She paused and looked at me slily. "I am all attention, Madame," I said, bowing.

"To la belle Denise!" she said.

It was my turn to start and stare now; in confusion as well as surprise. But she only laughed the more, and, clapping her hands with childish abandon, bade me, "Drink, Monsieur, drink!"

I did so bravely, though I coloured under her eyes.

"That is well," she said, as I set down the gla.s.s. "Now, Monsieur, I shall be able--in the proper quarter--to report you no recreant."

"But, Madame," I said, "how do you know the proper quarter?"

"How do I know?" she answered navely. "Ah, that is the question."

But she did not answer it; though I remarked that from this moment she took a different tone with me. She dropped much of the reserve which she had hitherto maintained, and began to pour upon me a fire of wit and badinage, merriment and plaisanterie, against which I defended myself as well as I could, where all the advantage of knowledge lay with her. Such a duel with so fair an antagonist had its charms, the more as Denise and my relations to her formed the main objects of her raillery: yet I was not sorry when a clock, striking eight, produced a sudden silence and a change in her, as great as that which had preceded it. Her face grew almost sombre, she sighed, and sat looking gravely before her. I ventured to ask if anything ailed her.

"Only this, Monsieur," she answered. "That I must now put you to the test; and you may fail me."

"You wish me to do something?"

"I wish you to give me your escort," she answered, "to a place and back again."

"I am ready," I cried, rising gaily. "If I were not I should be a recreant indeed. But I think, Madame, that you were going to tell me your name."

"I am Madame Catinot," she answered. And then--I do not know what she read in my face, "I am a widow," she added, blushing deeply. "For the rest you are no wiser."

"But always at your service, Madame."

"So be it," she answered quietly. "I will meet you, M. le Vicomte, in the hall, if you will presently descend thither."

I held the door for her to go out, and she went; and wondering, and inexpressibly puzzled by the strangeness of the adventure, I paced up and down the room a minute, and then followed her. A hanging lamp which lit the hall showed her to me standing at the foot of the stairs; her hair hidden by a black lace mantilla, her dress under a cloak of the same dark colour. The man who had admitted me gave me in silence my cloak and hat; and without a word Madame led the way along a pa.s.sage.

Over a door at the end of the pa.s.sage was a second light. It fell on my hat--as I was about to put it on--and I started and stood. Instead of the tricolour I had been wearing in the hat, I saw a small red c.o.c.kade!

Madame heard me stop, and turning, discovered what was the matter. She laid her hand on my arm; and the hand trembled. "For an hour, Monsieur, only for an hour," she breathed in my ear. "Give me your arm."

Somewhat agitated--I began to scent danger and complications--I put on the hat and gave her my arm, and in a moment we stood in the open air in a dark, narrow pa.s.sage between high walls. She turned at once to the left, and we walked in silence a hundred, or a hundred and fifty, paces, which brought us to a low-browed doorway on the same side, through which a light poured out. Madame guiding me by a slight pressure, we pa.s.sed through this, and a narrow vestibule beyond it; and in a moment I found myself, to my astonishment, in a church, half full of silent worshippers.

Madame enjoined silence by laying her finger on her lip, and led the way along one of the dim aisles, until we came to a vacant chair beside a pillar. She signed to me to stand by the pillar, and herself knelt down.

Left at liberty to survey the scene, and form my conclusions, I looked about me like a man in a dream. The body of the church, faintly lit, was rendered more gloomy by the black cloaks and veils of the vast kneeling crowd that filled the nave and grew each moment more dense. The men for the most part stood beside pillars, or at the back of the church; and from these parts came now and then a low stern muttering, the only sound that broke the heavy silence. A red lamp burning before the altar added one touch of sombre colour to the scene.

I had not stood long before I felt the silence, and the crowd, and the empty vastnesses above us, begin to weigh me down; before my heart began to beat quickly in expectation of I knew not what. And then at last, when this feeling had grown almost intolerable, out of the silence about the altar came the first melancholy notes, the wailing refrain of the psalm, Miserere Domine!

It had a solemn and wondrous effect as it rose and fell, in the gloom, in the silence, above the heads of the kneeling mult.i.tude, who one moment were there and the next, as the lights sank, were gone, leaving only blackness and emptiness and s.p.a.ce--and that spasmodic wailing. As the pleading, almost desperate notes, floated down the long aisles, borne on the palpitating hearts of the listeners, a hand seemed to grasp the throat, the eyes grew dim, strong men's heads bowed lower, and strong men's hands trembled. Miserere mei Deus! Miserere Domine!

