Ferdinand stood upon the spot where he had seen her stand, until a sergent de ville touched him on the arm, and told him to move on. “What a wretched stupid play!—was it not?” the sentence rang in his ear, but brought with it the echo of the tone—that magic sound that had struck upon the chords of his secret soul, and under whose vibration they were still striking their response—the honeyed voice, not the hard words, had wounded him, and he confessed that, though deadly, the poison was nectar to the taste.
Day after day, hour after hour, did Ferdinand spend in the vain attempt to discover his unknown idol, and the less he succeeded in the enterprise, the more the object of his pursuit became lovely in his eyes, and was surrounded with ideal charms. It would be useless to enter into the painful details of Ferdinand’s life during this period.
The day after the failure of his tragedy, the Marquise de Guesvillers, an ancient dowager of the Faubourg St. Germain, and his chief prôneuse, sent to beg the discomfited author would come dine with her tête-à-tête. Ferdinand had a reason now for desiring to explore to the utmost extent the upper regions of society, and he accepted the invitation. The old lady greeted him with a half-benevolent, half-mischievous smile—“My dear child,” said she, when the servant had closed the door, “now that Providence has saved you from becoming an homme de lettres, we must try to make something of you. Heaven be praised! pen and ink must have lost its charm for you at last;” (a pinch of snuff,) “it seems your play was as bad as your enemy could wish; Madame de Rouvion was there, and has just told me so—poor dear Hector de Candolles,” (another pinch of snuff,) “if he could have guessed that a great-grandson of his would write a play! But, however, that is over now, and we have only to rejoice that things were no worse: when the recollection of your aventure shall have quite subsided, we will find a wife for you, and settle you in life! Thank Heaven! you are cured of your taste for pen and ink!” and these last words the good lady repeated over and over again in the course of the evening, and each time with remarkable satisfaction. Once or twice Ferdinand was tempted to shake the monotonous little dowager to pieces, and shout in her ear—“Woman! I must live by pen and ink, or starve!” but the remembrance of the face he had seen the night before, froze the words on his tongue, and he submitted to the torture in silence.
For months in the salons, whither Madame de Guesvillers carried him, he sought out the object of his dreams, but she never appeared, and Ferdinand went on leading la vie de Bohème, until hope began almost entirely to fade away. One evening, he had, for the fiftieth time, accepted an invitation to some soirée, where his indefatigable patroness insisted upon his going; and he was, as usual, looking on whilst others amused (or fancied they amused) themselves, when the conversation of two ladies near him attracted his attention—he knew not why.
“So Blanche Vouvray is come back at last?” said one.
“She is coming here to-night,” replied the other.
As the two talkers moved away, a certain movement might have been observed toward the middle of the room, and many and loud greetings welcomed a new comer, who seemed to have been long absent. Mysterious magnetism of the heart! Ferdinand knew what had happened, and was prepared, when he turned round, to recognize at last—standing in the midst of a group, who were pressing eagerly around her—the one, so long, so vainly sought; the vision that had risen over his ruin like a star over the tempest-torn sea, that had come and vanished in the momentous night, when it was proved to him that his sole resources, for a bare existence, must depend, in future, upon hard, ignoble, unavowed and insufficient toil!
There she stood—bright, beautiful and glad, beaming on all about her; dispensing favors in look, gesture and smile, and inflicting wound after wound on Ferdinand’s heart by the incomparably sweet voice that, do what he would, seemed to his ear always to repeat—“What a wretched, stupid play!—is it not?” It was the only link between them—the one sole sign whereby she had acknowledged his existence.
How long the soirée lasted, was what M. de Candolles never knew; he simply thought it a time—it might be one protracted moment—during which there was light; then, the light went out, and darkness spread over every thing around. He would not ask to be presented to Mademoiselle de Vouvray; he was content to watch her; and, when she was gone, he mechanically closed his eyes, locked up his vision within his inmost self, and then, re-awakening, went forth, to be once more alone with his idea!
Time passed on, and Ferdinand’s passion increased with every hour. Three or four times in the week he found means to feast his eyes upon the object of his adoration, and the remaining days and nights were spent in trying to draw poetic inspiration from what threatened to be the source of something very nearly akin to madness. Ferdinand’s actual talent, however, was of such a perfectly ordinary stamp, that it profited in no degree by the strong element love afforded it, and one fine morning—when he least expected it—a blow so stunning was dealt him that his whole fabric of existence was well-nigh shivered to the earth. The proprietor of the paper wherein, for the last year or two, M. de Candolles had published anonymously the chief productions of his pen, suddenly told him that he should in future be obliged to refuse his contributions unless signed by his own name! M. de Candolles, he urged, was known in many salons of the beau monde, and probably what he might write would be read by a good number of people, whereas the lucubrations of Jaques Bargel—Ferdinand’s pseudonyms—only occupied space, and brought neither fame nor money to the journal. M. de Candolles received the announcement, which went near to show destitution staring him in the face, with becoming fortitude. He would sooner have died than allow his name to be dragged forward into publicity; and at the thought of the elegant, aristocratical, disdainful lady of his worship discovering that he lived by writing feuilletons, he felt the very ground fail beneath his feet.