IN SEARCH OF THEIR SON.
It was Dr. Gilbert who was closeted with the King when the usher
inquired after him on the order of Isidore and the entreaty of
Sebastian.
The upright heart of Louis XVI. had appreciated the loyalty in the
doctor’s. After half an hour, the latter came forth and went into the
Queen’s ante-chamber, where he saw Isidore.
“I asked for you, doctor, but I have another with me who wants still
more to see you. It will be cruel to detain you from him: so let us
hasten to the Green Saloon.”
But the room was empty and such was the confusion in the palace that no
servant was at hand to inform them what had become of the young man.
“It was a person I met on the road, eager to get to Paris and coming
here on foot only for my giving him a ride.”
“Are you speaking of the peasant Pitou?”
“No, doctor--of your son, Sebastian.”
At this, the usher who had taken Isidore away returned.
He was ignorant of what had happened but, luckily, a second footman had
seen the singular disappearance of the boy in the carriage of a court
lady.
They hastened to the gates where the janitor well recalled that the
direction to the coachman was “No. 9 Coq-Heron Street, first carriage
entrance from Plastriere Street.”
“My sister-in-law’s,” exclaimed Isidore, “the countess of Charny!”
“Fatality,” muttered Gilbert. “He must have recognized her,” he said in
a lower tone.
“Let us go there,” suggested the young noble.
Gilbert saw all the dangers of Andrea’s son being discovered by her
husband.
“My lord,” he said, “my son is in safety in the hands of the Countess of
Charny, and as I have the honor to know her, I think I can call by
myself. Besides it is more proper that you should be on your road; for I
presume you are going to Turin, from what I heard in the King’s
presence.”
“Yes, doctor.”
“Receive my thanks for your kindness to Sebastian, and be off! When a
father says he is not uneasy, you need feel no anxiety.”
Isidore held out his hand which the revolutionist shook with more
heartiness than he had for most of his class; while the nobleman
returned within the palace, he went along to the junction of the streets
Coq-Heron and Plastriere.
Both were painful memories.
In the latter he had lived, a poor boy, earning his bread by copying
music, by receiving instruction from the author Rousseau. From his
window he had contemplated Andrea at her own casement, under the hands
of her maid, Nicole, his first sweetheart, and to that window he had
made his way by a rope and by scaling the wall, to view more closely and
satisfy his passion for the high-born lady who had bewitched him.
Rousseau was dead, but Andrea was rich and nobler still; he had also
attained wealth and consideration.
But was he any happier than when he walked out of doors to dip his crust
in the waters of this public fountain?
He could not help walking up to the door where Rousseau had lived. It
was open on the alley which ran under the building to the yard at the
back as well as up to the attic where he was lodged.
He went up to the first floor back, where the window on the landing gave
a view of the rear house where Baron Taverney had dwelt.
No one disturbed him in his contemplation; the house had come down in
the world; no janitor; the inhabitants were poor folk who did not fear
thieves.
The garden at Taverney’s house was the same as a dozen years before. The
vine still hung on the trellis which had served him as ladder in his
night clamberings within the enclosure.
He was unaware whether Count Charny was with his wife, but he was so
bent on learning about Sebastian that he meant to risk all.
He climbed the wall and descended on the other side. In the garden
nothing obstructed him, and thus he reached the window of Andrea’s
Bedroom.
In another instant, as related, the two enemies stood face to face.
The lady’s first feeling was invincible repugnance rather than profound
terror.
For her the Americanized Gilbert, the friend of Washington and
Lafayette, aristocratic through study, science and genius, was still the
hangdog Gilbert of her father’s manor house, and the gardener’s boy of
Trianon Palace.
Gilbert no longer bore her the ardent love which had driven him to crime
in his youth, but the deep and tender affection, spite of her insults
and persecutions, of a man ready to do a service at risk of his life.
With the insight nature had given him and the justice education
implanted, Gilbert had weighed himself: he understood that Andrea’s
misfortunes arose from him, and he would never be quits with her until
he had made her as happy as he had the reverse.
But how could he blissfully affect her future.
It was impossible for him yet to comprehend.
On seeing this but to so much despair, again the prey to woe, all his
fibres of mercy were moved for so much misery.
Instead of using his hypnotic power to subdue her, he spoke softly to
her, ready to master her if she became rebellious.
The result was that the medium felt the ethereal fluid fade away like a
dissolving fog, by Gilbert’s permission, and she was able to speak of
her own free will.
“What do you want, sir? how came you here?”
“By the way I used before,” replied the doctor. “Hence you can be
easy--no one will know of it. Why? because I come to claim a treasure,
of no consequence to you, but precious to me, my son. I want you to tell
what has become of my son, taken away in your carriage and brought
here.”
“How do I know? taught by you to hate his mother, he has fled.”
“His mother? are you really a mother to him?”
“Oh, you see my grief, you have heard my cries, and looking on my
despair, you ask me if I am his mother?”
“How then are you ignorant what has become of him?”
“But I tell you he has fled; that I came into this room for him and
found the window open and the room vacant.”
“Where could he have gone--good God!” exclaimed Gilbert. “It is past
midnight and he does not know the town.”
“Do you believe anything evil has befallen him?” asked she, approaching.
“We shall hear, for it is you who shall tell me.”
And with a wave of the hand he began anew to plunge her into the
mesmeric sleep.
She uttered a sigh and fell off into repose.
“Am I to put forth all my will power or will you answer voluntarily?”
asked Gilbert when she was under control.
“Will you tell the boy again that I am not his mother?”
“That depends. Do you love him?”
“Ardently, with all my soul.”
“Then you are his mother as I am his father, for it is thus I love him.
Loving him, you shall see him again. When did you part from the boy?”
“About half an hour ago, when Count Charny called. I had pushed him into
this room.”
“What were his last words?”
“That I was no more his mother: because I had told him that you were a
villain.”
“Look into the poor boy’s heart and see what harm you wrought.”
“Oh, God forgive me,” said Andrea: “forgive me, my son.”
“Did Count Charny suspect the boy was here?”
“No, I am sure.”
“Why did he not stay?”
“Because he never stays long with me. Oh, wretch that I am,” she
interrupted herself, “he was returning to me after refusing that
mission--because he loves me--he loves me!”
Gilbert began to see more clearly into this drama which his eye was
first to penetrate.
“But do you love him?” he demanded.
“I see your intention is good: you wish to make up to me for the grief
you have caused: but I refuse the boon coming from you. I hate you and
wish to continue in my hatred.”
“Poor mortality,” muttered the philosopher, “have you had so much
happiness that you can dally with a certain amount offered you? so you
love him?”
“Yes. Since first I saw him, as the Queen and I sat with him in a
hackney-carriage in which we returned from Paris to Versailles one
night.”
“You know what love is, Andrea,” queried Gilbert, mournfully.
“I know that love has been given as a standard by which we can measure
how much sadness we can endure,” replied she.
“It is well: you are a true woman and a true mother: a rough diamond,
you were shaped by the stern lapidary known as Grief. Return to
Sebastian.”
“Yes, I see him leaving the house with clenched hands and knit brow. He
wanders up the street--he goes up to a woman and asks her for St. Honore
Street----“
“My street: he was seeking for my house. Poor child! he will be there
awaiting me.”
“Hold! he has gone astray--he is in New St. Roch Street. Oh, he does not
see that vehicle coming down Sourdiere Street, but I see the
horses--Ah!”
She drew herself up with an awful scream, maternal anguish depicted on
her visage, down which rolled tears and perspiration.
“Oh, if harm befalls him, remember that it will recoil on your head,”
hissed Gilbert.
“Ah,” sighed Andrea in relief, without hearing or heeding him, “God in
heaven be praised! it is the horse’s breast which struck him, and he is
thrown out of the rut of the wheel. There he lies, stunned, but he is
not killed. Only swooned. Hasten to help him. It is my son! They form a
crowd round him: is there not a doctor or surgeon among them all?”
“Oh, I shall run,” said Gilbert.
“Wait,” said Andrea, stopping him by the arm, “they are dividing to let
help come. It is the doct--oh, do not let that man approach him--I
loathe him--he is a vampire, he is hideous!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, do not lose sight of Sebastian,” said Gilbert,
shuddering.
“This ghoul carries him away--up the street--into the blind alley,
called St. Hyacinthe: where he goes down some steps. He places him on a
table where books and printed papers are heaped. He takes off his coat
and rolls up his sleeve. He ties the arm with bandages from a woman as
dirty and hideous as himself. He finds a lance in a case--he is going to
bleed him. Oh, I cannot bear to see my son’s blood flow. Run, run, and
you will find him as I say.”
“Shall I awaken you at once with recollection: or would you sleep till
the morning and know nothing of what has happened?”
“Awaken me at once with full memory.”
Gilbert described a double curve with his hands so that his thumbs came
upon the medium’s eyelids; he breathed on her forehead and said merely:
“Awake!”
Instantly her eyes became animated; her limbs were supple; she looked at
Gilbert almost without terror, and continuing, though aroused, the
impulse in her vision, she cried:
“Oh, run, run, and snatch the boy from the hands of that man who causes
me so much fright!”