"You, who wanted to be a widow in order to prevent me from breaking the chains in which you held me. At our last meeting, when I thought you were crushed by grief, and felt overcome by your hypocritical tears, I was weak enough, I was stupid enough, to say that I married Dionysia only because you were not free. Then you cried, "O G.o.d, how happy I am that that idea did not occur to me before!" What idea was that, Genevieve? Come, answer me and confess, that it occurred to you too soon after all, since you have carried it out?"
And repeating with crushing irony the words just uttered by the countess, he said,--
"If you are innocent, who, then, would be the guilty man?"
Quite beside herself, she sprang up from her chair, and casting at Jacques one of those glances which seem to enter through our eyes into the very heart of our hearts, she asked,--
"Is it really possible that you have not committed this abominable crime?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"But then," she repeated, almost panting, "is it true, can it really be true, that you think I have committed it?"
"Perhaps you have only ordered it to be committed."
With a wild gesture she raised her arms to heaven, and cried in a heart-rending voice,--
"O G.o.d, O G.o.d! He believes it! he really believes it!"
There followed great silence, dismal, formidable silence, such as in nature follows the crash of the thunderbolt.
Standing face to face, Jacques and the Countess Claudieuse looked at each other madly, feeling that the fatal hour in their lives had come at last.
Each felt a growing, a sure conviction of the other. There was no need of explanations. They had been misled by appearances: they acknowledged it; they were sure of it.
And this discovery was so fearful, so overwhelming, that neither thought of who the real guilty one might be.
"What is to be done?" asked the countess.
"The truth must be told," replied Jacques.
"Which?"
"That I have been your lover; that I went to Valpinson by appointment with you; that the cartridge-case which was found there was used by me to get fire; that my blackened hands were soiled by the half-burnt fragment of our letters, which I had tried to scatter."
"Never!" cried the countess.
Jacques"s face turned crimson, as he said with an accent of merciless severity,--
"It shall be told! I will have it so, and it must be done!"
The countess seemed to be furious.
"Never!" she cried again, "never!"
And with convulsive haste she added,--
"Do you not see that the truth cannot possibly be told. They would never believe in our innocence. They would only look upon us as accomplices."
"Never mind. I am not willing to die."
"Say that you will not die alone."
"Be it so."
"To confess every thing would never save you, but would most a.s.suredly ruin me. Is that what you want? Would your fate appear less cruel to you, if there were two victims instead of one?"
He stopped her by a threatening gesture, and cried,--
"Are you always the same? I am sinking, I am drowning; and she calculates, she bargains! And she said she loved me!"
"Jacques!" broke in the countess.
And drawing close up to him, she said,--
"Ah! I calculate, I bargain? Well, listen. Yes, it is true. I did value my reputation as an honest woman more highly, a thousand times more, than my life; but, above my life and my reputation, I valued you. You are drowning, you say. Well, then, let us flee. One word from you, and I leave all,--honor, country, family, husband, children. Say one word, and I follow you without turning my head, without a regret, without a remorse."
Her whole body was shivering from head to foot; her bosom rose and fell; her eyes shone with unbearable brilliancy.
Thanks to the violence of her action, her dress, put on in great haste, had opened, and her dishevelled hair flowed in golden ma.s.ses over her bosom and her shoulders, which matched the purest marble in their dazzling whiteness.
And in a voice trembling with pent-up pa.s.sion, now sweet and soft like a tender caress, and now deep and sonorous like a bell, she went on,--
"What keeps us? Since you have escaped from prison, the greatest difficulty is overcome. I thought at first of taking our girl, your girl, Jacques; but she is very ill; and besides a child might betray us.
If we go alone, they will never overtake us. We will have money enough, I am sure, Jacques. We will flee to those distant countries which appear in books of travels in such fairy-like beauty. There, unknown, forgotten, unnoticed, our life will be one unbroken enjoyment. You will never again say that I bargain. I will be yours, entirely, and solely yours, body and soul, your wife, your slave."
She threw her head back, and with half-closed eyes, bending with her whole person toward him, she said in melting tones,--
"Say, Jacques, will you? Jacques!"
He pushed her aside with a fierce gesture. It seemed to him almost a sacrilege that she also, like Dionysia, should propose to him to flee.
"Rather the galleys!" he cried.
She turned deadly pale; a spasm of rage convulsed her features; and drawing back, stiff and stern, she said,--
"What else do you want?"
"Your help to save me," he replied.
"At the risk of ruining myself?"
He made no reply.
Then she, who had just now been all humility, raised herself to her full height, and in a tone of bitterest sarcasm said slowly,--
"In other words, you want me to sacrifice myself, and at the same time all my family. For your sake? Yes, but even more for Miss Chandore"s sake. And you think that it is quite a simple thing. I am the past to you, satiety, disgust: she is the future to you, desire, happiness. And you think it quite natural that the old love should make a footstool of her love and her honor for the new love? You think little of my being disgraced, provided she be honored; of my weeping bitterly, if she but smile? Well, no, no! it is madness in you to come and ask me to save you, so that you may throw yourself into the arms of another. It is madness, when in order to tear you from Dionysia, I am ready to ruin myself, provided only that you be lost to her forever."
"Wretch!" cried Jacques.