THE DESERTED WOMAN

 BY

 HONORE DE BALZAC

 Translated By

 Ellen Marriage

 DEDICATION

 To Her Grace the Duchesse d'Abrantes, from her devoted servant, Honore de Balzac. PARIS, August 1835. 

 THE DESERTED WOMAN

In the early spring of 1822, the Paris doctors sent to Lower Normandya young man just recovering from an inflammatory complaint, brought onby overstudy, or perhaps by excess of some other kind. Hisconvalescence demanded complete rest, a light diet, bracing air, andfreedom from excitement of every kind, and the fat lands of Bessinseemed to offer all these conditions of recovery. To Bayeux, apicturesque place about six miles from the sea, the patient thereforebetook himself, and was received with the cordiality characteristic ofrelatives who lead very retired lives, and regard a new arrival as agodsend. 

All little towns are alike, save for a few local customs. When M. LeBaron Gaston de Nueil, the young Parisian in question, had spent twoor three evenings in his cousin's house, or with the friends who madeup Mme. De Sainte-Severe's circle, he very soon had made theacquaintance of the persons whom this exclusive society considered tobe "the whole town. " Gaston de Nueil recognized in them the invariablestock characters which every observer finds in every one of the manycapitals of the little States which made up the France of an olderday. 

First of all comes the family whose claims to nobility are regarded asincontestable, and of the highest antiquity in the department, thoughno one has so much as heard of them a bare fifty leagues away. Thisspecies of royal family on a small scale is distantly, butunmistakably, connected with the Navarreins and the Grandlieu family, and related to the Cadignans, and the Blamont-Chauvrys. The head ofthe illustrious house is invariably a determined sportsman. He has nomanners, crushes everybody else with his nominal superiority, tolerates the sub-prefect much as he submits to the taxes, anddeclines to acknowledge any of the novel powers created by thenineteenth century, pointing out to you as a political monstrosity thefact that the prime minister is a man of no birth. His wife takes adecided tone, and talks in a loud voice. She has had adorers in hertime, but takes the sacrament regularly at Easter. She brings up herdaughters badly, and is of the opinion that they will always be richenough with their name. 

Neither husband nor wife has the remotest idea of modern luxury. Theyretain a livery only seen elsewhere on the stage, and cling to oldfashions in plate, furniture, and equipages, as in language and mannerof life. This is a kind of ancient state, moreover, that suitspassably well with provincial thrift. The good folk are, in fact, thelords of the manor of a bygone age, /minus/ the quitrents and heriots, the pack of hounds and the laced coats; full of honor amongthemselves, and one and all loyally devoted to princes whom they onlysee at a distance. The historical house /incognito/ is as quaint asurvival as a piece of ancient tapestry. Vegetating somewhere amongthem there is sure to be an uncle or a brother, a lieutenant-general, an old courtier of the Kings's, who wears the red ribbon of the orderof Saint-Louis, and went to Hanover with the Marechal de Richelieu:and here you will find him like a stray leaf out of some old pamphletof the time of Louis Quinze. 

This fossil greatness finds a rival in another house, wealthier, though of less ancient lineage. Husband and wife spend a couple ofmonths of every winter in Paris, bringing back with them its frivoloustone and short-lived contemporary crazes. Madame is a woman offashion, though she looks rather conscious of her clothes, and isalways behind the mode. She scoffs, however, at the ignorance affectedby her neighbors. /Her/ plate is of modern fashion; she has "grooms, "Negroes, a valet-de-chambre, and what-not. Her oldest son drives atilbury, and does nothing (the estate is entailed upon him), hisyounger brother is auditor to a Council of State. The father is wellposted up in official scandals, and tells you anecdotes of LouisXVIII. And Madame du Cayla. He invests his money in the five percents, and is careful to avoid the topic of cider, but has been knownoccasionally to fall a victim to the craze for rectifying theconjectural sums-total of the various fortunes of the department. Heis a member of the Departmental Council, has his clothes from Paris, and wears the Cross of the Legion of Honor. In short, he is a countrygentleman who has fully grasped the significance of the Restoration, and is coining money at the Chamber, but his Royalism is less purethan that of the rival house; he takes the /Gazette/ and the /Debats/, the other family only read the /Quotidienne/. 

His lordship the Bishop, a sometime Vicar-General, fluctuates betweenthe two powers, who pay him the respect due to religion, but at timesthey bring home to him the moral appended by the worthy Lafontaine tothe fable of the /Ass laden with Relics/. The good man's origin isdistinctly plebeian. 

Then come stars of the second magnitude, men of family with ten ortwelve hundred livres a year, captains in the navy or cavalryregiments, or nothing at all. Out on the roads, on horseback, theyrank half-way between the cure bearing the sacraments and the taxcollector on his rounds. Pretty nearly all of them have been in thePages or in the Household Troops, and now are peaceably ending theirdays in a /faisance-valoir/, more interested in felling timber and thecider prospects than in the Monarchy. 

Still they talk of the Charter and the Liberals while the cards aremaking, or over a game at backgammon, when they have exhausted theusual stock of /dots/, and have married everybody off according to thegenealogies which they all know by heart. Their womenkind are haughtydames, who assume the airs of Court ladies in their basket chaises. They huddle themselves up in shawls and caps by way of full dress; andtwice a year, after ripe deliberation, have a new bonnet from Paris, brought as opportunity offers. Exemplary wives are they for the mostpart, and garrulous. 

These are the principal elements of aristocratic gentility, with a fewoutlying old maids of good family, spinsters who have solved theproblem: given a human being, to remain absolutely stationary. Theymight be sealed up in the houses where you see them; their faces andtheir dresses are literally part of the fixtures of the town, and theprovince in which they dwell. They are its tradition, its memory, itsquintessence, the /genius loci/ incarnate. There is something frigidand monumental about these ladies; they know exactly when to laugh andwhen to shake their heads, and every now and then give out someutterance which passes current as a witticism. 

A few rich townspeople have crept into the miniature FaubourgSaint-Germain, thanks to their money or their aristocratic leanings. But despite their forty years, the circle still say of them, "YoungSo-and-so has sound opinions, " and of such do they make deputies. Asa rule, the elderly spinsters are their patronesses, not withoutcomment. 

Finally, in this exclusive little set include two or threeecclesiastics, admitted for the sake of their cloth, or for their wit;for these great nobles find their own society rather dull, andintroduce the bourgeois element into their drawing-rooms, as a bakerputs leaven into his dough. 

The sum-total contained by all heads put together consists of acertain quantity of antiquated notions; a few new inflections brewedin company of an evening being added from time to time to the commonstock. Like sea-water in a little creek, the phrases which representthese ideas surge up daily, punctually obeying the tidal laws ofconversation in their flow and ebb; you hear the hollow echo ofyesterday, to-day, to-morrow, a year hence, and for evermore. On allthings here below they pass immutable judgments, which go to make up abody of tradition into which no power of mortal man can infuse onedrop of wit or sense. The lives of these persons revolve with theregularity of clockwork in an orbit of use and wont which admits of nomore deviation or change than their opinions on matters religious, political, moral, or literary. 

If a stranger is admitted to the /cenacle/, every member of it in turnwill say (not without a trace of irony), "You will not find thebrilliancy of your Parisian society here, " and proceed forthwith tocriticise the life led by his neighbors, as if he himself were anexception who had striven, and vainly striven, to enlighten the rest. But any stranger so ill advised as to concur in any of their freelyexpressed criticism of each other, is pronounced at once to be anill-natured person, a heathen, an outlaw, a reprobate Parisian "asParisians mostly are. "

Before Gaston de Nueil made his appearance in this little world ofstrictly observed etiquette, where every detail of life is anintegrant part of a whole, and everything is known; where the valuesof personalty and real estate is quoted like stocks on the vast sheetof the newspaper--before his arrival he had been weighed in theunerring scales of Bayeusaine judgment. 

His cousin, Mme. De Sainte-Severe, had already given out the amount ofhis fortune, and the sum of his expectations, had produced the familytree, and expatiated on the talents, breeding, and modesty of thisparticular branch. So he received the precise amount of attentions towhich he was entitled; he was accepted as a worthy scion of a goodstock; and, for he was but twenty-three, was made welcome withoutceremony, though certain young ladies and mothers of daughters lookednot unkindly upon him. 

He had an income of eighteen thousand livres from land in the valleyof the Auge; and sooner or later his father, as in duty bound, wouldleave him the chateau of Manerville, with the lands thereuntobelonging. As for his education, political career, personal qualities, and qualifications--no one so much as thought of raising thequestions. His land was undeniable, his rentals steady; excellentplantations had been made; the tenants paid for repairs, rates, andtaxes; the apple-trees were thirty-eight years old; and, to crown all, his father was in treaty for two hundred acres of woodland justoutside the paternal park, which he intended to enclose with walls. Nohopes of a political career, no fame on earth, can compare with suchadvantages as these. 

Whether out of malice or design, Mme. De Sainte-Severe omitted tomention that Gaston had an elder brother; nor did Gaston himself say aword about him. But, at the same time, it is true that the brother wasconsumptive, and to all appearance would shortly be laid in earth, lamented and forgotten. 

At first Gaston de Nueil amused himself at the expense of the circle. He drew, as it were, for his mental album, a series of portraits ofthese folk, with their angular, wrinkled faces, and hooked noses, their crotchets and ludicrous eccentricities of dress, portraits whichpossessed all the racy flavor of truth. He delighted in their"Normanisms, " in the primitive quaintness of their ideas andcharacters. For a short time he flung himself into their squirrel'slife of busy gyrations in a cage. Then he began to feel the want ofvariety, and grew tired of it. It was like the life of the cloister, cut short before it had well begun. He drifted on till he reached acrisis, which is neither spleen nor disgust, but combines all thesymptoms of both. When a human being is transplanted into anuncongenial soil, to lead a starved, stunted existence, there isalways a little discomfort over the transition. Then, gradually, ifnothing removes him from his surroundings, he grows accustomed tothem, and adapts himself to the vacuity which grows upon him andrenders him powerless. Even now, Gaston's lungs were accustomed to theair; and he was willing to discern a kind of vegetable happiness indays that brought no mental exertion and no responsibilities. Theconstant stirring of the sap of life, the fertilizing influences ofmind on mind, after which he had sought so eagerly in Paris, werebeginning to fade from his memory, and he was in a fair way ofbecoming a fossil with these fossils, and ending his days among them, content, like the companions of Ulysses, in his gross envelope. 

