l the
more a mother because maternity is, as you know, a passion with women of
that sort. Du Guenic would let himself be cut in pieces, and would chop
up his wife for Beatrix; and you think it is an easy matter to drag a
man from the depths of such credulity! Ah! madame, Shakespeare's Iago
would lose all his handkerchiefs. People think that Othello, or his
younger brother, Orosmanes, or Saint-Preux, Rene, Werther, and other
lovers now in possession of fame, represented love! Never did their
frosty-hearted fathers know what absolute love is; Moliere alone
conceived it. Love, Madame la duchesse, is not loving a noble woman, a
Clarissa--a great effort, faith! Love is to say to one's self: 'She
whom I love is infamous; she deceives me, she will deceive me; she is an
abandoned creature, she smells of the frying of hell-fire;' but we rush
to her, we find there the blue of heaven, the flowers of Paradise. That
is how Moliere loved, and how we, scamps that we are! how we love. As
for me, I weep at the great scene of Arnolphe. Now, that is how your
son-in-law loves Beatrix. I shall have trouble separating Rochefide from
Madame Schontz; but Madame Schontz will no doubt lend herself to the
plot; I shall study her interior. But as for Calyste and Beatrix, they
will need the blows of an axe, far deeper treachery, and so base an
infamy that your virtuous imagination could never descend to it--unless
indeed your director gave you a hand. You have asked the impossible, you
shall be obeyed. But in spite of my settled intention to war with fire
and sword, I cannot absolutely promise you success. I have known lovers
who did not recoil before the most awful disillusions. You are too
virtuous to know the full power of women who are not virtuous."

"Do not enter upon those infamous actions until I have consulted the
Abbe Brossette to know how far I may be your accomplice," cried the
duchess, with a naivete which disclosed what selfishness there is in
piety.

"You shall be ignorant of everything, my dear mother," interposed
d'Ajuda.

On the portico, while the carriage of the marquis was drawing up,
d'Ajuda said to Maxime:--

"You frightened that good duchess."

"But she has no idea of the difficulty of what she asks. Let us go to
the Jockey Club; Rochefide must invite me to dine with Madame Schontz
to-morrow, for to-night my plan will be made, and I shall have chosen
the pawns on my chess-board to carry it out. In the days of her splend