I remember distinctly the incidents of that summer at Bergerac; or at
least its general character, its tone. It was a hot, dry season; we
lived with doors and windows open. M. Coquelin suffered very much from
the heat, and sometimes, for days together, my lessons were suspended.
We put our books away and rambled out for a long day in the fields. My
tutor was perfectly faithful; he never allowed me to wander beyond call.
I was very fond of fishing, and I used to sit for hours, like a little
old man, with my legs dangling over the bank of our slender river,
patiently awaiting the bite that so seldom came. Near at hand, in the
shade, stretched at his length on the grass, Coquelin read and re-read
one of his half dozen Greek and Latin poets. If we had walked far from
home, we used to go and ask for some dinner at the hut of a neighboring
peasant. For a very small coin we got enough bread and cheese and small
fruit to keep us over till supper. The peasants, stupid and squalid as
they were, always received us civilly enough, though on Coquelin's
account quite as much as on my own. He addressed them with an easy
familiarity, which made them feel, I suppose, that he was, if not quite
one of themselves, at least by birth and sympathies much nearer to them
than to the future Baron de Bergerac. He gave me in the course of these
walks a great deal of good advice; and without perverting my signorial
morals or instilling any notions that were treason to my rank and
position, he kindled in my childish breast a little democratic flame
which has never quite become extinct. He taught me the beauty of
humanity, justice, and tolerance; and whenever he detected me in a
precocious attempt to assert my baronial rights over the wretched little
_manants_ who crossed my path, he gave me morally a very hard drubbing. He
had none of the base complaisance and cynical nonchalance of the
traditional tutor of our old novels and comedies. Later in life I might
have found him too rigorous a moralist; but in those days I liked him
all the better for letting me sometimes feel the curb. It gave me a
highly agreeable sense of importance and a maturity. It was a tribute to
half-divined possibilities of naughtiness. In the afternoon, when I was
tired of fishing, he would lie with his thumb in his book and his eyes
half closed and tell me fairy-tales till the eyes of both of us closed
together. Do the instructors of youth nowadays condescend to the
fairy-tale pure and simple? Coquelin's stories belonged to the old, old
world: no political economy, no physics, no application to anything in
life. Do you remember in Doré's illustrations to Perrault's tales, the
picture of the enchanted castle of the Sleeping Beauty? Back in the
distance, in the bosom of an ancient park and surrounded by thick
baronial woods which blacken all the gloomy horizon, on the farther side
of a great abysmal hollow of tangled forest verdure, rise the long
façade, the moss-grown terraces, the towers, the purple roofs, of a
château of the time of Henry IV. Its massive foundations plunge far
down into the wild chasm of the woodland, and its cold pinnacles of
slate tower upwards, close to the rolling autumn clouds. The afternoon
is closing in and a chill October wind is beginning to set the forest
a-howling. In the foreground, on an elevation beneath a mighty oak,
stand a couple of old woodcutters pointing across into the enchanted
distance and answering the questions of the young prince. They are the
bent and blackened woodcutters of old France, of La Fontaine's Fables
and the _Médecin malgré lui._ What does the castle contain? What
secret is locked in its stately walls? What revel is enacted in its long
saloons? What strange figures stand aloof from its vacant windows? You
ask the question, and the answer is a long revery. I never look at the
picture without thinking of those summer afternoons in the woods and of
Coquelin's long stories. His fairies were the fairies of the _Grand
Siècle_, and his princes and shepherds the godsons of Perrault and
Madame d'Aulnay. They lived in such palaces and they hunted in such
woods.
Mlle. de Bergerac, to all appearance, was not likely to break her
promise to M. de Treuil,--for lack of the opportunity, quite as much as
of the will. Those bright summer days must have seemed very long to her,
and I can't for my life imagine what she did with her time. But she,
too, as she had told the Vicomte, was very fond of the green fields; and
although she never wandered very far from the house, she spent many an
hour in the open air. Neither here nor within doors was she likely to
encounter the happy man of whom the Vicomte might be jealous. Mlle. de
Bergerac had a friend, a single intimate friend, who came sometimes to
pass the day with her, and whose visits she occasionally returned. Marie
de Chalais, the granddaughter of the Marquis de Chalais, who lived some
ten miles away, was in all respects the exact counterpart and foil of my
aunt. She was extremely plain, but with that sprightly, highly seasoned
ugliness which is often so agreeable to men. Short, spare, swarthy,
light, with an immense mouth, a most impertinent little nose, an
imperceptible foot, a charming hand, and a delightful voice, she was, in
spite of her great name and her fine clothes, the very ideal of the old
stage soubrette. Frequently, indeed, in her dress and manner, she used
to provoke a comparison with this incomparable type. A cap, an apron,
and a short petticoat were all sufficient; with these and her bold, dark
eyes she could impersonate the very genius of impertinence and intrigue.
