“In what sense do you mean it?”
“Is she ill?”
“No, no—she is, unfortunately, as well as she is beautiful.”
“Unfortunately!” cried the bailiff, in surprise.
“Alas, yes! for when beauty, youth, and health are joined to an evil spirit of revolt and perversity—to a character which certainly has not its equal upon earth—it would be far better to be deprived of those dangerous advantages, which only become so many causes of perdition. But I conjure you, my dear sir, let us talk of something else: this subject is too painful,” said M. Rodin, with a voice of deep emotion, lifting the tip of his little finger to the corner of his right eye, as if to stop a rising tear.
The bailiff did not see the tear, but he saw the gesture, and he was struck with the change in M. Rodin’s voice. He answered him, therefore, with much sympathy: “Pardon my indiscretion, sir; I really did not know—”
“It is I who should ask pardon for this involuntary display of feeling—tears are so rare with old men—but if you had seen, as I have, the despair of that excellent princess, whose only fault has been too much kindness, too much weakness, with regard to her niece—by which she has encouraged her—but, once more, let us talk of something else, my dear sir!”
After a moment’s pause, during which M. Rodin seemed to recover from his emotion, he said to Dupont: “One part of my mission, my dear sir—that which relates to the Green Chamber—I have now told you; but there is yet another. Before coming to it, however, I must remind you of a circumstance you have perhaps forgotten—namely, that some fifteen or sixteen years ago, the Marquis d’Aigrigny, then colonel of the hussars in garrison at Abbeville, spent some time in this house.”
“Oh, sir! what a dashing officer was there! It was only just now, that I was talking about him to my wife. He was the life of the house!—how well he could perform plays—particularly the character of a scapegrace. In the Two Edmonds, for instance, he would make you die with laughing, in that part of a drunken soldier—and then, with what a charming voice he sang Joconde, sir—better than they could sing it at Paris!”
Rodin, having listened complacently to the bailiff, said to him: “You doubtless know that, after a fierce duel he had with a furious Bonapartist, one General Simon, the Marquis d’Aigrigny (whose private secretary I have now the honor to be) left the world for the church.”