easy, as the priest had said, to find the house of Le Kain; she bade the servant take the priest’s letter to his master, and she was not long kept waiting before she was admitted to the physician’s presence. He was a spare, tall man, with a bald front, and a calm and friendly countenance. He was not less touched than the priest had been by the manner in which she narrated her story, described the affliction of her betrothed, and the hope that had inspired the pilgrimage she had just made.
“Well,” said he, encouragingly, “we must see our patient. You can bring him hither to me.”
“Ah, sir, I had hoped—” Lucille stopped suddenly.
“What, my young friend?”
“That I might have had the triumph of bringing you to Malines. I know, sir, what you are about to say, and I know, sir, your time must be very valuable; but I am not so poor as I seem, and Eugene, that is, M. St. Amand, is very rich, and—and I have at Bruxelles what I am sure is a large sum; it was to have provided for the wedding, but it is most heartily at your service, sir.”
Le Kain smiled; he was one of those men who love to read the human heart when its leaves are fair and undefiled; and, in the benevolence of science, he would have gone a longer journey than from Louvain to Malines to give sight to the blind, even had St. Amand been a beggar.
“Well, well,” said he, “but you forget that M. St. Amand is not the only one in the world who wants me. I must look at my notebook, and see if I can be spared for a day or two.”
So saying, he glanced at his memoranda. Everything smiled on Lucille; he had no engagements that his partner could not fulfil, for some days; he consented to accompany Lucille to Malines.
Meanwhile, cheerless and dull had passed the time to St. Amand. He was perpetually asking Madame le Tisseur what hour it was,—it was almost his only question. There seemed to him no sun in the heavens, no freshness in the air, and he even forbore his favourite music; the instrument had lost its sweetness since Lucille was not by to listen.
It was natural that the gossips of Malines should feel some envy at the marriage Lucille was about to make with one whose competence report had exaggerated into prodigal wealth, whose birth had been elevated from the respectable to the noble, and whose handsome person was clothed, by the interest excited by his misfortune, with the beauty of Antinous. Even that misfortune, which ought to have levelled all distinctions, was not sufficient to check the general envy; perhaps to some of the damsels of Malines blindness in a husband would not have seemed an unwelcome infirmity! But there was one in whom this envy rankled with a peculiar sting: it was the beautiful, the all-conquering Julie! That the humble, the neglected Lucille should be preferred to her; that Lucille, whose existence was well-nigh forgot beside Julie’s, should become thus suddenly of importance; that there should be one person in the world, and that person young, rich, handsome, to whom she was less than nothing, when weighed in the balance with Lucille, mortified to the quick a vanity that had never till then received a wound. “It is well,” she would say with a bitter jest, “that Lucille’s lover is blind. To be the one it is necessary to be the other!”
During Lucille’s absence she had been constantly in Madame le Tisseur’s house; indeed, Lucille had prayed her to be so. She had sought, with an industry that astonished herself, to supply Lucille’s place; and among the strange contradictions of human nature, she had learned during her efforts to please, to love the object of those efforts,—as much at least as she was capable of loving.
She conceived a positive hatred to Lucille; she persisted in imagining that nothing but the accident of first acquaintance had deprived her of a conquest with which she persuaded herself her happiness had become connected. Had St. Amand never loved Lucille and proposed to Julie, his misfortune would have made her reject him, despite his wealth and his youth; but to be Lucille’s lover, and a conquest to be won from Lucille, raised him instantly to an importance not his own. Safe, however, in his affliction, the arts and beauty of Julie fell harmless on the fidelity of St. Amand. Nay, he liked her less than ever, for it seemed an impertinence in any one to counterfeit the anxiety and watchfulness of Lucille.
“It is time, surely it is time, Madame le Tisseur, that Lucille should return? She might have sold all the lace in Malines by this time,” said St. Amand, one day, peevishly.
“Patience, my dear friend, patience; perhaps she may return to-morrow.”
“To-morrow! let me see, it is only six o’clock,—only six, you are sure?”
“Just five, dear Eugene. Shall I read to you? This is a new book from Paris; it has made a great noise,” said Julie.
“You are very kind, but I will not trouble you.”
“It is anything but trouble.”
“In a word, then, I would rather not.”
“Oh, that he could see!” thought Julie; “would I not punish him for this!”
“I hear carriage wheels; who can be passing this way? Surely it is the voiturier from Bruxelles,” said St. Amand, starting up; “it is his day,—his hour, too. No, no, it is a lighter vehicle,” and he sank down listlessly on his seat.
Nearer and nearer rolled the wheels; they turned the corner; they stopped at the lowly door; and, overcome, overjoyed, Lucille was clasped to the bosom of St. Amand.
“Stay,” said she, blushing, as she recovered her self-possession, and turned to Le Kain; “pray pardon me, sir. Dear Eugene, I have brought with me one who, by God’s blessing, may yet restore you to sight.”
“We must not be sanguine, my child,” said Le Kain; “anything is better than disappointment.”
To close this part of my story, dear Gertrude, Le Kain examined St. Amand, and the result of the examination was a confident belief in the probability of a cure. St. Amand gladly consented to the experiment of an operation; it succeeded, the blind man saw! Oh, what were Lucille’s feelings, what her emotion, what her joy, when she found the object of her pilgrimage, of her prayers, fulfilled! That joy was so intense that in the eternal alternations of human life she might have foretold from its excess how bitter the sorrows fated to ensue.
As soon as by degrees the patient’s new sense became reconciled to the light, his first, his only demand was for Lucille. “No, let me not see her alone; let me see her in the midst of you all, that I may convince you that the heart never is mistaken in its instincts.” With a fearful, a sinking presentiment, Lucille yielded to the request, to which the impetuous St. Amand would hear indeed no denial. The father, the mother, Julie, Lucille, Julie’s younger sisters, assembled in the little parlour; the door opened, and St. Amand stood hesitating on the threshold. One look around sufficed to him; his face brightened, he uttered a cry of joy. “Lucille! Lucille!” he exclaimed, “it is you, I know it, you only!” He sprang forward and fell at the feet of Julie!
Flushed, elated, triumphant, Julie bent upon him her sparkling eyes; she did not undeceive him.
“You are wrong, you mistake,” said Madame le Tisseur, in confusion; “that is her cousin Julie,—this is your Lucille.”
St. Amand rose, turned, saw Lucille, and at that moment she wished herself in her grave. Surprise, mortification, disappointment, almost dismay, were depicted in his gaze. He had been haunting his prison-house with dreams, and now, set free, he felt how unlike they were to the truth. Too new to observation to read the woe, the despair, the lapse and shrinking of the whole frame, that his look occasioned Lucille, he yet felt, when the first shock of his surprise was over, that it was not thus he should thank her who had restored him to sight. He hastened to redeem
