"I never had a mother," said Gabrielle, "but my father has been good as G.o.d himself."

"I never had a father," said the hated son, "but my mother was all of heaven to me."

Etienne related his youth, his love for his mother, his taste for flowers. Gabrielle exclaimed at his last words. Questioned why, she blushed and avoided answering; then when a shadow pa.s.sed across that brow which death seemed to graze with its pinion, across that visible soul where the young man's slightest emotions showed, she answered:--

"Because I too love flowers."

To believe ourselves linked far back in the past by community of tastes, is not that a declaration of love such as virgins know how to give? Love desires to seem old; it is a coquetry of youth.

Etienne brought flowers on the morrow, ordering his people to find rare ones, as his mother had done in earlier days for him. Who knows the depths to which the roots of a feeling reach in the soul of a solitary being thus returning to the traditions of mother-love in order to bestow upon a woman the same caressing devotion with which his mother had charmed his life? To him, what grandeur in these nothings wherein were blended his only two affections. Flowers and music thus became the language of their love. Gabrielle replied to Etienne's gifts by nosegays of her own,--nosegays which told the wise old doctor that his ignorant daughter already knew enough. The material ignorance of these two lovers was like a dark background on which the faintest lines of their all-spiritual intercourse were traced with exquisite delicacy, like the red, pure outlines of Etruscan figures. Their slightest words brought a flood of ideas, because each was the fruit of their long meditations.

Incapable of boldly looking forward, each beginning seemed to them an end. Though absolutely free, they were imprisoned in their own simplicity, which would have been disheartening had either given a meaning to their confused desires. They were poets and poem both. Music, the most sensual of arts for loving souls, was the interpreter of their ideas; they took delight in repeating the same harmony, letting their pa.s.sion flow through those fine sheets of sound in which their souls could vibrate without obstacle.

Many loves proceed through opposition; through struggles and reconciliations, the vulgar struggle of mind and matter. But the first wing-beat of true love sends it far beyond such struggles. Where all is of the same essence, two natures are no longer to be distinguished; like genius in its highest expression, such love can sustain itself in the brightest light; it grows beneath the light, it needs no shade to bring it into relief. Gabrielle, because she was a woman, Etienne, because he had suffered much and meditated much, pa.s.sed quickly through the regions occupied by common pa.s.sions and went beyond it. Like all enfeebled natures, they were quickly penetrated by Faith, by that celestial glow which doubles strength by doubling the soul. For them their sun was always at its meridian. Soon they had that divine belief in themselves which allows of neither jealousy nor torment; abnegation was ever ready, admiration constant.

Under these conditions, love could have no pain. Equal in their feebleness, strong in their union, if the n.o.ble had some superiority of knowledge and some conventional grandeur, the daughter of the physician eclipsed all that by her beauty, by the loftiness of her sentiments, by the delicacy she gave to their enjoyments. Thus these two white doves flew with one wing beneath their pure blue heaven; Etienne loved, he was loved, the present was serene, the future cloudless; he was sovereign lord; the castle was his, the sea belonged to both of them; no vexing thought troubled the harmonious concert of their canticle; virginity of mind and senses enlarged for them the world, their thoughts rose in their minds without effort; desire, the satisfactions of which are doomed to blast so much, desire, that evil of terrestrial love, had not as yet attacked them. Like two zephyrs swaying on the same willow-branch, they needed nothing more than the joy of looking at each other in the mirror of the limpid waters; immensity sufficed them; they admired their Ocean, without one thought of gliding on it in the white-winged bark with ropes of flowers, sailed by Hope.

Love has its moment when it suffices to itself, when it is happy in merely being. During this springtime, when all is budding, the lover sometimes hides from the beloved woman, in order to enjoy her more, to see her better; but Etienne and Gabrielle plunged together into all the delights of that infantine period. Sometimes they were two sisters in the grace of their confidences, sometimes two brothers in the boldness of their questionings. Usually love demands a slave and a G.o.d, but these two realized the dream of Plato,--they were but one being deified. They protected each other. Caresses came slowly, one by one, but chaste as the merry play--so graceful, so coquettish--of young animals. The sentiment which induced them to express their souls in song led them to love by the manifold transformations of the same happiness. Their joys caused them neither wakefulness nor delirium. It was the infancy of pleasure developing within them, unaware of the beautiful red flowers which were to crown its shoots. They gave themselves to each other, ignorant of all danger; they cast their whole being into a word, into a look, into a kiss, into the long, long pressure of their clasping hands.

They praised each other's beauties ingenuously, spending treasures of language on these secret idylls, inventing soft exaggerations and more diminutives than the ancient muse of Tibullus, or the poesies of Italy.

On their lips and in their hearts love flowed ever, like the liquid fringes of the sea upon the sands of the sh.o.r.e,--all alike, all dissimilar. Joyous, eternal fidelity!

