on the right, without knowing, indeed, which was on the left or which on the right, which was mother, which was daughter.  He abandoned himself willingly to the pleasure of unpremeditated and exquisite sensuous delight.  He even tried to mingle them in his heart, not to distinguish them in his thought, and quieted desire with the charm of this confusion.  Was it not only one woman beside him, composed of this mother and daughter, so much alike?  And did not the daughter seem to have come to earth only for the purpose of reanimating his former love for the mother?

When he opened his eyes on entering the castle, it seemed to him that he had just passed through the most delicious moments of his life; that he had experienced the strangest, the most puzzling, yet complete emotion a man might feel, intoxicated with the same love by the seductiveness emanating from two women.

“Ah, what an exquisite evening!” said he, as soon as he found himself between them in the lamplight.

“I am not at all sleepy,” said Annette; “I could pass the whole night walking when the weather is fine.”

The Countess looked at the clock.

“Oh, it is half after eleven.  You must go to bed, my child.”

They separated, and went to their own apartments.  The young girl who did not wish to go to bed was the only one that went to sleep at once.

The next morning, at the usual hour, when the maid, after opening the curtains and the shutters, brought the tea and looked at her mistress, who was still drowsy, she said: 

“Madame looks better to-day, already.”

“Do you think so?”

“Oh, yes.  Madame’s face looks more rested.”

Though she had not yet looked at herself, the Countess knew that this was true.  Her heart was light, she did not feel it throb, and she felt once more as if she lived.  The blood flowing in her veins was no longer coursing so rapidly as on the day before, hot and feverish, sending nervousness and restlessness through all her body, but gave her a sense of well-being and happy confidence.

When the maid had gone she went to look at herself in the mirror.  She was a little surprised, for she felt so much better that she expected to find herself rejuvenated by several years in a single night.  Then she realized the childishness of such a hope, and, after another glance, resigned herself to the knowledge that her complexion was only clearer, her eyes less fatigued, her lips a little redder than on the day before.  As her soul was content, she could not feel sad, and she smiled, thinking:  “Yes, in a few days I shall be quite myself again.  I have gone through too much to recover so quickly.”

But she remained seated a very long time before her toilet-table, upon which were laid out in graceful order on a muslin scarf bordered with lace, before a beautiful mirror of cut crystal, all her little ivory-handled instruments of coquetry, bearing her arms surmounted by a coronet.  There they were, innumerable, pretty, all different, destined for delicate and secret use, some of steel, fine and sharp, of strange shapes, like surgical instruments for operations on children, others round and soft, of feathers, of down, of the skins of unknown animals, made to lay upon the tender skin the caresses of fragrant powders or of powerful liquid perfumes.