Luxury - Gluttony: Two of the Seven Cardinal Sins

"And you, too, my dear Madame Dutertre, to abuse an honest confidence!" said M. Pascal, hiding his anger under a veil of sweetness, "to strike me in my dearest hope, ah, this is generous! God grant that I may not give myself up to cruel retaliation! After two years of friendship to part with such sentiments! But it must be, it must be!" added Pascal, looking alternately at Dutertre and his wife. "Is all ended between us?"

Sophie and her husband preserved a silence full of resignation and dignity.

"Oh, well," said Pascal, taking his hat, "another proof of the ingratitude of men, alas!"

"Monsieur," cried Dutertre, exasperated beyond measure at the affected sensibility of Pascal, "in the presence of the frightful blow with which you intend to crush us, this continued sarcasm is atrocious. Leave us, leave us!"

"Ah, here I am driven away from this house by people who are conscious of owing their happiness to me for so long a time, — their salvation even, they owe to me," said Pascal, walking slowly toward the door. "Driven away from here! I! Ah, this mortifying grief disappoints me, indeed!"

Then, pausing, he rummaged his pocket, and drew out the little purse that Sophie had given him a few moments before, and, handing it to the young wife, he said, with a pitiless accent of sardonic contrition:

"Happily, they are mute, or these pearls of steel would tell me every moment how much my name was blessed in this house from which I am driven away."

Then, with the air of changing his mind, he put the purse back in his pocket, after looking at it with a melancholy smile, and said:

"No, no, I will keep you, poor little innocent purse. You will recall to me the little good I have done, and the cruel deception which has been my reward."

So saying, M. Pascal put his hand on the knob of the door, opened it, and went out, while Sophie and her husband and her father sat in gloomy silence.

This oppressive silence was still unbroken when M. Pascal, returning and opening the door half-way, said across the threshold:

"To tell the truth, Dutertre, I have reflected. Listen to me, my dear Dutertre."

A ray of foolish hope illumined the face of Dutertre; for a moment he believed that, in spite of the cold and sarcastic cruelty that Pascal had first affected, he did feel some pity at last.

Sophie shared the same hope; like her husband she listened with indescribable anguish to the words of the man who was to dispose so absolutely of their fate, while Pascal said:

"Next Saturday is your pay-day, is it not, my dear Dutertre? Let me call you so notwithstanding what has passed between us."

"Thank God, he has some pity," thought Dutertre, and he replied aloud:

"Yes, monsieur."

"I would not wish, you understand, my dear Dutertre," continued Pascal, "to put you in ruinous embarrassment. I know Paris, and in the present business crisis you could not get credit for a cent, especially if it were known that I have withdrawn mine from you, and as, after all, you relied upon my name to meet your liabilities, did you not?"

"Charles, we are saved!" whispered Sophie, panting, "he was only testing us."

Dutertre, struck with this idea, which appeared to him all the more probable as he had at first suspected it, no longer doubted his safety; his heart beat violently, his contracted features relaxed into their ordinary cheerful expression, and he replied, stammering from excess of emotion:

"In fact, sir, trusting blindly to your promises, I relied on your credit as usual."

"Well, my dear Dutertre, that you may not find yourself in an embarrassed position, I have come back to tell you that, as you still have about a week, you had better provide for yourself elsewhere, as you cannot depend on Paris or on me."

And M. Pascal closed the door, and took his departure.

The reaction was so terrible that Dutertre fell back in his chair, pale, inanimate, and utterly exhausted. Hiding his face in his hands, he sobbed:

"Lost, lost!"

"Oh, our children!" cried Sophie, in a heartrending voice, as she threw herself down at her husband's knees, "our poor children!"

"Charles," said the old man, extending his hands, and timidly groping his way to his son, "Charles, my beloved son, have courage!"

"Oh, father, it is ruin, it is bankruptcy," said the unhappy man, with convulsive sobs. "The misery, oh, my God! the misery in store for us all!"

At the height of this overwhelming sorrow came a cruel contrast; the little children, clamorous with joy, rushed into the parlour, exclaiming:

"It is Madeleine; here is Madeleine!"

CHAPTER X

At the sight of Madeleine, who was no other than the Marquise de Miranda, the happiness of Madame Dutertre was so great that for a moment all her sorrows and all her terrors for the future were forgotten; her sweet and gracious countenance beamed with joy, she could only pronounce these words in broken accents:

"Madeleine, dear Madeleine! after such a long absence, at last you have come!"

After the two young women had embraced each other Sophie said to her friend as she looked at her husband and the old man:

"Madeleine, my husband and his father, — our father, as he calls me his daughter."

