Esmeralda | Page 9

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 Cl��lie, 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 Cl��lie 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,--
"Cl��lie," 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 Cl��lie, 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," Cl��lie 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 Cl��lie, 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 is possible that this may have prepared the reader for the d��no?ment which followed; but singular as it may appear, it did not prepare either Cl��lie or myself--perhaps because we had seen the world, and having learned to view it in a practical light, were not prepared to encounter suddenly a romance almost unparalleled.
The next morning I was compelled to go out to give my lessons as usual, and left Cl��lie with our patient. On my return, my wife, hearing my footsteps, came out and met me upon the landing. She was moved by the strongest emotion and much excited; her cheeks were pale and her eyes shone.
"Do not go in yet," she said, "I have something to tell you. It is almost incredible; but--but it is--the lover!"
For a moment we remained silent--standing looking at each other. To me it seemed incredible indeed.
"He could not give her up," Cl��lie went on, "until he was sure she wished to discard him.