"You are afraid you will have to thank Monsieur Antoine? Nonsense, you unforgiving creature! that is too childish!"
Madame Thierry was on the point of swooning. Julien almost lost patience with her, for her agitation caused him to lose minutes, seconds which he might have passed with Julie. Marcel, who was delighted by the good news she had brought, was also vexed by his aunt's delay, and went upstairs to hurry her. So that Julie was left alone in the studio for several moments.
Those moments, swiftly as they passed, seemed afterward like a century in her memory, for the light shone into her heart in a single dazzling ray. "Your happiness is found," said an inward voice in a tone of sovereign authority: "it is here. It consists in nothing less than the possession of a boundless love concealed in the bosom of a narrow, straitened existence. Julien's mother knew and enjoyed that happiness throughout her youth. Intercourse with the world and opulence added nothing to her happiness. They rather diminished it by introducing ideas foreign to love. Forget society, you will be the better for it. Break with your whole past, which deceived you and set you at odds with yourself. Become reconciled to your own beginnings, which are more nearly connected with the third estate than with the nobility; and to your conscience, which reproaches you for having listened to the advice of false glory and for having yielded to the threats of your ambitious kinsfolk; seek to be received back into favor by the God who abandons souls which are enamored of false joys; be true, be strong like this young man who adores you, and who has just revealed to you in a glance the greatest and noblest passion you will ever inspire!"
As she listened to this mysterious voice in her own heart, Julie looked about her and was surprised to find that a divine tranquillity succeeded to the agitation which had overwhelmed her. She thoroughly relished the charm of a very simple little phenomenon. Short-sighted though she was, she was able to see everything in a room so much smaller than those to which she was accustomed. A very humble dwelling was that Louis XIII. pavilion; but it was embellished by a tastefulness of arrangement which revealed the artist whose love of refinement was not lessened by poverty. The building was not ugly in itself. The deep, broad window-recess where the widow had installed her arm-chair as in a little sanctum, with her spinning-wheel, her little table and the cushion for her feet, imparted a sort of homelike Flemish aspect to that part of the studio; the rest had been recently restored, but with the strictest economy. Plain gray wainscoting with raised borders to the panels; straight lines everywhere, but nothing out of proportion; a white ceiling, rather low, but devoid of any crushing effect; above the doors, oval spaces with very simple garlands of foliage carved on wood and painted, as was the beading of the panels, a deeper shade of gray than the rest; two or three beautiful fruit and flower pieces, highly prized specimens of André Thierry's work, with several sketches and one or two small studies by Julien; a large bowl of Rouen porcelain, standing on a console in front of a mirror, and filled with wild flowers and green branches gracefully arranged and hanging to the floor; a small rug before the couch, two or three easels, shells, boxes of insects, statuettes and engravings on a large table; cane-seated oak chairs, and a small harp, whose old gilded frame glistened in a dark corner, the only brilliant object in the whole room: surely there was nothing in all this to denote great affluence; but over it all there was a varnish of exquisite neatness, an atmosphere of freshness and a soft light most conducive to revery. The studio was darkened a little by the lilacs in the garden, which were too near and too dense; but there was a strange fascination in that greenish light, and there was in the air an indefinable invitation to rapt contemplation, which Julie felt most profoundly. What more did one need than that humble and unpretentious retreat to taste the pure joy and unending bliss of moral security? Of what benefit was it to Julie to have magnificent furniture, a thousand trinkets on her what-nots at which she never looked, blue ceilings starred with gold over her head, Gobelin carpets under her feet, Sèvres vases to hold her bouquets, lackeys in gold lace to announce her friends, her pockets full of Chinese fans, and her jewel-cases of diamonds? All those things had amused her but a single day, and what playthings can divert a heart that is bored? Julien's austere and laborious life, his pathetic, never-ending tête-à-tête with his mother, his love, concealed and prostrate as he himself had said,—these were surely purer and nobler than the existence, surrounded by flattery, of a frivolous or blasé nobleman.
A sparrow which Julien had tamed, and which lived among the neighboring trees, entered the studio and lighted familiarly on Julie's shoulder. She was surprised for a moment and thought that it was a miracle, a presage of happiness or of victory. She was really bewildered with emotion.
At last Madame Thierry appeared, sorely perturbed and deeply moved. She had insisted upon being left alone with the countess for an instant. She threw herself at her feet, and, being at once compelled by her to rise, spoke thus to her:
"You are as kind as the angels, my lovely neighbor. I bless you a thousand times! But I must tell you of my sorrow as well as my joy: my son, my dear Julien, is lost if he does not abandon all hope of ever seeing you again. He loves you, madame, he loves you madly! He deceived me, he told me that he had hardly seen you in the distance; but he sees you every day, he gazes at you stealthily, he is driving himself wild, he is killing himself, by looking at you. He doesn't eat, he doesn't sleep, he has lost all his cheerfulness, his eyes are hollow, his voice rings with fever. He has never loved before, but I know how he will love, how he loves already. Alas! he has an excitable temperament, with a mind of extraordinary constancy. Discourage him if possible, madame, by not looking at him, by not speaking to him, by never seeing him again. Have mercy on him and on me, and do not come to our house again! In a few days we shall go away; absence will cure him perhaps. If it does not cure him, I do not know what I shall do to avoid dying of grief."
Madame Thierry sobbed bitterly, and there was in her tears an eloquence born of conviction which dealt Julie the last blow. Her whole dream of happiness seemed destined to vanish in face of this mother's despair. That delicious revery which had poured such balm into her heart was a mere vagary at which she herself would smile when she returned home. Had she decided to break all social bonds in order to throw herself into the arms of a man whom she had just seen for the first time? That was a most absurd idea, and Madame Thierry was a thousand times right in looking upon it as impossible. Julie made an effort to agree with her and to drive away the vertigo that had assailed her; but the charm must have been exceedingly potent, for it seemed to her that reason had torn the heart out of her breast, and, instead of devising some dignified and sensible response to encourage the poor mother, she threw herself into her arms and followed her example by bursting into tears.
These tears so surprised Madame Thierry that she nearly lost her head. She dared not ask for an explanation of them; nor indeed had she any time to do so, for Julien and Marcel entered the room.
"Come, come, my dear mother," said the former, "you weep too much, and I am sure that you have forgotten to thank madame and make up your mind what to do. Marcel tells me that you ought also to thank Monsieur Thierry in person, and to go to his house to-morrow to——"