As soon as it was light at Rosette's, D'Albert had himself announced with a promptness that was not usual with him.
“Here you are,” said Rosette, “and I should say you were early, if you could ever come early. And so, to reward you for your gallantry, I grant you my hand to kiss.”
And from beneath the lace-trimmed sheet of Flanders linen, she drew the prettiest little hand that was ever seen at the end of a round, plump arm.
D'Albert kissed it with compunction.
“And the other one, its little sister, are we not to kiss it as well?”
“Oh, dear, yes! nothing more feasible. I am in my Sunday humor to-day; here.” And, bringing her other hand out of the bed, she tapped him lightly on the mouth. “Am I not the most accommodating woman in the world?”
“You are grace itself, and should have white marble temples raised to you in myrtle groves. Indeed I am much afraid that there will happen to you what happened to Psyche, and that Venus will become jealous of you,” said D'Albert joining both the hands of the fair one and carrying them together to his lips.
“How you deliver all that in a breath! One would say that it was a phrase you had learnt by heart,” said Rosette with a delicious little pout.
“Not at all; you are quite worthy of having a phrase turned expressly for you, and you are made to pluck the virginity of madrigals,” returned D' Albert. “Oh, indeed! really-what makes you so lively to-day? Are you ill that you are so polite? I fear that you will die. Do you know that it is a bad sign when anyone changes his character all at once with no apparent reason? Now, it is an established fact, in the eyes of all the women who have taken the trouble to love you, that you are usually as cross as you can be, and it is no less certain that at this moment you are as charming as one can be, and are displaying most inexplicable amiability. There, I do think that you are looking pale, my poor D'Albert; give me your arm, that I may feel your pulse.” And she drew up his sleeve and counted the beats with comical gravity. “No, you are as well as possible, without the slightest symptom of fever. Then I must be furiously pretty this morning! Just get me my mirror, and let me see how far your gallantry is right or wrong.”
D'Albert took up a little mirror that was on the toilet-table and laid it on the bed.
“In point of fact,” said Rosette, “you are not altogether wrong. Why do you not make a sonnet on my eyes, sir poet? You have no reason for not doing so. Just see how unfortunate I am! to have eyes like that and a poet like this, and yet to be in want of sonnets, as though I were one-eyed with a water-carrier for my lover! You do not love me, sir; you have not even written me an acrostic sonnet. And what do you think of my mouth? Yet I have kissed you with that mouth, and shall, perhaps, do so again, my handsome gloomy one; and, indeed, it is a favor that you scarcely deserve (this is not meant for to-day, for you deserve everything); but not to be always talking about myself, you have unparalleled beauty and freshness this morning, you look like a brother of Aurora; and although it is scarcely light you are already dressed and got up as though you were going to a ball. Perchance you have designs upon me? would you deal a treacherous blow at my virtue? do you wish to make a conquest of me? But I forgot that that was done already, and is now ancient history.”
“Rosette, do not jest in that way; you know very well that I love you.”
“Why, that depends. I don't know it very well; and you?”
“Perfectly; and so true is it that if you were so kind as to forbid your door to everybody, I should endeavor to prove it to you, and, I venture to flatter myself, in a victorious fashion.”
“As for that, no; however much I may wish to be convinced, my door shall remain open; I am too pretty to have closed doors; the sun shines for everybody, and my beauty shall be like the sun to-day, if you have no objection.”
“But I have, on my honor; however, act as though I thought it excellent I am your very humble slave, and I lay my wishes at your feet.”
“That is quite right; continue to have sentiments of the kind, and leave the key in your door this evening.”
“The Chevalier Theodore de Serannes,” said a big negro's head, smiling and chubby-faced, appearing between the leaves of the folding-door, “wishes to pay his respects to you and entreats you to condescend to receive him.”
“Ask the chevalier to come in,” said Rosette, drawing up the sheet to her chin.
Theodore first went up to Rosette's bed and made her a most profound and graceful bow, to which she returned a friendly nod, and then turned towards D'Albert, and saluted him also with a free and Courteous air.
