"And I," replied Etienne, "can _I_ go on the seashore after sundown?"

The double meaning of this speech, full of the gentle playfulness of a
first desire, made the old man smile.

"You have a daughter, Beauvouloir."
"Yes, monseigneur,--the child of my old age; my darling child.

Monseigneur, the duke, your father, charged me so earnestly to watch
your precious health that, not being able to go to Forcalier, where

she was, I have brought her here, to my great regret. In order to
conceal her from all eyes, I have placed her in the house monseigneur

used to occupy. She is so delicate I fear everything, even a sudden
sentiment or emotion. I have never taught her anything; knowledge

would kill her."
"She knows nothing!" cried Etienne, surprised.

"She has all the talents of a good housewife, but she has lived as the
plants live. Ignorance, monseigneur, is as sacred a thing as

knowledge. Knowledge and ignorance are only two ways of living, for
the human creature. Both preserve the soul and envelop it; knowledge

is your existence, but ignorance will save my daughter's life. Pearls
well-hidden escape the diver, and live happy. I can only compare my

Gabrielle to a pearl; her skin has the pearl's translucence, her soul
its softness, and until this day Forcalier has been her fostering

shell."
"Come with me," said Etienne, throwing on a cloak. "I want to walk on

the seashore, the air is so soft."
Beauvouloir and his master walked in silence until they reached a spot

where a line of light, coming from between the shutters of a
fisherman's house, had furrowed the sea with a golden rivulet.

"I know not how to express," said Etienne, addressing his companion,
"the sensations that light, cast upon the water, excites in me. I have

often watched it streaming from the windows of that room," he added,
pointing back to his mother's chamber, "until it was extinguished."

"Delicate as Gabrielle is," said Beauvouloir, gaily, "she can come and
walk with us; the night is warm, and the air has no dampness. I will

fetch her; but be prudent, monseigneur."
Etienne was too timid to propose to accompany Beauvouloir into the

house; besides, he was in that torpid state into which we are plunged
by the influx of ideas and sensations which give birth to the dawn of

passion. Conscious of more freedom in being alone, he cried out,
looking at the sea now gleaming in the moonlight,--

"The Ocean has passed into my soul!"
The sight of the lovely living statuette which was now advancing

towards him, silvered by the moon and wrapped in its light, redoubled
the palpitations of his heart, but without causing him to suffer.

"My child," said Beauvouloir, "this is monseigneur."
In a moment poor Etienne longed for his father's colossal figure; he

would fain have seemed strong, not puny. All the vanities of love and
manhood came into his heart like so many arrows, and he remained in

gloomy silence, measuring for the first time the extent of his
imperfections. Embarrassed by the salutation of the young girl, he

returned it awkwardly, and stayed beside Beauvouloir, with whom he
talked as they paced along the shore; presently, however, Gabrielle's

timid and deprecating countenance emboldened him, and he dared to
address her. The incident of the song was the result of mere chance.

Beauvouloir had intentionally made no preparations; he thought,
wisely, that between two beings in whom solitude had left pure hearts,

love would arise in all its simplicity. The repetition of the air by
Gabrielle was a ready text on which to begin a conversation.

During this promenade Etienne was conscious of that bodily buoyancy
which all men have felt at the moment when a first love transports

their vital principle into another being. He offered to teach
Gabrielle to sing. The poor lad was so glad to show himself to this

young girl invested with some slight superiority that he trembled with
pleasure when she accepted his offer. At that moment the moonlight

fell full upon her, and enabled Etienne to note the points of her
resemblance to his mother, the late duchess. Like Jeanne de Saint-

Savin, Beauvouloir's daughter was slender and delicate; in her, as in
the duchess, sadness and suffering conveyed a mysterious charm. She

had that nobility of manner peculiar to souls on whom the ways of the
world have had no influence, and in whom all is noble because all is

natural. But in Gabrielle's veins there was also the blood of "la
belle Romaine," which had flowed there from two generations, giving to

this young girl the passionate heart of a courtesan in an absolutely
pure soul; hence the enthusiasm that sometimes reddened her cheek,

sanctified her brow, and made her exhale her soul like a flash of
light, and communicated the sparkle of flame to all her motions.

Beauvouloir shuddered when he noticed this phenomenon, which we may
call in these days the phosphorescence of thought; the old physician

of that period regarded it as the precursor of death.
Hidden beside her father, Gabrielle endeavored to see Etienne at her

ease, and her looks expressed as much curiosity as pleasure, as much
kindliness as innocentdaring. Etienne detected her in stretching her

neck around Beauvouloir with the movement of a timid bird looking out
of its nest. To her the young man seemed not feeble, but delicate; she

found him so like herself that nothing alarmed her in this sovereign
lord. Etienne's sicklycomplexion, 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 maternalprotection, 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. New ideas, new
sensations were rising in each with a force, with an abundance that

enlarged their souls; both remained silent and overcome, for
sentiments are least demonstrative when most real and deep. All

durable love begins by dreamymeditation. It was suitable that these
two beings should first see each other in the softer light of the

moon, that love and its splendors might not dazzle them too suddenly;
it was well that they met by the shores of the Ocean,--vast image of

the vastness of their feelings. They parted filled with one another,
fearing, each, to have failed to please.

From his window Etienne watched the lights of the house where
Gabrielle was. During that hour of hope mingled with fear, the young

poet found fresh meanings in Petrarch's sonnets. He had now seen
Laura, a delicate, delightful figure, pure and glowing like a sunray,

intelligent as an angel, feeble as a woman. His twenty years of study
found their meaning, he understood the mystic marriage of all

beauties; he perceived how much of womanhood there was in the poems he
adored; in short, he had so long loved unconsciously that his whole

past now blended with the emotions of this glorious night. Gabrielle's
resemblance to his mother seemed to him an order divinely given. He

did not betray his love for the one in loving the other; this new love
continued HER maternity. He contemplated that young girl, asleep in

the cottage, with the same feelings his mother had felt for him when
he was there. Here, again, was a similitude which bound this present

to the past. On the clouds of memory the saddened face of his mother
appeared to him; he saw once more her feeble smile, he heard her

gentle voice; she bowed her head and wept. The lights in the cottage
were extinguished. Etienne sang once more the pretty canzonet, with a

new expression, a new meaning. From afar Gabrielle again replied. The
young girl, too, was making her first voyage into the charmed land of

amorous ecstasy. That echoed answer filled with joy the young man's
heart; the blood flowing in his veins gave him a strength he never yet

had felt, love made him powerful. Feeble beings alone know the
voluptuous joy of that new creation entering their life. The poor, the

suffering, the ill-used, have joys ineffable; small things to them are
worlds. Etienne was bound by many a tie to the dwellers in the City of

Sorrows. His recent accession to grandeur had caused him terror only;
love now shed within him the balm that created strength; he loved

Love.
The next day Etienne rose early to hasten to his old house, where

Gabrielle, stirred by curiosity and an impatience she did not
acknowledge to herself, had already curled her hair and put on her

prettiest costume. Both were full of the eager desire to see each
other again,--mutually fearing the results of the interview. As for

Etienne, he had chosen his finest lace, his best-embroidered mantle,
his violet-velvet breeches; in short, those handsome habiliments which

we connect in all memoirs of the time with the pallid face of Louis
XIII., a face oppressed with pain in the midst of grandeur, like that