CHAPTER XXII
WARS WITHIN THE BREAST
The next morning came in frigid and gray. The unseasonable numeralswhich the meteorologist recorded in his tables might have provoked asuperstitious lover of better weather to suppose that Monsieur Danny,the head imp of discord, had been among the aerial currents. Thepassionate southern sky, looking down and seeing some six thousand toseventy-five hundred of her favorite children disconcerted andshivering, tried in vain, for two hours, to smile upon them with alittle frozen sunshine, and finally burst into tears.
In thus giving way to despondency, it is sad to say, the sky was closelyimitating the simultaneous behavior of Aurora Nancanou. Never was prettylady in cheerier mood than that in which she had come home from Honore'scounting-room. Hard would it be to find the material with which to buildagain the castles-in-air that she founded upon two or three littlediscoveries there made. Should she tell them to Clotilde? Ah! and forwhat? No, Clotilde was a dear daughter--ha! few women were capable ofhaving such a daughter as Clotilde; but there were things about whichshe was entirely too scrupulous. So, when she came in from that errandprofoundly satisfied that she would in future hear no more about therent than she might choose to hear, she had been too shrewd to exposeherself to her daughter's catechising. She would save her littlerevelations for disclosure when they might be used to advantage. As shethrew her bonnet upon the bed, she exclaimed, in a tone of gentle andwearied reproach:
"Why did you not remind me that M. Honore Grandissime, that precioussomebody-great, has the honor to rejoice in a quadroon half-brother ofthe same illustrious name? Why did you not remind me, eh?"
"Ah! and you know it as well as A, B, C," playfully retorted Clotilde.
"Well, guess which one is our landlord?"
"Which one?"
"_Ma foi_! how do _I_ know? I had to wait a shameful long time to see_Monsieur le prince_,--just because I am a De Grapion, I know. When atlast I saw him, he says, 'Madame, this is the other Honore Grandissime.'There, you see we are the victims of a conspiracy; if I go to the other,he will send me back to the first. But, Clotilde, my darling," cried thebeautiful speaker, beamingly, "dismiss all fear and care; we shall haveno more trouble about it."
"And how, indeed, do you know that?"
"Something tells it to me in my ear. I feel it! Trust in Providence, mychild. Look at me, how happy I am; but you--you never trust inProvidence. That is why we have so much trouble,--because you don'ttrust in Providence. Oh! I am so hungry, let us have dinner."
"What sort of a person is M. Grandissime in his appearance?" askedClotilde, over their feeble excuse for a dinner.
"What sort? Do you imagine I had nothing better to do than noticewhether a Grandissime is good-looking or not? For all I know to thecontrary, he is--some more rice, please, my dear."
But this light-heartedness did not last long. It was based on anunutterable secret, all her own, about which she still had tremblingdoubts; this, too, notwithstanding her consultation of the dark oracles.She was going to stop that. In the long run, these charms and spellsthemselves bring bad luck. Moreover, the practice, indulged in toexcess, was wicked, and she had promised Clotilde,--that droll littlesaint,--to resort to them no more. Hereafter, she should do nothing ofthe sort, except, to be sure, to take such ordinary precautions againstmisfortune as casting upon the floor a little of whatever she might beeating or drinking to propitiate M. Assonquer. She would have liked,could she have done it without fear of detection, to pour upon the frontdoor-sill an oblation of beer sweetened with black molasses to PapaLebat (who keeps the invisible keys of all the doors that admitsuitors), but she dared not; and then, the hound would surely havelicked it up. Ah me! was she forgetting that she was a widow?
She was in poor plight to meet the all but icy gray morning; and, tomake her misery still greater, she found, on dressing, that an accidenthad overtaken her, which she knew to be a trustworthy sign of love growncold. She had lost--alas! how can we communicate it in English!--a smallpiece of lute-string ribbon, about _so long_, which she used for--not anecktie exactly, but--
And she hunted and hunted, and couldn't bear to give up the search, andsat down to breakfast and ate nothing, and rose up and searched again(not that she cared for the omen), and struck the hound with the broom,and broke the broom, and hunted again, and looked out the front window,and saw the rain beginning to fall, and dropped into a chair--crying,"Oh! Clotilde, my child, my child! the rent collector will be hereSaturday and turn us into the street!" and so fell a-weeping.
A little tear-letting lightened her unrevealable burden, and she rose,rejoicing that Clotilde had happened to be out of eye-and-ear-shot. Thescanty fire in the fireplace was ample to warm the room; the fire withinher made it too insufferably hot! Rain or no rain, she parted thewindow-curtains and lifted the sash. What a mark for Love's arrow shewas, as, at the window, she stretched her two arms upward! And, "rightso," who should chance to come cantering by, the big drops of rainpattering after him, but the knightliest man in that old town, and thefittest to perfect the fine old-fashioned poetry of the scene!
"Clotilde," said Aurora, turning from her mirror, whither she hadhastened to see if her face showed signs of tears (Clotilde was enteringthe room), "we shall never be turned out of this house by HonoreGrandissime!"
"Why?" asked Clotilde, stopping short in the floor, forgetting Aurora'strust in Providence, and expecting to hear that M. Grandissime had beenfound dead in his bed.
"Because I saw him just now; he rode by on horseback. A man with thatnoble face could never _do such a thing_!"
The astonished Clotilde looked at her mother searchingly. This sort ofspeech about a Grandissime? But Aurora was the picture of innocence.
Clotilde uttered a derisive laugh.
"_Impertinente_!" exclaimed the other, laboring not to join in it.
"Ah-h-h!" cried Clotilde, in the same mood, "and what face had he whenhe wrote that letter?"
"What face?"
"Yes, what face?"
"I do not know what face you mean," said Aurora.
"What face," repeated Clotilde, "had Monsieur Honore de Grandissime onthe day that he wrote--"
"Ah, f-fah!" cried Aurora, and turned away, "you don't know what you aretalking about! You make me wish sometimes that I were dead!"
Clotilde had gone and shut down the sash, as it began to rain hard andblow. As she was turning away, her eye was attracted by an object ata distance.
"What is it?" asked Aurora, from a seat before the fire.
"Nothing," said Clotilde, weary of the sensational,--"a man in therain."
It was the apothecary of the rue Royale, turning from that street towardthe rue Bourbon, and bowing his head against the swirling norther.