Felicite's tender love was preparing for Calyste a prosperous future.
Being allied to the family of Grandlieu, the ducal branch of which was ending in five daughters for lack of a male heir, she had written to the Duchesse de Grandlieu, describing Calyste and giving his history, and also stating certain intentions of her own, which were as follows:
She had lately sold her house in the rue du Mont-Blanc, for which a party of speculators had given her two millions five hundred thousand francs. Her man of business had since purchased for her a charming new house in the rue de Bourbon for seven hundred thousand francs; one million she intended to devote to the recovery of the du Guenic estates, and the rest of her fortune she desired to settle upon Sabine de Grandlieu. Felicite had long known the plans of the duke and duchess as to the settlement of their five daughters: the youngest was to marry the Vicomte de Grandlieu, the heir to their ducal title;Clotilde-Frederique, the second daughter, desired to remain unmarried, in memory of a man she had deeply loved, Lucien de Rubempre, while, at the same time, she did not wish to become a nun like her eldest sister; two of the remaining sisters were already married, and the youngest but one, the pretty Sabine, just twenty years old, was the only disposable daughter left. It was Sabine on whom Felicite resolved to lay the burden of curing Calyste's passion for Beatrix.
During the journey to Paris Mademoiselle des Touches revealed to the baroness these arrangements. The new house in the rue de Bourbon was being decorated, and she intended it for the home of Sabine and Calyste if her plans succeeded.
The party had been invited to stay at the hotel de Grandlieu, where the baroness was received with all the distinction due to her rank as the wife of a du Guenic and the daughter of a British peer.
Mademoiselle des Touches urged Calyste to see Paris, while she herself made the necessary inquiries about Beatrix (who had disappeared from the world, and was travelling abroad), and she took care to throw him into the midst of diversions and amusements of all kinds. The season for balls and fetes was just beginning, and the duchess and her daughters did the honors of Paris to the young Breton, who was insensibly diverted from his own thoughts by the movement and life of the great city. He found some resemblance of mind between Madame de Rochefide and Sabine de Grandlieu, who was certainly one of the handsomest and most charming girls in Parisian society, and this fancied likeness made him give to her coquetries a willing attention which no other woman could possibly have obtained from him. Sabine herself was greatly pleased with Calyste, and matters went so well that during the winter of 1837 the young Baron du Guenic, whose youth and health had returned to him, listened without repugnance to his mother when she reminded him of the promise made to his dying father and proposed to him a marriage with Sabine de Grandlieu. Still, while agreeing to fulfil his promise, he concealed within his soul an indifference to all things, of which the baroness alone was aware, but which she trusted would be conquered by the pleasures of a happy home.
On the day when the Grandlieu family and the baroness, accompanied by her relations who came from England for this occasion, assembled in the grand salon of the hotel de Grandlieu to sign the marriage contract, and Leopold Hannequin, the family notary, explained the preliminaries of that contract before reading it, Calyste, on whose forehead every one present might have noticed clouds, suddenly and curtly refused to accept the benefactions offered him by Mademoiselle des Touches. Did he still count on Felicite's devotion to recover Beatrix? In the midst of the embarrassment and stupefaction of the assembled families, Sabine de Grandlieu entered the room and gave him a letter, explaining that Mademoiselle des Touches had requested her to give it to him on this occasion.
Calyste turned away from the company to the embrasure of a window and read as follows:--Camille Maupin to Calyste.
Calyste, before I enter my convent cell I am permitted to cast a look upon the world I am now to leave for a life of prayer and solitude. That look is to you, who have been the whole world to me in these last months. My voice will reach you, if my calculations do not miscarry, at the moment of a ceremony I am unable to take part in.
On the day when you stand before the altar giving your hand and name to a young and charming girl who can love you openly before earth and heaven, I shall be before another altar in a convent at Nantes betrothed forever to Him who will neither fail nor betray me. But I do not write to sadden you,--only to entreat you not to hinder by false delicacy the service I have wished to do you since we first met. Do not contest my rights so dearly bought.
If love is suffering, ah! I have loved you indeed, my Calyste. But feel no remorse; the only happiness I have known in life I owe to you; the pangs were caused by my own self. Make me compensation, then, for all those pangs, those sorrows, by causing me an everlasting joy. Let the poor Camille, who /is/ no longer, still be something in the material comfort you enjoy. Dear, let me be like the fragrance of flowers in your life, mingling myself with it unseen and not importunate.
To you, Calyste, I shall owe my eternal happiness; will you not accept a few paltry and fleeting benefits from me? Surely you will not be wanting in generosity? Do you not see in this the last message of a renounced love? Calyste, the world without you had nothing more for me; you made it the most awful of solitudes; and you have thus brought Camille Maupin, the unbeliever, the writer of books, which I am soon to repudiate solemnly--you have cast her, daring and perverted, bound hand and foot, before God.
