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During the silence of that terrible night, the only service she could render her was to make her weep. Nor did those laggard hours pass less bitterly for M. de Camors. He tried to take no rest, but walked up and down his apartment until daylight in a sort of frenzy. The distress of this poor child wounded him to the heart. The souvenirs of the past rose before him and passed in sad procession.
M. de Camors rallied quickly from his weakness, if even he did not repent it. He spent eight days at Reuilly, remarking in the countenance of Madame de Tecle and in her manner toward him, more ease than formerly. On his return to Paris, with thoughtful care he made some changes in the interior arrangement of his mansion.
The same example presented to a healthier mind would not have been much more salutary, for we must tell those who, like M. de Camors, trample under foot all principles of right, and nevertheless imagine that their secretaries, their servants, their wives and their children, may remain virtuous we must tell these that while they wrong others they deceive themselves!
Of course no one will imagine that M. de Camors had the bad taste to undertake deliberately the demoralization of his secretary; but contact, intimacy, and example sufficed fully to do this. A secretary is always more or less a confidant.
The most cruel trial reserved to Madame de Camors in the life which she had the courage and judgment to adopt, was assuredly the duty of again seeing the Marquise de Campvallon, and preserving with her such relations as might blind the eyes of the General and of the world. She resigned herself even to this; but she desired to defer as long as possible the pain of such a meeting.
She must summon the servants, say the General had been taken suddenly ill, and that on entering her room he had been seized by an apoplectic stroke. It was with some effort that she understood she was to wait long enough before giving the alarm to give Camors sufficient time to escape; and until then she was to remain in this frightful tete-a-tete, alone with the dead.
This should not be beyond the strength of a man of good intentions; and Louis de Camors might have accomplished the task had he been aided by better instruction and guidance. It is the common misfortune of those just entering life to find in it less than their ideal.
He supported himself on the one hand by the philosophic society to be met at Madame d'Oilly's; on the other, by the orthodox reunions of Madame de la Roche-Jugan. By these influences he contrived to secure the secretaryship to the Comte de Camors, who, in his general contempt of the human species, judged Vautrot to be as good as any other.
"I understand you, Elise," laughingly rejoined M. des Rameures, "but I must beg Monsieur de Camors to believe that I do not in any case intend to offend him. I shall also beg him to tolerate the monomania of an old man, and some freedom of language with regard to the only subject which makes him lose his sang froid."
But they exchanged animated observations, to which the hidden Count lent an attentive ear. Suddenly a strong voice which he recognized as belonging to him of the violin-rose over them all in the pleasing order: "Loose the dog!" This was sufficient for Camors.
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