Chapter XVIII: Storm

From that day Emile no longer lived at his parents' house. He was there in the body at night, to be sure, and during some hours of the day; but his mind was more frequently at Boisguilbault and his heart almost always at Châteaubrun.

He went frequently to Boisguilbault, more frequently than he would have done, perhaps, had it not been for the proximity of Châteaubrun and the pretexts afforded by his first visit.

In the first place there were books to carry to Gilberte, and although the marquis gave him permission to draw upon the library at his discretion, he was careful to carry them one by one, so that he might always have an excuse for calling upon her.

It did not occur to Monsieur Antoine or Janille to be surprised at the pleasure which Gilberte derived from reading, or to superintend her choice of books; for Janille could not read, and prudence was not Monsieur Antoine's forte. But the maid's guardian angel was no more heedful of the purity of her thoughts than was Emile. His love enveloped Gilberte with an inviolable respect, and the child's saintlike innocence was a treasure of which he showed himself a more jealous guardian than her father, to whom, as Janille expressed it, good fortune had always come when he was asleep.

How carefully therefore did he turn the leaves of a volume before handing it to her,--whatever its subject,--history, morals, poetry or romance,--lest it should contain some word that might make her blush!

If, in her trustful ignorance, she asked him to procure her some book in which he remembered that there were certain passages that ought not to be put before the eyes of a young virgin, he would reply that he had looked through the collection at Boisguilbault in vain; that it was not there.

A mother could have acted no more wisely under such circumstances than Gilberte's young lover, and in proportion as the father, in his affectionate heedlessness, unwittingly smoothed the way for attempts at corruption, Emile made it his sacred and cherished duty to justify the confidence of those ingenuous hearts.

Emile's opportunities for talking with Gilberte as to what took place between himself and Monsieur de Boisguilbault were very rare and brief, for Janille almost never left them; and when they were with Monsieur Antoine, Gilberte instinctively and from habit clung to her father's side.

However she soon learned that the friendship between young Cardonnet and the old marquis was making great strides, and that it was based upon a remarkable harmony of principles and ideas. But Emile did his best to conceal from her the ill success of his attempts to bring about a reconciliation between the two families: we shall set forth, in due time, the result of his efforts in that direction.

Hoping always to succeed in time, Emile dissembled his frequent rebuffs; and Gilberte, divining the embarrassments and the delicate nature of the mission he had accepted, did not press him in the fear of displaying too great eagerness and persistence.

And then, it should be said that Gilberte gradually became less interested in the success of the enterprise, while Emile, for his part, felt that his resolution became day by day more earnest.

Love absorbs every other thought; and these two young people, by dint of thinking of each other soon had no leisure to think of anything else. Their whole existence became sentiment, that is to say passion, and the hours flew by in the intoxication of being together, or dragged heavily in anticipation of the moment which was to bring them together.

It was a strange thing to Monsieur Cardonnet, who was watching his son closely, and to Emile, who no longer realized what was going on within him, and yet it was entirely natural, inevitable indeed, that the passion which had absorbed our hero's first youth,--that is to say, the desire to acquire knowledge, to understand and take part in general life,--gave place to a gentle slumber of the intellect and to something like forgetfulness of his favorite theories.

In a society where all things were in harmony, love would surely become a stimulant to patriotism and to social virtue. But when bold and generous impulses are doomed to maintain a painful conflict with the men and things that surround us, the personal affections capture us and dominate us to the point of producing a sort of numbness of the other faculties.

The common people seek in intoxication by alcohol oblivion of their privations, and the lover finds in the intoxication produced by his mistress's eyes a sort of philter that induces oblivion of everything else. Emile was too young to know how to suffer and to desire to suffer, but he had already suffered much. Now that happiness had come in search of him, how could he think of eluding it? Let us admit, without too much shame for the poor boy, that he no longer thought of laws or facts or the future, of the past of the world, of the vices of society, or the means of saving it, of human misery or the divine will, of Heaven or earth. Earth, Heaven, God's law, destiny, the world--his love was all of these; and provided he could see Gilberte and read his fate in her eyes, it mattered little to him if the universe crumbled about his ears.

