Antonia

I The time was the month of April, 1785, and the place Paris, where the spring that year was a genuine spring. The garden was in holiday attire, the greensward was studded with marguerites, the birds were singing, and the lilacs grew so straight and so close to Julien's window, that their fragrant clusters actually entered his room and strewed the white tiled floor of his studio with their little violet crosses. Julien Thierry was a painter of flowers, like his father André Thierry, renowned under Louis XV. in the art of decorating spaces over doors, dining-room panels and boudoir ceilings. Those dainty ornaments became, under his skilful hands, objects of genuine, serious art, so that the artisan had became an artist, highly esteemed by people of taste, handsomely paid, and a person of much consideration in society. Julien, his pupil, had confined himself to painting on canvas. The fashion of his time frowned upon the fanciful and charming decorations of the Pompadour style. The Louis XVI. style was more severe; flowers were no longer strewn upon walls and ceilings, but were framed. Julien, then, painted flower and fruit pieces of the Mignon variety, mother-of-pearl shells, multi-colored butterflies, green lizards and drops of dew. He had much talent, he was handsome, he was twenty-four years old, and his father had left him nothing but debts. André Thierry's widow was there in the studio where Julien was at work, and where the clusters of lilac shed their petals under the soft touch of a warm breeze. She was a woman of sixty, well-preserved, with eyes that were still beautiful, hair almost black, and slim, delicate hands. Short, slight, pale, dressed poorly, but with studied neatness, Madame Thierry was knitting mittens, and from time to time raised her eyes to glance at her son, who was absorbed in the study of a rose. "Julien," she said, "why is it, I wonder, that you don't sing now when you are working? You might induce the nightingale to let us hear his voice." "Listen, mother, there he is now," Julien replied. "He doesn't need anybody to give him the key." And at that moment they did in fact hear the pure, sweet and resonant notes of the nightingale for the first time that year. "Ah! so he has come!" exclaimed Madame Thierry. "To think that a whole year has passed!—Can you see him, Julien?" she asked, as the young man, putting aside his work, scrutinized the shrubs massed in front of the window. "I thought I saw him," he replied with a sigh, "but I was mistaken." And he returned to his easel. His mother watched him more closely, but she dared not question him. "Never mind," she began after a few moments, "you have a beautiful voice too, and I used to love to hear you sing the pretty ballads your poor father sang so well—only last year at just this time!" "Yes," Julien replied, "you insist on my singing them, and then you weep. No, I don't propose to sing any more!" "I won't weep, I promise you! Sing me a lively one, and I will laugh—as if he were here!" "No! don't ask me to sing. It makes me feel sad too! Later, later! it will come back gradually. Let us not force our sorrow!" "Julien, we must not talk about sorrow any more," said the mother in a tone of gentle but indubitably strong determination. "I was a little weak at the beginning; you will forgive me, won't you? To lose thirty years of happiness in a day! But I ought to have reflected that you lost more than I did, because I still have you, while I am good for nothing except to love you." "And what more can I want?" said Julien, kneeling in front of his mother. "You love me as no one else will ever love me, I know! and I do not say that you were weak. You concealed from me at least half of your suffering, I saw it and understood it. I gave you full credit for it, never fear, and I thank you for it, my dear mother! You sustained me when I needed it sadly; for I suffered on your account at least as much as on my own, and, when I saw how brave you were, I was always certain that God would perform a miracle to keep you alive and well for me, despite the most cruel of trials. He owed us that much, and He did it. Now, mother, you do not feel weak and disheartened any more, do you?" "Now, my child, I am really happy. You are right in thinking that God sustains those who do not despair, and that He gives strength to those who pray to Him for it with all their hearts. Do not think that I am unhappy; I have wept bitterly; but how could I do otherwise? he was so lovely, so kind to us! and he always seemed to be so happy! He might have lived a long while—but that was not God's will. I have had such a beautiful life that I really had no right to ask for anything more. And see what the divine goodness has left me! the best and most dearly loved of sons! Should I complain? Should I pray for death? No, no! I will join your dear father when my time comes, and he will say to me: 'You did well to remain on earth as long as you could, and not leave our beloved son too soon.'" "So you see," said Julien, putting his arms around his mother, "that we are no longer unhappy, and that there is no need for me to sing to divert our thoughts. We can think of him without bitterness and of each other without selfishness." They remained in a close embrace for an instant, then returned to their respective occupations. This took place in Rue de Babylone, in a sort of pavilion, already very old, for it dated from the reign of Louis XIII., and stood by itself at the end of the street, whose most modest structure—and at the same time the one nearest the said pavilion—was the house, to-day torn down, which was then called the hôtel d'Estrelle. While Julien and his mother were engaged in the conversation we have just reported, two other persons were talking in a dainty little salon of the aforesaid hôtel d'Estrelle, a cool, homelike apartment, decorated in the style of the last years of Louis XVI., a pretty bastard Greek style, a little stiff in outline, but harmonious in tone and set off by much gilding against a pearl-white ground. The Comtesse d'Estrelle was simply dressed in a half-mourning gown of gray silk, and her friend the Baronne d'Ancourt in a