Guerande, July, 1838.
To Madame la Duchesse de Grandlieu:
Ah, my dear mamma! at the end of three months to know what it is to be jealous! My heart completes its experience; I now feel the deepest hatred and the deepest love! I am more than betrayed,--Iam not loved. How fortunate for me to have a mother, a heart on which to cry out as I will!
It is enough to say to wives who are still half girls: "Here's a key rusty with memories among those of your palace; go everywhere, enjoy everything, but keep away from Les Touches!" to make us eager to go there hot-foot, our eyes shining with the curiosity of Eve. What a root of bitterness Mademoiselle des Touches planted in my love! Why did she forbid me to go to Les Touches? What sort of happiness is mine if it depends on an excursion, on a visit to a paltry house in Brittany? Why should I fear? Is there anything to fear? Add to this reasoning of Mrs. Blue-Beard the desire that nips all women to know if their power is solid or precarious, and you'll understand how it was that I said one day, with an unconcerned little air:--"What sort of place is Les Touches?"
"Les Touches belongs to you," said my divine, dear mother-in-law.
"If Calyste had never set foot in Les Touches!"--cried my aunt Zephirine, shaking her head.
"He would not be my husband," I added.
"Then you know what happened there?" said my mother-in-law, slyly.
"It is a place of perdition!" exclaimed Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel.
"Mademoiselle des Touches committed many sins there, for which she is now asking the pardon of God.""But they saved the soul of that noble woman, and made the fortune of a convent," cried the Chevalier du Halga. "The Abbe Grimont told me she had given a hundred thousand francs to the nuns of the Visitation.""Should you like to go to Les Touches?" asked my mother-in-law.
"It is worth seeing."
"No, no!" I said hastily.
Doesn't this little scene read to you like a page out of some diabolical drama?
It was repeated again and again under various pretexts. At last my mother-in-law said to me: "I understand why you do not go to Les Touches, and I think you are right."Oh! you must admit, mamma, that an involuntary, unconscious stab like that would have decided you to find out if your happiness rested on such a frail foundation that it would perish at a mere touch. To do Calyste justice, he never proposed to me to visit that hermitage, now his property. But as soon as we love we are creatures devoid of common-sense, and this silence, this reserve piqued me; so I said to him one day: "What are you afraid of at Les Touches, that you alone never speak of the place?""Let us go there," he replied.
So there I was /caught/,--like other women who want to be caught, and who trust to chance to cut the Gordian knot of their indecision. So to Les Touches we went.
It is enchanting, in a style profoundly artistic. I took delight in that place of horror where Mademoiselle des Touches had so earnestly forbidden me to go. Poisonous flowers are all charming;Satan sowed them--for the devil has flowers as well as God; we have only to look within our souls to see the two shared in the making of us. What delicious acrity in a situation where I played, not with fire, but--with ashes! I studied Calyste; the point was to know if that passion was thoroughly extinct. I watched, as you may well believe, every wind that blew; I kept an eye upon his face as he went from room to room and from one piece of furniture to another, exactly like a child who is looking for some hidden thing. Calyste seemed thoughtful, but at first I thought that Ihad vanquished the past. I felt strong enough to mention Madame de Rochefide-whom in my heart I called la Rocheperfide. At last we went to see the famous bush were Beatrix was caught when he flung her into the sea that she might never belong to another man.
"She must be light indeed to have stayed there," I said laughing.
Calyste kept silence, so I added, "We'll respect the dead."Still Calyste was silent.
"Have I displeased you?" I asked.
"No; but cease to galvanize that passion," he answered.
What a speech! Calyste, when he saw me all cast down by it, redoubled his care and tenderness.
August.
I was, alas! at the edge of a precipice, amusing myself, like the innocent heroines of all melodramas, by gathering flowers.
Suddenly a horrible thought rode full tilt through my happiness, like the horse in the German ballad. I thought I saw that Calyste's love was increasing through his reminiscences; that he was expending on /me/ the stormy emotions I revived by reminding him of the coquetries of that hateful Beatrix,--just think of it!
that cold, unhealthy nature, so persistent yet so flabby, something between a mollusk and a bit of coral, dares to call itself Beatrix, /Beatrice!/Already, dearest mother, I am forced to keep one eye open to suspicion, when my heart is all Calyste's; and isn't it a great catastrophe when the eye gets the better of the heart, and suspicion at last finds itself justified? It came to pass in this way:--"This place is dear to me," I said to Calyste one morning, "because I owe my happiness to it; and so I forgive you for taking me sometimes for another woman."The loyal Breton blushed, and I threw my arms around his neck. But all the same I have left Les Touches, and never will I go back there again.
