Micheline

“ My will alone protects me, and in a moment of weakness it may betray me."
"You still love him?" asked Madame Desvarennes, in a deep voice which made Serge quiver.
"Do I know? There are times when I think I hate him. What I have endured since I have been here is incredible! Everything galls me, irritates me. My husband is blind, Micheline unsuspicious, and Serge smiles quietly, as if he were preparing some treachery. Jealousy, anger, contempt, are all conflicting within me. I feel that I ought to go away, and still I feel a, horrible delight in remaining." ”

“ Micheline, transfigured by passion, strong, and ready for a struggle, threw herself in Jeanne’s way, with arms outstretched, as if to prevent her going to Serge.
“Well!” she said; “try to take him from me!”
“Take him from you!” answered Jeanne, laughing like a mad woman. “To whom does he most belong? To the woman who was as ignorant of his love as she was of his danger; who could do nothing toward his happiness, and can do nothing for his safety? Or to the mistress who has sacrificed her honor to please him and risks her safety to save him?” ”

“ The arrival at Marseilles; the journey along the coast, the approach to Nice, were all matters of ecstacy to Micheline. But it was when the carriage, which was waiting for them at the railway station, stopped at the gates of the villa, that she broke into raptures. She could not feast her eyes enough on the scene which was before her. The blue sea, the sky without a cloud, the white houses rising on the hill amid the dark foliage, and in the distance the mountaintops covered with snow, and tinged with pink under the brilliant rays of the sun. ”

“ I have more money than I want; I refuse millions every day."
"Oh, I know capitalists run after you," said Cayrol, laughingly; "and to welcome them you affect the scruples of a pretty woman. But let us go and congratulate the Prince."
While Cayrol and Herzog were exchanging those few words which had such a considerable influence on the future of Serge Panine—a scene, terrible in its simplicity, was going on without being noticed. Micheline had thrown herself with a burst of tenderness into her mother's arms. ”

“ Oh, I see now what a dangerous man you are, if you captivate other women's hearts as you have caught mine."
She looked at the Prince fixedly, and added, in her clear commanding voice, with a shade of gayety:
"Now, I hope you will reserve all your powers of charming for my daughter. No more flirting, eh? She loves you; she would be jealous, and you would get into hot water with me! Let Micheline's life be happy, without a cloud-blue, always blue sky!"
"That will be easy," said Serge. "To be unhappy I should have to seek misfortune ”

“ Happily Marie and a follower of hers named Kitty could disguise themselves admirably in men's clothes. The prince procured for Marie Michon the dress of a cavalier and for Kitty that of a lackey; he sent them two excellent horses, and the fugitives went out hastily from Tours, shaping their course toward Spain, trembling at the least noise, following unfrequented roads, and asking for hospitality when they found themselves where there was no inn. ”

“ Ouen's; and he spoke proudly of his friendship with the Duke's Daughter, who had admired the cut of his jerkin at the Court of Elizabeth. But in the house where Angele had lived he moved about as though in the presence of a beloved sleeper he would not awake.
Michel and Angele had had their few years of exquisite life and love, and had gone; Lempriere had longer measure of life and little love, and who shall say which had more profit of breath and being? The generations have passed away, and the Angel of Equity hath a smiling pity as she scans the scales and the weighing of the Past. ”

“ I am very much interested in little Florence, and shall certainly come for her some day in my golden chariot to take her to my castle for a visit, because she is such a well-behaved child and knew me, in her childish way, for a noble lady in disguise. Cecilia? Which one is that? Oh, the one her sisters call Sissy! She needs disciplining sadly, Mr. Madigan, sadly. Much as he loves me, my father, the Prince, would not care to have me know her—as she is now. But she will improve, if you will be very, very strict with her. ”

