第28章

The General was broken down by her harshness; this woman seemed as if she could be at will a sister or a stranger to him.He made one despairing stride towards the door.He would leave her forever without another word.He was wretched; and the Duchess was laughing within herself over mental anguish far more cruel than the old judicial torture.But as for going away, it was not in his power to do it.In any sort of crisis, a woman is, as it were, bursting with a certain quantity of things to say; so long as she has not delivered herself of them, she experiences the sensation which we are apt to feel at the sight of something incomplete.Mme de Langeais had not said all that was in her mind.She took up her parable and said--"We have not the same convictions, General, I am pained to think.It would be dreadful if a woman could not believe in a religion which permits us to love beyond the grave.I set Christian sentiments aside; you cannot understand them.Let me simply speak to you of expediency.Would you forbid a woman at court the table of the Lord when it is customary to take the sacrament at Easter? People must certainly do something for their party.The Liberals, whatever they may wish to do, will never destroy the religious instinct.Religion will always be a political necessity.Would you undertake to govern a nation of logic-choppers? Napoleon was afraid to try; he persecuted ideologists.If you want to keep people from reasoning, you must give them something to feel.So let us accept the Roman Catholic Church with all its consequences.And if we would have France go to mass, ought we not to begin by going ourselves? Religion, you see, Armand, is a bond uniting all the conservative principles which enable the rich to live in tranquillity.Religion and the rights of property are intimately connected.It is certainly a finer thing to lead a nation by ideas of morality than by fear of the scaffold, as in the time of the Terror--the one method by which your odious Revolution could enforce obedience.The priest and the king--that means you, and me, and the Princess my neighbour; and, in a word, the interests of all honest people personified.There, my friend, just be so good as to belong to your party, you that might be its Sylla if you had the slightest ambition that way.I know nothing about politics myself; I argue from my own feelings; but still I know enough to guess that society would be overturned if people were always calling its foundations in question----""If that is how your Court and your Government think, I am sorry for you," broke in Montriveau."The Restoration, madam, ought to say, like Catherine de Medici, when she heard that the battle of Dreux was lost, `Very well; now we will go to the meeting-house.' Now 1815 was your battle of Dreux.Like the royal power of those days, you won in fact, while you lost in right.Political Protestantism has gained an ascendancy over people's minds.If you have no mind to issue your Edict of Nantes; or if, when it is issued, you publish a Revocation; if you should one day be accused and convicted of repudiating the Charter, which is simply a pledge given to maintain the interests established under the Republic, then the Revolution will rise again, terrible in her strength, and strike but a single blow.

It will not be the Revolution that will go into exile; she is the very soil of France.Men die, but people's interests do not die.

...Eh, great Heavens! what are France and the crown and rightful sovereigns, and the whole world besides, to us? Idle words compared with my happiness.Let them reign or be hurled from the throne, little do I care.Where am I now?""In the Duchesse de Langeais's boudoir, my friend.""No, no.No more of the Duchess, no more of Langeais; I am with my dear Antoinette.""Will you do me the pleasure to stay where you are," she said, laughing and pushing him back, gently however.

"So you have never loved me," he retorted, and anger flashed in lightning from his eyes.

"No, dear"; but the "No" was equivalent to "Yes.""I am a great ass," he said, kissing her hands.The terrible queen was a woman once more.--"Antoinette," he went on, laying his head on her feet, "you are too chastely tender to speak of our happiness to anyone in this world.""Oh!" she cried, rising to her feet with a swift, graceful spring, "you are a great simpleton." And without another word she fled into the drawing-room.

"What is it now?" wondered the General, little knowing that the touch of his burning forehead had sent a swift electric thrill through her from foot to head.

In hot wrath he followed her to the drawing-room, only to hear divinely sweet chords.The Duchess was at the piano.If the man of science or the poet can at once enjoy and comprehend, bringing his intelligence to bear upon his enjoyment without loss of delight, he is conscious that the alphabet and phraseology of music are but cunning instruments for the composer, like the wood and copper wire under the hands of the executant.For the poet and the man of science there is a music existing apart, underlying the double expression of this language of the spirit and senses.Andiamo mio ben can draw tears of joy or pitying laughter at the will of the singer; and not unfrequently one here and there in the world, some girl unable to live and bear the heavy burden of an unguessed pain, some man whose soul vibrates with the throb of passion, may take up a musical theme, and lo!

heaven is opened for them, or they find a language for themselves in some sublime melody, some song lost to the world.

The General was listening now to such a song; a mysterious music unknown to all other ears, as the solitary plaint of some mateless bird dying alone in a virgin forest.

"Great Heavens! what are you playing there?" he asked in an unsteady voice.

"The prelude of a ballad, called, I believe, Fleuve du Tage.""I did not know that there was such music in a piano," he returned.