“Dear and honored friend Billet:
“The Revolutionary cause gains daily hereabouts and while the aristocrats lose, the patriots advance. The Village of Haramont enrolls itself in the active service of the National Guard; but it has no arms. The means to procure them lies in those who harbor arms in quantity should be made to surrender the overplus, so that the country would be saved expense. If it pleases General Lafayette to authorize that such illegal magazines of arms should be placed at the call of the townships, proportionately to the number of men to be armed, I undertake for my part to supply the Haramont Arsenal with at least thirty guns. This is the only means to oppose a dam to the contra-Revolutionary movements of the aristocrats and enemies of the Nation.
“Your fellow-Citizen and most humble Servant,
“Ange Pitou.”
When this was written the author perceived that he had omitted to speak to his correspondent of his wife and daughter. He treated him too much in the Brutus style; on the other hand, to give Billet particulars about Catherine’s love affair was to rend the father’s heart; it was also to re-open Pitou’s bleeding wounds. He stifled a sigh and appended this P. S.
“Mistress Billet and Miss Catherine and all the household are well, and beg to be remembered to Master Billet.”
Thus he entangled neither himself nor others.
The reply to this was not slow in coming. Two days subsequently, a mounted express messenger dashed into Haramont and asked for Captain Ange Pitou. His horse was white with foam. He wore the uniform of a staff-officer of the Parisian National Guards.
Judge of the effect he produced and the trouble and throbs of Pitou! He went up to the officer who smiled, and pale and trembling he took the paper he bore for him. It was a response from Billet, by the hand of Gilbert.
Billet advised Pitou to move moderately in his patriotism.
He enclosed General Lafayette’s order, countersigned by the War Minister, to arm the Haramont National Guards.
The bearer was an officer charged to see to the arming of cities on the road.
Thus ran the Order:
“All who possess more than one gun or sword are hereby bound to place the excess at the disposal of the chief officials in their cantons. The Present Measure is to be executed throughout the entire country.”
Red with joy, Pitou thanked the officer, who smiled again, and started off for the next post for changing horses.
Thus was our friend at the high tide of honor: he had received a communication from General Lafayette, and the War Minister.
This message served his schemes and plans most timely.
To see the animated faces of his fellows, their brightened eyes and eager manner; the profound respect all at once entertained for Ange Pitou, the most credulous observer must have owned that he had become an important character.
One after another the electors begged to touch the seal of the War Department.
When the crowd had tapered down to the chosen friends, Pitou said:
“Citizens, my plans have succeeded as I anticipated. I wrote to the Commander-in-chief your desire to be constituted National Guards, and your choice of me as leader. Read the address on the order brought me.”
The envelope was superscribed: “Captain Ange Pitou, Commander of the National Guards. Haramont.”
“Therefore,” continued the martial peasant, “I am known and accepted as commander by the Chief of the Army. You are recognized and approved as Soldiers of the Nation by General Lafayette and the Minister of War.”
A long cheer shook the walls of the little house which sheltered Pitou.
“I know where to get the arms,” he went on. “Select two of your number to accompany me. Let them be lusty lads, for we may have a difficulty.”
The embryo regiment chose one Claude Tellier sergeant and one Desire Maniquet lieutenant. Pitou approved.
Accompanied by the two, Captain Pitou proceeded once more to Villers Cotterets where he went straight to the mayor to be still farther supported in his demand.
On the way he was puzzled why the letter from Billet, written by Gilbert, asked no news of Sebastian.
On the way he fretted over a paragraph in the letter from Billet, written as it was by Dr. Gilbert, which read:
“Why has Pitou forgot to send news about Sebastian and why does not the boy himself write news?”
Meanwhile, Father Fortier was little aware of the storm he had aroused; and nobody was more astounded when a thunderclap came to his door. When it was opened he saw on the sill the mayor, his vice, and his secretary. Behind them appeared the cocked hats of two gendarmes, and half-a-dozen curious people behind them.
“Father Fortier,” said the mayor, “are you aware of the new decree of the Minister of War?”
“No, mayor,” said he.
“Read it, then.”
The secretary read the warrant to take extra arms from the domiciles. The schoolmaster turned pale.
“The Haramont National Guard have come for the guns.”
Fortier jumped as if he meant to fly at the guardsmen.
Judging that this was the nick for his appearance, Pitou approached, backed by his lieutenant and sergeant.
“These rogues,” cried the abbe, passing from white to red, “these scums!”
The mayor was a neutral who wanted things to go on quietly; he had no wish to quarrel with the altar or the guard-house; the invectives only called forth his hearty laugh.
“You hear how the reverend gentleman treats the Haramont National Guards,” he said to Pitou and his officers.
“Because he knew us when boys and does not think we have grown up,” said Ange, with melancholy mildness.
“But we have become men,” roughly said Maniquet, holding out towards the priest his hand, maimed by a gun going off prematurely while he was poaching on a nobleman’s warren. Needless to say he was determined the nobility should pay for this accident.
“Serpents,” said the schoolmaster in irritation.
“Who will sting if trodden on,” retorted Sergeant Claude, joining in.
In these threats the mayor saw the extent of the Revolution and the priest martyrdom.
“We want some of the arms here,” said the former, to conciliate everybody.
“They are not mine but belong to the Duke of Orleans,” was the reply.
“Granted,” said Pitou, “but that does not prevent us asking for them all the same.”
“I will write to the prince,” said the pedagogue loftily.
“You forget that the delay will avail nothing,” interposed the mayor; “the duke is for the people and would reply that they ought to be given not only the muskets but the old cannon.”
This probability painfully struck the priest who groaned in Latin: “I am surrounded by foes.”
“Quite true, but these are merely political enemies,” observed Pitou; “we hate in you only the bad patriot.”
“Absurd and dangerous fool,” returned the priest, in excitement which gave him eloquence of a kind, “which is of us the better lover of his country, I who wish to keep cruel weapons in the shade, or you demanding them for civil strife and discord? which is the true son, I who seek palms to decorate our common mother, or you who hunt for the steel to rend her bosom?”
The mayor turned aside his head to hide his emotion, making a slight nod as much as to say: “That is very neatly put.” The deputy mayor, like another Tarquin, was cropping the flowers with his cane. Ange was set back, which caused his two companions to frown.
Sebastian, a Spartan child, was impassible. Going up to Pitou he asked him what was the to-do.
“An order signed by General Lafayette, and written by my father?” he repeated when briefly informed. “Why is there any hesitation in obeying it?”
