章节正文
sign to Gabrielle, which told her he had something to whisper to her.
Gabrielle understood him, and came. She placed herself on his knee
with the lightness of a gazelle, and slipped her arm about his neck,
ruffling his collar.
"Tell me," he said, "what were you thinking of when you gathered those
flowers? You have never before arranged them so charmingly."
"I was thinking of many things," she answered. "Looking at the flowers
made for us, I wondered whom we were made for; who are they who look
at us? You are wise, and I can tell you what I think; you know so much
you can explain all. I feel a sort of force within me that wants to
exercise itself; I struggle against something. When the sky is gray I
am half content; I am sad, but I am calm. When the day is fine, and
the flowers smell sweet, and I sit on my bench down there among the
jasmine and honeysuckles, something rises in me, like waves which beat
against my stillness. Ideas come into my mind which shake me, and fly
away like those birds before the windows; I cannot hold them. Well,
when I have made a bouquet in which the colors blend like tapestry,
and the red contrasts with white, and the greens and the browns cross
each other, when all seems so abundant, the breeze so playful, the
flowers so many that their fragrance mingles and their buds interlace,
--well, then I am happy, for I see what is passing in me. At church
when the organ plays and the clergyrespond, there are two distinct
songs speaking to each other,--the human voice and the music. Well,
then, too, I am happy; that harmony echoes in my breast. I pray with a
pleasure which stirs my blood."
While listening to his daughter, Beauvouloir examined her with
sagacious eyes; those eyes seemed almost stupid from the force of his
rushing thoughts, as the water of a cascade seems motionless. He
raised the veil of flesh which hid the secret springs by which the
soul reacts upon the body; he studied the diverse symptoms which his
long experience had noted in persons committed to his care, and he
compared them with those contained in this frail body, the bones of
which frightened him by their delicacy, as the milk-white skin alarmed
him by its want of substance. He tried to bring the teachings of his
science to bear upon the future of that angelic child, and he was
dizzy in so doing, as though he stood upon the verge of an abyss; the
too vibrant voice, the too slender bosom of the young girl filled him
with dread, and he questioned himself after questioning her.
"You suffer here!" he cried at last, driven by a last thought which
summed up his whole meditation.
She bent her head gently.
"By God's grace!" said the old man, with a sigh, "I will take you to
the Chateau d'Herouville, and there you shall take sea-baths to
strengthen you."
"Is that true, father? You are not laughing at your little Gabrielle?
I have so longed to see the castle, and the men-at-arms, and the
captains of monseigneur."
"Yes, my daughter, you shall really go there. Your nurse and Jean
shall accompany you."
"Soon?"
"To-morrow," said the old man, hurrying into the garden to hide his
agitation from his mother and his child.
"God is my witness," he cried to himself, "that no ambitious thought
impels me. My daughter to save, poor little Etienne to make happy,--
those are my only motives."
If he thus interrogated himself it was because, in the depths of his
consciousness, he felt an inextinguishable satisfaction in knowing
that the success of his project would make Gabrielle some day the
Duchesse d'Herouville. There is always a man in a father. He walked
about a long time, and when he came in to supper he took delight for
the rest of the evening in watching his daughter in the midst of the
soft brown poesy with which he had surrounded her; and when, before
she went to bed, they all--the grandmother, the nurse, the doctor, and
Gabrielle--knelt together to say their evening prayer, he added the
words,--
"Let us pray to God to bless my enterprise."
The eyes of the grandmother, who knew his intentions, were moistened
with what tears remained to her. Gabrielle's face was flushed with
happiness. The father trembled, so much did he fear some catastrophe.
"After all," his mother said to him, "fear not, my son. The duke would
never kill his grandchild."
"No," he replied, "but he might compel her to marry some brute of a
baron, and that would kill her."
The next day Gabrielle, mounted on an ass, followed by her nurse on
foot, her father on his mule, and a valet who led two horses laden
with baggage, started for the castle of Herouville, where the caravan
arrived at nightfall. In order to keep this journey secret,
Beauvouloir had taken by-roads, starting early in the morning, and had
brought provisions to be eaten by the way, in order not to show
himself at hostelries. The party arrived, therefore, after dark,
without being noticed by the castle retinue, at the little dwelling on
the seashore, so long occupied by the hated son, where Bertrand, the
only person the doctor had taken into his confidence, awaited them.
