“Would you prefer their being made public?”
“Oh, no; you act like a delicate man,” said the marquise,
smiling.
“Come, dear marquise, punish me not with reproaches, I
implore you.”
“Reproaches! Have I a right to make you any?”
“No, unfortunately, no; but tell me, you, who during a year
I have loved without return or hope —- ”
“You are mistaken — without hope it is true, but not
without return.”
“What! for me, of my love! there is but one proof, and that
proof I still want.”
“I am here to bring it, monsieur.”
Fouquet wished to clasp her in his arms, but she disengaged
herself with a gesture.
“You persist in deceiving yourself, monsieur, and never will
accept of me the only thing I am willing to give you —
devotion.”
“Ah, then, you do not love me? Devotion is but a virtue,
love is a passion.”
“Listen to me, I implore you: I should not have come hither
without a serious motive: you are well assured of that, are
you not?”
“The motive is of very little consequence, so that you are
but here — so that I see you — so that I speak to you!”
“You are right; the principal thing is that I am here
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without any one having seen me, and that I can speak to
you.” — Fouquet sank on his knees before her. “Speak!
speak, madame!” said he, “I listen to you.”
The marquise looked at Fouquet, on his knees at her feet,
and there was in the looks of the woman a strange mixture of
love and melancholy. “Oh!” at length murmured she, “would
that I were she who has the right of seeing you every
minute, of speaking to you every instant! would that I were
she who might watch over you, she who would have no need of
mysterious springs, to summon and cause to appear, like a
sylph, the man she loves, to look at him for an hour, and
then see him disappear in the darkness of a mystery, still
more strange at his going out than at his coming in. Oh!
that would be to live a happy woman!”
“Do you happen, marquise,” said Fouquet, smiling, “to be
speaking of my wife?”
“Yes, certainly, of her I spoke.”
“Well, you need not envy her lot, marquise; of all the women
with whom I have any relations, Madame Fouquet is the one I
see the least of, and who has the least intercourse with
me.”
“At least, monsieur, she is not reduced to place, as I have
done, her hand upon the ornament of a glass to call you to
her; at least you do not reply to her by the mysterious,
alarming sound of a bell, the spring of which comes from I
don’t know where; at least you have not forbidden her to
endeavor to discover the secret of these communications
under pain of breaking off forever your connections with
her, as you have forbidden all who have come here before me,
and all who will come after me.”
“Dear marquise, how unjust you are, and how little do you
know what you are doing in thus exclaiming against mystery;
it is with mystery alone we can love without trouble; it is
with love without trouble alone that we can be happy. But
let us return to ourselves, to that devotion of which you
were speaking, or rather let me labor under a pleasing
delusion, and believe that this devotion is love.”
“Just now,” repeated the marquise, passing over her eyes a
hand that might have been a model for the graceful contours
of antiquity; “just now I was prepared to speak, my ideas
were clear and bold, now I am quite confused, quite
troubled; I fear I bring you bad news.”
“If it is to that bad news I owe your presence, marquise,
welcome be even that bad news! or rather, marquise, since
you allow that I am not quite indifferent to you, let me
hear nothing of the bad news, but speak of yourself.”
“No, no, on the contrary, demand it of me; require me to