Philippe Valcoeur’s first concern when they arrived at the château was to give Mathieu and Sir Julian Templeforth a brief tour of his laboratory. It was a great deal more capacious than the cramped room in the house in London, and had a proportionately greater quantity of standard apparatus, with a particular emphasis on equipment to facilitate the extraction and replacement of blood.
Mathieu pronounced it satisfactory after barely a glance, but reminded his host and his patient that the first and most important obstacle to the application of his process would be the manufacture of the filter used to extract the golden fluid from the blood while circulating outside the body. Because the raw material of the filter was alive and easy to grow in vitro with the aid of a standard nutritive substrate, supply ought not to be a problem once he had set up a growth facility, and the fungal spores of an appropriate species were easy enough to obtain, but processing the initial batch of fungal hyphae to produce the gel was a more delicate operation.
“If I work around the clock,” he informed them, “with the aid of two competent laboratory assistants, I should have enough gel to begin processing blood in three days. At that point a supply of blood will become necessary, and I’ll be able to draw up a schedule for preliminary experimentation.”
“Damn preliminary experimentation,” said Sir Julian, speaking from behind his black mask. “You’ll start with me, and you’ll work as fast as you can. Where could you ever find a better specimen to demonstrate your alchemical prowess?”
As he spoke, his mask turned toward Caroline Deangate, who was still by Mathieu’s side, as if to remind those present of the other spectacular specimen demonstrative of Mathieu’s wizardly, and that there was a hint of vanity in his claim to constitute a better one—provided, of course, that the treatment worked.
Mathieu did not want to embark upon a discussion of the reasons why it might not work, or why it might not be as successful as Caroline’s treatment. Nor did Sir Julian, who had avoided any such discussion on the ship and during the journey overland; in his view, it was not a matter of weighing risks and probabilities couched in careful scientific terms: it was a matter of an all-or-nothing bet, staked on the only card he had to play. He was still suffering some physical side-effects of the fit he had suffered during his abrupt metamorphosis, and Mathieu would have liked to give him longer to return to full fitness, but the baronet wanted the result as quickly as possible, and he wanted Mathieu to do his utmost to produce it. He did not even want to contemplate the possibility of failure.
Mathieu made no objection to the baronet’s insistence on being the first recipient of the renewed treatment, but merely looked to Philippe for confirmation that his part of the operation could be slotted into the timetable he had laid down.
“You’ll have all the blood you need,” Philippe confirmed, “and reassurance, too, that the extraction will do no harm…provided that Mother consents.”
“Why should she not?” growled Sir Julian.
“I’ll take you to see her now,” was Philippe’s only reply.
He led them through the lamplit corridors and staircases of the ancient edifice to a room in what seemed to be the opposite corner of the main building, on the first floor. The room into which he took them was far smaller than the laboratory—little larger, in fact, than the bedroom that had been allocated to Mathieu and Caroline—and had a lower ceiling, Mathieu judged that it must be brightly illuminated in the mornings, for it had two large ogival windows facing east and south. At present, because it was pitch dark outside, it was illuminated by half a dozen wax candles disposed in brackets of candlesticks, although there as also a tall bronze oil-lamp that was not lit.
The room was, in fact, a bedroom, because it had a curtained alcove opposite the east-facing window, but it as also a work-room, for it had a large leather-topped desk, and with the exception of the chimney breast, on which four portraits hung, two by two, almost all of the wall space was covered with shelving, most of which accommodated books and manuscripts in what seemed to Mathieu to be a state of casual confusion.
There was no fire in the grate, but three armchairs had nevertheless been arranged in an arc around the hearth, and the arc was extended by a wheelchair, in which the Marquise de Valcoeur was sitting, with a blanket covering the lower part of her body.
“Forgive me for not getting up,” she said to her visitors, even before Philippe had introduced them each by name, “but I haven’t had the use of my legs for twenty years. I’m a terrible inconvenience to my family and servants, as you can imagine.”
When Sir Julian was introduced, and bowed, she indicated the seat furthest from her own, and with the same automatic authority she directed Mathieu to take the next seat along. Before inviting Caroline to sit down, however, she extended an arm toward her. She did not have to beckon to make the command to come closer evident, and Caroline obeyed without hesitation.
The Marquise took her hand, very gently, and Caroline inclined slightly in response, so that the older woman could examine her face at close range.