The old retainer helped the nurse and valet to unload the horses and
carry in the baggage, and otherwise establish the daughter of
Beauvouloir in Etienne's former abode. When Bertrand saw Gabrielle, he
was amazed.
"I seem to see madame!" he cried. "She is slim and willowy like her;
she has madame's coloring and the same fair hair. The old duke will
surely love her."
"God grant it!" said Beauvouloir. "But will he acknowledge his own
blood after it has passed through mine?"
"He can't deny it," replied Bertrand. "I often went to fetch him from
the door of the Belle Romaine, who lived in the rue Culture-Sainte-
Catherine. The Cardinal de Lorraine was compelled to give her up to
monseigneur, out of shame at being insulted by the mob when he left
her house. Monseigneur, who in those days was still in his twenties,
will remember that affair; bold he was,--I can tell it now--he led the
insulters!"
"He never thinks of the past," said Beauvouloir. "He knows my wife is
dead, but I doubt if he remembers I have a daughter."
"Two old navigators like you and me ought to be able to bring the ship
to port," said Bertrand. "After all, suppose the duke does get angry
and seize our carcasses; they have served their time."
CHAPTER VI
LOVE
Before starting for Paris, the Duc d'Herouville had forbidden the
castle servants under heavy pains and penalties to go upon the shore
where Etienne had passed his life, unless the Duc de Nivron took any
of them with him. This order, suggested by Beauvouloir, who had shown
the duke the wisdom of leaving Etienne master of his solitude,
guaranteed to Gabrielle and her attendants the inviolability of the
little domain, outside of which he forbade them to go without his
permission.
Etienne had remained during these two days shut up in the old
seignorial bedroom under the spell of his tenderest memories. In that
bed his mother had slept; her thoughts had been confided to the
furnishings of that room; she had used them; her eyes had often
wandered among those draperies; how often she had gone to that window
to call with a cry, a sign, her poor disowned child, now master of the
chateau. Alone in that room, whither he had last come secretly,
brought by Beauvouloir to kiss his dying mother, he fancied that she
lived again; he spoke to her, he listened to her, he drank from that
spring that never faileth, and from which have flowed so many songs
like the "Super flumina Babylonis."
The day after Beauvouloir's return he went to see his young master and
blamed him gently for shutting himself up in a single room, pointing
out to him the danger of leading a prison life in place of his former
free life in the open air.
"But this air is vast," replied Etienne. "The spirit of my mother is
in it."
The physician prevailed, however, by the gentle influence of
affection, in making Etienne promise that he would go out every day,
either on the seashore, or in the fields and meadows which were still
unknown to him. In spite of this, Etienne, absorbed in his memories,
remained yet another day at his window watching the sea, which offered
him from that point of view aspects so various that never, as he
believed, had he seen it so beautiful. He mingled his contemplations
with readings in Petrarch, one of his most favorite authors,--him
whose poesy went nearest to the young man's heart through the
constancy and the unity of his love. Etienne had not within him the
stuff for several passions. He could love but once, and in one way
only. If that love, like all that is a unit, were intense, it must
also be calm in its expression, sweet and pure like the sonnets of the
Italian poet.
At sunset this child of solitude began to sing, in the marvellous
voice which had entered suddenly, like a hope, into the dullest of all
ears to music,--those of his father. He expressed his melancholy by
varying the same air, which he repeated, again and again, like the
nightingale. This air, attributed to the late King Henri IV., was not
the so-called air of "Gabrielle," but something far superior as art,
as melody, as the expression of infinitetenderness. The admirers of
those ancient tunes will recognize the words, composed by the great
king to this air, which were taken, probably, from some folk-song to
which his cradle had been rocked among the mountains of Bearn.
"Dawn, approach,
I pray thee;
It gladdens me to see thee;
The maiden
Whom I love
Is rosy, rosy like thee;
The rose itself,
Dew-laden,
Has not her freshness;
Ermine has not
Her pureness;
Lilies have not
Her whiteness."
