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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Duchesse de Langeais, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: The Duchesse de Langeais
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Release Date: September 19, 2004 [EBook #469]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DUCHESSE DE LANGEAIS ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                      THE DUCHESSE OF LANGEAIS
+
+                                 BY
+
+                          HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+
+                           Translated by
+                           Ellen Marriage
+
+
+
+
+PREPARER'S NOTE:
+
+  The Duchesse of Langeais is the second part of a trilogy. Part
+  one is entitled Ferragus and part three is The Girl with the
+  Golden Eyes. The three stories are frequently combined under the
+  title The Thirteen.
+
+
+
+
+                           To Franz Liszt
+
+
+
+In a Spanish city on an island in the Mediterranean, there stands
+a convent of the Order of Barefoot Carmelites, where the rule
+instituted by St. Theresa is still preserved with all the first
+rigor of the reformation brought about by that illustrious
+woman. Extraordinary as this may seem, it is none the less true.
+Almost every religious house in the Peninsula, or in Europe for
+that matter, was either destroyed or disorganized by the outbreak
+of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars; but as this
+island was protected through those times by the English fleet,
+its wealthy convent and peaceable inhabitants were secure from
+the general trouble and spoliation. The storms of many kinds
+which shook the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century
+spent their force before they reached those cliffs at so short a
+distance from the coast of Andalusia.
+
+If the rumour of the Emperor's name so much as reached the shore
+of the island, it is doubtful whether the holy women kneeling in
+the cloisters grasped the reality of his dream-like progress of
+glory, or the majesty that blazed in flame across kingdom after
+kingdom during his meteor life.
+
+In the minds of the Roman Catholic world, the convent stood out
+pre-eminent for a stern discipline which nothing had changed; the
+purity of its rule had attracted unhappy women from the furthest
+parts of Europe, women deprived of all human ties, sighing after
+the long suicide accomplished in the breast of God. No convent,
+indeed, was so well fitted for that complete detachment of the
+soul from all earthly things, which is demanded by the religious
+life, albeit on the continent of Europe there are many convents
+magnificently adapted to the purpose of their existence. Buried
+away in the loneliest valleys, hanging in mid-air on the steepest
+mountainsides, set down on the brink of precipices, in every
+place man has sought for the poetry of the Infinite, the solemn
+awe of Silence; in every place man has striven to draw closer to
+God, seeking Him on mountain peaks, in the depths below the
+crags, at the cliff's edge; and everywhere man has found God.
+But nowhere, save on this half-European, half-African ledge of
+rock could you find so many different harmonies, combining so to
+raise the soul, that the sharpest pain comes to be like other
+memories; the strongest impressions are dulled, till the sorrows
+of life are laid to rest in the depths.
+
+The convent stands on the highest point of the crags at the
+uttermost end of the island. On the side towards the sea the
+rock was once rent sheer away in some globe-cataclysm; it rises
+up a straight wall from the base where the waves gnaw at the
+stone below high-water mark. Any assault is made impossible by
+the dangerous reefs that stretch far out to sea, with the
+sparkling waves of the Mediterranean playing over them. So, only
+from the sea can you discern the square mass of the convent built
+conformably to the minute rules laid down as to the shape,
+height, doors, and windows of monastic buildings. From the side
+of the town, the church completely hides the solid structure of
+the cloisters and their roofs, covered with broad slabs of stone
+impervious to sun or storm or gales of wind.
+
+The church itself, built by the munificence of a Spanish family,
+is the crowning edifice of the town. Its fine, bold front gives
+an imposing and picturesque look to the little city in the sea.
+The sight of such a city, with its close-huddled roofs, arranged
+for the most part amphitheatre-wise above a picturesque harbour,
+and crowned by a glorious cathedral front with triple-arched
+Gothic doorways, belfry towers, and filigree spires, is a
+spectacle surely in every way the sublimest on earth. Religion
+towering above daily life, to put men continually in mind of the
+End and the way, is in truth a thoroughly Spanish conception.
+But now surround this picture by the Mediterranean, and a burning
+sky, imagine a few palms here and there, a few stunted evergreen
+trees mingling their waving leaves with the motionless flowers
+and foliage of carved stone; look out over the reef with its
+white fringes of foam in contrast to the sapphire sea; and then
+turn to the city, with its galleries and terraces whither the
+townsfolk come to take the air among their flowers of an evening,
+above the houses and the tops of the trees in their little
+gardens; add a few sails down in the harbour; and lastly, in the
+stillness of falling night, listen to the organ music, the
+chanting of the services, the wonderful sound of bells pealing
+out over the open sea. There is sound and silence everywhere;
+oftener still there is silence over all.
+
+The church is divided within into a sombre mysterious nave and
+narrow aisles. For some reason, probably because the winds are
+so high, the architect was unable to build the flying buttresses
+and intervening chapels which adorn almost all cathedrals, nor
+are there openings of any kind in the walls which support the
+weight of the roof. Outside there is simply the heavy wall
+structure, a solid mass of grey stone further strengthened by
+huge piers placed at intervals. Inside, the nave and its little
+side galleries are lighted entirely by the great stained-glass
+rose-window suspended by a miracle of art above the centre
+doorway; for upon that side the exposure permits of the display
+of lacework in stone and of other beauties peculiar to the style
+improperly called Gothic.
+
+The larger part of the nave and aisles was left for the
+townsfolk, who came and went and heard mass there. The choir was
+shut off from the rest of the church by a grating and thick folds
+of brown curtain, left slightly apart in the middle in such a way
+that nothing of the choir could be seen from the church except
+the high altar and the officiating priest. The grating itself
+was divided up by the pillars which supported the organ loft; and
+this part of the structure, with its carved wooden columns,
+completed the line of the arcading in the gallery carried by the
+shafts in the nave. If any inquisitive person, therefore, had
+been bold enough to climb upon the narrow balustrade in the
+gallery to look down into the choir, he could have seen nothing
+but the tall eight-sided windows of stained glass beyond the high
+altar.
+
+At the time of the French expedition into Spain to establish
+Ferdinand VII once more on the throne, a French general came to
+the island after the taking of Cadiz, ostensibly to require the
+recognition of the King's Government, really to see the convent
+and to find some means of entering it. The undertaking was
+certainly a delicate one; but a man of passionate temper, whose
+life had been, as it were, but one series of poems in action, a
+man who all his life long had lived romances instead of writing
+them, a man pre-eminently a Doer, was sure to be tempted by a
+deed which seemed to be impossible.
+
+To open the doors of a convent of nuns by lawful means! The
+metropolitan or the Pope would scarcely have permitted it! And
+as for force or stratagem--might not any indiscretion cost him
+his position, his whole career as a soldier, and the end in view
+to boot? The Duc d'Angouleme was still in Spain; and of all the
+crimes which a man in favour with the Commander-in-Chief might
+commit, this one alone was certain to find him inexorable. The
+General had asked for the mission to gratify private motives of
+curiosity, though never was curiosity more hopeless. This final
+attempt was a matter of conscience. The Carmelite convent on the
+island was the only nunnery in Spain which had baffled his
+search.
+
+As he crossed from the mainland, scarcely an hour's distance, he
+felt a presentiment that his hopes were to be fulfilled; and
+afterwards, when as yet he had seen nothing of the convent but
+its walls, and of the nuns not so much as their robes; while he
+had merely heard the chanting of the service, there were dim
+auguries under the walls and in the sound of the voices to
+justify his frail hope. And, indeed, however faint those so
+unaccountable presentiments might be, never was human passion
+more vehemently excited than the General's curiosity at that
+moment. There are no small events for the heart; the heart
+exaggerates everything; the heart weighs the fall of a
+fourteen-year-old Empire and the dropping of a woman's glove in
+the same scales, and the glove is nearly always the heavier of
+the two. So here are the facts in all their prosaic simplicity.
+The facts first, the emotions will follow.
+
+An hour after the General landed on the island, the royal
+authority was re-established there. Some few Constitutional
+Spaniards who had found their way thither after the fall of Cadiz
+were allowed to charter a vessel and sail for London. So there
+was neither resistance nor reaction. But the change of
+government could not be effected in the little town without a
+mass, at which the two divisions under the General's command were
+obliged to be present. Now, it was upon this mass that the
+General had built his hopes of gaining some information as to the
+sisters in the convent; he was quite unaware how absolutely the
+Carmelites were cut off from the world; but he knew that there
+might be among them one whom he held dearer than life, dearer
+than honour.
+
+His hopes were cruelly dashed at once. Mass, it is true, was
+celebrated in state. In honour of such a solemnity, the curtains
+which always hid the choir were drawn back to display its riches,
+its valuable paintings and shrines so bright with gems that they
+eclipsed the glories of the ex-votos of gold and silver hung up
+by sailors of the port on the columns in the nave. But all the
+nuns had taken refuge in the organ-loft. And yet, in spite of
+this first check, during this very mass of thanksgiving, the most
+intimately thrilling drama that ever set a man's heart beating
+opened out widely before him.
+
+The sister who played the organ aroused such intense enthusiasm,
+that not a single man regretted that he had come to the service.
+Even the men in the ranks were delighted, and the officers were
+in ecstasy. As for the General, he was seemingly calm and
+indifferent. The sensations stirred in him as the sister played
+one piece after another belong to the small number of things
+which it is not lawful to utter; words are powerless to express
+them; like death, God, eternity, they can only be realised
+through their one point of contact with humanity. Strangely
+enough, the organ music seemed to belong to the school of
+Rossini, the musician who brings most human passion into his art.
+
+Some day his works, by their number and extent, will receive the
+reverence due to the Homer of music. From among all the scores
+that we owe to his great genius, the nun seemed to have chosen
+_Moses in Egypt_ for special study, doubtless because the spirit of
+sacred music finds therein its supreme expression. Perhaps the
+soul of the great musician, so gloriously known to Europe, and
+the soul of this unknown executant had met in the intuitive
+apprehension of the same poetry. So at least thought two
+dilettanti officers who must have missed the Theatre Favart in
+Spain.
+
+At last in the _Te Deum_ no one could fail to discern a French soul
+in the sudden change that came over the music. Joy for the
+victory of the Most Christian King evidently stirred this nun's
+heart to the depths. She was a Frenchwoman beyond mistake. Soon
+the love of country shone out, breaking forth like shafts of
+light from the fugue, as the sister introduced variations with
+all a Parisienne's fastidious taste, and blended vague
+suggestions of our grandest national airs with her music. A
+Spaniard's fingers would not have brought this warmth into a
+graceful tribute paid to the victorious arms of France. The
+musician's nationality was revealed.
+
+"We find France everywhere, it seems," said one of the men.
+
+The General had left the church during the _Te Deum_; he could
+not listen any longer. The nun's music had been a revelation of
+a woman loved to frenzy; a woman so carefully hidden from the
+world's eyes, so deeply buried in the bosom of the Church, that
+hitherto the most ingenious and persistent efforts made by men
+who brought great influence and unusual powers to bear upon the
+search had failed to find her. The suspicion aroused in the
+General's heart became all but a certainty with the vague
+reminiscence of a sad, delicious melody, the air of _Fleuve du
+Tage_. The woman he loved had played the prelude to the ballad in
+a boudoir in Paris, how often! and now this nun had chosen the
+song to express an exile's longing, amid the joy of those that
+triumphed. Terrible sensation! To hope for the resurrection of
+a lost love, to find her only to know that she was lost, to catch
+a mysterious glimpse of her after five years--five years, in
+which the pent-up passion, chafing in an empty life, had grown
+the mightier for every fruitless effort to satisfy it!
+
+Who has not known, at least once in his life, what it is to lose
+some precious thing; and after hunting through his papers,
+ransacking his memory, and turning his house upside down; after
+one or two days spent in vain search, and hope, and despair;
+after a prodigious expenditure of the liveliest irritation of
+soul, who has not known the ineffable pleasure of finding that
+all-important nothing which had come to be a king of monomania?
+Very good. Now, spread that fury of search over five years; put
+a woman, put a heart, put love in the place of the trifle;
+transpose the monomania into the key of high passion; and,
+furthermore, let the seeker be a man of ardent temper, with a
+lion's heart and a leonine head and mane, a man to inspire awe
+and fear in those who come in contact with him--realise this, and
+you may, perhaps, understand why the General walked abruptly out
+of the church when the first notes of a ballad, which he used to
+hear with a rapture of delight in a gilt-paneled boudoir, began
+to vibrate along the aisles of the church in the sea.
+
+The General walked away down the steep street which led to the
+port, and only stopped when he could not hear the deep notes of
+the organ. Unable to think of anything but the love which broke
+out in volcanic eruption, filling his heart with fire, he only
+knew that the _Te Deum_ was over when the Spanish congregation
+came pouring out of the church. Feeling that his behaviour and
+attitude might seem ridiculous, he went back to head the
+procession, telling the alcalde and the governor that, feeling
+suddenly faint, he had gone out into the air. Casting about for
+a plea for prolonging his stay, it at once occurred to him to
+make the most of this excuse, framed on the spur of the moment.
+He declined, on a plea of increasing indisposition, to preside at
+the banquet given by the town to the French officers, betook
+himself to his bed, and sent a message to the Major-General, to
+the effect that temporary illness obliged him to leave the
+Colonel in command of the troops for the time being. This
+commonplace but very plausible stratagem relieved him of all
+responsibility for the time necessary to carry out his plans.
+The General, nothing if not "catholic and monarchical," took
+occasion to inform himself of the hours of the services, and
+manifested the greatest zeal for the performance of his religious
+duties, piety which caused no remark in Spain.
+
+The very next day, while the division was marching out of the
+town, the General went to the convent to be present at vespers.
+He found an empty church. The townsfolk, devout though they
+were, had all gone down to the quay to watch the embarkation of
+the troops. He felt glad to be the only man there. He tramped
+noisily up the nave, clanking his spurs till the vaulted roof
+rang with the sound; he coughed, he talked aloud to himself to
+let the nuns know, and more particularly to let the organist know
+that if the troops were gone, one Frenchman was left behind. Was
+this singular warning heard and understood? He thought so. It
+seemed to him that in the _Magnificat_ the organ made response
+which was borne to him on the vibrating air. The nun's spirit
+found wings in music and fled towards him, throbbing with the
+rhythmical pulse of the sounds. Then, in all its might, the
+music burst forth and filled the church with warmth. The Song of
+Joy set apart in the sublime liturgy of Latin Christianity to
+express the exaltation of the soul in the presence of the glory
+of the ever-living God, became the utterance of a heart almost
+terrified by its gladness in the presence of the glory of a
+mortal love; a love that yet lived, a love that had risen to
+trouble her even beyond the grave in which the nun is laid, that
+she may rise again as the bride of Christ.
+
+The organ is in truth the grandest, the most daring, the most
+magnificent of all instruments invented by human genius. It is a
+whole orchestra in itself. It can express anything in response
+to a skilled touch. Surely it is in some sort a pedestal on
+which the soul poises for a flight forth into space, essaying on
+her course to draw picture after picture in an endless series, to
+paint human life, to cross the Infinite that separates heaven
+from earth? And the longer a dreamer listens to those giant
+harmonies, the better he realizes that nothing save this
+hundred-voiced choir on earth can fill all the space between
+kneeling men, and a God hidden by the blinding light of the
+Sanctuary. The music is the one interpreter strong enough to
+bear up the prayers of humanity to heaven, prayer in its
+omnipotent moods, prayer tinged by the melancholy of many
+different natures, coloured by meditative ecstasy, upspringing
+with the impulse of repentance--blended with the myriad fancies
+of every creed. Yes. In those long vaulted aisles the melodies
+inspired by the sense of things divine are blended with a grandeur
+unknown before, are decked with new glory and might. Out of the
+dim daylight, and the deep silence broken by the chanting of the
+choir in response to the thunder of the organ, a veil is woven
+for God, and the brightness of His attributes shines through it.
+
+And this wealth of holy things seemed to be flung down like a
+grain of incense upon the fragile altar raised to Love beneath
+the eternal throne of a jealous and avenging God. Indeed, in the
+joy of the nun there was little of that awe and gravity which
+should harmonize with the solemnities of the _Magnificat_. She
+had enriched the music with graceful variations, earthly
+gladness throbbing through the rhythm of each. In such brilliant
+quivering notes some great singer might strive to find a voice
+for her love, her melodies fluttered as a bird flutters about her
+mate. There were moments when she seemed to leap back into the
+past, to dally there now with laughter, now with tears. Her
+changing moods, as it were, ran riot. She was like a woman
+excited and happy over her lover's return.
+
+But at length, after the swaying fugues of delirium, after the
+marvellous rendering of a vision of the past, a revulsion swept
+over the soul that thus found utterance for itself. With a swift
+transition from the major to the minor, the organist told her
+hearer of her present lot. She gave the story of long melancholy
+broodings, of the slow course of her moral malady. How day by
+day she deadened the senses, how every night cut off one more
+thought, how her heart was slowly reduced to ashes. The sadness
+deepened shade after shade through languid modulations, and in a
+little while the echoes were pouring out a torrent of grief.
+Then on a sudden, high notes rang out like the voices of angels
+singing together, as if to tell the lost but not forgotten lover
+that their spirits now could only meet in heaven. Pathetic hope!
+Then followed the _Amen_. No more joy, no more tears in the air,
+no sadness, no regrets. The _Amen_ was the return to God. The
+final chord was deep, solemn, even terrible; for the last
+rumblings of the bass sent a shiver through the audience that
+raised the hair on their heads; the nun shook out her veiling of
+crepe, and seemed to sink again into the grave from which she had
+risen for a moment. Slowly the reverberations died away; it
+seemed as if the church, but now so full of light, had returned
+to thick darkness.
+
+The General had been caught up and borne swiftly away by this
+strong-winged spirit; he had followed the course of its flight
+from beginning to end. He understood to the fullest extent the
+imagery of that burning symphony; for him the chords reached deep
+and far. For him, as for the sister, the poem meant future,
+present, and past. Is not music, and even opera music, a sort of
+text, which a susceptible or poetic temper, or a sore and
+stricken heart, may expand as memories shall determine? If a
+musician must needs have the heart of a poet, must not the
+listener too be in a manner a poet and a lover to hear all that
+lies in great music? Religion, love, and music--what are they
+but a threefold expression of the same fact, of that craving for
+expansion which stirs in every noble soul. And these three forms
+of poetry ascend to God, in whom all passion on earth finds its
+end. Wherefore the holy human trinity finds a place amid the
+infinite glories of God; of God, whom we always represent
+surrounded with the fires of love and seistrons of gold--music
+and light and harmony. Is not He the Cause and the End of all
+our strivings?
+
+The French General guessed rightly that here in the desert, on
+this bare rock in the sea, the nun had seized upon music as an
+outpouring of the passion that still consumed her. Was this her
+manner of offering up her love as a sacrifice to God? Or was it
+Love exultant in triumph over God? The questions were hard to
+answer. But one thing at least the General could not mistake--in
+this heart, dead to the world, the fire of passion burned as
+fiercely as in his own.
+
+Vespers over, he went back to the alcalde with whom he was
+staying. In the all-absorbing joy which comes in such full
+measure when a satisfaction sought long and painfully is attained
+at last, he could see nothing beyond this--he was still loved!
+In her heart love had grown in loneliness, even as his love had
+grown stronger as he surmounted one barrier after another which
+this woman had set between them! The glow of soul came to its
+natural end. There followed a longing to see her again, to
+contend with God for her, to snatch her away--a rash scheme,
+which appealed to a daring nature. He went to bed, when the meal
+was over, to avoid questions; to be alone and think at his ease;
+and he lay absorbed by deep thought till day broke.
+
+He rose only to go to mass. He went to the church and knelt
+close to the screen, with his forehead touching the curtain; he
+would have torn a hole in it if he had been alone, but his host
+had come with him out of politeness, and the least imprudence
+might compromise the whole future of his love, and ruin the new
+hopes.
+
+The organ sounded, but it was another player, and not the nun of
+the last two days whose hands touched the keys. It was all
+colorless and cold for the General. Was the woman he loved
+prostrated by emotion which well-nigh overcame a strong man's
+heart? Had she so fully realised and shared an unchanged,
+longed-for love, that now she lay dying on her bed in her cell?
+While innumerable thoughts of this kind perplexed his mind, the
+voice of the woman he worshipped rang out close beside him; he
+knew its clear resonant soprano. It was her voice, with that
+faint tremor in it which gave it all the charm that shyness and
+diffidence gives to a young girl; her voice, distinct from the
+mass of singing as a _prima donna's_ in the chorus of a finale.
+It was like a golden or silver thread in dark frieze.
+
+It was she! There could be no mistake. Parisienne now as ever,
+she had not laid coquetry aside when she threw off worldly
+adornments for the veil and the Carmelite's coarse serge. She
+who had affirmed her love last evening in the praise sent up to
+God, seemed now to say to her lover, "Yes, it is I. I am here.
+My love is unchanged, but I am beyond the reach of love. You
+will hear my voice, my soul shall enfold you, and I shall abide
+here under the brown shroud in the choir from which no power on
+earth can tear me. You shall never see me more!"
+
+"It is she indeed!" the General said to himself, raising his
+head. He had leant his face on his hands, unable at first to
+bear the intolerable emotion that surged like a whirlpool in his
+heart, when that well-known voice vibrated under the arcading,
+with the sound of the sea for accompaniment.
+
+Storm was without, and calm within the sanctuary. Still that
+rich voice poured out all its caressing notes; it fell like balm
+on the lover's burning heart; it blossomed upon the air--the air
+that a man would fain breathe more deeply to receive the
+effluence of a soul breathed forth with love in the words of the
+prayer. The alcalde coming to join his guest found him in tears
+during the elevation, while the nun was singing, and brought him
+back to his house. Surprised to find so much piety in a French
+military man, the worthy magistrate invited the confessor of the
+convent to meet his guest. Never had news given the General more
+pleasure; he paid the ecclesiastic a good deal of attention at
+supper, and confirmed his Spanish hosts in the high opinion they
+had formed of his piety by a not wholly disinterested respect.
+
+He inquired with gravity how many sisters there were in the
+convent, and asked for particulars of its endowment and revenues,
+as if from courtesy he wished to hear the good priest discourse
+on the subject most interesting to him. He informed himself as
+to the manner of life led by the holy women. Were they allowed
+to go out of the convent, or to see visitors?
+
+"Senor," replied the venerable churchman, "the rule is strict.
+A woman cannot enter a monastery of the order of St. Bruno
+without a special permission from His Holiness, and the rule here
+is equally stringent. No man may enter a convent of Barefoot
+Carmelites unless he is a priest specially attached to the
+services of the house by the Archbishop. None of the nuns may
+leave the convent; though the great Saint, St. Theresa, often
+left her cell. The Visitor or the Mothers Superior can alone
+give permission, subject to an authorization from the Archbishop,
+for a nun to see a visitor, and then especially in a case of
+illness. Now we are one of the principal houses, and
+consequently we have a Mother Superior here. Among other foreign
+sisters there is one Frenchwoman, Sister Theresa; she it is who
+directs the music in the chapel."
+
+"Oh!" said the General, with feigned surprise. "She must have
+rejoiced over the victory of the House of Bourbon."
+
+"I told them the reason of the mass; they are always a little
+bit inquisitive."
+
+"But Sister Theresa may have interests in France. Perhaps she
+would like to send some message or to hear news."
+
+"I do not think so. She would have come to ask me."
+
+"As a fellow-countryman, I should be quite curious to see her,"
+said the General. "If it is possible, if the Lady Superior
+consents, if----"
+
+"Even at the grating and in the Reverend Mother's presence, an
+interview would be quite impossible for anybody whatsoever; but,
+strict as the Mother is, for a deliverer of our holy religion and
+the throne of his Catholic Majesty, the rule might be relaxed for
+a moment," said the confessor, blinking. "I will speak about
+it."
+
+"How old is Sister Theresa?" inquired the lover. He dared not
+ask any questions of the priest as to the nun's beauty.
+
+"She does not reckon years now," the good man answered, with a
+simplicity that made the General shudder.
+
+Next day before siesta, the confessor came to inform the French
+General that Sister Theresa and the Mother consented to receive
+him at the grating in the parlour before vespers. The General
+spent the siesta in pacing to and fro along the quay in the
+noonday heat. Thither the priest came to find him, and brought
+him to the convent by way of the gallery round the cemetery.
+Fountains, green trees, and rows of arcading maintained a cool
+freshness in keeping with the place.
+
+At the further end of the long gallery the priest led the way
+into a large room divided in two by a grating covered with a
+brown curtain. In the first, and in some sort of public half of
+the apartment, where the confessor left the newcomer, a wooden
+bench ran round the wall, and two or three chairs, also of wood,
+were placed near the grating. The ceiling consisted of bare
+unornamented joists and cross-beams of ilex wood. As the two
+windows were both on the inner side of the grating, and the dark
+surface of the wood was a bad reflector, the light in the place
+was so dim that you could scarcely see the great black crucifix,
+the portrait of Saint Theresa, and a picture of the Madonna which
+adorned the grey parlour walls. Tumultuous as the General's
+feelings were, they took something of the melancholy of the
+place. He grew calm in that homely quiet. A sense of something
+vast as the tomb took possession of him beneath the chill
+unceiled roof. Here, as in the grave, was there not eternal
+silence, deep peace--the sense of the Infinite? And besides this
+there was the quiet and the fixed thought of the cloister--a
+thought which you felt like a subtle presence in the air, and in
+the dim dusk of the room; an all-pervasive thought nowhere
+definitely expressed, and looming the larger in the imagination;
+for in the cloister the great saying, "Peace in the Lord,"
+enters the least religious soul as a living force.
+
+The monk's life is scarcely comprehensible. A man seems
+confessed a weakling in a monastery; he was born to act, to live
+out a life of work; he is evading a man's destiny in his cell.
+But what man's strength, blended with pathetic weakness, is
+implied by a woman's choice of the convent life! A man may have
+any number of motives for burying himself in a monastery; for him
+it is the leap over the precipice. A woman has but one motive
+--she is a woman still; she betrothes herself to a Heavenly
+Bridegroom. Of the monk you may ask, "Why did you not fight
+your battle?" But if a woman immures herself in the cloister,
+is there not always a sublime battle fought first?
+
+At length it seemed to the General that that still room, and the
+lonely convent in the sea, were full of thoughts of him. Love
+seldom attains to solemnity; yet surely a love still faithful in
+the breast of God was something solemn, something more than a man
+had a right to look for as things are in this nineteenth century?
+The infinite grandeur of the situation might well produce an
+effect upon the General's mind; he had precisely enough elevation
+of soul to forget politics, honours, Spain, and society in Paris,
+and to rise to the height of this lofty climax. And what in
+truth could be more tragic? How much must pass in the souls of
+these two lovers, brought together in a place of strangers, on a
+ledge of granite in the sea; yet held apart by an intangible,
+unsurmountable barrier! Try to imagine the man saying within
+himself, "Shall I triumph over God in her heart?" when a faint
+rustling sound made him quiver, and the curtain was drawn aside.
+
+Between him and the light stood a woman. Her face was hidden by
+the veil that drooped from the folds upon her head; she was
+dressed according to the rule of the order in a gown of the
+colour become proverbial. Her bare feet were hidden; if the
+General could have seen them, he would have known how appallingly
+thin she had grown; and yet in spite of the thick folds of her
+coarse gown, a mere covering and no ornament, he could guess how
+tears, and prayer, and passion, and loneliness had wasted the
+woman before him.
+
+An ice-cold hand, belonging, no doubt, to the Mother Superior,
+held back the curtain. The General gave the enforced witness of
+their interview a searching glance, and met the dark, inscrutable
+gaze of an aged recluse. The Mother might have been a century
+old, but the bright, youthful eyes belied the wrinkles that
+furrowed her pale face.
+
+"Mme la Duchesse," he began, his voice shaken with emotion,
+"does your companion understand French?" The veiled figure
+bowed her head at the sound of his voice.
+
+"There is no duchess here," she replied. "It is Sister Theresa
+whom you see before you. She whom you call my companion is my
+mother in God, my superior here on earth."
+
+The words were so meekly spoken by the voice that sounded in
+other years amid harmonious surroundings of refined luxury, the
+voice of a queen of fashion in Paris. Such words from the lips
+that once spoke so lightly and flippantly struck the General dumb
+with amazement.
+
+"The Holy Mother only speaks Latin and Spanish," she added.
+
+"I understand neither. Dear Antoinette, make my excuses to
+her."
+
+The light fell full upon the nun's figure; a thrill of deep
+emotion betrayed itself in a faint quiver of her veil as she
+heard her name softly spoken by the man who had been so hard in
+the past.
+
+"My brother," she said, drawing her sleeve under her veil,
+perhaps to brush tears away, "I am Sister Theresa."
+
+Then, turning to the Superior, she spoke in Spanish; the General
+knew enough of the language to understand what she said perfectly
+well; possibly he could have spoken it had he chosen to do so.
+
+"Dear Mother, the gentleman presents his respects to you, and
+begs you to pardon him if he cannot pay them himself, but he
+knows neither of the languages which you speak----"
+
+The aged nun bent her head slowly, with an expression of angelic
+sweetness, enhanced at the same time by the consciousness of her
+power and dignity.
+
+"Do you know this gentleman?" she asked, with a keen glance.
+
+"Yes, Mother."
+
+"Go back to your cell, my daughter!" said the Mother imperiously.
+
+The General slipped aside behind the curtain lest the dreadful
+tumult within him should appear in his face; even in the shadow
+it seemed to him that he could still see the Superior's piercing
+eyes. He was afraid of her; she held his little, frail, hardly-won
+happiness in her hands; and he, who had never quailed under a
+triple row of guns, now trembled before this nun. The Duchess went
+towards the door, but she turned back.
+
+"Mother," she said, with dreadful calmness, "the Frenchman is
+one of my brothers."
+
+"Then stay, my daughter," said the Superior, after a pause.
+
+The piece of admirable Jesuitry told of such love and regret,
+that a man less strongly constituted might have broken down under
+the keen delight in the midst of a great and, for him, an
+entirely novel peril. Oh! how precious words, looks, and
+gestures became when love must baffle lynx eyes and tiger's
+claws! Sister Theresa came back.
+
+"You see, my brother, what I have dared to do only to speak to
+you for a moment of your salvation and of the prayers that my
+soul puts up for your soul daily. I am committing mortal sin. I
+have told a lie. How many days of penance must expiate that lie!
+But I shall endure it for your sake. My brother, you do not know
+what happiness it is to love in heaven; to feel that you can
+confess love purified by religion, love transported into the
+highest heights of all, so that we are permitted to lose sight of
+all but the soul. If the doctrine and the spirit of the Saint to
+whom we owe this refuge had not raised me above earth's anguish,
+and caught me up and set me, far indeed beneath the Sphere
+wherein she dwells, yet truly above this world, I should not have
+seen you again. But now I can see you, and hear your voice, and
+remain calm----"
+
+The General broke in, "But, Antoinette, let me see you, you whom
+I love passionately, desperately, as you could have wished me to
+love you."
+
+"Do not call me Antoinette, I implore you. Memories of the past
+hurt me. You must see no one here but Sister Theresa, a creature
+who trusts in the Divine mercy." She paused for a little, and
+then added, "You must control yourself, my brother. Our Mother
+would separate us without pity if there is any worldly passion in
+your face, or if you allow the tears to fall from your eyes."
+
+The General bowed his head to regain self-control; when he looked
+up again he saw her face beyond the grating--the thin, white, but
+still impassioned face of the nun. All the magic charm of youth
+that once bloomed there, all the fair contrast of velvet
+whiteness and the colour of the Bengal rose, had given place to a
+burning glow, as of a porcelain jar with a faint light shining
+through it. The wonderful hair in which she took such pride had
+been shaven; there was a bandage round her forehead and about her
+face. An ascetic life had left dark traces about the eyes, which
+still sometimes shot out fevered glances; their ordinary calm
+expression was but a veil. In a few words, she was but the ghost
+of her former self.
+
+"Ah! you that have come to be my life, you must come out of this
+tomb! You were mine; you had no right to give yourself, even to
+God. Did you not promise me to give up all at the least command
+from me? You may perhaps think me worthy of that promise now
+when you hear what I have done for you. I have sought you all
+through the world. You have been in my thoughts at every moment
+for five years; my life has been given to you. My friends, very
+powerful friends, as you know, have helped with all their might
+to search every convent in France, Italy, Spain, Sicily, and
+America. Love burned more brightly for every vain search. Again
+and again I made long journeys with a false hope; I have wasted
+my life and the heaviest throbbings of my heart in vain under
+many a dark convent wall. I am not speaking of a faithfulness
+that knows no bounds, for what is it?--nothing compared with the
+infinite longings of my love. If your remorse long ago was
+sincere, you ought not to hesitate to follow me today."
+
+"You forget that I am not free."
+
+"The Duke is dead," he answered quickly.
+
+Sister Theresa flushed red.
+
+"May heaven be open to him!" she cried with a quick rush of
+feeling. "He was generous to me.--But I did not mean such ties;
+it was one of my sins that I was ready to break them all without
+scruple--for you."
+
+"Are you speaking of your vows?" the General asked, frowning. "I
+did not think that anything weighed heavier with your heart than
+love. But do not think twice of it, Antoinette; the Holy Father
+himself shall absolve you of your oath. I will surely go to Rome,
+I will entreat all the powers of earth; if God could come down
+from heaven, I would----"
+
+"Do not blaspheme."
+
+"So do not fear the anger of God. Ah! I would far rather hear
+that you would leave your prison for me; that this very night you
+would let yourself down into a boat at the foot of the cliffs.
+And we would go away to be happy somewhere at the world's end, I
+know not where. And with me at your side, you should come back
+to life and health under the wings of love."
+
+"You must not talk like this," said Sister Theresa; "you do
+not know what you are to me now. I love you far better than I
+ever loved you before. Every day I pray for you; I see you with
+other eyes. Armand, if you but knew the happiness of giving
+yourself up, without shame, to a pure friendship which God
+watches over! You do not know what joy it is to me to pray for
+heaven's blessing on you. I never pray for myself: God will do
+with me according to His will; but, at the price of my soul, I
+wish I could be sure that you are happy here on earth, and that
+you will be happy hereafter throughout all ages. My eternal life
+is all that trouble has left me to offer up to you. I am old now
+with weeping; I am neither young nor fair; and in any case, you
+could not respect the nun who became a wife; no love, not even
+motherhood, could give me absolution. . . . What can you say to
+outweigh the uncounted thoughts that have gathered in my heart
+during the past five years, thoughts that have changed, and worn,
+and blighted it? I ought to have given a heart less sorrowful to
+God."
+
+"What can I say? Dear Antoinette, I will say this, that I love
+you; that affection, love, a great love, the joy of living in
+another heart that is ours, utterly and wholly ours, is so rare a
+thing and so hard to find, that I doubted you, and put you to
+sharp proof; but now, today, I love you, Antoinette, with all my
+soul's strength. . . . If you will follow me into solitude, I
+will hear no voice but yours, I will see no other face."
+
+"Hush, Armand! You are shortening the little time that we may
+be together here on earth."
+
+"Antoinette, will you come with me?"
+
+"I am never away from you. My life is in your heart, not
+through the selfish ties of earthly happiness, or vanity, or
+enjoyment; pale and withered as I am, I live here for you, in
+the breast of God. As God is just, you shall be happy----"
+
+"Words, words all of it! Pale and withered? How if I want you?
+How if I cannot be happy without you? Do you still think of
+nothing but duty with your lover before you? Is he never to come
+first and above all things else in your heart? In time past you
+put social success, yourself, heaven knows what, before him; now
+it is God, it is the welfare of my soul! In Sister Theresa I
+find the Duchess over again, ignorant of the happiness of love,
+insensible as ever, beneath the semblance of sensibility. You do
+not love me; you have never loved me----"
+
+"Oh, my brother----!"
+
+"You do not wish to leave this tomb. You love my soul, do you
+say? Very well, through you it will be lost forever. I shall
+make away with myself----"
+
+"Mother!" Sister Theresa called aloud in Spanish, "I have lied
+to you; this man is my lover!"
+
+The curtain fell at once. The General, in his stupor, scarcely
+heard the doors within as they clanged.
+
+"Ah! she loves me still!" he cried, understanding all the
+sublimity of that cry of hers. "She loves me still. She must
+be carried off. . . ."
+
+
+
+The General left the island, returned to headquarters, pleaded
+ill-health, asked for leave of absence, and forthwith took his
+departure for France.
+
+And now for the incidents which brought the two personages in
+this Scene into their present relation to each other.
+
+
+
+The thing known in France as the Faubourg Saint-Germain is
+neither a Quarter, nor a sect, nor an institution, nor anything
+else that admits of a precise definition. There are great houses
+in the Place Royale, the Faubourg Saint-Honore, and the Chaussee
+d'Antin, in any one of which you may breathe the same atmosphere
+of Faubourg Saint-Germain. So, to begin with, the whole Faubourg
+is not within the Faubourg. There are men and women born far
+enough away from its influences who respond to them and take
+their place in the circle; and again there are others, born
+within its limits, who may yet be driven forth forever. For the
+last forty years the manners, and customs, and speech, in a word,
+the tradition of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, has been to Paris
+what the Court used to be in other times; it is what the Hotel
+Saint-Paul was to the fourteenth century; the Louvre to the
+fifteenth; the Palais, the Hotel Rambouillet, and the Place
+Royale to the sixteenth; and lastly, as Versailles was to the
+seventeenth and the eighteenth.
+
+Just as the ordinary workaday Paris will always centre about some
+point; so, through all periods of history, the Paris of the
+nobles and the upper classes converges towards some particular
+spot. It is a periodically recurrent phenomenon which presents
+ample matter for reflection to those who are fain to observe or
+describe the various social zones; and possibly an enquiry into
+the causes that bring about this centralization may do more than
+merely justify the probability of this episode; it may be of
+service to serious interests which some day will be more deeply
+rooted in the commonwealth, unless, indeed, experience is as
+meaningless for political parties as it is for youth.
+
+In every age the great nobles, and the rich who always ape the
+great nobles, build their houses as far as possible from crowded
+streets. When the Duc d'Uzes built his splendid hotel in the Rue
+Montmartre in the reign of Louis XIV, and set the fountain at his
+gates--for which beneficent action, to say nothing of his other
+virtues, he was held in such veneration that the whole quarter
+turned out in a body to follow his funeral--when the Duke, I say,
+chose this site for his house, he did so because that part of
+Paris was almost deserted in those days. But when the
+fortifications were pulled down, and the market gardens beyond
+the line of the boulevards began to fill with houses, then the
+d'Uzes family left their fine mansion, and in our time it was
+occupied by a banker. Later still, the noblesse began to find
+themselves out of their element among shopkeepers, left the Place
+Royale and the centre of Paris for good, and crossed the river to
+breathe freely in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where palaces were
+reared already about the great hotel built by Louis XIV for the
+Duc de Maine--the Benjamin among his legitimated offspring. And
+indeed, for people accustomed to a stately life, can there be
+more unseemly surroundings than the bustle, the mud, the street
+cries, the bad smells, and narrow thoroughfares of a populous
+quarter? The very habits of life in a mercantile or
+manufacturing district are completely at variance with the lives
+of nobles. The shopkeeper and artisan are just going to bed when
+the great world is thinking of dinner; and the noisy stir of life
+begins among the former when the latter have gone to rest. Their
+day's calculations never coincide; the one class represents the
+expenditure, the other the receipts. Consequently their manners
+and customs are diametrically opposed.
+
+Nothing contemptuous is intended by this statement. An
+aristocracy is in a manner the intellect of the social system, as
+the middle classes and the proletariat may be said to be its
+organizing and working power. It naturally follows that these
+forces are differently situated; and of their antagonism there is
+bred a seeming antipathy produced by the performance of different
+functions, all of them, however, existing for one common end.
+
+Such social dissonances are so inevitably the outcome of any
+charter of the constitution, that however much a Liberal may be
+disposed to complain of them, as of treason against those sublime
+ideas with which the ambitious plebeian is apt to cover his
+designs, he would none the less think it a preposterous notion
+that M. le Prince de Montmorency, for instance, should continue
+to live in the Rue Saint-Martin at the corner of the street which
+bears that nobleman's name; or that M. le Duc de Fitz-James,
+descendant of the royal house of Scotland, should have his hotel
+at the angle of the Rue Marie Stuart and the Rue Montorgueil.
+_Sint ut sunt, aut non sint_, the grand words of the Jesuit, might
+be taken as a motto by the great in all countries. These social
+differences are patent in all ages; the fact is always accepted
+by the people; its "reasons of state" are self-evident; it is
+at once cause and effect, a principle and a law. The common
+sense of the masses never deserts them until demagogues stir them
+up to gain ends of their own; that common sense is based on the
+verities of social order; and the social order is the same
+everywhere, in Moscow as in London, in Geneva as in Calcutta.
+Given a certain number of families of unequal fortune in any
+given space, you will see an aristocracy forming under your eyes;
+there will be the patricians, the upper classes, and yet other
+ranks below them. Equality may be a _right_, but no power on earth
+can convert it into _fact_. It would be a good thing for France if
+this idea could be popularized. The benefits of political
+harmony are obvious to the least intelligent classes. Harmony
+is, as it were, the poetry of order, and order is a matter of
+vital importance to the working population. And what is order,
+reduced to its simplest expression, but the agreement of things
+among themselves--unity, in short? Architecture, music, and
+poetry, everything in France, and in France more than in any
+other country, is based upon this principle; it is written upon
+the very foundations of her clear accurate language, and a
+language must always be the most infallible index of national
+character. In the same way you may note that the French popular
+airs are those most calculated to strike the imagination, the
+best-modulated melodies are taken over by the people; clearness
+of thought, the intellectual simplicity of an idea attracts them;
+they like the incisive sayings that hold the greatest number of
+ideas. France is the one country in the world where a little phrase
+may bring about a great revolution. Whenever the masses have risen,
+it has been to bring men, affairs, and principles into agreement.
+No nation has a clearer conception of that idea of unity which
+should permeate the life of an aristocracy; possibly no other
+nation has so intelligent a comprehension of a political
+necessity; history will never find her behind the time. France
+has been led astray many a time, but she is deluded, woman-like,
+by generous ideas, by a glow of enthusiasm which at first
+outstrips sober reason.
+
+So, to begin with, the most striking characteristic of the
+Faubourg is the splendour of its great mansions, its great
+gardens, and a surrounding quiet in keeping with princely
+revenues drawn from great estates. And what is this distance set
+between a class and a whole metropolis but visible and outward
+expression of the widely different attitude of mind which must
+inevitably keep them apart? The position of the head is well
+defined in every organism. If by any chance a nation allows its
+head to fall at its feet, it is pretty sure sooner or later to
+discover that this is a suicidal measure; and since nations have
+no desire to perish, they set to work at once to grow a new head.
+If they lack the strength for this, they perish as Rome perished,
+and Venice, and so many other states.
+
+This distinction between the upper and lower spheres of social
+activity, emphasized by differences in their manner of living,
+necessarily implies that in the highest aristocracy there is real
+worth and some distinguishing merit. In any state, no matter
+what form of "government" is affected, so soon as the patrician
+class fails to maintain that complete superiority which is the
+condition of its existence, it ceases to be a force, and is
+pulled down at once by the populace. The people always wish to
+see money, power, and initiative in their leaders, hands, hearts,
+and heads; they must be the spokesmen, they must represent the
+intelligence and the glory of the nation. Nations, like women,
+love strength in those who rule them; they cannot give love
+without respect; they refuse utterly to obey those of whom they
+do not stand in awe. An aristocracy fallen into contempt is a
+_roi faineant_, a husband in petticoats; first it ceases to be
+itself, and then it ceases to be.
+
+And in this way the isolation of the great, the sharply marked
+distinction in their manner of life, or in a word, the general
+custom of the patrician caste is at once the sign of a real
+power, and their destruction so soon as that power is lost. The
+Faubourg Saint-Germain failed to recognise the conditions of its
+being, while it would still have been easy to perpetuate its
+existence, and therefore was brought low for a time. The
+Faubourg should have looked the facts fairly in the face, as the
+English aristocracy did before them; they should have seen that
+every institution has its climacteric periods, when words lose
+their old meanings, and ideas reappear in a new guise, and the
+whole conditions of politics wear a changed aspect, while the
+underlying realities undergo no essential alteration.
+
+These ideas demand further development which form an essential
+part of this episode; they are given here both as a succinct
+statement of the causes, and an explanation of the things which
+happen in the course of the story.
+
+The stateliness of the castles and palaces where nobles dwell;
+the luxury of the details; the constantly maintained
+sumptuousness of the furniture; the "atmosphere" in which the
+fortunate owner of landed estates (a rich man before he was born)
+lives and moves easily and without friction; the habit of mind
+which never descends to calculate the petty workaday gains of
+existence; the leisure; the higher education attainable at a much
+earlier age; and lastly, the aristocratic tradition that makes of
+him a social force, for which his opponents, by dint of study and
+a strong will and tenacity of vocation, are scarcely a match-all
+these things should contribute to form a lofty spirit in a man,
+possessed of such privileges from his youth up; they should stamp
+his character with that high self-respect, of which the least
+consequence is a nobleness of heart in harmony with the noble
+name that he bears. And in some few families all this is
+realised. There are noble characters here and there in the
+Faubourg, but they are marked exceptions to a general rule of
+egoism which has been the ruin of this world within a world. The
+privileges above enumerated are the birthright of the French
+noblesse, as of every patrician efflorescence ever formed on the
+surface of a nation; and will continue to be theirs so long as
+their existence is based upon real estate, or money; _domaine-sol_
+and _domaine-argent_ alike, the only solid bases of an organized
+society; but such privileges are held upon the understanding that
+the patricians must continue to justify their existence. There
+is a sort of moral _fief_ held on a tenure of service rendered to
+the sovereign, and here in France the people are undoubtedly the
+sovereigns nowadays. The times are changed, and so are the
+weapons. The knight-banneret of old wore a coat of chain armor
+and a hauberk; he could handle a lance well and display his
+pennon, and no more was required of him; today he is bound to
+give proof of his intelligence. A stout heart was enough in the
+days of old; in our days he is required to have a capacious
+brain-pan. Skill and knowledge and capital--these three points
+mark out a social triangle on which the scutcheon of power is
+blazoned; our modern aristocracy must take its stand on these.
+
+A fine theorem is as good as a great name. The Rothschilds, the
+Fuggers of the nineteenth century, are princes _de facto_. A great
+artist is in reality an oligarch; he represents a whole century,
+and almost always he is a law to others. And the art of words,
+the high pressure machinery of the writer, the poet's genius, the
+merchant's steady endurance, the strong will of the statesman who
+concentrates a thousand dazzling qualities in himself, the
+general's sword--all these victories, in short, which a single
+individual will win, that he may tower above the rest of the
+world, the patrician class is now bound to win and keep
+exclusively. They must head the new forces as they once headed
+the material forces; how should they keep the position unless
+they are worthy of it? How, unless they are the soul and brain
+of a nation, shall they set its hands moving? How lead a people
+without the power of command? And what is the marshal's baton
+without the innate power of the captain in the man who wields it?
+The Faubourg Saint-Germain took to playing with batons, and
+fancied that all the power was in its hands. It inverted the
+terms of the proposition which called it into existence. And
+instead of flinging away the insignia which offended the people,
+and quietly grasping the power, it allowed the bourgeoisie to
+seize the authority, clung with fatal obstinacy to its shadow,
+and over and over again forgot the laws which a minority must
+observe if it would live. When an aristocracy is scarce a
+thousandth part of the body social, it is bound today, as of old,
+to multiply its points of action, so as to counterbalance the
+weight of the masses in a great crisis. And in our days those
+means of action must be living forces, and not historical
+memories.
+
+In France, unluckily, the noblesse were still so puffed up with
+the notion of their vanished power, that it was difficult to
+contend against a kind of innate presumption in themselves.
+Perhaps this is a national defect. The Frenchman is less given
+than anyone else to undervalue himself; it comes natural to him
+to go from his degree to the one above it; and while it is a rare
+thing for him to pity the unfortunates over whose heads he rises,
+he always groans in spirit to see so many fortunate people above
+him. He is very far from heartless, but too often he prefers to
+listen to his intellect. The national instinct which brings the
+Frenchman to the front, the vanity that wastes his substance, is
+as much a dominant passion as thrift in the Dutch. For three
+centuries it swayed the noblesse, who, in this respect, were
+certainly pre-eminently French. The scion of the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain, beholding his material superiority, was fully
+persuaded of his intellectual superiority. And everything
+contributed to confirm him in his belief; for ever since the
+Faubourg Saint-Germain existed at all--which is to say, ever
+since Versailles ceased to be the royal residence--the Faubourg,
+with some few gaps in continuity, was always backed up by the
+central power, which in France seldom fails to support that side.
+Thence its downfall in 1830.
+
+At that time the party of the Faubourg Saint-Germain was rather
+like an army without a base of operation. It had utterly failed
+to take advantage of the peace to plant itself in the heart of
+the nation. It sinned for want of learning its lesson, and
+through an utter incapability of regarding its interests as a
+whole. A future certainty was sacrificed to a doubtful present
+gain. This blunder in policy may perhaps be attributed to the
+following cause.
+
+The class-isolation so strenuously kept up by the noblesse
+brought about fatal results during the last forty years; even
+caste-patriotism was extinguished by it, and rivalry fostered
+among themselves. When the French noblesse of other times were
+rich and powerful, the nobles (_gentilhommes_) could choose their
+chiefs and obey them in the hour of danger. As their power
+diminished, they grew less amenable to discipline; and as in the
+last days of the Byzantine Empire, everyone wished to be emperor.
+They mistook their uniform weakness for uniform strength.
+
+Each family ruined by the Revolution and the abolition of the law
+of primogeniture thought only of itself, and not at all of the
+great family of the noblesse. It seemed to them that as each
+individual grew rich, the party as a whole would gain in
+strength. And herein lay their mistake. Money, likewise, is
+only the outward and visible sign of power. All these families
+were made up of persons who preserved a high tradition of
+courtesy, of true graciousness of life, of refined speech, with a
+family pride, and a squeamish sense of _noblesse oblige_ which
+suited well with the kind of life they led; a life wholly filled
+with occupations which become contemptible so soon as they cease
+to be accessories and take the chief place in existence. There
+was a certain intrinsic merit in all these people, but the merit
+was on the surface, and none of them were worth their face-value.
+
+Not a single one among those families had courage to ask itself
+the question, "Are we strong enough for the responsibility of
+power?" They were cast on the top, like the lawyers of 1830;
+and instead of taking the patron's place, like a great man, the
+Faubourg Saint-Germain showed itself greedy as an upstart. The
+most intelligent nation in the world perceived clearly that the
+restored nobles were organizing everything for their own
+particular benefit. From that day the noblesse was doomed. The
+Faubourg Saint-Germain tried to be an aristocracy when it could
+only be an oligarchy--two very different systems, as any man may
+see for himself if he gives an intelligent perusal to the list of
+the patronymics of the House of Peers.
+
+The King's Government certainly meant well; but the maxim that
+the people must be made to _will_ everything, even their own
+welfare, was pretty constantly forgotten, nor did they bear in
+mind that La France is a woman and capricious, and must be happy
+or chastised at her own good pleasure. If there had been many
+dukes like the Duc de Laval, whose modesty made him worthy of the
+name he bore, the elder branch would have been as securely seated
+on the throne as the House of Hanover at this day.
+
+In 1814 the noblesse of France were called upon to assert their
+superiority over the most aristocratic bourgeoisie in the most
+feminine of all countries, to take the lead in the most highly
+educated epoch the world had yet seen. And this was even more
+notably the case in 1820. The Faubourg Saint-Germain might very
+easily have led and amused the middle classes in days when
+people's heads were turned with distinctions, and art and science
+were all the rage. But the narrow-minded leaders of a time of
+great intellectual progress all of them detested art and science.
+They had not even the wit to present religion in attractive
+colours, though they needed its support. While Lamartine,
+Lamennais, Montalembert, and other writers were putting new life
+and elevation into men's ideas of religion, and gilding it with
+poetry, these bunglers in the Government chose to make the
+harshness of their creed felt all over the country. Never was
+nation in a more tractable humour; La France, like a tired woman,
+was ready to agree to anything; never was mismanagement so
+clumsy; and La France, like a woman, would have forgiven wrongs
+more easily than bungling.
+
+If the noblesse meant to reinstate themselves, the better to
+found a strong oligarchy, they should have honestly and
+diligently searched their Houses for men of the stamp that
+Napoleon used; they should have turned themselves inside out to
+see if peradventure there was a Constitutionalist Richelieu
+lurking in the entrails of the Faubourg; and if that genius was
+not forthcoming from among them, they should have set out to find
+him, even in the fireless garret where he might happen to be
+perishing of cold; they should have assimilated him, as the
+English House of Lords continually assimilates aristocrats made
+by chance; and finally ordered him to be ruthless, to lop away
+the old wood, and cut the tree down to the living shoots. But,
+in the first place, the great system of English Toryism was far
+too large for narrow minds; the importation required time, and in
+France a tardy success is no better than a fiasco. So far,
+moreover, from adopting a policy of redemption, and looking for
+new forces where God puts them, these petty great folk took a
+dislike to any capacity that did not issue from their midst; and,
+lastly, instead of growing young again, the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain grew positively older.
+
+Etiquette, not an institution of primary necessity, might have
+been maintained if it had appeared only on state occasions, but
+as it was, there was a daily wrangle over precedence; it ceased
+to be a matter of art or court ceremonial, it became a question
+of power. And if from the outset the Crown lacked an adviser
+equal to so great a crisis, the aristocracy was still more
+lacking in a sense of its wider interests, an instinct which
+might have supplied the deficiency. They stood nice about M. de
+Talleyrand's marriage, when M. de Talleyrand was the one man
+among them with the steel-encompassed brains that can forge a new
+political system and begin a new career of glory for a nation.
+The Faubourg scoffed at a minister if he was not gently born, and
+produced no one of gentle birth that was fit to be a minister.
+There were plenty of nobles fitted to serve their country by
+raising the dignity of justices of the peace, by improving the
+land, by opening out roads and canals, and taking an active and
+leading part as country gentlemen; but these had sold their
+estates to gamble on the Stock Exchange. Again the Faubourg
+might have absorbed the energetic men among the bourgeoisie, and
+opened their ranks to the ambition which was undermining
+authority; they preferred instead to fight, and to fight unarmed,
+for of all that they once possessed there was nothing left but
+tradition. For their misfortune there was just precisely enough
+of their former wealth left them as a class to keep up their
+bitter pride. They were content with their past. Not one of
+them seriously thought of bidding the son of the house take up
+arms from the pile of weapons which the nineteenth century flings
+down in the market-place. Young men, shut out from office, were
+dancing at Madame's balls, while they should have been doing the
+work done under the Republic and the Empire by young,
+conscientious, harmlessly employed energies. It was their place
+to carry out at Paris the programme which their seniors should
+have been following in the country. The heads of houses might
+have won back recognition of their titles by unremitting
+attention to local interests, by falling in with the spirit of
+the age, by recasting their order to suit the taste of the times.
+
+But, pent up together in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where the
+spirit of the ancient court and traditions of bygone feuds
+between the nobles and the Crown still lingered on, the
+aristocracy was not whole-hearted in its allegiance to the
+Tuileries, and so much the more easily defeated because it was
+concentrated in the Chamber of Peers, and badly organized even
+there. If the noblesse had woven themselves into a network over
+the country, they could have held their own; but cooped up in
+their Faubourg, with their backs against the Chateau, or spread
+at full length over the Budget, a single blow cut the thread of a
+fast-expiring life, and a petty, smug-faced lawyer came forward
+with the axe. In spite of M. Royer-Collard's admirable
+discourse, the hereditary peerage and law of entail fell before
+the lampoons of a man who made it a boast that he had adroitly
+argued some few heads out of the executioner's clutches, and now
+forsooth must clumsily proceed to the slaying of old institutions.
+
+There are examples and lessons for the future in all this. For
+if there were not still a future before the French aristocracy,
+there would be no need to do more than find a suitable
+sarcophagus; it were something pitilessly cruel to burn the dead
+body of it with fire of Tophet. But though the surgeon's scalpel
+is ruthless, it sometimes gives back life to a dying man; and the
+Faubourg Saint-Germain may wax more powerful under persecution
+than in its day of triumph, if it but chooses to organize itself
+under a leader.
+
+And now it is easy to give a summary of this semi-political
+survey. The wish to re-establish a large fortune was uppermost
+in everyone's mind; a lack of broad views, and a mass of small
+defects, a real need of religion as a political factor, combined
+with a thirst for pleasure which damaged the cause of religion
+and necessitated a good deal of hypocrisy; a certain attitude of
+protest on the part of loftier and clearer-sighted men who set
+their faces against Court jealousies; and the disaffection of the
+provincial families, who often came of purer descent than the
+nobles of the Court which alienated them from itself--all these
+things combined to bring about a most discordant state of things
+in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. It was neither compact in its
+organisation, nor consequent in its action; neither completely
+moral, nor frankly dissolute; it did not corrupt, nor was it
+corrupted; it would neither wholly abandon the disputed points
+which damaged its cause, nor yet adopt the policy that might have
+saved it. In short, however effete individuals might be, the
+party as a whole was none the less armed with all the great
+principles which lie at the roots of national existence. What
+was there in the Faubourg that it should perish in its strength?
+
+It was very hard to please in the choice of candidates; the
+Faubourg had good taste, it was scornfully fastidious, yet there
+was nothing very glorious nor chivalrous truly about its fall.
+
+In the Emigration of 1789 there were some traces of a loftier
+feeling; but in the Emigration of 1830 from Paris into the
+country there was nothing discernible but self-interest. A few
+famous men of letters, a few oratorical triumphs in the Chambers,
+M. de Talleyrand's attitude in the Congress, the taking of
+Algiers, and not a few names that found their way from the
+battlefield into the pages of history--all these things were so
+many examples set before the French noblesse to show that it was
+still open to them to take their part in the national existence,
+and to win recognition of their claims, if, indeed, they could
+condescend thus far. In every living organism the work of
+bringing the whole into harmony within itself is always going on.
+If a man is indolent, the indolence shows itself in everything
+that he does; and, in the same manner, the general spirit of a
+class is pretty plainly manifested in the face it turns on the
+world, and the soul informs the body.
+
+The women of the Restoration displayed neither the proud
+disregard of public opinion shown by the court ladies of olden
+time in their wantonness, nor yet the simple grandeur of the
+tardy virtues by which they expiated their sins and shed so
+bright a glory about their names. There was nothing either very
+frivolous or very serious about the woman of the Restoration.
+She was hypocritical as a rule in her passion, and compounded, so
+to speak, with its pleasures. Some few families led the domestic
+life of the Duchesse d'Orleans, whose connubial couch was
+exhibited so absurdly to visitors at the Palais Royal. Two or
+three kept up the traditions of the Regency, filling cleverer
+women with something like disgust. The great lady of the new
+school exercised no influence at all over the manners of the
+time; and yet she might have done much. She might, at worst,
+have presented as dignified a spectacle as English-women of the
+same rank. But she hesitated feebly among old precedents, became
+a bigot by force of circumstances, and allowed nothing of herself
+to appear, not even her better qualities.
+
+Not one among the Frenchwomen of that day had the ability to
+create a salon whither leaders of fashion might come to take
+lessons in taste and elegance. Their voices, which once laid
+down the law to literature, that living expression of a time, now
+counted absolutely for nought. Now when a literature lacks a
+general system, it fails to shape a body for itself, and dies out
+with its period.
+
+When in a nation at any time there is a people apart thus
+constituted, the historian is pretty certain to find some
+representative figure, some central personage who embodies the
+qualities and the defects of the whole party to which he belongs;
+there is Coligny, for instance, among the Huguenots, the
+Coadjuteur in the time of the Fronde, the Marechal de Richelieu
+under Louis XV, Danton during the Terror. It is in the nature of
+things that the man should be identified with the company in
+which history finds him. How is it possible to lead a party
+without conforming to its ideas? or to shine in any epoch unless
+a man represents the ideas of his time? The wise and prudent
+head of a party is continually obliged to bow to the prejudices
+and follies of its rear; and this is the cause of actions for
+which he is afterwards criticised by this or that historian
+sitting at a safer distance from terrific popular explosions,
+coolly judging the passion and ferment without which the great
+struggles of the world could not be carried on at all. And if
+this is true of the Historical Comedy of the Centuries, it is
+equally true in a more restricted sphere in the detached scenes
+of the national drama known as the _Manners of the Age_.
+
+
+
+At the beginning of that ephemeral life led by the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain under the Restoration, to which, if there is any
+truth in the above reflections, they failed to give stability,
+the most perfect type of the aristocratic caste in its weakness
+and strength, its greatness and littleness, might have been found
+for a brief space in a young married woman who belonged to it.
+This was a woman artificially educated, but in reality ignorant;
+a woman whose instincts and feelings were lofty while the thought
+which should have controlled them was wanting. She squandered
+the wealth of her nature in obedience to social conventions; she
+was ready to brave society, yet she hesitated till her scruples
+degenerated into artifice. With more wilfulness than real force
+of character, impressionable rather than enthusiastic, gifted
+with more brain than heart; she was supremely a woman, supremely
+a coquette, and above all things a Parisienne, loving a brilliant
+life and gaiety, reflecting never, or too late; imprudent to the
+verge of poetry, and humble in the depths of her heart, in spite
+of her charming insolence. Like some straight-growing reed, she
+made a show of independence; yet, like the reed, she was ready to
+bend to a strong hand. She talked much of religion, and had it
+not at heart, though she was prepared to find in it a solution of
+her life. How explain a creature so complex? Capable of heroism,
+yet sinking unconsciously from heroic heights to utter a spiteful
+word; young and sweet-natured, not so much old at heart as aged
+by the maxims of those about her; versed in a selfish philosophy
+in which she was all unpractised, she had all the vices of a
+courtier, all the nobleness of developing womanhood. She trusted
+nothing and no one, yet there were times when she quitted her
+sceptical attitude for a submissive credulity.
+
+How should any portrait be anything but incomplete of her, in
+whom the play of swiftly-changing colour made discord only to
+produce a poetic confusion? For in her there shone a divine
+brightness, a radiance of youth that blended all her bewildering
+characteristics in a certain completeness and unity informed by
+her charm. Nothing was feigned. The passion or semi-passion,
+the ineffectual high aspirations, the actual pettiness, the
+coolness of sentiment and warmth of impulse, were all spontaneous
+and unaffected, and as much the outcome of her own position as of
+the position of the aristocracy to which she belonged. She was
+wholly self-contained; she put herself proudly above the world
+and beneath the shelter of her name. There was something of the
+egoism of Medea in her life, as in the life of the aristocracy
+that lay a-dying, and would not so much as raise itself or
+stretch out a hand to any political physician; so well aware of
+its feebleness, or so conscious that it was already dust, that it
+refused to touch or be touched.
+
+The Duchesse de Langeais (for that was her name) had been married
+for about four years when the Restoration was finally
+consummated, which is to say, in 1816. By that time the
+revolution of the Hundred Days had let in the light on the mind
+of Louis XVIII. In spite of his surroundings, he comprehended
+the situation and the age in which he was living; and it was only
+later, when this Louis XI, without the axe, lay stricken down by
+disease, that those about him got the upper hand. The Duchesse
+de Langeais, a Navarreins by birth, came of a ducal house which
+had made a point of never marrying below its rank since the reign
+of Louis XIV. Every daughter of the house must sooner or later
+take a _tabouret_ at Court. So, Antoinette de Navarreins, at the
+age of eighteen, came out of the profound solitude in which her
+girlhood had been spent to marry the Duc de Langeais' eldest
+son. The two families at that time were living quite out of the
+world; but after the invasion of France, the return of the
+Bourbons seemed to every Royalist mind the only possible way of
+putting an end to the miseries of the war.
+
+The Ducs de Navarreins and de Langeais had been faithful
+throughout to the exiled Princes, nobly resisting all the
+temptations of glory under the Empire. Under the circumstances
+they naturally followed out the old family policy; and Mlle
+Antoinette, a beautiful and portionless girl, was married to M.
+le Marquis de Langeais only a few months before the death of the
+Duke his father.
+
+After the return of the Bourbons, the families resumed their
+rank, offices, and dignity at Court; once more they entered
+public life, from which hitherto they held aloof, and took their
+place high on the sunlit summits of the new political world. In
+that time of general baseness and sham political conversions, the
+public conscience was glad to recognise the unstained loyalty of
+the two houses, and a consistency in political and private life
+for which all parties involuntarily respected them. But,
+unfortunately, as so often happens in a time of transition, the
+most disinterested persons, the men whose loftiness of view and
+wise principles would have gained the confidence of the French
+nation and led them to believe in the generosity of a novel and
+spirited policy--these men, to repeat, were taken out of affairs,
+and public business was allowed to fall into the hands of others,
+who found it to their interest to push principles to their
+extreme consequences by way of proving their devotion.
+
+The families of Langeais and Navarreins remained about the Court,
+condemned to perform the duties required by Court ceremonial amid
+the reproaches and sneers of the Liberal party. They were
+accused of gorging themselves with riches and honours, and all
+the while their family estates were no larger than before, and
+liberal allowances from the civil list were wholly expended in
+keeping up the state necessary for any European government, even
+if it be a Republic.
+
+In 1818, M. le Duc de Langeais commanded a division of the army,
+and the Duchess held a post about one of the Princesses, in
+virtue of which she was free to live in Paris and apart from her
+husband without scandal. The Duke, moreover, besides his
+military duties, had a place at Court, to which he came during
+his term of waiting, leaving his major-general in command. The
+Duke and Duchess were leading lives entirely apart, the world
+none the wiser. Their marriage of convention shared the fate of
+nearly all family arrangements of the kind. Two more
+antipathetic dispositions could not well have been found; they
+were brought together; they jarred upon each other; there was
+soreness on either side; then they were divided once for all.
+Then they went their separate ways, with a due regard for
+appearances. The Duc de Langeais, by nature as methodical as the
+Chevalier de Folard himself, gave himself up methodically to his
+own tastes and amusements, and left his wife at liberty to do as
+she pleased so soon as he felt sure of her character. He
+recognised in her a spirit pre-eminently proud, a cold heart, a
+profound submissiveness to the usages of the world, and a
+youthful loyalty. Under the eyes of great relations, with the
+light of a prudish and bigoted Court turned full upon the
+Duchess, his honour was safe.
+
+So the Duke calmly did as the _grands seigneurs_ of the eighteenth
+century did before him, and left a young wife of two-and-twenty
+to her own devices. He had deeply offended that wife, and in her
+nature there was one appalling characteristic--she would never
+forgive an offence when woman's vanity and self-love, with all
+that was best in her nature perhaps, had been slighted, wounded
+in secret. Insult and injury in the face of the world a woman
+loves to forget; there is a way open to her of showing herself
+great; she is a woman in her forgiveness; but a secret offence
+women never pardon; for secret baseness, as for hidden virtues
+and hidden love, they have no kindness.
+
+This was Mme la Duchesse de Langeais' real position, unknown to
+the world. She herself did not reflect upon it. It was the time
+of the rejoicings over the Duc de Berri's marriage. The Court
+and the Faubourg roused itself from its listlessness and reserve.
