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The Dream

by Émile Zola · English · Gutenberg #9499 · 511,098 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Dream

Author: Émile Zola

Translator: Eliza E. Chase


        
Release date: April 27, 2006 [eBook #9499]
                Most recently updated: November 3, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9499

Credits: Dagny, John Bickers, Roger Proctor and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DREAM ***




THE DREAM

(LE RÊVE)

By Émile Zola


Translated by Eliza E. Chase



CHAPTER I

During the severe winter of 1860 the river Oise was frozen over and the
plains of Lower Picardy were covered with deep snow. On Christmas Day,
especially, a heavy squall from the north-east had almost buried the
little city of Beaumont. The snow, which began to fall early in the
morning, increased towards evening and accumulated during the night;
in the upper town, in the Rue des Orfèvres, at the end of which, as if
enclosed therein, is the northern front of the cathedral transept,
this was blown with great force by the wind against the portal of Saint
Agnes, the old Romanesque portal, where traces of Early Gothic could be
seen, contrasting its florid ornamentation with the bare simplicity of
the transept gable.

The inhabitants still slept, wearied by the festive rejoicings of the
previous day. The town-clock struck six. In the darkness, which was
slightly lightened by the slow, persistent fall of flakes, a vague
living form alone was visible: that of a little girl, nine years of age,
who, having taken refuge under the archway of the portal, had passed the
night there, shivering, and sheltering herself as well as possible. She
wore a thin woollen dress, ragged from long use, her head was covered
with a torn silk handkerchief, and on her bare feet were heavy shoes
much too large for her. Without doubt she had only gone there after
having well wandered through the town, for she had fallen down from
sheer exhaustion. For her it was the end of the world; there was no
longer anything to interest her. It was the last surrender; the hunger
that gnaws, the cold which kills; and in her weakness, stifled by the
heavy weight at her heart, she ceased to struggle, and nothing was
left to her but the instinctive movement of preservation, the desire of
changing place, of sinking still deeper into these old stones, whenever
a sudden gust made the snow whirl about her.

Hour after hour passed. For a long time, between the divisions of this
double door, she leaned her back against the abutting pier, on whose
column was a statue of Saint Agnes, the martyr of but thirteen years of
age, a little girl like herself, who carried a branch of palm, and at
whose feet was a lamb. And in the tympanum, above the lintel, the whole
legend of the Virgin Child betrothed to Jesus could be seen in high
relief, set forth with a charming simplicity of faith. Her hair, which
grew long and covered her like a garment when the Governor, whose son
she had refused to marry, gave her up to the soldiers; the flames of
the funeral pile, destined to destroy her, turning aside and burning her
executioners as soon as they lighted the wood; the miracles performed
by her relics; Constance, daughter of the Emperor, cured of leprosy; and
the quaint story of one of her painted images, which, when the priest
Paulinus offered it a very valuable emerald ring, held out its finger,
then withdrew it, keeping the ring, which can be seen at this present
day. At the top of the tympanum, in a halo of glory, Agnes is at last
received into heaven, where her betrothed, Jesus, marries her, so young
and so little, giving her the kiss of eternal happiness.

But when the wind rushed through the street, the snow was blown in the
child’s face, and the threshold was almost barred by the white masses;
then she moved away to the side, against the virgins placed above the
base of the arch. These are the companions of Agnes, the saints who
served as her escort: three at her right--Dorothea, who was fed in
prison by miraculous bread; Barbe, who lived in a tower; and Genevieve,
whose heroism saved Paris: and three at her left--Agatha, whose breast
was torn; Christina, who was put to torture by her father; and Cecilia,
beloved by the angels. Above these were statues and statues; three
close ranks mounting with the curves of the arches, decorating them with
chaste triumphant figures, who, after the suffering and martyrdom
of their earthly life, were welcomed by a host of winged cherubim,
transported with ecstasy into the Celestial Kingdom.

There had been no shelter for the little waif for a long time, when at
last the clock struck eight and daylight came. The snow, had she not
trampled it down, would have come up to her shoulders. The old door
behind her was covered with it, as if hung with ermine, and it looked
as white as an altar, beneath the grey front of the church, so bare and
smooth that not even a single flake had clung to it. The great saints,
those of the sloping surface especially, were clothed in it, and were
glistening in purity from their feet to their white beards. Still
higher, in the scenes of the tympanum, the outlines of the little saints
of the arches were designed most clearly on a dark background, and this
magic sect continued until the final rapture at the marriage of Agnes,
which the archangels appeared to be celebrating under a shower of white
roses. Standing upon her pillar, with her white branch of palm and her
white lamp, the Virgin Child had such purity in the lines of her body of
immaculate snow, that the motionless stiffness of cold seemed to congeal
around her the mystic transports of victorious youth. And at her feet
the other child, so miserable, white with snow--she also grew so stiff
and pale that it seemed as if she were turning to stone, and could
scarcely be distinguished from the great images above her.

At last, in one of the long line of houses in which all seemed to be
sleeping, the noise from the drawing up of a blind made her raise her
eyes. It was at her right hand, in the second story of a house at the
side of the Cathedral. A very handsome woman, a brunette about forty
years of age, with a placid expression of serenity, was just looking out
from there, and in spite of the terrible frost she kept her uncovered
arm in the air for a moment, having seen the child move. Her calm face
grew sad with pity and astonishment. Then, shivering, she hastily closed
the window. She carried with her the rapid vision of a fair little
creature with violet-coloured eyes under a head-covering of an old silk
handkerchief. The face was oval, the neck long and slender as a lily,
and the shoulders drooping; but she was blue from cold, her little hands
and feet were half dead, and the only thing about her that still showed
life was the slight vapour of her breath.

The child remained with her eyes upturned, looking at the house
mechanically. It was a narrow one, two stories in height, very old, and
evidently built towards the end of the fifteenth century. It was almost
sealed to the side of the Cathedral, between two buttresses, like a wart
which had pushed itself between the two toes of a Colossus. And thus
supported on each side, it was admirably preserved, with its stone
basement, its second story in wooden panels, ornamented with bricks,
its roof, of which the framework advanced at least three feet beyond the
gable, its turret for the projecting stairway at the left corner, where
could still be seen in the little window the leaden setting of long ago.
At times repairs had been made on account of its age. The tile-roofing
dated from the reign of Louis XIV., for one easily recognised the work
of that epoch; a dormer window pierced in the side of the turret, little
wooden frames replacing everywhere those of the primitive panes; the
three united openings of the second story had been reduced to two, that
of the middle being closed up with bricks, thus giving to the front the
symmetry of the other buildings on the street of a more recent date.

In the basement the changes were equally visible, an oaken door with
mouldings having taken the place of the old one with iron trimmings that
was under the stairway; and the great central arcade, of which the lower
part, the sides, and the point had been plastered over, so as to leave
only one rectangular opening, was now a species of large window, instead
of the triple-pointed one which formerly came out on to the street.

Without thinking, the child still looked at this venerable dwelling of a
master-builder, so well preserved, and as she read upon a little yellow
plate nailed at the left of the door these words, “Hubert, chasuble
maker,” printed in black letters, she was again attracted by the sound
of the opening of a shutter. This time it was the blind of the square
window of the ground floor. A man in his turn looked out; his face was
full, his nose aquiline, his forehead projecting, and his thick short
hair already white, although he was scarcely yet five-and-forty. He,
too, forgot the air for a moment as he examined her with a sad wrinkle
on his great tender mouth. Then she saw him, as he remained standing
behind the little greenish-looking panes. He turned, beckoned to
someone, and his wife reappeared. How handsome she was! They both stood
side by side, looking at her earnestly and sadly.

For four hundred years, the line of Huberts, embroiderers from father
to son, had lived in this house. A noted maker of chasubles had built it
under Louis XI., another had repaired it under Louis XIV., and the Hubert
who now occupied it still embroidered church vestments, as his ancestors
had always done. At twenty years of age he had fallen in love with a
young girl of sixteen, Hubertine, and so deep was their affection for
each other, that when her mother, widow of a magistrate, refused to give
her consent to their union, they ran away together and were married. She
was remarkably beautiful, and that was their whole romance, their joy,
and their misfortune.

When, a year later, she went to the deathbed of her mother, the latter
disinherited her and gave her her curse. So affected was she by the
terrible scene, that her infant, born soon after, died, and since then
it seemed as if, even in her coffin in the cemetery, the willful
woman had never pardoned her daughter, for it was, alas! a childless
household. After twenty-four years they still mourned the little one
they had lost.

Disturbed by their looks, the stranger tried to hide herself behind the
pillar of Saint Agnes. She was also annoyed by the movement which now
commenced in the street, as the shops were being opened and people began
to go out. The Rue des Orfèvres, which terminates at the side front of
the church, would be almost impassable, blocked in as it is on one side
by the house of the Huberts, if the Rue du Soleil, a narrow lane, did
not relieve it on the other side by running the whole length of the
Cathedral to the great front on the Place du Cloître. At this hour there
were few passers, excepting one or two persons who were on their way to
early service, and they looked with surprise at the poor little girl,
whom they did not recognise as ever having seen at Beaumont. The slow,
persistent fall of snow continued. The cold seemed to increase with the
wan daylight, and in the dull thickness of the great white shroud which
covered the town one heard, as if from a distance, the sound of voices.
But timid, ashamed of her abandonment, as if it were a fault, the
child drew still farther back, when suddenly she recognised before her
Hubertine, who, having no servant, had gone out to buy bread.

“What are you doing there, little one? Who are you?”

She did not answer, but hid her face. Then she was no longer conscious
of suffering; her whole being seemed to have faded away, as if her
heart, turned to ice, had stopped beating. When the good lady turned
away with a pitying look, she sank down upon her knees completely
exhausted, and slipped listlessly into the snow, whose flakes quickly
covered her.

And the woman, as she returned with her fresh rolls, seeing that she had
fallen, again approached her.

“Look up, my child! You cannot remain here on this doorstep.”

Then Hubert, who had also come out, and was standing near the threshold,
took the bread from his wife, and said:

“Take her up and bring her into the house.”

Hubertine did not reply, but, stooping, lifted her in her strong arms.
And the child shrank back no longer, but was carried as if inanimate;
her teeth closely set, her eyes shut, chilled through and through, and
with the lightness of a little bird that had just fallen from its nest.

They went in. Hubert shut the door, while Hubertine, bearing her burden,
passed through the front room, which served as a parlour, and where
some embroidered bands were spread out for show before the great
square window. Then she went into the kitchen, the old servants’ hall,
preserved almost intact, with its heavy beams, its flagstone floor
mended in a dozen places, and its great fireplace with its stone
mantelpiece. On shelves were the utensils, the pots, kettles, and
saucepans, that dated back one or two centuries; and the dishes were
of old stone, or earthenware, and of pewter. But on the middle of the
hearth was a modern cooking-stove, a large cast-iron one, whose copper
trimmings were wondrously bright. It was red from heat, and the
water was bubbling away in its boiler. A large porringer, filled with
coffee-and-milk, was on one corner of it.

“Oh! how much more comfortable it is here than outside,” said Hubert, as
he put the bread down on a heavy table of the style of Louis XIII., which
was in the centre of the room. “Now, seat this poor little creature near
the stove that she may be thawed out!”

Hubertine had already placed the child close to the fire, and they both
looked at her as she slowly regained consciousness. As the snow that
covered her clothes melted it fell in heavy drops. Through the holes of
her great shoes they could see her little bruised feet, whilst the thin
woollen dress designed the rigidity of her limbs and her poor body, worn
by misery and pain. She had a long attack of nervous trembling, and then
opened her frightened eyes with the start of an animal which suddenly
awakes from sleep to find itself caught in a snare. Her face seemed to
sink away under the silken rag which was tied under her chin. Her
right arm appeared to be helpless, for she pressed it so closely to her
breast.

“Do not be alarmed, for we will not hurt you. Where did you come from?
Who are you?”

But the more she was spoken to the more frightened she became, turning
her head as if someone were behind her who would beat her. She examined
the kitchen furtively, the flaggings, the beams, and the shining
utensils; then her glance passed through the irregular windows which
were left in the ancient opening, and she saw the garden clear to the
trees by the Bishop’s house, whose white shadows towered above the wall
at the end, while at the left, as if astonished at finding itself there,
stretched along the whole length of the alley the Cathedral, with its
Romanesque windows in the chapels of its apses. And again, from the
heat of the stove which began to penetrate her, she had a long attack
of shivering, after which she turned her eyes to the floor and remained
quiet.

“Do you belong to Beaumont? Who is your father?”

She was so entirely silent that Hubert thought her throat must be too
dry to allow her to speak.

Instead of questioning her he said: “We would do much better to give her
a cup of coffee as hot as she can drink it.”

That was so reasonable that Hubertine immediately handed her the cup
she herself held. Whilst she cut two large slices of bread and buttered
them, the child, still mistrustful, continued to shrink back; but her
hunger was too great, and soon she ate and drank ravenously. That there
need not be a restraint upon her, the husband and wife were silent, and
were touched to tears on seeing her little hand tremble to such a degree
that at times it was difficult for her to reach her mouth. She made use
only of her left hand, for her right arm seemed to be fastened to her
chest. When she had finished, she almost broke the cup, which she caught
again by an awkward movement of her elbow.

“Have you hurt your arm badly?” Hubertine asked. “Do not be afraid, my
dear, but show it to me.”

But as she was about to touch it the child rose up hastily, trying
to prevent her, and as in the struggle she moved her arm, a little
pasteboard-covered book, which she had hidden under her dress, slipped
through a large tear in her waist. She tried to take it, and when she
saw her unknown hosts open and begin to read it, she clenched her fist
in anger.

It was an official certificate, given by the Administration des Enfants
Assistes in the Department of the Seine. On the first page, under a
medallion containing a likeness of Saint Vincent de Paul, were the
printed prescribed forms. For the family name, a simple black line
filled the allotted space. Then for the Christian names were those of
Angelique Marie; for the dates, born January 22, 1851, admitted the 23rd
of the same month under the registered number of 1,634. So there was
neither father nor mother; there were no papers; not even a statement of
where she was born; nothing but this little book of official coldness,
with its cover of pale red pasteboard. No relative in the world! and
even her abandonment numbered and classed!

“Oh! then she is a foundling!” exclaimed Hubertine.

In a paroxysm of rage the child replied: “I am much better than all
the others--yes--yes! I am better, better, better. I have never taken
anything that did not belong to me, and yet they stole all I had. Give
me back, now, that which you also have stolen from me!”

Such powerless passion, such pride to be above the others in goodness,
so shook the body of the little girl, that the Huberts were startled.
They no longer recognised the blonde creature, with violet eyes and
graceful figure. Now her eyes were black, her face dark, and her neck
seemed swollen by a rush of blood to it. Since she had become warm, she
raised her head and hissed like a serpent that had been picked up on the
snow.

“Are you then really so naughty?” asked Hubert gently. “If we wish to
know all about you, it is because we wish to help you.”

And looking over the shoulders of his wife he read as the latter turned
the leaves of the little book. On the second page was the name of the
nurse. “The child, Angelique Marie, had been given, on January 25, 1851,
to the nurse, Françoise, sister of Mr. Hamelin, a farmer by profession,
living in the parish of Soulanges, an arrondissement of Nevers. The
aforesaid nurse had received on her departure the pay for the first
month of her care, in addition to her clothing.” Then there was a
certificate of her baptism, signed by the chaplain of the Asylum for
Abandoned Children; also that of the physician on the arrival and on
the departure of the infant. The monthly accounts, paid in quarterly
installments, filled farther on the columns of four pages, and each time
there was the illegible signature of the receiver or collector.

“What! Nevers!” asked Hubertine. “You were brought up near Nevers?”

Angelique, red with anger that she could not prevent them from reading,
had fallen into a sullen silence. But at last she opened her mouth to
speak of her nurse.

“Ah! you may be sure that Maman Nini would have beaten you. She always
took my part against others, she did, although sometimes she struck me
herself. Ah! it is true I was not so unhappy over there, with the cattle
and all!”

Her voice choked her and she continued, in broken, incoherent sentences,
to speak of the meadow where she drove the great red cow, of the broad
road where she played, of the cakes they cooked, and of a pet house-dog
that had once bitten her.

Hubert interrupted her as he read aloud: “In case of illness, or of bad
treatment, the superintendent is authorised to change the nurses of the
children.” Below it was written that the child Angelique Marie had been
given on June 20 to the care of Theresa, wife of Louis Franchomme, both
of them makers of artificial flowers in Paris.

“Ah! I understand,” said Hubertine. “You were ill, and so they took you
back to Paris.”

But no, that was not the case, and the Huberts did not know the whole
history until they had drawn it, little by little from Angelique. Louis
Franchomme, who was a cousin of Maman Nini, went to pass a month in his
native village when recovering from a fever. It was then that his wife,
Theresa, became very fond of the child, and obtained permission to take
her to Paris, where she could be taught the trade of making flowers.
Three months later her husband died, and she herself, being delicate in
health, was obliged to leave the city and to go to her brother’s, the
tanner Rabier, who was settled at Beaumont. She, alas! died in the early
days of December, and confided to her sister-in-law the little girl,
who since that time had been injured, beaten, and, in short, suffered
martyrdom.

“The Rabiers?” said Hubert. “The Rabiers? Yes, yes! They are tanners on
the banks of the Ligneul, in the lower town. The husband is lame, and
the wife is a noted scold.”

“They treated me as if I came from the gutter,” continued Angelique,
revolted and enraged in her mortified pride. “They said the river was
the best place for me. After she had beaten me nearly to death, the
woman would put something on the floor for me to eat, as if I were a
cat, and many a time I went to bed suffering from hunger. Oh! I could
have killed myself, at last!” She made a gesture of furious despair.

“Yesterday, Christmas morning, they had been drinking, and, to amuse
themselves, they threatened to put out my eyes. Then, after a while,
they began to fight with each other, and dealt such heavy blows that I
thought they were dead, as they both fell on the floor of their room.
For a long time I had determined to run away. But I was anxious to have
my book. Maman Nini had often said, in showing it to me: ‘Look, this is
all that you own, and if you do not keep this you will not even have a
name.’ And I know that since the death of Maman Theresa they had hid
it in one of the bureau drawers. So stepping over them as quietly as
possible, while they were lying on the floor, I got the book, hid it
under my dress-waist, pressing it against me with my arm. It seemed so
large that I fancied everyone must see it, and that it would be taken
from me. Oh! I ran, and ran, and ran, and when night came it was so
dark! Oh! how cold I was under the poor shelter of that great door! Oh
dear! I was so cold, it seemed as if I were dead. But never mind now,
for I did not once let go of my book, and here it is.” And with a sudden
movement, as the Huberts closed it to give it back to her, she snatched
it from them. Then, sitting down, she put her head on the table, sobbing
deeply as she laid her cheek on the light red cover. Her pride seemed
conquered by an intense humility. Her whole being appeared to
be softened by the sight of these few leaves with their rumpled
corners--her solitary possession, her one treasure, and the only tie
which connected her with the life of this world. She could not relieve
her heart of her great despair; her tears flowed continually, and under
this complete surrender of herself she regained her delicate looks and
became again a pretty child. Her slightly oval face was pure in its
outlines, her violet eyes were made a little paler from emotion, and the
curve of her neck and shoulders made her resemble a little virgin on a
church window. At length she seized the hand of Hubertine, pressed it to
her lips most caressingly, and kissed it passionately.

The Huberts were deeply touched, and could scarcely speak. They
stammered: “Dear, dear child!”

She was not, then, in reality bad! Perhaps with affectionate care she
could be corrected of this violence of temper which had so alarmed them.

In a tone of entreaty the poor child exclaimed: “Do not send me back to
those dreadful people! Oh, do not send me back again!”

The husband and wife looked at each other for a few moments. In fact,
since the autumn they had planned taking as an apprentice some young
girl who would live with them, and thus bring a little brightness into
their house, which seemed so dull without children. And their decision
was soon made.

“Would you like it, my dear?” Hubert asked.

Hubertine replied quietly, in her calm voice: “I would indeed.”

Immediately they occupied themselves with the necessary formalities.
The husband went to the Justice of Peace of the northern district of
Beaumont, who was cousin to his wife, the only relative with whom she
had kept up an acquaintance, and told him all the facts of the case. He
took charge of it, wrote to the Hospice of Abandoned Children--where,
thanks to the registered number, Angelique was easily recognised--and
obtained permission for her to remain as apprentice with the Huberts,
who were well known for their honourable position.

