LOVE REQUITED
Then Diane threw herself into Gabriel's arms,--"And you, too, Gabriel,"
said she, "you, too, I must thank and bless. With my last conscious
thought, I invoked my guardian angel, and you came to me. Thanks! oh,
thanks!"
"Oh, Diane," he replied, "how I have suffered, and what a weary time it
has been since I saw you last!"
"And I too have suffered, and have found the waiting weary," she cried.
They then began--at too great length to be dramatic, it must be
confessed--to tell what each had endured and felt during their unhappy
separation.
Calais, the Duc de Guise, vanquished and victors,--all were forgotten.
All the strife and all the deadly passion which was rife about the two
lovers did not reach them. Lost in their world of love and ecstasy, they
no longer saw or heard the sights or sounds of the sad world around
them.
When one has undergone so much grief and terror, the heart is enfeebled
and softened to a certain extent by suffering, and though brave to
overcome disaster, can no longer resist happiness. In this balmy
atmosphere of chaste emotion, Diane and Gabriel gave themselves up
without restraint to the sweet influences of peace and joy, to which
they had so long been strangers.
To the scene of insane passion which we have described succeeded another
similar, and yet widely different at the same time.
"How good it seems to be with you, my friend," said Diane. "Instead of
the presence of that impious wretch whom I hated so, and whose love made
me shudder, what ecstasy to have you near me, so reassuring, and so
precious!"
"And I," rejoined Gabriel, "since our childhood, when we were happy
without knowing it, do not remember, Diane, that I have ever known in my
poor lonely, troubled life a single moment to be compared to this."
For a while they were silent, gazing in rapt enjoyment at each other.
Diane resumed:--
"Come and sit by me, Gabriel. Can you believe it, dear, this moment,
which has united us once more in so unhoped-for a manner, I have
nevertheless dreamed of and foreseen, even in my apparently hopeless
captivity? I have always felt sure that my deliverance would come
through you, and that in my supreme peril God would send you, my own
knight, to rescue me."
"For my part, Diane," said Gabriel, "the thought of you has always led
me on as a lover and guided my steps like a ray of light. Shall I make a
confession to you and to my own conscience? Although many other potent
motives might have urged me on, I never should have conceived the idea
of taking Calais, Diane, which is mine alone, nor should I ever have had
the courage to carry it out by resorting to such reckless expedients,
had it not been that you were a prisoner here, and that my prophetic
instinct of the danger which beset you encouraged and stimulated me.
Except for my hope of rescuing you and the other holy purpose for which
I live, Calais would still be in English hands. May God, in His mercy,
not chastise me for having wished to do and having done what was right
for selfish reasons only!"
Gabriel thought at that moment of the scene in the Rue St. Jacques, of
the self-abnegation of Ambroise Paré, and the stern belief of the
admiral that Heaven demands unstained hands to sustain a pure cause.
But Diane's beloved voice restored his confidence somewhat as she
exclaimed,--
"God chastise you, Gabriel! God chastise you for being noble and
generous!"
"Who knows?" said he, casting upward a look heavy with sad foreboding,
as if he were asking the question of Heaven.
"_I_ know," replied Diane, with a lovely smile.
She was so bewitching as she said it that Gabriel, in admiration of her
beauty, and lost to every other thought, could not restrain the
exclamation,--
"Oh, Diane, you are as beautiful as an angel!"
"And you as valiant as a hero, Gabriel," said Diane. They were seated
side by side; their hands touched by accident and met in a fervent
clasp. Darkness was beginning to fall.
Diane, with blushing cheeks, rose and walked away a few steps.
"Are you going, Diane? You are flying from me!" said the youth, sadly.
"Oh, no indeed!" said she eagerly, drawing near again. "With you it is
very different; and I have no fear, dearest."
Diane was wrong; it was a different sort of danger that threatened her
now, but danger nevertheless; and it might be that the friend was as
much to be feared as the foe.
"That is right, Diane!" said Gabriel, taking the little hand, white and
soft, which she surrendered to him once more; "that is as it should be.
Let us enjoy a little happiness after all we have gone through. Let us
give free play to our hearts to revel in their confidence and joy."
"Yes, indeed; it is so good to be near you, Gabriel!" Diane replied.
"Let us forget the world and the uproar around us for a moment; let us
enjoy to the full the unaccustomed sweetness of this hour. God, I think,
will allow us to do so without anxiety or dread. You are right; else why
have we suffered so?"
With a graceful movement which was common with her when she was a child,
she laid her lovely head upon Gabriel's shoulder; her great velvety eyes
slowly closed, and her hair brushed the lips of the ardent youth.
It was he then who rose, shuddering and bewildered.
