Chapter III: Part I: I (3)

Hereafter he was careful to dissimulate, and seemed exclusively occupied in subjecting his son to a system of his invention, the excessive rigor of which would have upset a steadier one than he.

He demanded of him daily written attestations of his attendance both at the law-school and at the lawyer’s office. He marked out the itinerary of his walks for him, and measured the time they required, within a few minutes. Immediately after dinner he shut him up in his room, under lock and key, and never failed, when he came home at ten o’clock to make sure of his presence.

He could not have taken steps better calculated to exalt still more Mme. Favoral’s blind tenderness.

When she heard that Maxence had a mistress, she had been rudely shocked in her most cherished feelings. It is never without a secret jealousy that a mother discovers that a woman has robbed her of her son’s heart. She had retained a certain amount of spite against him on account of disorders, which, in her candor, she had never suspected. She forgave him every thing when she saw of what treatment he was the object.

She took sides with him, believing him to be the victim of a most unjust persecution. In the evening, after her husband had gone out, Gilberte and herself would take their sewing, sit in the hall outside his room, and converse with him through the door. Never had they worked so hard for the shop-keeper in the Rue St. Denis. Some weeks they earned as much as twenty-five or thirty francs.

But Maxence’s patience was exhausted; and one morning he declared resolutely that he would no longer attend the law-school, that he had been mistaken in his vocation, and that there was no human power capable to make him return to M. Chapelain’s.

“And where will you go?” exclaimed his father. “Do you expect me eternally to supply your wants?”

He answered that it was precisely in order to support himself, and conquer his independence, that he had resolved to abandon a profession, which, after two years, yielded him twenty francs a month.

“I want some business where I have a chance to get rich,” he replied. “I would like to enter a banking-house, or some great financial establishment.”

Mme. Favoral jumped at the idea.

“That’s a fact,” she said to her husband. “Why couldn’t you find a place for our son at the Mutual Credit? There he would be under your own eyes. Intelligent as he is, backed by M. de Thaller and yourself, he would soon earn a good salary.”

M. Favoral knit his brows.

“That I shall never do,” he uttered. “I have not sufficient confidence in my son. I cannot expose myself to have him compromise the consideration which I have acquired for myself.”

And, revealing to a certain extent the secret of his conduct:

“A cashier,” he added, “who like me handles immense sums cannot be too careful of his reputation. Confidence is a delicate thing in these times, when there are so many cashiers constantly on the road to Belgium. Who knows what would be thought of me, if I was known to have such a son as mine?”

Mme. Favoral was insisting, nevertheless, when he seemed to make up his mind suddenly.

“Enough,” he said. “Maxence is free. I allow him two years to establish himself in some position. That delay over, good-by: he can find board and lodging where he please. That’s all. I don’t want to hear any thing more about it.”

It was with a sort of frenzy that Maxence abused that freedom; and in less than two weeks he had dissipated three months’ earnings of his mother and sister.

That time over, he succeeded, thanks to M. Chapelain, in finding a place with an architect.

This was not a very brilliant opening; and the chances were, that he might remain a clerk all his life. But the future did not trouble him much. For the present, he was delighted with this inferior position, which assured him each month one hundred and seventy-five francs.

One hundred and seventy-five francs! A fortune. And so he rushed into that life of questionable pleasures, where so many wretches have left not only the money which they had, which is nothing, but the money which they had not, which leads straight to the police-court.

He made friends with those shabby fellows who walk up and down in front of the Cafe Riche, with an empty stomach, and a tooth-pick between their teeth. He became a regular customer at those low cafes of the Boulevards, where plastered girls smile to the men. He frequented those suspicious table d’hotes where they play baccarat after dinner on a wine-stained table-cloth, and where the police make periodical raids. He ate suppers in those night restaurants where people throw the bottles at each other’s heads after drinking their contents.

Often he remained twenty-four hours without coming to the Rue St. Gilles; and then Mme. Favoral spent the night in the most fearful anxiety. Then, suddenly, at some hour when he knew his father to be absent, he would appear, and, taking his mother to one side:

“I very much want a few louis,” he would say in a sheepish tone.

She gave them to him; and she kept giving them so long as she had any, not, however, without observing timidly to him that Gilberte and herself could not earn very much.

Until finally one evening, and to a last demand:

“Alas!” she answered sorrowfully, “I have nothing left, and it is only on Monday that we are to take our work back. Couldn’t you wait until then?”

He could not wait: he was expected for a game. Blind devotion begets ferocious egotism. He wanted his mother to go out and borrow the money from the grocer or the butcher. She was hesitating. He spoke louder.

Then Mlle. Gilberte appeared.

“Have you, then, really no heart?” she said. “It seems to me, that, if I were a man, I would not ask my mother and sister to work for me.”

