“Courage, Stein,” he said to him, “and to a happier meeting.”
“Good-by, and—forever,” murmured Stein.
And he departed.
The duke, now quite alone, walked about for a long time. As he calmed down from the agitation which Stein’s revelation had caused him, a smile of contempt played on his lips, for he was not one of those men who, possessed of those gross desires for which the misconduct of women, far from being a motive of repulsion, serve on the contrary to stimulate their brutal appetites. His character, full of elevation and nobleness, could not admit of love joined to contempt. The woman, whom he had sang in verse, who had fascinated him in his dreams, had become completely indifferent to him.
“And I,” he said to himself, “I who adored her as one adores an ideal being which he has created; I who honored her as virtue is honored, and who respected her as one respects the wife of a friend! I, who blindly absorbed by her, estranged myself from the noble woman who was my first and my only love, the pure and chaste mother of my children—my Leonore, who has so much suffered, without ever a complaint escaping from her lips!—”
By a sudden movement, yielding to the powerful influence of these last reflections, the duke left his library, and went to the apartment of his wife. On arriving near the saloon where the duchess was accustomed to remain during the day, he heard his name pronounced; he stopped.
“Then the duke has become invisible?” said a voice. “It is now fifteen days since I arrived in Madrid, and my dear nephew has not deigned to come and see me yet, and I have seen him nowhere.”
“My aunt,” replied the duchess, “he is no doubt ignorant of your arrival.”
“Ignorant of the arrival in Madrid of the Marchioness Gutibamba! It is impossible! He would be the only person of the court who knew not of it. I will tell you, besides, you have had time to inform him of it.”
“That is true, my aunt, I am culpable for having forgotten it.”