One evening Gaston de Nueil was seated between a dowager and one ofthe vicars-general of the diocese, in a gray-paneled drawing-room, floored with large white tiles. The family portraits which adorned thewalls looked down upon four card-tables, and some sixteen personsgathered about them, chattering over their whist. Gaston, thinking ofnothing, digesting one of those exquisite dinners to which theprovincial looks forward all through the day, found himself justifyingthe customs of the country. 

He began to understand why these good folk continued to play withyesterday's pack of cards and shuffle them on a threadbare tablecloth, and how it was that they had ceased to dress for themselves or others. He saw the glimmerings of something like a philosophy in the eventenor of their perpetual round, in the calm of their methodicalmonotony, in their ignorance of the refinements of luxury. Indeed, healmost came to think that luxury profited nothing; and even now, thecity of Paris, with its passions, storms, and pleasures, was scarcelymore than a memory of childhood. 

He admired in all sincerity the red hands, and shy, bashful manner ofsome young lady who at first struck him as an awkward simpleton, unattractive to the last degree, and surprisingly ridiculous. His doomwas sealed. He had gone from the provinces to Paris; he had led thefeverish life of Paris; and now he would have sunk back into thelifeless life of the provinces, but for a chance remark which reachedhis ear--a few words that called up a swift rush of such emotion as hemight have felt when a strain of really good music mingles with theaccompaniment of some tedious opera. 

"You went to call on Mme. De Beauseant yesterday, did you not?" Thespeaker was an elderly lady, and she addressed the head of the localroyal family. 

"I went this morning. She was so poorly and depressed, that I couldnot persuade her to dine with us to-morrow. "

"With Mme. De Champignelles?" exclaimed the dowager with somethinglike astonishment in her manner. 

"With my wife, " calmly assented the noble. "Mme. De Beauseant isdescended from the House of Burgundy, on the spindle side, 'tis true, but the name atones for everything. My wife is very much attached tothe Vicomtesse, and the poor lady has lived alone for such a longwhile, that----"

The Marquis de Champignelles looked round about him while he spokewith an air of cool unconcern, so that it was almost impossible toguess whether he made a concession to Mme. De Beauseant's misfortunes, or paid homage to her noble birth; whether he felt flattered toreceive her in his house, or, on the contrary, sheer pride was themotive that led him to try to force the country families to meet theVicomtesse. 

The women appeared to take counsel of each other by a glance; therewas a sudden silence in the room, and it was felt that their attitudewas one of disapproval. 

"Does this Mme. De Beauseant happen to be the lady whose adventurewith M. D'Ajuda-Pinto made so much noise?" asked Gaston of hisneighbor. 

"The very same, " he was told. "She came to Courcelles after themarriage of the Marquis d'Ajuda; nobody visits her. She has, besides, too much sense not to see that she is in a false position, so she hasmade no attempt to see any one. M. De Champignelles and a fewgentlemen went to call upon her, but she would see no one but M. DeChampignelles, perhaps because he is a connection of the family. Theyare related through the Beauseants; the father of the present Vicomtemarried a Mlle. De Champignelles of the older branch. But though theVicomtesse de Beauseant is supposed to be a descendant of the House ofBurgundy, you can understand that we could not admit a wife separatedfrom her husband into our society here. We are foolish enough still tocling to these old-fashioned ideas. There was the less excuse for theVicomtesse, because M. De Beauseant is a well-bred man of the world, who would have been quite ready to listen to reason. But his wife isquite mad----" and so forth and so forth. 

M. De Nueil, still listening to the speaker's voice, gathered nothingof the sense of the words; his brain was too full of thick-comingfancies. Fancies? What other name can you give to the alluring charmsof an adventure that tempts the imagination and sets vague hopesspringing up in the soul; to the sense of coming events and mysteriousfelicity and fear at hand, while as yet there is no substance of facton which these phantoms of caprice can fix and feed? Over thesefancies thought hovers, conceiving impossible projects, giving in thegerm all the joys of love. Perhaps, indeed, all passion is containedin that thought-germ, as the beauty, and fragrance, and rich color ofthe flower is all packed in the seed. 

M. De Nueil did not know that Mme. De Beauseant had taken refuge inNormandy, after a notoriety which women for the most part envy andcondemn, especially when youth and beauty in some sort excuse thetransgression. Any sort of celebrity bestows an inconceivableprestige. Apparently for women, as for families, the glory of thecrime effaces the stain; and if such and such a noble house is proudof its tale of heads that have fallen on the scaffold, a young andpretty woman becomes more interesting for the dubious renown of ahappy love or a scandalous desertion, and the more she is to bepitied, the more she excites our sympathies. We are only pitiless tothe commonplace. If, moreover, we attract all eyes, we are to allintents and purposes great; how, indeed, are we to be seen unless weraise ourselves above other people's heads? The common herd ofhumanity feels an involuntary respect for any person who can riseabove it, and is not over-particular as to the means by which theyrise. 

It may have been that some such motives influenced Gaston de Nueil atunawares, or perhaps it was curiosity, or a craving for some interestin his life, or, in a word, that crowd of inexplicable impulses which, for want of a better name, we are wont to call "fatality, " that drewhim to Mme. De Beauseant. 

The figure of the Vicomtesse de Beauseant rose up suddenly before himwith gracious thronging associations. She was a new world for him, aworld of fears and hopes, a world to fight for and to conquer. Inevitably he felt the contrast between this vision and the humanbeings in the shabby room; and then, in truth, she was a woman; whatwoman had he seen so far in this dull, little world, where calculationreplaced thought and feeling, where courtesy was a cut-and-driedformality, and ideas of the very simplest were too alarming to bereceived or to pass current? The sound of Mme. De Beauseant's namerevived a young man's dreams and wakened urgent desires that had laindormant for a little. 

Gaston de Nueil was absent-minded and preoccupied for the rest of theevening. He was pondering how he might gain access to Mme. DeBeauseant, and truly it was no very easy matter. She was believed tobe extremely clever. But if men and women of parts may be captivatedby something subtle or eccentric, they are also exacting, and can readall that lies below the surface; and after the first step has beentaken, the chances of failure and success in the difficult task ofpleasing them are about even. In this particular case, moreover, theVicomtesse, besides the pride of her position, had all the dignity ofher name. Her utter seclusion was the least of the barriers raisedbetween her and the world. For which reasons it was well-nighimpossible that a stranger, however well born, could hope foradmittance; and yet, the next morning found M. De Nueil taking hiswalks abroad in the direction of Courcelles, a dupe of illusionsnatural at his age. Several times he made the circuit of the gardenwalls, looking earnestly through every gap at the closed shutters oropen windows, hoping for some romantic chance, on which he foundedschemes for introducing himself into this unknown lady's presence, without a thought of their impracticability. Morning after morning wasspent in this way to mighty purpose; but with each day's walk, thatvision of a woman living apart from the world, of love's martyr buriedin solitude, loomed larger in his thoughts, and was enshrined in hissoul. So Gaston de Nueil walked under the walls of Courcelles, andsome gardener's heavy footstep would set his heart beating high withhope. 

He thought of writing to Mme. De Beauseant, but on matureconsideration, what can you say to a woman whom you have never seen, acomplete stranger? And Gaston had little self-confidence. Like mostyoung persons with a plentiful crop of illusions still standing, hedreaded the mortifying contempt of silence more than death itself, andshuddered at the thought of sending his first tender epistle forth toface so many chances of being thrown on the fire. He was distracted byinnumerable conflicting ideas. But by dint of inventing chimeras, weaving romances, and cudgeling his brains, he hit at last upon one ofthe hopeful stratagems that are sure to occur to your mind if youpersevere long enough, a stratagem which must make clear to the mostinexperienced woman that here was a man who took a fervent interest inher. The caprice of social conventions puts as many barriers betweenlovers as any Oriental imagination can devise in the most delightfullyfantastic tale; indeed, the most extravagant pictures are seldomexaggerations. In real life, as in the fairy tales, the woman belongsto him who can reach her and set her free from the position in whichshe languishes. The poorest of calenders that ever fell in love withthe daughter of the Khalif is in truth scarcely further from his ladythan Gaston de Nueil from Mme. De Beauseant. The Vicomtesse knewabsolutely nothing of M. De Nueil's wanderings round her house; Gastonde Nueil's love grew to the height of the obstacles to overleap; andthe distance set between him and his extemporized lady-love producedthe usual effect of distance, in lending enchantment. 

One day, confident in his inspiration, he hoped everything from thelove that must pour forth from his eyes. Spoken words, in his opinion, were more eloquent than the most passionate letter; and, besides, hewould engage feminine curiosity to plead for him. He went, therefore, to M. De Champignelles, proposing to employ that gentleman for thebetter success of his enterprise. He informed the Marquis that he hadbeen entrusted with a delicate and important commission whichconcerned the Vicomtesse de Beauseant, that he felt doubtful whethershe would read a letter written in an unknown handwriting, or putconfidence in a stranger. Would M. De Champignelles, on his nextvisit, ask the Vicomtesse if she would consent to receive him--Gastonde Nueil? While he asked the Marquis to keep his secret in case of arefusal, he very ingeniously insinuated sufficient reasons for his ownadmittance, to be duly passed on to the Vicomtesse. Was not M. DeChampignelles a man of honor, a loyal gentleman incapable of lendinghimself to any transaction in bad taste, nay, the merest suspicion ofbad taste! Love lends a young man all the self-possession and astutecraft of an old ambassador; all the Marquis' harmless vanities weregratified, and the haughty grandee was completely duped. He tried hardto fathom Gaston's secret; but the latter, who would have been greatlyperplexed to tell it, turned off M. De Champignelles' adroitquestioning with a Norman's shrewdness, till the Marquis, as a gallantFrenchman, complimented his young visitor upon his discretion. 

