The Wandering Jew Part 218

"Oh, my friend!" cried the girl, interrupting Agricola, with tears of joy: "I cannot tell you what I feel, when I hear you call me Magdalen.

It is so sweet, so soothing, that my heart expands with delight."

"Poor girl! how dreadfully she must have suffered!" cried the smith, with inexpressible emotion, "when she displays so much happiness, so much grat.i.tude, at being called by her own poor name!"

"But consider, my friend; that word in your mouth contains a new life for me. If you only knew what hopes, what pleasures I can now see gleaming in the future! If you knew all the cherished longings of my tenderness! Your wife, the charming Angela, with her angel face and angel-soul--oh! in my turn, I can say to, you, 'Look at me, and see how sweet that name is to my lips and heart!' Yes, your charming, your good Angela will call me Magdalen--and your children, Agricola, your children!--dear little creatures!--to them also I shall be Magdalen--their good Magdalen--and the love I shall bear them will make them mine, as well as their mother's--and I shall have my part in every maternal care--and they will belong to us three; will they not, Agricola?--Oh! let me, let me weep! These tears without bitterness do me so much good; they are tears that need not be concealed. Thank heaven!

thank you, my friend! those other tears are I trust dried forever."

For some seconds, this affecting scene had been overlooked by an invisible witness. The smith and Mother Bunch had not perceived Mdlle.

de Cardoville standing on the threshold of the door. As Mother Bunch had said, this day, which dawned with all under such fatal auspices, had become for all a day of ineffable felicity. Adrienne, too, was full of joy, for Djalma had been faithful to her, Djalma loved her with pa.s.sion.

The odious appearances, of which she had been the dupe and victim, evidently formed part of a new plot of Rodin, and it only remained for Mdlle. de Cardoville to discover the end of these machinations.

Another joy was reserved for her. The happy are quick in detecting happiness in others, and Adrienne guessed, by the hunchback's last words, that there was no longer any secret between the smith and the sempstress. She could not therefore help exclaiming, as she entered: "Oh! this will be the brightest day of my life, for I shall not be happy alone!"

Agricola and Mother Bunch turned round hastily. "Lady," said the smith, "in spite of the promise I made you, I could not conceal from Magdalen that I knew she loved me!"

"Now that I no longer blush for this love before Agricola, why should I blush for it before you, lady, that told me to be proud of it, because it is n.o.ble and pure?" said Mother Bunch, to whom her happiness gave strength enough to rise, and to lean upon Agricola's arm.

"It is well, my friend," said Adrienne, as she threw her arms round her to support her; "only one word, to excuse the indiscretion with which you will perhaps reproach me. If I told your secret to M. Agricola--"

"Do you know why it was, Magdalen?" cried the smith, interrupting Adrienne. "It was only another proof of the lady's delicate generosity.

'I long hesitate to confide to you this secret,' said she to me this morning, 'but I have at length made up my mind to it. We shall probably find your adopted sister; you have been to her the best of brothers: but many times, without knowing it, you have wounded her feelings cruelly--and now that you know her secret, I trust in your kind heart to keep it faithfully, and so spare the poor child a thousand pangs--pangs the more bitter, because they come from you, and are suffered in silence. Hence, when you speak to her of your wife, your domestic happiness, take care not to gall that n.o.ble and tender heart.'--Yes, Magdalen, these were the reasons that led the lady to commit what she called an indiscretion."

"I want words to thank you now and ever," said Mother Bunch.

"See, my friend," replied Adrienne, "how often the designs of the wicked turn against themselves. They feared your devotion to me, and therefore employed that unhappy Florine to steal your journal--"

"So as to drive me from your house with shame, lady, When I supposed my most secret thoughts an object of ridicule to all. There can be no doubt such was their plan," said Mother Bunch.

"None, my child. Well! this horrible wickedness, which nearly caused your death, now turns to the confusion of the criminals. Their plot is discovered--and, luckily, many other of their designs," said Adrienne, as she thought of Rose-Pompon.

Then she resumed, with heartfelt joy: "At last, we are again united, happier than ever, and in our very happiness we shall find new resources to combat our enemies. I say our enemies--for all that love me are odious to these wretches. But courage, the hour is come, and the good people will have their turn."

"Thank heaven, lady," said the smith; "or my part, I shall not be wanting in zeal. What delight to strip them of their mask!"

"Let me remind you, M. Baudoin, that you have an appointment for to morrow with M. Hardy."

"I have not forgotten it, lady, any more than the generous offers I am to convey to him."

"That is nothing. He belongs to my family. Tell him (what indeed I shall write to him this evening), that the funds necessary to reopen his factory are at his disposal; I do not say so for his sake only, but for that of a hundred families reduced to want. Beg him to quit immediately the fatal abode to which they have taken him: for a thousand reasons he should be on his guard against all that surround him."

"Be satisfied, lady. The letter he wrote to me in reply to the one I got secretly delivered to him, was short, affectionate, sad--but he grants me the interview I had asked for, and I am sure I shall be able to persuade him to leave that melancholy dwelling, and perhaps to depart with me, he has always had so much confidence in my attachment."

