He remained some time thus; then, suddenly collecting his strength, he threw himself at my feet.
"Juliette," he said, "I am lost unless you love me to frenzy."
"O heaven! what does that mean?" I cried wildly, throwing my arms around his neck.
"And you do not love me that way!" he continued, in an agony of despair. "I am lost, am I not?"
"I love you with all the strength of my heart!" I cried, weeping. "What must I do to save you?"
"Ah! you would never consent!" he replied, with a discouraged air. "I am the most miserable of men; you are the only woman I have ever loved, Juliette, and when I am on the point of possessing you, my heart, my life, I lose you forever! I have no choice but to die."
"Mon Dieu! mon Dieu!" I cried; "can't you speak? can't you tell me what you expect of me?"
"No, I cannot speak," he replied; "a ghastly secret, a frightful mystery overhangs my whole life, and I can never disclose it to you. To love me, to go with me, to comfort me, you would need to be more than a woman, more than angel, perhaps!"
"To love you! to go with you!" I repeated. "Shall I not be your wife in a few days? You have but a word to say; however great my sorrow and that of my parents, I will follow you to the end of the world, if it is your will."
"Is that true, O my Juliette?" he cried in a transport of joy; "you will go with me? you will leave everything for me? Very well; if you love me as much as that, I am saved! Let us go, let us go at once!"
"What! can you think of such a thing, Leoni? Are we married?" said I.
"We cannot marry," he replied shortly, in a firm voice.
I was stricken dumb.
"And if you will not love me, if you will not fly with me," he continued, "I have but one course to take; that is, to kill myself."
He said this in such a determined tone that I shuddered from head to foot.
"In heaven's name what is happening to us?" I said; "is this a dream? Who can prevent our marrying, when everything is decided, when you have my father's word?"
"A word from the man who is in love with you, and who is determined to prevent you from being mine."
"I hate him and despise him!" I cried. "Where is he? I propose to make him feel the shame of such cowardly persecution and such a detestable vengeance. But how can he injure you, Leoni? are you not so far above his attacks that with a word you can pulverize him? Are not your virtue and your strength as pure and unassailable as gold? O heaven! I understand; you are ruined! the papers you have been expecting bring only bad news. Henryet knows it and threatens to tell my parents. His conduct is infamous; but have no fear, my parents are kind, they adore me; I will throw myself at their feet, I will threaten to go into a convent; you can appeal to them again as you did yesterday and you will persuade them, you may be sure. Am I not rich enough for two? My father will not choose to condemn me to die of grief; my mother will intercede for me. We three together shall be stronger than my aunt to argue with him. Come, don't be distressed, Leoni, this cannot part us, it is impossible. If my parents should prove to be as sordid as that, then I would fly with you."
"Let us fly then at once," said Leoni with an air of profound gloom; "for they will be inflexible. There is something in addition to my ruin, something infernal, which I cannot tell you. Are you kind? Are you the woman I have dreamed of and thought I had found in you? Are you capable of heroism? Do you understand great things, boundless devotion? Tell me, Juliette, tell me, are you simply an amiable, pretty woman from whom I shall part with regret, or are you an angel whom God has sent to me to save me from despair? Do you feel that there is something noble in sacrificing yourself for one you love? Does not your heart swell at the thought of holding in your hands a man's life and destiny and in consecrating your whole being to him? Ah! if only we could change our rôles! if I were in your place! With what joy, with what bliss I would sacrifice to you all my affections, all my duties!"
"Enough, Leoni!" I replied, "you drive me wild with your words. Mercy, mercy for my poor mother, for my poor father, for my honor! You wish to ruin me——"
"Ah! you think of all those people!" he cried, "and not of me! You weigh the sorrow of your parents, and you do not deign to put mine in the balance! You do not love me!"
I hid my face in my hands, I appealed to God, I listened to Leoni's sobs; I thought that I was going mad.
"Very well! you will have it so," I said, "and you have the power; speak, tell me what you wish, and I must obey you; have you not my mind and my will at your disposal?"
"We have very few minutes to lose," replied Leoni. "We must be away from here in an hour, or your flight will have become impossible. There is a vulture's eye hovering over us; but if you consent, we will find a way to outwit him. Do you consent? do you consent?"
He pressed me frantically in his arms. Cries of agony escaped from his breast. I answered yes without knowing what I was saying.
"Well, then, go back at once to the ball-room," he said, "and show no excitement. If anybody questions you, say that you have been a little indisposed; but don't let them take you home. Dance if you must. Above all things, if Henryet speaks to you, don't irritate him; remember that for another hour my fate is in his hands. An hour hence I will come back in a domino. I will have this bit of ribbon in my hood. You will recognize it, won't you? You will go with me, and above all else, you will be calm, impassive. You must think of all this; do you feel that you are strong enough?"
I rose and pressed my hands against my throbbing heart. My throat was on fire, my cheeks were burning with fever. I was like a drunken man.
"Come, come," he said to me; with that he pushed me into the ball-room and disappeared. My mother was looking for me. I could detect her anxiety in the distance, and to avoid her questions I hurriedly accepted an invitation to dance.
I danced, and I have no idea how I kept from falling when the dance was at an end, I had made such a mighty effort to get through it. When I returned to my place my mother was already on the floor, waltzing. She had seen me dancing, so her mind was at rest, and she began to enjoy herself once more. My aunt, instead of questioning me about my absence, scolded me. I preferred that, for I was not called upon to answer and to lie. One of my friends asked me with a terrified air what the matter was with me and why I had such a distressed expression on my face. I answered that I had just had a violent fit of coughing.—"You must rest," she said, "and not dance any more."
But I had decided to avoid my mother's glance; I was afraid of her anxiety, her affection and my remorse. I spied her handkerchief, which she had left on the bench; I picked it up, put it to my face, and, covering my mouth with it, devoured it with convulsive kisses. My friend thought that I was coughing again, for I pretended to cough. I did not know how to pass that fatal hour, barely half of which had dragged away. My aunt noticed that I was very hoarse and said that she was going to urge my mother to go home. I was terrified by that threat and instantly accepted another invitation. When I was in the midst of the dancers, I noticed that I had accepted an invitation to waltz. Like almost all girls, I never waltzed; but, when I recognized in the man who already had his arm about me the sinister face of Henryet, terror prevented my refusing. He led me away and the rapid movement took away the last remnant of my reasoning power. I asked myself if all that was taking place about me were not a vision; if I were not lying in bed with the fever, rather than whirling about in a waltz, like a mad woman, with a man whom I held in horror. And then I remembered that Leoni would soon come for me. I looked at my mother, who seemed to fly through the circle of dancers, so light of foot and heart was she. I said to myself that it was impossible, that I could not leave my mother thus. I felt that Henryet was holding my very tight in his arms and that his eyes were devouring my face, which was turned toward his. I came very near shrieking and flying from him. But I remembered Leoni's words: "My fate is in his hands for another hour." So I resigned myself. We stopped for a moment. He spoke to me. I did not hear what he said, but answered with a wild sort of smile. At that moment I felt something brush against my bare arms and shoulders. I had no need to turn for I recognized the almost imperceptible breathing of Leoni. I asked to be taken back to my place. Another moment and Leoni, in a black domino, offered me his hand. I went with him. We glided through the crowd, we escaped, by some miracle, the jealous surveillance of Henryet and of my mother's eyes, for she was looking for me again. The very audacity with which I left the ball-room in the presence of five hundred witnesses, to fly with Leoni, prevented my flight from being noticed. We passed through the throng in the dressing-rooms. Some people who were getting their cloaks recognized us and were astonished to see me going down the stairs without my mother, but they also were going away and so would not report what they had seen in the ball-room.
