A Daughter of Eve

It was half-past eleven in the evening, and two women were seated by the fire of a boudoir in one of the finest houses of the Rue Neuve-des-Mathurins. The room was hung in blue velvet, of the kind with tender melting lights, which French industry has only lately learned to manufacture. The doors and windows had been draped by a really artistic decorator with rich cashmere curtains, matching the walls in color. From a prettily moulded rose in the centre of the ceiling, hung, by three finely wrought chains, a silver lamp, studded with turquoises. The plan of decoration had been carried out to the very minutest detail; even the ceiling was covered with blue silk, while long bands of cashmere, folded across the silk at equal distances, made stars of white, looped up with pearl beading. The feet sank in the warm pile of a Belgian carpet, close as a lawn, where blue nosegays were sprinkled over a ground the color of unbleached linen. The warm tone of the furniture, which was of solid rosewood and carved after the best antique models, saved from insipidity the general effect which a painter might have called wanting in “accent.” On the chair backs small panels of splendid broche silk⁠—white with blue flowers⁠—were set in broad leafy frames, finely cut on the wood. On either side of the window stood a set of shelves, loaded with valuable knickknacks, the flower of mechanical art, sprung into being at the touch of creative fancy.

“Ah! do not reproach me,” cried the Countess. “No woman has the right to do so, who has not suffered the weariness of a tame, colorless life and passed from it straight to the paradise of love. She must have known the bliss of living her whole life in another, of espousing the ever-varying emotions of a poet’s soul. In every flight of his imagination, in all the efforts of his ambition, in the great part he plays upon the stage of life, she must have borne her share, suffering in his pain and mounting on the wings of his measureless delights; and all this while never losing her cold, impassive demeanor before a prying world. Yes, dear, a tumult of emotion may rage within, while one sits by the fire at home, quietly and comfortably like this. And yet what joy to have at every instant one overwhelming interest which expands the heart and makes it live in every fibre. Nothing is indifferent to you; your very life seems to depend on a drive, which gives you the chance of seeing in the crowd the one man before the flash of whose eye the sunlight pales; you tremble if he is late, and could strangle the bore who steals from you one of those precious moments when happiness throbs in every vein! To be alive, only to be alive is rapture. Think of it, dear, to live, when so many women would give the world to feel as I do, and cannot. Remember, child, that for this poetry of life there is but one season⁠—the season of youth.

“How can I go out at eleven o’clock at night?”

“My carriage is here.”

“Well, what are you two plotting here?” It was du Tillet who threw open the door of the boudoir.

A false geniality lit up the blank countenance which met the sisters’ gaze. They had been too much absorbed in talking to notice the wheels of du Tillet’s carriage, and the thick carpets had muffled the sound of his steps. The Countess, who had an indulgent husband and was well used to society, had acquired a tact and address such as her sister, passing straight from a mother’s to a husband’s yoke, had had no opportunity of cultivating. She was able then to save the situation, which she saw that Eugénie’s terror was on the point of betraying, by a frank reply.

“I thought my sister wealthier than she is,” she said, looking her brother-in-law in the face. “Women sometimes get into difficulties which they don’t care to speak of to their husbands⁠—witness Napoleon and Joséphine⁠—and I came to ask a favor of her.”

“There will be no difficulty about that. Eugénie is a rich woman,” replied du Tillet, in a tone of honeyed acerbity.

“Only for you,” said the Countess, with a bitter smile.

“How much do you want?” said du Tillet, who was not sorry at the prospect of getting his sister-in-law into his toils.

“How dense you are! Didn’t I tell you that we want to keep our husbands out of this?” was the prudent reply of Mme. de Vandenesse, who feared to place herself at the mercy of the man whose character had by good luck just been sketched by her sister.

Nathan lay in the editorial chair, the death-rattle in his throat.

“Break open that door, and tell no one! I will pay you to keep silence,” she cried. “Can’t you see that M. Nathan is dying?”

The man went to the compositors’ room to fetch an iron chase with which to force the door. Raoul was killing himself, like some poor workgirl, with the fumes from a pan of charcoal. He had just finished a letter to Blondet, in which he begged him to attribute his death to a fit of apoplexy. The Countess was just in time; she had Raoul carried into the cab; and not knowing where to get him looked after, she went to a hotel, took a room there, and sent the attendant to fetch a doctor. Raoul in a few hours was out of danger; but the Countess did not leave his bedside till she had obtained a full confession. When the prostrate wrestler with fate had poured into her heart the terrible elegy of his sufferings, she returned home a prey to all the torturing fancies which the evening before had brooded over Nathan’s brow.