+This was the real beginning of that unheard-of splendour which
+the Government of the Restoration carried too far. At that time
+the Duchess, whether for reasons of her own, or from vanity,
+never appeared in public without a following of women equally
+distinguished by name and fortune. As queen of fashion she had
+her _dames d'atours_, her ladies, who modeled their manner and
+their wit on hers. They had been cleverly chosen. None of her
+satellites belonged to the inmost Court circle, nor to the
+highest level of the Faubourg Saint-Germain; but they had set
+their minds upon admission to those inner sanctuaries. Being as
+yet simple denominations, they wished to rise to the neighbourhood
+of the throne, and mingle with the seraphic powers in the high
+sphere known as _le petit chateau_. Thus surrounded, the Duchess's
+position was stronger and more commanding and secure. Her
+"ladies" defended her character and helped her to play her
+detestable part of a woman of fashion. She could laugh at men at
+her ease, play with fire, receive the homage on which the
+feminine nature is nourished, and remain mistress of herself.
+
+At Paris, in the highest society of all, a woman is a woman
+still; she lives on incense, adulation, and honours. No beauty,
+however undoubted, no face, however fair, is anything without
+admiration. Flattery and a lover are proofs of power. And what
+is power without recognition? Nothing. If the prettiest of
+women were left alone in a corner of a drawing-room, she would
+droop. Put her in the very centre and summit of social grandeur,
+she will at once aspire to reign over all hearts--often because
+it is out of her power to be the happy queen of one. Dress and
+manner and coquetry are all meant to please one of the poorest
+creatures extant--the brainless coxcomb, whose handsome face is
+his sole merit; it was for such as these that women threw
+themselves away. The gilded wooden idols of the Restoration, for
+they were neither more nor less, had neither the antecedents of
+the _petits maitres_ of the time of the Fronde, nor the rough
+sterling worth of Napoleon's heroes, not the wit and fine manners
+of their grandsires; but something of all three they meant to be
+without any trouble to themselves. Brave they were, like all
+young Frenchmen; ability they possessed, no doubt, if they had
+had a chance of proving it, but their places were filled up by
+the old worn-out men, who kept them in leading strings. It was a
+day of small things, a cold prosaic era. Perhaps it takes a long
+time for a Restoration to become a Monarchy.
+
+For the past eighteen months the Duchesse de Langeais had been
+leading this empty life, filled with balls and subsequent visits,
+objectless triumphs, and the transient loves that spring up and
+die in an evening's space. All eyes were turned on her when she
+entered a room; she reaped her harvest of flatteries and some few
+words of warmer admiration, which she encouraged by a gesture or
+a glance, but never suffered to penetrate deeper than the skin.
+Her tone and bearing and everything else about her imposed her
+will upon others. Her life was a sort of fever of vanity and
+perpetual enjoyment, which turned her head. She was daring
+enough in conversation; she would listen to anything, corrupting
+the surface, as it were, of her heart. Yet when she returned
+home, she often blushed at the story that had made her laugh; at
+the scandalous tale that supplied the details, on the strength of
+which she analyzed the love that she had never known, and marked
+the subtle distinctions of modern passion, not with comment on
+the part of complacent hypocrites. For women know how to say
+everything among themselves, and more of them are ruined by each
+other than corrupted by men.
+
+There came a moment when she discerned that not until a woman is
+loved will the world fully recognise her beauty and her wit.
+What does a husband prove? Simply that a girl or woman was
+endowed with wealth, or well brought up; that her mother managed
+cleverly that in some way she satisfied a man's ambitions. A
+lover constantly bears witness to her personal perfections. Then
+followed the discovery still in Mme de Langeais' early womanhood,
+that it was possible to be loved without committing herself,
+without permission, without vouchsafing any satisfaction beyond
+the most meagre dues. There was more than one demure feminine
+hypocrite to instruct her in the art of playing such dangerous
+comedies.
+
+So the Duchess had her court, and the number of her adorers and
+courtiers guaranteed her virtue. She was amiable and
+fascinating; she flirted till the ball or the evening's gaiety
+was at an end. Then the curtain dropped. She was cold,
+indifferent, self-contained again till the next day brought its
+renewed sensations, superficial as before. Two or three men were
+completely deceived, and fell in love in earnest. She laughed at
+them, she was utterly insensible. "I am loved!" she told
+herself. "He loves me!" The certainty sufficed her. It is
+enough for the miser to know that his every whim might be
+fulfilled if he chose; so it was with the Duchess, and perhaps
+she did not even go so far as to form a wish.
+
+One evening she chanced to be at the house of an intimate friend
+Mme la Vicomtesse de Fontaine, one of the humble rivals who
+cordially detested her, and went with her everywhere. In a
+"friendship" of this sort both sides are on their guard, and
+never lay their armor aside; confidences are ingeniously
+indiscreet, and not unfrequently treacherous. Mme de Langeais
+had distributed her little patronizing, friendly, or freezing
+bows, with the air natural to a woman who knows the worth of her
+smiles, when her eyes fell upon a total stranger. Something in
+the man's large gravity of aspect startled her, and, with a
+feeling almost like dread, she turned to Mme de Maufrigneuse
+with, "Who is the newcomer, dear?"
+
+"Someone that you have heard of, no doubt. The Marquis de
+Montriveau."
+
+"Oh! is it he?"
+
+She took up her eyeglass and submitted him to a very insolent
+scrutiny, as if he had been a picture meant to receive glances,
+not to return them.
+
+"Do introduce him; he ought to be interesting."
+
+"Nobody more tiresome and dull, dear. But he is the fashion."
+
+M. Armand de Montriveau, at that moment all unwittingly the
+object of general curiosity, better deserved attention than any
+of the idols that Paris needs must set up to worship for a brief
+space, for the city is vexed by periodical fits of craving, a
+passion for _engouement_ and sham enthusiasm, which must be
+satisfied. The Marquis was the only son of General de Montriveau,
+one of the _ci-devants_ who served the Republic nobly, and fell
+by Joubert's side at Novi. Bonaparte had placed his son at the
+school at Chalons, with the orphans of other generals who fell
+on the battlefield, leaving their children under the protection
+of the Republic. Armand de Montriveau left school with his way
+to make, entered the artillery, and had only reached a major's
+rank at the time of the Fontainebleau disaster. In his section
+of the service the chances of advancement were not many. There
+are fewer officers, in the first place, among the gunners than
+in any other corps; and in the second place, the feeling in the
+artillery was decidedly Liberal, not to say Republican; and the
+Emperor, feeling little confidence in a body of highly educated
+men who were apt to think for themselves, gave promotion
+grudgingly in the service. In the artillery, accordingly, the
+general rule of the army did not apply; the commanding officers
+were not invariably the most remarkable men in their department,
+because there was less to be feared from mediocrities. The
+artillery was a separate corps in those days, and only came under
+Napoleon in action.
+
+Besides these general causes, other reasons, inherent in Armand
+de Montriveau's character, were sufficient in themselves to
+account for his tardy promotion. He was alone in the world. He
+had been thrown at the age of twenty into the whirlwind of men
+directed by Napoleon; his interests were bounded by himself, any
+day he might lose his life; it became a habit of mind with him to
+live by his own self-respect and the consciousness that he had
+done his duty. Like all shy men, he was habitually silent; but
+his shyness sprang by no means from timidity; it was a kind of
+modesty in him; he found any demonstration of vanity intolerable.
+There was no sort of swagger about his fearlessness in action;
+nothing escaped his eyes; he could give sensible advice to his
+chums with unshaken coolness; he could go under fire, and duck
+upon occasion to avoid bullets. He was kindly; but his
+expression was haughty and stern, and his face gained him this
+character. In everything he was rigorous as arithmetic; he never
+permitted the slightest deviation from duty on any plausible
+pretext, nor blinked the consequences of a fact. He would lend
+himself to nothing of which he was ashamed; he never asked
+anything for himself; in short, Armand de Montriveau was one of
+many great men unknown to fame, and philosophical enough to
+despise it; living without attaching themselves to life, because
+they have not found their opportunity of developing to the full
+their power to do and feel.
+
+People were afraid of Montriveau; they respected him, but he was
+not very popular. Men may indeed allow you to rise above them,
+but to decline to descend as low as they can do is the one
+unpardonable sin. In their feeling towards loftier natures,
+there is a trace of hate and fear. Too much honour with them
+implies censure of themselves, a thing forgiven neither to the
+living nor to the dead.
+
+After the Emperor's farewells at Fontainebleau, Montriveau, noble
+though he was, was put on half-pay. Perhaps the heads of the War
+Office took fright at uncompromising uprightness worthy of
+antiquity, or perhaps it was known that he felt bound by his oath
+to the Imperial Eagle. During the Hundred Days he was made a
+Colonel of the Guard, and left on the field of Waterloo. His
+wounds kept him in Belgium he was not present at the disbanding
+of the Army of the Loire, but the King's government declined to
+recognise promotion made during the Hundred Days, and Armand de
+Montriveau left France.
+
+An adventurous spirit, a loftiness of thought hitherto satisfied
+by the hazards of war, drove him on an exploring expedition
+through Upper Egypt; his sanity or impulse directed his
+enthusiasm to a project of great importance, he turned his
+attention to that unexplored Central Africa which occupies the
+learned of today. The scientific expedition was long and
+unfortunate. He had made a valuable collection of notes bearing
+on various geographical and commercial problems, of which
+solutions are still eagerly sought; and succeeded, after
+surmounting many obstacles, in reaching the heart of the
+continent, when he was betrayed into the hands of a hostile
+native tribe. Then, stripped of all that he had, for two years
+he led a wandering life in the desert, the slave of savages,
+threatened with death at every moment, and more cruelly treated
+than a dumb animal in the power of pitiless children. Physical
+strength, and a mind braced to endurance, enabled him to survive
+the horrors of that captivity; but his miraculous escape
+well-nigh exhausted his energies. When he reached the French
+colony at Senegal, a half-dead fugitive covered with rags, his
+memories of his former life were dim and shapeless. The great
+sacrifices made in his travels were all forgotten like his
+studies of African dialects, his discoveries, and observations.
+One story will give an idea of all that he passed through. Once
+for several days the children of the sheikh of the tribe amused
+themselves by putting him up for a mark and flinging horses'
+knuckle-bones at his head.
+
+Montriveau came back to Paris in 1818 a ruined man. He had no
+interest, and wished for none. He would have died twenty times
+over sooner than ask a favour of anyone; he would not even press
+the recognition of his claims. Adversity and hardship had
+developed his energy even in trifles, while the habit of
+preserving his self-respect before that spiritual self which we
+call conscience led him to attach consequence to the most
+apparently trivial actions. His merits and adventures became
+known, however, through his acquaintances, among the principal
+men of science in Paris, and some few well-read military men.
+The incidents of his slavery and subsequent escape bore witness
+to a courage, intelligence, and coolness which won him celebrity
+without his knowledge, and that transient fame of which Paris
+salons are lavish, though the artist that fain would keep it must
+make untold efforts.
+
+Montriveau's position suddenly changed towards the end of that
+year. He had been a poor man, he was now rich; or, externally at
+any rate, he had all the advantages of wealth. The King's
+government, trying to attach capable men to itself and to
+strengthen the army, made concessions about that time to
+Napoleon's old officers if their known loyalty and character
+offered guarantees of fidelity. M. de Montriveau's name once
+more appeared in the army list with the rank of colonel; he
+received his arrears of pay and passed into the Guards. All
+these favours, one after another, came to seek the Marquis de
+Montriveau; he had asked for nothing however small. Friends had
+taken the steps for him which he would have refused to take for
+himself.
+
+After this, his habits were modified all at once; contrary to his
+custom, he went into society. He was well received, everywhere
+he met with great deference and respect. He seemed to have found
+some end in life; but everything passed within the man, there
+were no external signs; in society he was silent and cold, and
+wore a grave, reserved face. His social success was great,
+precisely because he stood out in such strong contrast to the
+conventional faces which line the walls of Paris salons. He was,
+indeed, something quite new there. Terse of speech, like a
+hermit or a savage, his shyness was thought to be haughtiness,
+and people were greatly taken with it. He was something strange
+and great. Women generally were so much the more smitten with
+this original person because he was not to be caught by their
+flatteries, however adroit, nor by the wiles with which they
+circumvent the strongest men and corrode the steel temper. Their
+Parisian's grimaces were lost upon M. de Montriveau; his nature
+only responded to the sonorous vibration of lofty thought and
+feeling. And he would very promptly have been dropped but for
+the romance that hung about his adventures and his life; but for
+the men who cried him up behind his back; but for a woman who
+looked for a triumph for her vanity, the woman who was to fill
+his thoughts.
+
+For these reasons the Duchesse de Langeais' curiosity was no
+less lively than natural. Chance had so ordered it that her
+interest in the man before her had been aroused only the day
+before, when she heard the story of one of M. de Montriveau's
+adventures, a story calculated to make the strongest impression
+upon a woman's ever-changing fancy.
+
+During M. de Montriveau's voyage of discovery to the sources of
+the Nile, he had had an argument with one of his guides, surely
+the most extraordinary debate in the annals of travel. The
+district that he wished to explore could only be reached on foot
+across a tract of desert. Only one of his guides knew the way;
+no traveller had penetrated before into that part of the country,
+where the undaunted officer hoped to find a solution of several
+scientific problems. In spite of the representations made to him
+by the guide and the older men of the place, he started upon the
+formidable journey. Summoning up courage, already highly strung
+by the prospect of dreadful difficulties, he set out in the
+morning.
+
+The loose sand shifted under his feet at every step; and when,
+at the end of a long day's march, he lay down to sleep on the
+ground, he had never been so tired in his life. He knew,
+however, that he must be up and on his way before dawn next day,
+and his guide assured him that they should reach the end of their
+journey towards noon. That promise kept up his courage and gave
+him new strength. In spite of his sufferings, he continued his
+march, with some blasphemings against science; he was ashamed to
+complain to his guide, and kept his pain to himself. After
+marching for a third of the day, he felt his strength failing,
+his feet were bleeding, he asked if they should reach the place
+soon. "In an hour's time," said the guide. Armand braced himself
+for another hour's march, and they went on.
+
+The hour slipped by; he could not so much as see against the sky
+the palm-trees and crests of hill that should tell of the end of
+the journey near at hand; the horizon line of sand was vast as
+the circle of the open sea.
+
+He came to a stand, refused to go farther, and threatened the
+guide--he had deceived him, murdered him; tears of rage and
+weariness flowed over his fevered cheeks; he was bowed down with
+fatigue upon fatigue, his throat seemed to be glued by the desert
+thirst. The guide meanwhile stood motionless, listening to these
+complaints with an ironical expression, studying the while, with
+the apparent indifference of an Oriental, the scarcely
+perceptible indications in the lie of the sands, which looked
+almost black, like burnished gold.
+
+"I have made a mistake," he remarked coolly. "I could not
+make out the track, it is so long since I came this way; we are
+surely on it now, but we must push on for two hours."
+
+"The man is right," thought M. de Montriveau.
+
+So he went on again, struggling to follow the pitiless native.
+It seemed as if he were bound to his guide by some thread like
+the invisible tie between the condemned man and the headsman.
+But the two hours went by, Montriveau had spent his last drops of
+energy, and the skyline was a blank, there were no palm-trees, no
+hills. He could neither cry out nor groan, he lay down on the
+sand to die, but his eyes would have frightened the boldest;
+something in his face seemed to say that he would not die alone.
+His guide, like a very fiend, gave him back a cool glance like a
+man that knows his power, left him to lie there, and kept at a
+safe distance out of reach of his desperate victim. At last M.
+Montriveau recovered strength enough for a last curse. The guide
+came nearer, silenced him with a steady look, and said, "Was it not
+your own will to go where I am taking you, in spite of us all? You
+say that I have lied to you. If I had not, you would not be even
+here. Do you want the truth? Here it is. _We have still another five
+hours' march before us, and we cannot go back_. Sound yourself; if
+you have not courage enough, here is my dagger."
+
+Startled by this dreadful knowledge of pain and human strength,
+M. de Montriveau would not be behind a savage; he drew a fresh
+stock of courage from his pride as a European, rose to his feet,
+and followed his guide. The five hours were at an end, and still
+M. de Montriveau saw nothing, he turned his failing eyes upon his
+guide; but the Nubian hoisted him on his shoulders, and showed
+him a wide pool of water with greenness all about it, and a noble
+forest lighted up by the sunset. It lay only a hundred paces
+away; a vast ledge of granite hid the glorious landscape. It
+seemed to Armand that he had taken a new lease of life. His
+guide, that giant in courage and intelligence, finished his work
+of devotion by carrying him across the hot, slippery, scarcely
+discernible track on the granite. Behind him lay the hell of
+burning sand, before him the earthly paradise of the most
+beautiful oasis in the desert.
+
+The Duchess, struck from the first by the appearance of this
+romantic figure, was even more impressed when she learned that
+this was that Marquis de Montriveau of whom she had dreamed
+during the night. She had been with him among the hot desert
+sands, he had been the companion of her nightmare wanderings; for
+such a woman was not this a delightful presage of a new interest
+in her life? And never was a man's exterior a better exponent of
+his character; never were curious glances so well justified. The
+principal characteristic of his great, square-hewn head was the
+thick, luxuriant black hair which framed his face, and gave him a
+strikingly close resemblance to General Kleber; and the likeness
+still held good in the vigorous forehead, in the outlines of his
+face, the quiet fearlessness of his eyes, and a kind of fiery
+vehemence expressed by strongly marked features. He was short,
+deep-chested, and muscular as a lion. There was something of the
+despot about him, and an indescribable suggestion of the security
+of strength in his gait, bearing, and slightest movements. He
+seemed to know that his will was irresistible, perhaps because he
+wished for nothing unjust. And yet, like all really strong men,
+he was mild of speech, simple in his manners, and kindly natured;
+although it seemed as if, in the stress of a great crisis, all
+these finer qualities must disappear, and the man would show
+himself implacable, unshaken in his resolve, terrific in action.
+There was a certain drawing in of the inner line of the lips
+which, to a close observer, indicated an ironical bent.
+
+The Duchesse de Langeais, realising that a fleeting glory was to
+be won by such a conquest, made up her mind to gain a lover in
+Armand de Montriveau during the brief interval before the
+Duchesse de Maufrigneuse brought him to be introduced. She would
+prefer him above the others; she would attach him to herself,
+display all her powers of coquetry for him. It was a fancy, such
+a merest Duchess's whim as furnished a Lope or a Calderon with
+the plot of the _Dog in the Manger_. She would not suffer another
+woman to engross him; but she had not the remotest intention of
+being his.
+
+Nature had given the Duchess every qualification for the part of
+coquette, and education had perfected her. Women envied her, and
+men fell in love with her, not without reason. Nothing that can
+inspire love, justify it, and give it lasting empire was wanting
+in her. Her style of beauty, her manner, her voice, her bearing,
+all combined to give her that instinctive coquetry which seems to
+be the consciousness of power. Her shape was graceful; perhaps
+there was a trace of self-consciousness in her changes of
+movement, the one affectation that could be laid to her charge;
+but everything about her was a part of her personality, from her
+least little gesture to the peculiar turn of her phrases, the
+demure glance of her eyes. Her great lady's grace, her most
+striking characteristic, had not destroyed the very French quick
+mobility of her person. There was an extraordinary fascination
+in her swift, incessant changes of attitude. She seemed as if
+she surely would be a most delicious mistress when her corset and
+the encumbering costume of her part were laid aside. All the
+rapture of love surely was latent in the freedom of her
+expressive glances, in her caressing tones, in the charm of her
+words. She gave glimpses of the high-born courtesan within her,
+vainly protesting against the creeds of the duchess.
+
+You might sit near her through an evening, she would be gay and
+melancholy in turn, and her gaiety, like her sadness, seemed
+spontaneous. She could be gracious, disdainful, insolent, or
+confiding at will. Her apparent good nature was real; she had no
+temptation to descend to malignity. But at each moment her mood
+changed; she was full of confidence or craft; her moving
+tenderness would give place to a heart-breaking hardness and
+insensibility. Yet how paint her as she was, without bringing
+together all the extremes of feminine nature? In a word, the
+Duchess was anything that she wished to be or to seem. Her face
+was slightly too long. There was a grace in it, and a certain
+thinness and fineness that recalled the portraits of the Middle
+Ages. Her skin was white, with a faint rose tint. Everything
+about her erred, as it were, by an excess of delicacy.
+
+M. de Montriveau willingly consented to be introduced to the
+Duchesse de Langeais; and she, after the manner of persons whose
+sensitive taste leads them to avoid banalities, refrained from
+overwhelming him with questions and compliments. She received
+him with a gracious deference which could not fail to flatter a
+man of more than ordinary powers, for the fact that a man rises
+above the ordinary level implies that he possesses something of
+that tact which makes women quick to read feeling. If the
+Duchess showed any curiosity, it was by her glances; her
+compliments were conveyed in her manner; there was a winning
+grace displayed in her words, a subtle suggestion of a desire to
+please which she of all women knew the art of manifesting. Yet
+her whole conversation was but, in a manner, the body of the
+letter; the postscript with the principal thought in it was still
+to come. After half an hour spent in ordinary talk, in which the
+words gained all their value from her tone and smiles, M. de
+Montriveau was about to retire discreetly, when the Duchess
+stopped him with an expressive gesture.
+
+"I do not know, monsieur, whether these few minutes during which
+I have had the pleasure of talking to you proved so sufficiently
+attractive, that I may venture to ask you to call upon me; I am
+afraid that it may be very selfish of me to wish to have you all
+to myself. If I should be so fortunate as to find that my house
+is agreeable to you, you will always find me at home in the
+evening until ten o'clock."
+
+The invitation was given with such irresistible grace, that M. de
+Montriveau could not refuse to accept it. When he fell back
+again among the groups of men gathered at a distance from the
+women, his friends congratulated him, half laughingly, half in
+earnest, on the extraordinary reception vouchsafed him by the
+Duchesse de Langeais. The difficult and brilliant conquest had
+been made beyond a doubt, and the glory of it was reserved for
+the Artillery of the Guard. It is easy to imagine the jests,
+good and bad, when this topic had once been started; the world of
+Paris salons is so eager for amusement, and a joke lasts for such
+a short time, that everyone is eager to make the most of it while
+it is fresh.
+
+All unconsciously, the General felt flattered by this nonsense.
+From his place where he had taken his stand, his eyes were drawn
+again and again to the Duchess by countless wavering reflections.
+He could not help admitting to himself that of all the women
+whose beauty had captivated his eyes, not one had seemed to be a
+more exquisite embodiment of faults and fair qualities blended in
+a completeness that might realise the dreams of earliest manhood.
+Is there a man in any rank of life that has not felt indefinable
+rapture in his secret soul over the woman singled out (if only in
+his dreams) to be his own; when she, in body, soul, and social
+aspects, satisfies his every requirement, a thrice perfect woman?
+And if this threefold perfection that flatters his pride is no
+argument for loving her, it is beyond cavil one of the great
+inducements to the sentiment. Love would soon be convalescent,
+as the eighteenth century moralist remarked, were it not for
+vanity. And it is certainly true that for everyone, man or
+woman, there is a wealth of pleasure in the superiority of the
+beloved. Is she set so high by birth that a contemptuous glance
+can never wound her? is she wealthy enough to surround herself
+with state which falls nothing short of royalty, of kings, of
+finance during their short reign of splendour? is she so
+ready-witted that a keen-edged jest never brings her into
+confusion? beautiful enough to rival any woman?--Is it such a
+small thing to know that your self-love will never suffer through
+her? A man makes these reflections in the twinkling of an eye.
+And how if, in the future opened out by early ripened passion, he
+catches glimpses of the changeful delight of her charm, the frank
+innocence of a maiden soul, the perils of love's voyage, the
+thousand folds of the veil of coquetry? Is not this enough to
+move the coldest man's heart?
+
+This, therefore, was M. de Montriveau's position with regard to
+woman; his past life in some measure explaining the extraordinary
+fact. He had been thrown, when little more than a boy, into the
+hurricane of Napoleon's wars; his life had been spent on fields
+of battle. Of women he knew just so much as a traveller knows of
+a country when he travels across it in haste from one inn to
+another. The verdict which Voltaire passed upon his eighty years
+of life might, perhaps, have been applied by Montriveau to his
+own thirty-seven years of existence; had he not thirty-seven
+follies with which to reproach himself? At his age he was as
+much a novice in love as the lad that has just been furtively
+reading _Faublas_. Of women he had nothing to learn; of love he
+knew nothing; and thus, desires, quite unknown before, sprang
+from this virginity of feeling.
+
+There are men here and there as much engrossed in the work
+demanded of them by poverty or ambition, art or science, as M. de
+Montriveau by war and a life of adventure--these know what it is
+to be in this unusual position if they very seldom confess to it.
+Every man in Paris is supposed to have been in love. No woman in
+Paris cares to take what other women have passed over. The dread
+of being taken for a fool is the source of the coxcomb's bragging
+so common in France; for in France to have the reputation of a
+fool is to be a foreigner in one's own country. Vehement desire
+seized on M. de Montriveau, desire that had gathered strength
+from the heat of the desert and the first stirrings of a heart
+unknown as yet in its suppressed turbulence.
+
+A strong man, and violent as he was strong, he could keep mastery
+over himself; but as he talked of indifferent things, he retired
+within himself, and swore to possess this woman, for through that
+thought lay the only way to love for him. Desire became a solemn
+compact made with himself, an oath after the manner of the Arabs
+among whom he had lived; for among them a vow is a kind of
+contract made with Destiny a man's whole future is solemnly
+pledged to fulfil it, and everything even his own death, is
+regarded simply as a means to the one end.
+
+A younger man would have said to himself, "I should very much
+like to have the Duchess for my mistress!" or, "If the Duchesse
+de Langeais cared for a man, he would be a very lucky rascal!"
+But the General said, "I will have Mme de Langeais for my
+mistress." And if a man takes such an idea into his head when
+his heart has never been touched before, and love begins to be a
+kind of religion with him, he little knows in what a hell he has
+set his foot.
+
+Armand de Montriveau suddenly took flight and went home in the
+first hot fever-fit of the first love that he had known. When a
+man has kept all his boyish beliefs, illusions, frankness, and
+impetuosity into middle age, his first impulse is, as it were, to
+stretch out a hand to take the thing that he desires; a little
+later he realizes that there is a gulf set between them, and that
+it is all but impossible to cross it. A sort of childish
+impatience seizes him, he wants the thing the more, and trembles
+or cries. Wherefore, the next day, after the stormiest
+reflections that had yet perturbed his mind, Armand de Montriveau
+discovered that he was under the yoke of the senses, and his
+bondage made the heavier by his love.
+
+The woman so cavalierly treated in his thoughts of yesterday had
+become a most sacred and dreadful power. She was to be his
+world, his life, from this time forth. The greatest joy, the
+keenest anguish, that he had yet known grew colorless before the
+bare recollection of the least sensation stirred in him by her.
+The swiftest revolutions in a man's outward life only touch his
+interests, while passion brings a complete revulsion of feeling.
+And so in those who live by feeling, rather than by self-interest,
+the doers rather than the reasoners, the sanguine rather than the
+lymphatic temperaments, love works a complete revolution. In a
+flash, with one single reflection, Armand de Montriveau wiped out
+his whole past life.
+
+A score of times he asked himself, like a boy, "Shall I go, or
+shall I not?" and then at last he dressed, came to the Hotel de
+Langeais towards eight o'clock that evening, and was admitted.
+He was to see the woman--ah! not the woman--the idol that he had
+seen yesterday, among lights, a fresh innocent girl in gauze and
+silken lace and veiling. He burst in upon her to declare his
+love, as if it were a question of firing the first shot on a
+field of battle.
+
+Poor novice! He found his ethereal sylphide shrouded in a brown
+cashmere dressing-gown ingeniously befrilled, lying languidly
+stretched out upon a sofa in a dimly lighted boudoir. Mme de
+Langeais did not so much as rise, nothing was visible of her but
+her face, her hair was loose but confined by a scarf. A hand
+indicated a seat, a hand that seemed white as marble to
+Montriveau by the flickering light of a single candle at the
+further side of the room, and a voice as soft as the light said:
+
+"If it had been anyone else, M. le Marquis, a friend with whom I
+could dispense with ceremony, or a mere acquaintance in whom I
+felt but slight interest, I should have closed my door. I am
+exceedingly unwell."
+
+"I will go," Armand said to himself.
+
+"But I do not know how it is," she continued (and the simple
+warrior attributed the shining of her eyes to fever), "perhaps
+it was a presentiment of your kind visit (and no one can be more
+sensible of the prompt attention than I), but the vapors have
+left my head."
+
+"Then may I stay?"
+
+"Oh, I should be very sorry to allow you to go. I told myself
+this morning that it was impossible that I should have made the
+slightest impression on your mind, and that in all probability
+you took my request for one of the commonplaces of which
+Parisians are lavish on every occasion. And I forgave your
+ingratitude in advance. An explorer from the deserts is not
+supposed to know how exclusive we are in our friendships in the
+Faubourg."
+
+The gracious, half-murmured words dropped one by one, as if they
+had been weighted with the gladness that apparently brought them
+to her lips. The Duchess meant to have the full benefit of her
+headache, and her speculation was fully successful. The General,
+poor man, was really distressed by the lady's simulated distress.
+Like Crillon listening to the story of the Crucifixion, he was
+ready to draw his sword against the vapors. How could a man
+dare to speak just then to this suffering woman of the love that
+she inspired? Armand had already felt that it would be absurd to
+fire off a declaration of love point-blank at one so far above
+other women. With a single thought came understanding of the
+delicacies of feeling, of the soul's requirements. To love: what
+was that but to know how to plead, to beg for alms, to wait? And
+as for the love that he felt, must he not prove it? His tongue
+was mute, it was frozen by the conventions of the noble Faubourg,
+the majesty of a sick headache, the bashfulness of love. But no
+power on earth could veil his glances; the heat and the Infinite
+of the desert blazed in eyes calm as a panther's, beneath the
+lids that fell so seldom. The Duchess enjoyed the steady gaze
+that enveloped her in light and warmth.
+
+"Mme la Duchesse," he answered, "I am afraid I express my
+gratitude for your goodness very badly. At this moment I have
+but one desire--I wish it were in my power to cure the pain."
+
+"Permit me to throw this off, I feel too warm now," she said,
+gracefully tossing aside a cushion that covered her feet.
+
+"Madame, in Asia your feet would be worth some ten thousand
+sequins.
+
+"A traveler's compliment!" smiled she.
+
+It pleased the sprightly lady to involve a rough soldier in a
+labyrinth of nonsense, commonplaces, and meaningless talk, in
+which he manoeuvred, in military language, as Prince Charles
+might have done at close quarters with Napoleon. She took a
+mischievous amusement in reconnoitring the extent of his
+infatuation by the number of foolish speeches extracted from a
+novice whom she led step by step into a hopeless maze, meaning to
+leave him there in confusion. She began by laughing at him, but
+nevertheless it pleased her to make him forget how time went.
+
+The length of a first visit is frequently a compliment, but
+Armand was innocent of any such intent. The famous explorer
+spent an hour in chat on all sorts of subjects, said nothing that
+he meant to say, and was feeling that he was only an instrument
+on whom this woman played, when she rose, sat upright, drew the
+scarf from her hair, and wrapped it about her throat, leant her
+elbow on the cushions, did him the honour of a complete cure, and
+rang for lights. The most graceful movement succeeded to
+complete repose. She turned to M. de Montriveau, from whom she
+had just extracted a confidence which seemed to interest her
+deeply, and said:
+
+"You wish to make game of me by trying to make me believe that
+you have never loved. It is a man's great pretension with us.
+And we always believe it! Out of pure politeness. Do we not
+know what to expect from it for ourselves? Where is the man that
+has found but a single opportunity of losing his heart? But you
+love to deceive us, and we submit to be deceived, poor foolish
+creatures that we are; for your hypocrisy is, after all, a homage
+paid to the superiority of our sentiments, which are all
+purity."
+
+The last words were spoken with a disdainful pride that made the
+novice in love feel like a worthless bale flung into the deep,
+while the Duchess was an angel soaring back to her particular
+heaven.
+
+"Confound it!" thought Armand de Montriveau, "how am I to tell
+this wild thing that I love her?"
+
+He had told her already a score of times; or rather, the Duchess
+had a score of times read his secret in his eyes; and the passion
+in this unmistakably great man promised her amusement, and an
+interest in her empty life. So she prepared with no little
+dexterity to raise a certain number of redoubts for him to carry
+by storm before he should gain an entrance into her heart.
+Montriveau should overleap one difficulty after another; he
+should be a plaything for her caprice, just as an insect teased
+by children is made to jump from one finger to another, and in
+spite of all its pains is kept in the same place by its
+mischievous tormentor. And yet it gave the Duchess inexpressible
+happiness to see that this strong man had told her the truth.
+Armand had never loved, as he had said. He was about to go, in a
+bad humour with himself, and still more out of humour with her;
+but it delighted her to see a sullenness that she could conjure
+away with a word, a glance, or a gesture.
+
+"Will you come tomorrow evening?" she asked. "I am going to a
+ball, but I shall stay at home for you until ten o'clock."
+
+Montriveau spent most of the next day in smoking an indeterminate
+quantity of cigars in his study window, and so got through the
+hours till he could dress and go to the Hotel de Langeais. To
+anyone who had known the magnificent worth of the man, it would
+have been grievous to see him grown so small, so distrustful of
+himself; the mind that might have shed light over undiscovered
+worlds shrunk to the proportions of a she-coxcomb's boudoir.
+Even he himself felt that he had fallen so low already in his
+happiness that to save his life he could not have told his love
+to one of his closest friends. Is there not always a trace of
+shame in the lover's bashfulness, and perhaps in woman a certain
+exultation over diminished masculine stature? Indeed, but for a
+host of motives of this kind, how explain why women are nearly
+always the first to betray the secret?--a secret of which,
+perhaps, they soon weary.
+
+"Mme la Duchesse cannot see visitors, monsieur," said the man;
+"she is dressing, she begs you to wait for her here."
+
+Armand walked up and down the drawing-room, studying her taste in
+the least details. He admired Mme de Langeais herself in the
+objects of her choosing; they revealed her life before he could
+grasp her personality and ideas. About an hour later the Duchess
+came noiselessly out of her chamber. Montriveau turned, saw her
+flit like a shadow across the room, and trembled. She came up to
+him, not with a bourgeoise's enquiry, "How do I look?" She was
+sure of herself; her steady eyes said plainly, "I am adorned to
+please you."
+
+No one surely, save the old fairy godmother of some princess in
+disguise, could have wound a cloud of gauze about the dainty
+throat, so that the dazzling satin skin beneath should gleam
+through the gleaming folds. The Duchess was dazzling. The pale
+blue colour of her gown, repeated in the flowers in her hair,
+appeared by the richness of its hue to lend substance to a
+fragile form grown too wholly ethereal; for as she glided towards
+Armand, the loose ends of her scarf floated about her, putting
+that valiant warrior in mind of the bright damosel flies that
+hover now over water, now over the flowers with which they seem
+to mingle and blend.
+
+"I have kept you waiting," she said, with the tone that a woman
+can always bring into her voice for the man whom she wishes to
+please.
+
+"I would wait patiently through an eternity," said he, "if I
+were sure of finding a divinity so fair; but it is no compliment
+to speak of your beauty to you; nothing save worship could touch
+you. Suffer me only to kiss your scarf."
+
+"Oh, fie!" she said, with a commanding gesture, "I esteem you
+enough to give you my hand."
+
+She held it out for his kiss. A woman's hand, still moist from
+the scented bath, has a soft freshness, a velvet smoothness that
+sends a tingling thrill from the lips to the soul. And if a man
+is attracted to a woman, and his senses are as quick to feel
+pleasure as his heart is full of love, such a kiss, though chaste
+in appearance, may conjure up a terrific storm.
+
+"Will you always give it me like this?" the General asked
+humbly when he had pressed that dangerous hand respectfully to
+his lips.
+
+"Yes, but there we must stop," she said, smiling. She sat
+down, and seemed very slow over putting on her gloves, trying to
+slip the unstretched kid over all her fingers at once, while she
+watched M. de Montriveau; and he was lost in admiration of the
+Duchess and those repeated graceful movements of hers.
+
+"Ah! you were punctual," she said; "that is right. I like
+punctuality. It is the courtesy of kings, His Majesty says; but
+to my thinking, from you men it is the most respectful flattery
+of all. Now, is it not? Just tell me."
+
+Again she gave him a side glance to express her insidious
+friendship, for he was dumb with happiness sheer happiness
+through such nothings as these! Oh, the Duchess understood _son
+metier de femme_--the art and mystery of being a woman--most
+marvelously well; she knew, to admiration, how to raise a man in
+his own esteem as he humbled himself to her; how to reward every
+step of the descent to sentimental folly with hollow flatteries.
+
+"You will never forget to come at nine o'clock."
+
+"No; but are you going to a ball every night?"
+
+"Do I know?" she answered, with a little childlike shrug of the
+shoulders; the gesture was meant to say that she was nothing if
+not capricious, and that a lover must take her as she
+was.--"Besides," she added, "what is that to you? You shall
+be my escort."
+
+"That would be difficult tonight," he objected; "I am not
+properly dressed."
+
+"It seems to me," she returned loftily, "that if anyone has a
+right to complain of your costume, it is I. Know, therefore,
+_monsieur le voyageur_, that if I accept a man's arm, he is
+forthwith above the laws of fashion, nobody would venture to
+criticise him. You do not know the world, I see; I like you the
+better for it."
+
+And even as she spoke she swept him into the pettiness of that
+world by the attempt to initiate him into the vanities of a woman
+of fashion.
+
+"If she chooses to do a foolish thing for me, I should be a
+simpleton to prevent her," said Armand to himself. "She has a
+liking for me beyond a doubt; and as for the world, she cannot
+despise it more than I do. So, now for the ball if she likes."
+
+The Duchess probably thought that if the General came with her
+and appeared in a ballroom in boots and a black tie, nobody would
+hesitate to believe that he was violently in love with her. And
+the General was well pleased that the queen of fashion should
+think of compromising herself for him; hope gave him wit. He had
+gained confidence, he brought out his thoughts and views; he felt
+nothing of the restraint that weighed on his spirits yesterday.
+His talk was interesting and animated, and full of those first
+confidences so sweet to make and to receive.
+
+Was Mme de Langeais really carried away by his talk, or had she
+devised this charming piece of coquetry? At any rate, she looked
+up mischievously as the clock struck twelve.
+
+"Ah! you have made me too late for the ball!" she exclaimed,
+surprised and vexed that she had forgotten how time was going.
+
+The next moment she approved the exchange of pleasures with a
+smile that made Armand's heart give a sudden leap.
+
+"I certainly promised Mme de Beauseant," she added. "They are
+all expecting me."
+
+"Very well--go."
+
+"No--go on. I will stay. Your Eastern adventures fascinate me.
+Tell me the whole story of your life. I love to share in a brave
+man's hardships, and I feel them all, indeed I do!"
+
+She was playing with her scarf, twisting it and pulling it to
+pieces, with jerky, impatient movements that seemed to tell of
+inward dissatisfaction and deep reflection.
+
+"_We_ are fit for nothing," she went on. "Ah! we are
+contemptible, selfish, frivolous creatures. We can bore
+ourselves with amusements, and that is all we can do. Not one of
+us that understands that she has a part to play in life. In old
+days in France, women were beneficent lights; they lived to
+comfort those that mourned, to encourage high virtues, to reward
+artists and stir new life with noble thoughts. If the world has
+grown so petty, ours is the fault. You make me loathe the ball
+and this world in which I live. No, I am not giving up much for
+you."
+
+She had plucked her scarf to pieces, as a child plays with a
+flower, pulling away all the petals one by one; and now she
+crushed it into a ball, and flung it away. She could show her
+swan's neck.
+
+She rang the bell. "I shall not go out tonight," she told the
+footman. Her long, blue eyes turned timidly to Armand; and by
+the look of misgiving in them, he knew that he was meant to take
+the order for a confession, for a first and great favour. There
+was a pause, filled with many thoughts, before she spoke with
+that tenderness which is often in women's voices, and not so
+often in their hearts. "You have had a hard life," she said.
+
+"No," returned Armand. "Until today I did not know what
+happiness was."
+
+"Then you know it now?" she asked, looking at him with a
+demure, keen glance.
+
+"What is happiness for me henceforth but this--to see you, to
+hear you? . . . Until now I have only known privation; now I
+know that I can be unhappy----"
+
+"That will do, that will do," she said. "You must go; it is
+past midnight. Let us regard appearances. People must not talk
+about us. I do not know quite what I shall say; but the headache
+is a good-natured friend, and tells no tales."
+
+"Is there to be a ball tomorrow night?"
+
+"You would grow accustomed to the life, I think. Very well.
+Yes, we will go again tomorrow night."
+
+There was not a happier man in the world than Armand when he went
+out from her. Every evening he came to Mme de Langeais' at the
+hour kept for him by a tacit understanding.
+
+It would be tedious, and, for the many young men who carry a
+redundance of such sweet memories in their hearts, it were
+superfluous to follow the story step by step--the progress of a
+romance growing in those hours spent together, a romance
+controlled entirely by a woman's will. If sentiment went too
+fast, she would raise a quarrel over a word, or when words
+flagged behind her thoughts, she appealed to the feelings.
+Perhaps the only way of following such Penelope's progress is by
+marking its outward and visible signs.
+
+As, for instance, within a few days of their first meeting, the
+assiduous General had won and kept the right to kiss his lady's
+insatiable hands. Wherever Mme de Langeais went, M. de
+Montriveau was certain to be seen, till people jokingly called
+him "Her Grace's orderly." And already he had made enemies;
+others were jealous, and envied him his position. Mme de
+Langeais had attained her end. The Marquis de Montriveau was
+among her numerous train of adorers, and a means of humiliating
+those who boasted of their progress in her good graces, for she
+publicly gave him preference over them all.
+
+"Decidedly, M. de Montriveau is the man for whom the Duchess
+shows a preference," pronounced Mme de Serizy.
+
+And who in Paris does not know what it means when a woman "shows
+a preference?" All went on therefore according to prescribed
+rule. The anecdotes which people were pleased to circulate
+concerning the General put that warrior in so formidable a light,
+that the more adroit quietly dropped their pretensions to the
+Duchess, and remained in her train merely to turn the position to
+account, and to use her name and personality to make better terms
+for themselves with certain stars of the second magnitude. And
+those lesser powers were delighted to take a lover away from Mme
+de Langeais. The Duchess was keen-sighted enough to see these
+desertions and treaties with the enemy; and her pride would not
+suffer her to be the dupe of them. As M. de Talleyrand, one of
+her great admirers, said, she knew how to take a second edition
+of revenge, laying the two-edged blade of a sarcasm between the
+pairs in these "morganatic" unions. Her mocking disdain
+contributed not a little to increase her reputation as an
+extremely clever woman and a person to be feared. Her character
+for virtue was consolidated while she amused herself with other
+people's secrets, and kept her own to herself. Yet, after two
+months of assiduities, she saw with a vague dread in the depths
+of her soul that M. de Montriveau understood nothing of the
+subtleties of flirtation after the manner of the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain; he was taking a Parisienne's coquetry in earnest.
+
+"You will not tame _him_, dear Duchess," the old Vidame de
+Pamiers had said. "'Tis a first cousin to the eagle; he will
+carry you off to his eyrie if you do not take care."
+
+Then Mme de Langeais felt afraid. The shrewd old noble's words
+sounded like a prophecy. The next day she tried to turn love to
+hate. She was harsh, exacting, irritable, unbearable; Montriveau
+disarmed her with angelic sweetness. She so little knew the
+great generosity of a large nature, that the kindly jests with
+which her first complaints were met went to her heart. She
+sought a quarrel, and found proofs of affection. She persisted.
+
+"When a man idolizes you, how can he have vexed you?" asked
+Armand.
+
+"You do not vex me," she answered, suddenly grown gentle and
+submissive. "But why do you wish to compromise me? For me you
+ought to be nothing but a _friend_. Do you not know it? I wish I
+could see that you had the instincts, the delicacy of real
+friendship, so that I might lose neither your respect nor the
+pleasure that your presence gives me."
+
+"Nothing but your _friend_!" he cried out. The terrible word
+sent an electric shock through his brain. "On the faith of
+these happy hours that you grant me, I sleep and wake in your
+heart. And now today, for no reason, you are pleased to destroy
+all the secret hopes by which I live. You have required promises
+of such constancy in me, you have said so much of your horror of
+women made up of nothing but caprice; and now do you wish me to
+understand that, like other women here in Paris, you have
+passions, and know nothing of love? If so, why did you ask my
+life of me? why did you accept it?"
+
+"I was wrong, my friend. Oh, it is wrong of a woman to yield to
+such intoxication when she must not and cannot make any return."
+
+"I understand. You have merely been coquetting with me,
+and----"
+
+"Coquetting?" she repeated. "I detest coquetry. A coquette
+Armand, makes promises to many, and gives herself to none; and a
+woman who keeps such promises is a libertine. This much I
+believed I had grasped of our code. But to be melancholy with
+humorists, gay with the frivolous, and politic with ambitious
+souls; to listen to a babbler with every appearance of
+admiration, to talk of war with a soldier, wax enthusiastic with
+philanthropists over the good of the nation, and to give to each
+one his little dole of flattery--it seems to me that this is as
+much a matter of necessity as dress, diamonds, and gloves, or
+flowers in one's hair. Such talk is the moral counterpart of the
+toilette. You take it up and lay it aside with the plumed
+head-dress. Do you call this coquetry? Why, I have never
+treated you as I treat everyone else. With you, my friend, I am
+sincere. Have I not always shared your views, and when you
+convinced me after a discussion, was I not always perfectly glad?
+In short, I love you, but only as a devout and pure woman may
+love. I have thought it over. I am a married woman, Armand. My
+way of life with M. de Langeais gives me liberty to bestow my
+heart; but law and custom leave me no right to dispose of my
+person. If a woman loses her honour, she is an outcast in any
+rank of life; and I have yet to meet with a single example of a
+man that realizes all that our sacrifices demand of him in such a
+case. Quite otherwise. Anyone can foresee the rupture between
+Mme de Beauseant and M. d'Ajuda (for he is going to marry Mlle de
+Rochefide, it seems), that affair made it clear to my mind that
+these very sacrifices on the woman's part are almost always the
+cause of the man's desertion. If you had loved me sincerely, you
+would have kept away for a time.--Now, I will lay aside all
+vanity for you; is not that something? What will not people say
+of a woman to whom no man attaches himself? Oh, she is
+heartless, brainless, soulless; and what is more, devoid of
+charm! Coquettes will not spare me. They will rob me of the
+very qualities that mortify them. So long as my reputation is
+safe, what do I care if my rivals deny my merits? They certainly
+will not inherit them. Come, my friend; give up something for
+her who sacrifices so much for you. Do not come quite so often;
+I shall love you none the less."
+
+"Ah!" said Armand, with the profound irony of a wounded heart
+in his words and tone. "Love, so the scribblers say, only feeds
+on illusions. Nothing could be truer, I see; I am expected to
+imagine that I am loved. But, there!--there are some thoughts
+like wounds, from which there is no recovery. My belief in you
+was one of the last left to me, and now I see that there is
+nothing left to believe in this earth."
+
+She began to smile.
+
+"Yes," Montriveau went on in an unsteady voice, "this Catholic
+faith to which you wish to convert me is a lie that men make for
+themselves; hope is a lie at the expense of the future; pride, a
+lie between us and our fellows; and pity, and prudence, and
+terror are cunning lies. And now my happiness is to be one more
+lying delusion; I am expected to delude myself, to be willing to
+give gold coin for silver to the end. If you can so easily
+dispense with my visits; if you can confess me neither as your
+friend nor your lover, you do not care for me! And I, poor fool
+that I am, tell myself this, and know it, and love you!"
+
+"But, dear me, poor Armand, you are flying into a passion!"
+
+"I flying into a passion?"
+
+"Yes. You think that the whole question is opened because I ask
+you to be careful."
+
+In her heart of hearts she was delighted with the anger that
+leapt out in her lover's eyes. Even as she tortured him, she was
+criticising him, watching every slightest change that passed over
+his face. If the General had been so unluckily inspired as to
+show himself generous without discussion (as happens occasionally
+with some artless souls), he would have been a banished man
+forever, accused and convicted of not knowing how to love. Most
+women are not displeased to have their code of right and wrong
+broken through. Do they not flatter themselves that they never
+yield except to force? But Armand was not learned enough in this
+kind of lore to see the snare ingeniously spread for him by the
+Duchess. So much of the child was there in the strong man in
+love.
+
+"If all you want is to preserve appearances," he began in his
+simplicity, "I am willing to----"
+
+"Simply to preserve appearances!" the lady broke in; "why,
+what idea can you have of me? Have I given you the slightest
+reason to suppose that I can be yours?"
+
+"Why, what else are we talking about?" demanded Montriveau.
+
+"Monsieur, you frighten me! . . . No, pardon me. Thank you,"
+she added, coldly; "thank you, Armand. You have given me timely
+warning of imprudence; committed quite unconsciously, believe it,
+my friend. You know how to endure, you say. I also know how to
+endure. We will not see each other for a time; and then, when
+both of us have contrived to recover calmness to some extent, we
+will think about arrangements for a happiness sanctioned by the
+world. I am young, Armand; a man with no delicacy might tempt a
+woman of four-and-twenty to do many foolish, wild things for his
+sake. But _you_! You will be my friend, promise me that you
+will?"
+
+"The woman of four-and-twenty," returned he, "knows what she
+is about."
+
+He sat down on the sofa in the boudoir, and leant his head on his
+hands.
+
+"Do you love me, madame?" he asked at length, raising his head,
+and turning a face full of resolution upon her. "Say it
+straight out; Yes or No!"
+
+His direct question dismayed the Duchess more than a threat of
+suicide could have done; indeed, the woman of the nineteenth
+century is not to be frightened by that stale stratagem, the
+sword has ceased to be part of the masculine costume. But in the
+effect of eyelids and lashes, in the contraction of the gaze, in
+the twitching of the lips, is there not some influence that
+communicates the terror which they express with such vivid
+magnetic power?
+
+"Ah, if I were free, if----"
+
+"Oh! is it only your husband that stands in the way?" the
+General exclaimed joyfully, as he strode to and fro in the
+boudoir. "Dear Antoinette, I wield a more absolute power than
+the Autocrat of all the Russias. I have a compact with Fate; I
+can advance or retard destiny, so far as men are concerned, at my
+fancy, as you alter the hands of a watch. If you can direct the
+course of fate in our political machinery, it simply means (does
+it not?) that you understand the ins and outs of it. You shall
+be free before very long, and then you must remember your
+promise."
+
+"Armand!" she cried. "What do you mean? Great heavens! Can
+you imagine that I am to be the prize of a crime? Do you want to
+kill me? Why! you cannot have any religion in you! For my own
+part, I fear God. M. de Langeais may have given me reason to
+hate him, but I wish him no manner of harm."
+
+M. de Montriveau beat a tattoo on the marble chimney-piece, and
+only looked composedly at the lady.
+
+"Dear," continued she, "respect him. He does not love me, he
+is not kind to me, but I have duties to fulfil with regard to
+him. What would I not do to avert the calamities with which you
+threaten him?--Listen," she continued after a pause, "I will
+not say another word about separation; you shall come here as in
+the past, and I will still give you my forehead to kiss. If I
+refused once or twice, it was pure coquetry, indeed it was. But
+let us understand each other," she added as he came closer.
+"You will permit me to add to the number of my satellites; to
+receive even more visitors in the morning than heretofore; I mean
+to be twice as frivolous; I mean to use you to all appearance
+very badly; to feign a rupture; you must come not quite so often,
+and then, afterwards----"
+
+While she spoke, she had allowed him to put an arm about her
+waist, Montriveau was holding her tightly to him, and she seemed
+to feel the exceeding pleasure that women usually feel in that
+close contact, an earnest of the bliss of a closer union. And
+then, doubtless she meant to elicit some confidence, for she
+raised herself on tiptoe, and laid her forehead against Armand's
+burning lips.
+
+"And then," Montriveau finished her sentence for her, "you
+shall not speak to me of your husband. You ought not to think of
+him again."
+
+Mme de Langeais was silent awhile.
+
+"At least," she said, after a significant pause, "at least you
+will do all that I wish without grumbling, you will not be
+naughty; tell me so, my friend? You wanted to frighten me, did
+you not? Come, now, confess it? . . . You are too good ever to
+think of crimes. But is it possible that you can have secrets
+that I do not know? How can you control Fate?"
+
+"Now, when you confirm the gift of the heart that you have
+already given me, I am far too happy to know exactly how to
+answer you. I can trust you, Antoinette; I shall have no
+suspicion, no unfounded jealousy of you. But if accident should
+set you free, we shall be one----"
+
+"Accident, Armand?" (With that little dainty turn of the head
+that seems to say so many things, a gesture that such women as
+the Duchess can use on light occasions, as a great singer can act
+with her voice.) "Pure accident," she repeated. "Mind that.
+If anything should happen to M. de Langeais by your fault, I
+should never be yours."
+
+And so they parted, mutually content. The Duchess had made a
+pact that left her free to prove to the world by words and deeds
+that M. de Montriveau was no lover of hers. And as for him, the
+wily Duchess vowed to tire him out. He should have nothing of
+her beyond the little concessions snatched in the course of
+contests that she could stop at her pleasure. She had so pretty
+an art of revoking the grant of yesterday, she was so much in
+earnest in her purpose to remain technically virtuous, that she
+felt that there was not the slightest danger for her in
+preliminaries fraught with peril for a woman less sure of her
+self-command. After all, the Duchess was practically separated
+from her husband; a marriage long since annulled was no great
+sacrifice to make to her love.
+
+Montriveau on his side was quite happy to win the vaguest
+promise, glad once for all to sweep aside, with all scruples of
+conjugal fidelity, her stock of excuses for refusing herself to
+his love. He had gained ground a little, and congratulated
+himself. And so for a time he took unfair advantage of the
+rights so hardly won. More a boy than he had ever been in his
+life, he gave himself up to all the childishness that makes first
+love the flower of life. He was a child again as he poured out
+all his soul, all the thwarted forces that passion had given him,
+upon her hands, upon the dazzling forehead that looked so pure to
+his eyes; upon her fair hair; on the tufted curls where his lips
+were pressed. And the Duchess, on whom his love was poured like
+a flood, was vanquished by the magnetic influence of her lover's
+warmth; she hesitated to begin the quarrel that must part them
+forever. She was more a woman than she thought, this slight
+creature, in her effort to reconcile the demands of religion with
+the ever-new sensations of vanity, the semblance of pleasure
+which turns a Parisienne's head. Every Sunday she went to Mass;
+she never missed a service; then, when evening came, she was
+steeped in the intoxicating bliss of repressed desire. Armand
+and Mme de Langeais, like Hindoo fakirs, found the reward of
+their continence in the temptations to which it gave rise.
+Possibly, the Duchess had ended by resolving love into fraternal
+caresses, harmless enough, as it might have seemed to the rest of
+the world, while they borrowed extremes of degradation from the
+license of her thoughts. How else explain the incomprehensible
+mystery of her continual fluctuations? Every morning she
+proposed to herself to shut her door on the Marquis de
+Montriveau; every evening, at the appointed hour, she fell under
+the charm of his presence. There was a languid defence; then she
+grew less unkind. Her words were sweet and soothing. They were
+lovers--lovers only could have been thus. For him the Duchess
+would display her most sparkling wit, her most captivating wiles;
+and when at last she had wrought upon his senses and his soul,
+she might submit herself passively to his fierce caresses, but
+she had her _nec plus ultra_ of passion; and when once it was
+reached, she grew angry if he lost the mastery of himself and
+made as though he would pass beyond. No woman on earth can brave
+the consequences of refusal without some motive; nothing is more
+natural than to yield to love; wherefore Mme de Langeais promptly
+raised a second line of fortification, a stronghold less easy to
+carry than the first. She evoked the terrors of religion. Never
+did Father of the Church, however eloquent, plead the cause of
+God better than the Duchess. Never was the wrath of the Most
+High better justified than by her voice. She used no preacher's
+commonplaces, no rhetorical amplifications. No. She had a
+"pulpit-tremor" of her own. To Armand's most passionate
+entreaty, she replied with a tearful gaze, and a gesture in which
+a terrible plenitude of emotion found expression. She stopped
+his mouth with an appeal for mercy. She would not hear another
+word; if she did, she must succumb; and better death than
+criminal happiness.
+
+"Is it nothing to disobey God?" she asked him, recovering a
+voice grown faint in the crises of inward struggles, through
+which the fair actress appeared to find it hard to preserve her
+self-control. "I would sacrifice society, I would give up the
+whole world for you, gladly; but it is very selfish of you to ask
+my whole after-life of me for a moment of pleasure. Come, now!
+are you not happy?" she added, holding out her hand; and
+certainly in her careless toilette the sight of her afforded
+consolations to her lover, who made the most of them.
+
+Sometimes from policy, to keep her hold on a man whose ardent
+passion gave her emotions unknown before, sometimes in weakness,
+she suffered him to snatch a swift kiss; and immediately, in
+feigned terror, she flushed red and exiled Armand from the sofa
+so soon as the sofa became dangerous ground.
+
+"Your joys are sins for me to expiate, Armand; they are paid for
+by penitence and remorse," she cried.
+
+And Montriveau, now at two chairs' distance from that
+aristocratic petticoat, betook himself to blasphemy and railed
+against Providence. The Duchess grew angry at such times.
+
+"My friend," she said drily, "I do not understand why you
+decline to believe in God, for it is impossible to believe in
+man. Hush, do not talk like that. You have too great a nature
+to take up their Liberal nonsense with its pretension to abolish
+God."
+
+Theological and political disputes acted like a cold douche on
+Montriveau; he calmed down; he could not return to love when the
+Duchess stirred up his wrath by suddenly setting him down a
+thousand miles away from the boudoir, discussing theories of
+absolute monarchy, which she defended to admiration. Few women
+venture to be democrats; the attitude of democratic champion is
+scarcely compatible with tyrannous feminine sway. But often, on
+the other hand, the General shook out his mane, dropped politics
+with a leonine growling and lashing of the flanks, and sprang
+upon his prey; he was no longer capable of carrying a heart and
+brain at such variance for very far; he came back, terrible with
+love, to his mistress. And she, if she felt the prick of fancy
+stimulated to a dangerous point, knew that it was time to leave
+her boudoir; she came out of the atmosphere surcharged with
+desires that she drew in with her breath, sat down to the piano,
+and sang the most exquisite songs of modern music, and so baffled
+the physical attraction which at times showed her no mercy,
+though she was strong enough to fight it down.
+
+At such times she was something sublime in Armand's eyes; she was
+not acting, she was genuine; the unhappy lover was convinced that
+she loved him. Her egoistic resistance deluded him into a belief
+that she was a pure and sainted woman; he resigned himself; he
+talked of Platonic love, did this artillery officer!
+
+When Mme de Langeais had played with religion sufficiently to
+suit her own purposes, she played with it again for Armand's
+benefit. She wanted to bring him back to a Christian frame of
+mind; she brought out her edition of _Le Genie du Christianisme_,
+adapted for the use of military men. Montriveau chafed; his yoke
+was heavy. Oh! at that, possessed by the spirit of contradiction,
+she dinned religion into his ears, to see whether God might not
+rid her of this suitor, for the man's persistence was beginning
+to frighten her. And in any case she was glad to prolong any
+quarrel, if it bade fair to keep the dispute on moral grounds
+for an indefinite period; the material struggle which followed
+it was more dangerous.
+
+But if the time of her opposition on the ground of the marriage
+law might be said to be the _epoque civile_ of this sentimental
+warfare, the ensuing phase which might be taken to constitute the
+_epoque religieuse_ had also its crisis and consequent decline of
+severity.
+
+Armand happening to come in very early one evening, found M.
+l'Abbe Gondrand, the Duchess's spiritual director, established in
+an armchair by the fireside, looking as a spiritual director
+might be expected to look while digesting his dinner and the
+charming sins of his penitent. In the ecclesiastic's bearing
+there was a stateliness befitting a dignitary of the Church; and
+the episcopal violet hue already appeared in his dress. At sight
+of his fresh, well-preserved complexion, smooth forehead, and
+ascetic's mouth, Montriveau's countenance grew uncommonly dark;
+he said not a word under the malicious scrutiny of the other's
+gaze, and greeted neither the lady nor the priest. The lover
+apart, Montriveau was not wanting in tact; so a few glances
+exchanged with the bishop-designate told him that here was the
+real forger of the Duchess's armory of scruples.
+
+That an ambitious abbe should control the happiness of a man of
+Montriveau's temper, and by underhand ways! The thought burst in
+a furious tide over his face, clenched his fists, and set him
+chafing and pacing to and fro; but when he came back to his place
+intending to make a scene, a single look from the Duchess was
+enough. He was quiet.
+
+Any other woman would have been put out by her lover's gloomy
+silence; it was quite otherwise with Mme de Langeais. She
+continued her conversation with M. de Gondrand on the necessity
+of re-establishing the Church in its ancient splendour. And she
+talked brilliantly.
+
+The Church, she maintained, ought to be a temporal as well as a
+spiritual power, stating her case better than the Abbe had done,
+and regretting that the Chamber of Peers, unlike the English
+House of Lords, had no bench of bishops. Nevertheless, the Abbe
+rose, yielded his place to the General, and took his leave,
+knowing that in Lent he could play a return game. As for the
+Duchess, Montriveau's behaviour had excited her curiosity to such
+a pitch that she scarcely rose to return her director's low bow.
+
+"What is the matter with you, my friend?"
+
+"Why, I cannot stomach that Abbe of yours."
+
+"Why did you not take a book?" she asked, careless whether the
+Abbe, then closing the door, heard her or no.
+
+The General paused, for the gesture which accompanied the
+Duchess's speech further increased the exceeding insolence of her
+words.
+
+"My dear Antoinette, thank you for giving love precedence of the
+Church; but, for pity's sake, allow me to ask one question."
+
+"Oh! you are questioning me! I am quite willing. You are my
+friend, are you not? I certainly can open the bottom of my heart
+to you; you will see only one image there."
+
+"Do you talk about our love to that man?"
+
+"He is my confessor."
+
+"Does he know that I love you?"
+
+"M. de Montriveau, you cannot claim, I think, to penetrate the
+secrets of the confessional?"
+
+"Does that man know all about our quarrels and my love for
+you?"
+
+"That man, monsieur; say God!"
+
+"God again! _I_ ought to be alone in your heart. But leave God
+alone where He is, for the love of God and me. Madame, you _shall
+not_ go to confession again, or----"
+
+"Or?" she repeated sweetly.
+
+"Or I will never come back here."
+
+"Then go, Armand. Good-bye, good-bye forever."
+
+She rose and went to her boudoir without so much as a glance at
+Armand, as he stood with his hand on the back of a chair. How
+long he stood there motionless he himself never knew. The soul
+within has the mysterious power of expanding as of contracting
+space.
+
+He opened the door of the boudoir. It was dark within. A faint
+voice was raised to say sharply:
+
+"I did not ring. What made you come in without orders? Go
+away, Suzette."
+
+"Then you are ill," exclaimed Montriveau.
+
+"Stand up, monsieur, and go out of the room for a minute at any
+rate," she said, ringing the bell.
+
+"Mme la Duchesse rang for lights?" said the footman, coming in
+with the candles. When the lovers were alone together, Mme de
+Langeais still lay on her couch; she was just as silent and
+motionless as if Montriveau had not been there.
+
+"Dear, I was wrong," he began, a note of pain and a sublime
+kindness in his voice. "Indeed, I would not have you without
+religion----"
+
+"It is fortunate that you can recognise the necessity of a
+conscience," she said in a hard voice, without looking at him.
+"I thank you in God's name."
+
+The General was broken down by her harshness; this woman seemed
+as if she could be at will a sister or a stranger to him. He
+made one despairing stride towards the door. He would leave her
+forever without another word. He was wretched; and the Duchess
+was laughing within herself over mental anguish far more cruel
+than the old judicial torture. But as for going away, it was not
+in his power to do it. In any sort of crisis, a woman is, as it
+were, bursting with a certain quantity of things to say; so long
+as she has not delivered herself of them, she experiences the
+sensation which we are apt to feel at the sight of something
+incomplete. Mme de Langeais had not said all that was in her
+mind. She took up her parable and said:
+
+"We have not the same convictions, General, I am pained to
+think. It would be dreadful if a woman could not believe in a
+religion which permits us to love beyond the grave. I set
+Christian sentiments aside; you cannot understand them. Let me
+simply speak to you of expediency. Would you forbid a woman at
+court the table of the Lord when it is customary to take the
+sacrament at Easter? People must certainly do something for
+their party. The Liberals, whatever they may wish to do, will
+never destroy the religious instinct. Religion will always be a
+political necessity. Would you undertake to govern a nation of
+logic-choppers? Napoleon was afraid to try; he persecuted
+ideologists. If you want to keep people from reasoning, you must
+give them something to feel. So let us accept the Roman Catholic
+Church with all its consequences. And if we would have France go
+to mass, ought we not to begin by going ourselves? Religion, you
+see, Armand, is a bond uniting all the conservative principles
+which enable the rich to live in tranquillity. Religion and the
+rights of property are intimately connected. It is certainly a
+finer thing to lead a nation by ideas of morality than by fear of
+the scaffold, as in the time of the Terror--the one method by
+which your odious Revolution could enforce obedience. The priest
+and the king--that means you, and me, and the Princess my
+neighbour; and, in a word, the interests of all honest people
+personified. There, my friend, just be so good as to belong to
+your party, you that might be its Scylla if you had the slightest
+ambition that way. I know nothing about politics myself; I argue
+from my own feelings; but still I know enough to guess that
+society would be overturned if people were always calling its
+foundations in question----"
+
+"If that is how your Court and your Government think, I am sorry
+for you," broke in Montriveau. "The Restoration, madam, ought
+to say, like Catherine de Medici, when she heard that the battle
+of Dreux was lost, 'Very well; now we will go to the
+meeting-house.' Now 1815 was your battle of Dreux. Like the
+royal power of those days, you won in fact, while you lost in
+right. Political Protestantism has gained an ascendancy over
+people's minds. If you have no mind to issue your Edict of
+Nantes; or if, when it is issued, you publish a Revocation; if
+you should one day be accused and convicted of repudiating the
+Charter, which is simply a pledge given to maintain the interests
+established under the Republic, then the Revolution will rise
+again, terrible in her strength, and strike but a single blow.
+It will not be the Revolution that will go into exile; she is the
+very soil of France. Men die, but people's interests do not die.
+. . . Eh, great Heavens! what are France and the crown and
+rightful sovereigns, and the whole world besides, to us? Idle
+words compared with my happiness. Let them reign or be hurled
+from the throne, little do I care. Where am I now?"
+
+"In the Duchesse de Langeais' boudoir, my friend."
+
+"No, no. No more of the Duchess, no more of Langeais; I am with
+my dear Antoinette."
+
+"Will you do me the pleasure to stay where you are," she said,
+laughing and pushing him back, gently however.
+
+"So you have never loved me," he retorted, and anger flashed in
+lightning from his eyes.
+
+"No, dear"; but the "No" was equivalent to "Yes."
