“Babache,” replied Gaston, coming and sitting on the arm of my chair, his arm about my neck, “the afternoon before I left I sat with Francezka—I call her that to you, but to no other man—I sat with Francezka in the Italian garden at the foot of Petrarch’s statue. I had a volume of Petrarch, and read to her that sonnet from the poet’s heart beginning:
| Sweet bird, that singest on thy airy way. |
“I had often read it to her in that spot—and I reminded her that it was the last, last time for long—perhaps forever—that we should sit in that place and read that book of enchantment together, when—Babache, will you promise me on your sword never to breathe what I tell you?”
I promised; lovers can not keep their own secrets, but expect others to do it.
“When I had finished reading the sonnet, Francezka remained silent. I looked at her, and the big, beautiful tears were dropping upon her cheeks. Babache, can you imagine the exquisite rapturous pain of seeing the woman you love weeping at the thought of parting from you?”
He got up and walked about the room, and sat down, this time opposite me.
“You understand, Babache, she is not yet quite seventeen. 191 In another year she will be her own mistress; but I think she regards as sacred her father’s injunction not to marry for two years after her majority. Nay, I believe she wants those two years of freedom. All this does not frighten me—but—her fortune will be very great, and that frightens me. Mine is but small. Had we but succeeded in Courland! If I could but give her glory in exchange for wealth. And—Babache—the kindness of her eyes—those tears were for me—” he got up again and walked about frantically, like your young lover. I saw he was not really very miserable, but had persuaded himself that he was.
“You will not find many men balking at her fortune,” said I. “And remember: Mademoiselle Capello is in danger of sharing the usual wretched fate of heiresses, to be sold like a slave in the market. You, at least, love her.”
“Love her—” he pranced about wildly, protesting his love. He was but two and twenty, after all; but under this effervescence, I saw a deep and true passion that possessed him body and soul.
Presently he calmed himself and talked seriously of Francezka. I had no doubt, although he preserved a manly modesty about it, that Francezka, impetuous like himself, wilful, proud, but loving, had given him much greater encouragement than a tear or two at his reading a sonnet of Petrarch’s to her. But with that strain of sober sense, and that mastery of the will which I had so often noticed in Francezka’s wildest dreams, and which I always attributed to her Scotch blood, she meant not to throw away her liberty rashly. She might lap her soul in Elysium, and dream dreams, and entertain love 192 with magnificence, but she always knew where her footing was, and what she actually did would not be waited on by repentance.