:-NRLF 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 BY HENRY JAMES 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 BONI AND LIVERIGHT 
 
 1918 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1918. 
 BY BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC. 
 

 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 d O i in n 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 PART I 
 
 MY good old friend, in his white 
 flannel dressing-gown, with his 
 wig "removed," as they say of the 
 dinner-service, by a crimson 
 nightcap, sat for some moments gazing into the 
 fire. At last he looked up. I knew what 
 was coming. "Apropos, that little debt of 
 mine 
 
 Not that the debt was really very little. But 
 M. de Bergerac was a man of honor, and I 
 knew I should receive my dues. He told me 
 frankly that he saw no way, either in the pres 
 ent or the future, to reimburse me in cash. 
 His only treasures were his paintings; would 
 I choose one of them? Now I had not spent 
 an hour in M. de Bergerac s little parlor twice 
 a week for three winters, without learning that 
 
 7 
 
8 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 the Baron s paintings were, with a single ex 
 ception, of very indifferent merit. On the 
 other hand, I had taken a great fancy to the 
 picture thus excepted. Yet, as I knew it was 
 a family portrait, I hesitated to claim it. I 
 refused to make a choice. M. de Bergerac, 
 however, insisted, and I finally laid my finger 
 on the charming image of my friend s aunt. 
 I of course insisted, on my side, that M. de 
 Bergerac should retain it during the remainder 
 of his life, and so it was only after his decease 
 that I came into possession of it. It hangs 
 above my table as I write, and I have only to 
 glance up at the face of my heroine to feel 
 how vain it is to attempt to describe it. The 
 portrait represents, in dimensions several de 
 grees below those of nature, the head and 
 shoulders of a young girl of two-and-twenty. 
 The execution of the work is not especially 
 strong, but it is thoroughly respectable and 
 one may easily see that the painter deeply ap 
 preciated the character of the face. The coun 
 tenance is interesting rather than beautiful, 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 the forehead broad and open, the eyes slightly 
 prominent, all the features full and firm and 
 yet replete with gentleness. The head is 
 slightly thrown back, as if in movement, and 
 the lips are parted in a half-smile. And yet, 
 in spite of this tender smile, I always fancy 
 that the eyes are sad. The hair, dressed with 
 out powder, is rolled back over a high cushion 
 (as I suppose), and adorned just above the 
 left ear with a single white rose; while, on the 
 other side, a heavy tress from behind hangs 
 upon the neck with a sort of pastoral freedom. 
 The neck is long and full, and the shoulders 
 rather broad. The whole face has a look of 
 mingled softness and decision, and seems to 
 reveal a nature inclined to revery, affection, 
 and repose, but capable of action and even of 
 heroism. Mile, de Bergerac died under the 
 axe of the Terrorists. Now that I had ac 
 quired a certain property in this sole memento 
 of her life, I felt a natural curiosity as to her 
 character and history. Had M. de Bergerac 
 known his aunt? Did he remember her? 
 
10 GABHIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 Would it be a tax on his good-nature to sug 
 gest that he should favor me with a few remi 
 niscences? The old man fixed his eyes on the 
 fire, and laid his hand on mine, as if his mem 
 ory were fain to draw from both sources 
 from the ruddy glow and from my fresh young 
 blood a certain vital, quickening warmth. A 
 mild, rich smile ran to his lips, and he pressed 
 my hand. Somehow, I hardly know why, 
 I felt touched almost to tears. Mile, de Ber- 
 gerac had been a familiar figure in her 
 nephew s boyhood, and an important event in 
 her life had formed a sort of episode in his 
 younger days. It was a simple enough story; 
 but such as it was, then and there, settling 
 back into his chair, with the fingers of the 
 clock wandering on to the small hours of the 
 night, he told it with a tender, lingering gar 
 rulity. Such as it is, I repeat it. I shall give, 
 as far as possible, my friend s words, or the 
 English of them; but the reader will have to 
 do without his inimitable accents. For them 
 there is no English. 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 11 
 
 My father s household at Bergerac (said the 
 Baron) consisted, exclusive of the servants, of 
 five persons, himself, my mother, my aunt 
 (Mile, de Bergerac), M. Coquelin (my pre 
 ceptor), and M. Coquelin s pupil, the heir of 
 the house. Perhaps, indeed, I should have 
 numbered M. Coquelin among the servants. 
 It is certain that my mother did. Poor little 
 woman! she was a great stickler for the rights 
 of birth. Her own birth was all she had, for 
 she was without health, beauty, or fortune. 
 My father, on his side, had very little of the 
 last; his property of Bergerac yielded only 
 enough to keep us without discredit. We gave 
 no entertainments, and passed the whole year 
 in the country ; and as my mother was resolved 
 that her weak health should do her a kindness 
 as well as an injury, it was put forward as an 
 apology for everything. We led at best a 
 simple, somnolent sort of life. There was a 
 terrible amount of leisure for rural gentlefolks 
 in those good old days. We slept a great deal; 
 we slept, you will say, on a volcano. It was 
 
12 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 a very different world from this patent new 
 world of yours, and I may say that I was born 
 on a different planet. Yes, in 1789, there 
 came a great convulsion; the earth cracked 
 and opened and broke, and this poor old pays 
 de France went whirling through space. 
 When I look back at my childhood, I look over 
 a gulf. Three years ago, I spent a week at 
 a country house in the neighborhood of Ber- 
 gerac, and my hostess drove me over to the 
 site of the chateau. The house has disap 
 peared, and there s a homoeopathic hydro 
 pathic what do you call it? establishment 
 erected in its place. But the little town is 
 there, and the bridge on the river, and the 
 church where I was christened, and the double 
 row of lime-trees on the market-place, and 
 the fountain in the middle. There s only one 
 striking difference : the sky is changed. I was 
 born under the old sky. It was black enough, 
 of course, if we had only had eyes to see it; 
 but to me, I confess, it looked divinely blue. 
 And in fact it was very bright, the little 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 13 
 
 patch under which I cast my juvenile shadow. 
 An odd enough little shadow you would 
 have thought it. I was promiscuously cud 
 dled and fondled. I was M. le Cheva 
 lier, and prospective master of Bergerac; and 
 when I walked to church on Sunday, I 
 had a dozen yards of lace on my coat and a 
 little sword at my side. My poor mother did 
 her best to make me good for nothing. She 
 had her maid to curl my hair with the tongs, 
 and she used with her own fingers to stick 
 little black patches on my face. And yet I 
 was a good deal neglected too, and I would 
 go for days with black patches of another sort. 
 I m afraid I should have got very little educa 
 tion if a kind Providence hadn t given me 
 poor M. Coquelin. A kind Providence, that 
 is, and my father ; for with my mother my tutor 
 was no favorite. She thought him and, in 
 deed, she called him a bumpkin, a clown. 
 There was a very pretty abbe among her 
 friends, M. Tiblaud by name, whom she 
 wished to install at the chateau as my intellec- 
 
14 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 tual, and her spiritual, adviser; but my father, 
 who, without being anything of an esprit fort, 
 had an incurable aversion to a priest out of 
 church, very soon routed this pious scheme. 
 My poor father was an odd figure of a man. 
 He belonged to a type as completely obsolete 
 as the biggest of those big-boned, pre-historic 
 monsters discovered by M. Cuvier. He was 
 not overburdened with opinions or principles. 
 The only truth that was absolute to his per 
 ception was that the house of Bergerac was 
 de bonne noblesse. His tastes were not deli 
 cate. He was fond of the open air, of long 
 rides, of the smell of the game-stocked woods 
 in autumn, of playing at bowls, of a drinking- 
 cup, of a dirty pack of cards, and a free- 
 spoken tavern Hebe. I have nothing of him 
 but his name. I strike you as an old fossil, 
 a relic, a mummy. Good heavens ! you should 
 have seen him, his good, his bad manners, his 
 arrogance, his bonhomie, his stupidity and 
 pluck. 
 
 My early years had promised ill for my 
 
GABRIELLE I)E BEUGEUAC 15 
 
 health; I was listless and languid, and my 
 father had been content to leave me to the 
 women, who, on the whole, as I have said, left 
 me a good deal to myself. But one morning he 
 seemed suddenly to remember that he had a 
 little son and heir running wild. It was, I re 
 member, in my ninth year, a morning early in 
 June, after breakfast, at eleven o clock. lie 
 took me by the hand and led me out on the 
 terrace, and sat down and made me stand be 
 tween his knees. I was engaged upon a great 
 piece of bread and butter, which I had 
 brought away from the table. He put his 
 hand into my hair, and, for the first time that 
 I could remember, looked me straight in the 
 face. I had seen him take the forelock of a 
 young colt in the same way, when he wished to 
 look at its teeth. What did he want? Was 
 he going to send me for sale? His eyes 
 seemed prodigiously black and his eyebrows 
 terribly thick. They were very much the eye 
 brows of that portrait. My father passed his 
 
16 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 other hand over the muscles of my arms and 
 the sinews of my poor little legs. 
 
 "Chevalier," said he, "you re dreadfully 
 puny. What s one to do with you?" 
 
 I dropped my eyes and said nothing. 
 Heaven knows I felt puny. 
 
 "It s time you knew how to read and write. 
 What are you blushing at?" 
 
 "I do know how to read," said I. 
 
 My father stared. "Pray, who taught 
 you?" 
 
 "I learned in a book." 
 
 "What book?" 
 
 I looked up at my father before I answered. 
 His eyes were bright, and there was a little 
 flush in his face, I hardly knew whether of 
 pleasure or anger. I disengaged myself and 
 went into the drawing-room, where I took 
 from a cupboard in the wall an odd volume of 
 Scarron s Eomcun comique. As I had to go 
 through the house, I was absent some minutes. 
 When I came back I found a stranger on the 
 terrace. A young man in poor clothes, with 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 17 
 
 a walking-stick, had come up from the avenue, 
 and stood before my father, with his hat in his 
 hand. At the farther end of the terrace was 
 my aunt. She was sitting on the parapet, 
 playing with a great black crow, which we 
 kept in a cage in the dining-room window. I 
 betook myself to my father s side with my 
 book, and stood staring at our visitor. He 
 was a dark-eyed, sunburnt young man, of 
 about twenty-eight, of middle height, broad in 
 the shoulders and short in the neck, with a 
 slight lameness in one of his legs. He looked 
 travel-stained and weary and pale. I remem 
 ber there was something prepossessing in his 
 being pale. I didn t know that the paleness 
 came simply from his being horribly hungry. 
 
 "In view of these facts," he said, as I came 
 up, "I have ventured to presume upon the 
 good-will of M. le Baron." 
 
 My father sat back in his chair, with his 
 legs apart and a hand on each knee and his 
 waistcoat unbuttoned, as was usual after a 
 meal. "Upon my word," he said, "I don t 
 
18 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 know what I can do for you. There s no 
 place for you in my own household/ 
 
 The young man was silent a moment. "Has 
 M. le Baron any children?" he asked, after a 
 pause. 
 
 "I have my son whom you see here." 
 
 "May I inquire if M. le Chevalier is sup 
 plied with a preceptor?" 
 
 My father glanced down at me. "Indeed, 
 he seems to be," he cried. "What have you 
 got there?" And he took my book. "The 
 little rascal has M. Scarron for a teacher. 
 This is his preceptor!" 
 
 I blushed very hard, and the young man 
 smiled. "Is that your only teacher?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "My aunt taught me to read," I said, look 
 ing round at her. 
 
 "And did your aunt recommend this book?" 
 asked my father. 
 
 "My aunt gave me M. Plutarque," I said. 
 
 My father burst out laughing, and the young 
 man put his hat up to his mouth. But I could 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 19 
 
 see that above it his eyes had a very good- 
 natured look. My aunt, seeing that her name 
 had been mentioned, walked slowly over to 
 where we stood, still holding her crow on her 
 hand. You have her there before you; judge 
 how she looked. I remember that she fre 
 quently dressed in blue, my poor aunt, and I 
 know that she must have dressed simply. 
 Fancy her in a light stuff gown, covered with 
 big blue flowers, with a blue ribbon in her dark 
 hair, and the points of her high-heeled blue 
 slippers peeping out under her stiff white petti 
 coat. Imagine her strolling along the terrace 
 of the chateau with a villainous black crow 
 perched on her wrist. You ll admit it s a pic 
 ture. 
 
 "Is all this true, sister?" said my father. "Is 
 the Chevalier such a scholar?" 
 
 "He s a clever boy," said my aunt, putting 
 her hand on my head. 
 
 "It seems to me that at a pinch he could do 
 without a preceptor," said my father. "He has 
 such a learned aunt." 
 
20 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 "I ve taught him all I know. He had begui 
 to ask me questions that I was quite unable t< 
 
 answer." 
 
 "I should think he might," cried my father 
 with a broad laugh, "when once he had got int< 
 M. Scarron!" 
 
 "Questions out of Plutarch," said Mile. d< 
 Bergerac, "which you must know Latin t< 
 
 answer." 
 
 "Would you like to know Latin, M. L 
 Chevalier?" said the young man, looking at m< 
 with a smile. 
 
 "Do you know Latin, you?" I asked. 
 
 "Perfectly," said the young man, with th( 
 same smile. 
 
 "Do you want to learn Latin, Chevalier? 
 said my aunt. 
 
 "Every gentleman learns Latin," said the 
 young man. 
 
 I looked at the poor fellow, his dusty shoe* 
 and his rusty clothes. "But you re not a gen 
 tleman," said I. 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 21 
 
 He blushed up to his eyes. "Ah, I only 
 each it," he said. 
 
 In this way it was that Pierre Coquelin came 
 o be my governor. My father, who had a 
 aortal dislike to all kinds of cogitation and in- 
 [iiiry, engaged him on the simple testimony of 
 ds face and of his own account of his talents. 
 ilis history, as he told it, was in three words 
 .s follows : He was of our province, and neither 
 Qore nor less than the son of a village tailor, 
 rle is my hero: tirez-vous de la. Showing a 
 ively taste for books, instead of being pro- 
 noted to the paternal bench, he had been put 
 o study with the Jesuits. After a residence 
 >f some three years with these gentlemen, he 
 iad incurred their displeasure by a foolish 
 >reach of discipline, and had been turned out 
 nto the world. Here he had endeavored to 
 nake capital out of his excellent education, 
 ind had gone up to Paris with the hope of 
 :arning his bread as a scribbler. But in Paris 
 le scribbled himself hungry and nothing more, 
 ind was in fact in a fair way to die of star- 
 
22 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 vation. At last he encountered an agent of the 
 Marquis de Rochambeau, who was collecting 
 young men for the little army which the latter 
 was prepared to conduct to the aid of the 
 American insurgents. He had engaged him 
 self among Rochambeau s troops, taken part in 
 several battles, and finally received a wound 
 in his leg of which the effect was still percepti 
 ble. At the end of three years he had returned 
 to France, and repaired on foot, with what 
 speed he might, to his native town; but only to 
 find that in his absence his father had died, 
 after a tedious illness, in which he had vainly 
 lavished his small earnings upon the physicians, 
 and that his mother had married again, very 
 little to his taste. Poor Coquelin was friend 
 less, penniless, and homeless. But once back 
 on his native soil, he found himself possessed 
 again by his old passion for letters, and, like 
 all starving members of his craft, he had turned 
 his face to Paris. He longed to make up for 
 his three years in the wilderness. He trudged 
 along, lonely, hungry, and weary, till he came 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 23 
 
 to the gates of Bergerac. Here, sitting down 
 to rest on a stone, he saw us come out on the 
 terrace to digest our breakfast in the sun. 
 Poor Coquelin! he had the stomach of a gen 
 tleman. He was filled with an irresistible 
 longing to rest awhile from his struggle with 
 destiny, and it seemed to him that for a mess 
 of smoking pottage he would gladly exchange 
 his vague and dubious future. In obedience 
 to this simple impulse, an impulse touching 
 in its humility, when you knew the man, he 
 made his way up the avenue. We looked af 
 fable enough, an honest country gentleman, 
 a young girl playing with a crow, and a little 
 boy eating bread and butter ; and it turned out, 
 we were as kindly as we looked. 
 
 For me, I soon grew extremely fond of him, 
 and I was glad to think in later days that he 
 had found me a thoroughly docile child. In 
 those days, you know, thanks to Jean Jacques 
 Rousseau, there was a vast stir in men s no 
 tions of education, and a hundred theories 
 afloat about the perfect teacher and the perfect 
 
24 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 pupil. Coquelin was a firm devotee of Jea 
 Jacques, and very possibly applied some of b 
 precepts to my own little person. But of h 
 own nature Coquelin was incapable of an; 
 thing that was not wise and gentle, and he hs 
 no need to learn humanity in books. He wa 
 nevertheless, a great reader, and w 7 hen he ha 
 not a volume in his hand he was sure to ha^ 
 two in his pockets. He had half a dozen litt 
 copies of the Greek and Latin poets, bound i 
 yellow parchment, which, as he said, with 
 second shirt and a pair of white stockings, coi 
 stituted his whole library. He had carrie 
 these books to America, and read them in tt 
 wilderness, and by the light of camp-fires, an 
 in crow r ded, steaming barracks in winter-qua] 
 ters. He had a passion for Virgil. M. Scai 
 ron was very soon dismissed to the cupboan 
 among the dice-boxes and the old packs c 
 cards, and I was confined for the time to Vh 
 gil and Ovid and Plutarch, all of which, wit 
 the stimulus of Coquelin s own delight, I foun 
 very good reading. But better than any c 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 25 
 
 e stories I read were those stories of his wan- 
 rings, and his odd companions and encoun- 
 rs, and charming tales of pure fantasy, 
 rich, with the best grace in the world, he 
 )uld recite by the hour. We took long walks, 
 d he told me the names of the flowers and 
 e various styles of the stars, and I remember 
 at I often had no small trouble to keep them 
 stinct. He wrote a very bad hand, but he 
 ide very pretty drawings of the subjects then 
 vogue, nymphs and heroes and shepherds 
 d pastoral scenes. I used to fancy that his 
 lowledge and skill w r ere inexhaustible, and I 
 stered him so for entertainment that I cer- 
 inly proved that there were no limits to his 
 tience. 
 
