I handed it to the Baron and asked him to read it.
"I never read other people's letters," he answered, with hypocritical pride.
"And I never write to another man's wife without that man's full knowledge of the correspondence."
He glanced at my letter, and, with an enigmatical smile, enclosed it in his own.
I saw nothing of him during the rest of the week, until I met him one evening at a street corner. He seemed very pleased to see me, and we went into a café to have a chat.
He had just returned from the country, where he had spent a few days with his wife's cousin. Without ever having met that charming person, I was easily able to draw a mental picture of her from the traces of her influence on the Baron's character. He had lost his haughtiness and his melancholy. There was a gay, somewhat dissipated look on his face, and he enriched his vocabulary by a few expressions of doubtful taste; even the tone of his voice was altered.
"A weak mind," I said to myself, "swayed by every emotion; a blank slate on which the lightest of women may write sense or folly, according to her sweet will."
He behaved like the hero in comic opera; he joked, told funny tales and was in boisterous spirits. His charm was gone with his uniform; and when, after supper, slightly intoxicated, he suggested that we should call on certain female friends of his, I thought him positively repulsive. With the exception of the neckpiece, the sash and the uniform, he really possessed no attractions whatever.
When his intoxication had reached its climax, he lost all sense of shame and began to discuss the secrets of his married life. I interrupted him indignantly and proposed that we should go home. He assured me that his wife allowed him full license during her absence. At first I thought this more than human, but later on it confirmed the opinion I had formed of the Baroness's naturally frigid temperament. We parted very early, and I returned to my room, my brain on fire with the indiscreet disclosure which I had been made to listen to.
This woman, although apparently in love with her husband, after a union of three years not only permitted him every freedom, but did so without claiming the same right for herself. It was strange, unnatural, like love without jealousy, light without shade. No! it was impossible; there must be another cause. He had told me the Baroness was naturally cold. That, too, seemed strange. Or was she really an embodiment of the virgin mother, such as I had already dimly divined? And was not chastity, purity of the soul, so closely linked to refinement of manners, a characteristic, an attribute of a superior race? I had not been deceived, then, in my youthful meditations when a young girl roused my admiration without in the least exciting my senses. Beautiful childish dreams! Charming ignorance of woman, that problem unspeakably more complex than a bachelor ever dreams of!
At last the Baroness returned, radiant with health; the memories awakened by meeting again the friends of her girlhood seemed to have rejuvenated her.
"Here is the dove with the olive branch," she said, handing me a letter from my so-called sweetheart.
With anything but genuine enjoyment I waded through the presumptuous twaddle, the effusions of a heartless blue-stocking, anxious to win independence by marriage—any marriage, and while I was reading I made up my mind to put an end to the matter.
"Do you know for certain," I asked the Baroness, "whether the lady is engaged to the singer or not?"
"Yes and no."
"Has she given him her word?"
"No."
"Does she want to marry him?"
"No."
"Do her parents wish it?"
"No."
"Why is she so determined to marry him, then?"
"Because … I don't know."
"Is she in love with me?"
"Perhaps she is."
"Then she is simply a husband-hunter. She has but one thought, to make a bargain with the highest bidder. She doesn't know what love is."
"What is love?"
"A passion stronger than all others, a force of nature absolutely irresistible, something akin to thunder, to rising floods, a waterfall, a storm——"
She gazed into my eyes, forgetting the reproaches which, in the interest of her friend, had risen to the tip of her tongue.
"And is your love for her a force like that?" she asked. I had a strong impulse to tell her everything.
But, supposing I did? … The bond between us would be broken, and, without the lie which protected me from my criminal passion, I should be lost.
Afraid of committing myself, I asked her to drop the subject. I said that my cruel sweetheart was dead as far as I was concerned, and that all that remained for me to do was to forget her.
The Baroness did her utmost to comfort me, but she did not cloak the fact that I had a dangerous rival in the singer, who was on the spot and in personal contact with his lady-love.
The Baron, evidently bored by our conversation, interrupted us peevishly, telling us that we should end by burning our fingers.
"This meddling with other people's love affairs is utter folly!" he exclaimed, almost rudely; the Baroness's face flushed with indignation. I hastily changed the subject to avoid a scene.
The ball had been set rolling. The lie, originally a mere whim, grew. Full of apprehension and shame, I told myself fairy tales which I ended in believing. In them I played the part of the ill-starred lover, a part which came easy enough, for with the exception of the object of my tenderness, the fairy tales agreed in every detail with reality.
I was indeed caught in my own net. One day, on returning home, I found "her" father's card. I returned his call at once. He was a little old man, unpleasantly like his daughter, the caricature of a caricature. He treated me in every way as he would his prospective son-in-law. He inquired about my family, my income, my prospects. It was a regular cross-examination. The matter threatened to become serious.
What was I to do? Hoping to divert his attention from me, I made myself as insignificant as possible in his eyes. The reason of his visit to Stockholm was obvious. Either he wanted to shake off the singer, whom he disliked, or the lady had made up her mind to honour me with her hand if an expert should approve of her bargain.
I showed myself from my most unpleasant side, avoided every opportunity of meeting him, refused even an invitation to dinner from the Baroness; I tired my unlucky would-be father-in-law out by giving him the slip again and again, pleading urgent duty at the library, until I had gained my purpose, and he departed before the appointed time.
Did my rival ever guess to whom he was indebted for his matrimonial misery when he married his bride-elect? No doubt he never knew, and proudly imagined that he had ousted me.
An incident which to some extent affected our destiny was the sudden departure of the Baroness and her little daughter to the country. It was in the beginning of August. For reasons of health she had chosen Mariafred, a small village on the Lake of Mälar, where at the moment the little cousin happened to be staying with her parents.
