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falsehoods: She couldn’t live without me; I was the only man for her in all the world; she feared she might bore me, as my presence stripped her of her wit; when I was beside her, her every faculty turned solely to love; she was too full of tenderness not to be frightened; for six months she’d been seeking the manner to bind me to her eternally, and for that, the good Lord above alone knew the way—in short, she made of me her god!”
    The women listening to de Marsay seemed put out to see themselves so skillfully mimicked, for he accompanied these words with expressions, simperings, and sidelong glances that created the perfect illusion.
    “Just when I was on the point of believing those adorable untruths, still holding her moist hand in mine, I asked, ‘And when do you marry the duke?’ That stab was so point-blank, my eyes staring so straight into hers, and her hand so gently laid in my own, that the start she then gave, however slight, could not be entirely concealed; her gaze faltered, and a faint blush tinged her cheeks. ‘The duke! Why, what do you mean?’ she answered, feigning astonishment. ‘I know all,’ I told her, ‘and my advice is to delay no longer. He’s a rich man, a duke, but he’s not merely devout, he’s religious! Thanks to his scruples, I’ve no doubt you’ve been faithful to me. I can’t tell you how urgent it is that you compromise him before himself and before God, otherwise you’ll never be done with it.’ ‘Am I dreaming?’ she said, clapping her hand against her brow—La Malibran’s celebrated gesture, fifteen years before La Malibran . ‘Come now, my angel, don’t be childish,’ I said, attempting to take her hands in mine. But she crossed her arms over her waist with an air of offended virtue. ‘Marry him, I have no objection,’ I went on, answering her gesture with a polite vous . ‘You can do better than me, and I urge you to do so.’ ‘But,’ she said, falling to her knees, ‘there’s been some terrible misunderstanding: You’re all I love in this world; you may ask me to prove it however you like.’ ‘Stand up, my dear, and do me the honor of speaking the truth.’ ‘As if before God.’ ‘Do you doubt my love?’ ‘No.’ ‘My fidelity?’ ‘No.’ ‘Well, I have committed the gravest of all crimes,’ I answered. ‘I have doubted your love and fidelity. Between two moments of bliss, I began to look around me dispassionately.’ ‘Dispassionately!’ she cried, with a mournful sigh. ‘That’s all I need to know. Henri, you don’t love me anymore.’ As you see, she’d already found a way out. In these sorts of scenes, an adverb is a most dangerous thing. But fortunately curiosity compelled her to ask, ‘And what did you see? Have I ever spoken to the duke other than in society? Did you once glimpse, in my eye—’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘in his. And eight times you took me to Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin to see you hearing the same mass as he.’ ‘Ah!’ she cried at last, ‘so I’ve made you jealous.’ ‘Oh! I’d be happy to be jealous,’ I said, admiring the agility of her intelligence, those acrobatics that succeed in dazzling only the blind. ‘But all those hours in church made me skeptical. The day of my first cold and your first deception, when you thought me in bed, the duke called on you here, and you told me you’d seen no one.’ ‘Do you realize your behavior is abominable?’ ‘In what way? I consider your marriage with the duke an excellent bargain: It gives you a very fine name, and the only place in society worthy of you, a glorious and eminent rank. You’ll be one of the queens of Paris. I would be doing you wrong if I stood in the way of that arrangement, that honorable existence, that excellent alliance. Ah! One day you’ll thank me, Charlotte, when you realize how different my character is from other young men’s . . . You would have had no choice but to deceive me . . . He keeps a close watch on you: You would