A Tragic Idyl

by Paul Bourget

In fact, in four years this was the first winter she had spent with the Archduke, who, being ill, had retired to his villa at Cannes—a strange place, truly, made in the image of its strange master; half of the house was a palace, and half a laboratory.

Madame Brion had witnessed from afar this conjugal drama, whose example she had not followed. The gentle creature, without a word, had let herself be wounded and broken by the hard fist of the brute whose name she bore. This contrast itself had made her friend dearer to her. Ely de Carlsberg had served her as her own rebellion, her own independence, her own romance—a romance in which she was ignorant of many chapters. For the confidences of two friends who see each other only at long intervals are always somewhat uncandid. Instinctively a woman who confesses to a friend guards against troubling the image which the friend forms of her; and that image gradually acquires a more striking resemblance to her past than to her present.

So the Baroness had concealed from her confidante all of one side of her life. Beautiful as she was, rich, free, audacious, and unburdened with principles, she had sought vengeance and oblivion of her domestic miseries where all women who have her temperament and her lack of religious faith seek a like oblivion and a like vengeance. She had had adventures—many adventures—Madame Brion had no suspicion of them. She loved the life in Ely, not realizing that this movement, this vitality, this energy, could not exist in a creature of her race and her freedom without leading to culpable experiences. But is it not the first quality, even the very definition, of friendship, this inconsistent favoritism which causes us to forget with certain persons the well-known law of the simultaneous development of merits and faults, and the necessary bond that connects these contrary manifestations of the same individuality?

Yet, however blinded by friendship a woman may be, and however honest and uninitiated in the gallant intrigues that go on around her, she is none the less a woman, and as such apparently possesses a special instinct for sexual matters, which enables her to feel how her confidential friend conducts herself toward men. Louise could not have formulated the change in Ely, and yet for years, at every interview, she had perceived the change. Was it a greater freedom in manner and dress, a shade of boldness in her glance, a readiness to put an evil interpretation on every intimacy she noticed, an habitual disenchantment, almost a cynicism, in her conversation?

The signs that reveal the woman who has dared to overstep conventional prejudices, as well as moral principles, Madame Brion could not help remarking in Madame de Carlsberg; but she did not permit herself to analyze them, or even think about them. Delicate souls, who are created for love, feel a self-reproach, almost a remorse, at the discovery of a fault in one they love. They blame themselves and their impressions, rather than judge the person from whom the impressions were received. An uneasiness remains, however, which the first precise fact renders insupportable.

To Louise Brion this little fact had appeared in the recent attitude of her friend toward Pierre Hautefeuille. She chanced to be at Cannes when the young man was presented to the Baroness at the Chésy residence. On that evening she had been surprised at Ely, who had had a long talk with the young stranger en tête-à-tête in a corner of the drawing-room. Having left at once for Monte Carlo, she doubtless would not have thought of it again, if, on another visit to Cannes, she had not found the young man on a footing of very sudden intimacy at the Villa Carlsberg. Staying herself a few days at the villa, she was forced to recognize that her friend was either a great coquette or was very imprudent with Hautefeuille. She had chosen the hypothesis of imprudence. She told herself that this boy was falling wildly in love with Ely, and she was capable, out of mere carelessness or ennui, of accepting a diversion of that kind. Louise resolved to warn her, but did not dare, overcome by that inner paralysis which the strong produce in the weak by the simple magnetism of their presence.

The little scene which she had observed this evening in the Casino had given her the courage to speak. The action of Pierre Hautefeuille, his haste to procure the jewel sold by Madame de Carlsberg, had singularly moved this faithful friend. She had suddenly perceived the analogy between her own feelings and those of the lover.

Having herself mingled with the crowd of spectators to follow the play of her friend, whose nervousness had all day disquieted her, she had seen her sell the gold case. This Bohemian act had pained her cruelly, and still more the thought that this jewel which Ely used continually would be bought in a second-hand shop of Monte Carlo and given by some lucky gambler to some demi-mondaine. She had immediately started toward the usurer, with the same purpose as Pierre Hautefeuille; and to discover that he had been moved by the same idea touched a deep chord of sympathy in her. She had been moved in her affection for Madame de Carlsberg, and in a secret spot of her gentle and romantic nature, so little used to find in men an echo of her own delicacy.

"Unfortunate man," she murmured. "What I feared has come. He loves her. Is there still time to warn Ely, and keep her from having on her conscience the unhappiness of this boy?"

It was this thought that determined the innocent, good creature to speak to her friend as soon as she had an opportunity; and the opportunity presented itself at this moment.