He could not open a book or sustain a discussion. When he had tired himself out scouring all the paths that led in the direction of his beloved, he dozed beside his mother's chair or read the newspapers to her without understanding a word of what his voice said; and when he was alone in his chamber, he would undress very hurriedly so that he could put out his light and avoid the sight of external objects.

Then the darkness would be illuminated by the inward fire which gave him life, and his radiant vision would appear before him. In that ecstatic state he ceased to have the sensations of sleep or of waking. He dreamed with his eyes open, he saw with his eyes closed.

A word of playful affection, a smile from Gilberte, the touch of her dress brushing against him as she passed, a blade of grass which she had broken and which he had seized upon,--any one of these was enough to occupy his mind during the night; and no sooner did the first rays of dawn appear than he ran to groom his horse himself so that he might start the earlier. He forgot to eat and considered it perfectly natural that he should live on the morning dew and the breeze that blew from Châteaubrun.

He dared not go there every day, although he might have done so without fear that Monsieur Antoine would receive him less warmly. But there is in love a shrinking modesty which takes fright at happiness at the moment of grasping it. So he wandered about in every direction, and hid in the woods, where he could gaze at the ruins of Châteaubrun through the branches, as if he were afraid of being caught in the act of adoration.

At night, when Jean Jappeloup had finished his day's work, as he did not as yet earn enough to hire a house and did not choose to be a burden to his friends, and as the nights were warm and pleasant, he repaired to a small abandoned chapel, on the hill which formed the centre of the village, and before lying down on the straw with which he had made a bed, went to say his prayers at the pretty little church of Gargilesse.

He went down, from preference, into the Roman crypt which still bears traces of the curious frescoes of the fifteenth century. From the daintily-carved window of that underground apartment one overlooks walls of rock and the green ravines through which the Gargilesse flows.

The carpenter had been deprived longer than he liked of the sight of his dear native place, and he often interrupted his placid, pensive prayer to gaze on the landscape, still half-praying, half-musing, in that peculiar frame of mind characteristic of simple-hearted folk, peasants, especially after the fatigue of the day.

It was then that Emile, when he had dined and walked a while with his mother, came to join the carpenter, to admire the pretty structure with him, and then to chat on the hill-top of everything that he could not talk about at home--of Châteaubrun, Monsieur Antoine, Janille, and, lastly, of Gilberte.

There was one person who loved Gilberte almost as dearly as Emile, but with another kind of love: that person was Jean. He did not precisely look upon her as his daughter, for, blended with the paternal sentiment, there was a sort of respect for a nature so adorable, a sort of unpolished enthusiasm which he would not have had for his own children. But he was proud of her beauty, of her goodness, of her common sense and of her courage, like a man who knows the value of those qualities, and feels keenly the honor of a noble attachment.

The familiarity with which he expressed himself concerning her, dropping the title of mademoiselle in accordance with his habit of calling every one by his or her name, in no wise detracted from his instinctive veneration for her, and Emile's ears were not wounded thereby, although he would never have dared do the same.

The young man took keen delight in hearing of Gilberte's childish sports and pretty ways, of her kindly impulses, of her generous and delicate attentions to the friend who, but for her, would have lacked everything.

"When I was wandering in the mountains not long ago," said Jappeloup, "I was pressed so close sometimes that I dared not leave the hole in the cliff or the branches of some tree with dense foliage, in which I had hidden in the morning. At such times hunger took hold of me, and one night when I was thoroughly done up with weakness and fatigue, and was creeping round the mountain, saying to myself that it was a long, long way to Châteaubrun, and if I should happen to meet gendarmes on the way I shouldn't have the strength to run, I saw a little wagon on the road with several bundles of straw, and Gilberte walking alongside and making signs to me. She had come all that distance with Sylvain Charasson, looking for me everywhere, and watching like a little quail under a bush. I lay down and hid in the straw. Gilberte sat down by my side, and Sylvain led us back to Châteaubrun, where I went in under the noses of the gendarmes, who were hunting for me not two steps away.

