V

Clara made a little pouting face, bent her head, and finally smiled.

When the dance was over, the young man wrapped her in a cashmere shawl

with a lover's care, and seated her in a place sheltered from the

wind. Very soon Mademoiselle de Fontaine, seeing them rise and walk

round the place as if preparing to leave, found means to follow them

under pretence of admiring the views from the garden. Her brother lent

himself with malicious good-humor to the divagations of her rather

eccentric wanderings. Emilie then saw the attractive couple get into

an elegant tilbury, by which stood a mounted groom in livery. At the

moment when, from his high seat, the young man was drawing the reins

even, she caught a glance from his eye such as a man casts aimlessly

at the crowd; and then she enjoyed the feeble satisfaction of seeing

him turn his head to look at her. The young lady did the same. Was it

from jealousy?

"I imagine you have now seen enough of the garden," said her brother.

"We may go back to the dancing."

"I am ready," said she. "Do you think the girl can be a relation of

Lady Dudley's?"

"Lady Dudley may have some male relation staying with her," said the

Baron de Fontaine; "but a young girl!--No!"

Next day Mademoiselle de Fontaine expressed a wish to take a ride.

Then she gradually accustomed her old uncle and her brothers to

escorting her in very early rides, excellent, she declared for her

health. She had a particular fancy for the environs of the hamlet

where Lady Dudley was living. Notwithstanding her cavalry manoeuvres,

she did not meet the stranger so soon as the eager search she pursued

might have allowed her to hope. She went several times to the "Bal de

Sceaux" without seeing the young Englishman who had dropped from the

skies to pervade and beautify her dreams. Though nothing spurs on a

young girl's infant passion so effectually as an obstacle, there was a

time when Mademoiselle de Fontaine was on the point of giving up her

strange and secret search, almost despairing of the success of an

enterprise whose singularity may give some idea of the boldness of her

temper. In point of fact, she might have wandered long about the

village of Chatenay without meeting her Unknown. The fair Clara--since

that was the name Emilie had overheard--was not English, and the

stranger who escorted her did not dwell among the flowery and fragrant

bowers of Chatenay.

One evening Emilie, out riding with her uncle, who, during the fine

weather, had gained a fairly long truce from the gout, met Lady

Dudley. The distinguished foreigner had with her in her open carriage

Monsieur Vandenesse. Emilie recognized the handsome couple, and her

suppositions were at once dissipated like a dream. Annoyed, as any

woman must be whose expectations are frustrated, she touched up her

horse so suddenly that her uncle had the greatest difficulty in

following her, she had set off at such a pace.

"I am too old, it would seem, to understand these youthful spirits,"

said the old sailor to himself as he put his horse to a canter; "or

perhaps young people are not what they used to be. But what ails my

niece? Now she is walking at a foot-pace like a gendarme on patrol in

the Paris streets. One might fancy she wanted to outflank that worthy

man, who looks to me like an author dreaming over his poetry, for he

has, I think, a notebook in his hand. My word, I am a great simpleton!

Is not that the very young man we are in search of!"

At this idea the old admiral moderated his horse's pace so as to

follow his niece without making any noise. He had played too many

pranks in the years 1771 and soon after, a time of our history when

gallantry was held in honor, not to guess at once that by the merest

chance Emilie had met the Unknown of the Sceaux gardens. In spite of

the film which age had drawn over his gray eyes, the Comte de

Kergarouet could recognize the signs of extreme agitation in his

niece, under the unmoved expression she tried to give to her features.

The girl's piercing eyes were fixed in a sort of dull amazement on the

stranger, who quietly walked on in front of her.

"Ay, that's it," thought the sailor. "She is following him as a pirate

follows a merchantman. Then, when she has lost sight of him, she will

be in despair at not knowing who it is she is in love with, and

whether he is a marquis or a shopkeeper. Really these young heads need

an old fogy like me always by their side . . ."

He unexpectedly spurred his horse in such a way as to make his niece's

bolt, and rode so hastily between her and the young man on foot that

he obliged him to fall back on to the grassy bank which rose from the

roadside. Then, abruptly drawing up, the Count exclaimed:

"Couldn't you get out of the way?"

