“She has talked to me of her fate in life, told me all her experience, and proved to me that love, the object of our desires and dreams, had always evaded her; I replied that she seemed to me a proof of that difficulty of matching anything sublime, which accounts for much unhappiness. Yours is one of the angelic souls whose sister-soul it seems impossible to find. This misfortune, dear child, is what Camille will spare you; even if she should die for it, she will find you a being with whom you may live happy as a husband.
“I offer you a friend’s hand, and trust, not to your heart, but to your sense, to find that we are henceforth to each other a brother and sister, and to terminate our correspondance, which, between les Touches and Guérande, is odd, to say the least of it.
The Baroness, in the highest degree excited by the details and progress of her son’s love affairs with the beautiful Rochefide, could not sit still in the room, where she was working at her cross-stitch, looking up at every stitch to watch Calyste; she rose from her chair and came up to him with a mixture of diffidence and boldness. The mother had all the graces of a courtesan about to ask a favor.
“Well?” said she, trembling, but not actually asking to see the letter.
Calyste showed it her in his hand, and read it aloud to her. The two noble souls, so simple and ingenuous, discovered in this astute and perfidious reply none of the treachery and snares infused into it by the Marquise.
“She is a noble and high-minded woman!” said the Baroness, whose eyes glistened with moisture. “I will pray to God for her. I never believed that a mother could desert her husband and child and preserve so much virtue. She deserves to be forgiven.”
“Am I not right to worship her?” cried Calyste.
“But whither will this love lead you?” said his mother. “Oh! my child, how dangerous are these women of noble sentiments! Bad women are less to be feared.—Marry Charlotte de Kergarouët, and release two-thirds of the family estates. Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoël can achieve this great end by selling a few farms, and the good soul will devote herself to improving the property. You may leave your children a noble name, a fine fortune—”
“What, forget Béatrix?” said Calyste, in a hollow voice, his eyes fixed on the floor.
He left his mother, and went up to his room to reply to this letter.
Madame du Guénic had Madame de Rochefide’s words stamped on her heart: she wanted to know on what Calyste founded his hopes. At about this hour the Chevalier would be exercising his dog on the Mall; the Baroness, sure of finding him there, put on a bonnet and shawl and went out. It was so extraordinary an event to see Madame du Guénic out, excepting at church, or in one of the two pretty alleys that were frequented on fête-days, when she would accompany her husband and Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoël, that, within two hours, everyone was saying to everyone else, “Madame du Guénic was out today; did you see her?” Thus before long the news came to Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoël’s ears, and she said to her niece:
“Something very strange is happening at the du Guénics’.”
“Calyste is madly in love with the beautiful Marquise de Rochefide,” said Charlotte. “I should do better to leave Guérande and go back to Nantes.”
At this moment the Chevalier du Halga, surprised at being sought out by the Baroness, had released Thisbe from her word, recognizing the impossibility of attending to two ladies it once.
“Chevalier, you have had some experience in love affairs?” said the Baroness.
Captain du Halga drew himself up with not a little of the airs of a coxcomb. Madame du Guénic, without naming her son or the Marquise, told him the contents of the love letter, asking him what could be the meaning of such an answer. The Chevalier stood with his nose in the air caressing his chin; he listened with little grimaces; and at last he looked keenly at the Baroness.
“When a thoroughbred horse means to leap a fence, it goes up to it first to smell it and examine it,” he said. “Calyste will be the happiest young rogue—”
“Hush!” said the Baroness.
“I am dumb. In old times that was my only point,” said the old man. “It is fine weather,” he went on, after a pause, “the wind is northeasterly. By Heaven! how the Belle-Poule danced before that wind on the day—But,” he went on, interrupting himself, “I have a singing in my ears, and pains in the false-ribs; the weather will change.—You know that the fight of the Belle-Poule was so famous that ladies wore caps à la Belle-Poule. Madame de Kergarouët was the first to appear at the opera in such a headdress. ‘You are dressed for conquest,’ I said to her. The words were repeated in every box.”
The Baroness listened politely to the old man, who, faithful to the laws of old-world etiquette, escorted her back to the little street, neglecting Thisbe. He let out the secret of Thisbe’s birth. She was the granddaughter of that sweet Thisbe that had belonged to Madame la Comtesse de Kergarouët, the Admiral’s first wife. This Thisbe the third was eighteen years old.
The Baroness ran lightly up to Calyste’s room, as gleeful as if she were in love herself. Calyste was not there, but Fanny saw a letter on the table addressed to Madame de Rochefide, folded, but not sealed. Irresistible curiosity prompted the anxious mother to read her son’s answer. The indiscretion was cruelly punished; she felt horrible anguish when she saw the precipice towards which love was driving Calyste.
Calyste to Béatrix.
“What do I care for the family of du Guénic in such times as