The Sub-Inspector of the Hospice, on coming to verify the little book,
signed the new contract as witness for Hubert, by which the latter
promised to treat the child kindly, to keep her tidy, to send her to
school and to church, and to give her a good bed to herself. On the
other side, the Administration agreed to pay him all indemnities, and
to give the child certain stipulated articles of clothing, as was their
custom.

In ten days all was arranged. Angelique slept upstairs in a room under
the roof, by the side of the garret, and the windows of which overlooked
the garden. She had already taken her first lessons in embroidery. The
first Sunday morning after she was in her new home, before going to
mass, Hubertine opened before her the old chest in the working-room,
where she kept the fine gold thread. She held up the little book, then,
placing it in that back part of one of the drawers, said: “Look! I have
put it here. I will not hide it, but leave it where you can take it if
you ever wish to do so. It is best that you should see it, and remember
where it is.”

On entering the church that day, Angelique found herself again under the
doorway of Saint Agnes. During the week there had been a partial thaw,
then the cold weather had returned to so intense a degree that the
snow which had half melted on the statues had congealed itself in large
bunches or in icicles. Now, the figures seemed dressed in transparent
robes of ice, with lace trimmings like spun glass. Dorothea was holding
a torch, the liquid droppings of which fell upon her hands. Cecilia
wore a silver crown, in which glistened the most brilliant of pearls.
Agatha’s nude chest was protected by a crystal armour. And the scenes
in the tympanum, the little virgins in the arches, looked as if they had
been there for centuries, behind the glass and jewels of the shrine of
a saint. Agnes herself let trail behind her her court mantle, threaded
with light and embroidered with stars. Her lamb had a fleece of
diamonds, and her palm-branch had become the colour of heaven. The whole
door was resplendent in the purity of intense cold.

Angelique recollected the night she had passed there under the
protection of these saints. She raised her head and smiled upon them.



CHAPTER II

Beaumont is composed of two villages, completely separated and quite
distinct one from the other--Beaumont-l’Église, on the hill with its old
Cathedral of the twelfth century, its Bishop’s Palace which dates only
from the seventeenth century, its inhabitants, scarcely one thousand in
number, who are crowded together in an almost stifling way in its narrow
streets; and Beaumont-la-Ville, at the foot of the hill, on the banks of
the Ligneul, an ancient suburb, which the success of its manufactories
of lace and fine cambric has enriched and enlarged to such an extent
that it has a population of nearly ten thousand persons, several public
squares, and an elegant sub-prefecture built in the modern style. These
two divisions, the northern district and the southern district, have
thus no longer anything in common except in an administrative way.
Although scarcely thirty leagues from Paris, where one can go by rail
in two hours, Beaumont-l’Église seems to be still immured in its old
ramparts, of which, however, only three gates remain. A stationary,
peculiar class of people lead there a life similar to that which their
ancestors had led from father to son during the past five hundred years.

The Cathedral explains everything, has given birth to and preserved
everything. It is the mother, the queen, as it rises in all its majesty
in the centre of, and above, the little collection of low houses, which,
like shivering birds, are sheltered under her wings of stone. One lives
there simply for it, and only by it. There is no movement of business
activity, and the little tradesmen only sell the necessities of life,
such as are absolutely required to feed, to clothe, and to maintain
the church and its clergy; and if occasionally one meets some private
individuals, they are merely the last representatives of a scattered
crowd of worshippers. The church dominates all; each street is one of
its veins; the town has no other breath than its own. On that account,
this spirit of another age, this religious torpor from the past, makes
the cloistered city which surrounds it redolent with a savoury perfume
of peace and of faith.

And in all this mystic place, the house of the Huberts, where Angelique
was to live in the future, was the one nearest to the Cathedral,
and which clung to it as if in reality it were a part thereof. The
permission to build there, between two of the great buttresses, must
have been given by some vicar long ago, who was desirous of attaching
to himself the ancestors of this line of embroiderers, as master
chasuble-makers and furnishers for the Cathedral clergy. On the southern
side, the narrow garden was barred by the colossal building; first,
the circumference of the side chapels, whose windows overlooked the
flower-beds, and then the slender, long nave, that the flying buttresses
supported, and afterwards the high roof covered with the sheet lead.

The sun never penetrated to the lower part of this garden, where ivy and
box alone grew luxuriantly; yet the eternal shadow there was very soft
and pleasant as it fell from the gigantic brow of the apse--a religious
shadow, sepulchral and pure, which had a good odour about it. In the
greenish half-light of its calm freshness, the two towers let fall
only the sound of their chimes. But the entire house kept the quivering
therefrom, sealed as it was to these old stones, melted into them and
supported by them. It trembled at the least of the ceremonies; at the
High Mass, the rumbling of the organ, the voices of the choristers, even
the oppressed sighs of the worshippers, murmured through each one of
its rooms, lulled it as if with a holy breath from the Invisible, and
at times through the half-cool walls seemed to come the vapours from the
burning incense.

For five years Angelique lived and grew there, as if in a cloister, far
away from the world. She only went out to attend the seven-o’clock Mass
on Sunday mornings, as Hubertine had obtained permission for her to
study at home, fearing that, if sent to school, she might not always
have the best of associates. This old dwelling, so shut in, with its
garden of a dead quiet, was her world. She occupied as her chamber a
little whitewashed room under the roof; she went down in the morning to
her breakfast in the kitchen, she went up again to the working-room in
the second story to her embroidery. And these places, with the turning
stone stairway of the turret, were the only corners in which she passed
her time; for she never went into the Huberts’ apartments, and only
crossed the parlour on the first floor, and they were the two rooms
which had been rejuvenated and modernised. In the parlour, the beams
were plastered over, and the ceiling had been decorated with a palm-leaf
cornice, accompanied by a rose centre; the wall-paper dated from the
First Empire, as well as the white marble chimney-piece and the mahogany
furniture, which consisted of a sofa and four armchairs covered with
Utrecht velvet, a centre table, and a cabinet.

On the rare occasions when she went there, to add to the articles
exposed for sale some new bands of embroidery, if she cast her eyes
without, she saw through the window the same unchanging vista, the
narrow street ending at the portal of Saint Agnes; a parishioner pushing
open the little lower door, which shut itself without any noise, and the
shops of the plate-worker and wax-candle-maker opposite, which appeared
to be always empty, but where was a display of holy sacramental vessels,
and long lines of great church tapers. And the cloistral calm of all
Beaumont-l’Église--of the Rue Magloire, back of the Bishop’s Palace,
of the Grande Rue, where the Rue de Orfèvres began, and of the Place du
Cloître, where rose up the two towers, was felt in the drowsy air, and
seemed to fall gently with the pale daylight on the deserted pavement.

Hubertine had taken upon herself the charge of the education of
Angelique. Moreover, she was very old-fashioned in her ideas, and
maintained that a woman knew enough if she could read well, write
correctly, and had studied thoroughly the first four rules of
arithmetic. But even for this limited instruction she had constantly to
contend with an unwillingness on the part of her pupil, who, instead of
giving her attention to her books, preferred looking out of the windows,
although the recreation was very limited, as she could see nothing but
the garden from them. In reality, Angelique cared only for reading;
notwithstanding in her dictations, chosen from some classic writer, she
never succeeded in spelling a page correctly, yet her handwriting was
exceedingly pretty, graceful, and bold, one of those irregular styles
which were quite the fashion long ago. As for other studies, of
geography and history and cyphering, she was almost completely ignorant
of them. What good would knowledge ever do her? It was really useless,
she thought. Later on, when it was time for her to be Confirmed, she
learned her Catechism word for word, and with so fervent an ardour that
she astonished everyone by the exactitude of her memory.

Notwithstanding their gentleness, during the first year the Huberts
were often discouraged. Angelique, who promised to be skilful in
embroidering, disconcerted them by sudden changes to inexplicable
idleness after days of praiseworthy application. She was capricious,
seemed to lose her strength, became greedy, would steal sugar to eat
when alone, and her cheeks were flushed and her eyes looked wearied
under their reddened lids. If reproved, she would reply with a flood of
injurious words. Some days, when they wished to try to subdue her, her
foolish pride at being interfered with would throw her into such serious
attacks that she would strike her feet and her hands together, and
seemed ready to tear her clothing, or to bite anyone who approached
her. At such moments they drew away from her, for she was like a little
monster ruled by the evil sprit within her.

Who could she be? Where did she come from? Almost always these abandoned
children are the offspring of vice. Twice they had resolved to give
her up and send her back to the Asylum, so discouraged were they and so
deeply did they regret having taken her. But each time these frightful
scenes, which almost made the house tremble, ended in the same deluge of
tears, and the same excited expressions and acts of penitence, when the
child would throw herself on the floor, begging them so earnestly to
punish her that they were obliged to forgive her.

Little by little, Hubertine gained great authority over her. She was
peculiarly adapted for such a task, with her kind heart, her gentle
firmness, her common-sense and her uniform temper. She taught her the
duty of obedience and the sin of pride and of passion. To obey was to
live. We must obey God, our parents, and our superiors. There was a
whole hierarchy of respect, outside of which existence was unrestrained
and disorderly. So, after each fit of passion, that she might learn
humility, some menial labour was imposed upon her as a penance, such as
washing the cooking-utensils, or wiping up the kitchen floor; and, until
it was finished, she would remain stooping over her work, enraged at
first, but conquered at last.

With the little girl excess seemed to be a marked characteristic in
everything, even in her caresses. Many times Hubertine had seen her
kissing her hands with vehemence. She would often be in a fever of
ecstasy before the little pictures of saints and of the Child
Jesus, which she had collected; and one evening she was found in a
half-fainting state, with her head upon the table, and her lips pressed
to those of the images. When Hubertine confiscated them there was
a terrible scene of tears and cries, as if she herself were being
tortured. After that she was held very strictly, was made to obey, and
her freaks were at once checked by keeping her busy at her work; as
soon as her cheeks grew very red, her eyes dark, and she had nervous
tremblings, everything was immediately made quiet about her.

Moreover, Hubertine had found an unexpected aid in the book given by the
Society for the Protection of Abandoned Children. Every three months,
when the collector signed it, Angelique was very low-spirited for the
rest of the day. If by chance she saw it when she went to the drawer for
a ball of gold thread, her heart seemed pierced with agony. And one day,
when in a fit of uncontrollable fury, which nothing had been able
to conquer, she turned over the contents of the drawer, she suddenly
appeared as if thunderstruck before the red-covered book. Her sobs
stifled her. She threw herself at the feet of the Huberts in great
humility, stammering that they had made a mistake in giving her shelter,
and that she was not worthy of all their kindness. From that time her
anger was frequently restrained by the sight or the mention of the book.

In this way Angelique lived until she was twelve years of age and
ready to be Confirmed. The calm life of the household, the little
old-fashioned building sleeping under the shadow of the Cathedral,
perfumed with incense, and penetrated with religious music, favoured the
slow amelioration of this untutored nature, this wild flower, taken from
no one knew where, and transplanted in the mystic soil of the narrow
garden. Added to this was the regularity of her daily work and the utter
ignorance of what was going on in the world, without even an echo from a
sleepy quarter penetrating therein.

But, above all, the gentlest influence came from the great love of the
Huberts for each other, which seemed to be enlarged by some unknown,
incurable remorse. He passed the days in endeavouring to make his
wife forget the injury he had done her in marrying her in spite of the
opposition of her mother. He had realised at the death of their child
that she half accused him of this punishment, and he wished to be
forgiven. She had done so years ago, and now she idolised him. Sometimes
he was not sure of it, and this doubt saddened his life. He wished they
might have had another infant, and so feel assured that the obstinate
mother had been softened after death, and had withdrawn her malediction.
That, in fact, was their united desire--a child of pardon; and he
worshipped his wife with a tender love, ardent and pure as that of a
betrothed. If before the apprentice he did not even kiss her hand,
he never entered their chamber, even after twenty years of marriage,
without an emotion of gratitude for all the happiness that had
been given him. This was their true home, this room with its tinted
paintings, its blue wall-paper, its pretty hangings, and its walnut
furniture. Never was an angry word uttered therein, and, as if from a
sanctuary, a sentiment of tenderness went out from its occupants, and
filled the house. It was thus for Angelique an atmosphere of affection
and love, in which she grew and thrived.

An unexpected event finished the work of forming her character. As she
was rummaging one morning in a corner of the working-room, she found
on a shelf, among implements of embroidery which were no longer used,
a very old copy of the “Golden Legend,” by Jacques de Voragine. This
French translation, dating from 1549, must have been bought in the
long ago by some master-workman in church vestments, on account of the
pictures, full of useful information upon the Saints. It was a great
while since Angelique had given any attention to the little old carved
images, showing such childlike faith, which had once delighted her. But
now, as soon as she was allowed to go out and play in the garden, she
took the book with her. It had been rebound in yellow calf, and was in
a good condition. She slowly turned over some of the leaves, then looked
at the title-page, in red and black, with the address of the bookseller:
“à Paris, en la rue Neufre Nostre-Dame, à l’enseigne Saint Jehan
Baptiste;” and decorated with medallions of the four Evangelists, framed
at the bottom by the Adoration of the Three Magi, and at the top by the
Triumph of Jesus Christ, and His resurrection. And then picture after
picture followed; there were ornamented letters, large and small,
engravings in the text and at the heading of the chapters; “The
Annunciation,” an immense angel inundating with rays of light a slight,
delicate-looking Mary; “The Massacre of the Innocents,” where a cruel
Herod was seen surrounded by dead bodies of dear little children; “The
Nativity,” where Saint Joseph is holding a candle, the light of which
falls upon the face of the Infant Jesus, Who sleeps in His mother’s
arms; Saint John the Almoner, giving to the poor; Saint Matthias,
breaking an idol; Saint Nicholas as a bishop, having at his right hand
a little bucket filled with babies. And then, a little farther on, came
the female saints: Agnes, with her neck pierced by a sword; Christina,
torn by pincers; Genevieve, followed by her lambs; Juliana, being
whipped; Anastasia, burnt; Maria the Egyptian, repenting in the desert,
Mary of Magdalene, carrying the vase of precious ointment; and others
and still others followed. There was an increasing terror and a piety
in each one of them, making it a history which weighs upon the heart and
fills the eyes with tears.

But, little by little, Angelique was curious to know exactly what these
engravings represented. The two columns of closely-printed text, the
impression of which remained very black upon the papers yellowed by
time, frightened her by the strange, almost barbaric look of the
Gothic letters. Still, she accustomed herself to it, deciphered these
characters, learned the abbreviations and the contractions, and soon
knew how to explain the turning of the phrases and the old-fashioned
words. At last she could read it easily, and was as enchanted as if she
were penetrating a mystery, and she triumphed over each new difficulty
that she conquered.

Under these laborious shades a whole world of light revealed itself. She
entered, as it were, into a celestial splendour. For now the few classic
books they owned, so cold and dry, existed no longer. The Legend alone
interested her. She bent over it, with her forehead resting on her
hands, studying it so intently, that she no longer lived in the real
life, but, unconscious of time, she seemed to see, mounting from the
depths of the unknown, the broad expansion of a dream.

How wonderful it all was! These saints and virgins! They are born
predestined; solemn voices announce their coming, and their mothers have
marvellous dreams about them. All are beautiful, strong, and victorious.
Great lights surround them, and their countenances are resplendent.
Dominic has a star on his forehead. They read the minds of men and
repeat their thoughts aloud. They have the gift of prophecy, and their
predictions are always realised. Their number is infinite. Among them
are bishops and monks, virgins and fallen women, beggars and nobles of a
royal race, unclothed hermits who live on roots, and old men who inhabit
caverns with goats. Their history is always the same. They grow up for
Christ, believe fervently in Him, refuse to sacrifice to false gods,
are tortured, and die filled with glory. Emperors were at last weary of
persecuting them. Andrew, after being attached to the cross, preached
during two days to twenty thousand persons. Conversions were made
in masses, forty thousand men being baptised at one time. When the
multitudes were not converted by the miracles, they fled terrified. The
saints were accused of sorcery; enigmas were proposed to them, which
they solved at once; they were obliged to dispute questions with learned
men, who remained speechless before them. As soon as they entered the
temples of sacrifice the idols were overthrown with a breath, and were
broken to pieces. A virgin tied her sash around the neck of a statue of
Venus, which at once fell in powder. The earth trembled. The Temple of
Diana was struck by lightning and destroyed; and the people revolting,
civil wars ensued. Then often the executioners asked to be baptised;
kings knelt at the feet of saints in rags who had devoted themselves to
poverty. Sabina flees from the paternal roof. Paula abandons her five
children. Mortifications of the flesh and fasts purify, not oil or
water. Germanus covers his food with ashes. Bernard cares not to eat,
but delights only in the taste of fresh water. Agatha keeps for three
years a pebble in her mouth. Augustinus is in despair for the sin he has
committed in turning to look after a dog who was running. Prosperity and
health are despised, and joy begins with privations which kill the body.
And it is thus that, subduing all things, they live at last in gardens
where the flowers are stars, and where the leaves of the trees sing.
They exterminate dragons, they raise and appease tempests, they seem
in their ecstatic visions to be borne above the earth. Their wants are
provided for while living, and after their death friends are advised
by dreams to go and bury them. Extraordinary things happen to them, and
adventures far more marvellous than those in a work of fiction. And
when their tombs are opened after hundreds of years, sweet odours escape
therefrom.

Then, opposite the saints, behold the evil spirits!

“They often fly about us like insects, and fill the air without number.
The air is also full of demons, as the rays of the sun are full of
atoms. It is even like powder.” And the eternal contest begins. The
saints are always victorious, and yet they are constantly obliged to
renew the battle. The more the demons are driven away, the more they
return. There were counted six thousand six hundred and sixty-six in the
body of a woman whom Fortunatus delivered. They moved, they talked and
cried, by the voice of the person possessed, whose body they shook as if
by a tempest. At each corner of the highways an afflicted one is seen,
and the first saint who passes contends with the evil spirits. They
enter by the eyes, the ears, and by the mouth, and, after days of
fearful struggling, they go out with loud groanings. Basilus, to save a
young man, contends personally with the Evil One. Macarius was attacked
when in a cemetery, and passed a whole night in defending himself. The
angels, even at deathbeds, in order to secure the soul of the dying were
obliged to beat the demons. At other times the contests are only of the
intellect and the mind, but are equally remarkable. Satan, who prowls
about, assumes many forms, sometimes disguising himself as a woman,
and again, even as a saint. But, once overthrown, he appears in all his
ugliness: “a black cat, larger than a dog, his huge eyes emitting flame,
his tongue long, large, and bloody, his tail twisted and raised in the
air, and his whole body disgusting to the last degree.” He is the one
thing that is hated, and the only preoccupation. People fear him,
yet ridicule him. One is not even honest with him. In reality,
notwithstanding the ferocious appearance of his furnaces, he is the
eternal dupe. All the treaties he makes are forced from him by violence
or cunning. Feeble women throw him down: Margaret crushes his head with
her feet, and Juliana beats him with her chain. From all this a serenity
disengages itself, a disdain of evil, since it is powerless, and a
certainty of good, since virtue triumphs. It is only necessary to cross
one’s self, and the Devil can do no harm, but yells and disappears,
while the infernal regions tremble.

