Beatrix

Chapter 23

ONE OF THE DISEASES OF THE AGE

Such conduct implied a plan, and Madame Schontz had, as you may well

believe, a plan. Jealous for the last two years of Madame du Bruel,

she was consumed with the ambition to be married by church and mayor.

All social positions have their forbidden fruit, some little thing

magnified by desire until it has become the weightiest thing in life.

This ambition of course involved a second Arthur; but no espial on the

part of those about her had as yet discovered Rochefide's secret

rival. Bixiou fancied he saw the favored one in Leon de Lora; the

painter saw him in Bixiou, who had passed his fortieth year and ought

to be making himself a fate of some kind. Suspicions were also turned

on Victor de Vernisset, a poet of the school of Canalis, whose passion