After naively revealing the thought of his heart in song, Etienne
contemplated the sea, saying to himself: "There is my bride; the only
love for me!" Then he sang too other lines of the canzonet,--
"She is fair
Beyond compare,"--
repeating it to express the imploring poesy which abounds in the heart
of a timid young man, brave only when alone. Dreams were in that
undulating song, sung, resung, interrupted, renewed, and hushed at
last in a final modulation, the tones of which died away like the
lingering vibrations of a bell.
At this moment a voice, which he fancied was that of a siren rising
from the sea, a woman's voice, repeated the air he had sung, but with
all the hesitations of a person to whom music is revealed for the
first time. He recognized the stammering of a heart born into the
poesy of harmony. Etienne, to whom long study of his own voice had
taught the language of sounds, in which the soul finds resources
greater than speech to express its thoughts, could divine the timid
amazement that attended these attempts. With what religious and
subtile admiration had that unknown being listened to him! The
stillness of the atmosphere enabled him to hear every sound, and he
quivered at the distant rustle of the folds of a gown. He was amazed,
--he, whom all emotions produced by terror sent to the verge of death
--to feel within him the healing, balsamic sensation which his
mother's coming had formerly brought to him.
"Come, Gabrielle, my child," said the voice of Beauvouloir, "I forbade
you to stay upon the seashore after sundown; you must come in, my
daughter."
"Gabrielle," said Etienne to himself. "Oh! the pretty name!"
Beauvouloir presently came to him, rousing his young master from one
of those meditations which resemble dreams. It was night, and the moon
was rising.
"Monseigneur," said the physician, "you have not been out to-day, and
it is not wise of you."
Gabrielle understood him, and came. She placed herself on his knee
with the lightness of a gazelle, and slipped her arm about his neck,
ruffling his collar.
"Tell me," he said, "what were you thinking of when you gathered those
flowers? You have never before arranged them so charmingly."
"I was thinking of many things," she answered. "Looking at the flowers
made for us, I wondered whom we were made for; who are they who look
at us? You are wise, and I can tell you what I think; you know so much
you can explain all. I feel a sort of force within me that wants to
exercise itself; I struggle against something. When the sky is gray I
am half content; I am sad, but I am calm. When the day is fine, and
the flowers smell sweet, and I sit on my bench down there among the
jasmine and honeysuckles, something rises in me, like waves which beat
against my stillness. Ideas come into my mind which shake me, and fly
away like those birds before the windows; I cannot hold them. Well,
when I have made a bouquet in which the colors blend like tapestry,
and the red contrasts with white, and the greens and the browns cross
each other, when all seems so abundant, the breeze so playful, the
flowers so many that their fragrance mingles and their buds interlace,
--well, then I am happy, for I see what is passing in me. At church
when the organ plays and the clergyrespond, there are two distinct
songs speaking to each other,--the human voice and the music. Well,
then, too, I am happy; that harmony echoes in my breast. I pray with a
pleasure which stirs my blood."
While listening to his daughter, Beauvouloir examined her with
sagacious eyes; those eyes seemed almost stupid from the force of his
rushing thoughts, as the water of a cascade seems motionless. He
raised the veil of flesh which hid the secret springs by which the
soul reacts upon the body; he studied the diverse symptoms which his
long experience had noted in persons committed to his care, and he
compared them with those contained in this frail body, the bones of
which frightened him by their delicacy, as the milk-white skin alarmed
him by its want of substance. He tried to bring the teachings of his
science to bear upon the future of that angelic child, and he was
dizzy in so doing, as though he stood upon the verge of an abyss; the
too vibrant voice, the too slender bosom of the young girl filled him
with dread, and he questioned himself after questioning her.
"You suffer here!" he cried at last, driven by a last thought which
summed up his whole meditation.
She bent her head gently.
"By God's grace!" said the old man, with a sigh, "I will take you to
the Chateau d'Herouville, and there you shall take sea-baths to
strengthen you."
"Is that true, father? You are not laughing at your little Gabrielle?
I have so longed to see the castle, and the men-at-arms, and the
captains of monseigneur."
"Yes, my daughter, you shall really go there. Your nurse and Jean
shall accompany you."
"Soon?"
