whenever the bell rang; to estimate the drain of life when a

carriage rolled past without stopping, and left her prostrate.
"Can he be playing with me?" she said, as the clocks struck

midnight.
She grew white; her teeth chattered; she struck her hands

together and leapt up and crossed the boudoir, recollecting as
she did so how often he had come thither without a summons. But

she resigned herself. Had she not seen him grow pale, and start
up under the stinging barbs of irony? Then Mme de Langeais felt

the horror of the woman's appointed lot; a man's is the active
part, a woman must wait passively when she loves. If a woman

goes beyond her beloved, she makes a mistake which few men can
forgive; almost every man would feel that a woman lowers herself

by this piece of angelicflattery. But Armand's was a great
nature; he surely must be one of the very few who can repay such

exceeding love by love that lasts forever.
"Well, I will make the advance," she told herself, as she

tossed on her bed and found no sleep there; "I will go to him.
I will not weary myself with holding out a hand to him, but I

will hold it out. A man of a thousand will see a promise of love
and constancy in every step that a woman takes towards him. Yes,

the angels must come down from heaven to reach men; and I wish to
be an angel for him."

Next day she wrote. It was a billet of the kind in which the
intellects of the ten thousand Sevignes that Paris now can number

particularly excel. And yet only a Duchesse de Langeais, brought
up by Mme la Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, could have written

that delicious note; no other woman could complain without
lowering herself; could spread wings in such a flight without

draggling her pinions in humiliation; rise gracefully in revolt;
scold without giving offence; and pardon without compromising her

personal dignity.
Julien went with the note. Julien, like his kind, was the victim

of love's marches and countermarches.
"What did M. de Montriveau reply?" she asked, as indifferently

as she could, when the man came back to report himself.
"M. le Marquis requested me to tell Mme la Duchesse that it was

all right.
Oh the dreadfulreaction of the soul upon herself! To have her

heart stretched on the rack before curious witnesses; yet not to
utter a sound, to be forced to keep silence! One of the

countless miseries of the rich!
More than three weeks went by. Mme de Langeais wrote again and

again, and no answer came from Montriveau. At last she gave out
that she was ill, to gain a dispensation from attendance on the

Princess and from social duties. She was only at home to her
father the Duc de Navarreins, her aunt the Princesse de

Blamont-Chauvry, the old Vidame de Pamiers (her maternal
great-uncle), and to her husband's uncle, the Duc de Grandlieu.

These persons found no difficulty in believing that the Duchess
was ill, seeing that she grew thinner and paler and more dejected

every day. The vague ardour of love, the smart of wounded pride,
the continual prick of the only scorn that could touch her, the

yearnings towards joys that she craved with a vain continual
longing--all these things told upon her, mind and body; all the

forces of her nature were stimulated to no purpose. She was
paying the arrears of her life of make-believe.

She went out at last to a review. M. de Montriveau was to be
there. For the Duchess, on the balcony of the Tuileries with the

Royal Family, it was one of those festival days that are long
remembered. She looked supremely beautiful in her languor; she

was greeted with admiration in all eyes. It was Montriveau's
presence that made her so fair.

Once or twice they exchanged glances. The General came almost to
her feet in all the glory of that soldier's uniform, which

produces an effect upon the feminineimagination to which the
most prudish will confess. When a woman is very much in love,

and has not seen her lover for two months, such a swift moment
must be something like the phase of a dream when the eyes embrace

a world that stretches away forever. Only women or young men can
imagine the dull, frenzied hunger in the Duchess's eyes. As for

older men, if during the paroxysms of early passion in youth they
had experience of such phenomena of nervous power; at a later day

it is so completely forgotten that they deny the very existence
of the luxuriantecstasy--the only name that can be given to

these wonderful intuitions. Religious ecstasy is the aberration
of a soul that has shaken off its bonds of flesh; whereas in

amorous ecstasy all the forces of soul and body are embraced and
blended in one. If a woman falls a victim to the tyrannous

frenzy before which Mme de Langeais was forced to bend, she will
take one decisiveresolution after another so swiftly that it is

impossible to give account of them. Thought after thought rises
and flits across her brain, as clouds are whirled by the wind

across the grey veil of mist that shuts out the sun. Thenceforth
the facts reveal all. And the facts are these.

The day after the review, Mme de Langeais sent her carriage and
liveried servants to wait at the Marquis de Montriveau's door

from eight o'clock in the morning till three in the afternoon.
Armand lived in the Rue de Tournon, a few steps away from the

Chamber of Peers, and that very day the House was sitting; but
long before the peers returned to their palaces, several people

had recognised the Duchess's carriage and liveries. The first of
these was the Baron de Maulincour. That young officer had met

with disdain from Mme de Langeais and a better reception from Mme
de Serizy; he betook himself at once therefore to his mistress,

and under seal of secrecy told her of this strange freak.
In a moment the news was spread with telegraphic speed through

all the coteries in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; it reached the
Tuileries and the Elysee-Bourbon; it was the sensation of the

day, the matter of all the talk from noon till night. Almost
everywhere the women denied the facts, but in such a manner that

the report was confirmed; the men one and all believed it, and
manifested a most indulgent interest in Mme de Langeais. Some

among them threw the blame on Armand.
"That savage of a Montriveau is a man of bronze," said they;

"he insisted on making this scandal, no doubt."
"Very well, then," others replied, "Mme de Langeais has been

guilty of a most generous piece of imprudence. To renounce the
world and rank, and fortune, and consideration for her lover's

sake, and that in the face of all Paris, is as fine a coup d'etat
for a woman as that barber's knife-thrust, which so affected

Canning in a court of assize. Not one of the women who blame the
Duchess would make a declarationworthy of ancient times. It is

heroic of Mme de Langeais to proclaim herself so frankly. Now
there is nothing left to her but to love Montriveau. There must

be something great about a woman if she says, `I will have but
one passion.' "

"But what is to become of society, monsieur, if you honour vice
in this way without respect for virtue?" asked the Comtesse de

Granville, the attorney-general's wife.
While the Chateau, the Faubourg, and the Chaussee d'Antin were

discussing the shipwreck of aristocraticvirtue; while excited
young men rushed about on horseback to make sure that the

carriage was standing in the Rue de Tournon, and the Duchess in
consequence was beyond a doubt in M. de Montriveau's rooms, Mme

de Langeais, with heavy throbbing pulses, was lying hidden away
in her boudoir. And Armand?--he had been out all night, and at

that moment was walking with M. de Marsay in the Gardens of the
Tuileries. The elder members, of Mme de Langeais's family were

engaged in calling upon one another, arranging to read her a
homily and to hold a consultation as to the best way of putting a

stop to the scandal.
At three o'clock, therefore, M. le Duc de Navarreins, the Vidame

de Pamiers, the old Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, and the Duc de
Grandlieu were assembled in Mme la Duchesse de Langeais's

drawing-room. To them, as to all curious enquirers, the servants
said that their mistress was not at home; the Duchess had made no

exceptions to her orders. But these four personages shone
conspicuous in that lofty sphere, of which the revolutions and