THE MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN (Complete Edition: Volumes 1-5). Alexandre Dumas
there.”
“Very well, Gilbert may be hungry. What is the name of your inn?”
“The Trap.”
“How queer!”
“The country folks have droll ideas. But it is not an inn; only a shooting-box where the gamekeepers offer hospitality to gentlemen.”
“Of course you know the owner’s name?” said Rousseau, suspicious.
“Not at all: Lady Mirepoix or Lady Egmont—or—it does not matter if the butter and the bread are fresh.”
The good-humored way in which he spoke disarmed the philosopher who besides had his appetite whetted by the early stroll. Jussieu led the march, Rousseau followed, gleaning, and Gilbert guarded the rear, thinking of Andrea and how to see her at Trianon Palace.
At the top of the hill, rather painfully climbed by the three botanists, rose one of those imitation rustic cottages invented by the gardeners of England and giving a stamp of originality to the scene. The walls were of brick and the shelly stone found naturally in mosaic patterns on the riverside.
The single room was large enough to hold a table and half-a-dozen chairs. The windows were glazed in different colors so that you could by selection view the landscape in the red of sunset, the blue of a cloudy day or the still colder slate hue of a December day.
This diverted Gilbert but a more attractive sight was the spread on the board. It drew an outcry of admiration from Rousseau, a simple lover of good cheer, though a philosopher, from his appetite being as hearty as his taste was modest.
“My dear master,” said Jussieu, “if you blame me for this feast you are wrong, for it is quite a mild set-out—— ”
“Do not depreciate your table, you gormand!”
“Do not call it mine!”
“Not yours? then whose—the brownies, the fairies?” demanded Rousseau, with a smile testifying to his constraint and good nature at the same time.
“You have hit it,” answered the doctor, glancing wistfully to the door.
Gilbert hesitated.
“Bless the fays for their hospitality,” said Rousseau, “fall on! they will be offended at your holding back and think you rate their bounty incomplete.”
“Or unworthy you gentlemen,” interrupted a silvery voice at the summerhouse door, where two pretty women presented themselves arm in arm.
With smiles on their lips, they waved their plump hands for Jussieu to moderate his salutations.
“Allow me to present the Author Rousseau to your ladyship, countess,” said the latter. “Do you not know the lady?”
Gilbert did, if his teacher did not, for he stared and, pale as death, looked for an exit.
“It is the first time we meet,” faltered the Citizen of Geneva.
“Countess Dubarry!” explained the other botanist.
His colleague started as though on a redhot plate of iron.
Jeanne Dubarry, favorite of King Louis X. was a lovely woman, just of the right plumpness to be a material Venus; fair, with light hair but dark eyes she was witching and delightful to all men who prefer truth to fancy in feminine beauty.
“I am very happy,” she said “to see and welcome under my roof one of the most illustrious thinkers of the era.”
“Lady Dubarry,” stammered Rousseau, without seeing that his astonishment was an offense. “So it is she who gives the breakfast?”
“You guess right, my dear philosopher,” replied Jussieu, “she and her sister, Mdlle. Chon, who at least is no stranger to Friend Gilbert.”
“Her sister knows Gilbert?”
“Intimately,” rejoined the impudent girl with the audacity which respected neither royal ill-humor nor philosopher’s quips. “We are old boon companions—are you already forgetful of the candy and cakes of Luciennes and Versailles?”
This shot went home; Rousseau dropped his arms. Habituated in his conceit to think the aristocratic party were always trying to seduce him from the popular side, he saw traitors and spies in everybody.
“Is this so, unhappy boy?” he asked of Gilbert, confounded. “Begone, for I do not like those who blow hot and cold with the same breath.”
“But I ran away from Luciennes where I was locked up, and I must have preferred your house, my guide, my friend, my philosopher!”
“Hypocrisy!”
“But, M. Rousseau, if I wanted the society of these ladies, I should go with them now?”
“Go where you like! I may be deceived once but not twice. Go to this lady, good and amiable—and with this gentleman,” he added pointing to Jussieu, amazed at the philosopher’s rebuke to the royal pet, “he is a lover of nature and your accomplice—he has promised you fortune and assistance and he has power at court.”
He bowed to the women in a tragic manner, unable to contain himself, and left the pavillion statelily, without glancing again at Gilbert.
“What an ugly creature a philosopher is,” tranquilly said Chon, watching the Genevan stumble down the hill.
“You can have anything you like,” prompted Jussieu to Gilbert who kept his face buried in his hands.
“Yes, anything, Gilly,” added the countess, smiling on the returned prodigal.
Raising his pale face, and tossing back the hair matted on his forehead, he said in a steady voice:
“I should be glad to be a gardener at Trianon Palace.”
Chon and the countess glanced at each other, and the former touched her sister’s foot while she winked broadly. Jeanne nodded.
“If feasible, do it,” she said to Jussieu.
Gilbert bowed with his hand on his heart, overflowing with joy after having been drowned with grief.
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