She received no reply; the man had disappeared; the horse was free. She was overcome by a vague fear, and, not daring to turn round, she urged Jacquet forward, and returned to the house on a gallop without seeing any one.
The Duke was ten paces off when this singular encounter took place. He saw nothing, but heard the frightened voice of Mlle de Saint-Geneix at the moment of the horse's sudden stop. He sprang forward, and finding himself face to face with an unknown person, he seized him by the collar, demanding, "Who are you?"
The unknown person struggled vigorously to escape from this investigation; but the Duke, who was a very powerful man, dragged his adversary out of the wood into the path. There, what was his ineffable surprise to recognize his brother?
"Heavens! Urbain," cried he, "did I not strike you? It seems to me that I did. But why didn't you answer me?"
"I don't know," replied M. de Villemer, much agitated. "I did not recognize your voice! Did you speak to me? Whom did you take me for, then?"
"For a robber, in sober earnest! Did you not frighten Mlle de Saint-Geneix just now?"
"I perhaps frightened her horse, unintentionally. Where is she?"
"Why, she was afraid and took to flight. Did you not hear her riding off toward the house?"
"And why should she have been afraid of me?" rejoined the Marquis, with singular bitterness. "I did not wish to offend her." And then, weary of deception, he added, "I merely wanted to speak to her!"
"About whom? About me?"
"Yes, perhaps. I wanted to know whether she loved you."
"And why did n't you speak to her?"
"I do not know. I could not say a word to her."
"Are you in pain?"
"Yes. I am ill, very ill, to-day."
"Let us go in, brother," said the Duke. "I see that you are in a fever, and the dew is falling."
"No matter!" said the Marquis, seating himself on a block at the edge of the walk. "I wish I was dead!"
"Urbain!" cried the Duke, a sudden light striking him at last; "it is you who are in love with Mlle de Saint-Geneix!"
"I in love with her? Is she not,—is she not yours?"
"Never, since you love her! On my part it was only a caprice, an idle, selfish vanity; but, as truly as I am my father's son, she has not the least inclination toward me; she has just simply understood nothing of my artifices; she is as pure, as free, and as proud as on the day she came among us."
"Why did you leave her alone in this wood after you had brought her out into it?"
"Ah! you suspect me after the solemn assertion that I have just made! Can it be that love is making you insane?"
"You have played with your promise about this young lady. For you, in questions of gallantry, oaths count nothing; I know that. If it were otherwise, would you and your fortunate compeers be able to persuade so many women? Do you not know how to slip away from all engagements? Was it honorable, this absurd manœuvring,—which may have been very skilfully done for aught I know about such games,—to draw her into your arms through fascination, through spite, through all the weak or bad impulses in woman's nature? Is there anything that you do respect! Is not virtue, in your eyes, an infirmity of which a poor innocent girl, helpless and inexperienced, must be cured? Is not the abyss into which you want to see her fling herself, in your opinion, the rational condition, fortunate or fatal, of a girl without a dowry and without an ancestry? See! did you not mock me this very morning, when you wished to persuade me that you would marry her! And this is what you said only a moment ago: 'It is you who are in love with her. For me, it was only a fancy, an idle, selfish vanity.' Come, it is frightful,—this libertine vanity of yours! It drags down into the mire all that comes near you! Your very gaze soils a woman, and it is too much for me already that this girl has undergone the insult of your thoughts. I love her no longer."
Having spoken thus to his brother for the first time in his life, the Marquis rose and strode away from him swiftly with a kind of gloomy hatred and with a curse seemingly irrevocable.
The Duke, beside himself, arose immediately to demand satisfaction. He even took a few steps in pursuit of his brother, then stopped abruptly and returned, throwing himself down on the spot which Urbain had just left. He was the victim of a terrible conflict; irritated, furious, he still felt that the person of the Marquis was sacred to him; he was not in the habit of rendering to himself a just account of his own faults, and yet in spite of himself, he felt none the less overwhelmed by the language of truth. He wrung his hands convulsively, and great tears of rage and grief flowed down his cheeks.
André came to find him, having been sent by his mother. The visitors were gone, but Madame d'Arglade had arrived. They were astonished not to see him. The Marchioness, knowing that he had ridden Blanche, was afraid that the unfortunate horse might have been crushed under him.
He followed the servant mechanically, and asked, just as he was going into the house, "Where is M. de Villemer?"
"In his room, your Grace. I saw him go in."
"And Mlle de Saint-Geneix?"
"She has also gone to her room; but Madame the Marchioness has informed her of the arrival of Madame d'Arglade, and she will come down again soon."
"Very good! Go tell M. de Villemer that I wish to speak with him. In ten minutes I will go up to his room."
Madame d'Arglade was the wife of a great provincial dignitary. She had obtained an introduction to the Marchioness de Villemer at the South, when the latter was passing the summer there upon a large estate, since sold to pay the debts of her eldest son. Madame d'Arglade had that particular kind of narrow and persevering ambition of which certain wives of officials, small or great, furnish quite remarkable specimens. To rise in order to shine, and to shine in order to rise,—that was the sole thought, the sole dream, the sole talent, the sole principle of this little woman. Rich, and without an ancestry to boast of, she had bestowed her dowry upon a ruined noble to serve as security for a place in the department of finance, and to add splendor to her house; for she understood perfectly well that, in that condition of life, the best way to acquire a large fortune was to begin by having one suitable to her position and by spending it liberally. Plump, active, pretty, cool, and adroit, she considered a certain amount of coquetry as a duty of her station, and secretly prided herself upon the lofty science which consists in promising with the eyes but never with the pen or the lips, in making transient impressions, but calling forth no abiding attachments, and, lastly, in gaining her objects by surprise, without appearing to hold them, and never descending to ask for them, that she might find herself supported on all occasions by useful friends, she gathered them up everywhere, received every one with no great nicety of choice, with a well-acted good-nature or thoughtlessness, and, in fine, she penetrated skilfully into the most exclusive families and was not long in contriving to become indispensable to them.
It was thus that Madame d'Arglade had wormed herself into what was almost an intimacy with Madame de Villemer, in spite of the prejudice of that noble lady against her origin, her position, and the occupation of her husband; but Léonie d'Arglade paraded her own complete lack of political opinions, and dexterously went round begging pardon of every one for her utter incapacity and nothingness in this regard,—which was her expedient to shock no one, and to make people forget the compulsory zeal of her husband for the cause he served. She was gay, heedless, sometimes silly, laughing loudly at herself, but inwardly laughing at the simplicity of others, and managing to pass for the most ingenuous and disinterested creature in the world, while all her proceedings were based on calculation, and all her impulses were premeditated.
She had very well understood that a certain class of society, however divided in opinion it may be, is always held together by some indissoluble tie of kinship or expediency, and that, upon occasion, all its shades of difference are blended by one animating spirit of caste or of common interest. She was quite well aware, then, that she needed acquaintance with the Faubourg St. Germain, where her husband was not usually admitted, and, thanks to Madame de Villemer, whose good-nature she had adroitly captivated by her prattle and untiring "availability," she had gained a foothold in certain drawing-rooms, where she pleased people and passed for an amiable child of no great consequence.