+
+"I am a great ass," he said, kissing her hands. The terrible
+queen was a woman once more.--"Antoinette," he went on, laying
+his head on her feet, "you are too chastely tender to speak of
+our happiness to anyone in this world."
+
+"Oh!" she cried, rising to her feet with a swift, graceful
+spring, "you are a great simpleton." And without another word
+she fled into the drawing-room.
+
+"What is it now?" wondered the General, little knowing that the
+touch of his burning forehead had sent a swift electric thrill
+through her from foot to head.
+
+In hot wrath he followed her to the drawing-room, only to hear
+divinely sweet chords. The Duchess was at the piano. If the man
+of science or the poet can at once enjoy and comprehend, bringing
+his intelligence to bear upon his enjoyment without loss of
+delight, he is conscious that the alphabet and phraseology of
+music are but cunning instruments for the composer, like the wood
+and copper wire under the hands of the executant. For the poet
+and the man of science there is a music existing apart,
+underlying the double expression of this language of the spirit
+and senses. _Andiamo mio ben_ can draw tears of joy or pitying
+laughter at the will of the singer; and not unfrequently one here
+and there in the world, some girl unable to live and bear the
+heavy burden of an unguessed pain, some man whose soul vibrates
+with the throb of passion, may take up a musical theme, and lo!
+heaven is opened for them, or they find a language for themselves
+in some sublime melody, some song lost to the world.
+
+The General was listening now to such a song; a mysterious music
+unknown to all other ears, as the solitary plaint of some
+mateless bird dying alone in a virgin forest.
+
+"Great Heavens! what are you playing there?" he asked in an
+unsteady voice.
+
+"The prelude of a ballad, called, I believe, _Fleuve du Tage_."
+
+"I did not know that there was such music in a piano," he
+returned.
+
+"Ah!" she said, and for the first time she looked at him as a
+woman looks at the man she loves, "nor do you know, my friend,
+that I love you, and that you cause me horrible suffering; and
+that I feel that I must utter my cry of pain without putting it
+too plainly into words. If I did not, I should yield----But you
+see nothing."
+
+"And you will not make me happy!"
+
+"Armand, I should die of sorrow the next day."
+
+The General turned abruptly from her and went. But out in the
+street he brushed away the tears that he would not let fall.
+
+The religious phase lasted for three months. At the end of that
+time the Duchess grew weary of vain repetitions; the Deity, bound
+hand and foot, was delivered up to her lover. Possibly she may
+have feared that by sheer dint of talking of eternity she might
+perpetuate his love in this world and the next. For her own
+sake, it must be believed that no man had touched her heart, or
+her conduct would be inexcusable. She was young; the time when
+men and women feel that they cannot afford to lose time or to
+quibble over their joys was still far off. She, no doubt, was on
+the verge not of first love, but of her first experience of the
+bliss of love. And from inexperience, for want of the painful
+lessons which would have taught her to value the treasure poured
+out at her feet, she was playing with it. Knowing nothing of the
+glory and rapture of the light, she was fain to stay in the
+shadow.
+
+Armand was just beginning to understand this strange situation;
+he put his hope in the first word spoken by nature. Every
+evening, as he came away from Mme de Langeais', he told himself
+that no woman would accept the tenderest, most delicate proofs of
+a man's love during seven months, nor yield passively to the
+slighter demands of passion, only to cheat love at the last. He
+was waiting patiently for the sun to gain power, not doubting but
+that he should receive the earliest fruits. The married woman's
+hesitations and the religious scruples he could quite well
+understand. He even rejoiced over those battles. He mistook the
+Duchess's heartless coquetry for modesty; and he would not have
+had her otherwise. So he had loved to see her devising
+obstacles; was he not gradually triumphing over them? Did not
+every victory won swell the meagre sum of lovers' intimacies long
+denied, and at last conceded with every sign of love? Still, he
+had had such leisure to taste the full sweetness of every small
+successive conquest on which a lover feeds his love, that these
+had come to be matters of use and wont. So far as obstacles
+went, there were none now save his own awe of her; nothing else
+left between him and his desire save the whims of her who allowed
+him to call her Antoinette. So he made up his mind to demand
+more, to demand all. Embarrassed like a young lover who cannot
+dare to believe that his idol can stoop so low, he hesitated for
+a long time. He passed through the experience of terrible
+reactions within himself. A set purpose was annihilated by a
+word, and definite resolves died within him on the threshold. He
+despised himself for his weakness, and still his desire remained
+unuttered. Nevertheless, one evening, after sitting in gloomy
+melancholy, he brought out a fierce demand for his illegally
+legitimate rights. The Duchess had not to wait for her bond-slave's
+request to guess his desire. When was a man's desire a secret? And
+have not women an intuitive knowledge of the meaning of certain
+changes of countenance?
+
+"What! you wish to be my friend no longer?" she broke in at the
+first words, and a divine red surging like new blood under the
+transparent skin, lent brightness to her eyes. "As a reward for
+my generosity, you would dishonor me? Just reflect a little. I
+myself have thought much over this; and I think always for us
+_both_. There is such a thing as a woman's loyalty, and we can no
+more fail in it than you can fail in honour. _I_ cannot blind
+myself. If I am yours, how, in any sense, can I be M. de
+Langeais' wife? Can you require the sacrifice of my position,
+my rank, my whole life in return for a doubtful love that could
+not wait patiently for seven months? What! already you would rob
+me of my right to dispose of myself? No, no; you must not talk
+like this again. No, not another word. I will not, I cannot
+listen to you."
+
+Mme de Langeais raised both hands to her head to push back the
+tufted curls from her hot forehead; she seemed very much excited.
+
+"You come to a weak woman with your purpose definitely planned
+out. You say--'For a certain length of time she will talk to me
+of her husband, then of God, and then of the inevitable
+consequences. But I will use and abuse the ascendancy I shall
+gain over her; I will make myself indispensable; all the bonds of
+habit, all the misconstructions of outsiders, will make for me;
+and at length, when our _liaison_ is taken for granted by all the
+world, I shall be this woman's master.'--Now, be frank; these are
+your thoughts! Oh! you calculate, and you say that you love.
+Shame on you! You are enamoured? Ah! that I well believe! You
+wish to possess me, to have me for your mistress, that is all!
+Very well then, No! The _Duchesse de Langeais_ will not descend so
+far. Simple _bourgeoises_ may be the victims of your treachery--I,
+never! Nothing gives me assurance of your love. You speak of my
+beauty; I may lose every trace of it in six months, like the dear
+Princess, my neighbour. You are captivated by my wit, my grace.
+Great Heavens! you would soon grow used to them and to the
+pleasures of possession. Have not the little concessions that I
+was weak enough to make come to be a matter of course in the last
+few months? Some day, when ruin comes, you will give me no
+reason for the change in you beyond a curt, 'I have ceased to
+care for you.'--Then, rank and fortune and honour and all that
+was the Duchesse de Langeais will be swallowed up in one
+disappointed hope. I shall have children to bear witness to my
+shame, and----" With an involuntary gesture she interrupted
+herself, and continued: "But I am too good-natured to explain
+all this to you when you know it better than I. Come! let us
+stay as we are. I am only too fortunate in that I can still
+break these bonds which you think so strong. Is there anything
+so very heroic in coming to the Hotel de Langeais to spend an
+evening with a woman whose prattle amuses you?--a woman whom you
+take for a plaything? Why, half a dozen young coxcombs come here
+just as regularly every afternoon between three and five. They,
+too, are very generous, I am to suppose? I make fun of them;
+they stand my petulance and insolence pretty quietly, and make me
+laugh; but as for you, I give all the treasures of my soul to
+you, and you wish to ruin me, you try my patience in endless
+ways. Hush, that will do, that will do," she continued, seeing
+that he was about to speak, "you have no heart, no soul, no
+delicacy. I know what you want to tell me. Very well,
+then--yes. I would rather you should take me for a cold,
+insensible woman, with no devotion in her composition, no heart
+even, than be taken by everybody else for a vulgar person, and be
+condemned to your so-called pleasures, of which you would most
+certainly tire, and to everlasting punishment for it afterwards.
+Your selfish love is not worth so many sacrifices. . . ."
+
+The words give but a very inadequate idea of the discourse which
+the Duchess trilled out with the quick volubility of a
+bird-organ. Nor, truly, was there anything to prevent her from
+talking on for some time to come, for poor Armand's only reply to
+the torrent of flute notes was a silence filled with cruelly
+painful thoughts. He was just beginning to see that this woman
+was playing with him; he divined instinctively that a devoted
+love, a responsive love, does not reason and count the
+consequences in this way. Then, as he heard her reproach him
+with detestable motives, he felt something like shame as he
+remembered that unconsciously he had made those very
+calculations. With angelic honesty of purpose, he looked within,
+and self-examination found nothing but selfishness in all his
+thoughts and motives, in the answers which he framed and could
+not utter. He was self-convicted. In his despair he longed to
+fling himself from the window. The egoism of it was intolerable.
+
+What indeed can a man say when a woman will not believe in love?
+--Let me prove how much I love you.--The _I_ is always there.
+
+The heroes of the boudoir, in such circumstances, can follow the
+example of the primitive logician who preceded the Pyrrhonists
+and denied movement. Montriveau was not equal to this feat.
+With all his audacity, he lacked this precise kind which never
+deserts an adept in the formulas of feminine algebra. If so many
+women, and even the best of women, fall a prey to a kind of
+expert to whom the vulgar give a grosser name, it is perhaps
+because the said experts are great _provers_, and love, in spite
+of its delicious poetry of sentiment, requires a little more
+geometry than people are wont to think.
+
+Now the Duchess and Montriveau were alike in this--they were both
+equally unversed in love lore. The lady's knowledge of theory
+was but scanty; in practice she knew nothing whatever; she felt
+nothing, and reflected over everything. Montriveau had had but
+little experience, was absolutely ignorant of theory, and felt
+too much to reflect at all. Both therefore were enduring the
+consequences of the singular situation. At that supreme moment
+the myriad thoughts in his mind might have been reduced to the
+formula--"Submit to be mine----" words which seem horribly
+selfish to a woman for whom they awaken no memories, recall no
+ideas. Something nevertheless he must say. And what was more,
+though her barbed shafts had set his blood tingling, though the
+short phrases that she discharged at him one by one were very
+keen and sharp and cold, he must control himself lest he should
+lose all by an outbreak of anger.
+
+"Mme la Duchesse, I am in despair that God should have invented
+no way for a woman to confirm the gift of her heart save by
+adding the gift of her person. The high value which you yourself
+put upon the gift teaches me that I cannot attach less importance
+to it. If you have given me your inmost self and your whole
+heart, as you tell me, what can the rest matter? And besides, if
+my happiness means so painful a sacrifice, let us say no more
+about it. But you must pardon a man of spirit if he feels
+humiliated at being taken for a spaniel."
+
+The tone in which the last remark was uttered might perhaps have
+frightened another woman; but when the wearer of a petticoat has
+allowed herself to be addressed as a Divinity, and thereby set
+herself above all other mortals, no power on earth can be so
+haughty.
+
+"M. le Marquis, I am in despair that God should not have
+invented some nobler way for a man to confirm the gift of his
+heart than by the manifestation of prodigiously vulgar desires.
+We become bond-slaves when we give ourselves body and soul, but a
+man is bound to nothing by accepting the gift. Who will assure
+me that love will last? The very love that I might show for you
+at every moment, the better to keep your love, might serve you as
+a reason for deserting me. I have no wish to be a second edition
+of Mme de Beauseant. Who can ever know what it is that keeps you
+beside us? Our persistent coldness of heart is the cause of an
+unfailing passion in some of you; other men ask for an untiring
+devotion, to be idolized at every moment; some for gentleness,
+others for tyranny. No woman in this world as yet has really
+read the riddle of man's heart."
+
+There was a pause. When she spoke again it was in a different
+tone.
+
+"After all, my friend, you cannot prevent a woman from trembling
+at the question, 'Will this love last always?' Hard though my
+words may be, the dread of losing you puts them into my mouth.
+Oh, me! it is not I who speaks, dear, it is reason; and how
+should anyone so mad as I be reasonable? In truth, I am nothing
+of the sort."
+
+The poignant irony of her answer had changed before the end into
+the most musical accents in which a woman could find utterance
+for ingenuous love. To listen to her words was to pass in a
+moment from martyrdom to heaven. Montriveau grew pale; and for
+the first time in his life, he fell on his knees before a woman.
+He kissed the Duchess's skirt hem, her knees, her feet; but for
+the credit of the Faubourg Saint-Germain it is necessary to
+respect the mysteries of its boudoirs, where many are fain to
+take the utmost that Love can give without giving proof of love
+in return.
+
+The Duchess thought herself generous when she suffered herself to
+be adored. But Montriveau was in a wild frenzy of joy over her
+complete surrender of the position.
+
+"Dear Antoinette," he cried. "Yes, you are right; I will not
+have you doubt any longer. I too am trembling at this
+moment--lest the angel of my life should leave me; I wish I could
+invent some tie that might bind us to each other irrevocably."
+
+"Ah!" she said, under her breath, "so I was right, you see."
+
+"Let me say all that I have to say; I will scatter all your
+fears with a word. Listen! if I deserted you, I should deserve
+to die a thousand deaths. Be wholly mine, and I will give you
+the right to kill me if I am false. I myself will write a letter
+explaining certain reasons for taking my own life; I will make my
+final arrangements, in short. You shall have the letter in your
+keeping; in the eye of the law it will be a sufficient
+explanation of my death. You can avenge yourself, and fear
+nothing from God or men."
+
+"What good would the letter be to me? What would life be if I
+had lost your love? If I wished to kill you, should I not be
+ready to follow? No; thank you for the thought, but I do not
+want the letter. Should I not begin to dread that you were
+faithful to me through fear? And if a man knows that he must
+risk his life for a stolen pleasure, might it not seem more
+tempting? Armand, the thing I ask of you is the one hard thing
+to do."
+
+"Then what is it that you wish?"
+
+"Your obedience and my liberty."
+
+"Ah, God!" cried he, "I am a child."
+
+"A wayward, much spoilt child," she said, stroking the thick
+hair, for his head still lay on her knee. "Ah! and loved far
+more than he believes, and yet he is very disobedient. Why not
+stay as we are? Why not sacrifice to me the desires that hurt
+me? Why not take what I can give, when it is all that I can
+honestly grant? Are you not happy?"
+
+"Oh yes, I am happy when I have not a doubt left. Antoinette,
+doubt in love is a kind of death, is it not?"
+
+In a moment he showed himself as he was, as all men are under the
+influence of that hot fever; he grew eloquent, insinuating. And
+the Duchess tasted the pleasures which she reconciled with her
+conscience by some private, Jesuitical ukase of her own; Armand's
+love gave her a thrill of cerebral excitement which custom made
+as necessary to her as society, or the Opera. To feel that she
+was adored by this man, who rose above other men, whose character
+frightened her; to treat him like a child; to play with him as
+Poppaea played with Nero--many women, like the wives of King
+Henry VIII, have paid for such a perilous delight with all the
+blood in their veins. Grim presentiment! Even as she surrendered
+the delicate, pale, gold curls to his touch, and felt the close
+pressure of his hand, the little hand of a man whose greatness
+she could not mistake; even as she herself played with his dark,
+thick locks, in that boudoir where she reigned a queen, the
+Duchess would say to herself:
+
+"This man is capable of killing me if he once finds out that I
+am playing with him."
+
+Armand de Montriveau stayed with her till two o'clock in the
+morning. From that moment this woman, whom he loved, was neither
+a duchess nor a Navarreins; Antoinette, in her disguises, had
+gone so far as to appear to be a woman. On that most blissful
+evening, the sweetest prelude ever played by a Parisienne to what
+the world calls "a slip"; in spite of all her affectations of a
+coyness which she did not feel, the General saw all maidenly
+beauty in her. He had some excuse for believing that so many
+storms of caprice had been but clouds covering a heavenly soul;
+that these must be lifted one by one like the veils that hid her
+divine loveliness. The Duchess became, for him, the most simple
+and girlish mistress; she was the one woman in the world for him;
+and he went away quite happy in that at last he had brought her
+to give him such pledges of love, that it seemed to him
+impossible but that he should be but her husband henceforth in
+secret, her choice sanctioned by Heaven.
+
+Armand went slowly home, turning this thought in his mind with
+the impartiality of a man who is conscious of all the
+responsibilities that love lays on him while he tastes the
+sweetness of its joys. He went along the Quais to see the widest
+possible space of sky; his heart had grown in him; he would fain
+have had the bounds of the firmament and of earth enlarged. It
+seemed to him that his lungs drew an ampler breath. In the course
+of his self-examination, as he walked, he vowed to love this woman
+so devoutly, that every day of her life she should find absolution
+for her sins against society in unfailing happiness. Sweet
+stirrings of life when life is at the full! The man that is strong
+enough to steep his soul in the colour of one emotion, feels
+infinite joy as glimpses open out for him of an ardent lifetime
+that knows no diminution of passion to the end; even so it is
+permitted to certain mystics, in ecstasy, to behold the Light of
+God. Love would be naught without the belief that it would last
+forever; love grows great through constancy. It was thus that,
+wholly absorbed by his happiness, Montriveau understood passion.
+
+"We belong to each other forever!"
+
+The thought was like a talisman fulfilling the wishes of his
+life. He did not ask whether the Duchess might not change,
+whether her love might not last. No, for he had faith. Without
+that virtue there is no future for Christianity, and perhaps it
+is even more necessary to society. A conception of life as
+feeling occurred to him for the first time; hitherto he had lived
+by action, the most strenuous exertion of human energies, the
+physical devotion, as it may be called, of the soldier.
+
+Next day M. de Montriveau went early in the direction of the
+Faubourg Saint-Germain. He had made an appointment at a house
+not far from the Hotel de Langeais; and the business over, he
+went thither as if to his own home. The General's companion
+chanced to be a man for whom he felt a kind of repulsion whenever
+he met him in other houses. This was the Marquis de
+Ronquerolles, whose reputation had grown so great in Paris
+boudoirs. He was witty, clever, and what was more--courageous;
+he set the fashion to all the young men in Paris. As a man of
+gallantry, his success and experience were equally matters of
+envy; and neither fortune nor birth was wanting in his case,
+qualifications which add such lustre in Paris to a reputation as
+a leader of fashion.
+
+"Where are you going?" asked M. de Ronquerolles.
+
+"To Mme de Langeais'."
+
+"Ah, true. I forgot that you had allowed her to lime you. You
+are wasting your affections on her when they might be much better
+employed elsewhere. I could have told you of half a score of
+women in the financial world, any one of them a thousand times
+better worth your while than that titled courtesan, who does with
+her brains what less artificial women do with----"
+
+"What is this, my dear fellow?" Armand broke in. "The Duchess
+is an angel of innocence."
+
+Ronquerolles began to laugh.
+
+"Things being thus, dear boy," said he, "it is my duty to
+enlighten you. Just a word; there is no harm in it between
+ourselves. Has the Duchess surrendered? If so, I have nothing
+more to say. Come, give me your confidence. There is no
+occasion to waste your time in grafting your great nature on that
+unthankful stock, when all your hopes and cultivation will come
+to nothing."
+
+Armand ingenuously made a kind of general report of his position,
+enumerating with much minuteness the slender rights so hardly
+won. Ronquerolles burst into a peal of laughter so heartless,
+that it would have cost any other man his life. But from their
+manner of speaking and looking at each other during that colloquy
+beneath the wall, in a corner almost as remote from intrusion as
+the desert itself, it was easy to imagine the friendship between
+the two men knew no bounds, and that no power on earth could
+estrange them.
+
+"My dear Armand, why did you not tell me that the Duchess was a
+puzzle to you? I would have given you a little advice which
+might have brought your flirtation properly through. You must
+know, to begin with, that the women of our Faubourg, like any
+other women, love to steep themselves in love; but they have a
+mind to possess and not to be possessed. They have made a sort
+of compromise with human nature. The code of their parish gives
+them a pretty wide latitude short of the last transgression. The
+sweets enjoyed by this fair Duchess of yours are so many venial
+sins to be washed away in the waters of penitence. But if you
+had the impertinence to ask in earnest for the moral sin to which
+naturally you are sure to attach the highest importance, you
+would see the deep disdain with which the door of the boudoir and
+the house would be incontinently shut upon you. The tender
+Antoinette would dismiss everything from her memory; you would be
+less than a cipher for her. She would wipe away your kisses, my
+dear friend, as indifferently as she would perform her ablutions.
+She would sponge love from her cheeks as she washes off rouge.
+We know women of that sort--the thorough-bred Parisienne. Have
+you ever noticed a grisette tripping along the street? Her face
+is as good as a picture. A pretty cap, fresh cheeks, trim hair,
+a guileful smile, and the rest of her almost neglected. Is not
+this true to the life? Well, that is the Parisienne. She knows
+that her face is all that will be seen, so she devotes all her
+care, finery, and vanity to her head. The Duchess is the same;
+the head is everything with her. She can only feel through her
+intellect, her heart lies in her brain, she is a sort of
+intellectual epicure, she has a head-voice. We call that kind of
+poor creature a Lais of the intellect. You have been taken in
+like a boy. If you doubt it, you can have proof of it tonight,
+this morning, this instant. Go up to her, try the demand as an
+experiment, insist peremptorily if it is refused. You might set
+about it like the late Marechal de Richelieu, and get nothing for
+your pains."
+
+Armand was dumb with amazement.
+
+"Has your desire reached the point of infatuation?"
+
+"I want her at any cost!" Montriveau cried out despairingly.
+
+"Very well. Now, look here. Be as inexorable as she is
+herself. Try to humiliate her, to sting her vanity. Do _not_ try
+to move her heart, nor her soul, but the woman's nerves and
+temperament, for she is both nervous and lymphatic. If you can
+once awaken desire in her, you are safe. But you must drop these
+romantic boyish notions of yours. If when once you have her in
+your eagle's talons you yield a point or draw back, if you so
+much as stir an eyelid, if she thinks that she can regain her
+ascendancy over you, she will slip out of your clutches like a
+fish, and you will never catch her again. Be as inflexible as
+law. Show no more charity than the headsman. Hit hard, and then
+hit again. Strike and keep on striking as if you were giving her
+the knout. Duchesses are made of hard stuff, my dear Armand;
+there is a sort of feminine nature that is only softened by
+repeated blows; and as suffering develops a heart in women of
+that sort, so it is a work of charity not to spare the rod. Do
+you persevere. Ah! when pain has thoroughly relaxed those nerves
+and softened the fibres that you take to be so pliant and
+yielding; when a shriveled heart has learned to expand and
+contract and to beat under this discipline; when the brain has
+capitulated--then, perhaps, passion may enter among the steel
+springs of this machinery that turns out tears and affectations
+and languors and melting phrases; then you shall see a most
+magnificent conflagration (always supposing that the chimney
+takes fire). The steel feminine system will glow red-hot like
+iron in the forge; that kind of heat lasts longer than any other,
+and the glow of it may possibly turn to love.
+
+"Still," he continued, "I have my doubts. And, after all, is
+it worth while to take so much trouble with the Duchess? Between
+ourselves a man of my stamp ought first to take her in hand and
+break her in; I would make a charming woman of her; she is a
+thoroughbred; whereas, you two left to yourselves will never get
+beyond the A B C. But you are in love with her, and just now you
+might not perhaps share my views on this subject----. A pleasant
+time to you, my children," added Ronquerolles, after a pause.
+Then with a laugh: "I have decided myself for facile beauties;
+they are tender, at any rate, the natural woman appears in their
+love without any of your social seasonings. A woman that haggles
+over herself, my poor boy, and only means to inspire love! Well,
+have her like an extra horse--for show. The match between the
+sofa and confessional, black and white, queen and knight,
+conscientious scruples and pleasure, is an uncommonly amusing
+game of chess. And if a man knows the game, let him be never so
+little of a rake, he wins in three moves. Now, if I undertook a
+woman of that sort, I should start with the deliberate purpose
+of----" His voice sank to a whisper over the last words in
+Armand's ear, and he went before there was time to reply.
+
+As for Montriveau, he sprang at a bound across the courtyard of
+the Hotel de Langeais, went unannounced up the stairs straight to
+the Duchess's bedroom.
+
+"This is an unheard-of thing," she said, hastily wrapping her
+dressing-gown about her. "Armand! this is abominable of you!
+Come, leave the room, I beg. Just go out of the room, and go at
+once. Wait for me in the drawing-room.--Come now!"
+
+"Dear angel, has a plighted lover no privilege whatsoever?"
+
+"But, monsieur, it is in the worst possible taste of a plighted
+lover or a wedded husband to break in like this upon his wife."
+
+He came up to the Duchess, took her in his arms, and held her
+tightly to him.
+
+"Forgive, dear Antoinette; but a host of horrid doubts are
+fermenting in my heart."
+
+"_Doubts_? Fie!--Oh, fie on you!"
+
+"Doubts all but justified. If you loved me, would you make this
+quarrel? Would you not be glad to see me? Would you not have
+felt a something stir in your heart? For I, that am not a woman,
+feel a thrill in my inmost self at the mere sound of your voice.
+Often in a ballroom a longing has come upon me to spring to your
+side and put my arms about your neck."
+
+"Oh! if you have doubts of me so long as I am not ready to
+spring to your arms before all the world, I shall be doubted all
+my life long, I suppose. Why, Othello was a mere child compared
+with you!"
+
+"Ah!" he cried despairingly, "you have no love for me----"
+
+"Admit, at any rate, that at this moment you are not lovable."
+
+"Then I have still to find favour in your sight?"
+
+"Oh, I should think so. Come," added she, "with a little
+imperious air, go out of the room, leave me. I am not like you;
+I wish always to find favour in your eyes."
+
+Never woman better understood the art of putting charm into
+insolence, and does not the charm double the effect? is it not
+enough to infuriate the coolest of men? There was a sort of
+untrammeled freedom about Mme de Langeais; a something in her
+eyes, her voice, her attitude, which is never seen in a woman who
+loves when she stands face to face with him at the mere sight of
+whom her heart must needs begin to beat. The Marquis de
+Ronquerolles' counsels had cured Armand of sheepishness; and
+further, there came to his aid that rapid power of intuition
+which passion will develop at moments in the least wise among
+mortals, while a great man at such a time possesses it to the
+full. He guessed the terrible truth revealed by the Duchess's
+nonchalance, and his heart swelled with the storm like a lake
+rising in flood.
+
+"If you told me the truth yesterday, be mine, dear Antoinette,"
+he cried; "you shall----"
+
+"In the first place," said she composedly, thrusting him back
+as he came nearer--"in the first place, you are not to
+compromise me. My woman might overhear you. Respect me, I beg
+of you. Your familiarity is all very well in my boudoir in an
+evening; here it is quite different. Besides, what may your 'you
+shall' mean? 'You shall.' No one as yet has ever used that word
+to me. It is quite ridiculous, it seems to me, absolutely
+ridiculous.
+
+"Will you surrender nothing to me on this point?"
+
+"Oh! do you call a woman's right to dispose of herself a
+'point?' A capital point indeed; you will permit me to be
+entirely my own mistress on that 'point.'"
+
+"And how if, believing in your promises to me, I should
+absolutely require it?"
+
+"Oh! then you would prove that I made the greatest possible
+mistake when I made you a promise of any kind; and I should beg
+you to leave me in peace."
+
+The General's face grew white; he was about to spring to her
+side, when Mme de Langeais rang the bell, the maid appeared, and,
+smiling with a mocking grace, the Duchess added, "Be so good as
+to return when I am visible."
+
+Then Montriveau felt the hardness of a woman as cold and keen as
+a steel blade; she was crushing in her scorn. In one moment she
+had snapped the bonds which held firm only for her lover. She
+had read Armand's intention in his face, and held that the moment
+had come for teaching the Imperial soldier his lesson. He was to
+be made to feel that though duchesses may lend themselves to
+love, they do not give themselves, and that the conquest of one
+of them would prove a harder matter than the conquest of Europe.
+
+"Madame," returned Armand, "I have not time to wait. I am a
+spoilt child, as you told me yourself. When I seriously resolve
+to have that of which we have been speaking, I shall have it."
+
+"You will have it?" queried she, and there was a trace of
+surprise in her loftiness.
+
+"I shall have it."
+
+"Oh! you would do me a great pleasure by 'resolving' to have it.
+For curiosity's sake, I should be delighted to know how you would
+set about it----"
+
+"I am delighted to put a new interest into your life,"
+interrupted Montriveau, breaking into a laugh which dismayed the
+Duchess. "Will you permit me to take you to the ball tonight?"
+
+"A thousand thanks. M. de Marsay has been beforehand with you. I
+gave him my promise."
+
+Montriveau bowed gravely and went.
+
+"So Ronquerolles was right," thought he, "and now for a game
+of chess."
+
+Thenceforward he hid his agitation by complete composure. No man
+is strong enough to bear such sudden alternations from the height
+of happiness to the depths of wretchedness. So he had caught a
+glimpse of happy life the better to feel the emptiness of his
+previous existence? There was a terrible storm within him; but
+he had learned to endure, and bore the shock of tumultuous
+thoughts as a granite cliff stands out against the surge of an
+angry sea.
+
+"I could say nothing. When I am with her my wits desert me.
+She does not know how vile and contemptible she is. Nobody has
+ventured to bring her face to face with herself. She has played
+with many a man, no doubt; I will avenge them all."
+
+For the first time, it may be, in a man's heart, revenge and love
+were blended so equally that Montriveau himself could not know
+whether love or revenge would carry all before it. That very
+evening he went to the ball at which he was sure of seeing the
+Duchesse de Langeais, and almost despaired of reaching her heart.
+He inclined to think that there was something diabolical about
+this woman, who was gracious to him and radiant with charming
+smiles; probably because she had no wish to allow the world to
+think that she had compromised herself with M. de Montriveau.
+Coolness on both sides is a sign of love; but so long as the
+Duchess was the same as ever, while the Marquis looked sullen and
+morose, was it not plain that she had conceded nothing?
+Onlookers know the rejected lover by various signs and tokens;
+they never mistake the genuine symptoms for a coolness such as
+some women command their adorers to feign, in the hope of
+concealing their love. Everyone laughed at Montriveau; and he,
+having omitted to consult his cornac, was abstracted and ill at
+ease. M. de Ronquerolles would very likely have bidden him
+compromise the Duchess by responding to her show of friendliness
+by passionate demonstrations; but as it was, Armand de Montriveau
+came away from the ball, loathing human nature, and even then
+scarcely ready to believe in such complete depravity.
+
+"If there is no executioner for such crimes," he said, as he
+looked up at the lighted windows of the ballroom where the most
+enchanting women in Paris were dancing, laughing, and chatting,
+"I will take you by the nape of the neck, Mme la Duchesse, and
+make you feel something that bites more deeply than the knife in
+the Place de la Greve. Steel against steel; we shall see which
+heart will leave the deeper mark."
+
+For a week or so Mme de Langeais hoped to see the Marquis de
+Montriveau again; but he contented himself with sending his card
+every morning to the Hotel de Langeais. The Duchess could not
+help shuddering each time that the card was brought in, and a dim
+foreboding crossed her mind, but the thought was vague as a
+presentiment of disaster. When her eyes fell on the name, it
+seemed to her that she felt the touch of the implacable man's
+strong hand in her hair; sometimes the words seemed like a
+prognostication of a vengeance which her lively intellect
+invented in the most shocking forms. She had studied him too
+well not to dread him. Would he murder her, she wondered? Would
+that bull-necked man dash out her vitals by flinging her over his
+head? Would he trample her body under his feet? When, where,
+and how would he get her into his power? Would he make her
+suffer very much, and what kind of pain would he inflict? She
+repented of her conduct. There were hours when, if he had come,
+she would have gone to his arms in complete self-surrender.
+
+Every night before she slept she saw Montriveau's face; every
+night it wore a different aspect. Sometimes she saw his bitter
+smile, sometimes the Jovelike knitting of the brows; or his
+leonine look, or some disdainful movement of the shoulders made
+him terrible for her. Next day the card seemed stained with
+blood. The name of Montriveau stirred her now as the presence of
+the fiery, stubborn, exacting lover had never done. Her
+apprehensions gathered strength in the silence. She was forced,
+without aid from without, to face the thought of a hideous duel
+of which she could not speak. Her proud hard nature was more
+responsive to thrills of hate than it had ever been to the
+caresses of love. Ah! if the General could but have seen her, as
+she sat with her forehead drawn into folds between her brows;
+immersed in bitter thoughts in that boudoir where he had enjoyed
+such happy moments, he might perhaps have conceived high hopes.
+Of all human passions, is not pride alone incapable of
+engendering anything base? Mme de Langeais kept her thoughts to
+herself, but is it not permissible to suppose that M. de
+Montriveau was no longer indifferent to her? And has not a man
+gained ground immensely when a woman thinks about him? He is
+bound to make progress with her either one way or the other
+afterwards.
+
+Put any feminine creature under the feet of a furious horse or
+other fearsome beast; she will certainly drop on her knees and
+look for death; but if the brute shows a milder mood and does not
+utterly slay her, she will love the horse, lion, bull, or what
+not, and will speak of him quite at her ease. The Duchess felt
+that she was under the lion's paws; she quaked, but she did not
+hate him.
+
+The man and woman thus singularly placed with regard to each
+other met three times in society during the course of that week.
+Each time, in reply to coquettish questioning glances, the
+Duchess received a respectful bow, and smiles tinged with such
+savage irony, that all her apprehensions over the card in the
+morning were revived at night. Our lives are simply such as our
+feelings shape them for us; and the feelings of these two had
+hollowed out a great gulf between them.
+
+The Comtesse de Serizy, the Marquis de Ronquerolles' sister,
+gave a great ball at the beginning of the following week, and Mme
+de Langeais was sure to go to it. Armand was the first person
+whom the Duchess saw when she came into the room, and this time
+Armand was looking out for her, or so she thought at least. The
+two exchanged a look, and suddenly the woman felt a cold
+perspiration break from every pore. She had thought all along
+that Montriveau was capable of taking reprisals in some
+unheard-of way proportioned to their condition, and now the
+revenge had been discovered, it was ready, heated, and boiling.
+Lightnings flashed from the foiled lover's eyes, his face was
+radiant with exultant vengeance. And the Duchess? Her eyes were
+haggard in spite of her resolution to be cool and insolent. She
+went to take her place beside the Comtesse de Serizy, who could
+not help exclaiming, "Dear Antoinette! what is the matter with
+you? You are enough to frighten one."
+
+"I shall be all right after a quadrille," she answered, giving
+a hand to a young man who came up at that moment.
+
+Mme de Langeais waltzed that evening with a sort of excitement
+and transport which redoubled Montriveau's lowering looks. He
+stood in front of the line of spectators, who were amusing
+themselves by looking on. Every time that _she_ came past him, his
+eyes darted down upon her eddying face; he might have been a
+tiger with the prey in his grasp. The waltz came to an end, Mme
+de Langeais went back to her place beside the Countess, and
+Montriveau never took his eyes off her, talking all the while
+with a stranger.
+
+"One of the things that struck me most on the journey," he was
+saying (and the Duchess listened with all her ears), "was the
+remark which the man makes at Westminster when you are shown the
+axe with which a man in a mask cut off Charles the First's head,
+so they tell you. The King made it first of all to some
+inquisitive person, and they repeat it still in memory of him."
+
+"What does the man say?" asked Mme de Serizy.
+
+"'Do not touch the axe!'" replied Montriveau, and there was
+menace in the sound of his voice.
+
+"Really, my Lord Marquis," said Mme de Langeais, "you tell
+this old story that everybody knows if they have been to London,
+and look at my neck in such a melodramatic way that you seem to
+me to have an axe in your hand."
+
+The Duchess was in a cold sweat, but nevertheless she laughed as
+she spoke the last words.
+
+"But circumstances give the story a quite new application,"
+returned he.
+
+"How so; pray tell me, for pity's sake?"
+
+"In this way, madame--you have touched the axe," said
+Montriveau, lowering his voice.
+
+"What an enchanting prophecy!" returned she, smiling with
+assumed grace. "And when is my head to fall?"
+
+"I have no wish to see that pretty head of yours cut off. I
+only fear some great misfortune for you. If your head were
+clipped close, would you feel no regrets for the dainty golden
+hair that you turn to such good account?"
+
+"There are those for whom a woman would love to make such a
+sacrifice; even if, as often happens, it is for the sake of a man
+who cannot make allowances for an outbreak of temper."
+
+"Quite so. Well, and if some wag were to spoil your beauty on a
+sudden by some chemical process, and you, who are but eighteen
+for us, were to be a hundred years old?"
+
+"Why, the smallpox is our Battle of Waterloo, monsieur," she
+interrupted. "After it is over we find out those who love us
+sincerely."
+
+"Would you not regret the lovely face that?"
+
+"Oh! indeed I should, but less for my own sake than for the sake
+of someone else whose delight it might have been. And, after
+all, if I were loved, always loved, and truly loved, what would
+my beauty matter to me?--What do you say, Clara?"
+
+"It is a dangerous speculation," replied Mme de Serizy.
+
+"Is it permissible to ask His Majesty the King of Sorcerers when
+I made the mistake of touching the axe, since I have not been to
+London as yet?----"
+
+"_Not so_," he answered in English, with a burst of ironical
+laughter.
+
+"And when will the punishment begin?"
+
+At this Montriveau coolly took out his watch, and ascertained the
+hour with a truly appalling air of conviction.
+
+"A dreadful misfortune will befall you before this day is out."
+
+"I am not a child to be easily frightened, or rather, I am a
+child ignorant of danger," said the Duchess. "I shall dance
+now without fear on the edge of the precipice."
+
+"I am delighted to know that you have so much strength of
+character," he answered, as he watched her go to take her place
+in a square dance.
+
+But the Duchess, in spite of her apparent contempt for Armand's
+dark prophecies, was really frightened. Her late lover's
+presence weighed upon her morally and physically with a sense of
+oppression that scarcely ceased when he left the ballroom. And
+yet when she had drawn freer breath, and enjoyed the relief for a
+moment, she found herself regretting the sensation of dread, so
+greedy of extreme sensations is the feminine nature. The regret
+was not love, but it was certainly akin to other feelings which
+prepare the way for love. And then--as if the impression which
+Montriveau had made upon her were suddenly revived--she
+recollected his air of conviction as he took out his watch, and
+in a sudden spasm of dread she went out.
+
+By this time it was about midnight. One of her servants, waiting
+with her pelisse, went down to order her carriage. On her way
+home she fell naturally enough to musing over M. de Montriveau's
+prediction. Arrived in her own courtyard, as she supposed, she
+entered a vestibule almost like that of her own hotel, and
+suddenly saw that the staircase was different. She was in a
+strange house. Turning to call her servants, she was attacked by
+several men, who rapidly flung a handkerchief over her mouth,
+bound her hand and foot, and carried her off. She shrieked
+aloud.
+
+"Madame, our orders are to kill you if you scream," a voice
+said in her ear.
+
+So great was the Duchess's terror, that she could never recollect
+how nor by whom she was transported. When she came to herself,
+she was lying on a couch in a bachelor's lodging, her hands and
+feet tied with silken cords. In spite of herself, she shrieked
+aloud as she looked round and met Armand de Montriveau's eyes.
+He was sitting in his dressing-gown, quietly smoking a cigar in
+his armchair.
+
+"Do not cry out, Mme la Duchesse," he said, coolly taking the
+cigar out of his mouth; "I have a headache. Besides, I will
+untie you. But listen attentively to what I have the honour to
+say to you."
+
+Very carefully he untied the knots that bound her feet.
+
+"What would be the use of calling out? Nobody can hear your
+cries. You are too well bred to make any unnecessary fuss. If
+you do not stay quietly, if you insist upon a struggle with me, I
+shall tie your hands and feet again. All things considered, I
+think that you have self-respect enough to stay on this sofa as
+if you were lying on your own at home; cold as ever, if you will.
+You have made me shed many tears on this couch, tears that I hid
+from all other eyes."
+
+While Montriveau was speaking, the Duchess glanced about her; it
+was a woman's glance, a stolen look that saw all things and
+seemed to see nothing. She was much pleased with the room. It
+was rather like a monk's cell. The man's character and thoughts
+seemed to pervade it. No decoration of any kind broke the grey
+painted surface of the walls. A green carpet covered the floor.
+A black sofa, a table littered with papers, two big easy-chairs,
+a chest of drawers with an alarum clock by way of ornament, a
+very low bedstead with a coverlet flung over it--a red cloth with
+a black key border--all these things made part of a whole that
+told of a life reduced to its simplest terms. A triple
+candle-sconce of Egyptian design on the chimney-piece recalled
+the vast spaces of the desert and Montriveau's long wanderings; a
+huge sphinx-claw stood out beneath the folds of stuff at the
+bed-foot; and just beyond, a green curtain with a black and
+scarlet border was suspended by large rings from a spear handle
+above a door near one corner of the room. The other door by
+which the band had entered was likewise curtained, but the
+drapery hung from an ordinary curtain-rod. As the Duchess
+finally noted that the pattern was the same on both, she saw that
+the door at the bed-foot stood open; gleams of ruddy light from
+the room beyond flickered below the fringed border. Naturally,
+the ominous light roused her curiosity; she fancied she could
+distinguish strange shapes in the shadows; but as it did not
+occur to her at the time that danger could come from that
+quarter, she tried to gratify a more ardent curiosity.
+
+"Monsieur, if it is not indiscreet, may I ask what you mean to
+do with me?" The insolence and irony of the tone stung through
+the words. The Duchess quite believed that she read extravagant
+love in Montriveau's speech. He had carried her off; was not
+that in itself an acknowledgment of her power?
+
+"Nothing whatever, madame," he returned, gracefully puffing the
+last whiff of cigar smoke. "You will remain here for a short
+time. First of all, I should like to explain to you what you
+are, and what I am. I cannot put my thoughts into words whilst
+you are twisting on the sofa in your boudoir; and besides, in
+your own house you take offence at the slightest hint, you ring
+the bell, make an outcry, and turn your lover out at the door as
+if he were the basest of wretches. Here my mind is unfettered.
+Here nobody can turn me out. Here you shall be my victim for a
+few seconds, and you are going to be so exceedingly kind as to
+listen to me. You need fear nothing. I did not carry you off to
+insult you, nor yet to take by force what you refused to grant of
+your own will to my unworthiness. I could not stoop so low. You
+possibly think of outrage; for myself, I have no such thoughts."
+
+He flung his cigar coolly into the fire.
+
+"The smoke is unpleasant to you, no doubt, madame?" he said,
+and rising at once, he took a chafing-dish from the hearth, burnt
+perfumes, and purified the air. The Duchess's astonishment was
+only equaled by her humiliation. She was in this man's power;
+and he would not abuse his power. The eyes in which love had
+once blazed like flame were now quiet and steady as stars. She
+trembled. Her dread of Armand was increased by a nightmare
+sensation of restlessness and utter inability to move; she felt
+as if she were turned to stone. She lay passive in the grip of
+fear. She thought she saw the light behind the curtains grow to
+a blaze, as if blown up by a pair of bellows; in another moment
+the gleams of flame grew brighter, and she fancied that three
+masked figures suddenly flashed out; but the terrible vision
+disappeared so swiftly that she took it for an optical delusion.
+
+"Madame," Armand continued with cold contempt, "one minute,
+just one minute is enough for me, and you shall feel it
+afterwards at every moment throughout your lifetime, the one
+eternity over which I have power. I am not God. Listen
+carefully to me," he continued, pausing to add solemnity to his
+words. "Love will always come at your call. You have boundless
+power over men: but remember that once you called love, and love
+came to you; love as pure and true-hearted as may be on earth,
+and as reverent as it was passionate; fond as a devoted woman's,
+as a mother's love; a love so great indeed, that it was past the
+bounds of reason. You played with it, and you committed a crime.
+Every woman has a right to refuse herself to love which she feels
+she cannot share; and if a man loves and cannot win love in
+return, he is not to be pitied, he has no right to complain. But
+with a semblance of love to attract an unfortunate creature cut
+off from all affection; to teach him to understand happiness to
+the full, only to snatch it from him; to rob him of his future of
+felicity; to slay his happiness not merely today, but as long as
+his life lasts, by poisoning every hour of it and every thought
+--this I call a fearful crime!"
+
+"Monsieur----"
+
+"I cannot allow you to answer me yet. So listen to me still. In
+any case I have rights over you; but I only choose to exercise
+one--the right of the judge over the criminal, so that I may
+arouse your conscience. If you had no conscience left, I should
+not reproach you at all; but you are so young! You must feel
+some life still in your heart; or so I like to believe. While I
+think of you as depraved enough to do a wrong which the law does
+not punish, I do not think you so degraded that you cannot
+comprehend the full meaning of my words. I resume."
+
+As he spoke the Duchess heard the smothered sound of a pair of
+bellows. Those mysterious figures which she had just seen were
+blowing up the fire, no doubt; the glow shone through the
+curtain. But Montriveau's lurid face was turned upon her; she
+could not choose but wait with a fast-beating heart and eyes
+fixed in a stare. However curious she felt, the heat in Armand's
+words interested her even more than the crackling of the
+mysterious flames.
+
+"Madame," he went on after a pause, "if some poor wretch
+commits a murder in Paris, it is the executioner's duty, you
+know, to lay hands on him and stretch him on the plank, where
+murderers pay for their crimes with their heads. Then the
+newspapers inform everyone, rich and poor, so that the former are
+assured that they may sleep in peace, and the latter are warned
+that they must be on the watch if they would live. Well, you
+that are religious, and even a little of a bigot, may have masses
+said for such a man's soul. You both belong to the same family,
+but yours is the elder branch; and the elder branch may occupy
+high places in peace and live happily and without cares. Want or
+anger may drive your brother the convict to take a man's life;
+you have taken more, you have taken the joy out of a man's life,
+you have killed all that was best in his life--his dearest
+beliefs. The murderer simply lay in wait for his victim, and
+killed him reluctantly, and in fear of the scaffold; but _you_
+. . . ! You heaped up every sin that weakness can commit against
+strength that suspected no evil; you tamed a passive victim, the
+better to gnaw his heart out; you lured him with caresses; you
+left nothing undone that could set him dreaming, imagining,
+longing for the bliss of love. You asked innumerable sacrifices
+of him, only to refuse to make any in return. He should see the
+light indeed before you put out his eyes! It is wonderful how
+you found the heart to do it! Such villainies demand a display
+of resource quite above the comprehension of those bourgeoises
+whom you laugh at and despise. They can give and forgive; they
+know how to love and suffer. The grandeur of their devotion
+dwarfs us. Rising higher in the social scale, one finds just as
+much mud as at the lower end; but with this difference, at the
+upper end it is hard and gilded over.
+
+"Yes, to find baseness in perfection, you must look for a noble
+bringing up, a great name, a fair woman, a duchess. You cannot
+fall lower than the lowest unless you are set high above the rest
+of the world.--I express my thoughts badly; the wounds you dealt
+me are too painful as yet, but do not think that I complain. My
+words are not the expression of any hope for myself; there is no
+trace of bitterness in them. Know this, madame, for a
+certainty--I forgive you. My forgiveness is so complete that you
+need not feel in the least sorry that you came hither to find it
+against your will. . . . But you might take advantage of other
+hearts as child-like as my own, and it is my duty to spare them
+anguish. So you have inspired the thought of justice. Expiate
+your sin here on earth; God may perhaps forgive you; I wish that
+He may, but He is inexorable, and will strike."
+
+The broken-spirited, broken-hearted woman looked up, her eyes
+filled with tears.
+
+"Why do you cry? Be true to your nature. You could look on
+indifferently at the torture of a heart as you broke it. That
+will do, madame, do not cry. I cannot bear it any longer. Other
+men will tell you that you have given them life; as for myself, I
+tell you, with rapture, that you have given me blank extinction.
+Perhaps you guess that I am not my own, that I am bound to live
+for my friends, that from this time forth I must endure the cold
+chill of death, as well as the burden of life? Is it possible
+that there can be so much kindness in you? Are you like the
+desert tigress that licks the wounds she has inflicted?"
+
+The Duchess burst out sobbing.
+
+"Pray spare your tears, madame. If I believed in them at all,
+it would merely set me on my guard. Is this another of your
+artifices? or is it not? You have used so many with me; how can
+one think that there is any truth in you? Nothing that you do or
+say has any power now to move me. That is all I have to say."
+
+Mme de Langeais rose to her feet, with a great dignity and
+humility in her bearing.
+
+"You are right to treat me very hardly," she said, holding out
+a hand to the man who did not take it; "you have not spoken
+hardly enough; and I deserve this punishment."
+
+"_I_ punish you, madame! A man must love still, to punish, must
+he not? From me you must expect no feeling, nothing resembling
+it. If I chose, I might be accuser and judge in my cause, and
+pronounce and carry out the sentence. But I am about to fulfil a
+duty, not a desire of vengeance of any kind. The cruelest
+revenge of all, I think, is scorn of revenge when it is in our
+power to take it. Perhaps I shall be the minister of your
+pleasures; who knows? Perhaps from this time forth, as you
+gracefully wear the tokens of disgrace by which society marks out
+the criminal, you may perforce learn something of the convict's
+sense of honour. And then, you will love!"
+
+The Duchess sat listening; her meekness was unfeigned; it was no
+coquettish device. When she spoke at last, it was after a
+silence.
+
+"Armand," she began, "it seems to me that when I resisted
+love, I was obeying all the instincts of woman's modesty; I
+should not have looked for such reproaches from _you_. I was weak;
+you have turned all my weaknesses against me, and made so many
+crimes of them. How could you fail to understand that the
+curiosity of love might have carried me further than I ought to
+go; and that next morning I might be angry with myself, and
+wretched because I had gone too far? Alas! I sinned in
+ignorance. I was as sincere in my wrongdoing, I swear to you, as
+in my remorse. There was far more love for you in my severity
+than in my concessions. And besides, of what do you complain? I
+gave you my heart; that was not enough; you demanded, brutally,
+that I should give my person----"
+
+"Brutally?" repeated Montriveau. But to himself he said, "If
+I once allow her to dispute over words, I am lost."
+
+"Yes. You came to me as if I were one of those women. You
+showed none of the respect, none of the attentions of love. Had
+I not reason to reflect? Very well, I reflected. The
+unseemliness of your conduct is not inexcusable; love lay at the
+source of it; let me think so, and justify you to myself.--Well,
+Armand, this evening, even while you were prophesying evil, I
+felt convinced that there was happiness in store for us both.
+Yes, I put my faith in the noble, proud nature so often tested
+and proved." She bent lower. "And I was yours wholly," she
+murmured in his ear. "I felt a longing that I cannot express to
+give happiness to a man so violently tried by adversity. If I
+must have a master, my master should be a great man. As I felt
+conscious of my height, the less I cared to descend. I felt I
+could trust you, I saw a whole lifetime of love, while you were
+pointing to death. . . . Strength and kindness always go
+together. My friend, you are so strong, you will not be unkind
+to a helpless woman who loves you. If I was wrong, is there no
+way of obtaining forgiveness? No way of making reparation?
+Repentance is the charm of love; I should like to be very
+charming for you. How could I, alone among women, fail to know a
+woman's doubts and fears, the timidity that it is so natural to
+feel when you bind yourself for life, and know how easily a man
+snaps such ties? The bourgeoises, with whom you compared me just
+now, give themselves, but they struggle first. Very well--I
+struggled; but here I am!--Ah! God, he does not hear me!" she
+broke off, and wringing her hands, she cried out "But I love
+you! I am yours!" and fell at Armand's feet.
+
+"Yours! yours! my one and only master!"
+
+Armand tried to raise her.
+
+"Madame, it is too late! Antoinette cannot save the Duchesse de
+Langeais. I cannot believe in either. Today you may give
+yourself; tomorrow, you may refuse. No power in earth or heaven
+can insure me the sweet constancy of love. All love's pledges
+lay in the past; and now nothing of that past exists."
+
+The light behind the curtain blazed up so brightly, that the
+Duchess could not help turning her head; this time she distinctly
+saw the three masked figures.
+
+"Armand," she said, "I would not wish to think ill of you. Why
+are those men there? What are you going to do to me?"
+
+"Those men will be as silent as I myself with regard to the
+thing which is about to be done. Think of them simply as my
+hands and my heart. One of them is a surgeon----"
+
+"A surgeon! Armand, my friend, of all things, suspense is the
+hardest to bear. Just speak; tell me if you wish for my life; I
+will give it to you, you shall not take it----"
+
+"Then you did not understand me? Did I not speak just now of
+justice? To put an end to your misapprehensions," continued he,
+taking up a small steel object from the table, "I will now
+explain what I have decided with regard to you."
+
+He held out a Lorraine cross, fastened to the tip of a steel rod.
+
+"Two of my friends at this very moment are heating another
+cross, made on this pattern, red-hot. We are going to stamp it
+upon your forehead, here between the eyes, so that there will be
+no possibility of hiding the mark with diamonds, and so avoiding
+people's questions. In short, you shall bear on your forehead
+the brand of infamy which your brothers the convicts wear on
+their shoulders. The pain is a mere trifle, but I feared a
+nervous crisis of some kind, of resistance----"
+
+"Resistance?" she cried, clapping her hands for joy. "Oh no,
+no! I would have the whole world here to see. Ah, my Armand,
+brand her quickly, this creature of yours; brand her with your
+mark as a poor little trifle belonging to you. You asked for
+pledges of my love; here they are all in one. Ah! for me there
+is nothing but mercy and forgiveness and eternal happiness in
+this revenge of yours. When you have marked this woman with your
+mark, when you set your crimson brand on her, your slave in soul,
+you can never afterwards abandon her, you will be mine for
+evermore? When you cut me off from my kind, you make yourself
+responsible for my happiness, or you prove yourself base; and I
+know that you are noble and great! Why, when a woman loves, the
+brand of love is burnt into her soul by her own will.--Come in,
+gentlemen! come in and brand her, this Duchesse de Langeais. She
+is M. de Montriveau's forever! Ah! come quickly, all of you, my
+forehead burns hotter than your fire!"
+
+Armand turned his head sharply away lest he should see the
+Duchess kneeling, quivering with the throbbings of her heart. He
+said some word, and his three friends vanished.
+
+The women of Paris salons know how one mirror reflects another.
+The Duchess, with every motive for reading the depths of Armand's
+heart, was all eyes; and Armand, all unsuspicious of the mirror,
+brushed away two tears as they fell. Her whole future lay in
+those two tears. When he turned round again to help her to rise,
+she was standing before him, sure of love. Her pulses must have
+throbbed fast when he spoke with the firmness she had known so
+well how to use of old while she played with him.
+
+"I spare you, madame. All that has taken place shall be as if
+it had never been, you may believe me. But now, let us bid each
+other goodbye. I like to think that you were sincere in your
+coquetries on your sofa, sincere again in this outpouring of your
+heart. Good-bye. I feel that there is no faith in you left in
+me. You would torment me again; you would always be the Duchess,
+and----But there, good-bye, we shall never understand each
+other.
+
+"Now, what do you wish?" he continued, taking the tone of a
+master of the ceremonies--"to return home, or to go back to Mme
+de Serizy's ball? I have done all in my power to prevent any
+scandal. Neither your servants nor anyone else can possibly know
+what has passed between us in the last quarter of an hour. Your
+servants have no idea that you have left the ballroom; your
+carriage never left Mme de Serizy's courtyard; your brougham may
+likewise be found in the court of your own hotel. Where do you
+wish to be?"
+
+"What do you counsel, Armand?"
+
+"There is no Armand now, Mme la Duchesse. We are strangers to
+each other."
+
+"Then take me to the ball," she said, still curious to put
+Armand's power to the test. "Thrust a soul that suffered in the
+world, and must always suffer there, if there is no happiness for
+her now, down into hell again. And yet, oh my friend, I love you
+as your bourgeoises love; I love you so that I could come to you
+and fling my arms about your neck before all the world if you
+asked it off me. The hateful world has not corrupted me. I am
+young at least, and I have grown younger still. I am a child,
+yes, your child, your new creature. Ah! do not drive me forth
+out of my Eden!"
+
+Armand shook his head.
+
+"Ah! let me take something with me, if I go, some little thing
+to wear tonight on my heart," she said, taking possession of
+Armand's glove, which she twisted into her handkerchief.
+
+"No, I am _not_ like all those depraved women. You do not know
+the world, and so you cannot know my worth. You shall know it
+now! There are women who sell themselves for money; there are
+others to be gained by gifts, it is a vile world! Oh, I wish I
+were a simple bourgeoise, a working girl, if you would rather
+have a woman beneath you than a woman whose devotion is
+accompanied by high rank, as men count it. Oh, my Armand, there
+are noble, high, and chaste and pure natures among us; and then
+they are lovely indeed. I would have all nobleness that I might
+offer it all up to you. Misfortune willed that I should be a
+duchess; I would I were a royal princess, that my offering might
+be complete. I would be a grisette for you, and a queen for
+everyone besides."
+
+He listened, damping his cigars with his lips.
+
+"You will let me know when you wish to go," he said.
+
+"But I should like to stay----"
+
+"That is another matter!"
+
+"Stay, that was badly rolled," she cried, seizing on a cigar
+and devouring all that Armand's lips had touched.
+
+"Do you smoke?"
+
+"Oh, what would I not do to please you?"
+
+"Very well. Go, madame."
+
+"I will obey you," she answered, with tears in her eyes.
+
+"You must be blindfolded; you must not see a glimpse of the
+way."
+
+"I am ready, Armand," she said, bandaging her eyes.
+
+"Can you see?"
+
+"No."
+
+Noiselessly he knelt before her.
+
+"Ah! I can hear you!" she cried, with a little fond gesture,
+thinking that the pretence of harshness was over.
+
+He made as if he would kiss her lips; she held up her face.
+
+"You can see, madame."
+
+"I am just a little bit curious."
+
+"So you always deceive me?"
+
+"Ah! take off this handkerchief, sir," she cried out, with the
+passion of a great generosity repelled with scorn, "lead me; I
+will not open my eyes."
+
+Armand felt sure of her after that cry. He led the way; the
+Duchess nobly true to her word, was blind. But while Montriveau
+held her hand as a father might, and led her up and down flights
+of stairs, he was studying the throbbing pulses of this woman's
+heart so suddenly invaded by Love. Mme de Langeais, rejoicing in
+this power of speech, was glad to let him know all; but he was
+inflexible; his hand was passive in reply to the questionings of
+her hand.
+
+At length, after some journey made together, Armand bade her go
+forward; the opening was doubtless narrow, for as she went she
+felt that his hand protected her dress. His care touched her; it
+was a revelation surely that there was a little love still left;
+yet it was in some sort a farewell, for Montriveau left her
+without a word. The air was warm; the Duchess, feeling the heat,
+opened her eyes, and found herself standing by the fire in the
+Comtesse de Serizy's boudoir.
+
+She was alone. Her first thought was for her disordered
+toilette; in a moment she had adjusted her dress and restored
+her picturesque coiffure.
+
+"Well, dear Antoinette, we have been looking for you
+everywhere." It was the Comtesse de Serizy who spoke as she
+opened the door.
+
+"I came here to breathe," said the Duchess; "it is unbearably
+hot in the rooms."
+
+"People thought that you had gone; but my brother Ronquerolles
+told me that your servants were waiting for you."
+
+"I am tired out, dear, let me stay and rest here for a minute,"
+and the Duchess sat down on the sofa.
+
+"Why, what is the matter with you? You are shaking from head to
+foot!"
+
+The Marquis de Ronquerolles came in.
+
+"Mme la Duchesse, I was afraid that something might have
+happened. I have just come across your coachman, the man is as
+tipsy as all the Swiss in Switzerland."
+
+The Duchess made no answer; she was looking round the room, at
+the chimney-piece and the tall mirrors, seeking the trace of an
+opening. Then with an extraordinary sensation she recollected
+that she was again in the midst of the gaiety of the ballroom
+after that terrific scene which had changed the whole course of
+her life. She began to shiver violently.
+
+"M. de Montriveau's prophecy has shaken my nerves," she said.
+"It was a joke, but still I will see whether his axe from London
+will haunt me even in my sleep. So good-bye, dear.--Good-bye, M.
+le Marquis."
+
+As she went through the rooms she was beset with inquiries and
+regrets. Her world seemed to have dwindled now that she, its
+queen, had fallen so low, was so diminished. And what, moreover,
+were these men compared with him whom she loved with all her
+heart; with the man grown great by all that she had lost in
+stature? The giant had regained the height that he had lost for
+a while, and she exaggerated it perhaps beyond measure. She
+looked, in spite of herself, at the servant who had attended her
+to the ball. He was fast asleep.
+
+"Have you been here all the time?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+As she took her seat in her carriage she saw, in fact, that her
+coachman was drunk--so drunk, that at any other time she would
+have been afraid; but after a great crisis in life, fear loses
+its appetite for common food. She reached home, at any rate,
+without accident; but even there she felt a change in herself, a
+new feeling that she could not shake off. For her, there was now
+but one man in the world; which is to say that henceforth she
+cared to shine for his sake alone.
+
+While the physiologist can define love promptly by following out
+natural laws, the moralist finds a far more perplexing problem
+before him if he attempts to consider love in all its
+developments due to social conditions. Still, in spite of the
+heresies of the endless sects that divide the church of Love,
+there is one broad and trenchant line of difference in doctrine,
+a line that all the discussion in the world can never deflect. A
+rigid application of this line explains the nature of the crisis
+through which the Duchess, like most women, was to pass. Passion
+she knew, but she did not love as yet.
+
+Love and passion are two different conditions which poets and men
+of the world, philosophers and fools, alike continually confound.
+Love implies a give and take, a certainty of bliss that nothing
+can change; it means so close a clinging of the heart, and an
+exchange of happiness so constant, that there is no room left for
+jealousy. Then possession is a means and not an end;
+unfaithfulness may give pain, but the bond is not less close; the
+soul is neither more nor less ardent or troubled, but happy at
+every moment; in short, the divine breath of desire spreading
+from end to end of the immensity of Time steeps it all for us in
+the selfsame hue; life takes the tint of the unclouded heaven.
+But Passion is the foreshadowing of Love, and of that Infinite to
+which all suffering souls aspire. Passion is a hope that may be
+cheated. Passion means both suffering and transition. Passion
+dies out when hope is dead. Men and women may pass through this
+experience many times without dishonor, for it is so natural to
+spring towards happiness; but there is only one love in a
+lifetime. All discussions of sentiment ever conducted on paper
+or by word of mouth may therefore be resumed by two questions
+--"Is it passion? Is it love?" So, since love comes into
+existence only through the intimate experience of the bliss
+which gives it lasting life, the Duchess was beneath the yoke of
+passion as yet; and as she knew the fierce tumult, the
+unconscious calculations, the fevered cravings, and all that is
+meant by that word _passion_--she suffered. Through all the
+trouble of her soul there rose eddying gusts of tempest, raised
+by vanity or self-love, or pride or a high spirit; for all these
+forms of egoism make common cause together.
+
+She had said to this man, "I love you; I am yours!" Was it
+possible that the Duchesse de Langeais should have uttered those
+words--in vain? She must either be loved now or play her part of
+queen no longer. And then she felt the loneliness of the
+luxurious couch where pleasure had never yet set his glowing
+feet; and over and over again, while she tossed and writhed
+there, she said, "I want to be loved."
+
+But the belief that she still had in herself gave her hope of
+success. The Duchess might be piqued, the vain Parisienne might
+be humiliated; but the woman saw glimpses of wedded happiness,
+and imagination, avenging the time lost for nature, took a
+delight in kindling the inextinguishable fire in her veins. She
+all but attained to the sensations of love; for amid her poignant
+doubt whether she was loved in return, she felt glad at heart to
+say to herself, "I love him!" As for her scruples, religion,
+and the world she could trample them under foot! Montriveau was
+her religion now. She spent the next day in a state of moral
+torpor, troubled by a physical unrest, which no words could
+express. She wrote letters and tore them all up, and invented a
+thousand impossible fancies.
+
+When M. de Montriveau's usual hour arrived, she tried to think
+that he would come, and enjoyed the feeling of expectation. Her
+whole life was concentrated in the single sense of hearing.
+Sometimes she shut her eyes, straining her ears to listen through
+space, wishing that she could annihilate everything that lay
+between her and her lover, and so establish that perfect silence
+which sounds may traverse from afar. In her tense
+self-concentration, the ticking of the clock grew hateful to her;
+she stopped its ill-omened garrulity. The twelve strokes of
+midnight sounded from the drawing-room.
+
+"Ah, God!" she cried, "to see him here would be happiness. And
+yet, it is not so very long since he came here, brought by
+desire, and the tones of his voice filled this boudoir. And now
+there is nothing."
+
+She remembered the times that she had played the coquette with
+him, and how that her coquetry had cost her her lover, and the
+despairing tears flowed for long.
+
+Her woman came at length with, "Mme la Duchesse does not know,
+perhaps, that it is two o'clock in the morning; I thought that
+madame was not feeling well."
+
+"Yes, I am going to bed," said the Duchess, drying her eyes.
+"But remember, Suzanne, never to come in again without orders; I
+tell you this for the last time."
+
+For a week, Mme de Langeais went to every house where there was a
+hope of meeting M. de Montriveau. Contrary to her usual habits,
+she came early and went late; gave up dancing, and went to the
+card-tables. Her experiments were fruitless. She did not
+succeed in getting a glimpse of Armand. She did not dare to
+utter his name now. One evening, however, in a fit of despair,
+she spoke to Mme de Serizy, and asked as carelessly as she could,
+"You must have quarreled with M. de Montriveau? He is not to
+be seen at your house now."
+
+The Countess laughed. "So he does not come here either?" she
+returned. "He is not to be seen anywhere, for that matter. He
+is interested in some woman, no doubt."
+
+"I used to think that the Marquis de Ronquerolles was one of his
+friends----" the Duchess began sweetly.
+
+"I have never heard my brother say that he was acquainted with
+him."
+
+Mme de Langeais did not reply. Mme de Serizy concluded from the
+Duchess's silence that she might apply the scourge with impunity
+to a discreet friendship which she had seen, with bitterness of
+soul, for a long time past.
+
+"So you miss that melancholy personage, do you? I have heard
+most extraordinary things of him. Wound his feelings, he never
+comes back, he forgives nothing; and, if you love him, he keeps
+you in chains. To everything that I said of him, one of those
+that praise him sky-high would always answer, 'He knows how to
+love!' People are always telling me that Montriveau would give
+up all for his friend; that his is a great nature. Pooh! society
+does not want such tremendous natures. Men of that stamp are all
+very well at home; let them stay there and leave us to our
+pleasant littlenesses. What do you say, Antoinette?"
+
+Woman of the world though she was, the Duchess seemed agitated,
+yet she replied in a natural voice that deceived her fair
+friend:
+
+"I am sorry to miss him. I took a great interest in him, and
+promised to myself to be his sincere friend. I like great
+natures, dear friend, ridiculous though you may think it. To
+give oneself to a fool is a clear confession, is it not, that one
+is governed wholly by one's senses?"
+
+Mme de Serizy's "preferences" had always been for commonplace
+men; her lover at the moment, the Marquis d'Aiglemont, was a
+fine, tall man.
