The coarse 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 passed 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 noble, 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 seashore; 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 noble 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 title of Duchesse 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 passion 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 circumstances 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 shore, 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 shore, 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, passing 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 noble 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 pass 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. On one side of him knelt Gabrielle, silent, watching the words he wrote, but not reading them; she read all on Etienne’s forehead. On his other side stood old Beauvouloir, whose jovial countenance was deeply sad,—sad as that gloomy chamber where Etienne’s mother died. A secret voice cried to the doctor, “The fate of his mother awaits him!”
When the letter was written, Etienne held it out to the old man, who hastened to give it to Bertrand. The old retainer’s horse was waiting in the courtyard, saddled; the man himself was ready. He started, and met the duke twelve miles from Herouville.
“Come with me to the gate of the courtyard,” said Gabrielle to her friend when they were alone.
The pair passed through the cardinal’s library, and went down through the tower, in which was a door, the key of which Etienne had given to Gabrielle. Stupefied by the dread of coming evil, the poor youth left in the tower the torch he had brought to light the steps of his beloved, and continued with her toward the cottage. A few steps from the little garden, which formed a sort of flowery courtyard to the humble habitation, the lovers stopped. Emboldened by the vague alarm which oppressed them, they gave each other, in the shades of night, in the silence, that first kiss in which the senses and the soul unite, and cause a revealing joy. Etienne comprehended love in its dual expression, and Gabrielle fled lest she should be drawn by that love—whither she knew not.
At the moment when the Duc de Nivron reascended the staircase to the castle, after closing the door of the tower, a cry of horror, uttered by Gabrielle, echoed in his ears with the sharpness of a flash of lightning which burns the eyes. Etienne ran through the apartments of the chateau, down the grand staircase, and along the beach towards Gabrielle’s house, where he saw lights.
When Gabrielle, quitting her lover, had entered the little garden, she saw, by the gleam of a torch which lighted her nurse’s spinning-wheel, the figure of a man sitting in the chair of that excellent woman. At the sound of her steps the man arose and came toward her; this had frightened her, and she gave the cry. The presence and aspect of the Baron d’Artagnon............