As she did not appear to notice the chilly way I received her complaint, I saw only another reason for thinking she was deceiving me, and had scornfully resolved not to be interrupted in her rôle, but to play it to the end, and I was excessively irritated.
Now that I know all, I can understand her inadvertence, but at the time it was a positive and aggravating proof of her duplicity.
She was inattentive, because the relief caused by the disclosure of a long hidden trouble is so exquisite that, overcome by the blessed effusion, we neither know nor care for the impression we produce.
It is only later, when the heart, already lighter, feels refreshed by this divine outpouring, that we look up hopefully, expecting to see in our friend's eyes some sympathetic tears, or some expression of commiseration.
Thus, when two friends meet after a long and painful separation, in the rapture of the first embrace neither thinks of noticing if the other is changed.
Having thus, as it were, broken the ice, Madame de Pënâfiel continued, after passing her hand over her tearful eyes:
"It would be very easy for me to explain the extraordinary confidence I have in you. I know that, although you have often defended me from slander, you have never attempted to reap any advantage from your loyal conduct; then the isolation in which you live, although moving in the gay world, your reserve, your superiority of mind, which is unlike others, and entirely your own, virtues and defects,—everything tends to my accepting you as a sincere and generous friend, to whom I can tell all my sorrows and all I suffer."
Without showing the least feeling, I replied that she could count on my discretion, which was trustworthy, and besides, as I had no one to talk to, it was all the more safe. "For," said I, "we are only indiscreet with our intimate friends, and I cannot reproach myself with having a single one."
"That," said she, "is the very reason why I am encouraged to speak to you as I do. I fancied that you also were alone, that you also had some secret chagrin that you dared not speak of, suffering from your isolated position as I do from mine, for, like you, I have no friends; people hate me, they say wicked things about me, and why? Mon Dieu! have I deserved such treatment? Why is the world so unjust and cruel towards me? Whom have I injured? Oh, if you only knew! If I could tell you all!"
Her complaining seemed so childish and weak, her reticence so ill calculated to excite my curiosity, that, assuming a cheerful manner, I began an apology for the world in general.