Beatrix by Honoré de Balzac (story books to read TXT) 📖

de Kergarouet went bravely on in her tilt with the satirical Parisians.

Calyste, who was trotting slowly beside the carriage, could only see the faces of the two ladies on the front seat, and his eyes expressed, from time to time, rather painful thoughts. Forced, by her position, to let herself be looked at, Beatrix constantly avoided meeting the young man's eyes, and practised a manoeuvre most exasperating to lovers; she held her shawl crossed and her hands crossed over it, apparently plunged in the deepest meditation.

At a part of the road which is shaded, dewy, and verdant as a forest glade, where the wheels of the carriage scarcely sounded, and the breeze brought down balsamic odors and waved the branches above their heads, Camille called Madame de Rochefide's attention to the harmonies of the place, and pressed her knee to make her look at Calyste.

"How well he rides!" she said.

"Oh! Calyste does everything well," said Charlotte.

"He rides like an Englishman," said the marquise, indifferently.

"His mother is Irish,--an O'Brien," continued Charlotte, who thought herself insulted by such indifference.

Camille and the marquise drove through Guerande with the viscountess and her daughter, to the great astonishment of the inhabitants of the town. They left the mother and daughter at the end of the lane leading to the Guenic mansion, where a crowd came near gathering, attracted by so unusual a sight. Calyste had ridden on to announce the arrival of the company to his mother and aunt, who expected them to dinner, that meal having been postponed till four o'clock. Then he returned to the gate to give his arm to the two ladies, and bid Camille and Beatrix adieu.

He kissed the hand of Felicite, hoping thereby to be able to do the same to that of the marquise; but she still kept her arms crossed resolutely, and he cast moist glances of entreaty at her uselessly.

"You little ninny!" whispered Camille, lightly touching his ear with a kiss that was full of friendship.

"Quite true," thought Calyste to himself as the carriage drove away. "I am forgetting her advice--but I shall always forget it, I'm afraid."

Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel (who had intrepidly returned to Guerande on the back of a hired horse), the Vicomtesse de Kergarouet, and Charlotte found dinner ready, and were treated with the utmost cordiality, if luxury were lacking, by the du Guenics. Mademoiselle Zephirine had ordered the best wine to be brought from the cellar, and Mariotte had surpassed herself in her Breton dishes.

The viscountess, proud of her trip with the illustrious Camille Maupin, endeavored to explain to the assembled company the present condition of modern literature, and Camille's place in it. But the literary topic met the fate of whist; neither the du Guenics, nor the abbe, nor the Chevalier du Halga understood one word of it. The rector and the chevalier had arrived in time for the liqueurs at dessert.

As soon as Mariotte, assisted by Gasselin and Madame de Kergarouet's maid, had cleared the table, there was a general and enthusiastic cry for _mouche_. Joy appeared to reign in the household. All supposed Calyste to be free of his late entanglement, and almost as good as married to the little Charlotte. The young man alone kept silence. For the first time in his life he had instituted comparisons between his life-long friends and the two elegant women, witty, accomplished, and tasteful, who, at the present moment, must be laughing heartily at the provincial mother and daughter, judging by the look he intercepted between them.

He was seeking in vain for some excuse to leave his family on this occasion, and go up as usual to Les Touches, when Madame de Kergarouet mentioned that she regretted not having accepted Mademoiselle des Touches' offer of her carriage for the return journey to Saint-Nazaire, which for the sake of her three other "dear kittens," she felt compelled to make on the following day.

Fanny, who alone saw her son's uneasiness, and the little hold which Charlotte's coquetries and her mother's attentions were gaining on him, came to his aid.

"Madame," she said to the viscountess, "you will, I think, be very uncomfortable in the carrier's vehicle, and especially at having to start so early in the morning. You would certainly have done better to take the offer made to you by Mademoiselle des Touches. But it is not too late to do so now. Calyste, go up to Les Touches and arrange the matter; but don't be long; return to us soon."

"It won't take me ten minutes," cried Calyste, kissing his mother violently as she followed him to the door.


XI. FEMALE DIPLOMACY

Calyste ran with the lightness of a young fawn to Les Touches and reached the portico just as Camille and Beatrix were leaving the grand salon after their dinner. He had the sense to offer his arm to Felicite.

"So you have abandoned your viscountess and her daughter for us," she said, pressing his arm; "we are able now to understand the full merit of that sacrifice."

"Are these Kergarouets related to the Portendueres, and to old Admiral de Kergarouet, whose widow married Charles de Vandenesse?" asked Madame de Rochefide.

"The viscountess is the admiral's great-niece," replied Camille.

"Well, she's a charming girl," said Beatrix, placing herself gracefully in a Gothic chair. "She will just do for you, Monsieur du Guenic."