XII

Gilberte Favoral had just completed her eighteenth year. Rather tall, slender, her every motion betrayed the admirable proportions of her figure, and had that grace which results from the harmonious blending of litheness and strength. She did not strike at first sight; but soon a penetrating and indefinable charm arose from her whole person; and one knew not which to admire most,--the exquisite perfections of her figure, the divine roundness of her neck, her aerial carriage, or the placid ingenuousness of her attitudes. She could not be called beautiful, inasmuch as her features lacked regularity; but the extreme mobility of her countenance, upon which could be read all the emotions of her soul, had an irresistible seduction. Her large eyes, of velvety blue, had untold depths and an incredible intensity of expression; the imperceptible quiver of her rosy nostrils revealed an untamable pride; and the smile that played upon her lips told her immense contempt for every thing mean and small. But her real beauty was her hair,--of a blonde so luminous that it seemed powdered with diamond-dust; so thick and so long, that to be able to twist and confine it, she had to cut off heavy locks of it to the very root.

Alone, in the house, she did not tremble at her father’s voice. The studied despotism which had subdued Mme. Favoral had revolted her, and her energy had become tempered under the same system of oppression which had unnerved Maxence.

Whilst her mother and her brother lied with that quiet impudence of the slave, whose sole weapon is duplicity, Gilberte preserved a sullen silence. And if complicity was imposed upon her by circumstances, if she had to maintain a falsehood, each word cost her such a painful effort, that her features became visibly altered.

Never, when her own interests were alone at stake, had she stooped to an untruth. Fearlessly, and whatever might be the result,

“That is the fact,” she would say.

Accordingly, M. Favoral could not help respecting her to a degree; and, when he was in fine humor, he called her the Empress Gilberte. For her alone he had some deference and some attentions. He moderated, when she looked at him, the brutality of his language. He brought her a few flowers every Saturday.

He had even allowed her a professor of music; though he was wont to declare that a woman needs but two accomplishments,--to cook and to sew. But she had insisted so much, that he had at last discovered for her, in an attic of the Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule, an old Italian master, the Signor Gismondo Pulei, a sort of unknown genius, for whom thirty francs a month were a fortune, and who conceived a sort of religious fanaticism for his pupil.

Though he had always refused to write a note, he consented, for her sake, to fix the melodies that buzzed in his cracked brain; and some of them proved to be admirable. He dreamed to compose for her an opera that would transmit to the most remote generations the name of Gismondo Pulei.

“The Signora Gilberte is the very goddess of music,” he said to M. Favoral, with transports of enthusiasm, which intensified still his frightful accent.

The cashier of the Mutual Credit Society shrugged his shoulders, answering that there is no harmony for a man who spends his days listening to the exciting music of golden coins. In spite of which his vanity seemed highly gratified, when on Saturday evenings, after dinner, Mlle. Gilberte sat at the piano, and Mme. Desclavettes, suppressing a yawn, would exclaim,

“What remarkable talent the dear child has!”

The young girl had, then, a positive influence; and it was to her entreaties alone, and not to those of his wife, that he had several times forgiven Maxence. He would have done much more for her, had she wished it; but she would have been compelled to ask, to insist, to beg.

“And it’s humiliating,” she used to say.

Sometimes Mme. Favoral scolded her gently, saying that her father would certainly not refuse her one of those pretty toilets which are the ambition and the joy of young girls.

But she:

“It is much less mortification to me to wear these rags than to meet with a refusal,” she replied. “I am satisfied with my dresses.”

With such a character, surrounded, however, by a meek resignation, and an unalterable _sang-froid_, she inspired a certain respect to both her mother and her brother, who admired in her an energy of which they felt themselves incapable.

And when she appeared, and commenced reproaching him in an indignant tone of voice, with the baseness of his conduct, and his insatiate demands, Maxence was almost stunned.

“I did not know,” he commenced, turning as red as fire.

She crushed him with a look of mingled contempt and pity; and, in an accent of haughty irony:

“Indeed,” she said, “you do not know whence the money comes that you extort from our mother!”

And holding up her hand, still remarkably handsome, though slightly deformed by the constant handling of the needle; the fourth finger of the right hand bent by the thread, and the fore-finger of the left tattooed and lacerated by the needle:

“Indeed,” she repeated, “you do not know that my mother and myself, we spend all our days, and the greater part of our nights, working?”

Hanging his head, he said nothing.

“If it were for myself alone,” she continued, “I would not speak to you thus. But look at our mother! See her poor eyes, red and weak from her ceaseless labor! If I have said nothing until now, it is because I did not as yet despair of your heart; because I hoped that you would recover some feeling of decency. But no, nothing. With time, your last scruples seem to have vanished. Once you begged humbly; now you demand rudely. How soon will you resort to blows?”

“Gilberte!” stammered the poor fellow, “Gilberte!”

She interrupted him:

“Money!” she went on, “always, and without time, you must have money; no matter whence it comes, nor what it costs. If, at least, you had to justify your expenses, the excuse of some great passion, or of some object, were it absurd, ardently pursued! But I defy you to confess upon what degrading pleasures you lavish our humble economies. I defy you to tell us what you mean to do with the sum that you demand to-night,--that sum for which you would have our mother stoop to beg the assistance of a shop-keeper, to whom we would be compelled to reveal the secret of our shame.”

Touched by the frightful humiliation of her son:

“He is so unhappy!” stammered Mme. Favoral.

“He unhappy!” she exclaimed. “What, then, shall we say of us? and, above all, what shall you say of yourself, mother? Unhappy!--he, a man, who has liberty and strength, who may undertake every thing, attempt any thing, dare any thing. Ah, I wish I were a man! I! I would be a man as there are some, as I know some; and I would have avenged you, O beloved mother! long, long ago, from father; and I would have begun to repay you all the good you have done me.”

