, saying, with indignation, "One might as well risk
+the things they are teaching at the Sorbonne!"
+
+This literary incident greatly alarmed Madame de Nailles!  Of all things
+she dreaded that her daughter should early become dreamy and romantic.
+But on this point Jacqueline's behavior was calculated to reassure her.
+She laughed about her composition, she frolicked like a six-year-old
+child; without any apparent cause, she grew gayer and gayer as the time
+approached for the execution of her plot.
+
+The evening before the day fixed on for the first sitting, Modeste, the
+elderly maid of the first Madame de Nailles, who loved her daughter, whom
+she had known from the moment of her birth, as if she had been her own
+foster-child, arrived at the studio of Hubert Marien in the Rue de Prony,
+bearing a box which she said contained all that would be wanted by
+Mademoiselle.  Marien had the curiosity to look into it.  It contained a
+robe of oriental muslin, light as air, diaphanous--and so dazzlingly
+white that he remarked:
+
+"She will look like a fly in milk in that thing."
+
+"Oh!"  replied Modeste, with a laugh of satisfaction, "it is very
+becoming to her.  I altered it to fit her, for it is one of Madame's
+dresses.  Mademoiselle has nothing but short skirts, and she wanted to be
+painted as a young lady."
+
+"With the approval of her papa?"
+
+"Yes, of course, Monsieur, Monsieur le Baron gave his consent.  But for
+that I certainly should not have minded what the child said to me."
+
+"Then," replied Marien, "I can say nothing," and he made ready for his
+sitter the next day, by turning two or three studies of the nude, which
+might have shocked her, with their faces to the wall.
+
+A foreign language can not be properly acquired unless the learner has
+great opportunities for conversation.  It therefore became a fixed habit
+with Fraulein Schult and Jacqueline to keep up a lively stream of talk
+during their walks, and their discourse was not always about the rain,
+the fine weather, the things displayed in the shop-windows, nor the
+historical monuments of Paris, which they visited conscientiously.
+
+What is near the heart is sure to come eventually to the surface in
+continual tete-a-tete intercourse.  Fraulein Schult, who was of a
+sentimental temperament, in spite of her outward resemblance to a
+grenadier, was very willing to allow her companion to draw from her
+confessions relating to an intended husband, who was awaiting her at
+Berne, and whose letters, both in prose and verse, were her comfort in
+her exile.  This future husband was an apothecary, and the idea that he
+pounded out verses as he pounded his drugs in a mortar, and rolled out
+rhymes with his pills, sometimes inclined Jacqueline to laugh, but she
+listened patiently to the plaintive outpourings of her 'promeneuse',
+because she wished to acquire a right to reciprocate by a few half-
+confidences of her own.  In her turn, therefore, she confided to Fraulein
+Schult--moved much as Midas had been, when for his own relief he
+whispered to the reeds--that if she were sometimes idle, inattentive,
+"away off in the moon," as her instructors told her by way of reproach,
+it was caused by one ever-present idea, which, ever since she had been
+able to think or feel, had taken possession of her inmost being--the idea
+of being loved some day by somebody as she herself loved.
+
+"Was that somebody a boy of her own age?"
+
+Oh, fie!--mere boys--still schoolboys--could only be looked upon as
+playfellows or comrades.  Of course she considered Fred--Fred, for
+example!--Frederic d'Argy--as a brother, but how different he was from
+her ideal.  Even young men of fashion--she had seen some of them on
+Tuesdays--Raoul Wermant, the one who so distinguished himself as a leader
+in the 'german', or Yvonne's brother, the officer of chasseurs, who had
+gained the prize for horsemanship, and others besides these--seemed to
+her very commonplace by comparison.  No!--he whom she loved was a man in
+the prime of life, well known to fame.  She didn't care if he had a few
+white hairs.
+
+"Is he a person of rank?"  asked Fraulein Schult, much puzzled.
+
+"Oh!  if you mean of noble birth, no, not at all.  But fame is so
+superior to birth!  There are more ways than one of acquiring an
+illustrious name, and the name that a man makes for himself is the
+noblest of all!"
+
+Then Jacqueline begged Fraulein Schult to imagine something like the
+passion of Bettina for Goethe--Fraulein Schult having told her that story
+simply with a view of interesting her in German conversation only the
+great man whose name she would not tell was not nearly so old as Goethe,
+and she herself was much less childish than Bettina.  But, above all,
+it was his genius that attracted her--though his face, too, was very
+pleasing.  And she went on to describe his appearance--till suddenly she
+stopped, burning with indignation; for she perceived that,
+notwithstanding the minuteness of her description, what she said was
+conveying an idea of ugliness and not one of the manly beauty she
+intended to portray.
+
+"He is not like that at all," she cried.  "He has such a beautiful smile-
+a smile like no other I ever saw.  And his talk is so amusing--and--"
+here Jacqueline lowered her voice as if afraid to be overheard, "and I do
+think--I think, after all, he does love me--just a little."
+
+On what could she have founded such a notion?  Good heaven!--it was on
+something that had at first deeply grieved her, a sudden coldness and
+reserve that had come over his manner to her.  Not long before she had
+read an English novel (no others were allowed to come into her hands).
+It was rather a stupid book, with many tedious passages, but in it she
+was told how the high-minded hero, not being able, for grave reasons, to
+aspire to the hand of the heroine, had taken refuge in an icy coldness,
+much as it cost him, and as soon as possible had gone away.  English
+novels are nothing if not moral.
+
+This story, not otherwise interesting, threw a gleam of light on what,
+up to that time, had been inexplicable to Jacqueline.  He was above all
+things a man of honor.  He must have perceived that his presence troubled
+her.  He had possibly seen her when she stole a half-burned cigarette
+which he had left upon the table, a prize she had laid up with other
+relics--an old glove that he had lost, a bunch of violets he had gathered
+for her in the country.  Yes!  When she came to think of it, she felt
+certain he must have seen her furtively lay her hand upon that cigarette;
+that cigarette had compromised her.  Then it was he must have said to
+himself that it was due to her parents, who had always shown him
+kindness, to surmount an attachment that could come to nothing--nothing
+at present.  But when she should be old enough for him to ask her hand,
+would he dare?  Might he not rashly think himself too old?  She must seek
+out some way to give him encouragement, to give him to understand that
+she was not, after all, so far--so very far from being a young lady--old
+enough to be married.  How difficult it all was!  All the more difficult
+because she was exceedingly afraid of him.
+
+It is not surprising that Fraulein Schult, after listening day after day
+to such recitals, with all the alternations of hope and of discouragement
+which succeeded one another in the mind of her precocious pupil, guessed,
+the moment that Jacqueline came to her, in a transport of joy, to ask her
+to go with her to the Rue de Prony, that the hero of the mysterious love-
+story was no other than Hubert Marien.
+
+As soon as she understood this, she perceived that she should be placed
+in a very false position.  But she thought to herself there was no
+possible way of getting out of it, without giving a great deal too much
+importance to a very innocent piece of childish folly; she therefore
+determined to say nothing about it, but to keep a strict watch in the
+mean time.  After all, M. de Nailles himself had given her her orders.
+She was to accompany Jacqueline, and do her crochet-work in one corner of
+the studio as long as the sitting lasted.
+
+All she could do was to obey.
+
+"And above all not a word to mamma, whatever she may ask you," said
+Jacqueline.
+
+And her father added, with a laugh, "Not a word."  Fraulein Schult felt
+that she knew what was expected of her.  She was naturally compliant, and
+above all things she was anxious to get paid for as many hours of her
+time as possible--much like the driver of a fiacre, because the more
+money she could make the sooner she would be in a position to espouse her
+apothecary.
+
+When Jacqueline, escorted by her Swiss duenna, penetrated almost
+furtively into Marien's studio, her heart beat as if she had a
+consciousness of doing something very wrong.  In truth, she had pictured
+to herself so many impossible scenes beforehand, had rehearsed the
+probable questions and answers in so many strange dialogues, had soothed
+her fancy with so many extravagant ideas, that she had at last created,
+bit by bit, a situation very different from the reality, and then threw
+herself into it, body and soul.
+
+The look of the atelier--the first she had ever been in in her life--
+disappointed her.  She had expected to behold a gorgeous collection of
+bric-a-brac, according to accounts she had heard of the studios of
+several celebrated masters.  That of Marien was remarkable only for its
+vast dimensions and its abundance of light.  Studies and sketches hung on
+the walls, were piled one over another in corners, were scattered about
+everywhere, attesting the incessant industry of the artist, whose
+devotion to his calling was so great that his own work never satisfied
+him.
+
+Only some interesting casts from antique bronzes, brought out into strong
+relief by a background of tapestry, adorned this lofty hall, which had
+none of that confusion of decorative objects, in the midst of which some
+modern artists seem to pose themselves rather than to labor.
+
+A fresh canvas stood upon an easel, all ready for the sitter.
+
+"If you please, we will lose no time," said Marien, rather roughly,
+seeing that Jacqueline was about to explore all the corners of his
+apartment, and that at that moment, with the tips of her fingers, she
+was drawing aside the covering he had cast over his Death of Savonarola,
+the picture he was then at work upon.  It was not the least of his
+grudges against Jacqueline for insisting on having her portrait painted
+that it obliged him to lay aside this really great work, that he might
+paint a likeness.
+
+"In ten minutes I shall be ready," said Jacqueline, obediently taking off
+her hat.
+
+"Why can't you stay as you are?  That jacket suits you.  Let us begin
+immediately."
+
+"No, indeed!  What a horrid suggestion!"  she cried, running up to the
+box which was half open.  "You'll see how much better I can look in a
+moment or two."
+
+"I put no faith in your fancies about your toilette.  I certainly don't
+promise to accept them."
+
+Nevertheless, he left her alone with her Bernese governess, saying: "Call
+me when you are ready, I shall be in the next room."
+
+A quarter of an hour, and more, passed, and no signal had been given.
+Marien, getting out of patience, knocked on the door.
+
+"Have you nearly done beautifying yourself?"  he asked, in a tone of
+irony.
+
+"Just done," replied a low voice, which trembled.
+
+He went in, and to the great amusement of Fraulein Schult, who was not
+too preoccupied to notice everything, he stood confounded--petrified,
+as a man might be by some work of magic.  What had become of Jacqueline?
+What had she in common with that dazzling vision?  Had she been touched
+by some fairy's wand?  Or, to accomplish such a transformation, had
+nothing been needed but the substitution of a woman's dress, fitted to
+her person, for the short skirts and loose waists cut in a boyish
+fashion, which had made the little girl seem hardly to belong to any sex,
+an indefinite being, condemned, as it were, to childishness?  How tall,
+and slender, and graceful she looked in that long gown, the folds of
+which fell from her waist in flowing lines, a waist as round and flexible
+as the branch of a willow; what elegance there was in her modest corsage,
+which displayed for the first time her lovely arms and neck, half afraid
+of their own exposure.  She still was not robust, but the leanness that
+she herself had owned to was not brought into prominence by any bone or
+angle, her dark skin was soft and polished, the color of ancient statues
+which have been slightly tinted yellow by exposure to the sun.  This
+girl, a Parisienne, seemed formed on the model of a figurine of Tanagra.
+Greek, too, was her small head, crowned only by her usual braid of hair,
+which she had simply gathered up so as to show the nape of her neck,
+which was perhaps the most beautiful thing in all her beautiful person.
+
+"Well!--what do you think of me?"  she said to Marien, with a searching
+glance to see how she impressed him--a glance strangely like that of a
+grown woman.
+
+"Well!--I can't get over it!--Why have you bedizened yourself in that
+fashion?"  he asked, with an affectation of 'brusquerie', as he tried to
+recover his power of speech.
+
+"Then you don't like me?"  she murmured, in a low voice.  Tears came into
+her eyes; her lips trembled.
+
+"I don't see Jacqueline."
+
+"No--I should hope not--but I am better than Jacqueline, am I not?"
+
+"I am accustomed to Jacqueline.  This new acquaintance disconcerts me.
+Give me time to get used to her.  But once again let me ask, what
+possessed you to disguise yourself?"
+
+"I am not disguised.  I am disguised when I am forced to wear those
+things, which do not suit me," said Jacqueline, pointing to her gray
+jacket and plaid skirt which were hung up on a hat-rack.  "Oh, I know why
+mamma keeps me like that--she is afraid I should get too fond of dress
+before I have finished my education, and that my mind may be diverted
+from serious subjects.  It is no doubt all intended for my good, but I
+should not lose much time if I turned up my hair like this, and what harm
+could there be in lengthening my skirts an inch or two?  My picture will
+show her that I am improved by such little changes, and perhaps it will
+induce hor to let me go to the Bal Blanc that Madame d'Etaples is going
+to give on Yvonne's birthday.  Mamma declined for me, saying I was not
+fit to wear a low-necked corsage, but you see she was mistaken."
+
+"Rather," said Marien, smiling in spite of himself.
+
+"Yes--wasn't she?"  she went on, delighted at his look.  "Of course, I
+have bones, but they don't show like the great hollows under the collar-
+bones that Dolly shows, for instance--but Dolly looks stouter than I
+because her face is so round.  Well!  Dolly is going to Madame
+d'Etaples's ball."
+
+"I grant," said Marien, devoting all his attention to the preparation of
+his palette, that she might not see him laugh, "I grant that you have
+bones--yes, many bones--but they are not much seen because they are too
+well placed to be obtrusive."
+
+"I am glad of that," said Jacqueline, delighted.
+
+"But let me ask you one question.  Where did you pick up that queer gown?
+It seems to me that I have seen it somewhere."
+
+"No doubt you have," replied Jacqueline, who had quite recovered from her
+first shock, and was now ready to talk; "it is the dress mamma had made
+some time ago when she acted in a comedy."
+
+"So I thought," growled Marien, biting his lips.
+
+The dress recalled to his mind many personal recollections, and for one
+instant he paused.  Madame de Nailles, among other talents, possessed
+that of amateur acting.  On one occasion, several years before, she had
+asked his advice concerning what dress she should wear in a little play
+of Scribe's, which was to be given at the house of Madame d'Avrigny--the
+house in all Paris most addicted to private theatricals.  This
+reproduction of a forgotten play, with its characters attired in the
+costume of the period in which the play was placed, had had great
+success, a success due largely to the excellence of the costumes.  In the
+comic parts the dressing had been purposely exaggerated, but Madame de
+Nailles, who played the part of a great coquette, would not have been
+dressed in character had she not tried to make herself as bewitching as
+possible.
+
+Marien had shown her pictures of the beauties of 1840, painted by Dubufe,
+and she had decided on a white gauze embroidered with gold, in which, on
+that memorable evening, she had captured more than one heart, and which
+had had its influence on the life and destiny of Marien.  This might have
+been seen in the vague glance of indignation with which he now regarded
+it.
+
+"Never," he thought, "was it half so pretty when worn by Madame de
+Nailles as by her stepdaughter."
+
+Jacqueline meantime went on talking.
+
+"You must know--I was rather perplexed what to do--almost all mamma's
+gowns made me look horribly too old.  Modeste tried them on me one after
+another.  We burst out laughing, they seemed so absurd.  And then we were
+afraid mamma might chance to want the one I took.  This old thing it was
+not likely she would ask for.  She had worn it only once, and then put it
+away.  The gauze is a little yellow from lying by, don't you think so?
+But we asked my father, who said it was all right, that I should look
+less dark in it, and that the dress was of no particular date, which was
+always an advantage.  These Grecian dresses are always in the fashion.
+Ah! four years ago mamma was much more slender than she is now.  But we
+have taken it in--oh!  we took it in a great deal under the arms, but we
+had to let it down.  Would you believe it?--I am taller than mamma--but
+you can hardly see the seam, it is concealed by the gold embroidery."
+
+"No matter for that.  We shall only take a three-quarters' length," said
+Marien.
+
+"Oh, what a pity!  No one will see I have a long skirt on.  But I shall
+be 'decolletee', at any rate.  I shall wear a comb.  No one would know
+the picture for me--nobody!--You yourself hardly knew me--did you?"
+
+"Not at first sight.  You are much altered."
+
+"Mamma will be amazed," said Jacqueline, clasping her hands.  "It was a
+good idea!"
+
+"Amazed, I do not doubt," said Marien, somewhat anxiously.  "But suppose
+we take our pose--Stay!--keep just as you are.  Your hands before you,
+hanging down--so.  Your fingers loosely clasped--that's it.  Turn your
+head a little.  What a lovely neck!--how well her head is set upon it!"
+he cried, involuntarily.
+
+Jacqueline glanced at Fraulein Schult, who was at the farther end of the
+studio, busy with her crochet.  "You see," said the look, "that he has
+found out I am pretty--that I am worth something--all the rest will soon
+happen."
+
+And, while Marien was sketching in the graceful figure that posed before
+him, Jacqueline's imagination was investing it with the white robe of a
+bride.  She had a vision of the painter growing more and more resolved to
+ask her hand in marriage as the portrait grew beneath his brush; of
+course, her father would say at first: "You are mad--you must wait.  I
+shall not let Jacqueline marry till she is seventeen."  But long
+engagements, she had heard, had great delights, though in France they are
+not the fashion. At last, after being long entreated, she was sure that
+M. and Madame de Nailles would end by giving their consent--they were so
+fond of Marien.  Standing there, dreaming this dream, which gave her face
+an expression of extreme happiness, Jacqueline made a most admirable
+model. She had not felt in the least fatigued when Marien at last said to
+her, apologetically: "You must be ready to drop--I forgot you were not
+made of wood; we will go on to-morrow."
+
+Jacqueline, having put on her gray jacket with as much contempt for it as
+Cinderella may have felt for her rags after her successes at the ball,
+departed with the delightful sensation of having made a bold first step,
+and being eager to make another.
+
+Thus it was with all her sittings, though some left her anxious and
+unhappy, as for instance when Marien, absorbed in his work, had not
+paused, except to say, "Turn your head a little--you are losing the
+pose." Or else, "Now you may rest for today."
+
+On such occasions she would watch him anxiously as he painted swiftly,
+his brush making great splashes on the canvas, his dark features wearing
+a scowl, his chin on his breast, a deep frown upon his forehead, on which
+the hair grew low.  It was evident that at such times he had no thought
+of pleasing her.  Little did she suspect that he was saying to himself:
+"Fool that I am!--A man of my age to take pleasure in seeing that little
+head filled with follies and fancies of which I am the object.  But can
+one--let one be ever so old--always act--or think reasonably?  You are
+mad, Marien!  A child of fourteen!  Bah!--they make her out to be
+fourteen--but she is fifteen--and was not that the age of Juliet?  But,
+you old graybeard, you are not Romeo!--'Ma foi'!  I am in a pretty
+scrape.  It ought to teach me not to play with fire at my age."
+
+Those words "at my age" were the refrain to all the reflections of Hubert
+Marien.  He had seen enough in his relations with women to have no doubt
+about Jacqueline's feelings, of which indeed he had watched the rise and
+progress from the time she had first begun to conceive a passion for him,
+with a mixture of amusement and conceit.  The most cautious of men are
+not insensible to flattery, whatever form it may take.  To be fallen in
+love with by a child was no doubt absurd--a thing to be laughed at--but
+Jacqueline seemed no longer a child, since for him she had uncovered her
+young shoulders and arranged her dark hair on her head with the effect of
+a queenly diadem.  Not only had her dawning loveliness been revealed to
+him alone, but to him it seemed that he had helped to make her lovely.
+The innocent tenderness she felt for him had accomplished this miracle.
+Why should he refuse to inhale an incense so pure, so genuine?  How could
+he help being sensible to its fragrance?  Would it not be in his power to
+put an end to the whole affair whenever he pleased?  But till then might
+he not bask in it, as one does in a warm ray of spring sunshine?  He put
+aside, therefore, all scruples.  And when he did this Jacqueline with
+rapture saw the painter's face, no longer with its scowl, but softened by
+some secret influence, the lines smoothed from his brow, while the
+beautiful smile which had fascinated so many women passed like a ray of
+light over his expressive mobile features; then she would once more fancy
+that he was making love to her, and indeed he said many things, which,
+without rousing in himself any scruples of conscience, or alarming the
+propriety of Fraulein Schult, were well calculated to delude a girl who
+had had no experience, and who was charmed by the illusions of a love-
+affair, as she might have been by a fairy-story.
+
+It is true that sometimes, when he fancied he might have gone too far,
+Marien would grow sarcastic, or stay silent for a time.  But this change
+of behavior produced on Jacqueline only the same effect that the caprices
+of a coquette produce upon a very young admirer.  She grew anxious, she
+wanted to find out the reason, and finally found some explanation or
+excuse for him that coincided with her fancies.
+
+The thing that reassured her in such cases was her picture.  If she could
+seem to him as beautiful as he had made her look on canvas she was sure
+that he must love her.
+
+"Is this really I?  Are you sure?"  she said to Marien with a laugh of
+delight.  "It seems to me that you have made me too handsome."
+
+"I have hardly done you justice," he replied.  "It is not my fault if you
+are more beautiful than seems natural, like the beauties in the
+keepsakes.  By the way, I hold those English things in horror.  What do
+you say of them?"
+
+Then Jacqueline undertook to defend the keepsake beauties with animation,
+declaring that no one but a hopelessly realistic painter would refuse to
+do justice to those charming monstrosities.
+
+"Good heavens!"  thought Marien, "if she is adding a quick wit to her
+other charms--that will put the finishing stroke to me."
+
+When the portrait was sufficiently advanced, M. de Nailles came to the
+studio to judge of the likeness.  He was delighted: "Only, my friend,
+I think," he cried to Marien, endeavoring to soften his one objection to
+the picture, "that you have given her a look--how can I put it?--an
+expression very charming no doubt, but which is not that of a child of
+her age.  You know what I mean.  It is something tender--intense--
+profound, too feminine.  It may come to her some day, perhaps--but
+hitherto Jacqueline's expression has been generally that of a merry,
+mischievous child."
+
+"Oh, papa!" cried the young girl, stung by the insult.
+
+"You may possibly be right," Marien hastened to reply, "it was probably
+the fatigue of posing that gave her that expression."
+
+"Oh!"  repeated Jacqueline, more shocked than ever.
+
+"I can alter it," said the painter, much amused by her extreme despair.
+But Marien thought that Jacqueline had not in the least that precocious
+air which her father attributed to her, when standing before him she gave
+herself up to thoughts the current of which he followed easily, watching
+on her candid face its changes of expression.  How could he have painted
+her other than she appeared to him?  Was what he saw an apparition--
+or was it a work of magic?
+
+Several times during the sittings M. de Nailles made his appearance in
+the studio, and after greatly praising the work, persisted in his
+objection that it made Jacqueline too old.  But since the painter saw her
+thus they must accept his judgment.  It was no doubt an effect of the
+grown-up costume that she had had a fancy to put on.
+
+"After all," he said to Jacqueline, "it is of not much consequence; you
+will grow up to it some of these days.  And I pay you my compliments in
+advance on your appearance in the future."
+
+She felt like choking with rage.  "Oh! is it right," she thought, "for
+parents to persist in keeping a young girl forever in her cradle, so to
+speak?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A DANGEROUS MODEL
+
+Time passed too quickly to please Jacqueline.  Her portrait was finished
+at last, notwithstanding the willingness Marien had shown--or so it
+seemed to her--to retouch it unnecessarily that she might again and again
+come back to his atelier.  But it was done at last.  She glided into that
+dear atelier for the last time, her heart big with regret, with no hope
+that she would ever again put on the fairy robe which had, she thought,
+transfigured her till she was no longer little Jacqueline.
+
+"I want you only for one moment, and I need only your face," said Marien.
+"I want to change--a line--I hardly know what to call it, at the corner
+of your mouth.  Your father is right; your mouth is too grave.  Think of
+something amusing--of the Bal Blanc at Madame d'Etaples, or merely, if
+you like, of the satisfaction it will give you to be done with these
+everlasting sittings--to be no longer obliged to bear the burden of a
+secret, in short to get rid of your portrait-painter."
+
+She made him no answer, not daring to trust her voice.
+
+"Come! now, on the contrary you are tightening your lips," said Marien,
+continuing to play with her as a cat plays with a mouse--provided there
+ever was a cat who, while playing with its mouse, had no intention of
+crunching it.  "You are not merry, you are sad.  That is not at all
+becoming to you."
+
+"Why do you attribute to me your own thoughts?  It is you who will be
+glad to get rid of all this trouble."
+
+Fraulein Schult, who, while patiently adding stitch after stitch to the
+long strip of her crochet-work, was often much amused by the dialogues
+between sitter and painter, pricked up her ears to hear what a Frenchman
+would say to what was evidently intended to provoke a compliment.
+
+"On the contrary, I shall miss you very much," said Marien, quite simply;
+"I have grown accustomed to see you here.  You have become one of the
+familiar objects of my studio.  Your absence will create a void."
+
+"About as much as if this or that were gone," said Jacqueline, in a hurt
+tone, pointing first to a Japanese bronze and then to an Etruscan vase;
+"with only this difference, that you care least for the living object."
+
+"You are bitter, Mademoiselle."
+
+"Because you make me such provoking answers, Monsieur.  My feeling is
+different," she went on impetuously, "I could pass my whole life watching
+you paint."
+
+"You would get tired of it probably in the long run."
+
+"Never!"  she cried, blushing a deep red.
+
+"And you would have to put up with my pipe--that big pipe yonder--
+a horror."
+
+"I should like it," she cried, with conviction.
+
+"But you would not like my bad temper.  If you knew how ill I can behave
+sometimes!  I can scold, I can become unbearable, when this, for
+example," here he pointed with his mahlstick to the Savonarola, "does not
+please me."
+
+"But it is beautiful--so beautiful!"
+
+"It is detestable.  I shall have to go back some day and renew my
+impressions of Florence--see once more the Piazze of the Signora and San
+Marco--and then I shall begin my picture all over again.  Let us go
+together--will you?"
+
+"Oh!" she cried, fervently, "think of seeing Italy! --and with you!"
+
+"It might not be so great a pleasure as you think.  Nothing is such a
+bore as to travel with people who are pervaded by one idea, and my 'idee
+fixe' is my picture--my great Dominican.  He has taken complete
+possession of me--he overshadows me.  I can think of nothing but him."
+
+"Oh!  but you think of me sometimes, I suppose," said Jacqueline, softly,
+"for I share your time with him."
+
+"I think of you to blame you for taking me away from the fifteenth
+century," replied Hubert Marien, half seriously.  "Ouf!--There! it is
+done at last.  That dimple I never could manage I have got in for better
+or for worse.  Now you may fly off.  I set you at liberty--you poor
+little thing!"
+
+She seemed in no hurry to profit by his permission.  She stood perfectly
+still in the middle of the studio.
+
+"Do you think I have posed well, faithfully, and with docility all these
+weeks?"  she asked at last.
+
+"I will give you a certificate to that effect, if you like.  No one could
+have done better."
+
+"And if the certificate is not all I want, will you give me some other
+present?"
+
+"A beautiful portrait--what can you want more?"
+
+"The picture is for mamma.  I ask a favor on my own account."
+
+"I refuse it beforehand.  But you can tell me what it is, all the same."
+
+"Well, then--the only part of your house that I have ever been in is this
+atelier.  You can imagine I have a curiosity to see the rest."
+
+"I see!  you threaten me with a domiciliary visit without warning.  Well!
+certainly, if that would give you any amusement.  But my house contains
+nothing wonderful.  I tell you that beforehand."
+
+"One likes to know how one's friends look at home--in their own setting,
+and I have only seen you here at work in your atelier."
+
+"The best point of view, believe me.  But I am ready to do your bidding.
+Do you wish to see where I eat my dinner?"  asked Marien, as he took her
+down the staircase leading to his dining-room.
+
+Fraulein Schult would have liked to go with them--it was, besides, her
+duty.  But she had not been asked to fulfil it.  She hesitated a moment,
+and in that moment Jacqueline had disappeared.  After consideration, the
+'promeneuse' went on with her crochet, with a shrug of her shoulders
+which meant: "She can't come to much harm."
+
+Seated in the studio, she heard the sound of their voices on the floor
+below.  Jacqueline was lingering in the fencing-room where Marien was in
+the habit of counteracting by athletic exercises the effects of a too
+sedentary life.  She was amusing herself by fingering the dumb-bells and
+the foils; she lingered long before some precious suits of armor.  Then
+she was taken up into a small room, communicating with the atelier, where
+there was a fine collection of drawings by the old masters.  "My only
+luxury," said Marien.
+
+Mademoiselle Schult, getting impatient, began to roll up yards and yards
+of crochet, and coughed, by way of a signal, but remembering how
+disagreeable it would have been to herself to be interrupted in a tete-a-
+tete with her apothecary, she thought it not worth while to disturb them
+in these last moments.  M. de Nailles's orders had been that she was to
+sit in the atelier.  So she continued to sit there, doing what she had
+been told to do without any qualms of conscience.
+
+When Marien had shown Jacqueline all his drawings he asked her: "Are you
+satisfied?"
+
+But Jacqueline's hand was already on the portiere which separated the
+little room from Marien's bedchamber.
+
+"Oh! I beg pardon," she exclaimed, pausing on the threshold.
+
+"One would think you would like to see me asleep," said Marien with some
+little embarrassment.
+
+"I never should have thought your bedroom would have been so pretty.
+Why, it is as elegant as a lady's chamber," said Jacqueline, slipping
+into it as she spoke, with an exciting consciousness of doing something
+she ought not to do.
+
+"What an insult, when I thought all my tastes were simple and severe,"
+he replied; but he had not followed her into the chamber, withheld by an
+impulse of modesty men sometimes feel, when innocence is led into
+audacity through ignorance.
+
+"What lovely flowers you have!"  said Jacqueline, from within.  "Don't
+they make your head ache?"
+
+"I take them out at night."
+
+"I did not know that men liked, as we do, to be surrounded by flowers.
+Won't you give me one?"
+
+"All, if you like."
+
+"Oh!  one pink will be enough for me."
+
+"Then take it," said Marien; her curiosity alarmed him, and he was
+anxious to get her away.
+
+"Would it not be nicer if you gave it me yourself?"  she replied, with
+reproach in her tones.
+
+"Here is one, Mademoiselle.  And now I must tell you that I want to
+dress.  I have to go out immediately."
+
+She pinned the pink into her bodice so high that she could inhale its
+perfume.
+
+"I beg your pardon.  Thank you, and good-by," she said, extending her
+hand to him with a sigh.
+
+"Au revoir."
+
+"Yes--'au revoir' at home--but that will not be like here."
+
+As she stood there before him there came into her eyes a strange
+expression, to which, without exactly knowing why, he replied by pressing
+his lips fervently on the little hand he was still holding in his own.
+
+Very often since her infancy he had kissed her before witnesses, but this
+time she gave a little cry, and turned as white as the flower whose
+petals were touching her cheek.
+
+Marien started back alarmed.
+
+"Good-by," he said in a tone that he endeavored to make careless--but in
+vain.
+
+Though she was much agitated herself she failed not to remark his
+emotion, and on the threshold of the atelier, she blew a kiss back to him
+from the tips of her gloved fingers, without speaking or smiling.  Then
+she went back to Fraulein Schult, who was still sitting in the place
+where she had left her, and said: "Let us go."
+
+The next time Madame de Nailles saw her stepdaughter she was dazzled by a
+radiant look in her young face.
+
+"What has happened to you?"  she asked, "you look triumphant."
+
+"Yes--I have good reason to triumph," said Jacqueline.  "I think that I
+have won a victory."
+
+"How so?  Over yourself?"
+
+"No, indeed--victories over one's self give us the comfort of a good
+conscience, but they do not make us gay--as I am."
+
+"Then tell me--"
+
+"No-no!  I can not tell you yet.  I must be silent two days more," said
+Jacqueline, throwing herself into her mother's arms.
+
+Madame de Nailles asked no more questions, but she looked at her
+stepdaughter with an air of great surprise.  For some weeks past she had
+had no pleasure in looking at Jacqueline.  She began to be aware that
+near her, at her side, an exquisite butterfly was about for the first
+time to spread its wings--wings of a radiant loveliness, which, when they
+fluttered in the air, would turn all eyes away from other butterflies,
+which had lost some of their freshness during the summer.
+
+A difficult task was before her.  How could she keep this too precocious
+insect in its chrysalis state?  How could she shut it up in its dark
+cocoon and retard its transformation?
+
+"Jacqueline," she said, and the tones of her voice were less soft than
+those in which she usually addressed her, "it seems to me that you are
+wasting your time a great deal.  You hardly practise at all; you do
+almost nothing at the 'cours'.  I don't know what can be distracting your
+attention from your lessons, but I have received complaints which should
+make a great girl like you ashamed of herself.  Do you know what I am
+beginning to think?--That Madame de Monredon's system of education has
+done better than mine."
+
+"Oh! mamma, you can't be thinking of sending me to a convent!"  cried
+Jacqueline, in tones of comic despair.
+
+"I did not say that--but I really think it might be good for you to make
+a retreat where your cousin Giselle is, instead of plunging into follies
+which interrupt your progress."
+
+"Do you call Madame d'Etaples's 'bal blanc' a folly?"
+
+"You certainly will not go to it--that is settled," said the young
+stepmother, dryly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SURPRISES
+
+In all other ways Madame de Nailles did her best to assist in the success
+of the surprise.  On the second of June, the eve of Ste.-Clotilde's day,
+she went out, leaving every opportunity for the grand plot to mature.
+Had she not absented herself in like manner the year before at the same
+date--thus enabling an upholsterer to drape artistically her little salon
+with beautiful thick silk tapestries which had just been imported from
+the East?  Her idea was that this year she might find a certain lacquered
+screen which she coveted.  The Baroness belonged to her period; she liked
+Japanese things.  But, alas!  the charming object that awaited her, with
+a curtain hung over it to prolong the suspense, had nothing Japanese
+about it whatever.  Madame de Nailles received the good wishes of her
+family, responded to them with all proper cordiality, and then was
+dragged up joyously to a picture hanging on the wall of her room, but
+still concealed under the cloth that covered it.
+
+"How good of you!"  she said, with all confidence to her husband.
+
+"It is a picture by Marien!--A portrait by Marien!  A likeness of
+Jacqueline!"
+
+And he uncovered the masterpiece of the great artist, expecting to be
+joyous in the joy with which she would receive it.  But something strange
+occurred.  Madame de Nailles sprang back a step or two, stretching out
+her arms as if repelling an apparition, her face was distorted, her head
+was turned away; then she dropped into the nearest seat and burst into
+tears.
+
+"Mamma!--dear little mamma!--what is it?"  cried Jacqueline, springing
+forward to kiss her.
+
+Madame de Nailles disengaged herself angrily from her embrace.
+
+"Let me alone!"  she cried, "let me alone!--How dared you?"
+
+And impetuously, hardly restraining a gesture of horror and hate, she
+rushed into her own chamber.  Thither her husband followed her, anxious
+and bewildered, and there he witnessed a nervous attack which ended in a
+torrent of reproaches:
+
+Was it possible that he had, not seen the impropriety of those sittings
+to Marien?  Oh, yes!  No doubt he was an old friend of the family, but
+that did not prevent all these deceptions, all these disguises, and all
+the other follies which he had sanctioned--he--Jacqueline's father!--from
+being very improper.  Did he wish to take from her all authority over his
+child?--a girl who was already too much disposed to emancipate herself.
+Her own efforts had all been directed to curb this alarming propensity--
+yes, alarming--alarming for the future.  And all in vain!  There was no
+use in saying more.  'Mon Dieu'! had he no trust in her devotion to his
+child, in her prudence and her foresight, that he must thwart her thus?
+And she had always imagined that for ten years she had faithfully
+fulfilled a mother's duties!  What ingratitude from every one!
+Mademoiselle Schult should be sent away at once.  Jacqueline should go to
+a convent.  They would break off all intercourse with Marien.  They had
+conspired against her--every one.
+
+And then she wept more bitterly than ever--tears of rage, salt tears
+which rubbed the powder off her cheeks and disfigured the face that had
+remained beautiful by her power of will and self-control.  But now the
+disorder of her nerves got the better of precautions.  The blonde angel,
+whose beauty was on the wane, was transformed into a fury.  Her six-and-
+thirty years were fully apparent, her complexion appeared slightly
+blotched, all her defects were obtrusive in contrast with the precocious
+development of beauty in Jacqueline.  She was firmly resolved that her
+stepdaughter's obtrusive womanhood should remain in obscurity a very much
+longer time, under pretence that Jacqueline was still a child.  She was a
+child, at any rate!  The portrait was a lie!  an imposture!  an affront!
+an outrage!
+
+Meantime M. de Nailles, almost beside himself, fancied at first that his
+wife was going mad, but in the midst of her sobs and reproaches he
+managed to discover that he had somehow done her wrong, and when, with a
+broken voice, she cried, "You no longer love me!"  he did not know what
+to do to prove how bitterly he repented having grieved her.  He
+stammered, he made excuses, he owned that he had been to blame, that he
+had been very stupid, and he begged her pardon.  As to the portrait, it
+should be taken from the salon, where, if seen, it might become a pretext
+for foolish compliments to Jacqueline.  Why not send it at once to
+Grandchaux?  In short, he would do anything she wished, provided she
+would leave off crying.
+
+But Madame de Nailles continued to weep.  Her husband was forced at last
+to leave her and to return to Jacqueline, who stood petrified in the
+salon.
+
+"Yes," he said, "your mamma is right.  We have made a deplorable mistake
+in what we have done.  Besides, you must know that this unlucky picture
+is not in the least like you.  Marien has made some use of your features
+to paint a fancy portrait--so we will let nobody see it.  They might
+laugh at you."
+
+In this way he hoped to repair the evil he had done in flattering his
+daughter's vanity, and promoting that dangerous spirit of independence,
+denounced to him a few minutes before, but of which, up to that time, he
+had never heard.
+
+Jacqueline, in her turn, began to sob.
+
+Mademoiselle Schult had cause, too, to wipe her eyes, pretending a more
+or less sincere repentance for her share in the deception.  Vigorously
+cross-questioned by Madame de Nailles, who called upon her to tell all
+she knew, under pain of being dismissed immediately, she saw but one way
+of retaining her situation, which was to deliver up Jacqueline, bound
+hand and foot, to the anger of her stepmother, by telling all she knew of
+the childish romance of which she had been the confidante.  As a reward
+she was permitted (as she had foreseen) to retain her place in the
+character of a spy.
+
+It was a sad Ste.-Clotilde's day that year.  Marien, who came in the
+evening, heard with surprise that the Baroness was indisposed and could
+see no one.  For twelve days after this he continued in disgrace, being
+refused admittance when he called.  Those twelve days were days of
+anguish for Jacqueline.  To see Marien no longer, to be treated with
+coldness by her father, to see in the blue eyes of her stepmother--eyes
+so soft and tender when they looked upon her hitherto--only a harsh,
+mistrustful glare, almost a look of hatred, was a punishment greater than
+she could bear.  What had she done to deserve punishment?  Of what was
+she accused?  She spoke of her wretchedness to Fraulein Schult, who,
+perfidiously, day after day, drew from her something to report to Madame
+de Nailles.  That lady was somewhat consoled, while suffering tortures of
+jealousy, to know that the girl to whom these sufferings were due was
+paying dearly for her fault and was very unhappy.
+
+On the twelfth day something occurred which, though it made no noise in
+the household, had very serious consequences.  The effect it produced on
+Jacqueline was decisive and deplorable.  The poor child, after going
+through all the states of mind endured by those who suffer under
+unmerited disgrace--revolt, indignation, sulkiness, silent obstinacy--
+felt unable to bear it longer.  She resolved to humble herself, hoping
+that by so doing the wall of ice that had arisen between her stepmother
+and herself might be cast down.  By this time she cared less to know of
+what fault she was supposed to be guilty than to be taken back into favor
+as before.  What must she do to obtain forgiveness?  Explanations are
+usually worthless; besides, none might be granted her.  She remembered
+that when she was a small child she had obtained immediate oblivion of
+any fault by throwing herself impulsively into the arms of her little
+mamma, and asking her to forget whatever she had done to displease her,
+for she had not done it on purpose.  She would do the same thing now.
+Putting aside all pride and obstinacy, she would go to this mamma, who,
+for some days, had seemed so different.  She would smother her in kisses.
+She might possibly be repelled at first.  She would not mind it.  She was
+sure that in the end she would be forgiven.
+
+No sooner was this resolution formed than she hastened to put it into
+execution.  It was the time of day when Madame de Nailles was usually
+alone.  Jacqueline went to her bedchamber, but she was not there, and a
+moment after she stood on the threshold of the little salon.  There she
+stopped short, not quite certain how she should proceed, asking herself
+what would be her reception.
+
+"How shall I do it?"  she thought.  "How had I better do it?"
+
+"Bah!"  she answered these doubts.  "It will be very easy.  I will go in
+on tiptoe, so that she can't hear me.  I will slip behind her chair, and
+I will hug her suddenly, so tight, so tenderly, and kiss her till she
+tells me that all has been forgiven."
+
+As she thought thus Jacqueline noiselessly opened the door of the salon,
+over which, on the inner side, hung a thick plush 'portiere'.  But as she
+was about to lift it, the sound of a voice within made her stand
+motionless.  She recognized the tones of Marien.  He was pleading,
+imploring, interrupted now and then by the sharp and still angry voice of
+her mamma.  They were not speaking above their breath, but if she
+listened she could hear them, and, without any scruples of conscience,
+she did listen intently, anxious to see her way through the dark fog in
+which, for twelve days, she had wandered.
+
+"I do not go quite so far as that," said Madame de Nailles, dryly.  "It
+is enough for me that she produced an illusion of such beauty upon you.
+Now I know what to expect--"
+
+"That is nonsense," replied Marien--"mere foolishness.  You jealous!
+jealous of a baby whom I knew when she wore white pinafores, who has
+grown up under my very eyes?  But, so far as I am concerned, she exists
+no longer.  She is not, she never will be in my eyes, a woman.  I shall
+think of her as playing with her doll, eating sugar-plums, and so on."
+
+Jacqueline grew faint.  She shivered and leaned against the door-post.
+
+"One would not suppose so, to judge by the picture with which she has
+inspired you.  You may say what you like, but I know that in all this
+there was a set purpose to insult me."
+
+"Clotilde!"
+
+"In the first place, on no pretext ought you to have been induced to
+paint her portrait."
+
+"Do you think so?  Consider, had I refused, the danger of awakening
+suspicion?  I accepted the commission most unwillingly, much put out by
+it, as you may suppose.  But you are making too much of an imaginary
+fault.  Consign the wretched picture to the barn, if you like.  We will
+never say another word about so foolish a matter.  You promise me to
+forget it, won't you?.... Dear!  you will promise me?"  he added, after a
+pause.
+
+Madame de Nailles sighed and replied: "If not she it will be some one
+else.  I am very unhappy....  I am weak and contemptible...."
+
+"Clotilde!"  replied Marien, in an accent that went to Jacqueline's heart
+like a knife.
+
+She fancied that after this she heard the sound of a kiss, and, with her
+cheeks aflame and her head burning, she rushed away.  She understood
+little of what she had overheard.  She only realized that he had given
+her up, that he had turned her into ridicule, that he had said
+"Clotilde!" to her mother, that he had called her dear--she!--the woman
+she had so adored, so venerated, her best friend, her father's wife, her
+mother by adoption!  Everything in this world seemed to be giving way
+under her feet.  The world was full of falsehood and of treason, and
+life, so bad, so cruel, was no longer what she had supposed it to be.
+It had broken its promise to herself, it had made her bad--bad forever.
+She loved no one, she believed in no one.  She wished she were dead.
