Je Suis La Baronne Simone De Valfort

I was still snooping around the library, when she entered, holding her hand out to me. “Je suis la Baronne Simone de Valfort,” she said, with a bit of hoarseness in the throat that provided her timbre with a strange but warm quality, and gave her voice, deeper accents, which sensual sonorities, I’ll never forget. I could not tell how old she was, for she was the kind of women that remains untouched by time. The passing years could do no more than give her a brush. She may have been fifty, but her beauty was half her age. “Walter Morsirisse. Je suis enchanté.” I answered, my mouth so close to the hand she had offered me that I could feel the sweetness of her skin on my breath. She took back her hand -which I had kept close to my thin mustache

Whatever she wanted to discuss was surely important, however, she was having second thoughts about confiding in me. She was struggling inside. Her gestures had the same inutility as a nervous twitch. She moved in her chair in a contorted motion, wiggling to change her position, but after having found herself, successively, back in the same place, she finally gave up on the idea of ‘relocating’ her body within the limited space her seat was offering. So, she remained still, but started stroking the skirt of her black dress, with the obvious, and unnecessary intention to make wrinkles, - already invisible-, nonetheless disappear. Unhappy with the results of her last effort, she pulled on the hem of her dress, upsetting the garment that fitted her so

“Oh! Yes…,” she said hesitantly. “Forgive me… You see… I don’t know any more… I don’t know if I should…” “Please, feel free to speak. If something is bothering you, rest assured that you can count on me for help…” “Yes, I’m sure,” she rushed to say. Then, she stopped. She stopped like a fugitive who has reached the edge of a cliff, and is now faced with only one option: to jump. “Monsieur Morsirisse, my husband has paid you a visit!” My ‘yes’, sounded like ‘no’, or more precisely ‘I can’t tell you what it was about.’ Anyway, she obviously understood what I gave her in answer, for she looked disappointed. “Don’t worry!” she said. “It’s about the letter he received. Isn’t it?” “Did he tell you that?” “He didn’t have to,” she said, after a slight hesitation. “What do you mean?” I asked. The Baroness was uncovering her secret very slowly. Each one of her disclosures, if it clarified the preceding one, required, however, to be expounded. As she added a new detail to a revelation, I needed another fresh explanation. And this time, again, she made no exception, raising up the element of mystery in her response. What she next said found me unprepared. “I already