Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch

Of the rang’d empire fall! Here is my space.

Kingdoms are clay; our dungy earth alike

Feeds beast as man: the nobleness of life

Is to love thus .

  ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, Act I.

One evening after a day of stifling heat, they were strolling quietly amid the handsome groves of chestnuts that crown the heights of Andilly. Sometimes during the day these woods are spoiled by the intrusion of strangers. On this charming night, bathed in the calm light of a summer moon, these deserted slopes were an enchantment to the eye. They assumed a certain grandeur, the dark shadows cast by a brilliant moon eliminated their details. A soft breeze was playing among the trees, and completed the charms of this delicious evening. >From some caprice or other, Madame d’Aumale was determined, on this occasion, to keep Octave by her side; she reminded him coaxingly and without the slightest regard for her male escort, that it was in these woods that she had seen him for the first time: “You were disguised as a magician, and never was a first meeting more prophetic,” she went on, “for you have never bored me, and there is no other man of whom I can say that.”

Armance, who was walking with them, could not help feeling that these memories were very affectionate. Nothing could be so pleasant as to hear this brilliant Comtesse, so gay as a rule, deigning to speak in serious tones of the great interests of life and of the courses that one must follow to find any happiness here below. Octave withdrew from Madame d’Aumale’s group, and, finding himself presently alone with Armance some little way from the rest of the party, began to relate to her in the fullest detail the whole of the episode of his life in which Madame d’Aumale had been involved. “I sought that brilliant connexion,” he told her, “in order not to offend Madame de Bonnivet, who, but for some such precaution, might easily have finished by banishing me from her society.” So tender a confidence as this was made without any mention of love, but it was exactly attuned to Armance’s jealousy.

When Armance was able to hope that her voice would not betray the extreme distress in which this confession had plunged her: “I believe, my dear cousin,” she said to him, “I believe, as I am bound to believe, everything that you tell me; your word to me is as the Gospel. I observe, however, that you have never until now waited, before taking me into your confidence about any of your enterprises, until it was so far advanced.” “To that, I have my answer ready. Mademoiselle Méry de Tersan and you take the liberty sometimes of laughing at my success: one evening, for instance, two months ago, you almost accused me of fatuity. I might easily, even then, have confessed to you the decided feeling that I have for Madame d’Aumale; but I should have had to be treated kindly by her in your presence. Before I had succeeded, your malicious wit would not have failed to deride my feeble efforts. To-day, the presence of Mademoiselle de Tersan is the only thing lacking to complete my happiness.”

There was in the profound and almost tender accents with which Octave uttered these vain words, such an incapacity to love the somewhat bold charms of the pretty woman of whom he was speaking, and so passionate a devotion to the friend in whom he was confiding that she had not the courage to resist the happiness of seeing her............