"Well, what is it?" said Diane, opening her drooping eyes in wonder.
He fell on his knees before her, pale as a ghost, and threw his arms
about her.
"Oh, Diane, Diane! I love you!" he cried from the bottom of his heart.
"And I love you, too, Gabriel," Diane replied, fearlessly, and as if in
obedience to an irresistible impulse of her heart.
How their faces came nearer together; how their lips met; how in that
long, sweet kiss, their very souls were blended, God only knows; certain
it is that they did not know themselves.
But suddenly Gabriel, who felt his reason trembling in the vertigo of
happiness, tore himself away from Diane.
"Diane, leave me!" he almost shrieked, with a note of horror in his
voice, "let me fly!"
"Fly! and why, pray?" she asked wonderingly.
"Oh, Diane, Diane! if you should turn out to be my sister!" replied
Gabriel, beside himself.
"Your sister!" echoed Diane, overwhelmed, paralyzed. Gabriel checked
himself, dismayed and like one stunned by his own words; drawing his
hand across his burning brow, he asked in a loud voice,--
"What did I say?"
"What did you say, really?" said Diane. "Must I believe it to be
literally true, that fearful word? What is the key to this terrible
mystery? Can I really be your sister? Oh, _mon Dieu_!"
"My sister? Did I tell you that you were my sister?" said Gabriel.
"Ah, it is true, then!" cried Diane, gasping for breath.
"No; it is not, cannot be true! I do not know it, and who can know it?
Besides, I ought not to have said a word of all this to you. It is a
secret involving life and death which I have sworn to keep. Ah, Heaven
have pity upon me! I have preserved my self-control and my reason amid
suffering and misfortune; must it be that the first drop of happiness
which passes my lips should intoxicate me even to insanity and
forgetfulness of my oath!"
"Gabriel," rejoined Madame de Castro, gravely, "God knows that it is no
vain and purposeless curiosity which moves my words; but you have said
either too much or too little for my peace of mind. Now you must
finish."
"Impossible, impossible!" cried Gabriel in terror.
"And why impossible?" said Diane. "Something in my heart assures me that
these dread secrets concern me quite as nearly as yourself, and that you
have no right to conceal them from me."
"That is very true," Gabriel rejoined, "and you have certainly as much
right as I to this suffering. But since the burden bears upon me alone,
ask me not to share it with you."
"But I do ask it, and desire, nay, I demand my rightful share of your
burdens," Diane returned; "and to go still further, Gabriel, I implore
you! Will you refuse me?"
"But I have sworn to the king!" exclaimed Gabriel anxiously.
"You have sworn?" rejoined Diane. "Very well, keep your oath loyally to
strangers or to indifferent persons, nay, even to your friends, and it
will be well done of you. But with me, who, as you admit, have as deep
an interest as yourself in this mystery, can you, ought you, to preserve
this baleful silence? No, Gabriel, not if you have any pity for me. My
doubts and anxiety on this subject have already torn my heart enough. In
this matter, if not, alas! in the other events of your life, I am, in a
measure, your second self. Do you perjure yourself, pray, when you muse
upon your secret in the solitude of your own conscience? Do you think
that my loyal and sincere heart, tried by so many bitter tests, will not
be as steadfast as yours to retain and hold in trust the secret of joy
or sorrow confided to it, and which belongs to it as much as to you?"
The soft and soothing tones of Diane's voice flowed on, moving the young
man's inmost soul, as if it were an instrument obedient to her words.
"And then, Gabriel, since fate forbids our being bound together by the
ties of happy love, how can you have the heart to deny me the only
communion of feeling which is permissible for us,--that of sorrow? Shall
we not suffer less if we suffer together? Is it not, then, very sad to
think that the only bond which can unite us still keeps us apart?"
Feeling that Gabriel, though half convinced, was still in doubt, she
resumed,--
"Besides, you must beware! If you persist in your silence, why should I
not adopt the same language with you which caused you so much terror and
anguish just now,--why, I know not,--but which you yourself, after all,
long ago taught my lips and my heart? Surely your betrothed has the
right to tell you over and over again that she loves you, and none but
you. Your promised wife in God's sight may surely, with a chaste caress,
put her head upon your shoulder and her lips to your forehead thus--"
But Gabriel, with a sinking heart, again put Diane aside, with a
shudder.
"No!" he cried, "have pity on my reason, Diane, I implore you. So you
really wish to know the terrible secret in all its details? Well, in the
face of a possible crime, I allow it to pass my lips. Yes, Diane, you
must take in their literal meaning the words which I let bill in my
agony a moment ago. Diane, it is possible that you are the daughter of
the Comte de Montgommery, my father; it is possible that you are my
sister."
