The Lock and Key Library Part 19

August 30th.

How he made me suffer yesterday! I have not recovered from it yet.

What! was it he--was it to me? G.o.d! what bitterness of language; what keen irony! Count Kostia, you make a mistake--this child is really yours. He may have the features and smile of his mother, but there is a little of your soul in his. What grievances can he have against me? I can imagine but two. Sunday last, near three o'clock, we were both at the window. He commenced a very animated speech by signs, and prolonged it far beyond the prudential limits which I have prescribed to him. He spoke, I believe, about Soliman, and of a walk which he had refused to take with Ivan. I did not pay close attention, for I was occupied in looking round to see that no one was watching us. Suddenly I saw on the slope of the hill big Fritz and the little goat girl, to whom he is paying court, seated on a rock. At the moment I was about to answer Stephane, they raised their eyes to me. I began then to look at the landscape, and presently quitted the spot. Stephane could not see them from his window, and of course did not understand the cause of my retreat. The other grievance is, that for the first time three days have pa.s.sed without my paying him a visit; but day before yesterday the wind was so violent that it overthrew a chimney nearby, . . . and it was to punish me for such a grave offense that he allowed himself to say that I was no doubt an excellent botanist, an unparalleled philanthropist, but that I understood nothing of the refinements of sentiment.

"You are one of those men," said he, "who carry the whole world in their hearts. It is useless for you to deny it. I am sure you have at least a hundred intimate friends."

"You are right," I replied; "it is even for the hundredth one that I have risked my life."

September 7th.

During the last week, I have seen him three times. He has given me no cause for complaint; he works, he reflects; his judgment is forming, not a moment of ill-humor; he is calm, docile, and gentle as a lamb. Yes, but it is this excess of gentleness which disturbs me. There is something unnatural to me, in his condition, and I am forced to regret the absence of those transports, and the childishness of which I have endeavored to cure him. "Stephane, you have become too unlike yourself. But a short time since, your feet hardly touched the ground; lively, impetuous, and violent, there came from your lips by turns flashes of merriment or of anger, and in an instant you pa.s.sed from enthusiasm to despair; but in our recent interviews I could scarcely recognize you. No more freaks of the rebellious child; no more of those familiarities which I loved! Your glances, even, as they meet mine, seem less a.s.sured; sometimes they wander over me doubtfully, and from the surprise they express, I am inclined to believe that my figure must have grown some cubits, and you can no longer take it in at a glance. And then those sighs which escape you! Besides, you no longer complain of anything; your existence seems to have become a stranger to you. It must be that without my knowledge--" Ah!

unhappy child, I will know. You shall speak; you shall tell me... .

September 10.

Heavens! what a flood of light! Father Alexis, you did not tell me all! The more I think of it... . Ah! Gilbert, what scales covered your eyes! Yesterday I carried him that copy of the poem of the Metamorphoses, which I had promised him. A few fragments that I had repeated to him had inspired him with the desire of reading the whole piece, not from the book, but copied in my hand.

We read it together, distich by distich. I translated, explained, and commented. When we arrived at these verses: "May you only remember how the tie which first united our souls was a germ from which grew in time a sweet and charming intimacy, and soon friendship revealed its power in our hearts, until love, coming last, crowned it with flowers and with fruit--" At these words he became agitated and trembled violently.

"Do not let us go any further," said he, pushing the paper away.

"That is poetry enough for this evening."

Then leaning upon the table, he opened and turned the leaves of his herbarium; but his eyes and his thoughts were elsewhere. Suddenly he rose, took a few steps in the room, and then returning to me:

"Do you think that friendship can change into love?"

"Goethe says so; we must believe it."

He took a flower from the table, looked at it a moment and dropping it on the floor, he murmured, lowering his eyes:

"I am an ignoramus; tell me what is this love?"

"It is the folly of friendship."

"Have you ever been foolish?"

"No, and I do not imagine I ever shall be."

