Authors: Elizabeth Gaskell
"It must have required some patience and much diplomacy, before Clement
de Crequy found out the exact place where his cousin was hidden. The old
gardener took the cause very much to heart; as, judging from my
recollections, I imagine he would have forwarded any fancy, however wild,
of Monsieur Clement's. (I will tell you afterwards how I came to know
all these particulars so well.)
"After Clement's return, on two succeeding days, from his dangerous
search, without meeting with any good result, Jacques entreated Monsieur
de Crequy to let him take it in hand. He represented that he, as
gardener for the space of twenty years and more at the Hotel de Crequy,
had a right to be acquainted with all the successive concierges at the
Count's house; that he should not go among them as a stranger, but as an
old friend, anxious to renew pleasant intercourse; and that if the
Intendant's story, which he had told Monsieur de Crequy in England, was
true, that mademoiselle was in hiding at the house of a former concierge,
why, something relating to her would surely drop out in the course of
conversation. So he persuaded Clement to remain indoors, while he set
off on his round, with no apparent object but to gossip.
"At night he came home,—having seen mademoiselle. He told Clement much
of the story relating to Madame Babette that I have told to you. Of
course, he had heard nothing of the ambitious hopes of Morin Fils,—hardly
of his existence, I should think. Madame Babette had received him
kindly; although, for some time, she had kept him standing in the
carriage gateway outside her door. But, on his complaining of the
draught and his rheumatism, she had asked him in: first looking round
with some anxiety, to see who was in the room behind her. No one was
there when he entered and sat down. But, in a minute or two, a tall,
thin young lady, with great, sad eyes, and pale cheeks, came from the
inner room, and, seeing him, retired. 'It is Mademoiselle Cannes,' said
Madame Babette, rather unnecessarily; for, if he had not been on the
watch for some sign of Mademoiselle de Crequy, he would hardly have
noticed the entrance and withdrawal.
"Clement and the good old gardener were always rather perplexed by Madame
Babette's evident avoidance of all mention of the De Crequy family. If
she were so much interested in one member as to be willing to undergo the
pains and penalties of a domiciliary visit, it was strange that she never
inquired after the existence of her charge's friends and relations from
one who might very probably have heard something of them. They settled
that Madame Babette must believe that the Marquise and Clement were dead;
and admired her for her reticence in never speaking of Virginie. The
truth was, I suspect, that she was so desirous of her nephews success by
this time, that she did not like letting any one into the secret of
Virginie's whereabouts who might interfere with their plan. However, it
was arranged between Clement and his humble friend, that the former,
dressed in the peasant's clothes in which he had entered Paris, but
smartened up in one or two particulars, as if, although a countryman, he
had money to spare, should go and engage a sleeping-room in the old
Breton Inn; where, as I told you, accommodation for the night was to be
had. This was accordingly done, without exciting Madame Babette's
suspicions, for she was unacquainted with the Normandy accent, and
consequently did not perceive the exaggeration of it which Monsieur de
Crequy adopted in order to disguise his pure Parisian. But after he had
for two nights slept in a queer dark closet, at the end of one of the
numerous short galleries in the Hotel Duguesclin, and paid his money for
such accommodation each morning at the little bureau under the window of
the conciergerie, he found himself no nearer to his object. He stood
outside in the gateway: Madame Babette opened a pane in her window,
counted out the change, gave polite thanks, and shut to the pane with a
clack, before he could ever find out what to say that might be the means
of opening a conversation. Once in the streets, he was in danger from
the bloodthirsty mob, who were ready in those days to hunt to death every
one who looked like a gentleman, as an aristocrat: and Clement, depend
upon it, looked a gentleman, whatever dress he wore. Yet it was unwise
to traverse Paris to his old friend the gardener's grenier, so he had to
loiter about, where I hardly know. Only he did leave the Hotel
Duguesclin, and he did not go to old Jacques, and there was not another
house in Paris open to him. At the end of two days, he had made out
Pierre's existence; and he began to try to make friends with the lad.