This child was already twenty-eight years old and did not appear more than twenty-two or twenty-three, although balls were a little fatiguing to her; she had managed to preserve so much engaging sauciness and simplicity that no one perceived her growing a trifle too fleshy. She showed her little dazzling teeth when she smiled, lisped in her speech, and seemed intoxicated with dress and pleasure. In fine, no one suspected her and perhaps there was really nothing to dread in her, since her first interest was to appear good-natured and to make herself inoffensive; but it required great exertion in any one who did not want to find himself suddenly entangled with her.
It was in this way that, without being on her guard and all the while declaring that she would take no step to influence the ministry of the citizen king, Madame de Villemer had found herself inveigled into affecting more or less directly Léonie's withdrawal from her province. Thanks to Madame de Villemer and to the Duke d'Aléria, M. d'Arglade had just received an appointment in Paris, and his wife had written to the Marchioness:—
"Dear Madame, I owe to you my life; you are my guardian angel. I quit the South, and I shall only touch at Paris; for, before establishing myself there, before beginning to rejoice and amuse myself, before everything, in a word, I want to go and thank you and prostrate myself before you at Séval for twenty-four hours, and tell you during those twenty-four hours how much I love you and bless you.
"I will be with you on the 10th of June. Say to his Grace the Duke that it will be the 9th or the 11th, and that, in the mean time, I thank him for having been so kind to my husband, who is going to write him on his own account."
This pretended uncertainty as to the day of her arrival was, on the part of Madame d'Arglade, the graceful reception of a joke which the Duke had often made about the ignorance of days and hours that she always affected. The Duke, with all his cunning with regard to women, had been completely duped by Léonie. He thought her silly, and had a way of addressing her thus: "That's it! You are coming to see my mother to-day, Monday, Tuesday, or Sunday, the seventh, sixth, or fifth day of the month of November, September, or December, in your blue or gray or rose-colored dress, and you are going to honor us by supping, dining, or breakfasting with us, or with them, or with other people."
The Duke was not at all taken with her. She amused him, and the small talk and witticism which characterized his manner with her were merely as a mask for a sort of desultory groping about in the dark, which Madame d'Arglade pretended not to notice, but of which she knew very well how to keep clear.
When the Duke entered the presence of Madame d'Arglade and his mother, he was still much disturbed, and the change in his countenance struck the Marchioness. "Bless me!" cried she, "there has been some accident!"
"None at all, dear mother. Reassure yourself; everything has passed off finely. I have been a little cold, that is all."
He was really cold, although he had still on his brow the perspiration of vexation and anger. He drew near the fire which burned every evening, at all seasons of the year, in the drawing-room of the Marchioness; but, after a few moments, the habit of self-mastery, which is the whole science of fashionable life, and the brilliant pyrotechnics of Léonie's words and smiles, dispelled his bitterness.
Mlle de Saint-Geneix now came forward to embrace her old companion at the convent. "Ah! but you are pale too," said the Marchioness to Caroline. "You are concealing something from me! There has been some accident—I am sure of it—with those infernal beasts."
"No, Madame," replied Caroline, "none at all, I assure you, and, to relieve your anxiety, I will tell you everything: I have been very much frightened."
"Really? By what, pray?" asked the Duke; "it certainly was not by your horse?"
"Perhaps it was by you, your Grace. Come, was it you who stopped my horse for sport, while I was alone walking him slowly in the green avenue?"
"Well, yes, it was I," replied the Duke. "I wanted to see whether you were as brave as you seemed."
"And I was not. I ran like a terrified chicken."
"But you did not cry out, and you did not lose your presence of mind,—that's something."
They told Madame d'Arglade about the horseback ride. As was her custom, she pretended to take very little notice of what was said; but she lost not a word, and asked herself earnestly whether the Duke had deceived or wanted to deceive Caroline, and whether this combination might not be useful in some way at a future day. The Duke left the ladies together, and went up to his brother's room.
The reason why Caroline and Léonie were not intimate at the convent was the difference in their ages. Four years establish a very considerable barrier in youth. Caroline had not wished to tell the Duke the true reason, fearing to seem desirous to make her companion appear old, fully aware besides, that it is doing an ill-turn to most pretty women to recollect their ages too faithfully. It is also worth mention, that all the time Madame d'Arglade remained at Séval, she passed for the younger, and that Caroline, like a good girl, allowed this error of memory to go uncontradicted.
Caroline then, in reality, knew very little about her protectress; she had never met her since the time, when, as a child upon the benches of the "little class," she had seen Mlle Léonie Lecompte emerge from the convent, eager to marry some man of birth or position, regretting no one, but, already shrewd and calculating, bidding every one a tender farewell. Caroline and Camille de Saint-Geneix, at that period girls of gentle blood and comfortable fortune, might, she thought, be good acquaintances to find again at some future time. She wrote them, in a very compassionate tone, therefore, when she learned of their father's death. In her reply Caroline did not conceal the fact that she was left not only an orphan but penniless, Madame d'Arglade took good care not to desert her friend in her misfortunes. Other convent mates, of whom she saw more, had told her that both the Saint-Geneix were charming, and that, with her talents and beauty, Caroline would be sure to make a good match nevertheless,—the idle talk of inexperienced young women. Léonie thought, indeed, that they were mistaken; but she might try to marry off Caroline, and in that way find herself mixed up in confidential questions, and in intimate negotiations with divers families. From that time she thought of nothing but gaining many supporters, extending her relations everywhere, and obtaining the secrets of others while pretending to impart her own. She wanted to attract Caroline to her house in her province, offering her with a delicate grace, a refuge and a prospective home of her own. Caroline, touched by so much kindness, replied that she could not leave her sister, and did not wish to marry, but that if she should ever find herself painfully situated, she would appeal to Léonie's generous heart to seek out for her some modest employment.
From that time Léonie, always full of promises and praises, saw plainly that Caroline did not understand a life of expedients, and troubled herself no further about her, until some old friends, who perhaps pitied Caroline more sincerely, informed Léonie that she was seeking a place as governess in a quiet family, or as reader to some intelligent old lady. Léonie loved to use her influence, and always had something to ask for some one; it was an opportunity for her to get into notice, and to make herself agreeable. Finding herself in Paris at the time, she made greater haste than any one else did, and in her search fell upon the Marchioness de Villemer, who had just then dismissed her reader. She wanted an elderly lady. Madame d'Arglade expatiated on the disadvantages of old age, which had made Esther so crabbed. She also diminished as much as she could the youth and beauty of Caroline. She was a girl about thirty, pretty enough in other days, but who had suffered and must have faded. Then she wrote to Caroline to describe the Marchioness, urging her to come quickly, and offering to share her own temporary lodgings in Paris with her. We have seen that Caroline did not find her at home, but introduced herself to the Marchioness, astonished the latter with her beauty, and charmed her with her frankness, doing by the charm and ascendency of her appearance more than Léonie had ever hoped for her.
Upon seeing Léonie stout, flaunting, and shrewd, but having still preserved her girlish ways, and even exaggerated her childish lisping, Caroline was astonished and asked herself at first sight if all this was not affected; but she was soon to change her mind good-naturedly, and to share in the delusion of every one else. Madame d'Arglade was charmingly polite to her, and all the more so because she had already questioned the Marchioness about Mlle de Saint-Geneix, and knew her to be well anchored in the good graces of the old lady. Madame de Villemer declared her perfect in all respects, quick and discreet, frank and gentle, of unusual intelligence and the noblest character. She had warmly thanked Madame d'Arglade for having procured her this "pearl of the Orient," and Madame d'Arglade had said to herself, "Well and good! I see that Caroline can be useful to me; she is so already. It is always well not to despise or neglect any one." And she overwhelmed the young lady with caresses and flatteries, which seemed as unstudied as the affectionate rapture of a school-girl.
