WHEN ANDREE was alone she rose from the chair, and a shudder passed through Gilbert's frame.
The young girl stood upright, and with her hands, white as alabaster, she took the hair-pins one by one from her headdress, while the light shawl in which she was wrapped slipped from her shoulders, and showed her snowy graceful neck, and her arms, which, raised carelessly above her head, displayed to advantage the muscles of her exquisite throat and bosom, palpitating under the cambric.
Gilbert, on his knees, breathless intoxicated, felt the blood rush furiously to his heart and forehead. Fiery waves circulated in his veins, a cloud of flame descended over his sight, and strange feverish noises boiled in his ears. His state of mind bordered on madness. He was on the point of crossing the threshold of Andree's door, and crying:
“Yes, thou art beautiful! thou art, indeed, beautiful! But be not so proud of thy beauty, for thou owest it to me —I saved thy life!”
All at once, a knot in her waistband embarrassed the young girl; she became impatient, stamped with her foot, and sat down weak and trembling on her bed, as if this slight obstacle had overcome her strength. Then, bending toward the cord of the bell, she pulled it impatiently.
This noise recalled Gilbert to his senses. Nicole had left the door open to hear, therefore she would come.
“Farewell, my dream!” murmured he. “Farewell, happiness! henceforth only a baseless vision —henceforth only a remembrance, ever burning in my imagination, ever present to my heart!”
Gilbert endeavored to rush from the pavilion, but the baron on entering had closed the doors of the corridor after him. Not calculating on this interruption, he was some moments before he could open them.
Just as he entered Nicole's apartment, Nicole reached the pavilion. The young man heard the gravel of the garden walk grinding under her steps. He had only time to conceal himself in the shade, in order to let the young girl pass him; for after crossing the antechamber, the door of which she locked, she flew along the corridor as light as a bird.
Gilbert gained the antechamber and attempted to escape into the garden, but Nicole, while running on and crying; “I am coming, mademoiselle! I am coming! I am just closing the door!” had closed it indeed, and not only closed it and double-locked it, but in her confusion had put the key into her pocket.
Gilbert tried in vain to open the door. Then he had recourse to the windows, but they were barred, and after five minutes' investigation, he saw that it was impossible to escape.
The young man crouched into a corner, fortifying himself with the firm resolve to make Nicole open the door for him.
As for the latter, when she had given the plausible excuse for her absence, that she had gone to close the windows of the greenhouse, lest the night air might injure her young lady's flowers, she finished undressing Andree, and assisted her to bed.
There was a tremulousness in Nicole's voice, an unsteadiness in her hands, and an eagerness in all her attentions, which were very unusual, and indicated some extraordinary emotion. But from the calm and lofty sphere in which Andree's thoughts revolved, she rarely looked down upon the lower earth, and when she did so, the inferior beings whom she saw seemed like atoms in her eyes. She therefore perceived nothing. Meanwhile Gilbert was boiling with impatience, since he found the retreat thus cut off. He now longed only for liberty.
Andree dismissed Nicole after a short chat, in which the latter exhibited all the wheedling manner of a remorseful waiting maid.
Before retiring, she turned back her mistress's coverlet, lowered the lamp, sweetened the warm drink which was standing in a silver goblet upon an alabaster night lamp, wished her mistress good-night in her sweetest voice, and left the room on tip-toe. As she came out she closed the glass door. Then, humming gayly, as if her mind was perfectly tranquil, she crossed the antechamber and advanced toward the door leading into the garden.
Gilbert guessed Nicole's intention, and for a moment he asked himself if he should not, in place of making himself known, slip out suddenly, taking advantage of the opportunity to escape when the door should be opened. But in that case he would be seen without being recognized, and he would be taken for a robber. Nicole would cry for help, he would not have time to reach the cord, and even if he should reach it, he would be seen in his aerial flight, his retreat discovered, and himself made the object of the Taverneys' displeasure, which could not fail to be deep and lasting, considering the feeling evinced toward him by the head of the house.
True, he might expose Nicole, and procure her dismissal; but of what use would that be to him? He would in that case have done evil without reaping any corresponding advantage, in short, from pure revenge; and Gilbert was not so feebleminded as to feel satisfied when he was revenged. Useless revenge was to him worse than a bad action, it was folly.
As Nicole approached the door where Gilbert was in waiting, he suddenly emerged from the shadow in which he was concealed, and appeared to the young girl in the full rays of the moonlight which was streaming through the window. Nicole was on the point of crying out, but she took Gilbert for another, and said, after the first emotion of terror was past:
“Yes, it is I.” replied Gilbert, in a whisper; “but do not cry out for me more than you would do for another.”
This time Nicole recognized her interlocutor.
“Gilbert!” she exclaimed, “oh, Heaven!”
“I requested you not to cry out.” said the young man, coldly.
“But what are you doing here, sir?” exclaimed Nicole, angrily.
“Come,” said Gilbert, as coolly as before, “a moment ago you called me imprudent, and now you are more imprudent than I.”
“I think I am only too kind to you in asking what you are doing here,” said Nicole; “for I know very well.”
“You came to see Mademoiselle Andree.”
“Mademoiselle Andree?” said Gilbert, as calmly as before.
