"I wish that no one might enter this dear garret again, my Raphael,"said Pauline, after two hours of silence.
"We must have the door walled up, put bars across the window, and buy the house," the Marquis answered.
"Yes, we will," she said. Then a moment later she added: "Our search for your manus has been a little lost sight of," and they both laughed like children.
"Pshaw! I don't care a jot for the whole circle of the sciences,"Raphael answered.
"Ah, sir, and how about glory?"
"I glory in you alone."
"You used to be very miserable as you made these little scratches and scrawls," she said, turning the papers over.
"My Pauline----"
"Oh yes, I am your Pauline--and what then?"
"Where are you living now?"
"In the Rue Saint Lazare. And you?"
"In the Rue de Varenne."
"What a long way apart we shall be until----" She stopped, and looked at her lover with a mischievous and coquettish expression.
"But at the most we need only be separated for a fortnight," Raphael answered.
"Really! we are to be married in a fortnight?" and she jumped for joy like a child.
"I am an unnatural daughter!" she went on. "I give no more thought to my father or my mother, or to anything in the world. Poor love, you don't know that my father is very ill? He returned from the Indies in very bad health. He nearly died at Havre, where we went to find him.
Good heavens!" she cried, looking at her watch; "it is three o'clock already! I ought to be back again when he wakes at four. I am mistress of the house at home; my mother does everything that I wish, and my father worships me; but I will not abuse their kindness, that would be wrong. My poor father! He would have me go to the Italiens yesterday.
You will come to see him to-morrow, will you not?""Will Madame la Marquise de Valentin honor me by taking my arm?""I am going to take the key of this room away with me," she said.
"Isn't our treasure-house a palace?"
"One more kiss, Pauline."
"A thousand, MON DIEU!" she said, looking at Raphael. "Will it always be like this? I feel as if I were dreaming."They went slowly down the stairs together, step for step, with arms closely linked, trembling both of them beneath their load of joy. Each pressing close to the other's side, like a pair of doves, they reached the Place de la Sorbonne, where Pauline's carriage was waiting.
"I want to go home with you," she said. "I want to see your own room and your study, and to sit at the table where you work. It will be like old times," she said, blushing.
She spoke to the servant. "Joseph, before returning home I am going to the Rue de Varenne. It is a quarter-past three now, and I must be back by four o'clock. George must hurry the horses." And so in a few moments the lovers came to Valentin's abode.
"How glad I am to have seen all this for myself!" Pauline cried, creasing the silken bed-curtains in Raphael's room between her fingers. "As I go to sleep, I shall be here in thought. I shall imagine your dear head on the pillow there. Raphael, tell me, did no one advise you about the furniture of your hotel?""No one whatever."
"Really? It was not a woman who----"
"Pauline!"
"Oh, I know I am fearfully jealous. You have good taste. I will have a bed like yours to-morrow."Quite beside himself with happiness, Raphael caught Pauline in his arms.
"Oh, my father!" she said; "my father----"
"I will take you back to him," cried Valentin, "for I want to be away from you as little as possible.""How loving you are! I did not venture to suggest it----""Are you not my life?"
It would be tedious to set down accurately the charming prattle of the lovers, for tones and looks and gestures that cannot be rendered alone gave it significance. Valentin went back with Pauline to her own door, and returned with as much happiness in his heart as mortal man can know.
When he was seated in his armchair beside the fire, thinking over the sudden and complete way in which his wishes had been fulfilled, a cold shiver went through him, as if the blade of a dagger had been plunged into his breast--he thought of the Magic Skin, and saw that it had shrunk a little. He uttered the most tremendous of French oaths, without any of the Jesuitical reservations made by the Abbess of Andouillettes, leant his head against the back of the chair, and sat motionless, fixing his unseeing eyes upon the bracket of the curtain pole.
"Good God!" he cried; "every wish! Every desire of mine! Poor Pauline!----"He took a pair of compasses and measured the extent of existence that the morning had cost him.
"I have scarcely enough for two months!" he said.
A cold sweat broke out over him; moved by an ungovernable spasm of rage, he seized the Magic Skin, exclaiming:
"I am a perfect fool!"
He rushed out of the house and across the garden, and flung the talisman down a well.
"Vogue la galere," cried he. "The devil take all this nonsense."So Raphael gave himself up to the happiness of being beloved, and led with Pauline the life of heart and heart. Difficulties which it would be somewhat tedious to describe had delayed their marriage, which was to take place early in March. Each was sure of the other; their affection had been tried, and happiness had taught them how strong it was. Never has love made two souls, two natures, so absolutely one.
The more they came to know of each other, the more they loved. On either side there was the same hesitating delicacy, the same transports of joy such as angels know; there were no clouds in their heaven; the will of either was the other's law.
Wealthy as they both were, they had not a caprice which they could not gratify, and for that reason had no caprices. A refined taste, a feeling for beauty and poetry, was instinct in the soul of the bride;her lover's smile was more to her than all the pearls of Ormuz. She disdained feminine finery; a muslin dress and flowers formed her most elaborate toilette.