Just before going to his brother's room, the Duke, who was resolved upon a reconciliation, walked for five minutes on the lawn. Involuntary fits of wrath returned upon him, and he feared that he might not be master of himself, if the Marquis should renew his admonitions. At last he came to a decision, went up stairs, crossed a long vestibule, hearing his blood beat so loudly in his temples as to conceal the sound of his footsteps.
Urbain was alone at the farther end of the library, a long room in the ogive style, with slender arches, which his small lamp lighted but feebly. He was not reading; but hearing the approach of the Duke, he had placed a book before himself, ashamed of appearing unable to work.
The Duke stopped to look at him before saying a word. His dull paleness, and his eyes hollow with suffering, touched the Duke deeply. He was going to offer his hand, when the Marquis rose and said to him in a grave voice: "My brother, I offended you very much an hour ago. I was unjust probably, and, in any case, I had no right to remonstrate with you,—I who, having loved but one woman in my whole life, have yet been the guilty cause of her ruin and her death. I confess the absurdity, the harshness, the arrogance of my words, and I sincerely beg your pardon."
"Well, then, I thank you with all my heart," replied Gaëtan, taking him by both hands; "you are doing me a great kindness, for I had resolved to make an apology to you. The deuce take me, if I know what for! But I said to myself, that in wrestling with you under the trees, I must have excited your nerves. Perhaps I hurt you; my hand is heavy. Why didn't you speak to me? And then—and then—Come, I had been causing you much suffering, and perhaps for a long time, without knowing it; but I could not guess,—I ought to have suspected it, though, and I, too, sincerely beg your pardon for that, my poor brother. Ah! why did you lack confidence in me after what we had both solemnly promised?"
"Have confidence in you!" rejoined the Marquis; "do you not see that this is my greatest need, my keenest thirst, and that my wrath was only grief? I wept for it, this confidence that was put in question, I wept bitter tears for it. Give it back to me; I cannot do without it."
"What must I do? Tell me, do tell me! I am ready to go through fire and water! It is only the trial by water which I beg you to spare. What if I should be called upon to drink it!"
"Ah! you laugh at everything; do you not see that you do?"
"I laugh—I laugh—because it is my way of being pleased, and from the moment you love me again, the rest is nothing. And then what is there so very serious? You love this charming girl. You are not wrong. Do you wish me never to speak to her, and never to meet her, or never to look at her? It shall be done, I swear, it, and if this is not enough, I will set out to-morrow, or now, if you like, on Blanche. I don't see what worse thing I can do?"
"No, no, don't go away, don't desert me! Do you not see, Gaëtan, that I am dying?"
"My God! why do you say that?" cried the Duke, lifting up the shade of the lamp and looking his brother in the face; then he seized the hands of the Marquis, and, not finding the pulse readily, laid both his own on his brother's chest, and felt the disordered and uneven beating of the invalid's heart.
This disease had seriously threatened the life of the Marquis in his early youth. It had disappeared, leaving a delicate complexion, a great deal of nervous uneasiness, with sudden reactions of strength, but, on the whole, as great certitude of life as a hundred others have who are apparently more energetic and really less finely tempered, less sustained by a healthy will and the power of discrimination. This time, however, the old disease had reappeared, with violence enough to justify the alarm of Gaëtan and to produce in his brother the oppression and the awful sensations of a death-agony.
"Not a word to my mother!" said the Marquis, rising and going to open the window. "It is not to-morrow that I shall sink under this. I have some strength still; I do not give myself up yet. Where are you going?"
"Why, I am going to get a horse. I am going for a physician."
"Where? For whom? There is not one here who knows my constitution so well as not to run a risk of killing me, should he undertake my case in the name of his logic. If I should fail, take care not to leave me to any village Esculapius, and remember that bleeding will carry me off as the wind carries away an autumn leaf. I was doctored enough ten years ago to know what I need, and I am in the habit of taking care of myself. Come, do not doubt this," added he, showing the Duke some powders prepared in doses, from a drawer in his bureau. "Here are quieting and stimulating medicines, which I know how to use variously. I perfectly understand my disease and its treatment. Be sure that, if I can be cured, I shall be cured, and that, to this end, I shall do all that ought to be done by a man who knows the extent of his duties. Be calm. It was my duty to tell you what I am threatened with, so that you might thoroughly forgive in your heart my feverish anger. Keep my secret for me; we must not uselessly alarm our poor mother. If the time to prepare her should arrive, I shall feel it and will give you warning. Until then, be calm, I beg of you!"
"Calm! It is you who must be calm," retorted the Duke, "and here you are fighting with a passion! It is passion that has awakened this poor heart physically as well as morally. It is love, it is happiness, enthusiasm, tenderness, that you need. Well, nothing is lost then. Tell me, do you wish her to love you, this girl? She shall love you. What am I saying? She does love you, she has always loved you, from the very first day. Now I recall the whole. I see plainly. It is you—"
"Stop, stop!" said the Marquis, falling back into his arm-chair. "I cannot hear it; it stifles me."
But after a momentary silence, during which the Duke watched him with anxiety, he seemed better, and said with a smile, which restored to his expressive face all its youthful charm,—
"And yet what you said then was true! It is perhaps love. Perhaps it is nothing else. You have soothed me with an illusion, and I have given myself up to it like a child. Feel of my heart now; it is refreshed. The dream has passed over it like a cool breeze."
"Since you are feeling better," said the Duke, after making sure that he was really calm, "you ought to make the most of it and try to sleep. You do not sleep, and that is dreadful! In the morning, when I start for a hunt, I often see your lamp still burning."
"And yet, for many nights past, I have not been at work."
"Well, then, if it is sleeplessness, you shall not keep watch alone; I will answer for that. Let me see; you are going to lie down, to lie down on your bed."
"It is impossible."
"Yes, I see: you would suffocate. Well, you shall sit up and sleep. I will stay close by. I will talk to you about her until you no longer hear me."
The Duke conducted his brother to his room, placed him in a large arm-chair, took care of him as a mother would take care of her child, and seated himself near him, holding his hand in his own. Then all Urbain's natural kindliness returned, and he said, gratefully,—
"I have been hateful this evening. Tell me again that you forgive me."
"I do what is better: I love you," replied Gaëtan; "and I am not the only one, either. She is also thinking about you at this very hour."
"O Heaven! you are lying. You are lulling me with a celestial song; but you are lying. She loves no one; she will never love me!"
"Do you want me to go after her and tell her that you are seriously ill? I'll wager that in five minutes she would be here!"
"It is possible," replied the Marquis, with languid gentleness. "She is full of charity and devotedness; but it would be worse for me to ascertain that I had her pity—and nothing more."
"Bah! you know nothing about it. Pity is the beginning of love. Everything must begin with something which is not quite the middle or the end. If you would let yourself be guided by me, in a week you would see—"
"Ah! now you are doing me more harm still. If it were as easy as you think to win her love, I should not long for it so ardently."
"Very well. The illusion would be dispelled. You would regain your peace of mind. That would be something at least."