M. De Champignelles hurried off at once to Courcelles, with thateagerness to serve a pretty woman which belongs to his time of life. In the Vicomtesse de Beauseant's position, such a message was likelyto arouse keen curiosity; so, although her memory supplied no reasonat all that could bring M. De Nueil to her house, she saw no objectionto his visit--after some prudent inquiries as to his family andcondition. At the same time, she began by a refusal. Then shediscussed the propriety of the matter with M. De Champignelles, directing her questions so as to discover, if possible, whether heknew the motives for the visit, and finally revoked her negativeanswer. The discussion and the discretion shown perforce by theMarquis had piqued her curiosity. 

M. De Champignelles had no mind to cut a ridiculous figure. He said, with the air of a man who can keep another's counsel, that theVicomtesse must know the purpose of this visit perfectly well; whilethe Vicomtesse, in all sincerity, had no notion what it could be. Mme. De Beauseant, in perplexity, connected Gaston with people whom he hadnever met, went astray after various wild conjectures, and askedherself if she had seen this M. De Nueil before. In truth, nolove-letter, however sincere or skilfully indited, could have producedso much effect as this riddle. Again and again Mme. De Beauseantpuzzled over it. 

When Gaston heard that he might call upon the Vicomtesse, his raptureat so soon obtaining the ardently longed-for good fortune was mingledwith singular embarrassment. How was he to contrive a suitable sequelto this stratagem?

"Bah! I shall see /her/, " he said over and over again to himself as hedressed. "See her, and that is everything!"

He fell to hoping that once across the threshold of Courcelles heshould find an expedient for unfastening this Gordian knot of his owntying. There are believers in the omnipotence of necessity who neverturn back; the close presence of danger is an inspiration that callsout all their powers for victory. Gaston de Nueil was one of these. 

He took particular pains with his dress, imagining, as youth is apt toimagine, that success or failure hangs on the position of a curl, andignorant of the fact that anything is charming in youth. And, in anycase, such women as Mme. De Beauseant are only attracted by the charmsof wit or character of an unusual order. Greatness of characterflatters their vanity, promises a great passion, seems to imply acomprehension of the requirements of their hearts. Wit amuses them, responds to the subtlety of their natures, and they think that theyare understood. And what do all women wish but to be amused, understood, or adored? It is only after much reflection on the thingsof life that we understand the consummate coquetry of neglect of dressand reserve at a first interview; and by the time we have gainedsufficient astuteness for successful strategy, we are too old toprofit by our experience. 

While Gaston's lack of confidence in his mental equipment drove him toborrow charms from his clothes, Madame de Beauseant herself wasinstinctively giving more attention to her toilette. 

"I would rather not frighten people, at all events, " she said toherself as she arranged her hair. 

In M. De Nueil's character, person, and manner there was that touch ofunconscious originality which gives a kind of flavor to things thatany one might say or do, and absolves everything that they may chooseto do or say. He was highly cultivated, he had a keen brain, and aface, mobile as his own nature, which won the goodwill of others. Thepromise of passion and tenderness in the bright eyes was fulfilled byan essentially kindly heart. The resolution which he made as heentered the house at Courcelles was in keeping with his frank natureand ardent imagination. But, bold has he was with love, his heart beatviolently when he had crossed the great court, laid out like anEnglish garden, and the man-servant, who had taken his name to theVicomtesse, returned to say that she would receive him. 

"M. Le Baron de Nueil. "

Gaston came in slowly, but with sufficient ease of manner; and it is amore difficult thing, be it said, to enter a room where there is butone woman, than a room that holds a score. 

A great fire was burning on the hearth in spite of the mild weather, and by the soft light of the candles in the sconces he saw a youngwoman sitting on a high-backed /bergere/ in the angle by the hearth. The seat was so low that she could move her head freely; every turn ofit was full of grace and delicate charm, whether she bent, leaningforward, or raised and held it erect, slowly and languidly, as thoughit were a heavy burden, so low that she could cross her feet and letthem appear, or draw them back under the folds of a long black dress. 

The Vicomtesse made as if she would lay the book that she was readingon a small, round stand; but as she did so, she turned towards M. DeNueil, and the volume, insecurely laid upon the edge, fell to theground between the stand and the sofa. This did not seem to disconcerther. She looked up, bowing almost imperceptibly in response to hisgreeting, without rising from the depths of the low chair in which shelay. Bending forwards, she stirred the fire briskly, and stooped topick up a fallen glove, drawing it mechanically over her left hand, while her eyes wandered in search of its fellow. The glance wasinstantly checked, however, for she stretched out a thin, white, all-but-transparent right hand, with flawless ovals of rose-colorednail at the tips of the slender, ringless fingers, and pointed to achair as if to bid Gaston be seated. He sat down, and she turned herface questioningly towards him. Words cannot describe the subtlety ofthe winning charm and inquiry in that gesture; deliberate in itskindliness, gracious yet accurate in expression, it was the outcome ofearly education and of a constant use and wont of the graciousness oflife. These movements of hers, so swift, so deft, succeeded each otherby the blending of a pretty woman's fastidious carelessness with thehigh-bred manner of a great lady. 

Mme. De Beauseant stood out in such strong contrast against theautomatons among whom he had spent two months of exile in thatout-of-the-world district of Normandy, that he could not but find inher the realization of his romantic dreams; and, on the other hand, he could not compare her perfections with those of other women whom hehad formerly admired. Here in her presence, in a drawing-room like somesalon in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, full of costly trifles lyingabout upon the tables, and flowers and books, he felt as if he wereback in Paris. It was a real Parisian carpet beneath his feet, he sawonce more the high-bred type of Parisienne, the fragile outlines ofher form, her exquisite charm, her disdain of the studied effectswhich did so much to spoil provincial women. 

Mme. De Beauseant had fair hair and dark eyes, and the pale complexionthat belongs to fair hair. She held up her brow nobly like some fallenangel, grown proud through the fall, disdainful of pardon. Her way ofgathering her thick hair into a crown of plaits above the broad, curving lines of the bandeaux upon her forehead, added to thequeenliness of her face. Imagination could discover the ducal coronetof Burgundy in the spiral threads of her golden hair; all the courageof her house seemed to gleam from the great lady's brilliant eyes, such courage as women use to repel audacity or scorn, for they werefull of tenderness for gentleness. The outline of that little head, soadmirably poised above the long, white throat, the delicate, finefeatures, the subtle curves of the lips, the mobile face itself, worean expression of delicate discretion, a faint semblance of ironysuggestive of craft and insolence. Yet it would have been difficult torefuse forgiveness to those two feminine failings in her; for thelines that came out in her forehead whenever her face was not inrepose, like her upward glances (that pathetic trick of manner), toldunmistakably of unhappiness, of a passion that had all but cost herher life. A woman, sitting in the great, silent salon, a woman cut offfrom the rest of the world in this remote little valley, alone, withthe memories of her brilliant, happy, and impassioned youth, ofcontinual gaiety and homage paid on all sides, now replaced by thehorrors of the void--was there not something in the sight to strikeawe that deepened with reflection? Consciousness of her own valuelurked in her smile. She was neither wife nor mother, she was anoutlaw; she had lost the one heart that could set her pulses beatingwithout shame; she had nothing from without to support her reelingsoul; she must even look for strength from within, live her own life, cherish no hope save that of forsaken love, which looks forward toDeath's coming, and hastens his lagging footsteps. And this while lifewas in its prime. Oh! to feel destined for happiness and to die--neverhaving given nor received it! A woman too! What pain was this! Thesethoughts flashing across M. De Nueil's mind like lightning, left himvery humble in the presence of the greatest charm with which woman canbe invested. The triple aureole of beauty, nobleness, and misfortunedazzled him; he stood in dreamy, almost open-mouthed admiration of theVicomtesse. But he found nothing to say to her. 

Mme. De Beauseant, by no means displeased, no doubt, by his surprise, held out her hand with a kindly but imperious gesture; then, summoninga smile to her pale lips, as if obeying, even yet, the woman's impulseto be gracious:

"I have heard from M. De Champignelles of a message which you havekindly undertaken to deliver, monsieur, " she said. "Can it befrom----"

With that terrible phrase Gaston understood, even more clearly thanbefore, his own ridiculous position, the bad taste and bad faith ofhis behavior towards a woman so noble and so unfortunate. He reddened. The thoughts that crowded in upon him could be read in his troubledeyes; but suddenly, with the courage which youth draws from a sense ofits own wrongdoing, he gained confidence, and very humbly interruptedMme. De Beauseant. 

"Madame, " he faltered out, "I do not deserve the happiness of seeingyou. I have deceived you basely. However strong the motive may havebeen, it can never excuse the pitiful subterfuge which I used to gainmy end. But, madame, if your goodness will permit me to tell you----"

The Vicomtesse glanced at M. De Nueil, haughty disdain in her wholemanner. She stretched her hand to the bell and rang it. 

"Jacques, " she said, "light this gentleman to the door, " and shelooked with dignity at the visitor. 

She rose proudly, bowed to Gaston, and then stooped for the fallenvolume. If all her movements on his entrance had been caressinglydainty and gracious, her every gesture now was no less severelyfrigid. M. De Nueil rose to his feet, but he stood waiting. Mme. DeBeauseant flung another glance at him. "Well, why do you not go?" sheseemed to say. 

