"But the danger was never more imminent. | Lelio was to me but the shadow of the Cid, Lelio was sublime, and I had never been more the representative of that antique chivalric in love with him. My recent adventure love now ridiculed in France. The man, the seemed but a dream. I could not believe that actor, I did not fear, for I had seen him; I Lelio was other than he seemed upon the could love him only upon the stage. My Lelio stage. In spite of myself, I yielded to the was a fictitious being who had no existence terrible agitations into which he had the outside the theatre. The illusions of the stage, power of throwing me. My face was bathed the glare of the footlights, were a part of the in tears, and I was compelled to cover it with being whom I loved. Without them he was my handkerchief. In the disorder of my mind nothing to me, and faded like a star before the I wiped off my rouge and my patches, and the brightness of day. I had no desire to see him Comtesse de Ferrières advised me to retire to off the boards; I should have been in despair the back of my box, for my emotion was had I met him. It would have been to me creating a sensation in the house. I fortu- like contemplating the ashes of a great man. nately had the skill to make every one believe that it was the playing of Mdlle. Hippolyte Clairon which affected me so deeply. She was, in my opinion, a very cold and formal actress, too superior perhaps to her profession, as it was then understood; but her manner of saying 'Tout beau,' in 'Cinna,' had given her a great reputation. "It must be said, however, that when she played with Lelio she outdid herself. Although she took pains to proclaim her share in the fashionable contempt for his method of acting, she consciously felt the influence of his genius, and was inspired by him when the passion of the scene placed them in relation. "That evening Lelio noticed me either on account of my dress or my emotion; for I saw him, when he was not acting, bend over one of the spectators who, at that epoch, sat upon the stage, and inquire my name. I guessed his question by the manner they both looked at me. My heart beat almost to suffocation, and I noticed during the play that Lelio's eyes turned several times towards me. What would I not have given to hear what the Chevalier de Brétillac, whom he had questioned, had said to him about me! Lelio's face did not indicate the nature of the information he had received, for he was obliged to retain the expression suited to his part. I knew this Brétillac very slightly, and I could not imagine whether he would speak well or ill of me. "That night I understood for the first time the nature of the passion which enchained me to Lelio. It was a passion purely intellectual, purely ideal. It was not him I loved, but those heroes of ancient times whose sin cerity, whose fidelity, whose tenderness he knew how to represent; with him, and by him, I was carried back to an epoch of forgotten virtues. I was proud enough to think that in those days I should not have been misjudged and hated, and that I should not have been reduced to loving a phantom of the footlights. "One evening as I was going to the Carmelite church with the intention of leaving it by the opposite door, I perceived that I was followed, and became convinced that henceforth it would be almost impossible to conceal the object of my nocturnal expeditions. I decided to go publicly to the theatre. I acquired by degrees enough hypocrisy to hide my feelings, and besides, I began to profess a warm admiration for Mdlle. Hippolyte Clairon, which accounted sufficiently for the emotion I showed. I was now under greater constraint, and, compelled as I was to be perpetually conscious of myself, my enjoyment became less poignant and profound. But this circumstance involved another, which soon established a complete compensation. Lelio saw me and watched me; my beauty had struck him, my sensibility flattered him. His attention sometimes wandered so much as to displease the public. Soon I could no longer doubt. He was madly in love with me. "My box had pleased the Princesse de Vaudemont. I gave it up to her, and took for myself a smaller one, less in view of the house, and better situated. I was almost upon the stage, I did not lose one of Lelio's glances; and he could look at me without its being seen by the public. But I no longer needed to catch his eye in order to understand all his feelings. The sound of his voice, his sighs, the expression which he gave to certain verses, certain words, told me that he was speaking to me. I was the happiest and proudest of women, for then it was the hero, not the actor, who loved me. "After two years of an unknown and solitary love, cherished in the depths of my own soul, three winters passed over this same love, now shared by him; yet never a look, a glance of mine gave Lelio reason to hope for anything beyond this mysterious and tacit correspondence. I