 When he first came to us he looked hag- 
 rd and thin and weary ; but before the month 
 is out, he had acquired a comfortable ro- 
 ndity of person, and something of the sleek 
 d polished look which befits the governor 
 a gentleman s son. And yet he never lost 
 certain gravity and reserve of demeanor 
 
26 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 which was nearly akin to a mild melancholy. 
 With me, half the time, he was of course in 
 tolerably bored, and he must have had hard 
 work to keep from yawning in my face, 
 which, as he knew I knew, would have been an 
 unwarrantable liberty. At table, with my par 
 ents, he seemed to be constantly observing him 
 self and inwardly regulating his words and 
 gestures. The simple truth, I take it, was that 
 he had never sat at a gentleman s table, and 
 although he must have known himself inca 
 pable of a real breach of civility, essentially 
 delicate as he was in his feelings, he was too 
 proud to run the risk of violating etiquette. 
 My poor mother was a great stickler for cere 
 mony, and she would have had her majordomo 
 to lift the covers, even if she had had nothing 
 to put into the dishes. I remember a cruel 
 rebuke she bestowed upon Coquelin, shortly 
 after his arrival. She could never be brought 
 to forget that he had been picked up, as she 
 said, on the roads. At dinner one day, in the 
 absence of Mile, de Bergerac, who was indis- 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 27 
 
 posed, he inadvertently occupied her seat, tak 
 ing me as a vis-a-vis instead of a neighbor. 
 Shortly afterwards, coming to offer wine to 
 my mother, he received for all response a stare 
 so blank, cold, and insolent as to leave no 
 doubt of her estimate of his presumption. In 
 my mother s simple philosophy, Mile, de Ber- 
 gerac s seat could be decently occupied only 
 by hersejf, and in default of her presence 
 should remain conspicuously and sacredly va 
 cant. Dinner at Bergerac was at best, indeed, 
 a cold and dismal ceremony. I see it now, 
 the great dining-room, with its high windows 
 and their faded curtains, and the tiles upon the 
 floor, and the immense wainscots, and the great 
 white marble chimney-piece, reaching to the 
 ceiling, a triumph of delicate carving, and 
 the panels above the doors, with their galant 
 mythological paintings. All this had been the 
 work of my grandfather, during the Regency, 
 who had undertaken to renovate and beautify 
 the chateau ; but his funds had suddenly given 
 out, and we could boast but a desultory ele- 
 
28 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 gance. Such talk as passed at table was be 
 tween my mother and the Baron, and consisted 
 for the most part of a series of insidious at 
 tempts on my mother s part to extort infor 
 mation which the latter had no desire, or at 
 least no faculty, to impart. My father was 
 constitutionally taciturn and apathetic, and he 
 invariably made an end of my mother s inter 
 rogation by proclaiming that he hated gossip. 
 He liked to take his pleasure and have done 
 with it, or at best, to ruminate his substan 
 tial joys within the conservative recesses of 
 his capacious breast. The Baronne s inquisi 
 tive tongue was like a lambent flame, flicker 
 ing over the sides of a rock. She had a pas 
 sion for the world, and seclusion had only 
 sharpened the edge of her curiosity. She lived 
 on old memories shabby, tarnished bits of 
 intellectual finery and vagrant rumors, anec 
 dotes, and scandals. 
 
 Once in a while, however, her curiosity held 
 high revel ; for once a week we had the Vicomte 
 de Treuil to dine with us. This gentleman was, 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 29 
 
 although several years my father s junior, his 
 most intimate friend and the only constant vis 
 itor at Bergerac. He brought with him a sort 
 of intoxicating perfume of the great world, 
 which I myself was not too young to feel. He 
 had a marvellous fluency of talk; he was po 
 lite and elegant ; and he was constantly getting 
 letters from Paris, books, newspapers, and 
 prints, and copies of the new songs. When 
 he dined at Bergerac, my mother used to rustle 
 away from table, kissing her hand to him, and 
 actually light-headed from her deep potations 
 of gossip. His conversation was a constant 
 popping of corks. My father and the Vicomte, 
 as I have said, were firm friends, the firmer 
 for the great diversity of their characters. M. 
 de Bergerac was dark, grave, and taciturn, 
 with a deep, sonorous voice. He had in his 
 nature a touch of melancholy, and, in default 
 of piety, a broad vein of superstition. The 
 foundations of his soul, moreover, I am satis 
 fied, in spite of the somewhat ponderous super 
 structure, were laid in a soil of rich tenderness 
 
30 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 and pity. Gaston de Treuil was of a wholly 
 different temper. He was short and slight, 
 without any color, and with eyes as blue and 
 lustrous as sapphires. He was so careless and 
 gracious and mirthful, that to an unenlight 
 ened fancy he seemed the model of a joyous, 
 reckless, gallant, impenitent veneur. But it 
 sometimes struck me that, as he revolved an 
 idea in his mind, it produced a certain flinty 
 ring, which suggested that his nature was built, 
 as it were, on rock, and that the bottom of his 
 heart was hard. Young as he was, besides, 
 he had a tired, jaded, exhausted look, which 
 told of his having played high at the game of 
 life, and, very possibly, lost. In fact, it was 
 notorious that M. de Treuil had run through 
 his property, and that his actual business in 
 our neighborhood was to repair the breach in 
 his fortunes by constant attendance on a 
 wealthy kinsman, who occupied an adjacent 
 chateau, and who was dying of age and 
 his infirmities. But while I thus hint at the 
 existence in his composition of these few base 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 31 
 
 particles, I should be sorry to represent him 
 as substantially less fair and clear and lustrous 
 than he appeared to be. He possessed an irre 
 sistible charm, and that of itself is a virtue. 
 I feel sure, moreover, that my father would 
 never have reconciled himself to a real scanti 
 ness of masculine worth. The Vicomte en 
 joyed, I fancy, the generous energy of my fa 
 ther s good-fellowship, and the Baron s healthy 
 senses were flattered by the exquisite perfume 
 of the other s infallible savoir-i ivre. I offer 
 a hundred apologies, at any rate, to the 
 Vicomte s luminous shade, that I should have 
 ventured to cast a dingy slur upon his name. 
 History has commemorated it. He perished 
 on the scaffold, and showed that he knew how 
 to die as well as to live. He was the last relic 
 of the lily-handed youth of the bon temps; and 
 as he looks at me out of the poignant sadness 
 of the past, with a reproachful glitter in his 
 cold blue eyes, and a scornful smile on his fine 
 lips, I feel that, elegant and silent as he is, 
 he has the last word in our dispute. I shall 
 
32 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 think of him henceforth as he appeared one 
 night, or rather one morning, when he came 
 home from a ball with my father, who had 
 brought him to Bergerac to sleep. I had my 
 bed in a closet out of my mother s room, where 
 I lay in a most unwholesome fashion among 
 her old gowns and hoops and cosmetics. My 
 mother slept little; she passed the night in her 
 dressing-gown, bolstered up in her bed, read 
 ing novels. The two gentlemen came in at four 
 o clock in the morning and made their way up 
 to the Baronne s little sitting-room, next to her 
 chamber. I suppose they were highly exhila 
 rated, for they made a great noise of talking 
 and laughing, and my father began to knock 
 at the chamber door. He called out that he 
 had M. de Treuil, and that they were cold and 
 hungry. The Baronne said that she had a fire 
 and they might come in. She was glad enough, 
 poor lady, to get news of the ball, and to catch 
 their impressions before they had been dulled 
 by sleep. So they came in and sat by the fire, 
 and M. de Treuil looked for some wine and 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 33 
 
 some little cakes where my mother told him. 
 I was wide awake and heard it all. I heard 
 my mother protesting and crying out, and the 
 Vicomte laughing, when he looked into the 
 wrong place; and I am afraid that in my 
 mother s room there were a great many wrong 
 places. Before long, in my little stuffy, dark 
 closet, I began to feel hungry too; whereupon 
 I got out of bed and ventured forth into the 
 room. I remember the whole picture, as one 
 remembers isolated scenes of childhood: my 
 mother s bed, with its great curtains half 
 drawn back at the side, and her little eager face 
 and dark eyes peeping out of the recess; then 
 the two men at the fire, my father with his 
 hat on, sitting and looking drowsily into the 
 flames, and the Vicomte standing before the 
 hearth, talking, laughing, and gesticulating, 
 with the candlestick in one hand and a glass 
 of wine in the other, dropping the wax on 
 one side and the wine on the other. He was 
 dressed from head to foot in white velvet and 
 white silk, with embroideries of silver, and an 
 
34 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 immense jabot. He was very pale, and he 
 looked lighter and slighter and wittier and 
 more elegant than ever. He had a weak voice, 
 and when he laughed, after one feeble little 
 spasm, it went off into nothing, and you only 
 knew he was laughing by his nodding his head 
 and lifting his eyebrows and showing his hand 
 some teeth. My father was in crimson velvet, 
 with tarnished gold facings. My mother bade 
 me get back into bed, but my father took me 
 on his knees and held out my bare feet to the 
 fire. In a little while, from the influence of 
 the heat, he fell asleep in his chair, and I sat 
 in my place and watched M. de Treuil as he 
 stood in the firelight drinking his wine and 
 telling stories to my mother, until at last I too 
 relapsed into the innocence of slumber. They 
 w r ere very good friends, the Vicomte and my 
 mother. He admired the turn of her mind. I 
 remember his telling me several years later, at 
 the time of her death, when I was old enough 
 to understand him, that she was a very brave, 
 keen little woman, and that in her musty soli- 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 35 
 
 tude of Bergerac she said a great many more 
 good things than the world ever heard of. 
 
 During the winter which preceded Coque- 
 lin s arrival, M. de Treuil used to show himself 
 at Bergerac in a friendly manner; but about a 
 month before this event, his visits became more 
 frequent and assumed a special import and mo 
 tive. In a word, my father and his friend be 
 tween them had conceived it to be a fine thing 
 that the latter should marry Mile, de Bergerac. 
 Neither from his own nor from his friend s 
 point of view was Gaston de Treuil a marry 
 ing man or a desirable parti. He was too fond 
 of pleasure to conciliate a rich wife, and too 
 poor to support a penniless one. But I fancy 
 that my father was of the opinion that if the 
 Vicomte came into his kinsman s property, the 
 best way to insure the preservation of it, and 
 to attach him to his duties and responsibilities, 
 would be to unite him to an amiable girl, who 
 might remind him of the beauty of a domestic 
 life and lend him courage to mend his ways. 
 
36 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 As far as the Vicomte was concerned, this was 
 assuredly a benevolent scheme, but it seems to 
 me that it made small account of the young 
 girl s own happiness. M. de Treuil was sup 
 posed, in the matter of women, to have known 
 everything that can be known, and to be as 
 blase with regard to their charms as he was 
 proof against their influence. And, in fact, 
 his manner of dealing with women, and of dis 
 cussing them, indicated a profound disenchant 
 ment, no bravado of contempt, no affectation 
 of cynicism, but a cold, civil, absolute lassitude. 
 A simply charming woman, therefore, would 
 never have served the purpose of my father s 
 theory. A very sound and liberal instinct led 
 him to direct his thoughts to his sister. There 
 were, of course, various auxiliary reasons for 
 such disposal of Mile, de Bergerac s hand. She 
 was now a woman grown, and she had as yet 
 received no decent proposals. She had no mar 
 riage portion of her own, and my father had 
 no means to endow her. Her beauty, more 
 over, could hardly be called a dowry. It was 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 37 
 
 without those vulgar allurements which, for 
 many a poor girl, replace the glitter of cash. 
 If within a very few years more she had not 
 succeeded in establishing herself creditably in 
 the world, nothing would be left for her but to 
 withdraw from it, and to pledge her virgin 
 faith to the chilly sanctity of a cloister. I was 
 destined in the course of time to assume the 
 lordship and the slender revenues of Bergerac, 
 and it was not to be expected that I should be 
 burdened on the very threshold of life with the 
 maintenance of a dowerless maiden aunt. A 
 marriage with M. de Treuil would be in all 
 senses a creditable match, and, in the event of 
 his becoming his kinsman s legatee, a thor 
 oughly comfortable one. 
 
 It was some time before the color of my fa 
 ther s intentions, and the milder hue of the 
 Vicomte s acquiescence, began to show in our 
 common daylight. It is not the custom, as you 
 know, in our excellent France, to admit a lover 
 on probation. He is expected to make up his 
 mind on a view of the young lady s endow- 
 
38 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 merits, and to content himself before marriage 
 with the bare cognition of her face. It is not 
 thought decent (and there is certainly reason 
 in it) that he should dally with his draught, 
 and hold it to the light, and let the sun play 
 through it, before carrying it to his lips. It 
 was only on the ground of my father s warm 
 good-will to Gaston de Treuil, and the latter s 
 affectionate respect for the Baron, that the 
 Vicomte was allowed to appear as a lover, be 
 fore making his proposals in form. M. de 
 Treuil, in fact, proceeded gradually, and made 
 his approaches from a great distance. It was 
 not for several weeks, therefore, that Mile, de 
 Eergerac became aware of them. And now, 
 as this dear young girl steps into my story, 
 where, I ask you, shall I find words to describe 
 the broad loveliness of her person, to hint at 
 the perfect beauty of her mind, to suggest the 
 sweet mystery of her first suspicion of being 
 sought, from afar, in marriage? Not in my 
 fancy, surely; for there I should disinter the 
 flimsy elements and tarnished properties of a 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 39 
 
 superannuated comic opera. My taste, my son, 
 was formed once for all fifty years ago. But 
 if I wish to call up Mile, de Bergerac, I must 
 turn to my earliest memories, and delve in the 
 sweet-smelling virgin soil of my heart. For 
 Mile, de Bergerac is no misty sylphid nor ro 
 mantic moonlit nymph. She rises before me 
 now, glowing with life, with the sound of her 
 voice just dying in the air, the more living 
 for the mark of her crimson death-stain. 
 
 There was every good reason why her dawn 
 ing consciousness of M. de Treuil s attentions 
 - although these were little more than pro 
 jected as yet should have produced a serious 
 tremor in her heart. It was not that she was 
 aught of a coquette; I honestly believe that 
 there was no latent coquetry in her nature. At 
 all events, whatever she might have become 
 after knowing M. de Treuil, she was no co 
 quette to speak of in her ignorance. Her igno 
 rance of men, in truth, was great. For the 
 Vicomte himself, she had as yet known him 
 only distantly, formally, as a gentleman of 
 
40 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 rank and fashion; and for others of his qual 
 ity, she had seen but a small number, and not 
 seen them intimately. These few words suf 
 fice to indicate that my aunt led a life of un 
 broken monotony. Once a year she spent six 
 weeks with certain ladies of the Visitation, in 
 whose convent she had received her education, 
 and of whom she continued to be very fond. 
 Half a dozen times in the twelvemonth she 
 went to a hall, under convoy of some haply un 
 grudging chatelaine. Two or three times a 
 month, she received a visit at Bergerac. The 
 rest of the time she paced, with the grace of 
 an angel and the patience of a woman, the 
 dreary corridors and unclipt garden walks of 
 Bergerac. The discovery, then, that the bril 
 liant Vicomte de Treuil was likely to make a 
 proposal for her hand was an event of no small 
 importance. With precisely what feelings she 
 awaited its coming, I am unable to tell; but I 
 have no hesitation in saying that even at this 
 moment (that is, in less than a month after 
 my tutor s arrival) her feelings were strongly 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 41 
 
 modified by her acquaintance with Pierre 
 Coquelin. 
 
 The word "acquaintance" perhaps exagger 
 ates Mile, de Bergerac s relation to this excel 
 lent young man. Twice a day she sat facing 
 him at table, and half a dozen times a week 
 she met him on the staircase, in the saloon, or 
 in the park. Coquelin had been accommodated 
 with an apartment in a small untenanted pa 
 vilion, within the enclosure of our domain, and 
 except at meals, and when his presence was es 
 pecially requested at the chateau, he confined 
 himself to his own precinct. It was there, 
 morning and evening, that I took my lesson. 
 It was impossible, therefore, that an intimacy 
 should have arisen between these two young 
 persons, equally separated as they were by ma 
 terial and conventional barriers. Nevertheless, 
 as the sequel proved, Coquelin must, by his 
 mere presence, have begun very soon to ex 
 ert a subtle action on Mile, de Bergerac s 
 thoughts. As for the young girl s influence on 
 Coquelin, it is my belief that he fell in love with 
 
42 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 her the very first moment he beheld her, that 
 morning when he trudged wearily up our ave 
 nue. I need certainly make no apology for 
 the poor fellow s audacity. You tell me that 
 you fell in love at first sight with my aunt s 
 portrait ; you will readily excuse the poor youth 
 for having been smitten with the original. It 
 is less logical perhaps, but it is certainly no less 
 natural, that Mile, de Bergerac should have 
 ventured to think of my governor as a decided 
 ly interesting fellow. She saw so few men that 
 one the more or the less made a very great dif 
 ference. Coquelin s importance, moreover, was 
 increased rather than diminished by the fact 
 that, as I may say, he was a son of the soil. 
 Marked as he was, in aspect and utterance, 
 with the genuine plebeian stamp, he opened a 
 way for the girl s fancy into a vague, unknown 
 world. He stirred her imagination, I conceive, 
 in very much the same way as such a man as 
 Gaston de Treuil would have stirred actually 
 had stirred, of course the grosser sensibili 
 ties of many a little bourgeoise. Mile, de 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 43 
 
 Bergerac was so thoroughly at peace with the 
 consequences of her social position, so little 
 inclined to derogate in act or in thought from 
 the perfect dignity of her birth, that with the 
 best conscience in the world, she entertained, 
 as they came, the feelings provoked by Coque- 
 lin s manly virtues and graces. She had been 
 educated in the faith that noblesse oblige, and 
 she had seen none but gentlefolks and peasants. 
 I think that she felt a vague, unavowed curi 
 osity to see what sort of a figure you might 
 make when you were under no obligations to 
 nobleness. I think, finally, that unconsciously 
 and in the interest simply of her unsubstantial 
 dreams, (for in those long summer days at 
 Bergerac, without finery, without visits, music, 
 or books, or anything that a well-to-do grocer s 
 daughter enjoys at the present day, she must, 
 unless she was a far greater simpleton than I 
 wish you to suppose, have spun a thousand 
 airy, idle visions,) she contrasted Pierre Coque- 
 lin with the Vicomte de Treuil. I protest that 
 I don t see how Coquelin bore the contrast. I 
 
44 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 frankly admit that, in her place, I would have 
 given all my admiration to the Vicomte. At 
 all events, the chief result of any such compari 
 son must have been to show how, in spite of 
 real trials and troubles, Coquelin had retained 
 a certain masculine freshness and elasticity, 
 and how, without any sorrows but those of his 
 own wanton making, the Vicomte had utterly 
 rubbed off his primal bloom of manhood. 
 There was that about Gaston de Treuil that 
 reminded you of an actor by daylight. His lit 
 tle row of foot-lights had burned itself out. 
 But this is assuredly a more pedantic view of 
 the case than any that Mile, de Bergerac was 
 capable of taking. The Vicomte had but to 
 learn his part and declaim it, and the illusion 
 was complete. 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac may really have been a 
 great simpleton, and my theory of her feelings 
 vague and imperfect as it is may be put 
 together quite after the fact. But I see you 
 protest ; you glance at the picture ; you frown. 
 C est loon; give me your hand. She received 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 45 
 
 the Vicomte s gallantries, then, with a mod 
 est, conscious dignity, and courtesied to ex 
 actly the proper depth when he made her one 
 of his inimitable bows. 
 
