THE YOUNG VISIONARY.
Meeting with a public conveyance, the doctor got into it with Billet
and Pitou, and they went to Louis-the-Great College, where Sebastian
was still in the sick ward.
The principal received the doctor with deep regard as he knew him to
be the foremost pupil of the physicians and chemists, Cabanis and
Condorcet.
He imparted his fears, as well to the doctor as to the parent of his
pupil, that the boy was too much given to moody fits.
"You are right," said Gilbert, "gravity in a boy is a token of lunacy
or weakness."
While Pitou was being refreshed in the principal's residence and Billet
shared a bottle with the gentleman himself, the physician conferred
with his son.
"I ask you about your health," said the father to the pallid, nervous
youth, "and you answer that you are well. Now I ask you if your reserve
towards your schoolfellows arises from pride and I hope you will
answer, no."
"Be encouraged, father," said Sebastian, "It is neither pride nor ill
health, but sorrow. I have a dream which frightens me and yet it is not
a terror. When a little boy, I had such visions."
"Ah?"
"Two or three times I was lost in the woods, following this phantom."
Gilbert looked at the speaker in alarm.
"It was thus, father dear: I would be playing with the other children
of the village when I saw nothing; but when I left them, I heard the
rustle of a silk dress as if some one wearing it were going away from
me; I would thrust out my hands to seize it but grasp nothing but
air. But as the sound diminished, the vision appeared, more and more
distinct. This cloudy vapor would gradually assume a human shape. It
was a woman's, who glided rather than walked, and grew the more clear
as it was buried in the woody depths.
"A strange, weird, irresistible spell drew me on in the woman's steps.
I pursued her with extended arms, mute like she was. Often I tried to
call her but my lips would not emit a sound; I pursued without ever
overtaking, until the prodigy announcing her coming was reproduced for
her departure. She became misty and faded away. Spent with weariness, I
would drop on the sward, where she had disappeared. Pitou would find me
there, sometimes not till the following day."
Gilbert looked at the youth with increasing disquiet. His fingers
were fixed on his pulse. Sebastian seemed to understand his father's
feelings.
"Do not be uneasy about it," said he; "I know that it is a phantasm."
"What did this woman look like?"
"Majestic as a queen."
"Have you seen her lately?"
"I have seen her here--that is, in the garden reserved for the
teachers. I saw her glide from our grounds into that garden. And one
day when Master Berardier, pleased with my composition, asked me to
state a favor, I got leave to stroll in this garden. She appeared to
me."
"Strange hallucination," thought Gilbert; "yet not so remarkable in the
child of a mesmeric medium. Who do you think this woman is?"
"My mother."
Gilbert turned pale and clasped his hand to his heart as though to
staunch a re-opening wound. "But this is all a dream and I am almost as
crazed as you."
"It may be all a dream," said the youth with pensive eye, "but
the reality of the dream exists. I have seen the lady alive, in a
magnificent equipage drawn by four horses, in Satory Woods near
Versailles, on the last holiday when we were taken out there. I nearly
swooned on seeing her, I do not know why. For she could not be my
mother, who is dead, and she is the same as the vision."
He remarked the giddiness of his father who ran his hand over his brow,
and he was frightened by his white face.
"I see I am wrong to tell you such nonsense," he said.
"Oh, no, speak all you can on the subject and we shall try to cure
you," responded the doctor.
"Why? I am born to musing: it takes up half my time. I love this ghost
though it avoids me and seems sometimes to repulse me. Do not expel it:
I should else be all alone when you are on your travels or return to
America."
"I hope we shall not part," he said to his boy whom he embraced: "for I
want to take you on my journeys."
"Was my mother fair?" inquired the youth.
"Very," was answered in the doctor's stifled voice.
"And did she love you as much as I do?" continued the child.
"Sebastian, never speak her name to me!" cried the physician, kissing
him a last time and bounding out of the garden.
Instead of following him, the boy dropped on a bench, disconsolate.
In the yard Gilbert found Billet and Pitou, refreshed by the feast of
the principal, to whom the doctor recommended special care of his son,
and the three men got into the hack again.