The monotony of life and of conversation was so complete that there was nothing to help her to shake off the impression of mournful mystery which I had inflicted upon her.
The marquis, a prey to the contrasts of his character, cursed his fatal resolution to remain in this isolation. He announced for the next clear day a departure which he knew would be impossible. It would cost too much now, and beside, where could he go? He calculated the chances of seeing his Clermont friends who had several times breakfasted with him, but it was before the four hours between Aydat and the city had been doubled by the bad weather.
Then he installed himself at the card table, while the marquise, the governess and the religieuse applied themselves to their unending work.
It was my duty to look after Lucien who turned the leaves of a book of engravings or played at patience. I placed myself so that when she raised her eyes from the cards which she held in her hands while playing with her father, the young girl was obliged to see me. I had been interested in hypnotism, and I had in particular studied in all its details, in your “Anatomy of the Will,” the chapter devoted to the singular phenomena of certain moral denominations, which you have entitled: “Some demi-suggestions.” I depended on taking possession of this unoccupied mind, until the propitious moment in which, to complete this work of daily intercourse, I should decide to relate to her my story which, justifying my sadness, should end by engrossing her imagination.
This story I had manufactured upon two principles which you lay down, my dear master, in your beautiful chapter on Love. This chapter, the theories of the Ethics on the passions, and M. Ribot’s book on the “Maladies of the Will,” had become my breviaries. Permit me to recall these two principles, at least in their essence.
The first is that the majority of beings have sentiment only by imitation; abandoned to simple nature, love, for example, would be for them as for the animals, only a sensual instinct, dissipated as soon as satiated.
The second is that jealously may exist before love; consequently it may sometimes create it, and may often survive it. Much struck by the justness of this double remark, I argued that the romance which I should relate to Mlle. de Jussat ought to excite her imagination and irritate her vanity. I had succeeded in touching the cord of pity, I wished to touch that of sentimental emulation and that of self-love.
I had then, founded my story on this idea, that every woman interested in a man, is wounded in her vanity if this man shows that he is thinking of another woman. But twenty pages would be necessary to show you how I studied over the problem of the invention of this fable.
The occasion to relate it to her was furnished by the victim herself, fifteen days after I had begun to put at work what I proudly called my experience. The marquis had been told that one volume of the Encyclopedia was devoted to cards. He wished to find there how to play some old games such as Imperiale, Ombre, and Manilla. This brilliant idea had come to him after breakfast, on seeing in a journal a report of a new game called Poker, apropos of which the journalist gave a list of old-fashioned games.
When this maniac had conceived a fancy he could not wait, and his daughter was obliged to go at once to the library, where I was occupied in taking notes. I laid aside Helvétius upon the “Mind,” which I had discovered among some other books of the eighteenth century. I placed myself at the disposition of Mlle. de Jussat to take down the volume which she desired, and, when she took it from my hands, she said with her habitual grace: