rest suffering, and I had
not, like you, a beautiful young life before me in which to heal myself.
For me, life has no longer any spring, nor my soul a love. So, to find
consolation, I have had to look above. Here, in this room, the day
before Beatrix came here, I drew you her portrait; I did not do her
injustice, or you might have thought me jealous. I wanted you to know
her as she is, for that would have kept you safe. Listen now to the full
truth. Madame de Rochefide is wholly unworthy of you. The scandal of her
fall was not necessary; she did the thing deliberately in order to play
a part in the eyes of society. She is one of those women who prefer the
celebrity of a scandal to tranquil happiness; they fly in the face of
society to obtain the fatal alms of a rebuke; they desire to be talked
about at any cost. Beatrix was eaten up with vanity. Her fortune and her
wit had not given her the feminine royalty that she craved; they had not
enabled her to reign supreme over a salon. She then bethought herself of
seeking the celebrity of the Duchesse de Langeais and the Vicomtesse de
Beauseant. But the world, after all, is just; it gives the homage of its
interest to real feelings only. Beatrix playing comedy was judged to be
a second-rate actress. There was no reason whatever for her flight;
the sword of Damocles was not suspended over her head; she is neither
sincere, nor loving, nor tender; if she were, would she have gone away
with Conti this morning?"

Camille talked long and eloquently; but this last effort to open
Calyste's eyes was useless, and she said no more when he expressed to
her by a gesture his absolute belief in Beatrix.

She forced him to come down into the dining-room and sit there while she
dined; though he himself was unable to swallow food. It is only during
extreme youth that these contractions of the bodily functions occur.
Later, the organs have acquired, as it were, fixed habits, and are
hardened. The reaction of the mental and moral system upon the physical
is not enough to produce a mortal illness unless the physical system
retains its primitive purity. A man resists the violent grief that
kills a youth, less by the greater weakness of his affection than by the
greater strength of his organs.

Therefore Mademoiselle des Touches was greatly alarmed by the calm,
resigned attitude which Calyste took after his burst of tears had
subsided. Before he left her, he asked permission to go into Beatrix's