"No, my child—Charles has never seen thee. This is a betrothal—this will be a marriage exclusively arranged by the parents of the young people concerned. Thy father, the son of my beloved friend Antoinette de Bayard, does not desire that the husband of his Juliette should be a member of the military profession,—I am averse to the idea of my son's bestowing his name upon the Protestant daughter of a Flemish woolen-manufacturer—for that that was originally my son's intention, I will not seek to deny. Wounded in my tenderest and most susceptible spot by the announcement of Charles's infatuation, I might have estranged him for ever—even hurried on the catastrophe I feared, had not the advice of my director, Dom Clovis, of the Carmelite Fathers—fortified and sustained me in the trying hour! I wrote to my son. I poured out my maternal heart in pleadings the most earnest—the most tender. I recalled to him the dispositions of his late father's will. Under this document," Madame went on, drying a tear with a deep-hemmed cambric handkerchief, "I possess the power at pleasure to divert from Charles and his heirs a considerable portion of his sainted father's funded property. And that power," said Madame, drying another tear, "I solemnly assured my child, would—in the event of his union with Mademoiselle Clémence Basselôt—unhesitatingly be used."
Words might have come from the pale parted lips before her. Madame tapped them to silence with a mittened finger and pursued her way.
"Charles is profoundly reasonable—a quality he inherits from both parents. He wrote to me a letter inexpressibly touching in its expressions of filial trust and confidence, over which, I assure thee, I have shed the most consoling tears."
Something had previously crackled in the pocket of Madame's black silk apron, when she had smoothed it over her knees in seating herself. Now she drew it out, and Juliette saw a blue envelope directed in a handwriting of the business-like, copper-plate description. The sheet of white paper the envelope contained had an engraved picture-heading of a square building possessing many windows—no doubt the Belgian cloth manufactory possessed in partnership by MM. Basselôt and Tessier. From the page, closely covered all down one side with regular lines of mercantile handwriting, Madame read:
"Sentiments of the most profound agitated me as I read thy letter. These sentences penned by a mother's hand, have touched me to the quick. Thy arguments, so delicate, yet so powerful, have convinced me of the impossibility of the union toward which—I will own!—my wishes urged me. I abandon the idea henceforth! Since Mademoiselle Clémence is not to be mine, choose then for me, best and noblest of women. Let her who taught my infant lips to murmur the beloved name of mother select for me some virtuous young girl upon whom I may confer the equally sacred title of Wife.
"THY CHARLES."
And there, with a flourish like a double lasso, M. Tessier's letter ended, leaving Juliette swaying between the impulse to shriek with laughter and the urgent desire to melt away in tears.
Madame came to her rescue by proposing a visit to the billiard-room, built and appointed by the late M. Tessier to afford his son wholesome recreation at home. For otherwise, Madame explained, the young man might have been allured by the amusements to be found in the saloons of the Hôtel des Réservoirs and other brilliant and fashionable lounges, full of dissipated civilians and officers of every branch of the military and naval services. Clubs Madame regarded as gateways to eternal perdition. She dried another tear as she thanked Heaven that her beloved child did not belong to one. When possible, she added, Charles avoided restaurants. A congenital delicacy of constitution rendered over-seasoned dishes little less than poison to him; he habitually suffered from nettle-rash after the consumption of shellfish. Green salad was, upon this count, pernicious to his well-being. Nor should he ever be permitted to sleep without a nightcap, having been subject to earache from his youth.
The mental picture of Charles, suffering from an attack of nettle-rash and crowned with his protective nightcap, sent the listener's balance dipping toward hysteria. They were in the billiard-room, a pleasant, longish salle, with two high windows opening on the frontward terrace. The glass door stood open leading into the winter-garden: from whence came a smell of hot-water pipes, damp moss, and mold, with an added whiff of ferniness, and a suggestion of the cockroaches and mice that pervaded the place.
And then: "Thou seest, my sweet Juliette"—pray imagine Madame, indicating with a lifted mitten a gilt-framed square of canvas hanging between the two French windows—"a speaking portrait, painted but two years ago, of my—I should say, of our beloved Charles."