There was such cutting irony in that glance that Gaston grew white asif he were about to faint. Tears came into his eyes, but he would notlet them fall, and scorching shame and despair dried them. He lookedback at Madame de Beauseant, and a certain pride and consciousness ofhis own worth was mingled with his humility; the Vicomtesse had aright to punish him, but ought she to use her right? Then he went out. 

As he crossed the ante-chamber, a clear head, and wits sharpened bypassion, were not slow to grasp the danger of his situation. 

"If I leave this house, I can never come back to it again, " he said tohimself. "The Vicomtesse will always think of me as a fool. It isimpossible that a woman, and such a woman, should not guess the lovethat she has called forth. Perhaps she feels a little, vague, involuntary regret for dismissing me so abruptly. --But she could notdo otherwise, and she cannot recall her sentence. It rests with me tounderstand her. "

At that thought Gaston stopped short on the flight of steps with anexclamation; he turned sharply, saying, "I have forgotten something, "and went back to the salon. The lackey, all respect for a baron andthe rights of property, was completely deceived by the naturalutterance, and followed him. Gaston returned quietly and unannounced. The Vicomtesse, thinking that the intruder was the servant, looked upand beheld M. De Nueil. 

"Jacques lighted me to the door, " he said, with a half-sad smile whichdispelled any suspicion of jest in those words, while the tone inwhich they were spoken went to the heart. Mme. De Beauseant wasdisarmed. 

"Very well, take a seat, " she said. 

Gaston eagerly took possession of a chair. His eyes were shining withhappiness; the Vicomtesse, unable to endure the brilliant light inthem, looked down at the book. She was enjoying a delicious, ever newsensation; the sense of a man's delight in her presence is anunfailing feminine instinct. And then, besides, he had divined her, and a woman is so grateful to the man who has mastered the apparentlycapricious, yet logical, reasoning of her heart; who can track herthought through the seemingly contradictory workings of her mind, andread the sensations, shy or bold, written in fleeting red, abewildering maze of coquetry and self-revelation. 

"Madame, " Gaston exclaimed in a low voice, "my blunder you know, butyou do not know how much I am to blame. If you only knew what joy itwas to----"

"Ah! take care, " she said, holding up one finger with an air ofmystery, as she put out her hand towards the bell. 

The charming gesture, the gracious threat, no doubt called up some sadthought, some memory of the old happy time when she could be whollycharming and gentle without an afterthought; when the gladness of herheart justified every caprice, and put charm into every leastmovement. The lines in her forehead gathered between her brows, andthe expression of her face grew dark in the soft candle-light. Thenlooking across at M. De Nueil gravely but not unkindly, she spoke likea woman who deeply feels the meaning of every word. 

"This is all very ridiculous! Once upon a time, monsieur, whenthoughtless high spirits were my privilege, I should have laughedfearlessly over your visit with you. But now my life is very muchchanged. I cannot do as I like, I am obliged to think. What brings youhere? Is it curiosity? In that case I am paying dearly for a littlefleeting pleasure. Have you fallen /passionately/ in love already witha woman whom you have never seen, a woman with whose name slander has, of course, been busy? If so, your motive in making this visit is basedon disrespect, on an error which accident brought into notoriety. "

She flung her book down scornfully upon the table, then, with aterrible look at Gaston, she went on: "Because I once was weak, mustit be supposed that I am always weak? This is horrible, degrading. Orhave you come here to pity me? You are very young to offer sympathywith heart troubles. Understand this clearly, sir, that I would ratherhave scorn than pity. I will not endure compassion from any one. "

There was a brief pause. 

"Well, sir, " she continued (and the face that she turned to him wasgentle and sad), "whatever motive induced this rash intrusion upon mysolitude, it is very painful to me, you see. You are too young to betotally without good feeling, so surely you will feel that thisbehavior of yours is improper. I forgive you for it, and, as you see, I am speaking of it to you without bitterness. You will not come hereagain, will you? I am entreating when I might command. If you come tosee me again, neither you nor I can prevent the whole place frombelieving that you are my lover, and you would cause me greatadditional annoyance. You do not mean to do that, I think. "

She said no more, but looked at him with a great dignity which abashedhim. 

"I have done wrong, madame, " he said, with deep feeling in his voice, "but it was through enthusiasm and thoughtlessness and eager desire ofhappiness, the qualities and defects of my age. Now, I understand thatI ought not to have tried to see you, " he added; "but, at the sametime, the desire was a very natural one"--and, making an appeal tofeeling rather than to the intellect, he described the weariness ofhis enforced exile. He drew a portrait of a young man in whom thefires of life were burning themselves out, conveying the impressionthat here was a heart worthy of tender love, a heart which, notwithstanding, had never known the joys of love for a young andbeautiful woman of refinement and taste. He explained, withoutattempting to justify, his unusual conduct. He flattered Mme. DeBeauseant by showing that she had realized for him the ideal lady of ayoung man's dream, the ideal sought by so many, and so often sought invain. Then he touched upon his morning prowlings under the walls ofCourcelles, and his wild thoughts at the first sight of the house, till he excited that vague feeling of indulgence which a woman canfind in her heart for the follies committed for her sake. 

An impassioned voice was speaking in the chill solitude; the speakerbrought with him a warm breath of youth and the charms of a carefullycultivated mind. It was so long since Mme. De Beauseant had feltstirred by real feeling delicately expressed, that it affected hervery strongly now. In spite of herself, she watched M. De Nueil'sexpressive face, and admired the noble countenance of a soul, unbrokenas yet by the cruel discipline of the life of the world, unfretted bycontinual scheming to gratify personal ambition and vanity. Gaston wasin the flower of his youth, he impressed her as a man with somethingin him, unaware as yet of the great career that lay before him. Soboth these two made reflections most dangerous for their peace ofmind, and both strove to conceal their thoughts. M. De Nueil saw inthe Vicomtesse a rare type of woman, always the victim of herperfections and tenderness; her graceful beauty is the least of hercharms for those who are privileged to know the infinite of feelingand thought and goodness in the soul within; a woman whose instinctivefeeling for beauty runs through all the most varied expressions oflove, purifying its transports, turning them to something almost holy;wonderful secret of womanhood, the exquisite gift that Nature soseldom bestows. And the Vicomtesse, on her side, listening to the ringof sincerity in Gaston's voice, while he told of his youthfultroubles, began to understand all that grown children offive-and-twenty suffer from diffidence, when hard work has kept themalike from corrupting influences and intercourse with men and women ofthe world whose sophistical reasoning and experience destroys the fairqualities of youth. Here was the ideal of a woman's dreams, a manunspoiled as yet by the egoism of family or success, or by that narrowselfishness which blights the first impulses of honor, devotion, self-sacrifice, and high demands of self; all the flowers so soonwither that enrich at first the life of delicate but strong emotions, and keep alive the loyalty of the heart. 

But these two, once launched forth into the vast of sentiment, wentfar indeed in theory, sounding the depths in either soul, testing thesincerity of their expressions; only, whereas Gaston's experimentswere made unconsciously, Mme. De Beauseant had a purpose in all thatshe said. Bringing her natural and acquired subtlety to the work, shesought to learn M. De Nueil's opinions by advancing, as far as shecould do so, views diametrically opposed to her own. So witty and sogracious was she, so much herself with this stranger, with whom shefelt completely at ease, because she felt sure that they should nevermeet again, that, after some delicious epigram of hers, Gastonexclaimed unthinkingly:

"Oh! madame, how could any man have left you?"

The Vicomtesse was silent. Gaston reddened, he thought that he hadoffended her; but she was not angry. The first deep thrill of delightsince the day of her calamity had taken her by surprise. The skill ofthe cleverest /roue/ could not have made the impression that M. DeNueil made with that cry from the heart. That verdict wrung from ayoung man's candor gave her back innocence in her own eyes, condemnedthe world, laid the blame upon the lover who had left her, andjustified her subsequent solitary drooping life. The world'sabsolution, the heartfelt sympathy, the social esteem so longed for, and so harshly refused, nay, all her secret desires were given her tothe full in that exclamation, made fairer yet by the heart's sweetestflatteries and the admiration that women always relish eagerly. Heunderstood her, understood all, and he had given her, as if it werethe most natural thing in the world, the opportunity of rising higherthrough her fall. She looked at the clock. 

"Ah! madame, do not punish me for my heedlessness. If you grant me butone evening, vouchsafe not to shorten it. "

She smiled at the pretty speech. 

"Well, as we must never meet again, " she said, "what signifies amoment more or less? If you were to care for me, it would be a pity. "

"It is too late now, " he said. 

"Do not tell me that, " she answered gravely. "Under any othercircumstances I should be very glad to see you. I will speak frankly, and you will understand how it is that I do not choose to see youagain, and ought not to do so. You have too much magnanimity not tofeel that if I were so much as suspected of a second trespass, everyone would think of me as a contemptible and vulgar woman; I should belike other women. A pure and blameless life will bring my characterinto relief. I am too proud not to endeavor to live like one apart inthe world, a victim of the law through my marriage, man's victimthrough my love. If I were not faithful to the position which I havetaken up, then I should deserve all the reproach that is heaped uponme; I should be lowered in my own eyes. I had not enough lofty socialvirtue to remain with a man whom I did not love. I have snapped thebonds of marriage in spite of the law; it was wrong, it was a crime, it was anything you like, but for me the bonds meant death. I meant tolive. Perhaps if I had been a mother I could have endured the tortureof a forced marriage of suitability. At eighteen we scarcely know whatis done with us, poor girls that we are! I have broken the laws of theworld, and the world has punished me; we both did rightly. I soughthappiness. Is it not a law of our nature to seek for happiness? I wasyoung, I was beautiful . . . I thought that I had found a nature asloving, as apparently passionate. I was loved indeed; for a littlewhile . . . "

She paused. 