At last it came to an end. The psalm died down, and on the darkness and dead silence that succeeded, a light flared up suddenly in one place, and showed a pale, keen face and eyes that burned, as they gazed, not at the dim crowd, but into the empty s.p.a.ce above them, whence grim, carved visages peered vaguely out of fretted vaults. And the preacher began to preach.

In a low voice at first, and with little emotion, he spoke of the ways of G.o.d with His creatures, of the immensity of the past and the littleness of the present, of the Omnipotence before which time and s.p.a.ce and men were nothing; of the certainty that as G.o.d, the Almighty, the Everlasting, the Ever-present decreed, it was. And then, in fuller tones, he went on to speak of the Church, G.o.d's agent on earth, and of the work which it had done in past ages, converting, protecting, shielding the weak, staying the strong, baptising, marrying, burying. G.o.d's handmaid, G.o.d's vicegerent. "Of whom alone it comes," the preacher continued, raising his hand now, and speaking in a voice that throbbed louder and fuller through the s.p.a.ces of the church, "that we are more than animals, that knowing who is behind the veil we fear not temporal things, nor think of death as the worst possible, as do the unbelieving; but having that on which we rest, outside and beyond the world, can view unmoved the worst that the world can do to us. We believe; therefore, we are strong. We believe in G.o.d; therefore, we are stronger than the world. We believe in G.o.d; therefore, we are of G.o.d, and not of the world. We are above the world! we are about the world, and in the strength of G.o.d, who is the G.o.d of Hosts, shall subdue the world."

He paused, holding the crowd breathless; then in a lower tone he continued: "Yet how do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing? They trample on G.o.d! They say this exists, I see it. That exists, I hear it. The other exists, I touch it. And that is all--that is all. But does it come of what we see and hear and feel that a man will die for his brother? Does it come of what we see and hear and feel that a man will die for a thought? That he will die for a creed? That he will die for honour? That, withal, he will die for anything--for anything, while he may live? I trow not. It comes of G.o.d! Of G.o.d only.

"And they trample on Him. In the streets, in the senate, in high places. And He says, 'Who is on My side?' My children, my brethren, we have lived long in a time of ease and safety; we have been long untried by aught but the ordinary troubles of life, untrained by the imminent issues of life and death. Now, in these late years of the world, it has pleased the Almighty to try us; and who is on His side? Who is prepared to put the unseen before the seen, honour before life, G.o.d before man, chivalry before baseness, the Church before the world? Who is on His side? Spurned in this little corner of His creation, bruised and bleeding and trampled under foot, yet ruler of earth and heaven, life and death, judgment and eternity, ruler of all the countless worlds of s.p.a.ce, He comes! He comes! He comes, G.o.d Almighty, which was, and is, and is to be! And who is on His side?"

As the last word fell from his lips, and the light above his head went suddenly out, and darkness fell on the breathless hush, the listening hundreds, an indescribable wave of emotion pa.s.sed through the crowd. Men stirred their feet with a strange, stern sound, that spreading, pa.s.sed in muttered thunder to the vaults; while women sobbed, and here and there shrieked and prayed aloud. From the altar a priest in a voice that shook with feeling blessed the congregation; then, even as I awoke from a trance of attention, Madame touched my arm, and signed to me to follow her, and gliding quickly from her place, led the way down the aisle. Before the preacher's last words had ceased to ring in my ears or my heart had forgotten to be moved, we were walking under the stars with the night air cooling our faces; a moment, and we were in the house and stood again in the lighted salon where I had first found Madame Catinot.

Before I knew what she was going to do, she turned to me with a swift movement, and laid both her bare hands on my arm; and I saw that the tears were running down her face. "Who is on My side?" she cried, in a voice that thrilled me to the soul, so that I started where I stood. "Who is on My side? Oh, surely you! Surely you, Monsieur, whose fathers' swords were drawn for G.o.d and the King! Who, born to guide, are surely on the side of light! Who, n.o.ble, will never leave the task of government to the base! O----" and there, breaking off before I could answer, she turned from me with her hands clasped to her face. "O G.o.d!" she cried with sobs, "give me this man for Thy service."

I stood inexpressibly troubled; moved by the sight of this woman in tears, shaken by the conflict in my own soul, somewhat unmanned, perhaps, by what I had seen. For a moment I could not speak; when I did, "Madame," I said unsteadily, "if I had known that it was for this! You have been kind to me, and I--I can make no return."