Then, in this combat of legions of saints against Satan are developed
the fearful sufferings from persecutions. The executioners expose to the
flies the martyrs whose bodies are covered with honey; they make them
walk with bare feet over broken glass or red-hot coals, put them in
ditches with reptiles; chastise them with whips, whose thongs are
weighted with leaden balls; nail them when alive in coffins, which they
throw into the sea; hang them by their hair, and then set fire to them;
moisten their wounds with quicklime, boiling pitch, or molten lead; make
them sit on red-hot iron stools; burn their sides with torches; break
their bones on wheels, and torture them in every conceivable way. And,
with all this, physical pain counts for nothing; indeed, it seems to be
desired. Moreover, a continual miracle protects them. John drinks
poison but is unharmed. Sebastian smiles although pierced with arrows;
sometimes they remain in the air at the right or left of the martyr, or,
launched by the archer, they return upon himself and put out his eyes.
Molten lead is swallowed as if it were ice-water. Lions prostrate
themselves, and lick their hands as gently as lambs. The gridiron of
Saint Lawrence is of an agreeable freshness to him. He cries, “Unhappy
man, you have roasted one side, turn the other and then eat, for it is
sufficiently cooked.” Cecilia, placed in a boiling bath, is refreshed
by it. Christina exhorts those who would torture her. Her father had
her whipped by twelve men, who at last drop from fatigue; she is then
attached to a wheel, under which a fire is kindled, and the flame,
turning to one side, devours fifteen hundred persons. She is then thrown
into the sea, but the angels support her; Jesus comes to baptise her
in person, then gives her to the charge of Saint Michael, that he may
conduct her back to the earth; after that she is placed for five days in
a heated oven, where she suffers not, but sings constantly. Vincent,
who was exposed to still greater tortures, feels them not. His limbs are
broken, he is covered with red-hot irons, he is pricked with needles,
he is placed on a brazier of live coals, and then taken back to prison,
where his feet are nailed to a post. Yet he still lives, and his
pains are changed into a sweetness of flowers, a great light fills his
dungeon, and angels sing with him, giving him rest as if he were on a
bed of roses. The sweet sound of singing, and the fresh odour of flowers
spread without in the room, and when the guards saw the miracle they
were converted to the faith, and when Dacian heard of it, he was greatly
enraged, and said, “Do nothing more to him, for we are conquered.” Such
was the excitement among the persecutors, it could only end either by
their conversion or by their death. Their hands are paralysed; they
perish violently; they are choked by fish-bones; they are struck by
lightning, and their chariots are broken. In the meanwhile, the cells of
the martyrs are resplendent. Mary and the Apostles enter them at will,
although the doors are bolted. Constant aid is given, apparitions
descend from the skies, where angels are waiting, holding crowns of
precious stones. Since death seems joyous, it is not feared, and their
friends are glad when they succumb to it. On Mount Ararat ten thousand
are crucified, and at Cologne eleven thousand virgins are massacred by
the Huns. In the circuses they are devoured by wild beasts. Quirique,
who, by the influence of the Holy Spirit, taught like a man, suffered
martyrdom when but three years of age. Nursing-children reproved the
executioners. The hope for celestial happiness deadened the physical
senses and softened pain. Were they torn to pieces, or burnt, they
minded it not. They never yielded, and they called for the sword, which
alone could kill them. Eulalia, when at the stake, breathes the flame
that she may die the more quickly. Her prayer is granted, and a white
dove flies from her mouth and bears her soul to heaven.

Angelique marvelled greatly at all these accounts. So many abominations
and such triumphant joy delighted her and carried her out of herself.

But other points in the Legend, of quite a different nature, also
interested her; the animals, for instance, of which there were enough
to fill an Ark of Noah. She liked the ravens and the eagles who fed the
hermits.

Then what lovely stories there were about the lions. The serviceable one
who found a resting-place in a field for Mary the Egyptian; the flaming
lion who protected virgins or maidens in danger; and then the lion of
Saint Jerome, to whose care an ass had been confided, and, when the
animal was stolen, went in search of him and brought him back. There was
also the penitent wolf, who had restored a little pig he had intended
eating. Then there was Bernard, who excommunicates the flies, and they
drop dead. Remi and Blaise feed birds at their table, bless them,
and make them strong. Francis, “filled with a dove-like simplicity,”
 preaches to them, and exhorts them to love God. A bird was on a branch
of a fig-tree, and Francis, holding out his hand, beckoned to it, and
soon it obeyed, and lighted on his hand. And he said to it, “Sing my
sister, and praise the Lord.” And immediately the bird began to sing,
and did not go away until it was told to do so.

All this was a continual source of recreation to Angelique, and gave her
the idea of calling to the swallows, and hoping they might come to her.

The good giant Christopher, who carried the Infant Christ on his
shoulders, delighted her so much as to bring tears to her eyes.

She was very merry over the misadventures of a certain Governor with
the three chambermaids of Anastasia, whom he hoped to have found in
the kitchen, where he kissed the stove and the kettles, thinking he
was embracing them. “He went out therefrom very black and ugly, and his
clothes quite smutched. And when his servants, who were waiting, saw him
in such a state, they thought he was the Devil. Then they beat him with
birch-rods, and, running away, left him alone.”

But that which convulsed her most with laughter, was the account of the
blows given to the Evil One himself, especially when Juliana,
having been tempted by him in her prison cell, administered such an
extraordinary chastisement with her chain. “Then the Provost commanded
that Juliana should be brought before him; and when she came into his
presence, she was drawing the Devil after her, and he cried out, saying,
‘My good lady Juliana, do not hurt me any more!’ She led him in this way
around the public square, and afterwards threw him into a deep ditch.”

Often Angelique would repeat to the Huberts, as they were all at work
together, legends far more interesting than any fairy-tale. She had
read them over so often that she knew them by heart, and she told in
a charming way the story of the Seven Sleepers, who, to escape
persecution, walled themselves up in a cavern, and whose awakening
greatly astonished the Emperor Theodosius. Then the Legend of Saint
Clement with its endless adventures, so unexpected and touching, where
the whole family, father, mother, and three sons, separated by terrible
misfortunes, are finally re-united in the midst of the most beautiful
miracles.

Her tears would flow at these recitals. She dreamed of them at night,
she lived, as it were, only in this tragic and triumphant world of
prodigy, in a supernatural country where all virtues are recompensed by
all imaginable joys.

When Angelique partook of her first Communion, it seemed as if she were
walking, like the saints, a little above the earth. She was a young
Christian of the primitive Church; she gave herself into the hands of
God, having learned from her book that she could not be saved without
grace.

The Huberts were simple in their profession of faith. They went every
Sunday to Mass, and to Communion on all great fête-days, and this
was done with the tranquil humility of true belief, aided a little by
tradition, as the chasubliers had from father to son always observed the
Church ceremonies, particularly those at Easter.

Hubert himself had a tendency to imaginative fancies. He would at times
stop his work and let fall his frame to listen to the child as she
read or repeated the legends, and, carried away for the moment by her
enthusiasm, it seemed as if his hair were blown about by the light
breath of some invisible power. He was so in sympathy with Angelique,
and associated her to such a degree with the youthful saints of the
past, that he wept when he saw her in her white dress and veil. This
day at church was like a dream, and they returned home quite exhausted.
Hubertine was obliged to scold them both, for, with her excellent
common-sense, she disliked exaggeration even in good things.

From that time she had to restrain the zeal of Angelique, especially in
her tendency to what she thought was charity, and to which she wished
to devote herself. Saint Francis had wedded poverty; Julien the Chaplain
had called the poor his superiors; Gervasius and Protais had washed the
feet of the most indigent, and Martin had divided his cloak with them.
So she, following the example of Lucy, wished to sell everything
that she might give. At first she disposed of all her little private
possessions, then she began to pillage the house. But at last she
gave without judgment and foolishly. One evening, two days after her
Confirmation, being reprimanded for having thrown from the window
several articles of underwear to a drunken woman, she had a terrible
attack of anger like those when she was young; then, overcome by shame,
she was really ill and forced to keep her bed for a couple of days.



CHAPTER III

In the meanwhile, weeks and months went by. Two years had passed.
Angelique was now fourteen years of age and quite womanly. When she read
the “Golden Legend,” she would have a humming in her ears, the blood
circulated quickly through the blue veins near her temples, and she felt
a deep tenderness towards all these virgin saints.

Maidenhood is the sister of the angels, the union of all good,
the overthrow of evil, the domain of faith. It gives grace, it is
perfection, which has only need to show itself to conquer. The action of
the Holy Spirit rendered Lucy so heavy that a thousand men and five pair
of oxen could not drag her away from her home. An officer who tried
to kiss Anastasia was struck blind. Under torture, the purity of the
virgins is always powerful; from their exquisite white limbs, torn by
instruments, milk flows instead of blood. Ten different times the story
is told of the young convert who, to escape from her family, who wish
her to marry against her will, assumes the garb of a monk, is accused of
some misdeed, suffers punishment without indicating herself, and at last
triumphs by announcing her name. Eugenia is in this way brought before
a judge, whom she recognises as her father and reveals herself to
him. Externally the combat of chastity recommences; always the thorns
reappear. Thus the wisest saints shrink from being tempted. As the world
is filled with snares, hermits flee to the desert, where they scourge
themselves, throw themselves on the snow, or in beds of prickly herbs.
A solitary monk covers his fingers with his mantle, that he may aid his
mother in crossing a creek. A martyr bound to a stake, being tempted by
a young girl, bites off his tongue with his teeth and spits it at her.
All glorify the state of single blessedness. Alexis, very wealthy and
in a high position, marries, but leaves his wife at the church-door.
One weds only to die. Justina, in love with Cyprianus, converts him, and
they walk together to their punishment. Cecilia, beloved by an angel,
reveals the secret to Valerian on their wedding-day, and he, that he may
see the spirit, consents to be baptised. He found in his room Cecilia
talking with the angel, who held in his hand two wreaths of roses, and,
giving one to Cecilia, and one to Valerian, he said, “Keep these crowns,
like your hearts, pure and unspotted.” In many cases it was proved
that death was stronger than love, and couples were united only as a
challenge to existence. It was said that even the Virgin Mary at times
prevented betrothals from ending in a marriage. A nobleman, a relative
of the King of Hungary, renounced his claims to a young girl of
marvellous beauty on this account. “Suddenly our Blessed Lady appeared,
and said to him: ‘If I am indeed so beautiful as you have called me, why
do you leave me for another?’ And he became a most devout man for the
rest of his life.”

Among all this saintly company, Angelique had her preferences, and there
were those whose experiences touched her to the heart, and helped her
to correct her failings. Thus the learned Catherine, of high birth,
enchanted her by her great scientific knowledge, when, only eighteen
years of age, she was called by the Emperor Maximus to discuss certain
questions with fifty rhetoricians and grammarians. She astonished and
convinced them. “They were amazed and knew not what to say, but they
remained quiet. And the Emperor blamed them for their weakness in
allowing themselves to be so easily conquered by a young girl.” The
fifty professors then declared that they were converted. “And as soon
as the tyrant heard that, he had so terrible a fit of anger, that he
commanded they should all be burned to death in the public square.”
 In her eyes Catherine was the invincible learned woman, as proud and
dazzling in intellect as in beauty, just as she would have liked to
be, that she might convert men, and be fed in prison by a dove, before
having her head cut off. But Saint Elizabeth, the daughter of the King
of Hungary, was for her a constant teacher and guide. Whenever she was
inclined to yield to her violent temper, she thought of this model of
gentleness and simplicity, who was at five years of age very devout,
refusing to join her playmates in their sports, and sleeping on the
ground, that, in abasing herself, she might all the better render homage
to God. Later, she was the faithful, obedient wife of the Landgrave of
Thuringia, always showing to her husband a smiling face, although she
passed her nights in tears. When she became a widow she was driven from
her estates, but was happy to lead the life of poverty. Her dress was so
thin from use, that she wore a grey mantle, lengthened out by cloth of
a different shade. The sleeves of her jacket had been torn, and were
mended with a material of another colour. The king, her father, wishing
her to come to him, sent for her by a Count. And when the Count saw her
clothed in such a way and spinning, overcome with surprise and grief, he
exclaimed: “Never before did one see the daughter of a Royal House in
so miserable a garb, and never was one known to spin wool until now.”
 So Christian and sincere was her humility, that she ate black bread with
the poorest peasants, nursed them when ill, dressed their sores without
repugnance, put on coarse garments like theirs, and followed them in the
church processions with bare feet. She was once washing the porringers
and the utensils of the kitchen, when the maids, seeing her so out of
place, urged her to desist, but she replied, “Could I find another task
more menial even than this, I would do it.” Influenced by her example,
Angelique, who was formerly angry when obliged to do any cleaning in the
kitchen, now tried to invent some extremely disagreeable task when she
felt nervous and in need of control.

But more than Catherine, more than Elizabeth, far nearer and dearer
to her than all the other saints, was Agnes, the child-martyr; and her
heart leaped with joy on refinding in the “Golden Legend” this virgin,
clothed with her own hair, who had protected her under the Cathedral
portal. What ardour of pure love, as she repelled the son of the
Governor when he accosted her on her way from school! “Go--leave me,
minister of death, commencement of sin, and child of treason!” How
exquisitely she described her beloved! “I love the One whose Mother was
a Virgin, and whose father was faithful to her, at whose beauty the sun
and moon marvelled, and at whose touch the dead were made alive.” And
when Aspasien commanded that “her throat should be cut by the sword,”
 she ascended into Paradise to be united to her “betrothed, whiter and
purer than silver-gilt.”

Always, when weary or disturbed, Angelique called upon and implored her,
and it seemed as if peace came to her at once. She saw her constantly
near her, and often she regretted having done or thought of things which
would have displeased her.

One evening as she was kissing her hands, a habit which she still at
times indulged in, she suddenly blushed and turned away, although she
was quite alone, for it seemed as if the little saint must have seen
her. Agnes was her guardian angel.

Thus, at fifteen Angelique was an adorable child. Certainly, neither the
quiet, laborious life, nor the soothing shadows of the Cathedral, nor
the legends of the beautiful saints, had made her an angel, a creature
of absolute perfection. She was often angry, and certain weaknesses of
character showed themselves, which had never been sufficiently guarded
against; but she was always ashamed and penitent if she had done wrong,
for she wished so much to be perfect. And she was so human, so full of
life, so ignorant, and withal so pure in reality.

One day, on returning from a long excursion which the Huberts allowed
her to take twice a year, on Pentecost Monday and on Assumption Day,
she took home with her a sweetbriar bush, and then amused herself by
replanting it in the narrow garden. She trimmed it and watered it well:
it grew and sent out long branches, filled with odour. With her usual
intensity, she watched it daily, but was unwilling to have it grafted,
as she wished to see if, by some miracle, it could not be made to bear
roses. She danced around it, she repeated constantly: “This bush is like
me; it is like me!” And if one joked her upon her great wild-rose bush,
she joined them in their laughter, although a little pale, and with
tears almost ready to fall. Her violet-coloured eyes were softer than
ever, her half-opened lips revealed little white teeth, and her oval
face had a golden aureole from her light wavy hair. She had grown
tall without being too slight; her neck and shoulders were exquisitely
graceful; her chest was full, her waist flexible; and gay, healthy, of
a rare beauty, she had an infinite charm, arising from the innocence and
purity of her soul.

Every day the affection of the Huberts for her increased. They often
talked together of their mutual wish to adopt her. Yet they took no
active measures in that way, lest they might have cause to regret it.
One morning, when the husband announced his final decision, his wife
suddenly began to weep bitterly. To adopt a child? Was not that the same
as giving up all hope of having one of their own? Yet it was useless for
them to expect one now, after so many years of waiting, and she gave her
consent, in reality delighted that she could call her her daughter. When
Angelique was spoken to on the subject, she threw her arms around their
necks, kissed them both, and was almost choked with tears of joy.

So it was agreed upon that she was always to remain with them in this
house, which now seemed to be filled with her presence, rejuvenated by
her youth, and penetrated by her laughter. But an unexpected obstacle
was met with at the first step. The Justice of the Peace, Monsieur
Grandsire, on being consulted, explained to them the radical
impossibility of adoption, since by law the adopted must be “of age.”
 Then, seeing their disappointment, he suggested the expedient of a legal
guardianship: any individual over fifty years of age can attach himself
to a minor of fifteen years or less by a legal claim, on becoming their
official protector. The ages were all right, so they were delighted, and
accepted. It was even arranged that they should afterwards confer the
title of adoption upon their ward by way of their united last will and
testament, as such a thing would be permitted by the Code. Monsieur
Grandsire, furnished with the demand of the husband and the
authorisation of the wife, then put himself in communication with the
Director of Public Aid, the general guardian for all abandoned children,
whose consent it was necessary to have. Great inquiries were made,
and at last the necessary papers were placed in Paris, with a certain
Justice of the Peace chosen for the purpose. And all was ready except
the official report which constitutes the legality of guardianship, when
the Huberts suddenly were taken with certain scruples.

Before receiving Angelique into their family, ought not they to
ascertain if she had any relatives on her side? Was her mother still
alive? Had they the right to dispose of the daughter without being
absolutely sure that she had willingly been given up and deserted? Then,
in reality, the unknown origin of the child, which had troubled them
long ago, came back to them now and made them hesitate. They were so
tormented by this anxiety that they could not sleep.

Without any more talk, Hubert unexpectedly announced that he was
going to Paris. Such a journey seemed like a catastrophe in his calm
existence. He explained the necessity of it to Angelique, by speaking of
the guardianship. He hoped to arrange everything in twenty-four hours.
But once in the city, days passed; obstacles arose on every side. He
spent a week there, sent from one to another, really doing nothing, and
quite discouraged. In the first place, he was received very coldly at
the Office of Public Assistance. The rule of the Administration is that
children shall not be told of their parents until they are of age. So
for two mornings in succession he was sent away from the office. He
persisted, however, explained the matter to three secretaries, made
himself hoarse in talking to an under-officer, who wished to counsel him
that he had not official papers. The Administration were quite ignorant.
A nurse had left the child there, “Angelique Marie,” without naming the
mother. In despair he was about to return to Beaumont, when a new idea
impelled him to return for the fourth time to the office, to see the
book in which the arrival of the infant had been noted down, and in that
way to have the address of the nurse. That proved quite an undertaking.
But at last he succeeded, and found it was a Madame Foucart, and that in
1850 she lived on the Rue des Deux-Ecus.

Then he recommenced his hunting up and down. The end of the Rue des
Deux-Ecus had been demolished, and no shopkeeper in the neighbourhood
recollected ever having heard of Madame Foucart. He consulted the
directory, but there was no such name. Looking at every sign as he
walked along, he called on one after another, and at last, in this way,
he had the good fortune to find an old woman, who exclaimed, in answer
to his questions, “What! Do I know Madame Foucart? A most honourable
person, but one who has had many misfortunes. She lives on the Rue de
Censier, quite at the other end of Paris.” He hastened there at once.

Warned by experience, he determined now to be diplomatic. But Madame
Foucart, an enormous woman, would not allow him to ask questions in
the good order he had arranged them before going there. As soon as he
mentioned the two names of the child, she seemed to be eager to talk,
and she related its whole history in a most spiteful way. “Ah! the
child was alive! Very well; she might flatter herself that she had for a
mother a most famous hussy. Yes, Madame Sidonie, as she was called since
she became a widow, was a woman of a good family, having, it is said, a
brother who was a minister, but that did not prevent her from being
very bad.” And she explained that she had made her acquaintance when she
kept, on the Rue Saint-Honoré, a little shop where they dealt in
fruit and oil from Provence, she and her husband, when they came from
Plassans, hoping to make their fortune in the city. The husband died and
was buried, and soon after Madame Sidonie had a little daughter, which
she sent at once to the hospital, and never after even inquired for
her, as she was “a heartless woman, cold as a protest and brutal as a
sheriff’s aid.” A fault can be pardoned, but not ingratitude! Was not it
true that, obliged to leave her shop as she was so heavily in debt, she
had been received and cared for by Madame Foucart? And when in her turn
she herself had fallen into difficulties, she had never been able to
obtain from Madame Sidonie, even the month’s board she owed her, nor the
fifteen francs she had once lent her. To-day the “hateful thing” lived
on the Rue de Faubourg-Poissonnière, where she had a little apartment of
three rooms. She pretended to be a cleaner and mender of lace, but she
sold a good many other things. Ah! yes! such a mother as that it was
best to know nothing about!

An hour later, Hubert was walking round the house where Madame Sidonie
lived. He saw through the window a woman, thin, pale, coarse-looking,
wearing an old black gown, stained and greased. Never could the heart of
such a person be touched by the recollection of a daughter whom she had
only seen on the day of its birth. He concluded it would be best not to
repeat, even to his wife, many things that he had just learned. Still he
hesitated. Once more he passed by the place, and looked again. Ought
not he to go in, to introduce himself, and to ask the consent of the
unnatural parent? As an honest man, it was for him to judge if he had
the right of cutting the tie there and for ever. Brusquely he turned his
back, hurried away, and returned that evening to Beaumont.

Hubertine had just learned that the _procès-verbal_ at Monsieur
Grandsire’s, for the guardianship of the child, had been signed. And
when Angelique threw herself into Hubert’s arms, he saw clearly by
the look of supplication in her eyes, that she had understood the true
reason of his journey.

