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Page 24
I do not love Madame de Palme; I cannot and will not love her. My opinion
of her has evidently changed greatly; I look upon her henceforth as a good
little woman. Her head is light and will always be so; her behavior is
better than she gets credit for, though perhaps not as good as she
represents it herself; finally, her heart has both weight and value. I
feel some friendship for her, an affection that has something fraternal in
it; but between her and me, nothing further is at all likely; the expanse
of the heavens divides us. The idea of being her husband makes me burst
out laughing, and though a sentiment which you will readily appreciate,
the thought of being her lover inspires me with horror. As to her, I
believe she may feel the shadow of a caprice, but not even the dawn of a
passion. Here I am now upon her etagere with the rest of the figure-heads,
and I think, as does Madame de Malouet, that may be enough to satisfy her.
However, what do you think of it yourself?
[B] The German.
CHAPTER VII.
A MISDIRECTED PASSION.
_7th October._
Dear Paul, I take part in your grief from the bottom of my heart. Allow
me, however, to assure you, from the very details of your own letter that
your dear mother's illness offers no alarming symptoms whatever. It is
one of those painful but harmless crises which the approach of winter
brings back upon her almost invariably every year, as you know. Patience
therefore, and courage, I beseech you.
It requires, my friend, the formal expression of your wishes to induce me
to venture upon mingling my petty troubles with your grave solicitude. As
you anticipated in your wisdom and in your kind friendship, it was
consolation and not advice that I stood in need of when I received your
letter. My heart is not at peace, and, what is worse for me, neither is my
conscience; and yet, I think I have done my duty. Have I understood it
right or not? Judge for yourself.
I take up my situation toward Madame de Palme where I had left it in my
last letter. The day after our mutual explanation, I took every care to
maintain our relations upon the footing of good-fellowship on which they
seemed established, and which constituted, in my idea, the only sort of
intelligence desirable and even possible between us. It seemed to me, on
that day, that she manifested the same vivacity and the same spirit as
usual; yet I fancied that her voice and her look, when she addressed me,
assumed a meek gravity which is not part of her usual disposition; but on
the following days, though I had not deviated from the line of conduct I
had marked out for myself, it became impossible for me not to notice that
Madame de Palme had lost something of her gayety, and that a vague
preoccupation clouded the serenity of her brow. I could see her
dancing-partners surprised at her frequent absence of mind; she still
followed the whirl, but she no longer led it. Under pretext of fatigue,
she would leave suddenly and abruptly her partner's arm, in the midst of a
waltz, to go and sit in some corner with a pensive and even a pouting
look. If there happened to be a vacant seat next to mine, she threw
herself into it, and began from behind her fan some whimsical and
disjointed conversation like the following:
"If I cannot be a hermit, I am going to become a nun. What would you say,
if you saw me enter a convent to-morrow?"
"I should say that you would leave it the day after to-morrow."
"You have no confidence in my resolutions?"
"When they are unwise, no."
"I can only form unwise ones, according to you?"
"According to me, you waltz admirably. When a person waltzes as you do,
it's an art, almost a virtue."
"Is it customary to flatter one's friends?"
"I am not flattering you. I never speak a single word to you that I have
not carefully weighed, and that is not the most earnest expression of my
thought. I am a serious man, madam."
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