Calyste colored, and put the letter into his pocket.

“Why don’t you read it?”

“I know what it is about.”

The young wife sat down.  No longer did fever burn her, she wept no more; but madness such as, in feeble beings, gives birth to miracles of crime, madness which lays hands on arsenic for themselves or for their rivals, possessed her.  At this moment little Calyste was brought in, and she took him in her arms to dance him.  The child, just awakened, sought the breast beneath the gown.

“He remembers,—­he, at any rate,” she said in a low voice.

Calyste went to his own room to read his letter.  When he was no longer present the poor young woman burst into tears, and wept as women weep when they are all alone.

Pain, as well as pleasure, has its initiation.  The first crisis, like that in which poor Sabine nearly succumbed, returns no more than the first fruits of other things return.  It is the first wedge struck in the torture of the heart; all others are expected, the shock to the nerves is known, the capital of our forces has been already drawn upon for vigorous resistance.  So Sabine, sure of her betrayal, spent three hours with her son in her arms beside the fire in a way that surprised herself, when Gasselin, turned into a footman, came to say:—­

“Madame is served.”

“Let monsieur know.”

“Monsieur does not dine at home, Madame la baronne.”

Who knows what torture there is for a young woman of twenty-three in finding herself alone in the great dining-room of an old mansion, served by silent servants, under circumstances like these?

“Order the carriage,” she said suddenly; “I shall go to the Opera.”

She dressed superbly; she wanted to exhibit herself alone and smiling like a happy woman.  In the midst of her remorse for the addition she had made to Madame de Rochefide’s letter she had resolved to conquer, to win back Calyste by loving kindness, by the virtues of a wife, by the gentleness of the paschal lamb.  She wished, also, to deceive all Paris.  She loved,—­loved as courtesans and as angels love, with pride, with humility.  But the opera chanced to be “Otello.”  When Rubini sang Il mio cor si divide, she rushed away.  Music is sometimes mightier than actor or poet, the two most powerful of all natures, combined.  Savinien de Portenduere accompanied Sabine to the peristyle and put her in the carriage without being able to understand this sudden flight.

Madame du Guenic now entered a phase of suffering which is peculiar to the aristocracy.  Envious, poor, and miserable beings,—­when you see on the arms of such women golden serpents with diamond heads, necklaces clasped around their necks, say to yourselves that those vipers sting, those slender bonds burn to the quick through the delicate flesh.  All such luxury is dearly bought.  In situations like that of Sabine, women curse the pleasures of wealth; they look no longer at the gilding of their salons; the silk of the divans is jute in their eyes, exotic flowers are nettles, perfumes poison, the choicest cookery scrapes their throat like barley-bread, and life becomes as bitter as the Dead Sea.