This is the place to record a new effect of that great law of contraries, which produces so many crises in the human heart and accounts for such varied eccentricities that we are forced to remember it sometimes as well as its counterpart, the law of similitudes.  All courtesans preserve in the depths of their heart a perennial desire to recover their liberty; to this they would sacrifice everything.  They feel this antithetical need with such intensity that it is rare to meet with one of these women who has not aspired several times to a return to virtue through love.  They are not discouraged by the most cruel deceptions.  On the other hand, women restrained by their education, by the station they occupy, chained by the rank of their families, living in the midst of opulence, and wearing a halo of virtue, are drawn at times, secretly be it understood, toward the tropical regions of love.  These two natures of woman, so opposed to each other, have at the bottom of their hearts, the one that faint desire for virtue, the other that faint desire for libertinism which Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the first to have the courage to diagnose.  In one, it is a last reflexion of the ray divine that is not extinct; in the other, it is the last remains of our primitive clay.

This claw of the beast was rapped, this hair of the devil was pulled by Nathan with extreme cleverness.  The marquise began to ask herself seriously if, up to the present time, she had not been the dupe of her head, and whether her education was complete.  Vice—­what is it?  Possibly only the desire to know everything.

XXVI

DISILLUSIONS—­IN ALL BUT LA FONTAINE’S FABLES

The next day Calyste seemed to Beatrix just what he was:  a perfect and loyal gentleman without imagination or cleverness.  In Paris, a man called clever must have spontaneous brilliancy, as the fountains have water; men of the world and Parisians in general are in that way very clever.  But Calyste loved too deeply, he was too much absorbed in his own sentiments to perceive the change in Beatrix, and to satisfy her need by displaying new resources.  To her, he seemed pale indeed, after the brilliancy of the night before, and he caused not the faintest emotion to the hungry Beatrix.  A great love is a credit opened to a power so voracious that bankruptcy is sure to come sooner or later.

In spite of the fatigue of this day (the day when a woman is bored by a lover) Beatrix trembled with fear at the thought of a possible meeting between La Palferine and Calyste, a man of courage without assertion.  She hesitated to see the count again; but the knot of her hesitation was cut by a decisive event.