“Please to find out where she is, and announce to her Doctor Gilbert.”
“I will go and inquire whether madame is in the house or not. Doubtless she will receive you, sir; but should she be talking a walk, my orders are that she is not to be disturbed.”
“Very well; go quickly, I beg of you.”
The servant opened the gate, and Gilbert entered the grounds.
While relocking the gate, the servant cast an inquisitive glance on the vehicle which had brought the doctor, and on the extraordinary faces of his two travelling companions; then he went off, shaking his head, like a man who feels somewhat perplexed, but who defies any other intellect to see clearly into a matter where his own has been altogether puzzled.
Gilbert remained alone, waiting his return.
In about five minutes the servant reappeared.
“The Baroness de Staël is taking a walk,” said he, and he bowed in order to dismiss Gilbert.
But the doctor was not so easily got rid of.
“My friend,” said he, “be pleased to make a slight infraction in your orders, and tell the baroness, when you announce me to her, that I am a friend of the Marquis de Lafayette.”
A louis, slipped into the lackey’s hands, completely removed the scruples he had entertained, which the name of the marquis had nearly half dispelled.
“Come in, sir,” said the servant.
Gilbert followed him; but instead of taking him into the house he led him into the park.
“This is the favorite walk of the baroness,” said the lackey to Gilbert, pointing out to him the entrance to a species of labyrinth; “will you remain here a moment?”
Ten minutes afterwards he heard a rustling among the leaves, and a woman between twenty-three and twenty-four years of age, and of a figure rather noble than graceful, appeared to the eyes of Gilbert.
She seemed surprised on finding a man who still appeared young, when she had doubtless expected to meet one advanced in years.
Gilbert was a man of sufficiently remarkable appearance to strike at first sight so able an observer as Madame de Staël.
The features of few men were formed with such pure lines, and these lines had assumed, by the exercise of an all-powerful will, a character of extraordinary inflexibility. His fine black eyes, which were always so expressive, had become somewhat veiled by his literary labors and the sufferings he had undergone, and had lost a portion of that mobility which is one of the charms of youth.
A wrinkle, which was at once deep and graceful, hollowed out at the corner of his thin lips, that mysterious cavity in which physiognomists place the seat of circumspection. It appeared that time alone, and a precocious old age, had given to Gilbert that quality with which nature had neglected to endow him.
A wide and well-rounded forehead, slightly receding towards the roots of his fine black hair, which for years powder had no longer whitened, gave evidence at once of knowledge and of thought, of study and imagination. With Gilbert, as with his master, Rousseau, his prominent eyebrows threw a deep shade over his eyes, and from this shade glanced forth the luminous rays which revealed life.
Gilbert, notwithstanding his unassuming dress, presented himself before the future authoress of “Corinne,” with a remarkably dignified and distinguished air,—an air of which his well-shaped tapering white hands, his small feet, and his finely formed and muscular legs, completed the noble appearance.
Madame de Staël devoted some moments to examining Gilbert.
During this, Gilbert, on his side, had given a stiff sort of bow, which slightly recalled the modest civility of the American Quakers, who grant to women only the fraternity which protects instead of the respect which smiles.
Then, with a rapid glance, he, in his turn, analyzed the person of the already celebrated young woman, whose intelligent and expressive features were altogether devoid of beauty; it was the head of an insignificant and frivolous youth, rather than that of a woman, but which surmounted a form of voluptuous luxuriance.
She held in her hand a twig from a pomegranate-tree, from which, from absence of mind, she was biting off the blossoms.