He revealed the indomitable spirit of the two races creating him in his dilated pupils, and the rigidity of his brow.
The priest shuddered to hear the words and lowered his crest.
“This is rebellion,” continued Sebastian; “beware, sir!”
“Thou, also?” cried the schoolmaster, draping himself in his gown after the manner of Caesar.
“And I,” said Pitou, comprehending that his post was at stake. “Do you style me a traitor, because I came to you with the olive branch in my hand to ask the arms, and am forced this day to wrench them from you under support of the authorities? Well, I would rather appear as a traitor to my duties than give a favoring hand to the Anti-Revolution. The Country forever and above all! hand over the arms, or we will use ours!”
The mayor nodded on the sly to Pitou as he had to the priest to signify: “You have said that finely.”
The speech had thunderstricken the priest and electrified the hearers. The mayor slipped away, and the deputy would have liked to follow his example, but the absence of the two principal functionaries would look bad. He therefore followed the secretary, who led the gendarmes along to the museum, guided by Pitou who, instructed in the place was also instructed on the place of deposit.
Like a lion cub, Sebastian bounded with the patriots. The schoolmaster fell half dead on a chair.
The invaders wanted to pillage everything, but Pitou only selected thirty-three muskets, with an extra one, a rifle, for himself, together with a straight sword, which he girded on.
The others, made up into two bundles, were carried by the joyous pair of officers in spite of the weight, past the disconsolate priest.
They were distributed to the Haramontese that evening, and in presenting a gun to each, Pitou said, like the Spartan mother giving out the buckler: “Come home with it, or go to sleep on it!”
Thus was the little place set in a ferment by Pitou’s act. The delight was great to own a gun where firearms had been forbidden lest the lords’ game should be injured and where the long oppression of the gamekeepers had infused a mania for hunting.
But Pitou did not participate in the glee. The soldiers had weapons but not only was their captain ignorant how to drill them but to handle them in file or squad.
During the night his taxed brain suggested the remedy.
He remembered an old friend, also an old soldier, who had lost a leg at the Battle of Fontenoy; the Duke of Orleans gave him the privilege to live in the woods, and kill either a hare or a rabbit a-day. He was a dead shot and on the proceeds of his shooting under this license he fared very well.
His manual of arms might be musty but then Pitou could procure from Paris the new Drill-book of the National Guards, and correct what was obsolete by the newest tactics.
He called on old Clovis at a lucky moment as the old hunter was saddened by his gun having burst. He welcomed the present of the rifle which Ange brought him and eagerly embraced the opportunity of paying him in kindness by teaching him the drill.
Each day Pitou repeated to his soldiery what he had learnt overnight from the hunter, and he became more popular, the admired of men, children and the aged. Even women were quieted when his lusty voice thundered: “Heads up—eyes right! bear yourselves nobly! look at me!” for Pitou looked noble.
As soon as the manoeuvres became complicated, Pitou went over to a large town where he studied the troops on the parade grounds, and picked up more in a day from practice than from the books in three months.
Thus two months passed by, in fatigue, toil and feverish excitement.
Pitou was still unhappy in love, but he was satiated with glory. He had run about so much, so moved his limbs, and whetted his mind, that you may be astonished that he should long to appease or comfort his heart. But he was thinking of that.
MANY times after drill, and that followed nights spent in learning the tactics, Pitou would wander in the skirts of Boursonne Wood to see how faithful Catherine was to her love-trysts.
Stealing an hour or two from her farm and house duties, the girl would go to a little hunting-box, in a rabbit warren belonging to Boursonne Manor, to meet the happy Isidore, the mortal more than ever proud and handsome, when all the country was in suffering around him.
What anguish devoured poor Pitou, what sad reflections he was driven to make on the inequality of men as regards happiness.
He whom the pretty maids were ogling, preferred to come and mope like a dog whipped for following the master too far from home, at the door of the summerhouse where the amorous pair were billing and cooing.
All because he adored Catherine and the more as he deemed her vastly superior to him. He did not regard her as loving another, for Isidore Charny had ceased to be an object of jealousy. He was a lord, handsome and worthy of being loved: but Catherine as a daughter of the lower orders ought not for that reason disgrace her family or drive Pitou to despair.
Meditation on this cut him with sharp edges and keen points.
“She showed no proper feeling in letting me go from the farm,” he mused, “and since I went off, she has not inquired whether I starved to death or not. What would Father Billet say if he knew how his friends are thus cast off, and his business neglected? What would he say if he heard that, instead of looking after the working people, his daughter goes to keep appointments with the aristocrat, Lord Charny? He would not say much, but he would kill her. It is something to have the means of revenge in one’s hand,” thought Pitou.
But it is grander not to use them.
Still, Pitou had learnt that there is no benefit in doing good unless the actions are known to the person befriended.
Would it be possible to let Catherine know that he was helping her?
He knew that she came through the woods to go to the hunting-box, and it was very easy for him to plant himself under the trees, a book in hand as if he were studying, where she would be sure to come along.
Indeed, as he was pretending to pore over the “Perfect National Guardsman,” after having watched her to her rendezvous, he heard the soft shutting of a door. The rustle of a dress in the brush came next. Catherine’s head appeared above the bushes, looking with an apprehensive air all round for fear somebody would see her.
She was ten paces from her rustic worshipper, who kept still with the book on his knee. But he no longer looked on it but at the girl so that she should mark that he saw her.
She uttered a slight faint, stifled scream, recognized him, became pale as though death had flitted by and grazed her, and, after a short indecision betrayed in her trembling and the shrug of her shoulders, she flew wildly into the underwood and found her hitched-up horse in the forest. She mounted and fled.
Pitou’s plot was well laid and she had fallen into it.
He went home, half-frightened, half delighted.
He perceived a number of details most alarming in the accomplished trick.
The following Sunday was appointed for a grand military parade at Haramont. Sufficiently drilled, the Haramontese meant to give warlike exercises. Several rival villages also making military studies, were to contest with them in the career of arms.
The announcement drew a great crowd, and the people in holiday attire gathered on the green, where they feasted frugally on homemade cake and fruit, washed down with spring water.
Some of the spectators were the gentry and squires, come to laugh at the clowns playing at soldiers.
Haramont had become a centre, for four corps of other Guards came hither, headed by fife and drum.
Among the farmers, came Catherine and Mother Billet on horseback.
This was at the same time as the Haramont National Guard marched up, with fife and drum, with Commander Pitou on a borrowed white horse, in order that the likeness should be complete to General Lafayette reviewing the National Guards at Paris.