Mathieu knew that the Marquise must be in her late forties, at least, if she had married young, and might well be in her fifties, but he was impressed by the remarkable beauty of her face. It was a mature beauty rather than a youthful beauty, and it did not give a false impression, but it was striking nevertheless. It was not, however, an assertive or arrogant beauty; it gave no impression of vanity, as the face that Mathieu had gifted to Sir Julian Templeforth had. It was a quiet, almost saintly beauty, which seemed to radiate kindness and virtue.
“You’re very beautiful, my dear,” the Marquise said to Caroline, continuing to look at her, smiling, rather than glancing sideways at Mathieu to deflect any of the credit. “Please sit here, beside me.”
Caroline sat down. Only then did Mathieu and Sir Julian take the seats indicated to them.
“I want to thank you all for coming,” she said to them, as if all three had responded to personal invitations. “It means a great deal to me to have this opportunity to see the furtherance of an exceedingly ancient endeavor that is finally about emerge from the darkness of ignorance into the light of science. Please, Sir Julian, would you mind removing your hood and mask? I do not want to importune you, but I would like to see your face.”
Templeforth took off his mask, and pushed back the hood of his cape, to reveal his features.
“There, Madame,” he said, with a contrived note of levity. “The study in contrasts is complete. The epitome of human ugliness, to set beside the standard of perfect beauty—but remember, I beg you, that it was the cauldron of my blood that produced the magical potion that transformed the…young lady.”
The Marquise looked at him, albeit at a greater distance than she had looked at Caroline, with a similar fascination.
Eventually, she said: “A study in contrasts, as you say, Sir Julian. Quite remarkable. The cauldron of your blood…how very apt. But I sincerely hope that Dr. Galmier will be able to rectify the harm he has inflicted…was forced to inflict, if the account my daughter has given me of the incident is accurate.”
Because there was a hint of enquiry about the last observation, Mathieu thought it might be necessary to offer an excuse, but Sir Julian got in ahead of him. “I do not hold it against the doctor that he capitulated to the threat,” he said. “He is what he is—and he was trying to save the situation as best he could.”
The scorn in the remark was sufficient to sting Mathieu. “Tom Deangate was also trying to save the situation as best he could,” he remarked. “And succeeded in saving it…for which you shot him in the head.”
“I did,” the baronet agreed, looking at Mathieu with narrowed eyes, as if his ugliness were a provocation, “and my rebel tenant and my doorkeeper’s nephew with him. That was ill-tempered, I admit, and also caused the fire that might have cost me my life, or at last destroyed any hope of my redemption from these Hellish stigmata. I am a sinner, reckless and unrepentant to boot. I am also at your mercy. If you were to decide, in the name of justice, that I wear these stigmata until death…”
He turned toward the Marquise to add: “But Dr. Galmier is a man of science, not an avenging angel, and he would make every effort to restore me, simply to demonstrate that it could be done, even if he were not mortally afraid of me. Your children, I think, are of the same opinion, but I know that the final verdict rests with you, Madame. You have an exceedingly kind face, but I’m aware that appearances can sometimes be deceptive.”
He stopped at that, issuing no further justification and to further plea, seemingly content to await the judgment. Mathieu could not help feeling a certain admiration for the bravado of the declaration.
“I would not dream of opposing Dr. Galmier’s attempts to redeem his own sins,” Madame de Valcoeur said, silkily. “The state of his soul and conscience are exceedingly precious to me. My children and I will give him every possible assistance to fulfill his obligations to all his patients. You are a welcome guest here, Sir Julian, and I hope fervently that your sojourn will be a rewarding one. Would you be kind enough to leave us now, so that I can speak of Dr. Galmier and Mademoiselle Deangate in private?”
The baronet replaced his mask and took his leave with the utmost politeness, without managing to dissimulate completely the satisfaction he felt in having acquired the assurances he wanted.
Mathieu had the feeling that he ought to offer some kind of apology for having brought Sir Julian to Valcoeur, and for ever having involved himself with him in the first place, but the Marquise raised her hand slightly, bidding him not to speak, for the moment, and focused her attention on Caroline again.
“I’m truly sorry for your loss, my dear,” she said, “but you do understand, I know, that nothing will bring your brother back. Hatred and a desire for revenge merely cause further damage—and, in fact, constitute further damage.”
Caroline shook her head slightly to signify her confusion. Very faintly, and sadly, she said: “I wished him dead so many times.”
