"The fire!" said he,—"the fire!"
"Yes," said Lorin, "the fire; what then?"
"Gracious Heavens! if she has returned."
"Who?"
"Geneviève."
"Geneviève means Madame Dixmer, does it not?"
"Yes."
"There is no danger of her return; she did not go away for that purpose."
"Lorin, I must find her. I will have my revenge."
"Oh, oh!" said Lorin.
"None can escape thy puissant sceptre, Love.
Thou reign'st on earth and in the heavens above."
"You will assist me in my search, will you not, Lorin?"
"Zounds! there will be no difficulty in that."
"Why so?"
"Without doubt, if you are so much interested, as to me you appear to be, in Madame Dixmer's fate, you, being intimate with her, ought, knowing her, also to know her friends. She has not quitted Paris; her friends have every motive to stay; she has taken refuge in the house of some confidential acquaintance, and to-morrow morn[Pg 310]ing you will receive a billet by some 'Rose,' or some 'Marton,' couched as follows,—
"Wouldst see again, my Mars, thy Venus true?
Borrow of Night her scarf of azure hue.
And requesting you to present yourself at the porter's lodge, such a number, such a street, and to inquire for Madame Three-stars; that is all."
Maurice shrugged his shoulders; he well knew there was no one with whom Geneviève could take refuge.
"We shall not find her," said he.
"Will you permit me to say one thing, Maurice?"
"What?"
"That it will be no great misfortune if we should not find her."
"If we do not, Lorin, I shall die."
"The devil!" exclaimed the young man; "it was, then, of this love that you lately so nearly died."
"Yes," replied Maurice.
Lorin reflected an instant. "Maurice," said he, "it is now nearly eleven o'clock; this quarter is deserted; here is a stone seat, particularly adapted for the reception of two friends. Accord me the favor of a private interview, as they used to say, under the ancient régime. I give you my word of honor that I shall speak only in prose."
They seated themselves upon the bench.
"Speak!" said Maurice, resting his aching head upon his hand.
"Without exordium, periphrasis, or commentary, I tell you one thing, old fellow,—it is this, that we are ruining ourselves, or rather that you are ruining us."
"How so?" demanded Maurice.
"There is, my friend, a decree issued by the Com[Pg 311]mittee of Public Safety, which declares every man a traitor to his country who enters into any relationship with the acknowledged enemies of the said country. Eh! do you know this decree?"
"To be sure I do," replied Maurice.
"Well, it seems to me, you are not a vile traitor to your country. What say you? as Manlius says."
"Lorin!"
"Undoubtedly; unless you believe that those idolize their country who give house-room, bed, and board to Monsieur le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, who is not a high Republican, as I suppose, and has not been accused at any time of having taken part in the days of September."
"Ah! Lorin," said Maurice, sighing heavily.
"Still, it appears to me," continued the moralist, "that you have been, and still are, too intimate with the enemies of your country. Come! Come, friend Maurice, do not rebel! you are like the whilom Enceladus; you move a mountain each time you turn yourself."
Lorin pronounced these words in the kindest manner possible, and glossed them over with an artifice truly Ciceronian.
Maurice merely made a gesture of dissent, but the gesture was unheeded, and Lorin continued,—
"If we exist in a greenhouse temperature, a healthy atmosphere, where, according to botanic rules, the barometer invariably points to sixteen degrees, I should say, my dear Maurice, that this is elegant, satisfactory; what though we are occasionally rather aristocratic, we flourish and do well. But if scorched in a heat of thirty-five or forty degrees, the sap burns, so that it rises slowly, and from the excess of heat seems cold; when cold, then comes the blight of suspicion,—you know this, Maurice,—and once suspected, you possess too much good sense[Pg 312] not to know what we shall be, or rather that ere long we shall be no more."
"Well, then," said Maurice, "they can kill me, and there will be an end of me, for I am weary of my life."
"For the last quarter of an hour," said Lorin; "indeed scarcely so long that I should leave you to act according to your own pleasure on this subject; and then to die now, it is necessary to die a Republican while you would die an aristocrat."
"Ah!" said Maurice, whose blood began to boil from impassioned grief, resulting from the consciousness of his own criminality, "you go too far, friend Lorin."
"I shall go farther still, and forewarn you, that if you turn aristocrat—"
"You will denounce me?"