"Another time we had agreed that Sylvain should bring me something to eat and put it in the hollow trunk of an old willow about a league from Châteaubrun. It was horrible weather, pelting rain, and I had a strong suspicion that the little rascal, who likes to be comfortable, would pretend to forget me or would eat my dinner on the road. However, I went there at the time agreed upon, and I found the little basket well filled and well out of sight. But what do you suppose I spied near the willow? The print of a cunning little foot on the damp sand, and I was able to follow the poor little foot along the ground, where it had sunk in more than once over the ankle. The dear child had got wet through, dirty and tired, because she wouldn't trust anyone but herself to look after her old friend!

"And still another day she saw the bloodhounds marching straight for an old ruin, where, thinking that I was perfectly safe, I was calmly taking a nap at midday. It was terribly hot that day! It was the very day you arrived in the neighborhood. Well, Gilberte took the short cut, a very rough and dangerous path, where the horsemen could not have followed her, and arrived a quarter of an hour ahead of them, all red and all out of breath, to wake me and tell me to make tracks. She was sick afterward, poor dear heart, and her people knew nothing about it. That was what made me particularly anxious that evening, when we took supper at Châteaubrun and Janille told us that she had gone to bed.

"Ah! yes, the little one has always had a great heart. If the King of France knew her worth he would be too much honored to obtain her hand for the best of his sons. When she was no bigger than my fist, any one could see that she would be as pretty and lovable a creature as ever was. You may seek as you will among the greatest and richest ladies, my boy, you will never find a Gilberte like Gilberte de Châteaubrun!"

Emile listened with delight, asked him innumerable questions, and made him repeat the same stories ten times over.

It was not long before Monsieur Cardonnet discovered the cause of the change that had taken place in Emile. There was no more melancholy, no more painful reticence, no more indirect reproof. It seemed as if Emile had never been in opposition to him on any subject whatever, or at least had never noticed that his father had different ideas from his own. He had become a child once more in many respects. He did not heave sighs at this or that plan of study; he seemed not to see things which might have offended his principles; he dreamed of naught but lovely, sunny mornings, long walks, precipices to climb, solitudes to explore; and yet he brought back neither sketches, nor plants, nor mineralogical specimens, as he would have done at other times.

Country life pleased him above all things. It was the loveliest region in the world; the open air and exercise in the saddle did him a vast amount of good; in a word, everything was for the best, provided that he was allowed to have his way; and if he fell into a fit of musing, he would come out of it with a smile that seemed to say:

"I have things within me to occupy my mind, and what you say to me is nothing compared to what I think."

If Monsieur Cardonnet, by some artifice, succeeded in keeping him at home, he seemed distressed for a moment, then, suddenly assuming an air of resignation, like a man whom it is impossible to dispossess of his stock of happiness, he made haste to obey, and set about his task in order to have done with it the sooner.

"There's a pretty girl at the bottom of all this," said Monsieur Cardonnet to himself, "and it is love that makes this rebellious mind so docile. It's a very good thing to know. So the philosophical, argumentative fever may give way to thirst for pleasure or to sentimental reveries! I was very foolish not to reckon on his youth and the passions of youth! I must let this storm rage--it will blow away the obstacle upon which I should have gone to pieces; and when it is time to stay the storm, I will see what it is best to do. Make haste with your riding about the country and your loving, my poor Emile! It's the same with you as with this mountain stream that has declared war on me: you will both submit when you feel the hand of the master!"

Monsieur Cardonnet was not conscious of his cruelty. He believed neither in the force nor duration of love, and attached no more importance to a young man's despair than to a child's tears. If he had thought that Mademoiselle de Châteaubrun could become the victim of his plan of waiting, he might perhaps have been conscience-stricken. But the spirit of a proprietor and of _everyone for himself_, prevented him from foreseeing the danger of another.

"It's old Antoine's business to look out for his daughter," he thought. "If the old sot sleeps on his own perils, he has at all events a servant-mistress who has nothing better to do than put the key of the famous pavilion in her pocket at night. I can open the duenna's eyes when the time comes."

With this persuasion he left Emile almost free, both as to his time and his acts. He confined himself to ridiculing and bitterly decrying the family of Châteaubrun when opportunity offered, in order to protect himself from the reproach of having openly encouraged his son's suit.

