Chapter XVI: The Talisman

If Gilberte had been told a week earlier that a day was coming when the tranquillity of her heart would be disturbed by strange commotions, when the circle of her affections would not only be extended to admit a stranger to a place beside her father, Janille and the carpenter, but would suddenly be broken in order that a new name might be placed among those cherished names, she would not have believed that such a miracle could be and would have been terrified by the suggestion.

And yet she had a vague feeling that henceforth the image of this young man with the black hair, sparkling eye and slender figure, would dog her footsteps and follow her even in her sleep.

She spurned the thought of such a fatality, but she could not escape from it. Her chaste and gentle heart did not go forth to meet the intoxicating emotion that came to seek it; but she was destined to feel it when Emile's hand quivered and trembled on touching hers.

Incredible and mysterious power of attraction which nothing can turn aside and which determines the fate of youth before it has had time to become acquainted with itself and to prepare for attack or defence!

Somewhat excited by the first stings of this secret flame, Gilberte received them playfully. Her serenity was not disturbed on the surface, and while Emile was already compelled to put force upon himself in order to conceal his emotion, she continued to smile and to talk freely, pending the time when regret at his departure and impatience for his return should make her understand that his presence was rapidly becoming imperatively necessary to her.

Janille did not leave them again; but their conversation gradually drifted to subjects which Janille, despite her keen penetration, was far from understanding.

Gilberte had received as thorough an education as any girl educated at a Parisian boarding-school, and it is undoubtedly true that the education of women has made notable progress in the majority of those establishments in the past twenty years. The learning, the good sense and the manners of the women who have charge of them have undergone a similar amelioration, and talented men have deemed it not beneath their dignity to give courses of lectures in history, literature and elementary science for the benefit of that intelligent and perspicacious moiety of the human race.

Gilberte had acquired some notion of what are called "accomplishments"; but, while complying with her father's wishes in this respect, she had given more attention to the development of her intellectual faculties.

She had seasonably reflected that the fine arts would be but a feeble resource in a life of poverty and retirement, that household cares would take too much of her time, and that, as she was destined to work with her hands, it was her duty to train her mind so that she might not suffer from absence of thought and from a disorderly imagination.

A sub-mistress, a woman of much merit, of whom she had made a friend and the confidante of her precarious future, had advised this employment of her faculties, and the girl, impressed by the wisdom of her advice, had followed it implicitly.

This very pleasure in learning and retaining useful information had, however, caused the child some unhappiness since she had been deprived of books in the ruins of Châteaubrun. Monsieur Antoine would have made any sacrifice to procure books for her, if he could have detected her desire for them; but Gilberte, seeing how restricted their means were, and desiring more than all else that her father's comfort should not be impaired, was very careful not to mention the subject.

Janille had said to herself, once for all, that her girl "had learning enough," and, judging her by herself--for the old lady was coquettish still in the matter of dress, with all her parsimony,--she employed her little savings in buying for her from time to time, a calico dress or a bit of lace.

Gilberte feigned to receive these little gifts with extreme pleasure, in order not to lessen the pleasure which her old nurse derived from bringing them to her. But she sighed to herself at the thought that with the modest price of that finery she might have given her a volume of history or poetry.

She devoted her hours of leisure to reading again and again the few books she had brought from her school, and she almost knew them by heart.

Once or twice, without divulging her purpose, she had persuaded Janille, who held the strings of the common purse, to give her the money intended for a new gown. But on these occasions it happened that Jean needed shoes, or that some poor people near by had no clothes for their children; and Gilberte supplied what she called the most urgent needs, postponing the purchase of her books to better days.

The curé of Cuzion had lent her an Abridgment of some of the Fathers of the Church, and the _Lives of the Saints_, upon which she had feasted for a long time; for, when you have no choice, you compel your mind to enjoy serious things, despite the youthful impulse to indulge in less austere amusements.

This necessity is sometimes a salutary thing for healthy minds, and when Gilberte artlessly lamented her ignorance to Emile, he was astonished to find her, on the contrary, so well informed as to certain fundamental matters which he himself had accepted on the faith of others, without studying them.

Love and enthusiasm aiding, he speedily discovered that Gilberte was an accomplished young woman, and proclaimed her, in his own mind, the most intelligent and most perfect of human creatures; and it was relatively true. The greatest and best of mortals is the one who is most sympathetic with us, who understands us best, who is best able to develop and nourish the best qualities of our mind; in a word, the one who would make our life most blissful and complete if our lives could be absolutely blended.