"I used to think, " she said, "that no one could leave a woman in sucha position as mine. I have been forsaken; I must have offended in someway. Yes, in some way, no doubt, I failed to keep some law of ournature, was too loving, too devoted, too exacting--I do not know. Evildays have brought light with them! For a long while I blamed another, now I am content to bear the whole blame. At my own expense, I haveabsolved that other of whom I once thought I had a right to complain. I had not the art to keep him; fate has punished me heavily for mylack of skill. I only knew how to love; how can one keep oneself inmind when one loves? So I was a slave when I should have sought to bea tyrant. Those who know me may condemn me, but they will respect metoo. Pain has taught me that I must not lay myself open to this asecond time. I cannot understand how it is that I am living yet, afterthe anguish of that first week of the most fearful crisis in a woman'slife. Only from three years of loneliness would it be possible to drawstrength to speak of that time as I am speaking now. Such agony, monsieur, usually ends in death; but this--well, it was the agony ofdeath with no tomb to end it. Oh! I have known pain indeed!"

The Vicomtesse raised her beautiful eyes to the ceiling; and thecornice, no doubt, received all the confidences which a stranger mightnot hear. When a woman is afraid to look at her interlocutor, there isin truth no gentler, meeker, more accommodating confidant than thecornice. The cornice is quite an institution in the boudoir; what isit but the confessional, /minus/ the priest?

Mme. De Beauseant was eloquent and beautiful at that moment; nay, "coquettish, " if the word were not too heavy. By justifying herselfand love, she was stimulating every sentiment in the man before her;nay, more, the higher she set the goal, the more conspicuous it grew. At last, when her eyes had lost the too eloquent expression given tothem by painful memories, she let them fall on Gaston. 

"You acknowledge, do you not, that I am bound to lead a solitary, self-contained life?" she said quietly. 

So sublime was she in her reasoning and her madness, that M. De Nueilfelt a wild longing to throw himself at her feet; but he was afraid ofmaking himself ridiculous, so he held his enthusiasm and his thoughtsin check. He was afraid, too, that he might totally fail to expressthem, and in no less terror of some awful rejection on her part, or ofher mockery, an apprehension which strikes like ice to the most fervidsoul. The revulsion which led him to crush down every feeling as itsprang up in his heart cost him the intense pain that diffident andambitious natures experience in the frequent crises when they arecompelled to stifle their longings. And yet, in spite of himself, hebroke the silence to say in a faltering voice:

"Madame, permit me to give way to one of the strongest emotions of mylife, and own to all that you have made me feel. You set the heart inme swelling high! I feel within me a longing to make you forget yourmortifications, to devote my life to this, to give you love for allwho ever have given you wounds or hate. But this is a very suddenoutpouring of the heart, nothing can justify it to-day, and I oughtnot----"

"Enough, monsieur, " said Mme. De Beauseant; "we have both of us gonetoo far. By giving you the sad reasons for a refusal which I amcompelled to give, I meant to soften it and not to elicit homage. Coquetry only suits a happy woman. Believe me, we must remainstrangers to each other. At a later day you will know that ties whichmust inevitably be broken ought not to be formed at all. "

She sighed lightly, and her brows contracted, but almost immediatelygrew clear again. 

"How painful it is for a woman to be powerless to follow the man sheloves through all the phases of his life! And if that man loves hertruly, his heart must surely vibrate with pain to the deep trouble inhers. Are they not twice unhappy?"

There was a short pause. Then she rose smiling. 

"You little suspected, when you came to Courcelles, that you were tohear a sermon, did you?"

Gaston felt even further than at first from this extraordinary woman. Was the charm of that delightful hour due after all to the coquetry ofthe mistress of the house? She had been anxious to display her wit. Hebowed stiffly to the Vicomtesse, and went away in desperation. 

On the way home he tried to detect the real character of a creaturesupple and hard as a steel spring; but he had seen her pass through somany phases, that he could not make up his mind about her. The tonesof her voice, too, were ringing in his ears; her gestures, the littlemovements of her head, and the varying expression of her eyes grewmore gracious in memory, more fascinating as he thought of them. TheVicomtesse's beauty shone out again for him in the darkness; hisreviving impressions called up yet others, and he was enthralled anewby womanly charm and wit, which at first he had not perceived. He fellto wandering musings, in which the most lucid thoughts grow refractoryand flatly contradict each other, and the soul passes through a brieffrenzy fit. Youth only can understand all that lies in the dithyrambicoutpourings of youth when, after a stormy siege, of the most franticfolly and coolest common-sense, the heart finally yields to theassault of the latest comer, be it hope, or despair, as somemysterious power determines. 

At three-and-twenty, diffidence nearly always rules a man's conduct;he is perplexed with a young girl's shyness, a girl's trouble; he isafraid lest he should express his love ill, sees nothing butdifficulties, and takes alarm at them; he would be bolder if he lovedless, for he has no confidence in himself, and with a growing sense ofthe cost of happiness comes a conviction that the woman he lovescannot easily be won; perhaps, too, he is giving himself up tooentirely to his own pleasure, and fears that he can give none; andwhen, for his misfortune, his idol inspires him with awe, he worshipsin secret and afar, and unless his love is guessed, it dies away. Thenit often happens that one of these dead early loves lingers on, brightwith illusions in many a young heart. What man is there but keepswithin him these virgin memories that grow fairer every time they risebefore him, memories that hold up to him the ideal of perfect bliss?Such recollections are like children who die in the flower ofchildhood, before their parents have known anything of them but theirsmiles. 

So M. De Nueil came home from Courcelles, the victim of a mood fraughtwith desperate resolutions. Even now he felt that Mme. De Beauseantwas one of the conditions of his existence, and that death would bepreferable to life without her. He was still young enough to feel thetyrannous fascination which fully-developed womanhood exerts overimmature and impassioned natures; and, consequently, he was to spendone of those stormy nights when a young man's thoughts travel fromhappiness to suicide and back again--nights in which youth rushesthrough a lifetime of bliss and falls asleep from sheer exhaustion. Fateful nights are they, and the worst misfortune that can happen isto awake a philosopher afterwards. M. De Nueil was far too deeply inlove to sleep; he rose and betook to inditing letters, but none ofthem were satisfactory, and he burned them all. 

The next day he went to Courcelles to make the circuit of her gardenwalls, but he waited till nightfall; he was afraid that she might seehim. The instinct that led him to act in this way arose out of soobscure a mood of the soul, that none but a young man, or a man inlike case, can fully understand its mute ecstasies and its vagaries, matter to set those people who are lucky enough to see life only inits matter-of-fact aspect shrugging their shoulders. After painfulhesitation, Gaston wrote to Mme. De Beauseant. Here is the letter, which may serve as a sample of the epistolary style peculiar tolovers, a performance which, like the drawings prepared with greatsecrecy by children for the birthdays of father or mother, is foundinsufferable by every mortal except the recipients:--

 "MADAME, --Your power over my heart, my soul, myself, is so great that my fate depends wholly upon you to-day. Do not throw this letter into the fire; be so kind as to read it through. Perhaps you may pardon the opening sentence when you see that it is no commonplace, selfish declaration, but that it expresses a simple fact. Perhaps you may feel moved, because I ask for so little, by the submission of one who feels himself so much beneath you, by the influence that your decision will exercise upon my life. At my age, madame, I only know how to love, I am utterly ignorant of ways of attracting and winning a woman's love, but in my own heart I know raptures of adoration of her. I am irresistibly drawn to you by the great happiness that I feel through you; my thoughts turn to you with the selfish instinct which bids us draw nearer to the fire of life when we find it. I do not imagine that I am worthy of you; it seems impossible that I, young, ignorant, and shy, could bring you one-thousandth part of the happiness that I drink in at the sound of your voice and the sight of you. For me you are the only woman in the world. I cannot imagine life without you, so I have made up my mind to leave France, and to risk my life till I lose it in some desperate enterprise, in the Indies, in Africa, I care not where. How can I quell a love that knows no limits save by opposing to it something as infinite? Yet, if you will allow me to hope, not to be yours, but to win your friendship, I will stay. Let me come, not so very often, if you require it, to spend a few such hours with you as those stolen hours of yesterday. The keen delight of that brief happiness to be cut short at the least over-ardent word from me, will suffice to enable me to endure the boiling torrent in my veins. Have I presumed too much upon your generosity by this entreaty to suffer an intercourse in which all the gain is mine alone? You could find ways of showing the world, to which you sacrifice so much, that I am nothing to you; you are so clever and so proud! What have you to fear? If I could only lay bare my heart to you at this moment, to convince you that it is with no lurking afterthought that I make this humble request! Should I have told you that my love was boundless, while I prayed you to grant me friendship, if I had any hope of your sharing this feeling in the depths of my soul? No, while I am with you, I will be whatever you will, if only I may be with you. If you refuse (as you have the power to refuse), I will not utter one murmur, I will go. And if, at a later day, any other woman should enter into my life, you will have proof that you were right; but if I am faithful till death, you may feel some regret perhaps. The hope of causing you a regret will soothe my agony, and that thought shall be the sole revenge of a slighted heart. . . . "

Only those who have passed through all the exceeding tribulations ofyouth, who have seized on all the chimeras with two white pinions, thenightmare fancies at the disposal of a fervid imagination, can realizethe horrors that seized upon Gaston de Nueil when he had reason tosuppose that his ultimatum was in Mme. De Beauseant's hands. He sawthe Vicomtesse, wholly untouched, laughing at his letter and his love, as those can laugh who have ceased to believe in love. He could havewished to have his letter back again. It was an absurd letter. Therewere a thousand and one things, now that he came to think of it, thathe might have said, things infinitely better and more moving thanthose stilted phrases of his, those accursed, sophisticated, pretentious, fine-spun phrases, though, luckily, the punctuation hadbeen pretty bad and the lines shockingly crooked. He tried not tothink, not to feel; but he felt and thought, and was wretched. If hehad been thirty years old, he might have got drunk, but the innocenceof three-and-twenty knew nothing of the resources of opium nor of theexpedients of advanced civilization. Nor had he at hand one of thosegood friends of the Parisian pattern who understand so well how to say/Poete, non dolet!/ by producing a bottle of champagne, or alleviatethe agony of suspense by carrying you off somewhere to make a night ofit. Capital fellows are they, always in low water when you are infunds, always off to some watering-place when you go to look them up, always with some bad bargain in horse-flesh to sell you; it is true, that when you want to borrow of them, they have always just lost theirlast louis at play; but in all other respects they are the bestfellows on earth, always ready to embark with you on one of the steepdown-grades where you lose your time, your soul, and your life!

