Elise Lepage was not a beauty, yet in her earlier youth, at least, she possessed a charm which always insured her the admiration and very often the love of those with whom she came in contact. Her father, who was a musician of somewhat mediocre talent, recognized this charm, and in his simple way calculated upon its winning her a suitable husband, notwithstanding his small means and her consequent lack of a dowry. To him she was a paragon, and when, at the close of a long day of unremitting labor at the piano, he saw her approaching him in a dainty fresh robe ready for their usual walk on the boulevard, his face would light up with such pride and joy that the loving girl who watched him felt the tear gush to her eye at the same moment the smile rose to her lip.
They lived in a plain but sufficiently comfortable apartment, and had for neighbors two young men by the name of Picard,—brothers. These two young men occupied the apartment above them; and one of them, the youngest, having some taste for music, a natural acquaintance had sprung up between him and M. Lepage, which presently involved the older brother and Mlle. Lepage. The consequence was that Jean, the elder brother, fell in love with the fresh, charming young girl, and, being himself a man of no conventional prejudices—the future Communist in fact—he offered to marry her without any other fortune than that of her youth and many virtues. The old father was delighted. First, because he felt himself failing in health and was anxious to see his darling’s future secured; and secondly, because he liked this man better than any one else in the world save and excepting always his dear and much admired daughter. Why he felt this extraordinary affection for a man of whom he was forced to acknowledge to himself he knew but little, he could not have told had he tried. Certainly it was not because he understood him, for he did not; neither was it because the other possessed attractions of a peculiar or marked nature. Jean Picard was not handsome, nor was he even gifted in manner or conversation, yet old Mr. Lepage loved him and hailed the prospect of his being his son-in-law with as much fervor as if he were the owner of millions instead of being the physician of one of the poorest and worst paying quarters in the whole city. He trusted him, and that fact, perhaps, illustrates the character of the two men. For Jean Picard was to be trusted in all matters of the heart and conscience; it was only his head that was at fault, or, perhaps, I should say his temperament. He had inherited traditions of the First Revolution, and believed absolutely in the might of the people. But of this he had nothing to say in those days, his head and his heart being joined in the one wish, the one hope, the one purpose, to make Elise his wife.
The evening which he had chosen to speak to M. Lepage—he had never breathed a word of his desires to Elise herself—was, as he afterwards remembered, an especially beautiful one. The moon was shining, and as, filled with the joy of a successful suit, he stepped from the apartment of M. Lepage, something in the quiet beauty of this round and serene orb touched the poetry that exists with all true love in the heart, and drew him, in spite of his usually active ways, to a window opening from the corridor on to a small garden belonging to the concierge. He was looking from this window and dreaming of Elise, when his glance, which had been mechanically fixed upon a leafy retreat beneath him, became earnest, deep, and inquiring, and with a startled gesture of surprise, he bent forward and listened as if his life depended upon his hearing what went on in the garden below him. Had he seen anything which threatened his happiness, and if so, what?
His firm and controlled countenance tells little, but his wandering look and the unsteady step with which he leaves the window and betakes himself to his own room bespeak strong agitation. If we follow him and watch him as a half hour later he slowly rouses from the deep and troubled brooding into which he had sunk immediately upon his entrance, and turning towards the door, waits with a look not to be mistaken for the advance of the step just becoming audible upon the stairs, we shall undoubtedly learn from his own lips what it is that has disturbed him so deeply at a moment he esteemed himself so profoundly blessed.
Yet is he going to speak? His lips have opened, his face has assumed a terrible expression, he has even advanced two paces toward the door to meet the expected comer, when suddenly he pauses. The face he sees before him is not the one he anticipated. It is that of his brother, to be sure, but it does not wear the look he had schooled himself to meet, the triumphant look that goes with happy love, however wrongfully it may be won. The surprise upsets him, and for a moment the words falter on his tongue, then all his manhood re-asserts itself, and imperiously beckoning his brother to enter, he closes the door and stands with the handle still in his grasp, looking at Camille.
“You are in trouble,” said he shortly. “What is it?” Then as he saw his brother start and uneasily drop his eyes, added bitterly: “Have you told her what you are, and does she refuse to marry you?”
Camille, who was of a fiery nature, but who for certain reasons stood somewhat in awe of his brother, looked for a moment as if he could have leaped at his throat; but he restrained himself, and while the veins swelled on his forehead and his face grew fiery red, he stammered:
“Whom do you mean by her? I do not understand you.”
“That is not true; you understand me perfectly,” was the rude but brave Jean’s straightforward response. “But if you must have names I allude to Elise, the pure, innocent, high-minded girl whom by arts I do not profess to understand you have succeeded in pleasing, till, for aught I know, she considers you a model of virtue and goodness.”
“And if she did?” broke in the other impetuously.