Maxime's youth and freshness interested him; he said, in a world where everybody was blasé. He invited him to little suppers of three or four intimates, at which Marie Prévol was present. From that hour my son's head was turned. He fell passionately in love with this actress. He thought of her by day and night, abandoned himself utterly to his idolatry, desired ardently to make her his wife."
"He did not believe that she was married to Georges?"
"That was his difficulty. In his love and reverence for her he could not endure to think of her as in a degraded position; yet if she were already a wife, Maxime could never hope to win her. In his mad, headstrong love he was ready to forgive her past career, to redeem her from her degraded position, and make her the Baroness de Maucroix. He, who had been educated in the pride of race as in the gospel, was willing to marry an actress with a tarnished character!"
"Did he make you the confidante of his passion, Madame?"
"For some time he kept his secret from me; but I knew that he was unhappy, and I knew that there was only one kind of grief possible in such a life as his, where nature and fortune had been alike lavish. He had been my companion and adviser from the day of my widowhood; and we were nearer and dearer to each other, and more in each other's confidence, than mothers and sons usually are. More than once I had entreated him to tell me the nature of his trouble, to let me help him, if that were possible; and he had told me that there was no one who could help him in the great crisis of his life. 'I must be either the happiest or the most miserable of men,' he said. One night I went into his room and found him ill, feverish, in a half-delirious state, raving about Marie Prévol. This broke the ice, and during the brief illness that followed—the effect of cold, fatigue, excitement, and late hours—I obtained his confidence. He told me the whole story of his love for this beautiful actress; how at their first meeting he had been enslaved by her exquisite loveliness, her indescribable charm of manner. He protested that her nature was purity itself, despite her false position. She was the victim of circumstances. And then he told me that Georges spoke of her as his wife, treated her with a respect rarely shown to women of light character; and this thought that his idol was another man's wife filled my unhappy son with despair."
"You warned him of the danger of his position, no doubt, Madame."
"Not once only, but again and again. With all the fervour of a mother's prayers did I implore him to escape from this fatal entanglement. I urged him to travel, to go to Spain, Italy, Africa—Algiers was at that time a favourite resort for men of fashion—anywhere so long as he withdrew himself from the fascination which could end only in ruin. But it was in vain