At length M. De Nueil received a missive through the instrumentalityof Jacques, a letter that bore the arms of Burgundy on the scentedseal, a letter written on vellum notepaper. 

He rushed away at once to lock himself in, and read and re-read /her/letter:--

 "You are punishing me very severely, monsieur, both for the friendliness of my effort to spare you a rebuff, and for the attraction which intellect always has for me. I put confidence in the generosity of youth, and you have disappointed me. And yet, if I did not speak unreservedly (which would have been perfectly ridiculous), at any rate I spoke frankly of my position, so that you might imagine that I was not to be touched by a young soul. My distress is the keener for my interest in you. I am naturally tender-hearted and kindly, but circumstances force me to act unkindly. Another woman would have flung your letter, unread, into the fire; I read it, and I am answering it. My answer will make it clear to you that while I am not untouched by the expression of this feeling which I have inspired, albeit unconsciously, I am still far from sharing it, and the step which I am about to take will show you still more plainly that I mean what I say. I wish besides, to use, for your welfare, that authority, as it were, which you give me over your life; and I desire to exercise it this once to draw aside the veil from your eyes. 

 "I am nearly thirty years old, monsieur; you are barely two-and-twenty. You yourself cannot know what your thoughts will be at my age. The vows that you make so lightly to-day may seem a very heavy burden to you then. I am quite willing to believe that at this moment you would give me your whole life without a regret, you would even be ready to die for a little brief happiness; but at the age of thirty experience will take from you the very power of making daily sacrifices for my sake, and I myself should feel deeply humiliated if I accepted them. A day would come when everything, even Nature, would bid you leave me, and I have already told you that death is preferable to desertion. Misfortune has taught me to calculate; as you see, I am arguing perfectly dispassionately. You force me to tell you that I have no love for you; I ought not to love, I cannot, and I will not. It is too late to yield, as women yield, to a blind unreasoning impulse of the heart, too late to be the mistress whom you seek. My consolations spring from God, not from earth. Ah, and besides, with the melancholy insight of disappointed love, I read hearts too clearly to accept your proffered friendship. It is only instinct. I forgive the boyish ruse, for which you are not responsible as yet. In the name of this passing fancy of yours, for the sake of your career and my own peace of mind, I bid you stay in your own country; you must not spoil a fair and honorable life for an illusion which, by its very nature, cannot last. At a later day, when you have accomplished your real destiny, in the fully developed manhood that awaits you, you will appreciate this answer of mine, though to-day it may be that you blame its hardness. You will turn with pleasure to an old woman whose friendship will certainly be sweet and precious to you then; a friendship untried by the extremes of passion and the disenchanting processes of life; a friendship which noble thoughts and thoughts of religion will keep pure and sacred. Farewell; do my bidding with the thought that your success will bring a gleam of pleasure into my solitude, and only think of me as we think of absent friends. "

Gaston de Nueil read the letter, and wrote the following lines:--

 "MADAME, --If I could cease to love you, to take the chances of becoming an ordinary man which you hold out to me, you must admit that I should thoroughly deserve my fate. No, I shall not do as you bid me; the oath of fidelity which I swear to you shall only be absolved by death. Ah! take my life, unless indeed you do not fear to carry a remorse all through your own----"

When the man returned from his errand, M. De Nueil asked him with whomhe left the note?

"I gave it to Mme. La Vicomtesse herself, sir; she was in her carriageand just about to start. "

"For the town?"

"I don't think so, sir. Mme. La Vicomtesse had post-horses. "

"Ah! then she is going away, " said the Baron. 

"Yes, sir, " the man answered. 

Gaston de Nueil at once prepared to follow Mme. De Beauseant. She ledthe way as far as Geneva, without a suspicion that he followed. Andhe? Amid the many thoughts that assailed him during that journey, oneall-absorbing problem filled his mind--"Why did she go away?" Theoriesgrew thickly on such ground for supposition, and naturally he inclinedto the one that flattered his hopes--"If the Vicomtesse cares for me, a clever woman would, of course, choose Switzerland, where nobodyknows either of us, in preference to France, where she would findcensorious critics. "

An impassioned lover of a certain stamp would not feel attracted to awoman clever enough to choose her own ground; such women are tooclever. However, there is nothing to prove that there was any truth inGaston's supposition. 

The Vicomtesse took a small house by the side of the lake. As soon asshe was installed in it, Gaston came one summer evening in thetwilight. Jacques, that flunkey in grain, showed no sign of surprise, and announced /M. Le Baron de Nueil/ like a discreet domestic wellacquainted with good society. At the sound of the name, at the sightof its owner, Mme. De Beauseant let her book fall from her hands; hersurprise gave him time to come close to her, and to say in tones thatsounded like music in her ears:

"What a joy it was to me to take the horses that brought you on thisjourney!"

To have the inmost desires of the heart so fulfilled! Where is thewoman who could resist such happiness as this? An Italian woman, oneof those divine creatures who, psychologically, are as far removedfrom the Parisian as if they lived at the Antipodes, a being who wouldbe regarded as profoundly immoral on this side of the Alps, an Italian(to resume) made the following comment on some French novels which shehad been reading. "I cannot see, " she remarked, "why these poor loverstake such a time over coming to an arrangement which ought to be theaffair of a single morning. " Why should not the novelist take a hintfrom this worthy lady, and refrain from exhausting the theme and thereader? Some few passages of coquetry it would certainly be pleasantto give in outline; the story of Mme. De Beauseant's demurs and sweetdelayings, that, like the vestal virgins of antiquity, she might fallgracefully, and by lingering over the innocent raptures of first lovedraw from it its utmost strength and sweetness. M. De Nueil was at anage when a man is the dupe of these caprices, of the fence which womendelight to prolong; either to dictate their own terms, or to enjoy thesense of their power yet longer, knowing instinctively as they do thatit must soon grow less. But, after all, these little boudoirprotocols, less numerous than those of the Congress of London, are toosmall to be worth mention in the history of this passion. 

For three years Mme. De Beauseant and M. De Nueil lived in the villaon the lake of Geneva. They lived quite alone, received no visitors, caused no talk, rose late, went out together upon the lake, knew, inshort, the happiness of which we all of us dream. It was a simplelittle house, with green shutters, and broad balconies shaded withawnings, a house contrived of set purpose for lovers, with its whitecouches, soundless carpets, and fresh hangings, everything within itreflecting their joy. Every window looked out on some new view of thelake; in the far distance lay the mountains, fantastic visions ofchanging color and evanescent cloud; above them spread the sunny sky, before them stretched the broad sheet of water, never the same in itsfitful changes. All their surroundings seemed to dream for them, allthings smiled upon them. 

Then weighty matters recalled M. De Nueil to France. His father andbrother died, and he was obliged to leave Geneva. The lovers boughtthe house; and if they could have had their way, they would haveremoved the hills piecemeal, drawn off the lake with a siphon, andtaken everything away with them. 

Mme. De Beauseant followed M. De Nueil. She realized her property, andbought a considerable estate near Manerville, adjoining Gaston'slands, and here they lived together; Gaston very graciously giving upManerville to his mother for the present in consideration of thebachelor freedom in which she left him. 

Mme. De Beauseant's estate was close to a little town in one of themost picturesque spots in the valley of the Auge. Here the loversraised barriers between themselves and social intercourse, barrierswhich no creature could overleap, and here the happy days ofSwitzerland were lived over again. For nine whole years they knewhappiness which it serves no purpose to describe; happiness which maybe divined from the outcome of the story by those whose souls cancomprehend poetry and prayer in their infinite manifestations. 

All this time Mme. De Beauseant's husband, the present Marquis (hisfather and elder brother having died), enjoyed the soundest health. There is no better aid to life than a certain knowledge that ourdemise would confer a benefit on some fellow-creature. M. De Beauseantwas one of those ironical and wayward beings who, like holders oflife-annuities, wake with an additional sense of relish every morningto a consciousness of good health. For the rest, he was a man of theworld, somewhat methodical and ceremonious, and a calculator ofconsequences, who could make a declaration of love as quietly as alackey announces that "Madame is served. "

This brief biographical notice of his lordship the Marquis deBeauseant is given to explain the reasons why it was impossible forthe Marquise to marry M. De Nueil. 

So, after a nine years' lease of happiness, the sweetest agreement towhich a woman ever put her hand, M. De Nueil and Mme. De Beauseantwere still in a position quite as natural and quite as false as at thebeginning of their adventure. And yet they had reached a fatal crisis, which may be stated as clearly as any problem in mathematics. 

Mme. La Comtesse de Nueil, Gaston's mother, a strait-laced andvirtuous person, who had made the late Baron happy in strictly legalfashion would never consent to meet Mme. De Beauseant. Mme. DeBeauseant quite understood that the worthy dowager must of necessitybe her enemy, and that she would try to draw Gaston from hisunhallowed and immoral way of life. The Marquise de Beauseant wouldwillingly have sold her property and gone back to Geneva, but shecould not bring herself to do it; it would mean that she distrusted M. De Nueil. Moreover, he had taken a great fancy to this very Valleroyestate, where he was making plantations and improvements. She wouldnot deprive him of a piece of pleasurable routine-work, such as womenalways wish for their husbands, and even for their lovers. 

