The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty

She sprang in between him and the bedroom, seeing Sebastian behind the door, in her mind’s eye.

“Oh, my lord, do not go that way, I entreat you,” she exclaimed, barring the passage with her extended arms.

“Oh, my lady,” said he, looking at her so pale and trembling, with fright never more plain on a human face, “I knew that you did not like me: but I had no idea you hated me to this degree.”

Incapable of remaining any longer beside his wife without an outburst, he reeled for a space like an intoxicated man; recovering himself, he rushed out of the room with an exclamation of pain which echoed in the depths of the hearer’s heart.

She watched him till he was out of sight; she listened till she could no longer hear his departing carriage, and then with a breaking heart, dreading that she had not enough motherly love to combat with this other passion, she darted into the bedroom, calling out:

“Sebastian,” but no voice replied.

By the trembling of the night-lamp in a draft she perceived that the window was open. It was the same by which the child was kidnapped fifteen years before.

“This is justice,” she muttered; “did he not say that I was no more his mother?”

Comprehending that she had lost both husband and child at the period when she had recovered them, Andrea threw herself on the couch, at the end of her resignation and her prayers exhausted.

Suddenly it seemed to her that something more dreadful than her sorrowful plight glided in between grief and her tears.

She looked up and beheld a man, after climbing in at the open window, standing on the floor.

She wished to shriek and ring for help; but he bent on her the fascinating gaze which caused her the invincible lethargy she remembered Cagliostro could impose upon her: but in this mesmerist and his spell-binding look and bearing, she recognized Gilbert.

How was it the execrated father stood in the stead of his beloved son?

CHAPTER XIV

IN SEARCH OF THEIR SON

IT was Dr. Gilbert who was closeted with the King when the usher inquired after him on the order of Isidore and the entreaty of Sebastian.

The upright heart of Louis XVI. had appreciated the loyalty in the doctor’s. After half an hour, the latter came forth and went into the Queen’s ante-chamber, where he saw Isidore.

“I asked for you, doctor, but I have another with me who wants still more to see you. It will be cruel to detain you from him: so let us hasten to the Green Saloon.”

But the room was empty and such was the confusion in the palace that no servant was at hand to inform them what had become of the young man.

“It was a person I met on the road, eager to get to Paris and coming here on foot only for my giving him a ride.”

“Are you speaking of the peasant Pitou?”

“No, doctor – of your son, Sebastian.”

At this, the usher who had taken Isidore away returned.

He was ignorant of what had happened but, luckily, a second footman had seen the singular disappearance of the boy in the carriage of a court lady.

They hastened to the gates where the janitor well recalled that the direction to the coachman was “No. 9 Coq-Heron Street, first carriage entrance from Plastriere Street.”

“My sister-in-law’s,” exclaimed Isidore, “the countess of Charny!”

“Fatality,” muttered Gilbert. “He must have recognized her,” he said in a lower tone.

“Let us go there,” suggested the young noble.

Gilbert saw all the dangers of Andrea’s son being discovered by her husband.

“My lord,” he said, “my son is in safety in the hands of the Countess of Charny, and as I have the honor to know her, I think I can call by myself. Besides it is more proper that you should be on your road; for I presume you are going to Turin, from what I heard in the King’s presence.”

“Yes, doctor.”

“Receive my thanks for your kindness to Sebastian, and be off! When a father says he is not uneasy, you need feel no anxiety.”

Isidore held out his hand which the revolutionist shook with more heartiness than he had for most of his class; while the nobleman returned within the palace, he went along to the junction of the streets Coq-Heron and Plastriere.

Both were painful memories.

In the latter he had lived, a poor boy, earning his bread by copying music, by receiving instruction from the author Rousseau. From his window he had contemplated Andrea at her own casement, under the hands of her maid, Nicole, his first sweetheart, and to that window he had made his way by a rope and by scaling the wall, to view more closely and satisfy his passion for the high-born lady who had bewitched him.

Rousseau was dead, but Andrea was rich and nobler still; he had also attained wealth and consideration.

But was he any happier than when he walked out of doors to dip his crust in the waters of this public fountain?

He could not help walking up to the door where Rousseau had lived. It was open on the alley which ran under the building to the yard at the back as well as up to the attic where he was lodged.

He went up to the first floor back, where the window on the landing gave a view of the rear house where Baron Taverney had dwelt.

No one disturbed him in his contemplation; the house had come down in the world; no janitor; the inhabitants were poor folk who did not fear thieves.

The garden at Taverney’s house was the same as a dozen years before. The vine still hung on the trellis which had served him as ladder in his night clamberings within the enclosure.

He was unaware whether Count Charny was with his wife, but he was so bent on learning about Sebastian that he meant to risk all.

He climbed the wall and descended on the other side. In the garden nothing obstructed him, and thus he reached the window of Andrea’s Bedroom.

In another instant, as related, the two enemies stood face to face.

The lady’s first feeling was invincible repugnance rather than profound terror.

For her the Americanized Gilbert, the friend of Washington and Lafayette, aristocratic through study, science and genius, was still the hangdog Gilbert of her father’s manor house, and the gardener’s boy of Trianon Palace.

Gilbert no longer bore her the ardent love which had driven him to crime in his youth, but the deep and tender affection, spite of her insults and persecutions, of a man ready to do a service at risk of his life.

With the insight nature had given him and the justice education implanted, Gilbert had weighed himself: he understood that Andrea’s misfortunes arose from him, and he would never be quits with her until he had made her as happy as he had the reverse.

But how could he blissfully affect her future.

It was impossible for him yet to comprehend.