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Cosmopolis: A Novel, a novel by Paul Bourget |
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Chapter 10. Common Misery |
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_ CHAPTER X. COMMON MISERY The Contessina's disposition was too different from her mother's for the mother to comprehend that heart, the more contracted in proportion as it was touched, while emotion was synonymous with expansion in the opulent and impulsive Venetian. That evening she had not even observed Alba's dreaminess, Dorsenne once gone, and it required that Hafner should call her attention to it. To the scheming Baron, if the novelist was attentive to the young girl it was certainly with the object of capturing a considerable dowry. Julien's income of twenty-five thousand francs meant independence. The two hundred and fifty thousand francs which Alba would have at her mother's death was a very large fortune. So Hafner thought he would deserve the name of "old friend," by taking Madame Steno aside and saying to her: "Do you not think Alba has been a little strange for several days!" "She has always been so," replied the Countess. "Young people are like that nowadays; there is no more youth." "Do you not think," continued the Baron, "that perhaps there is another cause for that sadness--some interest in some one, for example?" "Alba?" exclaimed the mother. "For whom?" "For Dorsenne," returned Hafner, lowering his voice; "he just left five minutes ago, and you see she is no longer interested in anything nor in any one." "Ah, I should be very much pleased," said Madame Steno, laughing. "He is a handsome fellow; he has talent, fortune. He is the grand-nephew of a hero, which is equivalent to nobility, in my opinion. But Alba has no thought of it, I assure you. She would have told me; she tells me everything. We are two friends, almost two comrades, and she knows I shall leave her perfectly free to choose.... No, my old friend, I understand my daughter. Neither Dorsenne nor any one else interests her, unfortunately. I sometimes fear she will go into a decline, like her cousin Andryana Navagero, whom she resembles.... But I must cheer her up. It will not take long." "A Dorsenne for a son-in-law!" said Hafner to himself, as he watched the Countess walk toward Alba through the scattered groups of her guests, and he shook his head, turning his eyes with satisfaction upon his future son-in-law. "That is what comes of not watching one's children closely. One fancies one understands them until some folly opens one's eyes!... And, it is too late!... Well, I have warned her, and it is no affair of mine!" In spite of Fanny's observed and increasing vexation Ardea amused himself by relating to her anecdotes, more or less true, of the goings-on in the Vatican. He thus attempted to abate a Catholic enthusiasm at which he was already offended. His sense of the ridiculous and that of his social interest made him perceive how absurd it would be to go into clerical society after having taken for a wife a millionaire converted the day before. To be just, it must be added that the Countess's dry champagne was not altogether irresponsible for the persistency with which he teased his betrothed. It was not the first time he had indulged in the semi-intoxication which had been one of the sins of his youth, a sin less rare in the southern climates than the modesty of the North imagines. "You come opportunely, Contessina," said he, when Mademoiselle Steno had seated herself upon the couch beside them. "Your friend is scandalized by a little story I have just told her.... The one of the noble guard who used the telephone of the Vatican this winter to appoint rendezvous with Guilia Rezzonico without awakening the jealousy of Ugolino.... But it is nothing. I have almost quarrelled with Fanny for having revealed to her that the Holy Father repeated his benediction in Chapel Sixtine, with a singing master, like a prima donna...." "I have already told you that I do not like those jests," said Fanny, with visible irritation, which her patience, however, governed. "If you desire to continue them, I will leave you to converse with Alba." "Since you see that you annoy her," said the latter to the Prince, "change the subject." "Ah, Contessina," replied Peppino, shaking his head, "you support her already. What will it be later? Well, I apologize for my innocent epigrams on His Holiness in his dressing-gown. And," he continued, laughing, "it is a pity, for I have still two or three entertaining stories, notably one about a coffer filled with gold pieces, which a faithful bequeathed to the Pope. And that poor, dear man was about to count them when the coffer slipped from his hand, and there was the entire treasure on the floor, and the Pope and a cardinal on all fours were scrambling for the napoleons, when a servant entered.... Tableau! ....I assure you that good Pius IX would be the first to laugh with us at all the Vatican jokes. He is not so much 'alla mano'. But he is a holy man just the same. Do not think I do not render him justice. Only, the holy man is a man, and