Without joking, if he did not look stylish and aristocratic, he was noble and valiant and pleasant to behold.
This company of Guards had shining muskets, the national cockades, and marched with most satisfactory time in two files. It had won the tribute before reaching the parade ground.
Out of the corner of his eye, Pitou saw that Catherine changed color. From that moment the review had more interest to him than anything in the world.
He passed his men through the simple manual of arms, and they did it so smartly and neatly that it elicited applause.
Not so with the competitors, who were irregularly armed and had not been trained steadily. Others exaggerated from their conceit what they could have done properly.
On the whole imperfect results.
For the grand array, Pitou was outranked in seniority by an army sergeant who took the general command; but unhappily he had grasped more than he could hold: he bunched his men, lost grip of some files, let a company meander under the surrounding trees, and finally lost his head so that his own soldiers began to grumble.
From the Haramont side rose a shout:
“Let Pitou try!”
“Yes, yes Pitou!” caught up the other villagers, furious at their inferiority being manifested through their own instructors.
Pitou jumped on his white charger, and replacing himself at the head of his troop, become the rallying point of the little army, uttered a word of command so superbly that the oaks shivered. On the instant, and as by miracle, order was re-established: the movements fitted in with one another with such uniformity that the enthusiasm did not disturb the regularity. Pitou so well applied the theory of the instruction books and the practice of old Clovis that he obtained immense success.
Formed into a hollow square, the whole army raised but one voice and proclaimed him Colonel on the spot.
Bathed in perspiration and drunk with glory, Pitou got down off his horse and received the people’s felicitations when he alighted.
But at the same time he glanced round for Catherine. He heard her voice by his side; he had no need to hunt for her, as she had come to him. Great was this triumph.
“Have you not a word for us, Captain Pitou?” she demanded, with a laughing air belied by her pale face; “I suppose you have grown proud since you are a great general?”
“Oh, no,” responded he, saluting, “I am not that, but just a poor fellow who loves his country and desires to serve her.”
This reply was carried away on the waves of the multitude and was proclaimed sublime by the acclamation in unison.
“Ange, I want to speak with you,” whispered Catherine. “Do come back to the farm with mother and me.”
“All right.”
Catherine had already arranged that they should be alone together on the road. She had switched her mother into the train of several neighbors and gossips who held her in talk so that the girl could walk through the woods with the National Guardsman.
“Why have you kept aloof from the farm so long?” began Catherine when they were beneath the hoary oaks. “It is bad behavior on your part.”
Pitou was silent, for it hurt him to hear Catherine tell lies.
“But, I have something else to speak about,” she continued, seeing that he was avoiding her with his usually straight and loyal glance. “The other day I saw you in the copse. Did you know me?”
“Not at first, but I did know you.”
“What were you doing there in hiding?”
“Why should I be in hiding? I was studying a military book.”
“I only thought that curiosity——“
“I am not a Peeping Tom.”
She stamped testily with her small foot.
“You are always stuck there and it is not a regular place for students.”
“It is very secluded—nothing disturbs one there.”
“Nothing? do you stay there any length of time?”
“Sometimes whole days.”
“And have you been in the habit of making that your resort?” she inquired quickly.
“Since a good while back.”
“It is astonishing that I should not have seen you before,” she said, lying so boldly that Pitou was almost convinced.
But he was ashamed for her sake; he was timid from being in love and this led him to be guarded.
“I may have dozed off,” he replied; “it has happened when I have taxed my brain too much.”
“Then in your sleep you would not have noticed where I strayed for shade—I would go as far as the walls of the old shooting-lodge.”
“What lodge?” questioned Pitou.
“The Charny Hunting-lodge,” replied she, blushing from his innocence being too thickly laid on not to be suspicious. “It is there grow the finest houseleeks in the section. I burnt myself while ironing and wanted to make a poultice of them.”
As if willing to believe her, he looked at her hands.
“No, not my hand, my foot,” she said quickly. “I—I dropped the iron: but it has done me good; you see, that I do not limp.”
“She did not limp either when she scampered through the wood like a fawn,” thought Ange.
She imagined she had succeeded and that Pitou had seen and heard nothing. Giving way to delight, mean in so fine a spirit, she said:
“So Captain Pitou is riding his high horse; proud of his new rank, he scorns us rustics from being a military officer.”
Pitou felt wounded. Even a dissimulated sacrifice almost requires some reward, and as Catherine only mystified Pitou or jested at him, no doubt contrasting him with the intelligent Charny, all his good intentions vanished. Self-esteem is a charmed serpent, on which it is perillous to step unless you crush it once for all.
“It seems to me that you are the haughty one,” he returned, “for you drove me off the farm on the grounds that there was no work for me. I haven’t told Master Billet so far I have arms for earning my bread, thank God! However, you are the mistress under your own roof. In short, you sent me away. Hence, as you saw me at the Charny Lodge, and we were not enemies, it was your place to speak to me instead of running away like a boy stealing apples.”
The viper had bitten; Catherine dropped out of her calm.
“I, run away?” she exclaimed.
“As though fire had broken out on the farm. I had not time to shut up my book before you were on the back of Younker, where he was concealed in the foliage, after barking an ashtree, and ruining it.”
“What do you mean by ruining?”
“That is right enough,” continued Pitou: “while you were gathering houseleeks, Younker was browsing, and in an hour a horse eats a heap of stuff. It must have taken quite an hour for him to strip that sized tree of bark. You must have collected enough plants to cure all the wounds inflicted in taking the Bastile—it is a great thing for poultices!”
Pale and in despair, Catherine could not find a word to speak. Pitou was silent also, as he had said quite enough.
Mother Billet, stopping at the road forks, was bidding adieu to her cronies.
“What does the officer say?” queried the woman.
“He says goodnight to you, Mother Billet.”
“Not yet,” cried Catherine with a desperate tone. “Tell me the truth—are we no longer friends?”
Pitou felt his secret well up to his lips: but it was all over with him if he spoke; so he bowed mutely with respect which touched her heart; gave Mother Billet a pleasant smile, and disappeared in the dense wood.
“Is that what is called love?” Pitou monologued to himself; “it is sweet at times and then again bitter.”
He returned to Haramont, singing the most doleful of rural ballads to the mournfullest tunes.
Luckily he did not find his warriors in any such mood. On the contrary, they were preparing for a feast and they had set aside the chair of honor for their Caesar who had overcome the other villages’ Pompeys.
Dragged by his officers into the banquet room, he saluted in silence in return for the greetings, and with the calmness we know as his, attacked the roast veal and potatoes. His action lasted so long that his “digester” was filled while his heart was freed of gall. At the end of a couple of hours he perceived that his grief was no worse.
