“We will save him!” said Mademoiselle des Touches to the mother, who wrung her hand, shedding tears of joy.
A week after the Baron’s death, Mademoiselle des Touches, the Baronne du Guénic, and Calyste set out for Paris, leaving the business matters in the hands of old Mademoiselle.
Félicité’s affection for Calyste had planned a brilliant future for the poor boy. She was connected with the Grandlieus, and the ducal branch was ending in a family of five daughters. She had written to the Duchesse de Grandlieu, telling her the whole story of Calyste, and announcing her intention of selling her house in the Rue du Mont-Blanc, for which a company of speculators had offered two million five hundred thousand francs. Her business manager had already bought for her one of the finest houses in the Rue de Bourbon, at a cost of seven hundred thousand francs. Out of the surplus money from the sale of the house in the Rue du Mont-Blanc she meant to devote one million to repurchasing the estates of the du Guénics, and would leave the rest of her fortune among the five de Grandlieu girls.
Félicité knew the plans made by the Duke and Duchess, who intended that their youngest daughter should marry the Vicomte de Grandlieu, the heir to their titles; Clotilde-Frédérique, the second, meant, she knew, to remain unmarried, without taking the veil, however, as her eldest sister had done; so the only one to be disposed of was Sabine, a pretty creature just twenty years of age, on whom she counted to cure Calyste of his passion for Madame de Rochefide.
During their journey Félicité told Madame du Guénic of all these plans. The house in the Rue de Bourbon was now being furnished, and in it Calyste was to live if these schemes should succeed.
They all three went straight to the Hôtel Grandlieu, where the Baroness was received with all the respect due to her name as a girl and as a wife. Mademoiselle des Touches, of course, advised Calyste to see all he could of Paris while she made inquiries as to where Béatrix might be, and she left him to the fascinations of every kind which awaited him there. The Duchess, her daughters, and their friends did the honors of the capital for Calyste just at the season when it was beginning to be gayest.
The bustle of Paris entirely diverted the young Breton’s mind. He fancied there was some likeness in the minds of Madame de Rochefide and Sabine de Grandlieu, who at that time was certainly one of the loveliest and most charming girls in Paris society, and he thenceforward paid an amount of attention to her advances which no other woman would have won from him. Sabine de Grandlieu played her part all the more successfully because she liked Calyste.
Matters were so skilfully managed that in the course of the winter of 1837 the young Baron, who had recovered his color and youthful beauty, could listen without disgust when his mother reminded him of his promise to his dying father, and spoke of his marrying Sabine de Grandlieu. Still, while keeping his promise, he concealed an indifference which the Baroness could discern, while she hoped it might be dispelled by the satisfactions of a happy home.
On the day when the Grandlieu family and the Baroness, supported on this occasion by her relations from England, held a sitting in the large drawing-room of the Duke’s house, while Leopold Hannequin, the family notary, explained the conditions of the marriage contract before reading it through, Calyste, whose brow was clouded, as all could see, refused point-blank to accept the benefactions offered to him by Mademoiselle des Touches. He still trusted to Félicité’s devotion, and believed that she was seeking Béatrix.
At this, moment, in the midst of the dismay of both families, Sabine came in, dressed so as to remind Calyste of the Marquise de Rochefide, though her complexion was dark, and she placed in Calyste’s hand the following letter:—
Camille to Calyste.
“Calyste, before retiring into my cell as a novice, I may be allowed to glance back at the world I am quitting to enter the world of prayer. This glance is solely for you, who in these later days have been all the world to me. My voice will reach you, if I have calculated exactly, in the middle of a ceremony which I could not possibly witness. On the day when you stand before the altar, to give your hand to a young and lovely girl who is free to love before Heaven and the world, I shall be in a religious house at Nantes—before the altar too, but plighted forever to Him who can never deceive nor disappoint.
“I write, not to sadden you, but to beseech you not to allow any false delicacy to hinder the good I have always wished to do you since our first meeting. Do not deny the right I have so hardly earned. If love is suffering, then I have loved you well, Calyste; but you need feel no remorse. The only pleasures I have known in my life I owe to you, and the pain has come from myself. Compensate me for all this past suffering by giving me one eternal joy. Let me, dear, be in some sort a perfume in the flowers of your life, and mingle with it always without being importunate. I shall certainly owe to you my happiness in life eternal; will you not let me pay my debt by the offering of some transient and perishable possessions? You will not fail in generosity? You will not regard this as the last subterfuge of scorned love?
“Calyste, the world was nothing to me without you; you made it a fearful desert, and you have led the infidel Camille Maupin, the writer of books and dramas, which I shall solemnly disown—you have led that audacious and perverted woman, tied hand and foot, to the throne of God.
