II
Sisterly Confidences
Mme. de Vandenesse, it was plain, was crushed by the burden of troubles too heavy for a mind still unsophisticated after six years of marriage. She lay at length, her limbs flaccid, her body bent, her head fallen anyhow on the back of the lounge. Having looked in at the opera before hurrying to her sister’s, she had still a few flowers in the plaits of her hair, while others lay scattered on the carpet, together with her gloves, her mantle of fur-lined silk, her muff, and her hood. Bright tears mingled with the pearls on her white bosom and brimming eyes told a tale in gruesome contrast with the luxury around. The Countess had no heart for further words.
“You poor darling,” said Mme. du Tillet, “what strange delusion as to my married life made you come to me for help?”
It seemed as though the torrent of her sister’s grief had forced these words from the heart of the banker’s wife, as melting snow will set free stones that are held the fastest in the river’s bed. The Countess gazed stupidly on her with fixed eyes, in which terror had dried the tears.
“Can it be that the waters have closed over your head too, my sweet one?” she said in a low voice.
“Nay, dear, my troubles won’t lessen yours.”
“But tell me them, dear child. Do you think I am so sunk in self already as not to listen? Then we are comrades again in suffering as of old!”
“But we suffer apart,” sadly replied Mme. du Tillet. “We live in opposing camps. It is my turn to visit the Tuileries now that you have ceased to go. Our husbands belong to rival parties. I am the wife of an ambitious banker, a bad man. Your husband, sweetest, is kind, noble, generous—”
“Ah! do not reproach me,” cried the Countess. “No woman has the right to do so, who has not suffered the weariness of a tame, colorless life and passed from it straight to the paradise of love. She must have known the bliss of living her whole life in another, of espousing the ever-varying emotions of a poet’s soul. In every flight of his imagination, in all the efforts of his ambition, in the great part he plays upon the stage of life, she must have borne her share, suffering in his pain and mounting on the wings of his measureless delights; and all this while never losing her cold, impassive demeanor before a prying world. Yes, dear, a tumult of emotion may rage within, while one sits by the fire at home, quietly and comfortably like this. And yet what joy to have at every instant one overwhelming interest which expands the heart and makes it live in every fibre. Nothing is indifferent to you; your very life seems to depend on a drive, which gives you the chance of seeing in the crowd the one man before the flash of whose eye the sunlight pales; you tremble if he is late, and could strangle the bore who steals from you one of those precious moments when happiness throbs in every vein! To be alive, only to be alive is rapture. Think of it, dear, to live, when so many women would give the world to feel as I do, and cannot. Remember, child, that for this poetry of life there is but one season—the season of youth. Soon, very soon, will come the chills of winter. Oh! if you were rich as I am in these living treasures of the heart and were threatened with losing them—”
Mme. du Tillet, terrified, had hidden her face in her hands during this wild rhapsody. At last, seeing the warm tears on her sister’s cheek, she began:
“I never dreamed of reproaching you, my darling. Your words have, in a single instant, stirred in my heart more burning thoughts than all my tears have quenched, for indeed the life I lead might well plead within me for a passion such as you describe. Let me cling to the belief that if we had seen more of each other we should not have drifted to this point. The knowledge of my sufferings would have enabled you to realize your own happiness, and I might perhaps have learned from you courage to resist the tyranny which has crushed the sweetness out of my life. Your misery is an accident which chance may remedy, mine is unceasing. My husband neither has real affection for me nor does he trust me. I am a mere peg for his magnificence, the hallmark of his ambition, a tidbit for his vanity.
“Ferdinand”—and she struck her hand upon the mantelpiece—“is hard and smooth like this marble. He is suspicious of me. If I ask anything for myself I know beforehand that refusal is certain; but for whatever may tickle his self-importance or advertise his wealth I have not even to express a desire. He decorates my rooms, and spends lavishly on my table; my servants, my boxes at the theatre, all the trappings of my life are of the smartest. He grudges nothing to his vanity. His children’s baby-linen must be trimmed with lace, but he would never trouble about their real needs, and would shut his ears to their cries. Can you understand such a state of things? I go to court loaded with diamonds, and my ornaments are
