The Deputy of Arcis [127]
"So that when you see him take his ostracism coolly, your self-love as a woman will not be piqued."
"Certainly not; that is precisely the result I desire."
"And if you find, on the contrary, that he complains of you, or if he does not complain, that he suffers from your treatment, will your conscience tell you absolutely nothing?"
"It will tell me that I am doing right, and that I could not do otherwise."
"And if success attends him and fame with its hundred voices talks of him, how will you think of him?"
"As I think of Monsieur Thiers and Monsieur Berryer."
"And Nais, who adores him and will probably say, the first time he dines with you, 'Ah! mamma, how well he talks!'--"
"If you are going to argue on the chatter of a child--"
"And Monsieur de l'Estorade, who already irritates you? He is beginning to-day to sacrifice him to the spirit of party; shall you silence him every time he makes some malevolent insinuation about Monsieur de Sallenauve, and denies his honor and his talent?--you know the judgment people make on those who do not think as we do."
"In short," said Madame de l'Estorade, "you are trying to make me admit that the surest way to think of a person is to put him out of sight."
"Listen to me, my dear," said Madame de Camps, with a slight touch of gravity. "I have read and re-read your letters. You were there your own self, more natural and less quibbling than you are now, and an impression has remained upon my mind: it is that Monsieur de Sallenauve has touched your heart, though he may not have entered it."
Madame de l'Estorade made a gesture of denial, but the confessor went on:--
"I know that idea provokes you; you can't very well admit to me what you have studiously denied to yourself. But what is, is. We don't say of a man, 'A sort of magnetism issues from him, one feels his eye without meeting it'; we don't cry out, 'I am invulnerable on the side of love,' without having had some prickings of it."
"But so many things have happened since I wrote that nonsense."
"True, he was only a sculptor then, and before long he may be a minister,--not like Monsieur de Rastignac, but like our great poet, Canalis."
"I like sermons with definite deductions," said Madame de l'Estorade, with a touch of impatience.
"That is what Vergniaud said to Robespierre on the 31st of May, and I reply, with Robespierre, Yes, I'll draw my conclusion; and it is against your self-confidence as a woman, who, having reached the age of thirty-two without a suspicion of what love is, cannot admit that at this late date she may be subjected to the common law."
"But what I want is a practical conclusion," said Madame de l'Estorade, tapping her foot.
"My practical conclusion,--here it is," replied Madame Octave. "If you will not persist in the folly of swimming against the current, I see no danger whatever in your being submerged. You are strong; you have principles and religion; you adore your children; you love Monsieur de l'Estorade, their father, in them. With all that ballast you cannot sink."
"Well?" said Madame de l'Estorade, interrogatively.
"Well, there is no need to have recourse to violent measures, the success of which is very problematical. Remain as you are; build no barricades when no one attacks you. Don't excite tempests of heart and conscience merely to pacify your conscience and quiet your heart, now ruffled only by a tiny breeze. No doubt between a man and a woman the sentiment of friendship does take something of the character ordinarily given to love; but such friendship is neither an impossible illusion nor is it a yawning gulf."
"Then," said Madame de l'Estorade, with a thoughtful air, "do you wish me to make a friend of Monsieur de Sallenauve?"
"Yes, dear, in order not to make him a fixed idea, a regret, a struggle,--three things which poison life."
"But my husband, who has already had a touch of jealousy?"
"As for your husband, I find him somewhat changed, and not for the better. I miss that deference he always showed to you personally, to your