a good old man. That is what you do not wish to see." "Where are you going?" said Alba to Fanny, who had risen as she had threatened to do. "To talk with my father, to whom I have several words to say." "I warned you to change the subject," said Alba, when she and the Prince were alone. Ardea, somewhat abashed, shrugged his shoulders and laughed: "You will confess that the situation is quite piquant, little Countess.... You will see she will forbid me to go to the Quirinal.... Only one thing will be lacking, and it is that Papa Hafner should discover religious scruples which would prevent him from greeting the King.... But Fanny must be appeased!" "My God!" said Alba to herself, seeing the young man rise in his turn. "I believe he is intoxicated. What a pity!" As have almost all revolutions of that order, the work of Christianity, accomplished for years, in Fanny had for its principle an example. The death of a friend, the sublime death of a true believer, ended by determining her faith. She saw the dying woman receive the sacrament, and the ineffable joy of the benediction upon the face of the sufferer of twenty lighted up by ecstasy. She heard her say, with a smile of conviction: "I go to ask you of Our Lord, Jesus Christ." How could she have resisted such a cry and such a sight? The very day after that death she asked of her father permission to be baptized, which request drew from the Baron a reply too significant not to be repeated here: "Undoubtedly," had replied the surprising man, who instead of a heart, had a Bourse list on which all was tariffed, even God, "undoubtedly I am touched, very deeply touched, and very happy to see that religious matters preoccupy you to such a degree. To the people it is a necessary curb, and to us it accords with a certain rank, a certain society, a certain deportment. I think that a person called like you to live in Austria and in Italy should be a Catholic. However, it is necessary to remember that you might marry some one of another faith. Do not object. I am your father. I can foresee all. I know you will marry only according to the dictates of your heart. Wait then until it has spoken, to settle the question.... If you love a Catholic, you will then have occasion to pay a compliment to your betrothed by adopting his faith, of which he will be very sensible.... From now until then, I shall not prevent you from following ceremonies which please you. Those of the Roman liturgy are, assuredly, among the best; I myself attended Saint Peter's at the time of the pontifical government.... The taste, the magnificence, the music, all moved me.... But to take a definite, irreparable step, I repeat, you must wait. Your actual condition of a Protestant has the grand sentiment of being more neutral, less defined." What words to listen to by a heart already touched by the attraction of 'grace and by the nostalgia of eternal life! But the heart was that of a young girl very pure and very tender. To judge her father was to her impossible, and the Baron's firmness had convinced her that she must obey his wishes and pray that he be enlightened. She therefore waited, hoping, sustained and directed meanwhile by Cardinal Guerillot, who later on was to baptize her and to obtain for her the favor of approaching the holy table for the first time at the Pope's mass. That prelate, one of the noblest figures of which the French bishopric has had cause to be proud, since Monseigneur Pie, was one of those grand Christians for whom the hand of God is as visible in the direction of human beings as it is invisible to doubtful souls. When Fanny, already devoted to her charities, confided in him the serious troubles of her mind and the discord which had arisen between her and her father on the so essential point of her baptism, the Cardinal replied: "Have faith in God. He will give you a sign when your time has come." And he uttered those words with an accent whose conviction had filled the young girl with a certainty which had never left her. In spite of his seventy years, and of the experiences of the confession, in spite of the disenchanting struggle with the freemasonry of his French diocese, which had caused his exile to Rome, the venerable man looked at Fanny's marriage from a supernatural standpoint. Many priests are thus capable of a naivete which, on careful analysis, is often in the right. But at the moment the antithesis between the authentic reality and that which they believe, constitutes an irony almost absurd. When he had baptized Fanny, the old Bishop of Clermont was possessed by a joy so deep that he said to her, to express to her the more delicately the tender respect of his friendship: "I can now say as did Saint Monica after the baptism of Saint Augustine: 'Cur hic sim, nescio; jam consumpta spe hujus saeculi'. I do not know why I remain here below. All my hope of the age is consummated. And like her I can add--the only thing which made me desire to remain awhile was to see you a Catholic before dying. The traveller, who has tarried, has now nothing to do but to go. He has gathered the last and the prettiest flower.".... Noble and