The Magic Skin Part 24

"Pauline!"

"Oh, I know I am fearfully jealous. You have good taste. I will have a bed like yours to-morrow."

Quite beside himself with happiness, Raphael caught Pauline in his arms.

"Oh, my father!" she said; "my father----"

"I will take you back to him," cried Valentin, "for I want to be away from you as little as possible."

"How loving you are! I did not venture to suggest it----"

"Are you not my life?"

It would be tedious to set down accurately the charming prattle of the lovers, for tones and looks and gestures that cannot be rendered alone gave it significance. Valentin went back with Pauline to her own door, and returned with as much happiness in his heart as mortal man can know.

When he was seated in his armchair beside the fire, thinking over the sudden and complete way in which his wishes had been fulfilled, a cold s.h.i.+ver went through him, as if the blade of a dagger had been plunged into his breast--he thought of the Magic Skin, and saw that it had shrunk a little. He uttered the most tremendous of French oaths, without any of the Jesuitical reservations made by the Abbess of Andouillettes, leant his head against the back of the chair, and sat motionless, fixing his unseeing eyes upon the bracket of the curtain pole.

"Good G.o.d!" he cried; "every wis.h.!.+ Every desire of mine! Poor Pauline!----"

He took a pair of compa.s.ses and measured the extent of existence that the morning had cost him.

"I have scarcely enough for two months!" he said.

A cold sweat broke out over him; moved by an ungovernable spasm of rage, he seized the Magic Skin, exclaiming:

"I am a perfect fool!"

He rushed out of the house and across the garden, and flung the talisman down a well.

"_Vogue la galere_," cried he. "The devil take all this nonsense."

So Raphael gave himself up to the happiness of being beloved, and led with Pauline the life of heart and heart. Difficulties which it would be somewhat tedious to describe had delayed their marriage, which was to take place early in March. Each was sure of the other; their affection had been tried, and happiness had taught them how strong it was. Never has love made two souls, two natures, so absolutely one. The more they came to know of each other, the more they loved. On either side there was the same hesitating delicacy, the same transports of joy such as angels know; there were no clouds in their heaven; the will of either was the other's law.

Wealthy as they both were, they had not a caprice which they could not gratify, and for that reason had no caprices. A refined taste, a feeling for beauty and poetry, was instinct in the soul of the bride; her lover's smile was more to her than all the pearls of Ormuz. She disdained feminine finery; a muslin dress and flowers formed her most elaborate toilette.

Pauline and Raphael shunned every one else, for solitude was abundantly beautiful to them. The idlers at the Opera, or at the Italiens, saw this charming and unconventional pair evening after evening. Some gossip went the round of the salons at first, but the harmless lovers were soon forgotten in the course of events which took place in Paris; their marriage was announced at length to excuse them in the eyes of the prudish; and as it happened, their servants did not babble; so their bliss did not draw down upon them any very severe punishment.

One morning towards the end of February, at the time when the brightening days bring a belief in the nearness of the joys of spring, Pauline and Raphael were breakfasting together in a small conservatory, a kind of drawing-room filled with flowers, on a level with the garden.

The mild rays of the pale winter sunlight, breaking through the thicket of exotic plants, warmed the air somewhat. The vivid contrast made by the varieties of foliage, the colors of the ma.s.ses of flowering shrubs, the freaks of light and shadow, gladdened the eyes. While all the rest of Paris still sought warmth from its melancholy hearth, these two were laughing in a bower of camellias, lilacs, and blossoming heath. Their happy faces rose above lilies of the valley, narcissus blooms, and Bengal roses. A mat of plaited African gra.s.s, variegated like a carpet, lay beneath their feet in this luxurious conservatory. The walls, covered with a green linen material, bore no traces of damp. The surfaces of the rustic wooden furniture shone with cleanliness. A kitten, attracted by the odor of milk, had established itself upon the table; it allowed Pauline to bedabble it in coffee; she was playing merrily with it, taking away the cream that she had just allowed the kitten to sniff at, so as to exercise its patience, and keep up the contest. She burst out laughing at every antic, and by the comical remarks she constantly made, she hindered Raphael from perusing the paper; he had dropped it a dozen times already. This morning picture seemed to overflow with inexpressible gladness, like everything that is natural and genuine.

Raphael, still pretending to read his paper, furtively watched Pauline with the cat--his Pauline, in the dressing-gown that hung carelessly about her; his Pauline, with her hair loose on her shoulders, with a tiny, white, blue-veined foot peeping out of a velvet slipper. It was pleasant to see her in this negligent dress; she was delightful as some fanciful picture by Westall; half-girl, half-woman, as she seemed to be, or perhaps more of a girl than a woman, there was no alloy in the happiness she enjoyed, and of love she knew as yet only its first ecstasy. When Raphael, absorbed in happy musing, had forgotten the existence of the newspaper, Pauline flew upon it, crumpled it up into a ball, and threw it out into the garden; the kitten sprang after the rotating object, which spun round and round, as politics are wont to do.

