Memoirs of a Physician (4 page)

” It is true,” sighed Gilbert, ” I am weak ; I know it.”

“Well, then, take repose, and above all, mentally. You are the guest of a man whom all men obey, except his guest.”

Eousseau, delighted at this delicate compliment from so great a man, took his hand and pressed it.

” And then,” continued M. de Jussieu, ” you will be-come an object of particular care to the king and the princes.”

” I ! ” exclaimed Gilbert.

” You, a poor victim of that unfortunate evening. The dauphin, when he heard the news, uttered cries of grief ; and the dauphiness, who was going to Marly, remained at Trianon, to be more within reach of the unfortunate sufferers.”

” Oh, indeed ! ” said Eousseau.

” Yes, my dear philosopher, and nothing is spoken of but the letter written by the dauphin to Monsieur de Sartines.”

“I have not heard of it.”

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“It is at once simple and touching. The dauphin receives a monthly pension of two thousand crowns. This morning his month’s income had not been paid. The prince walked to and fro quite alarmed, asked for the treasurer several times, and as soon as the latter brought him the money, sent it instantly to Paris, with two charming lines to Monsieur de Sartiues, who has just shown them to me.”

” Ah, then you have seen Monsieur de Sartines to-day ? ” said Eousseau, with a kind of uneasiness, or rather distrust.

” Yes, I have just left him,” replied M. Jussieu, rather embarrassed. ” I had to ask him for some seeds. So that,” added he, quickly, ” the dauphiness remained at Versailles to tend her sick and wounded.”

” Her sick snd wounded ? ” asked Eousseau.

” Yes ; Monsieur Gilbert is not the only one who has suffered. This time the lower classes have only paid a partial quota to the accident ; it is said that there are many noble persons among the wounded.

Gilbert listened with inexpressible eagerness and anxiety, It seemed to him that every moment the name of Andre would be pronounced by the illustrious naturalist. But M. de Jussieu rose.

” So our consultation is over ?” said Eousseau.

” And henceforward oar science will be useless with regard to this young invalid ; air, moderate exercise, the woo ds all ! by the by, I was forgetting

” What ? “

” Next Sunday I am to make a botanical excursion to the forest of Marly ; will you accompany me, my illustrious fellow-laborer ? “

” Oh ! ” replied Eousseau, ” say, rather,, your unworthy admirer.”

” Parbleu ! that will be a fine opportunity for giving our invalid a walk. Bring him.”

“So far ?”

” The distance is nothing ; besides, my carriage takes me as far as Bougival, and 1 can give you a seat. We

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will go by the Princess’s Koad to Luciennes, and from thence proceed to Marly. Botanists stop every moment , our invalid will carry our camp-stools ; you and I will gather samples, he will gather health.”

” What an amiable man you are, my dear Jussieu ! ” said Rousseau.

“Never mind; it is for my own interest. You have, I know, a great work ready upon mosses, and as I am feeling my way a little on the same subject, you will guide me.”

” Oh ! ” exclaimed Rousseau, whose satisfaction was apparent in spite of himself.

” And when there.” added the botanist, “we shall have a little breakfast in the open air, and shall enjoy the shade and the beautiful flowers. It is settled ? “

” Oh, certainly.”

” For Sunday, then ?”

” Delightful. It seems to me as if I were fifteen again. I revel beforehand in all the pleasure I have in prospect ‘ replied Rousseau, with almost childish satisfaction.

“And you, my young friend, must get stronger on your legs in the meantime.”

Gilbert stammered out some words of thanks, which M. Jussieu did not hear, and the two botantists left Gilbert alone with his thoughts, and above all with his fears.

CHAPTER IV.

LIFE RETURN’S.

IN the meantime, while Rousseau believed his invalid to be on the high-road to health, and while Therese informed all her neighbors that, thanks to the prescriptions of the learned doctor, M. de Jussieu, Gilbert was entirely out of danger during this period of general confidence the young man incurred the worst danger he had yet run, by his obstinacy and his perpetual reveries. Rousseau could not be so confident, but that he entertained in his

2 DUMAS VOL. VII.

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inmost thoughts a distrust solidly founded on philosophical reasonings.

