“La Petite Madelaine se souvient toujours du bon Walter—Comment férait-elle autrement?
“Mais, cependant, qu’il ne soit plus question d’elle dans les lettres de Mons. Walter.”
“A most strange fancy! an unaccountable caprice of this dear Adrienne’s!” was Walter’s smiling soliloquy. “Some day she shall laugh at it with me—but for the present and for ever, be the dear one’s will my law.” Thenceforth “il n’était plus question de la Petite Madelaine” in Walter’s letters, and in those of Adrienne she was never more alluded to.
Mademoiselle de St Hilaire’s mind was about this time engrossed by far more important personages than her absent lover, or her youthful friend. The present occupants, herself (no new one truly), and a certain Marquis d’Arval, who would probably have been her first choice, if he had not been the selected of her parents. Not that she had by any means decided on the rupture of her engagement with Walter (if indeed such a contingency had ever formed the subject of her private musings); neither, at any rate, would she have dissolved it, till his return should compel her to a decision. For his letters were too agreeable, too spiritual—too full of that sweet incense that never satiated her vanity, to be voluntarily relinquished.
But in the mean time, the correspondence, piquant as it was—a charming passe-temps!—could not be expected to engross her wholly. Many vacant hours still hung upon her hands, wonderful to say, in spite of those intellectual and elegant pursuits, the late discovery of which had so enraptured the unsophisticated Walter. Who so proper as the Marquis d’Arval, then on a visit at the Chateau,—her cousin too—besides being the especial favourite of her parents—(dutiful Adrienne!)—to be the confidential friend of la belle délaissée?—to be in fact the substitute of the absent lover, in all those petits soins that so agreeably divert the ennui of a fine lady’s life, and for which the most sentimental correspondence can furnish no equivalent? In the article of petits soins indeed (the phrase is perfectly untranslatable), the merits of d’Arval were decidedly superior to those of his English competitor, whose English feelings and education certainly disqualified him for evincing that peculiar tact and nicety of judgment in all matters relating to female decoration and occupation, so essential in the cavalier servente of a French beauty. Though an excellent French scholar, Walter never could compass the nomenclature of shades and colours, so familiar and expressive to French tongues and tastes. He blundered perpetually between “rose tendre,” and “rose foncée;” and was quite at fault if referred to as arbitrator between the respective merits of “Boue de Paris,” or “Crapeau mort d’amour.”
Achilles, in his female weeds, was never more awkward at his task than poor Walter, when appointed, by especial favour, to the office of arranging the ribbon collar, or combing the silken mane and ruffled paws of Silvie, Adrienne’s little chien lion. And though ready enough (as we have seen) to importune his mistress with worthless offerings of paltry wild-flowers, it never entered his simple fancy to present her with small, compact bouquets, sentimentally and scientifically combined (the pensée never omitted, if in season), the stems wound together with silk of appropriate hue, or wrapped round with a motto, or well-turned couplet. In these, and all accomplishments of a similar nature, Walter Barnard’s genius was immeasurably distanced by that of the Marquis d’Arval.
The latter was also peculiarly interesting in his character of a despairing lover; and his attentions were particularly well-timed, at a season when the absence of the happy lover had made a vacuum in the life (of course not the heart) of Adrienne, who on her part was actuated by motives of pure humanity in consoling d’Arval (as far as circumstances permitted) for the success of his rival, by proofs of her warmest friendship and tenderest commiseration.
Since the Marquis’s arrival at St Hilaire, his universal genius had in great measure superseded la petite Madelaine in her office of exorcist to the demon of ennui, her fair cousin’s relentless persecutor. She was therefore less frequently, or rather less constantly, at the Chateau—though still summoned to secret conference in Adrienne’s boudoir, and often detained there for hours by consultations or occupations of that private and confidential nature, so interesting to the generality of young ladies who have lovers in their hearts or heads, though the details might be insipid to the general reader, if it were even allowable to reveal mysteries little less sacred than the Eleusinian.
It might have been inferred, however, that la petite Madelaine was but an unwilling sharer of those secret conferences; for she often retired from them with looks of more grave and even careful expression, than were well in character with the youthful countenance, and an air of dejection that ill suited the recent listener to a happy love-tale. And when her services (whatever were their nature) were no longer required, Adrienne evinced no inclination to detain her at St Hilaire.