ove is not what Nature
made it,--an imperious need, to the satisfaction of which she attaches
great and passing joys, which die. You see love such as Christianity
has created it,--an ideal kingdom, full of noble sentiments, of grand
weaknesses, poesies, spiritual sensations, devotions of moral fragrance,
entrancing harmonies, placed high above all vulgar coarseness, to which
two creatures as one angel fly on the wings of pleasure. This is what I
hoped to share; I thought I held in you a key to that door, closed to
so many, by which we may advance toward the infinite. You were there
already. In this you have misled me. I return to my misery,--to my vast
prison of Paris. Such a deception as this, had it come to me earlier
in life, would have made me flee from existence; to-day it puts into
my soul a disenchantment which will plunge me forever into an awful
solitude. I am without the faith which helped the Fathers to people
theirs with sacred images. It is to this, my dear Camille, to this that
the superiority of our mind has brought us; we may, both of us, sing
that dreadful hymn which a poet has put into the mouth of Moses speaking
to the Almighty: 'Lord God, Thou hast made me powerful and solitary.'"

At this moment Calyste appeared.

"I ought not to leave you ignorant that I am here," he said.

Mademoiselle des Touches showed the utmost fear; a sudden flush colored
her impassible face with tints of fire. During this strange scene she
was more beautiful than at any other moment of her life.

"We thought you gone, Calyste," said Claude. "But this involuntary
discretion on both sides will do no harm; perhaps, indeed, you may be
more at your ease at Les Touches by knowing Felicite as she is. Her
silence shows me I am not mistaken as to the part she meant me to play.
As I told you before, she loves you, but it is for yourself, not for
herself,--a sentiment that few women are able to conceive and practise;
few among them know the voluptuous pleasure of sufferings born of
longing,--that is one of the magnificent passions reserved for man.
But she is in some sense a man," he added, sardonically. "Your love for
Beatrix will make her suffer and make her happy too."

Tears were in the eyes of Mademoiselle des Touches, who was unable to
look either at the terrible Vignon or the ingenuous Calyste. She was
frightened at being understood; she had supposed to impossible for
a man, however keen his perception, to perceive a delicac