The Hated Son by Honoré de Balzac (the ebook reader TXT) 📕

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"Will you take me home?" said Gabrielle, the first to break the exquisite silence.

"Why should we part?" replied Etienne.

"We ought to be together always," she said.

"Stay with me."

"Yes."

The heavy step of Beauvouloir sounded in the adjoining room. The doctor had seen these children at the window locked in each other's arms, but he found them separated. The purest love demands its mystery.

"This is not right, my child," he said to Gabrielle, "to stay so late, and have no lights."

"Why wrong?" she said; "you know we love each other, and he is master of the castle."

"My children," said Beauvouloir, "if you love each other, your happiness requires that you should marry and pass your lives together; but your marriage depends on the will of monseigneur the duke--"

"My father has promised to gratify all my wishes," cried Etienne eagerly, interrupting Beauvouloir.

"Write to him, monseigneur," replied the doctor, "and give me your letter that I may enclose it with one which I, myself, have just written. Bertrand is to start at once and put these despatches into monseigneur's own hand. I have learned to-night that he is now in Rouen; he has brought the heiress of the house of Grandlieu with him, not, as I think, solely for himself. If I listened to my presentiments, I should take Gabrielle away from here this very night."

"Separate us?" cried Etienne, half fainting with distress and leaning on his love.

"Father!"

"Gabrielle," said the physician, holding out to her a smelling-bottle which he took from a table signing to her to make Etienne inhale its contents,--"Gabrielle, my knowledge of science tells me that Nature destined you for each other. I meant to prepare monseigneur the duke for a marriage which will certainly offend his ideas, but the devil has already prejudiced him against it. Etienne is Duc de Nivron, and you, my child, are the daughter of a poor doctor."

"My father swore to contradict me in nothing," said Etienne, calmly.

"He swore to me also to consent to all I might do in finding you a wife," replied the doctor; "but suppose that he does not keep his promises?"

Etienne sat down, as if overcome.

"The sea was dark to-night," he said, after a moment's silence.

"If you could ride a horse, monseigneur," said Beauvouloir, "I should tell you to fly with Gabrielle this very evening. I know you both, and I know that any other marriage would be fatal to you. The duke would certainly fling me into a dungeon and leave me there for the rest of my days when he heard of your flight; and I should die joyfully if my death secured your happiness. But alas! to mount a horse would risk your life and that of Gabrielle. We must face your father's anger here."

"Here!" repeated Etienne.

"We have been betrayed by some one in the chateau who has stirred your father's wrath against us," continued Beauvouloir.

"Let us throw ourselves together into the sea," said Etienne to Gabrielle, leaning down to the ear of the young girl who was kneeling beside him.

She bowed her head, smiling. Beauvouloir divined all.

"Monseigneur," he said, "your mind and your knowledge can make you eloquent, and the force of your love may be irresistible. Declare it to monseigneur the duke; you will thus confirm my letter. All is not lost, I think. I love my daughter as well as you love her, and I shall defend her."

Etienne shook his head.

"The sea was very dark to-night," he repeated.

"It was like a sheet of gold at our feet," said Gabrielle in a voice of melody.

Etienne ordered lights, and sat down at a table to write to his father. On one side of him knelt Gabrielle, silent, watching the words he wrote, but not reading them; she read all on Etienne's forehead. On his other side stood old Beauvouloir, whose jovial countenance was deeply sad,--sad as that gloomy chamber where Etienne's mother died. A secret voice cried to the doctor, "The fate of his mother awaits him!"

When the letter was written, Etienne held it out to the old man, who hastened to give it to Bertrand. The old retainer's horse was waiting in the courtyard, saddled; the man himself was ready. He started, and met the duke twelve miles from Herouville.

"Come with me to the gate of the courtyard," said Gabrielle to her friend when they were alone.

The pair passed through the cardinal's library, and went down through the tower, in which was a door, the key of which Etienne had given to Gabrielle. Stupefied by the dread of coming evil, the poor youth left in the tower the torch he had brought to light the steps of his beloved, and continued with her toward the cottage. A few steps from the little garden, which formed a sort of flowery courtyard to the humble habitation, the lovers stopped. Emboldened by the vague alarm which oppressed them, they gave each other, in the shades of night, in the silence, that first kiss in which the senses and the soul unite, and cause a revealing joy. Etienne comprehended love in its dual expression, and Gabrielle fled lest she should be drawn by that love--whither she knew not.

At the moment when the Duc de Nivron reascended the staircase to the castle, after closing the door of the tower, a cry of horror, uttered by Gabrielle, echoed in his ears with the sharpness of a flash of lightning which burns the eyes. Etienne ran through the apartments of the chateau, down the grand staircase, and along the beach towards Gabrielle's house, where he saw lights.

