"Poor Louise! then you do not hate me--me who have treated you so harshly, who have never said a kind or gentle word to you?"

"Hate you, madame? Oh! that doesn't seem possible to me; it seems to me that it is my duty to love you.--Oh! pardon--I forget that I am only a poor servant."

"A servant--you! Ah! that is what is killing me, that is what I cannot endure! You, a servant in my house! O my G.o.d! I was very guilty, I know, since Thou hast inflicted this punishment on me; but to-day it was too heavy.--Great heaven! what am I saying? I am losing my wits.--Louise, my poor child, you have believed that I detested you, that that was the reason why I was constantly trying to keep you away from me, have you not?--Ah! if you could have read in the depths of my heart!"

"Is it possible, madame, that you do not dislike me? Oh! I am so glad!"

"Listen to me, Louise. You ought not to be a servant; you ought to be rich and happy, poor girl! You have suffered enough for faults committed by others; your lot will soon be changed. Here, take this letter which I have just written, and hand it to the person whose name is on the envelope, to whom you will go at once on leaving here. I do not know where the--the person to whom I am sending you lives now, but you can learn by going to Monsieur Cherubin de Grandvilain's house; he is his friend, and he will tell you at once where he lives. You know Monsieur Cherubin's house, do you not?"

"Oh, yes! I have been there twice, madame.--And the person to whom I am to give this letter?"

"That person will--at least, I think so--restore you to your father."

"To my father! O my G.o.d! What, madame! I shall find my parents? Do you know them, madame?"

"Ask me nothing more, Louise; what I am doing now is a great deal. I swore that I would never write to this person; but since I have seen you, I have felt that it was wicked, very wicked, to deprive you of your father's caresses; for he will be happy to recover you! Oh, yes! I am sure that he will surround you with love and care."

"And my mother, madame--you say nothing of her? Shall I not see her too?

Oh! it would be so sweet to me to hold her in my arms!"

"Your mother? Oh, no! that is impossible; your father will conceal her name from you--he must. If, however, he should disclose it, remember that a heedless word would kill her!--But I have said enough. To-morrow, at daybreak, before anyone in the house is up, you will go away; you promise me that, Louise?"

"Yes, madame, I promise."

"That is well; and now, kiss me."

"May I?"

Madame de Noirmont's only reply was to put her arms about Louise's waist, strain her to her heart, and hold her so a long time, covering her with kisses. The poor girl was so happy that she thought that she was dreaming, and she prayed heaven not to wake her.

But Madame de Noirmont, whose eyes were filled with tears, made a superhuman effort, and extricating herself from the arms that enlaced her, deposited one more kiss on the girl's forehead and hurriedly left the room, saying in a voice overflowing with affection:

"Do not forget anything of all that I have said to you!"

Louise lay in a sort of trance; the kisses she had received had made her know such unalloyed happiness that she tried to prolong it; she dared not reflect, or seek to solve the mystery of Madame de Noirmont's conduct; but she repeated again and again:

"She loves me! oh, yes! she loves me, for she held me to her heart a long while, and she said: 'Don't forget anything that I said to you!'--Ah! I shall never forget those words; I shall remember them all my life."

Louise did not close her eyes during the rest of the night. As soon as the day began to break, she rose, dressed hastily, made a bundle of her clothes, placed in her bosom the letter that Madame de Noirmont had given her, and, softly opening the door, left her room, stole noiselessly through several rooms to the staircase, and so down to the courtyard; she knocked on the concierge's window, he opened the gate, and at daybreak she stood in the street.

XXVI

FEAR

Since his adventure with Chichette Chichemann, Cherubin had been less quick to take fire; or, rather, he had begun to understand that what he had taken for love was simply those desires which the sight of a pretty woman arouses in a man's heart; desires which are certain to be renewed often in a wholly inexperienced heart, whose sensations have the charm of novelty.

But the checks he had met with in his amorous essays had made Cherubin even more shy and timid; instead of taking advantage of the lessons that he had received to bear himself more gallantly in a tete-a-tete, poor Cherubin was so afraid of being unfortunate or awkward again, that the bare idea of an a.s.signation almost made him tremble. On the other hand, as love, at his age, is the first joy of life, the young marquis, not knowing how he could procure that joy, became sad and melancholy. At twenty years of age, with a n.o.ble name, a handsome fortune, with good looks and a fine figure; in a word, possessed of everything that is supposed to make a man happy, Cherubin was not happy; he lost his good spirits and even his fresh coloring. He no longer had that bright, ruddy complexion which people used to admire in him; for it is useless to try to conceal the fact that, while excessive dissipation sometimes destroys the health, excessive virtue may produce the same result; excess in anything is to be deplored.

