PART II
PART III
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC
PART I
My good old friend, in his white flannel dressing-gown, with his wig
"removed," as they say of the dinner-service, by a crimson nightcap, sat
for some moments gazing into the fire. At last he looked up. I knew what
was coming. "Apropos, that little debt of mine--"
Not that the debt was really very little. But M. de Bergerac was a man
of honor, and I knew I should receive my dues. He told me frankly that
he saw no way, either in the present or the future, to reimburse me in
cash. His only treasures were his paintings; would I choose one of them?
Now I had not spent an hour in M. de Bergerac's little parlor twice a
week for three winters, without learning that the Baron's paintings
were, with a single exception, of very indifferent merit. On the other
hand, I had taken a great fancy to the picture thus excepted. Yet, as I
knew it was a family portrait, I hesitated to claim it. I refused to
make a choice. M. de Bergerac, however, insisted, and I finally laid my
finger on the charming image of my friend's aunt. I of course insisted,
on my side, that M. de Bergerac should retain it during the remainder of
his life, and so it was only after his decease that I came into
possession of it. It hangs above my table as I write, and I have only to
glance up at the face of my heroine to feel how vain it is to attempt to
describe it. The portrait represents, in dimensions several degrees
below those of nature, the head and shoulders of a young girl of
two-and-twenty. The execution of the work is not especially strong, but
it is thoroughly respectable and one may easily see that the painter
deeply appreciated the character of the face. The countenance is
interesting rather than beautiful,--the forehead broad and open, the
eyes slightly prominent, all the features full and firm and yet replete
with gentleness. The head is slightly thrown back, as if in movement,
and the lips are parted in a half-smile. And yet, in spite of this
tender smile, I always fancy that the eyes are sad. The hair, dressed
without powder, is rolled back over a high cushion (as I suppose), and
adorned just above the left ear with a single white rose; while, on the
other side, a heavy tress from behind hangs upon the neck with a sort of
pastoral freedom. The neck is long and full, and the shoulders rather
broad. The whole face has a look of mingled softness and decision, and
seems to reveal a nature inclined to revery, affection, and repose, but
capable of action and even of heroism. Mlle. de Bergerac died under the
axe of the Terrorists. Now that I had acquired a certain property in
this sole memento of her life, I felt a natural curiosity as to her
character and history. Had M. de Bergerac known his aunt? Did he
remember her? Would it be a tax on his good-nature to suggest that he
should favor me with a few reminiscences? The old man fixed his eyes on
the fire, and laid his hand on mine, as if his memory were fain to draw
from both sources--from the ruddy glow and from my fresh young blood--a
certain vital, quickening warmth. A mild, rich smile ran to his lips,
and he pressed my hand. Somehow,--I hardly know why,--I felt touched
almost to tears. Mlle. de Bergerac had been a familiar figure in her
nephew's boyhood, and an important event in her life had formed a sort
of episode in his younger days. It was a simple enough story; but such
as it was, then and there, settling back into his chair, with the
fingers of the clock wandering on to the small hours of the night, he
told it with a tender, lingering garrulity. Such as it is, I repeat it.
I shall give, as far as possible, my friend's words, or the English of
them; but the reader will have to do without his inimitable accents. For
them there is no English.
My father's household at Bergerac (said the Baron) consisted, exclusive
of the servants, of five persons,--himself, my mother, my aunt (Mlle. de
Bergerac), M. Coquelin (my preceptor), and M. Coquelin's pupil, the heir
of the house. Perhaps, indeed, I should have numbered M. Coquelin among
the servants. It is certain that my mother did. Poor little woman! she
was a great stickler for the rights of birth. Her own birth was all she
had, for she was without health, beauty, or fortune. My father, on his
side, had very little of the last; his property of Bergerac yielded only
enough to keep us without discredit. We gave no entertainments, and
passed the whole year in the country; and as my mother was resolved that
her weak health should do her a kindness as well as an injury, it was
put forward as an apology for everything. We led at best a simple,
somnolent sort of life. There was a terrible amount of leisure for rural
gentlefolks in those good old days. We slept a great deal; we slept, you
will say, on a volcano. It was a very different world from this patent
new world of yours, and I may say that I was born on a different planet.
Yes, in 1789, there came a great convulsion; the earth cracked and
opened and broke, and this poor old _pays de France_ went whirling
through space. When I look back at my childhood, I look over a gulf.
Three years ago, I spent a week at a country house in the neighborhood
of Bergerac, and my hostess drove me over to the site of the château.
The house has disappeared, and there's a homœopathic--hydropathic--what
do you call it?--establishment erected in its place. But the little town
is there, and the bridge on the river, and the church where I was
christened, and the double row of lime-trees on the market-place, and
the fountain in the middle. There's only one striking difference: the
sky is changed. I was born under the old sky. It was black enough, of
course, if we had only had eyes to see it; but to me, I confess, it
looked divinely blue. And in fact it was very bright,--the little patch
under which I cast my juvenile shadow. An odd enough little shadow you
would have thought it. I was promiscuously cuddled and fondled. I was M.
le Chevalier, and prospective master of Bergerac; and when I walked to
church on Sunday, I had a dozen yards of lace on my coat and a little
sword at my side. My poor mother did her best to make me good for
nothing. She had her maid to curl my hair with the tongs, and she used
with her own fingers to stick little black patches on my face. And yet I
was a good deal neglected too, and I would go for days with black
patches of another sort. I'm afraid I should have got very little
education if a kind Providence hadn't given me poor M. Coquelin. A kind
Providence, that is, and my father; for with my mother my tutor was no
favorite. She thought him--and, indeed, she called him--a bumpkin, a
clown. There was a very pretty abbé among her friends, M. Tiblaud by
name, whom she wished to install at the château as my intellectual, and
her spiritual, adviser; but my father, who, without being anything of an
_esprit fort_, had an incurable aversion to a priest out of church, very
soon routed this pious scheme. My poor father was an odd figure of a
man. He belonged to a type as completely obsolete as the biggest of
those big-boned, pre-historic monsters discovered by M. Cuvier. He was
not overburdened with opinions or principles. The only truth that was
absolute to his perception was that the house of Bergerac was _de bonne
noblesse._ His tastes were not delicate. He was fond of the open air, of
long rides, of the smell of the game-stocked woods in autumn, of playing
at bowls, of a drinking-cup, of a dirty pack of cards, and a free-spoken
tavern Hebe. I have nothing of him but his name. I strike you as an old
fossil, a relic, a mummy. Good heavens! you should have seen him,--his
good, his bad manners, his arrogance, his _bonhomie_, his stupidity and
pluck.
My early years had promised ill for my health; I was listless and
languid, and my father had been content to leave me to the women, who,
on the whole, as I have said, left me a good deal to myself. But one
morning he seemed suddenly to remember that he had a little son and heir
running wild. It was, I remember, in my ninth year, a morning early in
June, after breakfast, at eleven o'clock. He took me by the hand and led
me out on the terrace, and sat down and made me stand between his knees.