“ At that moment Michel arrived; he seemed to have undergone a magical transformation since the preceding day, although he still wore his artisan's jacket; his forehead and his eyes seemed larger, his nostrils inhaled the air more freely, his chest seemed to have developed in a different atmosphere. The pride, the conscious strength, the tranquillity of the free man shone in his face.
"Ah!" said Magnani, throwing himself into the arms the young prince held out to him, "your dream has come true already, Michel! It was a beautiful dream! the awakening is still more beautiful. ”

“ Michel knelt beside her.
"I say to you: blessed mother you will be on the day you make the happiness of your son!"
"What is there so seductive about those wolves?" cried the baroness.
"By whatever name you call the woman I love," said Michel, "I shall reply to you: she has every quality that a man should seek in a wife; and it is not for you and me, mother, who have suffered so much from calumny, to seize, as readily as you have done, on the calumnies told of others." ”

“ My own daughter should not and would not marry a fisherman, neither shall Mignon. Madame la Marquise de la Caux is in Paris, and I do what I can to look after her belongings. Madame, Mignon’s mother, is in heaven, and the remnant of her people God knows where, and so I do what I can to look after their child.”
“But has the girl no say in the matter?” broke out Louis angrily. “You are not to live with him—she is.” ”

“ Michel had started off encased in his pride as in a cuirass, mentally accusing the princess of caprice and coquetry, and firmly resolved not to allow himself to be dazzled by her advances. And yet he confessed to himself that he was entirely unable to understand the irritation that he felt. He was forced to say to himself that she was immeasurably kind, and that if she was, in fact, indebted to old Pier-Angelo, she paid her debt with all the treasures of delicacy and refinement which a woman's heart can contain. ”

“ The good home. Yes, yes. I'm afraid that—that the rough life your husband has been living rather makes him forget the conventions my daughter has been accustomed to. Yes, I think so. I'm afraid I'll have to kind of—a—bring such to his attention that he might see his duty. Yes, my dear—" [Pg 236]
"But, papa! I—I—think you had—better not. You see—" and she caught his arm and was thoughtful, looking downward in the meantime. She loved Jean Baptiste, but she was not a strong willed person by nature, training or disposition. She had inherited her mother's timidness. ”

“ At the bare idea Michel felt faint and sick; he fancied that he saw the princess leaning on the arm of the fortunate mortal for whose sake she pretended to entertain no thought of marriage. They were glancing absently at the young painter's work, and smiling as they looked into each other's eyes, as if to say:
"What does it matter to us? nothing is beautiful, nothing exists for us, except ourselves." ”

“ Duty would be easier if you could love him. Try, Michel; perhaps, if you succeed, that warlike heart of his will soften too, for he has the keen faculties of a sibyl. It may be that he feels that you do not love him, and so he continues cold to you. The instant that you have a feeling of sincere affection for him, even though you do not manifest it, he will divine it and perhaps will love you in his turn. I will try to set you the example. I will strive to persuade myself that he is my son—a very different son from you, Michel—and that his faults do not prevent my loving him. ”

“ The princess did not know Michel, she had never seen him; he had not returned to Catania when she had taken Mila's scapulary and exchanged it for this beautiful locket. It is difficult to believe that a woman can fall in love with a man simply at sight of a lock of his hair. Michel cudgeled his brains to no purpose. He could think of no explanation save this, which was far from satisfactory to his intense curiosity: perhaps the princess had at some time been attached to someone whose hair was of precisely the same shade and texture as Michel's. ”

“ St Michel struck the friar, and lost his appointment. Nevertheless, he married a daughter of Sir Francis Kingsmill, the widow of an Irish esquire, and settled at Bideford in Devonshire, where he had children, of whom a son and a daughter are identified. St Michel was persuaded to return to France and to take a house in Paris for himself and his family. He served in the French army; and once on returning home, he was distracted to find that his wife and two children had been inveigled into the convent of the Ursulines. ”