"Don't say it!" she cried, turning to me and pleading with me. "Don't say it!" And she laid her clasped hands on my arm and looked at me, and then in a moment smiled through her tears. "Forgive me," she said humbly, "forgive me. I went about it wrongly. I feel--too much. I asked too quickly. But you will? You will, Monsieur? You will be worthy of yourself?"

I groaned. "I hold their commission," I said.

"Return it!"

"But that will not acquit me!"

"Who is on My side?" she said softly. "Who is on My side?"

I drew a deep breath. In the silence of the room, the wood-ashes on the hearth settled down, and a clock ticked. "For G.o.d! For G.o.d and the King!" she said, looking up at me with shining eyes, with clasped hands.

I could have sworn in my pain. "To what purpose?" I cried almost rudely. "If I were to say, yes, to what purpose, Madame? What could I do that would help you? What could I do that would avail?"

"Everything! Everything! You are one man more!" she cried. "One man more for the right. Listen, Monsieur. You do not know what is afoot, or how we are pressed, or----"

She stopped suddenly, abruptly; and looked at me, listening; listening with a new expression on her face. The door was not closed, and the voice of a man, speaking in the hall below, came up the staircase; another instant, and a quick foot crossed the hall, and sounded on the stairs. The man was coming up.

Madame, face to face with me, dumb and listening with distended eyes, stood a moment, as if taken by surprise. At the last moment, warning me by a gesture to be silent, she swept to the door and went out, closing it--not quite closing it behind her.

I judged that the man had almost reached it, for I heard him exclaim in surprise at her sudden appearance; then he said something in a tone which did not reach me. I lost her answer too, but his next words were audible enough.

"You will not open the door?" he cried.

"Not of that room," she replied bravely. "You can see me in the other, my friend."

Then silence. I could almost hear them breathing. I could picture them looking defiance at one another. I grew hot.

"Oh, this is intolerable!" he cried at last. "This is not to be borne. Are you to receive every stranger that comes to town? Are you to be closeted with them, and sup with them, and sit with them, while I eat my heart out outside? Am I--I will go in!"

"You shall not!" she cried; but I thought that the indignation in her voice rang false; that laughter underlay it. "It is enough that you insult me," she continued proudly. "But if you dare to touch me, or if you insult him----"

"Him!" he cried fiercely. "Him, indeed! Madame, I tell you at once, I have borne enough. I have suffered this more than once, but----"

But I had no longer any doubt, and before he could add the next word I was at the door--I had s.n.a.t.c.hed it open, and stood before him. Madame fell back with a cry between tears and laughter, and we stood, looking at one another.

The man was Louis St. Alais.

CHAPTER XX.

THE SEARCH.

I had not seen Louis since the day of the duel at Cahors, when, parting from him at the door in the pa.s.sage by the Cathedral, I had refused to take his hand. Then I had been sorely angry with him. But time and old memories and crowding events had long softened the feeling; and in the joy of meeting him again, of finding him in this unexpected stranger, nothing was further from my thoughts than to rake up old grudges. I held out my hand, therefore, with a laughing word. "Voila l'Inconnu, Monsieur!" I said with a bow. "I am here to find you, and I find you!"

He stared at me a moment in the utmost astonishment, and then impulsively grasping my hand he held it, and stood looking at me, with the old affection in his eyes. "Adrien! Adrien!" he said, much moved. "Is it really you?"

"Even so, Monsieur."

"And here?"

"Here," I said.

Then, to my astonishment, he slowly dropped my hand; and his manner and his face changed--as a house changes when the shutters are closed. "I am sorry for it," he said slowly, and after a long pause. And then, with an unmistakable flash of anger, "My G.o.d, Monsieur! Why have you come?" he cried.

"Why have I come?"

"Ay, why?" he repeated bitterly. "Why? Why have you come--to trouble us? You do not know what evil you are doing! You do not know, man!"

"I know at least what good I am seeking," I answered, purely astounded by this sudden and inexplicable change. "I have made no secret of that, and I make no secret of it now. No man was ever worse treated than I have been by your family. Your att.i.tude now impels me to say that. But when I see Madame la Marquise, to-morrow, I shall tell her that it will take more than this to change me. I shall tell her----"

"You will not see her!" he answered.

"But I shall!"

"You will not!" he retorted.

Before I could answer, Madame Catinot interposed. "Oh, no more!" she cried in a voice which sufficiently evinced her distress. "I thought that you and he were friends, M. Louis? And now--now that fortune has brought you together again----"

"Would to heaven it had not!" he cried, dropping his hand like a man in despair. And he took a turn this way and that on the floor.

