“What on earth is the matter?” said D’Argenton. “Is it this news of the Cydnus? It is a mere flying report, I am sure, and I attach no importance to it. Dr. Hirsch was to call at the office of the Company to-day, and he will be here directly.”
He spoke in a satirical tone, slightly disdainful, as the weak, children, fools, and invalids are often addressed. Was she not something of all these?
“Where were we?” he continued, when she was calmer. “You have made me lose the thread. Read me all you have written.”
Charlotte wiped her tears away.
“In a valley among the Pyrenees, those Pyrenees so rich in legendary lore—”
“Go on.”
“It is all,” she answered.
The poet was very much surprised; it seemed to him that he had dictated much more. The terrible advantage thought has over expression bewildered him. All that he dreamed, all that was in embryo within his brain, he fancied was already in form and on the page, and he was aghast at the disproportion between the dream and the reality. His delusion was like that of Don Quixote,—he believed himself in the Empyrean, and took the vapors from the kitchen for the breath of heaven, and, seated on his wooden horse, felt all the shock of an imaginary fall.. Had he been in such a state of mental exaltation merely to produce those two lines? Were these the only result of that frantic rubbing of his dishevelled hair, of that weary pacing to and fro?’
He was furious, for he felt that he was ridiculous. “It is your fault,” he said to Charlotte. “How can a man work in the face of a crying woman? It is always the same thing—nothing is accomplished. Years pass away and the places are filled. Do you not know how small a thing disturbs literary composition? I ought to live in a tower a thousand feet above all the futilities of life, instead of being surrounded by caprices, disorder, and childishness.” As he speaks he strikes a furious blow upon the table, and poor Charlotte, with the tears pouring from her eyes, gathers up the pens and papers that have flown about the room in wild confusion.
The arrival of Dr. Hirsch ends this deplorable scene, and after a while tranquillity is restored. The doctor is not alone; Labassandre comes with him, and both are grave and mysterious in their manner.