When we reached the courtyard, Leoni, dragging me behind him, rushed to a side gate not used by carriages. We ran a short distance along a dark street; the door of a post-chaise opened, Leoni lifted me in, wrapped me in a huge fur cloak, pulled a travelling cap over my head, and in the twinkling of an eye Monsieur Delpech's brilliantly lighted house, the street and the city disappeared behind us.
We travelled twenty-four hours without once leaving the carriage. At each relay-house, Leoni raised the window a little, put his arm outside, tossed the postilions four times their pay, hurriedly withdrew his arm and closed the window. I scarcely thought of complaining of fatigue or hunger; my teeth were clenched, my nerves tense; I could neither shed a tear nor say a word. Leoni seemed more disturbed by the fear of being pursued than by my suffering and grief.
We halted near a château a short distance from the road. We rang at a garden gate. A servant opened the gate after we had waited a long while. It was two o'clock in the morning. When he finally appeared, grumbling, he put his lantern to Leoni's face; he had no sooner recognized him than he lost himself in apologies and led us to the house. It seemed deserted and ill-kept. Nevertheless I was shown to a fairly comfortable chamber. In a moment a fire was lighted, the bed prepared, and a woman came to undress me. I had fallen into a sort of idiocy. The heat of the fire revivified me somewhat, and I discovered that I was in a night-dress, with my hair unbound, alone with Leoni; but he paid no attention to me; he was busy packing in a box the magnificent costume, the pearls and diamonds in which we were both arrayed a moment before. The jewels that Leoni wore belonged for the most part to my father. My mother, determined that his costume should not be less gorgeous than ours, had taken them from the shop and lent them to him without saying anything about it. When I saw all that wealth packed into a box, I was mortally ashamed of the species of theft we had committed, and I thanked Leoni for thinking about returning them to my father. I don't know what answer he made; he told me that I had four hours to sleep and begged me to make the best of them, without anxiety or grief. He kissed my bare feet and left me. I had not the courage to go to bed; I slept in an arm-chair by the fire. At six o'clock in the morning they came and woke me, brought me some chocolate and men's clothes. I breakfasted and dressed myself with resignation. Leoni came for me, and before daybreak we left that mysterious house, of which I have never known the name or the precise location or the owner; and the same is true of many other houses, some handsome and some wretched, which were thrown open to us, in all countries and at all hours, at the bare mention of Leoni's name.
As we rode on, Leoni recovered his usual serenity of manner and spoke to me with all his former affection. Enslaved and bound to him by a blind passion, I was an instrument whose every chord he played upon at will. If he was pensive I became melancholy; if he was cheerful, I forgot all my sorrows and all my remorse to smile at his jests; if he was passionate, I forgot the weariness of my brain and the exhaustion caused by weeping; I recovered strength enough to love him and to tell him of my love.
We arrived at Geneva, where we remained only long enough to rest. We soon travelled into the interior of Switzerland and there laid aside all fear of pursuit and discovery. Ever since our departure, Leoni's only thought had been to make his way with me to some peaceful rural retreat, there to live on love and poetry in a never-ending tête à-tête. That delicious dream was realized. We found in one of the valleys near Lago Maggiore one of the most picturesque of chalets in a fascinating situation. At a very small expense we had it arranged conveniently inside, and we hired it at the beginning of April. We passed there six months of intoxicating bliss, for which I shall thank God all my life, although He has made me pay very dear for them. We were absolutely alone and cut off from all relations with the world. We were served by a young couple, good-humored, sturdy country people, who added to our contentment by the spectacle of that which they enjoyed. The woman did the housework and the cooking, the husband drove to pasture a cow and two goats, which composed all our live stock, milked and made the cheese. We rose early, and, when the weather was fine, breakfasted a short distance from the house, in a pretty orchard, where the trees, abandoned to the hand of nature, put forth dense branches in every direction, less rich in fruit than in flowers and foliage. Then we went out to drive in the valley or climbed some mountain. We gradually adopted the habit of taking long excursions, and every day discovered some new spot. Mountainous countries have the peculiar charm that one can explore them for a long time before one becomes acquainted with all their beauties and all their secrets. When we went on our longest excursions, Joanne, our light-hearted major-domo, attended us with a basket of provisions, and nothing could be more delightful than our lunches on the grass. Leoni was easily satisfied except as to what he called the refectory. At last, when we had found a little verdure-clad shelf half-way down the slope of some deep gorge, sheltered from wind and sun, with a lovely view, and a brook close at hand sweetened by aromatic plants, he would himself arrange the repast on a white napkin spread on the ground. He would send Joanne to pick strawberries and plunge the wine into the cool water of the stream. He would light a spirit lamp and cook fresh eggs. By the same process I used to make excellent coffee after the cold meat and fruit. In this way we had something of the enjoyments of civilization amid the romantic beauties of the desert.
When the weather was bad, as was often the case in the early spring, we lighted a huge fire to keep the dampness from our little dwelling of fir; we surrounded ourselves with screens which Leoni sawed out, put together and painted with his own hand. We drank tea; and while he smoked a long Turkish pipe I read to him. We called those our Flemish days; while they were less exciting than the others, they were perhaps even pleasanter. Leoni had an admirable talent for apportioning the time so as to make life easy and agreeable. In the morning he would exert his mind to lay out a scheme for the day and arrange our occupations for the different hours; and when it was done he would come and submit it to me. I always found it admirable, and we always adhered strictly to it. In this way, ennui, which always pursues recluses and even lovers in their tête-à-têtes, never came near us. Leoni knew all that must be avoided and all that must be looked after to maintain mental tranquillity and bodily well-being. He would give me directions in his adroitly affectionate way; and, being as submissive to him as a slave to his master, I never opposed a single one of his washes. He said, for instance, that the exchange of thoughts between two people who love each other is the sweetest thing imaginable, but that it may become the greatest curse if it is abused. So he regulated the hours of our interviews and the places where they were to be held. We worked all day; I looked after the housekeeping; I prepared dainty dishes for him or folded his linen with my own hands. He was extremely sensible of such petty refinements of luxury, and found them doubly precious in our little hermitage. He, on his side, provided for all our needs and remedied all the inconveniences of our isolation. He had a little knowledge of all sorts of trades; he did cabinet work, he put on locks, he made partitions with wooden frames and painted paper panels, he prevented chimneys from smoking, he grafted fruit trees, he diverted the course of a stream, so that we had a supply of cool water near the house. He was always busy about something useful, and he always did it well. When these more important duties were performed, he painted in water-colors, composed lovely landscapes from the sketches we had made in our albums during our walks. Sometimes he wandered about the valley alone, making verses, and hurried home to repeat them to me. He often found me in the stable with my apron full of aromatic herbs of which the goats were very fond. My two lovely pets ate from my lap. One was pure white, without a speck: her name wasSnow; she had a gentle, melancholy air. The other was yellow like a chamois, with black beard and legs. She was very young, with a wild, saucy face; we called herDoe. The cow's name wasDaisy. She was red, with black stripes running transversely, like a tiger. She would put her head on my shoulder; and when Leoni found me so, he called me his Virgin at the Manger. He would toss me his album and dictate his verses, which were almost always addressed to me. They were hymns of love and happiness which seemed sublime to me, and which must have been sublime. I would weep silently as I wrote them down; and when I had finished, "Well," Leoni would say, "do you think they are pretty bad?" At that I would raise my tear-stained face to his; he would laugh and kiss me with the keenest delight.
Then he would sit down on the sweet-smelling hay and read me poems in other languages, which he translated with incredible rapidity and accuracy. Meanwhile I was spinning in the half-light of the stable. One must be familiar with the exquisite cleanliness of Swiss stables to understand our choosing ours for our salon. It was traversed by a swift mountain stream which washed it clean every moment, and which rejoiced our ears with its gentle plashing. Tame pigeons drank at our feet, and under the little arch through which the stream entered, saucy sparrows hopped in to bathe and steal a few wisps of hay. It was the coolest spot in warm days, when all the windows were open, and the warmest on cold days, when the smallest cracks were stuffed with straw and furze. Leoni, when tired of reading, would often fall asleep on the freshly-cut grass, and I would leave my work to gaze at that beautiful face, which the serenity of sleep made even nobler than before.