+
+After this, the Countess soon took her departure, you may be sure
+Mme de Langeais saw hope in Armand's withdrawal from the world;
+she wrote to him at once; it was a humble, gentle letter, surely
+it would bring him if he loved her still. She sent her footman
+with it next day. On the servant's return, she asked whether he
+had given the letter to M. de Montriveau himself, and could not
+restrain the movement of joy at the affirmative answer. Armand
+was in Paris! He stayed alone in his house; he did not go out
+into society! So she was loved! All day long she waited for an
+answer that never came. Again and again, when impatience grew
+unbearable, Antoinette found reasons for his delay. Armand felt
+embarrassed; the reply would come by post; but night came, and
+she could not deceive herself any longer. It was a dreadful day,
+a day of pain grown sweet, of intolerable heart-throbs, a day
+when the heart squanders the very forces of life in riot.
+
+Next day she sent for an answer.
+
+"M. le Marquis sent word that he would call on Mme la
+Duchesse," reported Julien.
+
+She fled lest her happiness should be seen in her face, and flung
+herself on her couch to devour her first sensations.
+
+"He is coming!"
+
+The thought rent her soul. And, in truth, woe unto those for
+whom suspense is not the most horrible time of tempest, while it
+increases and multiplies the sweetest joys; for they have nothing
+in them of that flame which quickens the images of things, giving
+to them a second existence, so that we cling as closely to the
+pure essence as to its outward and visible manifestation. What
+is suspense in love but a constant drawing upon an unfailing
+hope?--a submission to the terrible scourging of passion, while
+passion is yet happy, and the disenchantment of reality has not
+set in. The constant putting forth of strength and longing,
+called suspense, is surely, to the human soul, as fragrance to
+the flower that breathes it forth. We soon leave the brilliant,
+unsatisfying colours of tulips and coreopsis, but we turn again
+and again to drink in the sweetness of orange-blossoms or
+volkameria-flowers compared separately, each in its own land, to
+a betrothed bride, full of love, made fair by the past and
+future.
+
+The Duchess learned the joys of this new life of hers through the
+rapture with which she received the scourgings of love. As this
+change wrought in her, she saw other destinies before her, and a
+better meaning in the things of life. As she hurried to her
+dressing-room, she understood what studied adornment and the most
+minute attention to her toilet mean when these are undertaken for
+love's sake and not for vanity. Even now this making ready
+helped her to bear the long time of waiting. A relapse of
+intense agitation set in when she was dressed; she passed through
+nervous paroxysms brought on by the dreadful power which sets the
+whole mind in ferment. Perhaps that power is only a disease,
+though the pain of it is sweet. The Duchess was dressed and
+waiting at two o clock in the afternoon. At half-past eleven
+that night M. de Montriveau had not arrived. To try to give an
+idea of the anguish endured by a woman who might be said to be
+the spoilt child of civilization, would be to attempt to say how
+many imaginings the heart can condense into one thought. As well
+endeavour to measure the forces expended by the soul in a sigh
+whenever the bell rang; to estimate the drain of life when a
+carriage rolled past without stopping, and left her prostrate.
+
+"Can he be playing with me?" she said, as the clocks struck
+midnight.
+
+She grew white; her teeth chattered; she struck her hands
+together and leapt up and crossed the boudoir, recollecting as
+she did so how often he had come thither without a summons. But
+she resigned herself. Had she not seen him grow pale, and start
+up under the stinging barbs of irony? Then Mme de Langeais felt
+the horror of the woman's appointed lot; a man's is the active
+part, a woman must wait passively when she loves. If a woman
+goes beyond her beloved, she makes a mistake which few men can
+forgive; almost every man would feel that a woman lowers herself
+by this piece of angelic flattery. But Armand's was a great
+nature; he surely must be one of the very few who can repay such
+exceeding love by love that lasts forever.
+
+"Well, I will make the advance," she told herself, as she
+tossed on her bed and found no sleep there; "I will go to him.
+I will not weary myself with holding out a hand to him, but I
+will hold it out. A man of a thousand will see a promise of love
+and constancy in every step that a woman takes towards him. Yes,
+the angels must come down from heaven to reach men; and I wish to
+be an angel for him."
+
+Next day she wrote. It was a billet of the kind in which the
+intellects of the ten thousand Sevignes that Paris now can number
+particularly excel. And yet only a Duchesse de Langeais, brought
+up by Mme la Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, could have written
+that delicious note; no other woman could complain without
+lowering herself; could spread wings in such a flight without
+draggling her pinions in humiliation; rise gracefully in revolt;
+scold without giving offence; and pardon without compromising her
+personal dignity.
+
+Julien went with the note. Julien, like his kind, was the victim
+of love's marches and countermarches.
+
+"What did M. de Montriveau reply?" she asked, as indifferently
+as she could, when the man came back to report himself.
+
+"M. le Marquis requested me to tell Mme la Duchesse that it was
+all right."
+
+Oh the dreadful reaction of the soul upon herself! To have her
+heart stretched on the rack before curious witnesses; yet not to
+utter a sound, to be forced to keep silence! One of the
+countless miseries of the rich!
+
+More than three weeks went by. Mme de Langeais wrote again and
+again, and no answer came from Montriveau. At last she gave out
+that she was ill, to gain a dispensation from attendance on the
+Princess and from social duties. She was only at home to her
+father the Duc de Navarreins, her aunt the Princesse de
+Blamont-Chauvry, the old Vidame de Pamiers (her maternal
+great-uncle), and to her husband's uncle, the Duc de Grandlieu.
+These persons found no difficulty in believing that the Duchess
+was ill, seeing that she grew thinner and paler and more dejected
+every day. The vague ardour of love, the smart of wounded pride,
+the continual prick of the only scorn that could touch her, the
+yearnings towards joys that she craved with a vain continual
+longing--all these things told upon her, mind and body; all the
+forces of her nature were stimulated to no purpose. She was
+paying the arrears of her life of make-believe.
+
+She went out at last to a review. M. de Montriveau was to be
+there. For the Duchess, on the balcony of the Tuileries with the
+Royal Family, it was one of those festival days that are long
+remembered. She looked supremely beautiful in her languor; she
+was greeted with admiration in all eyes. It was Montriveau's
+presence that made her so fair.
+
+Once or twice they exchanged glances. The General came almost to
+her feet in all the glory of that soldier's uniform, which
+produces an effect upon the feminine imagination to which the
+most prudish will confess. When a woman is very much in love,
+and has not seen her lover for two months, such a swift moment
+must be something like the phase of a dream when the eyes embrace
+a world that stretches away forever. Only women or young men can
+imagine the dull, frenzied hunger in the Duchess's eyes. As for
+older men, if during the paroxysms of early passion in youth they
+had experience of such phenomena of nervous power; at a later day
+it is so completely forgotten that they deny the very existence
+of the luxuriant ecstasy--the only name that can be given to
+these wonderful intuitions. Religious ecstasy is the aberration
+of a soul that has shaken off its bonds of flesh; whereas in
+amorous ecstasy all the forces of soul and body are embraced and
+blended in one. If a woman falls a victim to the tyrannous
+frenzy before which Mme de Langeais was forced to bend, she will
+take one decisive resolution after another so swiftly that it is
+impossible to give account of them. Thought after thought rises
+and flits across her brain, as clouds are whirled by the wind
+across the grey veil of mist that shuts out the sun. Thenceforth
+the facts reveal all. And the facts are these.
+
+The day after the review, Mme de Langeais sent her carriage and
+liveried servants to wait at the Marquis de Montriveau's door
+from eight o'clock in the morning till three in the afternoon.
+Armand lived in the Rue de Tournon, a few steps away from the
+Chamber of Peers, and that very day the House was sitting; but
+long before the peers returned to their palaces, several people
+had recognised the Duchess's carriage and liveries. The first of
+these was the Baron de Maulincour. That young officer had met
+with disdain from Mme de Langeais and a better reception from Mme
+de Serizy; he betook himself at once therefore to his mistress,
+and under seal of secrecy told her of this strange freak.
+
+In a moment the news was spread with telegraphic speed through
+all the coteries in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; it reached the
+Tuileries and the Elysee-Bourbon; it was the sensation of the
+day, the matter of all the talk from noon till night. Almost
+everywhere the women denied the facts, but in such a manner that
+the report was confirmed; the men one and all believed it, and
+manifested a most indulgent interest in Mme de Langeais. Some
+among them threw the blame on Armand.
+
+"That savage of a Montriveau is a man of bronze," said they;
+"he insisted on making this scandal, no doubt."
+
+"Very well, then," others replied, "Mme de Langeais has been
+guilty of a most generous piece of imprudence. To renounce the
+world and rank, and fortune, and consideration for her lover's
+sake, and that in the face of all Paris, is as fine a _coup d'etat_
+for a woman as that barber's knife-thrust, which so affected
+Canning in a court of assize. Not one of the women who blame the
+Duchess would make a declaration worthy of ancient times. It is
+heroic of Mme de Langeais to proclaim herself so frankly. Now
+there is nothing left to her but to love Montriveau. There must
+be something great about a woman if she says, 'I will have but
+one passion.'"
+
+"But what is to become of society, monsieur, if you honour vice
+in this way without respect for virtue?" asked the Comtesse de
+Granville, the attorney-general's wife.
+
+While the Chateau, the Faubourg, and the Chaussee d'Antin were
+discussing the shipwreck of aristocratic virtue; while excited
+young men rushed about on horseback to make sure that the
+carriage was standing in the Rue de Tournon, and the Duchess in
+consequence was beyond a doubt in M. de Montriveau's rooms, Mme
+de Langeais, with heavy throbbing pulses, was lying hidden away
+in her boudoir. And Armand?--he had been out all night, and at
+that moment was walking with M. de Marsay in the Gardens of the
+Tuileries. The elder members, of Mme de Langeais' family were
+engaged in calling upon one another, arranging to read her a
+homily and to hold a consultation as to the best way of putting a
+stop to the scandal.
+
+At three o'clock, therefore, M. le Duc de Navarreins, the Vidame
+de Pamiers, the old Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, and the Duc de
+Grandlieu were assembled in Mme la Duchesse de Langeais'
+drawing-room. To them, as to all curious inquirers, the servants
+said that their mistress was not at home; the Duchess had made no
+exceptions to her orders. But these four personages shone
+conspicuous in that lofty sphere, of which the revolutions and
+hereditary pretensions are solemnly recorded year by year in the
+_Almanach de Gotha_, wherefore without some slight sketch of each
+of them this picture of society were incomplete.
+
+The Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, in the feminine world, was a
+most poetic wreck of the reign of Louis Quinze. In her beautiful
+prime, so it was said, she had done her part to win for that
+monarch his appellation of _le Bien-aime_. Of her past charms of
+feature, little remained save a remarkably prominent slender
+nose, curved like a Turkish scimitar, now the principal ornament
+of a countenance that put you in mind of an old white glove. Add
+a few powdered curls, high-heeled pantoufles, a cap with
+upstanding loops of lace, black mittens, and a decided taste for
+_ombre_. But to do full justice to the lady, it must be said that
+she appeared in low-necked gowns of an evening (so high an
+opinion of her ruins had she), wore long gloves, and raddled her
+cheeks with Martin's classic rouge. An appalling amiability in
+her wrinkles, a prodigious brightness in the old lady's eyes, a
+profound dignity in her whole person, together with the triple
+barbed wit of her tongue, and an infallible memory in her head,
+made of her a real power in the land. The whole Cabinet des
+Chartes was entered in duplicate on the parchment of her brain.
+She knew all the genealogies of every noble house in Europe
+--princes, dukes, and counts--and could put her hand on the last
+descendants of Charlemagne in the direct line. No usurpation of
+title could escape the Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry.
+
+Young men who wished to stand well at Court, ambitious men, and
+young married women paid her assiduous homage. Her salon set the
+tone of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. The words of this Talleyrand
+in petticoats were taken as final decrees. People came to
+consult her on questions of etiquette or usages, or to take
+lessons in good taste. And, in truth, no other old woman could
+put back her snuff-box in her pocket as the Princess could; while
+there was a precision and a grace about the movements of her
+skirts, when she sat down or crossed her feet, which drove the
+finest ladies of the young generation to despair. Her voice had
+remained in her head during one-third of her lifetime; but she
+could not prevent a descent into the membranes of the nose, which
+lent to it a peculiar expressiveness. She still retained a
+hundred and fifty thousand livres of her great fortune, for
+Napoleon had generously returned her woods to her; so that
+personally and in the matter of possessions she was a woman of no
+little consequence.
+
+This curious antique, seated in a low chair by the fireside, was
+chatting with the Vidame de Pamiers, a contemporary ruin. The
+Vidame was a big, tall, and spare man, a seigneur of the old
+school, and had been a Commander of the Order of Malta. His neck
+had always been so tightly compressed by a strangulation stock,
+that his cheeks pouched over it a little, and he held his head
+high; to many people this would have given an air of
+self-sufficiency, but in the Vidame it was justified by a
+Voltairean wit. His wide prominent eyes seemed to see
+everything, and as a matter of fact there was not much that they
+had not seen. Altogether, his person was a perfect model of
+aristocratic outline, slim and slender, supple and agreeable. He
+seemed as if he could be pliant or rigid at will, and twist and
+bend, or rear his head like a snake.
+
+The Duc de Navarreins was pacing up and down the room with the
+Duc de Grandlieu. Both were men of fifty-six or thereabouts, and
+still hale; both were short, corpulent, flourishing, somewhat
+florid-complexioned men with jaded eyes, and lower lips that had
+begun to hang already. But for an exquisite refinement of
+accent, an urbane courtesy, and an ease of manner that could
+change in a moment to insolence, a superficial observer might
+have taken them for a couple of bankers. Any such mistake would
+have been impossible, however, if the listener could have heard
+them converse, and seen them on their guard with men whom they
+feared, vapid and commonplace with their equals, slippery with
+the inferiors whom courtiers and statesmen know how to tame by a
+tactful word, or to humiliate with an unexpected phrase.
+
+Such were the representatives of the great noblesse that
+determined to perish rather than submit to any change. It was a
+noblesse that deserved praise and blame in equal measure; a
+noblesse that will never be judged impartially until some poet
+shall arise to tell how joyfully the nobles obeyed the King
+though their heads fell under a Richelieu's axe, and how deeply
+they scorned the guillotine of '89 as a foul revenge.
+
+Another noticeable trait in all the four was a thin voice that
+agreed peculiarly well with their ideas and bearing. Among
+themselves, at any rate, they were on terms of perfect equality.
+None of them betrayed any sign of annoyance over the Duchess's
+escapade, but all of them had learned at Court to hide their
+feelings.
+
+And here, lest critics should condemn the puerility of the
+opening of the forthcoming scene, it is perhaps as well to remind
+the reader that Locke, once happening to be in the company of
+several great lords, renowned no less for their wit than for
+their breeding and political consistency, wickedly amused himself
+by taking down their conversation by some shorthand process of
+his own; and afterwards, when he read it over to them to see what
+they could make of it, they all burst out laughing. And, in
+truth, the tinsel jargon which circulates among the upper ranks
+in every country yields mighty little gold to the crucible when
+washed in the ashes of literature or philosophy. In every rank
+of society (some few Parisian salons excepted) the curious
+observer finds folly a constant quantity beneath a more or less
+transparent varnish. Conversation with any substance in it is a
+rare exception, and boeotianism is current coin in every zone.
+In the higher regions they must perforce talk more, but to make
+up for it they think the less. Thinking is a tiring exercise,
+and the rich like their lives to flow by easily and without
+effort. It is by comparing the fundamental matter of jests, as
+you rise in the social scale from the street-boy to the peer of
+France, that the observer arrives at a true comprehension of M.
+de Talleyrand's maxim, "The manner is everything"; an elegant
+rendering of the legal axiom, "The form is of more consequence
+than the matter." In the eyes of the poet the advantage rests
+with the lower classes, for they seldom fail to give a certain
+character of rude poetry to their thoughts. Perhaps also this
+same observation may explain the sterility of the salons, their
+emptiness, their shallowness, and the repugnance felt by men of
+ability for bartering their ideas for such pitiful small change.
+
+The Duke suddenly stopped as if some bright idea occurred to him,
+and remarked to his neighbour:
+
+"So you have sold Tornthon?"
+
+"No, he is ill. I am very much afraid I shall lose him, and I
+should be uncommonly sorry. He is a very good hunter. Do you
+know how the Duchesse de Marigny is?"
+
+"No. I did not go this morning. I was just going out to call
+when you came in to speak about Antoinette. But yesterday she
+was very ill indeed; they had given her up, she took the
+sacrament."
+
+"Her death will make a change in your cousin's position."
+
+"Not at all. She gave away her property in her lifetime, only
+keeping an annuity. She made over the Guebriant estate to her
+niece, Mme de Soulanges, subject to a yearly charge."
+
+"It will be a great loss for society. She was a kind woman.
+Her family will miss her; her experience and advice carried
+weight. Her son Marigny is an amiable man; he has a sharp wit,
+he can talk. He is pleasant, very pleasant. Pleasant? oh, that
+no one can deny, but--ill regulated to the last degree. Well,
+and yet it is an extraordinary thing, he is very acute. He was
+dining at the club the other day with that moneyed
+Chaussee-d'Antin set. Your uncle (he always goes there for his
+game of cards) found him there to his astonishment, and asked if
+he was a member. 'Yes,' said he, 'I don't go into society now; I
+am living among the bankers.'--You know why?" added the Marquis,
+with a meaning smile.
+
+"No," said the Duke.
+
+"He is smitten with that little Mme Keller, Gondreville's
+daughter; she is only lately married, and has a great vogue, they
+say, in that set."
+
+"Well, Antoinette does not find time heavy on her hands, it
+seems," remarked the Vidame.
+
+"My affection for that little woman has driven me to find a
+singular pastime," replied the Princess, as she returned her
+snuff-box to her pocket.
+
+"Dear aunt, I am extremely vexed," said the Duke, stopping
+short in his walk. "Nobody but one of Bonaparte's men could
+ask such an indecorous thing of a woman of fashion. Between
+ourselves, Antoinette might have made a better choice."
+
+"The Montriveaus are a very old family and very well connected,
+my dear," replied the Princess; "they are related to all the
+noblest houses of Burgundy. If the Dulmen branch of the Arschoot
+Rivaudoults should come to an end in Galicia, the Montriveaus
+would succeed to the Arschoot title and estates. They inherit
+through their great-grandfather.
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"I know it better than this Montriveau's father did. I told him
+about it, I used to see a good deal of him; and, Chevalier of
+several orders though he was, he only laughed; he was an
+encyclopaedist. But his brother turned the relationship to good
+account during the emigration. I have heard it said that his
+northern kinsfolk were most kind in every way----"
+
+"Yes, to be sure. The Comte de Montriveau died at St.
+Petersburg," said the Vidame. "I met him there. He was a big
+man with an incredible passion for oysters."
+
+"However many did he eat?" asked the Duc de Grandlieu.
+
+"Ten dozen every day."
+
+"And did they not disagree with him?"
+
+"Not the least bit in the world."
+
+"Why, that is extraordinary! Had he neither the stone nor gout,
+nor any other complaint, in consequence?"
+
+"No; his health was perfectly good, and he died through an
+accident."
+
+"By accident! Nature prompted him to eat oysters, so probably
+he required them; for up to a certain point our predominant
+tastes are conditions of our existence."
+
+"I am of your opinion," said the Princess, with a smile.
+
+"Madame, you always put a malicious construction on things,"
+returned the Marquis.
+
+"I only want you to understand that these remarks might leave a
+wrong impression on a young woman's mind," said she, and
+interrupted herself to exclaim, "But this niece, this niece of
+mine!"
+
+"Dear aunt, I still refuse to believe that she can have gone to
+M. de Montriveau," said the Duc de Navarreins.
+
+"Bah!" returned the Princess.
+
+"What do you think, Vidame?" asked the Marquis.
+
+"If the Duchess were an artless simpleton, I should think
+that----"
+
+"But when a woman is in love she becomes an artless simpleton,"
+retorted the Princess. "Really, my poor Vidame, you must be
+getting older."
+
+"After all, what is to be done?" asked the Duke.
+
+"If my dear niece is wise," said the Princess, "she will go to
+Court this evening--fortunately, today is Monday, and reception
+day--and you must see that we all rally round her and give the
+lie to this absurd rumour. There are hundreds of ways of
+explaining things; and if the Marquis de Montriveau is a
+gentleman, he will come to our assistance. We will bring these
+children to listen to reason----"
+
+"But, dear aunt, it is not easy to tell M. de Montriveau the
+truth to his face. He is one of Bonaparte's pupils, and he has
+a position. Why, he is one of the great men of the day; he is
+high up in the Guards, and very useful there. He has not a spark
+of ambition. He is just the man to say, 'Here is my commission,
+leave me in peace,' if the King should say a word that he did not
+like."
+
+"Then, pray, what are his opinions?"
+
+"Very unsound."
+
+"Really," sighed the Princess, "the King is, as he always has
+been, a Jacobin under the Lilies of France."
+
+"Oh! not quite so bad," said the Vidame.
+
+"Yes; I have known him for a long while. The man that pointed
+out the Court to his wife on the occasion of her first state
+dinner in public with, 'These are our people,' could only be a
+black-hearted scoundrel. I can see Monsieur exactly the same as
+ever in the King. The bad brother who voted so wrongly in his
+department of the Constituent Assembly was sure to compound with
+the Liberals and allow them to argue and talk. This
+philosophical cant will be just as dangerous now for the younger
+brother as it used to be for the elder; this fat man with the
+little mind is amusing himself by creating difficulties, and how
+his successor is to get out of them I do not know; he holds his
+younger brother in abhorrence; he would be glad to think as he
+lay dying, 'He will not reign very long----'"
+
+"Aunt, he is the King, and I have the honour to be in his
+service----"
+
+"But does your post take away your right of free speech, my
+dear? You come of quite as good a house as the Bourbons. If the
+Guises had shown a little more resolution, His Majesty would be a
+nobody at this day. It is time I went out of this world, the
+noblesse is dead. Yes, it is all over with you, my children,"
+she continued, looking as she spoke at the Vidame. "What has my
+niece done that the whole town should be talking about her? She
+is in the wrong; I disapprove of her conduct, a useless scandal
+is a blunder; that is why I still have my doubts about this want
+of regard for appearances; I brought her up, and I know
+that----"
+
+Just at that moment the Duchess came out of her boudoir. She had
+recognised her aunt's voice and heard the name of Montriveau.
+She was still in her loose morning-gown; and even as she came in,
+M. de Grandlieu, looking carelessly out of the window, saw his
+niece's carriage driving back along the street. The Duke took
+his daughter's face in both hands and kissed her on the forehead.
+
+"So, dear girl," he said, "you do not know what is going on?"
+
+"Has anything extraordinary happened, father dear?"
+
+"Why, all Paris believes that you are with M. de Montriveau."
+
+"My dear Antoinette, you were at home all the time, were you
+not?" said the Princess, holding out a hand, which the Duchess
+kissed with affectionate respect.
+
+"Yes, dear mother; I was at home all the time. And," she
+added, as she turned to greet the Vidame and the Marquis, "I
+wished that all Paris should think that I was with M. de
+Montriveau."
+
+The Duke flung up his hands, struck them together in despair, and
+folded his arms.
+
+"Then, cannot you see what will come of this mad freak?" he
+asked at last.
+
+But the aged Princess had suddenly risen, and stood looking
+steadily at the Duchess, the younger woman flushed, and her eyes
+fell. Mme de Chauvry gently drew her closer, and said, "My
+little angel, let me kiss you!"
+
+She kissed her niece very affectionately on the forehead, and
+continued smiling, while she held her hand in a tight clasp.
+
+"We are not under the Valois now, dear child. You have
+compromised your husband and your position. Still, we will
+arrange to make everything right."
+
+"But, dear aunt, I do not wish to make it right at all. It is
+my wish that all Paris should say that I was with M. de
+Montriveau this morning. If you destroy that belief, however ill
+grounded it may be, you will do me a singular disservice."
+
+"Do you really wish to ruin yourself, child, and to grieve your
+family?"
+
+"My family, father, unintentionally condemned me to irreparable
+misfortune when they sacrificed me to family considerations. You
+may, perhaps, blame me for seeking alleviations, but you will
+certainly feel for me."
+
+"After all the endless pains you take to settle your daughters
+suitably!" muttered M. de Navarreins, addressing the Vidame.
+
+The Princess shook a stray grain of snuff from her skirts. "My
+dear little girl," she said, "be happy, if you can. We are not
+talking of troubling your felicity, but of reconciling it with
+social usages. We all of us here assembled know that marriage is
+a defective institution tempered by love. But when you take a
+lover, is there any need to make your bed in the Place du
+Carrousel? See now, just be a bit reasonable, and hear what we
+have to say."
+
+"I am listening."
+
+"Mme la Duchesse," began the Duc de Grandlieu, "if it were any
+part of an uncle's duty to look after his nieces, he ought to
+have a position; society would owe him honours and rewards and a
+salary, exactly as if he were in the King's service. So I am not
+here to talk about my nephew, but of your own interests. Let us
+look ahead a little. If you persist in making a scandal--I have
+seen the animal before, and I own that I have no great liking for
+him--Langeais is stingy enough, and he does not care a rap for
+anyone but himself; he will have a separation; he will stick to
+your money, and leave you poor, and consequently you will be a
+nobody. The income of a hundred thousand livres that you have
+just inherited from your maternal great-aunt will go to pay for
+his mistresses' amusements. You will be bound and gagged by the
+law; you will have to say _Amen_ to all these arrangements.
+Suppose M. de Montriveau leaves you----dear me! do not let us put
+ourselves in a passion, my dear niece; a man does not leave a
+woman while she is young and pretty; still, we have seen so many
+pretty women left disconsolate, even among princesses, that you
+will permit the supposition, an all but impossible supposition I
+quite wish to believe.----Well, suppose that he goes, what will
+become of you without a husband? Keep well with your husband as
+you take care of your beauty; for beauty, after all, is a woman's
+parachute, and a husband also stands between you and worse. I am
+supposing that you are happy and loved to the end, and I am
+leaving unpleasant or unfortunate events altogether out of the
+reckoning. This being so, fortunately or unfortunately, you may
+have children. What are they to be? Montriveaus? Very well;
+they certainly will not succeed to their father's whole fortune.
+You will want to give them all that you have; he will wish to do
+the same. Nothing more natural, dear me! And you will find the
+law against you. How many times have we seen heirs-at-law
+bringing a law-suit to recover the property from illegitimate
+children? Every court of law rings with such actions all over
+the world. You will create a _fidei commissum_ perhaps; and if the
+trustee betrays your confidence, your children have no remedy
+against him; and they are ruined. So choose carefully. You see
+the perplexities of the position. In every possible way your
+children will be sacrificed of necessity to the fancies of your
+heart; they will have no recognised status. While they are
+little they will be charming; but, Lord! some day they will
+reproach you for thinking of no one but your two selves. We old
+gentlemen know all about it. Little boys grow up into men, and
+men are ungrateful beings. When I was in Germany, did I not hear
+young de Horn say, after supper, 'If my mother had been an honest
+woman, I should be prince-regnant!' _If_?' We have spent our
+lives in hearing plebeians say _if_. _If_ brought about the
+Revolution. When a man cannot lay the blame on his father or
+mother, he holds God responsible for his hard lot. In short,
+dear child, we are here to open your eyes. I will say all I have
+to say in a few words, on which you had better meditate: A woman
+ought never to put her husband in the right."
+
+"Uncle, so long as I cared for nobody, I could calculate; I
+looked at interests then, as you do; now, I can only feel."
+
+"But, my dear little girl," remonstrated the Vidame, "life is
+simply a complication of interests and feelings; to be happy,
+more particularly in your position, one must try to reconcile
+one's feelings with one's interests. A grisette may love
+according to her fancy, that is intelligible enough, but you have
+a pretty fortune, a family, a name and a place at Court, and you
+ought not to fling them out of the window. And what have we been
+asking you to do to keep them all?--To manoeuvre carefully
+instead of falling foul of social conventions. Lord! I shall
+very soon be eighty years old, and I cannot recollect, under any
+regime, a love worth the price that you are willing to pay for
+the love of this lucky young man."
+
+The Duchess silenced the Vidame with a look; if Montriveau could
+have seen that glance, he would have forgiven all.
+
+"It would be very effective on the stage," remarked the Duc de
+Grandlieu, "but it all amounts to nothing when your jointure and
+position and independence is concerned. You are not grateful, my
+dear niece. You will not find many families where the relatives
+have courage enough to teach the wisdom gained by experience, and
+to make rash young heads listen to reason. Renounce your
+salvation in two minutes, if it pleases you to damn yourself;
+well and good; but reflect well beforehand when it comes to
+renouncing your income. I know of no confessor who remits the
+pains of poverty. I have a right, I think, to speak in this way
+to you; for if you are ruined, I am the one person who can offer
+you a refuge. I am almost an uncle to Langeais, and I alone have
+a right to put him in the wrong."
+
+The Duc de Navarreins roused himself from painful reflections.
+
+"Since you speak of feeling, my child," he said, "let me
+remind you that a woman who bears your name ought to be moved by
+sentiments which do not touch ordinary people. Can you wish to
+give an advantage to the Liberals, to those Jesuits of
+Robespierre's that are doing all they can to vilify the noblesse?
+Some things a Navarreins cannot do without failing in duty to his
+house. You would not be alone in your dishonor----"
+
+"Come, come!" said the Princess. "Dishonor? Do not make
+such a fuss about the journey of an empty carriage, children, and
+leave me alone with Antoinette. All three of you come and dine
+with me. I will undertake to arrange matters suitably. You men
+understand nothing; you are beginning to talk sourly already, and
+I have no wish to see a quarrel between you and my dear child.
+Do me the pleasure to go."
+
+The three gentlemen probably guessed the Princess's intentions;
+they took their leave. M. de Navarreins kissed his daughter on
+the forehead with, "Come, be good, dear child. It is not too
+late yet if you choose."
+
+"Couldn't we find some good fellow in the family to pick a
+quarrel with this Montriveau?" said the Vidame, as they went
+downstairs.
+
+When the two women were alone, the Princess beckoned her niece to
+a little low chair by her side.
+
+"My pearl," said she, "in this world below, I know nothing
+worse calumniated than God and the eighteenth century; for as I
+look back over my own young days, I do not recollect that a
+single duchess trampled the proprieties underfoot as you have
+just done. Novelists and scribblers brought the reign of Louis
+XV into disrepute. Do not believe them. The du Barry, my dear,
+was quite as good as the Widow Scarron, and the more agreeable
+woman of the two. In my time a woman could keep her dignity
+among her gallantries. Indiscretion was the ruin of us, and the
+beginning of all the mischief. The philosophists--the nobodies
+whom we admitted into our salons--had no more gratitude or sense
+of decency than to make an inventory of our hearts, to traduce us
+one and all, and to rail against the age by way of a return for
+our kindness. The people are not in a position to judge of
+anything whatsoever; they looked at the facts, not at the form.
+But the men and women of those times, my heart, were quite as
+remarkable as at any other period of the Monarchy. Not one of
+your Werthers, none of your notabilities, as they are called,
+never a one of your men in yellow kid gloves and trousers that
+disguise the poverty of their legs, would cross Europe in the
+dress of a travelling hawker to brave the daggers of a Duke of
+Modena, and to shut himself up in the dressing-room of the
+Regent's daughter at the risk of his life. Not one of your
+little consumptive patients with their tortoiseshell eyeglasses
+would hide himself in a closet for six weeks, like Lauzun, to
+keep up his mistress's courage while she was lying in of her
+child. There was more passion in M. de Jaucourt's little finger
+than in your whole race of higglers that leave a woman to better
+themselves elsewhere! Just tell me where to find the page that
+would be cut in pieces and buried under the floorboards for one
+kiss on the Konigsmark's gloved finger!
+
+"Really, it would seem today that the roles are exchanged, and
+women are expected to show their devotion for men. These modern
+gentlemen are worth less, and think more of themselves. Believe
+me, my dear, all these adventures that have been made public, and
+now are turned against our good Louis XV, were kept quite secret
+at first. If it had not been for a pack of poetasters,
+scribblers, and moralists, who hung about our waiting-women, and
+took down their slanders, our epoch would have appeared in
+literature as a well-conducted age. I am justifying the century
+and not its fringe. Perhaps a hundred women of quality were
+lost; but for every one, the rogues set down ten, like the
+gazettes after a battle when they count up the losses of the
+beaten side. And in any case I do not know that the Revolution
+and the Empire can reproach us; they were coarse, dull,
+licentious times. Faugh! it is revolting. Those are the
+brothels of French history.
+
+"This preamble, my dear child," she continued after a pause,
+"brings me to the thing that I have to say. If you care for
+Montriveau, you are quite at liberty to love him at your ease,
+and as much as you can. I know by experience that, unless you
+are locked up (but locking people up is out of fashion now), you
+will do as you please; I should have done the same at your age.
+Only, sweetheart, I should not have given up my right to be the
+mother of future Ducs de Langeais. So mind appearances. The
+Vidame is right. No man is worth a single one of the sacrifices
+which we are foolish enough to make for their love. Put yourself
+in such a position that you may still be M. de Langeais' wife,
+in case you should have the misfortune to repent. When you are
+an old woman, you will be very glad to hear mass said at Court,
+and not in some provincial convent. Therein lies the whole
+question. A single imprudence means an allowance and a wandering
+life; it means that you are at the mercy of your lover; it means
+that you must put up with insolence from women that are not so
+honest, precisely because they have been very vulgarly
+sharp-witted. It would be a hundred times better to go to
+Montriveau's at night in a cab, and disguised, instead of sending
+your carriage in broad daylight. You are a little fool, my dear
+child! Your carriage flattered his vanity; your person would
+have ensnared his heart. All this that I have said is just and
+true; but, for my own part, I do not blame you. You are two
+centuries behind the times with your false ideas of greatness.
+There, leave us to arrange your affairs, and say that Montriveau
+made your servants drunk to gratify his vanity and to compromise
+you----"
+
+The Duchess rose to her feet with a spring. "In Heaven's name,
+aunt, do not slander him!"
+
+The old Princess's eyes flashed.
+
+"Dear child," she said, "I should have liked to spare such of
+your illusions as were not fatal. But there must be an end of
+all illusions now. You would soften me if I were not so old.
+Come, now, do not vex him, or us, or anyone else. I will
+undertake to satisfy everybody; but promise me not to permit
+yourself a single step henceforth until you have consulted me.
+Tell me all, and perhaps I may bring it all right again."
+
+"Aunt, I promise----"
+
+"To tell me everything?"
+
+"Yes, everything. Everything that can be told."
+
+"But, my sweetheart, it is precisely what cannot be told that I
+want to know. Let us understand each other thoroughly. Come,
+let me put my withered old lips on your beautiful forehead. No;
+let me do as I wish. I forbid you to kiss my bones. Old people
+have a courtesy of their own. . . . There, take me down to my
+carriage," she added, when she had kissed her niece.
+
+"Then may I go to him in disguise, dear aunt?"
+
+"Why--yes. The story can always be denied," said the old
+Princess.
+
+This was the one idea which the Duchess had clearly grasped in
+the sermon. When Mme de Chauvry was seated in the corner of her
+carriage, Mme de Langeais bade her a graceful adieu and went up
+to her room. She was quite happy again.
+
+"My person would have snared his heart; my aunt is right; a man
+cannot surely refuse a pretty woman when she understands how to
+offer herself."
+
+That evening, at the Elysee-Bourbon, the Duc de Navarreins, M. de
+Pamiers, M. de Marsay, M. de Grandlieu, and the Duc de
+Maufrigneuse triumphantly refuted the scandals that were
+circulating with regard to the Duchesse de Langeais. So many
+officers and other persons had seen Montriveau walking in the
+Tuileries that morning, that the silly story was set down to
+chance, which takes all that is offered. And so, in spite of the
+fact that the Duchess's carriage had waited before Montriveau's
+door, her character became as clear and as spotless as Membrino's
+sword after Sancho had polished it up.
+
+But, at two o'clock, M. de Ronquerolles passed Montriveau in a
+deserted alley, and said with a smile, "She is coming on, is
+your Duchess. Go on, keep it up!" he added, and gave a
+significant cut of the riding whip to his mare, who sped off like
+a bullet down the avenue.
+
+Two days after the fruitless scandal, Mme de Langeais wrote to M.
+de Montriveau. That letter, like the preceding ones, remained
+unanswered. This time she took her own measures, and bribed M.
+de Montriveau's man, Auguste. And so at eight o'clock that
+evening she was introduced into Armand's apartment. It was not
+the room in which that secret scene had passed; it was entirely
+different. The Duchess was told that the General would not be at
+home that night. Had he two houses? The man would give no
+answer. Mme de Langeais had bought the key of the room, but not
+the man's whole loyalty.
+
+When she was left alone she saw her fourteen letters lying on an
+old-fashioned stand, all of them uncreased and unopened. He had
+not read them. She sank into an easy-chair, and for a while she
+lost consciousness. When she came to herself, Auguste was
+holding vinegar for her to inhale.
+
+"A carriage; quick!" she ordered.
+
+The carriage came. She hastened downstairs with convulsive
+speed, and left orders that no one was to be admitted. For
+twenty-four hours she lay in bed, and would have no one near her
+but her woman, who brought her a cup of orange-flower water from
+time to time. Suzette heard her mistress moan once or twice, and
+caught a glimpse of tears in the brilliant eyes, now circled with
+dark shadows.
+
+The next day, amid despairing tears, Mme de Langeais took her
+resolution. Her man of business came for an interview, and no
+doubt received instructions of some kind. Afterwards she sent
+for the Vidame de Pamiers; and while she waited, she wrote a
+letter to M. de Montriveau. The Vidame punctually came towards
+two o'clock that afternoon, to find his young cousin looking
+white and worn, but resigned; never had her divine loveliness
+been more poetic than now in the languor of her agony.
+
+"You owe this assignation to your eighty-four years, dear
+cousin," she said. "Ah! do not smile, I beg of you, when an
+unhappy woman has reached the lowest depths of wretchedness. You
+are a gentleman, and after the adventures of your youth you must
+feel some indulgence for women."
+
+"None whatever," said he.
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Everything is in their favour."
+
+"Ah! Well, you are one of the inner family circle; possibly you
+will be the last relative, the last friend whose hand I shall
+press, so I can ask your good offices. Will you, dear Vidame, do
+me a service which I could not ask of my own father, nor of my
+uncle Grandlieu, nor of any woman? You cannot fail to
+understand. I beg of you to do my bidding, and then to forget
+what you have done, whatever may come of it. It is this: Will
+you take this letter and go to M. de Montriveau? will you see him
+yourself, give it into his hands, and ask him, as you men can ask
+things between yourselves--for you have a code of honour between
+man and man which you do not use with us, and a different way of
+regarding things between yourselves--ask him if he will read this
+letter? Not in your presence. Certain feelings men hide from
+each other. I give you authority to say, if you think it
+necessary to bring him, that it is a question of life or death
+for me. If he deigns----"
+
+"_Deigns_!" repeated the Vidame.
+
+"If he deigns to read it," the Duchess continued with dignity,
+"say one thing more. You will go to see him about five o'clock,
+for I know that he will dine at home today at that time. Very
+good. By way of answer he must come to see me. If, three hours
+afterwards, by eight o'clock, he does not leave his house, all
+will be over. The Duchesse de Langeais will have vanished from
+the world. I shall not be dead, dear friend, no, but no human
+power will ever find me again on this earth. Come and dine with
+me; I shall at least have one friend with me in the last agony.
+Yes, dear cousin, tonight will decide my fate; and whatever
+happens to me, I pass through an ordeal by fire. There! not a
+word. I will hear nothing of the nature of comment or
+advice----Let us chat and laugh together," she added, holding
+out a hand, which he kissed. "We will be like two grey-headed
+philosophers who have learned how to enjoy life to the last
+moment. I will look my best; I will be very enchanting for you.
+You perhaps will be the last man to set eyes on the Duchesse de
+Langeais."
+
+The Vicomte bowed, took the letter, and went without a word. At
+five o'clock he returned. His cousin had studied to please him,
+and she looked lovely indeed. The room was gay with flowers as
+if for a festivity; the dinner was exquisite. For the
+grey-headed Vidame the Duchess displayed all the brilliancy of
+her wit; she was more charming than she had ever been before. At
+first the Vidame tried to look on all these preparations as a
+young woman's jest; but now and again the attempted illusion
+faded, the spell of his fair cousin's charm was broken. He
+detected a shudder caused by some kind of sudden dread, and once
+she seemed to listen during a pause.
+
+"What is the matter?" he asked.
+
+"Hush!" she said.
+
+At seven o'clock the Duchess left him for a few minutes. When
+she came back again she was dressed as her maid might have
+dressed for a journey. She asked her guest to be her escort,
+took his arm, sprang into a hackney coach, and by a quarter to
+eight they stood outside M. de Montriveau's door.
+
+Armand meantime had been reading the following letter:--
+
+
+"MY FRIEND,--I went to your rooms for a few minutes without your
+knowledge; I found my letters there, and took them away. This
+cannot be indifference, Armand, between us; and hatred would show
+itself quite differently. If you love me, make an end of this
+cruel play, or you will kill me, and afterwards, learning how
+much you were loved, you might be in despair. If I have not
+rightly understood you, if you have no feeling towards me but
+aversion, which implies both contempt and disgust, then I give up
+all hope. A man never recovers from those feelings. You will
+have no regrets. Dreadful though that thought may be, it will
+comfort me in my long sorrow. Regrets? Oh, my Armand, may I
+never know of them; if I thought that I had caused you a single
+regret----But, no, I will not tell you what desolation I should
+feel. I should be living still, and I could not be your wife; it
+would be too late!
+
+"Now that I have given myself wholly to you in thought, to whom
+else should I give myself?--to God. The eyes that you loved for
+a little while shall never look on another man's face; and may
+the glory of God blind them to all besides. I shall never hear
+human voices more since I heard yours--so gentle at the first, so
+terrible yesterday; for it seems to me that I am still only on
+the morrow of your vengeance. And now may the will of God
+consume me. Between His wrath and yours, my friend, there will
+be nothing left for me but a little space for tears and prayers.
+
+"Perhaps you wonder why I write to you? Ah! do not think ill of
+me if I keep a gleam of hope, and give one last sigh to happy
+life before I take leave of it forever. I am in a hideous
+position. I feel all the inward serenity that comes when a great
+resolution has been taken, even while I hear the last growlings
+of the storm. When you went out on that terrible adventure which
+so drew me to you, Armand, you went from the desert to the oasis
+with a good guide to show you the way. Well, I am going out of
+the oasis into the desert, and you are a pitiless guide to me.
+And yet you only, my friend, can understand how melancholy it is
+to look back for the last time on happiness--to you, and you
+only, I can make moan without a blush. If you grant my entreaty,
+I shall be happy; if you are inexorable, I shall expiate the
+wrong that I have done. After all, it is natural, is it not,
+that a woman should wish to live, invested with all noble
+feelings, in her friend's memory? Oh! my one and only love, let
+her to whom you gave life go down into the tomb in the belief
+that she is great in your eyes. Your harshness led me to
+reflect; and now that I love you so, it seems to me that I am
+less guilty than you think. Listen to my justification, I owe it
+to you; and you that are all the world to me, owe me at least a
+moment's justice.
+
+"I have learned by my own anguish all that I made you suffer by
+my coquetry; but in those days I was utterly ignorant of love.
+_You_ know what the torture is, and you mete it out to me! During
+those first eight months that you gave me you never roused any
+feeling of love in me. Do you ask why this was so, my friend? I
+can no more explain it than I can tell you why I love you now.
+Oh! certainly it flattered my vanity that I should be the subject
+of your passionate talk, and receive those burning glances of
+yours; but you left me cold. No, I was not a woman; I had no
+conception of womanly devotion and happiness. Who was to blame?
+You would have despised me, would you not, if I had given myself
+without the impulse of passion? Perhaps it is the highest height
+to which we can rise--to give all and receive no joy; perhaps
+there is no merit in yielding oneself to bliss that is foreseen
+and ardently desired. Alas, my friend, I can say this now; these
+thoughts came to me when I played with you; and you seemed to me
+so great even then that I would not have you owe the gift to
+pity----What is this that I have written?
+
+"I have taken back all my letters; I am flinging them one by one
+on the fire; they are burning. You will never know what they
+confessed--all the love and the passion and the madness----
+
+"I will say no more, Armand; I will stop. I will not say
+another word of my feelings. If my prayers have not echoed from
+my soul through yours, I also, woman that I am, decline to owe
+your love to your pity. It is my wish to be loved, because you
+cannot choose but love me, or else to be left without mercy. If
+you refuse to read this letter, it shall be burnt. If, after you
+have read it, you do not come to me within three hours, to be
+henceforth forever my husband, the one man in the world for me;
+then I shall never blush to know that this letter is in your
+hands, the pride of my despair will protect my memory from all
+insult, and my end shall be worthy of my love. When you see me
+no more on earth, albeit I shall still be alive, you yourself
+will not think without a shudder of the woman who, in three
+hours' time, will live only to overwhelm you with her tenderness;
+a woman consumed by a hopeless love, and faithful--not to
+memories of past joys--but to a love that was slighted.
+
+"The Duchesse de la Valliere wept for lost happiness and
+vanished power; but the Duchesse de Langeais will be happy that
+she may weep and be a power for you still. Yes, you will regret
+me. I see clearly that I was not of this world, and I thank you
+for making it clear to me.
+
+"Farewell; you will never touch _my_ axe. Yours was the
+executioner's axe, mine is God's; yours kills, mine saves. Your
+love was but mortal, it could not endure disdain or ridicule;
+mine can endure all things without growing weaker, it will last
+eternally. Ah! I feel a sombre joy in crushing you that believe
+yourself so great; in humbling you with the calm, indulgent smile
+of one of the least among the angels that lie at the feet of God,
+for to them is given the right and the power to protect and watch
+over men in His name. You have but felt fleeting desires, while
+the poor nun will shed the light of her ceaseless and ardent
+prayer about you, she will shelter you all your life long beneath
+the wings of a love that has nothing of earth in it.
+
+"I have a presentiment of your answer; our trysting place shall
+be--in heaven. Strength and weakness can both enter there, dear
+Armand; the strong and the weak are bound to suffer. This
+thought soothes the anguish of my final ordeal. So calm am I
+that I should fear that I had ceased to love you if I were not
+about to leave the world for your sake.
+
+                                                "ANTOINETTE."
+
+
+"Dear Vidame," said the Duchess as they reached Montriveau's
+house, "do me the kindness to ask at the door whether he is at
+home." The Vidame, obedient after the manner of the eighteenth
+century to a woman's wish, got out, and came back to bring his
+cousin an affirmative answer that sent a shudder through her.
+She grasped his hand tightly in hers, suffered him to kiss her on
+either cheek, and begged him to go at once. He must not watch
+her movements nor try to protect her. "But the people passing
+in the street," he objected.
+
+"No one can fail in respect to me," she said. It was the last
+word spoken by the Duchess and the woman of fashion.
+
+The Vidame went. Mme de Langeais wrapped herself about in her
+cloak, and stood on the doorstep until the clocks struck eight.
+The last stroke died away. The unhappy woman waited ten, fifteen
+minutes; to the last she tried to see a fresh humiliation in the
+delay, then her faith ebbed. She turned to leave the fatal
+threshold.
+
+"Oh, God!" the cry broke from her in spite of herself; it was
+the first word spoken by the Carmelite.
+
+
+
+Montriveau and some of his friends were talking together. He
+tried to hasten them to a conclusion, but his clock was slow, and
+by the time he started out for the Hotel de Langeais the Duchess
+was hurrying on foot through the streets of Paris, goaded by the
+dull rage in her heart. She reached the Boulevard d'Enfer, and
+looked out for the last time through falling tears on the noisy,
+smoky city that lay below in a red mist, lighted up by its own
+lamps. Then she hailed a cab, and drove away, never to return.
+When the Marquis de Montriveau reached the Hotel de Langeais, and
+found no trace of his mistress, he thought that he had been
+duped. He hurried away at once to the Vidame, and found that
+worthy gentleman in the act of slipping on his flowered
+dressing-gown, thinking the while of his fair cousin's happiness.
+
+Montriveau gave him one of the terrific glances that produced the
+effect of an electric shock on men and women alike.
+
+"Is it possible that you have lent yourself to some cruel hoax,
+monsieur?" Montriveau exclaimed. "I have just come from Mme de
+Langeais' house; the servants say that she is out."
+
+"Then a great misfortune has happened, no doubt," returned the
+Vidame, "and through your fault. I left the Duchess at your
+door----"
+
+"When?"
+
+"At a quarter to eight."
+
+"Good evening," returned Montriveau, and he hurried home to ask
+the porter whether he had seen a lady standing on the doorstep
+that evening.
+
+"Yes, my Lord Marquis, a handsome woman, who seemed very much
+put out. She was crying like a Magdalen, but she never made a
+sound, and stood as upright as a post. Then at last she went,
+and my wife and I that were watching her while she could not see
+us, heard her say, 'Oh, God!' so that it went to our hearts,
+asking your pardon, to hear her say it."
+
+Montriveau, in spite of all his firmness, turned pale at those
+few words. He wrote a few lines to Ronquerolles, sent off the
+message at once, and went up to his rooms. Ronquerolles came
+just about midnight.
+
+Armand gave him the Duchess's letter to read.
+
+"Well?" asked Ronquerolles.
+
+"She was here at my door at eight o'clock; at a quarter-past
+eight she had gone. I have lost her, and I love her. Oh! if my
+life were my own, I could blow my brains out."
+
+"Pooh, pooh! Keep cool," said Ronquerolles. "Duchesses do
+not fly off like wagtails. She cannot travel faster than three
+leagues an hour, and tomorrow we will ride six.--Confound it!
+Mme de Langeais is no ordinary woman," he continued. "Tomorrow
+we will all of us mount and ride. The police will put us on her
+track during the day. She must have a carriage; angels of that
+sort have no wings. We shall find her whether she is on the road
+or hidden in Paris. There is the semaphore. We can stop her.
+You shall be happy. But, my dear fellow, you have made a
+blunder, of which men of your energy are very often guilty. They
+judge others by themselves, and do not know the point when human
+nature gives way if you strain the cords too tightly. Why did
+you not say a word to me sooner? I would have told you to be
+punctual. Good-bye till tomorrow," he added, as Montriveau said
+nothing. "Sleep if you can," he added, with a grasp of the
+hand.
+
+But the greatest resources which society has ever placed at the
+disposal of statesmen, kings, ministers, bankers, or any human
+power, in fact, were all exhausted in vain. Neither Montriveau
+nor his friends could find any trace of the Duchess. It was
+clear that she had entered a convent. Montriveau determined to
+search, or to institute a search, for her through every convent
+in the world. He must have her, even at the cost of all the
+lives in a town. And in justice to this extraordinary man, it
+must be said that his frenzied passion awoke to the same ardour
+daily and lasted through five years. Only in 1829 did the Duc de
+Navarreins hear by chance that his daughter had travelled to
+Spain as Lady Julia Hopwood's maid, that she had left her service
+at Cadiz, and that Lady Julia never discovered that Mlle Caroline
+was the illustrious duchess whose sudden disappearance filled the
+minds of the highest society of Paris.
+
+
+
+The feelings of the two lovers when they met again on either side
+of the grating in the Carmelite convent should now be
+comprehended to the full, and the violence of the passion
+awakened in either soul will doubtless explain the catastrophe of
+the story.
+
+In 1823 the Duc de Langeais was dead, and his wife was free.
+Antoinette de Navarreins was living, consumed by love, on a ledge
+of rock in the Mediterranean; but it was in the Pope's power to
+dissolve Sister Theresa's vows. The happiness bought by so much
+love might yet bloom for the two lovers. These thoughts sent
+Montriveau flying from Cadiz to Marseilles, and from Marseilles
+to Paris.
+
+A few months after his return to France, a merchant brig, fitted
+out and munitioned for active service, set sail from the port of
+Marseilles for Spain. The vessel had been chartered by several
+distinguished men, most of them Frenchmen, who, smitten with a
+romantic passion for the East, wished to make a journey to those
+lands. Montriveau's familiar knowledge of Eastern customs made
+him an invaluable travelling companion, and at the entreaty of
+the rest he had joined the expedition; the Minister of War
+appointed him lieutenant-general, and put him on the Artillery
+Commission to facilitate his departure.
+
+Twenty-fours hours later the brig lay to off the north-west shore
+of an island within sight of the Spanish coast. She had been
+specially chosen for her shallow keel and light mastage, so that
+she might lie at anchor in safety half a league away from the
+reefs that secure the island from approach in this direction. If
+fishing vessels or the people on the island caught sight of the
+brig, they were scarcely likely to feel suspicious of her at
+once; and besides, it was easy to give a reason for her presence
+without delay. Montriveau hoisted the flag of the United States
+before they came in sight of the island, and the crew of the
+vessel were all American sailors, who spoke nothing but English.
+One of M. de Montriveau's companions took the men ashore in the
+ship's longboat, and made them so drunk at an inn in the little
+town that they could not talk. Then he gave out that the brig
+was manned by treasure-seekers, a gang of men whose hobby was
+well known in the United States; indeed, some Spanish writer had
+written a history of them. The presence of the brig among the
+reefs was now sufficiently explained. The owners of the vessel,
+according to the self-styled boatswain's mate, were looking for
+the wreck of a galleon which foundered thereabouts in 1778 with a
+cargo of treasure from Mexico. The people at the inn and the
+authorities asked no more questions.
+
+Armand, and the devoted friends who were helping him in his
+difficult enterprise, were all from the first of the opinion that
+there was no hope of rescuing or carrying off Sister Theresa by
+force or stratagem from the side of the little town. Wherefore
+these bold spirits, with one accord, determined to take the bull
+by the horns. They would make a way to the convent at the most
+seemingly inaccessible point; like General Lamarque, at the
+storming of Capri, they would conquer Nature. The cliff at the
+end of the island, a sheer block of granite, afforded even less
+hold than the rock of Capri. So it seemed at least to
+Montriveau, who had taken part in that incredible exploit, while
+the nuns in his eyes were much more redoubtable than Sir Hudson
+Lowe. To raise a hubbub over carrying off the Duchess would
+cover them with confusion. They might as well set siege to the
+town and convent, like pirates, and leave not a single soul to
+tell of their victory. So for them their expedition wore but two
+aspects. There should be a conflagration and a feat of arms that
+should dismay all Europe, while the motives of the crime remained
+unknown; or, on the other hand, a mysterious, aerial descent
+which should persuade the nuns that the Devil himself had paid
+them a visit. They had decided upon the latter course in the
+secret council held before they left Paris, and subsequently
+everything had been done to insure the success of an expedition
+which promised some real excitement to jaded spirits weary of
+Paris and its pleasures.
+
+An extremely light pirogue, made at Marseilles on a Malayan
+model, enabled them to cross the reef, until the rocks rose from
+out of the water. Then two cables of iron wire were fastened
+several feet apart between one rock and another. These wire
+ropes slanted upwards and downwards in opposite directions, so
+that baskets of iron wire could travel to and fro along them; and
+in this manner the rocks were covered with a system of baskets
+and wire-cables, not unlike the filaments which a certain species
+of spider weaves about a tree. The Chinese, an essentially
+imitative people, were the first to take a lesson from the work
+of instinct. Fragile as these bridges were, they were always
+ready for use; high waves and the caprices of the sea could not
+throw them out of working order; the ropes hung just sufficiently
+slack, so as to present to the breakers that particular curve
+discovered by Cachin, the immortal creator of the harbour at
+Cherbourg. Against this cunningly devised line the angry surge
+is powerless; the law of that curve was a secret wrested from
+Nature by that faculty of observation in which nearly all human
+genius consists.
+
+M. de Montriveau's companions were alone on board the vessel, and
+out of sight of every human eye. No one from the deck of a
+passing vessel could have discovered either the brig hidden among
+the reefs, or the men at work among the rocks; they lay below the
+ordinary range of the most powerful telescope. Eleven days were
+spent in preparation, before the Thirteen, with all their
+infernal power, could reach the foot of the cliffs. The body of
+the rock rose up straight from the sea to a height of thirty
+fathoms. Any attempt to climb the sheer wall of granite seemed
+impossible; a mouse might as well try to creep up the slippery
+sides of a plain china vase. Still there was a cleft, a straight
+line of fissure so fortunately placed that large blocks of wood
+could be wedged firmly into it at a distance of about a foot
+apart. Into these blocks the daring workers drove iron cramps,
+specially made for the purpose, with a broad iron bracket at the
+outer end, through which a hole had been drilled. Each bracket
+carried a light deal board which corresponded with a notch made
+in a pole that reached to the top of the cliffs, and was firmly
+planted in the beach at their feet. With ingenuity worthy of
+these men who found nothing impossible, one of their number, a
+skilled mathematician, had calculated the angle from which the
+steps must start; so that from the middle they rose gradually,
+like the sticks of a fan, to the top of the cliff, and descended
+in the same fashion to its base. That miraculously light, yet
+perfectly firm, staircase cost them twenty-two days of toil. A
+little tinder and the surf of the sea would destroy all trace of
+it forever in a single night. A betrayal of the secret was
+impossible; and all search for the violators of the convent was
+doomed to failure.
+
+At the top of the rock there was a platform with sheer precipice
+on all sides. The Thirteen, reconnoitring the ground with their
+glasses from the masthead, made certain that though the ascent
+was steep and rough, there would be no difficulty in gaining the
+convent garden, where the trees were thick enough for a
+hiding-place. After such great efforts they would not risk the
+success of their enterprise, and were compelled to wait till the
+moon passed out of her last quarter.
+
+For two nights Montriveau, wrapped in his cloak, lay out on the
+rock platform. The singing at vespers and matins filled him with
+unutterable joy. He stood under the wall to hear the music of
+the organ, listening intently for one voice among the rest. But
+in spite of the silence, the confused effect of music was all
+that reached his ears. In those sweet harmonies defects of
+execution are lost; the pure spirit of art comes into direct
+communication with the spirit of the hearer, making no demand on
+the attention, no strain on the power of listening. Intolerable
+memories awoke. All the love within him seemed to break into
+blossom again at the breath of that music; he tried to find
+auguries of happiness in the air. During the last night he sat
+with his eyes fixed upon an ungrated window, for bars were not
+needed on the side of the precipice. A light shone there all
+through the hours; and that instinct of the heart, which is
+sometimes true, and as often false, cried within him, "She is
+there!"
+
+"She is certainly there! Tomorrow she will be mine," he said
+to himself, and joy blended with the slow tinkling of a bell that
+began to ring.
+
+Strange unaccountable workings of the heart! The nun, wasted by
+yearning love, worn out with tears and fasting, prayer and
+vigils; the woman of nine-and-twenty, who had passed through
+heavy trials, was loved more passionately than the lighthearted
+girl, the woman of four-and-twenty, the sylphide, had ever been.
+But is there not, for men of vigorous character, something
+attractive in the sublime expression engraven on women's faces by
+the impetuous stirrings of thought and misfortunes of no ignoble
+kind? Is there not a beauty of suffering which is the most
+interesting of all beauty to those men who feel that within them
+there is an inexhaustible wealth of tenderness and consoling pity
+for a creature so gracious in weakness, so strong with love? It
+is the ordinary nature that is attracted by young, smooth,
+pink-and-white beauty, or, in one word, by prettiness. In some
+faces love awakens amid the wrinkles carved by sorrow and the
+ruin made by melancholy; Montriveau could not but feel drawn to
+these. For cannot a lover, with the voice of a great longing,
+call forth a wholly new creature? a creature athrob with the life
+but just begun breaks forth for him alone, from the outward form
+that is fair for him, and faded for all the world besides. Does
+he not love two women?--One of them, as others see her, is pale
+and wan and sad; but the other, the unseen love that his heart
+knows, is an angel who understands life through feeling, and is
+adorned in all her glory only for love's high festivals.
+
+The General left his post before sunrise, but not before he had
+heard voices singing together, sweet voices full of tenderness
+sounding faintly from the cell. When he came down to the foot of
+the cliffs where his friends were waiting, he told them that
+never in his life had he felt such enthralling bliss, and in the
+few words there was that unmistakable thrill of repressed strong
+feeling, that magnificent utterance which all men respect.
+
+
+
+That night eleven of his devoted comrades made the ascent in the
+darkness. Each man carried a poniard, a provision of chocolate,
+and a set of house-breaking tools. They climbed the outer walls
+with scaling-ladders, and crossed the cemetery of the convent.
+Montriveau recognised the long, vaulted gallery through which he
+went to the parlour, and remembered the windows of the room. His
+plans were made and adopted in a moment. They would effect an
+entrance through one of the windows in the Carmelite's half of
+the parlour, find their way along the corridors, ascertain
+whether the sister's names were written on the doors, find Sister
+Theresa's cell, surprise her as she slept, and carry her off,
+bound and gagged. The programme presented no difficulties to men
+who combined boldness and a convict's dexterity with the
+knowledge peculiar to men of the world, especially as they would
+not scruple to give a stab to ensure silence.
+
+In two hours the bars were sawn through. Three men stood on
+guard outside, and two inside the parlour. The rest, barefooted,
+took up their posts along the corridor. Young Henri de Marsay,
+the most dexterous man among them, disguised by way of precaution
+in a Carmelite's robe, exactly like the costume of the convent,
+led the way, and Montriveau came immediately behind him. The
+clock struck three just as the two men reached the dormitory
+cells. They soon saw the position. Everything was perfectly
+quiet. With the help of a dark lantern they read the names
+luckily written on every door, together with the picture of a
+saint or saints and the mystical words which every nun takes as a
+kind of motto for the beginning of her new life and the
+revelation of her last thought. Montriveau reached Sister
+Theresa's door and read the inscription, _Sub invocatione sanctae
+matris Theresae_, and her motto, _Adoremus in aeternum_. Suddenly
+his companion laid a hand on his shoulder. A bright light was
+streaming through the chinks of the door. M. de Ronquerolles
+came up at that moment.
+
+"All the nuns are in the church," he said; "they are beginning
+the Office for the Dead."
+
+"I will stay here," said Montriveau. "Go back into the parlour,
+and shut the door at the end of the passage."
+
+He threw open the door and rushed in, preceded by his disguised
+companion, who let down the veil over his face.
+
+There before them lay the dead Duchess; her plank bed had been
+laid on the floor of the outer room of her cell, between two
+lighted candles. Neither Montriveau nor de Marsay spoke a word
+or uttered a cry; but they looked into each other's faces. The
+General's dumb gesture tried to say, "Let us carry her away!"
+
+"Quickly" shouted Ronquerolles, "the procession of nuns is
+leaving the church. You will be caught!"
+
+With magical swiftness of movement, prompted by an intense
+desire, the dead woman was carried into the convent parlour,
+passed through the window, and lowered from the walls before the
+Abbess, followed by the nuns, returned to take up Sister
+Theresa's body. The sister left in charge had imprudently left
+her post; there were secrets that she longed to know; and so busy
+was she ransacking the inner room, that she heard nothing, and
+was horrified when she came back to find that the body was gone.
+Before the women, in their blank amazement, could think of making
+a search, the Duchess had been lowered by a cord to the foot of
+the crags, and Montriveau's companions had destroyed all traces
+of their work. By nine o'clock that morning there was not a sign
+to show that either staircase or wire-cables had ever existed,
+and Sister Theresa's body had been taken on board. The brig came
+into the port to ship her crew, and sailed that day.
+
+Montriveau, down in the cabin, was left alone with Antoinette de
+Navarreins. For some hours it seemed as if her dead face was
+transfigured for him by that unearthly beauty which the calm of
+death gives to the body before it perishes.
+
+"Look here," said Ronquerolles when Montriveau reappeared on
+deck, "_that_ was a woman once, now it is nothing. Let us tie a
+cannon ball to both feet and throw the body overboard; and if
+ever you think of her again, think of her as of some book that
+you read as a boy."
+
+"Yes," assented Montriveau, "it is nothing now but a dream."
+
+"That is sensible of you. Now, after this, have passions; but
+as for love, a man ought to know how to place it wisely; it is
+only a woman's last love that can satisfy a man's first love."
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+  Note: The Duchesse de Langeais is the second part of a trilogy.
+  Part one is entitled Ferragus and part three is The Girl with
+  the Golden Eyes. In other addendum references all three stories
+  are usually combined under the title The Thirteen.
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+Blamont-Chauvry, Princesse de
+  Madame Firmiani
+  The Lily of the Valley
+
+Grandlieu, Duc Ferdinand de
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Modeste Mignon
+  Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+
+Granville, Comtesse Angelique de
+  A Second Home
+  A Daughter of Eve
+
+Keller, Madame Francois
+  Domestic Peace
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Langeais, Duc de
+  An Episode under the Terror
+
+Langeais, Duchesse Antoinette de
+  Father Goriot
+  Ferragus
+
+Marsay, Henri de
+  Ferragus
+  The Girl with the Golden Eyes
+  The Unconscious Humorists
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Lily of the Valley
+  Father Goriot
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  Ursule Mirouet
+  A Marriage Settlement
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  The Ball at Sceaux
+  Modeste Mignon
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  A Daughter of Eve
+
+Montriveau, General Marquis Armand de
+  Father Goriot
+  Lost Illusions
+  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+  Another Study of Woman
+  Pierrette
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Navarreins, Duc de
+  A Bachelor's Establishment
+  Colonel Chabert
+  The Muse of the Department
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+  The Peasantry
+  Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+  The Country Parson
+  The Magic Skin
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  The Secrets of a Princess
+  Cousin Betty
+
+Pamiers, Vidame de
+  Ferragus
+  Jealousies of a Country Town
+
+Ronquerolles, Marquis de
+  The Imaginary Mistress
+  The Peasantry
+  Ursule Mirouet
+  A Woman of Thirty
+  Another Study of Woman
+  Ferragus
+  The Girl with the Golden Eyes
+  The Member for Arcis
+
+Serizy, Comtesse de
+  A Start in Life
+  Ferragus
+  Ursule Mirouet
+  A Woman of Thirty
+  Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
+  Another Study of Woman
+  The Imaginary Mistress
+
+Soulanges, Comtesse Hortense de
+  Domestic Peace
+  The Peasantry
+
+Talleyrand-Perigord, Charles-Maurice de
+  The Chouans
+  The Gondreville Mystery
+  Letters of Two Brides
+  Gaudissart II
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Duchesse de Langeais, by Honore de Balzac
+
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+****The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Duchesse de Langeais****
+by Honore de Balzac
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+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DUCHESS OF LANGEAIS
+
+
+I
+
+In a Spanish city on an island in the Mediterranean, there stands
+a convent of the Order of Barefoot Carmelites, where the rule
+instituted by St. Theresa is still preserved with all the first
+rigour of the reformation brought about by that illustrious
+woman.  Extraordinary as this may seem, it is none the less true.
+
+Almost every religious house in the Peninsula, or in Europe for
+that matter, was either destroyed or disorganised by the outbreak
+of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars; but as this
+island was protected through those times by the English fleet,
+its wealthy convent and peaceable inhabitants were secure from
+the general trouble and spoliation.  The storms of many kinds
+which shook the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century
+spent their force before they reached those cliffs at so short a
+distance from the coast of Andalusia.
+
+If the rumour of the Emperor's name so much as reached the shore
+of the island, it is doubtful whether the holy women kneeling in
+the cloisters grasped the reality of his dream-like progress of
+glory, or the majesty that blazed in flame across kingdom after
+kingdom during his meteor life.
