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CHAPTER XIII.

THE winter had stolen into early spring, but the winds were still cold--the sunshine fitful. Paris tried to cheat itself into the belief that the winter was over, but the northern blasts told a different tale. The poor suffered as the poor always do. To the rich it was simply an inconvenience to be guarded against and shut out with velvet portières and blazing fires.

The night was closing in, in an obscure quarter of the city--closing in with stormy gusts and blinding showers of rain and hail that beat their way into a dreary garret, where a young man sat alone. The poverty of his surroundings spoke plainly enough of the kindred poverty of his life. The broken chairs, the rickety table, the fireless grate, were eloquent exponents of fallen fortune, and told their tale of hard necessity only too well. It was here that André Brizeaux dwelt; it was here that he had spent the long, cold, cheerless winter, waiting vainly for the tidings that never came--for the help that Armand de Valtour had promised and failed to give, as yet.

Pride kept him aloof from the Count for long. He would not intrude upon him--would not seek to enforce a claim on his attention and interest; but all the same life had been a terrible struggle to him, and | | 149 pride put no fire in his stove, no bread on his table, no money in his pocket. His dreams of possible greatness faded one by one. He was thankful to play in the streets to earn enough to keep life in his body. Many days he had been obliged to lie in bed to keep himself warm; the cold was so intense that even playing in the streets was out of the question.

Once he summoned up courage to write to Armand de Valtour, but no answer ever came, for the Count had been unable to come to Paris for the winter, owing to Adrienne's illness. Of this, however, the young Provençal knew nothing. His letter had been forwarded to Valtours, but Armand had only glanced at it--put it down as a begging epistle, and tossed it aside with perfect indifference. He had been backward and forward to Paris several times, but never gave another thought to André, or to his own promises respecting the young singer.

It was a peculiarity of his disposition, this forgetfulness of promises. Madame Lissac, however, had taken care that he should keep his word respecting Zoé Laurent, and all that winter the little chanteuse had been singing at the theatre in those sparkling opéra bouffes which so delight the Parisians, with their mingled buffoonery, indecency, and scenic display. She had been a great success, and her two illustrious protectors were proud of the fact, though they kept their interest in her proceedings well in the background.

Armand de Valtour had been greatly annoyed at | | 150 his wife's inability to pass the winter in Paris, but the doctors had assured him it was impossible. Her life at Valtours had been passed almost entirely indoors, and chiefly in the companionship of Céline.

The part of a devoted husband to an invalid wife was not one that Armand cared to play, and even Adrienne's love-blinded eyes at last perceived that. But she was too proud to complain, or make any demands on his time or attention. She busied herself with schemes of good. She did her utmost to make that cold dreary winter a time less hard to the poor and the peasants on her husband's lands, and she succeeded in winning many a grateful prayer, a loving blessing from those whom her care and ministry succoured and helped. It grieved her that Armand did not share her interest or throw himself into her schemes. She remembered, with a pang, his words to her on first coming to Valtours, that she should teach him how to be worthy of his people's love--that she would make his home a home indeed. But she had done neither.

Where had she failed? she asked herself. But she could not answer the question. It was not likely she should so answer it when she never dared acknowledge that the fault lay in the man she loved. Occasionally after one of his visits to Paris he would return as loving, as devoted, as in the early days of their marriage. He would charm her as of old by his looks and words and ways, and that | | 151 peculiar fascination he had always had for her would return with double force.

She would thrust aside the shadow that threatened to come between her and her love, and give herself up to the happiness of the moment, only to feel again the bitterness of disappointment as his variable nature changed, and she again saw herself neglected or apparently forgotten. She had asked him once for news of André Brizeaux, and he had told her impatiently that he was all right--had procured some engagement in Paris. Adrienne believed him, and said no more. She wondered sometimes that little Maï kept aloof from the château so much, that any offer of assistance or help was proudly rejected. She was far enough from guessing the real reason then.

Armand de Valtour had grown tired of the pretty child. She was not at all what he imagined. No flattery, no tempting, had any effect upon her. She did not even seem to understand what he meant. "She is stupid," he would say to himself impatiently, as he returned home after some interview he had contrived to bring about under the cloak of accident.

But she was not at all stupid, only faithful. Perhaps in Armand de Valtour's mind the two were synonymous terms.

He had meant to amuse himself with her as a pastime; a little flattery, a little wooing, a little folly, but none of those things would Maï see or understand. She had not merely the innocence of ignorance, but also the innocent purity of a loving, faithful | | 152 soul, and Armand de Valtour recognised this fact at last.

In a fit of pique he had separated her from her lover. It had not pleased him that André Brizeaux should possess these charms, or hold the love of this peasant maiden so securely, and to part them had been so easy that he could not resist doing it. But the girl was different to anything he had imagined, and the discovery angered him.

"Do you want to hear of André?" he said to her, after one of those visits to Paris, which lasted longer now each time they occurred.

He had met her on the road leading from Valtours. She had been to the town on an errand, and was returning home in the grey winter dusk. Dark as it was he could see the scarlet flush rise to her cheeks, the soft light in the beautiful dark eyes upraised to his own.

"Have you seen him, monsieur; is he well?" she asked quickly.

"Oh, yes, he is well," said Armand indifferently. He was looking at her critically. His eyes had been long accustomed to read women's natures; what they read of hers displeased him.

"And is he great; has he found what he sought?" she asked him eagerly.