Mme. Favoral was sobbing.

“I beg of you,” she murmured, “spare him.”

“Be it so,” said the young girl. “But you must allow me to tell him that it is not for his sake that I devote my youth to a mercenary labor. It is for you, adored mother, that you may have the joy to give him what he asks, since it is your only joy.”

Maxence shuddered under the breath of that superb indignation. That frightful humiliation, he felt that he deserved it only too much. He understood the justice of these cruel reproaches. And, as his heart had not yet spoiled with the contact of his boon companions, as he was weak, rather than wicked, as the sentiments which are the honor and pride of a man were not dead within him.

“Ah! you are a brave sister, Gilberte,” he exclaimed; “and what you have just done is well. You have been harsh, but not as much as I deserve. Thanks for your courage, which will give me back mine. Yes, it is a shame for me to have thus cowardly abused you both.”

And, raising his mother’s hand to his lips: “Forgive, mother,” he continued, his eyes overflowing with tears; “forgive him who swears to you to redeem his past, and to become your support, instead of being a crushing burden--”

He was interrupted by the noise of steps on the stairs, and the shrill sound of a whistle.

“My husband!” exclaimed Mme. Favoral,--“your father, my children!”

“Well,” said Mlle. Gilberte coldly.

“Don’t you hear that he is whistling? and do you forget that it is a proof that he is furious? What new trial threatens us again?”

XIII

Mme. Favoral spoke from experience. She had learned, to her cost, that the whistle of her husband, more surely than the shriek of the stormy petrel, announces the storm.--And she had that evening more reasons than usual to fear. Breaking from all his habits, M. Favoral had not come home to dinner, and had sent one of the clerks of the Mutual Credit Society to say that they should not wait for him.

Soon his latch-key grated in the lock; the door swung open; he came in; and, seeing his son:

“Well, I am glad to find you here,” he exclaimed with a giggle, which with him was the utmost expression of anger.

Mme. Favoral shuddered. Still under the impression of the scene which had just taken place, his heart heavy, and his eyes full of tears, Maxence did not answer.

“It is doubtless a wager,” resumed the father, “and you wish to know how far my patience may go.”

“I do not understand you,” stammered the young man.

“The money that you used to get, I know not where, doubtless fails you now, or at least is no longer sufficient, and you go on making debts right and left--at the tailor’s, the shirt maker’s, the jeweler’s. Of course, it’s simple enough. We earn nothing; but we wish to dress in the latest style, to wear a gold chain across our vest, and then we make dupes.”

“I have never made any dupes, father.”

“Bah! And what, then, do you call all these people who came this very day to present me their bills? For they did dare to come to my office! They had agreed to come together, expecting thus to intimidate me more easily. I told them that you were of age, and that your business was none of mine. Hearing this, they became insolent, and commenced speaking so loud, that their voices could be heard in the adjoining rooms. At that very moment, the manager, M. de Thaller, happened to be passing through the hall. Hearing the noise of a discussion, he thought that I was having some difficulty with some of our stockholders, and he came in, as he had a right to. Then I was compelled to confess everything.”

He became excited at the sound of his words, like a horse at the jingle of his bells. And, more and more beside himself:

“That is just what your creditors wished,” he pursued. “They thought I would be afraid of a row, and that I would ‘come down.’ It is a system of blackmailing, like any other. An account is opened to some young rascal; and, when the amount is reasonably large, they take it to the family, saying, ‘Money, or I make row.’ Do you think it is to you, who are penniless, that they give credit? It’s on my pocket that they were drawing,--on my pocket, because they believed me rich. They sold you at exorbitant prices every thing they wished; and they relied on me to pay for trousers at ninety francs, shirts at forty francs, and watches at six hundred francs.”

Contrary to his habit, Maxence did not offer any denial.

“I expect to pay all I owe,” he said.

“You!”

“I give my word I will!”

“And with what, pray?”

“With my salary.”

“You have a salary, then?”

Maxence blushed.

“I have what I earn at my employer’s.”

“What employer?”

“The architect in whose office M. Chapelain helped me to find a place.”

With a threatening gesture, M. Favoral interrupted him.

“Spare me your lies,” he uttered. “I am better posted than you suppose. I know, that, over a month ago, your employer, tired of your idleness, dismissed you in disgrace.”

Disgrace was superfluous. The fact was, that Maxence, returning to work after an absence of five days, had found another in his place.

“I shall find another place,” he said.

M. Favoral shrugged his shoulders with a movement of rage.

“And in the mean time,” he said, “I shall have to pay. Do you know what your creditors threaten to do?--to commence a suit against me. They would lose it, of course, they know it; but they hope that I would yield before a scandal. And this is not all: they talk of entering a criminal complaint. They pretend that you have audaciously swindled them; that the articles you purchased of them were not at all for your own use, but that you sold them as fast as you got them, at any price you could obtain, to raise ready money. The jeweler has proofs, he says, that you went straight from his shop to the pawnbroker’s, and pledged a watch and chain which he had just sold you. It is a police matter. They said all that in presence of my superior officer--in presence of M. de Thaller. I had to get the janitor to put them out. But, after they had left, M. de Thaller gave me to understand that he wished me very much to settle everything. And he is right. My consideration could not resist another such scene. What confidence can be placed in a cashier whose son behaves in this manner? How can a key of a safe containing millions be left with a man whose son would have been dragged into the police-courts? In a word, I am at your mercy. In a word, my honor, my position, my fortune, rest upon you. As often as it may please you to make debts, you can make them, and I shall be compelled to pay.”

