Part 56

“Sabine is only too gentle; she is almost too completely a Christian wife; but she has not the slightest taste for mysticism.”

“Poor young woman!” said the abbe, maliciously. “What method will you take to remedy the evil?”

“I have committed the sin, my dear director, of thinking how to launch upon Madame de Rochefide a little man, very self-willed and full of the worst qualities, who will certainly induce her to dismiss my son-in-law.”

“My daughter,” replied the abbe, stroking his chin, “we are not now in the confessional; I am not obliged to make myself your judge. From the world’s point of view, I admit that the result would be decisive--”

“The means seem to me odious,” she said.

“Why? No doubt the duty of a Christian woman is to withdraw a sinning woman from an evil path, rather than push her along it; but when a woman has advanced upon that path as far as Madame de Rochefide, it is not the hand of man, but that of God, which recalls such a sinner; she needs a thunderbolt.”

“Father,” replied the duchess, “I thank you for your indulgence; but the thought has occurred to me that my son-in-law is brave and a Breton. He was heroic at the time of the rash affair of that poor MADAME. Now, if the young fellow who undertook to make Madame de Rochefide love him were to quarrel with Calyste, and a duel should ensue--”

“You have thought wisely, Madame la duchesse; and it only proves that in crooked paths you will always find rocks of stumbling.”

“I have discovered a means, my dear abbe, to do a great good; to withdraw Madame de Rochefide from the fatal path in which she now is; to restore Calyste to his wife, and possibly to save from hell a poor distracted creature.”

“In that case, why consult me?” asked the vicar, smiling.

“Ah!” replied the duchess, “Because I must permit myself some rather nasty actions--”

“You don’t mean to rob anybody?”

“On the contrary, I shall apparently have to spend a great deal of money.”

“You will not calumniate, or--”

“Oh! oh!”

“--injure your neighbor?”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Come, tell me your plan,” said the abbe, now becoming curious.

“Suppose, instead of driving out one nail by another,--this is what I thought at my prie-Dieu after imploring the Blessed Virgin to enlighten me,--I were to free Calyste by persuading Monsieur de Rochefide to take back his wife? Instead of lending a hand to evil for the sake of doing good to my daughter, I should do one great good by another almost as great--”

The vicar looked at the Portuguese lady, and was pensive.

“That is evidently an idea that came to you from afar,” he said, “so far that--”

“I have thanked the Virgin for it,” replied the good and humble duchess; “and I have made a vow--not counting a novena--to give twelve hundred francs to some poor family if I succeed. But when I communicated my plan to Monsieur de Grandlieu he began to laugh, and said: ‘Upon my honor, at your time of life I think you women have a devil of your own.’”

“Monsieur le duc made as a husband the same reply I was about to make when you interrupted me,” said the abbe, who could not restrain a smile.

“Ah! Father, if you approve of the idea, will you also approve of the means of execution? It is necessary to do to a certain Madame Schontz (a Beatrix of the quartier Saint-Georges) what I proposed to do to Madame de Rochefide.”

“I am certain that you will not do any real wrong,” said the vicar, cleverly, not wishing to hear any more, having found the result so desirable. “You can consult me later if you find your conscience muttering,” he added. “But why, instead of giving that person in the rue Saint-Georges a fresh occasion for scandal, don’t you give her a husband?”

“Ah! my dear director, now you have rectified the only bad thing I had in my plan. You are worthy of being an archbishop, and I hope I shall not die till I have had the opportunity of calling you Your Eminence.”

“I see only one difficulty in all this,” said the abbe.

“What is that?”