faithful apostle, who was indeed to go so shortly after, meriting what they said of him, that which the African bishop said of his mother: "That religious soul was at length absolved from her body.".... He did not anticipate that he would pay dearly for that realization of his last wish! He did not foresee that she whom he ingenuously termed his most beautiful flower was to become to him the principal cause of bitter sorrow. Poor, grand Cardinal! It was the final trial of his life, the supremely bitter drop in his chalice, to assist at the disenchantment which followed so closely upon the blissful intoxication of his gentle neophyte's first initiation. To whom, if not to him, should she have gone to ask counsel, in all the tormenting doubts which she at once began to have in her feelings with regard to her fiance? It was, therefore, that on the day following the evening on which imprudent Ardea had jested so persistently upon a subject sacred to her that she rang at the door of the apartment which Monseigneur Guerillot occupied in the large mansion on Rue des Quatre-Fontaines. There was no question of incriminating the spirit of those pleasantries, nor of relating her humiliating observations on the Prince's intoxication. No. She wished to ease her mind, on which rested a shade of sorrow. At the time of her betrothal, she had fancied she loved Ardea, for the emotion of her religious life at length freed had inspired her with gratitude for him who was, however, only the pretext of that exemption. She trembled to-day, not only at not loving him any more, but at hating him, and above all she felt herself a prey to that repugnance for the useless cares of the world, to that lassitude of transitory hopes, to that nostalgia of repose in God, undeniable signs of true vocations. At the thought that she might, if she survived her father and she remained free, retire to the 'Dames du Cenacle,' she felt at her approaching marriage an inward repugnance, which augmented still more the proof of her future husband's deplorable character. Had she the right to form such bonds with such feelings? Would it be honorable to break, without further developments, the betrothal which had been between her and her father the condition of her baptism? She was already there, after so few days! And her wound was deeper after the night on which the Prince had, uttered his careless jests. "It is permitted you to withdraw," replied Monsieur Guerillot, "but you are not permitted to lack charity in your judgment." There was within Fanny too much sincerity, her faith was too simple and too deep for her not to follow out that advice to the letter, and she conformed to it in deeds as well as in intentions. For, before taking a walk in the afternoon with Alba, she took the greatest care to remove all traces which the little scene of the day before could have left in her friend's mind. Her efforts went very far. She would ask pardon of her fiance.... Pardon! For what? For having been wounded by him, wounded to the depths of her sensibility? She felt that the charity of judgment recommended by the pious Cardinal was a difficult virtue. It exercises a discipline of the entire heart, sometimes irreconcilable with the clearness of the intelligence. Alba looked at her friend with a glance full of an astonishment, almost sorrowful, and she embraced her, saying: "Peppino is not worthy even to kiss the ground on which you tread, that is my opinion, and if he does not spend his entire life in trying to be worthy of you, it will be a crime." As for the Prince himself, the impulses which dictated to his fiancee words of apology when he was in the wrong, were not unintelligible to him, as they would have been to Hafner. He thought that the latter had lectured his daughter, and he congratulated himself on having cut short at once that little comedy of exaggerated religious feeling. "Never mind that," said he, with condescension, "it is I who have failed in form. For at heart you have always found me respectful of that which my fathers respected. But times have changed, and certain fanaticisms are no longer admissible. That is what I have wished to say to you in such a manner that you could take no offence." And he gallantly kissed Fanny's tiny hand, not divining that he had redoubled the melancholy of that too-generous child. The discord continued to be excessive between the world of ideas in which she moved and that in which the ruined Prince existed. As the mystics say with so much depth, they were not of the same heaven. Of all the chimeras which had lasted hours, God alone remained. It sufficed the noble creature to say: "My father is so happy, I will not mar his joy." "I will do my duty toward my husband. I will be so good a wife that I will transform him. He has religion. He has heart. It will be my role to make of him a true Christian. And then I shall have my children and the poor." Such were the thoughts which filled the mind of the envied betrothed. For her the journals began to describe the dresses already prepared, for her a staff of tailors, dressmakers, needlewomen and jewellers were working; she