Gathering all his courage:

“You have been sometimes very harsh with me, father,” commenced Maxence; “and yet I will not try to justify my conduct. I swear to you, that hereafter you shall have nothing to fear from me.”

“I fear nothing,” uttered M. Favoral with a sinister smile. “I know the means of placing myself beyond the reach of your follies --and I shall use them.”

“I assure you, father, that I have taken a firm resolution.”

“Oh! you may dispense with your periodical repentance.”

Mlle. Gilberte stepped forward.

“I’ll stand warrant,” she said, “for Maxence’s resolutions.”

Her father did not permit her to proceed.

“Enough,” he interrupted somewhat harshly. “Mind your own business, Gilberte! I have to speak to you too.”

“To me, father?”

“Yes.”

He walked up and down three or four times through the parlor, as if to calm his irritation. Then planting himself straight before his daughter, his arms folded across his breast:

“You are eighteen years of age,” he said; “that is to say, it is time to think of your marriage. An excellent match offers itself.”

She shuddered, stepped back, and, redder than a peony:

“A match!” she repeated in a tone of immense surprise.

“Yes, and which suits me.”

“But I do not wish to marry, father.”

“All young girls say the same thing; and, as soon as a pretender offers himself, they are delighted. Mine is a fellow of twenty-six, quite good looking, amiable, witty, and who has had the greatest success in society.”

“Father, I assure you that I do not wish to leave mother.”

“Of course not. He is an intelligent, hard-working man, destined, everybody says, to make an immense fortune. Although he is rich already, for he holds a controlling interest in a stock-broker’s firm, he works as hard as any poor devil. I would not be surprised to hear that he makes half a million of francs a year. His wife will have her carriage, her box at the opera, diamonds, and dresses as handsome as Mlle. de Thaller’s.”

“Eh! What do I care for such things?”

“It’s understood. I’ll present him to you on Saturday.”

But Mlle. Gilberte was not one of those young girls who allow themselves, through weakness or timidity, to become engaged, and so far engaged, that later, they can no longer withdraw. A discussion being unavoidable, she preferred to have it out at once.

“A presentation is absolutely useless, father,” she declared resolutely.

“Because?”

“I have told you that I did not wish to marry.”

“But if it is my will?”

“I am ready to obey you in every thing except that.”

“In that as in every thing else,” interrupted the cashier of the Mutual Credit in a thundering voice.

And, casting upon his wife and children a glance full of defiance and threats:

“In that, as in every thing else,” he repeated, “because I am the master; and I shall prove it. Yes, I will prove it; for I am tired to see my family leagued against my authority.”

And out he went, slamming the door so violently, that the partitions shook.

“You are wrong to resist your father thus,” murmured the weak Mme. Favoral.

The fact is, that the poor woman could not understand why her daughter refused the only means at her command to break off with her miserable existence.

“Let him present you this young man,” she said. “You might like him.”

“I am sure I shall not like him.”

She said this in such a tone, that the light suddenly flashed upon Mme. Favoral’s mind.

“Heavens!” she murmured. “Gilberte, my darling child, have you then a secret which your mother does not know?”

XIV

Yes, Mlle. Gilberte had her secret--a very simple one, though, chaste, like herself, and one of those which, as the old women say, must cause the angels to rejoice.

The spring of that year having been unusually mild, Mme. Favoral and her daughter had taken the habit of going daily to breathe the fresh air in the Place Royale. They took their work with them, crotchet or knitting; so that this salutary exercise did not in any way diminish the earnings of the week. It was during these walks that Mlle. Gilberte had at last noticed a young man, unknown to her, whom she met every day at the same place.

Tall and robust, he had a grand look, notwithstanding his modest clothes, the exquisite neatness of which betrayed a sort of respectable poverty. He wore his full beard; and his proud and intelligent features were lighted up by a pair of large black eyes, of those eyes whose straight and clear look disconcerts hypocrites and knaves.

He never failed, as he passed by Mlle. Gilberte, to look down, or turn his head slightly away; and in spite of this, in spite of the expression of respect which she had detected upon his face, she could not help blushing.

“Which is absurd,” she thought; “for after all, what on earth do I care for that young man?”

The infallible instinct, which is the experience of inexperienced young girls, told her that it was not chance alone that brought this stranger in her way. But she wished to make sure of it. She managed so well, that each day of the following week, the hour of their walk was changed. Sometimes they went out at noon, sometimes after four o’clock.

But, whatever the hour, Mlle. Gilberte, as she turned the corner of the Rue des Minimes, noticed her unknown admirer under the arcades, looking in some shop-window, and watching out of the corner of his eye. As soon as she appeared, he left his post, and hurried fast enough to meet her at the gate of the Place.

