At Dieppe, M. de Brévannes met with a Madame Beauvoisis (the domino of the chest)—very pretty, very much the fashion in a certain circle, very coquettish, and who had made a very deep impression on a most agreeable and gentlemanly person.
To revenge himself on Bertha's silence, and certain compunctious prickings of conscience, as well as to elevate himself in his own eyes, after the check which the engraver's daughter had given him, M. de Brévannes determined to play the agreeable with Madame de Beauvoisis, and supplant her favoured lover. He succeeded.
M. de Brévannes was the more annoyed, the more humiliated for his want of success with Bertha, in proportion as the conquest of Madame Beauvoisis seemed more flattering to him. His self-love revolted at the fact of a poor little unknown girl having been able to resist the advances of a man whom a most desirable woman had selected.
We are not pretending that M. de Brévannes had no love for Bertha, but with him the tender impatiences, the "charming agonies" of love—its hopes and melancholy fears—were perverted into strong desires and irritated pride.
He summed up the matter in his mind bitterly and brutally thus:—
"I am determined this girl shall be mine—cost it what it may, mine she shall be!"
Enraged at not receiving any letters from Bertha during the six weeks he had been away, M. de Brévannes suddenly broke off with Madame Beauvoisis, the idol of the season at Dieppe, and returned to his hiding-place in the Ile Saint Louis. When he arrived there, Bertha, unable to overcome her grief, was dying.
Almost touched at this proof of love, and wishing, moreover, at any cost, to have possession of this young girl, M. de Brévannes, in spite of his resolutions never to be duped into a marriage, as he declared, went to Pierre Raimond and demanded his daughter's hand formally in marriage, anticipating an exuberant outpouring of gratitude on the part of the old engraver.
Incredible—unheard of—strange as it may appear (and it completely upset all M. de Brévannes' ideas), Pierre Raimond would not give his consent to this union.