"It would be my death, Gaëtan," resumed the Marquis, growing animated and recovering strength in his voice. "How unhappy I am that you cannot understand me! But there is an abyss between us. Take care, my poor friend, with an imprudence, or a slight levity, or a mistaken devotedness, you can kill me as quickly as if you held a pistol to my head."
The Duke was very much puzzled. He found the situation simple enough, between two persons more or less attracted toward each other and separated only by scruples, which had little importance in his eyes; but in his opinion, Urbain was complicating this situation by whimsical delicacy. If Mlle de Saint-Geneix should accept him without really loving him, the Marquis felt that his own love for her would die, and in the loss of this love which was killing him, the thunderbolt would fall the quicker. This was a sort of blind alley which drove the Duke wellnigh to despair, but into which it was none the less necessary respectfully to follow his brother's wishes and ideas. By conversing longer with him, and sounding him to the very depths of his being, Gaëtan reached the conclusion that the only joy it was possible to give him would consist in aiding him to a knowledge of Caroline's affection and to a hope of its patient and delicate growth. So long as his imagination could wander through this garden of early emotions, romantic and pure, the Marquis was lulled by pleasant ideas and exquisite joys. As soon, however, as he saw the uncertain approach of the hour when he must decide upon his course and risk an avowal, he felt a dark presentiment of an inevitable disaster, and, unhappily for him, he was not mistaken. Caroline would refuse him and take to flight, or, if she should accept his hand, his aged mother would be driven to despair and perhaps sink under the loss of her illusions.
The Duke plunged deeply into these reflections, for Urbain began to drowse, after having made him promise that he would leave to get some rest himself as soon as he should see him fairly asleep. Gaëtan was vexed at finding no way to be of real service to him. He would have liked to tell Caroline the danger, to appeal to her kindliness and her esteem, asking her to humor the moral condition of the invalid, veiling the future to him, whatever it might be, and soothing him with vague hopes and fair dreams; but this would be pushing the poor girl down a very dangerous slope, and she was not so childish as not to understand that she would thus risk her reputation and probably her own peace of mind.
Destiny, which is very active in dramas of this kind, since it always meets with souls predisposed to yield to its action, did what the Duke dared not do.
Notwithstanding the promise made to his brother, to inform no one of his condition, the Duke could not quite make up his mind to assume the dangerous responsibility of absolute silence. He believed in a doctor, whoever he might be, in spite of his assertion that he did not believe in medicine, and he resolved to go to Chambon and make arrangements with a young man there who did not appear to him to be lacking either in knowledge or prudence, one day when he himself had consulted him about a slight indisposition. Under the seal of secrecy he would confide the situation of the Marquis to this young physician, and engage him to come to the manor-house the next day, under the pretext of selling a bit of prairie enclosed in the lands of Séval. Then he would bring about a chance for the doctor to see the patient, if only to observe his face and general symptoms, without giving any professional advice; a way of submitting this advice to M. de Villemer would be found, and perhaps he would consent to follow it. In a word the Duke, who could not endure to watch through the loneliness and silence of the night, felt the need of doing something to calm his own anxiety. He calculated that he could reach Chambon in a half-hour, and that an additional hour would give him time to rouse the physician, talk with him, and return. He could, he ought, to be back before his brother, who now seemed resting quietly, should awake from his first sleep.
The Duke withdrew noiselessly, left the house through the garden so as to be heard by no one, and descended quickly toward the bed of the river to a foot-bridge by the mill, and to a path which led him straight to the town. By taking a horse and following the road, he would have made a noise and gained very little time. The Marquis, however, did not sleep so soundly as not to hear him leave the room; but, knowing nothing of his project, and not wishing to hinder his brother from going to rest, he had pretended to be unconscious of everything.
It was then a little after midnight. Madame d'Arglade, after having taken her leave of the Marchioness, had followed Caroline to her room to have a little more talk with her. "Well now, pretty dear," she said, "are you really as well satisfied in this house as you say? Be frank with me, if anything troubles you here. Ah, bless me! there is always some little thing in the way. Take advantage of my presence now to confide it to me. I have some influence with the Marchioness, without having sought for it, to be sure; but she likes silly heads, and then I, who am naturally of a happy disposition, and never need anything for myself,—I have the right to serve my friends unhesitatingly."
"You are very good," replied Caroline; "but here everybody is good to me, too, and if I had anything to complain of I should speak of it quite freely."
"That's right, thank you," exclaimed Léonie, taking the promise as made to herself. "Well, now, how about the Duke? Has he never teased you, the handsome Duke?"
"Very little, and that is all over with now."
"Indeed, you give me pleasure by saying that. Do you know that after having written to you to engage you for this place I felt a certain remorse of conscience? I had never spoken to you of this great conqueror."
"It is true you seemed to have a fear of speaking to me about him."
"A fear! no, I had entirely forgotten him; I am so giddy-headed! I said to myself, 'Heavens! I hope that Mlle de Saint-Geneix will not be annoyed by his artifices!' for he has his artifices and with everybody."
"He has had none with me, I am thankful to be able to say."
"Then all is well," replied Léonie, who did not believe a word of what she heard. She changed the subject to that of dress, and all at once she exclaimed, "O, bless me! how sleepy I am becoming! It must be on account of the journey. Till to-morrow, then, dear Caroline. Are you an early riser?"
"Yes; are you?"
"Alas! not much of a one; but when I do get my eyes open, say, between ten and eleven, I shall find you in your room,—shall I not?"
She retired, resolved to get up early in the morning, wander about everywhere as if by chance, and obtain a stealthy knowledge of all the most intimate details of the family affairs, Caroline followed her to install her in her apartment, and returned to her own little room, which was some distance from that of the Marquis, but whose casements, looking out on the lawn, were almost opposite to his.
Before going to rest, she put in order certain books and papers, for she studied a great deal, and with a genuine relish; she heard it strike one o'clock in the morning, and went to shut her blinds before disrobing. At that moment she heard a sharp stroke against the glass of the opposite casement, and her eyes, following the direction of the sound, saw a pane fall rattling from the lighted window of the Marquis. Astonished by this accident, and by the silence which followed, Caroline listened attentively. No one stirred; no one had heard it. Gradually, confused sounds reached her, feeble plaints at first, and then stifled cries and a species of rattle. "Some one is assassinating the Marquis," was her first thought, for the sinister murmurs came evidently from his room. What should she do? Call, find some one, tell the Duke who lodged still farther away?—all that would take too much time, and, besides, under the oppression of such a warning there must be no indecision. Caroline measured the distance with her eye: there were twenty paces to go across the grass. If malefactors had penetrated to M. de Villemer's room it must have been by the stairs of the Griffin turret which was opposite to that of the Fox. These two cages with stairways in them bore the names of the emblems rudely sculptured on the tympans of their portals. The stairs of the Fox led away on this side from Caroline's room. No one else could arrive on the scene so soon as she could, and her solitary approach might cause the assassins to release the Marquis. In the Griffin turret there was besides the rope of a little alarm bell. She said all this to herself while running, and by the time she had finished saying it, she had reached this door, which she found open. The Duke had gone out there, intending to return in the same way without causing the hinges to creak, and thinking nothing about robbers, an unknown class in that country.