He remained motionless for a moment, his arms hanging listlessly; at length, raising them slowly, he crossed his hands over his head, one of his favorite att.i.tudes, raised his eyes from the ground, and looked steadily at me. Oh! what a strange expression! His wild look, a sad and mysterious smile wandering over his lips, his mouth which tried to speak, but to which speech refused to come! That face has been constantly before me since last night; it pursues me, possesses me, and even at this moment its image is stamped in the paper I am writing on. This black velvet tunic, then, may be a forced disguise? Yes, the character of Stephane, his mind, his singularity of conduct,--all these things which astonished and frightened me are now explained. Gilbert, Gilbert! what have you done? into what abyss... And yet, perhaps I am mistaken, for how can I believe-- There is the dinner bell... I shall see HIM again!

XVI

Some hours later, Gilbert entered Stephane's room, and struck by his pallor and with the troubled expression of his voice, inquired about him anxiously.

"I a.s.sure you I am very well," Stephane replied, mastering his emotion. "Have you brought me any flowers?"

"No, I have had no time to go for them."

"That is to say, you have not had time to think of me."

"Oh! I beg your pardon! I can think of you while working, while reading Greek, even while sleeping. And last night I saw you in my dreams: you treated me as a pedant, and threw your cap in my face."

"That was a very extravagant dream."

"I am not so sure about that. It seems to me that one day--"

"Yes, one day, two centuries ago."

"Is it then so long since our acquaintance commenced?"

"Perhaps not two centuries, but nearly. As for me, I have already lived three lives: my first I pa.s.sed with my mother. The second-- let us not speak of that. The third began upon the night when, for the first time, you climbed into this window. And that must have been a long time ago, if I can judge of it by all which has pa.s.sed since then, in my soul, in my imagination, and in my mind. Is it possible that these two centuries have only been two months? How can it be that such great changes have been wrought in me, in so short a time, for they are so marvelous that I can hardly recognize myself?"

"One of these changes, of which I am proud, is that you no longer throw your cap at my head."

"That was a liberty I took only with the pedant."

"And are you at last reconciled to him?"

"I have discovered that the pedant does not exist. There is a hero and a philosopher in you."

"That is a discovery I did not expect from you, and one that astonishes as much as it flatters me."

"When I tell you that I am changed throughout, and that I no longer recognize myself--"

"And I, in spite of your transformation, recognize you very easily.

My dear Stephane has preserved his habit of exaggerating all his impressions. Once I was a man who ought to be smothered; now I am an extraordinary being who pa.s.ses his life in executing heroic projects. No, my poet, I am neither a scoundrel nor a knight errant, and the best that can be said of me is that I am not a blockhead, that I do not lack heart, and that I run over the roofs with remarkable agility."

"No, I exaggerate nothing," he said. "I speak of things as they are, and the proof that you are an extraordinary man is, that in all you do, you appear perfectly simple and natural."

And as Gilbert shrugged his shoulders and smiled:

"Ah! you need not laugh!" he continued. "Feel my pulse, you will see I have no fever. And have you not noticed how calm I have been for several days?"

I confess that your quietness surprises me; but is it really a calm? I suspect that you have only covered the brazier, and that the fire smoulders under the ashes."

"And you stir up the ashes to draw out the sparks. As you please, but I forewarn you, that you will not succeed, and that I shall remain insensible to all your efforts."

"So for a week, you have felt more tranquil in heart and mind?"

"Yes, and I have a good reason for it. There was a great fomenter of seditions in me, a great stirrer up of rebellion. It was my pride."

Stephane hid his face in his hands; then after a long silence:

"No," said he, "I have not the courage to speak yet. Besides, before making my revelation, which you will perhaps consider extravagant, I want to prove to you more thoroughly that my senses have been restored, and that I have become wise in your school.

Know then, that before I became acquainted with you, religion was in my eyes, but a coa.r.s.e magic in which I believed with pa.s.sionate irrationality. I considered prayer as a kind of sorcery, and attributed to it the power of compelling the divine will; every day I called upon Heaven to perform a miracle in my favor, and, finding myself refused, my ungranted prayers fell back like lead upon my heart. Then I rebelled against the celestial intelligences which refused to yield to my enchantments, or else I sought in anguish to ascertain to what error in form, to what neglected precaution, to what sin of omission I could attribute the impotence of my operations in magic and my formulas.