Chapter 19

THE FIRST LIE OF A PIOUS DUCHESS

Calyste returned to his own house about two in the morning. After
waiting for him till half-past twelve, Sabine had gone to bed
overwhelmed with fatigue. She slept, although she was keenly
distressed by the laconic wording of her husband's note. Still, she
explained it. The true love of a woman invariably begins by explaining
all things to the advantage of the man beloved. Calyste was pressed
for time, she said.

The next morning the child was better; the mother's uneasiness
subsided, and Sabine came with a smiling face, and little Calyste on
her arm, to present him to his father before breakfast with the pretty
fooleries and senseless words which gay young mothers do and say. This
little scene gave Calyste the chance to maintain a countenance. He was
charming to his wife, thinking in his heart that he was a monster, and
he played like a child with Monsieur le chevalier; in fact he played
too well,--he overdid the part; but Sabine had not reached the stage
at which a woman recognizes so delicate a distinction.

At breakfast, however, she asked him suddenly:--

"What did you do yesterday?"

"Portenduere kept me to dinner," he replied, "and after that we went
to the club to play whist."

"That's a foolish life, my Calyste," said Sabine. "Young noblemen in
these days ought to busy themselves about recovering in the eyes of
the country the ground lost by their fathers. It isn't by smoking
cigars, playing whist, idling away their leisure, and saying insolent
things of parvenus who have driven them from their positions, not yet
by separating themselves from the masses whose soul and intellect and
providence they ought to be, that the nobility will exist. Instead of
being a party, you will soon be a mere opinion, as de Marsay said. Ah!
if you only knew how my ideas on this subject have enlarged since I
have nursed and cradled your child! I'd like to see that grand old
name of Guenic become once more historical!" Then suddenly plunging
her eyes into those of Calyste, who was listening to her with a
pensive air, she added: "Admit that the first note you ever wrote me
was rather stiff."

"I did not think of sending you word till I got to the club."

"But you wrote on a woman's note-paper; it had a perfume of feminine
elegance."

"Those club directors are such dandies!"

The Vicomte de Portenduere and his wife, formerly Mademoiselle
Mirouet, had become of late very intimate with the du Guenics, so
intimate that they shared their box at the Opera by equal payments.
The two young women, Ursula and Sabine, had been won to this
friendship by the