LI. Pyrame et Thisbé.

LI

Pyramus and Thisbe.

Two-thirds of the way along the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, behind a fine hôtel, remarkable among the remarkable dwellings of that wealthy district, stretches a vast garden whose thick chestnut trees rise above the enormous walls, high as ramparts, and, when spring comes, let fall their pink and white blossoms into two fluted stone vases placed parallel upon two quadrangular pilasters in which is set an iron grille dating from the time of Louis XIII.

This grandiose entrance has been walled up, despite the magnificent geraniums growing in the two vases and swaying their marbled leaves and purple flowers in the wind, ever since the owners of the hôtel—and this goes back a long while already—restricted themselves to the possession of the hôtel, the tree-planted court giving onto the faubourg, and the garden closed by that grille, which once opened onto a magnificent acre of kitchen garden annexed to the property. But the demon of speculation having drawn a line, that is to say a street, at the far end of that kitchen garden, and the street, before even existing, having already—thanks to a plate of burnished iron—received a name, it was thought possible to sell this kitchen garden to build upon the street, and compete with that great artery of Paris called the Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

But in matters of speculation, man proposes and money disposes; the baptized street died in its cradle; the purchaser of the kitchen garden, after paying for it in full, could not find a buyer at the price he wanted, and, awaiting a rise in value which cannot fail, sooner or later, to indemnify him far beyond his past losses and his idle capital, he contented himself with renting the enclosure to market gardeners, for the sum of five hundred francs a year.

That is money invested at half a percent, which is not dear in these times, when there are so many who invest it at fifty and still find that money yields a very poor return.

Nevertheless, as we have said, the garden grille, which once opened onto the kitchen garden, is walled up, and rust eats its hinges; there is more: so that ignoble gardeners might not sully with their vulgar gaze the interior of the aristocratic enclosure, a partition of planks is fixed to the bars up to the height of six feet. True, the planks are not so well joined that a furtive glance cannot slip between the intervals; but this is a severe house, which fears no indiscretions.

In this kitchen garden, instead of cabbages, carrots, radishes, peas and melons, grow great crops of alfalfa, the only cultivation that shows the place is still thought of. A low little door, opening onto the projected street, gives entrance to this wall-enclosed ground, which its tenants have just abandoned because of its sterility and which, for a week now, instead of yielding a half percent as before, yields nothing at all.

On the side of the hôtel, the chestnut trees we have spoken of crown the wall, which does not prevent other luxuriant and flowering trees from slipping their branches, greedy for air, between the intervals. At an angle where the foliage becomes so thick that light scarce penetrates, a wide stone bench and garden seats indicate a meeting place or a favorite retreat of some inhabitant of the hôtel situated a hundred paces off, and barely visible through the rampart of greenery that envelops it. Finally, the choice of this mysterious asylum is justified alike by the absence of sun, by the eternal coolness even during the hottest days of summer, by the warbling of birds and by the distance from the house and the street, that is to say from business and noise.

Toward evening of one of the hottest days that spring had yet granted the inhabitants of Paris, there lay upon this stone bench a book, a parasol, a workbasket and a cambric handkerchief whose embroidery was begun; and not far from this bench, near the grille, standing before the planks, her eye applied to the lattice partition, was a young woman, whose gaze plunged through a crack into the deserted garden we know.

Almost at the same moment, the little door of this ground closed without noise, and a young man, tall, vigorous, clad in a smock of raw linen, with a velvet cap, but whose mustaches, beard and extremely well-kept black hair clashed somewhat with this popular costume, after a rapid glance cast about him to assure himself that no one spied on him, passing through this door, which he closed behind him, directed his precipitate steps toward the grille.

At the sight of him she awaited, but probably not in this costume, the young girl grew afraid and drew back.

And yet already, through the chinks of the door, the young man, with that look which belongs only to lovers, had seen the white robe and the long blue sash flutter. He sprang toward the partition, and applying his mouth to an opening:

"Do not be afraid, Valentine," said he, "it is I."

The young girl drew near.

"Oh! sir," said she, "why then have you come so late today? Do you know that we shall soon be at dinner, and that it took me much diplomacy and much quickness to rid myself of my mother-in-law, who spies on me, of my chambermaid, who watches me, and of my brother, who plagues me, to come and work here at this embroidery, which, I greatly fear, will not be finished for a long while? Then, when you have excused yourself for your delay, you will tell me what this new costume is that you have pleased to adopt, and which almost caused me not to recognize you."

"Dear Valentine," said the young man, "you are too far above my love for me to dare speak of it to you, and yet, each time I see you, I need to tell you that I adore you, so that the echo of my own words may gently caress my heart when I no longer see you. Now I thank you for your scolding: it is altogether charming, for it proves to me—I dare not say that you awaited me, but that you thought of me. You wished to know the cause of my delay and the motive of my disguise; I shall tell them to you, and I hope you will excuse them: I have chosen a profession...."

