The Deserted Woman | Page 6

of life, the fertilizing influences of mind on mind,
after which he had sought so eagerly in Paris, were beginning to fade
from his memory, and he was in a fair way of becoming a fossil with
these fossils, and ending his days among them, content, like the
companions of Ulysses, in his gross envelope.
One evening Gaston de Nueil was seated between a dowager and one
of the vicars-general of the diocese, in a gray-paneled drawing-room,
floored with large white tiles. The family portraits which adorned the
walls looked down upon four card-tables, and some sixteen persons
gathered about them, chattering over their whist. Gaston, thinking of
nothing, digesting one of those exquisite dinners to which the
provincial looks forward all through the day, found himself justifying
the customs of the country.
He began to understand why these good folk continued to play with
yesterday's pack of cards and shuffle them on a threadbare tablecloth,
and how it was that they had ceased to dress for themselves or others.
He saw the glimmerings of something like a philosophy in the even
tenor of their perpetual round, in the calm of their methodical
monotony, in their ignorance of the refinements of luxury. Indeed, he
almost came to think that luxury profited nothing; and even now, the

city of Paris, with its passions, storms, and pleasures, was scarcely
more than a memory of childhood.
He admired in all sincerity the red hands, and shy, bashful manner of
some young lady who at first struck him as an awkward simpleton,
unattractive to the last degree, and surprisingly ridiculous. His doom
was sealed. He had gone from the provinces to Paris; he had led the
feverish life of Paris; and now he would have sunk back into the
lifeless life of the provinces, but for a chance remark which reached his
ear--a few words that called up a swift rush of such emotion as he
might have felt when a strain of really good music mingles with the
accompaniment of some tedious opera.
"You went to call on Mme. de Beauseant yesterday, did you not?" The
speaker was an elderly lady, and she addressed the head of the local
royal family.
"I went this morning. She was so poorly and depressed, that I could not
persuade her to dine with us to-morrow."
"With Mme. de Champignelles?" exclaimed the dowager with
something like astonishment in her manner.
"With my wife," calmly assented the noble. "Mme. de Beauseant is
descended from the House of Burgundy, on the spindle side, 'tis true,
but the name atones for everything. My wife is very much attached to
the Vicomtesse, and the poor lady has lived alone for such a long while,
that----"
The Marquis de Champignelles looked round about him while he spoke
with an air of cool unconcern, so that it was almost impossible to guess
whether he made a concession to Mme. de Beauseant's misfortunes, or
paid homage to her noble birth; whether he felt flattered to receive her
in his house, or, on the contrary, sheer pride was the motive that led
him to try to force the country families to meet the Vicomtesse.
The women appeared to take counsel of each other by a glance; there
was a sudden silence in the room, and it was felt that their attitude was
one of disapproval.
"Does this Mme. de Beauseant happen to be the lady whose adventure
with M. d'Ajuda-Pinto made so much noise?" asked Gaston of his
neighbor.
"The very same," he was told. "She came to Courcelles after the
marriage of the Marquis d'Ajuda; nobody visits her. She has, besides,

too much sense not to see that she is in a false position, so she has
made no attempt to see any one. M. de Champignelles and a few
gentlemen went to call upon her, but she would see no one but M. de
Champignelles, perhaps because he is a connection of the family. They
are related through the Beauseants; the father of the present Vicomte
married a Mlle. de Champignelles of the older branch. But though the
Vicomtesse de Beauseant is supposed to be a descendant of the House
of Burgundy, you can understand that we could not admit a wife
separated from her husband into our society here. We are foolish
enough still to cling to these old-fashioned ideas. There was the less
excuse for the Vicomtesse, because M. de Beauseant is a well-bred man
of the world, who would have been quite ready to listen to reason. But
his wife is quite mad----" and so forth and so forth.
M. de Nueil, still listening to the speaker's voice, gathered nothing of
the sense of the words; his brain was too full of thick-coming fancies.
Fancies? What other name can you give to