That he should have been the innocent and unwitting cause of insult and inconvenience to Madame broke his heart and drove him to distraction, she heard. He was ready to do anything in expiation and amendment; if, indeed, any were possible; she might command him; he was there, at her service absolutely. Did she wish apartments, pension, anything, elsewhere? He would fly to the ends of the earth to secure them; he would telegraph north, south, east, and west; let her but name her locality, her terms, and her aspect, they should be hers. She could, of course, not remain an hour under that roof after such an insult. What broke his heart most severely and drove him to uttermost distraction and maddest desire to slay himself, was the thought of Madame's invariable and continuous kindness to himself. At this a deepening crimson obliged Madame to spread a damp and flimsy wisp of handkerchief over as much of her face as circumstances permitted, attempting some faint murmurs of deprecation; she had only been decently civil, as to others. How he should have fared in the agonizing vicissitudes by which his bosom had been so cruelly furrowed and torn, without the unvarying sympathy and counsel Madame was good enough to extend to him, M. Isidore shuddered to think. Enough; she had saved him, she had recalled him to manhood and enabled him to endure, even to hope. In return for this she had suffered outrage, insult, desecration, from a breast of granite, from the impure rage of a hyena heart. She had been involved in the persecutions and maledictions of a ferocious fate that had blasted and blighted him from earliest youth—he looked about eighteen as he spoke—the poison of his misery had infected her. He wondered why he had been born, and rejoiced that it was not impossible for a brave man to die. In the meantime, and before resorting to this ultimate course of action, he had a favour to ask, an enormous favour, that nothing but previous experience of the inexhaustible goodness, the boundless tenderness, of Madame emboldened him to implore. She was aware of the misconstructions that a viperous and impure nature had cast upon the kindness and good counsel, he might almost say, despite her youth, the maternal counsel of Madame. He was powerless to explain these misconstructions, or remove the venomous suspicions with which a guileless and loving ear had been systematically and fatally poisoned. Madame alone had power to do this. Five words face to face with Mlle. Bontemps alone could effect it. Mademoiselle, prejudiced, poisoned against him, shuddering under base imputations to him of a terrible perfidy, reluctantly persuaded by venomous tongues, by the hissings of human serpents, of basest betrayal on the part of one she trusted to the utmost, wounded, as she imagined, by the hand she loved most, transfixed to the heart's core, bleeding from the stab of a supposed treachery without parallel, and almost lifeless, Mademoiselle absolutely refused to admit him to her adored presence, whence he was pitilessly chased by the entire Bontemps family. Madame was acquainted with the history of his devouring passion for this young girl, to win whose love he had stooped to serve, as Jupiter and other gods in like cases had so frequently done, assuming the form of a river, a bull, a shower of gold—what you will. The tenderness of Mademoiselle had been kindled by the amazing fire of his devotion, the marble prejudices even of her stony-hearted parents had been shattered after her rescue from the violence of a—— in short, after her rescue had been effected at the Carnival in the disguise of a crocodile; and, as Madame was doubtless aware, he had, in consequence of that, been permitted to salute Mlle. Geneviève as his betrothed. Of venomous and absurd misconceptions, partly due in all cases to his own folly and indiscretion, Madame was but too well aware. Would she have the extreme complaisance to explain this both to Mlle. Bontemps and to her iron-breasted parents?
"M. Isidore, I will do what I can. But how can I?" she faltered, having fresh recourse to the sadly inefficient handkerchief, now more like a wet sponge. "But they won't believe me. And I am so sorry about the—the It-It-Italian lessons you were goo-good enough to give me, never dreaming——"
"And the Monte Carlo incident," added M. Isidore, who was eminently practical. "Ah, Madame!" he cried, sinking with infinite grace and dexterity on one knee on a comparatively soft piece of rock, "you are acquainted with the depth of my passion, my infatuation, the agony, with which my bosom is torn. Grant me this one favour—only this one. I know that I am asking much—but consider my passion—have pity on my despair——"
"Stop that," suddenly growled a bass voice in British accents, as the tall figure and picturesque untidiness of the Anarchist appeared from round the corner of the pine-topped bluff, to the stupefaction of M. Isidore, who sprang to his feet with a deep involuntary "Mon Dieu!" and of Ermengarde, who removed the wet wisp from her face with a little stifled shriek, and gazed horror-struck on the intruder, who had the satisfaction of spoiling this moving scene of a weeping lady sadly resisting the passionate importunity of a kneeling, supplicating cavalier.
"Que diable voulez-vous ici, de Konski?" cried M. Isidore, quickly recovering himself, and fiercely and haughtily twirling his moustache.
"What the devil are you doing here, de Vieuxbois?" retorted the Anarchist in French. "What do you mean by masquerading as a waiter in a hotel? Stop annoying this lady at once."
"It is, on the contrary, Monsieur, you that annoy Madame. Have the complaisance to leave us without delay," commanded M. Isidore, his moustache stiff with rage.
"Oh, please go away," cried Ermengarde distractedly, shivering and white—"go at once, all of you—all of you!"
For herself the luckless Ermengarde had no option; she was totally incapable of flight, the path being narrow, and blocked on the one hand by M. Isidore and on the other by M. de Konski, while the bluff towered steeply above her and the ravine fell abruptly below. She wished the rock-path would split open and swallow her up, that the bluff would topple down and bury her under it, that she could get past the antagonists and fall headlong down the ravine, down to the very bed of the torrent below; in fact, she hardly knew what she wished in her desperation.
"Leave this lady, Vicomte," thundered the Anarchist. "Go, at once, before I make you!"