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Updated: May 21, 2025
The apprehensions Sallenauve had expressed the night before as to Marie-Gaston's condition returned to her mind. As soon as Philippe had repeated the explanations he had already given to her husband, she broke the seals of the letter. Whatever may have been the contents of that disquieting epistle, nothing was reflected on Madame de l'Estorade's face.
Madame de l'Estorade paid little attention to this programme, for a flash of light had illumined her mind. As soon as she was alone, she took Marie-Gaston's letter from her gown, and, finding it folded in the proper manner, she exclaimed, "Not a doubt of it! I remember perfectly that I folded it with the writing outside, as I put it back into the envelope; he must have read it!"
During the nine months that preceded their marriage, Marie-Gaston's letters to his friend became fewer and far-between. Dorlange ought surely to have been the first to know of this change in the life of his friend, but not one word of it was confided to him. This was exacted by the high and mighty lady of Gaston's love, Louise de Chaulieu, Baronne de Macumer.
His indifference to life and the perfect coolness with which he spoke of suicide won him Marie-Gaston's friendship in Florence.
In all matters in which my wife has taken part I have found her a most able negotiator; and in this particular case I should feel the utmost confidence in her intervention. She herself suffered from the exclusiveness of Madame Marie-Gaston's love for you. No one can explain to him better than she the absorbing conjugal life which drew its folds so closely around you.
Dorlange had too much self-respect to endeavor to pass the barriers thus opposed to him, and the old friends not only never saw each other, but no communication passed between them. But when the news of Madame Marie-Gaston's death reached him Dorlange forgot all and hastened to Ville d'Avray to comfort his friend. Useless eagerness!
The correspondence between them ceased, and if Marie-Gaston had entered the convent of La Trappe, he could not have been more completely lost to his friend. When Dorlange returned from Rome in 1836, the sequestration of Marie-Gaston's person and affection was more than ever close and inexorable.
This proud rejection, not properly understood by Dorlange, produced a slight coolness between the two friends; nevertheless, until the year 1833, their intimacy was maintained by a constant exchange of letters. But here, on Marie-Gaston's side, perfect confidence ceased, after a time, to exist. He was hiding something; his proud determination to depend wholly on himself was a sad mistake.
The age of the old majordomo and the confidential post he occupied in Marie-Gaston's establishment seemed to the factotum of the house of l'Estorade to authorize the designation of "monsieur," a civility expectant of return, be it understood. Descending from his eminence, the peer of France asked Philippe what brought him, and whether anything had happened at Ville d'Avray.
After a long detention in the waiting-room, he was at last enabled to see his friend at a moment when Marie-Gaston's insanity, which for several days had been in the stages of mania, was yielding to the care of the doctor, and showed some symptoms of a probable recovery.
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