In his opinion, Antoine de Châteaubrun was really a poor creature, a man of no consideration, whom poverty had degraded and idleness brutalized. He saw with vainglorious pleasure the former lords of the soil, thus fallen from their high estate, take refuge in the arms of the people, not daring to have recourse to the protection and companionship of the newly rich.

Monsieur de Boisguilbault found no favor in his eyes, although it was difficult to reproach him with dissipation and impropriety of conduct. The wealth which he had succeeded in retaining gave much more umbrage to Cardonnet than the name of Châteaubrun, and while he despised the count, he had a sort of hatred for the marquis. He declared that he was a fit subject for the lunatic hospital, and he blushed for him, he said, because of the idiotic use he had made of so long a life and so vast a fortune.

Emile took pains to defend Monsieur de Boisguilbault, but without avowing that he saw him two or three times a week. He was afraid that his father, by suggesting to him that he must make his visits more infrequent, would deprive him of the excuse he had for making a short call on the family at Châteaubrun as he rode by. He needed that excuse particularly on Gilberte's account, for he was confident that Monsieur Antoine would make no comment; but he was afraid that Janille might convince Mademoiselle that her dignity demanded that she should keep at a respectful distance a young man who was too wealthy to marry her, according to worldly ideas.

He foresaw clearly enough that the day would come when his assiduity would be observed.

"But by that time," he said to himself, "perhaps she will love me, and I can explain the seriousness of my attentions."

This thought naturally led him to anticipate a long and vehement opposition on Monsieur Cardonnet's part; but thereupon there rose in him a sort of well-spring of courage and determination; his heart beat like that of a soldier rushing forward to the assault, burning to plant his flag on the breach with his own hand; he felt that he quivered like the war-horse intoxicated by the smell of powder.

Sometimes, when his father overwhelmed one of his workmen with his cold, concentrated wrath, he would fold his arms and involuntarily measure him with his eye.

"We shall see," he would say to himself, "if such things will terrify me, and if such a blast will make me bend when he raises his hand against the sacred ark of my love.--O father! you have succeeded in turning me aside from the studies to which I was devoted, in stifling all my aspirations in my bosom, in wounding my self-esteem with impunity and trampling on my sympathies. If you demand the sacrifice of my intelligence and my inclinations, why, I will submit once more. But the sacrifice of my love! Ah! you are too prudent, too discerning to demand it, for if you did, you would see that, while I am your son to love you, I have your blood in my veins to resist you. We should shatter ourselves against each other, like two machines of equal strength, and you would have to become a parricide in order to win the victory."

Awaiting that terrible day, which Emile accustomed himself to contemplate, he allowed his father's secret rancor to vent itself in empty words against the worthy Antoine and his faithful Janille. It had even become a matter of indifference whether he did or did not allude to the doubtful parentage of the count's daughter. It mattered little to him whether she had plebeian blood in her veins, and he hardly heard what Monsieur Cardonnet said on that subject.

It seemed to him, furthermore, that it would have been an insult to Gilberte's father to seek to defend him against the other accusations of his father. He smiled almost like a martyr, who receives a wound and defies pain.

Thus, despite all his shrewdness, Cardonnet was on the wrong road and was dragging his son with him into the abyss, flattering himself that he could readily hold him back when they had reached the brink. He thought that he knew the human heart, because he knew the secret of human weaknesses; but he who knows only the weak and miserable side of men and things, knows only half of the truth.

"I have made him submit on more important occasions," he said to himself; "an _amourette_ is of no account."

He was right as to _amourettes_; perhaps he had had experience of them; but a great passion was to him an inaccessible ideal, and he had no conception of the sublime or disastrous resolutions it can inspire.

It may be that Monsieur de Boisguilbault contributed in some degree to allay Emile's tempestuous ardor in regard to social questions; sometimes his tone of glacial security had aroused the impetuous youth's impatience; but more frequently he realized that tranquil prophet was right in submitting patiently to the present, in view of what the future was certain to bring forth.

When the marquis discoursed to him in the name of the logic of ideas--sovereign of all worlds and mother of human destinies--instead of irritating him as Monsieur Cardonnet did by invoking the false and clumsy logic of facts, he succeeded in pacifying and convincing him.

If the contrast between the two sometimes caused a sort of generous irritability in the least patient of the two, the more tranquil soon recovered his influence and disclosed the power that was concealed within him and that made him, so to speak, superior to himself.