A Mlle. De la Rodiere, twenty-two years of age, an heiress with arent-roll of forty thousand livres, had come to live in theneighborhood. Gaston always met her at Manerville whenever he wasobliged to go thither. These various personages being to each other asthe terms of a proportion sum, the following letter will throw lighton the appalling problem which Mme. De Beauseant had been trying forthe past month to solve:--

 "My beloved angel, it seems like nonsense, does it not, to write to you when there is nothing to keep us apart, when a caress so often takes the place of words, and words too are caresses? Ah, well, no, love. There are some things that a woman cannot say when she is face to face with the man she loves; at the bare thought of them her voice fails her, and the blood goes back to her heart; she has no strength, no intelligence left. It hurts me to feel like this when you are near me, and it happens often. I feel that my heart should be wholly sincere for you; that I should disguise no thought, however transient, in my heart; and I love the sweet carelessness, which suits me so well, too much to endure this embarrassment and constraint any longer. So I will tell you about my anguish--yes, it is anguish. Listen to me! do not begin with the little 'Tut, tut, tut, ' that you use to silence me, an impertinence that I love, because anything from you pleases me. Dear soul from heaven, wedded to mine, let me first tell you that you have effaced all memory of the pain that once was crushing the life out of me. I did not know what love was before I knew you. Only the candor of your beautiful young life, only the purity of that great soul of yours, could satisfy the requirements of an exacting woman's heart. Dear love, how very often I have thrilled with joy to think that in these nine long, swift years, my jealousy has not been once awakened. All the flowers of your soul have been mine, all your thoughts. There has not been the faintest cloud in our heaven; we have not known what sacrifice is; we have always acted on the impulses of our hearts. I have known happiness, infinite for a woman. Will the tears that drench this sheet tell you all my gratitude? I could wish that I had knelt to write the words!--Well, out of this felicity has arisen torture more terrible than the pain of desertion. Dear, there are very deep recesses in a woman's heart; how deep in my own heart, I did not know myself until to-day, as I did not know the whole extent of love. The greatest misery which could overwhelm us is a light burden compared with the mere thought of harm for him whom we love. And how if we cause the harm, is it not enough to make one die? . . . This is the thought that is weighing upon me. But it brings in its train another thought that is heavier far, a thought that tarnishes the glory of love, and slays it, and turns it into a humiliation which sullies life as long as it lasts. You are thirty years old; I am forty. What dread this difference in age calls up in a woman who loves! It is possible that, first of all unconsciously, afterwards in earnest, you have felt the sacrifices that you have made by renouncing all in the world for me. Perhaps you have thought of your future from the social point of view, of the marriage which would, of course, increase your fortune, and give you avowed happiness and children who would inherit your wealth; perhaps you have thought of reappearing in the world, and filling your place there honorably. And then, if so, you must have repressed those thoughts, and felt glad to sacrifice heiress and fortune and a fair future to me without my knowledge. In your young man's generosity, you must have resolved to be faithful to the vows which bind us each to each in the sight of God. My past pain has risen up before your mind, and the misery from which you rescued me has been my protection. To owe your love to your pity! The thought is even more painful to me than the fear of spoiling your life for you. The man who can bring himself to stab his mistress is very charitable if he gives her her deathblow while she is happy and ignorant of evil, while illusions are in full blossom. . . . Yes, death is preferable to the two thoughts which have secretly saddened the hours for several days. To-day, when you asked 'What ails you?' so tenderly, the sound of your voice made me shiver. I thought that, after your wont, you were reading my very soul, and I waited for your confidence to come, thinking that my presentiments had come true, and that I had guessed all that was going on in your mind. Then I began to think over certain little things that you always do for me, and I thought I could see in you the sort of affection by which a man betrays a consciousness that his loyalty is becoming a burden. And in that moment I paid very dear for my happiness. I felt that Nature always demands the price for the treasure called love. Briefly, has not fate separated us? Can you have said, 'Sooner or later I must leave poor Claire; why not separate in time?' I read that thought in the depths of your eyes, and went away to cry by myself. Hiding my tears from you! the first tears that I have shed for sorrow for these ten years; I am too proud to let you see them, but I did not reproach you in the least. 

 "Yes, you are right. I ought not to be so selfish as to bind your long and brilliant career to my so-soon out-worn life. . . . And yet--how if I have been mistaken? How if I have taken your love melancholy for a deliberation? Oh, my love, do not leave me in suspense; punish this jealous wife of yours, but give her back the sense of her love and yours; the whole woman lies in that--that consciousness sanctifies everything. 

 "Since your mother came, since you paid a visit to Mlle. De Rodiere, I have been gnawed by doubts dishonoring to us both. Make me suffer for this, but do not deceive me; I want to know everything that your mother said and that you think! If you have hesitated between some alternative and me, I give you back your liberty. . . . I will not let you know what happens to me; I will not shed tears for you to see; only--I will not see you again. . . . Ah! I cannot go on, my heart is breaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I have been sitting benumbed and stupid for some moments. Dear love, I do not find that any feeling of pride rises against you; you are so kind-hearted, so open; you would find it impossible to hurt me or to deceive me; and you will tell me the truth, however cruel it may be. Do you wish me to encourage your confession? Well, then, heart of mine, I shall find comfort in a woman's thought. Has not the youth of your being been mine, your sensitive, wholly gracious, beautiful, and delicate youth? No woman shall find henceforth the Gaston whom I have known, nor the delicious happiness that he has given me. . . . No; you will never love again as you have loved, as you love me now; no, I shall never have a rival, it is impossible. There will be no bitterness in my memories of our love, and I shall think of nothing else. It is out of your power to enchant any woman henceforth by the childish provocations, the charming ways of a young heart, the soul's winning charm, the body's grace, the swift communion of rapture, the whole divine cortege of young love, in fine. 

 "Oh, you are a man now, you will obey your destiny, weighing and considering all things. You will have cares, and anxieties, and ambitions, and concerns that will rob /her/ of the unchanging smile that made your lips fair for me. The tones that were always so sweet for me will be troubled at times; and your eyes that lighted up with radiance from heaven at the sight of me, will often be lustreless for /her/. And besides, as it is impossible to love you as I love you, you will never care for that woman as you have cared for me. She will never keep a constant watch over herself as I have done; she will never study your happiness at every moment with an intuition which has never failed me. Ah, yes, the man, the heart and soul, which I shall have known will exist no longer. I shall bury him deep in my memory, that I may have the joy of him still; I shall live happy in that fair past life of ours, a life hidden from all but our inmost selves. 

 "Dear treasure of mine, if all the while no least thought of liberty has risen in your mind, if my love is no burden on you, if my fears are chimerical, if I am still your Eve--the one woman in the world for you--come to me as soon as you have read this letter, come quickly! Ah, in one moment I will love you more than I have ever loved you, I think, in these nine years. After enduring the needless torture of these doubts of which I am accusing myself, every added day of love, yes, every single day, will be a whole lifetime of bliss. So speak, and speak openly; do not deceive me, it would be a crime. Tell me, do you wish for your liberty? Have you thought of all that a man's life means? Is there any regret in your mind? That /I/ should cause you a regret! I should die of it. I have said it: I love you enough to set your happiness above mine, your life before my own. Leave on one side, if you can, the wealth of memories of our nine years' happiness, that they may not influence your decision, but speak! I submit myself to you as to God, the one Consoler who remains if you forsake me. "

When Mme. De Beauseant knew that her letter was in M. De Nueil'shands, she sank in such utter prostration, the over-pressure of manythoughts so numbed her faculties, that she seemed almost drowsy. Atany rate, she was suffering from a pain not always proportioned in itsintensity to a woman's strength; pain which women alone know. Andwhile the unhappy Marquise awaited her doom, M. De Nueil, reading herletter, felt that he was "in a very difficult position, " to use theexpression that young men apply to a crisis of this kind. 

By this time he had all but yielded to his mother's importunities andto the attractions of Mlle. De la Rodiere, a somewhat insignificant, pink-and-white young person, as straight as a poplar. It is true that, in accordance with the rules laid down for marriageable young ladies, she scarcely opened her mouth, but her rent-roll of forty thousandlivres spoke quite sufficiently for her. Mme. De Nueil, with amother's sincere affection, tried to entangle her son in virtuouscourses. She called his attention to the fact that it was a flatteringdistinction to be preferred by Mlle. De la Rodiere, who had refused somany great matches; it was quite time, she urged, that he should thinkof his future, such a good opportunity might not repeat itself, someday he would have eighty thousand livres of income from land; moneymade everything bearable; if Mme. De Beauseant loved him for his ownsake, she ought to be the first to urge him to marry. In short, thewell-intentioned mother forgot no arguments which the feminineintellect can bring to bear upon the masculine mind, and by thesemeans she had brought her son into a wavering condition. 

Mme. De Beauseant's letter arrived just as Gaston's love of her washolding out against the temptations of a settled life conformable toreceived ideas. That letter decided the day. He made up his mind tobreak off with the Marquise and to marry. 

"One must live a man's life, " said he to himself. 

Then followed some inkling of the pain that this decision would giveto Mme. De Beauseant. The man's vanity and the lover's consciencefurther exaggerated this pain, and a sincere pity for her seized uponhim. All at once the immensity of the misery became apparent to him, and he thought it necessary and charitable to deaden the deadly blow. He hoped to bring Mme. De Beauseant to a calm frame of mind bygradually reconciling her to the idea of separation; while Mlle. De laRodiere, always like a shadowy third between them, should besacrificed to her at first, only to be imposed upon her later. Hismarriage should take place later, in obedience to Mme. De Beauseant'sexpressed wish. He went so far as to enlist the Marquise's noblenessand pride and all the great qualities of her nature to help him tosucceed in this compassionate design. He would write a letter at onceto allay her suspicions. /A letter!/ For a woman with the mostexquisite feminine perception, as well as the intuition of passionatelove, a letter in itself was a sentence of death. 