When Gabrielle, quitting her lover, had entered the little garden, she saw, by the gleam of a torch which lighted her nurse's spinning-wheel, the figure of a man sitting in the chair of that excellent woman. At the sound of her steps the man arose and came toward her; this had frightened her, and she gave the cry. The presence and aspect of the Baron d'Artagnon amply justified the fear thus inspired in the young girl's breast.

"Are you the daughter of Beauvouloir, monseigneur's physician?" asked the baron when Gabrielle's first alarm had subsided.

"Yes, monsieur."

"I have matters of the utmost importance to confide to you. I am the Baron d'Artagnon, lieutenant of the company of men-at-arms commanded by Monseigneur the Duc d'Herouville."

Gabrielle, under the circumstances in which she and her lover stood, was struck by these words, and by the frank tone with which the soldier said them.

"Your nurse is here; she may overhear us. Come this way," said the baron.

He left the garden, and Gabrielle followed him to the beach behind the house.

"Fear nothing!" said the baron.

That speech would have frightened any one less ignorant than Gabrielle; but a simple young girl who loves never thinks herself in peril.

"Dear child," said the baron, endeavoring to give a honeyed tone to his voice, "you and your father are on the verge of an abyss into which you will fall to-morrow. I cannot see your danger without warning you. Monseigneur is furious against your father and against you; he suspects you of having seduced his son, and he would rather see him dead than see him marry you; so much for his son. As for your father, this is the decision monseigneur has made about him. Nine years ago your father was implicated in a criminal affair. The matter related to the secretion of a child of rank at the time of its birth which he attended. Monseigneur, knowing that your father was innocent, guaranteed him from prosecution by the parliament; but now he intends to have him arrested and delivered up to justice to be tried for the crime. Your father will be broken on the wheel; though perhaps, in view of some services he has done to his master, he may obtain the favor of being hanged. I do not know what course monseigneur has decided on for you; but I do know that you can save Monseigneur de Nivron from his father's anger, and your father from the horrible death which awaits him, and also save yourself."

"What must I do?" said Gabrielle.

"Throw yourself at monseigneur's feet, and tell him that his son loves you against your will, and say that you do not love him. In proof of this, offer to marry any man whom the duke himself may select as your husband. He is generous; he will dower you handsomely."

"I can do all except deny my love."

"But if that alone can save your father, yourself, and Monseigneur de Nivron?"

"Etienne," she replied, "would die of it, and so should I."

"Monseigneur de Nivron will be unhappy at losing you, but he will live for the honor of his house; you will resign yourself to be the wife of a baron only, instead of being a duchess, and your father will live out his days," said the practical man.

At this moment Etienne reached the house. He did not see Gabrielle, and he uttered a piercing cry.

"He is here!" cried the young girl; "let me go now and comfort him."

"I shall come for your answer to-morrow," said the baron.

"I will consult my father," she replied.

"You will not see him again. I have received orders to arrest him and send him in chains, under escort, to Rouen," said d'Artagnon, leaving Gabrielle dumb with terror.

The young girl sprang to the house, and found Etienne horrified by the silence of the nurse in answer to his question, "Where is she?"

"I am here!" cried the young girl, whose voice was icy, her step heavy, her color gone.

"What has happened?" he said. "I heard you cry."

"Yes, I hurt my foot against--"

"No, love," replied Etienne, interrupting her. "I heard the steps of a man."

"Etienne, we must have offended God; let us kneel down and pray. I will tell you afterwards."

Etienne and Gabrielle knelt down at the prie-dieu, and the nurse recited her rosary.

"O God!" prayed the girl, with a fervor which carried her beyond terrestrial space, "if we have not sinned against thy divine commandments, if we have not offended the Church, not yet the king, we, who are one and the same being, in whom love shines with the light that thou hast given to the pearl of the sea, be merciful unto us, and let us not be parted either in this world or in that which is to come."

"Mother!" added Etienne, "who art in heaven, obtain from the Virgin that if we cannot--Gabrielle and I--be happy here below we may at least die together, and without suffering. Call us, and we will go to thee."

Then, having recited their evening prayers, Gabrielle related her interview with Baron d'Artagnon.

"Gabrielle," said the young man, gathering strength from his despair, "I shall know how to resist my father."

He kissed her on the forehead, but not again upon the lips. Then he returned to the castle, resolved to face the terrible man who had weighed so fearfully on his life. He did not know that Gabrielle's house would be surrounded and guarded by soldiers the moment that he quitted it.

The next day he was struck down with grief when, on going to see her, he found her a prisoner. But Gabrielle sent her nurse to tell him she would die sooner than be false to him;