Chapter 19 - Page 2

delightful interchange of counsels, cares, and
confidences apropos of their first infants.

While Calyste, a novice in falsehood, was saying to himself, "I must
warn Savinien," Sabine was thinking, "I am sure that paper bore a
coronet." This reflection passed through her mind like a flash, and
Sabine scolded herself for having made it. Nevertheless, she resolved
to find the paper, which in the midst of her terrors of the night
before she had flung into her letter-box.

After breakfast Calyste went out, saying to his wife that he should
soon return. Then he jumped into one of those little low carriages
with one horse which were just beginning to supersede the inconvenient
cabriolet of our ancestors. He drove in a few minutes to the vicomte's
house and begged him to do him the service, with rights of return, of
fibbing in case Sabine should question the vicomtesse. Thence Calyste,
urging his coachman to speed, rushed to the rue de Chartres in order
to know how Beatrix had passed the rest of the night. He found that
unfortunate just from her bath, fresh, embellished, and breakfasting
with a very good appetite. He admired the grace with which his angel
ate her boiled eggs, and he marvelled at the beauty of the gold
service, a present from a monomaniac lord, for whom Conti had composed
a few ballads on /ideas/ of the lord, who afterwards published them as
his own!

Calyste listened entranced to the witty speeches of his idol, whose
great object was to amuse him, until she grew angry and wept when he
rose to leave her. He thought he had been there only half an hour, but
it was past three before he reached home. His handsome English horse,
a present from the Vicomtesse de Grandlieu, was so bathed in sweat
that it looked as though it had been driven through the sea. By one of
those chances which all jealous women prepare for themselves, Sabine
was at a window which looked on the court-yard, impatient at Calyste's
non-return, uneasy without knowing why. The condition of the horse
with its foaming mouth surprised her.

"Where can he have come from?"

The question was whispered in her ear by that power which is not
exactly consciousness, nor devil, nor angel; which sees, forebodes,
shows us the unseen, and creates belief in mental beings, creatures
born of our brains, going and coming and living in the world invisible
of ideas.

"Where do you come from, dear angel?" Sabine said to Calyste, meeting
him on the first landing of the staircase. "Abd-el-Kader is nearly
foundered. You told me you would be gone but a moment, and I have been
waiting for you these three hours."

"Well, well," thought Calyste, who was making progress