FIRST LOVE.
M. Boniface's room remained vacant for three or four months, when one
day Bathilde, who was accustomed to see the window closed, on raising
her eyes found that it was open, and at the window she saw a strange
face: it was that of D'Harmental. Few such faces as that of the
chevalier were seen in the Rue du Temps-Perdu. Bathilde, admirably
situated, behind her curtain, for seeing without being seen, was
attracted involuntarily. There was in our hero's features a distinction
and an elegance which could not escape Bathilde's eyes. The chevalier's
dress, simple as it was, betrayed the elegance of the wearer: then
Bathilde had heard him give some orders, and they had been given with
that inflection of voice which indicates in him who possesses it the
habit of command.
The young girl had discovered at the first glance that this man was very
superior in all respects to him whom he succeeded in the possession of
this little room, and with that instinct so natural to persons of good
birth, she at once recognized him as being of high family. The same day
the chevalier had tried his harpsichord. At the first sound of the
instrument Bathilde had raised her head. The chevalier, though he did
not know that he had a listener, or perhaps because he did not know it,
went on with preludes and fantasies, which showed an amateur of no mean
talents. At these sounds, which seemed to wake all the musical chords of
her own organization, Bathilde had risen and approached the window that
she might not lose a note, for such an amusement was unheard of in the
Rue du Temps-Perdu. Then it was that D'Harmental had seen against the
window the charming little fingers of his neighbor, and had driven them
away by turning round so quickly that Bathilde could not doubt she had
been seen.
The next day Bathilde thought it was a long time since she had played,
and sat down to her instrument. She began nervously, she knew not why;
but as she was an excellent musician, her fear soon passed away, and it
was then that she executed so brilliantly that piece from Armida, which
had been heard with so much astonishment by the chevalier and the Abbe
Brigaud.
We have said how the following morning the chevalier had seen Buvat, and
become acquainted with Bathilde's name. The appearance of the young girl
had made the deeper impression on the chevalier from its being so
unexpected in such a place; and he was still under the influence of the
charm when Roquefinette entered, and gave a new direction to his
thoughts, which, however, soon returned to Bathilde. The next day,
Bathilde, who, profiting by the first ray of the spring sun, was early
at her window, noticed in her turn that the eyes of the chevalier were
ardently fixed upon her. She had noticed his face, young and handsome,
but to which the thought of the responsibility he had taken gave a
certain air of sadness; but sadness and youth go so badly together, that
this anomaly had struck her--this handsome young man had something to
annoy him--perhaps he was unhappy. What could it be? Thus, from the
second time she had seen him, Bathilde had very naturally meditated
about the chevalier. This had not prevented Bathilde from shutting her
window, but, from behind her window, she still saw the outline of the
chevalier's sad face. She felt that D'Harmental was sad, and when she
sat down to her harpsichord, was it not from a secret feeling that music
is the consoler of troubled hearts?
That evening it was D'Harmental who played, and Bathilde listened with
all her soul to the melodious voice which spoke of love in the dead of
night. Unluckily for the chevalier, who, seeing the shadow of the young
girl behind the drapery, began to think that he was making a favorable
impression on the other side of the street, he had been interrupted in
his concert by the lodger on the third floor; but the most important
thing was accomplished--there was already a point of sympathy between
the two young people, and they already spoke that language of the heart,
the most dangerous of all.
Moreover, Bathilde, who had dreamed all night about music, and a little
about the musician, felt that something strange and unknown to her was
going on, and, attracted as she was toward the window, she kept it
scrupulously closed; from this resulted the movement of impatience,
under the influence of which the chevalier had gone to breakfast with
Madame Denis.
There he had learned one important piece of news, which was, that
Bathilde was neither the daughter, the wife, nor the niece of Buvat;
thus he went upstairs joyfully, and, finding the window open, he had
put himself--in spite of the friendly advice of Boniface--in
communication with Mirza, by means of bribing her with sugar. The
unexpected return of Bathilde had interrupted this amusement; the
chevalier, in his egotistical delicacy, had shut his window; but, before
the window had been shut, a salute had been exchanged between the two
young people. This was more than Bathilde had ever accorded to any man,
not that she had not from time to time exchanged salutes with some
acquaintance of Buvat's, but this was the first time she had blushed as
she did so.
