Though for her love was a sealed book, and she
was even unaware of her own ignorance, Fanny rose through maternal
tenderness into certain ideas of it; but the depths of such sentiment
being dark and obscured by clouds to her mind, she was shocked at the
state in which she saw him; the solitary uncomprehended desire of his
soul, which was evidently consuming him, simply terrified her. Calyste
had but one thought; Beatrix was always before him. In the evenings,
while cards were being played, his abstraction resembled his father's
somnolence. Finding him so different from what he was when he loved
Camille, the baroness became aware, with a sort of horror, of the
symptoms of real love,--a species of possession which had seized upon
her son,--a love unknown within the walls of that old mansion.
Feverish irritability, a constant absorption in thought, made Calyste
almost doltish. Often he would sit for hours with his eyes fixed on
some figure in the tapestry. One morning his mother implored him to
give up Les Touches, and leave the two women forever.
"Not go to Les Touches!" he cried.
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