"The marriage will never take place," said Camille hastily.

Mortified by the cold, calm air with which the marquise seemed to consider the Breton girl as the only creature fit to mate him, Calyste remained speechless and even mindless.

"Why so, Camille?" asked Madame de Rochefide.

"Really, my dear," said Camille, seeing Calyste's despair, "you are not generous; did I advise Conti to marry?"

Beatrix looked at her friend with a surprise that was mingled with indefinable suspicions.

Calyste, unable to understand Camille's motive, but feeling that she came to his assistance and seeing in her cheeks that faint spot of color which he knew to mean the presence of some violent emotion, went up to her rather awkwardly and took her hand. But she left him and seated herself carelessly at the piano, like a woman so sure of her friend and lover that she can afford to leave him with another woman. She played variations, improvising them as she played, on certain themes chosen, unconsciously to herself, by the impulse of her mind; they were melancholy in the extreme.

Beatrix seemed to listen to the music, but she was really observing Calyste, who, much too young and artless for the part which Camille was intending him to play, remained in rapt adoration before his real idol.

After about an hour, during which time Camille continued to play, Beatrix rose and retired to her apartments. Camille at once took Calyste into her chamber and closed the door, fearing to be overheard; for women have an amazing instinct of distrust.

"My child," she said, "if you want to succeed with Beatrix, you must seem to love me still, or you will fail. You are a child; you know nothing of women; all you know is how to love. Now loving and making one's self beloved are two very different things. If you go your own way you will fall into horrible suffering, and I wish to see you happy. If you rouse, not the pride, but the self-will, the obstinacy which is a strong feature in her character, she is capable of going off at any moment to Paris and rejoining Conti; and what will you do then?"

"I shall love her."

"You won't see her again."

"Oh! yes, I shall," he said.

"How?"

"I shall follow her."

"Why, you are as poor as Job, my dear boy."

"My father, Gasselin, and I lived for three months in Vendee on one hundred and fifty francs, marching night and day."

"Calyste," said Mademoiselle des Touches, "now listen to me. I know that you have too much candor to play a part, too much honesty to deceive; and I don't want to corrupt such a nature as yours. Yet deception is the only way by which you can win Beatrix; I take it therefore upon myself. In a week from now she shall love you."

"Is it possible?" he said clasping his hands.

"Yes," replied Camille, "but it will be necessary to overcome certain pledges which she has made to herself. I will do that for you. You must not interfere in the rather arduous task I shall undertake. The marquise has a true aristocratic delicacy of perception; she is keenly distrustful; no hunter could meet with game more wary or more difficult to capture. You are wholly unable to cope with her; will you promise me a blind obedience?"

"What must I do?" replied the youth.

"Very little," said Camille. "Come here every day and devote yourself to me. Come to my rooms; avoid Beatrix if you meet her. We will stay together till four o'clock; you shall employ the time in study, and I in smoking. It will be hard for you not to see her, but I will find you a number of interesting books. You have read nothing as yet of George Sand. I will send one of my people this very evening to Nantes to buy her works and those of other authors whom you ought to know. The evenings we will spend together, and I permit you to make love to me if you can--it will be for the best."

"I know, Camille, that your affection for me is great and so rare that it makes me wish I had never met Beatrix," he replied with simple good faith; "but I don't see what you hope from all this."

"I hope to make her love you."

"Good heavens! it cannot be possible!" he cried, again clasping his hands toward Camille, who was greatly moved on seeing the joy that she gave him at her own expense.

"Now listen to me carefully," she said. "If you break the agreement between us, if you have--not a long conversation--but a mere exchange of words with the marquise in private, if you let her question you, if you fail in the silent part I ask you to play, which is certainly not a very difficult one, I do assure you," she said in a serious tone, "you will lose her forever."

"I don't understand the meaning of what you are saying to me," cried Calyste, looking at Camille with adorable naivete.

"If you did understand it, you wouldn't be the noble and beautiful Calyste that you are," she replied, taking his hand and kissing it.

Calyste then did what he had never before done; he took Camille round the waist and kissed her gently, not with love but with tenderness, as he kissed his mother. Mademoiselle des Touches did not restrain her tears.

"Go now," she said, "my child; and tell your viscountess that my carriage is at her command."

Calyste wanted to stay longer, but he was forced to obey her imperious and imperative gesture.

He went home gaily; he believed that in a week the beautiful Beatrix would love him. The players at _mouche_ found him once more the Calyste they had missed for the last two months. Charlotte attributed this change to herself. Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel was charming to him. The Abbe Grimont endeavored to make out what was passing in the mother's mind. The Chevalier du Halga rubbed his hands. The two old maids were as lively as lizards. The viscountess lost one hundred sous