Chapter 10 - Page 2

Vignon from Paris to oppose it. Every now and then the voice of
Beatrix came fresh and pure to his ears from the little salon; a
savage desire to rush in and carry her off seized him at such moments.
What would become of him? What must he do? Could he come to Les
Touches? If Camille loved him how could he come there to adore
Beatrix? He saw no solution to these difficulties.

Insensibly to him silence now reigned in the house; he heard, but
without noticing, the opening and shutting of doors. Then suddenly
midnight sounded on the clock of the adjoining bedroom, and the voices
of Claude and Camille roused him fully from his torpid contemplation
of the future. Before he could rise and show himself, he heard the
following terrible words in the voice of Claude Vignon.

"You came to Paris last year desperately in love with Calyste," Claude
was saying to Felicite, "but you were horrified at the thought of the
consequences of such a passion at your age; it would lead you to a
gulf, to hell, to suicide perhaps. Love cannot exist unless it thinks
itself eternal, and you saw not far before you a horrible parting; old
age you knew would end the glorious poem soon. You thought of
'Adolphe,' that dreadful finale of the loves of Madame de Stael and
Benjamin Constant, who, however, were nearer of an age than you and
Calyste. Then you took me, as soldiers use fascines to build
entrenchments between the enemy and themselves. You brought me to Les
Touches to mask your real feelings and leave you safe to follow your
own secret adoration. The scheme was grand and ignoble both; but to
carry it out you should have chosen either a common man or one so
preoccupied by noble thoughts that you could easily deceive him. You
thought me simple and easy to mislead as a man of genius. I am not a
man of genius, I am a man of talent, and as such I have divined you.
When I made that eulogy yesterday on women of your age, explaining to
you why Calyste had loved you, do you suppose I took to myself your
ravished, fascinated, fazzling glance? Had I not read into your soul?
The eyes were turned on me, but the heart was throbbing for Calyste.
You have never been loved, my poor Maupin, and you never will be after
rejecting the beautiful fruit which chance has offered to you at the
portals of that hell of woman, the lock of which is the numeral 50!"

"Why has love fled me?" she said in a low voice. "Tell me, you who
know all."

"Because you are not lovable," he answered. "You do not bend to love;
love must bend to you. You may perhaps have yielded to some follies of
youth, but there was no youth in your heart; your mind has too much
depth; you have never been naive and artless,