It is enchanting, in a style profoundly artistic.  I took delight in that place of horror where Mademoiselle des Touches had so earnestly forbidden me to go.  Poisonous flowers are all charming; Satan sowed them—­for the devil has flowers as well as God; we have only to look within our souls to see the two shared in the making of us.  What delicious acrity in a situation where I played, not with fire, but—­with ashes!  I studied Calyste; the point was to know if that passion was thoroughly extinct.  I watched, as you may well believe, every wind that blew; I kept an eye upon his face as he went from room to room and from one piece of furniture to another, exactly like a child who is looking for some hidden thing.  Calyste seemed thoughtful, but at first I thought that I had vanquished the past.  I felt strong enough to mention Madame de Rochefide-whom in my heart I called la Rocheperfide.  At last we went to see the famous bush were Beatrix was caught when he flung her into the sea that she might never belong to another man.

  “She must be light indeed to have stayed there,” I said laughing. 
  Calyste kept silence, so I added, “We’ll respect the dead.”

  Still Calyste was silent.

  “Have I displeased you?” I asked.

  “No; but cease to galvanize that passion,” he answered.

  What a speech!  Calyste, when he saw me all cast down by it,
  redoubled his care and tenderness.

August.

I was, alas! at the edge of a precipice, amusing myself, like the innocent heroines of all melodramas, by gathering flowers.  Suddenly a horrible thought rode full tilt through my happiness, like the horse in the German ballad.  I thought I saw that Calyste’s love was increasing through his reminiscences; that he was expending on me the stormy emotions I revived by reminding him of the coquetries of that hateful Beatrix,—­just think of it! that cold, unhealthy nature, so persistent yet so flabby, something between a mollusk and a bit of coral, dares to call itself Beatrix, Beatrice!

Already, dearest mother, I am forced to keep one eye open to suspicion, when my heart is all Calyste’s; and isn’t it a great catastrophe when the eye gets the better of the heart, and suspicion at last finds itself justified?  It came to pass in this way:—­

  “This place is dear to me,” I said to Calyste one morning,
  “because I owe my happiness to it; and so I forgive you for taking
  me sometimes for another woman.”

  The loyal Breton blushed, and I threw my arms around his neck.  But
  all the same I have left Les Touches, and never will I go back
  there again.