“Mother,” cried Calyste, on whose forehead the hot tears fell, drops of heartbroken motherhood, “mother, do not cry. Just now, when, to do her a pleasure, I proposed scouring the coast from the customhouse hut to the Bourg de Batz, she said to me, ‘How anxious your mother would be!’ ”
“She said so! Then I can forgive her much,” said Fanny.
“Félicité wishes me well,” replied Calyste, “and she often checks herself from saying some of those hasty and doubtful things which artists let fall, so as not to shake my faith—knowing that it is not immovable. She has told me of the life led in Paris by youths of the highest rank, going from their country homes, as I might from mine, leaving their family without any fortune, and making great wealth by the force of their will and their intelligence. I can do what the Baron de Rastignac has done, and he is in the Ministry.—She gives me lessons on the piano, she teaches me Italian, she has let me into a thousand social secrets of which no one has an inkling at Guérande. She could not give me the treasures of her love; she gives me those of her vast intellect, her wit, her genius. She does not choose to be a mere pleasure, but a light to me; she offends none of my creeds; she believes in the nobility, she loves Brittany—”
“She has changed our Calyste,” said the old blind woman, interrupting him, “for I understand nothing of this talk. You have a fine old house over your head, nephew, old relations who worship you, good, old servants; you can marry a good little Bretonne, a pious and well-bred girl who will make you happy, and you can reserve your ambitions for your eldest son, who will be three times as rich as you are if you are wise enough to live quietly and economically, in the shade and in the peace of the Lord, so as to redeem the family estates. That is as simple as a Breton heart. You will get rich less quickly, but far more surely.”
“Your aunt is right, my darling; she cares as much for your happiness as I do. If I should not succeed in arranging your marriage with Miss Margaret, your uncle, Lord Fitz-William’s daughter, it is almost certain that Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoël will leave her money to either of her nieces you may prefer.”
“And there will be a few crown pieces here!” said the old aunt in a low, mysterious voice.
“I! Marry at my age?” said he, with one of those looks which weaken a mother’s reason. “Am I to have no sweet and crazy lovemaking? Am I never to tremble, thrill, flutter, fear, lie down under a pitiless gaze and presently melt it? May I never know the beauty that is free, the fancy of the soul, the clouds that fleet over the serene blue of happiness and that the breath of enjoyment blows away? May I never stand under a gutter spout without discovering that it is raining, like the lovers seen by Diderot? Shall I never hold a burning coal in the palm of my hand like the Duc de Lorraine? Shall I never climb a silken rope-ladder, nor cling to a rotten, old trellis without feeling it yield? Am I never to hide in a closet or under a bed? Can I know nothing of woman but wifely surrender, or of love but its equable lamplight? Is all my curiosity to be satiated before it is excited? Am I to live without ever feeling that fury of the heart which adds to a man’s power? Am I to be a married monk?—No! I have set my teeth in the Paris apple of civilization. Do you not perceive that by your chaste, your ignorant family habits you have laid the fire that is consuming me, and that I shall be burnt up before I can adore the divinity I see wherever I turn—in the green foliage and in the sand glowing in the sunshine, and in all the beautiful, lordly, and elegant women who are described in the books and poems I have devoured at Camille’s? Alas! There is but one such woman in all Guérande, and that is you, mother! The lovely Blue Birds of my dreams come from Paris; they live in the pages of Lord Byron and Scott; they are Parisina, Effie, Minna! Or, again, that Royal Duchess I saw in the moors among the heath and broom, whose beauty sent my blood with a rush to the heart!”
These thoughts were clearer, more brilliant, more living, to the Baroness’ eye, than art can make them to the reader; she saw them in a flash shot from the boy’s glance like the arrows from a quiver that is upset. Though she had never read Beaumarchais, she thought, as any woman would, that it would be a crime to make this Cherubino marry.
“Oh, my dear boy!” said she, taking him in her arms, pressing him to her, and kissing his beautiful hair—still her own—“marry when you please, only be happy. It is not my part to tease you.”
Mariotte came to lay the table. Gasselin had gone out to exercise Calyste’s horse, for he had not ridden it these two months. The three women, the mother, the aunt, and Mariotte, were of one mind, with the natural cunning of women, to make much of Calyste when he dined at home. Breton penuriousness, fortified by the memories and habits of childhood, tried to contend with the civilization of Paris so faithfully represented at les Touches, so close to Guérande. Mariotte tried to disgust her young master with the elaborate dishes prepared in Camille Maupin’s kitchen, as his mother and aunt vied with each other in attentions to enmesh their child in the nets of their tenderness, and to make comparisons impossible.
“Ah, ha! You have a lubine
