“ ‘Tell Calyste,’ said she in a low voice, ‘that my not seeing him is a matter of conscience and self-discipline, for I have permission; but I would rather not purchase the happiness of a few minutes with months of suffering! Oh, if you could only know how difficult I find it to answer when I am asked, “What are you thinking about?” The mistress of the novices can never understand the vastness and multiplicity of the ideas which rush through my brain like a whirlwind. Sometimes I see Italy once more, or Paris, with all their display, always with Calyste, who,’ she said with the poetic turn you know so well, ‘is the sun of my memory. I was too old to be admitted to the Carmelites, so I chose the Order of Saint Francis de Sales, solely because he said, “I will have you bareheaded instead of barefoot!” disapproving of such austerities as only mortify the body. In fact, the head is the sinner. The holy Bishop did well to make his rule stern to the brain and merciless to the will!—This was what I needed, for my mind is the real culprit; it deceived me as to my heart till the age of forty, when, though we are sometimes for a moment forty times happier than younger women, we are sometimes fifty times more wretched.—Well, my child, and are you happy?’ she ended by asking me, evidently glad to say no more about herself.
“ ‘You see me in a rapture of love and happiness,’ I told her.
“ ‘Calyste is as kind and genuine as he is noble and handsome,’ she said gravely. ‘You are my heiress; you have, besides my fortune, the twofold ideal of which I dreamed.—I am glad of what I have done,’ she added after a pause. ‘Now, my child, do not be blinded. You have easily grasped happiness, you had only to put out your hand; now try to keep it. If you had come here merely to carry away the advice of my experience, your journey would be well rewarded. Calyste at this moment is fired by an infection of passion; you did not inspire it. To make your happiness durable, dear child, strive to add this element to the former one. In your own interest and your husband’s, try to be capricious, coy, a little severe if necessary. I do not advise a spirit of odious calculation, nor tyranny, but the science of conduct. Between usury and extravagance there is economy. Learn to acquire a certain decent control of your husband.
“ ‘These are the last worldly words I shall ever speak; I have been waiting to say them to you, for my conscience quaked at the notion of having sacrificed you to save Calyste; attach him to you, give him children, let him respect you as their mother.—Finally,’ she added in an agitated voice, ‘manage that he shall never see Béatrix again!’
“This name was enough to produce a sort of torpor in us both; we remained looking into each other’s eyes, exchanging our vague sentiments of uneasiness.
“ ‘Are you going home to Guérande?’ she asked.
“ ‘Yes,’ said I.
“ ‘Well, never go to les Touches. I was wrong to give you the place.’
“ ‘Why?’
“ ‘Child, les Touches is for you a Bluebeard’s cupboard, for there is nothing so dangerous as rousing a sleeping passion.’
“I have given you the substance of our conversation, my dear mother. If Mademoiselle des Touches made me talk, on the other hand she gave me much to think about—all the more because in the excitement of our travels, and my happiness with my Calyste, I had forgotten the serious matter of which I spoke in my first letter.
“After admiring Nantes, a delightful and splendid city; after going to see, in the Place de Bretagne, the spot where Charette so nobly fell, we arranged to return to Saint-Nazaire down the Loire, since we had already gone from Nantes to Guérande by the road. Public traveling is an invention of the modern monster the Monopole. Two rather pretty women belonging to Nantes were behaving rather noisily on deck, suffering evidently from Kergarouëtism—a jest you will understand when I shall have told you what the Kergarouëts are. Calyste behaved very well. Like a true gentleman, he did not parade me as his wife. Though pleased by his good taste, like a child with his first drum, I thought this an admirable opportunity for practising the system recommended by Camille Maupin—for it was certainly not the novice that had spoken to me. I put on a little sulky face, and Calyste was very flatteringly distressed. In reply to his question, whispered in my ear, ‘What is the matter?’ I answered the truth:
“ ‘Nothing whatever.’
“And I could judge at once how little effect the truth has in the first instance. Falsehood is a decisive weapon in cases where rapidity is the only salvation for a woman or an empire. Calyste became very urgent, very anxious. I led him to the forepart of the boat, among a mass of ropes, and there, in a voice full of alarms, if not of tears, I told him all the woes and fears of a woman whose husband happens to be the handsomest of men.
“ ‘Oh, Calyste!’ said I, ‘there is one dreadful blot on our marriage. You did not love me! you did not choose me! You did not stand fixed like a statue when you saw me for the first time. My heart, my attachment, my tenderness cry out to you for affection, and some day you will punish me for having been the first to offer the treasure of my pure and involuntary girlish love! I ought to be grudging and capricious, but I have no strength for it against you.—If that odious woman who scorned you had been in my place now, you would not even have seen those two hideous provincial creatures who would be classed with cattle by the Paris octroi.’
“Calyste, my dear mother, had tears in his eyes and
