Réné Ronsard, coming back from his pleasurable duties as host and chairman to his fishermen-friends, found the cottage deserted, and smiled, as he sat himself down in the porch to smoke, and to wait for the lover’s return.
“What a thing it is to be young!” he sighed, as he gazed meditatively at the still beauty of the night around him;—“To be young,—and in love with the right person! Hours go like moments—the grass is never damp—the air is never cold—there is never time enough to give all the kisses that are waiting to be given; and life is so beautiful, that we are almost able to understand why God created the universe! The rapture passes very quickly, unfortunately—with some people;—but if I ever prayed for anything—which I do not—I should pray that it might remain with Gloria! It surely cannot offend the Supreme Being who is responsible for our existence, to see one woman happy out of all the tortured millions of them! One exception to the universal rule would not make much difference! The law that the strong should prey on the weak, nearly always prevails,—but it is possible to hope and believe that on rare occasions the strong may be magnanimous!”
He smoked on placidly, considering various points of philosophic meditation, and by and by fell into a gentle doze. The doze deepened into a dream which grew sombre and terrible,—and in it he thought he saw himself standing bareheaded on a raised platform above surging millions of people who all shouted with one terrific uproar of unison—“Regicide! Regicide!” He looked down upon his hands, and saw them red with blood!—he looked up to the heavens, and they were flushed with the same ominous hue. Blood!—blood!—the blood of kings,—the dust of thrones!—and he, the cause! Choked and tormented with a parching thirst, it seemed in the dream that he tried to speak,—and with all his force he cried out—“For her sake I did it! For her sake!” But the clamour of the crowd drowned his voice,—and then it was as if the coldness of death crept slowly over him,—slowly and cruelly, as though his whole body were being enclosed within an iceberg,—and he saw Gloria, the child of his love and care, laid out before him dead,—but robed and crowned like a queen, and placed on a great golden bier of state, with purple velvet falling about her, and tall candles blazing at her head and feet. And voices sang in his ears—“Gloria! Gloria in excelsis Deo!”—mingling with the muffled chanting of priests at some distant altar; and he thought he made an attempt to touch the royal velvet pall that draped her beautiful lifeless body, when he was roughly thrust back by armed men with swords and bayonets who asked him “What do you here? Are you not her murderer?”—and he cried out wildly “No, no! Never could I have harmed the child of my love! Never could I hurt a hair of her head, or cause her an hour’s sorrow! She is all I had in the world!—I loved her!—I loved her! Let me see her!—let me touch her!—let me kiss her once again!” And then the scene suddenly changed,—and it was found that Gloria was not dead at all, but walking peacefully alone in a garden of flowers, with lilies crowning her, and all the sunshine about her; and that the golden bier of state had changed into a ship at sea which was floating, floating westward bearing some great message to a far country, and that all was well for him and his darling. The troubled vision cleared from his brain, and his sleep grew calmer; he breathed more easily, and flitting glimpses of fair scenes passed before his dreaming eyes,—scenes in some peaceful and beautiful world, where never a shadow of sorrow or trouble darkened the quiet contentment of happy and innocent lives. He smiled in his sleep, and heaved a deep sigh of pleasure,—and so, gently awoke, to feel a light touch on his shoulder, and to see Gloria standing before him. A smile was on her face,—the fragrance of the woodlands and the sea clung about her garments,—she held a few roses in her hand, and there was something in her whole appearance that struck him as new, commanding, and more than ever beautiful.
“You have returned alone?” he said wonderingly.
“Yes. I have returned alone! I have much to tell you, dear! Let us go in!”
CHAPTER XIX. — OF THE CORRUPTION OF THE STATE
The large gaunt building, which was dignified by the name of the ‘People’s Assembly Rooms,’ stood in a dim unfashionable square of the city which had once been entirely devoted to warehouses and storage cellars. It had originally served a useful purpose in providing temporary shelter for foreign-made furniture, which was badly constructed and intrinsically worthless,—but which, being cheaply imported and showy in appearance, was patronized by some of the upper middle-classes in preference to goods of their own home workmanship. Lately, however, the foreign import had fallen to almost less than nothing; and whether or no this was due to the secret machinations of Sergius Thord and his Revolutionary Committee, no one would have had the hardihood to assert. Foreign tradesmen, however, and foreign workmen generally had certainly experienced a check in their inroads upon home manufactures, and some of the larger business firms had been so successfully intimidated as to set up prominent announcements outside their warehouses to the effect that “Only native workmen need apply.” Partly in consequence of the “slump” in foreign goods, the “Assembly Rooms,” as a mere building had for some time been shut up, and given over to dust and decay, till the owners of the property decided to let it out for popular concerts, meetings and dances, and so make some little money out of its bare whitewashed walls and comfortless ugliness. The plan had succeeded fairly well, and the place was beginning to be known as a convenient centre where thousands were wont to congregate, to enjoy cheap music and cheap entertainment generally. It was a favourite vantage ground for the disaffected and radical classes of the metropolis to hold forth on their wrongs, real or imaginary,—and the capacities of the largest room or hall in the building were put to their utmost extent to hold the enormous audiences that always assembled to hear the picturesque, passionate and striking oratory of Sergius Thord.
But there were one or two rare occasions when even Sergius Thord’s attractions as a speaker were thrown into the background, by the appearance of that mysterious personality known as Lotys,—concerning whom a thousand extravagant stories were rife, none of which were true. It was rumoured among other things as wild and strange, that she was the illegitimate child of a certain great prince, whose amours were legion—that she had been thrown out into the street to perish, deserted as an infant, and that Sergius Thord had rescued her from that impending fate of starvation and death,—and that it was by way of vengeance for the treatment of her mother by the Exalted Personage involved, that she had thrown in her lot with the Revolutionary party, to aid their propaganda by her intellectual gifts, which were many. She was known to be very poor,—she lived in cheap rooms in a low quarter of the city; she was seldom or never seen in the public thoroughfares,—she appeared to have no women friends, and she certainly mixed in no form of social intercourse or entertainment. Yet her name was on the lips of the million, and her influence was felt far beyond the city’s radius. Even among some of the highest and wealthiest classes of society this peculiar appellation of “Lotys,” carrying no surname with it, and spoken at haphazard had the effect of causing a sudden silence, and the interchange of questioning looks among those who heard it, and who, without knowing who she was, or what her aims in life really were, voted her “dangerous.” Those among the superior classes who had by rare chance seen her, were unanimous in their verdict that she was not beautiful,—“but!”—and the “but” spoke volumes. She was known to possess something much less common, and far more potent than beauty,—and that was a fascinating, compelling spiritual force, which magnetised into strange submission all who came within its influence,—and many there were who admitted, though with bated breath that ‘An’ if she chose’ she could easily become a very great personage indeed.