Part 68

But Calyste, half-mad with despair, had secretly obtained a passport, and had written to his mother begging her to send him at once a considerable sum of money. While awaiting the arrival of these funds he set himself to watch Beatrix, consumed by the fury of Breton jealousy. At last, nine days after the communication made by La Palferine to Maxime at the club, Calyste, to whom his mother had forwarded thirty thousand francs, went to Madame de Rochefide’s house with the firm intention of forcing the blockade, driving away La Palferine, and leaving Paris with his pacified angel. It was one of those horrible alternatives in which women who have hitherto retained some little respect for themselves plunge at once and forever into the degradations of vice,--though it is possible to return thence to virtue. Until this moment Madame de Rochefide had regarded herself as a virtuous woman in heart, upon whom two passions had fallen; but to adore Charles-Edouard and still let Calyste adore her, would be to lose her self-esteem,--for where deception begins, infamy begins. She had given rights to Calyste, and no human power could prevent the Breton from falling at her feet and watering them with the tears of an absolute repentance. Many persons are surprised at the glacial insensibility under which women extinguish their loves. But if they did not thus efface their past, their lives could have no dignity, they could never maintain themselves against the fatal familiarity to which they had once submitted. In the entirely new situation in which Beatrix found herself, she might have evaded the alternatives presented to her by Calyste had La Palferine entered the room; but the vigilance of her old footman, Antoine, defeated her.

Hearing a carriage stop before the door, she said to Calyste, “Here come visitors!” and she rushed forward to prevent a scene.

Antoine, however, as a prudent man, had told La Palferine that Madame la marquise was out.

When Beatrix heard from the old servant who had called and the answer he had given, she replied, “Very good,” and returned to the salon, thinking: “I will escape into a convent; I will make myself a nun.”

Calyste, meantime, had opened the window and seen his rival.

“Who came?” he said to Beatrix on her return.

“I don’t know; Antoine is still below.”

“It was La Palferine.”

“Possibly.”

“You love him, and that is why you are blaming and reproaching me; I saw him!”

“You saw him?”

“I opened the window.”

Beatrix fell half fainting on the sofa. Then she negotiated in order to gain time; she asked to have the journey postponed for a week, under pretence of making preparations; inwardly resolving to turn Calyste off in a way that she could satisfy La Palferine,--for such are the wretched calculations and the fiery anguish concealed with these lives which have left the rails along which the great social train rolls on.

When Calyste had left her, Beatrix felt so wretched, so profoundly humiliated, that she went to bed; she was really ill; the violent struggle which wrung her heart seemed to reach a physical reaction, and she sent for the doctor; but at the same time she despatched to La Palferine the following letter, in which she revenged herself on Calyste with a sort of rage:--

To Monsieur le Comte de la Palferine.

My Friend,--Come and see me; I am in despair. Antoine sent you away when your arrival would have put an end to one of the most horrible nightmares of my life and delivered me from a man I hate, and whom I trust never to see again. I love you only in this world, and I can never again love any one but you, though I have the misfortune not to please you as I fain would--

She wrote four pages which, beginning thus, ended in an exaltation too poetic for typography, in which she compromised herself so completely that the letter closed with these words: “Am I sufficiently at your mercy? Ah! nothing will cost me anything if it only proves to you how much you are loved.” And she signed the letter, a thing she had never done for Conti or Calyste.

The next day, at the hour when La Palferine called, Beatrix was in her bath, and Antoine begged him to wait. He, in his turn, saw Calyste sent away; for du Guenic, hungry for love, came early. La Palferine was standing at the window, watching his rival’s departure, when Beatrix entered the salon.

“Ah! Charles,” she cried, expecting what had happened, “you have ruined me!”

“I know it, madame,” replied La Palferine, tranquilly. “You have sworn to love me alone; you have offered to give me a letter in which you will write your motives for destroying yourself, so that, in case of infidelity, I may poison you without fear of human justice,--as if superior men needed to have recourse to poison for revenge! You have written to me: ‘Nothing will cost me anything if it only proves to you how much you are loved.’ Well, after that, I find a contradiction between those words and your present remark that I have ruined you. I must know now if you have had the courage to break with du Guenic.”

“Ah! you have your revenge upon him in advance,” she cried, throwing her arms around his neck. “Henceforth, you and I are forever bound together.”

“Madame,” said the prince of Bohemia, coldly, “if you wish me for your friend, I consent; but on one condition only.”

“Condition!” she exclaimed.

“Yes; the following condition. You must be reconciled to Monsieur de Rochefide; you must recover the honor of your position; you must return to your handsome house in the due d’Anjou and be once more one of the queens of Paris. You can do this by making Rochefide play a part in politics, and putting into your own conduct the persistency which Madame d’Espard has displayed. That is the situation necessary for the woman to whom I do the honor to give myself.”

“But you forget that Monsieur de Rochefide’s consent is necessary.”

“Oh, my dear child,” said La Palferine, “we have arranged all that; I have given my word of honor as a gentleman that you are worth all the Schontzes of the quartier Saint-Georges, and you must fulfil my pledge.”

For the next week Calyste went every day to Madame de Rochefide’s door, only to be refused by Antoine, who said with a studied face, “Madame is ill.”

From there Calyste hurried to La Palferine’s lodging, where the valet answered, “Monsieur le comte is away, hunting.” Each time this happened the Breton baron left a letter for La Palferine.