While De Breze and his friends were feasting at the cafe Anglais, and
faring better than the host had promised--for the bill of fare comprised
such luxuries as ass, mule, peas, fried potatoes, and champagne
(champagne in some mysterious way was inexhaustible during the time of
famine)--a very different group had assembled in the rooms of Isaura
Cicogna. She and the Venosta had hitherto escaped the extreme
destitution to which many richer persons had been reduced. It is true
that Isaura's fortune placed in the hands of the absent Louvier, and
invested in the new street that was to have been, brought no return. It
was true that in that street the Venosta, dreaming of cent. per cent.,
had invested all her savings. But the Venosta, at the first announcement
of war, had insisted on retaining in hand a small sum from the amount
Isaura had received from her "_roman_," that might suffice for current
expenses, and with yet more acute foresight had laid in stores of
provisions and fuel immediately after the probability of a siege became
apparent. But even the provident mind of the Venosta had never foreseen
that the siege would endure so long, or that the prices of all articles
of necessity would rise so high. And meanwhile all resources--money,
fuel, provisions--had been largely drawn upon by the charity and
benevolence of Isaura, without much remonstrance on the part of the
Venosta, whose nature was very accessible to pity. Unfortunately, too,
of late money and provisions had failed to Monsieur and Madame Rameau,
their income consisting partly of rents no longer paid, and the profits
of a sleeping partnership in the old shop, from which custom had
departed; so that they came to share the fireside and meals at the rooms
of their son's fiancee with little scruple, because utterly unaware that
the money retained and the provisions stored by the Venosta were now
nearly exhausted.
The patriotic ardour which had first induced the elder Rameau to
volunteer his services as a National Guard had been ere this cooled if
not suppressed, first by the hardships of the duty, and then by the
disorderly conduct of his associates, and their ribald talk and obscene
songs. He was much beyond the age at which he could be registered. His
son was, however, compelled to become his substitute, though from his
sickly health and delicate frame attached to that portion of the National
Guard which took no part in actual engagements, and was supposed to do
work on the ramparts and maintain order in the city.
In that duty, so opposed to his tastes and habits, Gustave signalised
himself as one of the loudest declaimers against the imbecility of the
Government, and in the demand for immediate and energetic action, no
matter at what loss of life, on the part of all--except the heroic force
to which he himself was attached. Still, despite his military labours,
Gustave found leisure to contribute to Red journals, and his
contributions paid him tolerably well. To do him justice, his parents
concealed from him the extent of their destitution; they, on their part,
not aware that he was so able to assist them, rather fearing that he
himself had nothing else for support but his scanty pay as a National
Guard. In fact, of late the parents and son had seen little of each
other. M. Rameau, though a Liberal politician, was Liberal as a
tradesman, not as a Red Republican or a Socialist. And, though little
heeding his son's theories while the Empire secured him from the
practical effect of them, he was now as sincerely frightened at the
chance of the Communists becoming rampant as most of the Parisian
tradesmen were. Madame Rameau, on her side, though she had the dislike
to aristocrats which was prevalent with her class, was a stanch Roman
Catholic; and seeing in the disasters that had befallen her country the
punishment justly incurred by its sins, could not but be shocked by the
opinions of Gustave, though she little knew that he was the author of
certain articles in certain journals, in which these opinions were
proclaimed with a vehemence far exceeding that which they assumed in his
conversation. She had spoken to him with warm anger, mixed with
passionate tears, on his irreligious principles; and from that moment
Gustave shunned to give her another opportunity of insulting his pride
and depreciating his wisdom.
Partly to avoid meeting his parents, partly because he recoiled almost as
much from the ennui of meeting the other visitors at her apartments--the
Paris ladies associated with her in the ambulance, Raoul de Vandeniar,
whom he especially hated, and the Abbe Vertpre, who had recently come
into intimate friendship with both the Italian ladies--his visits to
Isaura had become exceedingly rare. He made his incessant military
duties the pretext for absenting himself; and now, on this evening, there
were gathered round Isaura's hearth--on which burned almost the last of
the hoarded fuel--the Venosta, the two Rameaus, the Abbe Vertpre, who was
attached as confessor to the society of which Isaura was so zealous a
member. The old priest and the young poetess had become dear friends.
