When scruples became aroused, and a voice said: “And Charlotte? Have you the right to treat her as a simple object of experience?” I took my Spinoza, and I read there the theorem in which it is written that our right is only limited by our power.
I took your “Theory of the Passions” and I studied there your phrases on the duel between the sexes in love.
“It is the law of the world,” I reasoned, “that all existence should be a conquest, executed and maintained by the strongest at the expense of the feeblest. That is as true of the moral universe as of the physical. There are some souls of prey as there are wolves, tigers and hawks.”
This formula seemed to me strong, new and just. I applied it to myself, and I repeated:
“I am a soul of prey, a soul of prey,” with a furious attack of what the mystics call the pride of life, among the fresh verdure, under the blue sky, on the bank of the clear river which flows from the mountains to the lake. This exhilaration at my victorious pride was dissipated by a very simple fact. The marquis wrote that he would return, but alone. Mlle. de Jussat, who was still unwell, would remain with a sister of her mother. When the marquise communicated this news to us we were at table. I felt a spasm of anger so violent that it astonished myself, and on the plea of sudden indisposition I left the dinner table.
I should like to have cried out, broken something or manifested in some foolish way the rage which shook my soul. In the fever of vanity which had exalted me since the departure of Charlotte, I had foreseen everything, except that this girl would have character enough not to return to Aydat. The way which she had found to escape from her sentiment was so simple, but so sovereign, so complete.
The marvelous tactics of my psychology became as vain as the mechanism of the best cannon against an enemy out of reach of its shot.
What could I do if she were not there? The vision of my weakness rose up so strong, so painful, that it excited my nervous system so profoundly that I neither ate nor slept until the arrival of the marquis. I should then learn if this resolution excluded all hope of a counter order—if there were any chance that the young girl would return by the end of July, or in August, or in September. My engagement would last until the middle of October.
My heart beat, my throat was choked while we walked, Lucien and I, in the railroad station of Clermont, waiting for the train from Paris. In the excess of my impatience I had obtained permission to come to meet the father. The locomotive entered the station. M. de Jussat put his head through a doorway. I said at the risk of revealing my feelings:
“And Mlle. Charlotte?”