Mathieu knew that she was not talking about Sir Julian.
The Marquise reached out and took Caroline’s hand again. “My life has been exceedingly comfortable, my dear,” she said, in a tone that was almost regretful. “For me, virtue has always been ridiculously easy—although not everyone would agree with the notion of virtue that I had before my accident. At any rate, I am the last person in the world competent to judge or advise those who have faced much sterner challenges. Dr. Galmier is doubtless better placed to judge than I am in your regard, as you are in his, but I will say this: yours is a beauty of which you have absolutely no reason to be ashamed.”
She returned her attention to Mathieu then. “I am going to tell you things, Dr. Galmier,” she said, softly, “in a fashion that might test your credulity, even though you must have guessed most of them already. I merely ask for your patience and your indulgence. I shall not apologize for not having sought you out sooner, for I always strive to find a design in things, and prefer to believe that you have arrived here at the right time and in the right circumstances, no matter how uncomfortable those circumstances seem to you. You have undergone an ordeal of sorts, as people marked for great accomplishments very often do, but you are aware, I think, that it is trivial compared to the ordeal that this poor child has undergone. I have nothing to ask of you in that regard, but I think you understand how much she stands in need of whatever love you can give her, and how much benefit she might obtain from it.
“My daughter has told you something of the symbolism of the Rose Cross, I believe, although I dare say that her account has been a trifle unsympathetic, as she considers that symbolism to have been disastrously cheapened by its recent popularization. I take her point, but I think there is a certain cowardice in abandoning symbols merely because others have made them seem slightly ridiculous. Even the farce of Christian Rosenkreutz is not without an underlying good intention, which should not do its modern adherents any harm. At least they will not suffer the fate of the Albigensians. Did Sir Julian tell you that he is descended from Simon de Montfort?”
“Yes,” said Mathieu. “But I didn’t believe him. I thought was simply a provocation.”
“Perhaps it is, but it might well be true, if the available genealogies can be trusted—and that too, if one sees designs, might be part of the design. The tradition to which my ancestors have long adhered, however, antedates the Albigensian crusade by a long interval of time. Its origins predate history, and nothing remains of the foundations of its thought but myth and legend, but that is the case for all traditions; it could not be otherwise. The troubadours, the story of the Holy Grail, even the Roman Bacchanal, are all mere side-branches of an older conviction. The Christians, naturally, have tried to claim the cross of the Rose Cross as their own, but its antedates the tragic death of Christ by a length of time now incalculable. You’re doubtless familiar with many other employments of the symbol, including those invented by science and mathematics, but you understanding that in essence, it simply symbolized intersection, the productive and transformative encounter. The more elaborate element of the collective symbol is the rose—red in our version, although later users have substituted a white one. As a matter of interest, Doctor, how would you interpret that symbol?”
“As a flower, the rose provides a definitive symbol of beauty,” Mathieu said, “and I presume yours is red to declare an association with blood. But long before Linnaeus’s system of classification, it was recognized that the flower is the sexual part of the plant, the organ of its reproduction, and we now recognize that its visual beauty and scent have been designed by natural selection to attract the insects necessary to collaborate in pollination and hence complete the process of reproduction. That complicates the notion of beauty considerably.”
“It does,” the Marquise agreed, serenely. “And that complication is not unconnected with the complications that it has in our tradition, which do not see beauty as mere appearance but as something intimately connected with the soul, albeit in somewhat mysterious ways. Caroline, would you care to remind Dr. Galmier of the most important element that his analysis omitted?”
Caroline seemed startled to be asked, but had no hesitation in replying: “The thorns?”
“Thank you. As you see, Mathieu, a mind not focused by science or fine art automatically associates the image of the rose with the flower’s covert associate—the instrument of the defense of its beauty against predators. There are many beautiful flowers, of course, that do not have that association, but the symbol of beauty that seems, as you put it, definitive, inevitably carries that corollary. And the definitive characteristic of a thorn is that it draws blood.”
“True,” admitted Mathieu. “The Pravaz syringe and the lancet are, in essence, merely technological sophistications of a thorn…as the sewing needle was before them, and the dagger too. The rose cross, then, in your interpretation, is fundamentally concerned with the drawing of blood, not merely its color?”
