‘I will not weary you with any story of my passion. It was the old narrative of a hopeless love, affection unreturned, a whole heart’s devotion given without the shadow of requital. There was not an artifice I did not practise to cure myself of this baleful infatuation. I reasoned, I pondered, I even prayed against it. I tried to invest her with all the “traits” of that “canaille” multitude I hated. I endeavoured to believe her the very type of that base herd who exulted over our ruin and downfall; but no sooner did I see her, and hear her voice, than I forgot all my self-deceptions, and loved her more ardently, ay, more abjectly than ever. We live in strange times, Gerald,’ said he, with a deep sigh, ‘and we learn hard lessons. That this poor and friendless girl of the people should despise a Count de Noe tells to what depths we have fallen.’
Gerald listened with deep interest to this story. He never doubted in his own mind that this girl was Marietta, nor did he wonder at the fascination she exercised; still was he careful to conceal this knowledge from De Noe, and affecting a mere curiosity in the adventure, asked him to continue.
‘I have little more to tell you,’ said the other. ‘I know not if my attentions persecuted her, or that the promptings of a higher ambition moved her, but she left us, some said, to become the mistress of Mirabeau; others declared that Collot d’Herbois was her lover. The truth was soon apparent when she appeared at the Français under the name of Gabrielle. Ay, Gerald, the great genius of the French stage, the gifted pupil of Talma, the marvellous artiste whose triumphs are trumpeted through Europe, was the other day but the gipsy actress of the Trou de Taupe, as our little stage was politely named.’
De Noe described with enthusiasm the fervour of admiration La Gabrielle had excited; how the foremost men of the time had offered to share fortune with her; that she had but to choose throughout France the man who would be her protector—from Dumourier to Tinaille, there is not one would not make her his wife to-morrow.
‘I see,’ added he, ‘that you account all this exaggeration on my part. Well, there is happily a way to test the faithfulness of my report.’
‘How so?’
‘To-morrow evening is Madame Roland’s night of reception. You have heard of her as the great leader of the advanced reformers—they who would strip the nation of everything to clothe it in rags of their own pattern. Come with me there; I will present you as a young friend from the provinces, or better still, an exile fled from Italian tyranny. You will meet the most distinguished men of that extreme party; you will hear their sentiments and their hopes. A stray phrase about despotism, a passing word of execration on kingly rule, will be enough to make you free of the guild, and you will not fail to glean information from them. At all events, there is a great chance that you may see “Gabrielle;” she rarely misses one of these evenings, and you will see her in the sphere she loves best to move in, and where her influence is unbounded. It may be she will give me leave to present you.’
‘I will not ask so much,’ said Gerald, with an affected humility.
‘You cannot say so till you have seen her,’ cried the other. ‘I tell you, Gerald, that the men whose pride would scorn the notice of royalty would kneel with devotion to do her homage. She is not one of those whose eminence is a recognised conventionality, but one whose sway is an indisputable influence, greater as she is in real life than when depicting imaginary sorrows; and then that wondrous gift, the heritage of her gipsy blood, perhaps heightens the power she possesses to something almost terrible.’
‘Of what do you speak?’ asked Gerald eagerly.