After walking for some distance in silence, Calyste could not refrain, on a remark of Beatrix about the grandeur of the ocean, so unlike the smiling beauty of the Mediterranean, from comparing in depth, purity, extent, unchanging and eternal duration, that ocean with his love.
"It is met by a rock!" said Beatrix, laughing.
"When you speak thus," he answered, with a sublime look, "I hear you, I see you, and I can summon to my aid the patience of the angels; but when I am alone, you would pity me if you could see me then. My mother weeps for my suffering.""Listen to me, Calyste; we must put an end to all this," said the marquise, gazing down upon the sandy road. "Perhaps we have now reached the only propitious place to say these things, for never in my life did I see nature more in keeping with my thoughts. I have seen Italy, where all things tell of love; I have seen Switzerland, where all is cool and fresh, and tells of happiness,--the happiness of labor; where the verdure, the tranquil waters, the smiling slopes, are oppressed by the snow-topped Alps; but I have never seen anything that so depicts the burning barrenness of my life as that little arid plain down there, dried by the salt sea winds, corroded by the spray, where a fruitless agriculture tries to struggle against the will of that great ocean. There, Calyste, you have an image of this Beatrix. Don't cling to it. I love you, but I will never be yours in any way whatever, for I have the sense of my inward desolation. Ah! you do not know how cruel I am to myself in speaking thus to you. No, you shall never see your idol diminished; she shall never fall from the height at which you have placed her. I now have a horror of any love which disregards the world and religion. I shall remain in my present bonds;I shall be that sandy plain we see before us, without fruit or flowers or verdure.""But if you are abandoned?" said Calyste.
"Then I should beg my pardon of the man I have offended. I will never run the risk of taking a happiness I know would quickly end.""End!" cried Calyste.
The marquise stopped the passionate speech into which her lover was about to launch, by repeating the word "End!" in a tone that silenced him.
This opposition roused in the young man one of those mute inward furies known only to those who love without hope. They walked on several hundred steps in total silence, looking neither at the sea, nor the rocks, nor the plain of Croisic.
"I would make you happy," said Calyste.
"All men begin by promising that," she answered, "and they end by abandonment and disgust. I have no reproach to cast on him to whom Ishall be faithful. He made me no promises; I went to him; but my only means of lessening my fault is to make it eternal.""Say rather, madame, that you feel no love for me. I, who love you, Iknow that love cannot argue; it is itself; it sees nothing else. There is no sacrifice I will not make to you; command it, and I will do the impossible. He who despised his mistress for flinging her glove among the lions, and ordering him to bring it back to her, did not /love!/He denied your right to test our hearts, and to yield yourselves only to our utmost devotion. I will sacrifice to you my family, my name, my future.""But what an insult in that word 'sacrifice'!" she said, in reproachful tones, which made poor Calyste feel the folly of his speech.
None but women who truly love, or inborn coquettes, know how to use a word as a point from which to make a spring.
"You are right," said Calyste, letting fall a tear; "that word can only be said of the cruel struggles which you ask of me.""Hush!" said Beatrix, struck by an answer in which, for the first time, Calyste had really made her feel his love. "I have done wrong enough; tempt me no more."At this moment they had reached the base of the rock on which grew the plant of box. Calyste felt a thrill of delight as he helped the marquise to climb the steep ascent to the summit, which she wished to reach. To the poor lad it was a precious privilege to hold her up, to make her lean upon him, to feel her tremble; she had need of him. This unlooked-for pleasure turned his head; he saw nought else but Beatrix, and he clasped her round the waist.
"What!" she said, with an imposing air.
"Will you never be mine?" he demanded, in a voice that was choked by the tumult of his blood.
"Never, my friend," she replied. "I can only be to you a Beatrix,--a dream. But is not that a sweet and tender thing? We shall have no bitterness, no grief, no repentance.""Will you return to Conti?"
"I must."
"You shall never belong to any man!" cried Calyste, pushing her from him with frenzied violence.
He listened for her fall, intending to spring after her, but he heard only a muffled sound, the tearing of some stuff, and then the thud of a body falling on the ground. Instead of being flung head foremost down the precipice, Beatrix had only slipped some eight or ten feet into the cavity where the box-bush grew; but she might from there have rolled down into the sea if her gown had not caught upon a point of rock, and by tearing slowly lowered the weight of her body upon the bush.
Mademoiselle des Touches, who saw the scene, was unable in her horror to cry out, but she signed to Gasselin to come. Calyste was leaning forward with an expression of savage curiosity; he saw the position in which Beatrix lay, and he shuddered. Her lips moved,--she seemed to be praying; in fact, she thought she was about to die, for she felt the bush beginning to give way. With the agility which danger gives to youth, Calyste slid down to the ledge below the bush, where he was able to grasp the marquise and hold her, although at the risk of their both sliding down into the sea. As he held her, he saw that she had fainted; but in that aerial spot he could fancy her all his, and his first emotion was that of pleasure.
"Open your eyes," he said, "and forgive me; we will die together.""Die?" she said, opening her eyes and unclosing her pallid lips.
