Chapter XV: The Staircase

While a practised rake may congratulate himself upon the unhoped-for accident which procures him a tête-à-tête with the object of his pursuit, a pure-hearted young man, who is sincerely in love, is more likely to be confused, almost terrified, when such good fortune comes to him for the first time.

So it was with Emile Cardonnet: the respect that Mademoiselle de Châteaubrun inspired was so profound that he feared to raise his eyes to hers at that moment, lest he should show himself in any degree unworthy of the confidence reposed in him.

Gilberte, even more naïve than he, did not feel the same embarrassment. The thought that Emile could abuse, even by a careless word, her isolation and her inexperience, found no place in a mind so noble and innocent as hers, and her sacred ignorance preserved her from any suspicion of that sort. So she was the first to break the silence, and her voice, as by enchantment, brought tranquillity to the young visitor's agitated breast. There are voices so sympathetic and so penetrating, that to hear them pronounce two or three trivial words is enough to fill one with affection for the persons whose characters they describe, even before one sees them. Gilberte's voice was of this number. On hearing her speak or laugh or sing, you felt that there had never been in her mind an evil or unkind thought.

The thing that moves and charms us in the song of birds is not so much the melody, opposed to all our musical conventions, or the extraordinary power of their flexible organs, as a certain accent of primitive innocence, of which nothing in the language of men can convey an idea. It seemed, on listening to Gilberte, that the same comparison could be aptly applied to her, and that the most indifferent things acquired, on passing between her lips, a meaning much deeper than that which they expressed by themselves.

"We saw our friend Jean this morning," she said; "he came at daybreak and carried away all my father's tools, in order to do his first day's work; for he has found work already, and we have strong hopes that there will be no lack of it. He told us all that you did and tried to do for him last evening, and I assure you, monsieur, that, for all the pride and perhaps roughness of his refusal, he is as grateful as he ought to be."

"What I have been able to do for him amounts to so little that I am ashamed to speak of it," said Emile. "I am especially grieved that he allows his obstinacy to deprive him of a certainty of employment, for it seems to me that his position is still very precarious. To begin a life of toil, at sixty, and to have neither a house, nor clothes, nor even the necessary tools, is a terrifying prospect, is it not, mademoiselle?"

"Still, I am not terrified," replied Gilberte. "Brought up as I have been in uncertainty, and living from day to day, as it were, perhaps I have myself fallen into the habit of looking upon poverty with that same happy indifference. Either I am naturally of that disposition, or Jean's heedlessness reassures me; it is certain that none of us felt the least uneasiness in the congratulations we exchanged this morning. It takes so little to satisfy Jean! He is as sober and as healthy as a wild man. He has never been better than during these two months that he has lived in the woods, walking all day and sleeping most of the time in the open air. He declares that his sight has grown keener, that his youth has returned again, and that, if the summer would last all the time, he would never need to come back to the village to live. But in the bottom of his heart he has an invincible affection for his native place, and furthermore he would not be satisfied to be idle long. We urged him this morning to settle down here with us, and to live as we do, without thought for the morrow.

"'There is room enough here and plenty of material for you to build yourself a house,' said my father. 'I have all the stone you need and enough old trees for your frame, and I'll help you to put it up as you helped me with mine.'

"But Jean wouldn't listen to that.

"'Very good,' said he, 'but what in heaven's name should I do to kill time when you have set me up as a country gentleman? I can't live on my income, and I don't propose to be a burden to you during the thirty years that I still have to live, it may be. Even if you were rich enough to support me, I should die of ennui. It's all right for you, Monsieur Antoine, you were brought up to do nothing. Although you're no sluggard and you have proved it--it costs you nothing to resume the habit of living like a _monsieur_; but there's no more hunting and coursing for me; pray, am I to sit with folded arms? I should go mad at the end of the first week.'"

"So," said Emile, thinking of his father's theory of incessant toil and no repose in old age, "so Jean will never feel the longing to be free, although he makes so many sacrifices to his alleged freedom?"

"Why, are freedom and idleness the same thing?" said Gilberte, in a tone of surprise. "I think not. Jean is passionately fond of work, and all his freedom consists in choosing the work that pleases him; when he works to gratify his inclination and his natural inventiveness, he works with all the more ardor."

"Yes, mademoiselle, you are right," said Emile, with sudden melancholy, "and that is the whole secret. Man is born to work always, but to work according to his aptitudes and in proportion to the enjoyment he derives from it! Ah! if only I were a skilful carpenter! with what joy I would go and work with Jean Jappeloup, for the benefit of such a wise and unselfish man!"