The next day Bathilde had seen the chevalier at his window, and, without
being able to understand the action, had seen him nail a crimson ribbon
to the outer wall; but what she had particularly remarked was the
extraordinary animation visible on the face of the young man. Half an
hour afterward she had seen with the chevalier a man perfectly unknown
to her, but whose appearance was not re-assuring; this was Captain
Roquefinette. Bathilde had also remarked, with a vague uneasiness, that,
as soon as the man with the long sword had entered, the chevalier had
fastened the door.
The chevalier, as is easy to understand, had a long conference with the
captain; for they had to arrange all the preparations for the evening's
expedition. The chevalier's window remained thus so long closed that
Bathilde, thinking that he had gone out, had thought she might as well
open hers.
Hardly was it open, however, when her neighbor's, which had seemed only
to wait the moment to put itself in communication with her, opened in
turn. Luckily for Bathilde, who would have been much embarrassed by this
circumstance, she was in that part of the room where the chevalier could
not see her. She determined, therefore, to remain where she was, and sat
down near the second half of the window, which was still shut.
Mirza, however, who had not the same scruples as her mistress, hardly
saw the chevalier before she ran to the window, placed her front paws on
the sill, and began dancing on her hind ones. These attentions were
rewarded, as she expected, by a first, then a second, then a third, lump
of sugar; but this third bit, to the no small astonishment of Bathilde,
was wrapped up in a piece of paper.
This piece of paper troubled Bathilde a great deal more than it did
Mirza, who, accustomed to crackers and sucre de pomme, soon got the
sugar out of its envelope by means of her paws; and, as she thought very
much of the inside, and very little of the wrapper, she ate the sugar,
and, leaving the paper, ran to the window; but the chevalier was gone;
satisfied, no doubt, of Mirza's skill, he had retired into his room.
Bathilde was very much embarrassed; she had seen, at the first glance,
that the paper contained three or four lines of writing; but, in spite
of the sudden friendship which her neighbor seemed to have acquired for
Mirza, it was evidently not to Mirza that he was writing letters--it
must, therefore, be to her. What should she do? Go and tear it up? That
would be noble and proper; but, even if it were possible to do such a
thing, the paper in which the sugar had been wrapped might have been
written on some time, and then the action would be ridiculous in the
highest degree, and it would show, at any rate, that she thought about
the letter. Bathilde resolved then, to leave things as they were. The
chevalier could not know that she was at home, since he had not seen
her; he could not, therefore, draw any deduction from the fact that the
paper remained on the floor. She therefore continued to work, or rather
to reflect, hidden behind her curtain, as the chevalier, probably, was
behind his.
In about an hour, of which it must be confessed Bathilde passed
three-quarters with her eyes fixed on the paper, Nanette entered.
Bathilde, without moving, told her to shut the window--Nanette obeyed;
but in returning she saw the paper.
"What is that?" asked she, stooping down to pick it up.
"Nothing," answered Bathilde quickly, forgetting that Nanette could not
read, "only a paper which has fallen out of my pocket." Then, after an
instant's pause, and with a visible effort, "and which you may throw on
the fire," continued she.----"But perhaps it may be something important;
see what it is, at all events, mademoiselle." And Nanette presented the
letter to Bathilde.
The temptation was too strong to resist. Bathilde cast her eyes on the
paper, affecting an air of indifference as well as she could, and read
as follows:
"They say you are an orphan: I have no parents; we are, then, brother
and sister before God. This evening I run a great danger; but I hope to
come out of it safe and sound if my sister--Bathilde--will pray for her
brother Raoul."
"You are right," said Bathilde, in a moved voice, and taking the paper
from the hands of Nanette, "that paper is more important than I
thought;" and she put D'Harmental's letter in the pocket of her apron.
