Calyste understood that he must leave Madame de Rochefide free to act, and he looked out on the garden and the walls streaked with black and yellow lines left by the rain on the stucco of Paris.
Madame de Rochefide, like most fine ladies when they break their chain, had fled, leaving her fortune in her husband’s hands, and she would not appeal for help to her tyrant. Conti and Mademoiselle des Touches had spared Béatrix all the cares of material life, and her mother from time to time sent her a sum of money. Now that she was alone, she was reduced to economy of a rather severe kind to a woman used to luxury. So she had taken herself to the top of the hill on which lies the Pare Monceaux, sheltering herself in a little old house of some departed magnate, facing the street, but with a charming little garden behind it, at a rent of not more than eighteen hundred francs. And still, with an old manservant, a maid and a cook from Alençon, who had clung to her in her reverses, her poverty would have seemed opulence to many an ambitious middle-class housewife.
Calyste went up a flight of well-whitened stone stairs, the landings gay with flowers. On the first floor the old butler showed Calyste into the rooms through a double door of red velvet paneled with red silk and gilt nails. The rooms he went through were also hung with red silk and velvet. Dark-toned carpets, hangings across the windows and doors, the whole interior was in contrast with the outside, which the owner was at no pains to keep up.
Calyste stood waiting for Béatrix in a drawing-room, quiet in style, where luxury affected simplicity. It was hung with bright crimson velvet set off by cording of dull yellow silk; the carpet was a darker red, the windows looked like conservatories, they were so crowded with flowers, and there was so little daylight, that he could scarcely see two vases of fine old red porcelain, and between them a silver cup attributed to Benvenuto Cellini, and brought from Italy by Béatrix. The furniture of gilt wood upholstered with velvet, the handsome consoles, on one of which stood a curious clock, the table covered with a Persian cloth, all bore witness to past wealth, of which the remains were carefully arranged. On a small table Calyste saw some trinkets, and a book half read, in which the place was marked by a dagger—symbolical of criticism—its handle sparkling with jewels. On the walls ten watercolor drawings, handsomely framed, all representing bedrooms in various houses where Béatrix had lived in the course of her wandering life, gave an idea of her supreme impertinence.
The rustle of a silk dress announced the unfortunate lady, who appeared in a studied toilet, which, if Calyste had been an older hand, would certainly have shown him that he was expected. The dress, made like a dressing-gown to show a triangle of the white throat, was of pearl-gray watered silk with open hanging sleeves, showing the arms covered with an under sleeve made with puffs divided by straps, and with lace ruffles. Her fine hair, loosely fastened with a comb, escaped from under a cap of lace and flowers.
“So soon?” said she with a smile. “A lover would not have been so eager. So you have some secrets to tell me, I suppose?” And she seated herself on a sofa, signing to Calyste to take a place by her.
By some chance—not perhaps unintentional, for women have two kinds of memory, that of the angels and that of the devils—Béatrix carried about her the same perfume that she had used at les Touches when she had first met Calyste. The breath of this scent, the touch of that dress, the look of those eyes, which in the twilight seemed to focus and reflect light, all went to Calyste’s brain. The unhappy fellow felt the same surge of violence as had already so nearly killed Béatrix; but now the Marquise was on the edge of a divan, not of the ocean; she rose to ring the bell, putting her finger to her lips. At this Calyste, called to order, controlled himself; he understood that Béatrix had no hostile intentions.
“Antoine, I am not at home,” she said to the old servant. “Put some wood on the fire.—You see, Calyste, I treat you as a friend,” she added with dignity when the old man was gone. “Do not treat me as your mistress.—I have two remarks to make. First, that I should not make any foolish stipulations with a man I loved; next, that I will never belong again to any man in the world. For I believed myself loved, Calyste, by a sort of Rizzio whom no pledges could bind, a man absolutely free, and you see whither that fatal infatuation has brought me.—As for you, you are tied to the most sacred duties; you have a young, amiable, delightful wife; and you are a father. I should be as inexcusable as you are, and we should both be mad—”
“My dear Béatrix, all your logic falls before one word. I have never loved anyone on earth but you, and I married in spite of myself.”
“A little trick played us by Mademoiselle des Touches,” said she with a smile.
For three hours Madame de Rochefide kept Calyste faithful to his conjugal duties by pressing on him the horrible ultimatum of a complete breach with Sabine. Nothing less, she declared, could reassure her in the dreadful position in which she would be placed by
