XII
Gilberte Favoral had just completed her eighteenth year. Rathertall, slender, her every motion betrayed the admirable proportionsof her figure, and had that grace which results from the harmoniousblending of litheness and strength. She did not strike at firstsight; but soon a penetrating and indefinable charm arose from herwhole person; and one knew not which to admire most,--the exquisiteperfections of her figure, the divine roundness of her neck, heraerial carriage, or the placid ingenuousness of her attitudes. Shecould not be called beautiful, inasmuch as her features lackedregularity; but the extreme mobility of her countenance, upon whichcould be read all the emotions of her soul, had an irresistibleseduction. Her large eyes, of velvety blue, had untold depths andan incredible intensity of expression; the imperceptible quiver ofher rosy nostrils revealed an untamable pride; and the smile thatplayed upon her lips told her immense contempt for every thing meanand small. But her real beauty was her hair,--of a blonde soluminous that it seemed powdered with diamond-dust; so thick andso long, that to be able to twist and confine it, she had to cut offheavy locks of it to the very root.
Alone, in the house, she did not tremble at her father's voice. Thestudied despotism which had subdued Mme. Favoral had revolted her,and her energy had become tempered under the same system ofoppression which had unnerved Maxence.
Whilst her mother and her brother lied with that quiet impudence ofthe slave, whose sole weapon is duplicity, Gilberte preserved asullen silence. And if complicity was imposed upon her bycircumstances, if she had to maintain a falsehood, each word costher such a painful effort, that her features became visibly altered.
Never, when her own interests were alone at stake, had she stoopedto an untruth. Fearlessly, and whatever might be the result,
"That is the fact," she would say.
Accordingly, M. Favoral could not help respecting her to a degree;and, when he was in fine humor, he called her the Empress Gilberte.For her alone he had some deference and some attentions. Hemoderated, when she looked at him, the brutality of his language.He brought her a few flowers every Saturday.
He had even allowed her a professor of music; though he was wont todeclare that a woman needs but two accomplishments,--to cook andto sew. But she had insisted so much, that he had at lastdiscovered for her, in an attic of the Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule, anold Italian master, the Signor Gismondo Pulei, a sort of unknowngenius, for whom thirty francs a month were a fortune, and whoconceived a sort of religious fanaticism for his pupil.
Though he had always refused to write a note, he consented, for hersake, to fix the melodies that buzzed in his cracked brain; and someof them proved to be admirable. He dreamed to compose for her anopera that would transmit to the most remote generations the nameof Gismondo Pulei.
"The Signora Gilberte is the very goddess of music," he said to M.Favoral, with transports of enthusiasm, which intensified still hisfrightful accent.
The cashier of the Mutual Credit Society shrugged his shoulders,answering that there is no harmony for a man who spends his dayslistening to the exciting music of golden coins. In spite of whichhis vanity seemed highly gratified, when on Saturday evenings, afterdinner, Mlle. Gilberte sat at the piano, and Mme. Desclavettes,suppressing a yawn, would exclaim,
"What remarkable talent the dear child has!"
The young girl had, then, a positive influence; and it was to herentreaties alone, and not to those of his wife, that he had severaltimes forgiven Maxence. He would have done much more for her, hadshe wished it; but she would have been compelled to ask, to insist,to beg.
"And it's humiliating," she used to say.
Sometimes Mme. Favoral scolded her gently, saying that her fatherwould certainly not refuse her one of those pretty toilets which arethe ambition and the joy of young girls.
But she:
"It is much less mortification to me to wear these rags than to meetwith a refusal," she replied. "I am satisfied with my dresses."
With such a character, surrounded, however, by a meek resignation,and an unalterable _sang-froid_, she inspired a certain respect toboth her mother and her brother, who admired in her an energy ofwhich they felt themselves incapable.
And when she appeared, and commenced reproaching him in an indignanttone of voice, with the baseness of his conduct, and his insatiatedemands, Maxence was almost stunned.
"I did not know," he commenced, turning as red as fire.
She crushed him with a look of mingled contempt and pity; and, inan accent of haughty irony:
"Indeed," she said, "you do not know whence the money comes thatyou extort from our mother!"
And holding up her hand, still remarkably handsome, though slightlydeformed by the constant handling of the needle; the fourth fingerof the right hand bent by the thread, and the fore-finger of theleft tattooed and lacerated by the needle:
"Indeed," she repeated, "you do not know that my mother and myself,we spend all our days, and the greater part of our nights, working?"
Hanging his head, he said nothing.
"If it were for myself alone," she continued, "I would not speak toyou thus. But look at our mother! See her poor eyes, red and weakfrom her ceaseless labor! If I have said nothing until now, it isbecause I did not as yet despair of your heart; because I hoped thatyou would recover some feeling of decency. But no, nothing. Withtime, your last scruples seem to have vanished. Once you beggedhumbly; now you demand rudely. How soon will you resort to blows?"
"Gilberte!" stammered the poor fellow, "Gilberte!"
She interrupted him:
"Money!" she went on, "always, and without time, you must have money;no matter whence it comes, nor what it costs. If, at least, youhad to justify your expenses, the excuse of some great passion, orof some object, were it absurd, ardently pursued! But I defy youto confess upon what degrading pleasures you lavish our humbleeconomies. I defy you to tell us what you mean to do with the sumthat you demand to-night,--that sum for which you would have ourmother stoop to beg the assistance of a shop-keeper, to whom wewould be compelled to reveal the secret of our shame."
Touched by the frightful humiliation of her son:
"He is so unhappy!" stammered Mme. Favoral.
"He unhappy!" she exclaimed. "What, then, shallwe say of us? and, above all, what shall you say of yourself, mother?Unhappy!--he, a man, who has liberty and strength, who may undertakeevery thing, attempt any thing, dare any thing. Ah, I wish I werea man! I! I would be a man as there are some, as I know some; andI would have avenged you, O beloved mother! long, long ago, fromfather; and I would have begun to repay you all the good you havedone me."
Mme. Favoral was sobbing.
"I beg of you," she murmured, "spare him."
"Be it so," said the young girl. "But you must allow me to tell himthat it is not for his sake that I devote my youth to a mercenarylabor. It is for you, adored mother, that you may have the joy togive him what he asks, since it is your only joy."
Maxence shuddered under the breath of that superb indignation. Thatfrightful humiliation, he felt that he deserved it only too much.He understood the justice of these cruel reproaches. And, as hisheart had not yet spoiled with the contact of his boon companions,as he was weak, rather than wicked, as the sentiments which are thehonor and pride of a man were not dead within him.
"Ah! you are a brave sister, Gilberte," he exclaimed; "and what youhave just done is well. You have been harsh, but not as much as Ideserve. Thanks for your courage, which will give me back mine.Yes, it is a shame for me to have thus cowardly abused you both."
And, raising his mother's hand to his lips:"Forgive, mother," he continued, his eyes overflowing with tears;"forgive him who swears to you to redeem his past, and to becomeyour support, instead of being a crushing burden--"
He was interrupted by the noise of steps on the stairs, and theshrill sound of a whistle.
"My husband!" exclaimed Mme. Favoral,--"your father, my children!"
"Well," said Ml
le. Gilberte coldly.
"Don't you hear that he is whistling? and do you forget that it isa proof that he is furious? What new trial threatens us again?"