e said, in a cheerful tone. "I will keep my
promise; and while I tell you that history I will sit by the window and
watch the road to the marshes."

Calyste arranged a great Gothic chair for her near the window, and
opened one of the sashes. Camille Maupin, who shared the oriental taste
of her illustrious sister-author, took a magnificent Persian narghile,
given to her by an ambassador. She filled the nipple with patchouli,
cleaned the _bochettino_, perfumed the goose-quill, which she attached
to the mouthpiece and used only once, set fire to the yellow leaves,
placing the vase with its long neck enamelled in blue and gold at some
distance from her, and rang the bell for tea.

"Will you have cigarettes?--Ah! I am always forgetting that you do not
smoke. Purity such as yours is so rare! The hand of Eve herself, fresh
from the hand of her Maker, is alone innocent enough to stroke your
cheek."

Calyste colored; sitting down on a stool at Camille's feet, he did not
see the deep emotion that seemed for a moment to overcome her.

VIII. LA MARQUISE BEATRIX

"I promised you this tale of the past, and here it is," said Camille.
"The person from whom I received that letter yesterday, and who may be
here to-morrow, is the Marquise de Rochefide. The old marquis (whose
family is not as old as yours), after marrying his eldest daughter to
a Portuguese grandee, was anxious to find an alliance among the higher
nobility for his son, in order to obtain for him the peerage he had
never been able to get for himself. The Comtesse de Montcornet told
him of a young lady in the department of the Orne, a Mademoiselle
Beatrix-Maximilienne-Rose de Casteran, the youngest daughter of the
Marquis de Casteran, who wished to marry his two daughters without
dowries in order to reserve his whole fortune for the Comte de Casteran,
his son. The Casterans are, it seems, of the bluest blood. Beatrix, born
and brought up at the chateau de Casteran, was twenty years old at
the time of her marriage in 1828. She was remarkable for what you
provincials call originality, which is simply independence of ideas,
enthusiasm, a feeling for the beautiful, and a certain impulse and ardor
toward the things of Art. You may believe a poor woman who has allowed
herself to be drawn along the same lines, there is nothing more
dangerous for a woman. If she follows them, they lead her where you see
me, and where the marquise came,--to the verge of abysses. Men alone