On the fifth of September, at ten o'clock in the morning, Leon Renault, emaciated, dejected and scarcely recognizable, was at the feet of Clementine Sambucco in her aunt's parlor. There were flowers on the mantel and flowers in all the vases. Two great burglar sunbeams broke through the open windows. A million of little bluish atoms were playing in the light, crossing each other and getting fantastically mixed up, like the ideas in a volume of M. Alfred Houssaye. In the garden, the apples were falling, the peaches were ripe, the hornets were ploughing broad, deep furrows in the duchesse pears; the trumpet-flowers and clematis-vines were in blossom, and to crown all, a great mass of heliotropes, trained over the left window, was flourishing in all its beauty. The sun had given all the grapes in the arbor a tint of golden bronze; and the great Yucca on the lawn, shaken by the wind like a Chinese hat, noiselessly clashed its silver bells. But the son of M. Renault was more pale and haggard than the white lilac sprays, more blighted than the leaves on the old cherry-tree; his heart was without joy and without hope, like the currant bushes without leaves and without fruit!
To be exiled from his native land, to have lived three years in an inhospitable climate, to have passed so many days in deep mines, so many nights over an earthenware stove in the midst of an infinity of bugs and a multiplicity of serfs, and to see himself set aside for a twenty-five-louis Colonel whom he himself had brought to life by soaking him in water!
All men are subject to disappointments, but surely never had one encountered a misfortune so unforeseen and so extraordinary. Leon knew that Earth is not a valley flowing with chocolate and soup à la reine. He knew the list of the renowned unfortunates beginning with Abel slain in the garden of Paradise, and ending with Rubens assassinated in the gallery of the Louvre at Paris. But history, which seldom instructs us, never consoles us. The poor engineer in vain repeated to himself that a thousand others had been supplanted on the day before marriage, and a hundred thousand on the day after. Melancholy was stronger than Reason, and three or four soft locks were beginning to whiten about his temples.
"Clementine!" said he, "I am the most miserable of men. In refusing me the hand which you have promised, you condemn me to agony a hundred times worse than death. Alas! What would you have me become without you? I must live alone, for I love you too well to marry another. For four long years, all my affections, all my thoughts have been centred upon you; I have become accustomed to regard other women as inferior beings, unworthy of attracting the interest of a man! I will not speak to you of the efforts I have made to deserve you; they brought their reward in themselves, and I was already too happy in working and suffering for you. But see the misery in which your desertion has left me! A sailor thrown upon a desert island has less to deplore than I: I will be forced to live near you, to witness the happiness of another, to see you pass my windows upon the arm of my rival! Ah! death would be more endurable than this constant agony. But I have not even the right to die! My poor old parents have already sorrows enough. What would it be, Great God! if I were to condemn them to bear the loss of their son?"
This complaint, punctuated with sighs and tears, lacerated the heart of Clementine. The poor child wept too, for she loved Leon with her whole soul, but she was interdicted from telling him so. More than once, on seeing him half dying before her, she felt tempted to throw her arms about his neck, but the recollection of Fougas paralyzed all her tender impulses.
"My poor friend," said she, "you judge me very wrongfully if you think me insensible to your sufferings. I have known you thoroughly, Leon, and that too since my very childhood. I know all that there is in you of devotion, delicacy and precious and noble virtues. Since the time when you carried me in your arms to the poor, and put a penny in my hand to teach me to give alms, I have never heard benevolence spoken of without involuntarily thinking of you. When you whipped a boy twice your size for taking away my doll, I felt that courage was noble and that a woman would be happy in being able to lean on a brave man. All that I have ever seen you do since that time, has only redoubled my esteem and my sympathy. Believe me that it is neither from wickedness or ingratitude that I make you suffer now. Alas! I no longer belong to myself, I am under external control; I am like those automatons that move without knowing why. Yes, I feel an impulse within me more powerful than my self control, and it is the will of another that leads me."
"If I could but be sure that you will be happy! But no! This man, before whom you immolate me, will never know the worth of a soul as delicate as yours. He is a brute, a swash-buckler, a drunkard."
"I beseech you, Leon, remember that he has a right to my unreserved respect!"
"Respect! For him! And why? I ask of you, in Heaven's name, what you find respectable in the character of Mister Fougas? His age? He is younger than I. His talents? He never shows them anywhere but at the table. His education? It's lovely! His virtues? I know what is to be thought of his refinement and gratitude!"
"I have respected him, Leon, since I first saw him in his coffin. It is a sentiment stronger than all else; I cannot explain it, I can but submit to it."