Chapter 5

CALYSTE

The poor mother returned to the salon deeply distressed at finding
that the whole town was aware of what she had thought was known to her
alone. She sat down, trimmed the wick of the lamp by cutting it with a
pair of old scissors, took up once more the worsted-work she was
doing, and awaited Calyste. The baroness fondly hoped to induce her
son by this means to come home earlier and spend less time with
Mademoiselle des Touches. Such calculations of maternal jealousy were
wasted. Day after day, Calyste's visits to Les Touches became more
frequent, and every night he came in later. The night before the day
of which we speak it was midnight when he returned.

The baroness, lost in maternal meditation, was setting her stitches
with the rapidity of one absorbed in thought while engaged in manual
labor. Whoever had seen her bending to the light of the lamp beneath
the quadruply centennial hangings of that ancient room would have
admired the sublimity of the picture. Fanny's skin was so transparent
that it was possible to read the thoughts that crossed her brow
beneath it. Piqued with a curiosity that often comes to a pure woman,
she asked herself what devilish secrets these daughters of Baal
possessed to so charm men as to make them forgetful of mother, family,
country, and self-interests. Sometimes she longed to meet this woman
and judge her soberly for herself. Her mind measured to its full
extent the evils which the innovative spirit of the age--described to
her as so dangerous for young souls by the rector--would have upon her
only child, until then so guileless; as pure as an innocent girl, and
beautiful with the same fresh beauty.

Calyste, that splendid offspring of the oldest Breton race and the
noblest Irish blood, had been nurtured by his mother with the utmost
care. Until the moment when the baroness made over the training of him
to the rector of Guerande, she was certain that no impure word, no
evil thought had sullied the ears or entered the mind of her precious
son. After nursing him at her bosom, giving him her own life twice, as
it were, after guiding his footsteps as a little child, the mother had
put him with all his virgin innocence into the hands of the pastor,
who, out of true reverence for the family, had promised to give him a
thorough and Christian education. Calyste thenceforth received the
instruction which the abbe himself had received at the Seminary. The
baroness taught him English, and a teacher of mathematics was found,
not without difficulty, among the employes at Saint-Nazaire. Calyste
was therefore necessarily ignorant of modern literature, and the
advance and present progress of the sciences. His education had been
limited to geography and the circumspect