I was engaged upon a great piece of bread and butter, which I had
brought away from the table. He put his hand into my hair, and, for the
first time that I could remember, looked me straight in the face. I had
seen him take the forelock of a young colt in the same way, when he
wished to look at its teeth. What did he want? Was he going to send me
for sale? His eyes seemed prodigiously black and his eyebrows terribly
thick. They were very much the eyebrows of that portrait. My father
passed his other hand over the muscles of my arms and the sinews of my
poor little legs.
"Chevalier," said he, "you're dreadfully puny. What's one to do with
you?"
I dropped my eyes and said nothing. Heaven knows I felt puny.
"It's time you knew how to read and write. What are you blushing at?"
"I _do_ know how to read," said I.
My father stared. "Pray, who taught you?"
"I learned in a book."
"What book?"
I looked up at my father before I answered. His eyes were bright, and
there was a little flush in his face,--I hardly knew whether of pleasure
or anger. I disengaged myself and went into the drawing-room, where I
took from a cupboard in the wall an odd volume of Scarron's _Roman
comique._ As I had to go through the house, I was absent some minutes.
When I came back I found a stranger on the terrace. A young man in poor
clothes, with a walking-stick, had come up from the avenue, and stood
before my father, with his hat in his hand. At the farther end of the
terrace was my aunt. She was sitting on the parapet, playing with a
great black crow, which we kept in a cage in the dining-room window. I
betook myself to my father's side with my book, and stood staring at our
visitor. He was a dark-eyed, sunburnt young man, of about twenty-eight,
of middle height, broad in the shoulders and short in the neck, with a
slight lameness in one of his legs. He looked travel-stained and weary
and pale. I remember there was something prepossessing in his being
pale. I didn't know that the paleness came simply from his being
horribly hungry.
"In view of these facts," he said, as I came up, "I have ventured to
presume upon the good-will of M. le Baron."
My father sat back in his chair, with his legs apart and a hand on each
knee and his waistcoat unbuttoned, as was usual after a meal. "Upon my
word," he said, "I don't know what I can do for you. There's no place
for you in my own household."
The young man was silent a moment. "Has M. le Baron any children?" he
asked, after a pause.
"I have my son whom you see here."
"May I inquire if M. le Chevalier is supplied with a preceptor?"
My father glanced down at me. "Indeed, he seems to be," he cried. "What
have you got there?" And he took my book. "The little rascal has M.
Scarron for a teacher. This is his preceptor!"
I blushed very hard, and the young man smiled. "Is that your only
teacher?" he asked.
"My aunt taught me to read," I said, looking round at her.
"And did your aunt recommend this book?" asked my father.
"My aunt gave me M. Plutarque," I said.
My father burst out laughing, and the young man put his hat up to his
mouth. But I could see that above it his eyes had a very good-natured
look. My aunt, seeing that her name had been mentioned, walked slowly
over to where we stood, still holding her crow on her hand. You have her
there before you; judge how she looked. I remember that she frequently
dressed in blue, my poor aunt, and I know that she must have dressed
simply. Fancy her in a light stuff gown, covered with big blue flowers,
with a blue ribbon in her dark hair, and the points of her high-heeled
blue slippers peeping out under her stiff white petticoat. Imagine her
strolling along the terrace of the château with a villainous black crow
perched on her wrist. You'll admit it's a picture.
"Is all this true, sister?" said my father. "Is the Chevalier such a
scholar?"
"He's a clever boy," said my aunt, putting her hand on my head.
"It seems to me that at a pinch he could do without a preceptor," said
my father. "He has such a learned aunt."
"I've taught him all I know. He had begun to ask me questions that I was
quite unable to answer."
"I should think he might," cried my father, with a broad laugh, "when
once he had got into M. Scarron!"
"Questions out of Plutarch," said Mlle. de Bergerac, "which you must
know Latin to answer."
"Would you like to know Latin, M. le Chevalier?" said the young man,
looking at me with a smile.
"Do you know Latin,--you?" I asked.
"Perfectly," said the young man, with the same smile.
"Do you want to learn Latin, Chevalier?" said my aunt.
"Every gentleman learns Latin," said the young man.
I looked at the poor fellow, his dusty shoes and his rusty clothes. "But
you're not a gentleman," said I.
He blushed up to his eyes. "Ah, I only teach it," he said.
In this way it was that Pierre Coquelin came to be my governor. My
father, who had a mortal dislike to all kinds of cogitation and inquiry,
engaged him on the simple testimony of his face and of his own account
of his talents. His history, as he told it, was in three words as
follows: He was of our province, and neither more nor less than the son
of a village tailor. He is my hero: _tirez-vous de là._ Showing a
lively taste for books, instead of being promoted to the paternal bench,
he had been put to study with the Jesuits. After a residence of some
three years with these gentlemen, he had incurred their displeasure by a
foolish breach of discipline, and had been turned out into the world.
Here he had endeavored to make capital out of his excellent education,
and had gone up to Paris with the hope of earning his bread as a
scribbler. But in Paris he scribbled himself hungry and nothing more,
and was in fact in a fair way to die of starvation. At last he
encountered an agent of the Marquis de Rochambeau, who was collecting
young men for the little army which the latter was prepared to conduct
to the aid of the American insurgents. He had engaged himself among
Rochambeau's troops, taken part in several battles, and finally received
a wound in his leg of which the effect was still perceptible. At the end
of three years he had returned to France, and repaired on foot, with
what speed he might, to his native town; but only to find that in his
absence his father had died, after a tedious illness, in which he had
vainly lavished his small earnings upon the physicians, and that his
mother had married again, very little to his taste. Poor Coquelin was
friendless, penniless, and homeless. But once back on his native soil,
he found himself possessed again by his old passion for letters, and,
like: all starving members of his craft, he had turned his face to
Paris. He longed to make up for his three years in the wilderness. He
trudged along, lonely, hungry, and weary, till he came to the gates of
Bergerac. Here, sitting down to rest on a stone, he saw us come out on
the terrace to digest our breakfast in the sun. Poor Coquelin! he had
the stomach of a gentleman. He was filled with an irresistible longing
to rest awhile from his struggle with destiny, and it seemed to him that
for a mess of smoking pottage he would gladly exchange his vague and
dubious future. In obedience to this simple impulse,--an impulse
touching in its humility, when you knew the man,--he made his way up the
avenue. We looked affable enough,--an honest country gentleman, a young
girl playing with a crow, and a little boy eating bread and butter; and
it turned out, we were as kindly as we looked.