During these busy days we talked little, although almost always together; we would exchange an occasional loving word or caress and encourage each other in our work. But when the evening came, Leoni became indolent in body and mentally active. Those were the hours when he was most lovable, and he reserved them for the outpouring of our affection. Fatigued, but not unpleasantly, by his day's work, he would lie on the moss at my feet, in a lonely spot near the house, on the slope of the mountain. From there we would behold the gorgeous sunset, the melancholy fading away of the daylight, the grave and solemn coming of the night. We knew the moment when all the stars would rise, and over which peak each of them would begin to shine. Leoni was thoroughly familiar with astronomy, but Joanne, too, knew that science of the shepherds after his manner, and he gave the stars other names, often more poetic and more expressive than ours. When Leoni had amused himself sufficiently with his rustic pedantry, he would send him away to play theRanz des Vacheson his reed-pipe at the foot of the mountain. The shrill notes sounded indescribably sweet in the distance. Leoni would fall into a reverie which resembled a trance; and then, when it was quite dark, when the silence of the valley was no longer broken by aught save the plaintive cry of some cliff-dwelling bird, when the fireflies lighted their lamps in the grass about us and a soft breeze sighed through the firs over our heads, Leoni would seem to wake suddenly from a dream, as if to another life. His heart would take fire, his passionate eloquence would overflow my heart. He would talk to the skies, the wind, the echoes, to all nature with enthusiastic fervor; he would take me in his arms and overwhelm me with delirious caresses; then he would weep with love on my bosom, and, growing calmer, would talk to me in the sweetest, most intoxicating words.
Oh! how could I have failed to love that unequalled man, in his good and in his evil days? How lovable he was then! how beautiful! how becoming the sunburn was to his manly face, and with what profound respect it avoided the broad white forehead over the jet-black, eyebrows! How well he knew how to love and to tell his love! What a genius he had for arranging life and making it beautiful! How could I have failed to have blind confidence in him? How could I have failed to accustom myself to absolute submission to him? All that he did, all that he said, was good and wise and noble. He was generous, sensitive, refined, heroic; he took pleasure in relieving the destitution or the infirmities of the poor who knocked at our door. One day he jumped into a stream, at the risk of his life, to save a young shepherd; one night he wandered through the snowdrifts, surrounded by the most awful dangers, to assist some travellers who had lost their way and whose cries of distress we had heard. Oh! how, how could I have distrusted Leoni? how could I have conceived any dread of the future? Do not tell me again that I am credulous and weak; the most strong-minded of women would have been subjugated forever by those six months of love. As for myself, I was absolutely enslaved; and my cruel remorse for having abandoned my parents, the thought of their grief, grew fainter day by day, and, finally, vanished almost entirely. Oh! how great was that man's power!
Juliette paused and fell into a melancholy reverie. A clock in the distance struck twelve. I suggested that she should rest. "No," said she, "if you are not tired of listening to me, I prefer to go on. I feel that I have undertaken a task that will be very painful for my poor heart, and that when I have finished I shall neither feel nor remember anything for several days. I prefer to make the most of the strength I have to-day."
"Yes, you are right, Juliette," I said. "Tear the steel from your breast, and you will be better afterward. But tell me, my poor child, how it was that Henryet's strange conduct at the ball and Leoni's craven submission at a glance from him did not leave a suspicion, a fear in your mind?"
"What could I fear?" replied Juliette. "I knew so little of the affairs of life and the baseness of society that I utterly failed to understand that mystery. Leoni had told me that there was a terrible secret. I imagined a thousand romantic catastrophes. It was the fashion then in books to introduce characters burdened by the most extraordinary and improbable maledictions. Plays and novels alike teemed with sons of headsmen, heroic spies, virtuous murderers and felons. One day I readFrederick Styndall, another day, Cooper'sSpyfell into my hands. Remember that I was a mere child, and that my mind was far behind my heart in my passion. I fancied that society, being unjust and stupid, had placed Leoni under its ban for some sublime imprudence, some involuntary offence, or as the result of some savage prejudice. I will even admit that my poor girlish brain found an additional attraction in that impenetrable mystery, and that my woman's heart took fire at the opportunity of adventuring its entire destiny to repair a noble and poetic misfortune."
"Leoni probably detected that romantic tendency and played upon it?" I said.
"Yes," she replied, "he did. But if he took so much trouble to deceive me, it was because he loved me, because he was determined to have my love at any price."
We were silent for a moment; then Juliette resumed her narrative.
The winter came at last; we had made our plans to endure all its rigors rather than abandon our dear retreat. Leoni told me that he had never been so happy, that I was the only woman he had ever loved, that he was ready to renounce the world in order to live and die in my arms. His taste for dissipation, his passion for gambling—all had vanished, forgotten forever. Oh! how grateful I was to see that man, who shone so in society and was so flattered and courted, renounce without regret all the intoxicating joys of a life of excitement and festivities, to shut himself up with me in a cottage! And be sure, Don Aleo, that Leoni was not deceiving me at that time. While it is true that he had very strong reasons for keeping out of sight, it is none the less certain that he was happy in his retreat, and that he loved me there. Could he have feigned that perfect serenity during six whole months, unchanged for a single day? And why should he not have loved me? I was young and fair, I had left everything for him and I adored him. Understand, I am no longer under any delusion as to his character; I know everything and I will tell you the whole truth. His character is very ugly and very beautiful; very vile and very grand; when one has not the strength to hate the man, one must needs love him and become his victim.
But the winter began so fiercely that our residence in the valley became extremely dangerous. In a few days the snow reached the level of our chalet; it threatened to bury it and to cause our deaths by starvation. Leoni insisted on remaining; he wanted to lay in a stock of provisions and defy the enemy; but Joanne assured him that we should inevitably be lost if we did not beat a retreat at once; that such a winter had not been seen for ten years, and that when the thaw came the chalet would be swept away like a feather by the avalanches, unless Saint Bernard and Our Lady of the Snow-drifts should save it by a miracle.
"If I were alone," said Leoni, "I would wait for a miracle and laugh at the snow-drifts; but I have no courage when you share my dangers. We will go away to-morrow."
"We must do it," I said; "but where shall we go? I shall be recognized and betrayed very soon; I shall be compelled by force to return to my parents."
"There are a thousand ways of eluding men and laws," replied Leoni with a smile; "we can surely find one; don't be alarmed; the whole world is at our disposal."
"And where shall we begin?" I asked, forcing myself to smile too.
"I don't know yet," he replied, "but what does it matter? we shall be together; where can we be unhappy?"
"Alas!" said I, "shall we ever be so happy as we have been here?"
"Do you want to stay here?"
"No," I replied, "we should be happy no longer; in presence of danger, we should always be alarmed for each other."
We made preparations for our departure. Joanne passed the day clearing the path by which we were to go. During the night I had a strange experience, upon which I have feared, many times since then, to meditate.
In the midst of a sound sleep I suddenly felt very cold and woke up. I felt for Leoni at my side, but he was not there; his place was cold, and the bedroom door was ajar, admitting a current of ice-cold air. I waited a few moments, but, as Leoni did not return, I began to be alarmed, so I rose and hastily dressed myself. Even then I waited before making up my mind to go out, reluctant to allow myself to be governed by any mere childish anxiety. But he did not appear; an invincible terror seized upon me, and I went out, scantily clad, with the thermometer fifteen degrees below freezing. I was afraid that Leoni might have gone to assist some poor creatures who were lost in the snow, as had happened a few nights before, and I was determined to follow and find him. I called Joanne and his wife; they were sleeping so soundly that they did not hear me. Thereupon, almost frantic with dread, I went to the edge of the little palisaded platform which surrounded the chalet and saw a faint light twinkling on the snow some distance away. I fancied that I recognized the lantern that Leoni carried on his relief expeditions. I ran toward it as rapidly as the snow would allow me, sinking in up to my knees. I tried to call him, but the cold made my teeth chatter, and the wind, which blew in my face, intercepted my voice. At last I came near to the light and could see Leoni distinctly; he was standing on the spot where I had first seen him, holding a spade. I approached still nearer, the snow deadening the sound of my footsteps, and finally stood almost beside him, unseen by him. The light was enclosed in its metal cylinder and shone through a slit on the opposite side from me, directly upon him.