He stood up when his brother revellers could not stand, while the ladies had fled before the dessert. He made a speech on the sobriety of the Spartans—when all were dead drunk. He said that it was healthier to take a stroll than sleep under the table.
Alone he set the example; he asked of the shadows beneath the glades, why he should be so stern towards a young woman, made for love, grace and sweetness; one who might also cherish a fancy at the outset of life? Alas, why had she not fancied him?
Why should an ugly, uncouth bear like him inspire amorous sentiments in a pretty girl, when a handsome young nobleman—a very peacock beside him—was there to glitter and enchant?
He reasoned that, dazzled by Charny’s brilliancy, she would not see Pitou’s real value if he acted harshly towards her. Consequently, he ought to behave nicely to her.
The good soul, heated white hot by wine and love, vowed to make Catherine ashamed of having scorned the affection of such a sterling lover as he was.
He could not admit that the fair, chaste and proud Catherine was anything like a plaything to the dashing gallant, or a bright flirt, smiling on the lace ruffles and spurred boots.
Some day Master Isidore would go to the city to marry a countess, and the romance would end by his never looking at Catherine again.
To prove to the maid that he was not ugly, he resolved to take back any harsh words he had used; to do which it was necessary for him to see her.
He started through the woods for the Billet Farm, slashing the bushes with his stick—which blows the shrubs returned with usury.
During this time Catherine was pensively following her mother.
A few steps from the farm was a swamp. The road narrows there so that two horses can hardly go abreast. Mother Billet had gone through and the girl was about to follow when she heard a whistle.
In the shadow she spied the laced cap of Isidore’s groom. She let her mother ride on and waited for the messenger.
“Master wants to see you very particular this evening at eleven, wherever you like,” said the man.
“Good gracious, has anything bad happened to him?” she said.
“I do not know; but he had a letter from town sealed with black wax. I have been waiting an hour for you.”
Ten o’clock struck on the village church bell. Catherine looked round her.
“This place is dark and out of the way,” she said; “I will await your Master here.”
At the fixed time she ran out to the spot, warned by the sound of a galloping horse. It was Isidore, attended by the groom, who stood at a space while the noble advanced, without getting off his horse.
He held out his arms to her, lifted her on the stirrup, kissed her and said:
“My brother Valence was killed yesterday at Versailles and my brother the count calls me. I am off, Catherine!”
“Oh,” she moaned painfully, as she furiously embraced him, “if they have killed him, they will kill you as well.”
“Catherine, whatever betides, my eldest brother awaits me; Catherine, you know that I love you.”
“Oh, stay, stay,” she cried, only knowing one thing—that her beloved talked of leaving her.
“But, honor, Catherine—my murdered brother! vengeance!”
“Oh, what an unhappy girl I am,” moaned she, collapsing, palpitating but rigid in the horseman’s arms.
Resigned, for she at last comprehended that the brother’s summons was an order, she glided to the ground after a farewell kiss.
He turned his eyes, sighed and wavered for a time; but, attracted by the imperative order received, he set his horse to the gallop, and flung Catherine a final farewell.
The lackey followed him across the country.
Catherine remained on the ground, where she had dropped, barring the way with her body.
Almost immediately a man appeared on the hill, striding towards the farm. In his rapid course he could not fail to stumble on the body. He staggered and rolled in the fall, and his groping hands touched the inert form.
“Catherine—dead!” he yelled so that the farm dogs’ took up the howling. “Who has killed Catherine?”
He knelt down, pale and ice-cold, beside the inanimate body with its head across his knee.
ON this same evening, a no less grave event set the college of Father Fortier in an uproar. Sebastian Gilbert had disappeared about six o’clock and had not been found up to midnight by the most active search.
Nobody had seen him save Aunt Angelique, who, coming from the church, where she let out the chairs, had thought to see him going up a lane. This report added to the schoolmaster’s disquiet. He knew that the youth had strange delusions, during which he believed he was following a beautiful lady; more than once when on a walk he had seen him stare at vacancy and if he plunged too deeply into the copse, he would start the best pedestrians of the class after him.
But he had never gone off in the night.
This time, he had taken the road to Haramont, and Angelique had really seen him. He was going to find Pitou. But the latter left the village by one end, to go and see Catherine, at the same time as the doctor’s son quitted it by the other.
Pitou’s door was open, for the captain was still simple in his habits. He lit the candle and waited: but he was too fretful. He found a sheet of paper, half of that on which Pitou had inscribed the name of his company of soldiers, and wrote as follows:
“My dear Pitou: I have come to tell you of a conversation I overheard between Father Fortier and the Villers Cotterets Vicar. Fortier is in connivance with the aristocratic party of Paris and says that a counter-revolutionary movement is hatching at Versailles. The cue was given when the Queen wore the black cockade and trampled the tricolor under-foot. This threat already made me uneasy about my father, who is the aristocrats’ enemy, as you know: but this time it is worse.
“The vicar has returned the priest’s visit, and as I feared for my father, I listened to their talk to hear the sequel to what I overheard by accident last time. It appears, my dear Pitou, that the people stormed Versailles and killed a great many royalists, among them Lord Valence Charny.
“Father Fortier said: ‘Speak low, not to startle little Gilbert, whose father has gone to Versailles and may be killed in the lot!’
“You understand, Pitou, that I did not wait for more, but I have stolen away and I come to have you take me back to Paris. I will not wait any longer, as you may have gone to lay snares in the woods and would not be home till to-morrow. So I proceed on my road to Paris. Have no anxiety as I know the way and besides I have two gold pieces left out of the money my father gave me, so that I can take a seat in the first conveyance I catch up with.
“P. S.—I make this rather long in order to explain my departure, and to delay me that you may return before I finish. But no, I have finished, and you have not come, so that I am off. Farewell, until we meet again! if nothing has happened to my father and he runs no danger, I will return. If not, I shall ask his leave to stay beside him. Calm Father Fortier about my absence; but do not do so until it is too late for him to overtake me. Good-bye, again!”
Knowing his friend’s economy, he put out the candle, and set off.
He went by the starlight at first till he struck through byways the main road at Vauciennes. At the branch of the Paris and Crespy roads, he had to stop as he did not know which to take. They were both alike. He sat down discouraged, partly to rest, partly to reflect, when he heard the galloping of horses from Villers Cotterets way.
He waited to ask the riders the information he wanted. Soon he saw two shadows in the gloom, one riding at a space behind the other so that he judged the foremost to be the master and the other his groom.
