“A woman who would desert us in prosperity will sacrifice everything to us in adversity,” said he. “Women have the advantage of men in constancy; a woman must be deeply offended, indeed, to throw over a first lover; she clings to him as to her honor; a second love is a disgrace—” and so forth.
He was astoundingly moral; he burnt incense before the altar on which a heart was bleeding pierced by a thousand stabs. Only Camille and Béatrix understood the virulence of the acrid satire he poured out in the form of praises. Now and again they both colored, but they were obliged to control themselves; they went up to Camille’s sitting-room arm-in-arm, and with one consent passed through the larger drawing-room, where there were no lights, and they could exchange a few words.
“I cannot endure to let Conti walk over my prostrate body, to give him a right over me,” said Béatrix in an undertone. “The convict on the hulks is always at the mercy of the man he is chained to. I am lost! I must go back to the hulks of love!—And it is you who have sent me back. Ah, you made him come a day too late—or too soon. I recognize your infernal gift of romance. Yes, the revenge is complete, the climax perfect.”
“I could threaten you that I would write to Conti, but as to doing it!—I am incapable of such a thing!” cried Camille. “You are miserable, so I forgive you.”
“What will become of Calyste?” said the Marquise, with the exquisite artlessness of vanity.
“Then is Conti taking you away?” cried Camille.
“Ah! you expect to triumph?” retorted Béatrix.
The Marquise spoke the hideous words with rage, her beautiful features distorted, while Camille tried to conceal her gladness under an assumed expression of regret; but the light in her eyes gave the lie to the gravity of her face, and Béatrix could see through the mask! When they saw each other by candlelight, sitting on the divan where during the last three weeks so many comedies had been played out, where the secret tragedy of so many thwarted passions had had its beginning, the two women studied each other for the last time; they saw that they were divided by a deep gulf of hatred.
“I leave you Calyste,” said Béatrix, seeing her rival’s eyes. “But I am fixed in his heart, and no woman will oust me.”
Camille retorted by quoting, in a tone of subtle irony which stung the Marquise to the quick, the famous speech of Mazarin’s niece to Louis XIV: “You reign, you love him, and you are going!”
Neither of them throughout this scene, which was a stormy one, noticed the absence of Calyste and Conti. The artist had remained at table with his rival, desiring him to keep him company, and finish a bottle of champagne.
“We have something to say to each other,” said Conti, to anticipate any refusal.
In the position in which they stood to each other, the young Breton was obliged to obey the behest.
“My dear boy,” said the singer in a soothing voice when Calyste had drunk two glasses of wine, “we are a couple of good fellows; we may be frank with each other. I did not come here because I was suspicious. Béatrix loves me.” And he assumed a fatuous air. “For my part, I love her no longer; I have come, not to carry her off, but to break with her and leave her the credit of the rupture. You are young; you do not know how necessary it is to seem the victim when you feel that you are the executioner. Young men spout fire and flame, they make a parade of throwing over a woman, they often scorn her and make her hate them; but a wise man gets himself dismissed, and puts on a humiliated expression which leaves the lady some regrets and a sweet sense of superiority. The displeasure of the divinity is not irremediable, while abdication is past all reparation.
“You, happily for you, do not yet know how our lives may be hampered by the senseless promises which women are such fools as to accept, when gallantry requires us to tie such slipknots to divert the idle hours of happiness. The pair then swear eternal fidelity. A man has some adventure with a woman—he does not fail to assure her politely that he hopes to live and die with her; he pretends to be impatiently awaiting the demise of a husband while earnestly wishing him perfect health. If the husband should die, there are women so provincial or so tenacious, so silly or so wily, as to rush on the man, crying, ‘I am free—here I am!’
“Not one of us is free. The spent ball recoils and falls into the midst of our best-planned triumph or happiness.
“I foresaw that you would love Béatrix; I left her in a situation in which she must need flirt with you without abdicating her sacred majesty, were it only to annoy that angel, Camille Maupin. Well, my dear fellow, love her; you will be doing me a service. I only want her to behave atrociously to me. I dread her pride and her virtue.—Perhaps, in spite of goodwill on my side, some time will be required for this manoeuvre. On such occasions the one who does not take the first step wins. Just now, as we walked round the lawn, I tried to tell her that I knew all, and wished her joy of her happiness. Well, she was very angry.
“I, at this moment, am in love with the youngest of our singers, Mademoiselle Falcon, of the Opera, and I want