Caroline, however, all the more confirmed in the imaginary construction she had put upon the matter, bounded up the spiral stairway of stone. Hearing nothing at all there, she advanced along the passage, and stopped hesitating, before the door of the Marquis's apartment. She ventured to knock, but received no answer. There were certainly no assassins near her, yet what were the cries which she had heard? An accident of some kind, but undoubtedly a serious one, and one which made immediate assistance necessary. She pushed open the door, that was not even latched, and found M. de Villemer extended upon the floor, near the window which he had not had strength enough to open, and of which he had broken the glass to gain air, feeling himself overwhelmed by a sudden strangling.
The Marquis had not fainted. He had had the terrors of death; he now felt the return of his breathing and of life. As he had his face turned towards the window, he did not see Caroline enter, but he heard her, and thinking it was the Duke, "Do not be alarmed," he said, in a feeble voice; "it is passing off. Aid me to rise, I have no longer the strength."
Caroline rushed forward and raised him up with the energy of an overexcited will. It was only when he found himself again in his chair that he recognized her, or thought he recognized her, for his sight, still dim, was crossed by blue waves, and his limbs were so cold and rigid that they were insensible to the touch of the arms and dress of Caroline.
"Heaven! is it a dream?" he said, with a sort of wildness. "You! is it you?"
"Yes, certainly it is I," she answered; "I heard you groan. What is the matter? What shall I do? Call your brother, must I not? But I dare not leave you again. How do you feel? What has happened to you?"
"My brother," rejoined the Marquis, rousing himself enough to recover his memory. "Ah! it was he who led you here. Where is he?"
"He is not about; he knows nothing of this."
"You have not seen him?"
"No, I will go and have him called."
"Ah! do not leave me."
"Well, then, I will not; but to aid you—"
"Nothing, nothing! I know what it is; it is nothing. Do not be alarmed; you see I am quiet. And—you are here!—and you knew nothing?"
"Nothing in the world. For some days I have found you changed—I thought, indeed, that you were ill, but I dared not be anxious—"
"And now at this moment—did I call you?—What—what did I say?"
"Nothing. You broke this window-pane in falling perhaps. Has it not wounded you?"
And Caroline, approaching the light, took up and examined the hands of the Marquis. The right one was quite badly cut: she washed away the blood, adroitly removed the particles of glass, and dressed the wound. Urbain submitted, regarding her with the mingled astonishment and tenderness of a man who, picked up on the battle-field, discovers himself in friendly hands. He repeated feebly, "My brother, then, has told you nothing,—is it true?"
She did not at all understand this question, which seemed to have gained the fixedness of a diseased fancy, and to banish it she recounted to him, while binding up his hand, that she had believed him in the hands of assassins. "It was absurd, to be sure," she said, forcing herself to be cheerful; "but how could I help it? That fear took possession of me, and I ran hither, as to a fire, without informing any one."
"And if that had been really the case, you were coming here to expose yourself to danger?"
"Upon my word, I never thought of myself; I thought only of you and your mother. Nonsense! I would have helped you to defend yourself; I don't know how, or with what, but I would have found something; I would have made a diversion at any rate. There, your wound is dressed, and it will be nothing; but the other, what is the nature of it? You do not wish to tell me? Your friends must nevertheless know how to help you; your brother—"
"Yes, yes, the Duke knows all, my mother nothing."
"I understand you do not wish—I will tell her nothing; but you will permit me to be anxious; to try and find with the Duke what ought to be done to relieve you. I will not be troublesome. I know how one should be with those who suffer. I was the nurse of my poor father and of my sister's husband. See now, do not take it ill that I came here unwittingly and without reflection. You could have arisen from the floor yourself, I know very well; but it is a sad thing to suffer alone. You smile? Come, M. de Villemer, it seems to me that you are a little better. O, how much I want you to be!"
"I am in heaven," replied the Marquis, and, as he had no idea of the hour, "Stay a while longer," he said. "My brother watched with me a little this evening; he will return."
Caroline did not allow herself to make any objection; she simply did not consider at all what the Duke might think when he found her there, or what the servants would say if they saw her going back to her room; in the presence of a friend in danger, the possibility of any insulting suspicion had not even occurred to her. She remained.
The Marquis wished to say more to her, but had not the strength. "Do not speak," she said. "Try to sleep; I solemnly promise that I will not leave you."
"What? You want me to sleep? But I cannot. When I fall asleep I strangle."
"And yet you are overcome with fatigue; your eyes close in your own despite. Well, now you must obey nature. If you have another severe attack I will help you to bear it; I shall be here."
The confidence and good-will of Caroline had a magical effect upon the invalid. He fell asleep and rested peacefully till day. Caroline had seated herself near a table, and knew now the nature of his malady and how to care for it, for upon that table she had found a diagnosis of the case with simple, intelligible rules for its treatment signed by one of the first physicians of France. The Marquis, to relieve his brother from any anxiety he might have as to his manner of treating himself, had shown him that document invested with the authority of a great name, and the document had remained there under the hand, under the eyes of Caroline, who studied it very carefully. She perceived that the Marquis had been, since she had known him, living under a regimen quite opposed to the one there prescribed: he took no exercise, he ate stintingly, and went with too little sleep. She did not know but that this relapse would be mortal; but if it were not, she resolved to be on her guard in the future and to be bold enough to watch over his health, even if he still had that gloomy, cold manner toward her which she now attributed to an anguish altogether physical.
The Duke returned before sunrise. He had not found the physician; he had to go and look for him at Évaux. Before starting thither, he wanted to see his brother. The dawn was streaking the horizon with its first lines of white when he noiselessly regained the apartment of the Marquis. The latter was then sleeping so soundly that he did not hear the ascending footsteps, and Caroline could go out to meet the Duke upon the stairway, so that he should utter no exclamation of surprise at sight of her. His surprise was indeed great when he saw her coming down toward him with her finger to her lips. He understood nothing of what had passed. He thought that the Marquis had concealed the truth from him, that she was aware of his love, his sorrow, and that she had come to console him.
"Ah! my dear friend," taking her hands, "be at ease; he has confided all to me. You have come, you are good, you will save him;" and he carried Caroline's hands to his lips with genuine affection.
"But," said she, slightly astonished, "knowing him to be so ill, why did you leave him to-night? And since you counted upon my care for him, why did you not tell me it was needed?"
"What, then, has happened?" asked the Duke, who perceived that they did not understand each other. She told him briefly what had occurred, and as, absorbed by what he was hearing, he conducted her back across the grass-plot to the stairs of the Fox turret, Madame d'Arglade, who was already upon her feet behind the casement of her window, saw them pass, talking in a low voice with an air of mysterious intimacy. They stopped before the door, and stood talking awhile longer. The Duke gave Mlle de Saint-Geneix an account of his attempt to bring a physician to see his brother, and Caroline dissuaded him from that design. She believed that the directions she had read would be sufficient, and that it would be highly imprudent to adopt a new treatment when they were aware that the first one had been attended with beneficial results. The Duke readily promised her to conform to this advice, and consequently to have confidence in it. Madame d'Arglade saw them take each other by the hand at parting, and the Duke, retracing his steps, ascend the stairs of the Griffin turret.
"Very well, I have seen enough," thought Léonie; "and I have n't to run about in the dew, which I don't like to do at all; I can lie abed the whole forenoon." And in getting herself to sleep again; "That Caroline!" she said to herself, "I see plainly that she lied. How probable it is that the Duke would allow her to go free! But I will keep it, this fine secret of hers, and if ever I have need of her, she will of course have to do as I wish."
Caroline retired quickly, that she might get quickly to sleep, so as to return to the service of her patient.
