The Marquise was silent, then hastily laying her gold snuff-box on the table—“I have begun my confession,” said she, “and I will acknowledge everything. Listen. Once, and only once, I have loved, with a love as passionate and indomitable as it was imaginative and ideal. For you see, my child, you young men think you understand women, but you know nothing about them. If many old women of eighty were occasionally to tell you the history of their loves, you would perhaps find that the feminine soul contains sources of good and evil of which you have no idea. And now, guess what was the rank of the man for whom I entirely lost my head—I, a Marquise, and prouder and haughtier than any other.”
“The King of France, or the Dauphin, Louis XIV.”
“Oh, if you go on in that manner, it will be three hours before you come to my lover. I prefer to tell you at once—he was an actor.”
“A king, notwithstanding, I imagine.”
“The noblest, the most elegant that ever trod the boards. You are not amazed?”
“Not much. I have heard that such ill-sorted passions were not rare, even when the prejudices of caste in France were more powerful than they are to-day.”
“Those ill-sorted passions were not tolerated by the world, I can assure you. The first time I saw him I expressed my admiration to the Comtesse de Ferriers, who happened to be beside me, and she answered: ‘Do not speak so warmly to any one but me. You would be cruelly taunted were you suspected of forgetting that in the eyes of a woman of rank an actor can never be a man.’
“Madame Ferriers’s words remained in my mind, I know not why. At the time this contemptuous tone of hers seemed to me absurd, and this fear of committing myself a piece of malicious hypocrisy.
“His name was Lelio; he was by birth an Italian, but spoke French admirably. He may have been thirty-five, although on the stage he often seemed less than twenty. He played Corneille; after this he played Racine, and in both he was admirable.”
“I am surprised,” said I, interrupting the Marquise, “that his name does not appear in the annals of dramatic talent.”