She was a thoroughly light creature, and later in life, after her
marriage, she became famous for her ugliness, her witticisms, and her
adventures; but that she had a good heart is shown by her real
attachment to my aunt. They were forever at cross-purposes, and yet they
were excellent friends. When my aunt wished to walk, Mlle. de Chalais
wished to sit still; when Mlle. de Chalais wished to laugh, my aunt
wished to meditate; when my aunt wished to talk piety, Mlle. de Chalais
wished to talk scandal. Mlle. de Bergerac, however, usually carried the
day and set the tune. There was nothing on earth that Marie de Chalais
so despised as the green fields; and yet you might have seen her a dozen
times that summer wandering over the domain of Bergerac, in a short
muslin dress and a straw hat, with her arm entwined about the waist of
her more stately friend. We used often to meet them, and as we drew near
Mlle. de Chalais would always stop and offer to kiss the Chevalier. By
this pretty trick Coquelin was subjected for a few moments to the
influence of her innocent _agaçeries_; for rather than have no man at
all to prick with the little darts of her coquetry, the poor girl would
have gone off and made eyes at the scare-crow in the wheat-field.
Coquelin was not at all abashed by her harmless advances; for although,
in addressing my aunt, he was apt to lose his voice or his countenance,
he often showed a very pretty wit in answering Mlle. de Chalais.
On one occasion she spent several days at Bergerac, and during her stay
she proffered an urgent entreaty that my aunt should go back with her to
her grandfather's house, where, having no parents, she lived with her
governess. Mlle. de Bergerac declined, on the ground of having no gowns
fit to visit in; whereupon Mlle. de Chalais went to my mother, begged
the gift of an old blue silk dress, and with her own cunning little
hands made it over for my aunt's figure. That evening Mlle. de Bergerac
appeared at supper in this renovated garment,--the first silk gown she
had ever worn. Mlle. de Chalais had also dressed her hair, and decked
her out with a number of trinkets and furbelows; and when the two came
into the room together, they reminded me of the beautiful Duchess in Don
Quixote, followed by a little dark-visaged Spanish waiting-maid. The
next morning Coquelin and I rambled off as usual in search of
adventures, and the day after that they were to leave the château.
Whether we met with any adventures or not I forget; but we found
ourselves at dinner-time at some distance from home, very hungry after a
long tramp. We directed our steps to a little roadside hovel, where we
had already purchased hospitality, and made our way in unannounced. We
were somewhat surprised at the scene that met our eyes.
On a wretched bed at the farther end of the hut lay the master of the
household, a young peasant whom we had seen a fortnight before in full
health and vigor. At the head of the bed stood his wife, moaning,
crying, and wringing her hands. Hanging about her, clinging to her
skirts, and adding their piping cries to her own lamentations, were four
little children, unwashed, unfed, and half clad. At the foot, facing the
dying man, knelt his old mother--a horrible hag, so bent and brown and
wrinkled with labor and age that there was nothing womanly left of her
but her coarse, rude dress and cap, nothing of maternity but her sobs.
Beside the pillow stood the priest, who had apparently just discharged
the last offices of the Church. On the other side, on her knees, with
the poor fellow's hand in her own, knelt Mlle. de Bergerac, like a
consoling angel. On a stool near the door, looking on from a distance,
sat Mlle. de Chalais, holding a little bleating kid in her arms. When
she saw us, she started up. "Ah, M. Coquelin!" she cried, "do persuade
Mlle. de Bergerac to leave this horrible place."
I saw Mlle. de Bergerac look at the curé and shake her head, as if to
say that it was all over. She rose from her knees and went round to the
wife, telling the same tale with her face. The poor, squalid _paysanne_
gave a sort of savage, stupid cry, and threw herself and her rags on the
young girl's neck. Mlle. de Bergerac caressed her, and whispered heaven
knows what divinely simple words of comfort. Then, for the first time,
she saw Coquelin and me, and beckoned us to approach.