+
+How she reached her own room in this state Jacqueline never knew.  She
+was aware at last of being on her knees beside her bed, with her face
+hidden in the bed-clothes.  She was biting them to stifle her desire to
+scream.  Her hands were clenched convulsively.
+
+"Mamma!"  she cried, "mamma!"
+
+Was this a reproach addressed to her she had so long called by that name?
+Or was it an appeal, vibrating with remorse, to her real mother, so long
+forgotten in favor of this false idol, her rival, her enemy?
+
+Undoubtedly, Jacqueline was too innocent, too ignorant to guess the real
+truth from what she had overheard.  But she had learned enough to be no
+longer the pure-minded young girl of a few hours before.  It seemed to
+her as if a fetid swamp now lay before her, barring her entrance into
+life.  Vague as her perceptions were, this swamp before her seemed more
+deep, more dark, more dreadful from uncertainty, and Jacqueline felt that
+thenceforward she could make no step in life without risk of falling into
+it.  To whom now could she open her heart in confidence--that heart
+bleeding and bruised as if it had been trampled one as if some one had
+crushed it?  The thing that she now knew was not like her own little
+personal secrets, such as she had imprudently confided to Fraulein
+Schult.  The words that she had overheard she could repeat to no one.
+She must carry them in her heart, like the barb of an arrow in a secret
+wound, where they would fester and grow more painful day by day.
+
+"But, above all," she said at length, rising from her knees, "let me show
+proper pride."
+
+She bathed her fevered face in cold water, then she walked up to her
+mirror.  As she gazed at herself with a strange interest, trying to see
+whether the entire change so suddenly accomplished in herself had left
+its visible traces on her features, she seemed to see something in her
+eyes that spoke of the clairvoyance of despair.  She smiled at herself,
+to see whether the new Jacqueline could play the part, which--whether she
+would or not--was now assigned to her.  What a sad smile it was!
+
+"I have lost everything," she said, "I have lost everything!"  And she
+remembered, as one remembers something in the far-off long ago, how that
+very morning, when she awoke, her first thought had been "Shall I see him
+to-day?"  Each day she passed without seeing him had seemed to her a lost
+day, and she had accustomed herself to go to sleep thinking of him,
+remembering all he had said to her, and how he had looked at her.  Of
+course, sometimes she had been unhappy, but what a difference it seemed
+between such vague unhappiness and what she now experienced?  And then,
+when she was sad, she could always find a refuge in that dear mamma--in
+that Clotilde whom she vowed she would never kiss again, except with such
+kisses as might be necessary to avoid suspicion.  Kisses of that kind
+were worth nothing.  Quite the contrary!  Could she kiss her father now
+without a pang?  Her father!  He had gone wholly over to the side of that
+other in this affair.  She had seen him in one moment turn against
+herself.  No!--no one was left her!....  If she could only lay her head
+in Modeste's lap and be soothed while she crooned her old songs as in the
+nursery!  But, whatever Marien or any one else might choose to say, she
+was no longer a baby.  The bitter sense of her isolation arose in her.
+She could hardly breathe.  Suddenly she pressed her lips upon the glass
+which reflected her own image, so sad, so pale, so desolate.  She put the
+pity for herself into a long, long, fervent kiss, which seemed to say:
+"Yes, I am all alone--alone forever."  Then, in a spirit of revenge, she
+opened what seemed a safety-valve, preventing her from giving way to any
+other emotion.
+
+She rushed for a little box which she had converted into a sort of
+reliquary.  She took out of it the half-burned cigarette, the old glove,
+the withered violets, and a visiting-card with his name, on which three
+unimportant lines had been written.  She insulted these keepsakes, she
+tore them with her nails, she trampled them underfoot, she reduced them
+to fragments; she left nothing whatever of them, except a pile of shreds,
+which at last she set fire to.  She had a feeling as if she were employed
+in executing two great culprits, who deserved cruel tortures at her
+hands; and, with them, she slew now and forever the foolish fancy she had
+called her love.  By a strange association of ideas, the famous
+composition, so praised by M. Regis, came back to her memory, and she
+cried:
+
+          "Je ne veux me souvenir.... me souvenir de rien!"
+
+"If I remember, I shall be more unhappy.  All has been a dream.  His look
+was a dream, his pressure of my hand, his kiss on the last day, all--all
+--were dreams.  He was making a fool of me when he gave me that pink
+which is now in this pile of ashes.  He was laughing when he told me I
+was more beautiful than was natural.  Never have I been--never shall I be
+in his eyes--more than the baby he remembers playing with her doll."
+
+And unconsciously, as Jacqueline said these words, she imitated the
+careless accent with which she had heard them fall from the lips of the
+artist.  And she would have again to meet him!  If she had had thunder
+and lightning at her command, as she had had the match with which she had
+set fire to the memorials of her juvenile folly, Marien would have been
+annihilated on the spot.  She was at that moment a murderess at heart.
+But the dinner-bell rang.  The young fury gave a last glance at the
+adornments of her pretty bedchamber, so elegant, so original--all blue
+and pink, with a couch covered with silk embroidered with flowers.
+She seemed to say to them all: "Keep my secret.  It is a sad one.  Be
+careful: keep it safely."  The cupids on the clock, the little book-rest
+on a velvet stand, the picture of the Virgin that hung over her bed, with
+rosaries and palms entwined about it, the photographs of her girl-friends
+standing on her writing table in pretty frames of old-fashioned silk-all
+seemed to see her depart with a look of sympathy.
+
+She went down to the dining-room, resolved to prove that she would not
+submit to punishment.  The best way to brave Madame de Nailles was, she
+thought, to affect great calmness and indifference, aye, even, if she
+could, some gayety.  But the task before her was more difficult than she
+had expected.  Apparently, as a proof of reconciliation, Marien had been
+kept to dinner.  To see him so soon again after his words of outrage was
+more than she could bear.  For one moment the earth seemed to sink under
+her feet; she roused her pride by an heroic effort, and that sustained
+her.  She exchanged with the artist, as she always did, a friendly "Good-
+evening!" and ate her dinner, though it nearly choked her.
+
+Madame de Nailles had red eyes; and Jacqueline made the reflection that
+women who are thirty-five should never weep.  She knew that her face had
+not been made ugly by her tears, and this gave her a perverse
+satisfaction in the midst of her misery.  Of Marien she thought: "He sits
+there as if he had been put 'en penitence'."  No doubt he could not
+endure scenes, and the one he had just passed through must have given him
+the downcast look which Jacqueline noticed with contempt.
+
+What she did not know was that his depression had more than one cause.
+He felt--and felt with shame and with discouragement--that the fetters of
+a connection which had long since ceased to charm had been fastened on
+his wrists tighter than ever; and he thought: "I shall lose all my
+energy, I shall lose even my talent!  While I wear these chains I shall
+see ever before me--ah! tortures of Tantalus!--the vision of a new love,
+fresh as the dawn which beckons to me as it passes before my sight, which
+lays on me the light touch of a caress, while I am forced to see it glide
+away, to let it vanish, disappear forever!  And alas!  that is not all.
+If I have deceived an inexperienced heart by words spoken or deeds done
+in a moment of weakness or temptation, can I flatter myself that I have
+acted like an honest man?"
+
+This is what Marien was really thinking, while Jacqueline looked at him
+with an expression she strove to make indifferent, but which he
+interpreted, though she knew it not: "You have done me all the harm you
+can."
+
+M. de Nailles meantime went on talking, with little response from his
+wife or his guest, about some vehement discussion of a new law going on
+just then in the Chamber, and he became so interested in his own
+discourse that he did not remark the constraint of the others.
+
+Marien at last, tired of responding in monosyllables to his remarks,
+said abruptly, a short time before dessert was placed upon the table,
+something about the probability of his soon going to Italy.
+
+"A pilgrimage of art to Florence!"  cried the Baron, turning at once from
+politics.  "That's good.  But wait a little--let it be after the rising
+of the Chamber.  We will follow your steps.  It has been the desire of my
+wife's life--a little jaunt to Italy.  Has it not, Clotilde?  So we will
+all go in September or October.  What say you?"
+
+"In September or October, whichever suits you," said Marien, with
+despair.
+
+Not one month of liberty!  Why couldn't they leave him to his Savanarola!
+Must he drag about a ball and chain like a galley-slave?
+
+Clotilde rewarded M. de Nailles with a smile--the first smile she had
+given him since their quarrel about Jacqueline.
+
+"My wife has got over her displeasure," he said to himself, delightedly.
+
+Jacqueline, on her part, well remembered the day when Hubert had spoken
+to her for the first time of his intended journey, and how he had added,
+in a tone which she now knew to be badinage, but which then, alas!  she
+had believed serious: "Suppose we go together!"
+
+And her impulse to shed tears became so great, that when they left the
+dinner-table she escaped to her own room, under pretence of a headache.
+
+"Yes--you are looking wretchedly," said her stepmother.  And, turning to
+M. de Nailles, she added: "Don't you think, 'mon ami', she is as yellow
+as a quince!"  Marien dared not press the hand which she, who had been
+his little friend for years, offered him as usual, but this time with
+repugnance.
+
+"You are suffering, my poor Jacqueline!"  he ventured to say.
+
+"Oh! not much," she answered, with a glance at once haughty and defiant,
+"to-morrow I shall be quite well again."
+
+And, saying this, she had the courage to laugh.
+
+But she was not quite well the next day; and for many days after she was
+forced to stay in bed.  The doctor who came to see her talked about "low
+fever," attributed it to too rapid growth, and prescribed sea-bathing for
+her that summer.  The fever, which was not very severe, was of great
+service to Jacqueline.  It enabled her to recover in quiet from the
+effects of a bitter deception.
+
+Madame de Nailles was not sufficiently uneasy about her to be always at
+her bedside.  Usually the sick girl stayed alone, with her window-
+curtains closed, lying there in the soft half-light that was soothing to
+her nerves.  The silence was broken at intervals by the voice of Modeste,
+who would come and offer her her medicine.  When Jacqueline had taken it,
+she would shut her eyes, and resume, half asleep, her sad reflections.
+These were always the same.  What could be the tie between her stepmother
+and Marien?
+
+She tried to recall all the proofs of friendship she had seen pass
+between them, but all had taken place openly.  Nothing that she could
+remember seemed suspicious.  So she thought at first, but as she thought
+more, lying, feverish, upon her bed, several things, little noticed at
+the time, were recalled to her remembrance.  They might mean nothing, or
+they might mean much.  In the latter case, Jacqueline could not
+understand them very well.  But she knew he had called her "Clotilde,"
+that he had even dared to say "thou" to her in private--these were things
+she knew of her own knowledge.  Her pulse beat quicker as she thought of
+them; her head burned.  In that studio, where she had passed so many
+happy hours, had Marien and her stepmother ever met as lovers?
+
+Her stepmother and Marien!  She could not understand what it meant.
+Must she apply to them a dreadful word that she had picked up in the
+history books, where it had been associated with such women as Margaret
+of Burgundy, Isabeau of Bavaria, Anne Boleyn, and other princesses of
+very evil reputation?  She had looked it out in the dictionary, where the
+meaning given was: "To be unfaithful to conjugal vows."  Even then she
+could not understand precisely the meaning of adultery, and she set
+herself to solve it during the long lonely days when she was
+convalescent.  When she was able to walk from one room to another, she
+wandered in a loose dressing-gown, whose long, lank folds showed that she
+had grown taller and thinner during her illness, into the room that held
+the books, and went boldly up to the bookcase, the key of which had been
+left in the lock, for everybody had entire confidence in Jacqueline's
+scrupulous honesty.  Never before had she broken a promise; she knew that
+a well-brought-up young girl ought to read only such books as were put
+into her hands.  The idea of taking a volume from those shelves had no
+more occurred to her than the idea of taking money out of somebody's
+purse; that is, up to this moment it had not occurred to her to do so;
+but now that she had lost all respect for those in authority over her,
+Jacqueline considered herself released from any obligation to obey them.
+She therefore made use of the first opportunity that presented itself to
+take down a novel of George Sand, which she had heard spoken of as a very
+dangerous book, not doubting it would throw some light on the subject
+that absorbed her.  But she shut up the volume in a rage when she found
+that it had nothing but excuses to offer for the fall of a married woman.
+After that, and guided only by chance, she read a number of other novels,
+most of which were of antediluvian date, thus accounting, she supposed,
+for their sentiments, which she found old fashioned.  We should be wrong,
+however, if we supposed that Jacqueline's crude judgment of these books
+had nothing in common with true criticism.  Her only object, however, in
+reading all this sentimental prose was to discover, as formerly she had
+found in poetry, something that applied to her own case; but she soon
+discovered that all the sentimental heroines in the so-called bad books
+were persons who had had bad husbands; besides, they were either widows
+or old women--at least thirty years old!  It was astounding!  There was
+nothing--absolutely nothing--about young girls, except instances in which
+they renounced their hopes of happiness.  What an injustice!  Among these
+victims the two that most attracted her sympathy were Madame de Camors
+and Renee Mauperin.  But what horrors surrounded them!  What a varied
+assortment of deceptions, treacheries, and mysteries, lay hidden under
+the outward decency and respectability of what men called "the world!"
+Her young head became a stage on which strange plays were acted.  What
+one reads is good or bad for us, according to the frame of mind in which
+we read it--according as we discover in a volume healing for the sickness
+of our souls--or the contrary.  In view of the circumstances in which she
+found herself, what Jacqueline absorbed from these books was poison.
+
+When, after the physical and moral crisis through which she had passed,
+Jacqueline resumed the life of every day, she had in her sad eyes, around
+which for some time past had been dark circles, an expression of anxiety
+such as the first contact with a knowledge of evil might have put into
+Eve's eyes after she had plucked the apple.  Her investigations had very
+imperfectly enlightened her.  She was as much perplexed as ever, with
+some false ideas besides.  When she was well again, however, she
+continued weak and languid; she felt somehow as if, she had come back to
+her old surroundings from some place far away.  Everything about her now
+seemed sad and unfamiliar, though outwardly nothing was altered.
+Her parents had apparently forgotten the unhappy episode of the picture.
+It had been sent away to Grandchaux, which was tantamount to its being
+buried.  Hubert Marien had resumed his habits of intimacy in the family.
+From that time forth he took less and less notice of Jacqueline--whether
+it were that he owed her a grudge for all the annoyance she had been the
+means of bringing upon him, or whether he feared to burn himself in the
+flame which had once scorched him more than he admitted to himself, who
+can say?  Perhaps he was only acting in obedience to orders.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A CONVENT FLOWER
+
+One of Jacqueline's first walks, after she had recovered, was to see her
+cousin Giselle at her convent.  She did not seek this friend's society
+when she was happy and in a humor for amusement, for she thought her a
+little straightlaced, or, as she said, too like a nun; but nobody could
+condole or sympathize with a friend in trouble like Giselle.  It seemed
+as if nature herself had intended her for a Sister of Charity--a Gray
+Sister, as Jacqueline would sometimes call her, making fun of her
+somewhat dull intellect, which had been benumbed, rather than stimulated,
+by the education she had received.
+
+The Benedictine Convent is situated in a dull street on the left bank of
+the Seine, all gardens and hotels--that is, detached houses.  Grass
+sprouted here and there among the cobblestones.  There were no street-
+lamps and no policemen.  Profound silence reigned there.  The petals of
+an acacia, which peeped timidly over its high wall, dropped, like flakes
+of snow, on the few pedestrians who passed by it in the springtime.
+
+The enormous porte-cochere gave entrance into a square courtyard, on one
+side of which was the chapel, on the other, the door that led into the
+convent.  Here Jacqueline presented herself, accompanied by her old
+nurse, Modeste.  She had not yet resumed her German lessons, and was
+striving to put off as long as possible any intercourse with Fraulein
+Schult, who had known of her foolish fancy, and who might perhaps renew
+the odious subject.  Walking with Modeste, on the contrary, seemed like
+going back to the days of her childhood, the remembrance of which soothed
+her like a recollection of happiness and peace, now very far away; it was
+a reminiscence of the far-off limbo in which her young soul, pure and
+white, had floated, without rapture, but without any great grief or pain.
+
+The porteress showed them into the parlor.  There they found several
+pupils who were talking to members of their families, from whom they were
+separated by a grille, whose black bars gave to those within the
+appearance of captives, and made rather a barrier to eager demonstrations
+of affection, though they did not hinder the reception of good things to
+eat.
+
+"Tiens!  I have brought you some chocolate," said Jacqueline to Giselle,
+as soon as her cousin appeared, looking far prettier in her black cloth
+frock than when she wore an ordinary walking-costume.  Her fair hair was
+drawn back 'a la Chinoise' from a white forehead resembling that of a
+German Madonna; it was one of those foreheads, slightly and delicately
+curved, which phrenologists tell us indicate reflection and enthusiasm.
+
+But Giselle, without thanking Jacqueline for the chocolate, exclaimed at
+once: "Mon Dieu!  What has been the matter with you?"
+
+She spoke rather louder than usual, it being understood that
+conversations were to be carried on in a low tone, so as not to interfere
+with those of other persons.  She added: "I find you so altered."
+
+"Yes--I have been ill," said Jacqueline, carelessly, "sorrow has made me
+ill," she added, in a whisper, looking to see whether the nun, who was
+discreetly keeping watch, walking to and fro behind the grille, might
+chance to be listening.  "Oh, ask me no questions!  I must never tell
+you--but for me, you must know--the happiness of my life is at an end--
+is at an end--"
+
+She felt herself to be very interesting while she was speaking thus; her
+sorrows were somewhat assuaged.  There was undoubtedly a certain pleasure
+in letting some one look down into the unfathomable, mysterious depths of
+a suffering soul.
+
+She had expected much curiosity on the part of Giselle, and had resolved
+beforehand to give her no answers; but Giselle only sighed, and said,
+softly:
+
+"Ah--my poor darling!  I, too, am very unhappy.  If you only knew--"
+
+"How?  Good heavens!  what can have happened to you here?"
+
+"Here?  oh!  nothing, of course; but this year I am to leave the convent
+--and I think I can guess what will then be before me."
+
+Here, seeing that the nun who was keeping guard was listening, Giselle,
+with great presence of mind, spoke louder on indifferent subjects till
+she had passed out of earshot, then she rapidly poured her secret into
+Jacqueline's ear.
+
+From a few words that had passed between her grandmother and Madame
+d'Argy, she had found out that Madame de Monredon intended to marry her.
+
+"But that need not make you unhappy," said Jacqueline, "unless he is
+really distasteful to you."
+
+"That is what I am not sure about--perhaps he is not the one I think.
+But I hardly know why--I have a dread, a great dread, that it is one of
+our neighbors in the country.  Grandmamma has several times spoken in my
+presence of the advantage of uniting our two estates--they touch each
+other--oh!  I know her ideas!  she wants a man well-born, one who has a
+position in the world--some one, as she says, who knows something of
+life--that is, I suppose, some one no longer young, and who has not much
+hair on his head--like Monsieur de Talbrun."
+
+"Is he very ugly--this Monsieur de Talbrun?"
+
+"He's not ugly--and not handsome.  But, just think!  he is thirty-four!"
+
+Jacqueline blushed, seeing in this speech a reflection on her own taste
+in such matters.
+
+"That's twice my age," sighed Giselle.
+
+"Of course that would be dreadful if he were to stay always twice your
+age--for instance, if you were now thirty-five, he would be seventy, and
+a hundred and twenty when you reached your sixtieth year--but really to
+be twice your age now will only make him seventeen years older than
+yourself."
+
+In the midst of this chatter, which was beginning to attract the notice
+of the nun, they broke off with a laugh, but it was only one of those
+laughs 'au bout des levres', uttered by persons who have made up their
+minds to be unhappy.  Then Giselle went on:
+
+"I know nothing about him, you understand--but he frightens me.
+I tremble to think of taking his arm, of talking to him, of being his
+wife.  Just think even of saying thou to him!"
+
+"But married people don't say thou to each other nowadays," said
+Jacqueline, "it is considered vulgar."
+
+"But I shall have to call him by his Christian name!"
+
+"What is Monsieur de Talbrun's Christian name?"
+
+"Oscar."
+
+"Humph!  That is not a very pretty name, but you could get over the
+difficulty--you could say 'mon ami'.  After all, your sorrows are less
+than mine."
+
+"Poor Jacqueline!"  said Giselle, her soft hazel eyes moist with
+sympathy.
+
+"I have lost at one blow all my illusions, and I have made a horrible
+discovery, that it would be wicked to tell to any one--you understand--
+not even to my confessor."
+
+"Heavens!  but you could tell your mother!"
+
+"You forget, I have no mother," replied Jacqueline in a tone which
+frightened her friend: "I had a dear mamma once, but she would enter less
+than any one into my sorrows; and as to my father--it would make things
+worse to speak to him," she added, clasping her hands.  "Have you ever
+read any novels, Giselle?"
+
+"Hem!"  said the discreet voice of the nun, by way of warning.
+
+"Two or three by Walter Scott."
+
+"Oh!  then you can imagine nothing like what I could tell you.  How
+horrid that nun is, she stops always as she comes near us!  Why can't she
+do as Modeste does, and leave us to talk by ourselves?"
+
+It seemed indeed as if the Argus in a black veil had overheard part of
+this conversation, not perhaps the griefs of Jacqueline, which were not
+very intelligible, but some of the words spoken by Giselle, for, drawing
+near her, she said, gently: "We, too, shall all grieve to lose you, my
+dearest child; but remember one can serve God anywhere, and save one's
+soul--in the world as well as in a convent."  And she passed on, giving a
+kind smile to Jacqueline, whom she knew, having seen her several times in
+the convent parlor, and whom she thought a nice girl, notwithstanding
+what she called her "fly-away airs"--"the airs they acquire from modern
+education," she said to herself, with a sigh.
+
+"Those poor ladies would have us think of nothing but a future life,"
+said Jacqueline, shrugging her shoulders.
+
+"We ought to think of it first of all," said Giselle, who had become
+serious.  "Sometimes I think my place should have been among these ladies
+who have brought me up.  They are so good, and they seem to be so happy.
+Besides, do you know, I stand less in awe of them than I do of my
+grandmother.  When grandmamma orders me I never shall dare to object,
+even if--But you must think me very selfish, my poor Jacqueline!  I am
+talking only of myself.  Do you know what you ought to do as you go away?
+You should go into the chapel, and pray with all your heart for me, that
+I may be brought in safety through my troubles about which I have told
+you, and I will do the same for yours, about which you have not told me.
+An exchange of prayers is the best foundation for a friendship," she
+added; for Giselle had many little convent maxims at her fingers' ends,
+to which, when she uttered them, her sincerity of look and tone gave a
+personal meaning.
+
+"You are right," said Jacqueline, much moved.  "It has done me good to
+see you.  Take this chocolate."
+
+"And you must take this," said Giselle, giving her a little illuminated
+card, with sacred words and symbols.
+
+"Adieu, dearest-say, have you ever detested any one?"
+
+"Never!"  cried Giselle, with horror.
+
+"Well!  I do detest--detest--You are right, I will go into the chapel.
+I need some exorcism."
+
+And laughing at her use of this last word--the same little mirthless
+laugh that she had uttered before--Jacqueline went away, followed by the
+admiring glances of the other girls, who from behind the bars of their
+cage noted the brilliant plumage of this bird who was at liberty.  She
+crossed the courtyard, and, followed by Modeste, entered the chapel,
+where she sank upon her knees.  The mystic half-light of the place,
+tinged purple by its passage through the stained windows, seemed to
+enlarge the little chancel, parted in two by a double grille, behind
+which the nuns could hear the service without being seen.
+
+The silence was so deep that the low murmur of a prayer could now and
+then be heard.  The worshipers might have fancied themselves a hundred
+leagues from all the noises of the world, which seemed to die out when
+they reached the convent walls.
+
+Jacqueline read, and re-read mechanically, the words printed in letters
+of gold on the little card Giselle had given her.  It was a symbolical
+picture, and very ugly; but the words were: "Oh! that I had wings like a
+dove, for then would I flee away and be at rest."
+
+"Wings!"  she repeated, with vague aspiration.  The aspiration seemed to
+disengage her from herself, and from this earth, which had nothing more
+to offer her.  Ah!  how far away was now the time when she had entered
+churches, full of happiness and hope, to offer a candle that her prayer
+might be granted, which she felt sure it would be!  All was vanity!  As
+she gazed at the grille, behind which so many women, whose worldly lives
+had been cut short, now lived, safe from the sorrows and temptations of
+this world, Jacqueline seemed for the first time to understand why
+Giselle regretted that she might not share forever the blessed peace
+enjoyed in the convent.  A torpor stole over her, caused by the dimness,
+the faint odor of the incense, and the solemn silence.  She imagined
+herself in the act of giving up the world.  She saw herself in a veil,
+with her eyes raised to Heaven, very pale, standing behind the grille.
+She would have to cut off her hair.
+
+That seemed hard, but she would make the sacrifice.  She would accept
+anything, provided the ungrateful pair, whom she would not name, could
+feel sorrow for her loss--maybe even remorse.  Full of these ideas, which
+certainly had little in common with the feelings of those who seek to
+forgive those who trespass against them, Jacqueline continued to imagine
+herself a Benedictine sister, under the soothing influence of her
+surroundings, just as she had mistaken the effects of physical weakness
+when she was ill for a desire to die.  Such feelings were the result of a
+void which the whole universe, as she thought, never could fill, but it
+was really a temporary vacuum, like that caused by the loss of a first
+tooth.  These teeth come out with the first jar, and nature intends them
+to be speedily replaced by others, much more permanent; but children cry
+when they are pulled out, and fancy they are in very tight.  Perhaps they
+suffer, after all, nearly as much as they think they do.
+
+"Mademoiselle!"  said Modeste, touching her on the shoulder.
+
+"I was content to be here," answered Jacqueline, with a sigh.  "Do you
+know, Modeste," she went on, when they got out of doors, "that I have
+almost made up my mind to be a nun.  What do you say to that?"
+
+"Heaven forbid!"  cried the old nurse, much startled.
+
+"Life is so hard," replied her young mistress.
+
+"Not for you, anyhow.  It would be a sin to say so."
+
+"Ah! Modeste, we so little know the real truth of things--we can see only
+appearances.  Don't you think that a linen band over my forehead would be
+very becoming to me?  I should look like Saint Theresa."
+
+"And what would be the good of your looking like Saint Theresa, when
+there would be nobody to tell you so?"  said Modeste, with the practical
+good-sense that never forsook her.  "You would be beautiful for yourself
+alone.  You would not even be allowed a looking-glass just talk about
+that fancy to Monsieur--we should soon see what he would say to such a
+notion."
+
+M. de Nailles, having just left the Chamber, was crossing the Pont de la
+Concorde on foot at this moment.  His daughter ran up to him, and caught
+him by the arm.  They walked homeward talking of very different things
+from bolts and bars.  The Baron, who was a weak man, thought in his heart
+that he had been too severe with his daughter for some time past.  As he
+recalled what had taken place, the anger of Madame de Nailles in the
+matter of the picture seemed to him to have been extreme and unnecessary.
+Jacqueline was just at an age when young girls are apt to be nervous and
+impressionable; they had been wrong to be rough with one who was so
+sensitive.  His wife was quite of his opinion, she acknowledged (not
+wishing him to think too much on the subject) that she had been too
+quick-tempered.
+
+"Yes," she had said, frankly, "I am jealous; I want things to myself.  I
+own I was angry when I thought that Jacqueline was about to throw off my
+authority, and hurt when I found she was capable of keeping up a
+concealment--when I believed she was so open always with me.  My behavior
+was foolish, I acknowledge.  But what can we do?  Neither of us can go
+and ask her pardon?"
+
+"Of course not," said the father, "all we can do is to treat her with a
+little more consideration for the future; and, with your permission, I
+shall use her illness as an excuse for spoiling her a little."
+
+"You have carte blanche, my dear, I agree to everything."  So M. de
+Nailles, with his daughter's arm in his, began to spoil her, as he had
+intended.
+
+"You are still rather pale," he said, "but sea-bathing will change all
+that.  Would you like to go to the seaside next month?"
+
+Jacqueline answered with a little incredulous smile:
+
+"Oh, certainly, papa."
+
+"You don't seem very sure about it.  In the first place, where shall we
+go?  Your mamma seems to fancy Houlgate?"
+
+"Of course we must do what she wishes," replied Jacqueline, rather
+bitterly.
+
+"But, little daughter, what would you like?  What do you say to Treport?"
+
+"I should like Treport very much, because there we should be near Madame
+d'Argy."
+
+Jacqueline had felt much drawn to Madame d'Argy since her troubles, for
+she had been the nearest friend of her own mother--her own dead mother,
+too long forgotten.  The chateau of Madame d'Argy, called Lizerolles, was
+only two miles from Treport, in a charming situation on the road to St.
+Valery.
+
+"That's the very thing, then!"  said M. de Nailles.
+
+"Fred is going to spend a month at Lizerolles with his mother.  You might
+ride on horseback with him.  He is going to enjoy a holiday, poor fellow!
+before he has to be sent off on long and distant voyages."
+
+"I don't know how to ride," said Jacqueline, still in the tone of a
+victim.
+
+"The doctor thinks riding would be good for you, and you have time enough
+yet to take some lessons.  Mademoiselle Schult could take you nine or ten
+times to the riding-school.  And I will go with you the first time,"
+added M. de Nailles, in despair at not having been able to please her.
+"To-day we will go to Blackfern's and order a habit--a riding-habit!
+Can I do more?"
+
+At this, as if by magic, whether she would or not, the lines of sadness
+and sullenness disappeared from Jacqueline's face; her eyes sparkled.
+She gave one more proof, that to every Parisienne worthy of the name,
+the two pleasures in riding are, first to have a perfectly fitting habit,
+secondly, to have the opportunity of showing how pretty she can be after
+a new fashion.
+
+"Shall we go to Blackfern's now?"
+
+"This very moment, if you wish it."
+
+"You really mean Blackfern?  Yvonne's habit came from Blackfern's!"
+Yvonne d'Etaples was the incarnation of chic--of fashionable elegance--
+in Jacqueline's eyes.  Her heart beat with pleasure when she thought how
+Belle and Dolly would envy her when she told them: "I have a myrtle-green
+riding-habit, just like Yvonne's."  She danced rather than walked as they
+went together to Blackfern's.  A habit was much nicer than a long gown.
+
+A quarter of an hour later they were in the waiting-room, where the last
+creations of the great ladies' tailor, were displayed upon lay figures,
+among saleswomen and 'essayeuses', the very prettiest that could be found
+in England or the Batignolles, chosen because they showed off to
+perfection anything that could be put upon their shoulders, from the
+ugliest to the most extravagant.  Deceived by the unusual elegance of
+these beautiful figures, ladies who are neither young nor well-shaped
+allow themselves to be beguiled and cajoled into buying things not suited
+to them.  Very seldom does a hunchbacked dowager hesitate to put upon her
+shoulders the garment that draped so charmingly those of the living
+statue hired to parade before her.  Jacqueline could not help laughing as
+she watched this way of hunting larks; and thought the mirror might have
+warned them, like a scarecrow, rather than have tempted them into the
+snare.
+
+The head tailor of the establishment made them wait long enough to allow
+the pretty showgirls to accomplish their work of temptation.  They
+fascinated Jacqueline's father by their graces and their glances, while
+at the same time they warbled into his daughter's ear, with a slightly
+foreign' accent: "That would be so becoming to Mademoiselle."
+
+For ladies going to the seaside there were things of the most exquisite
+simplicity: this white fur, trimmed with white velvet, for instance; that
+jacket like the uniform of a naval officer with a cap to match--"All to
+please Fred," said Jacqueline, laughing.  M. de Nailles, while they
+waited for the tailor, chose two costumes quite as original as those of
+Mademoiselle d'Etaples, which delighted Jacqueline all the more, because
+she thought it probable they would displease her stepmother.  At last the
+magnificent personage, his face adorned with luxuriant whiskers, appeared
+with the bow of a great artist or a diplomatist; took Jacqueline's
+measure as if he were fulfilling some important function, said a few
+brief words to his secretary, and then disappeared; the group of English
+beauties saying in chorus that Mademoiselle might come back that day week
+and try it on.
+
+Accordingly, a week later Jacqueline, seated on the wooden-horse used for
+this purpose, had the satisfaction of assuring herself that her habit,
+fitting marvelously to her bust, showed not a wrinkle, any more than a
+'gant de Suede' shows on the hand; it was closely fitted to a figure not
+yet fully developed, but which the creator of the chef-d'oeuvre deigned
+to declare was faultless.  Usually, he said, he recommended his customers
+to wear a certain corset of a special cut, with elastic material over the
+hips covered by satin that matched the riding-habit, but at
+Mademoiselle's age, and so supple as she was, the corset was not
+necessary.  In short, the habit was fashioned to perfection, and fitted
+like her skin to her little flexible figure.  In her close-fitting
+petticoat, her riding-trousers and nothing else, Jacqueline felt herself
+half naked, though she was buttoned up to her throat.  She had taken an
+attitude on her wooden horse such as might have been envied by an
+accomplished equestrienne, her elbows held well back, her shoulders down,
+her chest expanded, her right leg over the pommel, her left foot in the
+stirrup, and never after did any real gallop give her the same delight as
+this imaginary ride on an imaginary horse, she looking at herself with
+entire satisfaction all the time in an enormous cheval-glass.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Great interval between a dream and its execution
+Music--so often dangerous to married happiness
+Old women--at least thirty years old!
+Seldom troubled himself to please any one he did not care for
+Small women ought not to grow stout
+Sympathetic listening, never having herself anything to say
+The bandage love ties over the eyes of men
+Waste all that upon a thing that nobody will ever look at
+Women who are thirty-five should never weep
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Jacqueline, v1
+by Therese Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+JACQUELINE
+
+By THERESE BENTZON (MME. BLANC)
+
+
+
+BOOK 2.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE BLUE BAND
+
+Love, like any other human malady, should be treated according to the age
+and temperament of the sufferer.  Madame de Nailles, who was a very keen
+observer, especially where her own interests were concerned, lent herself
+with the best possible grace to everything that might amuse and distract
+Jacqueline, of whom she had by this time grown afraid.  Not that she now
+dreaded her as a rival.  The attitude of coldness and reserve that the
+young girl had adopted in her intercourse with Marien, her stepmother
+could see, was no evidence of coquetry.  She showed, in her behavior to
+the friend of the family, a freedom from embarrassment which was new to
+her, and a frigidity which could not possibly have been assumed so
+persistently.  No!  what struck Madame de Nailles was the suddenness of
+this transformation.  Jacqueline evidently took no further interest in
+Marien; she had apparently no longer any affection for herself--she, who
+had been once her dear little mamma, whom she had loved so tenderly, now
+felt herself to be considered only as a stepmother.  Fraulein Schult,
+too, received no more confidences.  What did it all mean?
+
+Had Jacqueline, through any means, discovered a secret, which, in her
+hands, might be turned into a most dangerous weapon?  She had a way of
+saying before the guilty pair: "Poor papa!"  with an air of pity, as she
+kissed him, which made Madame de Nailles's flesh creep, and sometimes she
+would amuse herself by making ambiguous remarks which shot arrows of
+suspicion into a heart already afraid.  "I feel sure," thought the
+Baroness, "that she has found out everything.  But, no!  it seems
+impossible.  How can I discover what she knows?"
+
+Jacqueline's revenge consisted in leaving her stepmother in doubt.  She
+more than suspected, not without cause, that Fraulein Schult was false to
+her, and had the wit to baffle all the clever questions of her
+'promeneuse'.
+
+"My worship of a man of genius--a great artist?  Oh!  that has all come
+to an end since I have found out that his devotion belongs to an elderly
+lady with a fair complexion and light hair.  I am only sorry for him."
+
+Jacqueline had great hopes that these cruel words would be reported--as
+they were--to her stepmother, and, of course, they did not mitigate the
+Baroness's uneasiness.  Madame de Nailles revenged herself for this
+insult by dismissing the innocent echo of the impertinence--of course,
+under some plausible pretext.  She felt it necessary also to be very
+cautious how she treated the enemy whom she was forced to shelter under
+her own roof.  Her policy--a policy imposed on her by force of
+circumstances--was one of great indulgence and consideration, so that
+Jacqueline, soon feeling that she was for the present under no control,
+took the bit between her teeth.  No other impression can adequately
+convey an idea of the sort of fury with which she plunged into pleasure
+and excitement, a state of mind which apparently, without any transition,
+succeeded her late melancholy.  She had done with sentiment, she thought,
+forever.  She meant to be practical and positive, a little Parisienne,
+and "in the swim."  There were plenty of examples among those she knew
+that she could follow.  Berthe, Helene, and Claire Wermant were excellent
+leaders in that sort of thing.  Those three daughters of the 'agent de
+change' were at this time at Treport, in charge of a governess, who let
+them do whatever they pleased, subject only to be scolded by their
+father, who came down every Saturday to Treport, on that train that was
+called the 'train des maris'.  They had made friends with two or three
+American girls, who were called "fast," and Jacqueline was soon enrolled
+in the ranks of that gay company.
+
+The cure that was begun on the wooden horse at Blackfern's was completed
+on the sea-shore.
+
+The girls with whom she now associated were nine or ten little imps of
+Satan, who, with their hair flying in the wind and their caps over one
+ear, made the quiet beach ring with their boy-like gayety.  They were
+called "the Blue Band," because of a sort of uniform that they adopted.
+We speak of them intentionally as masculine, and not feminine, because
+what is masculine best suited their appearance and behavior, for, though
+all could flirt like coquettes of experience, they were more like boys
+than girls, if judged by their age and their costume.
+
+These Blues lived close to one another on that avenue that is edged with
+chalets, cottages, and villas, whose lower floors are abundantly provided
+with great glass windows, which seem to let the ocean into their very
+rooms, as well as to lay bare everything that passes in them to the
+public eye, as frankly as if their inmates bivouacked in the open street.
+Nothing was private; neither the meals, nor the coming and going of
+visitors.  It must be said, however, that the inhabitants of these glass
+houses were very seldom at home.  Bathing, and croquet, or tennis, at low
+water, on the sands, searching for shells, fishing with nets, dances at
+the Casino, little family dances alternating with concerts, to which even
+children went till nine o'clock, would seem enough to fill up the days of
+these young people, but they had also to make boating excursions to
+Cayeux, Crotoy, and Hourdel, besides riding parties in the beautiful
+country that surrounded the Chateau of Lizerolles, where they usually
+dismounted on their return.
+
+At Lizerolles they were received by Madame d'Argy, who was delighted that
+they provided safe amusement for her son, who appeared in the midst of
+this group of half-grown girls like a young cock among the hens of his
+harem.  Frederic d'Argy, the young naval officer, who was enjoying his
+holiday, as M. de Nailles had said, was enjoying it exceedingly.  How
+often, long after, on board the ship Floye, as he paced the silent
+quarter-deck, far from any opportunity of flirting, did he recall the
+forms and faces of these young girls, some dark, some fair, some rosy-
+half-women and half-children, who made much of him, and scolded him, and
+teased him, and contended for his attentions, while no better could be
+had, on purpose to tease one another.  Oh!  what a delightful time he had
+had!  They did not leave him to himself one moment.  He had to lift them
+into their saddles, to assist them as they clambered over the rocks, to
+superintend their attempts at swimming, to dance with them all by turns,
+and to look after them in the difficult character of Mentor, for he was
+older than they, and were they not entrusted to his care?  What a serious
+responsibility!  Had not Mentor even found himself too often timid and
+excited when one little firm foot was placed in his hand, when his arm
+was round one little waist, when he could render her as a cavalier a
+thousand little services, or accept with gladness the role of her
+consoler.  He did everything he could think of to please them, finding
+all of them charming, though Jacqueline never ceased to be the one he
+preferred, a preference which she might easily have inferred from the
+poor lad's unusual timidity and awkwardness when he was brought into
+contact with her.  But she paid no attention to his devotion, accepting
+himself and all he did for her as, in some sort, her personal property.
+
+He was of no consequence, he did not count; what was he but her comrade
+and former playfellow?
+
+Happily for Fred, he took pleasure in the familiarity with which she
+treated him--a familiarity which, had he known it, was not flattering.
+He was in the seventh heaven for a whole fortnight, during which he was
+the recipient of more dried flowers and bows of ribbon than he ever got
+in all the rest of his life--the American girls were very fond of giving
+keepsakes--but then his star waned.  He was no longer the only one.  The
+grown-up brother of the Wermants came to Treport--Raoul, with his air of
+a young man about town--a boulevardier, with his jacket cut in the latest
+fashion, with his cockle-shell of a boat, which he managed as well on
+salt water as on fresh, sculling with his arms bare, a cigarette in his
+mouth, a monocle in his eye, and a pith-helmet, such as is worn in India.
+The young ladies used to gather on the sands to watch him as he struck
+the water with the broad blade of his scull, near enough for them to see
+and to admire his nautical ability.  They thought all his jokes amusing,
+and they delighted in his way of seizing his partner for a waltz and
+bearing her off as if she were a prize, hardly allowing her to touch the
+floor.
+
+Fred thought him, with his stock of old jokes, very ill-mannered.  He
+laughed at his sculling, and had a great mind to strike him after he saw
+him waltzing with Jacqueline.  But he had to acknowledge the general
+appreciation felt for the fellow whom he called vulgar.
+
+Raoul Wermant did not stay long at Treport.  He had only come to see his
+sisters on his way to Dieppe, where he expected to meet a certain Leah
+Skip, an actress from the 'Nouveautes'.  If he kept her waiting, however,
+for some days, it was because he was loath to leave the handsome Madame
+de Villegry, who was living near her friend Madame de Nailles, recruiting
+herself after the fatigues of the winter season.  Such being the
+situation, the young girls of the Blue Band might have tried in vain to
+make any impression upon him.  But the hatred with which he inspired Fred
+found some relief in the composition of fragments of melancholy verse,
+which the young midshipman hid under his mattresses.  It is not an
+uncommon thing for naval men to combine a love of the sea with a love of
+poetry.  Fred's verses were not good, but they were full of dejection.
+The poor fellow compared Raoul Wermant to Faust, and himself to Siebel.
+He spoke of
+
+               The youth whose eyes were brimming with salt tears,
+               Whose heart was troubled by a thousand fears,
+               Poor slighted lover!-since in his heavy heart
+               All his illusions perish and depart.
+
+Again, he wrote of Siebel:
+
+               O Siebel!--thine is but the common fate!
+               They told thee Fortune upon youth would wait;
+               'Tis false when love's in question-and you may--
+
+Here he enumerated all the proofs of tenderness possible for a woman to
+give her lover, and then he added:
+
+               You may know all, poor Siebel!--all, some day,
+               When weary of this life and all its dreams,
+               You learn to know it is not what it seems;
+               When there is nothing that can cheer you more,
+               All that remains is fondly to adore!
+
+And after trying in vain to find a rhyme for lover, he cried:
+
+               Oh!  tell me--if one grief exceeds another
+               Is not this worst, to feel mere friendship moves
+               To cruel kindness the dear girl he loves?
+
+Fred's mother surprised him one night while he was watering with his
+tears the ink he was putting to so sorry a use.  She had been aware that
+he sat up late at night--his sleeplessness was not the insomnia of
+genius--for she had seen the glare of light from his little lamp burning
+later than the usual bedtime of the chateau, in one of the turret
+chambers at Lizerolles.