For me, I soon grew extremely fond of him, and I was glad to think in
later days that he had found me a thoroughly docile child. In those
days, you know, thanks to Jean Jacques Rousseau, there was a vast stir
in men's notions of education, and a hundred theories afloat about the
perfect teacher and the perfect pupil. Coquelin was a firm devotee of
Jean Jacques, and very possibly applied some of his precepts to my own
little person. But of his own nature Coquelin was incapable of anything
that was not wise and gentle, and he had no need to learn humanity in
books. He was, nevertheless, a great reader, and when he had not a
volume in his hand he was sure to have two in his pockets. He had half a
dozen little copies of the Greek and Latin poets, bound in yellow
parchment, which, as he said, with a second shirt and a pair of white
stockings, constituted his whole library. He had carried these books to
America, and read them in the wilderness, and by the light of
camp-fires, and in crowded, steaming barracks in winter-quarters. He had
a passion for Virgil. M. Scarron was very soon dismissed to the
cupboard, among the dice-boxes and the old packs of cards, and I was
confined for the time to Virgil and Ovid and Plutarch, all of which,
with the stimulus of Coquelin's own delight, I found very good reading.
But better than any of the stories I read were those stories of his
wanderings, and his odd companions and encounters, and charming tales of
pure fantasy, which, with the best grace in the world, he would recite
by the hour. We took long walks, and he told me the names of the flowers
and the various styles of the stars, and I remember that I often had no
small trouble to keep them distinct. He wrote a very bad hand, but he
made very pretty drawings of the subjects then in vogue,--nymphs and
heroes and shepherds and pastoral scenes. I used to fancy that his
knowledge and skill were inexhaustible, and I pestered him so for
entertainment that I certainly proved that there were no limits to his
patience.
When he first came to us he looked haggard and thin and weary; but
before the month was out, he had acquired a comfortable rotundity of
person, and something of the sleek and polished look which befits the
governor of a gentleman's son. And yet he never lost a certain gravity
and reserve of demeanor which was nearly akin to a mild melancholy. With
me, half the time, he was of course intolerably bored, and he must have
had hard work to keep from yawning in my face,--which, as he knew I
knew, would have been an unwarrantable liberty. At table, with my
parents, he seemed to be constantly observing himself and inwardly
regulating his words and gestures. The simple truth, I take it, was that
he had never sat at a gentleman's table, and although he must have known
himself incapable of a real breach of civility,--essentially delicate as
he was in his feelings,--he was too proud to run the risk of violating
etiquette. My poor mother was a great stickler for ceremony, and she
would have had her majordomo to lift the covers, even if she had had
nothing to put into the dishes. I remember a cruel rebuke she bestowed
upon Coquelin, shortly after his arrival. She could never be brought to
forget that he had been picked up, as she said, on the roads. At dinner
one day, in the absence of Mlle. de Bergerac, who was indisposed, he
inadvertently occupied her seat, taking me as a _vis-à-vis_ instead of
a neighbor. Shortly afterwards, coming to offer wine to my mother, he
received for all response a stare so blank, cold, and insolent as to
leave no doubt of her estimate of his presumption. In my mother's simple
philosophy, Mlle. de Bergerac's seat could be decently occupied only
herself, and in default of her presence should remain conspicuously and
sacredly vacant. Dinner at Bergerac was at best, indeed, a cold and
dismal ceremony. I see it now,--the great dining-room, with its high
windows and their faded curtains, and the tiles upon the floor, and the
immense wainscots, and the great white marble chimney-piece, reaching to
the ceiling,--a triumph of delicate carving,--and the panels above the
doors, with their _galant_ mythological paintings. All this had been the
work of my grandfather, during the Regency, who had undertaken to
renovate and beautify the château; but his funds had suddenly given
out, and we could boast but a desultory elegance. Such talk as passed at
table was between my mother and the Baron, and consisted for the most
part of a series of insidious attempts on my mother's part to extort
information which the latter had no desire, or at least no faculty, to
impart. My father was constitutionally taciturn and apathetic, and he
invariably made an end of my mother's interrogation by proclaiming that
he hated gossip. He liked to take his pleasure and have done with it, or
at best, to ruminate his substantial joys within the conservative
recesses of his capacious breast. The Baronne's inquisitive tongue was
like a lambent flame, flickering over the sides of a rock. She had a
passion for the world, and seclusion had only sharpened the edge of her
curiosity. She lived on old memories--shabby, tarnished bits of
intellectual finery--and vagrant rumors, anecdotes, and scandals.
Once in a while, however, her curiosity held high revel; for once a week
we had the Vicomte de Treuil to dine with us. This gentleman was,
although several years my father's junior, his most intimate friend and
the only constant visitor at Bergerac. He brought with him a sort of
intoxicating perfume of the great world, which I myself was not too
young to feel. He had a marvellous fluency of talk; he was polite and
elegant; and he was constantly getting letters from Paris, books,
newspapers, and prints, and copies of the new songs. When he dined at
Bergerac, my mother used to rustle away from table, kissing her hand to
him, and actually light-headed from her deep potations of gossip. His
conversation was a constant popping of corks. My father and the Vicomte,
as I have said, were firm friends,--the firmer for the great diversity
of their characters. M. de Bergerac was dark, grave, and taciturn, with
a deep, sonorous voice. He had in his nature a touch of melancholy, and,
in default of piety, a broad vein of superstition. The foundations of
his soul, moreover, I am satisfied, in spite of the somewhat ponderous
superstructure, were laid in a soil of rich tenderness and pity. Gaston
de Treuil was of a wholly different temper. He was short and slight,
without any color, and with eyes as blue and lustrous as sapphires. He
was so careless and gracious and mirthful, that to an unenlightened
fancy he seemed the model of a joyous, reckless, gallant, impenitent
_veneur._ But it sometimes struck me that, as he revolved an idea in his
mind, it produced a certain flinty ring, which suggested that his nature
was built, as it were, on rock, and that the bottom of his heart was
hard. Young as he was, besides, he had a tired, jaded, exhausted look,
which told of his having played high at the game of life, and, very
possibly, lost. In fact, it was notorious that M. de Treuil had run
through his property, and that his actual business in our neighborhood
was to repair the breach in his fortunes by constant attendance on a
wealthy kinsman, who occupied an adjacent château, and who was dying of
age and his infirmities. But while I thus hint at the existence in his
composition of these few base particles, I should be sorry to represent
him as substantially less fair and clear and lustrous than he appeared
to he. He possessed an irresistible charm, and that of itself is a
virtue. I feel sure, moreover, that my father would never have
reconciled himself to a real scantiness of masculine worth. The Vicomte
enjoyed, I fancy, the generous energy of my father's good-fellowship,
and the Baron's healthy senses were flattered by the exquisite perfume
of the other's infallible _savoir-vivre._ I offer a hundred apologies,
at any rate, to the Vicomte's luminous shade, that I should have