"Chevalier," she said, still holding the woman on her breast, "have you
got any money?"
At these words the woman raised her head. I signified that I was
penniless.
My aunt frowned impatiently. "M. Coquelin, have you?"
Coquelin drew forth a single small piece, all that he possessed; for it
was the end of his month. Mlle. de Bergerac took it, and pursued her
inquiry.
"Curé, have you any money?"
"Not a sou," said the curé, smiling sweetly.
"Bah!" said Mlle. de Bergerac, with a sort of tragic petulance. "What
can I do with twelve sous?"
"Give it all the same," said the woman, doggedly, putting out her hand.
"They want money," said Mlle de Bergerac, lowering her voice to
Coquelin. "They have had this great sorrow, but a _louis d'or_ would
dull the wound. But we're all penniless. O for the sight of a little
gold!"
"I have a _louis_ at home," said I; and I felt Coquelin lay his hand on
my head.
"What was the matter with the husband?" he asked.
"_Mon Dieu!_" said my aunt, glancing round at the bed. "I don't know."
Coquelin looked at her, half amazed, half worshipping.
"Who are they, these people? What are they?" she asked.
"Mademoiselle," said Coquelin, fervently, "you're an angel!"
"I wish I were," said Mlle. de Bergerac, simply; and she turned to the
old mother.
We walked home together,--the curé with Mlle. de Chalais and me, and
Mlle. de Bergerac in front with Coquelin. Asking how the two young girls
had found their way to the deathbed we had just left, I learned from
Mlle. de Chalais that they had set out for a stroll together, and,
striking into a footpath across the fields, had gone farther than they
supposed, and lost their way. While they were trying to recover it, they
came upon the wretched hut where we had found them, and were struck by
the sight of two children, standing crying at the door. Mlle. de
Bergerac had stopped and questioned them to ascertain the cause of their
sorrow, which with some difficulty she found to be that their father was
dying of a fever. Whereupon, in spite of her companion's lively
opposition, she had entered the miserable abode, and taken her place at
the wretched couch, in the position in which we had discovered her. All
this, doubtless, implied no extraordinary merit on Mlle. de Bergerac's
part; but it placed her in a gracious, pleasing light.
The next morning the young girls went off in the great coach of M. de
Chalais, which had been sent for them overnight, my father riding along
as an escort. My aunt was absent a week, and I think I may say we keenly
missed her. When I say we, I mean Coquelin and I, and when I say
Coquelin and I, I mean Coquelin in particular; for it had come to this,
that my tutor was roundly in love with my aunt. I didn't know it then,
of course; but looking back, I see that he must already have been
stirred to his soul's depths. Young as I was, moreover, I believe that I
even then suspected his passion, and, loving him as I did, watched it
with a vague, childish awe and sympathy. My aunt was to me, of course, a
very old story, and I am sure she neither charmed nor dazzled my boyish
fancy. I was quite too young to apprehend the meaning or the
consequences of Coquelin's feelings; but I knew that he had a secret,
and I wished him joy of it. He kept so jealous a guard on it that I
would have defied my elders to discover the least reason for accusing
him; but with a simple child of ten, thinking himself alone and
uninterpreted, he showed himself plainly a lover. He was absent,
restless, preoccupied; now steeped in languid revery, now pacing up and
down with the exaltation of something akin to hope. Hope itself he could
never have felt; for it must have seemed to him that his passion was so
audacious as almost to be criminal. Mlle. de Bergerac's absence showed
him, I imagine, that to know her had been the event of his life; to see
her across the table, to hear her voice, her tread, to pass her, to meet
her eye, a deep, consoling, healing joy. It revealed to him the force
with which she had grasped his heart, and I think he was half frightened
at the energy of his passion.
One evening, while Mlle. de Bergerac was still away, I sat in his
window, committing my lesson for the morrow by the waning light. He was
walking up and down among the shadows. "Chevalier," said he, suddenly,
"what should you do if I were to leave you?"
My poor little heart stood still. "Leave me?" I cried, aghast; "why
should you leave me?"
"Why, you know I didn't come to stay forever."
"But you came to stay till I'm a man grown. Don't you like your place?"
"Perfectly."
"Don't you like my father?"
"Your father is excellent."
"And my mother?"
"Your mother is perfect."
"And me, Coquelin?"
"You, Chevalier, are a little goose."
