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For want of it, Clotilde's short explorations in Dot-and-Dash land were of a kind to terrify her, and yet they seemed not only unavoidable, but foreshadowing of the unavoidable to come.
The lady seemed just for a minute or so rather bewildered by Clotilde's vehement sally, but as soon as she recovered herself she replied with ominous coldness and decision, "I can scarcely suppose that mademoiselle could do anything so very silly; but if such should be the case, why there will be another ride in the coach, perhaps a longer one than the last.
The colonel had been the confidant of the baroness's grief over this love-passion of Alvan's, and her resignation. He shared her doubts of Clotilde's nobility of character: the reports were not favourable to the young lady. But the baroness and he were of one opinion, that Alvan in love was not likely to be governable by prudent counsel. He dropped a word of the whispers of Clotilde's volatility.
We may ask it: an eagle is expected, and how is he to declare his eagleship save by breaking through our mean conventional systems, tearing links asunder, taking his own in the teeth of vulgar ordinances? Clotilde's imagination drew on her reading for the knots it tied and untied, and its ideas of grandeur. Her reading was an interfusion of philosophy skimmed, and realistic romances deep-sounded.
This put her in despair, for she had seen the doctor on the previous day, and he had unbosomed himself to her, chagrined at not having yet received a decisive answer, and eager now to obtain at least Clotilde's promise. Things could not go on in this way, the young girl must be compelled to engage herself to him. "He has too much delicacy," she cried. "I have told him so.
Ramond was absent from home, attending a consultation at Marseilles, and he would not be back until the following evening. And it young Mme. Ramond, an old friend of Clotilde's, some three years her junior, who received them. She seemed a little embarrassed, but she was very amiable, notwithstanding.
With the mention of Clotilde's name came a vision: instead of this splendid peasant wench he seemed to see the graceful and drooping figure of the woman he had put away because she had not borne him a son. He closed his eyes, and the girl, taking it for dismissal, went away. When he opened them there were only the fire and the dogs about it, and the Bishop, who was preparing to depart.
Moreover, to the better account, Clotilde's English friend had sent him the lines addressed to her, in which the writer dwelt on her love of him with a whimper of the voice of love. That was previous to her perjury by little, by a day-eighteen hours. How lurid a satire was flung on events by the proximity of the dates!
Let it be added that Aurelian and Aridius are real personages who are met with elsewhere in history, and whose parts as played on the occasion of Clotilde's marriage are in harmony with the other traces that remain of their lives. The consequences of the marriage justified before long the importance which had on all sides been attached to it.
At the time that he ran across her, she was living wretchedly and trying to learn the art of making artificial flowers. Today, thanks to her talent, she earned enough to keep her mother and sisters in comfort. Clotilde's attraction lay in her charm of manner rather than her beauty.
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