He used to watch at his window with a telescope, and whenever the sisters came out of their own grounds, which unfortunately was not above twice a week, he would throw himself in their way by the merest accident, and pay them a dignified and courteous salute, which he had carefully got up before a mirror in the privacy of his own chamber.
One day, as he took off his hat to the young ladies, there broke from one of them a smile, so sudden, sweet, and vivid, that he seemed to feel it smite him first on the eyes then in the heart.He could not sleep for this smile.
Yet he had seen many smilers; but to be sure most of them smiled without effect, because they smiled eternally; they seemed cast with their mouths open, and their pretty teeth forever in sight; and this has a saddening influence on a man of sense--when it has any.But here a fair, pensive face had brightened at sight of him; a lovely countenance, on which circumstances, not nature, had impressed gravity, had sprung back to its natural gayety for a moment, and had thrilled and bewitched the beholder.
The next Sunday he went to church--and there worshipped--whom?
Cupid.He smarted for his heathenism; for the young ladies went with higher motives, and took no notice of him.They lowered their long silken lashes over one breviary, and scarcely observed the handsome citizen.Meantime he, contemplating their pious beauty with earthly eyes, was drinking long draughts of intoxicating passion.And when after the service they each took an arm of Dr.
Aubertin, and he with the air of an admiral convoying two ships choke-full of specie, conducted his precious charge away home, our young citizen felt jealous, and all but hated the worthy doctor.
This went on till he became listless and dejected on the days he did not see them.Then he asked himself whether he was not a cowardly fool to keep at such a distance.After all he was a man in authority.His friendship was not to be despised, least of all by a family suspected of disaffection to the state.
He put on his glossy beaver with enormous brim, high curved; his blue coat with brass buttons; his white waistcoat, gray breeches, and top-boots; and marched up to the chateau of Beaurepaire, and sent in his card with his name and office inscribed.
Jacintha took it, bestowed a glance of undisguised admiration on the young Adonis, and carried it to the baroness.That lady sent her promptly down again with a black-edged note to this effect.
Highly flattered by Monsieur de Riviere's visit, the baroness must inform him that she receives none but old acquaintances, in the present grief of the family, and of the KINGDOM.
Young Riviere was cruelly mortified by this rebuff.He went off hurriedly, grinding his teeth with rage.
"Cursed aristocrats! We have done well to pull you down, and we will have you lower still.How I despise myself for giving any one the chance to affront me thus.The haughty old fool; if she had known her interest, she would have been too glad to make a powerful friend.These royalists are in a ticklish position; I can tell her that.She calls me De Riviere; that implies nobody without a 'De'
to their name would have the presumption to visit her old tumble-down house.Well, it is a lesson; I am a republican, and the Commonwealth trusts and honors me; yet I am so ungrateful as to go out of the way to be civil to her enemies, to royalists; as if those worn-out creatures had hearts, as if they could comprehend the struggle that took place in my mind between duty, and generosity to the fallen, before I could make the first overture to their acquaintance; as if they could understand the politeness of the heart, or anything nobler than curving and ducking and heartless etiquette.This is the last notice I will ever take of that old woman, unless it is to denounce her."He walked home to the town very fast, his heart boiling, and his lips compressed, and his brow knitted.
To this mood succeeded a sullen and bitter one.He was generous, but vain, and his love had humiliated him so bitterly, he resolved to tear it out of his heart.He absented himself from church; he met the young ladies no more.He struggled fiercely with his passion; he went about dogged, silent, and sighing.Presently he devoted his leisure hours to shooting partridges instead of ladies.
And he was right; partridges cannot shoot back; whereas beautiful women, like Cupid, are all archers more or less, and often with one arrow from eye or lip do more execution than they have suffered from several discharges of our small shot.
In these excursions, Edouard was generally accompanied by a thick-set rustic called Dard, who, I believe, purposes to reveal his own character to you, and so save me that trouble.
One fine afternoon, about four o'clock, this pair burst remorselessly through a fence, and landed in the road opposite Bigot's Auberge; a long low house, with "ICI ON LOGE A PIED ET A CHEVAL," written all across it in gigantic letters.Riviere was for moving homeward, but Dard halted and complained dismally of "the soldier's gripes."The statesman had never heard of that complaint, so Dard explained that the VULGAR name for it was hunger."And only smell," said he, "the soup is just fit to come off the fire."Riviere smiled sadly, but consented to deign to eat a morsel in the porch.Thereat Dard dashed wildly into the kitchen.