have since heard that Lelio often followed me in my walks and drives; so little did I desire to see him outside the theatre, that I never perceived it. Of the eighty years | But, no; to think so were to presume too much. I have passed in the world, those five are the only ones in which I really lived. "One day I read in the Mercure de France the name of a new actor engaged at the Comédie Française to replace Lelio, who was about to leave France. This announcement was a mortal blow to me. I could not conceive how I should exist when deprived of these emotions, this life of passion and storm. This event gave an immense development to my love, and was well nigh my ruin. "I no longer struggled with myself; I no longer sought to stifle at once all thoughts contrary to the dignity of my rank. I regretted that he was not what he appeared upon the stage; I wished him as young and handsome as he seemed each night before the footlights, that I might sacrifice to him all my pride, all my prejudices. "While I was in this state of irresolution, I received a letter in an unknown hand. It is the only love-letter I have ever kept; though Larrieux has written me innumerable protestations, and I have received a thousand perfumed declarations from a hundred others, it is the only real love-letter that was ever sent me." The Marquise rose, opened with an untrembling hand an inlaid casket, and took from it a crumpled worn-out letter, which I read with difficulty. "MADAM,-I am certain that you will feel nothing but contempt for this letter; you will not even deem it worthy of your anger. But, to a man falling into an abyss, what matters one more stone at the bottom? You will think me mad, and you will be right. You will perhaps pity me, for you will not doubt my sincerity. However humble your piety may have made you, you will understand the extent of my despair; you must already know how much evil and how much good your eyes can do. "If you give one compassionate thought, if, to-night at the theatre, I perceive upon your features a slight expression of pity, I shall be less wretched when I depart; I shall bear with me a memory which may give me strength to live far from France, and there pursue my arduous and barren career. "But you must know this already, madam; it is impossible that the violent emotions I have betrayed upon the stage, my cries of wrath and despair, have twenty times revealed to you my passion. You cannot have lighted all these flames without being conscious of what you did. Perhaps you played with me as a tiger with his prey; perhaps the spectacle of my folly and my tortures were your pastime. VOL. II. No, madam, I do not believe it; you never thought of me. You felt the verses of the great Corneille, you identified yourself with the noble passions of tragedy; that was all. And I, madman that I was, I dared to think that my voice alone sometimes awoke your sympathies, that my heart echoed in yours, that between you and me there was something more than between me and the public. Oh, my madness was arrant, but it was sweet! Leave me my illusions, madam; what are they to you? Do you fear that I should boast of them? By what right should I do so, and who would believe me? I should only make myself the laughing-stock of sensible people. Leave me this conviction; it has given me more joy than the severity of the public has caused me sorrow. Let me bless you, let me thank you upon my knees, for the sensibility which I have discovered in your soul, and which no other soul has ever shown me; for the tears which I have seen you shed for my fictitious sorrows, and which have often raised my inspiration almost to delirium; for the timid glances which sought, at least I believed so, to console me for the coldness of my audience. Oh, why were you born to pomp and splendour! Why am I an obscure and nameless artist! Why have I not riches and the favour of the public, that I might exchange them for a name, for one of those titles which I have hitherto disdained, and which, perhaps, would permit me to aspire as high as you are placed! Once I deemed the distinctions conferred upon talent superior to all others. To what purpose, thought I, is a man a chevalier or a marquis but to be the sillier, the vainer, and the more insolent? I hated the pride of men of rank, and thought I should be sufficiently avenged for their disdain if my genius raised me above them. Dreams and delusions all! my strength has not equalled my mad ambition. I have remained obscure; I have done worse-I have touched success, and allowed it to escape me. I thought myself great, and I was cast down to the dust; I imagined that I was almost sublime, and I was condemned to be ridiculous. Fate took me me and my audacious dreamsand crushed me as if I had been a reed! I am a most wretched man! "But I committed my greatest folly when I cast my eyes beyond that row of lights which marks between me and the rest of society a line of