“Friend,” she said, “you caused me the bitterest suffering, and I had not, like you, a beautiful young life before me in which to heal myself.  For me, life has no longer any spring, nor my soul a love.  So, to find consolation, I have had to look above.  Here, in this room, the day before Beatrix came here, I drew you her portrait; I did not do her injustice, or you might have thought me jealous.  I wanted you to know her as she is, for that would have kept you safe.  Listen now to the full truth.  Madame de Rochefide is wholly unworthy of you.  The scandal of her fall was not necessary; she did the thing deliberately in order to play a part in the eyes of society.  She is one of those women who prefer the celebrity of a scandal to tranquil happiness; they fly in the face of society to obtain the fatal alms of a rebuke; they desire to be talked about at any cost.  Beatrix was eaten up with vanity.  Her fortune and her wit had not given her the feminine royalty that she craved; they had not enabled her to reign supreme over a salon.  She then bethought herself of seeking the celebrity of the Duchesse de Langeais and the Vicomtesse de Beauseant.  But the world, after all, is just; it gives the homage of its interest to real feelings only.  Beatrix playing comedy was judged to be a second-rate actress.  There was no reason whatever for her flight; the sword of Damocles was not suspended over her head; she is neither sincere, nor loving, nor tender; if she were, would she have gone away with Conti this morning?”

Camille talked long and eloquently; but this last effort to open Calyste’s eyes was useless, and she said no more when he expressed to her by a gesture his absolute belief in Beatrix.

She forced him to come down into the dining-room and sit there while she dined; though he himself was unable to swallow food.  It is only during extreme youth that these contractions of the bodily functions occur.  Later, the organs have acquired, as it were, fixed habits, and are hardened.  The reaction of the mental and moral system upon the physical is not enough to produce a mortal illness unless the physical system retains its primitive purity.  A man resists the violent grief that kills a youth, less by the greater weakness of his affection than by the greater strength of his organs.

Therefore Mademoiselle des Touches was greatly alarmed by the calm, resigned attitude which Calyste took after his burst of tears had subsided.  Before he left her, he asked permission to go into Beatrix’s bedroom, where he had seen her on the night of her illness, and there he laid his head on the pillow where hers had lain.

“I am committing follies,” he said, grasping Camille’s hand, and bidding her good-night in deep dejection.

He returned home, found the usual company at mouche, and passed the remainder of the evening sitting beside his mother.  The rector, the Chevalier du Halga, and Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel all knew of Madame de Rochefide’s departure, and were rejoicing in it.  Calyste would now return to them; and all three watched him cautiously.  No one in that old manor-house was capable of imagining the result of a first love, the love of youth in a heart so simple and so true as that of Calyste.