“It is a persecution,” thought Mlle. Gilberte.

How, then, had she not spoken of it to her mother? Why had she not said any thing to her the day, when, happening, to look out of the window, she saw her “persecutor” passing before the house, or, evidently looking in her direction?

“Am I losing my mind?” she thought, seriously irritated against herself. “I will not think of him any more.”

And yet she was thinking of him, when one afternoon, as her mother and herself were working, sitting upon a bench, she saw the stranger come and sit down not far from them. He was accompanied by an elderly man with long white mustaches, and wearing the rosette of the Legion of Honor.

“This is an insolence,” thought the young girl, whilst seeking a pretext to ask her mother to change their seats.

But already had the young man and his elderly friend seated themselves, and so arranged their chairs, that Mlle. Gilberte could not miss a word of what they were about to say. It was the young man who spoke first.

“You know me as well as I know myself, my dear count,” he commenced --“you who were my poor father’s best friend, you who dandled me upon your knees when I was a child, and who has never lost sight of me.”

“Which is to say, my boy, that I answer for you as for myself,” put in the old man. “But go on.”

“I am twenty-six years old. My name is Yves-Marius-Genost de Tregars. My family, which is one of the oldest of Brittany, is allied to all the great families.”

“Perfectly exact,” remarked the old gentleman.

“Unfortunately, my fortune is not on a par with my nobility. When my mother died, in 1856, my father, who worshiped her, could no longer bear, in the intensity of his grief, to remain at the Chateau de Tregars where he had spent his whole life. He came to Paris, which he could well afford, since we were rich then, but unfortunately, made acquaintances who soon inoculated him with the fever of the age. They proved to him that he was mad to keep lands which barely yielded him forty thousand francs a year, and which he could easily sell for two millions; which amount, invested merely at five per cent, would yield him an income of one hundred thousand francs. He therefore sold every thing, except our patrimonial homestead on the road from Quimper to Audierne, and rushed into speculations. He was rather lucky at first. But he was too honest and too loyal to be lucky long. An operation in which he became interested early in 1869 turned out badly. His associates became rich; but he, I know not how, was ruined, and came near being compromised. He died of grief a month later.”

The old soldier was nodding his assent.

“Very well, my boy,” he said. “But you are too modest; and there’s a circumstance which you neglect. You had a right, when your father became involved in these troubles, to claim and retain your mother’s fortune; that is, some thirty thousand francs a year. Not only you did not do so; but you gave up every thing to his creditors. You sold the domain of Tregars, except the old castle and its park, and paid over the proceeds to them; so that, if your father did die ruined, at least he did not owe a cent. And yet you knew, as well as myself, that your father had been deceived and swindled by a lot of scoundrels who drive their carriages now, and who, perhaps, if the courts were applied to, might still be made to disgorge their ill-gotten plunder.”

Her head bent upon her tapestry, Mlle. Gilberte seemed to be working with incomparable zeal. The truth is, she knew not how to conceal the blushes on her cheeks, and the trembling of her hands. She had something like a cloud before her eyes; and she drove her needle at random. She scarcely preserved enough presence of mind to reply to Mme. Favoral, who, not noticing any thing, spoke to her from time to time.

Indeed, the meaning of this scene was too clear to escape her.

“They have had an understanding,” she thought, “and it is for me alone that they are speaking.”

Meantime, Marius de Tregars was going on:

“I should lie, my old friend, were I to say that I was indifferent to our ruin. Philosopher though one may be, it is not without some pangs that one passes from a sumptuous hotel to a gloomy garret. But what grieved me most of all was that I saw myself compelled to give up the labors which had been the joy of my life, and upon which I had founded the most magnificent hopes. A positive vocation, stimulated further by the accidents of my education, had led me to the study of physical sciences. For several years, I had applied all I have of intelligence and energy to certain investigations in electricity. To convert electricity into an incomparable motive-power which would supersede steam,--such was the object I pursued without pause. Already, as you know, although quite young, I had obtained results which had attracted some attention in the scientific world. I thought I could see the last of a problem, the solution of which would change the face of the globe. Ruin was the death of my hopes, the total loss of the fruits of my labors; for my experiments were costly, and it required money, much money, to purchase the products which were indispensable to me, and to construct the machines which I contrived.

“And I was about being compelled to earn my daily bread.

“I was on the verge of despair, when I met a man whom I had formerly seen at my father’s, and who had seemed to take some interest in my researches, a speculator named Marcolet. But it is not at the bourse that he operates. Industry is the field of his labors. Ever on the lookout for those obstinate inventors who are starving to death in their garrets, he appears to them at the hour of supreme crisis: he pities them, encourages them, consoles them, helps them, and almost always succeeds in becoming the owner of their discovery. Sometimes he makes a mistake; and then all he has to do is to put a few thousand francs to the debit of profit or loss. But, if he has judged right, then he counts his profits by hundreds of thousands; and how many patents does he work thus! Of how many inventions does he reap the results which are a fortune, and the inventors of which have no shoes to wear! Every thing is good to him; and he defends with the same avidity a cough-sirup, the formula of which he has purchased of some poor devil of a druggist, and an improvement to the steam-engine, the patent for which has been sold to him by an engineer of genius. And yet Marcolet is not a bad man. Seeing my situation, he offered me a certain yearly sum to undertake some studies of industrial chemistry which he indicated to me. I accepted; and the very next day I hired a small basement in the Rue des Tournelles, where I set up my laboratory, and went to work at once. That was a year ago. Marcolet must be satisfied. I have already found for him a new shade for dyeing silk, the cost price of which is almost nothing. As to me, I have lived with the strictest economy, devoting all my surplus earnings to the prosecution of the problem, the solution of which would give me both glory and fortune.”

