第51章

THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE TO MADAME OCTAVE DE CAMPSParis, March, 1839.

About the year 1820 in the course of the same week two news (to use the schoolboy phrase of my son Armand) entered the college of Tours.

One had a charming face, the other would have been thought ugly if health, frankness, and intelligence beaming on his features had not compensated for their irregularity and inelegance.

Here you will stop me, and ask whether I have come to the end of my own adventure, that I should now be writing this feuilleton-story.No, this tale is really a continuation of that adventure, though it seems little like it; so, give it your best attention and do not interrupt me again.

One of these lads, the handsome one, was dreamy, contemplative, and a trifle elegaic; the other, ardent, impetuous, and always in action.

They were two natures which completed each other; a priceless blessing to every friendship that is destined to last.Both had the same bar-sinister on them at their birth.The dreamer was the natural son of the unfortunate Lady Brandon.His name was Marie-Gaston; which, indeed, seems hardly an actual name.The other, born of wholly unknown parents, was named Dorlange, which is certainly no name at all.

Dorlange, Valmon, Volmar, Melcourt, are heard upon the stage and nowhere else; already they belong to a past style, and will soon rejoin Alceste, Arnolphe, Clitandre, Damis, Eraste, Philinte, and Arsinoe.

Another reason why the poor ill-born lads should cling together was the cruel abandonment to which they were consigned.For the seven years their studies lasted there was not a day, even during the holidays, when the door of their prison opened.Now and then Marie-Gaston received a visit from an old woman who had served his mother;through her the quarterly payment for his schooling was regularly made.That of Dorlange was also made with great punctuality through a banker in Tours.A point to be remarked is that the price paid for the schooling of the latter was the highest which the rules of the establishment allowed; hence the conclusion that his unknown parents were persons in easy circumstances.Among his comrades, Dorlange attained to a certain respect which, had it been withheld, he would very well have known how to enforce with his fists.But under their breaths, his comrades remarked that he was never sent for to see friends in the parlor, and that outside the college walls no one appeared to take an interest in him.

The two lads, who were both destined to become distinguished men, were poor scholars; though each had his own way of studying.By the time he was fifteen Marie-Gaston had written a volume of verses, satires, elegies, meditations, not to speak of two tragedies.The favorite studies of Dorlange led him to steal logs of wood, out of which, with his knife, he carved madonnas, grotesque figures, fencing-masters, saints, grenadiers of the Old Guard, and, but this was secretly, Napoleons.

In 1827, their school-days ended, the two friends left college together and were sent to Paris.A place had been chosen for Dorlange in the atelier of the sculptor Bosio, and from that moment a rather fantastic course was pursued by an unseen protection that hovered over him.When he reached the house in Paris to which the head-master of the school had sent him, he found a dainty little apartment prepared for his reception.Under the glass shade of the clock was a large envelope addressed to him, so placed as to strike his eye the moment that he entered the room.In that envelope was a note, written in pencil, containing these words:--The day after your arrival in Paris go at eight in the morning punctually to the garden of the Luxembourg, Allee de l'Observatoire, fourth bench to the right, starting from the gate.

This order is strict.Do not fail to obey it.

Punctual to the minute, Dorlange was not long at the place of rendezvous before he was met by a very small man, whose enormous head, bearing an immense shock of hair, together with a pointed nose, chin, and crooked legs made him seem like a being escaped from one of Hoffman's tales.Without saying a word, for to his other physical advantages this weird messenger added that of being deaf and dumb, he placed in the young man's hand a letter and a purse.The letter said that the family of Dorlange were glad to see that he wished to devote himself to art.They urged him to work bravely and to profit by the instructions of the great master under whose direction he was placed.

They hoped he would live virtuously; and, in any case, an eye would be kept upon his conduct.There was no desire, the letter went on to say, that he should be deprived of the respectable amusements of his age.

For his needs and for his pleasures, he might count upon the sum of six hundred and fifty francs every three months, which would be given to him in the same place by the same man; but he was expressly forbidden to follow the messenger after he had fulfilled his commission; if this injunction were directly or indirectly disobeyed, the punishment would be severe; it would be nothing less than the withdrawal of the stipend and, possibly, total abandonment.