The violins struck up as, for answer, Armand seized her. "You shall see if I am ill! Can you dance till daybreak, Esmeralda?"
In the frenzy of rapture that possessed him he scarcely knew how his partners changed. Now he was dancing deliriously with an odalisque, now with a nun. His tongue ran riot like his blood; but he never came on the gold and purple dress again, though once or twice he saw it in the distance. Well, he could wait ... And at last, the pendulum swinging from exultation into dreams, he escaped from the hot ballroom into the quiet of the garden, and tried to think.
When he came back, twenty minutes later, the dancing had ceased, though the violins were still playing madly. On the shining floor of the great room the dancers were broken up into groups, talking in low voices. Many had unmasked, and showed faces oddly whitened; some were hurrying away. At one end of the room a woman was screaming; near him another, the odalisque, had fainted. No one was caring for her. What had happened? He thought at first that Louis Philippe had been assassinated, that the Duchesse de Berry was dead.
Then he caught the awful whisper that was passing from mouth to mouth. And hearing it, half-crazy with terror, he ran wildly out into the street, in the direction of the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin.
(5)
The Marquis Emmanuel de la Roche-Guyon, never a very good sleeper, was wakeful to-night. He had worked till nearly twelve o'clock at his monograph on the seaweeds of France, now approaching completion. Then he had sat a long time with his chin on his hand, thinking of the past, the only person awake in the great house, where they kept early hours. The lamp lit up his comfortable, untidy, prosperous surroundings, and the little bits of feathered stuff from the deep on which he tried to nourish a starved heart.
After a while he sighed and stirred. The room seemed hot; he would take a turn in the courtyard before retiring, and perhaps the fresh air would bring him sleep.
It was thus that he met his brother. Across the courtyard, lit by a faint, clouded moon and by the single oil lamp that burnt all night, there was coming, staggering, a figure which at first Emmanuel could not believe in, much less recognise—a gallant of the court of the later Valois, in ruff, doublet and hose. The Marquis almost rubbed his eyes; was it a ghost? Then, as the apparition drew nearer, he saw that it was his brother, with a face like death.
"Armand, in God's name, what is the matter?" he cried, catching hold of him as he lurched by. "Are you hurt? are you drunk?"
Armand threw back his head. "They would not let me in!" he said between his teeth. "They would not let me in, and she is dying ... Stand out of the way! I am going to get my pistols."