to me, if only one word!"
"I am merciless," replied the author: "man's injustice has made me more ferocious than a tiger. Go and join my enemies with whom you correspond. League yourself with them, which I do not hinder, but do all this beyond my domicile."
"Those young women are no enemies of yours—they are Mademoiselle Andrea of Taverney, the young lady I told you of, on whose estate I was born, and her maid Nicole. Excuse me troubling you with such matters, but you drive me to it. This is the lady whom I love more than you ever loved all your flames. It is she whom I followed afoot, penniless and wanting bread, until I fell exhausted on the highway and racked with pain. It is she whom I saw once more yesterday at St. Denis, and behind whose coach I came till I housed her in the place yonder. In short, it is she for whom I wish one of these days to be a great man—a Rousseau!"
His hearer knew the human heart, and the gamut of its exclamations. The best actor could hardly have Gilbert's tearful voice and the feverish gesture accompanying the effusion.
"So this is your lady love?"
"My foster-sister, yes."
"Then you lied a while ago when you said you knew her not, and you are a liar, if not a traitor."
"You are racking my heart and you would hurt me less were you to slay me on the spot."
"Pooh! that is a mere piece of fustian out of the Diderot or Marmontel books. You are a liar, sir."
"Have it so, and the worse for you that you do not understand such white lies!" retorted Gilbert. "I shall go, heartbroken, and you will have my despair on your conscience."
Rousseau smoothed his chin and regarded the youth whose case had so much analogy with his own.
"He is either a great rogue or a lad with a big heart," he mused; "but after all, if he is in a plot against me, it will be best to have the wires of the puppets in my hand."
Gilbert strode to the door, but he paused with his hand on the knob, waiting for the last word to recall or banish him.
"Enough on this head, my son," said the man of letters. "It is hard enough for you to be in love, to this degree. But it is getting on, and we have thirty pages of music to copy this day. Look alive, Gilbert, look alive!"
Gilbert grasped the speaker's hand and pressed it to his lips as he would not a king's. While Gilbert leaned up against the doorjamb with emotion, Rousseau took a last peep out of the window. This was the moment when Andrea stood up to put on her dress, but seeing a person up at the attic window, she darted back and bade Nicole shut the sashes.
"My old head frightened her," mumbled the philosopher; "his youthful one would not have done that. Oh, youth, lovely youth!" he broke forth, sighing, "'Spring is the love-time of the year! love is the springtime of life!'"
Hanging up the dress, he melancholically descended the stairs at the heels of Gilbert, for whose youth he would at that time have bartered his reputation, at that juncture counterbalancing Voltaire's and with it sharing the admiration of the entire world.
Chapter XXXVI.
Balsamo At Home.
The house in St. Claude Street, to which Joseph Balsamo invited the Cardinal Prince of Rohan did not look strange in his day, but it resembled a fortress to such an extent that it would be remarkable at present. Strongly built, and with barred windows and grated doors, to say nothing of the ditch in front and high balconies, it was in keeping with this part of the town, pretty unsafe at this epoch after dark.
There were scarcely a dozen houses on the quarter of a league to the Bastille, and the municipal authorities did not think it worth while to supply lamps. Along this deserted and unlighted highway a carriage was driven after nine one evening, which stopped at the low, deep doorway where gleamed the brazen griffin for a knocker which Count Fenix had described.
The arms of the nobleman were on the carriage panels. He preceded it by some yards, riding Djerid, who whisked his long tail till it whistled in the dust of the dirty pavement.
Behind the closed blinds slumbered Lorenza on the cushions.
At the rolling of the wheels, the door opened as by enchantment, and the carriage vanished in the black gulf of the mansion courtyard.
There was no need of any mystery, for nobody was about to see the count come home or mark what he brought, even if it were the treasure-chest of St. Denis Abbey.
A skillful calculator, given the size of the building lot and that of the house on street, would be surprised how so small a one covered so much ground. The fact of the matter was that there stood a house behind the outer house, known only to the tenant.
A German servant, aged about thirty; closed the coachway door and bolted it. Opening the coach door while the emotionless driver unharnessed the team, he drew from within the senseless Lorenza, whom he carried indoors to an antechamber. He laid her on a table and discreetly wrapped her in her long veil to the feet.
He went out to light at the coach lamps a seven-candle chandelier, with which he came back.
During that short space, Lorenza had disappeared.
In fact Count Fenix had entered after the valet went out. He had taken up the girl in his arms, and carried her out by a secret passage into a room furnished with trophies of outlandish weapons.
With his foot he pressed the spring of the backplate of the high fireplace, which turned on well-oiled hinges, so that the count could go forth, as he did, while the secret panel slid to behind him.
On the other side of the chimney was another flight of steps. Mounting a dozen, covered with Utrecht velvet carpet, he reached the sill of a room elegantly tapestried with satin, so wonderfully embroidered in high relief with flowers in their natural colors that they seemed real.
The extremely rich furniture was of a boudoir and toilet chamber leading to a parlor.
Curtains hid two windows, but as it was night, they were not wanted to give light. Lamps burning perfumed oil burnt here night and day, for the room had no external openings. They were drawn up through apertures in the ceiling by unseen hands when they needed replenishing.
Not a sound penetrated here, and one might feel as a thousand miles out of the world. But gilding flashed on all sides and Bohemian glass mirrors sparkled as, dissatisfied with the light, after having placed Lorenza on a sofa, the count struck a fire with the silver phosphorus matchbox so startling to Gilbert, and kindled two pink candled chandeliers on the mantel-piece.
Returning to Lorenza, and kneeling with one knee on a pile of cushions beside her, he called her by name. Though her eyes remained closed, she rose on one elbow, but without replying.
"Are you sleeping naturally or through the magnetic spell?"
"Lorenza sleeps in the magnetic sleep," she replied.
"Then you can answer my questions. Look into the room of the Princess Louise which we have just quitted, and tell me if the Cardinal of Rohan is there."
"No;
