“Will you permit me to sometimes enter your domain?” asked the duke, lowing his eyes.

Seeing Etienne so timid, so humble,—­for he, on his part, had magnified Beauvouloir’s daughter,—­Gabrielle was embarrassed with the sceptre he placed in her hands; and yet she was profoundly touched and flattered by such submission.  Women alone know what seduction the respect of their master and lover has for them.  Nevertheless, she feared to deceive herself, and, curious like the first woman, she wanted to know all.

“I thought you promised yesterday to teach me music,” she answered, hoping that music might be made a pretext for their meetings.

If the poor child had known what Etienne’s life really was, she would have spared him that doubt.  To him his word was the echo of his mind, and Gabrielle’s little speech caused him infinite pain.  He had come with his heart full, fearing some cloud upon his daylight, and he met a doubt.  His joy was extinguished; back into his desert he plunged, no longer finding there the flowers with which he had embellished it.  With that prescience of sorrows which characterizes the angel charged to soften them—­who is, no doubt, the Charity of heaven—­Gabrielle instantly divined the pain she had caused.  She was so vividly aware of her fault that she prayed for the power of God to lay bare her soul to Etienne, for she knew the cruel pang a reproach or a stern look was capable of causing; and she artlessly betrayed to him these clouds as they rose in her soul,—­the golden swathings of her dawning love.  One tear which escaped her eyes turned Etienne’s pain to pleasure, and he inwardly accused himself of tyranny.  It was fortunate for both that in the very beginning of their love they should thus come to know the diapason of their hearts; they avoided henceforth a thousand shocks which might have wounded them.

Etienne, impatient to entrench himself behind an occupation, led Gabrielle to a table before the little window at which he himself had suffered so long, and where he was henceforth to admire a flower more dainty than all he had hitherto studied.  Then he opened a book over which they bent their heads till their hair touched and mingled.

These two beings, so strong in heart, so weak in body, but embellished by all the graces of suffering, were a touching sight.  Gabrielle was ignorant of coquetry; a look was given the instant it was asked for, the soft rays from the eyes of each never ceasing to mingle, unless from modesty.  The young girl took the joy of telling Etienne what pleasure his voice gave her as she listened to his song; she forgot the meaning of his words when he explained to her the position of the notes or their value; she listened to him, leaving melody for the instrument, the idea for the form; ingenuous flattery! the first that true love meets.  Gabrielle thought Etienne handsome; she would have liked to stroke the velvet of his mantle, to touch the lace of his broad collar.  As for Etienne he was transformed under the creative glance of those earnest eyes; they infused into his being a fruitful sap, which sparkled in his eyes, shone on his brow, remade him inwardly, so that he did not suffer from this new play of his faculties; on the contrary they were strengthened by it.  Happiness is the mother’s milk of a new life.