There is in the nature of a woman (and especially of a woman at once so
gifted and so childlike as Isaura, combining an innate tendency towards
faith with a restless inquisitiveness of intellect, which is always
suggesting query or doubt) a craving for something afar from the sphere
of her sorrow, which can only be obtained through that "bridal of the
earth and sky" which we call religion. And hence, to natures like
Isaura's, that link between the woman and the priest, which the
philosophy of France has never been able to dissever.
"It is growing late," said Madame Rameau; "I am beginning to feel uneasy.
Our dear Isaura is not yet returned."
"You need be under no apprehension," said the Abby. The ladies attached
to the ambulance of which she is so tender and zealous a sister incur no
risk. There are always brave men related to the sick and wounded who see
to the safe return of the women. My poor Raoul visits that ambulance
daily. His kinsman, M. de Rochebriant, is there among the wounded."
"Not seriously hurt, I hope," said the Venosta; "not disfigured? He was
so handsome; it is only the ugly warrior whom a scar on the face
improves."
"Don't be alarmed, Signora; the Prussian guns spared his face. His
wounds in themselves were not dangerous, but he lost a good deal of
blood. Raoul and the Christian brothers found him insensible among a
heap of the slain."
"M. de Vandemar seems to have very soon recovered the shock of his poor
brother's death," said Madame Rameau. "There is very little heart in an
aristocrat."
The Abbe's mild brow contracted. "Have more charity, my daughter. It is
because Raoul's sorrow for his lost brother is so deep and so holy that
he devotes himself more than ever to the service of the Father which is
in heaven. He said, a day or two after the burial, when plans for a
monument to Enguerrand were submitted to him: 'May my prayer be
vouchsafed, and my life be a memorial of him more acceptable to his
gentle spirit than monuments of bronze or marble. May I be divinely
guided and sustained in my desire to do such good acts as he would have
done had he been spared longer to earth. And whenever tempted to weary,
may my conscience whisper, Betray not the trust left to thee by thy
brother, lest thou be not reunited to him at last."'
"Pardon me, pardon!" murmured Madame Rameau humbly, while the Venosta
burst into tears.
The Abbe, though a most sincere and earnest ecclesiastic, was a cheery
and genial man of the world; and, in order to relieve Madame Rameau from
the painful self-reproach he had before excited, he turned the
conversation. "I must beware, however," he said, with his pleasant
laugh, "as to the company in which I interfere in family questions; and
especially in which I defend my poor Raoul from any charge brought
against him. For some good friend this day sent me a terrible organ of
communistic philosophy, in which we humble priests are very roughly
handled, and I myself am especially singled out by name as a pestilent
intermeddler in the affairs of private households. I am said to set the
women against the brave men who are friends of the people, and am
cautioned by very truculent threats to cease from such villainous
practices." And here, with a dry humour that turned into ridicule what
would otherwise have excited disgust and indignation among his listeners,
he read aloud passages replete with the sort of false eloquence which was
then the vogue among the Red journals. In these passages, not only the
Abbe was pointed out for popular execration, but Raoul de Vandemar,
though not expressly named, was clearly indicated as a pupil of the
Abbe's, the type of a lay Jesuit.
The Venosta alone did not share in the contemptuous laughter with which
the inflated style of these diatribes inspired the Rameaus. Her simple
Italian mind was horror-stricken by language which the Abbe treated with
ridicule.
"Ah!" said M. Rameau, "I guess the author--that firebrand Felix Pyat."
"No," answered the Abbe; "the writer signs himself by the name of a more
learned atheist--Diderot le jeune." Here the door opened, and Raoul
entered, accompanying Isaura. A change had come over the face of the
young Vandemar since his brother's death. The lines about the mouth had
deepened, the cheeks had lost their rounded contour and grown somewhat
hollow. But the expression was as serene as ever, perhaps even less
pensively melancholy. His whole aspect was that of a man who has
sorrowed, but been supported in sorrow; perhaps it was more sweet-
certainly it was more lofty.