At eight o'clock she was up and looked through her window. The Duke was at that of his brother. He made her a sign that he would go through the halls and meet her in the library. She went thither immediately from her side of the house, and there she learned that the Marquis was remarkably well. He had just awakened, and he had said, "Heavens, what a miracle! This is my first sleep after a whole week of this suffering, and I no longer feel any pain; I breathe freely; it seems to me that I am cured. It is to her that I owe it all!"—"and it is the truth, my dear friend," added the Duke; "it is you who have saved him, and who will preserve him for us, if you have pity upon us."
The Duke had resolved to say nothing; he had sworn it to his brother; but, although thinking himself very discreet, he had let the truth escape him in his own despite. That truth darted through the mind of Caroline like a flash of lightning. "What is it that your Grace says?" cried she. "Who am I, and how am I here to have such an influence?"
The Duke himself was frightened by the frightened look of Caroline. "Come, in whom are you disappointed?" he said, resuming the mask of his tranquil smile. "What is that you have got into your head now? Do you not see that I worship my brother, that I am in great fear of losing him, and that, because of the assistance you were to him last night, I speak to you as if you were my sister? I am very much embarrassed; I lose my senses, do you see? Urbain is killing himself with work. My influence over him is not sufficient; he does not want me to inform our mother of the return of his old disorder. Informing her would be indeed to agitate her dangerously; infirm as she is, she would be always with him to watch. At the end of two nights she would succumb to her exertions. It remains for us two, therefore, to save my brother, without seeming to do so, without taking the lackeys and chambermaids into our confidence. That sort of people will always talk. Come, are you a woman of heart and head as I have persuaded myself that you are? Will you, can you, dare you, seriously, aid me to nurse him in secret, and watch alternately with me for several evenings, several nights if necessary, never leaving him alone an hour, so that even for an hour he cannot betake himself again to his accursed old books! He needs nothing, I feel sure, but absolute repose of mind, sufficient sleep, a little walking, and that he should try to eat. To bring these things about, it requires the despotic authority—yes, the despotic authority of some one who is not afraid to go counter to his will—of some devoted heart not easily moved or harshly immovable, or unseasonably distrustful,—some one who will bear with his whims if he should have any, and with the impulsive excesses of his gratitude if such should escape him,—a serious friend,in a word, who shall have such delicate, intelligent charity for him as will make him accept and perhaps love his yoke. Well, now, Caroline, you are the only one here who can be that person. My brother has great esteem, profound respect, and, I believe, even a sincere friendship for you. Try to govern him a week, a fortnight, a month perhaps, for if he could get up to-day he would be here this evening turning over the leaves of his books and taking notes; if he sleeps again to-night he will believe himself through with the whole thing, and will not go to bed at all the next night. You see what task we ought to impose upon ourselves. As for my part, I am resolved upon it, entirely devoted to it, but by myself alone I can do nothing. I shall weary him, he will allow no one but me to see him, and his impatience will neutralize the effect of my care. With you,—a woman, a voluntary guardian, generous, firm and tender, patient and resolute, as women only know how to be,—I will answer for it that he will submit without ill-will, and later, when all the paroxysms of his disorder are passed, he will bless you for having thwarted him."
This insidious explanation of the case entirely dissipated the vague and sudden suspicion of Caroline. "Yes, yes," she answered, with decision, "I will be that guardian. Count upon me; I thank you for having chosen me, and do not think better of me on that account. I am used to nursing; it costs me neither effort nor fatigue. Your brother is to me, as to you, so worthy of respect and so superior to every one we know that it is a happiness and honor to serve him. Let us, therefore, understand each other, so that we can share this good task without arousing suspicion of any one around us here as to his real state. To begin with, you install yourself in his room to-night."
"He will not allow that."
"Well, then, his breathing can be heard from here. There is a large sofa on which one can sleep quite comfortably, muffled in a cloak. You and I can pass the night here alternately, till a change is brought about."
"Very well."
"You must make him rise early, so that he will get the habit of sleeping at night; and you must bring him to breakfast with us."
"If you will make him promise to do these things."
"I will try. It is absolutely necessary that he should eat oftener than once in twenty-four hours. We will make him walk or simply seat himself with us in the open air till noon. That is the hour of his visit and yours to the Marchioness. I work with her till five o'clock; then I dress—"
"That will not take you an hour. Will you not come and pay him a short visit in the library? I shall be there."
"Yes, so I will; we will all dine together. We will keep him in the drawing-room till ten o'clock. Then you will follow him."
"All this is perfect, but when my mother has visitors she will leave us at liberty, and you can then easily come here and talk with us an hour or two?"
"No, not to talk," replied Caroline. "I will come and read to him a little, for you can well imagine he will not pass all this time without wishing to interest himself in something, and I will read to him in a way to quiet him and dispose him to sleep. So, it is agreed. Only to-day we shall be very much hindered by Madame d'Arglade."
"To-day I take everything upon myself, and Madame d'Arglade leaves to-morrow at daylight; then my brother is saved, and you are an angel!"
Being informed by his brother of all these arrangements, the Marquis submitted with gratitude. He was extremely weak, and recovering apparently from a dangerous crisis, which had not wholly exhausted him, but had broken him down morally almost as much as a long illness would have done. He could struggle against his love no longer; and having ceased to feel the dangerous storms of passion, thanks to this prostration, he gave himself up to the pleasure of being tenderly cared for. The Duke would not permit him to question the future. "You cannot come to any decision in your present state," Gaëtan would say to his brother. "You have n't the free use of your will: without health there can be no moral clear-sightedness. Let us cure you, and then you will see plainly that, with your health, you have also regained the strength necessary to resist your love, or to deal with the scruples it causes. In the mean time I don't see what you can have on your conscience, for Mlle de Saint-Geneix suspects nothing, and after all is only doing what a sister would do in her place."
This compromise quieted all the invalid's uneasiness. He arose and went to see his mother a few moments, making her believe that a slight indisposition was responsible for the change in his countenance. He asked to be excused from returning till the next day, and so for twenty-four hours, that is, until after the departure of Madame d'Arglade, he could give himself up to almost absolute repose.
Throughout the day there subsisted between the Duke and Caroline an air of mutual intelligence and an exchange of glances which had for their subject only the Marquis and his health, but which completely deluded Léonie. She went away perfectly sure of her facts, but without saying anything to the Marchioness which could lead that old lady to suppose her possessed of any penetration whatever.
At the close of the week M. de Villemer was much better. Every symptom of aneurism had passed away, and under rational treatment he even regained a certain glow of health, as well as a mental serenity, to which he had long been a stranger. No one for ten years had taken care of him with the assiduity, the devotedness, the evenness of temper, the unheard-of charm, with which Mlle de Saint-Geneix contrived to surround him: we might even say he had never met with attentions at once so sensible and so tender, for his mother, aside from her lack of active physical strength, had shown herself excitable and over-anxious in the care she had lavished on him when his life had before been threatened. She had, indeed, at this time some suspicion of a relapse, when she saw her son more frequently with her, and consequently less devoted to his work; but when this idea occurred the crisis had already passed: the good understanding between the Duke and Caroline as to the need of tranquillity, the absolute ignorance of the servants, few in numbers and therefore very busy, and the serenity of the Marquis himself, all tended to reassure her; and at the close of a fortnight she even observed that her son was regaining an air of youth and health at which she could but rejoice.