"Ah! I have done well to keep my heart empty and my mind pure hitherto," said Emile to himself, "and I thank thee, O God, for having assisted me! for surely this is the woman who was destined for me, and without whom I should simply have vegetated and suffered."

While talking on general subjects, Gilberte allowed her regret at being deprived of books to appear, and Emile speedily divined that regret was deeper than she cared to reveal to Janille.

He reflected sorrowfully that there was not a single volume in his father's house except commercial and industrial treatises, and that, expecting to return to Poitiers, he had left there what few books he owned.

But Gilberte suggested that there was a very extensive library at Boisguilbault. Jean had done some work long ago in a large room full of books, and it was much to be regretted that the families were at odds, for she might have taken advantage of the proximity of such a treasure.

At this juncture, Janille, who always knitted as she walked, raised her head.

"It's probably a lot of tiresome old books," she said, "and for my part I should be very sorry to put my nose into them; I should be afraid they would make me a lunatic like the man who lives on them."

"Why, does Monsieur de Boisguilbault read very much?" asked Gilberte; "he must be very learned."

"Well, what good has it done him to read so much and be so learned? He has never done anybody any good with it, and it hasn't made him loving or lovable."

Janille, unwilling to expose herself to further questions concerning a man whom she hated, without knowing or caring to say why she hated him, walked toward her goats as if to prevent them from nibbling a vine which grew around the door of the square pavilion.

Emile took advantage of this moment to say to Gilberte that, if there were so many books at Boisguilbault, she should soon have them at her disposal, even if he had to borrow them stealthily.

Gilberte could only thank him with a smile, not daring to add a glance thereto; she was beginning to feel embarrassed with him when Janille was not there.

"On my word!" said Janille, retracing her steps, "Monsieur Antoine is in no hurry to return. I know him: he's chattering somewhere at this minute! He has met some old friends and is treating them at the wineshop, forgetting the time and spending his money. And then, if some whining creature wants to borrow ten or fifteen francs to buy a miserable goat or a brace or two of scrawny geese, he'll let him have it! He'd give away all he has about him if he wasn't afraid of being scolded when he comes home. He took six sheep, you see, and if he only brings back the price of five in his purse, as it happens too often, let him look out for _ma mie_ Janille! he won't go to market again without me! Hark--there's the clock striking four--thanks to Monsieur Emile, who fixed it so well,--and I'll bet that your father has no more than just started for home, at the best."

"Four o'clock!" exclaimed Emile; "why that's Monsieur de Boisguilbault's dinner-hour. I haven't a moment to lose."

"Go at once then," said Gilberte, "for we mustn't make him any more ill-disposed toward us than he is already."

"What difference does it make to us whether he bears us ill-will or not?" said Janille. "Do you really mean to go without seeing Monsieur Antoine?"

"I must, I am very sorry to say!"

"Where is that little villain of a Charasson?" cried Janille. "Asleep in a corner, I'll warrant, and not thinking about bringing up your horse! When monsieur is absent, Sylvain disappears. Here, you wicked rascal, where are you hiding?"

"I wish that you could provide me with a charm!" said Emile to Gilberte, while Janille was seeking Sylvain and calling him in tones more vociferous than really angry. "I am going forth, like a knight errant, to enter the wizard's den and try to extort from him his secrets and the words that will put an end to your distress."

"Here," said Gilberte, laughingly, taking a flower from her belt, "here is the loveliest rose from my garden; perhaps its fragrance may possess the salutary power of putting its enemy's prudence to sleep and softening his ferocity. Leave it on his table, try to induce him to admire it and smell it. He is a horticulturist, but I doubt if he has in his great garden so fine a specimen as this product of my last year's graft. If I were a châtelaine of the good old days which Janille regrets, perhaps I could invoke a spell that would impart a magic power to this flower. But, being a poor girl, I can only pray to God to instill mercy into that cruel heart, even as he caused the dew to fall and open this rose-bud."

"Must I leave my talisman, pray?" said Emile, hiding the rose in his breast: "may I not keep it to use another time?"

The tone in which he asked this question and the emotion discernible upon his face caused Gilberte a moment's artless surprise. She looked at him with an uncertain expression, unable as yet to understand the value he attached to the flower taken from her girdle. She tried to smile, as at a jest, but felt that the blood rose to her cheeks; and as Janille reappeared, she made no reply.

Emile, drunk with love, descended with reckless speed the dangerous path down the hill. When he was at the foot he ventured to turn, and saw Gilberte following him with her eyes from her rose-covered terrace, her hands apparently busied trimming her favorite plants.

