Great physician that he was, Beauvouloir saw plainly that to a being so
delicately organized as Etienne marriage must come as a slow and gentle
inspiration, communicating new powers to his being and vivifying it with
the fires of love. As he had said to the father, to impose a wife on
Etienne would be to kill him. Above all it was important that the young
recluse should not be alarmed at the thought of marriage, of which he
knew nothing, or be made aware of the object of his father’s wishes.
This unknown poet conceived as yet only the beautiful and noble passion
of Petrarch for Laura, of Dante for Beatrice. Like his mother he was all
pure love and soul; the opportunity to love must be given to him, and
then the event should be awaited, not compelled. A command to love would
have dried within him the very sources of his life.
Maitre Antoine Beauvouloir was a father; he had a daughter brought
up under conditions which made her the wife for Etienne. It was so
difficult to foresee the events which would make a son, disowned by his
father and destined to the priesthood, the presumptive heir of the
house of Herouville that Beauvouloir had never until now noticed the
resemblance between the fate of Etienne and that of Gabrielle. A sudden
idea which now came to him was inspired more by his devotion to those
two beings than by ambition.
His wife, in spite of his great skill, had died in child-bed leaving him
a daughter whose health was so frail that it seemed as if the mother
had bequeathed to her fruit the germs of death. Beauvouloir loved
his Gabrielle as old men love their only child. His science and his
incessant care had given factitious life to this frail creature, which
he cultivated as a florist cultivates an exotic plant. He had kept her
hidden from all eyes on his estate of Forcalier, where she was protected
against the dangers of the time by the general good-will felt for a man
to whom all owed gratitude, and whose scientific powers inspired in the
ignorant minds of the country-people a superstitious awe.
By attaching himself to the house of Herouville, Beauvouloir had
increased still further the immunity he enjoyed in the province, and had
thwarted all attempts of his enemies by means of his powerful influence
with the governor. He had taken care, however, in coming to reside at
the castle, not to bring with him the flower he cherished in secret at
Forcalier, a domain more important for its landed value than for
the house then upon it, but with which he expected to obtain for his
daughter an establishment in conformity with his views. While promising
the duke a posterity and requiring his master’s word of honor to approve
his acts, he thought suddenly of Gabrielle, of that sweet child whose
mother had been neglected and forgotten by the duke as he had also
neglected and forgotten his son Etienne.
He awaited the departure of his master before putting his plan into
execution; foreseeing that, if the duke became aware of it, the enormous
difficulties in the way would be from the first insurmountable.
Beauvouloir’s house at Forcalier had a southern exposure on the slope of
one of those gentle hills which surround the vales of Normandy; a thick
wood shielded it from the north; high walls and Norman hedges and deep
ditches made the enclosure inviolable. The garden, descending by an easy
incline to the river which watered the valley, had a thick double hedge
at its foot, forming an natural embankment. Within this double hedge
wound a hidden path, led by the sinuosities of the stream, which the
willows, oaks, and beeches made as leafy as a woodland glade. From the
house to this natural rampart stretched a mass of verdure peculiar to
that rich soil; a beautiful green sheet bordered by a fringe of rare
trees, the tones of which formed a tapestry of exquisite coloring:
there, the silvery tints of a pine stood forth against the darker green
of several alders; here, before a group of sturdy oaks a slender poplar
lifted its palm-like figure, ever swaying; farther on, the weeping
willows drooped their pale foliage between the stout, round-headed
walnuts. This belt of trees enabled the occupants of the house to go
down at all hours to the river-bank fearless of the rays of the sun.
The facade of the house, before which lay the yellow ribbon of a
gravelled terrace, was shaded by a wooden gallery, around which climbing
plants were twining, and tossing in this month of May their various
blossoms into the very windows of the second floor. Without being really
vast, this garden seemed immense from the manner in which its vistas
were cut; points of view, cleverly contrived through the rise and fall
of the ground, married themselves, as it were, to those of the valley,
where the eye could rove at will. Following the instincts of her
thought, Gabrielle could either enter the solitude of a narrow space,
seeing naught but the thick green and the blue of the sky above the
tree-tops, or she could hover above a glorious prospect, letting her
eyes follow those many-shaded green lines, from the brilliant colors
of the foreground to the pure tones of the horizon on which they lost
themselves, sometimes in the blue ocean of the atmosphere, sometimes in
the cumuli that floated above it.