Monsieur Cardonnet's raillery had wounded Emile deeply, and had almost driven him to the exaggeration of fanaticism. Monsieur de Boisguilbault's exalted good sense reconciled him to himself, and he felt proud to have the sanction of an old man so enlightened and so rigid in his deductions. As they were in perfect accord as to the fundamental points, their discussions could not last long, and as communism was the only subject capable of rousing the marquis from his usual taciturnity, it often happened that they were silent for a long while in a sort of reverie _à deux_.

But Emile was never bored at Boisguilbault. The beauty of the park, the library, and, above all, the reserved but indubitable pleasure which the marquis derived from his society, made his visits agreeably restful and delightful to him as a relief from more intense emotions. He created for himself there, unconsciously, a second home, much more in conformity with his tastes than the noisy factory and his father's household, managed as it was with military strictness.

Châteaubrun would have been a retreat even more after his heart. There he loved everything and everybody, without exception: the family, the old ruins, even the domestic animals and the plants. But to enjoy the happiness of passing his life there, he must scale the walls of heaven; and as he must needs fall back to the earth after his dream, Emile found that the fall was less severe at Boisguilbault than at Gargilesse. Boisguilbault was a sort of half-way station between the bottomless pit and heaven; the _limbo_ between purgatory and paradise. He was so warmly welcomed there, and so warmly urged to remain, that he became accustomed to the idea that he was at home there. He busied himself about the park, arranged the books, and took riding-lessons in the main courtyard.

Gradually the old marquis yielded to the pleasures of companionship, and sometimes his smile indicated genuine cheerfulness. He did not realize the fact or did not choose to admit it: but the young man became necessary to him and brought life to him. For hours at a time he seemed to accept the boon indifferently, but when Emile was about to leave him that pale face would gradually change its expression, and the wheeze of asthma would become a sigh of affection and regret when the young man leaped upon his horse, impatient to descend the hill.

At last it became evident to Emile, who was learning day by day to decipher that mysterious book, that the old man's heart was affectionate and sympathetic, that he regretted, secretly but constantly, that he had adopted a life of solitude, and that he had other reasons for taking that course than a misanthropic temperament simply.

He believed that the time had come to probe the wound and suggest the remedy. The name of Antoine de Châteaubrun, which he had already mentioned many times to no purpose, and which had died away, leaving no echo, in the silence of the park, came once more to his lips and clung there more obstinately. The marquis was forced to hear it and make some reply.

"My dear Emile," he said, in the most solemn tone he had as yet assumed with him, "you can cause me much pain, and if such is your purpose, I will furnish you with the means, namely, to speak to me of the person you have just mentioned."

"I know," replied the young man, "but----"

"You know!" Monsieur de Boisguilbault interrupted him; "what do you know?"

And, as he asked this question, he seemed so indignant, and his lifeless eyes were filled with such threatening fire, that Emile, taken by surprise, remembered what was said at their first interview about his alleged irascibility, although it was said in such a tone that at the time he had been unable to view it in any other light than as a boastful joke.

"Answer me!" continued Monsieur de Boisguilbault, in a milder voice but with a bitter smile. "If you know the causes of my resentment, how dare you remind me of them?"

"If they are serious," replied Emile, "I certainly know nothing of them; for what I have been told is so frivolous that I am entirely unable to credit it, seeing how angry you are with me."

"Frivolous! frivolous! In heaven's name what has anyone told you? Be honest: don't hope to deceive me!"

"Since when, pray, have I given you the right to suspect me of anything so base as falsehood?" retorted Emile, becoming a little heated in his turn.

"Monsieur Cardonnet," said the marquis, taking the young man's arm in a hand that trembled like the leaf fluttering in the autumn breeze, "I do not think that you will seek to make sport of my suffering. Speak, therefore, and tell me what you know, for I must hear it."

"I know what people say and no more. They say that you broke off a friendship of twenty years' standing because of a quarrel about a deer. One of those creatures, which you had tamed for your amusement, escaped from your enclosure, and Monsieur de Châteaubrun, having fallen in with it a short distance from your park, was inconsiderate enough to kill it. It would have been exceedingly inconsiderate, it is true, as there are no deer in this region, so that he must have known that it was one of your pets; Monsieur de Châteaubrun has always been very absent-minded, and that is not an injury of the sort for which one cannot forgive a friend."