"Well, well, monsieur," said Janille, as she returned to the room, ostentatiously balancing her earthenware pitcher on her head, to display her strength, "you talk just like Monsieur Antoine. If you'll believe it, he wanted to go to Gargilesse this morning with Jean and work with him as a journeyman, as he used to do! Poor dear man! his kind heart carried him to that length.

"'You helped me to earn my living long enough,' he said; 'now I propose to help you earn yours. You refuse to share my table and my house; accept at least the price of my work, as I don't need it.'"

"And Monsieur Antoine would have done as he said. At his age and with his rank, he would go and hammer away like a deaf man on those great blocks of wood!"

"Why did you prevent him, Mère Janille? Why did Jean obstinately refuse? My father's health would have been no worse for it, and it would be consistent with all the noble impulses of his life. Ah! why cannot I too wield an axe and serve my apprenticeship to the man who supported my father so long, while I, knowing nothing about our means of existence, learned to sing and draw to please you. Really, women are good for nothing in this world!"

"What's that! what's that! women good for nothing!" cried Janille; "very good, let us both start out, climb up on the roofs, square timber and drive nails. Upon my word I could do better at it than you, old and small as I am; but meanwhile, your papa, who's about as clever with his hands as a frog with his tail, will spin our flax and Jean will iron our caps."

"You are right, mother," replied Gilberte; "my wheel is loaded and I have done nothing to-day. If we make haste we shall have cloth enough to make clothes for Jean before next winter. I am going to work and make up for lost time; but it's true none the less that you are an aristocrat, not to want my father to be a workman again when he pleases."

"Let me tell you the truth then," said Janille, with a solemn, confidential air. "Monsieur Antoine never succeeded in being a good workman. He had more courage than skill, and my only reason for letting him work was to prevent him from getting depressed and discouraged. Ask Jean if he didn't have to work twice as hard to mend Monsieur's mistakes, as he would have done if he'd been working alone. But Monsieur always seemed to be doing a lot of work, so the customers were satisfied and he was well paid. But it's true all the same that I was never easy in my mind in those days and that I don't sigh for them. I always shuddered for fear Monsieur Antoine would hit his arm or his leg instead of a timber, or would fall off his ladder when, in his absent-minded way, he would sit down on the rung as if he were by his own fireside."

"You frighten me, Janille," said Gilberte. "Oh! if that is the case, you did well to disgust him, by your joking, with the idea of working again, and in that, as in everything else, you are our Providence!"

Mademoiselle de Châteaubrun spoke even more truly than she knew. Janille had been the good angel of Antoine de Châteaubrun's existence. Without her prudence, her motherly domination and her shrewd judgment, that excellent man would not have passed through the slough of poverty without deteriorating a little morally. At all events he would not have retained his external dignity as well as the generous purity of his instincts. He would often have sinned by too great resignation and self-abandonment. Being naturally inclined to effusiveness and prodigality, he would have become intemperate; he would have acquired as many faults of the common people as of their good qualities, and perhaps he would have ended by meriting in some degree the disdain which fools and vainglorious parvenus felt justified in entertaining for him, even as it was.

But, thanks to Janille, who, without thwarting him openly, had always maintained the equilibrium and instilled moderation, he had emerged from the test with honor and had not ceased to deserve the esteem and respect of judicious people.

The sound of Gilberte's spinning-wheel interrupted the conversation, or at least made it less coherent. She was unwilling to interrupt her work again until her task was completed; and yet she seemed to display more ardor than the apparent motive of her activity called for. She urged Emile not to subject himself to the tedium of listening to that monotonous clattering, but to go with Janille and explore the ruins; but, as Janille also wanted to finish her spinning, Gilberte unconsciously worked even faster than before, in order to finish as soon as she, and to be one of the party.

"I am ashamed of my inaction," said Emile, who dared not gaze too fondly at the young spinstress's lovely arms or watch her motions too closely, for fear of attracting Janille's sharp little eyes; "haven't you some work to give me?"

"What can you do?" queried Gilberte with a smile.

"Whatever Sylvain Charasson can do, I flatter myself," he replied.

"I might send you to water my lettuce," said Janille, laughing outright, "but that would deprive us of your company. Suppose you wind up the clock, which seems to have stopped?"

"Oh! it stopped three days ago," said Gilberte, "and I haven't been able to make it go. I think there's something broken."

"Ah! that's the job for me," cried Emile; "I have studied mechanics a little--unwillingly, to be sure--and I don't believe that this cuckoo affair is very complicated."

"And suppose you break my clock altogether?" said Janille.

"Oh! let him break it if it amuses him," said Gilberte, with a good-natured air in which he could detect her father's easy-going heedlessness.

"I ask the privilege of breaking it, if that is its destiny," said Emile, "provided that I may be permitted to replace it."

