“Good,” she said, and she took his hand. “You are perhaps the only one I can trust here among all these. Oh, my friend, when you love, love a woman whom you are sure that you can love always. Never forsake a woman.”
She took Rastignac’s arm, and went towards a sofa in the card-room.
“I want you to go to the Marquis,” she said. “Jacques, my footman, will go with you; he has a letter that you will take. I am asking the Marquis to give my letters back to me. He will give them all up, I like to think that. When you have my letters, go up to my room with them. Some one shall bring me word.”
She rose to go to meet the Duchesse de Langeais, her most intimate friend, who had come like the rest of the world.
Rastignac went. He asked for the Marquis d’Ajuda at the Hotel Rochefide, feeling certain that the latter would be spending his evening there, and so it proved. The Marquis went to his own house with Rastignac, and gave a casket to the student, saying as he did so, “They are all there.”
He seemed as if he was about to say something to Eugene, to ask about the ball, or the Vicomtesse; perhaps he was on the brink of the confession that, even then, he was in despair, and knew that his marriage had been a fatal mistake; but a proud gleam shone in his eyes, and with deplorable courage he kept his noblest feelings a secret.
“Do not even mention my name to her, my dear Eugene.” He grasped Rastignac’s hand sadly and affectionately, and turned away from him. Eugene went back to the Hotel Beauseant, the servant took him to the Vicomtesse’s room. There were signs there of preparations for a journey. He sat down by the fire, fixed his eyes on the cedar wood casket, and fell into deep mournful musings. Mme. de Beauseant loomed large in these imaginings, like a goddess in the Iliad.
“Ah! my friend!...” said the Vicomtesse; she crossed the room and laid her hand on Rastignac’s shoulder. He saw the tears in his cousin’s uplifted eyes, saw that one hand was raised to take the casket, and that the fingers of the other trembled. Suddenly she took the casket, put it in the fire, and watched it burn.
“They are dancing,” she said. “They all came very early; but death will be long in coming. Hush! my friend,” and she laid a finger on Rastignac’s lips, seeing that he was about to speak. “I shall never see Paris again. I am taking my leave of the world. At five o’clock this morning I shall set out on my journey; I mean to bury myself in the remotest part of Normandy. I have had very little time to make my arrangements; since three o’clock this afternoon I have been busy signing documents, setting my affairs in order; there was no one whom I could send to...”
She broke off.