And, as if there were in the atmosphere of his presence something that
communicated the likeness of his own soul to others, since Isaura had
been brought into his companionship, her own lovely face had caught the
expression that prevailed in his--that, too, had become more sweet--that,
too, had become more lofty.
The friendship that had grown up between these two young mourners was of
a very rare nature. It had in it no sentiment that could ever warm into
the passion of human love. Indeed, had Isaura's heart been free to give
away, love for Raoul de Vandemar would have seemed to her a profanation.
He was never more priestly than when he was most tender. And the
tenderness of Raoul towards her was that of some saint-like nature
towards the acolyte whom it attracted upwards. He had once, just before
Enguerrand's death, spoken to Isaura with a touching candour as to his
own predilection for a monastic life. "The worldly avocations that open
useful and honourable careers for others have no charm for me. I care
not for riches nor power, nor honours nor fame. The austerities of the
conventual life have no terror for me; on the contrary, they have a
charm, for with them are abstraction from earth and meditation on heaven.
In earlier years I might, like other men, have cherished dreams of human
love, and felicity in married life, but for the sort of veneration with
which I regarded one to whom I owe--humanly speaking--whatever of good
there may be in me. Just when first taking my place among the society of
young men who banish from their life all thought of another, I came under
the influence of a woman who taught me to see that holiness was beauty.
She gradually associated me with her acts of benevolence, and from her I
learned to love God too well not to be indulgent to his creatures. I
know not whether the attachment I felt to her could have been inspired in
one who had not from childhood conceived a romance, not perhaps justified
by history, for the ideal images of chivalry. My feeling for her at
first was that of the pure and poetic homage which a young knight was
permitted, _sans reproche_, to render to some fair queen or chatelaine,
whose colours he wore in the lists, whose spotless repute he would have
perilled his life to defend. But soon even that sentiment, pure as it
was, became chastened from all breath of earthly love, in proportion as
the admiration refined itself into reverence. She has often urged me to
marry, but I have no bride on this earth. I do but want to see
Enguerrand happily married, and then I quit the world for the cloister."
But after Enguerrand's death, Raoul resigned all idea of the convent.
That evening, as he attended to their homes Isaura and the other ladies
at to the ambulance, he said, in answer to inquiries about his mother,
"She is resigned and calm. I have promised her I will not, while she
lives, bury her other son: I renounce my dreams of the monastery."
Raoul did not remain many minutes at Isaura's. The Abbe accompanied him
on his way home. "I have a request to make to you," said the former;
"you know, of course, your distant cousin the Vicomte de Mauleon?"
"Yes. Not so well as I ought, for Enguerrand liked him."
"Well enough, at all events, to call on him with a request which I am
commissioned to make, but it might come better from you as a kinsman. I
am a stranger to him, and I know not whether a man of that sort would not
regard as an officious intermeddling any communication made to him by a
priest. The matter, however, is a very simple one. At the convent of
------- there is a poor nun who is, I fear, dying. She has an intense
desire to see M. de Mauleon, whom she declares to be her uncle, and her
only surviving relative. The laws of the convent are not too austere
to prevent the interview she seeks in such a case. I should add that I
am not acquainted with her previous history. I am not the confessor of
the sisterhood; he, poor man, was badly wounded by a chance ball a few
days ago when attached to an ambulance on the ramparts. As soon as the
surgeon would allow him to see any one, he sent for me, and bade me go to
the nun I speak of--Sister Ursula. It seems that he had informed her
that M. de Mauleon was at Paris, and had promised to ascertain his
address. His wound had prevented his doing so, but he trusted to me to
procure the information. I am well acquainted with the Superieure of the
convent, and I flatter myself that she holds me in esteem. I had
therefore no difficulty to obtain her permission to see this poor nun,
which I did this evening. She implored me for the peace of her soul to
lose no time in finding out M. de Mauleon's address, and entreating him
to visit her. Lest he should demur, I was to give him the name by which
he had known her in the world--Louise Duval. Of course I obeyed. The
address of a man who has so distinguished himself in this unhappy siege I
very easily obtained, and repaired at once to M. de Mauleon's apartment.
I there learned that he was from home, and it was uncertain whether he
would not spend the night on the ramparts."
"I will not fail to see him early in the morning," said Raoul, "and
execute your commission."