but Certainty let loose upon her other proofs. Grown bold and
insolent, Beatrix wrote to Calyste at his own home; Madame du Guenic
received the letter, and gave it to her husband without opening it,
but she said to him, in a changed voice and with death in her soul:
"My friend, that letter is from the Jockey Club; I recognize both the
paper and the perfume."

Calyste colored, and put the letter into his pocket.

"Why don't you read it?"

"I know what it is about."

The young wife sat down. No longer did fever burn her, she wept no
more; but madness such as, in feeble beings, gives birth to miracles
of crime, madness which lays hands on arsenic for themselves or for
their rivals, possessed her. At this moment little Calyste was brought
in, and she took him in her arms to dance him. The child, just
awakened, sought the breast beneath the gown.

"He remembers,--he, at any rate," she said in a low voice.

Calyste went to his own room to read his letter. When he was no longer
present the poor young woman burst into tears, and wept as women weep
when they are all alone.

Pain, as well as pleasure, has its initiation. The first crisis, like
that in which poor Sabine nearly succumbed, returns no more than the
first fruits of other things return. It is the first wedge struck in
the torture of the heart; all others are expected, the shock to the