Part 34 (1/2)
”Don't you understand? She may give him a child. And if Calyste loved the child of that woman more than mine--Oh! that's the end of my patience and all my resignation.”
She fell into a chair. She had given vent to the deepest thought in her heart; she had no longer a hidden grief; and secret sorrow is like that iron rod that sculptors put within the structure of their clay,--it supports, it is a force.
”Come, go home, dear sufferer. In view of such misery the abbe will surely give me absolution for the venial sins which the deceits of the world compel us to commit. Leave me now, my daughter,” she said, going to her _prie-Dieu_. ”I must pray to our Lord and the Blessed Virgin for you, with special supplication. Good-bye, my dear Sabine; above all things, do not neglect your religious duties if you wish us to succeed.”
”And if we do triumph, mother, we shall only save the family. Calyste has killed within me the holy fervor of love,--killed it by sickening me with all things. What a honey-moon was mine, in which I was made to feel on that first day the bitterness of a retrospective adultery!”
The next day, about two in the afternoon, one of the vicars of the faubourg Saint-Germain appointed to a vacant bishopric in 1840 (an office refused by him for the third time), the Abbe Brossette, one of the most distinguished priests in Paris, crossed the court-yard of the hotel de Grandlieu, with a step which we must needs call the ecclesiastical step, so significant is it of caution, mystery, calmness, gravity, and dignity. He was a thin little man about fifty years of age, with a face as white as that of an old woman, chilled by priestly austerities, and hollowed by all the sufferings which he espoused.
Two black eyes, ardent with faith yet softened by an expression more mysterious than mystical, animated that truly apostolical face. He was smiling as he mounted the steps of the portico, so little did he believe in the enormity of the cases about which his penitent sent for him; but as the hand of the d.u.c.h.ess was an open palm for charity, she was worth the time which her innocent confessions stole from the more serious miseries of the parish.
When the vicar was announced the d.u.c.h.ess rose, and made a few steps toward him in the salon,--a distinction she granted only to cardinals, bishops, simple priests, d.u.c.h.esses older then herself, and persons of royal blood.
”My dear abbe,” she said, pointing to a chair and speaking in a low voice, ”I need the authority of your experience before I throw myself into a rather wicked intrigue, although it is one which must result in great good; and I desire to know from you whether I shall make hindrances to my own salvation in the course I propose to follow.”
”Madame la d.u.c.h.esse,” replied the abbe, ”do not mix up spiritual things with worldly things; they are usually irreconcilable. In the first place, what is this matter?”
”You know that my daughter Sabine is dying of grief; Monsieur du Guenic has left her for Madame de Rochefide.”
”It is very dreadful, very serious; but you know what our dear Saint Francois de Sales says on that subject. Remember too how Madame Guyon complained of the lack of mysticism in the proofs of conjugal love; she would have been very willing to see her husband with a Madame de Rochefide.”
”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 G.o.d, which recalls such a sinner; she needs a thunderbolt.”
”Father,” replied the d.u.c.h.ess, ”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 d.u.c.h.esse; 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 h.e.l.l a poor distracted creature.”
”In that case, why consult me?” asked the vicar, smiling.
”Ah!” replied the d.u.c.h.ess, ”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!”