If there be a thing which a true Parisian of Rameau’s stamp associates with love of woman, it is a certain sort of elegant surroundings, a pretty boudoir, a cheery hearth, an easy fauteuil. In the absence of such attributes, “fuyit retro Venus.” If the Englishman invented the word comfort, it is the Parisian who most thoroughly comprehends the thing. And he resents the loss of it in any house where he has been accustomed to look for it, as a personal wrong to his feelings.
Left for some minutes alone, Gustave occupied himself with kindling the log, and muttering, “Par tous les diables, quel chien de rhume je vais attraper?” He turned as he heard the rustle of a robe and a light slow step. Isaura stood before him. Her aspect startled him. He had come prepared to expect grave displeasure and a frigid reception. But the expression of Isaura’s face was more kindly, more gentle, more tender, than he had seen it since the day she had accepted his suit.
Knowing from his mother what his father had said to his prejudice, he thought within himself, “After all, the poor girl loves me better than I thought. She is sensible and enlightened; she cannot pretend to dictate an opinion to a man like me.”
He approached with a complacent self-assured mien, and took her hand, which she yielded to him quietly, leading her to one of the few remaining chairs, and seating himself beside her.
“Dear Isaura,” he said, talking rapidly all the while he performed this ceremony, “I need not assure you of my utter ignorance of the state to which the imbecility of our Government, and the cowardice, or rather the treachery, of our generals, has reduced you. I only heard of it late last night from my mother. I hasten to claim my right to share with you the humble resources which I have saved by the intellectual labours that have absorbed all such moments as my military drudgeries left to the talents which, even at such a moment, paralysing minds less energetic, have sustained me:”—and therewith he poured several pieces of gold and silver on the table beside her chair.
“Gustave,” then said Isaura, “I am well pleased that you thus prove that I was not mistaken when I thought and said that, despite all appearances, all errors, your heart was good. Oh, do but follow its true impulses, and—”
“Its impulses lead me ever to thy feet,” interrupted Gustave, with a fervour which sounded somewhat theatrical and hollow.
The girl smiled, not bitterly, not mockingly; but Gustave did not like the smile.
“Poor Gustave,” she said, with a melancholy pathos in her soft voice, “do you not understand that the time has come when such commonplace compliments ill suit our altered positions to each other? Nay, listen to me patiently; and let not my words in this last interview pain you to recall. If either of us be to blame in the engagement hastily contracted, it is I. Gustave, when you, exaggerating in your imagination the nature of your sentiments for me, said with such earnestness that on my consent to our union depended your health, your life, your career; that if I withheld that consent you were lost, and in despair would seek distraction from thought in all from which your friends, your mother, the duties imposed upon Genius for the good of Man to the ends of God, should withhold and save you—when you said all this, and I believed it, I felt as if Heaven commanded me not to desert the soul which appealed to me in the crisis of its struggle and peril. Gustave, I repent; I was to blame.”
“How to blame?”