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Gustave paused: “Adieu, Mademoiselle! Adieu, though we may never meet again,—though our fates divide us,—believe me that I shall ever cherish your memory—and—”
The girl interrupted him, impulsively seizing his arm, and looking him in the face with a wild fixed stare. “Hush! dost thou mean to say that we are parted,—parted forever?”
“Alas!” said Gustave, “what option is before us? Your guardian rightly forbids my visits; and even were I free to offer you my hand, you yourself say that I am not a suitor he would approve.”
Julie turned her eyes towards De Mauleon, who, following Gustave into the ante-room, stood silent and impassive, leaning against the wall.
He now understood and replied to the pathetic appeal in the girl’s eyes.
“My young ward,” he said, “M. Rameau expresses himself with propriety and truth. Suffer him to depart. He belongs to the former life; reconcile yourself to the new.”
He advanced to take her hand, making a sign to Gustave to depart. But as he approached Julie, she uttered a weak piteous wail, and fell at his feet senseless. De Mauleon raised and carried her into her room, where he left her to the care of the old bonne. On re-entering the anteroom, he found Gustave still lingering by the outer door. “You will pardon me, Monsieur,” he said to the Vicomte, “but in fact I feel so uneasy, so unhappy. Has she—? You see, you see that there is danger to her health, perhaps to her reason, in so abrupt a separation, so cruel a rupture between us. Let me call again, or I may not have strength to keep my promise.”
De Mauleon remained a few minutes musing. Then he said in a whisper, “Come back into the salon. Let us talk frankly.”
CHAPTER X.
“M. Rameau,” said De Mauleon, when the two men had reseated themselves in the salon, “I will honestly say that my desire is to rid myself as soon as I can of the trust of guardian to this young lady. Playing as I do with fortune, my only stake against her favours is my life. I feel as if it were my duty to see that Mademoiselle is not left alone and friendless in the world at my decease. I have in my mind for her a husband that I think in every way suitable: a handsome and brave young fellow in my battalion, of respectable birth, without any living relations to consult as to his choice. I have reason to believe that if Julie married him, she need never fear as a reproach to her antecedents. Her dot would suffice to enable him to realise his own wish of a country town in Normandy. And in that station, Paris and its temptations would soon pass from the poor child’s thoughts, as an evil dream. But I cannot dispose of her hand without her own consent; and if she is to be reasoned out of her fancy for you, I have no time to devote to the task. I come to the point, You are not the man I would choose for her husband. But, evidently, you are the man she would choose. Are you disposed to marry her? You hesitate, very naturally; I have no right to demand an immediate answer to a question so serious. Perhaps you will think over it, and let me know in a day or two? I take it for granted that if you were, as I heard, engaged before the siege to marry the Signora Cicogna, that engagement is annulled?”
“Why take it for granted?” asked Gustave, perplexed. “Simply because I find you here. Nay, spare explanations and excuses. I quite understand that you were invited to come. But a man solemnly betrothed to a mademoiselle like the Signora Cicogna, in a time of such dire calamity and peril, could scarcely allow himself to be tempted to accept the invitation of one so beautiful, and so warmly attached to him, as is Mademoiselle Julie; and on witnessing the passionate strength of that attachment, say that he cannot keep a promise not to repeat his visits. But if I mistake, and you are still betrothed to the Signorina, of course all discussion is at an end.”
Gustave hung his head in some shame, and in much bewildered doubt.
The practised observer of men’s characters, and of shifting phases of mind, glanced at the poor poet’s perturbed countenance with a half-smile of disdain.
“It is for you to judge how far the very love to you so ingenuously evinced by my ward—how far the reasons against marriage with one whose antecedents expose her to reproach—should influence one of your advanced opinions upon social ties. Such reasons do not appear to have with artists the same weight they have with the bourgeoisie. I have but to add that the husband of Julie will receive with her hand a dot of nearly 120,000 francs; and I have reason to believe that that fortune will be increased—how much, I cannot guess-when the cessation of the siege will allow communication with England. One word more. I should wish to rank the husband of my ward in the number of my friends. If he did not oppose the political opinions with which I identify my own career, I should be pleased to make any rise in the world achieved by me assist to the raising of himself. But my opinions, as during the time we were brought together you were made aware, are those of a practical man of the world, and have nothing in common with Communists, Socialists, Internationalists, or whatever sect would place the aged societies of Europe in Medea’s caldron of youth. At a moment like the present, fanatics and dreamers so abound that the number of such sinners will necessitate a general amnesty when order is restored. What a poet so young as you may have written or said at such a time will be readily forgotten and forgiven a year or two hence, provided he does not put his notions into violent action. But if you choose to persevere in the views you now advocate, so be it. They will not make poor Julie less a believer in your wisdom and genius. Only they will separate you from me, and a day may come when I should have the painful duty of ordering you to be shot—Die meliora. Think over all I have thus frankly said. Give me your answer within forty-eight hours; and meanwhile hold no communication with my ward. I have the honour to wish you good-day.”
CHAPTER XI.
The short grim day was closing when Gustave, quitting Julie’s apartment, again found himself in the streets. His thoughts were troubled and confused. He was the more affected by Julie’s impassioned love for him, by the contrast with Isaura’s words and manner in their recent interview. His own ancient fancy for the “Ondine of Paris” became revived by the difficulties between their ancient intercourse which her unexpected scruples and De Mauleon’s guardianship interposed. A witty writer thus defines une passion, “une caprice inflamme par des obstacles.” In the ordinary times of peace, Gustave, handsome, aspiring to reputable position in the beau monde, would not have admitted any considerations to compromise his station by marriage with a fagurante. But now the wild political doctrines he had embraced separated his ambition from that beau
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