"Holy Virgin!" murmured Madame de Castro, overwhelmed by this
revelation. "But how can it be?" she added.
"I should have preferred," said Gabriel, "that your pure and peaceful
life should never have come to know aught of this mystery, so full of
terror and crime. But I am confident, alas! that in the end my strength
alone would not have been sufficient to prevail against my love. So you
must assist me against yourself, Diane, and I will tell you all."
"I listen, Gabriel, in terrible dread, but with attention," said Diane.
Gabriel then narrated everything to her: how his father had loved Madame
de Poitiers, and in the eyes of all the court had seemed to be favored
by her; how the dauphin, the present king, had become his rival; how the
Comte de Montgommery had disappeared one day, and how Aloyse had come to
know, and had revealed to his son what had taken place. But that was the
extent of the nurse's information; and since Madame de Poitiers
obstinately refused to speak, the Comte de Montgommery alone, if he were
still living, could tell the secret of Diane's birth.
When Gabriel had finished the lugubrious history, Diane cried,--
"This is indeed frightful! But whatever be the issue, my friend, there
is misery in store for us. If I am the Comte de Montgommery's daughter,
you are my brother Gabriel; if I am the king's daughter, you are the
rightfully outraged enemy of my father. So that in either event we must
be parted."
"No, Diane," Gabriel replied, "our wretchedness, thank God, is not
altogether hopeless. Since I have begun to tell you the whole story, I
will go on to the end. I feel, too, that you were in the right; it has
encouraged me to confide in you; and my secret, after all, has only left
my heart to be shared by yours."
Gabriel then told Madame de Castro of the strange and perilous bargain
he had made with Henri II., and the king's solemn promise to restore the
Comte de Montgommery to freedom if the Vicomte de Montgommery, after
having defended St. Quentin against the Spaniards, should wrest Calais
from the English.
Now Calais had been for an hour a French city, and Gabriel thought that
he might say with all modesty that he had had a large share in bringing
about that glorious result.
As he continued, the light of hope began to chase away the gloom from
Diane's face as the light of dawn dissipates the darkness.
When Gabriel had finished, she remained silent for a moment in deep
thought; then she said firmly, holding out her hand to him,--
"Poor Gabriel! doubtless we have as much to think about and suffer in
the future as we have had in the past. But let us not stop there, my
friend. We must not allow ourselves to become weak and timid. For my
part, I will do my best to be strong and brave like you and with you.
The important thing now is to set to work and unravel our fate one way
or the other. Our agony is drawing to a close, I believe. You have now
kept and more than kept your promise to the king, and he, I trust, will
redeem his to you. It is upon that expectation that we must henceforth
base all our thoughts and hopes. What do you mean to do now?"
"Monsieur le Duc de Guise," replied Gabriel, "was my illustrious
confidant, and was accessory to all that I undertook to do here. I know
that, except for him, I could have done nothing; but he knows as well
that he could have done nothing without me. He, only, can and ought to
bear witness to the king of the part I have taken in this new conquest.
I have so much the more reason to expect this act of justice from him
because he promised me solemnly, for the second time, within a few days,
to give that testimony. Now I am going at once to remind Monsieur de
Guise of his undertaking, also to request from him a letter to his
Majesty, and since my presence here is no longer essential, to start at
once for Paris--"
Gabriel was still speaking eagerly, and Diane listening with her eyes
beaming with hope, when the door opened, and Jean Peuquoy appeared,
discomposed, and in apparent consternation.
"Well, what is it?" asked Gabriel, anxiously. "Is Martin-Guerre worse?"
"No, Monsieur le Vicomte," replied Jean. "Martin-Guerre has been taken
to our house by my efforts, and Master Ambroise Paré has already seen
him. Although amputation of the leg was deemed necessary, Master Paré
thinks that we may be sure that your gallant squire will survive the
operation."
"Splendid news!" said Gabriel. "Ambroise Paré is doubtless with him
still?"
"Monseigneur," replied the burgher, sadly, "he was obliged to leave him
to attend another wounded man, more illustrious and more hopeless."
"Who is it, pray?" asked Gabriel, changing color. "Maréchal Strozzi,
Monsieur de Nevers--?"
"Monsieur le Duc de Guise, who lies dying at this moment," said Jean.
Gabriel and Diane simultaneously uttered a cry of grief.
"And I was just saying that we were nearing the end of our agony," said
Madame de Castro, after a moment's silence. "Oh, _Mon Dieu_! _mon
Dieu_!"
"Call not upon God, Madame," said Gabriel, with a sad smile. "God is
just, and justly chastises my selfishness. I took Calais only for my
father's sake and yours. It is God's will that I should have taken it
for the good of France."