At the beginning of the winter she returned to Paris.  The little town of Guerande was by this time roused to diabolical curiosity; its whole talk was of the Asiatic luxury displayed at Les Touches.  Her man of business gave orders after her departure that visitors should be admitted to view the house.  They flocked from the village of Batz, from Croisic, and from Savenay, as well as from Guerande.  This public curiosity brought in an enormous sum to the family of the porter and gardener, not less, in two years, than seventeen francs.

After this, Mademoiselle des Touches did not revisit Les Touches for two years, not until her return from Italy.  On that occasion she came by way of Croisic and was accompanied by Conti.  It was some time before Guerande became aware of her presence.  Her subsequent apparitions at Les Touches excited comparatively little interest.  Her Parisian fame did not precede her; her man of business alone knew the secret of her writings and of her connection with the celebrity of Camille Maupin.  But at the period of which we are now writing the contagion of the new ideas had made some progress in Guerande, and several persons knew of the dual form of Mademoiselle des Touches’ existence.  Letters came to the post-office, directed to Camille Maupin at Les Touches.  In short, the veil was rent away.  In a region so essentially Catholic, archaic, and full of prejudice, the singular life of this illustrious woman would of course cause rumors, some of which, as we have seen, had reached the ears of the Abbe Grimont and alarmed him; such a life could never be comprehended in Guerande; in fact, to every mind, it seemed unnatural and improper.

Felicite, during her present stay, was not alone in Les Touches.  She had a guest.  That guest was Claude Vignon, a scornful and powerful writer who, though doing criticism only, has found means to give the public and literature the impression of a certain superiority.  Mademoiselle des Touches had received this writer for the last seven years, as she had so many other authors, journalists, artists, and men of the world.  She knew his nerveless nature, his laziness, his utter penury, his indifference and disgust for all things, and yet by the way she was now conducting herself she seemed inclined to marry him.  She explained her conduct, incomprehensible to her friends, in various ways,—­by ambition, by the dread she felt of a lonely old age; she wanted to confide her future to a superior man, to whom her fortune would be a stepping-stone, and thus increase her own importance in the literary world.

With these apparent intentions she had brought Claude Vignon from Paris to Les Touches, as an eagle bears away a kid in its talons,—­to study him, and decide upon some positive course.  But, in truth, she was misleading both Calyste and Claude; she was not even thinking of marriage; her heart was in the throes of the most violent convulsion that could agitate a soul as strong as hers.  She found herself the dupe of her own mind; too late she saw life lighted by the sun of love, shining as love shines in a heart of twenty.