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She began, therefore, to listen, without even acted displeasure, to the talk of the youth's blind passion; she allowed his soft pity to soothe her. Several times she had been moved to tears as she listened to Calyste's promises; and she suffered him to commiserate her for being bound to an evil genius, a man as false as Conti.
No sooner was Calyste sixteen years of age than his father accompanied him to the marshes and the forest, teaching him through the pleasures of the chase the rudiments of war, preaching by example, indifferent to fatigue, firm in his saddle, sure of his shot whatever the game might be, deer, hare, or a bird on the wing, intrepid in face of obstacles, bidding his son follow him into danger as though he had ten other sons to take Calyste's place.
Do you think I don't hear death in Calyste's voice? he is so feeble now that he has barely strength to whisper." It was at this moment that the three doctors arrived. They plied Calyste with questions; but as for his father, the examination was short; they were surprised that he still lived on.
Sabine studied her attitudes, her toilets; she took heed about herself in all the infinitely little trifles of love. The cooking trouble lasted nearly a month. Sabine, assisted by Mariotte and Gasselin, invented various little vaudeville schemes to ascertain the dishes which Madame de Rochefide served to Calyste. Gasselin was substituted for Calyste's groom, who had fallen conveniently ill.
"All Guerande is turned upside down about Calyste's passion for this amphibious creature, who is neither man nor woman, who smokes like an hussar, writes like a journalist, and has at this very moment in her house the most venomous of all writers, so the postmaster says, and he's a juste-milieu man who reads the papers. They are even talking about her at Nantes.
No longer have they self-love, pettiness, or vanity; their love it is the Loire at its mouth, it is vast, it is swelled by all the illusions, all the affluents of life, and this is why but my muse is dumb," he added, observing the ecstatic attitude of Mademoiselle des Touches, who was pressing Calyste's hand with all her strength, perhaps to thank him for having been the occasion of such a moment, of such an eulogy, so lofty that she did not see the trap that it laid for her.
Again and again she walked about the velvet turf which lay between the house and garden leaning on Calyste's arm in languid dependence. "Ah! my dear, you are taking him a long journey in a small space," said Mademoiselle des Touches one day.
"Well, don't tell secrets on the staircase," she said, laughing. "Come in." In the middle of a salon which adjoined their bedroom, she caught sight in a mirror of Calyste's face, on which, not aware that it could be seen, he allowed his real feelings and his weariness to appear. "Now for your secret?" she said, turning round.
"Forget Beatrix!" said Calyste, in a muffled voice, with his eyes on the ground. He left the baroness, and went up to his own room to write an answer to the marquise. Madame du Guenic, whose heart retained every word of Madame de Rochefide's letter, felt the need of some help in comprehending it more clearly, and also the grounds of Calyste's hope.
"She is just the thing for you," said Claude Vignon, smiling sardonically at Calyste. The young man was deeply wounded by the words, and by the manner in which they were said. "Don't put such ideas into Calyste's mind; you don't know how dangerous such jokes may prove to be," said Mademoiselle des Touches, hastily.
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