"I beg your pardon, monsieur. But I did not know that it lay with me

to apologize to you because you almost rode me down."

"There, enough of that, my good fellow!" replied the sailor harshly,

in a sneering tone that was nothing less than insulting. At the same

time the Count raised his hunting-crop as if to strike his horse, and

touched the young fellow's shoulder, saying, "A liberal citizen is a

reasoner; every reasoner should be prudent."

The young man went up the bankside as he heard the sarcasm; then he

crossed his arms, and said in an excited tone of voice, "I cannot

suppose, monsieur, as I look at your white hairs, that you still amuse

yourself by provoking duels----"

"White hairs!" cried the sailor, interrupting him. "You lie in your

throat. They are only gray."

A quarrel thus begun had in a few seconds become so fierce that the

younger man forgot the moderation he had tried to preserve. Just as

the Comte de Kergarouet saw his niece coming back to them with every

sign of the greatest uneasiness, he told his antagonist his name,

bidding him keep silence before the young lady entrusted to his care.

The stranger could not help smiling as he gave a visiting card to the

old man, desiring him to observe that he was living at a country-house

at Chevreuse; and, after pointing this out to him, he hurried away.

"You very nearly damaged that poor young counter-jumper, my dear,"

said the Count, advancing hastily to meet Emilie. "Do you not know how

to hold your horse in?--And there you leave me to compromise my

dignity in order to screen your folly; whereas if you had but stopped,

one of your looks, or one of your pretty speeches--one of those you

can make so prettily when you are not pert--would have set everything

right, even if you had broken his arm."

"But, my dear uncle, it was your horse, not mine, that caused the

accident. I really think you can no longer ride; you are not so good a

horseman as you were last year.--But instead of talking nonsense----"

"Nonsense, by Gad! Is it nothing to be so impertinent to your uncle?"

"Ought we not to go on and inquire if the young man is hurt? He is

limping, uncle, only look!"

"No, he is running; I rated him soundly."

"Oh, yes, uncle; I know you there!"

"Stop," said the Count, pulling Emilie's horse by the bridle, "I do

not see the necessity of making advances to some shopkeeper who is

only too lucky to have been thrown down by a charming young lady, or

the commander of La Belle-Poule."

"Why do you think he is anything so common, my dear uncle? He seems to

me to have very fine manners."

"Every one has manners nowadays, my dear."

"No, uncle, not every one has the air and style which come of the

habit of frequenting drawing-rooms, and I am ready to lay a bet with

you that the young man is of noble birth."

"You had not long to study him."

"No, but it is not the first time I have seen him."

"Nor is it the first time you have looked for him," replied the

admiral with a laugh.

Emilie colored. Her uncle amused himself for some time with her

embarrassment; then he said: "Emilie, you know that I love you as my

own child, precisely because you are the only member of the family who

has the legitimate pride of high birth. Devil take it, child, who

could have believed that sound principles would become so rare? Well,

I will be your confidant. My dear child, I see that his young

gentleman is not indifferent to you. Hush! All the family would laugh

at us if we sailed under the wrong flag. You know what that means. We

two will keep our secret, and I promise to bring him straight into the

drawing-room."

"When, uncle?"

"To-morrow."

"But, my dear uncle, I am not committed to anything?"

"Nothing whatever, and you may bombard him, set fire to him, and leave

him to founder like an old hulk if you choose. He won't be the first,

I fancy?"

"You ARE kind, uncle!"

As soon as the Count got home he put on his glasses, quietly took the

card out of his pocket, and read, "Maximilien Longueville, Rue de

Sentier."

"Make yourself happy, my dear niece," he said to Emilie, "you may hook

him with any easy conscience; he belongs to one of our historical

families, and if he is not a peer of France, he infallibly will be."

"How do you know so much?"

"That is my secret."

"Then do you know his name?"