I saw then that he had shovelled away the snow and dug into the earth; he was up to his knees in a hole he had made.
This strange occupation, at such an hour and in such severe weather, gave me an absurd fright. Leoni seemed to be in extraordinary haste. From time to time he glanced uneasily about; I crouched behind a rock for I was terrified by the expression of his face. It seemed to me that he would kill me if he should find me there. All the fanciful, foolish stories I had read, all the strange conjectures I had made concerning his secret, recurred to my mind; I believed that he had come there to dig up a corpse, and I almost fainted. I was somewhat reassured when I saw him, after digging a little longer, take a box from the hole. He scrutinized it closely, looked to see if the lock had been forced, then placed it on the edge of the hole and began to throw back the earth and snow, taking little pains to conceal the traces of his operation.
When I saw that he was ready to return to the house with his box, I was terribly afraid that he would discover my imprudent curiosity, and I fled as swiftly as I could. I made haste to throw my wet clothes into a corner and go back to bed, resolved to pretend to be fast asleep when he returned; but I had plenty of time to recover from my emotion, for it was more than half an hour before he reappeared.
I lost myself in conjectures concerning that mysterious box, which must have been buried on the mountain since our arrival, and was destined to accompany us, either as a talisman of safety or as an instrument of death. It seemed to me unlikely that it contained money; for it was of considerable size and yet Leoni had lifted it with one hand and without apparent effort. Perhaps it contained papers upon which his very existence depended. What impressed me most strongly was the idea that I had seen the box before; but it was impossible for me to remember when or where. This time its shape and color were engraved on my memory as if by a sort of fatal necessity. I had it before my eyes all night, and in my dreams I saw a multitude of strange objects come out of it: sometimes cards cut into curious shapes, sometimes bloody weapons; sometimes flowers, feathers and jewels; and sometimes bones, snakes, bits of gold, iron chains and anklets.
I was very careful not to question Leoni or to let him suspect my discovery. He had often said to me that on the day that I discovered his secret all would be at an end between us; and although he thanked me on his knees for believing blindly in him, he often gave me to understand that the slightest curiosity on my part would be distasteful to him. We started the next morning on mules, and travelled by post from the nearest town all the way to Venice.
There we alighted at one of those mysterious houses which Leoni seemed to have at his disposal in all countries. This one was dark, dilapidated and hidden away, as it were, in a deserted quarter of the city. He told me that it belonged to a friend of his who was absent; he begged me to try to put up with it for a day or two, adding that there were important reasons why he could not show himself in the city at once, but that, in twenty-four hours at the latest, I should be provided with suitable lodgings and should have no reason to complain of life in his native place.
We had just breakfasted in a cold, damp room, when a shabbily dressed man, with a disagreeable face and a sickly complexion, made his appearance, observing that Leoni had sent for him.
"Yes, yes, my dear Thaddeus," Leoni replied, hastily leaving the table; "I am glad to see you; let us go into another room and not bore madame with business matters."
An hour later Leoni came and kissed me; he seemed excited, but satisfied, as if he had won a victory.
"I must leave you for a few hours," he said; "I am going to have your new home made ready; we shall sleep there to-morrow night."
He was away all day. The next day he went out early. He seemed very busy; but he was in a more cheerful mood than I had yet seen him. That gave me courage to endure the tedium of another twelve hours and dispelled the melancholy impression that cold and silent house produced upon me. In the afternoon I tried to distract my thoughts by going over it; it was very old; some remnants of antiquated furniture, tattered hangings, and several pictures half consumed by rats attracted my attention; but an object even more interesting to me turned my thoughts in another direction.
As I entered the room where Leoni had slept, I saw the famous box on the floor; it was open and entirely empty. An enormous weight was lifted from my mind. The unknown dragon confined in that box had taken flight! the terrible destiny which it had seemed to me to forebode no longer weighed upon us!—"Well, well," I said to myself with a smile, "Pandora's box is empty; hope has remained behind for me."
As I was about to leave the room, I placed my foot on a small bit of cotton wool which had been left lying on the floor with some crumpled tissue paper. I felt something hard and stooped mechanically to pick it up. My fingers felt the same hard substance through the cotton, and on pulling it apart I found a pin made of several large diamonds, which I at once recognized as belonging to my father, and which I had worn on the evening of the last ball, to fasten a scarf on my shoulder. This incident made such an impression on me that I thought no more of the box or of Leoni's secret. I was conscious of nothing but a vague feeling of uneasiness concerning the jewels I had carried with me in my flight, and to which I had not since given even a thought, supposing that Leoni had sent them back at once. The possibility that that had not been done was horrible to me; and as soon as Leoni returned I asked him ingenuously:
"My dear, you didn't forget to send back my father's diamonds after we left Brussels, did you?"
Leoni looked at me with a strange expression. He seemed to be trying to read in the lowest depths of my soul.
"Why don't you answer?" I said; "what is there so surprising in my question?"
"What the devil does it mean?" he replied calmly.
"It means that I went into your room to-day, and found this on your floor. Thereupon I feared that, in the excitement of our flight and the confusion of our travels, you might have forgotten to send back the other jewels. For my own part, I hardly reminded you of it; my brain was in such a whirl."
As I concluded, I handed him the pin. I spoke so naturally and was so far from dreaming of suspecting him, that he saw it at once; and, taking the pin with the utmost calmness, he said:
"Parbleu! I don't know what this means. Where did you find it? Are you sure that it belonged to your father and was not left behind here by the people who occupied the house before us?"
"Oh! yes," said I, "here is an almost imperceptible mark near the fastening; it's my father's private mark. With a magnifying-glass you can see his cipher."
"Very good," he replied; "then the pin must have been left in one of our trunks, and I suppose I dropped it this morning when shaking some of my clothes. Luckily it's the only piece of jewelry we brought away by accident; all the rest was placed in charge of a reliable man and addressed to Delpech, who must have turned it over to your family. I don't believe that it is worth while to return this; it would excite your mother's grief anew for very little money."
"It is worth at least ten thousand francs," I said.
"Very well, keep it until you have an opportunity to send it back. By the way, are you ready? are the trunks locked? There is a gondola at the door and your house is waiting impatiently for you; supper is already served."
Half an hour later we stopped at the door of a magnificent palace. The stairways were covered with amaranth-colored carpets; the white marble rails with flowering orange-trees, in midwinter, and with light statues which seemed to lean over to salute us. The concierge and four servants came forward to assist us to disembark. Leoni took a candlestick from one of them and raised it so that I could read on the cornice of the peristyle, in silver letters on an azure ground:Palazzo Leoni.
"O my love," I cried, "you did not deceive us? You are rich and of noble birth and I am in your house!"
LEONI TAKES JULIETTE TO HISPALACE.Leoni took a candlestick * * * and raised it so that I could read on the cornice of the peristyle, in silver letters, on an azure ground: Palazzo Leoni."O my love," I cried, "you did not deceive us? You are rich and of noble birth, and I am in your house!"
LEONI TAKES JULIETTE TO HISPALACE.
Leoni took a candlestick * * * and raised it so that I could read on the cornice of the peristyle, in silver letters, on an azure ground: Palazzo Leoni.