invincible separation. It is to me the circle of Popilius. I, an actor, I dared to raise my eyes and fasten them upon a beautiful woman-upon a woman, young, lovely, and of 29 high rank; for you are all this, madam, and I know it. The world accuses you of coldness and of exaggerated piety. I alone understand you. Your first smile, your first tear, sufficiently disproved the absurd fables which the Chevalier de Brétillac repeated against you. "But, then, what a destiny is yours! What fatality weighs upon you as upon me, that in the midst of a society so brilliant, which calls itself so enlightened, you should have found only the heart of a poor actor to do you justice! Nothing will deprive me of the sad and consoling thought, that had we been born in the same rank, you would have been mine in spite of my rivals, in spite of my own inferiority. You would have been compelled to acknowledge that there is in me something greater than their wealth and their titles-the power of loving you. "LELIO." "This letter," continued the Marquise, "was of a character very unusual at the time it was written, and seemed to me, notwithstanding some touches of theatrical declamation at the beginning so powerful, so true, so full of fresh bold passion, that I was overwhelmed by it. The pride which still struggled within me faded away. I would have given all the remaining days I had to live for one hour of such love. "I will not tell you of my anxiety, my uncertainty, my terror; I could not recollect them with any coherence. I answered in these words, as nearly as I can remember: "I do not accuse you,. Lelio; I accuse Destiny. I do not pity you alone; I pity myself also. Neither pride nor prudence shall make me deny you the consolation of believing that I have felt a preference for you. Keep it, for it is the only one I can offer you. I can never consent to see you.' 'Next day I received a note which I hastily read and threw into the fire, to prevent Larrieux from seeing it, for he came suddenly upon me while I was reading it. It read thus: "MADAM,-I must see you or I must die. Once once only, but for a single hour, if such is your will. Why should you fear an interview, since you trust my honour and my prudence? Madam, I know who you are; I am well aware of your piety, of the austerity of your life. I am not fool enough to hope for anything but a word of compassion, but it must fall from your own lips. My heart must receive and bear it away, or my heart must break. 'LELIO.' "I must say in my own praise, for a generous and magnanimous trust is always praiseworthy, that not for a moment did I fear that Lelio would betray the trust I placed in him. "I believed implicity in the humility, in the sincerity of Lelio. Besides, I had ample reason to trust my own strength. I resolved to see him. I had completely forgotten his faded features, his low-bred manners, his vulgar aspect; I recollected only the fascination of his genius, his letters, and his love. I answered: "I will see you. Find some secure place, but hope for nothing but for what you have asked. Should you seek to abuse my trust, you would be a villain, and I should not fear you.' "Answer: "Your trust would save you from the basest of villains. You will see, madam, that Lelio is not unworthy of it. The Duke has often been good enough to offer me the use of his house in the Rue de Valois. Deign to go thither after the play.' "Some explanations and directions as to the locality of the house followed. "I received this note at four o'clock. The whole negotiation had occupied but a day. I had spent it in wandering through the house like one distracted; I was in a fever. This rapid succession of events bore me along as in a dream. "When I had made the final decision, when it was impossible to draw back, I sank down upon my ottoman, breathless and dizzy. "I was really ill. A surgeon was sent for, and I was bled. I told my servants not to mention my indisposition to any one; for I dreaded the intrusion of officious advisers, and was determined not to be prevented from going out that night. "I threw myself upon my bed to await the appointed hour, and gave orders that no visitors should be admitted. "The blood-letting had relieved and weakened me; I sank into a great depression of spirits. All my illusions vanished with the excitement which had accompanied my fever. Reason and memory returned; I remembered my disenchantment in the coffee-house, and Lelio's wretched appearance there; I prepared to blush for my folly, and to fall from the height of my deceitful visions to a bare and despicable reality. I no longer understood how it had been possible for me to consent to exchange my heroic and romantic tenderness for the revulsion of feeling which awaited me, and the sense of shame which would henceforth poison all my recollections. I bitterly regretted what I had done; I wept my illusions, my love, and that future of pure and secret joys which I was about to