“The notion that the essence of life is contained in the blood is very old. When Christopher Wren attempted experiments with blood transfusion, in the hope of contriving a means of rejuvenation and the prolongation of life, he was by no means the first, but merely one of the first to undertake his endeavor under the formal aegis of science rather than that of religion or magic. The drinking of blood and the sharing of blood are involved in countless rituals whose origins are lost in the darkness of time…but it seems likely that they have always excited horror as well as avid attraction. The oldest documents of history inform us of that unease, including the prohibitions of Leviticus and the legal suppression of the Bacchanal by the Roman Republic in the second century before Christ.
“It has always been a matter of routine for such practices to lead to persecution, and to be driven underground, to be practiced in secrecy—but they have usually persisted, in spite of that persecution. And where the suppression has been successful, the cost of that success has sometimes been the replacement of the literal by the symbolic, as in the Christian mass, and such mythological corollaries as the legend of the Grail. There is an essential ambivalence in that long history and prehistory, just as there is in the inherent symbolism of the rose cross.”
She paused, waiting for an endorsement.
“It’s arguable that the psychology has shifted of late,” Mathieu observed. “Two centuries of blood-letting by physicians has made some contribution to demystifying medical trafficking with blood. My own experience has not been entirely fortunate, but I have always told my patients that in the next century, blood transfusion will become standard medical practice. Blood replacement is already becoming common in surgery, and my former colleagues at the Pasteur Institut are in the process of developing a classification of blood types that will permit safer and more elaborate replacements in that context, which will save many lives.”
“And will that same change of attitude allow your procedure to become similarly routine?” the Marquise asked. “Will it initiate a traffic in youth and beauty, that will allow the rich and powerful to steal those privileges from the poor, and secure a monopoly by means of predation?”
“That isn’t my objective!” Mathieu protested.
“No,” said the Marquise, “but it might nevertheless be the consequence, as Sir Julian’s example must have reminded you—painfully, if my daughter has judged you correctly. And by virtue of that awareness, and that pain, you ought to be in a position to appreciate the predicament of the magicians of the remote past who developed methods of the transmission of beauty that, although far more primitive than yours, did have a similar effect…and similar costs.”
“But it couldn’t work,” Mathieu protested, albeit a trifle feebly. “I can understand the psychological basis of superstitions that attributed powers of rejuvenation and life extension to the drinking of blood, or the application of blood to the skin, the inevitable development of complex rituals and recipes in the hope of finding a formula that might contribute that effect—but the fact remains that it couldn’t work. Without the filter, the refinement of the gel…”
He stopped, realizing the limits of his argument. The fungus from which his gel as derived was a common species, found virtually everywhere that humans made bread, and although the process of refinement and chemical transformation to which he subjected the hyphae was complex, it was not impossible that far more primitive treatments, either of the fungus in isolation or, more likely, crude cultures grown on bread or animal fat, might have produced a paste capable of extracting a measure of the golden liquid from blood, doubtless with countless impurities, but nevertheless capable of some limited action, even via such crude means as ingestion or external application. He could not declare it impossible that magical or alchemical dabbling might have produced a crude analogue of his process.
And as soon as he had admitted that, the problem that he had just allowed the Marquise to pose, and which he had always carefully avoided addressing on his own behalf, became pertinent. If a magician or alchemist had come into possession of such a secret, what attitude would he have been likely to have taken his discovery and how would he have been likely to employ it?
“You live in a materialistic era, Dr. Galmier,” said the Marquise, “a period when the initial impulse of scientists making discoveries is to publish them, whether in quest of personal glory or in respect of a perceived duty to increase the sum of general human knowledge. But that is a recent attitude. For much of human history, the instinct of scholar making discoveries has been to maintain secrecy, to confide them selectively, with the utmost precaution, either in quest of the particular personal glory of knowing secrets unknown to other men, or in respect of a perceived duty to maintain the elitism of wisdom and capability. You doubtless consider the replacement of the earlier attitude by the modern one as a matter of social and intellectual progress, and perhaps it is—but you must be aware of a contemporary school of thought that regrets the fact that the monks who made such discoveries as eau-de-vie and gunpowder released them, so that their fellows could make whatever destructive use of them they wished.
“It does not matter whether you or I approve of the attitude and conduct of those magicians of the past who stumbled upon primitive means of producing the effect that you have refined so spectacularly. We have no way of knowing how many there were, but we can be sure that those who attempted to traffic their secret to the temporarily powerful, as you have, did not enhance the likelihood of its preservation, let alone its publication. The same is probably true of other desirable discoveries that the ancient alchemists might have made.
