Charlottes Inheritance | Page 8

only because Madelon was not the most
attractive or the prettiest of women!
The young man stood firm against all their arguments, he was unmoved
by all their pleading. It was only when his anxious kindred had given
up the battle for lost that Gustave wavered. Their mute despair moved
him more than the most persuasive eloquence; and the end was
submission. He left Beaubocage the plighted lover of that woman who,
of all others, he would have been the last to choose for his wife. It had
all been settled very pleasantly--the dowry, the union of the two estates,
the two names. For six months Gustave was to enjoy his freedom to
finish his studies; and then he was to return to Normandy for his
marriage.
"I have heard very good accounts of you from Paris," said the Baron.
"You are not like some young men, wild, mad-brained. One can
confide in your honour, your steadiness."
The good folks of Beaubocage were in ecstacies. They congratulated
Gustave--they congratulated each other. A match so brilliant would be
the redemption of the family. The young man at last began to fancy
himself the favoured of the gods. What if Madelon seemed a little
dull--a little wanting in that vivacity which is so pleasing to frivolous
minds? she was doubtless so much the more profound, so much the
more virtuous. If she was not bright and varied and beautiful as some
limpid fountain dancing in summer sunlight, she was perhaps
changeless and steady as a rock; and who would not rather have the
security of a rock than the summer-day beauty of a fountain?
Before Gustave departed from his paternal home he had persuaded
himself that he was a very lucky fellow; and he had paid Mademoiselle
Frehlter some pretty little stereotyped compliments, and had listened
with sublime patience to her pretty little stereotyped songs. He left the
young lady profoundly impressed by his merits; he left his own
household supremely happy; and he carried away with him a heart in

which Madelon Frehlter's image had no place.
CHAPTER II.
IN THIS WIDE WORLD I STAND ALONE.
Gustave went back to his old life, and was not much disturbed by the
grandeur of his destiny as future seigneur of Côtenoir and Beaubocage.
It sometimes occurred to him that he had a weight upon his mind; and,
on consideration, he found that the weight was Madelon Frehlter. But
he continued to carry that burden very lightly, and his easy-going
student life went on, unbroken by thoughts of the future. He sent polite
messages to the demoiselle Frehlter in his letters to Cydalise; and he
received from Cydalise much information, more graphic than
interesting, upon the subject of the family at Côtenoir; and so his days
went on with pleasant monotony. This was the brief summer of his
youth; but, alas, how near at hand was the dark and dismal winter that
was to freeze this honest joyous heart! That heart, so compassionate for
all suffering, so especially tender for all womankind, was to be attacked
upon its weaker side.
It was Gustave Lenoble's habit to cross the gardens of the Luxembourg
every morning, on his way from the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle to the
Ecole de Droit. Sometimes, when he was earlier than usual, he carried a
book with him, and paced one of the more obscure alleys, reading for
an odd half-hour before he went to the daily mill-grinding in the big
building beyond those quiet gardens.
Walking with his book one morning--it was a volume of Boileau,
which the student knew by heart, and the pages whereof did not
altogether absorb his attention--he passed and repassed a bench on
which a lady sat, pensive and solitary, tracing shapeless figures on the
ground with the point of her parasol. He glanced at her somewhat
carelessly the first time of passing, more curiously on the second
occasion, and the third time with considerable attention. Something in
her attitude--helplessness, hopelessness, nay indeed, despair itself, all
expressed in the drooping head, the listless hand tracing those idle

characters on the gravel--enlisted the sympathies of Gustave Lenoble.
He had pitied her even before his gaze had penetrated the cavernous
depths of the capacious bonnet of those days; but one glimpse of the
pale plaintive face inspired him with compassion unspeakable. Never
had he seen despair more painfully depicted on the human
countenance--a despair that sought no sympathy, a sorrow that
separated the sufferer from the outer world. Never had he seen a face so
beautiful, even in despair. He could have fancied it the face of
Andromache, when all that made her world had been reft from her; or
of Antigone, when the dread fiat had gone forth--that funeral rites or
sepulture for the last accursed scion of an accursed