The marquise, entering suddenly, had thrown herself upon Sophie's neck with such impetuous affection that Charles Dutertre could not distinguish the features of the stranger, but when, at Madame Dutertre's last words, the newly arrived friend turned toward him, he felt a sudden strange impression, — an impression so positive that, for a few minutes, he, like his wife, forgot the vindictive speech of M. Pascal.

What Charles Dutertre felt at the sight of Madeleine was a singular mixture of surprise, admiration, and almost distress, for he experienced a sort of indefinable remorse at the thought of being in that critical moment accessible to any emotion except that which pertained to the ruin which threatened him and his family.

The Marquise de Miranda would hardly, at first sight, seem capable of making so sudden and so deep an impression. Quite tall in stature, her form and waist were completely hidden under a large mantle of spring material which matched that of her dress, whose long, trailing folds scarcely permitted a view of the extremity of her little boot. It was the same with her hands, which were almost entirely concealed by the sleeves of her dress, which she wore, as was her custom, long and floating. A little hood made of crape, as white as snow, formed a framework for her distinctly oval face, and set off the tint of her complexion, for Madeleine had that dull, pale flesh-colour so often found in brunettes of a pronounced type, with large, expressive blue eyes fringed with lashes as black as her eyebrows of jet, while, by a bewitching contrast, her hair, arranged in a mass of little curls, à la Sevigné, was of that charming and delicate ash-blonde which Rubens makes flow like waves upon the shoulders of his fair naiads.

This pallid complexion, these blue eyes, these black eyebrows and blonde hair, gave to Madeleine's physiognomy a very fetching attraction; her ebony lashes were so thick, so closely set, that one might have said — like the women of the East, who by this means impart a passionate and at the same time an enervated expression to their faces — she painted with black the under part of her eyelids, almost always partially closed over their large azure-coloured pupils; her pink nostrils, changing and nervous, dilated on each side of a Greek nose exquisite in its contour; while her lips, of so warm a red that one might almost see the blood circulate under their delicate epidermis, were full but clear cut, and a little prominent, like those of an antique Erigone, and sometimes under their bright coloured edges one could see the beautiful enamel of her teeth.

But why continue this portrait? Will there not be always, however faithful our description, however highly coloured it may be, as immeasurable a distance between that and the reality as exists between a painting and a living being? It would be impossible to make perceptible that atmosphere of irresistible attraction, that magnetism, we might say, which emanated from this singular creature. That which in others would have produced a neutralising effect, seemed in her to increase her fascinations a hundredfold. The very length and amplitude of her garments, which, without revealing the contour of her figure, allowed only a sight of the end of her fingers and the extremity of her boot, added a charm to her. In a word, if the chaste drapery which falls at the feet of an antique muse, of severe and thoughtful face, enhances the dignity of her aspect, a veil thrown over the beautiful form of the Venus Aphrodite only serves to excite and inflame the imagination.

Such was the impression which Madeleine had produced on Charles Dutertre, who, speechless and troubled, stood for some moments gazing at her.

Sophie, not suspecting the cause of her husband's silence and emotion, supposed him to be absorbed in thought of the imminent danger which threatened him, and this idea bringing her back to the position she had for a moment forgotten, she said to the marquise, trying to force a smile:

"My dear Madeleine, you must excuse the preoccupation of Charles. At the moment you entered we were talking of business, and business of a very serious nature indeed."

"Yes, really, madame, you must excuse me," said Dutertre, starting, and reproaching himself for the strange impression his wife's friend had made upon him. "Fortunately, all that Sophie has told me of your kindness encourages me to presume upon your indulgence."

"My indulgence? It is I who have need of yours, monsieur," replied the marquise, smiling, "for in my overmastering desire to see my dear Sophie again, running here unawares, I threw myself on her neck, without dreaming of your presence or that of your father. But he will, I know, pardon me for treating Sophie like a sister, since he treats her as a daughter."

With these words, Madeleine turned to the old man.

"Alas! madame," exclaimed he, involuntarily, "never did my poor children have greater need of the fidelity of their friends. Perhaps it is Heaven that sends you — "

"Take care, father," said Dutertre, in a low voice to the old man, as if he would reproach him tenderly for making a stranger acquainted with their domestic troubles, for Madeleine had suddenly directed a surprised and interrogative glance toward Sophie.

The old man comprehended his son's thought, and whispered:

"You are right. I ought to keep silent, but grief is so indiscreet! Come now, Charles, take me back to my room. I feel very much overcome."