Béatrix

of various white draperies to recall the maidens of Ossian, with names ending in a, so poetically represented by Girodet. Her fair hair fell about her long face in bunches of curls, reflecting the flare of the footlights in the sheen of scented oil. Her pale forehead shone, she had applied an imperceptible touch of rouge over the dull whiteness of her skin, bathed in bran-water, and its brilliancy cheated the eye. A scarf, so fine that it was hard to believe that man could have woven it of silk, was wound about her neck so as to diminish its length by hiding it, and barely revealing the treasures enticingly displayed by her stays. The bodice was a masterpiece of art. As to her attitude, it is enough to say that it was well worth the pains she had taken to elaborate it. Her arms, lean and hard, were scarcely visible through the carefully arranged puffs of her wide sleeves. She presented that mixture of false glitter and sheeny silk, of flowing gauze and frizzled hair, of liveliness, coolness, and movement which has been called je ne sais quoi. Everyone knows what is meant by this je ne sais quoi. It is a compound of cleverness, taste, and temperament. Béatrix was, in fact, a drama, a spectacle, all scenery, and transformations, and marvelous machinery.

The performance of these fairy pieces, which are no less brilliant in dialogue, turns the head of a man blessed with honesty; for, by the law of contrast, he feels a frenzied desire to play with the artificial thing. It is false and seductive, elaborate, but pleasing, and there are men who adore these women who play at being charming as one plays a game of cards. This is the reason⁠—man’s desire is a syllogism, and argues from this external skill to the secret theorems of voluptuous enjoyment. The mind concludes, though not in words, “A woman who can make herself so attractive must have other resources of passion.” And it is true. The women who are deserted are the women who love; the women who keep their lovers are those who know how to love. Now, though this lesson in Italian had been a hard one for Béatrix’s vanity, her nature was too thoroughly artificial not to profit by it.

“It is not a matter of loving you men,” she had been saying some minutes before Calyste went in; “we have to worry you when we have got you; that is the secret of keeping you. Dragons who guard treasures are armed with talons and wings!”

“Your idea might be put into a sonnet,” Canalis was saying just as Calyste entered the box.

At one glance Béatrix read Calyste’s condition; she saw, still fresh and raw, the marks of the collar she had put on him at les Touches. Calyste, offended by her phrase about his wife, hesitated between his dignity as a husband, defending Sabine, and finding a sharp word to cast on the heart whence, for him, rose such fragrant reminiscences⁠—a heart he believed to be yet bleeding. The Marquise discerned this hesitancy; she had spoken thus, solely to gauge the extent of her power over Calyste, and, seeing him so weak, she came to his assistance to get him out of his difficulty.

“Well, my friend,” said she, when the two courtiers had left, “you see me alone⁠—yes, alone in the world!”

“And you never thought of me?” said Calyste.

“You!” she replied; “are not you married?⁠—It has been one of my great griefs among the many I have endured since we last met. ‘Not merely have I lost love,’ I said to myself, ‘but friendship too, a friendship I believed to be wholly Breton.’ We get used to anything. I now suffer less, but I am broken. This is the first time for a long while that I have unburdened my heart. Compelled to be reserved in the presence of indifferent persons, and as arrogant to those who court me as though I had never fallen, and having lost my dear Félicité, I have no ear into which to breathe the words, ‘I am wretched!’ And even now, can I tell you what my anguish was when I saw you a few yards away from me, not recognizing me; or what my joy is at seeing you close to me.⁠—Yes,” said she, at a movement on Calyste’s part, “it is almost fidelity! In this you see what misfortune means! A nothing, a visit, is everything.

“Yes, you really loved me, as I deserved to be loved by the man who has chosen to trample on all the treasures I cast at his feet. And, alas! to my woe, I cannot forget; I love, and I mean to be true to the past, which can never return.”

As she poured out this speech, a hundred times rehearsed, she used her eyes in such a way as to double the effect of words which seemed to surge up from her soul with the violence of a long-restrained torrent. Calyste, instead of speaking, let fall the tears that had been gathering in his eyes. Béatrix took his hand and pressed it, making him turn pale.

“Thank you, Calyste; thank you, my poor boy; that is the way a true friend should respond to a friend’s sorrow. We understand each other. There, do not add another word!⁠—Go now; if we were seen, you might cause your wife grief if by chance anyone told her that we had met⁠—though innocently enough, in the face of a thousand people.⁠—Goodbye, I am brave, you see⁠—” And she wiped her eyes by what should be called in feminine rhetoric the antithesis of action.

“Leave me to laugh the laugh of the damned with the people I do not care for, but who amuse me,” she went on. “I see artists and writers, the circle I knew at our poor Camille’s⁠—she was right, no doubt! Enrich the man you love, and then disappear, saying, ‘I am too old for him!’ It