“Where were you?” said Theodore. “I have perhaps interrupted an interesting conversation. Pray continue, and acquaint me with the subject of it in a few words.”
“Oh, no!” replied Rosette with a mischievous smile; “we were talking of business.”
Theodore sat down at the foot of Rosette's bed, for D'Albert had placed himself beside the pillow, as being the first arrival; the conversation wandered for some time from subject to subject, and was very witty, very gay and very lively, which is the reason why we shall not give any account of it; we should be afraid that it would lose too much if transcribed. Mien, accent, fire in speech and gesture, the thousand ways of pronouncing a word, all the spirit of it; like the foam of champagne which sparkles and evaporates immediately, are things that it is impossible to fix and reproduce. It is a lacuna which we leave to be filled up by the reader, and with which he will assuredly deal better than we; let him here imagine five or six pages filled with everything of the most delicate, most capricious, most curiously fantastical, most elegant and most glittering description.
We are aware that we are here employing an artifice which tends to recall that of Timanthes who, despairing of his ability to adequately represent Agamemnon's face, threw a drapery over his head; but we would rather be timid than imprudent.
It might perhaps be to the purpose to inquire into the motives which had prompted D'Albert to get up so early in the morning, and the incentive which had induced him to visit Rosette as early as if he had been still in love with her. It looked as though it were a slight impulse of secret and unacknowledged jealousy. He was certainly not much attached to Rosette, and he would even have been very glad to get rid of her, but he wished at least to give her up himself and not to be given up by her, a thing which never fails to wound a man's pride deeply, however well extinguished his first flame may otherwise be.
Theodore was such a handsome cavalier that it was difficult to see him appearing in a connection without being apprehensive of what had, in fact, often happened already, apprehensive, that is, lest all eyes should be turned upon him and all hearts follow the eyes; and it was a singular thing that, although he had carried off many women, no lover had ever maintained towards him the lasting resentment which is usually entertained towards those who have supplanted you. In all his ways there was such a conquering charm, such natural grace, and something so sweet and proud, that even men were sensible of it. D'Albert, who had come to see Rosette with the intention of speaking to Theodore with tartness, should he meet him there, was quite surprised to find himself free from the slightest impulse of anger in his presence, and so ready to receive the advances that were made to him.
At the end of half-an-hour you would have thought them friends from childhood, and yet D'Albert had an intimate conviction that if Rosette was ever to love, it would be this man, and he had every reason to be jealous at least for the future, for as to the present, he had as yet no suspicion; what would it have been had he seen the fair one in a white dressing-gown gliding like a moth on a moon-ray into the handsome youth's room, and not coming out until three or four hours afterwards with mysterious precautions? He might truly have thought himself more unfortunate than he was, for one of the things that we scarcely ever see is a pretty, amorous woman coming out of the chamber of an equally pretty cavalier exactly as she went in.
Rosette listened to Theodore with great attention, and in the way that people listen to someone whom they love; but what he said was so amusing and varied, that this attention seemed only natural and was easy of explanation. Accordingly D'Albert did not take umbrage at it. Theodore's manner towards Rosette was polished and friendly, but nothing more.
“What shall we do to-day, Theodore?” said Rosette; “suppose we take a sail? what do you think? or we might go hunting?”
“Let us go hunting, it is less melancholy than gliding over the water side by side with some languid swan, and bending the leaves of the water-lilies right and left, — is that not your opinion, D'Albert?”
“I might perhaps prefer to flow along in the boat with the current of the stream to galloping desperately in pursuit of a poor beast; but I will go where you will. We have now only to let Madame Rosette get up, and assume a suitable costume.”
Rosette gave a sign of assent, and rang to have herself dressed. The two young men went off arm-in-arm, and it was easy to guess, seeing them so friendly together, that one was the formal lover and the other the beloved lover of the same person.
Everyone was soon ready. D'Albert and Theodore were already mounted in the first court when Rosette appeared in a riding-habit, on the top of the flight of steps. She had a little sprightly and easy air in this costume which became her very well. She leaped upon the saddle with her usual agility, and gave a switch to her horse which started off like an arrow, D'Albert struck in both his spurs and soon rejoined her, Theodore allowed them to get some way ahead, being sure of catching them up as soon as he wished to do so. He seemed to be waiting for something, and often looked round towards the mansion.