Then he said quietly: “My child, your mother is not living.” Angelique
wept, as she kissed him most affectionately. After this the subject was
not referred to. She was their daughter.

At Whitsuntide, this year, the Huberts had taken Angelique with them
to lunch at the ruins of the Château d’Hautecœur, which overlooks the
Ligneul, two leagues below Beaumont; and, after the day spent in running
and laughing in the open air, the young girl still slept when, the next
morning, the old house-clock struck eight.

Hubertine was obliged to go up and rap at her door.

“Ah, well! Little lazy child! We have already had our breakfast, and it
is late.”

Angelique dressed herself quickly and went down to the kitchen,
where she took her rolls and coffee alone. Then, when she entered the
workroom, where Hubert and his wife had just seated themselves, after
having arranged their frames for embroidery, she said:

“Oh! how soundly I did sleep! I had quite forgotten that we had promised
to finish this chasuble for next Sunday.”

This workroom, the windows of which opened upon the garden, was a large
apartment, preserved almost entirely in its original state. The two
principal beams of the ceiling, and the three visible cross-beams of
support, had not even been whitewashed, and they were blackened by smoke
and worm-eaten, while, through the openings of the broken plaster, here
and there, the laths of the inner joists could be seen. On one of the
stone corbels, which supported the beams, was the date 1463, without
doubt the date of the construction of the building. The chimney-piece,
also in stone, broken and disjointed, had traces of its original
elegance, with its slender uprights, its brackets, its frieze with a
cornice, and its basket-shaped funnel terminating in a crown. On the
frieze could be seen even now, as if softened by age, an ingenious
attempt at sculpture, in the way of a likeness of Saint Clair, the
patron of embroiderers. But this chimney was no longer used, and
the fireplace had been turned into an open closet by putting shelves
therein, on which were piles of designs and patterns. The room was now
heated by a great bell-shaped cast-iron stove, the pipe of which, after
going the whole length of the ceiling, entered an opening made expressly
for it in the wall. The doors, already shaky, were of the time of Louis
XIV.. The original tiles of the floor were nearly all gone, and had been
replaced, one by one, by those of a later style. It was nearly a hundred
years since the yellow walls had been coloured, and at the top of
the room they were almost of a greyish white, and, lower down, were
scratched and spotted with saltpetre. Each year there was talk of
repainting them, but nothing had yet been done, from a dislike of making
any change.

Hubertine, busy at her work, raised her head as Angelique spoke and
said:

“You know that if our work is done on Sunday, I have promised to give
you a basket of pansies for your garden.”

The young girl exclaimed gaily: “Oh, yes! that is true. Ah, well! I will
do my best then! But where is my thimble? It seems as if all working
implements take to themselves wings and fly away, if not in constant
use.”

She flipped the old _doigtier_ of ivory on the second joint of her
little finger, and took her place on the other side of the frame,
opposite to the window.

Since the middle of the last century there had not been the slightest
modification in the fittings and arrangements of the workroom. Fashions
changed, the art of the embroiderer was transformed, but there was still
seen fastened to the wall the chantlate, the great piece of wood
where was placed one end of the frame or work, while the other end was
supported by a moving trestle. In the corners were many ancient tools--a
little machine called a “diligent,” with its wheels and its long
pins, to wind the gold thread on the reels without touching it; a hand
spinning-wheel; a species of pulley to twist the threads which were
attached to the wall; rollers of various sizes covered with silks and
threads used in the crochet embroidery. Upon a shelf was spread out an
old collection of punches for the spangles, and there was also to
be seen a valuable relic, in the shape of the classic chandelier in
hammered brass which belonged to some ancient master-workman. On the
rings of a rack made of a nailed leather strap were hung awls, mallets,
hammers, irons to cut the vellum, and roughing chisels of bogwood, which
were used to smooth the threads as fast as they were employed. And yet
again, at the foot of the heavy oaken table on which the cutting-out
was done, was a great winder, whose two movable reels of wicker held the
skeins. Long chains of spools of bright-coloured silks strung on cords
were hung near that case of drawers. On the floor was a large basket
filled with empty bobbins. A pair of great shears rested on the straw
seat of one of the chairs, and a ball of cord had just fallen on the
floor, half unwound.

“Oh! what lovely weather! What perfect weather!” continued Angelique.
“It is a pleasure simply to live and to breathe.”

And before stooping to apply herself to her work, she delayed another
moment before the open window, through which entered all the beauty of a
radiant May morning.



CHAPTER IV

The sun shone brightly on the roof of the Cathedral, a fresh odour of
lilacs came up from the bushes in the garden of the Bishop. Angelique
smiled, as she stood there, dazzled, and as if bathed in the springtide.
Then, starting as if suddenly awakened from sleep, she said:

“Father, I have no more gold thread for my work.”

Hubert, who had just finished pricking the tracing of the pattern of a
cope, went to get a skein from the case of drawers, cut it, tapered
off the two ends by scratching the gold which covered the silk, and he
brought it to her rolled up in parchment.

“Is that all you need?”

“Yes, thanks.”

With a quick glance she had assured herself that nothing more was
wanting; the needles were supplied with the different golds, the red,
the green, and the blue; there were spools of every shade of silk; the
spangles were ready; and the twisted wires for the gold lace were in the
crown of a hat which served as a box, with the long fine needles, the
steel pincers, the thimbles, the scissors, and the ball of wax. All
these were on the frame even, or on the material stretched therein,
which was protected by a thick brown paper.

She had threaded a needle with the gold thread. But at the first stitch
it broke, and she was obliged to thread it again, breaking off tiny
bits of the gold, which she threw immediately into the pasteboard
waste-basket which was near her.

“Now at last I am ready,” she said, as she finished her first stitch.

Perfect silence followed. Hubert was preparing to stretch some material
on another frame. He had placed the two heavy ends on the chantlate and
the trestle directly opposite in such a way as to take lengthwise the
red silk of the cope, the breadths of which Hubertine had just stitched
together, and fitting the laths into the mortice of the beams, he
fastened them with four little nails. Then, after smoothing the material
many times from right to left, he finished stretching it and tacked on
the nails. To assure himself that it was thoroughly tight and firm, he
tapped on the cloth with his fingers and it sounded like a drum.

Angelique had become a most skilful worker, and the Huberts were
astonished at her cleverness and taste. In addition to what they had
taught her, she carried into all she did her personal enthusiasm, which
gave life to flowers and faith to symbols. Under her hands, silk and
gold seemed animated; the smaller ornaments were full of mystic meaning;
she gave herself up to it entirely, with her imagination constantly
active and her firm belief in the infinitude of the invisible world.

The Diocese of Beaumont had been so charmed with certain pieces of her
embroidery, that a clergyman who was an archaeologist, and another who
was an admirer of pictures, had come to see her, and were in raptures
before her Virgins, which they compared to the simple gracious figures
of the earliest masters. There was the same sincerity, the same
sentiment of the beyond, as if encircled in the minutest perfection of
detail. She had the real gift of design, a miraculous one indeed, which,
without a teacher, with nothing but her evening studies by lamplight,
enabled her often to correct her models, to deviate entirely from them,
and to follow her own fancies, creating beautiful things with the point
of her needle. So the Huberts, who had always insisted that a thorough
knowledge of the science of drawing was necessary to make a good
embroiderer, were obliged to yield before her, notwithstanding their
long experience. And, little by little, they modestly withdrew into the
background, becoming simply her aids, surrendering to her all the most
elaborate work, the under part of which they prepared for her.

From one end of the year to the other, what brilliant and sacred marvels
passed through her hands! She was always occupied with silks, satins,
velvets, or cloths of gold or silver. She embroidered chasubles, stoles,
maniples, copes, dalmatics, mitres, banners, and veils for the chalice
and the pyx. But, above all, their orders for chasubles never failed,
and they worked constantly at those vestments, with their five colours:
the white, for Confessors and Virgins; the red, for Apostles and
Martyrs; the black, for the days of fasting and for the dead; the
violet, for the Innocents; and the green for fête-days. Gold was also
often used in place of white or of green. The same symbols were always
in the centre of the Cross: the monograms of Jesus and of the Virgin
Mary, the triangle surrounded with rays, the lamb, the pelican, the
dove, a chalice, a monstrance, and a bleeding heart pierced with thorns;
while higher up and on the arms were designs, or flowers, all the
ornamentation being in the ancient style, and all the flora in large
blossoms, like anemones, tulips, peonies, pomegranates, or hortensias.
No season passed in which she did not remake the grapes and thorns
symbolic, putting silver on black, and gold on red. For the most costly
vestments, she varied the pictures of the heads of saints, having, as a
central design, the Annunciation, the Last Supper, or the Crucifixion.
Sometimes the orfreys were worked on the original material itself; at
others, she applied bands of silk or satin on brocades of gold cloth, or
of velvet. And all this efflorescence of sacred splendour was created,
little by little, by her deft fingers. At this moment the vestment on
which Angelique was at work was a chasuble of white satin, the cross
of which was made by a sheaf of golden lilies intertwined with bright
roses, in various shades of silk. In the centre, in a wreath of little
roses of dead gold, was the monogram of the Blessed Virgin, in red and
green gold, with a great variety of ornaments.

For an hour, during which she skilfully finished the little roses, the
silence had not been broken even by a single word. But her thread broke
again, and she re-threaded her needle by feeling carefully under the
frame, as only an adroit person can do. Then, as she raised her head,
she again inhaled with satisfaction the pure, fresh air that came in
from the garden.

“Ah!” she said softly, “how beautiful it was yesterday! The sunshine is
always perfect.”

Hubertine shook her head as she stopped to wax her thread.

“As for me, I am so wearied, it seems as if I had no arms, and it tires
me to work. But that is not strange, for I so seldom go out, and am no
longer young and strong, as you are at sixteen.”

Angelique had reseated herself and resumed her work. She prepared the
lilies by sewing bits of vellum on certain places that had been marked,
so as to give them relief, but the flowers themselves were not to be
made until later, for fear the gold be tarnished were the hands moved
much over it.

Hubert, who, having finished arranging the material in its frame,
was about drawing with pumice the pattern of the cope, joined in the
conversation and said: “These first warm days of spring are sure to give
me a terrible headache.”

Angelique’s eyes seemed to be vaguely lost in the rays which now fell
upon one of the flying buttresses of the church, as she dreamily added:
“Oh no, father, I do not think so. One day in the lively air, like
yesterday, does me a world of good.”

Having finished the little golden leaves, she began one of the large
roses, near the lilies. Already she had threaded several needles with
the silks required, and she embroidered in stitches varying in length,
according to the natural position and movement of the petals, and
notwithstanding the extreme delicacy and absorbing nature of this work,
the recollections of the previous day, which she lived over again in
thought and in silence, now came to her lips, and crowded so closely
upon each other that she no longer tried to keep them back. So she
talked of their setting out upon their expedition, of the beautiful
fields they crossed, of their lunch over there in the ruins of
Hautecœur, upon the flagstones of a little room whose tumble-down walls
towered far above the Ligneul, which rolled gently among the willows
fifty yards below them.

She was enthusiastic over these crumbling ruins, and the scattered
blocks of stone among the brambles, which showed how enormous the
colossal structure must have been as, when first built, it commanded
the two valleys. The donjon remained, nearly two hundred feet in height,
discoloured, cracked, but nevertheless firm, upon its foundation pillars
fifteen feet thick. Two of its towers had also resisted the attacks
of Time--that of Charlemagne and that of David--united by a heavy wall
almost intact. In the interior, the chapel, the court-room, and certain
chambers were still easily recognised; and all this appeared to have
been built by giants, for the steps of the stairways, the sills of the
windows, and the branches on the terraces, were all on a scale far out
of proportion for the generation of to-day. It was, in fact, quite a
little fortified city. Five hundred men could have sustained there a
siege of thirty months without suffering from want of ammunition or of
provisions. For two centuries the bricks of the lowest story had been
disjointed by the wild roses; lilacs and laburnums covered with blossoms
the rubbish of the fallen ceilings; a plane-tree had even grown up in
the fireplace of the guardroom. But when, at sunset, the outline of the
donjon cast its long shadow over three leagues of cultivated ground,
and the colossal Château seemed to be rebuilt in the evening mists, one
still felt the great strength, and the old sovereignty, which had made
of it so impregnable a fortress that even the kings of France trembled
before it.

“And I am sure,” continued Angelique, “that it is inhabited by the souls
of the dead, who return at night. All kinds of noises are heard there;
in every direction are monsters who look at you, and when I turned round
as we were coming away, I saw great white figures fluttering above the
wall. But, mother, you know all the history of the castle, do you not?”

Hubertine replied, as she smiled in an amused way: “Oh! as for ghosts, I
have never seen any of them myself.”

But in reality, she remembered perfectly the history, which she had read
long ago, and to satisfy the eager questionings of the young girl, she
was obliged to relate it over again.

The land belonged to the Bishopric of Rheims, since the days of Saint
Remi, who had received it from Clovis.

An archbishop, Severin, in the early years of the tenth century, had
erected at Hautecœur a fortress to defend the country against the
Normans, who were coming up the river Oise, into which the Ligneul
flows.

In the following century a successor of Severin gave it in fief to
Norbert, a younger son of the house of Normandy, in consideration of an
annual quit-rent of sixty sous, and on the condition that the city of
Beaumont and its church should remain free and unincumbered. It was in
this way that Norbert I. became the head of the Marquesses of Hautecœur,
whose famous line from that date became so well known in history. Hervé
IV., excommunicated twice for his robbery of ecclesiastical property,
became a noted highwayman, who killed, on a certain occasion, with his
own hands, thirty citizens, and his tower was razed to the ground by
Louis le Gros, against whom he had dared to declare war. Raoul I., who
went to the Crusades with Philip Augustus, perished before Saint Jean
d’Acre, having been pierced through the heart by a lance. But the most
illustrious of the race was John V, the Great, who, in 1225, rebuilt the
fortress, finishing in less than five years this formidable Château of
Hautecœur, under whose shelter he, for a moment, dreamed of aspiring
to the throne of France, and after having escaped from being killed in
twenty battles, he at last died quietly in his bed, brother-in-law to
the King of Scotland. Then came Felician III, who made a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem barefooted; Hervé VII., who asserted his claims to the throne
of Scotland; and still many others, noble and powerful in their day
and generation, down to Jean IX., who, under Mazarin, had the grief of
assisting at the dismantling of the castle. After a desperate siege, the
vaults of the towers and of the donjon were blown up with powder, and
the different constructions were set on fire; where Charles VI had been
sent to rest, and to turn his attention from his vagaries, and where,
nearly two hundred years later, Henri IV. had passed a week as Gabrielle
D’Estress. Thenceforth, all these royal souvenirs had passed into
oblivion.

Angelique, without stopping the movement of her needle, listened
eagerly, as if the vision of these past grandeurs rose up from her
frame, in proportion as the rose grew there in its delicate life
of colour. Her ignorance of general history enlarged facts, and she
received them as if they were the basis of a marvellous legend. She
trembled with delight, and, transported by her faith, it seemed as if
the reconstructed Château mounted to the very gates of heaven, and the
Hautecœurs were cousins to the Virgin Mary.

When there was a pause in the recital she asked, “Is not our new Bishop
Monseigneur d’Hautecœur, a descendant of this noted family?”

Hubertine replied that Monseigneur must belong to the younger branch of
the family, as the elder branch had been extinct for a very long time.
It was, indeed, a most singular return, as for centuries the Marquesses
of Hautecœur and the clergy of Beaumont had been hostile to each
other. Towards 1150 an abbot undertook to build a church, with no other
resources than those of his Order; so his funds soon gave out, when the
edifice was no higher than the arches of the side chapels, and they were
obliged to cover the nave with a wooden roof. Eighty years passed, and
Jean V. came to rebuild the Château, when he gave three hundred thousand
pounds, which, added to other sums, enabled the work on the church to be
continued. The nave was finished, but the two towers and the great front
were terminated much later, towards 1430, in the full fifteenth century.
To recompense Jean V. for his liberality, the clergy accorded to him,
for himself and his descendants, the right of burial in a chapel of the
apse, consecrated to St. George, and which, since that time, had been
called the Chapel Hautecœur. But these good terms were not of long
duration. The freedom of Beaumont was put in constant peril by the
Château, and there were continual hostilities on the questions of
tribute and of precedence. One especially, the right of paying toll,
which the nobles demanded for the navigation of the Ligneul, perpetuated
the quarrels. Then it was that the great prosperity of the lower town
began, with its manufacturing of fine linen and lace, and from this
epoch the fortune of Beaumont increased daily, while that of Hautecœur
diminished, until the time when the castle was dismantled and the church
triumphed. Louis XIV. made of it a cathedral, a bishop’s palace was
built in the old enclosure of the monks, and, by a singular chain of
circumstances, to-day a member of the family of Hautecœur had returned
as a bishop to command the clergy, who, always powerful, had conquered
his ancestors, after a contest of four hundred years.

“But,” said Angelique, “Monseigneur has been married, and has not he a
son at least twenty years of age?”

Hubertine had taken up the shears to remodel one of the pieces of
vellum.

“Yes,” she replied, “the Abbot Cornille told me the whole story, and it
is a very sad history. When but twenty years of age, Monseigneur was a
captain under Charles X. In 1830, when only four-and-twenty, he resigned
his position in the army, and it is said that from that time until he
was forty years of age he led an adventurous life, travelling everywhere
and having many strange experiences. At last, one evening, he met,
at the house of a friend in the country, the daughter of the Count de
Valencay, Mademoiselle Pauline, very wealthy, marvellously beautiful,
and scarcely nineteen years of age, twenty-two years younger than
himself. He fell violently in love with her, and, as she returned his
affection, there was no reason why the marriage should not take place
at once. He then bought the ruins of Hautecœur for a mere song--ten
thousand francs, I believe--with the intention of repairing the Château
and installing his wife therein when all would be in order and in
readiness to receive her. In the meanwhile they went to live on one of
his family estates in Anjou, scarcely seeing any of their friends, and
finding in their united happiness the days all too short. But, alas! at
the end of a year Pauline had a son and died.”

Hubert, who was still occupied with marking out his pattern, raised
his head, showing a very pale face as he said in a low voice: “Oh! the
unhappy man!”

“It was said that he himself almost died from his great grief,”
 continued Hubertine. “At all events, a fortnight later he entered into
Holy Orders, and soon became a priest. That was twenty years ago, and
now he is a bishop. But I have also been told that during all this time
he has refused to see his son, the child whose birth cost the life of
its mother. He had placed him with an uncle of his wife’s, an old abbot,
not wishing even to hear of him, and trying to forget his existence. One
day a picture of the boy was sent him, but in looking at it he found
so strong a resemblance to his beloved dead that he fell on the floor
unconscious and stiff, as if he had received a blow from a hammer. . . .
Now age and prayer have helped to soften his deep grief, for yesterday
the good Father Cornille told me that Monseigneur had just decided to
send for his son to come to him.”

Angelique, having finished her rose, so fresh and natural that perfume
seemed to be exhaled from it, looked again through the window into the
sunny garden, and, as if in a reverie, she said in a low voice: “The son
of Monseigneur!”

Hubertine continued her story.

“It seems that the young man is handsome as a god, and his father wished
him to be educated for the priesthood. But the old abbot would not
consent to that, saying that the youth had not the slightest inclination
in that direction. And then, to crown all, his wealth, it is said, is
enormous. Two million pounds sterling! Yes, indeed! His mother left
him a tenth of that sum, which was invested in land in Paris, where the
increase in the price of real estate has been so great, that to-day it
represents fifty millions of francs. In short, rich as a king!”

“Rich as a king, beautiful as a god!” repeated Angelique unconsciously,
in her dreamy voice.

And with one hand she mechanically took from the frame a bobbin wound
with gold thread, in order to make the open-work centre of one of the
large lilies. After having loosened the end from the point of the reel,
she fastened it with a double stitch of silk to the edge of the vellum
which was to give a thickness to the embroidery. Then, continuing her
work, she said again, without finishing her thought, which seemed lost
in the vagueness of its desire, “Oh! as for me, what I would like, that
which I would like above all else----”

The silence fell again, deep and profound, broken only by the dull sound
of chanting which came from the church. Hubert arranged his design by
repassing with a little brush all the perforated lines of the drawing,
and thus the ornamentation of the cope appeared in white on the red
silk. It was he who first resumed speaking.