"A profession!... What do you mean, Maximilien? And are we then happy enough for you to speak of what concerns us in jest?"

"Oh! God preserve me," said the young man, "from jesting with what is my life; but weary of being a field-runner and a wall-climber, seriously alarmed at the idea you put into my head the other evening that your father would one day have me judged as a thief, which would compromise the honor of the whole French army, no less alarmed at the possibility that one might wonder at seeing eternally circling around this ground, where there is not the smallest citadel to besiege or the smallest blockhouse to defend, a captain of spahis, I have made myself a market gardener, and have adopted the costume of my profession."

"Come, what folly!"

"It is on the contrary the wisest thing, I believe, that I have done in my life, for it gives us complete security."

"Let us see, explain yourself."

"Well, I went to the owner of this enclosure; the lease with the former tenants was ended, and I leased it anew from him. All this alfalfa you see belongs to me, Valentine; nothing prevents me from having a cabin built among the hay and living henceforth twenty paces from you. Oh! my joy and my happiness, I cannot contain them. Do you understand, Valentine, that one can attain such things? It is impossible, is it not? Well, all this felicity, all this happiness, all this joy, for which I would have given ten years of my life, cost me—guess how much?... Five hundred francs a year, payable by the quarter. Thus you see, henceforth nothing to fear. I am here at home, I may set ladders against my wall and look over, and I have, without fear of a patrol coming to disturb me, the right to tell you that I love you, as long as your pride is not wounded at hearing this word issue from the mouth of a poor day-laborer clad in a smock and capped with a velvet cap."

Valentine uttered a little cry of joyful surprise; then suddenly:

"Alas, Maximilien," said she sadly, as if a jealous cloud had suddenly come to veil the sunbeam illuminating her heart, "now we shall be too free, our happiness will tempt God; we shall abuse our security, and our security will ruin us."

"Can you say that to me, my friend, to me who, since I have known you, prove to you each day that I have subordinated my thoughts and my life to your life and your thoughts? Who gave you confidence in me? my happiness, was it not? When you told me that a vague instinct assured you that you ran some great danger, I put my devotion at your service, without asking of you any other reward than the happiness of serving you. Since that time, have I, by a word, by a sign, given you cause to repent having distinguished me amid those who would have been happy to die for you? You told me, poor child, that you were betrothed to M. d'Épinay, that your father had decided this alliance, that is to say that it was certain, for all that M. de Villefort wills infallibly comes to pass. Well, I remained in the shadow, awaiting all—not from my will, not from yours, but from events, from Providence, from God; and yet you love me, you have pitied me, Valentine, and you have told me so; thanks for that sweet word, which I ask of you only to repeat to me from time to time, and which will make me forget all."

"And that is what emboldened you, Maximilien, that is what makes me at once a life most sweet and most unhappy, to the point that I often ask myself which is better for me, the sorrow my mother-in-law's severity and her blind preference for her child once caused me, or the danger-filled happiness I taste in seeing you."

"Danger!" cried Maximilien; "can you utter a word so harsh and so unjust? Did you ever see a slave more submissive than I? You permitted me sometimes to address you, Valentine, but you forbade me to follow you; I obeyed. Since I found the means to slip into this enclosure, to talk with you through this door, to be at last so near you without seeing you, have I ever—tell me—asked to touch the hem of your robe through these grilles? Have I ever taken a step to cross this wall, a ridiculous obstacle for my youth and my strength? Never a reproach for your severity, never a desire spoken aloud; I have been riveted to my word like a knight of olden times. Acknowledge at least that, so that I may not think you unjust."

"It is true," said Valentine, passing between two planks the tip of one of her slender fingers, upon which Maximilien placed his lips; "it is true, you are an honest friend. But after all you acted only with a sense of your own interest, my dear Maximilien; you knew well that from the day the slave became exacting, he must lose all. You promised me the friendship of a brother, me who has no friends, me whom my father forgets, me whom my mother-in-law persecutes, and who has for consolation only the motionless, mute, frozen old man, whose hand cannot press my hand, whose eye alone can speak to me, and whose heart, no doubt, still beats for me with a remnant of warmth. Bitter derision of fate, which makes me enemy and victim of all those stronger than I, and which gives me a corpse for support and for friend! Oh! truly, Maximilien, I repeat to you, I am very unhappy, and you are right to love me for myself and not for yourself."

