He opened the other note, and hastily ran over it. “Thursday! I shall see him on Thursday at two o'clock. Poor George! it will be a sad meeting, in spite of the news [pg 469] I have to surprise and console him.”
He had the satisfaction of learning by this note that, thanks to the powerful influence brought to bear on the occasion, he would be permitted to pass an hour with the prisoner every day during the week that yet remained before the sad train of exiles would set forth.
“Poor George!” he again repeated. “Can it be he has really come to this?—But who knows what may yet take place? If the proverb, ‘What woman wills, God wills,’ is true, all hope is not lost, for here are two women evidently with the will to aid him, and energetic enough to overrule the most adverse destiny. Two—doubtless one too many, and I have been rather bold to risk a fearful collision. But things have come to such a point that they can hardly be worse. If the fair Vera succeeds, it is George's affair to get out of the complication of gratitude to her who has saved him, and the one ready to follow him. But if she fails, as seems only too probable, then the case will be very simple: our charming heroine will have no rival to fear.”
LIV.
After the succession of disagreeable surprises Mademoiselle Josephine had experienced during her painful journey, another of a different nature, but the greatest of all, awaited her at the end. Her imagination, we are aware, never furnished her with anything beyond the strictest necessity. It was only with difficulty she succeeded in comprehending that her dear Gabrielle had decided to marry a stranger condemned to the galleys, and this inconceivable idea seemed to have penetrated her mind to the exclusion of all others. She was going to join a prisoner, and from the day of her departure from Heidelberg she looked upon herself as on the way to a dungeon. When therefore she heard the words, “We have arrived!” and their sledge passed under the arch of an immense porte cochêre, she shivered with fear. It was, consequently, with a sort of stupefaction she found herself in a brilliantly lighted vestibule, whence a broad staircase led to a fine long gallery opening into one salon after another, at the end of which our travellers were ushered into a dining-room, where supper was awaiting them of a quality to which mademoiselle was quite as unaccustomed as to the splendor with which it was served. She looked around with mute surprise, hardly daring touch the dishes before her, and looking at her two companions with an interrogative expression of the greatest perplexity. But they both seemed affected and preoccupied to such a degree as not to notice what was passing around them, and mademoiselle, faithful to her habits, forbore questioning them for the moment.
The repast was made in silence; after which Clement wrote a note which she heard him ask a valet to send to M. le Marquis. Then the two ladies were conducted to the apartments prepared for them. Fleurange embraced her companion and wished her good-night, and Mademoiselle Josephine was left alone in a chamber surpassing any she had ever seen, with large mirrors around her, in which for the first time in her life she saw herself from head to foot. There was also a bed à baldaquin, which she scarcely dared think destined for her modest person, but in which at length she extended [pg 470] herself with a respect that for a long time troubled her repose. Never had the excellent Josephine found herself so completely out of her element. She wondered if it was really herself beneath those curtains of silk, and, when at last she fell asleep, it was to dream that Gabrielle, splendidly apparelled, was mounting a throne, and she, Mademoiselle Josephine, arrayed in a similar manner, was at her side. Her disturbed slumbers were not of long duration. Before day she was up, and impatiently waiting for the hour when she could leave her fine chamber and sally forth to explore this strange dwelling which the night before seemed so much like a fairy palace.
This impression was not lessened by the light of day. The rooms were really splendid, and furnished with the taste the Princess Catherine everywhere displayed, and which was as carefully consulted in the house where she only spent three months of the year, as in her palace at Florence, which she made her home. Mademoiselle went from one room to another in a state of continually increasing admiration, and, while thus walking about, she found everywhere the same mild temperature, which seemed something marvellous, for all the doors were open, and not only were there no fires to be seen, but no glass or even sashes in the windows. Apparently there was nothing to screen her from the frosty air without—freezing indeed, for on their arrival at St. Petersburg the thermometer was down to fifteen or sixteen degrees, and yet—what was the secret of this wonderful fact? She was not cold in the least, though the sight of the large windows made her shiver, and she only ventured to stand at a distance and look at the view without.
She beheld a vast plain covered with snow, with carriage-ways in every direction, bordered with branches of fir. Vehicles of all kinds were crossing to and fro. Yonder was a succession of vast buildings, and farther off were the gloomy walls of a fortress flanked by a church whose gilded spire glittered in the winter sun—a sun radiant, but without warmth; which imparted a dazzling brilliancy to the snow, but whose deceptive light, far from alleviating the severity of the season, was, on the contrary, the surest sign of its merciless rigor.
While thus admiring and wondering at everything, Mademoiselle came to the last salon of the enfilade, where, before one of the large windows, she perceived Fleurange motionless and absorbed in such profound reverie that she did not notice her approach.
“Ah! Gabrielle, here you are! God be praised! I was lost, but no longer feel so, now I have found you. But, for pity's sake! what are you doing at that open window?”