If we must count by days, the time thus spent was five months only; if we may count by the innumerable sensations, thoughts, dreams, glances, opening flowers, realized hopes, unceasing joys, speeches interrupted, renewed, abandoned, frolic laughter, bare feet dabbling in the sea, hunts, childlike, for sh.e.l.ls, kisses, surprises, clasping hands,--call it a lifetime; death will justify the word. There are existences that are ever gloomy, lived under ashen skies; but suppose a glorious day, when the sun of heaven glows in the azure air,--such was the May of their love, during which Etienne had suspended all his griefs,--griefs which had pa.s.sed into the heart of Gabrielle, who, in turn, had fastened all her joys to come on those of her lord. Etienne had had but one sorrow in his life,--the death of his mother; he was to have but one love--Gabrielle.

CHAPTER VII. THE CRUSHED PEARL

The coa.r.s.e rivalry of an ambitious man hastened the destruction of this honeyed life. The Duc d'Herouville, an old warrior in wiles and policy, had no sooner pa.s.sed his word to his physician than he was conscious of the voice of distrust. The Baron d'Artagnon, lieutenant of his company of men-at-arms, possessed his utmost confidence. The baron was a man after the duke's own heart,--a species of butcher, built for strength, tall, virile in face, cold and harsh, brave in the service of the throne, rude in his manners, with an iron will in action, but supple in manoeuvres, withal an ambitious n.o.ble, possessing the honor of a soldier and the wiles of a politician. He had the hand his face demanded,--large and hairy like that of a guerrilla; his manners were brusque, his speech concise. The duke, in departing, gave to this man the duty of watching and reporting to him the conduct of Beauvouloir toward the new heir-presumptive.

In spite of the secrecy which surrounded Gabrielle, it was difficult to long deceive the commander of a company. He heard the singing of two voices; he saw the lights at night in the dwelling on the seash.o.r.e; he guessed that Etienne's orders, repeated constantly, for flowers concerned a woman; he discovered Gabrielle's nurse making her way on foot to Forcalier, carrying linen or clothes, and bringing back with her the work-frame and other articles needed by a young lady. The spy then watched the cottage, saw the physician's daughter, and fell in love with her. Beauvouloir he knew was rich. The duke would be furious at the man's audacity. On those foundations the Baron d'Artagnon erected the edifice of his fortunes. The duke, on learning that his son was falling in love, would, of course, instantly endeavor to detach him from the girl; what better way than to force her son into a marriage with a n.o.ble like himself, giving his son to the daughter of some great house, the heiress of large estates. The baron himself had no property. The scheme was excellent, and might have succeeded with other natures than those of Etienne and Gabrielle; with them failure was certain.

During his stay in Paris the duke had avenged the death of Maximilien by killing his son's adversary, and he had planned for Etienne an alliance with the heiress of a branch of the house of Grandlieu,--a tall and disdainful beauty, who was flattered by the prospect of some day bearing the t.i.tle of d.u.c.h.esse d'Herouville. The duke expected to oblige his son to marry her. On learning from d'Artagnon that Etienne was in love with the daughter of a miserable physician, he was only the more determined to carry out the marriage. What could such a man comprehend of love,--he who had let his own wife die beside him without understanding a single sigh of her heart? Never, perhaps, in his life had he felt such violent anger as when the last despatch of the baron told him with what rapidity Beauvouloir's plans were advancing,--the baron attributing them wholly to the bonesetter's ambition. The duke ordered out his equipages and started for Rouen, bringing with him the Comtesse de Grandlieu, her sister the Marquise de Noirmoutier, and Mademoiselle de Grandlieu, under pretext of showing them the province of Normandy.

A few days before his arrival a rumor was spread about the country--by what means no one seemed to know--of the pa.s.sion of the young Duc de Nivron for Gabrielle Beauvouloir. People in Rouen spoke of it to the Duc d'Herouville in the midst of a banquet given to celebrate his return to the province; for the guests were glad to deliver a blow to the despot of Normandy. This announcement excited the anger of the governor to the highest pitch. He wrote to the baron to keep his coming to Herouville a close secret, giving him certain orders to avert what he considered to be an evil.

It was under these circ.u.mstances that Etienne and Gabrielle unrolled their thread through the labyrinth of love, where both, not seeking to leave it, thought to dwell. One day they had remained from morn to evening near the window where so many events had taken place. The hours, filled at first with gentle talk, had ended in meditative silence.

They began to feel within them the wish for complete possession; and presently they reached the point of confiding to each other their confused ideas, the reflections of two beautiful, pure souls. During these still, serene hours, Etienne's eyes would sometimes fill with tears as he held the hand of Gabrielle to his lips. Like his mother, but at this moment happier in his love than she had been in hers, the hated son looked down upon the sea, at that hour golden on the sh.o.r.e, black on the horizon, and slashed here and there with those silvery caps which betoken a coming storm. Gabrielle, conforming to her friend's action, looked at the sight and was silent. A single look, one of those by which two souls support each other, sufficed to communicate their thoughts.