“Ah! those ancient days were magnificent! Noblemen then wore costumes
weighted with embroidery. At Lyons, material was sometimes sold for as
much as six hundred francs an ell. One ought to read the by-laws and
regulations of the Guild of Master Workmen, where it is laid down that
‘The embroiderers of the King have always the right to summon, by armed
force if necessary, the workmen of other masters.’ . . . And then we
had coats of arms, too! Azure, a fesse engrailed or, between three
fleurs-de-lys of the same, two of them being near the top and the third
in the point. Ah! it was indeed beautiful in the days of long ago!”

He stopped a moment, tapping the frame with his fingers to shake off the
dust. Then he continued:

“At Beaumont they still have a legend about the Hautecœurs, which my
mother often related to me when I was a child. . . . A frightful plague
ravaged the town, and half of the inhabitants had already fallen victims
to it, when Jean V., he who had rebuilt the fortress, perceived that God
had given him the power to contend against the scourge. Then he went on
foot to the houses of the sick, fell on his knees, kissed them, and as
soon as his lips had touched them, while he said, ‘If God is willing,
I wish it,’ the sufferers were healed. And lo! that is why these words
have remained the device of the Hautecœurs, who all have since that
day been able to cure the plague. . . . Ah! what a proud race of men!
A noble dynasty! Monseigneur himself is called Jean XII., and the first
name of his son must also be followed by a number, like that of a
prince.”

He stopped. Each one of his words lulled and prolonged the reverie of
Angelique. She continued, in a half-singing tone: “Oh! what I wish for
myself! That which I would like above all else----”

Holding the bobbin, without touching the thread, she twisted the gold by
moving it from left to right alternately on the vellum, fastening it at
each turn with a stitch in silk. Little by little the great golden lily
blossomed out.

Soon she continued: “Yes, what I would like above all would be to marry
a prince--a prince whom I had never seen; who would come towards sunset,
just before the waning daylight, and would take me by the hand and lead
me to his palace. And I should wish him to be very handsome, as well as
very rich! Yes, the most beautiful and the wealthiest man that had ever
been seen on the earth! He should have superb horses that I could hear
neighing under my windows, and jewels which he would pour in streams
into my lap, and gold that would fall from my hands in a deluge when I
opened them. And what I wish still further is, that this prince of
mine should love me to distraction, so that I might also love him
desperately. We would then remain very young, very good, and very noble,
for ever!”

Hubert, leaving his work, had approached her smilingly; whilst
Hubertine, in a friendly way, shook her finger at the young girl.

“Oh, what a vain little creature! Ah! ambitious child, you are quite
incorrigible. Now, you are quite beside yourself with your need of being
a queen. At all events such a dream is much better than to steal sugar
and to be impertinent. But really, you must not indulge in such fancies.
It is the Evil One who prompts them, and it is pride that speaks, as
well as passion.”

Gay and candid, Angelique looked her in the face as she said: “But
mother, mother mine, what are you saying? Is it, then, a sin to love
that which is rich and beautiful? I love it because it is rich and
beautiful, and so cheers my heart and soul. A beautiful object brightens
everything that is near it, and helps one to live, as the sun does. You
know very well that I am not selfish. Money? Oh! you would see what a
good use I would make of it, if only I had it in abundance! I would rain
it over the town; it should be scattered among the miserable. Think what
a blessing it would be to have no more poverty! In the first place,
as for you and my father, I would give you everything. You should be
dressed in robes and garments of brocades, like the lords and ladies of
the olden time.”

Hubertine shrugged her shoulders and smiled. “It is ridiculous,” she
said. “But, my dear child, you must remember that you are poor, and that
you have not a penny for your marriage-portion. How can you, then, for a
moment dream of a prince? Are you, then, so desirous to marry a prince?”

“Why should not I wish to marry such a man?” And she looked quite
amazed, as she continued: “Marry him? Of course I would do so. Since he
would have plenty of money, what difference would it make if I had none?
I should owe everything to him, and on that very account I should love
him all the more deeply.”

This victorious reasoning enchanted Hubert, who seemed carried above the
earth by Angelique’s enthusiasm. He would willingly have accompanied her
on the wings of a cloud to the regions of fancy.

“She is right,” he exclaimed.

But his wife glanced at him reprovingly. She became quite stern.

“My child, you will think differently later on, when you know life
better.”

“Life?--but I know it already.”

“How is it possible for you to know it? You are too young; you are
ignorant of evil. Yet evil exists and is very powerful.”

“Evil--evil?”

Angelique repeated the word very slowly, as if to penetrate its meaning.
And in her pure eyes was a look of innocent surprise. Evil? She knew all
about it, for she had read of it in the “Golden Legend.” Was not
evil Satan himself? And had not she seen how, although he constantly
reappeared, he was always overthrown? After every battle he remained
crushed to earth, thoroughly conquered, and in a most pitiable state.

“Evil? Ah, mother mine, if you knew how little I fear it! It is only
necessary once to conquer it and afterwards life is all happiness.”

Hubertine appeared troubled and looked anxious.

“You will make me almost regret having brought you up in this house,
alone with us two, and away from the world as it were. I am really
afraid that some day we shall regret having kept you in such complete
ignorance of the realities of life. What Paradise are you looking for?
What is your idea of the world?”

A look of hope brightened the face of the young girl, while, bending
forward, she still moved the bobbin back and forth with a continuous,
even motion.

“You then really think, mother, that I am very foolish, do you not? This
world is full of brave people. When one is honest and industrious, one
is always rewarded. I know also that there are some bad people, but they
do not count. We do not associate with them, and they are soon punished
for their misdeeds. And then, you see, as for the world, it produces on
me, from a distance, the effect of a great garden; yes, of an immense
park, all filled with flowers and with sunshine. It is such a blessing
to live, and life is so sweet that it cannot be bad.”

She grew excited, as if intoxicated by the brightness of the silks and
the gold threads she manipulated so well with her skilful fingers.

“Happiness is a very simple thing. We are happy, are we not? All three
of us? And why? Simply because we love each other. Then, after all, it
is no more difficult than that; it is only necessary to love and to
be loved. So, you see, when the one I expect really comes, we shall
recognise each other immediately. It is true I have not yet seen him,
but I know exactly what he ought to be. He will enter here and will say:
‘I have come in search of you.’ And I shall reply: ‘I expected you, and
will go with you.’ He will take me with him, and our future will be at
once decided upon. He will go into a palace, where all the furniture
will be of gold, encrusted in diamonds. Oh, it is all very simple!”

“You are crazy; so do not talk any more,” interrupted Hubertine, coldly.

And seeing that the young girl was still excited, and ready to continue
to indulge her fancies, she continued to reprove her.

“I beg you to say no more, for you absolutely make me tremble. Unhappy
child! When we really marry you to some poor mortal you will be crushed,
as you fall to earth from these heights of the imagination. Happiness,
for the greater part of the world, consists in humility and obedience.”

Angelique continued to smile with an almost obstinate tranquillity.

“I expect him, and he will come.”

“But she is right,” exclaimed Hubert, again carried away by her
enthusiasm. “Why need you scold her? She is certainly pretty, and dainty
enough for a king. Stranger things than that have happened, and who
knows what may come?”

Sadly Hubertine looked at him with her calm eyes.

“Do not encourage her to do wrong, my dear. You know, better than
anyone, what it costs to follow too much the impulses of one’s heart.”

He turned deadly pale, and great tears came to the edge of his eyelids.
She immediately repented of having reproved him, and rose to offer him
her hands. But gently disengaging himself, he said, stammeringly:

“No, no, my dear; I was wrong. Angelique, do you understand me? You must
always listen to your mother. She alone is wise, and we are both of us
very foolish. I am wrong; yes, I acknowledge it.”

Too disturbed to sit down, leaving the cope upon which he had been
working, he occupied himself in pasting a banner that was finished,
although still in its frame. After having taken the pot of Flemish glue
from the chest of drawers, he moistened with a brush the underside of
the material, to make the embroidery firmer. His lips still trembled,
and he remained quiet.

But if Angelique, in her obedience, was also still, she allowed her
thoughts to follow their course, and her fancies mounted higher and
still higher. She showed it in every feature--in her mouth, that ecstasy
had half opened, as well as in her eyes, where the infinite depth of her
visions seemed reflected. Now, this dream of a poor girl, she wove it
into the golden embroidery. It was for this unknown hero that, little
by little, there seemed to grow on the white satin the beautiful great
lilies, and the roses, and the monogram of the Blessed Virgin. The stems
of the lilies had all the gracious pointings of a jet of light, whilst
the long slender leaves, made of spangles, each one being sewed on with
gold twist, fell in a shower of stars. In the centre, the initials of
Mary were like the dazzling of a relief in massive gold, a marvellous
blending of lacework and of embossing, or goffering, which burnt like
the glory of a tabernacle in the mystic fire of its rays. And the roses
of delicately-coloured silks seemed real, and the whole chasuble was
resplendent in its whiteness of satin, which appeared covered almost
miraculously with its golden blossoms.

After a long silence, Angelique, whose cheeks were flushed by the blood
which mounted into them from her excitement, raised her head, and,
looking at Hubertine, said again, a little maliciously:

“I expect him, and he will come.”

It was absurd for her thus to give loose reins to her imagination. But
she was willful. She was convinced in her own mind that everything would
come to pass, eventually, as she wished it might. Nothing could weaken
her happy conviction.

“Mother,” she added, “why do you not believe me, since I assure you it
must be as I say?”

Hubertine shrugged her shoulders, and concluded the best thing for her
to do was to tease her.

“But I thought, my child, that you never intended being married. Your
saints, who seem to have turned your head, they led single lives. Rather
than do otherwise they converted their lovers, ran away from their
homes, and were put to death.”

The young girl listened and was confused. But soon she laughed merrily.
Her perfect health, and all her love of life, rang out in this sonorous
gaiety. “The histories of the saints! But that was ages ago! Times have
entirely changed since then. God having so completely triumphed, no
longer demands that anyone should die for Him.”

When reading the Legend, it was the marvels which fascinated her, not
the contempt of the world and the desire for death. She added: “Most
certainly I expect to be married; to love and to be loved, and thus be
very happy.”

“Be careful, my dear,” said Hubertine, continuing to tease her. “You
will make your guardian angel, Saint Agnes, weep. Do not you know that
she refused the son of the Governor, and preferred to die, that she
might be wedded to Jesus?”

The great clock of the belfry began to strike; numbers of sparrows flew
down from an enormous ivy-plant which framed one of the windows of
the apse. In the workroom, Hubert, still silent, had just hung up the
banner, moist from the glue, that it might dry, on one of the great iron
hooks fastened to the wall.

The sun in the course of the morning had lightened up different parts
of the room, and now it shone brightly upon the old tools--the diligent,
the wicker winder, and the brass chandelier--and as its rays fell upon
the two workers, the frame at which they were seated seemed almost
on fire, with its bands polished by use, and with the various objects
placed upon it, the reels of gold cord, the spangles, and the bobbins of
silk.

Then, in this soft, charming air of spring, Angelique looked at
the beautiful symbolic lily she had just finished. Opening wide her
ingenuous eyes, she replied, with an air of confiding happiness, to
Hubertine’s last remark in regard to the child-martyr, Saint Agnes:

“Ah, yes! But it was Jesus who wished it to be so.”



CHAPTER V

Notwithstanding her thoroughly cheerful nature, Angelique liked
solitude; and it was to her the greatest of recreations to be alone
in her room, morning and evening. There she gave herself up to her
thoughts; there she indulged to the full scope in her most joyous
fancies. Sometimes even during the day, when she could go there for a
moment, she was as happy as if, in full freedom, she had committed some
childish prank.

The chamber was very large, taking in at least half of the upper story,
the other half being the garret. It was whitewashed everywhere; not only
the walls and the beams, but the joists, even to the visible copings of
the mansard part of the roof; and in this bare whiteness, the old oaken
furniture seemed almost as black as ebony. At the time of the decoration
of the sleeping-room below, and the improvements made in the parlour,
the ancient furniture, which had been bought at various epochs, had
been carried upstairs. There was a great carved chest of the Renaissance
period, a table and chairs which dated from the reign of Louis XIII., an
enormous bedstead, style Louis XIV., and a very handsome wardrobe, Louis
XV. In the middle of these venerable old things a white porcelain stove,
and the little toilet-table, covered with a pretty oilcloth, seemed out
of place and to mar the dull harmony. Curtained with an old-fashioned
rose-coloured chintz, on which were bouquets of heather, so faded that
the colour had become a scarcely perceptible pink, the enormous bedstead
preserved above all the majesty of its great age.

But what pleased Angelique more than anything else was the little
balcony on which the window opened. Of the two original windows, one
of them, that at the left, had been closed by simply fastening it with
nails, and the balcony, which formerly extended across the front of
the building, was now only before the window at the right. As the lower
beams were still strong, a new floor had been made, and above it an
iron railing was firmly attached in place of the old worm-eaten wooden
balustrade. This made a charming little corner, a quiet nook under the
gable point, the leaden laths of which had been renewed at the beginning
of the century. By bending over a little, the whole garden-front of the
house could be seen in a very dilapidated state, with its sub-basement
of little cut stones, its panels ornamented with imitation bricks, and
its large bay window, which to-day had been made somewhat smaller. The
roof of the great porch of the kitchen-door was covered with zinc. And
above, the interduces of the top, which projected three feet or more,
were strengthened by large, upright pieces of wood, the ends of which
rested on the string-course of the first floor. All this gave to the
balcony an appearance of being in a perfect vegetation of timber, as if
in the midst of a forest of old wood, which was green with wallflowers
and moss.

Since she occupied the chamber, Angelique had spent many hours there,
leaning over the balustrade and simply looking. At first, directly
under her was the garden, darkened by the eternal shade of the evergreen
box-trees; in the corner nearest the church, a cluster of small
lilac-bushes surrounded an old granite bench; while in the opposite
corner, half hidden by a beautiful ivy which covered the whole wall
at the end as if with a mantle, was a little door opening upon the
Clos-Marie, a vast, uncultivated field. This Clos-Marie was the old
orchard of the monks. A rivulet of purest spring-water crossed it, the
Chevrotte, where the women who occupied the houses in the neighbourhood
had the privilege of washing their linen; certain poor people sheltered
themselves in the ruins of an old tumble-down mill; and no other persons
inhabited this field, which was connected with the Rue Magloire simply
by the narrow lane of the Guerdaches, which passed between the high
walls of the Bishop’s Palace and those of the Hotel Voincourt. In
summer, the centenarian elms of the two parks barred with their
green-leaved tops the straight, limited horizon which in the centre
was cut off by the gigantic brow of the Cathedral. Thus shut in on
all sides, the Clos-Marie slept in the quiet peace of its abandonment,
overrun with weeds and wild grass, planted with poplars and willows sown
by the wind. Among the great pebbles the Chevrotte leaped, singing as it
went, and making a continuous music as if of crystal.

Angelique was never weary of this out-of-the-way nook. Yet for seven
years she had seen there each morning only what she had looked at on the
previous evening. The trees in the little park of the Hotel Voincourt,
whose front was on the Grand Rue, were so tufted and bushy that it
was only in the winter she could occasionally catch a glimpse of the
daughter of the Countess, Mademoiselle Claire, a young girl of her own
age.

In the garden of the Bishop was a still more dense thickness of
branches, and she had often tried in vain to distinguish there the
violet-coloured cassock of Monseigneur; and the old gate, with its
Venetian slats above and at the sides, must have been fastened up for
a very long time, for she never remembered to have seen it opened, not
even for a gardener to pass through. Besides the washerwomen in the
Clos, she always saw the same poor, ragged little children playing or
sleeping in the grass.

The spring this year was unusually mild. She was just sixteen years of
age, and until now she had been glad to welcome with her eyes alone
the growing green again of the Clos-Marie under the April sunshine.
The shooting out of the tender leaves, the transparency of the warm
evenings, and all the reviving odours of the earth had simply amused her
heretofore. But this year, at the first bud, her heart seemed to beat
more quickly. As the grass grew higher and the wind brought to her all
the strong perfumes of the fresh verdure, there was in her whole being
an increasing agitation. Sudden inexplicable pain would at times seize
her throat and almost choke her. One evening she threw herself, weeping,
into Hubertine’s arms, having no cause whatever for grief, but, on the
contrary, overwhelmed with so great, unknown a happiness, that her heart
was too full for restraint. In the night her dreams were delightful.
Shadows seemed to pass before her, and she fell into such an ecstatic
state that on awakening she did not dare to recall them, so confused
was she by the angelic visions of bliss. Sometimes, in the middle of her
great bed, she would rouse herself suddenly, her two hands joined and
pressed against her breast as if a heavy burden were weighing her down
and almost suffocating her. She would then jump up, rush across the
room in her bare feet, and, opening the window wide, would stand there,
trembling slightly, until at last the pure fresh air calmed her. She
was continually surprised at this great change in herself, as if the
knowledge of joys and griefs hitherto unknown had been revealed to
her in the enchantment of dreams, and that her eyes had been opened to
natural beauties which surrounded her.

What--was it really true that the unseen lilacs and laburnums of the
Bishop’s garden had so sweet an odour that she could no longer breathe
it without a flush of colour mounting to her cheeks? Never before had
she perceived this warmth of perfume which now touched her as if with a
living breath.

And again, why had she never remarked in preceding years a great
Japanese Paulownia in blossom, which looked like an immense violet
bouquet as it appeared between two elm-trees in the garden of the
Voincourts? This year, as soon as she looked at it, her eyes grew
moist, so much was she affected by the delicate tints of the pale purple
flowers. She also fancied that the Chevrotte had never chattered
so gaily over the pebbles among the willows on its banks. The river
certainly talked; she listened to its vague words, constantly repeated,
which filled her heart with trouble. Was it, then, no longer the field
of other days, that everything in it so astonished her and affected her
senses in so unusual a way? Or, rather, was not she herself so changed
that, for the first time, she appreciated the beauty of the coming into
life of trees and plants?

But the Cathedral at her right, the enormous mass which obstructed the
sky, surprised her yet more. Each morning she seemed to see it for the
first time; she made constant discoveries in it, and was delighted to
think that these old stones lived and had lived like herself. She did
not reason at all on the subject, she had very little knowledge, but
she gave herself up to the mystic flight of the giant, whose coming into
existence had demanded three centuries of time, and where were placed
one above the other the faith and the belief of generations. At the
foundation, it was kneeling as if crushed by prayer, with the Romanesque
chapels of the nave, and with the round arched windows, plain,
unornamented, except by slender columns under the archivolts. Then it
seemed to rise, lifting its face and hands towards heaven, with the
pointed windows of its nave, built eighty years later; high, delicate
windows, divided by mullions on which were broken bows and roses. Then
again it sprung from the earth as if in ecstasy, erect, with the piers
and flying buttresses of the choir finished and ornamented two centuries
after in the fullest flamboyant Gothic, charged with its bell-turrets,
spires, and pinnacles. A balustrade had been added, ornamented with
trefoils, bordering the terrace on the chapels of the apse. Gargoyles at
the foot of the flying buttresses carried off the water from the roofs.
The top was also decorated with flowery emblems. The whole edifice
seemed to burst into blossom in proportion as it approached the sky in
a continual upward flight, as if, relieved at being delivered from the
ancient sacerdotal terror, it was about to lose itself in the bosom of a
God of pardon and of love. It seemed to have a physical sensation which
permeated it, made it light and happy, like a sacred hymn it had just
heard sung, very pure and holy, as it passed into the upper air.

Moreover, the Cathedral was alive. Hundreds of swallows had constructed
their nests under the borders of trefoil, and even in the hollows of the
bell-turrets and the pinnacles, and they were continually brushing their
wings against the flying buttresses and the piers which they inhabited.
There were also the wood-pigeons of the elms in the Bishop’s garden, who
held themselves up proudly on the borders of the terraces, going slowly,
as if walking merely to show themselves off. Sometimes, half lost in
the blue sky, looking scarcely larger than a fly, a crow alighted on
the point of a spire to smooth its wings. The old stones themselves were
animated by the quiet working of the roots of a whole flora of plants,
the lichens and the grasses, which pushed themselves through the
openings in the walls. On very stormy days the entire apse seemed to
awake and to grumble under the noise of the rain as it beat against the
leaden tiles of the roof, running off by the gutters of the cornices and
rolling from story to story with the clamour of an overflowing torrent.
Even the terrible winds of October and of March gave to it a soul, a
double voice of anger and of supplication, as they whistled through
its forests of gables and arcades of roseate ornaments and of little
columns. The sun also filled it with life from the changing play of
its rays; from the early morning, which rejuvenated it with a delicate
gaiety, even to the evening, when, under the slightly lengthened-out
shadows, it basked in the unknown.