ventured to cast a dingy slur upon his name. History has commemorated
it. He perished on the scaffold, and showed that he knew how to die as
well as to live. He was the last relic of the lily-handed youth of the
_bon temps_; and as he looks at me out of the poignant sadness of the
past, with a reproachful glitter in his cold blue eyes, and a scornful
smile on his fine lips, I feel that, elegant and silent as he is, he has
the last word in our dispute. I shall think of him henceforth as he
appeared one night, or rather one morning, when he came home from a ball
with my father, who had brought him to Bergerac to sleep. I had my bed
in a closet out of my mother's room, where I lay in a most unwholesome
fashion among her old gowns and hoops and cosmetics. My mother slept
little; she passed the night in her dressing-gown, bolstered up in her
bed, reading novels. The two gentlemen came in at four o'clock in the
morning and made their way up to the Baronne's little sitting-room, next
to her chamber. I suppose they were highly exhilarated, for they made a
great noise of talking and laughing, and my father began to knock at the
chamber door. He called out that he had M. de Treuil, and that they were
cold and hungry. The Baronne said that she had a fire and they might
come in. She was glad enough, poor lady, to get news of the ball, and to
catch their impressions before they had been dulled by sleep. So they
came in and sat by the fire, and M. de Treuil looked for some wine and
some little cakes where my mother told him. I was wide awake and heard
it all. I heard my mother protesting and crying out, and the Vicomte
laughing, when he looked into the wrong place; and I am afraid that in
my mother's room there were a great many wrong places. Before long, in
my little stuffy, dark closet, I began to feel hungry too; whereupon I
got out of bed and ventured forth into the room. I remember the whole
picture, as one remembers isolated scenes of childhood: my mother's bed,
with its great curtains half drawn back at the side, and her little
eager face and dark eyes peeping out of the recess; then the two men at
the fire,--my father with his hat on, sitting and looking drowsily into
the flames, and the Vicomte standing before the hearth, talking,
laughing, and gesticulating, with the candlestick in one hand and a
glass of wine in the other,--dropping the wax on one side and the wine
on the other. He was dressed from head to foot in white velvet and white
silk, with embroideries of silver, and an immense _jabot._ He was very
pale, and he looked lighter and slighter and wittier and more elegant
than ever. He had a weak voice, and when he laughed, after one feeble
little spasm, it went off into nothing, and you only knew he was
laughing by his nodding his head and lifting his eyebrows and showing
his handsome teeth. My father was in crimson velvet, with tarnished gold
facings. My mother bade me get back into bed, but my father took me on
his knees and held out my bare feet to the fire. In a little while, from
the influence of the heat, he fell asleep in his chair, and I sat in my
place and watched M. de Treuil as he stood in the firelight drinking his
wine and telling stories to my mother, until at last I too relapsed into
the innocence of slumber. They were very good friends, the Vicomte and
my mother. He admired the turn of her mind. I remember his telling me
several years later, at the time of her death, when I was old enough to
understand him, that she was a very brave, keen little woman, and that
in her musty solitude of Bergerac she said a great many more good things
than the world ever heard of.
During the winter which preceded Coquelin's arrival, M. de Treuil used
to show himself at Bergerac in a friendly manner; but about a month
before this event, his visits became more frequent and assumed a special
import and motive. In a word, my father and his friend between them had
conceived it to be a fine thing that the latter should marry Mlle. de
Bergerac. Neither from his own nor from his friend's point of view was
Gaston de Treuil a marrying man or a desirable _parti._ He was too fond
of pleasure to conciliate a rich wife, and too poor to support a
penniless one. But I fancy that my father was of the opinion that if the
Vicomte came into his kinsman's property, the best way to insure
the preservation of it, and to attach him to his duties and
responsibilities, would be to unite him to an amiable girl, who might
remind him of the beauty of a domestic life and lend him courage to mend
his ways. As far as the Vicomte was concerned, this was assuredly a
benevolent scheme, but it seems to me that it made small account of the
young girl's own happiness. M. de Treuil was supposed, in the matter of
women, to have known everything that can be known, and to be as _blasé_
with regard to their charms as he was proof against their influence.
And, in fact, his manner of dealing with women, and of discussing them,
indicated a profound disenchantment,--no bravado of contempt, no
affectation of cynicism, but a cold, civil, absolute lassitude. A simply
charming woman, therefore, would never have served the purpose of my
father's theory. A very sound and liberal instinct led him to direct his
thoughts to his sister. There were, of course, various auxiliary reasons
for such disposal of Mlle. de Bergerac's hand. She was now a woman
grown, and she had as yet received no decent proposals. She had no
marriage portion of her own, and my father had no means to endow her.
Her beauty, moreover, could hardly be called a dowry. It was without
those vulgar allurements which, for many a poor girl, replace the
glitter of cash. If within a very few years more she had not succeeded
in establishing herself creditably in the world, nothing would be left
for her but to withdraw from it, and to pledge her virgin faith to the
chilly sanctity of a cloister. I was destined in the course of time to
assume the lordship and the slender revenues of Bergerac, and it was not
to be expected that I should be burdened on the very threshold of life
with the maintenance of a dowerless maiden aunt. A marriage with M. de
Treuil would be in all senses a creditable match, and, in the event of
his becoming his kinsman's legatee, a thoroughly comfortable one.
It was some time before the color of my father's intentions, and the
milder hue of the Vicomte's acquiescence, began to show in our common
daylight. It is not the custom, as you know, in our excellent France, to
admit a lover on probation. He is expected to make up his mind on a view
of the young lady's endowments, and to content himself before marriage
with the bare cognition of her face. It is not thought decent (and there
is certainly reason in it) that he should dally with his draught, and
hold it to the light, and let the sun play through it, before carrying
it to his lips. It was only on the ground of my father's warm good-will
to Gaston de Treuil, and the latter's affectionate respect for the
Baron, that the Vicomte was allowed to appear as a lover, before making
his proposals in form. M. de Treuil, in fact, proceeded gradually, and
made his approaches from a great distance. It was not for several weeks,
therefore, that Mlle. de Bergerac became aware of them. And now, as this
dear young girl steps into my story, where, I ask you, shall I find
words to describe the broad loveliness of her person, to hint at the
perfect beauty of her mind, to suggest the sweet mystery of her first
suspicion of being sought, from afar, in marriage? Not in my fancy,
surely; for there I should disinter the flimsy elements and tarnished
properties of a superannuated comic opera. My taste, my son, was formed
once for all fifty years ago. But if I wish to call up Mlle. de
Bergerac, I must turn to my earliest memories, and delve in the
sweet-smelling virgin soil of my heart. For Mlle. de Bergerac is no
misty sylphid nor romantic moonlit nymph. She rises before me now,
glowing with life, with the sound of her voice just dying in the
air,--the more living for the mark of her crimson death-stain.