would have on her contract the same signature as a princess of the blood, who would be a princess herself and related to one of the most glorious aristocracies in the world. Such were the thoughts she would no doubt have through life, as she walked in the garden of the Palais Castagna, that historical garden in which is still to be seen a row of pear-trees, in the place where Sixte-Quint, near death, gathered some fruit. He tasted it, and he said to Cardinal Castagna--playing on their two names, his being Peretti--"The pears are spoiled. The Romans have had enough. They will soon eat chestnuts." That family anecdote enchanted Justus Hafner. It seemed to him full of the most delightful humor. He repeated it to his colleagues at the club, to his tradesmen, to it mattered not whom. He did not even mistrust Dorsenne's irony. "I met Hafner this morning on the Corso," said the latter to Alba at one of the soirees at the end of the month, "and I had my third edition of the pleasantry on the pears and chestnuts. And then, as we took a few steps in the same direction, he pointed out to me the Palais Bonaparte, saying, 'We are also related to them.'.... Which means that a grand-nephew of the Emperor married a cousin of Peppino.... I swear he thinks he is related to Napoleon!... He is not even proud of it. The Bonapartes are nowhere when it is a question of nobility!... I await the time when he will blush." "And I the time when he will be punished as he deserves," interrupted Alba Steno, in a mournful voice. "He is insolently triumphant. But no. ....He will succeed.... If it be true that his fortune is one immense theft, think of those he has ruined. In what can they believe in the face of his infamous happiness?" "If they are philosophers," replied Dorsenne, laughing still more gayly, "this spectacle will cause them to meditate on the words uttered by one of my friends: 'One can not doubt the hand of God, for it created the world.' Do you remember a certain prayer-book of Montluc's?" "The one which your friend Montfanon bought to vex the poor little thing?" "Precisely. The old-leaguer has returned it to Ribalta; the latter told me so yesterday; no doubt in a spirit of mortification. I say no doubt for I have not seen the poor, dear man since the duel, which his impatience toward Ardea and Hafner rendered in evitable. He retired, I know not for how many days, to the convent of Mount Olivet, near Sienna, where he has a friend, one Abbe de Negro, of whom he always speaks as of a saint. I learned, through Rebalta, that he has returned, but is invisible. I tried to force an entrance. In short, the volume is again in the shop of the curiosity-seeker in the Rue Borgognona, if Mademoiselle Hafner still wants it!" "What good fortune!" exclaimed Fanny, with a sparkle of delight in her eyes. "I did not know what present to offer my dear Cardinal. Shall we make the purchase at once?" "Montluc's prayer-book?" repeated old Ribalta, when the two young ladies had alighted from the carriage before his small book-shop, more dusty, more littered than ever with pamphlets, in which he still was, with his face more wrinkled, more wan and more proud, peering from beneath his broad-brimmed hat, which he did not raise. "How do you know it is here? Who has told you? Are there spies everywhere?" "It was Monsieur Dorsenne, one of Monsieur de Montfanon's friends," said Fanny, in her gentle voice. "Sara sara," replied the merchant with his habitual insolence, and, opening the drawer of the chest in which he kept the most incongruous treasures, he drew from it the precious volume, which he held toward them, without giving it up. Then he began a speech, which reproduced the details given by Montfanon himself. "Ah, it is very authentic. There is an indistinct but undeniable signature. I have compared it with that which is preserved in the archives of Sienna. It is Montluc's writing, and there is his escutcheon with the turtles.... Here, too, are the half-moons of the Piccolomini.... This book has a history...." "The Marshal gave it, after the famous siege, to one of the members of that illustrious family. And it was for one of the descendants that I was commissioned to buy it.... They will not give it up for less than two thousand francs." "What a cheat!" said Alba to her companion, in English. "Dorsenne told me that Monsieur de Monfanon bought it for four hundred." "Are you sure?" asked Fanny, who, on receiving a reply in the affirmative, addressed the bookseller, with the same gentleness, but with reproach in her accent: "Two thousand francs, Monsieur Ribalta? But it is not a just price, since you sold it to Monsieur de Montfanon for one-fifth of that sum." "Then I am a liar and a thief," roughly replied the old man; "a thief and a liar," he repeated. "Four hundred francs! You wish to have this book for four hundred francs? I wish Monsieur de Montfanon was here to tell you how much I asked him for it." The old bookseller smiled cruelly as he replaced the prayerbook in the drawer, the key of which he turned, and turning toward the two young girls, whose delicate beauty, heightened by their fine toilettes, contrasted