Not to be hampered in climbing by women's clothing,
she wore trousers with frilled edges, a short blouse, a peaked cap,
and, by way of staff, she carried a riding-whip, for Camille has
always had a certain vanity in her strength and her agility. Thus
arrayed, she looked far handsomer than Beatrix. She wore also a little
shawl of crimson China crape, crossed on her bosom and tied behind, as
they dress a child. For some time Beatrix and Calyste saw her flitting
before them over the peaks and chasms like a ghost or vision; she was
trying to still her inward sufferings by confronting some imaginary
peril.
She was the first to reach the rock in which the box-bush grew. There
she sat down in the shade of a granite projection, and was lost in
thought. What could a woman like herself do with old age, having
already drunk the cup of fame which all great talents, too eager to
sip slowly the stupid pleasures of vanity, quaff at a single draught?
She has since admitted that it was here--at this moment, and on this
spot--that one of those singular reflections suggested by a mere
nothing, by one of those chance accidents that seem nonsense to common
minds, but which, to noble souls, do sometimes open vast depths of
thought, decided her to take the extraordinary step by which she was
to part forever from social life.
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