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Etienne's heart was horribly wrung by the same fears which filled the minds of these faithful servants; but this emotion prepared him, in a measure, for the sight that met his eyes in that signorial room, which he had never re-entered since the fatal day when, as a child, the paternal curse had driven him from it.
Etienne's sickly complexion, his beautiful hands, his languid smile, his hair parted in the middle into two straight bands, ending in curls on the lace of his large flat collar, his noble brow, furrowed with youthful wrinkles, all these contrasts of luxury and weakness, power and pettiness, pleased her; perhaps they gratified the instinct of maternal protection, which is the germ of love; perhaps, also, they stimulated the need that every woman feels to find distinctive signs in the man she is prompted to love.
The burgher looked up the street and down the street, after M. Étienne's example, but there was no help to be seen or heard. He turned to his tormentor with the valour of a mouse at bay. "Monsieur, beware what you do. I am Pierre Marceau!" "Oh, you are Pierre Marceau? And can M. Pierre Marceau explain how he happened to be faring forth from his dwelling at this unholy hour?"
Abdicate, there is still time, before you set your foot on the lowest step of the throne for which so many ambitious spirits are contending, and do not sell your honor, as I do, for a livelihood." Etienne's eyes filled with tears as he spoke. "Do you know how I make a living?" he continued passionately. "The little stock of money they gave me at home was soon eaten up.
Dinah was able to judge of the extreme poverty that lay hidden under the purely superficial elegance of this bachelor home when she found none of the necessaries of life. As she took possession of the closets and drawers, she indulged in the fondest dreams; she would alter Etienne's habits, she would make him home-keeping, she would fill his cup of domestic happiness.
As a cheerful chronicler of deeds done well, it joys me to relate that the hand which fell upon Etienne's amorous lips was not his own. There was one sudden sound, as of a mule kicking a lath fence, and then through the swinging doors of oblivion for Etienne. I had seen this blow delivered. It was an aloof, unstudied, almost absent-minded affair.
Presently I discovered that Maître Jacques's was the ministering hand, M. Étienne's the shoulder. After all, this was not heaven, but still Paris. I had no desire to speak so long as the flow of old Jacques's best Burgundy continued; but when he saw my eyes wide open, he stopped, and I said, my voice, to my surprise, very faint and quavery: "What happened?" "Dear, brave lad! You fainted!"
Etienne's face would have made a fine study for a painter, as he encountered the gaze of Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances. The bishop drew the youth gently into a deep embrasure, where a curtain before the opening veiled a window seat, for the feast was now over, and the guests were mingling in general conversation. "Father," said Etienne "am I, whom he has made an orphan, a fit witness?"
Etienne's wealth, piles of gray stone, for ever dust-laden and dingy, into which poured a never-ending stream of grain, and out of which poured an equally unceasing stream of bags and barrels laden with flour. Around the wide interiors wandered a few men, gray too, who peeped now and then into caverns where hidden machinery did all the work.
I will give up all show of teaching presently, and give out that I keep a hospital a retreat for ailing brothers. Still, this Edouard is a pretty boy." "Very." "Etienne's letter says he is twenty and a Savoyard. He speaks like a Parisian." "Very likely he is seminary bred," put in the Swiss. "Whatever he is, I like his looks," said our Superior. This good man liked every one.
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