Calyste and Conti went up to Camille’s salon.  The composer, begged by his young rival to sing, gave them that greatest of musical masterpieces viewed as execution, the famous “Pria che spunti l’aurora,” which Rubini himself never attempted without trembling, and which had often been Conti’s triumph.  Never was his singing more extraordinary than on this occasion, when so many feelings were contending in his breast.  Calyste was in ecstasy.  As Conti sang the first words of the cavatina, he looked intently at the marquise, giving to those words a cruel signification which was fully understood.  Camille, who accompanied him, guessed the order thus conveyed, which bowed the head of the luckless Beatrix.  She looked at Calyste, and felt sure that the youth had fallen into some trap in spite of her advice.  This conviction became certainty when the evidently happy Breton came up to bid Beatrix good-night, kissing her hand, and pressing it with a little air of happy confidence.

By the time Calyste had reached Guerande, the servants were packing Conti’s travelling-carriage, and “by dawn,” as the song had said, the composer was carrying Beatrix away with Camille’s horses to the first relay.  The morning twilight enabled Madame de Rochefide to see Guerande, its towers, whitened by the dawn, shining out upon the still dark sky.  Melancholy thoughts possessed her; she was leaving there one of the sweetest flowers of all her life,—­a pure love, such as a young girl dreams of; the only true love she had ever known or was ever to conceive of.  The woman of the world obeyed the laws of the world; she sacrificed love to their demands just as many women sacrifice it to religion or to duty.  Sometimes mere pride can rise in acts as high as virtue.  Read thus, this history is that of many women.

The next morning Calyste went to Les Touches about mid-day.  When he reached the spot from which, the day before, he had seen Beatrix watching for him at the window, he saw Camille, who instantly ran down to him.  She met him at the foot of the staircase and told the cruel truth in one word,—­

“Gone!”

“Beatrix?” asked Calyste, thunderstruck.

“You have been duped by Conti; you told me nothing, and I could do nothing for you.”

She led the poor fellow to her little salon, where he flung himself on the divan where he had so often seen the marquise, and burst into tears.  Felicite smoked her hookah and said nothing, knowing well that no words or thoughts are capable of arresting the first anguish of such pain, which is always deaf and dumb.  Calyste, unable even to think, much less to choose a course, sat there all day in a state of complete torpidity.  Just before dinner was served, Camille tried to say a few words, after begging him, very earnestly, to listen to her.