Chapter 20 - Page 2

idol," she said to herself. These thoughts
plowed furrows in her heart. She wanted to ask pardon for her fault,
but Certainty let loose upon her other proofs. Grown bold and
insolent, Beatrix wrote to Calyste at his own home; Madame du Guenic
received the letter, and gave it to her husband without opening it,
but she said to him, in a changed voice and with death in her soul:
"My friend, that letter is from the Jockey Club; I recognize both the
paper and the perfume."

Calyste colored, and put the letter into his pocket.

"Why don't you read it?"

"I know what it is about."

The young wife sat down. No longer did fever burn her, she wept no
more; but madness such as, in feeble beings, gives birth to miracles
of crime, madness which lays hands on arsenic for themselves or for
their rivals, possessed her. At this moment little Calyste was brought
in, and she took him in her arms to dance him. The child, just
awakened, sought the breast beneath the gown.

"He remembers,--he, at any rate," she said in a low voice.

Calyste went to his own room to read his letter. When he was no longer
present the poor young woman burst into tears, and wept as women weep
when they are all alone.

Pain, as well as pleasure, has its initiation. The first crisis, like
that in which poor Sabine nearly succumbed, returns no more than the
first fruits of other things return. It is the first wedge struck in
the torture of the heart; all others are expected, the shock to the
nerves is known, the capital of our forces has been already drawn upon
for vigorous resistance. So Sabine, sure of her betrayal, spent three
hours with her son in her arms beside the fire in a way that surprised
herself, when Gasselin, turned into a footman, came to say:--

"Madame is served."

"Let monsieur know."

"Monsieur does not dine at home, Madame la baronne."

Who knows what torture there is for a young woman of twenty-three in
finding herself alone in the great dining-room of an old mansion,
served by silent servants, under circumstances like these?

"Order the carriage," she said suddenly; "I shall go to the Opera."

She dressed superbly; she wanted to exhibit herself alone and smiling
like a happy woman. In the midst of her remorse for the addition she
had made to Madame de Rochefide's letter she had resolved to conquer,
to win back Calyste by loving kindness, by the virtues of a wife, by
the gentleness of the paschal lamb. She wished, also, to deceive all
Paris. She loved,--loved as courtesans and as angels love, with pride,
with humility. But the opera chanced to be "Otello." When Rubini sang