"Valentine," said the young man with deep emotion, "I will not say that I love none but you in the world, for I also love my sister and my brother-in-law, but it is with a gentle and calm love, which in no way resembles the sentiment I feel for you: when I think of you, my blood boils, my breast swells, my heart overflows; but this force, this ardor, this superhuman power, I shall employ in loving you only until the day you tell me to employ them in serving you. M. Franz d'Épinay will be absent a year yet, they say; in a year, how many favorable chances may serve us, how many events may second us! Let us then always hope, it is so good and so sweet to hope! But meanwhile, you, Valentine, you who reproach me with my selfishness, what have you been to me? The beautiful and cold statue of modest Venus. In exchange for this devotion, this obedience, this reserve, what have you promised me, you? nothing; what have you granted me? very little. You speak to me of M. d'Épinay, your betrothed, and you sigh at the thought of being one day his. Come, Valentine, is that all you have in your soul? What! I pledge you my life, I give you my soul, I consecrate to you even the most insignificant beating of my heart, and when I am all yours, I, when I say to myself in a whisper that I shall die if I lose you, you are not dismayed, you, at the mere idea of belonging to another! Oh! Valentine! Valentine! if I were what you are, if I felt myself loved as you are sure that I love you, already a hundred times I should have passed my hand between the bars of this grille, and should have clasped the hand of poor Maximilien, saying to him: 'Yours, yours alone, Maximilien, in this world and the next.'"

Valentine answered nothing, but the young man heard her sigh and weep.

The reaction was prompt upon Maximilien.

"Oh!" cried he, "Valentine! Valentine! forget my words, if there is in my words aught that could wound you!"

"No," said she, "you are right; but do you not see that I am a poor creature, abandoned in an almost strange house, for my father is almost a stranger to me, and whose will has been broken for ten years, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, by the iron will of the masters who weigh upon me? No one sees what I suffer and I have told it to no one but you. In appearance, and in the eyes of all, all is kind to me, all is affectionate; in reality, all is hostile to me. The world says: 'M. de Villefort is too grave and too severe to be very tender toward his daughter; but at least she had the happiness of finding in Mme de Villefort a second mother.' Well, the world is mistaken, my father abandons me with indifference, and my mother-in-law hates me with a fierceness all the more terrible in that it is veiled by an eternal smile."

"Hate you! you, Valentine! and how can one hate you?"

"Alas! my friend," said Valentine, "I am forced to confess that this hatred of me comes from an almost natural feeling. She adores her son, my brother Édouard."

"Well?"

"Well, it seems strange to me to mingle a question of money with what we were saying; well, my friend, I believe that her hatred comes from there, at least. As she has no fortune of her own, while I am already rich from my mother's side, and this fortune will be more than doubled by that of M. and Mme de Saint-Méran, which must one day come to me, well, I believe she is envious. Oh! my God! if I could give her half that fortune and find myself in M. de Villefort's house like a daughter in her father's house, certainly I would do it this instant."

"Poor Valentine!"

"Yes, I feel myself enchained, and at the same time I feel so weak, that it seems to me these bonds sustain me, and I fear to break them. Besides, my father is not a man whose orders one may infringe with impunity: he is powerful against me, he would be against you, he would be against the king himself, protected as he is by an irreproachable past and an almost unassailable position. Oh! Maximilien! I swear to you, I do not struggle, because it is you as much as myself that I fear to shatter in this struggle."

"But finally, Valentine," resumed Maximilien, "why despair thus, and see the future always dark?"

"Ah! my friend, because I judge it by the past."

"See, however, if I am not an illustrious party from the aristocratic point of view, yet I am connected in many ways with the world in which you live; the time when there were two Frances in France no longer exists; the highest families of the monarchy have merged into the families of the Empire: the aristocracy of the lance has married the nobility of the cannon. Well, I belong to the latter: I have a fine future in the army, I enjoy a limited but independent fortune; the memory of my father, finally, is venerated in our country like that of one of the most honest merchants who ever lived. I say our country, Valentine, because you are almost from Marseille."

"Do not speak to me of Marseille, Maximilien; that single word recalls my good mother, that angel whom all regretted, and who, after watching over her daughter during her short stay on earth, still watches over her, I hope at least, during her eternal stay in heaven. Oh! if my poor mother lived, Maximilien, I should have nothing more to fear; I would tell her that I love you, and she would protect us."

"Alas! Valentine," resumed Maximilien, "if she lived, I should doubtless not know you, for, as you said, you would be happy if she lived, and happy Valentine would have looked upon me with much disdain from the height of her greatness."

"Ah! my friend," cried Valentine, "it is you who are unjust in your turn.... But, tell me...."

"What would you have me tell you?" resumed Maximilien, seeing that Valentine hesitated.

"Tell me," continued the young girl, "was there formerly at Marseille some cause of misunderstanding between your father and mine?"

