The Trampling of the Lilies | Page 5

his wont. But then, he was that day a man

transformed.
" It comes, Mademoiselle, upon some spring morning such as this - for
is not spring the mating season, and have not poets sung of it, inspired
and conquered by it? It comes in the April of life, when in our hearts
we bear the first fragrant bud of what shall anon blossom into a
glorious summer bloom red as is Love's livery and perfumed beyond all
else that God has set on earth for man's delight and thankfulness."
The intensity with which he spoke, and the essence of the speech itself,
left her a moment dumb with wonder and with an incomprehensible
consternation, born of some intuition not yet understood.
"And so, Monsieur, the Secretary," said she at last, a nervous laugh
quivering in her first words, "from all this wondrous verbiage I am to
take it that you love?"
"Aye, that I love, dear lady," he cried, his eyes so intent upon her that
her glance grew timid and fell before them. And then, a second later,
she could have screamed aloud in apprehension, for the book of Jean
Jacques Rousseau lay tumbled in the grass where he had flung it, even
as he flung himself upon his knees before her. "You may take it indeed
that I love - that I love you, Mademoiselle."
The audacious words being spoken, his courage oozed away and
anti-climax, followed. He paled and trembled, yet he knelt on until she
should bid him rise, and furtively he watched her face. He saw it darken;
he saw the brows knit; he noted the quickening breath, and in all these
signs he read his doom before she uttered it.
"Monsieur, monsieur," she answered him, and sad was her tone, "to
what lengths do you urge this springtime folly? Have you forgotten so
your station - yes, and mine - that because I talk with you and laugh
with you, and am kind to you, you must presume to speak to me in this
fashion? What answer shall I make you, Monsieur - for I am not so
cruel that I can answer you as you deserve."
An odd thing indeed was La Boulaye's courage. An instant ago he had

felt a very coward, and had quivered, appalled by the audacity of his
own words. Now that she assailed him thus, and taxed him with that
same audacity, the blood of anger rushed to his face - anger of the
quality that has its source in shame. In a second he was on his feet
before her, towering to the full of his lean height. The words came from
him in a hot stream, which for reckless passion by far outvied his
erstwhile amatory address.
"My station?" he cried, throwing wide his arms. "What fault lies in my
station? I am a secretary, a scholar, and so, by academic right, a
gentleman. Nay, Mademoiselle, never laugh; do not mock me yet. In
what do you find me less a man than any of the vapid caperers that fill
your father's salon? Is not my shape as good? Are not my arms as
strong, my hands as deft, my wits as keen, and my soul as true? Aye,"
he pursued with another wild wave of his long arms, "my attributes
have all these virtues, and yet you scorn me - you scorn me because of
my station, so you say!"
How she had angered him! All the pent-up gall of years against the
supercilia of the class from which she sprang surged in that moment to
his lips. He bethought him now of the thousand humiliations his proud
spirit had suffered at their hands when he noted the disdain with which
they addressed him, speaking to him - because he was compelled to
carve his living with a quill - as though he were less than mire. It was
not so much against her scorn of him that he voiced his bitter grievance,
but against the entire noblesse of France, which denied him the right to
carry a high head because he had not been born of Madame la
Duchesse, Madame la Marquise, or Madame la Comtesse. All the great
thoughts of a wondrous transformation, which had been sown in him by
the revolutionary philosophers he had devoured with such appreciation,
welled up now, and such scraps of that infinity of thought as could find
utterance he cast before the woman who had scorned him for his station.
Presumptuous he had accounted himself - but only until she had found
him so. By that the presumption, it seemed, had been lifted from him,
and he held that what he had said to her of the love he bore her was no
more than by virtue of