After being bled, the patient felt better; she could speak; she consented to go in the boat; and at about five in the afternoon they crossed to Guérande, where the town doctor was waiting for her. The news of the accident had spread in this deserted and almost uninhabited land with amazing rapidity.
Calyste spent the night at les Touches at the foot of Béatrix’s bed with Camille. The doctor promised that by next morning the Marquise would suffer from nothing worse than stiffness. Through Calyste’s despair a great happiness beamed. He was at the foot of Béatrix’s bed watching her asleep or waking; he could study her pale face, her lightest movements. Camille smiled bitterly as she recognized in the lad all the symptoms of a passion such as tinges the soul and mind of a man by becoming a part of his life at a time when no thought, no cares counteract this torturing mental process.
Calyste would never discern the real woman in Béatrix. How guilelessly did the young Breton allow her to read his most secret soul!—Why, he fancied she was his, merely because he found himself here, in her room, admiring her in the disorder of the bed. He watched Béatrix in her slightest movement with rapturous attention; his face expressed such sweet curiosity, his ecstasy was so artlessly betrayed, that there was a moment when the two women looked at each other with a smile. As Calyste read in the invalid’s fine sea-green eyes a mixed expression of confusion, love, and amusement, he blushed and looked away.
“Did I not say to you, Calyste, that you men promised us happiness and ended by throwing us over a precipice?”
As he heard this little jest, spoken in a charming tone of voice, which betrayed some change in Béatrix’s heart, Calyste knelt down, took one of her moist hands, which she allowed him to hold, and kissed it very submissively.
“You have every right to reject my love forever,” said he, “and I have no right ever to say a single word to you again.”
“Ah!” cried Camille, as she saw the expression of her friend’s face, and compared it with that she had seen after every effort of diplomacy; “love unaided will always have more wit than all the world beside.—Take your draught, my dear, and go to sleep.”
This evening spent by Calyste with Mademoiselle des Touches, who read books on mystical theology, while Calyste read Indiana—the first work of Camille’s famous rival, in which he found the captivating picture of a young man who loved with idolatry and devotion, with mysterious rapture, and for his whole life—a book of fatal teaching for him!—this evening left an ineffaceable mark on the heart of the unhappy youth, for Félicité at last convinced him that any woman who was not a monster could only be happy and flattered in every vanity, by knowing herself to be the object of a crime.
“You would never, never, have thrown me into the sea!” said poor Camille, wiping away a tear.
Towards morning Calyste, quite worn out, fell asleep in his chair. It was now the Marquise’s turn to look at the pretty boy, pale with agitation and his first love-watch; she heard him murmuring words in his sleep.
“He loves in his very dreams!” said she to Camille.
“We must send him home to bed,” said Félicité, awaking him.
No one was alarmed at the du Guénics’; Mademoiselle des Touches had written a few words to the Baroness.
Calyste dined at les Touches next day. He found Béatrix up, pale, languid, and tired. But there was no hardness now in her speech or looks. After that evening, which Camille filled with music, seating herself at the piano to allow Calyste to hold and press Béatrix’s hands while they could say nothing to each other, there was never a storm at les Touches. Félicité completely effaced herself.
Women like Madame de Rochefide, cold, fragile, hard, and thin—such women, whose throat shows a form of collarbone suggestive of the feline race—have souls as pale and colorless as their pale gray or green eyes; to melt them, to vitrify these flints, a thunderbolt is needed. To Béatrix this thunderbolt had fallen in Calyste’s rage of love and attempt on her life; it was such a flame as nothing can resist, changing the most stubborn nature. Béatrix felt herself softened; pure and true love flooded her soul with its soothing lapping glow. She floated in a mild and tender atmosphere of feeling hitherto unknown, in which she felt ennobled, elevated; she had entered into the heaven where, in all ages, woman has dwelt, in Brittany. She enjoyed the respectful worship of this boy, whose happiness cost her so little; for a smile, a look, a word was enough for Calyste. Such value set by feeling on such trifles touched her extremely. To this angelic soul, the glove she had worn could be more than her whole body was to the man who ought to have adored her. What a contrast!
What woman could have resisted this persistent idolatry? She was sure of being understood and obeyed. If she had bid Calyste to risk his life for her smallest whim, he would not even have paused to think. And Béatrix acquired an indescribable air of imposing dignity; she looked at love on its loftiest side, and sought in it a footing, as it were, which would enable her to remain, in Calyste’s eyes, the