And then, from a sort of unreasoned instinct that Mlle. de Bergerac was
somehow connected with his idea of going away, "And my aunt?" I added.
"How, your aunt?"
"Don't you like her?"
Coquelin had stopped in his walk, and stood near me and above me. He
looked at me some moments without answering, and then sat down beside me
in the window-seat, and laid his hand on my head.
"Chevalier," he said, "I will tell you something."
"Well?" said I, after I had waited some time.
"One of these days you will be a man grown, and I shall have left you
long before that. You'll learn a great many things that you don't know
now. You'll learn what a strange, vast world it is, and what strange
creatures men are--and women; how strong, how weak, how happy, how
unhappy. You'll learn how many feelings and passions they have, and what
a power of joy and of suffering. You'll be Baron de Bergerac and master
of the château and of this little house. You'll sometimes be very proud
of your title, and you'll sometimes feel very sad that it's so little
more than a bare title. But neither your pride nor your grief will come
to anything beside this, that one day, in the prime of your youth and
strength and good looks, you'll see a woman whom you will love more than
all these things,--more than your name, your lands, your youth, and
strength, and beauty. It happens to all men, especially the good ones,
and you'll be a good one. But the woman you love will be far out of your
reach. She'll be a princess, perhaps she'll be the Queen. How can a poor
little Baron de Bergerac expect her to look at him? You will give up
your life for a touch of her hand; but what will she care for your life
or your death? You'll curse your love, and yet you'll bless it, and
perhaps--not having your living to get--you'll come up here and shut
yourself up with your dreams and regrets. You'll come perhaps into this
pavilion, and sit here alone in the twilight. And then, my child, you'll
remember this evening; that I foretold it all and gave you my blessing
in advance and--kissed you." He bent over, and I felt his burning lips
on my forehead.
I understood hardly a word of what he said; but whether it was that I
was terrified by his picture of the possible insignificance of a Baron
de Bergerac, or that I was vaguely overawed by his deep, solemn tones, I
know not; but my eyes very quietly began to emit a flood of tears. The
effect of my grief was to induce him to assure me that he had no present
intention of leaving me. It was not, of course, till later in life,
that, thinking over the situation, I understood his impulse to arrest
his hopeless passion for Mlle. de Bergerac by immediate departure. He
was not brave in time.
At the end of a week she returned one evening as we were at supper. She
came in with M. de Chalais, an amiable old man, who had been so kind as
to accompany her. She greeted us severally, and nodded to Coquelin. She
talked, I remember, with great volubility, relating what she had seen
and done in her absence, and laughing with extraordinary freedom. As we
left the table, she took my hand, and I put out the other and took
Coquelin's.
"Has the Chevalier been a good boy?" she asked.
"Perfect," said Coquelin; "but he has wanted his aunt sadly."
"Not at all," said I, resenting the imputation as derogatory to my
independence.
"You have had a pleasant week, mademoiselle?" said Coquelin.
"A charming week. And you?"
"M. Coquelin has been very unhappy," said I. "He thought of going away."
"Ah?" said my aunt.
Coquelin was silent.
"You think of going away?"
"I merely spoke of it, mademoiselle. I must go away some time, you know.
The Chevalier looks upon me as something eternal."
"What's eternal?" asked the Chevalier.
"There is nothing eternal, my child," said Mlle. de Bergerac. "Nothing
lasts more than a moment."
"O," said Coquelin, "I don't agree with you!"
"You don't believe that in this world everything is vain and fleeting
and transitory?"
"By no means; I believe in the permanence of many things."
"Of what, for instance?"
"Well, of sentiments and passions."
"Very likely. But not of the hearts that hold them. 'Lovers die, but
love survives.' I heard a gentleman say that at Chalais."
"It's better, at least, than if he had put it the other way. But lovers
last too. They survive; they outlive the things that would fain destroy
them,--indifference, denial, and despair."
"But meanwhile the loved object disappears. When it isn't one, it's the
other."
"O, I admit that it's a shifting world. But I have a philosophy for
that."
"I'm curious to know your philosophy."
"It's a very old one. It's simply to make the most of life while it
lasts. I'm very fond of life," said Coquelin, laughing.
"I should say that as yet, from what I know of your history, you have
had no great reason to be."
"Nay, it's like a cruel mistress," said Coquelin. "When once you love
her, she's absolute. Her hard usage doesn't affect you. And certainly I
have nothing to complain of now."
