Gilbert’s Romance.
AS PALE, as despairing as Andree, Gilbert stood downcast before her. At the sight of a man, and of a stranger, for such he seemed at first sight through the thick veil of tears which obscured her gaze, Andree hastily dried her eyes, as if the proud young girl would have blushed to be seen weeping. She made an effort to compose herself, and restored calmness to her marble features, only an instant before agitated with the shudder of despair. Gilbert was much longer in regaining his calmness, and his features still wore an expression of grief when Mademoiselle de Taverney, looking up, at last recognized him.
“Oh! Monsieur Gilbert again!” said Andree with that trifling tone which she affected to assume whenever chance brought her in contact with the young man.
Gilbert made no reply; his feelings were still too deeply moved. The grief which had shaken Andree’s frame to the center had violently agitated his own. It was Andree, therefore, who again broke the silence, wishing to have the last word with this apparition.
“But what is the matter, Monsieur Gilbert?” inquired she. “Why do you gaze at me in that woebegone manner? Something must grieve you. May I ask what it is?”
“Do you wish to know?” asked Gilbert, mournfully, for he felt the irony concealed beneath this appearance of interest.
“Yes.”
“Well, what grieves me, mademoiselle, is to see you suffer,” replied Gilbert.
“And who told you that I am suffering?”
“I see it.”
“You mistake, sir; I am not suffering,” said Andree, passing her handkerchief over her face.
Gilbert felt the storm rising, but he resolved to turn it aside by humility.
“I entreat your pardon, mademoiselle,” said he, “but the reason I spoke was that I heard your sobs.”
“Ah! you were listening; better and better!”
“Mademoiselle, it was by accident!” stammered Gilbert, for he felt that he was telling a falsehood.
“Accident! I regret exceedingly, Monsieur Gilbert, that chance should have brought you here. But even so, may I ask in what manner these sobs which you heard me utter grieved you? Pray inform me.”
“I cannot bear to see a woman weep,” said Gilbert, in a tone which highly displeased Andree.
“Am I then a woman in M. Gilbert’s eyes?” replied the haughty young girl. “I sue for no one’s sympathy, but M. Gilbert’s still less than any other’s.”
“Mademoiselle,” said Gilbert, sadly, “you do wrong to taunt me thus. I saw you sad, and I felt grieved. I heard you say, that now M. Philip was gone, you would be alone in the world. Never, mademoiselle! for I am beside you, and never did a heart beat more devoted to you. I repeat it, Mademoiselle de Taverney cannot be alone in the world while my head can think, my heart beat, or my arm retains its strength.”
While he spoke these words, Gilbert was indeed a model of manly elegance and beauty, although he pronounced them with all the humility which the most sincere respect commanded.
But it was fated that everything which the young man did should displease Andree, should offend her, and urge her to offensive retorts — as if his very respect were an insult, and his prayers a provocation. At first she attempted to rise, that she might second her harsh words with as harsh gestures; but a nervous shudder retained her on her seat. Besides, she reflected that if she were standing, she could be seen from a distance, and seen talking to Gilbert. She therefore remained seated; for she was determined, once for all, to crush the importunate insect before her under foot, and replied:
“I thought I had already informed you. Monsieur Gilbert, that you are highly displeasing to me, that your voice annoys me, that your philosophical speeches disgust me. Then why, when you know this, do you still persist in addressing me?”
“Mademoiselle,” replied Gilbert, pale, but self-possessed, “an honest-hearted woman is never disgusted by sympathy. An honest man is the equal of every human being; and I, whom you maltreat so cruelly, deserve, more than any other, perhaps, the sympathy which I regret to perceive you do not feel for me.”
At this word sympathy, thus twice repeated, Andree opened her large eyes to their utmost extent, and fixed them impertinently upon Gilbert.
“Sympathy!” said she; “sympathy between you and me, Monsieur Gilbert! In truth I was deceived in my opinion of you. I took you for insolent, and I find you are even less than that — you are only a madman.”
“I am neither insolent nor mad,” said Gilbert with an apparent calm which it must have caused his proud disposition much to assume. “No, mademoiselle; nature has made me your equal, and chance has made you my debtor.”
“Chance again!” said Andree, sarcastically.
“Perhaps I should have said Providence. I never intended to have spoken to you of this, but your insults refresh my memory.”
“I your debtor, sir? Your debtor. I think you said? Explain yourself.” “I should be ashamed to find you ungrateful, mademoiselle; God, who has made you so beautiful, has given you, to compensate for your beauty, sufficient defects without that.” This time Andree rose. “Stay! pardon me!” said Gilbert; “at times you irritate me too much also, and then I forget for a moment the interest with which you inspire me.”
Andree burst into a fit of laughter so prolonged that it was calculated to rouse Gilbert’s anger to the utmost; but to her great surprise Gilbert did not take fire. He folded his arms on his breast, retained the same hostile and determined expression in his fiery glance, and patiently awaited the end of this insulting laugh.
When she had finished:
“Mademoiselle,” said Gilbert coldly, “will you condescend to answer one question? Do you respect your father?”
“You take the liberty of catechising me, it seems, Monsieur Gilbert?” replied the young girl with sovereign hauteur.
“Yes, you respect your father,” continued Gilbert; “and it is not on account of his good qualities or his virtues, but simply because he gave you life. A father, unfortunately — and you must know it, mademoiselle — a father is respected only in one relation, but still it gives him a claim. Even more; for this sole benefit” — and Gilbert, in his turn, felt himself animated by an emotion of scornful pity—” you are bound to love your benefactor. Well, mademoiselle, this being established as a principle, why do you insult me? why do you scorn me? why do you hate him who did not indeed give you life; but who saved it?”