Knowing Gilbert to be in love, and having caught him in open rebellion to medical authority, he judged that he would again commit the same faults if he gave him too much liberty. Therefore, like a good father, he had closed the padlock of Gilbert’s attic more carefully than ever, tacitly permitting him meanwhile to go to the win-dow, but carefully preventing his crossing the threshold. It may easily be imagined what rage this solicitude, which changed his garret into a prison, aroused in Gilbert’s breast, and what hosts of projects crowded his teeming brain. To many minds constraint is fruitful in inventions. Gilbert now thought only of Andre, of the happiness of seeing and watching over the progress of her convalescence, even from afar ; but Andre did not appear at the windows of the pavilion, and Gilbert, when he fixed his ardent and searching looks on the opposite apartments, or surveyed every nook and corner of the building, could only see Nicole carrying the invalid’s draught on a porcelain plate, or M. de Taverney surveying the garden and vigorously taking snuff as if to clear and refresh his intellect. Still these details tranqnilized him, for they betokened illness but not death.

” There,” thought he, ‘ ‘ beyond that door, behind that blind, breathes, sighs, and suffers she whom I adore, whom I idolize she whose very sight would cause the perspiration to stand upon my forehead and make my limbs tremble she to whose existence mine is forever riveted she for whom alone I breathe and live ! “

And then, leaning forward out of his window so that the inquisitive Chon thought, twenty times in an hour, that he would throw himself out Gilbert with his practised eye took the measure of the partitions of the floors, of the depth of the pavilion, and constructed an exact plan of them in his brain. There M. de Taveruey slept ; there must be the kitchen ; there Philip’s apartments ; there the cabinet occupied by Nicole ; and, last of all, there must be Andre’s chamber the sanctuary at

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the door of which he would have given his life to remain for one day kneeling.

This sanctuary, according to Gilbert’s plan, was a large apartment on the ground floor, guarded by an antecham- ber, from which opened a small cabinet with a glass door, which, agreeably to Gilbert’s arrangement, served as Nicole’s sleeping-chamber.

” Oh ! ” exclaimed the excited youth in his fits of jealous fury, ” how happy are the beings who are privileged to walk in the garden on which my window and those of the staircase look. How happy those thoughtless mortals who tread the gravel of the parterre ! for there, during the silence of night, may be heard Mademoiselle Andre’s plaints and sighs.”

Between the formation of a wish and its accomplish-ment there is a wide gulf ; but fertile imaginations can throw a bridge across. They can find the real in the impossible they know how to cross the broadest rivers and scale the highest mountains, by a plan peculiarly their own.

For the first few days Gilbert contented himself with wishing. Then he reflected that these much-envied, happy beings were simple mortals, endowed as he was, with limbs to tread the soil of the garden, and with arms to open the doors. Then, by degrees, he pictured to himself the happiness there would be in secretly gliding into this forbidden house in pressing his ears against the Venetian blinds through which the sounds from the interior were, as it were, filtered. With Gilbert wishing did not long suffice ; the fulfilment must be immediate.

Besides, his strength returned rapidly ; youth is fruitful and rich. At the end of three days, his veins still throbbing with feverish excitement, Gilbert felt himself as strong as he had ever been in his life.

He calculated that, as Rousseau had locked him in, one of the greatest difficulties that of obtaining an entrance into the hotel of the Taverneys by the street-door was placed out of the question ; for, as the entrance-door opened upon the Rue Coq Heron, and as Gilbert was

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locked up in the Rue Plastriere, he could not of course reach any street, and had therefore no need to open any doors. There remained the windows. That of his garret looked down upon a perpendicular wall of forty-eight feet iu depth.

No one, unless he were drunk or mad, would venture to descend it. ” Oh ! those doors are happy inventions after all,” thought he, clinching his hands, “and yet Monsieur Rousseau, a philosopher, locks them ! “

To break the padlock ! That would be easily done ; but if so, adieu to the hospitable roof which had sheltered him.

To escape from Luciennes, from the Rue Plastriere, from Taverney always to escape, would be to render himself unable to look a single creature in the face without fearing to meet the reproach of ingratitude.

