“Her flight was not justified by any obstacles. Damocles’ sword did not hang glittering over her festivities; and besides, in Paris, those who love truly and sincerely may easily be happy in a quiet way. In short, if she could be tender and loving, she would not have gone off last night with Conti.”
Camille talked for a long time, and very eloquently, but this last effort was in vain; she ceased on seeing a shrug, by which Calyste conveyed his entire belief in Béatrix, and she insisted on his coming down and sitting with her at dinner, for he found it impossible to eat.
It is only while we are very young that these spasmodic symptoms occur. At a later period the organs have formed habits, and are, as it were, hardened. The reaction of the moral system on the physical is never strong enough to induce mortal illness unless the constitution preserves its original delicacy. A man can resist a violent grief which kills a youth, less because his feelings are not so strong, than because his organs are stronger. Mademoiselle des Touches was indeed alarmed from the first by Calyste’s calm and resigned attitude after the first flood of tears. Before leaving the house, he begged to see Béatrix’s room once more, and hid his face in the pillow on which hers had rested.
“This is folly!” said he, shaking hands with Camille and leaving her, sunk in melancholy.
He returned home, found the usual party engaged in playing mouche, and sat by his mother all the evening. The curé, the Chevalier du Halga, and Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoël all knew of Madame de Rochefide’s departure, and were all glad. Calyste would now come back to them, and they all watched, almost by stealth, seeing that he was silent. Nobody in that old house could conceive of all that this death of a first love must be to a heart as true and artless as Calyste’s.
For some days Calyste went regularly to les Touches; he would wander round the grass-plot where he had sometimes walked arm-in-arm with Béatrix. He often went as far as le Croisic, and climbed the rock whence he had tried to throw her into the sea; he would sit for hours leaning on the box-shrub, for by examining the projections on the riven rock he had learnt to climb up and down the face of it. His solitary expeditions, his silence, and his lack of appetite at last made his mother uneasy. At the end of a fortnight, while these proceedings lasted—a good deal like those of an animal in its cage, and the despairing lover’s cage was, to adopt la Fontaine’s phrase, “the spots honored by the footstep, illuminated by the eyes” of Béatrix—Calyste could no longer cross the little inlet; he had only strength enough to drag himself as far on the Guérande road as the spot whence he had seen Béatrix at the window.
The family, glad at the departing of “the Parisians,” to use the provincial phrase, discerned nothing ominous or sickly in Calyste. The two old maids and the curé, following up their plan, had kept Charlotte de Kergarouët, who, in the evening, made eyes at Calyste, and got nothing in return but advice as to her game of mouche. All through the evening Calyste would sit between his mother and his provincial fiancée, under the eye of the curé and of Charlotte’s aunt, who, on their way home, would comment on his greater or less dejection. They took the unhappy boy’s indifference for acquiescence in their plans.
One evening, when Calyste, being tired, had gone early to bed, the players all left their cards on the table, and looked at each other as the young man shut his bedroom door. They had listened anxiously to his footsteps.
“Something ails Calyste,” said the Baroness, wiping her eyes.
“There is nothing the matter with him,” replied Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoël; “we must get him married as soon as may be.”
“Do you think that will divert him?” said the Chevalier.
Charlotte looked sternly at Monsieur du Halga, whom she thought in very bad taste this evening, immoral, depraved, irreligious, and quite ridiculous with his dog, in spite of her aunt, who always took the old sailor’s part.
“Tomorrow morning I will lecture Calyste,” said the Baron, whom they had thought asleep; “I do not want to go out of this world without having seen my grandson, a little pink-and-white du Guénic, with a Breton hood on in his cradle.”
“He never speaks a word,” said old Zéphirine, “no one knows what ails him; he never ate less in his life; what does he live on? If he eats at les Touches, the devil’s cookery does him no good.”
“He is in love,” said the Chevalier, proffering this opinion with extreme timidity.
“Now, then, old dotard, you have not put into the pool,” said Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoël. “When you are thinking of your young days, you forget everything else.”
“Come to breakfast with us tomorrow morning,” said old Zéphirine to Charlotte and Jacqueline; “my brother will talk to his son, and we will settle everything. One nail drives out another.”
“Not in a Breton,” said the Chevalier.
The next morning Calyste saw Charlotte arrive, dressed with unusual care, though it was still early, just as his father had ended giving him, in the dining-room, a discourse on matrimony, to which the lad could find nothing to say. He knew how ignorant his aunt, his father, and his mother were, and all their friends; he was gathering the fruits of knowledge; he found himself isolated, no longer speaking the language of the household. So he only begged a few days’ respite, and his father rubbed his hands with joy, and gave new life to the Baroness by whispering the good news in her ear.
Breakfast was a cheerful meal. Charlotte, to whom the Baron had given a wink, was in high spirits. A rumor filtered through Gasselin, by which all the town knew that the du Guénics and the Kergarouëts had come
