Young lovers are like hungry men; kitchen odors will not appease their hunger; they think too much of what is coming to care for the means that bring it.  As Calyste walked back to Guerande, his soul was full of Beatrix; he paid no heed to the profound feminine cleverness which Felicite was displaying on his behalf.  During this week the marquise had only written once to Conti, a symptom of indifference which had not escaped the watchful eyes of Camille, who imparted it to Calyste.  All Calyste’s life was concentrated in the short moment of the day during which he was allowed to see the marquise.  This drop of water, far from allaying his thirst, only redoubled it.  The magic promise, “Beatrix shall love you,” made by Camille, was the talisman with which he strove to restrain the fiery ardor of his passion.  But he knew not how to consume the time; he could not sleep, and spent the hours of the night in reading; every evening he brought back with him, as Mariotte remarked, cartloads of books.

His aunt called down maledictions on the head of Mademoiselle des Touches; but his mother, who had gone on several occasions to his room on seeing his light burning far into the night, knew by this time the secret of his conduct.  Though for her love was a sealed book, and she was even unaware of her own ignorance, Fanny rose through maternal tenderness into certain ideas of it; but the depths of such sentiment being dark and obscured by clouds to her mind, she was shocked at the state in which she saw him; the solitary uncomprehended desire of his soul, which was evidently consuming him, simply terrified her.  Calyste had but one thought; Beatrix was always before him.  In the evenings, while cards were being played, his abstraction resembled his father’s somnolence.  Finding him so different from what he was when he loved Camille, the baroness became aware, with a sort of horror, of the symptoms of real love,—­a species of possession which had seized upon her son,—­a love unknown within the walls of that old mansion.

Feverish irritability, a constant absorption in thought, made Calyste almost doltish.  Often he would sit for hours with his eyes fixed on some figure in the tapestry.  One morning his mother implored him to give up Les Touches, and leave the two women forever.

“Not go to Les Touches!” he cried.

“Oh! yes, yes, go! do not look so, my darling!” she cried, kissing him on the eyes that had flashed such flames.

Under these circumstances Calyste often came near losing the fruit of Camille’s plot through the Breton fury of his love, of which he was ceasing to be the master.  Finally, he swore to himself, in spite of his promise to Felicite, to see Beatrix, and speak to her.  He wanted to read her eyes, to bathe in their light, to examine every detail of her dress, breathe its perfume, listen to the music of her voice, watch the graceful composition of her movements, embrace at a glance the whole figure, and study her as a general studies the field where he means to win a decisive battle.  He willed as lovers will; he was grasped by desires which closed his ears and darkened his intellect, and threw him into an unnatural state in which he was conscious of neither obstacles, nor distances, nor the existence even of his own body.