"
"Then why are you shut up together every morning?" she said, with a
treacherous smile. "I don't suppose that Camille, in spite of her
passion for tobacco, prefers her cigar to you, or that you, in your
admiration for female authors, spend four hours a day in reading their
romances."
"So then you know--" began the guileless young Breton, his face
glowing with the happiness of being face to face with his idol.
"Calyste!" cried Camille, angrily, suddenly appearing and interrupting
him. She took his arm and drew him away to some distance. "Calyste, is
this what you promised me?"
Beatrix heard these words of reproach as Mademoiselle des Touches
disappeared toward the house, taking Calyste with her. She was
stupefied by the young man's assertion, and could not comprehend it;
she was not as strong as Claude Vignon. In truth, the part being
played by Camille Maupin, as shocking as it was grand, is one of those
wicked grandeurs which women only practise when driven to extremity.
By it their hearts are broken; in it the feelings of their sex are
lost to them; it begins an abnegation which ends by either plunging
them to hell, or lifting them to heaven.
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