+
+In vain Fred denied that he was doing anything, in vain he tried to put
+his papers out of sight; his mother was so persuasive that at last he
+owned everything to her, and in addition to the comfort he derived from
+his confession, he gained a certain satisfaction to his 'amour-propre',
+for Madame d'Argy thought the verses beautiful.  A mother's geese are
+always swans.  But it was only when she said, "I don't see why you should
+not marry your Jacqueline--such a thing is not by any means impossible,"
+and promised to do all in her power to insure his happiness, that Fred
+felt how dearly he loved his mother.  Oh, a thousand times more than he
+had ever supposed he loved her!  However, he had not yet done with the
+agonies that lie in wait for lovers.
+
+Madame de Monredon arrived one day at the Hotel de la Plage, accompanied
+by her granddaughter, whom she had taken away from the convent before the
+beginning of the holidays.  Since she had fully arranged the marriage
+with M. de Talbrun, it seemed important that Giselle should acquire some
+liveliness, and recruit her health, before the fatal wedding-day arrived.
+M. de Talbrun liked ladies to be always well and always lively, and it
+was her duty to see that Giselle accommodated herself to his taste; sea-
+bathing, life in the open air, and merry companions, were the things she
+needed to make her a little less thin, to give her tone, and to take some
+of her convent stiffness out of her.  Besides, she could have free
+intercourse with her intended husband, thanks to the greater freedom of
+manners permitted at the sea-side.  Such were the ideas of Madame de
+Monredon.
+
+Poor Giselle!  In vain they dressed her in fine clothes, in vain they
+talked to her and scolded her from morning till night, she continued to
+be the little convent-bred schoolgirl she had always been; with downcast
+eyes, pale as a flower that has known no sunlight, and timid to a point
+of suffering.  M. de Talbrun frightened her as much as ever, and she had
+looked forward to the comfort of weeping in the arms of Jacqueline, who,
+the last time she had seen her, had been herself so unhappy.  But what
+was her astonishment to find the young girl, who, a few weeks before, had
+made her such tragic confidences through the grille in the convent
+parlor, transformed into a creature bent on excitement and amusement.
+When she attempted to allude to the subject on which Jacqueline had
+spoken to her at the convent, and to ask her what it was that had then
+made her so unhappy, Jacqueline cried: "Oh!  my dear, I have forgotten
+all about it!"  But there was exaggeration in this profession of
+forgetfulness, and she hurriedly drew Giselle back to the game of
+croquet, where they were joined by M. de Talbrun.
+
+The future husband of Giselle was a stout young fellow, short and thick-
+set, with broad shoulders, a large flat face, and strong jaws, ornamented
+with an enormous pair of whiskers, which partly compensated him for a
+loss of hair.  He had never done anything but shoot and hunt over his
+property nine months in the year, and spend the other three months in
+Paris, where the jockey Club and ballet-dancers sufficed for his
+amusement.  He did not pretend to be a man whose bachelor life had been
+altogether blameless, but he considered himself to be a "correct" man,
+according to what he understood by that expression, which implied neither
+talents, virtues, nor good manners; nevertheless, all the Blue Band
+agreed that he was a finished type of gentleman-hood.  Even Raoul's
+sisters had to confess, with a certain disgust, that, whatever people may
+say, in our own day the aristocracy of wealth has to lower its flag
+before the authentic quarterings of the old noblesse.  They secretly
+envied Giselle because she was going to be a grande dame, while all the
+while they asserted that old-fashioned distinctions had no longer any
+meaning.  Nevertheless, they looked forward to the day when they, too,
+might take their places in the Faubourg St. Germain.  One may purchase
+that luxury with a fortune of eight hundred thousand francs.
+
+The croquet-ground, which was underwater at high tide, was a long stretch
+of sand that fringed the shingle.  Two parties were formed, in which care
+was taken to make both sides as nearly equal as possible, after which the
+game began, with screams, with laughter, a little cheating and some
+disputes, as is the usual custom.  All this appeared to amuse Oscar de
+Talbrun--exceedingly.  For the first time during his wooing he was not
+bored.  The Misses Sparks--Kate and Nora--by their "high spirits"
+agreeably reminded him of one or two excursions he had made in past days
+into Bohemian society.
+
+He formed the highest opinion of Jacqueline when he saw how her still
+short skirts showed pretty striped silk stockings, and how her well-
+shaped foot was planted firmly on a blue ball, when she was preparing to
+roquer the red one.  The way in which he fixed his eyes upon her gave
+great offense to Fred, and did it not alarm and shock Giselle?  No!
+Giselle looked on calmly at the fun and talk around her, as unmoved as
+the stump of a tree, spoiling the game sometimes by her ignorance or her
+awkwardness, well satisfied that M. de Talbrun should leave her alone.
+Talking with him was very distasteful to her.
+
+"You have been more stupid than usual," had been what her grandmother had
+never failed to say to her in Paris after one of his visits, which he
+alternated with bouquets.  But at Treport no one seemed to mind her being
+stupid, and indeed M. de Talbrun hardly thought of her existence, up to
+the moment when they were all nearly caught by the first wave that came
+rolling in over the croquet-ground, when all the girls took flight,
+flushed, animated, and with lively gesticulation, while the gentlemen
+followed with the box into which had been hastily flung hoops, balls, and
+mallets.
+
+On their way Count Oscar condescendingly explained to Fred, as to a
+novice, that the only good thing about croquet was that it brought men
+and girls together.  He was himself very good at games, he said, having
+remarkably firm muscles and exceptionally sharp sight; but he went on to
+add that he had not been able to show what he could do that day.  The wet
+sand did not make so good a croquet-ground as the one he had had made in
+his park!  It is a good thing to know one's ground in all circumstances,
+but especially in playing croquet.  Then, dexterously passing from the
+game to the players, he went on to say, under cover of giving Fred a
+warning, that a man need not fear going too far with those girls from
+America--they had known how to flirt from the time they were born.  They
+could look out for themselves, they had talons and beaks; but up to a
+certain point they were very easy to get on with.  Those other players
+were queer little things; the three sisters Wermant were not wanting in
+chic, but, hang it!--the sweetest flower of them all, to his mind, was
+the tall one, the dark one--unripe fruit in perfection!  "And a year or
+two hence," added M. de Talbrun, with all the self-confidence of an
+expert, "every one will be talking about her in the world of society."
+
+Poor Fred kept silent, trying to curb his wrath.  But the blood mounted
+to his temples as he listened to these remarks, poured into his ear by a
+man of thirty-five, between puffs of his cigar, because there was nobody
+else to whom he could make them.  But they seemed to Fred very ill-
+mannered and ill-timed.  If he had not dreaded making himself absurd,
+he would gladly have stood forth as the champion of the Sparks, the
+Wermants, and all the other members of the Blue Band, so that he might
+give vent to the anger raging in his heart on hearing that odious
+compliment to Jacqueline.  Why was he not old enough to marry her?  What
+right had that detestable Talbrun to take notice of any girl but his
+fiancee?  If he himself could marry now, his choice would soon be made!
+No doubt, later--as his mother had said to him.  But would Jacqueline
+wait?  Everybody was beginning to admire her.  Somebody would carry her
+off--somebody would cut him out while he was away at sea.  Oh, horrible
+thought for a young lover!
+
+That night, at the Casino, while dancing a quadrille with Giselle, he
+could not refrain from saying to her, "Don't you object to Monsieur de
+Talbrun's dancing so much with Jacqueline?"
+
+"Who?--I?"  she cried, astonished, "I don't see why he should not."  And
+then, with a faint laugh, she added: "Oh, if she would only take him--
+and keep him!"
+
+But Madame de Monredon kept a sharp eye upon M. de Talbrun.  "It seems to
+me," she said, looking fixedly into the face of her future grandson-in-
+law, "that you really take pleasure in making children skip about with
+you."
+
+"So I do," he replied, frankly and good-humoredly.  "It makes me feel
+young again."
+
+And Madame de Monredon was satisfied.  She was ready to admit that most
+men marry women who have not particularly enchanted them, and she had
+brought up Giselle with all those passive qualities, which, together with
+a large fortune, usually suit best with a 'mariage de convenance'.
+
+Meantime Jacqueline piqued herself upon her worldly wisdom, which she
+looked upon as equal to Madame de Monredon's, since the terrible event
+which had filled her mind with doubts.  She thought M. de Talbrun would
+do well enough for a husband, and she took care to say so to Giselle.
+
+"It is a fact," she told her, with all the self-confidence of large
+experience, "that men who are very fascinating always remain bachelors.
+That is probably why Monsieur de Cymier, Madame de Villegry's handsome
+cousin, does not think of marrying."
+
+She was mistaken.  The Comte de Cymier, a satellite who revolved around
+that star of beauty, Madame de Villegry, had been by degrees brought
+round by that lady herself to thoughts of matrimony.
+
+Madame de Villegry, notwithstanding her profuse use of henna and many
+cosmetics, which was always the first thing to strike those who saw her,
+prided herself on being uncompromised as to her moral character.  There
+are some women who, because they stop short of actual vice, consider
+themselves irreproachable.  They are willing, so to speak, to hang out
+the bush, but keep no tavern.  In former times an appearance of evil was
+avoided in order to cover evil deeds, but at present there are those who,
+under the cover of being only "fast," risk the appearance of evil.
+
+Madame de Villegry was what is sometimes called a "professional beauty."
+She devoted many hours daily to her toilette, she liked to have a crowd
+of admirers around her.  But when one of them became too troublesome, she
+got rid of him by persuading him to marry.  She had before this proposed
+several young girls to Gerard de Cymier, each one plainer and more
+insignificant than the others.  It was to tell his dear friend that the
+one she had last suggested was positively too ugly for him, that the
+young attache to an embassy had come down to the sea-side to visit her.
+
+The day after his arrival he was sitting on the shingle at Madame
+de Villegry's feet, both much amused by the grotesque spectacle presented
+by the bathers, who exhibited themselves in all degrees of ugliness and
+deformity.  Of course Madame de Villegry did not bathe, being, as she
+said, too nervous.  She was sitting under a large parasol and enjoying
+her own superiority over those wretched, amphibious creatures who waddled
+on the sands before her, comparing Madame X to a seal and Mademoiselle Z
+to the skeleton of a cuttle-fish.
+
+"Well!  it was that kind of thing you wished me to marry," said M. de
+Cymier, in a tone of resentment.
+
+"But, my poor friend, what would you have?  All young girls are like
+that.  They improve when they are married."
+
+"If one could only be sure."
+
+"One is never sure of anything, especially anything relating to young
+girls.  One can not say that they do more than exist till they are
+married.  A husband has to make whatever he chooses out of them.  You are
+quite capable of making what you choose of your wife.  Take the risk,
+then."
+
+"I could educate her as to morals--though, I must say, I am not much used
+to that kind of instruction; but you will permit me to think that, as to
+person, I should at least wish to see a rough sketch of what I may expect
+in my wife before my marriage."
+
+At that moment, a girl who had been bathing came out of the water a few
+yards from them; the elegant outline of her slender figure, clad in a
+bathing-suit of white flannel, which clung to her closely, was thrown
+into strong relief by the clear blue background of a summer sky.
+
+"Tiens!--but she is pretty!" cried Gerard, breaking off what he was
+saying: "And she is the first pretty one I have seen!"
+
+Madame de Villegry took up her tortoiseshell opera-glasses, which were
+fastened to her waist, but already the young girl, over whose shoulders
+an attentive servant had flung a wrapper--a 'peignoir-eponge'--had run
+along the boardwalk and stopped before her, with a gay "Good-morning!"
+
+"Jacqueline!"  said Madame de Villegry.  "Well, my dear child, did you
+find the water pleasant?"
+
+"Delightful!"  said the young girl, giving a rapid glance at M. de
+Cymier, who had risen.
+
+He was looking at her with evident admiration, an admiration at which she
+felt much flattered.  She was closely wrapped in her soft, snow-white
+peignoir, bordered with red, above which rose her lovely neck and head.
+She was trying to catch, on the point of one little foot, one of her
+bathing shoes, which had slipped from her.  The foot which, when well
+shod, M. de Talbrun, through his eyeglass, had so much admired, was still
+prettier without shoe or stocking.  It was so perfectly formed, so white,
+with a little pink tinge here and there, and it was set upon so delicate
+an ankle!  M. de Cymier looked first at the foot, and then his glance
+passed upward over all the rest of the young figure, which could be seen
+clearly under the clinging folds of the wet drapery.  Her form could be
+discerned from head to foot, though nothing was uncovered but the pretty
+little arm which held together with a careless grace the folds of her
+raiment.  The eye of the experienced observer ran rapidly over the
+outline of her figure, till it reached the dark head and the brown hair,
+which rippled in little curls over her forehead.  Her complexion,
+slightly golden, was not protected by one of those absurd hats which many
+bathers place on top of oiled silk caps which fit them closely.  Neither
+was the precaution of oiled silk wanted to protect the thick and curling
+hair, now sprinkled with great drops that shone like pearls and diamonds.
+The water, instead of plastering her hair upon her temples, had made it
+more curly and more fleecy, as it hung over her dark eyebrows, which,
+very near together at the nose, gave to her eyes a peculiar, slightly
+oblique expression.  Her teeth were dazzling, and were displayed by the
+smile which parted her lips--lips which were, if anything, too red for
+her pale complexion.  She closed her eyelids now and then to shade her
+eyes from the too blinding sunlight.  Those eyes were not black, but that
+hazel which has golden streaks.  Though only half open, they had quickly
+taken in the fact that the young man sitting beside Madame de Villegry
+was very handsome.
+
+As she went on with a swift step to her bathing-house, she drew out two
+long pins from her back hair, shaking it and letting it fall down her
+back with a slightly impatient and imperious gesture; she wished,
+probably, that it might dry more quickly.
+
+"The devil!"  said M. de Cymier, watching her till she disappeared into
+the bathing-house.  "I never should have thought that it was all her own!
+There is nothing wanting in her.  That is a young creature it is pleasant
+to see."
+
+"Yes," said Madame de Villegry, quietly, "she will be very good-looking
+when she is eighteen."
+
+"Is she nearly eighteen?"
+
+"She is and she is not, for time passes so quickly.  A girl goes to sleep
+a child, and wakes up old enough to be married.  Would you like to be
+informed, without loss of time, as to her fortune?"
+
+"Oh!  I should not care much about her dot.  I look out first for other
+things."
+
+"I know, of course; but Jacqueline de Nailles comes of a very good
+family."
+
+"Is she the daughter of the deputy?"
+
+"Yes, his only daughter.  He has a pretty house in the Parc Monceau and
+a chateau of some importance in the Haute-Vienne."
+
+"Very good; but, I repeat, I am not mercenary.  Of course, if I should
+marry, I should like, for my wife's sake, to live as well as a married
+man as I have lived as a bachelor."
+
+"Which means that you would be satisfied with a fortune equal to your
+own.  I should have thought you might have asked more.  It is true that
+if you have been suddenly thunderstruck that may alter your calculations
+--for it was very sudden, was it not?  Venus rising from the sea!"
+
+"Please don't exaggerate!  But you are not so cruel, seeing you are
+always urging me to marry, as to wish me to take a wife who looks like a
+fright or a horror."
+
+"Heaven preserve me from any such wish!  I should be very glad if my
+little friend Jacqueline were destined to work your reformation."
+
+"I defy the most careful parent to find anything against me at this
+moment, unless it be a platonic devotion.  The youth of Mademoiselle de
+Nailles is an advantage, for I might indulge myself in that till we were
+married, and then I should settle down and leave Paris, where nothing
+keeps me but--"
+
+"But a foolish fancy," laughed Madame de Villegry.  "However, in return
+for your madrigal, accept the advice of a friend.  The Nailles seem to me
+to be prosperous, but everybody in society appears so, and one never
+knows what may happen any day.  You would not do amiss if, before you go
+on, you were to talk with Wermant, the 'agent de change', who has a
+considerable knowledge of the business affairs of Jacqueline's father.
+He could tell you about them better than I can."
+
+"Wermant is at Treport, is he not?  I thought I saw him--"
+
+"Yes, he is here till Monday.  You have twenty-four hours."
+
+"Do you really think I am in such a hurry?"
+
+"Will you take a bet that by this time to-morrow you will not know
+exactly the amount of her dot and the extent of her expectations?"
+
+"You would lose.  I have something else to think of--now and always."
+
+"What?"  she said, carelessly.
+
+"You have forbidden me ever to mention it."
+
+Silence ensued.  Then Madame de Villegry said, smiling:
+
+"I suppose you would like me to present you this evening to my friends
+the De Nailles?"
+
+And in fact they all met that evening at the Casino, and Jacqueline, in a
+gown of scarlet foulard, which would have been too trying for any other
+girl, seemed to M. de Cymier as pretty as she had been in her bathing-
+costume.  Her hair was not dressed high, but it was gathered loosely
+together and confined by a ribbon of the same color as her gown, and she
+wore a little sailor hat besides.  In this costume she had been called by
+M. de Talbrun the "Fra Diavolo of the Seas," and she never better
+supported that part, by liveliness and audacity, than she did that
+evening, when she made a conquest that was envied--wildly envied--by the
+three Demoiselles Wermant and the two Misses Sparks, for the handsome
+Gerard, after his first waltz with Madame de Villegry, asked no one to be
+his partner but Mademoiselle de Nailles.
+
+The girls whom he neglected had not even Fred to fall back upon, for
+Fred, the night before, had received orders to join his ship.  He had
+taken leave of Jacqueline with a pang in his heart which he could hardly
+hide, but to which no keen emotion on her part seemed to respond.
+However, at least, he was spared the unhappiness of seeing the star of
+De Cymier rising above the horizon.
+
+"If he could only see me," thought Jacqueline, waltzing in triumph with
+M. de Cymier.  "If he could only see me I should be avenged."
+
+But he was not Fred.  She was not giving him a thought.  It was the last
+flash of resentment and hatred that came to her in that moment of
+triumph, adding to it a touch of exquisite enjoyment.
+
+Thus she performed the obsequies of her first love!
+
+Not long after this M. de Nailles said to his wife:
+
+"Do you know, my dear, that our little Jacqueline is very much admired?
+Her success has been extraordinary.  It is not likely she will die an old
+maid."
+
+The Baronne assented rather reluctantly.
+
+"Wermant was speaking to me the other day," went on M. de Nailles.  "It
+seems that that young Count de Cymier, who is always hanging around you,
+by the way, has been making inquiries of him, in a manner that looks as
+if it had some meaning, as to what is our fortune, our position.  But
+really, such a match seems too good to be true."
+
+"Why so?"  said the Baronne.  "I know more about it than you do, from
+Blanche de Villegry.  She gave me to understand that her cousin was much
+struck by Jacqueline at first sight, and ever since she does nothing but
+talk to me of M. de Cymier--of his birth, his fortune, his abilities--
+the charming young fellow seems gifted with everything.  He could be
+Secretary of Legation, if he liked to quit Paris: In the meantime attache
+to an Embassy looks very well on a card.  Attache to the Ministry of the
+Foreign Affairs does not seem so good.  Jacqueline would be a countess,
+possibly an ambassadress.  What would you think of that!"
+
+Madame de Nailles, who understood policy much better than her husband,
+had suddenly become a convert to opportunism, and had made a change of
+base.  Not being able to devise a plan by which to suppress her young
+rival, she had begun to think that her best way to get rid of her would
+be by promoting her marriage.  The little girl was fast developing into a
+woman--a woman who would certainly not consent quietly to be set aside.
+Well, then, it would be best to dispose of her in so natural a way.  When
+Jacqueline's slender and graceful figure and the freshness of her bloom
+were no longer brought into close comparison with her own charms, she
+felt she should appear much younger, and should recover some of her
+prestige; people would be less likely to remark her increasing stoutness,
+or the red spots on her face, increased by the salt air which was so
+favorable to young girls' complexions.  Yes, Jacqueline must be married;
+that was the resolution to which Madame de Nailles had come after several
+nights of sleeplessness.  It was her fixed idea, replacing in her brain
+that other fixed idea which, willingly or unwillingly, she saw she must
+give up--the idea of keeping her stepdaughter in the shade.
+
+"Countess!  Ambassadress!"  repeated M. de Nailles, with rather a
+melancholy smile.  "You are going too fast, my dear Clotilde.  I don't
+doubt that Wermant gave the best possible account of our situation; but
+when it comes to saying what I could give her as a dot, I am very much
+afraid.  We should have, in that case, to fall back on Fred, for I have
+not told you everything.  This morning Madame d'Argy, who has done
+nothing but weep since her boy went away, and who, she says, never will
+get accustomed to the life of misery and anxiety she will lead as a
+sailor's mother, exclaimed, as she was talking to me: 'Ah! there is but
+one way of keeping him at Lizerolles, of having him live there as the
+D'Argys have lived before him, quietly, like a good landlord, and that
+would be to give him your daughter; with her he would be entirely
+satisfied.'"
+
+"Ah! so that is the reason why she asked whether Jacqueline might not
+stay with her when we go to Italy!  She wishes to court her by proxy.
+But I don't think she will succeed.  Monsieur de Cymier has the best
+chance."
+
+"Do you suppose the child suspects--"
+
+"That he admires her?  My dear friend, we have to do with a very sharp--
+sighted young person.  Nothing escapes the observation of Mademoiselle
+'votre fille'."
+
+And Madame de Nailles, in her turn, smiled somewhat bitterly.
+
+"Well," said Jacqueline's father, after a few moments' reflection, "it
+may be as well that she should weigh for and against a match before
+deciding.  She may spend several years that are difficult and dangerous
+trying to find out what she wants and to make up her mind."
+
+"Several years?"
+
+"Hang it!  You would not marry off Jacqueline at once?"
+
+"Bah! many a girl, practically not as old as she, is married at sixteen
+or seventeen."
+
+"Why!  I fancied you thought so differently!"
+
+"Our ways of thinking are sometimes altered by events, especially when
+they are founded upon sincere and disinterested affection."
+
+"Like that of good parents, such as we are," added M. de Nailles, ending
+her sentence with an expression of grateful emotion.
+
+For one moment the Baronne paled under this compliment.
+
+"What did you say to Madame d'Argy?"  she hastened to ask.
+
+"I said we must give the young fellow's beard time to grow."
+
+"Yes, that was right.  I prefer Monsieur de Cymier a hundred times over.
+Still, if nothing better offers--a bird in the hand, you know--"
+
+Madame de Nailles finished her sentence by a wave of her fan.
+
+"Oh! our bird in the hand is not to be despised.  A very handsome
+estate--"
+
+"Where Jacqueline would be bored to death.  I should rather see her
+radiant at some foreign court.  Let me manage it.  Let me bring her out.
+Give me carte blanche and let me have some society this winter."
+
+Madame de Nailles, whether she knew it or not--probably she did, for she
+had great skill in reading the thoughts of others--was acting precisely
+in accordance with the wishes or the will of Jacqueline, who, having
+found much enjoyment in the dances at the Casino, had made up her mind
+that she meant to come out into society before any of her young
+companions.
+
+"I shall not have to beg and implore her," she said to herself,
+anticipating the objections of her stepmother.  "I shall only have
+politely to let her suspect that such a thing may have occurred as having
+had a listener at a door.  I paid dearly enough for this hold over her.
+I have no scruple in using it."
+
+Madame de Nailles was not mistaken in her stepdaughter; she was very far
+advanced beyond her age, thanks to the cruel wrong that had been done her
+by the loss of her trust in her elders and her respect for them.  Her
+heart had had its past, though she was still hardly more than a child--
+a sad past, though its pain was being rapidly effaced.  She now thought
+about it only at intervals.  Time and circumstances were operating on her
+as they act upon us generally; only in her case more quickly than usual,
+which produced in her character and feelings phenomena that might have
+seemed curious to an observer.  She was something of a woman, something
+of a child, something of a philosopher.  At night, when she was dancing
+with Wermant, or Cymier, or even Talbrun, or on horseback, an exercise
+which all the Blues were wild about, she was an audacious flirt, a girl
+up to anything; and in the morning, at low tide, she might be seen, with
+her legs and feet bare, among the children, of whom there were many on
+the sands, digging ditches, making ramparts, constructing towers and
+fortifications in wet sand, herself as much amused as if she had been one
+of the babies themselves.  There was screaming and jumping, and rushing
+out of reach of the waves which came up ready to overthrow the most
+complicated labors of the little architects, rough romping of all kinds,
+enough to amaze and disconcert a lover.
+
+But no one could have guessed at the thoughts which, in the midst of all
+this fun and frolic, were passing through the too early ripened mind of
+Jacqueline.  She was thinking that many things to which we attach great
+value and importance in this world are as easily swept away as the sand
+barriers raised against the sea by childish hands; that everywhere there
+must be flux and reflux, that the beach the children had so dug up would
+soon become smooth as a mirror, ready for other little ones to dig it
+over again, tempting them to work, and yet discouraging their industry.
+Her heart, she thought, was like the sand, ready for new impressions.
+The elegant form of M. de Cymier slightly overshadowed it, distinct among
+other shadows more confused.
+
+And Jacqueline said to herself with a smile, exactly what her father and
+Madame de Nailles had said to each other:
+
+"Countess!--who knows?  Ambassadress!  Perhaps--some day--"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+A PUZZLING CORRESPONDENCE
+
+"But I can not see any reason why we should not take Jacqueline with us
+to Italy.  She is just of an age to profit by it."
+
+These words were spoken by M. de Nailles after a long silence at the
+breakfast-table.  They startled his hearers like a bomb.
+
+Jacqueline waited to hear what would come next, fixing a keen look upon
+her stepmother.  Their eyes met like the flash of two swords.
+
+The eyes of the one said: "Now, let us hear what you will answer!"  while
+the other strove to maintain that calmness which comes to some people in
+a moment of danger.  The Baroness grew a little pale, and then said, in
+her softest tones:
+
+"You are quite right, 'mon ami', but Jacqueline, I think, prefers to
+stay."
+
+"I decidedly prefer to stay," said Jacqueline.
+
+Her adversary, much relieved by this response, could not repress a sigh.
+
+"It seems singular," said M. de Nailles.
+
+"What! that I prefer to pass a month or six weeks with Madame d'Argy?
+Besides, Giselle is going to be married during that time."
+
+"They might put it off until we come back, I should suppose."
+
+"Oh!  I don't think they would," cried the Baroness.  "Madame de Monredon
+is so selfish.  She was offended to think we should talk of going away on
+the eve of an event she considers so important.  Besides, she has so
+little regard for me that I should think her more likely to hasten the
+wedding-day rather than retard it, if it were only for the pleasure of
+giving us a lesson."
+
+"I am sorry.  I should have been glad to be, as she wished, one of
+Giselle's witnesses, but people don't take my position into
+consideration.  If I do not take advantage of the recess--"
+
+"Besides," interrupted Jacqueline, carelessly, "your journey must
+coincide with that of Monsieur Marien."
+
+She had the pleasure of seeing her stepmother again slightly change
+color.  Madame de Nailles was pouring out for herself a cup of tea with
+singular care and attention.
+
+"Of course," said M. de Nailles.  His daughter pitied him, and cried,
+with an increasing wish to annoy her stepmother: "Mamma, don't you see
+that your teapot has no tea in it?  Yes," she went on, "it must be
+delightful to travel in Italy in company with a great artist who would
+explain everything; but then one would be expected to visit all the
+picture-galleries, and I hate pictures, since--"
+
+She paused and again looked meaningly at her stepmother, whose soft blue
+eyes showed anguish of spirit, and seemed to say: "Oh, what a cruel hold
+she has upon me!"  Jacqueline continued, carelessly-- "Picture-galleries
+I don't care for--I like nature a hundred times better.  Some day I
+should like to take a journey to suit myself, my own journey!  Oh, papa,
+may I?  A journey on foot with you in the Tyrol?"
+
+Madame de Nailles was no great walker.
+
+"Both of us, just you and I alone, with our alpenstocks in our hands--it
+would be lovely!  But Italy and painters--"
+
+Here, with a boyish flourish of her hands, she seemed to send that
+classic land to Jericho!
+
+"Do promise me, papa!"
+
+"Before asking a reward, you must deserve it," said her father, severely,
+who saw something was wrong.
+
+During her stay at Lizerolles, which her perverseness, her resentment,
+and a repugnance founded on instincts of delicacy, had made her prefer to
+a journey to Italy, Jacqueline, having nothing better to do, took it into
+her head to write to her friend Fred.  The young man received three
+letters at three different ports in the Mediterranean and in the West
+Indies, whose names were long associated in his mind with delightful and
+cruel recollections.  When the first was handed to him with one from his
+mother, whose letters always awaited him at every stopping-place, the
+blood flew to his face, his heart beat violently, he could have cried
+aloud but for the necessity of self-command in the presence of his
+comrades, who had already remarked in whispers to each other, and with
+envy, on the pink envelope, which exhaled 'l'odor di femina'.  He hid his
+treasure quickly, and carried it to a spot where he could be alone; then
+he kissed the bold, pointed handwriting that he recognized at once,
+though never before had it written his address.  He kissed, too, more
+than once, the pink seal with a J on it, whose slender elegance reminded
+him of its owner.  Hardly did he dare to break the seal; then forgetting
+altogether, as we might be sure, his mother's letter, which he knew
+beforehand was full of good advice and expressions of affection, he
+eagerly read this, which he had not expected to receive:
+
+                              "LIZEROLLES, October, 5, 188-
+
+     "MY DEAR FRED:
+
+     "Your mother thinks you would be pleased to receive a letter from
+     me, and I hope you will be.  You need not answer this if you do not
+     care to do so.  You will notice, 'par parenthese', that I take this
+     opportunity of saying you and not thou to you.  It is easier to
+     change the familiar mode of address in writing than in speaking, and
+     when we meet again the habit will have become confirmed.  But, as I
+     write, it will require great attention, and I can not promise to
+     keep to it to the end.  Half an hour's chat with an old friend will
+     also help me to pass the time, which I own seems rather long, as it
+     is passed by your sweet, dear mother and myself at Lizerolles.  Oh,
+     if you were only here it would be different!  In the first place,
+     we should talk less of a certain Fred, which would be one great
+     advantage.  You must know that you are the subject of our discourse
+     from morning to night; we talk only of the dangers of the seas, the
+     future prospects of a seaman, and all the rest of it.  If the wind
+     is a little higher than usual, your mother begins to cry; she is
+     sure you are battling with a tempest.  If any fishing-boat is
+     wrecked, we talk of nothing but shipwrecks; and I am asked to join
+     in another novena, in addition to those with which we must have
+     already wearied Notre Dame de Treport.  Every evening we spread out
+     the map: 'See, Jacqueline, he must be here now--no, he is almost
+     there,' and lines of red ink are traced from one port to another,
+     and little crosses are made to show the places where we hope you
+     will get your letters--'Poor boy, poor, dear boy!' In short,
+     notwithstanding all the affectionate interest I take in you, this is
+     sometimes too much for me.  In fact, I think I must be very fond of
+     thee not to have grown positively to hate thee for all this fuss.
+     There!  In this last sentence, instead of saying you, I have said
+     thee!  That ought to gild the pill for you!
+
+     We do not go very frequently to visit Treport, except to invoke for
+     you the protection of Heaven, and I like it just as well, for since
+     the last fortnight in September, which was very rainy, the beach is
+     dismal--so different from what it was in the summer.  The town looks
+     gloomy under a cloudy sky with its blackened old brick houses!  We
+     are better off at Lizerolles, whose autumnal beauties you know so
+     well that I will say nothing about them. --Oh, Fred, how often I
+     regret that I am not a boy!  I could take your gun and go shooting
+     in the swamps, where there are clouds of ducks now.  I feel sure
+     that if you were in my place, you could kill time without killing
+     game; but I am at the end of my small resources when I have played a
+     little on the piano to amuse your mother and have read her the
+     'Gazette de France'.  In the evening we read a translation of some
+     English novel.  There are neighbors, of course, old fogies who stay
+     all the year round in Picardy--but, tell me, don't you find them
+     sometimes a little too respectable?  My greatest comfort is in your
+     dog, who loves me as much as if I were his master, though I can not
+     take him out shooting.  While I write he is lying on the hem of my
+     gown and makes a little noise, as much as to tell me that I recall
+     you to his remembrance.  Yet you are not to suppose that I am
+     suffering from ennui, or am ungrateful, nor above all must you
+     imagine that I have ceased to love your excellent mother with all my
+     heart.  I love her, on the contrary, more than ever since I passed
+     this winter through a great, great sorrow--a sorrow which is now
+     only a sad remembrance, but which has changed for me the face of
+     everything in this world.  Yes, since I have suffered myself, I
+     understand your mother.  I admire her, I love her more than ever.
+
+     How happy you are, my dear Fred, to have such a sweet mother,--
+     a real mother who never thinks about her face, or her figure, or her
+     age, but only of the success of her son; a dear little mother in a
+     plain black gown, and with pretty gray hair, who has the manners and
+     the toilette that just suit her, who somehow always seems to say:
+     'I care for nothing but that which affects my son.' Such mothers are
+     rare, believe me.  Those that I know, the mothers of my friends, are
+     for the most part trying to appear as young as their daughters--nay,
+     prettier, and of course more elegant.  When they have sons they make
+     them wear jackets a l'anglaise and turn-down collars, up to the age
+     when I wore short skirts.  Have you noticed that nowadays in Paris
+     there are only ladies who are young, or who are trying to make
+     themselves appear so?  Up to the last moment they powder and paint,
+     and try to make themselves different from what age has made them.
+     If their hair was black it grows blacker--if red, it is more red.
+     But there is no longer any gray hair in Paris--it is out of fashion.
+     That is the reason why I think your mother's pretty silver curls so
+     lovely and 'distingues'.  I kiss them every night for you, after I
+     have kissed them for myself.
+
+     "Have a good voyage, come back soon, and take care of yourself, dear
+     Fred."
+
+
+The young sailor read this letter over and over again.  The more he read
+it the more it puzzled him.  Most certainly he felt that Jacqueline gave
+him a great proof of confidence when she spoke to him of some mysterious
+unhappiness, an unhappiness of which it was evident her stepmother was
+the cause.  He could see that much; but he was infinitely far from
+suspecting the nature of the woes to which she alluded.  Poor Jacqueline!
+He pitied her without knowing what for, with a great outburst of
+sympathy, and an honest desire to do anything in the world to make her
+happy.  Was it really possible that she could have been enduring any
+grief that summer when she had seemed so madly gay, so ready for a little
+flirtation?  Young girls must be very skilful in concealing their inmost
+feelings!  When he was unhappy he had it out by himself, he took refuge
+in solitude, he wanted to be done with existence.  Everybody knew when
+anything went wrong with him.  Why could not Jacqueline have let him know
+more plainly what it was that troubled her, and why could she not have
+shown a little tenderness toward him, instead of assuming, even when she
+said the kindest things to him, her air of mockery?  And then, though she
+might pretend not to find Lizerolles stupid, he could see that she was
+bored there.  Yet why had she chosen to stay at Lizerolles rather than go
+to Italy?
+
+Alas!  how that little pink letter made him reflect and guess, and turn
+things over in his mind, and wish himself at the devil--that little pink
+letter which he carried day and night on his breast and made it crackle
+as it lay there, when he laid his hand on the satin folds so near his
+heart!  It had an odor of sweet violets which seemed to him to overpower
+the smell of pitch and of salt water, to fill the air, to perfume
+everything.
+
+"That young fellow has the instincts of a sailor," said his superior
+officers when they saw him standing in attitudes which they thought
+denoted observation, though with him it was only reverie.  He would stand
+with his eyes fixed upon some distant point, whence he fancied he could
+see emerging from the waves a small, brown, shining head, with long hair
+streaming behind, the head of a girl swimming, a girl he knew so well.
+
+"One can see that he takes an interest in nautical phenomena, that he is
+heart and soul in his profession, that he cares for nothing else.  Oh,
+he'll make a sailor!  We may be sure of that!"
+
+Fred sent his young friend and cousin, by way of reply, a big packet of
+manuscript, the leaves of which were of all sizes, over which he had
+poured forth torrents of poetry, amorous and descriptive, under the
+title:  At Sea.
+
+Never would he have dared to show her this if the ocean had not lain
+between them.  He was frightened when his packet had been sent.  His only
+comfort was in the thought that he had hypocritically asked Jacqueline
+for her literary opinion of his verses; but she could not fail, he
+thought, to understand.
+
+Long before an answer could have been expected, he got another letter,
+sky-blue this time, much longer than the first, giving him an account of
+Giselle's wedding.
+
+     "Your mother and I went together to Normandy, where the marriage was
+     to take place after the manner of old times, 'in the fashion of the
+     Middle Ages,' as our friends the Wermants said to me, who might
+     perhaps not have laughed at it had they been invited.  Madame de
+     Monredon is all for old customs, and she had made it a great point
+     that the wedding should not take place in Paris.  Had I been
+     Giselle, I should not have liked it.  I know nothing more elegant or
+     more solemn than the entrance of a bridal party into the Madeleine,
+     but we shall have to be content with Saint-Augustin.  Still, the
+     toilettes, as they pass up the aisle, even there, are very
+     effective, and the decoration of the tall, high altar is
+     magnificent.  Toc!  Toc!  First come the beadles with their
+     halberds, then the loud notes of the organ, then the wide doors are
+     thrown open, making a noise as they turn on their great hinges,
+     letting the noise of carriages outside be heard in the church; and
+     then comes the bride in a ray of sunshine.  I could wish for nothing
+     more.  A grand wedding in the country is much more quiet, but it is
+     old-fashioned.  In the little village church the guests were very
+     much crowded, and outside there was a great mob of country folk.
+     Carpets had been laid down over the dilapidated pavement, composed
+     principally of tombstones.  The rough walls were hung with scarlet.
+     All the clergy of the neighborhood were present.  A Monsignor--
+     related to the Talbruns--pronounced the nuptial benediction; his
+     address was a panegyric on the two families.  He gave us to
+     understand that if he did not go back quite as far as the Crusades,
+     it was only because time was wanting.
+
+     Madame de Monredon was all-glorious, of course.  She certainly
+     looked like an old vulture, in a pelisse of gray velvet, with a
+     chinchilla boa round her long, bare neck, and her big beak, with
+     marabouts overshadowing it, of the same color.  Monsieur de Talbrun
+     --well!  Monsieur de Talbrun was very bald, as bald as he could be.
+     To make up for the want of hair on his head, he has plenty of it on
+     his hands.  It is horrid, and it makes him look like an animal.  You
+     have no idea how queer he looked when he sat down, with his big,
+     pink head just peeping over the back of the crimson velvet chair,
+     which was, however, almost as tall as he is.  He is short, you may
+     remember.  As to our poor Giselle, the prettiest persons sometimes
+     look badly as brides, and those who are not pretty look ugly.  Do
+     you recollect that picture--by Velasquez, is it not? of a fair
+     little Infanta stiffly swathed in cloth of gold, as becomes her
+     dignity, and looking crushed by it?  Giselle's gown was of point
+     d'Alencon, old family lace as yellow as ancient parchment, but of
+     inestimable value.  Her long corsage, made in the fashion of Anne of
+     Austria, looked on her like a cuirass, and she dragged after her,
+     somewhat awkwardly, a very long train, which impeded her movement as
+     she walked.  A lace veil, as hereditary and time-worn as the gown,
+     but which had been worn by all the Monredons at their weddings, the
+     present dowager's included, hid the pretty, light hair of our dear
+     little friend, and was supported by a sort of heraldic comb and some
+     orange-flowers; in short, you can not imagine anything more heavy or
+     more ugly.  Poor Giselle, loaded down with it, had red eyes, a face
+     of misery, and the air of a martyr.  For all this her grandmother
+     scolded her sharply, which of course did not mend matters.  'Du
+     reste', she seemed absorbed in prayer or thought during the
+     ceremony, in which I took up the offerings, by the way, with a young
+     lieutenant of dragoons just out of the military school at Saint Cyr:
+     a uniform always looks well on such occasions.  Nor was Monsieur de
+     Talbrun one of those lukewarm Christians who hear mass with their
+     arms crossed and their noses in the air.  He pulled a jewelled
+     prayerbook out of his pocket, which Giselle had given him.  Speaking
+     of presents, those he gave her were superb: pearls as big as
+     hazelnuts, a ruby heart that was a marvel, a diamond crescent that I
+     am afraid she will never wear with such an air as it deserves, and
+     two strings of diamonds 'en riviere', which I should suppose she
+     would have reset, for rivieres are no longer in fashion.  The stones
+     are enormous.
+
+     "But, poor dear!  she could care little for such things.  All she
+     wanted was to get back as quickly as she could into her usual
+     clothes.  She said to me, again and again: 'Pray God for me that I
+     may be a good wife.  I am so afraid I may not be.  To belong to
+     Monsieur de Talbrun in this world, and in the next; to give up
+     everything for him, seems so extraordinary.  Indeed, I think I
+     hardly knew what I was promising.'  I felt sorry for her; I kissed
+     her.  I was ready to cry myself, and poor Giselle went on: 'If you
+     knew, dear, how I love you!  how I love all my friends!  really to
+     love, people must have been brought up together--must have always
+     known each other.'  I don't think she was right, but everybody has
+     his or her ideas about such things.  I tried, by way of consoling
+     her, to draw her attention to the quantities of presents she had
+     received.  They were displayed on several tables in the smaller
+     drawing-room, but her grandmother would not let them put the name of
+     the giver upon each, as is the present custom.  She said that it
+     humiliated those who had not been able to make gifts as expensive as
+     others.  She is right, when one comes to think of it.  Nor would she
+     let the trousseau be displayed; she did not think it proper, but I
+     saw enough to know that there were marvels in linen, muslin, silks,
+     and surahs, covered all over with lace.  One could see that the
+     great mantua-maker had not consulted the grandmother, who says that
+     women of distinction in her day did not wear paltry trimmings.
+
+     "Dinner was served under a tent for all the village people during
+     the two mortal hours we had to spend over a repast, in which Madame
+     de Monredon's cook excelled himself.  Then came complimentary
+     addresses in the old-fashioned style, composed by the village
+     schoolmaster who, for a wonder, knew what he was about; groups of
+     village children, boys and girls, came bringing their offerings,
+     followed by pet lambs decked with ribbons; it was all in the style
+     of the days of Madame de Genlis.  While we danced in the salons
+     there was dancing in the barn, which had been decorated for the
+     occasion.  In short; lords and ladies and laborers all seemed to
+     enjoy themselves, or made believe they did.  The Parisian gentlemen
+     who danced were not very numerous.  There were a few friends of
+     Monsieur de Talbrun's, however--among them, a Monsieur de Cymier,
+     whom possibly you remember having seen last summer at Treport; he
+     led the cotillon divinely.  The bride and bridegroom drove away
+     during the evening, as they do in England, to their own house, which
+     is not far off.  Monsieur de Talbrun's horses--a magnificent pair,
+     harnessed to a new 'caleche'--carried off Psyche, as an old
+     gentleman in gold spectacles said near me.  He was a pretentious old
+     personage, who made a speech at table, very inappropriate and much
+     applauded.  Poor Giselle!  I have not seen her since, but she has
+     written me one of those little notes which, when she was in the
+     convent, she used to sign Enfant de Marie.  It begged me again to
+     pray earnestly for her that she might not fail in the fulfilment of
+     her new duties.  It seems hard, does it not?  Let us hope that
+     Monsieur de Talbrun, on his part, may not find that his new life
+     rather wearies him!  Do you know what should have been Giselle's
+     fate--since she has a mania about people being thoroughly acquainted
+     before marriage?  What would two or three years more or less have
+     mattered?  She would have made an admirable wife for a sailor; she
+     would have spent the months of your absence kneeling before the
+     altar; she would have multiplied the lamentations and the
+     tendernesses of your excellent mother.  I have been thinking this
+     ever since the wedding-day--a very sad day, after all.
