The Knight of Maison-Rouge_ A Novel of Marie Antoinette - Alexandre Dumas [45]
If in the purest of dreams that the young Raphael managed to put down on canvas there is a Madonna with smiling lips, chaste eyes, and a celestial expression, she is the model we should borrow from Perugia’s student of the divine to serve as the portrait of Geneviève.
Perched among her flowers, whose freshness and perfume she shared, sheltered from her husband’s industry and from her husband himself, Geneviève appeared to Maurice, each time he saw her, like a living enigma whose meaning he could not divine and whose secret he dared not ask.
One night, as usual, they were left alone together, sitting at the casement window he had entered that first night with such a desperate din. The perfume of the lilies in flower floated on the gentle breeze that follows a radiant sunset. After a long silence during which Maurice tracked the intelligent and ecstatic eye of Geneviève as she watched a silver star hatch in the azure sky, he suddenly broke the silence and ventured to ask her how it was that she was so young when her husband was already past his prime; so distinguished, when all the signs were that her husband’s education and upbringing were lower class; so poetic, finally, when her husband was so concerned merely to weigh, stretch, and dye the skins his factory produced.
“How come, in a master tanner’s place, there are a harp and a piano and all these pastels that you admitted to me were your doing? How come—I have to say it!—all this aristocracy, which I loathe in other people and adore in you?”
Geneviève turned candid eyes on Maurice.
“Thank you,” she said, “for asking me that question: it proves you are a man of delicacy and that you’ve never tried to find out about me from anyone else.”
“Never, madame,” said Maurice. “I have a devoted friend who would die for me, I have a hundred pals who are ready to go wherever I lead them; but of all these, there’s only one heart I confide in when it comes to a woman, a woman like you, and that’s my own.”
“Thank you, Maurice. I’ll tell you myself all you want to know.”
“Let’s start with your maiden name. I only know your married name.”
Geneviève saw the amorous egoism of the question and smiled.
“Geneviève du Treilly,” she said.
Maurice repeated it: “Geneviève du Treilly!”
“My family was ruined in the American War, in which my father and my elder brother took part.”
“Both gentlemen?” asked Maurice.
“No, no,” said Geneviève, going red.
“But you told me your maiden name was Geneviève du Treilly.”
“Without the ‘de,’1 Monsieur Maurice; my family was rich, but there was nothing at all noble about them.”
“You don’t trust me,” said the young man, smiling.
“No, no, I do,” Geneviève went on. “In America my father became friends with Monsieur Morand’s father. Monsieur Dixmer was Monsieur Morand’s business agent. Seeing us ruined and knowing that Monsieur Dixmer had an independent fortune, Monsieur Morand introduced him to my father, who then introduced him to me. I could see that a marriage had already been settled on and arranged and that it was what my family wanted. I didn’t love anyone and never had. I accepted. I’ve been Dixmer’s wife now for three years, and I must say that for three years my husband has been so good, so wonderful to me, that I’ve never had a single moment of regret, despite the difference in age and outlook you’ve noticed.”
“But when you married Monsieur Dixmer, he wasn’t yet the head of this factory?”
“No. We lived in Blois.2 After the tenth of August, Monsieur Dixmer bought this house and the workshops that go with it. So I would not be forced to mingle with the workers, to spare me even the sight of things that I might find upsetting given my inclinations, which