Camille calls your resolution obstinacy; I defend you, and I call it virtue. You are only the more beautiful because of it. I know my destiny, and the pride of a Breton can rise to the height of the woman who makes her pride a virtue.
Therefore, dear Beatrix, be kind, be consoling to me. When victims were selected, they crowned them with flowers; so do you to me;you owe me the flowers of pity, the music of my sacrifice. Am Inot a proof of your grandeur? Will you not rise to the level of my disdained love,--disdained in spite of its sincerity, in spite of its immortal passion?
Ask Camille how I behaved to her after the day she told me, on her return to Les Touches, that she loved Claude Vignon. I was mute; Isuffered in silence. Well, for you I will show even greater strength,--I will bury my feelings in my heart, if you will not drive me to despair, if you will only understand my heroism. Asingle word of praise from you is enough to make me bear the pains of martyrdom.
But if you persist in this cold silence, this deadly disdain, you will make me think you fear me. Ah, Beatrix, be with me what you are,--charming, witty, gay, and tender. Talk to me of Conti, as Camille has talked to me of Claude. I have no other spirit in my soul, no other genius but that of love; nothing is there that can make you fear me; I will be in your presence as if I loved you not.
Can you reject so humble a prayer?--the prayer of a child who only asks that his Light shall lighten him, that his Sun may warm him.
He whom you love can be with you at all times, but I, poor Calyste! have so few days in which to see you; you will soon be freed from me. Therefore I may return to Les Touches to-morrow, may I not? You will not refuse my arm for that excursion? We shall go together to Croisic and to Batz? If you do not go I shall take it for an answer,--Calyste will understand it!
There were four more pages of the same sort in close, fine writing, wherein Calyste explained the sort of threat conveyed in the last words, and related his youth and life; but the tale was chiefly told in exclamatory phrases, with many of those points and dashes of which modern literature is so prodigal when it comes to crucial passages,--as though they were planks offered to the reader's imagination, to help him across crevasses. The rest of this artless letter was merely repetition. But if it was not likely to touch Madame de Rochefide, and would very slightly interest the admirers of strong emotions, it made the mother weep, as she said to her son, in her tender voice,--"My child, you are not happy."
This tumultuous poem of sentiments which had arisen like a storm in Calyste's heart, terrified the baroness; for the first time in her life she read a love-letter.
Calyste was standing in deep perplexity; how could he send that letter? He followed his mother back into the salon with the letter in his pocket and burning in his heart like fire. The Chevalier du Halga was still there, and the last deal of a lively /mouche/ was going on.
Charlotte de Kergarouet, in despair at Calyste's indifference, was paying attention to his father as a means of promoting her marriage.
Calyste wandered hither and thither like a butterfly which had flown into the room by mistake. At last, when /mouche/ was over, he drew the Chevalier du Halga into the great salon, from which he sent away Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel's page and Mariotte.
"What does he want of the chevalier?" said old Zephirine, addressing her friend Jacqueline.
"Calyste strikes me as half-crazy," replied Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel.
"He pays Charlotte no more attention than if she were a /paludiere/."Remembering that the Chevalier du Halga had the reputation of having navigated in his youth the waters of gallantry, it came into Calyste's head to consult him.
"What is the best way to send a letter secretly to one's mistress," he said to the old gentleman in a whisper.
"Well, you can slip it into the hand of her maid with a louis or two underneath it; for sooner or later the maid will find out the secret, and it is just as well to let her into it at once," replied the chevalier, on whose face was the gleam of a smile. "But, on the whole, it is best to give the letter yourself.""A louis or two!" exclaimed Calyste.
He snatched up his hat and ran to Les Touches, where he appeared like an apparition in the little salon, guided thither by the voices of Camille and Beatrix. They were sitting on the sofa together, apparently on the best of terms. Calyste, with the headlong impulse of love, flung himself heedlessly on the sofa beside the marquise, took her hand, and slipped the letter within it. He did this so rapidly that Felicite, watchful as she was, did not perceive it. Calyste's heart was tingling with an emotion half sweet, half painful, as he felt the hand of Beatrix press his own, and saw her, without interrupting her words, or seeming in the least disconcerted, slip the letter into her glove.
"You fling yourself on a woman's dress without mercy," she said, laughing.
"Calyste is a boy who is wanting in common-sense," said Felicite, not sparing him an open rebuke.
Calyste rose, took Camille's hand, and kissed it. Then he went to the piano and ran his finger-nail over the notes, making them all sound at once, like a rapid scale. This exuberance of joy surprised Camille, and made her thoughtful; she signed to Calyste to come to her.
"What is the matter with you?" she whispered in his ear.
"Nothing," he replied.
"There is something between them," thought Mademoiselle des Touches.
The marquise was impenetrable. Camille tried to make Calyste talk, hoping that his artless mind would betray itself; but the youth excused himself on the ground that his mother expected him, and he left Les Touches at eleven o'clock,--not, however, without having faced the fire of a piercing glance from Camille, to whom that excuse was made for the first time.
