第30章

Great Heavens! you would soon grow used to them and to the pleasures of possession.Have not the little concessions that Iwas weak enough to make come to be a matter of course in the last few months? Some day, when ruin comes, you will give me no reason for the change in you beyond a curt, `I have ceased to care for you.'--Then, rank and fortune and honour and all that was the Duchesse de Langeais will be swallowed up in one disappointed hope.I shall have children to bear witness to my shame, and----" With an involuntary gesture she interrupted herself, and continued: "But I am too good-natured to explain all this to you when you know it better than I.Come! let us stay as we are.I am only too fortunate in that I can still break these bonds which you think so strong.Is there anything so very heroic in coming to the Hotel de Langeais to spend an evening with a woman whose prattle amuses you?--a woman whom you take for a plaything? Why, half a dozen young coxcombs come here just as regularly every afternoon between three and five.They, too, are very generous, I am to suppose? I make fun of them;they stand my petulance and insolence pretty quietly, and make me laugh; but as for you, I give all the treasures of my soul to you, and you wish to ruin me, you try my patience in endless ways.Hush, that will do, that will do," she continued, seeing that he was about to speak, "you have no heart, no soul, no delicacy.I know what you want to tell me.Very well, then--yes.I would rather you should take me for a cold, insensible woman, with no devotion in her composition, no heart even, than be taken by everybody else for a vulgar person, and be condemned to your so-called pleasures, of which you would most certainly tire, and to everlasting punishment for it afterwards.

Your selfish love is not worth so many sacrifices...."The words give but a very inadequate idea of the discourse which the Duchess trilled out with the quick volubility of a bird-organ.Nor, truly, was there anything to prevent her from talking on for some time to come, for poor Armand's only reply to the torrent of flute notes was a silence filled with cruelly painful thoughts.He was just beginning to see that this woman was playing with him; he divined instinctively that a devoted love, a responsive love, does not reason and count the consequences in this way.Then, as he heard her reproach him with detestable motives, he felt something like shame as he remembered that unconsciously he had made those very calculations.With angelic honesty of purpose, he looked within, and self-examination found nothing but selfishness in all his thoughts and motives, in the answers which he framed and could not utter.He was self-convicted.In his despair he longed to fling himself from the window.The egoism of it was intolerable.

What indeed can a man say when a woman will not believe in love?

Let me prove how much I love you.--The _I_ is always there.

The heroes of the boudoir, in such circumstances, can follow the example of the primitive logician who preceded the Pyrrhonists and denied movement.Montriveau was not equal to this feat.

With all his audacity, he lacked this precise kind which never deserts an adept in the formulas of feminine algebra.If so many women, and even the best of women, fall a prey to a kind of expert to whom the vulgar give a grosser name, it is perhaps because the said experts are great PROVERS, and love, in spite of its delicious poetry of sentiment, requires a little more geometry than people are wont to think.

Now the Duchess and Montriveau were alike in this--they were both equally unversed in love lore.The lady's knowledge of theory was but scanty; in practice she knew nothing whatever; she felt nothing, and reflected over everything.Montriveau had had but little experience, was absolutely ignorant of theory, and felt too much to reflect at all.Both therefore were enduring the consequences of the singular situation.At that supreme moment the myriad thoughts in his mind might have been reduced to the formula--"Submit to be mine ----' words which seem horribly selfish to a woman for whom they awaken no memories, recall no ideas.Something nevertheless he must say.And what was more, though her barbed shafts had set his blood tingling, though the short phrases that she discharged at him one by one were very keen and sharp and cold, he must control himself lest he should lose all by an outbreak of anger.

"Mme la Duchesse, I am in despair that God should have invented no way for a woman to confirm the gift of her heart save by adding the gift of her person.The high value which you yourself put upon the gift teaches me that I cannot attach less importance to it.If you have given me your inmost self and your whole heart, as you tell me, what can the rest matter? And besides, if my happiness means so painful a sacrifice, let us say no more about it.But you must pardon a man of spirit if he feels humiliated at being taken for a spaniel."The tone in which the last remark was uttered might perhaps have frightened another woman; but when the wearer of a petticoat has allowed herself to be addressed as a Divinity, and thereby set herself above all other mortals, no power on earth can be so haughty.

"M.le Marquis, I am in despair that God should not have invented some nobler way for a man to confirm the gift of his heart than by the manifestation of prodigiously vulgar desires.