morning visiting costume—that is to say, in an elaborate combination of muslins, ribbons and lace. "Dear heart," she was saying to the countess, "I don't understand you at all. You are twenty years old; you are as beautiful as the Loves, and you persist in living in solitude like the wife of a petty bourgeois! You have put off your mourning, and everybody knows that you had no reason to regret your husband, the least regrettable of mankind. He left you a fortune; that is the only reasonable thing he ever did in his life." "And as to that, my dear baroness, you are entirely mistaken. The fortune the count left me is overburdened with debts; I was told that, by making a few sacrifices and depriving myself of some luxuries, I might clear myself in a few years. So I accepted the succession without looking into it very carefully, and the result is that to-day, after two years of uncertainty and long explanations of which I did not understand a word, my new solicitor, who is a very honorable man, assures me that I have been deceived and that I am much nearer being poor than rich. The case is so serious, my dear, that I have been in consultation with him this morning to decide whether or not I could keep this house." "What! sell your house! Why, that is impossible, my dear! It would be a stain on your husband's memory. His family will never consent to that." "His family say that they will not consent, but they also say that they will not help me in any way. What do they want, and what do they expect me to do?" "They are a detestable family!" cried the baroness, "but I ought not to be astonished at anything that the old marquis and his bigot of a wife may do!" At that moment Monsieur Marcel Thierry was announced. "Show him in," said the countess; and she added, addressing the baroness: "it is the very person of whom I was just speaking—my solicitor." "In that case I will leave you." "That is not necessary. He has but a word to say to me, and as you know my plight——" "And am deeply interested in it. I will remain." The solicitor entered. He was a man of about forty, balder than was natural at his age, but with a pleasant face, good-humored and frank, although remarkably shrewd and even satirical. One could see that much experience of the conduct of men at odds with their selfish interests had made him thoroughly practical, perhaps sceptical, but that it had not destroyed his ideal of uprightness and sincerity, which he was all the better able to recognize and appreciate. "Well, Monsieur Thierry," said the countess, motioning to a chair, "is there anything new since this morning that you have taken the trouble to return?" "Yes, madame," the solicitor replied, "there is something new. Monsieur le Marquis d'Estrelle sent his man of business to me with an offer which I have accepted in your behalf, subject to your assent, which I have come to obtain. He suggests coming to your assistance by turning over a few unimportant pieces of property, the total value of which, to be sure, will not pay all the debts which are hanging over you, but which will allay your anxieties for a moment and delay the sale of your house by enabling you to give your creditors something on account." "Something on account! Is that all?" cried the Baroness d'Ancourt indignantly. "That is all that the Estrelle family can do for the widow of a spendthrift? Why, it is a perfect outrage, monsieur le procureur!" "It is at the best a pitifully mean performance," rejoined Marcel Thierry; "I wasted my eloquence, and this is where we stand. As madame la comtesse has no fortune of her own, she is forced, in order to retain even a paltry dower, to submit to the conditions imposed by a family devoid of consideration and generosity." "Say of heart and honor!" exclaimed the baroness. "Say nothing at all," added the countess, who had listened with a resigned expression. "The family is what it is; it is not for me to pass judgment on them, bearing their name as I do. In every other respect I am a stranger to them, and lamentations would come with a very bad grace from me, for I alone am to blame." "You to blame!" repeated the solicitor, with an incredulous smile. "Yes," continued Madame d'Estrelle. "I have committed one great sin in my life. I consented to that marriage, against which my heart and my instincts rebelled. I was a coward! I was a mere child, and they gave me my choice between a convent and a disagreeable husband; I was afraid of everlasting seclusion, so I accepted the everlasting humiliation of an ill-assorted marriage. I did as so many other women have done, I thought that wealth would take the place of happiness. Happiness! I did not know, I have never known what it is. I was told that it consisted, above all things, in riding in a carriage, wearing diamonds, and having a box at the opera. My head was turned, I was intoxicated, put to sleep with presents. I must not say that my hand was forced, for that would not be true. To be sure there were locks and bolts and bars, imprisonment for life in the cloister, before me in case of refusal; but there was neither axe nor executioner, and I might have said no if I had had any courage. But we have none, my dear baroness, we may as well admit it; we women cannot make up our minds to resign frankly, and conceal our spring-time under the veil of a nun, which, however, would be more dignified, more honest and perhaps pleasanter in the end than to throw ourselves into the arms of the first stranger who presents himself. That then was my cowardice, my blindness, my folly, my vanity, my neglect of myself—in a word, my sin! I hope never to commit another; but I cannot forget that my punishment has come through my sin. I allowed puerile ambition to dispose of my life, and to-day I see that I was deceived, that I am not rich, that I must sell diamonds and horses, and that there is great danger that before long I shall not have over my head the roof of a house that bears my crest. That is as it should be—I feel it and admit it; I am penitent, but I do not want to be pitied, and I shall accept without discussion such alms as my husband's relations choose to bestow upon me in order to save his honor."