There was every good reason why her dawning consciousness of M. de
Treuil's attentions--although these were little more than projected as
yet--should have produced a serious tremor in her heart. It was not that
she was aught of a coquette; I honestly believe that there was no latent
coquetry in her nature. At all events, whatever she might have become
after knowing M. de Treuil, she was no coquette to speak of in her
ignorance. Her ignorance of men, in truth, was great. For the Vicomte
himself, she had as yet known him only distantly, formally, as a
gentleman of rank and fashion; and for others of his quality, she had
seen but a small number, and not seen them intimately. These few words
suffice to indicate that my aunt led a life of unbroken monotony. Once a
year she spent six weeks with certain ladies of the Visitation, in whose
convent she had received her education, and of whom she continued to be
very fond. Half a dozen times in the twelvemonth she went to a hall,
under convoy of some haply ungrudging _châtelaine._ Two or three times
a month, she received a visit at Bergerac. The rest of the time she
paced, with the grace of an angel and the patience of a woman, the
dreary corridors and unclipt garden walks of Bergerac. The discovery,
then, that the brilliant Vicomte de Treuil was likely to make a proposal
for her hand was an event of no small importance. With precisely what
feelings she awaited its coming, I am unable to tell; but I have no
hesitation in saying that even at this moment (that is, in less than a
month after my tutor's arrival) her feelings were strongly modified by
her acquaintance with Pierre Coquelin.
The word "acquaintance" perhaps exaggerates Mlle. de Bergerac's relation
to this excellent young man. Twice a day she sat facing him at table,
and half a dozen times a week she met him on the staircase, in the
saloon, or in the park. Coquelin had been accommodated with an apartment
in a small untenanted pavilion, within the enclosure of our domain, and
except at meals, and when his presence was especially requested at the
château, he confined himself to his own precinct. It was there, morning
and evening, that I took my lesson. It was impossible, therefore, that
an intimacy should have arisen between these two young persons, equally
separated as they were by material and conventional barriers.
Nevertheless, as the sequel proved, Coquelin must, by his mere presence,
have begun very soon to exert a subtle action on Mlle. de Bergerac's
thoughts. As for the young girl's influence on Coquelin, it is my belief
that he fell in love with her the very first moment he beheld her,--that
morning when he trudged wearily up our avenue. I need certainly make no
apology for the poor fellow's audacity. You tell me that you fell in
love at first sight with my aunt's portrait; you will readily excuse the
poor youth for having been smitten with the original. It is less logical
perhaps, but it is certainly no less natural, that Mlle. de Bergerac
should have ventured to think of my governor as a decidedly interesting
fellow. She saw so few men that one the more or the less made a very
great difference. Coquelin's importance, moreover, was increased rather
than diminished by the fact that, as I may say, he was a son of the
soil. Marked as he was, in aspect and utterance, with the genuine
plebeian stamp, he opened a way for the girl's fancy into a vague,
unknown world. He stirred her imagination, I conceive, in very much the
same way as such a man as Gaston de Treuil would have stirred--actually
had stirred, of course--the grosser sensibilities of many a little
_bourgeoise._ Mlle. de Bergerac was so thoroughly at peace with the
consequences of her social position, so little inclined to derogate in
act or in thought from the perfect dignity of her birth, that with the
best conscience in the world, she entertained, as they came, the
feelings provoked by Coquelin's manly virtues and graces. She had been
educated in the faith that _noblesse oblige_, and she had seen none but
gentlefolks and peasants. I think that she felt a vague, unavowed
curiosity to see what sort of a figure you might make when you were
under no obligations to nobleness. I think, finally, that unconsciously
and in the interest simply of her unsubstantial dreams, (for in those
long summer days at Bergerac, without finery, without visits, music, or
books, or anything that a well-to-do grocer's daughter enjoys at the
present day, she must, unless she was a far greater simpleton than I
wish you to suppose, have spun a thousand airy, idle visions,) she
contrasted Pierre Coquelin with the Vicomte de Treuil. I protest that I
don't see how Coquelin bore the contrast. I frankly admit that, in her
place, I would have given all my admiration to the Vicomte. At all
events, the chief result of any such comparison must have been to show
how, in spite of real trials and troubles, Coquelin had retained a
certain masculine freshness and elasticity, and how, without any sorrows
but those of his own wanton making, the Vicomte had utterly rubbed off
his primal bloom of manhood. There was that about Gaston de Treuil that
reminded you of an actor by daylight. His little row of foot-lights had
burned itself out. But this is assuredly a more pedantic view of the
case than any that Mlle. de Bergerac was capable of taking. The Vicomte
had but to learn his part and declaim it, and the illusion was complete.
Mlle. de Bergerac may really have been a great simpleton, and my theory
of her feelings--vague and imperfect as it is--may be put together quite
after the fact. But I see you protest; you glance at the picture; you
frown. _C'est bon_; give me your hand. She received the Vicomte's
gallantries, then, with a modest, conscious dignity, and courtesied to
exactly the proper depth when he made her one of his inimitable bows.
One evening--it was, I think, about ten days after Coquelin's
arrival--she was sitting reading to my mother, who was ill in bed. The
Vicomte had been dining with us, and after dinner we had gone into the
drawing-room. At the drawing-room door Coquelin had made his bow to my
father, and carried me off to his own apartment. Mlle. de Bergerac and
the two gentlemen had gone into the drawing-room together. At dusk I had
come back to the château, and, going up to my mother, had found her in
company with her sister-in-law. In a few moments my father came in,
looking stern and black.
"Sister," he cried, "why did you leave us alone in the drawing-room?
Didn't you see I wanted you to stay?"
Mlle. de Bergerac laid down her book and looked at her brother before
answering. "I had to come to my sister," she said: "I couldn't leave her
alone."
My mother, I'm sorry to say, was not always just to my aunt. She used to
lose patience with her sister's want of coquetry, of ambition, of desire
to make much of herself. She divined wherein my aunt had offended.
"You're very devoted to your sister, suddenly," she said. "There are
duties and duties, mademoiselle. I'm very much obliged to you for
reading to me. You can put down the book."
"The Vicomte swore very hard when you went out," my father went on.
Mlle. de Bergerac laid aside her book. "Dear me!" she said, "if he was
going to swear, it's very well I went."
"Are you afraid of the Vicomte?" said my mother. "You're twenty-two
years old. You're not a little girl."
"Is she twenty-two?" cried my father. "I told him she was twenty-one."
"Frankly, brother," said Mlle. de Bergerac, "what does he want? Does he
want to marry me?"
My father stared a moment. "_Pardieu!_" he cried.
"She looks as if she didn't believe it," said my mother. "Pray, did you
ever ask him?"
"No, madam; did you? You are very kind." Mlle. de Bergerac was excited;
her cheeks flushed.
"In the course of time," said my father, gravely, "the Vicomte proposes
to demand your hand."
"What is he waiting for?" asked Mlle. de Bergerac, simply.