She surely was not dressed more daintily than usual that day. Her dress was clean, like everything that passed through Janille's scrupulous hands; but it had been washed and ironed so many times that the color had changed from lilac to that indefinable tint which the hortensia assumes just as it withers.

Her superb golden hair, rebelling against the fetters imposed upon it, escaped from its confinement and formed a sort of halo of gold about her head. A snow-white, tightly-fitting chemisette surrounded her lovely neck and suggested the graceful outlines of her shoulders. In Emile's eyes she was resplendent in the sunbeams falling full upon her, for she made no effort to shield herself from them. Sunburn was powerless to impair that rich carnation, and her pale, faded costume made her seem all the fresher.

Moreover, the imagination of a lover of twenty years is too rich to be embarrassed by a mere matter of dress. That faded gown assumed in Emile's eyes a hue more gorgeous than that of all the richest stuffs of the Orient, and he wondered why the painters of the Renaissance had never been able to clothe their smiling madonnas and their triumphant saints so magnificently.

He stood as if nailed to the spot for several minutes, and, except for the impatience of his horse tossing his head and pawing the ground, he would have forgotten entirely that Monsieur de Boisguilbault had another hour to wait for him.

He had had to make several detours to reach the foot of the hill, and the distance in a straight line was not so great that the two young people could not see each other quite plainly. Gilberte observed the hesitation of the horseman, who could not make up his mind to lose sight of her; so she went behind the rose-bushes, to conceal herself from him, but she continued to watch him for a long time through the branches.

Janille had walked in the opposite direction to meet her master. Not until Gilberte heard her father's voice did she break the spell that held her. It was the first time that she had ever allowed Janille to anticipate her in going to meet him and relieve him of his game-bag and his stick.

As he approached Boisguilbault, Emile made and remade a hundred times his plan of attack upon the fortress where that incomprehensible individual lay entrenched.

Impelled by his romantic disposition, he had a sort of presentiment that Gilberte's destiny--and consequently his own--was written in mysterious characters in some obscure corner of that old manor, whose high gray walls rose before him.

Tall, gloomy, melancholy and silent as its aged lord, that isolated abode seemed to defy the bold attacks of curiosity. But Emile was spurred on by a passionate determination. As Gilberte's confidant and agent, he said to himself, pressing the rose, already withered, against his lips, that he would have the necessary courage and address to triumph over every obstacle.

He found Monsieur de Boisguilbault alone on his stoop, idle and impassive as always. He made haste to apologize for delaying the old gentleman's dinner, on the plea that he had lost his way, and, being as yet unfamiliar with the neighborhood, had passed nearly two hours finding it.

Monsieur de Boisguilbault asked no questions as to the route he had taken. One would have said that he dreaded the name of Châteaubrun; but, with refinement of courtesy, he assured his guest that he had no idea of the time and had not thought of being impatient. He had been somewhat disturbed, none the less, as Emile soon discovered from some faltering remarks that he made, and the young man fancied that he could see that, amid the profound tedium of his solitary life, the marquis's sensitive nature would have suffered keenly if he had broken his word.

The dinner was excellent and served by the old retainer with scrupulous punctuality. He was the only servant to be seen in the château. The others, buried in the kitchen, which was underground, did not appear at all. It seemed that this was the result of a sort of standing order, and that their dean was the only one who did not offend the master's eye.

The old man was very infirm, but he was so accustomed to his duties that the marquis had to say almost nothing to him; and when it happened that he did not anticipate his master's desires, a sign was sufficient to convey them to him.

His deafness seemed admirably suited to Monsieur de Boisguilbault's taciturnity, and perhaps the latter was not sorry to have about him a man whose impaired vision made it impossible for him to read his features: he was rather a machine than a servant; for, being deprived by his infirmities of the power of mental communication with his fellow-men, he no longer had any desire or occasion therefor.

One could readily conceive that those two old men were well fitted to live together without a thought of being bored by each other's company, there was so little apparent life in either of them.

The dinner was served with due regularity, but not rapidly. They were two hours at table. Emile observed that his host ate almost nothing, and seemed to have no other purpose in eating than to induce him to taste all the dishes, which were appetizing and toothsome. The wines were exquisite, and old Martin poured them from bottles covered with the dust of ages, which he held horizontally, taking care not to jar them in the slightest degree.

The marquis barely wet his lips, but motioned to his old servant to fill Emile's glass, who, being habitually very abstemious, kept close watch upon himself, to see that he did not allow his reason to succumb to the repeated experiments with the numerous specimens from that seignorial cellar.

"Is this your ordinary fare, monsieur le marquis?" he asked, marvelling that such a sumptuous repast should be provided for two persons.

