第58章

Some hours later, Gilbert entered Stephane's room, and struck by his pallor and with the troubled expression of his voice, inquired about him anxiously.

"I assure you I am very well," Stephane replied, mastering his emotion."Have you brought me any flowers?""No, I have had no time to go for them."

"That is to say, you have not had time to think of me.""Oh! I beg your pardon! I can think of you while working, while reading Greek, even while sleeping.And last night I saw you in my dreams: you treated me as a pedant, and threw your cap in my face.""That was a very extravagant dream."

"I am not so sure about that.It seems to me that one day--""Yes, one day, two centuries ago."

"Is it then so long since our acquaintance commenced?""Perhaps not two centuries, but nearly.As for me, I have already lived three lives: my first I passed with my mother.The second--let us not speak of that.The third began upon the night when, for the first time, you climbed into this window.And that must have been a long time ago, if I can judge of it by all which has passed since then, in my soul, in my imagination, and in my mind.Is it possible that these two centuries have only been two months? How can it be that such great changes have been wrought in me, in so short a time, for they are so marvelous that I can hardly recognize myself?""One of these changes, of which I am proud, is that you no longer throw your cap at my head.""That was a liberty I took only with the pedant.""And are you at last reconciled to him?"

"I have discovered that the pedant does not exist.There is a hero and a philosopher in you.""That is a discovery I did not expect from you, and one that astonishes as much as it flatters me.""When I tell you that I am changed throughout, and that I no longer recognize myself--""And I, in spite of your transformation, recognize you very easily.

My dear Stephane has preserved his habit of exaggerating all his impressions.Once I was a man who ought to be smothered; now I am an extraordinary being who passes his life in executing heroic projects.No, my poet, I am neither a scoundrel nor a knight errant, and the best that can be said of me is that I am not a blockhead, that I do not lack heart, and that I run over the roofs with remarkable agility.""No, I exaggerate nothing," he said."I speak of things as they are, and the proof that you are an extraordinary man is, that in all you do, you appear perfectly simple and natural."And as Gilbert shrugged his shoulders and smiled:

"Ah! you need not laugh!" he continued."Feel my pulse, you will see I have no fever.And have you not noticed how calm I have been for several days?"I confess that your quietness surprises me; but is it really a calm? I suspect that you have only covered the brazier, and that the fire smoulders under the ashes.""And you stir up the ashes to draw out the sparks.As you please, but I forewarn you, that you will not succeed, and that I shall remain insensible to all your efforts.""So for a week, you have felt more tranquil in heart and mind?""Yes, and I have a good reason for it.There was a great fomenter of seditions in me, a great stirrer up of rebellion.It was my pride."Stephane hid his face in his hands; then after a long silence:

"No," said he, "I have not the courage to speak yet.Besides, before making my revelation, which you will perhaps consider extravagant, I want to prove to you more thoroughly that my senses have been restored, and that I have become wise in your school.

Know then, that before I became acquainted with you, religion was in my eyes, but a coarse magic in which I believed with passionate irrationality.I considered prayer as a kind of sorcery, and attributed to it the power of compelling the divine will; every day I called upon Heaven to perform a miracle in my favor, and, finding myself refused, my ungranted prayers fell back like lead upon my heart.Then I rebelled against the celestial intelligences which refused to yield to my enchantments, or else I sought in anguish to ascertain to what error in form, to what neglected precaution, to what sin of omission I could attribute the impotence of my operations in magic and my formulas.

"And now am I nothing but a charmed dreamer, a half-crazy child, a sick brain feeding on crochets, an incorrigible, wrong-headed fellow? No, you admit that I have profited by your lessons; that a grain of wisdom has fallen into my brain, and that without having seen the bottom of things, I have at least lucid intervals.If this be so, my Gilbert, believe what I am going to say as you would the Holy Bible.You have worked with all your strength to cure my soul, and there is not a more skillful physician in the world than you.But all of your trouble would have been lost, if you had not had by your side an all-powerful ally, whom you don't know, and whom I am about to reveal to you.Ah! tell me, when you came into this room the first time, did you not feel that a celestial spirit followed in your track and entered with you? You went, he remained, and has not left me, and never will.Look, do not these walls speak of him? Do not these saints move their lips to murmur his name to you? And the air we breathe here, is it not full of those delicious perfumes which these envoys of Heaven scatter in their earthward journeys? How strange this spirit appeared to me at first! His face was all unknown to me, it had never appeared to me in my dreams.Startled and bewildered, I said to him: Who then art thou? What is thy name? And, one day, Gilbert, one day, it was through your mouth that he answered me.Gilbert, Gilbert, oh!

what a singular company you have introduced to me in his person.