 One evening it was, I think, about ten days 
 after Coquelin s arrival she was sitting read 
 ing to my mother, who was ill in bed. The 
 Vicomte had been dining with us, and after 
 dinner we had gone into the drawing-room. 
 At the drawing-room door Coquelin had made 
 his bow to my father, and carried me off to his 
 own apartment. Mile, de Bergerac and the 
 two gentlemen had gone into the drawing- 
 room together. At dusk I had come back to 
 the chateau, and, going up to my mother, had 
 found her in company with her sister-in-law. 
 In a few moments my father came in, looking 
 stern and black. 
 
 "Sister," he cried, "why did you leave us 
 alone in the drawing-room? Didn t you see I 
 wanted you to stay?" 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac laid down her book and 
 looked at her brother before answering. "I 
 
46 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 had to come to my sister," she said: "I couldn t 
 leave her alone." 
 
 My mother, I m sorry to say, was not al 
 ways just to my aunt. She used to lose pa 
 tience with her sister s want of coquetry, of 
 ambition, of desire to make much of herself. 
 She divined wherein my aunt had offended. 
 "You re very devoted to your sister, sud 
 denly," she said. "There are duties and du 
 ties, mademoiselle. I m very much obliged 
 to you for reading to me. You can put down 
 the book." 
 
 "The Vicomte swore very hard when you 
 went out," my father went on. 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac laid aside her book. 
 "Dear me!" she said, "if he was going to swear, 
 it s very well I went." 
 
 "Are you afraid of the Vicomte?" said my 
 mother. "You re twenty-two years old. 
 You re not a little girl." 
 
 "Is she twenty- two?" cried my father. "I 
 told him she was twenty-one." 
 
 "Frankly, brother," said Mile, de Bergerac, 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 47 
 
 "what does he want? Does he want to marry 
 me?" 
 
 My father stared a moment. "Pardieu!" 
 he cried. 
 
 "She looks as if she didn t believe it," said 
 my mother. "Pray, did you ever ask him?" 
 
 "No, madam; did you? You are very kind." 
 Mile, de Bergerac was excited; her cheeks 
 flushed. 
 
 "In the course of time," said my father, 
 gravely, "the Vicomte proposes to demand 
 your hand." 
 
 "What is he waiting for?" asked Mile, de 
 Bergerac, simply. 
 
 ff Fi done, mademoiselle!" cried my mother. 
 
 "He is waiting for M. de Sorbieres to die," 
 said I, who had got this bit of news from my 
 mother s w r aiting-woman. 
 
 My father stared at me, half angrily; and 
 then, "He expects to inherit," he said, boldly. 
 "It s a very fine property." 
 
 "He would have done better, it seems to 
 me," rejoined Mile, de Bergerac, after a pause, 
 
48 GABRIKLLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 "to wait till he had actually come into posses 
 sion of it." 
 
 "M. de Sorbieres," cried my father, "has 
 given him his word a dozen times over. Be 
 sides, the Vicomte loves you." 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac blushed, with a little 
 smile, and as she did so her eyes fell on mine. 
 I was standing gazing at her as a child gazes 
 at a familiar friend who is presented to him in 
 a new light. She put out her hand and drew 
 me towards her. "The truth comes out of the 
 mouths of children," she said. "Chevalier, 
 does he love me?" 
 
 "Stuff!" cried the Baronne; "one doesn t 
 speak to children of such things. A young 
 girl should believe what she s told. I believed 
 my mother when she told me that your brother 
 loved me. He didn t, but I believed it, and as 
 far as I know I m none the worse for it." 
 
 For ten days after this I heard nothing more 
 of Mile, de Bergerac s marriage, and I sup 
 pose that, childlike, I ceased to think of what 
 I had already heard. One evening, about mid- 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 49 
 
 summer, M. de Treuil came over to supper, 
 and announced that he was about to set out 
 in company with poor M. de Sorbieres for some 
 mineral springs in the South, by the use of 
 which the latter hoped to prolong his life. 
 
 I remember that, while we sat at table, 
 Coquelin was appealed to as an authority upon 
 some topic broached by the Vicomte, on which 
 he found himself at variance with my father. 
 It was the first time, I fancy, that he had been 
 so honored and that his opinions had been 
 deemed worth hearing. The point under dis 
 cussion must have related to the history of the 
 American War, for Coquelin spoke with the 
 firmness and fulness warranted by personal 
 knowledge. I fancy that he was a little fright 
 ened by the sound of his own voice, but he ac 
 quitted himself with perfect good grace and 
 success. We all sat attentive ; my mother even 
 staring a little, surprised to find in a beggarly 
 pedagogue a perfect beau diseur. My father, 
 as became so great a gentleman, knew by a cer 
 tain rough instinct when a man had something 
 
50 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 amusing to say. He leaned back, with his 
 hands in his pockets, listening and paying the 
 poor fellow the tribute of a half-puzzled frown. 
 The Vicomte, like a man of taste, was charmed. 
 He told stories himself, he was a good judge. 
 
 After supper we went out on the terrace. 
 It was a perfect summer night, neither too 
 warm nor too cool. There was no moon, but 
 the stars flung down their languid light, and 
 the earth, with its great dark masses of vege 
 tation and the gently swaying tree-tops, 
 seemed to answer back in a thousand vague 
 perfumes. Somewhere, close at hand, out of 
 an enchanted tree, a nightingale raved and 
 carolled in delirious music. We had the good 
 taste to listen in silence. My mother sat down 
 on a bench against the house, and put out her 
 hand and made my father sit beside her. Mile, 
 de Bergerac strolled to the edge of the terrace, 
 and leaned against the balustrade, whither M. 
 de Treuil soon followed her. She stood mo 
 tionless, with her head raised, intent upon the 
 music. The Vicomte seated himself upon the 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 51 
 
 parapet, with his face towards her and his arms 
 folded. He may perhaps have been talking, 
 under cover of the nightingale. Coquelin 
 seated himself near the other end of the ter 
 race, and drew me between his knees. At last 
 the nightingale ceased. Coquelin got up, and 
 bade good night to the company, and made his 
 w r ay across the park to his lodge. I went over 
 to my aunt and the Vicomte. 
 
 "M. Coquelin is a clever man," said the 
 Vicomte, as he disappeared down the avenue. 
 "He spoke very well this evening." 
 
 "He never spoke so much before," said I. 
 "He s very shy." 
 
 "I think," said my aunt, "he s a little proud." 
 
 "I don t understand," said the Vicomte, 
 "how a man with any pride can put up with 
 the place of a tutor. I had rather dig in the 
 fields." 
 
 "The Chevalier is much obliged to you," said 
 my aunt, laughing. "In fact, M. Coquelin has 
 to dig a little, hasn t he, Chevalier?" 
 
52 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 "Not at all," said I. "But he keeps some 
 plants in pots." 
 
 At this my aunt and the Vicomte began to 
 laugh. "He keeps one precious plant," cried 
 my aunt, tapping my face with her fan. 
 
 At this moment my mother called me away. 
 "He makes them laugh," I heard her say to my 
 father, as I went to her. 
 
 "She had better laugh about it than cry," 
 said my father. 
 
 Before long, Mile, de Bergerac and her com 
 panion came back toward the house. 
 
 "M. le Vicomte, brother," said my aunt, "in 
 vites me to go down and walk in the park. 
 May I accept?" 
 
 "By all means," said my father. "You may 
 go with the Vicomte as you would go with me." 
 
 "Ah!" said the Vicomte. 
 
 "Come then, Chevalier," said my aunt. "In 
 my turn, I invite you." 
 
 "My son," said the Baronne, "I forbid you." 
 
 "But my brother says," rejoined Mile, de 
 Bergerac, "that I may go wdth M. de Treuil as 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 53 
 
 I would go with himself. He would not object 
 to my taking my nephew." And she put out 
 her hand. 
 
 "One would think," said my mother, "that 
 you were setting out for Siberia." 
 
 "For Siberia!" cried the Vicomte, laughing; 
 "Ono!" 
 
 I paused, undecided. But my father gave 
 me a push. "After all," he said, "it s better." 
 
 When I overtook my aunt and her lover, the 
 latter, losing no time, appeared to have come 
 quite to the point. 
 
 "Your brother tells me, mademoiselle," he 
 had begun, "that he has spoken to you." 
 
 The young girl was silent. 
 
 "You may be indifferent," pursued the Vi 
 comte, "but I can t believe you re ignorant." 
 
 "My brother has spoken to me," said Mile, 
 de Bergerac at last, with an apparent effort, 
 "my brother has spoken to me of his project." 
 
 "I m very glad he seemed to you to have es 
 poused my cause so warmly that you call it his 
 own. I did my best to convince him that I pos- 
 
54 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 sess what a person of your merit is entitled to 
 exact of the man who asks her hand. In doing 
 so, I almost convinced myself. The point is 
 now to convince you." 
 
 "I listen." 
 
 "You admit, then, fehat your mind is not 
 made up in advance against me." 
 
 "Mon Dicu!" cried my aunt, with some em 
 phasis, "a poor girl like me doesn t make up 
 her mind. You frighten me, Vicomte. This is 
 a serious question. I have the misfortune to 
 have no mother. I can only pray God. But 
 prayer helps me not to choose, but only to be 
 resigned." 
 
 Tray often, then, mademoiselle. I m not 
 an arrogant lover, and since I have known you 
 a little better, I have lost all my vanity. I m 
 not a good man nor a wise one. I have no 
 doubt you think me very light and foolish, but 
 you can t begin to know how light and foolish 
 I am. Marry me and you ll never know. If 
 you don t marry me, I m afraid you ll never 
 marry." 
 
GABRIELLE DE BEItGEIlAC 55 
 
 "You re very frank, Vicomte. If you think 
 I m afraid of never marrying, you re mistaken. 
 One can be very happy as an old maid. I 
 spend six weeks every year with the ladies of 
 the Visitation. Several of them are excellent 
 women, charming women. They read, they 
 educate young girls, they visit the poor 
 
 The Vicomte broke into a laugh. "They get 
 up at five o clock in the morning; they break 
 fast on boiled cabbage; they make flannel 
 waistcoats, and very good sweetmeats! Why 
 do you talk so, mademoiselle? Why do you 
 say that you would like to lead such a life? 
 One might almost believe it is coquetry. 
 TeneZ; I believe it s ignorance, ignorance of 
 your own feelings, your own nature, and your 
 own needs." M. de Treuil paused a moment, 
 and, although I had a very imperfect notion 
 of the meaning of his words, I remember being 
 struck with the vehement look of his pale face, 
 which seemed fairly to glow in the darkness. 
 Plainly, he was in love. "You are not made 
 for solitude," he went on; "y u are n t made 
 
56 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 to be buried in a dingy old chateau, in the 
 depths of a ridiculous province. You are made 
 for the world, for the court, for pleasure, to be 
 loved, admired, and envied. No, you don t 
 know yourself, nor does Bergerac know you, 
 nor his wife! I, at least, appreciate you, I 
 know that you are supremely beautiful 
 
 " Vicomte," said Mile, de Bergerac, "y u for 
 getthe child." 
 
 "Hang the child! Why did you bring 
 him along? You are no child. You can un 
 derstand me. You are a woman, full of intelli 
 gence and goodness and beauty. They don t 
 know you here, they think you a little demoi 
 selle in pinafores. Before Heaven, made 
 moiselle, there is that about you, I see it, I 
 feel it here at your side, in this rustling dark 
 ness there is that about you that a man would 
 gladly die for." 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac interrupted him with en 
 ergy. "You talk extravagantly. I don t un 
 derstand you; you frighten me." 
 
 "I talk as I feel. I frighten you? So much 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 57 
 
 the better. I wish to stir your heart and get 
 some answer to the passion of my own." 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac was silent a moment, as 
 if collecting her thoughts. "If I talk with you 
 on this subject, I must do it with my wits about 
 me," she said at last. "I must know exactly 
 what we each mean." 
 
 "It s plain then that I can t hope to inspire 
 you with any degree of affection." 
 
 "One doesn t promise to love, Vicomte; I 
 can only answer for the present. My heart is 
 so full of good wishes toward you that it costs 
 me comparatively little to say I don t love 
 you." 
 
 "And anything I may say of my own feel 
 ings will make no difference to you?" 
 
 "You have said you love me. Let it rest 
 there." 
 
 "But you look as if you doubted my word." 
 
 "You can t see how I look; Vicomte, I be 
 lieve you." 
 
 "Well then, there is one point gained. Let 
 us pass to the others. I m thirty years old. I 
 
58 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 have a very good name and a very bad reputa 
 tion. I honestly believe that, though I ve fallen 
 below my birth, I ve kept above my fame. I 
 believe that I have no vices of temper; I m nei 
 ther brutal, nor jealous, nor miserly. As for 
 my fortune, I m obliged to admit that it con 
 sists chiefly in my expectations. My actual 
 property is about equal to your brother s and 
 you know how your sister-in-law is obliged to 
 live. My expectations are thought particularly 
 good. My great-uncle, M. de Sorbieres, pos 
 sesses, chiefly in landed estates, a fortune of 
 some three millions of livres. I have no impor 
 tant competitors, either in blood or devotion. 
 He is eighty-seven years old and paralytic, and 
 within the past year I have been laying siege 
 to his favor with such constancy that his sur 
 render, like his extinction, is only a question of 
 time. I received yesterday a summons to go 
 with him to the Pyrenees, to drink certain me 
 dicinal waters. The least he can do, on my 
 return, is to make me a handsome allowance, 
 which with my own revenues will make en 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 59 
 
 attendant better things a sufficient income for 
 a reasonable couple." 
 
 There was a pause of some moments, during 
 which we slowly walked along in the obstructed 
 starlight, the silence broken only by the train 
 of my aunt s dress brushing against the twigs 
 and pebbles. 
 
 "What a pity," she said, at last, "that you 
 are not able to speak of all this good fortune 
 as in the present rather than in the future." 
 
 "There it is! Until I came to know you, I 
 had no thoughts of marriage. What did I 
 want of wealth ? If five years ago I had fore 
 seen this moment, I should stand here with 
 something better than promises. * 
 
 "Well, Vicomte," pursued the young girl, 
 with singular composure, "you do me the honor 
 to think very well of me : I hope you will not be 
 vexed to find that prudence is one of my vir 
 tues. If I marry, I wish to marry w^ell. It s 
 not only the husband, but the marriage that 
 counts. In accepting you as you stand, I 
 
60 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 should make neither a sentimental match nor 
 a brilliant one." 
 
 "Excellent. I love you, prudence and all. 
 Say, then, that I present myself here three 
 months hence with the titles and tokens of 
 property amounting to a million and a half of 
 livres, will you consider that I am a parti suffi 
 ciently brilliant to make you forget that you 
 don t love me?" 
 
 "I should never forget that." 
 
 "Well, nor I either. It makes a sort of sor 
 rowful harmony ! If three months hence, I re 
 peat, I offer you a fortune instead of this poor 
 empty hand, will you accept the one for the 
 sake of the other?" 
 
 My aunt stopped short in the path. "I hope, 
 Vicomte," she said, with much apparent sim 
 plicity, "that you are going to do nothing indel 
 icate." 
 
 "God forbid, mademoiselle! It shall be a 
 clean hand and a clean fortune." 
 
 "If you ask then a promise, a pledge " 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 61 
 
 "You ll not give it. I ask then only for a 
 little hope. Give it in what form you will." 
 
 We walked a few steps farther and came out 
 from among the shadows, beneath the open sky. 
 The voice of M. de Treuil, as he uttered these 
 words, was low and deep and tender and full 
 of entreaty. Mile, de Bergerac cannot but 
 have been deeply moved. I think she was some 
 what awe-struck at having called up such a 
 force of devotion in a nature deemed cold and 
 inconstant. She put out her hand. "I wish 
 success to any honorable efforts. In any case 
 you will be happier for your wealth. In one case 
 it will get you a wife, and in the other it will 
 console you." 
 
