One morning he resolved to go to Les Touches at an earlier hour than that agreed upon, and endeavor to meet Beatrix in the garden.  He knew she walked there daily before breakfast.

Mademoiselle des Touches and the marquise had gone, as it happened, to see the marshes and the little bay with its margin of fine sand, where the sea penetrates and lies like a lake in the midst of the dunes.  They had just returned, and were walking up a garden path beside the lawn, conversing as they walked.

“If the scenery pleases you,” said Camille, “we must take Calyste and make a trip to Croisic.  There are splendid rocks there, cascades of granite, little bays with natural basins, charmingly unexpected and capricious things, besides the sea itself, with its store of marble fragments,—­a world of amusement.  Also you will see women making fuel with cow-dung, which they nail against the walls of their houses to dry in the sun, after which they pile it up as we do peat in Paris.”

“What! will you really risk Calyste?” cried the marquise, laughing, in a tone which proved that Camille’s ruse had answered its purpose.

“Ah, my dear,” she replied, “if you did but know the angelic soul of that dear child, you would understand me.  In him, mere beauty is nothing; one must enter that pure heart, which is amazed at every step it takes into the kingdom of love.  What faith! what grace! what innocence!  The ancients were right enough in the worship they paid to sacred beauty.  Some traveller, I forget who, relates that when wild horses lose their leader they choose the handsomest horse in the herd for his successor.  Beauty, my dear, is the genius of things; it is the ensign which Nature hoists over her most precious creations; it is the trust of symbols as it is the greatest of accidents.  Did any one ever suppose that angels could be deformed? are they not necessarily a combination of grace and strength?  What is it that makes us stand for hours before some picture in Italy, where genius has striven through years of toil to realize but one of those accidents of Nature?  Come, call up your sense of the truth of things and answer me; is it not the Idea of Beauty which our souls associate with moral grandeur?  Well, Calyste is one of those dreams, those visions, realized.  He has the regal power of a lion, tranquilly unsuspicious of its royalty.  When he feels at his ease, he is witty; and I love his girlish timidity.  My soul rests in his heart away from all corruptions, all ideas of knowledge, literature, the world, society, politics,—­those useless accessories under which we stifle happiness.  I am what I have never been,—­a child!  I am sure of him, but I like to play at jealousy; he likes it too.  Besides, that is part of my secret.”

Beatrix walked on pensively, in silence.  Camille endured unspeakable martyrdom, and she cast a sidelong look at her companion which looked like flame.

“Ah, my dear; but you are happy,” said Beatrix presently, laying her hand on Camille’s arm like a woman wearied out with some inward struggle.