+
+In the minds of the Roman Catholic world, the convent stood out
+pre-eminent for a stern discipline which nothing had changed; the
+purity of its rule had attracted unhappy women from the furthest
+parts of Europe, women deprived of all human ties, sighing after
+the long suicide accomplished in the breast of God.  No convent,
+indeed, was so well fitted for that complete detachment of the
+soul from all earthly things, which is demanded by the religious
+life, albeit on the continent of Europe there are many convents
+magnificently adapted to the purpose of their existence.  Buried
+away in the loneliest valleys, hanging in mid-air on the steepest
+mountainsides, set down on the brink of precipices, in every
+place man has sought for the poetry of the Infinite, the solemn
+awe of Silence; in every place man has striven to draw closer to
+God, seeking Him on mountain peaks, in the depths below the
+crags, at the cliff's edge; and everywhere man has found God. 
+But nowhere, save on this half-European, half-African ledge of
+rock could you find so many different harmonies, combining so to
+raise the soul, that the sharpest pain comes to be like other
+memories; the strongest impressions are dulled, till the sorrows
+of life are laid to rest in the depths.
+
+The convent stands on the highest point of the crags at the
+uttermost end of the island.  On the side towards the sea the
+rock was once rent sheer away in some globe-cataclysm; it rises
+up a straight wall from the base where the waves gnaw at the
+stone below high-water mark.  Any assault is made impossible by
+the dangerous reefs that stretch far out to sea, with the
+sparkling waves of the Mediterranean playing over them.  So, only
+from the sea can you discern the square mass of the convent built
+conformably to the minute rules laid down as to the shape,
+height, doors, and windows of monastic buildings.  From the side
+of the town, the church completely hides the solid structure of
+the cloisters and their roofs, covered with broad slabs of stone
+impervious to sun or storm or gales of wind.
+
+The church itself, built by the munificence of a Spanish family,
+is the crowning edifice of the town.  Its fine, bold front gives
+an imposing and picturesque look to the little city in the sea. 
+The sight of such a city, with its close-huddled roofs, arranged
+for the most part amphitheatre-wise above a picturesque harbour,
+and crowned by a glorious cathedral front with triple-arched
+Gothic doorways, belfry towers, and filigree spires, is a
+spectacle surely in every way the sublimest on earth.  Religion
+towering above daily life, to put men continually in mind of the
+End and the way, is in truth a thoroughly Spanish conception. 
+But now surround this picture by the Mediterranean, and a burning
+sky, imagine a few palms here and there, a few stunted evergreen
+trees mingling their waving leaves with the motionless flowers
+and foliage of carved stone; look out over the reef with its
+white fringes of foam in contrast to the sapphire sea; and then
+turn to the city, with its galleries and terraces whither the
+townsfolk come to take the air among their flowers of an evening,
+above the houses and the tops of the trees in their little
+gardens; add a few sails down in the harbour; and lastly, in the
+stillness of falling night, listen to the organ music, the
+chanting of the services, the wonderful sound of bells pealing
+out over the open sea.  There is sound and silence everywhere;
+oftener still there is silence over all.
+
+The church is divided within into a sombre mysterious nave and
+narrow aisles.  For some reason, probably because the winds are
+so high, the architect was unable to build the flying buttresses
+and intervening chapels which adorn almost all cathedrals, nor
+are there openings of any kind in the walls which support the
+weight of the roof.  Outside there is simply the heavy wall
+structure, a solid mass of grey stone further strengthened by
+huge piers placed at intervals.  Inside, the nave and its little
+side galleries are lighted entirely by the great stained-glass
+rose-window suspended by a miracle of art above the centre
+doorway; for upon that side the exposure permits of the display
+of lacework in stone and of other beauties peculiar to the style
+improperly called Gothic.
+
+The larger part of the nave and aisles was left for the
+townsfolk, who came and went and heard mass there.  The choir was
+shut off from the rest of the church by a grating and thick folds
+of brown curtain, left slightly apart in the middle in such a way
+that nothing of the choir could be seen from the church except
+the high altar and the officiating priest.  The grating itself
+was divided up by the pillars which supported the organ loft; and
+this part of the structure, with its carved wooden columns,
+completed the line of the arcading in the gallery carried by the
+shafts in the nave.  If any inquisitive person, therefore, had
+been bold enough to climb upon the narrow balustrade in the
+gallery to look down into the choir, he could have seen nothing
+but the tall eight-sided windows of stained glass beyond the high
+altar.
+
+At the time of the French expedition into Spain to establish
+Ferdinand VII once more on the throne, a French general came to
+the island after the taking of Cadiz, ostensibly to require the
+recognition of the King's Government, really to see the convent
+and to find some means of entering it.  The undertaking was
+certainly a delicate one; but a man of passionate temper, whose
+life had been, as it were, but one series of poems in action, a
+man who all his life long had lived romances instead of writing
+them, a man pre-eminently a Doer, was sure to be tempted by a
+deed which seemed to be impossible.
+
+To open the doors of a convent of nuns by lawful means!  The
+metropolitan or the Pope would scarcely have permitted it!  And
+as for force or strategem--might not any indiscretion cost him
+his position, his whole career as a soldier, and the end in view
+to boot?  The Duc d'Angouleme was still in Spain; and of all the
+crimes which a man in favour with the Commander-in-Chief might
+commit, this one alone was certain to find him inexorable.  The
+General had asked for the mission to gratify private motives of
+curiosity, though never was curiosity more hopeless.  This final
+attempt was a matter of conscience.  The Carmelite convent on the
+island was the only nunnery in Spain which had baffled his
+search.
+
+As he crossed from the mainland, scarcely an hour's distance, he
+felt a presentiment that his hopes were to be fulfilled; and
+afterwards, when as yet he had seen nothing of the convent but
+its walls, and of the nuns not so much as their robes; while he
+had merely heard the chanting of the service, there were dim
+auguries under the walls and in the sound of the voices to
+justify his frail hope.  And, indeed, however faint those so
+unaccountable presentiments might be, never was human passion
+more vehemently excited than the General's curiosity at that
+moment.  There are no small events for the heart; the heart
+exaggerates everything; the heart weighs the fall of a
+fourteen-year-old Empire and the dropping of a woman's glove in
+the same scales, and the glove is nearly always the heavier of
+the two.  So here are the facts in all their prosaic simplicity. 
+The facts first, the emotions will follow.
+
+An hour after the General landed on the island, the royal
+authority was re-established there.  Some few Constitutional
+Spaniards who had found their way thither after the fall of Cadiz
+were allowed to charter a vessel and sail for London.  So there
+was neither resistance nor reaction.  But the change of
+government could not be effected in the little town without a
+mass, at which the two divisions under the General's command were
+obliged to be present.  Now, it was upon this mass that the
+General had built his hopes of gaining some information as to the
+sisters in the convent; he was quite unaware how absolutely the
+Carmelites were cut off from the world; but he knew that there
+might be among them one whom he held dearer than life, dearer
+than honour.
+
+His hopes were cruelly dashed at once.  Mass, it is true, was
+celebrated in state.  In honour of such a solemnity, the curtains
+which always hid the choir were drawn back to display its riches,
+its valuable paintings and shrines so bright with gems that they
+eclipsed the glories of the ex-votos of gold and silver hung up
+by sailors of the port on the columns in the nave.  But all the
+nuns had taken refuge in the organ-loft.  And yet, in spite of
+this first check, during this very mass of thanksgiving, the most
+intimately thrilling drama that ever set a man's heart beating
+opened out widely before him.
+
+The sister who played the organ aroused such intense enthusiasm,
+that not a single man regretted that he had come to the service. 
+Even the men in the ranks were delighted, and the officers were
+in ecstasy.  As for the General, he was seemingly calm and
+indifferent.  The sensations stirred in him as the sister played
+one piece after another belong to the small number of things
+which it is not lawful to utter; words are powerless to express
+them; like death, God, eternity, they can only be realised
+through their one point of contact with humanity.  Strangely
+enough, the organ music seemed to belong to the school of
+Rossini, the musician who brings most human passion into his art.
+
+Some day his works, by their number and extent, will receive the
+reverence due to the Homer of music.  From among all the scores
+that we owe to his great genius, the nun seemed to have chosen
+Moses in Egypt for special study, doubtless because the spirit of
+sacred music finds therein its supreme expression.  Perhaps the
+soul of the great musician, so gloriously known to Europe, and
+the soul of this unknown executant had met in the intuitive
+apprehension of the same poetry. So at least thought two
+dilettanti officers who must have missed the Theatre Favart in
+Spain.
+
+At last in the Te Deum no one could fail to discern a French soul
+in the sudden change that came over the music.  Joy for the
+victory of the Most Christian King evidently stirred this nun's
+heart to the depths.  She was a Frenchwoman beyond mistake.  Soon
+the love of country shone out, breaking forth like shafts of
+light from the fugue, as the sister introduced variations with
+all a Parisienne's fastidious taste, and blended vague
+suggestions of our grandest national airs with her music.  A
+Spaniard's fingers would not have brought this warmth into a
+graceful tribute paid to the victorious arms of France.  The
+musician's nationality was revealed.
+
+"We find France everywhere, it seems," said one of the men.
+
+The General had left the church during the Te Deum; he could not
+listen any longer.  The nun's music had been a revelation of a
+woman loved to frenzy; a woman so carefully hidden from the
+world's eyes, so deeply buried in the bosom of the Church, that
+hitherto the most ingenious and persistent efforts made by men
+who brought great influence and unusual powers to bear upon the
+search had failed to find her.  The suspicion aroused in the
+General's heart became all but a certainty with the vague
+reminiscence of a sad, delicious melody, the air of Fleuve du
+Tage.  The woman he loved had played the prelude to the ballad in
+a boudoir in Paris, how often! and now this nun had chosen the
+song to express an exile's longing, amid the joy of those that
+triumphed.  Terrible sensation!  To hope for the resurrection of
+a lost love, to find her only to know that she was lost, to catch
+a mysterious glimpse of her after five years--five years, in
+which the pent-up passion, chafing in an empty life, had grown
+the mightier for every fruitless effort to satisfy it!
+
+Who has not known, at least once in his life, what it is to lose
+some precious thing; and after hunting through his papers,
+ransacking his memory, and turning his house upside down; after
+one or two days spent in vain search, and hope, and despair;
+after a prodigious expenditure of the liveliest irritation of
+soul, who has not known the ineffable pleasure of finding that
+all-important nothing which had come to be a king of monomania? 
+Very good.  Now, spread that fury of search over five years; put
+a woman, put a heart, put love in the place of the trifle;
+transpose the monomania into the key of high passion; and,
+furthermore, let the seeker be a man of ardent temper, with a
+lion's heart and a leonine head and mane, a man to inspire awe
+and fear in those who come in contact with him--realise this, and
+you may, perhaps, understand why the General walked abruptly out
+of the church when the first notes of a ballad, which he used to
+hear with a rapture of delight in a gilt-panelled boudoir, began
+to vibrate along the aisles of the church in the sea.
+
+The General walked away down the steep street which led to the
+port, and only stopped when he could not hear the deep notes of
+the organ.  Unable to think of anything but the love which broke
+out in volcanic eruption, filling his heart with fire, he only
+knew that the Te Deum was over when the Spanish congregation came
+pouring out of the church.  Feeling that his behaviour and
+attitude might seem ridiculous, he went back to head the
+procession, telling the alcalde and the governor that, feeling
+suddenly faint, he had gone out into the air.  Casting about for
+a plea for prolonging his stay, it at once occurred to him to
+make the most of this excuse, framed on the spur of the moment. 
+He declined, on a plea of increasing indisposition, to preside at
+the banquet given by the town to the French officers, betook
+himself to his bed, and sent a message to the Major-General, to
+the effect that temporary illness obliged him to leave the
+Colonel in command of the troops for the time being.  This
+commonplace but very plausible stratagem relieved him of all
+responsibility for the time necessary to carry out his plans. 
+The General, nothing if not "catholic and monarchical," took
+occasion to inform himself of the hours of the services, and
+manifested the greatest zeal for the performance of his religious
+duties, piety which caused no remark in Spain.
+
+The very next day, while the division was marching out of the
+town, the General went to the convent to be present at vespers. 
+He found an empty church.  The townsfolk, devout though they
+were, had all gone down to the quay to watch the embarkation of
+the troops.  He felt glad to be the only man there.  He tramped
+noisily up the nave, clanking his spurs till the vaulted roof
+rang with the sound; he coughed, he talked aloud to himself to
+let the nuns know, and more particularly to let the organist know
+that if the troops were gone, one Frenchman was left behind.  Was
+this singular warning heard and understood?  He thought so.  It
+seemed to him that in the Magnificat the organ made response
+which was borne to him on the vibrating air.  The nun's spirit
+found wings in music and fled towards him, throbbing with the
+rhythmical pulse of the sounds.  Then, in all its might, the
+music burst forth and filled the church with warmth.  The Song of
+Joy set apart in the sublime liturgy of Latin Christianity to
+express the exaltation of the soul in the presence of the glory
+of the ever-living God, became the utterance of a heart almost
+terrified by its gladness in the presence of the glory of a
+mortal love; a love that yet lived, a love that had risen to
+trouble her even beyond the grave in which the nun is laid, that
+she may rise again as the bride of Christ.
+
+The organ is in truth the grandest, the most daring, the most
+magnificent of all instruments invented by human genius.  It is a
+whole orchestra in itself.  It can express anything in response
+to a skilled touch.  Surely it is in some sort a pedestal on
+which the soul poises for a flight forth into space, essaying on
+her course to draw picture after picture in an endless series, to
+paint human life, to cross the Infinite that separates heaven
+from earth?  And the longer a dreamer listens to those giant
+harmonies, the better he realises that nothing save this
+hundred-voiced choir on earth can fill all the space between
+kneeling men, and a God hidden by the blinding light of the
+Sanctuary.  The music is the one interpreter strong enough to
+bear up the prayers of humanity to heaven, prayer in its
+omnipotent moods, prayer tinged by the melancholy of many
+different natures, coloured by meditative ecstasy, upspringing
+with the impulse of repentance--blended with the myriad fancies
+of every creed.  Yes.  In those long vaulted aisles the melodies
+inspired by the sense of things divine are blent with a grandeur
+unknown before, are decked with new glory and might.  Out of the
+dim daylight, and the deep silence broken by the chanting of the
+choir in response to the thunder of the organ, a veil is woven
+for God, and the brightness of His attributes shines through it.
+
+And this wealth of holy things seemed to be flung down like a
+grain of incense upon the fragile altar raised to Love beneath
+the eternal throne of a jealous and avenging God.  Indeed, in the
+joy of the nun there was little of that awe and gravity which
+should harmonise with the solemnities of the Magnificat.  She had
+enriched the music with graceful variations, earthly gladness
+throbbing through the rhythm of each.  In such brilliant
+quivering notes some great singer might strive to find a voice
+for her love, her melodies fluttered as a bird flutters about her
+mate.  There were moments when she seemed to leap back into the
+past, to dally there now with laughter, now with tears.  Her
+changing moods, as it were, ran riot.  She was like a woman
+excited and happy over her lover's return.
+
+But at length, after the swaying fugues of delirium, after the
+marvellous rendering of a vision of the past, a revulsion swept
+over the soul that thus found utterance for itself.  With a swift
+transition from the major to the minor, the organist told her
+hearer of her present lot.  She gave the story of long melancholy
+broodings, of the slow course of her moral malady.  How day by
+day she deadened the senses, how every night cut off one more
+thought, how her heart was slowly reduced to ashes.  The sadness
+deepened shade after shade through languid modulations, and in a
+little while the echoes were pouring out a torrent of grief. 
+Then on a sudden, high notes rang out like the voices of angels
+singing together, as if to tell the lost but not forgotten lover
+that their spirits now could only meet in heaven.  Pathetic hope!
+
+Then followed the Amen.  No more Joy, no more tears in the air,
+no sadness, no regrets.  The Amen was the return to God.  The
+final chord was deep, solemn, even terrible; for the last
+rumblings of the bass sent a shiver through the audience that
+raised the hair on their heads; the nun shook out her veiling of
+crepe, and seemed to sink again into the grave from which she had
+risen for a moment.  Slowly the reverberations died away; it
+seemed as if the church, but now so full of light, had returned
+to thick darkness.
+
+The General had been caught up and borne swiftly away by this
+strong-winged spirit; he had followed the course of its flight
+from beginning to end.  He understood to the fullest extent the
+imagery of that burning symphony; for him the chords reached deep
+and far.  For him, as for the sister, the poem meant future,
+present, and past.  Is not music, and even opera music, a sort of
+text, which a susceptible or poetic temper, or a sore and
+stricken heart, may expand as memories shall determine?  If a
+musician must needs have the heart of a poet, must not the
+listener too be in a manner a poet and a lover to hear all that
+lies in great music?  Religion, love, and music--what are they
+but a threefold expression of the same fact, of that craving for
+expansion which stirs in every noble soul.  And these three forms
+of poetry ascend to God, in whom all passion on earth finds its
+end.  Wherefore the holy human trinity finds a place amid the
+infinite glories of God; of God, whom we always represent
+surrounded with the fires of love and seistrons of gold--music
+and light and harmony.  Is not He the Cause and the End of all
+our strivings?
+
+The French General guessed rightly that here in the desert, on
+this bare rock in the sea, the nun had seized upon music as an
+outpouring of the passion that still consumed her.  Was this her
+manner of offering up her love as a sacrifice to God?  Or was it
+Love exultant in triumph over God?  The questions were hard to
+answer.  But one thing at least the General could not mistake--in
+this heart, dead to the world, the fire of passion burned as
+fiercely as in his own.
+
+Vespers over, he went back to the alcalde with whom he was
+staying.  In the all-absorbing joy which comes in such full
+measure when a satisfaction sought long and painfully is attained
+at last, he could see nothing beyond this--he was still loved! 
+In her heart love had grown in loneliness, even as his love had
+grown stronger as he surmounted one barrier after another which
+this woman had set between them!  The glow of soul came to its
+natural end.  There followed a longing to see her again, to
+contend with God for her, to snatch her away--a rash scheme,
+which appealed to a daring nature.  He went to bed, when the meal
+was over, to avoid questions; to be alone and think at his ease;
+and he lay absorbed by deep thought till day broke.
+
+He rose only to go to mass.  He went to the church and knelt
+close to the screen, with his forehead touching the curtain; he
+would have torn a hole in it if he had been alone, but his host
+had come with him out of politeness, and the least imprudence
+might compromise the whole future of his love, and ruin the new
+hopes.
+
+The organ sounded, but it was another player, and not the nun of
+the last two days whose hands touched the keys.  It was all
+colourless and cold for the General.  Was the woman he loved
+prostrated by emotion which wellnigh overcame a strong man's
+heart?  Had she so fully realised and shared an unchanged,
+longed-for love, that now she lay dying on her bed in her cell? 
+While innumerable thoughts of this kind perplexed his mind, the
+voice of the woman he worshipped rang out close beside him; he
+knew its clear resonant soprano.  It was her voice, with that
+faint tremor in it which gave it all the charm that shyness and
+diffidence gives to a young girl; her voice, distinct from the
+mass of singing as a prima donna's in the chorus of a finale.  It
+was like a golden or silver thread in dark frieze.
+
+It was she!  There could be no mistake.  Parisienne now as ever,
+she had not laid coquetry aside when she threw off worldly
+adornments for the veil and the Carmelite's coarse serge.  She
+who had affirmed her love last evening in the praise sent up to
+God, seemed now to say to her lover, "Yes, it is I.  I am here. 
+My love is unchanged, but I am beyond the reach of love.  You
+will hear my voice, my soul shall enfold you, and I shall abide
+here under the brown shroud in the choir from which no power on
+earth can tear me.  You shall never see me more!"
+
+"It is she indeed!" the General said to himself, raising his
+head.  He had leant his face on his hands, unable at first to
+bear the intolerable emotion that surged like a whirlpool in his
+heart, when that well-known voice vibrated under the arcading,
+with the sound of the sea for accompaniment.
+
+Storm was without, and calm within the sanctuary.  Still that
+rich voice poured out all its caressing notes; it fell like balm
+on the lover's burning heart; it blossomed upon the air--the air
+that a man would fain breathe more deeply to receive the
+effluence of a soul breathed forth with love in the words of the
+prayer.  The alcalde coming to join his guest found him in tears
+during the elevation, while the nun was singing, and brought him
+back to his house.  Surprised to find so much piety in a French
+military man, the worthy magistrate invited the confessor of the
+convent to meet his guest.  Never had news given the General more
+pleasure; he paid the ecclesiastic a good deal of attention at
+supper, and confirmed his Spanish hosts in the high opinion they
+had formed of his piety by a not wholly disinterested respect. 
+He enquired with gravity how many sisters there were in the
+convent, and asked for particulars of its endowment and revenues,
+as if from courtesy he wished to hear the good priest discourse
+on the subject most interesting to him.  He informed himself as
+to the manner of life led by the holy women.  Were they allowed
+to go out of the convent, or to see visitors?
+
+"Senor," replied the venerable churchman, "the rule is strict. 
+A woman cannot enter a monastery of the order of St. Bruno
+without a special permission from His Holiness, and the rule here
+is equally stringent.  No man may enter a convent of Barefoot
+Carmelites unless he is a priest specially attached to the
+services of the house by the Archbishop.  None of the nuns may
+leave the convent; though the great Saint, St. Theresa, often
+left her cell.  The Visitor or the Mothers Superior can alone
+give permission, subject to an authorisation from the Archbishop,
+for a nun to see a visitor, and then especially in a case of
+illness.  Now we are one of the principal houses, and
+consequently we have a Mother Superior here.  Among other foreign
+sisters there is one Frenchwoman, Sister Theresa; she it is who
+directs the music in the chapel."
+
+"Oh!" said the General, with feigned surprise.  "She must have
+rejoiced over the victory of the House of Bourbon."
+
+"I told them the reason of the mass; they are always a little
+bit inquisitive."
+
+"But Sister Theresa may have interests in France.  Perhaps she
+would like to send some message or to hear news."
+
+"I do not think so.  She would have come to ask me."
+
+"As a fellow-countryman, I should be quite curious to see her,"
+said the General.  "If it is possible, if the Lady Superior
+consents, if----"
+
+"Even at the grating and in the Reverend Mother's presence, an
+interview would be quite impossible for anybody whatsoever; but,
+strict as the Mother is, for a deliverer of our holy religion and
+the throne of his Catholic Majesty, the rule might be relaxed for
+a moment," said the confessor, blinking.  "I will speak about
+it."
+
+"How old is Sister Theresa?" enquired the lover.  He dared not
+ask any questions of the priest as to the nun's beauty.
+
+"She does not reckon years now," the good man answered, with a
+simplicity that made the General shudder. 
+
+Next day before siesta, the confessor came to inform the French
+General that Sister Theresa and the Mother consented to receive
+him at the grating in the parlour before vespers.  The General
+spent the siesta in pacing to and fro along the quay in the
+noonday heat.  Thither the priest came to find him, and brought
+him to the convent by way of the gallery round the cemetery. 
+Fountains, green trees, and rows of arcading maintained a cool
+freshness in keeping with the place.
+
+At the further end of the long gallery the priest led the way
+into a large room divided in two by a grating covered with a
+brown curtain.  In the first, and in some sort of public half of
+the apartment, where the confessor left the newcomer, a wooden
+bench ran round the wall, and two or three chairs, also of wood,
+were placed near the grating.  The ceiling consisted of bare
+unornamented joists and cross-beams of ilex wood.  As the two
+windows were both on the inner side of the grating, and the dark
+surface of the wood was a bad reflector, the light in the place
+was so dim that you could scarcely see the great black crucifix,
+the portrait of Saint Theresa, and a picture of the Madonna which
+adorned the grey parlour walls.  Tumultuous as the General's
+feelings were, they took something of the melancholy of the
+place.  He grew calm in that homely quiet.  A sense of something
+vast as the tomb took possession of him beneath the chill
+unceiled roof.  Here, as in the grave, was there not eternal
+silence, deep peace--the sense of the Infinite?  And besides this
+there was the quiet and the fixed thought of the cloister--a
+thought which you felt like a subtle presence in the air, and in
+the dim dusk of the room; an all-pervasive thought nowhere
+definitely expressed, and looming the larger in the imagination;
+for in the cloister the great saying, "Peace in the Lord,"
+enters the least religious soul as a living force.
+
+The monk's life is scarcely comprehensible.  A man seems
+confessed a weakling in a monastery; he was born to act, to live
+out a life of work; he is evading a man's destiny in his cell. 
+But what man's strength, blended with pathetic weakness, is
+implied by a woman's choice of the convent life!  A man may have
+any number of motives for burying himself in a monastery; for him
+it is the leap over the precipice.  A woman has but one
+motive--she is a woman still; she betrothes herself to a Heavenly
+Bridegroom.  Of the monk you may ask, "Why did you not fight
+your battle?"  But if a woman immures herself in the cloister,
+is there not always a sublime battle fought first?
+
+At length it seemed to the General that that still room, and the
+lonely convent in the sea, were full of thoughts of him.  Love
+seldom attains to solemnity; yet surely a love still faithful in
+the breast of God was something solemn, something more than a man
+had a right to look for as things are in this nineteenth century?
+
+The infinite grandeur of the situation might well produce an
+effect upon the General's mind; he had precisely enough elevation
+of soul to forget politics, honours, Spain, and society in Paris,
+and to rise to the height of this lofty climax.  And what in
+truth could be more tragic?  How much must pass in the souls of
+these two lovers, brought together in a place of strangers, on a
+ledge of granite in the sea; yet held apart by an intangible,
+unsurmountable barrier!  Try to imagine the man saying within
+himself, "Shall I triumph over God in her heart?" when a faint
+rustling sound made him quiver, and the curtain was drawn aside.
+
+Between him and the light stood a woman.  Her face was hidden by
+the veil that drooped from the folds upon her head; she was
+dressed according to the rule of the order in a gown of the
+colour become proverbial.  Her bare feet were hidden; if the
+General could have seen them, he would have known how appallingly
+thin she had grown; and yet in spite of the thick folds of her
+coarse gown, a mere covering and no ornament, he could guess how
+tears, and prayer, and passion, and loneliness had wasted the
+woman before him.
+
+An ice-cold hand, belonging, no doubt, to the Mother Superior,
+held back the curtain.  The General gave the enforced witness of
+their interview a searching glance, and met the dark, inscrutable
+gaze of an aged recluse.  The Mother might have been a century
+old, but the bright, youthful eyes belied the wrinkles that
+furrowed her pale face.
+
+"Mme la Duchesse," he began, his voice shaken with emotion,
+"does your companion understand French?"  The veiled figure
+bowed her head at the sound of his voice.
+
+"There is no duchess here," she replied.  "It is Sister
+Theresa whom you see before you.  She whom you call my companion
+is my mother in God, my superior here on earth."
+
+The words were so meekly spoken by the voice that sounded in
+other years amid harmonious surroundings of refined luxury, the
+voice of a queen of fashion in Paris.  Such words from the lips
+that once spoke so lightly and flippantly struck the General dumb
+with amazement.
+
+"The Holy Mother only speaks Latin and Spanish," she added.
+
+"I understand neither.  Dear Antoinette, make my excuses to
+her."
+
+The light fell full upon the nun's figure; a thrill of deep
+emotion betrayed itself in a faint quiver of her veil as she
+heard her name softly spoken by the man who had been so hard in
+the past.
+
+"My brother," she said, drawing her sleeve under her veil,
+perhaps to brush tears away, "I am Sister Theresa."
+
+Then, turning to the Superior, she spoke in Spanish; the General
+knew enough of the language to understand what she said perfectly
+well; possibly he could have spoken it had he chosen to do so.
+
+"Dear Mother, the gentleman presents his respects to you, and
+begs you to pardon him if he cannot pay them himself, but he
+knows neither of the languages which you speak----"
+
+The aged nun bent her head slowly, with an expression of angelic
+sweetness, enhanced at the same time by the consciousness of her
+power and dignity.
+
+"Do you know this gentleman?" she asked, with a keen glance.
+
+"Yes, Mother." 
+
+"Go back to your cell, my daughter!" said the Mother
+imperiously.  The General slipped aside behind the curtain lest
+the dreadful tumult within him should appear in his face; even in
+the shadow it seemed to him that he could still see the
+Superior's piercing eyes.  He was afraid of her; she held his
+little, frail, hardly-won happiness in her hands; and he, who had
+never quailed under a triple row of guns, now trembled before
+this nun.  The Duchess went towards the door, but she turned
+back.
+
+"Mother," she said, with dreadful calmness, "the Frenchman is
+one of my brothers."
+
+"Then stay, my daughter," said the Superior, after a pause.
+
+The piece of admirable Jesuitry told of such love and regret,
+that a man less strongly constituted might have broken down under
+the keen delight in the midst of a great and, for him, an
+entirely novel peril.  Oh! how precious words, looks, and
+gestures became when love must baffle lynx eyes and tiger's
+claws!  Sister Theresa came back.
+
+"You see, my brother, what I have dared to do only to speak to
+you for a moment of your salvation and of the prayers that my
+soul puts up for your soul daily.  I am committing mortal sin.  I
+have told a lie.  How many days of penance must expiate that lie!
+
+But I shall endure it for your sake.  My brother, you do not know
+what happiness it is to love in heaven; to feel that you can
+confess love purified by religion, love transported into the
+highest heights of all, so that we are permitted to lose sight of
+all but the soul.  If the doctrine and the spirit of the Saint to
+whom we owe this refuge had not raised me above earth's anguish,
+and caught me up and set me, far indeed beneath the Sphere
+wherein she dwells, yet truly above this world, I should not have
+seen you again.  But now I can see you, and hear your voice, and
+remain calm----"
+
+The General broke in, "But, Antoinette, let me see you, you whom
+I love passionately, desperately, as you could have wished me to
+love you."
+
+"Do not call me Antoinette, I implore you.  Memories of the past
+hurt me.  You must see no one here but Sister Theresa, a creature
+who trusts in the Divine mercy."  She paused for a little, and
+then added, "You must control yourself, my brother.  Our Mother
+would separate us without pity if there is any worldly passion in
+your face, or if you allow the tears to fall from your eyes."
+
+The General bowed his head to regain self-control; when he looked
+up again he saw her face beyond the grating--the thin, white, but
+still impassioned face of the nun.  All the magic charm of youth
+that once bloomed there, all the fair contrast of velvet
+whiteness and the colour of the Bengal rose, had given place to a
+burning glow, as of a porcelain jar with a faint light shining
+through it.  The wonderful hair in which she took such pride had
+been shaven; there was a bandage round her forehead and about her
+face.  An ascetic life had left dark traces about the eyes, which
+still sometimes shot out fevered glances; their ordinary calm
+expression was but a veil.  In a few words, she was but the ghost
+of her former self. 
+
+"Ah! you that have come to be my life, you must come out of this
+tomb!  You were mine; you had no right to give yourself, even to
+God.  Did you not promise me to give up all at the least command
+from me?  You may perhaps think me worthy of that promise now
+when you hear what I have done for you.  I have sought you all
+through the world.  You have been in my thoughts at every moment
+for five years; my life has been given to you.  My friends, very
+powerful friends, as you know, have helped with all their might
+to search every convent in France, Italy, Spain, Sicily, and
+America.  Love burned more brightly for every vain search.  Again
+and again I made long journeys with a false hope; I have wasted
+my life and the heaviest throbbings of my heart in vain under
+many a dark convent wall.  I am not speaking of a faithfulness
+that knows no bounds, for what is it?--nothing compared with the
+infinite longings of my love.  If your remorse long ago was
+sincere, you ought not to hesitate to follow me today."
+
+"You forget that I am not free."
+
+"The Duke is dead," he answered quickly.
+
+Sister Theresa flushed red.
+
+"May heaven be open to him!" she cried with a quick rush of
+feeling.  "He was generous to me.--But I did not mean such ties;
+it was one of my sins that I was ready to break them all without
+scruple--for you."
+
+"Are you speaking of your vows?" the General asked, frowning. 
+"I did not think that anything weighed heavier with your heart
+than love.  But do not think twice of it, Antoinette; the Holy
+Father himself shall absolve you of your oath.  I will surely go
+to Rome, I will entreat all the powers of earth; if God could
+come down from heaven, I would----"
+
+"Do not blaspheme."
+
+"So do not fear the anger of God.  Ah! I would far rather hear
+that you would leave your prison for me; that this very night you
+would let yourself down into a boat at the foot of the cliffs. 
+And we would go away to be happy somewhere at the world's end, I
+know not where.  And with me at your side, you should come back
+to life and health under the wings of love."
+
+"You must not talk like this," said Sister Theresa; "you do
+not know what you are to me now.  I love you far better than I
+ever loved you before.  Every day I pray for you; I see you with
+other eyes.  Armand, if you but knew the happiness of giving
+yourself up, without shame, to a pure friendship which God
+watches over!  You do not know what joy it is to me to pray for
+heaven's blessing on you.  I never pray for myself:  God will do
+with me according to His will; but, at the price of my soul, I
+wish I could be sure that you are happy here on earth, and that
+you will be happy hereafter throughout all ages.  My eternal life
+is all that trouble has left me to offer up to you.  I am old now
+with weeping; I am neither young nor fair; and in any case, you
+could not respect the nun who became a wife; no love, not even
+motherhood, could give me absolution. . . .  What can you say to
+outweigh the uncounted thoughts that have gathered in my heart
+during the past five years, thoughts that have changed, and worn,
+and blighted it?  I ought to have given a heart less sorrowful to
+God."
+
+"What can I say?  Dear Antoinette, I will say this, that I love
+you; that affection, love, a great love, the joy of living in
+another heart that is ours, utterly and wholly ours, is so rare a
+thing and so hard to find, that I doubted you, and put you to
+sharp proof; but now, today, I love you, Antoinette, with all my
+soul's strength. . . .  If you will follow me into solitude, I
+will hear no voice but yours, I will see no other face."
+
+"Hush, Armand!  You are shortening the little time that we may
+be together here on earth."
+
+"Antoinette, will you come with me?"
+
+"I am never away from you.  My life is in your heart, not
+through the selfish ties of earthly happiness, or vanity, or
+enjoyment; pale and withered as I am, I live here for you, in the
+breast of God.  As God is just, you shall be happy----"
+
+"Words, words all of it!  Pale and withered?  How if I want you?
+
+How if I cannot be happy without you?  Do you still think of
+nothing but duty with your lover before you?  Is he never to come
+first and above all things else in your heart?  In time past you
+put social success, yourself, heaven knows what, before him; now
+it is God, it is the welfare of my soul!  In Sister Theresa I
+find the Duchess over again, ignorant of the happiness of love,
+insensible as ever, beneath the semblance of sensibility.  You do
+not love me; you have never loved me----"
+
+"Oh, my brother----!"
+
+"You do not wish to leave this tomb.  You love my soul, do you
+say?  Very well, through you it will be lost forever.  I shall
+make away with myself----"
+
+"Mother!" Sister Theresa called aloud in Spanish, "I have lied
+to you; this man is my lover!"
+
+The curtain fell at once.  The General, in his stupor, scarcely
+heard the doors within as they clanged.
+
+"Ah! she loves me still!" he cried, understanding all the
+sublimity of that cry of hers.  "She loves me still.  She must
+be carried off. . . ."
+
+
+The General left the island, returned to headquarters, pleaded
+ill-health, asked for leave of absence, and forthwith took his
+departure for France.
+
+And now for the incidents which brought the two personages in
+this Scene into their present relation to each other.
+
+
+The thing known in France as the Faubourg Saint-Germain is
+neither a Quarter, nor a sect, nor an institution, nor anything
+else that admits of a precise definition.  There are great houses
+in the Place Royale, the Faubourg Saint-Honore, and the Chaussee
+d'Antin, in any one of which you may breathe the same atmosphere
+of Faubourg Saint-Germain.  So, to begin with, the whole Faubourg
+is not within the Faubourg.  There are men and women born far
+enough away from its influences who respond to them and take
+their place in the circle; and again there are others, born
+within its limits, who may yet be driven forth forever.  For the
+last forty years the manners, and customs, and speech, in a word,
+the tradition of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, has been to Paris
+what the Court used to be in other times; it is what the Hotel
+Saint-Paul was to the fourteenth century; the Louvre to the
+fifteenth; the Palais, the Hotel Rambouillet, and the Place
+Royale to the sixteenth; and lastly, as Versailles was to the
+seventeenth and the eighteenth.
+
+Just as the ordinary workaday Paris will always centre about some
+point; so, through all periods of history, the Paris of the
+nobles and the upper classes converges towards some particular
+spot.  It is a periodically recurrent phenomenon which presents
+ample matter for reflection to those who are fain to observe or
+describe the various social zones; and possibly an enquiry into
+the causes that bring about this centralisation may do more than
+merely justify the probability of this episode; it may be of
+service to serious interests which some day will be more deeply
+rooted in the commonwealth, unless, indeed, experience is as
+meaningless for political parties as it is for youth.
+
+In every age the great nobles, and the rich who always ape the
+great nobles, build their houses as far as possible from crowded
+streets.  When the Duc d'Uzes built his splendid hotel in the Rue
+Montmartre in the reign of Louis XIV, and set the fountain at his
+gates--for which beneficent action, to say nothing of his other
+virtues, he was held in such veneration that the whole quarter
+turned out in a body to follow his funeral--when the Duke, I say,
+chose this site for his house, he did so because that part of
+Paris was almost deserted in those days.  But when the
+fortifications were pulled down, and the market gardens beyond
+the line of the boulevards began to fill with houses, then the
+d'Uzes family left their fine mansion, and in our time it was
+occupied by a banker.  Later still, the noblesse began to find
+themselves out of their element among shopkeepers, left the Place
+Royale and the centre of Paris for good, and crossed the river to
+breathe freely in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where palaces were
+reared already about the great hotel built by Louis XIV for the
+Duc de Maine--the Benjamin among his legitimated offspring.  And
+indeed, for people accustomed to a stately life, can there be
+more unseemly surroundings than the bustle, the mud, the street
+cries, the bad smells, and narrow thoroughfares of a populous
+quarter?  The very habits of life in a mercantile or
+manufacturing district are completely at variance with the lives
+of nobles.  The shopkeeper and artisan are just going to bed when
+the great world is thinking of dinner; and the noisy stir of life
+begins among the former when the latter have gone to rest.  Their
+day's calculations never coincide; the one class represents the
+expenditure, the other the receipts.  Consequently their manners
+and customs are diametrically opposed.  
+
+Nothing contemptuous is intended by this statement.  An
+aristocracy is in a manner the intellect of the social system, as
+the middle classes and the proletariat may be said to be its
+organising and working power.  It naturally follows that these
+forces are differently situated; and of their antagonism there is
+bred a seeming antipathy produced by the performance of different
+functions, all of them, however, existing for one common end.
+
+Such social dissonances are so inevitably the outcome of any
+charter of the constitution, that however much a Liberal may be
+disposed to complain of them, as of treason against those sublime
+ideas with which the ambitious plebeian is apt to cover his
+designs, he would none the less think it a preposterous notion
+that M. le Prince de Montmorency, for instance, should continue
+to live in the Rue Saint-Martin at the corner of the street which
+bears that nobleman's name; or that M. le Duc de Fitz-James,
+descendant of the royal house of Scotland, should have his hotel
+at the angle of the Rue Marie Stuart and the Rue Montorgueil. 
+Sint ut sunt, aut non sint, the grand words of the Jesuit, might
+be taken as a motto by the great in all countries.  These social
+differences are patent in all ages; the fact is always accepted
+by the people; its "reasons of state" are self-evident; it is
+at once cause and effect, a principle and a law.  The common
+sense of the masses never deserts them until demagogues stir them
+up to gain ends of their own; that common sense is based on the
+verities of social order; and the social order is the same
+everywhere, in Moscow as in London, in Geneva as in Calcutta. 
+Given a certain number of families of unequal fortune in any
+given space, you will see an aristocracy forming under your eyes;
+there will be the patricians, the upper classes, and yet other
+ranks below them.  Equality may be a RIGHT, but no power on earth
+can convert it into FACT.  It would be a good thing for France if
+this idea could be popularised.  The benefits of political
+harmony are obvious to the least intelligent classes.  Harmony
+is, as it were, the poetry of order, and order is a matter of
+vital importance to the working population.  And what is order,
+reduced to its simplest expression, but the agreement of things
+among themselves--unity, in short?  Architecture, music, and
+poetry, everything in France, and in France more than in any
+other country, is based upon this principle; it is written upon
+the very foundations of her clear accurate language, and a
+language must always be the most infallible index of national
+character.  In the same way you may note that the French popular
+airs are those most calculated to strike the imagination, the
+best-modulated melodies are taken over by the people; clearness
+of thought, the intellectual simplicity of an idea attracts them;
+they like the incisive sayings that hold the greatest number of
+ideas.
+
+France is the one country in the world where a little phrase may
+bring about a great revolution.  Whenever the masses have risen,
+it has been to bring men, affairs, and principles into agreement.
+
+No nation has a clearer conception of that idea of unity which
+should permeate the life of an aristocracy; possibly no other
+nation has so intelligent a comprehension of a political
+necessity; history will never find her behind the time.  France
+has been led astray many a time, but she is deluded, woman-like,
+by generous ideas, by a glow of enthusiasm which at first
+outstrips sober reason.
+
+So, to begin with, the most striking characteristic of the
+Faubourg is the splendour of its great mansions, its great
+gardens, and a surrounding quiet in keeping with princely
+revenues drawn from great estates.
+
+And what is this distance set between a class and a whole
+metropolis but visible and outward expression of the widely
+different attitude of mind which must inevitably keep them apart?
+
+The position of the head is well defined in every organism.  If
+by any chance a nation allows its head to fall at its feet, it is
+pretty sure sooner or later to discover that this is a suicidal
+measure; and since nations have no desire to perish, they set to
+work at once to grow a new head.  If they lack the strength for
+this, they perish as Rome perished, and Venice, and so many other
+states.
+
+This distinction between the upper and lower spheres of social
+activity, emphasised by differences in their manner of living,
+necessarily implies that in the highest aristocracy there is real
+worth and some distinguishing merit.  In any state, no matter
+what form of "government" is affected, so soon as the patrician
+class fails to maintain that complete superiority which is the
+condition of its existence, it ceases to be a force, and is
+pulled down at once by the populace.  The people always wish to
+see money, power, and initiative in their leaders, hands, hearts,
+and heads; they must be the spokesmen, they must represent the
+intelligence and the glory of the nation.  Nations, like women,
+love strength in those who rule them; they cannot give love
+without respect; they refuse utterly to obey those of whom they
+do not stand in awe.  An aristocracy fallen into contempt is a
+roi faineant, a husband in petticoats; first it ceases to be
+itself, and then it ceases to be.
+
+And in this way the isolation of the great, the sharply marked
+distinction in their manner of life, or in a word, the general
+custom of the patrician caste is at once the sign of a real
+power, and their destruction so soon as that power is lost.  The
+Faubourg Saint-Germain failed to recognise the conditions of its
+being, while it would still have been easy to perpetuate its
+existence, and therefore was brought low for a time.  The
+Faubourg should have looked the facts fairly in the face, as the
+English aristocracy did before them; they should have seen that
+every institution has its climacteric periods, when words lose
+their old meanings, and ideas reappear in a new guise, and the
+whole conditions of politics wear a changed aspect, while the
+underlying realities undergo no essential alteration.
+
+These ideas demand further development which form an essential
+part of this episode; they are given here both as a succinct
+statement of the causes, and an explanation of the things which
+happen in the course of the story. 
+
+The stateliness of the castles and palaces where nobles dwell;
+the luxury of the details; the constantly maintained
+sumptuousness of the furniture; the "atmosphere" in which the
+fortunate owner of landed estates (a rich man before he was born)
+lives and moves easily and without friction; the habit of mind
+which never descends to calculate the petty workaday gains of
+existence; the leisure; the higher education attainable at a much
+earlier age; and lastly, the aristocratic tradition that makes of
+him a social force, for which his opponents, by dint of study and
+a strong will and tenacity of vocation, are scarcely a match-all
+these things should contribute to form a lofty spirit in a man,
+possessed of such privileges from his youth up; they should stamp
+his character with that high self-respect, of which the least
+consequence is a nobleness of heart in harmony with the noble
+name that he bears.  And in some few families all this is
+realised.  There are noble characters here and there in the
+Faubourg, but they are marked exceptions to a general rule of
+egoism which has been the ruin of this world within a world.  The
+privileges above enumerated are the birthright of the French
+noblesse, as of every patrician efflorescence ever formed on the
+surface of a nation; and will continue to be theirs so long as
+their existence is based upon real estate, or money; domaine-sol
+and domaine-argent alike, the only solid bases of an organised
+society; but such privileges are held upon the understanding that
+the patricians must continue to justify their existence.  There
+is a sort of moral fief held on a tenure of service rendered to
+the sovereign, and here in France the people are undoubtedly the
+sovereigns nowadays.  The times are changed, and so are the
+weapons.  The knight-banneret of old wore a coat of chain armour
+and a hauberk,; he could handle a lance well and display his
+pennon, and no more was required of him; today he is bound to
+give proof of his intelligence.  A stout heart was enough in the
+days of old; in our days he is required to have a capacious
+brain-pan.  Skill and knowledge and capital--these three points
+mark out a social triangle on which the scutcheon of power is
+blazoned; our modern aristocracy must take its stand on these.
+
+A fine theorem is as good as a great name.  The Rothschilds, the
+Fuggers of the nineteenth century, are princes de facto.  A great
+artist is in reality an oligarch; he represents a whole century,
+and almost always he is a law to others.  And the art of words,
+the high pressure machinery of the writer, the poet's genius, the
+merchant's steady endurance, the strong will of the statesman who
+concentrates a thousand dazzling qualities in himself, the
+general's sword--all these victories, in short, which a single
+individual will win, that he may tower above the rest of the
+world, the patrician class is now bound to win and keep
+exclusively.  They must head the new forces as they once headed
+the material forces; how should they keep the position unless
+they are worthy of it?  How, unless they are the soul and brain
+of a nation, shall they set its hands moving?  How lead a people
+without the power of command?  And what is the marshal's baton
+without the innate power of the captain in the man who wields it?
+
+The Faubourg Saint-Germain took to playing with batons, and
+fancied that all the power was in its hands.  It inverted the
+terms of the proposition which called it into existence.  And
+instead of flinging away the insignia which offended the people,
+and quietly grasping the power, it allowed the bourgeoisie to
+seize the authority, clung with fatal obstinacy to its shadow,
+and over and over again forgot the laws which a minority must
+observe if it would live.  When an aristocracy is scarce a
+thousandth part of the body social, it is bound today, as of old,
+to multiply its points of action, so as to counterbalance the
+weight of the masses in a great crisis.  And in our days those
+means of action must be living forces, and not historical
+memories.
+
+In France, unluckily, the noblesse were still so puffed up with
+the notion of their vanished power, that it was difficult to
+contend against a kind of innate presumption in themselves. 
+Perhaps this is a national defect.  The Frenchman is less given
+than anyone else to undervalue himself; it comes natural to him
+to go from his degree to the one above it; and while it is a rare
+thing for him to pity the unfortunates over whose heads he rises,
+he always groans in spirit to see so many fortunate people above
+him.  He is very far from heartless, but too often he prefers to
+listen to his intellect.  The national instinct which brings the
+Frenchman to the front, the vanity that wastes his substance, is
+as much a dominant passion as thrift in the Dutch.  For three
+centuries it swayed the noblesse, who, in this respect, were
+certainly pre-eminently French.  The scion of the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain, beholding his material superiority, was fully
+persuaded of his intellectual superiority.  And everything
+contributed to confirm him in his belief; for ever since the
+Faubourg Saint-Germain existed at all--which is to say, ever
+since Versailles ceased to be the royal residence--the Faubourg,
+with some few gaps in continuity, was always backed up by the
+central power, which in France seldom fails to support that side.
+
+Thence its downfall in 1830.
+
+At that time the party of the Faubourg Saint-Germain was rather
+like an army without a base of operation.  It had utterly failed
+to take advantage of the peace to plant itself in the heart of
+the nation.  It sinned for want of learning its lesson, and
+through an utter incapability of regarding its interests as a
+whole.  A future certainty was sacrificed to a doubtful present
+gain.  This blunder in policy may perhaps be attributed to the
+following cause.
+
+The class-isolation so strenuously kept up by the noblesse
+brought about fatal results during the last forty years; even
+caste-patriotism was extinguished by it, and rivalry fostered
+among themselves.  When the French noblesse of other times were
+rich and powerful, the nobles (gentilhommes) could choose their
+chiefs and obey them in the hour of danger.  As their power
+diminished, they grew less amenable to discipline; and as in the
+last days of the Byzantine Empire, everyone wished to be emperor.
+
+They mistook their uniform weakness for uniform strength.
+
+Each family ruined by the Revolution and the abolition of the law
+of primogeniture thought only of itself, and not at all of the
+great family of the noblesse.  It seemed to them that as each
+individual grew rich, the party as a whole would gain in
+strength.  And herein lay their mistake.  Money, likewise, is
+only the outward and visible sign of power.  All these families
+were made up of persons who preserved a high tradition of
+courtesy, of true graciousness of life, of refined speech, with a
+family pride, and a squeamish sense of noblesse oblige which
+suited well with the kind of life they led; a life wholly filled
+with occupations which become contemptible so soon as they cease
+to be accessories and take the chief place in existence.  There
+was a certain intrinsic merit in all these people, but the merit
+was on the surface, and none of them were worth their face-value.
+
+Not a single one among those families had courage to ask itself
+the question, "Are we strong enough for the responsibility of
+power?"  They were cast on the top, like the lawyers of 1830;
+and instead of taking the patron's place, like a great man, the
+Faubourg Saint-Germain showed itself greedy as an upstart.  The
+most intelligent nation in the world perceived clearly that the
+restored nobles were organising everything for their own
+particular benefit.  From that day the noblesse was doomed.  The
+Faubourg Saint-Germain tried to be an aristocracy when it could
+only be an oligarchy--two very different systems, as any man may
+see for himself if he gives an intelligent perusal to the list of
+the patronymics of the House of Peers.
+
+The King's Government certainly meant well; but the maxim that
+the people must be made to WILL everything, even their own
+welfare, was pretty constantly forgotten, nor did they bear in
+mind that La France is a woman and capricious, and must be happy
+or chastised at her own good pleasure.  If there had been many
+dukes like the Duc de Laval, whose modesty made him worthy of the
+name he bore, the elder branch would have been as securely seated
+on the throne as the House of Hanover at this day.
+
+In 1814 the noblesse of France were called upon to assert their
+superiority over the most aristocratic bourgeoisie in the most
+feminine of all countries, to take the lead in the most highly
+educated epoch the world had yet seen.  And this was even more
+notably the case in 1820.  The Faubourg Saint-Germain might very
+easily have led and amused the middle classes in days when
+people's heads were turned with distinctions, and art and science
+were all the rage.  But the narrow-minded leaders of a time of
+great intellectual progress all of them detested art and science.
+
+They had not even the wit to present religion in attractive
+colours, though they needed its support.  While Lamartine,
+Lamennais, Montalembert, and other writers were putting new life
+and elevation into men's ideas of religion, and gilding it with
+poetry, these bunglers in the Government chose to make the
+harshness of their creed felt all over the country.  Never was
+nation in a more tractable humour; La France, like a tired woman,
+was ready to agree to anything; never was mismanagement so
+clumsy; and La France, like a woman, would have forgiven wrongs
+more easily than bungling.
+
+If the noblesse meant to reinstate themselves, the better to
+found a strong oligarchy, they should have honestly and
+diligently searched their Houses for men of the stamp that
+Napoleon used; they should have turned themselves inside out to
+see if peradventure there was a Constitutionalist Richelieu
+lurking in the entrails of the Faubourg; and if that genius was
+not forthcoming from among them, they should have set out to find
+him, even in the fireless garret where he might happen to be
+perishing of cold; they should have assimilated him, as the
+English House of Lords continually assimilates aristocrats made
+by chance; and finally ordered him to be ruthless, to lop away
+the old wood, and cut the tree down to the living shoots.  But,
+in the first place, the great system of English Toryism was far
+too large for narrow minds; the importation required time, and in
+France a tardy success is no better than a fiasco.  So far,
+moreover, from adopting a policy of redemption, and looking for
+new forces where God puts them, these petty great folk took a
+dislike to any capacity that did not issue from their midst; and,
+lastly, instead of growing young again, the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain grew positively older.
+
+Etiquette, not an institution of primary necessity, might have
+been maintained if it had appeared only on state occasions, but
+as it was, there was a daily wrangle over precedence; it ceased
+to be a matter of art or court ceremonial, it became a question
+of power.  And if from the outset the Crown lacked an adviser
+equal to so great a crisis, the aristocracy was still more
+lacking in a sense of its wider interests, an instinct which
+might have supplied the deficiency.  They stood nice about M. de
+Talleyrand's marriage, when M. de Talleyrand was the one man
+among them with the steel-encompassed brains that can forge a new
+political system and begin a new career of glory for a nation. 
+The Faubourg scoffed at a minister if he was not gently born, and
+produced no one of gentle birth that was fit to be a minister. 
+There were plenty of nobles fitted to serve their country by
+raising the dignity of justices of the peace, by improving the
+land, by opening out roads and canals, and taking an active and
+leading part as country gentlemen; but these had sold their
+estates to gamble on the Stock Exchange.  Again the Faubourg
+might have absorbed the energetic men among the bourgeoisie, and
+opened their ranks to the ambition which was undermining
+authority; they preferred instead to fight, and to fight unarmed,
+for of all that they once possessed there was nothing left but
+tradition.  For their misfortune there was just precisely enough
+of their former wealth left them as a class to keep up their
+bitter pride.  They were content with their past.  Not one of
+them seriously thought of bidding the son of the house take up
+arms from the pile of weapons which the nineteenth century flings
+down in the market-place.  Young men, shut out from office, were
+dancing at Madame's balls, while they should have been doing the
+work done under the Republic and the Empire by young,
+conscientious, harmlessly employed energies.  It was their place
+to carry out at Paris the programme which their seniors should
+have been following in the country.  The heads of houses might
+have won back recognition of their titles by unremitting
+attention to local interests, by falling in with the spirit of
+the age, by recasting their order to suit the taste of the times.
+
+But, pent up together in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where the
+spirit of the ancient court and traditions of bygone feuds
+between the nobles and the Crown still lingered on, the
+aristocracy was not whole-hearted in its allegiance to the
+Tuileries, and so much the more easily defeated because it was
+concentrated in the Chamber of Peers, and badly organised even
+there.  If the noblesse had woven themselves into a network over
+the country, they could have held their own; but cooped up in
+their Faubourg, with their backs against the Chateau, or spread
+at full length over the Budget, a single blow cut the thread of a
+fast-expiring life, and a petty, smug-faced lawyer came forward
+with the axe.  In spite of M. Royer-Collard's admirable
+discourse, the hereditary peerage and law of entail fell before
+the lampoons of a man who made it a boast that he had adroitly
+argued some few heads out of the executioner's clutches, and now
+forsooth must clumsily proceed to the slaying of old
+institutions.
+
+There are examples and lessons for the future in all this.  For
+if there were not still a future before the French aristocracy,
+there would be no need to do more than find a suitable
+sarcophagus; it were something pitilessly cruel to burn the dead
+body of it with fire of Tophet.
+
+But though the surgeon's scalpel is ruthless, it sometimes gives
+back life to a dying man; and the Faubourg Saint-Germain may wax
+more powerful under persecution than in its day of triumph, if it
+but chooses to organise itself under a leader.
+
+And now it is easy to give a summary of this semi-political
+survey.  The wish to re-establish a large fortune was uppermost
+in everyone's mind; a lack of broad views, and a mass of small
+defects, a real need of religion as a political factor, combined
+with a thirst for pleasure which damaged the cause of religion
+and necessitated a good deal of hypocrisy; a certain attitude of
+protest on the part of loftier and clearer-sighted men who set
+their faces against Court jealousies; and the disaffection of the
+provincial families, who often came of purer descent than the
+nobles of the Court which alienated them from itself--all these
+things combined to bring about a most discordant state of things
+in the Faubourg Saint-Germain.  It was neither compact in its
+organisation, nor consequent in its action; neither completely
+moral, nor frankly dissolute; it did not corrupt, nor was it
+corrupted; it would neither wholly abandon the disputed points
+which damaged its cause, nor yet adopt the policy that might have
+saved it.  In short, however effete individuals might be, the
+party as a whole was none the less armed with all the great
+principles which lie at the roots of national existence.  What
+was there in the Faubourg that it should perish in its strength? 
+
+It was very hard to please in the choice of candidates; the
+Faubourg had good taste, it was scornfully fastidious, yet there
+was nothing very glorious nor chivalrous truly about its fall.
+
+In the Emigration of 1789 there were some traces of a loftier
+feeling; but in the Emigration of 1830 from Paris into the
+country there was nothing discernible but self-interest.  A few
+famous men of letters, a few oratorical triumphs in the Chambers,
+M. de Talleyrand's attitude in the Congress, the taking of
+Algiers, and not a few names that found their way from the
+battlefield into the pages of history--all these things were so
+many examples set before the French noblesse to show that it was
+still open to them to take their part in the national existence,
+and to win recognition of their claims, if, indeed, they could
+condescend thus far.  In every living organism the work of
+bringing the whole into harmony within itself is always going on.
+
+If a man is indolent, the indolence shows itself in everything
+that he does; and, in the same manner, the general spirit of a
+class is pretty plainly manifested in the face it turns on the
+world, and the soul informs the body.
+
+The women of the Restoration displayed neither the proud
+disregard of public opinion shown by the court ladies of olden
+time in their wantonness, nor yet the simple grandeur of the
+tardy virtues by which they expiated their sins and shed so
+bright a glory about their names.  There was nothing either very
+frivolous or very serious about the woman of the Restoration. 
+She was hypocritical as a rule in her passion, and compounded, so
+to speak, with its pleasures.  Some few families led the domestic
+life of the Duchesse d'Orleans, whose connubial couch was
+exhibited so absurdly to visitors at the Palais Royal.  Two or
+three kept up the traditions of the Regency, filling cleverer
+women with something like disgust.  The great lady of the new
+school exercised no influence at all over the manners of the
+time; and yet she might have done much.  She might, at worst,
+have presented as dignified a spectacle as English-women of the
+same rank.  But she hesitated feebly among old precedents, became
+a bigot by force of circumstances, and allowed nothing of herself
+to appear, not even her better qualities.
+
+Not one among the Frenchwomen of that day had the ability to
+create a salon whither leaders of fashion might come to take
+lessons in taste and elegance.  Their voices, which once laid
+down the law to literature, that living expression of a time, now
+counted absolutely for nought.  Now when a literature lacks a
+general system, it fails to shape a body for itself, and dies out
+with its period.
+
+When in a nation at any time there is a people apart thus
+constituted, the historian is pretty certain to find some
+representative figure, some central personage who embodies the
+qualities and the defects of the whole party to which he belongs;
+there is Coligny, for instance, among the Huguenots, the
+Coadjuteur in the time of the Fronde, the Marechal de Richelieu
+under Louis XV, Danton during the Terror.  It is in the nature of
+things that the man should be identified with the company in
+which history finds him.  How is it possible to lead a party
+without conforming to its ideas? or to shine in any epoch unless
+a man represents the ideas of his time?  The wise and prudent
+head of a party is continually obliged to bow to the prejudices
+and follies of its rear; and this is the cause of actions for
+which he is afterwards criticised by this or that historian
+sitting at a safer distance from terrific popular explosions,
+coolly judging the passion and ferment without which the great
+struggles of the world could not be carried on at all.  And if
+this is true of the Historical Comedy of the Centuries, it is
+equally true in a more restricted sphere in the detached scenes
+of the national drama known as the Manners of the Age.
+
+
+At the beginning of that ephemeral life led by the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain under the Restoration, to which, if there is any
+truth in the above reflections, they failed to give stability,
+the most perfect type of the aristocratic caste in its weakness
+and strength, its greatness and littleness, might have been found
+for a brief space in a young married woman who belonged to it. 
+This was a woman artificially educated, but in reality ignorant;
+a woman whose instincts and feelings were lofty while the thought
+which should have controlled them was wanting.  She squandered
+the wealth of her nature in obedience to social conventions; she
+was ready to brave society, yet she hesitated till her scruples
+degenerated into artifice.  With more wilfulness than real force
+of character, impressionable rather than enthusiastic, gifted
+with more brain than heart; she was supremely a woman, supremely
+a coquette, and above all things a Parisienne, loving a brilliant
+life and gaiety, reflecting never, or too late; imprudent to the
+verge of poetry, and humble in the depths of her heart, in spite
+of her charming insolence.  Like some straight-growing reed, she
+made a show of independence; yet, like the reed, she was ready to
+bend to a strong hand.  She talked much of religion, and had it
+not at heart, though she was prepared to find in it a solution of
+her life.  How explain a creature so complex?  Capable of
+heroism, yet sinking unconsciously from heroic heights to utter a
+spiteful word; young and sweet-natured, not so much old at heart
+as aged by the maxims of those about her; versed in a selfish
+philosophy in which she was all unpractised, she had all the
+vices of a courtier, all the nobleness of developing womanhood. 
+She trusted nothing and no one, yet there were times when she
+quitted her sceptical attitude for a submissive credulity.
+
+How should any portrait be anything but incomplete of her, in
+whom the play of swiftly-changing colour made discord only to
+produce a poetic confusion?  For in her there shone a divine
+brightness, a radiance of youth that blended all her bewildering
+characteristics in a certain completeness and unity informed by
+her charm.  Nothing was feigned.  The passion or semi-passion,
+the ineffectual high aspirations, the actual pettiness, the
+coolness of sentiment and warmth of impulse, were all spontaneous
+and unaffected, and as much the outcome of her own position as of
+the position of the aristocracy to which she belonged.  She was
+wholly self-contained; she put herself proudly above the world
+and beneath the shelter of her name.  There was something of the
+egoism of Medea in her life, as in the life of the aristocracy
+that lay a-dying, and would not so much as raise itself or
+stretch out a hand to any political physician; so well aware of
+its feebleness, or so conscious that it was already dust, that it
+refused to touch or be touched.
+
+The Duchesse de Langeais (for that was her name) had been married
+for about four years when the Restoration was finally
+consummated, which is to say, in 1816.  By that time the
+revolution of the Hundred Days had let in the light on the mind
+of Louis XVIII.  In spite of his surroundings, he comprehended
+the situation and the age in which he was living; and it was only
+later, when this Louis XI, without the axe, lay stricken down by
+disease, that those about him got the upper hand.  The Duchesse
+de Langeais, a Navarreins by birth, came of a ducal house which
+had made a point of never marrying below its rank since the reign
+of Louis XIV.  Every daughter of the house must sooner or later
+take a tabouret at Court.  So, Antoinette de Navarreins, at the
+age of eighteen, came out of the profound solitude in which her
+girlhood had been spent to marry the Duc de Langeais's eldest
+son.  The two families at that time were living quite out of the
+world; but after the invasion of France, the return of the
+Bourbons seemed to every Royalist mind the only possible way of
+putting an end to the miseries of the war.
+
+The Ducs de Navarreins and de Langeais had been faithful
+throughout to the exiled Princes, nobly resisting all the
+temptations of glory under the Empire.  Under the circumstances
+they naturally followed out the old family policy; and Mlle
+Antoinette, a beautiful and portionless girl, was married to M.
+le Marquis de Langeais only a few months before the death of the
+Duke his father.
+
+After the return of the Bourbons, the families resumed their
+rank, offices, and dignity at Court; once more they entered
+public life, from which hitherto they held aloof, and took their
+place high on the sunlit summits of the new political world.  In
+that time of general baseness and sham political conversions, the
+public conscience was glad to recognise the unstained loyalty of
+the two houses, and a consistency in political and private life
+for which all parties involuntarily respected them.  But,
+unfortunately, as so often happens in a time of transition, the
+most disinterested persons, the men whose loftiness of view and
+wise principles would have gained the confidence of the French
+nation and led them to believe in the generosity of a novel and
+spirited policy--these men, to repeat, were taken out of affairs,
+and public business was allowed to fall into the hands of others,
+who found it to their interest to push principles to their
+extreme consequences by way of proving their devotion.
+
+The families of Langeais and Navarreins remained about the Court,
+condemned to perform the duties required by Court ceremonial amid
+the reproaches and sneers of the Liberal party.  They were
+accused of gorging themselves with riches and honours, and all
+the while their family estates were no larger than before, and
+liberal allowances from the civil list were wholly expended in
+keeping up the state necessary for any European government, even
+if it be a Republic.
+
+In 1818, M. le Duc de Langeais commanded a division of the army,
+and the Duchess held a post about one of the Princesses, in
+virtue of which she was free to live in Paris and apart from her
+husband without scandal.  The Duke, moreover, besides his
+military duties, had a place at Court, to which he came during
+his term of waiting, leaving his major-general in command.  The
+Duke and Duchess were leading lives entirely apart, the world
+none the wiser.  Their marriage of convention shared the fate of
+nearly all family arrangements of the kind.  Two more
+antipathetic dispositions could not well have been found; they
+were brought together; they jarred upon each other; there was
+soreness on either side; then they were divided once for all. 
+Then they went their separate ways, with a due regard for
+appearances.  The Duc de Langeais, by nature as methodical as the
+Chevalier de Folard himself, gave himself up methodically to his
+own tastes and amusements, and left his wife at liberty to do as
+she pleased so soon as he felt sure of her character.  He
+recognised in her a spirit pre-eminently proud, a cold heart, a
+profound submissiveness to the usages of the world, and a
+youthful loyalty.  Under the eyes of great relations, with the
+light of a prudish and bigoted Court turned full upon the
+Duchess, his honour was safe.
+
+So the Duke calmly did as the grands seigneurs of the eighteenth
+century did before him, and left a young wife of two-and-twenty
+to her own devices.  He had deeply offended that wife, and in her
+nature there was one appalling characteristic--she would never
+forgive an offence when woman's vanity and self-love, with all
+that was best in her nature perhaps, had been slighted, wounded
+in secret.  Insult and injury in the face of the world a woman
+loves to forget; there is a way open to her of showing herself
+great; she is a woman in her forgiveness; but a secret offence
+women never pardon; for secret baseness, as for hidden virtues
+and hidden love, they have no kindness
+
+This was Mme la Duchesse de Langeais's real position, unknown to
+the world.  She herself did not reflect upon it.  It was the time
+of the rejoicings over the Duc de Berri's marriage.  The Court
+and the Faubourg roused itself from its listlessness and reserve.
+
+This was the real beginning of that unheard-of splendour which
+the Government of the Restoration carried too far.  At that time
+the Duchess, whether for reasons of her own, or from vanity,
+never appeared in public without a following of women equally
+distinguished by name and fortune.  As queen of fashion she had
+her dames d'atours, her ladies, who modelled their manner and
+their wit on hers.  They had been cleverly chosen.  None of her
+satellites belonged to the inmost Court circle, nor to the
+highest level of the Faubourg Saint-Germain; but they had set
+their minds upon admission to those inner sanctuaries.  Being as
+yet simple dominations, they wished to rise to the neighbourhood
+of the throne, and mingle with the seraphic powers in the high
+sphere known as le petit chateau.  Thus surrounded, the Duchess's
+position was stronger and more commanding and secure.  Her
+"ladies" defended her character and helped her to play her
+detestable part of a woman of fashion.  She could laugh at men at
+her ease, play with fire, receive the homage on which the
+feminine nature is nourished, and remain mistress of herself.  