He walked out three steps from the roadside to accost him when the horseman clapped his hand to his holster for a pistol.
“I am not a thief, sir,” cried Sebastian, interpreting the action correctly, “but a boy whom recent events at Versailles calls thither to seek his father. I do not know which of these roads I ought to take to get to Paris—point it out, please, and you will do me a great service.”
The speaker’s stylish language and his juvenile tone did not seem unknown to the rider, who reined in his steed, albeit he seemed in haste.
“Who are you, my boy, and how comes it you are out on the highway at such an hour?” he inquired.
“I am not asking you who you are—only my road—the way for a poor boy to reach his father in distress.”
In the almost childish voice was firmness which struck the cavalier.
“My friend, we are on the road to Paris,” he replied: “I have only been there twice and do not know it very well, but I am sure this is the right one.”
Sebastian drew back a step offering his thanks. The horses had need of getting their wind and started off again not very rapidly.
“My Lord Viscount,” said the lackey to his master, “do you not recognize that youth?”
“No: though I fancied——“
“It is young Sebastian Gilbert, who is at boarding school, at Abbé Fortier’s; and who comes over to Billet’s Farm with Ange Pitou.”
“You are right, by Jove!” Turning his horse and stopping, he called out: “Is this you, Sebastian?”
“Yes, my lord,” returned the boy, who had known the horseman all the time.
“Then, come, and tell me how I find you here?”
“I did tell you—I want to learn that my father in Paris is not killed or hurt.”
“Alas, my poor boy,” said Isidore with profound sadness, “I am going to town on the like errand: only I have no doubt; one of my brothers, Valence, was slain at Versailles yesterday.”
“Oh, I am so sorry,” said the youth, holding out his hand to the speaker, which the latter took and squeezed.
“Well, my dear boy, since our fate is akin,” said the cavalier, “we must not separate; you must like me be eager to get to Paris.”
“Oh, dear, yes!”
“You can never reach it on foot.”
“I could do it but it would take too long; so I reckon on taking a place in a stage going my way, and get what lift I can do the journey.”
“Better than that, my boy; get up behind my man.”
Sebastian plucked his hands out of the other’s grasp.
“I thank you, my lord,” said he in such a tone that the noble understood that he had hurt the youth’s feelings by offering to mount him behind his inferior.
“Or, better still, now I think of it,” he went on, “take his place. He can come on afterwards. He can learn where I am by asking at the Tuileries Palace.”
“I thank you again, my lord,” replied the adolescent, in a milder voice, for he had comprehended the delicacy of the offer: “I do not wish to deprive you of his services.”
It was hard to come to an arrangement now that the terms of peace were laid down.
“Better again, my dear Sebastian. Get up behind me. Dawn is peeping: at ten we shall be at Dammartin, half way; there we will leave the two horses, which would not carry us much farther, under charge of Baptistin, and we will take the post-chaise to Paris. I intended to do this so that you do not lead to any change in my arrangements.”
“If this be true, then, I accept,” said the young man, hesitating but dying to go.
“Down with you, Baptistin, and help Master Sebastian to mount.”
“Thanks, but it is useless,” said the youth leaping up behind the gentleman as light as a schoolboy.
The three on the two horses started off at the gallop, and disappeared over the ridge.
AT five next afternoon, Viscount Charny and Sebastian reached the Tuileries Palace gates. The name of his brother passed Isidore and his companion into the middle courtyard.
Young Gilbert had wanted to go to the house in Honore Street where his father dwelt, but the other had pointed out that as he was honorary physician to the Royal Household, he might be at the palace, where the latest news of him could be had.
While an usher made inquiries, Sebastian sat on a sofa and Isidore walked up and down the sitting-room.
In ten minutes the man returned: Count Charny was with the Queen; Dr. Gilbert had had nothing happen to him; he was supposed to be with the King, as a doctor was with his Majesty. If it were so, he would be informed on coming out that a person was waiting to see him.
Isidore was much affected in parting with him as his joy at recovering his father made the loss of his brother more painful.
At this the door opened for a servant to call: “The Viscount of Charny is asked for in the Queen’s apartments.”
“You will wait for me,” said Isidore; “unless your father comes, promise me, Gilbert, for I am answerable for you to the doctor.”
“Yes, and receive my thanks in the meantime,” rejoined Sebastian, resuming his place on the sofa as the Viscount left the room with the domestic.
Easy about his father’s fate, and himself, certain that the good intent would earn his forgiveness for the journey, he went back in memory to Father Fortier, and on Pitou, and reflected on the trouble which his flight and his note would cause them severally.
And naturally, by the mechanism of ideas, he thought of the woods around Pitou’s home, where he had so often pursued the ghost in his reverie. The White Lady seen so oft in visions, and once only in reality, he believed in Satory Wood, appearing and flitting away in a magnificent carriage drawn by a galloping pair.
He recalled the profound emotion this sight had given him and half plunged in dreams anew, he murmured:
“My mother?”
At this juncture, a door in the wall over against him opened. A woman appeared. This appearance was so much in harmony with what happened in his fancy, that he started to see his ghost take substance. In this woman was the vision and the reality—the lady seen at Satory.
He sprang up as though a spring had acted under his feet.
His lips tightened on one another, his eyes expanded, and the pupils dilated. His heaving breast in vain endeavored to form a sound.
Majestic, haughty and disdainful, the lady passed him without any heed. Calm as she was externally, yet her pale countenance, frowning brow and whistling respiration, betrayed that she was in great nervous irritation.
She crossed the room diagonally, opened another door, and walked into a corridor.
Sebastian comprehended that she was escaping him, if he did not hasten. He still looked as if apprehensive that it was a ghost, but then darted after her, before the skirt of her silken robe had disappeared round the turning of the lobby.
Hearing steps behind her, she walked more briskly as if fearing pursuit.
He quickened his gait as much as he could, fearing as the corridor was dark that he might miss her. This caused her to accelerate her pace also, but she looked round.
He uttered a cry of joy for it was clearly the vision.
Seeing but a boy with extended arms and understanding nothing why she should be chased, the lady hurried down a flight of stairs. But she had barely descended to one landing than Sebastian arrived at the end of the passage where he called out:
“Lady, oh, lady!”
This voice produced a strange sensation throughout the hearer; she seemed struck in the heart by a pain which was half delight, and from the heart a shudder sent by the blood through all her veins.
Nevertheless, as all was a puzzle to her; she doubled her speed, and the course resembled a flight.
They reached the foot of the stairs at the same time.
