Madeleine did not doubt that the hero of the duel of which she had been an invisible witness, her blond archangel, and the ideal of her passion, Frantz, and the lover of Antonine, were one and the same person.
At this sudden discovery the marquise felt a profound agitation. Until then, this love, surrounded with the mystery of the unknown, this vague and charming love which seemed like the memory of a sweet dream, had sufficed to fill her heart in the midst of the perturbations of her life, rendered so fantastic by the calm of her own indifference and the foolish transport that she involuntarily inspired in others.
It had never occurred to Madeleine that her ideal could be in love with another woman, or, rather, her thought had never rested on this doubt; for her, this radiant archangel was provided with beautiful wings, which might carry him away before all eyes into the infinite plains of ether. Incessantly besieged by lovers, by no means platonic, she experienced a joy, an ineffable moral repose, in lifting herself into immaterial regions, where her charmed and dazzled eyes saw her ideal hovering. But suddenly reality cut the wings of the archangel, and, fallen from his celestial sphere, he was no more than a handsome young man, in love with a pretty girl of fifteen, who adored him.
At this discovery, Madeleine could not repress a sort of sadness, or, rather, of sweet melancholy like that which follows the awakening from an enchanted dream, for to experience the tortures of jealousy, would be to love carnally. In short, if Frantz had almost always occupied the thought of Madeleine, he had never had part in her life; it only concerned her, then, to break the thousand ties that habit, sympathy, and confidence had rendered so dear. Nevertheless, she felt herself a prey to a growing disquietude, to painful presentiments which she could not explain to herself. Suddenly she started, and said:
"If fate should order that this strange charm that I exercise on almost all who approach me should also act upon Frantz, if I, too, should share his feeling on seeing the only man who has ever occupied my heart and my thought!"
Then, trying to reassure herself by an appeal to her humility, Madeleine said:
"No, no; Frantz loves Antonine too much, it is his first love; the purity, the sincerity of this love will protect him. He will have for me that coldness which I have for all. Yes, and who can say that my pride, my self-esteem will not revolt from the coldness of Frantz? Who can tell me that, forgetting the duties of sacred friendship, almost maternal, toward Antonine, I may not employ all the resources of my mind and all my power of seduction to conquer Frantz? Oh, no, that would be odious, and then I deceive myself again, Frantz loves Antonine too much. Alas! the husband of Sophie loves her tenderly, too, and I fear that—"
These reflections of the marquise were interrupted by the sound of the archduke's voice as he ordered Pascal to go out; listening to this discussion, she said to herself:
"After he has put this man out, the prince will come in here. I must attend to what is most urgent."
Drawing a memorandum-book from her pocket, the marquise detached one of the leaflets, wrote a few lines with a pencil, folded the paper, and closed it firmly by means of a pin. After writing the address, "For the prince," she laid the note where it could be seen on a marble table in the middle of the parlour, put on her hat, and went out, as we have said, a little before the departure of M. Pascal.