He made no answer and went.
When Charles was no longer there, when his empty chair spoke for him, regrets flocked in upon her, and she found fault with herself. Passion makes an immense advance as soon as a woman persuades herself that she has failed somewhat in generosity or hurt a noble nature. In love there is never any need to be on our guard against the worst in us;that is a safeguard; a woman only surrenders at the summons of a virtue. "The floor of hell is paved with good intentions,"--it is no preacher's paradox.
Vandenesse stopped away for several days. Every evening at the accustomed hour the Marquise sat expectant in remorseful impatience.
She could not write--that would be a declaration, and, moreover, her instinct told her that he would come back. On the sixth day he was announced, and never had she heard the name with such delight. Her joy frightened her.
"You have punished me well," she said, addressing him.
Vandenesse gazed at her in astonishment.
"Punished?" he echoed. "And for what?" He understood her quite well, but he meant to be avenged for all that he had suffered as soon as she suspected it.
"Why have you not come to see me?" she demanded with a smile.
"Then you have seen no visitors?" asked he, parrying the question.
"Yes. M. de Ronquerolles and M. de Marsay and young d'Escrignon came and stayed for nearly two hours, the first two yesterday, the last this morning. And besides, I have had a call, I believe, from Mme.
Firmiani and from your sister, Mme. de Listomere."Here was a new infliction, torture which none can comprehend unless they know love as a fierce and all-invading tyrant whose mildest symptom is a monstrous jealousy, a perpetual desire to snatch away the beloved from every other influence.
"What!" thought he to himself, "she has seen visitors, she has been with happy creatures, and talking to them, while I was unhappy and all alone."He buried his annoyance forthwith, and consigned love to the depths of his heart, like a coffin to the sea. His thoughts were of the kind that never find expression in words; they pass through the mind swiftly as a deadly acid, that poisons as it evaporates and vanishes.
His brow, however, was over-clouded; and Mme. d'Aiglemont, guided by her woman's instinct, shared his sadness without understanding it. She had hurt him, unwittingly, as Vandenesse knew. He talked over his position with her, as if his jealousy were one of those hypothetical cases which lovers love to discuss. Then the Marquise understood it all. She was so deeply moved, that she could not keep back the tears--and so these lovers entered the heaven of love.
Heaven and Hell are two great imaginative conceptions formulating our ideas of Joy and Sorrow--those two poles about which human existence revolves. Is not heaven a figure of speech covering now and for evermore an infinite of human feeling impossible to express save in its accidents--since that Joy is one? And what is Hell but the symbol of our infinite power to suffer tortures so diverse that of our pain it is possible to fashion works of art, for no two human sorrows are alike?