"I do not hinder you, Chevalier!" she replied, with a laugh of incredulity, "but you do not do it! It is only your politeness to say that. I have told you that the pleasure of a woman is in the fidelity of her lover; tell me now, Chevalier, what is the highest pleasure of a man?"
"The beauty and condescension of his mistress,--at least, I know none greater." Bigot looked at her as if his speech ought to receive acknowledgement on the spot.
"And it is your politeness to say that, also, Chevalier!" replied she very coolly.
"I wish I could say of your condescension, Angelique, what I have said of your beauty: Francois Bigot would then feel the highest pleasure of a man." The Intendant only half knew the woman he was seeking to deceive. She got angry.
Angelique looked up with a scornful flash. "My condescension, Chevalier? to what have I not condescended on the faith of your solemn promise that the lady of Beaumanoir should not remain under your roof? She is still there, Chevalier, in spite of your promise!"
Bigot was on the point of denying the fact, but there was sharpness in Angelique's tone, and clearness of all doubt in her eyes. He saw he would gain nothing by denial.
"She knows the whole secret, I do believe!" muttered he. "Argus with his hundred eyes was a blind man compared to a woman's two eyes sharpened by jealousy."
"The lady of Beaumanoir accuses me of no sin that I repent of!" replied he. "True! I promised to send her away, and so I will; but she is a woman, a lady, who has claims upon me for gentle usage. If it were your case, Angelique--"
Angelique quitted his arm and stood confronting him, flaming with indignation. She did not let him finish his sentence: "If it were my case, Bigot! as if that could ever be my case, and you alive to speak of it!"
Bigot stepped backwards. He was not sure but a poniard glittered in the clenched hand of Angelique. It was but the flash of her diamond rings as she lifted it suddenly. She almost struck him.
"Do not blame me for infidelities committed before I knew you, Angelique!" said he, seizing her hand, which he held forcibly in his, in spite of her efforts to wrench it away.
"It is my nature to worship beauty at every shrine. I have ever done so until I found the concentration of all my divinities in you.
I could not, if I would, be unfaithful to you, Angelique des Meloises!" Bigot was a firm believer in the classical faith that Jove laughs at lovers' perjuries.
"You mock me, Bigot!" replied she. "You are the only man who has ever dared to do so twice."
"When did I mock you twice, Angelique?" asked he, with an air of injured innocence.
"Now! and when you pledged yourself to remove the lady of Beaumanoir from your house! I admire your courage, Bigot, in playing false with me and still hoping to win! But never speak to me more of love while that pale spectre haunts the secret chambers of the Chateau!"
"She shall be removed, Angelique, since you insist upon it," replied he, secretly irritated; "but where is the harm? I pledge my faith she shall not stand in the way of my love for you."
"Better she were dead than do so!" whispered Angelique to herself.
"It is my due, Bigot!" replied she aloud, "you know what I have given up for your sake!"
"Yes! I know you have banished Le Gardeur de Repentigny when it had been better to keep him securely in the ranks of the Grand Company.
Why did you refuse to marry him, Angelique?"
The question fairly choked her with anger. "Why did I refuse to marry him? Francois Bigot! Do you ask me seriously that question?
Did you not tell me of your own love, and all but offer me your hand, giving me to understand--miserable sinner that you are, or as you think me to be--that you pledged your own faith to me, as first in your choice, and I have done that which I had better have been dead and buried with the heaviest pyramid of Egypt on top of me, buried without hope of resurrection, than have done?"
Bigot, accustomed as he was to woman's upbraidings, scarcely knew what to reply to this passionate outburst. He had spoken to her words of love, plenty of them, but the idea of marriage had not flashed across his mind for a moment,--not a word of that had escaped his lips. He had as little guessed the height of Angelique's ambition as she the depths of his craft and wickedness, and yet there was a wonderful similarity between the characters of both,--the same bold, defiant spirit, the same inordinate ambition, the same void of principle in selecting means to ends,--only the one fascinated with the lures of love, the other by the charms of wit, the temptations of money, or effected his purposes by the rough application of force.
"You call me rightly a miserable sinner," said he, half smiling, as one not very miserable although a sinner. "If love of fair women be a sin, I am one of the greatest of sinners; and in your fair presence, Angelique, I am sinning at this moment enough to sink a shipload of saints and angels!"
"You have sunk me in my own and the world's estimation, if you mean what you say, Bigot!" replied she, unconsciously tearing in strips the fan she held in her hand. "You love all women too well ever to be capable of fixing your heart upon one!" A tear, of vexation perhaps, stood in her angry eye as she said this, and her cheek twitched with fierce emotion.
"Come, Angelique!" said he, soothingly, "some of our guests have entered this alley. Let us walk down to the terrace. The moon is shining bright over the broad river, and I will swear to you by St.
Picaut, my patron, whom I never deceive, that my love for all womankind has not hindered me from fixing my supreme affection upon you."
Angelique allowed him to press her hand, which he did with fervor.
She almost believed his words. She could scarcely imagine another woman seriously preferred to herself, when she chose to flatter a man with a belief of her own preference for him.
They walked down a long alley brilliantly illuminated with lamps of Bohemian glass, which shone like the diamonds, rubies, and emeralds which grew upon the trees in the garden of Aladdin.