Chapter 26 - Page 2

leper. Calyste
dared not, seeing his wife on the staircase, advance to accompany her,
though twice she vainly cast him a tearful glance, a prayer, that he
would come to her. At that moment, La Palferine, elegant, superb,
charming, left two ladies with whom he had been talking, and came down
to the marquise.

"Take my arm," he said, bowing, "and walk proudly out. I will find
your carriage."

"Will you come home with me and finish the evening?" she answered,
getting into her carriage and making room for him.

La Palferine said to his groom, "Follow the carriage of madame," and
then he jumped into it beside her to the utter stupefaction of
Calyste, who stood for a moment planted on his two legs as if they
were lead. It was the sight of him standing thus, pale and livid, that
caused Beatrix to make the sign to La Palferine to enter her carriage.
Doves can be Robespierres in spite of their white wings. Three
carriages reached the rue de Chartres with thundering rapidity,--that
of Calyste, that of the marquise, and that of La Palferine.

"Oh! you here?" said Beatrix, entering her salon on the arm of the
young count, and finding Calyste, whose horse had outstripped those of
the other carriages.

"Then you know monsieur?" said Calyste, furiously.

"Monsieur le Comte de la Palferine was presented to me ten days ago by
Nathan," she replied; "but you, monsieur, /you/ have known me four
years!--"

"And I am ready, madame," said Charles-Edouard, "to make the Marquise
d'Espard repent to her third generation for being the first to turn
away from you."

"Ah! it was /she/, was it?" cried Beatrix; "I will make her rue it."

"To revenge yourself thoroughly," said the young man in her ear, "you
ought to recover your husband; and I am capable of bringing him back
to you."

The conversation, thus begun, went on till two in the morning, without
allowing Calyste, whose anger was again and again repressed by a look
from Beatrix, to say one word to her in private. La Palferine, though
he did not like Beatrix, showed a superiority of grace, good taste,
and cleverness equal to the evident inferiority of Calyste, who
wriggled in his chair like a worm cut in two, and actually rose three
times as if to box the ears of La Palferine. The third time that he
made a dart forward, the young count said to him, "Are you in pain,
monsieur?" in a manner which sent Calyste back to his chair, where he
sat as rigid as a mile-stone.

The marquise conversed with the ease of a Celimene, pretending to
ignore that Calyste was there. La Palferine had