loved and Camille whom he had ceased to love, the poor boy sat despairing and undecided, lost in thought.  He sought in vain for the reasons which had made Felicite reject his love and bring Claude Vignon from Paris to oppose it.  Every now and then the voice of Beatrix came fresh and pure to his ears from the little salon; a savage desire to rush in and carry her off seized him at such moments.  What would become of him?  What must he do?  Could he come to Les Touches?  If Camille loved him how could he come there to adore Beatrix?  He saw no solution to these difficulties.

Insensibly to him silence now reigned in the house; he heard, but without noticing, the opening and shutting of doors.  Then suddenly midnight sounded on the clock of the adjoining bedroom, and the voices of Claude and Camille roused him fully from his torpid contemplation of the future.  Before he could rise and show himself, he heard the following terrible words in the voice of Claude Vignon.

“You came to Paris last year desperately in love with Calyste,” Claude was saying to Felicite, “but you were horrified at the thought of the consequences of such a passion at your age; it would lead you to a gulf, to hell, to suicide perhaps.  Love cannot exist unless it thinks itself eternal, and you saw not far before you a horrible parting; old age you knew would end the glorious poem soon.  You thought of ‘Adolphe,’ that dreadful finale of the loves of Madame de Stael and Benjamin Constant, who, however, were nearer of an age than you and Calyste.  Then you took me, as soldiers use fascines to build entrenchments between the enemy and themselves.  You brought me to Les Touches to mask your real feelings and leave you safe to follow your own secret adoration.  The scheme was grand and ignoble both; but to carry it out you should have chosen either a common man or one so preoccupied by noble thoughts that you could easily deceive him.  You thought me simple and easy to mislead as a man of genius.  I am not a man of genius, I am a man of talent, and as such I have divined you.  When I made that eulogy yesterday on women of your age, explaining to you why Calyste had loved you, do you suppose I took to myself your ravished, fascinated, fazzling glance?  Had I not read into your soul?  The eyes were turned on me, but the heart was throbbing for Calyste.  You have never been loved, my poor Maupin, and you never will be after rejecting the beautiful fruit which chance has offered to you at the portals of that hell of woman, the lock of which is the numeral 50!”

“Why has love fled me?” she said in a low voice.  “Tell me, you who know all.”

“Because you are not lovable,” he answered.  “You do not bend to love; love must bend to you.  You may perhaps have yielded to some follies of youth, but there was no youth in your heart; your mind has too much depth; you have never been naive and artless, and you cannot begin to be so now.  Your charm comes from mystery; it is abstract, not active.  Your strength repulses men of strength who fear a struggle.  Your power may please young souls, like that of Calyste, which like to be protected; though, even them it wearies in the long run.  You are grand, and you are sublime; bear with the consequence of those two qualities—­they fatigue.”