And with what guileless innocence the young Breton allowed his
thoughts to be read! When he saw the beautiful green eyes of the sick
woman turned to him, expressing a mixture of love, confusion, and even
mischief, he colored, and turned away his head.
"Did I not say truly, Calyste, that you men promised happiness, and
ended by flinging us down a precipice?"
When he heard this little jest, said in sweet, caressing tones which
betrayed a change of heart in Beatrix, Calyste knelt down, took her
moist hand which she yielded to him, and kissed it humbly.
"You have the right to reject my love forever," he said, "and I, I
have no right to say one word to you."
"Ah!" cried Camille, seeing the expression on Beatrix's face and
comparing it with that obtained by her diplomacy, "love has a
wit of its own, wiser than that of all the world! Take your
composing-draught, my dear friend, and go to sleep."
That night, spent by Calyste beside Mademoiselle des Touches, who read
a book of theological mysticism while Calyste read "Indiana,"--the
first work of Camille's celebrated rival, in which is the captivating
image of a young man loving with idolatry and devotion, with
mysterious tranquillity and for all his life, a woman placed in the
same false position as Beatrix (a book which had a fatal influence
upon him),--that night left ineffaceable marks upon the heart of the
poor young fellow, whom Felicite soothed with the assurance that
unless a woman were a monster she must be flattered in all her
vanities by being the object of such a crime.
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