"For shame! No. I will confine you in a cellar, and have you sought after to the sound of the drum, like something lost; then I will proclaim that the aristocrats, knowing what you had in reserve for them, had seized, victimized, and starved you, so that, like Provost Élie de Beaumont, Monsieur Latude, and others, when found, you will be publicly crowned with flowers by the ladies of La Halle, and the ragpickers of Section Victor. Make haste, then, to appear again an Aristides, else your business is concluded."
"Lorin! Lorin! I feel that you are right; but I am dragged along. I am sliding down the precipice. Are you displeased with me, because my fate drags me onward?"
"I am not displeased with you, but I shall remonstrate with you. Call to mind a few of the scenes enacted daily between Pylades and Orestes,—scenes which prove beyond all doubt that friendship is a paradox, since these model friends quarrelled without ceasing."
[Pg 313]
"Leave me to my fate, Lorin, you had much better do so."
"I will never abandon you."
"Then, allow me to love, to be mad, at my ease; to be criminal, perhaps, for if I again see her, I fear I shall kill her."
"Or fall upon your knees. Ah, ah, Maurice, Maurice, to love an aristocrat, I never could have credited it! It is like poor Osselin with the Marquise de Charny."
"No more, Lorin, I beseech you."
"Maurice, I will cure you, or may the Devil take me! I do not wish you to be drawn in the lottery of Saint Guillotine, as the grocer of the Rue des Lombards observes. Maurice, you will exasperate me! Maurice, you will render me bloodthirsty! I feel as if I wanted to set fire to the isle of Saint Louis! A torch! a firebrand!
"The toil were idle. Maurice, thy passion dire
Sufficient is Paris to set on fire."
Maurice smiled in spite of himself.
"You know," said he, "that it was agreed between us that we should speak only in prose."
"But you exasperate me with your folly," said Lorin. "Drink, Maurice, become a drunkard, do anything, study political economy; but for the love of Jupiter, let us fall in love with nothing but Liberty!"
"Or Reason?"
"Ah! that is true; by the way, the Goddess Reason talks much about you. She thinks you are a charming mortal."
"Are you not jealous?"
"Maurice, to save a friend I feel capable of any sacrifice."
"Thanks, my poor Lorin, and I truly appreciate your[Pg 314] devotion; but the best way to console me is to leave me to sate my grief. Adieu! Lorin, go to your Arthémise."
"And you; where are you going?"
"I shall return home."
And Maurice turned toward the bridge.
"You live, then, in the direction of the old Rue Saint Jacques now?"
"No; but it pleases me to go that way."
"To look once again upon the place inhabited by your fair inconstant?"
"To see if she has not returned where she knows I am awaiting her. Ah, Geneviève! Geneviève! I could not have believed you capable of so much deceit!"
"Maurice, a tyrant who well knew the fair sex, since he died from having loved them too well, said,—
"'Woe to the man who trusts his heart
To woman, changeful as the breeze.'"
Maurice sighed, and the two friends took the road to the old Rue Saint Jacques.
As they approached they heard a great noise, and saw the light increase; they listened to patriotic chants, which on a brilliant day in the glorious sunshine, or in the atmosphere of combat, sounded like hymns of heroism, but which by the red light of an incendiary fire savored more of the diabolic incantations of drunken cannibals.
"Oh, my God! my God!" cried Maurice, forgetting that God had been abolished, as he wiped the perspiration from his face.
Lorin watched him attentively and muttered,—
"Alas! when caught in Cupid's snare,
To Prudence we must bid adieu."
[Pg 315]
All the inhabitants of Paris appeared moving toward the theatre of the events we have just narrated. Maurice was obliged to cross a hedge formed by the gendarmes, the ranks of the sections, then the impetuous crowd of this always furious populace, at this epoch easily aroused, and who ran howling from spectacle to spectacle without intermission. As they approached, Maurice impatiently hastened his steps; Lorin, with some trouble, kept close behind him, for he did not like to leave his friend to himself at such a moment.
It was nearly all over. The fire had communicated from the shed where the soldier had flung his torch to the workshops, constructed of planks so put together as to allow the free circulation of air; the merchandise was consumed, and the house itself was now in flames.
"O God!" said Maurice to himself, "if she has returned, should she find herself in a chamber encircled by the devouring element, waiting for me, calling on me—" and Maurice, nearly insensible from grief, liked better to think of the folly of those he loved than of his treason. He rushed headlong toward the door, of which he caught a glimpse through the mass of burning flame. Lorin still followed him. He would have followed him to the infernal regions. The roof was in flames; the fire had now indeed commenced its work of destruction on the staircase. Maurice hastened to visit the first floor, the parlor, the chamber of Geneviève, of the Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, and the corridors, calling, in stifled accents, "Geneviève! Geneviève!"