So when Jacques came and brought Mme. De Beauseant a sheet of paperfolded in a triangle, she trembled, poor woman, like a snared swallow. A mysterious sensation of physical cold spread from head to foot, wrapping her about in an icy winding sheet. If he did not rush to herfeet, if he did not come to her in tears, and pale, and like a lover, she knew that all was lost. And yet, so many hopes are there in theheart of a woman who loves, that she is only slain by stab after stab, and loves on till the last drop of life-blood drains away. 

"Does madame need anything?" Jacques asked gently, as he went away. 

"No, " she said. 

"Poor fellow!" she thought, brushing a tear from her eyes, "he guessesmy feelings, servant though he is!"

She read: "My beloved, you are inventing idle terrors foryourself . . . " The Marquise gazed at the words, and a thick mistspread before her eyes. A voice in her heart cried, "He lies!"--Thenshe glanced down the page with the clairvoyant eagerness of passion, and read these words at the foot, "/Nothing has been decided asyet . . . /" Turning to the other side with convulsive quickness, shesaw the mind of the writer distinctly through the intricacies of thewording; this was no spontaneous outburst of love. She crushed it inher fingers, twisted it, tore it with her teeth, flung it in the fire, and cried aloud, "Ah! base that he is! I was his, and he had ceased tolove me!"

She sank half dead upon the couch. 

M. De Nueil went out as soon as he had written his letter. When hecame back, Jacques met him on the threshold with a note. "Madame laMarquise has left the chateau, " said the man. 

M. De Nueil, in amazement, broke the seal and read:--

 "MADAME, --If I could cease to love you, to take the chances of becoming an ordinary man which you hold out to me, you must admit that I should thoroughly deserve my fate. No, I shall not do as you bid me; the oath of fidelity which I swear to you shall only be absolved by death. Ah! take my life, unless indeed you do not fear to carry a remorse all through your own . . . "

It was his own letter, written to the Marquise as she set out forGeneva nine years before. At the foot of it Claire de Bourgogne hadwritten, "Monsieur, you are free. "

M. De Nueil went to his mother at Manerville. In less than three weekshe married Mlle. Stephanie de la Rodiere. 

If this commonplace story of real life ended here, it would be to someextent a sort of mystification. The first man you meet can tell you abetter. But the widespread fame of the catastrophe (for, unhappily, this is a true tale), and all the memories which it may arouse inthose who have known the divine delights of infinite passion, and lostthem by their own deed, or through the cruelty of fate, --these thingsmay perhaps shelter the story from criticism. 

Mme. La Marquise de Beauseant never left Valleroy after her partingfrom M. De Nueil. After his marriage she still continued to livethere, for some inscrutable woman's reason; any woman is at liberty toassign the one which most appeals to her. Claire de Bourgogne lived insuch complete retirement that none of the servants, save Jacques andher own woman, ever saw their mistress. She required absolute silenceall about her, and only left her room to go to the chapel on theValleroy estate, whither a neighboring priest came to say mass everymorning. 

The Comte de Nueil sank a few days after his marriage into somethinglike conjugal apathy, which might be interpreted to mean happiness orunhappiness equally easily. 

"My son is perfectly happy, " his mother said everywhere. 

Mme. Gaston de Nueil, like a great many young women, was a rathercolorless character, sweet and passive. A month after her marriage shehad expectations of becoming a mother. All this was quite inaccordance with ordinary views. M. De Nueil was very nice to her; buttwo months after his separation from the Marquise, he grew notablythoughtful and abstracted. But then he always had been serious, hismother said. 

After seven months of this tepid happiness, a little thing occurred, one of those seemingly small matters which imply such greatdevelopment of thought and such widespread trouble of the soul, thatonly the bare fact can be recorded; the interpretation of it must beleft to the fancy of each individual mind. One day, when M. De Nueilhad been shooting over the lands of Manerville and Valleroy, hecrossed Mme. De Beauseant's park on his way home, summoned Jacques, and when the man came, asked him, "Whether the Marquise was as fond ofgame as ever?"

Jacques answering in the affirmative, Gaston offered him a good roundsum (accompanied by plenty of specious reasoning) for a very littleservice. Would he set aside for the Marquise the game that the Countwould bring? It seemed to Jacques to be a matter of no greatimportance whether the partridge on which his mistress dined had beenshot by her keeper or by M. De Nueil, especially since the latterparticularly wished that the Marquise should know nothing about it. 

"It was killed on her land, " said the Count, and for some days Jacqueslent himself to the harmless deceit. Day after day M. De Nueil wentshooting, and came back at dinner-time with an empty bag. A whole weekwent by in this way. Gaston grew bold enough to write a long letter tothe Marquise, and had it conveyed to her. It was returned to himunopened. The Marquise's servant brought it back about nightfall. TheCount, sitting in the drawing-room listening, while his wife at thepiano mangled a /Caprice/ of Herold's, suddenly sprang up and rushedout to the Marquise, as if he were flying to an assignation. He dashedthrough a well-known gap into the park, and went slowly along theavenues, stopping now and again for a little to still the loud beatingof his heart. Smothered sounds as he came nearer the chateau told himthat the servants must be at supper, and he went straight to Mme. DeBeauseant's room. 

Mme. De Beauseant never left her bedroom. M. De Nueil could gain thedoorway without making the slightest sound. There, by the light of twowax candles, he saw the thin, white Marquise in a great armchair; herhead was bowed, her hands hung listlessly, her eyes gazing fixedly atsome object which she did not seem to see. Her whole attitude spoke ofhopeless pain. There was a vague something like hope in her bearing, but it was impossible to say whither Claire de Bourgogne was looking--forwards to the tomb or backwards into the past. Perhaps M. DeNueil's tears glittered in the deep shadows; perhaps his breathingsounded faintly; perhaps unconsciously he trembled, or again it mayhave been impossible that he should stand there, his presence unfelt bythat quick sense which grows to be an instinct, the glory, the delight, the proof of perfect love. However it was, Mme. De Beauseant slowlyturned her face towards the doorway, and beheld her lover of bygonedays. Then Gaston de Nueil came forward a few paces. 

"If you come any further, sir, " exclaimed the Marquise, growing paler, "I shall fling myself out of the window!"

She sprang to the window, flung it open, and stood with one foot onthe ledge, her hand upon the iron balustrade, her face turned towardsGaston. 

"Go out! go out!" she cried, "or I will throw myself over. "

At that dreadful cry the servants began to stir, and M. De Nueil fledlike a criminal. 

When he reached his home again he wrote a few lines and gave them tohis own man, telling him to give the letter himself into Mme. DeBeauseant's hands, and to say that it was a matter of life and deathfor his master. The messenger went. M. De Nueil went back to thedrawing-room where his wife was still murdering the /Caprice/, and satdown to wait till the answer came. An hour later, when the /Caprice/had come to an end, and the husband and wife sat in silence onopposite sides of the hearth, the man came back from Valleroy and gavehis master his own letter, unopened. 

M. De Nueil went into a small room beyond the drawing-room, where hehad left his rifle, and shot himself. 

The swift and fatal ending of the drama, contrary as it is to all thehabits of young France, is only what might have been expected. Thosewho have closely observed, or known for themselves by deliciousexperience, all that is meant by the perfect union of two beings, willunderstand Gaston de Nueil's suicide perfectly well. A woman does notbend and form herself in a day to the caprices of passion. Thepleasure of loving, like some rare flower, needs the most carefulingenuity of culture. Time alone, and two souls attuned each to each, can discover all its resources, and call into being all the tender anddelicate delights for which we are steeped in a thousandsuperstitions, imagining them to be inherent in the heart thatlavishes them upon us. It is this wonderful response of one nature toanother, this religious belief, this certainty of finding peculiar orexcessive happiness in the presence of one we love, that accounts inpart for perdurable attachments and long-lived passion. If a womanpossesses the genius of her sex, love never comes to be a matter ofuse and wont. She brings all her heart and brain to love, clothes hertenderness in forms so varied, there is such art in her most naturalmoments, or so much nature in her art, that in absence her memory isalmost as potent as her presence. All other women are as shadowscompared with her. Not until we have lost or known the dread of losinga love so vast and glorious, do we prize it at its just worth. And ifa man who has once possessed this love shuts himself out from it byhis own act and deed, and sinks to some loveless marriage; if by someincident, hidden in the obscurity of married life, the woman with whomhe hoped to know the same felicity makes it clear that it will neverbe revived for him; if, with the sweetness of divine love still on hislips, he has dealt a deadly wound to /her/, his wife in truth, whom heforsook for a social chimera, --then he must either die or take refugein a materialistic, selfish, and heartless philosophy, from whichimpassioned souls shrink in horror. 

As for Mme. De Beauseant, she doubtless did not imagine that herfriend's despair could drive him to suicide, when he had drunk deep oflove for nine years. Possibly she may have thought that she alone wasto suffer. At any rate, she did quite rightly to refuse the mosthumiliating of all positions; a wife may stoop for weighty socialreasons to a kind of compromise which a mistress is bound to hold inabhorrence, for in the purity of her passion lies all itsjustification. 

ANGOULEME, September 1832. 

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy. 

Beauseant, Marquis and Comte de Father Goriot An Episode under the Terror

Beauseant, Marquise de Letters of Two Brides

Beauseant, Vicomte de Father Goriot

Beauseant, Vicomtesse de Father Goriot Albert Savarus

Champignelles, De The Seamy Side of History

Jacques (M. De Beauseant's butler) Father Goriot

Nueil, Gaston de The Deserted Woman Albert Savarus