above all, to a poet whose soul is feminine, nervous, full of the jealousies of true passion. I should make a poor diplomatist indeed if I had not perceived that your first coquetries, your little premeditated inconsistencies, were only assumed for the purpose of studying our characters--"
Modeste raised her head with the rapid, intelligent, half-coquettish motion of a wild animal, in whom instinct produces such miracles of grace.
"--and therefore when I returned home and thought them over, they never misled me. I only marvelled at a cleverness so in harmony with your character and your countenance. Do not be uneasy, I never doubted that your assumed duplicity covered an angelic candor. No, your mind, your education, have in no way lessened the precious innocence which we demand in a wife. You are indeed a wife for a poet, a diplomatist, a thinker, a man destined to endure the chances and changes of life;
and my admiration is equalled only by the attachment I feel to you. I
now entreat you--if yesterday you were not playing a little comedy when you accepted the love of a man whose vanity will change to pride if you accept him, one whose defects will become virtues under your divine influence--I entreat you do not excite a passion which, in him, amounts to vice. Jealousy is a noxious element in my soul, and you have revealed to me its strength; it is awful, it destroys everything --Oh! I do not mean the jealousy of an Othello," he continued, noticing Modeste's gesture. "No, no; my thoughts were of myself: I
have been so indulged on that point. You know the affection to which I
owe all the happiness I have ever enjoyed,--very little at the best"
(he sadly shook his head). "Love is symbolized among all nations as a child, because it fancies the world belongs to it, and it cannot conceive otherwise. Well, Nature herself set the limit to that sentiment. It was still-born. A tender, maternal soul guessed and calmed the painful constriction of my heart,--for a woman who feels, who knows, that she is past the joys of love becomes angelic in her treatment of others. The duchess has never made me suffer in my sensibilities. For ten years not a word, not a look, that could wound me! I attach more value to words, to thoughts, to looks, than ordinary men. If a look is to me a treasure beyond all price, the slightest doubt is deadly poison; it acts instantaneously, my love dies. I
believe--contrary to the mass of men, who delight in trembling, hoping, expecting--that love can only exist in perfect, infantile, and infinite security. The exquisite purgatory, where women delight to send us by their coquetry, is a base happiness to which I will not submit: to me, love is either heaven or hell. If it is hell, I will have none of it. I feel an affinity with the azure skies of Paradise within my soul. I can give myself without reserve, without secrets, doubts or deceptions, in the life to come; and I demand reciprocity.
Perhaps I offend you by these doubts. Remember, however, that I am only talking of myself--"
"--a good deal, but never too much," said Modeste, offended in every hole and corner of her pride by this discourse, in which the Duchesse de Chaulieu served as a dagger. "I am so accustomed to admire you, my dear poet."
"Well, then, can you promise me the same canine fidelity which I offer to you? Is it not beautiful? Is it not just what you have longed for?"
"But why, dear poet, do you not marry a deaf-mute, and one who is also something of an idiot? I ask nothing better than to please my husband.
But you threaten to take away from a girl the very happiness you so kindly arrange for her; you are tearing away every gesture, every word, every look; you cut the wings of your bird, and then expect it to hover about you. I know poets are accused of inconsistency--oh!
very unjustly," she added, as Canalis made a gesture of denial; "that alleged defect which comes from the brilliant activity of their minds which commonplace people cannot take into account. I do not believe, however, that a man of genius can invent such irreconcilable conditions and call his invention life. You are requiring the impossible solely for the pleasure of putting me in the wrong,--like the enchanters in fairy-tales, who set tasks to persecuted young girls whom the good fairies come and deliver."
"In this case the good fairy would be true love," said Canalis in a curt tone, aware that his elaborate excuse for a rupture was seen through by the keen and delicate mind which Butscha had piloted so well.