No one replied. On returning from the search our two friends saw volumes of flame now entering the door; but not heeding the shouts of Lorin, who pointed to the window, Maurice passed through the flames, then ran to the house, crossed, notwithstanding all impediments, a[Pg 316] court-yard strewed with broken furniture, searched the dining-room, Dixmer's parlor, Morand's laboratory,—all filled with smoke, fragments, and broken glass. The fire had reached this part of the house, and the work of destruction would soon be complete. Maurice, as in the pavilion, did not omit visiting a single chamber, or leave unexamined even a corridor. He then descended to the cellars; perhaps Geneviève had taken refuge from the fire there. He found no one.
"Zounds!" said Lorin; "no one but a salamander could take refuge here, and it is not that fabulous animal that you are in search of. Let us go; we can make inquiry in this assemblage. Some one has perhaps seen her."
It needed all Lorin's force to drag away Maurice; hope still detained him there.
Then they commenced their investigation; they visited the environs, stopped all the females who passed, searched all the alleys, without any result. It was now one o'clock in the morning, and Maurice, notwithstanding his athletic vigor, was overpowered and broken down with fatigue, and at length desisted from his worse than useless efforts.
A carriage passed; Lorin hailed it.
"Come, bear up, old fellow," said he to Maurice; "we have done all in the range of human possibility to recover Geneviève. We have broken our backs, been roasted, and have been cruelly cuffed for her. Cupid, however exacting he may be, could require no more from a man in love, and above all, from one who is not. So jump into the carriage, and let us return home."
Maurice submitted without making any reply. They arrived at Maurice's door without either of the friends having uttered a single word. As Maurice descended[Pg 317] from the carriage, they heard a window of his apartment closed.
"All right!" said Lorin, "he is waiting; I shall rest easy now. Knock, however."
Maurice knocked, the door opened.
"Good-night!" said Lorin, "wait for me to-morrow morning to go out!"
"Good-night," said Maurice, mechanically, as the door closed behind him. Upon the first steps of the staircase he met his official.
"Ah! Citizen Lindey," he exclaimed, "how much uneasiness you have caused us!" The word us struck Maurice.
"You?" said he.
"Yes, me and the little lady who is waiting for you."
"The little lady," repeated Maurice, feeling the moment ill-chosen to remind him of his former loves; "you were right to tell me. I shall sleep at Lorin's."
"That is impossible; she was at the window, and saw you alight, and cried out, 'There he is!'"
"What care I whether she knows I am here or not? I have no heart for love. Go upstairs, and tell this woman she is mistaken."
The official made a movement as if to obey him, then stopped.
"Ah! Citizen," said he, "you are wrong. The little lady is already very sad; your message will drive her to despair."
"But," asked Maurice, "who is this woman?"
"Citizen, I have not seen her face; it is concealed by her mantle, and she weeps, that is all I know."
"She weeps!" exclaimed Maurice.
"Yes, but very softly, stifling her sobs."
[Pg 318]
"She weeps," repeated Maurice; "there is then some one in the world who loves me sufficiently to feel anxious in my absence?" and he ascended slowly behind the official.
"Here he is, Citizen, here he is!" cried the latter, rushing into the chamber. Maurice entered behind him.
He then beheld in a corner of the room the trembling form of a woman whose face was hid in the cushions, and whom he would have thought dead, but for her convulsive moaning, which made him start. He signed to his official to leave the room, who went out, closing the door behind him. Then Maurice ran to the young woman, who raised her head.
"Geneviève!" cried the young man, "Geneviève here! good Heavens! am I then mad?"
"No, you are in possession of your senses, my friend," replied the young woman. "I promised to be yours if you would save the Chevalier de Maison-Rouge. You have saved him, and I am here; I was awaiting you."
Maurice mistook the meaning of these words; he recoiled a step, and looked sadly at the young woman.
"Geneviève," said he, "you do not love me."
Geneviève regarded him with tearful eyes; then turning from him, leaned her head on the pillow of the sofa, and gave free vent to her sobs and tears.
"Alas!" said Maurice, "it is evident that you no longer love me; and not only that you love me no more, Geneviève, but that you must entertain a feeling of hatred toward me, to experience this despair."
