Not one iota of reticence in her manner, in her eyes or her words; always white, fresh, and open to her lover, like the Oriental lily in the Song of Songs! . . . Ah! my friends!” the minister cried despondently, a young man once more. “One has to crack one’s head very hard against the marble top to drive out that poetry!”

This heartfelt lament struck a chord among the tablemates and goaded their curiosity, already so ably aroused.

“Every morning, mounted on that fine Sultan you’d sent me from England,” he said to Lord Dudley. “I used to ride past her calèche, the horses deliberately slowed to a walk, and read the daily message written in the flowers of her bouquet, in case the opportunity for a quick exchange of words was denied us. Although we saw each other nearly every evening in society, and although she wrote me every day, we had adopted a certain code of conduct to deceive inquisitive eyes and thwart untoward remarks. Never looking at each other, avoiding each other’s company, speaking ill of each other, preening and boasting of oneself, or posing as a spurned suitor, none of those old ruses can match this: each lover openly admitting a false passion for an indifferent person and an air of indifference for the genuine idol. If two lovers choose to play that game, the world will always be duped, but they must have absolute faith in each other. Her chosen surrogate was a man then in favor, a man of the court, austere and devout, whom she never received at home. That comedy was performed for the benefit of fools and drawing rooms, and they duly laughed. Never did the question of marriage arise between us: A difference of six years might well have given her pause; she knew nothing of my fortune, which, as a matter of principle, I have always kept to myself. For my part, charmed by her wit, her ways, the breadth of her acquaintances, her worldliness, I would have married her without a second thought. Nevertheless, I liked her reserve. Had she been the first to raise the subject of marriage, I might well have found something vulgar about that ineffable soul. Six full months, a diamond of the finest water! Six good months: There is my allotted share of love in this world. One morning, laid low by the fever that accompanies an oncoming cold, I wrote her a note to postpone one of those secret sessions of merrymaking that take place beneath the roofs of Paris, invisible as pearls in the sea. No sooner had the letter been dispatched than I found myself beset by remorse. ‘She won’t believe I’m genuinely ill!’ I reflected. She often played at jealousy and suspicion. When jealousy is real,” said de Marsay, interrupting himself, “it is the unmistakable sign of an exclusive love.”

“Why is that?” Princess de Cadignan briskly asked.

“True, exclusive love,” said de Marsay, “produces a sort of bodily inertia, in harmony with our meditative mood. The mind then complicates everything, it tortures itself, it conceives wild fancies, it transforms them into realities and torments, and such a jealousy is as delightful as it is distressing.”

A foreign minister smiled, glimpsing the truth of this observation by the light of a memory.

“Besides, I asked myself, how could I say no to a moment of bliss?” said de Marsay, returning to his tale. “Was it not better to go with a raging fever? Besides, on learning I was ill she might have come running to my side and compromised herself. I summoned my strength, wrote a second letter, and carried it myself, for my valet had gone off. We were separated by the river, I had all of Paris to cross, but finally, at a suitable distance from her home, I spied an errand boy and enjoined him to have the letter brought up to her straightaway, and I had the fine idea of passing by her front door in a fiacre to see if she might not by chance receive the two messages at once. Just as I pulled up, at two o’clock, the main door is being opened for a carriage, and whose carriage is it, do you suppose? The surrogate’s!” Fifteen years have gone by . . . and yet, as he tells it to you now, the world-weary orator, the minister hardened by long experience with matters of state, still feels a tumult in his heart and a fire in his diaphragm. “An hour later, I passed by again: The carriage was still in the courtyard! My note must have stayed with the porter.