"Who told you that story? He, I suppose?"

"He has never mentioned the subject to me. It was Jean, the carpenter, another man whom you won't talk about, although you have been very kind to him, who told me that he has never known of any other reason for misunderstanding between you."

"And from whom did he obtain this interesting explanation? from the maid-servant, doubtless?"

"No, monsieur le marquis. The servant never mentions you any more than the master does. What I have told you is the story generally believed among the peasants."

"And the basis of it is true," rejoined Monsieur de Boisguilbault, after a long pause, which seemed to restore his tranquillity entirely. "Why should you be surprised, Emile? Don't you know that it only takes a drop of water to make a lake overflow?"

"But if your lake of bitterness was filled with such drops of water only, how can I fail to be surprised by your sensitiveness? I can discover no other fault in Monsieur de Châteaubrun than constant inertia and heedlessness. If it was a series of absent-minded freaks and _gaucheries_ that made his presence insupportable to you, I must say that I do not recognize your accustomed good judgment and tolerant spirit. I, whom you often call a volcano in eruption, should have been more patient than you, for Monsieur Antoine's fits of abstraction amuse me rather than irritate me, and I see in them a proof of his openness of heart and the artlessness of his mind."

"Emile, Emile, you are not qualified to judge of such matters," rejoined Monsieur de Boisguilbault with an embarrassed air. "I am very absent-minded myself, and I suffer from my own mistakes. Those of other people are evidently more than I can stand, you see. Affection lives only upon contrasts, they say. Two deaf or two blind men are sadly bored together. In short, I was tired of that man! say no more to me about him."

"I cannot believe that prohibition is intended seriously. O my noble-hearted friend, turn your wrath upon me alone; if I insist; but it is impossible for me to avoid seeing that this rupture is one of the principal causes of your sadness. At the bottom of your heart you reproach yourself with it as an act of injustice; and who can say that it is not the only source of your misanthropy? We find it difficult to tolerate other men when there is in the depths of our minds something for which we cannot give ourselves absolution. I believe, and I dare to tell you, that you would be comforted if you should repair the injury which you inflicted on one of your fellow-men so many years ago."

"The injury I inflicted on him? What injury, pray? What revenge did I take on him? to whom did I ever say an unkind word of him? to whom have I complained? what do you yourself know of my inmost feelings toward him? The miserable fellow had better hold his peace! he will commit a great sin if he complains of my conduct."

"He does not complain of it, monsieur le marquis, but he deplores the loss of your friendship. That regret disturbs his sleep and sometimes obscures the serenity of his amiable and resigned heart. He does not of his own accord mention your name, but if anybody mentions it in his presence, he speaks of you in the highest terms and his eyes fill with tears. And then, too, there is some one very near to him who suffers even more than himself in his sorrow, some one who respects you, who fears you and who dares not implore you, but whose affection and gratitude would be a blessing in your loneliness and a support in your old age."

"What do you mean, Emile?" said the marquis, painfully affected. "Are you speaking of yourself? Does your friendship for me depend upon that condition? That would be very cruel on your part."

"There is no question of me in this matter," Emile replied. "My attachment to you is too profound, and my sympathy too instinctive for me to put any price on them. I am speaking of some one who knows you only through me, but who had already divined your character and who does full justice to your noble qualities; of a person a thousand times more estimable than I, whom you would love with a father's affection if you knew her; in a word, I am speaking of an angel, of Mademoiselle Gilberte de Châteaubrun."

Emile had no sooner pronounced that name, upon which he relied as a magic charm, than he saw his host's expression change in an alarming manner. The knobs of his thin, sallow cheeks flushed purple; his eyes started from their sockets; his arms and legs twitched convulsively. He tried to speak and stammered unintelligible words. At last he succeeded in saying this:

"Enough, monsieur, that is enough, too much. Never be so misguided as to mention that _demoiselle's_ name to me!"

And, leaving the cliff in the park, where this conversation took place, he entered the chalet and closed the door violently behind him.