“Theodore, Theodore, come on! are you riding a wooden horse?” cried Rosette.
Theodore gave his animal a gallop, and diminished the distance separating him from Rosette, without, however, causing it to disappear.
He again looked towards the mansion of which they were beginning to lose sight; a little whirlwind of dust, in which something that could not yet be discerned was in very hasty motion, appeared at the end of the road. In a few moments it was at Theodore's side, and opening up, like the classic clouds in the Iliad, displayed the fresh and rosy face of the mysterious page.
“Theodore, come along!” cried Rosette a second time, “give your tortoise the spur and come up beside us.”
Theodore gave the rein to his horse which was pawing and rearing with impatience, and in a few seconds he was several heads in advance of D'Albert and Rosette.
“Whoever loves me will follow me,” said Theodore, leaping a fence four feet high. “Well, sir poet,” he said, when he was on the other side, “you do not jump? Yet your mount has wings, so people say.”
“Faith! I would rattier go round; I have only one head to break after all; if I had several I should try,” replied D'Albert, smiling.
“Nobody loves me then, since nobody follows me,” said Theodore drawing down the arched corners of his mouth even more than usual. The little page raised his large blue eyes towards him with a look of reproach, and brought his heels against his horse's sides.
The horse gave a prodigious bound.
“Yes! somebody,” he said to him on the other side of the fence.
Rosette cast a singular look upon the child and blushed up to her eyes; then, giving a furious stroke with her whip on the neck of her mare, she crossed the bar of apple-green wood which fenced the avenue.
“And I, Theodore, do you think that I do not love you?”
The child cast a sly side-glance at her, and drew close to Theodore.
D'Albert was already in the middle of the avenue, and saw nothing of all this; for from time immemorial, fathers, husbands, and lovers have been possessed of the privilege of seeing nothing.
“Isnabel,” said Theodore, “you are mad, and so are you, Rosette! Isnabel, you did not take sufficient room for the leap, and you, Rosette, nearly caught your dress in the posts. You might have killed yourself.”
“What matter?” replied Rosette with an accent so sad and melancholy, that Isnabel forgave her for having leaped the fence as well.
They went on for some time and reached the crossroads where they were to find huntsmen and pack. Six arches cut in the thickness of the forest led to a little stone tower with six sides, on each of which was engraved the name of the road that terminated there. The trees rose to such a height that it seemed as if they wished to card the fleecy, flaky clouds sailing over their heads before a somewhat strong breeze; close, high grass and impenetrable bushes afforded retreats and fortresses to the game, and the hunt promised to be a success. It was a genuine old-world forest, with ancient oaks more than a century old, such as are to be seen no longer now that we plant no more trees, and have not patience enough to wait until those that are planted have grown up; a hereditary forest planted by great-grandfathers for the fathers, and by the fathers for the grandsons, with avenues of prodigious breadth, an obelisk surmounted by a ball, a rock-work fountain, the indispensable pond, and white-powdered keepers in yellow leather breeches and sky-blue coats; one of those dark, bushy forests wherein stand out in admirable relief the white satiny cruppers of the great horses of Wouvermans, and the broad flags on the Dampierre horns, which Parrocelli loves to display radiant on the huntsmen's backs.
A multitude of dog's tails, like pruning knives or hedge-bills, were curled friskily in a dusty cloud. The signal was given, the dogs, which were straining hard enough at the leash to strangle themselves, were uncoupled, and the hunt began. We shall not describe. very minutely the turnings and windings of the stag through the forest; we do not even know with exactitude whether it was a full grown stag, and in spite of all our researches we have not been able to ascertain, which is really distressing. Nevertheless we think that only full grown stags could have been found in such a forest, so ancient, so shady, and so lordly, and we see no reason why the animal after which the four principal characters of this illustrious romance were galloping on horses of different colors and non passibus aequis, should not have-been one.