 "Console me! I shall hate it, despise it, and 
 throw it into the sea!" 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac had no intention, of 
 course, of leaving her companion under an illu 
 sion. "Ah, but understand, Vicomte," she said, 
 "I make no promise. My brother claims the 
 right to bestow my hand. If he wishes our 
 
62 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 marriage now, of course he will wish it three 
 months hence. I have never gainsaid him." 
 
 "From now to three months a great deal may 
 happen." 
 
 "To you, perhaps, but not to me." 
 
 "Are you going to your friends of the Visita 
 tion?" 
 
 "No, indeed. I have no wish to spend the 
 summer in a cloister. I prefer the green 
 fields." 
 
 "Well, then va for the green fields! They re 
 the next best thing. I recommend you to the 
 Chevalier s protection." 
 
 We had made half the circuit of the park, 
 and turned into an alley which stretched away 
 towards the house, and about midway in its 
 course separated into two paths, one leading 
 to the main avenue, arid the other to the little 
 pavilion inhabited by Coquelin. At the point 
 where the alley was divided stood an enormous 
 oak of great circumference, with a circular 
 bench surrounding its trunk. It occupied, I 
 believe, the central point of the whole domain. 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 63 
 
 As we reached the oak, I looked down along 
 the footpath towards the pavilion, and saw 
 Coquelin s light shining in one of the windows. 
 I immediately proposed that we should pay him 
 a visit. My aunt objected, on the ground that 
 he was doubtless busy and would not thank us 
 for interrupting him. And then, when I in 
 sisted, she said it was not proper. 
 
 "How not proper?" 
 
 "It s not proper for me. A lady doesn t 
 visit young men in their own apartments." 
 
 At this the Vicomte cried out. He was part 
 ly amused, I think, at my aunt s attaching any 
 compromising power to poor little Coquelin, 
 and partly annoyed at her not considering his 
 own company, in view of his pretensions, a suf 
 ficient guaranty. 
 
 "I should think," he said, "that with the Che 
 valier and me you might venture 
 
 "As you please, then," said my aunt. And 
 I accordingly led the way to my governor s 
 abode. 
 
 It was a small edifice of a single floor, stand- 
 
64 GABRIELLE DE BERGE11AC 
 
 ing prettily enough among the trees, and still 
 habitable, although very much in disrepair. It 
 had been built by that same ancestor to whom 
 Bergerac was indebted, in the absence of sev 
 eral of the necessities of life, for many of its 
 elegant superfluities, and had been designed, I 
 suppose, as a scene of pleasure, such pleasure 
 as he preferred to celebrate elsewhere than be 
 neath the roof of his domicile. Whether it had 
 ever been used I know not ; but it certainly had 
 very little of the look of a pleasure-house. Such 
 furniture as it had once possessed had long 
 since been transferred to the needy saloons of 
 the chateau, and it now looked dark and bare 
 and cold. In front, the shrubbery had been left 
 to grow thick and wild and almost totally to 
 exclude the light from the windows; but be 
 hind, outside of the two rooms which he occu 
 pied, and w r hich had been provided from the 
 chateau with the articles necessary for comfort, 
 Coquelin had obtained my father s permission 
 to effect a great clearance in the foliage, and 
 he now enjoyed plenty of sunlight and a 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 65 
 
 charming view of the neighboring country. It 
 was in the larger of these two rooms, arranged 
 as a sort of study, that we found him. 
 
 He seemed surprised and somewhat con 
 fused by our visit, but he very soon recovered 
 himself sufficiently to do the honors of his little 
 establishment. 
 
 "It was an idea of my nephew," said Mile, 
 de Bergerac. "We were walking in the park, 
 and he saw your light. Now that we are here, 
 Chevalier, what would you have us do?" 
 
 "M. Coquelin has some very pretty things 
 to show you," said I. 
 
 Coquelin turned very red. "Pretty things, 
 Chevalier? Pray, what do you mean? I have 
 some of your nephew s copy-books," he said, 
 turning to my aunt. 
 
 "Nay, you have some of your own," I cried. 
 "He has books full of drawings, made by him 
 self." 
 
 "Ah, you draw?" said the Vicomte. 
 
 "M. le Chevalier does me the honor to think 
 
66 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 so. My drawings are meant for no critics but 
 children." 
 
 "In the way of criticism," said my aunt, 
 gently, "we too are children." Her beautiful 
 eyes, as she uttered these words, must have been 
 quite as gentle as her voice. Coquelin looked 
 at her, thinking very modestly of his little pic 
 tures, but loth to refuse the first request she 
 had ever made him. 
 
 "Show them, at any rate," said the Vicomte, 
 in a somewhat peremptory tone. In those 
 days, you see, a man occupying Coquelin s 
 place was expected to hold all his faculties and 
 talents at the disposal of his patron, and it was 
 thought an unwarrantable piece of assumption 
 that he should cultivate any of the arts for his 
 own peculiar delectation. In withholding his 
 drawings, therefore, it may have seemed to the 
 Vicomte that Coquelin was unfaithful to the 
 service to which he was held, that, namely, of 
 instructing, diverting, and edifying the house 
 hold of Bergerac. Coquelin went to a little 
 cupboard in the wall, and took out three small 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 67 
 
 albums and a couple of portfolios. Mile, de 
 Bergerac sat down at the table, and Coquelin 
 drew up the lamp and placed his drawings 
 before her. He turned them over, and gave 
 such explanations as seemed necessary. I have 
 only my childish impressions of the character 
 of these sketches, which, in my eyes, of course, 
 seemed prodigiously clever. What the judg 
 ment of my companions was worth I know not, 
 but they appeared very well pleased. The Vi- 
 comte probably knew a good sketch from a 
 poor one, and he very good-naturedly pro 
 nounced my tutor an extremely knowing fel 
 low. Coquelin had drawn anything and every 
 thing, peasants and dumb brutes, landscapes 
 and Parisian types and figures, taken indiffer 
 ently from high and low life. But the best 
 pieces in the collection were a series of illus 
 trations and reminiscences of his adventures 
 with the American army, and of the figures 
 and episodes he had observed in the Colonies. 
 They were for the most part rudely enough 
 executed, owing to his want of time and mate- 
 
G8 GABRIELL.E DE BERGERAC 
 
 rials, but they were full of finesse and charac 
 ter. M. de Treuil was very much amused at 
 the rude equipments of your ancestors. There 
 were sketches of the enemy too, whom Coque- 
 lin had apparently not been afraid to look in 
 the face. While he was turning over these de 
 signs for Mile, de Bergerac, the Vicomte took 
 up one of his portfolios, and, after a short in 
 spection, drew from it, with a cry of surprise, 
 a large portrait in pen and ink. 
 
 "Tien*!" said I; "it s my aunt!" 
 
 Coquelin turned pale. Mile, de Bergerac 
 looked at him, and turned the least bit red. As 
 for the Vicomte, he never changed color. 
 There was no eluding the fact that it was a 
 likeness, and Coquelin had to pay the penalty 
 of his skill. 
 
 "I didn t know," he said, at random, "that it 
 was in that portfolio. Do you recognize it, 
 mademoiselle?" 
 
 "Ah," said the Vicomte, dryly, "M. Coquelin 
 meant to hide it. 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 69 
 
 "It s too pretty to hide," said my aunt; "and 
 yet it s too pretty to show. It s flattered." 
 
 "Why should I have flattered you, mademoi 
 selle?" asked Coquelin. "You were never to 
 see it." 
 
 "That s what it is, mademoiselle," said the 
 Vicomte, "to have such dazzling heauty. It 
 penetrates the world. Who knows where 
 you ll find it reflected next?" 
 
 However pretty a compliment this may have 
 been to Mile, de Bergerac, it was decidedly a 
 back-handed blow to Coquelin. The young 
 girl perceived that he felt it. 
 
 She rose to her feet. "My beauty," she said, 
 with a slight tremor in her voice, "would be 
 a small thing without M. Coquelin s talent. 
 We are much obliged to you. I hope that 
 you ll bring your pictures to the chateau, so 
 that we may look at the rest." 
 
 "Are you going to leave him this?" asked M. 
 de Treuil, holding up the portrait. 
 
 "If M. Coquelin will give it to me, I shall be 
 very glad to have it." 
 
70 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 "One doesn t keep one s own portrait," said 
 the Vicomte. "It ought to belong to me." In 
 those days, before the invention of our sublime 
 machinery for the reproduction of the human 
 face, a young fellow was very glad to have his 
 mistress s likeness in pen and ink. 
 
 But Coquelin had no idea of contributing to 
 the Vicomte s gallery. "Excuse me," he said, 
 gently, but looking the nobleman in the face. 
 "The picture isn t good enough for Mile, de 
 Bergerac, but it s too good for any one else"; 
 and he drew it out of the other s hands, tore it 
 across, and applied it to the flame of the lamp. 
 
 We went back to the chateau in silence. The 
 drawing-room was empty; but as we went in, 
 the Vicomte took a lighted candle from a table 
 and raised it to the young girl s face. "Par- 
 bleu!" he exclaimed, "the vagabond had looked 
 at you to good purpose !" 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac gave a half-confused 
 laugh. "At any rate," she said, "he didn t hold 
 a candle to me as if I were my old smoke- 
 stained grandame, yonder!" and she blew out 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 71 
 
 the light. "I ll call my brother," she said, pre 
 paring to retire. 
 
 "A moment," said her lover; "I shall not see 
 you for some weeks. I shall start to-morrow 
 with my uncle. I shall think of you by day, 
 and dream of you by night. And meanwhile 
 I shall very much doubt whether you think of 
 
 me." 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac smiled. "Doubt, doubt. 
 It will help you to pass the time. With faith 
 alone it would hang very heavy." 
 
 "It seems hard," pursued M. de Treuil, "that 
 I should give you so many pledges, and that 
 you should give me none." 
 "I give all I ask." 
 
 "Then, for Heaven s sake, ask for some 
 thing!" 
 
 "Your kind words are all I want." 
 "Then give me some kind word yourself." 
 "What shall I say, Vicomte?" 
 "Say, say that you ll wait for me." 
 They were standing in the centre of the 
 great saloon, their figures reflected by the light 
 
72 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 of a couple of candles in the shining inlai 
 floor. Mile, de Bergerac walked away a fe^ 
 steps with a look of agitation. Then turnini 
 about, "Vicomte," she asked, in a deep, fu] 
 voice, "do you truly love me?" 
 
 "Ah, Gabrielle!" cried the young man. 
 
 I take it that no woman can hear her baptis 
 mal name uttered for the first time as that o 
 Mile, de Bergerac then came from her suitor 
 lips without being thrilled with joy and pridt 
 
 "Well, M. de Treuil," she said, "I will wai 
 for you." 
 
PART II 
 
 I REMEMBER distinctly the incidents of 
 that summer at Bergerac; or at least its 
 general character, its tone. It was a hot, 
 dry season ; we lived with doors and win 
 dows open. M. Coquelin suffered very much 
 from the heat, and sometimes, for days together, 
 my lessons were suspended. We put our books 
 away and rambled out for a long day in the 
 fields. My tutor was perfectly faithful; he 
 never allowed me to wander beyond call. I 
 was very fond of fishing, and I used to sit for 
 hours, like a little old man, with my legs dan 
 gling over the bank of our slender river, pa 
 tiently awaiting the bite that so seldom came. 
 Near at hand, in the shade, stretched at his 
 length on the grass, Coquelin read and re-read 
 one of his half dozen Greek and Latin poets. 
 If we had walked far from home, w r e used to 
 go and ask for some dinner at the hut of a 
 
 73 
 
74 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 neighboring peasant. For a very small coin 
 we got enough bread and cheese and small fruit 
 to keep us over till supper. The peasants, stu 
 pid and squalid as they were, always received 
 us civilly enough, though on Coquelin s ac 
 count quite as much as on my own. He ad 
 dressed them with an easy familiarity, which 
 made them feel, I suppose, that he was, if not 
 quite one of themselves, at least by birth and 
 sympathies much nearer to them than to the 
 future Baron de Bergerac. He gave me in the 
 course of these walks a great deal of good 
 advice; and without perverting my signorial 
 morals or instilling any notions that were trea 
 son to my rank and position, he kindled in my 
 childish breast a little democratic flame which 
 has never quite become extinct. He taught me 
 the beauty of humanity, justice, and tolerance; 
 and whenever he detected me in a precocious 
 attempt to assert my baronial rights over the 
 wretched little manants who crossed my path, 
 he gave me morally a very hard drubbing. He 
 had none of the base complaisance and cynical 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 75 
 
 nonchalance of the traditional tutor of our old 
 novels and comedies. Later in life I might 
 have found him too rigorous a moralist; but 
 in those days I liked him all the better for let 
 ting me sometimes feel the curb. It gave me 
 a highly agreeable sense of importance and 
 maturity. It was a tribute to half-divined pos 
 sibilities of naughtiness. In the afternoon, 
 when I was tired of fishing, he would lie with 
 his thumb in his book and his eyes half closed 
 and tell me fairy-tales till the eyes of both of 
 us closed together. Do the instructors of youth 
 nowadays condescend to the fairy-tale pure 
 and simple? Coquelin s stories belonged to the 
 old, old world: no political economy, no phys 
 ics, no application to anything in life. Do you 
 remember in Dore s illustrations to Perrault s 
 tales, the picture of the enchanted castle of the 
 Sleeping Beauty? Back in the distance, in the 
 bosom of an ancient park and surrounded by 
 thick baronial woods which blacken all the 
 gloomy horizon, on the farther side of a great 
 abysmal hollow of tangled forest verdure, rise 
 
76 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 the long facade, the moss-grown terraces, the 
 towers, the purple roofs, of a chateau of the 
 time of Henry IV. Its massive foundations 
 plunge far down into the wild chasm of the 
 woodland, and its cold pinnacles of slate tower 
 upwards, close to the rolling autumn clouds. 
 The afternoon is closing in and a chill October 
 wind is beginning to set the forest a-howling. 
 In the foreground, on an elevation beneath a 
 mighty oak, stand a couple of old woodcutters 
 pointing across into the enchanted distance and 
 answering the questions of the young prince. 
 They are the bent and blackened woodcutters 
 of old France, of La Fontaine s Fables and the 
 Mcdecin malgre lid. What does the castle 
 contain? What secret is locked in its stately 
 walls? What revel is enacted in its long sa 
 loons ? What strange figures stand aloof from 
 its vacant windows? You ask the question, 
 and the answer is a long revery. I never look 
 at the picture without thinking of those sum 
 mer afternoons in the woods and of Coquelin s 
 long stories. His fairies were the fairies of the 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 77 
 
 Grand Siecle, and his princes and shepherds 
 the godsons of Perrault and Madame d Aul- 
 nay. They lived in such palaces and they 
 hunted in such woods. 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac, to all appearance, was 
 not likely to break her promise to M. de Treuil, 
 for lack of the opportunity, quite as much as 
 of the will. Those bright summer days must 
 have seemed very long to her, and I can t for 
 my life imagine what she did with her time. 
 But she, too, as she had told the Vicomte, was 
 very fond of the green fields ; and although she 
 never wandered very far from the house, she 
 spent many an hour in the open air. Neither 
 here nor within doors was she likely to encoun 
 ter the happy man of whom the Vicomte might 
 be jealous. Mile, de Bergerac had a friend, a 
 single intimate friend, who came sometimes to 
 pass the day with her, and whose visits she 
 occasionally returned. Marie de Chalais, the 
 granddaughter of the Marquis de Chalais, who 
 lived some ten miles away, was in all respects 
 the exact counterpart and foil of my aunt. She 
 
78 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 was extremely plain, but with that sprightly, 
 highly seasoned ugliness which is often so 
 agreeable to men. Short, spare, swarthy, light, 
 with an immense mouth, a most impertinent 
 little nose, an imperceptible foot, a charming 
 hand, and a delightful voice, she was, in spite 
 of her great name and her fine clothes, the very 
 ideal of the old stage soubrctte, Frequently, 
 indeed, in her dress and manner, she used to 
 provoke a comparison with this incomparable 
 type. A cap, an apron, and a short petticoat 
 were all sufficient; w r ith these and her bold, 
 dark eyes she could impersonate the very 
 genius of impertinence and intrigue. She was 
 a thoroughly light creature, and later in life, 
 after her marriage, she became famous for her 
 ugliness, her witticisms, and her adventures; 
 but that she had a good heart is shown by her 
 real attachment to my aunt. They were for 
 ever at cross-purposes, and yet they were ex 
 cellent friends. When my aunt wished to walk, 
 Mile, de Chalais wished to sit still; when Mile, 
 de Chalais wished to laugh, my aunt wished to 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 79 
 
 meditate; when my aunt wished to talk piety, 
 Mile, de Chalais wished to talk scandal. Mile, 
 de Bergerac, however, usually carried the day 
 and set the tune. There was nothing on earth 
 that Marie de Chalais so despised as the green 
 fields ; and yet you might have seen her a dozen 
 times that summer wandering over the domain 
 of Bergerac, in a short muslin dress and a straw 
 hat, with her arm entwined about the waist of 
 her more stately friend. We used often to 
 meet them, and as we drew near Mile, de 
 Chalais would always stop and offer to kiss 
 the Chevalier. By this pretty trick Coquelin 
 was subjected for a few moments to the influ 
 ence of her innocent agaperies; for rather than 
 have no man at all to prick with the little darts 
 of her coquetry, the poor girl would have 
 gone off and made eyes at the scare-crow in the 
 wheat-field. Coquelin was not at all abashed 
 by her harmless advances; for although, in 
 addressing my aunt, he was apt to lose his voice 
 or his countenance, he often showed a very 
 pretty wit in answering Mile, de Chalais. 
 
