第23章

"Ah! you have made me too late for the ball!" she exclaimed, surprised and vexed that she had forgotten how time was going.

The next moment she approved the exchange of pleasures with a smile that made Armand's heart give a sudden leap.

"I certainly promised Mme de Beauseant," she added."They are all expecting me.""Very well--go."

"No--go on.I will stay.Your Eastern adventures fascinate me.

Tell me the whole story of your life.I love to share in a brave man's hardships, and I feel them all, indeed I do!"She was playing with her scarf, twisting it and pulling it to pieces, with jerky, impatient movements that seemed to tell of inward dissatisfaction and deep reflection.

"WE are fit for nothing," she went on."Ah! we are contemptible, selfish, frivolous creatures.We can bore ourselves with amusements, and that is all we can do.Not one of us that understands that she has a part to play in life.In old days in France, women were beneficent lights; they lived to comfort those that mourned, to encourage high virtues, to reward artists and stir new life with noble thoughts.If the world has grown so petty, ours is the fault.You make me loathe the ball and this world in which I live.No, I am not giving up much for you."She had plucked her scarf to pieces, as a child plays with a flower, pulling away all the petals one by one; and now she crushed it into a ball, and flung it away.She could show her swan's neck.

She rang the bell."I shall not go out tonight," she told the footman.Her long, blue eyes turned timidly to Armand; and by the look of misgiving in them, he knew that he was meant to take the order for a confession, for a first and great favour.There was a pause, filled with many thoughts, before she spoke with that tenderness which is often in women's voices, and not so often in their hearts."You have had a hard life," she said.

"No," returned Armand."Until today I did not know what happiness was.""Then you know it now?" she asked, looking at him with a demure, keen glance.

"What is happiness for me henceforth but this--to see you, to hear you?...Until now I have only known privation; now Iknow that I can be unhappy----"

"That will do, that will do," she said."You must go; it is past midnight.Let us regard appearances.People must not talk about us.I do not know quite what I shall say; but the headache is a good-natured friend, and tells no tales.""Is there to be a ball tomorrow night?"

"You would grow accustomed to the life, I think.Very well.

Yes, we will go again tomorrow night."

There was not a happier man in the world than Armand when he went out from her.Every evening he came to Mme de Langeais's at the hour kept for him by a tacit understanding.

It would be tedious, and, for the many young men who carry a redundance of such sweet memories in their hearts, it were superfluous to follow the story step by step--the progress of a romance growing in those hours spent together, a romance controlled entirely by a woman's will.If sentiment went too fast, she would raise a quarrel over a word, or when words flagged behind her thoughts, she appealed to the feelings.

Perhaps the only way of following such Penelope's progress is by marking its outward and visible signs.

As, for instance, within a few days of their first meeting, the assiduous General had won and kept the right to kiss his lady's insatiable hands.Wherever Mme de Langeais went, M.de Montriveau was certain to be seen, till people jokingly called him "Her Grace's orderly." And already he had made enemies;others were jealous, and envied him his position.Mme de Langeais had attained her end.The Marquis de Montriveau was among her numerous train of adorers, and a means of humiliating those who boasted of their progress in her good graces, for she publicly gave him preference over them all.

"Decidedly, M.de Montriveau is the man for whom the Duchess shows a preference," pronounced Mme de Serizy.

And who in Paris does not know what it means when a woman "shows a preference?" All went on therefore according to prescribed rule.The anecdotes which people were pleased to circulate concerning the General put that warrior in so formidable a light, that the more adroit quietly dropped their pretensions to the Duchess, and remained in her train merely to turn the position to account, and to use her name and personality to make better terms for themselves with certain stars of the second magnitude.And those lesser powers were delighted to take a lover away from Mme de Langeais.The Duchess was keen-sighted enough to see these desertions and treaties with the enemy; and her pride would not suffer her to be the dupe of them.As M.de Talleyrand, one of her great admirers, said, she knew how to take a second edition of revenge, laying the two-edged blade of a sarcasm between the pairs in these "morganatic" unions.Her mocking disdain contributed not a little to increase her reputation as an extremely clever woman and a person to be feared.Her character for virtue was consolidated while she amused herself with other people's secrets, and kept her own to herself.Yet, after two months of assiduities, she saw with a vague dread in the depths of her soul that M.de Montriveau understood nothing of the subtleties of flirtation after the manner of the Faubourg Saint-Germain; he was taking a Parisienne's coquetry in earnest.

"You will not tame HIM, dear Duchess," the old Vidame de Pamiers had said." 'Tis a first cousin to the eagle; he will carry you off to his eyrie if you do not take care."Then Mme de Langeais felt afraid.The shrewd old noble's words sounded like a prophecy.The next day she tried to turn love to hate.She was harsh, exacting, irritable, unbearable; Montriveau disarmed her with angelic sweetness.She so little knew the great generosity of a large nature, that the kindly jests with which her first complaints were met went to her heart.She sought a quarrel, and found proofs of affection.She persisted.

"When a man idolises you, how can he have vexed you?" asked Armand.