The stag ran like the true stag that he was, and the fifty dogs at his heels were no ordinary spur to his natural swiftness. The run was so quick that only a few rare bays were to be heard.
Theodore, being the best mounted and the best horseman, followed hard on the pack with incredible eagerness. If Albert was close behind him. Rosette and the little page Isnabel came after, separated by an interval which was increasing every minute.
The interval was soon so great as to take away all hope of restoring an equilibrium.
“Suppose we stop for a little,” said Rosette, to give our horses breath? The hunt is going in the direction of the pond, and I know a cross-road which will take us there as soon as they.”
Isnabel drew the bridle of his little mountain horse which, shaking the hanging locks of his mane over his eyes bent his head, and began to scrape the sand with his hoofs.
This little horse formed the most perfect contrast with Rosette's: he was as black as night, the other as white as satin; he was quite shaggy and dishevelled, the other had its mane plaited with blue, and its tail curled and crisped. The second looked like a unicorn, and the first like a barbet
The same antithetical difference was to be remarked in the masters as in the steeds. Rosette's hair was as dark as Isnabel's was fair; her eyebrows were very neatly traced and in a very apparent manner; the page's were scarcely more vigorous than his skin and resembled the down on a peach. The color of the one was brilliant and strong like the light of noon; the complexion of the other had the transparencies and blushings of the dawn of day.
“Suppose we try to catch up the hunt now?” said Isnabel to Rosette; “the horses have had time to take breath.”
“Come along!” replied the pretty amazon, and they started off at a gallop down a rather narrow, transverse avenue which led to the pond; the two animals were abreast and took up nearly the whole breadth.
On Isnabel's side a great branch projected like an arm from a twisted and knotted tree, which seemed to be shaking its fist at the riders. The child did not see it.
“Take care!” cried Rosette, “bend down on your saddle! you will be unhorsed!”
The warning had been given too late; the branch struck Isnabel in the middle of the body. The violence of the blow made him lose his stirrups, and, as his horse continued to gallop and the branch was too strong to bend, he found himself lifted out of the saddle and fell heavily backward.
The child lay senseless from the blow. Rosette, greatly frightened, threw herself from her horse, and hastened to the page who showed no signs of life.
His cap had fallen off, and his beautiful fair hair streamed on all sides in disorder on the sand. His little open hands looked like hands of wax, so pale were they Rosette knelt down beside him and tried to restore him. She had neither salts nor flask about her, and her perplexity was great. At last she noticed a tolerably deep rut in which the rain-water had collected and become clear; she dipped her finger into it, to the great terror of a little frog who was the naiad of this sea, and shook a few drops upon the bluish temples of the young page. He did not appear to feel them, and the water-pearls rolled along his white cheeks like a sylphid's tears along the leaf of a lily. Rosette, thinking that his clothes might distress him, unfastened his belt, undid the buttons of his tightly-fitting coat and opened his shirt that his breast might have freer play.
Rosette there saw something which to a man would have been one of the most agreeable surprises in the world, but which seemed to be very far from giving her pleasure- for her eyebrows drew close together, and her upper lip trembled slightly-namely, a very white bosom, scarcely formed as yet, but which gave admirable promise, and was already fulfilling much of it; a round, polished ivory bosom — to speak like the Ronsardizers-delicious to see, and more delicious to kiss!
“A woman!” she said, “a woman! ah! Theodore!”
Isnabel-for we shall continue to give him this name, although it was not his-began to breathe a little, and languidly raised his long eyelashes; he had not been wounded in any way, but only stunned. He soon sat up, and with Rosette's assistance was able to stand up on his feet and remount his horse, which had stopped as soon as he had felt that his rider was gone.
They proceeded at a slow pace as far as the pond, where they did in fact meet again with the rest of the hunt Rosette, in a few words, related to Theodore what had taken place. The latter changed color several times during Rosette's narration, and kept his horse beside Isnabel's for the remainder of the way.
They came back very early to the mansion; the day which had commenced so joyously ended rather sadly.
Rosette was pensive, and D'Albert seemed also to be plunged in deep thought. The reader will soon know what had occasioned this.