Armand smiled coldly. "I fancy not," he said. "You see, fame is not reached by stretching out one's hand. It is the labour of long years to climb to the height where it abides."

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She looked down. The ardour and eagerness left her face. "He never writes," she said. "I think the old man would forgive him if he did. He frets for his absence, I know, though he will say nothing--even to me. Does André forget us, do you think?"

"Perhaps," answered the Count. "One is apt to do that--in Paris."

She hung her head and was silent. After all, why should she complain? André had a right to please himself. She made a movement as if to go on, but Armand de Valtour had not seen her for long now, and he did not choose that she should leave him so quickly.

"Supposing he did forget you?" he said. "Supposing he never came back?"

"It is not wise to meet our griefs before they come to us," was the answer. "I do not think André is ungrateful, whatever he may be besides. If he be great one day, as doubtless he will, I am sure his thoughts will turn to home, for the world, with all its riches, can never give him such love as we hold."

Armand de Valtour felt rebuked.

"He does not half know her value, poor girl," he said to himself. "And how wise she is in her very simplicity! No gold can buy love, as she says."

"Perhaps there are other things he may prefer even to love," he said aloud. "André is different to you, Maï."

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"I know that," she answered. "I was never half worthy of him. But, all the same, I cannot change, even if he does."

He laughed--a little low laugh. "You foolish child," he said. "With your beauty you might rule the world yonder. Why waste youth and life on a shadow, when the warm living reality lies almost within your grasp?"

Her clear, soft eyes looked up to him. "I do not understand you," she said. "My life can never be different to what it is. I do not wish it even, unless--"

"Unless?" he questioned, as she paused.

The warm blood softly flushed her face again.

"Unless André desired it," she said.

He was silent then, and moved aside and let her pass up the dark and silent road, while, abashed and wondering, he took his own way homeward through the gathering dusk.

"Strange she should not understand yet," he said to himself. "Another woman would have read my meaning long ago. Shall I leave her alone after all? Poor little Maï! Well, her lover will never come back to her--that I know. Fame or a grave, he said to me once. It will not be fame, I fancy."

Then he went home and sat by Adrienne's couch, and talked to her softly and tenderly, as he well knew how, and told her of the alterations he was making in his hotel in Paris for her, and of the art treasures it held; and painted, in sweet, persuasive | | 155 words, the life she would lead there, with its mingled sovereignty and pleasure and endless delight.

Adrienne listened, content enough so that he was by her side, though the pictures of the great world that he drew for her with the skill of words and the knowledge of long experience had less allurement than the thought that he would be always with her, that her triumphs would be his, and that no longer would he find excuse to leave her for these long, solitary weeks. In her own way, Adrienne was as innocent as Maï.

Meantime, while those he had forsaken thought of him with tender love and patient uncomplaint, André Brizeaux was tasting the bitterness of failure, the heart-sickness of disappointment, the cruelty of poverty and want.

To come to a great city, friendless and unknown, and then by one's own genius or merits take it by storm, is doubtless a wonderful thing. Its rarity makes one sceptical as to its possibility. It reads admirably in romance; but in reality it seems a trifle impracticable. André had fled to Paris with an artist's ambition and a perfect faith in the destiny to which he had blindly trusted himself.

But he was ignorant what to do, to whom to turn, and a certain nervousness and diffidence kept him from showing himself at his best when he applied to agents or directors.

A word of influence might have helped him; but | | 156 that word was never spoken, and he gradually awoke to the fact that he must do what he could for himself, since no other friend was at hand. How he lived on through that winter he hardly knew. The street where he was located was one almost entirely tenanted by instrument makers and dealers. In the house of one of these he had lodged since he first came to Paris. He was an old man and very poor, but he was kind-hearted withal, and pitied sincerely the handsome young peasant, with his beautiful voice, and strange ignorance, and complete friendlessness.

André sat alone in his garret one cold spring night pondering over the difficulties that beset him--wondering a little whether it would not be best after all to return to Provence and beg his father's forgiveness. But yet the thought of the old life was more distasteful than ever.

Moved by some sudden impulse, he rose at last and seized his hat and went out into the bleak and bitter night. The rain had ceased for a time, but the wind blew in strong fierce gusts. It penetrated his thin clothing and numbed him to the bone. Still he went on doggedly, on past the quarters of the poor to the Faubourg, where the hotels of the great and wealthy in Paris were situated.

The lights shone brilliantly, people were moving to and fro. In the courtyard of one of the large buildings a little crowd was waiting. He paused among them, and as he stood there, a woman, young and lovely, came out to her carriage, wrapped all in | | 157 soft white furs. He saw her face, and involuntarily started forward, the blood crimsoning his forehead, his eyes wild, eager, entreating. But at the same moment a man stepped out into the glare of light and got into the carriage and seated himself by her side.

It was the Count de Valtour.

André drew back as swiftly as he had advanced. A murmur of admiration from those around fell on his ears. His heart grew faint and sick. The horses plunged and reared, the carriage was driven off, and like one in a dream, he left the gates and went on his way with the memory of that fair sweet face ever in his mind.

"She is in Paris, too," he thought to himself, when his brain grew less dizzy. "Ah, she will be kinder than her husband. She is not one who easily forgets."

He seemed again to see her as he had seen her at the marriage fêtes. The sweet smile, the lovely face that had looked to him like an angel's. And once again the scent of the white roses came back to him amidst the dreams and desolation of the night. But he went on now, feeling no longer the cold, and misery, and wretchedness of his life. Hope had come to his heart again.