Five minutes after Nanette, who came in twenty times a day without any
particular reason, went out as she had entered, and left Bathilde alone.
Bathilde had only just glanced at the letter, and it had seemed to
dazzle her. As soon as Nanette was gone she read it a second time.
It would have been impossible to have said more in fewer words. If
D'Harmental had taken a whole day to combine every word of the billet,
instead of writing on the spur of the moment, he could not have done it
better. Indeed, he established a similarity of position between himself
and the orphan; he interested Bathilde in her neighbor's fate on account
of a menacing danger, a danger which would appear all the greater to the
young girl from her not knowing its nature; and, finally, the expression
brother and sister, so skillfully glided in at the end, and to ask a
simple prayer, excluded from these first advances all idea of love.
It followed, therefore, that, if at this moment Bathilde had found
herself vis-a-vis with D'Harmental, instead of being embarrassed and
blushing, as a young girl would who had just received her first
love-letter, she would have taken him by the hand and said to him,
smiling--"Be satisfied, I will pray for you." There remained, however,
on the mind of Bathilde something more dangerous than all the
declarations in the world, and that was the idea of the peril which her
neighbor ran. By a sort of presentiment with which she had been seized
on seeing him, with a face so different from his ordinary expression,
nail the crimson ribbon to his window, and withdraw it directly the
captain entered, she was almost sure that the danger was somehow
connected with this new personage, whom she had never seen before. But
how did this danger concern him? What was the nature of the danger
itself? This was what she asked herself in vain. She thought of a duel,
but to a man such as the chevalier appeared to be, a duel was not one of
those dangers for which one asks the prayers of women; besides, the hour
named was not suitable to duels. Bathilde lost herself in her
conjectures; but, in losing herself, she thought of the chevalier,
always of the chevalier, and of nothing but the chevalier; and, if he
had calculated upon such an effect, it must be owned that his
calculations were wofully true for poor Bathilde.
The day passed; and, whether it was intentional, or whether it was that
he was otherwise employed, Bathilde saw him no more, and his window
remained closed. When Buvat came home as usual, at ten minutes after
four, he found the young girl so much preoccupied that, although his
perspicacity was not great in such matters, he asked her three or four
times if anything was wrong; each time she answered by one of those
smiles which supplied Buvat with enough to do in looking at her; and it
followed that, in spite of these repeated questions, Bathilde kept her
secret.
After dinner M. Chaulieu's servant entered--he came to ask Buvat to
spend the evening with his master. The Abbe Chaulieu was one of Buvat's
best patrons, and often came to his house, for he had taken a great
liking for Bathilde. The poor abbe became blind, but not so entirely as
not to be able to recognize a pretty face; though it is true that he saw
it across a cloud. The abbe had told Bathilde, in his sexagenarian
gallantry, that his only consolation was that it is thus that one sees
the angels.
Bathilde thanked the good abbe from the bottom of her heart for thus
getting her an evening's solitude. She knew that when Buvat went to the
Abbe Chaulieu he ordinarily stayed some time; she hoped, then, that he
would stop late as usual. Poor Buvat went out, without imagining that
for the first time she desired his absence.
Buvat was a lounger, as every bourgeois of Paris ought to be. From one
end to the other of the Palais Royal, he stared at the shops, stopping
for the thousandth time before the things which generally drew his
attention. On leaving the colonnade, he heard singing, and saw a group
of men and women, who were listening to the songs; he joined them, and
listened too. At the moment of the collection he went away, not from a
bad heart, nor that he would have wished to refuse the admirable
musician the reward which was his due, but that by an old habit, of
which time had proved the advantage, he always came out without money,
so that by whatever he was tempted he was sure to overcome the
temptation. This evening he was much tempted to drop a sou into the
singer's bowl, but as he had not a sou in his pocket, he was obliged to
go away. He made his way then, as we have seen, toward the Barriere des
Sergents, passed up the Rue du Coq, crossed the Pont-Neuf, returned
along the quay so far as the Rue Mazarine; it was in the Rue Mazarine
that the Abbe Chaulieu lived.