"No, not that I know of," answered Maximilien; "it is only that your father was a more than zealous partisan of the Bourbons, and mine a man devoted to the Emperor. That is, I presume, all the dissension there ever was between them. But why this question, Valentine?"

"I will tell you," resumed the young girl, "for you must know all. Well, it was the day your nomination as officer of the Legion of Honor was published in the newspaper. We were all at my grandfather's, M. Noirtier, and moreover M. Danglars was there too, you know that banker whose horses almost killed my mother and my brother the day before yesterday? I was reading the newspaper aloud to my grandfather while those gentlemen talked of Mademoiselle Danglars's marriage. When I came to the paragraph concerning you, and which I had already read, for the previous morning you had announced this good news to me; when I came, I say, to the paragraph concerning you, I was very happy... but also trembling at being forced to pronounce your name aloud, and certainly I would have omitted it but for the fear I felt that my silence would be ill interpreted; so I gathered all my courage, and read."

"Dear Valentine!"

"Well, as soon as your name sounded, my father turned his head. I was so persuaded (see how foolish I am!) that everyone was going to be struck by that name as by a thunderbolt, that I thought I saw my father start and even (for that one it was an illusion, I am sure), and even M. Danglars.

"'Morrel,' said my father, 'wait now!' (He frowned.) 'Would this be one of those Morrels of Marseille, one of those rabid Bonapartists who gave us so much trouble in 1815?'

"'Yes,' answered M. Danglars; 'I believe even it is the son of the old shipowner.'

"—Truly! said Maximilien. And what did your father answer, tell me, Valentine?

"—Oh! an awful thing, which I dare not repeat to you.

"—Say it anyway, resumed Maximilien smiling.

"'Their Emperor,' he continued, frowning, 'knew how to put them in their place, all those fanatics: he called them cannon fodder, and it was the only name they deserved. I see with joy that the new government is reviving this salutary principle. If only for that it keeps Algeria, I would congratulate the government, though it costs us a little dear.'

"—It is indeed rather brutal politics, said Maximilien. But do not blush, dear friend, at what M. de Villefort said there; my brave father yielded in nothing to yours on that point, and he repeated incessantly: 'Why does the Emperor, who does so many fine things, not make a regiment of judges and lawyers, and send them always to the front?' You see, dear friend, the parties are equal for picturesqueness of expression and sweetness of thought. But M. Danglars, what does he say to this sally of the king's attorney?

"—Oh! he began to laugh that sly laugh peculiar to him and which I find ferocious; then they rose immediately after and departed. I then saw only that my grandfather was all agitated. I must tell you, Maximilien, that I alone divine the agitations of that poor paralytic, and I suspected besides that the conversation which had taken place before him (for no one pays attention to him anymore, poor grandfather!) had strongly impressed him, seeing that ill had been spoken of his Emperor, and that, it appears, he was a fanatic of the Emperor.

"—It is indeed, said Maximilien, one of the known names of the empire: he was a senator, and, as you know or as you do not know, Valentine, he was near all the Bonapartist conspiracies made under the Restoration.

"—Yes, I sometimes hear such things said in a whisper which seem strange to me: the grandfather Bonapartist, the father royalist; well, what would you have?... I turned then toward him. He showed me the newspaper with his look.

"'What is it, papa?' said I to him; 'are you content?'

"He signed to me with his head that yes.

"'At what my father just said?' I asked.

"He signed no.

"'At what M. Danglars said?'

"He signed no again.

"'It is then at M. Morrel—I dared not say Maximilien—being named officer of the Legion of Honor?'

"He signed yes.

"—Would you believe it, Maximilien? he was content that you were named officer of the Legion of Honor, he who does not know you. It is perhaps folly on his part, for they say he is turning childish: but I love him well for that yes.

"—It is odd, thought Maximilien. Your father would hate me, then, whereas on the contrary your grandfather... Strange things, these loves and these party hates!

"—Hush!" suddenly cried Valentine. "Hide yourself, save yourself; someone is coming!"

Maximilien leaped upon a spade and began mercilessly turning the alfalfa.

"Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle!" cried a voice behind the trees, "Mme de Villefort is looking for you everywhere and calling you; there is a visitor in the salon."

"A visitor?" said Valentine, all agitated; "and who pays us this visit?"

"A great lord, a prince, so they say, M. the Count of Monte-Cristo."

"I am going," said Valentine aloud.

That name made him on the other side of the grille start, he to whom Valentine's "I am going" served as a farewell at the end of each interview.

"Ha!" said Maximilien to himself, leaning all thoughtful on his spade, "how does the Count of Monte-Cristo know M. de Villefort?"

“Stories of the world, in your language.”