"O my love," I cried, "you did not deceive us? You are rich and of noble birth, and I am in your house!"
I went all over the palace with childlike delight. It was one of the finest in all Venice. The furniture and the hangings, fairly glistening with newness, had been copied from antique models, so that the paintings on the ceilings and the old-fashioned architecture harmonized perfectly with the new accessories. The luxury that we bourgeois and people of the North affect is so paltry, so vulgar, so slovenly, that I had never dreamed of such elegance. I walked through the vast galleries as through an enchanted palace; all the objects about me were of strange shapes, of unfamiliar aspect; I wondered if I were dreaming, or if I were really the mistress and queen of all those marvellous things. Moreover, that feudal magnificence was a fresh source of enchantment to me. I had never realized the pleasure or the advantage of being noble. In France people no longer know what it is, in Belgium they have never known. Here in Italy the few remaining nobles are still proud and fond of display; the palaces are not demolished, but are allowed to crumble away. Between those walls laden with trophies and escutcheons, beneath those ceilings on which the armorial bearings of the family were painted, face to face with Leoni's ancestors painted by Titian and Veronese, some grave and stern in their long cloaks, others elegant and gracious in their black satin doublets, I understood that pride of rank which may be so attractive and so becoming when it does not adorn a fool. All this illustrious environment was so suited to Leoni that it would be impossible for me, even to-day, to think of him as a plebeian. He was the fitting descendant of those men with black beards and alabaster hands, of the type that Van Dyck has immortalized. He had their eagle-like profile, their delicate and refined features, their tall stature, their eyes, at once mocking and kindly. If those portraits could have walked they would have walked as he did; if they had spoken, they would have had his voice.
"Can it be," I said, throwing my arms about him, "that it was you, my lord, Signor Leone Leoni, who were in that chalet among the goats and hens the other day, with a pickaxe over your shoulder and a blouse on your back? Was it you that lived that life for six months, with a nameless, witless girl, who has no other merit than her love for you? And you mean to keep me with you, you will love me always, and tell me so every morning, as at the chalet? Oh, it is a too exalted and too happy lot for me; I had not aspired so high, and it terrifies me at the same time that it intoxicates me."
"Do not be frightened," he said, with a smile, "be my companion and my queen forever. Now, come to supper; I have two guests to present to you. Arrange your hair and make yourself pretty; and when I call you my wife, don't open your eyes as if you were surprised."
We found an exquisite supper served on a table sparkling with porcelain, glass and plate. The two guests were presented to me with due solemnity; they were Venetians both, with attractive faces and refined manners, and, although very inferior to Leoni, they resembled him somewhat in their pronunciation and in the quality of their minds. I asked him in an undertone if they were kinsmen of his.
"Yes," he replied aloud, with a laugh, "they are my cousins."
"Of course," added one of them, who was addressed as the marquis, "we are all cousins."
The next day, instead of two guests, there were four or five different ones at each meal. In less than a week our house was inundated with intimate friends. These assiduous guests consumed many sweet hours that I might have passed alone with Leoni, but had to share with them all. But Leoni, after his long exile, seemed overjoyed to see his friends once more and to lead a gayer life. I could form no wish opposed to his, and I was happy to see him enjoying himself. To be sure, the society of those men was delightful. They were all young and refined, jovial or intelligent, amiable or entertaining. They had excellent manners, and most of them were men of talent. Every morning we had music; in the afternoon we went on the water; after dinner we went to the theatre; and, on returning home, had supper and cards. I did not enjoy looking on at this last amusement, in which enormous sums changed hands every night. Leoni had given me permission to retire after supper, and I never failed. Little by little the number of our acquaintances increased so that I was bored and fatigued by them; but I said nothing about it. Leoni still seemed enchanted by this dissipated life. All the dandies of all nations who were then in Venice met by appointment at our house to drink and gamble and sing. The best singers from the theatres came often to mingle their voices with our instruments and with Leoni's voice, which was neither less beautiful nor less skilfully managed than theirs. Despite the fascination of this society, I felt more and more the longing for repose. To be sure, we still had some pleasant hours tête-à-tête from time to time. The dandies did not come every day, but the regular habitués consisted of a dozen or more men who formed the nucleus of our dinner-parties. Leoni was so fond of them that I could not help feeling some affection for them. They were the ones who enlivened the whole table by their superiority in every respect to the others. Those men were really remarkable, and seemed in some sense reflections of Leoni. They had that sort of family resemblance, that conformity of ideas and language which had impressed me the first day. There was an indefinable air of subtlety and distinction, which was lacking even in the most distinguished of the others. Their glances were more penetrating, their replies more prompt, their self-possession more lordly, their reckless extravagance in better taste. Each one of them exerted a sort of moral authority over a portion of the new-comers. They acted as their models and guides, at first in small matters, afterward in greater ones. Leoni was the soul of the whole body, the superior chief who was the mentor of that brilliant masculine coterie, in style, tone, dissipation and extravagance.
This species of empire pleased him, and I was not surprised at it. I had seen him reign even more openly at Brussels, and I had shared his pride and his glory; but our happy life at the chalet had taught me the secret of purer, more private joys. I regretted that life, and could not refrain from saying so.
"And so do I," said he. "I regret those months of pure delight, superior to all the empty vanities of society; but God did not choose to change the succession of the seasons for us. There is no eternal happiness any more than there is perpetual spring. It is a law of nature which we cannot escape. Be sure that everything is ordered for the best in this wicked world. The strength of a man's heart is no greater than the duration of the blessings of life. Let us submit; let us bend our necks. The flowers droop, wither and are born again every year. The human heart can renew itself like a flower, when it knows its own strength and does not bloom to the bursting point. Six months of unalloyed felicity was a tremendous allowance, my dear; we should have died of too much happiness if that had continued, or else we should have abused it. Destiny bids us come down from our ethereal peaks and breathe a less pure atmosphere in cities. Let us bow to the necessity and believe that it is well for us. When the fine weather returns again, we will return to our mountains. We shall be the more eager to find there all the pleasures of which we are deprived here; we shall better appreciate the value of our peaceful privacy; and that season of love and delight, which the hardships of the winter would have spoiled for us, will come again even lovelier than last year."
"Oh, yes," said I, embracing him, "we will return to Switzerland! How good you are to want to do it and to promise me that you will! But tell me, Leoni, can we not live more simply and more by ourselves here? We see each other now only through the fumes of punch; we speak to each other only amid songs and laughter. Why have we so many friends? Are we not enough for each other?"
"Why, Juliette," he replied, "angels are children, and you are both. You do not know that love is the function of the noblest faculties of the mind, and that we must take care of those faculties as of the apple of one's eye. You do not know, little girl, what your own heart is. Dear, sensitive, confiding creature that you are, you believe that it is an inexhaustible fountain of love; but the sun itself is not eternal. You do not know that the heart becomes tired like the body, and that it must be treated with the same care. Trust to me, Juliette; let me keep the sacred fire alight in your heart. It is my interest to preserve your love, to prevent you from squandering it too rapidly. All women are like you; they are in such a hurry to love that they suddenly cease to love, and do not know why."
"Bad boy," I said, "are these the things you said to me in the evenings on the mountain? Did you urge me not to love you too much? did you think that I was capable of becoming weary of loving you?"
