“I impress that poor man so deeply,” said she to her mother, laughing, “that if I would say Yes, I believe he would say No.”
One evening Monsieur de Clagny and his wife were taking his dear Countess home from the theatre, and she was deeply pensive. They had been to the first performance of Leon Gozlan’s first play, La Main Droite et la Main Gauche (The Right Hand and the Left).
“What are you thinking about?” asked the lawyer, alarmed at his idol’s dejection.
This deep and persistent melancholy, though disguised by the Countess, was a perilous malady for which Monsieur de Clagny knew no remedy; for true love is often clumsy, especially when it is not reciprocated. True love takes its expression from the character. Now, this good man loved after the fashion of Alceste, when Madame de la Baudraye wanted to be loved after the manner of Philinte. The meaner side of love can never get on with the Misanthrope’s loyalty. Thus, Dinah had taken care never to open her heart to this man. How could she confess to him that she sometimes regretted the slough she had left?
She felt a void in this fashionable life; she had no one for whom to dress, or whom to tell of her successes and triumphs. Sometimes the memory of her wretchedness came to her, mingled with memories of consuming joys. She would hate Lousteau for not taking any pains to follow her; she would have liked to get tender or furious letters from him.
Dinah made no reply, so Monsieur de Clagny repeated the question, taking the Countess’ hand and pressing it between his own with devout respect.
“Will you have the right hand or the left?” said she, smiling.
“The left,” said he, “for I suppose you mean the truth or a fib.”
“Well, then, I saw him,” she said, speaking into the lawyer’s ear. “And as I saw him looking so sad, so out of heart, I said to myself, Has he a cigar? Has he any money?”
“If you wish for the truth, I can tell it you,” said the lawyer. “He is living as a husband with Fanny Beaupre. You have forced me to tell you this secret; I should never have told you, for you might have suspected me perhaps of an ungenerous motive.”