“I,” said he, “love you wholly; you will find in me none of the triumphs of art, nor the pleasures derived from seeing a crowd bewildered by the wonders of talent; my only talent is for loving you, my only joys will be in yours; no woman’s admiration will seem to me worthy of consideration; you need fear no odious rivals. You are misprized; and wherever you are accepted I desire also to be accepted every day.”
She listened to his words with a drooping head, allowing him to kiss her hands, and confessing to herself silently but very readily that she was perhaps a misunderstood angel.
“I am too much humiliated,” she replied; “my past deprives me of all security for the future.”
It was a great day for Calyste when, on reaching les Touches at seven in the morning, he saw from between two gorse bushes Béatrix at a window, wearing the same straw hat that she had worn on the day of their excursion. He felt quite dazzled. These small details of passion make the world wider.
Only Frenchwomen, perhaps, have the secret of these theatrical touches; they owe them to their graceful wit, of which they infuse just so much into feeling as it can bear without losing its force.
Ah! how lightly she leaned on Calyste’s arm. They went out together by the garden gate leading to the sand-hills. Béatrix thought their wildness pleasing; she saw the little rigid plants that grow there with their pink blossoms, and gathered several, with some of the Carthusian pinks, which also thrive on barren sands, and divided the flowers significantly with Calyste, to whom these blossoms and leaves were to have an eternally sinister association.
“We will add a sprig of box!” said she with a smile.
She stood for some time waiting for the boat on the jetty, where Calyste told her of his childish eagerness the day of her arrival.
“That expedition, which I heard of, was the cause of my severity that first day,” said she.
Throughout their walk Madame de Rochefide talked in the half-jesting tone of a woman who loves, and with tenderness and freedom of manner. Calyste might believe himself loved. But when, as they went along the strand under the rocks, and down into one of those pretty bays where the waves have thrown up a marvelous mosaic of the strangest marbles, with which they played like children at picking up the finest specimens—when Calyste, at the height of intoxication, proposed in so many words that they should fly to Ireland, she assumed a dignified and mysterious air, begged to take his arm, and went on towards the cliff she had called her Tarpeian rock.
“My dear fellow,” said she, as they slowly climbed the fine block of granite she meant to take as her pedestal, “I have not courage enough to conceal all you are to me. For the last ten years I have known no happiness to compare with that we have just enjoyed in hunting for shells among those tide-washed rocks, in exchanging pebbles, of which I shall have a necklace made, more precious in my eyes than if it were composed of the finest diamonds. I have been a child again, a little girl such as I was at thirteen or fourteen, when I was worthy of you. The love I have been so happy as to inspire you with has elevated me in my own eyes. Understand this in all its magical meaning. You have made me the proudest, the happiest of my sex, and you will live longer in my memory than I probably shall in yours.”
At this moment she had reached the summit of the cliff, whence the vast ocean was seen spreading on one side, and on the other the Brittany coast with its golden islets, its feudal towers, and its clumps of gorse. Never had a woman a finer stage on which to make a grand avowal.
“But,” she went on, “I am not my own; I am more firmly bound by my own act than I was by law. So you are punished for my misfortune; you must be content to know that we suffer together. Dante never saw Beatrice again, Petrarch never possessed his Laura. Such disasters befall none but great souls.
“Oh! if ever I should be deserted, if I should fall a thousand degrees lower in shame and infamy, if your Béatrix is cruelly misunderstood by a world that will be loathsome to her, if she should be the most despised of women! … Then, beloved child,” she added, taking his hand, “you will know that she is the foremost of them all, that she could rise to heaven with your support. But then, my friend,” she added, with a lofty glance at him, “when you want to throw her down, do not miss your stroke; after your love, death!”
Calyste had his arm round her waist; he clasped her to his heart. To confirm her tender words, Madame de Rochefide sealed Calyste’s forehead with the most chaste and timid kiss. Then they went down the path and returned slowly, talking like two people who perfectly understand and enter into each other’s minds; she believing she had secured peace, he no longer doubting that he was to be happy—and both deceived. Calyste hoped from what Camille had observed that Conti would be