Watched over by her grandmother and served by her former nurse,
Gabrielle Beauvouloir never left this modest home except for the parish
church, the steeple of which could be seen at the summit of the hill,
whither she was always accompanied by her grandmother, her nurse, and
her father’s valet. She had reached the age of seventeen in that sweet
ignorance which the rarity of books allowed a girl to retain without
appearing extraordinary at a period when educated women were thought
phenomenal. The house had been to her a convent, but with more freedom,
less enforced prayer,--a retreat where she had lived beneath the eye of
a pious old woman and the protection of her father, the only man she had
ever known. This absolute solitude, necessitated from her birth by the
apparent feebleness of her constitution, had been carefully maintained
by Beauvouloir.
As Gabrielle grew up, such constant care and the purity of the
atmosphere had gradually strengthened her fragile youth. Still, the wise
physician did not deceive himself when he saw the pearly tints around
his daughter’s eyes soften or darken or flush according to the emotions
that overcame her; the weakness of the body and the strength of the soul
were made plain to him in that one indication which his long experience
enabled him to understand. Besides this, Gabrielle’s celestial beauty
made him fearful of attempts too common in times of violence and
sedition. Many reasons had thus induced the good father to deepen the
shadows and increase the solitude that surrounded his daughter, whose
excessive sensibility alarmed him; a passion, an assault, a shock of any
kind might wound her mortally. Though she seldom deserved blame, a mere
word of reproach overcame her; she kept it in the depths of her heart,
where it fostered a meditative melancholy; she would turn away weeping,
and wept long.
Thus the moral education of the young girl required no less care than
her physical education. The old physician had been compelled to cease
telling stories, such as all children love, to his daughter; the
impressions she received were too vivid. Wise through long practice, he
endeavored to develop her body in order to deaden the blows which a
soul so powerful gave to it. Gabrielle was all of life and love to her
father, his only heir, and never had he hesitated to procure for her
such things as might produce the results he aimed for. He carefully
removed from her knowledge books, pictures, music, all those creations
of art which awaken thought. Aided by his mother he interested Gabrielle
in manual exercises. Tapestry, sewing, lace-making, the culture of
flowers, household cares, the storage of fruits, in short, the most
material occupations of life, were the food given to the mind of this
charming creature. Beauvouloir brought her beautiful spinning-wheels,
finely-carved chests, rich carpets, pottery of Bernard de Palissy,
tables, prie-dieus, chairs beautifully wrought and covered with
precious stuffs, embroidered line and jewels. With an instinct given by
paternity, the old man always chose his presents among the works of that
fantastic order called arabesque, which, speaking neither to the
soul nor the senses, addresses the mind only by its creations of pure
fantasy.
Thus--singular to say!--the life which the hatred of a father had
imposed on Etienne d’Herouville, paternal love had induced Beauvouloir
to impose on Gabrielle. In both these children the soul was killing the
body; and without an absolute solitude, ordained by cruelty for one and
procured by science for the other, each was likely to succumb,--he to
terror, she beneath the weight of a too keen emotion of love. But, alas!
instead of being born in a region of gorse and moor, in the midst of an
arid nature of hard and angular shapes, such as all great painters have
given as backgrounds to their Virgins, Gabrielle lived in a rich and
fertile valley. Beauvouloir could not destroy the harmonious grouping of
the native woods, the graceful upspringing of the wild flowers, the cool
softness of the grassy slopes, the love expressed in the intertwining
growth of the clustering plants. Such ever-living poesies have a
language heard, rather than understood by the poor girl, who yielded to
vague misery among the shadows. Across the misty ideas suggested by
her long study of this beautiful landscape, observed at all seasons and
through all the variations of a marine atmosphere in which the fogs
of England come to die and the sunshine of France is born, there rose
within her soul a distant light, a dawn which pierced the darkness in
which her father kept her.
Beauvouloir had never withdrawn his daughter from the influence of
Divine love; to a deep admiration of nature she joined her girlish
adoration of the Creator, springing thus into the first way open to the
feelings of womanhood. She loved God, she loved Jesus, the Virgin and
the saints; she loved the Church and its pomps; she was Catholic after
the manner of Saint Teresa, who saw in Jesus an eternal spouse, a
continual marriage. Gabrielle gave herself up to this passion of strong
souls with so touching a simplicity that she would have disarmed the
most brutal seducer by the infantine naivete of her language.