“Yes, you are in love with her; but, fortunately, she does not love you.”
“But take care, Monsieur Gilbert,” said Nicole, threateningly.
“Take care that I do not inform on you.”
“Yes, I; take care I don't get you dismissed from the house.”
“What will happen, then, if I tell mademoiselle, Monsieur Philip, and the baron, that I met you here?”
“It will happen as you have said—not that I shall be dismissed—I am, thank God, dismissed already——but that I shall be tracked and hunted like a wild beast. But she who will be dismissed will be Nicole.”
“Certainly; Nicole, who has stones thrown to her over the walls.”
“Take care, Monsieur Gilbert,” said Nicole, in a threatening tone, “a piece of mademoiselle's dress was found in your hand upon the Place Louis XV.”
“Monsieur Philip told his father so. He suspects nothing as yet, but if he gets a hint or two, perhaps he will suspect in the end.”
“And who will give him the hint?”
“Take care, Nicole! One might suspect, also, that when you seem to be drying lace, you are picking up the stones that are thrown over the wall!”
“It is false!” cried Nicole. Then, retracting her denial, she continued; “At all events, it is not a crime to receive a letter —not like stealing in here while mademoiselle is undressing. Ah! what will you say to that, Monsieur Gilbert?”
“I shall say, Mademoiselle Nicole, that it is also a crime for such a well-conducted young lady as you are to slip keys under the doors of gardens.”
“I shall say,” continued Gilbert, “that if I, who am known to M. de Taverney, to Monsieur Philip, to Mademoiselle Andree, have committed a crime in entering here, in my anxiety to know how the family I so long served were, and particularly Mademoiselle Andree, whom I endeavored so strenuously to save on the evening of the fireworks that a piece of her dress remained in my hand—I shall say that if I have committed this pardonable crime, you have committed the unpardonable one of introducing a stranger into your master's house, and are now going to meet him a second time, in the greenhouse, where you have already spent an hour in his company—”
“Oh! how virtuous we are, all of a sudden, Mademoiselle Nicole! You deem it very wicked that I should be found here, while—”
“Yes, go and tell mademoiselle that I love her. I shall say that it is you whom I love, and she will believe me, for you were foolish enough to tell her so at Taverney.”
“And you will be dismissed, Nicole; and in place of going to Trianon, and entering the household of the dauphiness with mademoiselle—instead of coquetting with the fine lords and rich gentlemen, as you will not fail to do if you remain with the family—instead of nil this, you will be sent to enjoy the society of your admirer, M. Beausire, an exempt, a soldier! Oh! what a direful fall! What a noble ambition Mademoiselle Nicole's is—to be the favored fair one of a guardsman!” And Gilbert began to hum, in a low voice, with a most malicious accent:
“In mercy, Monsieur Gilbert,” said Nicole, “do not look at me in that ill-natured manner. Your eyes pierce me, even in the darkness. Do not laugh either—your laugh terrifies me.”
“Then open the door,” said Gilbert, imperatively; “open the door for me, Nicole, and not another word of all this.”
Nicole opened the door with so violent a nervous trembling that her shoulders and head shook like those of an old woman.
Gilbert tranquilly stepped out first, and seeing that the young girl was leading him toward the door of the garden, he said:
“No, no; you have your means for admitting people here, I have my means for leaving it. Go to the greenhouse, to M. Beausire, who must be waiting impatiently for you, and remain with him ten minutes longer than you intended to do. I will grant you this recompense for your discretion.”
“Ten minutes, and why ten minutes?” asked Nicole, trembling.
“Because I require ten minutes to disappear. Go, Nicole, go; and, like Lot's wife, whose story I told you at Taverney, when you gave me a rendezvous among the hay-stacks, do not turn round, else something worse will happen to you than to be changed into a statue of salt. Go, beautiful siren, go; I have nothing else to say to you.”
Nicole, subdued, alarmed, conquered, by the coolness and presence of mind shown by Gilbert, who held her future destiny in his hands, turned with drooping head toward the greenhouse, where Beausire was already uneasy at her prolonged absence.
Gilbert, on his side, observing the same precautions as before to avoid discovery, once more reached the wall, seized his rope, and, assisted by the vine and trelliswork, gained the first story in safety, and quickly ascended the stairs. As luck would have it, he met no one on his way up; the neighbors were already to bed, and Therese was still at supper.
Gilbert was too much excited by his victory over Nicole to entertain the least fear of missing his foot in the leaden gutter. He felt as if he could have walked on the edge of a sharpened razor, had the razor been a league long. He regained his attic in safety therefore, closed the window, seized the note, which no one had touched, and tore it in pieces. Then he stretched himself with a, delicious feeling of languor upon his bed.
Half an hour afterward Therese kept her word, and came to the door to inquire how he was.; Gilbert thanked her, in a voice interrupted by terrific yawns, as if he were dying of sleep. He was eager to be alone, quite alone, in darkness and silence, to collect his thoughts, and analyze the varied emotions of this ever-memorable day.
Soon, indeed, everything faded from his mind's eye; the baron, Philip, Nicole, Beausire, disappeared from view, to give place to the vision of Andree at her toilet, her arms raised above her head, and detaching the pins from her long and flowing hair.
