Mademoiselle des Touches was struck with the expression she now saw on Calyste’s face, and tried to console him with a look of sympathy. Claude Vignon intercepted that look. From that moment the great critic expanded into gaiety that overflowed in sarcasm. He maintained to Beatrix that love existed only by desire; that most women deceived themselves in loving; that they loved for reasons unknown to men and to themselves; that they wanted to deceive themselves, and that the best among them were artful.
“Keep to books, and don’t criticise our lives,” said Camille, glancing at him imperiously.
The dinner ceased to be gay. Claude Vignon’s sarcasm had made the two women pensive. Calyste was conscious of pain in the midst of the happiness he found in looking at Beatrix. Conti looked into the eyes of the marquise to guess her thoughts. When dinner was over Mademoiselle des Touches took Calyste’s arm, gave the other two men to the marquise, and let them pass before her, that she might be alone with the young Breton for a moment.
“My dear Calyste,” she said, “you are acting in a manner that embarrasses the marquise; she may be delighted with your admiration, but she cannot accept it. Pray control yourself.”
“She was hard to me, she will never care for me,” said Calyste, “and if she does not I shall die.”
“Die! you! My dear Calyste, you are a child. Would you have died for me?”
“You have made yourself my friend,” he answered.
After the talk that follows coffee, Vignon asked Conti to sing something. Mademoiselle des Touches sat down to the piano. Together she and Gennaro sang the Dunque il mio bene tu mia sarai, the last duet of Zingarelli’s “Romeo e Giulietta,” one of the most pathetic pages of modern music. The passage Di tanti palpiti expresses love in all its grandeur. Calyste, sitting in the same arm-chair in which Felicite had told him the history of the marquise, listened in rapt devotion. Beatrix and Vignon were on either side of the piano. Conti’s sublime voice knew well how to blend with that of Felicite. Both had often sung this piece; they knew its resources, and they put their whole marvellous gift into bringing them out. The music was at this moment what its creator intended, a poem of divine melancholy, the farewell of two swans to life. When it was over, all present were under the influence of feelings such as cannot express themselves by vulgar applause.
“Ah! music is the first of arts!” exclaimed the marquise.
“Camille thinks youth and beauty the first of poesies,” said Claude Vignon.