Whither was this life of innocence leading Gabrielle? How teach a mind
as pure as the water of a tranquil lake, reflecting only the azure of
the skies? What images should be drawn upon that spotless canvas? Around
which tree must the tendrils of this bind-weed twine? No father has ever
put these questions to himself without an inward shudder.
At this moment the good old man of science was riding slowly on his mule
along the roads from Herouville to Ourscamp (the name of the village
near which the estate of Forcalier was situated) as if he wished to keep
that way unending. The infinite love he bore his daughter suggested a
bold project to his mind. One only being in all the world could make
her happy; that man was Etienne. Assuredly, the angelic son of Jeanne
de Saint-Savin and the guileless daughter of Gertrude Marana were twin
beings. All other women would frighten and kill the heir of Herouville;
and Gabrielle, so Beauvouloir argued, would perish by contact with any
man in whom sentiments and external forms had not the virgin delicacy of
those of Etienne. Certainly the poor physician had never dreamed of such
a result; chance had brought it forward and seemed to ordain it. But,
under, the reign of Louis XIII., to dare to lead a Duc d’Herouville to
marry the daughter of a bonesetter!
And yet, from this marriage alone was it likely that the lineage
imperiously demanded by the old duke would result. Nature had destined
these two rare beings for each other; God had brought them together by
a marvellous arrangement of events, while, at the same time, human ideas
and laws placed insuperable barriers between them. Though the old man
thought he saw in this the finger of God, and although he had forced
the duke to pass his word, he was seized with such fear, as his thoughts
reverted to the violence of that ungovernable nature, that he returned
upon his steps when, on reaching the summit of the hill above Ourscamp,
he saw the smoke of his own chimneys among the trees that enclosed his
home. Then, changing his mind once more, the thought of the illegitimate
relationship decided him; that consideration might have great influence
on the mind of his master. Once decided, Beauvouloir had confidence in
the chances and changes of life; it might be that the duke would die
before the marriage; besides, there were many examples of such marriage;
a peasant girl in Dauphine, Francoise Mignot, had lately married the
Marechal d’Hopital; the son of the Connetable Anne de Montmorency
had married Diane, daughter of Henri II. and a Piedmontese lady named
Philippa Duc.
During this mental deliberation in which paternal love measured all
probabilities and discussed both the good and the evil chances, striving
to foresee the future and weighing its elements, Gabrielle was walking
in the garden and gathering flowers for the vases of that illustrious
potter, who did for glaze what Benvenuto Cellini did for metal.
Gabrielle had put one of these vases, decorated with animals in relief,
on a table in the middle of the hall, and was filling it with flowers
to enliven her grandmother, and also, perhaps, to give form to her
own ideas. The noble vase, of the pottery called Limoges, was filled,
arranged, and placed upon the handsome table-cloth, and Gabrielle was
saying to her grandmother, “See!” when Beauvouloir entered. The young
girl ran to her father’s arms. After this first outburst of affection
she wanted him to admire her bouquet; but the old man, after glancing at
it, cast a long, deep look at his daughter, which made her blush.
“The time has come,” he said to himself, understanding the language of
those flowers, each of which had doubtless been studied as to form and
as to color, and given its true place in the bouquet, where it produced
its own magical effect.
Gabrielle remained standing, forgetting the flower begun on her
tapestry. As he looked at his daughter a tear rolled from Beauvouloir’s
eyes, furrowed his cheeks which seldom wore a serious aspect, and fell
upon his shirt, which, after the fashion of the day, his open doublet
exposed to view above his breeches. He threw off his felt hat, adorned
with an old red plume, in order to rub his hand over his bald head.
Again he looked at his daughter, who, beneath the brown rafters of that
leather-hung room, with its ebony furniture and portieres of silken
damask, and its tall chimney-piece, the whole so softly lighted, was
still his very own. The poor father felt the tears in his eyes and
hastened to wipe them. A father who loves his daughter longs to keep her
always a child; as for him who can without deep pain see her fall under
the dominion of another man, he does not rise to worlds superior, he
falls to lowest space.
“What ails you, my son?” said his old mother, taking off her spectacles,
and seeking the cause of his silence and of the change in his usually
joyous manner.
