"Then you must see that you despised me."

Sallenauve seemed wholly surprised by this deduction; he thought himself very clever in replying,--

"It seems to me that if I had behaved to you in any other manner you would have the right to say that I despised you."

But he had to do with a woman who in everything, in her friendships, her hatreds, her actions, as in her words, went straight to her point. As if she feared not to be fully understood, she went on:--

"To-day, monsieur, I can tell you all, for I speak of the past; the future has opened before me, as you see. From the day you were good to me and by your generous protection I escaped an infamous outrage, my heart has been wholly yours."

Sallenauve, who had never suspected that feeling, and, above all, was unable to understand how so artlessly crude an avowal of it could be made, knew not what to answer.

"I am not ignorant," continued the strange woman, "that I should have difficulty in rising from the degradation in which I appeared to you at our first meeting. If, at the time you consented to take me with you to Paris, I had seen you incline to treat me with gallantry, had you shown any sign of turning to your profit the dangerous situation in which I had placed myself, my heart would instantly have retired; you would have seemed to me an ordinary man--"

"So," remarked Sallenauve, "to love you would have been insulting; not to love you was cruel! What sort of woman are you, that either way you are displeased?"

"You ought not to have loved me," she replied, "while the mud was still on my skirts and you scarcely knew me; because then your love would have been the love of the eyes and not of the soul. But when, after two years pa.s.sed beside you, you had seen by my conduct that I was an honorable woman; when, without ever accepting a pleasure, I devoted myself to the care of the house and your comfort without other relaxation than the study of my art; and when, above all, I sacrificed to you that modesty you had seen me defend with such energy,--then you were cruel not to comprehend, and never, never will your imagination tell you what I have suffered, and all the tears you have made me shed."

"But, my dear Luigia, I was your host, and even had I suspected what you now reveal to me, my duty as an honorable man would have commanded me to see nothing of it, and to take no advantage of you."

"Ah! that is not the reason; it is simpler than that. You saw nothing because your fancy turned elsewhere."

"Well, and if it were so?"

"It ought not to be so," replied Luigia, vehemently. "That woman is not free; she has a husband and children, and though you did make a saint of her, I presume to say, ridiculous as it may seem, that she is not worth me!"

Sallenauve could not help smiling, but he answered very seriously,--

"You are totally mistaken as to your rival. Madame de l'Estorade was never anything to me but a model, without other value than the fact that she resembled another woman. That one I knew in Rome before I knew you.

She had beauty, youth, and a glorious inclination for art. To-day she is confined in a convent; like you, she has paid her tribute to sorrow; therefore, you see--"

"What, three hearts devoted to you," cried Luigia, "and not one accepted? A strange star is yours! No doubt I suffer from its fatal influence, and therefore I must pardon you."

"You are good to be merciful; will you now let me ask you a question?

Just now you spoke of your future, and I see it with my own eyes. Who are the friends who have suddenly advanced you so far and so splendidly in your career? Have you made any compact with the devil?"

"Perhaps," said Luigia, laughing.

"Don't laugh," said Sallenauve; "you chose to rush alone and unprotected into that h.e.l.l called Paris, and I dread lest you have made some fatal acquaintance. I know the immense difficulties and the immense dangers that a woman placed as you are now must meet. Who is this lady that you spoke of? and how did you ever meet her while living under my roof?"

"She is a pious and charitable woman, who came to see me during your absence at Arcis. She had noticed my voice at Saint-Sulpice, during the services of the Month of Mary, and she tried to entice me away to her own parish church of Notre-Dame de Lorette,--it was for that she came to see me."

"Tell me her name."

"Madame de Saint-Esteve."

Though far from penetrating the many mysteries that surrounded Jacqueline Collin, Sallenauve knew Madame de Saint-Esteve to be a woman of doubtful character and a matrimonial agent, having at times heard Bixiou tell tales of her.

"But that woman," he said, "has a shocking notoriety in Paris. She is an adventuress of the worst kind."

"I suspected it," said Luigia. "But what of that?"

"And the man to whom she introduced you?"

"He an adventurer? No, I think not. At any rate, he did me a great service."

"But he may have designs upon you."

"Yes, people may have designs upon me," replied Luigia, with dignity, "but they cannot execute them: between those designs and me, there is myself."

"But your reputation?"

"That was lost before I left your house. I was said to be your mistress; you had yourself to contradict that charge before the electoral college; you contradicted it, but you could not stop it."

"And my esteem, for which you profess to care?"

"I no longer want it. You did not love me when I wished for it; you shall not love me now that I no longer wish it."

"Who knows?" exclaimed Sallenauve.

"There are two reasons why it cannot be," said the singer. "In the first place, it is too late; and in the second, we are no longer on the same path."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I am an artist and you have ceased to be one. I rise; you fall."

"Do you call it falling to rise, perhaps, to the highest dignities of the State?"

"To whatever height you rise," said Luigia, pa.s.sionately, "you will ever be below your past and the n.o.ble future that was once before you--Ah!

stay; I think that I have lied to you; had you remained a sculptor, I believe I should have borne still longer your coldness and your disdain; I should have waited until I entered my vocation, until the halo round a singer's head might have shown you, at last, that I was there beside you. But on the day that you apostatized I would no longer continue my humiliating sacrifice. There is no future possible between us."

"Do you mean," said Sallenauve, holding out his hand, which she did not take, "that we cannot even be friends?"

"No," she replied; "all is over--past and gone. We shall hear of each other; and from afar, as we pa.s.s in life, we can wave our hands in recognition, but nothing further."

"So," said Sallenauve, sadly, "this is how it all ends!"

La Luigia looked at him a moment, her eyes shining with tears.

"Listen," she said in a resolute and sincere tone: "this is possible.

I have loved you, and after you, no one can enter the heart you have despised. You will hear that I have lovers; believe it not; you will not believe it, remembering the woman that I am. But who knows? Later your life may be swept clean of the other sentiments that have stood in my way; the freedom, the strangeness of the avowal I have just made to you will remain in your memory, and then it is not impossible that after this long rejection you may end by desiring me. If that should happen,--if at the end of many sad deceptions you should return, in sheer remorse, to the religion of art,--then, then, supposing that long years have not made love ridiculous between us, remember this evening.

Now, let us part; it is already too late for a _tete-a-tete_."

So saying, she took a light and pa.s.sed into an inner room, leaving Sallenauve in a state of mind we can readily imagine after the various shocks and surprises of this interview.

On returning to his hotel he found Jacques Bricheteau awaiting him.

"Where the devil have you been?" cried the organist, impatiently. "It is too late now to take the steamboat."

"Well," said Sallenauve, carelessly, "then I shall have a few hours longer to play truant."