Palpitating with inexpressible emotion, Mlle. Gilberte was listening to this young man, unknown to her a few moments since, and whose whole history she now knew as well as if she had always lived near him; for it never occurred to her to suspect his sincerity.

No voice had ever vibrated to her ear like this voice, whose grave sonorousness stirred within her strange sensations, and legions of thoughts which she had never suspected. She was surprised at the accent of simplicity with which he spoke of the illustriousness of his family, of his past opulence, of his obscure labors, and of his exalted hopes.

She admired the superb disregard for money which beamed forth in his every word. Here was then one man, at least, who despised that money before which she had hitherto seen all the people she knew prostrated in abject worship.

After a pause of a few moments, Marius de Tregars, still addressing himself apparently to his aged companion, went on:

“I repeat it, because it is the truth, my old friend, this life of labor and privation, so new to me, was not a burden. Calm, silence, the constant exercise of all the faculties of the intellect, have charms which the vulgar can never suspect. I was happy to think, that, if I was ruined, it was through an act of my own will. I found a positive pleasure in the fact that I, the Marquis de Tregars, who had had a hundred thousand a year--I must the next moment go out in person to the baker’s and the green-grocer’s to purchase my supplies for the day. I was proud to think that it was to my labor alone, to the work for which I was paid by Marcolet, that I owed the means of prosecuting my task. And, from the summits where I was carried on the wings of science, I took pity on your modern existence, on that ridiculous and tragical medley of passions, interests, and cravings; that struggle without truce or mercy, whose law is, woe to the weak, in which whosoever falls is trampled under feet.

“Sometimes, however, like a fire that has been smouldering under the ashes, the flame of youthful passions blazed up within me. I had hours of madness, of discouragement, of distress, during which solitude was loathsome to me. But I had the faith which raises mountains--faith in myself and my work. And soon, tranquilized, I would go to sleep in the purple of hope, beholding in the vista of the distant future the triumphal arches erected to my success.

“Such was my situation, when, one afternoon in the month of February last, after an experiment upon which I had founded great hopes, and which had just miserably failed, I came here to breathe a little fresh air.

“It was a beautiful spring day, warm and sunny. The sparrows were chirping on the branches, swelled with sap: bands of children were running along the alleys, filling the air with their joyous screams.

“I was sitting upon a bench, ruminating over the causes of my failure, when two ladies passed by me; one somewhat aged, the other quite young. They were walking so rapidly, that I hardly had time to see them.

“But the young lady’s step, the noble simplicity of her carriage, had struck me so much, that I rose to follow her with the intention of passing her, and then walking back to have a good view of her face. I did so; and I was fairly dazzled. At the moment when my eyes met hers, a voice rose within me, crying that it was all over now, and that my destiny was fixed.”

“I remember, my dear boy,” remarked the old soldier in a tone of friendly raillery; “for you came to see me that night, and I had not seen you for months before.”

Marius proceeded without heeding the remark.

“And yet you know that I am not the man to yield to first impression. I struggled: with determined energy I strove to drive off that radiant image which I carried within my soul, which left me no more, which haunted me in the midst of my studies.

“Vain efforts. My thoughts obeyed me no longer--my will escaped my control. It was indeed one of those passions that fill the whole being, overpower all, and which make of life an ineffable felicity or a nameless torture, according that they are reciprocated, or not. How many days I spent there, waiting and watching for her of whom I had thus had a glimpse, and who ignored my very existence! And what insane palpitations, when, after hours of consuming anxiety, I saw at the corner of the street the undulating folds of her dress! I saw her thus often, and always with the same elderly person, her mother. They had adopted in this square a particular bench, where they sat daily, working at their sewing with an assiduity and zeal which made me think that they lived upon the product of their labor.”

Here he was suddenly interrupted by his companion. The old gentleman feared that Mme. Favoral’s attention might at last be attracted by too direct allusions.

“Take care, boy!” he whispered, not so low, however, but what Gilberte overheard him.

But it would have required much more than this to draw Mme. Favoral from her sad thoughts. She had just finished her band of tapestry; and, grieving to lose a moment:

“It is perhaps time to go home,” she said to her daughter. “I have nothing more to do.”

Mlle. Gilberte drew from her basket a piece of canvas, and, handing it to her mother:

“Here is enough to go on with, mamma,” she said in a troubled voice. “Let us stay a little while longer.”

And, Mme. Favoral having resumed her work, Marius proceeded:

“The thought that she whom I loved was poor delighted me. Was not this similarity of positions a link between us? I felt a childish joy to think that I would work for her and for her mother, and that they would be indebted to me for their ease and comfort in life.