It was the courtyard into which the lady sped. A carriage was waiting for her, for a servant was holding the door open. She stepped in swiftly and took her seat.
Before the door could be closed, Sebastian glided in between it and the footman, and seizing the hem of her dress, kissed with frenzy and cried:
Looking at the pretty boy who had frightened her at first, she said in a sweeter voice than she usually spoke, though it was yet shaken with fear and emotion:
“Well, my little friend, why are you running after me? why do you call me? what do you want?”
“I want to see you, and kiss you,” replied the child. “I want to call you ‘Mother,'” he added in so low a voice that only she could hear him.
She uttered a scream, embraced him, and approaching him as by a sudden revelation, fastened her ardent lips on his brow. Then, as though she dreaded someone coming to snatch away this child whom she had found, she drew him entirely into the vehicle, pushed him to its other side, shut the door with her own hand, and lowering the glass to order: “Drive to No. 9 Coq-Heron Street, the first carriage-doorway from Plastriere Street,” she shut the window instantly.
Turning to the boy she asked his name.
“Sebastian? come, Sebastian, come here, on my heart.”
She threw herself back as if going to swoon, muttering: “What new sensation is this? can it be what is called happiness?”
The journey was one long kiss of mother and son.
She had found this son by a miracle, whom the father had torn from her in a terrible night of anguish and dishonor; he had disappeared with no trace but the abductor’s tracks in the snow; this child had been detested until she heard its first wail, whereupon she had loved him; this child had been prayed for, called for, begged for. Her brother had uselessly hunted for him over land and ocean. For fifteen years she had yearned for him, and despaired to behold him again; she had begun to think no more of him but as a cherished spirit. Here he was, running and crying after her, seeking her, in his turn, calling her “Mother!”
He was pillowed on her heart, pressing on her bosom, loving her filially although he had never seen her, as she loved him with maternal affection. Her pure lips recovered all the joys of a lost life in this first kiss given her son.
Above the head of mankind is Something else than the void in which the spheres revolve: in life there is Another Thing than chance and fatality.
After fourteen years she was taken back to the house where he was born, this offspring of the union of the mesmerist Gilbert and the daughter of the House of Taverney, his victim. There he had drawn the first breath of life and thence his father had stolen him.
This little residence, bought by the late Baron Taverney, served as lodging for his son when he came to town, which was rarely, and for Andrea, when she slept in town.
After her conflict with the Queen, unable to bear meeting the woman who loved her husband, Andrea had made up her mind to go away from the rival, who visited on her retaliation for all her griefs, and whom the woes of the Queen, great though they were, always remained beneath the sufferings of the loving woman.
All concurred then in making this evening a happy one for the ex-Queen’s maid of honor. Nothing should trouble her. Instead of a room in a palace where the walls are all ears and eyes, she was harboring her child in her own little, secluded house.
As soon as she was closeted with Sebastian in her boudoir, she drew him to a lounge, on which were concentrated the lights from both candles and fire.
“Oh, my boy, is it really you?” she exclaimed with a joy which still quivered with lingering doubt.
“Mother!” ejaculated Sebastian with an outburst of the heart, flowing like refreshing dews on Andrea’s burning heart and enfevered veins.
“And the meeting to be here,” said she, looking round with terror towards the room whence he had been stolen.
“What do you mean by ‘Here?'”
“Fifteen years ago, my boy, you were born in this room, and I bless the mercy of the Almighty that you are miraculously restored to me.”
“Yes, miraculously indeed,” said the youth, “for if I had not feared for my father——“
Andrea closed her eyes and leaned back, so sharp was the pang shooting through her.
“If I had not set out alone in the night, I should not have been perplexed about the road: and then I should not have been recognized by Lord Isidore Charny, who offered his help and conducted me to the Tuileries——“
Her eyes re-opened, her heart expanded and her glance thanked heaven: for it increased the miracle that Sebastian should be led to her by her husband’s brother.
“I should not have seen you passing through the palace and not following you might never have called you ‘Mother!’ the word so sweet and tender to utter.”
Recalled to her bliss, she hugged him again and said:
“Yes, you are right, my boy; it is most sweet: but there is perchance another one more sweet and tender; ‘My son!’ which I say to you as I press you to my heart. But in short,” she suddenly said, “it is impossible that all should remain mysterious around us. You have explained how you come here, but not how you recognized me and ran after me, calling me your mother.”
“How can I tell? I do not myself know,” replied Sebastian, looking at her with love unspeakable. “You speak of mysteries? all is mysterious about you and me. List to me, and I will tell you what seems a prodigy.”
Andrea bent nearer.
“It is ten years since I knew you. You do not understand. I have dreams which my father calls hallucinations.”
At the reminder of Gilbert, passing like a steel point from the boyish lips, Andrea started.
“I have seen you twenty times, mother. In the village, while playing with the other schoolboys, I have followed you as you flitted through the woods and pursued you with useless calls till you faded away. Crushed by fatigue I would drop on the spot, as if your presence alone had sustained me.”
This kind of second existence, this living dream, too much resembled what the medium herself experienced for her not to understand him.
“Poor darling,” she said as she pressed him more closely, “it was vainly that hate strove to part us. Heaven was bringing us together without my suspecting it. Less happy than you, I saw my dear child neither in dream nor reality. Still, when I passed through that Green Saloon I felt a shiver; when I heard your footsteps behind mine, giddiness thrilled my heart and brain; when you called me ‘Lady’ I all but stopped; when you called me ‘Mother!’ I nearly swooned; when I embraced you, I believed.”
“My mother,” repeated Sebastian, as if to console her for not having heard the welcome title for so long.
“Yes, your mother,” said the countess, with a transport of love impossible to describe.
“Now that we have found each other,” said the youth, “and as you are contented and happy at our union, we are not going to part any more, tell me?”
She shuddered: she was enjoying the present to the exclusion of the past and totally closing her eyes on the future.
“How I should bless you, my poor boy, if you could accomplish this miracle!” she sighingly murmured.
“Let me manage it; I will do it. I do not know the causes separating you from my father,”—Andrea turned pale—“but they will be effaced by my tears and entreaties, however serious they may be.”
“Never,” returned the countess, shaking her head.
“I tell you that my father adores you,” said Sebastian, who believed that the woman was in the wrong from the way his father had forbidden him ever to mention her name.
Her hands holding the speaker’s relaxed but he did not notice this, as he continued:
“I will prepare him to greet you; I will tell him all the happiness you give me; one of these days, I will take you by the hand and lead you to him, saying: ‘Here she is, father—look, how handsome she is!'”
