Finding herself betrayed and abandoned for the millions, Eleonore gave
way to a paroxysm of anger, hatred, and cold vindictiveness. Philoxene
knocked at the door of the sumptuous room, and entering found her
mistress with her eyes full of tears,--so unprecedented a phenomenon
in the fifteen years she had waited upon her that the woman stopped
short stupefied.
"We expiate the happiness of ten years in ten minutes," she heard the
duchess say.
"A letter from Havre, madame."
Eleonore read the poet's prose without noticing the presence of
Philoxene, whose amazement became still greater when she saw the dawn
of fresh serenity on the duchess's face as she read further and
further into the letter. Hold out a pole no thicker than a
walking-stick to a drowning man, and he will think it a high-road of
safety. The happy Eleonore believed in Canalis's good faith when she
had read through the four pages in which love and business, falsehood
and truth, jostled each other. She who, a few moments earlier, had
sent for her husband to prevent Melchior's appointment while there was
still time, was now seized with a spirit of generosity that amounted
almost to the sublime.
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