The Abbe Chaulieu recognized Buvat, whose excellent qualities he had
appreciated during their two years' acquaintance, and with much pressing
on his part, and many difficulties on Buvat's, made him sit down near
himself, before a table covered with papers. It is true that at first
Buvat sat on the very edge of his chair; gradually, however, he got
further and further on--put his hat on the ground--took his cane between
his legs, and found himself sitting almost like any one else.
The work that there was to be done did not promise a short
sitting; there were thirty or forty poems on the table to be
classified--numbered, and, as the abbe's servant was his amanuensis,
corrected; so that it was eleven o'clock before they thought that it had
struck nine. They had just finished and Buvat rose, horrified at having
to come home at such an hour. It was the first time such a thing had
ever happened to him; he rolled up the manuscript, tied it with a red
ribbon, which had probably served as a sash to Mademoiselle de Launay,
put it in his pocket, took his cane, picked up his hat, and left the
house, abridging his leave-taking as much as possible. To add to his
misfortunes there was no moonlight, the night was cloudy. Buvat
regretted not having two sous in his pocket to cross the ferry which was
then where now stands the Pont des Arts; but we have already explained
Buvat's theory to our readers, and he was obliged to return as he had
come--by the Quai Conti, the Rue Pont-Neuf, the Rue du Coq, and the Rue
Saint Honore.
Everything had gone right so far, and except the statue of Henri IV. of
which Buvat had forgotten either the existence or the place, and which
had frightened him terribly, and the Samaritaine, which, fifty steps
off, had struck the half-hour without any preparation, the noise of
which had made poor belated Buvat tremble from head to foot, he had run
no real peril, but on arriving at the Rue des Bons Enfants things took a
different look. In the first place, the aspect of the street itself,
long, narrow, and only lighted by two flickering lanterns in the whole
length, was not reassuring, and this evening it had to Buvat a very
singular appearance; he did not know whether he was asleep or awake; he
fancied that he saw before him some fantastic vision, such as he had
heard told of the old Flemish sorceries; the streets seemed alive--the
posts seemed to oppose themselves to his passage--the recesses of the
doors whispered to each other--men crossed like shadows from one side of
the street to the other; at last, when he had arrived at No. 24, he was
stopped, as we have seen, by the chevalier and the captain. It was then
that D'Harmental had recognized him, and had protected him against the
first impulse of Roquefinette, inviting him to continue his route as
quickly as possible. There was no need to repeat the request--Buvat set
off at a trot, gained the Place des Victoires, the Rue du Mail, the Rue
Montmartre, and at last arrived at his own house, No. 4, Rue du
Temps-Perdu, where, nevertheless, he did not think himself safe till he
had shut the door and bolted it behind him.
There he stopped an instant to breathe and to light his candle--then
ascended the stairs, but he felt in his legs the effect of the
occurrence, for he trembled so that he could hardly get to the top.
As to Bathilde, she had remained alone, getting more and more uneasy as
the evening advanced. Up to seven o'clock she had seen a light in her
neighbor's room, but at that time the lamp had been extinguished, and
had not been relighted. Then Bathilde's time became divided between two
occupations--one of which consisted in standing at her window to see if
her neighbor did not return; the other in kneeling before the crucifix,
where she said her evening prayers. She heard nine, ten, eleven, and
half-past eleven, strike successively. She had heard all the noises in
the streets die away one by one, and sink gradually into that vague and
heavy sound which seems the breathing of a sleeping town; and all this
without bringing her the slightest inkling as to whether he who had
called himself her brother had sunk under the danger which hung over his
head, or come triumphant through the crisis.
She was then in her own room, without light, so that no one might see
that she was watching, and kneeling before her crucifix for the tenth
time, when the door opened, and, by the light of his candle she saw
Buvat so pale and haggard that she knew in an instant that something
must have happened to him, and she rose, in spite of the uneasiness she
felt for another, and darted toward him, asking what was the matter. But
it was no easy thing to make Buvat speak, in the state he then was; the
shock had reached his mind, and his tongue stammered as much as his legs
trembled.