Pierre was too sharp and shrewd not to suspect something from the
confused attempts at friendliness. It was not for nothing that the
Norman farmer lounged in the court and doorway, and brought home presents
of galette. Pierre accepted the galette, reciprocated the civil
speeches, but kept his eyes open. Once, returning home pretty late at
night, he surprised the Norman studying the shadows on the blind, which
was drawn down when Madame Babette's lamp was lighted. On going in, he
found Mademoiselle Cannes with his mother, sitting by the table, and
helping in the family mending.
"Pierre was afraid that the Norman had some view upon the money which his
mother, as concierge, collected for her brother. But the money was all
safe next evening, when his cousin, Monsieur Morin Fils, came to collect
it. Madame Babette asked her nephew to sit down, and skilfully barred
the passage to the inner door, so that Virginie, had she been ever so
much disposed, could not have retreated. She sat silently sewing. All
at once the little party were startled by a very sweet tenor voice, just
close to the street window, singing one of the airs out of Beaumarchais'
operas, which, a few years before, had been popular all over Paris. But
after a few moments of silence, and one or two remarks, the talking went
on again. Pierre, however, noticed an increased air of abstraction in
Virginie, who, I suppose, was recurring to the last time that she had
heard the song, and did not consider, as her cousin had hoped she would
have done, what were the words set to the air, which he imagined she
would remember, and which would have told her so much. For, only a few
years before, Adam's opera of Richard le Roi had made the story of the
minstrel Blondel and our English Coeur de Lion familiar to all the opera-
going part of the Parisian public, and Clement had bethought him of
establishing a communication with Virginie by some such means.
"The next night, about the same hour, the same voice was singing outside
the window again. Pierre, who had been irritated by the proceeding the
evening before, as it had diverted Virginie's attention from his cousin,
who had been doing his utmost to make himself agreeable, rushed out to
the door, just as the Norman was ringing the bell to be admitted for the
night. Pierre looked up and down the street; no one else was to be seen.
The next day, the Norman mollified him somewhat by knocking at the door
of the conciergerie, and begging Monsieur Pierre's acceptance of some
knee-buckles, which had taken the country farmer's fancy the day before,
as he had been gazing into the shops, but which, being too small for his
purpose, he took the liberty of offering to Monsieur Pierre. Pierre, a
French boy, inclined to foppery, was charmed, ravished by the beauty of
the present and with monsieur's goodness, and he began to adjust them to
his breeches immediately, as well as he could, at least, in his mother's
absence. The Norman, whom Pierre kept carefully on the outside of the
threshold, stood by, as if amused at the boy's eagerness.
"'Take care,' said he, clearly and distinctly; 'take care, my little
friend, lest you become a fop; and, in that case, some day, years hence,
when your heart is devoted to some young lady, she may be inclined to say
to you'—here he raised his voice—'No, thank you; when I marry, I marry
a man, not a petit-maitre; I marry a man, who, whatever his position may
be, will add dignity to the human race by his virtues.' Farther than
that in his quotation Clement dared not go. His sentiments (so much
above the apparent occasion) met with applause from Pierre, who liked to
contemplate himself in the light of a lover, even though it should be a
rejected one, and who hailed the mention of the words 'virtues' and
'dignity of the human race' as belonging to the cant of a good citizen.
"But Clement was more anxious to know how the invisible Lady took his
speech. There was no sign at the time. But when he returned at night,
he heard a voice, low singing, behind Madame Babette, as she handed him
his candle, the very air he had sung without effect for two nights past.
As if he had caught it up from her murmuring voice, he sang it loudly and
clearly as he crossed the court.
"'Here is our opera-singer!' exclaimed Madame Babette. 'Why, the Norman
grazier sings like Boupre,' naming a favourite singer at the neighbouring
theatre.
"Pierre was struck by the remark, and quietly resolved to look after the
Norman; but again, I believe, it was more because of his mother's deposit
of money than with any thought of Virginie.
