“Absence is killing you?”
Esther’s only answer was to hang her head as the sick do who already scent the breath of the grave.
“If you could see him ——?” said he.
“It would be life!” she cried.
“And do you think of him only spiritually?”
“Ah, monsieur, love cannot be dissected!”
“Child of an accursed race!
I have done everything to save you; I send you back to your fate. — You shall see him again.”
“Why insult my happiness?
Can I not love Lucien and be virtuous? Am I not ready to die here for virtue, as I should be ready to die for him?
Am I not dying for these two fanaticisms — for virtue, which was to make me worthy of him, and for him who flung me into the embrace of virtue?
Yes, and ready to die without seeing him or to live by seeing him.
God is my Judge.”
The color had mounted to her face, her whiteness had recovered its amber warmth.
Esther looked beautiful again.
“The day after that on which you are washed in the waters of baptism you shall see Lucien once more; and if you think you can live in virtue by living for him, you shall part no more.”
The priest was obliged to lift up Esther, whose knees failed her; the poor child dropped as if the ground had slipped from under her feet. The Abbe seated her on a bench; and when she could speak again she asked him:
“Why not to-day?”
“Do you want to rob Monseigneur of the triumph of your baptism and conversion?
You are too close to Lucien not to be far from God.”
“Yes, I was not thinking ——”
“You will never be of any religion,” said the priest, with a touch of the deepest irony.
“God is good,” said she; “He can read my heart.”
Conquered by the exquisite artlessness and gestures, Herrera kissed her on the forehead for the first time.
“Your libertine friends named you well; you would bewitch God the Father.
— A few days more must pass, and then you will both be free.”
“Both!” she echoed in an ecstasy of joy.
This scene, observed from a distance, struck pupils and superiors alike; they fancied they had looked on at a miracle as they compared Esther with herself.
She was completely changed; she was alive.
She reappeared her natural self, all love, sweet, coquettish, playful, and gay; in short, it was a resurrection.
Herrera lived in the Rue Cassette, near Saint–Sulpice, the church to which he was attached.
This building, hard and stern in style, suited this Spaniard, whose discipline was that of the Dominicans.
A lost son of Ferdinand VII.‘s astute policy, he devoted himself to the cause of the constitution, knowing that this devotion could never be rewarded till the restoration of the Rey netto.
Carlos Herrera had thrown himself body and soul into the Camarilla at the moment when the Cortes seemed likely to stand and hold their own.
To the world this conduct seemed to proclaim a superior soul.
The Duc d’Angouleme’s expedition had been carried out, King Ferdinand was on the throne, and Carlos Herrera did not go to claim the reward of his services at Madrid.
Fortified against curiosity by his diplomatic taciturnity, he assigned as his reason for remaining in Paris his strong affection for Lucien de Rubempre, to which the young man already owed the King’s patent relating to his change of name.
Herrera lived very obscurely, as priests employed on secret missions traditionally live.
He fulfilled his religious duties at Saint–Sulpice, never went out but on business, and then after dark, and in a hackney cab.
His day was filled up with a siesta in the Spanish fashion, which arranges for sleep between the two chief meals, and so occupies the hours when Paris is in a busy turmoil.
The Spanish cigar also played its part, and consumed time as well as tobacco.
Laziness is a mask as gravity is, and that again is laziness.
Herrera lived on the second floor in one wing of the house, and Lucien occupied the other wing.
The two apartments were separated and joined by a large reception room of antique magnificence, suitable equally to the grave priest and to the young poet.
The courtyard was gloomy; large, thick trees shaded the garden.
Silence and reserve are always found in the dwellings chosen by priests.
Herrera’s lodging may be described in one word — a cell.
Lucien’s, splendid with luxury, and furnished with every refinement of comfort, combined everything that the elegant life of a dandy demands — a poet, a writer, ambitious and dissipated, at once vain and vainglorious, utterly heedless, and yet wishing for order, one of those incomplete geniuses who have some power to wish, to conceive — which is perhaps the same thing — but no power at all to execute.
These two, Lucien and Herrera, formed a body politic.
This, no doubt, was the secret of their union.