after dinner, in the salon of the bells, under the lamps from which the great shades permitted only an obscure light to filter, good madame marmet was warming herself by the hearth, with a white cat on her knees. the evening was cool. madame martin, her eyes reminiscent of the golden light, the violet peaks, and the ancient trees of florence, smiled with happy fatigue. she had gone with miss bell, dechartre, and madame marmet to the chartrist convent of ema. and now, in the intoxication of her visions, she forgot the care of the day before, the importunate letters, the distant reproaches, and thought of nothing in the world but cloisters chiselled and painted, villages with red roofs, and roads where she saw the first blush of spring. dechartre had modelled for miss bell a waxen figure of beatrice. vivian was painting angels. softly bent over her, prince albertinelli caressed his beard and threw around him glances that appeared to seek admiration.
replying to a reflection of vivian bell on marriage and love:
“a woman must choose,” he said. “with a man whom women love her heart is not quiet. with a man whom the women do not love she is not happy.”
“darling,” asked miss bell, “what would you wish for a friend dear to you?”
“i should wish, vivian, that my friend were happy. i should wish also that she were quiet. she should be quiet in hatred of treason, humiliating suspicions, and mistrust.”
“but, darling, since the prince has said that a woman can not have at the same time happiness and security, tell me what your friend should choose.”
“one never chooses, vivian; one never chooses. do not make me say what i think of marriage.”
at this moment choulette appeared, wearing the magnificent air of those beggars of whom small towns are proud. he had played briscola with peasants in a coffeehouse of fiesole.
“here is monsieur choulette,” said miss bell. “he will teach what we are to think of marriage. i am inclined to listen to him as to an oracle. he does not see the things that we see, and he sees things that we do not see. monsieur choulette, what do you think of marriage?”
he took a seat and lifted in the air a socratic finger:
“are you speaking, mademoiselle, of the solemn union between man and woman? in this sense, marriage is a sacrament. but sometimes, alas! it is almost a sacrilege. as for civil marriage, it is a formality. the importance given to it in our society is an idiotic thing which would have made the women of other times laugh. we owe this prejudice, like many others, to the bourgeois, to the mad performances of a lot of financiers which have been called the revolution, and which seem admirable to those that have profited by it. civil marriage is, in reality, only registry, like many others which the state exacts in order to be sure of the condition of persons: in every well organized state everybody must be indexed. morally, this registry in a big ledger has not even the virtue of inducing a wife to take a lover. who ever thinks of betraying an oath taken before a mayor? in order to find joy in adultery, one must be pious.”
“but, monsieur,” said therese, “we were married at the church.”
then, with an accent of sincerity:
“i can not understand how a man ever makes up his mind to marry; nor how a woman, after she has reached an age when she knows what she is doing, can commit that folly.”
the prince looked at her with distrust. he was clever, but he was incapable of conceiving that one might talk without an object, disinterestedly, and to express general ideas. he imagined that countess martin-belleme was suggesting to him projects that she wished him to consider. and as he was thinking of defending himself and also avenging himself, he made velvet eyes at her and talked with tender gallantry:
“you display, madame, the pride of the beautiful and intelligent french women whom subjection irritates. french women love liberty, and none of them is as worthy of liberty as you. i have lived in france a little. i have known and admired the elegant society of paris, the salons, the festivals, the conversations, the plays. but in our mountains, under our olive-trees, we become rustic again. we assume golden-age manners, and marriage is for us an idyl full of freshness.”
vivian bell examined the statuette which dechartre had left on the table.
“oh! it was thus that beatrice looked, i am sure. and do you know, monsieur dechartre, there are wicked men who say that beatrice never existed?”
choulette declared he wished to be counted among those wicked men. he did not believe that beatrice had any more reality than other ladies through whom ancient poets who sang of love represented some scholastic idea, ridiculously subtle.
impatient at praise which was not destined for himself, jealous of dante as of the universe, a refined man of letters, choulette continued:
“i suspect that the little sister of the angels never lived, except in the imagination of the poet. it seems a pure allegory, or, rather, an exercise in arithmetic or a theme of astrology. dante, who was a good doctor of bologna and had many moons in his head, under his pointed cap — dante believed in the virtue of numbers. that inflamed mathematician dreamed of figures, and his beatrice is the flower of arithmetic, that is all.”
and he lighted his pipe.
vivian bell exclaimed:
“oh, do not talk in that way, monsieur choulette. you grieve me much, and if our friend monsieur gebhart heard you, he would not be pleased with you. to punish you, prince albertinelli will read to you the canticle in which beatrice explains the spots on the moon. take the divine comedy, eusebio. it is the white book which you see on the table. open it and read it.”
during the prince’s reading, dechartre, seated on the couch near countess martin, talked of dante with enthusiasm as the best sculptor among the poets. he recalled to therese the painting they had seen together two days before, on the door of the servi, a fresco almost obliterated, where one hardly divined the presence of the poet wearing a laurel wreath, florence, and the seven circles. this was enough to exalt the artist. but she had distinguished nothing, she had not been moved. and then she confessed that dante did not attract her. dechartre, accustomed to her sharing all his ideas of art and poetry, felt astonishment and some discontent. he said, aloud:
“there are many grand and strong things which you do not feel.”
miss bell, lifting her head, asked what were these things that “darling” did not feel; and when she learned that it was the genius of dante, she exclaimed, in mock anger:
“oh, do you not honor the father, the master worthy of all praise, the god? i do not love you any more, darling. i detest you.”
and, as a reproach to choulette and to the countess martin, she recalled the piety of that citizen of florence who took from the altar the candles that had been lighted in honor of christ, and placed them before the bust of dante.
the prince resumed his interrupted reading. dechartre persisted in trying to make therese admire what she did not know. certainly he would have easily sacrificed dante and all the poets of the universe for her. but near him, tranquil, and an object of desire, she irritated him, almost without his realizing it, by the charm of her laughing beauty. he persisted in imposing on her his ideas, his artistic passions, even his fantasy, and his capriciousness. he insisted in a low tone, in phrases concise and quarrelsome. she said:
“oh, how violent you are!”
then he bent to her ear, and in an ardent voice, which he tried to soften:
“you must take me with my own soul!”
therese felt a shiver of fear mingled with joy.
