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"'Not quite so fast, urged the prudent Gascon; 'Foedora has all the sagacity natural to a profoundly selfish woman; perhaps she may have taken your measure while you still coveted only her money and her splendor; in spite of all your care, she could have read you through and through. She can dissemble far too well to let any dissimulation pass undetected.
The playgoers heard the bell ring, and left the greenroom to take their places again. Raphael and the old merchant separated. As he entered his box, the Marquis saw Foedora sitting exactly opposite to him on the other side of the theatre.
"Pray, give me your arm," interrupted Foedora carelessly, "we are already very late. But then, it is all your own fault; how is it that you, the personification of exactitude, did not proclaim the hour of eleven long ago?" "Ah! madame, I assure you I am not in a laughing humor. Your cruel jest wounded me to the heart." "I was not aware that you possessed such a vulnerable heart."
FOEDORA haunted me like some evil thought, with which you seek to come to terms. A voice said in me, 'You are going to see Foedora! In vain I reasoned with that voice, saying that it lied to me; all my arguments were defeated by the name 'Foedora. Was not the name, and even the woman herself, the symbol of all my desires, and the object of my life?
I myself had not loved Pauline because she was poor; and had not the wealthy Foedora a right to repulse Raphael? Conscience is our unerring judge until we finally stifle it. A specious voice said within me, 'Foedora is neither attracted to nor repulses any one; she has her liberty, but once upon a time she sold herself to the Russian count, her husband or her lover, for gold.
"'You know I am pledged, he said, 'and what I should lose, too, if I tried a change in love. So my observation of Foedora has been quite cool and disinterested, and my remarks must have some truth in them. I was looking to your future when I thought of introducing you to her; so mind very carefully what I am about to say. She has a terrible memory.
To explain myself more clearly; there were two women in Foedora, divided perhaps by the line between head and body: the one, the head alone, seemed to be susceptible, and the other phlegmatic. She prepared her glance before she looked at you, something unspeakably mysterious, some inward convulsion seemed revealed by her glittering eyes.
"The maid lighted the taper in the alabaster sconce that hung before the bed, while her mistress sat thoughtful and silent before the fire. Justine went for a warming-pan, turned down the bed, and helped to lay her mistress in it; then, after some further time spent in punctiliously rendering various services that showed how seriously Foedora respected herself, her maid left her.
As every other woman in the house looked by turns at her and at the Marquis, Foedora would have consigned them all to the oubliettes of some Bastille; for in spite of her capacity for dissimulation, her discomfiture was discerned by her rivals. Her unfailing consolation had slipped from her at last.
"What an amusing story we shall have to relate at the embassy! but, my dear Foedora, why don't you answer? what ails you?" "I don't know," replied the countess; "what I experience, is most singular." "You want air, my dear countess," rejoined the duke, with solicitude. "This agglomeration of the masses is stifling; and though the apartments are spacious "
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