I tolerated this for a little while, and then refused to be dragged around any longer as a cloak for Alma's pleasures. Telling myself that if I continued to share my husband's habits of life, for any reason or under any pretext, I should become like him, and my soul would rot inch by inch, I resolved to be clean in my own eyes and to resist the contaminations of his company.
As a consequence, he became more and more reckless, and Alma made no efforts to restrain him, so that it came to pass at last that they went together to a scandalous entertainment which was for a while the talk of the society papers throughout Europe.
I know no more of this entertainment than I afterwards learned from those sources—that it was given by a notorious woman, who was not shut out of society because she was "the good friend" of a King; that she did the honours with clever imitative elegance; that her salon that night was crowded with such male guests as one might see at the court of a queen—princes, dukes, marquises, counts, English noblemen and members of parliament, as well as some reputable women of my own and other countries; that the tables were laid for supper at four o'clock with every delicacy of the season and wines of the rarest vintage; that after supper dancing was resumed with increased animation; and that the dazzling and improper spectacle terminated with a Chaîne diabolique at seven in the morning, when the sun was streaming through the windows and the bells of the surrounding churches were ringing for early mass.
I had myself risen early that morning to go to communion at the Madeleine, and never shall I forget the effect of cleansing produced upon me by the sacred sacrament. From the moment when—the priest standing at the foot of the altar—the choir sang the Kyrie eleison, down to the solemn silence of the elevation, I had a sense of being washed from all the taint of the contaminating days since my marriage.
The music was Perosi's, I remember, and the voices in the Gloria in excelsis, which I used to sing myself, seemed to carry up the cry of my sorrowful heart to the very feet of the Virgin whose gracious figure hung above me.
"Cleanse me and intercede for me, O Mother of my God."
It was as though our Blessed Lady did so, for as I walked out of the church and down the broad steps in front of it, I had a feeling of purity and lightness that I had never known since my time at the Sacred Heart.
It was a beautiful day, with all the freshness and fragrance of early morning in summer, when the white stone houses of Paris seem to blush in the sunrise; and as I walked up the Champs Elysées on my way back to the hotel, I met under the chestnut trees, which were then in bloom, a little company of young girls returning to school after their first communion.
How sweet they looked! In their white muslin frocks, white shoes and stockings and gloves, white veils and coronets of white flowers, they were twittering away as merrily as the little birds that were singing unseen in the leaves above them.
It made me feel like a child myself to look at their sweet faces; but turning into the hotel I felt like a woman too, for I thought the great and holy mystery, the sacrament of union and love, had given me such strength that I could meet any further wrong I might have to endure in my walk through the world with charity and forgiveness.