Andrea never suspected that she had been cruel to the youth. The fair and serene maiden was completely unaware that there could be any link between her and her foster-brother, for joy or sorrow. She soared over earthly spheres, casting on them shine or shadow according to her being smiling or gloomy. This time it chanced that her shade of disdain had chilled Gilbert; as she had merely followed the impulse of her temper, she was ignorant that she had been scornful.
But Gilbert, like a disarmed gladiator, had received the proud speech and the scorning looks straight in the heart. He was not enough of a philosopher yet not to console himself with despair while the wound was bleeding.
Hence he did not notice men or horses in the press. Gathering up his strength, he rushed into it, at the risk of being crushed, like a wild boar cutting through the pack of hounds.
At length breathing more freely, he reached the green sward, water side and loneliness. He had run to the river Seine, and came out opposite St. Denis island. Exhausted, not by bodily fatigue but by spiritual anguish, he rolled on the grass, and roared like a lion transfixed by a spear, as if the animal's voice better expressed his woes than human tongue.
Was not all the vague and undecided hope which had flung a little light on the mad ideas, not to be accounted for to himself, now extinguished at a blow? To whatever step on the social ladder Gilbert might rise by dint of genius, science and study, he would always be a man or a thing—according to her own words, for which her father was wrong in paying any attention, and not worth her lowering her eyes upon.
He had briefly fancied that, on seeing him in the capital, and learning his resolution to struggle till he came up through the darkness, Andrea would applaud the effort. Not only had the cheer failed the brave boy, but he had met the haughty indifference always had for the dependent by the young lady of the manor.
Furthermore she had shown anger that he should have looked at her music book; had he touched it, he did not doubt that he would be thought fit to be burned at the stake.
As he writhed on the turf, he knew not whether he loved or hated his torturer; he suffered, that was all. But as he was not capable of long patience, he sprang out of his prostration, decided to invent some energetic course.
"Granted that she does not love me," he reasoned, "I must not hope that she never will. I had the right to expect from her the mild interest attached to those who wrestle with their misfortune. She did not understand what her brother saw. He thought that I might become a celebrity; should it happen so, he would act fairly and let me have his sister, in reward of my earned glory, as he would have exchanged her for my native aristocracy, had I been born his equal.
"But I shall always be plain Gilbert in her eyes, for she looks down in me upon what nothing can efface, gild or cover—my low birth. As though, supposing I attain my mark, it would not be greater of me than if I had started on her high level! Oh, mad creature! senseless being! oh, woman, woman—your other name is Imperfection.