"This is all very dreadful!" said she, as though stunned by a blow. "I am horrified, and yet I do not understand—"
"Then I must speak more clearly, madame. The confession you wished me to make was to serve as amusement for your friends, when you should tell it in your charmingly malicious way,—like the way you told me about M. de Cernay's offer of marriage."
"But what you are saying is horrible!" she cried, wringing her hands in alarm. "Could you believe—?"
"Yes, I believed it at first, but after your confession of disgust for the world, and a nameless sorrow, which I now can easily understand, I recognised that the second rôle I was to play was even worse than this; for, in the first rôle, I was to force a woman of your rank to play a comedy to puzzle me, and it was so well performed, that I was quite proud to serve in any capacity that would give you an opportunity of exercising your rare talent for serious comedy."
"Monsieur," cried Madame de Pënâfiel, rising to her full height, "do you understand that you are speaking to me?" But she suddenly changed her haughty accent, and, clasping her hands, said: "It is enough to make me insane. I beseech you, explain yourself. What is it that you mean? Why should I wish to puzzle you? What rôle did I wish you to perform? Ah, be merciful, and do not blight the only moment of confidence, the only appeal for sympathy that I have given way to for so many long, weary months. If you only knew."
"I know," said I, in the fiercest and most insulting way, as I approached her, so that I might place my foot on the medallion, and crush it,—"I know, madame, that if I were a woman, and a man should scorn my love, I would rather die of shame and despair than to make the first comer, who cared nothing about them, such humiliating confessions, as weak and silly for the one who tells them as they are revolting and wearisome to the one who is obliged to hear them."
"Monsieur, how dare you be so audacious? How dare you to suppose—?"
"This!" said I, pointing with a scornful look at the portrait at her feet; then, pressing my boot on the medallion, I crushed the crystal.
"It is a sacrilege!" cried out Madame de Pënâfiel, quickly stooping to seize the portrait, which she took in her two hands, and turned on me her eyes that were blazing with indignation.
"It may be sacrilege, madame, but I treat your divinity as well as he treats you." Then I bowed myself out.