“You!” exclaimed Andree; “you saved my life?”
“Ah! you did not even dream of that.” said Gilbert, “or rather you have forgotten it. That is very natural; it occurred nearly a year ago. Well, mademoiselle, I must only therefore inform you of it, or recall it to your memory. Yes, I saved your life at the risk of my own.”
“At least. Monsieur Gilbert,” said Andree, deadly pale, “you will do me the favor of telling me when and where.”
“The day, mademoiselle, when a hundred thousand persons, crushed one against the other, fleeing from the fiery horses, and the sabers which thinned the crowd, left a long train of dead and dying upon the Place Louis XV.”
“Ah! the 31st of May?”
“Yes, mademoiselle.”
Andree seated herself, and her features again assumed a pitiless smile.
“And on that day, you say you sacrificed your life to save mine, Monsieur Gilbert?”
“I have already told you so.”
“Then you are the Baron Balsamo; I beg your pardon. I was not aware of the fact.”
“No, I am not the Baron Balsamo,” replied Gilbert, with flashing eye and quivering lip; “I am the poor child of the people — Gilbert, who has the folly, the madness, the misfortune to love you; who, because he loved you like a madman, like a fool, like a sot, followed you into the crowd; who, separated from you for a moment, recognized you by the piercing shriek you uttered when you lost your footing; who, forcing his way to you, shielded you with his arms until twenty thousand arms, pressing against his, broke their strength; who threw himself upon the stone wall against which you were about to be crushed, to afford you the softer repose of his corpse; and, perceiving among the crowd that strange man who seemed to govern his fellowmen, and whose name you have just pronounced, collected all his strength, all his energy, and raised you in his exhausted arms that this man might see you, seize hold of you, and save you! — Gilbert, who in yielding you up to a more fortunate protector than himself, retained nothing but a shred of your dress, which he pressed to his lips! And it was time, for already the blood was rushing to Ins heart, to his temples, to his brain. The rolling tide of executioners and victims swept over him, and buried him beneath its waves, while you ascended aloft from its abyss to a haven of safety!”
Gilbert in these hurried words had shown himself as he was — uncultivated, simple, almost sublime, in his resolution as in his love. Notwithstanding her contempt. Andree could not refrain from gazing at him with astonishment. For a moment he believed that his narrative had been as irresistible as truth — as love. But poor Gilbert did not take into his calculations incredulity, that demon prompted by hatred. Andree, who hated Gilbert, did not allow herself to be moved by any of the forcible arguments of her despised lover.
She did not reply immediately, but looked at Gilbert, while something like a struggle took place in her mind. The young man, therefore, ill at ease during this freezing silence, felt himself obliged to add, as a sort of peroration:
“And now, mademoiselle, do not detest me as you did formerly, for now it would not only be injustice, but ingratitude, to do so. I said so before, and I now repeat it.”
At these words Andree raised her haughty brow, and in a most indifferent and cutting tone, she asked:
“How long, Monsieur Gilbert, did you remain under M. Rousseau’s tutelage?”
“Mademoiselle,” said Gilbert, ingenuously, “I think about three months, without reckoning the few days of my illness, which was caused by the accident on the 31st of May.”
“You misunderstand me,” said she; “I did not ask you whether you had been ill or not, or what accidents you may have received. They add an artistic finish to your story, but otherwise they are of no importance to me. I merely wished to tell you that, having resided only three months with the illustrious author, you have profited well by his lessons, and that the pupil at his first essay composes romances almost worthy of his master.”
Gilbert had listened with calmness, believing that Andree was about to reply seriously to his impassioned narration; but at this stroke of cutting irony, he fell from the summit of his buoyant hopes to the dust.
“A romance!” murmured he, indignantly; “you treat what I have told you as a romance!”
“Yes, sir,” said Andree, “a romance — I repeat the word; only you did not force me to read it — for that I have to thank you. I deeply regret that, unfortunately, I am not able to repay its full value; but I should make the attempt in vain — the romance is invaluable.”
“And this is your reply?” stammered Gilbert, a pang darting through his heart, and his eyes becoming dim from emotion.
“I do not reply at all, sir,” said Andree, pushing him aside to allow her room to pass on. The fact was, that Nicole had at that moment made her appearance at the end of the alley, calling her mistress while still a considerable distance off, in order not to interrupt this interview too suddenly, ignorant as she was as to whom Andree’s companion might be, for she had not recognized Gilbert through the foliage. But as she approached she saw the young man, recognized him, and stood astounded. She then repented not having made a detour in order to overhear what Gilbert had to say to Mademoiselle de Taverney. The latter addressed her in a softened voice, as if to mark more strongly to Gilbert the haughtiness with which she had spoken to him.
“Well, child,” said she, “what is the matter?”
“The Baron de Taverney and the Duke de Richelieu have come to present their respects to mademoiselle,” replied Nicole.
“Where are they?”
“In mademoiselle’s apartments.”
“Come, then.”
And Andree moved away. Nicole followed, not without throwing, as she passed, a sarcastic glance back at Gilbert, who, livid with agitation, and almost frantic with rage, shook his clenched hand in the direction of his departing enemy, and, grinding his teeth, muttered:
“Oh! creature without heart, without soul! I saved your life, I concentrated all my affection on you, I extinguished every feeling which might offend your purity, for in my madness I looked upon you as some superior being — the inhabitant of a higher sphere! Now that I have seen you more nearly, I find you are no more than a woman — and I am a man! But one day or other, Andree de Taverney, I shall be revenged!”
He rushed from the spot, bounding through the thickest of the shrubs like a young wolf wounded by the hunter, who turns and shows his sharp teeth and his bloodshot eyeballs.