“Alas, yes, madame, I have come to save what is dearer to you than life — your honor.
Compose yourself and get dressed, we must go to the Duchesse de Grandlieu; happily for you, you are not the only person compromised.”
“But at the Palais, yesterday, Leontine burned, I am told, all the letters found at poor Lucien’s.”
“But, madame, behind Lucien there was Jacques Collin!” cried the magistrate’s wife. “You always forget that horrible companionship which beyond question led to that charming and lamented young man’s end.
That Machiavelli of the galleys never loses his head!
Monsieur Camusot is convinced that the wretch has in some safe hiding-place all the most compromising letters written by you ladies to his ——”
“His friend,” the Duchess hastily put in. “You are right, my child. We must hold council at the Grandlieus’.
We are all concerned in this matter, and Serizy happily will lend us his aid.”
Extreme peril — as we have observed in the scenes in the Conciergerie — has a hold over the soul not less terrible than that of powerful reagents over the body.
It is a mental Voltaic battery.
The day, perhaps, is not far off when the process shall be discovered by which feeling is chemically converted into a fluid not unlike the electric fluid.
The phenomena were the same in the convict and the Duchess.
This crushed, half-dying woman, who had not slept, who was so particular over her dressing, had recovered the strength of a lioness at bay, and the presence of mind of a general under fire.
Diane chose her gown and got through her dressing with the alacrity of a grisette who is her own waiting-woman.
It was so astounding, that the lady’s-maid stood for a moment stock-still, so greatly was she surprised to see her mistress in her shift, not ill pleased perhaps to let the judge’s wife discern through the thin cloud of lawn a form as white and as perfect as that of Canova’s Venus.
It was like a gem in a fold of tissue paper.
Diane suddenly remembered where a pair of stays had been put that fastened in front, sparing a woman in a hurry the ill-spent time and fatigue of being laced.
She had arranged the lace trimming of her shift and the fulness of the bosom by the time the maid had fetched her petticoat, and crowned the work by putting on her gown.
While Amelie, at a sign from the maid, hooked the bodice behind, the woman brought out a pair of thread stockings, velvet boots, a shawl, and a bonnet.
Amelie and the maid each drew on a stocking.
“You are the loveliest creature I ever saw!” said Amelie, insidiously kissing Diane’s elegant and polished knee with an eager impulse.
“Madame has not her match!” cried the maid.
“There, there, Josette, hold your tongue,” replied the Duchess. —“Have you a carriage?” she went on, to Madame Camusot. “Then come along, my dear, we can talk on the road.” And the Duchess ran down the great stairs of the Hotel de Cadignan, putting on her gloves as she went — a thing she had never been known to do.
“To the Hotel de Grandlieu, and drive fast,” said she to one of her men, signing to him to get up behind.
The footman hesitated — it was a hackney coach.
“Ah! Madame la Duchesse, you never told me that the young man had letters of yours.
Otherwise Camusot would have proceeded differently . . . ”
“Leontine’s state so occupied my thoughts that I forgot myself entirely. The poor woman was almost crazy the day before yesterday; imagine the effect on her of this tragical termination.
If you could only know, child, what a morning we went through yesterday! It is enough to make one forswear love!
— Yesterday Leontine and I were dragged across Paris by a horrible old woman, an old-clothes buyer, a domineering creature, to that stinking and blood-stained sty they call the Palace of Justice, and I said to her as I took her there:
‘Is not this enough to make us fall on our knees and cry out like Madame de Nucingen, when she went through one of those awful Mediterranean storms on her way to Naples, “Dear God, save me this time, and never again ——!”’ “These two days will certainly have shortened my life.
— What fools we are ever to write!
— But love prompts us; we receive pages that fire the heart through the eyes, and everything is in a blaze!
Prudence deserts us — we reply ——”
“But why reply when you can act?” said Madame Camusot.
“It is grand to lose oneself utterly!” cried the Duchess with pride. “It is the luxury of the soul.”
“Beautiful women are excusable,” said Madame Camusot modestly. “They have more opportunities of falling than we have.”
The Duchess smiled.
“We are always too generous,” said Diane de Maufrigneuse. “I shall do just like that odious Madame d’Espard.”
“And what does she do?” asked the judge’s wife, very curious.
“She has written a thousand love-notes ——”
“So many!” exclaimed Amelie, interrupting the Duchess.
“Well, my dear, and not a word that could compromise her is to be found in any one of them.”
“You would be incapable of maintaining such coldness, such caution,” said Madame Camusot. “You are a woman; you are one of those angels who cannot stand out against the devil ——”
“I have made a vow to write no more letters.
I never in my life wrote to anybody but that unhappy Lucien. — I will keep his letters to my dying day!
My dear child, they are fire, and sometimes we want ——”
“But if they were found!” said Amelie, with a little shocked expression.
“Oh! I should say they were part of a romance I was writing; for I have copied them all, my dear, and burned the originals.”
“Oh, madame, as a reward allow me to read them.”