Still, when Buvat was seated in his easy chair, and had wiped his
forehead with his handkerchief, when he had made two or three journeys
to the door to see that his terrible hosts of the Rue des Bons Enfants
had not followed him home, he began to stutter out his adventure. He
told how he had been stopped in the Rue des Bons Enfants by a band of
robbers, whose lieutenant, a ferocious-looking man nearly six feet high,
had wanted to kill him, when the captain had come and saved his life.
Bathilde listened with rapt attention, first, because she loved her
guardian sincerely, and that his condition showed that--right or
wrong--he had been greatly terrified; next, because nothing that
happened that night seemed indifferent to her; and, strange as the idea
was, it seemed to her that the handsome young man was not wholly
unconnected with the scene in which Buvat had just played a part. She
asked him if he had time to observe the face of the young man who had
come to his aid, and saved his life.
Buvat answered that he had seen him face to face, as he saw her at that
moment, and that the proof was that he was a handsome young man of from
five to six and twenty, in a large felt hat, and wrapped in a cloak;
moreover, in the movement which he had made in stretching out his hand
to protect him, the cloak had opened, and shown that, besides his sword,
he carried a pair of pistols in his belt. These details were too precise
to allow Buvat to be accused of dreaming. Preoccupied as Bathilde was
with the danger which the chevalier ran, she was none the less touched
by that, smaller no doubt, but still real, which Buvat had just escaped;
and as repose is the best remedy for all shocks, physical or moral,
after offering him the glass of wine and sugar which he allowed himself
on great occasions, and which nevertheless he refused on this one, she
reminded him of his bed, where he ought to have been two hours before.
The shock had been violent enough to deprive Buvat of all wish for
sleep, and even to convince him that he should sleep badly that night;
but he reflected that in sitting up he should force Bathilde to sit up,
and should see her in the morning with red eyes and pale cheeks, and,
with his usual sacrifice of self, he told Bathilde that she was
right--that he felt that sleep would do him good--lit his candle--kissed
her forehead--and went up to his own room; not without stopping two or
three times on the staircase to hear if there was any noise.
Left alone, Bathilde listened to the steps of Buvat, who went up into
his own room; then she heard the creaking of his door, which he double
locked; then, almost as trembling as Buvat himself, she ran to the
window, forgetting even to pray.
She remained thus for nearly an hour, but without having kept any
measure of time. Then she gave a cry of joy, for through the window,
which no curtain now obscured, she saw her neighbor's door open, and
D'Harmental enter with a candle in his hand.
By a miracle of foresight Bathilde had been right--the man in the felt
hat and the cloak, who had protected Buvat, was really the young
stranger, for the stranger had on a felt hat and a cloak; and moreover,
hardly had he returned and shut the door, with almost as much care as
Buvat had his, and thrown his cloak on a chair, than she saw that he had
a tight coat of a dark color, and in his belt a sword and pistols. There
was no longer any doubt: it was from head to foot the description given
by Buvat. Bathilde was the more able to assure herself of this, that
D'Harmental, without taking off any of his attire, took two or three
turns in his room, his arms crossed, and thinking deeply; then he took
his pistols from his belt, assured himself that they were primed, and
placed them on the table near his bed, unclasped his sword, took it half
out of the scabbard, replaced it, and put it under his pillow; then,
shaking his head, as if to shake out the somber ideas that annoyed him,
he approached the window, opened it, and gazed earnestly at that of the
young girl, who, forgetting that she could not be seen, stepped back,
and let the curtain fall before her, as if the darkness which surrounded
her were not a sufficient screen.
She remained thus motionless and silent, her hand on her heart, as if to
still its beatings; then she quietly raised the curtain, but that of her
neighbor was down, and she saw nothing but his shadow passing and
repassing before it.