“What I do know, however—and this is perhaps where you might cease to trust me, and raise the common psychological barrier of incredulity—is that the cult to which I and my ancestors have belonged for centuries has contrived to preserve one such secret, and to employ it, precisely by refusing to traffic it to the rich and powerful, sometimes in spite of extreme pressure to do so on the part of those who suspected that they had it.
“I believe that the reason for that successful preservation has been that very refusal to divulge the secret to those intent on making egotistical use of it, or likely to treat it as an object of commerce. I believe that the tradition has survived for longer than history is capable of remembering because of the investment of its objective with a sacred character, its insistence on regarding the quest for transfiguration and the enhancement of beauty as a quest undertaken for its own sake, a Grail whose achievement is esthetic and moral rather than something to be employed in the service of vanity and lust. I will not try to persuade you here and now that that attitude is morally correct, but I do ask you to think about the matter carefully. If you do, I believe that you will come to appreciate the logic of its survival in a hostile and avid world, which could so easily have destroyed it by attempting to monopolize it.
“The truth is that a means of transferring beauty analogous to yours has existed for thousands of years—unsurprisingly, given the avidity with which such means have been sought, often in blood, which, as you have proved, really was the appropriate source. We have recently modified our traditional methods of donation by substituting Pravaz syringes for lancets and other successive replacements for the original thorns, but much of the ritual remains the same. We shall not celebrate it while Sir Julian Templeforth is here, but that will not prevent my daughter gathering donors for a special donation—as many as you will need to collect sufficient serum for Sir Julian’s initial treatment, without taking sufficient from any one of them to cause deleterious after-effects. That has always been our policy, and we have not seen the kind of drastic effects that some of your London volunteers, including Caroline, seem to have suffered.
“We do not know who made the initial discovery that we are carrying forward, nor the names of those who might have modified the formula of the compound potion thereafter. My son has analyzed the one we currently use as best he can, and he will show you his findings in due course. We suspect, but do not know for certain, that similar discoveries have been made at other times, in other places, and it is not impossible that some of those have been preserved in a similar way. But we suspect that those discoveries have never been devoid of costs of various kinds, and the possibility of their preservation has always been cursed with severe difficulties.
“I asked my children to find you and bring you here, Dr. Galmier, because I want you to join us. I want you to work with my son, externally to our cult—at least to begin with—but I understand that you will have to think long and hard about the implications and consequences of the decision even to work with us on that basis. What I have said to you this evening is merely an attempt to lay the intellectual foundations for your decision, and subsequent decisions that you will inevitably be called upon to make. My son and my daughter have ideas of their own, which they will doubtless communicate to you over time, which will probably complicate the decision-making process, but we believe it to be necessary that your decision is a matter of free choice, and we shall not attempt any coercion.”
The Marquise paused, and looked at Caroline. “Do you understand what I have said to the doctor, my dear?”
“I think so,” said Caroline. “May I ask you a question, milady?”
“Of course.”
Caroline touched her face, lightly. “This will fade, will it not? Not just with age, but soon?”
“I fear so,” said the Marquise, touching her own face. “It can be renewed, but each renewal is more difficult than the last. The beauty that we transfer has always been essentially ephemeral, just as the beauty produced by nature is ephemeral—even more so than that of life itself. I cannot say for sure that it will always be so, but I fear that it might. Dr. Galmier might be able to develop a means of slowing down its decay, as he hopes to do, but his dreams of reproducing an active agent outside a living human body might well be disappointed.”
Caroline nodded. “I thought so,” she said, and added, almost absent-mindedly: “Love is essentially ephemeral too, is it not?”
If the Marquise was surprised by what question, she did not show it. “Passion is certainly liable to fade, as it is blunted by familiarity, but love is a different matter. It is capable of lasting much longer, perhaps forever. I wish I could say that my own personal experience has confirmed that assertion, but I have not been so fortunate. I am, however, aware of sufficient examples to be certain of the contention. Are you asking me about love because you believe that your own recovered beauty is as much a product of your feelings for Dr. Galmier as for his serum?”
“Yes,” said Caroline simply.
“You might be right. I have long thought something similar.” She turned to Mathieu. “Do you have any questions, Doctor?”
“A great many,” said Mathieu. “Some more indelicate than others.”