"To-morrow," said the old man, hurrying into the garden to hide his
agitation from his mother and his child.
"God is my witness," he cried to himself, "that no ambitious thought
impels me. My daughter to save, poor little Etienne to make happy,--
those are my only motives."
If he thus interrogated himself it was because, in the depths of his
consciousness, he felt an inextinguishable satisfaction in knowing
that the success of his project would make Gabrielle some day the
Duchesse d'Herouville. There is always a man in a father. He walked
about a long time, and when he came in to supper he took delight for
the rest of the evening in watching his daughter in the midst of the
soft brown poesy with which he had surrounded her; and when, before
she went to bed, they all--the grandmother, the nurse, the doctor, and
Gabrielle--knelt together to say their evening prayer, he added the
words,--
"Let us pray to God to bless my enterprise."
The eyes of the grandmother, who knew his intentions, were moistened
with what tears remained to her. Gabrielle's face was flushed with
happiness. The father trembled, so much did he fear some catastrophe.
"After all," his mother said to him, "fear not, my son. The duke would
never kill his grandchild."
"No," he replied, "but he might compel her to marry some brute of a
baron, and that would kill her."
The next day Gabrielle, mounted on an ass, followed by her nurse on
foot, her father on his mule, and a valet who led two horses laden
with baggage, started for the castle of Herouville, where the caravan
arrived at nightfall. In order to keep this journey secret,
Beauvouloir had taken by-roads, starting early in the morning, and had
brought provisions to be eaten by the way, in order not to show
himself at hostelries. The party arrived, therefore, after dark,
without being noticed by the castle retinue, at the little dwelling on
the seashore, so long occupied by the hated son, where Bertrand, the
only person the doctor had taken into his confidence, awaited them.
The old retainer helped the nurse and valet to unload the horses and
carry in the baggage, and otherwise establish the daughter of
Beauvouloir in Etienne's former abode. When Bertrand saw Gabrielle, he
was amazed.
"I seem to see madame!" he cried. "She is slim and willowy like her;
she has madame's coloring and the same fair hair. The old duke will
surely love her."
"God grant it!" said Beauvouloir. "But will he acknowledge his own
blood after it has passed through mine?"
"He can't deny it," replied Bertrand. "I often went to fetch him from
the door of the Belle Romaine, who lived in the rue Culture-Sainte-
Catherine. The Cardinal de Lorraine was compelled to give her up to
monseigneur, out of shame at being insulted by the mob when he left
her house. Monseigneur, who in those days was still in his twenties,
will remember that affair; bold he was,--I can tell it now--he led the
insulters!"
"He never thinks of the past," said Beauvouloir. "He knows my wife is
dead, but I doubt if he remembers I have a daughter."
"Two old navigators like you and me ought to be able to bring the ship
to port," said Bertrand. "After all, suppose the duke does get angry
and seize our carcasses; they have served their time."
CHAPTER VI
LOVE
Before starting for Paris, the Duc d'Herouville had forbidden the
castle servants under heavy pains and penalties to go upon the shore
where Etienne had passed his life, unless the Duc de Nivron took any
of them with him. This order, suggested by Beauvouloir, who had shown
the duke the wisdom of leaving Etienne master of his solitude,
guaranteed to Gabrielle and her attendants the inviolability of the
little domain, outside of which he forbade them to go without his
permission.
Etienne had remained during these two days shut up in the old
seignorial bedroom under the spell of his tenderest memories. In that
bed his mother had slept; her thoughts had been confided to the
furnishings of that room; she had used them; her eyes had often
wandered among those draperies; how often she had gone to that window
to call with a cry, a sign, her poor disowned child, now master of the
chateau. Alone in that room, whither he had last come secretly,
brought by Beauvouloir to kiss his dying mother, he fancied that she
lived again; he spoke to her, he listened to her, he drank from that
spring that never faileth, and from which have flowed so many songs
like the "Super flumina Babylonis."
The day after Beauvouloir's return he went to see his young master and
blamed him gently for shutting himself up in a single room, pointing
out to him the danger of leading a prison life in place of his former
free life in the open air.
"But this air is vast," replied Etienne. "The spirit of my mother is
in it."