so delightfully with the sordid surroundings, he enveloped them with a glance so malicious that they shuddered and instinctively drew nearer one another. Then the bookseller resumed, in a voice hoarser and deeper than ever: "If you wish to spend four hundred francs I have a volume which is worth it, and which I propose to take to the Palais Savorelli one of these days.... Ha, ha! It must be one of the very last, for the Baron has bought them all." In uttering, those enigmatical words, he opened the cup board which formed the lower part of the chest, and took from one of the shelves a book wrapped in a newspaper. He then unfolded the journal, and, holding the volume in his enormous hand with his dirty nails, he disclosed the title to the two young girls: 'Hafner and His Band; Some Reflections on the Scandalous Acquittal. By a Shareholder.' It was a pamphlet, at that date forgotten, but which created much excitement at one time in the financial circles of Paris, of London and of Berlin, having been printed at once in three languages--in French, in German and in English--on the day after the suit of the 'Credit Austro Dalmate.' The dealer's chestnut-colored eyes twinkled with a truly ferocious joy as he held out the volume and repeated: "It is worth four hundred francs." "Do not read that book, Fanny," said Alba quickly, after having read the title of the work, and again speaking in English; "it is one of those books with which one should not even pollute one's thoughts." "You may keep the book, sir," she continued, "since you have made yourself the accomplice of those who have written it, by speculating on the fear you hoped it would inspire. Mademoiselle Hafner has known of it long, and neither she nor her father will give a centime." "Very well! So much the better, so much the better," said Ribalta, wrapping up his volume again; "tell your father I will keep it at his service." "Ah, the miserable man!" said Alba, when Fanny and she had left the shop and reentered the carriage. "To dare to show you that!" "You saw," replied Fanny, "I was so surprised I could not utter a word. That the man should offer me that infamous work is very impertinent. My father?... You do not know his scrupulousness in business. It is the honor of his profession. There is not a sovereign in Europe who has not given him a testimonial." That impassioned protestation was so touching, the generous child's illusion was so sincere, that Alba pressed her hand with a deeper tenderness. When Alba found herself that evening with her friend Dorsenne, who again dined at Madame Steno's, she took him aside to relate to him the tragical scene, and to ask him: "Have you seen that pamphlet?" "To-day," said the writer. "Montfanon, whom I have found at length, has just bought one of the two copies which Ribalta received lately. The old leaguer believes everything, you know, when a Hafner is in the question.... I am more skeptical in the bad as well as in the good. It was only the account given by the trial which produced any impression on me, for that is truth." "But he was acquitted." "Yes," replied Dorsenne, "though it is none the less true that he ruined hundreds and hundreds of persons." "Then, by the account given you of the case, it is clear to you that he is dishonest," interrupted Alba. "As clear as that you are here, Contessina," replied Dorsenne, "if to steal means to plunder one's neighbors and to escape justice. But that would be nothing. The sinister corner in this affair is the suicide of one Schroeder, a brave citizen of Vienna, who knew our Baron intimately, and who invested, on the advice of his excellent friend, his entire fortune, three hundred thousand florins, in the scheme. He lost them, and, in despair, killed himself, his wife, and their three children." "My God!" cried Alba, clasping her hands. "And Fanny might have read that letter in the book." "Yes," continued Julien, "and all the rest with proof in support of it. But rest assured, she shall not have the volume. I will go to that anarchist of a Ribalta to-morrow and I will buy the last copy, if Hafner has not already bought it." Notwithstanding his constant affectation of irony, and, notwithstanding, his assumption of intellectual egotism, Julien was obliging. He never hesitated to render any one a service. He had not told his little friend an untruth when he promised her to buy the dangerous work, and the following morning he turned toward the Rue Borgognona, furnished with the twenty louis demanded by the bookseller. Imagine his feelings when the latter said to him: "It is too late, Monsieur Dorsenne. The young lady was here last night. She pretended not to prefer one volume to the other. It was to bargain, no doubt. Ha, ha! But she had to pay the price. I would have asked the father more. One owes some consideration to a young girl." "Wretch!" exclaimed the novelist. "And you can jest after having committed that Judas-like act! To inform a child of her father's misdeeds, when she is ignorant of them!... Never, do you hear, never any more will Monsieur de Montfanon and I set foot in your shop, nor Monseigneur