+
+     "But how I have let my pen run on.  I shall have to put on two
+     stamps, notwithstanding my thin paper.  But then you have plenty of
+     time to read on board-ship, and this account may amuse you.  Make
+     haste and thank me for it.
+                                   "Your old friend,
+                                             "JACQUELINE."
+
+Amuse him!  How could he be amused by so great an insult?  What!  thank
+her for giving him over even in thought to Giselle or to anybody?  Oh,
+how wicked, how ungrateful, how unworthy!
+
+The six pages of foreign-post paper were crumpled up by his angry
+fingers.  Fred tore them with his teeth, and finally made them into a
+ball which he flung into the sea, hating himself for having been so
+foolish as to let himself be caught by the first lines, as a foolish fish
+snaps at the bait, when, apropos to the church in which she would like to
+be married, she had added "But we should have to be content with Saint-
+Augustin."
+
+Those words had delighted him as if they had really been meant for
+himself and Jacqueline.  This promise for the future, that seemed to
+escape involuntarily from her pen, had made him find all the rest of her
+letter piquant and amusing.  As he read, his mind had reverted to that
+little phrase which he now found he had interpreted wrongly.  What a
+fall!  How his hopes now crumbled under his feet!  She must have done it
+on purpose--but no, he need not blacken her!  She had written without
+thought, without purpose, in high spirits; she wanted to be witty, to be
+droll, to write gossip without any reference to him to whom her letter
+was addressed.  That we who some day would make a triumphal entry into
+St. Augustin would be herself and some other man--some man with whom her
+acquaintance had been short, since she did not seem to feel in that
+matter like Giselle.  Some one she did not yet know?  Was that sure?  She
+might know her future husband already, even now she might have made her
+choice--Marcel d'Etaples, perhaps, who looked so well in uniform, or that
+M. de Cymier, who led the cotillon so divinely.  Yes!  No doubt it was
+he--the last-comer.  And once more Fred suffered all the pangs of
+jealousy.  It seemed to him that in his loneliness, between sky and sea,
+those pangs were more acute than he had ever known them.  His comrades
+teased him about his melancholy looks, and made him the butt of all their
+jokes in the cockpit.  He resolved, however, to get over it, and at the
+next port they put into, Jacqueline's letter was the cause of his
+entering for the first time some discreditable scenes of dissipation.
+
+At Bermuda he received another letter, dated from Paris, where Jacqueline
+had rejoined her parents, who had returned from Italy.  She sent him a
+commission.  Would he buy her a riding-whip?  Bermuda was renowned for
+its horsewhips, and her father had decided that she must go regularly to
+the riding-school.  They seemed anxious now to give her, as preliminary
+to her introduction into society, not only such pleasures as horseback
+exercise, but intellectual enjoyment also.  She had been taken to the
+Institute to hear M. Legouve, and what was better still, in December her
+stepmother would give a little party every fortnight and would let her
+sit up till eleven o'clock.  She was also to be taken to make some calls.
+In short, she felt herself rising in importance, but the first thing that
+had made her feel so was Fred's choice of her to be his literary
+confidant.  She was greatly obliged to him, and did not know how she
+could better prove to him that she was worthy of so great an honor than
+by telling him quite frankly just what she thought of his verses.  They
+were very, very pretty.  He had talent--great talent.  Only, as in
+attending the classes of M. Regis she had acquired some little knowledge
+of the laws of versification, she would like to warn him against
+impairing a thought for the benefit of a rhyme, and she pointed out
+several such places in his compositions, ending thus:
+
+"Bravo!  for sunsets, for twilights, for moonshine, for deep silence, for
+starry nights, and silvery seas--in such things you excel; one feels as
+if one were there, and one envies you the fairy scenes of ocean.  But, I
+implore you, be not sentimental.  That is the feeble part of your poetry,
+to my thinking, and spoils the rest.  By the way, I should like to ask
+you whose are those soft eyes, that silky hair, that radiant smile, and
+all that assortment of amber, jet, and coral occurring so often in your
+visions?  Is she--or rather, are they--black, yellow, green, or tattooed,
+for, of course, you have met everywhere beauties of all colors?  Several
+times when it appeared as if the lady of your dreams were white, I
+fancied you were drawing a portrait of Isabelle Ray.  All the girls, your
+old friends, to whom I have shown At Sea, send you their compliments, to
+which I join my own.  Each of them will beg you to write her a sonnet;
+but first of all, in virtue of our ancient friendship, I want one myself.
+
+                                                  "JACQUELINE."
+
+
+So!  she had shown to others what was meant for her alone; what
+profanation!  And what was more abominable, she had not recognized that
+he was speaking of herself.  Ah!  there was nothing to be done now but to
+forget her.  Fred tried to do so conscientiously during all his cruise in
+the Atlantic, but the moment he got ashore and had seen Jacqueline, he
+fell again a victim to her charms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+BEAUTY AT THE FAIR
+
+She was more beautiful than ever, and her first exclamation on seeing him
+was intended to be flattering: "Ah!  Fred, how much you have improved!
+But what a change!  What an extraordinary change!  Why, look at him!  He
+is still himself, but who would have thought it was Fred!"
+
+He was not disconcerted, for he had acquired aplomb in his journeys round
+the globe, but he gave her a glance of sad reproach, while Madame de
+Nailles said, quietly:
+
+"Yes, really--How are you, Fred?  The tan on your face is very becoming
+to you.  You have broadened at the shoulders, and are now a man--
+something more than a man, an experienced sailor, almost an old seadog."
+
+And she laughed, but only softly, because a frank laugh would have shown
+little wrinkles under her eyes and above her cheeks, which were getting
+too large.
+
+Her toilette, which was youthful, yet very carefully adapted to her
+person, showed that she was by no means as yet "laid on the shelf," as
+Raoul Wermant elegantly said of her.  She stood up, leaning over a table
+covered with toys, which it was her duty to sell at the highest price
+possible, for the place of a meeting so full of emotions for Fred was a
+charity bazaar.
+
+The moment he arrived in Paris the young officer had been, so to speak,
+seized by the collar.  He had found a great glazed card, bidding him to
+attend this fair, in a fashionable quarter, and forthwith he had
+forgotten his resolution of not going near the Nailles for a long time.
+
+"This is not the same thing," he said to himself.  "One must not let
+one's self be supposed to be stingy."  So with these thoughts he went to
+the bazaar, very glad in his secret heart to have an excuse for breaking
+his resolution.
+
+The fair was for the benefit of sufferers from a fire--somewhere or
+other.  In our day multitudes of people fall victims to all kinds of
+dreadful disasters, explosions of boilers, explosions of fire-damp, of
+everything that can explode, for the agents of destruction seem to be in
+a state of unnatural excitement as well as human beings.  Never before,
+perhaps, have inanimate things seemed so much in accordance with the
+spirit of the times.  Fred found a superb placard, the work of Cheret,
+a pathetic scene in a mine, banners streaming in the air, with the words
+'Bazar de Charite' in gold letters on a red ground, and the courtyard of
+the mansion where the fair was held filled with more carriages than one
+sees at a fashionable wedding.  In the vestibule many footmen were in
+attendance, the chasseurs of an Austrian ambassador, the great hulking
+fellows of the English embassy, the gray-liveried servants of old
+Rozenkranz, with their powdered heads, the negro man belonging to Madame
+Azucazillo, etc., etc.  At each arrival there was a frou-frou of satin
+and lace, and inside the sales room was a hubbub like the noise in an
+aviary.  Fred, finding himself at once in the full stream of Parisian
+life, but for the moment not yet part of it, indulged in some of those
+philosophic reflections to which he had been addicted on shipboard.
+
+Each of the tables showed something of the tastes, the character, the
+peculiarities of the lady who had it in charge.  Madame Sterny, who had
+the most beautiful hands in the world, had undertaken to sell gloves,
+being sure that the gentlemen would be eager to buy if she would only
+consent to try them on; Madame de Louisgrif, the 'chanoiness', whose
+extreme emaciation was not perceived under a sort of ecclesiastical cape,
+had an assortment of embroideries and objects of devotion, intended only
+for ladies--and indeed for only the most serious among them; for the
+table that held umbrellas, parasols and canes suited to all ages and both
+sexes, a good, upright little lady had been chosen.  Her only thought was
+how much money she could make by her sales.  Madame Strahlberg, the
+oldest of the Odinskas, obviously expected to sell only to gentlemen; her
+table held pyramids of cigars and cigarettes, but nothing else was in the
+corner where she presided, supple and frail, not handsome, but far more
+dangerous than if she had been, with her unfathomable way of looking at
+you with her light eyes set deep under her eyebrows, eyes that she kept
+half closed, but which were yet so keen, and the cruel smile that showed
+her little sharp teeth.  Her dress was of black grenadine embroidered
+with silver.  She wore half mourning as a sort of announcement that she
+was a widow, in hopes that this might put a stop to any wicked gossip
+which should assert that Count Strahlberg was still living, having got a
+divorce and been very glad to get it.  Yet people talked about her, but
+hardly knew what to bring against her, because, though anything might be
+suspected, nothing was known.  She was received and even sought after in
+the best society, on account of her wonderful talents, which she employed
+in a manner as perverse as everything else about her, but which led some
+people to call her the 'Judic des salons'.  Wanda Strahlberg was now
+holding between her lips, which were artificially red, in contrast to the
+greenish paleness of her face, which caused others to call her a vampire,
+one of the cigarettes she had for sale.  With one hand, she was playing,
+graceful as a cat, with her last package of regalias, tied with green
+ribbon, which, when offered to the highest bidder, brought an enormous
+sum.  Her sister Colette was selling flowers, like several other young
+girls, but while for the most part these waited on their customers in
+silence, she was full of lively talk, and as unblushing in her eagerness
+to sell as a 'bouquetiere' by profession.  She had grown dangerously
+pretty.  Fred was dazzled when she wanted to fasten a rose into his
+buttonhole, and then, as he paid for it, gave him another, saying: "And
+here is another thrown in for old acquaintance' sake."
+
+"Charity seems to cover many things," thought the young man as he
+withdrew from her smiles and her glances, but yet he had seen nothing so
+attractive among the black, yellow, green or tattooed ladies about whom
+Jacqueline had been pleased to tease him.
+
+"Fred!"
+
+It was Jacqueline's voice that arrested him.  It was sharp and almost
+angry.  She, too, was selling flowers, while at the same time she was
+helping Madame de Nailles with her toys; but she was selling with that
+decorum and graceful reserve which custom prescribes for young girls.
+"Fred, I do hope you will wear no roses but mine.  Those you have are
+frightful.  They make you look.  like a village bridegroom.  Take out
+those things; come!  Here is a pretty boutonniere, and I will fasten it
+much better in your buttonhole--let me."
+
+In vain did he try to seem cold to her; his heart thawed in spite of
+himself.  She held him so charmingly by the lapel of his coat, touching
+his cheek with the tip end of an aigrette which set so charmingly on the
+top of the most becoming of fur caps which she wore.  Her hair was turned
+up now, showing her beautiful neck, and he could see little rebellious
+hairs curling at their own will over her pure, soft skin, while she,
+bending forward, was engaged in his service.  He admired, too, her
+slender waist, only recently subjected to the restraint of a corset.  He
+forgave her on the spot.  At this moment a man with brown hair, tall,
+elegant, and with his moustache turned up at the ends, after the old
+fashion of the Valois, revived recently, came hurriedly up to the table
+of Madame de Nailles.  Fred felt that that inimitable moustache reduced
+his not yet abundant beard to nothing.
+
+"Mademoiselle Jacqueline," said the newcomer, "Madame de Villegry has
+sent me to beg you to help her at the buffet.  She can not keep pace with
+her customers, and is asking for volunteers."
+
+All this was uttered with a familiar assurance which greatly shocked the
+young naval man.
+
+"You permit me, Madame?"
+
+The Baroness bowed with a smile, which said, had he chosen to interpret
+it, "I give you permission to carry her off now--and forever, if you wish
+it."
+
+At that moment she was placing in the half-unwilling arms of Hubert
+Marien an enormous rubber balloon and a jumping-jack, in return for five
+Louis which he had laid humbly on her table.  But Jacqueline had not
+waited for her stepmother's permission; she let herself be borne off
+radiant on the arm of the important personage who had come for her, while
+Colette, who perhaps had remarked the substitution for her two roses,
+whispered in Fred's ear, in atone of great significance "Monsieur de
+Cymier."
+
+The poor fellow started, like a man suddenly awakened from a happy dream
+to face the most unwelcome of realities.  Impelled by that natural
+longing, that we all have, to know the worst, he went toward the buffet,
+affecting a calmness which it cost him a great effort to maintain.  As he
+went along he mechanically gave money to each of the ladies whom he knew,
+moving off without waiting for their thanks or stopping to choose
+anything from their tables.  He seemed to feel the floor rock under his
+feet, as if he had been walking the deck of a vessel.  At last he reached
+a recess decorated with palms, where, in a robe worthy of 'Peau d'Ane'
+in the story, and absolutely a novelty in the world of fashions robe all
+embroidered with gold and rubies, which glittered with every movement
+made by the wearer--Madame de Villegry was pouring out Russian tea and
+Spanish chocolate and Turkish coffee, while all kinds of deceitful
+promises of favor shone in her eyes, which wore a certain tenderness
+expressive of her interest in charity.  A party of young nymphs formed
+the court of this fair goddess, doing their best to lend her their aid.
+Jacqueline was one of them, and, at the moment Fred approached, she was
+offering, with the tips of her fingers, a glass of champagne to M. de
+Cymier, who at the same time was eagerly trying to persuade her to
+believe something, about which she was gayly laughing, while she shook
+her head.  Poor Fred, that he might hear, and suffer, drank two mouthfuls
+of sherry which he could hardly swallow.
+
+"One who was really charitable would not hesitate," said M. de Cymier,
+"especially when every separate hair would be paid for if you chose.
+Just one little curl--for the sake of the poor.  It is very often done:
+anything is allowable for the sake of the poor."
+
+"Maybe it is because, as you say, that it is very often done that I shall
+not do it," said Jacqueline, still laughing.  "I have made up my mind
+never to do what others have done before me."
+
+"Well, we shall see," said M. de Cymier, pretending to threaten her.
+
+And her young head was thrown back in a burst of inextinguishable
+laughter.
+
+Fred fled, that he might not be tempted to make a disturbance.  When he
+found himself again in the street, he asked himself where he should go.
+His anger choked him; he felt he could not keep his resentment to
+himself, and yet, however angry he might be with Jacqueline, he would
+have been unwilling to hear his mother give utterance to the very
+sentiments that he was feeling, or to harsh judgments, of which he
+preferred to keep the monopoly.  It came into his mind that he would pay
+a little visit to Giselle, who, of all the people he knew, was the least
+likely to provoke a quarrel.  He had heard that Madame de Talbrun did not
+go out, being confined to her sofa by much suffering, which, it might be
+hoped, would soon come to an end; and the certainty that he should find
+her if he called at once decided him.  Since he had been in Paris he had
+done nothing but leave cards.  This time, however, he was sure that the
+lady upon whom he called would be at home.  He was taken at once into the
+young wife's boudoir, where he found her very feeble, lying back upon her
+cushions, alone, and working at some little bits of baby-clothes.  He was
+not slow to perceive that she was very glad to see him.  She flushed with
+pleasure as he came into the room, and, dropping her sewing, held out to
+him two little, thin hands, white as wax.  "Take that footstool--sit down
+there--what a great, great pleasure it is to see you back again!"  She
+was more expansive than she had been formerly; she had gained a certain
+ease which comes from intercourse with the world, but how delicate she
+seemed!  Fred for a moment looked at her in silence, she seemed so
+changed as she lay there in a loose robe of pale blue cashmere, whose
+train drawn over her feet made her look tall as it stretched to the end
+of the gilded couch, round which Giselle had collected all the little
+things required by an invalid--bottles, boxes, work-bag, dressing-case,
+and writing materials.
+
+"You see," she said, with her soft smile, "I have plenty to occupy me,
+and I venture to be proud of my work and to think I am creating marvels."
+
+As she spoke she turned round on her closed hand a cap that seemed
+microscopic to Fred.
+
+"What!"  he cried, "do you expect him to be small enough to wear that!"
+
+"Him! you said him; and I am sure you will be right.  I know it will be a
+boy," replied Giselle, eagerly, her fair face brightened by these words.
+"I have some that are still smaller.  Look!" and she lifted up a pile of
+things trimmed with ribbons and embroidery.  "See; these are the first!
+Ah!  I lie here and fancy how he will look when he has them on.  He will
+be sweet enough to eat.  Only his papa wants us to give him a name that I
+think is too long for him, because it has always been in the family--
+Enguerrand."
+
+"His name will be longer than himself, I should say, judging by the
+dimensions of this cap," said Fred, trying to laugh.
+
+"Bah!"  replied Giselle, gayly, "but we can get over it by calling him
+Gue-gue or Ra-ra.  What do you think?  The difficulty is that names of
+that kind are apt to stick to a boy for fifty years, and then they seem
+ridiculous.  Now a pretty abbreviation like Fred is another matter.  But
+I forget they have brought up my chocolate.  Please ring, and let them
+bring you a cup.  We will take our luncheon together, as we used to do."
+
+"Thank you, I have no appetite.  I have just come from a certain buffet
+where I lost it all."
+
+"Oh!  I suppose you have been to the Bazaar--the famous Charity Fair!
+You must have made a sensation there on your return, for I am told that
+the gentlemen who are expected to spend the most are likely to send their
+money, and not to show themselves.  There are many complaints of it."
+
+"There were plenty of men round certain persons," replied Fred, dryly.
+"Madame de Villegry's table was literally besieged."
+
+"Really!  What, hers!  You surprise me!  So it was the good things she
+gave you that make you despise my poor chocolate," said Giselle, rising
+on her elbow, to receive the smoking cup that a servant brought her on a
+little silver salver.
+
+"I didn't take much at her table," said Fred, ready to enter on his
+grievances.  "If you wish to know the reason why, I was too indignant to
+eat or drink."
+
+"Indignant?"
+
+"Yes, the word is not at all too strong.  When one has passed whole
+months away from what is unwholesome and artificial, such things as make
+up life in Paris, one becomes a little like Alceste, Moliere's
+misanthrope, when one gets back to them.  It is ridiculous at my age, and
+yet if I were to tell you--"
+
+"What?--you puzzle me.  What can there be that is unwholesome in selling
+things for the poor?"
+
+"The poor!  A pretty pretext!  Was it to benefit the poor that that
+odious Countess Strahlberg made all those disreputable grimaces?  I have
+seen kermesses got up by actresses, and, upon my word, they were good
+form in comparison."
+
+"Oh!  Countess Strahlberg!  People have heard about her doings until they
+are tired of them," said Giselle, with that air of knowing everything
+assumed by a young wife whose husband has told her all the current
+scandals, as a sort of initiation.
+
+"And her sister seems likely to be as bad as herself before long."
+
+"Poor Colette!  She has been so badly brought up.  It is not her fault."
+
+"But there's Jacqueline," cried Fred, in a sudden outburst, and already
+feeling better because he could mention her name.
+
+"Allons, donc!  You don't mean to say anything against Jacqueline?"
+cried Giselle, clasping her hands with an air of astonishment.  "What can
+she have done to scandalize you--poor little dear?"
+
+Fred paused for half a minute, then he drew the stool in the form of an
+X, on which he was sitting, a little nearer to Giselle's sofa, and,
+lowering his voice, told her how Jacqueline had acted under his very
+eyes.  As he went on, watching as he spoke the effect his words produced
+upon Giselle, who listened as if slightly amused by his indignation, the
+case seemed not nearly so bad as he had supposed, and a delicious sense
+of relief crept over him when she to whom he told his wrongs after
+hearing him quietly to the end, said, smiling:
+
+"And what then?  There is no great harm in all that.  Would you have had
+her refuse to go with the gentleman Madame de Villegry had sent to fetch
+her?  And why, may I ask, should she not have done her best to help by
+pouring out champagne?  An air put on to please is indispensable to a
+woman, if she wishes to sell anything.  Good Heavens!  I don't approve
+any more than you do of all these worldly forms of charity, but this kind
+of thing is considered right; it has come into fashion.  Jacqueline had
+the permission of her parents, and I really can't see any good reason why
+you should complain of her.  Unless--why not tell me the whole truth,
+Fred?  I know it--don't we always know what concerns the people that we
+care for?  And I might possibly some day be of use to you.  Say!  don't
+you think you are--a little bit jealous?"
+
+Less encouragement than this would have sufficed to make him open his
+heart to Giselle.  He was delighted that some woman was willing he should
+confide in her.  And what was more, he was glad to have it proved that he
+had been all wrong.  A quarter of an hour later Giselle had comforted
+him, happy herself that it had been in her power to undertake a task of
+consolation, a work in which, with sweet humility, she felt herself at
+ease.  On the great stage of life she knew now she should never play any
+important part, any that would bring her greatly into view.  But she felt
+that she was made to be a confidant, one of those perfect confidants who
+never attempt to interfere rashly with the course of events, but who wait
+upon the ways of Providence, removing stones, and briers and thorns, and
+making everything turn out for the best in the end.  Jacqueline, she
+said, was so young!  A little wild, perhaps, but what a treasure!  She
+was all heart!  She would need a husband worthy of her, such a man as
+Fred.  Madame d'Argy, she knew, had already said something on the subject
+to her father.  But it would have to be the Baroness that Fred must bring
+over to their views; the Baroness was acquiring more and more influence
+over her husband, who seemed to be growing older every day.  M. de
+Nailles had evidently much, very much upon his mind.  It was said in
+business circles that he had for some time past been given to
+speculation.  Oscar said so.  If that were the case, many of Jacqueline's
+suitors might withdraw.  Not all men were so disinterested as Fred.
+
+"Oh!  As to her dot--what do I care for her dot?"  cried the young man.
+"I have enough for two, if she would only be satisfied to live quietly at
+Lizerolles!"
+
+"Yes," said the judicious little matron, nodding her head, "but who would
+like to marry a midshipman?  Make haste and be a lieutenant, or an
+ensign."
+
+She smiled at herself for having made the reward depend upon exertion,
+with a sort of maternal instinct.  It was the same instinct that would
+lead her in the future to promise Enguerrand a sugar-plum if he said his
+lesson.  "Nobody will steal your Jacqueline till you are ready to carry
+her off.  Besides, if there were any danger I could give you timely
+warning."
+
+"Ah!  Giselle, if she only had your kind heart--your good sense."
+
+"Do you think I am better and more reasonable than other people?  In what
+way?  I have done as so many other girls do; I have married without
+knowing well what I was doing."
+
+She stopped short, fearing she might have said too much, and indeed Fred
+looked at her anxiously.
+
+"You don't regret it, do you?"
+
+"You must ask Monsieur de Talbrun if he regrets it," she said, with a
+laugh.  "It must be hard on him to have a sick wife, who knows little of
+what is passing outside of her own chamber, who is living on her reserve
+fund of resources--a very poor little reserve fund it is, too!"
+
+Then, as if she thought that Fred had been with her long enough, she
+said: "I would ask you to stay and see Monsieur de Talbrun, but he won't
+be in, he dines at his club.  He is going to see a new play tonight which
+they say promises to be very good."
+
+"What!  Will he leave you alone all the evening?"
+
+"Oh!  I am very glad he should find amusement.  Just think how long it is
+that I have been pinned down here!  Poor Oscar!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+GISELLE'S CONSOLATION
+
+The arrival of the expected Enguerrand hindered Giselle from pleading
+Fred's cause as soon as she could have wished.  Her life for twenty-four
+hours was in great danger, and when the crisis was past, which M. de
+Talbrun treated very indifferently, as a matter of course, her first cry
+was "My baby!"  uttered in a tone of tender eagerness such as had never
+been heard from her lips before.
+
+The nurse brought him.  He lay asleep swathed in his swaddling clothes
+like a mummy in its wrappings, a motionless, mysterious being, but he
+seemed to his mother beautiful--more beautiful than anything she had seen
+in those vague visions of happiness she had indulged in at the convent,
+which were never to be realized.  She kissed his little purple face, his
+closed eyelids, his puckered mouth, with a sort of respectful awe.  She
+was forbidden to fatigue herself.  The wet-nurse, who had been brought
+from Picardy, drew near with her peasant cap trimmed with long blue
+streamers; her big, experienced hands took the baby from his mother, she
+turned him over on her lap, she patted him, she laughed at him.  And the
+mother-happiness that had lighted up Giselle's pale face died away.
+
+"What right," she thought, "has that woman to my child?"  She envied the
+horrid creature, coarse and stout, with her tanned face, her bovine
+features, her shapeless figure, who seemed as if Nature had predestined
+her to give milk and nothing more.  Giselle would so gladly have been in
+her place!  Why wouldn't they permit her to nurse her baby?
+
+M. de Talbrun said in answer to this question:
+
+"It is never done among people in our position.  You have no idea, of all
+it would entail on you--what slavery, what fatigue!  And most probably
+you would not have had milk enough."
+
+"Oh!  who can tell?  I am his mother!  And when this woman goes he will
+have to have English nurses, and when he is older he will have to go to
+school.  When shall I have him to myself?"
+
+And she began to cry.
+
+"Come, come!"  said M. de Talbrun, much astonished, "all this fuss about
+that frightful little monkey!"
+
+Giselle looked at him almost as much astonished as he had been at her.
+Love, with its jealousy, its transports, its anguish, its delights had
+for the first time come to her--the love that she could not feel for her
+husband awoke in her for her son.  She was ennobled--she was transfigured
+by a sense of her maternity; it did for her what marriage does for some
+women--it seemed as if a sudden radiance surrounded her.
+
+When she raised her infant in her arms, to show him to those who came to
+see her, she always seemed like a most chaste and touching representation
+of the Virgin Mother.  She would say, as she exhibited him: "Is he not
+superb?"  Every one said: "Yes, indeed!"  out of politeness, but, on
+leaving the mother's presence, would generally remark: "He is Monsieur de
+Talbrun in baby-clothes: the likeness is perfectly horrible!"
+
+The only visitor who made no secret of this impression was Jacqueline,
+who came to see her cousin as soon as she was permitted--that is, as soon
+as her friend was able to sit up and be prettily dressed, as became the
+mother of such a little gentleman as the heir of all the Talbruns.  When
+Jacqueline saw the little creature half-smothered in the lace that
+trimmed his pillows, she burst out laughing, though it was in the
+presence of his mother.
+
+"Oh, mon Dieu!"  she cried, "how ugly!  I never should have supposed we
+could have been as ugly as that!  Why, his face is all the colors of the
+rainbow; who would have imagined it?  And he crumples up his little face
+like those things in gutta-percha.  My poor Giselle, how can you bear to
+show him!  I never, never could covet a baby!"
+
+Giselle, in consternation, asked herself whether this strange girl, who
+did not care for children, could be a proper wife for Fred; but her
+habitual indulgence came to her aid, and she thought:
+
+"She is but a child herself, she does not know what she is saying," and
+profiting by her first tete-a-tete with Jacqueline's stepmother, she
+spoke as she had promised to Madame de Nailles.
+
+"A matchmaker already!"  said the Baroness, with a smile.  "And so soon
+after you have found out what it costs to be a mother!  How good of you,
+my dear Giselle!  So you support Fred as a candidate?  But I can't say I
+think he has much chance; Monsieur de Nailles has his own ideas."
+
+She spoke as if she really thought that M. de Nailles could have any
+ideas but her own.  When the adroit Clotilde was at a loss, she was
+likely to evoke this chimerical notion of her husband's having an opinion
+of his own.
+
+"Oh!  Madame, you can do anything you like with him!"
+
+The clever woman sighed:
+
+"So you fancy that when people have been long married a wife retains as
+much influence over her husband as you have kept over Monsieur de
+Talbrun?  You will learn to know better, my dear."
+
+"But I have no influence," murmured Giselle, who knew herself to be her
+husband's slave.
+
+"Oh!  I know better.  You are making believe!"
+
+"Well, but we were not talking about me, but--"
+
+"Oh!  yes.  I understood.  I will think about it.  I will try to bring
+over Monsieur de Nailles."
+
+She was not at all disposed to drop the meat for the sake of the shadow,
+but she was not sure of M. de Cymier, notwithstanding all that Madame de
+Villegry was at pains to tell her about his serious intentions.  On the
+other hand, she would have been far from willing to break with a man so
+brilliant, who made himself so agreeable at her Tuesday receptions.
+
+"Meantime, it would be well if you, dear, were to try to find out what
+Jacqueline thinks.  You may not find it very easy."
+
+"Will you authorize me to tell her how well he loves her?  Oh, then, I am
+quite satisfied!"  cried Giselle.
+
+But she was under a mistake.  Jacqueline, as soon as she began to speak
+to her of Fred's suit, stopped her:
+
+"Poor fellow!  Why can't he amuse himself for some time longer and let me
+do the same?  Men seem to me so strange!  Now, Fred is one who, just
+because he is good and serious by nature, fancies that everybody else
+should be the same; he wishes me to be tethered in the flowery meads of
+Lizerolles, and browse where he would place me.  Such a life would be an
+end of everything--an end to my life, and I should not like it at all.
+I should prefer to grow old in Paris, or some other capital, if my
+husband happened to be engaged in diplomacy.  Even supposing I marry--
+which I do not think an absolute necessity, unless I can not get rid
+otherwise of an inconvenient chaperon--and to do my stepmother justice,
+she knows well enough that I will not submit to too much of her
+dictation!"
+
+"Jacqueline, they say you see too much of the Odinskas."
+
+"There!  that's another fault you find in me.  I go there because Madame
+Strahlberg is so kind as to give me some singing-lessons.  If you only
+knew how much progress I am making, thanks to her.  Music is a thousand
+times more interesting, I can tell you, than all that you can do as
+mistress of a household.  You don't think so?  Oh! I know Enguerrand's
+first tooth, his first steps, his first gleams of intelligence, and all
+that.  Such things are not in my line, you know.  Of course I think your
+boy very funny, very cunning, very--anything you like to fancy him, but
+forgive me if I am glad he does not belong to me.  There, don't you see
+now that marriage is not my vocation, so please give up speaking to me
+about matrimony."
+
+"As you will," said Giselle, sadly, "but you will give great pain to a
+good man whose heart is wholly yours."
+
+"I did not ask for his heart.  Such gifts are exasperating.  One does not
+know what to do with them.  Can't he--poor Fred--love me as I love him,
+and leave me my liberty?"
+
+"Your liberty!"  exclaimed Giselle; "liberty to ruin your life, that's
+what it will be."
+
+"Really, one would suppose there was only one kind of existence in your
+eyes--this life of your own, Giselle.  To leave one cage to be shut up in
+another--that is the fate of many birds, I know, but there are others who
+like to use their wings to soar into the air.  I like that expression.
+Come, little mother, tell me right out, plainly, that your lot is the
+only one in this world that ought to be envied by a woman."
+
+Giselle answered with a strange smile:
+
+"You seem astonished that I adore my baby; but since he came great things
+seem to have been revealed to me.  When I hold him to my breast I seem to
+understand, as I never did before, duty and marriage, family ties and
+sorrows, life itself, in short, its griefs and joys.  You can not
+understand that now, but you will some day.  You, too, will gaze upon the
+horizon as I do.  I am ready to suffer; I am ready for self-sacrifice.
+I know now whither my life leads me.  I am led, as it were, by this
+little being, who seemed to me at first only a doll, for whom I was
+embroidering caps and dresses.  You ask whether I am satisfied with my
+lot in life.  Yes, I am, thanks to this guide, this guardian angel,
+thanks to my precious Enguerrand."
+
+Jacqueline listened, stupefied, to this unexpected outburst, so unlike
+her cousin's usual language; but the charm was broken by its ending with
+the tremendously long name of Enguerrand, which always made her laugh, it
+was in such perfect harmony with the feudal pretensions of the Monredons
+and the Talbruns.
+
+"How solemn and eloquent and obscure you are, my dear," she answered.
+"You speak like a sibyl.  But one thing I see, and that is that you are
+not so perfectly happy as you would have us believe, seeing that you feel
+the need of consolations.  Then, why do you wish me to follow your
+example?"
+
+"Fred is not Monsieur de Talbrun," said the young wife, for the moment
+forgetting herself.
+
+"Do you mean to say--"
+
+"I meant nothing, except that if you married Fred you would have had the
+advantage of first knowing him."
+
+"Ah!  that's your fixed idea.  But I am getting to know Monsieur de
+Cymier pretty well."
+
+"You have betrayed yourself," cried Giselle, with indignation.  "Monsieur
+de Cymier!"
+
+"Monsieur de Cymier is coming to our house on Saturday evening, and I
+must get up a Spanish song that Madame Strahlberg has taught me, to charm
+his ears and those of other people.  Oh!  I can do it very well.  Won't
+you come and hear me play the castanets, if Monsieur Enguerrand can spare
+you?  There is a young Polish pianist who is to play our accompaniment.
+Ah, there is nothing like a Polish pianist to play Chopin!  He is
+charming, poor young man!  an exile, and in poverty; but he is cared for
+by those ladies, who take him everywhere.  That is the sort of life I
+should like--the life of Madame Strahlberg--to be a young widow, free to
+do what I pleased."
+
+"She may be a widow--but some say she is divorced."
+
+"Oh! is it you who repeat such naughty scandals, Giselle?  Where shall
+charity take refuge in this world if not in your heart?  I am going--your
+seriousness may be catching.  Kiss me before I go."
+
+"No," said Madame de Talbrun, turning her head away.
+
+After this she asked herself whether she ought not to discourage Fred.
+She could not resolve on doing so, yet she could not tell him what was
+false; but by eluding the truth with that ability which kind-hearted
+women can always show when they try to avoid inflicting pain, she
+succeeded in leaving the young man hope enough to stimulate his ambition.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+FRED ASKS A QUESTION
+
+Time, whatever may be said of it by the calendars, is not to be measured
+by days, weeks, and months in all cases; expectation, hope, happiness and
+grief have very different ways of counting hours, and we know from our
+own experience that some are as short as a minute, and others as long as
+a century.  The love or the suffering of those who can tell just how long
+they have suffered, or just how long they have been in love, is only
+moderate and reasonable.
+
+Madame d'Argy found the two lonely years she passed awaiting the return
+of her son, who was winning his promotion to the rank of ensign, so long,
+that it seemed to her as if they never would come to an end.  She had
+given a reluctant consent to his notion of adopting the navy as a
+profession, thinking that perhaps, after all, there might be no harm in
+allowing her dear boy to pass the most dangerous period of his youth
+under strict discipline, but she could not be patient forever!  She
+idolized her son too much to be resigned to living without him; she felt
+that he was hers no longer.  Either he was at sea or at Toulon, where she
+could very rarely join him, being detained at Lizerolles by the necessity
+of looking after their property.  With what eagerness she awaited his
+promotion, which she did not doubt was all the Nailles waited for to give
+their consent to the marriage; of their happy half-consent she hastened
+to remind them in a note which announced the new grade to which he had
+been promoted.  Her indignation was great on finding that her formal
+request received no decided answer; but, as her first object was Fred's
+happiness, she placed the reply she had received in its most favorable
+light when she forwarded it to the person whom it most concerned.  She
+did this in all honesty.  She was not willing to admit that she was being
+put off with excuses; still less could she believe in a refusal.
+
+She accepted the excuse that M. de Nailles gave for returning no decided
+answer, viz.: that "Jacqueline was too young," though she answered him
+with some vehemence: "Fred was born when I was eighteen."  But she had to
+accept it.  Her ensign would have to pass a few more months on the coast
+of Senegal, a few more months which were made shorter by the
+encouragement forwarded to him by his mother, who was careful to send him
+everything she could find out that seemed to be, or that she imagined
+might be, in his favor; she underlined such things and commented upon
+them, so as to make the faintest hypothesis seem a certainty.  Sometimes
+she did not even wait for the post.  Fred would find, on putting in at
+some post, a cablegram: "Good news," or "All goes well," and he would be
+beside himself with joy and excitement until, on receiving his poor, dear
+mother's next letter, he found out on how slight a foundation her
+assurance had been founded.
+
+Sometimes, she wrote him disagreeable things about Jacqueline, as if she
+would like to disenchant him, and then he said to himself: "By this, I am
+to understand that my affairs are not going on well; I still count for
+little, notwithstanding my promotion."  Ah!  if he could only have had,
+so near the beginning of his career, any opportunity of distinguishing
+himself!  No brilliant deed would have been too hard for him.  He would
+have scaled the very skies.  Alas!  he had had no chance to win
+distinction, he had only had to follow in the beaten track of ordinary
+duty; he had encountered no glorious perils, though at St. Louis he had
+come very near leaving his bones, but it was only a case of typhoid
+fever.  This fever, however, brought about a scene between M. de Nailles
+and his mother.
+
+"When," she cried, with all the fury of a lioness, "do you expect to come
+to the conclusion that my son is a suitable match for Jacqueline?  Do you
+imagine that I shall let him wait till he is a post-captain to satisfy
+the requirements of Mademoiselle your daughter--provided he does not die
+in a hospital?  Do you think that I shall be willing to go on living--
+if you can call it living!--all alone and in continual apprehension?  Why
+do you let him keep on in uncertainty?  You know his worth, and you know
+that with him Jacqueline would be happy.  Instead of that--instead of
+saying once for all to this young man, who is more in love with her than
+any other man will ever be: 'There, take her, I give her to you,' which
+would be the straightforward, sensible way, you go on encouraging the
+caprices of a child who will end by wasting, in the life you are
+permitting her to lead, all the good qualities she has and keeping
+nothing but the bad ones."
+
+"Mon Dieu! I can't see that Jacqueline leads a life like that!"  said M.
+de Nailles, who felt that he must say something.
+
+"You don't see, you don't see!  How can any one see who won't open his
+eyes?  My poor friend, just look for once at what is going on around you,
+under your own roof--"
+
+"Jacqueline is devoted to music," said her father, good-humoredly.
+Madame d'Argy in her heart thought he was losing his mind.
+
+And in truth he was growing older day by day, becoming more and more
+anxious, more and more absorbed in the great struggle--not for life; that
+might exhaust a man, but at least it was energetic and noble--but for
+superfluous wealth, for vanity, for luxury, which, for his own part, he
+cared nothing for, and which he purchased dearly, spurred on to exertion
+by those near to him, who insisted on extravagances.
+
+"Oh! yes, Jacqueline, I know, is devoted to music," went on Madame
+d'Argy, with an air of extreme disapproval, "too much so!  And when she
+is able to sing like Madame Strahlberg, what good will it do her?  Even
+now I see more than one little thing about her that needs to be reformed.
+How can she escape spoiling in that crowd of Slavs and Yankees, people of
+no position probably in their own countries, with whom you permit her to
+associate?  People nowadays are so imprudent about acquaintances!  To be
+a foreigner is a passport into society.  Just think what her poor mother
+would have said to the bad manners she is adopting from all parts of the
+globe?  My poor, dear Adelaide!  She was a genuine Frenchwoman of the old
+type; there are not many such left now.  Ah!" continued Madame d'Argy,
+without any apparent connection with her subject, "Monsieur de Talbrun's
+mother, if he had one, would be truly happy to see him married to
+Giselle!"
+
+"But," faltered M. de Nailles, struck by the truth of some of these
+remarks, "I make no opposition--quite the contrary--I have spoken several
+times about your son, but I was not listened to!"
+
+"What can she say against Fred?"
+
+"Nothing.  She is very fond of him, that you know as well as I do.  But
+those childish attachments do not necessarily lead to love and marriage."
+
+"Friendship on her side might be enough," said Madame d'Argy, in the tone
+of a woman who had never known more than that in marriage.  "My poor Fred
+has enthusiasm and all that, enough for two.  And in time she will be
+madly in love with him--she must!  It is impossible it should be
+otherwise."
+
+"Very good, persuade her yourself if you can; but Jacqueline has a pretty
+strong will of her own."
+
+Jacqueline's will was a reality, though the ideas of M. de Nailles may
+have been illusion.
+
+"And my wife, too!"  resumed the Baron, after a long sigh.  "I don't know
+how it is, but Jacqueline, as she has grown up, has become like an
+unbroken colt, and those two, who were once all in all to each other, are
+now seldom of one mind.  How am I to act when their two wills cross mine,
+as they often do?  I have so many things on my mind.  There are times
+when--"
+
+"Yes, one can see that.  You don't seem to know where you are.  And do
+you think that the disposition she shows to act, as you say, like an
+unbroken colt, is nothing to me?  Do you think I am quite satisfied with
+my son's choice?  I could have wished that he had chosen for his wife--
+but what is the use of saying what I wished?  The important thing is that
+he should be happy in his own way.  Besides, I dare say the young thing
+will calm down of her own accord.  Her mother's daughter must be good at
+heart.  All will come right when she is removed from a circle which is
+doing her no good; it is injuring her in people's opinion already, you
+must know.  And how will it be by-and-bye?  I hear people saying
+everywhere: 'How can the Nailles let that young girl associate so much
+with foreigners?'  You say they are old school-fellows, they went to the
+'cours' together.  But see if Madame d'Etaples and Madame Ray, under the
+same pretext, let Isabelle and Yvonne associate with the Odinskas!  As to
+that foolish woman, Madame d'Avrigny, she goes to their house to look up
+recruits for her operettas, and Madame Strahlberg has one advantage over
+regular artists, there is no call to pay her.  That is the reason why she
+invites her.  Besides which, she won't find it so easy to marry Dolly."
+
+"Oh! there are several reasons for that," said the Baron, who could see
+the mote in his neighbor's eye, "Mademoiselle d'Avrigny has led a life so
+very worldly ever since she was a child, so madly fast and lively, that
+suitors are afraid of her.  Jacqueline, thank heaven, has never yet been
+in what is called the world.  She only visits those with whom she is on
+terms of intimacy."
+
+"An intimacy which includes all Paris," said Madame d'Argy, raising her
+eyes to heaven.  "If she does not go to great balls, it is only because
+her stepmother is bored by them.  But with that exception it seems to me
+she is allowed to do anything.  I don't see the difference.  But, to be
+sure, if Jacqueline is not for us, you have a right to say that I am
+interfering in what does not concern me."
+
+"Not at all," said the unfortunate father, "I feel how much I ought to
+value your advice, and an alliance with your family would please me more
+than anything."
+
+He said the truth, for he was disturbed by seeing M. de Cymier so slow in
+making his proposals, and he was also aware that young girls in our day
+are less sought for in marriage than they used to be.  His friend
+Wermant, rich as he was, had had some trouble in capturing for Berthe a
+fellow of no account in the Faubourg St. Germain, and the prize was not
+much to be envied.  He was a young man without brains and without a sou,
+who enjoyed so little consideration among his own people that his wife
+had not been received as she expected, and no one spoke of Madame de
+Belvan without adding: "You know, that little Wermant, daughter of the
+'agent de change'."
