"We are going to take you home to your house," said the baroness to
Madame B-----. "Monsieur de V-----, offer your arm to Emilie!"
And now the baron is seated in his carriage next to a woman who,
during the whole evening, had been offered and had refused a thousand
attentions, and from whom he had hoped in vain to win a single look.
There she was, in all the lustre of her youth and beauty, displaying
the whitest shoulders and the most ravishing lines of beauty. Her
face, which still reflected the pleasures of the evening, seemed to
vie with the brilliancy of her satin gown; her eyes to rival the blaze
of her diamonds; and her skin to cope with the soft whiteness of the
marabouts which tied in her hair, set off the ebon tresses and the
ringlets dangling from her headdress. Her tender voice would stir the
chords of the most insensible hearts; in a word, so powerfully did she
wake up love in the human breast that Robert d'Abrissel himself would
perhaps have yielded to her.
The baron glanced at his wife, who, overcome with fatigue, had sunk to
sleep in a corner of the carriage. He compared, in spite of himself,
the toilette of Louise and that of Emilie. Now on occasions of this
kind the presence of a wife is singularly calculated to sharpen the
unquenchable desires of a forbidden love.
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