80 GABIUELI.E DE BEUGERAC 
 
 On one occasion she spent several days at 
 Bergerac, and during her stay she proffered 
 an urgent entreaty that my aunt should go 
 back with her to her grandfather s house, 
 where, having no parents, she lived with her 
 governess. Mile, de Bergerac declined, on the 
 ground of having no gowns fit to visit in; 
 whereupon Mile, de Chalais went to my 
 mother, begged the gift of an old blue silk 
 dress, and with her own cunning little hands 
 made it over for my aunt s figure. That even 
 ing Mile, de Bergerac appeared at supper in 
 this renovated garment, the first silk gown 
 she had ever worn. Mile, de Chalais had also 
 dressed her hair, and decked her out w r ith a 
 number of trinkets and furbelows; and when 
 the two came into the room together, they re 
 minded me of the beautiful Duchess in Don 
 Quixote, followed by a little dark-visaged 
 Spanish waiting-maid. The next morning 
 Coquelin and I rambled off as usual in search 
 of adventures, and the day after that they were 
 to leave the chateau. Whether w r e met with 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 81 
 
 any adventures or not I forget; but we found 
 ourselves at dinner-time at some distance from 
 home, very hungry after a long tramp. We 
 directed our steps to a little roadside hovel, 
 where we had already purchased hospitality, 
 and made our way in unannounced. We were 
 somewhat surprised at the scene that met our 
 eyes. 
 
 On a wretched bed at the farther end of the 
 hut lay the master of the household, a young 
 peasant whom we had seen a fortnight before 
 in full health and vigor. At the head of the 
 bed stood his wife, moaning, crying, and wring 
 ing her hands. Hanging about her, clinging 
 to her skirts, and adding their piping cries to 
 her own lamentations, were four little children, 
 unw r ashed, unfed, and half clad. At the foot, 
 facing the dying man, knelt his old mother a 
 horrible hag, so bent and brown and wrinkled 
 with labor and age that there was nothing 
 womanly left of her but her coarse, rude dress 
 and cap, nothing of maternity but her sobs. 
 Beside the pillow stood the priest, who had ap- 
 
82 GABRIELLE DE BERGEIIAC 
 
 parently just discharged the last offices of the 
 Church. On the other side, on her knees, with 
 the poor fellow s hand in her own, knelt Mile, 
 de Bergerac, like a consoling angel. On a 
 stool near the door, looking on from a distance, 
 sat Mile, de Chalais, holding a little bleating 
 kid in her arms. When she saw us, she started 
 up. "Ah, M. Coquelin!" she cried, "do per 
 suade Mile, de Bergerac to leave this horrible 
 place." 
 
 I saw Mile, de Bergerac look at the cure and 
 shake her head, as if to say that it was all over. 
 She rose from her knees and went round to 
 the wife, telling the same tale with her face. 
 The poor, squalid paysanne gave a sort of 
 savage, stupid cry, and threw herself and her 
 rags on the young girl s neck. Mile, de Ber 
 gerac caressed her, and whispered heaven 
 knows what divinely simple words of comfort. 
 Then, for the first time, she saw Coquelin and 
 me, and beckoned us to approach. 
 
 "Chevalier," she said, still holding the 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 83 
 
 woman on her breast, have you got any 
 money?" 
 
 At these words the woman raised her head. 
 I signified that I was penniless. 
 
 My aunt frowned impatiently. "M. Coque- 
 lin, have you?" 
 
 Coquelin drew forth a single small piece, 
 all that he possessed ; for it was the end of his 
 month. Mile, de Bergerac took it, and pur 
 sued her inquiry. 
 
 "Cure, have you any money?" 
 
 "Not a sou/ said the cure, smiling sweetly. 
 
 "Bah!" said Mile, de Bergerac, with a sort 
 of tragic petulance. "What can I do with 
 twelve sous?" 
 
 "Give it all the same," said the woman, 
 doggedly, putting out her hand. 
 
 "They want money," said Mile de Bergerac, 
 lowering her voice to Coquelin. "They have 
 had this great sorrow, but a louts d or would 
 dull the wound. But we re all penniless. O 
 for the sight of a little gold!" 
 
84 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 "I have a louis at home," said I; and I felt 
 Coquelin lay his hand on my head. 
 
 "What was the matter with the husband?" 
 he asked. 
 
 fc Mon Dieu!" said my aunt, glancing round 
 at the bed. "I don t know." 
 
 Coquelin looked at her, half amazed, half 
 worshipping. 
 
 "Who are they, these people? What are 
 they?" she asked. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," said Coquelin, fervently, 
 "you re an angel!" 
 
 "I wish I were," said Mile, de Bergerac, 
 simply ; and she turned to the old mother. 
 
 We walked home together, the cure with 
 Mile, de Chalais and me, and Mile, de Berge 
 rac in front with Coquelin. Asking how the 
 two young girls had found their way to the 
 deathbed we had just left, I learned from 
 Mile, de Chalais that they had set out for a 
 stroll together, and, striking into a footpath 
 across the fields, had gone farther than they 
 supposed, and lost their way. While they were 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 85 
 
 trying to recover it, they came upon the 
 wretched hut where we had found them, and 
 were struck by the sight of two children, stand 
 ing crying at the door. Mile, de Bergerac had 
 stopped and questioned them to ascertain the 
 cause of their sorrow, which with some diffi 
 culty she found to be that their father was 
 dying of a fever. Whereupon, in spite of her 
 companion s lively opposition, she had entered 
 the miserable abode, and taken her place at 
 the wretched couch, in the position in which we 
 had discovered her. All this, doubtless, implied 
 no extraordinary merit on Mile, de Bergerac s 
 part; but it placed her in a gracious, pleasing 
 light. 
 
 The next morning the young girls went off 
 in the great coach of M. de Chalais, which had 
 been sent for them overnight, my father riding 
 along as an escort. My aunt was absent a 
 week, and I think I may say we keenly missed 
 her. When I say we, I mean Coquelin and I, 
 and when I say Coquelin and I, I mean Co 
 quelin in particular; for it had come to this, 
 
86 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 that my tutor was roundly in love with my 
 aunt. I didn t know it then, of course; but 
 looking back, I see that he must already have 
 been stirred to his soul s depths. Young as I 
 was, moreover, I believe that I even then sus 
 pected his passion, and, loving him as I did, 
 watched it with a vague, childish awe and sym 
 pathy. My aunt was to me, of course, a very 
 old story, and I am sure she neither charmed 
 nor dazzled my boyish fancy. I was quite too 
 young to apprehend the meaning or the conse 
 quences of Coquelin s feelings ; but I knew that 
 he had a secret, and I wished him joy of it. 
 He kept so jealous a guard on it that I would 
 have defied my elders to discover the least rea 
 son for accusing him; but with a simple child 
 of ten, thinking himself alone and uninter- 
 preted, he showed himself plainly a lover. He 
 was absent, restless, preoccupied; now steeped 
 in languid revery, now pacing up and down 
 with the exaltation of something akin to hope. 
 Hope itself he could never have felt; for it 
 must have seemed to him that his passion was 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 87 
 
 so audacious as almost to be criminal. Mile, de 
 Bergerac s absence showed him, I imagine, 
 that to know her had been the event of his life ; 
 to see her across the table, to hear her voice, her 
 tread, to pass her, to meet her eye, a deep, con 
 soling, healing joy. It revealed to him the 
 force with which she had grasped his heart, and 
 I think he was half frightened at the energy 
 of his passion. 
 
 One evening, while Mile, de Bergerac was 
 still away, I sat in his window, committing my 
 lesson for the morrow by the waning light. 
 He was walking up and down among the shad 
 ows. "Chevalier," said he, suddenly, "what 
 should you do if I were to leave you?" 
 
 My poor little heart stood still. "Leave 
 me?" I cried, aghast; "why should you leave 
 me?" 
 
 "Why, you know I didn t come to stay for 
 
 ever." 
 
 "But you came to stay till I m a man grown, 
 Don t you like your place?" 
 "Perfectly." 
 
88 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 "Don t you like my father?" 
 
 "Your father is excellent." 
 
 "And my mother?" 
 
 "Your mother is perfect." 
 
 "And me, Coquelin?" 
 
 "You, Chevalier, are a little goose." 
 
 And then, from a sort of unreasoned instinct 
 that Mile, de Bergerac was somehow connected 
 with his idea of going away, "And my aunt?" 
 I added. 
 
 "How, your aunt?" 
 
 "Don t you like her?" 
 
 Coquelin had stopped in his walk, and stood 
 near me and above me. He looked at me some 
 moments without answering, and then sat down 
 beside me in the window-seat, and laid his hand 
 on my head. 
 
 "Chevalier," he said, "I will tell you some 
 thing." 
 
 "Well?" said I, after I had waited some 
 time. 
 
 "One of these days you will be a man grown, 
 and I shall have left you long before that. 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 89 
 
 You ll learn a great many things that you don t 
 know now. You ll learn what a strange, vast 
 world it is, and what strange creatures men 
 are and women; how strong, how weak, how 
 happy, how unhappy. You ll learn how many 
 feelings and passions they have, and what a 
 power of joy and of suffering. You ll be 
 Baron de Bergerac and master of the chateau 
 and of this little house. You ll sometimes be 
 very proud of your title, and you ll sometimes 
 feel very sad that it s so little more than a bare 
 title. But neither your pride nor your grief 
 will come to anything beside this, that one day, 
 in the prime of your youth and strength and 
 good looks, you ll see a woman whom you will 
 love more than all these things, more than 
 your name, your lands, your youth, and 
 strength, and beauty. It happens to all men, 
 especially the good ones, and you ll be a good 
 one. But the woman you love will be far out 
 of your reach. She ll be a princess, perhaps 
 she ll be the Queen. How can a poor little 
 Baron de Bergerac expect her to look at him? 
 
90 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 You will give up your life for a touch of her 
 hand; but what will she care for your life or 
 your death? You ll curse your love, and yet 
 you ll bless it, and perhaps not having your 
 living to get you ll come up here and shut 
 yourself up with your dreams and regrets. 
 You ll come perhaps into this pavilion, and sit 
 here alone in the twilight. And then, my child, 
 you ll remember this evening; that I foretold 
 it all and gave you my blessing in advance and 
 kissed you." lie bent over, and I felt his 
 burning lips on my forehead. 
 
 I understood hardly a word of what he said; 
 but whether it was that I was terrified by his 
 picture of the possible insignificance of a Baron 
 de Bergerac, or that I was vaguely overawed 
 by his deep, solemn tones, I know not ; but my 
 eyes very quietly began to emit a flood of tears. 
 The effect of my grief was to induce him to 
 assure me that he had no present intention of 
 leaving me. It was not, of course, till later in 
 life, that, thinking over the situation, I under 
 stood his impulse to arrest his hopeless passion 
 
GABRIELLE 1)E BERGERAC 91 
 
 for Mile, de Bergerac by immediate departure. 
 He was not brave in time. 
 
 At the end of a week she returned one eve 
 ning as we were at supper. She came in with 
 M. de Chalais, an amiable old man, who had 
 been so kind as to accompany her. She greeted 
 us severally, and nodded to Coquelin. She 
 talked, I remember, with great volubility, re 
 lating what she had seen and done in her ab 
 sence, and laughing with extraordinary free 
 dom. As we left the table, she took my hand, 
 and I put out the other and took Coquelin s. 
 
 "Has the Chevalier been a good boy?" she 
 asked. 
 
 "Perfect," said Coquelin; "but he has 
 w r anted his aunt sadly." 
 
 "Not at all," said I, resenting the imputa 
 tion as derogatory to my independence. 
 
 "You have had a pleasant week, mademoi 
 selle?" said Coquelin. 
 
 "A charming week. And you?" 
 
 "M. Coquelin has been very unhappy," said 
 I. "He thought of going away." 
 
92 GABRIELHE DE BERGERAC 
 
 "Ah?" said rny aunt. 
 
 Coquelin was silent. 
 
 "You think of going away?" 
 
 "I merely spoke of it, mademoiselle. I must 
 go away some time, you know. The Chevalier 
 looks upon me as something eternal." 
 
 "What s eternal?" asked the Chevalier. 
 
 "There is nothing eternal, my child," said 
 Mile, de Bergerac. "Nothing lasts more than 
 a moment." 
 
 "O," said Coquelin, "I don t agree with 
 you!" 
 
 "You don t believe that in this world every 
 thing is vain and fleeting and transitory?" 
 
 "By no means; I believe in the permanence 
 of many things." 
 
 "Of what, for instance?" 
 
 "Well, of sentiments and passions." 
 
 "Very likely. But not of the hearts that 
 hold them. Lovers die, but love survives. I 
 heard a gentleman say that at Chalais." 
 
 "It s better, at least, than if he had put it the 
 other way. But lovers last too. They survive ; 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 93 
 
 they outlive the things that would fain destroy 
 them, indifference, denial, and despair." 
 
 "But meanwhile the loved object disappears. 
 When it isn t one, it s the other." 
 
 "O, I admit that it s a shifting world. But 
 I have a philosophy for that." 
 
 "I m curious to know your philosophy." 
 
 "It s a very old one. It s simply to make the 
 most of life while it lasts. I m very fond of 
 life," said Coquelin, laughing. 
 
 "I should say that as yet, from what I know 
 of your history, you have had no great reason 
 to be." 
 
 "Nay, it s like a cruel mistress," said Coque 
 lin. "When once you love her, she s absolute. 
 Her hard usage doesn t affect you. And cer 
 tainly I have nothing to complain of now." 
 
 "You re happy here then?" 
 
 "Profoundly, mademoiselle, in spite of the 
 Chevalier." 
 
 "I should suppose that with your tastes you 
 would prefer something more active, more ar 
 dent." 
 
94 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 "Mon DieU; my tastes are very simple. And 
 then happiness, cela ne se raisonne pas. You 
 don t find it when you go in quest of it. It s 
 like fortune; it comes to you in your sleep." 
 
 "I imagine," said Mile, de Bergerac, "that 
 I was never happy." 
 
 "That s a sad story," said Coquelin. 
 
 The young girl began to laugh. "And never 
 unhappy." 
 
 "Dear me, that s still worse. Never fear, it 
 will come." 
 
 "What will come?" 
 
 "That which is both bliss and misery at 
 
 once." 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac hesitated a moment. 
 "And what is this strange thing?" she asked. 
 
 On his side Coquelin was silent. "When it 
 comes to you," he said, at last, "you ll tell me 
 what you call it." 
 
 About a week after this, at breakfast, in pur 
 suance of an urgent request of mine, Coquelin 
 proposed to my father to allow him to take me 
 to visit the ruins of an ancient feudal castle 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 95 
 
 some four leagues distant, which he had ob 
 served and explored while he trudged across 
 the country on his way to Bergerac, and which, 
 indeed, although the taste for ruins was at that 
 time by no means so general as since the Revo 
 lution (when one may say it was in a measure 
 created), enjoyed a certain notoriety through 
 out the province. My father good-naturedly 
 consented; and as the distance w r as too great 
 to be achieved on foot, he placed his two old 
 coach-horses at our service. You know that 
 although I affected, in boyish sort, to have been 
 indifferent to my aunt s absence, I was really 
 very fond of her, and it occurred to me that our 
 excursion would be more solemn and splendid 
 for her taking part in it. So I appealed to my 
 father and asked if Mile, de Bergerac might 
 be allowed to go with us. What the Baron 
 would have decided had he been left to himself 
 I know not; but happily for our cause my 
 mother cried out that, to her mind, it was 
 highly improper that her sister-in-law should 
 travel twenty miles alone with two young men. 
 
96 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 4 One of your young men is a child," said my 
 father, "and her nephew into the bargain; and 
 the other," and he laughed, coarsely but not 
 ill-humoredly, -"the other is Coquelin!" 
 
 "Coquelin is not a child nor is mademoiselle 
 either," said my mother. 
 
 "All the more reason for their going. Ga- 
 brielle, will you go?" My father, I fear, was 
 not remarkable in general for his tenderness or 
 his prevenance for the poor girl whom fortune 
 had given him to protect ; but from time to time 
 he would wake up to a downright sense of kin 
 ship and duty, kindled by the pardonable ag 
 gressions of my mother, between whom and her 
 sister-in-law there existed a singular antago 
 nism of temper. 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac looked at my father in 
 tently and with a little blush. "Yes, brother, 
 I ll go. The Chevalier can take me en croupe" 
 
 So we started, Coquelin on one horse, and I 
 on the other, with my aunt mounted behind me. 
 Our sport for the first part of the journey con 
 sisted chiefly in my urging my beast into a 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 97 
 
 somewhat ponderous gallop, so as to terrify 
 my aunt, who was not very sure of her seat, 
 and who, at moments, between pleading and 
 laughing, had hard work to preserve her bal 
 ance. At these times Coquelin would ride close 
 alongside of us, at the same cumbersome pace, 
 declaring himself ready to catch the young girl 
 if she fell. In this way we jolted along, in a 
 cloud of dust, with shouts and laughter. 
 
 "Madame the Baronne was wrong," said 
 Coquelin, "in denying that we are children." 
 
 "O, this is nothing yet," cried my aunt. 
 
 The castle of Fossy lifted its dark and crum 
 bling towers with a decided air of feudal arro 
 gance from the summit of a gentle eminence in 
 the recess of a shallow gorge among the hills. 
 Exactly when it had flourished and when it had 
 decayed I knew not, but in the year of grace 
 of our pilgrimage it was a truly venerable, 
 almost a formidable, ruin. Two great towers 
 were standing, one of them diminished by 
 half its upper elevation, and the other sadly 
 scathed and shattered, but still exposing its 
 
98 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 hoary head to the weather, and offering the 
 sullen hospitality of its empty skull to a colony 
 of swallows. I shall never forget that day at 
 Fossy; it was one of those long raptures of 
 childhood which seem to imprint upon the mind 
 an ineffaceable stain of light. The novelty and 
 mystery of the dilapidated fortress, its antiq 
 uity, its intricacy, its sounding vaults and 
 corridors, its inaccessible heights and impen 
 etrable depths, the broad sunny glare of its 
 grass-grown courts and yards, the twilight of 
 its passages and midnight of its dungeons, and 
 along with all this my freedom to rove and 
 scramble, my perpetual curiosity, my lusty 
 absorption of the sun-warmed air, and the con 
 tagion of my companions careless and sensu 
 ous mirth, all these things combined to make 
 our excursion one of the memorable events of 
 my youth. My two companions accepted the 
 situation and drank in the beauty of the day 
 and the richness of the spot with all my own 
 reckless freedom. Coquelin was half mad with 
 the joy of spending a whole unbroken sum- 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 99 
 
 mer s day with the woman whom he secretly 
 loved. He was all motion and humor and reso 
 nant laughter; and yet intermingled with his 
 random gayety there lurked a solemn sweet 
 ness and reticence, a feverish concentration of 
 thought, which to a woman with a woman s 
 senses must have fairly betrayed his passion. 
 Mile, de Bergerac, without quite putting aside 
 her natural dignity and gravity of mien, lent 
 herself with a charming girlish energy to the 
 undisciplined spirit of the hour. 
 