Repulsing Sebastian, she sprang up.
“Never,” repeated she, while he stared with astounded eyes for she was so white as to alarm him. This time her accent expressed a threat rather than fright.
She recoiled on the lounge; in that face he had seen the hard lines which Raphael gives to irritated angels.
“Why do you refuse to receive my father?” he demanded, in a sullen voice.
At these words, the lightning burst as at the contact of two clouds.
“Why? do you ask me why? well, never shall you know.”
“Still, I ask why,” said Sebastian, with firmness.
“Because, then,” said Andrea, incapable of self-restraint under the sting of the serpent gnawing at her heart, “because your father is an infamous villain!”
He bounded up from the divan and stood before her.
“Do you say that of my father,” he cried, “of Dr. Gilbert, who brought me up and educated me, the only friend I ever knew? I am making a mistake—you are no mother of mine!”
She stopped him darting towards the door.
“Stay,” she said, “you cannot know, ought not understand, may not judge.”
“No; but I can feel, and I feel that I love you no more.”
She screamed with pain.
Simultaneously, a diversion was given to the emotion overwhelming her by the sound of a carriage coming up to the street doorway. Such a shudder ran over her that he thrilled in sympathy.
“Wait, and be silent,” she said so that he was subjugated.
“Who am I to announce?” she heard the old footman demand in the ante-room.
“The Count of Charny; and inquire if my lady will do me the honor to receive me?”
“Into this room, child,” said Andrea, “he must not see you—he must not know that you exist!”
She pushed the frightened youth into the adjoining apartment.
“Remain here till he shall have gone, when I will relate to—No, nothing of that can be said? I will so love you that you will not doubt that I am your own loving mother.”
His only reply was a moan.
At this moment the door opened and the servant, cap in hand, acquitted himself of the errand entrusted to him.
“Show in the Count of Charny,” she said in the firmest voice she could find.
As the old man retired, the nobleman appeared on the sill.
COUNT CHARNY was clad in black, mourning for his brother slain two days before.
This mourning was not solely in his habit, but in the recesses of his heart, and his pallid cheeks attested what grief he had undergone. Never are handsome faces finer than after sorrow, and the rapid glance of his wife perceived that he had never looked more superb.
She closed her eyes an instant, slightly held back her head to draw a full breath and laid her hand on her heart which seemed about to break.
When she opened them, after a second, Charny was in the same place.
“Is the carriage to wait?” inquired the servant, urged by the footman at the door.
An unspeakable look shot from the yearning eyes of the visitor upon his wife, who was dazed into closing her own again, while she stood breathless as though she had not noticed the glance or heard the question. Both had penetrated to her heart.
Charny sought in this lovely living statue for some token to indicate what answer he should make. As her shiver might be read both ways, he said: “Bid the coachman wait.”
The door closed and perhaps for the first time since their wedding the lord and his lady were alone together.
“Pardon me,” said the count, breaking the silence, “but is my unexpected call intrusion? I have not seated myself and the carriage waits so that I can depart as I came.”
“No, my lord, quite the contrary,” quickly said Andrea. “I knew you were well and safe, but I am not the less happy to see you after recent events.”
“You have been good enough then to ask after me?”
“Of course; yesterday, and this morning, when I was answered that you were at Versailles; and this evening, when I learnt that you were in attendance on the Queen.”
Were those last words spoken simply or did they contain a reproach? Not knowing what to make of them, the count was evidently set thinking by them. But probably leaving to the outcome of the dialogue the lifting of the veil lowered on his mind for the time, he replied almost instantly:
“My lady, a pious duty retained me at Versailles yesterday and this day; one as sacred in my eyes brought me instantly on my arrival in town beside her Majesty.”
Andrea tried in her turn to discover the true intent of the words. Thinking that she ought to respond, she said:
“Yes, I know of the terrible loss which—you have experienced.” She had been on the point of saying “we,” but she dared not, and continued: “You have had the misfortune to lose your brother Valence de Charny.”
The count seemed to be waiting for the clue, for he had started on hearing the pronoun “Your.”
“Yes, my lady. As you say, a terrible loss for me, but you cannot appreciate the young man, as you little knew poor Valence, happily.”
In the last word was a mild and melancholy reproach, which his auditor comprehended, though no outward sign was manifested that she gave it heed.
“Still, one thing consoles me, if anything can console me; poor Valence died doing his duty, as probably his brother Isidore will die, and I myself.”
This deeply affected Andrea.
“Alas, my lord,” she asked, “do you believe matters so desperate that fresh sacrifices of blood are necessary to appease the wrath of heaven?”
“I believe that the hour comes when the knell of kings is to peal; that an evil genius pushes monarchy unto the abysm. In short I think, if it is to fall, it will be accompanied, and should be so, by all those who took part in its splendor.”
“True, but when comes that day, believe that it will find me ready like yourself for the utmost devotion,” said Andrea.
“Your ladyship has given too many proofs of that devotion in the past, for any one to doubt it for the future—I least of all—the less as I have for the first time flinched about an order from the Queen. On arriving from Versailles, I found the order to present myself to her Majesty instantly.”
“Oh,” said Andrea, sadly smiling; “it is plain,” she added, after a pause, “like you, the Queen sees the future is sombre and mysterious and wishes to gather round her all those she can depend on.”
“You are wrong, my lady,” returned Charny, “for the Queen summoned me, not to bid me stand by her, but to send me afar.”
“Send you away?” quickly exclaimed the countess, taking a step towards the speaker. “But I am keeping you standing,” she said, pointing to a chair.
So saying, she herself sank, as though unable to remain on foot any longer, on the sofa where she had been sitting with Sebastian shortly before.
“Send you away? in what end?” she said with emotion not devoid of joy at the thought that the suspected lovers were parting.
“To have me go to Turin to confer with Count Artois and the Duke of Bourbon, who have quitted the country.”
“And you accepted?”
“No, my lady,” responded Charny, watching her fixedly.
She lost color so badly that he moved as if to assist her, but this revived her strength and she recovered.
“No? you have answered No to an order of the Queen’s, my lord?” she faltered, with an indescribable accent of doubt and astonishment.
“I answered that I believed my presence here at present more necessary than in Italy. Anybody could bear the message with which I was to be honored; I had a second brother, just arrived from the country, to place at the orders of the King, and he was ready to start in my stead.”
“Of course the Queen was happy to see the substitute,” exclaimed Andrea, with bitterness she could not contain, and not appearing to escape Charny.
