“You are right. I must, above all things, keep my word. It was too late yesterday; but we shall have time enough today, it would seem,” she said, in a half-playful, half-bitter tone. “To fulfil my promise, I will sit where I can look down the road to the cliffs.”
Calyste placed a deep Gothic armchair where she could look out in that direction, and opened the window. Camille Maupin, who shared the Oriental tastes of the more illustrious writer of her own sex, took out a magnificent Persian narghileh that an ambassador had given her; she filled it with patchouli leaves, cleaned the mouthpiece, scented the quill before she inserted it—it would serve her but once—put a match to the dried leaves, placed the handsome instrument of pleasure, with its long-necked bowl of blue-and-gold enamel, at no great distance, and then rang for tea.
“If you would like a cigarette?—Ah! I always forget that you do not smoke. Such immaculateness as yours is rare! I feel as though only the fingers of an Eve fresh from the hand of God ought to caress the downy satin of your cheeks.”
Calyste reddened and sat down on a stool; he did not observe the deep emotion that made Camille blush.
“The person from whom I yesterday received this letter, and who will perhaps be here tomorrow, is the Marquise de Rochefide,” said Félicité. “After getting his eldest daughter married to a Portuguese grandee who has settled in France, old Rochefide, whose family is not as old as yours, wanted to connect his son with the highest nobility, so as to procure for him a peerage he had failed to obtain for himself. The Comtesse de Montcornet told him that in the department of the Orne there was a certain Mademoiselle Béatrix Maximilienne, Rose de Casteran, the youngest daughter of the Marquis de Casteran, who wanted to get his two daughters off his hands without any money, so as to leave his whole fortune to his son, the Comte de Casteran. The Casterans, it would seem, are descended direct from Adam.
“Béatrix, born and brought up in the château of Casteran, at the time of her marriage in 1828, was twenty years of age. She was remarkable for what you provincials call eccentricity, which is simply a superior mind, enthusiasm, a sense of the beautiful, and a fervid feeling for the works of art. Take the word of a poor woman who has trusted herself on these slopes, there is nothing more perilous for a woman; if she tries them, she arrives where you see me, and where the Marquise is—in an abyss. Men only have the staff that can be a support on the edge of those precipices, a strength which we lack, or which makes us monsters if we have it.
“Her old grandmother, the dowager Marquise de Casteran, was delighted to see her marry a man whose superior she would certainly be in birth and mind. The Rochefides did everything extremely well, Béatrix could but be satisfied; and in the same way Rochefide had every reason to be pleased with the Casterans, who, as connected with the Verneuils, the d’Esgrignons, and the Troisvilles, obtained the peerage for their son-in-law as one of the last batch made by Charles X, though it was annulled by a decree of the Revolution of July.
“Rochefide is a fool, however; he began by having a son; and as he gave his wife no respite, and almost killed her with his company, she soon had enough of him. The early days of married life are a rock of danger for small minds as for great passions. Rochefide, being a fool, mistook his wife’s ignorance for coldness; he regarded Béatrix as a lymphatic creature—she is very fair—and thereupon lulled himself in perfect security, and led a bachelor life, trusting to the Marquise’s supposed coldness, her pride, her haughtiness, and the splendor of a style of living which surrounds a woman in Paris with a thousand barriers. When you go there you will understand what I mean. Those who hoped to take advantage of his easy indifference would say to him, ‘You are a lucky fellow. You have a heartless wife, whose passions will be in her brain; she is content with shining; her fancies are purely artistic; her jealousy and wishes will be amply satisfied if she can form a salon where all the wits and talents meet; she will have debauches of music, orgies of literature.’—And the husband took in all this nonsense with which simpletons are stuffed in Paris.
“At the same time, Rochefide is not a common idiot; he has as much vanity and pride as a clever man, with this difference, that clever men assume some modesty and become cats; they coax to be coaxed in return; whereas, Rochefide has a fine flourishing conceit, rosy and plump, that admires itself in public, and is always smiling. His vanity rolls in the stable, and feeds noisily from the manger, tugging out the hay. He has faults such as are known only to those who are in a position to judge him intimately, which are noticeable only in the shade and mystery of private life, while in society and to society the man seems charming. Rochefide must have been intolerable the moment he fancied that his hearth and home were threatened; for his is that cunning and squalid jealousy that is brutal when it is roused, cowardly for six months, and murderous the seventh. He thought he deceived his wife, and he feared her—two reasons for tyranny if the day should come when he discerned that his wife was so merciful as to affect indifference to his infidelities.
“I have analyzed his character to explain Béatrix’s conduct. The Marquise used to admire me greatly; but there is but one step from admiration to jealousy. I have one of the most remarkable salons
