Next morning I sent Joubert to my guardian's apartments with a message craving an interview.

It was nine o'clock, and the old gentleman received me in his dressing-room and in his dressing-gown. Beril had just shaved him, and he was examining his rubicund, jovial face in a hand-mirror. The place smelt of Parma violets and shaving-soap. It was like the dressing-room of a duchess, so elaborate were the fittings and so complex the manicure instruments and toilet arrangements set out on the dressing-table.

"Leave me, Beril," said the old gentleman, when he had made a little bow to my reflection in the big mirror facing him. Then, taking up a tooth instrument—for, like M. Chateaubriand, he kept on his toilet-table a set of dental instruments with which he doctored his own pearly teeth—he motioned me to take a seat and proceed.

"I have come this morning, monsieur, to place my position before you and to tell you of a serious step in life which I have decided to take."

"Yes?" replied the Vicomte, tenderly tapping with the little steel instrument on a front tooth, as though he were questioning it as to its health.

"You told me once that I was getting myself into a difficult position. Well, as a matter of fact——"

"You have?"

"Yes, monsieur."

Then I told him everything.

When I had finished, the old gentleman put away the tooth instrument, folded his dressing-gown more closely round him, and examined contemplatively his hands, of which he was very proud.

"The only thing that would have surprised me," said he at last, "would have been if all this had not occurred. Well, now, let us make the best of it. We will assure her future, and she will forget."

"Monsieur, I am this morning about to offer Mademoiselle Feliciani my hand in marriage."

My guardian, who had been attending to his left-hand little finger with an ivory polisher, turned in his chair and looked at me. He saw I was in earnest. The blow was severe, yet his power of restraint was so great that his face did not alter.

Only the hand which held the ivory manicure instrument trembled slightly.

"You have decided on this step?"

"Absolutely, monsieur."

"You know, of course, it will mean your social ruin, and, as you do not love the girl, the ruin of your happiness?"

"I am aware of all that, monsieur—bitterly."

My guardian sighed, rubbed his chin softly, and, for a moment, seemed plunged in a profound reverie.

"I am growing old," said he. "I have no children. I looked upon you almost as a child of mine. I made plans for your future, a magnificent future; I took pleasure to introduce you to my friends, in seeing you well dressed. With the Emperor at your right hand you would have made a very great figure in society, monsieur. Ah, yes, you might have been what you would! And now, in a moment, this has all vanished. Excuse me if I complain. Of course, as you are not of full age I could compel you not to take this step. I could, as a matter of fact, sequestrate you; but I know your spirit, and I am not a believer in brute force. Well, well, what can I say? You come and tell me this thing—your suicide would sadden me less than this marriage which will be your social death. You are a man, and it is not for me to treat you as though you were a child. Think once again on the matter, and then—— Why, then act as your will directs."

He rang the bell for Beril to complete his toilet, and I left the room smitten to the heart. His unaffected sadness, his kindness, his straightforwardness would have moved me from my course if anything mortal could have done so.

Yet I left the room with my determination unshaken.

I was coming down the stairs when a footman accosted me on the first landing.

"A person has called to see you, monsieur, and I have shown him into the library."

I turned to the library, opened the door, and found myself engulfed in the arms of Franzius.

"Mind the violin, mind the violin!" I cried, for he was carrying it, and I felt the bridge snapping against my chest. Then I held him at arm's length.

He was radiant, laughing like a boy. He had come from Etiolles, all the way on foot, and all the joy that had been bottled up in him during the twenty-four miles' tramp had burst loose.

"And now," I said, laughing, too, from the infection of his gaiety, "what is it?"

"Oh, my friend," said Franzius, "she loves me!"

"Good heavens! Who?"

But you might just as well have questioned the Sud Express going full speed.

"Yesterday you saw me—I was in despair. I had not understood aright. She had not understood me. She thought I cared for nothing but my music; she did not know that my music was herself—that her soul had entered into me, that she was me——"

"But stay!" I cried, recalling to mind all the women at Etiolles, from Madame Fauchard to Elise, the station-master's pretty daughter; recalling to my mind all but the right one. "But, stay!"