The old physician signed to the old mother to look at his daughter,
nodding his head with satisfaction as if to say, “How sweet she is!”
What father would not have felt Beauvouloir’s emotion on seeing the
young girl as she stood there in the Norman dress of that period?
Gabrielle wore the corset pointed before and square behind, which
the Italian masters give almost invariably to their saints and their
madonnas. This elegant corselet, made of sky-blue velvet, as dainty as
that of a dragon-fly, enclosed the bust like a guimpe and compressed it,
delicately modelling the outline as it seemed to flatten; it moulded the
shoulders, the back, the waist, with the precision of a drawing made by
an able draftsman, ending around the neck in an oblong curve, adorned
at the edges with a slight embroidery in brown silks, leaving to view
as much of the bare throat as was needed to show the beauty of her
womanhood, but not enough to awaken desire. A full brown skirt,
continuing the lines already drawn by the velvet waist, fell to her feet
in narrow flattened pleats. Her figure was so slender that Gabrielle
seemed tall; her arms hung pendent with the inertia that some deep
thought imparts to the attitude. Thus standing, she presented a living
model of those ingenuous works of statuary a taste for which prevailed
at that period,--works which obtained admiration for the harmony of
their lines, straight without stiffness, and for the firmness of
a design which did not exclude vitality. No swallow, brushing the
window-panes at dusk, ever conveyed the idea of greater elegance of
outline.
Gabrielle’s face was thin, but not flat; on her neck and forehead ran
bluish threads showing the delicacy of a skin so transparent that the
flowing of the blood through her veins seemed visible. This excessive
whiteness was faintly tinted with rose upon the cheeks. Held beneath a
little coif of sky-blue velvet embroidered with pearls, her hair, of an
even tone, flowed like two rivulets of gold from her temples and played
in ringlets on her neck, which it did not hide. The glowing color of
those silky locks brightened the dazzling whiteness of the neck, and
purified still further by its reflections the outlines of the face
already so pure. The eyes, which were long and as if pressed between
their lids, were in harmony with the delicacy of the head and body;
their pearl-gray tints were brilliant without vivacity, candid without
passion. The line of the nose might have seemed cold, like a steel
blade, without two rosy nostrils, the movements of which were out
of keeping with the chastity of that dreamy brow, often perplexed,
sometimes smiling, but always of an august serenity. An alert little ear
attracted the eye, peeping beneath the coif and between two curls, and
showing a ruby ear-drop, the color of which stood vigorously out on the
milky whiteness of the neck. This was neither Norman beauty, where flesh
abounds, nor French beauty, as fugitive as its own expressions, nor the
beauty of the North, cold and melancholy as the North itself--it was the
deep seraphic beauty of the Catholic Church, supple and rigid, severe
but tender.
“Where could one find a prettier duchess?” thought Beauvouloir,
contemplating his daughter with delight. As she stood there slightly
bending, her neck stretched out to watch the flight of a bird past the
windows, he could only compare her to a gazelle pausing to listen for
the ripple of the water where she seeks to drink.
“Come and sit here,” said Beauvouloir, tapping his knee and making a
sign to Gabrielle, which told her he had something to whisper to her.
Gabrielle understood him, and came. She placed herself on his knee with
the lightness of a gazelle, and slipped her arm about his neck, ruffling
his collar.
“Tell me,” he said, “what were you thinking of when you gathered those
flowers? You have never before arranged them so charmingly.”
“I was thinking of many things,” she answered. “Looking at the flowers
made for us, I wondered whom we were made for; who are they who look at
us? You are wise, and I can tell you what I think; you know so much you
can explain all. I feel a sort of force within me that wants to exercise
itself; I struggle against something. When the sky is gray I am half
content; I am sad, but I am calm. When the day is fine, and the flowers
smell sweet, and I sit on my bench down there among the jasmine and
honeysuckles, something rises in me, like waves which beat against my
stillness. Ideas come into my mind which shake me, and fly away like
those birds before the windows; I cannot hold them. Well, when I have
made a bouquet in which the colors blend like tapestry, and the red
contrasts with white, and the greens and the browns cross each other,
when all seems so abundant, the breeze so playful, the flowers so many
that their fragrance mingles and their buds interlace,--well, then I am
happy, for I see what is passing in me. At church when the organ plays
and the clergy respond, there are two distinct songs speaking to each
other,--the human voice and the music. Well, then, too, I am happy;
that harmony echoes in my breast. I pray with a pleasure which stirs my
blood.”