"_Fi donc, mademoiselle!_" cried my mother.
"He is waiting for M. de Sorbières to die," said I, who had got this
bit of news from my mother's waiting-woman.
My father stared at me, half angrily; and then,--"He expects to
inherit," he said, boldly. "It's a very fine property."
"He would have done better, it seems to me," rejoined Mlle. de Bergerac,
after a pause, "to wait till he had actually come into possession of
it."
"M. de Sorbières," cried my father, "has given him his word a dozen
times over. Besides, the Vicomte loves you."
Mlle. de Bergerac blushed, with a little smile, and as she did so her
eyes fell on mine. I was standing gazing at her as a child gazes at a
familiar friend who is presented to him in a new light. She put out her
hand and drew me towards her. "The truth comes out of the mouths of
children," she said. "Chevalier, does he love me?"
"Stuff!" cried the Baronne; "one doesn't: speak to children of such
things. A young girl should believe what she's told. I believed my
mother when she told me that your brother loved me. He didn't, but I
believed it, and as far as I know I'm none the worse for it."
For ten days after this I heard nothing more of Mlle. de Bergerac's
marriage, and I suppose that, childlike, I ceased to think of what I had
already heard. One evening, about midsummer, M. de Treuil came over to
supper, and announced that he was about to set out in company with poor
M. de Sorbières for some mineral springs in the South, by the use of
which the latter hoped to prolong his life.
I remember that, while we sat at table, Coquelin was appealed to as an
authority upon some topic broached by the Vicomte, on which he found
himself at variance with my father. It was the first time, I fancy, that
he had been so honored and that his opinions had been deemed worth
hearing. The point under discussion must have related to the history of
the American War, for Coquelin spoke with the firmness and fulness
warranted by personal knowledge. I fancy that he was a little frightened
by the sound of his own voice, but he acquitted himself with perfect
good grace and success. We all sat attentive; my mother even staring a
little, surprised to find in a beggarly pedagogue a perfect beau diseur.
My father, as became so great a gentleman, knew by a certain rough
instinct when a man had something amusing to say. He leaned back, with
his hands in his pockets, listening and paying the poor fellow the
tribute of a half-puzzled frown. The Vicomte, like a man of taste, was
charmed. He told stories himself, he was a good judge.
After supper we went out on the terrace. It was a perfect summer night,
neither too warm nor too cool. There was no moon, but the stars flung
down their languid light, and the earth, with its great dark masses of
vegetation and the gently swaying tree-tops, seemed to answer back in a
thousand vague perfumes. Somewhere, close at hand, out of an enchanted
tree, a nightingale raved and carolled in delirious music. We had the
good taste to listen in silence. My mother sat down on a bench against
the house, and put out her hand and made my father sit beside her. Mlle.
de Bergerac strolled to the edge of the terrace, and leaned against the
balustrade, whither M. de Treuil soon followed her. She stood
motionless, with her head raised, intent upon the music. The Vicomte
seated himself upon the parapet, with his face towards her and his arms
folded. He may perhaps have been talking, under cover of the
nightingale. Coquelin seated himself near the other end of the terrace,
and drew me between his knees. At last the nightingale ceased. Coquelin
got up, and bade good night to the company, and made his way across the
park to his lodge. I went over to my aunt and the Vicomte.
"M. Coquelin is a clever man," said the Vicomte, as he disappeared down
the avenue. "He spoke very well this evening."
"He never spoke so much before," said I. "He's very shy."
"I think," said my aunt, "he's a little proud."
"I don't understand," said the Vicomte, "how a man with any pride can
put up with the place of a tutor. I had rather dig in the fields."
"The Chevalier is much obliged to you," said my aunt, laughing. "In
fact, M. Coquelin has to dig a little, hasn't he, Chevalier?"
"Not at all," said I. "But he keeps some plants in pots."
At this my aunt and the Vicomte began to laugh. "He keeps one precious
plant," cried my aunt, tapping my face with her fan.
At this moment my mother called me away. "He makes them laugh," I heard
her say to my father, as I went to her.
"She had better laugh about it than cry," said my father.
Before long, Mlle. de Bergerac and her companion came back toward the
house.
"M. le Vicomte, brother," said my aunt, "invites me to go down and walk
in the park. May I accept?"
"By all means," said my father. "You may go with the Vicomte as you
would go with me."
"Ah!" said the Vicomte.
"Come then, Chevalier," said my aunt. "In my turn, I invite you."
"My son," said the Baronne, "I forbid you."
"But my brother says," rejoined Mlle. de Bergerac, "that I may go with
M. de Treuil as I would go with himself. He would not object to my
taking my nephew." And she put out her hand.
"One would think," said my mother, "that you were setting out for
Siberia."
"For Siberia!" cried the Vicomte, laughing; "O no!"
I paused, undecided. But my father gave me a push. "After all," he said,
"it's better."
When I overtook my aunt and her lover, the latter, losing no time,
appeared to have come quite to the point.
"Your brother tells me, mademoiselle," he had begun, "that he has spoken
to you."
The young girl was silent.
"You may be indifferent," pursued the Vicomte, "but I can't believe
you're ignorant."
"My brother has spoken to me," said Mlle. de Bergerac at last, with an
apparent effort,--"my brother has spoken to me of his project."
"I'm very glad he seemed to you to have espoused my cause so warmly that
you call it his own. I did my best to convince him that I possess what a
person of your merit is entitled to exact of the man who asks her hand.
In doing so, I almost convinced myself. The point is now to convince
you."
"I listen."
"You admit, then, that your mind is not made up in advance against me."
"_Mon Dieu!_" cried my aunt, with some emphasis, "a poor girl like me
doesn't make up her mind. You frighten me, Vicomte. This is a serious
question. I have the misfortune to have no mother. I can only pray God.
But prayer helps me not to choose, but only to be resigned."
"Pray often, then, mademoiselle. I'm not an arrogant lover, and since I
have known you a little better, I have lost all my vanity. I'm not a
good man nor a wise one. I have no doubt you think me very light and
foolish, but you can't begin to know how light and foolish I am. Marry
me and you'll never know. If you don't marry me, I'm afraid you'll never
marry."
"You're very frank. Vicomte. If you think I'm afraid of never marrying,
you're mistaken. One can be very happy as an old maid. I spend six weeks
every year with the ladies of the Visitation. Several of them are
excellent women, charming women. They read, they educate young girls,
they visit the poor--"
The Vicomte broke into a laugh. "They get up at five o'clock in the
morning; they breakfast on boiled cabbage; they make flannel waistcoats,
and very good sweetmeats! Why do you talk so, mademoiselle? Why do you
say that you would like to lead such a life? One might almost believe it
is coquetry. _Tenez_, I believe it's ignorance,--ignorance of your own
feelings, your own nature, and your own needs." M. de Treuil paused a
moment, and, although I had a very imperfect notion of the meaning of
his words, I remember being struck with the vehement look of his pale
face, which seemed fairly to glow in the darkness. Plainly, he was in
love. "You are not made for solitude," he went on; "you are not made to
be buried in a dingy old château, in the depths of a ridiculous
province. You are made for the world, for the court, for pleasure, to be
loved, admired, and envied. No, you don't know yourself, nor does
Bergerac know you, nor his wife! I, at least, appreciate you. I blow
that you are supremely beautiful--"
"Vicomte," said Mlle. de Bergerac, "you forget--the child."
