“I don’t see my husband.... Look a little where my husband is, if you will be so kind.”
And it was known that her greatest delight was to relate, precisely to her husband, the declarations which she had received. When she came home with him from a ball, all wrapped in the white silken folds of her sortie du bal, with her pure throat, her snowy shoulders that blossomed still more fair from her swansdown boa; when in the evening she met him in the dining-room, still in visiting costume, with her slim waist tightly compressed by an exquisitely elegant gown, with her face animated by the slight excitement which elegant conversation always produces in a young woman, she amused herself immensely in addressing to her husband some of these provoking and roguish phrases:
“You know, I was at Countess Foschis’.... Molise was there, you know.... Always faithful and always in despair.... And also Comelli, he that has such lugubrious gallantry.... He has promised to kill himself for my sake, within a month, we shall see.... Ah! Ah!”
And sitting opposite to him, in a rustle of satin and jet, making shine like two stars the brilliants, large as hazelnuts, which adorned her small ears, she continued to laugh, with her elastic laughter, full of mischief and full of tenderness.
Ah, indeed, old Marchis could call himself a fortunate man!
Fortunate? Yes, he ought to have considered himself so. When he set himself to reason about it, to describe mentally his conjugal situation, he had to conclude that he would have done wrong to complain of his destiny. And yet....
What of the terribly unexpected had he now discovered in the depths of the pure sapphire of Gemma’s eyes? Was there arisen in his soul the doubt that that faithfulness against every trial, that coldness toward her admirers was nothing but the wish to preserve intact a position acquired with difficulty, and that precisely to that position was directed all the tenderness shown toward himself! I do not know; but the vivid and impetuous joy of the wedding was no longer in him, although his love remained the same; and a painful doubt thrilled in his voice when he replied to the playful confidence of Gemma, forcing himself to laugh too:
“Take care, now, take care.... The vengeance of the tyrant hangs over you....”
Ah, the poor tyrant, how he loved her! How she had known how to bind him with her little hands, white and perfumed as two lilies. For nothing in the world would he have discovered the truth, changed into certainty his fomenting doubt; so, she had only to ask in order to obtain; for now for him that love of which he doubted, had become his life; and he felt a painful stricture at his heart at the mere thought that a day might come when he would be obliged to refuse her something. Yet that day came. Suddenly, by one of those mysterious complications of business his bank, which until then had gone from triumph to triumph, underwent a violent shock. Not a noisy downfall, one of those open, public ruins, which produce great failures; but one of those deep, intimate secret crises, that must be borne without a word, a lament, under penalty of death; that can be overcome only by force of small privations, little hidden savings; it is then that strict economy in the family becomes necessary. The luxury of Gemma, in those moments, became absolutely ruinous for her husband; he ought to have warned her, sought to check her; he dared not; and continued to content her, but very soon came the time when he could do so no more.
It was on the occasion of a great ball to which she was to go; she had ordered from Paris a marvelous gown that became her to perfection; still she was not satisfied. Some days before, in the showcase of the most fashionable jeweler of the city, a diadem had set in revolution all the feminine imaginations; a superb jewel, of antique style, set in silver gilt, of a starry pallor, where the brilliants seemed drops of flame. Gemma wished to have it and indeed it would be difficult to find a face adapted to the almost religious richness of that jewel, more than her snowy profile of an angel in ecstacy.