“But I am not one of those dreamers who confide their destiny to the wings of a chimera. Before undertaking any thing, I resolved to inform myself. Alas! at the first words that I heard, all my fine dreams took wings. I heard that she was rich, very rich. I was told that her father was one of those men whose rigid probity surrounds itself with austere and harsh forms. He owed his fortune, I was assured, to his sole labor, but also to prodigies of economy and the most severe privations. He professed a worship, they said, for that gold that had cost him so much; and he would never give the hand of his daughter to a man who had no money. This last comment was useless. Above my actions, my thoughts, my hopes, higher than all, soars my pride. Instantly I saw an abyss opening between me and her whom I love more than my life, but less than my dignity. When a man’s name is Genost de Tregars, he must support his wife, were it by breaking stones. And the thought that I owed my fortune to the woman I married would make me execrate her.

“You must remember, my old friend, that I told you all this at the time. You thought, too, that it was singularly impertinent, on my part, thus to flare up in advance, because, certainly a millionaire does not give his daughter to a ruined nobleman in the pay of Marcolet, the patent-broker, to a poor devil of an inventor, who is building the castles of his future upon the solution of a problem which has been given up by the most brilliant minds.

“It was then that I determined upon an extreme resolution, a foolish one, no doubt, and yet to which you, the Count de Villegre, my father’s old friend, you have consented to lend yourself.

“I thought that I would address myself to her, to her alone, and that she would at least know what great, what immense love she had inspired. I thought I would go to her and tell her, ‘This is who I am, and what I am. For mercy’s sake, grant me a respite of three years. To a love such as mine there is nothing impossible. In three years I shall be dead, or rich enough to ask your hand. From this day forth, I give up my task for work of more immediate profit. The arts of industry have treasures for successful inventors. If you could only read in my soul, you would not refuse me the delay I am asking. Forgive me! One word, for mercy’s sake, only one! It is my sentence that I am awaiting.’”

Mlle. Gilberte’s thoughts were in too great a state of confusion to permit her to think of being offended at this extraordinary proceeding. She rose, quivering, and addressing herself to Mme. Favoral:

“Come, mother,” she said, “come: I feel that I have taken cold. I must go home and think. To-morrow, yes, to-morrow, we will come again.”

Deep as Mme. Favoral was plunged in her meditations, and a thousand miles as she was from the actual situation, it was impossible that she should not notice the intense excitement under which her daughter labored, the alteration of her features, and the incoherence of her words.

“What is the matter?” she asked, somewhat alarmed. “What are you saying?”

“I feel unwell,” answered her daughter in a scarcely audible voice, “quite unwell. Come, let us go home.”

As soon as they reached home, Mlle. Gilberte took refuge in her own room. She was in haste to be alone, to recover her self-possession, to collect her thoughts, more scattered than dry leaves by a storm wind.

It was a momentous event which had just suddenly fallen in her life so monotonous and so calm--an inconceivable, startling event, the consequences of which were to weigh heavily upon her entire future.

Staggering still, she was asking herself if she was not the victim of an hallucination, and if really there was a man who had dared to conceive and execute the audacious project of coming thus under the eyes of her mother, of declaring his love, and of asking her in return a solemn engagement. But what stupefied her more still, what confused her, was that she had actually endured such an attempt.

Under what despotic influence had she, then, fallen? To what undefinable sentiments had she obeyed? And if she had only tolerated! But she had done more: she had actually encouraged. By detaining her mother when she wished to go home (and she had detained her), had she not said to this unknown?--“Go on, I allow it: I am listening.”

And he had gone on. And she, at the moment of returning home, she had engaged herself formally to reflect, and to return the next day at a stated hour to give an answer. In a word, she had made an appointment with him.

It was enough to make her die of shame. And, as if she had needed the sound of her own words to convince herself of the reality of the fact, she kept repeating loud,

“I have made an appointment--I, Gilberte, with a man whom my parents do not know, and of whose name I was still ignorant yesterday.”

And yet she could not take upon herself to be indignant at the imprudent boldness of her conduct. The bitterness of the reproaches which she was addressing to herself was not sincere. She felt it so well, that at last:

“Such hypocrisy is unworthy of me,” she exclaimed, “since now, still, and without the excuse of being taken by surprise, I would not act otherwise.”

The fact is, the more she pondered, the less she could succeed in discovering even the shadow of any offensive intention in all that Marius de Tregars had said. By the choice of his confidant, an old man, a friend of his family, a man of the highest respectability, he had done all in his power to make his step excusable. It was impossible to doubt his sincerity, to suspect the fairness of his intentions.

Mlle. Gilberte, better than almost any other young girl, could understand the extreme measure resorted to by M. de Tregars. By her own pride she could understand his. No more than he, in his place, would she have been willing to expose herself to a certain refusal. What was there, then, so extraordinary in the fact of his coming directly to her, in his exposing to her frankly and loyally his situation, his projects, and his hopes?

“Good heavens!” she thought, horrified at the sentiments which she discovered in the deep recesses of her soul, “good heavens! I hardly know myself any more. Here I am actually approving what he has done!”

