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Updated: June 16, 2025
Madame de la Roche-Jugan did not shrink from the probability which was most likely of an encounter between the General and Camors. Every one knows the disdainful intrepidity of women in the matter of duels. She had no scruple, therefore, in engaging Vautrot in the meritorious work she meditated.
Camors himself, three fourths of the time, would bring him in before going out in the evening. "I bring you Vautrot, my dear," he would say, "and Shakespeare. You can read him together." Vautrot read well; and though his heavy declamatory style frequently annoyed the Countess, she thus managed to kill many a long evening, while waiting the expected visit of Madame de Tecle.
Seeing the man on his knees, she could not comprehend it, and only exclaimed, simply: "Are you mad, Vautrot?" "Yes, I am mad!" Vautrot threw his hair back with a romantic gesture common to him, and, as he believed, to the poets-"Yes, I am mad with love and with pity, for I see your sufferings, pure and noble victim!" The Countess only stared in blank astonishment.
She secured him by some immediate advantages and by promises; she made him believe the General would recompense him largely. Vautrot, smarting still from the cut of Camors's whip on his shoulder, and ready to kill him with his own hand had he dared, hardly required the additional stimulus of gain to aid his protectress in her vengeance by acting as her instrument.
She spoke haughtily; and though Vautrot had never suspected this imperiousness of manner or of language, he reflected hurriedly on the point at which he had arrived. More sure than ever of success, after a moment he took from his pocket a folded letter. It was one with which he had provided himself to confirm the suspicions of the Countess, now awakened for the first time.
On this foundation of truth she did not fear to frame the most odious suspicions; and Vautrot, baffled like her in his vengeance and in his envy, had aided her. A few sinister rumors, escaping apparently from this source, had even crept at this time into Parisian society.
And this was the case with Hippolyte Vautrot. He was about forty years of age a period of life when men often become very vicious, even when they have been passably virtuous up to that time. He affected an austere and puritanical air; was the great man of the cafe he frequented; and there passed judgment on his contemporaries and pronounced them all inferior.
Vautrot could not avoid, as he had probably done more than once, encountering Camors. Seeing himself recognized he saluted him and stopped, with an uneasy smile on his lips. His worn black coat and doubtful linen showed a poverty unacknowledged but profound.
Otherwise, like Vautrot, he exposes himself to be laughed at. "Rise, my good Vautrot," the Countess said, gravely. "This book has evidently bewildered you. Go and take some rest and we will forget this; only you must never forget yourself again in this manner." Vautrot rose. He was livid. "Madame la Comtesse," he said, bitterly, "the love of a great heart never can be an offence.
"Two days ago, while we were dining, Vautrot allowed himself to indulge in a rather violent tirade of this description. It was certainly contrary to all good taste.
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