Six o’clock was striking by the clocks of Guérande. Calyste went home, asked for some dinner, and then played mouche, a prey to gloomy meditations. These alternations of joy and grief, the overthrow of his hopes following hard upon what seemed the certainty that he was loved, crushed the young soul that had been soaring heavenward to the sky, and had risen so high that the fall must be tremendous.
“What ails you, my Calyste?” his mother whispered to him.
“Nothing,” said he, looking at her with eyes whence the light of his soul and the flame of love had died out.
It is not hope, but despair, that gives the measure of our ambitions. We give ourselves over in secret to the beautiful poems of hope, while grief shows itself unveiled.
“Calyste, you are not at all nice,” said Charlotte, after vainly wasting on him those little provincial teasing ways which always degenerate into annoyance.
“I am tired,” he said, rising and bidding the party goodnight.
“Calyste is much altered,” said Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoël.
“We haven’t fine gowns covered with lace; we don’t flourish our sleeves like this; we don’t sit so, or know how to look on one side and wriggle our heads,” said Charlotte, imitating and caricaturing the Marquise’s airs and attitude and looks. “We haven’t a voice with a squeak in the head, or a little interesting cough, heugh! heugh! like the sigh of a ghost; we are so unfortunate as to have robust health and be fond of our friends without any nonsense; when we look at them we do not seem to be stabbing them with a dart, or examining them with a hypocritical glance. We don’t know how to droop our heads like a weeping willow, and appear quite affable merely by raising it, so!”
Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoël could not help laughing at her niece’s performance; but neither the Chevalier nor the Baron understood this satire of the country on Paris.
“But the Marquise de Rochefide is very handsome,” said the old lady.
“My dear,” said the Baroness to her husband, “I happen to know that she is going tomorrow to le Croisic; we will walk down there. I should very much like to meet her.”
While Calyste was racking his brain to divine why the door of les Touches should have been closed in his face, a scene was taking place between the two friends which was to have its effect on the events of the morrow. Calyste’s letter had given birth to unknown emotions in Madame de Rochefide’s heart. A woman is not often the object of a passion so youthful, so guileless, so sincere and absolute as was this boy’s. Béatrix had loved more than she had been loved. After being a slave she felt an unaccountable longing to be the tyrant in her turn.
In the midst of her joy, as she read and reread Calyste’s letter, a cruel thought pierced her like a stab. What had Calyste and Camille been about together since Claude Vignon’s departure? If Calyste did not love Camille, and Camille knew it, what did they do in those long mornings? The memory of her brain insidiously compared this remark with all Camille had said. It was as though a smiling devil held up before her, as in a mirror, the portrait of her heroic friend, with certain looks, certain gestures, which finally enlightened Béatrix. Far from being Félicité’s equal, she was crushed by her; far from deceiving her, it was she who was deceived; she herself was but a toy that Camille wanted to give the child she loved with an extraordinary and never vulgar passion.
To a woman like Béatrix this discovery was a thunderbolt. She recalled every detail of the past week. In an instant Camille’s part and her own lay before her in their fullest development; she saw herself strangely abased. In the rush of her jealous hatred she fancied she detected in Camille some plot of revenge on Conti. All the events of the past two years had perhaps led up to these two weeks. Once started on the downward slope of suspicions, hypotheses, and anger, Béatrix did not check herself; she walked up and down her rooms, spurred by impulses of passion, or, sitting down now and again, tried to make a plan; still, until the dinner-hour she remained a prey to indecision, and only went down when dinner was served without changing her dress.
On seeing her rival come in, Camille guessed everything. Béatrix, in morning dress, had a cold look and an expression of reserve, which to an observer so keen as Camille betrayed the animosity of embittered feelings. Camille immediately left the room and gave the order that had so greatly astonished Calyste; she thought that if the guileless lad, with his insane adoration, came into the middle of the quarrel he might never see Béatrix again, and compromise the future of his passion by some foolish bluntness. She meant to fight out this duel of dupery without any witness. Béatrix, with no one to uphold her, must certainly yield. Camille knew how shallow her soul was, and how mean her pride, to which she had justly given the name of obstinacy.
The dinner was gloomy. Both the women had too much spirit and good taste to have any explanation before the servants, or when they might listen at the doors. Camille was gentle and kind; she felt herself so much the superior! The Marquise was hard and biting; she knew she was being fooled like a child. There was, all through dinner, a warfare of looks, shrugs, half-spoken words, to which the servants could have no clue, but which gave warning of a terrible storm. When they were going upstairs again Camille mischievously offered Béatrix her arm; the Marquise affected not to see, and rushed forward alone. As soon as coffee was served, Mademoiselle des Touches said to
