Ask Camille how I behaved to her after the day she told me, on her return to Les Touches, that she loved Claude Vignon.  I was mute; I suffered in silence.  Well, for you I will show even greater strength,—­I will bury my feelings in my heart, if you will not drive me to despair, if you will only understand my heroism.  A single word of praise from you is enough to make me bear the pains of martyrdom.

But if you persist in this cold silence, this deadly disdain, you will make me think you fear me.  Ah, Beatrix, be with me what you are,—­charming, witty, gay, and tender.  Talk to me of Conti, as Camille has talked to me of Claude.  I have no other spirit in my soul, no other genius but that of love; nothing is there that can make you fear me; I will be in your presence as if I loved you not.

  Can you reject so humble a prayer?—­the prayer of a child who only
  asks that his Light shall lighten him, that his Sun may warm him.

He whom you love can be with you at all times, but I, poor Calyste! have so few days in which to see you; you will soon be freed from me.  Therefore I may return to Les Touches to-morrow, may I not?  You will not refuse my arm for that excursion?  We shall go together to Croisic and to Batz?  If you do not go I shall take it for an answer,—­Calyste will understand it!

There were four more pages of the same sort in close, fine writing, wherein Calyste explained the sort of threat conveyed in the last words, and related his youth and life; but the tale was chiefly told in exclamatory phrases, with many of those points and dashes of which modern literature is so prodigal when it comes to crucial passages, —­as though they were planks offered to the reader’s imagination, to help him across crevasses.  The rest of this artless letter was merely repetition.  But if it was not likely to touch Madame de Rochefide, and would very slightly interest the admirers of strong emotions, it made the mother weep, as she said to her son, in her tender voice,—­

“My child, you are not happy.”

This tumultuous poem of sentiments which had arisen like a storm in Calyste’s heart, terrified the baroness; for the first time in her life she read a love-letter.

Calyste was standing in deep perplexity; how could he send that letter?  He followed his mother back into the salon with the letter in his pocket and burning in his heart like fire.  The Chevalier du Halga was still there, and the last deal of a lively mouche was going on.  Charlotte de Kergarouet, in despair at Calyste’s indifference, was paying attention to his father as a means of promoting her marriage.  Calyste wandered hither and thither like a butterfly which had flown into the room by mistake.  At last, when mouche was over, he drew the Chevalier du Halga into the great salon, from which he sent away Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel’s page and Mariotte.