Your Beatrix knows how to dress herself, that's true; and you are man who likes figure-heads. Besides, you want to send Monsieur du Guenic to the right-about. It will be a triumph! You'll cut quite an appearance in the world! How people will talk of it! Why! you'll be a hero!"Madame Schontz did not make an end of her sarcasms for two hours after mid-day, in spite of Arthur's protestations. She then said she was invited out to dinner, and advised her "faithless one" to go without her to the Opera, for she herself was going to the Ambigu-Comique to meet Madame de la Baudraye, a charming woman, a friend of Lousteau.
Arthur proposed, as proof of his eternal attachment to his little Aurelie and his detestation of his wife, to start the next day for Italy, and live as a married couple in Rome, Naples, Florence,--in short, wherever she liked, offering her a gift of sixty thousand francs.
"All that is nonsense," she said. "It won't prevent you from making up with your wife, and you'll do a wise thing."Arthur and Aurelie parted on this formidable dialogue, he to play cards and dine at the club, she to dress and spend the evening /tete-a-tete/ with Fabien.
Monsieur de Rochefide found Maxime at the club, and complained to him like a man who feels that his happiness is being torn from his heart by the roots, every fibre of which clung to it. Maxime listened to his moans, as persons of social politeness are accustomed to listen, while thinking of other things.
"I'm a man of good counsel in such matters, my dear fellow," he answered. "Well, let me tell you, you are on the wrong road in letting Aurelie see how dear she is to you. Allow me to present you to Madame Antonia. There's a heart to let. You'll soon see La Schontz with other eyes. She is thirty-seven years old, that Schontz of yours, and Madame Antonia is only twenty-six! And what a woman! I may say she is my pupil. If Madame Schontz persists in keeping on the hind heels of her pride, don't you know what that means?""Faith, no!"
"That she wants to marry, and if that's the case, nothing can hinder her from leaving you. After a lease of six years a woman has a right to do so. Now, if you will only listen to me, you can do a better thing for yourself. Your wife is to-day worth more than all the Schontzes and Antonias of the quartier Saint-Georges. I admit the conquest is difficult, but it is not impossible; and after all that has happened she will make you as happy as an Orgon. In any case, you mustn't look like a fool; come and sup to-night with Antonia.""No, I love Aurelie too well; I won't give her any reason to complain of me.""Ah! my dear fellow, what a future you are preparing for yourself!"cried Maxime.
"It is eleven o'clock; she must have returned from the Ambigu," said Rochefide, leaving the club.
And he called out his coachman to drive at top speed to the rue de la Bruyere.
Madame Schontz had given precise directions; monsieur could enter as master with the fullest understanding of madame; but, warned by the noise of monsieur's arrival, madame had so arranged that the sound of her dressing-door closing as women's doors do close when they are surprised, was to reach monsieur's ears. Then, at a corner of the piano, Fabien's hat, forgotten intentionally, was removed very awkwardly by a maid the moment after monsieur had entered the room.
"Did you go to the Ambigu, my little girl?"
"No, I changed my mind, and stayed at home to play music.""Who came to see you?" asked the marquis, good-humoredly, seeing the hat carried off by the maid.
"No one."
At that audacious falsehood Arthur bowed his head; he passed beneath the Caudine forks of submission. A real love descends at times to these sublime meannesses. Arthur behaved with Madame Schontz as Sabine with Calyste, and Calyste with Beatrix.
