“Your very presence is love, Rosaline,� he answered softly, “your face, your eyes, your voice. When I first saw you in the little shop I was a desperate man, but from that moment my heart was changed. You entered like an angel, and as an angel I adored you.�
“And I made that difference in your life, François?� she said tenderly,—“I, Rosaline de St. Cyr. Ah, Dieu, am I not blessed?�
She stood away from him on the mossy bank, the stream lying brown and placid below her feet. Behind her the tree trunks were outlined against the rosy west, and the sweet stillness of twilight was enfolding them. The afterglow shone in her beautiful young face, and her blue eyes were radiant.
“I was never happy before,� she said, smiling, “now I know it!—but this is happiness—love—life. Do you see that bright star shining yonder, François? There is a little one beside it—see! like two souls, uplifted above the world and radiant. I will be afraid no more, my love, for even death has lost its terrors, for thus our two souls would shine together above the sorrow and the pain. I will fear no more—for stronger than death is love!�
CHAPTER XV
THE TEMPTATION OF LE BOSSU
The shadows had deepened; night already lay in the little woodland; the distant hills were purple against the pale horizon. The rising wind turned the wheel on the old mill; the rusty vanes moved feebly, as though a cripple waved long arms in the twilight. The stream rippled, and here and there a star was reflected in its bosom, and the leaves rustled continuously now. The scene was suddenly desolate, perhaps because the lovers had deserted it, and the darkness came rolling along like a cloud, rising from every hollow, lurking in every grove of figs or of olives, wrapping every object in an elusive gloom. And away in the distance the night wind sighed drearily, as it gathered strength. No spot could have been more quiet or more lonely.
A man came out of the mill carrying his bundle, and stood awhile on the edge of the stream,—a small man with a hump on his back and a face that showed white even at nightfall. He remained only a short time motionless, then he shouldered his bag of tools and followed the bank of the stream until he came at last to a bridge, and crossing this made his way to the highroad leading toward Nîmes. He walked slowly and painfully, as though he carried a far greater burden than it appeared, and he held his head down. The soul of the little cobbler of St. Antoine was in torment, what matter if his body walked the earth with other men? Pent up in the heart of the hunchback were the passion and longing and anguish of a lifetime.
“Mon Dieu!� he cried out in his bitterness, “why didst thou give me the heart of a man and the body of a toad?�
He had had black hours before when he was well-nigh ready to curse God and die, but never a worse moment than this. The devil was contending for the soul of le Bossu, and the darkness fell, and it seemed as if that road might lead to hell. And what was he, after all? he thought; a peasant, a shoemaker, a hunchback! But, oh, mon Dieu! the long, long years of desolation, the anguish, the hunger for one word of love, of kindness, of sympathy. What evil spirit had led him to lie down in that old windmill? had let him sleep there until her voice awoke him, and out of purgatory he had looked into paradise? Like Dives, he had cried out for a drop of water to slake his thirst, and yet he still lay in the fires of Satan.
Early that day he had set out for St. Césaire, and he had done his work in the village, and before sunset he went up the stream to the old mill and rested, thinking of mademoiselle in the château, thankful that she was sheltered and safe. Sleep had come to the weary cobbler, and when he awoke Rosaline and her lover were talking at the door of the mill. He had heard all, lying there almost in a stupor and he had remained quiet. It was too late to warn them of a listener, and was it not best that she should be ignorant of it? He had heard all; their love for each other, their talk of their religion, their hopes and their fears. He was no longer in doubt of the nature of the dangers that surrounded them, and he possessed a secret that it was a crime to conceal; that the State and the Church had ordered every good Catholic to reveal; and if he revealed it, the lovers would be separated forever, and he would have no cause to think of their happiness with such a pang of miserable jealousy. The poor hunchbacked cobbler held their lives in his hand, their joy, and their desolation.