第32章

In the course of his self-examination, as he walked, he vowed to love this woman so devoutly, that every day of her life she should find absolution for her sins against society in unfailing happiness.Sweet stirrings of life when life is at the full!

The man that is strong enough to steep his soul in the colour of one emotion, feels infinite joy as glimpses open out for him of an ardent lifetime that knows no diminution of passion to the end; even so it is permitted to certain mystics, in ecstasy, to behold the Light of God.Love would be naught without the belief that it would last forever; love grows great through constancy.

It was thus that, wholly absorbed by his happiness, Montriveau understood passion.

"We belong to each other forever!"

The thought was like a talisman fulfilling the wishes of his life.He did not ask whether the Duchess might not change, whether her love might not last.No, for he had faith.Without that virtue there is no future for Christianity, and perhaps it is even more necessary to society.A conception of life as feeling occurred to him for the first time; hitherto he had lived by action, the most strenuous exertion of human energies, the physical devotion, as it may be called, of the soldier.

Next day M.de Montriveau went early in the direction of the Faubourg Saint-Germain.He had made an appointment at a house not far from the Hotel de Langeais; and the business over, he went thither as if to his own home.The General's companion chanced to be a man for whom he felt a kind of repulsion whenever he met him in other houses.This was the Marquis de Ronquerolles, whose reputation had grown so great in Paris boudoirs.He was witty, clever, and what was more--courageous;he set the fashion to all the young men in Paris.As a man of gallantry, his success and experience were equally matters of envy; and neither fortune nor birth was wanting in his case, qualifications which add such lustre in Paris to a reputation as a leader of fashion.

"Where are you going?" asked M.de Ronquerolles.

"To Mme de Langeais's."

"Ah, true.I forgot that you had allowed her to lime you.You are wasting your affections on her when they might be much better employed elsewhere.I could have told you of half a score of women in the financial world, any one of them a thousand times better worth your while than that titled courtesan, who does with her brains what less artificial women do with----""What is this, my dear fellow?" Armand broke in."The Duchess is an angel of innocence."Ronquerolles began to laugh.

"Things being thus, dear boy," said he, "it is my duty to enlighten you.Just a word; there is no harm in it between ourselves.Has the Duchess surrendered? If so, I have nothing more to say.Come, give me your confidence.There is no occasion to waste your time in grafting your great nature on that unthankful stock, when all your hopes and cultivation will come to nothing."Armand ingenuously made a kind of general report of his position, enumerating with much minuteness the slender rights so hardly won.Ronquerolles burst into a peal of laughter so heartless, that it would have cost any other man his life.But from their manner of speaking and looking at each other during that colloquy beneath the wall, in a corner almost as remote from intrusion as the desert itself, it was easy to imagine the friendship between the two men knew no bounds, and that no power on earth could estrange them.

"My dear Armand, why did you not tell me that the Duchess was a puzzle to you? I would have given you a little advice which might have brought your flirtation properly through.You must know, to begin with, that the women of our Faubourg, like any other women, love to steep themselves in love; but they have a mind to possess and not to be possessed.They have made a sort of compromise with human nature.The code of their parish gives them a pretty wide latitude short of the last transgression.The sweets enjoyed by this fair Duchess of yours are so many venial sins to be washed away in the waters of penitence.But if you had the impertinence to ask in earnest for the moral sin to which naturally you are sure to attach the highest importance, you would see the deep disdain with which the door of the boudoir and the house would be incontinently shut upon you.The tender Antoinette would dismiss everything from her memory; you would be less than a cipher for her.She would wipe away your kisses, my dear friend, as indifferently as she would perform her ablutions.

She would sponge love from her cheeks as she washes off rouge.

We know women of that sort--the thorough-bred Parisienne.Have you ever noticed a grisette tripping along the street? Her face is as good as a picture.A pretty cap, fresh cheeks, trim hair, a guileful smile, and the rest of her almost neglected.Is not this true to the life? Well, that is the Parisienne.She knows that her face is all that will be seen, so she devotes all her care, finery, and vanity to her head.The Duchess is the same;the head is everything with her.She can only feel through her intellect, her heart lies in her brain, she is a sort of intellectual epicure, she has a head-voice.We call that kind of poor creature a Lais of the intellect.You have been taken in like a boy.If you doubt it, you can have proof of it tonight, this morning, this instant.Go up to her, try the demand as an experiment, insist peremptorily if it is refused.You might set about it like the late Marechal de Richelieu, and get nothing for your pains."Armand was dumb with amazement.

"Has your desire reached the point of infatuation?""I want her at any cost!" Montriveau cried out despairingly.