forfeit. Above all, I mourned for Lelio, whom in seeing I should for ever lose, in whose love I had found five years of happiness, and for whom in a few hours I should feel nothing but indifference. "In the paroxysm of my grief I violently wrung my arms; the vein re-opened, and I had barely time to ring for my maid, who found me in a swoon upon my bed. A deep and heavy sleep, against which I struggled in vain, seized me. I neither dreamed nor suffered; I was as one dead for several hours. When I again opened my eyes my room was almost dark, my house silent; my waitingwoman was asleep in a chair at the foot of my bed. I remained some time in such a state of numbness and weakness that I recollected nothing. Suddenly my memory returned, and I asked myself whether the hour and the day of rendezvous were passed, whether I had slept an hour or a century; whether I had killed Lelio by breaking my word. Was there yet time? I tried to rise, but my strength failed me. I struggled for some moments as if in a nightmare. At last I summoned all the forces of my will to the assistance of my exhausted body. I sprang to the floor, opened the curtains, and saw the moon shining upon the trees of my garden. I ran to the clock; the hands marked ten. I seized my maid and waked her: 'Quinette, what day of the week is it?' She sprang from her chair, screaming, and tried to escape from me, for she thought me delirious; I reassured her, and learned that I had only slept three hours. I thanked God. I asked for a hackney-coach. Quinette looked at me with amazement. At last she became convinced that I had the full use of my senses, transmitted my order, and began to dress me. "I asked for my simplest dress; I put no ornaments in my hair, and refused to wear any rouge. I wished above all things for Lelio's esteem and respect, for they were far more precious to me than his love. Nevertheless, I was pleased when Quinette, who was much surprised at this new caprice, said, examining me from head to foot: 666 "Come, simpleton, give me my mantle and muff.' "At midnight I was in the house of the Rue de Valois. I was carefully veiled, a sort of valet de chambre received me; he was the only human being to be seen in this mysterious dwelling. He led me through the windings of a dark garden to a pavilion buried in silence and shadow. Depositing his green silk lantern in the vestibule, he opened the door of a large dusky room, showed me by a respectful gesture and with a most impassive face a ray of light proceeding from the other extremity, and said, in a tone so low that it seemed as if he feared to awaken the sleeping echoes: 'Your ladyship is alone, no one else has yet come. Your ladyship will find in the summer parlour a bell which I will answer should you need anything.' He disappeared as if by enchantment, shutting the door upon me. "I was terribly frightened; I thought I had fallen into some trap. I called him back. He instantly reappeared, and his air of stupid solemnity reassured me. I asked him what time it was, although I knew perfectly well, for I had sounded my watch twenty times in the carriage. 'It is midnight, answered he, without raising his eyes. I now resolutely entered the summer parlour, and I realized how unfounded were my fears when I saw that the doors which opened upon the garden were only of painted silk. Nothing could be more charming than this boudoir; it was fitted up as a concert-room. The walls were of stucco as white as snow, and the mirrors were framed in unpolished silver. Musical instruments of unusually rich material were scattered about, upon seats of white velvet trimmed with pearls. The light came from above through leaves of alabaster which formed a dome overhead. This soft even light might have been mistaken for that of the moon. A single statue of white marble stood in the middle of the room; it was an antique, and represented Isis veiled, with her finger upon her lips. The mirrors which reflected us, both pale and draped in white, produced such an illusion upon me that I was obliged to move in order to distinguish my figure from hers. "Truly, madam, I know not how you manage it. You are dressed in a plain white robe, without either train or pannier; you are "Suddenly the silence was interrupted; a ill and as pale as death; you have not even door was opened and closed, and light footput on a patch; yet I never saw you so beauti-steps sounded upon the floor. I sank into a ful as to-night. I pity the men who will look chair more dead than alive, for I was about to upon you!' see Lelio shorn of the illusions of the stage. closed my eyes, and inwardly bade them farewell before I reopened them. "Do you think me so very austere, my poor Quinette?' "Alas! madam, every day I pray Heaven to make me like you; but up to this time' I "But how much was I surprised! Lelio was beautiful as an angel. He had not taken off his stage dress, and it was the most elegant I had seen him wear. His Spanish doublet was of white satin, his shoulder and garter knots of cherry ribbons, and a short cloak of the same colour was thrown over his shoulder. He wore an immense ruff of English lace; his hair was short and unpowdered, partially covered by a cap with white feathers and a diamond rose. In this costume he had just played Don Juan in the Festin de Pierre.' Never had I seen him so beautiful, so young, so poetical, as at that moment. Velasquez would have worshipped such a model. "He knelt before me. I could not help stretching out my hand to him, he seemed so submissive, so fearful of displeasing me. A man sufficiently in love to tremble before a woman was so rare in those times, and this one was thirty-five, and an actor. 