THE MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN (Complete Edition: Volumes 1-5). Alexandre Dumas
idle fit seizing one just arisen. But he had retired swiftly, not to be caught by her while looking out of a garret window. Perhaps if he had lived on the first floor, and his window had given a view within of a richly furnished apartment, he would have called her attention on it. But the fifth flat still classed him among social inferiors, so that he wanted to keep in the background.
Besides, it is always an advantage to see without being seen.
Again, if Andrea saw him, might she not consider that enough to induce her to move away, or at least not to stroll about the garden?
Alas, for Gilbert's conceit! it enlarged him in his own eyes; but what mattered Gilbert to the patrician, and what would make her move a step nearer or further from him? Was she not of the class of women who would come out from a bath with a peasant or a footman by, and not regard them as men?
But Nicole was not of this degree, and she had to be avoided.
But Gilbert did not keep away from the window. He returned to peep out at the corner.
A second window, exactly beneath the other, opened also, and the white figure appearing there was Andrea's. In a morning gown, she was stooping to look after her slipper fallen under a chair.
In vain did Gilbert, every time he saw his beloved, make a vow to resist his passion within a rampart of hate; the same effect followed the cause. He was obliged to lean on the wall, with his heart throbbing as if to burst and the blood boiling all over his body.
As the arteries cooled gradually, he reflected. The main point was to spy without being seen. He took one of Madame Rousseau's old dresses off the clothesline, and fastened it with a pin on a string across his window so that he might watch Andrea under the improvised screen.
Andrea imitated Nicole in stretching her lovely arms, which, by this extension, parted the gown an instant; then she leaned out to examine the neighboring grounds at her leisure. Her face expressed rare satisfaction, for while she seldom smiled on men, she made up for it by often smiling on things.
On all sides the rear house was shaded by fine trees.
Rousseau's house attracted her gaze like all the other buildings, but no more. From her point, the upper part alone could be espied, but what concern had she in the servants' quarters in a house?
Andrea therefore came to the conclusion that she was unseen and alone, with no curious or joking face of Parisians on the edge of this tranquil retreat, so dreaded by country ladies.
Leaving her window wide open for the sunshine to flush the remotest corners, the young lady went to pull the bellrope at the fire-place side and began to dress in the twilight. Nicole ran in and opening the straps of a shagreen dressing-case dating from a previous reign, took a tortoise-shell comb and disentangled her mistress' tresses.
Gilbert smothered a sigh. He could hardly be said to recognize the hair, for Andrea followed the fashion in powdering it, but he knew her a hundred times fairer without the frippery than in the most pompous decorations. His mouth dried up, his fingers scorched with fever, and his eye ceased to see from his staring too hard.
Chance ruled that Andrea's gaze, idle as it was from her sitting still to have her hair brushed, fell on Rousseau's attic.
"Yes, yes, keep on staring," uttered the youth, "but you will see nothing and I shall see all."
But he was wrong, for she descried the novel screen of the old dress which floated round the man's head as a kind of turban. She pointed out this odd curtain to her maid. Nicole stopped and pointed with the comb to the object to ask whether that were the reason for her mistress' amusement.
Without his suspecting it, this had a fourth spectator.
He suddenly felt a hasty hand snatch Madame Rousseau's dress from his brow, and he fell back thunderstricken at recognizing the master.
"What the deuse are you up to?" queried the philosopher, with a frowning brow and a sour grin as he examined the gown.
"Nothing," stammered the other, trying to divert the intruder's sight from the window.
"Then why hide up in this dress?"
"The sun was too bright for me."
"The sun is at the back of us, and I think it is you who are too bright for me. You have very weak eyes, young man."
Rousseau walked straight up to the window. By a very natural feeling to be a veil to his beauty, Gilbert, who had shrunk away, now rushed in between.
"Bless me, the rear house is lived in now!" The tone froze the blood in Gilbert's veins, and he could not get out a word. "And by people who know my house, for they are pointing up to it," added the suspicious author.
Gilbert, fearful now that he was too forward, retreated. Neither the movement nor its cause escaped Rousseau, who saw that his employee trembled to be seen.
"No, you don't, young man!" he said, grasping him by the wrist; "there is some plot afoot, for they are pointing out your garret. Stand here, pray."
He placed him before the window, in the uncovered glare.
Gilbert would have had to struggle with his idol, and respect restrained him from thus being free.
"You know those women, and they know you," continued Rosseau, "or, why do you shrink from showing yourself?"
"Monsieur Rousseau, you have had secrets in your life. Pity for mine!"
"Traitor!" cried the writer; "I know your sort of secret. You are the tool of my enemies, the Grimms and Holbachs. They taught you a part to captivate my benevolence, and, sneaking into my house, you are betraying me. Threefold fool that I am, stupid lover of nature, to think I was helping one of my kind, and to nourish a spy!"
"A spy?" repeated the other in revolt.
"When are you to deliver me to my murderers, O Judas?" demanded Rousseau, draping himself in Therese's dress, which he had mechanically kept in hand, and looking droll when he fancied he was sublime with sorrow.
"You calumniate me, sir," said Gilbert.
"Calumniate this little viper!" said the philosopher, "when I catch you corresponding in dumb show with my enemies—I daresay acquainting them in signs with my latest work."
"Had I come to steal your story, sir, I should better have made a copy of the manuscript, lying on your desk, than to convey it in signs."
This was true, and Rousseau felt that he had made one of those blunders which escaped him in his moments of fear, and he became angry.
"I am sorry for you, but experience makes me stern," he said. "My life has passed amid deceit. I have been betrayed by everybody, denied, sold and martyrized. You know I am one of those illustrious unfortunates whom governments outlaw. Under such circumstances, I may be allowed to be suspicious. As you are a suspicious character, you must take yourself out of this house."
Gilbert had not expected this conclusion. He was to be driven forth! He clenched his fists, and a flash in his eyes made Rousseau start. Gilbert reflected that in going he would lose the mild pleasure of seeing his loved one during the day, and lose Rousseau's affection—it was shame as well as misfortune.
Dropping from his fierce pride, he clasped his hands and implored:
"Listen to me, if only one word!"
"I am merciless," replied the author: "man's injustice has made me more ferocious than a tiger. Go and join my enemies with whom you correspond. League yourself with them, which I do not hinder, but do all this beyond my domicile."
"Those young women are no enemies of yours—they are Mademoiselle Andrea of Taverney, the young lady I told you of, on whose estate I was born, and her maid Nicole. Excuse me troubling you with such matters, but you drive me to it. This is the lady whom I love more than you ever loved all your flames. It is she whom I followed afoot, penniless and wanting bread, until I fell exhausted on the highway and racked with pain. It is she whom I saw once more yesterday at St. Denis, and behind whose coach I came till I housed her in