Part 47

“But they saved the soul of that noble woman, and made the fortune of a convent,” cried the Chevalier du Halga. “The Abbe Grimont told me she had given a hundred thousand francs to the nuns of the Visitation.”

“Should you like to go to Les Touches?” asked my mother-in-law. “It is worth seeing.”

“No, no!” I said hastily.

Doesn’t this little scene read to you like a page out of some diabolical drama?

It was repeated again and again under various pretexts. At last my mother-in-law said to me: “I understand why you do not go to Les Touches, and I think you are right.”

Oh! you must admit, mamma, that an involuntary, unconscious stab like that would have decided you to find out if your happiness rested on such a frail foundation that it would perish at a mere touch. To do Calyste justice, he never proposed to me to visit that hermitage, now his property. But as soon as we love we are creatures devoid of common-sense, and this silence, this reserve piqued me; so I said to him one day: “What are you afraid of at Les Touches, that you alone never speak of the place?”

“Let us go there,” he replied.

So there I was caught,--like other women who want to be caught, and who trust to chance to cut the Gordian knot of their indecision. So to Les Touches we went.

It is enchanting, in a style profoundly artistic. I took delight in that place of horror where Mademoiselle des Touches had so earnestly forbidden me to go. Poisonous flowers are all charming; Satan sowed them--for the devil has flowers as well as God; we have only to look within our souls to see the two shared in the making of us. What delicious acrity in a situation where I played, not with fire, but--with ashes! I studied Calyste; the point was to know if that passion was thoroughly extinct. I watched, as you may well believe, every wind that blew; I kept an eye upon his face as he went from room to room and from one piece of furniture to another, exactly like a child who is looking for some hidden thing. Calyste seemed thoughtful, but at first I thought that I had vanquished the past. I felt strong enough to mention Madame de Rochefide-whom in my heart I called la Rocheperfide. At last we went to see the famous bush were Beatrix was caught when he flung her into the sea that she might never belong to another man.

“She must be light indeed to have stayed there,” I said laughing. Calyste kept silence, so I added, “We’ll respect the dead.”

Still Calyste was silent.

“Have I displeased you?” I asked.

“No; but cease to galvanize that passion,” he answered.

What a speech! Calyste, when he saw me all cast down by it, redoubled his care and tenderness.

August.

I was, alas! at the edge of a precipice, amusing myself, like the innocent heroines of all melodramas, by gathering flowers. Suddenly a horrible thought rode full tilt through my happiness, like the horse in the German ballad. I thought I saw that Calyste’s love was increasing through his reminiscences; that he was expending on me the stormy emotions I revived by reminding him of the coquetries of that hateful Beatrix,--just think of it! that cold, unhealthy nature, so persistent yet so flabby, something between a mollusk and a bit of coral, dares to call itself Beatrix, Beatrice!

Already, dearest mother, I am forced to keep one eye open to suspicion, when my heart is all Calyste’s; and isn’t it a great catastrophe when the eye gets the better of the heart, and suspicion at last finds itself justified? It came to pass in this way:--

“This place is dear to me,” I said to Calyste one morning, “because I owe my happiness to it; and so I forgive you for taking me sometimes for another woman.”

The loyal Breton blushed, and I threw my arms around his neck. But all the same I have left Les Touches, and never will I go back there again.

The very strength of hatred which makes me long for Madame de Rochefide’s death--ah, heavens! a natural death, pleurisy, or some accident--makes me also understand to its fullest extent the power of my love for Calyste. That woman has appeared to me to trouble my sleep,--I see her in a dream; shall I ever encounter her bodily? Ah! the postulant of the Visitation was right,--Les Touches is a fatal spot; Calyste has there recovered his past emotions, and they are, I see it plainly, more powerful than the joys of our love. Ascertain, my dear mamma, if Madame de Rochefide is in Paris, for if she is, I shall stay in Brittany. Poor Mademoiselle des Touches might well repent of her share in our marriage if she knew to what extent I am taken for our odious rival! But this is prostitution! I am not myself; I am ashamed of it all. A frantic desire seizes me sometimes to fly from Guerande and those sands of Croisic.

August 25th.

I am determined to go and live in the ruins of the old chateau. Calyste, worried by my restlessness, agrees to take me. Either he knows life so little that he guesses nothing, or he does know the cause of my flight, in which case he cannot love me. I tremble so with fear lest I find the awful certainty I seek that, like a child, I put my hands before my eyes not to hear the explosion--

Oh, mother! I am not loved with the love that I feel in my heart. Calyste is charming to me, that’s true! but what man, unless he were a monster, would not be, as Calyste is, amiable and gracious when receiving all the flowers of the soul of a young girl of twenty, brought up by you, pure, loving, and beautiful, as many women have said to you that I am.

Guenic, September 18.

Has he forgotten her? That’s the solitary thought which echoes through my soul like a remorse. Ah! dear mamma, have all women to struggle against memories as I do? None but innocent young men should be married to pure young girls. But that’s a deceptive Utopia; better have one’s rival in the past than in the future.

Ah! mother, pity me, though at this moment I am happy as a woman who fears to lose her happiness and so clings fast to it,--one way of killing it, says that profoundly wise Clotilde.

I notice that for the last five months I think only of myself, that is, of Calyste. Tell sister Clotilde that her melancholy bits of wisdom often recur to me. She is happy in being faithful to the dead; she fears no rival. A kiss to my dear Athenais, about whom I see Juste is beside himself. From what you told me in your last letter it is evident he fears you will not give her to him. Cultivate that fear as a precious product. Athenais will be sovereign lady; but I who fear lest I can never win Calyste back from himself shall always be a servant.

A thousand tendernesses, dear mamma. Ah! if my terrors are not delusions, Camille Maupin has sold me her fortune dearly. My affectionate respects to papa.