"That she was me, that my music was her—that every strand of her golden hair, every motion of her lips, every——"

Ah, then it began to dawn on me!

"Franzius," I cried, suddenly seizing him by the shoulders, "Franzius, is it Mademoiselle Eloise?"

"They call her that," replied the stricken one, "but for me she is my soul."

Then I embraced Franzius. It was the first time in my life that I had "embraced" a man French fashion. He and his old violin I took in my arms, nearly crushing them. Fool! fool! Double fool that I was not to have seen it before! Her sadness when I was with her, the way she lighted up when he was near! And I had fancied that she was in love with me!

There was a grain of cynical bitterness in that recollection, but so small a grain that it was swallowed up, perished for ever, in the honest joy that filled my heart.

I had done the right thing, I had prepared to sacrifice myself, and this was my reward.

Then the recollection of the old man upstairs came to me, and, bidding Franzius to wait for me, I ran from the room. I saw a servant on the stairs and called to him to bring wine and cigars to the gentleman in the library; then, two steps at a time, up I went to the dressing-room.

I knocked and opened the door without waiting for a reply. Beril was tying my guardian's cravat. I took him by the shoulders and marched him out of the room.

"Saved!" cried I to the astonished Vicomte as I stood with my back to the door and he stood opposite me, his striped satin cravat hanging loose and his hand half reaching for the bell.

Then I told him all, and he saw that I was not mad.

"Is he downstairs, this Monsieur Franzius?" asked my guardian when I had finished my tale and he had finished congratulating me.

"Yes."

"I would like to see him. Ask him to dÉjeÛner."

"He's rather—— I mean, you know, he's a Bohemian; does not bother much about dress and that sort of thing—so you must not expect to see a Boulevardier."

"My dear sir," said the old man with delightful gaiety, "if one is in a burning building, does one trouble about the colour of the fire escape that saves one from destruction, or if it has been new painted? Ask him to dÉjeÛner though he came dressed as a red Indian!"

Franzius, when I found him in the library, would not touch the wine or cigars I had ordered up; he was in a frame of mind far above such earthly things. I made him sit down, and, taking a seat opposite to him, listened while he told me the whole affair.

He declared that the idea of love for Eloise had never come to him of itself; he was far too humble to worship her, except as one worships the sun. It was his music that said to him: "She loves you, and you love her. Listen to me: Am I not beautiful? I am the child of your soul and hers; divine love has brought you together so that you might create me. I will exist for ever, for I am the child of two immortal souls."

"Then, my friend," said Franzius, "I knew what love was—it is the birth of music in the heart, it is the music itself, the little birds try to tell us this. I had loved her without knowing from the first day; and when knowledge came to me I was still dumb; dumb as a miser who speaks not of his gold; till yesterday, when I told her all. She cried out and ran from me, and hid herself in the house, and I thought she was offended. I thought she did not love me, I thought the music had lied to me, and that there was no God, that the flowers were fiends in disguise, the sun a goblin. I came to Paris, I walked here and there, I met you, my distress was great. Then I returned to Etiolles. It was evening, towards sunset, and, coming through the wood near the Pavilion, I saw her.

"She had taken her seat on the root of an old tree; her basket of needlework was by her side, and in her lap was an old coat; she had made me bring it to the Pavilion some days before, saying she would mend it. I thought she had forgotten it, but now it was in her lap; her needle was in her hand, and she had just finished mending a rent in the sleeve. Then she held it up as if to see were there any more to be done; then—she kissed it."

"So that——"

"Ah, my friend, all is right with me now. I have come home to the home that has been waiting for me all these weary years. Often when I have looked back at my wanderings I have said to myself, Why? It all seemed so useless and leading nowhere—such a zig-zag road here and there across Europe on foot, poor as ever when the year was done. But now I see that every footstep of that journey was a footstep nearer to her, and I praise God."

He ceased, and I bowed my head. The holy spirit of Love seemed present in that room, and I dared not break the sacred silence with words.

It was broken by the opening of the door, and the cheery voice of M. le Vicomte bidding me introduce him to my friend.