One day he found before her mausoleum at Amyôt the most mondaine of women: Blanche Princesse de Laon, who, in her childish days, had been Blanchette de Vannes.
'You, too, remember her?' he said in surprise.
Blanche de Laon replied roughly:
'I loved her;—tout le monde est bête une fois!'
She stood before the marble sepulchre where Mercier had made the angels of Pity and of Youth weeping. She was not twenty years of age, but she knew the world like her glove. She was cruel, cold, avaricious, sensual, steeped in frivolity and intrigue as in a bath of wine, but underneath all that there was one little spot of memory, of regret, of tenderness in her nature; as far as she had been capable of affection she had loved Yseulte.
'Tiens!' she said, as she stood beside the sepulchre. 'Do you think it has succeeded—your nephew's last marriage?'
'I believe so,' replied Friedrich Othmar with surprise. 'Yes, certainly, I should say so; they seem quite in accord; he is devoted to her still.'
'Tiens!' she said again, and she struck the marble of the tomb sharply with the long ivory stick of her sun umbrella. 'I watch them like a cat a mouse. I will be even with her still; the first time there is a little crack in what you call their happiness, I shall be there—and I will widen it. Have you seen the drivers of Monte Carlo make an open wound in their horses' flank on purpose? Well, this is how they do it. A fly settles and leaves a little piece of braised skin, the men rub that little place with sand, it widens and widens, they rub in more sand, the sun and the flies do the rest.'
Then she struck her ivory stick once more on the marble parapet of the great tomb.
'She died for them! She was so foolish always. But there was something great in it. We are not great like that. If he only remembered, I would forgive him for her sake. But he never remembers. He does not care. A dog might be buried instead of her.'