“ I scarcely need tell you, then, that I thought of Michel all that night in spite of myself. Early the next morning I ran to my window, and gazed eagerly out through the protecting blinds. The day was superb, and Michel spent it as he had spent the previous day, stretched out upon a couch on the veranda, smoking, reading, dreaming, and enjoying to the full the happiness of being alive, as he told me afterwards. During the day, a man dressed in black, and carrying a large portfolio under his arm, visited him. Thanks to my lorgnette I soon discovered that he was Michel's man of affairs. ”

“ Michelet calls her a nonentity, a stage queen with merely the externals--the attire--of royalty, remaining exactly on a level with the rulers of the smaller Italian principalities, contriving everything and fearing everything, with no more heart than she had sense or temperament. Being a female, she loved her young; she loved the arts, but cared to cultivate only their externalities. In this, however, Michelet goes to an extreme; for no woman ever lived who had so great a talent for intrigues and politics as she--a very type of the deceit and cunning which were inherent in her race. ”

“ There are two things a woman cannot be at the same time," and he waved his hand toward her resolutely. "A wife to the man she has married, and a daughter to her father." With this statement he sank back into the chair from which he had partly risen. He had said the last statement with such forceful logic, that it made her stop, pause uneasily, and then suddenly she straightened and turning, went to the telephone. But when she called over the wire to her father, all the [Pg 382] composure that Jean Baptiste ever had left him. ”

“ Michelet is happy. His long labor is drawing to an end. The great epic which he has followed as it developed through the centuries is complete. His hero stands hand in hand before the altar with the spouse of his choice, for whose smile he has toiled and struggled. The poet-historian sees again in the Fête de la Fédération the radiant face of his vision, the true face of France, La Dulce. ”

“ In the first place, if Michel and Florence loved each other,—it is useless to mince words,—if they were lovers, there is nothing to prevent them from living as man and wife in some quiet country village, or even here in Paris, the place of all others in which one can live in seclusion, and according to one's liking. ”

“ It was Angèle herself who brought the two Seigneurs together at her own good table, and it needed all her tact on that occasion to prevent the ancient foes from drinking all the wine in her cellar.
There was no parish in Jersey that did not know their goodness, but mostly in the parishes of St. Martin's and Rozel were their constant labors done. From all parts of the island people came to hear Michel speak, though that was but seldom, and when he spoke he always wore the sword the Queen had given him, and used the Book he had studied in her palace. ”

“ An inspired understanding appears to have at once united their minds. "It is enchantment," Michelet says, "to read the vivacious and delightful letters which open the correspondence of Saint Francis with his dear sister and dear daughter. Nothing can be more pure, nothing can be more ardent." He says the sentiment she awakened powerfully assisted his spiritual progress. ”

“ Mila concluded that Michel was aware that Magnani persisted in loving another woman, although the young artisan had refused to take back the princess's ring, and had begged Mila to keep it as a pledge of his esteem and respect. On that same evening, the evening that he had escorted her home from the Della Serra palace while Michel remained behind with his mother, Magnani, intoxicated by her beauty, her wit and her social success, had spoken to her so warmly that what he said was almost a declaration of love. Mila had had the strength of will to refrain from encouraging him openly. ”

“ Michel will receive him gladly."
"Is Mr. St. Michel the conductor, Mr. Davy, then?" replied my mother with kindness. "I remember seeing 45 him in Germany when a little theatre was opened in our village. I was a girl then, and he very young."
"Yes, madam. Application was made to the wonderful Milans-André, who has been delighting Europe with his own compositions interpreted by himself; but he could not visit England at present, so St. Michel will be with us, as on former occasions. And he is a good conductor, very steady, and understands rehearsal." ”

“ The sight threw me into a bad humor, for I detest those books, my boy, and wish the United States of America had never seen them.
Monsieur Michelet, a French individual of questionable morals, first writes a book about "Love," and then clinches it with one about "Woman." It is hardly necessary to add, that he treats both subjects in a thoroughly French manner, and makes one a continuation of the other. Love is a charming little story in every man's life, "complete in one number"—Number one. Woman is a love-story, "to be continued" until, like all other continued stories, it ends with marriage! ”