"However, the next morning, to the wonder of both mother and son,
Mademoiselle Cannes proposed, with much hesitation, to go out and make
some little purchase for herself. A month or two ago, this was what
Madame Babette had been never weary of urging. But now she was as much
surprised as if she had expected Virginie to remain a prisoner in her
rooms all the rest of her life. I suppose she had hoped that her first
time of quitting it would be when she left it for Monsieur Morin's house
as his wife.
"A quick look from Madame Babette towards Pierre was all that was needed
to encourage the boy to follow her. He went out cautiously. She was at
the end of the street. She looked up and down, as if waiting for some
one. No one was there. Back she came, so swiftly that she nearly caught
Pierre before he could retreat through the porte-cochere. There he
looked out again. The neighbourhood was low and wild, and strange; and
some one spoke to Virginie,—nay, laid his hand upon her arm,—whose
dress and aspect (he had emerged out of a side-street) Pierre did not
know; but, after a start, and (Pierre could fancy) a little scream,
Virginie recognised the stranger, and the two turned up the side street
whence the man had come. Pierre stole swiftly to the corner of this
street; no one was there: they had disappeared up some of the alleys.
Pierre returned home to excite his mother's infinite surprise. But they
had hardly done talking, when Virginie returned, with a colour and a
radiance in her face, which they had never seen there since her father's
death."
"I have told you that I heard much of this story from a friend of the
Intendant of the De Crequys, whom he met with in London. Some years
afterwards—the summer before my lord's death—I was travelling with him
in Devonshire, and we went to see the French prisoners of war on
Dartmoor. We fell into conversation with one of them, whom I found out
to be the very Pierre of whom I had heard before, as having been involved
in the fatal story of Clement and Virginie, and by him I was told much of
their last days, and thus I learnt how to have some sympathy with all
those who were concerned in those terrible events; yes, even with the
younger Morin himself, on whose behalf Pierre spoke warmly, even after so
long a time had elapsed.
"For when the younger Morin called at the porter's lodge, on the evening
of the day when Virginie had gone out for the first time after so many
months' confinement to the conciergerie, he was struck with the
improvement in her appearance. It seems to have hardly been that he
thought her beauty greater: for, in addition to the fact that she was not
beautiful, Morin had arrived at that point of being enamoured when it
does not signify whether the beloved one is plain or handsome—she has
enchanted one pair of eyes, which henceforward see her through their own
medium. But Morin noticed the faint increase of colour and light in her
countenance. It was as though she had broken through her thick cloud of
hopeless sorrow, and was dawning forth into a happier life. And so,
whereas during her grief, he had revered and respected it even to a point
of silent sympathy, now that she was gladdened, his heart rose on the
wings of strengthened hopes. Even in the dreary monotony of this
existence in his Aunt Babette's conciergerie, Time had not failed in his
work, and now, perhaps, soon he might humbly strive to help Time. The
very next day he returned—on some pretence of business—to the Hotel
Duguesclin, and made his aunt's room, rather than his aunt herself, a
present of roses and geraniums tied up in a bouquet with a tricolor
ribbon. Virginie was in the room, sitting at the coarse sewing she liked
to do for Madame Babette. He saw her eyes brighten at the sight of the
flowers: she asked his aunt to let her arrange them; he saw her untie the
ribbon, and with a gesture of dislike, throw it on the ground, and give
it a kick with her little foot, and even in this girlish manner of
insulting his dearest prejudices, he found something to admire.
"As he was coming out, Pierre stopped him. The lad had been trying to
arrest his cousin's attention by futile grimaces and signs played off
behind Virginie's back: but Monsieur Morin saw nothing but Mademoiselle
Cannes. However, Pierre was not to be baffled, and Monsieur Morin found
him in waiting just outside the threshold. With his finger on his lips,
Pierre walked on tiptoe by his companion's side till they would have been
long past sight or hearing of the conciergerie, even had the inhabitants
devoted themselves to the purposes of spying or listening.
"'Chut!' said Pierre, at last. 'She goes out walking.'
"'Well?' said Monsieur Morin, half curious, half annoyed at being
disturbed in the delicious reverie of the future into which he longed to
fall.