"You're happy here then?"
"Profoundly, mademoiselle, in spite of the Chevalier."
"I should suppose that with your tastes you would prefer something more
active, more ardent."
"_Mon Dieu_, my tastes are very simple. And then--happiness, _cela ne se
raisonne pas._ You don't find it when you go in quest of it. It's like
fortune; it comes to you in your sleep."
"I imagine," said Mlle. de Bergerac, "that I was never happy."
"That's a sad story," said Coquelin.
The young girl began to laugh. "And never unhappy."
"Dear me, that's still worse. Never fear, it will come."
"What will come?"
"That which is both bliss and misery at once."
Mlle. de Bergerac hesitated a moment. "And what is this strange thing?"
she asked.
On his side Coquelin was silent. "When it comes to you," he said, at
last, "you'll tell me what you call it."
About a week after this, at breakfast, in pursuance of an urgent request
of mine, Coquelin proposed to my father to allow him to take me to visit
the ruins of an ancient feudal castle some four leagues distant, which
he had observed and explored while he trudged across the country on his
way to Bergerac, and which, indeed, although the taste for ruins was at
that time by no means so general as since the Revolution (when one may
say it was in a measure created), enjoyed a certain notoriety throughout
the province. My father good-naturedly consented; and as the distance
was too great to be achieved on foot, he placed his two old coach-horses
at our service. You know that although I affected, in boyish sort, to
have been indifferent to my aunt's absence, I was really very fond of
her, and it occurred to me that our excursion would be more solemn and
splendid for her taking part in it. So I appealed to my father and asked
if Mlle. de Bergerac might be allowed to go with us. What the Baron
would have decided had he been left to himself I know not; but happily
for our cause my mother cried out that, to her mind, it was highly
improper that her sister-in-law should travel twenty miles alone with
two young men.
"One of your young men is a child," said my father, "and her nephew into
the bargain; and the other,"--and he laughed, coarsely but not
ill-humoredly,--"the other is--Coquelin!"
"Coquelin is not a child nor is mademoiselle either," said my mother.
"All the more reason for their going, Gabrielle, will you go?" My
father, I fear, was not remarkable in general for his tenderness or his
_prévenance_ for the poor girl whom fortune had given him to protect;
but from time to time he would wake up to a downright sense of kinship
and duty, kindled by the pardonable aggressions of my mother, between
whom and her sister-in-law there existed a singular antagonism of
temper.
Mlle. de Bergerac looked at my father intently and with a little blush.
"Yes, brother. I'll go. The Chevalier can take me _en croupe._"
So we started, Coquelin on one horse, and I on the other, with my aunt
mounted behind me. Our sport for the first part of the journey consisted
chiefly in my urging my beast into a somewhat ponderous gallop, so as to
terrify my aunt, who was not very sure of her seat, and who, at moments,
between pleading and laughing, had hard work to preserve her balance. At
these times Coquelin would ride close alongside of us, at the same
cumbersome pace, declaring himself ready to catch the young girl if she
fell. In this way we jolted along, in a cloud of dust, with shouts and
laughter.
"Madame the Baronne was wrong," said Coquelin, "in denying that we are
children."
"O, this is nothing yet," cried my aunt.
The castle of Fossy lifted its dark and crumbling towers with a decided
air of feudal arrogance from the summit of a gentle eminence in the
recess of a shallow gorge among the hills. Exactly when it had
flourished and when it had decayed I knew not, but in the year of grace
of our pilgrimage it was a truly venerable, almost a formidable, ruin.
Two great towers were standing,--one of them diminished by half its
upper elevation, and the other sadly scathed and shattered, but still
exposing its hoary head to the weather, and offering the sullen
hospitality of its empty skull to a colony of swallows. I shall never
forget that day at Fossy; it was one of those long raptures of childhood
which seem to imprint upon the mind an ineffaceable stain of light. The
novelty and mystery of the dilapidated fortress,--its antiquity, its
intricacy, its sounding vaults and corridors, its inaccessible heights
and impenetrable depths, the broad sunny glare of its grass-grown courts
and yards, the twilight of its passages and midnight of its dungeons,
and along with all this my freedom to rove and scramble, my perpetual
curiosity, my lusty absorption of the sun-warmed air, and the contagion
of my companions' careless and sensuous mirth,--all these things
combined to make our excursion one of the memorable events of my youth.
