THE MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN (Complete Edition: Volumes 1-5). Alexandre Dumas
until I set up my establishment at Versailles. Keep me in mind, my dear young lady."
The baron passed on with son and daughter. Others came up for whom the princess had pretty stuff to say, but that little mattered to Gilbert. Gliding out of the covert, he followed the baron among the two hundred footmen shouting out their master's names, fifty coachmen roaring out in answer to the lackeys, while sixty coaches rolled over the pavement like thunder.
As Taverney had a royal carriage, it waited for him aside from the common herd. He stepped in, with Andrea and Philip, and the door closed after them.
"Get on the box with the driver," said Philip to the footman. "He has been on his feet all day, and must be worn out."
The baron grumbled some remonstrance not heard by Gilbert, but the lackey mounted beside the driver. Gilbert went nearer. At the time of starting a trace got loose and the driver had to alight to set it right.
"It is very late," said the baron.
"I am dreadfully tired," sighed Andrea. "I hope we shall find a sleeping place somewhere."
"I expect so," replied her brother. "I sent Labrie and Nicole straight to Paris from Soissons. I gave him a letter to a friend for him to let us have a little house in the rear of his, where his mother and sister live when they come up from the country. It is not luxury, but it is comfortable. You do not want to make a show while you are waiting for the coming out in the suitable style."
"Anything will easily beat Taverney," said the old lord.
"Unfortunately, yes," added the captain.
"Any garden?" asked Andrea.
"Quite a little park, for town, with fine trees. However, you will not long enjoy it, as you will be presented as soon as the wedding is over."
"We are in a bright dream—do not waken us. Did you give the coachman the address?"
"Yes, father," replied the young noble, while Gilbert greedily listened.
He had hoped to catch the address.
"Never mind," he muttered; "it is only a league to town. I will follow them."
But the royal horses could go at a rattling gait when not kept in line with others. The trace being mended, the man mounted his box and drove off rapidly—so rapidly that this reminded poor Gilbert of how he had fallen on the road under the hoofs of Chon's post-horses.
Making a spurt, he reached the untenanted footboard, and hung on behind for an instant. But the thought struck him that he was in the menial's place behind Andrea's carriage, and he muttered:
"No! it shall not be said that I did not fight it out to the last. My legs are tired, but not my arms."
Seizing the edge of the footboard with both hands, the inflexible youth swung his feet up under the body of the coach so as to get them on the foresprings; thus suspended, he was carried on, spite of the jerking, over the wretched rutty road. He stuck to the desperate situation by strength of arm, rather than capitulate with his conscience.
"I shall learn her address," he thought. "It will be another wakeful night; but to-morrow I shall have repose, seated while I am copying music. I have a trifle of money, too, and I will take a little rest."
He reflected that Paris was very large and that he might be lost after seeing the baron to his house. Happily it was near midnight, and dawn came at half after three.
As he was pondering he remarked that they crossed an open place where stood an equestrian statue in the midst.
"Victories Place," he thought gleefully; "I know it."
The vehicle turning partly round and Andrea put her head out to see the statue.
"The late king," explained her brother. "We are pretty nearly there now."
They went down so steep a hill that Gilbert was nearly scraped off.
"Here we are," cried the dragoon captain.
Gilbert dropped and slipped out from beneath to hide behind a horseblock on the other side.
Young Taverney got out first, rang at a house doorbell, and returned to receive Andrea in his arms. The baron was the last out.
"Are those rascals going to keep us out all night?" he snarled.
At this the voices of Labrie and Nicole were heard, and a door opened. The three Taverneys were engulfed in a dark courtyard where the door closed upon them. The vehicle and attendants went their way to the royal stables.
Nothing remarkable was apparent on the house; but the carriage lamps had flashed on the next doorway, which had a label: "This is the mansion of the Armenonvilles." Gilbert did not know what street it was as yet, but going to the far end, the same the carriage had gone out of, he was startled to see the public fountain at which he drank in the mornings. Going ten paces up the street he saw the baker's shop where he supplied himself. Still doubting, he returned to the corner. By the gleam of a swinging lamp, he could read on a white stone the name read three days before when coming from Meudon Wood with Rousseau:
"Plastrière Street."
It followed that Andrea was lodged a hundred steps apart, nearer than she was to him at Taverney.
So he went to his own door, hoping that the latchet might not be drawn altogether within. It was pulled in, but it was frayed and a few threads stuck out. He drew one and then another so that the thong itself came forth at last. He lifted the latch, and entered, for it was one of his lucky days.
He groped up the stairs one by one, without making any noise, and finally touched the padlock on his own bedroom door, in which Rousseau had thoughtfully left the key.
Chapter XXXV.
The Garden House.
From coming home so late, and dropping off to sleep so soon and heavily, Gilbert forgot to hang up the linen cloth which served as curtain to the garret window. The unintercepted sunbeam struck his eyes at five and speedily woke him. He rose, vexed at having overslept.
Brought up in the country, he could exactly tell the time by the sun's inclination and the amount of heat it emitted. He hastened to consult this clock. The pallor of the dawn, scarcely clearing the high trees, set him at ease; he was rising too early, not too late.
He made his ablutions at the skylight, thinking over what had happened over night, and gladly baring his burning and burdened forehead to the fresh morning breeze. Then it came to his mind that Andrea was housed next door to Armenonville House, in an adjoining street. He wanted to distinguish this residence.
The sight of shade-trees reminded him of her question to her brother,—Was there a garden where they were going?
"Why may it not be just such a house in the back garden as we have yonder?" he asked himself.
By a strange coincidence with his thought, a sound and a movement quite unusual drew his attention where it was turning; one of the long fastened up windows of a house built at the rear of the one on the other street shook under a rough or clumsy hand. The frame gave way at the top; but it stuck probably with damp swelling it at the bottom. A still rougher push started the two folds of the sash, which opened like a door, and the gap showed a girl, red with the exertion she had to make and shaking her dusty hands.
Gilbert uttered an outcry in astonishment and quickly drew back, for this sleepy and yawning girl was Nicole.
He could harbor no doubt now. Philip Taverney had told his father that he had sent on Labrie and their maid servant to get a lodging ready in Paris. Hence this was the one. The house in Coq-Heron Street, where the travelers had disappeared—was this with the extra building in the rear.
Gilbert's withdrawal had been so marked that Nicole must have noticed it only for her being absorbed