“I reproach myself, young man,” said the former, “in having kept you so long away from the ladies.  I give you back your liberty—­I shall cast my eye on the journals.”

“There is nothing new in them, I think,” said Camors, rising.  He took up a newspaper himself, and placing his back against the mantelpiece, warmed his feet, one after the other.  The General threw himself on the divan, ran his eye over the ‘Moniteur de l’Armee’, approving of some military promotions, and criticising others; and, little by little, he fell into a doze, his head resting on his chest.

But Camors was not reading.  He listened vaguely to the music of the orchestra, and fell into a reverie.  Through these harmonies, through the murmurs and warm perfume of the ball, he followed, in thought, all the evolutions of her who was mistress and queen of all.  He saw her proud and supple step—­he heard her grave and musical voice—­he felt her breath.

This young man had exhausted everything.  Love and pleasure had no longer for him secrets or temptations; but his imagination, cold and blase, had arisen all inflamed before this beautiful, living, palpitating statue.  She was really for him more than a woman—­more than a mortal.  The antique fables of amorous goddesses and drunken Bacchantes—­the superhuman voluptuousness unknown in terrestrial pleasures—­were in reach of his hand, separated from him only by the shadow of this sleeping old man.  But a shadow was ever between them—­it was honor.

His eyes, as if lost in thought, were fixed straight before him on the curtain opposite the chimney.  Suddenly this curtain was noiselessly raised, and the young Marquise appeared, her brow surmounted by her coronet.  She threw a rapid glance over the boudoir, and after a moment’s pause, let the curtain fall gently, and advanced directly toward Camors, who stood dazzled and immovable.  She took both his hands, without speaking, looked at his steadily—­throwing a rapid glance at her husband, who still slept—­and, standing on tiptoe, offered her lips to the young man.

Bewildered, and forgetting all else, he bent, and imprinted a kiss on her lips.

At that very moment, the General made a sudden movement and woke up; but the same instant the Marquise was standing before him, her hands resting on the card-table; and smiling upon him, she said, “Good-morning, my General!”

The General murmured a few words of apology, but she laughingly pushed him back on his divan.

“Continue your nap,” she said; “I have come in search of my cousin, for the last cotillon.”  The General obeyed.

She passed out by the gallery.  The young man; pale as a spectre, followed her.

Passing under the curtain, she turned toward him with a wild light burning in her eyes.  Then, before she was lost in the throng, she whispered, in a low, thrilling voice: 

“There is the crime!”

CHAPTER XIII