+
+Of course, Jacqueline had the advantage of good birth over Berthe, but
+how great was her inferiority in point of fortune!  M. de Nailles
+sometimes confided these perplexities to his wife, without, however,
+receiving much comfort from her.  Nor did the Baroness confess to her
+husband all her own fears.  In secret she often asked herself, with the
+keen insight of a woman of the world well trained in artifice and who
+possessed a thorough knowledge of mankind, whether there might not be
+women capable of using a young girl so as to put the world on a wrong
+scent; whether, in other words, Madame de Villegry did not talk
+everywhere about M. de Cymier's attentions to Mademoiselle de Nailles in
+order to conceal his relations to herself?  Madame de Villegry indeed
+cared little about standing well in public opinion, but rather the
+contrary; she would not, however, for the world have been willing, by too
+openly favoring one man among her admirers, to run the risk of putting
+the rest to flight.  No doubt M. de Cymier was most assiduous in his
+attendance on the receptions and dances at Madame de Nailles's, but he
+was there always at the same time as Madame de Villegry herself.  They
+would hold whispered conferences in corners, which might possibly have
+been about Jacqueline, but there was no proof that they were so, except
+what Madame de Villegry herself said.  "At any rate," thought Madame de
+Nailles, "if Fred comes forward as a suitor it may stimulate Monsieur de
+Cymier.  There are men who put off taking a decisive step till the last
+moment, and are only to be spurred up by competition."
+
+So every opportunity was given to Fred to talk freely with Jacqueline
+when he returned to Paris.  By this time he wore two gold-lace stripes
+upon his sleeve.  But Jacqueline avoided any tete-a-tete with him as if
+she understood the danger that awaited her.  She gave him no chance of
+speaking alone with her.  She was friendly--nay, sometimes affectionate
+when other people were near them, but more commonly she teased him,
+bewildered him, excited him.  After an hour or two spent in her society
+he would go home sometimes savage, sometimes desponding, to ponder in his
+own room, and in his own heart, what interpretation he ought to put upon
+the things that she had said to him.
+
+The more he thought, the less he understood.  He would not have confided
+in his mother for the world; she might have cast blame on Jacqueline.
+Besides her, he had no one who could receive his confidences, who would
+bear with his perplexities, who could assist in delivering him from the
+network of hopes and fears in which, after every interview with
+Jacqueline, he seemed to himself to become more and more entangled.
+
+At last, however, at one of the soirees given every fortnight by Madame
+de Nailles, he succeeded in gaining her attention.
+
+"Give me this quadrille," he said to her.
+
+And, as she could not well refuse, he added, as soon as she had taken his
+arm: "We will not dance, and I defy you to escape me."
+
+"This is treason!"  she cried, somewhat angrily.  "We are not here to
+talk; I can almost guess beforehand what you have to say, and--"
+
+But he had made her sit down in the recess of that bow-window which had
+been called the young girls' corner years ago.  He stood before her,
+preventing her escape, and half-laughing, though he was deeply moved.
+
+"Since you have guessed what I wanted to say, answer me quickly."
+
+"Must I?  Must I, really?  Why didn't you ask my father to do your
+commission?  It is so horribly disagreeable to do these things for one's
+self."
+
+"That depends upon what the things may be that have to be said.  I should
+think it ought to be very agreeable to pronounce the word on which the
+happiness of a whole life is to depend."
+
+"Oh!  what a grand phrase!  As if I could be essential to anybody's
+happiness?  You can't make me believe that!"
+
+"You are mistaken.  You are indispensable to mine."
+
+"There!  my declaration has been made," thought Fred, much relieved that
+it was over, for he had been afraid to pronounce the decisive words.
+
+"Well, if I thought that were true, I should be very sorry," said
+Jacqueline, no longer smiling, but looking down fixedly at the pointed
+toe of her little slipper; "because--"
+
+She stopped suddenly.  Her face flushed red.
+
+"I don't know how to explain to you;" she said.
+
+"Explain nothing," pleaded Fred; "all I ask is Yes, nothing more.  There
+is nothing else I care for."
+
+She raised her head coldly and haughtily, yet her voice trembled as she
+said:
+
+"You will force me to say it?  Then, no!  No!"  she repeated, as if to
+reaffirm her refusal.
+
+Then, alarmed by Fred's silence, and above all by his looks, he who had
+seemed so gay shortly before and whose face now showed an anguish such as
+she had never yet seen on the face of man, she added:
+
+"Oh, forgive me!--Forgive me," she repeated in a lower voice, holding out
+her hand.  He did not take it.
+
+"You love some one else?"  he asked, through his clenched teeth.
+
+She opened her fan and affected to examine attentively the pink landscape
+painted on it to match her dress.
+
+"Why should you think so?  I wish to be free."
+
+"Free?  Are you free?  Is a woman ever free?"
+
+Jacqueline shook her head, as if expressing vague dissent.
+
+"Free at least to see a little of the world," she said, "to choose, to
+use my wings, in short--"
+
+And she moved her slender arms with an audacious gesture which had
+nothing in common with the flight of that mystic dove upon which she had
+meditated when holding the card given her by Giselle.
+
+"Free to prefer some other man," said Fred, who held fast to his idea
+with the tenacity of jealousy.
+
+"Ah!  that is different.  Supposing there were anyone whom I liked--not
+more, but differently from the way I like you--it is possible.  But you
+spoke of loving!"
+
+"Your distinctions are too subtle," said Fred.
+
+"Because, much as it seems to astonish you, I am quite capable of seeing
+the difference," said Jacqueline, with the look and the accent of a
+person who has had large experience.  "I have loved once--a long time
+ago, a very long time ago, a thousand years and more.  Yes, I loved some
+one, as perhaps you love me, and I suffered more than you will ever
+suffer.  It is ended; it is over--I think it is over forever."
+
+"How foolish!  At your age!"
+
+"Yes, that kind of love is ended for me.  Others may please me, others do
+please me, as you said, but it is not the same thing.  Would you like to
+see the man I once loved?"  asked Jacqueline, impelled by a juvenile
+desire to exhibit her experience, and also aware instinctively that to
+cast a scrap of past history to the curious sometimes turns off their
+attention on another track.  "He is near us now," she added.
+
+And while Fred's angry eyes, under his frowning brows, were wandering all
+round the salon, she pointed to Hubert Marien with a movement of her fan.
+
+Marien was looking on at the dancing, with his old smile, not so
+brilliant now as it had been.  He now only smiled at beauty collectively,
+which was well represented that evening in Madame de Nailles's salon.
+Young girls 'en masse' continued to delight him, but his admiration as an
+artist became less and less personal.
+
+He had grown stout, his hair and beard were getting gray; he was
+interested no longer in Savonarola, having obtained, thanks to his
+picture, the medal of honor, and the Institute some months since had
+opened its doors to him.
+
+"Marien?  You are laughing at me!" cried Fred.
+
+"It is simply the truth."
+
+Some magnetic influence at that moment caused the painter to turn his
+eyes toward the spot where they were talking.
+
+"We were speaking of you," said Jacqueline.
+
+And her tone was so singular that he dared not ask what they were saying.
+With humility which had in it a certain touch of bitterness he said,
+still smiling:
+
+"You might find something better to do than to talk good or evil of a
+poor fellow who counts now for nothing."
+
+"Counts for nothing!  A fellow to be pitied!"  cried Fred, "a man who has
+just been elected to the Institute--you are hard to satisfy!"
+
+Jacqueline sat looking at him like a young sorceress engaged in sticking
+pins into the heart of a waxen figure of her enemy.  She never missed an
+opportunity of showing her implacable dislike of him.
+
+She turned to Fred: "What I was telling you," she said, "I am quite
+willing to repeat in his presence.  The thing has lost its importance now
+that he has become more indifferent to me than any other man in the
+world."
+
+She stopped, hoping that Marien had understood what she was saying and
+that he resented the humiliating avowal from her own lips that her
+childish love was now only a memory.
+
+"If that is the only confession you have to make to me," said Fred, who
+had almost recovered his composure, "I can put up with my former rival,
+and I pass a sponge over all that has happened in your long past of
+seventeen years and a half, Jacqueline.  Tell me only that at present you
+like no one better than me."
+
+She smiled a half-smile, but he did not see it.  She made no answer.
+
+"Is he here, too--like the other!"  he asked, sternly.
+
+And she saw his restless eyes turn for an instant to the conservatory,
+where Madame de Villegry, leaning back in her armchair, and Gerard de
+Cymier, on a low seat almost at her feet, were carrying on their platonic
+flirtation.
+
+"Oh! you must not think of quarrelling with him," cried Jacqueline,
+frightened at the look Fred fastened on De Cymier.
+
+"No, it would be of no use.  I shall go out to Tonquin, that's all."
+
+"Fred!  You are not serious."
+
+"You will see whether I am not serious.  At this very moment I know a man
+who will be glad to exchange with me."
+
+"What!  go and get yourself killed at Tonquin for a foolish little girl
+like me, who is very, very fond of you, but hardly knows her own mind.
+It would be absurd!"
+
+"People are not always killed at Tonquin, but I must have new interests,
+something to divert my mind from--"
+
+"Fred!  my dear Fred"--Jacqueline had suddenly become almost tender,
+almost suppliant.  "Your mother!  Think of your mother!  What would she
+say?  Oh, my God!"
+
+"My mother must be allowed to think that I love my profession better than
+all else.  But, Jacqueline," continued the poor fellow, clinging in
+despair to the very smallest hope, as a drowning man catches at a straw,
+"if you do not, as you said, know exactly your own mind--if you would
+like to question your own heart--I would wait--"
+
+Jacqueline was biting the end of her fan--a conflict was taking place
+within her breast.  But to certain temperaments there is pleasure in
+breaking a chain or in leaping a barrier; she said:
+
+"Fred, I am too much your friend to deceive you."
+
+At that moment M. de Cymier came toward them with his air of assurance:
+"Mademoiselle, you forget that you promised me this waltz," he said.
+
+"No, I never forget anything," she answered, rising.
+
+Fred detained her an instant, saying, in a low voice:
+
+"Forgive me.  This moment, Jacqueline, is decisive.  I must have an
+answer.  I never shall speak to you again of my sorrow.  But decide now--
+on the spot.  Is all ended between us?"
+
+"Not our old friendship, Fred," said Jacqueline, tears rising in her
+eyes.
+
+"So be it, then, if you so will it.  But our friendship never will show
+itself unless you are in need of friendship, and then only with the
+discretion that your present attitude toward me has imposed."
+
+"Are you ready, Mademoiselle," said Gerard, who, to allow them to end
+their conversation, had obligingly turned his attention to some madrigals
+that Colette Odinska was laughing over.
+
+Jacqueline shook her head resolutely, though at that moment her heart
+felt as if it were in a vise, and the moisture in her eyes looked like
+anything but a refusal.  Then, without giving herself time for further
+thought, she whirled away into the dance with M. de Cymier.  It was over,
+she had flung to the winds her chance for happiness, and wounded a heart
+more cruelly than Hubert Marien had ever wounded hers.  The most horrible
+thing in this unending warfare we call love is that we too often repay to
+those who love us the harm that has been done us by those whom we have
+loved.  The seeds of mistrust and perversity sown by one man or by one
+woman bear fruit to be gathered by some one else.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A COMEDY AND A TRAGEDY
+
+The departure of Frederic d'Argy for Tonquin occasioned a break in the
+intercourse between his mother and the family of De Nailles.  The wails
+of Hecuba were nothing to the lamentations of poor Madame d'Argy; the
+unreasonableness of her wrath and the exaggeration in her reproaches
+hindered even Jacqueline from feeling all the remorse she might otherwise
+have felt for her share in Fred's departure.  She told her father, who
+the first time in her life addressed her with some severity, that she
+could not be expected to love all the young men who might threaten to go
+to the wars, or to fling themselves from fourth-story windows, for her
+sake.
+
+"It was very indelicate and inconsiderate of Fred to tell any one that it
+was my fault that he was doing anything so foolish," she said, with true
+feminine deceit, "but he has taken the very worst possible means to make
+me care for him.  Everybody has too much to say about this matter which
+concerns only him and me.  Even Giselle thought proper to write me a
+sermon!"
+
+And she gave vent to her feelings in an exclamation of three syllables
+that she had learned from the Odinskas, which meant: "I don't care!"
+(je m'en moque).
+
+But this was not true.  She cared very much for Giselle's good opinion,
+and for Madame d'Argy's friendship.  She suffered much in her secret
+heart at the thought of having given so much pain to Fred.  She guessed
+how deep it was by the step to which it had driven him.  But there was in
+her secret soul something more than all the rest, it was a puerile, but
+delicious satisfaction in feeling her own importance, in having been able
+to exercise an influence over one heart which might possibly extend to
+that of M. de Cymier.  She thought he might be gratified by knowing that
+she had driven a young man to despair, if he guessed for whose sake she
+had been so cruel.  He knew it, of course.  Madame de Nailles took care
+that he should not be ignorant of it, and the pleasure he took in such a
+proof of his power over a young heart was not unlike that pleasure
+Jacqueline experienced in her coquetry--which crushed her better
+feelings.  He felt proud of the sacrifice this beautiful girl had made
+for his sake, though he did not consider himself thereby committed to any
+decision, only he felt more attached to her than ever.  Ever since the
+day when Madame de Villegry had first introduced him at the house of
+Madame de Nailles, he had had great pleasure in going there.  The
+daughter of the house was more and more to his taste, but his liking for
+her was not such as to carry him beyond prudence.  "If I chose," he would
+say to himself after every time he met her, "if I chose I could own that
+jewel.  I have only to stretch out my hand and have it given me."  And
+the next morning, after going to sleep full of that pleasant thought, he
+would awake glad to find that he was still as free as ever, and able to
+carry on a flirtation with a woman of the world, which imposed no
+obligations upon him, and yet at the same time make love to a young girl
+whom he would gladly have married but for certain reports which were
+beginning to circulate among men of business concerning the financial
+position of M. de Nailles.
+
+They said that he was withdrawing money from secure investments to repair
+(or to increase) considerable losses made by speculation, and that he
+operated recklessly on the Bourse.  These rumors had already withdrawn
+Marcel d'Etaples from the list of his daughter's suitors.  The young
+fellow was a captain of Hussars, who had no scruple in declaring the
+reason of his giving up his interest in the young lady.  Gerard de
+Cymier, more prudent, waited and watched, thinking it would be quite time
+enough to go to the bottom of things when he found himself called upon to
+make a decision, and greatly interested meantime in the daily increase of
+Jacqueline's beauty.  It was evident she cared for him.  After all, it
+was doing the little thing no harm to let her live on in the intoxication
+of vanity and hope, and to give her something to dwell upon in her
+innocent dreams.  Never did Gerard allow himself to overstep the line he
+had marked out for himself; a glance, a slight pressure of the hand,
+which might have been intentional, or have meant nothing, a few ambiguous
+words in which an active imagination might find something to dream about,
+a certain way of passing his arm round her slight waist which would have
+meant much had it not been done in public to the sound of music, were all
+the proofs the young diplomatist had ever given of an attraction that was
+real so far as consisted with his complete selfishness, joined to his
+professional prudence, and that systematic habit of taking up fancies at
+any time for anything, which prevents each fancy as it occurs from
+ripening into passion.
+
+He alluded indirectly to Fred's departure in a way that turned it into
+ridicule.  While playing a game of 'boston' he whispered into
+Jacqueline's ear something about the old-fashionedness and stupidity of
+Paul and Virginia, and his opinion of "calf-love," as the English call an
+early attachment, and something about the right of every girl to know a
+suitor long before she consents to marry him.  He said he thought that
+the days of courtship must be the most delightful in the life of a woman,
+and that a man who wished to cut them short was a fellow without delicacy
+or discretion!
+
+From this Jacqueline drew the conclusion that he was not willing to
+resemble such a fellow, and was more and more persuaded that there was
+tenderness in the way he pressed her waist, and that his voice had the
+softness of a caress when he spoke to her.  He made many inquiries as to
+what she liked and what she wished for in the future, as if his great
+object in all things was to anticipate her wishes.  As for his intimacy
+with Madame de Villegry, Jacqueline thought nothing of it,
+notwithstanding her habitual mistrust of those she called old women.
+In the first place, Madame de Villegry was her own mistress, nothing
+hindered them from having been married long ago had they wished it;
+besides, had not Madame de Villegry brought the young man to their house
+and let every one see, even Jacqueline herself, what was her object in
+doing so?  In this matter she was their ally, a most zealous and kind
+ally, for she was continually advising her young friend as to what was
+most becoming to her and how she might make herself most attractive to
+men in general, with little covert allusions to the particular tastes of
+Gerard, which she said she knew as well as if he had been her brother.
+
+All this was lightly insinuated, but never insisted upon, with the tact
+which stood Madame de Villegry in stead of talent, and which had enabled
+her to perform some marvellous feats upon the tight-rope without losing
+her balance completely.  She, too, made fun of the tragic determination
+of Fred, which all those who composed the society of the De Nailles had
+been made aware of by the indiscreet lamentations of Madame d'Argy.
+
+"Is not Jacqueline fortunate?"  cried.  Colette Odinska, who, herself
+always on a high horse, looked on love in its tragic aspect, and would
+have liked to resemble Marie Stuart as much as she could, "is she not
+fortunate?  She has had a man who has gone abroad to get himself killed
+--and all for her!"
+
+Colette imagined herself under the same circumstances, making the most of
+a slain lover, with a crape veil covering her fair hair, her mourning
+copied from that of her divorced sister, who wore her weeds so
+charmingly, but who was getting rather tired of a single life.
+
+As for Miss Kate Sparks and Miss Nora, they could not understand why the
+breaking of half-a-dozen hearts should not be the prelude to every
+marriage.  That, they said with much conviction, was always the case in
+America, and a girl was thought all the more of who had done so.
+
+Jacqueline, however, thought more than was reasonable about the dangers
+that the friend of her childhood was going to encounter through her
+fault.  Fred's departure would have lent him a certain prestige, had not
+a powerful new interest stepped in to divert her thoughts.  Madame
+d'Avrigny was getting up her annual private theatricals, and wanted
+Jacqueline to take the principal part in the play, saying that she ought
+to put her lessons in elocution to some use.  The piece chosen was to
+illustrate a proverb, and was entirely new.  It was as unexceptionable as
+it was amusing; the most severe critic could have found no fault with its
+morality or with its moral, which turned on the eagerness displayed by
+young girls nowadays to obtain diplomas.  Scylla and Charybdis was its
+name.  Its story was that of a young bride, who, thinking to please a
+husband, a stupid and ignorant man, was trying to obtain in secret a high
+place in the examination at the Sorbonne--'un brevet superieur'.  The
+husband, disquieted by the mystery, is at first suspicious, then jealous,
+and then is overwhelmed with humiliation when he discovers that his wife
+knows more of everything than himself.  He ends by imploring her to give
+up her higher education if she wishes to please him.  The little play had
+all the modern loveliness and grace which Octave Feuillet alone can give,
+and it contained a lesson from which any one might profit; which was by
+no means always the case with Madame d'Avrigny's plays, which too often
+were full of risky allusions, of critical situations, and the like;
+likely, in short, to "sail too close to the wind," as Fred had once
+described them.  But Madame d'Avrigny's prime object was the amusement of
+society, and society finds pleasure in things which, if innocence
+understood them, would put her to the blush.  This play, however, was an
+exception.  There had been very little to cut out this time.  Madame de
+Nailles had been asked to take the mother's part, but she declined, not
+caring to act such a character in a house where years before in all her
+glory she had made a sensation as a young coquette.  So Madame d'Avrigny
+had to take the part herself, not sorry to be able to superintend
+everything on the stage, and to prompt Dolly, if necessary--Dolly, who
+had but four words to say, which she always forgot, but who looked lovely
+in a little cap as a femme de chambre.
+
+People had been surprised that M. de Cymier should have asked for the
+part of the husband, a local magistrate, stiff and self-important, whom
+everybody laughed at.  Jacqueline alone knew why he had chosen it: it
+would give him the opportunity of giving her two kisses.  Of course those
+kisses were to be reserved for the representation, but whether
+intentionally or otherwise, the young husband ventured upon them at every
+rehearsal, in spite of the general outcry--not, however, very much in
+earnest, for it is well understood that in private theatricals certain
+liberties may be allowed, and M. de Cymier had never been remarkable for
+reserve when he acted at the clubs, where the female parts were taken by
+ladies from the smaller theatres.  In this school he had acquired some
+reputation as an amateur actor.  "Besides," as he remarked on making his
+apology, "we shall do it very awkwardly upon the stage if we are not
+allowed to practise it beforehand."  Jacqueline burst out laughing, and
+did not make much show of opposition.  To play the part of his wife, to
+hear him say to her, to respond with the affectionate and familiar 'toi',
+was so amusing!  It was droll to see her cut out her husband in
+chemistry, history, and grammar, and make him confound La Fontaine with
+Corneille.  She had such a little air while doing it!  And at the close,
+when he said to her: "If I give you a pony to-morrow, and a good hearty
+kiss this very minute, shall you be willing to give up getting that
+degree?"  she responded, with such gusto: "Indeed, I shall!"  and her
+manner was so eager, so boyish, so full of fun, that she was wildly
+applauded, while Gerard embraced her as heartily as he liked, to make up
+to himself for her having had, as his wife, the upper hand.
+
+All this kissing threw him rather off his balance, and he might soon have
+sealed his fate, had not a very sad event occurred, which restored his
+self-possession.
+
+The dress rehearsal was to take place one bright spring day at about four
+o'clock in the afternoon.  A large number of guests was assembled at the
+house of Madame d'Avrigny.  The performance had been much talked about
+beforehand in society.  The beauty, the singing, and the histrionic
+powers of the principal actress had been everywhere extolled.  Fully
+conscious of what was expected of her, and eager to do herself credit in
+every way, Jacqueline took advantage of Madame Strahlberg's presence to
+run over a little song, which she was to--sing between the acts and in
+which she could see no meaning whatever.  This little song, which, to
+most of the ladies present, seemed simply idiotic, made the men in the
+audience cry "Oh!"  as if half-shocked, and then "Encore!  Encore!"  in a
+sort of frenzy.  It was a so-called pastoral effusion, in which Colinette
+rhymed with herbette, and in which the false innocence of the eighteenth
+century was a cloak for much indelicate allusion.
+
+"I never," said Jacqueline in self-defense, before she began the song,
+"sang anything so stupid.  And that is saying much when one thinks of all
+the nonsensical words that people set to music!  It's a marvel how any
+one can like this stuff.  Do tell me what there is in it?" she added,
+turning to Gerard, who was charmed by her ignorance.
+
+Standing beside the grand piano, with her arms waving as she sang,
+repeating, by the expression of her eyes, the question she had asked and
+to which she had received no answer, she was singing the verses she
+considered nonsense with as much point as if she had understood them,
+thanks to the hints given her by Madame Strahlberg, who was playing her
+accompaniment, when the entrance of a servant, who pronounced her name
+aloud, made a sudden interruption.  "Mademoiselle de Nailles is wanted at
+home at once.  Modeste has come for her."
+
+Madame d'Avrigny went out to say to the old servant: "She can not
+possibly go home with you!  It is only half an hour since she came.
+The rehearsal is just beginning."
+
+But something Modeste said in answer made her give a little cry, full of
+consternation.  She came quickly back, and going up to Jacqueline:
+
+"My dear," she said, "you must go home at once--there is bad news, your
+father is ill."
+
+"Ill?"
+
+The solemnity of Madame d'Avrigny's voice, the pity in her expression,
+the affection with which she spoke and above all her total indifference
+to the fate of her rehearsal, frightened Jacqueline.  She rushed away,
+not waiting to say good-by, leaving behind her a general murmur of "Poor
+thing!"  while Madame d'Avrigny, recovering from her first shock, was
+already beginning to wonder--her instincts as an impresario coming once
+more to the front--whether the leading part might not be taken by
+Isabelle Ray.  She would have to send out two hundred cards, at least,
+and put off her play for another fortnight.  What a pity!  It seemed as
+if misfortunes always happened just so as to interfere with pleasures.
+
+The fiacre which had brought Modeste was at the door.  The old nurse
+helped her young lady into it.
+
+"What has happened to papa?"  cried Jacqueline, impetuously.
+
+There was something horrible in this sudden transition from gay
+excitement to the sharpest anxiety.
+
+"Nothing--that is to say--he is very sick.  Don't tremble like that, my
+darling-courage!"  stammered Modeste, who was frightened by her
+agitation.
+
+"He was taken sick, you say.  Where?  How happened it?"
+
+"In his study.  Pierre had just brought him his letters.  We thought we
+heard a noise as if a chair had been thrown down, and a sort of cry.
+I ran in to see.  He was lying at full length on the floor."
+
+"And now?  How is he now?"
+
+"We did what we could for him.  Madame came back.  He is lying on his
+bed."
+
+Modeste covered her face with her hands.
+
+"You have not told me all.  What else?"
+
+"Mon Dieu!  you knew your poor father had heart disease.  The last time
+the doctor saw him he thought his legs had swelled--"
+
+"Had!"  Jacqueline heard only that one word.  It meant that the life of
+her father was a thing of the past.  Hardly waiting till the fiacre could
+be stopped, she sprang out, rushed into the house, opened the door of her
+father's chamber, pushing aside a servant who tried to stop her, and fell
+upon her knees beside the bed where lay the body of her father, white and
+rigid.
+
+"Papa!  My poor dear--dear papa!"
+
+The hand she pressed to her lips was as cold as ice.  She raised her
+frightened eyes to the face over which the great change from life to
+death had passed.  "What does it mean?"  Jacqueline had never looked on
+death before, but she knew this was not sleep.
+
+"Oh, speak to me, papa!  It is I--it is Jacqueline!"
+
+Her stepmother tried to raise her--tried to fold her in her arms.
+
+"Let me alone!"  she cried with horror.
+
+It seemed to her as if her father, where he was now, so far from her, so
+far from everything, might have the power to look into human hearts, and
+know the perfidy he had known nothing of when he was living.  He might
+see in her own heart, too, her great despair.  All else seemed small and
+of no consequence when death was present.
+
+Oh! why had she not been a better daughter, more loving, more devoted?
+why had she ever cared for anything but to make him happy?
+
+She sobbed aloud, while Madame de Nailles, pressing her handkerchief to
+her eyes, stood at the foot of the bed, and the doctor, too, was near,
+whispering to some one whom Jacqueline at first had not perceived--the
+friend of the family, Hubert Marien.
+
+Marien there?  Was it not natural that, so intimate as he had always been
+with the dead man, he should have hastened to offer his services to the
+widow?
+
+Jacqueline flung herself upon her father's corpse, as if to protect it
+from profanation.  She had an impulse to bear it away with her to some
+desert spot where she alone could have wept over it.
+
+She lay thus a long time, beside herself with grief.
+
+The flowers which covered the bed and lay scattered on the floor, gave a
+festal appearance to the death-chamber.  They had been purchased for a
+fete, but circumstances had changed their destination.  That evening
+there was to have been a reception in the house of M. de Nailles, but the
+unexpected guest that comes without an invitation had arrived before the
+music and the dancers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE STORM BREAKS
+
+Monsieur de Nailles was dead, struck down suddenly by what is called
+indefinitely heart-failure.  The trouble in that organ from which he had
+long suffered had brought on what might have been long foreseen, and yet
+every one seemed, stupefied by the event.  It came upon them like a
+thunderbolt.  It often happens so when people who are really ill persist
+in doing all that may be done with safety by other persons.  They
+persuaded themselves, and those about them are easily persuaded, that
+small remedies will prolong indefinitely a state of things which is
+precarious to the last degree.  Friends are ready to believe, when the
+sufferer complains that his work is too hard for him, that he thinks too
+much of his ailments and that he exaggerates trifles to which they are
+well accustomed, but which are best known to him alone.  When M. de
+Nailles, several weeks before his death, had asked to be excused and to
+stay at home instead of attending some large gathering, his wife, and
+even Jacqueline, would try to convince him that a little amusement would
+be good for him; they were unwilling to leave him to the repose he
+needed, prescribed for him by the doctors, who had been unanimous that he
+must "put down the brakes," give less attention to business, avoid late
+hours and over-exertion of all kinds.  "And, above all," said one of the
+lights of science whom he had consulted recently about certain feelings
+of faintness which were a bad symptom, "above all, you must keep yourself
+from mental anxiety."
+
+How could he, when his fortune, already much impaired, hung on chances as
+uncertain as those in a game of roulette?  What nonsense!  The failure of
+a great financial company had brought about a crisis on the Bourse.  The
+news of the inability of Wermant, the 'agent de change', to meet his
+engagements, had completed the downfall of M. de Nailles.  Not only
+death, but ruin, had entered that house, where, a few hours before,
+luxury and opulence had seemed to reign.
+
+"We don't know whether there will be anything left for us to live upon,"
+cried Madame de Nailles, with anguish, even while her husband's body lay
+in the chamber of death, and Jacqueline, kneeling beside it, wept,
+unwilling to receive comfort or consolation.
+
+She turned angrily upon her stepmother and cried:
+
+"What matter?  I have no father--there is nothing else I care for."
+
+But from that moment a dreadful thought, a thought she was ashamed of,
+which made her feel a monster of selfishness, rose in her mind, do what
+she would to hinder it.  Jacqueline was sensible that she cared for
+something else; great as was her sense of loss, a sort of reckless
+curiosity seemed haunting her, while all the time she felt that her great
+grief ought not to give place to anything besides.  "How would Gerard de
+Cymier behave in these circumstances?"  She thought about it all one
+dreadful night as she and Modeste, who was telling her beads softly,
+sat in the faint light of the death-chamber.  She thought of it at dawn,
+when, after one of those brief sleeps which come to the young under all
+conditions, she resumed with a sigh a sense of surrounding realities.
+Almost in the same instant she thought: "My dear father will never wake
+again," and "Does he love me?--does he now wish me to be his wife?--
+will he take me away?"  The devil, which put this thought into her heart,
+made her eager to know the answer to these questions.  He suggested how
+dreadful life with her stepmother would be if no means of escape were
+offered her.  He made her foresee that her stepmother would marry again--
+would marry Marien.  "But I shall not be there!"  she cried, "I will not
+countenance such an infamy!"  Oh, how she hoped Gerard de Cymier loved
+her!  The hypocritical tears of Madame de Nailles disgusted her.  She
+could not bear to have such false grief associated with her own.
+
+Men in black, with solemn faces, came and bore away the body, no longer
+like the form of the father she had loved.  He had gone from her forever.
+Pompous funeral rites, little in accordance with the crash that soon
+succeeded them, were superintended by Marien, who, in the absence of near
+relatives, took charge of everything.  He seemed to be deeply affected,
+and behaved with all possible kindness and consideration to Jacqueline,
+who could not, however, bring herself to thank him, or even to look at
+him.  She hated him with an increase of resentment, as if the soul of her
+dead father, who now knew the truth, had passed into her own.
+
+Meantime, M. de Cymier took care to inform himself of the state of
+things.  It was easy enough to do so.  All Paris was talking of the
+shipwreck in which life and fortune had been lost by a man whose
+kindliness as a host at his wife's parties every one had appreciated.
+That was what came, people said, of striving after big dividends!  The
+house was to be sold, with the horses, the pictures, and the furniture.
+What a change for his poor wife and daughter!  There were others who
+suffered by the Wermant crash, but those were less interesting than the
+De Nailles.  M. de Belvan found himself left by his father-in-law's
+failure with a wife on his hands who not only had not a sou, but who was
+the daughter of an 'agent de change' who had behaved dishonorably.
+
+This was a text for dissertations on the disgrace of marrying for money;
+those who had done the same thing, minus the same consequences, being
+loudest in reprobating alliances of that kind.  M. de Cymier listened
+attentively to such talk, looking and saying the right things, and as he
+heard more and more about the deplorable condition of M. de Nailles's
+affairs, he congratulated himself that a prudent presentiment had kept
+him from asking the hand of Jacqueline.  He had had vague doubts as to
+the firm foundation of the opulence which made so charming a frame for
+her young beauty; it seemed to him as if she were now less beautiful than
+he had imagined her; the enchantment she had exercised upon him was
+thrown off by simple considerations of good sense.  And yet he gave a
+long sigh of regret when he thought she was unattainable except by
+marriage.  He, however, thanked heaven that he had not gone far enough
+to have compromised himself with her.  The most his conscience could
+reproach him with was an occasional imprudence in moments of
+forgetfulness; no court of honor could hold him bound to declare himself
+her suitor.  The evening that he made up his mind to this he wrote two
+letters, very nearly alike; one was to Madame d'Avrigny, the other to
+Madame de Nailles, announcing that, having received orders to join the
+Embassy to which he was attached at Vienna, he was about to depart at
+once, with great regret that he should not be able to take leave of any
+one.  To Madame d'Avrigny he made apologies for having to give up his
+part in her theatricals; he entreated Madame de Nailles to accept both
+for herself and for Mademoiselle Jacqueline his deepest condolences and
+the assurance of his sympathy.  The manner in which this was said was all
+it ought to have been, except that it might have been rather more brief.
+M. de Cymier said more than was necessary about his participation in
+their grief, because he was conscious of a total lack of sympathy.  He
+begged the ladies would forgive him if, from feelings of delicacy and a
+sense of the respect due to a great sorrow, he did not, before leaving
+Paris, which he was about do to probably for a long time, personally
+present to them 'ses hommages attristes'.  Then followed a few lines in
+which he spoke of the pleasant recollections he should always retain of
+the hospitality he had enjoyed under M. de Nailles's roof, in a way that
+gave them clearly to understand that he had no expectation of ever
+entering their family on a more intimate footing.
+
+Madame de Nailles received this letter just as she had had a conversation
+with a man of business, who had shown her how complete was the ruin for
+which in a great measure she herself was responsible.  She had no longer
+any illusions as to her position.  When the estate had been settled there
+would be nothing left but poverty, not only for herself, who, having
+brought her husband no dot, had no right to consider herself wronged by
+the bankruptcy, but for Jacqueline, whose fortune, derived from her
+mother, had suffered under her father's management (there are such men--
+unfaithful guardians of a child's property, but yet good fathers) in
+every way in which it was possible to evade the provisions of the Code
+intended to protect the rights of minor children.  In the little salon
+so charmingly furnished, where never before had sorrow or sadness been
+discussed, Madame de Nailles poured out her complaints to her
+stepdaughter and insisted upon plans of strict economy, when M. de
+Cymier's letter was brought in.
+
+"Read!"  said the Baroness, handing the strange document to Jacqueline,
+after she had read it through.
+
+Then she leaned back in her chair with a gesture which signified: "This
+is the last straw!"  and remained motionless, apparently overwhelmed,
+with her face covered by one hand, but furtively watching the face of the
+girl so cruelly forsaken.
+
+That face told nothing, for pride supplies some sufferers with necessary
+courage.  Jacqueline sat for some time with her eyes fixed on the
+decisive adieu which swept away what might have been her secret hope.
+The paper did not tremble in her hand, a half-smile of contempt passed
+over her mouth.  The answer to the restless question that had intruded
+itself upon her in the first moments of her grief was now before her.
+Its promptness, its polished brutality, had given her a shock, but not
+the pain she had expected.  Perhaps her great grief--the real, the true,
+the grief death brings--recovered its place in her heart, and prevented
+her from feeling keenly any secondary emotion.  Perhaps this man, who
+could pay court to her in her days of happiness and disappear when the
+first trouble came, seemed to her not worth caring for.
+
+She silently handed back the letter to her stepmother.
+
+"No more than I expected," said the Baroness.
+
+"Indeed?"  replied Jacqueline with complete indifference.  She wished to
+give no opening to any expressions of sympathy on the part of Madame de
+Nailles.
+
+"Poor Madame d'Avrigny," she added, "has bad luck; all her actors seem to
+be leaving her."
+
+This speech was the vain bravado of a young soldier going into action.
+The poor child betrayed herself to the experienced woman, trained either
+to detect or to practise artifice, and who found bitter amusement in
+watching the girl's assumed 'sang-froid'.  But the mask fell off at the
+first touch of genuine sympathy.  When Giselle, forgetful of a certain
+coolness between them ever since Fred's departure, came to clasp her in
+her arms, she showed only her true self, a girl suffering all the
+bitterness of a cruel, humiliating desertion.  Long talks ensued between
+the friends, in which Jacqueline poured into Giselle's ear her sad
+discoveries in the past, her sorrows and anxieties in the present, and
+her vague plans for the future.  "I must go away," she said; "I must
+escape somewhere; I can not go on living with Madame de Nailles--I should
+go mad, I should be tempted every day to upbraid her with her conduct."
+
+Giselle made no attempt to curb an excitement which she knew would resist
+all she could say to calm it.  She feigned agreement, hoping thereby to
+increase her future influence, and advised her friend to seek in a
+convent the refuge that she needed.  But she must do nothing rashly; she
+should only consider it a temporary retreat whose motive was a wish to
+remain for a while within reach of religious consolation.  In that way
+she would give people nothing to talk about, and her step mother could
+not be offended.  It was never of any use to get out of a difficulty by
+breaking all the glass windows with a great noise, and good resolutions
+are made firmer by being matured in quietness.  Such were the lessons
+Giselle herself had been taught by the Benedictine nuns, who, however
+deficient they might be in the higher education of women, knew at least
+how to bring up young girls with a view to making them good wives.
+Giselle illustrated this day by day in her relations to a husband as
+disagreeable as a husband well could be, a man of small intelligence,
+who was not even faithful to her.  But she did not cite herself as an
+example.  She never talked about herself, or her own difficulties.
+
+"You are an angel of sense and goodness," sobbed Jacqueline.  "I will do
+whatever you wish me to do."
+
+"Count upon me--count upon all your friends," said Madame de Talbrun,
+tenderly.
+
+And then, enumerating the oldest and the truest of these friends, she
+unluckily named Madame d'Argy.  Jacqueline drew herself back at once:
+
+"Oh, for pity's sake!"  she cried, "don't mention them to me!"
+
+Already a comparison between Fred's faithful affection and Gerard de
+Cymier's desertion had come into her mind, but she had refused to
+entertain it, declaring resolutely to herself that she never should
+repent her refusal.  She was sore, she was angry with all men, she wished
+all were like Cymier or like Marien, that she might hate every one of
+them; she came to the conclusion in her heart of hearts that all of them,
+even the best, if put to the proof, would turn out selfish.  She liked to
+think so--to believe in none of them.  Thus it happened that an
+unexpected visit from Fred's mother, among those that she received
+in her first days of orphanhood, was particularly agreeable to her.
+
+Madame d'Argy, on hearing of the death and of the ruin of M. de Nailles,
+was divided by two contradictory feelings.  She clearly saw the hand of
+Providence in what had happened: her son was in the squadron on its way
+to attack Formosa; he was in peril from the climate, in peril from
+Chinese bullets, and assuredly those who had brought him into peril could
+not be punished too severely; on the other hand, the last mail from
+Tonquin had brought her one of those great joys which always incline us
+to be merciful.  Fred had so greatly distinguished himself in a series of
+fights upon the river Min that he had been offered his choice between the
+Cross of the Legion of Honor or promotion.  He told his mother now that
+he had quite recovered from a wound he had received which had brought him
+some glory, but which he assured her had done him no bodily harm, and he
+repeated to her what he would not tell her at first, some words of praise
+from Admiral Courbet of more value in his eyes than any reward.
+
+Triumphant herself, and much moved by pity for Jacqueline, Madame d'Argy
+felt as if she must put an end to a rupture which could not be kept up
+when a great sorrow had fallen on her old friends, besides which she
+longed to tell every one, those who had been blind and ungrateful in
+particular, that Fred had proved himself a hero.  So Jacqueline and her
+stepmother saw her arrive as if nothing had ever come between them.
+There were kisses and tears, and a torrent of kindly meant questions,
+affectionate explanations, and offers of service.  But Fred's mother
+could not help showing her own pride and happiness to those in sorrow.
+They congratulated her with sadness.  Madame d'Argy would have liked to
+think that the value of what she had lost was now made plain to
+Jacqueline.  And if it caused her one more pang--what did it matter?
+He and his mother had suffered too.  It was the turn of others.  God was
+just.  Resentment, and kindness, and a strange mixed feeling of
+forgiveness and revenge contended together in the really generous heart
+of Madame d'Argy, but that heart was still sore within her.  Pity,
+however, carried the day, and had it not been for the irritating coldness
+of "that little hard-hearted thing," as she called Jacqueline, she would
+have entirely forgiven her.  She never suspected that the exaggerated
+reserve of manner that offended her was owing to Jacqueline's dread
+(commendable in itself) of appearing to wish in her days of misfortune
+for the return of one she had rejected in the time of prosperity.
+
+In spite of the received opinion that society abandons those who are
+overtaken by misfortune, all the friends of the De Nailles flocked to
+offer their condolences to the widow and the orphan with warm
+demonstrations of interest.  Curiosity, a liking to witness, or to
+experience, emotion, the pleasure of being able to tell what has been
+seen and heard, to find out new facts and repeat them again to others,
+joined to a sort of vague, commonplace, almost intrusive pity, are
+sentiments, which sometimes in hours of great disaster, produce what
+appears to wear the look of sympathy.  A fortnight after M. de Nailles's
+death, between the acts of Scylla and Charybdis, the principal parts in
+which were taken by young d'Etaples and Isabelle Ray, the company, as it
+ate ices, was glibly discussing the real drama which had produced in
+their own elegant circle much of the effect a blow has upon an ant-hill--
+fear, agitation, and a tumultuous rush to the scene of the disaster.
+
+Great indignation was expressed against the man who had risked the
+fortune of his family in speculation.  Oh! the thing had been going on
+for a long while.  His fortune had been gradually melting away;
+Grandchaux was loaded down with mortgages and would bring almost nothing
+at a forced sale.
+
+Everybody forgot that had M. de Nailles's speculations been successful
+they would have been called matters of business, conducted with great
+ability on a large scale.  When a performer falls from the tightrope, who
+remembers all the times he has not failed?  It is simply said that he
+fell from his own carelessness.
+
+"The poor Baroness is touchingly resigned," said Madame de Villegry, with
+a deep sigh; "and heaven knows how many other cares she has besides the
+loss of money!  I don't mean only the death of her husband--and you know
+how much they were attached to each other--I am speaking of that
+unaccountable resolution of Jacqueline's."
+
+Madame d'Avrigny here came forward with her usual equanimity which
+nothing disturbed, unless it were something which interfered with the
+success of her salon.
+
+She was of course very sorry for her friends in trouble, but the
+vicissitudes that had happened to her theatricals she had more at heart.
+
+"After all," she said, "the first act did not go off badly, did it?  The
+musical part made up for the rest.  That divine Strahlberg is ready for
+any emergency.  How well she sang that air of 'La Petite Mariee!' It was
+exquisite, but I regretted Jacqueline.  She was so charming in that
+lively little part.  What a catastrophe!
+
+What a terrible catastrophe!  Were you speaking of the retreat she wishes
+to make in a convent?  Well, I quite understand how she feels about it!
+I should feel the same myself.  In the bewilderment of a first grief one
+does not care to see anything of the world.  'Mon Dieu'!  youth always
+has these exaggerated notions.  She will come back to us.  Poor little
+thing!  Of course it was no fault of hers, and I should not think of
+blaming Monsieur de Cymier.  The exigencies of his career--but you all
+must own that unexpected things happen so suddenly in this life that it
+is enough to discourage any one who likes to open her house and provide
+amusement for her friends."
+
+Every one present pitied her for the contretemps over which she had
+triumphed so successfully.  Then she resumed, serenely:
+
+"Don't you think that Isabelle played the part almost as well as
+Jacqueline?  Up to the last moment I was afraid that something would go
+wrong.  When one gets into a streak of ill-luck--but all went off to
+perfection, thank heaven!"
+
+Meantime Madame Odinska was whispering to one of those who sat near her
+her belief that Jacqueline would never get over her father's loss.
+"It would not astonish me," she said, "to hear that the child, who has
+a noble nature, would remain in the convent and take the veil."
+
+Any kind of heroic deed seemed natural to this foolish enthusiast, who,
+as a matter of fact, in her own life, had never shown any tendency to
+heroic virtues; her mission in life had seemed to be to spoil her
+daughters in every possible way, and to fling away more money than
+belonged to her.