'It seemed to me then, it seems to me still, that he was in the first bloom of youth. In his white dress he looked like a young page; his forehead had all the purity, his heart all the ardour of a first love. He took my hands and covered them with kisses. My senses seemed to desert me; I caressed his burning forehead, his stiff black hair, and the brown neck which disappeared in the soft whiteness of his collar. He wept like a woman; I was overwhelmed with his sobs. "I wept delicious tears. I compelled him to raise his head and look at me. How beautiful he was! How splendid, how tender were his eyes! How much fascination his warm true soul communicated to the very defects of his face, and the scars left upon it by time and toil! Oh, the power of the soul! He who understands not its miracles has never loved! When I saw the premature wrinkles upon his beautiful forehead, when I saw the pallor of his lips, the languor of his smile, my heart melted. I felt that I must needs weep for his griefs, his disappointments, the labours of his life. I identified myself with him in all his sorrows, even that of his long hopeless love for me, and I had but one wish-to compensate him for the ills he had suffered. "My dear Lelio, my great Rodrigue, my beautiful Don Juan!' cried I, in my delirium. He spoke to me, he told me all the phases of his love; he told me how from a dissipated actor I had made him a man full of life and ardour; how I had raised him in his own eyes, and restored to him the illusions of his youth; he spoke of his respect, his veneration for me, of his contempt for the species of love which was then in fashion. Never did a more penetrating eloquence speak to the heart of a woman; never did Racine make love utter itself with such a conviction of its own truth, such poetry, such strength. Everything elevated and profound, everything sweet and fiery which passion can inspire, lay in his words, his voice, his eyes, his caresses, and his submission. Alas! did he deceive himself? Was he playing a part?" "I certainly do not think so," cried I, looking at the Marquise. She seemed to grow young as she spoke, and, like the fairy Urgela, to cast off her hundred years. I know not who has said that a woman's heart has no wrinkles. "Listen to the end," said she. "I threw my arms around his neck; I shivered as I touched the satin of his coat, as I breathed the perfume of his hair. My emotion was too violent, and I fainted. "He recalled me to myself by his prompt assistance. I found him still kneeling at my feet. Pity me, kill me,' cried he. He was paler and far more ill than I. "Listen, Lelio,' said I. Here we separate for ever, but let us carry from this place a whole future of blissful thoughts and adored memories. I swear, Lelio, to love you till my death. I swear it without fear, for I feel that the snows of age will not have the power to extinguish this ardent flame.' "Lelio knelt before me; he did not implore me, he did not reproach me; he said that he had not hoped for as much happiness as I had given him, and that he had no right to ask for more. Nevertheless, as he bade me farewell, his despair, the emotion which trembled in his voice, terrified me. I asked him if he would not find happiness in thinking of me, if the ecstacy of our meeting would not lend its charm to all the days of his life, if his past and future sorrows would not be softened each time he recalled it. He roused himself to promise, to swear all I asked. He again fell at my feet and passionately kissed my dress. I made a sign, and he left me. The carriage I had sent for came. The automatic servant of the house knocked three times outside to warn me. Lelio despairingly threw himself in front of the door; he looked like a spectre. I gently repulsed him, and he yielded. I crossed the threshold, and as he attempted to follow me, I showed him a chair in the middle of the room, underneath the statue of Isis. He sat down in it. A passionate smile wandered over his lips, his eyes sent out one more flash of gratitude and love. He was still beautiful, still young, still a grandee of Spain. After a few steps, when I was about to lose him for ever, I turned back and looked at him once more. Despair had |