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Charles de Marigny arrived the following
afternoon. Aurore had been full of eager joy to see him. All morning
she had been busy in the apartment of the Rue de la Monnaie, putting
it to rights, making it look as comfortable and as gay as she
could. The house was at the end of the street, and the windows
of the parlour commanded a beautiful view over the Grande Place,
the Ducal Palace, and the river beyond. The room was flooded with
sunshine.
After an exceptionally severe winter the spring had come in early,
with warm days and an absence of cold winds. The shrubs in the
gardens of the Palace were covered with tender green. Lilac, syringa,
and jasmine were in bud. Aurore went about her task humming the
old chansons:
"Il était une Bergère, et ron - et ron, petit Pataplon!"
and
"Nuage, beau Nuage, qui passe Triomphant!"
She couldn't sit still. At every sound of wheels or clatter of hoofs she ran to the window to see if the carriole was in sight.
But at sight of her father her high spirits quickly sank. Looking
down on him from the window, as he got out of the carriole, he
appeared to her to be years older. She ran down, and he embraced
her with passionate effusion, but the very next moment he pushed
her away from him as if the sight of her horrified him. He followed
her upstairs, however, leaving Pierre and Jeannette to deal with
the carriole and luggage. He did not so much as give a glance
round the sunlit room, but threw himself into a chair like a man
wearied to death. He had not yet uttered a single word.
Aurore came and knelt down beside him. She would not admit to
herself how appalled and disappointed she was. She, who had been
the apple of her father's eye, felt as if he were a stranger to
her, a stranger whom she almost feared. Her anxious glance searched
the face that she had loved so dearly, vainly seeking for that
expression of almost passionate tenderness wherewith he had been
wont to regard her. But now there was a kind of fierce glitter
in his eyes which would suddenly die down and give place to a
dull, vacant stare. Aurore felt intensely sorry for him, for his
face betrayed the suffering which he must have endured throughout
this long autumn and winter, brooding over his wrongs, all alone
up at Marigny, and seeing the horrors and the outrage of this
terrible revolution pass like a nightmare before his eyes.
He said very little that first afternoon, and never once touched
upon his daughter's marriage or asked either after her husband
or the kind friends in whose house she was staying.
But the next day he appeared more loquacious, was apparently
happy at the thought that he would no longer be parted from his
darling little Aurore, and fell in with all her plans for spending
as much time together as possible. They would drive out into the
country, or go up the river, and they would spend long evenings
together, talking over old times.
He spoke quite rationally, but Aurore could not help noticing
that his movements were jerky and that while he talked his hands
kept on shaking and his fingers fidgeting with anything that was
handy. And suddenly he mentioned André Vallon by name,
quite dispassionately at first. Aurore was at her favourite place
on a low stool beside his chair, with one arm over his knees.
He took hold of her hand, and she noticed that his was burning
hot. Carefully, insidiously, he invited her confidence.
"Tell me, my little Aurore," he said, and his tone
was gentle and soothing. "Don't be afraid to tell me how
unhappy you are. I know you are unhappy, my beloved child, but
our troubles always seem less, you know, when we tell of them
to a sympathetic ear."
"When you were little," he went on, as Aurore made
some evasive reply, "I was your mother as well as your father.
You used to tell me everything - all your childish troubles. Tell
me your troubles now, my darling. Tell me everything. That cruel,
inhuman beast! I'd like to know to what lengths his brutality
could go."
And as Aurore still continued to parry his direct questions he
put down her reticence to the desire to spare him pain. His tone
became more insinuating still, and a look of deep cunning came
into his eyes. He leaned forward in his chair till his mouth nearly
touched her ear.
"I'll rid you of him, my little Aurore," he whispered.
"I have thought it all out. That's why I consented to come
to this miserable hole. You trust me. I know! I know just what
to do. You needn't tell me anything. I can guess. The brute! The
beggarly knave! I know! But I'll rid you of him. Never fear!"
Aurore did all she could to soothe him, but, in spite of herself,
her heart was filled with a great and nameless dread. There was
something dangerous in the fanaticism of her father's hatred,
and although the Mignets and André himself did all they
could to reassure her, she had the growing conviction that there
was method in her father's apparent madness. He took to roaming
about the streets for hours at a time, and Jeannette told Aurore
that when he returned he usually brought back with him a lot of
news sheets over which he pored and pondered for the rest of the
day. Jeannette and Pierre both said that Monseigneur slept very
little; they heard him pacing up and down the room half the night
through and muttering to himself. Aurore questioned the two faithful
souls as to what Monseigneur said when he muttered like that,
but it seemed that those mutterings were mostly unintelligible;
the only words they ever heard clearly were: "Quite simple
- quite easy! That is what I must do," which certainly did
not tend to reassure Aurore.
One day, when she came to see the old man, Jeannette told her
that he had just gone out, but had spent all morning poring over
some news sheets. One in particular he had been intent on for
more than an hour, Jeannette said; it was still lying on the table
beside his chair. Aurore went into the parlour and had a look
at the news sheet. It was an old number of the Moniteur,
bearing a date in September of last year. it contained the full
text of Merlin's abominable "Loi Relatif aux Gens Suspects."
The Law of the Suspect! Obviously, De Marigny had been perusing
it; the page with the text lay uppermost; there were notes in
the margin in his handwriting. Certain passages were underlined;
for instance:
Art I: Immediately after the publication of this Decree, all suspected persons on the territory of the Republic who are still at large will be arrested.
And below that there was:
Are reputed suspect I°: Those who, either by their conduct or by their relations with former tyrants or aristos.
And the last have dozen words were underlined.
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