 Our first thoughts, after Coquelin had 
 turned the horses to pasture in one of the 
 grassy courts of the castle, were naturally be 
 stowed upon our little basket of provisions; 
 and our first act was to sit down on a heap of 
 fallen masonry and divide its contents. After 
 that we wandered. We climbed the still prac 
 ticable staircases, and wedged ourselves into 
 the turrets and strolled through the chambers 
 and halls; we started from their long repose 
 every echo and bat and owl within the innumer 
 able walls. 
 
100 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 Finally, after we had rambled a couple of 
 hours, Mile, de Bergerac betrayed signs of 
 fatigue. Coquelin went with her in search of 
 a place of rest, and I was left to my own de 
 vices. For an hour I found plenty of diver 
 sion, at the end of which I returned to my 
 friends. I had some difficulty in finding them. 
 They had mounted by an imperfect and some 
 what perilous ascent to one of the upper plat 
 forms of the castle. Mile, de Bergerac was 
 sitting in a listless posture on a block of stone, 
 against the wall, in the shadow of the still sur 
 viving tower; opposite, in the light, half lean 
 ing, half sitting on the parapet of the terrace, 
 was her companion. 
 
 "For the last half -hour, mademoiselle," said 
 Coquelin, as I came up, "you ve not spoken a 
 word." 
 
 "All the morning," said Mile, de Bergerac, 
 "I ve been scrambling and chattering and 
 laughing. Now, by reaction, I m triste" 
 
 "I protest, so am I," said Coquelin. "The 
 truth is, this old feudal fortress is a decidedly 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 101 
 
 melancholy spot. It s haunted with the ghost 
 of the past. It smells of tragedies, sorrows, 
 and cruelties." He uttered these words with 
 singular emphasis. "It s a horrible place," he 
 pursued, with a shudder. 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac began to laugh. "It s odd 
 that we should only just now have discovered 
 it!" 
 
 "No, it s like the history of that abominable 
 past of which it s a relic. At the first glance 
 we see nothing but the great proportions, the 
 show, and the splendor; but when we come to 
 explore, we detect a vast underground world 
 of iniquity and suffering. Only half this castle 
 is above the soil; the rest is dungeons and 
 vaults and oubliettes." 
 
 "Nevertheless," said the young girl, "I 
 should have liked to live in those old days. 
 Shouldn t you?" 
 
 "Verily, no, mademoiselle!" And then after 
 a pause, with a certain irrepressible bitterness : 
 "Life is hard enough now." 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac stared but said nothing. 
 
102 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 "In those good old days/ Coquelin resumed, 
 "I should have been a brutal, senseless peas 
 ant, yoked down like an ox, with my forehead 
 in the soil. Or else I should have been a trem 
 bling, groaning, fasting monk, moaning my 
 soul away in the ecstasies of faith." 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac rose and came to the edge 
 of the platform. "Was no other career open in 
 those days?" 
 
 "To such a one as me, no. As I say, made 
 moiselle, life is hard now, but it was a mere 
 dead weight then. I know it was. I feel in my 
 bones and pulses that awful burden of despair 
 under which my wretched ancestors struggled. 
 Tenez, I m the great man of the race. My 
 father came next; he was one of four brothers, 
 who all thought it a prodigious rise in the 
 world when he became a village tailor. If we 
 had lived five hundred years ago, in the shadow 
 of these great towers, we should never have 
 risen at all. We should have stuck with our 
 feet in the clay. As I m not a fighting man, I 
 suppose I should have gone into the Church. 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 103 
 
 If I hadn t died from an overdose of inanition, 
 very likely I might have lived to be a cardinal." 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac leaned against the para 
 pet, and with a meditative droop of the head 
 looked down the little glen toward the plain 
 and the highway. Tor myself," she said, "I 
 can imagine very charming things of life in 
 this castle of Fossy." 
 
 "For yourself, very likely." 
 
 "Fancy the great moat below filled with 
 water and sheeted with lilies, and the draw 
 bridge lowered, and a company of knights rid 
 ing into the gates. Within, in one of those 
 vaulted, quaintly timbered rooms, the chate 
 laine stands ready to receive them, with her 
 women, her chaplain, her physician, and her 
 little page. They come clanking up the stair 
 case, with ringing swords, sweeping the ground 
 with their plumes. They are all brave and 
 splendid and fierce, but one of them far more 
 than the rest. They each bend a knee to the 
 lady" 
 
 "But he bends two," cried Coquelin. "They 
 
104 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 wander apart into one of those deep embra 
 sures and spin the threads of perfect love. Ah, 
 I could fancy a sweet life, in those days, made 
 moiselle, if I could only fancy myself a 
 knight!" 
 
 "And you can t," said the young girl, grave 
 ly, looking at him. 
 
 "It s an idle game; it s not worth trying." 
 
 "Apparently then, you re a cynic; you have 
 an equally small opinion of the past and the 
 present." 
 
 "No; you do me injustice." 
 
 "But you say that life is hard." 
 
 "I speak not for myself, but for others; for 
 my brothers and sisters and kinsmen in all de 
 grees ; for the great mass of petits gens of my 
 own class." 
 
 "Dear me, M. Coquelin, while you re about 
 it, you can speak for others still; for poor por 
 tionless girls, for instance." 
 
 "Are they very much to be pitied?" 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac was silent. "After all," 
 she resumed, "they oughtn t to complain." 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 105 
 
 "Not when they have a great name and 
 beauty," said Coquelin. 
 
 "O heaven!" said the young girl, impa 
 tiently, and turned away. Coquelin stood 
 watching her, his brow contracted, his lips 
 parted. Presently, she came back. "Perhaps 
 you think," she said, "that I care for my name, 
 my great name, as you call it." 
 
 "Assuredly, I do." 
 
 She stood looking at him, blushing a little 
 and frowning. As he said these words, she 
 gave an impatient toss of the head and turned 
 away again. In her hand she carried an orna 
 mented fan, an antiquated and sadly dilapi 
 dated instrument. She suddenly raised it 
 above her head, swung it a moment, and threw 
 it far across the parapet. "There goes the 
 name of Bergerac!" she said; and sweeping 
 round, made the young man a very low cour 
 tesy. 
 
 There was in the whole action a certain pas 
 sionate freedom which set poor Coquelin s 
 heart a- throbbing. "To have a good name, 
 
106 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 mademoiselle," he said, "and to be indifferent 
 to it, is the sign of a noble mind." (In paren 
 thesis, I may say that I think he was quite 
 wrong. ) 
 
 "It s quite as noble, monsieur," returned my 
 aunt, "to have a small name and not to blush 
 for it." 
 
 With these words I fancy they felt as if they 
 had said enough ; the conversation was growing 
 rather too pointed. 
 
 "I think," said my aunt, "that we had better 
 prepare to go." And she cast a farewell glance 
 at the broad expanse of country which lay 
 stretched out beneath us, striped with the long 
 afternoon shadows. 
 
 Coquelin followed the direction of her eyes. 
 "I wish very much," he said, "that before we 
 go we might be able to make our way up into 
 the summit of the great tower. It would be 
 worth the attempt. The view from here, 
 charming as it is, must be only a fragment of 
 what you see from that topmost platform." 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 107 
 
 "It s not likely," said my aunt, "that the 
 staircase is still in a state to be used." 
 
 "Possibly not; but we can see." 
 
 "Nay," insisted my aunt, "I m afraid to 
 trust the Chevalier. There are great breaches 
 in the sides of the ascent, which are so many 
 open doors to destruction." 
 
 I strongly opposed this view of the case ; but 
 Coquelin, after scanning the elevation of the 
 tower and such of the fissures as were visible 
 from our standpoint, declared that my aunt 
 was right and that it was my duty to comply. 
 "And you, too, mademoiselle," he said, "had 
 better not try it, unless you pride yourself on 
 your strong head." 
 
 "No, indeed, I have a particularly weak one. 
 And you?" 
 
 "I confess I m very curious to see the view. 
 I always want to read to the end of a book, to 
 walk to the turn of a road, and to climb to the 
 top of a building." 
 
 "Good," said Mile, de Bergerac. "We ll 
 wait for you." 
 
108 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 Although in a straight line from the spot 
 which we occupied, the distance through the 
 air to the rugged sides of the great cylinder 
 of masonry which frowned above us was not 
 more than thirty yards, Coquelin was obliged, 
 in order to strike at the nearest accessible point 
 the winding staircase which clung to its mas 
 sive ribs, to retrace his steps through the inte 
 rior of the castle and make a detour of some 
 five minutes duration. In ten minutes more 
 he showed himself at an aperture in the wall, 
 facing our terrace. 
 
 "How do you prosper?" cried my aunt, rais 
 ing her voice. 
 
 "I ve mounted eighty steps," he shouted; 
 "I ve a hundred more." Presently he ap 
 peared again at another opening. "The steps 
 have stopped," he cried. 
 
 "You ve only to stop too," rejoined Mile, de 
 Bergerac. Again he was lost to sight and we 
 supposed he was returning. A quarter of an 
 hour elapsed, and we began to wonder at his 
 not having overtaken us, when we heard a loud 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 109 
 
 call high above our heads. There he stood, on 
 the summit of the edifice, waving his hat. At 
 this point he was so far above us that it was 
 difficult to communicate by sounds, in spite of 
 our curiosity to know how, in the absence of 
 a staircase, he had effected the rest of the as 
 cent. He began to represent, by gestures of 
 pretended rapture, the immensity and beauty 
 of the prospect. Finally Mile, de Bergerac 
 beckoned to him to descend, and pointed to the 
 declining sun, informing him at the same time 
 that we would go down and meet him in the 
 lower part of the castle. We left the terrace 
 accordingly, and, making the best of our way 
 through the intricate passages of the edifice, at 
 last, not without a feeling of relief, found our 
 selves on the level earth. We waited quite half 
 an hour without seeing anything of our com 
 panion. My aunt, I could see, had become 
 anxious, although she endeavored to appear at 
 her ease. As the time elapsed, however, it be 
 came so evident that Coquelin had encountered 
 some serious obstacle to his descent, that Mile. 
 
110 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 de Bergerac pro]>osed we should, in so far as 
 was possible, betake ourselves to bis assistance. 
 The point was to approach him within speak 
 ing distance. 
 
 We entered the body of the castle again, 
 climbed to one of the upper levels, and reached 
 a spot where an extensive destruction of the 
 external wall partially exposed the great 
 tower. As we approached this crumbling 
 breach, Mile, de Bergerac drew back from its 
 brink with a loud cry of horror. It was not 
 long before I discerned the cause of her move 
 ment. The side of the tower visible from where 
 we stood presented a vast yawning fissure, 
 which explained the interruption of the stair 
 case, the latter having fallen for want of sup 
 port. The central column, to which the steps 
 had been fastened, seemed, nevertheless, still 
 to be erect, and to have formed, with the ag 
 glomeration of fallen fragments and various 
 occasional projections of masonry, the means 
 by which Coquelin, with extraordinary courage 
 and skill, had reached the topmost platform. 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 111 
 
 The ascent, then, had been possible; the de 
 scent, curiously enough, he seemed to have 
 found another matter; and after striving in 
 vain to retrace his footsteps, had been obliged 
 to commit himself to the dangerous experiment 
 of passing from the tower to the external sur 
 face of the main fortress. lie had accom 
 plished half his journey and now stood directly 
 over against us in a posture which caused my 
 young limbs to stiffen with dismay. The point 
 to which he had directed himself was appar 
 ently the breach at which we stood; meanwhile 
 he had paused, clinging in mid-air to heaven 
 knows what narrow ledge or flimsy iron clump 
 in the stone-work, and straining his nerves to 
 an agonized tension in the effort not to fall, 
 while his eyes vaguely wandered in quest of 
 another footing. The wall of the castle w r as so 
 immensely thick, that wherever he could em 
 brace its entire section, progress was com 
 paratively easy; the more especially as, above 
 our heads, this same wall had been demolished 
 in such a way as to maintain a rapid upward 
 
112 GABRIELLE DE BEKGERAC 
 
 inclination to the point where it communicated 
 with the tower. 
 
 I stood staring at Coquelin with my heart in 
 my throat, forgetting (or rather too young to 
 reflect) that the sudden shock of seeing me 
 where I was might prove fatal to his equipoise. 
 lie perceived me, however, and tried to smile. 
 " Don t be afraid," he cried, "I ll he with you 
 in a moment." My aunt, who had fallen back, 
 returned to the aperture, and gazed at him with 
 pale cheeks and clasped hands. lie made a 
 long step forward, successfully, and, as he re 
 covered himself, caught sight of her face and 
 looked at her with fearful intentness. Then 
 seeing, I suppose, that she was sickened by his 
 insecurity, he disengaged one hand and mo 
 tioned her back. She retreated, paced in a sin 
 gle moment the length of the enclosure in which 
 we stood, returned and stopped just short of 
 the point at which she would have seen him 
 again. She buried her face in her hands, like 
 one muttering a rapid prayer, and then ad 
 vanced once more within range of her friend s 
 
GABRIELLE DE BKRGERAC 113 
 
 vision. As she looked at him, clinging in mid 
 air and planting step after step on the jagged 
 and treacherous edge of the immense perpen 
 dicular chasm, she repressed another loud cry 
 only by thrusting her handkerchief into her 
 mouth. He caught her eyes again, gazed into 
 them with piercing keenness, as if to drink in 
 coolness and confidence, arid then, as she closed 
 them again in horror, motioned me with his 
 head to lead her away. She returned to the 
 farther end of the apartment and leaned her 
 head against the wall. I remained staring at 
 poor Coquelin, fascinated by the spectacle of 
 his mingled danger and courage. Inch by inch, 
 yard by yard, I saw him lessen the interval 
 which threatened his life. It was a horrible, 
 beautiful sight. Some five minutes elapsed; 
 they seemed like fifty. The last few yards he 
 accomplished with a rush ; he reached the win 
 dow which was the goal of his efforts, sw r ung 
 himself in and let himself down by a prodigious 
 leap to the level on which we stood. Here he 
 stopped, pale, lacerated, and drenched with 
 
lit GAIUUKLLK 1)E BEKGERAC 
 
 perspiration. lie put out his hand to Mile, de 
 Bcrgerac, who, at the sound of his steps, had 
 turned herself about. On seeing him she made 
 a few steps forward and burst into tears. I 
 took his extended hand. lie bent over me and 
 kissed me, and then giving me a push, "Go and 
 kiss your poor aunt," he said. Mile, de Ber- 
 gerac elasped me to her breast with a most con- 
 vulsive pressure. From that moment till we 
 reaehed home, there was very little said. Both 
 my companions had matter for silent reflec- 
 tion, Mile, de Bergerac in the deep signifi 
 cance of that offered hand, and Coquelin in the 
 rich avowal of her tears. 
 
PART III 
 
 A WEEK after this memorable visit to 
 Fossy, in emulation of my good pre 
 ceptor, I treated my friends, or my 
 self at least, to a five minutes fright. 
 Wandering beside the river one day when Co- 
 quelin had been detained within doors to over 
 look some accounts for my father, I amused 
 myself, where the bank projected slightly over 
 the stream, with kicking the earth away in 
 fragments, and watching it borne dow r n the 
 current. The result may be anticipated: I came 
 very near going the way of those same frag 
 ments. I lost my foothold and fell into the 
 stream, which, however, was so shallow as to 
 offer no great obstacle to self-preservation. I 
 scrambled ashore, wet to the bone, and, feeling 
 rather ashamed of my misadventure, skulked 
 about in the fields for a couple of hours, in my 
 dripping clothes. Finally, there being no sun 
 
 115 
 
116 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 and my garments remaining inexorably damp, 
 my teeth began to chatter and my limbs to ache. 
 I went home and surrendered myself. Here 
 again the result may be foreseen: the next day 
 I was laid up with a high fever. 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac, as I afterwards learned, 
 immediately appointed herself my nurse, re 
 moved me from my little sleeping-closet to her 
 own room, and watched me with the most ten 
 der care. My illness lasted some ten days, my 
 convalescence a week. When I began to mend, 
 my bed was transferred to an unoccupied room 
 adjoining my aunt s. Here, late one after 
 noon, I lay languidly singing to myself and 
 watching the western sunbeams shimmering on 
 the opposite wall. If you were ever ill as a 
 child, you will remember such moments. You 
 look by the hour at your thin, white hands ; you 
 listen to the sounds in the house, the opening 
 of doors and the tread of feet; you murmur 
 strange odds and ends of talk; and you watch 
 the fading of the day and the dark flowering 
 of the night. Presently my aunt came in, in- 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 117 
 
 troducing Coquelin, whom she left by my bed 
 side. He sat with me a long time, talking in 
 the old, kind way, and gradually lulled me to 
 sleep with the gentle murmur of his voice. 
 When I awoke again it was night. The sun 
 was quenched on the opposite wall, but through 
 a window on the same side came a broad ray of 
 moonlight. In the window sat Coquelin, who 
 had apparently not left the room. Near him 
 was Mile, de Bergerac. 
 