The old man bowed his gray head, which was not unlike a gnarled oak-

stump, with a few leaves fluttering about it, withered by autumnal

frosts; and his niece immediately began to try the ever-new power of

her coquettish arts. Long familiar with the secret of cajoling the old

man, she lavished on him the most childlike caresses, the tenderest

names; she even went so far as to kiss him to induce him to divulge so

important a secret. The old man, who spent his life in playing off

these scenes on his niece, often paying for them with a present of

jewelry, or by giving her his box at the opera, this time amused

himself with her entreaties, and, above all, her caresses. But as he

spun out this pleasure too long, Emilie grew angry, passed from

coaxing to sarcasm and sulks; then, urged by curiosity, she recovered

herself. The diplomatic admiral extracted a solemn promise from his

niece that she would for the future be gentler, less noisy, and less

wilful, that she would spend less, and, above all, tell him

everything. The treaty being concluded, and signed by a kiss impressed

on Emilie's white brow, he led her into a corner of the room, drew her

on to his knee, held the card under the thumbs so as to hide it, and

then uncovered the letters one by one, spelling the name of

Longueville; but he firmly refused to show her anything more.

This incident added to the intensity of Mademoiselle de Fontaine's

secret sentiment, and during chief part of the night she evolved the

most brilliant pictures from the dreams with which she had fed her

hopes. At last, thanks to chance, to which she had so often appealed,

Emilie could now see something very unlike a chimera at the fountain-

head of the imaginary wealth with which she gilded her married life.

Ignorant, as all young girls are, of the perils of love and marriage,

she was passionately captivated by the externals of marriage and love.

Is not this as much as to say that her feeling had birth like all the

feelings of extreme youth--sweet but cruel mistakes, which exert a

fatal influence on the lives of young girls so inexperienced as to

trust their own judgment to take care of their future happiness?

Next morning, before Emilie was awake, her uncle had hastened to

Chevreuse. On recognizing, in the courtyard of an elegant little

villa, the young man he had so determinedly insulted the day before,

he went up to him with the pressing politeness of men of the old

court.

"Why, my dear sir, who could have guessed that I should have a brush,

at the age of seventy-three, with the son, or the grandson, of one of

my best friends. I am a vice-admiral, monsieur; is not that as much as

to say that I think no more of fighting a duel than of smoking a

cigar? Why, in my time, no two young men could be intimate till they

had seen the color of their blood! But 'sdeath, sir, last evening,

sailor-like, I had taken a drop too much grog on board, and I ran you

down. Shake hands; I would rather take a hundred rebuffs from a

Longueville than cause his family the smallest regret."

However coldly the young man tried to behave to the Comte de

Kergarouet, he could not resist the frank cordiality of his manner,

and presently gave him his hand.

"You were going out riding," said the Count. "Do not let me detain

you. But, unless you have other plans, I beg you will come to dinner

to-day at the Villa Planat. My nephew, the Comte de Fontaine, is a man

it is essential that you should know. Ah, ha! And I propose to make up

to you for my clumsiness by introducing you to five of the prettiest

women in Paris. So, so, young man, your brow is clearing! I am fond of

young people, and I like to see them happy. Their happiness reminds me

of the good times of my youth, when adventures were not lacking, any

more than duels. We were gay dogs then! Nowadays you think and worry

over everything, as though there had never been a fifteenth and a

sixteenth century."

"But, monsieur, are we not in the right? The sixteenth century only

gave religious liberty to Europe, and the nineteenth will give it

political lib----"

"Oh, we will not talk politics. I am a perfect old woman--ultra you

see. But I do not hinder young men from being revolutionary, so long

as they leave the King at liberty to disperse their assemblies."

When they had gone a little way, and the Count and his companion were

in the heart of the woods, the old sailor pointed out a slender young

birch sapling, pulled up his horse, took out one of his pistols, and

the bullet was lodged in the heart of the tree, fifteen paces away.

"You see, my dear fellow, that I am not afraid of a duel," he said

with comical gravity, as he looked at Monsieur Longueville.

"Nor am I," replied the young man, promptly cocking his pistol; he

aimed at the hole made by the Comte's bullet, and sent his own close

to it.

"That is what I call a well-educated man," cried the admiral with

enthusiasm.