And it had its interior existence. The ceremonies with which it was ever
vibrating, the constant swinging of its bells, the music of the organ,
and the chanting of the priests, all these were like the pulsation of
its veins. There was always a living murmur in it: half-lost sounds,
like the faint echo of a Low Mass; the rustling of the kneeling
penitents, a slight, scarcely perceptible shivering, nothing but the
devout ardour of a prayer said without words and with closed lips.

Now, as the days grew longer, Angelique passed more and more time in the
morning and evening with her elbows on the balustrade of the balcony,
side by side with her great friend, the Cathedral. She loved it the best
at night, when she saw the enormous mass detach itself like a huge block
on the starry skies. The form of the building was lost. It was with
difficulty that she could even distinguish the flying buttresses, which
were thrown like bridges into the empty space. It was, nevertheless,
awake in the darkness, filled with a dream of seven centuries, made
grand by the multitudes who had hoped or despaired before its altars.
It was a continual watch, coming from the infinite of the past, going to
the eternity of the future; the mysterious and terrifying wakefulness
of a house where God Himself never sleeps. And in the dark, motionless,
living mass, her looks were sure to seek the window of a chapel of the
choir, on the level of the bushes of the Clos-Marie, the only one which
was lighted up, and which seemed like an eye which was kept open all
the night. Behind it, at the corner of a pillar, was an ever-burning
altar-lamp. In fact, it was the same chapel which the abbots of old had
given to Jean V. d’Hautecœur, and to his descendants, with the right of
being buried there, in return for their liberality. Dedicated to Saint
George, it had a stained-glass window of the twelfth century, on which
was painted the legend of the saint. From the moment of the coming on of
twilight, this historic representation came out from the shade,
lighted up as if it were an apparition, and that was why Angelique was
fascinated, and loved this particular point, as she gazed at it with her
dreamy eyes.

The background of the window was blue and the edges red. Upon this
sombre richness of colouring, the personages, whose flying draperies
allowed their limbs to be seen, stood out in relief in clear light
on the glass. Three scenes of the Legend, placed one above the other,
filled the space quite to the upper arch. At the bottom, the daughter of
the king, dressed in costly royal robes, on her way from the city to be
eaten by the dreadful monster, meets Saint George near the pond, from
which the head of the dragon already appears; and a streamer of silk
bears these words: “Good Knight, do not run any danger for me, as you
can neither help me nor deliver me, but will have to perish with me.”
 Then in the middle the combat takes place, and the saint, on horseback,
cuts the beast through and through. This is explained by the following
words: “George wielded so well his lance that he wounded the enemy and
threw him upon the earth.” At last, at the top, the Princess is seen
leading back into the city the conquered dragon: “George said, ‘Tie your
scarf around his neck, and do not be afraid of anything, oh beautiful
maiden, for when you have done so he will follow you like a well-trained
dog.’”

When the window was new it must have been surmounted in the middle of
the arch by an ornamental design. But later, when the chapel belonged to
the Hautecœurs, they replaced the original work by their family coat
of arms. And that was why, in the obscure nights, armorial bearings of
a more recent date shown out above the painted legend. They were the
old family arms of Hautecœur, quartered with the well-known shield of
Jerusalem; the latter being argent, a cross potencée, or, between four
crosselettes of the same; and those of the family, azure, a castle, or,
on it a shield, sable, charged with a human heart, argent, the whole
between three fleurs-de-lys, or; the shield was supported on the dexter
and sinister sides by two wyverns, or; and surmounted by the silver
helmet with its blue feathers, embossed in gold, placed frontwise, and
closed by eleven bars, which belongs only to Dukes, Marshals of France,
titled Lords and heads of Sovereign Corporations. And for motto were
these words: “_Si Dieu volt, ie vueil_.”

Little by little, from having seen him piercing the monster with
his lance, whilst the king’s daughter raised her clasped hands in
supplication, Angelique became enamoured of Saint George. He was her
hero. At the distance where she was she could not well distinguish the
figures, and she looked at them as if in the aggrandisement of a dream;
the young girl was slight, was a blonde, and, in short, had a face not
unlike her own, while the saint was frank and noble looking, with the
beauty of an archangel. It was as if she herself had just been saved,
and she could have kissed his hands with gratitude. And to this
adventure, of which she dreamed confusedly, of a meeting on the border
of a lake and of being rescued from a great danger by a young man more
beautiful than the day, was added the recollection of her excursion
to the Château of Hautecœur, and a calling up to view of the feudal
donjon, in its original state, peopled with the noble lords of olden
times.

The arms glistened like the stars on summer nights; she knew them well,
she read them easily, with their sonorous words, for she was so in the
habit of embroidering heraldic symbols. There was Jean V., who stopped
from door to door in the town ravaged by the plague, and went in to
kiss the lips of the dying, and cured them by saying, “_Si Dieu volt,
ie vueil_.” And Felician III, who, forewarned that a severe illness
prevented Philippe le Bel from going to Palestine, went there in his
place, barefooted and holding a candle in his hand, and for that he had
the right of quartering the arms of Jerusalem with his own. Other and
yet other histories came to her mind, especially those of the ladies of
Hautecœur, the “happy dead,” as they were called in the Legend. In
that family the women die young, in the midst of some great happiness.
Sometimes two or three generations would be spared, then suddenly Death
would appear, smiling, as with gentle hands he carried away the daughter
or the wife of a Hautecœur, the oldest of them being scarcely twenty
years of age, at the moment when they were at the height of earthly love
and bliss. For instance, Laurette, daughter of Raoul I., on the evening
of her betrothal to her cousin Richard, who lived in the castle, having
seated herself at her window in the Tower of David, saw him at his
window in the Tower of Charlemagne, and, thinking she heard him call
her, as at that moment a ray of moonlight seemed to throw a bridge
between them, she walked toward him. But when in the middle she made in
her haste a false step and overpassed the ray, she fell, and was crushed
at the foot of the tower. So since that day, each night when the moon is
bright and clear, she can be seen walking in the air around the Château,
which is bathed in white by the silent touch of her immense robe. Then
Balbine, wife of Hervé VII., thought for six months that her husband had
been killed in the wars. But, unwilling to give up all hope, she watched
for him daily from the top of the donjon, and when at last she saw him
one morning on the highway, returning to his home, she ran down quickly
to meet him, but was so overcome with joy, that she fell dead at the
entrance of the castle. Even at this day, notwithstanding the ruins, as
soon as twilight falls, it is said she still descends the steps, runs
from story to story, glides through the corridors and the rooms, and
passes like a phantom through the gaping windows which open into the
desert void. All return. Isabeau, Gudule, Vonne, Austreberthe, all these
“happy dead,” loved by the stern messenger, who spared them from the
vicissitudes of life by taking them suddenly when, in early youth, they
thought only of happiness. On certain nights this white-robed band fill
the house as if with a flight of doves. To their number had lately been
added the mother of the son of Monseigneur, who was found lifeless on
the floor by the cradle of her infant, where, although ill, she dragged
herself to die, in the fullness of her delight at embracing him. These
had haunted the imagination of Angelique; she spoke of them as if they
were facts of recent occurrence, which might have happened the day
before. She had read the names of Laurette and of Balbine on old
memorial tablets let into the walls of the chapel. Then why should not
she also die young and very happy, as they had? The armouries would
glisten as now, the saint would come down from his place in the
stained-glass window, and she would be carried away to heaven on the
sweet breath of a kiss. Why not?

The “Golden Legend” had taught her this: Was not it true that the
miracle is really the common law, and follows the natural course of
events? It exists, is active, works with an extreme facility on
every occasion, multiplies itself, spreads itself out, overflows even
uselessly, as if for the pleasure of contradicting the self-evident
rules of Nature. Its power seems to be on the same plane as that of the
Creator. Albrigan, King of Edeese, writes to Jesus, who replies to him.
Ignatius receives letters from the Blessed Virgin. In all places the
Mother and the Son appear, disguise themselves, and talk with an air of
smiling good-nature. When Stephen meets them they are very familiar with
him. All the virgins are wed to Jesus, and the martyrs mount to heaven,
where they are to be united to Mary. And as for the angels and saints,
they are the ordinary companions of men. They come, they go, they pass
through walls, they appear in dreams, they speak from the height of
clouds, they assist at births and deaths, they support those who are
tortured, they deliver those who are in prison, and they go on dangerous
missions. Following in their footsteps is an inexhaustible efflorescence
of prodigies. Sylvester binds the mouth of a dragon with a thread.
The earth rises to make a seat for Hilary, whose companions wished to
humiliate him. A precious stone falls into the chalice of Saint Loup. A
tree crushes the enemies of Saint Martin; a dog lets loose a hare, and
a great fire ceases to burn at his command. Mary the Egyptian walks
upon the sea; honey-bees fly from the mouth of Ambrosius at his birth.
Continually saints cure diseases of the eye, withered limbs, paralysis,
leprosy, and especially the plague. There is no disease that resists the
sign of the Cross. In a crowd, the suffering and the feeble are placed
together, that they may be cured in a mass, as if by a thunderbolt.
Death itself is conquered, and resurrections are so frequent that they
become quite an everyday affair. And when the saints themselves are
dead the wonders do not cease, but are redoubled, and are like perennial
flowers which spring from their tombs. It is said that from the head and
the feet of Nicholas flowed two fountains of oil which cured every ill.
When the tomb of Saint Cecilia was opened an odour of roses came up from
her coffin. That of Dorothea was filled with manna. All the bones of
virgins and of martyrs performed marvels: they confounded liars, they
forced robbers to give back their stolen goods, they granted the prayers
of childless wives, they brought the dying back to life. Nothing was
impossible for them; in fact the Invisible reigned, and the only law
was the caprice of the supernatural. In the temples the sorcerers mix
themselves up with the popular idea, and scythes cut the grass without
being held, brass serpents move, and one hears bronze statues laugh and
wolves sing. Immediately the saints reply and overwhelm them. The Host
is changed into living food, sacred Christian images shed drops of
blood, sticks set upright in the ground blossom into flower, springs
of pure water appear in dry places, warm loaves of bread multiply
themselves at the feet of the needy, a tree bows down before some holy
person, and so on. Then, again, decapitated heads speak, broken chalices
mend themselves, the rain turns aside from a church to submerge a
neighbouring palace, the robes of hermits never wear out, but renew
themselves at each season like the skin of a beast. In Armenia at one
time the persecutors threw into the sea the leaden coffins of five
martyrs, and the one containing the body of Saint Bartholomew the
Apostle took the lead, and the four others accompanied it as a guard of
honour. So, all together, in regular order, like a fine squadron, they
floated slowly along, urged by the breeze, through the whole length of
the sea, until they reached the shores of Sicily.

Angelique was a firm believer in miracles. In her ignorance she lived
surrounded by wonders. The rising of the stars, or the opening of a
violet; each fact was a surprise to her. It would have appeared to her
simply ridiculous to have imagined the world so mechanical as to
be governed by fixed laws. There were so many things far beyond her
comprehension, she felt herself so weak and helpless in the midst of
forces whose power it was impossible to measure, that she would not even
have suspected they existed, had it not been for the great questioning
breath which at times passed over her face. So, trusting, and
as thoroughly Christian as if belonging to the primitive Church,
spiritually fed by her readings from the “Golden Legend,” she gave
herself up entirely into the hands of God, with only the spot of
original sin to be cleansed from her soul. She had no liberty of action
or freedom of will; God alone could secure her salvation by giving
her the gift of His grace. That grace had been already manifested by
bringing her to the hospitable roof of the Huberts, where, under the
shadow of the Cathedral, she could lead a life of submission, of purity,
and of faith. She often heard within her soul the grumblings of heredity
tendency to evil, and asked herself what would have become of her had
she been left on her native soil. Without doubt she would have been bad;
while here, in this blessed corner of the earth, she had grown up free
from temptation, strong and healthy. Was it not grace that had given her
this home, where she was surrounded by such charming histories she had
so easily committed to memory, where she had learned such perfect faith
in the present and hope in the future, and where the invisible and
unknown, or the miracles of ages, seemed natural to her, and quite on
a level with her daily life? It had armed her for all combats, as
heretofore it had armed the martyrs. And she created an imaginary
experience for herself almost unknowingly. It was, in fact, the
inevitable result of a mind overcharged and excited by fables; it was
increased by her ignorance of the life within and about her, as well
as from her loneliness. She had not had many companions, so all desires
went from her only to return to her.

Sometimes she was in such a peculiar state that she would put her hands
over her face, as if doubting her own identity. Was she herself only
an illusion, and would she suddenly disappear some day and vanish into
nothingness? Who would tell her the truth?

One evening in the following May, on this same balcony where she had
spent so much time in vague dreams, she suddenly broke into tears.
She was not low-spirited in the least, but it seemed to her as if her
anxiety arose from a vain expectation of a visit from someone. Yet who
was there to come? It was very dark; the Clos-Marie marked itself out
like a great black spot under the sky filled with stars, and she could
but vaguely distinguish the heavy masses of the old elm-trees of the
Bishop’s garden, and of the park of the Hotel Voincourt. Alone the
window of the chapel sent out a little light. If no one were to come,
why did her heart beat so rapidly? It was nothing new, this feeling of
waiting, or of hope, but it was dated from the long ago, from her early
youth; it was like a desire, a looking forward for something which
had grown with her growth, and ended in this feverish anxiety of her
seventeen years. Nothing would have surprised her, as for weeks she
had heard the sound of voices in this mysterious corner, peopled by her
imagination. The “Golden Legend” had left there its supernatural world
of saints and martyrs, and the miracle was all ready to appear there.
She understood well that everything was animated, that the voices came
from objects hitherto silent; that the leaves of the trees, the waters
of the Chevrotte, and the stones of the Cathedral spoke to her. But what
was it that all these whisperings from the Invisible wished to explain?
What did these unknown forces above and around her wish to do with her
as they floated in the air? She kept her eyes fixed upon the darkness,
as if she were at an appointed meeting with she knew not whom, and
she waited, still waited, until she was overcome with sleep, whilst it
seemed to her as if some supernatural power were deciding her destiny,
irrespective of her will or wish.

For four evenings Angelique was nervous, and wept a great deal in
the darkness. She remained in her usual place and was patient. The
atmosphere seemed to envelope her, and as it increased in density it
oppressed her more and more, as if the horizon itself had become smaller
and was shutting her in. Everything weighed upon her heart. Now there
was a dull murmuring of voices in her brain; yet she was not able to
hear them clearly, or to distinguish their meaning. It was as if Nature
itself had taken possession of her, and the earth, with the vast heavens
above it, had penetrated into her being. At the least sound her hands
burned and her eyes tried to pierce the darkness. Was the wonderful
event about to take place, the prodigy she awaited? No, there was
nothing yet. It was probably merely the beating of the wings of a night
bird. And she listened again, attentively, until she could distinguish
the difference of sound between the leaves of the elms and the willows.
At least twenty times she trembled violently when a little stone rolled
in the rivulet, or a prowling animal jumped over the wall. She leaned
forward; but there was nothing--still nothing.

At last, after some days, when at night a warmer darkness fell from the
sky where no moon was visible, a change began. She felt it, but it was
so slight, so almost imperceptible, she feared that she might have been
mistaken in the little sound she heard, which seemed unlike the usual
noises she knew so well. She held her breath, as the sound seemed
very long in returning. At last it came again, louder than before, but
equally confused. She would have said it came from a great distance,
that it was a scarcely-defined step, and that the trembling of the air
announced the approach of something out of sight and out of hearing.
That which she was expecting came slowly from the invisible slight
movement of what surrounded her. Little by little it disengaged itself
from her dream, like a realisation of the vague longings of her youth.
Was it the Saint George of the chapel window, who had come down from his
place and was walking on the grass in silence towards her? Just then,
by chance, the altar-light was dimmed, so that she could not distinguish
the faintest outline of the figures on the painted glass, but all seemed
like a blue cloud of vapoury mist. That was all she heard or learned at
that time of the mystery.

But on the morrow, at the same hour, by a like obscurity, the noise
increased and approached a little nearer. It was certainly the sound of
steps, of real steps, which walked upon the earth. They would stop for a
moment, then recommence here and there, moving up and down, without her
being able to say precisely where they were. Perhaps they came from
the garden of the Voincourts, where some night pedestrian was lingering
under the trees. Or it might be, rather, that they were in the tufted
masses of the great lilac-bushes of the park of the Bishop, whose strong
perfume made her almost ill. She might do her best to try to penetrate
the darkness, it was only by her hearing that she was forewarned of the
coming events, aided a little by her sense of smell, as the perfume of
the flowers was increased as if a breath were mingled with it. And
so for several nights the steps resounded under the balcony, and she
listened as they came nearer, until they reached the walls under her
feet. There they stopped, and a long silence followed, until she seemed
almost to lose consciousness in this slow embrace of something of which
she was ignorant.

Not long after, she saw one evening the little crescent of the new moon
appear among the stars. But it soon disappeared behind the brow of
the Cathedral, like a bright, living eye that the lid re-covers.
She followed it with regret, and at each nightfall she awaited its
appearance, watched its growth, and was impatient for this torch which
would ere long light up the invisible. In fact, little by little, the
Clos-Marie came out from the obscurity, with the ruins of its old mill,
its clusters of trees, and its rapid little river. And then, in the
light, creation continued. That which came from a vision ended in being
embodied. For at first she only perceived that a dim shadow was moving
under the moonlight. What was it, then? A branch moved to and fro by the
wind? Or was it a large bat in constant motion? There were moments when
everything disappeared, and the field slept in so deathly a stillness
that she thought her eyes had deceived her. Soon there was no longer any
doubt possible, for a dark object had certainly just crossed the open
space and had glided from one willow-tree to another. It appeared, then
disappeared, without her being able exactly to define it.

One evening she thought she distinguished the dim outline of two
shoulders, and at once she turned her eyes towards the chapel window. It
had a greyish tint, as if empty, for the moon shining directly upon
it had deadened the light within. At that moment she noticed that the
living shadow grew larger, as it approached continually nearer and
nearer, walking in the grass at the side of the church. In proportion as
she realised it was a fact that someone was there, she was overcome by
an indefinable sensation, a nervous feeling that one has on being looked
at by mysterious unseen eyes.

Certainly someone was there under the trees who was regarding her
fixedly. She had on her hands and face, as it were, a physical
impression of those long, ardent, yet timid looks; but she did not
withdraw herself from them, because she knew they were pure, and came
from the enchanted world of which she had read in the “Golden Legend”;
and, in the certainty of a promised happiness, her first anxiety was
quickly changed into a delicious tranquillity.

One night, suddenly, on the ground whitened by the moon’s rays, the
shadow designed itself plainly and clearly. It was indeed that of a man
whom she could not see, as he was hidden by the willows. As he did not
move, she was able to look for a long time at his shadow.

From that moment Angelique had a secret. Her bare, whitewashed chamber
was filled with it. She remained there for hours lying on her great
bed--where she seemed lost, she was so little--her eyes closed, but not
asleep, and seeing continually before her, in her waking dreams, this
motionless shadow upon the earth. When she re-opened her eyes at dawn,
her looks wandered from the enormous wardrobe to the odd carved chest,
from the porcelain stove to the little toilet-table, as if surprised
at not seeing there the mysterious silhouette, which she could have so
easily and precisely traced from memory. In her sleep she had seen it
gliding among the pale heather-blossoms on her curtains. In her dreams,
as in her waking hours, her mind was filled with it. It was a companion
shadow to her own. She had thus a double being, although she was alone
with her fancies.

