"And so it went on,--for weeks, months--I could hardly count the time, it seemed so long. Medlicott told me she noticed a preternatural sensitiveness of ear in Madame de Crequy, induced by the habit of listening silently for the slightest unusual sound in the house. Medlicott was always a minute watcher of any one whom she cared about; and, one day, she made me notice by a sign madame's acuteness of hearing, although the quick expectation was but evinced for a moment in the turn of the eye, the hushed breath--and then, when the unusual footstep turned into my lord's apartments, the soft quivering sigh, and the closed eyelids.
"At length the intendant of the De Crequy estates--the old man, you will remember, whose information respecting Virginie de Crequy first gave Clement the desire to return to Paris,--came to St. James's Square, and begged to speak to me. I made haste to go down to him in the housekeeper's room, sooner than that he should be ushered into mine, for fear of madame hearing any sound.
"The old man stood--I see him now--with his hat held before him in both his hands; he slowly bowed till his face touched it when I came in. Such long excess of courtesy augured ill. He waited for me to speak.
"'Have you any intelligence?' I inquired. He had been often to the house before, to ask if we had received any news; and once or twice Ihad seen him, but this was the first time he had begged to see me.
"'Yes, madame,' he replied, still standing with his head bent down, like a child in disgrace.
"'And it is bad!' I exclaimed.
"'It is bad.' For a moment I was angry at the cold tone in which my words were echoed; but directly afterwards I saw the large, slow, heavy tears of age falling down the old man's cheeks, and on to the sleeves of his poor, threadbare coat.
"I asked him how he had heard it: it seemed as though I could not all at once bear to hear what it was. He told me that the night before, in crossing Long Acre, he had stumbled upon an old acquaintance of his; one who, like himself had been a dependent upon the De Crequy family, but had managed their Paris affairs, while Flechier had taken charge of their estates in the country. Both were now emigrants, and living on the proceeds of such small available talents as they possessed. Flechier, as I knew, earned a very fair livelihood by going about to dress salads for dinner parties. His compatriot, Le Febvre, had begun to give a few lessons as a dancing-master. One of them took the other home to his lodgings; and there, when their most immediate personal adventures had been hastily talked over, came the inquiry from Flechier as to Monsieur de Crequy "'Clement was dead--guillotined. Virginie was dead--guillotined.'
"When Flechier had told me thus much, he could not speak for sobbing;and I, myself, could hardly tell how to restrain my tears sufficiently, until I could go to my own room and be at liberty to give way. He asked my leave to bring in his friend Le Febvre, who was walking in the square, awaiting a possible summons to tell his story. I heard afterwards a good many details, which filled up the account, and made me feel--which brings me back to the point Istarted from--how unfit the lower orders are for being trusted indiscriminately with the dangerous powers of education. I have made a long preamble, but now I am coming to the moral of my story."My lady was trying to shake off the emotion which she evidently felt in recurring to this sad history of Monsieur de Crequy's death. She came behind me, and arranged my pillows, and then, seeing I had been crying--for, indeed, I was weak-spirited at the time, and a little served to unloose my tears--she stooped down, and kissed my forehead, and said "Poor child!" almost as if she thanked me for feeling that old grief of hers.
"Being once in France, it was no difficult thing for Clement to get into Paris. The difficulty in those days was to leave, not to enter.
He came in dressed as a Norman peasant, in charge of a load of fruit and vegetables, with which one of the Seine barges was freighted. He worked hard with his companions in landing and arranging their produce on the quays; and then, when they dispersed to get their breakfasts at some of the estaminets near the old Marche aux Fleurs, he sauntered up a street which conducted him, by many an odd turn, through the Quartier Latin to a horrid back alley, leading out of the Rue l'Ecole de Medecine; some atrocious place, as I have heard, not far from the shadow of that terrible Abbaye, where so many of the best blood of France awaited their deaths. But here some old man lived, on whose fidelity Clement thought that he might rely. I am not sure if he had not been gardener in those very gardens behind the Hotel Crequy where Clement and Urian used to play together years before. But whatever the old man's dwelling might be, Clement was only too glad to reach it, you may be sure, he had been kept in Normandy, in all sorts of disguises, for many days after landing in Dieppe, through the difficulty of entering Paris unsuspected by the many ruffians who were always on the look-out for aristocrats.
"The old gardener was, I believe, both faithful and tried, and sheltered Clement in his garret as well as might be. Before he could stir out, it was necessary to procure a fresh disguise, and one more in character with an inhabitant of Paris than that of a Norman carter was procured; and after waiting in-doors for one or two days, to see if any suspicion was excited, Clement set off to discover Virginie.
"He found her at the old concierge's dwelling. Madame Babette was the name of this woman, who must have been a less faithful--or rather, perhaps, I should say, a more interested--friend to her guest than the old gardener Jaques was to Clement.