The more carefully he reviewed this knotty question, the more bewildered became the excellent de Brèze. Laudably resolved to delve to the bottom, he left the waiting-maid for the mistress, and observed for the first time that his daughter's welcoming smile was less bright than of yore. On being cross-questioned, she grew grave and reticent, refusing to complain of her husband, and entrenched herself within a proud reserve. "He might be odd, but she preferred him as he was," she declared shortly; would not have him altered by one tittle. Vainly her father pressed her, assured her that he would do nothing that she would not entirely approve. There was naught to be drawn from Gabrielle.
"Well," said the maréchal at last, wistfully sighing, "if I am not to interfere, I won't; but you know that I live only for my child."
"I know you do, dear," she softly answered. "Your anxiety wrings my heart!"
Then rising from her seat, trembling from head to foot, she clasped him in a fond embrace, and seemed about to make a confession. Words trembled on her lips, but whatever they were, she choked them back again, and indulged in delicious tears.
"You have spoilt me so, that I am naughty and capricious," she remarked gaily. "Do you really sufficiently love your little Gabrielle to submit to a wayward whim?"
"When did I deny you anything?" reproachfully replied de Brèze.
"Never; nor will you now, though it is a great slice of property that I require. Will the best of men humour my new fancy? Yes? Well, then, know that I am tired of Paris and its tinsel, and would fain retire to the country."
"You--leave the gaieties of Paris?"
"Yes. The good air and quiet will brace my nerves, untuned by racket, and that explosion of presumptuous wickedness that sacrificed so many lives."
"The storming of the Bastile?" returned the maréchal. "Pshaw! By and bye we will terribly avenge de Launay and his intrepid garrison. What on earth will you do in the country? In a week you'll be petrified with ennui."
"Not at Lorge. Its grimness suits my humour. The children are less strong than I would have them. Freedom in pure air will bring back the roses to their cheeks, and in them you know I am engrossed. My children, oh! my children! What should I have become without them."
The involuntary bitter cry, so eloquent of pain, and so speedily suppressed, clove the bosom of the maréchal.
"She will not tell me or have confidence," he groaned inwardly, "and yet her suffering is great. She must have her way in this as in other things, and God be with her in her travail."
With the delicate tact of a gentleman he let pass the cry unnoticed, and simply said, "What do you wish, my dearest?"
"Lorge," she replied, "no less. What a rapacious greedy soul I must be to rob you of the home of your ancestors!"
"It shall be yours," the maréchal replied, delighted to be able to do something. "I understand that for some reason you desire to take possession and hold the place without interference? Is that so? At my death, it will be yours with all the rest. Meanwhile, I lend it, to do with as you will."
It was an odd fancy. What could be the meaning of the freak? Presently he enquired, "What will your husband do?"
"It was his idea," was the eager rejoinder. "He wishes it, and I am--oh--so very glad! I long to get him away from Paris and its evil influences. Do you know, father?" Gabrielle continued in a grave whisper, "that there are secret meetings he attends, to come home at dawn in a fever. And there are forbidding men who come to see him, whom he evidently does not want to see; such coarse and common men. I don't know what it all is, but it has something to do with that mystical groping after the unattainable which is so weariful, and can only end in madness. To a Christian, such impious presumption is horrible!"
"Then I hold the clue?" cried the old man, much relieved. "It is the prophet who is in your way? You would wean Clovis from Mesmer, turn him from Cagliostro, and carry him to Mass on Sundays?"
The idea was so comically innocent, that de Brèze wheezed with delight. "Sweet pet!" he said, tapping his daughter's cheek archly, "you are earnest if not clever."
And then he went off into a shout of laughter, as he beheld in imagination the daily scene at Lorge. Tête-à-tête in the dreary chateau among the bats and owls, she would drone out Bossuet's sermons to put animal magnetism to flight; perhaps call in the village curé to assist. What a delightful prospect for the husband! How ghastly tiresome is the wife who preaches at her other half; drones out to him scraps out of good books. Well, well. We must not place our finger twixt bark and tree; but if any form of desperation was likely to awake the entranced Clovis (as Toinon had it), a system of moral lecturing on the part of a well-meaning but narrow-minded spouse was about the thing to perform the miracle.
The maréchal trotted home quite pleased, and straightway informed by letter those whom it concerned that henceforth, the Marquise de Gange was to be considered the proprietress of Lorge. Both M. and Madame de Brèze equally loathed the place. If Gabrielle was possessed by the strange fancy of playing chatelaine, in its cobwebbed corridors, let her do so by all means, and convert her husband if she might.
The good maréchal was mistaken. Gabrielle knew better than to worry her husband with importunate readings, but trusted rather for the working of a change to the renewed intimacy which retirement must produce. She never would have dared to propose a hermitage to Clovis, but when he himself suggested a temporary flitting, she thanked heaven as if a prayer had been answered. She could not guess that he was afraid to stop in Paris, and that he was revolving an embryo scheme of closer union with Mesmer. The prophet having been ejected from the land with Maranatha, could not unfortunately bestow his presence or personal assistance. But why should he not send to his pupil some learned adept, well versed in mystic lore who, in sylvan solitude would further instruct the neophyte? Removed from the frivolous court, and secure against being mixed in the treasonable doings of political philanthropists, his mind would be in a condition of receptivity, and his studies would make giant strides.
Poor Gabrielle! She had said to herself with a choking heart-leap that, removed from pernicious influences, she and the cherubs would wind fond webs about him, and win him from indifference to love. Alas! Poor simple yearning wife!
CHAPTER IV.
THE CHATEAU OF "LORGE."
In Touraine, midway between Tours and Blois, the venerable chateau of Lorge stands out from a wooded background, bathing its feet in the swiftly flowing Loire, morosely contemplating the details of its grim reflection. Profoundly interesting from an archæological point of view, the historic pile is not a lively dwelling, and it is no wonder that the jolly old maréchal should have ungrudgingly passed it to his daughter. Privileged to occupy a place in one of the most smiling provinces of France, it is within a drive of Amboise on one side and Chinon on the other, dignified castles both; and not very far away is Diane de Poictier's Chenonceaux, whimsically spanning a river, a specimen of elfin architecture straight from fairyland. Lorge dates from the iron period; not the time of prehistoric man, who had recently blossomed out of monkeydom, but of the early mediæval barons, who slept in their armour--as they still do on their tombs--whose pet pastimes were the cleaving of pates and the quaffing of usquebaugh.
With the march of centuries Amboise, Chinon, and the rest found it advisable to polish themselves up, and modify their native harshness to be in touch with less rugged epochs; but no coaxing ingenuity of architect or landscape gardener