+
+"Really?  Was she so very fond of her father!"  asked Madame Ray,
+incredulously.  "When he was alive, they did not seem to make much of
+him in his own house.  Maybe this retreat is a good way of getting over
+a little wound to her 'amour-propre'."
+
+"The proper thing, I think," said Madame d'Etaples, "would be for the
+mother and daughter to keep together, to bear the troubles before them
+hand in hand.  Jacqueline does not seem to think much of the last wishes
+of the father she pretends to be so fond of.  The Baroness showed me,
+with many tears, a letter he left joined to his will, which was written
+some years ago, and which now, of course, is of no value.  He told mother
+and daughter to take care of each other and hoped they would always
+remain friends, loving each other for love of him.  Jacqueline's conduct
+amazes me; it looks like ingratitude."
+
+"Oh! she is a hard-hearted little thing!  I always thought so!"  said
+Madame de Villegry, carelessly.
+
+Here the rising of the curtain stopped short these discussions, which
+displayed so much good-nature and perspicacity.  But some laid the blame
+on the influence of that little bigot of a Talbrun, who had secretly
+blown up the fire of religious enthusiasm in Jacqueline, when Madame
+d'Avrigny's energetic "Hush!"  put an end to the discussion.  It was time
+to come back to more immediate interests, to the play which went on in
+spite of wind and tide.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A mother's geese are always swans
+Bathers, who exhibited themselves in all degrees of ugliness
+Fred's verses were not good, but they were full of dejection
+Hang out the bush, but keep no tavern
+A familiarity which, had he known it, was not flattering
+His sleeplessness was not the insomnia of genius
+Importance in this world are as easily swept away as the sand
+Natural longing, that we all have, to know the worst
+Notion of her husband's having an opinion of his own
+Pride supplies some sufferers with necessary courage
+Seemed to enjoy themselves, or made believe they did
+This unending warfare we call love
+Unwilling to leave him to the repose he needed
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Jacqueline, v2
+by Therese Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+JACQUELINE
+
+By THERESE BENTZON (MME. BLANC)
+
+
+
+BOOK 3.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+BITTER DISILLUSION
+
+Some people in this world who turn round and round in a daily circle of
+small things, like squirrels in a cage, have no idea of the pleasure a
+young creature, conscious of courage, has in trying its strength; this
+struggle with fortune loses its charm as it grows longer and longer and
+more and more difficult, but at the beginning it is an almost certain
+remedy for sorrow.
+
+To her resolve to make head against misfortune Jacqueline owed the fact
+that she did not fall into those morbid reveries which might have
+converted her passing fancy for a man who was simply a male flirt into
+the importance of a lost love.  Is there any human being conscious of
+energy, and with faith in his or her own powers, who has not wished to
+know something of adversity in order to rise to the occasion and confront
+it?  To say nothing of the pleasure there is in eating brown bread, when
+one has been fed only on cake, or of the satisfaction that a child feels
+when, after strict discipline, he is left to do as he likes, to say
+nothing of the pleasure ladies boarding in nunneries are sure to feel on
+reentering the world, at recovering their liberty, Jacqueline by nature
+loved independence, and she was attracted by the novelty of her situation
+as larks are attracted by a mirror.  She was curious to know what life
+held for her in reserve, and she was extremely anxious to repair the
+error she had committed in giving way to a feeling of which she was now
+ashamed.  What could do this better than hard work?  To owe everything to
+herself, to her talents, to her efforts, to her industry, such was
+Jacqueline's ideal of her future life.
+
+She had, before this, crowned her brilliant reputation in the 'cours' of
+M. Regis by passing her preliminary examination at the Sorbonne; she was
+confident of attaining the highest degree--the 'brevet superieur', and
+while pursuing her own studies she hoped to give lessons in music and in
+foreign languages, etc.  Thus assured of making her own living, she could
+afford to despise the discreditable happiness of Madame de Nailles, who,
+she had no doubt, would shortly become Madame Marien; also the crooked
+ways in which M. de Cymier might pursue his fortune-hunting.  She said to
+herself that she should never marry; that she had other objects of
+interest; that marriage was for those who had nothing better before them;
+and the world appeared to her under a new aspect, a sphere of useful
+activity full of possibilities, of infinite variety, and abounding in
+interests.  Marriage might be all very well for rich girls, who unhappily
+were objects of value to be bought and sold; her semi-poverty gave her
+the right to break the chains that hampered the career of other well-born
+women--she would make her own way in the world like a man.
+
+Thus, at eighteen, youth is ready to set sail in a light skiff on a rough
+sea, having laid in a good store of imagination and of courage, of
+childlike ignorance and self-esteem.
+
+No doubt she would meet with some difficulties; that thought did but
+excite her ardor.  No doubt Madame de Nailles would try to keep her with
+her, and Jacqueline had provided herself beforehand with some double-
+edged remarks by way of weapons, which she intended to use according to
+circumstances.  But all these preparations for defense or attack proved
+unnecessary.  When she told the Baroness of her plans she met with no
+opposition.  She had expected that her project of separation would highly
+displease her stepmother; on the contrary, Madame de Nailles discussed
+her projects quietly, affecting to consider them merely temporary, but
+with no indication of dissatisfaction or resistance.  In truth she was
+not sorry that Jacqueline, whose companionship became more and more
+embarrassing every day, had cut the knot of a difficult position by a
+piece of wilfulness and perversity which seemed to put her in the wrong.
+The necessity she would have been under of crushing such a girl, who was
+now eighteen, would have been distasteful and unprofitable; she was very
+glad to get rid of her stepdaughter, always provided it could be done
+decently and without scandal.  Those two, who had once so loved each
+other and who were now sharers in the same sorrows, became enemies--
+two hostile parties, which only skilful strategy could ever again bring
+together.  They tacitly agreed to certain conditions: they would save
+appearances; they would remain on outwardly good terms with each other
+whatever happened, and above all they would avoid any explanation.  This
+programme was faithfully carried out, thanks to the great tact of Madame
+de Nailles.
+
+No one could have been more watchful to appear ignorant of everything
+which, if once brought to light, would have led to difficulties; for
+instance, she feigned not to know that her stepdaughter was in possession
+of a secret which, if the world knew, would forever make them strangers
+to each other; nor would she seem aware that Hubert Marien, weary to
+death of the tie that bound him to her, was restrained from breaking it
+only by a scruple of honor.  Thanks to this seeming ignorance, she parted
+from Jacqueline without any open breach, as she had long hoped to do, and
+she retained as a friend who supplied her wants a man who was only too
+happy to be allowed at this price to escape the act of reparation which
+Jacqueline, in her simplicity, had dreaded.
+
+All those who, having for years dined and danced under the roof of the
+Nailles, were accounted their friends by society, formed themselves into
+two parties, one of which lauded to the skies the dignity and resignation
+of the Baroness, while the other admired the force of character in
+Jacqueline.
+
+Visitors flocked to the convent which the young girl, by the advice of
+Giselle, had chosen for her retreat because it was situated in a quiet
+quarter.  She who looked so beautiful in her crape garments, who showed
+herself so satisfied in her little cell with hardly any furniture, who
+was grateful for the services rendered her by the lay sisters, content
+with having no salon but the convent parlor, who was passing examinations
+to become a teacher, and who seemed to consider it a favor to be
+sometimes allowed to hear the children in the convent school say their
+lessons--was surely like a heroine in a novel.  And indeed Jacqueline had
+the agreeable sensation of considering herself one.  Public admiration
+was a great help to her, after she had passed through that crisis in her
+grief during which she could feel nothing but the horror of knowing she
+should never see her father again, when she had ceased to weep for him
+incessantly, to pray for him, and to turn, like a wounded lioness, on
+those who blamed his reckless conduct, though she herself had been its
+chief victim.
+
+For three months she hardly left the convent, walking only in the grounds
+and gardens, which were of considerable extent.  From time to time
+Giselle came for her and took her to drive in the Bois at that hour of
+the day when few people were there.
+
+Enguerrand, who, thanks to his mother's care, was beginning to be an
+intelligent and interesting child, though he was still painfully like
+M. de Talbrun, was always with them in the coupe, kindhearted Giselle
+thinking that nothing could be so likely to assuage grief as the prattle
+of a child.  She was astonished--she was touched to the heart, by what
+she called naively the conversion of Jacqueline.  It was true that the
+young girl had no longer any whims or caprices.  All the nuns seemed to
+her amiable, her lodging was all she needed, her food was excellent; her
+lessons gave her amusement.  Possibly the excitement of the entire
+change had much to do at first with this philosophy, and in fact at the
+end of six months Jacqueline owned that she was growing tired of dining
+at the table d'hote.
+
+There was a little knot of crooked old ladies who were righteous
+overmuch, and several sour old maids whose only occupation seemed to be
+to make remarks on any person who had anything different in dress,
+manners, or appearance from what they considered the type of the
+becoming.  If it is not good that man should live alone, it is equally
+true that women should not live together.  Jacqueline found this out as
+soon as her powers of observation came back to her.  And about the same
+time she discovered that she was not so free as she had flattered herself
+she should be.  The appearance of a lady, fair and with light hair, very
+pretty and about her own age, gave her for the first time an inclination
+to talk at table.  She and this young woman met twice a day at their
+meals, in the morning and in the evening; their rooms were next each
+other, and at night Jacqueline could hear her through the thin partition
+giving utterance to sighs, which showed that she was unhappy.  Several
+times, too, she came upon her in the garden looking earnestly at a place
+where the wall had been broken, a spot whence it was said a Spanish
+countess had been carried off by a bold adventurer.  Jacqueline thought
+there must be something romantic in the history of this newcomer, and
+would have liked exceedingly to know what it might be.  As a prelude to
+acquaintance, she offered the young stranger some holy water when they
+met in the chapel, a bow and a smile were interchanged, their fingers
+touched.  They seemed almost friends.  After this, Jacqueline contrived
+to change her seat at table to one next to this unknown person, so
+prettily dressed, with her hair so nicely arranged, and, though her
+expression was very sad, with a smile so very winning.  She alone
+represented the world, the world of Paris, among all those ladies,
+some of whom were looking for places as companions, some having come up
+from the provinces, and some being old ladies who had seen better days.
+Her change of place was observed by the nun who presided at the table,
+and a shade of displeasure passed over her face.  It was slight, but it
+portended trouble.  And, indeed, when grace had been said, Mademoiselle
+de Nailles was sent for by the Mother Superior, who gave her to
+understand that, being so young, it was especially incumbent on her to be
+circumspect in her choice of associates.  Her place thenceforward was to
+be between Madame de X-----, an old, deaf lady, and Mademoiselle J-----,
+a former governess, as cold as ice and exceedingly respectable.  As to
+Madame Saville, she had been received in the convent for especial
+reasons, arising out of circumstances which did not make her a fit
+companion for inexperienced girls.  The Superior hesitated a moment and
+then said: "Her husband requested us to take charge of her," in a tone by
+which Jacqueline quite understood that "take charge" was a synonym for
+"keep a strict watch upon her."  She was spied upon, she was persecuted--
+unjustly, no doubt.
+
+All this increased the interest that Jacqueline already felt in the lady
+with the light hair.  But she made a low curtsey to the Mother Superior
+and returned no answer.  Her intercourse with her neighbor was
+thenceforward; however, sly and secret, which only made it more
+interesting and exciting.  They would exchange a few words when they met
+upon the stairs, in the garden, or in the cloisters, when there was no
+curious eye to spy them out; and the first time Jacqueline went out alone
+Madame Saville was on the watch, and, without speaking, slipped a letter
+into her hand.
+
+This first time Jacqueline went out was an epoch in her life, as small
+events are sometimes in the annals of nations; it was the date of her
+emancipation, it coincided with what she called her choice of a career.
+Thinking herself sure of possessing a talent for teaching, she had spoken
+of it to several friends who had come to see her, and who each and all
+exclaimed that they would like some lessons, a delicate way of helping
+her quite understood by Jacqueline.  Pupils like Belle Ray and Yvonne
+d'Etaples, who wanted her to come twice a week to play duets with them or
+to read over new music, were not nearly so interesting as those in her
+little class who had hardly more than learned their scales!  Besides
+this, Madame d'Avrigny begged her to come and dine with her, when there
+would be only themselves, on Mondays, and then practise with Dolly, who
+had not another moment in which she could take a lesson.  She should be
+sent home scrupulously before ten o'clock, that being the hour at the
+convent when every one must be in.  Jacqueline accepted all these
+kindnesses gratefully.  By Giselle's advice she hid her slight figure
+under a loose cloak and put on her head a bonnet fit for a grandmother,
+a closed hat with long strings, which, when she first put it on her head,
+made her burst out laughing.  She imagined herself to be going forth in
+disguise.  To walk the streets thus masked she thought would be amusing,
+so amusing that the moment she set foot on the street pavement she felt
+that the joy of living was yet strong in her.  With a roll of music in
+her hand, she walked on rather hesitatingly, a little afraid, like a bird
+just escaped from the cage where it was born; her heart beat, but it was
+with pleasure; she fancied every one was looking at her, and in fact one
+old gentleman, not deceived by the cloak, did follow her till she got
+into an omnibus for the first time in her life--a new experience and a
+new pleasure.  Once seated, and a little out of breath, she remembered
+Madame Saville's letter, which she had slipped into her pocket.  It was
+sealed and had a stamp on it; it was too highly scented to be in good
+taste, and it was addressed to a lieutenant of chasseurs with an
+aristocratic name, in a garrison at Fontainebleau.
+
+Then Jacqueline began vaguely to comprehend that Madame Saville's husband
+might have had serious reasons for commending his wife to the
+surveillance of the nuns, and that there might have been some excuse for
+their endeavoring to hinder all intimacy between herself and the little
+blonde.
+
+This office of messenger, thrust upon her without asking permission, was
+not agreeable to Jacqueline, and she resolved as she dropped the missive,
+which, even on the outside, looked compromising, into the nearest post-
+box, to be more reserved in future.  For which reason she responded
+coldly to a sign Madame Saville made her when, in the evening, she
+returned from giving her lessons.
+
+Those lessons--those excursions which took her abroad in all weathers,
+though with praiseworthy and serious motives, into the fashionable parts
+of Paris, from which she had exiled herself by her own will--were greatly
+enjoyed by Jacqueline.  Everything amused her, being seen from a point of
+view in which she had never before contemplated it.  She seemed to be at
+a play, all personal interests forgotten for the moment, looking at the
+world of which she was no longer a part with a lively, critical
+curiosity, without regrets but without cynicism.  The world did not seem
+to her bad--only man's higher instincts had little part in it.  Such,
+at least, was what she thought, so long as people praised her for her
+courage, so long as the houses in which another Jacqueline de Nailles had
+been once so brilliant, received her with affection as before, though she
+had to leave in an anteroom her modest waterproof or wet umbrella.  They
+were even more kind and cordial to her than ever, unless an exaggerated
+cordiality be one form of impertinence.  But the enthusiasm bestowed on
+splendid instances of energy in certain circles, to which after all such
+energy is a reproach, is superficial, and not being genuine is sure not
+to last long.  Some people said that Jacqueline's staid manners were put
+on for effect, and that she was only attempting to play a difficult part
+to which she was not suited; others blamed her for not being up to
+concert-pitch in matters of social interest.  The first time she felt the
+pang of exclusion was at Madame d'Avrigny's, who was at the same moment
+overwhelming her with expressions of regard.  In the first place, she
+could see that the little family dinner to which she had been so kindly
+invited was attended by so many guests that her deep mourning seemed out
+of place among them.  Then Madame d'Avrigny would make whispered
+explanations, which Jacqueline was conscious of, and which were very
+painful to her.  Such words as: "Old friend of the family;" "Is giving
+music lessons to my daughter;" fell more than once upon her ear, followed
+by exclamations of "Poor thing!"  "So courageous!"  "Chivalric
+sentiments!"  Of course, everyone added that they excused her toilette.
+Then when she tried to escape such remarks by wearing a new gown, Dolly,
+who was always a little fool (there is no cure for that infirmity) cried
+out in a tone such as she never would have dared to use in the days when
+Jacqueline was a model of elegance: "Oh, how fine you are!"  Then again,
+Madame d'Avrigny, notwithstanding the good manners on which she prided
+herself, could not conceal that the obligation of sending home the
+recluse to the ends of the earth, at a certain hour, made trouble with
+her servants, who were put out of their way.  Jacqueline seized on this
+pretext to propose to give up the Monday music-lesson, and after some
+polite hesitation her offer was accepted, evidently to Madame d'Avrigny's
+relief.
+
+In this case she had the satisfaction of being the one to propose the
+discontinuance of the lessons.  At Madame Ray's she was simply dismissed.
+About the close of winter she was told that as Isabelle was soon to be
+married she would have no time for music till her wedding was over, and
+about the same time the d'Etaples told her much the same thing.  This was
+not to be wondered at, for Mademoiselle Ray was engaged to an officer of
+dragoons, the same Marcel d'Etaples who had acted with her in Scylla and
+Charybdis, and Madame Ray, being a watchful mother, was not long in
+perceiving that Marcel came to pay court to Isabelle too frequently at
+the hour for her music-lesson.  Madame d'Etaples on her part had made a
+similar discovery, and both judged that the presence of so beautiful a
+girl, in Jacqueline's position, might not be desirable in these
+interviews between lovers.
+
+When Giselle, as she was about to leave town for the country in July,
+begged Jacqueline, who seemed run down and out of spirits, to come and
+stay with her, the poor child was very glad to accept the invitation.
+Her pupils were leaving her one after another, she could not understand
+why, and she was bored to death in the convent, whose strict rules were
+drawn tighter on her than before, for the nuns had begun to understand
+her better, and to discover the real worldliness of her character.  At
+the same time, that retreat within these pious walls no longer seemed
+like paradise to Jacqueline; her transition from the deepest crape to the
+softer tints of half mourning, seemed to make her less of an angel in
+their eyes.  They said to each other that Mademoiselle de Nailles was
+fanciful, and fancies are the very last things wanted in a convent, for
+fancies can brave bolts, and make their escape beyond stone walls,
+whatever means may be taken to clip their wings.
+
+"She does not seem like the same person," cried the good sisters, who had
+been greatly edified at first by her behavior, and who were almost ready
+now to be shocked at her.
+
+The course of things was coming back rapidly into its natural channel;
+in obedience to the law which makes a tree, apparently dead, put forth
+shoots in springtime.  And that inevitable re-budding and reblossoming
+was beautiful to see in this young human plant.  M. de Talbrun,
+Jacqueline's host, could not fail to perceive it.  At first he had been
+annoyed with Giselle for giving the invitation, having a habit of finding
+fault with everything he had not ordered or suggested, by virtue of his
+marital authority, and also because he hated above all things, as he
+said, to have people in his house who were "wobegones."  But in a week he
+was quite reconciled to the idea of keeping Mademoiselle de Nailles all
+the summer at the Chateau de Fresne.  Never had Giselle known him to take
+so much trouble to be amiable, and indeed Jacqueline saw him much more to
+advantage at home than in Paris, where, as she had often said, he
+diffused too strong an odor of the stables.  At Fresne, it was more easy
+to forgive him for talking always of his stud and of his kennel, and then
+he was so obliging!  Every day he proposed some new jaunt, an excursion
+to see some view, to visit all the ruined chateaux or abbeys in the
+neighborhood.  And, with surprising delicacy, M. de Talbrun refrained
+from inviting too many of his country neighbors, who might perhaps have
+scared Jacqueline and arrested her gradual return to gayety.  They might
+also have interrupted his tete-a-tete with his wife's guest, for they had
+many such conversations.  Giselle was absorbed in the duty of teaching
+her son his a, b, c.  Besides, being very timid, she had never ridden on
+horseback, and, naturally, riding was delightful to her cousin.
+Jacqueline was never tired of it; while she paid as little attention to
+the absurd remarks Oscar made to her between their gallops as a girl does
+at a ball to the idle words of her partner.  She supposed it was his
+custom to talk in that manner--a sort of rough gallantry--but with the
+best intentions.  Jacqueline was disposed to look upon her life at Fresne
+as a feast after a long famine.  Everything was to her taste, the whole
+appearance of this lordly chateau of the time of Louis XIII, the splendid
+trees in the home park, the gardens laid out 'a la Francais', decorated
+with art and kept up carefully.  Everything, indeed, that pertained to
+that high life which to Giselle had so little importance, was to her
+delightful.  Giselle's taste was so simple that it was a constant subject
+of reproach from her husband.  To be sure, it was with him a general rule
+to find fault with her about everything.  He did not spare her his
+reproaches on a multitude of subjects; all day long he was worrying her
+about small trifles with which he should have had nothing to do.  It is
+a mistake to suppose that a man can not be brutal and fussy at the same
+time.  M. de Talbrun was proof to the contrary.
+
+"You are too patient," said Jacqueline often to Giselle.  "You ought to
+answer him back--to defend yourself.  I am sure if you did so you would
+have him, by-and-bye, at your beck and call."
+
+"Perhaps so.  I dare say you could have managed better than I do,"
+replied Giselle, with a sad smile, but without a spark of jealousy.
+"Oh, you are in high favor.  He gave up this week the races at Deauville,
+the great race week from which he has never before been absent, since our
+marriage.  But you see my ambition has become limited; I am satisfied if
+he lets me alone."  Giselle spoke these words with emphasis, and then she
+added: "and lets me bring up his son my own way.  That is all I ask."
+
+Jacqueline thought in her heart that it was wrong to ask so little,
+that poor Giselle did not know how to make the best of her husband, and,
+curious to find out what line of conduct would serve best to subjugate M.
+de Talbrun, she became herself--that is to say, a born coquette--
+venturing from one thing to another, like a child playing fearlessly with
+a bulldog, who is gentle only with him, or a fly buzzing round a spider's
+web, while the spider lies quietly within.
+
+She would tease him, contradict him, and make him listen to long pieces
+of scientific music as she played them on the piano, when she knew he
+always said that music to him was nothing but a disagreeable noise; she
+would laugh at his thanks when a final chord, struck with her utmost
+force, roused him from a brief slumber; in short, it amused her to prove
+that this coarse, rough man was to her alone no object of fear.  She
+would have done better had she been afraid.
+
+Thus it came to pass that, as they rode together through some of the
+prettiest roads in the most beautiful part of Normandy, M. de Talbrun
+began to talk, with an ever-increasing vivacity, of the days when they
+first met, at Treport, relating a thousand little incidents which
+Jacqueline had forgotten, and from which it was easy to see that he had
+watched her narrowly, though he was on the eve of his own marriage.  With
+unnecessary persistence, and stammering as he was apt to do when moved by
+any emotion, he repeated over and over again, that from the first moment
+he had seen her he had been struck by her--devilishly struck by her--
+he had been, indeed!  And one day when she answered, in order not to
+appear to attach any importance to this declaration, that she was very
+glad of it, he took an opportunity, as their horses stopped side by side
+before a beautiful sunset, to put his arm suddenly round her waist, and
+give her a kiss, so abrupt, so violent, so outrageous, that she screamed
+aloud.  He did not remove his arm from her, his coarse, red face drew
+near her own again with an expression that filled her with horror.  She
+struggled to free herself, her horse began to rear, she screamed for help
+with all her might, but nothing answered her save an echo.  The situation
+seemed critical for Jacqueline.  As to M. de Talbrun, he was quite at his
+ease, as if he were accustomed to make love like a centaur; while the
+girl felt herself in peril of being thrown at any moment, and trampled
+under his horse's feet.  At last she succeeded in striking her aggressor
+a sharp blow across the face with her riding-whip.  Blinded for a moment,
+he let her go, and she took advantage of her release to put her horse to
+its full speed.  He galloped after her, beside himself with wrath and
+agitation; it was a mad but silent race, until they reached the gate of
+the Chateau de Fresne, which they entered at the same moment, their
+horses covered with foam.
+
+"How foolish!"  cried Giselle, coming to meet them.  "Just see in what a
+state you have brought home your poor horses."
+
+Jacqueline, pale and trembling, made no answer.  M. de Talbrun, as he
+helped her to dismount, whispered, savagely: "Not a word of this!"
+
+At dinner, his wife remarked that some branch must have struck him on the
+cheek, there was a red mark right across his face like a blow.
+
+"We were riding through the woods," he answered, shortly.
+
+Then Giselle began to suspect something, and remarked that nobody was
+talking that evening, asking, with a half-smile, whether they had been
+quarrelling.
+
+"We did have a little difference," Oscar replied, quietly.
+
+"Oh, it did not amount to anything," he said, lighting his cigar; "let us
+make friends again, won't you?"  he added, holding out his hand to
+Jacqueline.  She was obliged to give him the tips of her fingers, as she
+said in her turn, with audacity equal to his own:
+
+"Oh, it was less than nothing.  Only, Giselle, I told your husband that I
+had had some bad news, and shall have to go back to Paris, and he tried
+to persuade me not to go."
+
+"I beg you not to go," said Oscar, vehemently.
+
+"Bad news?"  repeated Giselle, "you did not say a word to me about it!"
+
+"I did not have a chance.  My old Modeste is very ill and asks me to come
+to her.  I should never forgive myself if I did not go."
+
+"What, Modeste?  So very ill?  Is it really so serious?  What a pity!
+But you will come back again?"
+
+"If I can.  But I must leave Fresne to-morrow morning."
+
+"Oh, I defy you to leave Fresne!"  said M. de Talbrun.
+
+Jacqueline leaned toward him, and said firmly, but in a low voice:
+"If you attempt to hinder me, I swear I will tell everything."
+
+All that evening she did not leave Giselle's side for a moment, and at
+night she locked herself into her chamber and barricaded the door, as if
+a mad dog or a murderer were at large in the chateau.
+
+Giselle came into her room at an early hour.
+
+"Is what you said yesterday the truth, Jacqueline?  Is Modeste really
+ill?  Are you sure you have had no reason to complain of anybody in this
+place?--of any one?"
+
+Then, after a pause, she added:
+
+"Oh, my darling, how hard it is to do good even to those whom we most
+dearly love."
+
+"I don't understand you," said Jacqueline, with an effort.  "Everybody
+has been kind to me."
+
+They kissed each other with effusion, but M. de Talbrun's leave-taking
+was icy in the extreme.  Jacqueline had made a mortal enemy.
+
+The grand outline of the chateau, built of brick and stone with its wings
+flanked by towers, the green turf of the great park in which it stood,
+passed from her sight as she drove away, like some vision in a dream.
+
+"I shall never come back--never come back!"  thought Jacqueline.  She
+felt as if she had been thrust out everywhere.  For one moment she
+thought of seeking refuge at Lizerolles, which was not very many miles
+from the railroad station, and when there of telling Madame d'Argy of her
+difficulties, and asking her advice; but false pride kept her from doing
+so--the same false pride which had made her write coldly, in answer to
+the letters full of feeling and sympathy Fred had written to her on
+receiving news of her father's death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+TREACHEROUS KINDNESS
+
+The experience through which Jacqueline had just passed was not
+calculated to fortify her or to elevate her soul.  She felt for the
+first time that her unprotected situation and her poverty exposed her
+to insult, for what other name could she give to the outrageous behavior
+of M. de Talbrun, which had degraded her in her own eyes?
+
+What right had that man to treat her as his plaything?  Her pride and all
+her womanly instincts rose up in rebellion.  Her nerves had been so
+shaken that she sobbed behind her veil all the way to her destination.
+Paris, when she reached it, offered her almost nothing that could comfort
+or amuse her.  That city is always empty and dull in August, more so than
+at any other season.  Even the poor occupation of teaching her little
+class of music pupils had been taken away by the holidays.  Her sole
+resource was in Modeste's society.  Modeste--who, by the way, had never
+been ill, and who suffered from nothing but old age--was delighted to
+receive her dear young lady in her little room far up under the roof,
+where, though quite infirm, she lived comfortably, on her savings.
+Jacqueline, sitting beside her as she sewed, was soothed by her old
+nursery tales, or by anecdotes of former days.  Her own relatives were
+often the old woman's theme.  She knew the history of Jacqueline's family
+from beginning to end; but, wherever her story began, it invariably wound
+up with:
+
+"If only your poor papa had not made away with all your money!"
+
+And Jacqueline always answered:
+
+"He was quite at liberty to do what he pleased with what belonged to
+him."
+
+"Belonged to him!  Yes, but what belonged to you?  And how does it happen
+that your stepmother seems so well off?  Why doesn't some family council
+interfere?  My little pet, to think of your having to work for your
+living.  It's enough to kill me!"
+
+"Bah!  Modeste, there are worse things than being poor."
+
+"Maybe so," answered the old nurse, doubtfully, "but when one has money
+troubles along with the rest, the money troubles make other things harder
+to bear; whereas, if you have money enough you can bear anything, and you
+would have had enough, after all, if you had married Monsieur Fred."
+
+At which point Jacqueline insisted that Modeste should be silent, and
+answered, resolutely: "I mean never to marry at all."
+
+To this Modeste made answer: "That's another of your notions.  The worst
+husband is always better than none; and I know, for I never married."
+
+"That's why you talk such nonsense, my poor dear Modeste!  You know
+nothing about it."
+
+One day, after one of these visits to the only friend, as she believed,
+who remained to her in the world--for her intimacy with Giselle was
+spoiled forever--she saw, as she walked with a heavy heart toward her
+convent in a distant quarter, an open fiacre pull up, in obedience to a
+sudden cry from a passenger who was sitting inside.  The person sprang
+out, and rushed toward Jacqueline with loud exclamations of joy.
+
+"Madame Strahlberg!"
+
+"Dear Jacqueline!  What a pleasure to meet you!"  And, the street being
+nearly empty, Madame Strahlberg heartily embraced her friend.
+
+"I have thought of you so often, darling, for months past--they seem like
+years, like centuries!  Where have you been all that long time?"
+
+In point of fact, Jacqueline had no proof that the three Odinska ladies
+had ever remembered her existence, but that might have been partly her
+own fault, or rather the fault of Giselle, who had made her promise to
+have as little as possible to do with such compromising personages.  She
+was seized with a kind of remorse when she found such warmth of
+recognition from the amiable Wanda.  Had she not shown herself ungrateful
+and cowardly?  People about whom the world talks, are they not sometimes
+quite as good as those who have not lost their standing in society, like
+M. de Talbrun?  It seemed to her that, go where she would, she ran risks.
+
+The cynicism that is the result of sad experience was beginning to show
+itself in Jacqueline.
+
+"Oh, forgive me!"  she said, feeling, contrite.
+
+"Forgive you for what, you beautiful creature?"  asked Madame Strahlberg,
+with sincere astonishment.
+
+She had the excellent custom of never observing when people neglected
+her, or at least, of never showing that she did so, partly because her
+life was so full of varied interests that she cared little for such
+trifles, and secondly because, having endured several affronts of that
+nature, she had ceased to be very sensitive.
+
+"I knew, through the d'Avrignys," she said, "that you were still at the
+convent.  You are not going to take the veil there, are you?  It would be
+a great pity.  No?  You wish to lead the life of an intelligent woman who
+is free and independent?  That is well; but it was rather an odd idea to
+begin by going into a cloister.  Oh!--I see, public opinion?"  And Madame
+Strahlberg made a little face, expressive of her contempt for public
+opinion.
+
+"It does not pay to consult other people's opinions--it is useless,
+believe me.  The more we sacrifice to public opinion, the more it asks of
+us.  I cut that matter short long ago.  But how glad I am to hear that
+you don't intend to hide that lovely face in a convent.  You are looking
+better than ever--a little too pale, still, perhaps--a little too
+interesting.  Colette will be so glad to see you, for you must let me
+take you home with me.  I shall carry you off, whether you will or not,
+now I have caught you.  We will have a little music just among ourselves,
+as we had in the good old times--you know, our dear music; you will feel
+like yourself again.  Ah, art--there is nothing to compare with art in
+this world, my darling!"
+
+Jacqueline yielded without hesitation, only too glad of the unhoped-for
+good fortune which relieved her from her ennui and her depression.  And
+soon the hired victoria was on its way to that quarter of the city which
+is made up of streets with geographical names, and seems as if it were
+intended to lodge all the nations under heaven.  It stopped in the Rue de
+Naples, before a house that was somewhat showy, but which showed from its
+outside, that it was not inhabited by high-bred people.  There were pink
+linings to lace curtains at the windows, and quantities of green vines
+drooped from the balconies, as if to attract attention from the passers-
+by.  Madame Strahlberg, with her ostentatious and undulating walk, which
+caused men to turn and notice her as she went by, went swiftly up the
+stairs to the second story.  She put one finger on the electric bell,
+which caused two or three little dogs inside to begin barking, and pushed
+Jacqueline in before her, crying: "Colette!  Mamma!  See whom I have
+brought back to you!"  Meantime doors were hurriedly opened, quick steps
+resounded in the antechamber, and the newcomer found herself received
+with a torrent of affectionate and delighted exclamations, pressed to the
+ample bosom of Madame Odinska, covered with kisses by Colette, and fawned
+upon by the three toy terriers, the most sociable of their kind in all
+Paris, their mistresses declared.
+
+Jacqueline was passing through one of those moments when one is at the
+mercy of chance, when the heart which has been closed by sorrow suddenly
+revives, expands, and softens under the influence of a ray of sunshine.
+Tears came into her eyes, and she murmured:
+
+"My friends--my kind friends!"
+
+"Yes, your friends, whatever happens, now and always," said Colette,
+eagerly, though she had probably barely given a thought to Jacqueline for
+eighteen months.  Nevertheless, on seeing her, Colette really thought she
+had not for a moment ceased to be fond of her.  "How you have suffered,
+you poor pussy!  We must set to work and make you feel a little gay, at
+any price.  You see, it is our duty.  How lucky you came to-day--"
+
+A sign from her sister stopped her.
+
+They carried Jacqueline into a large and handsome salon, full of dust and
+without curtains, with all the furniture covered up as if the family were
+on the eve of going to the country.  Madame Strahlberg, nevertheless, was
+not about to leave Paris, her habit being to remain there in the summer,
+sometimes for months, picnicking as it were, in her own apartment.  What
+was curious, too, was that the chandelier and all the side-lights had
+fresh wax candles, and seats were arranged as if in preparation for a
+play, while near the grand piano was a sort of stage, shut off from the
+rest of the room by screens.
+
+Colette sat down on one of the front row of chairs and cried: "I am the
+audience--I am all ears."  Her sister hurriedly explained all this to
+Jacqueline, with out waiting to be questioned: "We have been giving some
+little summer entertainments of late, of which you see the remains."  She
+went at once to the piano, and incited Jacqueline to sing by beginning
+one of their favorite duets, and Jacqueline, once more in her native
+element, followed her lead.  They went on from one song to another, from
+the light to the severe, from scientific music to mere tunes and airs,
+turning over the old music-books together.
+
+"Yes, you are a little out of practice, but all you have to do is to rub
+off the rust.  Your voice is finer than ever--just like velvet."  And
+Madame Strahlberg pretended that she envied the fine mezzo-soprano,
+speaking disparagingly of her own little thread of a voice, which,
+however, she managed so skilfully.  "What a shame to take up your time
+teaching, with such a voice as that!"  she cried; "you are out of your
+senses, my dear, you are raving mad.  It would be sinful to keep your
+gifts to yourself!  I am very sorry to discourage you, but you have none
+of the requisites for a teacher.  The stage would be best for you--
+'Mon Dieu!  why not?  You will see La Rochette this evening; she is a
+person who would give you good advice.  I wish she could hear you!"
+
+"But my dear friend, I can not stay," murmured Jacqueline, for those
+unexpected words "the stage, why not?" rang in her head, made her heart
+beat fast, and made lights dance before her eyes.  "They are expecting me
+to dine at home."
+
+"At your convent?  I beg your pardon, I'll take care of that.  Don't you
+know me?  My claws seldom let go of a prize, especially when that prize
+is worth the keeping.  A little telegram has already been sent, with your
+excuses.  The telegraph is good for that, if not for anything else: it
+facilitates 'impromptus'."
+
+"Long live impromptus," cried out Colette, "there is nothing like them
+for fun!"  And while Jacqueline was trying to get away, not knowing
+exactly what she was saying, but frightened, pleased, and much excited,
+Colette went on: "Oh! I am so glad, so glad you came to-day; now you can
+see the pantomime!  I dreamed, wasn't it odd, only last night, that you
+were acting it with us.  How can one help believing in presentiments?
+Mine are always delightful--and yours?"
+
+"The pantomime?"  repeated Jacqueline in bewilderment, "but I thought
+your sister told me you were all alone."
+
+"How could we have anything like company in August?"  said Madame
+Strahlberg, interrupting her; "why, it would be impossible, there are not
+four cats in Paris.  No, no, we sha'n't have anybody.  A few friends
+possibly may drop in--people passing through Paris--in their travelling-
+dresses.  Nothing that need alarm you.  The pantomime Colette talks about
+is only a pretext that they may hear Monsieur Szmera."
+
+And who was M. Szmera?
+
+Jacqueline soon learned that he was a Hungarian, second half-cousin of a
+friend of Kossuth, the most wonderful violinist of the day, who had
+apparently superseded the famous Polish pianist in these ladies' interest
+and esteem.  As for the latter, they had almost forgotten his name, he
+had behaved so badly.
+
+"But," said Jacqueline, anxiously, "you know I am obliged to be home by
+ten o'clock."
+
+"Ah!  that's like Cinderella," laughed Wanda.  "Will the stroke of the
+clock change all the carriages in Paris into pumpkins?  One can get
+'fiacres' at any hour."
+
+"But it is a fixed rule: I must be in," repeated Jacqueline, growing very
+uneasy.
+
+"Must you really?  Madame Saville says it is very easy to manage those
+nuns--"
+
+"What?  Do you know Madame Saville, who was boarding at the convent last
+winter?"
+
+"Yes, indeed; she is a countrywoman of ours, a friend, the most charming
+of women.  You will see her here this evening.  She has gained her
+divorce suit--"
+
+"You are mistaken," said Colette, "she has lost it.  But that makes no
+difference.  She has got tired of her husband.  Come, say 'Yes,'
+Jacqueline--a nice, dear 'Yes'--you will stay, will you not?  Oh, you
+darling!"
+
+They dined without much ceremony, on the pretext that the cook had been
+turned off that morning for impertinence, but immediately after dinner
+there was a procession of boys from a restaurant, bringing whipped
+creams, iced drinks, fruits, sweetmeats, and champagne--more than would
+have been wanted at the buffet of a ball.  The Prince, they said, had
+sent these things.  What Prince?
+
+As Jacqueline was asking this question, a gentleman came in whose age it
+would have been impossible to guess, so disguised was he by his black
+wig, his dyed whiskers, and the soft bloom on his cheeks, all of which
+were entirely out of keeping with those parts of his face that he could
+not change.  In one of his eyes was stuck a monocle.  He was bedizened
+with several orders, he bowed with military stiffness, and kissed with
+much devotion the ladies' hands, calling them by titles, whether they had
+them or not.  His foreign accent made it as hard to detect his
+nationality as it was to know his age.  Two or three other gentlemen,
+not less decorated and not less foreign, afterward came in.  Colette
+named them in a whisper to Jacqueline, but their names were too hard for
+her to pronounce, much less to remember.  One of them, a man of handsome
+presence, came accompanied by a sort of female ruin, an old lady leaning
+on a cane, whose head, every time she moved, glittered with jewels,
+placed in a very lofty erection of curled hair.
+
+"That gentleman's mother is awfully ugly," Jacqueline could not help
+saying.
+
+"His mother?  What, the Countess?  She is neither his mother nor his
+wife.  He is her gentleman-in-waiting-that's all.  Don't you understand?
+Well, imagine a man who is a sort of "gentleman-companion"; he keeps her
+accounts, he escorts her to the theatre, he gives her his arm.  It is a
+very satisfactory arrangement."
+
+"The gentleman receives a salary, in such a case?"  inquired Jacqueline,
+much amused.
+
+"Why, what do you find in it so extraordinary?"  said Colette.  "She
+adores cards, and there he is, always ready to be her partner.  Oh, here
+comes dear Madame Saville!"
+
+There were fresh cries of welcome, fresh exchanges of affectionate
+diminutives and kisses, which seemed to make the Prince's mouth water.
+Jacqueline discovered, to her great surprise, that she, too, was a dear
+friend of Madame Saville's, who called her her good angel, in reference,
+no doubt, to the letter she had secretly put into the post.  At last she
+said, trying to make her escape from the party: "But it must be nine
+o'clock."
+
+"Oh!  but--you must hear Szmera."
+
+A handsome young fellow, stoutly built, with heavy eyebrows, a hooked
+nose, a quantity of hair growing low upon his forehead, and lips that
+were too red, the perfect type of a Hungarian gypsy, began a piece of his
+own composition, which had all the ardor of a mild 'galopade' and a
+Satanic hunt, with intervals of dying sweetness, during which the painted
+skeleton they called the Countess declared that she certainly heard a
+nightingale warbling in the moonlight.
+
+This charming speech was forthwith repeated by her "umbra" in all parts
+of the room, which was now nearly filled with people, a mixed multitude,
+some of whom were frantic about music, others frantic about Wanda
+Strahlberg.  There were artists and amateurs present, and even
+respectable women, for Madame d'Avrigny, attracted by the odor of a
+species of Bohemianism, had come to breathe it with delight, under cover
+of a wish to glean ideas for her next winter's receptions.
+
+Then again there were women who had been dropped out of society, like
+Madame de Versanne, who, with her sunken eyes and faded face, was not
+likely again to pick up in the street a bracelet worth ten thousand
+francs.  There was a literary woman who signed herself Fraisiline, and
+wrote papers on fashion--she was so painted and bedizened that some one
+remarked that the principal establishments she praised in print probably
+paid her in their merchandise.  There was a dowager whose aristocratic
+name appeared daily on the fourth page of the newspapers, attesting the
+merits of some kind of quack medicine; and a retired opera-singer, who,
+having been called Zenaide Rochet till she grew up in Montmartre, where
+she was born, had had a brilliant career as a star in Italy under the
+name of Zina Rochette.  La Rochette's name, alas!  is unknown to the
+present generation.
+
+In all, there were about twenty persons, who made more noise with their
+applause than a hundred ordinary guests, for enthusiasm was exacted by
+Madame Strahlberg.  Profiting by the ovation to the Hungarian musician,
+Jacqueline made a movement toward the door, but just as she reached it
+she had the misfortune of falling in with her old acquaintance, Nora
+Sparks, who was at that moment entering with her father.  She was forced
+to sit down again and hear all about Kate's marriage.  Kate had gone back
+to New York, her husband being an American, but Nora said she had made up
+her mind not to leave Europe till she had found a satisfactory match.
+
+"You had better make haste about it, if you expect to keep me here," said
+Mr. Sparks, with a peculiar expression in his eye.  He was eager to get
+home, having important business to attend to in the West.
+
+"Oh, papa, be quiet!  I shall find somebody at Bellagio.  Why, darling,
+are you still in mourning?"
+
+She had forgotten that Jacqueline had lost her father.  Probably she
+would not have thought it necessary to wear black so long for Mr. Sparks.
+Meantime, Madame Strahlberg and her sister had left the room.
+
+"When are they coming back?"  said Jacqueline, growing very nervous.
+"It seems to me this clock must be wrong.  It says half-past nine.  I am
+sure it must be later than that."
+
+"Half-past nine!--why, it is past eleven," replied Miss Nora, with a
+giggle.  "Do you suppose they pay any attention to clocks in this house?
+Everything here is topsy-turvy."
