With the delicate tact of a gentleman he let pass the cry unnoticed, and simply said, "What do you wish, my dearest?"
"Lorge," she replied, "no less. What a rapacious greedy soul I must be to rob you of the home of your ancestors!"
"It shall be yours," the maréchal replied, delighted to be able to do something. "I understand that for some reason you desire to take possession and hold the place without interference? Is that so? At my death, it will be yours with all the rest. Meanwhile, I lend it, to do with as you will."
It was an odd fancy. What could be the meaning of the freak? Presently he enquired, "What will your husband do?"
"It was his idea," was the eager rejoinder. "He wishes it, and I am--oh--so very glad! I long to get him away from Paris and its evil influences. Do you know, father?" Gabrielle continued in a grave whisper, "that there are secret meetings he attends, to come home at dawn in a fever. And there are forbidding men who come to see him, whom he evidently does not want to see; such coarse and common men. I don't know what it all is, but it has something to do with that mystical groping after the unattainable which is so weariful, and can only end in madness. To a Christian, such impious presumption is horrible!"
"Then I hold the clue?" cried the old man, much relieved. "It is the prophet who is in your way? You would wean Clovis from Mesmer, turn him from Cagliostro, and carry him to Mass on Sundays?"
The idea was so comically innocent, that de Brèze wheezed with delight. "Sweet pet!" he said, tapping his daughter's cheek archly, "you are earnest if not clever."
And then he went off into a shout of laughter, as he beheld in imagination the daily scene at Lorge. Tête-à-tête in the dreary chateau among the bats and owls, she would drone out Bossuet's sermons to put animal magnetism to flight; perhaps call in the village curé to assist. What a delightful prospect for the husband! How ghastly tiresome is the wife who preaches at her other half; drones out to him scraps out of good books. Well, well. We must not place our finger twixt bark and tree; but if any form of desperation was likely to awake the entranced Clovis (as Toinon had it), a system of moral lecturing on the part of a well-meaning but narrow-minded spouse was about the thing to perform the miracle.
The maréchal trotted home quite pleased, and straightway informed by letter those whom it concerned that henceforth, the Marquise de Gange was to be considered the proprietress of Lorge. Both M. and Madame de Brèze equally loathed the place. If Gabrielle was possessed by the strange fancy of playing chatelaine, in its cobwebbed corridors, let her do so by all means, and convert her husband if she might.
The good maréchal was mistaken. Gabrielle knew better than to worry her husband with importunate readings, but trusted rather for the working of a change to the renewed intimacy which retirement must produce. She never would have dared to propose a hermitage to Clovis, but when he himself suggested a temporary flitting, she thanked heaven as if a prayer had been answered. She could not guess that he was afraid to stop in Paris, and that he was revolving an embryo scheme of closer union with Mesmer. The prophet having been ejected from the land with Maranatha, could not unfortunately bestow his presence or personal assistance. But why should he not send to his pupil some learned adept, well versed in mystic lore who, in sylvan solitude would further instruct the neophyte? Removed from the frivolous court, and secure against being mixed in the treasonable doings of political philanthropists, his mind would be in a condition of receptivity, and his studies would make giant strides.