"No, my angel," Leoni replied, kissing my hands, "nor do I think it now. But listen to my experience: external things exert upon our most secret feelings an influence against which the strongest contend in vain. In our valley, surrounded by pure air, by natural perfumes and melodies, we might well be and were certain to be all love, all poesy, all enthusiasm: but remember that, even while we were there, I was sparing of that enthusiasm, which is so easy to lose, so impossible to find again when it is lost; remember our rainy days, when I was more or less harsh with you in forcing you to keep your mind occupied, in order to save you from reflection and the melancholy which is its inevitable consequence. Be sure that too frequent examination of oneself and others is the most dangerous of occupations. We must shake off the selfish craving which impels us to be forever searching our hearts and the hearts of those who love us, like a foolish husbandman who exhausts the soil by dint of calling on it to produce beyond its capacity. We must know how to be unemotional and frivolous at times; such periods of distraction are dangerous only to weak and indolent hearts. An ardent heart ought to seek them in order not to consume itself; it is always rich enough. A word, a glance, is sufficient to send a thrill through it in the midst of the eddying whirl which carries it away, and to bring it back more ardent and more loving to the consciousness of its passion. Here, you see, we must have excitement and variety; these great palaces are beautiful, but they are melancholy. The sea moss clings to their feet, and the limpid water in which they are reflected is often laden with vapors which fall in tears. This magnificence is severe, and these marks of nobility which please you are simply a long succession of epitaphs and tombs which we must decorate with flowers. We must fill with living beings this echoing mansion, where your footsteps would frighten you if you were alone; we must throw money from the window to this populace which has no other bed than the ice-covered parapets of the bridges, so that the spectacle of its misery may not make us sad amid our well-being. Allow yourself to be cheered by our laughter and lulled to sleep by our songs; be good and do not worry; I will undertake to arrange your life and make it pleasant to you, even if I am unable to make it intoxicating. Be my wife and my mistress at Venice; you shall be my angel and my nymph again among the glaciers of Switzerland."
By such speeches he allayed my anxiety and led me, fascinated and confiding, to the brink of the abyss. I thanked him lovingly for the trouble he took to persuade me, when he could make me obey with a sign. We embraced affectionately and returned to the salon where our friends awaited us to part us.
However, as the days succeeded one another, Leoni did not take the same trouble to reconcile me to them. He paid less attention to my growing discontent, and when I mentioned it to him, he argued with me less gently. One day indeed he was short with me and bitter; I saw that I offended him; I determined to complain no more; but I began to suffer really and to be genuinely unhappy. I waited with resignation until Leoni snatched a few moments to come to me. To be sure he was so kind and loving at those times that I deemed myself foolish and cowardly to have suffered so. My courage and my confidence would revive for a few days; but those days of encouragement became more and more infrequent. Leoni, seeing that I was meek and submissive, still treated me with consideration; but he no longer noticed my melancholy. Ennui devoured me, Venice became hateful to me; its canals, its gondolas, its sky, everything about it was distasteful. During the nights of card-playing I wandered alone on the terrace at the top of the house; I shed bitter tears; I recalled my home, my heedless youth, my kind, foolish mother, my poor father, so loving and so good-natured, and even my aunt, with her petty worries and her long sermons. It seemed to me that I was really homesick, that I longed to fly, to go home and throw myself at my parents' feet, to forget Leoni forever. But if a window opened below me, if Leoni, weary of the game and the heat, came out on the balcony to breathe the fresh air from the canal, I would lean over the rail to look at him, and my heart would beat as during the first days of my passion, when he crossed the threshold of my father's house; if the moon shone upon him and enabled me to distinguish that noble figure beneath the rich fancy costume that he always wore in his own palace, I would thrill with pride and pleasure as on the evening that he led me into that ball-room from which we went forth never to return; if his melodious voice, murmuring a measure from some song, rebounded from the resonant marbles of Venice and rose to my ears, I would feel the tears flowing down my cheeks, as on those evenings among the mountains when he sang me a ballad composed for me in the morning.
A few words which I overheard from the mouth of one of his friends increased my depression and my disgust to an intolerable degree. Among Leoni's twelve intimate associates, the Vicomte de Chalm, who called himself anémigréFrenchman, was the one whose attentions were most offensive to me. He was the oldest of them all, and perhaps the cleverest; but underneath his exquisite manners I detected a sort of cynicism which often revolted me. He was satirical, cold-blooded and insolent; furthermore, he was a man without morals and without heart; but I knew nothing of that, and he displeased me, apart from that. One evening when I was on the balcony, hidden from him by the silk curtains, I heard him say to the Venetian marquis: "Why, where's Juliette?"—That mode of speaking of me brought the blood to my cheeks; I kept perfectly still and listened.—"I don't know," the Venetian replied. "Why, are you so much in love with her?"—"Not too much," was the reply, "but enough."—"And Leoni?"—"Leoni will turn her over to me one of these days."—"What! his own wife?"—"Nonsense, marquis! are you mad?" replied the viscount; "she is a girl he seduced at Brussels; when he has had enough of her, and that will be before long, I will gladly take charge of her. If you want her next after me, marquis, put your name down."—"Many thanks," replied the marquis; "I know how you deprave women, and I should be afraid to succeed you."
I heard no more; I leaned over the balustrade half-dead, and, hiding my face in my shawl, wept with rage and shame.
That same night I called Leoni into my room, and demanded satisfaction for the way I was treated by his friends. He took the insult with a coolness which dealt my heart a mortal blow.—"You are a little fool," he said to me; "you don't know what men are; their thoughts are indiscreet and their words still more so; the rakes are the best of them. A strong woman should laugh at their airs instead of losing her temper."
I fell upon a chair and burst into tears, crying;—"O mother! mother! how low has your daughter fallen!"
Leoni exerted himself to soothe me, and succeeded only too quickly. He knelt at my feet, kissed my hands and my arms, implored me to treat with scorn a foolish remark and to think of nothing but him and his love.
"Alas!" said I, "what am I to think when your friends flatter themselves that they can pick me up as they do your old pipes when you want them no longer."
"Juliette," he replied, "wounded pride makes you bitter and unjust. I have been a libertine, as you know; I have often told you of my youthful disorders; but I thought that I had purified myself in the air of our valley. My friends are still living the life that I used to lead; they know nothing of the six months we passed in Switzerland; they could never understand them. But ought you to misinterpret and forget them?"
I begged his pardon, I shed sweeter tears on his brow and his beautiful hair; I strove to forget the uncomfortable impression I had received. I flattered myself moreover that he would make his friends understand that I was not a kept mistress and that they must respect me; but he either did not choose to do it or did not think of it, for on the next and following days I saw that Monsieur de Chalm's eyes followed me and solicited me with revolting insolence.
I was in despair, but I did not know which way to turn to avoid the evils into which I had plunged. I was too proud to be happy, and loved Leoni too dearly to leave him.
One evening I had gone into the salon to get a book I had left on the piano. Leoni was surrounded by a select party of his friends; they were grouped around the tea table at the end of the room, which was dimly lighted, and did not notice my presence. The viscount seemed to be in one of his wickedest teasing moods.
"Baron Leone de Leoni," he said in a dry, mocking voice, "do you know, my dear fellow, that you are getting in very deep?"
"What do you mean?" rejoined Leoni, "I have no debts at Venice yet."
"But you soon will have."
"I hope so," retorted Leoni with the utmost tranquillity.
"Vive Dieu!" said the viscount, "you are the first of men when it comes to ruining yourself; half a million in three months! do you know that's running a very pretty rig?"
Surprise had nailed me to my place; motionless and holding my breath, I awaited the end of this strange conversation.
"Half a million?" echoed the Venetian marquis indifferently.
"Yes," said Chalm, "Thaddeus the Jew advanced him five hundred thousand francs at the beginning of the winter."
"That's doing very well," said the marquis. "Have you paid the rent of your ancestral palace, Leoni?"
"Parbleu! yes, in advance," said Chalm; "would they have let it to him otherwise?"
"What do you expect to do when you have nothing left?" queried another of Leoni's trusty friends.
"Run in debt," replied Leoni with imperturbable tranquillity.
"That's easier than to find Jews who will leave you at peace for three months," said the viscount. "What will you do when your creditors take you by the collar."
"I will take a pretty little boat," replied Leoni with a smile.
"Good! and go to Trieste?"
"No, that is too near; to Palermo, I have never been there."
"But when you arrive anywhere," said the marquis, "you must cut something of a figure for a few days."
