Chapter 26

DISILLUSIONS--IN ALL BUT LA FONTAINE'S FABLES

The next day Calyste seemed to Beatrix just what he was: a perfect and
loyal gentleman without imagination or cleverness. In Paris, a man
called clever must have spontaneous brilliancy, as the fountains have
water; men of the world and Parisians in general are in that way very
clever. But Calyste loved too deeply, he was too much absorbed in his
own sentiments to perceive the change in Beatrix, and to satisfy her
need by displaying new resources. To her, he seemed pale indeed, after
the brilliancy of the night before, and he caused not the faintest
emotion to the hungry Beatrix. A great love is a credit opened to a
power so voracious that bankruptcy is sure to come sooner or later.

In spite of the fatigue of this day (the day when a woman is bored by
a lover) Beatrix trembled with fear at the thought of a possible
meeting between La Palferine and Calyste, a man of courage without
assertion. She hesitated to see the count again; but the knot of her
hesitation was cut by a decisive event.

Beatrix had taken the third of a box at the Opera, obscurely situated
on the lower tier for the purpose of not being much in sight. For the
last few days Calyste, grown bolder, had escorted the marquise to her
box, placing himself behind her, and timing their arrival at a late
hour so as to meet no one in the corridors. Beatrix, on these
occasions, left the box alone before the end of the last act, and
Calyste followed at a distance to watch over her, although old Antoine
was always there to attend his mistress. Maxime and La Palferine had
studied this strategy, which was prompted by respect for the
proprieties, also by that desire for concealment which characterizes
the idolators of the little god, and also, again, by the fear which
oppresses all women who have been constellations in the world and whom
love has caused to fall from their zodiacal eminence. Public
humiliation is dreaded as an agony more cruel than death itself. But,
by a manoeuvre of Maxime's, that blow to her pride, that outrage which
women secure of their rank in Olympus cast upon others who have fallen
from their midst, was now to descend on Beatrix.

At a performance of "Lucia," which ends, as every one knows, with one
of the finest triumphs of Rubini, Madame de Rochefide, whom Antoine
had not yet come to fetch, reached the peristyle of the opera-house by
the lower corridor just as the staircase was crowded by fashionable
women ranged on the stairs or standing in groups below it, awaiting
the announcement of their carriages. Beatrix was instantly recognized;
whispers which soon became a murmur arose in every group. In a moment
the crowd dispersed; the marquise was left alone like a