Esmeralda | Page 9

I've laid awake and

thought of it many a night. Father and me saw a man taken out of it one
day, and the people said he was a Tyrolean, and drowned himself
because he was so poor and lonely--and--and so far from home."
Upon the very morning she made this speech I saw again our friend of
the sixth floor. In going down-stairs I came upon him, sitting upon one
of the steps as if exhausted, and when he turned his face upward, its
pallor and haggardness startled me. His tall form was wasted, his eyes
were hollow, the peculiarities I had before observed were doubly
marked--he was even emaciated.
"Monsieur," I said in English, "you appear indisposed. You have been
ill. Allow me to assist you to your room."
"No, thank you," he answered. "It's only weakness. I--I sorter give out.
Don't trouble yourself. I shall get over it directly."
Something in his face, which was a very young and well-looking one,
forced me to leave him in silence, merely bowing as I did so. I felt
instinctively that to remain would be to give him additional pain.
As I passed the room of the concierge, however, the excellent woman
beckoned to me to approach her.
"Did you see the young man?" she inquired rather anxiously. "He has
shown himself this morning for the first time in three days. There is
something wrong. It is my impression that he suffers want--that he is
starving himself to death!"
Her rosy countenance absolutely paled as she uttered these last words,
retreating a pace from me and touching my arm with her fore-finger.
"He has carried up even less bread than usual during the last few
weeks," she added, "and there has been no bouillon whatever. A young
man cannot live only on dry bread, and too little of that. He will perish;
and apart from the inhumanity of the thing, it will be unpleasant for the
other locataires."

I wasted no time in returning to Clélie, having indeed some hope that I
might find the poor fellow still occupying his former position upon the
staircase. But in this I met with disappointment: he was gone and I
could only relate to my wife what I had heard, and trust to her
discretion. As I had expected, she was deeply moved.
"It is terrible," she said.. "And it is also a delicate and difficult matter to
manage. But what can one do? There is only one thing--I who am a
woman, and have suffered privation myself, may venture."
Accordingly, she took her departure for the floor above. I heard her
light summons upon the door of one of the rooms, but heard no reply.
At last, however, the door was opened gently, and with a hesitance that
led me to imagine that it was Clélie herself who had pushed it open,
and immediately afterward I was sure that she had uttered an alarmed
exclamation. I stepped out upon the landing and called to her in a
subdued tone,--
"Clélie," I said, "did I hear you speak?"
"Yes," she returned from within the room. "Come at once, and bring
with you some brandy."
In the shortest possible time I had joined her in the room, which was
bare, cold, and unfurnished--a mere garret, in fact, containing nothing
but a miserable bedstead. Upon the floor, near the window, knelt Clélie,
supporting with her knee and arm the figure of the young man she had
come to visit.
"Quick with the brandy," she exclaimed. "This may be a faint, but it
looks like death." She had found the door partially open, and receiving
no answer to her knock, had pushed it farther ajar, and caught a glimpse
of the fallen figure, and hurried to its assistance.
To be as brief as possible, we both remained at the young man's side
during the whole of the night. As the concierge had said, he was
perishing from inanition, and the physician we called in assured us that
only the most constant attention would save his life.

"Monsieur," Clélie explained to him upon the first occasion upon which
he opened his eyes, "you are ill and alone, and we wish to befriend
you." And he was too weak to require from her anything more definite.
Physically he was a person to admire. In health his muscular power
must have been immense. He possessed the frame of a young giant, and
yet there was in his face a look of innocence and inexperience amazing
even when one recollected his youth.
"It is the look," said Clélie, regarding him attentively,--"the look one
sees in the faces of Monsieur and his daughter down-stairs; the look of
a person who has lived a simple life, and who knows absolutely
nothing of the world."
It