Suddenly, as she turned an angle, Béatrix was seized with a spasm of horror—the infectious dread that is caused by the sight of a reptile, and that chilled Calyste before he saw its occasion. On a bench under a weeping-ash Conti sat talking to Camille Maupin. Madame de Rochefide’s convulsive interval trembling was more evident than she wished. Calyste now knew how dear he was to this woman who had just built up the barrier between herself and him, no doubt with a view to securing a few days more for coquetting before overleaping it.
In one instant a tragical drama in endless perspective was felt in each heart.
“You did not expect me so soon, I dare say,” said the artist, offering Béatrix his arm.
The Marquise could not avoid relinquishing Calyste’s arm and taking Conti’s. This undignified transition, so imperatively demanded, so full of offence to the later love, was too much for Calyste, who went to throw himself on the bench by Camille, after exchanging the most distant greeting with his rival. He felt a hundred contending sensations. On discerning how much Béatrix loved him, his impulse was to rush at the artist and declare that she was his; but the poor woman’s moral convulsion, betraying her sufferings—for she had in that one moment paid the forfeit of all her sins—had startled him so much that he remained stupefied, stricken, like her, by relentless necessity. These antagonistic impulses produced the most violent storm of feeling he had yet known since he had loved Béatrix.
Madame de Rochefide and Conti went past the seat where Calyste had thrown himself by Camille’s side; the Marquise looking at her rival with one of those terrible flashes by which a woman can convey everything. She avoided Calyste’s eye, and seemed to listen to Conti, who was talking lightly.
“What can they be saying?” asked Calyste of Camille.
“Dear child, you have no idea yet of the terrible hold a man has over a woman on the strength of a dead passion. Béatrix could not refuse him her hand. He is laughing at her, no doubt, over her fresh love affair; he guessed it, of course, from your behavior, and the way in which you came in together when he saw you.”
“He is laughing at her!” cried the vehement youth.
“Keep calm,” said Camille, “or you will lose the few chances that remain to you. If he wounds Béatrix too much in her vanities, she will trample him under foot like a worm. But he is astute; he will know how to do it cleverly. He will not suppose that the haughty Madame de Rochefide could possibly be false to him! It would be too base to love a young man for his beauty! He will no doubt speak of you to her as a mere boy bewitched by the notion of possessing a Marquise and of ruling the destinies of two women. Finally, he will thunder with the rattling artillery of insulting insinuations. Then Béatrix will be obliged to combat him with false denials, of which he will take advantage, and remain master of the field.”
“Ah!” cried Calyste, “he does not love. I should leave her free. Love demands a choice renewed every minute, confirmed every day. The morrow is the justification of yesterday, and increases our hoard of joys.—A few days later, and he would not have found us here. What brought him back?”
“A journalist’s taunt,” said Camille. “The opera on whose success he had counted is a failure—a dead failure. These words spoken in the greenroom, perhaps by Claude Vignon, ‘It is hard to lose your reputation and your mistress both at once!’ stung him, no doubt, in all his vanities. Love based on mean sentiments is merciless.
“I questioned him; but who can trust so false and deceitful a nature? He seemed weary of poverty and of love, disgusted with life. He regretted having connected himself so publicly with the Marquise, and in speaking of their past happiness fell into a strain of poetic melancholy rather too elegant to be genuine. He hoped, no doubt, to extract the secret of your love from the joy his flattery must give me.”
“Well?” said Calyste, looking at Béatrix and Conti returning, and listening no longer to Camille.
Camille had prudently kept on the defensive; she had not betrayed either Calyste’s secret or Béatrix’s. The artist was a man to dupe anyone in the world, and Mademoiselle des Touches warned Calyste to be on his guard with him.
“My dear child,” said she, “this is for you the most critical moment; such prudence and skill are needed as you have not, and you will be fooled by the most cunning man on earth; for I can do no more for you.”
A bell announced that dinner was served. Conti offered his arm to Camille, Béatrix took that of Calyste. Camille let the Marquise lead the way; she had a moment to look at Calyste and enjoin prudence by putting her finger to her lips.
All through dinner Conti was in the highest spirits. This was perhaps
