M. de Montriveau was to be
there. For the Duchess, on the balcony of the Tuileries with the
Royal Family, it was one of those festival days that are long
remembered. She looked supremely beautiful in her languor; she
was greeted with admiration in all eyes. It was Montriveau's
presence that made her so fair.
Once or twice they exchanged glances. The General came almost to
her feet in all the glory of that soldier's uniform, which
produces an effect upon the feminine imagination to which the
most prudish will confess. When a woman is very much in love,
and has not seen her lover for two months, such a swift moment
must be something like the phase of a dream when the eyes embrace
a world that stretches away forever. Only women or young men can
imagine the dull, frenzied hunger in the Duchess's eyes. As for
older men, if during the paroxysms of early passion in youth they
had experience of such phenomena of nervous power; at a later day
it is so completely forgotten that they deny the very existence
of the luxuriant ecstasy--the only name that can be given to
these wonderful intuitions. Religious ecstasy is the aberration
of a soul that has shaken off its bonds of flesh; whereas in
amorous ecstasy all the forces of soul and body are embraced and
blended in one. If a woman falls a victim to the tyrannous
frenzy before which Mme de Langeais was forced to bend, she will
take one decisive resolution after another so swiftly that it is
impossible to give account of them.
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