"Well, M. Baudoin, courage!" said Adrienne, as she threw her cloak over the workgirl's shoulders, and wrapped her round with care. "Let us be gone, for it is late. As soon as we get home, I will give you a letter for M. Hardy, and to-morrow you will come and tell me the result of your visit. No, not to-morrow," she added, blus.h.i.+ng slightly. "Write to me to-morrow, and the day after, about twelve, come to me."

Some minutes later, the young sempstress, supported by Agricola and Adrienne, had descended the stairs of that gloomy house, and, being placed in the carriage by the side of Mdlle. de Cardoville, she earnestly entreated to be allowed to see Cephyse; it was in vain that Agricola a.s.sured her it was impossible, and that she should see her the next day. Thanks to the information derived from Rose-Pompon, Mdlle. de Cardoville was reasonably suspicious of all those who surrounded Djalma, and she therefore took measures, that, very evening, to have a letter delivered to the prince by what she considered a sure hand.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII. THE TWO CARRIAGES.

It is the evening of the day on which Mdlle. de Cardoville prevented the sewing-girl's suicide. It strikes eleven; the night is dark; the wind blows with violence, and drives along great black clouds, which completely hide the pale l.u.s.tre of the moon. A hackney-coach, drawn by two broken-winded horses, ascends slowly and with difficulty the slope of the Rue Blanche, which is pretty steep near the barrier, in the part where is situated the house occupied by Djalma.

The coach stops. The coachman, cursing the length of an interminable drive "within the circuit," leading at last to this difficult ascent, turns round on his box, leans over towards the front window of the vehicle, and says in a gruff tone to the person he is driving: "Come!

are we almost there? From the Rue de Vaugirard to the Barriere Blanche, is a pretty good stretch, I think, without reckoning that the night is so dark, that one can hardly see two steps before one--and the street-lamps not lighted because of the moon, which doesn't s.h.i.+ne, after all!"

"Look out for a little door with a portico-drive on about twenty yards beyond--and then stop close to the wall," answered a squeaking voice, impatiently, and with an Italian accent.

"Here is a beggarly Dutchman, that will make me as savage as a bear?"

muttered the angry Jehu to himself. Then he added: "Thousand thunders!

I tell you that I can't see. How the devil can I find out your little door?"

"Have you no sense? Follow the wall to the right, brush against it, and you will easily find the little door. It is next to No. 50. If you do not find it, you must be drunk," answered the Italian, with increased bitterness.

The coachman only replied by swearing like a trooper, and whipping up his jaded horses. Then, keeping close to the wall, he strained his eyes in trying to read the numbers of the houses, by the aid of his carriage lamps.

After some moments, the coach again stopped. "I have pa.s.sed No. 50, and here is a little door with a portico," said the coachman. "Is that the one?"

"Yes," said the voice. "Now go forward some twenty yards, and then stop."

"Well! I never--"

"Then get down from your box, and give twice three knocks at the little door we have just pa.s.sed--you understand me?--twice three knocks."

"Is that all you give me to drink?" cried the exasperated coachman.

"When you have taken me back to the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where I live, you shall have something handsome, if you do but manage matters well."

"Ha! now the Faubourg Saint-Germain! Only that little bit of distance!"

said the driver, with repressed rage. "And I who have winded my horses, wanted to be on the boulevard by the time the play was out. Well, I'm blowed!" Then, putting a good face on his bad luck, and consoling himself with the thought of the promised drink-money, he resumed: "I am to give twice three knocks at the little door?"

"Yes; three knocks first--then pause--then three other knocks. Do you understand?"

"What next?"

"Tell the person who comes, that he is waited for, and bring him here to the coach."

"The devil burn you!" said the coachman to himself, as he turned round on the box, and whipped up his horses, adding: "this crusty old Dutchman has something to do with Free-masons, or, perhaps, smugglers, seeing we are so near the gates. He deserves my giving him in charge, for bringing me all the way from the Rue de Vaugirard."

At twenty steps beyond the little door, the coach again stopped, and the coachman descended from the box to execute the orders he had received.

Going to the little door, he knocked three times; then paused, as he had been desired, and then knocked three times more. The clouds, which had hitherto been so thick as entirely to conceal the disk of the moon, just then withdrew sufficiently to afford a glimmering light, so that when the door opened at the signal, the coachman saw a middle-sized person issue from it, wrapped in a cloak, and wearing a colored cap.

This man carefully locked the door, and then advanced two steps into the street. "They are waiting for you," said the coachman; "I am to take you along with me to the coach."

Preceding the man with the cloak, who only answered him by a nod, he led him to the coach-door, which he was about to open, and to let down the step, when the voice exclaimed from the inside: "It is not necessary.

The gentleman may talk to me through the window. I will call you when it is time to start."

"Which means that I shall be kept here long enough to send you to all the devils!" murmured the driver. "However, I may as well walk about, just to stretch my legs."