Initiated by Félicité into all this grandeur, which perhaps escapes the ken of those who put it on the stage and are its makers, Calyste satisfied at les Touches the love of the marvelous that is so strong at his age, and that guileless admiration, the first love of a growing man, which is so wroth with criticism. It is so natural that flame should fly upwards! He heard the light Parisian banter, the graceful irony which revealed to him what French wit should be, and awoke in him a thousand ideas that had been kept asleep by the mild torpor of home life. To him, Mademoiselle des Touches was the mother of his intelligence, a mother with whom he might be in love without committing a crime. She was so kind to him: a woman is always adorably kind to a man in whom she has inspired a passion, even though she should not seem to share it. At this moment Félicité was giving him music lessons. To him the spacious rooms on the ground floor, looking all the larger by reason of the skilful arrangement of the lawns and shrubs in the little park; the staircase, lined with masterpieces of Italian patience—carved wood, Venetian and Florentine mosaics, bas-reliefs in ivory and marble, curious toys made to the order of the fairies of the Middle Ages; the upper rooms, so cozy, so dainty, so voluptuously artistic, were all infused and living with a light, a spirit, an atmosphere, that were supernatural, indefinable, and strange. The modern world with its poetry was in strong contrast to the solemn, patriarchal world of Guérande, and the two systems here were face to face. On one hand, the myriad effects of art; on the other, the simplicity of wild Brittany. No one, then, need ask why the poor boy, as weary as his mother was of the subtleties of mouche, always felt a qualm as he entered this house, as he rang the bell, as he crossed the yard. It is to be observed that these presentiments cease to agitate men of riper growth, inured to the mishaps of life, whom nothing can surprise, and who are prepared for everything.
As he went in, Calyste heard the sound of the piano; he thought that Camille Maupin was in the drawing-room; but on entering the billiard-room he could no longer hear it. Camille was playing, no doubt, on the little upright piano, brought for her from England by Conti, which stood in the little drawing-room above. As he mounted the stairs, where the thick carpet completely deadened the sound of footsteps, Calyste went more and more slowly. He perceived that this music was something extraordinary. Félicité was playing to herself alone; she was talking to herself. Instead of going in, the young man sat down on a Gothic settle with a green velvet cushion on the landing, beneath the window, which was artistically framed in carved wood stained with walnut juice and varnished.
Nothing could be more mysteriously melancholy than Camille’s improvisation; it might have been the cry of a soul wailing a De profundis to God from the depths of the grave. The young lover knew it for the prayer of love in despair, the tenderness of resigned grief, the sighing of controlled anguish. Camille was amplifying, varying, and changing the introduction to the cavatina, “Grâce pour toi, grâce pour moi” from the fourth act of Robert le Diable. Suddenly she began to sing the scena in heartrending tones, and broke off. Calyste went in and saw the reason of this abrupt ending. Poor Camille Maupin, beautiful Félicité, turned to him without affectation, her face bathed in tears, took out her handkerchief to wipe them away, and said simply:
“Good morning.”
She was charming in her morning dress; on her head was one of the red chenille nets at that time in fashion, from which the shining curls of her black hair fell on her neck. A very short pelisse formed a modern Greek tunic, showing below it cambric trousers, with embroidered frills, and the prettiest scarlet and gold Turkish slippers.
“What is the matter?” asked Calyste.
“He has not come back,” she replied, standing up at the window, and looking out over the sands, the creek, and the marshes.
This reply accounted for her costume. Camille, it would seem, was expecting Claude Vignon, and she was fretted as a woman who had wasted her pains. A man of thirty would have seen this. Calyste only saw that she was unhappy.
“You are anxious?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied, with a melancholy that this boy could not fathom. Calyste was hastily leaving the room.
“Well, where are you going?”
“To find him.”
“Dear child!” said she, taking his hand, and drawing him to her with one of those tearful looks which to a young soul is the highest reward. “Are you mad? Where do you think you can find him on this shore?”
“I will find him.”
“Your mother will suffer mortal anguish. Besides—stay. Come, I insist upon it,” and she made him sit down on the divan. “Do not break your heart about me. These tears that you see are the tears we take pleasure in. There is a faculty in women which men have not: that of abandoning ourselves to our nerves by indulging our feelings to excess. By imagining certain situations, and giving way to the idea, we work ourselves up to tears, sometimes into a serious condition and real illness. A woman’s fancies are not the sport of the mind merely, but of the heart.—You have come at the right moment; solitude is bad for me. I am not deluded by the wish he felt to go without me to study le Croisic and its rocks, the Bourg
