Part 17 (1/2)
”Then why are you shut up together every morning?” she said, with a treacherous smile. ”I don't suppose that Camille, in spite of her pa.s.sion for tobacco, prefers her cigar to you, or that you, in your admiration for female authors, spend four hours a day in reading their romances.”
”So then you know--” began the guileless young Breton, his face glowing with the happiness of being face to face with his idol.
”Calyste!” cried Camille, angrily, suddenly appearing and interrupting him. She took his arm and drew him away to some distance. ”Calyste, is this what you promised me?”
Beatrix heard these words of reproach as Mademoiselle des Touches disappeared toward the house, taking Calyste with her. She was stupefied by the young man's a.s.sertion, and could not comprehend it; she was not as strong as Claude Vignon. In truth, the part being played by Camille Maupin, as shocking as it was grand, is one of those wicked grandeurs which women only practise when driven to extremity. By it their hearts are broken; in it the feelings of their s.e.x are lost to them; it begins an abnegation which ends by either plunging them to h.e.l.l, or lifting them to heaven.
During breakfast, which Calyste was invited to share, the marquise, whose sentiments could be n.o.ble and generous, made a sudden return upon herself, resolving to stifle the germs of love which were rising in her heart. She was neither cold nor hard to Calyste, but gently indifferent,--a course which tortured him. Felicite brought forward a proposition that they should make, on the next day but one, an excursion into the curious and interesting country lying between Les Touches, Croisic, and the village of Batz. She begged Calyste to employ himself on the morrow in hiring a boat and sailors to take them across the little bay, undertaking herself to provide horses and provisions, and all else that was necessary for a party of pleasure, in which there was to be no fatigue. Beatrix stopped the matter short, however, by saying that she did not wish to make excursions round the country. Calyste's face, which had beamed with delight at the prospect, was suddenly overclouded.
”What are you afraid of, my dear?” asked Camille.
”My position is so delicate I do not wish to compromise--I will not say my reputation, but my happiness,” she said, meaningly, with a glance at the young Breton. ”You know very well how suspicious Conti can be; if he knew--”
”Who will tell him?”
”He is coming back here to fetch me,” said Beatrix.
Calyste turned pale. In spite of all that Camille could urge, in spite of Calyste's entreaties, Madame de Rochefide remained inflexible, and showed what Camille had called her obstinacy. Calyste left Les Touches the victim of one of those depressions of love which threaten, in certain men, to turn into madness. He began to revolve in his mind some decided means of coming to an explanation with Beatrix.
XII. CORRESPONDENCE
When Calyste reached home, he did not leave his room until dinner time; and after dinner he went back to it. At ten o'clock his mother, uneasy at his absence, went to look for him, and found him writing in the midst of a pile of blotted and half-torn paper. He was writing to Beatrix, for distrust of Camille had come into his mind. The air and manner of the marquise during their brief interview in the garden had singularly encouraged him.
No first love-letter ever was or ever will be, as may readily be supposed, a brilliant effort of the mind. In all young men not tainted by corruption such a letter is written with gus.h.i.+ngs from the heart, too overflowing, too multifarious not to be the essence, the elixir of many other letters begun, rejected, and rewritten.
Here is the one that Calyste finally composed and which he read aloud to his poor, astonished mother. To her the old mansion seemed to have taken fire; this love of her son flamed up in it like the glare of a conflagration.
Calyste to Madame la Marquise de Rochefide.
Madame,--I loved you when you were to me but a dream; judge, therefore, of the force my love acquired when I saw you. The dream was far surpa.s.sed by the reality. It is my grief and my misfortune to have nothing to say to you that you do not know already of your beauty and your charms; and yet, perhaps, they have awakened in no other heart so deep a sentiment as they have in me.
In so many ways you are beautiful; I have studied you so much while thinking of you day and night that I have penetrated the mysteries of your being, the secrets of your heart, and your delicacy, so little appreciated. Have you ever been loved, understood, adored as you deserve to be?