"Hang the child! Why did you bring him along? You are no child. You can
understand me. You are a woman, full of intelligence and goodness and
beauty. They don't know you here, they think you a little demoiselle in
pinafores. Before Heaven, mademoiselle, there is that about you,--I see
it, I feel it here at your side, in this rustling darkness--there is
that about you that a man would gladly die for."
Mlle. de Bergerac interrupted him with energy. "You talk extravagantly.
I don't understand you; you frighten me."
"I talk as I feel. I frighten you? So much the better. I wish to stir
your heart and get some answer to the passion of my own."
Mlle. de Bergerac was silent a moment, as if collecting her thoughts.
"If I talk with you on this subject, I must do it with my wits about
me," she said at last. "I must know exactly what we each mean."
"It's plain then that I can't hope to inspire you with any degree of
affection."
"One doesn't promise to love, Vicomte; I can only answer for the
present. My heart is so full of good wishes toward you that it costs me
comparatively little to say I don't love you."
"And anything I may say of my own feelings will make no difference to
you?"
"You have said you love me. Let it rest there."
"But you look as if you doubted my word."
"You can't see how I look; Vicomte, I believe you."
"Well then, there is one point gained. Let us pass to the others. I'm
thirty years old. I have a very good name and a very bad reputation. I
honestly believe that, though I've fallen below my birth, I've kept
above my fame. I believe that I have no vices of temper; I'm neither
brutal, nor jealous, nor miserly. As for my fortune, I'm obliged to
admit that it consists chiefly in my expectations. My actual property is
about equal to your brother's and you know how your sister-in-law is
obliged to live. My expectations are thought particularly good. My
great-uncle, M. de Sorbières, possesses, chiefly in landed estates, a
fortune of some three millions of livres. I have no important
competitors, either in blood or devotion. He is eighty-seven years old
and paralytic, and within the past year I have been laying siege to his
favor with such constancy that his surrender, like his extinction, is
only a question of time. I received yesterday a summons to go with him
to the Pyrenees, to drink certain medicinal waters. The least he can do,
on my return, is to make me a handsome allowance, which with my own
revenues will make--_en attendant_ better things--a sufficient income
for a reasonable couple."
There was a pause of some moments, during which we slowly walked along
in the obstructed starlight, the silence broken only by the train of my
aunt's dress brushing against the twigs and pebbles.
"What a pity," she said, at last, "that you are not able to speak of all
this good fortune as in the present rather than in the future."
"There it is! Until I came to know you, I had no thoughts of marriage.
What did I want of wealth? If five years ago I had foreseen this moment,
I should stand here with something better than promises."
"Well, Vicomte," pursued the young girl, with singular composure, "you
do me the honor to think very well of me: I hope you will not be vexed
to find that prudence is one of my virtues. If I marry, I wish to marry
well. It's not only the husband, but the marriage that counts. In
accepting you as you stand, I should make neither a sentimental match
nor a brilliant one."
"Excellent. I love you, prudence and all. Say, then, that I present
myself here three months hence with the titles and tokens of property
amounting to a million and a half of livres, will you consider that I am
a _parti_ sufficiently brilliant to make you forget that you don't love
me?"
"I should never forget that."
"Well, nor I either. It makes a sort of sorrowful harmony! If three
months hence, I repeat, I offer you a fortune instead of this poor empty
hand, will you accept the one for the sake of the other?"
My aunt stopped short in the path. "I hope, Vicomte," she said, with
much apparent simplicity, "that you are going to do nothing indelicate."
"God forbid, mademoiselle! It shall be a clean hand and a clean
fortune."
"If you ask then a promise, a pledge--"
"You'll not give it. I ask then only for a little hope. Give it in what
form you will."
We walked a few steps farther and came out from among the shadows,
beneath the open sky. The voice of M. de Treuil, as he uttered these
words, was low and deep and tender and full of entreaty. Mlle. de
Bergerac cannot but have been deeply moved. I think she was somewhat
awe-struck at having called up such a force of devotion in a nature
deemed cold and inconstant. She put out her hand. "I wish success to any
honorable efforts. In any case you will be happier for your wealth. In
one case it will get you a wife, and in the other it will console you."
"Console me! I shall hate it, despise it, and throw it into the sea!"
Mlle. de Bergerac had no intention, of course, of leaving her companion
under an illusion. "Ah, but understand. Vicomte," she said, "I make no
promise. My brother claims the right to bestow my hand. If he wishes our
marriage now, of course he will wish it three months hence. I have never
gainsaid him."
"From now to three months a great deal may happen."
"To you, perhaps, but not to me."
"Are you going to your friends of the Visitation?"
"No, indeed. I have no wish to spend the summer in a cloister. I prefer
the green fields."
"Well, then _va_ for the green fields! They're the next best thing. I
recommend you to the Chevalier's protection."
We had made half the circuit of the park, and turned into an alley which
stretched away towards the house, and about midway in its course
separated into two paths, one leading to the main avenue, and the other
to the little pavilion inhabited by Coquelin. At the point where the
alley was divided stood an enormous oak of great circumference, with a
circular bench surrounding its trunk. It occupied, I believe, the
central point of the whole domain. As we reached the oak, I looked down
along the footpath towards the pavilion, and saw Coquelin's light
shining in one of the windows. I immediately proposed that we should pay
him a visit. My aunt objected, on the ground that he was doubtless busy
and would not thank us for interrupting him. And then, when I insisted,
she said it was not proper.
"How not proper?"
"It's not proper for me. A lady doesn't visit young men in their own
apartments."
At this the Vicomte cried out. He was partly amused, I think, at my
aunt's attaching any compromising power to poor little Coquelin, and
partly annoyed at her not considering his own company, in view of his
pretensions, a sufficient guaranty.
"I should think," he said, "that with the Chevalier and me you might
venture--"
"As you please, then," said my aunt. And I accordingly led the way to my
governor's abode.
It was a small edifice of a single floor, standing prettily enough among
the trees, and still habitable, although very much in disrepair. It had
been built by that same ancestor to whom Bergerac was indebted, in the
absence of several of the necessities of life, for many of its elegant
superfluities, and had been designed, I suppose, as a scene of
pleasure,--such pleasure as he preferred to celebrate elsewhere than
beneath the roof of his domicile. Whether it had ever been used I know
not; but it certainly had very little of the look of a pleasure-house.