This secret she confided to no one, not even to Hubertine, to whom,
until now, she had always told even her thoughts. When the latter,
surprised at her gaiety, questioned her, she blushed deeply as she
replied that the early spring had made her very happy. From morning to
evening she hummed little snatches of song, like a bee intoxicated
by the heat of the sun’s rays. Never before had the chasubles she
embroidered been so resplendent with silk and gold. The Huberts smiled
as they watched her, thinking simply that this exuberance of spirits
came from her state of perfect health. As the day waned she grew more
excited, she sang at the rising of the moon, and as soon as the hour
arrived she hurried to her balcony, and waited for the shadow to appear.
During all the first quarters of the moon she found it exact at each
rendezvous, erect and silent. But that was all. What was the cause
of it? Why was it there? Was it, indeed, only a shadow? Was not it,
perhaps, the saint who had left his window, or the angel who had
formerly loved Saint Cecilia, and who had now come to love her in her
turn? Although she was not vain, these thoughts made her proud, and were
as sweet to her as an invisible caress. Then she grew impatient to know
more, and her watching recommenced.

The moon, at its full, lighted up the Clos-Marie. When it was at its
zenith, the trees, under the white rays which fell straight upon them
in perpendicular lines, cast no more shadows, but were like running
fountains of silent brightness. The whole garden was bathed and filled
with a luminous wave as limpid as crystal, and the brilliancy of it
was so penetrating that everything was clearly seen, even to the fine
cutting of the willow-leaves. The slightest possible trembling of air
seemed to wrinkle this lake of rays, sleeping in the universal peace
among the grand elm-trees of the neighbouring garden and the gigantic
brow of the Cathedral.

Two more evenings had passed like this, when, on the third night, as
Angelique was leaning on her elbows and looking out, her heart seemed to
receive a sudden shock. There, in the clear light, she saw him standing
before her and looking at her. His shadow, like that of the trees, had
disappeared under his feet, and he alone was there, distinctly seen. At
this distance she saw--as if it were full day--that he was tall, slight,
a blonde, and apparently about twenty years of age. He resembled either
a Saint George or a superb picture of Christ, with his curly hair, his
thin beard, his straight nose, rather large, and his proudly-smiling
black eyes. And she recognised him perfectly; never had she seen another
like him; it was he, her hero, and he was exactly as she expected to
find him. The wonder was at last accomplished; the slow creation of the
invisible had perfected itself in this living apparition, and he came
out from the unknown, from the movement of things, from murmuring
voices, from the action of the night, from all that had enveloped her,
until she almost fainted into unconsciousness. She also saw him as if he
were lifted above the earth, so supernatural appeared to be his coming,
whilst the miraculous seemed to surround him on every side as it floated
over the mysterious moon-lake. He had as his escort the entire people of
the Legend--the saints whose staffs blossomed, the virgins whose wounds
shed milk--and the stars seemed to pale before this white group of
perfection.

Angelique continued to look at him. He raised his arms, and held them
out, wide open. She was not at all afraid, but smiled sweetly.



CHAPTER VI

It was a great affair for the whole household when, every three months,
Hubertine prepared the “lye” for the wash. A woman was hired to aid
them, the Mother Gabet, as she was called, and for four days all
embroidery was laid aside, while Angelique took her part in the unusual
work, making of it a perfect amusement, as she soaped and rinsed the
clothes in the clean water of the Chevrotte. The linen when taken from
the ashes was wheeled to the Clos-Marie, through the little gate of
communication in the garden. There the days were spent in the open air
and the sunshine.

“I will do the washing this time, mother, for it is the greatest of
delights to me.”

And gaily laughing, with her sleeves drawn up above her elbows,
flourishing the beetle, Angelique struck the clothes most heartily
in the pleasure of such healthy exercise. It was hard work, but she
thoroughly enjoyed it, and only stopped occasionally to say a few words
or to show her shiny face covered with foam.

“Look, mother! This makes my arms strong. It does me a world of good.”

The Chevrotte crossed the field diagonally, at first drowsily, then its
stream became very rapid as it was thrown in great bubbles over a pebbly
descent. It came from the garden of the Bishop, through a species
of floodgate left at the foot of the wall, and at the other end it
disappeared under an arched vault at the corner of the Hotel Voincourt,
where it was swallowed up in the earth, to reappear two hundred yards
farther on, as it passed along the whole length of the Rue Basse to the
Ligneul, into which it emptied itself. Therefore it was very necessary
to watch the linen constantly, for, run as fast as possible, every piece
that was once let go was almost inevitably lost.

“Mother, wait, wait a little! I will put this heavy stone on the
napkins. We shall then see if the river can carry them away. The little
thief!”

She placed the stone firmly, then returned to draw another from the old,
tumble-down mill, enchanted to move about and to fatigue herself; and,
although she severely bruised her finger, she merely moistened it a
little, saying, “Oh! that is nothing.”

During the day the poor people who sheltered themselves in the ruins
went out to ask for charity from the passers-by on the highways. So the
Clos was quite deserted. It was a delicious, fresh solitude, with its
clusters of pale-green willows, its high poplar-trees, and especially
its verdure, its overflowing of deep-rooted wild herbs and grasses, so
high that they came up to one’s shoulders. A quivering silence came from
the two neighbouring parks, whose great trees barred the horizon.
After three o’clock in the afternoon the shadow of the Cathedral
was lengthened out with a calm sweetness and a perfume of evaporated
incense.

Angelique continued to beat the linen harder still, with all the force
of her well-shaped white arms.

“Oh, mother dear! You can have no idea how hungry I shall be this
evening! . . . Ah! you know that you have promised to give me a good
strawberry-cake.”

On the day of the rinsing, Angelique was quite alone. The _mère_ Gabet,
suffering from a sudden, severe attack of sciatica, had not been able to
come as usual, and Hubertine was kept at home by other household cares.

Kneeling in her little box half filled with straw, the young girl took
the pieces one by one, shook them for a long time in the swiftly-rolling
stream, until the water was no longer dimmed, but had become as clear
as crystal. She did not hurry at all, for since the morning she had been
tormented by a great curiosity, having seen, to her astonishment, an old
workman in a white blouse, who was putting up a light scaffolding before
the window of the Chapel Hautecœur. Could it be that they were about to
repair the stained-glass panes? There was, it must be confessed, great
need of doing so. Several pieces were wanting in the figure of Saint
George, and in other places, where in the course of centuries panes that
had been broken had been replaced by ordinary glass. Still, all this was
irritating to her. She was so accustomed to the gaps of the saint who
was piercing the dragon with his sword, and of the royal princess as she
led the conquered beast along with her scarf, that she already mourned
as if one had the intention of mutilating them. It was sacrilege to
think of changing such old, venerable things. But when she returned
to the field after her lunch, all her angry feelings passed away
immediately; for a second workman was upon the staging, a young man this
time, who also wore a white blouse. And she recognised him! It was he!
Her hero!

Gaily, without any embarrassment, Angelique resumed her place on her
knees on the straw of her box. Then, with her wrists bare, she put her
hands in the deep, clear water, and recommenced shaking the linen back
and forth.

Yes, it was he--tall, slight, a blonde, with his fine beard and his hair
curled like that of a god, his complexion as fresh as when she had first
seen him under the white shadow of the moonlight. Since it was he, there
was nothing to be feared for the window; were he to touch it, he would
only embellish it. And it was no disappointment to her whatever to
find him in this blouse, a workman like herself, a painter on glass, no
doubt. On the contrary, this fact made her smile, so absolutely certain
was she of the eventual fulfillment of her dream of royal fortune. Now,
it was simply an appearance, a beginning. What good would it do her
to know who he was, from whence he came, or whither he was going? Some
morning he would prove to be that which she expected him to be. A shower
of gold would stream from the roof of the Cathedral, a triumphal march
would break forth in the distant rumblings of the organ, and all would
come true. She did not stay to ask herself how he could always be there,
day and night. Yet it was evident either that he must live in one of the
neighbouring houses, or he must pass by the lane des Guerdaches, which
ran by the side of the Bishop’s park to the Rue Magloire.

Then a charming hour passed by. She bent forward, she rinsed her linen,
her face almost touching the fresh water; but each time she took a
different piece she raised her head, and cast towards the church a look,
in which from the agitation of her heart, was a little good-natured
malice. And he, upon the scaffolding, with an air of being closely
occupied in examining the state of the window, turned towards her,
glancing at her sideways, and evidently much disturbed whenever she
surprised him doing so. It was astonishing how quickly he blushed, how
dark red his face became. At the slightest emotion, whether of anger or
interest, all the blood in his veins seemed to mount to his face. He had
flashing eyes, which showed will; yet he was so diffident, that, when he
knew he was being criticised, he was embarrassed as a little child, did
not seem to know what to do with his hands, and stammered out his orders
to the old man who accompanied him.

As for Angelique, that which delighted her most, as she refreshed her
arms in this turbulent water, was to picture him innocent like herself,
ignorant of the world, and with an equally intense desire to have a
taste of life. There was no need of his telling to others who he was,
for had not invisible messengers and unseen lips made known to her that
he was to be her own? She looked once more, just as he was turning his
head; and so the minutes passed, and it was delicious.

Suddenly she saw that he jumped from the staging, then that he walked
backwards quite a distance through the grass, as if to take a certain
position from which he could examine the window more easily. But she
could not help smiling, so evident was it that he simply wished
to approach her. He had made a firm decision, like a man who risks
everything, and now it was touching as well as comical to see that he
remained standing a few steps from her, his back towards her, not daring
to move, fearing that he had been too hasty in coming as far as he
had done. For a moment she thought he would go back again to the
chapel-window as he had come from it, without paying any attention to
her. However, becoming desperate, at last he turned, and as at that
moment she was glancing in his direction, their eyes met, and they
remained gazing fixedly at each other. They were both deeply confused;
they lost their self-possession, and might never have been able to
regain it, had not a dramatic incident aroused them.

“Oh dear! Oh dear!” exclaimed the young girl, in distress.

In her excitement, a dressing-sacque, which she had been rinsing
unconsciously, had just escaped her, and the stream was fast bearing it
away. Yet another minute and it would disappear round the corner of the
wall of the Voincourt park, under the arched vault through which the
Chevrotte passed.

There were several seconds of anxious waiting. He saw at once what had
happened, and rushed forward. But the current, leaping over the pebbles,
carried this sacque, which seemed possessed, as it went along, much more
rapidly than he. He stooped, thinking he had caught it, but took up only
a handful of soapy foam. Twice he failed. The third time he almost fell.
Then, quite vexed, with a brave look as if doing something at the peril
of his life, he went into the water, and seized the garment just as it
was about being drawn under the ground.

Angelique, who until now had followed the rescue anxiously, quite upset,
as if threatened by a great misfortune, was so relieved that she had an
intense desire to laugh. This feeling was partly nervous, it is true,
but not entirely so. For was not this the adventure of which she had so
often dreamed? This meeting on the border of a lake; the terrible danger
from which she was to be saved by a young man, more beautiful than the
day? Saint George, the tribune, the warrior! These were simply united in
one, and he was this painter of stained glass, this young workman in
his white blouse! When she saw him coming back, his feet wet through
and through, as he held the dripping camisole awkwardly in his hand,
realising the ridiculous side of the energy he had employed in saving it
from the waves, she was obliged to bite her tongue to check the outburst
of gaiety which seemed almost to choke her.

He forgot himself as he looked at her. She was like a most adorable
child in this restrained mirth with which all her youth seemed to
vibrate. Splashed with water, her arms almost chilled by the stream,
she seemed to send forth from herself the purity and clearness of
these living springs which rushed from the mossy woods. She was an
impersonation of health, joy, and freshness, in the full sunlight. One
could easily fancy that she might be a careful housekeeper and a queen
withal as she was there, in her working dress, with her slender waist,
her regal neck, her oval face, such as one reads of in fairy-tales. And
he did not know how to give her back the linen, he found her exquisite,
so perfect a representation of the beauty of the art he loved. It
enraged him, in spite of himself, that he should have the air of an
idiot, as he plainly saw the effort she made not to laugh. But he was
forced to do something, so at last he gave her back the sacque.

Then Angelique realised that if she were to open her mouth and try to
thank him, she would shout. Poor fellow! She sympathised with him and
pitied him. But it was irresistible; she was happy, and needed to give
expression to it; she must yield to the gaiety with which her heart
overflowed. It was such lovely weather, and all life was so beautiful!

At last she thought she might speak, wishing simply to say: “Thank you,
Monsieur.”

But the wish to laugh had returned, and made her stammer, interrupting
her at each word. It was a loud, cheery laugh, a sonorous outpouring of
pearly notes, which sang sweetly to the crystalline accompaniment of the
Chevrotte.

The young man was so disconcerted that he could find nothing to say. His
usually pale face had become very red, the timid, childlike expression
of his eyes had changed into a fiery one, like that of an eagle, and he
moved away quickly. He disappeared with the old workman, and even then
she continued to laugh as she bent over the water, again splashing
herself as she shook the clothes hither and thither, rejoicing in the
brightness of the happy day.

On the morrow he came an hour earlier. But at five o’clock in the
morning the linen, which had been dripping all night, was spread out on
the grass. There was a brisk wind, which was excellent for drying. But
in order that the different articles need not be blown away, they were
kept in place by putting little pebbles on their four corners. The whole
wash was there, looking of a dazzling whiteness among the green herbage,
having a strong odour of plants about it, and making the meadow as if it
had suddenly blossomed out into a snowy covering of daisies.

When Angelique came to look at it after breakfast, she was distressed,
for so strong had become the gusts of wind that all threatened to be
carried away. Already a sheet had started, and several napkins had gone
to fasten themselves to the branches of a willow. She fortunately caught
them, but then the handkerchiefs began to fly. There was no one to help
her; she was so frightened that she lost all her presence of mind. When
she tried to spread out the sheet again, she had a regular battle,
for she was quite lost in it, as it covered her with a great crackling
sound.

Through all the noise of the wind she heard a voice saying,
“Mademoiselle, do you wish me to help you?”

It was he, and immediately she cried to him, with no other thought than
her pre-occupation as a good housewife:

“Of course I wish it. Come and help me, then. Take the end over there,
nearest to you. Hold it firm!”

The sheet, which they stretched out with their strong arms, flapped
backwards and forwards like a sail. At last they succeeded in putting it
on the ground, and then placed upon it much heavier stones than before.
And now that, quite conquered, it sank quietly down, neither of them
thought of leaving their places, but remained on their knees at the
opposite corners, separated by this great piece of pure white linen.

She smiled, but this time without malice. It was a silent message of
thanks. He became by degrees a little bolder.

“My name is Felicien.”

“And mine is Angelique.”

“I am a painter on glass, and have been charged to repair the
stained-glass window of the chapel here.”

“I live over there with my father and mother, and I am an embroiderer of
church vestments.”

The wind, which continued to be strong under the clear blue sky, carried
away their words, lashed them with its purifying breath in the midst of
the warm sunshine in which they were bathed.

They spoke of things which they already knew, as if simply for the
pleasure of talking.

“Is the window, then, to be replaced?”

“No! oh no! it will be so well repaired that the new part cannot be
distinguished from the old. I love it quite as much as you do.”

“Oh! it is indeed true that I love it! I have already embroidered a
Saint George, but it was not so beautiful as this one.”

“Oh, not so beautiful! How can you say that? I have seen it, if it is
the Saint George on the chasuble which the Abbot Cornille wore last
Sunday. It is a marvellous thing.”

She blushed with pleasure, but quickly turned the conversation, as she
exclaimed:

“Hurry and put another stone on the left corner of the sheet, or the
wind will carry it away from us again.”

He made all possible haste, weighed down the linen, which had been in
great commotion, like the wings of a great wounded bird trying its best
to fly away. Finding that this time it would probably keep its place,
the two young people rose up, and now Angelique went through the narrow,
green paths between the pieces of linen, glancing at each one, while
he followed her with an equally busy look, as if preoccupied by the
possible loss of a dish-towel or an apron. All this seemed quite natural
to them both. So she continued to chatter away freely and artlessly, as
she told of her daily life and explained her tastes.

“For my part, I always wish that everything should be in its place. In
the morning I am always awakened at the same hour by the striking of
the cuckoo-clock in the workroom; and whether it is scarcely daylight or
not, I dress myself as quickly as possible; my shoes and stockings
are here, my soap and all articles of toilette there--a true mania for
order. Yet you may well believe that I was not born so! Oh no! On the
contrary, I was the most careless person possible. Mother was obliged to
repeat to me the same words over and over again, that I might not leave
my things in every corner of the house, for I found it easier to scatter
them about. And now, when I am at work from morning to evening, I can
never do anything right if my chair is not in the same place, directly
opposite the light, Fortunately, I am neither right nor left handed, but
can use both hands equally well at embroidering, which is a great help
to me, for it is not everyone who can do that. Then, I adore flowers,
but I cannot keep a bouquet near me without having a terrible headache.
Violets alone I can bear, and that is surprising. But their odour seems
to calm me, and at the least indisposition I have only need to smell
them and I am at once cured.”

He was enraptured while listening to her prattle. He revelled in
the beautiful ring of her voice, which had an extremely penetrating,
prolonged charm; and he must have been peculiarly sensitive to this
human music, for the caressing inflection on certain words moistened his
eyelids.

Suddenly returning to her household cares she exclaimed:

“Oh, now the shirts will soon be dry!”

Then, in the unconscious and simple need of making herself known, she
continued her confidences:

“For colouring, the white is always beautiful, is it not? I tire at
times of blue, of red, and of all other shades; but white is a constant
joy, of which I am never weary. There is nothing in it to trouble you;
on the contrary, you would like to lose yourself in it. We had a white
cat, with yellow spots, which I painted white. It did very well for a
while, but it did not last long. Listen a minute. Mother does not know
it, but I keep all the waste bits of white silk, and have a drawer full
of them, for just nothing except the pleasure of looking at them, and
smoothing them over from time to time. And I have another secret, but
this is a very serious one! When I wake up, there is every morning near
my bed a great, white object, which gently flies away.”

He did not smile, but appeared firmly to believe her. Was not all she
said, in her simple way, quite natural? A queen in the magnificence of
her courtly surroundings could not have conquered him so quickly. She
had, in the midst of this white linen on the green grass, a charming,
grand air, happy and supreme, which touched him to the heart, with an
ever-increasing power. He was completely subdued. She was everything to
him from this moment. He would follow her to the last day of his life,
in the worship of her light feet, her delicate hands, of her whole
being, adorable and perfect as a dream. She continued to walk before
him, with a short quick step, and he followed her closely, suffocated by
a thought of the happiness he scarcely dared hope might come to him.

But another sudden gust of wind came up, and there was a perfect flight
into the distance of cambric collars and cuffs, of neckerchiefs and
chemisettes of muslin, which, as they disappeared, seemed like a flock
of white birds knocked about by the tempest.

Angelique began to run.

“Oh dear! What shall I do? You will have to come again and help me. Oh
dear!”

They both rushed forward. She caught a kerchief on the borders of the
Chevrotte. He had already saved two chemisettes which he found in the
midst of some high thistles. One by one the cuffs and the collars were
retaken. But in the course of their running at full speed, the flying
folds of her skirt had at several different times brushed against
him, and each time his face became suddenly red, and his heart beat
violently. In his turn, he touched her face accidentally, as she jumped
to recover the last fichu, which he had carelessly let go of. She was
startled and stood quietly, but breathing more quickly. She joked
no longer; her laugh sounded less clear, and she was not tempted to
ridicule this great awkward, but most attractive fellow. The feminine
nature so recently awakened in her softened her almost to tears, and
with the feeling of inexplicable tenderness, which overpowered her, was
mingled a half-fear.

What was the matter with her that she was less gay, and that she was so
overcome by this delicious pang? When he held out the kerchief to her,
their hands, by chance, touched for a moment. They trembled, as they
looked at each other inquiringly. Then she drew back quickly, and
for several seconds seemed not to know what she should do under the
extraordinary circumstances which had just occurred. At last she
started. Gathering up all the smaller articles of linen in her arms, and
leaving the rest, she turned towards her home.

Felicien then wished to speak . . . “Oh, I beg your pardon. . . . I pray
you to----”

But the wind, which had greatly increased, cut off his words. In despair
he looked at her as she flew along, as if carried away by the blast. She
ran and ran, in and out, among the white sheets and tablecloths, under
the oblique, pale golden rays of the sun. Already the shadow of the
Cathedral seemed to envelop her, and she was on the point of entering
her own garden by the little gate which separated it from the Clos,
without having once glanced behind her. But on the threshold she turned
quickly, as if seized with a kind impulse, not wishing that he should
think she was angry, and confused, but smiling, she called out:

“Thank you. Thank you very much.”