"All right!" said Janille, "if it turns out so, I want one just like it, no finer and no larger; this one suits us: it strikes clear and yet doesn't deafen us."

Emile set to work; he took the little German clock apart, and, having examined it, found nothing more to do than remove a little dust from the interior. Leaning over the table near Gilberte he carefully cleaned and readjusted the rough machinery, exchanging with the two women an occasional remark of a playful turn, which led to a pleasant sort of familiarity between them.

It is commonly said that people become expansive and confidential while eating together; but intimacy comes more readily and naturally to those who work together. All three of them felt it; and when they had finished their various tasks they were almost members of the same family.

"You're right at home at that business," said Janille, when she saw that her clock was going; "you would almost do for a clockmaker. Now let's go for a walk; I will go first and light my lantern to take you into the cellars."

"Monsieur," said Gilberte, when Janille had left the room, "you said just now that you expected to dine with Monsieur de Boisguilbault. May I not ask you what sort of impression that gentleman made upon you?"

"I should have difficulty in defining it," replied Emile. "It is a mixture of repulsion and sympathy, so strange that I feel that I must see him again, examine him closely and then reflect further, before attempting to interpret so odd a character. Don't you know him, mademoiselle, and can you not assist me to understand him?"

"I do not know him at all; I have seen him only once or twice in my life, although we live very near him; and, because of what I had heard about him, I was very anxious to see him; but he was riding on the same road with my father and myself, and the instant that he caught sight of us, he spurred his horse, bowed to us without looking at us, apparently without knowing who we were, and was out of sight in a moment: you would have said he was trying to hide in the dust that his horse's feet kicked up."

"Has Monsieur de Châteaubrun no relations with him, although he is so near a neighbor?"

"Oh! that's a very strange thing," said Gilberte, lowering her voice confidentially, "but I may speak to you about it, Monsieur Emile, because it seems to me that you may be able to solve the mystery. My father was very intimate with Monsieur de Boisguilbault in his younger days. I know that much, although he never speaks of him, and Janille avoids answering me when I question her; but Jean, who knows no more than I do about the cause of their rupture, has often told me that he can remember a time when they were inseparable. That is what has always made me think that Monsieur de Boisguilbault is neither so proud nor so cold as he seems; for my father with his good humor and vivacity could never have been on warm terms with a haughty disposition and a cold heart. I must tell you too that I have overheard some conversation about him between my father and Janille, when they thought that I was not listening. My father said that the only irreparable misfortune of his life was the loss of Monsieur de Boisguilbault's friendship, that he should never be consoled for it, and that he would not hesitate to sacrifice an eye or an arm or a leg to recover it. Janille called his lamentations nonsense and advised him not to make the slightest step toward reconciliation because she knew the man well and he would never forget the affair that had made the trouble between them.

"'Very well,' said my father, 'I would prefer to have an explanation, to submit to his reproaches; I would rather have fought a duel with him, when we were of almost equal strength, than have to endure this implacable silence and frigid persistence which cuts me to the heart. No, Janille, no, I shall never be reconciled to it, and if I die without shaking hands with him, I shall regret that I ever lived.'

"Janille tried to divert his mind, and she succeeded, for my father is impressionable and too affectionate to be willing to depress others with his melancholy. But you, Monsieur Emile, who love your parents so dearly, will understand that this secret grief of my father's has weighed heavily on my heart ever since I discovered it. So that I can think of nothing that I would not undertake to relieve him from it. For a whole year I have been thinking about it constantly, and twenty times I have dreamed that I went to Boisguilbault, threw myself at that unforgiving man's feet and said to him:

"'My father is the best of men and your most faithful friend. His virtues have made him happy in spite of his ill-fortune; he has but one sorrow, but it is a deep one and you can dispel it with a word.'

"But he repulsed me and turned me out of his house in a rage. I woke in deadly terror, and one night when I called his name, Janille got up and took me in her arms and said:

"'Why do you think about that wretched man? he has no power over you and he wouldn't dare attack your father.'

"From that I saw that Janille hated him; but whenever she happens to say a word against him, my father warmly defends him. What is there between them? Almost nothing, perhaps. A puerile sensitiveness, a dispute about hunting, so Jean Jappeloup declares. If that were certain, wouldn't it be possible to reconcile them? My father dreams of Monsieur de Boisguilbault too, and sometimes, when he dozes in his chair after supper, he mutters his name in a tone of profound distress. Monsieur Emile, I appeal to your generosity and prudence to induce Monsieur de Boisguilbault to speak, if possible. I have always intended to grasp the first opportunity that presented itself to reconcile two men who have been so closely attached to each other, and if Jean had been fully taken back into the marquis's favor, I should have hoped great things from his boldness and his natural shrewdness. But he too is the victim of a strange caprice on Monsieur de Boisguilbault's part, and I can think of nobody but you who can help me."

