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They set up house accordingly, lived a most quiet and happy domestic life, and the bond between them was knitted more closely still by the birth of a most beautiful boy, the image of his pretty mother. Mademoiselle Scuderi made an idol of little Olivier, whom she would take away from his mother for hours and days, to pet him and kiss him.
D'Andilly, when Mademoiselle Scuderi had told him at full length all the circumstances, inquired again into the very minutest particulars. He asked Count Miossens if he was quite positive as to its having been Cardillac who attacked him, and if he would recognise Olivier as the person who carried away the body.
Mademoiselle Scuderi completed what Seron had commenced, by letting many a gentle ray of hope stream into the girl's heart, till at length a violent flood of tears, which started to her eyes, brought her relief, and she was able to tell what had befallen, with only occasional interruptions, when the overmastering might of her sorrow turned her words into sobbing.
It was at the epoch when the ancient classical romance which, after having been Clelie, was no longer anything but Lodoiska, still noble, but ever more and more vulgar, having fallen from Mademoiselle de Scuderi to Madame Bournon-Malarme, and from Madame de Lafayette to Madame Barthelemy-Hadot, was setting the loving hearts of the portresses of Paris aflame, and even ravaging the suburbs to some extent.
Master René," said Mademoiselle Scuderi, jesting pleasantly, "how think you it would become me at my age to bedeck myself with those beautiful jewels? and what should put it in your mind to make me such a valuable present? Come, come!
Closely examining and considering everything, starting from the assumption that, notwithstanding all that spoke so loudly for his innocence, Olivier yet had been Cardillac's murderer, Mademoiselle Scuderi could find, in all the realm of possibility, no motive for the terrible deed, which, in any case, was bound to destroy his happiness.
"But why is it brought to me?" cried Mademoiselle Scuderi. "What can this mean?" She saw, however, a little folded note at the bottom of the casket, and in this she rightly thought she would find the key to the mystery. When she had read what was written in the note, it fell from her trembling hands; she raised an appealing look to heaven, and then sank down half fainting in her chair.
Here we cannot help but admire the way in which Scudéri, the bully of this tragic-comedy, forced to the wall, blackguards and maltreats him, how pitilessly he unmasks his classical artillery, how he shows the author of Le Cid "what the episodes should be, according to Aristotle, who tells us in the tenth and sixteenth chapters of his Poetics"; how he crushes Corneille, in the name of the same Aristotle "in the eleventh chapter of his Art of Poetry, wherein we find the condemnation of Le Cid"; in the name of Plato, "in the tenth book of his Republic"; in the name of Marcellinus, "as may be seen in the twenty-seventh book"; in the name of "the tragedies of Niobe and Jephthah"; in the name of the "Ajax of Sophocles"; in the name of "the example of Euripides"; in the name of "Heinsius, chapter six of the Constitution of Tragedy; and the younger Scaliger in his poems"; and finally, in the name of the Canonists and Jurisconsults, under the title "Nuptials."
The girl was now beginning to revive, and breathe again faintly, though still incapable of speech or motion. There she lay with closed eyes, and people did not know what to do, whether to take her indoors, or leave her where she was a little longer till she recovered. Mademoiselle Scuderi looked upon this innocent creature deeply moved, with tears in her eyes.
And you might well say with Mlle. de Scudéri: "Love is I know not what: which comes I know not when: which is formed I know not how: which enchants I know not by what: and which ends I know not when or why." You explain love by asserting that it is not to be explained. And therein lies our difference. You accept results; I search for causes.
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