” No ! ” thought he, ” Monsieur Rousseau shall know nothing of it.”

Leaning out of his window, Gilbert continued :

” With my hands and my legs, those instruments granted to free men by nature, I will creep along the tiles, and, keeping in the spout which is narrow indeed, but straight, and therefore the direct road from one end to the other I shall arrive, if I get on so far, at the skylight parallel to this. Now, this skylight belongs to the stairs. If I do not reach so far, I shall fall into the garden ; that will make a noise, people will hasten from the pavilion, will raise me up, will recognize me, and I die nobly, poetically, pitied ! That would be glorious !

” If I arrive, as everything leads me to believe I shall, I will creep in under the skylight over the stairs, and descend barefooted to the first story, the window of which also opens in the garden, at fifteen feet from the ground. I jump. Alas, my strength, my activity are gone ! It is true that there is an espalier to assist me. Yes, but this espalier with its rotten framework will break ; I shall tumble down, not killed nobly and poetically, but whitened with plaster, my clothes torn, ashamed, and looking as if I had come to rob the orchard ! Odious thought ! Mon-MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN. 29

sieur de Taverney will order the porter to flog me, or La Brie to pull my ears.

” No ! 1 have here twenty pack-threads, which, twisted together, will make a rope according to Monsieur Rousseau’s definition that many straws make a sheaf. I shall borrow all these pack-threads from Madame Therese for one night. I shall knot them together, and when I have reached the window on the first floor, I shall let the rope to the little balcony, or even to the lead, and slip down into the garden.” .

When Gilbert had inspected the spout, attached and measured the cords, and calculated the height by his eye, he felt himself strong and determined.

He twisted the pieces of twine together, and made a tolerably strong rope of them, then tried his strength by hanging to a beam in his garret, and, happy to find that he had only spat blood once during his efforts, he decided upon the nocturnal expedition.

The better to hoodwink M. Jacques and Therese, he counterfeited illness, and kept his bed until two o’clock, at which time Rousseau went out for his dinner walk and did not return till the evening. When Rousseau paid a visit to his attic, before setting out, Gilbert announced to him his wish of sleeping until the next morning ; to which Rousseau replied that as he had made an engagement to sup from home that evening he was happy to find Gilbert inclined to rest.

With these mutual explanations they separated. When Rousseau was gone, Gilbert brought out his pack-threads again, and this time he twisted them permanently.

He again examined the spout and the tiles ; then placed himself at the window to keep watch on the garden until evening.

30 MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN.

CHAPTER V.

THE AERIAL TRIP.

GILBERT was now prepared for his entrance into the enemy’s camp, for thus he mentally termed M. de Taverney’s ground, and from his window he explored the gar-den with the care and attention of a skilful strategist, who is about to give battle, when in his calm and motionless mansion, an incident occurred which attracted the philosopher’s attention.

A stone flew over the garden wall and struck against the angle of the house. Gilbert, who had already learned that there can be no effect without a cause, determined to discover the cause, having seen the effect.

But although he leaned out as fur as possible, he could not discover the person in the street who had thrown the stone. However, he immediately comprehended that this maneuver had reference to an event which just then took place ; one of the outside shutters of the ground floor opened cautiously, and through the opening appeared Nicole’s head.

On seeing Xicole Gilbert made a plunge back in his gar-ret, but without losing sight of the nimble young girl. The latter, after throwing a stealthy glance at all the windows, particularly at those of the pavilion, emerged from her hiding-place and ran toward the garden, as if going to the espalier where some lace was drying in the sun. It was on the path which led toward the espalier that the stone had fallen, and neither Xicole nor Gilbert lost sight of it. Gilbert saw her kick this stone which, for the moment, became of such great importance before her several times, and she continued this maneuver until she reached the flower border, in which the espalier stood. Once there, Nicole raised her hands to take down the lace, let fall some of it, and, in picking it up again, seized the stone.

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As yet Gilbert could understand nothing of this movement, but seeing Nicole pick up the stone as a greedy schoolboy picks up a nut, and unroll a slip of paper which was tied round it, he at once guessed the degree of importance which was attached to the aerolite.