“Of course. I can anticipate some of them. No, I do not renew my looks by drinking blood, and have only recently had recourse to injections administered by my son. Initially, before and after my accident, I used a method of external application employed by my community for centuries. The switch to injections seems to have inhibited the degenerative trend, but I might not have made it had I been aware of the risk that I might suffer a sudden catastrophe akin to Sir Julian’s. I have read old accounts of similar metamorphoses, and other unfortunate side-effects, but all were construed by their observers in magical terms, as curses, deserved or undeserved. None of the donors who have offered their blood to me or my peers have ever suffered any such drastic reaction, but I believe that Sir Julian’s situation was…unusual.”
“And why, exactly, do your donors make their donations?”
“Because they are members of the cult, disinterestedly committed to the cause of the perfection of beauty, as we understand it. My own active role has been reduced somewhat by my injury, and will inevitably come to an end at some indeterminate point in the future, when my position will be taken by my daughter.”
“As a matter of aristocratic right.”
The Marquise smiled. “You might see it in those terms,” she said. “Perhaps you would be correct, and our beliefs are merely a hypocritical disguise for predation in that particular instance—but I am not the only regular recipient of the gift, by any means, and we would like to think that our criteria of selection are not merely reflective of social status or wealth.”
“Do you use your methods for the purpose of reparation—to compensate for ugliness, natural or induced, rather than for the maintenance or enhancement of existing beauty?”
“Yes, on occasion—but we have never, so far as I know, attempted to address a situation like Sir Julian’s. We shall be very interested, I assure you, to see how successful you are in his treatment…and to see how enduring any success you achieve will be.”
“Because, if it is successful, and if I can contrive to find a means of stabilizing the effect, it will change your entire world-view, and the logic of your determined esotericism?”
“Do you think so?” the Marquise countered. “You might be right, I suppose—but that is something about which I shall have to think long and hard. So will Sir Julian, I dare say. What will his reaction be to your success, do you think, if you are, in fact, successful? Personal satisfaction, obviously, but beyond that…do you think he will want to broadcast your success to the world, apply for a patent on it, or strive to keep it secret? I shall be interested to find out, if that situation does come about.”
“But you don’t think it will?”
“How can I tell? You have already worked one miracle; I have no way of knowing whether you are capable of others. But I do think you ought to ask yourself how you might want to proceed in the event that your success remains partial—if beauty like Caroline’s or mine, or the attractions that you were initially able to transfer to Sir Julian, can only be maintained by renewal, with its inevitable costs and inevitable gradual decline. We have adapted to that situation as best we can, but you might be able to envisage better ways.”
Mathieu, having reached a break in the series of his question, fell silent momentarily.
Again, the Marquise turned to Caroline. “I hope that you can be happy here, my dear,” she said. “It’s a very different world from the one to which you are accustomed, but it is a far better one. If happiness only depended on that…but things are never so simple. Whatever I can do, you may rely on me to do it. You are a miracle worth preservation, perhaps the finest exemplar of our quest presently alive. This is where you belong.”
Caroline blushed, and looked away, but raised no objection, even though Mathieu had no difficulty in imagining the objections that had sprung to her mind.
“Thank you, Madame,” he said to the chatelaine, on Caroline’s behalf. He knew that the Marquise had no need to make a similar formal statement to him; it was blatantly obvious what she thought about the question of where he belonged, and her willingness to do whatever she could to persuade him to say. Alas, he reflected, just as she had, things were never so simple. And he had yet to discover what the ultimate outcome of his endeavors would be.
He shifted in his seat, ready to take his leave, but the Marquise made a slight gesture indicating that she had one more thing to say. “What I said to Sir Julian is true,” she said. “I really do hope that you will be successful in your attempt to give him what he wants. But you have already discovered—have you not?—that these processes are more complicated than they might seem at first glance to the untutored eye. I cannot tell what the result of your experiment will be…but I hope you will not be too disappointed if it does not entirely live up to Sir Julian’s hopes, or yours.”
“That is a possibility for which I am trying to prepare myself,” Mathieu said, dryly.
“Good,” said the Marquise. She turned back to Caroline. “Please come back and see me in the morning, my dear, and every morning, so that I can contemplate your beauty in daylight.”
Caroline attempted a kind of curtsey as they withdrew. Mathieu thought that only he could hear her mutter, as she turned away from her hostess: “For as long as it lasts.”