 Some time elapsed between my becoming 
 conscious of their presence and my distinguish 
 ing the sense of the words that were passing 
 between them. When I did so, if I had reached 
 the age when one ponders and interprets what 
 one hears, I should readily have perceived that 
 since those last thrilling moments at Fossy 
 their friendship had taken a very long step, 
 and that the secret of each heart had changed 
 place with its mate. But even now there was 
 little that was careless and joyous in their 
 young love; the first words of Mile. Bergerac 
 
118 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 that I distinguished betrayed the sombre tinge 
 of their passion. 
 
 "I don t care what happens now," she said. 
 "It will always be something to have lived 
 through these days." 
 
 "You re stronger than I, then," said Coque- 
 lin. "1 haven t the courage to defy the future. 
 I m afraid to think of it. Ah, why can t we 
 make a future of our own?" 
 
 "It would be a greater happiness than we 
 have a right to. Who are you, Pierre Coque- 
 lin, that you should claim the right to marry 
 the girl you love, when she s a demoiselle de 
 Bergerac to begin with? And who am I, that 
 I should expect to have deserved a greater 
 blessing than that one look of your eyes, which 
 I shall never, never forget? It is more than 
 enough to watch you and pray for you and 
 worship you in silence." 
 
 "What am I? what are you? We are two 
 honest mortals, who have a perfect right to 
 repudiate the blessings of God. If ever a pas 
 sion deserved its reward, mademoiselle, it s the 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 119 
 
 absolute love I bear you. It s not a spasm, a 
 miracle, or a delusion; it s the most natural 
 emotion of my nature." 
 
 "We don t live in a natural world, Coquelin. 
 If we did, there would be no need of concealing 
 this divine affection. Great heaven! who s 
 natural? Is it my sister-in-law? Is it M. de 
 Treuil? Is it my brother? My brother is 
 sometimes so natural that he s brutal. Is it I 
 myself? There are moments when I m afraid 
 of my nature." 
 
 It was too dark for me to distinguish my 
 companions faces in the course of this singular 
 dialogue; but it s not hard to imagine how, as 
 my aunt uttered these words, with a burst of 
 sombre naivete, her lover must have turned 
 upon her face the puzzled brightness of his 
 eyes. 
 
 "What do you mean?" he asked. 
 
 "Mon Dieu! think how I have lived! What 
 a senseless, thoughtless, passionless life! What 
 solitude, ignorance, and languor! What triv 
 ial duties and petty joys! I have fancied my- 
 
120 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 self happy at times, for it was God s mercy 
 that I didn t know what I lacked. But now 
 that my soul begins to stir and throb and live, 
 it shakes me with its mighty pulsations. I feel 
 as if in the mere wantonness of strength and 
 joy it might drive me to some extravagance. 
 I seem to feel myself making a great rush, 
 with my eyes closed and my heart in my throat. 
 And then the earth sinks away from under 
 my feet, and in my ears is the sound of a dread 
 ful tumult." 
 
 "Evidently we have very different ways of 
 feeling. For you our love is action, passion; 
 for me it s rest. For you it s romance; for me 
 it s reality. For me it s a necessity; for you 
 (how shall I say it?) it s a luxury. In point 
 of fact, mademoiselle, how should it be other 
 wise? When a demoiselle de Bergerac bestows 
 her heart upon an obscure adventurer, a man 
 born in poverty and servitude, it s a matter of 
 charity, of noble generosity." 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac received this speech in si 
 lence, and for some moments nothing was said. 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 121 
 
 At last she resumed: "After all that has passed 
 between us, Coquelin, it seems to me a matter 
 neither of generosity nor of charity to allude 
 again to that miserable fact of my birth." 
 
 "I was only trying to carry out your own 
 idea, and to get at the truth with regard to our 
 situation. If our love is worth a straw, we 
 needn t be afraid of that. Isn t it true bless 
 edly true, perhaps, for all I know that you 
 shrink a little from taking me as I am? Ex 
 cept for my character, I m so little! It s im 
 possible to be less of a personage. You can t 
 quite reconcile it to your dignity to love a no 
 body, so you fling over your weakness a veil 
 of mystery and romance and exaltation. You 
 regard your passion, perhaps, as more of an 
 escapade, an adventure, than it needs to be." 
 
 "My nobody, said Mile, de Bergerac, 
 gently, "is a very wise man, and a great phi 
 losopher. I don t understand a word you say." 
 
 "Ah, so much the better!" said Coquelin with 
 a little laugh. 
 
 "Will you promise me," pursued the young 
 
122 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 girl, "never again by word or deed to allude 
 to the difference of our birth? If you refuse, 
 I shall consider you an excellent pedagogue, 
 but no lover." 
 
 "Will you in return promise me 
 
 "Promise you what?" 
 
 Coquelin was standing before her, looking 
 at her, with folded arms. "Promise me like 
 wise to forget it!" 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac stared a moment, and also 
 rose to her feet. "Forget it! Is this gener 
 ous?" she cried. "Is it delicate? I had pretty 
 well forgot it, I think, on that dreadful day 
 at Fossy!" Her voice trembled and swelled; 
 she burst into tears. Coquelin attempted to re 
 monstrate, but she motioned him aside, and 
 swept out of the room. 
 
 It must have been a very genuine passion 
 between these two, you ll observe, to allow this 
 handling without gloves. Only a plant of 
 hardy growth could have endured this chilling 
 blast of discord and disputation. Ultimately, 
 indeed, its effect seemed to have been to fortify 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 123 
 
 and consecrate their love. This was apparent 
 several days later; but I know not what man 
 ner of communication they had had in the in 
 terval. I was much better, but I was still weak 
 and languid. Mile, de Bergerac brought me 
 my breakfast in bed, and then, having helped 
 me to rise and dress, led me out into the garden, 
 where she had caused a chair to be placed in 
 the shade. While I sat watching the bees and 
 butterflies, and pulling the flowers to pieces, 
 she strolled up and down the alley close at 
 hand, taking slow stitches in a piece of em 
 broidery. We had been so occupied about ten 
 minutes, when Coquelin came towards us from 
 his lodge, by appointment, evidently, for this 
 was a roundabout way to the house. Mile, de 
 Bergerac met him at the end of the path, where 
 I could not hear what they said, but only see 
 their gestures. As they came along together, 
 she raised both hands to her ears, and shook 
 her head with vehemence, as if to refuse to 
 listen to what he was urging. When they drew 
 
124 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 near my resting-place, she had interrupted 
 him. 
 
 "No, no, no!" she cried, "I will never forget 
 it to my dying day. How should I ? How can 
 I look at you without remembering it? It s in 
 your face, your figure, your movements, the 
 tones of your voice. It s you, it s what I love 
 in you! It was that which went through my 
 heart that day at Fossy. It was the look, the 
 tone, with which you called the place horrible; 
 it was your bitter plebeian hate. When you 
 spoke of the misery and baseness of your race, 
 I could have cried out in an anguish of love! 
 When I contradicted you, and pretended that 
 I prized and honored all these tokens of your 
 servitude, just heaven! you know now what 
 my words were worth!" 
 
 Coquelin walked beside her with his hands 
 clasped behind him, and his eyes fixed on the 
 ground with a look of repressed sensibility. 
 He passed his poor little convalescent pupil 
 without heeding him. When they came down 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 125 
 
 the path again, the young girl was still talk 
 ing with the same feverish volubility. 
 
 "But most of all, the first day, the first hour, 
 when you came up the avenue to my brother! 
 I had never seen any one like you. I had seen 
 others, but you had something that went to my 
 soul. I devoured you with my eyes, your 
 dusty clothes, your uncombed hair, your pale 
 face, the way you held yourself not to seem 
 tired. I went down on my knees, then; I 
 haven t been up since." 
 
 The poor girl, you see, was completely pos 
 sessed by her passion, and yet she was in a 
 very strait place. For her life she wouldn t 
 recede; and yet how was she to advance? 
 There must have been an odd sort of sim 
 plicity in her way of bestowing her love; or 
 perhaps you ll think it an odd sort of subtlety. 
 It seems plain to me now, as I tell the story, 
 that Coquelin, with his perfect good sense, was 
 right, and that there was, at this moment, a 
 large element of romance in the composition 
 of her feelings. She seemed to feel no desire 
 
126 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 to realize her passion. Her hand was already 
 bestowed; fate was inexorable. She wished 
 simply to compress a world of bliss into her 
 few remaining hours of freedom. 
 
 The day after this interview in the garden 
 I came down to dinner; on the next I sat up 
 to supper, and for some time afterwards, 
 thanks to my aunt s preoccupation of mind. 
 On rising from the table, my father left the 
 chateau; my mother, who was ailing, returned 
 to her room. Coquelin disappeared, under pre 
 tence of going to his own apartments; but, 
 Mile, de Bergerac having taken me into the 
 drawing-room and detained me there some 
 minutes, he shortly rejoined us. 
 
 "Great heaven, mademoiselle, this must 
 end!" he cried, as he came into the room. "I 
 can stand it no longer." 
 
 "Nor can I," said my aunt. "But I have 
 given my word." 
 
 "Take back your word, then! Write him a 
 letter go to him send me to him anything! 
 I can t stay here on the footing of a thief and 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 12? 
 
 impostor. I ll do anything," he continued, as 
 she was silent. "I ll go to him in person; I ll 
 go to your brother; I ll go to your sister even. 
 I ll proclaim it to the world. Or, if you don t 
 like that, I ll keep it a mortal secret. I ll leave 
 the chateau with you without an hour s delay. 
 I ll defy pursuit and discovery. We ll go to 
 America, anywhere you wish, if it s only ac 
 tion. Only spare me the agony of seeing you 
 drift along into that man s arms." 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac made no reply for some 
 moments. At last, "I will never marry M. de 
 Treuil," she said. 
 
 To this declaration Coquelin made no re 
 sponse; but after a pause, "Well, well, well?" 
 he cried. 
 
 "Ah, you re pitiless!" said the young girl. 
 
 "No, mademoiselle, from the bottom of my 
 heart I pity you." 
 
 "Well, then, think of all you ask ! Think of 
 the inexpiable criminality of my love. Think 
 of me standing here, here before my mother s 
 portrait, murmuring out my shame, scorched 
 
128 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 by my sister s scorn, buffeted by my brother s 
 curses! Gracious heaven, Coquelin, suppose 
 after all I were a bad, hard girl!" 
 
 "I ll suppose nothing; this is no time for 
 hair-splitting." And then, after a pause, as if 
 with a violent effort, in a voice hoarse and yet 
 soft: "Gabrielle, passion is blind. Reason 
 alone is worth a straw. I ll not counsel you in 
 passion, let us wait till reason comes to us." 
 He put out his hand; she gave him her own; 
 he pressed it to his lips and departed. 
 
 On the following day, as I still professed 
 myself too weak to resume my books, Coque 
 lin left the chateau alone, after breakfast, for 
 a long walk. He was going, I suppose, into 
 the woods and meadows in quest of Reason. 
 She was hard to find, apparently, for he failed 
 to return to dinner. He reappeared, however, 
 at supper, but now my father was absent. My 
 mother, as she left the table, expressed the wish 
 that Mile, de Bergerac should attend her to 
 her own room. Coquelin, meanwhile, went 
 with me into the great saloon, and for half 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 129 
 
 an hour talked to me gravely and kindly about 
 my studies, and questioned me on what we had 
 learned before my illness. At the end of this 
 time Mile, de Bergerac returned. 
 
 "I got this letter to-day from M. de Treuil," 
 she said, and offered him a missive which had 
 apparently been handed to her since dinner. 
 
 "I don t care to read it," he said. 
 
 She tore it across and held the pieces to the 
 flame of the candle. "He is to be here to 
 morrow," she added finally. 
 
 "Well?" asked Coquelin gravely. 
 
 "You know my answer." 
 
 "Your answer to him, perfectly. But what 
 is your answer to me?" 
 
 She looked at him in silence. They stood 
 for a minute, their eyes locked together. And 
 then, in the same posture, her arms loose at 
 her sides, her head slightly thrown back,- 
 "To you," she said, "my answer is farewell." 
 
 The word was little more than whispered; 
 but, though he heard it, he neither started nor 
 spoke. He stood unmoved, all his soul trem- 
 
L 3() GAliUIELLE I)E BEKGEKAT 
 
 bling under liis brows and filling the space be 
 tween bis mistress and himself with a sort of 
 sacred stillness. Then, gradually, his bead 
 sank on his breast, and his eyes dropped on the 
 ground. 
 
 "It s reason, 11 the young girl began. "Rea 
 son has come to me. She tells me that if I 
 marry in my brother s despite, and in opposi 
 tion to all the traditions that have been kept 
 sacred in my family, I shall neither find happi 
 ness nor give it. I must choose the simplest 
 course. The other is a gulf; I can t leap it. 
 It s harder than you think. Something in the 
 air forbids it, something in the very look of 
 these old walls, within which I was born and 
 I ve lived. I shall never marry; I shall go into 
 religion. I tried to fling away my name; it was 
 sowing dragons teeth. I don t ask you to 
 forgive me. It s small enough comfort that 
 you should have the right to think of me as 
 a poor, weak heart. Keep repeating that: it 
 will console you. I shall not have the compen- 
 
(JABHIELLE 1)E BEUGEUAC 131 
 
 sation of doubting the perfection of what I 
 
 1> 
 ove. 
 
 Coquelin turned away in silence. Mile, de 
 Ik-rgerae sprang after him. "In Heaven s 
 name," she cried, "say something! Have, 
 storm, swear, but don t let me think I ve 
 broken your heart." 
 
 "My heart s sound/ said Coquelin, almost 
 with a smile. "I regret nothing that has hap 
 pened. O, how I love you! 
 
 The young girl buried her face in her hands. 
 
 "This end," he went on, "is doubtless the 
 only possible one. It s thinking very lightly 
 of life to expect any other. After all, what 
 call had I to interrupt your life, to burden 
 you with a trouble, a choice, a decision? As 
 much as anything that I have ever known in 
 you I admire your beautiful delicacy of con 
 
 science/ 
 
 "Ah," said the young girl, with a moan, 
 "don t kill me with fine names! 
 
 And then came the farewell. "I feel," said 
 poor Coquelin, "that I can t see you again. 
 
132 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 We must not meet. I will leave Bergerac im 
 mediately, to-night, under pretext of hav 
 ing been summoned home by my mother s ill 
 ness. In a few days I will write to your 
 brother that circumstances forbid me to re 
 turn." 
 
 My own part in this painful interview I shall 
 not describe at length. When it began to 
 dawn upon my mind that my friend was actu 
 ally going to disappear, I was seized with a 
 convulsion of rage and grief. "Ah," cried 
 Mile, de Bergerac bitterly, "that was all that 
 w r as wanting!" What means were taken to 
 restore me to composure, w r hat promises were 
 made me, w T hat pious deception was practised. 
 I forget ; but, when at last I came to my senses, 
 Coquelin had made his exit. 
 
 My aunt took me by the hand and prepared 
 to lead me up to bed, fearing naturally that 
 my ruffled aspect and swollen visage would 
 arouse suspicion. At this moment I heard the 
 clatter of hoofs in the court, mingled w r ith the 
 sound of voices. From the window, I saw 
 
GABRIELLE I)E BERGERAC 
 
 M. de Treuil and my father alighting from 
 horseback. Mile. de Bergerac, apparently, 
 made the same observation; she dropped my 
 hand and sank down in a chair. She was not 
 left long in suspense. Perceiving a light in the 
 saloon, the two gentlemen immediately made 
 their way to this apartment. They came in 
 together, arm in arm, the Vicornte dressed in 
 mourning. Just within the threshold they 
 stopped; my father disengaged his arm, took 
 his companion by the hand and led him to Mile. 
 de Bergerac. She rose to her feet as you may 
 imagine a sitting statue to rise. The Vicomte 
 bent his knee. 
 
 "At last, mademoiselle," said he, "sooner 
 than I had hoped, my long probation is fin 
 ished." 
 
 The young girl spoke, but no one would 
 have recognized her voice. "I fear, M. le 
 Vicomte," she said, "that it has only begun." 
 
 The Vicomte broke into a harsh, nervous 
 laugh. 
 
(JABKIKLLK I)E HKIKJKKAC 
 
 "Fol dc rol, mademoiselle/ 1 cried my father, 
 "your pleasantry is in very had taste." 
 
 Hut the Yicomte had recovered himself. 
 "Mademoiselle is quite right/ 1 he declared; 
 "she means that I must now begin to deserve 
 my happiness/ This little speech showed a 
 very hrave fancy. It was in flagrant discord 
 with the expression of the poor girl s figure, 
 as she stood twisting her hands together and 
 rolling her eyes, an image of sombre despera 
 tion. 
 
 My father felt there was a storm in the air. 
 "M. le Yicomte is in mourning for M. de Sor- 
 bieres," he said. "M. le Vicomte is his sole 
 legatee. lie comes to exact the fulfilment of 
 your promise/ 
 
 "I made no promise," said Mile, de Ber- 
 gerac. 
 
 "Excuse me, mademoiselle; you gave your 
 word that you d wait for me." 
 
 "Gracious heaven!" cried the young girl; 
 "haven t I waited for you!" 
 
 "Ma tonic belle" said the Baron, trying to 
 
(;ABKIELI.E DE MERGER AC 
 
 keep his angry voice within the compass of 
 an undertone, and reducing it in the effort to 
 a very ugly whisper, "if 1 had supposed you 
 were going to make us a scene, nom dc Dicn! 
 I would have taken my precautions before 
 hand! You know what you re to expect. 
 Vieomte, keep her to her word. I ll give you 
 half an hour. Come, Chevalier." And he took 
 me by the hand. 
 