This childish scene recalled Raphael to himself. He would have gone on reading, and felt for the sheet he no longer possessed. Joyous laughter rang out like the song of a bird, one peal leading to another.

"I am quite jealous of the paper," she said, as she wiped away the tears that her childlike merriment had brought into her eyes. "Now, is it not a heinous offence," she went on, as she became a woman all at once, "to read Russian proclamations in my presence, and to attend to the prosings of the Emperor Nicholas rather than to looks and words of love!"

"I was not reading, my dear angel; I was looking at you."

Just then the gravel walk outside the conservatory rang with the sound of the gardener's heavily nailed boots.

"I beg your pardon, my Lord Marquis--and yours, too, madame--if I am intruding, but I have brought you a curiosity the like of which I never set eyes on. Drawing a bucket of water just now, with due respect, I got out this strange salt-water plant. Here it is. It must be thoroughly used to water, anyhow, for it isn't saturated or even damp at all. It is as dry as a piece of wood, and has not swelled a bit. As my Lord Marquis certainly knows a great deal more about things than I do, I thought I ought to bring it, and that it would interest him."

Therewith the gardener showed Raphael the inexorable piece of skin; there were barely six square inches of it left.

"Thanks, Vaniere," Raphael said. "The thing is very curious."

"What is the matter with you, my angel; you are growing quite white!"

Pauline cried.

"You can go, Vaniere."

"Your voice frightens me," the girl went on; "it is so strangely altered. What is it? How are you feeling? Where is the pain? You are in pain!--Jonathan! here! call a doctor!" she cried.

"Hush, my Pauline," Raphael answered, as he regained composure. "Let us get up and go. Some flower here has a scent that is too much for me. It is that verbena, perhaps."

Pauline flew upon the innocent plant, seized it by the stalk, and flung it out into the garden; then, with all the might of the love between them, she clasped Raphael in a close embrace, and with languis.h.i.+ng coquetry raised her red lips to his for a kiss.

"Dear angel," she cried, "when I saw you turn so white, I understood that I could not live on without you; your life is my life too. Lay your hand on my back, Raphael mine; I feel a chill like death. The feeling of cold is there yet. Your lips are burning. How is your hand?--Cold as ice," she added.

"Mad girl!" exclaimed Raphael.

"Why that tear? Let me drink it."

"O Pauline, Pauline, you love me far too much!"

"There is something very extraordinary going on in your mind, Raphael!

Do not dissimulate. I shall very soon find out your secret. Give that to me," she went on, taking the Magic Skin.

"You are my executioner!" the young man exclaimed, glancing in horror at the talisman.

"How changed your voice is!" cried Pauline, as she dropped the fatal symbol of destiny.

"Do you love me?" he asked.

"Do I love you? Is there any doubt?"

"Then, leave me, go away!"

The poor child went.

"So!" cried Raphael, when he was alone. "In an enlightened age, when we have found out that diamonds are a crystallized form of charcoal, at a time when everything is made clear, when the police would hale a new Messiah before the magistrates, and submit his miracles to the Academie des Sciences--in an epoch when we no longer believe in anything but a notary's signature--that I, forsooth, should believe in a sort of _Mene, Tekel, Upharsin_! No, by Heaven, I will not believe that the Supreme Being would take pleasure in torturing a harmless creature.--Let us see the learned about it."

Between the Halle des Vins, with its extensive a.s.sembly of barrels, and the Salpetriere, that extensive seminary of drunkenness, lies a small pond, which Raphael soon reached. All sorts of ducks of rare varieties were there disporting themselves; their colored markings shone in the sun like the gla.s.s in cathedral windows. Every kind of duck in the world was represented, quacking, dabbling, and moving about--a kind of parliament of ducks a.s.sembled against its will, but luckily without either charter or political principles, living in complete immunity from sportsmen, under the eyes of any naturalist that chanced to see them.

"That is M. Lavrille," said one of the keepers to Raphael, who had asked for that high priest of zoology.

The Marquis saw a short man buried in profound reflections, caused by the appearance of a pair of ducks. The man of science was middle-aged; he had a pleasant face, made pleasanter still by a kindly expression, but an absorption in scientific ideas engrossed his whole person. His peruke was strangely turned up, by being constantly raised to scratch his head; so that a line of white hair was left plainly visible, a witness to an enthusiasm for investigation, which, like every other strong pa.s.sion, so withdraws us from mundane considerations, that we lose all consciousness of the "I" within us. Raphael, the student and man of science, looked respectfully at the naturalist, who devoted his nights to enlarging the limits of human knowledge, and whose very errors reflected glory upon France; but a she-c.o.xcomb would have laughed, no doubt, at the break of continuity between the breeches and striped waistcoat worn by the man of learning; the interval, moreover, was modestly filled by a s.h.i.+rt which had been considerably creased, for he stooped and raised himself by turns, as his zoological observations required.

After the first interchange of civilities, Raphael thought it necessary to pay M. Lavrille a ba.n.a.l compliment upon his ducks.