She remembered the words of Friederich Othmar at the mausoleum in the grounds yonder: 'She would wish you to spare him.' Yes, no doubt, poor, generous, heroic, saintly, foolish soul!—if she could know, if she could speak, if she could interpose, she would always come from her grave to save or to serve the husband who had never had one impulse of love for her. But the dead know nothing; the dead never stir; 'quand on est mort c'est pour longtemps,' thought Blanchette, with grim realism, as she closed the drawer which held the little poem: and meanwhile, if ever she herself had the chance, she would do as she had said: she would rub the sand into the gall, she would widen any wound that she saw.
She thought to herself, 'If she had lived, perhaps——' perhaps she would have kept alive some little green place in her own soul; perhaps she would have kept her own steps aloof from some vices which were not all sweetness; perhaps she would have had something in her own life besides insolent audacity, merciless intrigue, and insatiable curiosity of unattainable excitations: it was a consciousness of her own loss, in the loss of the one purer influence which her life had ever known, which made the arid and frivolous nature of Blanche de Laon cherish her hatred for those who seemed to her as the murderers of Yseulte with a ferocity and tenacity of remembrance which was the only impersonal emotion she had ever known.
Avarice, expenditure, vanity, corruption, every ingenuity of self-indulgence and of physical licence, filled up her own days, and left no space for any memory which was not selfish, any desire which was not base; she had copied and exaggerated the egotism of Nadine Napraxine until it had become a monstrosity, and she had replaced the physical indifference of her model by appetites and curiosities which were both morbid and insatiable. Yet her life at times failed to satisfy her, and at such time the recollection of Yseulte came to her as a cool breeze will touch the hot forehead of a drunkard. Things which had been odious and ridiculous to her in all others, had looked worth something when mirrored to her in the clear soul of her childhood's companion; when Yseulte had passed out of her life she, little greedy, callous cynic of a child though she had been, had vaguely felt that something had gone away from her which would never be replaced.
'Poor little saint! Poor little fool!' she thought now, with as near an approach to tenderness and reverence as her temperament could approach, as she cast a lingering glance over the lonely rooms, with the dead flowers in the vases, the dust of years on the walls, the stray sunbeams slanting on to the empty bed, the scent of late roses and autumn fruits coming in through the dusky shadows and close odours within.
'Poor little saint! Poor little fool!'
As she stood thus, Othmar, passing through the gardens, saw the windows open which were by his command always closed. He was immediately beneath them, and he called aloud in tones of exceeding anger: 'Who has ventured to enter there?'
Blanche de Laon heard, and her insolent, fair, small face looked out from one of the open places in the old painted casements, guarded with their scrolls of iron.
'It is I,' she said, with the usual impertinence of her accent hushed into quietude, almost into sadness. Then she leaned her elbows on the stonework of the sill, and put her face close to his. He was almost on a level with her, for those rooms were raised but a mètre or two from the ground.
He grew pale with indignation.
'Madame de Laon,' he said in a low tone, through which all his anger thrilled, 'when I put all my house at your disposition there were some things in it which I did not suppose it necessary to enjoin you to respect.'