“And I am leaving you pure and free from remorse. I might drag you into the abyss, but you stand upon the brink in all your stainless glory. One thought, though, haunts me …”
“What thought?”
“You will despise me.”
She smiled a proud smile.
“Yes, you will never believe in the holiness of my love for you; and then they will slander me, I know. No woman can conceive how, from out of the filth in which we wallow, we raise our eyes to heaven in single-hearted worship of some radiant star—some Marie. They mix up this adoration with painful questions; they cannot understand that men of high intellect and poetic vision are able to wean their souls from pleasure and keep them to lay entire upon some cherished altar. And yet, Marie, our devotion to the ideal is more ardent than yours; we embody it in a woman, while she does not even seek for it in us.”
“Why this effusion?” she said, with the irony of a woman who has no misgivings.
“I am leaving France; you will learn how and why tomorrow from a letter which my servant will bring you. Farewell, Marie.”
Raoul went out, after pressing the Countess to his heart in an agonized embrace, and left her dazed with misery.
“What is wrong, dear?” said the Marquise d’Espard, coming to look for her. “What has M. Nathan been saying? He left us with quite a melodramatic air. You must have been terribly foolish—or terribly prudent.”
The Countess took Mme. d’Espard’s arm to return to the drawing-room, where, however, she only stayed a few instants.
“Perhaps she is going to her first appointment,” said Lady Dudley to the Marchioness.
“I shall make sure as to that,” replied Mme. d’Espard, who left at once to follow the Countess’ carriage.
But the coupé of Mme. de Vandenesse took the road to the Faubourg St. Honoré. When Mme. d’Espard entered her house, she saw the Countess driving along the Faubourg in the direction of the Rue du Rocher. Marie went to bed, but not to sleep, and spent the night in reading a voyage to the North Pole, of which she did not take in a word.
At half-past eight next morning, she got a letter from Raoul and opened it in feverish haste. The letter began with the classic phrase:
“My loved one, when this paper is in your hands, I shall be no more.”
She read no further, but crushing the paper with a nervous motion, rang for her maid, hastily put on a loose gown, and the first pair of shoes that came to hand, wrapped a shawl round her, took a bonnet, and then went out, instructing her maid to tell the Count that she had gone to her sister, Mme. du Tillet.
“Where did you leave your master?” she asked of Raoul’s servant.
“At the newspaper office.”
“Take me there,” she said.
To the amazement of the household, she left the house on foot before nine o’clock, visibly distraught. Fortunately for her, the maid went to tell the Count that her mistress had just received a letter from Mme. du Tillet which had upset her very much, and that she had started in a great hurry for her sister’s house, accompanied by the servant who had brought the letter. Vandenesse waited for further explanations till his wife’s return. The Countess got a cab and was borne rapidly to the office. At that time of day the spacious rooms occupied by the paper, in an old house in the Rue Feydeau, were deserted. The only occupant was an attendant, whose astonishment was great when a pretty and distracted young woman rushed up and demanded M. Nathan.
“I expect he is with Mlle. Florine,” he replied, taking the Countess for some jealous rival, bent on making a scene.
“Where does he work?” she asked.
“In a small room, the key of which is in his pocket.”
“I must go there.”
The man led her to a dark room, looking out on a backyard, which had formerly been the dressing-closet attached to a large bedroom. This closet made an angle with the bedroom, in which the recess for the bed still remained. By opening the bedroom window, the Countess was able to see through that of the closet what was happening within.
Nathan lay in the editorial chair, the death-rattle in his throat.
“Break open that door, and tell no one! I will pay you to keep silence,” she cried. “Can’t you see that M. Nathan is dying?”
The man went to the compositors’ room to fetch an iron chase with which to force the door. Raoul was killing himself, like some poor work-girl, with the fumes from a pan of charcoal. He had just finished a letter to Blondet, in which he begged him to attribute his death to a fit of apoplexy. The Countess was just in time; she had Raoul carried into the cab; and not knowing where to get him looked after, she went to a hotel, took a room there, and sent the attendant to fetch a doctor. Raoul in a few hours was out of danger; but the Countess did not leave his bedside till she had obtained a full confession. When the prostrate wrestler with fate had poured into her heart the terrible elegy of his sufferings, she returned home a prey to all the torturing fancies which the evening before had brooded over Nathan’s brow.
“Leave it all to me,” she had said, hoping to win him back to life.
“Well, what is wrong with your sister?” asked Félix, on seeing his wife return. “You look like a ghost.”
“It is a frightful story, but I must keep it an absolute secret,” she replied, summoning all her strength to put on an appearance of composure.
In order to be alone and able to think in peace, she went to the opera in the evening, and thence had gone on to unbosom her woes to Mme. du Tillet. After describing the ghastly scene of the morning, she implored her sister’s advice and aid. Neither of them had an idea then that