My two companions accepted the situation and drank in the beauty of the
day and the richness of the spot with all my own reckless freedom.
Coquelin was half mad with the joy of spending a whole unbroken summer's
day with the woman whom he secretly loved. He was all motion and humor
and resonant laughter; and yet intermingled with his random gayety there
lurked a solemn sweetness and reticence, a feverish concentration of
thought, which to a woman with a woman's senses must have fairly
betrayed his passion. Mlle. de Bergerac, without quite putting aside her
natural dignity and gravity of mien, lent herself with a charming
girlish energy to the undisciplined spirit of the hour.
Our first thoughts, after Coquelin had turned the horses to pasture in
one of the grassy courts of the castle, were naturally bestowed upon our
little basket of provisions; and our first act was to sit down on a heap
of fallen masonry and divide its contents. After that we wandered. We
climbed the still practicable staircases, and wedged ourselves into the
turrets and strolled through the chambers and halls; we started from
their long repose every echo and bat and owl within the innumerable
walls.
Finally, after we had rambled a couple of hours, Mlle. de Bergerac
betrayed signs of fatigue. Coquelin went with her in search of a place
of rest, and I was left to my own devices. For an hour I found plenty of
diversion, at the end of which I returned to my friends. I had some
difficulty in finding them. They had mounted by an imperfect and
somewhat perilous ascent to one of the upper platforms of the castle.
Mlle. de Bergerac was sitting in a listless posture on a block of stone,
against the wall, in the shadow of the still surviving tower; opposite,
in the light, half leaning, half sitting on the parapet of the terrace,
was her companion.
"For the last half-hour, mademoiselle," said Coquelin, as I came up,
"you've not spoken a word."
"All the morning," said Mlle. de Bergerac, "I've been scrambling and
chattering and laughing. Now, by reaction, I'm _triste._"
"I protest, so am I," said Coquelin. "The truth is, this old feudal
fortress is a decidedly melancholy spot. It's haunted with the ghost of
the past. It smells of tragedies, sorrows, and cruelties." He uttered
these words with singular emphasis. "It's a horrible place," he pursued,
with a shudder.
Mlle. de Bergerac began to laugh. "It's odd that we should only just now
have discovered it!"
"No, it's like the history of that abominable past of which it's a
relic. At the first glance we see nothing but the great proportions, the
show, and the splendor; but when we come to explore, we detect a vast
underground world of iniquity and suffering. Only half this castle is
above the soil; the rest is dungeons and vaults and _oubliettes._"
"Nevertheless," said the young girl, "I should have liked to live in
those old days. Shouldn't you?"
"Verily, no, mademoiselle!" And then after a pause, with a certain
irrepressible bitterness: "Life is hard enough now."
Mlle. de Bergerac stared but said nothing.
"In those good old days," Coquelin resumed, "I should have been a
brutal, senseless peasant, yoked down like an ox, with my forehead in
the soil. Or else I should have been a trembling, groaning, fasting
monk, moaning my soul away in the ecstasies of faith."
Mlle. de Bergerac rose and came to the edge of the platform. "Was no
other career open in those days?"
"To such a one as me,--no. As I say, mademoiselle, life is hard now, but
it was a mere dead weight then. I know it was. I feel in my bones and
pulses that awful burden of despair under which my wretched ancestors
struggled. _Tenez_, I'm the great man of the race. My father came next;
he was one of four brothers, who all thought it a prodigious rise in the
world when he became a village tailor. If we had lived five hundred
years ago, in the shadow of these great towers, we should never have
risen at all. We should have stuck with our feet in the clay. As I'm not
a fighting man, I suppose I should have gone into the Church. If I
hadn't died from an overdose of inanition, very likely I might have
lived to be a cardinal."
Mlle. de Bergerac leaned against the parapet, and with a meditative
droop of the head looked down the little glen toward the plain and the
highway. "For myself," she said, "I can imagine very charming things of
life in this castle of Fossy."
"For yourself, very likely."
"Fancy the great moat below filled with water and sheeted with lilies,
and the drawbridge lowered, and a company of knights riding into the
gates. Within, in one of those vaulted, quaintly timbered rooms, the
châtelaine stands ready to receive them, with her women, her chaplain,
her physician, and her little page. They come clanking up the staircase,
with ringing swords, sweeping the ground with their plumes. They are all
brave and splendid and fierce, but one of them far more than the rest.
