"The hour is unearthly," answered Bathsheba, uneasily. "It is past midnight. This lonely street has long since been deserted. May it not be our lookout come to warn us of the approach of some peril?"
"No, our lookout would have given the established signal," answered the Jew. "I"ll go see what it may be."
And taking the lamp, he pa.s.sed out of the chamber.
CHAPTER II.
REVOLUTIONARY EFFERVESCENCE.
Lamp in hand, Samuel approached the wicket gate. The light he carried revealed to him standing outside a lackey in a livery of orange and green, trimmed with silver lace. The fellow, swaying unsteadily on his feet, and with the air of one half-seas over with drink, knocked again, violently.
"Ho, friend!" cried Samuel. "Don"t knock so hard! Perhaps you mistake the house."
"I--I knock how I please," returned the lackey in a thick voice. "Open the door--right off. I want to come in--gallows-bird!"
"Whom do you wish?"
"You do not want to open; dog of Jewry! Swine! My master will beat you to death with his stick. He said to me: "Carry--this letter to Samuel the Jew--and above all--rascal--do not tarry at the inn!" So I want to get in to your dog-kennel, you devil of a Jew!"
"May I ask your master"s name?"
"My master is Monseigneur the Count of Plouernel, colonel in the Guards.
You know him well. You have before now lent him money--triple Arab!--according to what my lord"s steward says--and at good interest, too."
"Have you your master"s letter?"
"Yes--pig! And so, open. If not--I"ll break in the gate."
"Then pa.s.s me the letter through the wicket, and hurry about it. Else I shall go in and leave you as you are."
"Mule! Isn"t he stubborn, that animal!" grumbled the lackey as he shoved the letter through the grating. "I must have an answer, good and quick, I was told," he added.
"When I have read the letter," replied Samuel.
"To make me wait outside the door--like a dog!" muttered the tipsy servingman. "Me, the first lackey of my lord!"
Samuel, without paying the least attention to the impertinences of the lackey, read the letter of the Count of Plouernel by the light of his lamp, and then answered:
"Say to your master that I shall visit him to-morrow morning at his rooms. Your errand is done. You may leave."
"You won"t give me a written answer?"
"No, the reply I have just given you will suffice."
Leaving the valet outside to fume his wrath away, Samuel refastened the wicket and returned to the room where he had left his wife. Bathsheba said to him, with some uneasiness:
"My friend, did I not hear a threatening voice?"
"It was a drunken lackey who brought me a letter from the Count of Plouernel."
"Another demand for a loan, I suppose?"
"Exactly. He has ordered me to undertake to secure for him the sum of 100,000 livres. He did not call on me direct for the loan, because he thought me too poor to be able to furnish it."
"Will you lend him the money, my friend?"
"Surely, on excellent securities of thirty deniers to one. The Count is good for it, and it will please me to squeeze him, along with other great seigneurs, to the profit of the strong-box of the Voyants."
Hardly had Samuel uttered these words when Prince Franz of Gerolstein, accompanied by one single companion, entered the room. Samuel and his wife silently pa.s.sed upstairs to the floor above, leaving the two alone.
Franz of Gerolstein, then at the age of twenty-five, tall of stature and at once graceful and robust, presented an appearance both n.o.ble and impressive. In his face could be read frankness, resolution, and generosity. He was simply dressed. His companion, who was evidently a woman disguised in male habiliments, seemed as young as he, though she was really thirty. In spite of their rare beauty, her features bore the stamp of virility. Her figure was tall and lithe; a brownish down marked strongly her upper lip; everything harmonized with her masculine garments. Yet the beauty of this woman was of a sinister character. The marble-like pallor of her brow, the flashes of her black eyes, the contraction of her pupils, the bitterness of the smile, frequently cruel, which curled on her lips--all seemed to bear witness to the ravages of pa.s.sion or to some incurable chagrin. She seemed either a superb courtesan, or a repentant Magdalen.
Neither Franz nor his companion broke the silence of the lower room for an instant. The Prince spoke first, in a voice grave and almost solemn:
"Victoria, it is now three months since my visit to the Prison of the Repentant Women. Your beauty, marked with a depth of sadness, seized possession of me at once. I learned why you had been condemned to confinement. Those reasons, once learned, moved me deeply. From that time dates the interest with which you have inspired me. By the intervention of a powerful friend, I am fortunate enough to have secured your release."
"Yes, I owe you my liberty," responded she whom he called Victoria, in a virile voice. "And moreover, you have given me, in my misfortune, many proofs of affection."
"But the interest I have shown you has other springs than in your misfortune--although that has much augmented it."
"What may they be, Franz? Speak--I am listening."
The Prince paused in silence for a second, and then asked:
"Know you who I am?"
"Have you not told me that you were a student in one of the universities of Germany, your native land?"
"I deceived you as to my station, Victoria. I am no student."
"You deceived me! You whom I thought so true?"
"You will soon learn for what cause I hid from you the truth. But first I would make you aware of the nature of the sentiments you inspire in me. I can no longer hold back the confession. Hear me, then, Victoria--"
The young woman shuddered, stopped the Prince, and said in tones of bitterness:
"Unless I greatly mistake, I foresee the end of this speech, Franz. So before you proceed, and in the hope of sparing you a refusal which would be an insult to you, I must declare that I have not changed since I met you. I must repeat what I said to you in our first interview: My heart is dead to love--one single pa.s.sion rules me, and that is, vengeance. I have hid from you nothing of the past."
"Aye, I know that you have suffered. Victoria, if your heart is dead, mine is no longer mine. I left behind in Germany a young girl, an angel of candor, of virtue, of beauty. She is poor and obscure of birth, but I have sworn before G.o.d to make her my wife. I shall remain true to my love and to my oath."
"Oh, thanks, Franz, thanks for your confidence. It has lifted from me a fearsome apprehension," said Victoria, with a sigh of joy. "I love you with the tenderness of a sister, or rather, of a friend. For I am no longer a woman, and it would have been cruelty on my part to inspire in you a sentiment I could not share. But what, then, is the nature of your feeling towards me?"
"I feel for you the tender compa.s.sion due to the sorrows of your childhood and early youth--a profound esteem for the qualities which in you have survived, have overcome, all the causes of your degradation;--and finally, Victoria, I am united to you by an indissoluble bond which reaches into the most distant past--that of kinship."