"They go to work like La Fontaine, when he wanted to enter the
Academy," said Camille.
Madame de Rochefide had unbounded power to restrain Calyste within the
limits where she meant to keep him; it sufficed her to remind him by a
look or gesture of his horrible violence on the rocks. The eyes of her
poor victim would fill with tears, he was silent, swallowing down his
prayers, his arguments, his sufferings with a heroism that would
certainly have touched any other woman. She finally brought him by her
infernal coquetry to such a pass that he went one day to Camille
imploring her advice.
Beatrix, armed with Calyste's own letter, quoted the passage in which
he said that to love was the first happiness, that of being loved came
later; and she used that axiom to restrain his passion to the limits
of respectful idolatry, which pleased her well. She liked to feel her
soul caressed by those sweet hymns of praise and adoration which
nature suggests to youth; in them is so much artless art; such
innocent seduction is in their cries, their prayers, their
exclamations, their pledges of themselves in the promissory notes
which they offer on the future; to all of which Beatrix was very
careful to give no definite answer.
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