“It was just the other way, for she seemed to be deeply wounded by the refusal. I should have been forced to go had not the King chanced in and I made him the arbiter.”
“The King held you to be right?” sneered the lady with an ironical smile: “he like you advised your staying in the Tuileries? Oh, how good his Majesty is!”
“So he is,” went on the count, without wincing: “he said that my brother Isidore would be well fitted for the mission and the more so as it was his first visit to court, so that his absence would not be remarked. He added that it would be cruel for the Queen to require my being sent away from you at present.”
“The King said, from me?” exclaimed Andrea.
“I repeat his own words, my lady. Looking round and addressing me, he wanted to know where the Countess of Charny was. ‘I have not seen her this evening,’ said he. As this was specially directed to me, I made bold to reply. ‘Sire,’ I said, ‘I have so seldom the pleasure of seeing the countess that I am in the state of impossibility to tell where she is; but if your Majesty wishes to know, he might inquire of the Queen who, knowing, will reply!’ I insisted as I judged from the Queen looking black, that some difference had arisen between you.”
Andrea was so enwrapt in the listening that she did not think of saying anything.
“The Queen made answer that the Countess of Charny had gone away from the palace with no intention to return. ‘Why, what motive can your best friend have in quitting the palace at this juncture?’ inquired the King. ‘Because she is uncomfortable here,’ replied the Queen who had started at the title you were given. ‘Well, that may be so; but we will find accommodation for her and the count beside our own rooms,’ went on the King. ‘You will not be very particular, eh, my lord?’ I told him that I should be satisfied with any post as long as I could serve him in it. ‘I know it well: so that we only want the lady called back from—’ the Queen did not know whither you had departed. ‘Not know where your friend has gone?’ exclaimed the King. ‘When my friends leave me I do not inquire after them.’ ‘Good, some woman’s quarrel,’ said Louis; ‘my Lord Charny, I have to speak a while with the Queen. Kindly wait for me and present your brother who shall start for Turin this evening. I am of your opinion that I shall require you and I mean to keep you by me.’ So I sent for my brother who was awaiting me in the Green Saloon, I was told.”
At the mention, Andrea, who had nearly forgotten Sebastian in her interest in her husband’s story, was made to think of all that had passed between mother and son, and she threw her eyes with anguish on the bedroom door where she had placed him.
“But you must excuse me for talking of matters but slightly interesting you while you are no doubt wishful to know why I have come here.”
“No, my lord, what you say does engage me,” replied the countess; “your presence can only be agreeable on account of the fears I have felt on your account. I pray you to continue. The King asked you to wait for him and to bring your brother.”
“We went to the royal apartments, where he joined us in ten minutes. As the mission for the princes was urgent he began by that. Their Highnesses were to be instructed about what had happened. A quarter of an hour after the King came, my brother was on the road, and the King and I were left alone. He stopped suddenly in pacing the room and said: ‘My lord, do you know what has passed between the Queen and the countess?’ I was ignorant. ‘Something must have happened,’ he went on, ‘for the Queen is in a temper fit to massacre everybody, and it appears to me unjust to the countess—which is odd, as the Queen usually defends her friends through thick and thin, even when they are wrong.’ ‘I repeat I know nothing, but I venture to assert that the countess has done no wrong—even if we cannot admit that a queen ever does so.'”
“I thank your lordship for having so good an opinion of me,” said Andrea.
“'I suppose as the countess has a house in town that she has retired there,’ I suggested. ‘Of course! I will give you leave of absence till to-morrow on condition that you bring back the countess,’ said the King.”
Charny looked at his wife so fixedly that she was unable to bear the glance and had to close her eyes.
“Then, seeing that I was in mourning, he stayed me to say that my loss was one of those which monarchs could not repair; but that if my brother left a widow or a child he would help them, and would like them presented to him, at any rate; the Queen should take care of the widow and he would of the children.”
Charny spoke with tears in his voice.
“I daresay the King was only repeating what the Queen had said,” remarked the lady.
“The Queen did not honor me with a word on the subject,” returned Charny, “and that is why the King’s speech affected me most deeply. He ended by bidding me ‘Go to our dear Andrea; for though those we love cannot console us they can mourn with us, and that is a relief!’ Thus it is that I come by the King’s order, which may be my excuse, my lady,” concluded the count.
“Did you doubt your welcome?” cried the lady, quickly rising and holding out both hands to him.
He grasped them and kissed them; she uttered a scream as though they were redhot iron, and sank back on the divan. But her hands were clinging to his and he was drawn down so as to be placed sitting beside her.
But it was then that she thought she heard a noise in the next room, and she started from him so abruptly that he rose and stood off a little, not knowing to what to attribute the outcry and the repulsion so suddenly made.
Leaning on the sofa back, he sighed. The sigh touched her deeply.
At the very time when the bereaved mother found her child, something like the dawn of love beamed on her previously dismal and sorrowful horizon. But by a strange coincidence, proven that she was not born to happiness, the two events were so combined that one annulled the other: the return of the husband thrust aside the son’s love as the latter’s presence destroyed the budding passion.
Charny could not divine this in the exclamation and the starting aloof, the silence full of sadness following, although the cry was of love and the retreat from fear, not repulsion.
He gazed upon her with an expression which she could not have mistaken if she had been looking up.
“What answer am I to carry to the King?” he inquired emitting a sigh.
“My lord,” she replied, starting at the sound and raising her clear and limpid eyes to him, “I suffered so much while in the court that I accepted the leave to go when accorded by the Queen, with thankfulness. I am not fitted to live in society, and in solitude I have found repose if not happiness. My happiest days were those spent as a girl at Taverney and in the convent of St. Denis with the noble princess of the House of France, the Lady Louise. But, with your lordship’s permission, I will dwell in this summerhouse, full of recollections which are not without some sweetness spite of their sadness.”
Charny bowed at this suggestion of his permission being sought, like a man who was obeying an order, far more than granting a request.
“As this is a fixed resolve,” he said, marking how steady she was with all her meekness, “am I to be allowed to call on you here?”
She fastened her eyes on him, usually clear but now full of astonishment and blandness.
“Of course, my lord,” was her response, “and as I shall have no company, you can come any time that your duties at the palace allow you to set aside a little while to me.”
Never had Charny seen so much charm in her gaze, or such tenderness in her voice. Something ran through his veins, like the shudder from a lover’s first kiss. He glanced at the place whence he had risen when Andrea got up; he would have given a year of life to take his seat there again if she would not once more repel him. But the soldier was timid, and he dared not allow himself the liberty.