 We had crossed the threshold and reached 
 the hall, when I heard the Vieomte give a long 
 moan, half plaintive, half indignant. My fa 
 ther turned, and answered with a fierce, inar 
 ticulate cry, which I can best describe as a roar. 
 lie straightway retraced his steps, I, of 
 course, following. Exactly what, in the brief 
 interval, had passed between our companions I 
 am unable to say; but it was plain that Mile. 
 de Uergerac, by some cruelly unerring word or 
 act, had discharged the bolt of her refusal. 
 Her gallant lover had sunk into a chair, bury 
 ing his face in his hands, and stamping his feet 
 on the floor in a frenzy of disappointment. 
 
130 GABKIELLE DE HERGERAC 
 
 She stood regarding him in a sort of helpless, 
 distant pity. My father had been going to 
 break out into a storm of imprecations; but he 
 suppressed them, and folded his arms. 
 
 "And now, mademoiselle," he said, "will you 
 be so good as to inform me of your intentions?" 
 
 Beneath my father s ga/e the softness passed 
 out of my aunt s faee and gave plaee to an 
 angry defiance, which he must have recognized 
 as cousin-german, at least, to the passion in his 
 own breast. "My intentions had been," she 
 said, "to let M. le Vicomte know that 1 couldn t 
 marry him, with as little offence as possible. 
 But you seem determined, my brother, to 
 thrust in a world of offence somewhere." 
 
 You must not blame Mile, de Bergerac for 
 the sting of her retort. She foresaw a hard 
 fight; she had only sprung to her arms. 
 
 My father looked at the wretched Vicomte, 
 as he sat sobbing and stamping like a child. 
 His bosom was wrung with pity for his friend. 
 "Look at that dear Gaston, that charming man, 
 and blush for your audacity." 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 137 
 
 "I know a great deal more about my au 
 dacity than you, brother. I might tell you 
 things that would surprise you." 
 
 "Gabrielle, you are mad!" the Baron broke 
 out. 
 
 Perhaps I am," said the young girl. And 
 then, turning to M. de Treuil, in a tone of ex 
 quisite reproach, "M. le Vicomte, you suffer 
 less well than I had hoped." 
 
 My father could endure no more. lie seized 
 his sister by her two wrists, so that beneath 
 the pressure her eyes filled with tears. 
 "Heartless fool!" he cried, "do you know what 
 I can do to you?" 
 
 "I can imagine, from this specimen," said 
 the poor creature. 
 
 The Baron was beside himself with passion. 
 "Down, down on your knees," he went on, "and 
 beg our pardon all round for your senseless, 
 shameless perversity!" As he spoke, he in 
 creased the pressure of his grasp to that degree 
 that, after a vain struggle to free herself, she 
 uttered a scream of pain. The Vicomte sprang 
 
138 GABUIELLE DP: BERGERAC 
 
 to his feet. "In heaven s name, Gabrielle," 
 he cried, and it was the only real ndivctc that 
 he had ever uttered, "isn t it all a horrible 
 jest?" 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac shook her head. "It 
 seems hard, Vicomte," she said, "that I should 
 be answerable for your happiness." 
 
 "You hold it there in your hand. Think 
 of what I suffer. To have lived for weeks 
 in the hope of this hour, and to find it what 
 you would fain make it! To have dreamed of 
 rapturous bliss, and to wake to find it hideous 
 misery! Think of it onee again!" 
 
 "She shall have a chance to think of it," the 
 Baron declared; "she shall think of it quite at 
 her ease. Go to your room, mademoiselle, and 
 remain there till further notice." 
 
 Gabrielle prepared to go, but, as she moved 
 away, "I used to fear you, brother," she said 
 with homely scorn, "but I don t fear you now. 
 Judge whether it s because I love you more!" 
 
 "Gabrielle," the Vicomte cried out, "I 
 haven t given you up." 
 
GABRIEL.LE DE BERGERAC 139 
 
 "Your feelings are your own, M. le Vicomte. 
 I would have given more than I can say rather 
 than have caused you to suffer. Your asking 
 my hand has been the great honor of my life; 
 my withholding it has been the great trial." 
 .And she walked out of the room with the step 
 of unacted tragedy. My father, with an oath, 
 despatched me to bed in her train. Heavy- 
 headed with the recent spectacle of so much 
 half-apprehended emotion, I speedily fell 
 asleep. 
 
 I was aroused by the sound of voices, and 
 the grasp of a heavy hand on my shoulder. 
 My father stood before me, holding a candle, 
 with M. de Treuil beside him. "Chevalier," 
 he said, "open your eyes like a man, and come 
 to your senses." 
 
 Thus exhorted, I sat up and stared. The 
 Baron sat down on the edge of the bed. "This 
 evening," he began, "before the Vicomte and 
 I came in, were you alone with your aunt?" 
 -My dear friend, you see the scene from here. 
 I answered with the cruel directness of my 
 
140 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 years. Even if I had had the wit to dissemble, 
 I should have lacked the courage. Of course 
 I had no story to tell. I had drawn no infer 
 ences ; I didn t say that my tutor was my aunt s 
 lover. I simply said that he had been with us 
 after supper, and that he wanted my aunt to 
 go away with him. Such was my part in the 
 play. I see the whole picture again, my fa 
 ther brandishing the candlestick, and devour 
 ing my words with his great flaming eyes ; and 
 the Vicomte behind, portentously silent, with 
 his black clothes and his pale face. 
 
 They had not been three minutes out of the- 
 room when the door leading to my aunt s cham 
 ber opened and Mile, de Bergerac appeared. 
 She had heard sounds in my apartment, and 
 suspected the visit of the gentlemen and its mo 
 tive. She immediately won from me the recital 
 of what I had been forced to avow. "Poor 
 Chevalier," she cried, for all commentary. 
 And then, after a pause, "What made them 
 suspect that M. Coquelin had been with us?" 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 141 
 
 "They saw him, or some one, leave the cha 
 teau as they came in." 
 
 "And where have they gone now?" 
 
 "To supper. My father said to M. de Treuil 
 that first of all they must sup." 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac stood a moment in medi 
 tation. Then suddenly, "Get up, Chevalier," 
 she said, "I want you to go with me." 
 
 "Where are you going?" 
 
 "To M. Coquelin s." 
 
 I needed no second admonition. I hustled 
 on my clothes; Mile, de Bergerac left the room 
 and immediately returned, clad in a light man 
 tle. We made our way undiscovered to one of 
 the private entrances of the chateau, hurried 
 across the park and found a light in the win 
 dow of Coquelin s lodge. It was about half 
 past nine. Mile, de Bergerac gave a loud 
 knock at the door, and we entered her lover s 
 apartment. 
 
 Coquelin was seated at his table writing. He 
 sprang to his feet with a cry of amazement. 
 Mile, de Bergerac stood panting, with one 
 
142 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 hand pressed to her heart, while rapidly mov 
 ing the other as if to enjoin calmness. 
 
 "They are come back," she began, -"M. de 
 Treuil and my brother!" 
 
 "I thought he was to come to-morrow. Was 
 it a deception?" 
 
 "Ah, no! not from him, an accident. 
 Pierre Coquelin, I ve had such a scene! But 
 it s not your fault." 
 
 "What made the scene?" 
 
 "My refusal, of course." 
 
 "You turned off the Vicomte?" 
 
 "Holy Virgin! You ask me?" 
 
 "Unhappy girl!" cried Coquelin. 
 
 "No, I was a happy girl to have had a chance 
 to act as my heart bade me. I had faltered 
 enough. But it was hard!" 
 
 "It s all hard." 
 
 "The hardest is to come," said my aunt. 
 She put out her hand; he sprang to her and 
 seized it, and she pressed his own with vehe 
 mence. "They have discovered our secret, 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 143 
 
 don t ask how. It was Heaven s will. From 
 this moment, of course 
 
 "From this moment, of course," cried Coque- 
 lin, "I stay where I am!" 
 
 With an impetuous movement she raised 
 his hand to her lips and kissed it. "You stay 
 where you are. We have nothing to conceal, 
 but we have nothing to avow. We have no 
 confessions to make. Before God we have 
 done our duty. You may expect them, I 
 fancy, to-night; perhaps, too, they will honor 
 me with a visit. They are supping between 
 two battles. They will attack us with fury, 
 I know; but let them dash themselves against 
 our silence as against a wall of stone. I have 
 taken my stand. My love, my errors, my long 
 ings, are my own affair. My reputation is a 
 sealed book. Woe to him who would force it 
 open!" 
 
 The poor girl had said once, you know, that 
 she was afraid of her nature. Assuredly it had 
 now sprung erect in its strength; it came hur 
 rying into action on the winds of her indigna- 
 
144 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 tion. "Remember, Coquelin," she went on, 
 "you are still and always my friend. You are 
 the guardian of my weakness, the support of 
 my strength." 
 
 "Say it all, Gain-idle!" he cried. "I m for 
 ever and ever your lover!" 
 
 Suddenly, above the music of his voice, there 
 came a great rattling knock at the door. 
 Coquelin sprang forward; it opened in his face 
 and disclosed my father and M. de Treuil. I 
 have no words in my dictionary, no images in 
 my rhetoric, to represent the sudden horror 
 that leaped into my father s face as his eye 
 fell upon his sister. lie staggered back a step 
 and then stood glaring, until his feelings found 
 utterance in a single word: "Courcusc!" I 
 have never been able to look upon the word as 
 trivial since that moment. 
 
 The Vicomte came striding past him into the 
 room, like a bolt of lightning from a rumbling 
 cloud, quivering- with baffled desire, and look 
 ing taller by the head for his passion. "And 
 it was for this, mademoiselle," he cried, "and 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 145 
 
 for that!" and he flung out a scornful hand to 
 ward Coquelin. "For a beggarly, boorish, ig 
 norant pedagogue !" 
 
 Coquelin folded his arms. "Address me di 
 rectly, M. le Vicomte," he said; "don t fling 
 mud at me over mademoiselle s head." 
 
 "You ? Who are you ?" hissed the nobleman. 
 "A man doesn t address you; he sends his lack 
 eys to flog you!" 
 
 "Well, M. le Vicomte, you re complete," 
 said Coquelin, eyeing him from head to foot. 
 
 "Complete T and M. de Treuil broke into 
 an almost hysterical laugh. "I only lack hav 
 ing married your mistress! 
 
 "Ah!" cried Mile, de Bergerac. 
 
 "O, you poor, insensate fool!" said Coquelin. 
 
 "Heaven help me," the young man went on, 
 "I m ready to marry her still." 
 
 While these words were rapidly exchanged, 
 my father stood choking with the confusion of 
 amusement and rage. He was stupefied at his 
 sister s audacity, at the dauntless spirit which 
 ventured to flaunt its shameful passion in the 
 
146 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 very face of honor and authority. Yet that 
 simple interjection which I have quoted from 
 my aunt s lips stirred a secret tremor in his 
 heart; it was like the striking of some magic 
 silver bell, portending monstrous things. His 
 passion faltered, and, as his eyes glanced upon 
 my innocent head (which, it must be confessed, 
 was sadly out of place in that pernicious scene) , 
 alighted on this smaller wrong. "The next 
 time you go on your adventures, mademoi 
 selle," he cried, "I d thank you not to pollute 
 my son by dragging him at your skirts." 
 
 "I m not sorry to have my family present," 
 said the young girl, who had had time to col 
 lect her thoughts. "I should be glad even if 
 my sister were here. I wish simply to bid you 
 farewell." 
 
 Coquelin, at these words, made a step to 
 wards her. She passed her hand through his 
 arm. "Things have taken place and chiefly 
 within the last moment which change the face 
 of the future. You ve done the business, 
 brother," and she fixed her glittering eyes on 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 the Baron; "you ve driven me back on myself. 
 I spared you, but you never spared me. I 
 cared for my name; you loaded it with dis 
 honor. I chose between happiness and duty, 
 duty as you would have laid it down: I pre 
 ferred duty. But now that happiness has be 
 come one with simple safety from violence and 
 insult, I go back to happiness. I give you back 
 your name; though I have kept it more jeal 
 ously than you. I have another ready for me. 
 O Messieurs!" she cried, with a burst of rap 
 turous exaltation, "for what you have done to 
 me I thank you." 
 
 My father began to groan and tremble. He 
 had grasped my hand in his own, which was 
 clammy with perspiration. "For the love of 
 God, Gabrielle," he implored, "or the fear of 
 the Devil, speak so that a sickened, maddened 
 Christian can understand you ! For what pur 
 pose did you come here to-night?" 
 
 "Mon Dieu, it s a long story. You made 
 short work with it. I might in justice do as 
 
148 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 much. I came here, brother, to guard my repu 
 tation, and not to lose it." 
 
 All this while my father had neither looked 
 at Coquelin nor spoken to him, either because 
 he thought him riot worth his words, or be 
 cause he had kept some transcendent insult in 
 reserve. Here my governor broke in. "It 
 seems to me time, M. le Baron, that I should 
 inquire the purpose of your own visit." 
 
 My father stared a moment. "I came, M. 
 Coquelin, to take you by the shoulders and 
 eject you through that door, with the further 
 impulsion, if necessary, of a vigorous kick." 
 "Good! AndM. le Vicomte?" 
 "M. le Vicomte came to see it done." 
 "Perfect! A little more and you had come 
 too late. I was on the point of leaving Berge- 
 rac. I can put the story into three words. I 
 have been so happy as to secure the affections 
 of Mile, de Bergerac. She asked herself, de 
 voutly, what course of action was possible un 
 der the circumstances. She decided that the 
 only course w r as that we should immediately 
 
GABRIELLE DE BKKGERAC 149 
 
 separate. I had no hesitation in bringing my 
 residence with M. le Chevalier to a sudden 
 close. I was to have quitted the chateau early 
 to-morrow morning, leaving mademoiselle at 
 absolute liberty. With her refusal of M. de 
 Treuil I have nothing to do. Her action in 
 this matter seems to have been strangely pre 
 cipitated, and my own departure anticipated in 
 consequence. It was at her adjuration that 
 I was preparing to depart. She came here 
 this evening to command me to stay. In our 
 relations there was nothing that the world had 
 a right to lay a finger upon. From the mo 
 ment that they were suspected it was of the 
 first importance to the security and sanctity 
 of Mile, de Bergerac s position that there 
 should be no appearance on my part of elusion 
 or flight. The relations I speak of had ceased 
 to exist; there was, therefore, every reason 
 why for the present I should retain my place. 
 Mile, de Bergerac had been here some three 
 minutes, and had just made known her wishes, 
 when you arrived with the honorable inten- 
 
150 GABttlELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 tions which you avow, and under that illusion 
 the perfect stupidity of which is its least re 
 proach. In my own turn, Messieurs, I thank 
 you!" 
 
 "Gabrielle," said my father, as Coquelin 
 ceased speaking, "the long and short of it ap 
 pears to be that after all you needn t rnarry 
 this man. Am I to understand that you in 
 tend to?" 
 
 "Brother, I mean to marry M. Coquelin." 
 
 My father stood looking from the young girl 
 to her lover. The Vicomte walked to the win 
 dow, as if he were in want of air. The night 
 was cool and the window closed. lie tried the 
 sash, but for some reason it resisted. Where 
 upon he raised his sword-hilt and with a violent 
 blow shivered a pane into fragments. The 
 Baron went on: "On what do you propose to 
 live?" 
 
 "It s for me to propose," said Coquelin. 
 "My wife shall not suffer." 
 
 "Whither do you mean to go?" 
 
 "Since you re so good as to ask, to Paris." 
 
GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 151 
 
 My father had got back his fire. "Well, 
 then," he cried, "my bitterest unforgiveness go 
 with you, and turn your unholy pride to ab 
 ject woe! My sister may marry a base-born 
 vagrant if she wants, but I shall not give her 
 away. I hope you ll enjoy the mud in which 
 you ve planted yourself. 1 hope your mar 
 riage will be blessed in the good old fashion, 
 and that you ll regard philosophically the sight 
 of a half-dozen starving children. I hope 
 you ll enjoy the company of chandlers and cob 
 blers and scribblers!" The Baron could go 
 no further. "Ah, my sister!" he half exclaimed. 
 His voice broke; he gave a great convulsive 
 sob, and fell into a chair. 
 
 "Coquelin," said my aunt, "take me back to 
 the chateau." 
 
 As she walked to the door, her hand in the 
 young man s arm, the Vicomte turned short 
 about from the window, and stood with his 
 drawn sword, grimacing horribly. 
 
 "Not if I can help it!" he cried through his 
 teeth, and with a sweep of his weapon he made 
 
152 GABRIELLE DE BERGERAC 
 
 a savage thrust at the young girl s breast. 
 Coquelin, with equal speed, sprang before her, 
 threw out his arm, and took the blow just be 
 low the elbow. 
 
 "Thank you, M. le Vicomte," he said, "for 
 the chance of calling you a coward ! There was 
 something I wanted." 
 
 Mile, de Bergerac spent the night at the 
 chateau, but by early dawn she had disap 
 peared. Whither Coquelin betook himself 
 with his gratitude and his wound, I know not. 
 He lay, I suppose, at some neighboring farm 
 er s. My father and the Vicomte kept for an 
 hour a silent, sullen vigil in my preceptor s va 
 cant apartment, for an hour and perhaps 
 longer, for at the end of this time I fell asleep, 
 and when I came to my senses, the next morn 
 ing, I was in my own bed. 
 
 M. de Bergerac had finished his talc. 
 "But the marriage," I asked, after a pause, 
 "was it happy?" 
 
 "Reasonably so, I fancy. There is no doubt 
 
GABRIELLE DE BEKGERAC ? 53 
 
 that Coquelin was an excellent fellow. They 
 had three children, and lost them all. They 
 managed to live. He painted portraits and did 
 literary work. 
 
 "And his wife?" 
 
 "Her history, I take it, is that of all good 
 wives : she loved her husband. When the Revo 
 lution came, they went into politics; but here, 
 in spite of his base birth, Coquelin acted with 
 that superior temperance which I always asso 
 ciate with his memory. He was no sans 
 culotte. They both went to the scaffold among 
 the Girondists." 
 

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