“On that day when a hundred thousand people, crushing one another as they fled from masterless horses and flashing swords, strewed Louis XV. Place with dying and the dead.”
“The last day of May?”
Andrea lost and regained her ironical smile.
“Oh, you are Baron Balsamo, are you? I cry you pardon for I did not know this either, before!”
“No, I am not the baron,” replied Gilbert, with flaming eyes and tremulous lip; “I am the poor boy, offspring of the dregs of the Kingdom, whose folly, stupidity, and misfortune it is to be in love with you. It was because of this I followed you into that multitude. I am Gilbert who, separated from you by the crush, recognized you by the dreadful scream you raised. Gilbert, who fell near you but encompassed you with his arms so that twenty thousand hands tearing at them could not have relaxed the clasp. Gilbert, who placed himself between the stone post on which you would be smashed, to make a buffer of his breast. Gilbert, who seeing in the throng the strange man who seemed to command the other men, called out your name to the Baron Balsamo, so that he and his allied friends should come to your rescue. He yielded you up to a happier saver, did Gilbert, retaining of his prize only the flag—the scrap of your dress torn in the struggle with the thousands; I pressed that to my lips, in time to stop the blood which flew up from my shattered bosom. The rolling sea of the terrified and brutal overwhelmed me but you ascended, like the Angel of the Resurrection, to the abode of the blessed.”
Gilbert exhibited himself wholly in this outburst, wild, simple and sublime, the same in his determination as in his love. In spits of her contempt, Andrea could not view him without astonishment. He believed for an instant that his story had the irresistibility of love and truth. But the poor lad reckoned without unbelief, the want of faith which hate has. Hating Gilbert, Andrea let none of the arguments capture in this disdained lover.
“I see,” she said, “that the author Rousseau has taught you how to weave romances.”
“My love a romance?” he exclaimed, indignant.
“And one which you forced me to listen to.”
“Is this all your answer?” faltered he, with dulled eyes and his heart aching as in a vice.