I soon regretted having promised Madame de Fersen never to address her a word of gallantry. Since she felt entirely at her ease with me, she appeared to me more and more charming, and each day I became more deeply in love.
Constant to our meetings in the saloon, where we were almost always alone with Irene, our intercourse soon became quite friendly and intimate.
I very skilfully displayed my total ignorance of politics so that they should be entirely banished in our conversations. Having mastered the situation, I succeeded in always bringing back our talks to the thousand subjects relating to tender or passionate sentiments.
Sometimes, as though fearing the tendency of our intercourse, Madame de Fersen insisted on speaking politics. Then I would profess my ignorance, and the princess would wittily accuse me of acting like those lovers who pretend to dislike sport, in order that they may stay at home with the ladies while their husbands go tramping across the fields.
When the tediousness of navigation had given rise to a certain degree of intimacy between me and the officers of the Russian frigate, our conversation often introduced the name of Madame de Fersen, and I was surprised at the profound respect with which they always spoke of her. Calumny, they said, had never attacked her, be it in Russia, Constantinople, or at the different courts where she had resided.
A reputation of unimpeachable purity has, I believe, an irresistible charm, especially when found in a young, beautiful, and intellectual woman, of an exalted position; for she must be endowed with a powerful moral strength, to disarm envy, or to blunt its darts, and inspire, as did Madame de Fersen, a general sentiment of benevolence and respect.
In comparing my love for Madame de Pënâfiel to what I felt for Madame de Fersen, I appreciated the lofty and alluring charm of this seduction.
Marguerite had, doubtless, been shamefully maligned,—of this I had received indisputable proofs; but, however false may be the rumours that attack the woman you love, they will ever produce a feeling of resentment.
Admitting, even, that you succeed in convincing yourself of the falsehood of the rumour, you then accuse the woman who is its victim of not possessing the wit to assert her virtue.
Hélène's life had been pure, and yet she had been attacked. My attentions to her had alone occasioned those odious rumours, and yet, in my unjust frenzy, I accused her of not having known how to hold herself above suspicion.