The physician prevailed, however, by the gentle influence of
affection, in making Etienne promise that he would go out every day,
either on the seashore, or in the fields and meadows which were still
unknown to him. In spite of this, Etienne, absorbed in his memories,
remained yet another day at his window watching the sea, which offered
him from that point of view aspects so various that never, as he
believed, had he seen it so beautiful. He mingled his contemplations
with readings in Petrarch, one of his most favorite authors,--him
whose poesy went nearest to the young man's heart through the
constancy and the unity of his love. Etienne had not within him the
stuff for several passions. He could love but once, and in one way
only. If that love, like all that is a unit, were intense, it must
also be calm in its expression, sweet and pure like the sonnets of the
Italian poet.
At sunset this child of solitude began to sing, in the marvellous
voice which had entered suddenly, like a hope, into the dullest of all
ears to music,--those of his father. He expressed his melancholy by
varying the same air, which he repeated, again and again, like the
nightingale. This air, attributed to the late King Henri IV., was not
the so-called air of "Gabrielle," but something far superior as art,
as melody, as the expression of infinitetenderness. The admirers of
those ancient tunes will recognize the words, composed by the great
king to this air, which were taken, probably, from some folk-song to
which his cradle had been rocked among the mountains of Bearn.
"Dawn, approach,
I pray thee;
It gladdens me to see thee;
The maiden
Whom I love
Is rosy, rosy like thee;
The rose itself,
Dew-laden,
Has not her freshness;
Ermine has not
Her pureness;
Lilies have not
Her whiteness."
After naively revealing the thought of his heart in song, Etienne
contemplated the sea, saying to himself: "There is my bride; the only
love for me!" Then he sang too other lines of the canzonet,--
"She is fair
Beyond compare,"--
repeating it to express the imploring poesy which abounds in the heart
of a timid young man, brave only when alone. Dreams were in that
undulating song, sung, resung, interrupted, renewed, and hushed at
last in a final modulation, the tones of which died away like the
lingering vibrations of a bell.
At this moment a voice, which he fancied was that of a siren rising
from the sea, a woman's voice, repeated the air he had sung, but with
all the hesitations of a person to whom music is revealed for the
first time. He recognized the stammering of a heart born into the
poesy of harmony. Etienne, to whom long study of his own voice had
taught the language of sounds, in which the soul finds resources
greater than speech to express its thoughts, could divine the timid
amazement that attended these attempts. With what religious and
subtile admiration had that unknown being listened to him! The
stillness of the atmosphere enabled him to hear every sound, and he
quivered at the distant rustle of the folds of a gown. He was amazed,
--he, whom all emotions produced by terror sent to the verge of death
--to feel within him the healing, balsamic sensation which his
mother's coming had formerly brought to him.
"Come, Gabrielle, my child," said the voice of Beauvouloir, "I forbade
you to stay upon the seashore after sundown; you must come in, my
daughter."
"Gabrielle," said Etienne to himself. "Oh! the pretty name!"
Beauvouloir presently came to him, rousing his young master from one
of those meditations which resemble dreams. It was night, and the moon
was rising.
"Monseigneur," said the physician, "you have not been out to-day, and
it is not wise of you."
