"What is love?" asked Gesa, looking at him steadily.
The stranger cleared his throat. "A sickness, a fever," said he, hastily, "a fever in which one dreams beautiful things--and does hateful ones."
IV
M. Gaston Delileo was the stranger's name, but in the Rue Ravestein they never called him anything but "the sad gentleman,"--the "droevige Herr." He might have been between forty and fifty years old, had a yellow face that reminded one of a carving in old ivory, wore a full beard, and long straight black hair parted in the middle of his forehead. Except in the hottest summer weather he never went on the street otherwise than wrapped in an old dark blue, red-lined Carbonari cloak.
About seven months before, he had moved into the Rue Ravestein, stroked the children's heads, greeted the women in passing, was generally liked and associated with no one.
Before Margaretha's flight she had secretly placed a letter in the otherwise empty letter-box before his door, begging that he would adopt the boy, thereby showing some shrewd knowledge of character in trusting to his benevolence. His wife was dead: his only child, a little daughter, at that time hardly seven years old, was being brought up by relatives in France, as his bachelor housekeeping would have made it difficult for him to give the child proper care. Thus widowed and solitary, afflicted moreover with a great heart that needed love, and had never all his life long been satisfied, he took the boy to himself without any overnice reasoning upon the subject.
"Come to breakfast," he said quite simply, took the orphan by the hand and led him into his own dwelling.
When the meal was over, and while M. Delileo, with that rage for systematizing which often distinguishes especially unpractical people, was bending over his writing table, making out a plan of education, a division of hours, and finally a long list of things which Gesa might possibly need within the next ten years, the boy slipped curiously around in the little room, and examined its arrangement. The furniture was a decayed mixture of stiff, military Empire, and pretentious, crooked Louis-Philippe. On the walls hung a few sketches by once celebrated masters, with dedications "à mon chère ami, etc.," a few poet's autographs in little black frames, and besides these the rapidly executed portrait of a very beautiful woman, in a white satin dress with a great many strings of pearls around her neck, and a little crown on her head. "Is that the queen?" asked Gesa of his new protector.
Whereupon the "droevige Herr," rising up from his occupation, answered, not without a certain solemnity, "That, my child, that was the Gualtieri!"
"Ah!" said Gesa, and was exactly as wise as before. How indeed was he to know that the Gualtieri in her time had been one of the most famous, and alas! one of the most infamous artistes in the world?