The condition of the Marquis had been carefully concealed from Madame d'Arglade. The Duke would in no wise give up the great marriage projected for his brother. He thought Léonie was a foolish chatterbox, and did not care to have it understood in society that his brother's health, at any moment, might give serious cause for alarm. The Duke had thoroughly warned Caroline on this point. He was playing with her, in the interests of his brother as he understood them, the double game of preparing her as far as possible, and little by little, for the exercise of an unlimited devotion; and to this end, he thought best to remind her, now and then, that the future well-being of the family rested entirely on the famous marriage. Caroline, then, had no chance to forget this; and relying on the integrity of the two brothers, on her own ideas of duty and the unselfishness of her heart, she walked resolutely toward an abyss which might have engulfed her. And thus the Duke, naturally kind, and animated by the best intentions toward his brother, was coolly working out the misery of a poor girl whose personal merit made her worthy of the highest places of happiness and consideration.
Fortunately for Mlle de Saint-Geneix, although the conscience of the Marquis was somewhat stupefied, it was not wholly asleep. Besides, his passion was made up of enthusiasm and sincere affection. He insisted that the Duke should be with them almost always, and in his abrupt sincerity he came near releasing Caroline from her attendance altogether, promising not to begin work again without her permission. The moment came even when he did give her this promise to induce her to cease her watch in the library; he had found her there more than once, a guardian, gently and gayly "savage," over the books and portfolios, placed, she said, under interdict till further orders; but the Duke counteracted the effect of this "imprudence" on his brother's part, by telling Caroline, in a very low voice, that she must not trust a promise, given in good faith to be sure, but which Urbain would not have it in his power to keep. "You don't know how absent-minded he is," said the Duke; "when an idea takes hold of him it masters him, and makes him forget all his promises. I have found him myself, more than twenty times, searching over these bookshelves while my back was turned, and when I called out, 'Here, here, you marauder!' he seemed startled out of a revery and looked at me with an air of great surprise."
So Caroline did not relax her watchfulness. The library was much farther from her room than from that of the Marquis; but yet so near the centre of the house that the constant presence of the young lady reader in this room devoted to study was not likely to strike the servants as anything remarkable. They saw her there often, sometimes alone, sometimes with the Duke or the Marquis, more frequently with both, although the Duke had a thousand pretexts for leaving her alone with his brother; but even then the doors always open, the book often in Caroline's hands, the evident interest with which she was reading, and lastly, more than all this, the real truth of the situation,—truth, which has more power than the best-planned deception,—removed every pretext and even every desire for malicious comment.
In this state of things Caroline was really happy, and often recurred to it in after years as the most delightful phase of her life. She had suffered from Urbain's coldness, but now she found him showing an unhoped-for kindness and a disposition to trust her again. As soon as all fears for his health were dispelled, a bond was established between them, which, for Caroline, had not a single doubt or apprehension. The Marquis enjoyed her reading exceedingly, and before long he even consented to let her help him with his work. She conducted investigations for him and took notes, which she classified in the very spirit he desired,—a spirit she seemed to divine wonderfully. In short, she rendered his studies so pleasant, and relieved him so cleverly from the dry and disagreeable portions, that he could once more betake himself to writing without pain or fatigue.
The Marquis certainly needed a secretary far more than his mother did; but he had never been able to endure this interposition between himself and the objects of his researches. He saw very soon, however, that Caroline never led him off into ideas foreign to his own, but kept him from straying away himself into useless speculations and reveries. She had a remarkable clearness of judgment, joined with a faculty rarely possessed by women, namely, that of order in the sequence of thought. She could remain absorbed in any pursuit a long while, without fatigue or faltering. The Marquis made a discovery,—one that was destined to direct his future. He found himself in presence of a superior mind, not creative, indeed, but analytic in the highest degree,—just the organization he needed to give balance and scope to his own intellect.
Let us say, once for all, that M. de Villemer was a man of very sound understanding; but he had not found as yet, and was still awaiting, the crisis of its development. Hence the slow and painful progress of his work. He thought and wrote rapidly; but his conscientiousness, as a philosopher and moralist, was always putting fresh obstacles in the way of his enthusiasm as an historian. He was the victim of his own scruples, like certain devotees, sincere but morbid, who always imagine they have failed to tell their confessor the whole truth. He wanted to confess to the human race the truth about social science; and did not sufficiently admit that this science of truths and facts is, largely, a relative one, determined by the age in which one lives. He could not decide on his course. He strove to discover the meaning of facts long buried among the arcana of the past, and after he had, with great labor, caught a few traces of these, he was surprised to find them often contradictory, and in alarm would doubt his own discernment or his own impartiality, would suspend judgment, laying aside his work, and for weeks and months would be the prey of terrible uncertainties and misgivings.
Caroline, without knowing his book, which was still only half written, and which he concealed with a morbid timidity, soon divined the cause of his mental uneasiness from his conversation, and especially his remarks while she was reading aloud. She volunteered a few off-hand reflections of extreme simplicity, but so plainly just and right as to be unanswerable. She was not perplexed by a little blot on a grand life or a tiny glimmer of reason in an age of delirium. She thought the past must be viewed just as we look at paintings, from the distance required by the eye of each in order to take in the whole; and that, as the great masters have done in composing their pictures, we must learn to sacrifice the petty details, which sometimes really destroy the harmony of nature, and even her logic. She called attention to the fact that we notice on a landscape, at every step, strange effects of light and shade, and the multitude will say, "How could a painter render that?" and the painter would reply, "By not rendering it at all."
She admitted that the historian is fettered more than the artist to accuracy in matters of fact, but she denied that there could be progress on any different principles in either case. The past and even the present of individual or collective life, according to her, take color and meaning only from their general tenor and results.
She ventured on these suggestions, cautiously putting them in the form of questions; without being positive, and as if willing to suppress them in case they were not approved; but M. de Villemer was struck with them, because he felt she had given expression to a certainty, an inward faith, and that if she consented to keep silence, she would still remain none the less convinced. He struggled a little, nevertheless, laying before her a number of facts which had delayed and troubled him. She passed judgment on them in one word, with the strong, good sense of a fresh mind and a pure heart, and he soon exclaimed with a glance at the Duke, "She finds the truth because she has it within her, and that is the first condition of clear insight. Never will the troubled conscience, never will the perverted mind, comprehend history."
"Perhaps," said she, "that is why history should not be too much made up from memoirs, for these are nearly always the work of prejudice or passions of the moment. It is the fashion now to dig these out with great care, bringing forward many trifling facts not generally known, and which do not deserve to be known."
"Yes, you are right," replied the Marquis; "if the historian, instead of standing firm in his belief and worship of lofty things, lets himself be misled and distracted by trivial ones, truth loses all that reality usurps."
If we relate these bits of conversation, perhaps a little out of the usual color of a romance, it is because they are necessary to explain the seriousness and apparent calmness of the relations that were growing up between the scholar and the humble lady-reader in the castle of Séval, in spite of the pains the Duke was taking to leave them as much as possible to the tender influences of youth and love. The Marquis felt that he belonged to Caroline, not only through his enthusiasm, his dreams, his need of throwing a kind of ideal about grace and beauty, but through his reason, his judgment, and through his present certainty that he had met that ideal. Henceforth Caroline was safe; she commanded respect by the weight of her character, and the Marquis stood in no further fear of losing control of his own impulses.