"Providence will provide for that," said Leoni, "she is the mother of the audacious."
"But not of the indolent," said Chalm, "and I know nobody on earth more indolent than you. What the devil did you do in Switzerland with your infanta for six months?"
"Silence on that subject!" retorted Leoni; "I loved her, and I'll throw my glass at the head of any man who sees anything to laugh at in that."
"Leoni, you drink too much," observed another of his friends.
"Perhaps so, but I have said what I have said."
The viscount didn't take up this species of challenge, and the marquis made haste to change the conversation.
"Why, in God's name, aren't you playing?" he asked Leoni.
"Ventre-Dieu! I play every day to oblige you, although I detest gambling; you will make a fool of me with your cards and your dice, and your pockets like the cask of the Danaides, and your insatiable hands! You are nothing but a parcel of fools, the whole of you. When you have made a hit, instead of taking a rest and enjoying life like true sybarites, you keep at it until you have spoiled your luck."
"Luck, luck!" said the marquis, "everyone knows what luck is."
"Many thanks!" said Leoni, "I no longer care to know; I was too thoroughly currycombed at Paris. When I think that there is one man, whom may God in his mercy consign to all the devils——!"
"Well?" said the viscount.
"A man," said the marquis, "of whom we must rid ourselves at any cost, if we wish to enjoy liberty again on this earth. But, patience, there are two of us against him."
"Never fear," said Leoni, "I have not so far forgotten the old customs of the country that I don't know how to clear my path of the man who stands in my way. Except for my devil of a love-affair, which filled my brain, I had a fine chance in Brussels."
"You?" said the marquis; "you never did anything in that line, and you will never have the courage."
"Courage?" cried Leoni, half-rising, with flashing eyes.
"No extravagance," replied the marquis, with that horrifying sang-froid which they all had. "Let us understand each other. You have courage to kill a bear or a wild boar, but you have too many sentimental and philosophical ideas in your head to kill a man."
"That may be," said Leoni, resuming his seat, "but I am not sure."
"You don't mean to play at Palermo, then?" said the viscount.
"To the devil with your gambling! If I could get up a passion for something—hunting, or a horse, or an olive-skinned Calabrian—I would go next summer, and shut myself up in the Abruzzi and pass a few more months forgetting you all."
"Rekindle your passion for Juliette," said the viscount, with a sneer.
"I will not rekindle my passion for Juliette," replied Leoni, angrily, "but I will strike you if you mention her name again."
"We must make him drink some tea," said the viscount, "he's dead drunk."
"Come, come, Leoni," cried the marquis, grasping his arm, "you treat us horribly to-night. What's the matter with you, in God's name? Are we no longer friends? do you doubt us? Speak."
"No, I don't doubt you," said Leoni; "you have given me back as much as I took from you. I know what you are worth; good and bad, I judge you all, without prejudice or prepossession."
"Ah! I should like to hear your judgment!" said the viscount, between his teeth.
"Come, come! more punch! more punch!" cried the other guests. "There's no possibility of any more fun unless we drink Chalm and Leoni under the table. They have reached the stage of nervous spasms; let's put them in a trance."
"Yes, my friends, my very dear friends!" cried Leoni, "punch! friendship! life—a jolly life! The deuce take the cards! they are what make me ugly. Here's to drunkenness! Here's to the ladies! Here's to sloth, tobacco, music and money! Here's to the young maids and old countesses! Here's to the devil! Here's to love! Here's to all that makes one live! Everything is good when one is well enough constituted to make the most of it and enjoy it."
They all rose, shouting a drinking song. I fled; I ran upstairs with the frenzy of one who thinks herself pursued, and fell in a swoon on my bedroom floor.
The next morning they found me lying on the floor, as stiff and cold as a corpse; I had brain fever. I believe that Leoni was attentive to me; it seemed to me that I saw him frequently at my bedside, but I had only a vague memory of it. After three days I was out of danger. Then Leoni came from time to time to inquire for me, and to pass part of the afternoon with me. He left the palace every evening at six o'clock, and did not return until next morning. That fact I learned later.
Of all that I had heard I had clearly understood but one thing, which was the cause of my despair: it was that Leoni no longer loved me. Until then I had always refused to believe it, although his conduct should have made it clear to me. I resolved to contribute no farther to his ruin, and not to abuse a remnant of compassion and generosity which led him to continue to show me some consideration. I sent for him as soon as I felt strong enough to endure the interview, and told him what I had heard him say about me in the midst of the revel; I kept silence as to all the rest. I could not see clearly in that confused mass of infamous things which the remarks of his friends had caused me to suspect; I did not choose to understand them. Moreover, I was ready to consent to everything: to desertion, despair and death.
I told him that I had decided to go away in a week, and that I would accept nothing from him thenceforth. I had kept my father's pin; by selling it I could obtain much more than I needed to return to Brussels.
The courage with which I spoke, and which the fever doubtless assisted, dealt Leoni an unexpected blow. He said nothing, but paced the floor excitedly; then he began to sob and cry, and fell, gasping for breath, on a chair. Dismayed by his apparent condition, I left my reclining chair in spite of myself, and went to him with an air of solicitude. Thereupon he seized me in his arms and, pressing me frantically to his breast, cried:
"No, no! you shall not leave me; I will never consent to it; if your pride, perfectly just and legitimate as it is, will not let you yield, I will lie at your feet, across this doorway, and I will kill myself if you step over me. No, you shall not go, for I love you passionately; you are the only woman in the world whom I have ever been able to respect and admire after possessing her for six months. What I said was nonsense, and an infamous lie; you do not know, Juliette, oh! you do not know all my misfortunes! you do not know to what I am condemned by the society of a coterie of abandoned men, to what I am impelled by a soul of brass, fire, gold and mud, which I received from heaven and hell in concert! If you will not love me any longer, then I will live no longer. What have I not done, what have I not sacrificed, what faculties have I not debased, to retain my hold upon this execrable life, made execrable by them! What mocking demon is confined in my brain to make me still find attraction in this life at times, and shatter the most sacred ties to plunge into it still deeper? Ah! it is time to have done with it. Since I was born, I have known but one really beautiful, really pure time, and that was when I possessed and adored you. That purged me of all my wickedness, and I should have remained in the chalet under the snow; I should have died at peace with you, with God and with myself, whereas here I am ruined in your eyes and my own. Juliette, Juliette! mercy, pardon! I feel that my heart will break if you abandon me. I am young still; I want to live, to be happy, and I never shall be, except with you. Will you punish me with death for a blasphemous word that escaped my lips when I was intoxicated? Do you believe what I said? can you believe it? Oh! how I suffer! how I have suffered for a fortnight! I have secrets which burn my vitals; if only I could tell them to you!—but you would never be able to listen to the end."
"I know them," I cried; "and if you loved me, I would care nothing for all the rest."
"You know them!" he exclaimed with an air of bewilderment; "you know them? What do you know?"
"I know that you are ruined, that this palace is not yours, that you have squandered an enormous sum in three months; I know that you have become accustomed to this adventurous life and these dissipated habits. I do not know how you reconstruct your fortune so quickly or how you throw it away; I fancy that gambling is your ruin and your resource; I believe that you have about you a deplorable circle of friends, and that you are struggling against shockingly bad advice; I believe that you are on the brink of a precipice, but that you can still avoid it."
"Well, yes, that is all true," he cried; "you know everything! and you will forgive me?"
"If I had not lost your love," I replied, "I should not consider it a loss to leave this palace, this luxury and this society, all of which are hateful to me. However poor we may be, we can always live as we lived in our chalet—there, or somewhere else, if you are tired of Switzerland. If you still loved me, you would not be ruined; for you would think neither of gambling nor of intemperance, nor of any of the passions which you commemorated in an infernal toast; if you loved me, you would pay what you owe with what you have left, and we would go and bury ourselves and love each other in some secluded spot where I would quickly forget what I have learned, where I would never remind you of it, where I could not suffer because of it—if you loved me!"
