“Good God!” said she. “He loves her. Then I must die without ever having been understood or loved!”
She sat for some minutes with her head resting on her friend’s shoulder; her pain was genuine; she felt in her own soul the same terrible blow that Madame du Guénic had received on reading this letter.
“Do you love him?” said she, sitting up and looking at Béatrix. “Do you feel for him that infinite devotion which triumphs over all suffering, and survives scorn, betrayal, even the certainty of never being loved again? Do you love him for himself, for the very joy of loving?”
“My dearest friend!” said the Marquise, much moved. “Well, be content, I will leave tomorrow.”
“Do not go away; he loves you, I see it! And I love him so well that I should be in despair if I saw him miserable and unhappy. I had dreamed of many things for him; but if he loves you, that is all at an end.”
“Yes, Camille, I love him,” said the Marquise with delightful simplicity, but coloring.
“You love him, and you can resist him!” cried Camille. “No, you do not love him!”
“I do not know what new virtues he has aroused in me, but he has certainly made me ashamed of myself,” said Béatrix. “I could wish to be virtuous and free, so as to have something else to sacrifice to him besides the remnants of a heart and disgraceful bonds. I will not accept an incomplete destiny either for him or for myself.”
“Cold brain! it can love and calculate!” cried Camille, with a sort of horror.
“Whatever you please, but I will not blight his life or be a stone round his neck, an everlasting regret. As I cannot be his wife, I will not be his mistress. He has—you will not laugh at me? No?—Well, then, his beautiful love has purified me.”
Camille gave Béatrix a look—the wildest, fiercest look that ever a jealous woman flung at her rival.
“On that ground,” said she, “I fancied I stood alone. Béatrix, that speech has parted us forever; we are no longer friends. We are at the beginning of a hideous struggle. Now, I tell you plainly, you must succumb or fly.”
Félicité rushed away into her own room after showing to Béatrix, who was amazed, a face like an infuriated lioness.
“Are you coming to le Croisic tomorrow?” said Camille, lifting the curtain.
“Certainly,” said the Marquise, loftily; “I will not fly—nor will I succumb.”
“I play with my hand on the table,” retorted Camille; “I shall write to Conti.”
Béatrix turned as white as her gauze scarf.
“For each of us life is at stake,” replied Béatrix, who did not know what to decide on.
The violent passions to which this scene had given rise between the two women subsided during the night. They both reasoned with themselves, and came back to a reliance on the perfidious temporizing which fascinates most women—an excellent system between them and men, but a bad one between woman and woman. It was in the midst of this last storm that Mademoiselle des Touches heard the great voice which dominates even the bravest. Béatrix listened to the counsels of worldly wisdom; she feared the contempt of society. So Félicité’s last masterstroke, weighted with the accents of intense jealousy, was perfectly successful. Calyste’s blunder was remedied, but any fresh mistake might ruin his hopes forever.
The month of August was drawing to a close, the sky was magnificently clear. On the horizon the ocean, like a southern sea, had a hue as of molten silver, and fluttered to the strand in sparkling ripples. A sort of glistening vapor, produced by the sun’s rays falling directly on the sand, made an atmosphere at least equal to that of the tropics. The salt blossomed into little white stars on the surface of the salt-pans. The laborious marshmen, dressed in white on purpose to defy the heat of the sun, were at their post by daybreak armed with their long rakes, some leaning against the mud-walls dividing the plots, and watching this process of natural chemistry, familiar to them from their infancy; others playing with their little ones and wives. Those green dragons called excisemen smoked their pipes in peace. There was something Oriental in the picture, and certainly a Parisian, suddenly dropped there, would not have believed that he was in France.
The Baron and Baroness, who had made a pretext of their wish to see how the salt-raking was going on, were on the jetty, admiring the silent scene, where no sound was to be heard but the sea moaning with regular rhythm, where boats cut through the water, and the green belt of cultivated land was all the more lovely in its effect because it is so uncommon on the desert shores of the ocean.
“Well, my friends, I shall have seen the marshes of Guérande once more before I die,” said the Baron to the marshmen, who stood in groups at the fringe of the marsh to greet him.
“As if the du Guénics died!” said one of the men.
At this moment the little party from les Touches came down the narrow road. The Marquise led the way alone, Calyste and Camille followed arm-in-arm. About twenty yards behind them came Gasselin.
“There are my father and mother,” said Calyste to Camille.
The Marquise stopped. Madame du Guénic felt the most vehement repulsion at the sight of Béatrix, though she was dressed to advantage, in a broad-brimmed Leghorn hat trimmed with blue cornflowers, her hair waved beneath it; a dress of gray linen stuff, and a blue sash with long ends: in short, the garb of a princess disguised as a shepherdess.
“She has no heart!” said Fanny to herself.
“Mademoiselle,” said Calyste to Camille, “here are Madame du Guénic and my father.”
Then he added to his parents:
“Mademoiselle des Touches and Madame la Marquise de Rochefide, née de Casteran—my father.”
The Baron bowed to Mademoiselle des Touches, who bowed with an air of humble gratitude to the Baroness.
“She,” thought Fanny, “really loves my boy;