The young marquis no longer visited the Comtesse de Valdieri, or Madame Celival, because the frigid greeting he received from those ladies was equivalent to a dismissal; but he sometimes met them in society. When he did, it seemed to him that all the ladies looked at him in a strange fashion, that they whispered together and even went so far as to laugh when he appeared. All this tormented and disturbed him; he told his troubles to his friend Monfreville.

"Do you suppose that that little countess and Madame Celival have been saying unkind things about me?" he said. "I don't know what I have done to them."

"That is just the reason!" replied Monfreville, with a smile. "I beg you, my young friend, do not persist in this apathy, which is ill-suited to your years. You have everything that a man needs, to be agreeable to the ladies; form other connections. Have three or four mistresses at once, deceive them all openly, and your reputation will soon be reestablished."

"That is very easy for you to say, my dear Monfreville, but, since my misadventures, I am so afraid of being--er--awkward again with a woman, that it makes me shudder beforehand. It is enough to kill one with shame and despair! I prefer not to take the risk. And yet I feel that I am terribly bored."

"I can well believe it--to live without love, at your age! when one has not even the memory of his follies! that is perfectly absurd. But if you are afraid that you are not yet sufficiently enterprising with a great lady, why, my friend, make a beginning with grisettes and actresses. I a.s.sure you they will train you quite as well."

"Yes, I thought of that at first; and last week, happening to meet Malvina--you know, that lively little ballet girl?"

"Yes."

"Well, I spoke to her. At first she called me Monsieur Jack Frost; but when I told her that I wasn't as cold as she thought, she said: 'To make me believe that, you must prove it.' And she invited me again to breakfast with her--at six o'clock in the morning--and we appointed a day."

"Good! that is excellent!"

"Oh, yes! but the day came long ago, and I didn't go."

"Why not?"

"Because I reflected that I had no more love for Malvina than for the others, and that I should no doubt make as big a fool of myself with her as I had done at my previous tete-a-tetes."

"You were altogether wrong! your reasoning is ridiculous! The idea of reflecting about an amourette, a pa.s.sing fancy! But stay--didn't you tell me once of a grisette, a girl who worked in a linen-draper's shop near by, and who used to ogle you? she even told you her name, I believe."

"Yes, my friend, that was little Celanire, with the fair hair and the nose _a la Roxelane_."

"Well, there's your chance; ask Mademoiselle Celanire for a rendezvous.

Judging from what you have told me, she won't refuse you."

"That is what I did, my friend. The day before yesterday I saw the young grisette in the street; when she found that I was walking behind her, she pretended to make a misstep; then she stopped and clung to me to keep from falling."

"That was very clever."

"So I thought; after that, we talked, and finally she agreed to meet me that evening on Boulevard du Chateau d'Eau, a long way from her quarter, for the express purpose of not meeting people who might recognize her."

"That was very prudent; grisettes think of everything. Well, how did matters go at that meeting?"

"Mon Dieu! my friend, I didn't go there either. As I was about to start, I made the same reflections that I had made concerning the little dancer. Then I was afraid and I stayed at home."

"Oh! this is too much, my poor Cherubin! If you give way to such terrors, there is no reason why you should not be bewildered by them all your life! In old times, the old women would have said that someone had cast a spell on you, and they would have sent you to see some famous exorcist. For, in the good old days, spells were cast and destroyed frequently; indeed, it was not uncommon to see prosecutions based upon such affairs, and to see the judges order an inspection, in order to make the man prove his innocence, who attempted to make so many honest people forfeit theirs. But those barbarous days have pa.s.sed--for they really deserve to be so called. Now, we know no better sorcerer than a pretty woman to discover whether a man is in love or not. So that I persist in referring you to such a one."

Monfreville's words did not console Cherubin in the least; he continued in his state of depression and self torment; but one morning there came to his mind a thought that roused and revivified him: he thought of Gagny, of young Louise, of his kindhearted nurse, who loved him so dearly; it occurred to him to revisit his childhood home. In his melancholy and his ennui he remembered those who loved him; in the whirl of dissipation he had forgotten them! Such cases are too common; they do not speak well for our hearts, but why did Nature make us like that?

Cherubin said nothing to any of his household; he took neither Jasmin nor Gerondif, but ordered his cabriolet, bade his little groom climb up behind, and started, after obtaining minute directions as to the shortest way to Gagny.