Villette

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 ›dévot;‹ 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 to remember. I know that to the end of our mutual lives there occurred no repetition of, no allusion to, that fiery passage.
    That night passed: all nights – even the starless night before dissolution – must wear away. About six o'clock, the hour which called up the household, I went out to the court, and washed my face in its cold, fresh, well-water. Entering by the carré, a piece of mirror-glass, set in an oaken cabinet, repeated my image. It said I was changed; my cheeks and lips were sodden-white, my eyes were glassy, and my eye-lids swollen and purple.
    On rejoining my companions, I knew they all looked at me – my heart seemed discovered to them; I believed myself self-betrayed. Hideously certain did it seem that the very youngest of the school must guess why and for whom I despaired.
    »Isabelle,« the child whom I had once nursed in sickness, approached me. Would she, too, mock me?
    »Que vous êtes pâle! Vous êtes donc bien malade, mademoiselle!« said she, putting her finger in her mouth, and staring with a wistful stupidity which at the moment seemed to me more beautiful than the keenest intelligence.
    Isabelle did not long stand alone in the recommendation of ignorance; before the day was over, I gathered cause of gratitude towards the whole blind household. The multitude have something else to do than to read hearts and interpret dark sayings. Who wills, may keep his own counsel – be his own secret's sovereign. In the course of that day, proof met me on proof, not only that the cause of my present sorrow was unguessed, but that my whole inner life for the last six months, was still mine only. It was not known – it had not been noted – that I held in peculiar value one life among all lives. Gossip had passed me by; curiosity had looked me over: both subtle influences, hovering always round, had never become centred upon me. A given organization may live in a full fever-hospital, and escape typhus. M. Emanuel had come and gone; I had been taught and sought; in season and out of season he had called me, and I had obeyed him: »M. Paul wants Miss Lucy« – »Miss Lucy is with M. Paul« – such had been the perpetual bulletin; and nobody commented, far less condemned. Nobody hinted, nobody jested. Madame Beck read the riddle; none else resolved it. What I now suffered was called illness – a headache: I accepted the baptism.
    But what bodily illness was ever like this pain? This certainty that he was gone without a farewell – this cruel conviction that fate and pursuing furies – a woman's envy and a priest's bigotry – would suffer me to see him no more? What wonder that the second evening found me like the first – untamed, tortured, again pacing a solitary room in an unalterable passion of silent desolation?
    Madame Beck did not