Part 41

Raphael, still pretending to read his paper, furtively watched Pauline with the cat--his Pauline, in the dressing-gown that hung carelessly about her; his Pauline, with her hair loose on her shoulders, with a tiny, white, blue-veined foot peeping out of a velvet slipper. It was pleasant to see her in this negligent dress; she was delightful as some fanciful picture by Westall; half-girl, half-woman, as she seemed to be, or perhaps more of a girl than a woman, there was no alloy in the happiness she enjoyed, and of love she knew as yet only its first ecstasy. When Raphael, absorbed in happy musing, had forgotten the existence of the newspaper, Pauline flew upon it, crumpled it up into a ball, and threw it out into the garden; the kitten sprang after the rotating object, which spun round and round, as politics are wont to do. This childish scene recalled Raphael to himself. He would have gone on reading, and felt for the sheet he no longer possessed. Joyous laughter rang out like the song of a bird, one peal leading to another.

“I am quite jealous of the paper,” she said, as she wiped away the tears that her childlike merriment had brought into her eyes. “Now, is it not a heinous offence,” she went on, as she became a woman all at once, “to read Russian proclamations in my presence, and to attend to the prosings of the Emperor Nicholas rather than to looks and words of love!”

“I was not reading, my dear angel; I was looking at you.”

Just then the gravel walk outside the conservatory rang with the sound of the gardener’s heavily nailed boots.

“I beg your pardon, my Lord Marquis--and yours, too, madame--if I am intruding, but I have brought you a curiosity the like of which I never set eyes on. Drawing a bucket of water just now, with due respect, I got out this strange salt-water plant. Here it is. It must be thoroughly used to water, anyhow, for it isn’t saturated or even damp at all. It is as dry as a piece of wood, and has not swelled a bit. As my Lord Marquis certainly knows a great deal more about things than I do, I thought I ought to bring it, and that it would interest him.”

Therewith the gardener showed Raphael the inexorable piece of skin; there were barely six square inches of it left.

“Thanks, Vaniere,” Raphael said. “The thing is very curious.”

“What is the matter with you, my angel; you are growing quite white!” Pauline cried.

“You can go, Vaniere.”

“Your voice frightens me,” the girl went on; “it is so strangely altered. What is it? How are you feeling? Where is the pain? You are in pain!--Jonathan! here! call a doctor!” she cried.

“Hush, my Pauline,” Raphael answered, as he regained composure. “Let us get up and go. Some flower here has a scent that is too much for me. It is that verbena, perhaps.”

Pauline flew upon the innocent plant, seized it by the stalk, and flung it out into the garden; then, with all the might of the love between them, she clasped Raphael in a close embrace, and with languishing coquetry raised her red lips to his for a kiss.

“Dear angel,” she cried, “when I saw you turn so white, I understood that I could not live on without you; your life is my life too. Lay your hand on my back, Raphael mine; I feel a chill like death. The feeling of cold is there yet. Your lips are burning. How is your hand?--Cold as ice,” she added.

“Mad girl!” exclaimed Raphael.

“Why that tear? Let me drink it.”

“O Pauline, Pauline, you love me far too much!”

“There is something very extraordinary going on in your mind, Raphael! Do not dissimulate. I shall very soon find out your secret. Give that to me,” she went on, taking the Magic Skin.

“You are my executioner!” the young man exclaimed, glancing in horror at the talisman.

“How changed your voice is!” cried Pauline, as she dropped the fatal symbol of destiny.

“Do you love me?” he asked.

“Do I love you? Is there any doubt?”

“Then, leave me, go away!”

The poor child went.

“So!” cried Raphael, when he was alone. “In an enlightened age, when we have found out that diamonds are a crystallized form of charcoal, at a time when everything is made clear, when the police would hale a new Messiah before the magistrates, and submit his miracles to the Academie des Sciences--in an epoch when we no longer believe in anything but a notary’s signature--that I, forsooth, should believe in a sort of Mene, Tekel, Upharsin! No, by Heaven, I will not believe that the Supreme Being would take pleasure in torturing a harmless creature.--Let us see the learned about it.”

Between the Halle des Vins, with its extensive assembly of barrels, and the Salpetriere, that extensive seminary of drunkenness, lies a small pond, which Raphael soon reached. All sorts of ducks of rare varieties were there disporting themselves; their colored markings shone in the sun like the glass in cathedral windows. Every kind of duck in the world was represented, quacking, dabbling, and moving about--a kind of parliament of ducks assembled against its will, but luckily without either charter or political principles, living in complete immunity from sportsmen, under the eyes of any naturalist that chanced to see them.

“That is M. Lavrille,” said one of the keepers to Raphael, who had asked for that high priest of zoology.

The Marquis saw a short man buried in profound reflections, caused by the appearance of a pair of ducks. The man of science was middle-aged; he had a pleasant face, made pleasanter still by a kindly expression, but an absorption in scientific ideas engrossed his whole person. His peruke was strangely turned up, by being constantly raised to scratch his head; so that a line of white hair was left plainly visible, a witness to an enthusiasm for investigation, which, like every other strong passion, so withdraws us from mundane considerations, that we lose all consciousness of the “I” within us. Raphael, the student and man of science, looked respectfully at the naturalist, who devoted his nights to enlarging the limits of human knowledge, and whose very errors reflected glory upon France; but a she-coxcomb would have laughed, no doubt, at the break of continuity between the breeches and striped waistcoat worn by the man of learning; the interval, moreover, was modestly filled by a shirt which had been considerably creased, for he stooped and raised himself by turns, as his zoological observations required.

After the first interchange of civilities, Raphael thought it necessary to pay M. Lavrille a banal compliment upon his ducks.