Madame de Pënâfiel gazed at me for some moments with her great astonished eyes, and then said, in a firm and very decided way: "All that is not true; you are not happy; it is impossible that you should be. I know the truth; why will you not admit the truth, and then I could tell you—" Then she hesitated and cast down her eyes as though she were on the point of revealing a secret.
"If it will give you the least satisfaction, madame," I replied, smiling, "I will hasten to declare myself the most unfortunate, melancholy, dismal, sophisticated of mortals, and from henceforth I will go about proclaiming only, Anathema! Fatality!"
After contemplating me for some moments with inexpressible amazement, she said, as though speaking to herself: "Can I have deceived myself? Was I mistaken?" Then continuing, "No, no, it is impossible, if you were as happy and indifferent as you pretend to be, would I not have known it instinctively? Would I have opened my heart to you and exposed my grief? Would I have risked a confession only to have derision in return? No, no, my heart whispered the truth when it said, 'Speak to him, tell him all, he is your friend, a friend who will pity you, for he also is lonely and wretched.'"
Her strange persistence in making me acknowledge some imaginary sorrow, in order to deride me afterwards, astonished and irritated me.
"Madame," I said, "why do you persist in believing me to be so miserable?"
"Why, why?" said she, quite impatiently. "Because there are some confessions that one never makes to the gay and careless; because, to understand the bitterness of certain woes, there must exist some sort of harmony between the soul that bewails its grief, and the one who hears its complaining; because, had I thought you careless, merry, flippant, happy in the enjoyment of the life of frivolity whose charms you were just now vaunting, I never would have dreamed of telling you why I am so wretched, or explaining the secret of a life which must seem fantastic and bizarre. I would never have wished to tell you, as to a devoted and true friend, a brother, indeed, the reason I am so overwhelmed with sorrow."
I had reached such a point of irritation and distrust, that when she said the words "friend, brother," another idea suggested itself to me. Remembering Madame de Pënâfiel's reticence and a thousand other incidents which had passed unnoticed until now, I decided that her nameless sorrow, her disgust for everything, her weariness of the world, resembled very strongly an unrequited passion, and that she was in love, but that her love was not returned. I therefore believed her willing to make me the discreet confidant of her pains and longings.
This last hypothesis woke the most violent and mortal jealousy in my breast, and showed me plainly the extent of my love for Madame de Pënâfiel, as well as the ridiculous rôle I was expected to play if my last supposition were true.
I was about to reply, when, by moving the folds of her dress, she uncovered on the carpet at her feet a medallion, which had probably fallen from the buhl cabinet, when, in order to hide the crucifix (and, perhaps, the medallion as well), she had so suddenly closed its doors. It was a man's portrait, but I could not see the features.
I had no longer the least doubt, all my other imaginings vanished before this evident proof of Madame de Pënâfiel's duplicity; then, tortured by jealousy and wild with anger and wounded pride, I arose, and said, with perfect coolness: