Some hours later, Gilbert entered Stephane's room, and struck by
his pallor and with the troubled expression of his voice, inquired
about him anxiously.
"I assure you I am very well," Stephane replied, mastering his
emotion. "Have you brought me any flowers?"
"No, I have had no time to go for them."
"That is to say, you have not had time to think of me."
"Oh! I beg your pardon! I can think of you while working, while
reading Greek, even while sleeping. And last night I saw you in my
dreams: you treated me as a pedant, and threw your cap in my face."
"That was a very extravagant dream."
"I am not so sure about that. It seems to me that one day--"
"Yes, one day, two centuries ago."
"Is it then so long since our acquaintance commenced?"
"Perhaps not two centuries, but nearly. As for me, I have already
lived three lives: my first I passed with my mother. The second--
let us not speak of that. The third began upon the night when, for
the first time, you climbed into this window. And that must have
been a long time ago, if I can judge of it by all which has passed
since then, in my soul, in my imagination, and in my mind. Is it
possible that these two centuries have only been two months? How
can it be that such great changes have been wrought in me, in so
short a time, for they are so marvelous that I can hardly recognize
myself?"
"One of these changes, of which I am proud, is that you no longer
throw your cap at my head."
"That was a liberty I took only with the pedant."
"And are you at last reconciled to him?"
"I have discovered that the pedant does not exist. There is a hero
and a philosopher in you."
"That is a discovery I did not expect from you, and one that
astonishes as much as it flatters me."
"When I tell you that I am changed throughout, and that I no longer
recognize myself--"
"And I, in spite of your transformation, recognize you very easily.
My dear Stephane has preserved his habit of exaggerating all his
impressions. Once I was a man who ought to be smothered; now I am
an extraordinary being who passes his life in executing heroic
projects. No, my poet, I am neither a scoundrel nor a knight
errant, and the best that can be said of me is that I am not a
blockhead, that I do not lack heart, and that I run over the roofs
with remarkable agility."
"No, I exaggerate nothing," he said. "I speak of things as they
are, and the proof that you are an extraordinary man is, that in
all you do, you appear perfectly simple and natural."
And as Gilbert shrugged his shoulders and smiled:
"Ah! you need not laugh!" he continued. "Feel my pulse, you will
see I have no fever. And have you not noticed how calm I have been
for several days?"
I confess that your quietness surprises me; but is it really a
calm? I suspect that you have only covered the brazier, and that
the fire smoulders under the ashes."
"And you stir up the ashes to draw out the sparks. As you please,
but I forewarn you, that you will not succeed, and that I shall
remain insensible to all your efforts."
"So for a week, you have felt more tranquil in heart and mind?"
"Yes, and I have a good reason for it. There was a great fomenter
of seditions in me, a great stirrer up of rebellion. It was my
pride."
Stephane hid his face in his hands; then after a long silence:
"No," said he, "I have not the courage to speak yet. Besides,
before making my revelation, which you will perhaps consider
extravagant, I want to prove to you more thoroughly that my senses
have been restored, and that I have become wise in your school.
Know then, that before I became acquainted with you, religion was
in my eyes, but a coarse magic in which I believed with passionate
irrationality. I considered prayer as a kind of sorcery, and
attributed to it the power of compelling the divine will; every day
I called upon Heaven to perform a miracle in my favor, and, finding
myself refused, my ungranted prayers fell back like lead upon my
heart. Then I rebelled against the celestial intelligences which
refused to yield to my enchantments, or else I sought in anguish to
ascertain to what error in form, to what neglected precaution, to
what sin of omission I could attribute the impotence of my
operations in magic and my formulas.
"And now am I nothing but a charmed dreamer, a half-crazy child, a
sick brain feeding on crochets, an incorrigible, wrong-headed
fellow? No, you admit that I have profited by your lessons; that a
grain of wisdom has fallen into my brain, and that without having
seen the bottom of things, I have at least lucid intervals. If
this be so, my Gilbert, believe what I am going to say as you would
the Holy Bible. You have worked with all your strength to cure my
soul, and there is not a more skillful physician in the world than
you. But all of your trouble would have been lost, if you had not
had by your side an all-powerful ally, whom you don't know, and
whom I am about to reveal to you. Ah! tell me, when you came into
this room the first time, did you not feel that a celestial spirit
followed in your track and entered with you? You went, he
remained, and has not left me, and never will. Look, do not these
walls speak of him? Do not these saints move their lips to murmur
his name to you? And the air we breathe here, is it not full of
those delicious perfumes which these envoys of Heaven scatter in
their earthward journeys? How strange this spirit appeared to me
at first! His face was all unknown to me, it had never appeared to
me in my dreams. Startled and bewildered, I said to him: Who then
art thou? What is thy name? And, one day, Gilbert, one day, it
was through your mouth that he answered me. Gilbert, Gilbert, oh!
what a singular company you have introduced to me in his person.
Sometimes he seated himself near me, pale, melancholy, clothed in
mourning, and breathed into my heart a venomous bitterness, such as
I had never dreamed of. And feeling myself seized with an
inexpressible desire to die; I cried out 'I know you, you must be
the brother of death!' But all at once transforming himself, he
appeared to me holding a fool's cap in his hand. He shook the
bells and sang to me songs which filled my ears with feverish
murmurings. My head turned, smoke floated before me, my dazzled
eyes were intoxicated with visions, and it seemed to me, poor
child, nourished with gall and tears, that life was an eternal
fete, upon which Heaven looked down smiling. Then I said to the
spirit: 'Now I know you better, you are the brother of folly.' But
he changed himself again, and suddenly I saw him standing erect
before me folded in the long white wings of the seraphim; at once
serious and gentle, divine reason shone in his deep eyes and the
serenity on his brow announced an inhabitant of Heaven. In these
moments, my Gilbert, his voice was more penetrating and more
persuasive than yours; he repeated your words and gave me strength
to believe in them; he engraved your lessons on my mind; he
instilled your wisdom into my folly, your soul in my soul; and know
that if the lily has drunk the juices of the earth, if the lily has
grown, if the lily should blossom one day, it shall not be from the
impotent sun rays which you brought to me in your breast, to which
thanks must be rendered; but to him, the celestial spirit, to him
who lighted in my heart a divine flame with which, may it please
God that yours too may be illuminated!" And rising at these words,
he almost gasped: "Have I said enough? Do you understand me at
last?"
"No!" answered Gilbert resolutely, "I do not understand this
celestial spirit at all."
Stephane writhed his arms.
"Cruel! you do not wish then to divine anything!" murmured he
distractedly. And going to the window, he stood some moments
leaning against it. When he turned towards Gilbert, his eyes were
wet with tears; but by one of those rapid changes which were
familiar to him, he had a smile upon his lips, "What I dare not say
to you, I have just now written," resumed he, drawing a letter from
his bosom.
"It was a last resort which I hoped you would not force me to call
to my aid. Oh! hard heart! to what humiliations have you not
abased my pride!" He presented the letter, but changing his mind,
he said:
"I wish to add a few words to it."
And ran and seated himself at the table. His pen had fallen on the
floor, and not being able to find it, he quickly sharpened a pencil
with a keen-edged poniard which he drew from the depths of a
drawer.
"What a singular penknife you have there," said Gilbert,
approaching him.
"It is a Russian stiletto of Toula manufacture. It belongs to
Ivan, he lent it to me day before yesterday, when we were out
walking, to uproot a plant with. He has forgotten to take it
back."
"You will oblige me by returning it to him," answered Gilbert; "it
is a plaything I don't like to see in your hands."
Stephane gave a sign of assent, and bent over the paper. The
letter which he had written was as follows:
"My Gilbert, listen to a story. I was eleven years old when MY
BROTHER STEPHANE died. Scarcely was he buried when my father
called me to him. He held in his hand a suit of clothes like these
I wear now, and he said to me: 'Stephane, understand me clearly.
It was my daughter that just died, my son lives still.' And as I
persisted in not understanding him, he had a coffin brought in,
placed on a table and he laid me in it; and closing the cover by
degrees, he said, 'My daughter, are you dead?' When it was
entirely closed, I decided to speak, and I cried out, 'Father, your
daughter is dead. It shall be as you desire.' Then he drew me out
of the coffin half dead with fear and horror, and exclaimed,
'Stephane, remember that my daughter is dead. Should you ever
happen to forget it' . . . He said no more, but his eyes finished
the sentence. Gilbert, at this moment the daughter of my father
comes back to life to tell you that she loves you with an
unconquerable love which she can no longer conceal. In my
simplicity, I thought at first that I loved you as you loved me;
but you yourself have taken care to undeceive me. One day you
spoke of our approaching separation, and you said to me: 'We shall
see each other sometimes!' And you did not hear the cry of my
heart which answered you; to pass a day without seeing you! What a
hell!
"When I had fairly comprehended that your friendship was a
devotion, a virtue, a wisdom, and that mine was a folly, then the
daughter of my father thought of dying, so bitter were the torments
which her rebellious pride inflicted upon her. Ah! what would I
not have given, my Gilbert, if divining who I was, you had fallen
at my feet crying: 'I too know how to love madly!'
"But no; you have understood nothing, suspected nothing. My hair,
the resemblance to my mother imprinted on my face, the smile, which
they tell me, passed from her lips to mine. . . . Oh! blindest of
men! how I have hated you at moments! But it does not really seem
that a fatality pursues me? That hand with its iron grip fastened
on my shoulder, and forcing me to prostrate myself before you, I
feel no longer, with its nails pressing into my flesh; and yet my
knees, trembling, powerless, bend under me, and again you see me
fall at your feet. Yes, my poor pride is dead indeed. The thunder
growled when it gave up its last breath. You remember that stormy
night. Glued at the window pane, I tried to pierce the darkness
with my eyes, to discern you in the midst of the tempest. All at
once the heavens were ablaze, and I saw you standing upon the ledge
of your window, bending proudly over the abyss, at which you seemed
to hurl defiance. Enveloped in flashing light, you appeared to me
like a blissful spirit, and I exclaimed to myself: 'This is one of
the elect of God! I can ask of him without shame for indulgence
and mercy!' And now, my Gilbert, do not presume to tell me that my
love is a malady, which needs only careful attention. Oh, God! all
that would be useless; the saints themselves have refused to cure
me. Do not try to terrify me, either, or speak to me of
insurmountable obstacles to our union; of dangers which threaten
us. The future! We will talk of that hereafter. Now, I want to
know but one thing; that is, if you are capable of loving me as I
love you? Friend, if hatred can change to love, would it be
impossible for friendship? . . . Gilbert, Gilbert, forget what the
refined barbarity of my father has made of me; forget my gusts of
passion, my violence, the unruliness of a badly educated child;
forget the vehemence of my language, the rudeness of my actions;
forget the fountain; my whip raised to you; forget those young
villagers I compelled to kiss my feet; forget even the cap which I
threw in your face, for, Heaven is my witness, I feel a woman's
heart awakened in my bosom; it shakes off its long sleep, it stirs,
it sighs, it speaks, and the first name it utters, the only one it
ever wants to know, is yours! . . .
"What more shall I say? I would like to appear to you in your
dreams decked as if for a fete: clothed in white, a smile upon my
lips, pearls about my neck, around my head the flowers you love--
white anemones and blue gentians. Only take care, some of the
henbane flowers have slipped into my crown. Tear them from my hair
yourself, lest their perfume instill a deadly poison into my heart.
But no, I do not wish to frighten you. Stephane is wise; she is
reasonable; she does not ask the impossible; she gives you time to
breathe; to recover yourself. Wait, if you wish it, a week, a
fortnight, a month, before coming here again; until that blessed
day dawns when you can say with your adored poet; 'In its turn,
friendship revealed its power to my heart, and at length love,
coming last, crowned it with flowers and fruit.'"
To this letter Stephane added these words: "And if that day,
Gilbert, if that day should never come--"
But here she hesitated; her hand trembled; she looked alternately
at Gilbert and the knife; then rising--
"I do not know how to finish my letter," she said. "You can easily
supply what is lacking. But you must not read it here; carry it to
your turret; you will meditate upon it there more at leisure."
And at these words, having returned the paper to him, she burst
into a fit of laughter.
"Again that same laugh, which I detest," said Gilbert, trying to
hide the anguish which was consuming him.
"Do you want to know what it means?" said the young girl, looking
him in the face. "When we were at Baden-Baden, three years ago,
Father Alexis had a fancy to take me to a gambling house, and in
entering I heard a burst of laughter much resembling those which
shock you so. 'Who is laughing in that way?' said I to the good
father. He found on inquiring that it was a man who had just
gained enormous sums, and who was preparing to play double or
quits.
"Double or quits!" added she; "to play double or quits! If I
should lose--"
All at once her eyes dilated, and shot fire; she turned her head
backward, and raising her arm towards Gilbert, she exclaimed:
"You know who I am, and you have condemned me in your heart. Ah!
think twice; you have my life in your hands." And recoiling a few
steps she suddenly turned, fled across the room, threw open a small
side-door, and disappeared.
How did Gilbert manage to reach his turret?
All he knows himself is, that on coming out of the dormer window,
beside himself, forgetting all idea of danger, he committed, for
the first time, the signal imprudence of walking erectly over the
roof, which ordinarily he found difficult to cross even in
crawling; seeing and hearing nothing, entirely absorbed in a single
thought, he started forward at a quick pace. From his gait and
carriage, the moon, which shone brightly in the sky, must have
taken him for a madman, or a somnambulist. He reached the end of
the roof, when a broken slate slipped under his feet. He lost his
balance, fell heavily, and it would have been all over with him,
if, in falling, his hand had not by a miracle encountered the
trailing end of his ladder, by which he had strength enough to hold
himself. Slates are brittle, and when hurled against a hard
substance break in a thousand pieces. The one which Gilbert had
just precipitated into space met a point of rock which scattered it
into fragments, one of which struck, without wounding, the hand of
a man who happened to be rambling on the border of the ravine.
As fate would have it, this evening M. Leminof had an important
letter to forward by the mail; and near nine o'clock, contrary to
all the usages and customs of his house, he had sent Fritz to a
large town about a league distant, where the courier passed during
the night. Unluckily, upon his return, Fritz saw a light shining
in the cottage of his Dulcinea. Appetite, the opportunity, some
devil also urging him, he left the road, walked straight to the
cabin, opened the door, which was only closed by a latch, entered
with stealthy tread, and surprised his beauty seated upon a stool
and mending her linen. He drew near her, said gallant things to
her, and soon began to take liberties. The damsel, frolicsome and
forward, instead of awakening her father, who slept in the
neighboring room, rushed to the door, darted out and gained upon a
run the serpentine path which ran along the edge of the ravine. A
hundred times more active than Fritz, she kept in advance of him;
then halted, called him, and the moment when he thought he was
going to seize her, she escaped and ran on faster. She continued
this game until becoming weary she hid herself behind a bush, and
laughing in her sleeve, saw the amorous giant pass her, continue to
ascend, reeking with sweat, slipping frequently, and constantly
fearing he would fall down the precipice. At length, by dint of
scrambling, he arrived at the place where the path ended at the
perpendicular fall of the precipice, a height of forty feet. By
what means had his fantastic princess scaled this wall? All at
once he heard a silvery voice which called him below. In his rage
he struck his forehead with his fist; but at the moment he was
about to descend, a singular noise struck his ear--a piece of slate
grazed his hand and drew from him an exclamation of surprise.
Raising his head quickly, and favored by the light of the moon, he
saw upon his right a shadow suspended in the air. It mounted,
stopped upon the ledge of a window, stooped down and soon
disappeared.
"Oh! oh!" said he, much astonished, "here's something odd!
Monsieur secretary goes out at night, then, to make the rounds of
the roofs? And for this we have provided ourselves with rope
ladders. I am much mistaken if his Excellency, the Count, will
relish this little amusement. Peste, the jolly fellow has a good
foot and a good eye. There must be a great deal to gain to risk
his skin this way. Faith! these demure faces are not to be
trusted."
The great Fritz was so stupefied with his discovery that he seated
himself a moment upon a stone to collect his thoughts. The fine
idea which his thick skull brought forth was that the secretary
belonged to the illustrious brotherhood of ambidexters, and that
his nocturnal circuits had for their object the search for hidden
treasure. Proud of his sagacity, and delighted with the
opportunity to satisfy his resentment, he descended the path, not
without trouble, and deaf to the voice and the laughter of his
enchantress, who challenged him to new trials, he regained the road
and strode on to the castle.
"Oh! then, Mr. Secretary," said the knave to himself with a wicked
smile, "you threw me down a staircase, and thought you'd get me
turned out of doors. What will you say if I make you go out by the
window?"