The Chouans, Honoré de Balzac [red queen ebook txt] 📗

“What does all that mean?” thought Madame du Gua.

“But,” she continued, “you still love me; at any rate, you desire me, and the folly you have just committed,” she added, taking his hand, “proves it to me. I will again be that I desired to be; and I return to Fougeres happy. Love absolves everything. You love me; I have regained the respect of the man who represents to me the whole world, and I can die.”

“Then you still love me?” said the marquis.

“Have I said so?” she replied with a scornful look, delighting in the torture she was making him endure. “I have run many risks to come here. I have saved Monsieur de Bauvan’s life, and he, more grateful than others, offers me in return his fortune and his name. You have never even thought of doing that.”

The marquis, bewildered by these words, stifled the worst anger he had ever felt, supposing that the count had played him false. He made no answer.

“Ah! you reflect,” she said, bitterly.

“Mademoiselle,” replied the young man, “your doubts justify mine.”

“Let us leave this room,” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, catching sight of a corner of Madame du Gua’s gown, and rising. But the wish to reduce her rival to despair was too strong, and she made no further motion to go.

“Do you mean to drive me to hell?” cried the marquis, seizing her hand and pressing it violently.

“Did you not drive me to hell five days ago? are you not leaving me at this very moment uncertain whether your love is sincere or not?”

“But how do I know whether your revenge may not lead you to obtain my life to tarnish it, instead of killing me?”

“Ah! you do not love me! you think of yourself and not of me!” she said angrily, shedding a few tears.

The coquettish creature well knew the power of her eyes when moistened by tears.

“Well, then,” he cried, beside himself, “take my life, but dry those tears.”

“Oh, my love! my love!” she exclaimed in a stifled voice: “those are the words, the accents, the looks I have longed for, to allow me to prefer your happiness to mine. But,” she added, “I ask one more proof of your love, which you say is so great. I wish to stay here only so long as may be needed to show the company that you are mine. I will not even drink a glass of water in the house of a woman who has twice tried to kill me, who is now, perhaps, plotting mischief against us,” and she showed the marquis the floating corner of Madame du Gua’s drapery. Then she dried her eyes and put her lips to the ear of the young man, who quivered as he felt the caress of her warm breath. “See that everything is prepared for my departure,” she said; “you shall take me yourself to Fougeres and there only will I tell you if I love you. For the second time I trust you. Will you trust me a second time?”

“Ah, Marie, you have brought me to a point where I know not what I do. I am intoxicated by your words, your looks, by you—by you, and I am ready to obey you.”

“Well, then, make me for an instant very happy. Let me enjoy the only triumph I desire. I want to breathe freely, to drink of the life I have dreamed, to feed my illusions before they are gone forever. Come—come into the ballroom and dance with me.”

They re-entered the room together, and though Mademoiselle de Verneuil was as completely satisfied in heart and vanity as any woman ever could be, the unfathomable gentleness of her eyes, the demure smile on her lips, the rapidity of the motions of a gay dance, kept the secret of her thoughts as the sea swallows those of the criminal who casts a weighted body into its depths. But a murmur of admiration ran through the company as, circling in each other’s arms, voluptuously interlaced, with heavy heads, and dimmed sight, they waltzed with a sort of frenzy, dreaming of the pleasures they hoped to find in a future union.

A few moments later Mademoiselle de Verneuil and the marquis were in the latter’s travelling-carriage drawn by four horses. Surprised to see these enemies hand in hand, and evidently understanding each other, Francine kept silence, not daring to ask her mistress whether her conduct was that of treachery or love. Thanks to the darkness, the marquis did not observe Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s agitation as they neared Fougeres. The first flush of dawn showed the towers of Saint-Leonard in the distance. At that moment Marie was saying to herself: “I am going to my death.”

As they ascended the first hill the lovers had the same thought; they left the carriage and mounted the rise on foot, in memory of their first meeting. When Marie took the young man’s arm she thanked him by a smile for respecting her silence; then, as they reached the summit of the plateau and looked at Fougeres, she threw off her reverie.

“Don’t come any farther,” she said; “my authority cannot save you from the Blues to-day.”

Montauran showed some surprise. She smiled sadly and pointed to a block of granite, as if to tell him to sit down, while she herself stood before him in a melancholy attitude. The rending emotions of her soul no longer permitted her to play a part. At that moment she would have knelt on red-hot coals without feeling them any more than the marquis had felt the fire-brand he had taken in his hand to prove the strength of his passion. It was not until she had contemplated her lover with a look of the deepest anguish that she said to him, at last:—

“All that you have suspected of me is true.”

The marquis started.

“Ah! I pray you,” she said, clasping her hands, “listen to me without interruption. I am indeed the daughter of the Duc de Verneuil,—but his natural daughter. My mother, a Demoiselle de Casteran, who became a nun to escape the reproaches of her family, expiated her fault by fifteen years of sorrow, and died at Seez, where she was abbess. On her death-bed she implored, for the first time and only for me, the help of the man who had betrayed her, for she knew she was leaving me without friends, without fortune, without a future. The duke accepted the charge, and took me from the roof of Francine’s mother, who had hitherto taken care of me; perhaps he liked me because I was beautiful; possibly I reminded him of his youth. He was one of those great lords of the old regime, who took pride in showing how they could get their crimes forgiven by committing them with grace. I will say no more, he was my father. But let me explain to you how my life in Paris injured my soul. The society of the Duc de Verneuil, to which he introduced me, was bitten by that scoffing philosophy about which all France was then enthusiastic because it was wittily professed. The brilliant conversations which charmed my ear were marked by subtlety of perception and by witty contempt for all that was true and spiritual. Men laughed at sentiments, and pictured them all