+
+At Paris, in the highest society of all, a woman is a woman
+still; she lives on incense, adulation, and honours.  No beauty,
+however undoubted, no face, however fair, is anything without
+admiration.  Flattery and a lover are proofs of power.  And what
+is power without recognition?  Nothing.  If the prettiest of
+women were left alone in a corner of a drawing-room, she would
+droop.  Put her in the very centre and summit of social grandeur,
+she will at once aspire to reign over all hearts--often because
+it is out of her power to be the happy queen of one.  Dress and
+manner and coquetry are all meant to please one of the poorest
+creatures extant--the brainless coxcomb, whose handsome face is
+his sole merit; it was for such as these that women threw
+themselves away.  The gilded wooden idols of the Restoration, for
+they were neither more nor less, had neither the antecedents of
+the petits maitres of the time of the Fronde, nor the rough
+sterling worth of Napoleon's heroes, not the wit and fine manners
+of their grandsires; but something of all three they meant to be
+without any trouble to themselves.  Brave they were, like all
+young Frenchmen; ability they possessed, no doubt, if they had
+had a chance of proving it, but their places were filled up by
+the old worn-out men, who kept them in leading strings.  It was a
+day of small things, a cold prosaic era.  Perhaps it takes a long
+time for a Restoration to become a Monarchy.
+
+For the past eighteen months the Duchesse de Langeais had been
+leading this empty life, filled with balls and subsequent visits,
+objectless triumphs, and the transient loves that spring up and
+die in an evening's space.  All eyes were turned on her when she
+entered a room; she reaped her harvest of flatteries and some few
+words of warmer admiration, which she encouraged by a gesture or
+a glance, but never suffered to penetrate deeper than the skin. 
+Her tone and bearing and everything else about her imposed her
+will upon others.  Her life was a sort of fever of vanity and
+perpetual enjoyment, which turned her head.  She was daring
+enough in conversation; she would listen to anything, corrupting
+the surface, as it were, of her heart.  Yet when she returned
+home, she often blushed at the story that had made her laugh; at
+the scandalous tale that supplied the details, on the strength of
+which she analysed the love that she had never known, and marked
+the subtle distinctions of modern passion, not with comment on
+the part of complacent hypocrites.  For women know how to say
+everything among themselves, and more of them are ruined by each
+other than corrupted by men.
+
+There came a moment when she discerned that not until a woman is
+loved will the world fully recognise her beauty and her wit. 
+What does a husband prove?  Simply that a girl or woman was
+endowed with wealth, or well brought up; that her mother managed
+cleverly that in some way she satisfied a man's ambitions.  A
+lover constantly bears witness to her personal perfections.  Then
+followed the discovery still in Mme de Langeais's early
+womanhood, that it was possible to be loved without committing
+herself, without permission, without vouchsafing any satisfaction
+beyond the most meagre dues.  There was more than one demure
+feminine hypocrite to instruct her in the art of playing such
+dangerous comedies.
+
+So the Duchess had her court, and the number of her adorers and
+courtiers guaranteed her virtue.  She was amiable and
+fascinating; she flirted till the ball or the evening's gaiety
+was at an end.  Then the curtain dropped.  She was cold,
+indifferent, self-contained again till the next day brought its
+renewed sensations, superficial as before.  Two or three men were
+completely deceived, and fell in love in earnest.  She laughed at
+them, she was utterly insensible.  "I am loved!" she told
+herself.  "He loves me!"  The certainty sufficed her.  It is
+enough for the miser to know that his every whim might be
+fulfilled if he chose; so it was with the Duchess, and perhaps
+she did not even go so far as to form a wish.
+
+One evening she chanced to be at the house of an intimate friend
+Mme la Vicomtesse de Fontaine, one of the humble rivals who
+cordially detested her, and went with her everywhere.  In a
+"friendship" of this sort both sides are on their guard, and
+never lay their armour aside; confidences are ingeniously
+indiscreet, and not unfrequently treacherous.  Mme de Langeais
+had distributed her little patronising, friendly, or freezing
+bows, with the air natural to a woman who knows the worth of her
+smiles, when her eyes fell upon a total stranger.  Something in
+the man's large gravity of aspect startled her, and, with a
+feeling almost like dread, she turned to Mme de Maufrigneuse
+with, "Who is the newcomer, dear?"
+
+"Someone that you have heard of, no doubt.  The Marquis de
+Montriveau."
+
+"Oh! is it he?"
+
+She took up her eyeglass and submitted him to a very insolent
+scrutiny, as if he had been a picture meant to receive glances,
+not to return them.
+
+"Do introduce him; he ought to be interesting."
+
+"Nobody more tiresome and dull, dear.  But he is the fashion."
+
+M. Armand de Montriveau, at that moment all unwittingly the
+object of general curiosity, better deserved attention than any
+of the idols that Paris needs must set up to worship for a brief
+space, for the city is vexed by periodical fits of craving, a
+passion for engouement and sham enthusiasm, which must be
+satisfied.  The Marquis was the only son of General de
+Montriveau, one of the ci-devants who served the Republic nobly,
+and fell by Joubert's side at Novi.  Bonaparte had placed his son
+at the school at Chalons, with the orphans of other generals who
+fell on the battlefield, leaving their children under the
+protection of the Republic.  Armand de Montriveau left school
+with his way to make, entered the artillery, and had only reached
+a major's rank at the time of the Fontainebleau disaster.  In his
+section of the service the chances of advancement were not many. 
+There are fewer officers, in the first place, among the gunners
+than in any other corps; and in the second place, the feeling in
+the artillery was decidedly Liberal, not to say Republican; and
+the Emperor, feeling little confidence in a body of highly
+educated men who were apt to think for themselves, gave promotion
+grudgingly in the service.  In the artillery, accordingly, the
+general rule of the army did not apply; the commanding officers
+were not invariably the most remarkable men in their department,
+because there was less to be feared from mediocrities.  The
+artillery was a separate corps in those days, and only came under
+Napoleon in action.
+
+Besides these general causes, other reasons, inherent in Armand
+de Montriveau's character, were sufficient in themselves to
+account for his tardy promotion.  He was alone in the world.  He
+had been thrown at the age of twenty into the whirlwind of men
+directed by Napoleon; his interests were bounded by himself, any
+day he might lose his life; it became a habit of mind with him to
+live by his own self-respect and the consciousness that he had
+done his duty.  Like all shy men, he was habitually silent; but
+his shyness sprang by no means from timidity; it was a kind of
+modesty in him; he found any demonstration of vanity intolerable.
+
+There was no sort of swagger about his fearlessness in action;
+nothing escaped his eyes; he could give sensible advice to his
+chums with unshaken coolness; he could go under fire, and duck
+upon occasion to avoid bullets.  He was kindly; but his
+expression was haughty and stern, and his face gained him this
+character.  In everything he was rigorous as arithmetic; he never
+permitted the slightest deviation from duty on any plausible
+pretext, nor blinked the consequences of a fact.  He would lend
+himself to nothing of which he was ashamed; he never asked
+anything for himself; in short, Armand de Montriveau was one of
+many great men unknown to fame, and philosophical enough to
+despise it; living without attaching themselves to life, because
+they have not found their opportunity of developing to the full
+their power to do and feel.
+
+People were afraid of Montriveau; they respected him, but he was
+not very popular.  Men may indeed allow you to rise above them,
+but to decline to descend as low as they can do is the one
+unpardonable sin.  In their feeling towards loftier natures,
+there is a trace of hate and fear.  Too much honour with them
+implies censure of themselves, a thing forgiven neither to the
+living nor to the dead.
+
+After the Emperor's farewells at Fontainebleau, Montriveau, noble
+though he was, was put on half-pay.  Perhaps the heads of the War
+Office took fright at uncompromising uprightness worthy of
+antiquity, or perhaps it was known that he felt bound by his oath
+to the Imperial Eagle.  During the Hundred Days he was made a
+Colonel of the Guard, and left on the field of Waterloo.  His
+wounds kept him in Belgium he was not present at the disbanding
+of the Army of the Loire, but the King's government declined to
+recognise promotion made during the Hundred Days, and Armand de
+Montriveau left France.
+
+An adventurous spirit, a loftiness of thought hitherto satisfied
+by the hazards of war, drove him on an exploring expedition
+through Upper Egypt; his sanity or impulse directed his
+enthusiasm to a project of great importance, he turned his
+attention to that unexplored Central Africa which occupies the
+learned of today.  The scientific expedition was long and
+unfortunate.  He had made a valuable collection of notes bearing
+on various geographical and commercial problems, of which
+solutions are still eagerly sought; and succeeded, after
+surmounting many obstacles, in reaching the heart of the
+continent, when he was betrayed into the hands of a hostile
+native tribe.  Then, stripped of all that he had, for two years
+he led a wandering life in the desert, the slave of savages,
+threatened with death at every moment, and more cruelly treated
+than a dumb animal in the power of pitiless children.  Physical
+strength, and a mind braced to endurance, enabled him to survive
+the horrors of that captivity; but his miraculous escape
+well-nigh exhausted his energies.  When he reached the French
+colony at Senegal, a half-dead fugitive covered with rags, his
+memories of his former life were dim and shapeless.  The great
+sacrifices made in his travels were all forgotten like his
+studies of African dialects, his discoveries, and observations. 
+One story will give an idea of all that he passed through.  Once
+for several days the children of the sheikh of the tribe amused
+themselves by putting him up for a mark and flinging horses'
+knuckle-bones at his head.
+
+Montriveau came back to Paris in 1818 a ruined man.  He had no
+interest, and wished for none.  He would have died twenty times
+over sooner than ask a favour of anyone; he would not even press
+the recognition of his claims.  Adversity and hardship had
+developed his energy even in trifles, while the habit of
+preserving his self-respect before that spiritual self which we
+call conscience led him to attach consequence to the most
+apparently trivial actions.  His merits and adventures became
+known, however, through his acquaintances, among the principal
+men of science in Paris, and some few well-read military men. 
+The incidents of his slavery and subsequent escape bore witness
+to a courage, intelligence, and coolness which won him celebrity
+without his knowledge, and that transient fame of which Paris
+salons are lavish, though the artist that fain would keep it must
+make untold efforts.
+
+Montriveau's position suddenly changed towards the end of that
+year.  He had been a poor man, he was now rich; or, externally at
+any rate, he had all the advantages of wealth.  The King's
+government, trying to attach capable men to itself and to
+strengthen the army, made concessions about that time to
+Napoleon's old officers if their known loyalty and character
+offered guarantees of fidelity.  M. de Montriveau's name once
+more appeared in the army list with the rank of colonel; he
+received his arrears of pay and passed into the Guards.  All
+these favours, one after another, came to seek the Marquis de
+Montriveau; he had asked for nothing however small.  Friends had
+taken the steps for him which he would have refused to take for
+himself.
+
+After this, his habits were modified all at once; contrary to his
+custom, he went into society.  He was well received, everywhere
+he met with great deference and respect.  He seemed to have found
+some end in life; but everything passed within the man, there
+were no external signs; in society he was silent and cold, and
+wore a grave, reserved face.  His social success was great,
+precisely because he stood out in such strong contrast to the
+conventional faces which line the walls of Paris salons.  He was,
+indeed, something quite new there.  Terse of speech, like a
+hermit or a savage, his shyness was thought to be haughtiness,
+and people were greatly taken with it.  He was something strange
+and great.  Women generally were so much the more smitten with
+this original person because he was not to be caught by their
+flatteries, however adroit, nor by the wiles with which they
+circumvent the strongest men and corrode the steel temper.  Their
+Parisian's grimaces were lost upon M. de Montriveau; his nature
+only responded to the sonorous vibration of lofty thought and
+feeling.  And he would very promptly have been dropped but for
+the romance that hung about his adventures and his life; but for
+the men who cried him up behind his back; but for a woman who
+looked for a triumph for her vanity, the woman who was to fill
+his thoughts.
+
+For these reasons the Duchesse de Langeais's curiosity was no
+less lively than natural.  Chance had so ordered it that her
+interest in the man before her had been aroused only the day
+before, when she heard the story of one of M. de Montriveau's
+adventures, a story calculated to make the strongest impression
+upon a woman's ever-changing fancy.
+
+During M. de Montriveau's voyage of discovery to the sources of
+the Nile, he had had an argument with one of his guides, surely
+the most extraordinary debate in the annals of travel.  The
+district that he wished to explore could only be reached on foot
+across a tract of desert.  Only one of his guides knew the way;
+no traveller had penetrated before into that part of the country,
+where the undaunted officer hoped to find a solution of several
+scientific problems.  In spite of the representations made to him
+by the guide and the older men of the place, he started upon the
+formidable journey.  Summoning up courage, already highly strung
+by the prospect of dreadful difficulties, he set out in the
+morning.
+
+The loose sand shifted under his feet at every step; and when, at
+the end of a long day's march, he lay down to sleep on the
+ground, he had never been so tired in his life.  He knew,
+however, that he must be up and on his way before dawn next day,
+and his guide assured him that they should reach the end of their
+journey towards noon.  That promise kept up his courage and gave
+him new strength.  In spite of his sufferings, he continued his
+march, with some blasphemings against science; he was ashamed to
+complain to his guide, and kept his pain to himself.  After
+marching for a third of the day, he felt his strength failing,
+his feet were bleeding, he asked if they should reach the place
+soon.
+
+"In an hour's time," said the guide.  Armand braced himself for
+another hour's march, and they went on.
+
+The hour slipped by; he could not so much as see against the sky
+the palm-trees and crests of hill that should tell of the end of
+the journey near at hand; the horizon line of sand was vast as
+the circle of the open sea.
+
+He came to a stand, refused to go farther, and threatened the
+guide--he had deceived him, murdered him; tears of rage and
+weariness flowed over his fevered cheeks; he was bowed down with
+fatigue upon fatigue, his throat seemed to be glued by the desert
+thirst.  The guide meanwhile stood motionless, listening to these
+complaints with an ironical expression, studying the while, with
+the apparent indifference of an Oriental, the scarcely
+perceptible indications in the lie of the sands, which looked
+almost black, like burnished gold.
+
+"I have made a mistake," he remarked coolly.  "I could not
+make out the track, it is so long since I came this way; we are
+surely on it now, but we must push on for two hours."
+
+"The man is right," thought M. de Montriveau.
+
+So he went on again, struggling to follow the pitiless native. 
+It seemed as if he were bound to his guide by some thread like
+the invisible tie between the condemned man and the headsman. 
+But the two hours went by, Montriveau had spent his last drops of
+energy, and the skyline was a blank, there were no palm-trees, no
+hills.  He could neither cry out nor groan, he lay down on the
+sand to die, but his eyes would have frightened the boldest;
+something in his face seemed to say that he would not die alone. 
+His guide, like a very fiend, gave him back a cool glance like a
+man that knows his power, left him to lie there, and kept at a
+safe distance out of reach of his desperate victim.  At last M.
+Montriveau recovered strength enough for a last curse.
+
+The guide came nearer, silenced him with a steady look, and said,
+"Was it not your own will to go where I am taking you, in spite
+of us all?  You say that I have lied to you.  If I had not, you
+would not be even here.  Do you want the truth?  Here it is.  WE
+HAVE STILL ANOTHER FIVE HOURS' MARCH BEFORE US, AND WE CANNOT GO
+BACK.  Sound yourself; if you have not courage enough, here is my
+dagger."
+
+Startled by this dreadful knowledge of pain and human strength,
+M. de Montriveau would not be behind a savage; he drew a fresh
+stock of courage from his pride as a European, rose to his feet,
+and followed his guide.  The five hours were at an end, and still
+M. de Montriveau saw nothing, he turned his failing eyes upon his
+guide; but the Nubian hoisted him on his shoulders, and showed
+him a wide pool of water with greenness all about it, and a noble
+forest lighted up by the sunset.  It lay only a hundred paces
+away; a vast ledge of granite hid the glorious landscape.  It
+seemed to Armand that he had taken a new lease of life.  His
+guide, that giant in courage and intelligence, finished his work
+of devotion by carrying him across the hot, slippery, scarcely
+discernible track on the granite.  Behind him lay the hell of
+burning sand, before him the earthly paradise of the most
+beautiful oasis in the desert.
+
+The Duchess, struck from the first by the appearance of this
+romantic figure, was even more impressed when she learned that
+this was that Marquis de Montriveau of whom she had dreamed
+during the night.  She had been with him among the hot desert
+sands, he had been the companion of her nightmare wanderings; for
+such a woman was not this a delightful presage of a new interest
+in her life?  And never was a man's exterior a better exponent of
+his character; never were curious glances so well justified.  The
+principal characteristic of his great, square-hewn head was the
+thick, luxuriant black hair which framed his face, and gave him a
+strikingly close resemblance to General Kleber; and the likeness
+still held good in the vigorous forehead, in the outlines of his
+face, the quiet fearlessness of his eyes, and a kind of fiery
+vehemence expressed by strongly marked features.  He was short,
+deep-chested, and muscular as a lion.  There was something of the
+despot about him, and an indescribable suggestion of the security
+of strength in his gait, bearing, and slightest movements.  He
+seemed to know that his will was irresistible, perhaps because he
+wished for nothing unjust.  And yet, like all really strong men,
+he was mild of speech, simple in his manners, and kindly natured;
+although it seemed as if, in the stress of a great crisis, all
+these finer qualities must disappear, and the man would show
+himself implacable, unshaken in his resolve, terrific in action. 
+There was a certain drawing in of the inner line of the lips
+which, to a close observer, indicated an ironical bent.
+
+The Duchesse de Langeais, realising that a fleeting glory was to
+be won by such a conquest, made up her mind to gain a lover in
+Armand de Montriveau during the brief interval before the
+Duchesse de Maufrigneuse brought him to be introduced.  She would
+prefer him above the others; she would attach him to herself,
+display all her powers of coquetry for him.  It was a fancy, such
+a merest Duchess's whim as furnished a Lope or a Calderon with
+the plot of the Dog in the Manger.  She would not suffer another
+woman to engross him; but she had not the remotest intention of
+being his.
+
+Nature had given the Duchess every qualification for the part of
+coquette, and education had perfected her.  Women envied her, and
+men fell in love with her, not without reason.  Nothing that can
+inspire love, justify it, and give it lasting empire was wanting
+in her.  Her style of beauty, her manner, her voice, her bearing,
+all combined to give her that instinctive coquetry which seems to
+be the consciousness of power.  Her shape was graceful; perhaps
+there was a trace of self-consciousness in her changes of
+movement, the one affectation that could be laid to her charge;
+but everything about her was a part of her personality, from her
+least little gesture to the peculiar turn of her phrases, the
+demure glance of her eyes.  Her great lady's grace, her most
+striking characteristic, had not destroyed the very French quick
+mobility of her person.  There was an extraordinary fascination
+in her swift, incessant changes of attitude.  She seemed as if
+she surely would be a most delicious mistress when her corset and
+the encumbering costume of her part were laid aside.  All the
+rapture of love surely was latent in the freedom of her
+expressive glances, in her caressing tones, in the charm of her
+words.  She gave glimpses of the high-born courtesan within her,
+vainly protesting against the creeds of the duchess.
+
+You might sit near her through an evening, she would be gay and
+melancholy in turn, and her gaiety, like her sadness, seemed
+spontaneous.  She could be gracious, disdainful, insolent, or
+confiding at will.  Her apparent good nature was real; she had no
+temptation to descend to malignity.  But at each moment her mood
+changed; she was full of confidence or craft; her moving
+tenderness would give place to a heart-breaking hardness and
+insensibility.  Yet how paint her as she was, without bringing
+together all the extremes of feminine nature?  In a word, the
+Duchess was anything that she wished to be or to seem.  Her face
+was slightly too long. There was a grace in it, and a certain
+thinness and fineness that recalled the portraits of the Middle
+Ages.  Her skin was white, with a faint rose tint.  Everything
+about her erred, as it were, by an excess of delicacy.
+
+M. de Montriveau willingly consented to be introduced to the
+Duchesse de Langeais; and she, after the manner of persons whose
+sensitive taste leads them to avoid banalities, refrained from
+overwhelming him with questions and compliments.  She received
+him with a gracious deference which could not fail to flatter a
+man of more than ordinary powers, for the fact that a man rises
+above the ordinary level implies that he possesses something of
+that tact which makes women quick to read feeling.  If the
+Duchess showed any curiosity, it was by her glances; her
+compliments were conveyed in her manner; there was a winning
+grace displayed in her words, a subtle suggestion of a desire to
+please which she of all women knew the art of manifesting.  Yet
+her whole conversation was but, in a manner, the body of the
+letter; the postscript with the principal thought in it was still
+to come.  After half an hour spent in ordinary talk, in which the
+words gained all their value from her tone and smiles, M. de
+Montriveau was about to retire discreetly, when the Duchess
+stopped him with an expressive gesture.
+
+"I do not know, monsieur, whether these few minutes during which
+I have had the pleasure of talking to you proved so sufficiently
+attractive, that I may venture to ask you to call upon me; I am
+afraid that it may be very selfish of me to wish to have you all
+to myself.  If I should be so fortunate as to find that my house
+is agreeable to you, you will always find me at home in the
+evening until ten o'clock."
+
+The invitation was given with such irresistible grace, that M. de
+Montriveau could not refuse to accept it.  When he fell back
+again among the groups of men gathered at a distance from the
+women, his friends congratulated him, half laughingly, half in
+earnest, on the extraordinary reception vouchsafed him by the
+Duchesse de Langeais.  The difficult and brilliant conquest had
+been made beyond a doubt, and the glory of it was reserved for
+the Artillery of the Guard.  It is easy to imagine the jests,
+good and bad, when this topic had once been started; the world of
+Paris salons is so eager for amusement, and a joke lasts for such
+a short time, that everyone is eager to make the most of it while
+it is fresh.
+
+All unconsciously, the General felt flattered by this nonsense. 
+From his place where he had taken his stand, his eyes were drawn
+again and again to the Duchess by countless wavering reflections.
+
+He could not help admitting to himself that of all the women
+whose beauty had captivated his eyes, not one had seemed to be a
+more exquisite embodiment of faults and fair qualities blended in
+a completeness that might realise the dreams of earliest manhood.
+
+Is there a man in any rank of life that has not felt indefinable
+rapture in his secret soul over the woman singled out (if only in
+his dreams) to be his own; when she, in body, soul, and social
+aspects, satisfies his every requirement, a thrice perfect woman?
+
+And if this threefold perfection that flatters his pride is no
+argument for loving her, it is beyond cavil one of the great
+inducements to the sentiment.  Love would soon be convalescent,
+as the eighteenth century moralist remarked, were it not for
+vanity.  And it is certainly true that for everyone, man or
+woman, there is a wealth of pleasure in the superiority of the
+beloved.  Is she set so high by birth that a contemptuous glance
+can never wound her? is she wealthy enough to surround herself
+with state which falls nothing short of royalty, of kings, of
+finance during their short reign of splendour? is she so
+ready-witted that a keen-edged jest never brings her into
+confusion? beautiful enough to rival any woman?--Is it such a
+small thing to know that your self-love will never suffer through
+her?  A man makes these reflections in the twinkling of an eye. 
+And how if, in the future opened out by early ripened passion, he
+catches glimpses of the changeful delight of her charm, the frank
+innocence of a maiden soul, the perils of love's voyage, the
+thousand folds of the veil of coquetry?  Is not this enough to
+move the coldest man's heart?
+
+This, therefore, was M. de Montriveau's position with regard to
+woman; his past life in some measure explaining the extraordinary
+fact.  He had been thrown, when little more than a boy, into the
+hurricane of Napoleon's wars; his life had been spent on fields
+of battle.  Of women he knew just so much as a traveller knows of
+a country when he travels across it in haste from one inn to
+another.  The verdict which Voltaire passed upon his eighty years
+of life might, perhaps, have been applied by Montriveau to his
+own thirty-seven years of existence; had he not thirty-seven
+follies with which to reproach himself?  At his age he was as
+much a novice in love as the lad that has just been furtively
+reading Faublas.  Of women he had nothing to learn; of love he
+knew nothing; and thus, desires, quite unknown before, sprang
+from this virginity of feeling.
+
+There are men here and there as much engrossed in the work
+demanded of them by poverty or ambition, art or science, as M. de
+Montriveau by war and a life of adventure--these know what it is
+to be in this unusual position if they very seldom confess to it.
+
+Every man in Paris is supposed to have been in love.  No woman in
+Paris cares to take what other women have passed over.  The dread
+of being taken for a fool is the source of the coxcomb's bragging
+so common in France; for in France to have the reputation of a
+fool is to be a foreigner in one's own country.  Vehement desire
+seized on M. de Montriveau, desire that had gathered strength
+from the heat of the desert and the first stirrings of a heart
+unknown as yet in its suppressed turbulence.
+
+A strong man, and violent as he was strong, he could keep mastery
+over himself; but as he talked of indifferent things, he retired
+within himself, and swore to possess this woman, for through that
+thought lay the only way to love for him.  Desire became a solemn
+compact made with himself, an oath after the manner of the Arabs
+among whom he had lived; for among them a vow is a kind of
+contract made with Destiny a man's whole future is solemnly
+pledged to fulfil it, and everything even his own death, is
+regarded simply as a means to the one end.
+
+A younger man would have said to himself, "I should very much
+like to have the Duchess for my mistress!" or, "If the Duchesse
+de Langeais cared for a man, he would be a very lucky rascal!" 
+But the General said, "I will have Mme de Langeais for my
+mistress."  And if a man takes such an idea into his head when
+his heart has never been touched before, and love begins to be a
+kind of religion with him, he little knows in what a hell he has
+set his foot.
+
+Armand de Montriveau suddenly took flight and went home in the
+first hot fever-fit of the first love that he had known.  When a
+man has kept all his boyish beliefs, illusions, frankness, and
+impetuosity into middle age, his first impulse is, as it were, to
+stretch out a hand to take the thing that he desires; a little
+later he realises that there is a gulf set between them, and that
+it is all but impossible to cross it.  A sort of childish
+impatience seizes him, he wants the thing the more, and trembles
+or cries.  Wherefore, the next day, after the stormiest
+reflections that had yet perturbed his mind, Armand de Montriveau
+discovered that he was under the yoke of the senses, and his
+bondage made the heavier by his love.
+
+The woman so cavalierly treated in his thoughts of yesterday had
+become a most sacred and dreadful power.  She was to be his
+world, his life, from this time forth.  The greatest joy, the
+keenest anguish, that he had yet known grew colourless before the
+bare recollection of the least sensation stirred in him by her. 
+The swiftest revolutions in a man's outward life only touch his
+interests, while passion brings a complete revulsion of feeling. 
+And so in those who live by feeling, rather than by
+self-interest, the doers rather than the reasoners, the sanguine
+rather than the lymphatic temperaments, love works a complete
+revolution.  In a flash, with one single reflection, Armand de
+Montriveau wiped out his whole past life.
+
+A score of times he asked himself, like a boy, "Shall I go, or
+shall I not?" and then at last he dressed, came to the Hotel de
+Langeais towards eight o'clock that evening, and was admitted. 
+He was to see the woman--ah! not the woman--the idol that he had
+seen yesterday, among lights, a fresh innocent girl in gauze and
+silken lace and veiling.  He burst in upon her to declare his
+love, as if it were a question of firing the first shot on a
+field of battle.
+
+Poor novice!  He found his ethereal sylphide shrouded in a brown
+cashmere dressing-gown ingeniously befrilled, lying languidly
+stretched out upon a sofa in a dimly lighted boudoir.  Mme de
+Langeais did not so much as rise, nothing was visible of her but
+her face, her hair was loose but confined by a scarf.  A hand
+indicated a seat, a hand that seemed white as marble to
+Montriveau by the flickering light of a single candle at the
+further side of the room, and a voice as soft as the light said--
+
+"If it had been anyone else, M. le Marquis, a friend with whom I
+could dispense with ceremony, or a mere acquaintance in whom I
+felt but slight interest, I should have closed my door.  I am
+exceedingly unwell."
+
+"I will go," Armand said to himself.
+
+"But I do not know how it is," she continued (and the simple
+warrior attributed the shining of her eyes to fever), "perhaps
+it was a presentiment of your kind visit (and no one can be more
+sensible of the prompt attention than I), but the vapours have
+left my head."
+
+"Then may I stay?"
+
+"Oh, I should be very sorry to allow you to go.  I told myself
+this morning that it was impossible that I should have made the
+slightest impression on your mind, and that in all probability
+you took my request for one of the commonplaces of which
+Parisians are lavish on every occasion.  And I forgave your
+ingratitude in advance.  An explorer from the deserts is not
+supposed to know how exclusive we are in our friendships in the
+Faubourg."
+
+The gracious, half-murmured words dropped one by one, as if they
+had been weighted with the gladness that apparently brought them
+to her lips.  The Duchess meant to have the full benefit of her
+headache, and her speculation was fully successful.  The General,
+poor man, was really distressed by the lady's simulated distress.
+
+Like Crillon listening to the story of the Crucifixion, he was
+ready to draw his sword against the vapours.  How could a man
+dare to speak just then to this suffering woman of the love that
+she inspired?  Armand had already felt that it would be absurd to
+fire off a declaration of love point-blank at one so far above
+other women.  With a single thought came understanding of the
+delicacies of feeling, of the soul's requirements.  To love: what
+was that but to know how to plead, to beg for alms, to wait?  And
+as for the love that he felt, must he not prove it?  His tongue
+was mute, it was frozen by the conventions of the noble Faubourg,
+the majesty of a sick headache, the bashfulness of love.  But no
+power on earth could veil his glances; the heat and the Infinite
+of the desert blazed in eyes calm as a panther's, beneath the
+lids that fell so seldom.  The Duchess enjoyed the steady gaze
+that enveloped her in light and warmth.
+
+"Mme la Duchesse," he answered, "I am afraid I express my
+gratitude for your goodness very badly.  At this moment I have
+but one desire--I wish it were in my power to cure the pain."
+
+"Permit me to throw this off, I feel too warm now," she said,
+gracefully tossing aside a cushion that covered her feet.
+
+"Madame, in Asia your feet would be worth some ten thousand
+sequins.
+
+"A traveller's compliment!" smiled she.
+
+It pleased the sprightly lady to involve a rough soldier in a
+labyrinth of nonsense, commonplaces, and meaningless talk, in
+which he manoeuvred, in military language, as Prince Charles
+might have done at close quarters with Napoleon.  She took a
+mischievous amusement in reconnoitring the extent of his
+infatuation by the number of foolish speeches extracted from a
+novice whom she led step by step into a hopeless maze, meaning to
+leave him there in confusion.  She began by laughing at him, but
+nevertheless it pleased her to make him forget how time went.
+
+The length of a first visit is frequently a compliment, but
+Armand was innocent of any such intent.  The famous explorer
+spent an hour in chat on all sorts of subjects, said nothing that
+he meant to say, and was feeling that he was only an instrument
+on whom this woman played, when she rose, sat upright, drew the
+scarf from her hair, and wrapped it about her throat, leant her
+elbow on the cushions, did him the honour of a complete cure, and
+rang for lights.  The most graceful movement succeeded to
+complete repose.  She turned to M. de Montriveau, from whom she
+had just extracted a confidence which seemed to interest her
+deeply, and said--
+
+"You wish to make game of me by trying to make me believe that
+you have never loved.  It is a man's great pretension with us. 
+And we always believe it!  Out of pure politeness.  Do we not
+know what to expect from it for ourselves?  Where is the man that
+has found but a single opportunity of losing his heart?  But you
+love to deceive us, and we submit to be deceived, poor foolish
+creatures that we are; for your hypocrisy is, after all, a homage
+paid to the superiority of our sentiments, which are all
+purity."
+
+The last words were spoken with a disdainful pride that made the
+novice in love feel like a worthless bale flung into the deep,
+while the Duchess was an angel soaring back to her particular
+heaven.
+
+"Confound it!" thought Armand de Montriveau, "how am I to tell
+this wild thing that I love her?"
+
+He had told her already a score of times; or rather, the Duchess
+had a score of times read his secret in his eyes; and the passion
+in this unmistakably great man promised her amusement, and an
+interest in her empty life.  So she prepared with no little
+dexterity to raise a certain number of redoubts for him to carry
+by storm before he should gain an entrance into her heart. 
+Montriveau should overleap one difficulty after another; he
+should be a plaything for her caprice, just as an insect teased
+by children is made to jump from one finger to another, and in
+spite of all its pains is kept in the same place by its
+mischievous tormentor.  And yet it gave the Duchess inexpressible
+happiness to see that this strong man had told her the truth. 
+Armand had never loved, as he had said.  He was about to go, in a
+bad humour with himself, and still more out of humour with her;
+but it delighted her to see a sullenness that she could conjure
+away with a word, a glance, or a gesture.
+
+"Will you come tomorrow evening?" she asked.  "I am going to a
+ball, but I shall stay at home for you until ten o'clock."
+
+Montriveau spent most of the next day in smoking an indeterminate
+quantity of cigars in his study window, and so got through the
+hours till he could dress and go to the Hotel de Langeais.  To
+anyone who had known the magnificent worth of the man, it would
+have been grievous to see him grown so small, so distrustful of
+himself; the mind that might have shed light over undiscovered
+worlds shrunk to the proportions of a she-coxcomb's boudoir. 
+Even he himself felt that he had fallen so low already in his
+happiness that to save his life he could not have told his love
+to one of his closest friends.  Is there not always a trace of
+shame in the lover's bashfulness, and perhaps in woman a certain
+exultation over diminished masculine stature?  Indeed, but for a
+host of motives of this kind, how explain why women are nearly
+always the first to betray the secret?--a secret of which,
+perhaps, they soon weary.
+
+"Mme la Duchesse cannot see visitors, monsieur," said the man;
+"she is dressing, she begs you to wait for her here."
+
+Armand walked up and down the drawing-room, studying her taste in
+the least details.  He admired Mme de Langeais herself in the
+objects of her choosing; they revealed her life before he could
+grasp her personality and ideas.  About an hour later the Duchess
+came noiselessly out of her chamber.  Montriveau turned, saw her
+flit like a shadow across the room, and trembled.  She came up to
+him, not with a bourgeoise's enquiry, "How do I look?"  She was
+sure of herself; her steady eyes said plainly, "I am adorned to
+please you."
+
+No one surely, save the old fairy godmother of some princess in
+disguise, could have wound a cloud of gauze about the dainty
+throat, so that the dazzling satin skin beneath should gleam
+through the gleaming folds.  The Duchess was dazzling.  The pale
+blue colour of her gown, repeated in the flowers in her hair,
+appeared by the richness of its hue to lend substance to a
+fragile form grown too wholly ethereal; for as she glided towards
+Armand, the loose ends of her scarf floated about her, putting
+that valiant warrior in mind of the bright damosel flies that
+hover now over water, now over the flowers with which they seem
+to mingle and blend.
+
+"I have kept you waiting," she said, with the tone that a woman
+can always bring into her voice for the man whom she wishes to
+please.
+
+"I would wait patiently through an eternity," said he, "if I
+were sure of finding a divinity so fair; but it is no compliment
+to speak of your beauty to you; nothing save worship could touch
+you.  Suffer me only to kiss your scarf."
+
+"Oh, fie!" she said, with a commanding gesture, "I esteem you
+enough to give you my hand."
+
+She held it out for his kiss.  A woman's hand, still moist from
+the scented bath, has a soft freshness, a velvet smoothness that
+sends a tingling thrill from the lips to the soul.  And if a man
+is attracted to a woman, and his senses are as quick to feel
+pleasure as his heart is full of love, such a kiss, though chaste
+in appearance, may conjure up a terrific storm.
+
+"Will you always give it me like this?" the General asked
+humbly when he had pressed that dangerous hand respectfully to
+his lips.
+
+"Yes, but there we must stop," she said, smiling.  She sat
+down, and seemed very slow over putting on her gloves, trying to
+slip the unstretched kid over all her fingers at once, while she
+watched M. de Montriveau; and he was lost in admiration of the
+Duchess and those repeated graceful movements of hers.
+
+"Ah! you were punctual," she said; "that is right.  I like
+punctuality.  It is the courtesy of kings, His Majesty says; but
+to my thinking, from you men it is the most respectful flattery
+of all.  Now, is it not?  Just tell me."
+
+Again she gave him a side glance to express her insidious
+friendship, for he was dumb with happiness sheer happiness
+through such nothings as these!  Oh, the Duchess understood son
+metier de femme--the art and mystery of being a woman--most
+marvellously well; she knew, to admiration, how to raise a man in
+his own esteem as he humbled himself to her; how to reward every
+step of the descent to sentimental folly with hollow flatteries.
+
+"You will never forget to come at nine o'clock."
+
+"No; but are you going to a ball every night?"
+
+"Do I know?" she answered, with a little childlike shrug of the
+shoulders; the gesture was meant to say that she was nothing if
+not capricious, and that a lover must take her as she
+was.--"Besides," she added, "what is that to you?  You shall
+be my escort."
+
+"That would be difficult tonight," he objected; "I am not
+properly dressed."
+
+"It seems to me," she returned loftily, "that if anyone has a
+right to complain of your costume, it is I.  Know, therefore,
+monsieur le voyageur, that if I accept a man's arm, he is
+forthwith above the laws of fashion, nobody would venture to
+criticise him.  You do not know the world, I see; I like you the
+better for it."
+
+And even as she spoke she swept him into the pettiness of that
+world by the attempt to initiate him into the vanities of a woman
+of fashion.
+
+"If she chooses to do a foolish thing for me, I should be a
+simpleton to prevent her," said Armand to himself.  "She has a
+liking for me beyond a doubt; and as for the world, she cannot
+despise it more than I do.  So, now for the ball if she likes."
+
+The Duchess probably thought that if the General came with her
+and appeared in a ballroom in boots and a black tie, nobody would
+hesitate to believe that he was violently in love with her.  And
+the General was well pleased that the queen of fashion should
+think of compromising herself for him; hope gave him wit.  He had
+gained confidence, he brought out his thoughts and views; he felt
+nothing of the restraint that weighed on his spirits yesterday. 
+His talk was interesting and animated, and full of those first
+confidences so sweet to make and to receive.
+
+Was Mme de Langeais really carried away by his talk, or had she
+devised this charming piece of coquetry?  At any rate, she looked
+up mischievously as the clock struck twelve.
+
+"Ah! you have made me too late for the ball!" she exclaimed,
+surprised and vexed that she had forgotten how time was going.
+
+The next moment she approved the exchange of pleasures with a
+smile that made Armand's heart give a sudden leap.
+
+"I certainly promised Mme de Beauseant," she added.  "They are
+all expecting me."
+
+"Very well--go."
+
+"No--go on.  I will stay.  Your Eastern adventures fascinate me.
+
+Tell me the whole story of your life.  I love to share in a brave
+man's hardships, and I feel them all, indeed I do!"
+
+She was playing with her scarf, twisting it and pulling it to
+pieces, with jerky, impatient movements that seemed to tell of
+inward dissatisfaction and deep reflection.
+
+"WE are fit for nothing," she went on.  "Ah! we are
+contemptible, selfish, frivolous creatures.  We can bore
+ourselves with amusements, and that is all we can do.  Not one of
+us that understands that she has a part to play in life.  In old
+days in France, women were beneficent lights; they lived to
+comfort those that mourned, to encourage high virtues, to reward
+artists and stir new life with noble thoughts.  If the world has
+grown so petty, ours is the fault.  You make me loathe the ball
+and this world in which I live.  No, I am not giving up much for
+you."
+
+She had plucked her scarf to pieces, as a child plays with a
+flower, pulling away all the petals one by one; and now she
+crushed it into a ball, and flung it away.  She could show her
+swan's neck.
+
+She rang the bell.  "I shall not go out tonight," she told the
+footman.  Her long, blue eyes turned timidly to Armand; and by
+the look of misgiving in them, he knew that he was meant to take
+the order for a confession, for a first and great favour.  There
+was a pause, filled with many thoughts, before she spoke with
+that tenderness which is often in women's voices, and not so
+often in their hearts. "You have had a hard life," she said.
+
+"No," returned Armand.  "Until today I did not know what
+happiness was."
+
+"Then you know it now?" she asked, looking at him with a
+demure, keen glance.
+
+"What is happiness for me henceforth but this--to see you, to
+hear you? . . .  Until now I have only known privation; now I
+know that I can be unhappy----"
+
+"That will do, that will do," she said.  "You must go; it is
+past midnight.  Let us regard appearances.  People must not talk
+about us.  I do not know quite what I shall say; but the headache
+is a good-natured friend, and tells no tales."
+
+"Is there to be a ball tomorrow night?"
+
+"You would grow accustomed to the life, I think.  Very well. 
+Yes, we will go again tomorrow night."
+
+There was not a happier man in the world than Armand when he went
+out from her.  Every evening he came to Mme de Langeais's at the
+hour kept for him by a tacit understanding.
+
+It would be tedious, and, for the many young men who carry a
+redundance of such sweet memories in their hearts, it were
+superfluous to follow the story step by step--the progress of a
+romance growing in those hours spent together, a romance
+controlled entirely by a woman's will.  If sentiment went too
+fast, she would raise a quarrel over a word, or when words
+flagged behind her thoughts, she appealed to the feelings. 
+Perhaps the only way of following such Penelope's progress is by
+marking its outward and visible signs.
+
+As, for instance, within a few days of their first meeting, the
+assiduous General had won and kept the right to kiss his lady's
+insatiable hands.  Wherever Mme de Langeais went, M. de
+Montriveau was certain to be seen, till people jokingly called
+him "Her Grace's orderly."  And already he had made enemies;
+others were jealous, and envied him his position.  Mme de
+Langeais had attained her end.  The Marquis de Montriveau was
+among her numerous train of adorers, and a means of humiliating
+those who boasted of their progress in her good graces, for she
+publicly gave him preference over them all.
+
+"Decidedly, M. de Montriveau is the man for whom the Duchess
+shows a preference," pronounced Mme de Serizy.
+
+And who in Paris does not know what it means when a woman "shows
+a preference?"  All went on therefore according to prescribed
+rule.  The anecdotes which people were pleased to circulate
+concerning the General put that warrior in so formidable a light,
+that the more adroit quietly dropped their pretensions to the
+Duchess, and remained in her train merely to turn the position to
+account, and to use her name and personality to make better terms
+for themselves with certain stars of the second magnitude.  And
+those lesser powers were delighted to take a lover away from Mme
+de Langeais.  The Duchess was keen-sighted enough to see these
+desertions and treaties with the enemy; and her pride would not
+suffer her to be the dupe of them.  As M. de Talleyrand, one of
+her great admirers, said, she knew how to take a second edition
+of revenge, laying the two-edged blade of a sarcasm between the
+pairs in these "morganatic" unions.  Her mocking disdain
+contributed not a little to increase her reputation as an
+extremely clever woman and a person to be feared.  Her character
+for virtue was consolidated while she amused herself with other
+people's secrets, and kept her own to herself.  Yet, after two
+months of assiduities, she saw with a vague dread in the depths
+of her soul that M. de Montriveau understood nothing of the
+subtleties of flirtation after the manner of the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain; he was taking a Parisienne's coquetry in earnest.
+
+"You will not tame HIM, dear Duchess," the old Vidame de
+Pamiers had said.  " 'Tis a first cousin to the eagle; he will
+carry you off to his eyrie if you do not take care."
+
+Then Mme de Langeais felt afraid.  The shrewd old noble's words
+sounded like a prophecy.  The next day she tried to turn love to
+hate.  She was harsh, exacting, irritable, unbearable; Montriveau
+disarmed her with angelic sweetness.  She so little knew the
+great generosity of a large nature, that the kindly jests with
+which her first complaints were met went to her heart.  She
+sought a quarrel, and found proofs of affection.  She persisted.
+
+"When a man idolises you, how can he have vexed you?" asked
+Armand.
+
+"You do not vex me," she answered, suddenly grown gentle and
+submissive.  "But why do you wish to compromise me?  For me you
+ought to be nothing but a FRIEND.  Do you not know it?  I wish I
+could see that you had the instincts, the delicacy of real
+friendship, so that I might lose neither your respect nor the
+pleasure that your presence gives me."
+
+"Nothing but your FRIEND!" he cried out.  The terrible word
+sent an electric shock through his brain.  "On the faith of
+these happy hours that you grant me, I sleep and wake in your
+heart.  And now today, for no reason, you are pleased to destroy
+all the secret hopes by which I live.  You have required promises
+of such constancy in me, you have said so much of your horror of
+women made up of nothing but caprice; and now do you wish me to
+understand that, like other women here in Paris, you have
+passions, and know nothing of love?  If so, why did you ask my
+life of me? why did you accept it?"
+
+"I was wrong, my friend.  Oh, it is wrong of a woman to yield to
+such intoxication when she must not and cannot make any return."
+
+"I understand.  You have merely been coquetting with me,
+and----" 
+
+"Coquetting?" she repeated.  "I detest coquetry.  A coquette
+Armand, makes promises to many, and gives herself to none; and a
+woman who keeps such promises is a libertine.  This much I
+believed I had grasped of our code.  But to be melancholy with
+humorists, gay with the frivolous, and politic with ambitious
+souls; to listen to a babbler with every appearance of
+admiration, to talk of war with a soldier, wax enthusiastic with
+philanthropists over the good of the nation, and to give to each
+one his little dole of flattery--it seems to me that this is as
+much a matter of necessity as dress, diamonds, and gloves, or
+flowers in one's hair.  Such talk is the moral counterpart of the
+toilette.  You take it up and lay it aside with the plumed
+head-dress.  Do you call this coquetry?  Why, I have never
+treated you as I treat everyone else.  With you, my friend, I am
+sincere.  Have I not always shared your views, and when you
+convinced me after a discussion, was I not always perfectly glad?
+
+In short, I love you, but only as a devout and pure woman may
+love.  I have thought it over.  I am a married woman, Armand.  My
+way of life with M. de Langeais gives me liberty to bestow my
+heart; but law and custom leave me no right to dispose of my
+person.  If a woman loses her honour, she is an outcast in any
+rank of life; and I have yet to meet with a single example of a
+man that realises all that our sacrifices demand of him in such a
+case.  Quite otherwise.  Anyone can foresee the rupture between
+Mme de Beauseant and M. d'Ajuda (for he is going to marry Mlle de
+Rochefide, it seems), that affair made it clear to my mind that
+these very sacrifices on the woman's part are almost always the
+cause of the man's desertion.  If you had loved me sincerely, you
+would have kept away for a time.--Now, I will lay aside all
+vanity for you; is not that something?  What will not people say
+of a woman to whom no man attaches himself?  Oh, she is
+heartless, brainless, soulless; and what is more, devoid of
+charm!  Coquettes will not spare me.  They will rob me of the
+very qualities that mortify them.  So long as my reputation is
+safe, what do I care if my rivals deny my merits?  They certainly
+will not inherit them.  Come, my friend; give up something for
+her who sacrifices so much for you.  Do not come quite so often;
+I shall love you none the less."
+
+"Ah!" said Armand, with the profound irony of a wounded heart
+in his words and tone.  "Love, so the scribblers say, only feeds
+on illusions.  Nothing could be truer, I see; I am expected to
+imagine that I am loved.  But, there!--there are some thoughts
+like wounds, from which there is no recovery.  My belief in you
+was one of the last left to me, and now I see that there is
+nothing left to believe in this earth."
+
+She began to smile.
+
+"Yes," Montriveau went on in an unsteady voice, "this Catholic
+faith to which you wish to convert me is a lie that men make for
+themselves; hope is a lie at the expense of the future; pride, a
+lie between us and our fellows; and pity, and prudence, and
+terror are cunning lies.  And now my happiness is to be one more
+lying delusion; I am expected to delude myself, to be willing to
+give gold coin for silver to the end.  If you can so easily
+dispense with my visits; if you can confess me neither as your
+friend nor your lover, you do not care for me!  And I, poor fool
+that I am, tell myself this, and know it, and love you!"
+
+"But, dear me, poor Armand, you are flying into a passion!"
+
+"I flying into a passion?"
+
+"Yes.  You think that the whole question is opened because I ask
+you to be careful."
+
+In her heart of hearts she was delighted with the anger that
+leapt out in her lover's eyes.  Even as she tortured him, she was
+criticising him, watching every slightest change that passed over
+his face.  If the General had been so unluckily inspired as to
+show himself generous without discussion (as happens occasionally
+with some artless souls), he would have been a banished man
+forever, accused and convicted of not knowing how to love.  Most
+women are not displeased to have their code of right and wrong
+broken through.  Do they not flatter themselves that they never
+yield except to force?  But Armand was not learned enough in this
+kind of lore to see the snare ingeniously spread for him by the
+Duchess.  So much of the child was there in the strong man in
+love.
+
+"If all you want is to preserve appearances," he began in his
+simplicity, "I am willing to----"
+
+"Simply to preserve appearances!" the lady broke in; "why,
+what idea can you have of me?  Have I given you the slightest
+reason to suppose that I can be yours?"
+
+"Why, what else are we talking about?" demanded Montriveau.
+
+"Monsieur, you frighten me ! . . .  No, pardon me.  Thank you,"
+she added, coldly; "thank you, Armand.  You have given me timely
+warning of imprudence; committed quite unconsciously, believe it,
+my friend.  You know how to endure, you say.  I also know how to
+endure.  We will not see each other for a time; and then, when
+both of us have contrived to recover calmness to some extent, we
+will think about arrangements for a happiness sanctioned by the
+world.  I am young, Armand; a man with no delicacy might tempt a
+woman of four-and-twenty to do many foolish, wild things for his
+sake.  But YOU!  You will be my friend, promise me that you
+will?"
+
+"The woman of four-and-twenty," returned he, "knows what she
+is about."
+
+He sat down on the sofa in the boudoir, and leant his head on his
+hands.
+
+"Do you love me, madame?" he asked at length, raising his head,
+and turning a face full of resolution upon her.  "Say it
+straight out; Yes or No!"
+
+His direct question dismayed the Duchess more than a threat of
+suicide could have done; indeed, the woman of the nineteenth
+century is not to be frightened by that stale stratagem, the
+sword has ceased to be part of the masculine costume.  But in the
+effect of eyelids and lashes, in the contraction of the gaze, in
+the twitching of the lips, is there not some influence that
+communicates the terror which they express with such vivid
+magnetic power?
+
+"Ah, if I were free, if----"
+
+"Oh! is it only your husband that stands in the way?" the
+General exclaimed joyfully, as he strode to and fro in the
+boudoir.  "Dear Antoinette, I wield a more absolute power than
+the Autocrat of all the Russias.  I have a compact with Fate; I
+can advance or retard destiny, so far as men are concerned, at my
+fancy, as you alter the hands of a watch.  If you can direct the
+course of fate in our political machinery, it simply means (does
+it not?) that you understand the ins and outs of it.  You shall
+be free before very long, and then you must remember your
+promise."
+
+"Armand!" she cried.  "What do you mean?  Great heavens!  Can
+you imagine that I am to be the prize of a crime?  Do you want to
+kill me?  Why! you cannot have any religion in you!  For my own
+part, I fear God.  M. de Langeais may have given me reason to
+hate him, but I wish him no manner of harm."
+
+M. de Montriveau beat a tattoo on the marble chimneypiece, and
+only looked composedly at the lady.
+
+"Dear," continued she, "respect him.  He does not love me, he
+is not kind to me, but I have duties to fulfil with regard to
+him.  What would I not do to avert the calamities with which you
+threaten him?--Listen," she continued after a pause, "I will
+not say another word about separation; you shall come here as in
+the past, and I will still give you my forehead to kiss.  If I
+refused once or twice, it was pure coquetry, indeed it was.  But
+let us understand each other," she added as he came closer. 
+"You will permit me to add to the number of my satellites; to
+receive even more visitors in the morning than heretofore; I mean
+to be twice as frivolous; I mean to use you to all appearance
+very badly; to feign a rupture; you must come not quite so often,
+and then, afterwards----"
+
+While she spoke, she had allowed him to put an arm about her
+waist, Montriveau was holding her tightly to him, and she seemed
+to feel the exceeding pleasure that women usually feel in that
+close contact, an earnest of the bliss of a closer union.  And
+then, doubtless she meant to elicit some confidence, for she
+raised herself on tiptoe, and laid her forehead against Armand's
+burning lips.
+
+"And then," Montriveau finished her sentence for her, "you
+shall not speak to me of your husband.  You ought not to think of
+him again."
+
+Mme de Langeais was silent awhile.
+
+"At least," she said, after a significant pause, "at least you
+will do all that I wish without grumbling, you will not be
+naughty; tell me so, my friend?  You wanted to frighten me, did
+you not?  Come, now, confess it ? . . .  You are too good ever to
+think of crimes.  But is it possible that you can have secrets
+that I do not know?  How can you control Fate?" 
+
+"Now, when you confirm the gift of the heart that you have
+already given me, I am far too happy to know exactly how to
+answer you.  I can trust you, Antoinette; I shall have no
+suspicion, no unfounded jealousy of you.  But if accident should
+set you free, we shall be one----"
+
+"Accident, Armand?" (With that little dainty turn of the head
+that seems to say so many things, a gesture that such women as
+the Duchess can use on light occasions, as a great singer can act
+with her voice.)  "Pure accident," she repeated.  "Mind that. 
+If anything should happen to M. de Langeais by your fault, I
+should never be yours."
+
+And so they parted, mutually content.  The Duchess had made a
+pact that left her free to prove to the world by words and deeds
+that M. de Montriveau was no lover of hers.  And as for him, the
+wily Duchess vowed to tire him out.  He should have nothing of
+her beyond the little concessions snatched in the course of
+contests that she could stop at her pleasure.  She had so pretty
+an art of revoking the grant of yesterday, she was so much in
+earnest in her purpose to remain technically virtuous, that she
+felt that there was not the slightest danger for her in
+preliminaries fraught with peril for a woman less sure of her
+self-command.  After all, the Duchess was practically separated
+from her husband; a marriage long since annulled was no great
+sacrifice to make to her love.
+
+Montriveau on his side was quite happy to win the vaguest
+promise, glad once for all to sweep aside, with all scruples of
+conjugal fidelity, her stock of excuses for refusing herself to
+his love.  He had gained ground a little, and congratulated
+himself.  And so for a time he took unfair advantage of the
+rights so hardly won.  More a boy than he had ever been in his
+life, he gave himself up to all the childishness that makes first
+love the flower of life.  He was a child again as he poured out
+all his soul, all the thwarted forces that passion had given him,
+upon her hands, upon the dazzling forehead that looked so pure to
+his eyes; upon her fair hair; on the tufted curls where his lips
+were pressed.  And the Duchess, on whom his love was poured like
+a flood, was vanquished by the magnetic influence of her lover's
+warmth; she hesitated to begin the quarrel that must part them
+forever.  She was more a woman than she thought, this slight
+creature, in her effort to reconcile the demands of religion with
+the ever-new sensations of vanity, the semblance of pleasure
+which turns a Parisienne's head.  Every Sunday she went to Mass;
+she never missed a service; then, when evening came, she was
+steeped in the intoxicating bliss of repressed desire.  Armand
+and Mme de Langeais, like Hindoo fakirs, found the reward of
+their continence in the temptations to which it gave rise. 
+Possibly, the Duchess had ended by resolving love into fraternal
+caresses, harmless enough, as it might have seemed to the rest of
+the world, while they borrowed extremes of degradation from the
+licence of her thoughts.  How else explain the incomprehensible
+mystery of her continual fluctuations?  Every morning she
+proposed to herself to shut her door on the Marquis de
+Montriveau; every evening, at the appointed hour, she fell under
+the charm of his presence.  There was a languid defence; then she
+grew less unkind.  Her words were sweet and soothing.  They were
+lovers--lovers only could have been thus.  For him the Duchess
+would display her most sparkling wit, her most captivating wiles;
+and when at last she had wrought upon his senses and his soul,
+she might submit herself passively to his fierce caresses, but
+she had her nec plus ultra of passion; and when once it was
+reached, she grew angry if he lost the mastery of himself and
+made as though he would pass beyond.  No woman on earth can brave
+the consequences of refusal without some motive; nothing is more
+natural than to yield to love; wherefore Mme de Langeais promptly
+raised a second line of fortification, a stronghold less easy to
+carry than the first.  She evoked the terrors of religion.  Never
+did Father of the Church, however eloquent, plead the cause of
+God better than the Duchess.  Never was the wrath of the Most
+High better justified than by her voice.  She used no preacher's
+commonplaces, no rhetorical amplifications.  No.  She had a
+"pulpit-tremor" of her own.  To Armand's most passionate
+entreaty, she replied with a tearful gaze, and a gesture in which
+a terrible plenitude of emotion found expression.  She stopped
+his mouth with an appeal for mercy.  She would not hear another
+word; if she did, she must succumb; and better death than
+criminal happiness.
+
+"Is it nothing to disobey God?" she asked him, recovering a
+voice grown faint in the crises of inward struggles, through
+which the fair actress appeared to find it hard to preserve her
+self-control.  "I would sacrifice society, I would give up the
+whole world for you, gladly; but it is very selfish of you to ask
+my whole after-life of me for a moment of pleasure.  Come, now!
+are you not happy?" she added, holding out her hand; and
+certainly in her careless toilette the sight of her afforded
+consolations to her lover, who made the most of them.
+
+Sometimes from policy, to keep her hold on a man whose ardent
+passion gave her emotions unknown before, sometimes in weakness,
+she suffered him to snatch a swift kiss; and immediately, in
+feigned terror, she flushed red and exiled Armand from the sofa
+so soon as the sofa became dangerous ground.
+
+"Your joys are sins for me to expiate, Armand; they are paid for
+by penitence and remorse," she cried.
+
+And Montriveau, now at two chairs' distance from that
+aristocratic petticoat, betook himself to blasphemy and railed
+against Providence.  The Duchess grew angry at such times.
+
+"My friend," she said drily, "I do not understand why you
+decline to believe in God, for it is impossible to believe in
+man.  Hush, do not talk like that.  You have too great a nature
+to take up their Liberal nonsense with its pretension to abolish
+God."
+
+Theological and political disputes acted like a cold douche on
+Montriveau; he calmed down; he could not return to love when the
+Duchess stirred up his wrath by suddenly setting him down a
+thousand miles away from the boudoir, discussing theories of
+absolute monarchy, which she defended to admiration.  Few women
+venture to be democrats; the attitude of democratic champion is
+scarcely compatible with tyrannous feminine sway.  But often, on
+the other hand, the General shook out his mane, dropped politics
+with a leonine growling and lashing of the flanks, and sprang
+upon his prey; he was no longer capable of carrying a heart and
+brain at such variance for very far; he came back, terrible with
+love, to his mistress.  And she, if she felt the prick of fancy
+stimulated to a dangerous point, knew that it was time to leave
+her boudoir; she came out of the atmosphere surcharged with
+desires that she drew in with her breath, sat down to the piano,
+and sang the most exquisite songs of modern music, and so baffled
+the physical attraction which at times showed her no mercy,
+though she was strong enough to fight it down.
+
+At such times she was something sublime in Armand's eyes; she was
+not acting, she was genuine; the unhappy lover was convinced that
+she loved him.  Her egoistic resistance deluded him into a belief
+that she was a pure and sainted woman; he resigned himself; he
+talked of Platonic love, did this artillery officer!
+
+When Mme de Langeais had played with religion sufficiently to
+suit her own purposes, she played with it again for Armand's
+benefit.  She wanted to bring him back to a Christian frame of
+mind; she brought out her edition of Le Genie du Christianisme,
+adapted for the use of military men.  Montriveau chafed; his yoke
+was heavy.  Oh! at that, possessed by the spirit of
+contradiction, she dinned religion into his ears, to see whether
+God might not rid her of this suitor, for the man's persistence
+was beginning to frighten her.  And in any case she was glad to
+prolong any quarrel, if it bade fair to keep the dispute on moral
+grounds for an indefinite period; the material struggle which
+followed it was more dangerous.
+
+But if the time of her opposition on the ground of the marriage
+law might be said to be the epoque civile of this sentimental
+warfare, the ensuing phase which might be taken to constitute the
+epoque religieuse had also its crisis and consequent decline of
+severity.
+
+Armand happening to come in very early one evening, found M.
+l'Abbe Gondrand, the Duchess's spiritual director, established in
+an armchair by the fireside, looking as a spiritual director
+might be expected to look while digesting his dinner and the
+charming sins of his penitent.  In the ecclesiastic's bearing
+there was a stateliness befitting a dignitary of the Church; and
+the episcopal violet hue already appeared in his dress.  At sight
+of his fresh, well-preserved complexion, smooth forehead, and
+ascetic's mouth, Montriveau's countenance grew uncommonly dark;
+he said not a word under the malicious scrutiny of the other's
+gaze, and greeted neither the lady nor the priest.  The lover
+apart, Montriveau was not wanting in tact; so a few glances
+exchanged with the bishop-designate told him that here was the
+real forger of the Duchess's armoury of scruples. 
+
+That an ambitious abbe should control the happiness of a man of
+Montriveau's temper, and by underhand ways!  The thought burst in
+a furious tide over his face, clenched his fists, and set him
+chafing and pacing to and fro; but when he came back to his place
+intending to make a scene, a single look from the Duchess was
+enough.  He was quiet.
+
+Any other woman would have been put out by her lover's gloomy
+silence; it was quite otherwise with Mme de Langeais.  She
+continued her conversation with M. de Gondrand on the necessity
+of re-establishing the Church in its ancient splendour.  And she
+talked brilliantly.
+
+The Church, she maintained, ought to be a temporal as well as a
+spiritual power, stating her case better than the Abbe had done,
+and regretting that the Chamber of Peers, unlike the English
+House of Lords, had no bench of bishops.  Nevertheless, the Abbe
+rose, yielded his place to the General, and took his leave,
+knowing that in Lent he could play a return game.  As for the
+Duchess, Montriveau's behaviour had excited her curiosity to such
+a pitch that she scarcely rose to return her director's low bow.
+
+"What is the matter with you, my friend?"
+
+"Why, I cannot stomach that Abbe of yours."
+
+"Why did you not take a book?" she asked, careless whether the
+Abbe, then closing the door, heard her or no.
+
+The General paused, for the gesture which accompanied the
+Duchess's speech further increased the exceeding insolence of her
+words.
+
+"My dear Antoinette, thank you for giving love precedence of the
+Church; but, for pity's sake, allow me to ask one question."
+
+"Oh! you are questioning me!  I am quite willing.  You are my
+friend, are you not?  I certainly can open the bottom of my heart
+to you; you will see only one image there."
+
+"Do you talk about our love to that man?"
+
+"He is my confessor."
+
+"Does he know that I love you?"
+
+"M. de Montriveau, you cannot claim, I think, to penetrate the
+secrets of the confessional?"
+
+"Does that man know all about our quarrels and my love for
+you?"
+
+"That man, monsieur; say God!"
+
+"God again!  _I_ ought to be alone in your heart.  But leave God
+alone where He is, for the love of God and me.  Madame, you SHALL
+NOT go to confession again, or----"
+
+"Or?" she repeated sweetly.
+
+"Or I will never come back here."
+
+"Then go, Armand.  Good-bye, good-bye forever."
+
+She rose and went to her boudoir without so much as a glance at
+Armand, as he stood with his hand on the back of a chair.  How
+long he stood there motionless he himself never knew.  The soul
+within has the mysterious power of expanding as of contracting
+space. 
+
+He opened the door of the boudoir.  It was dark within.  A faint
+voice was raised to say sharply--
+
+"I did not ring.  What made you come in without orders?  Go
+away, Suzette."
+
+"Then you are ill," exclaimed Montriveau.
+
+"Stand up, monsieur, and go out of the room for a minute at any
+rate," she said, ringing the bell.
+
+"Mme la Duchesse rang for lights?" said the footman, coming in
+with the candles.  When the lovers were alone together, Mme de
+Langeais still lay on her couch; she was just as silent and
+motionless as if Montriveau had not been there.
+
+"Dear, I was wrong," he began, a note of pain and a sublime
+kindness in his voice.  "Indeed, I would not have you without
+religion----"
+
+"It is fortunate that you can recognise the necessity of a
+conscience," she said in a hard voice, without looking at him. 
+"I thank you in God's name."
+
+The General was broken down by her harshness; this woman seemed
+as if she could be at will a sister or a stranger to him.  He
+made one despairing stride towards the door.  He would leave her
+forever without another word.  He was wretched; and the Duchess
+was laughing within herself over mental anguish far more cruel
+than the old judicial torture.  But as for going away, it was not
+in his power to do it.  In any sort of crisis, a woman is, as it
+were, bursting with a certain quantity of things to say; so long
+as she has not delivered herself of them, she experiences the
+sensation which we are apt to feel at the sight of something
+incomplete.  Mme de Langeais had not said all that was in her
+mind.  She took up her parable and said--
+
+"We have not the same convictions, General, I am pained to
+think.  It would be dreadful if a woman could not believe in a
+religion which permits us to love beyond the grave.  I set
+Christian sentiments aside; you cannot understand them.  Let me
+simply speak to you of expediency.  Would you forbid a woman at
+court the table of the Lord when it is customary to take the
+sacrament at Easter?  People must certainly do something for
+their party.  The Liberals, whatever they may wish to do, will
+never destroy the religious instinct.  Religion will always be a
+political necessity.  Would you undertake to govern a nation of
+logic-choppers?  Napoleon was afraid to try; he persecuted
+ideologists.  If you want to keep people from reasoning, you must
+give them something to feel.  So let us accept the Roman Catholic
+Church with all its consequences.  And if we would have France go
+to mass, ought we not to begin by going ourselves?  Religion, you
+see, Armand, is a bond uniting all the conservative principles
+which enable the rich to live in tranquillity.  Religion and the
+rights of property are intimately connected.  It is certainly a
+finer thing to lead a nation by ideas of morality than by fear of
+the scaffold, as in the time of the Terror--the one method by
+which your odious Revolution could enforce obedience.  The priest
+and the king--that means you, and me, and the Princess my
+neighbour; and, in a word, the interests of all honest people
+personified.  There, my friend, just be so good as to belong to
+your party, you that might be its Sylla if you had the slightest
+ambition that way.  I know nothing about politics myself; I argue
+from my own feelings; but still I know enough to guess that
+society would be overturned if people were always calling its
+foundations in question----"
+
+"If that is how your Court and your Government think, I am sorry
+for you," broke in Montriveau.  "The Restoration, madam, ought
+to say, like Catherine de Medici, when she heard that the battle
+of Dreux was lost, `Very well; now we will go to the
+meeting-house.'  Now 1815 was your battle of Dreux.  Like the
+royal power of those days, you won in fact, while you lost in
+right.  Political Protestantism has gained an ascendancy over
+people's minds.  If you have no mind to issue your Edict of
+Nantes; or if, when it is issued, you publish a Revocation; if
+you should one day be accused and convicted of repudiating the
+Charter, which is simply a pledge given to maintain the interests
+established under the Republic, then the Revolution will rise
+again, terrible in her strength, and strike but a single blow. 
+It will not be the Revolution that will go into exile; she is the
+very soil of France.  Men die, but people's interests do not die.
