“Or fly away,” I put in.
“Or fly away,” she replied, with an indifference that would have spurred any man determined to use the strange power she attributed to us. “Do you think it worthy of a woman to stuff a man with bread buttered with virtue, to convince him that love and religion are incompatible? Am I then an infidel? A woman may yield or refuse; but to refuse and preach is to inflict a double penalty, which is against the law of every land. Now here you will have nothing but delicious sandwiches prepared by the hand of your humble servant Arabella, whose whole morality consists in inventing caresses such as no man has ever known, and which are suggested by the angels.”
I know nothing so undoing as such banter in the hands of an Englishwoman; she throws into it the eloquent gravity, the pompous air of conviction under which the English cover the lofty imbecilities of their prejudiced views. French irony is like lace with which women dress out the pleasure they give and the disputes they invent; it is a trimming, and as graceful as their dress. But English “fun” is an acid so corrosive to those on whom it falls that it leaves them skeletons, picked and cleaned. A witty Englishwoman’s tongue is like a tiger’s, which strips off the flesh to the very bone, and all in play; mockery, that all-powerful weapon of the devil’s, leave a deadly poison in the wounds it reopens at will.
That night Arabella chose to exert her power like the Grand Turk, who, to show his skill, amuses himself with decapitating innocent persons.
“My angel,” said she, when she had soothed me to the dozing condition in which everything is forgotten but a sense of happiness, “I have been moralizing too—I myself! I was wondering whether I am committing a crime in loving you, whether I was violating divine laws, and I decided that nothing could be more pious or more natural. Why should God create some beings more beautiful than others unless to show us that they are to be adored? The crime would be not to love you, for are you not an angel? That lady insults you by classing you with other men; the rules of morality do not apply to you; God has set you above them. Is not loving you rising to be nearer to Him? Can He be wroth with a poor woman for longing for things divine? Your large and radiant heart is so like the sky, that I mistake it, as midges come to burn themselves in the lights at a festival! Are they to be punished for their mistake? Indeed, is it a mistake? Is it not too fervent a worship of light? They perish from too much piety—if, indeed, flinging oneself into the arms we love can be called perishing!
“I am weak enough to love you while that woman is strong enough to remain in her chapel! Do not frown on me. You think I condemn her? No, child! I delight in her morality, since it has led her to leave you free, and so allowed me to win you and to keep you forever—for you are mine forever, are you not?”
“Yes.”
“Forever and ever?”
“Yes.”
“Then grant me a favor, my Sultan. I alone have discerned all your value. She, you say, cultivates the land? I leave that to the farmers; I would rather cultivate your heart.”
I have tried to recall all this chatter to give you a clear idea of this woman, to justify all I have said about her, and to give you a clue to the catastrophe. But how am I to describe the accompaniment to the sweet words you know so well—conceits only to be compared to the most extravagant fictions of our dreams; inventions sometimes reminding me of my nosegays: grace united to strength, tenderness and languid softness contrasting with volcanic eruptions of passions; the most elaborate modulations of music applied to the harmony of our delight, the most insinuating words graced with charming ideas, everything most poetical that wit can add to the pleasures of sense. She aimed at destroying the impression left on my heart by Henriette’s chaste reserve, by the flashes of her own impetuous passion. The Marchioness had seen the Countess quite as well as Madame de Mortsauf had seen her. They had judged each other clearly. The elaborate attack planned by Arabella showed how great her fears had been, and her secret admiration for her rival.
In the morning I found her with eyes full of tears; she had not slept.
“What is the matter?” said I.
“I am afraid my excess of love may militate against me,” said she. “I give you all; she, cleverer than I, still has something for you to desire. If you prefer her, think no more of me; I will not bore you with my sufferings, my remorse, my sorrows—no, I will go to die far away from you, like a plant far from the life-giving sun.”
She extracted from me such protestations as filled her with joy. What is to be said to a woman who weeps in the morning? A hard word then seems brutal. If she has not been denied over night, we must need tell lies in the morning, for the code of man makes such falsehood a duty.
“Well, then I am happy,” said she, wiping away her tears. “Go back to her; I do not wish to owe you to the vehemence of my love, but to your own free will. If you come back again I shall believe that you love me as much as I love you, which I had always thought impossible.”
She managed to persuade me to return to Clochegourde. How false the situation in which I should then find myself, was not to be imagined
