What a wedding-day was that! The bride, recovering from her swoon, found herself lying alone on the ground. And when splendor and homage were at an end, she longed still to be loved—loved in secret and in concealment. This too was denied her.
What a memory was that!—the path she had trodden to the house of her former lover and back again, twice in the darkness! her vain expectation next day! how she had counted the strokes of the clock, amidst the noise of the auction! And he never came! Then long years of painful dissimulation, of disguised humiliation! There was only one person who understood her—who knew that the balm of her heart was to see her rival share her passion, and fade away under it.
And the one man who knew to his cost what Athalie really was—the only hinderance to Timéa's happiness, the finder of the philosopher's stone which exercises everywhere a malevolent spell—that one man finds his death by a single false step on the ice!
And then happiness comes back to the house, and no one is miserable but herself. In many a sleepless night the bitter cup had filled drop by drop up to the brim; only one was wanting to make it overflow; and that last drop was the insulting word, "You stupid creature!" To be scolded like a maid, humbled in his presence! Athalie's limbs shook with fever. What was now going on in the house? They were preparing for the morrow's wedding. In the boudoir whispered the betrothed couple; from the kitchen, even through all the doors, came the noise of the merry-making servants.
But Athalie never heard the cheerful din: she heard only the whisper. . . . She had something to do during the night. . . . There was no light in the room; but the moon shone in, and gave light enough to open a box and read the names of the poisons inside it—the unfailing drugs of an Eastern poisoner. Athalie chose among them, and smiled to herself. What a good jest it would be if to-morrow, at the moment of drinking some toast, the words should die on the lips of the feasting guests! if each saw the face of his neighbor turn yellow and green; if they all sprung up crying for help, and began a demoniac dance, fit to make the devil laugh; if the bride's lovely face petrified into real marble, and the proud bridegroom made grimaces like a skull!
Ping! . . . A string gone in the piano! Athalie started so that she dropped what she held, and her hands twitched convulsively. It was only a string, coward! Are you so weak? She put back the poisons in her box, leaving out only one, and that not a deadly poison, only a sleeping-draught. The first idea had not satisfied her; that triumph would not suffice: it would not be sufficient revenge for "You stupid creature!" The tiger cares not for a corpse, he must have warm blood. Some one will have to take poison, but that is only herself—a poison not to be bought at the chemist's: it lies in the eye of St. George's dragon. She slipped noiselessly out to go to the hiding-place whence a view of Timéa's room could be obtained. The sweet murmurs and the caressing looks of the lovers will be the poison she must absorb in order to be fully prepared.
The major was about to take leave, and held Timéa's hand in his. Her cheeks were so rosy! Was any more deadly poison needed? They did not speak of love, and yet no third person had a right to listen. The bridegroom asked questions allowed to no one else. "Do you sleep alone here?" he asked, with tender curiosity, lifting the silken hangings of the bed.
"Yes, since I became a widow."
"(And before too," whispered Athalie, behind the dragon.)
The bridegroom, availing himself of his privileges, pursued his researches in the bride's room.