"Friend," she said, "you caused me the bitterest suffering, and I had
not, like you, a beautiful young life before me in which to heal
myself. For me, life has no longer any spring, nor my soul a love. So,
to find consolation, I have had to look above. Here, in this room, the
day before Beatrix came here, I drew you her portrait; I did not do
her injustice, or you might have thought me jealous. I wanted you to
know her as she is, for that would have kept you safe. Listen now to
the full truth. Madame de Rochefide is wholly unworthy of you. The
scandal of her fall was not necessary; she did the thing deliberately
in order to play a part in the eyes of society. She is one of those
women who prefer the celebrity of a scandal to tranquil happiness;
they fly in the face of society to obtain the fatal alms of a rebuke;
they desire to be talked about at any cost. Beatrix was eaten up with
vanity. Her fortune and her wit had not given her the feminine royalty
that she craved; they had not enabled her to reign supreme over a
salon. She then bethought herself of seeking the celebrity of the
Duchesse de Langeais and the Vicomtesse de Beauseant.
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