Part 36 (1/2)

Louise was eighteen and the baron forty. She was ordinary in face and her complexion could not be called white, but she had a charming figure, good eyes, a small foot, a pretty hand, good taste and abundant intelligence. The baron, worn out by the fatigues of war and still more by the excesses of a stormy youth, had one of those faces upon which the Republic, the Directory, the Consulate and the Empire seemed to have set their impress.

He became so deeply in love with his wife, that he asked and obtained from the Emperor a post at Paris, in order that he might be enabled to watch over his treasure. He was as jealous as Count Almaviva, still more from vanity than from love. The young orphan had married her husband from necessity, and, flattered by the ascendancy she wielded over a man much older than herself, waited upon his wishes and his needs; but her delicacy was offended from the first days of their marriage by the habits and ideas of a man whose manners were tinged with republican license. He was a predestined.

I do not know exactly how long the baron made his honeymoon last, nor when war was declared in his household; but I believe it happened in 1816, at a very brilliant ball given by Monsieur D-----, a commissariat officer, that the commissary general, who had been promoted head of the department, admired the beautiful Madame B-----, the wife of a banker, and looked at her much more amorously than a married man should have allowed himself to do.

At two o'clock in the morning it happened that the banker, tired of waiting any longer, went home leaving his wife at the ball.

”We are going to take you home to your house,” said the baroness to Madame B-----. ”Monsieur de V-----, offer your arm to Emilie!”

And now the baron is seated in his carriage next to a woman who, during the whole evening, had been offered and had refused a thousand attentions, and from whom he had hoped in vain to win a single look.

There she was, in all the l.u.s.tre of her youth and beauty, displaying the whitest shoulders and the most ravis.h.i.+ng lines of beauty. Her face, which still reflected the pleasures of the evening, seemed to vie with the brilliancy of her satin gown; her eyes to rival the blaze of her diamonds; and her skin to cope with the soft whiteness of the marabouts which tied in her hair, set off the ebon tresses and the ringlets dangling from her headdress. Her tender voice would stir the chords of the most insensible hearts; in a word, so powerfully did she wake up love in the human breast that Robert d'Abrissel himself would perhaps have yielded to her.

The baron glanced at his wife, who, overcome with fatigue, had sunk to sleep in a corner of the carriage. He compared, in spite of himself, the toilette of Louise and that of Emilie. Now on occasions of this kind the presence of a wife is singularly calculated to sharpen the unquenchable desires of a forbidden love. Moreover, the glances of the baron, directed alternately to his wife and to her friend, were easy to interpret, and Madame B----- interpreted them.

”Poor Louise,” she said, ”she is overtired. Going out does not suit her, her tastes are so simple. At Ecouen she was always reading--”

”And you, what used you to do?”

”I, sir? Oh, I thought about nothing but acting comely. It was my pa.s.sion!”

”But why do you so rarely visit Madame de V-----? We have a country house at Saint-Prix, where we could have a comedy acted, in a little theatre which I have built there.”

”If I have not visited Madame de V-----, whose fault is it?” she replied. ”You are so jealous that you will not allow her either to visit her friends or to receive them.”

”I jealous!” cried Monsieur de V-----, ”after four years of marriage, and after having had three children!”

”Hush,” said Emilie, striking the fingers of the baron with her fan, ”Louise is not asleep!”

The carriage stopped, and the baron offered his hand to his wife's fair friend and helped her to get out.

”I hope,” said Madame B-----, ”that you will not prevent Louise from coming to the ball which I am giving this week.”

The baron made her a respectful bow.

This ball was a triumph of Madame B-----'s and the ruin of the husband of Louise; for he became desperately enamored of Emilie, to whom he would have sacrificed a hundred lawful wives.

Some months after that evening on which the baron gained some hopes of succeeding with his wife's friend, he found himself one morning at the house of Madame B-----, when the maid came to announce the Baroness de V-----.

”Ah!” cried Emilie, ”if Louise were to see you with me at such an hour as this, she would be capable of compromising me. Go into that closet and don't make the least noise.”

The husband, caught like a mouse in a trap, concealed himself in the closet.

”Good-day, my dear!” said the two women, kissing each other.

”Why are you come so early?” asked Emilie.

”Oh! my dear, cannot you guess? I came to have an understanding with you!”

”What, a duel?”