" The Countess rose. "For your sake,
Madame, because you have always been kind to me, and because it
is impossible not to love you, I have degraded myself. I have
pretended to love a man who saw through the artifice and told me
so, to save me further shame. O Madame, it is all execrable!
"And you will use this love which you have gained--this first
love of a man who has known no other and will know no other
while he lives!-- to bring about his ruin? This other, at whose
head you threw me--beware of him. He is light-hearted and gay,
perhaps. You call him a clown; he is cunning and brave; and
unless you judge him at his true value, your fabric of schemes
will fall ere it reaches its culmination. Could even you trick
him with words? No. You were compelled to use force. Is he not
handsome, Madame?" with a feverish gaiety. "Is there a gentleman
at your court who is a more perfect cavalier? Why, he blushes
like a woman! Is there in your court--" But her sentence broke,
and she could not go on.
"Elsa, are you mad?"
"Yes, Madame, yes; they call it a species of madness." Then,
with a sudden gust of wrath: "Why did you not leave me in peace?
You have destroyed me! O, the shame of it!" and she fled into
her own room.
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