Well, yes, she did approve him, attracted, fascinated, by the very strangeness of the situation. Nothing seemed to her more admirable than the conduct of Marius de Tregars sacrificing his fortune and his most legitimate aspirations to the honor of his name, and condemning himself to work for his living.

“That one,” she thought, “is a man; and his wife will have just cause to be proud of him.”

Involuntarily she compared him to the only men she knew: to M. Favoral, whose miserly parsimony had made his whole family wretched; to Maxence, who did not blush to feed his disorders with the fruits of his mother’s and his sister’s labor.

How different was Marius! If he was poor, it was of his own will. Had she not seen what confidence he had in himself. She shared it fully. She felt certain that, within the required delay, he would conquer that indispensable fortune. Then he might present himself boldly. He would take her, away from the miserable surroundings among which she seemed fated to live: she would become the Marchioness de Tregars.

“Why, then, not answer, Yes!” thought she, with the harrowing emotions of the gambler who is about to stake his all upon one card. And what a game for Mlle. Gilberte, and what a stake!

Suppose she had been mistaken. Suppose that Marius should be one of those villains who make of seduction a science. Would she still be her own mistress, after answering? Did she know to what hazards such an engagement would expose her? Was she not about rushing blindfolded towards those deceiving perils where a young girl leaves her reputation, even when she saves her honor?

She thought, for a moment, of consulting her mother. But she knew Mme. Favoral’s shrinking timidity, and that she was as incapable of giving any advice as to make her will prevail. She would be frightened; she would approve all; and, at the first alarm, she would confess all.

“Am I, then, so weak and so foolish,” she thought, “that I cannot take a determination which affects me personally?”

She could not close her eyes all night; but in the morning her resolution was settled.

And toward one o’clock:

“Are we not going out mother?” she said.

Mme. Favoral was hesitating.

“These early spring days are treacherous,” she objected: “you caught cold yesterday.”

“My dress was too thin. To-day I have taken my precautions.”

They started, taking their work with them, and came to occupy their accustomed seats.

Before they had even passed the gates, Mlle. Gilberte had recognized Marius de Tregars and the Count de Villegre, walking in one of the side alleys. Soon, as on the day before, they took two chairs, and settled themselves within hearing.

Never had the young girl’s heart beat with such violence. It is easy enough to take a resolution; but it is not always quite so easy to execute it, and she was asking herself if she would have strength enough to articulate a word. At last, gathering her whole courage:

“You don’t believe in dreams, do you mother?” she asked.

Upon this subject, as well as upon many others, Mme. Favoral had no particular opinion.

“Why do you ask the question?” said she.

“Because I have had such a strange one.”

“Oh!”

“It seemed to me that suddenly a young man, whom I did not know, stood before me. He would have been most happy, said he to me, to ask my hand, but he dared not, being very poor. And he begged me to wait three years, during which he would make his fortune.”

Mme. Favoral smiled.

“Why it’s quite a romance,” said she.

“But it wasn’t a romance in my dream,” interrupted Mlle. Gilberte. “This young man spoke in a tone of such profound conviction, that it was impossible for me, as it were, to doubt him. I thought to myself that he would be incapable of such an odious villainy as to abuse the confiding credulity of a poor girl.”

“And what did you answer him?”

Moving her seat almost imperceptibly, Mlle. Gilberte could, from the corner of her eye, have a glimpse of M. de Tregars. Evidently he was not missing a single one of the words which she was addressing to her mother. He was whiter than a sheet; and his face betrayed the most intense anxiety.

This gave her the energy to curb the last revolts of her conscience.

“To answer was painful,” she uttered; “and yet I--dared to answer him. I said to him, ‘I believe you, and I have faith in you. Loyally and faithfully I shall await your success; but until then we must be strangers to one another. To resort to ruse, deceit, and falsehood would be unworthy of us. You surely would not expose to a suspicion her who is to be your wife.’”

“Very well,” approved Mme. Favoral; “only I did not know you were so romantic.”

She was laughing, the good lady, but not loud enough to prevent Gilberte from hearing M. de Tregars’ answer.

“Count de Villegre,” said he, “my old friend, receive the oath which I take to devote my life to her who has not doubted me. It is to-day the 4th of May, 1870--on the 4th of May, 1873, I shall have succeeded: I feel it, I will it, it must be!”

XV

It was done: Gilberte Favoral had just irrevocably disposed of herself. Prosperous or wretched, her destiny henceforth was linked with another. She had set the wheel in motion; and she could no longer hope to control its direction, any more than the will can pretend to alter the course of the ivory ball upon the surface of the roulette-table. At the outset of this great storm of passion which had suddenly surrounded her, she felt an immense surprise, mingled with unexplained apprehensions and vague terrors.

Around her, apparently, nothing was changed. Father, mother, brother, friends, gravitated mechanically in their accustomed orbits. The same daily facts repeated themselves monotonous and regular as the tick-tack of the clock.

And yet an event had occurred more prodigious for her than the moving of a mountain.

Often during the weeks that followed, she would repeat to herself, “Is it true, is it possible even?”

Or else she would run to a mirror to make sure once more that nothing upon her face or in her eyes betrayed the secret that palpitated within her.

The singularity of the situation was, moreover, well calculated to trouble and confound her mind.