+. . .  Eh, great Heavens! what are France and the crown and
+rightful sovereigns, and the whole world besides, to us?  Idle
+words compared with my happiness.  Let them reign or be hurled
+from the throne, little do I care.  Where am I now?"
+
+"In the Duchesse de Langeais's boudoir, my friend."
+
+"No, no.  No more of the Duchess, no more of Langeais; I am with
+my dear Antoinette."
+
+"Will you do me the pleasure to stay where you are," she said,
+laughing and pushing him back, gently however.
+
+"So you have never loved me," he retorted, and anger flashed in
+lightning from his eyes.
+
+"No, dear"; but the "No" was equivalent to "Yes."
+
+"I am a great ass," he said, kissing her hands.  The terrible
+queen was a woman once more.--"Antoinette," he went on, laying
+his head on her feet, "you are too chastely tender to speak of
+our happiness to anyone in this world."
+
+"Oh!" she cried, rising to her feet with a swift, graceful
+spring, "you are a great simpleton."  And without another word
+she fled into the drawing-room.
+
+"What is it now?" wondered the General, little knowing that the
+touch of his burning forehead had sent a swift electric thrill
+through her from foot to head.
+
+In hot wrath he followed her to the drawing-room, only to hear
+divinely sweet chords.  The Duchess was at the piano.  If the man
+of science or the poet can at once enjoy and comprehend, bringing
+his intelligence to bear upon his enjoyment without loss of
+delight, he is conscious that the alphabet and phraseology of
+music are but cunning instruments for the composer, like the wood
+and copper wire under the hands of the executant.  For the poet
+and the man of science there is a music existing apart,
+underlying the double expression of this language of the spirit
+and senses.  Andiamo mio ben can draw tears of joy or pitying
+laughter at the will of the singer; and not unfrequently one here
+and there in the world, some girl unable to live and bear the
+heavy burden of an unguessed pain, some man whose soul vibrates
+with the throb of passion, may take up a musical theme, and lo!
+heaven is opened for them, or they find a language for themselves
+in some sublime melody, some song lost to the world.
+
+The General was listening now to such a song; a mysterious music
+unknown to all other ears, as the solitary plaint of some
+mateless bird dying alone in a virgin forest.
+
+"Great Heavens! what are you playing there?" he asked in an
+unsteady voice.
+
+"The prelude of a ballad, called, I believe, Fleuve du Tage."
+
+"I did not know that there was such music in a piano," he
+returned.
+
+"Ah!" she said, and for the first time she looked at him as a
+woman looks at the man she loves, "nor do you know, my friend,
+that I love you, and that you cause me horrible suffering; and
+that I feel that I must utter my cry of pain without putting it
+too plainly into words.  If I did not, I should yield----But you
+see nothing."
+
+"And you will not make me happy!"
+
+"Armand, I should die of sorrow the next day."
+
+The General turned abruptly from her and went.  But out in the
+street he brushed away the tears that he would not let fall.
+
+The religious phase lasted for three months.  At the end of that
+time the Duchess grew weary of vain repetitions; the Deity, bound
+hand and foot, was delivered up to her lover.  Possibly she may
+have feared that by sheer dint of talking of eternity she might
+perpetuate his love in this world and the next.  For her own
+sake, it must be believed that no man had touched her heart, or
+her conduct would be inexcusable.  She was young; the time when
+men and women feel that they cannot afford to lose time or to
+quibble over their joys was still far off.  She, no doubt, was on
+the verge not of first love, but of her first experience of the
+bliss of love.  And from inexperience, for want of the painful
+lessons which would have taught her to value the treasure poured
+out at her feet, she was playing with it.  Knowing nothing of the
+glory and rapture of the light, she was fain to stay in the
+shadow.
+
+Armand was just beginning to understand this strange situation;
+he put his hope in the first word spoken by nature.  Every
+evening, as he came away from Mme de Langeais's, he told himself
+that no woman would accept the tenderest, most delicate proofs of
+a man's love during seven months, nor yield passively to the
+slighter demands of passion, only to cheat love at the last.  He
+was waiting patiently for the sun to gain power, not doubting but
+that he should receive the earliest fruits.  The married woman's
+hesitations and the religious scruples he could quite well
+understand.  He even rejoiced over those battles.  He mistook the
+Duchess's heartless coquetry for modesty; and he would not have
+had her otherwise.  So he had loved to see her devising
+obstacles; was he not gradually triumphing over them?  Did not
+every victory won swell the meagre sum of lovers' intimacies long
+denied, and at last conceded with every sign of love?  Still, he
+had had such leisure to taste the full sweetness of every small
+successive conquest on which a lover feeds his love, that these
+had come to be matters of use and wont.  So far as obstacles
+went, there were none now save his own awe of her; nothing else
+left between him and his desire save the whims of her who allowed
+him to call her Antoinette.  So he made up his mind to demand
+more, to demand all.  Embarrassed like a young lover who cannot
+dare to believe that his idol can stoop so low, he hesitated for
+a long time.  He passed through the experience of terrible
+reactions within himself.  A set purpose was annihilated by a
+word, and definite resolves died within him on the threshold.  He
+despised himself for his weakness, and still his desire remained
+unuttered.
+
+Nevertheless, one evening, after sitting in gloomy melancholy, he
+brought out a fierce demand for his illegally legitimate rights. 
+The Duchess had not to wait for her bond-slave's request to guess
+his desire.  When was a man's desire a secret?  And have not
+women an intuitive knowledge of the meaning of certain changes of
+countenance?
+
+"What! you wish to be my friend no longer?" she broke in at the
+first words, and a divine red surging like new blood under the
+transparent skin, lent brightness to her eyes.  "As a reward for
+my generosity, you would dishonour me?  Just reflect a little.  I
+myself have thought much over this; and I think always for us
+BOTH.  There is such a thing as a woman's loyalty, and we can no
+more fail in it than you can fail in honour.  _I_ cannot blind
+myself.  If I am yours, how, in any sense, can I be M. de
+Langeais's wife?  Can you require the sacrifice of my position,
+my rank, my whole life in return for a doubtful love that could
+not wait patiently for seven months?  What! already you would rob
+me of my right to dispose of myself?  No, no; you must not talk
+like this again.  No, not another word.  I will not, I cannot
+listen to you."
+
+Mme de Langeais raised both hands to her head to push back the
+tufted curls from her hot forehead; she seemed very much excited.
+
+"You come to a weak woman with your purpose definitely planned
+out.  You say--`For a certain length of time she will talk to me
+of her husband, then of God, and then of the inevitable
+consequences.  But I will use and abuse the ascendancy I shall
+gain over her; I will make myself indispensable; all the bonds of
+habit, all the misconstructions of outsiders, will make for me;
+and at length, when our liaison is taken for granted by all the
+world, I shall be this woman's master.'--Now, be frank; these are
+your thoughts!  Oh! you calculate, and you say that you love. 
+Shame on you!  You are enamoured?  Ah! that I well believe!  You
+wish to possess me, to have me for your mistress, that is all! 
+Very well then, No!  The DUCHESSE DE LANGEAIS will not descend so
+far.  Simple bourgeoises may be the victims of your treachery--I,
+never!  Nothing gives me assurance of your love.  You speak of my
+beauty; I may lose every trace of it in six months, like the dear
+Princess, my neighbour.  You are captivated by my wit, my grace. 
+Great Heavens! you would soon grow used to them and to the
+pleasures of possession.  Have not the little concessions that I
+was weak enough to make come to be a matter of course in the last
+few months?  Some day, when ruin comes, you will give me no
+reason for the change in you beyond a curt, `I have ceased to
+care for you.'--Then, rank and fortune and honour and all that
+was the Duchesse de Langeais will be swallowed up in one
+disappointed hope.  I shall have children to bear witness to my
+shame, and----"  With an involuntary gesture she interrupted
+herself, and continued:  "But I am too good-natured to explain
+all this to you when you know it better than I.  Come! let us
+stay as we are.  I am only too fortunate in that I can still
+break these bonds which you think so strong.  Is there anything
+so very heroic in coming to the Hotel de Langeais to spend an
+evening with a woman whose prattle amuses you?--a woman whom you
+take for a plaything?  Why, half a dozen young coxcombs come here
+just as regularly every afternoon between three and five.  They,
+too, are very generous, I am to suppose?  I make fun of them;
+they stand my petulance and insolence pretty quietly, and make me
+laugh; but as for you, I give all the treasures of my soul to
+you, and you wish to ruin me, you try my patience in endless
+ways.  Hush, that will do, that will do," she continued, seeing
+that he was about to speak, "you have no heart, no soul, no
+delicacy.  I know what you want to tell me.  Very well,
+then--yes.  I would rather you should take me for a cold,
+insensible woman, with no devotion in her composition, no heart
+even, than be taken by everybody else for a vulgar person, and be
+condemned to your so-called pleasures, of which you would most
+certainly tire, and to everlasting punishment for it afterwards. 
+Your selfish love is not worth so many sacrifices. . . ."
+
+The words give but a very inadequate idea of the discourse which
+the Duchess trilled out with the quick volubility of a
+bird-organ.  Nor, truly, was there anything to prevent her from
+talking on for some time to come, for poor Armand's only reply to
+the torrent of flute notes was a silence filled with cruelly
+painful thoughts.  He was just beginning to see that this woman
+was playing with him; he divined instinctively that a devoted
+love, a responsive love, does not reason and count the
+consequences in this way.  Then, as he heard her reproach him
+with detestable motives, he felt something like shame as he
+remembered that unconsciously he had made those very
+calculations.  With angelic honesty of purpose, he looked within,
+and self-examination found nothing but selfishness in all his
+thoughts and motives, in the answers which he framed and could
+not utter.  He was self-convicted.  In his despair he longed to
+fling himself from the window.  The egoism of it was intolerable.
+
+What indeed can a man say when a woman will not believe in love? 
+Let me prove how much I love you.--The _I_ is always there.
+
+The heroes of the boudoir, in such circumstances, can follow the
+example of the primitive logician who preceded the Pyrrhonists
+and denied movement.  Montriveau was not equal to this feat. 
+With all his audacity, he lacked this precise kind which never
+deserts an adept in the formulas of feminine algebra.  If so many
+women, and even the best of women, fall a prey to a kind of
+expert to whom the vulgar give a grosser name, it is perhaps
+because the said experts are great PROVERS, and love, in spite of
+its delicious poetry of sentiment, requires a little more
+geometry than people are wont to think.
+
+Now the Duchess and Montriveau were alike in this--they were both
+equally unversed in love lore.  The lady's knowledge of theory
+was but scanty; in practice she knew nothing whatever; she felt
+nothing, and reflected over everything.  Montriveau had had but
+little experience, was absolutely ignorant of theory, and felt
+too much to reflect at all.  Both therefore were enduring the
+consequences of the singular situation.  At that supreme moment
+the myriad thoughts in his mind might have been reduced to the
+formula--"Submit to be mine ----' words which seem horribly
+selfish to a woman for whom they awaken no memories, recall no
+ideas.  Something nevertheless he must say.  And what was more,
+though her barbed shafts had set his blood tingling, though the
+short phrases that she discharged at him one by one were very
+keen and sharp and cold, he must control himself lest he should
+lose all by an outbreak of anger.
+
+"Mme la Duchesse, I am in despair that God should have invented
+no way for a woman to confirm the gift of her heart save by
+adding the gift of her person.  The high value which you yourself
+put upon the gift teaches me that I cannot attach less importance
+to it.  If you have given me your inmost self and your whole
+heart, as you tell me, what can the rest matter?  And besides, if
+my happiness means so painful a sacrifice, let us say no more
+about it.  But you must pardon a man of spirit if he feels
+humiliated at being taken for a spaniel."
+
+The tone in which the last remark was uttered might perhaps have
+frightened another woman; but when the wearer of a petticoat has
+allowed herself to be addressed as a Divinity, and thereby set
+herself above all other mortals, no power on earth can be so
+haughty.
+
+"M. le Marquis, I am in despair that God should not have
+invented some nobler way for a man to confirm the gift of his
+heart than by the manifestation of prodigiously vulgar desires. 
+We become bond-slaves when we give ourselves body and soul, but a
+man is bound to nothing by accepting the gift.  Who will assure
+me that love will last?  The very love that I might show for you
+at every moment, the better to keep your love, might serve you as
+a reason for deserting me.  I have no wish to be a second edition
+of Mme de Beauseant.  Who can ever know what it is that keeps you
+beside us?  Our persistent coldness of heart is the cause of an
+unfailing passion in some of you; other men ask for an untiring
+devotion, to be idolised at every moment; some for gentleness,
+others for tyranny.  No woman in this world as yet has really
+read the riddle of man's heart."
+
+There was a pause.  When she spoke again it was in a different
+tone.
+
+"After all, my friend, you cannot prevent a woman from trembling
+at the question, `Will this love last always?'  Hard though my
+words may be, the dread of losing you puts them into my mouth. 
+Oh, me! it is not I who speaks, dear, it is reason; and how
+should anyone so mad as I be reasonable?  In truth, I am nothing
+of the sort."
+
+The poignant irony of her answer had changed before the end into
+the most musical accents in which a woman could find utterance
+for ingenuous love.  To listen to her words was to pass in a
+moment from martyrdom to heaven.  Montriveau grew pale; and for
+the first time in his life, he fell on his knees before a woman. 
+He kissed the Duchess's skirt hem, her knees, her feet; but for
+the credit of the Faubourg Saint-Germain it is necessary to
+respect the mysteries of its boudoirs, where many are fain to
+take the utmost that Love can give without giving proof of love
+in return.
+
+The Duchess thought herself generous when she suffered herself to
+be adored.  But Montriveau was in a wild frenzy of joy over her
+complete surrender of the position.
+
+"Dear Antoinette," he cried.  "Yes, you are right; I will not
+have you doubt any longer.  I too am trembling at this
+moment--lest the angel of my life should leave me; I wish I could
+invent some tie that might bind us to each other irrevocably."
+
+"Ah!" she said, under her breath, "so I was right, you see."
+
+"Let me say all that I have to say; I will scatter all your
+fears with a word.  Listen! if I deserted you, I should deserve
+to die a thousand deaths.  Be wholly mine, and I will give you
+the right to kill me if I am false.  I myself will write a letter
+explaining certain reasons for taking my own life; I will make my
+final arrangements, in short.  You shall have the letter in your
+keeping; in the eye of the law it will be a sufficient
+explanation of my death.  You can avenge yourself, and fear
+nothing from God or men."
+
+"What good would the letter be to me?  What would life be if I
+had lost your love?  If I wished to kill you, should I not be
+ready to follow?  No; thank you for the thought, but I do not
+want the letter.  Should I not begin to dread that you were
+faithful to me through fear?  And if a man knows that he must
+risk his life for a stolen pleasure, might it not seem more
+tempting?  Armand, the thing I ask of you is the one hard thing
+to do."
+
+"Then what is it that you wish?"
+
+"Your obedience and my liberty."
+
+"Ah, God!" cried he, "I am a child."
+
+"A wayward, much spoilt child," she said, stroking the thick
+hair, for his head still lay on her knee.  "Ah! and loved far
+more than he believes, and yet he is very disobedient.  Why not
+stay as we are?  Why not sacrifice to me the desires that hurt
+me?  Why not take what I can give, when it is all that I can
+honestly grant?  Are you not happy?"
+
+"Oh yes, I am happy when I have not a doubt left.  Antoinette,
+doubt in love is a kind of death, is it not?"
+
+In a moment he showed himself as he was, as all men are under the
+influence of that hot fever; he grew eloquent, insinuating.  And
+the Duchess tasted the pleasures which she reconciled with her
+conscience by some private, Jesuitical ukase of her own; Armand's
+love gave her a thrill of cerebral excitement which custom made
+as necessary to her as society, or the Opera.  To feel that she
+was adored by this man, who rose above other men, whose character
+frightened her; to treat him like a child; to play with him as
+Poppaea played with Nero--many women, like the wives of King
+Henry VIII, have paid for such a perilous delight with all the
+blood in their veins.  Grim presentiment!  Even as she
+surrendered the delicate, pale, gold curls to his touch, and felt
+the close pressure of his hand, the little hand of a man whose
+greatness she could not mistake; even as she herself played with
+his dark, thick locks, in that boudoir where she reigned a queen,
+the Duchess would say to herself--
+
+"This man is capable of killing me if he once finds out that I
+am playing with him."
+
+Armand de Montriveau stayed with her till two o'clock in the
+morning.  From that moment this woman, whom he loved, was neither
+a duchess nor a Navarreins; Antoinette, in her disguises, had
+gone so far as to appear to be a woman.  On that most blissful
+evening, the sweetest prelude ever played by a Parisienne to what
+the world calls "a slip"; in spite of all her affectations of a
+coyness which she did not feel, the General saw all maidenly
+beauty in her.  He had some excuse for believing that so many
+storms of caprice had been but clouds covering a heavenly soul;
+that these must be lifted one by one like the veils that hid her
+divine loveliness.  The Duchess became, for him, the most simple
+and girlish mistress; she was the one woman in the world for him;
+and he went away quite happy in that at last he had brought her
+to give him such pledges of love, that it seemed to him
+impossible but that he should be but her husband henceforth in
+secret, her choice sanctioned by Heaven.
+
+Armand went slowly home, turning this thought in his mind with
+the impartiality of a man who is conscious of all the
+responsibilities that love lays on him while he tastes the
+sweetness of its joys.  He went along the Quais to see the widest
+possible space of sky; his heart had grown in him; he would fain
+have had the bounds of the firmament and of earth enlarged.  It
+seemed to him that his lungs drew an ampler breath.
+
+In the course of his self-examination, as he walked, he vowed to
+love this woman so devoutly, that every day of her life she
+should find absolution for her sins against society in unfailing
+happiness.  Sweet stirrings of life when life is at the full! 
+The man that is strong enough to steep his soul in the colour of
+one emotion, feels infinite joy as glimpses open out for him of
+an ardent lifetime that knows no diminution of passion to the
+end; even so it is permitted to certain mystics, in ecstasy, to
+behold the Light of God.  Love would be naught without the belief
+that it would last forever; love grows great through constancy. 
+It was thus that, wholly absorbed by his happiness, Montriveau
+understood passion.
+
+"We belong to each other forever!"
+
+The thought was like a talisman fulfilling the wishes of his
+life.  He did not ask whether the Duchess might not change,
+whether her love might not last.  No, for he had faith.  Without
+that virtue there is no future for Christianity, and perhaps it
+is even more necessary to society.  A conception of life as
+feeling occurred to him for the first time; hitherto he had lived
+by action, the most strenuous exertion of human energies, the
+physical devotion, as it may be called, of the soldier.
+
+Next day M. de Montriveau went early in the direction of the
+Faubourg Saint-Germain.  He had made an appointment at a house
+not far from the Hotel de Langeais; and the business over, he
+went thither as if to his own home.  The General's companion
+chanced to be a man for whom he felt a kind of repulsion whenever
+he met him in other houses.  This was the Marquis de
+Ronquerolles, whose reputation had grown so great in Paris
+boudoirs.  He was witty, clever, and what was more--courageous;
+he set the fashion to all the young men in Paris.  As a man of
+gallantry, his success and experience were equally matters of
+envy; and neither fortune nor birth was wanting in his case,
+qualifications which add such lustre in Paris to a reputation as
+a leader of fashion.
+
+"Where are you going?" asked M. de Ronquerolles.
+
+"To Mme de Langeais's."
+
+"Ah, true.  I forgot that you had allowed her to lime you.  You
+are wasting your affections on her when they might be much better
+employed elsewhere.  I could have told you of half a score of
+women in the financial world, any one of them a thousand times
+better worth your while than that titled courtesan, who does with
+her brains what less artificial women do with----"
+
+"What is this, my dear fellow?" Armand broke in.  "The Duchess
+is an angel of innocence."
+
+Ronquerolles began to laugh.
+
+"Things being thus, dear boy," said he, "it is my duty to
+enlighten you.  Just a word; there is no harm in it between
+ourselves.  Has the Duchess surrendered?  If so, I have nothing
+more to say.  Come, give me your confidence.  There is no
+occasion to waste your time in grafting your great nature on that
+unthankful stock, when all your hopes and cultivation will come
+to nothing."
+
+Armand ingenuously made a kind of general report of his position,
+enumerating with much minuteness the slender rights so hardly
+won.  Ronquerolles burst into a peal of laughter so heartless,
+that it would have cost any other man his life.  But from their
+manner of speaking and looking at each other during that colloquy
+beneath the wall, in a corner almost as remote from intrusion as
+the desert itself, it was easy to imagine the friendship between
+the two men knew no bounds, and that no power on earth could
+estrange them.
+
+"My dear Armand, why did you not tell me that the Duchess was a
+puzzle to you?  I would have given you a little advice which
+might have brought your flirtation properly through.  You must
+know, to begin with, that the women of our Faubourg, like any
+other women, love to steep themselves in love; but they have a
+mind to possess and not to be possessed.  They have made a sort
+of compromise with human nature.  The code of their parish gives
+them a pretty wide latitude short of the last transgression.  The
+sweets enjoyed by this fair Duchess of yours are so many venial
+sins to be washed away in the waters of penitence.  But if you
+had the impertinence to ask in earnest for the moral sin to which
+naturally you are sure to attach the highest importance, you
+would see the deep disdain with which the door of the boudoir and
+the house would be incontinently shut upon you.  The tender
+Antoinette would dismiss everything from her memory; you would be
+less than a cipher for her.  She would wipe away your kisses, my
+dear friend, as indifferently as she would perform her ablutions.
+
+She would sponge love from her cheeks as she washes off rouge. 
+We know women of that sort--the thorough-bred Parisienne.  Have
+you ever noticed a grisette tripping along the street?  Her face
+is as good as a picture.  A pretty cap, fresh cheeks, trim hair,
+a guileful smile, and the rest of her almost neglected.  Is not
+this true to the life?  Well, that is the Parisienne.  She knows
+that her face is all that will be seen, so she devotes all her
+care, finery, and vanity to her head.  The Duchess is the same;
+the head is everything with her.  She can only feel through her
+intellect, her heart lies in her brain, she is a sort of
+intellectual epicure, she has a head-voice.  We call that kind of
+poor creature a Lais of the intellect.  You have been taken in
+like a boy.  If you doubt it, you can have proof of it tonight,
+this morning, this instant.  Go up to her, try the demand as an
+experiment, insist peremptorily if it is refused.  You might set
+about it like the late Marechal de Richelieu, and get nothing for
+your pains."
+
+Armand was dumb with amazement.
+
+"Has your desire reached the point of infatuation?"
+
+"I want her at any cost!" Montriveau cried out despairingly.
+
+"Very well.  Now, look here.  Be as inexorable as she is
+herself.  Try to humiliate her, to sting her vanity.  Do NOT try
+to move her heart, nor her soul, but the woman's nerves and
+temperament, for she is both nervous and lymphatic.  If you can
+once awaken desire in her, you are safe.  But you must drop these
+romantic boyish notions of yours.  If when once you have her in
+your eagle's talons you yield a point or draw back, if you so
+much as stir an eyelid, if she thinks that she can regain her
+ascendancy over you, she will slip out of your clutches like a
+fish, and you will never catch her again.  Be as inflexible as
+law.  Show no more charity than the headsman.  Hit hard, and then
+hit again.  Strike and keep on striking as if you were giving her
+the knout.  Duchesses are made of hard stuff, my dear Armand;
+there is a sort of feminine nature that is only softened by
+repeated blows; and as suffering develops a heart in women of
+that sort, so it is a work of charity not to spare the rod.  Do
+you persevere.  Ah! when pain has thoroughly relaxed those nerves
+and softened the fibres that you take to be so pliant and
+yielding; when a shrivelled heart has learned to expand and
+contract and to beat under this discipline; when the brain has
+capitulated--then, perhaps, passion may enter among the steel
+springs of this machinery that turns out tears and affectations
+and languors and melting phrases; then you shall see a most
+magnificent conflagration (always supposing that the chimney
+takes fire).  The steel feminine system will glow red-hot like
+iron in the forge; that kind of heat lasts longer than any other,
+and the glow of it may possibly turn to love.
+
+"Still," he continued, "I have my doubts.  And, after all, is
+it worth while to take so much trouble with the Duchess?  Between
+ourselves a man of my stamp ought first to take her in hand and
+break her in; I would make a charming woman of her; she is a
+thoroughbred; whereas, you two left to yourselves will never get
+beyond the A B C.  But you are in love with her, and just now you
+might not perhaps share my views on this subject----.  A pleasant
+time to you, my children," added Ronquerolles, after a pause. 
+Then with a laugh:  "I have decided myself for facile beauties;
+they are tender, at any rate, the natural woman appears in their
+love without any of your social seasonings.  A woman that haggles
+over herself, my poor boy, and only means to inspire love!  Well,
+have her like an extra horse--for show.  The match between the
+sofa and confessional, black and white, queen and knight,
+conscientious scruples and pleasure, is an uncommonly amusing
+game of chess.  And if a man knows the game, let him be never so
+little of a rake, he wins in three moves.  Now, if I undertook a
+woman of that sort, I should start with the deliberate purpose
+of----"  His voice sank to a whisper over the last words in
+Armand's ear, and he went before there was time to reply.
+
+As for Montriveau, he sprang at a bound across the courtyard of
+the Hotel de Langeais, went unannounced up the stairs straight to
+the Duchess's bedroom.
+
+"This is an unheard-of thing," she said, hastily wrapping her
+dressing-gown about her.  "Armand! this is abominable of you! 
+Come, leave the room, I beg.  Just go out of the room, and go at
+once.  Wait for me in the drawing-room.--Come now!"
+
+"Dear angel, has a plighted lover no privilege whatsoever?"
+
+"But, monsieur, it is in the worst possible taste of a plighted
+lover or a wedded husband to break in like this upon his wife."
+
+He came up to the Duchess, took her in his arms, and held her
+tightly to him.
+
+"Forgive, dear Antoinette; but a host of horrid doubts are
+fermenting in my heart."
+
+"DOUBTS?  Fie!--Oh, fie on you!"
+
+"Doubts all but justified.  If you loved me, would you make this
+quarrel?  Would you not be glad to see me?  Would you not have
+felt a something stir in your heart?  For I, that am not a woman,
+feel a thrill in my inmost self at the mere sound of your voice. 
+Often in a ballroom a longing has come upon me to spring to your
+side and put my arms about your neck."
+
+"Oh! if you have doubts of me so long as I am not ready to
+spring to your arms before all the world, I shall be doubted all
+my life long, I suppose.  Why, Othello was a mere child compared
+with you!"
+
+"Ah!" he cried despairingly, "you have no love for me----"
+
+"Admit, at any rate, that at this moment you are not lovable." 
+Then I have still to find favour in your sight?"
+
+"Oh, I should think so.  Come," added she, "with a little
+imperious air, go out of the room, leave me.  I am not like you;
+I wish always to find favour in your eyes."
+
+Never woman better understood the art of putting charm into
+insolence, and does not the charm double the effect? is it not
+enough to infuriate the coolest of men?  There was a sort of
+untrammelled freedom about Mme de Langeais; a something in her
+eyes, her voice, her attitude, which is never seen in a woman who
+loves when she stands face to face with him at the mere sight of
+whom her heart must needs begin to beat.  The Marquis de
+Ronquerolles's counsels had cured Armand of sheepishness; and
+further, there came to his aid that rapid power of intuition
+which passion will develop at moments in the least wise among
+mortals, while a great man at such a time possesses it to the
+full.  He guessed the terrible truth revealed by the Duchess's
+nonchalance, and his heart swelled with the storm like a lake
+rising in flood.
+
+"If you told me the truth yesterday, be mine, dear Antoinette,"
+he cried; "you shall----"
+
+"In the first place," said she composedly, thrusting him back
+as he came nearer--"in the first place, you are not to
+compromise me.  My woman might overhear you.  Respect me, I beg
+of you.  Your familiarity is all very well in my boudoir in an
+evening; here it is quite different.  Besides, what may your `you
+shall' mean?  `You shall.'  No one as yet has ever used that word
+to me.  It is quite ridiculous, it seems to me, absolutely
+ridiculous.
+
+"Will you surrender nothing to me on this point?"
+
+"Oh! do you call a woman's right to dispose of herself a
+`point?'  A capital point indeed; you will permit me to be
+entirely my own mistress on that `point.' "
+
+"And how if, believing in your promises to me, I should
+absolutely require it?"
+
+"Oh! then you would prove that I made the greatest possible
+mistake when I made you a promise of any kind; and I should beg
+you to leave me in peace." 
+
+The General's face grew white; he was about to spring to her
+side, when Mme de Langeais rang the bell, the maid appeared, and,
+smiling with a mocking grace, the Duchess added, "Be so good as
+to return when I am visible."
+
+Then Montriveau felt the hardness of a woman as cold and keen as
+a steel blade; she was crushing in her scorn.  In one moment she
+had snapped the bonds which held firm only for her lover.  She
+had read Armand's intention in his face, and held that the moment
+had come for teaching the Imperial soldier his lesson.  He was to
+be made to feel that though duchesses may lend themselves to
+love, they do not give themselves, and that the conquest of one
+of them would prove a harder matter than the conquest of Europe.
+
+"Madame," returned Armand, "I have not time to wait.  I am a
+spoilt child, as you told me yourself.  When I seriously resolve
+to have that of which we have been speaking, I shall have it."
+
+"You will have it?" queried she, and there was a trace of
+surprise in her loftiness.
+
+"I shall have it."
+
+"Oh! you would do me a great pleasure by `resolving' to have it.
+
+For curiosity's sake, I should be delighted to know how you would
+set about it----"
+
+"I am delighted to put a new interest into your life,"
+interrupted Montriveau, breaking into a laugh which dismayed the
+Duchess.  "Will you permit me to take you to the ball tonight?"
+
+"A thousand thanks.  M. de Marsay has been beforehand with you. 
+I gave him my promise."
+
+Montriveau bowed gravely and went.
+
+"So Ronquerolles was right," thought he, "and now for a game
+of chess."
+
+Thenceforward he hid his agitation by complete composure.  No man
+is strong enough to bear such sudden alternations from the height
+of happiness to the depths of wretchedness.  So he had caught a
+glimpse of happy life the better to feel the emptiness of his
+previous existence?  There was a terrible storm within him; but
+he had learned to endure, and bore the shock of tumultuous
+thoughts as a granite cliff stands out against the surge of an
+angry sea.
+
+"I could say nothing.  When I am with her my wits desert me. 
+She does not know how vile and contemptible she is.  Nobody has
+ventured to bring her face to face with herself.  She has played
+with many a man, no doubt; I will avenge them all."
+
+For the first time, it may be, in a man's heart, revenge and love
+were blended so equally that Montriveau himself could not know
+whether love or revenge would carry all before it.  That very
+evening he went to the ball at which he was sure of seeing the
+Duchesse de Langeais, and almost despaired of reaching her heart.
+
+He inclined to think that there was something diabolical about
+this woman, who was gracious to him and radiant with charming
+smiles; probably because she had no wish to allow the world to
+think that she had compromised herself with M. de Montriveau. 
+Coolness on both sides is a sign of love; but so long as the
+Duchess was the same as ever, while the Marquis looked sullen and
+morose, was it not plain that she had conceded nothing? 
+Onlookers know the rejected lover by various signs and tokens;
+they never mistake the genuine symptoms for a coolness such as
+some women command their adorers to feign, in the hope of
+concealing their love.  Everyone laughed at Montriveau; and he,
+having omitted to consult his cornac, was abstracted and ill at
+ease.  M. de Ronquerolles would very likely have bidden him
+compromise the Duchess by responding to her show of friendliness
+by passionate demonstrations; but as it was, Armand de Montriveau
+came away from the ball, loathing human nature, and even then
+scarcely ready to believe in such complete depravity.
+
+"If there is no executioner for such crimes," he said, as he
+looked up at the lighted windows of the ballroom where the most
+enchanting women in Paris were dancing, laughing, and chatting,
+"I will take you by the nape of the neck, Mme la Duchesse, and
+make you feel something that bites more deeply than the knife in
+the Place de la Greve.  Steel against steel; we shall see which
+heart will leave the deeper mark."
+
+For a week or so Mme de Langeais hoped to see the Marquis de
+Montriveau again; but he contented himself with sending his card
+every morning to the Hotel de Langeais.  The Duchess could not
+help shuddering each time that the card was brought in, and a dim
+foreboding crossed her mind, but the thought was vague as a
+presentiment of disaster.  When her eyes fell on the name, it
+seemed to her that she felt the touch of the implacable man's
+strong hand in her hair; sometimes the words seemed like a
+prognostication of a vengeance which her lively intellect
+invented in the most shocking forms.  She had studied him too
+well not to dread him.  Would he murder her, she wondered?  Would
+that bull-necked man dash out her vitals by flinging her over his
+head?  Would he trample her body under his feet?  When, where,
+and how would he get her into his power?  Would he make her
+suffer very much, and what kind of pain would he inflict?  She
+repented of her conduct.  There were hours when, if he had come,
+she would have gone to his arms in complete self-surrender.
+
+Every night before she slept she saw Montriveau's face; every
+night it wore a different aspect.  Sometimes she saw his bitter
+smile, sometimes the Jovelike knitting of the brows; or his
+leonine look, or some disdainful movement of the shoulders made
+him terrible for her.  Next day the card seemed stained with
+blood.  The name of Montriveau stirred her now as the presence of
+the fiery, stubborn, exacting lover had never done.  Her
+apprehensions gathered strength in the silence.  She was forced,
+without aid from without, to face the thought of a hideous duel
+of which she could not speak.  Her proud hard nature was more
+responsive to thrills of hate than it had ever been to the
+caresses of love.  Ah! if the General could but have seen her, as
+she sat with her forehead drawn into folds between her brows;
+immersed in bitter thoughts in that boudoir where he had enjoyed
+such happy moments, he might perhaps have conceived high hopes. 
+Of all human passions, is not pride alone incapable of
+engendering anything base?  Mme de Langeais kept her thoughts to
+herself, but is it not permissible to suppose that M. de
+Montriveau was no longer indifferent to her?  And has not a man
+gained ground immensely when a woman thinks about him?  He is
+bound to make progress with her either one way or the other
+afterwards.
+
+Put any feminine creature under the feet of a furious horse or
+other fearsome beast; she will certainly drop on her knees and
+look for death; but if the brute shows a milder mood and does not
+utterly slay her, she will love the horse, lion, bull, or what
+not, and will speak of him quite at her ease.  The Duchess felt
+that she was under the lion's paws; she quaked, but she did not
+hate him.
+
+The man and woman thus singularly placed with regard to each
+other met three times in society during the course of that week. 
+Each time, in reply to coquettish questioning glances, the
+Duchess received a respectful bow, and smiles tinged with such
+savage irony, that all her apprehensions over the card in the
+morning were revived at night.  Our lives are simply such as our
+feelings shape them for us; and the feelings of these two had
+hollowed out a great gulf between them
+
+The Comtesse de Serizy, the Marquis de Ronquerolles's sister,
+gave a great ball at the beginning of the following week, and Mme
+de Langeais was sure to go to it.  Armand was the first person
+whom the Duchess saw when she came into the room, and this time
+Armand was looking out for her, or so she thought at least.  The
+two exchanged a look, and suddenly the woman felt a cold
+perspiration break from every pore.  She had thought all along
+that Montriveau was capable of taking reprisals in some
+unheard-of way proportioned to their condition, and now the
+revenge had been discovered, it was ready, heated, and boiling. 
+Lightnings flashed from the foiled lover's eyes, his face was
+radiant with exultant vengeance.  And the Duchess?  Her eyes were
+haggard in spite of her resolution to be cool and insolent.  She
+went to take her place beside the Comtesse de Serizy, who could
+not help exclaiming, "Dear Antoinette! what is the matter with
+you?  You are enough to frighten one."
+
+"I shall be all right after a quadrille," she answered, giving
+a hand to a young man who came up at that moment.
+
+Mme de Langeais waltzed that evening with a sort of excitement
+and transport which redoubled Montriveau's lowering looks.  He
+stood in front of the line of spectators, who were amusing
+themselves by looking on.  Every time that SHE came past him, his
+eyes darted down upon her eddying face; he might have been a
+tiger with the prey in his grasp.  The waltz came to an end, Mme
+de Langeais went back to her place beside the Countess, and
+Montriveau never took his eyes off her, talking all the while
+with a stranger. 
+
+"One of the things that struck me most on the journey," he was
+saying (and the Duchess listened with all her ears), "was the
+remark which the man makes at Westminster when you are shown the
+axe with which a man in a mask cut off Charles the First's head,
+so they tell you.  The King made it first of all to some
+inquisitive person, and they repeat it still in memory of him."
+
+"What does the man say?" asked Mme de Serizy.
+
+" `Do not touch the axe!' " replied Montriveau, and there was
+menace in the sound of his voice.
+
+"Really, my Lord Marquis," said Mme de Langeais, "you tell
+this old story that everybody knows if they have been to London,
+and look at my neck in such a melodramatic way that you seem to
+me to have an axe in your hand."
+
+The Duchess was in a cold sweat, but nevertheless she laughed as
+she spoke the last words.
+
+"But circumstances give the story a quite new application,"
+returned he.
+
+"How so; pray tell me, for pity's sake?"
+
+"In this way, madame--you have touched the axe," said
+Montriveau, lowering his voice.
+
+"What an enchanting prophecy!" returned she, smiling with
+assumed grace.  "And when is my head to fall?"
+
+"I have no wish to see that pretty head of yours cut off.  I
+only fear some great misfortune for you.  If your head were
+clipped close, would you feel no regrets for the dainty golden
+hair that you turn to such good account?"
+
+"There are those for whom a woman would love to make such a
+sacrifice; even if, as often happens, it is for the sake of a man
+who cannot make allowances for an outbreak of temper."
+
+"Quite so.  Well, and if some wag were to spoil your beauty on a
+sudden by some chemical process, and you, who are but eighteen
+for us, were to be a hundred years old?"
+
+"Why, the smallpox is our Battle of Waterloo, monsieur," she
+interrupted.  "After it is over we find out those who love us
+sincerely."
+
+"Would you not regret the lovely face that?"
+
+"Oh! indeed I should, but less for my own sake than for the sake
+of someone else whose delight it might have been.  And, after
+all, if I were loved, always loved, and truly loved, what would
+my beauty matter to me?--What do you say, Clara?"
+
+"It is a dangerous speculation," replied Mme de Serizy.
+
+"Is it permissible to ask His Majesty the King of Sorcerers when
+I made the mistake of touching the axe, since I have not been to
+London as yet?----"
+
+"NOT SO," he answered in English, with a burst of ironical
+laughter.
+
+"And when will the punishment begin?"
+
+At this Montriveau coolly took out his watch, and ascertained the
+hour with a truly appalling air of conviction.
+
+"A dreadful misfortune will befall you before this day is out."
+
+"I am not a child to be easily frightened, or rather, I am a
+child ignorant of danger," said the Duchess.  "I shall dance
+now without fear on the edge of the precipice."
+
+"I am delighted to know that you have so much strength of
+character," he answered, as he watched her go to take her place
+in a square dance.
+
+But the Duchess, in spite of her apparent contempt for Armand's
+dark prophecies, was really frightened.  Her late lover's
+presence weighed upon her morally and physically with a sense of
+oppression that scarcely ceased when he left the ballroom.  And
+yet when she had drawn freer breath, and enjoyed the relief for a
+moment, she found herself regretting the sensation of dread, so
+greedy of extreme sensations is the feminine nature.  The regret
+was not love, but it was certainly akin to other feelings which
+prepare the way for love.  And then--as if the impression which
+Montriveau had made upon her were suddenly revived--she
+recollected his air of conviction as he took out his watch, and
+in a sudden spasm of dread she went out.
+
+By this time it was about midnight.  One of her servants, waiting
+with her pelisse, went down to order her carriage.  On her way
+home she fell naturally enough to musing over M. de Montriveau's
+prediction.  Arrived in her own courtyard, as she supposed, she
+entered a vestibule almost like that of her own hotel, and
+suddenly saw that the staircase was different.  She was in a
+strange house.  Turning to call her servants, she was attacked by
+several men, who rapidly flung a handkerchief over her mouth,
+bound her hand and foot, and carried her off.  She shrieked
+aloud.
+
+"Madame, our orders are to kill you if you scream," a voice
+said in her ear.
+
+So great was the Duchess's terror, that she could never recollect
+how nor by whom she was transported.  When she came to herself,
+she was lying on a couch in a bachelor's lodging, her hands and
+feet tied with silken cords.  In spite of herself, she shrieked
+aloud as she looked round and met Armand de Montriveau's eyes. 
+He was sitting in his dressing-gown, quietly smoking a cigar in
+his armchair.
+
+"Do not cry out, Mme la Duchesse," he said, coolly taking the
+cigar out of his mouth; "I have a headache.  Besides, I will
+untie you.  But listen attentively to what I have the honour to
+say to you."
+
+Very carefully he untied the knots that bound her feet.
+
+"What would be the use of calling out?  Nobody can hear your
+cries.  You are too well bred to make any unnecessary fuss.  If
+you do not stay quietly, if you insist upon a struggle with me, I
+shall tie your hands and feet again.  All things considered, I
+think that you have self-respect enough to stay on this sofa as
+if you were lying on your own at home; cold as ever, if you will.
+
+You have made me shed many tears on this couch, tears that I hid
+from all other eyes."
+
+While Montriveau was speaking, the Duchess glanced about her; it
+was a woman's glance, a stolen look that saw all things and
+seemed to see nothing.  She was much pleased with the room.  It
+was rather like a monk's cell.  The man's character and thoughts
+seemed to pervade it.  No decoration of any kind broke the grey
+painted surface of the walls.  A green carpet covered the floor. 
+A black sofa, a table littered with papers, two big easy-chairs,
+a chest of drawers with an alarum clock by way of ornament, a
+very low bedstead with a coverlet flung over it--a red cloth with
+a black key border--all these things made part of a whole that
+told of a life reduced to its simplest terms.  A triple
+candle-sconce of Egyptian design on the chimney-piece recalled
+the vast spaces of the desert and Montriveau's long wanderings; a
+huge sphinx-claw stood out beneath the folds of stuff at the
+bed-foot; and just beyond, a green curtain with a black and
+scarlet border was suspended by large rings from a spear handle
+above a door near one corner of the room.  The other door by
+which the band had entered was likewise curtained, but the
+drapery hung from an ordinary curtain-rod.  As the Duchess
+finally noted that the pattern was the same on both, she saw that
+the door at the bed-foot stood open; gleams of ruddy light from
+the room beyond flickered below the fringed border.  Naturally,
+the ominous light roused her curiosity; she fancied she could
+distinguish strange shapes in the shadows; but as it did not
+occur to her at the time that danger could come from that
+quarter, she tried to gratify a more ardent curiosity.
+
+"Monsieur, if it is not indiscreet, may I ask what you mean to
+do with me?"  The insolence and irony of the tone stung through
+the words.  The Duchess quite believed that she read extravagant
+love in Montriveau's speech.  He had carried her off; was not
+that in itself an acknowledgment of her power?
+
+"Nothing whatever, madame," he returned, gracefully puffing the
+last whiff of cigar smoke.  "You will remain here for a short
+time.  First of all, I should like to explain to you what you
+are, and what I am.  I cannot put my thoughts into words whilst
+you are twisting on the sofa in your boudoir; and besides, in
+your own house you take offence at the slightest hint, you ring
+the bell, make an outcry, and turn your lover out at the door as
+if he were the basest of wretches.  Here my mind is unfettered. 
+Here nobody can turn me out.  Here you shall be my victim for a
+few seconds, and you are going to be so exceedingly kind as to
+listen to me.  You need fear nothing.  I did not carry you off to
+insult you, nor yet to take by force what you refused to grant of
+your own will to my unworthiness.  I could not stoop so low.  You
+possibly think of outrage; for myself, I have no such thoughts."
+
+He flung his cigar coolly into the fire.
+
+"The smoke is unpleasant to you, no doubt, madame?" he said,
+and rising at once, he took a chafing-dish from the hearth, burnt
+perfumes, and purified the air.  The Duchess's astonishment was
+only equalled by her humiliation.  She was in this man's power;
+and he would not abuse his power.  The eyes in which love had
+once blazed like flame were now quiet and steady as stars.  She
+trembled.  Her dread of Armand was increased by a nightmare
+sensation of restlessness and utter inability to move; she felt
+as if she were turned to stone.  She lay passive in the grip of
+fear.  She thought she saw the light behind the curtains grow to
+a blaze, as if blown up by a pair of bellows; in another moment
+the gleams of flame grew brighter, and she fancied that three
+masked figures suddenly flashed out; but the terrible vision
+disappeared so swiftly that she took it for an optical delusion.
+
+"Madame," Armand continued with cold contempt, "one minute,
+just one minute is enough for me, and you shall feel it
+afterwards at every moment throughout your lifetime, the one
+eternity over which I have power.  I am not God.  Listen
+carefully to me," he continued, pausing to add solemnity to his
+words.  "Love will always come at your call.  You have boundless
+power over men: but remember that once you called love, and love
+came to you; love as pure and true-hearted as may be on earth,
+and as reverent as it was passionate; fond as a devoted woman's,
+as a mother's love; a love so great indeed, that it was past the
+bounds of reason.  You played with it, and you committed a crime.
+
+Every woman has a right to refuse herself to love which she feels
+she cannot share; and if a man loves and cannot win love in
+return, he is not to be pitied, he has no right to complain.  But
+with a semblance of love to attract an unfortunate creature cut
+off from all affection; to teach him to understand happiness to
+the full, only to snatch it from him; to rob him of his future of
+felicity; to slay his happiness not merely today, but as long as
+his life lasts, by poisoning every hour of it and every
+thought--this I call a fearful crime!"
+
+"Monsieur----"
+
+"I cannot allow you to answer me yet.  So listen to me still. 
+In any case I have rights over you; but I only choose to exercise
+one--the right of the judge over the criminal, so that I may
+arouse your conscience.  If you had no conscience left, I should
+not reproach you at all; but you are so young!  You must feel
+some life still in your heart; or so I like to believe.  While I
+think of you as depraved enough to do a wrong which the law does
+not punish, I do not think you so degraded that you cannot
+comprehend the full meaning of my words. I resume."
+
+As he spoke the Duchess heard the smothered sound of a pair of
+bellows.  Those mysterious figures which she had just seen were
+blowing up the fire, no doubt; the glow shone through the
+curtain.  But Montriveau's lurid face was turned upon her; she
+could not choose but wait with a fast-beating heart and eyes
+fixed in a stare.  However curious she felt, the heat in Armand's
+words interested her even more than the crackling of the
+mysterious flames.
+
+"Madame," he went on after a pause, "if some poor wretch
+commits a murder in Paris, it is the executioner's duty, you
+know, to lay hands on him and stretch him on the plank, where
+murderers pay for their crimes with their heads.  Then the
+newspapers inform everyone, rich and poor, so that the former are
+assured that they may sleep in peace, and the latter are warned
+that they must be on the watch if they would live.  Well, you
+that are religious, and even a little of a bigot, may have masses
+said for such a man's soul.  You both belong to the same family,
+but yours is the elder branch; and the elder branch may occupy
+high places in peace and live happily and without cares.  Want or
+anger may drive your brother the convict to take a man's life;
+you have taken more, you have taken the joy out of a man's life,
+you have killed all that was best in his life--his dearest
+beliefs.  The murderer simply lay in wait for his victim, and
+killed him reluctantly, and in fear of the scaffold; but YOU . .
+. !  You heaped up every sin that weakness can commit against
+strength that suspected no evil; you tamed a passive victim, the
+better to gnaw his heart out; you lured him with caresses; you
+left nothing undone that could set him dreaming, imagining,
+longing for the bliss of love.  You asked innumerable sacrifices
+of him, only to refuse to make any in return.  He should see the
+light indeed before you put out his eyes!  It is wonderful how
+you found the heart to do it!  Such villainies demand a display
+of resource quite above the comprehension of those bourgeoises
+whom you laugh at and despise.  They can give and forgive; they
+know how to love and suffer.  The grandeur of their devotion
+dwarfs us.  Rising higher in the social scale, one finds just as
+much mud as at the lower end; but with this difference, at the
+upper end it is hard and gilded over.
+
+"Yes, to find baseness in perfection, you must look for a noble
+bringing up, a great name, a fair woman, a duchess.  You cannot
+fall lower than the lowest unless you are set high above the rest
+of the world.--I express my thoughts badly; the wounds you dealt
+me are too painful as yet, but do not think that I complain.  My
+words are not the expression of any hope for myself; there is no
+trace of bitterness in them.  Know this, madame, for a
+certainty--I forgive you.  My forgiveness is so complete that you
+need not feel in the least sorry that you came hither to find it
+against your will. . . .  But you might take advantage of other
+hearts as child-like as my own, and it is my duty to spare them
+anguish.  So you have inspired the thought of justice.  Expiate
+your sin here on earth; God may perhaps forgive you; I wish that
+He may, but He is inexorable, and will strike."
+
+The broken-spirited, broken-hearted woman looked up, her eyes
+filled with tears.
+
+"Why do you cry?  Be true to your nature.  You could look on
+indifferently at the torture of a heart as you broke it.  That
+will do, madame, do not cry.  I cannot bear it any longer.  Other
+men will tell you that you have given them life; as for myself, I
+tell you, with rapture, that you have given me blank extinction. 
+Perhaps you guess that I am not my own, that I am bound to live
+for my friends, that from this time forth I must endure the cold
+chill of death, as well as the burden of life?  Is it possible
+that there can be so much kindness in you?  Are you like the
+desert tigress that licks the wounds she has inflicted?"
+
+The Duchess burst out sobbing.
+
+"Pray spare your tears, madame.  If I believed in them at all,
+it would merely set me on my guard.  Is this another of your
+artifices? or is it not?  You have used so many with me; how can
+one think that there is any truth in you?  Nothing that you do or
+say has any power now to move me.  That is all I have to say."
+
+Mme de Langeais rose to her feet, with a great dignity and
+humility in her bearing.
+
+"You are right to treat me very hardly," she said, holding out
+a hand to the man who did not take it; "you have not spoken
+hardly enough; and I deserve this punishment."
+
+"_I_ punish you, madame!  A man must love still, to punish, must
+he not?  From me you must expect no feeling, nothing resembling
+it.  If I chose, I might be accuser and judge in my cause, and
+pronounce and carry out the sentence.  But I am about to fulfil a
+duty, not a desire of vengeance of any kind.  The cruellest
+revenge of all, I think, is scorn of revenge when it is in our
+power to take it.  Perhaps I shall be the minister of your
+pleasures; who knows?  Perhaps from this time forth, as you
+gracefully wear the tokens of disgrace by which society marks out
+the criminal, you may perforce learn something of the convict's
+sense of honour.  And then, you will love!"
+
+The Duchess sat listening; her meekness was unfeigned; it was no
+coquettish device.  When she spoke at last, it was after a
+silence.
+
+"Armand," she began, "it seems to me that when I resisted
+love, I was obeying all the instincts of woman's modesty; I
+should not have looked for such reproaches from YOU.  I was weak;
+you have turned all my weaknesses against me, and made so many
+crimes of them.  How could you fail to understand that the
+curiosity of love might have carried me further than I ought to
+go; and that next morning I might be angry with myself, and
+wretched because I had gone too far?  Alas!  I sinned in
+ignorance.  I was as sincere in my wrongdoing, I swear to you, as
+in my remorse.  There was far more love for you in my severity
+than in my concessions.  And besides, of what do you complain?  I
+gave you my heart; that was not enough; you demanded, brutally,
+that I should give my person----"
+
+"Brutally?" repeated Montriveau.  But to himself he said, "If
+I once allow her to dispute over words, I am lost."
+
+"Yes.  You came to me as if I were one of those women.  You
+showed none of the respect, none of the attentions of love.  Had
+I not reason to reflect?  Very well, I reflected.  The
+unseemliness of your conduct is not inexcusable; love lay at the
+source of it; let me think so, and justify you to myself.--Well,
+Armand, this evening, even while you were prophesying evil, I
+felt convinced that there was happiness in store for us both. 
+Yes, I put my faith in the noble, proud nature so often tested
+and proved."  She bent lower.  "And I was yours wholly," she
+murmured in his ear.  "I felt a longing that I cannot express to
+give happiness to a man so violently tried by adversity.  If I
+must have a master, my master should be a great man.  As I felt
+conscious of my height, the less I cared to descend.  I felt I
+could trust you, I saw a whole lifetime of love, while you were
+pointing to death. . . .  Strength and kindness always go
+together.  My friend, you are so strong, you will not be unkind
+to a helpless woman who loves you.  If I was wrong, is there no
+way of obtaining forgiveness?  No way of making reparation? 
+Repentance is the charm of love; I should like to be very
+charming for you.  How could I, alone among women, fail to know a
+woman's doubts and fears, the timidity that it is so natural to
+feel when you bind yourself for life, and know how easily a man
+snaps such ties?  The bourgeoises, with whom you compared me just
+now, give themselves, but they struggle first.  Very well--I
+struggled; but here I am!--Ah!  God, he does not hear me!" she
+broke off, and wringing her hands, she cried out "But I love
+you!  I am yours!" and fell at Armand's feet.
+
+"Yours! yours! my one and only master!"
+
+Armand tried to raise her.
+
+"Madame, it is too late!  Antoinette cannot save the Duchesse de
+Langeais.  I cannot believe in either.  Today you may give
+yourself; tomorrow, you may refuse.  No power in earth or heaven
+can insure me the sweet constancy of love.  All love's pledges
+lay in the past; and now nothing of that past exists."
+
+The light behind the curtain blazed up so brightly, that the
+Duchess could not help turning her head; this time she distinctly
+saw the three masked figures.
+
+"Armand," she said, "I would not wish to think ill of you. 
+Why are those men there?  What are you going to do to me?"
+
+"Those men will be as silent as I myself with regard to the
+thing which is about to be done.  Think of them simply as my
+hands and my heart.  One of them is a surgeon----"
+
+"A surgeon!  Armand, my friend, of all things, suspense is the
+hardest to bear.  Just speak; tell me if you wish for my life; I
+will give it to you, you shall not take it----"
+
+"Then you did not understand me?  Did I not speak just now of
+justice?  To put an end to your misapprehensions," continued he,
+taking up a small steel object from the table, "I will now
+explain what I have decided with regard to you."
+
+He held out a Lorraine cross, fastened to the tip of a steel rod.
+
+"Two of my friends at this very moment are heating another
+cross, made on this pattern, red-hot.  We are going to stamp it
+upon your forehead, here between the eyes, so that there will be
+no possibility of hiding the mark with diamonds, and so avoiding
+people's questions.  In short, you shall bear on your forehead
+the brand of infamy which your brothers the convicts wear on
+their shoulders.  The pain is a mere trifle, but I feared a
+nervous crisis of some kind, of resistance----"
+
+"Resistance?" she cried, clapping her hands for joy.  "Oh no,
+no!  I would have the whole world here to see.  Ah, my Armand,
+brand her quickly, this creature of yours; brand her with your
+mark as a poor little trifle belonging to you.  You asked for
+pledges of my love; here they are all in one.  Ah! for me there
+is nothing but mercy and forgiveness and eternal happiness in
+this revenge of yours.  When you have marked this woman with your
+mark, when you set your crimson brand on her, your slave in soul,
+you can never afterwards abandon her, you will be mine for
+evermore?  When you cut me off from my kind, you make yourself
+responsible for my happiness, or you prove yourself base; and I
+know that you are noble and great!  Why, when a woman loves, the
+brand of love is burnt into her soul by her own will.--Come in,
+gentlemen! come in and brand her, this Duchesse de Langeais.  She
+is M. de Montriveau's forever!  Ah! come quickly, all of you, my
+forehead burns hotter than your fire!"
+
+Armand turned his head sharply away lest he should see the
+Duchess kneeling, quivering with the throbbings of her heart.  He
+said some word, and his three friends vanished.
+
+The women of Paris salons know how one mirror reflects another. 
+The Duchess, with every motive for reading the depths of Armand's
+heart, was all eyes; and Armand, all unsuspicious of the mirror,
+brushed away two tears as they fell.  Her whole future lay in
+those two tears.  When he turned round again to help her to rise,
+she was standing before him, sure of love.  Her pulses must have
+throbbed fast when he spoke with the firmness she had known so
+well how to use of old while she played with him.
+
+"I spare you, madame.  All that has taken place shall be as if
+it had never been, you may believe me.  But now, let us bid each
+other goodbye.  I like to think that you were sincere in your
+coquetries on your sofa, sincere again in this outpouring of your
+heart.  Good-bye.  I feel that there is no faith in you left in
+me.  You would torment me again; you would always be the Duchess,
+and---- But there, good-bye, we shall never understand each
+other.
+
+"Now, what do you wish?" he continued, taking the tone of a
+master of the ceremonies--"to return home, or to go back to Mme
+de Serizy's ball?  I have done all in my power to prevent any
+scandal.  Neither your servants nor anyone else can possibly know
+what has passed between us in the last quarter of an hour.  Your
+servants have no idea that you have left the ballroom; your
+carriage never left Mme de Serizy's courtyard; your brougham may
+likewise be found in the court of your own hotel.  Where do you
+wish to be?"
+
+"What do you counsel, Armand?"
+
+"There is no Armand now, Mme la Duchesse.  We are strangers to
+each other."
+
+"Then take me to the ball," she said, still curious to put
+Armand's power to the test.  "Thrust a soul that suffered in the
+world, and must always suffer there, if there is no happiness for
+her now, down into hell again.  And yet, oh my friend, I love you
+as your bourgeoises love; I love you so that I could come to you
+and fling my arms about your neck before all the world if you
+asked it off me.  The hateful world has not corrupted me.  I am
+young at least, and I have grown younger still.  I am a child,
+yes, your child, your new creature.  Ah! do not drive me forth
+out of my Eden!"
+
+Armand shook his head.
+
+"Ah! let me take something with me, if I go, some little thing
+to wear tonight on my heart," she said, taking possession of
+Armand's glove, which she twisted into her handkerchief.
+
+"No, I am NOT like all those depraved women.  You do not know
+the world, and so you cannot know my worth.  You shall know it
+now!  There are women who sell themselves for money; there are
+others to be gained by gifts, it is a vile world!  Oh, I wish I
+were a simple bourgeoise, a working girl, if you would rather
+have a woman beneath you than a woman whose devotion is
+accompanied by high rank, as men count it.  Oh, my Armand, there
+are noble, high, and chaste and pure natures among us; and then
+they are lovely indeed.  I would have all nobleness that I might
+offer it all up to you.  Misfortune willed that I should be a
+duchess; I would I were a royal princess, that my offering might
+be complete.  I would be a grisette for you, and a queen for
+everyone besides."
+
+He listened, damping his cigars with his lips.
+
+"You will let me know when you wish to go," he said.
+
+"But I should like to stay----"
+
+"That is another matter!"
+
+"Stay, that was badly rolled," she cried, seizing on a cigar
+and devouring all that Armand's lips had touched.
+
+"Do you smoke?"
+
+"Oh, what would I not do to please you?"
+
+"Very well.  Go, madame."
+
+"I will obey you," she answered, with tears in her eyes.
+
+"You must be blindfolded; you must not see a glimpse of the
+way."
+
+"I am ready, Armand," she said, bandaging her eyes.
+
+"Can you see?"
+
+"No."
+
+Noiselessly he knelt before her.
+
+"Ah!  I can hear you!" she cried, with a little fond gesture,
+thinking that the pretence of harshness was over.
+
+He made as if he would kiss her lips; she held up her face.
+
+"You can see, madame."
+
+"I am just a little bit curious."
+
+"So you always deceive me?"
+
+"Ah! take off this handkerchief, sir," she cried out, with the
+passion of a great generosity repelled with scorn, "lead me; I
+will not open my eyes."
+
+Armand felt sure of her after that cry.  He led the way; the
+Duchess nobly true to her word, was blind.  But while Montriveau
+held her hand as a father might, and led her up and down flights
+of stairs, he was studying the throbbing pulses of this woman's
+heart so suddenly invaded by Love.  Mme de Langeais, rejoicing in
+this power of speech, was glad to let him know all; but he was
+inflexible; his hand was passive in reply to the questionings of
+her hand.
+
+At length, after some journey made together, Armand bade her go
+forward; the opening was doubtless narrow, for as she went she
+felt that his hand protected her dress.  His care touched her; it
+was a revelation surely that there was a little love still left;
+yet it was in some sort a farewell, for Montriveau left her
+without a word.  The air was warm; the Duchess, feeling the heat,
+opened her eyes, and found herself standing by the fire in the
+Comtesse de Serizy's boudoir.
+
+She was alone.  Her first thought was for her disordered
+toilette; in a moment she had adjusted her dress and restored her
+picturesque coiffure.
+
+"Well, dear Antoinette, we have been looking for you
+everywhere."  It was the Comtesse de Serizy who spoke as she
+opened the door.
+
+"I came here to breathe," said the Duchess; "it is unbearably
+hot in the rooms."
+
+"People thought that you had gone; but my brother Ronquerolles
+told me that your servants were waiting for you."
+
+"I am tired out, dear, let me stay and rest here for a minute,"
+and the Duchess sat down on the sofa.
+
+"Why, what is the matter with you?  You are shaking from head to
+foot!"
+
+The Marquis de Ronquerolles came in.
+
+"Mme la Duchesse, I was afraid that something might have
+happened.  I have just come across your coachman, the man is as
+tipsy as all the Swiss in Switzerland."
+
+The Duchess made no answer; she was looking round the room, at
+the chimney-piece and the tall mirrors, seeking the trace of an
+opening.  Then with an extraordinary sensation she recollected
+that she was again in the midst of the gaiety of the ballroom
+after that terrific scene which had changed the whole course of
+her life.  She began to shiver violently.
+
+"M. de Montriveau's prophecy has shaken my nerves," she said. 
+"It was a joke, but still I will see whether his axe from London
+will haunt me even in my sleep.  So good-bye, dear.--Good-bye, M.
+le Marquis."
+
+As she went through the rooms she was beset with enquiries and
+regrets.  Her world seemed to have dwindled now that she, its
+queen, had fallen so low, was so diminished.  And what, moreover,
+were these men compared with him whom she loved with all her
+heart; with the man grown great by all that she had lost in
+stature?  The giant had regained the height that he had lost for
+a while, and she exaggerated it perhaps beyond measure.  She
+looked, in spite of herself, at the servant who had attended her
+to the ball.  He was fast asleep.
+
+"Have you been here all the time?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+As she took her seat in her carriage she saw, in fact, that her
+coachman was drunk--so drunk, that at any other time she would
+have been afraid; but after a great crisis in life, fear loses
+its appetite for common food.  She reached home, at any rate,
+without accident; but even there she felt a change in herself, a
+new feeling that she could not shake off.  For her, there was now
+but one man in the world; which is to say that henceforth she
+cared to shine for his sake alone.
+
+While the physiologist can define love promptly by following out
+natural laws, the moralist finds a far more perplexing problem
+before him if he attempts to consider love in all its
+developments due to social conditions.  Still, in spite of the
+heresies of the endless sects that divide the church of Love,
+there is one broad and trenchant line of difference in doctrine,
+a line that all the discussion in the world can never deflect.  A
+rigid application of this line explains the nature of the crisis
+through which the Duchess, like most women, was to pass.  Passion
+she knew, but she did not love as yet.
+
+Love and passion are two different conditions which poets and men
+of the world, philosophers and fools, alike continually confound.
+
+Love implies a give and take, a certainty of bliss that nothing
+can change; it means so close a clinging of the heart, and an
+exchange of happiness so constant, that there is no room left for
+jealousy.  Then possession is a means and not an end;
+unfaithfulness may give pain, but the bond is not less close; the
+soul is neither more nor less ardent or troubled, but happy at
+every moment; in short, the divine breath of desire spreading
+from end to end of the immensity of Time steeps it all for us in
+the selfsame hue; life takes the tint of the unclouded heaven. 
+But Passion is the foreshadowing of Love, and of that Infinite to
+which all suffering souls aspire.  Passion is a hope that may be
+cheated.  Passion means both suffering and transition.  Passion
+dies out when hope is dead.  Men and women may pass through this
+experience many times without dishonour, for it is so natural to
+spring towards happiness; but there is only one love in a
+lifetime.  All discussions of sentiment ever conducted on paper
+or by word of mouth may therefore be resumed by two
+questions--"Is it passion?  Is it love?"  So, since love comes
+into existence only through the intimate experience of the bliss
+which gives it lasting life, the Duchess was beneath the yoke of
+passion as yet; and as she knew the fierce tumult, the
+unconscious calculations, the fevered cravings, and all that is
+meant by that word PASSION--she suffered.  Through all the
+trouble of her soul there rose eddying gusts of tempest, raised
+by vanity or self-love, or pride or a high spirit; for all these
+forms of egoism make common cause together.
+
+She had said to this man, "I love you; I am yours!"  Was it
+possible that the Duchesse de Langeais should have uttered those
+words--in vain?  She must either be loved now or play her part of
+queen no longer.  And then she felt the loneliness of the
+luxurious couch where pleasure had never yet set his glowing
+feet; and over and over again, while she tossed and writhed
+there, she said, "I want to be loved."
+
+But the belief that she still had in herself gave her hope of
+success.  The Duchess might be piqued, the vain Parisienne might
+be humiliated; but the woman saw glimpses of wedded happiness,
+and imagination, avenging the time lost for nature, took a
+delight in kindling the inextinguishable fire in her veins.  She
+all but attained to the sensations of love; for amid her poignant
+doubt whether she was loved in return, she felt glad at heart to
+say to herself, "I love him!"  As for her scruples, religion,
+and the world she could trample them under foot!  Montriveau was
+her religion now.  She spent the next day in a state of moral
+torpor, troubled by a physical unrest, which no words could
+express.  She wrote letters and tore them all up, and invented a
+thousand impossible fancies.
+
+When M. de Montriveau's usual hour arrived, she tried to think
+that he would come, and enjoyed the feeling of expectation.  Her
+whole life was concentrated in the single sense of hearing. 
+Sometimes she shut her eyes, straining her ears to listen through
+space, wishing that she could annihilate everything that lay
+between her and her lover, and so establish that perfect silence
+which sounds may traverse from afar.  In her tense
+self-concentration, the ticking of the clock grew hateful to her;
+she stopped its ill-omened garrulity.  The twelve strokes of
+midnight sounded from the drawing-room.
+
+"Ah, God!" she cried, "to see him here would be happiness. 
+And yet, it is not so very long since he came here, brought by
+desire, and the tones of his voice filled this boudoir.  And now
+there is nothing."
+
+She remembered the times that she had played the coquette with
+him, and how that her coquetry had cost her her lover, and the
+despairing tears flowed for long.
+
+Her woman came at length with, "Mme la Duchesse does not know,
+perhaps, that it is two o'clock in the morning; I thought that
+madame was not feeling well."
+
+"Yes, I am going to bed," said the Duchess, drying her eyes. 
+"But remember, Suzanne, never to come in again without orders; I
+tell you this for the last time."