Each loved with that love so divinely like unto itself at every instant of its eternity that it is not conscious of devotion or sacrifice or exaction, it fears neither deceptions nor delay. But Etienne and Gabrielle were in absolute ignorance of satisfactions, a desire for which was stirring in their souls.

When the first faint tints of twilight drew a veil athwart the sea, and the hush was interrupted only by the soughing of the flux and reflux on the sh.o.r.e, Etienne rose; Gabrielle followed his motion with a vague fear, for he had dropped her hand. He took her in one of his arms, pressing her to him with a movement of tender cohesion, and she, comprehending his desire, made him feel the weight of her body enough to give him the certainty that she was all his, but not enough to be a burden on him. The lover laid his head heavily on the shoulder of his friend, his lips touched the heaving bosom, his hair flowed over the white shoulders and caressed her throat. The girl, ingenuously loving, bent her head aside to give more place for his head, pa.s.sing her arm about his neck to gain support. Thus they remained till nightfall without uttering a word. The crickets sang in their holes, and the lovers listened to that music as if to employ their senses on one sense only. Certainly they could only in that hour be compared to angels who, with their feet on earth, await the moment to take flight to heaven.

They had fulfilled the n.o.ble dream of Plato's mystic genius, the dream of all who seek a meaning in humanity; they formed but one soul, they were, indeed, that mysterious Pearl destined to adorn the brow of a star as yet unknown, but the hope of all!

"Will you take me home?" said Gabrielle, the first to break the exquisite silence.

"Why should we part?" replied Etienne.

"We ought to be together always," she said.

"Stay with me."

"Yes."

The heavy step of Beauvouloir sounded in the adjoining room. The doctor had seen these children at the window locked in each other's arms, but he found them separated. The purest love demands its mystery.

"This is not right, my child," he said to Gabrielle, "to stay so late, and have no lights."

"Why wrong?" she said; "you know we love each other, and he is master of the castle."

"My children," said Beauvouloir, "if you love each other, your happiness requires that you should marry and pa.s.s your lives together; but your marriage depends on the will of monseigneur the duke--"

"My father has promised to gratify all my wishes," cried Etienne eagerly, interrupting Beauvouloir.

"Write to him, monseigneur," replied the doctor, "and give me your letter that I may enclose it with one which I, myself, have just written.

Bertrand is to start at once and put these despatches into monseigneur's own hand. I have learned to-night that he is now in Rouen; he has brought the heiress of the house of Grandlieu with him, not, as I think, solely for himself. If I listened to my presentiments, I should take Gabrielle away from here this very night."

"Separate us?" cried Etienne, half fainting with distress and leaning on his love.

"Father!"

"Gabrielle," said the physician, holding out to her a smelling-bottle which he took from a table signing to her to make Etienne inhale its contents,--"Gabrielle, my knowledge of science tells me that Nature destined you for each other. I meant to prepare monseigneur the duke for a marriage which will certainly offend his ideas, but the devil has already prejudiced him against it. Etienne is Duc de Nivron, and you, my child, are the daughter of a poor doctor."

"My father swore to contradict me in nothing," said Etienne, calmly.

"He swore to me also to consent to all I might do in finding you a wife," replied the doctor; "but suppose that he does not keep his promises?"

Etienne sat down, as if overcome.

"The sea was dark to-night," he said, after a moment's silence.

"If you could ride a horse, monseigneur," said Beauvouloir, "I should tell you to fly with Gabrielle this very evening. I know you both, and I know that any other marriage would be fatal to you. The duke would certainly fling me into a dungeon and leave me there for the rest of my days when he heard of your flight; and I should die joyfully if my death secured your happiness. But alas! to mount a horse would risk your life and that of Gabrielle. We must face your father's anger here."

"Here!" repeated Etienne.

"We have been betrayed by some one in the chateau who has stirred your father's wrath against us," continued Beauvouloir.

"Let us throw ourselves together into the sea," said Etienne to Gabrielle, leaning down to the ear of the young girl who was kneeling beside him.

She bowed her head, smiling. Beauvouloir divined all.

"Monseigneur," he said, "your mind and your knowledge can make you eloquent, and the force of your love may be irresistible. Declare it to monseigneur the duke; you will thus confirm my letter. All is not lost, I think. I love my daughter as well as you love her, and I shall defend her."

Etienne shook his head.

"The sea was very dark to-night," he repeated.

"It was like a sheet of gold at our feet," said Gabrielle in a voice of melody.

Etienne ordered lights, and sat down at a table to write to his father.