Chapter 8

"My father has gone," thought Eugenie, who heard all that took place
from the head of the stairs. Silence was restored in the house, and
the distant rumbling of the carriage, ceasing by degrees, no longer
echoed through the sleeping town. At this moment Eugenie heard in her
heart, before the sound caught her ears, a cry which pierced the
partitions and came from her cousin's chamber. A line of light, thin
as the blade of a sabre, shone through a chink in the door and fell
horizontally on the balusters of the rotten staircase.

"He suffers!" she said, springing up the stairs. A second moan brought
her to the landing near his room. The door was ajar, she pushed it
open. Charles was sleeping; his head hung over the side of the old
armchair, and his hand, from which the pen had fallen, nearly touched
the floor. The oppressed breathing caused by the strained posture
suddenly frightened Eugenie, who entered the room hastily.

"He must be very tired," she said to herself, glancing at a dozen
letters lying sealed upon the table. She read their addresses: "To
Messrs. Farry, Breilmann, & Co., carriage-makers"; "To Monsieur
Buisson, tailor," etc.

"He has been settling all his affairs, so as to leave France at once,"
she thought. Her eyes fell upon two open letters. The words, "My dear
Annette," at the head of one of them, blinded her for a moment. Her
heart beat fast, her feet were nailed to the floor.

"His dear Annette! He loves! he is loved! No hope! What does he say to
her?"

These thoughts rushed through her head and heart. She saw the words
everywhere, even on the bricks of the floor, in letters of fire.

"Resign him already? No, no! I will not read the letter. I ought to go
away--What if I do read it?"

She looked at Charles, then she gently took his head and placed it
against the back of the chair; he let her do so, like a child which,
though asleep, knows its mother's touch and receives, without awaking,
her kisses and watchful care. Like a mother Eugenie raised the
drooping hand, and like a mother she gently kissed the chestnut hair
--"Dear Annette!" a demon shrieked the words in her ear.

"I am doing wrong; but I must read it, that letter," she said. She
turned away her head, for her noble sense of honor reproached her. For
the first time in her life good and evil struggled together in her
heart. Up to that moment she had never had to blush for any action.
Passion and curiosity triumphed. As she read each sentence her heart
swelled more and more, and the keen glow which filled her being as she
did so, only made the joys of first love still more precious.