While listening to his daughter, Beauvouloir examined her with sagacious
eyes; those eyes seemed almost stupid from the force of his rushing
thoughts, as the water of a cascade seems motionless. He raised the veil
of flesh which hid the secret springs by which the soul reacts upon
the body; he studied the diverse symptoms which his long experience had
noted in persons committed to his care, and he compared them with those
contained in this frail body, the bones of which frightened him by their
delicacy, as the milk-white skin alarmed him by its want of substance.
He tried to bring the teachings of his science to bear upon the future
of that angelic child, and he was dizzy in so doing, as though he stood
upon the verge of an abyss; the too vibrant voice, the too slender bosom
of the young girl filled him with dread, and he questioned himself after
questioning her.
“You suffer here!” he cried at last, driven by a last thought which
summed up his whole meditation.
She bent her head gently.
“By God’s grace!” said the old man, with a sigh, “I will take you to the
Chateau d’Herouville, and there you shall take sea-baths to strengthen
you.”
“Is that true, father? You are not laughing at your little Gabrielle? I
have so longed to see the castle, and the men-at-arms, and the captains
of monseigneur.”
“Yes, my daughter, you shall really go there. Your nurse and Jean shall
accompany you.”
“Soon?”
“To-morrow,” said the old man, hurrying into the garden to hide his
agitation from his mother and his child.
“God is my witness,” he cried to himself, “that no ambitious
thought impels me. My daughter to save, poor little Etienne to make
happy,--those are my only motives.”
If he thus interrogated himself it was because, in the depths of his
consciousness, he felt an inextinguishable satisfaction in knowing that
the success of his project would make Gabrielle some day the Duchesse
d’Herouville. There is always a man in a father. He walked about a long
time, and when he came in to supper he took delight for the rest of the
evening in watching his daughter in the midst of the soft brown poesy
with which he had surrounded her; and when, before she went to bed,
they all--the grandmother, the nurse, the doctor, and Gabrielle--knelt
together to say their evening prayer, he added the words,--
“Let us pray to God to bless my enterprise.”
The eyes of the grandmother, who knew his intentions, were moistened
with what tears remained to her. Gabrielle’s face was flushed with
happiness. The father trembled, so much did he fear some catastrophe.
“After all,” his mother said to him, “fear not, my son. The duke would
never kill his grandchild.”
“No,” he replied, “but he might compel her to marry some brute of a
baron, and that would kill her.”
The next day Gabrielle, mounted on an ass, followed by her nurse on
foot, her father on his mule, and a valet who led two horses laden with
baggage, started for the castle of Herouville, where the caravan arrived
at nightfall. In order to keep this journey secret, Beauvouloir
had taken by-roads, starting early in the morning, and had brought
provisions to be eaten by the way, in order not to show himself at
hostelries. The party arrived, therefore, after dark, without being
noticed by the castle retinue, at the little dwelling on the seashore,
so long occupied by the hated son, where Bertrand, the only person the
doctor had taken into his confidence, awaited them. The old retainer
helped the nurse and valet to unload the horses and carry in the
baggage, and otherwise establish the daughter of Beauvouloir in
Etienne’s former abode. When Bertrand saw Gabrielle, he was amazed.
“I seem to see madame!” he cried. “She is slim and willowy like her; she
has madame’s coloring and the same fair hair. The old duke will surely
love her.”
“God grant it!” said Beauvouloir. “But will he acknowledge his own blood
after it has passed through mine?”
“He can’t deny it,” replied Bertrand. “I often went to fetch him
from the door of the Belle Romaine, who lived in the rue
Culture-Sainte-Catherine. The Cardinal de Lorraine was compelled to give
her up to monseigneur, out of shame at being insulted by the mob when
he left her house. Monseigneur, who in those days was still in his
twenties, will remember that affair; bold he was,--I can tell it now--he
led the insulters!”
“He never thinks of the past,” said Beauvouloir. “He knows my wife is
dead, but I doubt if he remembers I have a daughter.”
“Two old navigators like you and me ought to be able to bring the ship
to port,” said Bertrand. “After all, suppose the duke does get angry and
seize our carcasses; they have served their time.”