+
+For a week, Mme de Langeais went to every house where there was a
+hope of meeting M. de Montriveau.  Contrary to her usual habits,
+she came early and went late; gave up dancing, and went to the
+card-tables.  Her experiments were fruitless.  She did not
+succeed in getting a glimpse of Armand.  She did not dare to
+utter his name now.  One evening, however, in a fit of despair,
+she spoke to Mme de Serizy, and asked as carelessly as she could,
+"You must have quarrelled with M. de Montriveau?  He is not to
+be seen at your house now."
+
+The Countess laughed.  "So he does not come here either?" she
+returned.  "He is not to be seen anywhere, for that matter.  He
+is interested in some woman, no doubt."
+
+"I used to think that the Marquis de Ronquerolles was one of his
+friends----" the Duchess began sweetly.
+
+"I have never heard my brother say that he was acquainted with
+him."
+
+Mme de Langeais did not reply.  Mme de Serizy concluded from the
+Duchess's silence that she might apply the scourge with impunity
+to a discreet friendship which she had seen, with bitterness of
+soul, for a long time past.
+
+"So you miss that melancholy personage, do you?  I have heard
+most extraordinary things of him.  Wound his feelings, he never
+comes back, he forgives nothing; and, if you love him, he keeps
+you in chains.  To everything that I said of him, one of those
+that praise him sky-high would always answer, `He knows how to
+love!'  People are always telling me that Montriveau would give
+up all for his friend; that his is a great nature.  Pooh! society
+does not want such tremendous natures.  Men of that stamp are all
+very well at home; let them stay there and leave us to our
+pleasant littlenesses.  What do you say, Antoinette?"
+
+Woman of the world though she was, the Duchess seemed agitated,
+yet she replied in a natural voice that deceived her fair
+friend--
+
+"I am sorry to miss him.  I took a great interest in him, and
+promised to myself to be his sincere friend.  I like great
+natures, dear friend, ridiculous though you may think it.  To
+give oneself to a fool is a clear confession, is it not, that one
+is governed wholly by one's senses?
+
+Mme de Serizy's "preferences" had always been for commonplace
+men; her lover at the moment, the Marquis d'Aiglemont, was a
+fine, tall man.
+
+After this, the Countess soon took her departure, you may be sure
+Mme de Langeais saw hope in Armand's withdrawal from the world;
+she wrote to him at once; it was a humble, gentle letter, surely
+it would bring him if he loved her still.  She sent her footman
+with it next day.  On the servant's return, she asked whether he
+had given the letter to M. de Montriveau himself, and could not
+restrain the movement of joy at the affirmative answer.  Armand
+was in Paris!  He stayed alone in his house; he did not go out
+into society!  So she was loved!  All day long she waited for an
+answer that never came.  Again and again, when impatience grew
+unbearable, Antoinette found reasons for his delay.  Armand felt
+embarrassed; the reply would come by post; but night came, and
+she could not deceive herself any longer.  It was a dreadful day,
+a day of pain grown sweet, of intolerable heart-throbs, a day
+when the heart squanders the very forces of life in riot.
+
+Next day she sent for an answer.
+
+"M. le Marquis sent word that he would call on Mme la
+Duchesse," reported Julien.
+
+She fled lest her happiness should be seen in her face, and flung
+herself on her couch to devour her first sensations.
+
+"He is coming!"
+
+The thought rent her soul.  And, in truth, woe unto those for
+whom suspense is not the most horrible time of tempest, while it
+increases and multiplies the sweetest joys; for they have nothing
+in them of that flame which quickens the images of things, giving
+to them a second existence, so that we cling as closely to the
+pure essence as to its outward and visible manifestation.  What
+is suspense in love but a constant drawing upon an unfailing
+hope?--a submission to the terrible scourging of passion, while
+passion is yet happy, and the disenchantment of reality has not
+set in.  The constant putting forth of strength and longing,
+called suspense, is surely, to the human soul, as fragrance to
+the flower that breathes it forth.  We soon leave the brilliant,
+unsatisfying colours of tulips and coreopsis, but we turn again
+and again to drink in the sweetness of orange-blossoms or
+volkameria-flowers compared separately, each in its own land, to
+a betrothed bride, full of love, made fair by the past and
+future.
+
+The Duchess learned the joys of this new life of hers through the
+rapture with which she received the scourgings of love.  As this
+change wrought in her, she saw other destinies before her, and a
+better meaning in the things of life.  As she hurried to her
+dressing-room, she understood what studied adornment and the most
+minute attention to her toilet mean when these are undertaken for
+love's sake and not for vanity.  Even now this making ready
+helped her to bear the long time of waiting.  A relapse of
+intense agitation set in when she was dressed; she passed through
+nervous paroxysms brought on by the dreadful power which sets the
+whole mind in ferment.  Perhaps that power is only a disease,
+though the pain of it is sweet.  The Duchess was dressed and
+waiting at two o clock in the afternoon.  At half-past eleven
+that night M. de Montriveau had not arrived.  To try to give an
+idea of the anguish endured by a woman who might be said to be
+the spoilt child of civilisation, would be to attempt to say how
+many imaginings the heart can condense into one thought.  As well
+endeavour to measure the forces expended by the soul in a sigh
+whenever the bell rang; to estimate the drain of life when a
+carriage rolled past without stopping, and left her prostrate.
+
+"Can he be playing with me?" she said, as the clocks struck
+midnight.
+
+She grew white; her teeth chattered; she struck her hands
+together and leapt up and crossed the boudoir, recollecting as
+she did so how often he had come thither without a summons.  But
+she resigned herself.  Had she not seen him grow pale, and start
+up under the stinging barbs of irony?  Then Mme de Langeais felt
+the horror of the woman's appointed lot; a man's is the active
+part, a woman must wait passively when she loves.  If a woman
+goes beyond her beloved, she makes a mistake which few men can
+forgive; almost every man would feel that a woman lowers herself
+by this piece of angelic flattery.  But Armand's was a great
+nature; he surely must be one of the very few who can repay such
+exceeding love by love that lasts forever.
+
+"Well, I will make the advance," she told herself, as she
+tossed on her bed and found no sleep there; "I will go to him. 
+I will not weary myself with holding out a hand to him, but I
+will hold it out.  A man of a thousand will see a promise of love
+and constancy in every step that a woman takes towards him.  Yes,
+the angels must come down from heaven to reach men; and I wish to
+be an angel for him."
+
+Next day she wrote.  It was a billet of the kind in which the
+intellects of the ten thousand Sevignes that Paris now can number
+particularly excel.  And yet only a Duchesse de Langeais, brought
+up by Mme la Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, could have written
+that delicious note; no other woman could complain without
+lowering herself; could spread wings in such a flight without
+draggling her pinions in humiliation; rise gracefully in revolt;
+scold without giving offence; and pardon without compromising her
+personal dignity.
+
+Julien went with the note.  Julien, like his kind, was the victim
+of love's marches and countermarches.
+
+"What did M. de Montriveau reply?" she asked, as indifferently
+as she could, when the man came back to report himself.
+
+"M. le Marquis requested me to tell Mme la Duchesse that it was
+all right.
+
+Oh the dreadful reaction of the soul upon herself!  To have her
+heart stretched on the rack before curious witnesses; yet not to
+utter a sound, to be forced to keep silence!  One of the
+countless miseries of the rich!
+
+More than three weeks went by.  Mme de Langeais wrote again and
+again, and no answer came from Montriveau.  At last she gave out
+that she was ill, to gain a dispensation from attendance on the
+Princess and from social duties.  She was only at home to her
+father the Duc de Navarreins, her aunt the Princesse de
+Blamont-Chauvry, the old Vidame de Pamiers (her maternal
+great-uncle), and to her husband's uncle, the Duc de Grandlieu. 
+These persons found no difficulty in believing that the Duchess
+was ill, seeing that she grew thinner and paler and more dejected
+every day.  The vague ardour of love, the smart of wounded pride,
+the continual prick of the only scorn that could touch her, the
+yearnings towards joys that she craved with a vain continual
+longing--all these things told upon her, mind and body; all the
+forces of her nature were stimulated to no purpose.  She was
+paying the arrears of her life of make-believe.
+
+She went out at last to a review.  M. de Montriveau was to be
+there.  For the Duchess, on the balcony of the Tuileries with the
+Royal Family, it was one of those festival days that are long
+remembered.  She looked supremely beautiful in her languor; she
+was greeted with admiration in all eyes.  It was Montriveau's
+presence that made her so fair.
+
+Once or twice they exchanged glances.  The General came almost to
+her feet in all the glory of that soldier's uniform, which
+produces an effect upon the feminine imagination to which the
+most prudish will confess.  When a woman is very much in love,
+and has not seen her lover for two months, such a swift moment
+must be something like the phase of a dream when the eyes embrace
+a world that stretches away forever.  Only women or young men can
+imagine the dull, frenzied hunger in the Duchess's eyes.  As for
+older men, if during the paroxysms of early passion in youth they
+had experience of such phenomena of nervous power; at a later day
+it is so completely forgotten that they deny the very existence
+of the luxuriant ecstasy--the only name that can be given to
+these wonderful intuitions.  Religious ecstasy is the aberration
+of a soul that has shaken off its bonds of flesh; whereas in
+amorous ecstasy all the forces of soul and body are embraced and
+blended in one.  If a woman falls a victim to the tyrannous
+frenzy before which Mme de Langeais was forced to bend, she will
+take one decisive resolution after another so swiftly that it is
+impossible to give account of them.  Thought after thought rises
+and flits across her brain, as clouds are whirled by the wind
+across the grey veil of mist that shuts out the sun.  Thenceforth
+the facts reveal all.  And the facts are these.
+
+The day after the review, Mme de Langeais sent her carriage and
+liveried servants to wait at the Marquis de Montriveau's door
+from eight o'clock in the morning till three in the afternoon. 
+Armand lived in the Rue de Tournon, a few steps away from the
+Chamber of Peers, and that very day the House was sitting; but
+long before the peers returned to their palaces, several people
+had recognised the Duchess's carriage and liveries.  The first of
+these was the Baron de Maulincour.  That young officer had met
+with disdain from Mme de Langeais and a better reception from Mme
+de Serizy; he betook himself at once therefore to his mistress,
+and under seal of secrecy told her of this strange freak.
+
+In a moment the news was spread with telegraphic speed through
+all the coteries in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; it reached the
+Tuileries and the Elysee-Bourbon; it was the sensation of the
+day, the matter of all the talk from noon till night.  Almost
+everywhere the women denied the facts, but in such a manner that
+the report was confirmed; the men one and all believed it, and
+manifested a most indulgent interest in Mme de Langeais.  Some
+among them threw the blame on Armand.
+
+"That savage of a Montriveau is a man of bronze," said they;
+"he insisted on making this scandal, no doubt."
+
+"Very well, then," others replied, "Mme de Langeais has been
+guilty of a most generous piece of imprudence.  To renounce the
+world and rank, and fortune, and consideration for her lover's
+sake, and that in the face of all Paris, is as fine a coup d'etat
+for a woman as that barber's knife-thrust, which so affected
+Canning in a court of assize.  Not one of the women who blame the
+Duchess would make a declaration worthy of ancient times.  It is
+heroic of Mme de Langeais to proclaim herself so frankly.  Now
+there is nothing left to her but to love Montriveau.  There must
+be something great about a woman if she says, `I will have but
+one passion.' "
+
+"But what is to become of society, monsieur, if you honour vice
+in this way without respect for virtue?" asked the Comtesse de
+Granville, the attorney-general's wife.
+
+While the Chateau, the Faubourg, and the Chaussee d'Antin were
+discussing the shipwreck of aristocratic virtue; while excited
+young men rushed about on horseback to make sure that the
+carriage was standing in the Rue de Tournon, and the Duchess in
+consequence was beyond a doubt in M. de Montriveau's rooms, Mme
+de Langeais, with heavy throbbing pulses, was lying hidden away
+in her boudoir.  And Armand?--he had been out all night, and at
+that moment was walking with M. de Marsay in the Gardens of the
+Tuileries.  The elder members, of Mme de Langeais's family were
+engaged in calling upon one another, arranging to read her a
+homily and to hold a consultation as to the best way of putting a
+stop to the scandal.
+
+At three o'clock, therefore, M. le Duc de Navarreins, the Vidame
+de Pamiers, the old Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, and the Duc de
+Grandlieu were assembled in Mme la Duchesse de Langeais's
+drawing-room.  To them, as to all curious enquirers, the servants
+said that their mistress was not at home; the Duchess had made no
+exceptions to her orders.  But these four personages shone
+conspicuous in that lofty sphere, of which the revolutions and
+hereditary pretensions are solemnly recorded year by year in the
+Almanach de Gotha, wherefore without some slight sketch of each
+of them this picture of society were incomplete.
+
+The Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, in the feminine world, was a
+most poetic wreck of the reign of Louis Quinze.  In her beautiful
+prime, so it was said, she had done her part to win for that
+monarch his appellation of le Bien-aime.  Of her past charms of
+feature, little remained save a remarkably prominent slender
+nose, curved like a Turkish scimitar, now the principal ornament
+of a countenance that put you in mind of an old white glove.  Add
+a few powdered curls, high-heeled pantoufles, a cap with
+upstanding loops of lace, black mittens, and a decided taste for
+ombre.  But to do full justice to the lady, it must be said that
+she appeared in low-necked gowns of an evening (so high an
+opinion of her ruins had she), wore long gloves, and raddled her
+cheeks with Martin's classic rouge.  An appalling amiability in
+her wrinkles, a prodigious brightness in the old lady's eyes, a
+profound dignity in her whole person, together with the triple
+barbed wit of her tongue, and an infallible memory in her head,
+made of her a real power in the land.  The whole Cabinet des
+Chartes was entered in duplicate on the parchment of her brain. 
+She knew all the genealogies of every noble house in
+Europe--princes, dukes, and counts--and could put her hand on the
+last descendants of Charlemagne in the direct line.  No
+usurpation of title could escape the Princesse de
+Blamont-Chauvry.
+
+Young men who wished to stand well at Court, ambitious men, and
+young married women paid her assiduous homage.  Her salon set the
+tone of the Faubourg Saint-Germain.  The words of this Talleyrand
+in petticoats were taken as final decrees.  People came to
+consult her on questions of etiquette or usages, or to take
+lessons in good taste.  And, in truth, no other old woman could
+put back her snuff-box in her pocket as the Princess could; while
+there was a precision and a grace about the movements of her
+skirts, when she sat down or crossed her feet, which drove the
+finest ladies of the young generation to despair.  Her voice had
+remained in her head during one-third of her lifetime; but she
+could not prevent a descent into the membranes of the nose, which
+lent to it a peculiar expressiveness.  She still retained a
+hundred and fifty thousand livres of her great fortune, for
+Napoleon had generously returned her woods to her; so that
+personally and in the matter of possessions she was a woman of no
+little consequence.
+
+This curious antique, seated in a low chair by the fireside, was
+chatting with the Vidame de Pamiers, a contemporary ruin.  The
+Vidame was a big, tall, and spare man, a seigneur of the old
+school, and had been a Commander of the Order of Malta.  His neck
+had always been so tightly compressed by a strangulation stock,
+that his cheeks pouched over it a little, and he held his head
+high; to many people this would have given an air of
+self-sufficiency, but in the Vidame it was justified by a
+Voltairean wit.  His wide prominent eyes seemed to see
+everything, and as a matter of fact there was not much that they
+had not seen.  Altogether, his person was a perfect model of
+aristocratic outline, slim and slender, supple and agreeable.  He
+seemed as if he could be pliant or rigid at will, and twist and
+bend, or rear his head like a snake.
+
+The Duc de Navarreins was pacing up and down the room with the
+Duc de Grandlieu.  Both were men of fifty-six or thereabouts, and
+still hale; both were short, corpulent, flourishing, somewhat
+florid-complexioned men with jaded eyes, and lower lips that had
+begun to hang already.  But for an exquisite refinement of
+accent, an urbane courtesy, and an ease of manner that could
+change in a moment to insolence, a superficial observer might
+have taken them for a couple of bankers.  Any such mistake would
+have been impossible, however, if the listener could have heard
+them converse, and seen them on their guard with men whom they
+feared, vapid and commonplace with their equals, slippery with
+the inferiors whom courtiers and statesmen know how to tame by a
+tactful word, or to humiliate with an unexpected phrase.
+
+Such were the representatives of the great noblesse that
+determined to perish rather than submit to any change.  It was a
+noblesse that deserved praise and blame in equal measure; a
+noblesse that will never be judged impartially until some poet
+shall arise to tell how joyfully the nobles obeyed the King
+though their heads fell under a Richelieu's axe, and how deeply
+they scorned the guillotine of '89 as a foul revenge.
+
+Another noticeable trait in all the four was a thin voice that
+agreed peculiarly well with their ideas and bearing.  Among
+themselves, at any rate, they were on terms of perfect equality. 
+None of them betrayed any sign of annoyance over the Duchess's
+escapade, but all of them had learned at Court to hide their
+feelings.
+
+And here, lest critics should condemn the puerility of the
+opening of the forthcoming scene, it is perhaps as well to remind
+the reader that Locke, once happening to be in the company of
+several great lords, renowned no less for their wit than for
+their breeding and political consistency, wickedly amused himself
+by taking down their conversation by some shorthand process of
+his own; and afterwards, when he read it over to them to see what
+they could make of it, they all burst out laughing.  And, in
+truth, the tinsel jargon which circulates among the upper ranks
+in every country yields mighty little gold to the crucible when
+washed in the ashes of literature or philosophy.  In every rank
+of society (some few Parisian salons excepted) the curious
+observer finds folly a constant quantity beneath a more or less
+transparent varnish.  Conversation with any substance in it is a
+rare exception, and boeotianism is current coin in every zone. 
+In the higher regions they must perforce talk more, but to make
+up for it they think the less.  Thinking is a tiring exercise,
+and the rich like their lives to flow by easily and without
+effort.  It is by comparing the fundamental matter of jests, as
+you rise in the social scale from the street-boy to the peer of
+France, that the observer arrives at a true comprehension of M.
+de Talleyrand's maxim, "The manner is everything"; an elegant
+rendering of the legal axiom, "The form is of more consequence
+than the matter."  In the eyes of the poet the advantage rests
+with the lower classes, for they seldom fail to give a certain
+character of rude poetry to their thoughts.  Perhaps also this
+same observation may explain the sterility of the salons, their
+emptiness, their shallowness, and the repugnance felt by men of
+ability for bartering their ideas for such pitiful small change.
+
+The Duke suddenly stopped as if some bright idea occurred to him,
+and remarked to his neighbour--
+
+"So you have sold Tornthon?"
+
+"No, he is ill.  I am very much afraid I shall lose him, and I
+should be uncommonly sorry.  He is a very good hunter.  Do you
+know how the Duchesse de Marigny is?"
+
+"No.  I did not go this morning.  I was just going out to call
+when you came in to speak about Antoinette.  But yesterday she
+was very ill indeed; they had given her up, she took the
+sacrament."
+
+"Her death will make a change in your cousin's position."
+
+"Not at all.  She gave away her property in her lifetime, only
+keeping an annuity.  She made over the Guebriant estate to her
+niece, Mme de Soulanges, subject to a yearly charge."
+
+"It will be a great loss for society.  She was a kind woman. 
+Her family will miss her; her experience and advice carried
+weight.  Her son Marigny is an amiable man; he has a sharp wit,
+he can talk.  He is pleasant, very pleasant.  Pleasant? oh, that
+no one can deny, but--ill regulated to the last degree.  Well,
+and yet it is an extraordinary thing, he is very acute.  He was
+dining at the club the other day with that moneyed
+Chaussee-d'Antin set.  Your uncle (he always goes there for his
+game of cards) found him there to his astonishment, and asked if
+he was a member.  `Yes,' said he, `I don't go into society now; I
+am living among the bankers.'--You know why?" added the Marquis,
+with a meaning smile.
+
+"No," said the Duke.
+
+"He is smitten with that little Mme Keller, Gondreville's
+daughter; she is only lately married, and has a great vogue, they
+say, in that set."
+
+"Well, Antoinette does not find time heavy on her hands, it
+seems," remarked the Vidame.
+
+"My affection for that little woman has driven me to find a
+singular pastime," replied the Princess, as she returned her
+snuff-box to her pocket.
+
+"Dear aunt, I am extremely vexed," said the Duke, stopping
+short in his walk.  "Nobody but one of Buonaparte's men could
+ask such an indecorous thing of a woman of fashion.  Between
+ourselves, Antoinette might have made a better choice."
+
+"The Montriveaus are a very old family and very well connected,
+my dear," replied the Princess; "they are related to all the
+noblest houses of Burgundy.  If the Dulmen branch of the Arschoot
+Rivaudoults should come to an end in Galicia, the Montriveaus
+would succeed to the Arschoot title and estates.  They inherit
+through their great-grandfather.
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"I know it better than this Montriveau's father did.  I told him
+about it, I used to see a good deal of him; and, Chevalier of
+several orders though he was, he only laughed; he was an
+encyclopaedist.  But his brother turned the relationship to good
+account during the emigration.  I have heard it said that his
+northern kinsfolk were most kind in every way----"
+
+"Yes, to be sure.  The Comte de Montriveau died at St.
+Petersburg," said the Vidame.  "I met him there.  He was a big
+man with an incredible passion for oysters."
+
+"However many did he eat?" asked the Duc de Grandlieu.
+
+"Ten dozen every day."
+
+"And did they not disagree with him?"
+
+"Not the least bit in the world."
+
+"Why, that is extraordinary!  Had he neither the stone nor gout,
+nor any other complaint, in consequence?"
+
+"No; his health was perfectly good, and he died through an
+accident."
+
+"By accident!  Nature prompted him to eat oysters, so probably
+he required them; for up to a certain point our predominant
+tastes are conditions of our existence."
+
+"I am of your opinion," said the Princess, with a smile.
+
+"Madame, you always put a malicious construction on things,"
+returned the Marquis.
+
+"I only want you to understand that these remarks might leave a
+wrong impression on a young woman's mind," said she, and
+interrupted herself to exclaim, "But this niece, this niece of
+mine!"
+
+"Dear aunt, I still refuse to believe that she can have gone to
+M. de Montriveau," said the Duc de Navarreins.
+
+"Bah!" returned the Princess.
+
+"What do you think, Vidame?" asked the Marquis.
+
+"If the Duchess were an artless simpleton, I should think
+that----"
+
+"But when a woman is in love she becomes an artless simpleton,"
+retorted the Princess.  "Really, my poor Vidame, you must be
+getting older."
+
+"After all, what is to be done?" asked the Duke.
+
+"If my dear niece is wise," said the Princess, "she will go to
+Court this evening--fortunately, today is Monday, and reception
+day--and you must see that we all rally round her and give the
+lie to this absurd rumour.  There are hundreds of ways of
+explaining things; and if the Marquis de Montriveau is a
+gentleman, he will come to our assistance.  We will bring these
+children to listen to reason----"
+
+"But, dear aunt, it is not easy to tell M. de Montriveau the
+truth to his face.  He is one of Buonaparte's pupils, and he has
+a position.  Why, he is one of the great men of the day; he is
+high up in the Guards, and very useful there.  He has not a spark
+of ambition.  He is just the man to say, `Here is my commission,
+leave me in peace,' if the King should say a word that he did not
+like."
+
+"Then, pray, what are his opinions?"
+
+"Very unsound."
+
+"Really," sighed the Princess, "the King is, as he always has
+been, a Jacobin under the Lilies of France."
+
+"Oh! not quite so bad," said the Vidame.
+
+"Yes; I have known him for a long while.  The man that pointed
+out the Court to his wife on the occasion of her first state
+dinner in public with, `These are our people,' could only be a
+black-hearted scoundrel.  I can see Monsieur exactly the same as
+ever in the King.  The bad brother who voted so wrongly in his
+department of the Constituent Assembly was sure to compound with
+the Liberals and allow them to argue and talk.  This
+philosophical cant will be just as dangerous now for the younger
+brother as it used to be for the elder; this fat man with the
+little mind is amusing himself by creating difficulties, and how
+his successor is to get out of them I do not know; he holds his
+younger brother in abhorrence; he would be glad to think as he
+lay dying, `He will not reign very long----' "
+
+"Aunt, he is the King, and I have the honour to be in his
+service----"
+
+"But does your post take away your right of free speech, my
+dear?  You come of quite as good a house as the Bourbons.  If the
+Guises had shown a little more resolution, His Majesty would be a
+nobody at this day.  It is time I went out of this world, the
+noblesse is dead.  Yes, it is all over with you, my children,"
+she continued, looking as she spoke at the Vidame.  "What has my
+niece done that the whole town should be talking about her?  She
+is in the wrong; I disapprove of her conduct, a useless scandal
+is a blunder; that is why I still have my doubts about this want
+of regard for appearances; I brought her up, and I know
+that----"
+
+Just at that moment the Duchess came out of her boudoir.  She had
+recognised her aunt's voice and heard the name of Montriveau. 
+She was still in her loose morning-gown; and even as she came in,
+M. de Grandlieu, looking carelessly out of the window, saw his
+niece's carriage driving back along the street.  The Duke took
+his daughter's face in both hands and kissed her on the forehead.
+
+"So, dear girl," he said, "you do not know what is going on?"
+
+"Has anything extraordinary happened, father dear?"
+
+"Why, all Paris believes that you are with M. de Montriveau."
+
+"My dear Antoinette, you were at home all the time, were you
+not?" said the Princess, holding out a hand, which the Duchess
+kissed with affectionate respect.
+
+"Yes, dear mother; I was at home all the time.  And," she
+added, as she turned to greet the Vidame and the Marquis, "I
+wished that all Paris should think that I was with M. de
+Montriveau."
+
+The Duke flung up his hands, struck them together in despair, and
+folded his arms.
+
+"Then, cannot you see what will come of this mad freak?" he
+asked at last.
+
+But the aged Princess had suddenly risen, and stood looking
+steadily at the Duchess, the younger woman flushed, and her eyes
+fell.  Mme de Chauvry gently drew her closer, and said, "My
+little angel, let me kiss you!"
+
+She kissed her niece very affectionately on the forehead, and
+continued smiling, while she held her hand in a tight clasp.
+
+"We are not under the Valois now, dear child.  You have
+compromised your husband and your position.  Still, we will
+arrange to make everything right."
+
+"But, dear aunt, I do not wish to make it right at all.  It is
+my wish that all Paris should say that I was with M. de
+Montriveau this morning.  If you destroy that belief, however ill
+grounded it may be, you will do me a singular disservice."
+
+"Do you really wish to ruin yourself, child, and to grieve your
+family?"
+
+"My family, father, unintentionally condemned me to irreparable
+misfortune when they sacrificed me to family considerations.  You
+may, perhaps, blame me for seeking alleviations, but you will
+certainly feel for me."
+
+"After all the endless pains you take to settle your daughters
+suitably!" muttered M. de Navarreins, addressing the Vidame.
+
+The Princess shook a stray grain of snuff from her skirts.  "My
+dear little girl," she said, "be happy, if you can.  We are not
+talking of troubling your felicity, but of reconciling it with
+social usages.  We all of us here assembled know that marriage is
+a defective institution tempered by love.  But when you take a
+lover, is there any need to make your bed in the Place du
+Carrousel?  See now, just be a bit reasonable, and hear what we
+have to say."
+
+"I am listening."
+
+"Mme la Duchesse," began the Duc de Grandlieu, "if it were any
+part of an uncle's duty to look after his nieces, he ought to
+have a position; society would owe him honours and rewards and a
+salary, exactly as if he were in the King's service.  So I am not
+here to talk about my nephew, but of your own interests.  Let us
+look ahead a little.  If you persist in making a scandal--I have
+seen the animal before, and I own that I have no great liking for
+him--Langeais is stingy enough, and he does not care a rap for
+anyone but himself; he will have a separation; he will stick to
+your money, and leave you poor, and consequently you will be a
+nobody.  The income of a hundred thousand livres that you have
+just inherited from your maternal great-aunt will go to pay for
+his mistresses' amusements.  You will be bound and gagged by the
+law; you will have to say Amen to all these arrangements. 
+Suppose M. de Montriveau leaves you----dear me! do not let us put
+ourselves in a passion, my dear niece; a man does not leave a
+woman while she is young and pretty; still, we have seen so many
+pretty women left disconsolate, even among princesses, that you
+will permit the supposition, an all but impossible supposition I
+quite wish to believe.----Well, suppose that he goes, what will
+become of you without a husband?  Keep well with your husband as
+you take care of your beauty; for beauty, after all, is a woman's
+parachute, and a husband also stands between you and worse.  I am
+supposing that you are happy and loved to the end, and I am
+leaving unpleasant or unfortunate events altogether out of the
+reckoning.  This being so, fortunately or unfortunately, you may
+have children.  What are they to be?  Montriveaus?  Very well;
+they certainly will not succeed to their father's whole fortune. 
+You will want to give them all that you have; he will wish to do
+the same.  Nothing more natural, dear me!  And you will find the
+law against you.  How many times have we seen heirs-at-law
+bringing a law-suit to recover the property from illegitimate
+children?  Every court of law rings with such actions all over
+the world.  You will create a fidei commissum perhaps; and if the
+trustee betrays your confidence, your children have no remedy
+against him; and they are ruined.  So choose carefully.  You see
+the perplexities of the position.  In every possible way your
+children will be sacrificed of necessity to the fancies of your
+heart; they will have no recognised status.  While they are
+little they will be charming; but, Lord! some day they will
+reproach you for thinking of no one but your two selves.  We old
+gentlemen know all about it.  Little boys grow up into men, and
+men are ungrateful beings.  When I was in Germany, did I not hear
+young de Horn say, after supper, `If my mother had been an honest
+woman, I should be prince-regnant!'  `IF?'  We have spent our
+lives in hearing plebeians say IF.  IF brought about the
+Revolution.  When a man cannot lay the blame on his father or
+mother, he holds God responsible for his hard lot.  In short,
+dear child, we are here to open your eyes.  I will say all I have
+to say in a few words, on which you had better meditate:  A woman
+ought never to put her husband in the right." 
+
+"Uncle, so long as I cared for nobody, I could calculate; I
+looked at interests then, as you do; now, I can only feel."
+
+"But, my dear little girl," remonstrated the Vidame, "life is
+simply a complication of interests and feelings; to be happy,
+more particularly in your position, one must try to reconcile
+one's feelings with one's interests.  A grisette may love
+according to her fancy, that is intelligible enough, but you have
+a pretty fortune, a family, a name and a place at Court, and you
+ought not to fling them out of the window.  And what have we been
+asking you to do to keep them all?--To manoeuvre carefully
+instead of falling foul of social conventions.  Lord!  I shall
+very soon be eighty years old, and I cannot recollect, under any
+regime, a love worth the price that you are willing to pay for
+the love of this lucky young man."
+
+The Duchess silenced the Vidame with a look; if Montriveau could
+have seen that glance, he would have forgiven all.
+
+"It would be very effective on the stage," remarked the Duc de
+Grandlieu, "but it all amounts to nothing when your jointure and
+position and independence is concerned.  You are not grateful, my
+dear niece.  You will not find many families where the relatives
+have courage enough to teach the wisdom gained by experience, and
+to make rash young heads listen to reason.  Renounce your
+salvation in two minutes, if it pleases you to damn yourself;
+well and good; but reflect well beforehand when it comes to
+renouncing your income.  I know of no confessor who remits the
+pains of poverty.  I have a right, I think, to speak in this way
+to you; for if you are ruined, I am the one person who can offer
+you a refuge.  I am almost an uncle to Langeais, and I alone have
+a right to put him in the wrong."
+
+The Duc de Navarreins roused himself from painful reflections.
+
+"Since you speak of feeling, my child," he said, "let me
+remind you that a woman who bears your name ought to be moved by
+sentiments which do not touch ordinary people.  Can you wish to
+give an advantage to the Liberals, to those Jesuits of
+Robespierre's that are doing all they can to vilify the noblesse?
+
+Some things a Navarreins cannot do without failing in duty to his
+house.  You would not be alone in your dishonour----"
+
+"Come, come!" said the Princess.  "Dishonour?  Do not make
+such a fuss about the journey of an empty carriage, children, and
+leave me alone with Antoinette.  Ail three of you come and dine
+with me.  I will undertake to arrange matters suitably.  You men
+understand nothing; you are beginning to talk sourly already, and
+I have no wish to see a quarrel between you and my dear child. 
+Do me the pleasure to go."
+
+The three gentlemen probably guessed the Princess's intentions;
+they took their leave.  M. de Navarreins kissed his daughter on
+the forehead with, "Come, be good, dear child.  It is not too
+late yet if you choose."
+
+"Couldn't we find some good fellow in the family to pick a
+quarrel with this Montriveau?" said the Vidame, as they went
+downstairs. 
+
+When the two women were alone, the Princess beckoned her niece to
+a little low chair by her side.
+
+"My pearl," said she, "in this world below, I know nothing
+worse calumniated than God and the eighteenth century; for as I
+look back over my own young days, I do not recollect that a
+single duchess trampled the proprieties underfoot as you have
+just done.  Novelists and scribblers brought the reign of Louis
+XV into disrepute.  Do not believe them.  The du Barry, my dear,
+was quite as good as the Widow Scarron, and the more agreeable
+woman of the two.  In my time a woman could keep her dignity
+among her gallantries.  Indiscretion was the ruin of us, and the
+beginning of all the mischief.  The philosophists--the nobodies
+whom we admitted into our salons--had no more gratitude or sense
+of decency than to make an inventory of our hearts, to traduce us
+one and all, and to rail against the age by way of a return for
+our kindness.  The people are not in a position to judge of
+anything whatsoever; they looked at the facts, not at the form. 
+But the men and women of those times, my heart, were quite as
+remarkable as at any other period of the Monarchy.  Not one of
+your Werthers, none of your notabilities, as they are called,
+never a one of your men in yellow kid gloves and trousers that
+disguise the poverty of their legs, would cross Europe in the
+dress of a travelling hawker to brave the daggers of a Duke of
+Modena, and to shut himself up in the dressing-room of the
+Regent's daughter at the risk of his life.  Not one of your
+little consumptive patients with their tortoiseshell eyeglasses
+would hide himself in a closet for six weeks, like Lauzun, to
+keep up his mistress's courage while she was lying in of her
+child.  There was more passion in M. de Jaucourt's little finger
+than in your whole race of higglers that leave a woman to better
+themselves elsewhere!  Just tell me where to find the page that
+would be cut in pieces and buried under the floorboards for one
+kiss on the Konigsmark's gloved finger!
+
+"Really, it would seem today that the roles are exchanged, and
+women are expected to show their devotion for men.  These modern
+gentlemen are worth less, and think more of themselves.  Believe
+me, my dear, all these adventures that have been made public, and
+now are turned against our good Louis XV, were kept quite secret
+at first.  If it had not been for a pack of poetasters,
+scribblers, and moralists, who hung about our waiting-women, and
+took down their slanders, our epoch would have appeared in
+literature as a well-conducted age.  I am justifying the century
+and not its fringe.  Perhaps a hundred women of quality were
+lost; but for every one, the rogues set down ten, like the
+gazettes after a battle when they count up the losses of the
+beaten side.  And in any case I do not know that the Revolution
+and the Empire can reproach us; they were coarse, dull,
+licentious times.  Faugh! it is revolting.  Those are the
+brothels of French history.
+
+"This preamble, my dear child," she continued after a pause,
+"brings me to the thing that I have to say.  If you care for
+Montriveau, you are quite at liberty to love him at your ease,
+and as much as you can.  I know by experience that, unless you
+are locked up (but locking people up is out of fashion now), you
+will do as you please; I should have done the same at your age. 
+Only, sweetheart, I should not have given up my right to be the
+mother of future Ducs de Langeais.  So mind appearances.  The
+Vidame is right.  No man is worth a single one of the sacrifices
+which we are foolish enough to make for their love.  Put yourself
+in such a position that you may still be M. de Langeais's wife,
+in case you should have the misfortune to repent.  When you are
+an old woman, you will be very glad to hear mass said at Court,
+and not in some provincial convent.  Therein lies the whole
+question.  A single imprudence means an allowance and a wandering
+life; it means that you are at the mercy of your lover; it means
+that you must put up with insolence from women that are not so
+honest, precisely because they have been very vulgarly
+sharp-witted.  It would be a hundred times better to go to
+Montriveau's at night in a cab, and disguised, instead of sending
+your carriage in broad daylight.  You are a little fool, my dear
+child!  Your carriage flattered his vanity; your person would
+have ensnared his heart.  All this that I have said is just and
+true; but, for my own part, I do not blame you.  You are two
+centuries behind the times with your false ideas of greatness. 
+There, leave us to arrange your affairs, and say that Montriveau
+made your servants drunk to gratify his vanity and to compromise
+you----"
+
+The Duchess rose to her feet with a spring.  "In Heaven's name,
+aunt, do not slander him!"
+
+The old Princess's eyes flashed.
+
+"Dear child," she said, "I should have liked to spare such of
+your illusions as were not fatal.  But there must be an end of
+all illusions now.  You would soften me if I were not so old. 
+Come, now, do not vex him, or us, or anyone else.  I will
+undertake to satisfy everybody; but promise me not to permit
+yourself a single step henceforth until you have consulted me. 
+Tell me all, and perhaps I may bring it all right again."
+
+"Aunt, I promise----"
+
+"To tell me everything?"
+
+"Yes, everything.  Everything that can be told."
+
+"But, my sweetheart, it is precisely what cannot be told that I
+want to know.  Let us understand each other thoroughly.  Come,
+let me put my withered old lips on your beautiful forehead.  No;
+let me do as I wish.  I forbid you to kiss my bones.  Old people
+have a courtesy of their own. . . .  There, take me down to my
+carriage," she added, when she had kissed her niece.
+
+"Then may I go to him in disguise, dear aunt?"
+
+"Why--yes.  The story can always be denied," said the old
+Princess.
+
+This was the one idea which the Duchess had clearly grasped in
+the sermon.  When Mme de Chauvry was seated in the corner of her
+carriage, Mme de Langeais bade her a graceful adieu and went up
+to her room.  She was quite happy again. 
+
+"My person would have snared his heart; my aunt is right; a man
+cannot surely refuse a pretty woman when she understands how to
+offer herself."
+
+That evening, at the Elysee-Bourbon, the Duc de Navarreins, M. de
+Pamiers, M. de Marsay, M. de Grandlieu, and the Duc de
+Maufrigneuse triumphantly refuted the scandals that were
+circulating with regard to the Duchesse de Langeais.  So many
+officers and other persons had seen Montriveau walking in the
+Tuileries that morning, that the silly story was set down to
+chance, which takes all that is offered.  And so, in spite of the
+fact that the Duchess's carriage had waited before Montriveau's
+door, her character became as clear and as spotless as Mambrino's
+sword after Sancho had polished it up.
+
+But, at two o'clock, M. de Ronquerolles passed Montriveau in a
+deserted alley, and said with a smile, "She is coming on, is
+your Duchess.  Go on, keep it up!" he added, and gave a
+significant cut of the riding whip to his mare, who sped off like
+a bullet down the avenue.
+
+Two days after the fruitless scandal, Mme de Langeais wrote to M.
+de Montriveau.  That letter, like the preceding ones, remained
+unanswered.  This time she took her own measures, and bribed M.
+de Montriveau's man, Auguste.  And so at eight o'clock that
+evening she was introduced into Armand's apartment.  It was not
+the room in which that secret scene had passed; it was entirely
+different.  The Duchess was told that the General would not be at
+home that night.  Had he two houses?  The man would give no
+answer.  Mme de Langeais had bought the key of the room, but not
+the man's whole loyalty.
+
+When she was left alone she saw her fourteen letters lying on an
+old-fashioned stand, all of them uncreased and unopened.  He had
+not read them.  She sank into an easy-chair, and for a while she
+lost consciousness.  When she came to herself, Auguste was
+holding vinegar for her to inhale.
+
+"A carriage; quick!" she ordered.
+
+The carriage came.  She hastened downstairs with convulsive
+speed, and left orders that no one was to be admitted.  For
+twenty-four hours she lay in bed, and would have no one near her
+but her woman, who brought her a cup of orange-flower water from
+time to time.  Suzette heard her mistress moan once or twice, and
+caught a glimpse of tears in the brilliant eyes, now circled with
+dark shadows.
+
+The next day, amid despairing tears, Mme de Langeais took her
+resolution.  Her man of business came for an interview, and no
+doubt received instructions of some kind.  Afterwards she sent
+for the Vidame de Pamiers; and while she waited, she wrote a
+letter to M. de Montriveau.  The Vidame punctually came towards
+two o'clock that afternoon, to find his young cousin looking
+white and worn, but resigned; never had her divine loveliness
+been more poetic than now in the languor of her agony.
+
+"You owe this assignation to your eighty-four years, dear
+cousin," she said.  "Ah! do not smile, I beg of you, when an
+unhappy woman has reached the lowest depths of wretchedness.  You
+are a gentleman, and after the adventures of your youth you must
+feel some indulgence for women."
+
+"None whatever," said he.
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Everything is in their favour."
+
+"Ah!  Well, you are one of the inner family circle; possibly you
+will be the last relative, the last friend whose hand I shall
+press, so I can ask your good offices.  Will you, dear Vidame, do
+me a service which I could not ask of my own father, nor of my
+uncle Grandlieu, nor of any woman?  You cannot fail to
+understand.  I beg of you to do my bidding, and then to forget
+what you have done, whatever may come of it.  It is this:  Will
+you take this letter and go to M. de Montriveau? will you see him
+yourself, give it into his hands, and ask him, as you men can ask
+things between yourselves--for you have a code of honour between
+man and man which you do not use with us, and a different way of
+regarding things between yourselves--ask him if he will read this
+letter?  Not in your presence.  Certain feelings men hide from
+each other.  I give you authority to say, if you think it
+necessary to bring him, that it is a question of life or death
+for me.  If he deigns----"
+
+"DEIGNS!" repeated the Vidame.
+
+"If he deigns to read it," the Duchess continued with dignity,
+"say one thing more.  You will go to see him about five o'clock,
+for I know that he will dine at home today at that time.  Very
+good.  By way of answer he must come to see me.  If, three hours
+afterwards, by eight o'clock, he does not leave his house, all
+will be over.  The Duchesse de Langeais will have vanished from
+the world.  I shall not be dead, dear friend, no, but no human
+power will ever find me again on this earth.  Come and dine with
+me; I shall at least have one friend with me in the last agony. 
+Yes, dear cousin, tonight will decide my fate; and whatever
+happens to me, I pass through an ordeal by fire.  There! not a
+word.  I will hear nothing of the nature of comment or
+advice----Let us chat and laugh together," she added, holding
+out a hand, which he kissed.  "We will be like two grey-headed
+philosophers who have learned how to enjoy life to the last
+moment.  I will look my best; I will be very enchanting for you. 
+You perhaps will be the last man to set eyes on the Duchesse de
+Langeais."
+
+The Vicomte bowed, took the letter, and went without a word.  At
+five o'clock he returned.  His cousin had studied to please him,
+and she looked lovely indeed.  The room was gay with flowers as
+if for a festivity; the dinner was exquisite.  For the
+grey-headed Vidame the Duchess displayed all the brilliancy of
+her wit; she was more charming than she had ever been before.  At
+first the Vidame tried to look on all these preparations as a
+young woman's jest; but now and again the attempted illusion
+faded, the spell of his fair cousin's charm was broken.  He
+detected a shudder caused by some kind of sudden dread, and once
+she seemed to listen during a pause. 
+
+"What is the matter?" he asked.
+
+"Hush!" she said.
+
+At seven o'clock the Duchess left him for a few minutes.  When
+she came back again she was dressed as her maid might have
+dressed for a journey.  She asked her guest to be her escort,
+took his arm, sprang into a hackney coach, and by a quarter to
+eight they stood outside M. de Montriveau's door.
+
+Armand meantime had been reading the following letter:--
+
+
+"MY FRIEND,--I went to your rooms for a few minutes without your
+knowledge; I found my letters there, and took them away.  This
+cannot be indifference, Armand, between us; and hatred would show
+itself quite differently.  If you love me, make an end of this
+cruel play, or you will kill me, and afterwards, learning how
+much you were loved, you might be in despair.  If I have not
+rightly understood you, if you have no feeling towards me but
+aversion, which implies both contempt and disgust, then I give up
+all hope.  A man never recovers from those feelings.  You will
+have no regrets.  Dreadful though that thought may be, it will
+comfort me in my long sorrow.  Regrets?  Oh, my Armand, may I
+never know of them; if I thought that I had caused you a single
+regret----But, no, I will not tell you what desolation I should
+feel.  I should be living still, and I could not be your wife; it
+would be too late!
+
+"Now that I have given myself wholly to you in thought, to whom
+else should I give myself?--to God.  The eyes that you loved for
+a little while shall never look on another man's face; and may
+the glory of God blind them to all besides.  I shall never hear
+human voices more since I heard yours--so gentle at the first, so
+terrible yesterday; for it seems to me that I am still only on
+the morrow of your vengeance.  And now may the will of God
+consume me.  Between His wrath and yours, my friend, there will
+be nothing left for me but a little space for tears and prayers.
+
+"Perhaps you wonder why I write to you?  Ah! do not think ill of
+me if I keep a gleam of hope, and give one last sigh to happy
+life before I take leave of it forever.  I am in a hideous
+position.  I feel all the inward serenity that comes when a great
+resolution has been taken, even while I hear the last growlings
+of the storm.  When you went out on that terrible adventure which
+so drew me to you, Armand, you went from the desert to the oasis
+with a good guide to show you the way.  Well, I am going out of
+the oasis into the desert, and you are a pitiless guide to me. 
+And yet you only, my friend, can understand how melancholy it is
+to look back for the last time on happiness--to you, and you
+only, I can make moan without a blush.  If you grant my entreaty,
+I shall be happy; if you are inexorable, I shall expiate the
+wrong that I have done.  After all, it is natural, is it not,
+that a woman should wish to live, invested with all noble
+feelings, in her friend's memory?  Oh! my one and only love, let
+her to whom you gave life go down into the tomb in the belief
+that she is great in your eyes.  Your harshness led me to
+reflect; and now that I love you so, it seems to me that I am
+less guilty than you think.  Listen to my justification, I owe it
+to you; and you that are all the world to me, owe me at least a
+moment's justice.
+
+"I have learned by my own anguish all that I made you suffer by
+my coquetry; but in those days I was utterly ignorant of love. 
+YOU know what the torture is, and you mete it out to me!  During
+those first eight months that you gave me you never roused any
+feeling of love in me.  Do you ask why this was so, my friend?  I
+can no more explain it than I can tell you why I love you now. 
+Oh! certainly it flattered my vanity that I should be the subject
+of your passionate talk, and receive those burning glances of
+yours; but you left me cold.  No, I was not a woman; I had no
+conception of womanly devotion and happiness.  Who was to blame? 
+You would have despised me, would you not, if I had given myself
+without the impulse of passion?  Perhaps it is the highest height
+to which we can rise--to give all and receive no joy; perhaps
+there is no merit in yielding oneself to bliss that is foreseen
+and ardently desired.  Alas, my friend, I can say this now; these
+thoughts came to me when I played with you; and you seemed to me
+so great even then that I would not have you owe the gift to
+pity----What is this that I have written?
+
+"I have taken back all my letters; I am flinging them one by one
+on the fire; they are burning.  You will never know what they
+confessed--all the love and the passion and the madness----
+
+"I will say no more, Armand; I will stop.  I will not say
+another word of my feelings.  If my prayers have not echoed from
+my soul through yours, I also, woman that I am, decline to owe
+your love to your pity.  It is my wish to be loved, because you
+cannot choose but love me, or else to be left without mercy.  If
+you refuse to read this letter, it shall be burnt.  If, after you
+have read it, you do not come to me within three hours, to be
+henceforth forever my husband, the one man in the world for me;
+then I shall never blush to know that this letter is in your
+hands, the pride of my despair will protect my memory from all
+insult, and my end shall be worthy of my love.  When you see me
+no more on earth, albeit I shall still be alive, you yourself
+will not think without a shudder of the woman who, in three
+hours' time, will live only to overwhelm you with her tenderness;
+a woman consumed by a hopeless love, and faithful--not to
+memories of past joys--but to a love that was slighted.
+
+"The Duchesse de la Valliere wept for lost happiness and
+vanished power; but the Duchesse de Langeais will be happy that
+she may weep and be a power for you still.  Yes, you will regret
+me.  I see clearly that I was not of this world, and I thank you
+for making it clear to me.
+
+"Farewell; you will never touch MY axe.  Yours was the
+executioner's axe, mine is God's; yours kills, mine saves.  Your
+love was but mortal, it could not endure disdain or ridicule;
+mine can endure all things without growing weaker, it will last
+eternally.  Ah!  I feel a sombre joy in crushing you that believe
+yourself so great; in humbling you with the calm, indulgent smile
+of one of the least among the angels that lie at the feet of God,
+for to them is given the right and the power to protect and watch
+over men in His name.  You have but felt fleeting desires, while
+the poor nun will shed the light of her ceaseless and ardent
+prayer about you, she will shelter you all your life long beneath
+the wings of a love that has nothing of earth in it.
+
+"I have a presentiment of your answer; our trysting place shall
+be--in heaven.  Strength and weakness can both enter there, dear
+Armand; the strong and the weak are bound to suffer.  This
+thought soothes the anguish of my final ordeal.  So calm am I
+that I should fear that I had ceased to love you if I were not
+about to leave the world for your sake.                          
+
+"ANTOINETTE."
+
+
+"Dear Vidame," said the Duchess as they reached Montriveau's
+house, "do me the kindness to ask at the door whether he is at
+home."  The Vidame, obedient after the manner of the eighteenth
+century to a woman's wish, got out, and came back to bring his
+cousin an affirmative answer that sent a shudder through her. 
+She grasped his hand tightly in hers, suffered him to kiss her on
+either cheek, and begged him to go at once.  He must not watch
+her movements nor try to protect her.  "But the people passing
+in the street," he objected.
+
+"No one can fail in respect to me," she said.  It was the last
+word spoken by the Duchess and the woman of fashion.
+
+The Vidame went.  Mme de Langeais wrapped herself about in her
+cloak, and stood on the doorstep until the clocks struck eight. 
+The last stroke died away.  The unhappy woman waited ten, fifteen
+minutes; to the last she tried to see a fresh humiliation in the
+delay, then her faith ebbed.  She turned to leave the fatal
+threshold.
+
+"Oh, God!" the cry broke from her in spite of herself; it was
+the first word spoken by the Carmelite.
+
+
+Montriveau and some of his friends were talking together.  He
+tried to hasten them to a conclusion, but his clock was slow, and
+by the time he started out for the Hotel de Langeais the Duchess
+was hurrying on foot through the streets of Paris, goaded by the
+dull rage in her heart.  She reached the Boulevard d'Enfer, and
+looked out for the last time through falling tears on the noisy,
+smoky city that lay below in a red mist, lighted up by its own
+lamps.  Then she hailed a cab, and drove away, never to return. 
+When the Marquis de Montriveau reached the Hotel de Langeais, and
+found no trace of his mistress, he thought that he had been
+duped.  He hurried away at once to the Vidame, and found that
+worthy gentleman in the act of slipping on his flowered
+dressing-gown, thinking the while of his fair cousin's happiness.
+
+Montriveau gave him one of the terrific glances that produced the
+effect of an electric shock on men and women alike.
+
+"Is it possible that you have lent yourself to some cruel hoax,
+monsieur?" Montriveau exclaimed.  "I have just come from Mme de
+Langeais's house; the servants say that she is out."
+
+"Then a great misfortune has happened, no doubt," returned the
+Vidame, "and through your fault.  I left the Duchess at your
+door----"
+
+"When?"
+
+"At a quarter to eight."
+
+"Good evening," returned Montriveau, and he hurried home to ask
+the porter whether he had seen a lady standing on the doorstep
+that evening.
+
+"Yes, my Lord Marquis, a handsome woman, who seemed very much
+put out.  She was crying like a Magdalen, but she never made a
+sound, and stood as upright as a post.  Then at last she went,
+and my wife and I that were watching her while she could not see
+us, heard her say, `Oh, God!' so that it went to our hearts,
+asking your pardon, to hear her say it."
+
+Montriveau, in spite of all his firmness, turned pale at those
+few words.  He wrote a few lines to Ronquerolles, sent off the
+message at once, and went up to his rooms.  Ronquerolles came
+just about midnight.
+
+Armand gave him the Duchess's letter to read.
+
+"Well?" asked Ronquerolles.
+
+"She was here at my door at eight o'clock; at a quarter-past
+eight she had gone.  I have lost her, and I love her.  Oh! if my
+life were my own, I could blow my brains out."
+
+"Pooh, pooh!  Keep cool," said Ronquerolles.  "Duchesses do
+not fly off like wagtails.  She cannot travel faster than three
+leagues an hour, and tomorrow we will ride six.--Confound it! 
+Mme de Langeais is no ordinary woman," he continued.  "Tomorrow
+we will all of us mount and ride.  The police will put us on her
+track during the day.  She must have a carriage; angels of that
+sort have no wings.  We shall find her whether she is on the road
+or hidden in Paris.  There is the semaphore.  We can stop her. 
+You shall be happy.  But, my dear fellow, you have made a
+blunder, of which men of your energy are very often guilty.  They
+judge others by themselves, and do not know the point when human
+nature gives way if you strain the cords too tightly.  Why did
+you not say a word to me sooner?  I would have told you to be
+punctual.  Good-bye till tomorrow," he added, as Montriveau said
+nothing.  "Sleep if you can," he added, with a grasp of the
+hand.
+
+But the greatest resources which society has ever placed at the
+disposal of statesmen, kings, ministers, bankers, or any human
+power, in fact, were all exhausted in vain.  Neither Montriveau
+nor his friends could find any trace of the Duchess.  It was
+clear that she had entered a convent.  Montriveau determined to
+search, or to institute a search, for her through every convent
+in the world.  He must have her, even at the cost of all the
+lives in a town.  And in justice to this extraordinary man, it
+must be said that his frenzied passion awoke to the same ardour
+daily and lasted through five years.  Only in 1829 did the Duc de
+Navarreins hear by chance that his daughter had travelled to
+Spain as Lady Julia Hopwood's maid, that she had left her service
+at Cadiz, and that Lady Julia never discovered that Mlle Caroline
+was the illustrious duchess whose sudden disappearance filled the
+minds of the highest society of Paris.
+
+
+The feelings of the two lovers when they met again on either side
+of the grating in the Carmelite convent should now be
+comprehended to the full, and the violence of the passion
+awakened in either soul will doubtless explain the catastrophe of
+the story.
+
+In 1823 the Duc de Langeais was dead, and his wife was free. 
+Antoinette de Navarreins was living, consumed by love, on a ledge
+of rock in the Mediterranean; but it was in the Pope's power to
+dissolve Sister Theresa's vows.  The happiness bought by so much
+love might yet bloom for the two lovers.  These thoughts sent
+Montriveau flying from Cadiz to Marseilles, and from Marseilles
+to Paris.
+
+A few months after his return to France, a merchant brig, fitted
+out and munitioned for active service, set sail from the port of
+Marseilles for Spain.  The vessel had been chartered by several
+distinguished men, most of them Frenchmen, who, smitten with a
+romantic passion for the East, wished to make a journey to those
+lands.  Montriveau's familiar knowledge of Eastern customs made
+him an invaluable travelling companion, and at the entreaty of
+the rest he had joined the expedition; the Minister of War
+appointed him lieutenant-general, and put him on the Artillery
+Commission to facilitate his departure.
+
+Twenty-fours hours later the brig lay to off the north-west shore
+of an island within sight of the Spanish coast.  She had been
+specially chosen for her shallow keel and light mastage, so that
+she might lie at anchor in safety half a league away from the
+reefs that secure the island from approach in this direction.  If
+fishing vessels or the people on the island caught sight of the
+brig, they were scarcely likely to feel suspicious of her at
+once; and besides, it was easy to give a reason for her presence
+without delay.  Montriveau hoisted the flag of the United States
+before they came in sight of the island, and the crew of the
+vessel were all American sailors, who spoke nothing but English. 
+One of M. de Montriveau's companions took the men ashore in the
+ship's longboat, and made them so drunk at an inn in the little
+town that they could not talk.  Then he gave out that the brig
+was manned by treasure-seekers, a gang of men whose hobby was
+well known in the United States; indeed, some Spanish writer had
+written a history of them.  The presence of the brig among the
+reefs was now sufficiently explained.  The owners of the vessel,
+according to the self-styled boatswain's mate, were looking for
+the wreck of a galleon which foundered thereabouts in 1778 with a
+cargo of treasure from Mexico.  The people at the inn and the
+authorities asked no more questions.
+
+Armand, and the devoted friends who were helping him in his
+difficult enterprise, were all from the first of the opinion that
+there was no hope of rescuing or carrying off Sister Theresa by
+force or stratagem from the side of the little town.  Wherefore
+these bold spirits, with one accord, determined to take the bull
+by the horns.  They would make a way to the convent at the most
+seemingly inaccessible point; like General Lamarque, at the
+storming of Capri, they would conquer Nature.  The cliff at the
+end of the island, a sheer block of granite, afforded even less
+hold than the rock of Capri.  So it seemed at least to
+Montriveau, who had taken part in that incredible exploit, while
+the nuns in his eyes were much more redoubtable than Sir Hudson
+Lowe.  To raise a hubbub over carrying off the Duchess would
+cover them with confusion.  They might as well set siege to the
+town and convent, like pirates, and leave not a single soul to
+tell of their victory.  So for them their expedition wore but two
+aspects.  There should be a conflagration and a feat of arms that
+should dismay all Europe, while the motives of the crime remained
+unknown; or, on the other hand, a mysterious, aerial descent
+which should persuade the nuns that the Devil himself had paid
+them a visit.  They had decided upon the latter course in the
+secret council held before they left Paris, and subsequently
+everything had been done to insure the success of an expedition
+which promised some real excitement to jaded spirits weary of
+Paris and its pleasures.
+
+An extremely light pirogue, made at Marseilles on a Malayan
+model, enabled them to cross the reef, until the rocks rose from
+out of the water.  Then two cables of iron wire were fastened
+several feet apart between one rock and another.  These wire
+ropes slanted upwards and downwards in opposite directions, so
+that baskets of iron wire could travel to and fro along them; and
+in this manner the rocks were covered with a system of baskets
+and wire-cables, not unlike the filaments which a certain species
+of spider weaves about a tree.  The Chinese, an essentially
+imitative people, were the first to take a lesson from the work
+of instinct.  Fragile as these bridges were, they were always
+ready for use; high waves and the caprices of the sea could not
+throw them out of working order; the ropes hung just sufficiently
+slack, so as to present to the breakers that particular curve
+discovered by Cachin, the immortal creator of the harbour at
+Cherbourg.  Against this cunningly devised line the angry surge
+is powerless; the law of that curve was a secret wrested from
+Nature by that faculty of observation in which nearly all human
+genius consists.
+
+M. de Montriveau's companions were alone on board the vessel, and
+out of sight of every human eye.  No one from the deck of a
+passing vessel could have discovered either the brig hidden among
+the reefs, or the men at work among the rocks; they lay below the
+ordinary range of the most powerful telescope.  Eleven days were
+spent in preparation, before the Thirteen, with all their
+infernal power, could reach the foot of the cliffs.  The body of
+the rock rose up straight from the sea to a height of thirty
+fathoms.  Any attempt to climb the sheer wall of granite seemed
+impossible; a mouse might as well try to creep up the slippery
+sides of a plain china vase.  Still there was a cleft, a straight
+line of fissure so fortunately placed that large blocks of wood
+could be wedged firmly into it at a distance of about a foot
+apart.  Into these blocks the daring workers drove iron cramps,
+specially made for the purpose, with a broad iron bracket at the
+outer end, through which a hole had been drilled.  Each bracket
+carried a light deal board which corresponded with a notch made
+in a pole that reached to the top of the cliffs, and was firmly
+planted in the beach at their feet.  With ingenuity worthy of
+these men who found nothing impossible, one of their number, a
+skilled mathematician, had calculated the angle from which the
+steps must start; so that from the middle they rose gradually,
+like the sticks of a fan, to the top of the cliff, and descended
+in the same fashion to its base.  That miraculously light, yet
+perfectly firm, staircase cost them twenty-two days of toil.  A
+little tinder and the surf of the sea would destroy all trace of
+it forever in a single night.  A betrayal of the secret was
+impossible; and all search for the violators of the convent was
+doomed to failure.
+
+At the top of the rock there was a platform with sheer precipice
+on all sides.  The Thirteen, reconnoitring the ground with their
+glasses from the masthead, made certain that though the ascent
+was steep and rough, there would be no difficulty in gaining the
+convent garden, where the trees were thick enough for a
+hiding-place.  After such great efforts they would not risk the
+success of their enterprise, and were compelled to wait till the
+moon passed out of her last quarter.
+
+For two nights Montriveau, wrapped in his cloak, lay out on the
+rock platform.  The singing at vespers and matins filled him with
+unutterable joy.  He stood under the wall to hear the music of
+the organ, listening intently for one voice among the rest.  But
+in spite of the silence, the confused effect of music was all
+that reached his ears.  In those sweet harmonies defects of
+execution are lost; the pure spirit of art comes into direct
+communication with the spirit of the hearer, making no demand on
+the attention, no strain on the power of listening.  Intolerable
+memories awoke.  All the love within him seemed to break into
+blossom again at the breath of that music; he tried to find
+auguries of happiness in the air.  During the last night he sat
+with his eyes fixed upon an ungrated window, for bars were not
+needed on the side of the precipice.  A light shone there all
+through the hours; and that instinct of the heart, which is
+sometimes true, and as often false, cried within him, "She is
+there!"
+
+"She is certainly there!  Tomorrow she will be mine," he said
+to himself, and joy blended with the slow tinkling of a bell that
+began to ring.
+
+Strange unaccountable workings of the heart!  The nun, wasted by
+yearning love, worn out with tears and fasting, prayer and
+vigils; the woman of nine-and-twenty, who had passed through
+heavy trials, was loved more passionately than the lighthearted
+girl, the woman of four-and-twenty, the sylphide, had ever been. 
+But is there not, for men of vigorous character, something
+attractive in the sublime expression engraven on women's faces by
+the impetuous stirrings of thought and misfortunes of no ignoble
+kind?  Is there not a beauty of suffering which is the most
+interesting of all beauty to those men who feel that within them
+there is an inexhaustible wealth of tenderness and consoling pity
+for a creature so gracious in weakness, so strong with love?  It
+is the ordinary nature that is attracted by young, smooth,
+pink-and-white beauty, or, in one word, by prettiness.  In some
+faces love awakens amid the wrinkles carved by sorrow and the
+ruin made by melancholy; Montriveau could not but feel drawn to
+these.  For cannot a lover, with the voice of a great longing,
+call forth a wholly new creature? a creature athrob with the life
+but just begun breaks forth for him alone, from the outward form
+that is fair for him, and faded for all the world besides.  Does
+he not love two women?--One of them, as others see her, is pale
+and wan and sad; but the other, the unseen love that his heart
+knows, is an angel who understands life through feeling, and is
+adorned in all her glory only for love's high festivals.
+
+The General left his post before sunrise, but not before he had
+heard voices singing together, sweet voices full of tenderness
+sounding faintly from the cell.  When he came down to the foot of
+the cliffs where his friends were waiting, he told them that
+never in his life had he felt such enthralling bliss, and in the
+few words there was that unmistakable thrill of repressed strong
+feeling, that magnificent utterance which all men respect.
+
+That night eleven of his devoted comrades made the ascent in the
+darkness.  Each man carried a poniard, a provision of chocolate,
+and a set of house-breaking tools.  They climbed the outer walls
+with scaling-ladders, and crossed the cemetery of the convent. 
+Montriveau recognised the long, vaulted gallery through which he
+went to the parlour, and remembered the windows of the room.  His
+plans were made and adopted in a moment.  They would effect an
+entrance through one of the windows in the Carmelite's half of
+the parlour, find their way along the corridors, ascertain
+whether the sister's names were written on the doors, find Sister
+Theresa's cell, surprise her as she slept, and carry her off,
+bound and gagged.  The programme presented no difficulties to men
+who combined boldness and a convict's dexterity with the
+knowledge peculiar to men of the world, especially as they would
+not scruple to give a stab to ensure silence.
+
+In two hours the bars were sawn through.  Three men stood on
+guard outside, and two inside the parlour.  The rest, barefooted,
+took up their posts along the corridor.  Young Henri de Marsay,
+the most dexterous man among them, disguised by way of precaution
+in a Carmelite's robe, exactly like the costume of the convent,
+led the way, and Montriveau came immediately behind him.  The
+clock struck three just as the two men reached the dormitory
+cells.  They soon saw the position.  Everything was perfectly
+quiet.  With the help of a dark lantern they read the names
+luckily written on every door, together with the picture of a
+saint or saints and the mystical words which every nun takes as a
+kind of motto for the beginning of her new life and the
+revelation of her last thought.  Montriveau reached Sister
+Theresa's door and read the inscription, Sub invocatione sanctae
+matris Theresae, and her motto, Adoremus in aeternum.  Suddenly
+his companion laid a hand on his shoulder.  A bright light was
+streaming through the chinks of the door.  M. de Ronquerolles
+came up at that moment.
+
+"All the nuns are in the church," he said; "they are beginning
+the Office for the Dead."
+
+"I will stay here," said Montriveau.  "Go back into the
+parlour, and shut the door at the end of the passage."
+
+He threw open the door and rushed in, preceded by his disguised
+companion, who let down the veil over his face.
+
+There before them lay the dead Duchess; her plank bed had been
+laid on the floor of the outer room of her cell, between two
+lighted candles.  Neither Montriveau nor de Marsay spoke a word
+or uttered a cry; but they looked into each other's faces.  The
+General's dumb gesture tried to say, "Let us carry her away!"
+
+"Quickly" shouted Ronquerolles, "the procession of nuns is
+leaving the church.  You will be caught!"
+
+With magical swiftness of movement, prompted by an intense
+desire, the dead woman was carried into the convent parlour,
+passed through the window, and lowered from the walls before the
+Abbess, followed by the nuns, returned to take up Sister
+Theresa's body.  The sister left in charge had imprudently left
+her post; there were secrets that she longed to know; and so busy
+was she ransacking the inner room, that she heard nothing, and
+was horrified when she came back to find that the body was gone. 
+Before the women, in their blank amazement, could think of making
+a search, the Duchess had been lowered by a cord to the foot of
+the crags, and Montriveau's companions had destroyed all traces
+of their work.  By nine o'clock that morning there was not a sign
+to show that either staircase or wire-cables had ever existed,
+and Sister Theresa's body had been taken on board.  The brig came
+into the port to ship her crew, and sailed that day.
+
+Montriveau, down in the cabin, was left alone with Antoinette de
+Navarreins.  For some hours it seemed as if her dead face was
+transfigured for him by that unearthly beauty which the calm of
+death gives to the body before it perishes.
+
+"Look here," said Ronquerolles when Montriveau reappeared on
+deck, "THAT was a woman once, now it is nothing.  Let us tie a
+cannon ball to both feet and throw the body overboard; and if
+ever you think of her again, think of her as of some book that
+you read as a boy."
+
+"Yes," assented Montriveau, "it is nothing now but a dream."
+
+"That is sensible of you.  Now, after this, have passions; but
+as for love, a man ought to know how to place it wisely; it is
+only a woman's last love that can satisfy a man's first love."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Duchesse de Langeais
+
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