Rosette welcomed him very warmly and I think she has formed a plan to use him to arouse my jealousy and thus kindle the tiny flame that is sleeping under the ashes of my passion. However redoubtable such a rival may be, I am little inclined to be jealous of him, and I am so attracted to him that I would gladly abandon my love to secure his friendship.
[Illustration: Chapter V--_A page of some fourteen or fifteen years, fair-haired, pink-cheeked, pretty as a seraph, who was half asleep, and so exhausted by his long ride that his master was obliged to lift him from his saddle and carry him to his room in his arms._]
VI
At this point, with the permission of the indulgent reader, we propose to abandon for some little time to his meditations, the worthy personage who has thus far occupied the stage all by himself and has spoken in his own behalf, and to adopt the ordinary form of the novel, reserving the right, however, to resume the dramatic form hereafter, if occasion should arise, and to draw still farther upon the species of epistolary confession that the aforesaid young man addressed to his friend, being fully persuaded that, however penetrating and sagacious we may be, we certainly cannot know so much about him as he knows about himself.
The little page was so overdone that he slept in his master's arms, and his little head, with its hair all in disorder, rolled from side to side as if he were dead. It was some distance from the stoop to the apartment set aside for the new arrival, and the servant who escorted him offered to take his turn at carrying the child; but the young gentleman, to whom the burden seemed no more than a feather-weight, thanked him and declined to relinquish it; he laid him gently on the couch, taking the utmost care to avoid waking him; a mother could have done no better. When the servant had retired and the door was closed, he knelt beside him and tried to remove his boots; but his little feet were so swollen and painful that the operation was a difficult one, and the pretty sleeper uttered from time to time vague, inarticulate exclamations, like a person who is on the point of waking; thereupon the young gentleman would stop and wait until he was sound asleep again. The boots yielded at last and the most important point was gained; the stockings made little resistance.--This operation at an end, the master took the child's feet and placed them side by side on the velvet covering of the sofa; surely they were the two loveliest feet in the world, no larger than that, white as new ivory, and reddened a little by the pressure of the boots in which they had been imprisoned seventeen hours--feet that were too small for a woman and looked as if they had never walked; the part of the leg that could be seen was round, plump, smooth, transparent, delicately veined, and of the most exquisitely graceful shape--a leg worthy of the foot.
[Illustration: Chapter VI--_The pretty sleeper uttered from time to time vague, inarticulate exclamations, like a person who is on the point of waking; thereupon the young gentleman would stop and wait until he was sound asleep again. The boots yielded at last and the most important point was gained; the stockings made little resistance._]
The young man, still on his knees, gazed at the two little feet with amorous, admiring intentness; he stooped, raised the left one and kissed it, then the right one and kissed that; then, from kiss to kiss, he ascended the leg to the place where the clothes began.--The page raised his long lashes slightly and cast an affectionate, sleepy glance at his master, in which there was no trace of surprise.--"My belt hurts me," he said, passing his finger under the ribbon; and he fell asleep again.--The master loosened the belt, placed a cushion beneath the page's head, and finding that his feet, which had been burning hot, were a little cold, he wrapped them carefully in his cloak, drew an arm-chair close to the sofa and sat down. Two hours passed thus, the young man watching the sleeping child and following the shadow of his dreams on his brow. The only sounds to be heard in the room were his regular breathing and the ticking of the clock.
It was certainly a very lovely picture. In the contrast between the two types of beauty there was an opportunity for effect, of which a skilful painter might have made good use.--The master was as beautiful as a woman--the page as lovely as a young girl. The round, rosy face, set in its frame of hair, resembled a peach among its leaves; it had the same fresh and velvety look, although the fatigue of the journey had lessened somewhat its usual brilliancy; the half-open mouth disclosed two rows of small teeth of a milky whiteness, and beneath the full, gleaming temples a network of blue veins crossed and recrossed; his eyelashes, like the golden threads around the heads of virgins in missals, reached almost to the middle of his cheeks; his long, silky hair resembled both gold and silver--gold in the shadow, silver in the light; his neck was at the same time plump and slender, and gave no sign of the sex indicated by his clothes; two or three buttons of his doublet were unbuttoned to enable him to breathe more freely and as the fine shirt of Dutch lawn beneath was open, a glimpse was afforded of an inch or two of firm rounded flesh of admirable whiteness, and the beginning of a certain curved line difficult to account for on a young boy's breast; upon looking closely one might have discovered also that his hips were a little too fully developed.--The reader will form what opinion he chooses; these are simple conjectures that we put forward; we have no better information on the subject than he, but we hope to learn something more in a short time, and we promise to keep him fully informed of our discoveries.--Let the reader, if his sight is keener than ours, bury his eyes under the lace of that shirt and decide conscientiously whether the contour is too swelling or not; but we warn him that the curtains are drawn and that there is a sort of half-light in the room, ill-adapted to that sort of investigation.
The young gentleman was pale, but his was a golden pallor, full of strength and vitality; his eyes swam in a crystalline blue fluid; his straight, thin nose imparted a wonderful air of pride and energy to his profile, and the flesh was of so fine a texture that it allowed the light to pass through it on the edge; his mouth wore the sweetest smile at certain moments, but ordinarily it was arched at the corners, curving in rather than out, as in some of the faces we see in the pictures of the old Italian masters; a detail that gave a charmingly disdainful expression to his face, a _smorfia_ alluring beyond words, an air of childish sulkiness and ill humor, very unusual and very fascinating.
What were the bonds that united the master to the page and the page to the master? Assuredly there was something more between them than any conceivable affection between master and servant. Were they friends or brothers?--In that case, why this masquerading?--It would have been difficult for any one witnessing the scene we have just described to believe that those two individuals were just what they seemed to be and nothing more.
"Dear angel, how he sleeps!" murmured the young man; "I don't believe he ever travelled so far in his life. Twenty leagues in the saddle, and he so delicate! I'm afraid that he will be sick with fatigue. But no, it will amount to nothing; to-morrow there will be no sign of it; he will have recovered his brilliant color and will be fresher than a rose after the rain.--How handsome he is like that! If I weren't afraid of waking him I would eat him up with kisses. What a fascinating dimple he has in his chin! what fine, white skin!--Sleep soundly, sweet treasure.--Ah! I am downright jealous of your mother, and I wish I had brought you into the world.--He can't be sick? No, his breathing is regular and he doesn't stir.--But I believe some one knocked."
In fact, some one had knocked twice, as gently as possible, on the panel of the door.
The young man rose, but, fearing that he might be mistaken, waited for a repetition of the knocking before opening the door.--Two more taps followed, a little more pronounced, and a soft female voice said, in a very low tone:--"It is I, Théodore."
Théodore opened the door, but with less eagerness than a young man naturally exhibits about admitting a woman whose voice is soft and who knocks mysteriously at his door at nightfall.--The open door gave passage to--whom do you suppose?--to the mistress of the perplexed D'Albert, to the Princess Rosette in person, rosier than her name, and her bosom as deeply moved as ever woman was upon entering a handsome youth's room in the evening.
"Théodore!" said Rosette.
Théodore lifted his finger and placed it on his lips so as to represent a statue of silence, and, pointing to the sleeping child, led her into the adjoining room.
"Théodore," continued Rosette, who seemed to take strange pleasure in repeating the name, and at the same time to be collecting her thoughts,--"Théodore," she continued, retaining the hand the young man had offered her to lead her to her chair, "so you have returned at last? What have you been doing all the time? where have you been?--Do you know that it is six months since I saw you! Ah! Théodore, that is not right; we owe some consideration, some pity to those who love us, even if we do not love them."