on night, confiding in solitude, I kept my tears sealed, my sobs chained, no longer. They heaved my heart; they tore their way. In this house, what grief could be sacred?
Soon after eleven o’clock—a very late hour in the Rue Fossette—the door unclosed, quietly but not stealthily; a lamp’s flame invaded the moonlight. Madame Beck entered, with the same composed air as if coming on an ordinary occasion, at an ordinary season. Instead of at once addressing me, she went to her desk, took her keys, and seemed to seek something. She loitered over this feigned search long, too long. She was calm, too calm. My mood scarce endured the pretence. Driven beyond common range, two hours since I had left behind me wonted respects and fears. Led by a touch and ruled by a word under usual circumstances, no yoke could now be borne, no curb obeyed.
“It is more than time for retirement,” said madame. “The rule of the house has already been transgressed too long.”
Madame met no answer. I did not check my walk. When she came in my way I put her out of it.
“Let me persuade you to calm, meess; let me lead you to your chamber,” said she, trying to speak softly.
“No!” I said. “Neither you nor another shall persuade or lead me.”
“Your bed shall be warmed. Goton is sitting up still. She shall make you comfortable. She shall give you a sedative.”
“Madame,” I broke out, “you are a sensualist. Under all your serenity, your peace, and your decorum, you are an undenied sensualist. Make your own bed warm and soft; take sedatives and meats, and drinks spiced and sweet, as much as you will. If you have any sorrow or disappointment (and perhaps you have—nay, I know you have) seek your own palliatives in your own chosen resources. Leave me, however. Leave me, I say!”
“I must send another to watch you, meess; I must send Goton.”
“I forbid it. Let me alone. Keep your hand off me, and my life, and my troubles. O madame! in your hand there is both chill and poison. You envenom and you paralyze.”
“What have I done, meess? You must not marry Paul. He cannot marry.”
“Dog in the manger!” I said, for I knew she secretly wanted him, and had always wanted him. She called him “insupportable;” she railed at him for a “devot.” She did not love; but she wanted to marry, that she might bind him to her interest. Deep into some of madame’s secrets I had entered, I know not how—by an intuition or an inspiration which came to me, I know not whence. In the course of living with her, too, I had slowly learned that, unless with an inferior, she must ever be a rival. She was my rival, heart and soul, though secretly, under the smoothest bearing, and utterly unknown to all save her and myself.
Two minutes I stood over madame, feeling that the whole woman was in my power, because in some moods, such as the present, in some stimulated states of perception, like that of this instant, her habitual disguise, her mask, and her domino were to me a mere network reticulated with holes; and I saw underneath a being heartless, self-indulgent, and ignoble. She quietly retreated from me. Meek and self-possessed, though very uneasy, she said, “If I would not be persuaded to take rest, she must reluctantly leave me.” Which she did incontinent, perhaps even more glad to get away than I was to see her vanish.
This was the sole flash-eliciting, truth-extorting rencontre which ever occurred between me and Madame Beck; this short night-scene was never repeated. It did not one whit change her manner to me. I do not know that she revenged it. I do not know that she hated me the worse for my fell candour. I think she bucklered herself with the secret philosophy of her strong mind, and resolved to forget what it irked her