Did she wish to say that she was grateful to him for having helped her
in recovering the linen? Or was it for something else? She disappeared,
and the gate was shut after her.

And he remained alone in the middle of the field, under the great
regular gusts, which continued to rage, although the sky was still clear
and pure. The elms in the Bishop’s garden rustled with a long, billowy
sound, and a loud voice seemed to clamour through the terraces and the
flying buttresses of the Cathedral. But he heard only the light flapping
of a little morning cap, tied to a branch of a lilac bush, as if it were
a bouquet, and which belonged to her.

From that date, each time that Angelique opened her window she saw
Felicien over there in the Clos-Marie. He passed days in the field,
having the chapel window as an excuse for doing so, on which, however,
the work did not advance the least in the world. For hours he would
forget himself behind a cluster of bushes, where, stretched out on
the grass, he watched through the leaves. And it was the greatest of
pleasures to smile at each other every morning and evening. She was
so happy that she asked for nothing more. There would not be another
general washing for three months, so, until then, the little garden-gate
would seldom be open. But three months would pass very quickly, and
if they could see each other daily, was not that bliss enough? What,
indeed, could be more charming than to live in this way, thinking during
the day of the evening look, and during the night of the glance of the
early morrow? She existed only in the hope of that desired moment; its
joy filled her life. Moreover, what good would there be in approaching
each other and in talking together? Were they not constantly becoming
better acquainted without meeting? Although at a distance, they
understood each other perfectly; each penetrated into the other’s
innermost thoughts with the closest intimacy. At last, they became so
filled one with the other that they could not close their eyes without
seeing before them, with an astonishing clearness of detail, the image
of their new friend; so, in reality, they were never separated.

It was a constant surprise to Angelique that she had unbosomed herself
at once to Felicien. At their first meeting she had confided in him,
had told him everything about her habits, her tastes, and the deepest
secrets of her heart. He, more silent, was called Felicien, and that was
all she knew. Perhaps it was quite right that it should be so; the woman
giving everything, and the man holding himself back as a stranger. She
had no premature curiosity. She continued to smile at the thought of
things which would certainly be realised. So for her, that of which she
was ignorant counted for nothing. The only important fact in her mind
was the intimacy between them, which united them, little by little,
apart from the world. She knew nothing about him, yet she was so well
acquainted with his nature that she could read his thoughts in a simple
look or smile. He, her hero, had come as she always said he would. She
had at once recognised him, and they loved each other.

So they enjoyed most thoroughly this true possession from a distance.
They were certainly encouraged by the new discoveries they made. She had
long, slender hands, roughened a little at the ends of the fingers by
her constant use of the needle, but he adored them. She noticed that
his feet were small, and was proud of the fact. Everything about him
flattered her; she was grateful to him for being so handsome; and she
was overcome with joy the evening that she found his beard to be of a
lighter shade than his hair, which fact gave a greater softness to his
smile. He went away transported when, one morning, as she leaned over
the balcony, he saw a little red spot on her pretty neck. Their hearts
being thus laid open, new treasures were daily found. Certainly the
proud and frank manner in which she opened her window showed that, even
in her ignorance as a little embroiderer, she had the royal bearing of
a princess. In the same way she knew that he was good, from seeing
how lightly he walked over the herbs and the grass. Around them was a
radiance of virtues and graces from the first hour of their meeting.
Each interview had its special charm. It seemed to them as if their
felicity in seeing each other could never be exhausted.

Nevertheless, Felicien soon showed certain signs of impatience, and he
no longer remained for hours concealed behind a bush in the immobility
of an absolute happiness. As soon as Angelique appeared at her window,
he was restless, and tried to approach her as he glided from willow to
willow. At length she was a little disturbed, fearing that someone might
see him. One day there was almost a quarrel, for he came even to the
wall of the house, so she was obliged to leave the balcony. It was a
great shock to him that she should be offended, and he showed in the
expression of his face so mute a prayer of submission that the next day
she pardoned him, and opened her window at the usual hour.

But although expectation was delightful, it was not sufficient for him,
and he began again. Now he seemed to be everywhere at once: he filled
the Clos-Marie with his restlessness; he came out from behind every
tree; he appeared above every bunch of brambles. Like the wood-pigeons
of the great elms in the Bishop’s garden, he seemed to have his
habitation between two branches in the environs. The Chevrotte was an
excuse for his passing entire days there, on its willowy banks, bending
over the stream, in which he seemed to be watching the floating of the
clouds.

One day she saw that he had climbed up on the ruins of the old mill,
and was standing on the framework of a shed, looking happy to have thus
approached her a little, in his regret at not being able to fly even so
far as her shoulder.

Another day she stifled a slight scream as she saw him far above her,
leaning on an ornamented balustrade of the Cathedral, on the roof of the
chapels of the choir, which formed a terrace. In what way could he have
reached this gallery, the door of which was always fastened, and whose
key no one had a right to touch but the beadle? Then again, a little
later on, how was it that she should find him up in the air among the
flying buttresses of the nave and the pinnacles of the piers? From these
heights he could look into every part of her chamber, as the swallows
who, flying from point to point among the spires, saw everything that
was therein, without her having the idea of hiding herself from them.
But a human eye was different, and from that day she shut herself up
more, and an ever-increasing trouble came to her at the thought that her
privacy was being intruded upon, and that she was no longer alone in
the atmosphere of adoration that surrounded her. If she were really not
impatient, why was it that her heart beat so strongly, like the bell of
the clock-tower on great festivals?

Three days passed without Angelique showing herself, so alarmed was she
by the increasing boldness of Felicien. She vowed in her mind that she
would never see him again, and wound herself up to such a degree of
resentment, that she thought she hated him. But he had given her his
feverishness. She could not keep still, and the slightest pretext was
enough for an excuse to leave the chasuble upon which she was at work.

So, having heard that _mère_ Gabet was ill in bed, in the most profound
poverty, she went to see her every morning. Her room was on the Rue des
Orfèvres, only three doors away from the Huberts. She would take her
tea, sugar, and soup, then, when necessary, go to buy her medicine at
the druggist’s on the Grand Rue. One day, as she returned with her hands
full of the little phials, she started at seeing Felicien at the bedside
of the old sick woman. He turned very red, and slipped away awkwardly,
after leaving a charitable offering. The next day he came in as she was
leaving, and she gave him her place, very much displeased. Did he really
intend to prevent her from visiting the poor?

In fact, she had been taken with one of her fits of charity, which made
her give all she owned that she might overwhelm those who had nothing.
At the idea of suffering, her whole soul melted into a pitiful
fraternity. She went often to the _père_ Mascart’s, a blind paralytic
on the Rue Basse, whom she was obliged to feed herself the broth she
carried him; then to the Chouteaux, a man and his wife, each one over
ninety years of age, who lived in a little hut on the Rue Magloire,
which she had furnished for them with articles taken from the attic of
her parents. Then there were others and others still whom she saw among
the wretched populace of the quarter, and whom she helped to support
from things that were about her, happy in being able to surprise them
and to see them brighten up for a little while. But now, strange to say,
wherever she went she encountered Felicien! Never before had she seen
so much of him; she who had avoided going to her window for fear that he
might be near. Her trouble increased, and at last she was very angry.

But the worst of all in this matter was that Angelique soon despaired of
her charity. This young man spoilt all her pleasure of giving. In other
days he might perhaps have been equally generous, but it was not among
the same people, not her own particular poor, of that she was sure. And
he must have watched her and followed her very closely to know them all
and to take them so regularly one after the other.

Now, go when she might with a little basket of provisions to the
Chouteaux, there was always money on the table. One day, when she
went to _père_ Mascart, who was constantly complaining that he had no
tobacco, she found him very rich, with a shining new louis d’or on his
table. Strangest of all, once when visiting _mère_ Gabet, the latter
gave her a hundred franc note to change, and with it she was enabled to
buy some high-priced medicines, of which the poor woman had long been
in need, but which she never hoped to obtain, for where could she find
money to pay for them?

Angelique herself could not distribute much money, as she had none. It
was heart-breaking to her to realise her powerlessness, when he could so
easily empty his purse. She was, of course, happy that such a windfall
had come to the poor, but she felt as if she were greatly diminished
in her former self-estimation. She no longer had the same happiness in
giving, but was disturbed and sad that she had so little to distribute,
while he had so much.

The young man, not understanding her feelings, thinking to conquer her
esteem by an increase of gifts, redoubled his charity, and thus daily
made hers seem less.

Was not it exasperating to run against this fellow everywhere; to see
him give an ox wherever she offered an egg? In addition to all this, she
was obliged to hear his praises sung by all the needy whom he visited:
“a young man so good, so kind, and so well brought up.” She was a mere
nothing now. They talked only of him, spreading out his gifts as if to
shame hers. Notwithstanding her firm determination to forget him, she
could not refrain from questioning them about him. What had he left?
What had he said? He was very handsome, was he not? Tender and diffident
as a woman! Perhaps he might even have spoken of her! Ah, yes indeed!
That was true, for he always talked of her. Then she was very angry;
yes, she certainly hated him, for at last she realised that he weighed
on her breast too heavily.

But matters could not continue in this way for ever, a change must take
place; and one May evening, at a wondrously beautiful nightfall, it
came. It was at the home of the Lemballeuse, the family who lived in
the ruins of the mill. There were only women there; the old grandmother,
seamed with wrinkles but still active, her daughter, and her
grandchildren. Of the latter, Tiennette, the elder, was a large,
wild-looking girl, twenty years of age, and her two little sisters, Rose
and Jeanne, had already bold, fearless eyes, under their unkempt mops
of red hair. They all begged during the day on the highway and along the
moat, coming back at night, their feet worn out from fatigue in their
old shoes fastened with bits of string. Indeed, that very evening
Tiennette had been obliged to leave hers among the stones, and had
returned wounded and with bleeding ankles. Seated before their door, in
the midst of the high grass of the Clos-Marie, she drew out the thorns
from her flesh, whilst her mother and the two children surrounded her
and uttered lamentations.

Just then Angelique arrived, hiding under her apron the bread which she
had brought them, as she did once every week. She had entered the field
by the little garden-gate, which she had left open behind her, as she
intended to go back as quickly as possible. But she stopped on seeing
all the family in tears.

“What is the matter? Why are you in such distress?”

“Ah, my good lady!” whined the mother Lemballeuse, “do not you see in
what a terrible state this great foolish girl has put herself? To-morrow
she will not be able to walk, so that will be a whole day lost. She must
have some shoes!”

Rose and Jeanne, with their eyes snapping from under their tangled hair,
redoubled their sobs, as they cried out loudly--

“Yes, yes! She must have some shoes! She must have some shoes!”

Tiennette, half lifting up her thin, dark face, looked round furtively.
Then, fiercely, without a word, she made one of her feet bleed still
more, maddened over a long splinter which she had just drawn out by the
aid of a pin, and which must have pained her intensely.

Angelique, quite touched by the scene, offered her the gift.

“See! Here at least is some bread.”

“Oh, bread!” said the mother. “No doubt it is necessary to eat. But
it is not with bread that she will be able to walk again, of that I am
certain! And we were to go to the fair at Bligny, a fair where, every
year, she makes at least two francs. Oh, good heavens! What will become
of us if she cannot go there?”

Pity and embarrassment rendered Angelique mute. She had exactly five
sous in her pocket. It surely was not with five sous that one could buy
a pair of shoes, even at an auction sale. As it had often done before,
her want of money now paralysed her. And that which exasperated her
still more and made her lose her self-control was that at this moment,
as she looked behind her, she saw Felicien, standing a few feet from her
in the darkening shadow. Without doubt he had heard all that had been
said; perhaps even he had been there for a great while, for he always
appeared to her in this way when least expected without her ever knowing
whence he came or whither he was going.

She thought to herself, “He will give the shoes.”

Indeed, he had already come forward. The first stars were appearing in
the pale sky. A sweet, gentle quiet seemed to fall down from on high,
soothing to sleep the Clos-Marie, whose willows were lost in the dusk.
The Cathedral itself was only a great black bar in the West.

“Yes, certainly, now he will offer to give the shoes.”

And at this probability she was really quite discouraged. Was he always,
then, to give everything? Could she never, even once, conquer him?
Never! Her heart beat so rapidly that it pained her. She wished that she
might be very rich, to show him that she, too, could make others happy.

But the Lemballeuse had seen the good gentleman. The mother had rushed
forward; the two little sisters moaned as they held out their hands for
alms, whilst the elder one, letting go of her wounded ankles, looked at
the new-comer inquiringly with her wild eyes.

“Listen, my noisy children,” said Felicien. Then, addressing the mother,
he continued, “You may go to the Grand Rue, at the corner of the Rue
Basse--”

Angelique had understood immediately, for the shoemaker had his shop
there. She interrupted him quickly, and was so agitated that she
stammered her words at random.

“But that is a useless thing to do! What would be the good of it? It is
much more simple--”

Yet she could not find in her own mind the more simple thing she
desired. What could she do? What could she invent, so to be before him
in giving her charity? Never had it seemed to her possible she could
detest him as she did now.

“You will say from me, that it is I who have sent you,” continued
Felicien. “You will ask--”

Again she interrupted him. The contest lasted a moment longer. She
repeated in an anxious way:

“It is, indeed, much more simple; it is much easier--”

Suddenly she was calm. She seated herself upon a stone, thoughtfully
examined her shoes, took them off, and then drew off her stockings,
saying:

“Look! This is the best thing to do, after all! Why should you have any
trouble about the matter?”

“Oh, my good young lady! God will reward you!” exclaimed the mother
Lemballeuse, as she turned over the shoes and found they were not only
excellent and strong, but almost new. “I will cut them a trifle on the
top, to make them a little larger--Tiennette, why do you not thank her,
stupid creature?”

Tiennette snatched from the hands of Rose and Jeanne the stockings they
were coveting. She did not open her lips; she only gave one long, fixed,
hard look.

But now Angelique realised that her feet were bare, and that Felicien
saw them. She blushed deeply, and knew not what to do. She dared not
move, for, were she to rise to get up, he would only see them all the
more. Then, frightened, she rose quickly, and without realising what she
was doing, began to run. In the grass her flying feet were very white
and small. The darkness of the evening had increased, and the Clos-Marie
was a lake of shadow between the great trees on one side and the
Cathedral on the other. And on the ground the only visible light came
from those same little feet, white and satiny as the wing of a dove.

Startled and afraid of the water, Angelique followed the bank of the
Chevrotte, that she might cross it on a plank which served as a bridge.
But Felicien had gone a shorter way through the brambles and brushwood.
Until now he had always been overcome by his timidity, and he had turned
redder than she as he saw her bare feet, pure and chaste as herself.
Now, in the overflow of his ignorant youth, passionately fond of beauty
and desirous for love, he was impatient to cry out and tell her of the
feeling which had entirely taken possession of him since he had first
seen her. But yet, when she brushed by him in her flight, he could only
stammer, with a trembling voice, the acknowledgment so long delayed and
which burnt his lips:

“I love you.”

She stopped in surprise. For an instant she stood still, and, slightly
trembling, looked at him. Her anger and the hate she thought she had for
him all vanished at once, and melted into a most delicious sentiment
of astonishment. What had he said, what was the word he had just
pronounced, that she should be so overcome by it? She knew that he loved
her; yet when he said so, the sound of it in her ear overwhelmed her
with an inexplicable joy. It resounded so deeply through her whole
being, that her fears came back and were enlarged. She never would dare
reply to him; it was really more than she could bear; she was oppressed.

He, grown more bold, his heart touched and drawn nearer to hers by their
united deeds of charity, repeated:

“I love you.”

And she, fearing the lover, began to run. That was surely the only way
to escape such a danger; yet it was also a happiness, it was all so
strange. The Chevrotte was gaily singing, and she plunged into it like a
startled fawn. Among its pebbles her feet still ran on, under the chill
of icy water. The garden-gate was at last reached, it closed, and she
disappeared.



CHAPTER VII

For two days Angelique was conscience-smitten. As soon as she was alone,
she sobbed as if she had done something wrong. And this question, which
she could not answer, came constantly to her mind: Had she sinned in
listening to this young man? Was she lost, like the dreadful women in
the Legend, who, having been tempted, had yielded to the Devil? Was life
to-day as it was centuries ago? The words, so softly uttered, “I love
you,” still resounded with such a tumult in her ears, and she was
confused, yet pleased by them to such a degree, that they must certainly
have come from some terrible power hidden in the depth of the invisible.
But she knew not--in fact, how could she have known anything in the
ignorance and solitude in which she had grown up? Her anguish was
redoubled by this mysterious and inexplicable struggle within her.

Had she sinned in making the acquaintance of Felicien, and then in
keeping it a secret? She recalled to her mind, one by one, all the
details of her daily experience during the past few weeks; she argued
with her innocent scruples.

What was sin, in short? Was it simply to meet--to talk--and afterwards
to tell a falsehood to one’s parents? But that could not be the extent
of the evil. Then why was she so oppressed? Why, if not guilty, did she
suddenly seem to have become quite another person--as agitated as if
a new soul had been given her? Perhaps it was sin that had made her
so weak and uncomfortable. Her heart was full of vague, undefined
longings--so strange a medley of words, and also of acts, in the future,
that she was frightened by them, without in the least understanding
them. The blood mounted to her face, and exquisitely coloured her
cheeks, as she heard again the sweet, yet appalling words, “I love you”;
and she reasoned no longer, but sobbed again, doubting evident facts,
fearing the commission of a fault in the beyond--in that which had
neither name nor form.

But that which especially distressed her now was that she had not made a
_confidante_ of Hubertine. Could she only have asked her what she wished
to know, no doubt the latter with a word would have explained the whole
mystery to her. Then it seemed to her as if the mere fact of speaking to
someone of her trouble would have cured her. But the secret had become
too weighty; to reveal it would be more than she could bear, for the
shame would be too great. She became quite artful for the moment,
affected an air of calmness, when in the depths of her soul a tempest
was raging. If asked why she was so pre-occupied, she lifted her
eyes with a look of surprise as she replied that she was thinking of
something. Seated before the working-frame, her hands mechanically
drawing the needle back and forth, very quiet to all outward appearance,
she was, from morning till evening, distracted by one thought. To be
loved! To be loved! And for herself, on her side, was she in love? This
was still an obscure question, to which, in her inexperience, she found
no answer. She repeated it so constantly that at last it made her giddy,
the words lost all their usual meaning, and everything seemed to be in a
whirl, which carried her away. With an effort she recovered herself, and
realised that, with needle in hand, she was still embroidering with her
accustomed application, although mechanically, as if in a half-dream.
Perhaps these strange symptoms were a sign that she was about to have a
severe illness. One evening she had such an attack of shivering when she
went to bed that she thought she would never be able to recover from it.
That idea was at the same time both cruel and sweet. She suffered from
it as if it were too great a joy. Even the next day her heart beat as if
it would break, and her ears were filled with a singing sound, like the
ringing of a distant bell. What could it mean? Was she in love, or was
she about to die? Thinking thus, she smiled sweetly at Hubertine, who,
in the act of waxing her thread, was looking at her anxiously.

Moreover, Angelique had made a vow that she would never again see
Felicien. She no longer ran the risk of meeting him among the brambles
and wild grasses in the Clos-Marie, and she had even given up her
daily visits to the poor. Her fear was intense lest, were they to find
themselves face to face, something terrible might come to pass. In her
resolution there was mingled, besides a feeling of penitence, a wish to
punish herself for some fault she might unintentionally have committed.
So, in her days of rigid humiliation, she condemned herself not even to
glance once through the window, so sure was she of seeing on the banks
of the Chevrotte the one whom she dreaded. But, after a while, being
sorely tempted, she looked out, and if it chanced that he were not
there, she was sad and low-spirited until the following day.

One morning, when Hubert was arranging a dalmatic, a ring at the
door-bell obliged him to go downstairs. It must be a customer; no doubt
an order for some article, as Hubertine and Angelique heard the hum of
voices which came through the doorway at the head of the stairs, which
remained open. Then they looked up in great astonishment; for steps
were mounting, and the embroiderer was bringing someone with him to
the workroom, a most unusual occurrence. And the young girl was quite
overcome as she recognised Felicien. He was dre

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