"I--I really don't know," the marquis replied; "I have nothing to do with it. Martin is my housekeeper. I never have any appetite, and I never notice what I eat. Do the things seem good to you?"

"Exquisite; and if I had the honor of being admitted to your table often, I should beg Martin to entertain me less splendidly, for I should be afraid of becoming a gourmand."

"Why not? it's one variety of enjoyment. Happy are they who have many others!"

"But there are those which are more elevating and less expensive," rejoined Emile; "so many people lack the necessaries of life that I should be ashamed to find that the luxuries were necessary to me."

"You are right," said Monsieur de Boisguilbault, with his accustomed sigh. "Well, I will tell Martin to serve you a simpler dinner another time. He supposed that at your age you would have a large appetite; but it seems to me that you eat like a man who has finished growing. How old are you?"

"Twenty-one."

"I should have thought that you were older."

"From my face?"

"No, from your ideas."

"I would like my father to hear your opinion, monsieur le marquis, and to become imbued with it," rejoined Emile with a smile; "for he always treats me like a child."

"What sort of a man is your father?" said Monsieur de Boisguilbault, with an ingenuous absent-mindedness which removed the sting from what might have seemed at first blush a most impertinent question.

"My father," replied Emile, "is a friend whose esteem I desire and whose blame I dread. I can think of no better way to describe an energetic, stern and just character."

"I have heard it said that he was a very able man, very wealthy and very jealous of his influence. Those are not disadvantages if he makes a good use of them."

"What in your opinion, monsieur le marquis, is the best use that he can make of them?"

"Ah! it would take a long while to tell!" sighed the marquis; "you ought to know as well as I."

And, roused momentarily by the confidence Emile designedly manifested in him in order to induce a similar confidence on his part, he relapsed into his torpor, as if he feared to make an effort to throw it off.

"I absolutely must break this secular ice," thought Emile. "Perhaps it's not so difficult as people think. Perhaps I shall be the first who ever tried it!"

And, while maintaining, as he was bound to do, a discreet silence concerning the apprehensions which his father's ambition aroused in him, and concerning the painful conflict between their respective opinions, he spoke freely and enthusiastically of his own beliefs, of his sympathies and even of his dreams for the future of the human race.

He was certain that the marquis would take him for a madman, and he amused himself by inviting contradictions which would enable him at last to penetrate that mysterious mind.

"If I could only bring about an explosion of contempt or indignation!" he said to himself; "then I could discover the strength or weakness of the citadel."

And he unconsciously adopted with the marquis the same tactics that his father had recently employed with him; he affected to attack and demolish everything that he assumed to be in any degree sacred in the old legitimist's eyes; "the nobility, the money power, large estates, the power of individuals, the slavery of the masses, the Jesuitism of the church, the alleged divine right of kings, the inequality of privileges and pleasures which is the basis of society as at present constituted, the domination of man over woman, who is treated as merchandise in the marriage contract and as real estate in the contract of public morality; in a word, all those heathenish laws which the Gospel has failed to banish from our institutions and which the political scheming of the Church has consecrated."

Monsieur de Boisguilbault seemed to listen more attentively than usual; his great blue eyes were wide open, as if, in default of wine, his amazement at such a sweeping declaration of the rights of man had utterly stupefied him.

Emile glanced at his glass, which was filled with tokay a hundred years old, and resolved to have recourse to it for inspiration if the natural warmth of his youthful enthusiasm was insufficient to avert the avalanche of snow that was about to fall upon him.

But he did not need that stimulant; for, whether because the snow had become too hard to be detached from the glacier, or because Monsieur de Boisguilbault, while seeming to listen, had heard nothing, the rash profession of faith of that child of the century was not interrupted and came to an end in the most profound silence.

"Well, monsieur le marquis," said Emile, amazed by this listless toleration of his views, "do you subscribe to my opinions, or do they seem to you unworthy of being combated?"

Monsieur de Boisguilbault did not reply; a wan smile played about his lips, which moved as if to speak but emitted only the problematical sigh. But he placed his hand on Emile's, and it seemed to the younger man that he felt a cool moisture, which imparted to that hand of stone some symptom of life.

At last he rose and said:

"We will take our coffee in the park.--For I am entirely of your opinion," he added after a pause, as if he were finishing aloud a sentence he had begun under his breath.

"Really?" cried Emile, resolutely passing his arm through his host's.

"Why not, pray?" rejoined the latter coolly.

"Then all these things are indifferent to you?"

"God grant it!" replied Monsieur de Boisguilbault, with a more pronounced sigh than usual.