"Oh! I do love you, I do love you!" he cried; "let us go! let us fly, save me! Be my benefactress, my angel, as you have always been! Come, and forgive me!"
He threw himself at my feet and all that the most fervent passion can dictate, he said to me with so much warmth that I believed it—and I shall always believe it. Leoni deceived me, degraded me, and loved me at the same time.
One day, to evade the keen reproaches that I heaped upon him, he tried to rehabilitate the passion of gambling.
"Gambling," he said, with the specious eloquence which had only too much power over me, "is a passion much more energetic than love. More fruitful in terrible dramas, it is more intoxicating, more heroic in the acts which combine to attain its end. I must say it, alas! that while that end is vile in appearance, the ardor is irresistible, the audacity is sublime, the sacrifices are blind and unlimited. You must know, Juliette, that women never inspire such passions. Gold has a power superior to theirs. In strength, in courage, in devotion, in perseverance, love, compared with the gambler's stake, is only a feeble child whose efforts are deserving of pity. How many men have you seen sacrifice to a mistress that inestimable treasure, that priceless necessity, that condition of existence without which we feel that existence is unendurable—honor? I have known very few whose devotion goes beyond the sacrifice of life. Every day the gambler sacrifices his honor and lives on. The gambler is keen, he is stoical, he takes his triumph coolly, he takes his downfall coolly; he passes in a few hours from the lowest ranks of society to the highest; in a few hours more he goes down again to his starting-point, and all without change of attitude or expression. In a few hours, without leaving the spot to which his demon chains him, he incurs all the vicissitudes of life, he passes through all the phases of fortune which represent the different social conditions. By turns king and beggar, he climbs the long ladder at a single stride, always calm, always self-controlled, always sustained by his sturdy ambition, always spurred on by the intense thirst that consumes him. What will he be an hour hence? prince or slave? How will he come forth from that den? stripped naked or bent beneath the weight of gold? What does it matter? He will return to-morrow to remake his fortune, to lose it or to triple it. The one thing impossible for him is repose; he is like the storm bird that cannot live without raging winds and an angry sea. He is accused of loving gold! he loves it so little that he throws it away by the handful. That gift of hell is powerless to benefit him or satisfy his craving. He is no sooner rich than he is in great haste to be ruined in order to enjoy that nerve-racking, terrible emotion without which life is tasteless to him. What is gold in his eyes? Less in itself than grains of sand in yours. But gold is to him an emblem of the blessings and the evils which he seeks and defies. Gold is his plaything, his enemy, his God, his dream, his demon, his mistress, his poesy: it is the ghost which haunts him, which he attacks, grasps, and then allows to escape, that he may have the pleasure of renewing the struggle and of engaging once more in a hand-to-hand conflict with destiny. It is magnificent, I tell you! It is absurd, to be sure, and should be condemned, because energy thus employed is of no advantage to society, because the man who expends his strength for such an end robs his fellow-men of all the good he might have done, them with less selfishness; but when you condemn him, do not despise him, ye narrow-minded creatures who are capable of neither good nor evil; do not gaze with dismay at the colossus of will-power, struggling thus on a tempestuous sea for the sole purpose of exerting his strength and forcing the sea back. His selfishness leads him into the midst of fatigues and dangers, as yours binds you down to patient, hard-working occupations. How many men in the whole world can you think of who work for their country without thinking of themselves? He voluntarily isolates himself, sets himself apart; he stakes his present, his repose, his honor. He dooms himself to suffering, to fatigue. Deplore his error if you will, but do not compare yourself with him, in the pride of your heart, in order to glorify yourself at his expense. Let his fatal example serve simply to console you for your own harmless nullity."
"O heaven!" I replied, "upon what sophistries your heart feeds, or else how weak my mind must be! What! the gambler is not despicable, you say? O Leoni, why, having so much strength of mind, have you not employed it in overcoming yourself in the interest of your fellow-men?"
"Apparently, because I have misunderstood life," he replied in a bitter, ironical tone. "Because, instead of appearing on a sumptuously appointed stage, I appeared in an open-air theatre; because, instead of spending my time declaiming specious moral apothegms on the stage of society and playing heroic rôles, I amused myself by performing feats of strength and risking my life on a tight-rope, in order to give full play to the strength of my muscles. And even that comparison amounts to nothing: the tight-rope dancer has his vanity as well as the tragedian or the philanthropic orator. The gambler has none; he is neither admired nor applauded nor envied. His triumphs are so short-lived and so hazardous that it is hardly worth while to speak of them. On the other hand, society condemns him, the common herd despises him, especially on the days when he has lost. All his charlatanism consists in showing a bold front, in falling manfully before a group of selfish creatures who do not even look at him, they are so engrossed by their own mental struggles! If in his swift hours of good luck he finds some enjoyment in gratifying the commonplace vanities of luxury, it is a very brief tribute that he pays to human weaknesses. Ere long he will go and sacrifice remorselessly those childish joys of an instant to the devouring activity of his mind, to that infernal fever which does not permit him to live for one whole day as other men live. Vanity in him! Why, he has not the time for it, he has something else to do! Has he not his heart to torture, his brain to overturn, his blood to drink, his flesh to torment, his gold to lose, his life to endanger, to reconstruct, to pull down, to wrench, to tear in pieces, to risk altogether, to reconquer, bit by bit, to put in his purse, to toss on the table every moment? Ask the sailor if he can live on shore, the bird if he can do without his wings, man's heart if it can do without emotions. The gambler then is not criminal in himself; it is always his social position that makes him so, his family, whom he ruins or dishonors. But suppose him to be like me, alone in the world, without attachments, without kindred near enough in degree to be taken into account, free, thrown on his own resources, satiated or deceived in love, as I have so often been, and you will pity his error, you will regret for his sake that he was born with a sanguine and vain rather than with a bilious and reserved temperament. How do you argue that the gambler is in the same category as brigands and filibusters? Ask governments why they derive a part of their revenues from such a shameful source? They alone are guilty of offering those terrible temptations to restlessness, those deplorable resources to despair. But although love of gambling is not in itself so degrading as the majority of other passions, it is the most dangerous of all, the keenest, the most irresistible, and attended by the most wretched consequences. It is almost impossible for the gambler not to dishonor himself for a few years. As for myself," he added, with a gloomier manner and in a less vibrant voice, "after enduring for a long time this life of torture and convulsions with the chivalrous heroism which was the foundation of my character, I allowed myself to be corrupted at last; that is to say, my strength being gradually exhausted by this constant conflict, I lost the stoical courage with which I had accepted reverses, endured the privations of ghastly poverty, recommenced the building of my fortune, sometimes with a single sou, waited, hoped, advanced warily and step by step, sacrificing a whole month to repair the losses of a single day. Such was my life for a long while. But at last, weary of suffering, I began to seek outside of my own will, outside of my virtue,—for it must be admitted that the gambler has a virtue of his own,—the means of regaining more quickly what I had lost; I borrowed and from that moment I was lost myself. At first a man suffers cruelly when he finds himself in an indelicate position; but eventually he gets used to it, as to everything else, becomes numb and indifferent. I did as all gamblers and spendthrifts do; I became dangerous and harmful to my friends. I heaped upon their heads the evils which I had for a long time bravely borne on my own. It was very culpable; I risked my own honor, then the honor and the lives of my nearest and dearest, as I had risked my money. There is this that is horrible about gambling, that it gives you none of those lessons which it is impossible to forget. It is always there, beckoning to you! That inexhaustible pile of gold is always before your eyes. It follows you about, it coaxes you, it bids you hope, and sometimes it keeps its promises, restores your courage, re-establishes your credit, seems to postpone dishonor again; but dishonor is consummated the moment that honor is voluntarily put in peril."