Guerillot, nor any of the persons of my acquaintance. I will tell the whole world of your infamy. I will write it, and it shall appear in all the journals of Rome. I will ruin you, I will force you to close this dusty old shop." During the entire day, Dorsenne vainly tried to shake off the weight of melancholy which that visit to the brigand of the Rue Borgognona had left upon his heart. On crossing, at nine o'clock, the threshold of the Villa Steno to give an account of his mission to the Contessina, he was singularly moved. There was no one there but the Maitlands, two tourists and two English diplomatists, on their way to posts in the East. "I was awaiting you," said Alba to her friend, as soon as she could speak with him in a corner of the salon. "I need your advice. Last night a tragical incident took place at the Hafner's." "Probably," replied Dorsenne. "Fanny has bought Ribalta's book." "She has bought the book!" said Alba, changing color and trembling. "Ah, the unhappy girl; the other thing was not sufficient!" "What other thing?" questioned Julien. "You remember," said the young girl, "that I told you of that Noe Ancona, the agent who served Hafner as a tool in selling up Ardea, and in thus forcing the marriage. Well, it seems this personage did not think himself sufficiently well-paid for his complicity. He demanded of the Baron a large sum, with which to found some large swindling scheme, which the latter refused point-blank. The other threatened to relate their little dealing to Ardea, and he did so." "And Peppino was angry?" asked Dorsenne, shaking his head. "That is not like him." "Indignant or not," continued Alba, "last night he went to the Palais Savorelli to make a terrible scene with his future father-in-law." "And to obtain an increase of dowry," said Julian. "He was not by any means tactful, then," replied Alba, "for even in the presence of Fanny, who entered in the midst of their conversation, he did not pause. Perhaps he had drunk a little more than he could stand, which has of late become common with him. But, you see, the poor child was initiated into the abominable bargain with regard to her future, to her happiness, and if she has read the book, too! It is too dreadful!" "What a violent scene!" exclaimed Dorsenne. "So the engagement has been broken off?" "Not officially. Fanny is ill in bed from the excitement. Ardea came this morning to see my mother, who has also seen Hafner. She has reconciled them by proving to them, which she thinks true, that they have a common interest in avoiding all scandal, and arranging matters. But it rests with the poor little one. Mamma wished me to go, this afternoon, to beseech her to reconsider her resolution. For she has told her father she never wishes to hear the Prince's voice again. I have refused. Mamma insists. Am I not right?" "Who knows?" replied Julien. "What would be her life alone with her father, now that her illusions with regard to him have been swept away?" The touching scene had indeed taken place, and less than twenty-four hours after the novelist had thus expressed to himself the regret of not assisting at it. Only he was mistaken as to the tenor of the dialogue, in a manner which proved that the subtlety of intelligence will never divine the simplicity of the heart. The most dolorous of all moral tragedies knit and unknit the most often in silence. It was in the afternoon, toward six o'clock, that a servant came to announce Mademoiselle Hafner's visit to the Contessina, busy at that moment reading for the tenth time the 'Eglogue Mondaine,' that delicate story by Dorsenne. When Fanny entered the room, Alba could see what a trial her charming god-daughter of the past week had sustained, by the surprising and rapid alteration in that expressive and noble visage. She took her hand at first without speaking to her, as if she was entirely ignorant of the cause of her friend's real indisposition. She then said: "How pleased I am to see you! Are you better?" "I have never been ill," replied Fanny, who did not know how to tell an untruth. "I have had pain, that is all." Looking at Alba, as if to beg her to ask no question, she added: "I have come to bid you adieu." "You are going away?" asked the Contessina. "Yes," said Fanny, "I am going to spend the summer at one of our estates in Styria." And, in a low voice: "Has your mother told you that my engagement is broken?" "Yes," replied Alba, and both were again silent. After several moments Fanny was the first to ask: "And how shall you spend your summer?"--"We shall go to Piove, as usual," was Alba's answer. "Perhaps Dorsenne will be there, and the Maitlands will surely be." A third pause ensued. They gazed at one another, and, without uttering another word, they distinctly read one another's hearts. The martyrdom they suffered was so similar, they both knew it to be so like, that they felt the same pity possess them at the same moment. Forced to condemn with the most irrevocable condemnation, the one her father, the other, her mother, each felt attracted toward the friend, like her, unhappy, and, falling into one another's arms, they both sobbed. _ |