Maurice had spoken so nobly, yet with so much feeling, that Geneviève arose and took his hand.
"Mon Dieu!" said she, "and is it ever thus that those we think the best prove merely egotists?"
[Pg 319]
"Egotists, Geneviève! what do you mean?"
"Can you not then imagine what I suffer? My husband a fugitive, my brother proscribed, our house in flames, and all this in one night; and then that dreadful scene between you and the Chevalier was added to the rest!"
Maurice listened with delight, for it was impossible even for the maddest passion not to admit that this accumulation of trouble was more than sufficient excuse for Geneviève's deep and violent grief.
"And now you are come, I shall keep you; you shall leave me no more!"
Geneviève started.
"Where should I go?" replied she, with bitterness. "Have I an asylum, a shelter, a protector, save he who has put a price upon his protection? Oh, rash and foolish that I am! I stepped over the Pont Neuf, Maurice, and in passing I stopped to gaze at the dark water, dashing angrily against the corners of the arches; it attracted and fascinated me. Then said I to myself, there, poor woman, is a shelter for you; there inviolable repose and oblivion!"
"Geneviève! Geneviève!" cried Maurice, "you said that? Then you do not love me?"
"I said it," replied Geneviève,—"I said it; but I am here."
Maurice drew a deep breath, and fell at her feet.
"Geneviève," murmured he, "weep no more! Geneviève, console yourself for all your grief, since you love me. Tell me, Geneviève, for the sake of Heaven! that it was not the violence of my menaces that brought you hither. Assure me that even had you not seen me this evening, on finding yourself alone, isolated, and without an asylum, you would have come to me; and accept the[Pg 320] oath which I now make you, to annul the one that I compelled you to take."
Geneviève looked down upon the young man with an expression of ineffable gratitude. "Generous!" said she; "Oh, my God! I thank thee, he is generous."
"Listen, Geneviève!" said Maurice. "God, whom they have here driven from their temples, but whom they cannot expel from our hearts, where he has implanted love, has made this evening in appearance dark and gloomy, but conceals behind its sombre curtain a silvery cloud. God has conducted you to me, Geneviève, and speaks to you through me. God is at length willing to compensate us for all the sufferings we have endured, for the virtue we have displayed in combating this love, as if this sentiment so long entertained, and so profound, could be a crime! Weep no more, Geneviève, weep no more; give me your hand! Do you wish to live in the house of your brother? Do you wish he should kiss the hem of your robe, and pass over the threshold of his door without turning his head? Well, say but the word, make but one sign, and I am gone, and you are free. But on the other hand, my adored Geneviève, will you call to mind that I have loved you so ardently that I had almost died of this love, which it remains with you to render so fatal or so fortunate to me; that for this love I have been a traitor to my party, and am become vile and contemptible in my own eyes,—will you now consider all the happiness which the future has in store for us, the strength and energy which our youth and love possess to defend this happiness, now but in the bud, from all who would dare attack it? Ah! Geneviève, what will you reply? You who are an angel of mercy, will you render a man so happy that he no longer regrets life, and ceases to desire eternal felicity? Then, instead of repelling me, smile, my Gene[Pg 321]viève; let me place your hand upon my heart, and incline toward one who worships you from the inmost recesses of his soul. Geneviève, my love, my life, do not take back your vow!"
The heart of the young woman swelled at these words. The fatigue of her late suffering had worn out her strength, and though her tears no longer flowed, occasional sobs relieved her overcharged bosom.
Maurice saw that she no longer had the force to resist, and seized her in his arms. Then she let her head fall on his shoulder, and her long hair brushed against her lover's burning cheeks.
At the same time Maurice felt the heaving of her chest, still disturbed like the ocean after a storm.
"You still weep, my Geneviève," continued Maurice, with profound melancholy,—"you still weep. Oh, reassure yourself! I will never impose my love on scornful grief, and never soil my lips with a kiss empoisoned by a single tear of regret."
He unwound the living girdle of her arms, averted his face, and coldly turned away.
But as quick as thought, in a moment of reaction so natural in a woman who struggles contrary to her own inclination, Geneviève threw her trembling arms around Maurice's neck, pressed him nervously to her heart, and laid her cold cheek, still wet with the tears which had ceased to flow, against the young man's burning one.
"Ah, Maurice!" murmured Geneviève, "do not abandon me, Maurice; I have no one left me in the world but you!"
[Pg 322]