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Page 56
"Excuse me, but it is the very question I would like to ask of you
myself."
"Of me?" said the count. "But I have not the slightest idea. She is a
Sphinx, a riddle, the solution of which escapes me completely. She both
charms and frightens me. She is peculiar, you said? She is more than that;
she is fantastic. She is not of this world. I know not whom or what I have
married. You remember that cold and beautiful creature in the Arabian
tales who rose at night to go and feast in the graveyard. It's absurd, but
she reminds me of that."
The count's troubled look, the constrained laugh with which he accompanied
his words, moved Lucan deeply.
"So, then," said the latter, "you are unhappy?"
"It is impossible to be more so," replied the count, pressing his hand
hard. "I adore her, and I am jealous--without knowing of whom and of what!
She does not love me--and yet she loves some one--she must love some one!
How can I doubt it? Look at her; she is the very embodiment of passion;
the fire of passion overflows in her words, in her looks, in the blood of
her veins! And near me, she is as cold as the statue upon a tomb!"
"Frankly, _mon cher_," said Lucan, "you seem to exaggerate your disasters
greatly. In reality they seem to amount to very little. In the first
place, you are seriously in love for the first time in your life, I think;
you had heard a great deal said about love, about passion, and perhaps you
were expecting of them excessive wonders. In the second place, I must beg
you to observe that very young women are rarely very passionate. The sort
of coolness of which you complain is therefore quite easy to explain
without the intervention of anything supernatural. Young women, I repeat,
are generally idealists; their love has no substance. You ask of whom or
of what you should be jealous? Be jealous, then, of all those vague and
romantic aspirations that torment youthful imaginations; be jealous of the
wind, of the tempest, of the barren moors, of the rugged cliffs, of my old
manor, of my words and of my ruins--for Julia adores all that. Be jealous,
above all, of that ardent worship she has avowed to her father's memory,
and which still absorbs her--I have lately had a proof of the fact--the
keenest of her passion."
"You do me good," rejoined Pierre de Moras, breathing more freely, "and
yet I had already thought of all these things. But if she does not love
now, she will some day--and suppose it should not be me! Were she to
bestow upon another all that she refuses me! my friend," added the count,
whose handsome features turned pale, "I would kill her with my own hand!"
"So much for being in love," said Lucan; "and I, am I nothing more to you,
then?"
"You, my friend," said Moras with emotion, "you see my confidence in you!
I have revealed to you weaknesses of which I am ashamed. Ah! why have I
ever known any other feeling than that of friendship! Friendship alone
returns as much as it receives; it fortifies instead of enervating; it is
the only passion worthy of a man. Never forsake me, my friend; you will
console me, whatever may happen."
The bell that was ringing for breakfast called them back to the chateau.
Julia pretended being tired and ailing. Under shelter of this pretext, her
silent humor, her more than dry answers to Lucan's polite questions,
passed at first without awakening either her mother's or her husband's
attention; but during the remainder of the day, and amid the various
incidents of family life, Julia's aggressive tone and disagreeable manners
toward Lucan became too strongly marked not to be noticed. However, as
Lucan had the patience and good taste not to seem to notice them, each one
kept his own impressions to himself. The dinner was, that day, more quiet
than usual. The conversation fell, toward the end of the meal, upon
extremely delicate ground, and it was Julia who brought it there, though,
however, without the least thought of evil. She was exhausting her mocking
_verve_ upon a little boy of eight or ten--the son of the Marchioness de
Boisfresnay--who had annoyed her extremely the night before, by parading
through the ball his own pretentious little person, and by throwing
himself pleasantly like a top between the legs of the gentlemen and
through the dresses of the ladies. The marchioness went into ecstasies at
these charming pranks. Clotilde defended her mildly, alleging that this
child was her only son.
"That is no reason for bestowing upon society one scoundrel the more,"
said Lucan.
"However," rejoined Julia, who hastened to be no longer of her own opinion
as soon as her step-father seemed to have rallied to it, "it is a well
acknowledged fact that spoiled children are those who turn out the best."
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