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Madame Julie Roubere
was expecting her elder sister, Madame Henriette Letore, who had
just returned from a trip to Switzerland.
The Letore household had left nearly five weeks before. Madame
Henriette had allowed her husband to return alone to their estate in
Calvados, where some business required his attention, and had come
to spend a few days in Paris with her sister. Night came on. In the
quiet parlor Madame Roubere was reading in the twilight in an
absent-minded way, raising her eyes whenever she heard a sound.
At last, she heard a ring at the door, and her sister appeared,
wrapped in a travelling cloak. And without any formal greeting, they
clasped each other in an affectionate embrace, only desisting for a
moment to give each other another hug. Then they talked about their
health, about their respective families, and a thousand other
things, gossiping, jerking out hurried, broken sentences as they
followed each other about, while Madame Henriette was removing her
hat and veil.
It was now quite dark. Madame Roubere rang for a lamp, and as soon
as it was brought in, she scanned her sister's face, and was on the
point of embracing her once more. But she held back, scared and
astonished at the other's appearance.
On her temples Madame Letore had two large locks of white hair. All
the rest of her hair was of a glossy, raven-black hue; but there
alone, at each side of her head, ran, as it were, two silvery
streams which were immediately lost in the black mass surrounding
them. She was, nevertheless, only twenty-four years old, and this
change had come on suddenly since her departure for Switzerland.
Without moving, Madame Roubere gazed at her in amazement, tears
rising to her eyes, as she thought that some mysterious and terrible
calamity must have befallen her sister. She asked:
"What is the matter with you, Henriette?"
Smiling with a sad face, the smile of one who is heartsick, the
other replied:
"Why, nothing, I assure you. Were you noticing my white hair?"
But Madame Roubere impetuously seized her by the shoulders, and with
a searching glance at her, repeated:
"What is the matter with you? Tell me what is the matter with you.
And if you tell me a falsehood, I'll soon find it out."
They remained face to face, and Madame Henriette, who looked as if
she were about to faint, had two pearly tears in the corners of her
drooping eyes.
Her sister continued:
"What has happened to you? What is the matter with you? Answer me!"
Then, in a subdued voice, the other murmured:
"I have--I have a lover."
And, hiding her forehead on the shoulder of her younger sister, she
sobbed.
Then, when she had grown a little calmer, when the heaving of her
breast had subsided, she commenced to unbosom herself, as if to cast
forth this secret from herself, to empty this sorrow of hers into a
sympathetic heart.
Thereupon, holding each other's hands tightly clasped, the two women
went over to a sofa in a dark corner of the room, into which they
sank, and the younger sister, passing her arm over the elder one's
neck, and drawing her close to her heart, listened.
"Oh! I know that there was no excuse for me; I do not understand
myself, and since that day I feel as if I were mad. Be careful, my
child, about yourself--be careful! If you only knew how weak we are,
how quickly we yield, and fall. It takes so little, so little, so
little, a moment of tenderness, one of those sudden fits of
melancholy which come over you, one of those longings to open, your
arms, to love, to cherish something, which we all have at certain
moments.
"You know my husband, and you know how fond I am of him; but he is
mature and sensible, and cannot even comprehend the tender
vibrations of a woman's heart. He is always the same, always good,
always smiling, always kind, always perfect. Oh! how I sometimes
have wished that he would clasp me roughly in his arms, that he
would embrace me with those slow, sweet kisses which make two beings
intermingle, which are like mute confidences! How I have wished that
he were foolish, even weak, so that he should have need of me, of my
caresses, of my tears!
"This all seems very silly; but we women are made like that. How can
we help it?
"And yet the thought of deceiving him never entered my mind. Now it
has happened, without love, without reason, without anything, simply
because the moon shone one night on the Lake of Lucerne.
"During the month when we were travelling together, my husband, with
his calm indifference, paralyzed my enthusiasm, extinguished my
poetic ardor. When we were descending the mountain paths at sunrise,
when as the four horses galloped along with the diligence, we saw,
in the transparent morning haze, valleys, woods, streams, and
villages, I clasped my hands with delight, and said to him: 'How
beautiful it is, dear! Give me a kiss! Kiss me now!' He only
answered, with a smile of chilling kindliness: 'There is no reason
why we should kiss each other because you like the landscape.'
"And his words froze me to the heart. It seems to me that when
people love each other, they ought to feel more moved by love than
ever, in the presence of beautiful scenes.
"In fact, I was brimming over with poetry which he kept me from
expressing. I was almost like a boiler filled with steam and
hermetically sealed .
"One evening (we had for four days been staying in a hotel at
Fluelen) Robert, having one of his sick headaches, went to bed
immediately after dinner, and I went to take a walk all alone along
the edge of the lake.
"It was a night such as one reads of in fairy tales. The full moon
showed itself in the middle of the sky; the tall mountains, with
their snowy crests, seemed to wear silver crowns; the waters of the
lake glittered with tiny shining ripples. The air was mild, with
that kind of penetrating warmth which enervates us till we are ready
to faint, to be deeply affected without any apparent cause. But how
sensitive, how vibrating the heart is at such moments! how quickly
it beats, and how intense is its emotion!
"I sat down on the grass, and gazed at that vast, melancholy, and
fascinating lake, and a strange feeling arose in me; I was seized
with an insatiable need of love, a revolt against the gloomy
dullness of my life. What! would it never be my fate to wander, arm
in arm, with a man I loved, along a moon-kissed bank like this? Was
I never to feel on my lips those kisses so deep, delicious, and
intoxicating which lovers exchange on nights that seem to have been
made by God for tenderness? Was I never to know ardent, feverish
love in the moonlit shadows of a summer's night?
"And I burst out weeping like a crazy woman. I heard something
stirring behind me. A man stood there, gazing at me. When I turned
my head round, he recognized me, and, advancing, said:
"'You are weeping, madame?'
"It was a young barrister who was travelling with his mother, and
whom we had often met. His eyes had frequently followed me.
"I was so confused that I did not know what answer to give or what
to think of the situation. I told him I felt ill.
"He walked on by my side in a natural and respectful manner, and
began talking to me about what we had seen during our trip. All that
I had felt he translated into words; everything that made me thrill
he understood perfectly, better than I did myself. And all of a
sudden he repeated some verses of Alfred de Musset. I felt myself
choking, seized with indescribable emotion. It seemed to me that the
mountains themselves, the lake, the moonlight, were singing to me
about things ineffably sweet.
"And it happened, I don't know how, I don't know why, in a sort of
hallucination.
"As for him, I did not see him again till the morning of his
departure.
"He gave me his card!"
And, sinking into her sister's arms, Madame Letore broke into
groans-- almost into shrieks.
Then, Madame Roubere, with a self-contained and serious air, said
very gently:
"You see, sister, very often it is not a man that we love, but love
itself. And your real lover that night was the moonlight."