The short grim day was closing when Gustave, quitting Julie's apartment,
again found himself in the streets. His thoughts were troubled and
confused. He was the more affected by Julie's impassioned love for him,
by the contrast with Isaura's words and manner in their recent interview.
His own ancient fancy for the "Ondine of Paris" became revived by the
difficulties between their ancient intercourse which her unexpected
scruples and De Mauleon's guardianship interposed. A witty writer thus
defines _une passion, "_une caprice inflamme par des obstacles_." In the
ordinary times of peace, Gustave, handsome, aspiring to reputable
position in the _beau monde_, would not have admitted any considerations
to compromise his station by marriage with a _fagurante_. But now the
wild political doctrines he had embraced separated his ambition from that
_beau monde_, and combined it with ascendancy over the revolutionists of
the populace--a direction which he must abandon if he continued his suit
to Isaura. Then, too, the immediate possession of Julie's dot was not
without temptation to a man who was so fond of his personal comforts, and
who did not see where to turn for a dinner, if, obedient to Isaura's
"prejudices," he abandoned his profits as a writer in the revolutionary
press. The inducements for withdrawal from the cause he had espoused,
held out to him with so haughty a coldness by De Mauleon, were not wholly
without force, though they irritated his self-esteem. He was dimly aware
of the Vicomte's masculine talents for public life; and the high
reputation he had already acquired among military authorities, and even
among experienced and thoughtful civilians, had weight upon Gustave's
impressionable temperament. But though De Mauleon's implied advice here
coincided in much with the tacit compact he had made with Isaura, it
alienated him more from Isaura herself, for Isaura did not bring to him
the fortune which would enable him to suspend his lucubrations, watch the
turn of events, and live at ease in the meanwhile; and the dot to be
received with De Mauleon's ward had those advantages.
While thus meditating Gustave turned into one of the cantines still open,
to brighten his intellect with a _petit verre_, and there he found the
two colleagues in the extinct Council of Ten, Paul Grimm and Edgar
Ferrier. With the last of these revolutionists Gustave had become
intimately _lie_. They wrote in the same journal, and he willingly
accepted a distraction from his self-conflict which Edgar offered him in
a dinner at the cafe Riche, which still offered its hospitalities at no
exorbitant price. At this repast, as the drink circulated, Gustave waxed
confidential. He longed, poor youth, for an adviser. Could he marry a
girl who had been a ballet-dancer, and who had come into an unexpected
heritage? "_Es-tu fou d'en douter_?" cried Edgar. "What a sublime
occasion to manifest thy scorn of the miserable banalities of the
bourgeoisie! It will but increase thy moral power over the people. And
then think of the money. What an aid to the cause! What a capital for
the launch!--journal all thine own! Besides, when our principles
triumph--as triumph they must--what would be marriage but a brief and
futile ceremony, to be broken the moment thou hast cause to complain of
thy wife or chafe at the bond? Only get the dot into thine own hands.
_L'amour passe--reste la cassette_."
Though there was enough of good in the son of Madame Rameau to revolt at
the precise words in which the counsel was given, still, as the fumes of
the punch yet more addled his brains, the counsel itself was acceptable;
and in that sort of maddened fury which intoxication produces in some
excitable temperaments, as Gustave reeled home that night leaning on the
arm of stouter Edgar Ferrier, he insisted on going out of his way to pass
the house in which Isaura lived, and, pausing under her window, gasped
out some verses of a wild song, then much in vogue among the votaries of
Felix Pyat, in which everything that existent society deems sacred was
reviled in the grossest ribaldry. Happily Isaura's ear heard it not.
The girl was kneeling by her bedside absorbed in prayer.