“Die!” cried I in alarm, as I looked at the dry flame in her glittering eyes, of which I can only give an idea to those whose dear ones have never been attacked by the dreadful malady by comparing her eyes with balls of tarnished silver. “Die! Henriette, I command you to live. You used to require vows of me—now I, today, require one of you: swear to me that you will consult Origet and do exactly what he tells you.”
“Then would you contend against the loving mercy of God?” said she, interrupting me with a cry of despair, indignant at being misunderstood.
“Then you do not love me enough to obey me blindly in everything, as that miserable lady does?”
“Yes, yes; whatever you wish,” said she, urged by a jealousy which made her overleap in that instant the distance she had till now preserved.
“I stay here,” said I, kissing her eyes.
Startled by this capitulation, she escaped from my embrace and went to lean against a tree. Then she turned homewards, walking very fast without turning her head; I followed her, she was praying and weeping. When we reached the lawn I took her hand and kissed it respectfully. This unlooked-for surrender touched her heart.
“Yours, come what may” said I. “I love you as your aunt loved you.”
She started and wrung my hand.
“One look,” said I, “only one of your old looks!” And feeling my whole soul enlightened by the flashing glance she gave me, I cried, “The woman who gives herself wholly gives me less of life and spirit than I have now received! Henriette, you are the best beloved—the only love.”
“I will live,” said she, “but you too must get well.”
That gaze had effaced the impression of Arabella’s sarcasms. Thus was I the plaything of the two irreconcilable passions I have described to you, and of which I felt the alternating influence. I loved an angel and a demon: two women equally lovely; one graced with all the virtues we torture out of hatred of our own defects, the other with all the vices we deify out of selfishness. As I rode down the avenue, turning round again and again to see Madame de Mortsauf leaning against a tree, her children standing by her and waving their handkerchiefs, I detected in my soul an impulse of pride at knowing myself to be the arbiter of two such noble destinies, the glory, on such different grounds, of two superior women, and at having inspired such passions that either of them would die if I failed her.
This brief but fatuous dream was severely punished, believe me. Some demon prompted me to wait with Arabella till a fit of despair or the Count’s death should throw Henriette into my arms, since Henriette still loved me: her severity, her tears, her remorse, her Christian resignation, were the eloquent symptoms of a feeling which could be no more effaced from her heart than from my own. As I slowly walked my horse along the pretty avenue, making these reflections, I was not five-and-twenty, I was fifty. Does not a young man, even more than a woman, leap in a moment from thirty to sixty?
Though I could drive away these evil thoughts with a breath, they haunted me, I must confess. Their source, perhaps, was at the Tuileries behind the panels of the royal cabinet. Who could come unharmed under the tainting influence of Louis XVIII, who was wont to say that a man knows nothing of true passion till he is past maturity, since passion is never splendid and frenzied till there is some loss of power, and each pleasure is like the gambler’s last stake.
When I reached the end of the avenue I looked round once more, and in the twinkling of an eye I was back again, on seeing Henriette still standing there alone. I flew to bid her a last adieu, bathed in tears of expiation of which she knew not the secret. Sincere tears, shed, though I knew it not, on the sweet love that was forever past, on the virgin emotions, the flowers of life that can never bloom again. Later in life a man can no longer give, he only receives; what he loves in his mistress is himself; whereas in youth he loves her in himself. Later, he inoculates the woman who loves him, with his tastes, perhaps with his vices; whereas, in the early days, the woman he loves imparts her virtues, her refinement, invites him to what is beautiful by her smile, and shows him what devotion means by her example.
Alas for the man who has not had his Henriette! Alas for him who has not met a Lady Dudley! If he marries, the second will fail to retain his wife, the first may perhaps be deserted by his mistress; happy is he who finds both in one woman; happy, Natalie, is the man you love!
On our return to Paris Arabella and I became more intimate; by small degrees we insensibly abrogated the laws of propriety to which I had subjected myself—laws whose observance often leads the world to overlook the false position to which Lady Dudley had committed herself. The world, which dearly loves to get behind the curtain