+
+"Oh!  what shall I do?"  sighed poor Jacqueline, on the verge of tears.
+
+"Why, do they keep you such a prisoner as that?  Can't you come in a
+little late--"
+
+"They wouldn't open the doors--they never open the doors on any pretext
+after ten o'clock," cried Jacqueline, beside herself.
+
+"Then your nuns must be savages?  You should teach them better."
+
+"Don't be worried, dear little one, you can sleep on this sofa," said
+Madame Odinska, kindly.
+
+To whom had she not offered that useful sofa?  Wanda and Colette were
+just as ready to propose that others should spend the night with them as,
+on the smallest pretext, to accept the same hospitality from others.
+Wanda, indeed, always slept curled up like a cat on a divan, in a fur
+wrapper, which she put on early in the evening when she wanted to smoke
+cigarettes.  She went to sleep at no regular hour.  A bear's skin was
+placed always within her reach, so that if she were cold she could draw
+it over her.  Jacqueline, not being accustomed to these Polish fashions,
+did not seem to be much attracted by the offer of the sofa.  She blamed
+herself bitterly for her own folly in having got herself into a scrape
+which might lead to serious consequences.
+
+But this was neither time nor place for expressions of anxiety; it would
+be absurd to trouble every one present with her regrets.  Besides, the
+harm was done--it was irreparable--and while she was turning over in her
+mind in what manner she could explain to the Mother Superior that the
+mistake about the hour had been no fault of hers--and the Mother
+Superior, alas!  would be sure to make inquiries as to the friends whom
+she had visited--the magic violin of M. Szmera played its first notes,
+accompanied by Madame Odinska on the piano, and by a delicious little
+flute.  They played an overture, the dreamy sweetness of which extorted
+cries of admiration from all the women.
+
+Suddenly, the screens parted, and upon the little platform that
+represented a stage bounded a sort of anomalous being, supple and
+charming, in the traditional dress of Pierrot, whom the English vulgarize
+and call Harlequin.  He had white camellias instead of buttons on his
+loose white jacket, and the bright eyes of Wanda shone out from his red-
+and-white face.  He held a mandolin, and imitated the most charming of
+serenades, before a make-believe window, which, being opened by a white,
+round arm, revealed Colette, dressed as Colombine.
+
+The little pantomime piece was called 'Pierrot in Love'.  It consisted of
+a series of dainty coquetries, sudden quarrels, fits of jealousy, and
+tender reconciliations, played by the two sisters.  Colette with her
+beauty, Wanda with her talent, her impishness, her graceful and
+voluptuous attitudes, electrified the spectators, especially in a long
+monologue, in which Pierrot contemplated suicide, made more effective by
+the passionate and heart-piercing strains of the Hungarian's violin, so
+that old Rochette cried out: "What a pity such a wonder should not be
+upon the stage!"  La Rochette, now retired into private life, wearing an
+old dress, with her gray hair and her black eyes, like those of a
+watchful crocodile, took the pleasure in the pantomime that all actors do
+to the very last in everything connected with the theatre.  She cried
+'brava' in tones that might reach Italy; she blew kisses to the actors in
+default of flowers.
+
+Madame d'Avrigny was also transported to the sixth heaven, but
+Jacqueline's presence somewhat marred her pleasure.  When she first
+perceived her she had shown great surprise.  "You here, my dear?"  she
+cried, "I thought you safe with our own excellent Giselle."
+
+"Safe, Madame?  It seems to me one can be safe anywhere," Jacqueline
+answered, though she was tempted to say "safe nowhere;" but instead she
+inquired for Dolly.
+
+Dolly's mother bit her lips and then replied: "You see I have not brought
+her.  Oh, yes, this house is very amusing--but rather too much so.
+The play was very pretty, and I am sorry it would not do at my house.
+It is too--too 'risque', you know;" and she rehearsed her usual speech
+about the great difficulties encountered by a lady who wished to give
+entertainments and provide amusement for her friends.
+
+Meantime Pierrot, or rather Madame Strahlberg, had leaped over an
+imaginary barrier and came dancing toward the company, shaking her large
+sleeves and settling her little snake-like head in her large quilled
+collar, dragging after her the Hungarian, who seemed not very willing.
+She presented him to Madame d'Avrigny, hoping that so fashionable a woman
+might want him to play at her receptions during the winter, and to a
+journalist who promised to give him a notice in his paper, provided--
+and here he whispered something to Pierrot, who, smiling, answered
+neither yes nor no.  The sisters kept on their costumes; Colette was
+enchanting with her bare neck, her long-waisted black velvet corsage,
+her very short skirt, and a sort of three-cornered hat upon her head.
+All the men paid court to her, and she accepted their homage, becoming
+gayer and gayer at every compliment, laughing loudly, possibly that her
+laugh might exhibit her beautiful teeth.
+
+Wanda, as Pierrot, sang, with her hands in her pockets, a Russian village
+song: "Ah! Dounai-li moy Dounai" ("Oh! thou, my Danube").  Then she
+imperiously called Jacqueline to the piano: --"It is your turn now," she
+said, "most humble violet."
+
+Up to that moment, Jacqueline's deep mourning had kept the gentlemen
+present from addressing her, though she had been much stared at.
+Although she did not wish to sing, for her heart was heavy as she thought
+of the troubles that awaited her the next day at the convent, she sang
+what was asked of her without resistance or pretension.  Then, for the
+first time, she experienced the pride of triumph.  Szmera, though he was
+furious at not being the sole lion of the evening, complimented her,
+bowing almost to the ground, with one hand on his heart; Madame Rochette
+assured her that she had a fortune in her throat whenever she chose to
+seek it; persons she had never seen and who did not know her name,
+pressed her hands fervently, saying that her singing was adorable.
+All cried "Encore," "Encore!"  and, yielding to the pleasure of applause,
+she thought no more of the flight of time.  Dawn was peeping through the
+windows when the party broke up.
+
+"What kind people!"  thought the debutante, whom they had encouraged and
+applauded; "some perhaps are a little odd, but how much cordiality and
+warmth there is among them!  It is catching.  This is the sort of
+atmosphere in which talent should live."
+
+Being very much fatigued, she fell asleep upon the offered sofa, half-
+pleased, half-frightened, but with two prominent convictions: one, that
+she was beginning to return to life; the other, that she stood on the
+edge of a precipice.  In her dreams old Rochette appeared to her, her
+face like that of an affable frog, her dress the dress of Pierrot, and
+she croaked out, in a variety of tones: "The stage!  Why not?  Applauded
+every night--it would be glorious!"  Then she seemed in her dream to be
+falling, falling down from a great height, as one falls from fairyland
+into stern reality.  She opened her eyes: it was noon.  Madame Odinska
+was waiting for her: she intended herself to take her to the convent,
+and for that purpose had assumed the imposing air of a noble matron.
+
+Alas! it was in vain!  Jacqueline, was made to understand that such an
+infraction of the rules could not be overlooked.  To pass the night
+without leave out of the convent, and not with her own family, was cause
+for expulsion.  Neither the prayers nor the anger of Madame Odinska had
+any power to change the sentence.  While the Mother Superior calmly
+pronounced her decree, she was taking the measure of this stout foreigner
+who appeared in behalf of Jacqueline, a woman overdressed, yet at the
+same time shabby, who had a far from well-bred or aristocratic air.
+"Out of consideration for Madame de Talbrun," she said, "the convent
+consents to keep Mademoiselle de Nailles a few days longer--a few weeks
+perhaps, until she can find some other place to go.  That is all we can
+do for her."
+
+Jacqueline listened to this sentence as she might have watched a game of
+dice when her fate hung on the result, but she showed no emotion.
+"Now," she thought, "my fate has been decided; respectable people will
+have nothing more to do with me.  I will go with the others, who,
+perhaps, after all are not worse, and who most certainly are more
+amusing."
+
+A fortnight after this, Madame de Nailles, having come back to Paris,
+from some watering-place, was telling Marien that Jacqueline had started
+for Bellagio with Mr. and Miss Sparks, the latter having taken a notion
+that she wanted that kind of chaperon who is called a companion in
+England and America.
+
+"But they are of the same age," said Marien.
+
+"That is just what Miss Sparks wants.  She does not wish to be hampered
+by an elderly chaperon, but to be accompanied, as she would have been by
+her sister."
+
+"Jacqueline will be exposed to see strange things; how could you have
+consented--"
+
+"Consented?  As if she cared for my consent!  And then she manages to say
+such irritating things as soon as one attempts to blame her or advise
+her.  For example, this is one of them: 'Don't you suppose,' she said to
+me, 'that every one will take the most agreeable chance that offers for a
+visit to Italy?'  What do you think of that allusion?  It closed my lips
+absolutely."
+
+"Perhaps she did not mean what you think she meant."
+
+"Do you think so?  And when I warned her against Madame Strahlberg,
+saying that she might set her a very bad example, she answered: 'I may
+have had worse.'  I suppose that was not meant for impertinence either!"
+
+"I don't know," said Hubert Marien, biting his lips doubtfully, "but--"
+
+He was silent a few moments, his head drooped on his breast, he was in
+some painful reverie.
+
+"Go on.  What are you thinking about?"  asked Madame de Nailles,
+impatiently.
+
+"I beg your pardon.  I was only thinking that a certain responsibility
+might rest on those who have made that young girl what she is."
+
+"I don't understand you," said the stepmother, with an impatient gesture.
+"Who can do anything to counteract a bad disposition?  You don't deny
+that hers is bad?  She is a very devil for pride and obstinacy--she has
+no affection--she has proved it.  I have no inclination to get myself
+wounded by trying to control her."
+
+"Then you prefer to let her ruin herself?"
+
+"I should prefer not to give the world a chance to talk, by coming to an
+open rupture with her, which would certainly be the case if I tried to
+contradict her.  After all, the Sparks and Madame Odinska are not yet put
+out of the pale of good society, and she knew them long ago.  An early
+intimacy may be a good explanation if people blame her for going too
+far--"
+
+"So be it, then; if you are satisfied it is not for me to say anything,"
+replied Marien, coldly.
+
+"Satisfied?  I am not satisfied with anything or anybody," said Madame de
+Nailles, indignantly.  "How could I be satisfied; I never have met with
+anything but ingratitude."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE SAILOR'S RETURN
+
+Madame D'Argy did not leave her son in ignorance of all the freaks and
+follies of Jacqueline.  He knew every particular of the wrong-doings and
+the imprudences of his early friend, and even the additions made to them
+by calumny, ever since the fit of in dependence which, after her father's
+death, had led her to throw off all control.  She told of her sudden
+departure from Fresne, where she might have found so safe a refuge with
+her friend and cousin.  Then had not her own imprudence and coquetry led
+to a rupture with the families of d'Etaples and Ray?  She told of the
+scandalous intimacy with Madame Strahlberg; of her expulsion from the
+convent, where they had discovered, even before she left, that she had
+been in the habit of visiting undesirable persons; and finally she
+informed him that Jacqueline had gone to Italy with an old Yankee and his
+daughter--he being a man, it was said, who had laid the foundation of his
+colossal fortune by keeping a bar-room in a mining camp in California.
+This last was no fiction, the cut of Mr. Sparks's beard and his
+unpolished manners left no doubt on the subject; and she wound up by
+saying that Madame d'Avrigny, whom no one could accuse of ill-nature,
+had been grieved at meeting this unhappy girl in very improper company,
+among which she seemed quite in her element, like a fish in water.
+It was said also that she was thinking of studying for the stage with
+La Rochette--M. de Talbrun had heard it talked about in the foyer of the
+Opera by an old Prince from some foreign country--she could not remember
+his name, but he was praising Madame Strahlberg without any reserve as
+the most delightful of Parisiennes.  Thereupon Talbrun had naturally
+forbidden his wife to have anything to do with Jacqueline, or even to
+write to her.  Fat Oscar, though he was not all that he ought to be
+himself, had some very strict notions of propriety.  No one was more
+particular about family relations, and really in this case no one could
+blame him; but Giselle had been very unhappy, and to the very last had
+tried to stand up for her unhappy friend.  Having told him all this, she
+added, she would say no more on the subject.
+
+Giselle was a model woman in everything, in tact, in goodness, in good
+sense, and she was very attentive to the poor old mother of Fred, who but
+for her must have died long ago of loneliness and sorrow.  Thereupon
+ensued the poor lady's usual lamentations over the long, long absence of
+her beloved son; as usual, she told him she did not think she should live
+to see him back again; she gave him a full account of her maladies,
+caused, or at least aggravated, by her mortal, constant, incurable
+sorrow; and she told how Giselle had been nursing her with all the
+patience and devotion of a Sister of Charity.  Through all Madame
+d'Argy's letters at this period the angelic figure of Giselle was
+contrasted with the very different one of that young and incorrigible
+little devil of a Jacqueline.
+
+Fred at first believed his mother's stories were all exaggeration, but
+the facts were there, corroborated by the continued silence of the person
+concerned.  He knew his mother to be too good wilfully to blacken the
+character of one whom for years she had hoped would be her daughter-in-
+law, the only child of her best friend, the early love of her son.  But
+by degrees he fancied that the love so long living at the bottom of his
+heart was slowly dying, that it had been extinguished, that nothing
+remained of it but remembrance, such remembrance as we retain for dead
+things, a remembrance without hope, whose weight added to the
+homesickness which with him was increasing every day.
+
+There was no active service to enable him to endure exile.  The heroic
+period of the war had passed.  Since a treaty of peace had been signed
+with China, the fleet, which had distinguished itself in so many small
+engagements and bombardments, had had nothing to do but to mount guard,
+as it were, along a conquered coast.  All round it in the bay, where it
+lay at anchor, rose mountains of strange shapes, which seemed to shut it
+into a kind of prison.  This feeling of nothing to be done--of nothing
+likely to be done, worked in Fred's head like a nightmare.  The only
+thing he thought of was how he could escape, when could he once more kiss
+the faded cheeks of his mother, who often, when he slept or lay wakeful
+during the long hours of the siesta, he saw beside him in tears.  Hers
+was the only face that he recalled distinctly; to her and to her only
+were devoted his long reveries when on watch; that time when he formerly
+composed his love verses, tender or angry, or full of despair.  That was
+all over!  A sort of mournful resignation had succeeded his bursts of
+excited feeling, his revolt against his fate.
+
+This was Fred's state of mind when he received orders to return home--
+orders as unexpected as everything seems to be in the life of a naval
+man.  "I am going back to her!"  he cried.  Her was his mother, her was
+France.  All the rest had disappeared as if into a fog.  Jacqueline was a
+phantom of the past; so many things had happened since the old times when
+he had loved her.  He had crossed the Indian Ocean and the China Sea; he
+had seen long stretches of interminable coast-line; he had beheld misery,
+and glory, and all the painful scenes that wait on warfare; he had seen
+pestilence, and death in every shape, and all this had wrought in him a
+sort of stoicism, the result of long acquaintance with solitude and
+danger.  He remembered his old love as a flower he had once admired as he
+passed it, a treacherous flower, with thorns that had wounded him.  There
+are flowers that are beneficent, and flowers that are poisonous, and the
+last are sometimes the most beautiful.  They should not be blamed, he
+thought; it was their nature to be hurtful; but it was well to pass them
+by and not to gather them.
+
+By the time he had debarked Fred had made up his mind to let his mother
+choose a wife for him, a daughter-in-law suited to herself, who would
+give her the delight of grandchildren, who would bring them up well, and
+who would not weary of Lizerolles.  But a week later the idea of this
+kind of marriage had gone out of his head, and this change of feeling was
+partly owing to Giselle.  Giselle gave him a smile of welcome that went
+to his heart, for that poor heart, after all, was only waiting for a
+chance again to give itself away.  She was with Madame d'Argy, who had
+not been well enough to go to the sea-coast to meet her son, and he saw
+at the same moment the pale and aged face which had visited him at
+Tonquin in his dreams, and a fair face that he had never before thought
+so beautiful, more oval than he remembered it, with blue eyes soft and
+tender, and a mouth with a sweet infantine expression of sincerity and
+goodness.  His mother stretched out her trembling arms, gave a great cry,
+and fainted away.
+
+"Don't be alarmed; it is only joy," said Giselle, in her soft voice.
+
+And when Madame d'Argy proved her to be right by recovering very quickly,
+overwhelming her son with rapid questions and covering him with kisses,
+Giselle held out her hand to him and said:
+
+"I, too, am very glad you have come home."
+
+"Oh!"  cried the sick woman in her excitement, "you must kiss your old
+playfellow!"
+
+Giselle blushed a little, and Fred, more embarrassed than she, lightly
+touched with his lips her pretty smooth hair which shone upon her head
+like a helmet of gold.  Perhaps it was this new style of hairdressing
+which made her seem so much more beautiful than he remembered her, but it
+seemed to him he saw her for the first time; while, with the greatest
+eagerness, notwithstanding Giselle's attempts to interrupt her, Madame
+d'Argy repeated to her son all she owed to that dear friend "her own
+daughter, the best of daughters, the most patient, the most devoted of
+daughters, could not have done more!  Ah!  if there only could be found
+another one like her!"
+
+Whereupon the object of all these praises made her escape, disclaiming
+everything.
+
+Why, after this, should she have hesitated to come back to Lizerolles
+every day, as of late had been her custom?  Men know so little about
+taking care of sick people.  So she came, and was present at all the
+rejoicings and all the talks that followed Fred's return.  She took her
+part in the discussions about Fred's future.  "Help me, my pet," said
+Madame d'Argy, "help me to find a wife for him: all we ask is that she
+should be like you."
+
+In answer to which Fred declared, half-laughing and half-seriously, that
+that was his ideal.
+
+She did not believe much of this, but, following her natural instinct,
+she assumed the dangerous task of consolation, until, as Madame d'Argy
+grew better, she discontinued her daily visits, and Fred, in his turn,
+took a habit of going over to Fresne without being invited, and spending
+there a good deal of his time.
+
+"Don't send me away.  You who are always charitable," he said.  "If you
+only knew what a pleasure a Parisian conversation is after coming from
+Tonquin!"
+
+"But I am so little of a Parisienne, or at least what you mean by that
+term, and my conversation is not worth coming for," objected Giselle.
+
+In her extreme modesty she did not realize how much she had gained in
+intellectual culture.  Women left to themselves have time to read, and
+Giselle had done this all the more because she had considered it a duty.
+Must she not know enough to instruct and superintend the education of her
+son?  With much strong feeling, yet with much simplicity, she spoke to
+Fred of this great task, which sometimes frightened her; he gave her his
+advice, and both discussed together the things that make up a good man.
+Giselle brought up frequently the subject of heredity: she named no one,
+but Fred could see that she had a secret terror lest Enguerrand, who in
+person was very like his father, might also inherit his character.  Fears
+on this subject, however, appeared unfounded.  There was nothing about
+the child that was not good; his tastes were those of his mother.  He was
+passionately fond of Fred, climbing on his lap as soon as the latter
+arrived and always maintaining that he, too, wanted a pretty red ribbon
+to wear in his buttonhole, a ribbon only to be got by sailing far away
+over the seas, like sailors.
+
+"A sailor!  Heaven forbid!"  cried Madame de Talbrun.
+
+"Oh!  sailors come back again.  He has come back.  Couldn't he take me
+away with him soon?  I have some stories about cabin-boys who were not
+much older than I."
+
+"Let us hope that your friend Fred won't go away," said Giselle.  "But
+why do you wish to be a cabinboy?"
+
+"Because I want to go away with him, if he does not stay here--because I
+like him," answered Enguerrand in a tone of decision.
+
+Hereupon Giselle kissed her boy with more than usual tenderness.  He
+would not take to the hunting-field, she thought, the boulevard, and the
+corps de ballet.  She would not lose him.  "But, oh, Fred!"  she cried,
+"it is not to be wondered at that he is so fond of you!  You spoil him!
+You will be a devoted father some day; your vocation is evidently for
+marriage."
+
+She thought, in thus speaking, that she was saying what Madame d'Argy
+would like her to say.
+
+"In the matter of children, I think your son is enough for me," he said,
+one day; "and as for marriage, you would not believe how all women--
+I mean all the young girls among whom I should have to make a choice--
+are indifferent to me.  My feeling almost amounts to antipathy."
+
+For the first time she ventured to say: "Do you still care for
+Jacqueline?"
+
+"About as much as she cares for me," he answered, dryly.  "No, I made a
+mistake once, and that has made me cautious for the future."
+
+Another day he said:
+
+"I know now who was the woman I ought to have loved."
+
+Giselle did not look up; she was devoting all her attention to
+Enguerrand.
+
+Fred held certain theories which he used to talk about.  He believed in a
+high, spiritual, disinterested affection which would raise a man above
+himself, making him more noble, inspiring a disgust for all ignoble
+pleasures.  The woman willing to accept such homage might do anything she
+pleased with a heart that would be hers alone.  She would be the lady who
+presided over his life, for whose sake all good deeds and generous
+actions would be done, the idol, higher than a wife or any object of
+earthly passion, the White Angel whom poets have sung.
+
+Giselle pretended that she did not understand him, but she was divinely
+happy.  This, then, was the reward of her spotless life!  She was the
+object of a worship no less tender than respectful.  Fred spoke of the
+woman he ought to have loved as if he meant to say, "I love you;" he
+pressed his lips on the auburn curls of little Enguerrand where his
+mother had just kissed him.  Day after day he seemed more attracted to
+that salon where, dressed with more care than she had ever dressed
+before, she expected him.  Then awoke in her the wish to please, and she
+was beautiful with that beauty which is not the insipid beauty of
+St.  Agnes, but that which, superior to all other, is seen when the face
+reflects the soul.  All that winter there was a new Giselle--a Giselle
+who passed away again among the shadows, a Giselle of whom everybody
+said, even her husband, "Ma foi! but she is beautiful!"  Oscar de
+Talbrun, as he made this remark, never thought of wondering why she was
+more beautiful.  He was ready to take offense and was jealous by nature,
+but he was perfectly sure of his wife, as he had often said.  As to Fred,
+the idea of being jealous of him would never have entered his mind.
+Fred was a relative and was admitted to all the privileges of a cousin
+or a brother; besides, he was a fellow of no consequence in any way.
+
+While this platonic attachment grew stronger and stronger between Fred
+and Giselle, assisted by the innocent complicity of little Enguerrand,
+Jacqueline was discovering how hard it is for a girl of good birth, if
+she is poor, to carry out her plans of honest independence.  Possibly she
+had allowed herself to be too easily misled by the title of "companion,"
+which, apparently more cordial than that of 'demoiselle de compagnie',
+means in reality the same thing--a sort of half-servile position.
+
+Money is a touchstone which influences all social relations, especially
+when on one side there is a somewhat morbid susceptibility, and on the
+other a lack of good breeding and education.  The Sparks, father and
+daughter, Americans of the lower class, though willing to spend any
+number of dollars for their own pleasure, expected that every penny they
+disbursed should receive its full equivalent in service; the place
+therefore offered so gracefully and spontaneously to Mademoiselle de
+Nailles was far from being a sinecure.  Jacqueline received her salary on
+the same footing as Justine, the Parisian maid, received her wages, for,
+although her position was apparently one of much greater importance and
+consideration than Justine's, she was really at the beck and call of a
+girl who, while she called her "darling," gave her orders and paid her
+for her services.  Very often Miss Nora asked her to sew, on the plea
+that she was as skilful with her fingers as a fairy, but in reality that
+her employer might feel the superiority of her own position.
+
+Hitherto Miss Nora had been delighted to meet at watering-places a friend
+of whom she could say proudly, "She is a representative of the old
+nobility of France" (which was not true, by the way, for the title of
+Baron borne by M. de Nailles went no farther back than the days of Louis
+XVIII); and she was still more proud to think that she was now waited on
+by this same daughter of a nobleman, when her own father had kept a
+drinking-saloon.  She did not acknowledge this feeling to herself, and
+would certainly have maintained that she never had had such an idea, but
+it existed all the same, and she was under its influence, being very vain
+and rather foolish.  And, indeed, Jacqueline, would have been very
+willing to plan trimmings and alter finery from morning to night in her
+own chamber in a hotel, exactly as Mademoiselle Justine did, if she could
+by this means have escaped the special duties of her difficult position,
+which duties were to follow Miss Nora everywhere, like her own shadow, to
+be her confidant and to act sometimes as her screen, or even as her
+accomplice, in matters that occasionally involved risks, and were never
+to her liking.
+
+The young American girl had already said to her father, when he asked her
+to give up her search for an entirely satisfactory European suitor, which
+search he feared might drag on forever without any results: "Oh!  I shall
+be sure to find him at Bellagio!"  And she made up her mind that there he
+was to be sought and found at any price.  Hotel life offered her
+opportunities to exercise her instincts for flirtation, for there she met
+many specimens of men she called chic, with a funny little foreign
+accent, which seemed to put new life into the wornout word.  Twenty times
+a day she baited her hook, and twenty times a day some fish would bite,
+or at least nibble, according as he was a fortune-hunter or a dilettante.
+Miss Nora, being incapable of knowing the difference, was ready to
+capture good or bad, and went about dragging her slaves at her chariot-
+wheels.  Sometimes she took them rowing, with the Stars and Stripes
+floating over her boat, by moonlight; sometimes she drove them recklessly
+in a drag through roads bordered by olive-groves and vineyards; all these
+expeditions being undertaken under-pretence of admiring the romantic
+scenery.  Her father was not disposed to interfere with what he called "a
+little harmless dissipation."  He was confident his daughter's
+"companion" must know what was proper, she being, as he said, accustomed
+to good society.  Were not all Italian ladies attended by gentlemen?  Who
+could blame a young girl for amusing herself?  Meantime Mr. Sparks amused
+himself after his own fashion, which was to sit comfortably, with his
+feet up on the piazza rail of the hotel, imbibing strong iced drinks
+through straws.  But in reality Jacqueline had no power whatever to
+preserve propriety, and only compromised herself by her associations,
+though her own conduct was irreproachable.  Indeed she was considered
+quite prudish, and the rest of the mad crowd laughed at her for having
+the manners of a governess.  In vain she tried to say words of warning to
+Nora; what she said was laughed at or resented in a tone that told her
+that a paid companion had not the right to speak as frankly as a friend.
+
+Her business, she was plainly told one day, was to be on the spot in case
+any impertinent suitor should venture too far in a tete-a-tete, but short
+of that she was not to "spoilsport."  "I am not doing anything wrong;
+it is allowable in America," was Miss Nora's regular speech on such
+occasions, and Jacqueline could not dispute the double argument.  Nora's
+conduct was not wicked, and in America such things might be allowed.  Yet
+Jacqueline tried to demonstrate that a young girl can not pass unscathed
+through certain adventures, even if they are innocent in the strict sense
+of the word; which made Nora cry out that all she said was subterfuge and
+that she had no patience with prejudices.
+
+In vain her young companion pointed out to her charge that other
+Americans at Bellagio seemed far from approving her conduct.  American
+ladies of a very different class, who were staying at the hotel, held
+aloof from her, and treated her with marked coldness whenever they met;
+declaring that her manners would be as objectionable in her own country,
+in good society, as they were in Italy.
+
+But Miss Sparks was not to be put down by any argument.  "Bah!  they are
+stuck-up Bostonians.  And do you know, Jacqueline, you are getting very
+tiresome?  You were faster yourself than I when we were the Blue Band at
+Treport."
+
+Nora's admirers, sometimes encouraged, sometimes snubbed, when treated
+cavalierly by this young lady, would occasionally pay court to the
+'demoiselle de compagnie', who indeed was well worth their pains; but,
+to their surprise, the subordinate received their attentions with great
+coldness.  Having entered her protest against what was going on, and
+having resisted the contagion of example, it was natural she should
+somewhat exaggerate her prudery, for it is hard to hit just the right
+point in such reaction.  The result was, she made herself so disagreeable
+to Miss Sparks that the latter determined on getting rid of her as
+tactfully as possible.
+
+Their parting took place on the day after an excursion to the Villa
+Sommariva, where Miss Sparks and her little court had behaved with their
+usual noise and rudeness.  They had gone there ostensibly to see the
+pictures, about which none of them cared anything, for Nora, wherever she
+was, never liked any one to pay attention to anybody or to look at
+anything but her own noisy, all-pervading self.
+
+It so happened that at the most riotous moment of the picnic an old
+gentleman passed near the lively crowd.  He was quite inoffensive,
+pleasant-mannered, and walked leaning on his cane, yet, had the statue of
+the Commander in Don Juan suddenly appeared it could not have produced
+such consternation as his presence did on Jacqueline, when, after a
+moment's hesitation, he bowed to her.  She recognized in him a friend of
+Madame d'Argy, M. Martel, whom she had often met at her house in Paris
+and at Lizerolles.  When he recognized her, she fancied she had seen pass
+over his face a look of painful surprise.  He would surely tell how he
+had met her; what would her old friends think of her?  What would Fred?
+For some time past she had thought more than ever before of what Fred
+would think of her.  The more she grew disgusted with the men she met,
+the more she appreciated his good qualities, and the more she thought of
+the honest, faithful love he had offered her--love that she had so madly
+thrown away.  She never should meet such love again, she thought.  It was
+the idea of how Fred would blame her when he heard what she pictured to
+herself the old gentleman would say of her, that suddenly decided her to
+leave Bellagio.
+
+She told Mr. Sparks that evening that she was not strong enough for such
+duties as were required of a companion.
+
+He looked at her with pity and annoyance.
+
+"I should have thought you had more energy.  How do you expect to live by
+work if you are not strong enough for pleasure?"
+
+"Pleasure needs strength as well as labor," she said, smiling; "I would
+rather work in the fields than go on amusing myself as I have been
+doing."
+
+"My dear, you must not be so difficult to please.  When people have to
+earn their bread, it is a bad plan.  I am afraid you will find out before
+long that there are harder ways of making a living than lunching,
+dancing, walking, and driving from morning to night in a pretty
+country--"
+
+Here Mr. Sparks began to laugh as he thought of all he had had to do,
+without making objections, in the Far West, in the heroic days of his
+youthful vigor.  He was rather fond of recalling how he had carried his
+pick on his shoulder and his knife in his belt, with two Yankee sayings
+in his head, and little besides for baggage: "Muscle and pluck!--Muscle
+and pluck!"  and "Go ahead for ever!"  That was the sort of thing to be
+done when a man or a woman had not a cent.
+
+And now, what was Jacqueline to do next?  She reflected that in a very
+short time she had attempted many things.  It seemed to her that all she
+could do now was to follow the advice which, when first given her by
+Madame Strahlberg, had frightened her, though she had found it so
+attractive.  She would study with Madame Rochette; she would go to the
+Milan Conservatory, and as soon as she came of age she would go upon the
+stage, under a feigned name, of course, and in a foreign country.  She
+would prove to the world, she said to herself, that the career of an
+actress is compatible with self-respect.  This resolve that she would
+never be found wanting in self-respect held a prominent place in all her
+plans, as she began to understand better those dangers in life which are
+for the most part unknown to young girls born in her social position.
+Jacqueline's character, far from being injured by her trials and
+experiences, had gained in strength.  She grew firmer as she gained in
+knowledge.  Never had she been so worthy of regard and interest as at the
+very time when her friends were saying sadly to themselves, "She is going
+to the bad," and when, from all appearances, they were right in this
+conclusion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+TWIN DEVILS
+
+Jacqueline came to the conclusion that she had better seriously consult
+Madame Strahlberg.  She therefore stopped at Monaco, where this friend,
+whom she intended to honor with the strange office of Mentor, was passing
+the winter in a little villa in the Condamine quarter--a cottage
+surrounded by roses and laurel-bushes, painted in soft colors and looking
+like a plaything.
+
+Madame Strahlberg had already urged Jacqueline to come and make
+acquaintance with her "paradise," without giving her any hint of the
+delights of that paradise, from which that of gambling was not excluded,
+for Madame Strahlberg was eager for any kind of excitement.  Roulette now
+occupied with her a large part of every night--indeed, her nights had
+been rarely given to slumber, for her creed was that morning is the time
+for sleep, for which reason they never took breakfast in the pink villa,
+but tea, cakes, and confectionery were eaten instead at all hours until
+the evening.  Thus it happened very often that they had no dinner, and
+guests had to accommodate themselves to the strange ways of the family.
+Jacqueline, however, did not stay long enough to know much of those ways.
+
+She arrived, poor thing, with weary wing, like some bird, who, escaping
+from the fowler's net, where it has left its feathers, flies straight to
+the spot where a sportsman lies ready to shoot it.  She was received with
+the same cries of joy, the same kisses, the same demonstrations of
+affection, as those which, the summer before, had welcomed her to the Rue
+de Naples.  They told her she could sleep on a sofa, exactly like the one
+on which she had passed that terrible night which had resulted in her
+expulsion from the convent; and it was decided that she must stay several
+days, at least, before she went on to Paris, to begin the life of hard
+study and courageous work which would make of her a great singer.
+
+Tired?--No, she was hardly tired at all.  The journey over the enchanting
+road of the Corniche had awakened in her a fervor of admiration which
+prevented her from feeling any bodily needs, and now she seemed to have
+reached fairyland, where the verdure of the tropics was like the hanging
+gardens of Babylon, only those had never had a mirror to reflect back
+their ancient, far-famed splendor, like that before her eyes, as she
+looked down upon the Mediterranean, with the sun setting in the west in a
+sky all crimson and gold.
+
+Notwithstanding the disorder of her travelling-dress, Jacqueline allowed
+her friend to take her straight from the railway station to the Terrace
+of Monte Carlo.  She fell into ecstasies at sight of the African cacti,
+the century plants, and the fig-trees of Barbary, covering the low walls
+whence they looked down into the water; at the fragrance of the
+evergreens that surrounded the beautiful palace with its balustrades,
+dedicated to all the worst passions of the human race; with the sharp
+rocky outline of Turbia; with an almost invisible speck on the horizon
+which they said was Corsica; with everything, which, whether mirage or
+reality, lifted her out of herself, and plunged her into that state of
+excited happiness and indescribable sense of bodily comfort, which
+exterior impressions so easily produce upon the young.
+
+After exhausting her vocabulary in exclamations and in questions, she
+stood silent, watching the sun as it sank beneath the waters, thinking
+that life is well worth living if it can give us such glorious
+spectacles, notwithstanding all the difficulties that may have to be
+passed through.  Several minutes elapsed before she turned her radiant
+face and dazzled eyes toward Wanda, or rather toward the spot where Wanda
+had been standing beside her.  "Oh!  my dear--how beautiful!"  she
+murmured with a long sigh.
+
+The sigh was echoed by a man, who for a few moments had looked at her
+with as much admiration as she had looked at the landscape.  He answered
+her by saying, in a low voice, the tones of which made her tremble from
+head to foot:
+
+"Jacqueline!"
+
+"Monsieur de Cymier!"
+
+The words slipped through her lips as they suddenly turned pale.  She had
+an instinctive, sudden persuasion that she had been led into a snare.  If
+not, why was Madame Strahlberg now absorbed in conversation with three
+other persons at some little distance.
+
+"Forgive me--you did not expect to see me--you seem quite startled," said
+the young man, drawing near her.  With an effort she commanded herself
+and looked full in his face.  Her anger rose.  She had seen the same look
+in the ugly, brutal face of Oscar de Talbrun.  From the Terrace of Monte
+Carlo her memory flew back to a country road in Normandy, and she
+clenched her hand round an imaginary riding-whip.  She needed coolness
+and she needed courage.  They came as if by miracle.
+
+"It is certain, Monsieur," she answered, slowly, "that I did not expect
+to meet you here."
+
+"Chance has had pity on me," he replied, bowing low, as she had set him
+the example of ceremony.
+
+But he had no idea of losing time in commonplace remarks--he wished to
+take up their intimacy on the terms it had been formerly, to resume the
+romance he himself had interrupted.
+
+"I knew," he said in the same low voice, full of persuasion, which gave
+especial meaning to his words, "I knew that, after all, we should meet
+again."
+
+"I did not expect it," said Jacqueline, haughtily.
+
+"Because you do not believe in the magnetism of a fixed desire."
+
+"No, I do not believe any such thing, when, opposed to such a desire,
+there is a strong, firm will," said Jacqueline, her eyes burning.
+
+"Ah!"  he murmured, and he might have been supposed to be really moved,
+so much his look changed, "do not abuse your power over me--do not make
+me wretched; if you could only understand--"
+
+She made a swift movement to rejoin Madame Strahlberg, but that lady was
+already coming toward them with the same careless ease with which she had
+left them together.
+
+"Well!  you have each found an old acquaintance," she said, gayly.
+"I beg your pardon, my loveliest, but I had to speak to some old friends,
+and ask them to join us to-morrow evening.  We shall sup at the
+restaurant of the Grand Hotel, after the opera--for, I did not tell you
+before, you will have the good luck to hear Patti.  Monsieur de Cymier,
+we shall expect you.  Au revoir."
+
+He had been on the point of asking leave to walk home with them.  But
+there was something in Jacqueline's look, and in her stubborn silence,
+that deterred him.  He thought it best to leave a skilful advocate to
+plead his cause before he continued a conversation which had not begun
+satisfactorily.  Not that Gerard de Cymier was discouraged by the
+behavior of Jacqueline.  He had expected her to be angry at his
+defection, and that she would make him pay for it; but a little skill on
+his part, and a little credulity on hers, backed by the intervention of a
+third party, might set things right.
+
+One moment he lingered to look at her, admiring her as she stood in the
+light of the dying sun, as beautiful in her plain dress and her indignant
+paleness, while she looked far out to sea, that she might not be obliged
+to look at him, as she had been when he had known her in prosperity.
+
+At that moment he knew she hated him, but it would be an additional
+delight to overcome that feeling.
+
+The two women, when he left them, continued walking on the terrace side
+by side, without a word.  Wanda watched her companion out of the corners
+of her eyes, and hummed an air to herself to break the silence.  She saw
+a storm gathering under Jacqueline's black eyebrows, and knew that sharp
+arrows were likely to shoot forth from those lips which several times had
+opened, though not a word had been uttered, probably through fear of
+saying too little or too much.
+
+At last she made some trifling comment on the view, explaining something
+about pigeon-shooting.
+
+"Wanda," interrupted Jacqueline, "did you not know what happened once?"
+
+"Happened, how?  About what?"  asked Madame Strahlberg, with an air of
+innocence.
+
+"I am speaking of the way Monsieur de Cymier treated me."
+
+"Bah!  He was in love with you.  Who didn't know it?  Every one could see
+that.  It was all the more reason why you should have been glad to meet
+him."
+
+"He did not act as if he were much in love," said Jacqueline.
+
+"Because he went away when your family thought he was about to make his
+formal proposal?  Not all men are marrying men, my dear, nor have all
+women that vocation.  Men fall in love all the same."
+
+"Do you think, then, that when a man knows he has no intention of
+marrying he should pay court to a young girl?  I think I told you at the
+time that he had paid court to me, and that he afterward--how shall I say
+it?--basely deserted me."
+
+The sharp and thrilling tone in which Jacqueline said this amused Madame
+Strahlberg.
+
+"What big words, my dear!  No, I don't remember that you ever said
+anything of the sort to me before.  But you are wrong.  As we grow older
+we lay aside harsh judgments and sharp words.  They do no good.  In your
+place I should be touched by the thought that a man so charming had been
+faithful to me."
+
+"Faithful!"  cried Jacqueline, her dark eyes flashing into the cat-like
+eyes of Madame Strahlberg.
+
+Wanda looked down, and fastened a ribbon at her waist.
+
+"Ever since we have been here," she said, "he has been talking of you."
+
+"Really--for how long?"
+
+"Oh, if you must know, for the last two weeks."
+
+"It is just a fortnight since you wrote and asked me to stay with you,"
+said Jacqueline, coldly and reproachfully.
+
+"Oh, well--what's the harm?  Suppose I did think your presence would
+increase the attractions of Monaco?"
+
+"Why did you not tell me?"
+
+"Because I never write a word more than is necessary; you know how lazy
+I am.  And also because, I may as well confess, it might have scared you
+off, you are so sensitive."
+
+"Then you meant to take me by surprise?"  said Jacqueline, in the same
+tone.
+
+"Oh!  my dear, why do you try to quarrel with me?"  replied Madame
+Strahlberg, stopping suddenly and looking at her through her eyeglass.
+"We may as well understand what you mean by a free and independent life."
+
+And thereupon ensued an address to which Jacqueline listened, leaning one
+hand on a balustrade of that enchanted garden, while the voice of the
+serpent, as she thought, was ringing in her ears.  Her limbs shook under
+her--her brain reeled.  All her hopes of success as a singer on the stage
+Madame Strahlberg swept away, as not worth a thought.  She told her that,
+in her position, had she meant to be too scrupulous, she should have
+stayed in the convent.  Everything to Jacqueline seemed to dance before
+her eyes.  The evening closed around them, the light died out, the
+landscape, like her life, had lost its glow.  She uttered a brief prayer
+for help, such a prayer as she had prayed in infancy.  She whispered it
+in terror, like a cry in extreme danger.  She was more frightened by
+Wanda's wicked words than she had been by M. de Talbrun or by M. de
+Cymier.  She ceased to know what she was saying till the last words, "You
+have good sense and you will think about it," met her ear.
+
+Jacqueline said not a word.
+
+Wanda took her arm.  "You may be sure," she said, "that I am thinking
+only of your good.  Come!  Would you like to go into the Casino and look
+at the pictures?  No, you are tired?  You can see them some evening.
+The ballroom holds a thousand persons.  Yes, if you prefer, we will go
+home.  You can take a nap till dinner-time.  We shall dine at eight
+o'clock."
+
+Conversation languished till they reached the Villa Rosa. Notwithstanding
+Jacqueline's efforts to appear natural, her own voice rang in her ears in
+tones quite new to her, a laugh that she uttered without any occasion,
+and which came near resulting in hysterics.  Yet she had power enough
+over her nerves to notice the surroundings as she entered the house.
+At the door of the room in which she was to sleep, and which was on the
+first story, Madame Strahlberg kissed her with one of those equivocal
+smiles which so long had imposed on her simplicity.
+
+"Till eight o'clock, then."
+
+"Till eight o'clock," repeated Jacqueline, passively.
+
+But when eight o'clock came she sent word that she had a severe headache,
+and would try to sleep it off.
+
+Suppose, she thought, M. de Cymier should have been asked to dinner;
+suppose she should be placed next to him at table?  Anything in that
+house seemed possible now.
+
+They brought her a cup of tea.  Up to a late hour she heard a confused
+noise of music and laughter.  She did not try to sleep.  All her
+faculties were on the alert, like those of a prisoner who is thinking of
+escape.  She knew what time the night trains left the station, and,
+abandoning her trunk and everything else that she had with her, she
+furtively--but ready, if need were, to fight for her liberty with the
+strength of desperation--slipped down the broad stairs over their thick
+carpet and pushed open a little glass door.  Thank heaven!  people came
+in and went out of that house as if it had been a mill.  No one
+discovered her flight till the next morning, when she was far on her way
+to Paris in an express train.   Modeste, quite unprepared for her young
+mistress's arrival, was amazed to see her drop down upon her, feverish
+and excited, like some poor hunted animal, with strength exhausted.
+Jacqueline flung herself into her nurse's arms as she used to do when,
+as a little girl, she was in what she fancied some great trouble, and she
+cried: "Oh, take me in--pray take me in!  Keep me safe!  Hide me!"  And
+then she told Modeste everything, speaking rapidly and disconnectedly,
+thankful to have some one to whom she could open her heart.  In default
+of Modeste she would have spoken to stone walls.
