“I left him hating his voice; he owed it more success than he could get from his talent as a composer; and he would rather be a man of genius like Rossini than a performer as fine as Rubini. I had been so foolish as to attach myself to him, and I would have decked the idol till the last. Conti, like many artists, is very dainty, and likes his ease and his little enjoyments; he is dandified, elegant, well dressed; well, I humored all his manias; I loved that weak but astute character. I was envied, and I sometimes smiled with disdain. I respected his courage; he is brave, and bravery, it is said, is the only virtue which no hypocrisy can simulate. On one occasion, when traveling, I saw him put to the test; he was ready to risk his life—and he loves it; but, strange to say, in Paris I have known him guilty of what I call mental cowardice.
“My dear boy, I knew all this. I said to the poor Marquise, ‘You do not know what a gulf you are setting foot in; you are the Perseus of a hapless Andromeda; you are rescuing me from the rock. If he loves you, so much the better; but I doubt it; he loves no one but himself.’
“Gennaro was in the seventh heaven of pride. I was no marquise; I was not born a Casteran; I was forgotten in a day. I allowed myself the fierce pleasure of studying this character to its depths. Certain of what the end would be, I meant to watch Conti’s contortions. My poor boy, in one week I saw horrors of sentimentality, hideous manoeuvring! I will tell you no more; you will see the man here. Only, as he knows that I know him, he hates me now. If he could safely stab me, I should not be alive for two seconds.
“I have never said a word of this to Béatrix. Gennaro’s last and constant insult is that he believes me capable of communicating my painful knowledge to the Marquise. He has become restless and absentminded, for he cannot believe in good feeling in anyone. He still performs for my benefit the part of a man grieved to have deserted me. You will find him full of the most penetrating cordiality; he will wheedle, he will be chivalrous. To him every woman is a Madonna! You have to live with him for some time before you detect the secret of that false frankness, or know the stiletto prick of his humbug. His air of conviction would take in God. And so you will be enmeshed by his feline blandishments, and will never conceive of the deep and rapid arithmetic of his inmost mind.—Let him be.
“I carried indifference to the point of receiving them together at my house. The consequence of this was that the most suspicious world on earth, the world of Paris, knew nothing of the intrigue. Though Gennaro was drunk with pride, he wanted, no doubt, to pose before Béatrix; his dissimulation was consummate. He surprised me; I had expected to find that he insisted on a stage-effect. It was she who compromised herself, after a year of happiness, under all the vicissitudes and risks of Parisian existence.
“She had not seen Gennaro for some days, and I had invited him to dine with me, as she was coming in the evening. Rochefide had no suspicions; but Béatrix knew her husband so well, that, as she often told me, she would have preferred the worst poverty to the wretched life that awaited her in the event of that man ever having a right to scorn or to torment her. I had chosen the evening when our friend, the Comtesse de Montcornet, was at home. After seeing her husband served with his coffee, Béatrix left the drawing-room to dress, though she was not in the habit of getting ready so early.
“ ‘Your hairdresser is not here yet,’ said Rochefide, when he heard why she was going.
“ ‘Thérèse can do my hair,’ she replied.
“ ‘Why, where are you going? You cannot go to Madame de Montcornet’s at eight o’clock.’
“ ‘No,’ said she, ‘but I shall hear the first act at the Italian Opera.’
“The catechizing bailiff in Voltaire’s Huron is a silent man by comparison with an idle husband. Béatrix fled, to be no further questioned, and did not hear her husband say, ‘Very well; we will go together.’
“He did not do it on purpose; he had no reason to suspect his wife; she was allowed so much liberty! He tried never to fetter her in any way; he prided himself on it. And, indeed, her conduct did not offer the smallest hold for the strictest critic. The Marquis was going who knows where—to see his mistress, perhaps. He had dressed before dinner; he had only to take up his hat and gloves when he heard his wife’s carriage draw up under the awning of the steps in the courtyard. He went to her room and found her ready, but amazed at seeing him.
“ ‘Where are you going?’ said she.
“ ‘Did I not tell you I would go with you to the Opera?’
“The Marquise controlled the outward expression of intense annoyance; but her cheeks turned as scarlet as though she had used rouge.
“ ‘Well, come then,’ she replied.
“Rochefide followed her, without heeding the agitation betrayed by her voice; she was burning with the most violent suppressed rage.
“ ‘To the Opera,’ said her husband.
“ ‘No,’ cried Béatrix, ‘to Mademoiselle des Touches’. I have a word to say to her,’ she added, when the door was shut.
“The carriage started.
“ ‘But if you like,’ Béatrix added, ‘I can take you first to the Opera and go to