They each bend a knee to the lady--"
"But he bends two," cried Coquelin. "They wander apart into one of those
deep embrasures and spin the threads of perfect love. Ah, I could fancy
a sweet life, in those days, mademoiselle, if I could only fancy myself
a knight!"
"And you can't," said the young girl, gravely, looking at him.
"It's an idle game; it's not worth trying."
"Apparently then, you're a cynic; you have an equally small opinion of
the past and the present."
"No; you do me injustice."
"But you say that life is hard."
"I speak not for myself, but for others; for my brothers and sisters and
kinsmen in all degrees; for the great mass of petits gens of my own
class."
"Dear me, M. Coquelin, while you're about it, you can speak for others
still; for poor portionless girls, for instance."
"Are they very much to be pitied?"
Mlle. de Bergerac was silent. "After all," she resumed, "they oughtn't
to complain."
"Not when they have a great name and beauty," said Coquelin.
"O heaven!" said the young girl, impatiently, and turned away. Coquelin
stood watching her, his brow contracted, his lips parted. Presently, she
came back. "Perhaps you think," she said, "that I care for my name,--my
great name, as you call it."
"Assuredly, I do."
She stood looking at him, blushing a little and frowning. As he said
these words, she gave an impatient toss of the head and turned away
again. In her hand she carried an ornamented fan, an antiquated and
sadly dilapidated instrument. She suddenly raised it above her head,
swung it a moment, and threw it far across the parapet. "There goes the
name of Bergerac!" she said; and sweeping round, made the young man a
very low courtesy.
There was in the whole action a certain passionate freedom which set
poor Coquelin's heart a-throbbing. "To have a good name, mademoiselle,"
he said, "and to be indifferent to it, is the sign of a noble mind." (In
parenthesis, I may say that I think he was quite wrong.)
"It's quite as noble, monsieur," returned my aunt, "to have a small name
and not to blush for it."
With these words I fancy they felt as if they had said enough; the
conversation was growing rather too pointed.
"I think," said my aunt, "that we had better prepare to go." And she
cast a farewell glance at the broad expanse of country which lay
stretched out beneath us, striped with the long afternoon shadows.
Coquelin followed the direction of her eyes. "I wish very much," he
said, "that before we go we might be able to make our way up into the
summit of the great tower. It would be worth the attempt. The view from
here, charming as it is, must be only a fragment of what you see from
that topmost platform."
"It's not likely," said my aunt, "that the staircase is still in a state
to be used."
"Possibly not; but we can see."
"Nay," insisted my aunt, "I'm afraid to trust the Chevalier. There are
great breaches in the sides of the ascent, which are so many open doors
to destruction."
I strongly opposed this view of the case; but Coquelin, after scanning
the elevation of the tower and such of the fissures as were visible from
our standpoint, declared that my aunt was right and that it was my duty
to comply. "And you, too, mademoiselle," he said, "had better not try
it, unless you pride yourself on your strong head."
"No, indeed, I have a particularly weak one. And you?"
"I confess I'm very curious to see the view. I always want to read to
the end of a book, to walk to the turn of a road, and to climb to the
top of a building."
"Good," said Mlle. de Bergerac. "We'll wait for you."
Although in a straight line from the spot which we occupied, the
distance through the air to the rugged sides of the great cylinder of
masonry which frowned above us was not more than thirty yards, Coquelin
was obliged, in order to strike at the nearest accessible point the
winding staircase which clung to its massive ribs, to retrace his steps
through the interior of the castle and make a _détour_ of some five
minutes' duration. In ten minutes more he showed himself at an aperture
in the wall, facing our terrace.
"How do you prosper?" cried my aunt, raising her voice.
"I've mounted eighty steps," he shouted; "I've a hundred more."
Presently he appeared again at another opening. "The steps have
stopped," he cried.
"You've only to stop too," rejoined Mlle. de Bergerac. Again he was lost
to sight and we supposed he was returning. A quarter of an hour elapsed,
and we began to wonder at his not having overtaken us, when we heard a
loud call high above our heads. There he stood, on the summit of the
edifice, waving his hat. At this point he was so far above us that it
was difficult to communicate by sounds, in spite of our curiosity to
know how, in the absence of a staircase, he had effected the rest of the
ascent. He began to represent, by gestures of pretended rapture, the
immensity and beauty of the prospect. Finally Mlle. de Bergerac beckoned
to him to descend, and pointed to the declining sun, informing him at
the same time that we would go down and meet him in the lower part of
the castle. We left the terrace accordingly, and, making the best of our
way through the intricate passages of the edifice, at last, not without
a feeling of relief, found ourselves on the level earth. We waited quite
half an hour without seeing anything of our companion. My aunt, I could
see, had become anxious, although she endeavored to appear at her ease.