The Duke was at first astonished by this unlooked-for result of their intimacy. His brother was cured, he was happy, he seemed to have conquered love by the very power of love itself; but the Duke was intelligent and he understood. He was even seized himself with a serious deference for Caroline. He took an interest in her reading, and soon, instead of falling asleep under the first few pages, he wanted to read in his turn and give them his impressions. He had no convictions, but, in the artist spirit, allowed himself to be moved and borne along by those of others. He had read but little on serious subjects, in the course of his life, but he had admirably retained all kinds of dates and proper names. So that he had in his fine memory, as one might say, a sort of network with large meshes to which the loose lines of his brother's studies could be tied. That is, he was a stranger to nothing except the logical and profound meanings of historical events. He did not lack prejudices; but excellence of style had a power over him which put them to silence, and before an eloquent page, whether of Bossuet or Rousseau, he felt the same enthusiasm.
Thus he also found himself pleasantly initiated into the pursuits of the Marquis and the society of Mlle de Saint-Geneix. What was really very good in him is that, from the day he first became aware of his brother's affection for Caroline, she ceased to be a woman in his eyes. He had nevertheless felt some emotion for several days in her presence, and the truth had come upon him unexpectedly in an hour of feverish spite. From day to day he abjured every evil thought, and, touched by seeing that the Marquis, after a terrible attack of jealousy, had restored to him his entire confidence, he knew, for the first time in his life, what it was to feel a true and worthy friendship for a pretty woman.
In the month of July Caroline wrote to her sister thus:—
"Be easy about me, dear Camille, it is some time since I ceased to watch the invalid, for the invalid has never before been so well; but I have always kept up the practice of rising at day-break in the summer season, and every morning I have several hours I can devote to the work he is kindly permitting me to share with him. Just now he is himself sleeping a good sound sleep, for he retires at ten o'clock, and I am allowed here to do the same, and I often have precious intervals of freedom even in the daytime. Our proximity to the baths of Évaux and the road to Vichy brings us visitors at the very hours when in Paris the Marchioness used to shut herself up; she says this disturbs and wearies her, and yet, all the while, she is delighted! The great correspondence suffers under it, but even the correspondence itself has diminished, since the marriage of the Marquis was projected. This scheme so absorbs Madame de Villemer, that she cannot help confiding it or hinting something about it to all her old friends; after which she will reflect seriously, admitting the imprudence of saying much about it, and that she ought not to rely on the discretion of so many people; and then we throw into the fire the letters she has just dictated. This it is that leads her to say so often: 'Bah! let us stop writing, I would rather say nothing at all than not to mention things that interest me.'
"When she has visitors she makes a sign that I may go and join the Marquis, for she knows now that I am taking notes for him. Since his illness is over, I thought there ought to be no mystery made about so simple a thing, and she is quite willing to have me relieve her son from any wearisome portions of his work. She is very curious to know what this book so carefully concealed can possibly be; but there is no danger, of my betraying anything, for I don't know a single word in it. I only know that just now we are deep in the history of France, and more especially in the age of Richelieu; but what I need not mention to any one here is, that I anticipate a great divergence in opinion between the son and the mother on a host of grave matters.
"Do not blame me for having taken on myself a double task, and for having gained, as you put it, two masters in the place of one. With the Marchioness the task is sacred, and I have an affectionate pleasure in it; with her son the task is agreeable, and I put into it that kind of veneration of which I have often told you. I enjoy the idea of having contributed to his recovery, of having managed to take care of him without making him impatient, of having gently persuaded him to live a little more as people ought to live in order to be well. I have even taken advantage of his passion for study by telling him that his genius will feel the effects of disease, and that I have no faith in the intellectual clearness of fever. You have no idea how good he has been to me, how patiently he has taken rebuke, and how he has even let himself be scolded by this young-lady sister of yours; how he has thanked me for my interest in him, and submitted to all my prescriptions. It has gone so far that at table, even, he consults me with his eyes as to what he shall eat, and when we go out for a walk he has no more mind of his own than a child as to the little journey which the Duke and I insist on making him take. He has a charming disposition, and every day I discover some new trait in his character. I did think he was a little whimsical and decidedly obstinate; but, poor fellow! it was the crisis that was threatening his life. He has, on the contrary, a gentleness and evenness of temper which is beyond everything; and the charm of familiar intercourse with him resembles nothing so much as the beauty, of the waters flowing through our valley, always limpid, always plentiful, borne along in a strong and even current, never ruffled or capricious. And to follow out this comparison, I might say that his mind has also flowery banks and oases of verdure where one can pause and dream delightfully, for he is full of poetry; and I always wonder how he has ever subjected the warmth of his imagination to the rigid demands of history.
"What is more, he pretends that all this is a discovery of mine, and that he is just beginning to perceive it himself. The other day we were looking at the beautiful pastures full of sheep and goats in a ravine crossing that of the Char. At the farther end of this sharp cut, there is a casing of rugged rocks, and some of their notches rise so far above the plateau that, in comparison with the lower level, it is really a mountain; and these beautiful rocks of lilac-gray form a crest, sufficiently imposing to conceal the flat country that lies behind, so you cannot see from here the upper part of the plateau, and you might imagine yourself in some nook of Switzerland. At least, this is what M. de Villemer tells me, to console me for the way in which the Marchioness scouts my admiration. 'Don't worry about that,' said he, 'and don't think it necessary to have seen many sublime things in order to have the conception and the sensation of sublimity. There is grandeur everywhere for those who carry this faculty within themselves; it is not an illusion which they cherish either; it is a revelation of what really exists in nature in a manner more or less pronounced. For dull senses, there must be coarse signs of the power and dimensions of things. This is why many people who go to Scotland, looking for the pictures described by Walter Scott, cannot find them, and pretend that the poet has overpraised his country. His pictures are there, nevertheless, I am very sure, and if you should go there, you would find them at once.'
"I confessed to him that real immensity tempted me greatly; that I often saw, in dreams, inaccessible mountains and giddy abysses; that, before an engraving representing the furious waterfalls in Sweden or the bergs that stray from Arctic seas, I have been carried away with wild imaginations of independence, and that there is no tale of distant explorations with enough of suffering and danger in it to take away my regret at not having shared them.
"'And yet,' said he, 'before a charming little landscape like this you seemed happy and really satisfied a moment ago. Do you then really feel more in need of emotions and surprises than of tenderness and safety? See how beautiful it is, this stillness! How this hour of reflected lights, barred across with lengthening shadows, this water, in spray which seems caressing the sides of the rock, this motionless leafage looking as if it were silently drinking in the gold of the last sunbeams, how truly indeed is all this serene and thoughtful solemnity the expression of the beautiful and good in nature! I never used to know all this myself. It has not impressed me strongly until lately. I have always been living in the midst of dust and death, or among abstractions. I used, indeed, to dream over the pictures of history, the phantasmagoria of the past. I have sometimes seen the fleet of Cleopatra sailing to the verge of the horizon; in the silence of the night I have thought I heard the warlike trumpets of Roncesvalles; but it was the dominion of a dream, and the reality did not speak to me. But when I saw you gazing at the horizon without saying a word, with an air of content that was like nothing else in the world, I asked myself what could be the secret of your joy; and, if I must tell you all, your selfish patient was a little jealous of everything that charmed you. He set himself perturbedly to work at gazing too, when he settled the point at once; for he felt that he loved what you loved.'