"You cannot doubt that will be my most constant endeavor henceforth," said Emile, with fervor. And as he heard Janille returning, her little clogs clattering on the flagstones, he stood on a chair as if to adjust the clock, but really to hide the blissful confusion born of Gilberte's confidence.

Gilberte also was moved. She had made a great effort to summon courage to open her heart to a young man whom she hardly knew; and she was not so childish or so countrified that she did not realize that she had gone beyond conventional propriety.

The loyal creature was distressed at the thought that she had a secret from Janille; but she took comfort in the purity of her intentions, and it was impossible to believe Emile capable of taking advantage of her. For the first time in her life the instinctive craft of her sex guided her action when the housekeeper returned. She felt that her face was on fire, and she stooped to pick up a needle which she had purposely dropped.

Thus Janille's penetration was routed by two children who were far from adroit in all other respects, and they set forth gayly to explore the subterranean regions.

The passage directly beneath the square pavilion led to a steep staircase which descended to a terrifying depth in the solid rock. Janille went first, at a deliberate gait, with the composure due to her frequent exercise of the functions of _cicerone_ with visitors. Emile followed her, to feel the way for Gilberte, who was neither awkward nor timid, but for whose safety Janille was constantly alarmed.

"Take care, my dear," she said at every step. "Hold her if she falls, Monsieur Emile. Mademoiselle is absent-minded like her dear father: it runs in the family. They're a pair of children who would have killed themselves a hundred times over if I had not always had my eye on them."

Emile was happy to be able to share Janille's task. He pushed the rubbish aside, and, as the staircase became more and more dilapidated and difficult, he deemed himself justified in offering his hand, which was declined at first, but afterward accepted as necessary.

Who can describe the violence and ecstasy of a first love in an ardent heart? Emile trembled so when he took Gilberte's hand in his that he could no longer talk and joke with Janille nor reply to Gilberte, who continued to jest at first, but gradually became more and more agitated until she could think of nothing to say.

They descended in this way only ten or twelve steps, but meanwhile time ceased to move for Emile; and when he passed the whole of the following night trying to review the emotions of that moment, it seemed to him that it had lasted a century.

His past life appeared thenceforth like a dream, and his personality was transformed. When he recalled his childhood, the years at school, the tedium or the pleasure of study, he was no longer the passive, fettered creature he had hitherto felt himself to be; it was Gilberte's lover who lived through those years, thenceforth radiant, enlightened with a new light. He saw himself as a mere child, then as an active, impetuous school-boy, and, finally, as a dreamy, earnest student; and those various personages, who had seemed to him to differ like the phases of his life, became in his eyes a single being, a privileged being, who moved triumphantly forward toward the bright daylight where Gilberte's hand was to be placed in his.

The underground staircase led to the base of the rocky hill which was crowned by the Château. It was a means of exit in case of a siege, and Janille was not sparing of encomiums upon that difficult and scientific piece of work.

Although she lived on terms of absolute equality with her masters, and would not have waived the privilege at any price, so thoroughly convinced was she of her rights, the little woman none the less had some strangely persistent feudal ideas; and, by dint of identifying herself with the ruins of Châteaubrun, she had reached the point of admiring everything in their past history, of which she had, to tell the truth, a very confused idea. Perhaps, too, she thought it her duty, to humble the pride of the wealthy bourgeoisie by vaunting loudly before Emile the ancient might of Gilberte's ancestors.

"See, monsieur," she said, escorting him from dungeon to dungeon, "this is where they brought people to their senses. You can still see the iron rings to which they fastened prisoners after their fetters were put on. This is a dungeon where they say three men were devoured by a huge serpent. The great noblemen of long ago had such creatures at their disposal. We will show to you the _oubliettes_ in a moment: it was no joke to get into them! Ah! if you had come down here before the Revolution, perhaps you would have done well to make the sign of the Cross instead of laughing!"

"Luckily we can laugh here now," said Gilberte, "and think of something else besides those horrible legends. I thank the good Lord that I was born in an age when it is very hard to believe in them, and I prefer our old nest as it is to-day, demolished and harmless forever. You know, Janille, what my father always says to the people of Cuzion, when they come and ask him for some of our stone for building purposes: 'Help yourselves, my friends, help yourselves; it will be the first time it ever served any good purpose!'"

"Never mind," rejoined Janille, "it's worth something to have been first in one's province and the master of everybody else!"

"It makes me realize all the more forcibly," replied the girl, "the pleasure of being everybody else's equal and of no longer causing fear to anybody."

"Oh! that is a glory and a joy which I envy!" cried Emile.