As the time elapsed, however, it became so evident that Coquelin had
encountered some serious obstacle to his descent, that Mlle. de Bergerac
proposed we should, in so far as was possible, betake ourselves to his
assistance. The point was to approach him within speaking distance.
We entered the body of the castle again, climbed to one of the upper
levels, and reached a spot where an extensive destruction of the
external wall partially exposed the great tower. As we approached this
crumbling breach, Mlle. de Bergerac drew back from its brink with a loud
cry of horror. It was not long before I discerned the cause of her
movement. The side of the tower visible from where we stood presented a
vast yawning fissure, which explained the interruption of the staircase,
the latter having fallen for want of support. The central column, to
which the steps had been fastened, seemed, nevertheless, still to be
erect, and to have formed, with the agglomeration of fallen fragments
and various occasional projections of masonry, the means by which
Coquelin, with extraordinary courage and skill, had reached the topmost
platform. The ascent, then, had been possible; the descent, curiously
enough, he seemed to have found another matter; and after striving in
vain to retrace his footsteps, had been obliged to commit himself to the
dangerous experiment of passing from the tower to the external surface
of the main fortress. He had accomplished half his journey and now stood
directly over against us in a posture which caused my young limbs to
stiffen with dismay. The point to which he had directed himself was
apparently the breach at which we stood; meanwhile he had paused,
clinging in mid-air to heaven knows what narrow ledge or flimsy iron
clump in the stone-work, and straining his nerves to an agonized tension
in the effort not to fall, while his eyes vaguely wandered in quest of
another footing. The wall of the castle was so immensely thick, that
wherever he could embrace its entire section, progress was comparatively
easy; the more especially as, above our heads, this same wall had been
demolished in such a way as to maintain a rapid upward inclination to
the point where it communicated with the tower.
I stood staring at Coquelin with my heart in my throat, forgetting (or
rather too young to reflect) that the sudden shock of seeing me where I
was might prove fatal to his equipoise. He perceived me, however, and
tried to smile. "Don't be afraid," he cried, "I'll be with you in a
moment." My aunt, who had fallen back, returned to the aperture, and
gazed at him with pale cheeks and clasped hands. He made a long step
forward, successfully, and, as he recovered himself, caught sight of her
face and looked at her with fearful intentness. Then seeing, I suppose,
that she was sickened by his insecurity, he disengaged one hand and
motioned her back. She retreated, paced in a single moment the length of
the enclosure in which we stood, returned and stopped just short of the
point at which she would have seen him again. She buried her face in her
hands, like one muttering a rapid prayer, and then advanced once more
within range of her friend's vision. As she looked at him, clinging in
mid-air and planting step after step on the jagged and treacherous edge
of the immense perpendicular chasm, she repressed another loud cry only
by thrusting her handkerchief into her mouth. He caught her eyes again,
gazed into them with piercing keenness, as if to drink in coolness and
confidence, and then, as she closed them again in horror, motioned me
with his head to lead her away. She returned to the farther end of the
apartment and leaned her head against the wall. I remained staring at
poor Coquelin, fascinated by the spectacle of his mingled danger and
courage. Inch by inch, yard by yard, I saw him lessen the interval which
threatened his life. It was a horrible, beautiful sight. Some five
minutes elapsed; they seemed like fifty. The last few yards he
accomplished with a rush; he reached the window which was the goal of
his efforts, swung himself in and let himself down by a prodigious leap
to the level on which we stood. Here he stopped, pale, lacerated, and
drenched with perspiration. He put out his hand to Mlle. de Bergerac,
who, at the sound of his steps, had turned herself about. On seeing him
she made a few steps forward and burst into tears. I took his extended
hand. He bent over me and kissed me, and then giving me a push, "Go and
kiss your poor aunt," he said. Mlle. de Bergerac clasped me to her
breast with a most convulsive pressure. From that moment till we reached
home, there was very little said. Both my companions had matter for
silent reflection,--Mlle. de Bergerac in the deep significance of that
offered hand, and Coquelin in the rich avowal of her tears.