Marquise de Ganges | Page 9

he merely allowed such words of compliment to escape
him as weigh neither with him who utters nor her who hears them; and
yet, before the close of this first interview, the abbe had decided in his
irrevocable will that this woman should be his.
As for the marquise, although the impression produced by her two
brothers-in-law could never be entirely effaced, the wit of the abbe, to
which he gave, with amazing facility, whatever turn he chose, and the
complete nullity of the chevalier brought her to certain feelings of less
repulsion towards them: for indeed the marquise had one of those souls
which never suspect evil, as long as it will take the trouble to assume
any veil at all of seeming, and which only recognise it with regret when
it resumes its true shape.
Meanwhile the arrival of these two new inmates soon spread a little
more life and gaiety through the house. Furthermore; greatly to the
astonishment of the marquise, her husband, who had so long been
indifferent to her beauty, seemed to remark afresh that she was too
charming to be despised; his words accordingly began little by little to
express an affection that had long since gradually disappeared from
them. The marquise had never ceased to love him; she had suffered the
loss of his love with resignation, she hailed its return with joy, and
three months elapsed that resembled those which had long ceased to be
more to the poor wife than a distant and half-worn- out memory.
Thus she had, with the supreme facility of youth, always ready to be
happy, taken up her gladness again, without even asking what genius

had brought back to her the treasure which she had thought lost, when
she received an invitation from a lady of the neighbourhood to spend
some days in her country house. Her husband and her two brothers-in-
law, invited with her, were of the party, and accompanied her. A great
hunting party had been arranged beforehand, and almost immediately
upon arriving everyone began to prepare for taking part in it.
The abbe, whose talents had made him indispensable in every company,
declared that for that day he was the marquise's cavalier, a title which
his sister-in-law, with her usual amiability, confirmed. Each of the
huntsmen, following this example, made choice of a lady to whom to
dedicate his attentions throughout the day; then, this chivalrous
arrangement being completed, all present directed their course towards
the place of meeting.
That happened which almost always happens the dogs hunted on their
own account. Two or three sportsmen only followed the dogs; the rest
got lost. The abbe, in his character of esquire to the marquise, had not
left her for a moment, and had managed so cleverly that he was alone
with her--an opportunity which he had been seeking for a month
previously with no less care--than the marquise had been using to avoid
it. No sooner, therefore, did the marquise believe herself aware that the
abbe had intentionally turned aside from the hunt than she attempted to
gallop her horse in the opposite direction from that which she had been
following; but the abbe stopped her. The marquise neither could nor
would enter upon a struggle; she resigned herself, therefore, to hearing
what the abbe had to say to her, and her face assumed that air of
haughty disdain which women so well know how to put on when they
wish a man to understand that he has nothing to hope from them. There
was an instant's silence; the abbe was the first to break it.
"Madame," said he, "I ask your pardon for having used this means to
speak to you alone; but since, in spite of my rank of brother-in-law, you
did not seem inclined to grant me that favour if I had asked it, I thought
it would be better for me, to deprive you of the power to refuse it me."
"If you have hesitated to ask me so simple a thing, monsieur," replied
the marquise, "and if you have taken such precautions to compel me to
listen to you, it must, no doubt, be because you knew beforehand that
the words you had to say to me were such as I could not hear. Have the
goodness, therefore, to reflect, before you open this conversation, that

here as elsewhere I reserve the right--and I warn you of it--to interrupt
what you may say at the moment when it may cease to seem to me
befitting."
"As to that, madame," said the abbe, "I think I can answer for it that
whatever it may please me to say to you, you will hear to the end; but
indeed the matters are so simple that there is no need to make