She looked at him. "I do not think that you have ever spoken to me in that tone before, Monsieur," she said in a tone of keen reproach. "If it is due--if, I mean," she continued quietly, but with a sparkling eye, "it is because you found M. le Vicomte with me, you infer something unworthy of us. You insult me as well as your friend!"

"Heaven forbid!" he exclaimed.

But she was roused. "That is not enough," she answered firmly and proudly. "For one week more, this is my house, M. Louis. After that it will be yours. Perhaps then--perhaps then," she continued, with a pitiful break in her voice, "I shall think of to-night, and wonder I took no warning! Perhaps then, Monsieur, a word of kindness from you may be as rare as a rough word now!"

He was not proof against that, and the sadness in her voice. He threw himself on his knees before her and seized her hands. "Madame! Catherine! forgive me!" he cried pa.s.sionately, kissing her hands again and again, and taking no heed of me at all. "Forgive me!" he continued, "I am miserable! You are my only comfort, my only compensation. I do not know, since I saw him, what I am saying. Forgive me!"

"I do!" she said hastily. "Rise, Monsieur!" and she furtively wiped away a tear, then looked at me, blushing but happy. "I do," she continued. "But, mon cher, I do not understand you. The other day you spoke so kindly of M. de Saux; and of--pardon me--your sister, and of other things. To-day M. de Saux is here, and you are unhappy."

"I am!" he said, casting a haggard, miserable look at me.

I shrugged my shoulders and spoke up. "So be it," I said proudly. "But because I have lost a friend, Monsieur, it does not follow that I need lose a mistress. I have come to Nimes to win Mademoiselle de St. Alais' hand. I shall not leave until I have won it."

"This is madness!" he said, with a groan. "Why?"

"Because you talk of the impossible," he answered. "Because Madame de St. Alais is not at Nimes--for you."

"She is at Nimes!"

"You will have to find her."

"That is childishness!" I said. "Do you mean to say that at the first hotel I enter I shall not be told where Madame has her lodging?"

"Neither at the first, nor at the last."

"She is in retreat?"

"I shall not tell you."

With that we stood facing one another; Madame Catinot watching us a little aside. Clearly the events of the last few months, which had so changed, so hardened Madame St. Alais, had not been lost on Louis. I could fancy, as I confronted him, that it was M. le Marquis, the elder, and not the younger brother, who withstood me; only--only from under Louis' mask of defiance, there peeped, I still fancied, the old Louis' face, doubting and miserable.

I tried that chord. "Come," I said, making an effort to swallow my wrath, and speak reasonably, "I think that you are not in earnest, M. le Comte, in what you say, and that we are both heated. Time was when we agreed well enough, and you were not unwilling to have me for your brother-in-law. Are we, because of these miserable differences----"

"Differences!" he cried, interrupting me harshly. "My mother's house in Cahors is an empty sh.e.l.l. My brother's house at St. Alais is a heap of ashes. And you talk of differences!"

"Well, call them what you like!"

"Besides," Madame Catinot interposed quickly, "pardon me, Monsieur--besides, M. St. Alais, you know our need of converts. M. le Vicomte is a gentleman, and a man of sense and religion. It needs but a little--a very little," she continued, smiling faintly at me, "to persuade him. And if your sister's hand would do that little, and Madame were agreeable?"

"He could not have it!" he answered sullenly, looking away from me.

"But a week ago," Madame Catinot answered in a startled tone, "you told me----"

"A week ago is not now," he said. "For the rest, I have only this to say. I am sorry to see you here, M. le Vicomte, and I beg you to return. You can do no good, and you may do and suffer harm. By no possibility can you gain what you seek."

"That remains to be seen," I answered stubbornly, roused in my turn. "To begin with, since you say that I cannot find Mademoiselle, I shall adopt a very simple plan. I shall wait here until you leave, Monsieur, and then accompany you home."

"You will not!" he said.

"You may depend upon it I shall!" I answered defiantly.

But Madame interposed. "No, M. de Saux," she said with dignity. "You will not do that; I am sure that you will not; it would be an abuse of my hospitality."

"If you forbid it?"

"I do," she answered.

"Then, Madame, I cannot," I replied. "But----"

"But nothing! Let there be a truce now, if you please," she said firmly. "If it is to be war between you, it shall not begin here. I think, too--I think that I had better ask you to retire," she continued, with an appealing glance at me.