+
+"And what will you do now, my poor darling?"  asked the old nurse, as
+soon as she understood that her young lady had come back to her, "with
+weary foot and broken wing," from what she had assured her on her
+departure would be a brilliant excursion.
+
+"Oh!  I don't know," answered Jacqueline, in utter discouragement; "I am
+too worn out to think or to do anything.  Let me rest; that is all."
+
+"Why don't you go to see your stepmother?"
+
+"My stepmother?  Oh, no!  She is at the bottom of all that has happened
+to me."
+
+"Or Madame d'Argy?  Or Madame de Talbrun?  Madame de Talbrun is the one
+who would give you good advice."
+
+Jacqueline shook her head with a sad smile.
+
+"Let me stay here.  Don't you remember--years ago--but it seems like
+yesterday--all the rest is like a nightmare--how I used to hide myself
+under your petticoats, and you would say, going on with your knitting:
+'You see she is not here; I can't think where she can be.'  Hide me now
+just like that, dear old Modeste.  Only hide me."
+
+And Modeste, full of heartfelt pity, promised to hide her "dear child"
+from every one, which promise, however, did not prevent her, for she was
+very self-willed, from going, without Jacqueline's knowledge, to see
+Madame de Talbrun and tell her all that had taken place.  She was hurt
+and amazed at her reception by Giselle, and at her saying, without any
+offer of help or words of sympathy, "She has only reaped what she has
+sown."  Giselle would have been more than woman had not Fred, and a
+remembrance of the wrongs that he had suffered through Jacqueline, now
+stood between them.  For months he had been the prime object in her life;
+her mission of comforter had brought her the greatest happiness she had
+ever known.  She tried to make him turn his attention to some serious
+work in life; she wanted to keep him at home, for his mother's sake,
+she thought; she fancied she had inspired him with a taste for home life.
+If she had examined herself she might have discovered that the task she
+had undertaken of doing good to this young man was not wholly for his
+sake but partly for her own.  She wanted to see him nearly every day and
+to occupy a place in his life ever larger and larger.  But for some time
+past the conscientious Giselle had neglected the duty of strict self-
+examination.  She was thankful to be happy--and though Fred was a man
+little given to self-flattery in his relations with women, he could not
+but be pleased at the change produced in her by her intercourse with him.
+
+But while Fred and Giselle considered themselves as two friends trying to
+console each other, people had begun to talk about them.  Even Madame
+d'Argy asked herself whether her son might not have escaped from the
+cruel claws of a young coquette of the new school to fall into a worse
+scrape with a married woman.  She imagined what might happen if the
+jealousy of "that wild boar of an Oscar de Talbrun" were aroused; the
+dangers, far more terrible than the perils of the sea, that might in such
+a case await her only son, the child for whose safety her mother-love
+caused her to suffer perpetual torments.  "O mothers!  mothers!"  she
+often said to herself, "how much they are to be pitied.  And they are
+very blind.  If Fred must get into danger and difficulty for any woman,
+it should not have been for Giselle de Talbrun."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+"AN AFFAIR OF HONOR"
+
+     A meeting took place yesterday at Vesinet between the Vicomte de
+     Cymier, secretary of Embassy at Vienna, and M. Frederic d'Argy,
+     ensign in the navy.  The parties fought with swords.  The seconds of
+     M. de Cymier were the Prince de Moelk and M. d'Etaples, captain in
+     the --th Hussars; those of M. d'Argy Hubert Marien, the painter.
+     M. d'Argy was wounded in the right arm, and for the present the
+     affair is terminated, but it is said it will be resumed on M.
+     d'Argy's recovery, although this seems hardly probable, considering
+     the very slight cause of the quarrel--an altercation at the Cercle
+     de la Rue Boissy d'Anglas, which took place over the card-table.
+
+Such was the announcement in a daily paper that met the eyes of
+Jacqueline, as she lay hidden in Modeste's lodging, like a fawn in its
+covert, her eyes and ears on the alert, watching for the least sign of
+alarm, in fear and trembling.  She expected something, she knew not what;
+she felt that her sad adventure at Monaco could not fail to have its
+epilogue; but this was one of which she never had dreamed.
+
+"Modeste, give me my hat!  Get me a carriage!  Quick!  Oh, my God, it is
+my fault!--I have killed him!"
+
+These incoherent cries came from her lips while Modeste, in alarm, picked
+up the newspaper and adjusted her silver spectacles upon her nose to read
+the paragraph.  "Monsieur Fred wounded!  Holy Virgin!  His poor mother!
+That is a new trouble fallen on her, to be sure.  But this quarrel had
+nothing to do with you, my pet; you see they say it was about cards."
+
+And folding up the Figaro, while Jacqueline in all haste was wrapping her
+head in a veil, Modeste, with the best intentions, went on to say:
+"Nobody ever dies of a sword-thrust in the arm."
+
+"But you see it says that they are going to fight all over again--don't
+you understand?  You are so stupid!  What could they have had to quarrel
+about but me?  O God!  Thou art just!  This is indeed punishment--too
+much punishment for me!"
+
+So saying, she ran down the many stairs that led up to Modeste's little
+lodging in the roof, her feet hardly touching them as she ran, while
+Modeste followed her more slowly, crying: "Wait for me!  Wait for me,
+Mademoiselle!"
+
+Calling a fiacre, Jacqueline, almost roughly, pushed the old woman into
+it, and gave the coachman the address of Madame d'Argy, having, in her
+excitement, first given him that of their old house in the Parc Monceau,
+so much was she possessed by the idea that this was a repetition of that
+dreadful day, when with Modeste, just as now, she went to meet an
+irreparable loss.  She seemed to see before her her dead father--
+he looked like Fred, and now, as before, Marien had his part in the
+tragedy.  Could he not have prevented the duel?  Could he not have done
+something to prevent Fred from exposing himself?  The wound might be no
+worse than it was said to be in the newspaper--but then a second meeting
+was to take place.  No!--it should not, she would stop it at any price!
+
+And yet, as the coach drew nearer to the Rue de Varenne, where Madame
+d'Argy had her winter residence, a little calm, a little sense returned
+to Jacqueline.  She did not see how she could dare to enter that house,
+where probably they cursed her very name.  She would wait in the street
+with the carriage-blinds pulled down, and Modeste should go in and ask
+for information.  Five minutes passed--ten minutes passed--they seemed
+ages.  How slow Modeste was, slow as a tortoise!  How could she leave her
+there when she knew she was so anxious?  What could she be doing?  All
+she had to do was to ask news of M. Fred in just two words!
+
+At last, Jacqueline could bear suspense no longer.  She opened the coach-
+door and jumped out on the pavement.  Just at that moment Modeste
+appeared, brandishing the umbrella that she carried instead of a stick,
+in a manner that meant something.  It might be bad news, she would know
+in a moment; anything was better than suspense.  She sprang forward.
+
+"What did they say, Modeste?  Speak!--Why have you been such a time?"
+
+"Because the servants had something else to do than to attend to me.
+I wasn't the only person there--they were writing in a register.
+Get back into the carriage, Mademoiselle, or somebody will see you--
+There are lots of people there who know you--Monsieur and Madame
+d'Etaples--"
+
+"What do I care?--The truth!  Tell me the truth--"
+
+"But didn't you understand my signals?  He is going on well.  It was only
+a scratch--Ah! Madame that's only my way of talking.  He will be laid up
+for a fortnight.  The doctor was there--he has some fever, but he is not
+in any danger."
+
+"Oh!  what a blessing!  Kiss me, Modeste.  We have a fortnight in which
+we may interfere--But how--Oh, how?--Ah! there is Giselle!  We will go to
+Giselle at once!"
+
+And the 'fiacre' was ordered to go as fast as possible to the Rue Barbet-
+de-Jouy.  This time Jacqueline herself spoke to the concierge.
+
+"Madame la Comtesse is out."
+
+"But she never goes out at this hour.  I wish to see her on important
+business.  I must see her."
+
+And Jacqueline passed the concierge, only to encounter another refusal
+from a footman, who insisted that Madame la Comtesse was at home to no
+one.
+
+"But me, she will see me.  Go and tell her it is Mademoiselle de
+Nailles."
+
+Moved by her persistence, the footman went in to inquire, and came back
+immediately with the answer:
+
+"Madame la Comtesse can not see Mademoiselle."
+
+"Ah!"  thought Jacqueline, "she, too, throws me off, and it is natural.
+I have no friends left.  No one will tell me anything!--I think it will
+drive me mad?"
+
+She was half-mad already.  She stopped at a newsstand and bought all the
+evening journals; then, up in her garret, in her poor little nest under
+the roof-which, as she felt bitterly, was her only refuge, she began to
+look over those printed papers in which she might possibly find out the
+true cause of the duel.  Nearly all related the event in almost the exact
+terms used by the Figaro.  Ah!--here was a different one!  A reporter who
+knew something more added, in Gil Blas: "We have stated the cause of the
+dispute as it has been given to the public, but in affairs of this nature
+more than in any others, it is safe to remember the old proverb: 'Look
+for the woman.'  The woman could doubtless have been found enjoying
+herself on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean, while men were drawing
+swords in her defense."
+
+Jacqueline went on looking through the newspapers, crumpling up the
+sheets as she laid them down.  The last she opened had the reputation of
+being a repository of scandals, never to be depended on, as she well
+knew.  Several times it had come to her hand and she had not opened it,
+remembering what her father had always said of its reputation.  But where
+would she be more likely to find what she wanted than in the columns of a
+journal whose reporters listened behind doors and peeped through
+keyholes?  Under the heading of 'Les Dessous Parisiens', she read on the
+first page:
+
+              "Two hens lived in peace; a cock came
+               And strife soon succeeded to joy;
+               E'en as love, they say, kindled the flame
+               That destroyed the proud city of Troy.
+
+     "This quarrel was the outcome of a violent rupture between the two
+     hens in question, ending in the flight of one of them, a young and
+     tender pullet, whose voice we trust soon to hear warbling on the
+     boards at one of our theatres.  This was the subject of conversation
+     in a low voice at the Cercle, at the hour when it is customary to
+     tell such little scandals.  M. de C----- was enlarging on the
+     somewhat Bohemian character of the establishment of a lovely foreign
+     lady, who possesses the secret of being always surrounded by
+     delightful friends, young ladies who are self-emancipated, quasi-
+     widows who, by divorce suits, have regained their liberty, etc.
+     He was speaking of one of the beauties who are friends of his friend
+     Madame S----, as men speak of women who have proved themselves
+     careless of public opinion; when M. d'A----, in a loud voice,
+     interrupted him; the lie was given in terms that of course led to
+     the hostile meeting of which the press has spoken, attributing it to
+     a dispute about the Queen of Spades, when it really concerned the
+     Queen of Hearts."
+
+Then she had made no mistake; it had been her flight from Madame
+Strahlberg's which had led to her being attacked by one man, and defended
+by the other!  Jacqueline found it hard to recognize herself in this
+tissue of lies, insinuations, and half-truths.  What did the paper mean
+its readers to understand by its account?  Was it a jealous rivalry
+between herself and Madame Strahlberg?--Was M. de Cymier meant by the
+cock?  And Fred had heard all this--he had drawn his sword to refute the
+calumny.  Brave Fred!  Alas!  he had been prompted only by chivalric
+generosity.  Doubtless he, also, looked upon her as an adventuress.
+
+All night poor Jacqueline wept with such distress that she wished that
+she might die.  She was dropping off to sleep at last, overpowered by
+fatigue, when a ring at the bell in the early morning roused her.  Then
+she heard whispering:
+
+"Do you think she is so unhappy?"
+
+It was the voice of Giselle.
+
+"Come in--come in quickly!"  she cried, springing out of bed.  Wrapped in
+a dressing-gown, with bare feet, her face pale, her eyelids red, her
+complexion clouded, she rushed to meet her friend, who was almost as much
+disordered as herself.  It seemed as if Madame de Talbrun might also have
+passed a night of sleeplessness and tears.
+
+"You have come!  Oh!  you have come at last!"  cried Jacqueline, throwing
+her arms around her, but Giselle repelled her with a gesture so severe
+that the poor child could not but understand its meaning.  She murmured,
+pointing to the pile of newspapers: "Is it possible?--Can you have
+believed all those dreadful things?"
+
+"What things?  I have read nothing," said Giselle, harshly.  "I only know
+that a man who was neither your husband nor your brother, and who
+consequently was under no obligation to defend you, has been foolish
+enough to be nearly killed for your sake.  Is not that a proof of your
+downfall?  Don't you know it?"
+
+"Downfall?"  repeated Jacqueline, as if she did not understand her.
+Then, seizing her friend's hand, she forcibly raised it to her lips:
+"Ah!  what can anything matter to me," she cried, "if only you remain my
+friend; and he has never doubted me!"
+
+"Women like you can always find defenders," said Giselle, tearing her
+hand from her cousin's grasp.
+
+Giselle was not herself at that moment.  "But, for your own sake, it
+would have been better he should have abstained from such an act of
+Quixotism."
+
+"Giselle!  can it be that you think me guilty?"
+
+"Guilty!"  cried Madame de Talbrun, her pale face aflame.  "A little more
+and Monsieur de Cymier's sword-point would have pierced his lungs."
+
+"Good heavens!" cried Jacqueline, hiding her face in her hands.  "But I
+have done nothing to--"
+
+"Nothing except to set two men against each other; to make them suffer,
+or to make fools of them, and to be loved by them all the same."
+
+"I have not been a coquette," said Jacqueline, with indignation.
+
+"You must have been, to authorize the boasts of Monsieur de Cymier.  He
+had seen Fred so seldom, and Tonquin had so changed him that he spoke in
+his presence--without supposing any one would interfere.  I dare not tell
+you what he said--"
+
+"Whatever spite or revenge suggested to him, no doubt," said Jacqueline.
+
+"Listen, Giselle--Oh, you must listen.  I shall not be long."
+
+She forced her to sit down; she crouched on a foot stool at her feet,
+holding her hands in hers so tightly that Giselle could not draw them
+away, and began her story, with all its details, of what had happened to
+her since she left Fresne.  She told of her meeting with Wanda; of the
+fatal evening which had resulted in her expulsion from the convent;
+her disgust at the Sparks family; the snare prepared for her by Madame
+Strahlberg.  "And I can not tell you all," she added, "I can not tell you
+what drove me away from my true friends, and threw me among these
+people--"
+
+Giselle's sad smile seemed to answer, "No need--I am aware of it--I know
+my husband."  Encouraged by this, Jacqueline went on with her confession,
+hiding nothing that was wrong, showing herself just as she had been, a
+poor, proud child who had set out to battle for herself in a dangerous
+world.  At every step she had been more and more conscious of her own
+imprudence, of her own weakness, and of an ever-increasing desire to be
+done with independence; to submit to law, to be subject to any rules
+which would deliver her from the necessity of obeying no will but her
+own.
+
+"Ah!" she cried, "I am so disgusted with independence, with amusement,
+and amusing people!  Tell me what to do in future--I am weary of taking
+charge of myself.  I said so the other day to the Abbe Bardin.  He is the
+only person I have seen since my return.  It seems to me I am coming back
+to my old ideas--you remember how I once wished to end my days in the
+cell of a Carmelite?  You might love me again then, perhaps, and Fred and
+poor Madame d'Argy, who must feel so bitterly against me since her son
+was wounded, might forgive me.  No one feels bitterly against the dead,
+and it is the same as being dead to be a Carmelite nun.  You would all
+speak of me sometimes to each other as one who had been very unhappy, who
+had been guilty of great foolishness, but who had repaired her faults as
+best she could."
+
+Poor Jacqueline!  She was no longer a girl of the period; in her grief
+and humiliation she belonged to the past.  Old-fashioned forms of
+penitence attracted her.
+
+"And what did the Abbe Bardin tell you?"  asked Giselle, with a slight
+movement of her shoulders.
+
+"He only told me that he could not say at present whether that were my
+vocation."
+
+"Nor can I," said Giselle.
+
+Jacqueline lifted up her face, wet with tears, which she had been leaning
+on the lap of Giselle.
+
+"I do not see what else I can do, unless you would get me a place as
+governess somewhere at the ends of the earth," she said.  "I could teach
+children their letters.  I should not mind doing anything.  I never
+should complain.  Ah!  if you lived all by yourself, Giselle, how I
+should implore you to take me to teach little Enguerrand!"
+
+"I think you might do better than that," said Giselle, wiping her
+friend's eyes almost as a mother might have done, "if you would only
+listen to Fred."
+
+Jacqueline's cheeks became crimson.
+
+"Don't mock me--it is cruel--I am too unworthy--it would pain me to see
+him.  Shame--regret--you understand!  But I can tell you one thing,
+Giselle--only you.  You may tell it to him when he is quite old, when he
+has been long married, and when everything concerning me is a thing of
+the past.  I never had loved any one with all my heart up to the moment
+when I read in that paper that he had fought for me, that his blood had
+flowed for me, that after all that had passed he still thought me worthy
+of being defended by him."
+
+Her tears flowed fast, and she added: "I shall be proud of that all the
+rest of my life!  If only you, too, would forgive me."
+
+The heart of Giselle was melted by these words.
+
+"Forgive you, my dear little girl?  Ah! you have been better than I.
+I forgot our old friendship for a moment--I was harsh to you; and I have
+so little right to blame you!  But come!  Providence may have arranged
+all for the best, though one of us may have to suffer.  Pray for that
+some one.  Good-by--'au revoir!"
+
+She kissed Jacqueline's forehead and was gone, before her cousin had
+seized the meaning of her last words.  But joy and peace came back to
+Jacqueline.  She had recovered her best friend, and had convinced her of
+her innocence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+GENTLE CONSPIRATORS
+
+Before Giselle went home to her own house she called on the Abbe Bardin,
+whom a rather surly servant was not disposed to disturb, as he was just
+eating his breakfast.  The Abbe Bardin was Jacqueline's confessor, and he
+held the same relation to a number of other young girls who were among
+her particular friends.  He was thoroughly acquainted with all that
+concerned their delicate and generally childish little souls.  He kept
+them in the right way, had often a share in their marriages, and in
+general kept an eye upon them all their lives.  Even when they escaped
+from him, as had happened in the case of Jacqueline, he did not give them
+up.  He commended them to God, and looked forward to the time of their
+repentance with the patience of a father.  The Abbe Bardin had never been
+willing to exercise any function but that of catechist; he had grown old
+in the humble rank of third assistant in a great parish, when, with a
+little ambition, he might have been its rector.  "Suffer little children
+to come unto me," had been his motto.  These words of his Divine Master
+seemed more often than any others on his lips-lips so expressive of
+loving kindness, though sometimes a shrewd smile would pass over them and
+seem to say: "I know, I can divine."  But when this smile, the result of
+long experience, did not light up his features, the good Abbe Bardin
+looked like an elderly child; he was short, his walk was a trot, his face
+was round and ruddy, his eyes, which were short-sighted, were large,
+wide-open, and blue, and his heavy crop of white hair, which curled and
+crinkled above his forehead, made him look like a sixty-year-old angel,
+crowned with a silvery aureole.
+
+Rubbing his hands affably, he came into the little parlor where Madame de
+Talbrun was waiting for him.  There was probably no ecclesiastic in all
+Paris who had a salon so full of worked cushions, each of which was a
+keepsake--a souvenir of some first communion.  The Abbe did not know his
+visitor, but the name Talbrun seemed to him connected with an honorable
+and well-meaning family.  The lady was probably a mother who had come to
+put her child into his hands for religious instruction.  He received
+visits from dozens of such mothers, some of whom were a little tiresome,
+from a wish to teach him what he knew better than they, and at one time
+he had set apart Wednesday as his day for receiving such visits, that he
+might not be too greatly disturbed, as seemed likely to happen to him
+that day.  Not that he cared very much whether he ate his cutlet hot or
+cold, but his housekeeper cared a great deal.  A man may be a very
+experienced director, and yet be subject to direction in other ways.
+
+The youth of Giselle took him by surprise.
+
+"Monsieur l'Abbe," she said, without any preamble, while he begged her to
+sit down, "I have come to speak to you of a person in whom you take an
+interest, Jacqueline de Nailles."
+
+He passed the back of his hand over his brow and said, with a sigh: "Poor
+little thing!"
+
+"She is even more to be pitied than you think.  You have not seen her,
+I believe, since last week."
+
+"Yes--she came.  She has kept up, thank God, some of her religious
+duties."
+
+"For all that, she has played a leading part in a recent scandal."
+
+The Abbe sprang up from his chair.
+
+"A duel has taken place because of her, and her name is in all men's
+mouths--whispered, of course--but the quarrel took place at the Club.
+You know what it is to be talked of at the Club."
+
+"The poison of asps," growled the Abbe; "oh! those clubs--think of all
+the evil reports concocted in them, of which women are the victims!"
+
+"In the present case the evil report was pure calumny.  It was taken up
+by some one whom you also know--Frederic d'Argy."
+
+"I have had profound respect these many years for his excellent and pious
+mother."
+
+"I thought so.  In that case, Monsieur l'Abbe, you would not object to
+going to Madame d'Argy's house and asking how her son is."
+
+"No, of course not; but--it is my duty to disapprove--"
+
+"You will tell her that when a young man has compromised a young girl by
+defending her reputation in a manner too public, there is but one thing
+he can do afterward-marry her."
+
+"Wait one moment," said the Abbe, who was greatly surprised; "it is
+certain that a good marriage would be the best thing for Jacqueline.
+I have been thinking of it.  But I do not think I could so suddenly--so
+soon after--"
+
+"Today at four o'clock, Monsieur l'Abbe.  Time presses.  You can add that
+such a marriage is the only way to stop a second duel, which will
+otherwise take place."
+
+"Is it possible?"
+
+"And it is also the only way to bring Frederic to decide on sending in
+his resignation.  Don't forget that--it is important."
+
+"But how do you know--"
+
+The poor Abbe stammered out his words, and counted on his fingers the
+arguments he was desired to make use of.
+
+"And you will solemnly assure them that Jacqueline is innocent."
+
+"Oh! as to that, there are wolves in sheeps' clothing, as the Bible tells
+us; but believe me, when such poor young things are in question, it is
+more often the sheep which has put on the appearance of a wolf--to seem
+in the fashion," added the Abbe, "just to seem in the fashion.  Fashion
+will authorize any kind of counterfeiting."
+
+"Well, you will say all that, will you not, to Madame d'Argy?  It will be
+very good of you if you will.  She will make no difficulties about money.
+All she wants is a quietly disposed daughter-in-law who will be willing
+to pass nine months of the year at Lizerolles, and Jacqueline is quite
+cured of her Paris fever."
+
+"A fever too often mortal," murmured the Abbe; "oh, for the simplicity of
+nature!  A priest whose lot is cast in the country is fortunate, Madame,
+but we can not choose our vocation.  We may do good anywhere, especially
+in cities.  Are you sure, however, that Jacqueline--"
+
+"She loves Monsieur d'Argy."
+
+"Well, if that is so, we are all right.  The great misfortune with many
+of these poor girls is that they have never learned to love anything;
+they know nothing but agitations, excitements, curiosities, and fancies.
+All that sort of thing runs through their heads."
+
+"You are speaking of a Jacqueline before the duel.  I can assure you that
+ever since yesterday, if not before, she has loved Monsieur d'Argy, who
+on his part for a long time--a very long time--has been in love with
+her."
+
+Giselle spoke eagerly, as if she forced herself to say the words that
+cost her pain.  Her cheeks were flushed under her veil.  The Abbe, who
+was keen-sighted, observed these signs.
+
+"But," continued Giselle, "if he is forced to forget her he may try to
+expend elsewhere the affection he feels for her; he may trouble the peace
+of others, while deceiving himself.  He might make in the world one of
+those attachments--Do not fail to represent all these dangers to Madame
+d'Argy when you plead the cause of Jacqueline."
+
+"Humph!  You are evidently much attached, Madame, to Mademoiselle de
+Nailles."
+
+"Very much, indeed," she answered, bravely, "very much attached to her,
+and still more to him; therefore you understand that this marriage must--
+absolutely must take place."
+
+She had risen and was folding her cloak round her, looking straight into
+the Abbe's eyes.  Small as she was, their height was almost the same; she
+wanted him to understand thoroughly why this marriage must take place.
+
+He bowed.  Up to that time he had not been quite sure that he had not to
+do with one of those wolves dressed in fleece whose appearance is as
+misleading as that of sheep disguised as wolves: now his opinion was
+settled.
+
+"Mon Dieu! Madame," he said, "your reasons seem to me excellent--a duel
+to be prevented, a son to be kept by the side of his sick mother, two
+young people who love each other to be married, the saving, possibly, of
+two souls--"
+
+"Say three souls, Monsieur l'Abbe!"
+
+He did not ask whose was the third, nor even why she had insisted that
+this delicate commission must be executed that same day.  He only bowed
+when she said again: "At four o'clock: Madame d'Argy will be prepared to
+see you.  Thank you, Monsieur l'Abbe."  And then, as she descended the
+staircase, he bestowed upon her silently his most earnest benediction,
+before returning to the cold cutlet that was on his breakfast table.
+
+Giselle did not breakfast much better than he.  In truth, M. de Talbrun
+being absent, she sat looking at her son, who was eating with a good
+appetite, while she drank only a cup of tea; after which, she dressed
+herself, with more than usual care, hiding by rice-powder the trace of
+recent tears on her complexion, and arranging her fair hair in the way
+that was most becoming to her, under a charming little bonnet covered
+with gold net-work which corresponded with the embroidery on an entirely
+new costume.
+
+When she went into the dining-room Enguerrand, who was there with his
+nurse finishing his dessert, cried out: "Oh! mamma, how pretty you are!"
+which went to her heart.  She kissed him two or three times--one kiss
+after another.
+
+"I try to be pretty for your sake, my darling."
+
+"Will you take me with you?"
+
+"No, but I will come back for you, and take you out."
+
+She walked a few steps, and then turned to give him such a kiss as
+astonished him, for he said:
+
+"Is it really going to be long?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Before you come back?  You kiss me as if you were going for a long time,
+far away."
+
+"I kissed you to give myself courage."
+
+Enguerrand, who, when he had a hard lesson to learn, always did the same
+thing, appeared to understand her.
+
+"You are going to do some thing you don't like."
+
+"Yes, but I have to do it, because you see it is my duty."
+
+"Do grown people have duties?"
+
+"Even more than children."
+
+"But it isn't your duty to write a copy--your writing is so pretty.
+Oh! that's what I hate most.  And you always say it is my duty to write
+my copy.  I'll go and do it while you do your duty.  So that will seem as
+if we were both together doing something we don't like--won't it, mamma?"
+
+She kissed him again, even more passionately.
+
+"We shall be always together, we two, my love!"
+
+This word love struck the little ear of Enguerrand as having a new
+accent, a new meaning, and, boy-like, he tried to turn this excess of
+tenderness to advantage.
+
+"Since you love me so much, will you take me to see the puppet-show?"
+
+"Anywhere you like--when I come back.  Goodby."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+A CHIVALROUS SOUL
+
+Madame D'Argy sat knitting by the window in Fred's chamber, with that
+resigned but saddened air that mothers wear when they are occupied in
+repairing the consequences of some rash folly.  Fred had seen her in his
+boyhood knitting in the same way with the same, look on her face, when he
+had been thrown from his pony, or had fallen from his velocipede.  He
+himself looked ill at ease and worried, as he lay on a sofa with his arm
+in a sling.  He was yawning and counting the hours.  From time to time
+his mother glanced at him.  Her look was curious, and anxious, and
+loving, all at the same time.  He pretended to be asleep.  He did not
+like to see her watching him.  His handsome masculine face, tanned that
+pale brown which tropical climates give to fair complexions, looked odd
+as it rose above a light-blue cape, a very feminine garment which, as it
+had no sleeves, had been tied round his neck to keep him from being cold.
+He felt himself, with some impatience, at the mercy of the most tender,
+but the most sharp-eyed of nurses, a prisoner to her devotion, and made
+conscious of her power every moment.  Her attentions worried him; he knew
+that they all meant "It is your own fault, my poor boy, that you are in
+this state, and that your mother is so unhappy."  He felt it.  He knew as
+well as if she had spoken that she was asking him to return to reason, to
+marry, without more delay, their little neighbor in Normandy,
+Mademoiselle d'Argeville, a niece of M. Martel, whom he persisted in not
+thinking of as a wife, always calling her a "cider apple," in allusion to
+her red cheeks.
+
+A servant came in, and said to Madame d'Argy that Madame de Talbrun was
+in the salon.
+
+"I am coming," she said, rolling up her knitting.
+
+But Fred suddenly woke up:
+
+"Why not ask her to come here?"
+
+"Very good," said his mother, with hesitation.  She was distracted
+between her various anxieties; exasperated against the fatal influence of
+Jacqueline, alarmed by the increasing intimacy with Giselle, desirous
+that all such complications should be put an end to by his marriage, but
+terribly afraid that her "cider apple" would not be sufficient to
+accomplish it.
+
+"Beg Madame de Talbrun to come in here," she said, repeating the order
+after her son; but she settled herself in her chair with an air more
+patient, more resigned than ever, and her lips were firmly closed.
+
+Giselle entered in her charming new gown, and Fred's first words, like
+those of Enguerrand, were: "How pretty you are!  It is charity," he
+added, smiling, "to present such a spectacle to the eyes of a sick man;
+it is enough to set him up again."
+
+"Isn't it?"  said Giselle, kissing Madame d'Argy on the forehead.  The
+poor mother had resumed her knitting with a sigh, hardly glancing at the
+pretty walking-costume, nor at the bonnet with its network of gold.
+
+"Isn't it pretty?"  repeated Giselle.  "I am delighted with this costume.
+It is made after one of Rejane's.  Oscar fell in love with it at a first
+representation of a vaudeville, and he gave me over into the hands of the
+same dressmaker, who indeed was named in the play.  That kind of
+advertising seems very effective."
+
+She went on chattering thus to put off what she had really come to say.
+Her heart was beating so fast that its throbs could be seen under the
+embroidered front of the bodice which fitted her so smoothly.  She
+wondered how Madame d'Argy would receive the suggestion she was about to
+make.
+
+She went on: "I dressed myself in my best to-day because I am so happy."
+
+Madame d'Argy's long tortoise-shell knitting-needles stopped.
+
+"I am glad to hear it, my dear," she said, coldly, "I am glad anybody can
+be happy.  There are so many of us who are sad."
+
+"But why are you pleased?"  asked Fred, looking at her, as if by some
+instinct he understood that he had something to do with it.
+
+"Our prodigal has returned," answered Giselle, with a little air of
+satisfaction, very artificial, however, for she could hardly breathe,
+so great was her fear and her emotion.  "My house is in the garb of
+rejoicing."
+
+"The prodigal?  Do you mean your husband?"  said Madame d'Argy,
+maliciously.
+
+"Oh!  I despair of him," replied Giselle, lightly.  "No, I speak of a
+prodigal who did not go far, and who made haste to repent.  I am speaking
+of Jacqueline."
+
+There was complete silence.  The knitting-needles ticked rapidly,
+a slight flush rose on the dark cheeks of Fred.
+
+"All I beg," said Madame d'Argy, "is that you will not ask me to eat the
+fatted calf in her honor.  The comings and going of Mademoiselle de
+Nailles have long ceased to have the slightest interest for me."
+
+"They have for Fred at any rate; he has just proved it, I should say,"
+replied Giselle.
+
+By this time the others were as much embarrassed as Giselle.  She saw it,
+and went on quickly:
+
+"Their names are together in everybody's mouth; you can not hinder it."
+
+"I regret it deeply-and allow me to make one remark: it seems to me you
+show a want of tact such as I should never have imagined in telling us--"
+
+Giselle read in Fred's eyes, which were steadily fixed on her, that he
+was, on that point, of his mother's opinion.  She went on, however, still
+pretending to blunder.
+
+"Forgive me--but I have been so anxious about you ever since I heard
+there was to be a second meeting--"
+
+"A second meeting!"  screamed Madame d'Argy, who, as she read no paper
+but the Gazette de France, or occasionally the Debats, knew nothing of
+all the rumors that find their echo in the daily papers.
+
+"Oh, 'mon Dieu'! I thought you knew--"
+
+"You need not frighten my mother," said Fred, almost angrily; "Monsieur
+de Cymier has written a letter which puts an end to our quarrel.  It is
+the letter of a man of honor apologizing for having spoken lightly, for
+having repeated false rumors without verifying them--in short, retracting
+all that he had said that reflected in any way on Mademoiselle de
+Nailles, and authorizing me, if I think best, to make public his
+retraction.  After that we can have nothing more to say to each other."
+
+"He who makes himself the champion to defend a young girl's character,"
+said Madame d'Argy, sententiously, "injures her as much as those who have
+spoken evil of her."
+
+"That is exactly what I think," said Giselle.  "The self-constituted
+champion has given the evil rumor circulation."
+
+There was again a painful silence.  Then the intrepid little woman
+resumed: "This step on the part of Monsieur de Cymier seems to have
+rendered my errand unnecessary.  I had thought of a way to end this sad
+affair; a very simple way, much better, most certainly, than men cutting
+their own throats or those of other people.  But since peace has been
+made over the ruins of Jacqueline's reputation, I had better say nothing
+and go away."
+
+"No--no!  Let us hear what you had to propose," said Fred, getting up
+from his couch so quickly that he jarred his bandaged arm, and uttered a
+cry of pain, which seemed very much like an oath, too.
+
+Giselle was silent.  Standing before the hearth, she was warming her
+small feet, watching, as she did so, Madame d'Argy's profile, which was
+reflected in the mirror.  It was severe--impenetrable.  It was Fred who
+spoke first.
+
+"In the first place," he said, hesitating, "are you sure that
+Mademoiselle de Nailles has not just arrived from Monaco?"
+
+"I am certain that for a week she has been living quietly with Modeste,
+and that, though she passed through Monaco, she did not stay there--
+twenty-four hours, finding that the air of that place did not agree with
+her."
+
+"But what do you say to what Monsieur Martel saw with his own eyes, and
+which is confirmed by public rumor?"  cried Madame d'Argy, as if she were
+giving a challenge.
+
+"Monsieur Martel saw Jacqueline in bad company.  She was not there of her
+own will.  As to public rumor, we may feel sure that to make it as
+flattering to her tomorrow as it is otherwise to-day only a marriage is
+necessary.  Yes, a marriage!  That is the way I had thought of to settle
+everything and make everybody happy."
+
+"What man would marry a girl who had compromised herself?"  said Madame
+d'Argy, indignantly.
+
+"He who has done his part to compromise her."
+
+"Then go and propose it to Monsieur de Cymier!"
+
+"No.  It is not Monsieur de Cymier whom she loves."
+
+"Ah!"  Madame d'Argy was on her feet at once.  "Indeed, Giselle, you are
+losing your senses.  If I were not afraid of agitating Fred--"
+
+He was, in truth, greatly agitated.  The only hand that he could use was
+pulling and tearing at the little blue cape crossed on his breast, in
+which his mother had wrapped him; and this unsuitable garment formed such
+a queer contrast to the expression of his face that Giselle, in her
+nervous excitement, burst out laughing, an explosion of merriment which
+completed the exasperation of Madame d'Argy.
+
+"Never!"  she cried, beside herself.  "You hear me--never will I consent,
+whatever happens!"
+
+At that moment the door was partly opened, and a servant announced
+"Monsieur l'Abbe Bardin."
+
+Madame d'Argy made a gesture which was anything but reverential.
+
+"Well, to be sure--this is the right moment with a vengeance!  What does
+he want!  Does he wish me to assist in some good work--or to undertake to
+collect money, which I hate."
+
+"Above all, mother," cried Fred, "don't expose me to the fatigue of
+receiving his visit.  Go and see him yourself.  Giselle will take care of
+your patient while you are gone.  Won't you, Giselle?"
+
+His voice was soft, and very affectionate.  He evidently was not angry at
+what she had dared to say, and she acknowledged this to herself with an
+aching heart.
+
+"I don't exactly trust your kind of care," said Madame d'Argy, with a
+smile that was not gay, and certainly not amiable.
+
+She went, however, because Fred repeated:
+
+"But go and see the Abbe Bardin."
+
+Hardly had she left the room when Fred got up from his sofa and
+approached Giselle with passionate eagerness.
+
+"Are you sure I am not dreaming," said he.  "Is it you--really you who
+advise me to marry Jacqueline?"
+
+"Who else should it be?"  she answered, very calm to all appearance.
+"Who can know better than I?  But first you must oblige me by lying down
+again, or else I will not say one word more.  That is right.  Now keep
+still.  Your mother is furiously displeased with me--I am sorry--but she
+will get over it.  I know that in Jacqueline you would have a good wife--
+a wife far better than the Jacqueline you would have married formerly.
+She has paid dearly for her experience of life, and has profited by its
+lessons, so that she is now worthy of you, and sincerely repentant for
+her childish peccadilloes."
+
+"Giselle," said Fred, "look me full in the face--yes, look into my eyes
+frankly and hide nothing.  Your eyes never told anything but the truth.
+Why do you turn them away?  Do you really and truly wish this marriage?"
+
+She looked at him steadily as long as he would, and let him hold her
+hand, which was burning inside her glove, and which with a great effort
+she prevented from trembling.  Then her nerves gave way under his long
+and silent gaze, which seemed to question her, and she laughed, a laugh
+that sounded to herself very unnatural.
+
+"My poor, dear friend," she cried, "how easily you men are duped!  You
+are trying to find out, to discover whether, in case you decide upon an
+honest act, a perfectly sensible act, to which you are strongly inclined
+--don't tell me you are not--whether, in short, you marry Jacqueline, I
+shall be really as glad of it as I pretend.  But have you not found out
+what I have aimed at all along?  Do you think I did not know from the
+very first what it was that made you seek me?
+
+"I was not the rope, but I had lived near the rose; I reminded you of her
+continually.  We two loved her; each of us felt we did.  Even when you
+said harm of her, I knew it was merely because you longed to utter her
+name, and repeat to yourself her perfections.  I laughed, yes, I laughed
+to myself, and I was careful how I contradicted you.  I tried to keep you
+safe for her, to prevent your going elsewhere and forming attachments
+which might have resulted in your forgetting her.  I did my best--do me
+justice--I did my best; perhaps sometimes I pushed things a little far
+in her interest, in that of your mother, but in yours more than all; in
+yours, for God knows I am all for you," said Giselle, with sudden and
+involuntary fervor.
+
+"Yes, I am all yours as a friend, a faithful friend," she resumed, almost
+frightened by the tones of her own voice; "but as to the slightest
+feeling of love between us, love the most spiritual, the most platonic--
+yes, all men, I fancy, have a little of that kind of self-conceit.  Dear
+Fred, don't imagine it--Enguerrand would never have allowed it."
+
+She was smiling, half laughing, and he looked at her with astonishment,
+asking himself whether he could believe what she was saying, when he
+could recollect what seemed to him so many proofs to the contrary.  Yet
+in what she said there was no hesitation, no incoherence, no false note.
+Pride, noble pride, upheld her to the end.  The first falsehood of her
+life was a masterpiece.
+
+"Ah, Giselle!"  he said at last, not knowing what to think, "I adore you!
+I revere you!"
+
+"Yes," she replied, with a smile, gracious, yet with a touch of sadness,
+"I know you do.  But her you love!"
+
+Might it not have been sweet to her had he answered "No, I loved her
+once, and remembered that old love enough to risk my life for her, but in
+reality I now love only you--all the more at this moment when I see you
+love me more than yourself."  But, instead, he murmured only, like a man.
+and a lover: "And Jacqueline--do you think she loves me?"  His anxiety, a
+thrill that ran through all his frame, the light in his eyes, his sudden
+pallor, told more than his words.
+
+If Giselle could have doubted his love for Jacqueline before, she would
+have now been convinced of it.  The conviction stabbed her to the heart.
+Death is not that last sleep in which all our faculties, weakened and
+exhausted, fail us; it is the blow which annihilates our supreme illusion
+and leaves us disabused in a cold and empty world.  People walk, talk,
+and smile after this death--another ghost is added to the drama played on
+the stage of the world; but the real self is dead.
+
+Giselle was too much of a woman, angelic as she was, to have any courage
+left to say: "Yes, I know she loves you."
+
+She said instead, in a low voice: "That is a question you must ask of
+her."
+
+Meantime, in the next room they could hear Madame d'Argy vehemently
+repeating: "Never!  No, I never will consent!  Is it a plot between you?"
+
+They heard also a rumbling monotone preceding each of these vehement
+interruptions.  The Abbe Bardin was pointing out to her that, unmarried,
+her son would return to Tonquin, that Lizerolles would be left deserted,
+her house would be desolate without daughter-in-law or grandchildren;
+and, as he drew these pictures, he came back, again and again, to his
+main argument:
+
+"I will answer for their happiness: I will answer for the future."
+
+His authority as a priest gave weight to this assurance, at least Madame
+d'Argy felt it so.  She went on saying never, but less and less
+emphatically, and apparently she ceased to say it at last, for three
+months later the d'Etaples, the Rays, the d'Avrignys and the rest,
+received two wedding announcements in these words:
+
+"Madame d'Argy has the honor to inform you of the marriage of her son,
+M. Frederic d'Argy, Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, to Mademoiselle de
+Nailles."
+
+The accompanying card ran thus:
+
+         "The Baroness de Nailles has the honor to inform you of the
+          marriage of Mademoiselle Jacqueline de Nailles, her
+          stepdaughter, to M. Frederic d'Argy."
+
+Congratulations showered down on both mother and stepmother.  A love-
+match is nowadays so rare!  It turned out that every one had always
+wished all kinds of good fortune to young Madame d'Argy, and every one
+seemed to take a sincere part in the joy that was expressed on the
+occasion, even Dolly, who, it was said, had in secret set her heart on
+Fred for herself; even Nora Sparks, who, not having carried out her
+plans, had gone back to New York, whence she sent a superb wedding
+present.  Madame de Nailles apparently experienced at the wedding all the
+emotions of a real mother.
+
+The roses at Lizerolles bloomed that year with unusual beauty, as if to
+welcome the young pair.  Modeste sang 'Nunc Dimittis'.  The least
+demonstrative of all those interested in the event was Giselle.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+As we grow older we lay aside harsh judgments and sharp words
+Blow which annihilates our supreme illusion
+Death is not that last sleep
+Fool (there is no cure for that infirmity)
+The worst husband is always better than none
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Jacqueline, v3
+by Therese Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE JACQUELINE:
+
+A familiarity which, had he known it, was not flattering
+A mother's geese are always swans
+As we grow older we lay aside harsh judgments and sharp words
+Bathers, who exhibited themselves in all degrees of ugliness
+Blow which annihilates our supreme illusion
+Death is not that last sleep
+Fool (there is no cure for that infirmity)
+Fred's verses were not good, but they were full of dejection
+Great interval between a dream and its execution
+Hang out the bush, but keep no tavern
+His sleeplessness was not the insomnia of genius
+Importance in this world are as easily swept away as the sand
+Music--so often dangerous to married happiness
+Natural longing, that we all have, to know the worst
+Notion of her husband's having an opinion of his own
+Old women--at least thirty years old!
+Pride supplies some sufferers with necessary courage
+Seemed to enjoy themselves, or made believe they did
+Seldom troubled himself to please any one he did not care for
+Small women ought not to grow stout
+Sympathetic listening, never having herself anything to say
+The bandage love ties over the eyes of men
+The worst husband is always better than none
+This unending warfare we call love
+Unwilling to leave him to the repose he needed
+Waste all that upon a thing that nobody will ever look at
+Women who are thirty-five should never weep
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Jacqueline, entire
+by Therese Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
+
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