The cooking trouble lasted nearly a month.  Sabine, assisted by Mariotte and Gasselin, invented various little vaudeville schemes to ascertain the dishes which Madame de Rochefide served to Calyste.  Gasselin was substituted for Calyste’s groom, who had fallen conveniently ill.  This enabled Gasselin to consort with Madame de Rochefide’s cook, and before long, Sabine gave Calyste the same fare, only better; but still he made difficulties.

“What is wanting now?” she said.

“Oh, nothing,” he answered, looking round the table for something he did not find.

“Ah!” exclaimed Sabine, as she woke the next morning, “Calyste wanted some of those Indian sauces they serve in England in cruets.  Madame de Rochefide accustoms him to all sorts of condiments.”

She bought the English cruets and the spiced sauces; but it soon became impossible for her to make such discoveries in all the preparations invented by her rival.

This period lasted some months; which is not surprising when we remember the sort of attraction presented by such a struggle.  It is life.  And that is preferable, with its wounds and its anguish, to the gloomy darkness of disgust, to the poison of contempt, to the void of abdication, to that death of the heart which is called indifference.  But all Sabine’s courage abandoned her one evening when she appeared in a toilet such as women are inspired to wear in the hope of eclipsing a rival, and about which Calyste said, laughing:—­

“In spite of all you can do, Sabine, you’ll never be anything but a handsome Andalusian.”

“Alas!” she said, dropping on a sofa, “I may never make myself a blonde, but I know if this continues I shall soon be thirty-five years old.”

She refused to go to the Opera as she intended, and chose to stay at home the whole evening.  But once alone she pulled the flowers from her hair and stamped upon them; she tore off the gown and scarf and trampled them underfoot, like a goat caught in the tangle of its tether, which struggles till death comes.  Then she went to bed.

XXI

THE WICKEDNESS OF A GOOD WOMAN

Playing for these terrible stakes Sabine grew thin; grief consumed her; but she never for a moment forsook the role she had imposed upon herself.  Sustained by a sort of fever, her lips drove back into her throat the bitter words that pain suggested; she repressed the flashing of her glorious dark eyes, and made them soft even to humility.  But her failing health soon became noticeable.  The duchess, an excellent mother, though her piety was becoming more and more Portuguese, recognized a moral cause in the physically weak condition in which Sabine now took satisfaction.  She knew the exact state of the relation between Beatrix and Calyste; and she took great pains to draw her daughter to her own house, partly to soothe the wounds of her heart, but more especially to drag her away from the scene of her martyrdom.  Sabine, however, maintained the deepest silence for a long time about her sorrows, fearing lest some one might meddle between herself and Calyste.  She declared herself happy!  At the height of her misery she recovered her pride, and all her virtues.