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There indeed was another humiliation, but by my weakness of position much more than of nature: whatever doing of "everything" might have been revealed to me as a means to the end, I would certainly have done it for a sight of Madame Doche and Fechter in Dumas's triumphant idyll now enjoying the fullest honours of innocuous classicism; with which, as with the merits of its interpreters, Honorine's happy charges had become perfectly and if not quite serenely, at least ever so responsively and feelingly, familiar.
As I involuntarily compared Amelie with Honorine, I found the erring wife more attractive than the pure girl. To Honorine's heart fidelity had not been a duty, but the inevitable; while Amelie would serenely pronounce the most solemn promises without knowing their purport or to what they bound her.
That old man was my poor friend, my patron, passing through Genoa to take leave of me and place his will in my hands. He appoints me his son's guardian. I had no occasion to tell him of Honorine's wishes." "Does he suspect himself of murder?" said Mademoiselle des Touches to the Baron de l'Hostal. "He suspects the truth," replied the Consul, "and that is what is killing him.
If one could look under the gray hairs and wrinkles with which time thatches old women, one would be surprised to see the flutterings, the quiverings, the thrills, the emotions, the coals of the heart-fires which death alone extinguishes, when he commands the tenant to vacate. Honorine's hands chilled with the ice of sixteen as she approached scissors to the white mustache and beard.
The blow was so terrible, that for a month I remained stunned. Afterwards, reflection counseled me to continue in ignorance, and Honorine's misfortunes have since taught me too much about all these things. So far, Maurice, the story is commonplace enough; but one word will change it all: I love Honorine, I have never ceased to worship her.
"'Poor boy! said he, taking my hand, which he pressed, while he kept back the tears that were starting to his eyes. "'You gave me the gloves, I said, laughing, 'but I have not put them on; that is all. "We then agreed as to what I was to do that evening at Honorine's house, whither I presently returned.
I remembered the terrible words you once quoted to me, "Lucretia's dagger wrote in letters of blood the watchword of woman's charter Liberty!" and they froze me. I felt imperatively how necessary to me was Honorine's consent, and how impossible it was to wring it from her. Could she guess the storms that distracted me when I left as when I came?
By a phenomenon of retrospection I see now the graces of Honorine's mind and heart, to which I paid little heed in the time of my happiness like all who are happy.
The gushing cousins, at the same time, assuredly knew still less of that, and Honorine's brave gloss of a whole range alike of possibilities and actualities was in itself a true social grace.
But as I went down the avenue I repeated the words: "'The battle is to-morrow. "Octave's anxiety was equal to Honorine's.
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