[XI]
By such speeches he allayed my anxiety and led me, fascinated and confiding, to the brink of the abyss. I thanked him lovingly for the trouble he took to persuade me, when he could make me obey with a sign. We embraced affectionately and returned to the salon where our friends awaited us to part us.
However, as the days succeeded one another, Leoni did not take the same trouble to reconcile me to them. He paid less attention to my growing discontent, and when I mentioned it to him, he argued with me less gently. One day indeed he was short with me and bitter; I saw that I offended him; I determined to complain no more; but I began to suffer really and to be genuinely unhappy. I waited with resignation until Leoni snatched a few moments to come to me. To be sure he was so kind and loving at those times that I deemed myself foolish and cowardly to have suffered so. My courage and my confidence would revive for a few days; but those days of encouragement became more and more infrequent. Leoni, seeing that I was meek and submissive, still treated me with consideration; but he no longer noticed my melancholy. Ennui devoured me, Venice became hateful to me; its canals, its gondolas, its sky, everything about it was distasteful. During the nights of card-playing I wandered alone on the terrace at the top of the house; I shed bitter tears; I recalled my home, my heedless youth, my kind, foolish mother, my poor father, so loving and so good-natured, and even my aunt, with her petty worries and her long sermons. It seemed to me that I was really homesick, that I longed to fly, to go home and throw myself at my parents' feet, to forget Leoni forever. But if a window opened below me, if Leoni, weary of the game and the heat, came out on the balcony to breathe the fresh air from the canal, I would lean over the rail to look at him, and my heart would beat as during the first days of my passion, when he crossed the threshold of my father's house; if the moon shone upon him and enabled me to distinguish that noble figure beneath the rich fancy costume that he always wore in his own palace, I would thrill with pride and pleasure as on the evening that he led me into that ball-room from which we went forth never to return; if his melodious voice, murmuring a measure from some song, rebounded from the resonant marbles of Venice and rose to my ears, I would feel the tears flowing down my cheeks, as on those evenings among the mountains when he sang me a ballad composed for me in the morning.
A few words which I overheard from the mouth of one of his friends increased my depression and my disgust to an intolerable degree. Among Leoni's twelve intimate associates, the Vicomte de Chalm, who called himself an émigré Frenchman, was the one whose attentions were most offensive to me. He was the oldest of them all, and perhaps the cleverest; but underneath his exquisite manners I detected a sort of cynicism which often revolted me. He was satirical, cold-blooded and insolent; furthermore, he was a man without morals and without heart; but I knew nothing of that, and he displeased me, apart from that. One evening when I was on the balcony, hidden from him by the silk curtains, I heard him say to the Venetian marquis: "Why, where's Juliette?"—That mode of speaking of me brought the blood to my cheeks; I kept perfectly still and listened.—"I don't know," the Venetian replied. "Why, are you so much in love with her?"—"Not too much," was the reply, "but enough."—"And Leoni?"—"Leoni will turn her over to me one of these days."—"What! his own wife?"—"Nonsense, marquis! are you mad?" replied the viscount; "she is a girl he seduced at Brussels; when he has had enough of her, and that will be before long, I will gladly take charge of her. If you want her next after me, marquis, put your name down."—"Many thanks," replied the marquis; "I know how you deprave women, and I should be afraid to succeed you."
I heard no more; I leaned over the balustrade half-dead, and, hiding my face in my shawl, wept with rage and shame.
That same night I called Leoni into my room, and demanded satisfaction for the way I was treated by his friends. He took the insult with a coolness which dealt my heart a mortal blow.—"You are a little fool," he said to me; "you don't know what men are; their thoughts are indiscreet and their words still more so; the rakes are the best of them. A strong woman should laugh at their airs instead of losing her temper."
I fell upon a chair and burst into tears, crying;—"O mother! mother! how low has your daughter fallen!"
Leoni exerted himself to soothe me, and succeeded only too quickly. He knelt at my feet, kissed my hands and my arms, implored me to treat with scorn a foolish remark and to think of nothing but him and his love.
"Alas!" said I, "what am I to think when your friends flatter themselves that they can pick me up as they do your old pipes when you want them no longer."
"Juliette," he replied, "wounded pride makes you bitter and unjust. I have been a libertine, as you know; I have often told you of my youthful disorders; but I thought that I had purified myself in the air of our valley. My friends are still living the life that I used to lead; they know nothing of the six months we passed in Switzerland; they could never understand them. But ought you to misinterpret and forget them?"