- whisper [´wispə]
v.耳语 n.低语；沙沙声 (初中英语单词) - abundant [ə´bʌndənt] a.丰富的；充分的 (初中英语单词)
- breeze [bri:z] n.微风；不费力的事 (初中英语单词)
- respond [ri´spɔnd] v.回答；响应；有反应 (初中英语单词)
- harmony [´hɑ:məni] n.调合，协调，和谐 (初中英语单词)
- stupid [´stju:pid] a.愚蠢的；糊涂的 (初中英语单词)
- slender [´slendə] a.细长的；微薄的 (初中英语单词)
- driven [´driv(ə)n] drive 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- ambitious [æm´biʃəs] a.有雄心的；热望的 (初中英语单词)
- satisfaction [,sætis´fækʃən] n.满意；满足 (初中英语单词)
- project [prə´dʒekt, ´prɔdʒekt] v.设计；投掷 n.计划 (初中英语单词)
- grandmother [´græn,mʌðə] n.(外)祖母 (初中英语单词)
- therefore [´ðeəfɔ:] ad.&conj.因此；所以 (初中英语单词)
- dwelling [´dweliŋ] n.住所；寓所 (初中英语单词)
- otherwise [´ʌðəwaiz] ad.另外 conj.否则 (初中英语单词)
- acknowledge [ək´nɔlidʒ] vt.(公开)承认；感谢 (初中英语单词)
- wisdom [´wizdəm] n.智慧，聪明，才智 (初中英语单词)
- gently [´dʒentli] ad.温和地；静静地 (初中英语单词)
- physician [fi´ziʃən] n.(内科)医生 (初中英语单词)
- sunset [´sʌnset] n.日落；晚霞 (初中英语单词)
- cradle [´kreidl] n.摇篮；发源地 (初中英语单词)
- divine [di´vain] a.神圣的 v.预言 (初中英语单词)
- admiration [,ædmə´reiʃən] n.赞赏，钦佩 (初中英语单词)
- atmosphere [´ætməsfiə] n.大气；空气；气氛 (初中英语单词)
- rustle [´rʌsl] v.&n.(使)沙沙作响 (初中英语单词)
- terror [´terə] n.恐怖；惊骇 (初中英语单词)
- sensation [sen´seiʃən] n.感觉；轰动；轰动一时 (初中英语单词)
- formerly [´fɔ:məli] ad.从前，以前 (初中英语单词)
- presently [´prezəntli] ad.不久；目前 (初中英语单词)
- resemble [ri´zembəl] vt.类似，象 (初中英语单词)
- stillness [´stilnis] n.不动；无声，寂静 (高中英语单词)
- fragrance [´freigrəns] n.芬芳，芳香 (高中英语单词)
- motionless [´məuʃənləs] a.静止的；固定的 (高中英语单词)
- studied [´stʌdid] a.故意的；有计划的 (高中英语单词)
- delicacy [´delikəsi] n.精美；娇弱，微妙 (高中英语单词)
- baggage [´bægidʒ] n.行李 (高中英语单词)
- cardinal [´kɑ:dinəl] a.主要的 n.深红色 (高中英语单词)
- forbidden [fə´bidn] forbid的过去分词 (高中英语单词)
- intense [in´tens] a.强烈的；紧张的 (高中英语单词)
- solitude [´sɔlitju:d] n.孤独；寂寞；荒凉 (高中英语单词)
- melancholy [´melənkəli] n.忧郁 a.忧郁的 (高中英语单词)
- repeated [ri´pi:tid] a.反复的；重复的 (高中英语单词)
- so-called [´sou ´kɔ:ld] a.所谓的，号称的 (高中英语单词)
- melody [´melədi] n.悦耳的音调；乐曲 (高中英语单词)
- infinite [´infinit] a.无限的，无穷的 (高中英语单词)
- tenderness [´tendənis] n.娇嫩；柔软；温柔 (高中英语单词)
- saying [´seiŋ, ´sei-iŋ] n.言语；言论；格言 (高中英语单词)
- bouquet [bu:´kei] n.花束；恭维话 (英语四级单词)
- clergy [´klə:dʒi] n.牧师；教士 (英语四级单词)
- cascade [kæ´skeid] n.小瀑布；喷流 (英语四级单词)
- chateau [´ʃætəu] n.城堡；公馆，邸宅 (英语四级单词)
- seashore [´si:ʃɔ:] n.海岸；海滨 (英语四级单词)
- domain [də´mein,dəu-] n.领土；版图；范围 (英语四级单词)
- forbade [fə´beid] forbid的过去式 (英语四级单词)
- composed [kəm´pəuzd] a.镇静自若的 (英语四级单词)
- playful [´pleifəl] a.爱玩耍的；幽默的 (英语六级单词)
- speaking [´spi:kiŋ] n.说话 a.发言的 (英语六级单词)
- diverse [dai´və:s] a.完全不同的 (英语六级单词)
- angelic [æn´dʒelik] a.天使(般)的 (英语六级单词)
- nightfall [´nait,fɔ:l] n.黄昏；傍晚 (英语六级单词)
- sundown [´sʌndaun] n.日落 (英语六级单词)
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