Such furniture as it had once possessed had long since been transferred
to the needy saloons of the château, and it now looked dark and bare
and cold. In front, the shrubbery had been left to grow thick and wild
and almost totally to exclude the light from the windows; but behind,
outside of the two rooms which he occupied, and which had been provided
from the château with the articles necessary for comfort, Coquelin had
obtained my father's permission to effect a great clearance in the
foliage, and he now enjoyed plenty of sunlight and a charming view of
the neighboring country. It was in the larger of these two rooms,
arranged as a sort of study, that we found him.
He seemed surprised and somewhat confused by our visit, but he very soon
recovered himself sufficiently to do the honors of his little
establishment.
"It was an idea of my nephew," said Mlle. de Bergerac. "We were walking
in the park, and he saw your light. Now that we are here, Chevalier,
what would you have us do?"
"M. Coquelin has some very pretty things to show you," said I.
Coquelin turned very red. "Pretty things, Chevalier? Pray, what do you
mean? I have some of your nephew's copy-books," he said, turning to my
aunt.
"Nay, you have some of your own," I cried. "He has books full of
drawings, made by himself."
"Ah, you draw?" said the Vicomte.
"M. le Chevalier does me the honor to think so. My drawings are meant
for no critics but children."
"In the way of criticism," said my aunt, gently, "we too are children."
Her beautiful eyes, as she uttered these words, must have been quite as
gentle as her voice. Coquelin looked at her, thinking very modestly of
his little pictures, but loth to refuse the first request she had ever
made him.
"Show them, at any rate," said the Vicomte, in a somewhat peremptory
tone. In those days, you see, a man occupying Coquelin's place was
expected to hold all his faculties and talents at the disposal of his
patron, and it was thought an unwarrantable piece of assumption that he
should cultivate any of the arts for his own peculiar delectation. In
withholding his drawings, therefore, it may have seemed to the Vicomte
that Coquelin was unfaithful to the service to which he was held,--that,
namely, of instructing, diverting, and edifying the household of
Bergerac. Coquelin went to a little cupboard in the wall, and took out
three small albums and a couple of portfolios. Mlle. de Bergerac sat
down at the table, and Coquelin drew up the lamp and placed his drawings
before her. He turned them over, and gave such explanations as seemed
necessary. I have only my childish impressions of the character of these
sketches, which, in my eyes, of course, seemed prodigiously clever. What
the judgment of my companions was worth I know not, but they appeared
very well pleased. The Vicomte probably knew a good sketch from a poor
one, and he very good-naturedly pronounced my tutor an extremely knowing
fellow. Coquelin had drawn anything and everything,--peasants and dumb
brutes, landscapes and Parisian types and figures, taken indifferently
from high and low life. But the best pieces in the collection were a
series of illustrations and reminiscences of his adventures with the
American army, and of the figures and episodes he had observed in the
Colonies. They were for the most part rudely enough executed, owing to
his want of time and materials, but they were full of _finesse_ and
character. M. de Treuil was very much amused at the rude equipments of
your ancestors. There were sketches of the enemy too, whom Coquelin had
apparently not been afraid to look in the face. While he was turning
over these designs for Mlle. de Bergerac, the Vicomte took up one of his
portfolios, and, after a short inspection, drew from it, with a cry of
surprise, a large portrait in pen and ink.
"_Tiens!_" said I; "it's my aunt!"
Coquelin turned pale. Mlle. de Bergerac looked at him, and turned the
least bit red. As for the Vicomte, he never changed color. There was no
eluding the fact that it was a likeness, and Coquelin had to pay the
penalty of his skill.
"I didn't know," he said, at random, "that it was in that portfolio. Do
you recognize it, mademoiselle?"
"Ah," said the Vicomte, dryly, "M. Coquelin meant to hide it."
"It's too pretty to hide," said my aunt; "and yet it's too pretty to
show. It's flattered."
"Why should I have flattered you, mademoiselle?" asked Coquelin. "You
were never to see it."
"That's what it is, mademoiselle," said the Vicomte, "to have such
dazzling beauty. It penetrates the world. Who knows where you'll find it
reflected next?"
However pretty a compliment this may have been to Mlle. de Bergerac, it
was decidedly a back-handed blow to Coquelin. The young girl perceived
that he felt it.
She rose to her feet. "My beauty," she said, with a slight tremor in her
voice, "would be a small thing without M. Coquelin's talent. We are much
obliged to you. I hope that you'll bring your pictures to the château,
so that we may look at the rest."
"Are you going to leave him this?" asked M. de Treuil, holding up the
portrait.
"If M. Coquelin will give it to me, I shall be very glad to have it."
"One doesn't keep one's own portrait," said the Vicomte. "It ought to
belong to me." In those days, before the invention of our sublime
machinery for the reproduction of the human face, a young fellow was
very glad to have his mistress's likeness in pen and ink.
But Coquelin had no idea of contributing to the Vicomte's gallery.
"Excuse me," he said, gently, but looking the nobleman in the face. "The
picture isn't good enough for Mlle. de Bergerac, but it's too good for
any one else"; and he drew it out of the other's hands, tore it across,
and applied it to the flame of the lamp.
We went back to the château in silence. The drawing-room was empty; but
as we went in, the Vicomte took a lighted candle from a table and raised
it to the young girl's face. "_Parbleu!_" he exclaimed, "the vagabond
had looked at you to good purpose!"
Mlle. de Bergerac gave a half-confused laugh. "At any rate," she said,
"he didn't hold a candle to me as if I were my old smoke-stained
grandame, yonder!" and she blew out the light. "I'll call my brother,"
she said, preparing to retire.
"A moment," said her lover; "I shall not see you for some weeks. I shall
start to-morrow with my uncle. I shall think of you by day, and dream of
you by night. And meanwhile I shall very much doubt whether you think of
me."
Mlle. de Bergerac smiled. "Doubt, doubt. It will help you to pass the
time. With faith alone it would hang very heavy."
"It seems hard," pursued M. de Treuil, "that I should give you so many
pledges, and that you should give me none."
"I give all I ask."
"Then, for Heaven's sake, ask for something!"
"Your kind words are all I want."
"Then give me some kind word yourself."
"What shall I say. Vicomte?"
"Say,--say that you'll wait for me."
They were standing in the centre of the great saloon, their figures
reflected by the light of a couple of candles in the shining inlaid
floor. Mlle. de Bergerac walked away a few steps with a look of
agitation. Then turning about, "Vicomte," she asked, in a deep, full
voice, "do you truly love me?"
"Ah, Gabrielle!" cried the young man.
I take it that no woman can hear her baptismal name uttered for the
first time as that of Mlle. de Bergerac then came from her suitor's lips
without being thrilled with joy and pride.
"Well, M. de Treuil," she said, "I will wait for you."