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The Parisians, a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
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Book 12 - Chapter 11 |
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_ BOOK XII CHAPTER XI The short grim day was closing when Gustave, quitting Julie's apartment, again found himself in the streets. His thoughts were troubled and confused. He was the more affected by Julie's impassioned love for him, by the contrast with Isaura's words and manner in their recent interview. His own ancient fancy for the "Ondine of Paris" became revived by the difficulties between their ancient intercourse which her unexpected scruples and De Mauleon's guardianship interposed. A witty writer thus defines une passion, "une caprice inflamme par des obstacles." In the ordinary times of peace, Gustave, handsome, aspiring to reputable position in the beau monde, would not have admitted any considerations to compromise his station by marriage with a fagurante. But now the wild political doctrines he had embraced separated his ambition from that beau monde, and combined it with ascendancy over the revolutionists of the populace--a direction which he must abandon if he continued his suit to Isaura. Then, too, the immediate possession of Julie's dot was not without temptation to a man who was so fond of his personal comforts, and who did not see where to turn for a dinner, if, obedient to Isaura's "prejudices," he abandoned his profits as a writer in the revolutionary press. The inducements for withdrawal from the cause he had espoused, held out to him with so haughty a coldness by De Mauleon, were not wholly without force, though they irritated his self-esteem. He was dimly aware of the Vicomte's masculine talents for public life; and the high reputation he had already acquired among military authorities, and even among experienced and thoughtful civilians, had weight upon Gustave's impressionable temperament. But though De Mauleon's implied advice here coincided in much with the tacit compact he had made with Isaura, it alienated him more from Isaura herself, for Isaura did not bring to him the fortune which would enable him to suspend his lucubrations, watch the turn of events, and live at ease in the meanwhile; and the dot to be received with De Mauleon's ward had those advantages. While thus meditating Gustave turned into one of the cantines still open, to brighten his intellect with a petit verre, and there he found the two colleagues in the extinct Council of Ten, Paul Grimm and Edgar Ferrier. With the last of these revolutionists Gustave had become intimately lie. They wrote in the same journal, and he willingly accepted a distraction from his self-conflict which Edgar offered him in a dinner at the cafe Riche, which still offered its hospitalities at no exorbitant price. At this repast, as the drink circulated, Gustave waxed confidential. He longed, poor youth, for an adviser. Could he marry a girl who had been a ballet-dancer, and who had come into an unexpected heritage? "Es-tu fou d'en douter?" cried Edgar. "What a sublime occasion to manifest thy scorn of the miserable banalities of the bourgeoisie! It will but increase thy moral power over the people. And then think of the money. What an aid to the cause! What a capital for the launch!--journal all thine own! Besides, when our principles triumph--as triumph they must--what would be marriage but a brief and futile ceremony, to be broken the moment thou hast cause to complain of thy wife or chafe at the bond? Only get the dot into thine own hands. L'amour passe--reste la cassette." Though there was enough of good in the son of Madame Rameau to revolt at the precise words in which the counsel was given, still, as the fumes of the punch yet more addled his brains, the counsel itself was acceptable; and in that sort of maddened fury which intoxication produces in some excitable temperaments, as Gustave reeled home that night leaning on the arm of stouter Edgar Ferrier, he insisted on going out of his way to pass the house in which Isaura lived, and, pausing under her window, gasped out some verses of a wild song, then much in vogue among the votaries of Felix Pyat, in which everything that existent society deems sacred was reviled in the grossest ribaldry. Happily Isaura's ear heard it not. The girl was kneeling by her bedside absorbed in prayer. _ |
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