Let me tell you now that there is not a trait in your nature which my heart does not interpret; your pride is understood by mine; the grandeur of your glance, the grace of your bearing, the distinction of your movements,--all things about your person are in harmony with the thoughts, the hopes, the desires hidden in the depths of your soul; it is because I have divined them all that I think myself worthy of your notice. If I had not become, within the last few days, another yourself, I could not speak to you of myself; this letter, indeed, relates far more to you than it does to me.
Beatrix, in order to write to you, I have silenced my youth, I have laid aside myself, I have aged my thoughts,--or, rather, it is you who have aged them, by this week of dreadful sufferings caused, innocently indeed, by you.
Do not think me one of those common lovers at whom I have heard you laugh so justly. What merit is there in loving a young and beautiful and wise and n.o.ble woman. Alas! I have no merit! What can I be to you? A child, attracted by effulgence of beauty and by moral grandeur, as the insects are attracted to the light. You cannot do otherwise than tread upon the flowers of my soul; they are there at your feet, and all my happiness consists in your stepping on them.
Absolute devotion, unbounded faith, love unquenchable,--all these treasures of a true and tender heart are nothing, nothing! they serve only to love with, they cannot win the love we crave.
Sometimes I do not understand why a wors.h.i.+p so ardent does not warm its idol; and when I meet your eye, so cold, so stern, I turn to ice within me. Your disdain, _that_ is the acting force between us, not my wors.h.i.+p. Why? You cannot hate me as much as I love you; why, then, does the weaker feeling rule the stronger? I loved Felicite with all the powers of my heart; yet I forgot her in a day, in a moment, when I saw you. She was my error; you are my truth.
You have, unknowingly, destroyed my happiness, and yet you owe me nothing in return. I loved Camille without hope, and I have no hope from you; nothing is changed but my divinity. I was a pagan; I am now a Christian, that is all--
Except this: you have taught me that to love is the greatest of all joys; the joy of being loved comes later. According to Camille, it is not loving to love for a short time only; the love that does not grow from day to day, from hour to hour, is a mere wretched pa.s.sion. In order to grow, love must not see its end; and she saw the end of ours, the setting of our sun of love. When I beheld you, I understood her words, which, until then, I had disputed with all my youth, with all the ardor of my desires, with the despotic sternness of twenty years. That grand and n.o.ble Camille mingled her tears with mine, and yet she firmly rejected the love she saw must end. Therefore I am free to love you here on earth and in the heaven above us, as we love G.o.d. If you loved me, you would have no such arguments as Camille used to overthrow my love. We are both young; we could fly on equal wing across our sunny heaven, not fearing storms as that grand eagle feared them.
But ha! what am I saying? my thoughts have carried me beyond the humility of my real hopes. Believe me, believe in the submission, the patience, the mute adoration which I only ask you not to wound uselessly. I know, Beatrix, that you cannot love me without the loss of your self-esteem; therefore I ask for no return. Camille once said there was some hidden fatality in names, _a propos_ of hers. That fatality I felt for myself on the jetty of Guerande, when I read on the sh.o.r.es of the ocean your name. Yes, you will pa.s.s through my life as Beatrice pa.s.sed through that of Dante. My heart will be a pedestal for that white statue, cold, distant, jealous, and oppressive.
It is forbidden to you to love me; I know that. You will suffer a thousand deaths, you will be betrayed, humiliated, unhappy; but you have in you a devil's pride, which binds you to that column you have once embraced,--you are like Samson, you will perish by holding to it. But this I have not divined; my love is too blind for that; Camille has told it to me. It is not my mind that speaks to you of this, it is hers. I have no mind with which to reason when I think of you; blood gushes from my heart, and its hot wave darkens my intellect, weakens my strength, paralyzes my tongue, and bends my knees. I can only adore you, whatever you may do to me.